Edith Layton
Authors: The Cad
Edith Layton
For Mary Van Deusen, who came when
she was most needed
She was enjoying herself until she saw the man watching…
The Brixton family departed the ball as night was beginning…
She blinked. For a moment it seemed the only thing…
“What is the matter with you?” Cecily demanded when Bridget…
“Yes,” Ewen breathed with satisfaction as he lifted his lips…
Ewen sat back and stretched out his long legs, resting…
Now that she’d left her aunt’s house, Bridget wasn’t being…
The red-haired man who’d introduced himself as Rafe sobered instantly.
Bridget hesitated on the church steps. It was a small…
He could have bitten his tongue, she looked so stricken.
“You lied,” Bridget said flatly.
Bridget came to understand why the period after a wedding…
“Oh, but you’re crushing it!” Betsy cried.
Dearest Ewen…
Bridget read the note twice but learned no more from…
It had been another terrible day. so bad even the…
She hadn’t been dreaming. Bridget knew that the minute she…
“And here are some of the invitations,” the woman who…
They took the Great North Road and left London behind…
“You married her, but she isn’t your wife? What are…
“Why?” Ewen demanded, shattering the silence that had fallen over…
S
he was enjoying herself until she saw the man watching her. Or at least until she realized the others saw him watching her. She could have ignored him; she was good at that. She couldn’t ignore them.
So she steeled herself and raised her head high. She turned it to the light, looking fully at him with all the pride and dignity she could muster.
He didn’t flinch at what he saw. He didn’t look flustered or embarrassed. He didn’t quickly glance away. Instead, he raised an eyebrow. The corners of his mouth lifted. He inclined his head, as though he were sketching a bow to her. And kept staring. T
hat
she wasn’t used to.
She felt blood rush to her cheeks, and ducked her head.
She knew the dance went on, even if her heart had
almost stopped. The couples in their sets on the ballroom floor danced under a chandelier of blazing candles. From where she sat in the shadows on the sidelines with the dowagers, chaperones, and wallflowers, the dancing couples looked as though they were onstage. She was used to being the audience, used to being in the dark—how
dare
he single her out?
He dared.
“Bridget!” Aunt Harriet whispered sharply. “You must not ogle the gentlemen!”
“I’m not ogling,” she said miserably. “I was
being
ogled. I just looked back at him.”
“Indeed?” Aunt Harriet asked, every word etched in acid. “But if you hadn’t been staring at him, you wouldn’t have known, would you?”
Bridget’s shoulders slumped. There was no answer to that. It was only the truth. Of course she’d been staring at him. He’d come into the warm room like a breath of cool night air. She’d noticed him instantly. Most of the women had.
It wasn’t because he’d prowled into the room, energizing it, causing such a flurry of attention. Or that his dark head was easier to see because he was taller than most, or that his face was so tan compared to the fashionable pallor of the other gentlemen. It certainly wasn’t because he was so handsome. He wasn’t. Not with that high-bridged nose, those hard, defined cheekbones, those long, narrowed, amused eyes. Not handsome. Just devilishly attractive. Bridget bit her lip. She was the reason for his amusement now.
But he’d caught her attention and held it. She’d stared at him, of course she had.
He’d gazed around the room and seen her reac
tion. And stared back. In that moment she’d been thrilled…until she remembered who she was, where she was, and what had caught his attention. Then she’d turned to the dancers and only noted him out of the corner of her eye.
Liar
, she thought, and sighed. She’d enjoyed her brief foolish game of glances with him. She imagined that because of the darkness where she sat, he hadn’t seen her clearly.
“It’s Sinclair,” the women around Bridget whispered. The sound went through the group of watching women in excited hisses.
“Sinclair? Here? He must be looking for a wife!” one of them said.
“Sinclair? Looking for a wife?” another laughed. “
Whose
wife, I wonder.”
“Nonsense,” an elderly lady said sharply. “Even Sinclair knows he cannot come to an affair like this with rakish intentions. I’ve heard he’s on the catch for a new bride, and here he is.”
“Indeed?” a lady next to Bridget purred, gazing at him now. “If so, why is he staring…?” She turned an amused eye on Bridget and left the comment unfinished. It nearly finished Bridget. It was more than enough for Aunt Harriet.
“Bridget,” she said in icy tones, “I saw your cousin shivering. The night air can be so treacherous. You know how fragile she is. Do get her wrap for her.”
Bridget jumped to her feet.
“Wait!” Aunt Harriet said. “Not in the cloakroom. I remember now, she left it in the coach. Go to the hall and tell a footman to get our coachman to fetch it for you. Wait there until he brings the wrap, will you?”
