The Temptation of the Night Jasmine pc-5 Read online

  If he had any sense, he would take Tommy’s perfectly logical suggestion and make his pretended return to Girdings a real one, settle the ducal mantle around his shoulders, and . . . what? He hadn’t the foggiest notion of what a duke was supposed to do. He wasn’t even sure if dukes wore mantles.

  He was a mistake, a fluke, a duke by accident, and when it came down to it, he’d rather face an oncoming Mahratta army. At least he would know what to do with the army.

  For a moment, it almost seemed as though his wish had been granted. As they rounded a curve in the path, heading towards a stand of trees, torches flared into view and what had been a low rumble escalated into a full-fledged din.

  Man-high torches sent orange flames into the sky, casting a satanic glow over the men disporting themselves about the edge of the forest. If it was an army, it was an unusually well-dressed one. The flames licked lovingly over silver watch fobs and polished boot tops, scintillating off signet rings and diamond stickpins. Charcoal crackled in low, three-legged braziers, emitting heat and plumes of sullen, dark smoke. To add to the confusion, dogs darted barking underfoot, worrying at fallen leaves, snapping at boot tassels, and getting in the way of the liveried servants who circulated among the mob offering steaming glasses balanced on silver trays.

  Judging from the raucous tone of the men’s voices, the liquid was not tea but something much, much stronger.

  “Ah,” Robert said smoothly. “We seem to have found the rest of the party.”

  Tommy eyed the dogs and torches with deep suspicion. “They look like they’re about to hunt down a head of peasant.”

  Robert stuck his hands in his pockets and assumed a superior expression. “Don’t be absurd. Peasant is too tough and stringy. Hardly worth the bother.”

  He wished he felt quite so sure as he sounded. For all his urbane words, there was something distinctly off-putting about the pampered lordlings prancing along the edge of the forest. The torchlight distended their open jaws and lent a yellow cast to their teeth, making exaggerated caricatures of their features, turning them into something predatory, primal, their faces florid in the flaring light of the torches.

  These were the sort of men Arthur Wrothan had collected around him in India, the spoiled, the bored, the wealthy. That was how Wrothan had operated. He had battened on the young aristocrats playing at soldier, winning their loyalty by introducing them to all the vices the Orient had to offer. He had made a very special sort of club out of it, one that operated by invitation only. It was a group Robert had steered well clear of — he had no use for amateur officers dabbling in debauchery and even less for bottom-feeders like Wrothan — but in such a small world, it was impossible not to know of them.

  They had tended to travel en masse, Wrothan’s lordlings, clattering into the officers’ mess in a burst of clanking spurs, gleaming silver buttons, and shouted ribaldries, well-groomed hair as burnished as their buttons, cheeks flushed with drink rather than sun. They reminded Robert of the thoroughbred horses his father used to take him to see race at Newmarket, glossy on the surface, but skittish underneath. In the midst of those animal high spirits, one would invariably find Wrothan, calm and contained, the dark kernel at the center of the storm.

  Lord Frederick Staines had been Wrothan’s greatest coup and most devoted acolyte. His selling out of the army at the same time as Wrothan might have been coincidence — but Robert doubted it.

  Under pretense of adjusting his collar, Robert scanned the group of men under the trees. Aside from his cousin and her friend, the group consisted almost entirely of men, shrouded in many-caped greatcoats, boots shining as though they had never touched anything so mundane as earth. Between high collars and low hat brims, it was next to impossible to make out individual features. To Robert’s prejudiced eyes, they all seemed cast from the same mold: overbred, overdressed, and distinctly overrated.

  Robert strolled casually over to Charlotte. “I take it this is the rest of the house party?”

  She had to tip her head back to look at him, bumping her nose on the side of her hood. “Only those who weren’t afraid to brave the cold. The faint of heart decided to stay in and toast by the fire.”

  Despite himself, Robert’s frozen lips cracked into a smile. “After all these years, you still speak like a book.”

  “That’s because she generally has her head buried in one,” put in her friend, with equal parts affection and scorn.

  “I like books,” said Charlotte disingenuously. “They’re so much grander than real life.”

