A Fresh Perspective, A Regency Romance (22 page)

And now, despite the gathering darkness, the rain and the carriage that splashed him with muddy water in cutting the corner too tight on Albemarle Street, he felt prepared to explain his plans, his changed future, his change of heart.

Giovanni Giamarco stopped him. He stood on the doorstep at number twenty-one when Reed rounded the corner, looking, as he had always looked, handsome and fit. The butler who answered his knock opened the door wide without hesitation, as if he came there often, smiling, bowing and taking his umbrella and the large bouquet of flowers that were no doubt intended for Megan. Following his flowers over the threshold, Giovanni doffed his hat. The door closed behind him.

The sight slowed Reed. The door closing stopped his progress entirely. Could it be Giovanni paid serious court to Megan? Could it be his attentions were even more welcome than Reed might have assumed? Giovanni would, after all be far more suitable a suitor at this point than he, would he not? He had far more to offer Megan.

Reed stood in the street, shifting from one foot to the other, wondering. There was a light in the window of what must be the sitting room at number twenty-one. The figure of a woman was suddenly silhouetted against the lace curtain, rising to greet her guest, her figure too indistinct to determine if it was Megan or her aunt. There came the sound of muffled laughter through windows almost completely closed against the rain. Knowing he had little news with which to amuse anyone, Reed lost all desire to expose himself and his problems, even to his dearest friend. He turned his back once again on number twenty-one Bruton Place and walked away.

Aunt Win rose, trailing needlework on a hoop when Giovanni, wildly curling hair glistening with rain, was shown into the sitting room. Megan did not rise, too immersed in the small type of an ad in the Times.

It was an ad for an auction to be held at Christie’s, an ad so amazing she did not look up when Giovanni greeted her with a pleasant “Good day.”

“Is it a good day?” she asked negligently. “It has done nothing but rain.”

Unperturbed Giovanni crossed the room to drop a spattered copy of The Post onto the table at her elbow. “You have seen it, then?”

Megan glanced up with a frown. He sounded all too cheerful. “The listing. Yes. It surprised me completely. Disastrous bit of news.”

“Disastrous?” He sank down beside her with a smile, undeniable mischief in his dark eyes, raindrops glistening in his eyelashes. “You deem it disastrous then?”

That he could be so callous as to suggest otherwise disappointed her. “Do you belittle our dear friend’s misfortune?”

“Misfortune? Is marriage a misfortune? Is that why you will not agree to return to Italy with me?”

“Marriage?” Megan was confused.

“Who is to be married?” Aunt Winifred looked up sharply from her stitching. “I was not aware you had asked Megan to return with you to Italy, Mr. Giamarco.”

“No?” Giovanni shrugged broadly, reminding Megan of Reed. “No great wonder. She refuses to take my marriage offer seriously.”

“You have yet to answer my question.” Megan snapped up the folded paper. “Is someone we know soon to be married?”

“It will not be you, my love,” he aunt scolded “if you make a habit of turning down every promising young man who offers for you.”

“Aunt Win!” Megan hoped to stop her from saying any more. Her aunt had been gently but ceaselessly chiding her over the lost opportunity with Harold Burnham. She had once declared him a bore, but now that Megan had refused him she kept referring to him as “that promising young man.”

“Turning down offers are you?” Giovanni asked, all interest. “What scoundrel,
carra
, dares to try to sway your affections from me?”

“My suitor may be called many things, Giovanni, but scoundrel is not one of them,” Megan said firmly.

“But who is he? I will call him out if he offends you with unwanted attentions.”

“He does not offend me. I have, to the contrary, offended him in refusing his offer.”

“Ready to fight a duel over my niece, are you, Mr. Giamarco?” Winifred laughed. “What a droll notion. No, that will not do, sir, for he is a very promising young man of both title and wealth whom Megan has known since she was a little girl.”

“What?” Giovanni looked surprised. “Has Reed Talcott bent knee to you then?”

“Talcott?” His response confused her aunt. “I thought his name was Burnham, Megan. Am I mistaken?”

“No. You are not mistaken, Giavanni is. Reed Talcott has not proposed, Harold Burnham has.”

“I do not know this Burnham,” Giovanni complained.

“And I do not know Reed Talcott,” Winifred said tartly. “No. Neither of you have never been introduced to the parties in question,” Megan said.

