Promise Me Heaven (5 page)

“Good,” he was saying. “First, you must promise to put yourself completely in my hands. I will not have you continually doubting my judgment, and I can assure you, with the utmost confidence, that I am remarkably knowing on the subject of seduction. Ain’t I, Bob?” he cheerfully inquired of the dour-faced footman.

“Regular libertine,” acknowledged the footman in a sad monotone.

“So, are we agreed?”

“Ah, yes, sir,” Cat answered, wincing.

His dark eyes flashed. “I realize that I am your elder and, in view of your exquisite manners, it will be hard for you to do so, but considering the proposed nature of our relationship, I think you might call me Thomas.”

She lowered her eyes. Nodding hurt too much.

“Good. And I shall call you Catherine.”

“Cat.”

“Excuse me?”

She reddened. “My family calls me Cat.”

“A nickname? Famous seductresses usually forswear nicknames as juvenile affectations, but seeing how your appellation has certain connotations I believe it may do very well.
Cat
.” The word on his lips became a caress, and she looked up to find him smiling at her, obviously amused.

He waved her to a seat across from him. “Do sit down, my dear. The fish is delicious. I believe Lady Montaigne White enjoyed quite a healthy portion earlier, didn’t she, Bob?”

“Has a taste for the heads, does her ladyship,” Bob agreed.

Fish
. Her gorge started to rise at the very thought. The blood fled her face and she covered her lips with unsteady fingertips before taking her seat.

“Now, as to the matter of your attire. If this is an example of your most seductive gown, I begin to suspect the cause of your lordling’s disinterest. Who the deuce is the fellow, anyway?”

“He is the Marquis of Strand, Lord Giles Dalton.”

The smile died on Thomas’s mobile lips. An odd silence ensued while he studied her.

“Strang, is it?” he finally asked, chasing a piece of sauced mushroom around his plate. Cat felt a new wave of nausea. “No matter. All the young pups who are presently cluttering London drawing rooms were in leaders the last time I was there. About your gown—”

“It is ‘Strand.’ And this is not my most seductive gown. Why would I wear my most seductive gown to breakfast?”

“Ah,” Thomas intoned. “A seductress does not own anything other than ‘most seductive gowns.’ Do you understand?”

“I think so.” Bob thrust a plate of oily little fish carcasses beneath her nose. She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head.

“Good. Well, immediately after breakfast go change into something you consider alluring and we’ll critique it, shall we?”

She dared a peek. The fish were gone. She breathed a sigh of relief and looked over at Thomas. “Whatever should I deck myself out for? To entrance the local cows?”

“My dear,” Thomas said with exaggerated kindness, “to the connoisseur, seduction is a lifestyle. You don’t go out for an evening and suddenly become a siren. You have to work yourself into it. Take on the trappings and slowly, surely,
hopefully
, achieve your ends.”

“Since we are rusticating here, perhaps I should clothe myself in a page’s garb and cut my hair short like Lady Caroline Lamb. She is accounted something of a siren, is she not?”

“Lady Caroline Lamb is mad. Or as close to being there as makes no difference. Her relationship with that poet fellow is merely a prime example of self-indulgent histrionics. At one time, she might have been considered alluring, but there is nothing in the least attractive about mental instability.”

Cat stared at him with wide eyes. It suddenly reoccurred to her that Thomas actually knew the figures of social legend; that he might have met Byron, flirted with Caroline Lamb, sat at the Bow Street window of White’s with Brummell, Avonsley, and their ilk. How incredible.

The rest of the meal passed with Thomas as friendly and even-tempered as last evening and afterwards Cat went upstairs determined to make a success of her schooling and vowing to impress Thomas. She spent all morning toward this end, rifling through the dresses hanging in the armoire. The gown she finally chose was more suited for a Covent Garden entertainment than a morning in Devon. It was a mauve and white striped muslin with a décolletage well beyond the accepted bounds of provincial propriety. The skirt was caught up in a brilliant green silk ribbon tied beneath her breasts, pushing their ample fullness higher.

Wondering what a siren did with her hair, Cat finally decided to twist the thick mass into waves, catching it loosely at the nape of her neck, like the Dresden shepherdess that decorated the mantel at Bellingcourt. She had once heard one of her mama’s husbands remark that the statuette “looks a wanton little thing.” She smiled into the mirror, well pleased with herself, secure in the belief she would quite turn Thomas’s head.

But when she presented herself at the drawing room door, Thomas did not fall over himself in eagerness to gain her side. He did not even reward her efforts with an appreciative gaze. He merely took her arm and wordlessly escorted her inside. Only after they had entered and he had shut the door did he turn and say, “I thought you were going to wear something alluring.”

Cat blinked at him. “This
is
alluring.”

“No. It’s certainly very pretty. And it’s very charming. For a young matron.”

“A young matron?”

“Yes. A young matron. A married member of a conservative family of some means with a desire to appear fashionable but not forward,” he instructed. “Is this really the best you can do? Because this evening we begin the game in earnest. And be assured that is precisely what it is: a game. I shall be the accomplished rake and you must try to be the accomplished flirt.”

“I shall do my best,” she said, lowering her eyes so he would not see the battle lights gleaming therein.

“Now, is this getup really the best you can muster?”

“I am afraid so.”

“Then there is nothing for it but that we go to Brighton to see about your wardrobe.”

“I can’t afford a new wardrobe.” She cursed the blood she could feel staining her cheeks.

