Chapter Nine
Caroline’s body tingled as Rockford handed her into the carriage along with his great aunt.
She had never seen any man look at her as though she were spellbinding.
She had never seen anyone lose control in her presence, and the effect had been almost overpowering. If she had been writing this as a story, that should have been the turning point for both their characters.
From then on, Caroline would have been the one in total control.
Unfortunately, real life and fiction did not often meet. When they were in the carriage and driving along the road, Rockford’s “great-aunt” revealed herself to be more than what she had seemed.
“Cor, those were fancy digs. You toffs know how to live, I’ll grant you.” The woman heaved a sigh as she adjusted, or rather loosened, her stays. “That’s better! Thought my tits were gonna fall off, they were gettin’ so pinched.”
“I beg your pardon?” Caroline felt alarm. This wasn’t the exact same situation as she’d imagined this afternoon, with a criminal taking her to the docks at knifepoint, but it was getting uncomfortably close.
“Mrs. Haddock, may I present the Honorable Miss Caroline Devereux,” Rockford drawled. The earl looked smug and handsome as ever, relaxing against the back of the coach dressed in his black frockcoat and blindingly white cravat.
Caroline felt lost, and she knew nothing could have pleased him more. Mrs. Haddock whistled as she looked Caroline over.
“You look a treat in that getup, love. Lord R over here’s got taste.” The older woman chuckled as she elbowed Rockford in the side, evidently pleased with her convincing fraud. The earl rolled his eyes.
“We’re not going to the opera, are we?” Caroline snapped. It’s what Rockford had told her father on their way out.
“I’m afraid not.” He smiled, wicked and pleased with himself as ever. She should have known this would be some nefarious plot. Caroline should have known there was a trick in all this to humiliate her. He could never have given her such a fine dress out of sheer admiration, and the thought made her cheeks burn. And now he was absconding with her to some nefarious location!
“Stop the coach. I shall not let you send me to the Mediterranean, do you hear me!” Caroline cried.
Rockford’s amusement finally fled. “I beg your pardon?”
Caroline didn’t know what else to do, so she kicked out at him. Rockford drew back his legs in astonishment.
“You bloody hellcat, watch yourself!” he cried.
“I knew this would happen,” Caroline said. “This was all a trick. You’re getting rid of me to save yourself from marriage. I’ll not be forced to leave London. I don’t care if either of you has a knife!”
“I don’t have a knife,” Rockford snapped.
“I do,” Mrs. Haddock volunteered. “But it’s more for self-defense, like. Us working women’s got to be prepared.”
“Beg pardon?” Caroline’s mind continued to churn. What on earth was going on? “What kind of profession requires a lady to carry a knife?”
“Mrs. Haddock runs one of the finest brothels in London.” Rockford spoke coldly, as if daring Caroline to speak out in judgment. Indeed, the news stunned her, and Rockford read it on her face. “Hmmph. As I thought. I suppose you’ll want to leap out of this coach now for that fact alone.”
Caroline frowned and looked between her two traveling companions. “She runs a brothel? She’s not a kidnapper?”
“No,” Rockford snapped.
“So…you’re not spiriting me out of London?”
“Trust me. I would’ve made him pay up more if we were.” Mrs. Haddock chuckled. Lord Rockford appeared annoyed by the whole situation.
“Well? What have you to say now?” he asked her.
Caroline considered a moment, then relaxed. “Forgive my rudeness earlier. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Haddock.”
“Oh. Charmed, I’m sure.” The older woman grinned. Caroline’s easy acceptance of the so-called lady of the night seemed to surprise Rockford. Good. They had returned to Caroline with the upper hand.
“You’ve been furious at my possibly kidnapping you,” the earl said. “You’ve berated me for all sorts of improper behavior. Yet I sit you in a carriage with a prostitute and you don’t even blink.”
Now Caroline started getting properly angry. She should have known he’d be as unfeeling as every other man in the ton .
“Oh, was this the real treat, then? To watch me recoil in horror at a woman with a…certain kind…of professional trade?” Caroline did try to put it all delicately, but that didn’t stifle her anger. “Funny enough how men of the ton expect ladies to recoil in seeming horror at fallen women, but then use those women like brute beasts.”
“Oh now, she understands a lot, don’t she?” Mrs. Haddock chuckled and elbowed Rockford once more. The earl rubbed his chin as he studied Caroline, seemingly in thought.
“That wasn’t my purpose in bringing Mrs. Haddock along. Rather, it was merely to get you away without a chaperone.”
“For what purpose, if not to kidnap me?”
“Your father wouldn’t like me taking you to a gentlemen’s club. I needed to get you away from respectable, prying eyes.”
