A Lady’s Code of Misconduct, Page 3

  But she could well imagine that when he was confronted by the Masons, Mr. Pine’s dreams of a pretty cottage in Cornwall had collapsed under terror.

  How smug her uncle must feel right now! She was only surprised that he had not sent Archie to rout her. Burke was too lofty for such errands. He was a star in the House of Commons, whose aristocratic connections gave him the upper hand over her uncle, despite her uncle’s access to her wealth.

  “You make a fine messenger boy,” she said. “And here I mistook you for a man with a spine.”

  “Your uncle did not send me.”

  Startled, she frowned at him. The firelight painted his skin golden and played across the chiseled planes of his face. Rarely had she allowed herself to study him at length. But sometimes, to her distress, she had dreamed of him anyway.

  In those dreams he was a different person, kinder, gentler. She always woke disturbed. Beauty had a horrible power. It did not conceal faults so much as it persuaded the viewer to ignore them, and to disregard the instinct that screamed danger.

  “If my uncle didn’t send you, why are you here?”

  Burke shrugged. “Mason intends to leave you stewing for a time. And then he will send Archibald to fetch you.”

  She digested this bitterness. “Teaching me a lesson, is he?”

  “You’ve been quite foolish.” Burke’s tone was gentle. “Archibald will come alone, you see. I cannot say, Miss Mason, what might transpire between you on the road home. But upon your arrival at Marylebigh, I feel certain that the Elboroughs will discover you together. Returning at midnight, in a state of disrepair, your gown perhaps ripped, with no chaperone . . .”

  She could not breathe.

  “It could be covered up,” he continued with dreadful patience, “if only the Elboroughs did not witness it. Your uncle will be alarmed and mortified. He will insist that his son does his duty by you. The Elboroughs will approve, and carry the tale of your engagement far and wide—as well as the cause for it. You will not be allowed to refuse this time.”

  “I will not marry Archibald.” She had said so time and again. “No one can force me.”

  “No one could have done,” Burke agreed. “But you made it possible. You arranged your own disgrace tonight.” He paused. “You and Jonathan Pine. How convenient! Mr. Pine certainly earned his payment.”

  She recoiled so sharply that the bench tipped. As it slammed back against the flagstones, the noise drew attention from rough men nearby. Mr. Burke appeared unalarmed by their scowls. He lifted his tankard to them, his smile easy.

  She battled a temptation to speak to the onlookers—to beg for their help. But nobody could help her. Her uncle was the most powerful man in the county, his influence built from the funds he steadily siphoned from her inheritance—and the cleverness and power of his friends.

  “I wish you joy of your marriage, Miss Mason.”

  As Burke rose, she leapt up. “Wait! I don’t—” She could not marry Archie. She would not live the rest of her life beneath her uncle’s thumb. “Please, you must help me.” Burke was allied with her uncle for a reason. Born high but a second son, he had no fortune of his own. “I offered Pine five thousand pounds. I will offer you the same if you help me to escape.”

  Burke turned back, considering her from head to toe. The thoroughness of his inspection made her aware of her dishevelment. She had walked four miles in the rain and mud; her skirts were stained, her hair straggling.

  Burke was right: the guests at Marylebigh would leap to the worst conclusion if they witnessed her returning alone, in Archibald’s company.

  “I do not want your money,” he said.

  “Ten thousand, then.”

  He smiled faintly. “Perhaps there is something else you might do for me. We might, as they say, become friends.”

  She had a vague notion of what friendship meant to a man like Burke. It had nothing to do with affection and everything to do with conspiracies.

  “I have nothing to offer but money,” she said.

  “Not true.” Burke sat back down, and so did she. “You know everything that goes on in your uncle’s household. They speak freely around you.”

  Jane hesitated. Did they not speak freely around him? She knew Burke had been quarreling more and more with her uncle—it was the debate over the mutiny that had first put them at odds. Philip was a warmonger, whereas Burke preferred subtler methods of intimidation. Still, she had imagined their alliance unbreakable. “You want me to . . . spy for you?”

