Happily Bedded Bliss: The Rakes of Cavendish Square Page 6

  Esme nodded and lowered her eyes.

  “Well,” Edward said, picking up the conversation, “now that we have gotten all that out of the way, allow me to introduce you to my sisters-in-law.” He nodded to each woman in turn. “Northcote, this is Margaret, Lady Cade; Sebastianne, Lady Drake; Grace, Lady John; Thalia, Lady Leopold; my sister Mallory, Lady Gresham. The duchess and dowager duchess, you already know.”

  “Ladies, a pleasure.” Northcote bowed.

  “And, of course, my youngest sister, Lady Esme, but then, as we have just ascertained, the two of you have met already.”

  “Even if he claims not to remember the first time, since he was asleep,” Lawrence murmured in a quiet aside to Leo that nonetheless carried the length of the room.

  Edward turned his glare on Lawrence.

  Lawrence stuck his hands into his pockets. “Sorry, but I’m still reserving judgment.”

  “Yes, well,” Edward continued, “now that we’ve all been reminded of the reason for Lord Northcote’s visit, perhaps we should get on with today’s business. Let us give Esme and his lordship a few minutes to converse. Ten ought to suffice, I would think.”

  “What?” Esme said, watching in sudden alarm as the others began to exit the room, even Mama. Surely they weren’t going to leave her alone with Northcote, who stood observing the exodus with sardonic amusement.

  “Mayhap I ought to remain?” said Mallory, uncertainly.

  Esme reached out a hand to her sister. “Yes, do, please.”

  “Come along, sweet,” Adam told his wife as he slid an arm around her waist. “This will be handled more easily without an audience. And she’s safe enough; we’ll be just next door.” Gresham directed the last comment Northcote’s way.

  The viscount lifted a brow and smiled.

  Mallory hesitated another few seconds, then squeezed Esme’s hand, her blue-green eyes filled with compassion. “You’ll be fine.”

  “But—”

  “We shall return shortly,” Edward told her, his tone resigned and strangely sad.

  Before she had time to question—or plead with—any of them further, they had gone, closing the doors behind them. She drew a breath, then slowly turned to face Northcote.

  He said nothing for a few moments, his expression enigmatic. “Would you care to be seated or should we do this standing up?”

  Do what? she thought, suddenly remembering a few of the more lurid rumors she’d heard whispered about him.

  Although they hadn’t met during her London Season, she nevertheless had heard his name in passing, always in the context of gentlemen to strictly avoid. The fact that Leo and Lawrence had a town house next to his . . . well, her brothers had wild reputations of their own—most of which she was also supposed to know nothing about. Add to it the fact that her sister and sisters-in-law weren’t always careful about closing their doors when they decided to gossip, and she knew just enough to give her pause.

  But her family wouldn’t have left her alone with him if they had the slightest worry that he might do something untoward. No, her greater concern at the moment was trying not to die of embarrassment, her mind full of memories of the way he’d looked lying naked as he slept beside Cray’s lake.

  She cringed inside, vividly aware that he must have seen her sketch of him. Was he thinking of that too?

  “I’ll stand, thank you. But please—” She gestured toward the sofa, silently inviting him to take a seat.

  He remained where he was, his hands behind his back.

  “I suppose I should begin,” she said.

  “Should you?” He looked surprised.

  She met his gaze, reminded again of how much his eyes looked like those of her hawk—beautifully golden, piercing and predatory.

  “Well, yes,” she said. “They’ve all left to spare both of us further embarrassment while I apologize for what I did yesterday. The sketch and all of that, you know.”

  “Is that why you think I’m here?” He tipped his head, disbelief ringing in his tone. “To receive an apology?”

  Her eyebrows drew down. “Of course. Why else would you have called upon me today?”

  His eyes narrowed, assessing her as if she was a great puzzlement, one that he had not entirely figured out. “You’ve really no idea, have you?”

  “No idea what?”

