An Infamous Proposal Read online

  Emma couldn’t believe the young gentleman Nick had been puffing off to her could be so obtuse. She assumed her guest had the same playful disposition as Nick and retorted, “No indeed, there is nothing trifling in Nick’s way of falsifying matters.”

  “Lady Capehart is jesting, James,” Nick said.

  “Ah. I’m not sure it’s wise to trifle with a gentleman’s reputation, Lady Capehart,” he said. His gentle voice made it less a reprimand than a suggestion.

  Emma looked a question at Nick. He shrugged his shoulders and spoke to Mr. Hunter. Before long the company was laughing at some foolishness having to do with a fixed horse race. Lord James listened closely, shaking his head in dismay. Tea was brought in and the conversation continued. Nick kept Hunter occupied to allow his cousin to make headway with Emma.

  “Do you live with your parents at Revson Hall, Lord James?” Emma asked.

  “I have been, until the present, except for the Season, of course, when one goes to London. It’s time I find my own way in the world. I have pretty well decided to enter the clergy.”

  “I expect your papa has a good living at his disposal?” she asked. Like Nick, she assumed a younger son would leap at the chance of stepping into an excellent estate instead. James’s reply caused a doubt.

  “He has two or three, but I have no opinion of plurality. One church and one flock is enough to keep a vicar busy. Actually, I would prefer not to exploit my favored position in Society. I intend to find a small country vicarage on my own and work my way up on my own small merits.”

  “That’s very—noble,” she said.

  Emma noticed that Nick was listening in on their conversation and directed a long, accusing look at him. She assumed Nick had coached his cousin to propriety, but he had done his work too well. James sounded like a stick-in-the-mud.

  “I trust your clerical goals don’t preclude dancing, Lord James?” she said, trying to lure him into more natural conversation. “Nick is having a rout party this evening in your honor.”

  “Oh, indeed, I have nothing against dancing. I’m not a Methodist. Every race indulges in the dance. Anything so widespread must be natural to man. Though it is only our decadent society that has turned it into something lascivious. I am referring, of course, to the waltz.”

  Emma was rapidly losing interest in him. “Even the waltz can be done decorously,” she said with a flouncing pout.

  James’s lips softened in a smile. When he replied, Emma sensed some ambiguity in his words. “Yes, it can, but why put temptation in man’s way?”

  His eyes were hot as they moved over the widow’s stormy eyes and pouting lips. He noticed the fullness of her breasts and her dainty white hands. Self-restraint could only succeed so far. Human nature would out.

  Nick sensed that the conversation was not going so well as he had hoped. He drew James into conversation with Hunter, and after he rose to fill his teacup, he sat beside Emma.

  She gave him a long, questioning look. “Tell the truth, Nick. Did you put Lord James up to it?”

  “Up to what?”

  “To pretending he is some sort of saint or hermit?”

  “Certainly not. What has he said?”

  “You didn’t mention that he intends to enter the church—and at the lowest level he can find.”

  “A few years ago he wanted to go and fight in the Peninsula. This year it’s saving souls. James never does things by halves. He’d change his mind about the church, if a better offer came along.”

  “I don’t plan to offer for him! I’ve learned my lesson.”

  “I should have said a better opportunity,” Nick said, cursing his slip.

  Emma gazed across the room at Lord James. She was intrigued by a gentleman who would want to don a shako and sword and kill men one year, and become a lowly vicar the next. A gentleman who condemned the waltz, yet who looked at a lady with fire glowing in his eyes. And who was young and handsome and nobly born besides.

  “Well, what do you think of him?” Nick asked.

  “He’s fascinating,” she said.

  Nick looked at her uncertainly. “Are you practicing the art of dissimulation, or do you mean it?”

  Her surprised look told him she was serious. “No, he really is fascinating. I look forward to knowing him better.”

  Nick’s mind told him this was an excellent thing. It would be good for James, good for Emma, and good for himself to have a sensible neighbor. But the satisfaction and pleasure he expected wasn’t there. In its place was a worm of discontent, as Emma gazed across at James with that faraway look in her eyes while he expounded some salutary tale on the evil of gambling to Mr. Hunter. That Mr. Hunter was listening to him with apparent interest was the greatest surprise of all.

