Amanda Scott (48 page)

He frowned. “I meant to remain here until Monday to visit with you and Gwen, and”—he glanced at the younger men, deep in conversation with Pamela across the room—“and Davy too, now I see he’s here. Then I’d intended to pass two or three nights at home on the way to London, where important matters require my attention, but perhaps I’d best ride on tomorrow instead.”

“Fiddle faddle,” the countess said sharply, changing her tune without a blink. “Meriel is perfectly stout, as Gwenyth has just told you, and has a houseful of servants to look after her if she requires them. Moreover, she’s proved three times already that she breeds easily enough—”

“Almeria, please!” protested Lady Cadogan.

“What?” demanded the countess. “Would you prefer that I say she’s in a family way, expects to be confined, or some other modern mealymouthed twaddle? ‘Breeding’ is a perfectly good word. Says just what I want to say. Furthermore, it describes a perfectly natural event that most sensible women manage without fuss. Certainly, I did—seven times, though two were female. So you let the man be. He will remain for my dinner party to make up a proper number of persons at table.”

Pamela’s attention was diverted from her swains at last. “Have you invited more ladies, then, ma’am?” she inquired innocently. “You told us before, when we were drawing up your guest list, that we didn’t have need of any more ladies, although we’d already got more gentlemen than we need.”

Lady Lyford cast her a look of profound dislike. “The
number
of guests is uneven, gel. That’s all I meant. Serving is much easier with an even number of persons at the table.”

Gwenyth hid a smile and instinctively avoided meeting either the earl’s gaze or Sir Antony’s. Knowing the latter for a man with a well-developed sense of the absurd and an even livelier curiosity, she knew that now, barring bad news from home, there was little likelihood of his departing before the countess’s dinner party.

The two younger men, both clearly besotted with Miss Beckley, likewise made no further objection to lending their presence to the occasion, going so far as to be among the first to present themselves, late the following afternoon, in the Chinese drawing room, where the guests began to gather before the meal. Lyford and Jared entered twenty minutes later, and Gwenyth, who had been watching for one of them, at least, smiled approvingly when she noted that Lyford, like his cousin, was precise to a pin in knee breeches, white stockings, and a dark coat.

Jared moved to greet his grandmother, but Lyford walked up to Gwenyth, fingering the single gold fob on his ribbon, and said without preamble, “I like that dress.”

“Do you, sir?” she replied demurely, smoothing one embroidered cuff. “Then perhaps you will be so kind now as to forgive my extravagance.”

He looked bewildered. “I have nothing to say about how much money you spend, ma’am.”

“Have you not? But the amount appeared to distress you most severely the day I ordered this gown,” she reminded him with enough wide-eyed innocence to compete with Pamela.

His expression cleared. “That is the Streatley gown?”

She nodded, adding provocatively, “I wanted it for tonight, you see, and by being just a trifle more extravagant, was able to induce Madame Mathilde to accommodate me.”

There was a brief silence before he leaned nearer and said softly, “A properly overbearing husband would know how to deal with impertinence in his wife, I believe.”

She grinned at him. “You provide me with yet another excellent reason for pursuing a permanent, independent spinsterhood, my lord.” Then, before he could gather himself to reply in kind, or at all for that matter, she patted his arm gently and stepped past him to greet Sir Antony, who had that moment appeared on the threshold and, being among the last to arrive, was looking rather stunned as he surveyed the assembly through his quizzing glass.

At her approach, he collected himself with visible effort, but his gaze flicked past her again before coming back to rest upon her face. “I say, m’dear,” he drawled, “do you know that Lyford’s standing where you left him with his mouth agape. Not the thing. Not the thing at all. Looks like a fish out of water. And who the devil are all these old men? Do you know, I had the most awful fear, standing here, that if I were to take another step into the room, I should promptly age by forty years.”

She laughed. “Never mind Lyford. He is only beginning to learn that all women are not cut from one bolt of cloth. And do, if you please, show a proper respect when you speak of the countess’s beaux.”

“What? Not all of them!”

Chuckling, she entwined her arm with his, drawing him farther into the room. “There are only five or six tonight, and”—she sighed dramatically, fluttering her lashes at him—“not one of them in a Bath chair, more’s the pity.”

