Reforming the Rogue Page 3

  His change in plans, from bullying to persuasion, had been the work of a second from the moment he laid eyes on that lovely, lithe goddess. It had gone against the grain to try to seduce his brother’s mistress away from him—it was a type of thievery, after all—but it was not only for his own pleasure but for his brother’s good, and so he had been able to rationalize that in this one case the end justified the means. But clearly he was going to have to rethink things. Perhaps this was for the best, for if she had been Jessica Landry and had had him tossed from the door, he would have had no recourse. It would have been the end of his campaign.

  But the battle was not lost. A wise captain knew when to retreat, muster his forces and find a new line of attack. The danger was that she—who was she, anyway?—would tell Miss Landry of this encounter. But he did not think she would. Cairngrove had talked enough of his paramour for Barton to know she was frail and sickly. No one who cared about her would tell her such upsetting news in that event.

  He took a deep breath, willing his body to calmness. Who was that gorgeous young woman? And what was her relationship to Miss Landry? He stared at the door, then turned and descended the steps, whistling a jaunty tune. He had not mistaken the flash of suppressed desire in her lovely eyes, of that one thing he was certain. Whether she knew it or not, she was susceptible to him.

  Offended by his suggestion though she surely had been, she was tempted, or his name was not Dominic Barton.

  • • •

  Linnet, shaking with anger, paced for a few minutes in the hall, reliving the triumph of showing him the door while his mouth hung open and he stared like a landed fish, gasping and gaping. How dare he? Who did he think he was, to offer carte blanche to his brother’s mistress? It was unthinkable. It was outrageous.

  “Ravished.” “The exquisite domination of passion.”

  Humming beneath her outrage, like the faint thread of a song one could not get out of one’s mind, was the insidious tug of attraction, a shocking wave of fascination for a man so totally outside of her experience. She laid her cheek against the cool painted surface of the door frame and gazed into the parlor they had just vacated. It still seethed with the energy of Barton’s presence, the intense masculinity of his graceful form and riveting eyes. He was right about one thing: Linnet had spent many an hour in the presence of the earl and never had she felt that allure, that pull, the force of magnetism between man and woman. Was that because Cairngrove was already bespoke, already consumed with love for Jessica? Or was there something between Linnet and Barton that was outside of the normal gravitation of female to male?

  With an exclamation of disgust she pushed herself away from the door frame, restlessly pacing the parlor in search of some useful thing to do. There was absolutely no point in even thinking about it. As had just been demonstrated by what had passed between them, the only way a man like Dominic Barton would look at Linnet Pelham was as a possible mistress.

  Though, she reminded herself firmly, as she sat with her sewing basket by the window, there was absolutely nothing wrong with her birth. Her father had been a gentleman and her mother almost a gentlewoman, though in her family indeed there was the hint of the shop. But on the Pelham side there was a baronet and knight, and more of the untitled gentry. It was enough to make them genteel.

  She picked a piece of embroidery out of the pile and stabbed at it with the needle. She would see how quickly she could destroy this piece that she had been working on haphazardly over the years, she thought, eyeing the crimson silk thread warily. The design was already starting to list badly on one side. Soon, if she continued torturing it, it would look as if it had been pulled into a whirlpool and twisted impossibly.

  Her family was genteel, yes, she thought, stabbing the cloth, but poor. That she was forced to admit. Her parents, matched well in love for each other if not in equality of birth, had been prolific. As the Bible admonished, they had gone forth and multiplied. And multiplied. Mrs. Pelham had matched even good Queen Charlotte, bearing fifteen children, though four of her own had died in infancy to the queen’s two losses.

  And their father’s income had never been adequate for his number of children. If they had been sensible they would have retired to separate beds after the first four. But they had not, and as a result the only time Linnet’s mother was not with child was when she was nursing the last one, an expedient she had been forced to by the lack of money to retain a wet nurse for the last several babies.

