Always a Scoundrel (6 page)

She held her breath as Lord Bramwell slid his hands around her waist and lifted her. His hands remained there for a heartbeat, warm and intimate, before he released her to swing up onto his own mount.

A day ago she’d wanted to punch him in the nose. He had a reputation for being charming when he wished to be, but she knew that. And she didn’t feel as though he was attempting to trick her into liking him. At the same time, she should be hating him for his role in helping to lead James astray. And she wasn’t. “Thank you, my lord,” she said belatedly.

“Bram,” he responded, circling his horse to bring it even with hers.

She nodded. “Br—”

“Your Titan makes my Swift look dull as rocks,” James complained from beyond Bram. “I’ll wager you for him.”

“No.”

“But he’s from Waring’s stable, ain’t he?”

“Yes. Sullivan Waring is my good friend. Ride on your sister’s other side.”

“But—”

“A lady should always be protected. And I don’t want you gawking at my damned horse all morning.”

With clear reluctance James moved to her right, so she had one of them on either side of her. Whether Lord Bramwell—Bram—was attempting to show her respect or whether James’s pestering did bother him, she didn’t know, but she appreciated the gesture. And she liked
the way he claimed Sullivan Waring as a friend. He said it plainly, as a fact not to be questioned. Simple, brief as it was, it spoke well of him. And that was something she’d never expected.

“When you returned my book to me,” she began conversationally, “you said you could teach me a great many things. I assume those things were not what you were referring to when you made that same offer again last night.”

Obsidian eyes met hers, unreadable and assessing. Men didn’t generally pay her much attention except to make an even number in a dance. And now she had a secret nearly-betrothed and a supposed teacher, one who looked like an angel and one a devil, and both with awful reputations. Best to remember that neither of them likely had anything good in mind for her.

“So today you’re unblushing and unafraid?” he asked after a moment, using the same low tone that she had. “Wise to the ways of men and unable to be shocked?”

“Given my present circumstances, I prefer to think of it as being practical.”

He nudged his big black a breath closer. “Do you think you can stand toe-to-toe with me, Lady Rosamund?”

Oh, dear
. “I think words are just words. Air with sound.”

He continued to gaze at her levelly. “If you think that,” he finally said, his voice a low, sensual murmur, “then you don’t know the same words I do.”

“I assure you, I am quite well edu—”

“Fuck, for example,” he interrupted. “Or cunt.”

Bramwell said the words so…matter-of-factly that it stunned her. Rose took a breath. If this was how he meant to proceed, then, well, she would simply be above it. “The vocabulary of fishmongers and whores doesn’t impress me.”

“It’s not meant to impress you, Rosamund.”

“Then what, precisely, is it meant to do?”

Bram looked beyond her, at her idiot brother who’d gotten her into this quagmire and didn’t seem to care a whit about what he’d done. And however sophisticated she played at being, those two words had obviously nearly given her an apoplexy. Cosgrove wouldn’t even need the six months he’d boasted it would take to destroy her. And that wasn’t taking into account what the marquis would do to her in bed.

“Well?” she prompted. “Or are those words all you have to offer?”

“It was a demonstration,” he returned, annoyed that the abrupt image of her in Cosgrove’s bed angered him. More than angered him. Infuriated him. He set his reaction aside for later consideration. “Put a princess among pigs, and eventually she’ll smell like one of them.”

“But she’ll still sound like a princess rather than a pig. And even a pig can learn to do tricks.”

“And a princess can be made to walk on all fours and squeal. Pretty tones or not, she still becomes a pig. Or worse.”

Rosamund blushed. “
I
will not become a pig. Or worse.”

“I’ve seen pretty princesses once Cosgrove has finished with them. And they began with more experience about men than you have.”

Fear flickered in her grass green eyes, and he told himself that was a good thing. She needed to understand the facts of what lay before her if she meant to survive Cosgrove with any bit of herself left at all. And so he wasn’t angry with himself for frightening her; he was angry with her for being so naive that she required his assistance.

“If I’m to be forced to…wallow in the mud, then what can you possibly
say
that will help me?”

Sweet Lucifer, she had spleen. He glanced at her brother again, but now that they’d reached Hyde Park the pup seemed absorbed by all the carriages and pretty colors. “I would say once again that perhaps you might consider taking the air in a place other than London,” he whispered.

