A Rogue Walks into a Ball Read online

  Jack stepped in first, followed by Miss Porter and finally, somewhat reluctantly, by Miss Smith. The space was very small, and they were obliged to stand only a few inches apart in a slightly awkward, close triangle.

  “It’s quite snug in here,” Miss Porter observed, lowering her voice, since they might have whispered and still heard each other.

  “The size of a Town garden being what it is, the grotto was designed on a small scale,” Jack said. “I’ve always liked it.”

  The inside would have been impenetrably dark were it not for little holes in the ceiling that let in sunlight, which picked out the mother of pearl linings of the shells.

  “It does feel like a cave,” Miss Smith observed, a general comment, but addressed, of course, to her cousin. “I’m already a bit colder.”

  “Would you like my coat?” Jack offered.

  Miss Smith made a little choking sound, which he would likely not have heard had they not all been so close.

  “How kind of you,” Miss Porter said, “but I’m sure Miss Smith can handle a brief change in temperature.”

  “Oh,” Miss Smith said woodenly, her panicked gaze trained on her cousin. “Yes, thank you, sir, but that’s not necessary.”

  Miss Porter said, “Can I ask, Lord Jack, what exactly does one do in a grotto like this?”

  “Well, if you’re not supposed to be playing with fire, it’s a good place not to get caught.”

  Miss Porter laughed, and Jack felt a jolt of surprise. Was that the first time he’d heard her laugh? He rather thought it was.

  “Surely it wasn’t created just for mischievous boys,” she said.

  “I think one of the previous Lord Boxhavens liked to come out here to read philosophy and think. And my mother sometimes comes out here with her sister and some candles and glasses of wine.”

  “Oh,” Miss Porter said. “That sounds quite nice.”

  “Annabelle Smith,” came Alice’s voice from the terrace, “come have some tea.”

  Miss Smith, apparently grateful for an excuse to leave the grotto, turned and bolted through the narrow opening, calling, “Coming.”

  Miss Porter turned to follow her, but Jack caught her arm.

  “A moment, please.”

  “Why?” Sarah asked warily. Lord Jack was looking at her with a dark expression.

  “What have you said to your cousin about me?” he demanded. “She’s completely terrified of me.”

  Sarah swallowed. “She’s not terrified of you.”

  He crossed his arms and glowered at her. “She has yet to be able to speak a single word to me, and half the time she’s looking at me, she’s doing this panicked thing with her eyes, this blinking thing.”

  She’d been hoping he hadn’t noticed Annabelle’s behavior in relation to him, or at least not very much, but that had clearly always been a foolish hope. He was not a fool. Sarah knew this, knew that he was smart, that however much she hadn’t wanted to give him credit for anything, the light in his blue eyes was an intelligent light.

  “Er... she is a little nervous around gentlemen. Her father is an anxious man who never liked her to go far from home, and the result is that she hasn’t often mixed with people she doesn’t know well.”

  “She talked with my brother and danced with him,” Lord Jack pointed out.

  “Actually, I think the only words she managed to speak were to thank him.”

  “But she did manage those, and I didn’t see any of the frantic blinking either when Marcus led her off. So there’s something particular about me. Knowing you as I do, I expect you gave her some kind of dire warning about rakes.”

  Under his relentless gaze, she had the most maddening urge to squirm. Even though there was a little more space in the tiny grotto with Annabelle gone, she still felt as though he was much too close. And that wasn’t the only thing she was becoming aware of.

  Her heart was pounding, but not with fear, though she almost wished it was fear. Fear would surely have been better than whatever this was. She felt warm, like a blush was spreading over her whole body, and the most delicious tingling sensation had started along the nape of her neck. Over the damp smell of the cave, she caught a hint of something scenting the fabric of his coat, or maybe him. Sandalwood, she realized after another drift reached her, mingled with something that was surely essence of Lord Jack Hallaway, and it smelled very, very good.

