The Seduction of an English Scoundrel

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

For a moment Grayson considered acting as if he did not notice the two women caught on their knees outside the door. But when they rose to block his escape, he could hardly ignore them. The pair had to be dealt with if he was to be a frequent visitor to this house.

“Excuse me,” he said, clearing his throat to affect a mockingly stern tone. “Do you always eavesdrop on your sister’s private conversations, or am I the focus of this prurient interest?”

The mere way he phrased the question, his voice deep with devilish intentions, made the two of them blush to their eyebrows.

Caroline responded first, swooping down to pick up the book she had dropped on the floor. “We, ah, we were chasing a spider—”

“An enormous brown one that ran all the way up the stairs,” Miranda added hastily.

Caroline waved the book under his nose for emphasis. “It seemed to be heading straight into the gallery. We hoped to catch it . . . Jane is deathly afraid of spiders.”

“And when you caught this creature, you planned to what”—he arrested the movement of the book with his hand before she could inadvertently swat his chin—“read it a bedtime story?”

“We are simply guarding Jane’s best interests,” Caroline said, dropping her facade.

Grayson leaned down to look her in the eye. “Is there any particular reason why you think I am an obstacle in the path of your noble intentions?”

“Well,” Miranda said under her breath, “you are a Boscastle.”

Caroline nodded. “A Boscastle broke her heart.”

“Which is why,” he said, “it is a Boscastle who must restore your sister’s spirits.”

“How do you intend to do this?” Caroline demanded.

“I don’t think that is any of your business,” he retorted. “I have the approval of your parents.”

“Our parents know absolutely nothing about our best interests,” Miranda said in a burst of feeling. “They should have listened to Jane when she expressed her reservations about marrying Nigel.”

Grayson hesitated, wondering if there was a weak spirit anywhere in the house. “It would appear that Nigel was the one with the reservations about matrimony.”

“Perhaps that is also a Boscastle trait,” Caroline said before she could stop herself. “The men of your family are notorious bachelors.”

The corners of his mouth curled into a daunting smile. “Perhaps you two lovely young ladies could turn your charms onto remedying that perplexing problem for me. Instead of eavesdropping.”

Miranda blushed, contemplating this suggestion until Caroline gave her a poke in the side. “The problem,” Caroline said crisply, “is that Jane is extremely vulnerable. And you are . . .”

He blinked innocently. “Yes?”

“Well,” Miranda said, finally taking up the thread, “a little overpowering. For a woman in such a vulnerable state.”

They were too precious, he thought in amusement. A pair of self-righteous kittens who had never ventured out into the cruel world. He might have to give them a well-meaning scare back to safety. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

Caroline clasped her book to her chest. “How can one most delicately phrase this? You see, there is rather a dangerous force about you that attracts young women.”

“A dangerous force?” he said with a gasp of modesty. “I never dreamed it possible.”

“And our sister,” Miranda said uncomfortably, “in her vulnerable state, might not be quite able to resist this force of yours.”

Grayson pretended to ponder this preposterous dilemma. Dangerous force? That was at least original. “I understand something of a woman’s emotional nature.”

“So we’ve heard,” Caroline murmured with an irrepressible trace of sarcasm.

He allowed a look of horror to settle on his face. “Surely you do not think I would seduce your sister after the humiliation dealt her today?”

“Of course not!” Miranda exclaimed.

“Good heavens, no!” Caroline said, although that was exactly what she had thought. “We never meant to imply that.”

He leaned one shoulder back against the door, half closing his eyes in contemplation. “Then what exactly did you mean?”

Caroline pursed her lips. “Well. For a start, you might strive to be slightly less . . . appealing to the female senses while in her company.”

His thick eyebrows shot up. “And how do I do this?”

“It would help,” Miranda said awkwardly, “if you could somehow not seem so manly when you present yourself.”

He lowered his voice, assuming a troubled expression. “I had no idea I was so offensive to the opposite sex. This is disturbing.”

Caroline glanced at her sister. “You misunderstand.”

“Do I?”

“Yes,” she continued, “while your masculine qualities are overpowering, they are not necessarily offensive.”

“Oh, good,” he said, venting a loud sigh of relief.

“In fact,” Miranda added, “your qualities are exactly the opposite of offensive.”

Caroline nodded vigorously. “Wherein lies the problem.”

“I see,” he said slowly, wanting nothing more than to burst into laughter. “It seems I shall have to seek a remedy for my appalling . . . ‘manliness.’ ”

“I rather think,” said a cool voice through a crack in the door behind him, “that your ‘manliness’ is not the problem. I believe it is how you use this attribute that puts you to shame.”

