CHAPTER 7
The face Rachel turned to Miranda was almost comical in its dismay. “Who?”
“The woman with whom your brother came, the blond beauty.”
“Oh. Oh, well, she’s no one really. Lady Vesey is her name.”
“Is she Ravenscar’s mistress?”
Rachel drew in her breath in a gasp. “Miranda!”
“Well?” Miranda fixed the other woman with a pleasant but determined gaze. “You don’t know me well, so I will tell you that I will eventually worm out of you everything you know about her. So you might as well go ahead and tell me all about her now.”
Rachel looked at her uneasily. “I really—you shouldn’t—”
“If you think that telling me about her will ruin the possibility of my marrying your brother, let me assure you that it will make absolutely no difference. Well, no, that is not true. You see, I believe in knowing everything I possibly can about a venture before I enter into it, whether it is buying a piece of real estate or having a dress made—or getting married. I want to know everything—good, bad and all the variations in between. Without all the details, I cannot make an informed decision. So I think that it is highly unlikely that I could marry your brother until I have discovered precisely what his relationship to Lady Vesey is.”
Rachel let out a groan.
“I promise you, I am not naive,” Miranda went on. “I know that people here like to think of Americans as unsophisticated, and perhaps in some things we are. But when it comes to matters of scandal, I will wager that we are as up-to-date as Europeans. I know that men frequently have mistresses. I would not expect a man, especially one such as your brother, not to have had, well, shall we say, affairs of the heart? But I have to know what I’m dealing with. What is Lady Vesey to him? Does he love her? It is scarcely fair to me, you must admit, to expect me to go into something like marriage blindfolded.”
Her companion cast her an agonized look. “No, you are right. It is terribly unfair of me to not want you to know. But I am afraid—oh, please, do not hold it against Dev. He was very young when he met her, and—and the woman is a witch! A harpy! She sank her claws into him, and she’s never let go.”
Rachel stopped and sighed, then began again, her voice calmer. “Her name is Leona, and she has been considered one of the greatest beauties of the Ton since she came to London—many, many years ago,” she added cattily. Rachel smiled self-deprecatingly. “Well, I don’t know how old she is, exactly, but I am sure she is several years older than Dev. She was already an established beauty and Lord Vesey’s wife before Dev came to London. When he came here, he associated with artists and other young men of whom my father disapproved, young men whose lifestyle was very free and easy. He did gamble and drink and womanize, I’m sure. He had done the same sort of things even at home, and every time it brought about a major battle with Father. I almost think that is why Dev did them—to antagonize our father. I think I told you that in London he became even wilder, but, still, I think he was not much worse than most young men.”
“They are apt to sow their wild oats,” Miranda said encouragingly.
“Yes, you know how it is,” Rachel said, grateful for her understanding. “He had actually met Leona at home at Darkwater. Her husband’s estate is not far from ours, and he saw her there. Of course, nothing would have come of it, because Leona rarely visits Vesey Park. But then Devin came to London. And he saw Leona again. Well, you know what she looks like. You can imagine how pretty she was then, in her youth. Dev fell in love with her—hopelessly, helplessly in love. A better woman would have discouraged him. A kinder one would have sent him on his way after a brief affair. But Leona is neither good nor kind. She is wicked, and she led Dev into all the same wicked pursuits she followed.”
“Was it over Leona that your father disowned him?”
“No. At least, I don’t think so. Father heard about his pursuing Leona and he disliked it intensely, but I—I think it was something else. I don’t think he was, well, really…involved with Leona yet when he and Father had that great fight. I was still young at the time, only fourteen, and neither Father nor Mother would speak to us about it. I only know that it was something terribly scandalous. But after that scandal, whatever it was, Dev became completely enmeshed in Leona’s group. I don’t even know everything they have done. People have tried to protect me, you see.” She offered Miranda a small smile. “I confess that I have not really wanted to know. I am not as brave as you.”
“I would probably feel the same as you if it were my brother we were talking about,” Miranda lied kindly. She knew that the truth was that if it had been her brother in a wicked woman’s clutches and fast sinking into sin, she would not only have found out everything she could about it but would also have set forth to try to stop it. But then, she also knew that she would not have had to do anything about it, because her father would have seen to it already; he would have pulled his son out of the muck, not disowned him, as Devin’s father had.
