The Rambunctious Lady Royston (17 page)

The ride back to Portman Square was achieved in half the time and ten times the silence of the trip out. As they rode, Samantha mourned the cracked sticks in her parasol in one corner of the seat and Zachary busily muttered dark imprecations in another.

Samantha—still somewhat out of breath, having been hauled out of the carriage at Portman Square, dragged willy-nilly up the wide staircase (past a snickering Carstairs and two bemused footmen), and thrust unceremoniously inside the main bedchamber—could only sit and goggle wide-eyed as her husband prowled back and forth across the carpet like a near-to-charging lion.

"Do you—
do you,"
he bellowed at last, finally coming to a halt in front of her, "have the slightest idea of the enormity of what you have done?" He ran a hand distractedly through his hair. "Oh, God, why do I ask such obvious questions? Of course you don't, do you, Samantha? How else could you sit there, looking just like a cat stretched at its ease next to an empty bird cage, with—with feathers sticking out of its mouth?"

He whirled away from Samantha and then whirled back again. "This is all just a lark to you, isn't it? Well, let me tell you," he leered, waving a finger in her face, "this little episode of yours tonight won't just blow over in a puff of smoke. Lorinda Foxx is very well thought of in some quarters, and there will be many to take her side in this shabby business. Don't you care about your good name?"

Samantha's attention was at first centered on that wagging forefinger, and her head bobbed up and down as she followed its movements. But at the Earl's words her head jerked up and a contemptuous sneer curled about her full lips. "Well thought of, is it, Zachary? In some quarters, you say? Whose, pray tell, that of the Fifth Foot? And as to my good name, husband, my name is St. John—so don't try to tell me your concern is for me!" she retaliated swiftly, sticking out her chin and daring him to take another stab at browbeating her. Go on, her expression screamed, just you try it!

This sudden turnabout, with Samantha suddenly going on the offensive, disconcerted St. John for a moment, cutting in as it did on his righteous anger. He could only mutter darkly, "How is it, madam, with your behavior so obviously at fault, that I have suddenly become the villain of the piece?"

To Samantha's reasoning the answer was so apparent she almost threw up her hands in mute disgust. But silence (especially when anyone of any sense could see silence was called for) was a stranger to Samantha's personality. She unhesitatingly counted off on her fingers: "One: you are the reason I—a mere nursling, if that titled vixen is to be believed—am in Society at all, cradle robbing lecher that you are. Two: and I dare you not to flinch at this home truth: it is your involvement with that same dubious lady that has made me the target of her viperous tongue. Three: —"

St. John reached out and grabbed his wife's hands, pleading mockingly, "Enough, enough, hellcat! You've made your point. My actions do have some bearing on the unfolding of tonight's events, but this admission does not totally absolve you of blame, you know. I was present throughout your exhibition tonight, and you did have a major part in pushing matters past a typical feminine exchange of insults. Lady Foxx was spoiling for a fight—anyone could see that—but it was you who cut her with that stunt with that damned quizzing glass, just as if you were the one looking to make trouble."

He squeezed both her trapped hands between his in the beginnings of husbandly forgiveness and said, "And that was before Lorinda so cunningly worked her meeting today with me into the conversation." Once the words were out, St. John knew he had made a tactical blunder, opening a subject best left closed. His wife wouldn't understand; wives never understood the good intentions of their husbands.

While Zachary was making pretty speeches (ending with his one damning remark) and fondling Samantha's hands, she herself was busily searching her brain for a way or ways to soften him even further before his anger had a chance to rekindle and his mind fell to the phaeton he had promised her the day before. He might just think putting paid to any hope of setting up her own stable to be a suitable punishment for his scandalous mate. Never let it be said Samantha St. John would whistle such a fine equipage down the wind over a woman such as Lady Foxx!

So, just as Samantha was about to swallow her pride and agree that she had been a naughty puss, kicking up in public just for the thrill of it, Zachary's ill-timed reminder of his recent
tête-à-tête
with "Lorinda" jarred her back to reality—and smack into a different sort of argument.

"Lorinda," Samantha sneered, "did not serve me with any surprise tonight, Royston, as I saw you both this afternoon at Bartholomew Fair—her hanging all over you like a wilting flower and you a pot of fresh water!"

