Ten Kisses to Scandal Page 3

  Then moments later, like Cleopatra coming forth on a golden chariot, she came back carrying a small dish, brimming with beautiful pale whipped heaven.

  “Oh, my dear Becky, you are an angel. I don’t think I could have lived through this day without you.” Briar took the offered dish, lifting the simple crockery in both hands like a chalice as she drew in the sweet essence.

  The maid laughed. “That’s the very last of it, miss, and not enough for a proper cup. But I must get back or Mr. Studgers will start shouting my name to the rafters.”

  Briar bid farewell and turned away. Then, just as she was about to take her first sip, the heel of her slipper caught on a cobblestone.

  She teetered. And before her lips could form a gasp, her reason for living spilled down the front of her dress.

  * * *

  Having descended from the driver’s perch, Nicholas moved fast across the cobblestones. He slipped a hand beneath the young woman’s elbow to keep her from stumbling, and snatched the dish in midair. “It doesn’t appear to be your morning, love.”

  She didn’t respond. Her gaze was fixed on the front of her dress, her delicate hands frozen and curled slightly in the empty air, as a distressed whimper escaped her.

  “No need to fret. Surely it will come out in the wash.”

  Other than a slow shake of her head, she still did not move.

  Nicholas wondered if the resolute, yet patently naive, young woman had finally reached her limit. “See here. There is no need for these histrionics. It was only foam. In fact, there’s still a spot of chocolate at the bottom.”

  “But . . . but the froth is the best part.”

  She lifted her face, her cornflower blue eyes distant and dim, causing something oddly chivalrous to tunnel through him.

  “I’ll get you another cup.”

  Again, she shook her head, the delightful curve of her lips turning the wrong direction. “That was the last of it. There’s no more, and likely not for days. Perhaps weeks. A lifetime, really, if you think of how much could happen, and worse, how much could stay the same. And I was ready for a change. It was supposed to happen today.”

  His mouth quirked as he held back a grin at her dramatic soliloquy. The funny thing was, he suspected she wasn’t acting but sincerely forlorn over the loss of the chocolate.

  Slipping an arm around her, he guided her sluggish steps toward the waiting carriage. “Come on, love. Let’s take you home. You need to start this day again on the right footing.”

  “It won’t do any good. My lucky slippers are ruined. I even sacrificed my gloves and one of my best stockings, trying to scrub the stain away.”

  “Did you now?” He set his hands in the dip of her waist, nearly spanning the distance with his splayed fingers, and lifted her without effort into the carriage. Though, as her face drifted past his and her lips parted on a breath, he caught the unmistakable scent of whisky.

  She fell back against the red velvet squabs and pointed the toe of her soiled slipper at him, her skirts rising to display a trim ankle and a lovely portion of tapered calf as well. “See?”

  “I do, indeed.” He also saw the flask on the floor beside a discarded pile of embroidered ivory silk—her stocking, he presumed. Reaching for the former, he shook it and found it empty. “By any chance, did you have a little nip on your way here?”

  “Well, I was . . . curious. I’ve never even been near spirits. Since it isn’t one of Uncle Ernest’s vices, we don’t keep any at the house. Terrible stuff the first swallow, and the second wasn’t much improved.”

  “And the third?”

  She offered a hapless shrug, carefully not meeting his gaze, her cheeks tinged a sleepy pink. “After that, it didn’t seem to matter. Wh-what are you doing?”

  “I’m climbing inside my own carriage,” he said, narrating his movements as he proceeded to settle the bulk of his frame on the bench across from her. “Closing the door. Rapping my knuckles to let Adams know we are ready to return to Sterling’s, where—I presume—your residence awaits nearby?”

  Nodding, she demurely arranged her skirts. She looked delightfully disheveled, blond curls mussed, cloak draped crookedly over one shoulder, and the toes of her slippers peeking out from beneath her skirts. “Surely you could sit in the driver’s box. I presume that is how you came to be here.”

