Surrender to Sin Page 3

  “Sounds ominous,” said her brother.

  “Ginger!” she cried, flinging open the salon doors. “Ginger, Cary says he won’t go to Surrey with us for Christmas. What are you going to do about it?”

  Geoffrey Ambler, the seventh Duke of Auckland, climbed to his feet. Juliet had not quite tamed the enormous redhead, but he now accepted being called Ginger by his future duchess without so much as a grimace of displeasure. The death of his father had hit him hard, postponing his marriage to Juliet, and plunging him, for the first time, into a world of tedious responsibility. Like Juliet, he was dressed in deepest mourning, and the ravages of new pressures and cares showed in the lines and shadows of his craggy face. Nonetheless, he gave Cary a quick, boyish smile that went a long way towards explaining Juliet’s adoration of the fierce-looking redhead. He said, with a lot of northern England in his accent, “I shall need a mallet and a very large sack, but I think I can manage to change his mind, my love.”

  Cary offered his hand. “Hullo, Auckland.”

  His future brother-in-law winced as he shook hands. His father had only been dead for eleven months and his new title was still a fresh source of pain to him. “Please don’t call me that. Auckland was my father. When I hear the name, I find myself looking behind me to see if he’s there. Geoffrey will do. We’re practically brothers, after all.”

  “I was just telling Cary about our plans for Christmas,” said Juliet brightly.

  “Which explains his refusal to go into Surrey,” the Duke said, his green eyes twinkling.

  “Nonsense! Everyone loves a good private theatrical, and Cary’s no different.”

  Cary snorted rather violently.

  “Twelfth Night,” Juliet went on bravely, undeterred by her brother’s lack of enthusiasm. “I’m to be Viola, of course, and Ginger will be my beloved Duke Orsino.”

  “You’re joking me,” said Cary. “Sir, is it even possible that this is true?”

  “If music be the food of love, play on,” the Duke said sheepishly.

  “You see?” Juliet said proudly. “He’s coming along very nicely, I think.”

  “Honestly, why do you put up with her?” Cary wanted to know.

  “Because he adores me, that’s why,” said Juliet. “And Serena has agreed to take the part of the Countess Olivia.”

  Cary started in surprise. Lady Serena Calverstock was seated behind him and he had not been aware of her presence until Juliet made it known. Given that she was wearing one of the new high-brimmed poke bonnets, it seemed a strange oversight. He could remember a time not very long ago when he had possessed an almost supernatural sense that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up whenever Serena was near. Now, nothing, despite the fact that, if anything, she was even more beautiful than he remembered. He bowed to her impassively. “Madam. You’re looking well, but then you always do. Look well, that is.”

  The dark-haired beauty felt the coldness behind the compliment and colored slightly. “Mr. Wayborn,” she said. “We have all missed you in Town this last year.”

  “I have been in Hertfordshire, overseeing my estate. It’s in absolute disarray, I’m afraid.”

  “If it is, it’s your own fault,” said Juliet, rather disloyally, Cary thought. “You’ve neglected it shamefully for years.”

  “And it will take me years to set it right. But I find I don’t miss London as much as I thought I would,” he said, now lying through his teeth. “I find country life very peaceful. The people are simple and kind. The young ladies of Hertfordshire are not so artful and designing as the London variety.”

  “You can’t be talking about the Mickleby girls,” Juliet scoffed. “They’re practically cannibals when it comes to you.”

  “I find them charmingly transparent,” Cary replied. “It’s the London opacity I can’t tolerate. Miss Mickleby and her sisters harbor no secrets. They would all very much like to marry me, if they can’t get anyone better.”

  Serena could not remain insensible to the hostility of her former admirer. “I beg your pardon, Juliet, but I fear I’ve stayed too long,” she said, pulling on the sky-blue gloves that exactly matched the immense plumes nodding on her bonnet. “I do have appointments. Would you be so kind as to ring for my maid?”

  “Allow me, my lady,” said Cary, all but leaping across the room to pull the bell rope.

  “Wait, Serena,” Juliet pleaded. “I haven’t told Cary the best part yet. Cary, you’re going to be Sebastian, Viola’s brother. It’s a very small part, hardly fifty lines. Say you will,” she quickly begged him. “Who better to play the part of my brother than my actual brother, after all? And, don’t forget, in the end, Sebastian and Olivia fall in love. You can play that part, surely, if Serena plays hers.”

