But it couldn’t be helped now, could it? How could she possibly marry a man whose kisses had, for so many months, been making her feel as if she were the luckiest girl in the world. . . .
Only to realize he’d been saving his
real
kisses for someone else?
Just once did Caroline came to life during the rowdy country dance, and that was when she happened to find herself partnered momentarily with her brother Thomas, who took the opportunity to give her arm a pinch and say, “Cheer up, puss! You look like someone just told you the punch was poisoned.”
“Tommy!” Caroline cried, startled out of her misery by the sight of him. “What do you think you’re doing, dancing like this? You know what Dr. Pettigrew said—”
“Oh, Dr. Pettigrew,” Thomas said, scathingly. “I wish he’d sod off.”
But before she’d had a chance to rebuke her brother, she was whirled away by—of all people—Braden Granville, looking very nearly as grim as she was certain she did, and she clamped her lips shut and said not another word until the reel was over.
But if she’d hoped to escape without further communication with Mr. Granville, she was sorely disappointed. At least if her brother, who stepped forward abruptly and took hold of her arm, had anything to say about it.
“Come on, puss,” Tommy said. “Someone sneaked a shrimp onto Ma’s plate at dinner, and now she’s gotten herself a hive. She’s waiting for us in the carriage. Oh,
hullo
there, sir.”
Even if she had not happened to have glanced his way, Caroline would have known Braden Granville was still somewhere about from the worshipful way in which Thomas had spoken the word
sir.
The fact that he was standing so
very
near, however—right
beside
her, actually—was rather startling, since she’d thought certain he’d drift away once their dance was over.
“How do you do, Lord Bartlett?” Granville nodded at the younger man. To Caroline, he said, “Lady Caroline. I trust you are feeling better than when we last met.”
Caroline, feeling color creep into her cheeks, said quickly, “Indeed,” and, in an effort to keep herself from looking a bigger fool in his eyes than she was certain she already did, vowed to say nothing more. . . .
Until, absolutely unbidden, the words, “I see you found the Lady Jacquelyn,” tumbled from her lips, almost before she’d realized she’d said them.
Idiot,
she berated herself. Why was it that sometimes she could not force her tongue to move, and at other times, she could not keep it still?
“Yes,” Braden Granville replied, as his gaze followed Caroline’s to rest upon his fiancée, who stood chatting gaily with Dame Ashforth, looking coolly beautiful and not at all like a woman who’d rather recently been ravished. “I did, indeed. It seems she’d stepped out into Dame Ashforth’s garden for a bit of air.” “Granville” then added, noticing Hurst rushing toward them, “I see that you are being sought. I’ll keep you no longer.”
“Oh,” Thomas began, “but it’s only
Slater. . . .”
His protest came too late, however, since Braden Granville had disappeared back into the throng of revelers. Hurst, his handsome face a mask of concern, burst urgently upon them.
“Carrie,” he cried. “What’s this I hear about your leaving, and so early? I won’t hear of it!”
Thomas, put out at his tête-à-tête with his hero being interrupted, rolled his eyes. Caroline shot him a disapproving look. Sometimes it was quite hard to remember that only six months earlier, her brother had been on the brink of death.
“Our mother isn’t feeling well, Hurst,” she said. “We’ve got to go. But please,
you
must stay.”
Hurst heaved a dramatic sigh. “If you insist, my sweet. Until tomorrow, then.” He leaned down as if to kiss her. Caroline just barely kept herself from averting her mouth. The thought of those lips, which had so recently been on Lady Jacquelyn’s, touching her own filled her with revulsion—almost as much as the thought of Braden Granville kissing her had earlier filled her with such inexplicable excitement.
But she needn’t have worried. Hurst didn’t attempt to place his mouth anywhere near hers. Instead, he kissed her lightly on the forehead. Caroline’s relief was such that she was halfway down the steep steps that led from Dame Ashforth’s townhouse to the carriage waiting on the street below before she even realized it.
“Good Lord,” she heard her brother cry just as one of Dame Ashforth’s footmen was handing Caroline into the carriage.
Caroline, thinking that her brother must have forgotten-something inside, and dreading the thought of spending another minute more at this house that would forever hold such unhappy memories for her, settled herself onto the seat beside her mother before asking, “What is it, Tommy?”
“That phaeton that just pulled up behind ours.” Thomas, leaning over them for a better look, jostled Caroline and her mother dreadfully. “That’s Braden Granville’s phaeton. Look at the team he’s got pulling it, Caro. Perfectly matched bays. We wouldn’t have been able to drag Pa away from them.”