  “I want you to use your brain,” he said coolly. “You don’t wish to marry Archibald? Then what you need is a friend—one who might do you favors, in return for those that you do him.”

  She felt a wave of revulsion. Was this how Burke conducted his career? Like a spider in the dark, weaving webs of shameful debts? At least her uncle’s motives were straightforward, his politics dictated by what would enrich him.

  But she’d long guessed Burke to be a more poisonous species. He had a cool temper, a clever mind, endless charm. He used people and then, elegantly, destroyed them. He never forgot a name or face or a slight against him. She had heard him quote, verbatim, conversations she had long forgotten, and pinpoint weaknesses in opponents that no honorable man would admit to knowing.

  “You would do anything,” she said unsteadily, “to become prime minister. Wouldn’t you?”

  He would overtake her uncle one day, and eat him alive. That Uncle Philip did not foresee the danger to himself amazed her.

  Burke laughed, a low and beautiful sound that made her swallow. “Certainly,” he said. “Far worse things than this, to be sure. And more useful things, too. For whatever reason, I’m feeling benevolent tonight.”

  “How fortunate for me,” she said, full of sarcasm.

  His sigh sounded impatient. “I’ll spare you the midnight ruination. In return, you will listen for a single name and tell me whatever you hear spoken of it. Are we agreed?”

  That did seem a simple trade. But Jane knew better than to trust such simplicity. Whosever name it was, it would lead her down a twisted path. “Oh,” she said softly, bitterly, “to be free of all of you!”

  Burke snorted. “You are not on a stage, darling. Spare me the melodrama. If freedom is your aim, then do what you must. Otherwise, I’m off.”

  She took a deep breath. What choice did she have? “Yes,” she said. “Tell me the name.”

  * * *

  Crispin considered his unwilling companion. “Would you really have married Pine?” he asked.

  Jane Mason sat across from him, clutching the hand strap as his carriage lurched down the flooding road. Crispin half expected her to refuse to answer. But her ordeal tonight, of hope dashed and defeat postponed, seemed to have left her too tired to assemble her usual restraint.

  “Of course,” she said. She gave him a brief, wondering look from beneath the shadows of her hood. The damp had undone her carefully pinned coiffure; curls rioted freely at her temples and brow. She shed pins as regularly as trees shed leaves; he was holding one in his hand right now, turning it over and over as he studied her.

  “What did you imagine?” she asked. “That I’d arranged the whole business for the pleasure of jilting a seventy-year-old?”

  Her bluntness amused him. “Seventy? You certainly were desperate.”

  “Or practical,” she said. “In a marriage of pure convenience, an elderly groom is far preferable to one bound to live fifty years.”

  His laughter startled him. This made three times tonight that his view of Jane Mason had twisted to reveal new angles. She made such a convincing show of drifting ghostlike through Marylebigh that one would never guess her soft-spoken demeanor concealed such a sharp tongue.

  “And?” he asked, for he was genuinely curious now. It was so rare to find himself mistaken about a person’s mettle. “After the marriage, what then?”

  She shrugged. “I would have provided him with a handsome settlement so he could live out his days in
the style he desired.”

  “But you would not have lived with him.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Convenience, sir, works both ways. Mr. Pine would have gone his way, and I mine.”

  For a woman so cloistered and coddled, she seemed quite confident that she would have faced no difficulties in setting off alone. “And where would you have gone?”

  But he had reached the end of her generosity. She turned her face toward the window, the stony set of her profile warning him not to prod her.

  She’d formulated some plan for herself. What could it be? Mason occasionally intercepted the letters she wrote to newspapers, earnest pleas to care for the poor, to reform the educational system, all manner of women’s concerns. Perhaps, then, she dreamed of a house in Bloomsbury, charity work, a life of noblesse oblige.

  Or perhaps, for all Crispin knew, she hungered for Parisian bohemianism. He no longer trusted his instincts about her; until this evening, he had discounted her entirely. In company, she always kept to a script of murmured neutralities that communicated both her polite attention and her overarching disinterest in the conversation.

