How to Romance a Rake (4 page)

For too long she’d allowed herself to be pushed to the side, like a broken bit of furniture that was no longer of use. She hadn’t been completely repaired, but she now knew that she was not so damaged as she’d once thought. And the knowledge filled her with hope—for the first time in years.

No one, she vowed to herself, would rob her of such opportunities again.

“Juliet! What on earth are you doing?”

Like an unskilled bow on a violin, the sound of Viscountess Shelby’s voice brought all activity in the room to a halt.

Just like her mother to spoil things. Juliet closed her eyes in an effort to steel her emotions. She had hoped that Lady Shelby would remain ignorant of her dance lessons until after she’d been able to demonstrate them in public. Her mother was much more likely to acquiesce to the change in her daughter’s social status if it were presented as a fait accompli. She had her own reasons for wishing Juliet to remain in her current position at the edges of the
ton
and none of them involved her offspring’s well-being. Juliet had learned that the hard way years ago.

When Juliet made to pull away from Deveril, she felt his arms tighten about her for a flash before he let her go.

“I am dancing, Mama,” she said to her mother, who stood in the doorway, her hand at her breast as if she’d discovered her daughter in an orgy rather than a simple dancing party.“It’s quite harmless.”

“I am so sorry, Your Grace,” the butler said from behind Lady Shelby. “She slipped past me as I came to give you her card.”

Perhaps sensing that her histrionics would not be best received by the present company, Lady Shelby visibly composed herself. “But, I am family, so I knew you would not wish to stand on ceremony, my dear Cecily,” she crooned, assuming a more solicitous mien. “And I did so wish to see my dear daughter dance. I hate to think of what effect it might have on her injury.”

“She is perfectly all right, as you can see, Aunt,” Cecily informed her as she stepped forward to offer a supporting arm to Juliet. “I daresay it’s even good for her.”

“Indeed, Lady Shelby,” Deveril said, flanking Juliet’s other side, “she is a natural dancer. It was I who suggested it in the first place, if you must know. I’ve an aunt who suffers from—”

But before he could complete his thought, Lady Shelby interrupted the viscount. “I am sure your aunt is quite able to do as she wishes, my lord. But you do not understand the fragile nature of my daughter’s health. I will thank you to let me know how best to take care of my own flesh and blood.”

“Mama,” Juliet objected, mortified at her mother’s rudeness.

“Juliet, my dear,” Lady Shelby said, turning her head in that way that signified she was about to issue a towering scold. “Might I speak with you in the hall for a moment? The rest of you will excuse us, of course.”

*   *   *

Alec watched as Juliet followed her mother from the sitting room, her limp more pronounced than it had been all evening.

“What was that about?” he demanded. “One would think that Lady Shelby disapproved of Miss Shelby dancing at all.”

The pall cast over the room by Lady Shelby’s arrival hovered over the erstwhile revelers like a dark cloud.

“Come, my lord,” Cecily said to him, linking her arm through Deveril’s and pulling him toward the table where refreshments had been laid out earlier. “Let me pour you a cup of tea.”

“It’s a da … er, dashed shame,” Winterson said, leading Lady Madeline to the refreshments as well. “It’s as plain as a pikestaff Lady Shelby resents Juliet enjoying herself.”

Though he was in agreement with his friend, Alec didn’t say so. He knew that he should be taking this opportunity to sit beside Lady Madeline and chat with her about some inconsequential frivolity, but he found himself reluctant to chat lightly of this and that while all the work he’d done to bring Miss Shelby out of her shell was being undone in another room.

“Here, Lord Deveril,” Cecily said from his elbow, offering him a cup of tea. “Do not let my aunt’s scolding bother you. I can assure you we have endured far worse from her over the years. Indeed, I believe she was much calmer than she would normally have been since she would dislike having you gentlemen know how difficult she can be. You will not believe it but you probably saved Juliet a public scold by your mere presence.”

“But why would she be so angry because Miss Shelby tried dancing?” he asked. “How can she possibly object to having her daughter participate more actively in society? I have seen mothers of debutantes before. And they do not make a habit of preventing their daughters from making good matches!”