  That poverty was one of the many reasons why, after being sacked from her position at Fox Hall, Linnet had not returned home. She had left initially to work at the school out of necessity. She had not been raised to think she would need to work, but her father’s death several years before, shortly after the birth of her last sister, had left her family destitute. She was not the eldest, nor was she the first to realize she would need to find employment, but at seventeen she had gone out as a schoolteacher and had spent six if not enjoyable then at least satisfying years in that position.

  But being left without a job had forced her onto Jessica, for there was no way she could return home to her fragile mother, who was still burdened by the raising of several of the youngest children. She hadn’t even told her mother yet about her lack of employment. But she would soon. Linnet must, when she broke the news to Mrs. Pelham that her eldest daughter, in disgrace these last few years first because of her profession and then because of her manner of support with no profession, was marrying the Earl of Cairngrove. Jessica was, indeed, Linnet’s eldest sister. The name Landry was a fiction designed to save the Pelham appellation from the stain of the stage.

  In fact Mrs. Pelham, caught up in her own worries, did not even yet truly know of her daughter’s descent into the world of the demimonde. If she had a more active, inquisitive mind she could have puzzled it out, even though nothing had ever been said outright to her. But she had never asked, and Jessica had never said, beyond referring, in her very occasional letters home, to the earl as a “mentor.”

  And so there were numerous shocks coming to the frail Mrs. Pelham, but please God, Linnet thought, not all of them would be unpleasant. Cairngrove had made it quite clear to both of them that one of his first priorities in the marriage settlements would be security for Jessica’s family. Until now, Jessica, bound by love to the earl as well as gratitude, had not allowed him do more than pay the rent on the Pelham family’s cottage in their Surrey village. But marriage would change the family’s situation and prospects, certainly.

  Her sewing tossed aside, Linnet gazed out the window at the activity in Boxley Square. A hansom pulled up next door and disgorged an elderly woman of heavily painted visage. A tiny sweeper dashed across the road and cleaned up the reminder of the horse’s passing.

  The outside world might criticize, but Linnet understood the pressures that had driven her dearest of sisters into such desperate choices. Six years before, with all of the children still at home, their mother ill and their father newly deceased, leaving them, through his improvident ways, destitute, they were soon at the point of despair. Within months they would be cast upon the charity of the parish. Jessica, at twenty-one as lovely of character and temperament as she was of face, took it upon herself to make use of a tenuous acquaintance with a young woman from their village who had become an actress. She moved to London and started her work in the theater. Every spare penny she made, she sent home.

  Linnet made the leap soon after, as young as she was, to a teaching position, and, like her sister, sent every penny home. But still, it was never enough. Their younger siblings became ill at different times, they needed medicine, good food, clothes, education, none of which came free. Jessica soon realized that the theater did not pay as well as she had hoped. A virtuous young woman when she was first approached by an ardent earl, Lord Cairngrove, who wished to become her protector, she said no. But soon, getting to know him and liking him, she agreed. Linnet had been shocked when Jessica first told her of her intentions, but it was Jess’s life and she was soon besotted by the earl, as much in love with his charm and intelligence as she was his purse. She had justified the move by telling Linnet that from her observation, most people placed actresses in the same category as mistresses and prostitutes anyway. It had the potential to be a downward move, for once a woman made that irrevocable step, she could be deserted, forced to find sustenance in the arms of another man. And then another. And another. But love had come to both of them, an unexpected fairy-tale ending to an all-to-common story.

  From his generous allowance she was able to divert a considerable amount of money to her family, and between them she and Linnet managed to keep their family out of the poorhouse. Now, after several years, most of the children were married or working and the worst of the pressure was off their mother, who now only had her four youngest at home.

  But still . . .

  Linnet sighed and jammed the embroidery back in the basket and paced to the window, staring out of it and longing to run outside to some treed area, some cool and quiet preserve. But this was London. If cool and quiet existed, no true Londoner would acknowledge it.

