Authors: Elizabeth Thornton
"Yes, go on," she said encouragingly.
"It was not as you think. The lady knows me for what I am and she was not unwilling."
Briony was silent, and Ravensworth began again.
"I may not have much of a conscience, Miss Langland, but I am not a scoundrel! I am a man of honor."
"I see," said the lady noncommittally.
"Will you accept me as such?"
"A man of honor?
I will if it satisfies you."
"It does not satisfy you?"
"Since you ask, no!"
"Why not?"
She shrugged dismissively.
"Honor!
What is this code of honor you gentlemen live by, my lord? Whom does it serve? Who devises the rules? How can honor be satisfied by duels and vendettas and so on? Yet that is what you gentlemen believe. No, I do not think a man of honor is to be compared to a man of conscience."
Ravensworth was taken aback at the scorn in
Briony's
voice. "What it means, madam," he said curtly, "is that if I give you my word, you may rely upon it."
Briony began to fuss with her gloves and Ravensworth perceived that the lady had no wish to pursue the conversation further, but some devil in him goaded him on. He could not let it rest.
"Do you believe in fate, Miss Langland?"
"Why do you ask?" she inquired curiously.
"Because I am beginning to believe that you
are
my nemesis. Did the gods send you?"
Briony chuckled. "Why should the gods send retribution on you?"
"For my misdeeds!"
"Are you the only person to regret misdeeds?"
"Did I say I regretted them?"
Briony looked frankly into his eyes as if to read his mind. Blue, honest eyes, she noted, fringed by long, thick, curling lashes; expressive eyes, with warmth, amusement, and something else concealed in their depths.
"Come now, Miss Langland, a man with no conscience cannot be expected to regret his misdeeds."
"And a man of honor?" she asked quietly.
"A man of honor doesn't have any."
Her gray eyes never wavered in their close scrutiny of his expression. He watched her brow wrinkle in puzzlement.
"Well," he finally demanded, "have you nothing to say in reply?"
Briony's
tone was reserved. "I don't understand."
"In plain terms, Miss Langland," said Ravensworth, impulsively taking her hands into his, "I wish you to know that although I may not be
as.
. .
virtuous as some gentlemen, I am not unscrupulous. You may depend on my word as a man of honor."
Briony was deeply troubled but she managed a polite, "Thank you," before lapsing into another of her reflective silences.
Ravensworth retrieved the reins from her hands. "I think the horses are recovered enough. Shall we find the others?" He spoke in a conversational tone.
On the drive back, not another word was said about Conscience or Honor, but Briony meditated on his words. Logic told her that Lord Ravensworth was dangerous, but her instincts gave her an entirely different message. She decided that there could be no harm in allowing him to pursue the acquaintance, if he wished it, for whatever might be the state of his lordship's
Conscience,
hers was as lively and as sensitive as it had ever been.
The freezing temperatures of a bitingly cold spring did little to dampen the high good humor of Sir John and Lady Esther in the year of our Lord 1814. With the little Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte, safely confined on Elba, England was enjoying a period of unalloyed peace with Europe for the first time in over twenty years. Public confidence had reached such heights that many of Wellington's units had been disbanded and others had crossed the Atlantic to join forces with loyalists in Canada against the United States of America.
Although news from the colonies was far from reassuring, the
Grenfells
had a particular reason for their mood of self- congratulation. They were celebrating the birth of their latest grandchild to their eldest daughter and her husband, who lived a mere two days' journey away in the Georgian city of Bath, and Sir John and Lady Grenfell proposed to spend an indeterminate number of weeks in the tranquil company of one of their offspring whom they averred had never given them a moment's unease.
In the normal course of events, nothing on earth would have persuaded such dutiful parents to desert their troublesome, scapegrace daughter but there had been what Lady Esther was pleased to call "A Transformation" in her youngest child. Miss Harriet Grenfell had changed. No one would deny it. Whether this conversion had come about because of the influence of Lord Avery, whose suit looked to be prospering, or whether her Quaker cousin had exercised a beneficial effect on Harriet's character, Lady Esther could not say. Nor did she care. It was enough that Harriet's manners, whether in public or in private,
were
conformed to the highest standards of a genteel lady of quality. Lady Jersey, that lioness of
Almack's
, had even hinted that one of the coveted vouchers to the assemblies might be forthcoming. Harriet's parents, not unnaturally, were quite overwhelmed.
Such was their conviction in Harriet's metamorphosis that they saw no reason, when they removed to Bath, why Harriet and Briony should delay their enjoyment of their London Season when people were beginning to trickle back to town. It had been their intention from the first to take up Great Aunt
Sophy's
generous offer to accommodate the Grenfell family in her commodious townhouse in Half Moon Street for those few months when the Season was at its height. In the circumstances, Aunt
Sophy
allowed herself to be more than willing to act as chaperone to the girls.
Broomhill
House could not be faulted in proportions and situation for a year-round family residence but it was conceded that Richmond was a tad out of the way for two young debutantes who would wish to be in the center of the social whirl.
Perforce, it was with an easy conscience that the assembled members of the household said their farewells to Briony and Harriet as the girls set off in the family coach on the short drive to town. Since there was little to occupy one of Nanny's particular abilities in a childless household, she had consented to accompany the
Grenfells
as nurse to the new babe. But she made it perfectly clear that this was to be a temporary arrangement since her loyalties lay with the Langland branch of the family and, although it remained
unspoken, it was Nanny's fondest hope that her ample arms would be nursing the first child of her "wee lamb" in the not too distant future.
