How to Seduce a Bride

Chapter Ten

Daisy took one last look in the mirror. She was going to pay another call on Geoff and Viscount Haye after breakfast, and so had tried to look both elegant and cool this warm summer’s morning. Her hair had been tamed, drawn taut and smoothed back from her face, allowing ringlets to riot only at the back of her head. She had on a yellow gown, sprigged with tiny pink flowers and green leaves. There was even a parasol to match, but she regretfully left it in its wrapping tissue. She still didn’t feel enough of a lady to sport one, never knowing when to use it for shade, rest it on her shoulder, or twirl it flirtatiously, in the easy way ladies of fashion did. That, along with the use of a fan, was like using another language, an art she meant to acquire.

She picked up a pair of yellow kid gloves. “I can’t look better,” she said. “Let’s have breakfast. I’m starved.”

Helena sighed but held her tongue. A lady wouldn’t have said she was starved, but she wouldn’t hurt Daisy’s feelings by correcting her for something that minor.

But Daisy had seen her expression. “I mean,” she said puckishly, raising a hand to her forehead, “I vow I am fairly famished.”

Helena laughed. “No. You said it right the first time, because you said it the way only you could.”

“I may never be styled a lady, you know,” Daisy confided as they walked to the door.

“You’ll be called ‘charming’ and ‘candid’ and ‘refreshing,’ and that’s much better.”

Daisy stopped and looked at Helena. She was frowning. “Do you really think they’ll do that? That they’ll accept me?”

Helena didn’t have to ask who “they” were. “If the earl does, they will,” she said diplomatically.

“Good,” Daisy said in relief. “I can change, but only so much. I mean, I suppose I could, but I’ve had enough of being someone I’m not in order to please a man.”

It was Helena who was frowning slightly as they went down the stair. But Daisy didn’t notice, she was too intent on getting downstairs to eat and then see Leland. And Geoff, she reminded herself.

“Go right on up,” Geoff said when Daisy and Helena arrived. “I’ve a visitor, my man-at-law; our business won’t take long. Leland’s still upstairs, but only because he can’t get down here on his own yet and refuses to be carried.”

“I’m on my way,” Daisy said. She saw Helena’s face grow pink. She hoped there wouldn’t be another objection to her seeing the viscount in his bedchamber.

But Helena turned to the earl. “May I be excused for a moment?” she asked in embarrassment. “And have you a withdrawing room?”

Daisy suppressed a giggle. No question that good breeding complicated things. Few people in Port Jackson would have known what Helena was talking about; they’d a much simpler way to say they needed a chamber pot. But Daisy had seen how much tea Helena had drunk at breakfast, and the earl was used to good manners.

“It’s just down the hall,” Geoff said, and indicated the direction.

Helena nodded. “I’ll be there soon,” she told Daisy unhappily, because though she clearly didn’t want Daisy to go up alone, she knew she wouldn’t wait.

This time, Leland’s door was open. This time, too, he sat up in a chair by the bed. He wore a robe over a shirt and breeches. His face wasn’t as pale as it had been the day before. His eyes were just as intense and blue, but she thought she saw pain in them.

“Why look at you!” she said. “Out of bed already. That’s very good.”

“So it is,” he said, and sat back, letting out a gusty sigh of relief, as though talking had exerted him. Then he smiled. “And look at you! You’re wearing one of Madame Bertrand’s gowns today. Very lovely, the color suits you. Take a chair, please. If you continue to stand, I’ll feel I must, too.”

She looked around. There was a chair near the window, far from him. And there was one right next to his. Too close, she thought, and too awkward. But how stupid she would look sitting on the other side of the bed! She’d have to shout to talk to him. She sat down, gingerly, next to him.

He saw her hesitation, and she saw amusement in his gaze. But “Tell me about the world outside” was all he said.

“You’ve only been here a few days,” she scoffed. “And you read the newspaper. I don’t know anything that’s happened that you don’t.”

“Oh, do you not?” he asked softly. “I think you know much that I want to know. What do you think of me now, for example?”

She blinked.

“You thought I was a fop and a man milliner, or worse, when we first met. Don’t deny it,” he said, raising a hand. “But now,” he said, watching her intently. “What do you think now? I ask because you are so very wary of me. Surely you know I mean you no harm?”