  But still . . . at this crisis point in her life Linnet had avoided home and her mother. She loved the woman, but the depression that was ever near, hovering like the bill collector just outside the door, would have enshrouded the woman again at the knowledge that Linnet had been sacked and was not likely to find such a good position again. So she had come to Jessica. And she was glad that she had, for she had found her beloved sister ill and afraid, unable at this critical time to accept that she could surmount all opposition and join with the exalted Earl of Cairngrove in matrimony.

  There should be joy and celebration—after all, this was an unbelievable stroke of good fortune, this marriage, the little cinder girl’s triumph just like the old fairy story—but all there was in the Boxley Square residence was gloom and dread. Why on earth was Jessica thinking of backing out of marriage with a man whom she clearly adored, and who loved her back with equal or surpassing fervency? It was impossibly puzzling. Yes, she was ill and perhaps not thinking clearly. Maybe that was all there was to it. Perhaps once she was feeling better she would be willing to take on the challenge of being the next Countess of Cairngrove.

  But now there was this new spider in the pudding: Mr. Dominic Barton, come to add tribulation to Jessica’s trials. If he was an indication of the wretched iniquity of the denizens of the ton, perhaps Jessica had good reason to fear the move into that exalted circle. Linnet could not help her with most of her worries, but in this one case she thought she could. She would rout Barton once again and as many times as it took to keep him from troubling her sister any further.

  Despite his Luciferian good looks, despite his overwhelming attraction—how good he smelled, how piercing his eyes, how magnificent his form—she knew herself to be equal to the challenge. There was nothing he could say to her, no allurement he could use now that she knew his true colors, to change her opinion of him. Nothing in this world or the next could convince her that he was anything but a serpent in the garden.

  Chapter Four

  Cairngrove smiled, the first genuine smile Barton had seen on his face for some time.

  “Nic, I am so glad. You have made me a very happy man and I’m now assured that Jessica will soon feel better, too. I have been worried for her—she has been so unwell lately—but I fear that part of her illness is worry about how she will fit in, how she will be accepted. What you have just said will go a long way toward making her feel welcome.”

  Lord, but his brother was an easy mark. That he could be gulled into thinking Barton wanted to make up their quarrel and wished to be made known to his new sister-to-be was remarkable. How had the man survived in diplomatic circles, Barton wondered.

  “That is my most fervent wish, old man. I understand that she has not been well, but would not a cozy visit in her sitting chamber be just the thing, perhaps? I would not want to make this into an ordeal so the less fuss the better.” Barton leaned across his brother’s desk and fiddled with the inkwell. “Does she have, er, a companion, or . . . or something of that nature?”

  Cairngrove nodded. “Yes, her . . . uh, friend, is staying with her for a while. Just while Jess is ill.”

  A “friend.” Cedric stumbled over that appellation. Did that mean his unknown inamorata was another actress, Barton wondered, out of work perhaps? Who was she? He didn’t even have a name to think of her by, yet. But that would come. First things first. “It might be best,” Barton said slowly, “to circumvent this friend for now. I wish this to be just between myself and my new ‘sister.’” He almost gagged on the words and concentrated on making his expression a mask of pleasantness.

  “I have an idea how to achieve a private visit,” Cairngrove said, sitting back in his deep chair and laying his hands across his stomach. “Just leave it up to me.”

  • • •

  Linnet walked slowly down Reed Street on the last approach to Boxley Square, one of the new squares planned and constructed during the recent building fervor. It was neat and modern, and the townhomes were all lovely, with clean modern lines and gracious exteriors.

  But it was still London. The miasma that drifted down alleyways, across the polluted Thames, down filthy streets paved with horse dung and rotting vegetation offended her nose and her visual sense of esthetics. Give her a country lane any day. She actually found herself missing the rigid conformity of Fox Hall, if only because of the country walks she had taken with her pupils while they talked of Pope and Spenser.

