Always a Maiden (The Belles of Beak Street #5)(3)
“In yonder passageway, trying to stay out of sight.” Still true, although he suspected Susanah’s hiding initially had been more about escaping from her mother. He half wondered if Susanah might be more animated if she was allowed off her lead every once in a while. “This way, my lady.”
He didn’t bother to see if she followed him as he wove through the guests again.
People cast curious stares in his direction. He wondered if Theresa had reappeared yet. If Lady Susanah had put two and two together, others likely would have too. He knew it was past time he changed his ways and he was bored with the game, but a man had needs. He couldn’t afford a mistress and a wife was out of the question. If he ended up being a caretaker to his reclusive cousin for the next forty or fifty years that wasn’t any kind of life for a wife. Although reclusive wasn’t the right word. Sequestered was a better fit. But that was the bargain he’d made with his uncle.
Lady Susanah was still in the alcove of the back passageway. He could just see the hem of her dress peeking out. Her thoroughly torn dress. He supposed he should show them the way out through the library as he’d planned to leave earlier.
He turned to see if Lady Weatdon was behind him. The marchioness was bearing down on him, albeit with a generous gap between them. She looked around as if trying to assess who had noticed her following him. He gave her a nod and then went down the corridor to the alcove. “Lady Susanah?”
She peeked out, her cheeks pink.
Surprised that he’d never really noticed her before, he studied her for a minute. Oh, he knew her. They ran in the same circles. But between his avoiding any woman who might expect a proposal and her seeking out suitors from the upper echelons of the aristocracy, they weren’t cozy with each other. Really, what he knew was that she was rumored to be excessively proper and dull as ditchwater—distinctly passionless—which was hardly a deterrent to matrimony when she also possessed a generous dowry and was her father’s sole heir.
She stepped out a little, holding the skirt of her gown to the bodice. “Did you find my mother?”
That her stays were peeking through stirred interest in him, in spite of himself. “She’s nearly here.”
Susanah’s expression went blank. Or severely schooled. There was a pleasant tilt to the corners of her mouth, but otherwise no animation at all. Somehow as he watched her control her features, he had the urge to prod her until her bland disguise slipped again.
He stared at her looking for the girl who a bit ago had cursed the belles and lamented not having what they had. “We should talk about what the belles have,” he heard himself say.
Her nose crinkled just the slightest bit as if expressing distaste, but it had the effect of making her practiced expression slip. “W-What do all the belles have?”
He grinned and then leaned close to her ear and whispered. “Unrestrained passion, my dear lady.”
She jerked back against the door and stared at him. Her face darkened. “L-Ladies don’t…”
He raised his eyebrows to challenge her. What was wrong with him? He didn’t need to tutor an ingénue in the ways of the world. Although Lady Susanah was a little old to still be playing the innocent. Not to mention, she had guessed the reason for his state of undress rather too quickly to be entirely pure in thought.
“A lady doesn’t…A gentleman surely wants a…a…a wife who is well b-behaved and proper,” she stammered.
Hell, if he wanted a challenge to the game of seduction, she’d make a perfect candidate. Even getting her alone with her dragon of a mother watching her every move would present problems and probably save him from his worst instincts.
“They most assuredly do. In the drawing room. But in the bedroom, a man wants a woman who is wanton and wild for him.” Good Lord, he was dicked in the nob for saying such a thing to her. “A man who finds both in a wife is blessed beyond measure.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed. All the while she stared up at him as if he were a feral beast who might attack her.
He wouldn’t attack per se, but he wasn’t entirely certain he would refrain from seduction. No, this wouldn’t do. He didn’t destroy unsullied maidens, and he wouldn’t start now. A gentleman, even one as disreputable as him, didn’t set out to ruin an unmarried lady. Or at least not without having marriage as a goal, which he didn’t—couldn’t in fact. He might have the reputation of a rake, but he wasn’t a ruthless defiler of women. No, he should just give her a wide berth.
*
“I hope you are not encouraging him,” Susanah’s mother said as soon as the carriage door shut them inside. “Mr. Cooper is not the sort who deserves your dowry.”
Her perhaps, but not her dowry or inheritance. She was, after all, a most disappointing child, both in her sex and her failure to land a husband of consequence. Susanah folded her hands in her lap, now that she didn’t need to hold her dress together. “Of course not. He has nothing to offer me, and I would never encourage a fortune hunter.”
“I should hope not.”
Evan Cooper didn’t have a title, nor did he have an estate, or, from what she knew, the expectation of one. If she remembered correctly he had older brothers, although his father was just a plain esquire. So there wasn’t a wisp of a hope that some distant noble relative might expire childless. Even if she should debase herself to consider ordinary gentlemen as potential husbands, she wanted one who had his own house. The idea of living with her mother for the rest of her life was enough to give Susanah hives. It wasn’t for lack of effort that she’d lived at home this long.