  Today, however . . . He’d been amazed when he’d overheard Philip Mason discussing his ward’s midnight assignation. Only Mason’s rage—which, unlike his muffled words, had translated clearly through the door—had convinced Crispin that he was hearing correctly.

  He’d not intended to interfere with Mason’s plan. After all, Jane’s money was what made Philip such a useful ally. But tonight, in the drawing room, she had caught his attention. She’d been listening too closely to his brawl with Mason. Later, as Archibald had produced Jane’s embroidery, Crispin had glanced over at her again. The golden goose, she had called herself earlier—he had wondered then if she referenced the less kind nickname her uncle used for her, the brown goose, his tired joke about her dull wit and homely airs.

  But in the drawing room, caught off guard by her cousin’s prank, Jane Mason had forgotten to restrain herself. The malicious delight on her face had been Crispin’s first inkling, in all the time he’d known her, that she restrained herself at all. Indeed, that single moment had revealed more of Jane Mason than years of casual acquaintance. In one glance, Crispin had realized not only the strength of the passions underlying her wan mask but the ferocious strength of will that she had wielded in order to present such a bland front to the world.

  Astonishing. His entire life had been a firsthand lesson in how badly others could misjudge a person. Yet he’d still overlooked her.

  No longer. A woman capable of such restraint and anger was far more interesting to him than any commonplace beauty. Brown goose, indeed. The brown goose could prove very useful, and Philip Mason’s carelessness had given Crispin the single opportunity he needed to place her in his power.

  “You don’t trust my uncle,” she said abruptly.

  “Oh, are we talking again?” He crossed his legs. “Excellent. So tell me, where did you intend to go, once you had your fortune in your hands?”

  “Has he given you cause for mistrust, or do you suspect people as a general policy?”

  “You first,” he said.

  “I intended to move to New York.” She shrugged. “Unmarried women have far more freedom in America. It’s only the married ones who have to behave. Your turn.”

  So she didn’t want to behave. Was this a recent desire? She’d certainly done a brilliant job of playing the pushover. “I trust no one,” he said. “Especially my friends.”

  “I expect that’s wise, since friendship with you suggests something very troubling about their characters.”

  The smile he gave her appeared to make her uneasy. She shrank back a little into the deep cushions on her bench.

  Interesting effect. He let his smile widen further, and watched her gaze drop from his and her chest rise on a sudden deep breath.

  Well, wasn’t this delightful? The goose was attracted to him. Very useful to know. Indeed, the more sharp angles he uncovered in her, the more intrigued he felt. She wasn’t actually as plain as Philip Mason hoped. Her skin was clear, her hazel eyes large and brilliant, and even the untamed spirals of her dark hair had a certain winsome charm, now that he could read them as metonyms for her frustrated desires.

  “You have a dark view of my character,” he said. What a terribly uncomfortable quandary for her, to want him and loathe him at once. He wondered if the struggle kept her awake at night.

  She licked her lips, and he felt a stirring of animal interest. The idea of touching her, of tempting her into surrendering to a wholly reluctant attraction, beckoned him. Why not? His family—and several others besides—already believed him well versed in worse.

  “I don’t think you much care about my opinion of you,” she said.

  “That’s true.” Others’ opinions were so often wrong that to set store by them was idiocy. But living up to those baseless opinions—ah, now, that could make a fine game. “More to the point, your view is quite correct. I’m not a good man, Miss Mason. I do not deserve your approval.”

  A line appeared between her dark brows. She studied him a moment, in which he let his own gaze dip to her lips, which were pink and prettily shaped.

  She averted her face. “You have no shame.”

  “None. Why would I? It’s a useless quality, and deadly to one’s ambitions.”

  “I think ambitions can coexist with decency,” she said quietly.

  “Indeed? Pray tell, what have you aspired to, Miss Mason?”

  She clearly registered his mockery, for she refused to look at him now. He let the moment draw out, gauging his next dose of it with an eye to how it would best serve to disarm her.

