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  A pause, and then Julius said, “You are right. But tell me if he harasses you, and I will deal with him.”

  “Discreetly?”

  “Yes.”

  Julius snapped the word, but he had given it, and Helena would hold him to it.

  “I can manage him,” she said. “Whatever else he might be, he was brought up a gentleman, and I know what to do with those.”

  Julius’s huffed laugh relieved her mind considerably. Julius had a quick temper, but these days he rarely lost it, and when he did, he recovered quickly. He was, after all, a supreme manipulator of society.

  The babble and heat of a hundred people crowded into a room meant for half that number met her in a suffocating wave. Their mingled perfumes hung over the whole, cloying and heavy. This was what she had longed for during her lonely hours in the last four years, ever since her mother had declared her intention of delaying her come-out until Lucinda was ready. Many people here knew her already, of course, but this ball marked her transition to full-fledged member of society. And of course that meant eligible for marriage, at last.

  However, she no longer held the eager anticipation she had felt when she’d entered this house. Eligible men no longer appeared so attractive. Who among all the men she had met when she had been but Julius’s sister had attracted her as much as the one she had encountered tonight?

  One of the other men approached now, a pleasant smile on his genial face. “It’s so good to see you here tonight, Lady Helena. Do you know how many years I have waited for you?”

  Such banter she could cope with easily. “About as long as I have waited for you, Lord Elsbury.”

  Unabashed, he grinned. Helena had known Elsbury since childhood. He was of an age with Julius and visited their family home in Derbyshire. If she had to choose anyone for her first society dance, he would come high on the list, mainly because their relationship was easy rather than intense. If she’d danced with Tom, she wouldn’t have kept her composure very easily.

  When she was executing a turn in the stately minuet, she caught sight of him. Tom stood at the edge of the room, with a man who looked enough like him to be his brother. He was naturally taking no notice of her at all.

  So why did his lack of concern strike her to the heart?

  He had used her, if she was to believe him, used her to irritate her family and possibly create a scandal. If she believed him, of course, and didn’t remember what had preceded his words. The way he had held her almost reverently did not tell her he was using her to provoke someone else, nor the way he’d stroked her cheek or smiled into her eyes. Or kissed her.

  The memory of his kisses made her falter, but she recovered herself by the time she met Lord Everslade in the dance once more, and she could give him a careless smile. “You are my first cicisbeo,” she told him.

  “I am no such thing!” Revulsion filled his tones.

  She ended the dance on a smile. Everslade was not the kind of man to attend a woman night and day with the devotion one could expect from a dog. Except for her mother. He was very much a sporting man, with heavy interests in the hunting field and fisticuffs, and only came to London when he had to, or so he claimed. His mother had urged him to visit, he told her, and he had business to conduct. A cicisbeo spent most of his days in ladies’ salons, and if he was lucky, their boudoirs. Not a place one would look for the bluff Everslade.

  Helena could not imagine herself entertaining a man in her boudoir. Except in the way most great ladies did, during the levee, when everyone was dressed and more than one person crowded in.

  When Tom left, Helena knew it, even though she did not once look in his direction. She felt his absence deep inside, as if he had magically connected them with his kiss. Julius’s inexpiable animosity troubled her. Of course he avoided and ignored the Dankworths whenever he could, as did the rest of the Emperors of London. But to show quite so much fury at a little flirtation? Julius dealt with adversity with chilling hauteur, a coldness that struck to the bone, not red hot anger.

  After her second dance, she caught sight of the lovely face that haunted all their lives—Julius’s wife, Caroline.

  With a heavy sense of duty filling her heart, Helena approached Caroline and offered a pleasant smile. Before now, Caroline had turned a shoulder on her, but she would not do this in public. At least she had that much decorum. But Helena was the wrong sex to interest Caroline. The daughter of wealthy and high-born parents, she’d always known she would marry someone of the same rank, but her parents had not set a good example of constancy. She did not expect fidelity, and she did not give it. Marriage was not a personal contract but a public one that involved the occasional human contact. Caroline adored Julius and did not know how to manage her obsession. It made for a miserable marriage.