  “The real reason I was summoned here.”

  She crossed her arms. “Oh? And what, pray tell, might that be?”

  “I am here to do the honorable thing by you. In order to save your reputation, Esme Byron, you and I are to be married.”

  Chapter 7

  Lady Esme’s vivid blue eyes widened, her soft pink lips parting on a silent inhalation as she considered his declaration.

  “Married?” she repeated. “But that’s absurd. We don’t even know each other.”

  “Exactly my own sentiment when I first heard the news,” he drawled.

  She caught her lower lip between her teeth, drawing his attention there as she gently worked the lush flesh.

  Suddenly she freed her lip and waved a dismissive hand. “No, that cannot be. You must have misunderstood.”

  “I am afraid I misunderstood nothing.”

  But she was shaking her head before he had even finished speaking. “No, I am certain you are misinformed and that I am here to offer you an apology. My family merely wants to find a way for both of us to remedy the damage caused by this unfortunate situation and put it behind us as swiftly as may be.”

  Silently, he regarded her, trying to decide whether to be amused by her reaction or merely feel sorry for her obvious naïveté.

  “My brothers can all be rather stubborn and hot-tempered at times, I admit,” she continued, “blustering and threatening when they really don’t mean half of what they’re saying. Honestly, they may seem to some like wolves, but in reality they’re as kind and gentle as lambs.”

  Gabriel forced himself not to snort. From what he’d observed, the Byron brothers were all wolf and meant every vicious, bloodthirsty word they’d said. Even his once so-called friends, Lawrence and Leopold, were angry and mistrustful of him despite the fact that he was innocent of any wrongdoing in this case.

  Lambs, my eye.

  Next she’d be comparing the duke to a harmless bunny rabbit who did nothing all day but sit around nibbling clover and looking for a soft patch of grass on which to sleep. More likely, Clybourne ate rabbits for breakfast—raw and dripping red all over his plate.

  Lady Esme folded her hands at her waist, her cheeks the same ethereal pink as her gown. “I am sure words were exchanged when my brothers called on you last night. They can be extremely protective and were greatly upset by the drawing they accidentally saw in my sketchbook. They jumped to the most dreadful conclusions concerning the two of us without giving me any chance to explain. I am genuinely sorry for any inconvenience and alarm you have suffered as a result. I hope you will forgive me, Lord Northcote.”

  He studied her as a most peculiar sensation passed through him. Sinner that he was, it wasn’t often that he found himself in the position of being asked to forgive someone else. Generally, he was the one in need of absolution—although he couldn’t remember the last time he’d given enough of a damn to bother seeking it.

  “Do not trouble yourself further on my account,” he told her. “I assure you I am not worth the effort. Just out of curiosity, though, why did you do it?”

  “It?”

  “The drawing? Why did you put pencil to paper when you spied me sleeping outdoors au naturel? Most young women would have run away the moment they saw me.”

  Her cheeks pinkened ever so slightly more, but she continued to meet his gaze, her expression forthright, even a tad defiant. “I am an artist. I draw things that interest and intrigue me. When I happened upon you there at the lake, I felt compelled to captu
re your likeness.”

  A slow smile spread over his face. “So I interest and intrigue you, do I?”

  “Only from an artistic point of view, nothing more. You might have been a particularly fine ram or perhaps a goat who had strayed from its flock. You were there, so I drew you.”

  Gabriel’s eyebrows arched, uncertain whether she was playing games with him or not. “I can assure you that I am neither a ram nor a goat, although I have been accused over the years of being as randy as one.”

  This time she flushed.

  He bit back a laugh, along with the urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her. He ought to be entitled, after all, considering that he was going to have to marry the outrageous minx, whatever she might currently believe to the contrary.

  He was on the verge of reaching for her when a quick tap came at the door. Before either of them could answer, it opened and in walked the duke.

  • • •

  Clybourne looked between Gabriel and Esme, his expression expectant. “Your ten minutes have passed. I thought I’d check to see if matters have been satisfactorily settled between the two of you yet.”

