LITMIR.BIZ

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a turn at this contest, everyone in Society agog to know the Peacock’s identity. But everyone else only toyed with the game, contenting themselves with wild guesses and the “romance” of the thing.

      Gabrielle Laurence was playing the game in earnest, whether in order to cement her position in Society without having to worry about continuing to curry Christian’s favor or because reigning over Society had been too easy a success and she was now looking for another challenge, Christian did not know.

      He knew only that she had come dangerously close to seeing beneath the veneer of his social pose, to catching his verbal slip the other night and immediately pouncing on it. Lady Ariana hadn’t noticed. Christian doubted that anyone of his acquaintance save George would have noticed. But Gabrielle had.

      “Which either proves that she is as intelligent as I thought, causing me to dislike her more for choosing to expend that intelligence so wastefully,” Christian mused aloud, “or makes me a wishful fool, looking for more than is there and hoping against hope that the beautiful Miss Laurence fits the image of a woman I could love.”

      “Or,” Frapple said from behind him as he entered the room, holding the apple-green velvet jacket in front of him as if it were the Holy Grail, “you are a lustful rutting dog like your Uncle Clarence, hot to bed a lovely lady, but trying to tell yourself you are different from him, and above such animal urges.”

      “That too.” Christian turned slowly on his chair, one side of his mouth rising in a rueful smile. “Educating you may have been a mistake on my part, Frapple,” he observed quietly. “Not only do you insult me, but you do it with great articulation. I should sack you for insubordination, you know.”

      “True, but then who would dress you, my lord?” Frapple motioned for Christian to follow him into the dressing room. “We must hurry,” he told his employer. “Lord Buxley is below, asking to see you.”

      “Lord Buxley?” Christian repeated questioningly as the servant helped him shrug into the tight-fitting jacket. What did that sober Tory prig want with him? Or had the incident at Lord Undercliff’s caused suspicion in someone other than Gabrielle Laurence?

      Damn and blast! He didn’t need this now. He was to visit Little Pillington tonight, not have one of Sidmouth’s staunchest supporters tagging at his heels so that he could not chance leaving Mayfair. “Deny me, Frapple.”

      “I do, my lord, as often as possible. St. Peter in all his disgrace could not deny his master more,” Frapple replied flippantly, giving Christian a sharp tap on each slightly padded shoulder as if to be sure the coat fit securely. “However, in this instance, his lordship will not retire. He says he is on the King’s business.”

      Christian chuckled low in his throat, laughing in reaction to both Frapple’s irreverent wit and the thought that Lord Anthony Buxley would stoop to using the King’s name to gain access to the mansion.

      “And what service would Lord Buxley have Baron St. Clair perform in the King’s name, do you suppose?” he ventured, slipping his distinctive dull silver ring on the middle finger of his right hand. “Would he have Society’s premier dandy bring Prinny back into favor with the ton? I fear that particular herculean feat, Frapple, would be beyond even me.”

      Frapple stepped behind Christian to secure the carefully constructed foaming lace neckgear around his master’s throat, a much less time-consuming exercise than the starched-to-perfection neckcloths with which Brummell had tortured the gentlemen of the ton in his time. “In that case, I’ll just have Meg chase his lordship out of the square with her broom.”

      “That will not be necessary, although it’s a sight I’d pay dearly to witness. I’ll see him, for my curiosity is piqued. A moment, Frapple, whilst this country bumpkin transforms himself.”

      Christian took a last, assessing look at himself in the glass over his dressing table, picked up his lace handkerchief, and turned to Frapple, a rather high-pitched giggle escaping him as he deliberately struck an elegant pose, flourishing that same handkerchief. “Impossible to bring the Prince Regent back into a good odor, you say? Quelle absurdité! That I, Baron Christian St. Clair, should be believed incapable of anything? Bruise me if I should countenance such arrant nonsense for even an instant. Frapple!”

      “Yes, my lord!” the servant replied sharply, bowing as his eyes twinkled in amusement.

      “My quizzing glass, man!” Christian commanded, lifting his chin. “Would you have me go naked to meet my guest?”

      A few moments later, Frapple having satisfied himself that his lordship was complete to a shade, Christian sauntered leisurely down the wide, curving staircase on his way to the drawing room, his agile mind busy behind the blank handsomeness of his face.

      Lord Buxley had never visited him here in Hanover Square. Indeed, the man barely nodded to him when their paths chanced to cross in public. They were both gentlemen, so they were civil to each other, but they were at opposite ends of the same rung of the social ladder.

      Lord Anthony Buxley was a staunch Tory, a backer of Lord Sidmouth’s government and proud of the fact. Baron St. Clair, Christian thought with a small smile as he deliberately halted in front of a large mirror in the foyer and adjusted his sleeves, was a staunch nothing, backing only himself, and everyone was aware of that fact.

      Lord Buxley, a good dozen years senior to the six-and-twenty Christian, was known as a Corinthian; a bruising rider, handy with his fives at Gentleman Jackson’s, and a man who dressed well but was not overly obsessed with fashion.

      Christian, in comparison, was the Compleat Dandy; he shunned horseflesh except to cowhandedly tool his high-perch phaeton in the promenade at five each afternoon, decried physical exertion other than brisk walking as brutish and prone to produce unwanted perspiration, and lived only to dress and undress and dress himself yet again.

      They had little in common, Christian St. Clair and Lord Anthony Buxley, except perhaps their physical attractiveness, their pedigrees, both of them being descendants of illustrious families, and their prominence in Society. But if locked up together in a room, they would have nothing to say to each other. Nothing.

      So why had Lord Buxley come here this evening?

      “Yoo-hoo! Lord Buxley! Halloo!” Christian exclaimed as he entered the immense drawing room decorated in the elegant Empire fashion, taking his lordship’s hand in his as that man stood up and approached him. Christian limply shook the older man’s fingers before meticulously arranging his tall frame on a small, armless chair and motioning for his guest to seat himself once more.

      “Voyons, Buxley,” he began quickly when his lordship didn’t speak, “but this is an unexpected delight. And don’t you look exquisite this evening, my lord? The cut of your coat is to weep for, truly it is! C’est merveilleux! What is that shade—funereal black? And we must each have some champagne to celebrate your presence in my humble abode. I shall summon Frapple at once.”

      Christian watched as Lord Buxley bit down on his anger and distaste, pleased to see that the man was here very much against his wishes. Something was afoot, but whatever mission had brought his lordship to Hanover Square had clearly not been his idea.

      “Can we get directly to the point, St. Clair?” Lord Buxley asked, obviously uncomfortable in the role of supplicant. “You witnessed that embarrassment at Lord Undercliff’s the other evening?”

      “Witnessed it?” Christian repeated, lifting one eyebrow. “My dear man, in all modesty I must remind you that I salvaged the moment. Why, if it were not for me, dearest Undercliff would even now be repairing to his country estate in abject disgrace, unable to show his head in the metropolis for years. Tiens! Don’t tell me you are here to thank me, my lord? I assure you, thanks are not in the least necessary. I was only doing—” he giggled at his own wit “—the Christian thing.”

      Lord Buxley hopped to his feet. You vacuous twit!” he exploded, his hands balled into fists as if only his fine breeding kept him from beating the baron into a bloody pulp. “Everything is a bloody game to you, isn’t it? A test of your social

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