Gentlemen Prefer Mischief (11 page)

She noticed that his eyes were frequently drawn to Eloise, which Eloise, busy adoring Ivorwood, didn’t notice at all.

“Ivorwood,” Eloise said, “have you seen the folly by the lake yet?”

The earl, who apparently hadn’t heard her, turned to address a remark to Delia, and Eloise’s smile faded.

Poor Eloise, with her affection for a man who hardly noticed her, even while there were other doubtless more worthy men whom she was overlooking. Lily felt an urge to help open Eloise’s eyes.

“Eloise,” she said, “the white rose bush behind the bench over there is so lovely—it would make a wonderful backdrop for a poetic scene. I wonder if you would do me the favor of sitting with a gentleman—Mr. Donwell, perhaps? So I might make a sketch.”

Eloise looked rightly puzzled by this sudden request, and Mr. Donwell was clearly surprised, but his ready response suggested he was not unhappily surprised.

“I should be delighted to assist, Miss Teagarden. That is, if Miss Waverly consents.”

What could Eloise say? She agreed. Lily could feel Delia and Hal looking at her askance, but she ignored them and fixed a time later that afternoon for the sitting.

As conversation turned to the latest fashions in London, about which Hal seemed to know far more than any man she’d ever met, Lily congratulated herself on finding an activity to occupy her mind and keep it away from thoughts of Hal: she’d help Eloise see that the subtle, kind Donwell was a far better suitor than the out-of-reach Earl of Ivorwood.

It was late afternoon when Hal slipped away from Mayfield and made a quick, surreptitious trip to Thistlethwaite. The housekeeper was flustered by such an august personage as the viscount arriving while the family was not at home, but she had no objections to showing him to Miss Teagarden’s room, where he’d been sent, he told her, to retrieve a book. He found Lily’s journal quickly and was gone with a smile on his face.

Touché, Lily girl
, he thought as his horse made its way back to Mayfield. He let the animal walk and allowed himself a few minutes to read.

Which was perhaps a mistake. As he slowly deciphered, each of her words became like a little hammer hitting a pulse within him.

I
dream
of
him
touching
me, of him pressing his lips to my cheek, the nape of my neck. Of him pulling my gown from the top of my shoulders, down my arms, exposing where my skin is pale and tender. I want so much to know what his lips would feel like.

In
my
dreams
his
hands
are
around
my
waist, holding me tight because he doesn’t ever want to let me go. I would place my hands flat against his chest and feel the thump of his heart, beating strong and steady and only for me.

Muttering a curse, he closed the book, finding himself uncomfortably astride for the second time that day with an erection. Lily was giving him the worst case of frustrated desire he’d ever endured. Along with the ridiculous idea that if only she would allow him in a little, some of her goodness would rub off on him.

He spurred his horse into a gallop and vaulted over an enormous tree stump and several hedgerows on his way to the stables.

***

On the terrace at Mayfield, Lily was ready to begin sketching Eloise and Donwell. Eloise sat on the bench with her arms resting on her lap, her graceful white hands a pretty contrast to the silky sapphire fabric of her gown. Her head was tipped up and to the side in a classical pose that Lily had intended to give Eloise ample chance to converse with Donwell.

He was standing at the end of the bench in a slightly bent, attentive posture. His faded brown coat was not right for a pretty sketch, but clothes were a detail of little importance, and Lily easily imagined him into a richer hue as she put her pencil to the paper. The afternoon sunshine lit fiery glints in his curling auburn hair that would have befitted a poet, and she began her sketch with his head.

After a few quiet minutes, Donwell addressed himself to Eloise, much to Lily’s delight.

“I would very much like to hear about your trip to the Continent this year, Miss Waverly.” He had a deep, smooth voice and a precise manner of speaking, as if he chose his words carefully.

Eloise was staring across the terrace in her pose, and her eyes were fixed on Ivorwood, who stood just inside the open doors that led into the library. She did not reply.

Donwell waited a moment, then, apparently assuming she hadn’t heard him, repeated himself. Eloise still didn’t respond, and Lily perceived with a sinking heart that the girl could pay attention to nothing beyond Ivorwood. Apparently Donwell had discerned this as well, because he said nothing further.

But a minute later Eloise seemed to come to her senses, perhaps because he’d used her name. “Did you say something, Mr. Donwell?” she asked.

“I was merely asking after your trip to the Continent. I was there myself in June, to visit a German friend who’s made a remarkable new telescope.”

“Oh?” Eloise said. “What’s different about this new telescope?”

