Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03] (6 page)

“It comes of their theatrical blood, I’m sure.” Westbrook stood near the hearth, his elbow propped on the back of the armchair where his wife sat. “All of Mrs. Westbrook’s family played singing roles from a young age. Myself, I expected all through my youth to be thrown out of church for desecrating the hymns.”

“Some talent might come from the Westbrook side nevertheless.” Miss Westbrook stood at the tea table, her hands moving lightly from pot to cup to sugar tongs. “Sometimes these things lie low in one generation and come out again in the next. Was our grandmother musical? Our grandfather, perhaps? We hear so many stories
of our Stanley relations, and know almost nothing of the people with whom our father grew up.”

Nick shifted a bit in his place on the sofa. He’d visited here long enough to see more than one of these uncomfortable little dialogues. In general Mr. Westbrook’s relations were not spoken of at all, but every now and then Miss Westbrook must seize at some flimsy pretext to bring them into the conversation. Her father’s family had cut him off before she was even born, and still she seemed to cherish hopes of seeing them all acknowledge one another again.

“Neither of my parents was musical, to my recollection.” Westbrook accepted the cup his daughter carried to him, and took the seat on the hearth opposite his wife. “I suppose my sister Elizabeth played rather well. But I contend you all owe your talents to your mother.”

Sometimes he detected a hint of disappointment in Miss Westbrook’s aspect when one of these conversations failed to catch on. This time she merely arched her eyebrows and gave a philosophical tilt of the head before returning to the tea table.

The requested duet began, and a moment or so into it came Miss Westbrook with his tea. She crossed the carpet so smoothly that scarcely a ripple could be seen in his cup, when she lowered cup and saucer into his hand. She’d remembered how he liked the drink, pitch dark and unmarred by sugar, though it had been some time since his last visit and there were plenty of other barristers and law students who called here, too.
Thank you
, he mouthed, to not disturb the singers. She sent him a smile every bit as potent as the contents of his cup, and went back to busy herself with everyone else’s tea.

The song proved to be a maudlin one, all about some noble lady wasting away for the love of some noble man, and the sisters sang it, so far as he could tell, quite prettily. He smiled whenever one of them glanced his
way—or, more accurately, whenever Miss Rosalind did, Miss Beatrice being altogether engrossed by reading the music and playing—and idly followed their eldest sister’s tea-serving circuit of the room.

If she were
only
a girl too keenly aware of her beauty, too concerned with class and consequence, he would never think of her at all. Not that he did think of her so very much. Certainly not the way he had in the beginning. He had the continuing study of law to keep him occupied, and agreeable colleagues, and now and then an adventurous woman with whom to dally, when he was in a dallying mood.

That he ever did think of Kate Westbrook had everything to do with those occasional glimpses of kindness and substance beneath the frivolous, self-satisfied mask. Her protective concern for her sister, to take one example. The guileless gravity with which she’d addressed him at dinner. Her consideration in serving everyone’s tea exactly to taste. Even after three years, he sometimes wondered if he really knew her, and sometimes felt he knew her all too well.

Back and forth she went from the tea table to the sofa where Sebastian sat with a sketchbook on his knee, to the fireside armchairs where her parents held court, to a writing table on the other side of the room at which Miss Viola labored, no doubt on the same opus she’d been authoring since before he’d ever set foot in this house.

She walked as though on clouds, the eldest Westbrook daughter did, a beatific, almost secretive smile on her face. She’d seemed so little troubled by her failure to get her father talking about his family, too. Once or twice her glance connected with his and he felt her happiness like an electrical charge. What could have happened, in the half hour since dinner, to put her in this mood?

Enough of that. Here was Miss Rosalind looking his
way again, to see that the song was meeting with his approval, and
that
was the glance and
those
the spirits to which he ought to be paying attention, as indeed he ought to be paying attention to this dirge of a tune she and her sister were performing for his benefit.

