How to Beguile a Beauty (5 page)

Lydia, her mouth falling open unbidden, looked to Charlotte, who was busily examining her fingernails, and then to Rafe, who appeared ready to rip off his cravat and stuff it in Miss Harburton's mouth.

“Um…” Lydia said at last, “yes, I agree?”

“Good, it's safer,” Tanner whispered in her ear, as he'd somehow managed to be standing next to her. “Let me tell you now, Lydia, that you have never looked more beautiful. I say that because it's true, and because I doubt either of us will get another word in edgewise between here and Lady Chalfont's. Shall we go?”

Tanner's words proved prophetic, for Jasmine talked nonstop all the way to Portland Place, all the time they were stalled on the stairs leading up into the ballroom, and she continued to talk as they were at last inside the cavernous ballroom and heading for the inevitable lines of chairs stuck against the long walls.

“You must need something to drink, Jasmine,” Tanner said once he had secured them seats, including one for the chaperone, Mrs. Shandy, a nearly stone deaf woman who had no idea how fortunate she was in her affliction. “Lydia?”

“Yes, please,” she said, although not before wondering if she would be too obvious if she'd fallen to her
knees and begged him not to leave her with this sweet but incessant chatterbox.

“Oh, good,” Jasmine said with a heartfelt sigh once Tanner had gone off to find a servant with a tray of lemonade, and most probably something stronger for himself. “I'm
so
unconscionably nervous whenever Tanner is about. And then I prattle and prattle and my tongue runs on wheels, and I hear myself saying the most inane and silly things and I can't stop myself. You must think me a ninny.”

“No, of course not,” Lydia said, crossing her gloved fingers in her lap. “But Tanner is your cousin. Why would he make you nervous?”

Jasmine rolled her expressive emerald eyes—really, with her coal dark hair and those lovely eyes, she was quite the beauty. “It's Papa, of course. He keeps telling everyone and anyone that Tanner and I are to be married. It was his father's dying wish, you understand. Tanner's father, not mine. Oh, you'd know that, or otherwise Papa would be dead, wouldn't he? Oh, dear, I'm doing it again. Prattling. At any rate, Tanner is such an honorable man, which is really quite vexing.”

“Why is that vexing?” Lydia asked, although she decided she might know the answer to that question. Wasn't Tanner in
her
life right now because he was an honorable man?

“Why, because he'll do what his father wished on his deathbed, of course. He'll marry me. Eventually. And I really wish he wouldn't.”

Lydia's heart gave a distressingly revealing little
flip inside her chest. “You do? I mean, you don't? That is…”

“Good evening, beautiful ladies. May I say, you present a veritable landscape of loveliness. One so dark, the other so fair, and both the epitome of everything that pleases. I am all but overcome.”

Jasmine giggled nervously, snapping open the painted fan that hung from her wrist and frantically waving it in front of her face before turning to speak to her stone deaf chaperone, as if she knew she was not going to be necessary to the conversation between the gentleman and her new friend.

Lydia merely looked up to see Baron Justin Wilde executing a most elegant leg directly in front of her, and smiled. She doubted anyone could resist returning the man's smile, even if the timing of his arrival on the scene couldn't have been worse, what with Jasmine's news about her disinclination to wed Tanner. “Well done, my lord. Any woman would think she'd been just delivered a most fulsome compliment, when, in fact, you harbor a distrust of all women. Most especially those whom you might deem
lovely.
”

He pressed his spread fingers against his immaculately white waistcoat. “Ah, I am cut to the quick. My friend Tanner has been whispering tales out of school since last we met, I presume?”

“Nothing too dire, sir. I do, however, remember your conversation of earlier today. Should I have been studying my Molière in the interim? Are you going to quiz me yet again?”

“A thousand apologies for that, Lady Lydia. You and Tanner were the first people I dared approach since my return to the scene of my disgrace. No, I fib. I did happen to be stopped by a few others in the park, one to tell me Society never forgives a murderer, and the other to confide that her husband was in the country for the week and she hoped I'd remembered her direction. All in all, not the most auspicious of homecomings, I think you'd agree? I fear my emotions were much too close to the surface for me to be fit company.”

“Your apology is accepted, sir, and there was really no need to explain. But I wonder, if you are so newly returned to England, how did you manage an invitation to this ball?”

