Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03] (21 page)

Bless her militant sister, so quick to absorb the shock, dispense with the shame, and begin shaping the whole experience into some new grist for one of her theories. Kate smiled into the darkness, pulling the covers up to
her chin. “Maybe that’s why I’ve never cared for Mr. Richardson’s novels. Maybe I always suspected them to be full of lies.”

“It’s been a gross fraud perpetrated on our sex, I think. Richardson was but one in a vast army of charlatans. Why, every girl’s mother is culpable, if she does not speak openly with her daughter on the subject of pleasure and passion. A girl taken by surprise, as you were tonight, could easily fall into disaster.”

“I cannot judge reticent mothers very harshly, though.” Kate yawned halfway through the thought. A warm drowsiness was settling in, now that she’d made her confession and been absolved of wantonness. “I’m sure they’re wary of instilling a temptation where perhaps there had been none before.”

“Then I shall have to do what they will not. Arm young ladies with true and comprehensive information. A separate pamphlet, I should think, in addition to the revisions I must make to my chapter on fallen women.” She paused. “This may even call for some slight emendation to my thoughts on bodily integrity.”

“I’m glad I told you, Viola.” Those few words stood for a host of others.
Thank you for knowing something was wrong. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being the one lady of my acquaintance who could hear such a tale and find no cause for blame
.

“So am I, to be sure.” Vi turned away on her side, taking most of the covers with her, as had been her habit in their youth. “I wasn’t likely to find out the truth about kissing by any other means. And now I shall have a great deal of thinking and writing to do.”

Kate stayed in her sister’s bed. To be here, crammed alongside like children again, was a comfort. She could almost believe she was small still, innocent, years away from grown-up folly.

She breathed, slow and even, waiting for sleep. Facing
Mr. Blackshear again was going to be a mortifying trial. Dimly she knew that, even drowsing in the glow of Viola’s ready exoneration. The prospect plucked at her thoughts and later thrummed along the edges of her dreams, distracting as gloved fingertips trifling through her ribbon-bound hair.

H
E
’
D THOUGHT
some, in the three days since the event, of what he might do to put her at ease. To reassure her that nothing would change between them; that he took all the blame for what had happened upon himself; that he’d already all but forgotten the particulars, up to and including
I’m not sorry this happened, Nick
.

She had apparently been mulling over the same matter, and decided on a facade of frivolous, impersonal gaiety. It hurt, somehow, to watch. He didn’t like to be responsible for making her do anything false.

But here he was on his first visit to the house since promising her father to keep her safe from unscrupulous men, and his few incidental interactions with her had all the weight of the silk thread with which she was presently sewing some decorative thing. She sat on the sofa, Miss Viola beside her, their attention half occupied by their respective needlework frame and book, and half engaged by the odd exercise going forward at the hearth end of the parlor.

Though it wasn’t so odd to the sisters, of course. They’d seen it enough times before.

Nick curled and uncurled his right hand fingers, flicking away the extraneous thoughts. “Ready?” He held up his paper where Lord Barclay could easily read from it. “Once more unto the breach, then.”

Barclay stooped, caught up the buckets of coal at his left and right hands, and straightened. He drew in a breath, concentrating his attention on the paper. “ ‘Stiffen
the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with—’ Good Lord, that
does
make a difference.”

“Do you feel how it brings the source of your voice down to just above your stomach?” Two rooms away, her words carrying effortlessly through two sets of open doors, Mrs. Westbrook paused in her regal pacing to deliver this query. Nick tapped the spot under his own ribcage for illustration before turning to watch her. “That’s your natural source of speech,” she went on. “If you want to be heard in the back rows without shouting, this is where you begin. Fierce articulation of your consonants will do the rest.” She carried a walking stick with which she now made a little flourish. “Onward, and be mindful of where you take your breaths. ‘Disguise fair nature …’ ”

Barclay nodded, wet his lips, and returned his gaze to the page.

This was their seventh time through the speech—Barclay had already whispered it, delivered it in conversational style, and articulated the whole with a wine cork clutched between his front teeth—and Nick suspected every person in the room could recite the final lines right along.

“Splendid, sir. I believe every one of us is ready to charge off and fall upon whatever enemy you choose.” She would have made an excellent leader of troops herself, Mrs. Westbrook. He could remember the pride that had welled up in him the first time he’d felt the full weight of her approval.

The full weight of her wrath must be equally formidable. He would surely feel it, and Mr. Westbrook’s wrath as well, if they were to find out he’d put his hands on their daughter.

Maybe even worse than wrath would be their disappointment.
I’m not sorry this happened, Nick
, would be a poor consolation if his actions should lose him the good opinions he prized above all others

He flexed his fingers again to clear his thoughts.

Barclay dipped his head, acknowledging Mrs. Westbrook’s praise. “You’re very kind. I confess I feel a bit ridiculous, still, saying such grand words. I’d thought we’d be practicing with plain sentences.”

“Count yourself lucky, Lord Barclay.” Miss Westbrook was nearly sparkling with mischief and good humor when Nick turned to her. Her needle flashed busily on. “When Mr. Blackshear stood where you are now, Mama had him delivering one of Portia’s speeches from the courtroom scene.”

The baron, catching her mood, cocked a brow and grinned at Nick. “The quality of mercy is not strain’d?”

“Nothing of the kind.” Mrs. Westbrook ventured a few steps into the intervening room; Nick could hear the smart tap of her walking stick. “If I’d assigned him that well-worn speech he would have plowed through it without pausing to get the sense of the words, just as you would if I’d set you the one about Saint Crispin’s Day. I look for something with which the speaker must apply some energy to acquaint himself.”

