A Reckless Desire Read online

  “I’ll send word to Magdalena that you’ll be in my care,” he said, striding across the room to his desk. “I’ll write it now, so you may deliver it to her yourself.”

  She shook her head swiftly. “If you please, my lord, she must not know anything. Truly. You heard her last night. She won’t permit it.”

  “She will if I tell her to,” he said, reaching for a fresh sheet of a paper. “She won’t be able to argue if I assume responsibility for you.”

  “Please, my lord,” she begged. How could she explain to him that it wasn’t well-meant concern for her welfare that would make her cousin object, but reluctance to part with a drudge that she could keep without wages? “I would rather tell Magdalena and my uncle myself that I’m leaving, and I’ll contrive some sort of nonsense by way of explanation, too. They do not deserve the truth. I would rather amaze them than suffer the weight of their scorn.”

  He paused, perplexed, his pen in his hand.

  “Scorn?” he repeated. “You wish to better yourself. What the devil could they scorn?”

  “Me, my lord,” she said succinctly. “They will not believe I can do this.”

  “Well, a pox on them,” he said. “I believe you can. You wouldn’t be permitted to fail, you know. You’ll have no choice but to succeed.”

  “Truly, my lord?” she said, stunned that he’d finally agreed. “You…you mean that?”

  “Of course,” he said, regarding her curiously. “Why would I say anything that I did not mean?”

  Yet she still couldn’t quite believe it. “You believe in me, my lord? You meant that part, too?”

  “I believe in you, yes,” he repeated with satisfying clarity, “and even more, I believe in myself to teach you. There is no conceivable way that I intend to lose to Everett, not this wager.”

  That wasn’t quite as good as having him believe in her abilities alone, but she’d accept it. In time she’d prove to him she could do it, just as she meant to prove it to so many others.

  And if Lord Rivers did not intend to lose, well, then, he’d learn soon enough that neither did she.

  “What wager, Fitzroy?” Lord Everett said. He was comfortably ensconced in a large old wing chair near the front window of the club, a cheroot in one hand and a racing newspaper in the other. He was so comfortably ensconced that he had the perfect air of a gentleman who did not wish to be troubled except in the most dire of circumstance, and the faintly displeased expression on his face showed that he didn’t believe Rivers’s interruption could possibly fall into that category of extremity. “What in blazes are you talking about?”

  “The wager over the girl,” Rivers said, dropping into the empty chair beside Everett’s. “Last night. Early in the evening. Come, you must remember it.”

  Everett screwed up his face with the exertion of thought, his cheeks hollowing as he drew deeply on the cheroot.

  “I’m afraid I don’t recall any wagers involving girls,” he admitted. “Not last night anyway. What was the chit’s name? Have I had her?”

  “She’s a Di Rossi,” said Rivers, pulling his chair closer to Everett’s. “And no, I can guarantee you haven’t had her in your bed. You’d better remember the wager, because I’m going to accept your terms.”

  That earned Everett’s attention, and he straightened in the chair. “One of those delightfully slatternly Di Rossis? You should have said so in the beginning, you rogue.”

  “Not one of those,” Rivers said with a wave of his hand, banishing all the slatterns in a single, dismissive sweep. “Her name is Lucia. Lucia di Rossi.”

  Everett frowned, considering. “Is she new to the litter?”

  Rivers sighed impatiently. “You remember her, Everett. Fifty blessed guineas.”

  The other man’s face lit with recognition. “The one you swore you could make over into the next Anne Bracegirdle! I recall her well enough now. A small, dreary, pinched creature. You say she’s a Di Rossi, too?”

  “So she swears.” Rivers thought Everett’s estimation was a little harsh. True, he himself had scarcely taken any notice of the girl in the past, but this morning, when she’d stood before him in his parlor and he’d had more time to study her properly, he’d been struck by her…her presence.