“It’s bigger than anyone’s ever made before, and it should allow us to see the heavens much more clearly.” He paused. “I believe, Miss Waverly, that you once professed an interest in the stars.”

Lily wondered, as her pencil described the tip of Eloise’s blue satin shoe, how well these two knew each other. If they had some history together, that might make things complicated.

“Hmm…” Eloise said. “Stars.” She sounded so vague all of a sudden that Lily glanced up from her work and saw with dismay that Eloise’s face had assumed a daft look. And she had no trouble guessing the reason for it—Ivorwood had passed through the doors onto the terrace and was now standing talking with Diana.

“You were saying?” Donwell prompted, but Eloise’s only reply was a sigh, and it wasn’t long before his eyes followed the direction of hers.

“Your gown is on fire, Miss Waverly,” he said in a conversational tone, making Lily blink before she realized that his intention was merely to see if Eloise was paying attention. Several silent moments passed, during which Lily tried to think of something to say as Eloise stared longingly at the earl. But then Ivorwood moved back into the library, and the spell was broken.

“What was that you were saying?” Eloise finally said.

“Merely a remark on your gown,” he replied.

“Oh, do you like it?” Her customary charming enthusiasm erased any hint of fishing for compliments. Lily was happy to see that Donwell smiled a little, though the turn of his lips had something knowing about it, and he seemed to consider her question more than such a light topic required.

“It suits you very well, but you already know that, or you wouldn’t have chosen it.”

Eloise’s brow drew together slightly, and Lily couldn’t blame her. What kind of conversation was this?

“For shame, Mr. Donwell. Do you mean to suggest I am conceited?”

“Not excessively. You are simply well aware of your many charms.”

Eloise’s cheeks turned pink, but when she spoke, she managed a playfully scolding tone. “Are you often so severe on ladies, Mr. Donwell? You’ll make yourself unpopular with the fairer sex.”

“I’m not interested in being popular,” he said. “Or in playing games with people.”

Lily could only like him better for his seriousness, but Eloise was looking uncharacteristically stiff, her pretty chin tipping higher in the air and spoiling the composition of their pose. Lily tried to catch her gaze, but it was already trained, with a surprisingly hard glint, on Donwell.

“Games?” Eloise said. “Is there some hidden meaning in your words?”

“No.”

“Do tell, then, Mr. Donwell,” Eloise said, “what you are interested in, if it is not the company of ladies.”

“I never said I didn’t like the company of ladies. What I dislike is the frequent lack of substance they display.”

“Substance!” Eloise said, standing up.

“The pose…” Lily implored without much hope.

“What do you know about substance?” Eloise continued. “You haven’t even got a proper coat!”

A wicked tilt tugged at the edges of Donwell’s mouth, which made Lily think he didn’t truly despair of Eloise’s
substance
. “I’m afraid that’s all the time I have for posing today,” he said mildly. “I hope you’ve had adequate time to sketch, Miss Teagarden.”

While Eloise’s dark blue eyes shot sparks, he dipped his head politely and took his leave.

“What an arrogant, horrible man!” Eloise said as soon as he was out of earshot.

“I rather like him,” Lily said.

“Like him! How could you? He insulted me!”

“I’m not certain he did, actually,” Lily said. “I think perhaps he admires your mind.”

Eloise looked taken aback at this, as though her mind were not the sort of thing gentlemen should be admiring, but just then Diana called out, “Anyone for billiards? We’re getting up teams, and so far Rob and Ian and Ivorwood are playing.”

Lily watched as Eloise fairly sprinted for the doors, calling, “I’m in!”

She sighed, thinking that Eloise’s eyes might only truly be opened by time.

“That went well, don’t you think?”

She hadn’t realized Hal was on the terrace, and she turned around to see him looking smug.

“Where did you come from?”

“I was out riding. And missing your matchmaking fun, apparently.”

“What do you mean?”

“Eloise and Donwell, obviously.”

How had he guessed?

He laughed, and the sun glinted enchantingly off his white teeth, as if to indicate everything he said was magical. She wanted to growl at him and embrace him all at once. She crossed her arms.

“You were hardly subtle earlier, asking out of the blue if they’d pose for you. It wasn’t as if you offered any of the other men the chance to pose with her.”

“There was only you and Ivorwood.”

“As I am her brother, that ruled me out. And avoiding Ivorwood was the whole point, wasn’t it?”

She pressed her lips and watched as Maisy, the stable cat, sauntered over and began making adoring figure eights around his ankles. “It’s heartrending the way she wants him to notice her when he won’t.”

“Is it just heartrending, or is it also familiar?”