  “No,” Gabriel said.

  “Yes,” Esme chimed.

  The two of them spoke at the same moment, their words overlapping.

  Clybourne studied them again. “Well? Which one is it?”

  “It is no, since Lady Esme is under the impression that I am here to receive her apology,” Gabriel said.

  Esme nodded. “Which I have given and which Lord Northcote has most graciously accepted. I know things may be sticky for a time since Miss Waxhaven, in particular, cannot be counted upon to hold her own tongue about what she saw. But, as I was starting to discuss with Lord Northcote, I am sure we can come up with a strategy to deflect the worst of the rumormongering.”

  Clybourne’s gaze shot to Gabriel’s. “You didn’t explain to her?”

  “I tried, but she had other ideas in mind. Perhaps you ought to have taken her aside earlier and discussed how things must be.”

  The duke glared. “I didn’t think I had to; it seemed so obvious. I assumed she knew.”

  “Apparently not.”

  Esme scowled as she listened, annoyed at being talked about as if she wasn’t even in the room. Still, a lump of dread formed in her chest, one that quite abruptly made her feel rather dim. Had she been the one to misunderstand, rather than Northcote? Surely they didn’t mean what she thought they meant? Surely they didn’t expect her to . . .

  “I am not marrying him, if that’s what you’re both talking about,” she said with dawning horror.

  Both men shifted their gazes her way; nothing in either of their expressions proved reassuring.

  “There must be some other solution.” She rushed on, her mind working frantically. “Nearly everyone in the family has been in one scandalous scrape or another and things have always worked out for the better. I’m sorry that the sketch was revealed; I certainly never meant it to be, but let us not go to extremes. We’re Byrons. We’ll bluster through. And Lord Northcote seems well up to weathering any storm, are you not, my lord?”

  “You are right that I can weather almost anything, Lady Esme, most particularly a scandal.” Northcote’s voice was deep and surprisingly gentle. “But I believe your family worries that you will not fare nearly so well. Society can be a cruel place to those it believes to have broken the rules, especially young ladies.”

  His eyes turned a rich gold as they looked into hers. “Innocent though both of us may be of any overt wrongdoing, there are few who will pause long enough to even listen to an explanation. Nor is it likely that any of them will forgive the fact that in your sketch I was naked as the day I was born and that you were brazen enough to draw me that way. People prefer to think the worst and they are sure to believe that something lurid happened between us, however untrue that may be. Sadly as well, my own less than estimable reputation does nothing to alleviate that impression. Quite the contrary, in point of fact.”

  Esme felt the warmth fade from her cheeks.

  Dear God, when he laid it all out like that, no wonder my family was so upset.

  Her heart raced like a cornered animal, but one not yet quite ready to accept defeat. She turned a pleading gaze on her brother and moved closer for some semblance of privacy. “But, Ned, you promised. You said the decision to marry would be up to me and that I could choose whomever I liked. You agreed to wait until I meet a man I can love and respect, that nothing would be orchestrated or arranged like it was for you, regardless of how well your marriage to Claire may have turned out in the end.”

  A look of sorrow darkened Edward’s blue eyes, whose color and shape were so like her own. “I’m sorry, Esme. I know what I promised and I fully intended to keep my word. But that was before. You must see that you are ruined and that there is no choice anymore.”

  “But, Ned—”

  He took her hand. “Sweetheart, facts are facts. From the moment that page in your sketchbook landed out in the open where everyone could see, your fate was sealed. Marrying Lord Northcote is the only option. If you do not marry him, I don’t believe you will ever marry at all.”

  She frowned, thoughts racing in desperation. “Maybe I don’t care. Would it be so bad if I lived here with you and Claire and the children?”

  “Not at all. We would be happy to have you with us forever,” Edward said with sincerity. “But I worry that you will come to regret your choice someday, that years from now you will be sorry not to have a home and children of your own.”