And by the time the thing reached its fittingly dismal conclusion—the young lady succumbed to the ravages of her despair, leaving the young man to recognize, too late, the value of that devotion he’d so little regarded—he was ready with a good-natured jibe about the appetite for melancholy in modern young women. One or two teasing remarks more, concerning the feminine predilection for horrid novels, and Miss Rosalind settled on the end of the sofa nearest his chair, coaxed out of her diffidence into an earnest defense of the volume she presently had out from the lending library.

“I advise you to admit defeat now, Mr. Blackshear.” Miss Westbrook slipped in from his left to hand her sister a cup of milky tea. “You may have studied disputation for four or five years, but she’s had that many years at our family dinner table, and twice that many in the most contentious nursery you could ever hope to see.”

“More to the point, Mr. Blackshear doesn’t read novels.” Miss Rose lobbed this intelligence to her sister. “So he’s just said.” With her mind occupied in organizing arguments, and her face aglow at the sense of carrying her point, the girl bore no resemblance to that muted creature who’d all but faded into the dining room wallpaper. “Therefore he has no grounds at all upon which to criticize them.”

“Indeed he hasn’t. The nerve of him.” Miss Westbrook had pivoted round behind her sister and now threw him a look that stopped just short of a wink.

Without question something had happened to alter her spirits. He’d have to see whether he couldn’t prize it out of her, later on. For now he shot her an answering
smile and dove back into the argument, just for the pleasure of seeing how far he could debate a subject on which he was so utterly uninformed.

“W
ELL DONE
,” Kate said later, under her breath. She’d waited for this opportunity, watched Mr. Blackshear even while she’d drifted among siblings and parents, passing out cups and praising whatever creative endeavor engaged them; and when their caller had excused himself from a visibly revived Rose and gone to replenish his tea, she’d contrived to encounter him over the cream and sugar and cake. “I don’t mind admitting you made a much better job of that than I would have done. No, this smaller pot has your murky devil’s brew. The other is merely tea, such as refined people prefer.”

“Refined people don’t know what they’re missing.” Of all Father’s young protégés, none sparred so readily, or with such good cheer, as Mr. Blackshear. He leaned in a bit, holding out his cup, and lowered his own voice. “You give me too much credit, though. I only followed your own instructions, asking her to sing and then engaging her in conversation.”

“No, you did better.” She refilled his cup and set down the pot. A little to the left was the bay window that overlooked Gower Street; she could draw him that way and then they’d have the piano between themselves and the rest of the room, and they wouldn’t need to keep their voices quite so low. “You engaged her in argument. You didn’t simply make her feel attended to, as I would have had you do. You made her feel clever and capable.”

“She
is
clever and capable, and a seasoned disputer, as you said.” He followed her to the window and took up a place on her right. “It’s nothing to do with me.”

“For Heaven’s sake, take the compliment, Mr. Blackshear. If there’s one thing I can’t abide it’s false modesty.”

“Indeed.” He eyed her sideways, one brow arching as he lifted his cup. “I hadn’t noticed you to have much use for modesty of any kind.”

So he was in that sort of mood, was he? Good. She could keep up with all the plaguing he cared to throw her way. “Ah, I take your meaning.” She shaped all her features into an exaggerated show of comprehension. “You think me vain of my looks.”

“No, Miss Westbrook.
Think
suggests an element of doubt. And that particular doubt, in my acquaintance with you, was long since done away with.” He took another swallow of that disgusting double-strength tea he favored, this time angling to watch her over the rim of his cup. His eyes, dark and glossy as a dandy’s polished boots, brimmed with mischief.

He was a decidedly handsome man. He always had been. His face had the excellent foundation of a strong chin, straight nose, and pronounced cheekbones, and his hair, though he unfortunately chose to wear it quite short, presumably to forego a cap under his barrister wig, was of an agreeable color. Under sunlight, and given a bit of length, the shade might be reminiscent of a much-handled guinea.

All that, however, was neither here nor there. Looks had never been the issue between them, unless you counted the bounty of her own looks that had justified setting her marital sights high.

“I must say, you gentlemen are very vexing in your expectations of us.” A small toss of her head would not go amiss here, so she added it. “A man wants a lady to be beautiful, but to drift about in ignorance of the fact until the day he can come along and enlighten her. And all the while, a well-looking lady is subjected to such
incessant attentions and courtesies from the lot of you as can leave her in no doubt of her appeal.”

