Georgina Devon – The Rake's Redemption (страница 3)

‘I am being blunt and honest.’

‘Then why do you always come to my beck and call?’

He pondered that. ‘For the pleasure of doing as I please. You see, like you, I have been spoilt and am used to having my own way.’

‘Exactly.’ She gave him a triumphant smile. ‘That is why I know you are just the one to do this.’

He raised one brow.

‘Oh, yes.’ She was so excited her breath came as though she were running. ‘There is a masquerade tonight. I want to go.’

He stepped back from her. ‘Then go.’

‘Don’t be stupid. I need someone to take me.’

‘Ask your sister.’

‘Ask me what,’ Emma Stockton said.

Her voice was so cold that Charles immediately decided to see how far he could provoke her. It was a pastime he found entertaining.

He turned and watched her stride across the balcony until she stood barely a foot from them. Her auburn brows formed a tight V and her usually full, peach-tinted lips formed a thin line of anger and disapproval. He found himself delighted.

It always amazed him that he reacted to her this way. She was not voluptuous or even particularly beautiful, but she was striking and for some reason he couldn’t understand—didn’t want to spend the time trying to understand—she always made him want to bait her.

‘Your delightful sister has plans for later this night. I told her that she should ask you.’ He kept his voice to a soft drawl, which he knew would irritate her. It always had in the past. Ennui was so difficult to assuage.

Emma turned her attention on her sister. ‘Amy?’

The younger Stockton scowled at her sister for all she was worth, while casting appealing looks at Charles. ‘Really, Em. It is nothing. Mr Hawthorne is making something big out of something that doesn’t exist.’

Charles nearly shook his head in amazement. Instead he laughed. He couldn’t help himself. The girl was a minx and the person assigned to control her couldn’t. He nearly pitied Emma Stockton.

‘What is so amusing, Mr Hawthorne?’ Emma Stockton’s voice dripped acid. ‘I find this entire situation skirting the boundary of acceptability. But then, I suppose, you already know that and choose to do as you wish. It seems to be a trait in your family.’

Her sarcastic words, perfectly aimed, sobered him. ‘If you had a sword, Miss Stockton, you would have scored a very solid hit.’

‘I know that.’

‘Oh, stop bickering you two,’ Amy’s light voice intruded. ‘You are ruining the evening. It is supposed to be about fun and excitement and the two of you make it seem awful.’

Charles found he could not look away from Emma Stockton, no matter what the girl said. The woman seemed fit to explode. Colour mounted her high cheekbones and her grey eyes seemed lit from within. Suddenly, he had had enough of taunting her.

He made a brief leg. ‘I will be about my business, ladies. I wish you a good evening—what is left of it.’

He departed without a backward glance, glad to be away before Emma Stockton went up in flames. Even he, as selfish and hedonistic as he was and bent on entertaining himself during a dull Season in any way possible, didn’t want to be around for the fireworks he knew were to come.

Emma felt Charles Hawthorne’s departure in spite of herself. It was as though the warmth had fled, leaving only her cold anger at him and her sister.

‘Amy, you know you should not be out here with a man of Charles Hawthorne’s ilk. Think of your reputation.’

Amy defiantly met Emma’s gaze. ‘There is nothing wrong. The doors are open and—’ she half turned and swept her arm in an indication of the gardens below ‘—there are people walking on the paths. Nothing would have happened.’

Emma wondered if she had ever been this headstrong and bent on achieving her own purpose no matter what the cost. She didn’t think so. From the first, she had realised someone needed to be responsible and help Mama. Her anger softened at the memory.

‘Amy,’ she said gently, ‘it is not a matter of anything happening. Exactly. It is a matter of propriety, and young girls don’t go outside alone with a man like Charles Hawthorne.’ Amy stood so they were eye to eye. ‘Well, we might have been brother-and sister-in-law. Surely that counts for something.’

‘Amy,’ Emma said reproachfully, ‘you know better than that. If I had married Lord Hawthorne, things would have been different. But I didn’t, so you can’t use that as an excuse. Society will forgive much in a man that it won’t forgive in a woman. Always remember that.’

‘Humph!’

Amy made to flounce around her sister but Emma grabbed her sister’s arm and held tight. ‘You still haven’t told me what the two of you came out here to discuss.’

