Promise Me Heaven (8 page)

And then there were the “lessons.” Except for that one evening, their adopted roles were strictly as mentor and pupil. The art of seduction, Cat found, was ample ground for amusement when dissected in Thomas’s wry, sardonic manner. Even here, bumping along on the way to the famous modiste, Madame Feille, the lessons continued. Thomas was attempting to teach Cat how to flirt with her eyes.

“The idea, Cat, is to send out covert messages of invitation, not to appear as though a swarm of gnats have just pelted you in the face.”

“I was fluttering my eyelashes.”

“No. You were trying to dislodge a field of sand. All that rapid blinking and squinting. The only man you’ll attract with that behavior is one with an interest in ophthalmology who’ll offer you a salve.”

Cat fixed her mentor with a wicked grin. “Well then, if you’re so expert at it, why don’t you demonstrate?”

In reply, Montrose assumed a mask of weary. “Ungrateful baggage. It is only through a growing desire to see the population of London saved from your flirtatious exhibitions that I proceed with these lessons at all. However remote our connection, I do have family pride to consider, and the thought of you making those grimaces all over the city in an attempt to lure some poor fool to the altar pricks my conceit. To have it come out that we are related, however tangentially, is beyond enduring.”

“I understand, Thomas,” Cat said soberly, her eyes shining. “You wish to foster the notion that our entire extended family is irresistible.”

“Exactly. Now lower your eyes slightly. No. Don’t squint. That’s right. Now look at me without moving your lids. Better. Now, maintain eye contact a second longer than is seemly… No.” He sighed with disgust. “You don’t fix the poor swain with a basilisk stare. You dart a glance at him. Make him aware that your interest is piqued but not set. All right, we’ll continue later. We have arrived.”

Cat straightened, looking out of the coach’s small window. They were near the Steyne in a fashionable side street close to Prinny’s ongoing masterpiece, the Marine Pavilion.

“I do not feel right about this, Thomas.”

“Nonsense. I was, in fact, sincere in my estimation of your wardrobe, Cat. It simply is too ingenuous. Don’t worry, I have no intention of decking you out in wet muslin and red satin.”

“Of course not. I trust your taste in these matters implicitly.”

“How gratifying to know that I have a future as a lady’s maid should the crops fail,” he teased, but her answering smile was still a distracted one.

“I cannot help but feel that I presume too much in having you incur the cost of my clothing. It doesn’t seem… seemly,” she said, her gaze on his rough, outdated garb.

Apparently, Thomas couldn’t afford to purchase himself a simple wardrobe and yet here he was, planning to spend an immense amount on her clothing. She simply couldn’t allow his fields to lay fallow just so she could have an ermine-trimmed cloak or a satin petticoat. Loath to injure his pride, Cat cast about for some excuse he would accept. “Aunt Hecuba would simply convulse if she knew.”

“Aunt Hecuba, I’ll warrant, has a shrewd idea of how matters stand. She has chosen ignorance. I take that as a sign of concurrence. As to the money, I firmly intend to recoup my losses upon your marriage to whatever the confounded fellow’s name is or upon the return of your parent. Consider it by way of a loan.”

“I suppose.” Silently, she vowed she’d repay him with interest once she was a wealthy matron. Thomas would have his fields planted
and
a new coat. She had to start seeing his expenditures as an investment in not only her family’s future but his own as well. As Thomas handed her from the carriage she said, “And, Thomas?”

“Yes?”

“I am not at all averse to red satin.”

“Witch,” he replied equably.

Cat surveyed herself doubtfully in front of the long mirror. The gown she modeled was a pale green silk worked with deep claret embroidery. It nipped in tight beneath her breasts, falling in sheer folds to her ankles. Delicate puffed sleeves capped her shoulders and the bodice had a high, prim neckline outlined with a simple band of claret beads. On the whole it was tasteful, elegant, nearly severe in the simplicity of its line. From the front. It was only when she turned to survey the back that she caught her breath. Because there was no back. The gown dipped so low it exposed the column of her spine to the waist. It was beyond daring; it was scandalous.

“Are you sure, Thomas?”

He had stretched his giant’s frame out in a ridiculously dainty love seat, causing the abused furniture to protest with an audible groan, a closed expression on his lean countenance.

“Sure of what? That it is as alluring a gown as you’re likely to find? Or that I would have you wear it?” he asked with maddening ambiguity.

“Are you sure I won’t reap the censure of all of London if I appear in public in it?”

“Vain little beast,” he murmured. “I assure you that ‘all of London’ isn’t likely to care what you wear as long as you publicly behave yourself. No, Cat. There are many fashionables clad in a good deal less cloth, displaying a great deal more flesh, who don’t excite the least comment. The appeal of this gown lies in its contradictory nature. So innocent from the front, so wanton from the back. Does the wearer know it is so? Which is she? That is the sort of contradiction that excites the mind, stimulates the jaded interest.” His smile seemed to her thin. “It will do quite well for your designs. We’ll take it.”

