Not Wicked Enough (2 page)

Her as yet silent companion could have passed for the ghost of one of Bitterward’s ancient lords. His present-century clothes spoiled the effect, but notwithstanding that anachronism, the ancient spirit gazing out of his eyes sent a shiver of anticipation through her.

Behind her, a servant pushed the heavy wooden door closed with an ominous
thunk
. The drum of rain diminished. On the table beside the door, a lantern threw her elongated shadow onto the marble floor. The floor was not the original surface, of course, but the marble, laid out in horizontal stripes of
V
s that alternated black and white, was worn enough to be quite old.

The gentleman’s wet boot was planted in the shadow of her head. Sensible footwear, those boots. Not even five minutes in the rain, and her slippers were soaked through. The damp from her shoes and the rain dripping off her cloak already penetrated her bones. Neither her shoes nor her coat had proven sufficient protection against this night’s weather.

The footman who’d met her carriage and held the umbrella over her head all the way up the front stairs—for all the good it did what with the wind blowing the rain sideways—disappeared through a side exit, umbrella in hand, leaving but one footman with her and the mysterious stranger.

“Welcome to Bitterward,” the gentleman said. He did not smile that she could see. The gloom of the entryway made it difficult to tell. Smile or no, the sound of his voice was intimate and very much at odds with the roughness of his clothes. That voice was a thing of dreams, entwining with her emotions, already at a high pitch after too many hours traveling and then this downpour that had her chilled to her marrow.

She resisted the urge to take a step back and instead indulged a fancy that she would be unable to move until he removed his boot from her shadow. She removed her bonnet
to stop the water from falling into her face and passed the back of a hand over her forehead. Her glove was too damp, as it turned out, to do much besides redistribute the wet. His gaze followed the motion of her hand. In the dimness, she was forced to guess his age. Thirty, she thought. The prime of life for a gentleman, be he real or ghost.

“Thank you, your grace.” She peeled off her gloves. The gentleman did not deny he was entitled to the honorific. She removed her cloak, too, and gave it a shake. Water cascaded onto the floor. Her traveling gown had been spared the worst of the drenching, thank goodness.

The remaining footman stepped forward to take her cloak. She dropped her gloves into the well of her upturned bonnet and handed that over, too. “Thank you.” To the duke, she said, “I hope you have ordered your sister and me better weather tomorrow.”

He didn’t react right away, and she had the impression he was deciding whether she had amused him or convinced him she was a fool. Perhaps a bit of both. Well. She was cold and wet. His boot yet pinned her shadow to the floor, so she remained where she was. Behind him, she caught a glimpse of a stone staircase that quickly narrowed and turned as it spiraled toward the first floor and disappeared into darkness.

Lily pointed to the painting on the wall beside the stairs, a gentleman dressed in the fashion of the Italians from two hundred years ago. “Is that a Gossart?”

“Yes,” he said without a glance at the portrait she meant. “It is.” He cocked his head. “I am informed my great-granduncle brought it here from the Continent.” As everyone knew, the line of descent from the first duke to the fourth was not a straight one. The title had gone into abeyance for a time, and the Crown, she understood, had been poised to take back the lands. Mountjoy had not yet reached his majority when his existence was discovered and his lineage proven. Imagine that. An orphan, living with his younger brother and sister in the home of a maternal uncle. On a farm. On which he himself had labored.

“He had excellent taste.” She declined to mention there was now a Gossart in her own house, but wasn’t that the oddest coincidence?

His mouth quirked on one side. “Thank you, Miss Wellstone.”

The duke might be rough around the edges in respect of his clothes, but there was nothing deficient in his intellect. She curtseyed and caught a glimpse of water stains on her hem. “You’re welcome, your grace.”

“George,” he said to the footman who still held her cloak and bonnet. The silk flowers she had so painstakingly made and affixed to her bonnet might never recover from the damp and, now, from being crushed in the footman’s hands. “Do you know which room my sister meant for Miss Wellstone to have?”

“The Lilac room, your grace.”

“Lilac?” A wry smile appeared on his mouth. “I’d no idea we had a room with a name like that. I don’t know how anyone keeps them straight.”

George bowed. “Your grace.”

“See to it her trunks are taken there forthwith.” He spoke well, with no trace of an accent, a Sheffieldshire one or any other for that matter. “Tell Miss Wellstone’s maid she may have a meal in the kitchen once she’s seen to her mistress’s comfort.”

“Your grace.” The footman bowed and departed to carry out his employer’s instructions, which left Lily wholly alone in the entryway with her friend Ginny’s wholly impressive eldest brother. For a man in such inferior clothes, his manners were faultless, but then he’d been some nine years in possession of the dukedom, and nine years was time enough to acquire some polish. Though, apparently, not quite enough.

“You must be exhausted after traveling for so long.” He moved toward her, treading further on her shadow. Since she was a tall woman, she preferred men who did not make her feel she was a giant. The duke was quite a bit taller than she. Six feet at least. His mouth curved in the most devastating smile. “In such inclement weather as I had ordered up this evening.”

“I forgive you the inconvenience.”

His gaze flicked over her, reminding her, forcefully, that she was female to his male. “Will you?”