  Cary looked at Serena with hard gray eyes. “I believe we have already played those parts, Juliet, and I, for one, don’t care to repeat the performance.”

  “Please do excuse me,” Serena breathed, jumping to her feet. Her ivory pallor had been replaced by a scarlet blush that decidedly did not match her blue ensemble.

  Juliet ran after her friend. Supremely unconcerned, Cary closed the door behind the two women and flung himself down into the nearest chair. The Duke of Auckland sat down too, but did not speak, for which Cary was deeply grateful.

  “Look here, old man,” Cary said after a moment. “Might I ask a favor of you?”

  Geoffrey Ambler looked a little hunted. Over the past few months, a great many favors had been asked of the new Duke of Auckland. Then he reminded himself that Cary was Juliet’s brother; he, at least, had some right to ask. “Of course,” he said, with some of his old generosity of spirit. “Up to half my kingdom, or, rather my dukedom. Ask away.”

  Cary spoke carefully. “I should like to stress that I’ve not yet come to the point where it’s necessary, but I want to ask you to buy the chestnuts, if it comes to it. I know you have your grays, but Julie ought to have a good driving team of her own. I couldn’t possibly sell them to anyone else, and you know what they’re worth.”

  The Duke sat up straight. “Sell your chestnuts? You can’t possibly be serious. Why, Cary Wayborn without his chestnuts is rather like…like…” His grace tried to find a suitable simile for this unprecedented occurrence, but he was no Shakespeare.

  Neither was Cary. “Rather like Cary Wayborn without his testicles, I should imagine. Look, I’m hoping it won’t come to it, but if it does, may I depend on you to buy them?”

  “If you need money, old man—”

  “Do please refrain from finishing that sentence,” Cary interrupted. “No, it’s kind of you to offer, but I couldn’t possibly accept. The estate is on the dunghill because of my neglect, and who should suffer for it but myself? Anyway, I don’t think it will come to it. I’m sure it won’t. But may I depend on you if it does?”

  “Yes,” said the Duke seriously. “Yes, of course.”

  “Juliet is not to know I’ve asked you,” Cary warned. “She’d only start throwing humpbacked heiresses in my way. I’ve no intention of marrying a bank account.”

  Having concluded this embarrassing business, Cary went upstairs to pay his respects to his aunt Lady Elkins. When he returned to the salon after a game of piquet with the old lady, he found his sister pouring out the tea. Her mood was that of an avenging angel.

  “How could you be so beastly cruel to Serena?” she demanded. “I can remember a time when you wanted to marry her.”

  Cary reddened. “And I can remember a time when you counseled me against it! Now you seem to live in her pocket. I would not have come to my aunt’s house had I known she was here. I didn’t see her carriage in the street.”

  “No, she walked here with her maid,” Juliet explained. “I wish you would forgive her, Cary. If you only knew what Horatio had put her through, you’d pity her. Seven years of a secret engagement, and then he spurned her! I call that infamous.”

  “Whatever he put her through, it wasn’t enough,” Cary replied. “She k
new I was utterly infatuated with her beauty, and she let me go on like a fool, dangling after her, when all the while she was engaged to my cousin. I have no pity for her.”

  “But Horatio is more at fault,” Juliet argued. “He drove Serena mad with his coldness and his contempt, until she had no choice but to relieve him of his obligation to her. Only yesterday, he was walking towards her in Bond Street, and, when he saw her, he crossed to the other side and pretended not to see her. You would not punish her like that, surely.”

  “No,” Cary admitted.

  “Horatio is an ass,” said the Duke, with the air of one giving the last word. “Just because the Prince Regent gave him that ruddy snuffbox doesn’t mean everyone in London has got to see it three times a day. Somebody ought to take it away from him and throw it in the Thames.”

  “Ginger’s right,” said Juliet. “That snuffbox is the only thing in the world he really loves. Horatio without his snuffbox…Why, that’s rather like Cary without his chestnuts.”

  “What do you mean?” cried the Duke, startled by her clairvoyance. “Why should you say such a damn fool thing? Cary without his chestnuts! I never heard such nonsense!”