  Edward gave her hand a squeeze, then let go. “There is also the fact that if you refuse this marriage, you will never again be received in Society. Lord Northcote is right that you will be an outcast, and for your sake that is something I cannot abide, not even if it means giving you over to the care of a man of Northcote’s questionable stamp.”

  Esme and Edward both glanced over at Northcote, who stood waiting in polite silence as if he were listening to them discuss the weather rather than debating the positives and negatives of Esme entering into a marriage with him.

  She drew in a quick breath, her mind awhirl. “I don’t know what to do. I need time to think.”

  “Unfortunately, time is not something of which we have a great deal,” Edward said gravely. “I cannot say for certain what our departing guests will do, but as you already mentioned, the Waxhavens will not hesitate to spread the news. As for Lord Eversley—”

  “Eversley? But you needn’t worry about him. He likes me, after all.”

  “He did like you. How he feels now, one cannot say for sure. As a gentleman, he may indeed hold his own counsel. On the other hand, I could not help but note that he departed this morning without asking to hear your side of the story.”

  Esme’s fingers curled against her skirts, remembering the shocked look on Lord Eversley’s face when he’d caught sight of her sketch of a naked Lord Northcote. Afterward, he’d avoided her gaze, soon excusing himself to retire upstairs. She had not seen him again.

  Of course, she’d risen early and left the house, so perhaps he’d wanted to speak with her but hadn’t been able to locate her before he departed. Then again, if he’d truly wished to seek her out, he could have asked one of the servants and they would have pointed him in her direction.

  But why was she dwelling on Lord Eversley anyway? She’d already decided against him as a prospective beau, despite the not so secret hopes her family may have cherished. And even if she hadn’t eliminated him from matrimonial contention, it was too late now to change her mind.

  He was gone.

  But Lord Northcote was not. Hedonist and self-described libertine though he might be, he was here, apparently ready to do the decent thing and marry her, even if there was little else to recommend him in the eyes of Society.

  Her gaze moved to Northcote, a tiny shiver whispe
ring along her spine as she met his steady, inscrutable look. Once again, he reminded her of Aeolus, a keen-thinking predator who would track his prey and cut it down without so much as a glimmer of hesitation or remorse. In a bird, she understood the behavior, which was natural and instinctual.

  But in a man . . .

  My God, can I possibly go through with this and marry him? He’s a stranger and a rather intimidating one at that. Then again, how can I refuse, given the alternative that awaits me?

  Because reluctant though she might be, Edward was right; she would regret never marrying, never having a home and children of her own. But did she want them with Lord Northcote, who clearly had little more enthusiasm for this marriage than she did herself?

  Hades and hangnails, she thought, I don’t even know his first name!

  “Mayhap Lady Esme and I might have another private minute to talk,” Northcote said to Edward. “Then she can give you her final decision.”

  Edward’s brows drew close. “Esme? What do you say? Shall I leave you with the viscount?”

  She paused, scrutinizing Northcote for a long moment. Then she nodded. “Yes. He and I should talk again, properly this time.”

  Edward looked concerned, more so than he had on the first occasion when he’d left them alone. But a few seconds later, he turned toward the door. “We’ll all still be just outside.”

  After shooting a look of warning at Northcote, he exited the room and closed the door behind him.

  • • •

  “So, Lady Esme, here we are again.”

  Gabriel watched her, wondering what thoughts were flitting through that quick mind of hers. She’d certainly made no effort to conceal the fact that she wasn’t the least bit eager to tie the knot with him. He supposed he should be glad to know he wasn’t on the verge of marrying a conniving liar who had deliberately led him into a trap. Then again, he hadn’t liked the direction the conversation with her brother had taken. Was there another man? A prospective suitor for whom she might harbor tender feelings? If so, that would end immediately. He was no saint, but that didn’t mean he would stand idly by and allow himself to be made a cuckold. That had been his father’s error; it would never be his.