A Dangerous Beauty, page 5
Each lady nodded slightly as her name was mentioned.
Ata continued. “Since the weather doesn’t seem to be cooperating with my plans today for a nice long march to Cudden Point, we shall have to amuse ourselves indoors. I know most of you find that revolting.”
A few coughs and smiles proved the ladies were too polite to disabuse the dowager of her notions.
“However,” she continued, “before the week’s end we shall go on an expedition to Godolphin Cross to explore their marvelous horse stables.”
Horse stables? Why, none of these ladies looked the sort to care a fig about horseflesh. But just the thought of a sleek, equine beauty brought a shiver of excitement down Rosamunde’s spine. She would, of course, tamp down her feelings and beg off somehow. Riding horses had been the first thing she had given up in the name of punishment for her impetuous behavior of so long ago.
“Well, now that’s settled, shall we have some music? Rosamunde and Sylvia, do you sing or play?”
Before Rosamunde could answer, Ata continued, “Elizabeth, dear, will you favor us with a sonata, perhaps one from Mr. Mozart?” She motioned toward the pianoforte.
“Your Gr—or rather—Ata, you know I play wretchedly. Georgiana plays much better than I,” Elizabeth insisted.
Well at least she was not the only one struggling to address the duchess so informally, thought Rosamunde with a smile.
“Elizabeth,” said Georgiana with the beautiful eyes, “that is most unfair. You know I play wretchedly.”
“Oh dear.” Ata laughed. “Well there must be some—”
Rosamunde saw Ata turn her way. She raised her hands and shook her head. “I’ve never played the pianoforte. But”—she hesitated and looked at her sister’s anxious face—“Sylvia is accomplished on the harp.”
“Rosa!” Sylvia’s eyes widened.
“But it’s true.”
“But—”
“My dear, Sylvia”—Ata’s eyes had misted over—“why, the harp is my favorite.”
“But Rosamunde is the one with the great gift. Her voice is…” Sylvia paused, unable to continue after glancing at the dowager’s pleading expression. “Oh, but it’s been many, many years since I’ve—”
“Please? I used to play long ago for hours at a time. It brought me the greatest joy.”
In that moment Rosamunde noticed the old lady’s hands were trembling before she quickly hid one of them, which appeared thin and wasted, beneath her shawl. Rosamunde inhaled sharply. It reminded her of the lady’s hand extended from the Duke of Helston’s carriage those long years ago. Her stomach churned in remembrance. Surely…
All eyes turned to the restrained beauty of the Countess of Sheffield when she spoke. “You would do us all a great honor by playing, Lady Sylvia.”
By the look of desperation bordering on terror on the rest of the widows’ faces, it was clear none of the ladies enjoyed performing.
“Well—” Sylvia began.
“Oh yes, please do,” Sarah begged.
Sylvia crossed the patterned parquet floor toward the harp near the pianoforte and various other instruments. There were enough wood, bows and strings to make up a small orchestra.
Sylvia tentatively settled onto a gilded stool and cradled the harp on her right shoulder. She posed her delicate hands on the strings and all at once achingly familiar notes of ancient Welsh music rippled through the room. It was like a warm spring rain flowing around Rosamunde, feeding the depths of her soul.
Rosamunde couldn’t stop herself from humming and only wished she had the courage to stand up and sing like she used to do in her father’s house.
Sylvia played for many long minutes, never missing a note, never hesitating when she moved toward the lilting conclusion. She appeared in a state of bliss, her face nuzzling the wood of the crown. Rosamunde felt the ache of tears at the back of her throat. It had been a long time since she had seen her sister so happy. Sylvia had given up so many years of her life to comfort Rosamunde in her miserable marriage. And how had she been rewarded? Alfred had forbidden any music. She should have never allowed Sylvia to live with them. She should have insisted she return home. Guilt made her hollow inside.
The harp fell silent, the last two notes ill played. There was not a sound in the room for long moments until someone cleared his throat.
