Courting the countess, p.18
Courting the Countess, page 18
The outrageousness of his comment startled a burst of laughter from Lady Haslake. She was extremely devoted to her earl and everyone knew it. She whacked Mallory playfully on his coat sleeve. “Mr. Claeg, that clever tongue of yours will get you in trouble one day, sir!”
Mallory took the older woman’s hand and kissed it. Holding Brook’s gaze, he said, “I can only hope.” It earned him another giggle, as he had intended. Realizing he had been staring too long at Brook, he let his gaze slide away while he issued greetings to her companions. Ham stiffly nodded and mumbled a greeting. The earl then intentionally walked away to speak with a gentleman he knew. It was not a direct cut in the truest sense, but it was rude.
“How are your lovely daughters?”
Brook frowned, wondering if anyone’s daughter was safe from the scoundrel. It seemed he was acquainted with every unmarried female in London.
Warming to one of her favorite subjects, Lady Haslake brightened. “How kind of you to remember. My eldest—” She stopped and tilted her head to the side. “Oh, good, here she is now. Laurette, Mr Claeg was asking about you.”
That was not precisely true, Brook protested silently, but no one corrected the misassumption. She did not bother concealing her disappointment. No one was paying attention to her. All eyes were focused on Lady Laurette Omant. The twenty-three-year-old woman politely greeted everyone. She was a youthful replica of her mother. With glossy black tresses and violet eyes and claiming a dowry that had most of the fortune hunters salivating, Rett, as her family and friends affectionately called her, had gentlemen dropping at her feet like overripe fruit.
“Mr. Claeg, I am honored you recalled my name,” she said, her lashes lowered flirtatiously. “The last time we met, you were surrounded by a legion of young ladies all desiring the chance to be immortalized by your, uh, skillful hands.”
Brook had managed not to show any reaction to the image the woman’s words conjured. Mallory did not appear embarrassed by or apologetic for the reminder, but his assessing gaze briefly locked onto Brook’s before returning to the earl’s daughter.
“If I recall correctly, my lady, it was your mischievous announcement during the ball that I was searching for a noble lady to be my Aphrodite that created the farce. I had to talk my way out of two dawn appointments because the furious gentlemen in question thought I was pursuing their wives.”
“Good grief, Rett, my dear, you did not,” her mother said, unaware of her daughter’s role in that old gossip.
“Well, I—” She dismissed her wicked actions by arching her left brow in a charming manner that made Brook feel a tug of envy for the unapologetic ease she possessed.
“Mr. Claeg, I trust my daughter’s part did not overly inconvenience you?” Lady Haslake glared at her eldest child, promising with a look that they would be discussing the matter at great length later in private.
The gleam in Mallory’s light blue gaze hinted that he was not above stirring his own mischief. “You will be pleased to know that I was not confined to bed because I stared into the barrel of a duelist’s pistol.”
Taking the imagined outcome to heart, Lady Haslake clasped her hand over her mouth in horror. “Merciful Lord!”
Lusty libertine, Brook sneered. He likely bedded several of those would-be Aphrodites. The mask of indifference she thought firmly in place must have yielded in her ire. The sly humor she had glimpsed in Mallory’s eyes erupted into shameless delight. He knew she was jealous.
“Never fear, my lady. I am unharmed.” Something over Lady Haslake’s shoulder distracted him. Frowning, he tried to recall what he had been saying. “I …” His concentration was lost again. “With your permission, excuse me.” Mallory nodded curtly and disappeared in the crowd.
“That was odd,” Lady Haslake mused.
Her daughter was not concerned. “Mr. Claeg is an eccentric, Mama. He once chased down a lady because the blue hue of her dress intrigued him. Do not take offense.”
“Oh, I do not. Though do not tell the handsome rascal,” she said, including everyone in her collusion. “Our annual ball is approaching and this might be the only leverage I have in gaining his assent to attend our grand function.”