Aunt Harriet was mistress of the question that required no answer, Bridget thought. But what answer could there be? She was being politely sent into exile. She’d wait in the hall until it was time to go home, because they both knew Cousin Cecily hadn’t brought a wrap at all. Why should she? It was mid-May, warm in the house, and almost as warm outside.
“Yes, Aunt,” Bridget said. Then, with her head down and watching her feet so not to see the expressions on the faces of the women around her, she picked her way through their circle of chairs and quickly stepped around the edges of the ballroom toward the great hall outside.
She didn’t mind missing the dance. She would have been shocked if anyone had invited her to take a turn on the floor. She was cousin to a fashionable young lady, but she was not that young and certainly not fashionable. Apart from her most obvious defect, she hadn’t a penny to bless herself with. She was not an eligible young woman.
But she was a perfect companion, and had been one for seven years, so long she’d almost forgotten what a poor name that was for what she did to earn her bread. Because there was no companionship in it for her. She was a warm female body present in order to watch over a young lady being presented to society. She didn’t mind. In fact, she was thrilled. She’d been a warm female body to fetch and carry for elderly relatives for the past seven years, and now she felt she’d come up in the world. At least she had dancing and not just knitting to watch now.
She’d only been in London a month, but she hadn’t been so happy in years. At least not since her father had
died, leaving her in the less than tender care of his family. It was amazing that when they’d heard of his death they’d unbent enough to offer his now fatherless daughter houseroom, since they’d been estranged from the day he’d married her mother. They hadn’t unbent enough to offer his widow the same, of course.
That didn’t matter; Mama would have gone home to Ireland anyway. But Ireland wasn’t Bridget’s home. And at eighteen years of age, she’d refused to be a burden on her mother. With hope and curiosity, she’d taken her father’s family’s offer.
She wasn’t a burden on them. The first two years she’d been an unpaid nursery maid for Cousin Sylvia in Suffolk. Then she’d been asked to companion crabby Cousin Elizabeth in Derbyshire. Bridget had thought of joining her mother in Ireland after all, but Mama had remarried by then, and was actually increasing! No room there for an older daughter, or so Bridget had told herself—glossing over the notion that she might be jealous or hurt or heartsick at the thought of Mama and her new baby, when she herself would never have one.
Then there were those dreadful years in exile with daft old Cousin Mary in the north. Cousin Mary’s loss of wits was the only reason Bridget remained with her, because it was easier to forgive a mad woman for all the nasty things she said. Besides, as Cousin Mary got older she forgot all the really dreadful things she would have liked to say or do.
But then this offer! Companion to sweet, silly Cousin Cecily? In London? B
liss
. In one short month Bridget had seen the Tower and Regent’s Park, gone shopping in dazzling arcades, gone to the theater
and
a concert—and now a ball! Of course, she went as an accompaniment, but it
was more life than she’d seen for seven years. Besides, Cousin Cecily smelled of rose water, not camphor.
Bliss
. No more criticism, no scolding, no complaining. Of course, there was no friendship, no confidences, and no praise, either. Cecily’s brothers were at school, but she had her own set of friends, and if she thought of her older cousin at all, Bridget realized, she thought of her as a necessary accessory, like one of the footmen who always trailed after her. Still, there was no fetching, no carrying…except for tonight, of course. But this was in the nature of a lesson, after all.
The hall in the townhouse where the ball was being held was immense, with a ceiling as high as a cathedral’s. There were urns with towering floral arrangements in the niches in the wall, and the floor was all black and white tiles in patterns, polished so highly that Bridget’s slippers fairly skimmed over them. The company was in the ballroom, so the hall was empty now except for two footmen standing by the door.
“Miss?” one said when he saw Bridget come into the hall.
“Excuse me,” she said, “but could you summon the Brixtons’ coachman? My cousin has left her wrap in the carriage and needs it now.”
“Of course, miss,” he said, bowing. He passed the word to the second footman, who called a page. Bridget waited as they relayed the message to him and he went running out the door.
Both footmen looked at Bridget. She shifted from foot to foot. “Um,” she said in a low voice, “I’ll wait here for it.”
“That won’t be necessary, miss. We’ll be happy to bring it to you.”
“My, ah, express orders,” Bridget said, “were to wait for it.”
She saw the quick look of sympathy the two footmen exchanged. But she was used to that, and so she put up her chin and tried to pretend she was invisible. She was used to doing that, too.
“Perhaps you’d care to have a seat whilst you wait,” one of them said, pointing to a chair in a niche at the side of the vast hall. She hadn’t seen it; it was a spindly thing set in a recess next to one of the immense marble columns that supported the ceiling.
