An Extraordinary Flirtation (3 page)

“The deuce I don’t!” said Beau, and snatched up a seedcake. Daisy looked hopeful, but this one he ate himself. “I tell you, Cara, I’m not going to let Zoe blot her copybook.”

This from the greatest copybook-blotter of his generation? “Why not? The rest of us did.”

Beau frowned at her. “You didn’t.”

Not for the lack of trying. Cara pushed away the memory of her own unsuitable attachments, and the days when admirers had still wished to kiss and hug her, before she’d grown so old and drab. “Zoe falls out of love as easily as she falls into it. She’ll eventually grow bored with her new conquest, and order will be restored.”

“Not this time it won’t.” Beau ran his hand through his rumpled hair. “She’s made up her mind. I mean to see her safely settled while I still can. That’s where I need your help.”

Caught half-envying Zoe her infatuation, Cara sat bolt upright. “Beau—"

He raised his hand. “Let me finish. You’re the only female in the entire history of the family who hasn’t followed the tradition of loving unwisely but too well—’Just one more romance, one more throw of the dice,’ wasn’t that what Grandmother Sophie always said?—and though it seems very dull of you, things have worked out well enough. And if they haven’t, I don’t want to know! You have a good understanding, Cara. I’ve always said so.”

Cara regarded her brother skeptically. “Next you’ll mention that I have a strong sense of propriety.”

“None of us do! There’s the rub. But Zoe won’t drive you to distraction like she does poor Ianthe. When she enacts you a Cheltenham tragedy, you’ll just box her ears.” Beau looked even gloomier. “And then she’ll fly into a passion and drum her heels on the floor and hold her breath until she turns blue.”

Cara set down her uneaten sandwich. “What an enchanting prospect! You exaggerate, I hope.”

He didn’t, not really; Zoe was either making kick-ups or shedding floods of tears and wailing that she wanted to Experience Life. Damned if Beau didn’t feel like going on a repairing lease himself. “You wouldn’t know if I was or wasn’t, since you ain’t seen the chit in so long. Shame on you! My poor Zoe needs an aunt’s guiding hand. Anyway, you know you’re tired of remaining cozily at home counting your sheep. Come to London and you may renovate
my
gardens. And visit the Horticultural Society, where they’re doing experiments on strawberries and nectarines. Then there’s the Herbarium at Kew.” Cara looked intrigued, and he grinned at her. “Speaking of going to ground.”

Cara had to admire her brother, shameless manipulator that he was. “Does Zoe know you’ve come to fetch me back to be her chaperone?”

“Zoe will enjoy spending time with her favorite aunt.” Cara looked skeptical, and Beau sighed. “Hell and the devil confound it, you’re my only hope. Whether you act on it or not, you know what’s right. And for the most part you
have
acted on it, because the worst that’s said of you is that you’re An Original. Which when you think on it, is a damn queer thing for a Loversall.” He eyed his silent sister. “I’ll even stand the business for your new clothes.”

Cara raised her eyebrows. Beau was notoriously tight-fisted. “You must be desperate.”

Beau reached for the teapot. “I am.”

Cara watched her brother pour tea into her cup as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps it was for him. She wondered how Squire Anderley would react were he to discover that his quarry had escaped, and whether he would set out in pursuit or simply look about for another fox. “Don’t tease yourself. I can buy my own clothes.”

If Beau lacked the family dimples, his smile was still dazzling. “Does that mean you’ll come?”

As if there were any question. Dared she refuse, Beau would immediately remind her that loyalty had been a family tradition ever since the Battle of Hastings, when two Loversall brothers, after having done considerable damage with a homemade slingshot and a large Danish battle-ax, noted which way the wind was blowing and prudently removed themselves from the Saxon lines. “As you say, I know my duty, whether I abide by it or not. Although I don’t know exactly what it is you think that I may do.”

Nor did Beau. “Drop Zoe a hint or two. Set her a good example. Prevent her from tossing her bonnet over the windmill. Blast it, Cara, someone must do something and there is no one else but you!”

Now she was a good example. How very depressing. Cara rose and Daisy leapt to attention, as if hoping her mistress would throw her a stick. “No, Daisy! Sit down. Just who is this unsuitable
tendre
who has you in such a taking, Beau?”

Beau grabbed the setter’s collar. “It’s not only that he’s unsuitable, he’s also above her touch. The blasted man must have had as many
amours
as I have myself. You think I overstate the case? Zoe has set her cap at no less than Mannering himself.”

