Heart of Decadence (Handful of Hearts Book 5) Read online

  “Well, you were, of course, right about her beauty. So it’s no surprise that, not long after you left, she was snapped up by Lord Carrington.” Settling back in the chair once more, Haversham took up his drink again. “The most fashionable couple of the Season. They seemed very happy together…and very affectionate. Until Carrington suddenly fell gravely ill.”

  “Deucedly bad luck.” Nathan couldn’t help but think how Miss Burrowes must’ve been mad with worry. He remembered her as being very tenderhearted.

  “In more ways than one.” A pinched expression came over Haversham’s face. “Lord Carrington lingered for some weeks so that eventually Miss Burrowes and her family requested that the marriage go forward despite the gentleman’s infirmity. To ensure, they said, that the lady would be provided for. And had they married, she would, even now, be the wealthy widow of an earl. But Carrington died before the nuptials could be arranged, and so she remained Miss Burrowes.”

  An unexceptional story, so far. Certainly not one that would produce a scandal of the magnitude Haversham alluded to. Something else must have caused Miss Burrowes to become a pariah in Society. He wished very badly that he’d known of her unmarried state when he’d returned from his tour. A renewal of their acquaintance then might’ve led to a continuance of their courtship.

  Frowning, Nathan poured another tot of spirits into his glass. “I do not see the point, Haversham. She was betrothed and the man died. If she was not suspected of poisoning him, I do not see how scandal came into it.”

  Swirling his libation slowly, Haversham kept his gaze on his glass. “That came afterward, Ainsley. Miss Burrowes was prostrate with grief at Carrington’s death. She and her family retired to their estate in Dorset where she fell ill herself for a time.”

  “I still see no hint of scandal here, Haversham. A woman’s grief is no reason for her to be disgraced.” Was this a storm in a cream pot after all?

  Casting a look of disbelief at Nathan, his friend sat forward in his chair. “Perhaps none of your family or friends has become betrothed in the last ten or so years?”

  Nathan shook his head. What was Haversham getting at?

  “Are you not aware then that from almost the moment couples agree to marry, they feel it is permitted to anticipate the wedding night?”

  “Well, yes, of course I know that.” Then with dawning realization… “So the ton believed that Miss Burrowes and Lord Carrington…?”

  “Exactly. It would explain her family’s frantic desire to have them marry before he died. And her illness afterward.”

  “Her illness?”

  Haversham paused. “The on-dit at the time put it about that she had either birthed or lost a child.”

  “Good God.” As though a rug had been pulled from beneath his feet, Nathan’s world shifted. The Miss Burrowes he had known would never have done such a thing.

  His traitorous memory, however, suggested otherwise.

  He was back under the cherry tree, in Lady Hamilton’s garden, moonlight streaming around him and the lady with a thousand stars shining down on them. They’d danced a spirited reel and afterward he’d suggested that some fresh air on the veranda would revive them both. She’d agreed, although they’d both understood it could be dangerous to her reputation.

  They’d been introduced at Lady Somerville’s ball the week before where Nathan had been immediately struck by Miss Burrowes’s grace and beauty. Her witty conversation had been an unexpected boon when he’d asked for and been granted the privilege of the supper dance. Every night that week he’d partnered her, at every chance had taken her for a carriage ride or called upon her. In that very short week, he’d come to have very affectionate feelings for the lady, and at Lady Hamilton’s, he’d suddenly craved more.

  The soft breeze had made her ballgown billow out over the new grass as they stood behind the trunk of the largest cherry tree, hopefully hidden from sight. He’d gently stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers, the smooth skin inciting a riot of desire throughout him. She’d tipped her head back, her eyelids half closed, her lips poised in a perfect bow. Passion had raged in him as he sank his mouth onto hers, her lips warm and welcoming as he pressed himself to her and sought to deepen the kiss. To his surprise, she opened like the petals of a flower, and he plunged in, delirious with the taste and feel of her.

