Wicked Under the Covers Page 3

  It was on the journey back to Arianrod that she permitted herself to grieve. She could not recall much about the journey. By the time she had arrived at the family’s estate, Fayre had dried her tears and a comfortable numbness had eased her pain. To her immense relief, her family had already settled in London. Perhaps it had been cowardly, but she remained at Arianrod for ten days. She used the healing solitude to reflect on her encounters with Lord Standish and the words they had exchanged.

  By the time she could see London on the horizon Fayre was prepared to face the gossips. What strengthened her resolve was the fact that she knew she would have the support of her family. Above all others, they would certainly understand how she had gotten herself into this unfortunate predicament.

  Her family had not understood.

  It was also her humble opinion that they were extremely hypocritical when one added up the sum total of their failed love affairs. In light of her father’s temper, she wisely kept her opinion to herself.

  “Bloody hell!” her father roared for the hundredth time. He had not been rational since he had learned of her involvement with the Marquess of Pennefeather’s second son. “Standish, of all gentlemen. How could you have chosen such a bounder as a lover?”

  He chose me, Papa, she forlornly thought. Fayre had concluded during her time at Arianrod not to reveal all the sordid details she had learned from Lady Hipgrave and Lord Standish. The countess had succeeded in hurting her and there was nothing she could do to change the fact she had loved unwisely. She could, however, shield her father from learning that his careless dismissal of his lover had triggered her current predicament. Fayre loved him too dearly to cause him pain. As long as she remained silent, she was denying Lady Hipgrave her coup de grâce. She took comfort in that small triumph over the vindictive woman.

  “Answer me!”

  Fayre was sitting sideways on the sofa with her head facedown against her bent arm. She wearily raised her head and blinked. “The three of you have been ranting and issuing threats for hours, Papa. I doubt you have heard a single word I have said.”

  “I will listen to you when you stop spouting nonsense,” her father countered, his fury battering her like a surging sea in a storm. “Tell me that Standish took you against your will. I promise, the man will not live to see another dawn.”

  It was a pleasant thought. Especially since the love she had felt for Lord Standish had withered in the face of adversity. Betrayal and revenge tended to dampen a lady’s ardor. “For your sake, I wish I could make such a confession. To my utter regret, I went to him willingly.”

  “I will call him out,” her brother said, having spent the past hour in brooding silence with his arms crossed against his torso.

  Fayre was finding his incessant staring annoying. His given name was Fayne, but he was also the Marquess of Temmes. To family and close friends, he was simply Tem. They resembled each other in looks; both had inherited the unusual reddish-brown hair and handsomeness from their Carlisle ancestors. Beyond sharing a few physical traits, she and her brother had nothing in common. As a child she had tried not to become too attached to him. After all, she had reasoned, if the Solitea curse were real, he was destined to die tragically young.

  “No, Tem, you cannot call him out. I was willing. I was also a fool. Leave Standish alone,” Fayre snapped at her brother.

  Her brother pushed away from the wall and moved closer to their father. At twenty-three, he matched their sire in height, but he had the muscled leanness of youth. He had also inherited the Carlisle appetite for sport. Tem’s favorite wore silk and muslin. Fayre realized even his frown was identical to their father’s. She found both of them extremely intimidating.

  “You love him,” Tem said flatly. His expression plainly revealed her folly was beyond his comprehension. “Have you heard the lies he is spreading about you throughout London?”

  She laughed bitterly. Fayre had heard the rumors. Letters from numerous acquaintances had begun arriving days before her arrival in London. The missives varied in tone from curious to smug. There were several individuals in particular who seemed to take pleasure in sharing the viscount’s version of events. “No, brother, I do not love Lord Standish. Nor do I care what tales he tells.”

  “Well, you should,” her father said. His face was a mottled unflattering red. “He has made a mockery of the Carlisle name, daughter. For that alone I should rip your great-grandfather’s sword down from its mounting on the wall and pierce the bastard’s heart!” He tilted his head and gave her a pitying glance. “I thought you were cut of different cloth, my dear girl. Better than the rest of us. When Standish has finished ruining your good name with his outlandish tales, you will just be another cautionary tale for every green miss enjoying her first season.”

