Chapter 12
Joan hardly knew what to think when Tristan Burke left after threatening to kiss her again.
“Threaten” was definitely the proper word for it.
The wretched man seemed to know how much the first kiss had unnerved her.
What was wrong with him, wanting to kiss a woman just to fluster her?
And what was wrong with her, that she allowed it to fluster her?
It was because he was a rake, she decided, who probably thought he could kiss any woman in the world and she would swoon at his feet.
It meant nothing to him, and should mean nothing to her—except, she consoled herself, that it was a valuable lesson from a reputed master.
When she was finally kissed by a respectable man with honorable intentions, she would be glad of a little knowledge.
Yes, that was the proper way to view it.
It had nothing to do with her, or with him; it was about planning for future, more romantic, encounters with true gentlemen.
And Douglas, setting that man on her! He had to know his friend’s reputation. Douglas, in fact, had probably been present for most of its wicked formation. She didn’t know what her brother had been thinking. He knew Mother didn’t approve of Lord Burke.
Of course, Mother wasn’t here. And it didn’t seem as though Evangeline would protest Joan spending time with him—or with any other gentleman, not that any others had come to announce their intention of escorting her about town.
She wondered why he had agreed to it, and then she said a small prayer that his attentions, whatever they might be, wouldn’t cause her any trouble.
She gave herself a shake and strode back toward the dressing room where she’d been happily sampling Evangeline’s bonnet collection before he arrived, only to meet her aunt coming up the stairs.
“Shall we go see Federico now?” Evangeline looked rather pleased about something. “I couldn’t wait—I sent off a note warning him we may call on him this very afternoon. If we order some gowns today, they should be ready within a week. I’ve a feeling we shall want to go out more.”
“Oh, yes.” Quickly Joan banished the infuriating Lord Burke from her thoughts.
She was desperately curious to meet the creator of Evangeline’s wardrobe.
Today her aunt wore a dress whose bodice looked more like a man’s shirt than a woman’s dress, with a collar and loose sleeves.
It was nothing like the dress Joan wore, but it looked comfortable, and even more important, it didn’t make her look like an umbrella. “Let me get my bonnet.”
“You mustn’t be put off by Federico’s manner,” said Evangeline when they were in the carriage. “He routinely runs roughshod over my every suggestion, but in the end his judgment is impeccable.”
“Of course.” Evangeline had been fortunate enough to find someone who knew how to flatter her figure.
Joan . . . well, Joan knew her mother meant well, just as she also knew that all of Mother’s carefully chosen designs never quite looked as elegant on her as they did in the illustrations.
She was tired of trying to conceal her figure with tight stays.
She had given up hope of looking elegant in the latest fashions.
She was tired of sitting for an hour while Janet curled her hair into a style that only made her look taller and plumper.
If Mr. Salvatore could produce a gown, any gown, that made her look attractive, Joan would wear it even if it caused a minor scandal.
And that would teach Lord Boor to call her an umbrella, wouldn’t it?
“Does Viscount Burke call upon you frequently?”
“Er.” Joan gave a guilty start at the unexpected question. “You saw him?”
“Yes.” Evangeline just waited, but her keen gaze brought a blush to Joan’s cheeks.
“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “Yes. Well, you see, he’s a friend of Douglas’s, and .
. . and . . . and he came to express his good wishes for Mother’s recovery.
” For some reason, a blithely innocent story was not coming to mind.
She kept hearing him saying he could kiss her and make her like it—as if he hadn’t already done so.
“How kind of him. He gets on well with your mother, then?”
Joan fiddled with her glove, thinking frantically.
If she were truthful, Evangeline would probably send Lord Burke on his way without further ado.
No doubt Papa had extracted a vow of good behavior from Evangeline as well.
Her promise to her father most likely required that she admit to her aunt how much Mother disliked and disapproved of Lord Burke.
But for reasons she didn’t like to examine, she didn’t want to do that.
“I don’t think he’s terribly well acquainted with Mother,” she said, hoping lightning wouldn’t strike her for that understatement. “But he’s been friends with Douglas for ages, and no doubt he called merely to be polite.”
“He told me Douglas asked him to look out for you. As a surrogate brother.”
Joan scowled. So much for her attempts to cast it in an ordinary, uninteresting light. “Yes. He said something of that sort to me, too.”
For a moment there was silence. “He looks remarkably like his father,” Evangeline remarked. “Such a tragedy. Colin Burke was one of a kind.”
She darted a glance at her aunt, but Evangeline had tilted her head to peer out the window at the sky. “Oh?”
“Oh, my, yes.” Something like admiration lit Evangeline’s face as she smiled in remembrance.
“He was the sort of young man your father was forbidden to associate with, for fear it would reinforce every wicked impulse your father had. Well, no doubt my father was right! You know your papa was once as big a rascal as Douglas, don’t you?
But Colin Burke . . . ah, my. He had the devil’s own charm, the handsomest face in England, and not a single ounce of fear.
All the young ladies were fascinated by him—so dangerous, so attractive, so charismatic!
But he was no fool, either. He wasn’t the heir, so he married the daughter of a naval man who’d made a fortune on the sea.
” Evangeline’s smile faded. “Such a tragedy,” she murmured again.
Joan nibbled her lip. She didn’t actually know what had happened to Lord Burke’s parents, but it sounded very sad. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely his fault he’d grown up with no manners. “Tragedy?”
“Yes.” Her aunt’s mouth twisted sadly. “Both he and his bride died before the age of twenty-five. He drowned, I believe, and she . . . I can’t remember. A broken heart, perhaps. I certainly would have, if I’d been his wife.”
Joan did some silent arithmetic. “Lord Burke must have been a very small boy when they died.”
“He’s the same age as Douglas? Yes, he must have been very young. I remember hearing about Colin Burke’s death the summer I was married, and that was the year before you were born. Ah—here we are.” The carriage was coming to a halt.
Evangeline said no more about Lord Burke, and Joan didn’t ask more as she followed her aunt.
He must not even remember his parents. As much as she chafed under her mother’s strictures at times, Joan couldn’t imagine life without her parents.
If they’d died when she was a baby, she might have been raised by—ugh—Lord and Lady Doncaster.
Not even having her cousin Mariah as a sister would have made up for that.
Somehow it seemed unlikely her parents would have left her and Douglas to Evangeline’s care.
She wondered who had raised Lord Burke, and why, in Douglas’s tales of him, he’d always seemed to be at some schoolmate’s home for school holidays.
It wasn’t a reason to like him, of course, but perhaps it was a reason not to think so harshly of him.