He bent toward her, his remarkably green eyes twinkling with mischief. “Very simple, my dear. I remembered the lady's direction. A sacrifice on my part, to be sure, but worth it in order to see you again this evening.”

Lydia felt hot color invading her cheeks, and was grateful she hadn't given in to Sarah's suggestion of the rouge pot, for otherwise she'd look like a painted doll at the moment. “You shouldn't say such things to me.”

“Ah, but I always say such things. Being outrageous is a large part of my charm. Now tell me my sacrifice will not have been in vain, and that your dance card is not yet full.”

“Far from full, my lord, as you can see,” she told him, holding up the card she had been handed by one of the servants as she entered the ballroom.

“Is London peopled entirely with fools?” he asked
her, snatching the card from her hand and using the small, attached bit of pencil to scribble on it before returning both to her. “I'd dare more, but convention limits me to three or else people will expect the banns to be posted tomorrow. Miss Harburton?” he then asked, bowing to Jasmine. “It would be my honor to be added to your dance card, as well.”

Jasmine looked to Lydia, who didn't understand the question in the other young woman's eyes. Was she actually turning to her for permission? But then she handed over her dance card and Justin signed it as well just as Tanner approached, carrying two glasses of lemonade.

“Ah, Tanner, here you are. I didn't presume stealing Lady Lydia away for the first dance, but do see you have her returned here in time for the second. I shouldn't wish to appear desperate by having to track the pair of you down on some balcony, would I? Now if you'll excuse me, I believe manners compel me to find a certain rather rapacious lady and haul her about the dance floor for the next ten minutes as a reward for allowing me to escort her this evening.”

Justin then bowed to Lydia and Jasmine once more and turned on his heel, melting into the crowd that seemed to now border on a multitude in the large ballroom as the orchestra signaled with a rather rusty flourish of violins that the first waltz was to commence momentarily.

Tanner handed over the glasses of lemonade and then snatched up Lydia's dance card, one corner of his
mouth lifting as he read what Justin Wilde had written. “It would appear, Lydia, that you have acquired an admirer,” he said, handing the card back to her. “You as well, Jasmine? I assume so, as Justin is always very careful with his manners.”

“I don't even know who he
is,
” Jasmine exclaimed, wide-eyed. “But he is pretty, isn't he? Oh, look, there's Lady Pendergast! She always wears so many feathers, doesn't she?” She poked Mrs. Shandy with her fan, directing her attention to the rather prodigiously obese woman in purple, sailing past them as if propelled by some errant wind catching at the trio of enormous white plumes in her hair.

Tanner smiled at Lydia, and spoke softly. “Lady Pendergast's feathers, a butterfly on the wing, most anything shiny—whatever takes her fancy. My cousin is easily amused, and even more easily distracted. But the baron was being attentive to you, I think.”

“The baron was only being outrageous, which I admit he does rather well,” Lydia said, taking the card, but not opening it. “I think he's apprehensive about the evening, and how he'll be received.”

“Justin? Apprehensive? I seriously doubt that.”

They both looked in the direction the baron had taken, just in time to see him bow to an older gentleman who pretended not to see the gesture before pointedly turning his back on him.

“Oh, that's not good,” Tanner said, shaking his head. “What one does, others may do, until the whole room turns its collective back on him. We managed to chase
Byron out of England only a fortnight ago, and now it would seem we're about to do the same to Brummell, as well. That can't happen to Justin. I won't allow it. Excuse me, Lydia, while I follow him, make my own feelings known on the subject of his return and my friendship for him. After all, being a bloody duke has to count for something.”

Lydia nodded her agreement and watched Tanner hurry off to stand by his friend. It was as Jasmine had said, as everyone who knew him said: the Duke of Malvern was an honorable man.

Jasmine was now speaking with a young woman dressed all in virginal white, her complexion as pale as her gown, and since Lydia didn't wish to interrupt, she busied herself by at last opening her dance card, to see what the baron had written that had brought such a strange smile to Tanner's face.

The baron had scribbled his name on the second line, the fifth, and the eighth. The three dances he had mentioned. But it was the way he had signed the card that now brought a smile to her face.

Wilde. Wilder. Wildest.

What a wicked, wickedly interesting man.

The captain had been gentle, almost respectful, their attraction to each other expressed only in longing looks, but never in word or action. He had been, she was realizing more and more, not only her first love, but also her beginning. Not her end.