Oh Lord, it was he.
The Duke of Helston stood by the door, dressed in the same austere fashion as yesterday. Rosamunde had hoped to avoid him since his outrageous ways unnerved her. There was something about the way his piercing blue eyes rested on her after his gaze swept the room, as if he knew what she was thinking and could see the chemisette under her gown. Or perhaps, even beneath her underclothes. She forced herself not to squirm.
“Lady Sylvia, you play like an angel,” he drawled. “Almost as well as Grace Sheffey.”
The countess burst out laughing. “Luc, you of all people know I’ve no talent whatsoever.”
“Hmmm, perhaps I’m confusing you with Elizabeth Ashburton, then.” His lips held the suggestion of a smile.
“Well, I do have a superior ear to Lizzy’s,” the countess confided.
“Whatever are you saying, Grace? You just told Her Grace I play better than you,” Elizabeth retorted.
“Too many Graces,” His Grace muttered.
Sarah Winters, who possessed a slightly older and wiser mien, chuckled. “Perhaps we should ask you both to play a duet, then we can be the judges.”
“Sarah, I believe you’re forgetting your own turn,” Georgiana Wilde said with a sly smile. She sat perched on the edge of her seat in a frayed gray silk gown, looking as if she knew how to fortify her defenses with a well-honed sense of humor.
They all turned to the duchess. She was staring at Sylvia, transfixed with happiness and with traces of tears on her cheeks. For once, she seemed at a total loss for words.
The duke cleared his throat again.
It brought the dowager from her reverie. “My dears, I know how much you’re all loathe to play.”
“That’s never stopped you from forcing them to injure our eardrums in the past,” His Grace murmured.
“Luc! How dare you sug—”
“I dare it because their eyes are begging me to stop this insanity and I’ve none of your fawning ways.”
“And don’t we know it,” the dowager harrumphed.
His Grace ignored his grandmother. “Mrs. Baird, will you join me in the front salon? You have a visitor.”
Blood pooled in Rosamunde’s fingers and she felt very cold. Please let it not be Algernon Baird. She knew he would eventually find her. She had just hoped it would be later, when she was more at ease in these new surroundings. She rose unsteadily and looked at Sylvia, whose face had turned ashen.
Her Grace looked at her grandson. “Luc, you’re not to leave her alone.”
“Finally an order I can obey to the letter.”
“Luc!”
“Your agreeable orders are so rare.”
“The better for you to enjoy them when they are given,” Her Grace said, annoyed.
Rosamunde, surprised anew by their banter, looked at the faces of all the people surrounding her. The Countess of Sheffield looked ready to burst out laughing. Apparently this was modus operandi at Amberley. It had been so long since she had witnessed the freedom of speaking plainly, of thinly disguising love with humor, that Rosamunde almost forgot the visitor.
The duke raised his forearm in invitation. “Mrs. Baird?”
His deep baritone voice heated her insides but it was nothing compared to feeling the coiled strength of his arm beneath hers as they removed from the music room. At the doorway, he released her briefly and she sensed the warm glide of his hand at her waist as he guided her through the narrow frame. For the first time in her life she felt petite, compared to the great stature of the gentleman next to her.
“Your Grace—”
“Oh no,” he interrupted. “If I’m forced to endure season after season of weeping widows, I’ll not tolerate such formality in private.”
“I’m certain your grandmother suggested informality among the ladies only.”
He ushered her through a long portrait gallery filled with likenesses of presumably generations of St. Aubyns—each of whom appeared more unyielding than the last. There was not a single female to be found among the austere paintings. Apparently, she thought peevishly, St. Aubyn females were considered negligible broodmares.
“Since the interview with your curious relation will require a special brand of fortitude on both our parts, I had hoped you’d become a bit more comfortable as our guest.”
The mention of Algernon sent an icy tingle down her legs, but she tried to appear calm. “I suppose you may use my given name in private, then.”
“Ah, fair Rosamunde.” He urged her into the shadowed corridor past the portrait gallery.
