“They dragged you all over the place, didn’t they? I suppose the reality was not as romantic as one might think.”
There was no great sympathy or tenderness in his voice. He spoke matter-of-factly and yet she felt her throat close up with emotion, that someone might understand. “They didn’t like England,” she forced out, fluttering her fan again. One sentence. One fact that had ruined her entire miserable life.
“What places did you go?” Lord Warren asked.
“Wild, horrible places in India and Africa,” she answered in a strained voice. “Hot places with insects and mud, and sickness, and violence, and people who distrusted us.”
“Your parents liked these places?”
Josephine shrugged. She would never understand what had drawn her parents to their travels, or what had fed their desire to live outside civilized society.
“And now you are back in England after all,” he said, making an obvious point.
“I wish I had died with them.” She had thought the words so many times, but this was the first time she’d actually said them. It felt good, but awful. Tears clouded her eyes. She wished she could hide back in the plants. She had to escape this room, this conversation. This man, with his intent, disturbing eyes.
She moved to stand but he grasped her hand. “No. Don’t go.”
“I must.”
“I’ve put you in a bleak mood and courtesy dictates that I cheer you up. Shall we have a dance after all?”
“I can’t. I’m in mourning.” Couldn’t he see her black gown, her somber, unadorned fan? “And I don’t like to dance.”
“Everyone loves to dance.”
“Not me.”
“Because you don’t know how.”
She shot him an aggrieved look.
He shrugged. “You don’t, do you? It’s only natural, given your history.” His noble features darkened in irritation. “Here, let’s do something about this. I can’t bear talking to you anymore through this blasted thing.” To Josephine’s shock, Lord Warren reached out and pried her fan from her fingers with all the casual insolence in the world.
“There, that’s better,” he said, setting it in his lap.
Josephine was flabbergasted. “You’ve just taken my fan.”
“I’m afraid so.” His exquisitely contoured lips curved into a smile.
She might not know the finer points of English etiquette, but she knew it wasn’t proper for gentlemen to go about appropriating ladies’ accessories at their whim.
“Give it back to me.” They were the only words she could manage in her flustered state.
He shook his head and placed it on the floor beside him. “If I give it back you might hide behind it again, and we can’t have that.”
“Give it to me, please.” She moved as if to reach for it and he took her wrist. It was the second time he’d put his hands on her. The third, if one counted peeling her fan from her fingers.
His gaze held hers. Light, and darkness. “I’ll give you back your fan if you’ll dance with me first.”
“I’ve said I don’t want to dance.” She pulled away from him, or perhaps he let her go. She could still feel his heat where he’d held her. “If this is some bizarre form of courtship, you’re wasting your time. I don’t plan to marry.”
He arched a brow. “That’s rather subversive of you.”
He mocked her. He seemed to find everything hilarious.
Josephine would have thought the situation could grow no worse, but then she glanced up and saw a horde of chattering females descending upon them, led by Lady Minette Bernard, who was the most annoyingly cheerful person Josephine had ever met.
“Oh, my dear Lady Maitland!” the woman exclaimed, leaning down to clasp her hands. “Or may I call you Josephine? Do you remember me from our audience with the queen? Well, your audience and then my audience. We certainly did not crowd before her together. Our pouffed-out skirts would have prevented it in any case.” Minette erupted in peals of tinkling feminine laughter.
Josephine heard a soft sound from Lord Warren beside her. He had stood politely at the approach of the women and now regarded Minette with an exasperated expression that echoed what Josephine felt. Minette chattered on, oblivious.
“But how elegant you look tonight in your black. I must know your dressmaker. And when you come out of mourning, what a sparkler you shall be. Bold colors look ever so dramatic with dark hair. I have always wanted red hair, especially deep, dark auburn red hair like yours. It’s so striking, and it makes one stand out, but my brother and I are blond as corn silk and always have been.” Minette made a vague gesture toward Lord Warren and her precipitate approach made more sense. This babbling young woman was his sister, which explained why she was as overbearing as him.
“I do remember you,” Josephine finally managed to reply.
“I’m so glad to hear it. Then we shall be Josephine and Minette from now on, and we shall call on each other in the mornings and be particular friends, especially now that you have made my brother’s acquaintance.”
