Page 3 of Brilliance and Betrayal (The Diamond of the Ton Regency Mysteries #1)

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“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”

—Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

P rinny’s little party was deadly tedious. Peregrine Fitzroy half wished he had never come, but some things had to be reckoned as necessary evils.

Everyone who thought they were someone would have killed for an invitation to this event at Carlton House, and to waste an opportunity to reassert himself triumphantly as a pardoned man in London’s bon ton after a long absence simply wouldn’t do.

Selina had been correct; no one had truly been expecting him to make an appearance. Not even the Prince Regent who had extended the invitation to him, if he had interpreted the man’s expression correctly.

That was one of the main reasons why he had let Selina persuade him to come to this specific event. Occasionally, one had to remind the sharp-toothed beasts lurking among the gentry that there were predators in their surroundings more cunning than they, and he was ready to reclaim his place among that more vicious pack.

“...suppose they will welcome you back?”

Peregrine brought his wandering attention back to Lord Tremayne standing beside him. He had not the foggiest idea what the man had been saying. “What do you think?” he evaded, but with a faint sardonic tone, as if the answer should be obvious.

Tremayne smiled faintly, tapping the fine crystal of his glass with a finger. It gave a pleasant ring beneath the percussion. “Well, I think that you receiving an invitation says a great deal about the matter.”

Ah. Another person who wanted to gossip about him, with him. Fitzroy didn’t let the expression on his face change. It was a foolish question, but there was no guile to Tremayne whatsoever, much less malice. No ill intention could be ascribed to it.

Besides, Tremayne was one of the few who seemed to be willing to take the Crown’s forgiveness of him at face value. With so few champions to his name, Peregrine was in no position to disdain support from any quarter. Not yet. And no matter how much of a hindquarter that quarter was.

“Has your mother written to you?” was the man’s next witless question, drawing curious glances from a nearby cluster.

Peregrine set his glass down on the low garden wall, gripping the young man’s shoulders with his hands so he wouldn’t do something foolish. Like accidentally show his temper by throttling him.

“Tremayne,” he said, clearing his throat. “I cannot think of anything less I would like to discuss so publicly right now. I went to war to prove my loyalty was to the Crown and not my mother, remember ?”

“Oh!” At least the man had the grace to look abashed at that. “I am sorry, Perry. How can I make it up to you?”

“Tell me of someone else’s misfortunes, perhaps,” Peregrine muttered, picking his glass up again to take another sip. But his voice hadn’t been low enough, so Tremayne took him up on that.

“Fine. I was at an event where Lord Gilbert, three sheets to the wind, mistook Lady Moreland’s parrot for her hat and tried to wear it.”

That was unexpected enough that it made Peregrine laugh, and his sense of humour restored itself somewhat. “I do not believe you.”

“I swear it. Ask anyone, and for further proof, I will point out he did not receive an invitation to Carlton House today. It happened just a few weeks ago. Before you—well, just after Napoleon abdicated. There were some rather… outrageous celebrations when the news reached London.”

“Well, upon my word.” Peregrine chuckled. But as he let his gaze sweep the party again, his stomach soured once more as his eyes fell upon the young blonde woman. One who was making no bones about looking directly at him.

One would think he was the only unexpected face at this soiree, the way the Queen’s missing diamond from last season was behaving. Lady Charity Cresswell. Or rather, now Her Grace, the Dowager Duchess Atholl.

This behaviour should have amused him—would have amused him, once upon a time. After everything that had transpired last year, however, it grated. While her kidnapping was an open wound between them, their bitter history went further back. From the moment she learned his name, the duchess had looked down her nose at him, and only the two of them knew why.

It was not that he expected her to be friendly. But how dare she look at him with such contempt?

As he leaned casually against one of the trees, he tipped his head in the direction of the young blonde lurker watching him, giving her a bland look to reprove her for her glaring.

Tremayne—curse the man for his sudden power of observation—turned to see what had caught his attention. “Who is that?”

“No one of importance,” Peregrine lied, turning his back upon her.

“She is pretty,” Tremayne added, obliviously imperceptive. “Do you not think so, Perry?”

Tremayne had all the sense of a sprat whose brains had leaked into his breeches. An ally like him might be worse than none at all. Discreetly, he sidled over and jabbed his elbow into Tremayne's midsection. “Stop gawking at her, you half-wit!”

The man was unabashed as he looked back at Peregrine. “She did not notice. She only has eyes for you, Fitzroy.”

“Eyes? Hardly. Daggers, perhaps,” he muttered. “Excuse me. I see someone else I must talk to.”