  Yes, that’s what it had been. Presence. It was all she had, really. She wasn’t beautiful the way the rest of her family was, but there was a quickness, a lightness, to her that had made it impossible for him to look away. He was certain that with his guidance, education, and better clothes, audiences could be persuaded to feel the same about her, too. If Magdalena was the sun, blindingly brilliant and alluring, then her cousin Lucia was like a small, silvery star with a brilliance that was all her own.

  Not, of course, that he’d ever dare speak such poetical gibberish to Everett.

  “Another Di Rossi,” Everett marveled. “She must dance, then. They all do. Yet I don’t recall seeing her on the stage.”

  “She doesn’t dance,” Rivers said. “Which is why I intend to transform her into an actress. Or I will if you’ll agree to our wager.”

  “The fifty blessed guineas?”

  “No retreat, Everett,” Rivers said firmly. “You increased the stake to a hundred, and that’s what it shall be. One hundred guineas says I’ll have that girl in a leading role on a stage in London by the end of the summer.”

  “That’s three months,” Everett protested. “You could make a horse recite Shakespeare in three months. I say you perform your miracle within six weeks, or there’s no wager.”

  Rivers lowered his chin and frowned. If three months appeared an eternity to Everett, six weeks seemed the merest blink of an eye to Rivers for the task before him. It wasn’t his own abilities as a teacher that he doubted. Far from it. While his friends and family might tease him about his scholarly habits, he’d always found that most anything really was possible through study and application. True, he’d never taught anyone else anything, but he was confident he would be successful, the same as he’d been with whatever he’d attempted, from learning ancient languages to jumping the stone walls at Breconridge Hall on horseback.

  No, it was the girl herself that concerned him. Lucia di Rossi had impressed him with her eagerness to learn, but he still had no notion about how quickly she could shed her old self and adopt the new habits that would be necessary for her to succeed. If she truly wanted to play grand ladies, she was going to have to change nearly everything about herself, from the way she spoke to how she stood and walked. He would need to summon mantua-makers and hairdressers and every other kind of female-improver to help make her small, slight self palatable to an audience quick to criticize a lack of beauty. He didn’t even know if she possessed the prodigious memory required to become a decent actress.

  But because he did like a challenge, and perhaps because he’d had just enough to drink to believe that anything—anything!—was possible through application, he accepted.

  “It shall be done,” he declared, seizing his friend’s hand to seal the wager. “Six weeks it is.”

  “How willingly you embrace the impossible!” Everett said, delighted. He held out his empty glass to a passing servant. “But no cheating, now. You must rely on your own genius to teach the girl. No bringing in Garrick or any of his professional ilk to help.”

  Rivers nodded. “I’ve a few terms of my own, Everett. You are not to see the girl again until she appears on the stage. I want no meddling from you, no interference. Nor do I wish you to speak of this to anyone else in town.”

  Everett’s smile was smug as he settled back in the chair.

  “Why should I?” he asked. “I wouldn’t dare risk lessening the exquisite surprise of seeing your plain little protégée make a fool of herself, and of you, too, my friend. I’ve never been more certain of a wager falling in my favor. You might as well give me the hundred guineas now and spare yourself the humiliation.”

  “What, and sacrifice the pleasure of seeing you humbled into submission by the divine Luc
ia di Rossi?” Rivers said, bravado making his confidence grow by the second. “You’ll see in six weeks. I’ll triumph, because she will.”

  Yet as certain as Rivers felt with Everett, he still saw no value in sharing the details about the bet when he visited his older brother’s house later that afternoon.

  “I’m going to the country for several weeks, Harry,” he announced as they stood together in the library, waiting for the rest of the company to appear before they went in to dine. “Perhaps longer. I’m finding London quite tedious at present, and besides, I have a special new project in mind.”

  His brother regarded Rivers curiously. Harry was the Earl of Hargreave, and heir to the family dukedom. In Rivers’s opinion, Harry had always been as fine an older brother as could be imagined, as had Geoffrey, the middle brother. He’d no complaints. Oh, there had been the usual older-brother torments inflicted when they’d been boys, to which Rivers had always countered with his own brand of youngest-brother aggravation. But on the whole they had always been quite loyal to one another, and together had had their share of scrapes and adventures, especially on their Grand Tour.