  Which was why Caroline preferred to ignore Helena. Now she offered a slight smile in return. “My dear sister-in-law is experiencing her first taste of London society in two years,” she said to the young men clustered around her. Several of those were definitely cicisbeos, Caroline’s advanced stage of pregnancy not affecting them one whit. She wafted her fan. “Your evening is modestly successful.”

  Her barbs were sometimes wide of the mark, but this one hit. Helena had longed for this evening for years. Helena had never been comfortable in childhood, always longing for the more exciting world of the grown-up, and her mother had known that. She used it as a way of controlling her daughter. Knowing what her mother was doing did not make her existence easier. Caroline, tempestuous, restless, and beautiful, knew it too.

  Smiling, she touched her belly in an apparently accidental way and lifted her glass of wine, moistening her lips and gazing over the rim of her glass at someone standing across the room.

  The man Helena had recognized as the one talking to Tom lifted his glass in a toast, giving her a smile in return.

  “Who is that?” Helena asked, not caring who heard. Surely this far along in her pregnancy Caroline would not be entertaining men intimately. Especially that one.

  When the silence fell, Helena turned her head. “What is it? What did I say?”

  “There is no reason you should know him,” Augustus said. “He is Lord William Dankworth.”

  So he was related to Tom. His brother, in fact, as she had suspected. He appeared to know Caroline very well, from the way he smiled at her. That was no society smile.

  As the true horror of the situation seeped into her, Helena shivered. For her to entertain a Dankworth was reprehensible. If Caroline was doing so, that had the makings of a major scandal. Caroline was wild and irresponsible, concerned only with satisfying her immediate desires. Her adventures had a “look at me” tone to them that made her look desperate rather than daring.

  “Cold?”

  She turned to Augustus, relieved to have a friend in this crowd. “A little. The night is chilly and they left the windows open.”

  “Come away. Let’s find you some supper.”

  Helena was only too glad to do so. Behind her, Caroline and her friends began to laugh and chatter once more. “I don’t want any supper,” Helena said. “Take me home, Augustus.”

  Her brother did not argue and led her quietly from the room.

  Helena’s first London ball in years had not gone as she’d wished. An evening that had begun in excited anticipation had ended in this, whatever “this” signified.

  Augustus did not speak to her in the carriage on the way home about anything significant, and he did not try to rally her with cheerful discussions about the evening. The experience was not one she would recall with any delight. Except, of course, for the first part, and those she would hug to herself and hold close until the memory faded.

  Alconbury had not known her any more than she had known him. She was sure about that. So why had he turned on her once Julius had caught them?

  “I enjoyed myself, yes,” she said by rote when Augustus asked her. “But I would like one incident clarified.
” At her brother’s frown, she said, “Not the one in the private room. The other. The way Caroline and Lord William Dankworth kept looking at each other.”

  Augustus let his head thud back against the cushions and stared at the ceiling, his blue eyes glinting in the light of the house they had passed earlier. The gathering there was still going on, as was the one they had just left. They would probably continue until the small hours, and Caroline would most likely be there when the company thinned. Caroline did not sleep much.

  “You’re growing up, aren’t you?” he said.

  “I did that several years ago,” she replied. “I’m merely learning what I should have then.”

  “I would not wish that on you,” Augustus said quietly. “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

  When the carriage came to a halt, Augustus helped her down and ushered her into the house, where the blessed quiet surrounded her like an intimation of peace. Ignoring her urge to go to her room, strip out of her finery, and go to bed, she took Augustus’s hand and led him upstairs to the small parlor next to the drawing room. With a sigh, she dropped her fan on the nearest table and sank into the chair. Although the fire had been banked down for the night, a comforting glow of warmth still bathed the room.

