Days of Rakes and Roses Read online

  Cam raised his brandy toward Simon in a toast. “In that case, may the best man win.”

  * * *

  Even as she told Simon Metcalf to stay away, Lydia knew that she wouldn’t be able to avoid him before her wedding. What she hadn’t expected was meeting the miscreant on a daily basis over the next week. Cam and his childhood friend attended most of the same social events she did, curse them. She loved her brother dearly, but after constantly seeing him with the knave who had once seduced her into stupidity, she wanted to hurl a brick at his head. And a second, bigger brick at Simon.

  “Those two are demmed inseparable,” Sir Richard Harmsworth drawled from where he lounged picturesquely beside her at the Plaistead ball.

  Richard had engaged Lydia for the contredanse, but she’d asked if he minded sitting out and they’d found two chairs in an alcove. It was a relief to relax her guard in an old friend’s company. With Richard, she needn’t smile and pretend to a gaiety she didn’t feel. She hadn’t been sleeping well. Waiting for Simon to do something outrageous left her jumpier than a cat on a hot stove.

  Nor did it improve her mood that so far he’d behaved well within polite limits. Not that Simon Metcalf’s interest in the Duke of Sedgemoor’s sister had gone unnoticed. All week she’d deflected questions about his pursuit with pointed reminders that she was no longer on the marriage market.

  At social gatherings, Grenville usually left her to her own devices. Not that she minded. She’d never wanted a man who hovered over her. Tonight, blast him, Grenville had hovered.

  A few minutes ago, she’d sent him to fetch her a lemonade. She hoped navigating through the throng would delay his return. His behavior lately offered worrying hints that a jealous man might lurk inside Grenville’s phlegmatic shell. One reason she’d accepted Grenville’s proposal after rejecting earlier offers was her reluctance to commit herself to a possessive husband. Perhaps she’d been mistaken in assuming Grenville felt no need to exert his authority over the woman he married.

  She didn’t like second guessing herself. Confound Grenville. And confound that pest Simon Metcalf for making her doubt her decision.

  At her side, Richard was still expounding his grievances. “I can’t take two steps without tripping over that dashed Metcalf fellow. By Jove, he’s ubiquitous.”

  “Are you jealous of my brother’s new bosom bow?”

  Lydia’s tart question made Sir Richard stare at her in aristocratic surprise. The deceptively lazy blue eyes sharpened on her face. “Perhaps you’d prefer the decorative Mr. Metcalf to devote his attention to you instead of to Cam.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” she retorted, closing her fan with an audible snap.

  “Yes, I see that I’m absurd,” her brother’s closest friend—at least until the advent of that wretch Simon—responded with a twitch of his lips. He reached across and gently untangled her fingers from where they tortured her fan’s silk cord. “Always devilish appealing to the ladies, Metcalf was.”

  Lydia flushed. “I’d forgotten you knew Simon before he left for the Continent.”

  “We were at Oxford together. He was good company then. He’s good company now. In small doses.”

  Richard, whose birth was as shrouded in scandal as Cam’s, played a good game of convincing the world that he had no thought beyond the cut of his coat. But Lydia knew better. He was kind, he was cleverer than he revealed, and he was gifted with surprising perception.

  Long acquaintance and genuine liking made her speak honestly. “You must know that Cam doesn’t approve of my engagement. Simon’s arrival is part of a plot to make me jilt Grenville.”

  Richard glanced across to where Grenville badgered some political cronies, Lydia’s lemonade clasped forgotten in one hand. “You’re capable of making your own decisions.”

  She smiled gratefully at the elegant blond man. “Thank you. Now will you tell my brother that? He might listen to you. I’ve scolded him until I’m blue in the face, but he just shrugs as if I’m talking nonsense.”

  “I don’t think it’s your brother with whom you’re really angry,” Richard said quietly, standing to snag two glasses of champagne from a passing footman.

  God give her strength. Everyone had an opinion on her marriage. Her brief charity with Sir Richard evaporated into irritation as she accepted the proffered glass. “I think you should mind your own business.”