Caroline’s indignation vanished. “Which club?”
“The Wolf’s Den. Tonight is their annual Hunter’s Ball, a masquerade.” Rockford smirked. “I’ve a mask for you, never fear. No one shall recognize you.”
Caroline had heard tales of the Wolf’s Den, not to mention the Hunter’s Ball, for years. It was one of the most decadent establishments in Mayfair, a place where fantasies came to life and indulgence was an everyday occurrence. The hair on her arms stood up, excitement rippling all through her body.
She would be masked. No one would know who she was tonight. She would be anonymous, free. She could run wild for the first time in her life.
“Very well. I see why you needed to hire a false chaperone,” she said.
“Then it all meets your approval?”
“I would’ve preferred to know our destination ahead of time, but I rather think you’ve pulled it off splendidly.”
Rockford stifled a laugh. His green eyes seemed to brighten with enjoyment. “Miss Devereux, I warn you that you’re in danger of being quite different from anyone else in the ton .”
Caroline thought of how Lord Rockford had allowed Mrs. Haddock to jab him in the ribs, how he’d treated her on equal footing with himself. She considered their risqué and also enthralling destination tonight and smiled.
“Perhaps we’re alike in that, my lord.”
“Mrs. Haddock, shall we drop you before making our way over?” Rockford asked.
“Lord, no. I’m comin’ to the ball. I don’t get many a night off.” The woman primped her brightly dyed curls.
Caroline giggled, feeling dizzy with the coming rush of freedom. Somehow, Rockford had guessed at her innermost desires. She didn’t want stuffy boxes at the opera, endless rotations of balls with judging looks thrown at her from every corner.
“This truly pleases you, then?” Rockford asked. Now he seemed to luxuriate in that idea, a large jungle cat licking its paw while reclining in a shaft of sunlight.
“You could have made a worse choice.” That was all she’d allow him, but Caroline knew he could read her excitement. The bastard would be even more confident now. Oh, well.
When the coach stopped before the club, Rockford helped both women out and quickly had his coachman hand down a box.
Inside were two masks, one of black satin, the other lavender. Caroline’s mask had wings sprouting out either side, and the body and beak of a dove in the center. She tied it on. Rockford’s appeared to be a black leopard. How very appropriate.
“I’m afraid you’ll need to purchase a mask at the door,” he told Mrs. Haddock.
“Oh no, Lord R. You’ll be purchasin’ and it ain’t comin’ outta my ten pound.”
“I’ll make certain His Lordship pays you in full,” Caroline said, looking daringly at Rockford through the eyeholes of her mask. She shivered when he leered down at her. The black leopard’s face seemed more his own than his mere human visage. He was, it seemed, every inch a predator and finally in his element.
“There’s only one woman I’ll allow to strong-arm me over finances,” he growled.
“Indeed.” Caroline smirked. “Me.”
He chuckled as he led her to the club’s door. It opened, and Caroline was enveloped in a world of noise, heat, and beauty.
She gasped, astonished at the visual grandeur on display. They had redone the club’s interior to resemble a forest by moonlight with crystal stars twinkling overhead. Everyone here wore some type of mask, and nymphs and satyrs pranced past in elaborate costumes.
“Do you like it?” Rockford asked, leaning close to her ear. Caroline shivered at the delicious undertone of pride in his voice.
“I do. I love it.”
She couldn’t hide her enthusiasm, not even from him.
No one looked at her in judgment or contempt here, just as no one tried to scrape or bow to Rockford. They were both anonymous tonight, unburdened by society’s constraints.
She didn’t know who here was a lord and who a banker, a duke or a thief. They were all equal and liberated.
Champagne fizzed in glasses, and Caroline snatched one as a server passed by with a tray. She drank it down, her giddiness mounting, her desire to experience everything the evening had to offer almost uncontrollable.
She thought of dancing, and she thought of gambling…and she thought of Lord Rockford standing beside her with those inscrutable grass-green eyes, that leopard’s face.
Everything here presented a tempting mystery, and he was the most mysterious—and tempting—of all.
Caroline’s heart beat faster. She finished her champagne and switched her empty glass for a new, full one off another tray.
“Careful,” Rockford said, but he laughed and joined her in a glass. “There’s no need to hurry. Your father won’t expect you home until later.”
“Is this what life was like before you became earl?” she asked.
“Masked balls? They don’t have too many of those in sailors’ taverns.”
“No, I mean this kind of joy and energy. Isn’t it glorious?”
“It is indeed.” Rockford studied her face as he said it. Even beneath her mask, Caroline felt his warm appraisal. “This is the life you’d want for yourself?”
