Chapter Ten
“Be damned to a thousand eternities of pain, thou Wretched Fiend!” she sobbed, struggling against the supple, scaly limb that surrounded her.
To have made it all the way to sunlight!
To have tasted fresh air upon her lips and then be corralled again in such a humiliating fashion—it was too much to bear.
“Let me go! If thou won’t help me, yet have no desire to kill me, why keep me here as a prisoner? ”
—The Dragon and the Blue Star by Analise Crewe
“It’s hopeless,” Aunt Glynis sighed, an air of injury creasing her brow.
“She can’t be readied for her debut at Lady Chetwynd-Ellerton’s ball, at least not in a fortnight’s time.
I swear it cannot be done, even by me. My dear nephew, you have given me an impossible task.
I’m throwing in the towel. Find another chaperone for that hoyden. ”
“You can’t quit. I’m counting on you,” Dex pleaded. “What has Miss Crewe done now? I’ll have a talk with her.”
“It won’t have any effect. She’s impervious to good sense.
She’s more whirlwind than young lady. She’s been dragging me all over town to various and sundry locations of interest and pestering me with an inexhaustible stream of oddly specific questions about societal rituals.
I tell you my nerves won’t stand for it. ”
Dex sympathized. He hadn’t had a moment of peace since Miss Crewe arrived in his home.
Her warmth and vitality filled the entire structure, even when he wasn’t physically near her.
He could hear her laughing with the maids, smell her clean lavender scent in the hallways.
He found her pencils in the oddest places.
They reminded him how fiercely she’d fought to protect herself on their first meeting, how a woman half his size had almost bested him with the aid of that humble but dangerous writing implement.
That made him smile despite himself. And smiling made his scars ache.
The nights were the worst part. She had somehow found entry into his dreams. They were rife with bright red-gold hair and soft pink lips, supple skin that pressed into his own, tangled limbs.
He dreamed she was pulling him from a dark cave into bright sunlight.
He dreamed he was unfurling a great roll of cloth, and when he’d reached the end of it she tumbled out.
Perfectly naked. Looking up at him with lambent green eyes, her arms outstretched, murmuring, “How does kissing work?” and other inane but wildly pleasant questions that woke him right up, boiling hot and aching to go back to sleep so that he could show her.
They never spoke without arguing, yet in his dreams all they did was . . . entirely inappropriate and entirely forbidden things.
“I’m afraid I’m partially to blame for those harebrained ideas. I said something about her novel lacking the ring of practical experience and now she’s determined to experience as many of the things her heroine experiences in real life.”
“Well-bred young ladies should not be writing novels, and they certainly shouldn’t be rehearsing them.
She’s altogether too eccentric and opinionated to be a success.
My advice for you, my boy? Give up the notion of introducing her to society altogether.
Find some impoverished lord to wed her, offer him a handsome settlement, and he’ll take her off your hands. ”
Her words filled him with disgust. Why did the idea of Miss Crewe marrying a fortune hunter make him so ill? It must be because he knew her to be a romantic. She’d never be happy in a loveless marriage.
“She must have her chance to dance at balls, to be on display, to make her own choice from the potential suitor pool.”
“Then I wash my hands of this whole affair. I will not chaperone her at a ball, for fear she might say or do something to damage this family’s good reputation.”
There was a loud knocking on the door. “Enter,” said Dex.
McArdle burst into the room, bright spots of color on his cheeks, panting heavily. “Your Grace, Miss Crewe is causing a commotion in the ballroom. She’s forcing the footmen to fight a duel and it’s frightening the maids.”
Aunt Glynis raised her eyebrows. “You see what I mean? I wash my hands, I tell you. You’re on your own, my boy.”
“Wait, Aunt, don’t leave. There must be something I can do to induce you to continue?”
The good lady paused. Though a veritable pillar of society, she was not immune to bribery. He did some quick mental calculations. “Your townhouse—I’ve heard you speak of renovations?”