That wasn’t strictly truthful, but as it happened, he had things to do besides converse with the addlepated. Also things to do other than pulling London's society out of their aristocratic ennui and sending them into a frenzy of speculation about why does the Duchess Atholl not like Lord Fitzroy overmuch?

What a little fool she was being.

Peregrine strolled past a large potted plant of some sort or other and out of her sight. As he suspected, he was on familiar terms with nearly everyone here. Of the gentry, only she was a relative newcomer, and she still had much of the raw newness of a debutante—wobbling like a foal on new legs, duchess or no. Grasping biddies would see her as prey standing between them and the Queen. But she—and that—was not his problem.

“Fitzroy? Are you skulking? Is there someone here, perchance, that you are attempting to avoid?”

General Rowland Hill’s amused tone behind him caused him to whirl around again, and Peregrine let one side of his mouth turn up in a mocking grin to cover his surprise. “I was attempting to avoid you and my debt, but I see that I failed.”

“Ha. That is right, you do owe me a drink, but I don’t believe for a moment that I’m the one you were avoiding,” Hill said shrewdly.

“Are you quite certain? I seem to recall you threatening to invite me to dinner,” Peregrine said lightly. But he said it with a smile, so Hill would take it for a jest instead of the truth that it was.

“You’ll give in and become part of the ‘family’ someday, I’m sure of it.” Hill winked.

Not bloody likely. After he had found himself under Rowland Hill’s command, Peregrine had vowed he would rather end up as a prisoner of the French than call his commander Daddy Hill .

The general turned, surveying the crowd. “I suppose you’re hiding instead from that young lady glaring daggers in your direction, then. Whatever bone could she have to pick with you?”

For the love of God, what was her problem? “I stepped on her foot by accident during a ball last season and ruined her shoe. It was, as I recall, one of her very favourite shoes.” He lied again, letting it slide from his tongue easily. “She still has not forgiven me, and I believe she wants to remind me of the injury to her toes and her father’s pocket.”

Hill laughed. “If you need protection from the chit…”

Clearly, Hill had not been introduced formally to his veritable barnacle. To be fair to the man, Hill had spent the last several years assisting Wellington on the continent instead of being part of the seasonal circuit. But Fitzroy still considered the man’s studied ignorance unforgivable, especially when such information was so easy to obtain. Surviving society—much like battle—required information.

“That chit , General, is a widowed duchess and one of the Queen’s pets besides. Have a care, or the knives she is hurling at me might find a new target.”

“A widow, you say? Perhaps you might introduce me?”

“If you are interested in attempting to court her, Hill, I would suggest you have Elstone over there do you the favour.” Peregrine indicated the man with a point of his chin.

Rowland Hill was a good man, but he hadn’t a chance in hell of convincing a title chaser to give it up just like that. But Peregrine wasn’t in the business of disabusing an interested general of such harmless flights of fancy, especially when it might get a millstone off his neck.

He added, “An introduction from me would hardly endear you to her. But you should do it now, before Elstone sots himself.”

“Splendid idea, lad. I think I’ll do just that.”

Hill toddled off, and Peregrine exhaled briefly in relief.

That would serve Elstone and his kith right, too. His cluster of nobles had been some of the ones that waited to see how others reacted to Peregrine, so they could follow suit without coming to their own decisions.

Spineless, the lot of them. But so many members of the ton were. Fortunately, cannon fodder had its uses even on these more genteel battlefronts.

Peregrine had learned to play this game of society as soon as he could walk, and he was very, very good at it. That was fortunate for him, because his success in disentangling himself from his mother now depended on this very skill.

He was the eldest male. As earl, he had a seat in the House of Lords, an empire of connections, and had been carefully setting himself up as a political and economical force to be reckoned with even without the peerage to back it. And then all of a piece last season, he was reduced to being his traitorous mother’s dupe, and the Crown hovered behind his shoulder, their hands waiting to seize the assets that belonged to him.

Now he was naught but ‘Lord’ Fitzroy, his address spoken like a jest. Damn his mother and her petty machinations both.

His neck prickled as he felt new eyes fall upon him, and he glanced up across the grass to see Selina watching. The woman’s plush lips were twisted slightly, and her eyes sparked with avaricious interest, as if she could sense the weakness of his thoughts. Carefully, he stowed his feelings deep once more.

Prinny and his ilk might consider themselves Kings of the proverbial jungle, but only because those with real power knew better than to tip their hands so thoughtlessly. One such, for example, being the Dowager Marchioness Selina of Normanby, who was more of a shark swimming in unknown depths than she was an idle social lioness.

It was wise never to forget that, especially while she stood in a cluster of women that included the Countesses of Hertford and Bessborough.

