“We?” Lord Farrington turned his horse at the Queen’s Gate end of the Row and headed back up it.
“And I think you should invite another couple or two as well,” Kit said. “We must not appear too obvious, after all. Eminently respectable couples, I need scarcely add.”
“Of course. And I am to forget to mention in the invitations that the infamous Lord Ravensberg is to be one of the party, I suppose?” his friend asked.
“No, no,” Kit protested. “I would not win by foul means. She will be determined not to come when she knows I am to be there. Sutton and his betrothed, when they know it, will exert all their considerable influence to dissuade her from accepting. So will Anburey and his lady. And Attingsborough. Probably Portfrey and the duchess too, though I am not at all sure that I don’t have an ally in that particular lady—she has a twinkling eye. Anyway, I count upon the discouraging chorus about Miss Edgeworth being loud enough to persuade her to come just to spite them all.”
“Tut, tut. You may as well pay your debts now and resign yourself to your father’s choice of a bride.” Lord Farrington shook his head before prodding his horse to a gallop and leaving his unwary friend in his dust for a moment.
But winning his wager had become an appealing as well as a necessary challenge, Kit realized before going in pursuit. She was prim and proper and apparently without even a glimmering of a sense of humor. At the same time she was hauntingly beautiful, and she was not immune to a challenge. Certainly she did not allow her relatives to rule her. And she had shown some intelligence as well as spirit in spurning his deliberately blatant flatteries in the park. What would such a lady be like in bed? he wondered suddenly. It was an intriguing thought.
He needed to see her again. For the sake of his wager. For his chance to go to Alvesley on his own terms. And for the personal challenge of somehow penetrating that cool, ladylike faзade—if there was anything beyond the faзade to penetrate to, that was. There might well not be.
The roses had wilted after a few days. But one bud was still pressed between several heavy volumes a footman had carried up to Lauren’s sitting room from the library below. It was too perfect to be allowed to die and be forgotten, she had told herself.
She had refused all further invitations to ton events after the Mannering ball and the drive in the park. She had gone shopping and walking for exercise. She had read several books from both the duke’s collection and Hookham’s subscription library. She had worked diligently at her embroidery and at her tatting. She had written almost daily letters to Gwendoline and Aunt Clara, Gwen’s mother. She had even written one to Lily and had the duke enclose it with his daily missive—Lily was his daughter. If there was a certain boredom in her days, a certain restlessness—well, that was a lady’s lot in life.
But on this particular evening she was riding in the Earl of Sutton’s town carriage with the earl and Wilma. They were on their way to the theater at the invitation of Lord Farrington to watch a performance of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Viscount Ravensberg was to be a member of the party.
“You must sit between Sutton and me when we arrive, Lauren,” Wilma instructed, not for the first time, as the carriage drew up behind a couple of others close to the theater doors.
Wilma had been vociferous in her determination not to accept her invitation, and she had had a firm ally in her betrothed. But a couple of weeks ago Lauren had discovered a hitherto unsuspected side to herself—a stubborn disinclination to have her activities ordered for her by others, however well meaning. All her life she had behaved the way she believed a lady ought to behave. And look where it had got her. She had informed Wilma that she was accepting her own invitation even though she had never met Lord Farrington. She was still not sure what she would have done if Wilma had not considered it her duty to accompany her with Lord Sutton.
The carriage inched forward and a doorman opened the door and let down the steps. A gentleman stepped forward from the throng about the theater doors and reached up a helping hand.
“Miss Edgeworth?” Viscount Ravensberg said. “Allow me.”
He looked incredibly dashing and handsome in his swinging black opera cloak and silk hat. Lauren set a hand in his even as Wilma and Lord Sutton murmured ineffectual protests.
“Thank you, my lord.” She stepped down to the pavement.
“A violet cloak,” he said, “with a matching gown beneath. But the shade is paler than your eyes this time—and less lustrous. I have missed you. I have looked for you everywhere and not seen you. I had to descend to this stratagem.” He led her through the crowded foyer of the theater toward the staircase up to the boxes.
“Why?” she asked.