“Nor are you likely to be,” Winifred said briskly. “Now that my niece has refused him.”

Megan grabbed up the folded paper that had been thrown on the table at her elbow, in a bit of a pet. “Now that we have determined that I am not to be married to either of the gentlemen in question, I return to my initial query. Who is to be married?”

“Our Miss Frost,” Giovanni pointed to the listing.

“Who?” Aunt Win asked

Megan objected. “She was never my Miss Frost in any way.”

“Who is this Miss Frost?” Win asked again.

“She means to marry some poor fellow named Dunlevey,” Giovanni said. “An earl, no less.”

“Who? Who did you say means to marry Dunlevey?” Aunt Win had begun to sound like an owl.

Megan sent Giovanni a warning look. “Her name is Laura Frost. Related to the Earl of Banning. Her uncle, if I am not mistaken. A beautiful and rather calculating young woman I met at the Lakes.”

“A fortune hunter is she?” Win stabbed at her needlepoint.

“However did you know that?” Megan was surprised by her aunt’s inexplicable accuracy.

“Well, Lord Dunlevey cannot be a day less than sixty, and not in the best of health last I heard. And Banning is well known to have a pack of wastrels and hangers-on as nieces and nevvies.”

Giovanni nodded, his expression gone dark and sad. “That is our Miss Frost all right, giving herself to a marriage that will soon leave her a wealthy widow.”

Aunt Win shuddered. “Sounds a dreadful, grasping creature.”

“Yes. And deadly charming,” Giovanni agreed briskly. “It might be my misfortune to be listed on that page had it not been for Reed Talcott.”

“Reed?” Megan and her aunt spoke in unison.

“The same Reed Talcott you thought had made Megan a proposal?” Win asked.

Megan fell silent. “The duel,” she said abruptly.

“Duel? We are no longer talking about the duel my dear,” her aunt said.

Oh, but they were, Megan thought. The paper and pen duel played through her mind.

Giovanni nodded. “Reed knew she was after my money. In the pages he wrote to me, he kindly revealed what little he knew of Miss Frost’s rather sordid history. I have since discovered there is a great deal more to it. As a result, I am forever indebted to your friend, Reed. His quick thinking and kindness have rescued me and my family from untold embarrassments. I do not know how I shall ever repay him.”

“Has this Reed fellow been engaging in duels, then, Megan? Highly unsuitable behavior in this day and age. I am sure you must agree, Mr. Giamarco.”

“How can I agree, without sounding the complete hypocrite?” Giovanni softened his response with a blinding smile. “It was I, after all, convinced him to engage in the duel in the first place.”

Megan sat still a moment, absorbing the truth. So much more of what Reed had said that day made sense to her. All the pieces fell together. Her gaze settled on the ad she had been perusing--the shocking ad for Christie’s, in which a number of very familiar watercolor landscapes and Italian bronzes were being offered up for sale. “You spoke of a feeling of indebtedness to Reed, Giovanni.” She handed him the paper. “Perhaps you could begin to repay him, by bidding on a landscape or two at Christie’s.”

“What’s this?” He took the paper and scanned the ad.

“Reed,” she said.

“He is in financial trouble?” he surmised.

“Yes and his situation must be dire indeed if he means to part with both the watercolors and the bronzes.”

“They are dear to him?”

“Dearer than anything,” she said bleakly, unable to imagine why Reed had not thought to come and tell her of his troubles.

Chapter Twenty Three

I
t rained again on the day that Giovanni, Megan, Aunt Win and Mrs. Blaynay set out for Christie’s auction rooms. Pall Mall, when they reached it, was thick with restless horses, rain-slick carriages and the shining black domes of drenched umbrellas. Pensively, Megan peered through fogged carriage windows at a collonade bracketed entrance and an expanse of rain-dotted plate glass. The carriage tipped and swayed as first Giovanni stepped down, then her aunt and Mrs. Blaynay.

The sway of the carriage added to the uneasy feeling in the pit of Megan’s stomach. Here she would see Reed, at a time and place he might prefer not to be seen.

“Your turn,” Giovanni leaned into the carriage, gloved hand extended, ready to transport her, as dryly as possible, to Christie’s door. “You look worried,
carra
.”

“Do I?”