  She stopped in front of 34 Boxley, Jessica’s house, but did not wish to go in just yet. She crossed the brick-paved street and let herself into the small gated garden that all of the residences of Boxley faced in toward. It was a tiny green space but treasured by Linnet because of the stately elms that shaded the path and the burgeoning spring gardens that rioted over the pathways.

  Cairngrove had sent a message that he was coming to visit Jessica. That meant he wanted to see her privately, in the language they had worked out since Linnet came to stay. In a home as large as the townhouse she could certainly have found a place away from Jessica’s suite, but she felt better leaving the house to give them as much privacy as possible. It was the least she could do.

  And Linnet would do anything for Cairngrove, who had been the soul of kindness to her since her abrupt arrival and treated her already with the affection of an older brother. He knew that she was Jessica’s sister, but at his lover’s request had not made it known to anyone else, including the serving staff. Jessica was adamant. She would not divulge Linnet’s relationship until her own wedding was a fait accompli.

  Knowing how she had struggled with the morality of her life choices, Linnet tried to make Jessica’s way easier by going along with her quirks, and she did understand. If Linnet ever intended to teach school again, it would never do to have it known that she had been resident in the home of a mistress. And yet how could they avoid that knowledge getting around once the marriage occurred and it was known that Linnet had been resident in the house? She shook her head. It was all a tangle. She would have to pick it apart thread by thread when she had a quiet moment to reflect.

  She chose a quiet bench, happy to have the tiny green space to herself for a half hour, and gazed at the row of townhomes through the fresh green of the new leaves. Her mind wandered and she wondered what it was that Cairngrove wanted to see Jessica about that was private. Or perhaps . . . perhaps he just wanted to exercise the right of a man with his mistress. Linnet shifted uncomfortably on the bench. The idea made her feel hot and strange. She had never asked Jessica about that part of her life with the earl. It was none of her business, but she had to admit to a certain curiosity.

  Especially since her own unschooled response to the earl’s dangerous brother. Mr. Barton had managed to play upon her feminine responses with just a suggestiveness in his voice and a look of his dark eyes. Was the attraction between Jessica and the earl similar? It did not do to think about it. Think rather about Barton and his abominable behavior.

  Unprincipled wretch! Let him try to break up Jessica and Cairngrove. It would not work, for she was aware of his intentions now and would guard her sister against his treachery.

  It was good that he was so loutish, for if she had found him as pleasant a personality as he was to look at, she might have become as fallen as her sister. Not that she considered Jessica immoral. Her older sister had been persuaded to become Cairngrove’s lover only after she had found herself actually in love with the man, and surely true love could never be immoral? She was the first of the two who knew her heart. Cairngrove had only gradually come to understand, Linnet thought, that Jessica had touched his heart, not just his body. If only the dolt had known it as quickly as Jess had! Then he could have married her immediately instead of proposing that most typical of actress-earl relationships, mistress and protector. Now it was going to be ten times as difficult to insinuate Jessica into society.

  But Linnet would not believe that it couldn’t be done. People among the ton, it seemed to her in her limited view of the upper crust, had short memories, especially with a man of as much power and social cache as Lord Cairngrove. And speaking of the earl, she could see, through the fence, the man himself come out the door, descend the steps and walk off toward Reed Street with a jaunty swing of his cane. Linnet stood and started toward the gate, not willing to guess at what had given him such an overwhelming feeling of well-being.

  None of her affair. She and the earl had worked out a comfortable relationship; Linnet had taken over from Jessica much of the work of wedding planning—the earl wanted a splashy St. George’s of Hanover Square ceremony, intended to show the ton his new wife was to be respected—and so she and Cairngrove had been together a great deal. She had found him intelligent, gentle, likable and absolutely without pretension, unlike his dastardly brother. But there were many areas that were still completely private between Jess and Cairngrove.