He didn’t need or want Cosgrove for an enemy. Apparently, though, he’d just discovered that there was at least one line he wouldn’t cross—or allow her to cross. Not without saying something, at any rate. How far his convictions would carry him next, he had no idea.

“You were being serious?” She looked truly shocked for the second time that morning. “What good would that possibly do?”

“It would keep you from having to marry Cosgrove. If you’re as well-educated as you claim, I could find you employment as a governess somewhere. I know a handful of people who aren’t completely despicable.”

“And Cosgrove would attempt to collect the ten thousand pounds from my family, and they would be twice ruined. Once by James’s actions, and once by mine.”

“Yes, well, it could all actually be traced back to James. His actions force you to react to save yourself.”

“What of my parents, then?”

He blinked. “They’ve sold you to a monster. They can go hang themselves.”

Rosamund gazed at him, meeting his eyes in that disconcertingly direct way she had. The expression on her face puzzled him. What was that? Pity? For herself, or for him?

“I hadn’t realized the help you offered was to advise me to do something that would harm and betray my family,” she said softly. “I won’t do that, so thank you for your time, but I cannot use your assistance.”

The twists and cankerous pits of human nature rarely surprised Bram any longer. This surprised him. She surprised him. “You’re a fool, Rosamund.”

“Perhaps. But I’m a loyal fool. Even if I had no obligation to my parents for raising me, I have a sister and brother-in-law, and a young niece and nephew back in Somerset. They would pay for my selfishness, more than I would. And you must agree that while Cosgrove may attempt to…alter my character, I have an equal chance of altering his.”

“You have no chance in hell.”

“But he’s never wished to marry before. Perhaps now he is willing to change.”

“Who, precisely, are you attempting to delude? Because it’s not working on me, my dear.”

She swallowed, looking down at her hands. “Then you have your opinion and I have my duty to help my family, and I suppose we have nothing left to discuss.”

Bram had caused women to cry before, but this was new. And he felt distinctly as though he had just descended into a lower level of Hades. He must be fairly close to the bottom, by now. Was it worse, though, to
say nothing and watch Rosamund Davies walk down the aisle to her destruction all unawares, or to remove any vestige of hope from her beforehand?

He shook himself, disliking the tension in his gut. And when he came across a sensation he didn’t like, he took action to dispense with it.
Damnation
. “The lessons that would have the greatest benefit for you,” he said slowly, “are the ones a proper young lady is only supposed to receive from her husband.”

Rosamund lifted her head again. “A lesson is only words.”

He nodded, a sensation very like hope running through him. He certainly recognized it in
her
face. This was a definite improvement. “Air with sounds.”

“There’s certainly nothing wrong with talking and such. And I think it might be to my benefit to know what to expect.”

“I agree.” His lips curved. “You can’t be rid of me yet, anyway, because you still owe me a waltz.”

“You may not be as awful as I first believed, Bram Johns.”

“I suggest you withhold your opinion on that count. It’s early yet.”

Since he’d apparently just agreed to teach a young lady—one he found oddly compelling—about the ways and whims of a rake and blackguard without actually touching her, he wasn’t about to vouch for his judgment or his sanity. It almost made housebreaking seem…simple.

“What are the odds that Sullivan Waring would sell me a horse?” Viscount Lester asked abruptly.

“The odds would be better if you had any blunt to spend,” Bram returned. He considered himself self-
absorbed, and happily so, but James Davies had raised that particular merit—or fault, he supposed—to an art form.

“Loan me the funds,” the boy said. “Or I’ll play you for them.”

It would have been an easy way to make another hundred quid or so, but he didn’t need Rosamund looking over at him to know that it wasn’t something he wanted to do at the moment. “I don’t play where I can’t lose,” he returned. “If you haven’t realized it by now, Lester, you are an abysmal gambler.”

The boy’s face fell. “I say! That’s unkind of you, Bram. Rotten, even.”

“What would you have me say? The very first rule of wagering is to never risk more than you can afford to lose. You’ve failed at that one, I would say.”

“Cosgrove says you have to lose before you can win. That’s how you learn the mettle of the other players.”

Good God
. Lester sounded even younger than the barely grown boy he was. Bram didn’t think he’d ever been that young, himself. He wanted to cuff the pup on the back of the head. “You lost ten thousand quid, James. I think you’ve shown everyone in Mayfair
your
mettle.”