  Or at least they had until first Harry and then Geoffrey had fallen in love and married and fathered children. In Rivers’s eyes, his brothers had become far too staid for their own good since then, and had ceased to be the raucous boon companions that he remembered so fondly, ones who could always drag him from his scholarly shell. They’d become responsible.

  Which was exactly why he chose not to tell Harry about the bet, or the nature of his visit to the country, either. Harry would not have understood. He would have cautioned Rivers against rash wagers, against entanglements with Italian dance troupes, against devoting himself to a foolish experiment instead of finding a well-bred wife of his own.

  “It’s early in the season for you to leave town,” Harry said, fortunately unable to read Rivers’s thoughts. “I’m sure there will be many young ladies who will be unhappy to see you go so soon.”

  Rivers shrugged. “More likely their mothers will be the unhappy ones,” he said. “Although I imagine both will find other more suitable quarry than I soon enough.”

  “You’re suitable,” Harry said, restlessly tapping his walking stick against the floor. A riding accident several years earlier had left him lame in one leg, and while in public he’d learned through sheer will to walk well enough with the aid of specially designed shoes and boots, at home and with family, he let himself rely upon the extra assistance of a walking stick. “Damned suitable. You need only ask Father. He’ll explain it all to you.”

  Rivers sighed. “I’ve no more wish to hear that particular explanation than you do yourself.”

  “Then you know the remedy as well,” Harry said, the sharpness in his voice unmistakable. “Marry, and give Father his heart’s desire.”

  “Don’t begin,” Rivers said wearily. He’d always considered it his personal good fortune to be the third son of the Duke of Breconridge, free of the dutiful obligations of being his father’s heir and permitted to do whatever else he desired. But his two brothers and their wives had thus far produced only daughters, five little girls who, despite their beauty and winsome charms, could never inherit the dukedom. Father’s impatience with this lamentable situation had grown after each birth, and he’d lately begun to pressure Rivers to find a bride and attempt to sire a son himself. Rivers was only twenty-six, without the slightest inclination to wed just yet, as he’d told his father again and again. It did not make for pleasing family gatherings.

  “Father’s not coming here tonight, is he?” Rivers asked, glancing uneasily around the room.

  “No, he is not,” Harry said, glowering at the thought. “Fortunately he and Celia were expected elsewhere. But you are right. Let’s not spoil the evening with any more of that particular subject, especially if you shall be leaving us for a while. Tell me instead of this new experiment of yours.”

  Rivers smiled again, relieved. It would be much easier to evade his brother’s questions than to be forced to answer his father. Though Father was their father, he’d been a duke first, and he did not like to be denied in anything.

  “The project’s at such an early stage at present that I cannot tell you much,” he said easily. “Once I’m in the country without distractions, I’ll be better able to sort out my plan.”

  “You’re not meddling with lightning again, are you?” Harry asked seriously. “I haven’t forgotten the last time, you know. Standing on the Lodge’s roof with the storm crashing around you, practically begging to be struck dead where you stood.”

  “I survived, with no harm done to me,” Rivers said patiently. “I was merely attempting to replicate Monsieur Dalibard’s 1752 experiment at Marly-la-Ville, wherein the electrical force of lightning would be transmitted through conductive rods into a Leyden jar. I’m sure I would have had true success, too, if only the storm had lasted another quarter hour.”

  “And for what purpose?” Harry asked, raising his voice so that the other guests at the far end of the room turned to look their way. “So that you might be roasted to a cinder? You’re a gentleman, Rivers, not some fiendish philosopher determined to make his mark before the Royal Society.”

  “I’m a gentleman who likes to learn more of this world with the head that God gave me,” Rivers said firmly. “There is no harm to that, and possibly a great deal of good to be gained.”

  Harry grumbled, unconvinced. “The harm could have come if you’d burned down the Lodge.”

  “I would never do that,” Rivers said, “and you know it.”