Caroline, despite her impatience to get away, turned in her seat to look. Their father had been a great horse lover and had passed his passion on to Caroline—somewhat to the embarrassment of her mother, because Caroline was as incapable as her father had been of remaining silent while a horse was being shabbily treated by its owner. This led to frequent and sometimes quite vocal arguments with the drivers of hackney cabs and coal carts, and Lady Bartlett often hid her face in shame at Caroline’s unladylike behavior when she came across a team in bearing reins, which were so popular with the more fashion-conscious members of her set, and of which she strongly disapproved.
Braden Granville, however, had not put his team in bearing reins, which caused Caroline to say, approvingly, “Very nice,” before she remembered that she didn’t want to think about Braden Granville anymore. She almost said so out loud, but her mother beat her to the chase.
“Braden Granville, Braden Granville, Braden Granville!” The Dowager Lady Bartlett, pushing testily at her crinoline, which her son’s antics had set askew, let out an exasperated sigh. “Can’t you speak of someone else for a change, Thomas? I am sick to death of hearing about Braden Granville.”
“Hear, hear,” Caroline said. And, at the time, she quite meant it, too.
3
A
s it happened, Lady Caroline Linford and her mother were not the only people sick of hearing about Braden Granville. Braden Granville himself was a bit tired of hearing about Braden Granville.
When, the following morning, he opened up the
Times,
and found that he was staring at a story about himself, he shuddered slightly, and set the paper aside. There had been a time, of course, when seeing his name in the
Times
—particularly accompanied, as it was that morning, by the words
wealthy industrialist
—had given him a certain thrill. After all, he had not always been wealthy, and he had not always borne the title industrialist. Once upon a time—very long ago, but still alive in his memory—he had been quite poor, and had been called, by the boys with whom he’d daily roamed the streets of London, in search of mischief and often worse, Dead Eye. Not, of course, because he had one, but because he
was
one, having taken out a rat at the age of five with a slingshot and a pebble, at a distance of fifty paces.
He had seldom, since that illustrious day, looked back, and he didn’t care to do so now. But nor did he care, necessarily, to dwell upon his current successes. After all, many of those who fawned over him today had been the selfsame people who’d vilified him a few years back. He was, he knew, neither the genius they thought him now, nor the failure they’d considered him then. The truth, Braden had decided long ago, was somewhere in the middle, and it was best simply not to dwell upon it.
Accordingly, he gathered up the correspondence his secretary had laid upon his desk and began to read it.
A knock upon the door to his private offices interrupted him before he’d finished a single line. He looked up and said, tolerantly, “Come in.”
Ronnie “Weasel” Ambrose, a copy of the same newspaper Braden had been looking at a few moments before tucked beneath his arm, slipped into the room and closed the door behind him in the manner of someone who was attempting to appear as inconspicuous as possible to whomever was standing in the other room.
“Sorry for the’trusion, Dead,” he said, as soon as the latch was safely secured. “But
she’s
here.”
Braden didn’t need to ask who
she
might be. He said only, in tones of some surprise, “It’s quite early for her, surely. Only just past ten.”
“She’s got her feathers on,” Weasel said, sauntering across the room and collapsing heavily into one of the leather seats across from his employer’s massive desk. “You know, the ones she wears to shop in.”
“Ah,” Braden said. “That explains it.”
“Right.” Weasel took the paper from his arm and said, casually, “You see the paper today, then, Dead?”
Braden replied, in his deep voice, “I did.”
“Did you?” Weasel turned the paper round so that the section which featured his employer faced the man himself. “See this part, here?”
“Indeed,” Braden said. “I did.”
“Calls it ‘elegant.’” Weasel turned the paper to face himself again, and read aloud, not very fluently, but in a voice which was fairly shaking with excitement, despite his seeming nonchalance. “ ‘From the inventor of the breech-loading revolver comes this elegant new pistol, which promises to be this year’s most desired model for the discriminating gun collector.’” Weasel glanced at his employer. “Care to hear how many orders for it have rolled in this morning alone?”
Braden said, “Quite a few, I would imagine. Remind me, Weasel, to send the author of that piece a case of brandy.”
“And that’s not all.” The secretary was doing a poor job now at hiding his excitement. He leaned forward eagerly in his chair, wrinkling the pages he held. “Who do you think we received an order from, just a little bit ago? Who do you think, Dead?”
