AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Do you know, Grenville, you’re rather adorable when you’re pedantic?”
“Both infatuation and intoxication are physical states,” she went on doggedly. “Both often lead to gross errors of judgment.”
“Or perhaps it’s the combination of ‘pedantic’ and ‘naked.’” His green gaze drifted lingeringly downward from her face to the ends of her toes, which she could barely keep from curling.
Since he would not listen to anything a woman said in ordinary circumstances, it was absurd to expect him to concentrate on what a naked woman said, she told herself.
On the other hand, his gaze was admiring, and Lydia was certainly woman enough to enjoy that. She returned the smile, to reward and encourage the admiration. Then, because she turned away to climb out of the bed, she didn’t see his smile fade or the uncertainty that passed over his face like a shadow.
“Where are you going, Grenville?”
“To wash.” She headed for the washstand, which stood behind a folding screen.
“Do you know, duchess,” he said reflectively, “the back view is as magnificent in its own way as the front. You have a…”
His voice trailed off as she stepped behind the screen.
Though she would have liked to hear the rest of the compliment, Lydia turned her attention to practical matters.
She had scarcely bled at all, which was not surprising in an athletic young woman, and more common, she was aware, than the prevailing wisdom maintained. Still, there were a few faint smears and she was definitely sticky. With his seed.
She washed herself, well aware that any number of incipient Mallorys had spilled into her and did not require any special cultivation to sprout to life.
Still, she had warned him that she was not prime breeding stock. Not that one could expect him to reflect upon the consequences. He cared no more about how his children turned out than he cared what a shambles he’d make of her existence if she let herself fall in love with him.
“Grenville.”
“I’ll be done in a minute,” she said.
There was a silence broken only by the slosh of water in the basin.
“Grenville, what’s that on your rump?”
“On my—” Then she remembered. “Oh, the birthmark, you mean. I know it looks like a tattoo, but it isn’t.”
She speedily completed her ablutions and stepped out from behind the screen…and came up against a tall, hard column of naked male.
“Turn ’round,” he said. His voice was very mild, his expression unreadable.
“Do you know, Ainswood, you become even more annoying than usual after sexual intimacy. I should—”
“Turn, please.”
She set her jaw and did as he asked, though she did not like being examined as though she were a curious biological specimen. She resolved to return the favor at the earliest opportunity. About one minute from now.
“I thought so,” he murmured. He touched her shoulder, gently turning her back to him. “My dear, do you know what that is?”
The endearment made her wary. “A birthmark, as I said. And a very small one at that. Hardly disfiguring. I hope you don’t have some sort of morbid aversion to—”
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “And the mark is…fetching.” He lifted his hand to stroke her tense jaw. “You don’t know what it is, do you?”
“I am on pins and needles to find out what it is to you,” she said, every instinct stirring, sensing trouble.
“Nothing.” He stepped back. “Nothing at all. Nothing to bother yourself about.” He turned away. “I’m simply going to kill him, that’s all.”
He strode back to the bed. Muttering to himself, he snatched up from the floor near the bedpost his dressing gown and flung it on. Like hers, it had been neatly laid out upon the bedclothes. His had slipped to the floor in the tumult of lovemaking. Hers was a rumpled clump wedged between mattress and bedpost.
She did not even try to figure out what he was about, but ran to the bed and tugged her robe free. As she pulled it on, he marched to the door, yanked it open, and stormed out. She hurried after him, tying her sash as she went.
“Facts about her background,” Vere snarled under his breath. “Crocodiles in Borneo. And there was Trent trying to tell me.”
“Ainswood,” his wife’s voice came from behind him.
He paused and turned. She stood in the open doorway of their room. “Go back to bed,” he said. “I’ll deal with this.” He swung ’round and went on walking.
He stopped at Dain’s door, raised his fist and pounded, once, twice, thrice. “Lord Almighty know-it-all. Portrait of his sire. ‘You recall, don’t you, Ainswood?’ Very amusing. Hilar—”
The door swung inward and six and one-half feet of dark, arrogant, half-Italian so-called friend advanced to fill the doorway. “Ah, Ainswood. Come for instructions, have you?” Beelzebub regarded him with a mocking half-smile.
Her smile. Why hadn’t he seen it?
Vere let his mouth curl in mimicry. “Shouldn’t call her hair gold, should you? Couldn’t be French, could she? Crocodiles in Borneo. You knew, you big-beaked macaroni bastard.”