Josephine didn’t know what making her brother’s acquaintance had to do with being “particular” friends, especially when both relationships had been forced upon her unwillingly. But she couldn’t be ungracious in front of this great group of house guests, which had swelled to include some young gentlemen.
“Of course we shall be friends,” said Josephine tightly.
Minette clapped her hands so hard that her blonde curls shook, then looked down beside her brother’s chair. “Oh, dear Josephine, your fan is on the floor. Warren, do pick it up before you trample it.” She turned back to Josephine. “It’s grown so hot in here, don’t you agree? But you look ever so splendid, as always. My hair goes wretchedly tangled in this kind of heat, but yours is smooth and sleek. Your lady’s maid must converse with mine and share her secrets.”
Josephine chose not to confess that she didn’t have a lady’s maid, since she seemed to alienate all of them within a day or two. She feared her daily care was a duty the regular household maids traded off as some kind of punitive measure.
“It has indeed grown uncomfortably hot,” she said, standing and taking her fan from Lord Warren. “In fact, I’m not feeling well. I believe I shall retire.”
This resulted in a chorus of such feigned agony and disappointment that Josephine grimaced. She glanced at Lord Warren, who gazed back at her with laughter in his eyes and a twitch in his lips. Yes, everything was hilarious to him. She didn’t know why all the young ladies fawned over her and dragged along the gentlemen to give her soft-hearted looks. They considered her reclusive and mysterious, she supposed, when the truth was that she was miserable. Lonely, awkward, out of place, and unlikely to ever match their pretty manners and haughty miens.
“Please say you will stay and talk with us a bit longer,” Minette begged. “All of us are tired of dancing, and you have been neglected, sitting here alone.”
“I was sitting with her,” Lord Warren broke in. “Am I of no consequence?”
“I’m sure that depends on who you ask,” his sister replied with perfectly droll timing. “And anyway, Warren, I thought you only came here to drink and play cards?” This brought amused titters from the ladies and guffaws from the gentlemen.
“That, and find you a husband,” he sallied back. “If I can find anyone brave enough to take you off my hands. Gentlemen?” He turned to the assembled young men. “Anyone?”
More laughter as Minette waggled a finger and glared at her brother. Josephine watched this curious exchange. She’d always been an only child, so their bantering and bickering fascinated her. Charmed her.
She did not wish to be charmed by him.
“Thank you for your company, Lord Warren,” she said, breaking into their repartee. She looked around at the other guests. “I wish all of you a pleasant evening.” Before they could complain or cajole any more, she walked from the ballroom and hurried down the hall, where the constriction of panic in her heart and the beating in her temples finally began to ease.
*** *** ***
Warren watched for Lady Maitland the entire next day, even checked for her among the house plants. He wanted to be sure he hadn’t ruffled her too badly in the ballroom, but the baroness was nowhere to be found. At least he knew she wasn’t with Stafford, since the man dogged him at every turn, even inviting him out to a local flagellation parlor. Warren might have agreed to go if the invitation had come from anyone else.
Instead he dressed for dinner, submitting to the fussy exactitude of his aged valet. Starched shirt, cravat, pin, waistcoat and coat, and a comb dragged through his unruly hair. While his man fancied him up, Warren’s mind turned on the conundrum of Lady Maitland. Now that he’d met her, with her great, innocent, green-amber eyes and her wary shyness, he couldn’t allow her to go to Stafford. He’d kidnap her from the altar before he’d let that happen. All she had done was frown and glower at him in the ballroom, and yet he felt some impetus to protect her from that fate.
After dinner, he must go to Lord Baxter, who was an eminently reasonable fellow, and explain the reasons he must reject Stafford’s offer for the lady’s hand. He’d relate their recent conversation if he must, word for word, until he convinced him Stafford was an amoral and reprehensible worm. Baxter would forbid the match, Lady Maitland could avoid Bedlam, and Warren could sleep better at night, knowing he’d accomplished a selflessly heroic deed.
“Leave off, Henri.” He shied from his valet’s comb. “If you haven’t made order of it yet, you never will.”
