Lord Perfect (The Dressmakers 3)

Lady Northwick stared at Olivia, then at Bathsheba.

“That is a Dreadful DeLucey,” Bathsheba said. “Now you will know, if you ever encounter another one. You may stop admiring yourself in the glass, Olivia. It is time for your exit scene.”

“It is not yet time,” said Lady Mandeville. “You and Olivia will join us for breakfast. I want Mandeville to make her acquaintance.”

“IT IS DREADFUL,” Bathsheba whispered to Benedict. “I cannot possibly control her at this distance. She ignores every look I send her. Oh, it is too much. She is giving him that wide-eyed gaze, as though he were the sun and the moon and the stars.”

Benedict gazed down the length of the table at Olivia, who sat to Lord Mandeville’s right, apparently hanging on his every word. “That is how you have looked at me,” Benedict murmured. “I thought you meant it.”

“Of course I did not mean it,” she said. “I only wanted to wrap you about my finger. I find you merely tolerable. Can you make out what she is saying?”

Perhaps because it was more than a family gathering, they breakfasted in state, in the dining room rather than the morning room. Still, Benedict was as surprised as Bathsheba when the countess placed Olivia at Lord Mandeville’s right hand and Lady Northwick on his left, and directed Benedict and Bathsheba to sit next to each other at the hostess’s end of the table.

Their hostess, however, was conversing with Peregrine at present. He, too, was watching Olivia, though he was making his best effort at polite behavior. For once, Peter DeLucey, seated beside Bathsheba, was not staring in that aggravatingly dazed way at her. He was gazing raptly at Olivia.

Even Lord Northwick showed signs of succumbing.

Now at last Benedict saw what the trouble was, and why Bathsheba feared her daughter would go straight to the devil. Olivia was not merely clever and cunning. She had a strong personal magnetism. The combination was exceedingly dangerous.

But she was not his problem, Benedict told himself.

“All I can discern is that she is taking care to speak softly and shyly,” he said. “It is useless to try to read her lips, because she ducks her head, so that the gentlemen must bend their heads very close to hear her.”

He dared to bend his head toward Bathsheba. He gazed at her silken skin and remembered its scent. He could not draw near enough to drink it in, as he longed to do. He could only watch the pink wash over her cheekbones. He could only stare at the black curl that had hooked itself over the top of her ear.

“You must not look at me in that besotted manner,” she said in an undertone. “You are making a spectacle of yourself, Rathbourne.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “Everyone here knows I am besotted.”

She met his gaze, then turned quickly away, and returned to pushing the food about on her plate. “No one knows any such thing,” she said. “If you would only maintain your dignity, everyone will assume I was merely a passing fancy.”

“I shall be maintaining my dignity for the rest of my life,” he said tightly. “I think I am entitled to look foolish this once.”

“But of course it is nonsense!” Lord Mandeville said, loud enough to bring the other conversations to a halt. “What fanciful creatures you females are.”

Benedict looked that way in time to catch the spark in Olivia’s eyes.

“Papa said there was a treasure,” she said. “Papa would never lie to me.”

“Olivia,” Bathsheba said warningly.

“It isn’t nonsense.” Olivia narrowed her eyes at her host. “You may not call my father a liar. He was a gentleman.”

Peregrine looked at her. “Any moment now,” he muttered. “Off she’ll go, like a rocket.”

“We are all aware that your father was a gentleman, Olivia,” Benedict said in his most excessively bored voice. “I should have thought that an educated girl of twelve could discern the difference between a lie and a theory or supposition. If this distinction eludes you, Lord Lisle will be happy to explain it to you after breakfast. For the present, let us turn your attention to the basic rules of proper conduct. Since I have no doubt your father and mother took pains to teach you these rules, I can only suppose that you have suffered a momentary lapse of memory. You may wish to leave the room until you recover it.”

The blue eyes flashed at him. He gave her a bored glance and returned to his breakfast.

She looked at her mother, but Bathsheba was looking at him . . . as though he were the sun and the moon and the stars.

Olivia excused herself and marched out of the dining room, chin aloft.

There was a silence.

Footsteps broke it, from the hall beyond. Benedict heard the confident click of boot heels on marble.

The footsteps paused, and Benedict heard a very low rumble, then Olivia’s indignant soprano in answer: “Lord Rathbourne sent me out of the room to remember my manners.”

More rumbling.

The footsteps recommenced.

The butler entered.

Benedict braced himself.

“Lord Hargate,” said Keble, and Benedict’s father strode into the room.

AFTER A BREAKFAST that Benedict gave up pretending to eat, Lord Hargate spoke privately with Lord Mandeville in the latter’s study.

Two full hours later, Benedict was summoned there.

He found Bathsheba in the hall outside, pacing. She stopped short when she saw him.

His heart stopped short, too, before recommencing unsteadily. “I thought you had gone,” he said. “I ordered a carriage. There is no need for you to endure this . . . annoyance.”

“I am not a coward,” she said. “I am not afraid of your father.”

“You ought to be,” he said. “Most sentient beings are.”

“I refuse to run away and leave you to bear all the blame,” she said.

“It is not as though I am going to be hanged,” he said. “He won’t even beat me. He never beat us. His tongue was much more effective. Oh, and his gaze. One look was worth a thousand blows. But I am no longer a boy. I shall emerge from the interview reeling rather than utterly crushed.”

“I will not let him make you unhappy,” she said.

“I am not a damsel in distress,” he said. “I do not need you to slay dragons for me, you addled creature. Now I understand where Olivia gets her mad ideas.”

“I want you to go away,” she said. “Go for a ride or a walk. Leave this to me.”

“Think again,” he said. “I can guess what you have in mind. You imagine you can try some of your DeLucey tricks and lures upon him, and wrap him about your finger and have him eating out of the palm of your hand. You have no idea what sort of man you are dealing with.”

“I don’t care what sort of man he is,” she said. “You are not going in there alone.”

“Bathsheba.”

She knocked once on the study door, opened it, and swept in, closing the door behind her.

He heard the key turn in the lock.

“Bathsheba,” he said. He raised his fist to pound on the door, then paused.

Scenes belong on the stage.

He turned away and walked quickly down the hall.

LORD HARGATE ROSE when she entered, his expression polite. It was the same courteously blank look he’d accorded her at breakfast. He did not so much as lift an eyebrow at her bursting in on him or locking the door.

She understood where Rathbourne got his inscrutability. And his height and bearing.

But Lord Hargate’s hair was brown threaded with silver, not black, and his eyes were a dark amber and as empty of expression as if they had been made of a mineral.

The earl gestured to a chair.

“I prefer to stand, my lord,” she said. “What I have to say will take little time. I only wished to make it clear that what has happened is not Lord Rathbourne’s doing. I deliberately put myself in your son’s way. I did everything possible to enslave him.”

His lordship said nothing. His face told her nothing

. A mask would have had more expression.

“Rathbourne hadn’t a prayer,” she said. “I left him no avenue of escape.”

“Indeed,” said Lord Hargate. “You engineered the children’s disappearance, then?”

The question took her aback. She had rehearsed her speech. She’d had plenty of time. This element had not occurred to her, however. She had been too agitated to think beyond a few simple points—the obvious ones. She had only to appear to be what everyone believed she was.

She decided against saying yes. That was too far-fetched, even for a Dreadful DeLucey.

“No, but I used their disappearance to further my plans,” she said.

“And these were . . . ?”