“A Bath chair!” He looked across the room to where the countess was holding four of her gentlemen in thrall, but his brow knitted for only an instant before he turned back to Gwenyth, his eyes atwinkle, his lips quivering with suppressed amusement. “I see.”

“I knew you would,” she said, satisfied. “Whatever else unkind persons may say about you, sir, they cannot complain of your being a slowtop.”

“Are there complaints?” he inquired, raising an eyebrow.

But Gwenyth only grinned at him. The butler announcing just then that dinner was served, Lady Lyford bounced up from her seat and approached the two of them, her retinue following close behind her.

“Sir Antony,” she said briskly, without heed for the probability of being overheard by her followers, or anyone else, “you may give me your arm in to table. ’Twill do this lot good to see me with a younger man. And you, Gwenyth, will go in with Sir Spenser. That idiotish Beckley chit has been casting sheep’s eyes at the poor man since he arrived, hanging on his lips and begging him to tell her more stories about his dratted house. I won’t have him put off his feed by her nonsense. Jared can take her in. She will do nicely for him, I believe.”

Nearly everyone in the room must have overheard her, but other than Pamela, who colored up to the roots of her hair, no one paid her much heed. But if Mr. Hawtrey had hoped to follow his grandmother’s command, he soon found he was too late, for Davy Traherne and his friend Mr. Webster leapt to escort Miss Beckley to the table. Jared was left to attend to an elderly neighbor who had accompanied her son and daughter to the party, while Lyford, making no effort to discover the female guest of highest rank, offered his arm to Lady Cadogan, who accepted with a smile. The other guests trailed in after them.

Dinner was not so much of an ordeal as Gwenyth had expected it to be, for she enjoyed conversing with Sir Spenser, and the fact that the gentleman on her left was totally deaf relieved her from taxing her conversational ingenuity in that quarter. She was disappointed, however, when the gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the Chinese drawing room soon after they had left the table, because Lyford and Sir Antony moved apart from the others to play piquet at a table in the window embrasure. Their conversation, she noticed, appeared to interest them even more than the cards did, and no one attempted to interrupt them.

The young people set up a game of jackstraws, while Lady Lyford, Sir Spenser, and a number of the older guests made up several tables for whist. When two gentlemen were left over, they promptly asked Gwenyth and Lady Cadogan to make up one more. Gwenyth abhorred whist, but there was no graceful way to decline, and there was thus nothing she could do a half-hour later to prevent her brother-in-law and Lyford from leaving the room together, still deep in conversation. They did not return, and she was unable to escape until after the tea tray had been brought in. The guests who were not staying overnight departed soon afterward, and she was able at last to make her weary way to bed, thinking that as dinner parties went it had been neither the best nor the worst of her experience.

She did not run her brother-in-law to earth until the following morning after the ladies and those few remaining guests who wished to accompany them had returned from church, when she found him in the stable talking to Davy. The sky was overcast, and there was a damp chill in the air.

Hugging her shawl around her shoulders, she greeted them, adding, “Davy, I never asked how long you and Mr. Webster intend to stay with us. I hope you will not rush off too soon.”

“Depends,” he replied, grinning. “Web and I mean to be in town for the opening of the new theater at Covent Garden and the Jubilee festivities, but we’ve no reason to go down any sooner, and every reason to put up here for a bit.”

“Burnt to the socket?” Sir Antony suggested amiably.

“No, only a trifle down pin.” Davy’s grin widened. “When does Joss return, Gwen?”

“I have no idea. It was idiotish of him to think to make a trip into Wales and back in a fortnight. Matters at home always take longer than he expects them to. Why? Did you wish to see him particularly?”

“On the contrary,” he replied. “I shall do much better without him. He wouldn’t give me a sou.”

Sir Antony regarded him lazily. “Hope you don’t think to apply to me.”

“Good Lord, no,” Davy said, thunderstruck. “I’d never expect you to frank me, sir.”

“No reason you shouldn’t expect it, but fortunate you don’t,” Sir Antony said. “I’ve a strong notion I’d do better to save my blunt for the future. That young sprout of mine looks like being the sort who will prove to be expensive.”

“And his sisters?” Gwenyth reminded him sweetly.

“Hmmm? Oh, yes, of course, and the new one too. Daresay they’ll run me off my legs, the lot of them.”