  “It’s less conspicuous at this time of morning, and less crowded than the perch.”

  He lowered the shades, and in the shadowy confines, her eyes turned watchful.

  “Just so you understand, I’m not like her—your friend from earlier.”

  “Then you’re in luck. Wide-eyed young maidens, fresh from the country and looking to marry, are not to my taste.”

  “For your information I have been in London for over a month, and if I were inclined to marry—which I am not—I would choose a man closer to my own age.” She waved a dismissive hand in the air between them, lifting her winged brows. “What would be the point of marrying you if I were to become a widow in five years, left to raise our children alone and manage the household on a pittance after your greedy relatives strip the accounts? After that, how could I afford a governess? Tutors? University? I’d be forced to dismiss servants I’d grown attached to. The house would fall into disrepair. There would be no one across from me at dinner. No one to sit beside me when I embroider, gently scolding me to wear my reading glasses, and tucking a lock of silver hair behind my ear. And no one to lend me his arm when I can no longer manage the stairs on my own.”

  Nicholas felt his jaw drop. He’d just witnessed an entire life—his life, apparently—flash out of existence in a matter of twenty seconds. “Just to be clear, how old do you think I am?”

  “I hope not to insult you by marking you older than you are, but my first estimation was two and thirty. Though I suppose you could simply be a weathered thirty.”

  His decrepit bones shifted on the seat. “I am four and thirty.”

  “Oh, I am so very sorry,” she said with the quiet gloom of someone visiting a deathbed.

  “No need to worry. Once Adams hands me my cane, I’m sure to make it out of the carriage.”

  Across from him, she tilted her chin to her shoulder and bit her full bottom lip as if to suppress a smile.

  “And just how young are you, love?” he asked. “Young enough that you must sneak out of your home for whatever rendezvous you’d had planned this morning.”

  She stiffened but wavered on the bench as the rumbling carriage took a corner. “It is bad form to ask a grown woman her age, and this was no mere rendezvous, but a vital errand.”

  “I’d wager a five-pound note that you are not more than twenty, love.”

  “Please stop calling me love. Such an endearment should be reserved for the one who claims your heart, and a man who engages in lascivious activity in the center of town likely doesn’t know the meaning.”

  “And you do, I suppose?”

  “Every woman understands what love should be in its purest, most wholesome form.”

  He could not help but smirk at her idealistic view. Love was far from pure and wholesome. It was a barb, rough edged, razor sharp, and designed to cut all the way to the marrow, leaving only jagged scars behind. “You’re full of grand illusions. By your age, I’d received a healthy dose of reality that knocked sense into me.”

  “With a father who abandoned my sisters and me, and a mother who died of a broken heart, I’ve had plenty of reality, thank you very much,” she said, some of her words slurring together. “But I refuse to let it embitter me. A true abiding love—or even just the expectation of it—is the only reason to wake up each morning. Well, unless there’s chocolate.”

  He studied her with renewed interest. It wasn’t until she’d mentioned her parents that he saw the mark of loss in her eyes, a sadness that lingered in the deeper blue ring that surrounded her pupils. Yet when she spoke of love that darkness receded, those petal-blue orbs brightened and filled with hope. “I doubt yo
u’ve ever been in love.”

  She glanced down to her lap and plucked at the saturated muslin. Then, when her gaze darted back to him and she saw that he was watching her, she let her hands fall and expelled a sweet, liquor-scented sigh. “Is it terribly obvious?”

  Her expression was so open and torn that it was impossible to lie to her. He nodded.

  “Bother. How am I supposed to prove myself a competent matchmaker if I can’t even convince a practitioner of hedonism that I know what I’m doing?”

  “Did you say . . . matchmaker?”

  “It is the family business.” She gave an absent flick of her wrist, as if it were an everyday occurrence for a seemingly well-born young woman to admit to having an occupation. “Likely, you read about the Bourne Matrimonial Agency in the society pages, announcing our recent premier. There was even a cartoon, but it was a rather unflattering caricature of Uncle Ernest. Why, his nose isn’t nearly that big. Certainly not as large as yours.”