She tipped her chin up. “Don’t flatter yourself. Anyway, you know very well the earl isn’t interested in her.”

“No, he isn’t. But she’s only sixteen. These things happen.”

And
they
scar
you
forever
, Lily thought.

“Sixteen is young,” she said, “but soon she’ll be making a choice for a husband. Don’t you think she deserves a considerate, attentive gentleman who would make her the apple of his eye?”

“And you thought that tractable exemplar would be Gregory Donwell?”

She didn’t like the smug glitter of humor in his eyes, and it only made her want to prove him wrong. “Perhaps the posing didn’t go well, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t suit.”

“And perhaps I don’t see Donwell as the ideal escort for my sister.”

“Nonsense, he would be perfect for her,” she said, aware that she was saying far more than she believed to be true—she hardly knew either of them. But certainly she knew more of human nature and real human connection than a viscount who spent his time playing escort to women he never intended to marry.

“We shall have to agree to disagree, then,” he said, “and let true love take its own course.”

“But what if it’s a foolish course? Eloise has no father or mother to guide her. Your brother and Diana have their own household to preoccupy them. That leaves you.”

“She’s sixteen and capable—why should she need guidance from me?”

“The choices she makes in these years will affect her entire life.”

“I should think you of all people would agree I’m the last person to guide her.”

“Perhaps guiding her would inspire you to become a model of propriety. And if you weren’t so busy flirting with Mrs. Whyte all the time, you might have thought of a suitable young man for Eloise to notice.”

His mouth curled into the kind of grin that had doubtless melted the heart of every last woman he’d ever met. “I’m flattered that you’ve been paying enough attention to notice with whom I’m flirting. Though for your information, Hyacinth is also very interested in flirting with your brothers and the earl.”

“Then I suppose you will have to content yourself with Maisy,” she said, leaving him with a puzzled look as she marched back inside through the French doors, more determined than ever to help Eloise see that the world did not revolve around a man who couldn’t truly care for her.

When Lily and Delia entered the Mayfield gallery before dinner that evening, their brothers were already there with the other guests milling about the long room, talking and drinking sherry. Enormous portraits of Hal’s ancestors lined the red walls, glowing like coins in their gold frames, while stately gilded chairs below stood ready for fashionable occupants. Above a fireplace that could have held a cow, an enormous plaster frieze depicted the goddess Diana hunting.

As Lily and Delia passed the hearth, a footman approached with a tray of sherry. Delia took one. “I wonder if this frieze is new,” she said. “The folds of Diana’s toga are so crisp.”

“I wish I had a toga to cover this bodice,” Lily muttered, declining the sherry with a wave. Her pale yellow gown, which she hadn’t worn since her Season, had seemed to fit when she’d tried it on briefly, but the neckline was lower than she was used to wearing, and now she was finding that every time she breathed, it pushed her bosom higher. “I shall go upstairs and change.”

“Don’t be such a schoolmistress type,” Delia said. “Gentlemen like softness in a woman.”

“What do you know about what men like? You’ve been shut up at Thistlethwaite your entire life.”

“I’ve read reams of novels. They’ve taught me all about human nature.”

“Heaven help us.”

Delia didn’t seem to have any qualms about showing her own bosom, which was displayed to advantage in a spring green and white striped gown with a matching green ribbon threaded through a pearl around her neck. She linked her arm with Lily’s and pulled her toward the rest of the party.

“Well, Hal,” Rob was saying to the others as Lily and Delia drew near, “have you had any success in your hunt for the Fiend of Mayfield Wood, or whatever it is you are calling your ghostly spirit?”

“I call it vexing, as it has escaped me twice.”

“I’m sure we’d all love to know who this Woods Fiend is,” said Miss Marianne Preston, the pretty daughter of a local bishop. “Though perhaps he’s terrifying. Think of how brave your great-uncle was all those years ago, my lord—sacrificing himself trying to rescue that young lady.”

How Lily wanted to set things straight, to say that it hadn’t been a rescue at all but a lovers’ meeting. However, that would only invite displeasure from those who wouldn’t want to think of a nobleman attached to a farmer’s daughter.

“At least we know our quarry is human,” Hal said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a swatch of familiar fabric, “and that he’s working with an accomplice. I found this caught in a bush last night.”

Hal’s eyes, resting on hers, held a knowing look. She gave him a little smirk.

“Rather odd stuff for men’s clothing,” Eloise said, peering at the cloth.

“Perhaps it’s fifty years old,” Lily said. “Like the Fiend.”

Something flickered in Hal’s eye, seeming to threaten retaliation for her part in helping the Fiend escape him. The thought of him retaliating shouldn’t be appealing, but it was.

