“There was that earl’s eldest son last year,” said another. “The perfect one.”
One of his fellows nudged him and muttered something. The man looked abashed.
Darius didn’t need the hint. They referred to his eldest brother Benedict, Lord Rathbourne, also known as Lord Perfect.
“Well, if Lord Perfect wasn’t good enough for her, perhaps she has an excessively high opinion of herself?” Darius said. She had been quite haughty with him, and perhaps made his pride smart a very little bit—because he wasn’t used to that sort of nonsense, he told himself.
“Not proud at all, sir,” said the first stableman.
“Sweetest lady in the world,” said another.
“Never a unkind word for anybody.”
“Always a smile and thanks, even for the smallest thing you do for her.”
“All the servants say the same.”
“The ladies, too. They all like her—and you know what cats they can be.”
Then followed stories of Lady Charlotte Hayward’s various kindnesses to her fellow creatures, from the great to the insignificant.
Darius tried to reconcile the picture they painted with the woman he’d met. It wouldn’t reconcile. This couldn’t be the same lady. Yet it must be.
He turned the problem over in his mind. He looked at it from first one angle then another. The conundrum remained.
This was annoying. He had more important things to do than puzzle over a woman he couldn’t bed. The trouble was, she was a puzzle, and whatever else Darius Carsington was capable of, he was no more capable of leaving alone an unanswered question than he was of resisting a challenge to his abilities. Which, after all, amounted to much the same thing.
“In short,” he said with a trace of irritation, “the lady is a saint.”
The men looked at one another. “Well, I dunno,” said one meditatively, “as I’d say that.”
Drawing room of Lithby Hall, that evening
Mr. Carsington had caught Charlotte unprepared the first time.
This time she was fully prepared. Her head was clear, her demeanor all it should be. She had her company smile in place and all eighty-three thousand six hundred fifty-seven rules of proper behavior in the front of her mind.
Nonetheless, when Mr. Carsington appeared, standing in the doorway for one perfectly timed dramatic moment, she felt a jolt, as though she’d touched one of those magnetic devices her boy cousins found so fascinating.
She was distantly aware that others were not unaffected. Every head turned his way, and many faces—especially the female ones—expressed more than simple curiosity about the newcomer.
The candlelight caught the gold in his hair and burnished his tanned countenance. Once again he seemed a golden god come among mortals.
Apollo, that was the one, beyond question. The sun god, all glimmering gold. His hair. His eyes.
And like a god, he seemed larger than life, his powerful frame filling the doorway.
But he wasn’t a god, she reminded herself. Merely a man and, if she was not much mistaken, an all-too-common variety.
A rake.
The man who had destroyed her future was a rake. Among the many lessons she learned from that experience was the importance of learning to recognize the breed.
She could spot one at fifty paces.
Had she not taken leave of her wits during their first encounter, she would have immediately filed Mr. Carsington under the category “Rakes” in her private Encyclopedia of Men.
Still, better late than never, she told herself while she adjusted her expression to one of polite welcome.
Her poise faltered when he left the doorway and made straight for her.
Heart racing, she almost took a step backward. Then she became aware of her father at her shoulder.
“Mr. Carsington, welcome,” Papa said. He introduced the man to Lizzie, and Mr. Carsington made her a graceful bow. Lizzie spoke to him, and he answered. Charlotte wasn’t sure what they said. Her head was buzzing as though filled with bees.
“Charlotte, my dear.” Papa’s voice broke through the buzzing. “Here is our new neighbor Mr. Carsington.” She heard the pride in her father’s voice as he continued, “Sir, my daughter, Charlotte.”
Inside her was a frantic flurry. She had all she could do to keep from trembling. She kept her muscles rigid while her heart beat so furiously that she couldn’t swallow or catch her breath.
Yet she was aware, too, of Papa beaming at her.
He loved her so much. She wanted so much to be everything he wanted her to be.
She made her muscles relax.
Mr. Carsington bowed. “Lady Charlotte.”
“Mr. Carsington.”
A pause ensued. It was not a quiet pause. The air seemed to hum, as though the bees had left her skull and now hovered between them.
Mr. Carsington’s amber eyes slanted toward her father, who had turned away to say something to Lizzie.
The gaze shifted back to her. This time she saw in his unusual eyes the same teasing expression he’d worn when he quizzed her about her hat.
“But I believe we’ve met before,” he said in a rumbling undertone. Though he stood a proper distance away, the words felt like a secret breathed in her ear. Her skin prickled.
“I think not,” she said, flashing him a warning look.
He lifted his eyebrows.
She lifted hers.
She thought, Utter one word of what happened, and I’ll wrap my hands around your throat and choke you dead.
She knew no one could read minds. He must have read something, though, because the quizzical expression disappeared, and he blinked.
She watched his mouth curve slowly into a smile. “Have we not?”
Under that lazy smile, something inside her seemed to unfurl, like flower petals opening under the sun.
But that’s what rake’s smiles did, she reminded herself: They made w
omen soft and malleable.
“No,” she said. She glanced at her parents. The rector and his wife had claimed their attention.
“Perhaps you have a twin sister,” said Mr. Carsington. He made a show of looking about the drawing room.
“No, I do not,” she said.
“How strange,” he said.
“It is not at all strange not to have a twin,” she said. “It is more common not to have one.”
“I could have sworn that we met, only a few hours ago, by a pond at Beechwood,” he said, still in the We-Have-a-Secret undertone. “You were wearing—or rather, not wearing—a wonderfully frivolous hat.”
He had teased her with the hat as a little boy might do, and for a moment she had wanted to play.
Experience came to her rescue. The mischief in his eyes was no more boyish than it was innocent. What she saw in those changeable amber eyes was a rake’s guile.
“A lady and a gentleman may not know each other unless they have been properly introduced,” she said coolly. “If they do not know each other, they cannot have met. Since we were properly introduced only a moment ago, we cannot have met previously.”
“What a madly contorted logic that is,” he said.
“It is a rule of behavior,” she said. “It needn’t be logical. There may even be a rule that rules of behavior must be illogical.”
His eyes lit. At first she thought what she saw there was amusement, and she cursed herself, because she did not wish to entertain him. But then his gaze drifted from her face to her neck and downward, lingering upon her bosom before it swept down to the toes of her silk slippers. It came up again so swiftly that she hadn’t time to get her breathing back to normal. She could hide that, but not the rest of her reaction.
Her face was hot. Everywhere was hot. Meanwhile, her tattletale skin was announcing the fact, she knew, spreading a blush over her neck and the extensive area of shoulders and bosom her gown revealed.
He was enjoying her agitation.
Anger crackled inside her.
Once, only once, she would like to do something, instead of silently enduring a man’s insolent examination.
But a lady must pretend not to notice when a man disrobed her with his eyes.
It was not fair.
When a man took offense at something, he was allowed to react. He was expected to react.