  Richard laughed softly. “And I don’t think you’re angry at me either.” His expression enigmatic, he studied her oblivious betrothed. “I wonder if Sir Grenville guesses how significant the competition is.”

  She cast Richard a look of dislike. “There is no competition. In a week, I’m going to marry Grenville, then I’ll have great satisfaction in showing you all how happy I am.”

  Richard raised his glass to her. “More power to your right arm, Lady Lydia.”

  For all her annoyance with Richard and every other male of her acquaintance, she couldn’t help smiling. “Hear, hear.”

  But as the ball proceeded, bravado faded, even though for once Simon seemed content to keep his distance. She should be happy about that, but illogically, his neglect made her edgier than his attentions did. If only she could convince herself not to notice where he was and who he spoke to.

  Much as she strove to avoid him, at one stage of the night, the person Simon spoke to was her. Although at least he had the good taste not to ask her to dance. He hadn’t asked her to dance since that acrimonious exchange at the ball to celebrate her engagement.

  She stood near the orchestra with Richard and two of the ladies who worked on her charitable committees. Cam and Simon approached and immediately caused a feminine flutter around her. Even Lydia had to admit that when Cam, Simon, and Richard stood together, it was difficult to decide who was the most striking.

  The dance before supper was about to begin. Grenville would come and find her any moment. It turned out that Cam and Richard were engaged to dance with her friends. Both were dashing widows of the kind her brother and his cronies pursued with solely sinful intent.

  For one moment, Lydia stepped back from her all-encompassing troubles and contemplated the three men, all tall, all dressed in impeccable tailoring, and all handsome enough to have stepped down from Olympus to dazzle mortal women.

  Odd that each of them had reached their thirties without marrying.

  Of course, Cam would marry as his duty to the dukedom. She suspected he already cast his eye over the ton’s unmarried ladies of suitable rank and bearing. He’d choose a bride as he did everything else, with his head not his heart. Which made his dislike of her engagement to Grenville even more contradictory.

  She imagined that Richard, tarred with scandal, would also choose an exemplary bride. One in the first stare of fashion if she meant to compete in any way with her husband’s elegance.

  In light of his fortune and remarkable looks, Lydia guessed that most women would overlook Richard’s dubious background. Everyone knew that he was a bastard, for all that he’d inherited the Harmsworth title. He liked to pretend he didn’t care, but she had a suspicion that the pride he hid so well rankled at the gossip. Occasionally she’d wondered if the signs of repressed temper she’d read in him might explode into defiance.

  If that happened, life could become very interesting indeed.

  And then there was Simon. Simon who she also supposed would marry sometime.

  “Just who are you plotting to kill?” Simon whispered under cover of the flirtations entertaining the others.

  Lydia started and blushed, and cursed that she did. The color in her cheeks betrayed that much as she wanted to treat Simon as a stranger, it was impossible. How he’d laugh if he knew that she indeed wanted to murder someone. The faceless, nameless, thieving, magnificently lucky woman who would become his wife.

  How he’d laugh, when right now all Lydia wanted to do was bawl. Why did he still wield this power over her? What was she doing, even thinking of him like this when she was pledged to a re
spectable man who had never faced down a whisper of scandal?

  “Perhaps you should be feeling a little vulnerable right now,” she hissed back.

  Instead of reacting with pique or anger, he flung his head back and laughed as if he found her a source of untold delight. And as Lydia stared in helpless enchantment at the man she’d loved and lost, she felt her heart crack into jagged pieces.

  * * *

  The ball had been a crush so Lydia was drooping with tiredness by the time Cam’s coach arrived to take them both home. If only there was the slightest chance that she’d sleep tonight. At this rate, she’d look an absolute hag for her wedding. Grenville would probably take one peek at her when she came up the aisle and run for cover.

  Cam handed her into the carriage before following her inside the vehicle. He shut the door after him and tapped the ceiling with his cane to bid the driver to roll on. With a heavy sigh, Lydia subsided onto the padded bench in the darkened cabin. Then some charge in the air made her sit up straight, every nerve prickling.

