Page 38 of Lady Daring
She paused before a vine studded with flowers as white and delicate as she was. “The moonflowers are blooming,” she said.She touched her fingertips to her red lips, then placed them gently on a blossom.
“Fanny’s favorite,” she explained, her eyes glossy with tears.
That old, familiar bolt of loss sheared through his chest, leaving cold air to rush in. He craved for her to touch him with such tenderness. He could not ruin her by association with him, and he could not have her; she was far, so far above his touch.
“Tell me, Lord Darien,” she said, walking on, “why you are interesting yourself with a tradesman’s family when your usual diversions, so I’ve heard, are to entertain female…admirers.”
The world applauded Lord Daring for his string of conquests, the many virginal females who had passed through his arms and, supposedly, his bed. Henrietta made the whole game feel tawdry.
Dairen debated how much to reveal. He didn’t wish her to know he had designs on her uncle. She had no notion of her own attractions, which he found absurdly endearing.
And he wanted her to know the truth behind his salacious reputation. She was the one person who could understand.
His voice sounded low and hoarse in the dusky light. “My brother and I were hellions. We were known for it even as boys.”
“Lord Daring?”
She drew her India shawl about her and walked beside him. He felt her listening with her whole body. It was rather alarming to be seen by her. Everyone else, man or woman, looked at him calculating how to get what they wanted. Henrietta watched him as if she wanted to learn who he was.
“And my brother Lucien was Lucifer. Horace, the eldest, was the steady one. We called him Horse.”
His throat tightened, and they walked in silence for a while. He pushed aside the occasional drooping branch so it would not tangle in her hair. The night air, thick with fragrance, calmed him.
“But my…reputation, shall we call it, began in university. My first conquest was Clothilde Canderley. A friend’s elder sister, forced into a betrothal she didn’t want. She was complaining of this one day, and I suggested she do something scandalous. Compromise herself, so her groom would cry off.”
Henrietta’s brow lifted. “And she chose you to ruin her?”
He nodded. “It was easy to arrange a damning tableau. My wildness helped. Lucien had a thought for his future, but I—didn’t.” He paused. “Clothilde was sent away in disgrace, but eventually she was allowed to marry the man she did want, a penniless clerk whom she helped win a diplomatic post, then a barony. She now enjoys wealth, comfort, and much envy as a hostess ofton.”
Henrietta’s gray-green eyes widened. “Lady Ellesmere. My aunt wondered how you had secured an invitation.”
“Clothilde told her secret to a friend in similar circumstances, and demand for my services grew. You’d be surprised how many clever young women wish to escape marriages or want a reason to be pressed into one.”
“And now,” she said, shaking her head, “all you need do is pause with a girl on the street—take her for a turn on a balcony during a ball—” Her brow furrowed. “Forsythia Pennyroyal?”
He winced. “There is still the occasional ambitious maiden who would like to set her cap for the son of a marquess.”
“But you have not taken advantage of her.”
He turned to face her. “My character as a rakehell is exaggerated, but not undeserved.”
“So Lady Celeste?—”
“That, I’m afraid, is entirely deserved.”
He’d erred gravely with Celeste. He’d thought her among the experienced women who regularly propositioned him, women who were confident and discreet. Dumb with grief over the death of Lucretius, wallowing in misery, he hadn’t realized she wasusing him to make Havering cry off. He’d had no idea of her designs until he came home from the Continent to encounter a challenge from Havering and learned that Celeste had been hiding a pregnancy, jilting her fiancé, and refusing to name the father of her babe.
In the moonlight, Henrietta’s skin looked as smooth as polished marble. The curve of her brow, her throat, her bosom beckoned for his touch. Darien took a deep, bracing breath of the chill night air and moved to a path on the opposite side of a flower bed.
“It’s a rather sad story, isn’t it?” she whispered.
He clenched his jaw. “Celeste’s?”
“Yours.” She faced him, her puzzled frown drawing his attention to the lush line of her mouth. “You have helped any number of independent young women arrange their own futures, poking convention in the eye. And yet your name is drawn through the mud, to the point where mothers fall over themselves to remove their daughters from your path.”
He shrugged. “I have no need of society’s approval.”
She bit her lip. “But to let yourself be so judged, and never speak the truth? To allow yourself to be so used?”