  “Very few are,” he said dryly, having forgotten for a moment how ancient—and clearly monstrous—he was.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean . . . Well, that is to say . . . The rest of your face appears to support it well enough.”

  “Through a great feat of engineering.”

  Again, she tucked her chin, trying not to smile, but her lips refused her bidding this time and curled upward like unfurling rose petals. Even so, he found that he could not feel cross with her. In the past thirty-four years, he’d grown used to such observations. But whatever he lacked in prettiness of feature, he compensated for with other endowments and talents.

  Skills which, he reminded himself, he would not use to seduce a marriage-minded young woman.

  Still, he was entranced by her. He reasoned that the core of it stemmed from her youthful vibrancy. Through her, he glimpsed what life was like for someone who didn’t drag bitterness around like a shackle and ball.

  His own youth had been less than idyllic after his father had died, and his mother had shifted the sole focus of her life to rearing Nicholas’s older brother. But that was nothing compared to what had happened later, when he’d discovered that one brief moment of carelessness could change a man forever.

  This young woman across from him was even more naive than he’d been. Even though she was no more than a stranger, the notion that she could suffer a similar fate knotted his stomach.

  He reclined back to ease the sensation. “Tell me more about the family business.”

  He still wasn’t sure he believed her. Women working in a matchmaking business and with society’s approval? Highly unlikely. Yet he was too intrigued by the narrator to question the validity.

  “As I mentioned, we only just opened our doors. Since the Season won’t begin for a few months, we haven’t had many clients—a handful of widows from the peerage and daughters of landed gentry. Our patroness is attempting to lure in a duke from a family she knows, but I’m not certain she will be successful. And oddly enough, we have a number of older gentlemen looking for young wives, which I don’t understand at all. I asked Uncle Ernest why they wouldn’t prefer women their own age, but he refused to answer.” Her expression turned thoughtful as she rested her head against the squabs and after a moment she shrugged. “If you can believe it, most of our male applicants are even older than you.”

  “Can such a thing be possible? Tell me, did they enter your establishment while garbed in their burial shrouds?”

  Ignoring his sarcasm, she continued. “We are open three days each week. Ainsley and Jacinda—my sisters,” she explained, “meet with the clients, make notes, and set up introductions. And what am I doing while they are performing the tasks of genuine matchmakers, hmm?” She splayed a hand over her chest, her brows lifting for an instant before her features flattened on a huff. “I’m serving tea and filing papers like a trained monkey. That is why this morning’s errand was so important. I was going to procure London’s most elusive bachelor as a client.”

  “If this gentleman is so elusive, how did you know exactly where he would be? Or is this a secret matchmaker talent?”

  “By way of the UBB—the Urgent Bachelor Bulletin. Every debutante subscribes for all the latest information on the most eligible gentlemen.”

  Her countenance was as stone-faced as a cardsharp. And for an instant, he wondered if such a publication existed.

  She must have read the uncertainty in his expression because next she cast him a coolly sardonic smirk. “From gossip, of course. I have a friend who is one of the serving wenches at the coffee house. She informed me that this particular gentleman fends for himself on his cook’s day off, dropping by each week for his breakfast pot takeaway. And I was going to use this to my advantage.”

  Nicholas sobered, an uneasy ripple breaking his merriment. He didn’t know what foolish lengths she would go to in order to achieve her goal. From what he’d already witnessed from this idealistic young woman, he had to ask. “How precisely?”

  “Before you ruined everything by appropriating my cab, I’d planned to happen upon him as if by accident, smile, and say something serendipitous about our meeting. Then, after a few pleasantries, I would have explained that I am a woman of business who knows exactly how to give him the most happiness imaginable, and bring him to the very summit of fulfillment by finding him the perfect m—”

  He cursed. “And before you could have finished, he would have found the nearest alley wall and lifted your skirts, taking you for a prostitute,” he said, incredulous. “You should thank your lucky slippers that I stopped you from making the worst mistake of your life. Have you no notion of what a man would think if a woman approached him and started talking about bringing him to the summit of fulfillment? It wouldn’t be matchmaking, I can assure you.”

