Chapter 2
Jake couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d been so thoroughly ogled by a room full of strangers. He may as well have entered the ballroom wearing nothing but his smalls and a tiara for all the rapt attention centered on him.
And on Mina.
Pride swelled within him for the way she stood, facing down a visibly inquisitive ton. “Ready to board the first ship back to Singapore?”
Her lips twitched, and her gaze cut toward his before returning to the crowd. They were here to stay. Any suggestion otherwise was pure fantasy. Reflected in one hundred pairs of eyes below them was reality.
Misgiving snaked through him as he stared across that uniform sea of faces. These people would make a spectacle of Mina. They would never accept her, not fully.
Even though she was the daughter of a viscount, her father’s birthright would be the condition of her position. Not her beauty . . . or her intellect . . . or even her father’s money. Forever she would be reduced to a novelty.
This was his fear and sometimes, like now, it threatened to erupt into a full-blown panic. Yet he had no choice. This was the life they’d been handed, and the one they’d accepted.
The gossipy tongues of London wouldn’t know more than the truth presented them. He and Mina were safe here, half a world away from Japan, from the truth of her birth. If the people populating this room ever uncovered that particular truth, they would do more than observe her in idle curiosity, they would shun her, completely, forever.
Well, that wouldn’t happen. The past was locked away, and he alone held the key.
Below him, a thoroughly bejeweled matron began ploughing up the staircase with an alarming tenacity for a woman of middle-to-late years. This must be the Dowager Duchess of Dalrymple.
“St. Alban, my dear,” she puffed, placing her hand on his arm for support, “it has been entirely too long.”
Too long? He wasn’t aware of ever having set eyes on this woman in his life. Still, he inclined his head in agreement. “Your Grace.”
“You were such a tiny lad when last I saw you. And now”—She snapped her fingers—“you’re a man full grown. One can’t tell from letters how very tall a person might be. And you were a sailor all these years on the Eastern seas?”
He nodded. “All my life in one form or another.”
Until now, he stopped himself from adding. Until he’d become a landlubbing viscount stuck in a soggy country that proceeded along much in the same manner as its weather: invariably and predictably.
The Dowager pivoted toward Mina. “And you must be Miss Radclyffe? Nearly match your father’s height, I daresay. Must be the Dutch blood.”
Jake took this as his cue. “Your Grace, may I present my daughter, Miss Radclyffe, to you?”
“Now, now, St. Alban, no need to stand on ceremony with family. After all, your paternal great-grandfather, the First Viscount St. Alban, was my paternal grandfather. My father was the second viscount. My brother, the third. And my nephew, the fourth. Such a tragedy about your distant cousin Georgie, but the man had no business stepping foot onto a boat. He couldn’t keep his footing on dry land.” She paused out of respect for the dead before continuing, “As far as the St. Alban title goes, nothing was ever expected to come of your particular branch. I suppose that is why you know so little of your English family. But, now, here you are. We shall make the best of it. You do, at least, look the part.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she began doing what appeared to be a complex computation, which required the use of her fingers. Jake smiled and winked down at Mina, who gave him a serious smile in return.
“Yes . . . yes, here we have it, St. Alban,” said the Dowager. “You and I are first cousins once-removed. That’s twice-removed for you, Miss Radclyffe, but I would like you both to call me Aunt Lucretia. Now, about Miss Radclyffe.” She paused for a gulp of air. “St. Alban, I understand that you’ve not yet learned the rules of Society, but you’ve made a grave faux pas in bringing her here tonight. She is not yet Out. I shall escort her to my private suite of rooms, where she will remain until you are ready to leave.”
She held up a forestalling hand as Jake opened his mouth to insert his opinion on the matter. “I’ve been around men all my life, and I know that look. You can save it. Miss Radclyffe’s reputation is at stake.” She turned to Mina. “Do you happen to have a sampler in your reticule?”
“I have a copy of Newton’s Opticks in my reticule,” Mina replied.
The Dowager’s eyebrows shot up. “Indeed?”
“Miss Radclyffe,” Jake inserted, “has a keen interest in astronomy and is intent on constructing her own telescope.”
“Oh?” chirped the Dowager. She pursed, then unpursed, her lips and, at last, rallied. “How original of you, my dear. Now, if you will come with me.”
