Tempting Fate Page 7

  Gabriel shrugged. “Unkind as it may be, Mrs. Winterton speaks the truth.”

  That earned him an approving look from the woman in question.

  And a scowl from Felicity as she glanced from him to her companion.

  Through most of dinner, Mrs. Winterton and Felicity spoke of schedules and events, of gossip and the garden. Gabriel didn’t eat his stew, but found the lamb superb and the dessert uncommonly good. After the meal, his lids threatened to droop, his muscles untangled, and he found himself quite content to lounge at the table sipping his port until they’d quite finished their discussion.

  He might not have many manners, but he knew to stand when the ladies did. He trailed them up the grand staircase and bade Mrs. Winterton good evening when she broke off to a second-floor bedroom. As a companion, she was another member of staff who didn’t sleep with the servants.

  He tried not to notice as Felicity stepped a couple of stairs above him, though her bustle was quite at eye level.

  How strange that women changed their shapes thus.

  What did Miss Felicity look like unclad? He’d seen her in her nightrobe, a billowy cream confection that left much to the imagination. And only then from a distance, backlit by a dim lamp through a window.

  Christ, he was a mangled pervert. Good thing he wasn’t staying. He couldn’t look at her like this for long without going mad.

  He trailed her down the third-story hall and was surprised when she stopped in front of his room, turning to address him. “Are your accommodations adequate, Mr. Severand?”

  He loved the way the lamps gilded her hair like strands of spun gold. “More than adequate.”

  She seemed to cast about for something else to say.

  “Since we’ll spend so much time together, you might call me Gareth in private,” he suggested. “If you like.”

  “I do like,” she said brightly, then winced. “I mean, I’d be delighted. Might you call me Felicity? Or Miss Felicity, if you prefer.”

  “I might.”

  “Well…” She shifted, and he wondered if she was as reluctant to go as he was to let her. “I’m told I snore loud enough to be heard through the walls…” She trailed one fingertip across the blue arabesque paper. “So, I apologize if that disturbs you.”

  “It won’t.”

  “Yes. That’s good… I’ll bid you goodnight then.” She made no move to leave, merely traced the outline of the repeating pattern on the wall. He could watch her mind working, see the cogs and wheels turning while she searched for something to say.

  “Is something troubling you?” he finally asked.

  She looked up at him, suddenly appearing extraordinarily young. His fingers itched to smooth away the pinched lines of worry from her brow. “Nighttime is never extremely comfortable, is it? The dark is so full of silence and my thoughts are so terribly loud.”

  “I often find sleep infuriatingly elusive.” He surprised himself by revealing something honest.

  She bit her lip, then released it, transfixing him. “You know, I woke up dreading the day, but it turned out not to be so terrible after all.”

  “I’m glad of that.”

  “So… thank you, Mr.— erm— Gareth.”

  “Goodnight, Miss Felicity.”

  “Sweet dreams.”

  He watched her until she closed her door, knowing that if her voice followed him into his dreams, they’d be very sweet, indeed.

  Chapter 5

  Felicity thought Lord Duncan Murphy, the Earl of Bainbridge, was uncommonly handsome for a man just over forty. Vital and graceful and ceaselessly dashing, he did nothing without an effervescent flair, and could flay one alive with such cunning wit, most people forgave him instantly for making them laugh.

  Ages ago, perhaps in a Tudor court, he’d have been a jester. Whispering satires into the King’s ear and seductions beneath the queen’s skirt.

  Felicity did her utmost to pay attention to him as they strolled through Hyde Park.

  The late morning held on to a pall of mist she and the tall, elegant rake on her arm displaced with their legs. The sun tried, and failed, to permeate the high clouds, but somehow the dew on the leaves still managed to linger and sparkle despite all that.

  She did appreciate the tinge of silver threads teasing the auburn hair at his temples. And his whisky eyes glinted and snapped with his inescapable cleverness. He was uncommonly fit, and moved with an unaffected amble most would consider confident, but she thought bordered on the edge of arrogant.