He waved a hand toward the hearth at the other end of the gallery. “What do you think of our new frieze?” he said. “It was done by the same craftsmen who are working on the folly. Or who were, until they heard about the Woods Fiend.”

“Isn’t it too bad they’re too frightened to finish?” Eloise said.

Miss Preston asked to see the frieze and Rob attentively led her away, followed by the others. Lily knew it would be wiser to go look at it some more, rather than stand there with Hal, but she couldn’t seem to make herself leave.

“You don’t wish to see the frieze?” Hal asked her.

“I’ve already seen it.”

“And did you like it?”

“It’s pretty, certainly. A folly and a frieze. What’s next, wallpaper?”

“The family’s hardly been here over the last year and the manor needs freshening up. Anyway,
I
like friezes, so what else matters?”

When she didn’t reply he said, “Aren’t you going to run off then?”

“Run off? Why should I run from you?”

“Because I remind you of things you don’t like about yourself. That you are a woman who likes to be kissed, for one thing.”

A memory of their horseback ride and how she’d felt both exhilaratingly wild and utterly safe in his arms made her want to listen to him, to be in his arms again and to say yes to everything he’d ask her. But she couldn’t. “You are mistaking things again. I’m not like that. Not truly.”

He laughed. “You can tell yourself that—it doesn’t make it true.”

She frowned and looked away from him toward the walls and changed the subject.

“I notice that all the men in that row of paintings are wearing that same ring, except for the last man.” The ring was distinctive—made of thick gold, its heavy setting held a large, square ruby.

He gave her a look that said he knew why she’d changed the subject. “That’s because the ring was lost some time ago. It always went to the second son. I spent a lot of my childhood on quests to find it.”

The group of guests looking at the frieze had moved across the long room, so that Lily and Hal were quite by themselves. But now she was curious; she knew little about his family.

“Were you close to your father?”

He shrugged.

“Didn’t you care for him?”

“I didn’t know him well enough to care about him. He was very taken up with the viscountcy, and with training Everard to be viscount when his time came.”

Her own father had been deeply flawed, but for the first dozen years of her life she’d been held in his love, and that had given her a sense of belonging she knew she’d always have. “You were only a year or two younger than your brother, weren’t you?”

“Sixteen months.”

“So close in age, yet so different in how you were treated. You must have felt left out of what your father and brother shared. It would only be natural.”

He gave her a dry look. “I doubt I thought about it, beyond being grateful that I didn’t have to go through the things my brother did—the formal events he was expected to attend, the adults he had to please.”

“Perhaps he didn’t have the freedom you did, but he had most of the attention.”

“Certainly, along with the knowledge that his path in life was entirely determined for him.”

“So you were left to do as you pleased and make mischief.”

“I had my share of beatings,” he said, “but they were never as severe as what Everard got. Everard wasn’t allowed to make mistakes.”

“And nobody expected as much of you.”

“I was lucky then, wasn’t I?”

She wondered. Was that lucky, to be so thoroughly branded as second class in your family? Though indeed, he’d always had such a joking, playful manner that no one would have thought him anything but golden, a golden youth now turned into a golden man. Laughing and easy and never much bothered about anything, he teased and pulled tricks and chased thrills. What he’d been good at had been play—and it still was. And yet, she thought about that dangerous swim in the river, and the shadows she’d sometimes seen in his eyes.

“Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps not.”

“There are advantages to being left to your own lights,” he said. “I used to make up adventures I would’ve had with the old uncles, the ones I never met. I created an entire society in my mind of all the second sons. We had epic adventures.”

He gestured toward the portraits. “A pack of swashbucklers, they were. First Lord of the Admiralty, lost his arm in a naval battle.” He pointed to another portrait. “Foreign Secretary, but really a spy for the king who secretly averted war with France.”

He obviously needed adventure now as much as he’d craved it when he was young. “You wish you were back in the army, don’t you?”

His eyelids lowered. “Feeling sorry for the poor, wealthy viscount?”

“I think you miss the danger of war,” she said. “Do you
need
danger?”

Hal didn’t like the way Lily was probing him—or how she seemed to see through him.

But she looked so pretty in her pale yellow gown that it fairly made his teeth hurt, no matter that he didn’t at all like the conversation they were having. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from being fascinated by her.

Her white-blond hair was piled with predictable tidiness on her head, though a few wisps were escaping here and there. With her cheeks pink and her eyes as softly blue as a summer field of periwinkle, she looked fresh and innocent, even if the sight of her creamy bosom was turning his thoughts more wicked every moment. He alone knew the way she might tip her head if a kiss were pressed behind her jaw, an invitation that was all the more a victory from a woman who didn’t want to yield.

