No Place for a Dame (19 page)

“Strand. The boy will be cold.” She turned her head and realized a trio of men were still standing just outside the club’s door—the man Strand had called Mandley, another middle-aged fellow with graying ginger hair and a sneering mouth, and Lord Vedder. Mandley’s gaze was too sharp and intelligent by half.

“Dear me, Mandley,” Giles said, turning around, his sophisticated indolence slipping back into place as easily as an old pair of gloves. “Marriage has made you quite the old woman.”

Without a glance in her direction, he motioned for her to follow. “Come along. Lessons are about to begin.”

Chapter Eighteen

H
e ought to put an end to this lunacy now. It was bound to come undone at any moment.

He had no doubt that Captain Mandley, the only fellow here he counted as close to resembling a friend, would have tumbled to her gender had he stayed but as soon as they quit the streets, Mandley excused himself, a more and more frequent occurrence of late as his new bride apparently proved better company than his old cohorts. Giles couldn’t blame him: He’d seen Mandley’s wife.

But it was nothing short of astounding that not one of these other so-called men had yet denounced Avery as a fraud. Her femininity announced itself as clearly as a trumpet blast.

Giles studied her from across the room where several of his fellow club members were busily regaling her and Demsforth with sensational tales of mad, breakneck carriage races. Everything about Avery betrayed her gender: the satiny sheen of her skin, the carnation-pink color in her cheek, the unconscious way she tucked her lower lip beneath her front teeth when she was nervous, how she pressed her knees together tightly and skewed sideways when she sat down, the way she tipped her head as
she listened,
everything
. The sweet swell of her derriere, the narrow, elegant wrists, the tender length of neck…

And yet, not one man had cast her a single questioning look.

Giles sloshed some brandy into a glass and quaffed it back neat, his mood growing darker with each moment. She should have been somewhere else. She should be living some other life. She should have been improving some worthy man by bullying him into planting more acres, buying more cattle, or printing more books. She should be dragooning their clutch of bright-eyed children into finishing their lessons. Or she should be lying soft and yielding under that same, worthy man’s straining body, her head thrown back in ecstasy, her hands fisted in the sheets, her legs—

He poured himself another glass, forcing back the unbidden red-hot flash of desire. Avery Quinn, he thought, should be wedded, bedded, and happily somewhere far away from here.

But she wasn’t and could never be and the fault for that lay at his family’s feet. He was honor bound to help her in her quest because his father had turned her into a woman without position or situation. She was far too well educated to ever fit into the social stratum into which she’d been born and too low born to ever fit into the class that in every respect, aside for the circumstances of her birth, she exceeded. A husband, children, a home, those things which she might have had before his father had embroiled himself in her life, had been replaced with dry books and cold, distant stars.

How could he refuse to help her attain the one thing her education had
not
precluded her from obtaining?

Demsforth’s nervous laugh broke Giles’s reverie. He set his glass down half-unfinished, his gaze slewing towards Avery’s companion.

If he couldn’t end this masquerade, at least he should be allowed the satisfaction of killing Lord Neville Demsforth. That great blond
boy,
he thought with unnatural venom, had risked Avery’s life. He had lost control of a team he should never even have owned, let alone driven, and in doing so had stopped Giles’s heart in his chest.

He’d stood in the window above the street, watching helplessly as the over-balanced carriage lurched out of the path of an oncoming hansom and nearly keeled over. And there hadn’t been a thing he could do to
prevent it, not a single
damned
thing. Except nod numbly when Vedder had suggested a bet.

Apparently, he did not handle helplessness well, because his response to the feeling was downright feral. Ergo his desire to throttle young Demsforth. Giles was not given to violent responses. It disconcerted him to find himself in the throes of one—though again, there didn’t seem to be a bloody thing he could do about it. His reputation amongst the ton was built on his sangfroid and amused indifference. He’d learned his heart was an untrustworthy advisor and, if he did not always successfully ignore it, at least he’d learned enough detachment that he could find his occasional, ungovernable lapses into sentimental yearning amusing.

He was certain if he considered it in the proper light, or with the proper amount of gin, he would find it excessively droll that when Avery had said, “I was lonely,” he’d felt as though he’d been kicked in the chest.

However, he’d never find anything amusing about Neville putting Avery in danger. Nor was it amusing to witness some of White’s more dissolute members segueing from telling mildly rakish tales of highway bravado to more illicit stories. Which was all too obviously what was happening now.

The men stood winking and elbowing each other’s ribs like lascivious schoolboys, pointing at the pages of a ledger laying open on a table before them: White’s infamous betting book. It was a decades-long litany of wagers, all the way from an innocent bet over the color of the resident mouser’s first kitten to far more salacious wagers.

Damn it.

God willing, no one had pointed out any involving his name. But then, even as he watched, Avery’s eyes grew round behind the obscuring spectacles and a rich rosy hue deepened the color of her face as, hovering over her shoulder like some dull-witted Norse demigod, Neville’s mouth dropped open.

Bloody hell, Giles thought impatiently and irritably and, worst of all, regretfully, what had they seen? The wager that he’d have a certain opera dancer in his bed by nightfall on the same day he met her? Or—

With a muttered oath, he slammed down his glass and stalked over to the group examining the betting book.

“I can’t imagine there is anything worth your perusal in there, Mr. Quinn. I should think it beyond, if not beneath, the scope of your studies.” He glanced down, his eye catching on a particular entry. Relief flowed through him.