“I’m anything but fair,” she muttered.
He chuckled. “Better and better. I can’t abide people who are fair. Can’t trust them by half.”
“Your character, sir, shows little variation.”
His wicked smile revealed the slightly crooked tooth, and she had the urge to smile back, but did not. He was such a mystery. Humorous evil hardness prevailed one moment, and yet she wondered if there was not something much deeper, much more compassionate beneath everything.
For the moment, there was no question he was trying to divert her. And for that she was grateful, but still petrified. Algernon would force her away from here, reveal all her secrets. And she would watch the look of cynical humor drain from the duke’s face, to be replaced with disgust and fury. And then she would be compelled to flee. Compelled to take her thirty-seven guineas, saved over the long years, and find a post carriage that would take her as far away as possible. She would probably have to sleep in a hedgerow and find employment. She shivered. But she would not tell Sylvia this time. Her sister would have no choice but to return to the home of their childhood, Edgecumbe.
“What are you thinking about? You look like all the demons of hell are chasing you.”
They were already in front of the drawing-room door. Rosamunde looked up and he was so close she could see the comb marks in his dark hair severely pulled back in the queue.
“Rosamunde.” He pulled her gently into the shadows.
She tried to hide the jolt his touch ignited. What on earth was he doing? Oh, he was probably going to try to reassure her again. But there was something about the touch of a man’s hands that always made her feel confined and ill at ease. She looked at his fingers and he pointedly removed them from her arm as if he’d been burned.
“I’d not guessed you were so chickenhearted to meet this Mr. Baird.” He looked down at her through half-closed eyes and she tried to steady her breathing.
“But I—”
He continued softly, “If he is anything at all like the former Mr. Baird, which is my guess after wasting time with him this morning, then you’ve two appealing options before you. You can either remain with us here and be hideously happy, or go with him and wish you were dancing with the devil.”
“I think I should prefer singing with the angels.”
“I thought you’d no musical talent, Mrs. Baird.”
“So we’re back to formalities, Your Grace?”
A long pause hung in the rays of light coming from a single small window in the hall. He seemed to be weighing some sort of decision.
“You’ve left me no choice, Rosamunde. There seems to be only one last thing to do before choosing your ghastly future.”
“I find your optimistic view of life inspiring, sir.”
“Perhaps I’m not always so happy. But when faced with the pleasure of a second meeting with one of the stupidest men I’ve yet to meet, my disposition improves greatly.”
He’d taken a short step closer during the exchange and Rosamunde could only focus on his blue eyes.
“Now, as I was saying, only one thing remains…”
Suddenly, shockingly, he bent down and touched his lips lightly to her forehead. She felt the heat of a thousand winter night fires blaze as she held her breath in the face of such a small spark of tenderness. It was the first glimmer of true intimacy she had had in all her life.
He pulled back and looked at her for a long moment, his eyes becoming dark with mystery, and then lowered his mouth again, only this time to her own.
Every sense in her body ignited into exquisite self-consciousness. She heard a low sound, or was it a growl? Every inch of her skin turned to gooseflesh, as if she had leapt from a snowbank into a hot bath.
Her mind blurred under the onslaught. His teeth nipped at her lips and it sent a long shiver through her. His tongue gently traced the seam of her lips, and finally she understood he sought entrance, sought knowledge of her. She unclenched her jaw and relaxed only to have excitement burst through her. His tongue curled about her own, making her feel as though she might faint from the intimacy of it.
No one had ever kissed her like this. Not that she knew much about kissing. She knew more about cold, hard pain, not pleasure. But surely this was wickedness incarnate.
She breathed in the mysterious scent of cheroots and woody cologne. He smelled of old elegance and permanence. And of sadness hiding behind a thin veneer. But most of all, she sensed a strange stoicism coursing beneath a long tunnel of dark experience.
He drew back and before she could gather her wits and breathe, let alone think about the magnitude of what had just happened, he opened the door. “After you, Mrs. Baird.”
