“Away, then, you devil,” Brandon growled, nudging the impatient animal’s flanks with his heels. The horse surged into a gallop, and man and beast thundered recklessly along the bridle path. Had anyone observed their headlong fury, that witness must have been convinced it was the devil and his familiar, plunging to the fiery place.
While the furious ride eventually pacified his horse, it did little for Lord Brandon except make him hot and dirty. A bath and change of clothes improved his appearance but not his temper.
Later, he stood in his dressing room, glaring at his reflection in the glass. He was not, he thought, vain—or not excessively so—yet he could not understand how a rational woman could look upon him with such utter revulsion. His crisply curling hair had not turned white suddenly. It was as black and thick as ever. His lace was not yet mottled with age and dissipation. His green eyes were clear, his posture straight. He had not turned into a troll overnight.
His appearance was not the trouble.
Lilith Davenant hated him for what he was, and what she believed he had done, and though he had done a great many tidings deserving of her prim displeasure, he had not done what she accused him of. Yet it was not the injustice that had angered him—and perhaps the feeling wasn’t precisely anger. Maddened for a moment, yes...
He turned away from the mirror.
There was no denying. Her snake-bite eyes had turned to ice, and she had raised her stubborn chin and opened her mouth, and—while the accusation was unjust, or only partly just—her words had pricked him. Very well, wounded him. He was not one to shy away from facts, however lowering they might be.
To be wounded by a woman was a novelty—not an agreeable one, certainly. Still, it was a fact: Lilith Davenant had stabbed him, and he was still smarting.
As he formulated the thought, he smiled wryly. He must remember to congratulate Elise on her choice of champion. Meanwhile, he had better set his mind to repairing the damage. Nearly a fortnight had passed since he had made his wager—and all he had to show for it was one absurdly chaste kiss!
***
Elise had not attended Eton, Harrow, Winchester, or any other ancient educational institution. All the same, she could count. Since the night he’d spent at his cousin’s, Robert had made love to her exactly once, with a conspicuous want of enthusiasm. Once in nine days. Last night, again, he had not come home.
Being wise, Elise had immediately sensed a woman in the case. Being well-informed, she had not required the entire nine days to ascertain who the woman was. Being practical, she turned her intelligence to determining the simplest, most direct way of eliminating her rival. Accordingly, she paid a visit to her dressmaker, and a bribe to Madame Suzetts’s assistant.
On the Sabbath, Mrs. Davenant took herself to church. She prayed for forgiveness and strength. She came away feeling unshriven and weaker than before. She’d found no comfort in the minister’s words, though he, accustomed to preach to the nobility, wisely forbore mentioning such vulgarities as hellfire and eternal damnation.
Lilith had looked up at him and seen herself, standing all those years ago before another minister. The shy girl, barely seventeen, who’d wondered at the powers that had given her as husband so golden and god-like a creature.
The young bridegroom at her side must have wondered as well, for he’d got the worst of the bargain. Even now, at eight and twenty, Lilith was no beauty. As a bride, she’d been a carrot-haired, freckle-faced, skinny adolescent, inwardly awkward and unsure. Outwardly, she had been poised, of course, cool and perfectly mannered, because manners, poise, and self-control had been drummed into her from the day her grandparents had taken in the orphaned child of their only son.
They had not, however, taught her how to make her husband love her. That, perhaps, was too much to ask. His family had wanted the match because their youngest son was too expensive to keep any longer. Her grandparents, their own title spanking new, had wanted the connexion with ancient nobility.
Love in such a case was not to be expected—even if there had been anything remotely lovable or attractive about her. Yet she had wished. She had wished at least that Charles Davenant would teach her how to please him. She could never express such a wish aloud, though.
Thus his rare visits to her bed were impatient and hurried, and his distaste only made the intimacy the more humiliating. When he was done, he left her hating her own body because it could never please him. Charles’s gawky child bride could not compete with his London beauties. She could not even inspire affection. She bored and embarrassed him, and even drunk—as he inevitably was—he could not wait to be gone from her.