  “Of course, James is very young,” Nick heard himself say. “Still wet behind the ears, really. His next notion may be to turn Whitehern into an orphanage or some such thing. One never knows what freakish start he’ll come up with.”

  He expected a scold for having brought a gentleman of such unstable ways into her company, and after puffing him off as unexceptionable as well.

  Emma smiled softly. “That’s what is so fascinating about him. But don’t worry that I would let him turn Whitehern into an orphanage. I have a little experience in handling gentlemen, you must know.”

  “I’m glad you like him,” Nick said.

  She tilted her head to one side and sat a moment, thinking and darting glances at James, across the room. “I haven’t said I liked him. I only said he’s fascinating. Snakes are fascinating, too. It doesn’t mean one approves, only that one is interested. He may prove too volatile for me to handle.”

  But the little smile at the corner of her lips told him she was looking forward to trying. Lord Hansard soon left, taking his cousin with him.

  “We shall see you all this evening, then,” he said, making his bows.

  Lord James cast a long look at the widow and said in soft, caressing accents, “Perhaps I was a little hasty in condemning the waltz, Lady Capehart. As you said, it can be done decorously. Will you save me the waltzes?”

  “I look forward to it, Lord James,” she replied, and gave him her hand. He lifted it to his lips. Custom decreed that the hand should stop an inch below his lips. Emma thought perhaps it was James’s gazing at her so intently that made him misjudge the distance, but his lips definitely grazed the back of her hand for a longish moment. When she felt a flicker of moisture on her flesh, she gave a start of alarm.

  Hansard took James’s elbow and said, “One would think you hadn’t been fed!” and, in a thoroughly bad humor, led his cousin out the door. Nick was accustomed to having the waltzes with Emma. He had been looking forward to it.

  As they drove home, Lord James chided gently, “You didn’t warn me the widow is a beauty, Hansard. I was quite unprepared for it. I fear I may have misbehaved. It was kind of you to call my attention to my lapse, for I quite lost my head. It was her perfume, I think, that did it. That lovely scent of mimosa. A light-skirt I had under my protection last year used that perfume. She was a hellion in bed. Mimosa acts like an aphrodisiac on my senses.”

  Nick gasped in astonishment. “A light-skirt? I heard nothing of this.”

  “Papa did an excellent job of hushing it up, as he always does.”

  “I’m packing you off home tomorrow, at dawn.”

  “Ah, Cousin, you wrong me. I am a changed man since my affair with Lily. I have learned the unwisdom of consorting with the muslin company. Only think, a child of mine being raised by a light-skirt.”

  “You got the woman enceinte?”

  “So she would have me believe. At it turned out, she was three months pregnant when I first knew her—intimately. No, the child was not mine, but it might have been. It taught me a lesson. I have reformed. That is what decided me to enter the church and lead a life of sobriety, doing good to atone for the ills of my scarlet past.”

  As James was only twenty-two, Nick assumed he was not ye
t a hardened rake. He was young enough to change his ways. Marriage would be an excellent thing for him. “Whitehern is a very profitable estate,” he said.

  “Yes, and of more interest,” James murmured, “did you notice that Lady Capehart’s eyes, if I am not mistaken, had the leer of invitation?”

  “Lady Capehart was not leering! She is a perfectly respectable widow, and I expect you to remember it.”

  “I shall certainly try, Hansard. I have a dreadful weakness for ladies, you know. I had hoped that daily doses of prayer might cure me, but prolonged abstinence is taking its toll. I am quite determined to behave myself, however. I shall go to my room when we return and read a few sermons by John Donne. Don’t let me read his poems. They incite me to ... Ah, but you wouldn’t understand. You are old and settled in your ways.”

  “I’m three and thirty. Not exactly Methuselah!”

  “If you have lived so close to that enchantress all these years and not seduced her, you are invincible. How do you control your passions?”