  When at last he’d broken the kiss, they stood together in the glorious night air, a whole new world within his grasp. “I will speak to your father,” he’d told her, and she’d smiled and taken his arm as they returned to the house.

  “Ainsley? Ainsley.”

  Haversham’s insistent voice brought him out of his reverie. “What?” He blinked several times to clear the vision of that night from his head.

  “You seem stunned. You’d never heard this rumor before? About Miss Burrowes?” His friend looked at him askance.

  “No, never. When I left for Italy, she’d just come out. My father wrote to me that she’d become betrothed to Lord Carrington shortly after I left, and I inquired about her no more.” And some time later, finally made peace with his heart. “When I returned a little over two years later, I had no cause to ask after her, assuming that she’d married. Only last night did I discover that the gentleman had died before they could do so.”

  “I suppose the scandal had died down by the time you returned, but it was on everyone’s tongues for months.” Haversham stared frankly at him. “And now she has returned to Society. I wonder why?”

  “She is to be married to a Mr. Burke from Derbyshire, it seems.”

  “Then perhaps they are testing the waters of respectability.” Haversham nodded. “Such a marriage might help repair her reputation.”

  “That seems likely.” And would explain much about last night. The embrace he’d interrupted, Burke’s overly affectionate treatment of Miss Burrowes, and her lack of affection for him. An arranged marriage to help bring her back into Society. “Though why now, after all these years, is a mystery.”

  “And one we will simply have to ponder until the gossips inform us, as they most assuredly will.” His friend laughed, drained his glass, and rose. “I’ll wager—or rather would wager had I the funds—that there is already an on-dit in some news sheet about her presence at Lady Hamilton’s last night. I wonder the lady would even invite her.”

  “That I can shed some light on.” Nathan rose as well. “Lady Hamilton is her aunt. I remember Miss Burrowes telling me that all those years ago. Perhaps she’s trying to assist the woman on her way back to respectability.”

  “Better she than you or I. Nothing good can come of such a scheme. Getting embroiled in such unpleasantness would be disastrous to one’s own reputation, I’m certain.” Haversham looked at Nathan and stopped dead. “You haven’t… Ainsley, tell me you didn’t get ensnared in this business somehow?”

  “I’m taking Miss Burrowes for a ride in my curricle this afternoon.” He tried to mitigate the defiance in his voice, but not much. It had occurred to Nathan that he might be, in part, responsible for Miss Burrowes’s downfall.

  “Are you mad, Ainsley?” The anguish on the earl’s face spoke of genuine concern for him. “For God’s sake, cry off. Plead illness or business that cannot wait. Do not allow your name to be linked to this woman’s. Mark my words, you will either be pulled down with her or quash her hopes for a chance at respectability.”

  “Do you think she did it, Haversham?” The question had been eating a hole in his heart ever since the revelation. “Do you think she allowed herself to be ruined because she was in love with the man?”

  His question brought his friend up short. Haversham’s lips drew in, his brows down in a scowl. “As I do not know the lady well, I cannot hazard a guess. She and Carrington were, as I said earlier, very affectionate in their address in public. How that resolved itself in private, only she knows. But it matters not what I think, or what you think, or, God help us, what the truth of the matter actually is. Society has decreed her guilty, a
nd unless that opinion can be changed, she may as well be.”

  Chapter 4

  After a night spent tossing and turning and a morning filled with growing dread, Amelia had regretfully dressed in her best blue carriage gown, trimmed with rosettes of the same color, and a matching bonnet and taken up her station in one of the chairs in the downstairs receiving room of the townhouse her father had taken for the Season. She hoped the small amount of Pear’s Almond Bloom she’d applied to her face helped hide her haggard look. It would not do for Lord Ainsley to believe her drooping appearance was due to sleeplessness caused by him. Even if it were true.

  There’d been so much upheaval last evening that she’d lain awake going over every moment until the wee hours. First there’d been Mr. Burke’s introduction and subsequent kiss in the library. Then Lord Ainsley’s startling appearance. Who would’ve thought he would materialize after such a long time, at the very worst moment, then offer to take her driving as though his absence during the last ten years had never occurred? But the worst had been Mr. Burke’s reaction to the outing with Lord Ainsley. Mama had calmed him, apparently, but he’d protested loudly and long on the way home, until Amelia was left at her doorstep with a terrible headache.