  “Simon.” Her voice was flat with displeasure.

  Whenever he was near, her skin tightened with an awareness that she wanted to deny but couldn’t. Even before she’d detected the patch of shadow on the seat opposite, she’d sensed his presence.

  “Don’t lose your temper, sis.” From next to her, Cam grabbed her hand where it curled into a fist in her filmy yellow skirts.

  “I have no intention of losing my temper,” she said with icy precision, breaking Cam’s hold. “I assume we’re going straight home. I can endure Mr. Metcalf’s company that long. With my brother as chaperon, even Grenville couldn’t object.”

  “How very sporting of you, Lydia.” Simon’s calm amusement made her want to cuff him.

  “I thought you might like a chance to catch up with each other.” Her haughty brother never sounded nervous. He sounded nervous right now.

  And so the worm should. Simon wasn’t the only person she wanted to slap. How she wished Cam hadn’t got this bee in his bonnet about reuniting her with her childhood sweetheart.

  “I believe Mr. Metcalf and I have already said everything that we need to,” she said in the same frigid voice, twining her hands in her lap in an attempt to quash her violent impulses.

  A bristling pause descended, filled with the faint creaking of the coach and the cry of a pie vendor a few streets away. As the carriage broke free of the traffic outside the Plaisteads’ house, it gathered speed.

  “We need to talk.” Simon’s self-assured baritone fell on her ears like poison.

  Her sparking temper incinerated all intentions to maintain a frosty silence. “I don’t think so,” she snapped. “Although I appreciate the chance to demand that both of you end this childish campaign immediately.”

  Cam turned toward her in the darkness. “Lydia, Grenville’s not—”

  “Cam, old man, it’s not the time,” Simon said quietly. “Leave it.”

  To Lydia’s surprise, her lordly brother heeded his friend’s reprimand. “My apologies, Lydia. It’s not my place to interfere.” Before she could come to terms with this blatantly insincere comment, he knocked on the ceiling once more. The carriage lurched to a halt with a suddenness that made her snatch after the leather strap hanging by the window. “I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  “Cam, what on earth are you doing?” Lydia asked, seriously worried now.

  “Giving you two some privacy.” With a speed that left her gasping, he unlatched the door and leaped from the carriage. “Bonne chance!”

  He waved to the coachman to drive on and slammed the door behind him.

  Chapter Four

  “Cam is the utter limit,” Lydia growled.

  The carriage wasn’t yet traveling fast enough for her to injure herself if she jumped out. While she had no wish to walk home unescorted, she was sure Cam would relent after he saw his sister tumble onto the open street. With an unsteady hand, she reached for the door.

  Simon leaned across the well between the seats and caught her wrist before she could release the latch. The tingling warmth of his grip shocked her into stillness.

  He wasn’t rough with her. If he had been, she’d have had no hesitation in shaking him off and pursuing her foolhardy plan. But his touch was tender as it slid upward to shape her bare arm beneath her drooping cashmere shawl. He’d removed his gloves, so the contact was skin to skin. She trembled with unwilling physical reaction. Heaven help her, the pleasure that seeped through her veins was forbidden but, oh, so alluring.

  Simon’s hold tightened. “Wait.”

  Just that. One word. No eloquent pleas for cooperation. No apologies. No excuses. And she, idiot that she was, found herself unable to throw off the restraint of that long-fingered hand. With every moment, the carriage picked up speed, putting escape further out of reach. Over the rattling of the wheels across the cobbles, she could hear the rasp of Simon’s breath. Light from outside flickered erratically over his face, lending him a demonic aspect. But she knew he’d never hurt her. Physically, at least.

  She kept her tone firm, even as insidious heat crept from his hand along her arm, down through her chest to a heart that had lain frozen for ten unhappy years. “What do you intend, Simon? I can’t believe you mean to ravish me—not with my brother’s cooperation. Even for you, that’s a step too far.”

  He laughed softly, ignoring the insult. “What a lurid imagination you have, sweetheart.”