“Ah yes,” she sighed, turning aggrieved eyes skyward. “The whole thing needs remodeling! Such a sorry state. But the cost—”
“Allow me to cover it.”
“And the furnishings! In such desperate need of updating . . .” Aunt Glynis was far too good to gloat, but she had him where she wanted and they both knew it.
“I’ll cover them. Anything you want. Just stay.”
“Anything I want? Any designer I choose?”
“Yes, of course. Just please stay. I need you.”
She favored him with a regal smile of acquiescence. “Very well, nephew. I can see how much this means to you. I shall renovate your Miss Crewe, and you shall renovate my home.”
“Take the afternoon and evening off. Go and begin arrangements for the renovations.” He escorted his aunt out of the house, relieved he’d managed to find a way to keep her as chaperone.
And now to douse the next conflagration threatening his once tranquil home.
Dex found Miss Crewe in the ballroom commanding a crew of reluctant duelists, who were arranged in formation on the shining oak-and-walnut floor. She was barking orders and waving her arms in the air, like an orchestra conductor about to box the ears of a second violinist with lamentable timing.
“Seconds! Where are my seconds? You are to stand behind but to the side—here and here, so that you may observe your friend’s actions and avenge as necessary. No, no—Mr. Appleby! You are the second to Mr. Smythe. You must not turn your back to him, however will you see the action?”
The poor Mr. Appleby shuffled shamefully around to face his assigned duelist, whose face wore a look of aggravated martyrdom.
“Now you (yes, Mr. Smythe! You!) raise your pistol, Mr. Harkins same, yes that’s it.
That looks right. Hold them steady, you’ve only got one shot to defend your honor! Now, lower your arms, take aim and—”
“Miss Crewe!”
She jumped, spinning around guiltily.
“Are you really forcing my footmen to duel? You do realize that I actually need footmen who are alive and unmaimed to maintain my house?”
She gave a trill of laughter. “Only a mock duel! And infinitely necessary, so that I may describe the scene more fully in my novel. It was difficult to pinpoint the relationship between pistol and principle without seeing it in the flesh. The pistols aren’t loaded, of course,” she added, reassuringly.
“Of course.” He turned to the footmen, who were frozen to the parquet in embarrassment.
“You may go. Surrender your pistols to McArdle and continue about your day,” he told them, as the four slunk by in procession.
He caught a glimpse of ornate scrollwork on the handle of Harkins’s gun, held cautiously away from the poor ex-duelist’s body between thumb and forefinger.
“Please tell me they weren’t using my own personal dueling pistols. ”
“I meant to have them back in your study before you returned.”
He glared at her in amazement.
“Miss Crewe, what am I to do with you? Aunt Glynis just threatened to quit her post.”
A wide smile, swiftly replaced by mock concern. “How very sad.”
“Don’t look so pleased with yourself. I bribed her to stay. I’m now on the hook for a whole new apartment’s worth of overpriced furniture and draperies.”
“Did Aunt Glynis think of that? I’m surprised!
I was certain she had no imagination whatsoever.
She doesn’t understand me, or my quest for knowledge.
Her world is very narrow, especially where young ladies are concerned.
” She laid her hand on his arm. “I believe that worlds should be widened, not narrowed. Life holds so many possibilities, it’s positively dizzying. ”
She was constantly in motion. Her hands making descriptive gestures as she spoke, flying high, punctuating her point, touching him to make sure he understood what she was saying.
That soft touch of her fingers on his forearm and he had to steel himself, clenching his jaw in concentration.
Don’t reciprocate. Don’t reach for that hand.
Touching her anywhere, everywhere, was beginning to occupy an alarming quantity of his thoughts.
It put him off-balance, and he didn’t like being off-balance.
It was time to restore order to this household, and to his heart.
It would be helpful if the daylight reflected in the chandeliers overhead stopped setting those shimmering blazes in her hair.
Hard to set his world to rights with nature actively plotting against him.