“Well, of course I know that,” she exclaimed. “You took a knife in your chest in my defense.”

He cocked his head to the side. “Any gentleman would have done that. What is it about me that frightens you, Daisy?”

Well, there was plain speaking, she thought with a little panic. She cleared her throat for time. “You say such flirtatious things, my lord,” she finally said. “And flirtation is a thing I’m out of practice with.”

“It isn’t all flirtation, Daisy,” he said softly. “I mean everything I say. You are beautiful, I do desire you, and I think I could make you very happy. But don’t be afraid. I am a gentleman, and would never do anything you didn’t want me to. That’s a solemn promise.”

“What do you want to do?” she asked without thinking, mesmerized by his soft voice and the intimate mood. Then she squeezed her eyes closed and shook her head. “No, no. Stupid question!” she said, and shot up from her chair. “I know very well what you want.”

He smiled. “Good. I hoped so.”

She didn’t know whether to laugh with him or rail at him, but didn’t have to do either.

“What the devil are you doing up and out of bed?” the earl said as he marched into the room, Helena at his side.

“Recovering,” Leland said gloomily. “Terrorizing Daisy and frightening you. Seeing if I can move at all. Oh bother, I’m sick of lying in bed. In fact, that’s it. I will be sick if I stay there.”

“The doctor said bed rest,” the earl said.

“The doctor also wanted to regale me with leeches,” Leland said on a barely concealed shudder. “And that after he’d let blood. I decided to save some for my veins. There are some things I still do control, you know. And look at me, I’m in fine fettle, and up to all kind of mischief,” he added, with a private smile for Daisy.

She couldn’t help smiling back at him. The dark, erotic mood he’d established was gone. He was Leland Grant, the trifling nobleman, again.

“I promised the doctor,” the earl said, crossing his arms.

“Oh, very well,” Leland said ungraciously. “I’ll do it to please you.” He started to rise, and faltered. His company darted forward. With the earl on one side and Helena on the other, they helped him walk the few steps to his high bed, and into it, so he could lie back on his pillows.

“I confess,” Leland said when he was settled, hand on the bandage over his heart, “This does feel better.”

“There’s a concession!” the earl said. “Do you want us to leave?”

“Never,” Leland said, and sounded as if he meant it. “I’m really feeling much better and I enjoy the company, believe me.”

“Good,” the earl said, “because you’ve another visitor coming. A lady who asked special permission to see you even if you were in bed.”

Leland’s eyebrows went up. “And you agreed? I must be corrupting you, Geoff.”

“Not that kind of visitor,” the earl said. “It’s your mama.”

Leland’s smile faded. “Unfair,” he said softly. “You ought to have asked me first.”

“No, I couldn’t and wouldn’t,” the earl said. “Because refusing wasn’t an option for you or me.”

Both men fell still.

“Would you like us to leave?” Daisy asked.

“Good God, no!” Leland exclaimed. “Finding me with a room full of young beauties may well speed her on her way. So please stay. You brighten my day. I’m a most unnatural son,” he added because of the shocked look on Helena’s face. “And she, a most indifferent mother. Still, if I greeted her with exclamations of profound joy, she’d believe me about to depart this life. We haven’t the warmest relationship,” he explained. “And everyone knows it.”

“Well, I can understand that sort of thing,” Daisy said with a shrug. “I loved my father, but I always knew he didn’t feel the same about me. He didn’t dislike me,” she added hastily. “Or treat me badly. He just didn’t think of me at all, is what it was.”

Leland narrowed his eyes against the blaze of color that surrounded her where she sat, in a pool of sunlight at the side of his bed. Or was she the light that dazzled him? he wondered. She was radiant; her hair, her gown, her frequent smile, her laughter.

Again, he wondered why she was attaching herself to a middle-aged recluse and his wounded friend, when she could have all London at her feet. It was true that with her past she might not attract a man who was a stickler for propriety. But this was the nineteenth century, after all. She was wellborn and well funded. Her wit and beauty, the novelty of her, could lure any normal male to ask for her hand and yearn for the sumptuous rest of her to follow as soon as possible.