“Cosgrove says—”

“I’m going to dinner at my brother’s house tomorrow night,” Bram interrupted hurriedly, before he could change his mind. “You and Lady Rosamund join me. We play faro after dinner. We’ll test your mettle there.”

Rosamund clearly didn’t like that, but it was the best way he could think of to keep her brother from getting into even more trouble for which she would somehow
have to pay. At least if Lester was under his supervision, he could control the amount being lost.

The brother would be the easy part, though. Keeping his word to Rosamund while not crossing Cosgrove was another task altogether. Especially when he wasn’t feeling the least bit brotherly about her. And restraint had never been his strong suit. In fact, he couldn’t recall ever having attempted to use it before.

Had she made a mistake? Rosamund tied on her bonnet, preparing to go down to the small Davies House garden to pick some fresh flowers for her bedchamber—and to give herself a moment without the sounds of her mother’s and Beatrice’s voices echoing through both her head and the entire house.

Her parents had sold her to the devil. Then she’d turned around and willingly made what amounted to a bargain with a second devil. They’d done it to save the family, but she’d acted only to help herself. But then, her family wouldn’t be living under Cosgrove’s roof. And if Bram could somehow lay out for her what she could expect from the marquis, then at least she could prepare herself a little.

Nothing Bram Johns had said thus far had made her feel any better at all—just the opposite, actually.
For a hardened, heartless rake to call another man, his own friend, a monster, was terrifying. Especially when she only had a little less than a month before she was supposed to spend the remainder of her life with him.

A shiver ran down her spine. For another week or so she would be able to pretend that it wasn’t truly going to happen, that she had just dreamed her upcoming marriage or that her father would find the money to repay James’s debt. The closer the date came, the more real the circumstances would become. And then Bram’s suggestion that she flee would be much more difficult to ignore.

As she passed her father’s downstairs office, she could hear James complaining about something, probably the reduction of his monthly allowance. Her father’s lower voice answered. All James needed to do was have a bit of patience; in a month the family’s debt would be erased, and he could return to his former debauchery.

“The garden, is it, my lady?” Elbon queried with a smile as he pulled open the front door for her.

She nodded. “I’ll pick some fresh lilies for the foyer, as well.”

“They would be most welcome.”

Even with the sounds of Mayfair and the neighboring households all around, the garden had always felt peaceful. Not to the degree of the one at Abernathy in Herefordshire, but the nearest thing to that anywhere in London. She could stand a bit of peace after the chaos of the past few days.

Fleetingly she wondered whether Lord Cosgrove had a garden, but she just as quickly banished the thought.
She didn’t want to think about it until she absolutely had to. Duty, duty, duty. Why had she learned that lesson so well when James seemed not to have been required to do so?

Blast it all
. Kneeling, she used her scissors to cut a handful of lily stems, laying the flowers in the basket she’d brought outside with her. For her own room she preferred roses, but the plants had bloomed early this year.

“A Rose among lilies,” a deep voice drawled from the direction of the carriage drive.

Her heart jumped, then began skittering as she realized the man moving up behind her wasn’t who she’d first thought.
Oh, dear
. “Lord Cosgrove,” she said, glancing over her shoulder and then returning to the lilies. They could use some pruning, she decided. “My brother and father are both inside the house.”

“Have you wondered,” he continued, as though she hadn’t spoken, “why it is that I consider you to be worth ten thousand pounds?”

He leaned against the oak tree several feet behind where she knelt. She didn’t like having her back to him, but neither did she want to turn around and somehow give the impression that she welcomed a conversation. She was without a chaperone, after all, and no one but her family—and Bram Johns—knew of their particular agreement.

“I’m certain I have no idea, my lord,” she answered after she’d waited in silence for as long as she could stand.

“Shall I tell you?”

Rose drew a breath, closing her eyes for just long
enough to wish that someone would look out a window and come to her rescue. “Do as you wish, my lord.”

“I always do.” He paused again. “Ask me, why don’t you?”

“Beg pardon?”

She heard him straighten, heard him move forward so that he stood directly behind her. “Perhaps it’s early yet to give orders,” he said in a low voice. “We are barely acquainted, after all.”

“Of course. I’m certain that once I’ve come to better know your character, and you mine, we will find ourselves compatible.” She jumped on the excuse, knowing she was prattling and unable to stop. “Love isn’t always necessary at the beginning of a marriage, because with familiarity comes affection. And—”

“I thought familiarity bred contempt.”

