Regency Rumour: Never Trust a Rake / Reforming the Viscount

He had never been so angry in his whole life. Caught in the kind of trap a greenhorn should have seen coming. And on his first foray into the world of so-called innocents! How could he have so woefully underestimated the predatory nature of womankind? He’d dismissed those virtually indistinguishable white-clad girls in the ballroom as vapid, brainless ciphers. But this girl had a quick mind. And an immense amount of ambition. He was the wealthiest, youngest, most highly ranking man she was ever likely to get within what he guessed was her limited social reach. And she had taken ruthless advantage of his momentary lapse of concentration to compromise him. She didn’t care a whit for his character. Or have a qualm about marrying a man she believed was incapable of fidelity. In fact, she’d told him she would condone it.

What was worse, the chit was not to know he was, in actual fact, looking for a wife. For all she knew, he was still an obdurate rake.

And yet she had persisted in setting out to ruthlessly snare him.

Cunning, ambitious, ruthless and amoral. If his mother were still alive, she would have seen this girl as a kindred spirit.

‘It is quite obvious what has been going on out here,’ said the girl’s mother, drawing herself up to her full height. Then, just as he’d expected, she said, ‘You must make amends.’

‘Offer marriage, you mean?’ That did it. He no longer cared if the old besom did think him ungallant. He thrust her clinging daughter from him with such determination she tottered a few steps and had to clutch at her mother to prevent herself tripping over.

Had he really been toying with the idea of proposing to the first apparently eligible female to cross his path? Was he mad? If he married a creature like this one, history would repeat itself, with the added twist that he would never be entirely certain who had fathered any of the children for whom he would be obliged to provide.

He leaned back against the balustrade and folded his arms. He was just about to inform them that no power on earth would induce him to offer this girl his name when another voice cried out, ‘Oh, please, it is not what it looks like!’

The three of them at his end of the terrace whirled towards the shadows at the far end, from whence the voice had emanated.

He could just make out a slender female form wriggling out from between two massive earthenware planters, behind which she had clearly been concealing herself.

‘For one thing,’ the still-shadowed girl said, reaching down to free her gown from some unseen obstruction, ‘I was out here the whole time. Miss Waverley was never alone with Lord Deben.’

Having freed her skirts, she straightened up and walked towards them. She hovered on the fringe of the pool of light in which they stood, as though reluctant to fully emerge from the shadows. But he’d glimpsed moss smearing the regulation white of her gown as a corner of it had fluttered into the light. And there was what looked like dried leaves caught in the tangled curls which tumbled round a pair of thin shoulders.

‘That’s all very well,’ the outraged mother of the scheming Miss Waverley, as he now knew her to be named, put in, ‘but how did he come to have her in his arms?’

Miss Waverley was still clinging to her mother with the air of a tragedy queen, but on her pretty face he could see the first stirrings of alarm.

‘Oh, well, she …’ The dishevelled girl hesitated. She darted a look towards the worried Miss Waverley, then drew herself upright and looked the older woman straight in the eye. ‘She dropped her fan. And then she sort of … stumbled up against Lord Deben, who naturally prevented her from falling.’

Well, she’d certainly presented the whole sequence of events in such a way as to put an entirely different complexion on the matter. Without telling an outright lie.

In fact, it had been very neatly done.

He pushed himself away from the balustrade and took the two paces necessary to reach the fan, which he bent down and retrieved.

‘No gentleman,’ he said, having decided to take his cue from the girl who, for some reason, reminded him of autumn personified, ‘not even one with a reputation as tarnished as my own, could have permitted such a fair creature to fall,’ he said, returning the fan to the set-faced Miss Waverley with a flourish. He had no idea why the Spirit of Autumn had decided to put a stop to Miss Waverley’s scheme, but he was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Miss Waverley’s mother was looking pensively at the uneven edges of the damp flagstones on which they stood.

Miss Waverley’s eyes were darting from him to the girl who had emerged from the shadows. He could almost see her mind working. It was no longer a case of her word against his. There were two people prepared to swear nothing untoward had occurred here this night.

‘Sir Humphrey should get these flags attended to, don’t you think?’ He smiled frostily at the girl who had attempted to compromise him. ‘Before somebody comes to grief. But at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that you have not come to any lasting hurt from this night’s little encounter.’

She flung up her chin and glowered at him.

Her mother, however, was more gracious in defeat.

‘Oh, well, I see now how it was, of course. And I do thank you for coming to my daughter’s aid, my lord. Though why she was out here with Miss Gibson, I cannot begin to imagine. She is not our sort of person. Not our sort of person at all.’

The matron shot the bedraggled nymph a look of contempt.

Did he imagine it, or did she shrink from the scrutiny, as though she was half-thinking of ducking behind the ornamental urns again?

‘Nor can I imagine how my dear Isabella has come to be on such intimate terms with her. Really, child,’ she said, addressing her daughter, whose mouth was pouting sulkily, ‘I cannot think what on earth possessed you to accompany a person like that out here, where you might have soiled your gown. Or caught a chill. How on earth,’ she said, rounding on the hapless Miss Gibson, ‘did you manage to persuade my daughter to come out here? And what were you doing, hiding at the end of the terrace down there, leaving my daughter alone with a gentleman? Have you no notion how improper your action was? How selfish?’