“Perhaps my aunt lacks a certain . . . verve, but she has an impeccable reputation, which is what you badly need to cement your own respectability during your debut.”
“I appreciate that she’s attempting to make me palatable to society, but it will never work. I’m a redheaded—”
“Spitfire of a hellion . . . so you’ve said, and so I’ve observed.”
“A hellion can’t change her stripes.”
“I wasn’t aware hellions had stripes. Are you mixing your metaphors?”
“Tiger, then! Head-to-toe stripes. And this one’s completely unable to change hers.”
He had the feeling she’d be sticking out her tongue at him if his back was turned.
“But she can use her keen intellect to ascertain when it’s in her best interests to obey her guardian.”
The cavernous ballroom with its wide windows and high ceilings felt somehow small with her in it. No matter how far away from her he was, she seemed close by. It was her energy, her sparkling life force, creating an intimate pull on all his senses.
“I would be more willing to obey if said guardian allowed said hellion—tiger, a modicum of freedom now and then.”
“You’re no prisoner.”
“Am I not? Lady Glynis wants me to put on a decorous, docile act. How would the gentleman who agreed to marry me feel if he thought he was engaging himself to a compliant paragon of propriety only to discover that my true nature is not at all to his liking, or society’s?
Pretending I’m something I’m not is a kind of prison. ”
Dex sighed. “Miss Crewe, no one wants you to be someone you’re not. I only ask that you adhere to the basic rules that are in place for your protection.”
“You do love your rules and regulations. Your entire household is run as if it were a military company.”
“And you live your life at the mercy of every whim that enters that infernal head of yours.”
She tossed the head in question back, the better to look up at him.
Her eyes held a challenging gleam, her small chin jutting forward mutinously.
He’d never felt taller, or paradoxically more vulnerable.
Here was a duelist worthy of sparring with, using words as blades to get under his skin. How did she wield such power?
“If this were Greek mythology, you would be the deity known as Chaos.”
“And if you were a Greek god,” she rejoined immediately, “you’d be named Taciturnus.”
“That’s not an actual mythological figure.”
She shook her head, impatience making her curls dance. “Then you’re Zeus the Grim, hurling glowers and grunts like thunderbolts from the sky!”
“It’s all for your own good. What I’m hurling at you is care and protection, you should be grateful.”
“I’m sure Zeus told himself that very lie every night!” Her verbal rapier thrust made contact. He winced. She glowed in triumph. Dex took a deep breath to regroup.
“Will you just promise to behave? And stop destroying Aunt Glynis’s nerves? She’s gone home for some well-deserved rest.”
“But aren’t we meant to go to the gallery opening this evening?”
Damn. He’d forgotten about that. Why had he allowed his aunt to leave? “We’ll have to cancel. You have no chaperone.”
“But I was so looking forward to it! I’ve always wanted to visit a gallery and meet artists.”
“You should have thought of that before you scared Aunt Glynis away.”
“Then I do apologize, Your Grace.” With a sudden change of demeanor, she gave an elegant dip of obeisance, bowing her head diffidently.
So she did know how to curtsy! The little minx.
“I, Analise Crewe, do solemnly promise to follow all your many rules this evening! Please do let me attend, I’ll be ever so quiet and docile. You won’t even know I’m there.”
Somehow he doubted that was possible.
“You said yourself there will be respectable duchesses there.”
“I said there would be duchesses. I’m not certain how respectable they are. My friends made . . . unusual matches. I suppose I could ask one of them to look after you tonight.”
“Splendid! I’ll be a model of propriety. I’ll drift around like a silent ghost, taking mental notes for my novel.”
He wasn’t buying this new tractable facade. She’d gotten her way, and now she was all demure smiles. It should have been infuriating. But it was . . . invigorating. Gratifying. He liked seeing her smile. He particularly enjoyed being the reason she was smiling.
Damn. And there it was again—his own smile, testing the edges of his scars.