He looked around at the men surrounding them. They were regarding him in bemusement. “Now there’s a wager I was amazed anyone took.” He tapped his finger against a scribbled line of text:

5 quid M. of S. arrives drunk to Almack’s 1st salon of 1817

“Why is that?” someone asked.

“Because of course I arrived drunk. ’Tis the only conceivable way to tolerate the place.”

He flipped the book shut with an unmistakable air of finality and divided his gaze amongst his fellow club members who, one after the other, had fallen into an uncomfortable silence. Then he straightened the cuff of his sleeve and asked casually, “I trust no one wishes to sabotage my attempt at redemption by despoiling my pet genius here?” He was acting out of character and he knew it and he didn’t give a bloody damn.

One of the younger men chuffed derisively. “Why should you care about redeeming yourself, Strand? We like you quite well enough unredeemed.”

“Terribly gratifying,” Giles said, “and for myself, I don’t. But my mother does. Come now. You all look as if the concept of my having a mother were as alien as Douphton here having a mistress.” He nodded at the ginger-haired man.

The men laughed. Though Douphton drank like a fish and had gambled away several fortunes, he still fancied himself morally superior to, well, just about everyone. From what Giles could gather, it was a viewpoint based solely on his much-vaunted celibacy.

“I assure you,” he continued, “I have a mother. A bluestocking, no less. Worse, a bluestocking with spies—though she insists on calling them friends—who over the years have been assiduously following my career and reporting to her in Italy.

“No, no. Pray do not look so contemptuous of the poor fools. We must be charitable. One must assume that relating my exploits to her are as close to having their own as they are likely to come.”

Appreciative snickers met this sally. Avery’s was not amongst them. He did not look at her.
Damn the girl, anyway
. She’d promised him she would stay discreetly tucked away in his house. She was never supposed to be here, with these men. She was never supposed to see him like this.

Now he had to come up with some viable excuse for his concern over her continued innocence. Dammit all.

“Alas, my mother’s coterie of toadeaters have been busier than usual of late,” he continued with sigh. “She has written, making clear her disappointment. She threatens to return to London to exert her saintly influence over me unless I reform. I admit, having lost the bride with which I’d hoped to placate her, I was at a loss.” Snorts of amusement and nods of approval greeted this callous admission. “But then I met Quinn here and saw the perfect opportunity to establish myself as a benefactor of the sciences.”

Vedder openly jeered. Giles turned on him, playing the role of facetious dilettante to the hilt.

“ ’Struth, Vedder, I did consider doing something geniusy myself, but it seemed an awful lot of trouble to go through when I could just as easily sit back and accept the accolades for ferretin’ out genius. And, of course,” he added confidingly, “pay for the boy’s odd spots of cheese and books and ink.”

He touched his finger to his lips as though a momentous thought had just occurred to him. “Begad, if I don’t think I may have a knack for this sort of thing! Mayhap I’ll find meself a painter fellow next year.”

He waited for them to laugh but they simply stood like befuddled sheep, unsure whether he was having them on or not.

A chuckle drew his attention. He swung around to identify the canny cove who’d tumbled to his mockery and found himself face to face with his little pear-shaped protégé. Her chuckle turned into a full-throated laugh. But then she realized she was the only one laughing. From behind her spectacles, she stared at his fellow club members. “You don’t actually
credit
all that fustian?”

Their uncertain glances turned faintly hostile. These were men who prided themselves on being awake to all suits. To have their gullibility pointed out to them by a chubby, oddly shaped country mouse of a scholar would be intolerable. Worse, at least two of these men had strong ties to Avery’s astronomical society. That’s why he’d come here today: to
set the groundwork for her introduction. Now, unless he acted quickly, her laughter would undo any social coin he might have earned.

“What fustian is that, Mr. Quinn?” he asked, moving closer to her. He let his eyes go cold and his voice colder still. “Is it fustian to suggest that if I am your intellectual equal?”

She searched his face, her amusement fading into confusion. “Well, I…”

“Or perhaps you consider my patronage fustian?”

Behind him he could hear someone exhort him, “That’s the way! Take the little blighter to task, Strand.”

Damn the man’s impudence.

Avery opened her mouth to reply. Closed it. Glanced in confusion at Neville, who quickly looked away. Smart lad. Now was not the time to come to the aid of a new acquaintance. Not if one wanted entrée into the most exclusive club in London.

“No,” she finally managed in a much-subdued voice.

“Or is it fustian to think I am canny enough to recognize the spark of genius in others? Or do you think your genius must shine especially brilliantly, seeing how it was able to attract the attention of a fainéant such as myself?”

Her chin wobbled, her eyes stricken. “No! I swear. I would never think such a thing!”

He reached out and casually flicked her beneath the chin, then spun on his heels, grinning. “Well, you should have; you would have been right.”

His companions burst into laughter, clapping him on the back and naming him a wag and a regular out-and-outer and a right cock of the game and then called for him to stand them all drinks in the next room. One would think he had traded barbs with some premier farceur rather than made mock of a defenseless boy.

But he went with them.

By all appearances, they’d forgotten Avery. Giles hadn’t. He couldn’t. He glanced back over his shoulder. She stood staring at him, looking small and stricken and vulnerable.

He crushed the desire to go back, to explain that this was who he was required to be, that this is what people expected of him, and that he had used their low expectations to achieve certain ends he would never have
been able to as another man. A better man. The question of Jack and Anne’s disappearance still needed answering and he intended to do that. And this, he’d learned, was the best guise in which to ask questions.

So, instead of following his impulse, he waved his hand at Lord Neville who, God love him, had not abandoned Avery to follow after them. “Best take Mr. Quinn home, Neville. The lessons for the day are over.”