Lilith had not wept for her husband in years. Even at his death, her tears had been for the waste of the man he might have been. So young, strong, handsome... to dwindle to a frail shadow, weak, fretful, and afraid. She had wept as well because he’d left her no golden children to whom she might give the love he’d never sought or wanted.
Now she wept silently in the church after the others had gone, because Charles’s friend had pierced the cold tomb of her heart, and revived the pain so long sealed within.
Chapter Nine
Early Monday morning, the much-harassed Mr. Higginbottom met with both Lord Brandon’s man of business and the marquess himself. Two hours later, Mr. Higginbottom was able to inform Mrs. Davenant that terms had been arranged at last, and to remind her, with gloomy satisfaction, that she would now be obliged to practice the strictest possible economy.
The greatest of her expenses having been incurred already, Lilith had few qualms about her ability to last the Season. Shortly after, she would be wed, and money would no longer be an issue. All she would lose was her independence. She persuaded herself she’d already more of that article than most ladies.
For five years she had been free to manage her own affairs, without having to accommodate a husband’s whims. She had not to chase him down when major decisions were required. She had done it all herself, without interference—and in the end she had made a bad job of it, had she not?
Furthermore, there must be some gratification in having at last won this particular war of wills with Lord Brandon.
To Mr. Higginbottom she expressed her satisfaction. Inwardly Lilith felt as though she were now a bill marked “Paid,” filed away and forgotten, and her victory was tinged with regret she despised herself for feeling.
By early afternoon, this matter took second place to a more urgent one.
Lilith was in her sitting room with Emma and Cecily, the two older women plying their needles while Cecily read aloud from The Corsair. That was when the box arrived from the dressmaker for Cecily.
“I declare I’d forgotten completely about the walking dresses,” the girl said as she untied the string. “No wonder. I’m sure I have dozens already, though I never seem to walk anywhere lately. It is always— Oh, my.”
She giggled as she pushed away the tissue paper. “Not a walking dress, I don’t think.”
Emma, sitting by her, turned pink. Lilith promptly rose from her chair to investigate.
Even the widow’s marble features became tinged with colour as Cecily withdrew from the box two intriguing garments.
They were negligees. One was a maidenly pink. That was its sole connexion with maidenhood. It was of gossamer silk, its plunging neckline caught with cherry-coloured ribbons. The other was a froth of black lace, equally transparent.
&nbs
p; “Not walking dresses, to be sure,” said Cecily with a smile as she held the black one against her and modeled it for her two stunned companions.
Lilith, who had stood numb with shock, hastily recovered. She snatched the two garments from her niece and threw them back into the box.
“Obviously there has been a mistake,” she said.
“I should say,” Cecily answered, grinning over the note she held in her hand. “I cannot be anybody’s ‘Dearest Lise,’ and who, I wonder, is my ‘adoring Robin’?” She giggled again. “I have never seen such naughty night-rails.”
“I should hope not,” said her aunt. “This box will be returned immediately, and I shall certainly have something to say to Madame regarding her carelessness. The idea—to send such—such wicked things to this house.”
“Of course it was a mistake,” Emma soothed. “There must have been another package, and another lady has Cecily’s frocks, I daresay.”
“A lady, indeed,” Lilith said half to herself. “That her lewd belongings should pollute this house, and he—” She broke off, recollecting her niece.
Cecily, however, was still studying the note. “But of course,” she said. It’s Lord Robert’s chere amis, is it not? Anne told me her name was Elise, and that she’s French, and the family’s in an uproar because he’s been living with her for years and years.”
Lilith tore the note from her hand.
“Anne should have told you no such thing. Ladies know nothing of—of these matters.”
“Well, they pretend they don’t, but they must be blind and deaf to be unaware, I should think. It’s not as though he hides her away. Why, he was with her that night at the opera. I recall distinctly. She was very lovely and elegant. Frenchwomen are so stylish, are they not?”
“I most certainly did not regard her,” the aunt answered quellingly.