Grayson shifted his shoulder to allow Jane to squeeze into the hall. Caroline and Miranda stood, frozen in guilt, as she confronted them.

Caroline said hastily, “We were—”

“I heard what you are doing,” Jane said, “but hasn’t there been enough trouble for one day?”

Grayson nodded in agreement. “For a lifetime, I’d say.”

Jane shot him an annoyed look. Unfortunately, her sisters had a good point. The man’s virility devastated the ordinary female. Fortunately, Jane wielded tight control over her impulses. At least she had until a few minutes ago.

“If the pair of you are done solving his lordship’s problems, I think I shall retire to my room for a nice lie-down.”

“Do you require assistance?” Sedgecroft asked blandly.

Jane gave him a look. There he went again! He couldn’t help himself. The very air he breathed smoldered with seduction. “I have been jilted, my lord. Not mortally wounded.”

“Oh, Jane,” Miranda said, tears brimming in her eyes. “How much it must hurt. You are so very brave.”

Brave and mysterious, Grayson thought, his body stirring at the memory of their kiss and her disconcertingly enigmatic response. It shouldn’t be difficult to help her forget his cad of a cousin in the event Nigel did not return. The sooner, the better. Mourning an unrequited love would only make her less appealing to another prospective husband.

“Jane,” he said solemnly, inclining his head. “I shall leave you now to recover from today’s ordeal.”

She released a sigh. Her debacle of a wedding had not devastated her half as much as he had.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “You are far too kind.”

And too charming. And too seductive. And too good-looking. And too—

“Rest,” he added in a dictatorial voice. “The results of our plan will be worthwhile, but I intend to be a demanding escort.”

The thought of what he might demand sent her pulses soaring. “I have not agreed to this yet, my lord,” she said a little mutinously as he turned away from her.

He glanced back, his blue eyes twinkling, a man so full of himself it was a feat to offend him. “You strike me as an intelligent woman. You will.”

“I might surprise you,” she muttered.

“I am always open to a challenge,” he replied.

Her eyes widened. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

He gave a devilish chuckle. “Helping to restore a woman’s reputation will be an experience entirely unknown to the Boscastle male.”

And with that startling confession, he left Jane and her sisters to wonder exactly what sort of challenge he expected from this courtship. He left them staring after him in a state of horrified admiration, the power of his presence lingering in the silence that had fallen.

It was well into the small hours that same night when Jane dipped her pen into the inkwell, writing furtively at her desk by the light of a single taper.

“At least I hope I will,” she muttered, dropping her quill in agitation.

She rose from the desk and paced across the Axminster carpet of the candlelit chamber, her linen nightrail rustling in the silence, her green eyes dark with worry.

She wasn’t the sort to complain. She had gone into this whole scheme with a willing spirit, but it did seem a little unfair that she was left behind to face the consequences of their thwarted wedding while Nigel was off enjoying matrimonial bliss with his bride.

The consequences, in the form of a breathtaking example of male beauty, the marquess, appeared more dire than the fate she had hoped to avoid.

How did one forestall Sedgecroft?

One didn’t, apparently. At least not without a cost. The man’s smile alone carried the impact of a shot to a female’s sensibilities. Beneath his urbane facade beat the heart of an accomplished conqueror. Of all the damsels in distress he could have chosen to champion, why had he picked her? If the man wanted to atone for his wicked ways, why didn’t he rescue orphans or build a village hospital? Because of Nigel, of course.

“Jane?” a voice whispered behind her.

She whirled in the middle of the carpet to discover Caroline standing in the doorway. She’d half expected Sedgecroft to materialize out of her thoughts.

“You gave me a fright,” she whispered.

Caroline quietly closed the door behind her. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight. I was worried about you.”

Jane schooled her features into the mask of lovelorn dejection she had worn all day. “I have a lot on my mind. Nigel and I shared many memories.”

“Among other things.”

Jane straightened in alarm as her sister veered over to the desk. “Excuse me?”

“The two of you shared secrets, didn’t you?”

“Well, a few but—” She darted forward to rescue her revealing note from her sister’s hands. “I meant to burn that.”

Caroline looked up slowly, realization dawning in her eyes. “It was a letter to Nigel, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but, you mustn’t fret over me.” She turned and set the letter to the smoldering coals. Was there no privacy to be had in this house anymore? “In due time my heart will heal.”

“I’d say it had remarkable powers of restoration,” Caroline said wryly.

Jane glanced up from the fireplace as the flames consumed the letter. “You know me. Never one to show my sorrow.”

“You cried for a solid month when your spaniel died.”

“Well, that was a pet. This is . . . Nigel. A lady doesn’t display her personal feelings in public.”