  She blushed even as her eyes narrowed. “Not every man has the same lecherous view of the world as you do. There are some who are good and kind and are not fixated on . . . on fornicating in the streets of London.” She gasped. Then a low mewl of distress escaped her as she slumped forward, burying her face in her hands. “Just listen to what you’ve made me say. I’ve never used the word fornicate in my entire life, and here I am speaking it to a completely corrupt stranger. I don’t know what’s come over me.”

  “Perhaps it was the flask of whisky you drank.”

  She bobbed her head in something of a nod, her words coming out muffled. “Terrible stuff.”

  “There is another part of your plan that you failed to think of—women aren’t allowed in coffee houses, at least not the gently bred sort. Men gather there, and at their clubs, to speak freely without being restricted by social niceties, saying the things that would corrupt a young woman such as yourself. Things that truly would shock you to your core.”

  “Precisely,” she said, lifting her face to his, her expression steadfast. “All the things I need to know in order to make matches for these men. How else would I find their perfect counterparts without knowing their inner desires?”

  That uneasy ripple turned into a shudder. “I know many of those men and more than I care to—certainly enough to understand that there is no counterpart for some. And for that, we should all be grateful.”

  “I’m not a nitwit.” She scoffed. “I’m speaking of decent men, ones who journey to coffee houses to recite poetry and speak of their political aspirations, among other things. And, even though I heartily disagree, I’m well aware of the rules against allowing women admittance. But women have every right to hear the inner workings of a man’s mind, and to express themselves in a public forum. What better way for the two sexes to learn about each other?”

  “I could name a dozen off the top of my head.”

  “Truly?” She stopped breathing and leaned forward, fascination glowing like a beacon around her.

  He shook his head, adamant. “Do not even finish that thought. You are too green, your perspective limited by the fact that you’ve seen nothing of the world. And you know nothing of men.”

&nb
sp; “Then tell me everything there is to know about men.”

  She was so guileless and trusting. Far too trusting. And those eyes of hers, filled with such unfettered curiosity, roused more than mere lust in his blood. But something fierce and primal.

  He had no intention of answering her, but damn it all if he wasn’t tempted to show her.

  Yet he would not turn into the very type of man he’d just warned her against. He might be a rake, but he was not a libertine. There was a difference.

  Nicholas lived by his own code of honor. He established rules beforehand—no attachments, interference, or manipulations of any sort—and his companions understood this. He never set out to wound or blindside anyone. For then he would be no better than his brother had been.

  Feeling the carriage shift into a slow rocking rhythm, he tore his gaze away from temptation. Slipping two fingers beneath the shade, he saw the gray stone façade of Sterling’s. The fog had lifted, and the pallid light of morning revealed the broken bottles, cigar and cheroot stubs, and all manner of papers strewn over the pavement. And, for just an instant, he had a wayward desire to keep her from seeing the ugliness of it.

  He nearly laughed. An hour in her company and some of her romantic notions had already started to infiltrate his thoughts. It would be better, for both of them, if he never forgot the man he’d become.

  Once they stopped, he let the shade fall back in place and rapped his knuckles against the panel, signaling Adams to bring the step. “Shall I escort you to your door, ensuring you don’t fall into some other sort of mischief along the way?”

  She blanched and darted a quick peek through the shade. “Bother. This morning didn’t go as I’d expected it to at all. I was supposed to arrive with a wonderful announcement. Laughter and dancing in the foyer. Perhaps even . . . a shower of rose petals over my head.” She expelled the most forlorn sigh he’d ever heard. Then she set a heavy hand on the door like a defeated soldier returning home from a lost battle. “Of course, you know, this entire debacle will have to be our secret.”

  “I don’t even know your name, love.” And she didn’t know his either, which was all the more important.