  Felicity catalogued these things as he spoke, having lost the conversation some minutes prior. Following Mrs. Winterton’s sage advice, she simply nodded and made encouraging noises when the tone or pitch of his voice seemed to warrant it.

  So far, it’d worked like a charm.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy Bainbridge’s company, she did. Yet, her entire body— all her focus and awareness— was concentrated on the man following behind them at a circumspect distance.

  Watching. Always watching.

  Gareth Severand’s gaze was a tangible thing, and she didn’t find it at all unpleasant, merely distracting.

  Upon awaking that morning, she’d rushed through her ablutions and toilette, more eager than usual to come down to breakfast.

  Wrenching the door open, she’d frozen on the spot.

  There, on a decorative table next to her door, sat a gleaming pair of spectacles and a watch hanging from a sapphire hummingbird brooch.

  Someone had gone to the glasshouse in the night and found her missing treasures there. They’d cleaned them to a sparkling shine and returned them without disturbing her.

  Without leaving a note or waiting until she was awake to deliver them into her hands and receive the deserved accolades.

  She knew, without a doubt, that he’d done it.

  Her servants were lovely, but they knew she preferred them to avoid the glasshouse. That was her domain. Her sanctuary. The one place she could go to truly be alone.

  The thought of him lingering within the enclosure didn’t at all bother her.

  In fact, it—

  “It is a happy thing to see you out of your dreadful mourning frocks, Felicity.” Bainbridge sniffed his distaste. “You quite look like a sunbeam in that gown.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured, smoothing her free hand over her velvet bodice. Everyone from Lucy, her lady’s maid, to Mr. Bartholomew, to the driver of her carriage, commented on the loveliness of her new gown.

  Everyone, that was, except Gareth Severand.

  He’d merely scanned her once over from her hem to the feather in her cap. Mutely offered his hand to help her into the coach.

  And then sat up with the driver.

  Probably to keep a lookout for danger and all that…

  His lack of notice didn’t bother her. That would be silly. And it wasn’t that she’d donned the frock with him in mind, per se.

  But she had caught him admiring an amber-gold glass figurine the day before, and thought he might be partial to the color.

  Now that she thought about it… perhaps he’d been admiring the shape of the nude woman the statue depicted, and not its shade at all.

  “What color shall you wear to the ball tonight?” Bainbridge asked down at her. “I own every shade of buttonhole and tiepin, and should like to complement your gown.”

  “Oh, um… It’s a gentle sort of color… not gold, not silver, not ivory… nor is it pink.”

  He let out a silken laugh that bared his even, white teeth. “Well, now that I know what it’s not, I’m more intrigued than ever.”

  “It’s a sort of diaphanous color, like champagne.”

  “And here you make a liar of me,” he winked. “When I said I had every color, I forgot about champagne. I’ll have to see what I can do on such short notice.”

  She cast him a conciliatory glance from beneath her lashes. “I’m sorry for being difficult.”

  “Think nothing of it.” He nudged her affectionall
y. “Speaking of difficult, you usually bring Mrs. Winterton along to these sorts of outings, do you not?”

  Felicity winced in sympathy. “She is suffering the gastric effects of a poorly cooked fish stew.”

  His pout was meant to seem affected, but she thought there was some genuine disappointment in the gesture. “Poor thing. I was rather looking forward to her disapproving frown, icy glare, and scorching condemnation.”

  At that, Felicity smothered a giggle with her silk glove. “Oh, it’s not so bad as all that. Mrs. Winterton barely approves of me. It’s why she was hired, I think. Father liked nothing so much as a censorious person. And she’s been ever so much kindlier since his passing.”

  “Yes, but I’ve often wondered why you keep her? Especially now that you have this strapping barbarian who’s almost half as frightening as she is.” He chuckled at his own joke.