  Fayre chewed on her lip, hurt by her father’s bluntness. “And here I thought you would be pleased that I was carrying on in the spirit of the Carlisle tradition,” she muttered waspishly.

  Tem closed his eyes and shook his head in dismay at her audacity. A strangling sound gurgled in her father’s throat and Fayre straightened from her slouched martyred position, truly concerned about his health.

  Her mother inadvertently spared her from her father’s explosive wrath. Much to Fayre’s disgust her mother had spent most of the family interrogation weeping.

  “We must accept that our Fayre is ruined in the eyes of polite society,” the duchess said, her voice wobbling as she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “This is hardly the time for recriminations. We need to be thinking of her future.”

  Fayre frowned. Her mother said the word future as she would the phrase sentenced to death.

  “What future?” the duke demanded. “I can think of a dozen respectable gentlemen who would not take her now!”

  “And I can think of a dozen not-so-respectable who would, now that Standish has had her,” Tem murmured lazily.

  The duchess gasped. It was not his observation that shocked her mother, but rather that Tem had spoken so boldly in front of the one Carlisle who was once considered respectable. The hypocrites were genuinely disappointed in her. Fayre glared at her brother. She liked him much better when he was brooding—and silent. “You are not helping matters, Fayne,” she said, deliberately using the whimsical name that matched her own just to annoy him. If he uttered another word, she vowed she would pick up Great-grandfather’s sword herself.

  “Carlisle, my love, is there nothing we can do to stanch the damage Standish has done?” her mother asked, hic-cupping into her handkerchief.

  “She could marry the bastard.”

  Fayre’s fingers curled into claws and scraped against the fabric of the sofa. “No, I will not marry the bastard. Nor am I retiring to Arianrod, Mama,” she said, anticipating her next suggestion.

  “I hear Italy is rather pleasant this time of year,” her mother said, unwilling to give up her notion of exile.

  She rubbed her temple. The calm Fayre had tried to maintain was deteriorating with her growing frustration. “For how long? A season? A year? The next fifty years?”

  Her father slammed his fist several times down on the table beside her. A vase and several porcelain creatures jumped with the thundering impact of his heavy fist. The tiny treasures shattered one by one as they hopped over the edge and struck the floor. “I will kill him for seducing you,” her father growled, finally regaining his speech. It was a shame his reasoning had cracked along with the fragile gewgaws.

  Her mother sniffed into her handkerchief. “I had such high ambitions for you, my daughter. However, Fayre, your stubbornness leaves us with only one option. We marry you off as quickly as we can. Mayhap to an older gentleman from the north; someone who does not keep up with town news?”

  She grimaced at the hope in her mother’s voice. Tem, curse him, baldly laughed. “Mama, you have overlooked one other choice,” Fayre said with icy determination. “I can remain in London for the season.”

  3

  “And how di
d your mother and father react to your announcement that you planned to remain in town for the duration of the season?”

  Fayre gave her friend Miss Callie Mable-ward a mischievous grin. Four days had passed since she had told her family that she refused to retire to the country. Her mother had not spoken a word to her since their argument. Tem had disappeared almost immediately. She considered his absence a blessing. Two days had gone by since she had last seen her father. Fayre assumed the duke was off dallying with his latest mistress. If that particular lady was Lady Talemon, then she hoped Lady Hipgrave was gnashing her teeth with frustration. By the time Callie’s invitation to ride with her at Hyde Park had arrived, Fayre had been eager to escape the solitude of the town house.

  Fayre expelled a weary sigh. “Oh, you know how stubborn I can be when I have my mind set on something. What could they say?”

  Callie pursed her lips in contemplation. “Your family is not speaking to you.”

  Fayre’s lips parted in surprise. “How did you know?”

  Callie sighed. “Lord Temmes told me.”

  She lifted her brow, astounded by her brother’s gall. “Tem told you? How is this possible? I have not seen my brother since the night the three of them tried to ship me off to Italy for the rest of my life.”