Algernon stood by the bow window in his Sunday finery, only a shred of mourning evident in the form of a scrap of black material tied about one arm.
All the smoldering embers in her body were sucked out to be replaced with the familiar icy dread. Her ability to cover her fears with a cloak of indifference, a skill honed over time, stood her well.
“My dear cousin.” Algernon bowed deeply.
“Algernon.” Rosamunde dipped a miniscule curtsy.
The duke motioned them both to a settee before the vast fireplace, intricately carved from a single slab of white marble tinged gray from many generations of use. He propped himself against it with casual elegance, rather like a great falcon watching his prey. Or was it a vulture?
“Ah, this is a sad state of affairs is it not, my dear?” Algernon’s question was more of a statement.
She sat still and mute.
Algernon darted a glance at the duke. Beads of moisture covered his forehead and the skin above his upper lip. Like his first cousin Alfred, Algernon Baird was always overheated in hot weather and in cold. His hair, a thinning, oily mixture of gray and red was combed forward à la mode Brutus. It was uncanny how much he looked like her late husband with the exception of his greater height.
“Well, enough of the niceties,” the duke said dryly. “You’ve requested an audience with Mrs. Baird and have proposed to me that she and her sister return to…”
“Barton’s Cottage,” Algernon filled in.
“Right. Barton’s Cottage, clearly a place much more appealing than this pile.” The duke brushed invisible lint from his coat lapel. “And this is to be done today.”
“This afternoon, Your Grace,” Algernon insisted. “We shan’t burden you further.”
“You show a forgiving nature, sir, toward a runaway grieving relation. It warms the heart,” the duke said.
Rosamunde could not move or speak for the life of her. Her world was crashing in around her yet again.
Algernon preened before him.
“It’s obvious any woman would be delighted to accept your charity.” The duke examined his pocket watch and clicked it shut. “I, however, find a slight—mind you, very slight—problem with your proposal.”
“Your Grace?”
“I’ve never subscribed to gothic scenarios. You understand me, I am sure. A grieving dependant female or two at the mercy of a”—Rosamunde was sure he was going to say licentious idiot but was mistaken—“gentleman,” the duke continued after a long pause.
Algernon’s face paled. “Are they not in the same situation here? Why, I am family to these two girls.”
“Girls?”
Algernon blinked. “Ladies.”
“Do we really need to belabor the point, Mr. Baird? I would be willing to endure the tedium of an argument, but only if you could find it within yourself to provide just a bit more entertainment along the way.”
Algernon appeared confused. “Are you insulting me?”
“I see you’ve no gloves with you, would you care for my handkerchief?” He reached for his pocket. “I’ve always found challenges quite amusing.”
The first hint of real panic appeared on Algernon’s face. Years of desperation prevented Rosamunde from taking any pleasure in it.
“No?” The duke continued after a short silence, “Well, you can take comfort in knowing there are at least three dozen guests here to save Mrs. Baird from, ahem, me.”
A bubble of disbelief tinged with hilarity floated in Rosamunde’s throat. Where had all those visitors been moments ago, outside the door?
The duke slowly raised a quizzing glass, dangling from a gold chain about his neck, to his face. It enlarged one of his eyes to ridiculous proportions.
“Have you nothing to say about this, Mrs. Baird? We’re talking about your fate, after all.”
“No,” she said quietly.
“No?” He looked at her with indifference and her heart grew smaller. “I keep forgetting females have no say in the matter of their futures. And here you have such a tempting offer on the table from Mr. Baird.”
“Offer?” she echoed, barely able to speak. Couldn’t he divine that the long years with Alfred had instilled in her the importance of remaining compliant and still?
“Why, yes. Mr. Baird explained to me not one half hour ago that he blames himself for your hasty departure, that you had not given him the chance to explain his ideas for your happy future.”
What was he talking about? She turned to consider Algernon’s frippery and slippery words and the sweaty, earthy awful core of him.
