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“Truth, Lydia? I had selected the Duke of Malvern for my initial conquest. After all, Rafe is friends with him, and the man has already met us, knows us. And there’s no denying how handsome the duke is. He seemed perfect for me to practice on.”
Lydia fairly leaped to her feet, her cheeks suddenly ashen. “The Duke of Malvern? Nicole, no! He’s the most loathsome creature alive. How could you even consider such a thing? I don’t think I want to talk about your silly plans anymore. I’m going to take a nap.”
Nicole wanted to kick herself for forgetting, even for a moment, the duke’s effect on her sister, that to Lydia he was a living reminder of everything she had lost. She could lay the blame for that lapse on the Marquess of Basingstoke, who seemed to muddle her brains every time she thought about him and their short but singular exchange that afternoon.
“Lydia, wait—” she said, but her sister had already run toward the connecting door between their bedchambers.
“How can I be so stupid!” Nicole berated herself, sinking back onto the low dressing table bench and dropping her chin into her hands as she contemplated her reflection. “I’ll have to apologize later. Perhaps offer to accompany her to Hatchard’s Book Repository again, and stand about for hours while she oohs and aahs over every other volume. Heaven knows that’s penance enough.”
That decided, she tipped her head to one side, wondering what it was that the Marquess of Basingstoke had seen when he’d looked at her that had seemingly upset him so much. Her eyes? Even she thought they were a pretty color, as well as unusual. Nicole liked to think of herself as unusual, singular.
She didn’t think he’d necessarily been put off by her freckles, the bane of her existence, especially since her mama, when she deigned to notice her daughters at all, had begun insisting Nicole spread crushed strawberries and clotted cream on them twice a week.
Yet if she had to choose between skin as creamy and blemish-free as Lydia’s and the freedom of riding Juliet across the fields of Ashurst Hall sans a hat, with the wind blowing her hair, well, she’d learn to live with the spots, and so would everyone else.
Although if she could rid herself of the childish habit of biting her bottom lip whenever she felt unsure of herself she would be happier, as it didn’t exactly seem the sort of thing polished London debutantes did.
In any case, the marquess had thought her attractive, she wasn’t such a ninny that she didn’t know that. And he was handsome, and sophisticated, very much a London gentleman, which was quite exciting. He’d make a delicious first conquest.
Unless he thought her vain, and stupid. Frivolous.
“Stop that!” she told herself. “It doesn’t matter what he thinks of you. You’re here to enjoy yourself, not to end up like Lydia.”
Still, before she rang for Renée to have a bath prepared for her, Nicole picked up the slim volume her sister had left behind and sat down on the slipper chair, hoping to improve her mind.
LUCAS STOPPED JUST INSIDE the doors of the drawing room in Grosvenor Square and said quietly, “Well, damn me for a fool. She said Rafael, didn’t she? Captain Rafe Daughtry. Of course.”
Rafael Daughtry, Duke of Ashurst this past year, a man who only recently had been a poor relation who, with no other prospects, had served with Wellington for half a dozen years, favored the marquess with a lazy salute. “Major. Good evening, sir,” he said, smiling.
“What’s this?” Viscount Yalding said, confused. “You two know each other? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“That should be obvious, Fletcher. I didn’t realize.” Lucas moved forward, holding out his right hand. “Rafe Daughtry. My God, how long has it been? The last time I saw you, you and your Irish friend were marching away from Paris just as I was marching in. What was his name again? Ah, I remember. Fitzgerald. One of the fiercest soldiers I’d ever seen. Completely fearless. He’s well?”
Rafe shook his head slowly, looking past Lucas to the ladies just entering the drawing room. “We lost Fitz at Quatre Bras. He was about to be betrothed to my sister Lydia.”
Lucas felt the too-familiar punch to the midsection that overtook him whenever he heard of the loss of another brave soldier. Even now, with nearly a year gone by, those blows remained too frequent. “My most sincere condolences, Rafe. I’ll not say another word.” He then quickly introduced Fletcher, and, together, they all turned to bow to the ladies.
There were three of them. Lady Lydia, along with Rafe’s clearly pregnant young wife, Charlotte, and Lady Nicole. Lucas bowed over Her Grace’s hand, begging her not to bother to curtsy to a gentleman who should be leading her to a chair and not allowing her to stand about, and then smiled to the younger ladies.
At least he hoped he’d smiled to both, as it was only Lady Nicole that he really saw.
