The Straight-Laced Duke Selbourne Page 12

  She’d danced every dance, except for those she spent out on the balcony with her partner, sipping lemonade and holding court to a dozen or more gangling youths, gout-ridden old lechers, gaily dressed half-pay officers—and more than a few married men who should have known better than to be seen with the Widow Winstead’s daughter.

  Meanwhile, Bramwell knew he’d had enough daggers sunk into his back by glaring mamas and disappointed debutantes to slay a battalion of Caesars.

  But when he saw Miss Ann Sturbridge put a handkerchief to her mouth and run for the anteroom, sobbing, and turned to see the girl’s fiancé kneeling at Sophie’s feet, making a great business out of reciting some drivel as he held a hand to his heart? Well, that’s when the duke of Selbourne had decided that enough was enough!

  “You’re coming with me,” he said, grabbing Sophie’s forearm as she stood talking to three young gentlemen and the kneeling fiancé—three fools and an outright baboon, Bramwell decided—and hauling her toward the balcony.

  “I say, Selbourne!” the baboon called after him. “That ain’t sporting!”

  Bramwell turned on the man, all but baring his teeth at him, so that the baboon subsided.

  Unfortunately, the baboon’s outcry, coupled with Bramwell’s rather florid face and pained expression, had brought the attention of several other gentlemen in the area.

  “Oh-ho, Selbourne, what’s forward?” one of them called out jovially, as Bramwell and Sophie whizzed by, Sophie smiling just as if the duke was taking her to see some amusing jugglers at a country fair. “Never say another balcony scene. Watch your balance, old fellow. How many tumbles from grace can the Selbourne name take, even for a willing Winstead?”

  “Stubble it, Farnsworthy,” Bramwell gritted out, giving Sophie’s arm another tug as she stopped, looking curiously at the grinning gentleman who’d just spoken. He saluted her, then gifted her with an elegant leg, flourishing a lace-edged handkerchief and bowing nearly to the floor.

  “What’s he talking about, Your Grace?” she asked, still looking back at Farnsworthy as Bramwell pulled her out onto the balcony, then unerringly directed her toward the bench that waited in the shadows at the far end of it. The fact that he’d had to growl at the young couple already ensconced on the bench, so that they had immediately taken themselves off to friendlier climes, did not bother him a jot.

  “You know damn full well what he’s talking about, Sophie,” Bramwell accused as he all but pushed Sophie onto the bench, wincing as he realized he’d done it again. He’d called her Sophie. Sophie, Sophie, Sophie. That’s what he called her at night, when he couldn’t sleep, when she invaded his dreams, when she left him tossing and turning and calling himself every kind of fool imaginable.

  “Well, no. I don’t, actually, Bramwell,” she answered, patting the space beside her on the bench, indicating that he should sit down, just as if they were bosom chums or some such ridiculousness. “Does it mean something in that sporting cant gentlemen use when they want to say something the ladies shouldn’t understand? Something none of my uncles told me about? Does balcony serve as another word for liaison? For keeping a mistress?”

  She shrugged her perfect shoulders, then sighed. “Balcony. It seems a queer sort of word, the way that man said it. And perhaps insulting to my mother’s memory? All the gentlemen I’ve met have been so nice, so that I hadn’t thought anyone would be mean. Perhaps I should have, yes?”

  Well, that stopped Bramwell, just as he was about to read her a lecture on circumspection, on proper behavior, on not reducing every man she met to a puddle of frustrated desire—at least not the betrothed ones.

  “You don’t know how—” he shook his head, attempting to rearrange his thoughts. “No. No, of course you don’t. You couldn’t, and still ask such a question.”

  He sat down.

  Sophie leaned toward him, the flowery yet lemony scent of her drifting to his nostrils, infiltrating his brain. “Please, Bram,” she said, laying a hand on his arm. “Tell me. What is it I don’t know? Now that I think on it, that wasn’t the first time tonight someone has made references to a balcony in my presence. And they’re always smiling when they do. Why is that? I thought perhaps there was some joke I didn’t understand. So I just smiled, and they soon were talking about my eyes, or how lovely my hair looks in the moonlight, so that I let it go. I’m a great success this evening, yes? But now I must know, please. What is a balcony?”