“I couldn’t begin to imagine,” Braden said, a distinctly uninterested drawl in his voice.
“The Prince of Wales,
Dead.” Weasel’s face was flushed, his eyes bright.
“The Prince of Wales
is going to be carrying a Granville pistol this season!”
“The Prince of Wales,” Braden said, returning to his correspondence,
“needs
a Granville pistol, he’s such a foul shot.”
“Dead.” Weasel rose to his feet and went to lean upon his friend’s desk, the newspaper forgotten, crumpled in one fist. “Dead, what’s the matter with you? You just received the most glowing recommendation for one of your guns you’ve ever had, and in the London
Times
—the
Times,
man, read by more people worldwide than any other newspaper—and you sit there and act as if it were nothing. What in God’s name is wrong?”
“Don’t be an ass, Weasel.” Braden tugged on the lapels of his impeccably cut morning coat. “Nothing is wrong. I’m just a bit done for this morning. Long night last night, don’t you know.”
Weasel laughed. Few men would have had the courage to laugh at the great “Granville,” but Ronald Ambrose had the advantage of twenty years’ acquaintance with the man. Why, he’d rubbed Braden Granville’s nose in the dirt more times than he could count. That, of course, had been well before his friend’s court-appointed apprenticeship had plucked him from the Dials; before his career had consequently taken its meteoric path to its current state; and well before Braden Granville had grown to his full height of several inches over six feet tall.
Still, Weasel, even at a comparably diminutive five feet eight, suffered no compunction in teasing his best friend and employer.
“Oy,” he said. “Worn out, are we, from chasin’ after the Lady Jackie late into the night?”
Braden growled, “Not that it’s any of your business,
Weasel.”
Weasel laughed again, this time at the reminder of how he’d come across his nickname. “Well, any luck then?”
“If you mean, did I discover the identity of the man with whom my fiancée is conducting an illicit affair, the answer is no,” Braden said. “At least, nothing that would be admissible in a court of law, if she happens to sue me for breach of promise—”
“Happens
to sue you?” Weasel hooted. “You think that if you break off your engagement to her, Jackie Seldon isn’t going to sue you for everything you’ve got? My God, Dead! It’s less than a month till the wedding.”
“I am,” Braden said, drily, “well aware of that, Weasel.”
Weasel dropped his voice conspiratorially. “I’ve heard of judges awarding thousands of pounds to brides whose blokes have cried off, some of’em a solid year before the blessed day. And you’re thinking you can get away without’er suing?”
“I know she’ll sue,” Braden said, with careful patience, “and I know she’ll win, too, unless I have better proof of her faithlessness than badly explained disappearances—like last night—and these infernal rumors that have been floating about.”
Weasel shook his head. “Rumors,” he said, disgustedly. “You’d think we was back in the Dials, the way these blighters talk about one another. Still, you can’t prove nothing from a rumor.”
“That,” Braden said, “is why I’ve been having her watched.”
“And the boys still haven’t come up with anything?”
“Oh, there’s a man, all right,” Braden said, grimly. “But either the boys’ve lost their touch, or the fellow is a ghost. Apparently, he can melt into shadows and lose himself in crowds almost as if—”
“—he were one of us,” Weasel finished for his employer. He whistled, low and long. “Think he could be?”
“Of course not,” Braden said. “How would a duke’s daughter get herself involved with a bloke from the Dials?”
“Excepting yourself, you mean?”
Braden barely suppressed a grin at that one. “ Obviously,” he drawled. “No, I’m reckoning the fellow’s married, and is hoping to keep the wife from finding out.”
“Or you, more likely,” Weasel said. “Probably doesn’t want to get his pretty little head blown to bits. Still and all, Dead, wouldn’t it be simpler just to let’er sue? You are richer than Croesus, you know. You can easily afford to throw a few thousand pounds her way, and have done with it. And her.”
The grin was wiped from Braden’s face. “No, I don’t think so,” he said, as politely as if refusing a cup of tea. “I’m not handing over a farthing more to Lady Jacquelyn Seldon than I have to. Not that way.”
Weasel raised his eyebrows. Braden supposed he couldn’t blame him. His refusal merely to “have done with” Jacquelyn Seldon puzzled even himself. Pride was clearly what was at work here. His pride, which he’d never before considered so fragile a thing that a mere woman could shake it.
Then again, he’d never before given his heart away.