Though he couldn’t help wondering himself how Miss Gibson would answer that barrage of questions, he had his own list, which were far more pertinent, given that he knew what had actually occurred.

The one which was uppermost, however, was to wonder why she had not taken the chance to expose Miss Waverley for the scheming jade she was, if she was so keen to put a spoke in her wheel. Her description of the sordid little scene had been so neatly wrapped up that Miss Waverley would walk away from this encounter with her reputation untarnished. Yet concern for Miss Waverley’s reputation could not have been what prompted her. She’d come out of hiding before he told them he would never offer her his name, no matter what tales they told. His reputation was already black as pitch, so he had nothing to lose. But the Waverley chit would most definitely have got her just deserts if this pair of designing females had attempted to cross swords, socially, with a man of his standing.

All Miss Gibson had needed to do, so far as she was concerned, was to stay concealed behind her plant pots and wait for them all to go away. Had she acted from friendship, then? Had she wanted to save a friend from a disastrous marriage?

No … he didn’t think that was it either. Miss Waverley had, at no point, looked as though she felt anything … friendly about the girl who’d thwarted her ambition. She certainly had not expected her to be out here. She had scanned the terrace for witnesses before staging her attempt to compromise him. And been furious when the Gibson girl had emerged and scotched her plans to bag herself an earl.

Enemies, then? No … from what the mother had said they barely mixed in the same social circles. Which meant they were not likely to have had opportunity to become either enemies, or friends.

Whichever way he looked at it, he kept on returning to the same unsettling conclusion. Her actions had nothing to do with Miss Waverley at all.

She had been attempting to rescue him.

He leaned back against the parapet once more, one hand on either side of him, and watched her in fascination. She was not making any attempt to defend herself while Miss Waverley’s mother rang a peal over her. She scarcely seemed to notice either the tirade, or the poisonous glances Miss Waverley kept darting at her.

She was just standing there, shoulders slumped, as though she simply did not care what anyone thought of her, or said of her. As though she wasn’t even fully attending to the vitriol being poured upon her innocent head.

Right up until the moment when Miss Waverley’s mother said, ‘But, then, what can one expect from somebody hailing from such a family as yours?’

At that, the change which came over her was remarkable. She lifted her head and stepped forwards, so that she was for the first time fully illuminated by the light streaming from the ballroom windows. All the colours of autumn glowed in her wild tresses. Rich conker browns, threaded with gold and russet of leaves on the turn. And her demeanour was so fierce, it was like witnessing a storm whipping up out of nowhere, blasting away all shreds of one of those drear November mornings which so depressed him.

‘One can expect honourable behaviour,’ she said. ‘I was concealing myself only because I did not wish anyone, especially not a gentleman, to see that I had been crying.’

Now that he could believe. Miss Gibson did not weep prettily. Her nose, which was a shade too large for her rather thin face, was red and running. Her cheeks were mottled and streaked with what looked like not only tears, but horrifically like the effusions from that abomination of a nose.

It made it all the more remarkable for her to have exposed herself to view, in order to intervene in the affairs of two people who were neither her friends, nor, in his case, even a remote acquaintance.

‘I might have known,’ the matron snapped. ‘I hope you are thoroughly ashamed of yourself, young lady. You see what comes of giving way to such a vulgar display of emotion? Not only do you look an absolute disgrace, but your selfish, wilful behaviour has exposed my own, blameless daughter to a situation that might very easily have been misinterpreted!’

Miss Gibson clenched her fists. She looked at the blameless Miss Waverley and took a breath. She was just about to blurt out the truth that would send shock waves rippling through the tranquillity of Miss Twining’s come-out ball, when he saw a look of chagrin cross her face.

Ah. She had just worked out that she could not now tell the complete truth without exposing herself. That was what happened when a woman began to spin a web of lies. She only had to put one foot wrong, to run the risk of becoming hopelessly enmeshed herself.

At least she had the intelligence to see it. She closed her mouth, lifted her chin and regarded the mother in stony-faced silence.

He felt his lips twitch as the gale blew itself out. Really, this was better than a play.

It was perhaps unfortunate that Miss Gibson glanced at him at the exact moment he began to see the humour in the situation. She caught his amused expression and returned it with a scowl that could have curdled milk.

‘Well,’ said the matron, who had missed the exchange of glances, because she’d been busy placing a comforting arm about her thwarted daughter’s shoulders. ‘I can see that you were motivated by the kindness of your heart, my dear, but really, it would have been better to have sought out Miss Gibson’s chaperon and let her deal with it.’

His brief foray into amusement at the absurdity of it all was over. The matron’s attitude was almost as offensive as that of her daughter. Here was a young female, so distressed that she’d run outside to give way to her emotions, and all she was getting was a lecture. It was not right. Somebody ought to be offering her some comfort. After all, females did not weep with such abandon, not in private, without having very good reason. They must know that, surely?