“Besides, that ‘quality of mercy’ business would never
do in a real courtroom. No judge would stand for it. I did the bit where she stipulates that Shylock cannot take any blood along with his pound of flesh. That’s the sort of hairsplitting that warms a barrister’s heart.” Nick delivered this last line over his shoulder, with a smile meant for the Westbrook matriarch.

No, she didn’t know what he’d done. He’d been reasonably certain Miss Westbrook wouldn’t tell, and now he was sure of it—not because Mrs. Westbrook couldn’t have dissembled on the matter, but because she wouldn’t have. She would have confronted him straightaway.

“If I were a judge, I’d be more inclined to allow a lecture on mercy than to go along with that reasoning about the blood.” Miss Viola spoke up, eyeing Nick rather severely. “There’s no possible way to remove that much flesh without releasing some blood; therefore permission to take the blood is implicit in permission to cut out the flesh. It doesn’t need explicit mention in the contract.”

“Nevertheless, Portia succeeded in arguing the court round to her side.” Miss Westbrook spoke lightly, hurrying the conversation away from the topics of blood and the cutting out of flesh. “Just as a barrister must often argue people away from their first reading of events, and just as Lord Barclay, I’m sure, will persuade other members of the House to see things as he does.” She spoke with eyelids lowered, watching her fingers work away; only at the end did she glance up at the two men and smile.

The baron smiled back.

He liked her. As was to be expected. He’d met her at her most radiant, to be sure, all aglow with enjoyment at the ball, and to now observe her refined manners, set off by the unconventional family in which fate had placed her, seemed only to solidify the good opinion he’d
formed that night. His smile creased his face hard enough to make the scar-crossed dimple appear.

Good. This was a triumph. Very easily the baron’s response to meeting Miss Westbrook’s family might have been a visible disappointment at finding that the pretty girl he’d met at the Astleys’ rout was after all not eligible. But Nick had gambled on what he sensed of the man’s deep fair-mindedness, and the gamble appeared to be going his way.

That was, Miss Westbrook’s way. Which for his purposes was the same thing.

He took a half step back, twisting to address Mrs. Westbrook. “Should he go through it a second time with the buckets, or may he set those down?”

Sans buckets, Henry the Fifth urged his men to savagery again, and again, and another time after that, with attention paid to strategic pauses and the modulation of syllables. Nick kept his position, holding up the paper and occasionally offering his own suggestions.

She could see by his actions, couldn’t she, that his intentions toward her were purely friendly? In the days since the rout, he’d had time to reflect on his behavior, from the moment he’d confronted her with Lord John through that point when he’d had his fingers at the back of her neck. The most unflattering motivations suggested themselves. Jealousy. Covetousness. A desire over which he had no control. Surely advancing her interest with another man was the best way to prove to both of them that he didn’t have his own designs on her.

He rolled his shoulder, which had begun to tighten from his unvarying paper-holding stance, and took the opportunity to glance over to the sofa. Miss Westbrook immediately ducked her head and turned a look of fierce concentration upon her sewing.

Confound it. He couldn’t stand to have her so uneasy in his presence as to alternate between acting false and
frivolous, and refusing to meet his eyes. He needed a private interview. For all his virtuous resolve about seeing her only in company, he would have to find a moment during this visit to speak to her alone. A quick, frank acknowledgment of their mistake; an agreement on their resulting shared state of embarrassment, would surely be the way to put that event behind them, and set them on the path back to the unblushing friendship that would best suit them both.

S
HEER STUBBORN
pride kept her in her place on the sofa. The more she wanted to slink unnoticed along the wall until she reached the far open door, or lift a corner of the carpet and crawl underneath, the brighter she made her silly smile and the bolder were her flourishes with the needle and thread. Twice she pricked her finger and drew blood. Two
jots
of blood, to quote Portia’s chosen term. Mr. Blackshear had been a very good sport about delivering that speech, back in his studying days. Some barristers-in-training balked at playing a woman’s part, which was foolish of them as the role had been played by boys for years and years.

She peeked up to find that he’d finished flexing his shoulder and had returned his attention to Lord Barclay and his speech.

Had he always done these things? Moving his shoulder about, curling and stretching his fingers, cocking his head to one side or the other? Surely he had. But she noticed them only now, because each restless gesture woke some memory in her muscles and skin. And no sooner did her neck tingle at the flex of his fingers, or her own head want to tilt in answer to his, than she remembered Viola’s all-too-aware presence beside her, and willed herself to smother her response.

This was the price paid by a lady who kissed a man.
She’d eaten of the forbidden fruit. She could not un-know the things she knew now. She could only hope the strength of that awareness would diminish over time, as indeed she trusted the mortification would fade and leave her able to face Mr. Blackshear with tolerable poise once more.

Again Lord Barclay chewed and spat his way through “hard-favor’d rage” and “the wild and wasteful ocean.” He, too, was an excellent sport. Handsome as well. Not the handsomest man in the room, perhaps, but with his ready smile, his gracious manners, and a certain ineffable masculinity in his military bearing, he gave a lady much to admire.

She’d liked him already, from the supper and the one shared dance at Cranbourne House. He’d made effortless proper conversation during that dance, answering her questions on the house’s history and never presuming to flirt. His conduct today, deferring to Mama’s authority with such respect as surely few titled gentlemen would ever show an actress, could only improve what had already been her good opinion.

This was what she ought to be noticing: the merits of the one man present who had
Lord
in front of his name. She’d gone to the Astleys’ rout determined to forge as many connections as she could with distinguished people. Whatever her intervening mistakes might have been, here, a mere three days later, was a baron in her parlor, cordial and ready to be charmed. What sort of fool would she be if she let this acquaintance slip through her fingers because her thoughts were all entangled with a man who regretted having kissed her and was no suitable prospect besides?