“I think he loves her,” Rachel admitted in a soft, sad voice. “At least, he has remained faithful to her all these years—in his own way. People dismiss the good things about him, but he is a very loyal person. He would do anything for me or someone else he loved, and I know he feels the pull of his duty. I think sometimes that he hates himself for the life he has led. There are people so cruel that they blame him for our father’s death—and it was not his fault! He had nothing to do with it. Father had not even spoken to him for years. But the word got out that Father would not see him even on his deathbed, and the rumors grew. But Dev’s loyalty to Leona hurts him. She has dragged him down into the muck.
“By the time I married and came to London, he had become quite steeped in sin. Neither he nor Leona were received by any but the most racy sets. I was appalled and hurt when I gave parties and so few of the most proper matrons came—when they were invariably pleasant to me at other parties. But then Michael told me, as gently as he could, that they would not come because Dev attended my parties—sometimes with Leona and her brother Stuart and their friends. I told Michael that I would never exclude my own brother from my parties, and I didn’t, but I think Michael must have talked to Dev, because after that Devin stopped coming to my parties. And then the more proper matrons were willing to attend and bring their daughters.”
“That must have been very hard for you,” Miranda said sympathetically.
Rachel nodded, tears glimmering in her eyes. She dashed them away impatiently. “It was. I would rather have had Dev there than all the others. I was quite angry with Michael for interfering. But he knew, and so did Dev, that if I continued that way, before too much longer I would be considered part of their set and excluded from the rest of the Ton just as they were. Dev didn’t want that to happen to me, so he stopped coming, except in the afternoons and such. Even the crustiest of old biddies could hardly expect me not to allow my brother to call on me.”
She added with the glimmer of a smile, “Of course, it could be that Dev just grew rather bored with my parties. I am sure he was accustomed to far livelier entertainments.”
They turned and started to stroll back toward the Upshaws’ box. Rachel was silent for a moment, then said, “Leona is an evil woman. I think she bound Dev to her with her wiles, and that and his strong loyalty have kept him with her. She has encouraged him in the wicked things he’s done. I know it was she who influenced him to stop painting. She wouldn’t like anything that held his interest and devotion the way painting did. If you had ever met her, you would have seen what sort of person she is—sly and deceptive and—”
“Perhaps I should meet her,” Miranda suggested.
“No! Oh, no, don’t even think such a thing!” Rachel turned a horrified face toward Miranda. “I am sure she would do something to hurt you. She is bound to be afraid of losing Dev if he marries you—unless her pride has grown so huge that she dismisses the idea of his ever falling in love with someone else.”
“Well, I am, after all, only an American heiress,” Miranda pointed out with a smile.
Rachel returned a small smile. “I only hope that is the way she feels. Otherwise…if she felt threatened, well, I wouldn’t put anything past her.”
“Don’t worry. I think that Lady Vesey might find me a more formidable opponent than she expects. If I were to marry your brother, that is.”
Rachel looked at her with barely restrained eagerness. “Are you? Going to marry Dev, I mean?”
Miranda shrugged. “I have been considering it.”
“Oh, Miranda!” Rachel’s eyes shone. “Please, please consider it very well. The more I am around you, the more I feel that you would be able to change Dev’s life. That is why I urged him to offer for you. I thought if he had a wife, someone he could fall in love with, give his devotion to, then maybe he would be able to break free of Leona’s influence. If only he could be taken away from that evil woman, I know that he would be different. Better. At least happier. She doesn’t make him happy, I know that. She keeps him fretting and uncertain. It is part of her hold on him. But you…if he were married to you, well, he might change. He might realize that happiness could be his. It is what I want so much for him.”
“I know.”
“I must seem very selfish to you. But I think Dev could make you happy, too. If he had a home and family, he could be a different man.”
“The man he is, is rather charming,” Miranda confessed.
Rachel chuckled. “Yes, he is, isn’t he?”
“But you must not tell him I said so.”
“Oh, no,” Rachel promised with a smile. “I would not. Trust me. But I am awfully glad you find him so.”