She was sure she could hear the bones of her fingers cracking under the strain of Zachary's steely grasp. "You were there, Samantha?" he asked. His voice sounded strangely strangled.

Wriggling her fingers free she flexed them experimentally before folding them discreetly in her lap. In for a penny, in for a pound, she sighed inwardly, mentally waving her very own yellow-wheeled phaeton farewell. "I was," she replied, in a voice that trembled only a very little bit. "What has that to do with anything? It is your indiscretion, not mine, that brought on this evening's scene at the ball."

The pieces of the puzzle at last all fell into place for Royston. His wife, who had not been very convincing at playing the innocent anyway, had not only taken an active part tonight: she had gone to the ball anticipating making such a scene. Lady Foxx had merely been cooperative (and foolhardy) enough to play into her hands, giving Samantha the opening she craved. Innocent! St. John scoffed with an audible sniff. My wife is about as innocent as a parlor maid in a whorehouse. St. John's eyes narrowed as his lips pursed, and as he took several deep breaths through his nose Samantha imagined she saw puffs of smoke coming from his nostrils.

She began to mount a prudent retreat. "N-n-ow, Zachary," she stammered, and moved to hide behind her chair, "don't do anything in the first heat of anger. It doesn't pay. Isn't my example from tonight proof enough for you?"

"How?" St. John barked, making Samantha flinch. "Just how were you able to see me this afternoon? Were you escorted, or has Mr. Samuel Smythe-Wright taken up residence here in Portman Square?"

Samantha squeezed her eyes shut, wincing as her husband's ice-cold anger froze the air around her. "It was Mr. Smythe-Wright, sir," she answered quietly, as if her low tone would lessen the degree of his anger.

She had gone abroad alone—alone and easy prey to a score or more different evils, all too sordid to contemplate. "You have no more sense than a newborn babe, Samantha. Have you no feelings for your own self-preservation?"

Slowly Samantha edged out from behind her chair, allowing the firelight to turn her hair to flame and her gown to starlight, and ventured, "You mean, because I ventured abroad alone in London, Zachary?"

"No!" he ejaculated fiercely. "Because you allowed me to
know
you ventured abroad alone in London, you headstrong madcap. How dare you gad about town unescorted, rubbing shoulders with the sweepings of Piccadilly?"

With a returning show of spirit, Samantha corrected: "I was never within six blocks of Piccadilly, Zachary."

St. John's head felt as if it would burst. "That is nothing to the point, burn it, and you know it. You could have been killed—or worse!"

That stopped him in his tracks as his blood ran cold. Samantha could have come to grief today. Suddenly his anger dissipated, to be replaced with a fierce need for this girl-woman who had so unsettled his serene (or was it boring?) existence. With one quick movement he crushed her to his chest, holding her there with one hand on her back and the other in her hair, and rasped, "I could have lost you, imp. I could have lost you."

From her vantage point scant inches from his chin she asked, "Would you have missed me, Zachary? I am really abominably slow, but until a few moments ago I would have thought my continued presence in your life to be the very last of your wishes. You were cross as two sticks with me. Admit it."

As she spoke she raised her head to look into St. John's eyes. He returned her teasing gaze for a few moments, trying to still the unaccustomed nervous tumult in his heart. Then he sighed, shaking his head in wordless resignation to his fate, and groaned, "Oh, Samantha," and ground his lips against hers.

Like a match to a flame, this sudden contact sent sparks flying between them that flared so fiercely and burned so wildly, that the following conflagration threatened to consume them totally. Their differences for the moment forgotten, they clung together as they sank first to their knees, then slid bonelessly onto the carpet before the hearth, their bodies striving for closer, ever closer contact. In this one area of their relationship, at least, they were enormously compatible.

"I love you," Samantha whispered ingenuously a short time later, as she lay snuggled up against her husband's side.

St. John's black eyes twinkled as he tucked an errant curl behind Samantha's ear. "Naturally, puss," he smiled down at her, "how could you resist me?"

"Oh-hh!" she shrieked, pulling herself out of his arms. "How like you to be so odiously smug when I have just bared my soul to you. You have no finer feelings at all you, you libertine! You were supposed to say that you love me, too—nay, that you adore me, would kiss the ground I walk on. But trust you to lap up my confession like a tomcat lapping up cream without a word of thanks or—or—anything!"