“
Si.
That line between your brows. I am not used to seeing it. Tell Giovanni, what is wrong?”

She sighed and forced a smile. His words stirred her memory of another rainy day not so long past and similar words said. “It is the rain--the stench of the city--the crowds,” she lied. “I have just been wishing myself back in the quiet sunshine and beauty of the Lakes.” That was true enough.

She took his hand, stepped carefully onto the carriage step and with her skirts gathered, made a leap to clear the litter choked gutter.

Giovanni secured her elbow as she landed safely on the pavement under cover of the umbrella he held high. “I could take you,
carra
, if you would only let me, to see the noble peaks of the Apennines topped with snow--purple in the clearness of a sky so blue it makes your eyes hurt. We would walk in my mother’s garden, a sunny place of fountains and labyrinths, smelling sweetly of oranges, lemons and cedar.

She stopped him, there in the street, with the doorman holding wide the door to Christie’s and her aunt and Mrs. Blaynay shedding coats just inside and surely wondering what delayed her progress in the rain. “Are you sincere when you say pretty things to me?” She had to ask.

“Things,
carra
?” He looked at her with what she thought must be a carefully cultivated expression of innocence. She was more than a little entranced by Giovanni Giamarco, darkly handsome, doe-eyed and appealing, his focus on her complete. He seemed to know exactly what to say in order to please. And yet she had no real desire to be bewitched by him. She had, in fact, begun to think that a great deal of her appeal was in her resistance to his charm.

“You say pretty things, my friend, but I warn you, do not play loosely with my affections. You see, I just might begin to believe you.”

He smiled, mischief dancing in the enchanting depths of soot lashed eyes. “You give my heart wings to say such a thing, Megan. Does this mean that at last you give up all hope in our friend Reed?”

She blushed. “Are my feelings for him so obvious?”

Her aunt’s walking stick thumped imperiously from the doorway, reminding her of the impropriety of standing so long in the street speaking privately to a gentleman.

Giovanni paid the summons of the stick no mind.

“You forget,” he said softly, “I saw the way you kissed him at the waterfall.” His smiled widened, his expression god-like and beautiful and yet not so loved as it might have been. “You pine for him,” he said with certainty. “I see it in your eyes, when you think no one notices.”

For an instant she felt like throwing herself against his broad chest to weep. There was a level of inner beauty, of profound sensitivity in Giovanni, an awareness and understanding she had never expected to discover so handsomely packaged. But, he was reaching up to collapse the umbrella and again Aunt Win tapped impatiently her walking stick. Megan could not throw herself at a river god without unwanted entanglement.

“Come,” Giovanni said with bracing vigor, nodding her toward the still unctuously waiting doorman. “We will see what good we can do for our friend, Reed.”

There was, Megan decided, a sense of urgency within the walls of Christie’s that matched her mood.

Auctions were conducted on the top floor of the building. To reach the bidding room one had to pass first, the front counters where people brought in their treasures to be valued, then mount the stairs, footsteps echoing, following and being followed by a steady stream of people, also bent on reaching either the viewing or the auction rooms. Everywhere they turned, to her surprise, people were wishing Giovanni good day, tipping their hats to him, fluttering fans.

“
Merci beaucoup
for the tip,” a gentleman with a French accent said
sotto voce
to Giovanni as he passed them.

“You have seen something you like?” Giovanni lowered his voice in an equally conspiratorial manner.

“There is a French commode I have my heart set on,” the fellow admitted with a wink, “and so much more to be seen. I will not stop to chat.”

Megan tugged on Giovanni’s sleeve when he was gone. “Is this your doing?”

“What?”

“These people? This crowd? Your debt to Reed repaid, perhaps?”

Giovanni winked at her. “Something like that.”

She was amazed. As another of those who viewed the antiques tipped his hat, she murmured, “What a lovely man you are, Giovanni.”

He smiled at her, his expression so enchanting that any number of women nearby took notice and set to whispering behind their fans. “So I have been telling you all along,” he said archly. “Will you not change your mind, Senorina, and sail away with me to Italy, when I depart for home next month?”

Megan smiled. For the first time since Giovanni had asked her, she seriously pictured what it would be like to travel to Italy as wife of the handsome and thoughtful Mr. Giamarco. There was a sense of urgency to her thoughts. The time in which she might agree to such a picture was short.