Beelzebub’s black gaze shifted to Vere’s left. An impatient glance that way showed Vere that his wife had not gone peaceably back to bed, but was swiftly approaching. Barefooted, he discovered to his dismay. She would catch her death.
“Grenville, I said I’d deal with this,” he told her, irritably aware of Beelzebub’s amused regard.
The bride only planted herself at Vere’s side, folded her arms, and waited, mouth set, eyes narrowed.
By this time, Lady Dain had elbowed her way into position beside her spouse. “Let me guess,” she said to him. “You didn’t tell Ainswood, though you promised me you would, before—”
“Plague take it!” Vere snapped. “Does all the world know? Devil rot your soul, Beelz, I don’t mind a joke—but you might have considered her feelings. The poor girl—”
“I hope you are not referring to me,” Grenville cut in icily. “I don’t know what maggot is eating at your brain at the moment, Ainswood, but—”
“Ah, you don’t know,” said Dain. “The bridegroom flew into a fit and thundered out without troubling to explain what had thrown his innards in an uproar. This is typical, I’m afraid. Ainswood has a lamentable tendency to leap first and think later. That is because he cannot keep more than one idea at a time in his very thick head.”
“Hear, hear,” said Lady Dain. “Pot calls kettle black.”
Dain turned to her. “Jessica, go to bed.”
“Not now,” answered she. “Not for a thousand pounds.” Her grey gaze moved to Vere. “I’m dying to learn how you found out.”
“It was precious difficult,” said Dain. “Sellowby and I only dropped about a thousand hints, amid Trent’s demented driveling about the Earl of Blackmoor—Charles II’s bosom bow—the cavalier with the golden curls.”
Vere heard his wife’s sharp intake of breath.
Dain shifted his attention to her. “You bear a strong resemblance to my pretty ancestor. If Trent had seen the portrait of my father as well, his remarks might have made more sense. Regrettably, the more recent painting had an encounter with the Demon Seed—my son, Dominick—and came out the worse,” he explained. “It was being repaired when Trent visited. If he’d seen it, he would have come nearer the mark, for if my late, unlamented sire had been a woman, he should have been you…cousin.”
If Bertie had been sleeping as he normally did, cannon fire would not have wakened him. But his sleep was fitful, agitated by visions of crocodiles snapping at the dainty feet of bespectacled maidens attempting to flee from leering cavaliers who wore nothing but the golden sausage curls clustering about their heads and shoulders.
This was why the hubbub in the hall penetrated his consciousness and shot him up from the pillows and,
in short order, from the bed.
He found his dressing gown and slippers and, decently covered, opened his door in time to hear Dain’s remarks about family portraits and the last, intriguing word: cousin.
Before Bertie could fully digest these revelations, the quartet had filed into Dain’s chamber and the door closed behind them.
Bertie was about to retreat to his room to ponder what he’d overheard when out of the corner of his eye he spied a flash of white, at the hallway’s corner near the top of the stairs.
An instant later, a bespectacled feminine face, surrounded by white ruffles, peeped out from the corner. A small white hand, also surrounded by ruffles, beckoned.
After a moment’s inner debate, Bertie went whither he was summoned.
“What’s happened?” Miss Price enquired—for it was she in the bewildering concoction of white ruffles. The silliest froth of a nightcap covered her dark hair. Ruffles encircled her neck and fluttered downward along the borders of her wrapper, which encasing cloud of a garment left absolutely everything to the imagination except her face and her fingers.
“I ain’t exactly sure,” Bertie said, blinking at this vision. “I only heard the last of it. Still, it looks like I were on the right trail but come by the wrong direction. It weren’t the cavalier fellow but Dain’s father. Only Dain called her ‘cousin,’ which were a jolt to me. I figured she were his sister—mean to say…” His face heated and his hand went up to tug on his neckcloth. He found he wasn’t wearing one, and the discovery made his face several degrees hotter. “Mean to say, half-sister, only without the parson’s blessing, if you know what I mean.”
Miss Price stared at him for a full twenty seconds by his count. “Not the cavalier,” she said slowly. “Who was the Earl of Blackmoor, you mean. Instead, Lord Dain’s father. Is that it?”
“She looks like him,” Bertie said.
“Miss Gren—the Duchess of Ainswood, I mean, resembles the previous marquess.”
“And Dain said ‘cousin.’ That were all. Then they went in his room.” He gestured that way. “The lot of ’em. What do you make of it? If Dain recognized her, why didn’t he say so before? Or were it a joke, do you think, which I can’t figure what else, bein’ as how if he didn’t want to know her, he wouldn’t say ‘cousin,’ would he?”
