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She gave him a smile nearly as roguish as the one he was famous for. ‘Well…you are a rake and you do flout conventions all the time.’
He nodded, wondering where this was leading and beginning to think he was going to have to bow out of her proposed escapade—and he didn’t even know where her wiles were heading. Not even he would compromise a girl barely out of the schoolroom.
‘I am all those things, but that does not mean I am your pet monkey to do as you bid me.’ He kept his tone light to counterbalance the baldness of his words.
She sat down and beckoned him to join her. He shook his head and propped one elegantly clad foot on the base of the balustrade. ‘I think not,’ he murmured.
She pouted. ‘But you won’t be able to hear me if you insist on staying so far away.’
‘You amaze me with your audacity, Miss Amy. Don’t you know well-bred young ladies keep their distance from men of my reputation?’
‘Oh, pooh! As though I care about that. I am in London to enjoy myself.’
‘And to find a suitable husband.’
‘You would do very nicely.’
He shook his head and wondered what he had got himself into. ‘I have no intentions of marrying anyone, let alone someone as young as you are.’
‘You are not being very gallant.’
Her brows drew together into a ferocious frown that he was sure normally got her whatever she wanted. He had used that ploy himself when he was younger and it had always worked. It was time to burst her bubble before the two of them got into something he could not extricate himself from.
‘I am being blunt and honest.’
‘Then why do you always come to my beck and call?’
He pondered that. ‘For the pleasure of doing as I please. You see, like you, I have been spoilt and am used to having my own way.’
‘Exactly.’ She gave him a triumphant smile. ‘That is why I know you are just the one to do this.’
He raised one brow.
‘Oh, yes.’ She was so excited her breath came as though she were running. ‘There is a masquerade tonight. I want to go.’
He stepped back from her. ‘Then go.’
‘Don’t be stupid. I need someone to take me.’
‘Ask your sister.’
‘Ask me what,’ Emma Stockton said.
Her voice was so cold that Charles immediately decided to see how far he could provoke her. It was a pastime he found entertaining.
He turned and watched her stride across the balcony until she stood barely a foot from them. Her auburn brows formed a tight V and her usually full, peach-tinted lips formed a thin line of anger and disapproval. He found himself delighted.
It always amazed him that he reacted to her this way. She was not voluptuous or even particularly beautiful, but she was striking and for some reason he couldn’t understand—didn’t want to spend the time trying to understand—she always made him want to bait her.
‘Your delightful sister has plans for later this night. I told her that she should ask you.’ He kept his voice to a soft drawl, which he knew would irritate her. It always had in the past. Ennui was so difficult to assuage.
Emma turned her attention on her sister. ‘Amy?’
The younger Stockton scowled at her sister for all she was worth, while casting appealing looks at Charles. ‘Really, Em. It is nothing. Mr Hawthorne is making something big out of something that doesn’t exist.’
Charles nearly shook his head in amazement. Instead he laughed. He couldn’t help himself. The girl was a minx and the person assigned to control her couldn’t. He nearly pitied Emma Stockton.
‘What is so amusing, Mr Hawthorne?’ Emma Stockton’s voice dripped acid. ‘I find this entire situation skirting the boundary of acceptability. But then, I suppose, you already know that and choose to do as you wish. It seems to be a trait in your family.’
Her sarcastic words, perfectly aimed, sobered him. ‘If you had a sword, Miss Stockton, you would have scored a very solid hit.’
‘I know that.’
‘Oh, stop bickering you two,’ Amy’s light voice intruded. ‘You are ruining the evening. It is supposed to be about fun and excitement and the two of you make it seem awful.’
Charles found he could not look away from Emma Stockton, no matter what the girl said. The woman seemed fit to explode. Colour mounted her high cheekbones and her grey eyes seemed lit from within. Suddenly, he had had enough of taunting her.
He made a brief leg. ‘I will be about my business, ladies. I wish you a good evening—what is left of it.’
He departed without a backward glance, glad to be away before Emma Stockton went up in flames. Even he, as selfish and hedonistic as he was and bent on entertaining himself during a dull Season in any way possible, didn’t want to be around for the fireworks he knew were to come.
Emma felt Charles Hawthorne’s departure in spite of herself. It was as though the warmth had fled, leaving only her cold anger at him and her sister.
‘Amy, you know you should not be out here with a man of Charles Hawthorne’s ilk. Think of your reputation.’
Amy defiantly met Emma’s gaze. ‘There is nothing wrong. The doors are open and—’ she half turned and swept her arm in an indication of the gardens below ‘—there are people walking on the paths. Nothing would have happened.’