If she’d been appealing that afternoon, this evening she was positively bewitching. He’d wanted to see her hair sans her bonnet, but he hadn’t been prepared for the impact of those thick black tresses, arranged with artless simplicity in the latest French mode, wondrously framing that perfect heart-shaped face and accenting the deep violet of her eyes.
Her pale peach gown was simple, as befitted a debutante, but there was nothing simple about the body beneath that gown. Her breasts were lush above the thin silken sash tied just below the bodice, and the sprinkling of freckles across the expanse of skin visible above that bodice made it impossible for him to think anything else save how he needed to know—had to know, would know—if the freckles extended everywhere, even to where the sun did not reach her.
Over drinks—wine for the gentlemen, lemonade for the ladies—Rafe told them all how he and Lucas had met many times on the Peninsula. He kept the telling light, relating an amusing incident involving a captured pack of supply mules and a shared meal fit for a king—but meant for the enemy.
“And you, of course, husband, only observed during this grand adventure in thievery,” Charlotte said, her eyes sparkling.
Rafe took his wife’s hand, raising it to his lips in a way that told Lucas the man was comfortable in allowing the world to see he was besotted with his lovely wife. “Oh, yes, certainly. I was always a pattern card of respectability, even while cold, halfstarved and in mud up to my knees.”
“No, you weren’t,” Charlotte corrected. “And I think we should applaud your ingenuity, all of you who had to deal with such extraordinary hardships.”
“Why, thank you, darling. But it was Lucas here who masterminded the raid on the supply train, and it was brilliant. He even kidnapped the man’s cook while he was about it. The cook spoke no English, we spoke no Spanish, but we managed. We hadn’t eaten so well in months.”
“I kept him for most of that summer, as I recall,” Lucas told them. “Until we understood each other sufficiently for him to inform me that he had a wife and, as I remember it, a dozen children in a village just over the hill. At which point we said our farewells. I still miss his way with a chicken. At the time, I mostly missed the chickens he stole when he left.”
By the time the majordomo announced that dinner was served, the small party had agreed to dispense with the formality of titles, and it was a fairly merry group that sat down to bowls of hot, clear consommé.
“Chicken,” Nicole pointed out as Lucas lifted his spoon. “Feel free to wax nostalgic once more about your Spanish cook.”
Lucas looked at her inquiringly. “You didn’t enjoy our small story?”
“I did, yes,” she told him quietly, her attention seemingly on her dish. “But I could not help but wonder, for all the stories you and Rafe told, that Captain Fitzgerald played no part in them. You know, don’t you?”
“Your brother was kind enough to warn me off,”
Lucas said, chancing a look across the table to where Lady Lydia appeared to be listening with rapt attention as Fletcher spoke just as quietly, gesturing with his hands in that way his friend had about him. “He becomes excited enough about his subject,” he said, indicating Fletcher, “and someone might be prudent to move those wineglasses. Once, when he was describing a boxing match he’d been to in Epsom, he knocked a candlestick into Lady Hertford’s lap. She was not amused.”
“I’d have been highly amused, and it will do no good to attempt to change the subject. I think my brother is entirely too protective of my sister. How will she heal if everyone continues to coddle her, to hide their memories of Captain Fitzgerald from her? To elevate him to sainthood, put his memory on a pedestal where he is no longer human, no longer real, is a disservice to the captain as well as to Lydia. He was a flesh-and-blood man, very much so. She will always love him, always remember him, but it’s time she smiled when she said his name. It’s time she makes him more than the dream he was to her.”
Lucas looked at her in some astonishment. Clearly polite dinner conversation, safe and innocuous, was not going to be the rule of the evening. “You may be right, Lady Nicole. But do you want to chance upsetting your sister?”
“No, I suppose not. Not right now. But I would think we need not tiptoe around the subject when we all meet again. To constantly avoid the captain’s name is cheating Lydia, and difficult for those around her.”
“When we meet again? Ah, a glimmer of hope invades my being. Then you have permission to drive out to Richmond tomorrow?”
The dimple appeared in her cheek as she smiled at him. “Rafe considers you harmless, yes. How does it feel, my lord, to be considered harmless? I’m only curious because no one has ever applied that description to me.”
“I can’t imagine why not,” Lucas said tongue in cheek as the soup plates were removed and the second course served. He had no appetite, unless it was for the woman sitting beside him, deliberately goading him, testing the boundaries to see how far she could go before she shocked him.
He’d like to know that, too.
“Lucas,” Fletcher said, leaning his elbows on the table. “You won’t believe this. Lady Lydia here has read Thomas Paine. Isn’t that beyond anything you’ve ever heard?”