Tanner was an honorable man and a good friend (who had a spring in his step, according to Sarah), and
a rather bemused but interested look in his eyes when she'd come into the drawing room this evening. She'd known, even at first feared, that Tanner could mean more to her than to simply be her friend. But she hadn't considered that
he
might know that. Besides, Captain Fitzgerald stood between them, a bond and yet also a division.

Baron Justin Wilde, however, was a man totally outside her limited realm of experience, a man who well could be teasing her, or he could be using his teasing to cover something that was perhaps more than a casual interest.

Why, she was beginning to feel like the heroine in a Pennypress novel. All she needed now was a menacing stepfather, or a dark castle complete with a ghost.

It was good that Rafe was a duke, and could frank her correspondence for her, as Lydia already felt certain her letter to Nicole was going to run to two sheets, if not more. Which, for a quiet person who was accustomed to little excitement in her life, was rather extraordinary, indeed.

T
ANNER AND
J
USTIN
stood on the dark balcony outside the ballroom, companionably sipping from their glasses as they leaned against the railing, looking out over the gardens and the inviting paths lit periodically by flam-beaux.

It was good to have Justin Wilde back in his life, Tanner thought. They'd had grand times together in the past, young men fresh from school and the country, eager to explore the world and maybe make their own mark on it. They'd laughed together, traveled to the races and boxing mills together. Raced their curricles neck-or-nothing, drunk deep in disreputable taverns, even shared an opera dancer or two. They'd been young, so young, all of them, with their whole lives ahead of them.

Now those memories seemed to be of another world, another time, one before Justin's marriage, his flight to the continent after the duel, and then many long years of war.

So many friends had been lost to that war, good men all. Jonathan, Richard, Harry…Fitz. A man needed to hang on to those friends he still had, stand with them, stand by them.

“I'm not hiding out here, you understand,” the baron said after a bit.

Tanner carefully kept his gaze on a married couple—but not married to each other—seemingly intent on finding a less well-lit area of the gardens. “Absolutely not. I would never think that of you.”

“It's a mob of bodies in there. The woman must have invited all of London, and all of London came.”

“Perhaps even some who were not invited,” Tanner said, a small smile playing about his lips.

“I'll ignore that remark. Balls can be exceedingly boring, don't you think, when there's no card room?”

“Yes, without doubt. Boring. And the wine is warm. All in all, a distinctly disappointing entertainment. I can't imagine why any of us is here. Why
are
we here, Justin? And by here, I mean on this balcony.”

Justin drained his glass, and then stared into it for a while. “All right, since you're being so insistent, I'll admit it. I am hiding, perhaps just a bit. I didn't expect Molton's response. Some of the others, yes, I did expect idiots to be idiots. But not Molton. He was friendly enough when we were in Vienna. We worked together with the Austrians, securing Marie Louise's condemnation of her husband so that the Allies could brand him an outlaw.”

“But now you're both in Mayfair. Molton will follow the pack, perhaps even more so if he fears that someone will remember he'd been seen with you in Vienna.”

“At least Chalfont hasn't asked me to remove my unacceptable self from the premises. There is that.”

Tanner turned his back to the rail, looking in at the bright, overheated ballroom. “Are you serious?” he teased his friend. “His wife is in alt, confident she has scored the coup of the Season, having you here. Her ball will be on everyone's lips tomorrow. She was mortified, she was horrified, she feared her dear husband might at any moment draw his sword and order you out at the point of it. But as you'd already killed the once…”

Justin also turned about, to lean back against the railing. “So you're saying I'm too outrageous to be in polite company, but too dangerous to exclude? How interesting. I might even like that. Shall I take to dressing all in black, do you think? Apply myself to developing a scowl?”

“You mean to combine a bit of Brummell's severe attire with a hint of Byron's pout? The ladies might enjoy that.”

Justin did a fairly good imitation of a dark scowl. “Ladies always enjoy the thought that they might be part of some titillating drama or the other. It's their bread and butter. How else did George collect an entire treasure box filled with locks of pubic hair, for God's sake. Women are fools. And then we have to defend their idiocy.”

“Sheila was one of Byron's conquests?”