Davy stared at him for a moment as though he wondered whether to believe him, but when Gwenyth chuckled, he laughed. “You must think us a pair of gulls for the catching, to spin that lot to us, sir.” He looked at his sister. “He was looking for Jared, Gwen. Have you seen him?”

She shook her head, looking curiously at Sir Antony. “I didn’t know you knew him, sir.”

“I don’t. That is, I was introduced, of course, but didn’t know him before. Lyford suggested I speak with him about some trifling matters we discussed last evening.”

“Perhaps I might help,” she suggested, hoping by her casual tone to conceal her avid curiosity.

He smiled. “Not unless you know details of the shipping trade,” he said. “I’ve a wish to learn something about it.”

“Jared will most likely refer you to his man of affairs,” Gwenyth said, laughing. “His name is Powell, and I believe he resides somewhere hereabouts, but for all I have seen of him, he may be entirely apocryphal. Jared prefers to ignore the fact that he himself has anything to do with his father’s business.”

“Perhaps,” Sir Antony agreed, “but he knows about the Bristol-to-London routes, and I am curious to learn some details about them.”

“Don’t they just put the goods on a ship?” Davy asked.

“No, they use the Severn and the Thames rivers. A canal connects the two, and the goods are moved on barges. They must come right past this house, actually. I’m told that Hawtrey … Ah, there he is now. I’ll just ask him myself.”

He strode away from them to meet Jared, who had entered the stableyard from the garden.

Davy looked at Gwenyth. “Mysteries?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know, precisely, but I daresay Antony is merely curious. He cannot help being, you know. ’Tis his nature. No doubt Lyford spoke of the business last evening while they played piquet, and Antony wants to know more. ’Tis odd, though, that he could not discover all he wanted to know from Lyford himself.”

“He sounded as though he knows quite a lot, actually,” Davy said, watching the two men as they walked toward the river together. “Wonder what he thinks the hook can tell him.”

“Hook?”

He reddened. “Shouldn’t have said that, Gwen. I apologize. Just don’t like the fellow much, is all.”

“But what does it mean?”

“Oh, nothing, really.” When she did not respond, he looked away, unable to meet her gaze. “It ain’t something I should have to explain to a female, if you must know. Just school slang, and I ain’t going to tell you more than that, ’cause knowing you, you’ll use it yourself, and then we’ll both be in the suds.”

“You are just annoyed with Jared because Pamela likes him,” Gwenyth said, getting to the heart of the matter.

“No, she don’t,” he retorted. “Told me so herself. Thinks he’s something of a cabbage seller.”

“She never said that!”

“Well, no,” he admitted, “but the way she talks about him, it wouldn’t surprise me if he is one.”

“Mr. Hawtrey does not sell cabbages!”

“Very true,” agreed Lyford, coming up behind them in time to hear her exclamation. “Much more likely to have got his fag to sell them, you know. Not one to do a job himself when he can get someone else to do it for him.” When Gwenyth only stared at him, then looked at her brother and back again, Lyford smiled at her. “A cabbage seller is one who sells crib notes,” he said.

She continued to look steadily at him.

“It means he helped others to cheat and probably did so himself as well,” he said, adding, “Not so sure about that. Jared would have been afraid to get caught.”

She turned back to her brother, shocked. “You ought never to say such a thing about someone you scarcely know.”

Davy shifted his feet, watching Lyford rather than Gwenyth. “I know. I told you, I don’t care for the fellow, but I ought never to have said such stuff to you.”

“Why not?” Lyford asked curiously. “If it is what you believe, you certainly have no reason not to say so.”

Davy stared at him, but Gwenyth found herself smiling. “What’s a hook, Lyford?”

His lips twitched, but he answered evenly, “A questionable sort of person, perhaps even a liar or thief. In any event, that’s the meaning at my old school. I believe the term originally referred to a pickpocket. Why do you ask?”

“I wanted to know,” she said, shooting a murderous glance at her brother before she added in an even tone, “Do you join us for supper today, sir? The countess has announced that we return to country hours at once.”

The earl nodded, smiling back at her in his usual way and thus warming her to her toes despite the chill in the yard. “I’ve some errands to attend to first,” he said, “but I’ll be back by then. Would you like to ride with me?”