Caroline’s golden-brown eyes speared her. “This is not public. This is me, Jane.”

“I prefer to keep my pain to myself, if you don’t mind.”

Caroline tapped her fingertips against her arm. “Spill the soup.”

“Soup? What—”

“I saw that letter. You mentioned Sedgecroft, whom you had never met before today. Hence, it was a new letter.”

“Which I never meant to send,” Jane said, her voice high and unconvincing.

“Liar.”

Caroline sent a suspicious glance around the room. A bowl of fruit sat on Jane’s comfortable four-poster, along with a stack of ladies’ magazines and a few novels.

“How long do you intend to play the tragic heroine?” she asked in an arch voice.

Jane blinked, aghast and yet a little relieved to have someone to confide in. She had never been able to keep a secret from either of her sisters in her life. They bedeviled her with their incessant curiosity, forever prying where they shouldn’t. It was a miracle she had managed to keep the truth from them this long. “I did it for us,” she burst out. “I did it so that none of us would have to accept another arranged marriage.”

“You did—” Caroline’s eyes widened in admiration. “It was a plot! Oh, my heavens. I knew it. I knew you and Nigel were planning something during all those private conversations. Miranda thought the pair of you were—well, never mind what she thought. She was wrong, obviously.”

Jane sank down onto the bed, emotionally exhausted. “It was a plot, all right, and it might have come off perfectly if not for that scoundrel Sedgecroft suffering a moral sea change and deciding to set an example for his family.”

Caroline stared at her in concern, apparently quite willing to be part of the conspiracy. “What are you going to do?”

“What can I do? I can’t tell him the truth. He’d be livid. I could never show my face again.”

“I suppose the only thing is to play along until he believes his point has been made. It can’t last forever. Rumor has it he is going to make a certain Frenchwoman named Helene Renard his next conquest.”

“He probably has a collection of conquests,” Jane said, shaking her head in chagrin. “I shall not survive.”

“Come on, Jane. He isn’t that bad.”

“No. He’s that good. As a scoundrel, I mean.”

“You have the strongest will of any woman I know, except perhaps next to me,” Caroline said, her forehead wrinkled in a frown. “I have never known you to submit to temptation, not since after the time you rode Papa’s stallion.”

“Temptation has never, well, it has never tempted me before.”

Caroline blinked, finally looking shocked at this revelation. “Does Sedgecroft tempt you?”

“Of course not,” she answered quickly, too quickly to convince either one of them. “It wouldn’t matter if he did. I have sacrificed my reputation to gain my freedom. I am not about to toss it away for a rogue’s kisses.” Even if his kisses were unspeakably erotic and would haunt her for the rest of her life.

“He kissed you?”

“Of course he kissed me. He can’t help himself.”

“What about you?”

“I couldn’t help myself either,” Jane admitted in misery, covering her face with her hands as if she could erase the memory from her mind.

“Oh, dear. I don’t suppose you liked it.”

“Yes, I liked it.” Jane lowered her hands and released a sigh.

“Well,” Caroline said after a long silence. “I suppose you’re right. Sedgecroft does not seem the sort to stay interested in a woman forever. I mean, not in a woman who doesn’t—”

“Yes, I’m afraid I know what you mean,” Jane said. “I am not the sort to hold his interest.”

“That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t become such a woman,” Caroline said, striving to be helpful.

“Becoming such a woman was hardly what I had in mind when I plotted this mess,” Jane said with another sigh.

“What would Nigel think of all this?” Caroline wondered aloud. “Sedgecroft is his cousin.”

Jane’s voice was dry. “I doubt Nigel is doing much thinking at this moment. He’s happily off on honeymoon.”

“On honeymoon?” Caroline gasped in shock.

“With Esther Chasteberry.”

“Nigel’s governess?” Caroline’s voice rose. “The robust, chaste, and chastising Miss Chasteberry? The mean one with the rod?”

“Robust she still is, according to Nigel. Chaste she apparently is no longer.”

“Well,” Caroline exclaimed, collapsing beside Jane on the bed. “Who would have imagined?”

“They love each other,” Jane said with a smile. “It is quite touching, actually, to hear him talk of her.”

“Well, that’s all very well and good for Nigel, but what about you?” Caroline asked loyally, her eyes brimming with concern. “How will you handle yourself in Society?”

“Never mind Society,” Jane said feelingly. “How will I handle Sedgecroft? Did you hear what he said? He promised to be a demanding escort. Do you have any idea what that means?”

Caroline blinked in fascination. “All sorts of indecent ideas are running through my head. What are you going to do with him?”

Jane fell back upon the bed, her face troubled as she whispered, “I haven’t plotted that part out yet.”