  Her friend fidgeted, clearly uncomfortable with the subject. “Do not be angry, Fayre. For all his faults, I believe he is genuinely concerned about you.”

  Fayre clutched Callie’s hand and squeezed her fingers encouragingly. “Tell me everything about your visit with my brother.”

  He could not believe his luck, Maccus thought as the two women passed them in the opposite direction. Then again, he was a man who fashioned his own luck. It was no mere chance he rode his horse each afternoon through Hyde Park. He had been searching for a certain lady, one who he knew possessed hair the color of cinnamon fire. As he had predicted, he had gained the mysterious Fayre’s full name before he had departed the restaurant where he had first seen her bathed in sunlight. Lady Fayre Carlisle. She was the Duke of Solitea’s daughter. He chuckled softly. His goals had definitely become loftier since he had settled in London.

  Maccus subtly maneuvered his gelding closer to his riding companion this afternoon. Lewth Prettejohn, Viscount Yemant, had the dubious honor of being the first acquaintance Maccus had established in the new life he had made for himself in London. The viscount was contemplative in temperament, lacking the boisterous excess of many of his peers. This did not mean his company was soporific. Indeed, the man possessed a cultivated intelligence that Maccus privately envied. Their connection had been unplanned. Maccus had been sitting in a coffeehouse two months earlier, reading his newspaper and blatantly listening to the heated discussion about the impact of a recent trade tariff. While others pounded their fists and shouted their opinions to the group, it was Lord Yemant’s calm, authoritative voice that held sway.

  Impressed, Maccus later struck up a conversation with the gentleman. They discovered that afternoon that they shared similar opinions on several subjects and a tentative friendship was formed. The following week, the young lord invited Maccus to join him at the coffeehouse. Yemant did not speak much about his personal life, and Maccus felt no inclination to pry; at least, not so transparently. Life had taught him never to underestimate a man, no matter how expensive his tailor or how tutored his intellect.

  It took a few discreet inquiries to learn that Lord Yemant’s refined circumstances were fairly recent. The title had originally passed on to the gentleman’s uncle. His father had been the third son to the unlucky Prettejohns. The young viscount had already lost his sire and one uncle, when the previous Lord Yemant fell down a flight of stairs and died from his injuries. Maccus had wondered, albeit briefly, if his successor had had a hand in his uncle’s death. He dismissed the sinister notion almost immediately. Young Yemant tended to be fanciful in his theories, but he was a scholar at heart, not a cold-blooded murderer.

  Nodding vaguely behind him, Maccus asked, “By chance did you notice the carriage we just passed?”

  Lord Yemant adjusted his hat out of habit, and glanced back at the equipage that had caught his companion’s interest. He grinned slightly as he straightened. “A fine carriage, indeed, Brawley,” he drawled. “Thinking about investing in one?”

  “And here I credited you with some passable wit, Yemant,” Maccus replied dryly, knowing his friend was poking at him. “I was referring to the fancy muslin garnishing it; specifically, the one holding the blue parasol.”

  The viscount chuckled. “I admire your aspirations, not to mention your refined taste, my friend. Though I wager the Duke of Solitea’s daughter would bristle at being described as fancy muslin.”

  “Solitea, you say? I have heard a few amusing tales about that clan,” Maccus admitted casually.

  “Just a few? If you decide to remain in town, the gossips will fill your ears about the Dukes of Solitea.”

  “The dukedom is rather old, I take it?”

  “Unlike many of the gentlemen who have inherited the title,” Yemant quipped. “The males of the clan have a tangled, albeit reckless history.”

  He glanced back at the carriage, but the growing distance made the ladies indistinguishable. “And what of the Solitea women?”

  “Most are just as wild and excessive as the men. Solitea’s daughter, Lady Fayre, seemed the rare exception, at least until recently,” the viscount said, his brow furrowing. “The debacle with Standish has tainted her good standing with the ton, or so it appears, depending on whose side you support.”