“I want a life where I feel unburdened, I suppose.” The champagne had done fast work at loosening her tongue. “Where I don’t have to feel constrained by expectations or society.”
“Such a life can be lonely,” Rockford said quietly. “It can also be precarious. In Lisbon, I would see girls ten years younger than you selling whatever they could of themselves to earn a few coins. They would go as domestics, as tavern girls…as other things if work wasn’t plentiful and they had other mouths to feed.” Gabriel’s usual cockiness vanished. He could become so quiet sometimes, so withdrawn into some inner world.
“I must seem very foolish then,” Caroline said, looking down.
“No. But I thought the same thing when I was a boy. That nothing in the world could be worse than Havenlock Hall or my father’s society. Then I saw that there was a price to freedom. Everything you want in this world comes with a price, Miss Devereux.” He leaned nearer to her, as if letting her in on a secret. “But if you’re willing to pay it, you can experience wonders. If you’re brave enough.”
Caroline shivered even though she felt warm. There seemed both a promise and a challenge in his words.
“I daresay every life’s hard in its own way. I’ve just come to hate performing for those who don’t like me to begin with.”
“Anyone who doesn’t like you is a fool.” Rockford’s irritation appeared. “Sadly, our world’s filled with fools.”
“Well.” She cleared her throat. “I’m afraid that makes you a fool, my lord. A great one at that. Perhaps the greatest I’ve ever known.” She meant it to tease, but his eyes flashed with annoyance.
“How do you mean?”
“Oh, please. You don’t like me, you’ve said it yourself. You wrote to my father and told him you would rather marry ‘a carp in a bonnet’ instead of me.”
To her surprise, he winced at the words. “I was angry when I wrote that. My temper gets the better of me sometimes.”
Caroline shouldn’t have been so bold, but the beautiful gown and the masked ball had shaken her up somewhat. The Earl of Rockford seemed almost…repentant. She leaned closer to him on the tips of her toes.
“Perhaps you’re not a fool, then,” she whispered in his ear. To her shock, Rockford did not try to move away from her. Indeed, the earl’s arm slipped around her waist.
“No?” His lips brushed her earlobe as he whispered. “This doesn’t feel foolish to you?”
Sinful? Yes. Ridiculous? Perhaps. But not foolish.
“Um. You’re a cad, of course.” She couldn’t seem to break away from him and wasn’t sure she wanted to. Given the way he glowered at her, his eyes green as jade through the holes of his black mask, Caroline almost wanted him to kiss her. She licked her lips, wondering if she should ask to kiss him or if she should just do it.
She was saved by a cane. Someone with a silver-headed cane in the shape of a wolf’s head tapped Rockford on his shoulder.
“Oi. We don’t serve scum in this establishment,” a man’s harsh voice said.
Rockford put Caroline down and turned to greet a tall, slim man in a wolf’s mask. Caroline wanted to tell this rude interloper that he should mind his own business, but Rockford grinned.
“I’m an earl now, Winters.”
“Like I said. You’re scum.” The man in the wolf’s mask chuckled, and soon the two men were patting each other on the back and pounding one another’s shoulders. Very masculine behavior.
“I take it you know one another?” Caroline asked, a bit dizzy with confusion.
“This is Mr. Winters, owner of the Wolf’s Den.” Rockford grinned. “Or is it Sir Rafe Winters now?”
“Fuck, don’t remind me,” Winters growled. No man had ever cursed so naturally in front of Caroline before. She loved it. “My brother-in-law, the Duke of Ashworth, he got me a knighthood as a joke. Now I’m stuck with the bloody thing.” Sir Rafe gave Caroline a short bow. “I’ve known His Lordship here since he was plain old Mr. Kane, coming to my establishment after a fight. Best be careful, Miss. He’s one of the few members of the ton with a reputation worse than my own.”
That didn’t frighten Caroline at all. She almost wished that it did.
“Could you arrange a private chamber for us, my friend?” Rockford asked.
Caroline inhaled sharply. Privacy with Lord Rockford when they were becoming almost chummy…it was almost too enticing a proposition.
Winters looked around at the crowded masses. “It’s a bit full tonight, but for old friends and scandalous bastards I can make a few arrangements.” Sir Rafe held up his cane in warning. “On one condition: you call me Winters, none of this ‘Sir Rafe’ business, eh?”
“On my honor,” Rockford replied.
“Piss off. We both know you’ve got none.”
The men parted in friendship with a mutual slug to the shoulder, then Winters was gone into the crowds. Caroline studied Rockford as he plucked them two more glasses of champagne. She accepted it, even though she shouldn’t have had a third without some supper first. Ah, well. One ought to make a few errors in judgment before one turned five-and-twenty.