“Already done, your grace.” Now that he’d stepped farther into the light cast by the lantern, she adjusted her opinion of his apparent age. He was younger than she’d thought. Not more than twenty-eight or nine, and with his looks, a good deal more dangerous to a woman’s virtue, too. “I will correct you in one respect, your grace, and say that I am not the least tired. I never am at this hour.”

“Duly noted.”

Ginny was fair-haired and blue-eyed. She’d expected both her friend’s brothers to have similar coloring. The duke’s hair was dark brown, and his eyes were an extraordinary green with thick, sooty lashes she would have killed to have herself. To say that the duke was handsome, however, would do a disservice to men who actually were.

Lily stayed where she was, meeting his gaze without blinking or looking away. According to the terms she’d set herself, she could not move while he trod on her shadow. The thought made her smile.

The duke didn’t look away, either. Nor did he smile in return. The effect was…bracing.

“I never fall asleep much before four or five in the morning,” she said. “Often as late as six.”

“Is that so?” His voice sent a shiver down her spine. He was doing that on purpose. “I would be happy to show you the library. In the event you would like to take something engaging back to your room.”

She gazed at her slippers, as ruined as the flowers on her bonnet. When she looked up, she saw a condescending smile flitting about his mouth. But she had indeed understood his double entendre. She smiled as if she had not. “Thank you.”

Mountjoy’s eyes widened.

Well then. Excellent. She maintained her most innocent expression though, in fact, she was no longer innocent. A spinster she might be, but she was not decrepit yet, thank you. “I do hope you have something thrilling to show me.”

M
OUNTJOY CONSIDERED THE PERMUTATIONS OF WHAT
his sister’s acquaintance had just said. Regardless of her actual age and experience of life, Miss Lily Wellstone possessed a disconcertingly guileless face. With her dainty, too-pretty features, she looked an innocent incapable of matching wits with anyone, let alone a man experienced with women of all sorts, proper and those not so proper.

Miss Wellstone was young enough to flirt and more than pretty enough to know she had an effect on a gentleman’s passions. And she was unmarried. As was he, which she must surely know. Never mind that he was all but engaged to a suitable woman. Until he was actually married, he would be pestered by hopeful parents and girls with ambition.

I do hope you have something thrilling to show me.

She was flirting, he decided. He was alarmed to realize he did not feel entirely impervious to her charm. Which was considerable.

Without responding to her comment, he fetched the lantern from the table then held out his arm, and they proceeded
up the stairs, with her shockingly bare hand on his sleeve. Her fingers were long, very pale, and slender. She wore two rings, a ruby on her first finger and a diamond on the one next to it. The gems were not gaudy, but they weren’t small, either.

When the stairs became too narrow to navigate side by side, he dropped back, allowing her to take the van but holding the lantern high enough to light her way. Her hips swayed as she climbed the stairs. He appreciated the view.

“Aside from the abysmal weather,” he said from behind her, “was your journey here a pleasant one?”

“It was, your grace. Until the very moment one of the horses threw a shoe. We were obliged to stop for several hours while we waited for the farrier to assist us.” They passed narrow, slitted windows with deep ledges, and she glanced out of each one even though there was nothing to see at this hour. “Your family were Yorkists, I presume,” she said as they made another dizzying turn of stairs. “During the War of the Roses.”

“Why would you presume such a thing?”

“To my recollection, which I confess might be imperfect, there are no Hamptons listed on Edward IV’s Act of Attainder.”

At least she wasn’t one of those women who pretended they were ignorant. “The Hamptons supported the House of York until after Edward was king. It’s how my ancestors eventually became dukes. After that it’s less clear. The situation was fluid.”

She lifted her skirts higher. Since by happy accident he was looking down, he caught a glimpse of two slender ankles. “Not surprising, if your relative fought valiantly.”

“We have been given to understand that he did, Miss Wellstone.” He paused, just the merest hesitation before he committed to an inappropriate reply as a test of his theory that she was not as guileless as she appeared. “All we Hampton men have valiant swords.”

“Thank goodness,” she said without missing a beat and with such artlessness that he frowned. Then she glanced
over her shoulder at him, eyes dancing with amusement. “Everyone has need of a valiant sword from time to time. Don’t you agree?”

It was all he could do not to laugh out loud. She was an amusing thing, wasn’t she? “Some more than others, I daresay.”

Outside, the wind shifted and drove the rain against the windows. “The weather,” she remarked, “is another reason I was so late getting into Sheffield and then to High Tearing.”

“Left at the top.”

“Thank you.” She reached the landing and went right.

He arrived at the top of the stairs and found she’d not gone far. She was waiting a few feet away. He joined her, holding out his arm for her to take. The air here was cooler, and he saw the skin up and down her arms prickle from the cold. “Left, Miss Wellstone.”

She sighed. “I never can tell the difference.” She gave him another heart-stopping smile. “Given the nature of my one and only defect, you’d be astonished how rarely I become lost.”

“I assure you, I am already astonished.”

“At any rate,” she went on as he got them headed in the correct direction, “I had thought to beat the rain, but I miscalculated. My coachman ought not to have listened to me. He ought to know better by now.”

“Had he a choice?”

“One always has a choice, your grace.” She spoke matter of factly, and he could feel her experience of life behind the words. “The difficulty comes when one or more of the choices is unpalatable. I’m sure my coachman considered whether his position was worth his silence. He’s new to my employ. I’ll warrant he does not know I would never dismiss any servant for politely voiced opposition.”