To Charm a Naughty Countess Page 23

Hambleton looked unconvinced. “Can you demonstrate?”

  All around the edges of the table, men bent down as though pulled by a drawstring, following the line of Michael’s cue as he pointed it at the spots of contact on the walls, then laid it flat to show angles.

  “Damnation,” breathed a youthful-looking man with a halo of red curls. “I’d have paid more attention in mathematics class when I was up at school if I’d known it would help plump my pockets.”

  Michael’s ears pricked. He had never considered using this particular talent to wager his way back to financial health. A brief, riotous vision flooded his mind: sharping his way through London, driving stakes high, gambling his way to fortune and freedom. Persuading a certain woman to his bed…

  All impossible, of course, and not only because he had vowed to take no more financial risks.

  “Curse me, but I can’t get the feel of it,” Hambleton grumbled. “I understand what you’re saying, Wyverne, but it’s easier said than done.”

  “Give it another try,” Tallant said. “It’s not as though we’ve bet money on the game. What have you to lose?”

  “Why haven’t we bet?” asked a man named Watkins, who was well into his port and had developed a slight hiccup. “I’ll put twenty quid on the duke to make five more in a row.”

  “I’ll take that bet,” said Hambleton.

  Puzzling. “You’re betting money on my skill at billiards?”

  “To be accurate, Hambleton’s betting against you.” Everett grinned. “But yes. How much faith do you have in your geometry, Wyverne?”

  “Five in a row is the bet?” When Watkins and Hambleton nodded, Michael agreed. There was no need for faith, only for observation.

  His eyes imagined the spiderweb of bumps and caroms needed, tracked the resolution of the shot back to its origin.

  Smack. He hit the cue ball cleanly, and with a neat click-clack, it rolled into one red ball, then the other.

  “There’s one,” he said over his shoulder.

  Two, three, and four followed just as neatly. As he lined up his cue for the final shot, a sharp rap at the door interrupted him.

  Caro.

  His hand shook; quickly, he straightened up to cover the tremor. “Come.”

  It wasn’t Caro who peeked in, though. It was her close friend Lady Tallant, who wrinkled her nose and fanned away the clouds of cigar smoke as she stepped into the room.

  “Everything all right, Em?” Her husband detached himself from the human wall around the billiard table and stepped closer to the countess. She looked far too feminine for this room, her light yellow gown frothy against the dark wools and knits and suedes of the men’s clothing.

  “Yes, yes,” she choked. “My goodness, this is more smoke than air. How can you all breathe?”

  “Tobacco smoke is preservative,” Tallant said. “At least, I think it is.”

  Michael suppressed a cough. “Might I help you in some way, Lady Tallant?”

  “Yes, if you’ll all accompany me,” said the countess. “We ladies are tired of needlepointing the world and we desire a little male company. I grew alarmed when we hadn’t seen or heard anything from you. Now I see that was a ridiculous fear, as you’re all preserving your good health through pickling and smoking.”

  She peered into the gap around the billiard table left by her husband. “Billiards? Are you playing red winning or red losing?”

  “Carambole,” Michael replied.

  The countess’s eyes lighted. “May I join you?”

  More than one man groaned. “I’ll just… ah… be heading to the drawing room,” said Lord Tallant, sidling toward the door of the billiard room. “Em, you’ll come with me?”

  “Indeed not.” His lady wife picked up a discarded cue, tossed it a few inches into the air, and snapped it in a neat overhand catch. “I’ve just arrived. Why would I want to fuss with a needle and thread when I could play billiards?”

  “I myself have a great fondness for needle and thread,” Hambleton said. “If you’ll all excuse me, I’ll just…” He followed Tallant to the doorway and vanished through it.

  In quick succession, the other men followed, muttering various excuses. Everett was the last. He rapped his knuckles on the edge of the table as he left, muttering, “Good luck, Wyverne. She’s the only person I’ve ever met who can shoot as well as you.”