“Yes, my lord.” The elderly servant put down the comb, gave one last twitch to Warren’s intricate cravat, then doddered away to clean up his grooming tools.
Warren headed to the dining room, wondering from whence this honorable and swashbuckling side of him had appeared. He supposed it had only been so long since a woman needed him. Oh, they wanted him. They always wanted him because of his money, his dashing looks, his talent at entertaining their fancies, his expertise in bed. But it had been a while since a woman
needed
him. And in this case, he could easily save Lady Maitland from marrying Stafford.
He only worried she needed more saving than that.
He fidgeted with the hem of his coat, feeling that tightness in his shoulders again. Surely there was a patient, earnest gent somewhere in England who could give this baroness the nurturing she required. Even if Warren was the marrying sort—which he wasn’t—he had Minette to worry about, and his burgeoning career in Parliament, and a thousand other duties that eclipsed the importance of the eccentric Lady Maitland.
As soon as he walked into the dining room, he heard an all too familiar greeting. “Good evening, Warren. We meet again.”
Jesus and the bloody devil. He might as well have Stafford on a leash. “Didn’t expect to see you,” Warren replied. “I thought you were going…elsewhere.”
“I am, later. If you want to join me, the offer still stands.”
“Not tonight.”
Not ever, if you’re going to be there.
He’d been to that flagellation parlor before, and it wasn’t a great establishment. The women all seemed rather overused. He liked his whores like he liked his horses—fresh and frisky, with a piece of ginger in their arse.
“Seen the baroness about?” asked Stafford as some other guests walked by. Down the table, Warren could see his sister with Mrs. Everly.
“No, I haven’t glimpsed Lady Maitland in some time. Honestly, I’ve been too busy planning how to steal her away.”
“You’re a howl, Warren, you really are.”
“I’m perfectly serious.”
Stafford studied his face. Pretty as the man was, he wasn’t very intelligent. His smile darkened to a frown. “Now see here,” he said, pointing a glittering finger at Warren’s chest. “I was after her first. It’s not the thing to move in on another chap’s territory.”
Warren shrugged. “All’s fair in love and war.”
“You know what I mean,” he muttered. “And she wouldn’t have you anyway. I saw you talking to her in the ballroom the other night, along with everyone else. She couldn’t wait to get away from you.”
“I haven’t seen you talking to her at all,” Warren replied in a bored tone. “Which makes me wonder if she’ll have you.”
“Like I said, there’s no other competition.”
“Except me.”
“Blast, man, are you jesting with me? Because if you’re serious—”
Warren held up a hand. Lady Maitland had entered the dining room, and was staring at both of them. Stafford followed Warren’s gaze, and puffed out his chest when he located the object of his attentions.
She pursed her lips and turned away. Warren snorted under his breath. “Anyone can see she’s wild to have you.”
“She’s no more wild to have you,” Stafford snapped.
Warren ignored him, watching Lady Maitland instead. She looked even more agitated than usual as she slid into her seat. She clasped her hands in her lap and worried at her lower lip.
Never fear
, he wanted to say.
I’ll protect you from this idiot. You have more options than you think.
*** *** ***
“Such crowds and noise.” Baxter chuckled as he closed the study door. “Lady Baxter loves her house parties, but they can be a bother when a man wants a moment alone.”
“I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me,” said Warren.
“Of course. Anything for a friend.”
Baxter poured a generous amount of port and handed Warren the glass, waving him to a chair near the fireplace. Warren sipped the rich liquid slowly, appreciating Baxter’s fine stock. The men exchanged pleasantries and impressions of the past winter. Warren hadn’t much to say for himself. He hadn’t exactly been dissipated, but he had spent a great many hours at his gentlemen’s club and favored brothels. Too many hours.
At last Baxter sat forward and fixed him with a frank gaze. “Enough polite talk. You asked me here for a reason. What is amiss?”
Warren took a deep breath. “I had hoped to have a word with you on the subject of your ward.”
“Oh, thank God,” Baxter burst out. “Absolutely. The answer is yes.”
“The answer to what?”
Baxter’s glass stopped halfway to his lips. “Haven’t you come to ask permission to court her? I suppose it’s too much to hope you’ll marry her out of hand.”