Page 9 of The Ruin of a Rake
“I think I hate you.”
“Iknowyou hate me.” And it was true. The expression in Medlock’s eyes was, if not total hatred, then at least scorn. No matter. Courtenay was used to it. He told himself that Medlock’s contempt didn’t matter, and the twisting feeling in his gut was a mere coincidence. “I don’t know what Eleanor sees in you.” He suddenly looked stricken. “Oh my God. Eleanor.”
The fellow most definitely thought Eleanor and Courtenay were lovers. Courtenay could have put his mind at ease, but bugger that. Let the man tear himself up a bit. Let him get a taste of what it was like to be on the wrong side of the rules.
Chapter Five
All eyes were on them as they made their way to Lady Montbray’s box during the interval. Julian didn’t like it one bit. He preferred to hover unobjectionably in the background. As always, he used absolute propriety as both sword and shield. Nobody could suspect him of lax ethics or any human frailty when he was the most correct person in the room. He could hardly suspect it of himself. He nodded and bowed to acquaintances and reassured himself that whatever madness had come over him earlier was a temporary aberration rather than a decline into moral turpitude. Courtenay must bring about that sort of reaction. There was no other explanation.
Courtenay looked... perfectly fine, actually. Julian had half expected the man to show up in a purple waistcoat or other sartorial abomination but instead he wore a perfectly unremarkable and quite well tailored black coat. Really, he was dressed more decently than Julian could have expected. He almost looked like a normal aristocrat rather than the infernal scapegrace he was. It was strange that he had taken care to arrange himself so properly, when he clearly couldn’t care any less about propriety in all other facets of his life.
The only blot on Courtenay’s appearance—apart from the tragedy that was his hair—was his cravat. The man’s valet must be blind or demented. However, it looked no different than it had when they entered the opera earlier that evening, even though it must have come askew during that ill-advised kiss. Perhaps that was why he tied it in such a sloppy manner—so nobody would be any the wiser if he indulged his lascivious inclinations. Perhaps he kissed and fondled men every night and women every morning and hosted a mixed orgy every afternoon. Perhaps their embrace had been as unremarkable for Courtenay as a regularly scheduled meal.
Not so for Julian. He preferred discreet liaisons, conducted with gentlemen who understood the value of moderation. There was no unbridled passion, thank God, but rather a straightforward and healthy fulfillment of a need.
He did not, in other words, get his cock stroked by his sister’s paramour with hundreds of potential onlookers.
As they approached Lady Montbray’s box, Julian patted his cravat to make sure it bore no traces of his indiscretion.
“It’s perfectly fine,” Courtenay said. Julian hadn’t even realized the man was watching him and felt a prickle of belated awareness course through his body.
They found Lady Montbray alone with her companion. Julian was pleased to see that Lady Montbray had on the white silk gown he had advised her to wear, very correct and becoming. She also had a profusion of feathers in her hair, which might perhaps have been vulgar in anyone lacking her pedigree, wealth, and beauty. Rich aristocrats who looked like Dutch dolls could put whatever they wanted in their hair, he supposed. Everybody else had to cleave closely to every rule and regulation or be branded an upstart vulgarian.Not one of us, dear.
That made it all the more galling that Courtenay had thrown that privilege away. He had been born to wealth, inherited a title, and was as good-looking as it was possible for a human being to be, as much as it irked Julian to admit it. But he had—if gossip was to be believed—gambled away half his fortune and spent the other half on women. He had behaved so outrageously that even his title wasn’t enough to redeem him.
If Julian had half the status Courtenay was born with—an entry in Debrett’s, a coat of arms—he’d be the prime minister by now, for God’s sake. Instead his sole accomplishment was being here, a gentleman so polished and pristine his very humanity was concealed beneath layers of glossy refinement. That had been his goal when he and Eleanor had arrived in London; his eighteen-year-old self had even thought being received by the highest rungs on the ladder of society would be a sort of gift for Eleanor, a present to thank her for having come with him. Perhaps he had been naïve.
He shook that thought off and performed the necessary introductions while Lady Montbray looked at Courtenay as if he were a lion in a zoo. Really, she wasn’t even bothering to conceal her shocked curiosity. Perhaps Julian had gone a step too far in bringing Courtenay to her. But at the beginning of the interval she had waved her fan ever so slightly at him, from her box to his.
One didn’t get where Julian was without being able to smooth over some minor awkwardness. He did what one always did in these situations, which was to make a stock remark about how one hoped one’s acquaintances enjoyed the rest of the evening, and then beat a hasty retreat. But before he could manage the thing, Courtenay had pulled up a chair next to Lady Montbray’s companion and drawn her into conversation.
“Oh dear,” he muttered. Miss Sutherland looked openly irritated. She was a thin, rather plain woman who Julian suspected of bluestocking tendencies, and she had not come to the opera to be assailed by rakehells.
“Mr. Medlock,” Lady Montbray whispered. “I was hoping you’d bring him to me. I’ve been dreadfully bored and meeting an infamous character was precisely what I needed.”
That gave Julian an idea. “Do you think anyone else will share that sentiment?” He could launch Courtenay into society as a novelty, perhaps. That would be better than nothing.
At that moment, a pair of ladies Julian only vaguely recognized entered Lady Montbray’s box, took one look at Courtenay, and turned wordlessly on their heels to leave.
“Perhaps not,” he said.
“But look. He’s made a conquest of Anne. I hadn’t thought her at all the type to be charmed by a rogue.”
Anne Sutherland was an impoverished relation of Lady Montbray’s late husband and had taken up residence with Lady Montbray some years earlier. She had a habit of looking at one as if she knew precisely what one was about, which made Julian slightly wary of her. But her earlier annoyance was quite gone, and now she was regarding Courtenay as if he were a clever child who had brought her a posy. They were talking about the book Miss Sutherland had open in her lap. How the devil had he managed to encounter the only two people on earth who read at the opera?
“Nobody’s safe,” Julian said bitterly.
Lady Montbray raised an eyebrow. “I think Anne is quite safe.”
“That’s what you say now.” In truth, Julian would have thought a mousy bluestocking like Miss Sutherland to be the last person on earth to draw Courtenay’s attentions. But looking at her now, she didn’t seem in the least bit drab. She looked lively and engaged. And when Courtenay reached into his coat pocket and produced that infernal novel, she actually laughed. He had never heard her laugh. He had hardly ever heard her speak, come to think of it. Whatever mysterious quality of Courtenay’s made one behave like a feral animal had the result of making Miss Sutherland positively blossom. He wasn’t flirting with her—it wasn’t anything as pointed as that—but it was as if he was bringing the best part of her out into the light.
She wasn’t half crawling into Courtenay’s lap, though, so perhaps she was made of stronger stuff than Julian, damn it.
“Youmustread it,” he was saying. He wasrecommendingit? Julian was horror stricken. The last thing he needed was for anyone else to read that blasted book and associate it with Courtenay.
“We’d best be getting back,” he announced.
Courtenay bent over Miss Sutherland’s hand, and instead of kissing the air above it, he turned her hand and kissed her palm. Good God. And shelaughedat this impertinence, as if he had told the funniest witticism. “Thank you for the conversation,” he said to Miss Sutherland. “I don’t meet many people who share my taste in poetry.”
