Promise Me Heaven (4 page)

“I have distinctly fond memories of one or two,” Thomas replied laconically. “But it was so long ago, one wonders if one is merely rewriting history to warm one on a dull evening.”

“Oh, no,” said Cat, “I’m sure there were. Really.”

“How good of you to see back to the days of my long past youth and surmise, from this countrified hulk you have seen fit to dine with, the dim shadows of my insignificant career as a rake.”

“You are too modest. I’m sure it wasn’t altogether insignificant. My, what an easy man you are to talk to.”

“It did much to further my reputation.”

“I’m sure it did,” she agreed, drunkenly polite.

“And since I do listen so well, perhaps you will now tell me the reason for your visit.”

“Well, I don’t know. I spent all afternoon trying to come up with some plausible excuse for coming here. It wasn’t your brother’s bird book.” She stared at him with an equal mixture of candor and contrition.

What a confoundedly forthright woman
, thought Thomas in exasperation.
Mayhaps now we can dispense with all my amusing shortcomings and finally come to the point.

“I rather thought not,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me the real reason you are here?”

“Should I?” she asked brightly. “Well, perhaps that’s best. You’ll think it rare amusing, no doubt.”

She dimpled at him. His face remained a smooth mask of polite interest. “No doubt.”

“All right then, I came precisely because of your past notoriety as a rake.”

“Pardon me?” He had anticipated a request for money. He had even prepared to grant it. Even now. But what his past had to do with her visit was beyond his comprehension.

“Yes. It was all rather silly, I’m afraid. But, you see, I came out a good three years ago. Yes, I’m quite long in the tooth myself, if the truth be known.” She smiled companionably. “And I have had it in my mind to alter my current state by marrying.”

“My best wishes,” Thomas said, fervently wishing her intended the best of luck. “And?”

“Well then, there’s the rub.” Cat scowled, her dark brows drawing into an angry line. “The man I’ve selected won’t come up to scratch.”

“He won’t?” asked Thomas, feigning surprise. Silently he congratulated the unknown fool on his good sense.

“No. No, he won’t.” Bright spots of color appeared high on her cheekbones, again surprising him. He would expect her to be sad, or upset, or woeful, but not angry.

“You see,” she continued, “the gentleman I have decided on is currently acquiring the reputation you had—or rather, the reputation that history has written for you. He’s not quite achieved the name. But it is not for want of trying. I’m afraid, given time, he really may become a rake. He’s quite, quite irresistible to females. Quite handsome—no, gloriously handsome—and very, very wealthy. And he’s taken to using these attributes quite shamelessly in pursuing…”

“Pleasures of the flesh?” Thomas suggested.

“Exactly! But, in spite of that, I feel we would deal well together. He’s the perfect height to partner me in a dance,” she stated with alcohol-imbued logic. “Besides which, I could make good use of his fortune and his position. And it really is past time I marry. I have quite set my mind on it.”

“And your heart?” Thomas prompted, unsure why he asked.

Perhaps she did not hear the query in her current state, or simply chose not to answer it. She fluttered her fingers impatiently.

“And what was my role to be in this little tale?” Thomas asked.

“Well, that’s the laughable thing. I had formulated a sort of a program of study to advance my goal. It seemed a sensible sort of thing. Before I met you, that is. I heard you had returned from the Continent, and I thought you would come back surrounded by all of your type of friends.”

“My type?”

“Yes, you know. Absolutely irresistible rakes and even more irresistible Cyprians. I thought if I could just stay here, I could, well, pick up a few pointers. Learn by studying what a rake finds enticing in a woman.

“You see, Giles likes me well enough. He always seeks me out in polite company. But I haven’t yet really captured his full attention.”

“You mean his heart.”

“No,” she said in genuine surprise. “His attention. Fix his interest. Just that. I am not so green as to have romantic notions about his heart. As if one could study how to make another love one,” she scoffed.

“Forgive my naivety.”

If she understood his irony, she ignored it. “I thought if I could just learn what attitudes to adopt in order to acquire a patina of… naughtiness? I believe I could bring him up to scratch. Nothing too outré. The object is, after all, matrimony. I guess, in short, I thought you could inadvertently teach me how to be scintillating.”

She giggled, looking to see if he shared her amusement.

He regarded her stonily. “And you don’t think I’m up to the challenge?”

She tilted her empty wineglass towards him invitingly. He ignored the unspoken request.

She sighed. “Well, I’m sure you could teach me very pretty manners. But I already have very pretty manners. I had been thinking along the lines of something more explicit.” She smiled cajolingly.

Thomas was not going to be cajoled. In the past half an hour, he had been taken down more pegs than he had in his entire thirty-three years. All from a lush-figured, basilisk-eyed, politically canny hoyden. A hoyden who went to no pains to conceal that she considered him an ancient, hulking has-been!

All the feelings of remorse over his ill-spent youth, all the malaise of spirit that had ridden him since his return from France, evaporated in the face of this frontal assault on his male pride. His amorous conquests, which for quite some time now had only engendered in him a vague sense of self-disgust, suddenly seemed like diamonds in a masculine crown, and she was questioning not only their number, but whether they even existed!

He would teach the hellish imp a thing or two about infamous rakes and their even more infamous desires. “I don’t think you have the raw materials.”

Her head snapped up, the smile vanishing with laughable alacrity. “What?”

“I simply don’t think you have the necessary components to become the sort of woman who captures and maintains the interest of a man of the world. You certainly won’t have caught mine.”