“The very thing. Thank you,” she said, and walked to it, head high. Now all she had to do was to pretend the two silent footmen weren’t there. Three strangers alone in a room, spending the evening together, not speaking—or would they have spoken to each other if she hadn’t been there? Bridget sighed a little at how absurd the world was. She’d have liked to chat with them, but their job was to be invisible, too.
Well, but there are worse places to spend an evening
, she told herself as she settled on the chair. It was a pity, though. She’d worn her best gown, the blue one, with darker blue ribbons at the high waist. She fidgeted with the ribbons now, thinking she might buy new ones—pink, for contrast? But maybe new slippers were a better idea, for she needed them. She raised a foot and contemplated it…and saw another foot suddenly appear in front of hers: a large foot in a shiny black shoe. Her eyes widened and her gaze flew up.
“Good evening,” Viscount Sinclair said, his mouth tilting in that wicked, curling smile that had sent her into her present exile.
“Good evening, my lord,” she said quickly, looking
down at her hands in her lap. She hoped he wasn’t going to apologize, and she wished he would.
“Do you dance so badly you insist on doing it in the hall?” he asked quizzically.
She smiled in spite of herself. “I don’t dance,” she told her hands in her lap.
“Or look at a gentleman when he speaks with you,” he chided her. “But I’m not a vain fellow. I came to ask if you’d care to dance.”
She raised her eyes to his in shock. A cruel jest or an innocent blunder? His glittering brown-and-gold eyes were amused. “I—I cannot dance,” she said. “Thank you anyway. Good evening, my lord.”
“You said that already.
Cannot
as in don’t know how?” he persisted. “I’d be glad to teach you.”
“C
annot
as in I am a companion, my lord, and companions do not dance at balls!” she said with spirit, because it looked as though the gentleman was having fun with her after all, and she was bitterly disappointed in him for it, and in herself for expecting more.
“I wasn’t aware that companions were supposed to pass their nights companioning footmen,” he said in his deep voice, a hint of laughter there, too.
“If you must know, companions are not supposed to be ogled by gentlemen, either. That’s why I’m here. But I’m new to London, or else I wouldn’t be in such difficulties. I won’t be again, that I can tell you,” she muttered. “But I do know companions aren’t supposed to be chatting with gentlemen alone, as we are. Please, my lord, let it be.”
“That I cannot do,” he said. “Pity there isn’t another chair here. I do wish you would look at me when I speak with you.”
“I do wish you would go away!” she blurted, and then, because she was miserably aware of the two footmen pretending not to listen, she added in a whisper, “You could cost me my position, if not my reputation! Please—if you’ve come to apologize, I accept. And if you haven’t—well, I suppose you should. In any case, I’m to stay here until my family is prepared to leave, and it wouldn’t do for them to find you talking to me.”
“Your
family
? Harsh treatment from kin. Are you the black sheep?”
He was prepared to have fun at her expense, then. She sighed. There was nothing she could do but answer him and hope he soon grew tired of his sport. “No, my lord. I’m the impoverished sheep. And likely to become more so if you stay here now.”
“No,” he said thoughtfully, “just the opposite, my dear. So you’re newly come to London. That’s why no one seemed to know your name.”
“I’ve been here a month. I wish you hadn’t asked about me. I’d like to remain in London, you see.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s any problem,” he said, and when she gazed at him in confusion, he added with a grin, “It can certainly be arranged….”
It was a pity, she thought, that his fascinating looks weren’t matched by his disposition, which was miserable. He had such presence. He was tall and straight, his shoulders wide, hips narrow, abdomen flat. Not above thirty and five, she guessed, and a fine specimen of a gentleman.
He wasn’t dressed as lavishly as a dandy or with the studied casualness of a Corinthian. But he was outfitted impeccably in a dark tight-fitted jacket over snowy linen and dark breeches. The only color about him was his
wine-and-gold vest and his hazel eyes. His dark hair was cropped to discourage curls, but she could see it needed cutting again. Or did he wear it that way because it made a woman yearn to brush it back from that high forehead? After all, Viscount Sinclair was a rake, or at least that was what she’d heard.
She could believe it. He had the sort of dark magnetism a rake was supposed to have. She’d never met one before. The only gentlemen who had tried to toy with her were the kind who attempted to dally with powerless females: the sneaks, the shy, the devious. There was the pinch-and-run type, like Cousin Howard, who was the reason she’d left Cousin Elizabeth. And there was the grab-and-grapple sort, like hearty Squire Evelyn, who was the reason she’d always stayed in her room whenever he visited Cousin Mary. There was also the let’s-pretend-my-hand-slipped kind, like Vicar Hanson, of all people!