  “Oh, forgive me,” he said apologetically. “I suppose you are thinking of your needlepoint. That tapestry, by the way, was very clever. But ugly. I recommend you stick to flowers.”

  “It was needlepoint, Mr. Burke. Tapestries are woven, you see, and I find it far more satisfying to stab than to weave.”

  “Needlepoint!” He was amazed. “Good God, that must have taken you . . .” He could not begin to guess how long.

  “Ten months,” she said. “It was so difficult to abandon the social whirl.”

  Her sarcasm was cutting. Mason did not allow her to set foot outside the estate. To Crispin’s knowledge, she had been cloistered at Marylebigh since her parents’ death.

  “Well,” he said. “No wonder I haven’t seen you recently.”

  “Oh, the needlepoint wasn’t to blame for that.” She offered him a brilliant smile. “I strive to avoid you.”

  Was that meant to wound him? He laughed. “Amazing. And yet you still made time for your little letters to the newspapers.”

  Shock widened her eyes. She mastered it quickly, but not before he had the satisfaction of glimpsing it.

  “Goodness,” he said. “Didn’t you know? Mason quite enjoys them. But you can’t blame him for your failure to be published.” A lie. The editors, being an unprincipled lot, knew that discarding the letters would earn a handy fee from her uncle. “At any rate, it seems your talents lie elsewhere. Do keep looking, sweetheart.”

  Her pause seemed promising, filled with self-doubt. But then she startled him by saying in a low voice, “Maybe I have no brain for politics, then. But I mean to keep trying anyway.”

  Her resolve made him feel irritated and weary all at once. “Without any conviction of talent? That sounds like a great waste of time.”

  “I don’t think so.” She met his eyes, her expression solemn. “I do find my thoughts worth sharing, sir. I think the fault must lie with the listeners. But even if I were a fool . . . it would still be worth the effort to think.”

  Where had this woman come from? Her voice was made of steel and her dignity, unbreakable.

  “You’ve been having a good deal of fun,” he said slowly, “haven’t you? Convincing the world that you’re a mouse.”

  “I haven’t yet had a chance to convince the world of anything.” She d
id not so much as blink. “You may notice that I spend all year here. If my ideas are small-minded, then they reflect my experience. But that must change—now, soon. So bear in mind, Mr. Burke, that whatever friendship I have offered you, it will expire within the year. One way or another, I will escape my uncle’s household.”

  She meant what she said. But she underestimated her uncle’s dependence on her wealth.

  The feeling that flickered through him was so unfamiliar and ridiculous that it took a moment to register. He opened his mouth, then made himself close it. Her safety was not his concern.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “you must think the whole thing laughable. I am cared for, am I not? Provided with every luxury my heart can desire, all the ink and paper and silk floss I could ask for. But you’ve never been powerless, Mr. Burke. Or discounted in every regard that makes one human. So you must trust me when I say that comfort can be a prison.”

  He clenched his teeth. “Very moving,” he said, intending sarcasm, but his voice came out roughly. He cleared his throat and scowled out the window.

  “I did not mean to move you,” she said. “I suspect it impossible, in fact. But I wonder. Would you really do anything to be prime minister?”

  A curious wariness came over him—the same kind of edged alertness he felt when sparring with the opposition on the floor of the Commons. A presentiment of an oncoming trap, a rhetorical gambit that might skewer him.

  The sensation irked him. She was surprisingly intelligent, but naïve and overconfident to boot. “Are you concerned for your safety, Miss Mason? Be at ease. Nobody ever won the office for doing away with an annoying woman.”

  “So you would murder someone, if it came to it?”

  He turned to stare at her. “Do you think me such a pathetic politician that murder would be necessary?”

  “That is not a denial.”

  She was goading him in the hope of rousing his indignation. But she had no idea that he’d been provoked a thousand times with these sordid insinuations. He had been punished for crimes that he’d never imagined, much less committed. And he had borne it all from people who’d had cause to know him far better than she.