The Wastrel

“I shall have to give it some thought,” Lord Mulholland said, and Clara could hear the laughter in his voice.

A man of his wealth could have any painter from the Royal Academy. He would never want to sit for Aunt Aurora, so why did he have to lead her on? Did he enjoy making sport of others or placing them in embarrassing positions? Probably. It would be in keeping with what she had heard of him from some of her aunt’s friends: that Paris Mulholland’s sole goal in life was to enjoy himself.

If he did decide to have Aunt Aurora paint his portrait—and Clara had to admit that they needed the money—and if he did come to her aunt’s lodgings to sit, she would ensure that she was out of the house. Or perhaps, finances notwithstanding, it would be better to discourage any talk of a portrait entirely. Although Clara loved her aunt dearly, there was no escaping the fact that every portrait her aunt painted bore a marked resemblance to the Duke of Wellington. She could almost hear the cutting criticism Lord Mulholland would make of the picture, and the way he would regale his equally ne’er-do-well friends with tales of her relatives’ eccentricities.

“A fine fellow! ” Uncle Byron whispered in her ear as they followed him into the well-appointed house.

Clara didn’t answer. Instead, she concentrated on the large, ornately decorated foyer, which was nearly the size of their entire flat. The floor was Italian marble, and the wallpaper was of intricate design, obviously costly. “So noble, so charming,” Uncle Byron continued. “Worthy of his name, wouldn’t you say? I can believe a man like that could seduce the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“And I can believe he wouldn’t care that such a selfish act would start a war,” Clara said, reminding her uncle that the name Paris was not one a man should be particularly proud of.

Lord Mulholland, having handed his flamboyant cape and hat to a footman, suddenly whirled around to face her. There was a smile on his good-looking face but also something that looked suspiciously like criticism in his brilliantly blue eyes. “I believe I mentioned that I am not named for the man who seduced Helen of Troy. My mother, in a flight of fancy, named me for the City of Light, where I was apparently conceived.

“Now, if you will all excuse me, I see an old friend inside,” he concluded coldly. He made a slight, polite bow before striding away.

Clara flushed again, and told herself she had been a fool to speak her thoughts out loud. She had been rude, too. Of all people, she should know how it felt to be judged by a name or an occupation.

“We must speak later, my lord, about the portrait!” Aunt Aurora called after him, waving gaily. “My dear, just think!” she exclaimed rapturously, clasping her plump hands together and ignoring the footman who waited to take their wraps. “Lord Paris Mulholland! If he agrees to sit for me, I shall be quite famous!”

Clara kept quiet, but she would rather walk barefoot to Dover in the middle of winter than have a man like Paris Mulholland in the studio.

She told herself that her reservations had absolutely nothing to do with his provocative manner and handsome face, or that the evening dress of pristine white shirt, white cravat and black tails seemed to have been designed with him specifically in mind. After all, her guardians’ bohemian friends had been trying to seduce her for years, with no success. She could fend off Lord Mulholland, too.

Even if he was the most tempting man she had ever met.

Chapter Two

“Don’t you agree, Mulholland?” Lord Pimblett demanded, smacking his palm on the marble mantle of the drawing room, which was decorated with all the embellishments currently in vogue. “Give ’em a bit, and they only want more! Workhouses and the Poor Law Amendment Act are the best things that ever happened to this country, sir!”

Paris was quite sure Lord Pimblett was adding, “You young muttonhead!” in his mind, even though the man clearly cherished hopes of having his eldest daughter wed to the Mulholland name and fortune, if not the physical embodiment of those things. He was also very well aware that he had an audience of young female admirers gathered about him like so many colorful butterflies, so he waved his wineglass in a shallow salute.

“I myself have never lived in one of their hovels,” he replied to the indignant nobleman, whose face flushed with irritation, “worn filthy, flea-infested clothing or eaten one of their pitiful meals. Since I do not possess the imagination of your lordship, so necessary to pass judgment when one lacks experience, I must bow to your superior knowledge of the lives of the lower classes.”

Lord Pimblett’s face turned scarlet, which made an interesting contrast with his white muttonchop whiskers. Paris knew he had made his point and gone quite far enough in exposing the shortcomings of his host’s opinion. Therefore, he smiled graciously and took a sip of his wine.

“Fancy you in rags!” one of the ever-present young women said with a shocked gasp and a giggle.

“None of you would ever look at me again,” Paris said sorrowfully and waited for the young women to protest. As they immediately did.

It amused him to watch their reactions—one of the few things in London that did amuse him anymore. Some bored young men turned to drink, or gambling or more sordid vices when life palled; Paris Mulholland amused himself by playing the charming wastrel, with the additional benefit of being the center of attention for such delightful bevies of carefully bred young ladies.

Not that he had any desire to seduce even one of the eager women, although it pleased his vanity to make them swarm around him. They were too innocent and unworldly, most of them, and despite his name and not completely unearned reputation, he would not take advantage of their naiveté. Trying to maintain their adulation simply made the interminable Season pass.

He turned away to hide his satisfied smile, and encountered the watchful eyes of the young woman he had met outside, the artist’s niece, Clara. She sat in the farthest corner of a window seat, nearly hidden behind a large potted fern, as if she were afraid to be seen.