Justin shrugged. “I never inquired. Couldn't bring myself to really much care either way, frankly, as long as she didn't do anything so publicly stupid as Caro Lamb. I've had eight long years to refine on my mistake. I failed my wife, Tanner. I wed Sheila's beauty,
not concerned with more than scoring such a coup, having her on my arm. It was only once we'd gotten to know each other that we both realized we'd each married a stranger and, at heart, really didn't even like one another. Let that be a lesson to you, my friend. Admire beauty, take it to bed if you must. But marry it? No, don't do that.”

Tanner knew he had to ask this next question. “You've danced twice with Lady Lydia, Justin. You admire her beauty?”

The baron pushed himself away from the railing, to look carefully at Tanner. “Am I poaching on already-fenced property, my friend? If so, you've only to tell me. My friends do not appear to be so thick on the ground at the moment that I would risk alienating one of them.”

Tanner didn't know how to answer that question. Was it only a few hours ago that he'd blithely told Rafe he would gladly welcome competition from somewhere other than the grave?

He'd watched Lydia and Justin as they'd moved around the dance floor in a waltz, and she'd seemed animated, quite happy, the two of them chattering the entire time…unaware of the sidelong looks, the furious whispers.

His friend Justin was handsome, rich, affable, and intelligent. Tanner didn't mind that sort of competition. But how does a man compete with someone whose past made him also appear dangerous, even deliciously intriguing? Worse, how did one compete with a friend, dead or alive?

It was rather as if Lydia had bloomed today. First in the Park, then again once Justin had come on the scene. Tanner didn't know what had happened, was happening. Perhaps Lydia had felt herself under her more gregarious sister's thumb, and now felt free?

No, that couldn't be it. Lydia and Nicole were more than sisters, even more than simply twins. They were very good friends. Still, he could understand how comfortable it might be for a basically shy person like Lydia to allow her sister to take the center of the stage, while she watched from the wings.

He'd thought—yes, he would admit it to himself—that, once Nicole was gone from the stage, as it were, Lydia would turn to him for companionship, and that their friendship, founded in tragedy, might grow into something more.

He'd even watch as she was pursued by other suitors, confident enough in his own ability to capture her heart when the time was right, when she could be sure of her decision. Especially now, today, as Lydia seemed to be ready to face life on her own, finally out from behind her sister's shadow.

What a hell of a moment for Justin and his wicked smile, his even more wicked wit, and his romantic tragic past to show up on the scene…

“Tanner? Was the question that difficult?”

“What? Oh,” Tanner said, realizing he'd become lost, perhaps even tangled, in his private thoughts. “Forgive me. I was debating whether I should discuss Lydia with anyone. But you're not just anyone, are you?”

“No. I'm an extraordinarily singular person,” Justin said, smiling that winning smile of his. “Are you about to make some confession to me?”

“Hardly.” Tanner came to a decision, not that he was particularly pleased with it. “No, Justin, Lady Lydia and I are friends, nothing more.”

“And now you've disappointed me, and after I've been so forthright and truthful with you.”

Tanner looked into the ballroom, to see Lydia dancing with a fairly well set-up young man he didn't recognize. She was talking to him, smiling up at him, just as she had done with Justin. Definitely a blooming flower, a butterfly suddenly shed of her cocoon, taking flight for the very first time, her new wings glittering in the sunlight.

“She looks very happy, doesn't she?”

Justin turned to look into the ballroom. “And that's unusual? Tanner, have I ever informed you that I loathe a mystery? And even worse, that I will now feel it my duty to pick at you and pick at you until you've told me what I want to know?”

“I'm sensing that, yes. And I admit it, I'm a poor liar. Very well. Lydia was all but betrothed to a good friend of mine,” Tanner explained, once more turning his back to the ballroom. “Captain Swain Fitzgerald. He was killed at Quatre Bras.”

“Damn,” Justin said, also turning to lean his forearms on the railing. “A deuced tricky thing, stepping into a dead man's boots.”

Tanner's smile was rueful. “I wouldn't have put it
quite that way, but yes, it is. I was the one who was with him when he died, promising him I'd take care of Lydia for him. I was the one who brought her the news of Fitz's death, delivered his personal belongings, what turned out to be his final letter to her.” He drank the last of his wine and carefully placed the glass on the railing. “Oh, how she hated me for that.”

“A natural reaction, I'm afraid.”