Vernon was to remain in
Broomhill
House temporarily. The Oxford Entrance would be upon him all too soon, and he desperately needed the time to perfect the intricacies of Greek grammar and syntax. It was with a wistful smile that he said his adieus to his sister and his cousin, promising that as soon as he was over "this infernal hurdle," he would be punctilious in presenting himself at Half Moon Street. Briony was uneasy in her mind about leaving her younger brother for it seemed to her that in the months since they had taken up residence in Richmond, Vernon had thrown off the moderating influence of his temperate parents and gave every evidence of becoming as dandified and as indolent a gentleman as any of the young bucks of his new circle of friends. She was sadly aware that there was little to restrain the natural impulses of a callow youth inclined to levity, for a sister's influence was all but negligible.
On one person, however,
Briony's
proximity was having a profound effect. Harriet, in the months since
Briony's
near disastrous accident in the curricle, had been suffering from the worst pangs of guilt that she had ever experienced in her life. That Briony had never so much as intimated the least displeasure in having the fatal cheroot thrust upon her simply to save Harriet's face swelled that young lady's sense of remorse immeasurably. She felt that her conduct had been worse than reprehensible, but when she had tried to make her heartfelt apologies, they had been brushed aside as being quite unnecessary. To be forgiven so freely and easily made Harriet's iniquity weigh even more heavily upon her. Lord Ravensworth and Avery had wasted no scruples in calling her to account for her irresponsible conduct, but from Briony there had been not even a mild rebuke. Harriet's conscience smote her heavily.
She soon came to perceive that cousin Briony, in her own way, was as much an original and as unconventional as Harriet had ever aspired to be, but she took no pleasure in that knowledge. On the contrary, it worried her to death. That her own outrageous behavior had on many occasions scandalized the more august members of the ton had never troubled Harriet overmuch in the past. But she would tolerate no disparagement, no ridicule, no ostracism of the gentle cousin whom she had come so much to admire. Her mind was resolute. No
outre
act of hers should ever again lure Briony into committing a social solecism. Harriet resigned herself to becoming a Model Girl.
Harriet's pride, however, was deeply wounded. Lord Avery she had jilted in a fit of pique when he had had the effrontery to issue an ultimatum. He had summarily ordered her to mend her ways or to cry off from their betrothal. Well, she had sent him to the roustabouts with a flea in his ear, even although her heart had been breaking. Harriet had her pride. Since then, Avery had been, with his friend Ravensworth, intermittently in her company for the last number of months. Her feminine intuition told her that her erstwhile fiancé was not immune to her charms. Moreover, her present deportment was everything he had said he wished it to be, but there had been no renewal of those offers which she had in her fury spurned. Harriet was troubled.
Briony was no less troubled by the attentions of Avery's friend. As her acquaintanceship with Ravensworth progressed, it had occurred to her, on occasion, that his lordship was cherishing a
tendre
for her. That notion she had soon put out of her head when he had explained with a confiding air that the heir to His Grace, the Duke of
Dalbreck
, might not marry where his fancy lay but that he was expected to make a match of the first consequence. Briony heard these words with a ripple of regret for she found the
Marquess
the most attractive man of her acquaintance even though she freely admitted that he was not a suitable mate for a respectable Quaker girl. When, therefore, she began to
suspect that she was becoming enamored of a man with whom she had little in common, a man who, moreover, was an openly confessed libertine and against whom every feeling of delicacy recoiled, she ruthlessly suppressed these tender emotions and directed her wayward thoughts in a direction more fitting for one of her gentle upbringing.
It was impossible to avoid his company altogether, however, for he and Avery seemed to have many acquaintances in Richmond and
Twickenham
and he was frequently in attendance at the small house parties which were assembled to pass the tedium of the long winter months. Briony was quick to perceive that even a man of Ravensworth's unsavory reputation was courted by eager hostesses, and when she queried Harriet, she was informed that whatever the state of his lordship's morals, his manners were impeccable and any hostess who had enticed him to her board could be considered to have a feather in her cap and something to crow about.
Briony could not fathom why Ravensworth sought out her company when he had frequently indicated that his autocratic father intended him for another, but she put it down to the incomprehensible ways of the ton in which she was a novice. She looked forward to the prospective sojourn in town, where she hoped that she might be so much in company that it would be less obvious that she was trying to avoid the man whom she found so unsettling to her usual tranquility.
The
Marquess
of Ravensworth smiled devilishly at his darkly handsome reflection in the cheval mirror in his dressing room in Albany House, and his lordship's valet, Denby, waiting patiently in the background to ease his master's broad back into a snug-fitting coat, noted the fleeting look and speculated on what devilment his master was contemplating.
With a delicate hand, the
Marquess
adjusted his fine lawn
neckcloth
which was intricately folded in a style commonly known as "a la Ravensworth" and he surveyed the result with a critical eye. His hair, which he wore rather long and disheveled, was in the "Titus" mode. Ravensworth's locks, however, owed nothing to art. His closely curled hair was honestly come by, for it was a distinguishing feature of all the
Montgomerys
.
He allowed a solicitous Denby to smooth his coat of blue superfine over his broad, muscular shoulders and he pulled the front open a trifle to reveal a white satin waistcoat heavily embroidered with silver thread.
"What do you think?" asked Ravensworth.
"The diamond or the sapphire?"
Denby considered. He appraised his master's figure from the top of his curled locks to the tips of his black kid pumps fastened with ribbons. He noted with approval the exquisitely tailored fit of the Weston coat, and the white satin breeches with matching waistcoat and silk stockings.