  Her hairpins dug into her scalp and her stays were too tight. “So tell me,” she said as Augustus resignedly took the chair opposite her. “Does Caroline entertain Lord William Dankworth?”

  Augustus stared at her tight-lipped. In a sudden movement he got to his feet, went to the sideboard, and returned in a moment with a large helping of brandy, which he swallowed in a couple of gulps. The sound of the glass meeting the table by his side sounded far too loud in the quiet room. A carriage rattled by in the street outside.

  “Caroline entertains Lord William, or she has in the past.”

  “So that was why Julius was so upset when he discovered me with Lord William’s brother.” Understanding swept through her in a great wave. Then another horrifying thought clutched her throat. “The baby—is it his?”

  Immediately Augustus shook his head. “No.” He paused, looking longingly at his empty glass. “At least, I don’t think so. If Julius suspects that, he’s keeping the information close to his chest.”

  An Emperor sired by a Dankworth? It didn’t bear thinking about.

  Sighing, Augustus returned his attention to her. “You cannot be unaware that Caroline enjoys male company.”

  She snorted. “She isn’t exactly discreet.”

  “I think she is.” Augustus got to his feet and took his glass back to the sideboard.

  “You can pour me one of those,” she said. “I didn’t even get my supper.”

  “You could have stayed.” He brought her a drink, not as full as his, but generous enough.

  She sipped the fiery drink. Heat coursed back into her veins. “After I’d disgraced myself, the mood left me. I wanted my home and my bed. I only stayed as long as I did because people might talk.” She lifted the glass and swirled the amber liquid around it. “They’ll talk anyway, will they not? Except that it won’t be about me. Not about the beauty who amazed London by her dazzling appearance.” Next to her family, Helena paled into insignificance. She should have known Tom meant nothing from his extravagant compliments. Beauty was not her forte.

  “You are lovely,” Augustus said firmly. “But next to Julius’s magnificence and Caroline’s beauty, we’re sometimes overlooked.”

  She laughed. Augustus was bigger than Julius and very difficult to overlook, being tall and strongly built. “Perhaps it’s just as well.”

  “You have a quiet beauty,” her brother told her. “The kind that lasts.”

  “Well, thank you, kind sir.” She took another sip, the alcohol giving her a lift she would not have achieved on her own. The brandy was a good idea. “But I don’t want to talk about my evening tonight. How could you have allowed me to walk into that place so unprepared?”

  He blinked and shook his head. “I know. I spoke to mother, and she assured me she would tell you what you needed to know.”

  “She did not.” Helena was still finding it difficult to understand what she had unwittingly walked into. “So Caroline is Lord William’s lover, and you caught me in a room with his brother?”

  “That puts the business in a nutshell.” Augustus paused. “Sometimes I forget you are twenty. You should know about them. God knows the rest of London does.”

  “What more can there be?”

  He sighed. “Julius blames himself for Caroline’s behavior. When they were first married, they enjoyed their lives together. Julius revelled in his freedom after our mother’s efforts to control him, and they both took a variety of lovers.”

  Shocked, she didn’t try to hold back her gasp. “I thought they loved each other, at first at any rate.”

  “They did, but I think they loved what they represented to each other as much as anything else.” He waved a hand vaguely. “Julius tired of it early, but Caroline is still engaged in it.”

  “Why didn’t I know?”

  “Because their behavior was a secret. At least, they kept it that way at first. Julius was wild, certainly, but not much more than any man thrown on the town can be. Caroline grew worse when Julius tired of it. In him, the madness was only temporary. Sometimes I think Caroline is truly mad. She had never stopped, but her family is prestigious enough to hide most of her foolishness.”

  “And because his wife is having an affair with Alconbury’s brother, Julius believed the worst when he discovered us in a room together.” Tom was nothing like his brother. She had no concrete proof. She just knew.