  When the door clicked closed behind them, Michael turned to face Lady Tallant, half-mystified, half-annoyed. He had been constructing a framework of camaraderie, and she had smashed it with her impatience to get a bit of male company for the women of the party.

  To his surprise, though, she grinned at him. “I must say, my ruse worked remarkably well.” She laid the cue on the billiard table. “I have no real desire to play—unless you do, Your Grace.”

  “What ruse is this?” Lady Tallant was known to be devoted to her husband, so this was not a flirtation. It must therefore be…

  “Caro,” Lady Tallant finished his unspoken thought. “Yes, I thought it was time I talked to you about her in private.”

  “I cannot imagine what you could impart to me that would be inappropriate for others to hear.”

  The countess raised one eyebrow. She was quite skilled at that expression. “Since you’ve no idea what I’m going to impart, that makes perfect sense. Why not hear me out? And if you’re comfortable with having others hear it, then I’ll apologize for breaking up your cheery game and I’ll send all the men back in.”

  Michael considered. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary. I would, of course, be delighted to hear whatever you wish to tell me.”

  Her other eyebrow shot up to join its mate. “I’m not sure how delighted you’ll be, but I am glad for your time.”

  Lady Tallant rolled the cue under light fingertips, back and forth on the table. Now that she had gained Michael’s full attention, she seemed uncertain how to make best use of it.

  “She’s not who you think,” she finally said. “Caro, I mean.”

  “Perhaps not.” Michael kept his voice noncommittal as he held his cue up to his eye and stared down its straight length. “Though that depends on who I think she is. I am sure you are not implying that she has a false identity.”

  “I am, actually.”

  Michael’s fingers slipped on the cue, catching it right before it clattered onto the billiard tabletop.

  The countess smiled. “Not in the sense that she’s… oh, a pirate, or anything like that. But she’s not exactly who she appears to be, either.”

  “A countess who holds the polite world in the palm of her hand?” Michael raised his own eyebrows, setting the cue down with nerveless hands.

  “She’s that, but much more too. Because everything she is, she created herself.”

  Michael studied Lady Tallant’s expression. Her pale face was earnest, even beseeching under its coiled crown of auburn hair. She didn’t look as though she were trying to trick him.

  He unbent. “Please sit, Lady Tallant, if you are so inclined. And please explain yourself further.”

  A bit brusque, but the countess smiled at him with the same unsinkable good humor her husband possessed, poising herself at the edge of a leather-upholstered chair that looked far too large and masculine for her slim form. Michael sank into a chair a few feet away.

  “I have known Caroline for more than eleven years,” she began, then gnawed on her lip.

  “I too knew her long ago,” he prompted.

  “Yes, exactly.” Lady Tallant took a deep breath. “I hope you will not be offended, Your Grace—”

  “Wyverne,” Michael corrected. “I assure you, Lady Tallant, I am never offended by the truth. Please put your mind at ease on that account.”

  His companion nodded. “Thank you. Caro and I debuted together, as you know. Though she had no fortune and was not of noble bi
rth, she was irresistibly lovely and charming.”

  “Yes,” Michael said drily. “I recall.”

  Lady Tallant shot him a sharp look. “Yes,” she echoed. “Well, then, perhaps you recall how admired she was?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many men courted her?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s the same way now. The ton is much fuller of followers than leaders, and those followers all wanted to pursue the maiden that had been deemed the most brilliant diamond of the year.”

  “Yes.” Every time he agreed, he felt diminished. She could have anyone, you know. He propped himself up with elbows on his thighs, his body a rigid right triangle.

  Lady Tallant pulled a long breath through her nose; then she let it out in a quick sigh. “They only wanted her until you left London, Wyverne. And then it all went to hell.”

  Michael snapped upright so quickly that his teeth clacked together. “I beg your pardon.”

  “It’s quite true. You can’t be caught embracing a woman in that way, then leave her without a proposal.”