  He meant it, too, for he loved the Lodge far too dearly to put it at risk. Breconridge Park Lodge, known within the family more simply as the Lodge, had first been built as a modest hunting box over a century and a half before. The dukes of Breconridge had absorbed the land on which it stood into their holdings, and over the years had improved the once-humble lodge with sufficient modern amenities and Palladian touches to make it comfortably livable for much more than hunting.

  Father had given the Lodge to Rivers on his twenty-first birthday as a personal retreat, a generous gift indeed for a third son. As country houses went, it was decidedly eccentric, with old-fashioned mullioned windows and an ornate stone balcony across the entire front, but it had become home to Rivers in a way that his London house never would. The Lodge was the place where he conducted his various projects without worrying about interruptions. It was his private sanctuary, from the small library crowded with books to the flat roof with a telescope for stargazing, as well as the experiment with lightning that had so distressed Harry.

  “Tell me at the very least that you’re not taking some poor milliner’s apprentice with you again as a companion,” Harry said, looking serious and very older-brother-ish. “You frightened that last one nearly to death with the lightning. I heard that she was so convinced you were in league with the devil that she ran screaming all the way to the Hall.”

  “I assure you that it wasn’t nearly so dramatic as that,” Rivers said, striving to remember more about the girl. She’d been exceptionally beautiful, but also exceptionally foolish, as he’d soon come to realize during the week she’d been with him. What in London had seemed like an entertaining and amorous notion had turned woefully bad once they were alone together in the country. She had bored him to the quick, and if she hadn’t run shrieking from the Lodge like a madwoman, he would likely have soon packed her back to town anyway. He thought her name had been Fanny. Or was it Annie?

  “So no pretty milliner’s apprentices will be accompanying you this time?” Harry asked, still suspicious. “No nymphs to chase beneath the ancient oaks and elders?”

  “Not this time, no,” Rivers said in perfect honesty. Lucia di Rossi was neither a pretty milliner’s apprentice nor a nymph, and he was certain there would be no chasing whatsoever. Thinking of her enormous eyes and pale face, her small body swathed in drab, dark clothing, he knew she’d offer no temptation of that variety. S
he might have spirit and presence, but those were not qualities he sought in a woman he wished to bed. Far from it. No, Lucia would be there for another purpose, one that would let her sleep entirely undisturbed in his single, small guest room. He was taking her to the Lodge only so he could transform her far away from any distractions—and from curious, interfering observers, especially Everett.

  “No diversion of that sort,” he continued. “Suffice to say that there is a small wager with Everett involved—a wager that I intend to win.”

  “A wager?” Harry repeated with fresh interest, cocking a single dark brow. “Now I am intrigued. I don’t suppose you’ll tell me more?”

  Rivers shook his head, and smiled, relishing the mystery. His earlier misgivings had entirely vanished, and now he’d not a single doubt that he’d make the girl succeed.

  “Not a word more,” he said, stopping just short of ungentlemanly boasting. “But I can assure you, brother, when I am done in six weeks’ time, you and the rest of London will be amazed—astounded!—by what I’ve achieved.”

  But the next morning, on the stage of the Prince’s Theatre, the subject of Rivers’s future brilliant achievement met with a much different reception to the news of the wager.

  “Please, Uncle Lorenzo, I must speak with you,” Lucia said, bravely stepping before him to block his path. She had been trying all morning to catch his attention and each time he had brushed her aside. She hated to interrupt her uncle here on the stage during the middle of a rehearsal, but Lord Rivers had told her to return to his house for the first lesson by noon, and if she waited any longer, she’d be late. “It’s of great importance.”

  Clearly displeased, her uncle scowled down at her. Although he no longer performed himself, he took his role as the head of their family as well as the maestro of their troupe very seriously, and expected to be treated with the respect due to a great artist who had danced for kings and queens. Although he dressed like a macaroni, in an oversized frizzled wig, snug striped waistcoat, and gold hoops in his ears, he was still an imperious figure, and an impatient one as well.