* * *
Devin returned to Leona’s opera box with a scowl on his face. He felt faintly as if the Upshaw girl had been laughing at him, and he did not like the feeling at all. In fact, he had not liked the way he had felt the whole evening. He had not wanted to go to the opera in the first place. He had been in a bad mood for several days, ever since Miranda Upshaw had so casually pointed out that he was for sale, like a horse or a piece of furniture. He had spent the time since then telling himself that he would be damned before he married that American upstart—all the time, that is, when he wasn’t thinking about the way she had felt in his arms, her lips yielding under his, and wondering what it would have felt like to have taken the moment further, to have peeled the clothes from her sweetly curved body and explored it inch by delicious inch.
Not, of course, that he liked the baggage or was interested in her—especially not in marrying her. But it would have been satisfying to have bent her to his will, to have caressed and kissed her until she was panting for him, begging him to take her, which he would, of course, do, but not until after he had made her ache for him as she never would for any other man. Every time he thought about that imagined ending to the evening—instead of the reality of his storming out of his sister’s house in a black fury—he had grown hot and stiff, and it had been only he who had ended up aching. That fact had only made him dislike the American more. He hated even to say her name. Miranda. What a foolish conceit, as if she were Shakespeare’s enchanting heroine, a role in which he could imagine no one less likely than she.
So he had been in a foul mood when he received Leona’s note telling him to call on her this evening, and the peremptory tone of the missive had set his teeth further on edge. When he got there, Leona had demanded all the details of the progress of his engagement with the American heiress, and when he told her that there was no engagement and never would be, she had stormed and pouted and wheedled. Finally, just to make her stop, he had agreed to escort her to the opera tonight, even though he had known she intended to use the time to try her powers of persuasion on him again.
He had been rather clever, he thought, in talking Stuart and another friend into attending the opera with them, promising that there was a fetching opera dancer who would catch their eye. While he had been congratulating himself on his cleverness, he had glanced around the opera house and his eyes had fallen on Miranda. He had felt as if a load of bricks had fallen on him. He had stood for a moment, stunned, unable to look away, cursing his bad luck that she should be there while he was with Leona. He reminded himself that he had no reason to feel guilty because he was with Leona. He wasn’t engaged to Miranda and didn’t intend to be, after all. There was no obligation.
Then he saw the man sitting next to her, and something twisted sourly inside him. Had the witch moved on to her next victim? He had turned away and sat down, pointedly ignoring her, but his brain would not do so. Throughout the first act, he kept thinking about the man and wondering who he was. He thought he would have at least recognized most of the peers the man’s age—unless, of course, he was Cavendish’s son, but everyone said the reason no one ever saw the man was that he was mentally deficient. He began to wonder if perhaps the man was not an aristocrat at all but merely some clever fortune hunter pretending to be Lord Somebody. That would serve the wretched girl right!
At the intermission, curiosity had driven him to find out who the fellow was, so he hastily excused himself, ignoring Leona’s startled glance, and made his way to his mother’s box. Rachel had been more than willing to let him escort her to the Upshaws’ box, but when they got there, he had felt ten times the fool. As soon as Miranda looked at him with those penetrating gray eyes, he had been certain she assumed he had come to see her. Which, of course, was not the truth. Or not exactly. Then, when he had discovered that the man was no one but Upshaw’s secretary, he had been swept with relief, which was an even more foolish reaction than his initial one. It was almost as if he had been jealous, he realized, and that, of course, was completely absurd. He wanted nothing to do with Miranda Upshaw, and it mattered not a jot to him whom she wed.
He had appeared, he felt sure, foolish and inarticulate. She, of course, had been as cool as a cucumber, sitting there looking at him in that faintly amused, superior way. It made him grind his teeth all the way back to Leona’s box.
Then, as soon as he sat down, Leona started in.
“Ravenscar…” she said, smiling in her catlike way. “Mr. Wyndham tells me that that is the American heiress’s box you just went to. Is that true?”
“Yes. Rachel insisted I accompany her.”
“And here I was being proud of you. I thought you were making a push with her.” Leona picked up her opera glasses and peered through them at the box in question, as she had done every few seconds since Wyndham had told her that the Upshaws were sitting there.