“Oh, no. I don’t think that’s so, at all. The—”

“Are you going to dig that hole all the way to China?” he interrupted.

Rosamund looked down. She’d pruned the lily in front of her into oblivion, and ruined her scissors stabbing them into the dirt. “The plant had worms,” she improvised.

Lord Cosgrove circled her, stopping his finely polished Hessian boots directly over the lily’s carcass. “Look at me, Rose.”

Oh, she should have stood up when she first heard his voice.
Idiot
. Pasting a friendly smile on her face, she lifted her head, swiftly looking past the crotch of his trousers and up at his face. The lazy, cool expression in his blue eyes turned her insides to ice. Every rumored affair, every whispered degradation, flooded
her mind. And clearest of all was Bram Johns’s voice talking about pigs and squealing and women with more experience than she had.

“You show very well, looking up from down there,” the marquis murmured. “We’ll have to remember that.”

Summoning every bit of courage she had, Rosamund lifted her hand. “Help me to my feet, if you please.”

At the same moment he took her hand, she realized that he’d never touched her before. His grip was firm enough as he pulled her upright, but despite a brief, wordless hope, all she felt at the contact was a chilly, growing dread.

Cosgrove kept her fingers in his, pulling her up against him. “Do you know how difficult it is, dearest Rose,” he murmured, “to find a woman of exactly your qualities?”

“And what qualities are those, my lord?” Her voice wasn’t quite steady, but that couldn’t possibly surprise him. The marquis was clearly trying to intimidate her, and he was doing a very fine job of it.

His lips curled in a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “I imagine you’ll discover that soon enough.”

He placed his fingers beneath her chin, not forcing her face up, but leaving her with the distinct impression that he would if she resisted.
Please don’t kiss me
, she prayed fervently, though at the same time she wondered why she bothered. In a month he would kiss her whenever he wished. And he wouldn’t have to stop there. As she looked up into those angelic blue eyes, she knew that Bram had been utterly, absolutely correct; she didn’t have a chance in Hades against this man. She didn’t know enough to fight
this battle, much less to have a hope of winning it. Of even surviving it.

“Are you afraid of me?” he continued in the same soft tone, their faces inches apart. “I suggest you say yes.”

“Y-yes,” she managed.

The marquis licked her mouth.

“You taste of it,” he said, releasing her and stepping back at the same time. “Delicious.” With another faint smile he took her in from head to toe, then turned his back and strolled away down the carriage drive.

“Good heavens.” Scrubbing at her mouth, Rosamund made her way to the garden’s stone bench and half collapsed on it. “Good heavens.” What in the world would she do when he didn’t walk away? When he wanted her to—made her—perform her wifely duty? Even Beatrice shuddered when she mentioned that, and she claimed to have made a love match.

“Oh, blast it, he’s gone,” James said as he panted up from the servants’ entrance.

“You saw Cosgrove out here with me?” Her voice lifted into an indignant squeak.

“Well, yes. Wanted to give you two a moment of privacy, so maybe you’d be convinced he ain’t so awful, but now I’ve missed him. Did he ride, or drive?” Her brother trotted past her toward the street.

“How the devil should I know?”

Frowning, James glanced over his shoulder at her. “Don’t bark at me. It’s not my fault he came to see you while you was wearing your gardening clothes. Cosgrove don’t care about th—”

“What?
” Rosamund shot to her feet and stalked after her brother. “Not your fault, James? Of course
it’s your fault. If you had a single ounce of common sense you would realize that what I’m doing is trying to save this family from its ruination at your hands!”

He backed up, putting his hands out to keep her away from him. “There’s no need for hysterics, Rose. You’re twenty as it is. All winter Mother complained about you not being married yet. Now I suppose I’ve seen to it. That’s doing my duty, ain’t it?”

There was every need for hysterics. Clearly, though, James wasn’t the one with whom she needed to speak. And Bram Johns had best not have changed his notoriously mercurial mind. Because she definitely needed his help. Even more than she’d realized previously.

“This is a very bad idea,” Bramwell muttered, eyeing himself in the dressing mirror.

“My lord?”

“The next time I agree to attend dinner with August and his progeny, you are to shoot me, Mostin. Is that clear?”