All day he’d thought about her, and about touching her again. He wanted to trouble the serious light in her eyes, to gain all her attention—and bring her to surrender. The kind of surrender that would also allow him to solve the mystery of what she was doing in his woods. And dammit, he wanted his folly completed.

“Why would I need danger?”

“I don’t know, but you seem to crave it. Taunting your colonel outrageously enough to be thrown in jail, racing horses, swimming in dangerous rivers. Maybe exploits make you feel more alive.”

“What kind of a man would feel more alive for killing a man?”

“Killing the enemy was what you were trained to do. But it’s not without costs, is it?”

He looked away from her. How had they come to be discussing this? Across the room, Eloise laughed musically. He was glad she and John and his family were safe, that none of them had been touched by the war. But, yes, it had done things to him, just as Everard’s death had, and he didn’t know what to do with those feelings. He damned well didn’t want Lily poking at them.

“Save your concern, Lily,” he said softly. “I was an indulged young man who had everything he ever wanted.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “Or perhaps you grew up accustomed to acting outrageous because your older brother outshone you by virtue of his birth, and then through his virtue. Perhaps, because you could never be first in your family, you made being a knave the thing you were best at. Perhaps it was your way of drawing attention where it was rarely bestowed—on you.”

She’d provoked something hard in him, and he needed to push back. He crossed his arms and propped a shoulder lazily against the window frame behind him.

“Do you know what I think, Lily? I think you focus on other people’s troubles because you don’t want to look at your own.”

“Me? I don’t have troubles,” she said, but he had his doubts. He remembered how she’d stiffened in his arms when they were on Emperor and he’d brought up how serious she’d been as a girl.

“What about your father? What happened with him?”

A wary look came into her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I remember hearing that he took to the bottle after your mother died.”

A flush came over her face. “How dare you. My father was a good man who suffered greatly when my mother died.”

She was angry with him, but he’d found a chink in her firm, tidy armor, and he needed to explore it, needed her to let him see inside her. “Everybody suffers sometimes,” he said. “But it’s hard to respect people who wallow.”

She sucked in a breath, and he knew he’d come up against something. “I hardly think a man like you could have appreciated someone like my father.”

He ignored the harshness of her words. “I liked your father very much when I was young. But I remember seeing you at the wine merchant one day when you were little more than a girl, discussing a bill. And now that I think about it, I see why you were there.”

“You know nothing about my family, and I’ll thank you not to say another word,” she said in a hard voice that should have made him stop. But this felt important.

“It only takes adding up the details to guess what happened. Your brothers would have been away at school, and your sister very young. With a father drowning in drink, that left you to be the responsible one in the household, didn’t it? And you would have been all of twelve or so, far too young for so much to be asked of you.”

Her eyes snapped at him, and she turned to go, but he reached out and grabbed her arm. Suddenly he saw so much about her. “Ian and Rob and Delia don’t have any idea, do they, of how much you took on back then? How much you did for them?”

“You’re inferring far too much!” she said, even though it was obvious he’d guessed the truth.

“I doubt it. Life in the army showed me just about everything men are capable of, including a colonel who was so constantly drunk that a captain was secretly running his regiment. I suspect you were the family captain for a number of years. It certainly accounts for why you are so bossy.”

“My father was a good and loving man,” she said in a rough, forceful voice.

“But that doesn’t mean he didn’t shirk his responsibilities.”

“I won’t listen to another word!” She tugged her arm from his grasp.

“Go then,” he said. “But think about this: maybe you are such a sharp judge of yourself and everyone else because you are angry.”

***

Lily rushed away from Hal, aware that she was furious. She forced herself to slow down so she could use the length of the room to calm her breathing. What was wrong with her? She never got upset, and she despised emotion.

But how dare he accuse her of being judgmental when he so uncaringly did everything he wanted? How dare he speak of her father as if he understood anything about her and her family?

And what was worst, she thought as her shoulders slumped, how could a man like Hal guess so many private things about her?

She reached the group of guests just as dinner was announced, and she forced herself to stop thinking about what she and Hal had said to each other. As they all left the gallery, she prayed she wouldn’t have to sit near him.

She was, luckily, placed at the opposite end of the long table. Eloise sat on her left, and Donwell was across from them. Lily made herself try a little to get them to speak to each other, but they both seemed adept at evading her efforts and spoke instead to others, and the dinner passed without any connection between them. The meal felt glum and endless, though certain of the gentlemen kept guffawing loudly.