It was his own fault. He’d been so stunned that such a beautiful, accomplished, and—it might as well be admitted—highly born a woman could ever be interested in him, he’d fallen for her, intoxicated by all that she represented, instead of seeing her for what she was.
He’d learned soon enough. Their engagement had hardly become official before Jackie began to get careless, not being where she’d said she was going to be, or arriving absurdly late for the assignations she did manage to keep with him, and oftentimes looking . . . well, like a woman who’d just been tumbled. And not by him. It was then that Braden began to realize that what he’d neglected to take into consideration was the fact that Jacquelyn was, for all her beauty and rank, still just a woman, as capable of fecklessness as any doxy back in the Dials.
More fool him for not realizing before the announcement was posted.
Weasel heaved a sigh. “It’s a cryin’ shame, I tell you. What’s this world comin’ to when a man like Braden Granville—the Lothario of London—can’t keep his own fiancée from cheatin’ on him? It’s almost . . . what do they call it? Oh, right. Poetic justice.”
Braden regarded his old friend with a wry smile. “Your keen insight into the ironies of my life is invaluable, Weasel. However, rather than standing there, pontificating upon them, hadn’t you better send her ladyship in? There’s no telling what Snake and Higginbottom might get up to out there, trying to impress her.”
Weasel said, suddenly querulous, “All right. I’ll send ’er in. But I’m telling you right now, Braden, I don’t like it. I’ve never seen you this way. Not about a woman. She’s not worth it, you know. She may have a title, but she’s as fast a piece of baggage as I ever saw.”
“Careful, Mr. Ambrose,” Braden said, lightly. “That’s my future wife you’re talking about.”
Weasel rolled his eyes. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Go on with you, Weasel,” Braden said, feeling more tired than ever. “Send her in. And find me some coffee, will you? My head feels as if it were in a vise this morning.”
Weasel sniffed at this dismissal. “As his serene highness requests.” Then, his head held high, but his lips betraying a distinct tendency to curl upward at the corner, the secretary exited the room.
When he was gone, Braden sat for a moment looking out the window to the left of his desk. The view, which was of busy, bustling Bond Street, was as fine as could be purchased in London, and yet Braden didn’t see it, not just then. He saw instead, as he often did when he was disturbed about something, his mother’s face, as it had looked before the disease which had taken her life had ravaged her pretty features. Those few years before her death had been the happiest ones in Braden’s memory. And after she’d gone. . . .
Oh, his father had tried. But Mary Granville had been the light of Sylvester Granville’s life as well as her son’s, and once she was gone, the old man had become a shell of his formerly vigorous self, half mad, and known to disappear for days at a time in his pursuit of parts for the various and absurd contraptions he invented, leaving Braden alone with affectionate but not very attentive aunts. Was it any wonder he’d fallen in with an unsavory crowd?
Thank God one man, at least, had been there to rescue him from what he might have become. . . .
It was those days before his mother’s death that Braden often thought of whenever his career took another dramatic upswing, as it had that morning. Because he had realized, from the moment he’d made his very first hundred pounds—and what a staggering amount it had seemed back then—that it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how much money he made. Money didn’t matter. All the money in the world wouldn’t have saved his mother.
And all the money in the world wouldn’t bring her back.
“Braden,” declared a flutey, highly cultured voice. “Whatever are you staring at?”
Braden shook himself, and was only slightly surprised to find he was not by the hearth in the room in which he’d grown up, but rather the comfortable office he maintained on Bond Street, not far from the Mayfair town house in which he lived. And the woman addressing him was not his mother, who’d suffered a prolonged and painful death twenty years earlier, but the very much living Lady Jacquelyn Seldon, whose fine figure and even finer face was currently the toast of London.
“I’m jealous,” Jacquelyn said, teasingly, stretching her gloved hand across his desk so that he could lay a kiss upon it. “Who is she?”
He stared at her. She was in a new ensemble this morning, one he had never seen before, which seemed to rely heavily upon marabou feather. He could hardly see her face, for all the feathery fronds that were embracing it. Still, what he could see was heartbreakingly beautiful.
“She?” he echoed, taking her hand quite automatically and laying a kiss upon it before returning it to her.
“Yes, silly. The one you were sitting there thinking of. Don’t try to tell me it wasn’t a woman.” Jacquelyn seated herself confidently upon the edge of his desk, oblivious to the dangerous way her crinoline tilted upward as she did so. Then again, she might have been perfectly aware of what she was doing, and was hoping to show off a new pair of pantaloons. She was quite coquettish, in that way.