  Felicity had to be very careful not to check over her shoulder to ascertain if the strapping barbarian in question had taken offense.

  “Mr. Severand is employed for my safety, not my companionship, and Mrs. Winterton reminds me of Mercy, so I can’t help but like her very much. We’re more friends than we are employer and staff.”

  “You have to be careful of that,” he cautioned with a wry smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You let someone like that get close, and they’ll take you for everything you have.”

  That drew her brows together. Bainbridge had always been a bit caustic, but she’d not known him to be so cynical.

  “How many times should I dance at the ball with you?” he asked, levity returning to his manner as if he’d summoned it from thin air.

  Felicity chewed on the inside of her lip, wondering if Bainbridge was every bit as wicked as he seemed, or much, much worse. She enjoyed his company always, but questioned if he was like this even when alone.

  When no one was there to watch his spectacle.

  “You know as well as I that dancing with me more than once would make a statement of intention…”

  “And what do you think about that?” he pressed gently.

  Her step faltered a bit, and she brushed it off as if checking her shoe for a flaw. “A statement? Are you implying you want to make one? But we’re not… and you’re…”

  “Old?” His lips twisted into a rueful sort of smirk.

  “I wasn’t going to say that,” she rushed to placate his feelings. “I mean, you are quite twenty years my elder, but I was more thinking about how a connection might come across as a bit… incestuous, you being my cousin and all.”

  “Second cousin,” he corrected. “And I know that’s fallen out of fashion these days, but we needn’t even produce an heir if you’re not inclined. I merely thought that since your father’s title and certain lands passed to me upon his death, so, too, might your delightful self. Furthermore, you mentioned in the past, you’d like to find a way to keep the holdings together.”

  “I-I did, but…”

  “Oh!” Bainbridge lifted a hand and waved enthusiastically at a group of gentlemen. “Pardon me, dear Felicity, I see a scoundrel with whom I must have a word. I’m going to leave you in the hands of this fellow for no longer than it takes for a kettle to whistle.”

  He hurried away over the green expanse of lawn, leaving her beneath the shade of a beech tree by a bench made of iron and oak.

  Felicity sank onto it, unfocusing her eyes at her twirling her parasol as she fought a rising bout of nerves.

  Bainbridge had spoken so blithely about marriage. As if it were a lark. But— God willing— she’d several decades to live her entire life. Deciding what that future would look like— and with whom she would share it— seemed like too monumental and overwhelming a task to leave in her own hands.

  What if she made an enormous mistake? This was the sort of contract only broken by death.

  Or worse, divorce.

  She had no idea about marriage. Most of the books she read ended by the time the vows were spoken. And when asked, her sisters all claimed to have known the men they married were the loves of their lives. Their choices were absolute and their regrets nonexistent.

  Whereas she… she’d received twelve proposals by post once she’d entered half mourning. Most of them from men she’d hardly met, and all of them little better than business contracts. Noblemen, politicians, even an impoverished duke, all offered to take over the running of her father’s shipping company.

  Indeed, her suitors thought that offering her a generous stipend of her own money was tantamount to courtship.

  Bainbridge represented a different course, or so she thought. Someone she knew. Someone she liked.

  However, behind his charm lurked something secretive, something that set alarm bells tolling in her head.

  Was this fear valid, or something foisted upon her by her already nervous, overwrought disposition?

  Blast, but it was bloody awful not to trust oneself.

  She felt a presence before she heard the faint rustle in the grass beside the bench. A large body sheltered her from the increasingly chilly breeze as Gareth Severand stood sentinel at her side.

  She glanced up at him, so glad to have the help of her spectacles to observe him.

  Lord but he was compelling to look at. From every angle, she learned something new. Discovered a scar or mannerism she’d not previously detected. His teeth ground together when he pondered the world, as if chewing on his thoughts to make them more palatable. He’d a vein in his forehead, just beneath his widow’s peak, that would appear when he was tense or irked. His eyes were never still, never fixed; they made ceaseless journeys across his entire vicinity, and she suspected he identified and catalogued any perceived threat, no matter how slight.