Dangerous things to be thinking while lounging in bed, Leland realized, feeling his body stirring in reaction to his thoughts. He struggled to sit up straighter, but the high featherbed defeated him, embracing him and sinking him deeper every time he tried to move. “My lord,” he pleaded when he couldn’t manage it, punching one of the pillows behind him. “See how helpless I am. At least let me sit in a chair again.”

The earl lifted an eyebrow. Leland subsided.

“I don’t want your blood on my hands, literally or figuratively,” the earl said.

“At least tell the viscountess that I’ll see her another day,” Leland said. “I feel far too vulnerable this way. She hasn’t seen me in bed since the day I was born.”

The earl shook his head. “I can’t. She’s already on her way.”

“Damn!” Leland said, and then quickly said, “I meant ‘drat,’ ladies. Mark it down to my distress and forgive me.”

Daisy wondered what he was apologizing for, until Helena spoke up. “It’s nothing, my lord,” she said. “Or at least nothing we never heard before.”

The viscount apologized for saying “damn”? Lord! Daisy thought, what would he have made of how they talked back in the colony? Her eyes met the earl’s and they smiled at each other, obviously both struck by the same thought.

“My dear Leland,” a cool voice exclaimed from the doorway. “So it was true! You were injured, attacked in public by a cutpurse.”

“Hello, Mama,” Leland said in an equally cool voice. “No saying it was a cutpurse. It could have been anyone with a grudge against me, as you always said might happen if I didn’t reform my way of life.”

His mother paused in the doorway, looking at him. Here, in the unrelenting light of day, Daisy could see that the years had left their mark on what was probably once flawless beauty. But signs of age-the few wrinkles at the eyes and around the corners of the mouth, and the gray in the golden hair-didn’t detract so much as point up the fact that she was still remarkably handsome. And cold.

From her voice to her smile, Viscountess Haye was a model of composure. She didn’t look like the sort of female who had once kicked over the traces and run off with a Gypsy. Or like the kind who had conducted countless affairs afterward. Daisy couldn’t imagine this woman showing any kind of passion. But then Daisy remembered a murderess she’d known who had poisoned three husbands and yet looked as though she was incapable of pouring a guest tea that was too hot.

Daisy saw that cool blue gaze fall on her, and looked away. The woman made her feel guilty, and she wasn’t sure of what.

“Mrs. Tanner, good morning,” the countess said as she stripped off her gloves and came into the room. She glanced at Helena, but only gave her a brief nod, because servants weren’t acknowledged, and if Helena wasn’t precisely a servant, she was in a paid position, and so, of no account.

Then that piercing blue gaze found the earl, and the countess smiled. “My lord,” she said. “Thank you for taking Haye in after the incident. It was very kind of you.”

“No kindness involved,” the earl said. “Leland’s a friend, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But, please, have a seat and stay as long as you wish. Mrs. Masters, if you’d be kind enough to come with me? I’ve a few questions to ask you about just that incident that I ought to have asked before.”

“I’ll come, too!” Daisy said, springing up from her chair.

“Please stay,” Leland said, “Or my mama will think she’s frightened you away.”

“Indeed,” the viscountess said. “Do stay, Mrs. Tanner. We hardly had time to get acquainted before, and I see you are already a fixture in my son’s life.”

“Lud, no!” Daisy blurted. “I mean to say, I’m not. That is, I’m an old friend of Geoff’s, I mean, the earl’s, and since the viscount’s a friend of his, we’re thrown into each other’s company a lot, is what it is.”

Daisy’s face flushed. Gracelessly said, and not what she meant, it made the viscount laugh and the viscountess’s gaze grow sharper.

“Absolutely true,” the earl said with a chuckle. “And just like Daisy to say it that way. Come along, Mrs. Masters. We’ll be back in no time.”

“Don’t look so anxious,” he murmured to Helena as they left the room. “I’ve just a few questions, because the man from Bow Street said everyone present that night should be interviewed, and I wanted to spare you the ordeal of having him do it.”

Once they were gone, Daisy sat back, feeling uneasy and out of place. Surely mother and son needed some private time together. So she sat quietly, trying to disappear by her silence.