Jake made eye contact with Mina to ensure she was agreeable to the Dowager’s plan. Mina nodded once, imperceptible to all but them, and that settled the matter.
The Dowager was leading Mina away when she threw one last parting command over her shoulder. “St. Alban, you must make yourself at home.”
A snort escaped Jake as the Dowager and Mina disappeared into the crowd. Home? Several fingers of a Scottish single malt might convince him that this room felt like home.
He slipped through the crowd, making his way to its periphery and ignoring the three-foot radius of silence that surrounded him. He would stumble across a cart stocked with whiskey, sooner or later.
One year ago, the first royal summons had reached him in Singapore, informing him that a distant English cousin, who happened to be a viscount, had died without having produced an heir. He’d ignored the letter. The English aristocracy had naught to do with his life.
His father had been the younger son of a minor branch of a noble family. Few career options open to him, he’d purchased a commission in the Royal Navy and rose to the rank of Admiral before his untimely death at sea when Jake was still in leading strings. As a result, Jake had been raised by his widowed mother and the Dutch family she’d left when she’d fallen in love with the older English admiral, only to return after his death. The Van Rijn’s were successful traders in the Far East, and Jake had spent the first thirty-five years of his life assured of his place in that unpredictable, always fascinating, world.
The English, however, had a different opinion on his place in the world. A month after the first summons arrived a second summons. He’d ignored that letter, too.
When the letters from the Dowager began trickling in, relentlessly one after another, he began paying attention. Her message was clear and increasingly frantic: if he didn’t accept the title, it would revert to the Crown. There were no other male heirs.
No longer could he ignore his English relations. He’d never shirked his familial obligations a day in his life. He’d accepted his fate. A fate that had led him to London, the possessor of an English viscountcy and a mountain of debt left by the previous viscounts, George and Georgie.
While this crowd didn’t reflect the sort of company he was accustomed to keeping, it did offer a distraction, albeit a temporary one, from the dreary balancing of Georgie’s books. The man’s idea of “business ventures” had involved blindly handing over large sums of money to “gentlemen” capitalists. It was clear to Jake that those “gentlemen” had speculated the money away on their own doomed and uninformed interests.
At last, his feet found the oasis he sought: a shiny brass cart stocked with crystal decanters of various shapes and sizes. He deferred to a silver-haired gentleman seeking the same before pouring himself two fingers of a deep amber whiskey and taking a long draught. That was the stuff. This cavernous ballroom wasn’t like home, but the light felt warmer nonetheless.
The old gentleman gave him a knowing smile and a silent toast as they turned in unison to take in the crowd. Jake was about to practice his rusty social skills by introducing himself—life aboard an East Indiaman didn’t prepare one for a London “small” Salon—when a pair of lords sidled up to the whiskey cart behind him.
“A widow for a decade?” asked a sloppy voice. “And now a divorcée? That would make her a follower of Mrs. Wollstonecraft or a slut and—”
“. . . And,” an equally sloppy voice chimed in, “she’s too handsome to be a bluestocking.”
A round of laughter, grating and repulsive, rang out. The old gentleman stiffened and stabbed the obnoxious duo with his piercing blue gaze. Jake turned in time to watch the blood drain from their faces, eyes as round as sovereigns.
“Might there be,” the old gentleman began, “a wide spectrum of possibility for the fairer sex between bluestocking and slut? Perhaps I’m acquainted with this paragon?”
“Oh, no, Your Grace,” one of the louts stammered out, “you’re not familiar with this particular . . . paragon.”
The pair mumbled a few indecipherable inanities and halved in size as they slunk away, entirely sobered, Jake suspected.
Your Grace. A Duke. The company one kept in London.
His Grace tossed back the remainder of his whiskey, set the glass down, and pivoted toward Jake. “Don’t believe everything you hear about Lady Olivia. They,” he said, gesturing toward the room at large, “have the upside-down of it.”
The man sauntered away, and Jake couldn’t help wondering who this Lady Olivia might be. Then a too-near voice called out, “St. Alban!” and his curiosity died an instant death.
He tried not to cringe. It was a name he had difficulty accepting as his own. The Viscounts St. Alban were distant relations on distant shores. And now he was one of them. Beyond belief.
“Have you considered taking a wife?” asked the Dowager without prelude.