  “Certainly grander than this lot,” snorted her friend, sounding more like the Dowager Duchess than the Duchess herself, but she ruined the effect by raising a hand and acknowledging the enthusiastic halloos of the gentlemen, several of whom seemed quite delighted to see her. Two men broke off from the group, starting forwards in their direction, one considerably ahead of the other.

  The man in the vanguard might, just might, have been Freddy Staines. He was certainly of the same type. His coat possessed enough cloaks to garb a small Indian village and his many watch fobs jangled like a dancing girl’s bracelets as he walked. His light brown hair had been brushed into careful disarray before being topped with a high-crowned beaver hat. Rings jostled for precedence on his fingers, a signet ring bumping up against a curiously scratched ruby in an overly ornate setting.

  “Miss Deveraux!” he exclaimed, before adding, as an afterthought, “Lady Charlotte.”

  He raised his glass in a toast to the two ladies, sloshing mulled wine over the side in the process. It made a sticky trail through the mud on Robert’s boot.

  No, decided Robert. It wasn’t Staines. This man’s skin was too fair ever to have weathered an Indian summer, and the pronounced veins beginning to show along his nose suggested a prolonged course of heavy drinking with the best smuggled brandy London had to offer.

  He eyed Robert arrogantly through a slightly grimy quizzing glass. “And you are?”

  “This is Dovedale,” Miss Deveraux said bluntly, before Robert could get a word in edgewise. “It’s his mistletoe you’re cutting.”

  “Good Gad! You’re Dovedale?”

  If a duke fell in the forest, there was no doubt that the entire ton would hear it. The mention of his title commanded universal attention. Conversations stopped. Baskets dropped. Even the dogs ceased barking, except for one spaniel who yipped out of turn before whimpering into silence.

  Robert sketched a wave. “Hullo. Carry on.”

  “Makes me feel like I ought to curtsy,” murmured Tommy.

  Silencing him with an elbow to the ribs, Rob turned back to the other man. “Yes, I am Dovedale.” The name felt clumsy on his tongue. “And you are?”

  “Frobisher. Martin Frobisher.” Suddenly the man was all eagerness to please. Letting the quizzing glass fall, he stuck out a gloved hand, noted the sticky splotch of spilled wine that marred the surface, rubbed it hard against his leg, and held it out again. “I believe our families are distantly connected. . . .”

  “Through Adam, perhaps,” drawled the man behind him. “I can’t conceive of any connection closer.”

  Frobisher’s cheeks mottled, but, surprisingly, he refrained from retaliating in kind. With a quick, sideways look at the other man, he subsided into obedient silence.

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” said Robert neutrally.

  The newcomer wafted a languid hand in greeting. “Sir Francis Medmenham, at your service. Like the rest of these louts, I am passing the holiday season on your largesse.”

  With his gleaming boots and large gold signet ring, he made a very unconvincing mendicant. His appearance accomplished that towards which Frobisher only strove, his coat boasting a restrained three capes, his hair brushed into a perfect Titus, and his hat brim tilted just forward enough to provide a rakish air without obscuring his vision.

  The name poked at Robert’s memory. “You haven’t been in the army, have you?’ he asked.

  “Me? No. I migh
t sully the shine on my boots. My valet would never forgive me.”

  “I wish you would,” grumbled Frobisher. “Then he might finally defect to me.”

  Medmenham looked the other man up and down with chilling disinterest. “I don’t think so.”

  Frobisher scowled, but was still.

  “It’s just that your name sounds familiar,” said Robert.

  Medmenham’s lips curled in a thin smile. “You’re probably thinking of my illustrious relations — the Dashwoods of Medmenham Abbey.”

  “Good God,” said Robert. “So that’s it.”

  “What’s it?” asked Charlotte innocently.

  “Nothing,” said Robert quickly.