  Bramwell was dumbstruck, a part of him pleased beyond his wildest imaginings, another, saner part of him, totally aghast. Who would have thought it, who would believe it? Sophie Winstead was an innocent. A totally exasperating, maddening, horribly complex, woefully simple innocent. Gentlemen admired her eyes, her hair, and she thought that was all they admired? All they wanted from the Widow Winstead’s daughter? For all the duke knew of the mother, for all he’d thought of the daughter, Sophie was an innocent. Playing at woman, playing in her mother’s world, believing she knew the game, the rules—and woefully ignorant of both.

  She hadn’t known the word pimp. Oh, yes, she’d most certainly sent Wally on a quest for servants cum lovers for his mother and aunt. But had she really known what she was about, what she really had been suggesting when she’d sent Wally off on his merry way, to pimp for his freedom? Bramwell had thought so at the time, but he didn’t think so now. She was only playing the games learned at her mother’s knee. Smiling, flirting, giving out come-hither glances, and warning that she could not help but be irresistible.

  Yes, that was it. She thought she knew the game.

  But her mother obviously had not told her all of the ins and outs of that game. All the consequences. Sophie saw the dash and flair of romance, not a tawdry sexual arrangement. She probably saw her mother’s liaisons with her many “uncles” as marvelously romantic—full of happy times, pet monkeys, lively discussions and the aroma of cigars—and was without a notion as to how her mother actually had sold herself, her body, her good name, over and over again.

  And she most certainly didn’t know how his father and her mother had died, how their deaths had rocked London Society with one of its most shocking, titillating scandals. If she did, she’d probably not be in London at all, giving the ton another opportunity to giggle over her mother, his father, the scandal—over Sophie herself.

  Poor little girl. Poor little Sophie.

  What a shock! Bramwell Seaton, Ninth Duke of Selbourne, was shocked. Shocked to his toes. He cursed Sophie’s mother for a dangerous, romantic fool, cursed the men here tonight, leering and laughing and hoping for a hurried tumble in the shrubberies, a quick peek under Sophie’s skirts. He cursed himself for all he had thought of her, imagined of her.

  “Well? Are you going to tell me?” Sophie asked, frowning up at him. “It’s bad, isn’t it? I’m not going to like what you say, yes?” He looked down at her, looked down on a beautiful woman-child, no more sophisticated than any of the debutantes at Almack’s this night, and just as virtuous—maybe more so, because at least she was honest about her reasons for being here.

  Bramwell took a deep breath, steadying himself, cursing himself again, cursing his fellow man for the randy goats they all were—and started in to lie for all he was worth.

  “You danced every dance? And everyone was kind to you, chérie?”

  Sophie smiled into the mirror, shaking her head at the concern she could see in her friend’s reflection. “Everyone was wonderful to me, Desiree,” she said, waiting impatiently until the row of buttons was opened and she could step out of the last of her undergarments, turn around, and throw herself into the woman’s loving arms. “I am the Sensation of the Season, just as you said I would be!”

  “And the duke?” Desiree persisted, giving Sophie’s cheek a kiss before her charge skipped off to the other side of the room to seek out her night rail. “He did not spend the evening glowering and growling?”

  Sophie dived into the night rail, hiding her face from the all-too-observant Frenchwoman. �
�Bramwell was very solicitous of me, actually. But we decided together that we will not be returning to Almack’s.”

  “Never say that! The duke made a wager; he must pay the forfeit. He is already committed to another week at Almack’s. Don’t tell me you’re going to allow him to squirm out of it, Sophie. Don’t be your maman, and let your soft heart rule your hard head.”

  Sophie took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Desiree,” she said earnestly, walking over to the bed the woman had turned down for her, “I will tell you the truth now, yes? For you’ll get it out of me one way or the other. Almack’s is not for me. I must be more discreet, less visible now that I have made my so brilliant entrance as we both wished.”

  “Who hurt you?” Desiree asked coldly, looking ready to do murder. “Who dared to hurt my baby?”