Mannering!
Just one more romance, one more throw of the dice
—”I’ll have Barrow pack.”

“What in blazes,” inquired Lord Mannering, “do you have wrapped around your neck?”

Baron Fitzrichard twisted on the carriage seat, the extreme dimensions of his shirt points and highly starched cravat making it impossible for him to properly turn his head. “D’you like it, Nicky? I ain’t named it yet. I was thinking about the Coup du Foudue. Or perhaps the Preux Chevalier.”

Nick eyed the neck-cloth. “The Faux Pas. The Mal-Apropos. The Imbecile. You see how I enter into the spirit of the thing.”

“By Jove, that’s unkind! After I canceled all my engagements this afternoon just to drive out with you. I’d meant to visit Lock’s and order a new
chapeau
and then perhaps take a turn around Piccadilly and Pall Mall—Watch that donkey cart! Damned if you ain’t making the flesh crawl on my bones.”

Lord Mannering, who was an excellent whipster, deftly avoided the donkey cart, and charitably attributed his companion’s mistrust of his driving to a well-known horror of heights. It was for that reason that the marquess had today bypassed his high-perch phaeton in favor of this somewhat less dashing curricle, drawn by a perfectly matched pair of bays, with a groom perched up behind.

All danger of donkey carts averted, he returned his attention to his companion, who in addition to his amazingly arranged cravat wore an exquisitely cut orange coat, ribbed kerseymere pantaloons, Hessian boots with heart-shaped top and tassel, a lavishly embroidered waistcoat, and a tall beaver hat perched atop carefully styled brown curls. “Anyone who drinks four bottles of champagne at one sitting deserves to have his flesh crawl on his bones, Fitz, not to mention a troop of devils banging cymbals in his head.”

The baron winced at this reminder of his excesses of the night before. Still, a man had his reputation to maintain, an endeavor that in this instance had involved playing macao at Watier’s late into the night. And then what must Nicky do but rouse him from his slumbers at the very crack of noon? Fitz blinked as the curricle turned into Berkeley Square. “Gunter’s? Are you in your dotage? Because I can’t think of any reason why you might want an ice. Unless—You ain’t ordering a wedding cake!”

Lord Mannering maneuvered his curricle through the crush of carriages. “No, and not a turkey preserved in jelly, or a ham cunningly embalmed in rich wine and broth. You are here, Fitz, because your presence is required.”

Fitz’s brown eyes narrowed. “So you said, but you ain’t said
why.”

Lord Mannering raised an eyebrow. “To lend me respectability, of course.”

Fitz snorted. Nicky required no one’s countenance to add to his own. Damned if Fitz knew how his friend did it, for the man was deuced careless of his appearance—breeches and top boots, of course, and the jacket he wore so casually was by no less than Weston; but his cravat was tied in an ordinary manner, and his dark hair was worn in the simplest style, as if he didn’t care how he looked. Despite this apparent disinterest, the marquess was tall, dark, and saturnine, immensely wealthy, and irresistibly handsome in the wicked way unmarried peers often were; and it hardly made a difference what he wore anyway, when so many ladies seemed intent on undressing him. “Respectability,” Fitz muttered. “Now
there's
a fine bag of moonshine.”

Berkeley Square, laid out in the 1730s, consisted of long ranges of stone-fronted terrace houses where various luminaries had dwelt, including Clive of India, who had resided at No. 45 on the west side from 1761 until his death in 1774 from an overdose of laudanum. In the center was an oval garden with long borders running parallel to the buildings on each side. Thirty plane maples grew there. In the center of the garden stood a little pump house with a Chinese roof.

A large number of carriages were gathered in the shade of the maple trees. Waiters from Gunter’s hurried across the pavement with ices and sorbets, while gentlemen lounged against the railings and chatted with perfect propriety to the ladies in their carriages, no small feat in an era when a well-brought-up young lady wasn’t allowed to be alone with a man for even a half hour lest her reputation, not to mention her sensibilities, be shredded beyond repair.

Fitz had no fear for his own reputation, and doubted that his spirits would be revived by an ice. He parted his lips to tell his friend so. Then he spied a certain carriage, and its occupants, and instead said, “Ha! Now I know why you begged me to come out with you.”