The marchioness flicked her eyes towards the foreign prince’s party, indicating that she would like to approach, and Peregrine inclined his head a bare inch.

Checking his watch, Peregrine then casually circled towards the hedge wall. As he turned the corner, he glanced back at the way he came… and caught the Duchess Atholl watching him. Again.

Immediately, Fitzroy turned back in Selina’s approximate direction. Seeing her eyes swing his way, he tapped his chin with a single finger, as though thinking. I need a moment .

Selina lifted her eyebrow but tilted her head, and Fitzroy spun on his heel then, locking eyes deliberately with the duchess. Imbuing the moment with a wealth of meaning, he pointedly stepped into the hedge maze.

It didn’t matter if his little saddle burr had the guts to follow him. If she shied away, the problem was still resolved.

Prinny’s hedge maze had two entrances, and sure enough, light footfalls entered the maze from the far entrance, as if she planned to confront him discreetly. A laugh. Though he had intended to slip right back out and lose her, Peregrine changed his mind. Instead, he navigated to the first turn from her direction, and caught her unawares.

She muffled her yelp of surprise with a hand over her mouth. He latched onto her free hand and tugged her deeper into the maze. The object of his annoyance was taut with shock at being manhandled, but by the time he found one of the alcoves nearer the center, she began to struggle.

“Why, hallo there, Duchess,” he purred. Then he smiled as she stiffened again, this time in outrage at such a casual address. Good. It was beyond satisfying to repay some of the irritation she had given him today in spades. But then she clawed him, the little wretch.

Inhaling a soft curse, he gave her hand a little shake. “I would be quiet, were I you. Else we will be answering some very awkward questions . ”

When she went still in furious compliance, he stepped away slightly, circling around to face her.

“How dare you put your hand upon me!” she hissed.

He had meant to give her a polite lecture, but this woman was an unrelenting plague upon his patience. He leaned in, not touching her, but near enough to intimidate, and her brief tremble almost made him feel like a lout.

Almost.

“Are we trading rules, Lady Diamond ? Then I have one of my own. Relationships of all kinds require both give and take. That means if you want something from me—civility, for example—you should make sure you do not deny it to me in the bargain.”

Her blue eyes, huge in her face, flared. “Civility,” she breathed. “Like that at your little party last year, where I was given a draught in my punch and then held against my will?”

Almost against his own will, his mouth quirked at her overly sarcastic timbre, his annoyance souring into something a little more bitter. “I will thank you to remember it was my ball , and not a silly little party. And that it was my mother’s doing, not mine. I understand your memories of the night may be a little muddled—” he paused and lifted an eyebrow when her face became a rictus.

“Muddled,” she repeated after a pause. And then she shoved him, if one could believe that.

Peregrine caught her wrists in his hands, his thumbs gliding along the soft, bare skin beneath her gloves. She tried to wrench away, but he held her firm, forcing her to meet his eyes.

“I told you not to touch me,” she growled.

She was rattled. And so was he—if he was being honest with himself. She was not the sweet, delicate newling he remembered flirting gently with last season. Not anymore. The differences from his memory were jarring.

He set his jaw. “Mark my words now, I will not be bound by rules you do not intend to follow. You had best comport yourself, Duchess. I have no reasons to spill your secrets to the ton . Whether you choose to believe me or not, I do not care. But if we quarrel, people will start guessing as to the reasons why, and if that happens, even if I keep silent, eventually it will not matter a whit.”

He let her go then, and she rubbed at her wrists, her breast heaving once in ire before she turned her face away, forcing her expression back in a tense sort of order. Finally, she looked at him again. “I will never forgive you for your part in what your mother did to me. You chose her side. I am going to do everything in my power to see your life burned to ashes.”

“More powerful people than you have tried,” he shot back impatiently, stepping back from her. “For now we should leave. But whatever you do in the future, O perfect one, perhaps you should take care that you do not catch yourself in the conflagration.”

His hair certainly might catch fire from the stare she leveled his way, but she gave a rough nod, and began to step past him. Peregrine inhaled, trying to find his calm again, and the cloying smell of rosewater filled his lungs.

She had changed her scent since the previous season. Last year, she had worn something more delicate that smelled pleasingly of citrus and sweet floral nectar. Orange, perhaps.

Before he realised what he was about, he thrust out his arm across her path, and she jerked to a stop. “By the by… the rosewater does not suit you,” he added.

The look she gave him was pure disbelief compounded by insult. “What?”

“The scent you wore last year was much lovelier. I thought I would let you know.”

“Orange blossom is for innocence and joy,” she said flatly, her face losing colour, and with it, the fight that had seemed to animate her. “Excuse me… I must find the princess.”