She looked like a nun in a cloister, and a strict one at that, with her dark brown hair pulled back plainly in a hard little knot of a bun, her dark brows slightly too thick to be conventionally pretty, and her full lips pressed together repressively. She wore an abominable gray dress with an absurdly high neckline and tight sleeves. A hair shirt would be more comfortable than that garment, he thought, which did nothing to flatter its wearer. Perhaps she enjoyed the mortification of the flesh.

As he caught her eye, her mouth frowned as grimly as the sternest of nannies catching a young charge in some mischief, and in her eyes was contempt rather than admiration.

So he winked at her.

She didn’t do anything. Didn’t blush, didn’t glare, didn’t smile, didn’t frown. She simply looked at him as if...as if he weren’t there.

Paris Mulholland was not used to being ignored, and he found it an intensely unpleasant experience.

Telling himself one young woman’s lack of response was unimportant, he looked away and saw Lady Pimblett slowly advancing toward him, nodding graciously at the assembly. Her presence, along with the nearly overpowering scent of perfume that pervaded the air around her, reminded him of his bet. He didn’t need Boffington’s money, of course; he simply found betting on such things harmless sport.

And if certain young females thought him nothing but a complete waste of breath and life, he didn’t care.

“I was reading a book by that chap Dickens,” he drawled, bestowing a warm smile on his hostess. “Oliver Twist. He’s rather too good at describing things we shouldn’t have to think about, wouldn’t you agree, my lady? Poorhouses and starving children and thieves. And that part about beating a young woman to death....”

“Oh, my,” her ladyship murmured.

Paris then had the immense satisfaction of seeing Lady Pimblett sink onto a sofa and fan herself violently. Four times in less than two hours! Too easy, really, indeed!

“That Dickens fellow should be horsewhipped!” Lord Pimblett blustered. “Stirring up all kinds of trouble. Thinks we should all give up our money to buy mansions and sweet cakes for the poor, I suppose! Stupid fool!”

“He’s a wonderful chap to have at parties,” Paris remarked, recalling well the only time he had met the writer, whose works he had never actually read. Dickens enjoyed the theater, and had been almost a whole play in himself as he acted out parts of Oliver Twist. It was a never-to-be-forgotten experience.

“If I ever meet him, I’ll...I’ll...He’ll be sorry!” Lord Pimblett continued. “The poor are lazy, sir, lazy, and if they won’t work, they should starve!”

Paris’s fingers tightened around the delicate crystal glass that cost more than many a man earned in a year. He never ceased to be amazed at the way the men of his class were all too quick to ascribe certain characteristics to the lower classes when he could think of several of them who would starve to death if they didn’t have family fortunes to sustain them.

Lady Pimblett recovered sufficiently to rise slightly, her action causing him to note yet again the opulent ostentation of the woman’s garments, as well as the fraudulent air of weak ill health that she enjoyed to the utmost.

One more swoon and he would win his bet. Telling himself not to fret about any disapproval a gray-gowned young lady might express, he quite remorselessly applied himself to the task.

“But the bodies, my lord,” he said plaintively. “What would we do with the piles of bodies that would be left in the street? The stench—”

He won his bet, and in the process it looked as if he had succeeded in causing Lady Pimblett to truly faint. His audience of young ladies emitted politely shocked squeals of alarm, and their fans moved rapidly.

His glance was drawn once more to the window seat, now empty. Just as well. The gray nun would only be looking daggers at him anyway.

“Don’t just stand there!” Lord Pimblett rumbled to nobody in particular. “Water!”

Paris obliged by yanking some huge and exceedingly ugly chrysanthemums out of a vase standing on a spindly-legged table, dipping his fingers in the water, and sprinkling his hostess’s face.

Lady Pimblett came to with startling abruptness as her cheeks changed color before their very eyes, going from a fashionable paleness to a far more healthy rose. The young ladies, whose mothers would never permit any application of cosmetics and acquainted that practice with the oldest profession, drew back in stunned horror as Lady Pimblett swiftly covered her face with her lace fan.

Lord Pimblett was staring as hard as any of them, and it occurred to Paris that perhaps he had never seen his wife without certain cosmetic additions. Poor man—and poor, deluded Lady Pimblett, for her natural color was far more pleasing to Paris’s eye than the white of her powder.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, Paris saw a beautiful and haughty young woman at the far end of the room, wearing a very expensive, fashionable, low-cut gown of pink silk that exposed her considerable personal charms. Lady Helena Pimblett, the woman he was supposed to marry—or so Helena firmly believed, although he himself had said nothing about such a thing—hurried toward him, a questioning look on her fair and arrogant face.

A precipitous flight was clearly called for. Paris muttered another apology and strode toward the door.

As he passed by a gaggle of different young women, each one perfumed and overdressed in the latest fashions, which meant that they resembled nothing so much as large bells, he smiled and nodded and wondered what the severe Miss Wells would make of the way they eyed him. Each one, he knew, was sizing him up as marriage material; each one would probably take him, if he offered.

Not Miss Wells, he ventured, recalling her indifferent expression.