  She was still trying to absorb the information as Augustus knocked back the last of his drink and got to his feet. “I’m not surprised you didn’t know the identity of the man in the room, but if anyone but us had walked in, we could have found ourselves in a deeply difficult situation.”

  “You mean a forced engagement?”

  Augustus gave a rough laugh. “Hardly. Can you imagine our two families not at odds with each other? The world would think we’d gone mad. But a duel, or a public airing of bad blood. The papers would have been full of it in the morning, and they would not hesitate to drag your name through the mud. They would relish it. They love to bring great families down.”

  Helena knew she could not object to that. The family meant more than its members, after all, but sometimes she longed to be just Miss Vernon of Anywhere, to be welcomed and appreciated for herself. That longing had fed into her interlude tonight, the one that had ended so badly but started so well. “You don’t like it any more than I do.”

  “I don’t. In fact, I’m leaving for the continent as soon as I can manage.”

  Helena blinked. “You are?” Along with Julius, Augustus had gone on the Grand Tour. He had returned enthused with classical literature and art, but Helena had not expected him to quit England completely. “Because of this?”

  Augustus waved around expansively. “All this. The feud, the ceremony, the scandals, the bowing and scraping, all that too. I hate it, Helena. I’m going to Rome as plain Augustus Vernon.”

  “Plenty of people visit the city. I’ve heard it said that Rome is as full of English aristocrats as London. They’ll know who you are.”

  “I can avoid them better there. I don’t have to attend gatherings and balls that bore me rigid, or talk about things that don’t interest me. If I were as fascinated by politics as our brother, or able to shut myself off as you do, I could perhaps bear it, but I cannot.”

  “Will you return?” Was she about to lose her brother?

  “Of course. I know this isn’t a permanent solution, but I can have a few years for myself.”

  “Can I come with you?” The life he described sounded wonderful.

  “No.” He spoke shortly, but he smiled. “I did not choose Rome arbitrarily. I’ll be researching a few small matters while I’m there. You can’t be any part of that. You m
ust stay and do your duty.”

  “Which is?”

  “To find happiness.” His voice lowered and softened. Few people saw Augustus’s gentler side, but she saw it now. “Don’t let them marry you to someone you don’t care for. Don’t let your fear of becoming mother’s unpaid servant hold you back. It will not come to that, Helena. We are determined on it.”

  “Oh.” Stunned, she sat back. “I am determined to marry the first man who asked.”

  “Don’t. You deserve more than that. You will have it.” Augustus sounded so firm she didn’t have the heart to contradict him, even though matters were nowhere near as clear as he tried to make them.

  “Thank you.” She put her empty glass down and got to her feet. “And thank you for telling me about Caroline.” Arrested by a sudden thought, she stopped. “Why would she do such a thing?”

  “Because she’s Caroline,” Augustus said. “Because she will do anything for attention, any kind of attention. Because she knows Julius is slipping away.”

  “Ah.” Now she understood. “Caroline still loves Julius.”

  “She does.” Augustus passed his hand over his forehead. “She adores him. It’s too late, Helena. He won’t go back to her, not after what she has done.”

  “But one of you needs to produce an heir.” She could not do it, and neither could her sister. Her father was the only male in a family of six. That meant a distant cousin would inherit if neither Julius nor Augustus provided an heir. How her mother would dislike that!

  “I know,” Augustus said. “One of us will. Plenty of marriages exist merely to make an heir, and if Julius fails in his mission, I’ll make the ultimate sacrifice.”

  Why such a sad remark should make her laugh Helena wasn’t sure, but she felt easier in her mind as she made her way upstairs to bed.

  Chapter 3

  After a convivial and profitable morning at Jonathan’s coffeehouse in the City, Tom made his way back to his family house situated at the edge of the fashionable part of London. He nodded to the liveried footman standing to attention in the hall. The green and gold livery made quite a show, even gaudy, but livery was like that.