  Sophie climbed onto the high bed, unsurprised that her good friend had seen straight to the heart of the matter, without need for a long explanation. “I’m not hurt, Desiree. Not really. But there were whispers, you understand. I tried to ignore them, but they were there. Gentlemen—ha! are there any gentlemen?—making some sort of sly references to Maman. Bramwell knew, but he tried to protect me, shield me from the truth with some farradiddle about balconies being the perfect spot for marriage proposals. It was a gentle fib, I suppose, as I’d already pretty much decided that balconies are more for liaisons, yes?”

  Then she smiled. “But I’m too harsh, Desiree. For there were very many nice gentlemen as well. Sir Wallace, Baron Lorimar, and several others. And Bram, of course. He was kindest of all.”

  “Mon Dieu! Bramwell, is it? Bram? Not the duke; not his grace? And balconies?” Desiree began energetically tucking the covers around her charge, clucking over Sophie like a hen with her only chick. “Bâtards! How cruel the English are! I do not like the sound of this, of any of this. This is my fault, all of it! I am stupid, stupid! I hadn’t thought! All I could see was your beauty, chérie, your great heart. I only wanted what was best for you; a safe man, a reasonable marriage, some babies for us both to love. Perhaps we should go home now, oui? Or, better yet, to Paris! They will adore you in Paris, my sweet child. In Paris, no one is cruel.”

  Sophie reached up to hug her friend, dislodging the neatly tucked-in covers. “No, no, Desiree! You’re wrong. I adore London. I couldn’t leave now. I just couldn’t.”

  “You couldn’t leave London, chérie?” Desiree asked quietly. “Or the duke? The very much disapproving if polite duke. The duke we tricked into presenting you. The betrothed duke.”

  Sophie subsided against the pillows, eyeing the Frenchwoman anxiously, glad once more that she’d not told Desiree of Bramwell’s kiss that first night. Of her longing, ever since, to have him kiss her again, of her strange excitement each time she watched him walk into a room. “You’re talking about how besotted Maman became over all the uncles, yes? How she fell so top over heels for Uncle Cesse—and how much the duke is like him. But I’m not my mother, Desiree. I am not so foolhardy as to give my heart to any man, pretending, if only for a moment, that there really is such a thing as love.”

  Desiree looked at her penetratingly. “Love, no. You don’t believe in that nonsense. But we probably should soon speak more of desire, oui? For that is all love is, chérie, desire in masquerade. Lust, dressed up in lace and ribbons, but none the less base for all its fine outward trappings. The fluttering pulse, the flushed cheek, the wish to melt softness against strength, plumb the unknown. All this, and more, were your maman’s downfall.”

  “Oh, stop, Desiree! I’m a long way from desire, eons from even beginning to think of doing what Maman did. I’m even farther than that from believing that such a loss of one’s own senses could be worth the delights Maman wrote about so glowingly. I simply believe that Bramwell is a very nice gentleman, that’s all. I’m not just another silly romantic racing headlong into disaster, Desiree. I promise you that.” She bit her full bottom lip, refusing to acknowledge the tears that had begun to sting at her eyes as she thought of the whispers she’d heard at Almack’s, remembered how protective Bramwell was of her, how kind. “Am I?”

  Johnson: Well, we had a good talk.

  Boswell: Yes, Sir; you tossed and gored several persons.

  — James Boswell, Life of Johnson

  Chapter Seven

  “Tell me again, Bram—why was it I just got to watch you beat Geoffrey Farnsworthy into a jelly?”

  Bramwell rubbed at the rather satisfying soreness of his knuckles as he and his friend descended the stairs from Gentleman Jackson’s Boxing Saloon. “And I’ll tell you again, Lorrie. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Farnsworthy wanted an opponent. I merely obliged him.”

  “Wrong. Allow me to correct you, if I may. You merely haunted every place in Mayfair you could haunt for the past few days, hunting for him, then found him here—and immediately merely half killed him,” Baron Lorimar countered as they dodged raindrops and quickly climbed into Bramwell’s coach. They were on their way to their club, and an arranged meeting with Sir Wallace Merritt, who had been conspicuous by his absence these same past three days. “Toyed with him first, of course, teased with him, let him know you could take him out of the game at any time you chose, and then—wham!—you annihilated him. I think the poor fool was almost relieved to feel himself going down that last time. What a wisty castor, a fine punch! I’ve always known you to be handy with your fives, Bram, but that was a brilliant display of cross-and-jostle work. Simply brilliant.”