He nodded to Madame Feille, the proprietress. Immediately she started to pull the pins from the materials, all the while barking orders to her attendants to fetch other gowns.

Madame Fielle covertly studied the great handsome giant. When he had entered the shop, there had been a few moments she had thought she would have to refuse him entry; he was so clearly not representative of her usual clientele being dressed with fearsome disregard to fashion in dark worsted, white linen, and dull Hessians.

But then Madame Feille had seen the young beauty he escorted and mentally shrugged. She would make a quick sale of a cheap ready-made and this beauty would act as an advertisement all over town. Her assumptions had soon been proven false. The man’s bearing marked him for a nob.

His speech too marked him as a peer. His tone was urbane, even suave. And he had displayed a sure and intimate knowledge of fashion. Madame Feille mentally rubbed her hands together as he demanded more of her skill as a dressmaker. Gown after gown was purchased for the statuesque young woman.

The auburn-haired beauty must be his mistress, she concluded, and he so careful a protector! Nothing too outré, too shameless. All tasteful and yet, at the same time, intensely provocative. Why, the gown of bronze and black silk tissue alone would make any impure’s reputation. And it appeared he was going to escort her amongst the ton itself!

The eager modiste foresaw a windfall of orders from this unlikely source. She redoubled her efforts to provide just the flavor the huge gentleman seemed to want.

However, with each gown, with each creation of restrained enticement, the black-eyed giant became more withdrawn. The beauty’s teasing comments provoked less and less of a response until finally, as she modeled a gown of gold tissue satin that displayed to full advantage her remarkable endowments, he rose and said, “This grows tedious in the extreme, Cat. And no doubt Hecuba is bestirring herself in the coach, interrogating poor Bob about his love life. Buy whatever else a lady needs to act as foundation for these fripperies, and I will see you presently.”

“But won’t you stay for the petticoats?” the girl asked, surveying herself in the mirror. Her tone seemed to Madame Feille a genuine display of confused innocence.

Apparently the big man thought so too. He looked at the beauty with such a sudden flare of ill-disguised longing that Madame Feille caught her breath. But the girl had turned away to pluck a pin from her waistband. Unfortunate, thought Madame Feille; the beauty might have made good use of such knowledge for both herself and Madame. Another dozen gowns at the least.

The dark man collected himself. “Oh, I think I can leave that in Madame’s capable hands. Just stay away from the coarse linens, do.”

But his eyes, Madame Feille noted with interest, still burned.

Chapter 7

T
he man was waiting in the suite when Thomas returned to the Old Ship Hotel. He sat on a chair pulled up toward the window, his hands folded in his lap, his expression one of infinite patience. Though far from old, he was a seasoned man, a contemporary of Thomas’s.

He had a military bearing, his slender physique held rigidly attentive, his dark blond head angled proudly. But his trappings were that of a gentleman: the ebony cane, the conservatively tied cravat, the dark coat and top hat.

“Damn,” said Thomas, “I must speak to the management about allowing uninvited chits to wander into one’s private rooms.”

The man rose, shrugging with Gallic indifference. “But, Thomas, management knows nothing about it.” His voice was low and rasping, as though his throat had been injured at one time, his pronunciation careful.

“Of course not,” Thomas acknowledged. “I suppose it was too much to hope that I had seen the last of you.”

“Entirely too much,” Colonel Henry “Jack” Seward agreed politely. “Comes of making yourself too useful. Sir Knowlton would never happily let go his premier—what shall we say?—consultant?”

“Say spy. It’s what you mean.”

Seward continued as though he hadn’t heard Thomas. “Not with the conferences in Vienna going on. Not with Napoleon plotting away on his little island.”

“And whose fault is that?” Thomas asked angrily. “I advised, repeatedly, against furnishing Napoleon with a fortune and a pet army.”

The blond gentleman raised a hand. “And there were some who listened. But not enough, Thomas. And those who did weighed the benefits of this fine, diplomatic gesture against potential public outrage. Censure the populace, Thomas, if you must. The ton itself has made a darling of the little emperor. And who is to say the decision was not justified? Nothing has come of it yet. There are only rumors, after all. And London, Thomas! Have you been to London? The entire city is celebrating.”

“I did my celebrating after Salamanca.”

Colonel Seward’s cold eyes met Thomas’s steady gaze. “Yes. That’s right. You purchased a commission shortly after that unfortunate affair with the Leons woman. Her son died, didn’t he?”

An awful silence met his soft query.

“I’d heard you were with Wellington in Spain,” Seward continued. “Your friend, Lord Strand, was there, too. Tell me, did fighting help assuage the guilt you felt over the boy’s death? You blamed yourself entirely too much, you know. It was as much her responsibility as yours. He was, after all,
her
son.”

He was a little boy who’d died because his mother had had information Thomas had wanted. “You overstep yourself, Seward. What do you want? I can hardly believe you have come to deliver an invitation by hand to one of Prinny’s debauches.” He gestured toward the folded paper Seward was holding.