“
Yours?
” she repeated in offensive bewilderment.

“Yes, mine. I do not wish to elaborate on it unduly, but while I am sure much of my unsavory reputation is, as you so astutely surmised, a matter of historical embellishment, I was, to put it bluntly, a rake of no mean accomplishment.”

“You were?”

“Really, if you are to become enigmatic, you will have to train your countenance into keeping secrets. Right now it all too clearly registers disbelief. Yes, I was. And I daresay I could remember enough about what I found appealing in a woman to provide you with some direction.”

“You could?”

He nodded his dark head. “But, I feel compelled to reiterate, I do not know if the raw material exists within you.”

Indignation abruptly replaced Cat’s confusion. She drew herself up haughtily and said with admirable, if slightly slurred, outrage, “I can but try.”

Thomas allowed his gaze to touch her face, frown at her hair, move slowly down the length of her neck, rest briefly on her bosom, then travel to her waist. Cat felt a quiver stir in her beneath his lazy perusal. She hastily ascribed it to the wine. She was too warm. Still, a suspicion that she had just entered unplumbed depths nagged at her. Pride alone made her hold herself still beneath his regard.

“Mmm… perhaps,” he said. “Well, it’s as well the lambing is done and I have energy to devote to this project. We can use all the time we can get. How much is that, do you say?”

“The season begins one month hence,” Cat bit out.

“A month. Well, ’twill be a challenge, perhaps not impossible,” Thomas murmured. “But then, there is the question of propriety. We can hardly manufacture a scintillating little virgin only to have the gossips get hold of your unchaperoned position in my household and ruin the invention, can we? And as your great-aunt has chosen not to grace us with her presence, it is a matter we need to address.”

Cat opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment a series of crashes and angrily raised voices shook the outer hall. The door burst open. A small figure, swathed in layer upon layer of thick, black wool, stood in the doorway. A huge, iron crucifix swung from an enshrouded throat. Green eyes, of amazing beauty and fierceness, impaled them from a perspiring, wrinkled visage. The tiny figure raised an ebony cane with one hand and with the other produced what appeared to be a well-worn Bible. She held both aloft as though warding off some demon. Into the silence, her voice issued forth with sepulcher condemnation. “Evil!”

Cat turned to Thomas. “Allow me to introduce my great-aunt, the dowager duchess Montaigne White. But I believe you know her better as ‘Hundreds Hecuba.’ ”

Chapter 4

D
amn and blast the chit,” Thomas muttered. He swung his long legs over the side of his bed, stifling a groan as his overworked muscles protested. He wondered darkly where
she
was now. Sprung, no doubt, fully clad and alert from the depths of youthful slumber. She probably did handsprings down the hall on her way to breakfast. After, of course, stopping for an edifying spiritual consultation with Hecuba Montaigne White.

Thinking of Hecuba, Thomas shuddered. Thus are the mighty tumbled—or rather, thus are they not tumbled—becoming a convert in the grip of religious mania. He only hoped that if in his dotage he should start collecting saints’ knuckle bones, someone would do him the kindness of placing a bullet ’twixt his eyes.

Luckily, he assured himself, his dotage was some years hence. In spite of what Catherine Sinclair thought. He had never been more fit. But while he may well be fit, there was no denying the silver streaking the hair at his temples, or the stiffness that was, even now, greeting his first moments of wakefulness. It made no difference that yesterday he had labored harder than most stalwart farmhands. At least five years ago it would have made no difference. The chit had merely pointed out a few unassailable facts, the foremost being he was no longer a youth. What a confoundedly rude thing to do!

Ever since selling his commission after the battle at Salamanca and returning to England, Thomas had flirted with depression. He had forced himself to become involved in the workings of his farm and while it had proved something of a tonic, it had not completely dispelled his sense that he lacked purpose.

This morning, however, the apathy he had tried so hard to combat had evaporated. This morning he wanted a spot of revenge.

He had spent hours last night wondering what to do with his unexpected, and unwanted, houseguest. This morning, images of her flitting about at the crack of dawn, concocting some syrupy tisane for her aged host, decided him. He would take her up on her outlandish proposal. He would turn the little shrike into a midnight swan, instruct her in the ways of a rogue, tutor her in the language of dandies, make her familiar with the ways of rakes and libertines. Begad, he’d win her respect!

With that, he rose with determination, if not grace, from his bed, all the while making plans for his new protégé.

“Ah!” Thomas rose from the breakfast table with flattering alacrity upon Cat’s arrival. His gaze dropped to her gown. His “ah” trailed off.

“Is something wrong?” Cat asked worriedly, looking down at her pale blue, sprigged frock for any undone fastenings.

He grimaced apologetically. “We might as well begin immediately, don’t you agree? But first we must set some ground rules.”

She nodded gingerly, the motion causing her head to throb.

Cat had not sprung from her bed. She had crawled from it. Her pounding head failed to dim a horridly clear memory of the preceding evening’s debacle. She had called her host “massive.” She had laughed at his past conquests. And somehow, somewhere, she had been maneuvered into outlining her ridiculous plan. Worst of all, she had at some point agreed—God, had she even suggested it herself?—to a preposterous scheme whereby she became Thomas Montrose’s pupil! If her head didn’t hurt so much, she was sure she could have fathomed the reason for his readiness to fall in with her plan. It certainly couldn’t have been her charm.