Jake’s brow wrinkled, equal parts shock and bemusement. “Actually,” he began, “I’ve reconciled myself to the idea.”
“Oh, my dear, it isn’t so grim as all that.”
Perhaps it wasn’t. But he hadn’t expected ever to marry for reasons other than true affinity, even love. This move to London had changed that expectation, and his obligation to Mina demanded precedence. He would find her a stepmother of impeccable reputation and lineage, one who could guide her and cement her place in Society.
He wouldn’t fail Mina, not the way he’d failed her mother.
“St. Alban,” continued the Dowager, a matchmaking gleam in her eye, “your bride is in this room, I can feel it.”
Jake scanned the cavernous space, surely full to the brim with every member of the ton, and feared she might be right.
Her eyes narrowed in on an indeterminate figure in the distance. “In fact, I may have the perfect candidate.”
Dread, pure and unfettered, shot through his veins, turning them to ice. His life just might be slipping out from under him.
“Now, the Duke of Arundel has agreed to my request,” she stated, again without preamble. Her hands and fingers flitted about in perpetual motion, sliding rings, shuffling bracelets, toying with necklaces, or whatever happened to be movable on her person.
Jake hesitated. “And what request might that be?”
“To mentor you in the duties of a viscount, of course. You appear a capable enough young man, but my dear papa was a Viscount St. Alban, and I won’t stand idly by and see the title run into the ground due to ignorance.”
Jake blinked once but held his peace and the smile that wanted release. He appreciated honesty in all its forms. Besides, he wasn’t obliged to accept or decline the Duke’s mentorship at this moment, although decline he would. If the Duke of Arundel’s financial acumen mirrored that of the late Viscounts St. Alban, he would be better served seeking the advice of strangers on the street.
“I see, Aunt Lucretia,” he replied at last. “If I’m to call you Aunt, then you must call me Radclyffe, or even Jake will do.”
Her active fingers froze mid-air, one finger looped through a long strand of pink pearls as if showcasing them to the room. Her sharp gaze held his for one . . . two . . . three seconds before she relented. “You are St. Alban. Better you accept that fact now and get on with it.” Her fingers resumed winding their way around the pearls as if they hadn’t missed a beat. “Now, you must meet the Duke of Arundel. Connections, my dear. One needs them in environs such as these.”
Jake resisted the urge to search the room for armed assassins, even as he suspected assassination came in subtler forms in environs such as these. “After you . . . Aunt.”
She threw him a that’s a good boy smile and set off, trusting him to follow in her wake. The density of the crowd pressed in on Jake as the Dowager—he couldn’t think of her as Aunt—guided him, stopping every few feet to introduce him to whomever was unlucky enough to stray into her path, usually yet another lord and his coquettish lady.
He was well-acquainted with a certain flutter of lashes that intimated a specific sort of interest, which had naught to do with ballrooms and husbands. A young man navigating coastal colonies learned quickly about other men’s wives, and the trouble they could cause.
“St. Alban!” the Dowager called over her shoulder. “There he is.”
In the distance, the silver-haired duke from the whiskey cart stood engaged in a discussion with a lady half his age. She was the sort of lady typical of English gatherings: petite, blond, and invariably dull.
Then his brain caught up with his eyes. The fact of the matter was this: even though she wasn’t his type in the slightest, the lady was remarkably good-looking.
There were the obvious details, of course: delicate, round face; narrow, pert nose; Cupid’s bow mouth with a plump lower lip. But it was another detail that intrigued him more than her physical perfection.
When she smiled up at the duke, one top tooth peeked out and slightly overlapped its neighbor, the sole imperfection on her otherwise ideal English face. And, yet, somehow this flaw rendered her face all the more perfect.
The Dowager slowed her clip and squeezed his forearm, jolting him out of musings both uncharacteristic and discomfiting. The Duke lit up at their approach and stepped forward. While Jake could take the gesture as welcome, he sensed it was less a friendly step and more a defensive one. It was possible the man was protecting the lady with the intriguing, crooked tooth.
“My lord, Duke of Arundel,” the Dowager intoned formally, “may I introduce Lord St. Alban to you?”
“Ah,” began the Duke, pinning Jake with his piercing blue eyes, amusement crinkling their corners, “so you’re the latest Viscount St. Alban.”