  From this angle, she could tell he’d nicked himself shaving this morning beneath his jaw.

  A vision of the man about his toilette distracted her from her troubled thoughts. His hair was combed back into organized layers tamed with pomade. His jaw clean-shaven, but threatened with a slight dark shadow in the places where the scars didn’t shine.

  She pictured him at the mirror, running a blade over his ruined cheeks, his hair in damp disarray and collar open, exposing his chest.

  It was easier to picture him sprung from the darkness just as he was. Clean and dark and presentable. Never disheveled or rumpled.

  Suddenly, her hand itched to glide through the strands of his tamed hair. To pull it and muss it and play among the glossy strands.

  “Are you all right?” He never looked at her once, just stood by her side, scanning the promenading elite as if he expected to find an assassin in their midst.

  Starting, she tore her gaze from appreciating him. “I find myself amazed, Mr.— er— Gareth.” They were in public, but no one was paying them any mind. She felt alone enough to dare the intimacy of his first name. If she were honest, she needed the connection. “Does Bainbridge think that was some sort of proposal? To match his tiepin with my dress and dance with me more than once? What does a lady even do with that?”

  That muscle ticked in his jaw as he rolled his shoulders in the semblance of a shrug.

  Felicity craned her neck to look up at him until he finally seemed to feel her stare and glanced back.

  A bemused wrinkle appeared between his brows, as if he were shocked that her question wasn’t a rhetorical one. “I… wouldn’t presume to imagine what a lady of your station might do in any given situation.”

  “How very politic of you.” Her lips twisted in a rueful smile as she tried to hide her disappointment. It was not that she expected any sage advice from her personal guard, he was just the only person she knew in her vicinity at the moment.

  “May I speak freely, Miss Felicity?”

  “Only if you sit. I shall hurt my neck staring up at you.” She scooted down the bench to make way for him, and he sank next to her, attempting a respectable distance.

  The world really didn’t make furniture large enough to accommodate men like him.

/>   Their knees touched, and Felicity couldn’t seem to move hers away.

  If he noticed, he didn’t make it obvious. Instead, he glared in the direction of Bainbridge and his cadre of gentlemen, maybe six in all, who were hanging upon his every word. “Is there a chance this Bainbridge has ulterior motives?” he ventured with apparent caution.

  “Such as?”

  “How would a match with you benefit him?”

  At this question, she frowned. “I don’t know; he did inherit my father’s title of Baron, but he tucks it under his own far greater one of Earl. He’s possessed of vast estates and a good name. I can only think he’s offering out of a sense of kindness or duty.”

  His stony features shifted only in barely perceptible increments from grim to dire.

  “You don’t agree?” she assessed.

  “I don’t trust kindness and duty as motivations for anyone, especially men like Bainbridge.” He flicked his gaze to her, squinted, and looked back at Bainbridge as if his eyes couldn’t land upon her for too long.

  “In your professional experience, how does one go about assessing another’s motivations?” she puzzled.

  “You could try asking him.”

  At his dry suggestion, Felicity made a sound of consternation in the back of her throat before she drew back to take in his entire expression.

  A muscle in his cheek tightened, lifted, and his grey eyes glinted with something more soft than sharp.

  He was teasing her.

  “Don’t be a cad,” she admonished with a smile, before following his gaze to her cousin. He was a rather stunning individual. All lithe and lovely in a bespoke grey suit. His skin perfect, his jaw angular, and his teeth astonishingly straight. Half the women in Christendom wanted Bainbridge as their lover. The other half had reportedly had him already.

  She blew her cheeks out on an eternal sigh. “I hate asking uncomfortable questions more than just about anything in the world. I’m always afraid people will be hostile or humiliating. Especially someone like Bainbridge, with his famously sharp wit.”