  Lorrie lounged back against the velvet squabs, looking at his friend levelly as the coach moved off into the street. “And I’m sure Farnsworthy deserved every punch, Bram, and then some.”

  “You nag worse than an old woman, Lorrie, you know that?” Bram wiped raindrops from the top of his curly-brimmed beaver before sitting it on the cushion beside him, then sighed. “You’re more clever about it, more subtle, but you’re not going to let this go until I tell you everything, are you?”

  “You know me so well,” the Baron purred, rubbing at his chin as he stretched his neck, still looking at his friend, a hint of danger in his usually laughing gray eyes. “As we’ll be at the club in less than ten minutes, the only question that remains would be whether or not you want Wally to hear the whole of it as well.”

  “Lord, no,” Bramwell said, groaning. “He’s already so besotted he’d want to call Farnsworthy out, for all the mess that would make of everything.”

  “Ah-ha! Then it is about Miss Winstead,” the Baron said, nodding as if in agreement with his own thoughts. “I’ve thought our dearest Sophie to be a bit downpin these past days, although she does her best to be sunny, the dear little thing, as she entertains half the men of the ton in your drawing room. Can’t take more than two steps in any direction without tumbling over some fool clutching posies to his breast. What did Farnsworthy do—at Almack’s I’ll assume? Offer her carte blanche?”

  Bramwell’s hands drew up into fists. “Use your head, if you please, Lorrie. If Farnsworthy had offered to set her up as his mistress, you’d be attending my trial for murder today, not watching while I merely rearranged the idiot’s face.”

  “True enough. You are her guardian, after all, and she your ward. So, what did he say?”

  “He made what he thought was a brilliant reference to my father’s death,” Bramwell explained, then stopped, realizing that he had been stung by that as well as the insult to Sophie. It hadn’t occurred to him until this very moment that he had, in part, also been avenging his father’s good name. Well, that was a singular event, wasn’t it, as he’d been spending the past three years doing his best to blank his father from both his memory and that of Society. “That is, he made a fairly snide reference to the fact that I was leading Sophie out onto the balcony. You can, I’m sure, imagine what he said. It doesn’t bear repeating.”

  The baron remained slouched on the seat as he looked at Bramwell from beneath heavily shuttered eyes. “Have your man turn the coach, Bram, if you p
lease,” he said quietly. “I suddenly find that I’d like a poke or two at the fellow myself.”

  Bramwell shook his head. “Let it go. I’ve dealt with Farnsworthy in my own way, Lorrie. And I believe I’ve delivered a message to anyone else who might think it jolly good fun to utter veiled remarks in Sophie’s presence. But that’s not the problem. Not really.”

  “Then what is? Does Sophie want a piece of, him, too? That’s no shy and retiring miss, you know. She told me one of her uncles taught her how to shoot.”

  Bramwell chuckled deep in his throat, then sobered. “She doesn’t know, Lorrie,” he said rather sadly. “Oh, she knows that her mother was mistress to more than one man, to my father. She knows that a certain hint of scandal must surround her own entrance into Society. But she has no idea how her mother and my father died. None.”

  “None?” the Baron repeated, sitting forward.

  “None. She believes I resent her because of the scandal of Constance Winstead’s liaison with my father and for my sins, she’s probably fairly close to the mark on that one. But she had no conception of the depth of the scandal that rocked the family name to its very foundations.”

  “And turned you into the boring pillar of society you’ve become, much to my distress, and Wally’s as well,” the Baron continued for him as Bramwell subsided into a corner of the coach, to rub at his aching head. Farnsworthy had gotten in at least one good shot before the duke had taken command. “But, now that I think on it, we should have known that, Bram. Sophie is not a stupid girl. She has her father’s name, and several pockets full of money, so that nobody could bar her from making her debut, making a successful match. She had your father’s written promise to lend her his power, his consequence.”

  “True. That has to be how she saw the thing. A bit of gossip, a bit of giggling, but nothing she couldn’t overcome. She’s dazzling, you know,” Bram said with a ghost of a smile. “She believed herself up to winning everyone over to her. Lord knows she made short work of my aunt, even of Isadora. Not to mention you and that other looby, Wally. She saw nothing ahead of her but one success tumbling on top of another.”