The viscountess sat upright in her chair and put her hands in her lap. She turned toward Daisy. “So you are in England to stay now, Mrs. Tanner?”

“Yes,” Daisy said, wondering why she didn’t ask her son how he felt before she chatted with his visitor.

“I see. And where will you live?”

“I’m staying at Grillions, on the park, for now.”

The countess’s brilliant blue eyes grew larger; that was the only way Daisy could read any reaction. “Surely you don’t mean to stay in a hotel forever?”

“Well, no. But I don’t know where I want to settle yet.”

“Mrs. Tanner will probably settle down with a husband before long,” Leland said. “So there’s little sense in her buying or renting a house now.”

“I see,” his mother said, without looking at him. “Have you anyone in mind, my dear?”

“My lady!” Leland said with an exasperated laugh. “Bow Street wouldn’t ask her such personal questions.”

“Would they not?” the viscountess asked. “So what have they asked?”

Daisy sat up straighter. The lady might be elegant, and far above her touch, but her conversation was presumptuous. She herself had been raised to act like a lady, and if the countess wasn’t behaving like one, she would.

“Bow Street hasn’t asked me anything yet,” Daisy said calmly. “If they do, I’ll tell them all. The thief that stabbed your son was after my purse, and when the viscount here rushed to protect me, he got stabbed. I wish he hadn’t had to; it wouldn’t have happened if I’d my wits and remembered I had my knife about me. But not my barker. I usually carry one, too, but I’d left it home that night. That won’t happen again.”

“A knife?” the viscountess asked, her brows going up.

“And a pistol,” Leland said with amusement. “Don’t worry about me, Mama, if you are, that is to say. I’ll be perfectly safe now that I’ve got a bruiser like Mrs. Tanner to protect me.”

Daisy laughed. The countess didn’t. Daisy wondered if she could.

“Of course I worry about you, Haye,” the viscountess said without a trace of emotion. “I understood the wound was not serious. At least that’s what the message the earl sent to me said. So why then are you still abed?”

“It’s his wish,” Leland said. “He feels responsible for me when I’m under his roof. I’m getting up tomorrow and going home soon after.”

“That relieves my mind,” she said in the same cool tones. “Even so, I will ask for a personal interview with him. You always make light of everything, Haye. I want to know what he really thinks.”

Daisy felt chilled. The woman called her son by his titled name, and scarcely looked at him.

There seemed to be no emotion in her. Yet she’d produced a laughing, exuberant son like Daffyd. Daisy guessed that must have been because he’d gotten more of his Gypsy father’s blood. But how could this cold creature have produced a merry care-for-nothing sensualist like Leland, Lord Haye?

The viscountess turned her penetrating gaze on her son and asked him how he felt, at last. He told her. And told her. She sighed at his long list of ridiculous mock complaints. She didn’t tolerate them for long.

Soon, she arose. “I don’t want to tire you, Haye. I’ll just go down and ask the earl a few more questions, and then will be on my way. Stay well. Good morning, Mrs. Tanner, until we meet again.”

And then she left the room.

Daisy finally let out her breath.

“Tingling toenails is not a disastrous symptom?” Leland asked. “Pity. If I’d known, I’d have told her that one first.”

Daisy didn’t answer.

“Touching, wasn’t it?” he asked her in a tired voice. He laid his head back against his pillows and seemed infinitely weary, and maybe in some pain.

“Are you all right?” Daisy asked immediately, coming close to him. He looked paler than he had when she’d first arrived. “Is there anything you need?”

He turned his head to look at her. He had the same color eyes as his mother, but they seemed gentler even in that severe masculine face. Unlike his mother, his eyes didn’t pierce, they sparkled. He smiled, and those larkspur eyes danced. “What I need, Daisy,” he purred, “is not what I can have here and now.”

She stepped back and frowned at him.

“My dear,” he said softly, “I’d have to be two days dead not to say something like that to a woman like you. Actually,” he said in a different tone, “I feel like I am. She does that to me. She leaches the life from me. I suppose she can’t help it anymore than I can help the way I am, but I wonder how my father got me on her without dying of frostbite first. Sorry,” he said, seeing her expression of surprise, “I don’t mind my manners as I should.”