Amy simultaneously tossed her head and tried to wriggle from Emma’s grasp. Emma let her go.

‘Nothing.’

‘Amy.’ Emma felt her patience shredding.

‘Oh, all right. There is a masquerade. I wanted him to escort me because I knew you wouldn’t.’

Emma gasped in spite of herself. ‘You are the most brazen girl. You would have ruined yourself for a couple of hours of pleasure.’

‘No, I wouldn’t. I would have worn a mask. No one would even know who I was.’

‘So, is he taking you?’

Amy half turned away, giving her sister a look from the corner of her eyes. ‘And if he is?’

‘Don’t goad me, Amy. I am not in the mood for it.’

And she wasn’t. Already she found herself wanting to lock her sister in her room with only bread and water, but Amy wasn’t a child anymore even though she acted like one. Next, she wanted to land Charles Hawthorne what her brother Bertram would call a facer. But she would do neither.

‘You are never in the mood for fun, Emma. That is the problem with you.’

Emma glared at Amy.

‘Oh, all right. No, he isn’t taking me.’ Her voice fell. ‘I was surprised. He is always game for anything.’

Emma silently groaned at her sister’s naiveté. ‘And what if you had been recognised? He might be reckless, but he’s not stupid. Your reputation would be in shreds and someone might start thinking he should marry you—something I very much believe he has no intention of doing.’

A flush spread across Amy’s fair face. ‘He certainly made that plain.’ She smoothed the fine white muslin of her gown, her eyes not meeting Emma’s. ‘But men change…if they want something badly enough.’

‘No, they don’t.’ Emma snapped the words, hearing the fatal misunderstanding so many of her sex seemed to have regarding men. ‘They don’t change.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Amy persisted. ‘Besides, Em, I am tired of this conversation. And he is not taking me to the masquerade. So, as far as you are concerned, things couldn’t be better.’

Emma would have begged to differ, but knew it did no good to argue with Amy when she had her mind made up. All she could do was try her best to be an obstacle in the young girl’s reckless path. To lecture Amy would only make her sister try harder to achieve what she ought not.

Chapter Two

E mma alighted first from the hired carriage they rented when need dictated. They lived in a genteel yet shabby part of London. The walk to Lady Jersey’s ball would have been too far, even for women raised in the country. Delicate ballroom slippers were not made for long distances and wearing one’s half boots and carrying one’s slippers to a fancy ball was not done.

Amy followed Emma. ‘Em, what engagements do we have tomorrow?’

Emma turned to pay the coachman, who tipped his hat before driving away. She moved to the front door, pulling a key from her reticule. ‘I believe we are at home tomorrow afternoon, Amy. At night, we should have been at a rout at the Princess Lieven’s but it has been postponed until the next evening.’

‘Nothing tomorrow afternoon,’ Amy murmured.

Amy’s voice held impatience and something else that Emma always dreaded. Excitement. She didn’t need Amy to say any more to know her sister had arranged or was planning something that would not be to anyone’s liking but Amy’s.

‘Why do you wish to know?’ Emma worked to keep the growing apprehension from her tone. Provoking Amy to further indiscretions was the last thing she needed to do.

‘Oh, nothing.’ Amy waved her gloved hand in an airy sweep. But there was a sparkle in her blue eyes that spoke of mischief.

Rather than press the issue, Emma said, ‘Then you had best get some sleep.’

A glance at Amy showed the young girl had missed Emma’s irony. Yes, Amy was definitely concocting something.

Emma inserted the key in the lock and pushed open the door. No servants waited up for them. It wasn’t fair to ask their old butler, who did many other things now because they were short of staff, to wait up. Nor would she ask the housekeeper who now filled in as lady’s maid. They rose at dawn, so she would not ask them to stay up until dawn.

Emma watched Amy trip blithely up the stairs, a bounce in the girl’s step that spoke of suppressed energy and excitement. Amy was enjoying her first Season immensely.

Emma remembered her own and wished she had been as young and unconcerned. But she had been twenty during her first Season. Her debut had been delayed three years while she nursed Mama and then for the year of mourning. When she’d finally come to London, she had known above all else that she needed to marry well.