  For an instant, he thought she was talking of his recent journey to London, and he almost said I did propose. But now: they were caught in the past.

  How entwined it had become with the present.

  “I can. Did.” He knit his brows. “I did, but I… shouldn’t have?” It was hard to recall exactly what had happened, in the long-ago flood of lust and dread. To complicate matters, his long-ill father had died shortly after Michael returned to Lancashire. Once he became Wyverne, he needed no excuse to keep his distance from London.

  Lady Tallant grimaced. “I don’t know. Things would be different now, to say the least, if you had not acted as you did.” She offered a thin smile. “While you were in town, there was much gossip that Caroline Ward was going to trap herself the heir to a dukedom. Though a few rumors swirled about you—well, you were still an heir to a dukedom, and you seemed amenable to Caroline.”

  “Yes.” Surely the understatement of the century.

  “Especially after you two were discovered—”

  “Yes, I know.” He didn’t like to think of it: a surrender to passion, a dip into madness. Recently it had happened again on a much greater scale.

  “When you put about that your father was ill, everyone understood that you would need to leave for Lancashire. But you did not propose to Caroline, and you never came back.”

  “No.” A new refrain at last. “There was nothing for me in London.”

  The countess winced. “That became quite clear. It was clear, too, that none of the gossip about your courtship was true. That you had meant nothing serious when you kissed Caroline. Most people thought you had seduced and abandoned her.”

  Michael could not suppress a bark of surprise. “Hardly a credit to me.”

  “No, but it didn’t matter. As you weren’t there, and as you were titled and a man, there was little outcry against you. Caroline was the one who suffered. Everyone who had admired her charm now remembered that she was a penniless country girl, and they saw her as an upstart. She was all but ruined. She would have been if the old Earl of Stratton hadn’t taken a fancy to her.”

  “Yes…” The word was a sigh. He hadn’t known any of this.

  Oh, he had known they kissed—God, what kisses. He had been shocked by the force of them, undone by his own desire for her. Never had he imagined—but then there were so many eyes surrounding them, such laughter at their discovery, and what had been a private revelation turned into a mockery. Caroline had laughed too.

  Maybe she had been laughing from glee, thinking he would propose. Or maybe she had simply been young and startled. Maybe she had not turned on him.

  But he had turned on himself. When the crowd dispersed, taking Caroline with it, he had slipped into the walled garden behind Lady Applewood’s mansion. And there, quite suddenly, he had gone mad. A fit of shaking, lost mindlessness that robbed him of all his hard-won security.

  Soon afterward he had walled himself away in Lancashire. He had known he tightened the reins on his own control, allowing none of the fleshly distractions that had consumed his father and that he himself seemed vulnerable to.

  At this distance in time, and in his beloved home, it was difficult to recall the urgency with which he had torn away from London.

  It was still more difficult to recall how he had managed to stop kissing Caroline once he had ever started.

  He had not known how greatly Caroline was affected. It simply had not occurred to him, inexperienced dolt that he had been at the age of twenty-one, that passionate kisses came with expectations. He had never held any expectations himself that a woman such as Caroline would want him.

  Until, one day, she did.

  Lady Tallant’s story was a lens, focusing an image of Caroline that had blurred into incomprehension. Now he understood her essential sweetness, sometimes washed over with bitterness; her insistence, earlier today, on maintaining her reputation. Her love of people who made their own way in life. The clergyman’s daughter had bought herself respectability by marrying an old nobleman, and who was Michael to say whether that was too high a price?

  “I understand,” he told Lady Tallant.

  Instead of softening, she shook her head so vehemently that a loose hairpin fell onto her lap. “No, you can’t possibly. You’ve never suffered as she has.”

  “You might be surprised. It’s not precisely pleasant to be called mad.” He tried to make a jest of it, but no one in the world knew how true and deep the pain of it ran.