The unrepentant-looking Earl raised himself upon one elbow and drank in the bewitching sight of his wife, her red hair cascading about her shoulders, her bared body rosy in the firelight, and felt more than a slight pang as he tried to make her see reason. It would not be fair to take advantage of her admission, given as it was in a moment of passion, by pledging an undying love of his own that would tie this beautiful woman-child to him, if only by her belated feelings of guilt, if her mood were to change in the cold light of day.

"Samantha, my pet, don't mistake lust for love. The two are, I assure you, vastly different emotions. When you can greet my bleary-eyed, unshaven face at the breakfast table—after I have spent a night carousing with some friends in an assortment of low-life taverns—and say 'I love you,' I shall be more than happy to enter into a discussion of our feelings for each other. Well, perhaps not at that very moment, but surely as soon as I were feeling more the thing."

Samantha checked her anger to consider his words, blushed deeply (much to the Earl's delight) and mutely nodded her head in agreement.

"For the moment though, Zachary, may I say that I am tolerably pleased with my husband? Because I am, you know," she ended defiantly, "even if you are a contradictory sort of fellow."

He chuckled. "You may. And I may say—although it seems terribly immodest of me—that my first impressions of your ability to brighten my existence have been more than amply proven to be correct?" His banter eased the last of Samantha's discomfiture.

Later, after a lighthearted exchange of personal services, as St. John took on the role of lady's-maid to Samantha's comical imitation of the Complete Gentleman's Gentleman, the pair was tucked up cosily in bed, the Earl's broad shoulder proving itself to be a quite comfortable pillow.

"About Lady Foxx—" Samantha began reluctantly, only to have St. John silence her by placing his forefinger over her lips—a move that earned that finger both a sweet kiss and gentle teasing nip.

"Lorinda Foxx can be sent to the Antipodes tomorrow for all I care a fig for that tedious female," Zachary told her. "I have not been alone with the woman since I met you, m'dear, and only agreed to meet her today to put an end to her passionate requests to talk to me—requests that were as much of a nuisance as they were embarrassing to hear."

"It must be such a sad trial to you, you poor man, to be so beset by lovesick females wherever you go," Samantha goaded him. "I was a fool to nearly become another broken hearted ninny for you to trample upon. You were right earlier when you said I should reserve judgment on my

feelings for such a black-hearted rogue—or at your age, is it roué?"

Zachary's heavy-lidded eyes scanned her laughing face and he drawled amicably, "Are you quite through, madam? Or, in order to continue, must I first turn you across my knee and give you the spanking you seem to crave?"

"Do you then deny that you are a heart-breaker?"

"I did once have that reputation, I fear. But, now that I am so firmly leg-shackled, it is a title doomed to become a relic of an unlamented past," St. John told her. "Didn't you know that reformed rakes make the most steadfast husbands? Here now, woman, stop that," he reprimanded as Samantha pulled a face at him.

"What a rapper!" she exclaimed. "I suggest we put a halt to these transports of yours and return to the subject at hand: the dear Lady Foxx. And, patterncard of virtue husband-of-mine, if I have a shred of pity in my body for anyone connected with Lady Foxx, it would be for her husband, not one of her paramours—past, present, or future."

"Lord, yes," the Earl agreed, "poor old Foxx has quite a rare handful in his wife." He twisted in the bed and put a finger under Samantha's chin to raise her eyes to his. "Speaking of husbandly problems, and consigning Lady Foxx evermore to perdition, may I remark for a moment that I too am in need of consolation for the rare handful I seem to have been landed with myself? Your behavior is far from unexceptionable itself, infant."

"Oh, piffle," Samantha scoffed. "I must somehow occupy my time, and even you must admit I came to no harm today. If you don't count the loss of my purse," she trailed off a bit weakly.

A rather heated discussion covering Samantha's activities of that day consumed a goodly amount of time until at last, in exasperation, Zachary commented, "It would seem my earlier warnings have gone entirely unheeded. It would, in fact, appear that I have pointed out the pitfalls only so that you can be sure to tumble into them headfirst. Samantha, you are a sad trial to me."