“Is that so, Lady Lydia,” he said, truly interested, if mildly surprised. “His most famous Common Sense is thought by some to be the major goad for the then American colonies to rise up against us in the last century, did you know that?”
Lydia’s cheeks had gone quite pink, but she looked directly at Lucas. “But there are things that must be said, don’t you agree, wrongs that must be righted? As Mr. Paine wrote, we cannot allow ourselves to be complacent, and to never question authority.”
“Yes, I remember. ‘A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.’”
“You’ve committed him to memory, Lucas?” Rafe remarked from the head of the table. “Don’t tell me you claim the man as family.”
“Not at all, although sharing a surname has caused my family to feel forced to defend his memory from time to time. I admire some of his writings, but I wish he’d stopped before he vented his spleen with The Rights of Man. For a time, it was a crime for an Englishman to possess a copy, did you know that?”
“Lydia possesses a copy,” Nicole said quietly. “I read some of it just this afternoon.”
Lucas raised an eyebrow. He’d known it would only be a matter of time before she’d shocked him, but he hadn’t expected that shock to come this soon. “Is that so? And have you read enough to form an opinion?”
Nicole bit her bottom lip for a moment and then nodded. “Truthfully? My sister may not agree with me, but for as much as I have so far read, I believe the man makes an incendiary argument consisting of a mixture of unpalatable truths and dangerous nonsense.”
Lucas threw back his head and laughed out loud. “Rafe! Did you hear that? I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“You have said it yourself,” Fletcher pointed out, looking at Nicole curiously. “It’s almost eerie.”
Lucas caught out Rafe and his lovely wife exchanging rather confused looks, as if they’d never expected to hear Nicole say anything like what she’d just said. Yet they hadn’t seemed shocked to hear that her sister had read Paine’s works. Or was there more to it than that?
He decided to find out.
“As you read Thomas Paine,” he asked Nicole as they ate, “I would imagine you’ve also read some of the works of Wieland, Gibbon, Burke?”
“You most certainly can imagine that. You can imagine that all you wish,” she answered brightly, and he knew he had just been put very firmly in his place. By a young girl clearly not easily put out of countenance by clumsy buffoons like himself.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, only to have her place her hand on his forearm and lean closer to him.
“And I should not have pretended to be someone I am not. Lydia stole all the brains, I believe, leaving me nothing but an only ordinary intelligence. But I did sound convincing, didn’t I? The use of incendiary was very nearly inspired, I think.”
And that was that. Beauty such as Nicole’s was not to be sneezed at and certainly he enjoyed looking at her, would like to possess her because of that beauty. But as he looked into those remarkable eyes, and saw what could only be a small imp of the devil looking back at him, Lucas was in serious danger of becoming completely and utterly lost. And he knew it.
CHAPTER THREE
AS IF TO PUNISH NICOLE for what she knew to be her outrageous behavior the night of the dinner party, there was such a downpour for the next two days that no sane person in London ventured outdoors, let alone took drives to Richmond or anywhere else.
In desperation, she had picked up Lydia’s copy of Jane Austen’s Emma, and hidden herself away in her room until all of the characters were nicely settled with their soul mates and Emma had finally opened her eyes to the charms of Mr. Knightley.
She hadn’t enjoyed the story very much. All this upset about matching this one to that one and keeping another one from making a mistake by bracketing herself to a clearly unsuitable person seemed silly.
Was there really nothing else for women to do but concern themselves with such mundane matters? Clearly her own decision never to marry would save her from a life of such nonsense, for which she’d be eternally grateful.
Although, considering herself more talented in the area than the fictional Emma, Nicole did think it might be fun to find a suitable husband for Lydia. For, although she saw no need to dip her own toe in matrimonial waters, clearly her sister needed to be loved, needed to love in return.
Nicole thought about the Viscount Yalding, who seemed a nice enough man, if rather nervous. Would he be a good match for Lydia? She hadn’t mentioned him, not even once, since the dinner party.
Lydia had, however, spoken often about the Marquess of Basingstoke. He’d been a soldier, like Captain Fitzgerald. He read Thomas Paine, like Captain Fitzgerald. He treated her kindly and obviously admired her intelligence. Like Captain Fitzgerald. But what did that mean, other than that Lydia still thought and spoke often of poor dead Fitz?
By the morning of the third day, marked by a thin, watery sun and with their escorts just arriving in Grosvenor Square in a pair of lovely curricles, Nicole had convinced herself that Lucas Paine was a man just like any other man, and that her intense reaction to him had been merely an aberration. She had more worlds to conquer than just this one man, and he could not be allowed to invade her mind to the degree that he had thus far, in only two brief meetings.