  “You can’t blame Horatio for everything,” Cary said quickly. “Pompous ass he may be, but he didn’t force her ladyship to flirt with me while she was secretly engaged to another. When I think of how she led me on, I could throw her in the Thames. Why don’t you ask Cousin Horatio to play Sebastian to her Olivia?”

  “Horatio does not deserve her,” Juliet protested.

  “Well, monkey, at the risk of sounding conceited, Serena don’t deserve me.”

  “You men!” she said scathingly. “You love as no man has ever loved before—that is, until the first real test of your devotion, and then it all goes out the window with the bathwater.”

  “‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds,’” said the Duke of Auckland, unexpectedly entering the argument, “‘or bends with the remover to remove…’”

  Juliet took her lord’s hand and recited the sonnet with him, “‘Oh, no! It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken. It is the star to every wandering bark…’”

  “Woof, woof,” said Cary, irritated by his sister’s treacly tone.

  The Duke looked at him seriously. “No, no, it’s not that sort of bark, old man. Julie explained it to me. In this case, ‘bark’ means ‘ship.’ As in ‘disembark,’ you know.”

  “Ginger’s really been studying his Shakespeare,” Juliet chimed, glowing with pride and temporarily forgetting that she was very cross with her brother.

  “Self-defense,” the Duke explained. “She’s forever quoting him at me.”

  “And now you’re graduating to private theatricals,” Cary remarked.

  “All the world’s a stage,” the Duke replied.

  “Wrong play, Ginger. Guess who’s going to be Malvolio,” said Juliet, turning to her brother, her gray eyes gleaming. “When you find out who I’ve got for Malvolio, you will want to come home for Christmas.”

  Cary stared at her in absolute horror. “You haven’t dragged our brother into this crackbrained scheme of yours, have you?”

  “No,” she admitted. “Benedict is too stuffy. He wouldn’t even let us use the library at Wayborn Hall for a theater. We’ve had to take Silvercombe. No, it’s not Benedict. You’ll never guess who it is, not in a hundred years.”

  Cary smiled. “In that case, monkey, you had better tell me.”

  “Mr. Rourke!” she said, unable to contain her triumph any longer. “Lord Ravenshaw wanted him for his private theatrical, but who wants to spend Christmas in Cornwall?”

  Cary looked at her blankly.

  “The actor! Mr. David Rourke, Cary. You remember him. He was Shylock last year.”

  “Oh, yes. I thought you hated him. Didn’t he run off with your maid?”

  Juliet frowned impatiently. “That is all forgiven. He’s returned Fifi to me, and my hair has never looked better, not that you men take any notice.”

  “He’s costing me a fortune,” the Duke put in. “Rooms at the Albany. Private hairdresser. Open-ended accounts with Mr. Weston and Mr. Hoby. Pretty well for an Irishman!”

  “I see,” said Cary, whose own accounts with the famed tailor and bootmaker were firmly closed, at least until he got his estate back in the black. “But I’m afraid that not even Mr. Rourke can entice me to Surrey this Christmas. I shall be at Tanglewood.”

  “But you always come home for Christmas,” said his sister, “except that one year when you ran mad and enlisted in the Army. We were so very annoyed with you.”

  “My tenants and neighbors are expecting me to give them a Christmas Ball,” said Cary, “and a New Year’s Day Ball, too, I shouldn’t wonder. Not to mention a St. Stephen’s Day treat.”

  “You never bothered with all that before,” she said suspiciously. “What’s really keeping you in Herts? Don’t tell me the artless Rhoda Mickleby has captured your heart!”

  Cary glared at her. “Juliet, as you have pointed out to me over and again, I’ve neglected Tanglewood for years. I’m trying to correct that now. As for Miss Rhoda, I’m quite safe from her. Some old aunt of hers has promised her a Season in London, and, as you know, catching husbands in the country cannot possibly compare to chasing them around Town.”

  “You can start afresh at Tanglewood in January,” said his sister, refusing to give up her scheme. “There’s no point in turning over a new leaf this late in the year.”