  So today she was determined to tell Lord Ainsley, in no uncertain terms, that she would not jeopardize her possible future with Mr. Burke just to satisfy his curiosity about her. That was all it must be. That she remembered their budding romance all those years ago did not mean he did, certainly not when he’d left without a word to her. She’d been devastated, waiting day after day for him to arrive at the townhouse to speak to her father about a formal courtship. Night after night, she’d searched each entertainment for him, until finally she’d overheard two gentlemen talking about Lord Ainsley and learned that he’d left for Italy the previous week.

  Somehow, she’d gotten through that horrible evening, although once she’d returned home, she’d cried until dawn.

  Never again would she cry over this man. She’d send him off with a large flea in his ear this very afternoon, marry Mr. Burke, and be content with her lot. Hopefully, her life would be better than it had been so far, if she worked at pleasing her husband. Not the marriage she’d imagined having all those years ago, but she’d be a wife and respectable again.

  The front door opening brought her up out of the chair, her stomach quivering. A murmur of voices in the corridor, and her mouth went as dry as if she’d swallowed cotton. She clutched the strings of her reticule, steeling herself.

  Their butler appeared in the doorway. “Lord Ainsley, miss.”

  Suddenly the butler was gone, and he was there, tall and handsome as ever. Dressed impeccably in pale trousers and an excellently cut walnut brown coat, wide at the shoulders and impossibly narrow at the waist, his lordship could’ve stepped out of a bandbox.

  “Miss Burrowes, good afternoon.” He smiled and bowed, his gaze taking her in from top to toe.

  “Good afternoon, my lord.” Hoping he couldn’t see her trembling, she curtsied and nodded toward the door. “Shall we go? I am certain you have more pressing things to attend to this afternoon than an outing with me.”

  “None that I can think of.” His gray eyes twinkled as he offered his arm. “But I will take the hint. Let us be off.”

  After handing her into his curricle, a sleek black and yellow vehicle, pulled by a matched pair of grays, he jumped aboard and took the ribbons with very sure hands.

  “Are they always this tiny?” The vehicle seemed too small to carry both of them. Perched on the seat with the top back and no sides to hold her in, Amelia expected to be ejected from the carriage as soon as they hit a rut or bump in the road. She clutched what little of the side there was in a death grip.

  “This is the standard size for a curricle, Miss Burrowes.” The wretch smiled as he started the team. “I believe I detect a lack of confidence in my ability to drive this rig.”

  “Oh, dear.” Amelia gritted her teeth as they turned the corner at a trot. She clung to the side as best she could, but even the slight speed made her dizzy. “It is not my lack of confidence in your driving, my lord, but my lack of faith in my ability to stay in my seat.”

  “You have never ridden in a curricle before?” He chuckled and adjusted the reins.

  Wretched man.

  “Never.” And never would again once they returned home.

  “Then I am delighted to be the one to introduce you to the pleasures of a brisk ride.” He grinned at her as they sped through the gates of Hyde Park. As soon as they rolled onto the sand and dirt bridle path, he did something with the ribbons and the horses picked up their pace.

  The grass, trees, and flowers along the path became a colorful blur as Amelia held onto her bonnet with one hand and the curricle with the other. The wind rushed over her face, which actually felt exquisite. Still, she feared they would come to mischief any second.

  After an interminable time, he slowed the horses again, this time to a sedate walk, and turned to her. “Did you enjoy your first curricle ride, Miss Burrowes?”

  On the tip of her tongue to tell him it had been horrible, thank you very much, she glanced at him and stopped, arrested by the hopeful look on his face. He really wished to have pleased her. Something inside her shifted, and she smiled back at him. “It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before, my lord.”

  “I wanted to come here before the fashionable hour just so we could take the path at a good clip. One cannot do that when so many people are about.”