Nicole prided herself on being in charge of her own life, her own mind—and most definitely her own heart. So why did just the thought of seeing the man again turn her insides into jelly?
Well, enough of that sort of missish silliness! Today she would make certain that she was the one in charge.
So thinking, as she watched Lydia tie the strings of her bonnet beneath her chin—the blue ribbon picked out for her most expressly by Captain Fitzgerald the previous year—Nicole tried to imagine her sister married to the Marquess of Basingstoke.
She bit her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment as she felt a slight, unidentifiable pang, but then pushed on with the idea.
“Lydia?” she asked her as they walked toward the staircase, for they’d been warned by Rafe and Charlotte both that it was not polite to allow their lordships’ horses to stand waiting too long. “What do you think of the marquess?”
Lydia stopped with her hand just on the railing of the staircase. “What do I think of him? I’m sorry, Nicole, but I don’t believe I think of him at all, not in any way that matters. What do you think of him?”
Nicole avoided the question by asking another of her own. “You don’t find him handsome?”
Lydia took hold of Nicole’s arm and steered her away from the stairs. “Nicole, what’s wrong? I thought you liked the man. You seemed to the day we met him, and he certainly was a delightful dinner companion. Rafe likes him. Charlotte likes him. Are you going to be contrary and decide to dislike him now, because everyone else likes him?”
“I don’t do things like that,” Nicole protested. “Do I?”
“No, I suppose not, except maybe for needlepoint. And turnips. But you do worry me sometimes. You don’t have to conquer every man you meet, you know. If you’ve decided that his lordship isn’t going to be your first…conquest, as you call it, then please, don’t feel you need to continue seeing him. Not that I approved of the idea in any case.”
“I don’t feel as if I have to conquer every—Do you know something, Lydia? Sometimes I don’t like me very much. This Season was supposed to be fun. London, the parties, the gaiety. I’ve lived for this moment ever since I can remember wanting anything. I didn’t have to think about the rest of my life, as everyone said I should do. And then he came along. If I could cry off from our drive, I would. He’s a most disconcerting man.”
Lydia looked at her for a long moment, and then a slow smile lit her face. “Why, Nicole, you like him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous, although I think someone standing here is. All your plans, your boasts—and all it takes is one man to scatter those plans to the four winds. Now do you understand, Nicole? You don’t choose. Fate chooses for you.”
“Maybe for some people. But not for me. Oh, come along. We shouldn’t keep the horses standing, remember?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. Suddenly I’m quite looking forward to this afternoon,” Lydia said, turning back toward the stairs, but not before Nicole realized that her sister, seemingly asleep, wandering listlessly through life since last June, had a tiny bit of sparkle in her eyes once more.
“Well, I’m not!” Nicole groused, just to please her twin, and then followed her down the stairs.
LUCAS SLICED ANOTHER LOOK at Nicole, her profile all but hidden by the brim of her fetching straw bonnet.
She’d greeted him rather coolly, climbed up onto the seat almost before he could assist her and had said less than ten words to him as they wended their way toward Richmond.
Her sister and Fletcher were behind them in his friend’s curricle, and each time Lucas had looked back to make sure they weren’t going to be separated in the traffic, he could see that the two of them were happily chatting together as Fletcher pointed out the sights of the city.
Nicole acted as if she had no interest in the buildings, or the people walking along the flagways. And most especially, no interest in him. She kept her head faced forward, her gloved hands folded together in her lap, and answered him with either nods or in monosyllables each time he attempted to start a conversation.
Thirty minutes of this, and Lucas had had enough.
“Has your brother warned you to behave?”
She turned to him in obvious shock. “What? Why would you say such a thing?”
“I don’t know. If I were your brother—and, thankfully, I’m not, for that would be decidedly awkward, considering my less than brotherly attraction to you—I might not let you out at all.”
A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, but she refused to let it grow. “I don’t think you should have said that, my lord.”
“Clearly. But if you’ve decided to take me in dislike, I might as well be honest.”
“I haven’t taken you in dislike,” she said, lifting her chin. “If I had done that, my lord, I wouldn’t be sitting here beside you. I never do what I don’t want to do.”
He couldn’t resist teasing her.
“Ah, then you do want to be in my company today. I apologize for thinking you wanted me on the far side of the moon.”
She did that thing with her teeth and her bottom lip, and turned her head forward once more. “You can be rather annoying,” she said imperiously.