“You have found me out, Fitz.” Nick pulled his team to a halt and gracefully leapt down from the seat. “I begged you—as you put it, though I rather thought it was a polite invitation—not solely because I wished the pleasure of your company.” He handed the reins to his groom. “But also because I felt myself in need of a chaperone.”

Nicky in need of a chaperone? Not likely. Lord Mannering had proven himself so determined a bachelor that even matchmaking mamas no longer included him in their plans. “I suppose you think I’m bottle-headed, but I ain’t. Even a blind man would notice the way the Loversall chit’s been casting sheep’s eyes at you. I have a bad feeling about this.”

“It’s all that champagne you drank.” Nick turned away from his carriage. “Are you coming with me, or are you just going to sit there and sulk?”

Sulking, was he? Fitz’s pride was stung. “Very well, have it your way. But don’t expect me to eat an ice!”

Berkeley Square was crowded with ladies and gentlemen come out to enjoy the afternoon, the ladies in elegant equipages and morning dresses, the gentlemen moving among them like drunken bumblebees lurching from flower to flower. Or perhaps it was his own excesses of the previous evening that made Fitz think of the influence of the grape, not that he had allowed the cymbal-banging in his head to interfere with his toilette. Fitz knew he made a fine appearance—wasn’t he wearing a fifteen-guinea embroidered waistcoat?—but he was plagued by the problem of persuading his pantaloons to keep their shape. Perhaps a strap under the arch of the foot. Although Brummel had already thought of that. Fitz disliked to be a follower. He aspired to be the Pinkest of the Pink.

The Loversall ladies were holding court in their carriage, which was not the most fashionable of the equipages present, a circumstance no one was likely to notice in light of the glorious creatures so gracefully displayed there. Ianthe attracted her own admirers, although she did not encourage them, and Zoe had so many swains that they were known to her family as Zoe’s Zoo, among them a duke (married), an earl (not married, although he should have been), several viscounts, a baronet, and an elderly knight, as well as hopeful commoners from Abethell to Zike.

Fitz was one of the few gentlemen in London not struck noodle-headed by the beauty of the family. He had also thought his friend to be in that minority, but now he wondered, as Nicky bent over the older woman’s hand. If a paler version of her cousin—Ianthe’s hair was merely gold instead of tinged with red; her eyes robin’s egg blue instead of sapphire, the skin around them taut with strain—she still remained beautiful at five-and-thirty, rather in the style of a great actress renowned for tragic roles.

At the moment, she also looked ready to sink. “Lord Mannering! I didn’t realize—Or perhaps I mistake the matter and she didn’t—Oh, if only I could assure myself of that!”

“Pray do not regard it,” he murmured, as the young woman under discussion watched the exchange with wide-eyed innocence. When the marquess glanced at her, she fluttered her lashes and allowed a becoming flush to tinge her delicate cheeks.

Baggage,
thought Fitz, without appreciation. Not that he could fault Zoe in appearance, for she wore a pale blue muslin pelisse over a white muslin walking dress, and a charming straw bonnet trimmed with wreaths of flowers, the strings fastened with a bow behind. Her red-gold hair was cut in a smart crop and arranged in close curls that crept out from beneath the bonnet to caress her perfect face. In addition to those lovely eyes, she had a charming little nose, lush lips, and dimples, two of them.

She was also short. Fitz didn’t like short females. Or chits right out of the schoolroom who threatened to tumble gentlemen who should have known better smack heels over head. He watched Nick stroll around to the other side of the carriage and muttered, “Damned if I remember when I last had an ice.”

“Oh! I am so sorry!” Ianthe practically wrung her hands. “Perhaps if we were to ask a waiter—I’m sure they would bring you something other than an ice—Perhaps a nice cup of tea!”

Fitz was ashamed of himself. It was hardly fair of him to take out his ill humor on Ianthe, who had borne the responsibility for her cousin square on her slender shoulders practically from the moment of that young woman’s birth. No wonder she looked so drawn and pale. Not that anyone could look
other
than pale in that dreadful outfit. Spanish pelisse of shot sarcenet trimmed with Egyptian crepe and antique cuffs trimmed with Chinese binding; lemon-colored kid gloves and slippers; reticule of painted velvet; Gypsy hat of satin straw with edge
a la cheveux de fries,
tied with a colored handkerchief.

Ianthe interrupted his ruminations with a compliment concerning his waistcoast. Fitz beamed at her. “Guthrie’s in Cork Street!” A discussion of embroidery stitches followed, from satin stitch to pearling, tambour stitch to herringbone.