  “The marquess is married,” she said. “She’s more comfortable around married men and older men.”

  “But that’s not the whole story, is it, Miss Porter?” he pressed. “What did you tell her about me?”

  “It wasn’t just about you,” she said, her words sounding breathy. Breathy? When had she ever sounded breathy in her life?

  He waited.

  “I... um...” How could she tell him that she’d magnified his slight of two years ago, for which he had apologized several times now, into something that had impelled her to frame him for Annabelle in terms of the kind of masculine villainy they’d seen in that play about a bigamist? It had been wrong of her, and she’d succeeded only in scaring Annabelle, and over a man who wasn’t even who she’d thought he was.

  Because Sarah was fairly certain now that, though Lord Jack might be a rogue who’d known far more than his fair share of willing female company, he was not some uncaring rake. He’d been nothing but polite and considerate to both Annabelle and Sarah, and he’d shown himself to be a good brother and son. He was obviously worried about Annabelle.

  He didn’t deserve her scorn. This realization was far more disappointing to Sarah than it should have been.

  “I might have referred to you as a... um, practiced seducer,” she admitted. “Among many other gentlemen in the ton.”

  He rolled his eyes. “That hardly seems like the kind of thing guaranteed to make a young lady quake in her shoes.”

  “Well... I was also a little inspired by the play we saw the other night to warn her about gentlemen who might be adept at charming women to get what they want from them.”

  She watched as his eyebrows shot upward and his already dark look turned rather murderous, and considered that perhaps this admission had not been her best course of action.

  “You led her to believe that I’m as villainous as a bigamist?”

  “Um,” she said and reached behind her to find the opening of the grotto, thinking to make a dash for escape if she could do it in one quick movement.

  His eyes narrowed as he caught sight of her hand. “Don’t even think about it,” he growled. “You’re going to explain yourself.”

  “Er,” she began. “I—”

  “What is wrong with you?” he demanded.

  She wished she knew, because up until the time when she’d come to London, she’d thought she knew what was what and who she was. But now, with this angry rogue breathing fire at her, and justifiably, she was completely at sea.

  “My cousin is very innocent,” she managed to say, “and it seemed like a good idea to warn her about how men can be.”

  His expression turned sardonic. “And you have such a great wealth of experience from which to offer such advice?”

  Anger sparked instantly. “Do you think that because I’m homely—”

  But he interrupted her just as she was drawing breath to unleash a blast from the store of pent-up emotions that had festered over years of being mocked for her appearance. “You? Homely?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about!”

  He cocked his head. “‘Homely’ makes me think of someone meek and retiring,” he mused, sounding as though he were about to wander off on a digression about word choice. “Perhaps because it sounds a bit like ‘homey.’” He might have heard the sound of her teeth grinding, because the corner of his mouth twitched and he said, “I wouldn’t describe you as homely.”

  Why was he pretending not to understand? “Just say it! Admit it! Those gossips at the theater already did: My nose is enormous.”

>   He had the audacity to look puzzled. “Those women are idiots. Your nose is not enormous.”

  “It’s a nose that belongs on a man.”

  “Nonsense. It’s a handsome nose. I like it.”

  What was he doing? No one liked her nose. Sarah had, herself, finally come to terms with it and decided that she would accept it since it was the only nose she had. But no one had ever, not once, suggested there was anything remotely appealing about it.

  “You don’t like it,” she bit off. “Maybe you’re used to seeing it on my face, but you don’t like it.”

  “How could you possibly know what I like?”

  “You can’t like it,” she persisted, determined to make him abandon whatever game he was playing, because she’d long ago learned not to fall for ruses.

  “When I referred to you not having a vast wealth of experience with the ways of gentlemen,” he said in the slow tones of one speaking to a fool, “I meant that you are a lady and can’t be much older than twenty-three, and thus you are not in the position to have such a vast experience of men.”