“It’s all right,” she said absently, taking one of his hands in hers, responding to the pain in his voice and not what he’d said. “I don’t mind. I’ve heard worse. Are you ill? I mean really sick, or is it just that she upset you?”

“Just?” he asked with a weary, tilted grin. “Lord, I wish there was a ‘just’ about it.” His hand clasped hers. She noted it was cold, and held it tightly. “You say your father didn’t care for you. But you cared for him, as he must have, in some way, for you, however ill advised or inept that care was. Because I’ve heard you quote him. That’s good, no matter how bad he was, because at least he never intentionally hurt you, did he?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“My mama never cared that she did. Oh, blast,” he said, wincing. “Listen to me. I must be sick. Here I am with a lovely woman inches away from me, and I’m blathering on like a schoolboy sent to bed early, whining about my parent. Forgive me again.”

She leaned down to pull a pillow up behind his head. She heard him take in a breath and looked down at him. They were very close.

“Did you know,” he asked with interest, his eyes on hers, “that you have the scent of heartsease in your hair? That’s rare. I didn’t know they could make perfume from them. You know, those pretty little flowers with tiny faces that smile up at you from the lawn. It’s a fragile scent, so vague it only reminds you of spring, never insisting on it. Of course you know; what a foolish question.” His eyes crinkled at the corners. “You probably have a bottle labeled ‘heartsease’ on your dressing table, just to break the hearts of men.”

She shook her head, and slowly eased her hand from his. His words were lovely to hear, but they dismayed her. Or was it his tone? How could the tender tone of his voice soothe her even as it upset her?

He let her hand go. “Well, that’s so,” he said gently, using the hand she’d released to trace the edges of her cheek with his fingertips. “And did you know that you’ve the most damnably tempting mouth I’ve seen in many a day?”

But that she knew how to answer, though her voice didn’t have the bite she’d normally have used. “You find many mouths tempting, sir,” she said. “You’re famous for it.”

“So I am. So that makes me an expert, right? And I say yours is not only the most tempting, but the most impudent. I can resist beauty, but why couldn’t you be dim?” he asked in mock despair.

She smiled, though she’d meant to step away.

He slowly ran a finger along the outline of her cheek, and she felt his touch down every seam in her body. Her eyes widened.

He smiled, put his hand at the back of her neck, raised his head as he drew hers down, and gently touched her mouth with his.

She felt her body tingle even as her mouth did. She closed her eyes and bent toward him. She felt the easy strength of his clasp; she’d never known such gentleness at a man’s hands. His mouth was warm, soft velvet. She felt his lips part and the light tentative touch of his tongue. She opened her lips and tasted the dark sweetness of his mouth. Her hand went to his neck, and she felt his warm blood beating beneath her fingertips. His kiss set her own blood to humming, and she yearned and sighed into his mouth, drew closer still-and then suddenly remembered what a kiss led to.

All the sweet promise had only one end to it: sweating and pushing, grunting and shoving, and the pain of humiliation.

She pulled away, straightened her back, and stared down at him. “I don’t do that,” she said jerkily. “Please forget that. And don’t do that again. I must leave.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, but she was gone and out the door.

Leland scowled, angry at himself Wrong of him, of course, to try for a seduction here and now. But he hadn’t meant to. That was new. Her kiss had been so sweet. She’d ended it abruptly and run from him in fear. That was absurd. She wasn’t a schoolroom miss or an ingénue. He never attempted them. She was a warm, ripe woman, and her obvious sympathy and understanding made him behave rashly. But not that rashly! What could he have done to her, after all? Especially here, in the earl’s house. She should have known that; she’d been a married woman.

And yet she might have been right; who knew what he’d been trying to do? It was as much of a surprise to him as it had been to her. Her reaction hadn’t been anger so much as fear. But he hadn’t been attempting rape; surely she knew that. She must know there was nothing much in a kiss.

But there had been in this one. There’d been solace and understanding, desire-and terror, at the end, for her.

Leland lay back, frowning. Now, why should that be? He wanted to know as much as he wanted another kiss from her. No, he thought. There was nothing he wanted more than that.