Anne Gracie – An Honourable Thief (страница 5)

He stood out like a battle-scarred tomcat in a sea of well-fed tabbies. Tall, lean, rangy, sombre. Detached. A little wary and yet certain of his prowess. His eyes ranged over the colourful throng. Kit wished she could see the expression in them. His very stance expressed the view that he could not care the snap of his fingers for the lot of them.

He looked more like a predator than a guest.

His hair was dark, midnight dark and thick, she thought, though cropped quite brutally close; not quite the Windswept, not quite the Brutus. A style of his own, Kit thought, or perhaps he disdained to follow fashion.

She wondered who he was. He did not seem to fit in this colourful, pleasure-seeking crowd. He stood, a man apart. Indifferent.

His face was unfashionably bronzed, the bones beneath the skin sculpted fine and hard. A long aquiline nose, just slightly off centre. A long lean jaw ending in a square, unyielding chin.

Not elegant: arresting.

His mouth was firm, resolute, unsmiling. She wondered what it would take to make him smile.

A woman hastened to greet him: their hostess, Lady Fanny Parsons. Kit watched him bend over her hand. He was not a man accustomed to bowing—oh, he was graceful enough, but there was a certain hesitation, she noticed, a careless indifference.

Lady Fanny was laughing and flirting. As Kit watched, the man shrugged a pair of very broad shoulders. The hard mouth quirked in a self-deprecatory grimace. She wondered what they were discussing.

“Miss Singleton?” came the youthful voice at her elbow. “Is he not the most divinely beautiful man you have ever seen?”

Kit blinked. Elegant she could accept. Striking, certainly. Even a little intimidating. But divinely beautiful? Never.

She turned to her young friend, only to find her looking at some other, quite different man, a very pretty young fellow in a pale blue velvet coat, striped stockings and pantaloons of the palest primrose. Sir Primrose had been standing beside her man of darkness, Kit realised. She wanted to ask her young friend if she knew who the dark stranger was. Such a distinctive man would surely be well known.

“Who is—?”

But he had disappeared.

Just then, Lord Norwood came to claim his dance with Kit. And soon the music started and Kit was too busy dancing to think of anything except the delightful sensation of being a young girl at a fine London ball.

She would think about the tall dark man later.

“Hugo Devenish! How very unexpected,” gushed Lady Fanny Parsons, surging forward in a froth of satin and lace. “I was certain you would ignore my invitation as you usually do, you wicked man.”

“Ignore you? Never, Lady Fanny.” Hugo bent over the hand she offered him. “’Tis just that I am so rarely in Town.”

Lady Fanny laughed and rapped him playfully with her fan. “And I hear you have been doing battle with frightfully dangerous criminals, you hero, you! So brave, such a risk you took. I heard the latest fellow was a desperate great ruffian armed to the teeth!”

Hugo quirked an ironic brow. “Rumour does me too much honour. It was a small, unarmed Chinaman.”

“A Chinaman! Good Heavens! I hadn’t heard that! What on earth would a Chinaman be doing breaking into the Pennington house—?”

“Black pearls are highly prized in the far east, I have heard.”

“Of course, the famous Pennington Black Pearls! Poor Eliza is just devastated, you know, and her husband is furious! An heirloom. Worth an absolute king’s ransom!”

Hugo nodded. “Yes, I was unable to save them, unfortunately.”

“Oh, but think how much worse it could have been if you hadn’t disturbed the blackguard!”

Hugo shrugged, but said nothing. He had already explained to Pennington that he felt the thief had already completed his depredations when Hugo arrived.

“Oh, you are so wonderfully modest, dear Hugo. I am so glad you are here—you can protect me tonight, in case any nasty Oriental thieves break in.” Lady Fanny giggled girlishly and rapped his arm with her fan again.

Hugo bowed again, then took his leave of Lady Fanny and made a leisurely way across the crowded room to where a lady had been glaring at him since his arrival.

“What the devil has brought you to London just now, Hugo?” said Lady Norwood, leading him into a small anteroom.

Hugo observed her coolly. “I was under the impression that you had written me no fewer than eleven missives, stating in terms of utmost urgency that you required my immediate attendance.”