  She collapsed back into her corner, tacit admission that for now she wasn’t going anywhere. With a trailing caress that made every hair on her skin lift in response, he released her and lounged on the opposite seat. She told herself she didn’t miss the connection. Then her heart crashed against her ribs with renewed shock when he pulled the blinds down, enveloping them in thick darkness.

  “What are you doing?” she asked sharply, pulses spiking with panic.

  “Ensuring our privacy.”

  “Is this your plan indeed? To ruin me and cause a scandal?” Her voice shook. For the first time tonight, she was truly afraid.

  “No, on my honor. You’re safe.” He released his breath in a huff of frustration. “Honestly, Lydia, you’re the outside of enough. As if I’d do anything to harm you. Even if my intentions were wicked, Jenkins is driving. He’s known you since you were toddling. One peep from you and he’d horsewhip me to Edinburgh.”

  The coach jolted over something in the road and the blind flapped, revealing that Simon had risen to his feet. She watched him brace himself against the sides of the rocking vehicle.

  “Stay away.” She edged farther into her corner, although within the confines of the carriage, there was nowhere to hide.

  Simon remained balanced above her. “Do you feel in danger, Lydia? From me? Really?”

  She battled to disregard the hurt underlying the question. The truth was that she did feel in danger, from her own weakness if nothing else. She was angry with Simon but angrier with herself. How could he turn her into this quivering jelly of indecision? A virtuous woman would insist on going home immediately. This tête-à-tête promised only heartache. But sweet memories kept her silent.

  Since she was seventeen, Simon’s kisses had haunted her.

  She sensed him lowering toward her. She placed a shaking hand on his chest, feeling the rhythmic bang of his heart through the palm of her glove. “Don’t.”

  Unexpectedly he cooperated. But then he was probably afraid that she still contemplated diving headlong from the carriage. Or shrieking for Jenkins. Above the coach’s rumble, she heard the shuffle and slide of his body as he retreated to his side of the carriage.

  She knew she should rail at him for this latest trick, but in truth, she was so weary and dejected, she couldn’t summon the energy. She closed her eyes on an unspoken prayer for guidance and rested her head back against the leather seat.

  However often she told herself that Simon was a stranger, she acknowledged that wasn’t entirely true. Over the last week and very muc
h against her will, she’d devoted more time than she’d admit to observing him. She’d noted that he was still considerate to the people around him, whatever their rank, and still inclined to find amusement in life’s small ironies. Ladies still turned like sunflowers to the sun to stare after him, drawn not just by his appearance but by some aura he’d always possessed, even as a boy.

  Heaven forgive her, but in Simon’s presence, Grenville faded into a complete nonentity. Although conceding that made her feel like a filthy traitor.

  Simon was at ease in his own skin in a way that nobody else she knew was. Everybody in the ton had someone to appease or impress or persuade. Even her powerful brother disguised his true self beneath a façade of almost inhuman self-discipline as he faced down the scandal of their mother’s affair with her glamorous brother-in-law. If one didn’t know him as Lydia did—and she recognized that Cam concealed unassailable depths that he’d never shared with her—one would imagine that not a shred of genuine emotion stirred beneath his immaculate shell.

  But Simon was content to be Simon. He always had been. It was breathtakingly attractive, even to a woman determined not to succumb to his appeal.

  “That’s a heavy sigh for a lady on the verge of marrying the man of her dreams,” Simon said softly.

  She examined his remark for a sneer but didn’t find one. “I’m tired, Simon. The last week hasn’t exactly been carefree.”

  He didn’t evade the implied criticism. “I’m sorry. It must be difficult to know that Cam opposes your engagement. You’ve always been close.” Simon didn’t need to add that they’d had to be. In the Rothermere household, neither Cam nor Lydia had found refuge in a parent’s love. “And my presence can’t make things easy.”

  “You could go away again.” Lydia paused. Her voice hardened as she recalled her justifiable resentment. “That’s probably your intention. To disrupt my wedding then disappear.”

  She couldn’t see his face, but she knew by his voice that he was smiling. “Oh, Lydia, sweetheart, you know me better than that.”