  “The trouble with January,” Cary told her, “is that it has two faces. One looking into the past and the other to the future. No, I’m sorry, monkey, but it will be a great scandal if I don’t keep my word. I won’t see you at Christmas. I shall miss you nearly as much as you miss me, but it can’t be helped.”

  Juliet reacted to this disappointment with a petulance unbecoming to a duchess in training. “You needn’t play Sebastian, you know, if you don’t wish to,” she said waspishly. “You can be Olivia’s uncle, Sir Toby Belch. Or Sir Andrew Aguecheek—no, no, he courts Olivia as well. I know! You could play the part of Feste, Olivia’s Fool.”

  Juliet was a fine-looking girl with a cloud of dark hair, wide gray eyes, and a slim athletic figure. Pique only served to enhance her natural beauty, but, as her brother, Cary was immune to both her tantrums and her charms. He still remembered her as the disgusting object that, at the age of three, had broken his favorite toy horse.

  “I shall take my leave of you now, you little beast,” he said. “Kiss me goodbye.”

  “I want you to come to Surrey!” said Juliet, in case he had not understood her. “I hate to think of you all alone in that drafty old pile at Christmas when you ought to be with your family. But I suppose you have a mistress there,” she went on spitefully, “and a half-dozen brats, too!”

  Cary laughed bitterly. “As a matter of fact, I’m up to my ears in involuntary celibacy.”

  It was no more than the miserable truth. There was not even one obliging widow in his neighborhood. His cousin the Vicar kept a very tight rein on the private lives of his parishioners. Wherever Dr. Wilfred Cary saw even a hint of impropriety, he took ruthless action to eliminate the threat. As for the artless young ladies Cary had boasted of knowing, he could not say two words to any of them without raising expectations he had no intention of fulfilling. Worst of all, he lacked the disposable income one needed to secure temporary love in London.

  “You have in me a kindred soul,” the Duke said sympathetically.

  Juliet flashed him a warning look. “What keeps you in the country, if not a woman?” she demanded of her brother.

  “Duty, monkey,” he told her resolutely. “Duty. I owe it to my tenants. I owe it to my neighbors. I owe it to dear old Grandmother Cary, who left me the drafty old pile. I owe it to her memory not to let the place fall to ruin.”

  “If you could just forgive Serena,” said Juliet, overriding his protests. “She has money, Cary. She could help y
ou with the place.”

  “No, Juliet,” he told her curtly. “I will make that estate turn a profit by main strength if I have to, and I don’t want to hear another word about it from you.”

  Juliet remembered that commanding voice from childhood. It was her father’s voice, and both her brothers seemed able to summon it at will. It always made her tremble and want to cry. “All right,” she sulked. “You needn’t shout at me.”

  Cary had always been fond of Juliet, even when, at the age of eight, she had found his battered copy of Fanny Hill and showed it gleefully to their eldest brother, Sir Benedict Wayborn, who had proceeded without delay to burn it. “Cheer up, monkey,” he said gently. “I’ll be with you in spirit. And I got you a nice present.” He handed her the gaily wrapped package from Hatchard’s. “Everyone else is getting a dead pheasant, I’m afraid.”

  “What a pretty package,” said Juliet, her suspicions renewed. “A woman must have done it for you. Who is she, Cary? Some opera dancer, I suppose.”

  “Cheeky madam! The clerk at Hatchard’s did it for me, if you must know. It’s a new service they’re offering. I actually met the young lady who thought it up.”

  Juliet grinned. “I knew there had to be a girl. What exactly did she think up?”

  “Christmas wrap.”

  “Nobody invented Christmas wrap,” Juliet scoffed. “Christmas wrap has always been.”

  The Duke suddenly laughed. “You mean like the stars and the mountains?”

  “If you don’t mind, sir, I’m interrogating my brother,” said Juliet, refusing to be thrown off the scent of a promising new trail. “Was she very pretty, Cary?”

  “Actually, she’s one of our Derbyshire cousins,” said Cary, avoiding the question. He knew from experience that telling his sister he had met a pretty girl was the surest way to turn her into a Cupid’s helper. “Lord Wayborn’s her uncle. You must know her. You know everyone.”

  “I do know everyone,” Juliet said smugly, “but his lordship must have two dozen nieces, if not more. He had a dozen brothers and sisters. What’s her name?”