“
Subjected
, to be sure. I can see it must be excessively trying, to be constantly the recipient of flattering notice from men.” He’d been shy of arguing with her, back in those days when he’d thought to court her, and in the succeeding period when mortification had kept him from speaking much to her at all. His society was infinitely more enjoyable now.

“The trying part is the inconsistency, the inherent contradiction in what gentlemen would like us to be. There’s simply no such thing as a beautiful woman who’s unaware of her beauty, unless she’s monumentally oblivious. More likely she’s feigning her ignorance in order to snare a credulous man in a web woven out of his own illogical expectations.”

He grinned down at her from his superior height, cup arrested halfway to his mouth, eyes practically sparking with mirth. “You were on your way to a first-rate argument, up until that last bit.” Oh, he was about to become pedantic. She’d seen this manner before. “Webs don’t snare things, I’m afraid.
Snare
refers to a tightening action like that of a hangman’s noose. Something caught in a web just sticks there. It may strike you as a fine distinction, but the last thing you want is to have a juror distracted by that detail when you’re trying to drive your case home.”

“Excellent advice. I’ll be sure to remember it if I ever find myself arguing in a courtroom.” She turned to look out the window, that no one in the room might glance over to find them facing one another with Mr. Blackshear smiling so. Mama and Papa, she knew, had never quite let go the hope that her heart might turn toward him, though the moment for that hope had long ago come and gone, even before there’d been any blot on his family name.

He turned, too, smoothly as though she’d given him a cue and he’d picked it up. In the window’s many panes she could see their faint reflections. His eyes stayed on her and his head tilted to a quizzical angle. “What’s happened to put you in such a fine contentious mood?” he said. “You were grave and solemn at dinner, and now you’re pert and pleased as if you had a set of Almack’s vouchers in your pocket.”

All the triumph of Lady Harringdon’s note went rippling through her again, not that it had subsided so very much in the minutes since she’d read those elegant words. “No vouchers quite yet.” She hadn’t meant to tell anyone, but his guess was so close to the truth, and her secret so deserving of congratulation, that to share the news seemed only right. “However, I received an equally gratifying item in the late post: an invitation to call on a grand lady in her Mayfair home.”

“Did you, now?” He made no attempt to hide the fact that he was impressed. He might needle her as mercilessly as Viola on the subject of her preoccupation with society, but he understood ambition and he knew how to respect an unlikely goal achieved. “Then I don’t suppose you’ll have any need of my Lord Barclay after all. And here I was prepared to do what I could to flush him into your snare, or your web. But who is this grand lady, and how have you come to her notice?”

She truly hadn’t meant to tell this part, but perhaps she could approach it as practice for when she must tell Papa and the others. She clasped her hands behind her back and lifted her chin. “The lady is my aunt, as it happens, and I expect she’s been aware of my existence for years.”

He twisted sharply left, frowning. “A Westbrook aunt?” Three words were enough to make his disapproval plain. You would think Mr. Blackshear of all people would have a bit of understanding for a family
who’d chosen to cast out a brother upon his marriage. Of course she couldn’t make any remark to that effect.

“A Westbrook aunt, indeed. Given that none of my Stanley aunts keeps a house in Mayfair, I should think that would be obvious.” Her attempt at sauciness fell flat: the pique in her voice stood out like sharp notes on a wrongly tuned piano.

Not that he seemed to notice. “Why would a Westbrook aunt invite you to call, when there’s been no intercourse between those families and yours since before you were born?”

“We haven’t been entirely without communication.” She stared out at the nearest streetlamp, to avoid his interrogating gaze.

“She’s written to you before? Is your father aware of this?” He was so disagreeable all of a sudden; so peremptory and lawyer-like, and she could imagine all too well what would be his response if she admitted that the writing had been all on her side.

“With respect, Mr. Blackshear, those details are no concern of yours.” She would not look at him. Not even at his reflection in the window. “I wouldn’t have told you if I’d known you’d be so officious. You’re not my elder brother, recall.”