Emma wondered if she had ever been this headstrong and bent on achieving her own purpose no matter what the cost. She didn’t think so. From the first, she had realised someone needed to be responsible and help Mama. Her anger softened at the memory.
‘Amy,’ she said gently, ‘it is not a matter of anything happening. Exactly. It is a matter of propriety, and young girls don’t go outside alone with a man like Charles Hawthorne.’ Amy stood so they were eye to eye. ‘Well, we might have been brother-and sister-in-law. Surely that counts for something.’
‘Amy,’ Emma said reproachfully, ‘you know better than that. If I had married Lord Hawthorne, things would have been different. But I didn’t, so you can’t use that as an excuse. Society will forgive much in a man that it won’t forgive in a woman. Always remember that.’
‘Humph!’
Amy made to flounce around her sister but Emma grabbed her sister’s arm and held tight. ‘You still haven’t told me what the two of you came out here to discuss.’
Amy simultaneously tossed her head and tried to wriggle from Emma’s grasp. Emma let her go.
‘Nothing.’
‘Amy.’ Emma felt her patience shredding.
‘Oh, all right. There is a masquerade. I wanted him to escort me because I knew you wouldn’t.’
Emma gasped in spite of herself. ‘You are the most brazen girl. You would have ruined yourself for a couple of hours of pleasure.’
‘No, I wouldn’t. I would have worn a mask. No one would even know who I was.’
‘So, is he taking you?’
Amy half turned away, giving her sister a look from the corner of her eyes. ‘And if he is?’
‘Don’t goad me, Amy. I am not in the mood for it.’
And she wasn’t. Already she found herself wanting to lock her sister in her room with only bread and water, but Amy wasn’t a child anymore even though she acted like one. Next, she wanted to land Charles Hawthorne what her brother Bertram would call a facer. But she would do neither.
‘You are never in the mood for fun, Emma. That is the problem with you.’
Emma glared at Amy.
‘Oh, all right. No, he isn’t taking me.’ Her voice fell. ‘I was surprised. He is always game for anything.’
Emma silently groaned at her sister’s naiveté. ‘And what if you had been recognised? He might be reckless, but he’s not stupid. Your reputation would be in shreds and someone might start thinking he should marry you—something I very much believe he has no intention of doing.’
A flush spread across Amy’s fair face. ‘He certainly made that plain.’ She smoothed the fine white muslin of her gown, her eyes not meeting Emma’s. ‘But men change…if they want something badly enough.’
‘No, they don’t.’ Emma snapped the words, hearing the fatal misunderstanding so many of her sex seemed to have regarding men. ‘They don’t change.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Amy persisted. ‘Besides, Em, I am tired of this conversation. And he is not taking me to the masquerade. So, as far as you are concerned, things couldn’t be better.’
Emma would have begged to differ, but knew it did no good to argue with Amy when she had her mind made up. All she could do was try her best to be an obstacle in the young girl’s reckless path. To lecture Amy would only make her sister try harder to achieve what she ought not.
Chapter Two
E mma alighted first from the hired carriage they rented when need dictated. They lived in a genteel yet shabby part of London. The walk to Lady Jersey’s ball would have been too far, even for women raised in the country. Delicate ballroom slippers were not made for long distances and wearing one’s half boots and carrying one’s slippers to a fancy ball was not done.
Amy followed Emma. ‘Em, what engagements do we have tomorrow?’
Emma turned to pay the coachman, who tipped his hat before driving away. She moved to the front door, pulling a key from her reticule. ‘I believe we are at home tomorrow afternoon, Amy. At night, we should have been at a rout at the Princess Lieven’s but it has been postponed until the next evening.’
‘Nothing tomorrow afternoon,’ Amy murmured.
Amy’s voice held impatience and something else that Emma always dreaded. Excitement. She didn’t need Amy to say any more to know her sister had arranged or was planning something that would not be to anyone’s liking but Amy’s.
‘Why do you wish to know?’ Emma worked to keep the growing apprehension from her tone. Provoking Amy to further indiscretions was the last thing she needed to do.
‘Oh, nothing.’ Amy waved her gloved hand in an airy sweep. But there was a sparkle in her blue eyes that spoke of mischief.
Rather than press the issue, Emma said, ‘Then you had best get some sleep.’
A glance at Amy showed the young girl had missed Emma’s irony. Yes, Amy was definitely concocting something.
Emma inserted the key in the lock and pushed open the door. No servants waited up for them. It wasn’t fair to ask their old butler, who did many other things now because they were short of staff, to wait up. Nor would she ask the housekeeper who now filled in as lady’s maid. They rose at dawn, so she would not ask them to stay up until dawn.
Emma watched Amy trip blithely up the stairs, a bounce in the girl’s step that spoke of suppressed energy and excitement. Amy was enjoying her first Season immensely.