“If guilt fails, Mother,” her daughter said, her violet eyes, which reminded Brook of a spring meadow, brimming with humor, “perhaps I can dream up another scheme by which to persuade him.”
Brook tried to see who had lured Mallory away, but they had both disappeared. It was difficult not to feel resentful, even if she was not talking to the man!
“I daresay the gentleman has endured enough of your mischief!” the older woman dotingly chided her eldest child. “Oh, Lady A’Court, you and your family must attend our ball. I will be upset with all of you if you send regrets.”
Relieved that someone of distinction was opening their home to her daughter, Mrs. Ludlow hastily replied, “Let me allay your fears, Lady Haslake, by stating that nothing will keep us from your door on the night of your revered ball. Do you not agree, Brook?” She looked expectantly at her daughter for support.
“Brook?” a soft feminine voice called out to her. She turned, not trusting her hearing. A blond woman stood apart from the others. Seeing her again touched not only memories but also Brook’s heart.
“Brook,” the woman said, her body tensing as if holding back her affectionate nature. “Dear friend, it is good to see you again.”
She closed her eyes in relief. Brook had not been certain she would come even though Viscount Tipton had assured her that her qualms were groundless. “Wynne.”
He had to be mistaken. Mallory pushed a path through the crowd blocking the way to his quarry. The women must have thought him incredibly rude abandoning them in that manner. The flash of pain in Brook’s eyes as he brushed past her revealed she thought he had grown bored and had found a new muse. He was really going to have to improve on her impression of him. Later. Right now, he needed to prove to himself that he had not glimpsed part of his past.
Mallory stepped out into the passage. Oil lamps provided ample light. He was not alone. People were standing and chatting in small groups. Others were leaving the salon to return to their boxes before the next act of the opera ballet began.
“Claeg, where are you going?”
His departure had not gone unnoticed. Bedegrayne might be related to him now; however, it did not make him privy to all Mallory’s secrets. Besides, telling his brother-in-law anything was in effect confessing it to his sister. This part of his life was something Amara did not need to know.
“I saw—I thought I recognized someone I used to know,” he said, keeping it as close to the truth as possible. Whoever he had seen was gone. He seized the queue at the base of his neck and tugged it in frustration.
“Now is not the time to be reacquainted with old loves,” Bedegrayne said, maddened by what he perceived as lack of control. “You were the one who insisted on joining us. Do not disappoint your sister. Your father’s illness and the pregnancy have made her delicate. If you do anything to upset her further, Claeg, I vow you will regret it.”
“Alone?” he asked, finally seeing the humorous side of things. “I think not. Now if you added Milroy and Tipton to the threat I might worry.” Something in Bedegrayne’s expression alerted him. Milroy. So he and his lady had finally arrived. Mallory thought of the countess. Damn.
In the distance, perhaps on the stairs beyond their view, they heard a woman’s throaty laughter. The sound made the hairs on his arms and neck prickle in reaction. The back view of a tall, familiar woman. A glimpse of red hair. Laughter that haunted his darkest nightmares. They were pieces of a spellbinding riddle he could not let go, even for the countess. “I will not be gone for long.”
“Claeg!” Bedegrayne shouted behind him, announcing his presence to everyone.
Damn.
Wynne Milroy risked rejection by embracing Brook. They both closed their eyes, blocking out their audience. Their public meeting was intentional, but not everything was for them. Her friend pulled back. When they had been in Miss Rann’s School for the Lady’s Arts together many of the girls had mistaken them for sisters. It had not been just their looks that had the girls drawing that false conclusion but also their camaraderie. “When Tipton and Devona told me that you were here …” Still clutching Brook’s hands, Wynne’s eyes filled with tears.
Brook struggled with her own composure. Her friend looked the same. They shared a similar pale hue of blond, which Brook had always blamed for their superficial resemblance. While her eyes were blue, the other woman’s eyes were a cool green, much like her brother’s and yet similar in shape to her younger sister’s. The women were once similar in build, but giving birth to twins had softened Wynne’s slender frame by adding more to her bosom, whereas grief and her self-imposed exile had sharpened Brook’s face. Two years and so much pain stood between them. Her lips trembled. “I …” She tried to smile but failed. “There is so much I have to say.”