  “Five,” she muttered. “I’m twenty-five.” And he was right that, though she was older than Annabelle, she had no more experience than her cousin did. She simply didn’t feel afraid of men, or awed by them.

  And yet, she had been inspired by that play to tell Annabelle what had happened to her mother. Women were sometimes too much protected, so that they couldn’t see for themselves what was real.

  She forced herself to breathe. “As it happens, I do have some experience of what happened in She Knew She Was Right. My mother was taken in by a bigamist, who almost succeeding in marrying her to gain control of her money before we discovered his ruse.”

  If she’d thought to at least provide something of the answer he deserved, she’d apparently succeeded spectacularly, because he looked, at least for a moment or two, stunned.

  But then, when he didn’t respond, as though her revelation was too much, she grew annoyed. This information about her mother was not something she’d shared with anyone beyond Annabelle, and of course Mr. Smith knew, which was part of why he’d been so kind in offering her a place to stay when her mother moved to Ireland.

  “I know that this is not the most flattering thing to admit about my mother,” she said tartly, “but any sensible person would see that it wasn’t her fault.”

  He shook his head as if to collect himself. “Of course it wasn’t her fault. She was preyed upon by a cretin. There can be few creatures lower than a man who would do such a thing. Snakes would be insulted by a comparison.”

  Something in her relaxed at his vehement defense of her mother. She’d long ago accepted that Hyacinth Porter was not the most intelligent of women, and Sarah and her mother did not quite understand each other, or even always enjoy one another’s company. But Hyacinth was still her mother and Sarah loved her, and for Lord Jack to defend her so vigorously, when this was just the kind of information that invited scorn and mockery, did something to her.

  “What I just told you is, of course, private,” she said.

  He looked offended. “Obviously. I would never betray such a confidence.”

  Well.

  “Miss Porter? Jack?” Lady Boxhaven called. “Aren’t you having tea?”

  “Coming,” Jack replied, his eyes still on Sarah’s. “We’re not finished,” he told her.

  But Sarah couldn’t stand there with him another moment. Ever since their first encounter, she’d thought of him as a pretty shell of a man, handsome and charming, but empty. But he wasn’t like that at all. He was much more real than she’d allowed. The little drifts of heat he was giving off, the deep timbre of his voice, the steady weight of his blue, blue eyes—they were all having an effect on her, the kind of effect she’d never dreamed a man like Lord Jack would have on her. Certainly, if she’d even believed she might be susceptible to feeling anything like this, she would never have intended to allow it to happen.

  But allowing had nothing to do with what he was doing to her. She was having no say at all in the effect he was having on her, and that scared her.

  She turned and hurried out of the grotto.

  Chapter 9

  Sorella Teresa: What if I’ve misjudged someone, even if he deserved it?

  Breaking the Habit, Act 1, Scene 4

  “What were you and Miss Porter talking about in the grotto all that time?” Alice asked as Jack accepted a cup of tea from his mother and moved to stand by a potted orange tree Fiona had recently put on the terrace. A soft breeze was blowing, pulling little clouds of rose scent through the air and gently ruffling a strand of hair that had slipped out of Miss Porter’s coiffure, which she kept reaching up to tuck behind her ear. She was facing away from him, determined, he suspected, to focus on anyone but him.

  “Trust you to try to poke your nose into everyone else’s conversation,” Kate said, saving Jack from having to reply. Conversation was a mild word for what had passed between him and Miss Porter in the grotto. He’d thought his blood was coming to a full boil at one point, and that hadn’t been entirely due to her explanation of why her cousin was terrified of him.

  He had wanted to shake her, but he had also wanted to kiss her.

  Which was completely inappropriate. She was the older cousin of Alice’s friend, a lady whose companionlike manner put her in the realm of those deserving of the kind of deferential respect given to any woman in the ton not considered a candidate for marriage. Wanting to kiss Miss Porter was akin to wanting to kiss his sister’s friend’s governess.