  “I bear in mind that I am a gentleman, and Lady Capehart is a lady.”

  “And a woman,” James said softly. “I shall have her—in marriage, I mean. When confronted with two evils, I always choose the prettier.”

  “And the other evil?”

  “Work, Cousin, in the field of the Lord, harvesting souls. I never really felt it was my calling. The jackets are so unbecoming, and all that fustian about truth and honesty. But with Lady Capehart by my side, I could be a saint in my own way.”

  Nick decided that he would give his young cousin a chance at reformation, but the lad would want watching. If he veered down the garden path, he would be dispatched home at once.

  Nick spent a few moments in the stable speaking to his groom when they returned to Waterdown. Lord James said he would go to his room to read the sermons. When Nick went inside, he went to the library to hide the copy of John Donne’s love poems. He couldn’t find the book. He called his butler and asked about it.

  “I believe you’ll find Lord James has it, sir. He asked for it the moment he came in.”

  “Will you please tell him I need it, immediately.”

  Nick waited, pacing the length of the marble-floored hall while his butler went abovestairs. He told himself the churning in his stomach was due to the possibility of James offending Lady Capehart. It would be unconscionable if she were seduced by his cousin and houseguest. Really! Why hadn’t Lady Revson warned him of this ungovernable streak in James?

  The butler returned empty-handed. “It seems I was mistaken, your lordship. His lordship says it was John Donne’s sermons that he borrowed from the library. Odd, as he borrowed them earlier and didn’t return them,” he added, with a raised eyebrow.

  “Thank you, Simms,” Nicholas said, and darted up to pound on James’s door.

  “Enter,” Lord James called. “Ah, it is you, Nicholas, vigilant to prevent my falling into errant ways. What an excellent cousin you are.”

  He handed Nick the book of poems. “Unfortunately,” Lord James said, “I have my favorite poems by heart. Perhaps if I apply myself diligently to the sermons, I shall overcome this weakness.”

  “You bloody well better!”

  “I make you a solemn promise, Hansard, if I— forget myself with Lady Capehart, I shall do the right thing by her.”

  “Very kind of you!”

  “Noblesse oblige,” Lord James said, and smiling vaguely, he pulled the sermons out from under his pillow. “And now, if you would leave me, I shall apply myself to the sermons.”

  Chapter Nine

  Emma didn’t have time to get the green silk made up into a gown before the rout party. She had to wear one from before John’s death. As he had liked her to cut a dash in Society, however, her greatest problem was deciding which of the many hanging in her closet to choose.

  After examining half a dozen possible choices, she chose a low-cut rose taffeta gown that was flattering to her raven hair and creamy skin. With it she wore the diamond necklace that had belonged to John’s mama. It was not large, but the stones were particularly fine. They dazzled like concentrated rainbows around her creamy throat.

  She felt a little pang of regret when her carriage wheeled up through the whispering oaks and elms of Hansard’s park, with the hall rising in splendor against the purpling sky of twilight. It would have been fine to call Waterdown home, to stand in the entrance of the grandest home in the county by Lord Hansard’s side, welcoming their guests.

  His shocked “Marry you!” echoed in her ears. What had she been thinking of to offer for him?

  As the party had been assembled on short notice, Lord Hansard was not having any guests to dinner before the rout. It occurred to him that he could ask Emma to be his hostess, but in a provincial society, that would lead to marital expectations. As the locals had two hosts that evening, they were well satisfied.

  Hansard was almost sorry that Emma looked so ravishing when he greeted her. To see her back in colors after her long mourning carried him back to the first time he had met her, after her marriage to John. He had been astonished then that John had landed such an Incomparable and imagined future trouble for his aging neighbor with so extraordinarily beautiful a young wife.

  The trouble had never come during John’s lifetime, but when he glanced at Lord James, he had a sinking sensation that it had arrived now. The loose-lipped smile on the young lord’s face told clearly that he had forgotten all about the sermons of John Donne.

  “You came!” James exclaimed in reverent accents, when Emma came forward to be welcomed.