He countered with another question. “Why did you accept?”
“Perhaps,” she said, “because I admire the work of Mr. Shakespeare.”
He chuckled.
“Lauren,” Wilma called from behind them, “do remember to sit between Sutton and me. I need you to tell me what is happening on stage. I am such a dunce. I never did understand all that archaic language.”
“There,” Lord Ravensberg murmured. “Your excuse to escape my lascivious clutches has just been presented to you, Miss Edgeworth. If you sit beside me, as you are invited to do, you may find me whispering naughty nothings into your ear all evening and touching you in places I ought not to touch you under cover of the darkness.”
His words were shockingly outrageous. They were meant to be, she realized, just as his lavish praise of her beauty had been meant to provoke rather than deceive her that day in the park. She would not show her indignation. She would merely be playing into his hands and affording him amusement, she suspected. Though why it should amuse a man like him to goad someone like her she did not at all understand.
“If I had wished to escape your clutches, my lord,” she told him, “I would have remained at home.”
“Provocative words indeed,” he murmured before stopping outside one of the boxes and opening the door.
A couple of minutes later, having been introduced to Lord Farrington, Miss Janet Merklinger, and Mr. and Mrs. Merklinger, the young lady’s parents, Lauren seated herself on a velvet-covered chair at the front of the box even though Wilma, still in conversation with Mrs. Merklinger, tried to snatch at her arm to detain her.
Viscount Ravensberg took the seat beside her.
Despite all her good intentions Lauren felt a prickle of awareness along the arm closest to him and a stirring of anticipation that felt very like excitement. If he should be forward or impertinent or otherwise outrageous, she would deal him a sharp setdown. She almost looked forward to pitting her wits against his.
Life was usually so very dull and predictable.
She sat, as he expected, without touching the back of her chair with any part of her spine. But it would be inaccurate to describe her posture as ramrod straight. There was an elegant arch to her back. Indeed, there was grace in every line of her body. A disciplined grace, that was. And perhaps an unconscious one. Certainly she watched the play with all her attention, her hands motionless in her lap, her closed fan clasped in one of them.
Kit watched her.
Did she realize that he did so? Had she noticed the considerable stir of interest their entry into Farrington’s box had aroused in the pit and the other boxes? Numerous quizzing glasses and lorgnettes had swung their way, and heads had moved together in that way people have when exchanging gossip. There had been a flurry of talk, of course, when he had driven her in Hyde Park the day after dancing with her at the Mannering ball—particularly, according to Rush, over the fact that he had borne her off along one of the shadier paths instead of completing the social circuit with her. But two weeks had passed since that occasion with nothing to fan the flames of speculation.
She seemed oblivious to the interest she had aroused. She turned her attention away from the stage only when the first act ended.
“I had forgotten,” she said, “what it is like to watch a live performance of a play. One forgets one’s very existence, does one not?”
“I have not been watching the play,” he confessed, deliberately lowering his voice.
Her lips compressed in an almost imperceptible expression of annoyance, and she opened the fan in her lap. Clearly she understood his meaning. Equally clearly she still did not approve of his form of light flirtation. He did not approve of it himself. He was capable of far more effective subtleties. But he found it amusing to discover how far he could push her before she lost her cool control over her temper—and to discover too what would happen if ever he could push her so far. Was there anything interesting behind the cool faзade?
Everyone else in the box had risen. Farrington was bearing Miss Merklinger off in pursuit of a glass of lemonade. Her parents, very correctly, were following closely behind.
“Lauren.” Lady Wilma Fawcitt touched her cousin on the shoulder. “Sutton has offered to escort us across to Lord Bridges’s box to pay our respects to dear Angela. Do come along.” She smiled graciously at Kit. “Goodness, you will feel quite abandoned, Lord Ravensberg. But we will be back for the second act.”
Lady Bridges was Sutton’s sister, Kit recalled. He got to his feet. Miss Edgeworth did not. She fanned her face slowly and set one slim arm along the velvet rest at the edge of the box.
“I believe I will remain here, Wilma,” she said. “Do please convey my respects to Lady Bridges.”
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