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Damn! I cannot see her. She is sitting in the shadows. Why doesn’t she move up some? Oh, bloody hell. Now they’re turning down the lights.”
Devin was relieved, but the start of the second act of the opera did not deter Leona. She moved her chair closer to Ravenscar’s and leaned into him, whispering behind her fan, “You know, you should have seized the opportunity, Dev. Why else would you have gone over there?”
“Hush. The music’s starting.”
“Oh, piffle. As if you or anyone else here cares about the music. One only comes to the opera to see and be seen, you know. All this in between is nothing but a nuisance. Unless, of course, you play some interesting games.” She smiled in the dark and moved so that her leg lay against Devin’s.
He twitched his leg away impatiently. “Don’t, Leona.”
“Why are you in such a foul mood?” she asked crossly. “Is it because the heiress has escaped you? Even if she did, you know that you can get her back. Use your charm.”
“I don’t want her back!” he snapped.
“Oh, Dev…for me?” Leona pouted prettily.
“If you had met this woman, you wouldn’t be so insistent,” he growled.
“Really…are you saying that I should be jealous of this colonial golden goose?” Leona’s laugh was rich and confident. “I think I can stand the competition.” She placed her hand on his thigh. Her fingers began to walk up his leg. “Wouldn’t it be pleasant to have all that money? We could do whatever we please.” Her creeping hand moved ever closer to the joinder of his legs.
“Dammit all to hell!” Devin jumped to his feet and strode out of the box, leaving the other occupants staring after him in amazement.
* * *
Miranda saw Ravenscar abruptly leave Lady Vesey’s opera box. Intrigued, she rose and slipped quietly out of their own box. She saw him trotting down the stairs at the far end of the corridor, so she followed silently, catching sight of him just as he pushed open one of the great outer doors and strode into the night. She was not sure exactly what impelled her, but she followed to the door and pushed it open. Something inside her wanted to call out to him, to bring him back to her, but she managed to clamp her lips shut on the impulse.
As she watched him, Dev paused a few steps above a young girl who was sitting on the bottom steps outside, two large baskets of flowers on either side of her. She was a flower girl, come to ply her trade at the closing of the opera, hoping to interest a few gentlemen in buying nosegays for their ladies. She was young, no more than ten or twelve, Miranda would guess, and she was pitifully thin, her hair straggling lankly down beside her face, skinny ankles sticking out from beneath her dress. Miranda felt a tug of pity for her, as she always did for the flower and food vendors.
Dev dug into his pocket and pulled out a few coins, and Miranda wondered, with a spurt of jealousy, if he intended to purchase a bunch of flowers to take back inside to Lady Vesey. However, he only tossed the coins into the girl’s basket and started on his way past her. Miranda smiled to herself, pleased that he had taken pity on the girl.
At that moment, another man, well-dressed and obviously inebriated, came slanting down the opera house steps on a path that would cross Dev’s. As he neared the flower girl, he stumbled and knocked into the girl’s basket, sending all the flowers in it flying across the steps. The girl cried out in consternation at the scattering of her livelihood. The drunken patron paid no attention, merely crunched on through the scattered flowers, demolishing most of them.
Outrage rose in Miranda at the man’s careless destruction of the girl’s flowers, and she started out the door, about to yell at him. But then she saw Dev cross the few feet to the man and catch him by the collar of his jacket. He spun the man around, and though Miranda could not hear, she saw him deliver a terse message to the man, nodding back toward the flower girl’s crushed posies. The man looked at the mess he had created and sneered.
Ravenscar delivered a short jab straight to the other man’s solar plexus, and the man doubled over. Devin jerked him back upright by his collar and spoke again. This time the man dug in his pocket, pulled out a bill and handed it to the girl. Dev gave him a nod and released him. The man continued on his way. The girl took the bill and tucked it quickly into her pocket, gratefully spewing out thanks to Ravenscar. Devin merely gave her a smile and went on his way.
Miranda watched his retreating figure until he was out of sight, her eyes alight and a smile curving her lips. Then she turned and rejoined her family inside their opera box.