“I, as well.” Wynne’s gaze sought out and held her husband’s. The connection was instantaneous and strengthened her. “Now that you have returned we have plenty of time.”
Those simple, generous words offered so much more than Brook dared to hope. The dread she had been feeling about their encounter melted. She swayed, dizzy from the lightness. “Yes, there is time,” she agreed, for the first time believing it.
The race through the passageway and down the stairs had been for naught. Angry at himself for choosing to chase ghosts instead of offering his support to the countess, Mallory had returned to the salon only to discover that most of the occupants had returned to their theater boxes. Hot and sweating from his run, he wished he could have removed his coat and loosened his cravat. Still panting softly, he ducked under the low drapery into Tipton’s box. There were only four people in the box.
Amara glanced back, met Mallory’s tardiness with a hostile glare, and then returned her attention back to the stage. Lady Tipton was not so polite. Muttering an oath, she started to rise until her husband lazily stopped her. He whispered something into her ear, and whatever he said was enough to quiet her. Bedegrayne, the bastard, had the indecency to grin at Mallory’s predicament. He gritted his teeth. He did not care about the others, but he despised disappointing Amara. There had been too much of that in the past. His sister was as temperamental as a hissing kitten when goaded. There was no point in begging her forgiveness. She was a typical woman when it came to vengeance. Unless he was prepared to grovel and endure a little clawing, she would not relent in her silence. A pity he was not in the mood to accommodate her bloodletting.
Then he thought of the countess’s hurt expression.
Bloody hell.
He collapsed into the chair positioned behind his sister and leaned forward, forcing her to listen to him. Bedegrayne snickered at his pathetic predicament.
“Are you planning to make me crawl, puss?”
Amara turned to reply and then recalled that she was not speaking to him. Clamping her mouth shut, she mutely stared unseeingly straight ahead.
“Of course you are,” he grumbled, desperate to get her to tell him what had happened. The box where the Ludlows and the A’Courts had been seated was empty. “I thought better of you, Amara. Using such an obvious female ploy as silence to punish me for my imaginary infractions.”
She attacked him as he had hoped. “Imaginary? You promised—ugh!” she exclaimed, disgusted that she had fallen for his ruse.
“I know I promised,” Mallory said, playing with one of the curls near her ear. “I will not bore you with excuses. I tend to brazenly lie when I am coerced into confessions.” She swallowed and he watched the fluid movement of her throat. “Suffice to say, I regret disappointing you.”
She remained silent.
Heartless wench! By damn, her tactic was working. He felt like the vilest cretin. Furious, he pushed himself onto his feet. “You know, puss, you remind me of someone when you act like this. Oh yes, now I recall. Our mother.” He turned on his heel and stalked out of the box.
She waited until he was gone before she winced. “That was low.”
“How long will it take for you to forgive your brother?” her husband asked.
“For his last comment alone?” She crossed her hands over her swollen belly. “Never.”
Chapter Eighteen
“I feel guilty,” Brook confessed. “Like we ran the man out of his own house.”
As Tipton had orchestrated it, they had both played out their parts for the public. He had explained that because the families had not spoken of the circumstances surrounding Lyon Meylan, Lord A’Court’s death to anyone, most of what the ton knew was speculation. Seeing the two women together should quell any rumors that there was discord between them. Several hours later Brook was sitting in the very house in which her husband had died.
“No. I think for Keanan, our visit was just the excuse he needed to prompt him to check on his brother. Besides, he understood we needed to speak privately.”
It was something her family had not. Ham had been embarrassingly vocal in his discontentment about her leaving with Mr. and Mrs. Milroy. With the exception of her stepfather, she had not been pleased with any of them. Disregarding Lord A’Court’s order had been her pleasure.