Emma remembered her own and wished she had been as young and unconcerned. But she had been twenty during her first Season. Her debut had been delayed three years while she nursed Mama and then for the year of mourning. When she’d finally come to London, she had known above all else that she needed to marry well.
The only man with the position and wealth to help her family and who had proposed to her had been Charles Hawthorne’s older brother, Lord George Hawthorne. It was to have been a marriage of convenience and both of them had known that. Then Hawthorne had met another woman and his actions with her had been so blatant that Emma had felt herself constrained to call off their engagement. While she had not expected a love match and had not been heartbroken, she had been humiliated. Nor had she wished to keep another person from finding happiness. For the most part, the only thing she regretted was that now Amy needed to marry well. Amy deserved better than that.
Her shadow wavered against the wall, catching her attention from the corner of her eye. A single candle burned in a brass holder set on a table. Nothing else adorned the entryway of the rented house. Her father and brother had sold off the silver long ago to pay gambling debts. Debts of honour.
She stared at the flame for only a few seconds. Crying over spilt milk or badly needed money frittered away for pleasure that did no one any good was not going to change anything. The best hope Amy had was to marry well. If the man could also pay to get their father and brother out of debt, then so much the better.
Charles Hawthorne could not fill either of those requirements. No matter that he was a devastatingly attractive man with a devilish charm even she found hard to resist.
Thank goodness he had not agreed to take Amy to the masquerade. Emma knew too well she would be hard-pressed to keep so close a watch on her sister that Amy could not escape or make it uncomfortable for Emma to prevent her. She nearly chuckled aloud at the picture of herself stretched on the floor across Amy’s bedroom door, for that is what she would have to do to keep Amy in check. Or tie her sister to the bed.
However, she had no doubt something else equally unacceptable would arise, for Charles Hawthorne had made it clear he had no intention of changing his atrocious behaviour where Amy was concerned. He would ruin her sister without a second thought, and Amy would let him.
Too much was at stake. She dared not let Charles Hawthorne and Amy continue down the path they were on. She had to do something to stop the man. The well-being of her sister and their entire family depended on Amy marrying well.
Yet, if she thought Amy loved the man she would think seriously about trying to convince their father to allow the match. But she knew her young sister well enough to know Amy enjoyed the notoriety of his attention because he was considered unattainable by every woman in society. Amy did not love Charles Hawthorne. Nor did he love her. That knowledge allowed Emma to entertain plans to sever the connection with a clear conscience.
But what to do about Charles Hawthorne?
A door opening down the hallway caught her attention. Who would be up at this hour? She had told all the servants to go to bed, and Amy had mounted the stairs. Footsteps echoed on the bare wood.
‘Who is there?’
‘Just your brother,’ Bertram Stockton drawled, his tall, skinny frame silhouetted by the light coming into the hall from the open door to the room he had just left. ‘Where have you been? It’s rather late to be out unescorted.’
His criticism raised her hackles.
‘We have been to Lady Jersey’s ball. We took a hired carriage since we do not have one of our own—for reasons you know very well. And I am old enough to not need an escort and to be a proper chaperone for our sister.’ Her irritation was instantly replaced by concern, for London and Bertram were not a good combination. ‘What are you doing in Town?’
His hazel-eyed gaze slid away from her. She knew he was going to lie to her. Perhaps it was better. She knew all too well why he was here, and she could do nothing to stop him.
His gaze returned to her. ‘I am up to check on you and Amy. Disturbing rumours have reached Father and me about Amy and Charles Hawthorne. After what his brother did to you, Father decided it would be best for all of us if I came and stayed. Provide a brotherly presence and all that. Besides which, the man is not someone we wish in the family. A rakehell of the first order. No, not at all what we wish for Amy.’
‘But a rich rakehell,’ Emma said, unable to stop the sarcastic retort. ‘We could use that commodity.’
Most days she felt no bitterness toward her brother and father for their recklessness at the tables, knowing there was nothing she could do to stop them. She tried to clean up the mess they left behind. Mother would want her to.
One day after Emma had got into a fight with Bertram over his gambling debts and the hardship they created, Mother had explained that some things were better left unsaid. Harsh words changed nothing and only created trouble between the people involved. Emma had followed that advice since, although at times like tonight, it was hard not to let her anger burst out.
She closed her eyes and willed herself to release the destructive emotions. They did no one any good, least of all herself. She could not change anything.
‘Your tongue is sharp tonight, sister.’
Emma took a deep breath and opened her eyes. ‘I am tired and surprised to see you. You sent no note so there is no room ready for you.’
‘The housekeeper saw to all of that.’
‘When did you arrive?’
‘An hour ago. You were out.’