  At least, nothing his cousin ought to know about. Medmenham Abbey had, in the previous century, been home to a group of devoted debauchees known sometimes as the Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe, sometimes as the Monks of Medmenham — in short, the Hellfire Club. Robert’s father, who had tottered drunkenly on the edge of polite society by virtue of his position as son of the second son of a duke, had once been invited to their revels. He enjoyed recalling the occasion in lurid detail while in his cups. There had been strange initiation ceremonies and underground chambers dedicated to mysterious rites, most of which seemed to involve wine and women, generally in that order. As far as Robert could tell, it boiled down to nothing more than wenching with a fringe of the occult.

  It was, however, exactly the sort of organization with which a certain Arthur Wrothan specialized. Wrothan had run his own version of the Hellfire Club back in Seringapatam, pandering to the jaded palates of the officer set. Having firmly turned down his first invitation, Robert hadn’t been asked again.

  “I have a rather well-known house,” said Sir Francis smoothly. “An architectural gem of its time.”

  “Really?” said Charlotte innocently. “How nice.”

  “Oh, it is rather,” agreed Sir Francis genially. “We have lovely parties.”

  “I’m certainly glad you could join our party,” Robert broke in smoothly, shifting so that he stood between Medmenham and Charlotte. “Are you passing the entirety of the holiday at Girdings?”

  Medmenham observed the new arrangements with quiet amusement. “Ten lords a-leaping and all that rot. Sorry — I forgot that it’s your rot, now. No offense meant, old chap.”

  “None taken,” said Robert, echoing his tone of urbane detachment. Charlotte, he noticed to his relief, had been distracted by the task of extracting her friend from the company of Mr. Martin Frobisher. From the practiced way with which Charlotte looped her arm through her friend’s and gradually eased her away, he gathered that this was not the first time that particular maneuver had been effected. “You’ll have to acquaint me with the other leaping lords. I’m afraid I’ve been abroad a very long time.”

  “Have you been on the Continent?” Medmenham inquired, his eyes roaming idly over the rest of the party. In the shifting light of the torches, Charlotte was shepherding her friend away across the clearing, towards a very large young man in a cravat patterned with pink carnations, who appeared to be attempting to cut down a tree with the blunt side of his saw. “I hear there are still bits of Italy that are habitable, despite Bonaparte’s best efforts.”

  “No,” said Robert shortly. “I was in India.”

  “Ah.” Medmenham looked him full in the face. “You must know Freddy, then. Lord Frederick Staines,” he clarified.

  Robert plastered on his best expression of worldly ennui. “I’m afraid I know him only by reputation.”

  “I needn’t ask what that is,” said Medmenham, with casual scorn. “Freddy always was too dim to know which tit to nurse from.”

  Robert raised an urbane eyebrow. “So you’re friends, then.”

  Medmenham’s lips quirked in appreciation. “Old Freddy has his redeeming points.”

  “Such as?”

  “A talent for collecting . . . interesting people.” A red ring glinted on Medmenham’s gloved hand as he lifted his handkerchief delicately to his nose. It looked, thought Robert, uncommonly like the ring he had noticed on Frobisher’s hand as well. “And a perpetually open purse.”

  “A useful person to know.” What had seemed like mere scratches on Frobisher’s ring were more deeply etched on Medmenham’s. The incised lines took up the entire surface of the stone, curving in a series of overlapping curlicues. When seen right side up, the whole came together as a stylized flower that Robert recognized from thousands of temple carvings. One could scarcely go anywhere in India without seeing the representation of a lotus.

  It was not, however, a flower generally favored for pictorial purposes in England, at least not that he could ever recall. The only recollection he had of the lotus flower prior to India was classical in origin, the island of the Lotus Eaters in Homer’s Odyssey, where the inhabitants dreamt their days chewing on the opiate leaves of the lotus.

  “I shouldn’t think you would be wanting for blunt.” Medmenham ran an appraising eye over the huge urns that towered along the roofline of the jutting wings of Girdings. “How many tenants do you have?”

  Robert supposed he must have tenants, but it wasn’t an item with which he had acquainted himself. He had made a point of never taking any income from the estates that accident had tossed his way. They were not, as far as he was concerned, really his. But that certainly wasn’t something he was going to share with Medmenham.

  Instead, he shrugged, like any other bored young man of the world. “Who keeps count?”