  Amelia glanced around and, true enough, only a handful of walkers and one gentleman on horseback were in evidence. Fewer people to recognize her as well. Had that also been on Lord Ainsley’s mind?

  “There is an offshoot of the path up ahead. I thought we might stop a moment.” He steered the willing horses toward a smaller opening in the trees and suddenly they were inside a bower of greenery, quite secluded, where he slowed the horses until they stopped.

  Her pulse raced. Why had he brought her here? Had he finally heard the stories the ton whispered about her and thought he could take advantage of her lack of reputation? The memory of their kiss beneath the cherry tree surfaced and her resolve suddenly faltered. Would she indeed allow him the liberty again?

  “Miss Burrowes, first, I would like to apologize most abjectly for the way I treated you, going away without a word all those years ago.”

  Of all the things she’d imagined he’d say today while tossing and turning last night, that had not even remotely crossed her mind. She blinked, not knowing how to respond. “Thank you, my lord. I do appreciate that, even though it was quite a long time ago.” She sighed. “A lifetime ago, it seems.”

  “Indeed, it does seem that way.” He gazed ahead, pointedly not looking at her. “I want to tell you what happened.” Suddenly his piercing gaze was trained on her, the sorrow there almost a palpable thing.

  She drew back, unsure if she wanted to listen to an explanation that brought so much pain to him. Still, if he needed atonement, she would hear him.

  “You said you remember that evening underneath the cherry tree?”

  Nodding, she looked away. Although time had dimmed the pain of his defection, that kiss still lingered bright in her memory.

  “I promised you I would speak to your father about a formal courtship and I had every intention of doing so the next day. So that night when I arrived at home, I sought out my father to apprise him of my intentions toward you.” Lord Ainsley’s cheerful countenance had grown grim, his mouth drawn, the skin under his eyes suddenly darkened. “Unfortunately, he was not particularly enthusiastic about the news. His reasons had nothing to do with you, my dear, but to do with me. My age, specifically. I was only twenty-one that summer, an age, he told me, when I should be off seeing the world, experiencing new places, new ideas, steeping myself in the ancient cultures of foreign lands. Not leg-shackled to a lady I’d only just met.”

  Teeth clenched to hold her tongue, Amelia sat with
her hands clasped in her lap, fuming. His father had been the one to sunder their budding affection for one another. Had he not done so, what might her life have been like these past ten years?

  Lord Ainsley closed his eyes and clenched his fists. “I should’ve argued more stringently for the courtship, but again, I was young and in the habit of taking my father’s advice.” He opened stormy gray eyes to gaze on her. “I wish to God I had not, but I did. We set off the very next morning for Portsmouth to arrange passage on a ship to Italy, to commence the Grand Tour I’d always wished to take. I wanted to send you a letter, explaining what had happened and asking you to wait for me, but Father wouldn’t hear of it. He said a clean break would be best, that I couldn’t expect you to wait years for me to return.”

  “In that, I believe he was correct, my lord.” Much as she’d have liked to refute it, she could not. While she would’ve been content to wait two or more years for Lord Ainsley to return, her parents certainly would not have. They’d expected her to make a good match that first Season.

  He shook his head sadly. “I set sail with the image of your face in my mind, determined to write to you when I first made port. However, the ship was delayed, becalmed off the Canary Islands, so when I arrived in Rome, I was met with a letter from my father that had come more swiftly overland. In it, he mentioned your betrothal to Lord Carrington.” Lord Ainsley sat straighter on the seat, shifting the ribbons from one hand to the other. “I sent up a prayer for your happiness and turned my thoughts to enjoying the Tour, although for the first month, at least, I was miserable company for the group of fellows I joined.”

  “I see.” Tears pricked her eyes and she blinked them back. He had truly cared for her that long-ago summer. If not for his father’s misplaced meddling, this man might’ve been her husband all these years.

  “Last night, I learned you did not marry after all, and today,” he paused, his lips going quite white, “I heard about the circumstances that followed your betrothed’s death.”