They had taken solace in Wynne’s private sitting room upstairs. She explained that she preferred to be close to her twin daughters, Aideen and Anna. The girls had been named in memory of the couple’s mothers. Pretty miniatures of their mother, they had celebrated their first birthday last February. Brook had peeked into the nursery to view the sleeping girls. She had not been prepared for the wrenching envy she felt in her heart as she had gazed down at them, and it shamed her. Wynne had already been carrying her children in her womb when Lyon had kidnapped her. If he had known, there was no telling what he might have done.
“Does Mr. Milroy blame me?”
Wynne made a small protesting sound. “Why would he? Brook, no one in my family blames you for what happened.”
They had curled up on the sofa and sat facing each other. The intimacy of their positions was not taken for granted by Brook, who had lived too long without the companionship of a genuine friend. “That is highly generous, considering it was my husband who snatched you from a ball and set a trap in this very house to murder your Mr. Milroy,” she said, relieved she was talking to someone with whom she did not have to pick her words carefully.
“Did you know he was coming for me?”
The suggestion that she had betrayed Wynne in such a cruel manner stunned her speechless. “No. He talked. Wild talk, but he was married to me. He could not carry out any of his plans unless …”
Wynne finished the thought she could not bear to speak aloud. “Unless you died. Oh, Brook, was that his intention when he beat you so severely? I saw the blood,” she said; her expression took on a haunted quality. “If it had not been for Tipton’s skills, you would have died from the blood loss. Later, we feared the grief and the fever would kill you.”
“I should never have come that day,” Brook murmured, trying to fit what she had been told with the fragments of her memory.
“Would you have rather perished with your babe?” her friend demanded, surprising her with her vehemence.
“Yes.” She took back the words with a small shake of her head. “When I woke up and realized my babe had died inside of me, I prayed that the fever would claim me.”
Without saying a word, Wynne reached out and clasped Brook’s hand in a gesture of comfort.
“I had failed my son, you see.” She glanced down at their joined hands. “I fell in love with a man who saw you when he touched me.”
Grief swam in the liquid pool of Wynne’s green eyes. “I am so sorry, Brook.”
She pulled out the handkerchief she had absently stuffed into the cuff of her sleeve and gently wiped away all traces of her friend’s tears. Lyon had once convinced Brook that crying was a sign of weakness. Even after his death, she had not indulged in tears, convinced by his mother that keeping the tears within was proving to them all how strong she had become. Watching Wynne cry reminded her that tears also showed compassion. It was a sign that adversity had not destroyed the gentler passions within. If Mallory had not come along and seduced her out of her complacency, she might have continued to cling to her counterfeit strength and let it eat her from the inside out until nothing remained but a brittle, bitter husk.
“I resented you for a while,” Brook admitted, needing to get it all out. “You had so many admirers that you had not even noticed Lyon.”
“I was aware of you. I sensed you were developing an attachment for Lord A’Court. In respect to our friendship, I thought I had nipped any affection he had developed in regard to me.”
While she had simmered in her jealousy Wynne had never wavered in devotion. “Your indifference fed his fervor. He thought to prove himself worthy of your esteem. When you rejected him, he set out to win you through your father—”
“My father laughed at his offer.” Wynne sickened at the notion of her beloved father ridiculing a gentleman who was teetering toward the edge of desperation.
“So he courted me. If he could not have you, he would claim someone who reminded him of you.”
“Someone I loved as a sister.”
It had been the perfect revenge for a sadistic monster.
Wynne used the toe point of one shoe to toy with the tassel decorating the top of her other. “I understood why you stayed away for so long. We spent much of that first year at Holinshead, our estate in the north. Keanan claimed the estate needed work and the country air was good for me while my waist expanded to amazing proportions. Regardless, I knew the truth. He was shielding me from all of the unpleasant talk.”
“It must have been difficult,” Brook said, thinking they had both stayed away for the same reason, although she had no one to protect her.
