Page 13 of How to Court a Rake
Kieran stood. ‘To the florist. You and I have calls to pay.’ He nodded to the newspaper. ‘Thanks to society gossip, you have the perfect reason to call on Lady Mary Kimber. I’ll be calling on Lady Elizabeth Cleeves, Colby’s daughter. And we don’t dare show up empty handed.’
Caine rose and clapped a hand on Kieran’s shoulder with a laugh. ‘I like it, simple but elegant. We have the cover of courting the daughters and we can use it to gain access to checking their ledgers. We can confirm if money was involved or even if we’re barking up the wrong tree.’ His bloodhound instincts told him they weren’t, though. What a man didn’t do for money, he often did for love and Colby and Carys had both motives working against them.
***
At the florist, Caine produced a large cut-glass vase of Bohemian crystal. He and Kieran had made a stop beforehand. ‘I’ll take the red roses from the front window.’ Women had been crowded around the window, staring at the blooms from the sidewalk, so lovely were they. ‘All of them. They should be sufficient to fill this vase.’
‘Allof them? There are four dozen, my lord.’ The florist’s eyes widened in barely disguised protest.
‘Yes,allof them.’ No one else would have the roses, at least not today.
‘Yes, my lord. Shall we strip off the thorns?’
‘No, leave them.’ Mary might appreciate that the most. She alone would see the deeper meaning.
The florist nodded, choosing not to argue the point, although his expression indicated he found the decision odd. ‘Will you send a card, my lord?’
‘No, she’ll know who they’re from.’ Caine grinned at the man’s discomfiture. In the span of a minute, he’d broken two sacrosanct rules of flower sending and marked himself as not a gentleman in truth. But his money spent the same and so the florist merely nodded again.
‘It will be a pleasure, my lord. They will go at once.’
Outside, Kieran laughed. ‘I thought you were going to give the poor fellow an apoplexy. Yes, to thorns, but no to a card. And four dozen roses when everyone else sends a dozen.’ Kieran let out a low whistle. ‘Perhaps with a message like that, you don’t need a card after all.’
Caine grinned. ‘My thoughts exactly.’ The order would make Mary smile. At least that was what he hoped. Part of him wished he could be there to see her face when they arrived.
‘Still, isn’t that a bit extravagant?’ Kieran nudged him in the ribs as they continued down the street in the bright July sunshine.
‘Hardly for what I am about to do to her.’ He hoped Carys was clear of any participation. He hoped that Mary would never have need to connect his continuing friendship with her to anything other than his personal preference for her company.
‘You’renot doing anything. If anything is amiss, it is her father’s fault. He’s made these choices,’ Kieran reminded him. ‘It all assumes our hypothesis is right. We don’t know that yet.’
Right or wrong, at some level it didn’t matter. The choices weren’t Mary’s choices. That was the point. If her father had sabotaged that transport, she would suffer once more for choices made on her behalf without her consent. Even as it was, she’d been reduced to playing the pawn and she didn’t even know it. If Caine had his way, she’d never know it. He did not want her thinking last night’s kiss had been connected to anything other than his own desire. She deserved truth and honesty and light. An association with him could give her none of those, only roses with thorns.
***
The roses came shortly after luncheon—forty-eight red roses in glorious full bloom and scent, thorns intact, in a cut glass vase that caught the sunlight, sending rays of light throughout the drawing room as if the vase was made of diamonds. A huge red silk bow was tied about it, tails flowing over the mantel, a display that put to shame every other bouquet in the room.
‘Who is it from?’ her mother gasped in delight at the sight of it. The footman had been so impressed by it, he’d interrupted lunch to announce its arrival. ‘The Viscount has already sent a bouquet.’ Some unexceptional carnations in pale pink. Mary could hardly pick them out in the room amid the splendour of this new arrangement.
Mary walked over to the vase while her mother continued to run through the list of suitors. Mary didn’t need to guess. She knew who’d sent these. Roses with thorns could only come from one man.
‘Is there no card?’ Her mother frowned. ‘How odd. Who sends a bouquet of this magnitude and doesn’t claim credit for it?’
‘A man who doesn’t need an introduction,’ Mary said softly. A man who kissed like sin in the dark, who dared even to defy a king’s command in order to pursue his own desires. She fingered the length of red silk ribbon. After the roses faded, she would keep the ribbon as a talisman, as a reminder of having known a man who was brave enough to live free and when she’d been in his company, she’d been brave, too.
She gave a surreptitious touch of fingertips to her lips, the memory of their kiss as vivid now in the bright light of afternoon as it had been in her dreams last night. Her body still thrummed with the echo of it as she took her seat beside her mother and smoothed her lilac skirts, prepared to receive callers for their at-home.
Normally, the prospect of an at-home would have bored her. It was a duty to be tolerated. The Viscount would call, the others who’d sent bouquets would call and she would give them their requisite fifteen minutes of polite conversation. But today, there was a new ripple of anticipation. Caine Parkhurst was coming for her and her body was alive with the thrill of that knowledge.
***
At half-past two, she looked up from conversation with an earl’s young heir to hear the footman say the words she’d been waiting for all afternoon. ‘The Marquess of Barrow for Lady Mary Kimber.’
Elation shot through her, obliterating all else. She instantly forgot the last words the young heir had spoken. All that registered was Caine. She could have looked at him all day, framed as he was in the doorway of the drawing room, his dark waves tousled as if he’d just come from a ride, his blue frock coat taut across his shoulders, breeches tight-fitted and boots polished. Hers was not the only breath that caught or the only gaze that lingered on this blatant display of roguish English manhood, but hers was the only one mattered, the only gaze he returned.
He strode directly to her and bent over her hand. ‘Lady Mary, I see you have received my roses.’ Around them, the whispers began, fans fluttered.
She gave a coy smile and lowered her gaze, playing the game with him. ‘Yes, I did. Thorns and all, my lord.’ At the covert press of his fingers against her hand, something private and warm passed between them. She raised her gaze to look up into those mysterious dark eyes, home to a thousand wicked promises, a thrill of excitement rippling through her. The devil was loose in the garden—and not just any garden—hers. Should she fear it or embrace it?
