Almost a Gentleman (34 page)

But I can't stay abed mornings when I'm home. I want to get a good start on the day, so I'm off for a few hours. I'll be back for breakfast at nine.

I'll bring my accounts and correspondence into the breakfast room, so that I can wait for you there if you insist on keeping a London dandy's hours.

But don't keep me waiting too long, sleepyhead. Come, let's ride on the wolds today, shall we?

With all my heart,

D.

P.S. I miss you already.

Sweet, hazy memories passed through her head: warm, fragmentary sensations of lolling back in his arms and clinging to his neck, of being gently set down and neatly tucked between cool, silky sheets. But it all must have happened in the very early hours, she thought, for according to the clock on the tiled mantelpiece it was only nine now.

She yawned, stretched, considered sleeping some more, and gave it up. She felt glorious, energetic, and madly curious about her surroundings. The room was warm; a servant must have rebuilt the fire while she'd slept. She threw off the covers: sweet-scented currents of air (for there were large silver bowls of pot-pourri on the mantel) drifted across the room, mingling with the sharp, briny smells that wafted from the hollows of her body. She spread her arms and legs, breathing deeply, trying to absorb every atom of him that still clung to her skin.

Pale winter sunlight shone through the French doors; she wondered what was growing in the garden outside—evergreens of some sort, holly or ivy. She wanted to explore the rest of the house, too. To try the marble bathtub. To see the countryside. To spur a horse over the wolds.

Where
was
the breakfast room anyway? She'd have to ring for Lissie to bring her there. She was starving; hadn't Mrs. Yonge promised that there would be ham for breakfast?

She'd wash and dress quickly. She missed him too.

The bathtub was a marvel—hot and cold water thrummed merrily through the spigots; the tub, big enough for two, was made of a delicate, pale pink, blue-veined marble. Like flesh: a warmth, a softness seemed to inhere in the stone. Whoever had built this wonder of modern sanitation, she thought, was as much a sensualist as the house's current owner. The countesses of Linseley must have been happy women.

But she wouldn't linger. For it was really rather lonely, washing herself in a tub that was big enough for two.

Humming to herself as she dried her damp hair, she wrapped herself in her dressing gown and went to find the bell pull. Ah yes, there it was, near the door that led to the corridor. She'd just given it a sharp tug when she'd stopped suddenly to listen to an odd, unexpected little sound.

A mouse? No, it didn't sound like a mouse. Her senses had always been acute, and three years of cautious, deliberate masquerade had only heightened her receptiveness to small signals from her surroundings. The sound in the hall had been soft, subtle—and unmistakable. There was someone outside her door. Watching and waiting. Listening. Peering through the keyhole at her.

"Stop! Who's there?" she called. She could feel, rather than hear, a sharp intake of breath on the other side of the door.
Surprised you, did I, you rascal
?

There was a bump now, and a rustle. But no footsteps. The villain was frozen in place, waiting for her next move, hoping she'd decide she'd been mistaken and turn away.

A good swordsman could exploit an enemy's misapprehensions, she thought. She took a step backward, exaggerating her motions, trying to make some slight noise that would strengthen the illusion that she was moving away from the door. She almost thought she saw an eye blink on the other side of the keyhole.

"No, it's nothing," she murmured.

Had she murmured it too loudly? Had her ruse been too crude, too obvious? No: she could feel the relief from the other side of the door. Now, she thought, now while I've got him unaware… swiftly, in a neat continuous arc of motion, she stepped forward, grasped the doorknob, and thrust the door open.

A gasp, a clatter, and the sound of quick footsteps pattering down the corridor's waxed parquet floor. She caught a glimpse of bright, unruly red hair, of bunched-up, itchy-looking winter wool stockings, and of the torn edge of a flannel petticoat fluttering over worn-down little (unbelievably little) boots. And then nothing. Her mysterious three-foot-tall adversary had skidded round a corner and disappeared.

But she?
She
! How typical, Phoebe thought, that one would naturally and stupidly assume one's adversary to be a
he)
had left some evidence behind. A doll. A large, beautiful wax doll, dressed for a round of London calls in a red velvet afternoon dress and matching bonnet and pelisse—and fully half as tall as the meddlesome little girl had been.

She heard a half-stern, half-amused voice, echoing somewhere within the maze of corridors. "Well, don't
cry
, you silly thing.
I'll get
your doll. Just you run down to the kitchen where you oughter be anyway and I'll bring it to you directly, after I help the lady. Well, off with you then, what are you waiting for? No, no, you little goose, I won't tell your granny."

Lissie.

"I'm here, Lissie," Phoebe called. "In the dressing room. Will you help me with my corset?" She needed the help; her hands were trembling. She turned away to allow Lissie to tug at the strings and tie them smartly.

"There, that should do you, Miss Browne."

"Excellent. Yes, thank you."

"And I hope the little girl didn't startle you too bad. She shouldna been spyin' like that, but she meant no harm. 'Twer my fault, I let her come wi' me early when I lit the fire. Her ma's in bed wi' a new one, see, and her granny's off her head preparin' for the feast come Plough Monday. So we all takes a turn wi' her now and again. 'Come wi' me, Susan,' I says to her, 'and I'll show you a lady even prettier than yer new dolly."

"And she did think you was pretty, miss. Right fell in love with you while you was sleepin' she did. Beggin' your pardon for the trouble it caused, though."

"Oh, no trouble at all, Lissie. It's just that I'm a bit high-strung. Easily surprised, you see. And a child makes sudden noises…"

Lissie promised her that it wouldn't happen again and Phoebe promised herself that she wouldn't continue to fuss over it.

But how very tiny those worn-down boots were
. One forgot, living in a world of only adults…

Enough. Calm down, you silly thing. David is waiting.