“Yes, but I wrote you at least six more after that telling you most expressly not to come!”

He smiled and raised a glass of champagne to his lips. “Yes, that is what decided me. I arrived this afternoon and when I presented myself in Portland Place, your butler informed me you were attending Fanny Parsons’s ball. And since Fanny had sent me a card…”

Lady Norwood stamped a foot. “Well, it is most inconvenient of you. I beg you will return to Yorkshire tomorrow morning without delay. Your presence is not needed here any longer, and to be frank, Hugo, you are very much in the way.”

Her late husband’s half-brother did not seem at all perturbed by her hostility. He shrugged. “You wrote to me that you were in grave distress.”

“Oh! Yes. Well, I was. I have been so frightfully worried about Thomas, you see.”

“About Thomas?” He regarded her with faint disbelief.

“But I have, Hugo, you have no reason to look at me like that.” She pouted winsomely in his direction. “You know what a doting mother I am, and oh! the cares of motherhood.” She sighed soulfully.

Hugo, displaying a lamentable lack of gallantry, did not respond. She peeped a glance at him through her downcast lashes. His expression was cynical.

“Dibs not in tune, eh, Amelia? Too bad. You’ll not get a penny from me, so you may as well give up the play-acting.”

Amelia abandoned her soulful mien. “You are nothing but a penny-pinching clutchfist, Hugo!”

Looking bored, Hugo strolled to the doorway and observed the dancers currently engaged in a cotillion.

His sister-in-law was not fooled by this apparent interest in his fellow guests. She glared at his back. The sight he presented did not at all meet her fastidious standards. His hair was cropped far too short and was not coaxed into a modish style, but simply brushed back from his brow. His shirtpoints were starched, but not high enough to be fashionable; his neckcloth was so plain as to be an affront to any person of taste. His coat fitted him perfectly, but it was of such a dark shade that it made him look almost as if he was in mourning, particularly in combination with his black pantaloons.

The entire effect was too sombre for words, but Amelia was forced to concede that his attire, at least, did not disgrace his family. It was the man himself who was the problem.

Those shoulders…She shuddered. More suited to a labourer than a gentleman. And his skin, which he’d carelessly allowed the sun and wind to darken to an unfashionable brown colour. She glanced at the hands holding the wineglass and sniffed. He could have worn gloves, at least! Those hands—tanned, and covered with nicks and scars—a shameful testament to a youth spent in manual labour.

She averted her gaze from her brother-in-law’s offending person and concentrated on his miserly habits.

“Not everyone enjoys a life of monkish isolation and deprivation, Hugo. We have expenses, Thomas and I. The life of a fashionable person costs a great deal. You—” She cast a disparaging glance over his plain clothing. “You would have no idea of the demands on a gentleman’s purse.”

The faint, disparaging emphasis on the word “gentleman” did not escape Hugo. But these days he was indifferent to it. His mother had been old Lord Norwood’s second wife, an heiress, with the stigma of trade attached to her. And Hugo was only the second son, after all, and with the blood of “dammed tradesmen” in his veins.

Lady Norwood continued, “In any case, as Lord Norwood, Thomas has a position to maintain, and he has every right to the fruits of his inheritance! You have no business denying—”

“Thomas’s inheritance, madam,” interrupted Hugo in a blighting tone, “was a shamefully neglected estate, a crumbling manor house, mortgaged to the hilt and falling apart with disrepair and a mountain of debts to go with them! The fact that Thomas was left anything at all was no thanks to my father and my half-brother, but to whichever far-seeing ancestor of ours established the entail which prevented them gambling away every square inch of land.”

Amelia squirmed, uncomfortably. “Yes, I know, but that is all in the past, after all. And everything has changed now, and you have returned and can—” She broke off as she glanced at him and saw the look in his eye.

She pouted and fiddled with her rings. “Well, I’m sure I am sorry about what happened to you, but it is not as if you suffered too badly—”

“You know nothing about it, madam.”

“Possibly not, but I can see you are very far from purse-pinched, after all. From all I have heard, I’m sure you could pay Thomas’s debts, and mine, and barely even notice it. We are family, after all.” She did not meet his eyes.