  “I am sure it is not, Your Grace. But as I said, you weren’t in London. You didn’t have to listen to the talk. It has taken great courage for Caro to reclaim her place in society, to lead it with kindness and never to take revenge on those who hurt her.”

  Michael nodded, unable to muster a yes.

  Lady Tallant rose to her feet, and Michael popped from his own chair. “Thank you, my lady. I am very glad you have reposed your trust in me.”

  She smiled at him. “I would not have had I not thought you worthy of it.” She nodded toward the door. “Or of Caro. I’ve never seen anyone come close to touching her heart. She’s my dearest friend, but she has shields even I’ve never seen past. But with you… I hope. That’s all.”

  I hope. It was better than despite.

  Though he had wounded Caroline so long ago, she had offered to help him anyway. Yet whether she intended to or not, she had certainly taken a perfect revenge on him. She had captured him, mind and body, then sent him packing.

  A dish served with all the coldness of eleven years’ wait. Well, some wounds could last a lifetime. He knew this; he had lived this.

  Lady Tallant spoke softly. “Shall I call the men back, Wyverne? Or is there something you might wish to discuss with Caro instead?”

  Michael heard her only dimly; his mind was clicking all the pieces into place. He would make this right. He would fix this situation. It was long past time.

  “Yes,” he said, already pressing at the door handle. “Yes, I must speak with her right away.”

  Twenty-three

  La fée verte. That was what the French called absinthe, wasn’t it? Caroline had never tasted it herself, but she knew of its ability to contort the world. If the world already seemed contorted, maybe absinthe would set it to rights.

  Unfortunately, there was nothing stronger than sherry in her glass, so she must make do. She had already drunk more than she ought, enough that everything seemed muddled.

  Or perhaps it was already muddled, and that was why she had drunk too much.

  The men had trudged into the drawing room like whipped puppies. Considering Emily hadn’t accompanied them back from the billiard room, Caroline suspected that was exactly what they were. She knew her friend’s skill with a cue.

  Michael hadn’t come in with them,
though. This probably implied some sort of a Secret Plot on Emily’s side.

  Hambleton perched himself on the arm of her chair, teetering on the frail wood support. He positively reeked of Spanish cigars.

  “How was billiards?” Caroline managed to ask.

  “Fair enough.” He opened and closed his mouth a few times, then added, “Some were fair. I was more than fair.”

  “I am sure you were, Hambleton. We both know of your gift for games, do we not?”

  Everett had found himself a glass of something spirituous upon entering the drawing room. “I myself was rather abysmal,” he admitted as he approached Caroline. He tugged a chair over to sit at her side. “I seem to be better suited to observation than participation. A hazard of my occupation, probably.”

  On this rare vacation from his employer, a capricious baron, Everett was quite frank about being on the hunt for amusement—though with limited coin, his greatest pleasure must lie in mockery. At least he was willing to turn his wit upon himself.

  Now, Caroline wished he would turn it to others. The guests were scattered around the drawing room, indolent as cats in the sun. Their complacence stifled her. They were all accustomed to doing what they liked.

  Just as she’d said to Michael, though her badge of courage had somehow become an insult. It was not as though she wanted anything particularly noble. Right now, she wanted nothing so much as to drown her winding thoughts in the bottom of her glass.

  She tipped it up, emptied it again.

  “Do allow me,” said Hambleton. He collected her glass and scurried off to refill it, a puppy, fetching and carrying.

  She could no longer enjoy the simple pleasure of having a man do a favor for her without wondering… why? Michael had led her to question it, and this ruined the spun-sugar fantasy that she and her puppies felt any real regard for each other.

  With Michael, she never had to wonder about motive. He gave her frankness and the freedom to be frank with him in return. These gifts were greater than she had realized.

  “Here you are, Caro.” Hambleton thrust a glass before her eyes, which took a bleary instant to snap into focus. Her face required another instant to take on the correct expression of flirtatious pleasure.