He looked up eagerly from his coffee as she hurried into the room.

"Oh good, dressed for riding. We shall have a sunny day, I think, before the storm blows in this evening."

"But what's troubling you, David?" For something was clearly amiss, though she wasn't sure how she'd discerned it.

"Nothing."

"Come," she coaxed him as she filled her plate from the sideboard, "you can tell me."

"I didn't want to bother you. Anyway, I thought I was being bluff and hearty about it."

"You needn't be bluff and hearty with me."

He smiled.

"Oh, well it's nothing really. Only my disappointment that Alec won't be here for Twelfth Night after all. Seems he's been in London these past few weeks. Makes excuses in this letter, says when he came round to see me I'd already gone. He didn't come before because he's been staying with a friend from university, who, it seems, has a…"

"A sister?"

"Exactly, how did you know?"

"I simply thought it likely that a young man, making excuses to his father in such circumstances, might have such a motivation."

"Yes, I expect so. Well, it's not the worse thing, I expect. And he
does
sound awfully happy. Makes her sound quite nice—here, you can read the paragraph where he describes her. And he adds a page of greetings to Stevens, Mrs. Oughton, Mrs. Yonge, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Even to Mr. and Mrs. Goulding—well, he was always fond of the Gouldings.

"Still, I did want you to meet him. And of course you will. Just not this week."

He shrugged and turned back to his correspondence, after passing her the newspaper. "Not much real news, since Parliament's in holiday recess. But there's an essay on the struggle for Greek emancipation that will interest you."

She stared at him. No, he wasn't mocking her. He'd known that the essay would interest her just as she'd known that something was troubling him. They'd begun to know each other. It was as ordinary—and as miraculous—as that.

In London, Lady Kate Beverredge had also received a disturbing communication in the post. Worse than disturbing: unlike Alec Hervey's letter to his father, this one had no redeeming virtues. Nor did it wish anybody well. Her hand trembled as she passed it to Admiral Wolfe over the luncheon table. INFORM P. THAT ESCAPE IS IMPOSSIBLE.

"I know it's silly of me to be so agitated. But there's something dreadful about these messages."

She'd read the rest of them this morning.

"Do you think the two of them are really safe, up there in Lincolnshire?"

"I do, Kate. David's extraordinarily capable and I've never known a gentleman whose household people are more deeply devoted to him."

"Still," the admiral continued, "I'll pen him a note, telling him to be on the lookout for strange characters. There will be a crowd in his house next week for the Plough play. Supposed to guarantee fertility to the land, you know. Tedious thing—local folk culture and all that—but he swears by it. He dragged me to it one year and I've been sure to have a ready-made excuse every year since then."

"Hmmm, I wonder how Phoebe will like it. She's developed very sophisticated, Londoner's tastes—dandy's tastes, you know. Still, she's in love…"

"I hope you're right about that, Kate. I wouldn't want to have her hurting my friend."

"I
know
I'm right."

The admiral shrugged. For such a proper lady, she could be awfully stubborn sometimes. Just as well; he'd never want to sail with a meek, quiescent ship's mate.

"And just how do you know that?"

"I know a great deal about Phoebe. And a little bit about love as well."

He put his hand upon hers. If she could be stubborn, so could he.

"I defer to your opinion. But only because I've one of my own, and on a matter of some importance, as it happens. I've decided that we're going to be married in the spring and not the summer. And I shall brook no counterargument."

"Let's make it the
early
spring, shall we? I'm very happy, John."

The ride over the wolds would have been perfect, Phoebe thought, if she hadn't had to sit sidesaddle. She'd loved the silent expansiveness of the land, its vast horizon punctuated by austere, iron-studded church steeples, its gentle curves embracing rare, thousand-year-old Saxon chapels. But she wished that she could have galloped full out, propelling Oberon—the big black gelding David had chosen for her—forward with her hips and thighs rather than merely sitting atop his back.

"Well, you needn't ride sidesaddle if you don't want to," David said, as they wandered hand-in-hand among the ruins of an ancient monastery. "I'll have Mrs. O. hunt up an old pair of Alec's breeches—from when he'd gotten some height but was still a skinny boy. You can wear them with Marston's boots and the coat you're wearing today."

She laughed.

"Quite the costume. Phizz would never stand for it. I'll look a fright."

"You'll look like Miss Browne, wholly herself and wholly adorable. Here, have an apple, I brought a few from the cellar."

She munched it appreciatively. "I'll look like one of the mummers from your Plough play, all ill-assorted bits and tatters. When I was a girl I made my mother quite furious, you know, for I never could be bothered to mind whether my clothes matched."

"Which reminds me of something Alec said when he was little… well, you know he's always had this rather formidable intelligence, and he said…"

They strolled on, crunching on their crisp apples and savoring this or that serendipitous bit from his or her past. Amazing, Phoebe thought, how much there was to learn about a person. And what precious, silly—sometimes even embarrassing—memories one wanted to share in return. Their conversation meandered like a rivulet through hilly countryside, flowing, swirling, bubbling and eddying in cheerful disorder. And yet a pattern seemed to emerge, glorious as a cathedral window.

They leaned their elbows against a fence, peering down from the hilltop to the gentle patchwork of his fields, some planted with winter wheat, some lying fallow until spring. His cheeks were ruddy from the cold air, his thick hair unruly. A ray of slanted afternoon sunlight illuminated a ridge of stubble on the edge of his jaw. She put up a hand to stroke it.

"I'm afraid I did a poor job of shaving this morning. I was preoccupied, and too impatient to wait for Croft to do it."

"I like it."

He leaned back to let her nuzzle him, to rub her smooth cheeks against his rough ones, to tease his lips into a kiss.

"You'll get a chill," he murmured. "Do you feel the sharp edge to the wind?"