Winterson choked on his tea. “I should say not! If only they did, the lot of us might have slept more easily these past few years.”

Madeline, who had been looking on with a frown, spoke up. “I do not know the reason behind it, but Aunt Rose has always been hard on her children. And you are right that it’s odd for her to sabotage Juliet’s chances at making a good match. But she’s been this way ever since Juliet’s accident.”

“What actually happened?” Deveril asked. He knew it was perhaps rude of him to ask such a question, but he sensed the circumstances surrounding the incident that had left Juliet crippled lay at the heart of Lady Shelby’s censure.

“We are not even exactly sure ourselves,” Cecily said, sipping from her own cup of tea. “The year Juliet was fourteen her father was posted with the Foreign Office to the Congress of Vienna. And while they were there something happened. Whether it was an accident or a deliberate injury we don’t know. But whatever occurred, it was grave indeed. I know that at one point they were unsure whether Juliet would even survive the injury, so it cannot have been minor. They remained abroad for two more years, and when they returned, Juliet was completely changed.”

“How so?” Monteith asked, stretching his long legs out before him as he reclined in an armchair.

“You will not believe it, but before they left,” Madeline said, “Juliet was the most animated of us three cousins.”

Alec felt his jaw drop a little.

“You’re joking,” Winterson said, his brow furrowed. “Juliet? Quiet Juliet?”

“I’ve seen it happen to soldiers,” Monteith said, his face serious. “You have too, Winterson. We all have. A young fellow full of his own importance goes off to war and comes home a changed man.”

“Yes,” Deveril said, “but a gently bred young lady living in polite society abroad is hardly exposed to the same sort of atrocities as a hardened soldier. No matter how close Vienna was to the battle of Waterloo.”

“Whatever happened, it must have been very difficult indeed,” Cecily said. “Because the Juliet who left and the Juliet who returned were like night and day. And of course there was the injury.”

“Which was…?” Monteith asked from his perch before the fireplace.

“We don’t know.” Madeline’s blue eyes were serious. “We have never known. Cecily and I agreed that we would wait for Juliet to tell us about it, thinking that for us to bring up the subject ourselves would perhaps be too intrusive. And there was a certain amount of…”—she paused, as if searching for the right word—“hesitation, I suppose, in her manner every time our conversation even approached talk of her time abroad, that we simply became accustomed to avoiding the subject altogether.”

“As a result,” Cecily continued, “we never did learn what happened to her. Or why. All we know is that something definitely occurred that left Juliet with a bad limp, and that our aunt has tried her hardest to make sure that Juliet does nothing to draw attention to herself.”

“Why allow her to debut, then?” Alec asked. This whole business made no sense. He’d never particularly liked Lady Shelby but he’d never considered that Juliet’s unpopularity actually sprang from a concerted effort on her mother’s part to prevent her from being accepted. “One would expect her to simply forbid Juliet from going out in society at all.”

“Oh, Lord Shelby wouldn’t allow it,” Madeline said. “I think Juliet would have been just as happy not to make her come out at all. But her father insisted that she do so along with us.”

“I overheard Lord and Lady Shelby arguing once at a house party. She was demanding that he give up his ridiculous insistence that Juliet be treated like any other young lady.” Cecily scowled at the memory. “I will never forget the scorn in her voice when she spoke of Juliet. As if she were an embarrassment. That was not terribly long after Juliet made her debut. She had gone for a walk on the terrace with Lord Filton and she’d slipped on a stone. You would have thought she’d fallen headfirst into the Serpentine at Hyde Park for the way Lady Shelby carried on about it.”

Deveril shook his head. He’d had no idea that any of this had been going on. He certainly hadn’t done anything to ensure that any of the Ugly Ducklings, as Amelia Snowe had dubbed them, were sheltered from the unkind members of the
haut ton
. A pang of shame washed over him at the knowledge. He’d been so busy worrying about himself, he’d not even noticed the dramas going on beyond the fringes of his more fashionable set of friends.

“You didn’t know,” Madeline said softly.