  It was obviously the right answer. The lotus ring glinted in another lazy pass through the air. “Who, indeed. Leave that to the estate agents. That’s what they’re there for. Why drudge away when there so many other pleasures to be had?”

  “Why, indeed,” echoed Rob as the hazy outlines of a plan began to take shape. It couldn’t be coincidence that both Frobisher and Medmenham bore the same ring, or that Staines was reputed to collect “interesting people.” If one of those interesting people was the man Robert sought . . .

  Rob’s pulse pounded in his ears as he said, with studied casualness, “If someone unfamiliar with the land were to wish to know more about such pleasures . . .”

  “I believe that might be arranged,” said Medmenham. “For a price.”

  In the torchlight, his eyes gleamed as red as his ring.

  “There is always a price.”

  Chapter Three

  It was Christmas Day, and all throughout the county, Christmas bells were ringing. Robert’s head was ringing, too, from too much strong drink the night before.

  Charlotte hadn’t lied: The Duchess did celebrate Christmas in the, old style, complete with pipers piping, lords a-leaping, and mummers’ plays put on by grizzled locals with accents thick enough to cut up and serve as Christmas pudding. Robert hadn’t seen the partridge in the pear tree yet, but he was sure there had to be one somewhere. It was impossible to pass through a doorway without being attacked by dangling bits of mistletoe and roughly hacked pine boughs perched precariously on every plausible surface. The pungent scent made Robert’s stomach churn.

  Long after the frozen revelers had returned from the woods, long after the Yule log had been ceremoniously dragged in and set alight, the mulled wine continued to flow. The ladies had said their good nights and retired; the Duchess had thumped through on her way to her stately — and, one presumed, solitary — bed; and the younger and more dissolute had kicked back in the aptly named Red Room, dealing cards and knocking back whatever beverage came to hand. By eleven, poor Tommy had been all but horizontal, more out of his chair than in it. By midnight of the dawning of the day of the blessed Savior’s birth, Martin Frobisher was puking out the window. An hour later, Lord Henry Innes passed out in front of the fire and had to be carried out by a pair of blank-faced footmen.

  The Duke of Dovedale and Sir Francis Medmenham played cards.

  By three in the morning, Robert had won fifty guineas and a tentative invitation to Med
menham. He would have preferred information to the invitation, but Medmenham was damnably tight-lipped about his little club, even after several decanters of port. Carefully calibrated questions elicited only a raised eyebrow and the unhelpful comment that only initiates were privy to the “inner mysteries.”

  Medmenham, thought Robert irritably, was deriving altogether too much enjoyment from stringing him along.

  Medmenham and Frobisher hadn’t been the only ones wearing the ruby rings with the lotus petals etched on the bezel. There had been the sullen gleam of a red stone on Lord Henry Innes’s finger as he collapsed before the fire. When Lord Frederick Staines had lifted his hymnal in church that morning, a red ring burned on his finger like a little cauldron of condensed hellfire. It had become a morbid sort of game, picking out the rings, wondering who else was part of their secret society — and whether Wrothan lay at the heart of it, or merely a pack of debauched dandies reenacting the greatest hits of Sir Francis Dashwood and the Monks of Medmenham.

  Robert rather hoped he could track down Wrothan without having to go through the mockery of an initiation ceremony into Medmenham’s little Hellfire Club. Whatever his father might have enjoyed, he really had very little interest in running around in a robe in a clammy cavern, bare-arsed, while dandies in masks gibbered what they fondly believed to be demonic incantations. There were better ways to spend an evening. Like being slowly flayed over a hot fire.

  Tommy was being no help at all. He was too busy gazing longingly at the bright red head of one Miss Penelope Deveraux, as though she personally had taught the torches to burn bright.

  He would have to see what he could get out of the other, less guarded members of the club. Lord Henry Innes was a type he recognized, a simple-minded brute with equally predictable appetites for wine and wenches. Not women, wenches. Innes had been quite explicit on that point. As he had explained before sprawling out on the hearth rug, he enjoyed the kind of gel one could get an arm around — none of them squealing milk-and-water young misses for him, although he supposed the mater would make him marry one of them sooner or later, eh, what?