“You can’t afford not to have one. Besides, I will find the ready to lend you until my brother returns. He can well afford it. We shall go in a fortnight. In the meantime, we shall see about your other accomplishments. You must spend the afternoon reviewing your repertoire. I regret I cannot take luncheon with you, but more pressing matters require my attention.”

“Wrestling more sheep?” she asked sweetly.

“Actually, Lord Coke has written me an interesting missive concerning the uses of manure. I intend to put his theories to the test.”

Cat stalked with ill-suppressed ire in the small antechamber to the library. “Drat!”

“ ‘Drat’ is but a diminutive of ‘damn’ and ‘damn’ is a profanity.” Her Aunt Hecuba squinted around the corner of the winged back she occupied and hastily concealed a small book in the folds of her black dress.

“Where were you this morning?”

“Having risen with God’s own creatures, I partook of a crust of bread and then, of course, spent the remainder of the morning on my knees, praying for the heathens of the world. And for you.”

Cat suddenly laughed. She sank down beside her aunt. “I could use more than your prayers, Aunt Hecuba. I could use your instruction.”

“Eh?” Hecuba asked.

“You could help me, Aunt Hecuba. You have so much knowledge to bestow. You were the reigning queen of the ton for years. Your information in certain areas must be well nigh omniscient.”

Hecuba scowled and plucked at the black tatting on her half-mitts. “And just why should I help you? So that you might marry some wealthy ne’er-do-well? For what? To have pretty dresses, houses full of servants, jewels, and all the other material snares with which the devil catches the unwary?”

“You know me better than that, Aunt.”

“ ’Course I do. Always had more sense than all your brothers and sisters put together. Until you took on this rattle-pated notion, I would have said too much sense. Always formulating some scheme for increased poultry production or some such economic mathematics.”

“I find it interesting.” Cat shrugged. “And as there was never anyone else about to see to Marcus’s lands, it was necessary.”

“Your brother should have been the one seeing to the needs of that infernal estate he inherited. How in heaven’s name he ever came to the title, I will never know.”

“Third cousin once removed,” Cat answered glibly before continuing softly, “and he was only thirteen.”

“And you were all of what? Seventeen?”

Cat sighed. It was a long-standing source of contention between them. Hecuba had never understood one simple, glaringly obvious fact: Cat liked managing things. Although Hecuba certainly didn’t want for those tendencies herself, thought Cat.

“You have asked for my help,” Hecuba finally said. “You must give me a good reason if you expect me to ally myself with your delinquent scheme.”

“What’s so delinquent about it?” Cat asked. “If I manage to contract a marriage which will provide my family with the means to better themselves, garner myself an undemanding spouse, and secure a position of some influence in society, it is no more than myriad other women have sought to do.”

“I doubt very much whether a union with a fast-developing womanizer is going to make you happy.”

“Happy?” Cat threw up her hands. “When did happiness become a requisite for marriage? Mama was constantly falling ‘happily’ in love. Five times she tripped ‘happily’ up the aisle to the altar!”

“Every union your mother engaged in was of a decidedly genial nature,” Hecuba said primly.

“I don’t deny it. But her continued ‘happiness’ has left the products of her conjugal rapture paupers! Simon can’t borrow the ready to purchase a commission. Timon hasn’t a prayer of entering Oxford, though he could well teach half the courses. Enid should have made her bow a year ago, and poor Marcus suffers the agonies of the damned over an inherited estate whose population is starving. Only Marianne hasn’t felt the pinch of our circumstances, and she will in another year when she is due to come out!”

“You mustn’t blame your poor mother for—”

Cat threw up her hands. “I don’t blame her, Aunt. I merely seek to allay the effects of her ‘happiness.’ We all assumed our troubles would be over when she wed Philip Montrose. Indeed! Mama herself was promised handsome settlements once she and Philip returned from their honeymoon. But, Aunt Hecuba, they left on their honeymoon two years ago and save for the occasional extravagant—and useless—gift, we are still ruinously poor. It is time someone affected some changes before we all end up in debtors’ prison. And I intend to do so in the most practical manner possible. By marrying Lord Strand.”

Hecuba narrowed her eyes. “Why Strand?”

Cat shrugged. “Strand is wealthy. He is witty. He is handsome and he is a pragmatist. He is secure enough not to pester a woman for her undivided attention. He is intelligent enough to have good conversation when we should happen to cohabit. And he has political and social associations that would assuage the boredom of the matrimonial state.

“I have studied the matter in depth, Aunt. I have spent a considerable amount of time and effort compiling a list of candidates and interviewing various sources as to their suitability as a spouse. Not merely their social attachments, either. Their political, business, and family connections have been thoroughly investigated. Lord Strand quite tops the list.” Cat, looking well pleased with herself, patted her skirt pocket.

Hecuba appeared dazed. “You actually have a list in there?”

“Yes. Not that I have need of it anymore, but one cannot be too careful.”

“No,” mumbled Hecuba. “Can’t be too careful.”

“You see, Aunt? There is nothing in the least reprehensible about my motives or my schemes. I assure you I have not made a frivolous choice.”

Hecuba shook her head. “No, no one would ever call you frivolous, Catherine. And you really think you might come to love this man?”

“Love? A most modern notion, Aunt Hecuba. One which, in my opinion, is overrated. I have never been infatuated for longer than a dance or the dessert course at dinner. I would not like to base my future on something so labile.”

“I will think on this, Catherine.” Hecuba shook her head, watching her great-niece with a bemused expression. “In the meantime, I shall lend you my most recently acquired tract, ‘The Lady’s Manifest of Maidenly Virtues.’ It is truly inspired.”

Chapter 5