Deveril looked up to find the curvy blonde’s gaze on him. She saw more than she let on, he’d wager. He was startled to remember that she was the one he’d originally intended to woo. Certainly he felt none of the dizzying array of emotions that Juliet inspired in him when he looked upon her. No, Madeline was a nice enough young lady, but he was not drawn to her in the same way as he was to Juliet. And perhaps that was all to the better. He had learned from his father’s example just what hardships could arise from a match based on passion. Much better to marry someone he liked, but felt no passion for.

“No,” he said at last. “I didn’t know, but I cannot help but feel responsible somehow. If I had been more alert to her situation—”

“You could have done nothing,” Cecily said baldly. “Only Lord Shelby has ever been able to sway Aunt Rose and even then he is not always successful. I daresay you weren’t even introduced to us until last year. One can hardly blame you for failing to intuit that Juliet was being held back.”

A sharp cry from the hallway startled them all. Alec, his senses attuned from years spent with his brute of a father, knew all too well what damage a parent could visit upon a child. Even an adult. Incensed, he stalked toward the pocket doors.

He was arrested by a hand on his arm.

“My lord, perhaps you should wait,” Cecily said quietly.

He pulled out of her grasp and continued to the door.

Behind him he heard Winterson bidding his wife to let him go.

Ignoring the talk behind him, he stepped into the hallway, his dancing slippers echoing on the marble floor.

He scanned the richly appointed room, and saw the door to an adjoining chamber ajar, the warm glow of lamplight spilling into the hall.

He could hear the sound of weeping and, for the first time, stopped. What right did he have to intrude upon Juliet’s pain? But something stronger than common sense made him press on, an urge he hardly understood leading him to seek her out.

Carefully, he walked to the door, and peered inside, so as not to startle her. To his relief, she was alone. And at first glance he saw no sign that she had been mishandled physically.

She sat in a small chair before the fire, a handkerchief in one hand and what appeared to be a note in the other.

“Miss Shelby,” he asked, trying not to let his anger for her current state infuse his voice. “Are you well?”

She looked up, her eyes bright with tears. Stricken, she dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief, made to stand.

“Lord Deveril, I did not hear you come in,” she said, her voice shaking, but strong. “If you will give me but a moment I will be back to finish our lesson.”

“Do not trouble yourself, Miss Shelby,” he said, moving closer, wishing he could take her into his arms to offer comfort. But even the Duchess of Winterson, with her liberal ideas, would frown upon that, he suspected.

He settled for a comforting hand on Juliet’s shoulder.

“Is there something I may assist you with?” he asked. “Shall I bring your cousin to you?”

She closed her eyes, as if to give herself strength, then shook her head.

“No,” she said softly. “No, I will be all right in a moment. I just needed a bit of time to myself.”

Her words implied that she wished him to leave, and he could not blame her. But he also knew that such situations, if left to be handled on their own, could lead to dire consequences.

“Miss Shelby,” he said. “Was your mother very angry about the dancing, then?”

She stared at him blankly for a moment. As if she didn’t understand his question. Perhaps she had been struck by her mother? He didn’t see any signs of it on her person, but clothing could hide bruises. He knew as well as anyone.

But her words suggested otherwise. “Yes, my lord, she was quite angry, but that’s not why I am overset.”

She sighed, and looked into the fire, as if choosing her words carefully. He gave her the space she needed.

Finally, she spoke.

“My mother is fearful that my injury will bring shame on the Shelby name,” she said. Her tears had gone now, leaving only resignation in their wake. “But I am accustomed to her histrionics now. The only real power she has over me is that of public embarrassment.”

Her lips curved upward in a wry smile.

“I find it ironic that in her efforts to save herself from scandal, she creates them all on her own.”

She held up the note between her slim fingers. “It is this which caused my outburst,” she said. “I am sorry to have given you the wrong impression.”

He pulled the chair opposite hers closer and took a seat. “Is it your friend? The one you spoke of the other evening?”

“Yes.” She tucked her handkerchief into the sleeve of her gown, and smoothed the silk of her skirts. Then, as if she had decided something, she handed him the note. “You can read it if you like.”

He took it from her, his gloved fingers brushing hers as he clasped the missive.

The paper was inexpensive. The sort that could be had at any common stationers’. On the outside Juliet’s name was written in a neat, curving hand. The direction of her father’s London town house beneath.