“At your service, Your Grace.” He made his bow to the Duke, even as the lady at his side remained captivated by the string quartet some thirty feet away. Viscounts must come two a penny in her world.
“From what I understand, Lucretia has plans for us.”
“Oh, Nathaniel,” the Dowager rapped the Duke with her fan, “that is quite enough.”
Then Jake felt it: her attention locked onto him. His gaze slid toward her. His first impression of her typicality held true, but certain details subverted it.
Platinum streaked through her hair as if she spent her days beneath the open sky instead of inside the close drawing rooms that a duller shade of blonde would suggest. And her face was unfashionably tanned a few shades darker than her décolletage, doubtless caused by the same source. And speaking of her décolletage . . .
His mouth went dry. It was the way her dress, a suggestive shade of newly flushed skin, clung to her body.
His eyes lifted to meet hers, and he detected knowledge there. She knew what he’d been thinking, and she wasn’t at all impressed. Further, he couldn’t help noting a cautious light within those eyes the blue of a Polynesian sky, determined not to give anything of herself away. How ironic, then, that they revealed the opposite.
Behind her guarded manner he sensed a raw, vulnerable nerve. An unusual quality at a gathering where most people’s sole purpose in attending was to appear as grandiose and invulnerable as possible.
An urge, immediate and strange, compelled him to protect this woman to whom he’d never spoken a word. He made an automatic movement forward, and she responded with a skittish step backward. A jarring image of predator and prey came to mind, at odds with the protectiveness he felt. A part of him relished the idea of playing shark to her minnow, even as another part understood that it made him a scoundrel.
The Duke must have noticed the subject of his attention for he neatly side-stepped and gestured toward the lady, whose circumspect gaze never once strayed from Jake. “Lord St. Alban,” said the Duke, “may I present my daughter, Lady Olivia, to you?”
This was Lady Olivia? The woman the pair of louts had been disparaging at the whiskey cart? And she was the daughter of a duke? This duke?
From what he could gather, the woman was a walking scandal. Impossible that she was the Dowager’s candidate for his bride.
He gave himself a mental shake. His bride? Where had that last bit come from? Even so, disappointment, distinct and unmistakable, reared its head and as quickly lay down. He didn’t need a walking scandal for a wife.
On a step forward, Lady Olivia extended her hand toward him. The instant he touched his fingers to hers, a happening occurred, unexpected and confounding: a tiny shock of electricity sparked between them.
A startled chirrup escaped her pink lips, and she snatched her hand back, a surprised smile flashing across her mouth. The smile dropped in an instant, as if she remembered that she didn’t smile for strangers.
Another tug of disappointment pulled at him. Lady Olivia had the sort of smile that reached all the way up to her eyes. A rare sighting in environs such as these, he suspected.
“Daughter by law, Your Grace,” the Dowager was saying, either unaware of or indifferent to any sparks that might be flying between him and Lady Olivia. “And former at that.”
Jake’s brows drew together. An entire conversation seemed to be taking place below the surface of the current conversation. And he wasn’t invited.
Lady Olivia angled her body toward the Duke and placed her silk-gloved hand on his forearm. There was no mistaking the affection the two held for one another. “I shall call you Father as long as you wish.”
“Forever, my dear,” he returned, a doting twinkle in his eye. He gestured toward Jake. “St. Alban happens to be my new protégé.”
“Your protégé?” Lady Olivia asked. She pinned Jake with a glare equal parts confusion and horror. He rather enjoyed the hitch he heard in her voice. “You don’t appear to be the sort of man incapable of managing his own affairs.”
The Dowager gasped, and the Duke’s bushy silver eyebrows lifted, but Jake took her outburst in stride. “Too often appearances can be deceiving,” he said. “One never knows what sort a man might be. That is, until you’ve known him long enough to take his measure. Wouldn’t you agree, my lady?”
Lady Olivia’s mouth snapped shut, and a blush crept up her décolletage. She hadn’t missed the double entendre located within his words. He tamped down a swell of satisfaction. For the first time since setting foot on English soil, Jake felt interested, engaged, and alive.
Even though he wouldn’t be marrying this walking scandal, her restraint made him want to poke and prod her until he’d stripped her of her exquisite control. Lady Olivia was petite and blond, but boring and dull she wasn’t.