  “I am not familiar with Standish, though I assume Lady Fayre is? Intimately.” To Maccus’s surprise, the ruddiness of Yemant’s cheeks deepened at the bald statement.

  “I prefer not to besmirch the poor lady further by adding to the speculation making the rounds,” the other man said tersely. “Whatever her sins, she is suffering both publicly and privately for them.”

  Maccus quirked his brow questioningly at the viscount’s vehement defense. He wondered if Lady Fayre knew Yemant was halfway in love with her. The realization irked him for some undefined reason.

  “For a scholar, you assume the mantle of knight with ease.” Coming to a private decision, he maneuvered his horse so that Yemant was forced to halt. “Introduce me to the lady who is worthy of your virtuous devotion.”

  Before the Lord Yemant could sputter out his polite refusal, Maccus had them reversing their direction and the horses closing the distance between him and his beautiful quarry.

  Slow-moving shadows of dappled sunlight moved across Fayre and Callie’s skirts from the tree branches overhead as the carriage bumped and rattled through the park. It had turned out to be a charming afternoon. The park was brimming with carriages and strolling pedestrians. If Fayre had not been so blinded by her brother’s interference, she might have noticed the knowing looks and whispers her presence in the park had incited.

  “The Solitea heirs rarely live to see gray in their hair. Whether he perishes by my hand now or is taken later by fate is of little consequence,” she said, pondering her dark thoughts aloud.

  “Fayre, you are being unreasonable,” Callie muttered, exasperated by her companion’s churlish behavior.

  Fayre pouted. “That is due to the fact that I am not feeling particularly reasonable.”

  What she truly wanted was to stand up and scream out her frustration. The carriage approaching them quelled any irrational actions. Years of practiced etiquette forced her to smile at the two ladies. She recognized the ladies, but did not know them personally. They stared at her boldly and neither returned her silent greeting. The muscles in her cheeks tightened painfully as she watched the young woman on the right turn to her companion and whisper into the older woman’s ear. As the two carriages passed each other, Fayre heard the words Standish and ruined. Even the sound of their rattling carriage could not dim their tittering. They were probably eager to share the news with their friends that foolish Lady Fayre had dar
ed to show her face in public.

  Fayre felt her face prickle with the heat of humiliation. The need to lash out at her accusers and the curious put a fine edge to her temper so she redirected it at the person least likely to cause her more trouble—her brother. “I still cannot believe Tem called on you with the intention of bribing you to spend the afternoon with me.”

  “Naturally, I refused the bribe,” her friend swiftly replied, attempting to diffuse Fayre’s outrage. “I am here merely as your friend, Fayre. Despite the stir your liaison with Lord Standish has created, I would not be surprised if you have other supporters.”

  “My brother still had no right to pull you into our current family spectacle like this, Callie,” Fayre said flatly, unwilling to allow the tiny fact that her friend’s support was genuine and not procured with Solitea gold appease her. “He has spent a large portion of his life ignoring me in pursuit of pleasure. I cannot fathom why he would suddenly change his ways.”

  Callie reached out for Fayre’s hand and clasped it. Fayre blinked at the surprising strength of her friend’s dainty fingers. Callie’s eyes, a warm chocolate hue, were earnest and direct when their gazes met. “In spite of his feckless ways, perhaps Lord Temmes could not ignore his sister’s pain.”

  Fayre dismissed the suggestion with a soft unladylike snort, ignoring the quick twist of pain in her chest. It would have been so simple to succumb to the misery she refused to reveal to anyone, including her family. Nevertheless, this was her private burden to bear and it would not do to falter. “Pain? That is a tad dramatic, do you not think? Standish has bruised my pride, nothing more. I find his lies extremely irksome. Tem’s inference merely lends credence to Standish’s boorish tales.”

  Callie gave her a doubtful glance. “If you say so.”

  Fayre shifted her attention away from Callie. Her friend was too polite to speak it aloud but her pitying expression called her a liar. She lifted her chin as she watched yet another pedestrian point at their carriage. Willing the sting of tears away, she vowed privately to herself that she could cry out her fury and pain later when there was no one to see her resolve crumble.