“I've never seen such grief, Justin. Lydia is a young woman of strong emotions, although she keeps them well tamped down beneath her quiet, rather shy demeanor. I've often wondered since then, would I ever inspire any woman to grieve so over me?”

“Planning on sticking your spoon in the wall, are you? No, don't bother to explain. I understand what you mean. You wondered—wonder—if anyone would ever love you quite so much. We all do, my friend, and we are all, for the most part, doomed to disappointment. But we have begun to digress, so let us return to my original question. Clearly you envision a time when you and the lady are more than friends. Tell me to back away and I will.”

Tanner shook his head. “No, I won't do that. I have no claim on Lydia.”

“And I'm selfish enough to take you at your word, even as I believe you're still lying to at least one of the two of us. Now please tell me about Miss Harburton. Another very beautiful young woman.”

“Jasmine? She's my third cousin.”

“Yes, she told me that during our dance. She told me
about your father's dying wish, as well. A very…
sharing
young woman, your cousin. She certainly kept me from the burden of cudgeling my brain to make scintillating conversation with a near stranger.”

“Jasmine talks when she's nervous.”

“Really? Then shame on me, for I must then have truly terrified the poor child.”

Tanner laughed. “Oh, it's good to have you back, old friend. I fear I've been much too sober and serious this past year, living a more quiet life.”

“And yet here you are this evening, with both Lady Lydia, who you say you lay no claim to, and Miss Harburton, whom you have likewise not claimed. That's your idea of a quiet life, juggling two beauties in the same evening? And, then, as if you didn't have problems enough, a handsome reprobate with an appreciation of if not a genuine affection for beautiful women stumbles into the Second Act. Yes, Richard Sheridan wouldn't have been amiss if he'd said he saw the foundation for a rather marvelous comedy of manners, even a true farce to outdo
The Rivals.
It might have been the remaking of his career, as a matter of fact, poor dead fellow that he is.”

Tanner shot him a dark look, but then smiled. “Remind me why I'm your friend.”

“You don't see me in the role? I could be the black sheep with a tarnished past but a heart of gold.”

“You have a heart? That's good to know.”

“Ouch! Now I'm wounded to the quick. But, as I seem to be a glutton for punishment, I think we have
hidden my shameful self out here long enough. And if I haven't thanked you for standing my friend in there, I do now.”

“What you need, Justin, is a new scandal, to take everyone's attention away from you. That shouldn't take too long, I imagine. In the meantime, you might want to consider not, well, forcing yourself on Society.”

“After this evening, I have no invitations at all, so that's not a worry. But you're correct. I shouldn't be jumping back in with both feet quite so dramatically, should I?”

“I'm sorry, Justin…”

“Don't be. I could have been hanged, you know. Having Molton and a few others dealing me the cut direct is at least not fatal. Ah, and as if I just conjured him up. Tanner, go away. You don't need to be involved in this.”

Tanner saw Lord Molton advancing toward them, his cheeks flushed with drink and false courage. He stepped forward, putting himself between Justin and the viscount, placing his palm against his lordship's chest. “Not the time nor the place, sir,” he warned quietly.

“Robbie Farber was m'friend.” Molton leaned around Tanner to point an accusing finger at Justin. “And
he
killed him, shot him down like a dog while poor Robbie stood there with an empty pistol.”

Tanner took one step to the side, once more blocking Molton's path, staring pointedly into the man's wild eyes. “Because he'd turned and fired on
two.
Do you remember that part? I do, because I was there. Farber bears at least as much blame as Justin here. Let it go.
It's over. Let the dead lie, and leave the rest of us to get on with our lives. Robbie's death was unfortunate, but it was eight long years ago. The baron is sorry. Of course he is. We're all sorry your friend is dead.”

Molton once more shifted his fevered gaze to the baron, who was standing with his arms at his sides, his relaxed posture and amused smile not really aiding the tense situation, and then back at Tanner. “He doesn't care. Do you see that? He doesn't
care.
”

Molton turned on his heel and stomped back inside the ballroom.

“You could have said something, offered him something,” Tanner pointed out to Justin.

“I suppose I could have, yes. We could then have asked everyone to form a line and I could apologize in turn to each and every person who thinks that firing in self-defense is a crime for which I should beg forgiveness. I apologize once, Tanner, and it would never end.”

“You challenged the man to a duel, Justin. You do remember that part, don't you?”