  “I’m simply more interested in actual, living people than you are,” Alice said to Kate, her hand hovering over the plate of little cakes Cook had made. Jack noticed there was only one cream cake left, which wasn’t surprising, as they were everyone’s favorite.

  “You must have the cream cake, Miss Smith,” Alice said.

  “Oh,” Miss Smith said in the tone of one about to demur, “that’s very kind of you.”

  Alice grinned. “Yes, it is very kind of me, because they’re delicious. But I’ve had two already, and I don’t think you’ve had any.”

  “Do take it, Miss Smith,” Kate urged, giving their guest a kind smile. Of his siblings, Kate was perhaps the most sensitive to people’s feelings. He suspected her fondness for reading had something to do with her powers of observation.

  Miss Smith smiled, her eyes downcast as she selected the cream cake from the plate. She was a very appealing young lady when she was at ease. Which she wouldn’t be if he drew closer.

  He waited until tea was over and his mother had gone inside to see to something and his sisters and Miss Smith had called Socrates over to play some game with a ball, and then he approached Miss Porter. She was standing next to a climbing rose growing along a trellis and studiously avoiding looking at him.

  “Miss Porter,” he said, coming up behind her, and he didn’t think it was his imagination that she jumped a little bit. “I would have a word with you.”

  He could tell by the way she glanced longingly at the other ladies, who were sitting on the other side of the garden, that she didn’t want to have even one word with him, but she said, “Very well.”

  He got right to the point. “I can’t help but think this whole issue with your cousin being afraid of me—”

  “Not just you,” she corrected.

  “And other unmarried young men,” he added with an emphasis that said he knew she had ensured her cousin thought he was the very worst of the worst, “came about because you haven’t truly forgiven me for that unfortunate incident at the ball in Hampshire two years ago.”

  “But I have,” she said impatiently. “I’ve said I did.”

  “I don’t believe you meant it. I think that you, Miss Porter, are very, very good at holding a grudge.”

  Her lips pressed together, and he sensed a direct hit.

  He moved a little closer, near enough to hear her quickly drawn breath. “I have done nothing to merit the level o
f contempt you have for me.”

  “It’s not contempt,” she said, stepping backward with a deft, barely perceptible movement that put more space between them again. “It’s good judgment. Just because I forgave you for that incident, it doesn’t mean I didn’t begin to form an opinion. You’re known to favor lovely widows with your attentions, among others.”

  He laughed a little, because she sounded so prim. “Maybe the widows are lonely and they’re glad someone’s giving them attention.”

  She blushed furiously, and maybe he was just a little bit of a villain, because he enjoyed the sight more than he should have.

  Though Sarah had given herself a talking-to during tea about the importance of not falling into any more intimate conversations with Lord Jack, here she was again, and she was noticing that laughing brought out crinkles at the edges of his eyes, making him look boyish and fun, and even more handsome.

  Lord Jack Hallaway had in abundance something that her mother used to refer to as “the charms of a man.”

  Once she’d become a widow, Hyacinth Porter had taken to extolling a man’s strength, rational thinking, and superior intelligence, much to Sarah’s annoyance, because what daughter wanted to hear her mother talk of such things? But what had really made Sarah want to run out of the room with her hands over her ears was when her mother would say, with a faraway look in her eyes, “Only a man has the charms that make a woman’s heart beat faster.”

  Sarah had spent quite a bit of time sneering at Lord Jack’s charm, privately and to her cousin. But now it occurred to her that his charm might be the very thing needed to help Annabelle.

  “Anyway,” he said, “we were talking about forgiveness, and how it’s not something you’re very good at.”

  “I find forgiveness most meaningful when it’s been merited,” she said, considering the best way to present to him the idea she’d just had, because he would doubtless find it a little unexpected. Or rather, a lot unexpected, and also insane. But it just might be the very thing to help Annabelle.