“As glass, my lord,” the valet returned, as calmly as if they’d been discussing cutlery. He continued brushing out the shoulders of the black coat Bram had donned.

“And if I mention that I’ve invited anyone else to join me there, reload and shoot me again.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Generally his valet’s toneless, obedient responses served to put Bram back into his usual, properly cynical humor. Tonight, though, he couldn’t shake off the sense that he’d blundered badly. Not only had he sent a note yesterday accepting August’s invitation, but he’d stated that he would be bringing friends.

Friends. He’d only asked Lester because his sister would require a chaperone, and he’d thereafter barely given the pup a second thought. He’d been thinking about Rosamund, and not about himself. The one bloody place he never felt like himself was in the presence of his own family. For Lucifer’s sake, he didn’t even know whether the duke meant to make an appearance. And now with Rosamund attending as well…He groaned. Christ. Levonzy knew about Abernathy’s agreement with Cosgrove.

“Idiot,” he muttered fiercely.

“My lord?”

Bram shook himself. “Not you, Mostin. Me.”

“If I may say, my lord, you don’t look at all well. Perhaps you should stay in tonight.”

“I should most definitely stay in tonight.” He set his black beaver hat on his head and pulled on his black leather gloves, then dropped a plump bag into one pocket. “Don’t wait up for me.”

Mostin nodded. “Have a good evening then, my lord.”

That wasn’t likely. The weather was mild, at least, and he supposed he might have taken his curricle or the barouche. But on the off chance that the duke would be in attendance, he’d had the coach brought around. Massive and black, it required two matched black teams to pull it, and as far as Bram was concerned its best feature was the absence of the family crest on the door panels. Levonzy likely had the Johns crest tattooed on his backside, but no one would find it anywhere at Lowry House.

Bram gave the direction to Davies House to his driver and sat back as Hibble closed the coach’s door. It was
a damned good thing that he enjoyed inciting chaos, because he was going to be in the middle of a bloody cartload of it tonight.

He was accustomed to women meeting his coach rather than him having to disembark and call at their front door, but apparently proper manners needed to be observed for a proper chit. Bram stifled a sigh a few minutes later as Viscount Lester galloped down the staircase to meet him in the Davies House foyer. The idiot had of course dressed all in black, so that together they looked like a pair of pallbearers.

“You two look like a pair of pallbearers,” a rich female voice said from the landing.

The hair on his arms lifted. Taking an uncharacteristic shallow breath, Bram looked up. He’d seen Rosamund dressed in her finery at the Clacton soiree. Intriguing as he’d found her then, that was nothing to now, when he could tell himself that tonight perhaps she’d dressed for him. Her ginger hair was piled artistically atop her head, with loose strands over her ears and across her forehead. She wore a yellow and violet gown with a froth of lace at the sleeves and throat, somehow demure and daring all at the same time.

“And you do
not
look like a pallbearer,” he returned, inclining his head as she joined them in the foyer.

This was ridiculous. He had to flex his fingers to keep from touching her. Even if he did consort with virginal females, which he did not, Rosamund Davies was tall, outspoken, and otherwise unremarkable. It had to be the temptation of forbidden fruit—Cosgrove had claimed her, and so logically she was supposed to become a…nonfemale in his eyes, an entity to be
tolerated and talked to if necessary, but not anyone he would ever think of in a sexual manner.

Except that he did think of her that way. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. He’d put himself in the position of being some sort of tutor to her, which was both absurd and so far out of character that he couldn’t quite believe it, himself.

“How many guests will be in attendance tonight?” Lady Rosamund asked as the butler helped her with her shawl.

“Just us,” Bram answered, then frowned. “And perhaps one other.” Unless the duke had something more important with which to occupy himself, which he more than likely did.

“‘One other’?” she repeated.

Her voice sounded tight and tense. Bram looked from her to James, then stepped forward and offered his arm. “The Duke of Levonzy, possibly,” he said, walking with her down the front steps to the waiting coach. “He was with your father when the agreement was made with Cosgrove.”

“His Grace is one of my father’s good friends.”

The mere mention of Levonzy would be nearly enough to give
him
an apoplexy, but her fingers around his arm relaxed a little. It wasn’t the prospect of the duke, then, that bothered her. “What’s amiss?” he murmured, gesturing for Lester to precede them into the vehicle.