“You do have friends in the most unlikely places, it seems,” she teased. “And here I thought you didn’t like anyone. But Mrs. Haddock and Winters appear to adore you.”
“I get along easier with people who don’t put on airs,” Rockford admitted. “I like people with an open temperament who’ve nothing to hide.” From the way he studied her, Caroline wondered if she’d been appointed to those ranks. She blushed.
“I didn’t know you fought in London,” she said.
“Only in underground clubs, and only for the thrill of it. I wasn’t a prizefighter in the capital. That would have drawn attention I didn’t want, the son of an earl competing with commoners.” Rafe sneered at that last word.
“I should’ve thought you’d want to cause your father as much discomfort as possible.”
“But not my mother and brother. Especially not Philip.” Again, Caroline saw a flash of pain, the wince of a wounded animal. “I didn’t want to bring scandal down on them. I couldn’t help it, though; scandal seemed to dog my steps wherever I went.”
Caroline knew what it was like to court disappointment with your every move.
“Well. Perhaps if you’d fought a bit less, scandal would have deserted you.”
“It still would have found me. I was a brawler, a drinker, and a scoundrel. Men came to hate me for the trouble I caused. If I wasn’t breaking their jaws, I got them in other ways. I’ve lost count of the women I’ve had over the years.”
Caroline’s face burned. She’d assumed that Lord Rockford had engaged in affairs with other women, but having him speak so casually about it both intrigued and irritated her.
Through his panther’s mask, Lord Rockford seemed to be judging her reactions.
“If you wish us to have a pleasant evening, perhaps bragging of your conquests is not the best way to go about it. You clearly don’t think much of women if you’re content to use them in such a way.” Caroline had almost begun to respect this fellow. How foolish of her.
“I can assure you, no woman ever meddled with me who didn’t want exactly what I did: some pleasure, and nothing more.” Lord Rockford continued to watch her closely, and the scrutiny made her itch.
“Is that all women amount to, then? A night of pleasure and nothing else?” Caroline’s temper began to flare, as it always seemed to in this man’s presence. It didn’t matter how much he captured her fascination or made her smile, she always ended up being furious with him.
“I’m not one of your perfect heroes in a novel,” Rockford murmured. He pressed nearer, pushing Caroline against a wall so that he blocked out the sights of the party. The earl filled her vision, overwhelmed her awareness of anything else. The intoxicating scent of his cologne and the simple, solid fact of his manly physicality were enough to almost overwhelm her. Almost. “I’m a rogue, a brawler, a bastard if my father’s letter is anything to go by. Why should I pretend to be anything but myself with you? If you’re to be my wife.”
“How magnanimous you are.” Caroline swallowed the rest of her glass in one go; she was ready to move on. “How telling it is that you would mention your countless meaningless exploits to me.”
“What the hell do you mean?” The earl looked puzzled.
“You know I’ve never had the freedom as an unmarried woman that you have as an unwed man,” Caroline said, stammering a bit as she felt flushed. Perhaps swallowing two or three glasses of champagne in fast sequence hadn’t been her finest notion. “I think I see the scope of your design now. You expected me to be so frightened by your prowess and rough manner that I’d want an end to our engagement. Didn’t you?” The truth suddenly revealed itself, and it was as disappointing as she feared it would be. Caroline scoffed. “This wasn’t about bringing me to something I might enjoy or showing me freedom. You wanted me to be horrified by all this, by you. You thought you could make me want to break the engagement.” She jabbed a finger into the solid wall of muscle that made up Rockford’s chest. He didn’t answer her, nor did he budge an inch. “Well, perhaps I don’t want to be married to a rake and a scoundrel, but I haven’t the option not to be.”
Rockford leaned in, pinning Caroline to the wall with his arms on either side of her. His mouth hovered dangerously above hers, their breaths mingling.
“You see strategy in everything, don’t you?” he whispered. Just his words made the hair on her nape stand up, as though they had stroked her body like fingertips. Rockford took the glass from her hand and set it down somewhere. Then he was close again, closer than ever. “You think you know me so well already, do you?”
“Well. Do you deny it?”
He did not answer, but the tension in his body and in the line of his jaw suggested some great inner struggle. And he was looking at her as he had never looked before, like she maddened him. Like she drove him out of his senses. Like he…enjoyed it.
Her anger and her molten desire played with the champagne and caused Caroline’s brain to fail. She wanted to kiss him, to taste what she could have and the power she could wield. Caroline knew she would either collapse into his arms and never leave again or flee.
So she shoved him into a server who dropped a tray of glasses and, dizzy with drink, ran off into the crowd.