  Emma curtsied and said, “Good evening, Lord James.” But she said it in a very satisfied way.

  As the last guests straggled in, James said, “Let us begin the dancing with the waltzes, Cousin. It is not a formal ball, after all.”

  “No, let us not,” Hansard replied through thin lips. “And I don’t want you making a cake of yourself over Lady Capehart, James.”

  Nick was almost happy to note that Mr. Hunter had secured Emma for the first set. Any romantic menace he represented paled to insignificance beside the greater peril of the “fascinating” Lord James.

  Nick glanced around uneasily to see if James was misbehaving himself with any other lady, only to find him glued to the wall, watching Emma with a small, anticipatory smile on his handsome face, as patient as a cat lurking beneath a tree to catch a sparrow unaware. But as Nick glanced at Emma, he realized she was no sparrow. She was aware of James’s attention. Her coquettish glance flickered often in his direction.

  William Bounty won Emma for the second set. When James made no move to stand up with any of the young girls who were ogling him, Nick took him by the elbow and led him away from the wall.

  “This is a rout party, not a vigil,” he said. “You will stand up with Miss Emery, and you will pretend to enjoy her company.”

  Lord James was stricken with remorse. “Was I being rude? Dreadfully sorry, Cousin, but how can a man be expected to do anything but stare when he is in the same room as her? I shall be vastly amusing to your Miss Emery to atone for my lapse. My, she’s ugly, isn’t she?”

  James danced well and seemed to Nick to make a determined effort not to watch Emma—until the waltzes began. Then he was at her side so quickly one would think he had been shot from a pistol.

  “At last!” he exclaimed, drawing her into his arms to whirl her about the floor like a caper merchant. He held her much too closely, he showered her with a hundred lavish compliments, and, as the music ended, he tucked her hand under his elbow and walked off to the refreshment parlor, where he had arranged with the butler to have a bottle of Nick’s best champagne set aside for himself and Emma.

  “Bring it to the library,” he ordered, then led Emma down the marbled hall to this spacious chamber, with a servant following them with the wine.

  One elderly couple sat by the grate. James settled Emma on a small sofa, well apart from them, snagged two glasses of champagne, and sat
beside her.

  “To us!” he toasted, adding very quickly and very earnestly, “Do you believe in love at first sight, Lady Capehart?” he asked in his gentle voice.

  “No. I believe in fascination at first sight.”

  “Surely that is redundant. Fascination is the casting of a spell at a glance—usually reserved for serpents, I believe. We have fascinated each other, ça va sans dire. What we must discover is whether it is love.”

  She disliked that charge of mutual fascination, but decided not to challenge it. “We shan’t discover that in one evening, Lord James,” she said instead.

  “Lord me no lords, and I shall lady you no ladies. Jamie and Emma. It is much too soon for it, but I feel I have known you forever ... in my dreams.” He touched his glass to hers and drank. “The names have a certain je ne sais quoi. Euphonious, if not mellifluous.”

  “Let us not rush rashly into things, Lord James.”

  “Ah, I see Cupid’s arrow has not cut so deeply into your heart as into mine. But it has nicked you, Emma. Say it has. You feel something for me.”

  “We shall see about that,” she said, but an encouraging smile peeped out to belie her show of reluctance.

  He smiled, satisfied. “I daresay a lady likes to put up a token show of resistance. It is odd that my own back is not arched, for usually when I am dispatched about the country to seek a bride, I dig in my heels and dislike everything about the lady concerned. I came prepared to find you provincial and ugly, and instead I found—perfection.” He drew her fingers to his lips and kissed them.

  “And were you dispatched to Waterdown for the express purpose of courting me?” she asked in a calm voice that concealed her curiosity.

  “It was rather a case of being summoned on this occasion. The summons came from Hansard. ‘A wealthy, impatient widow in need of a husband,’ he said. What he did not say was that you are an Aphrodite.”

  “I see,” she said, and took a sip of her wine while she digested this. “Impatient widow!” He made her sound desperate for a man. She couldn’t decide whether to be angry with Nick or amused at his simple plan.