Elisabeth Fairchild (6 page)

Patience hung back, unwilling to intrude, for Lady Wilmington gazed upon the two with something akin to adoration.

“Ah, Richard.” She held out a graceful hand. “You are just the gentleman to tell Philip . . .” Her gaze strayed over Richard’s shoulder. Her brows rose elegantly as she spotted Patience. “. . . about the young woman in red.”

Patience blushed.

Pip grabbed at Richard’s arm, sending the cockatoo scrabbling for higher purchase. “You know her?”

“I do,” Richard said quietly.

Patience dawdled on the edge of the group, now gossiping, who had been observing Pip’s games.

The lad handed over the turban now heavy with coin.

“Mr. Trumps!” Pip called.

Pip put a hand up for the bird, who stepped onto his finger, and as quickly onto the lad’s shoulder.

“How did we do?” Pip asked.

“Well enough,” the lad allowed.

“Pieces of eight, pieces of eight.” The bird cackled.

Lady Wilmington gave Richard’s arm a familiar squeeze, and leaned her head back so that not only did her throat show to advantage, but she might cast a coy glance in Patience’s direction. “And does the clever girl captivate your heart as much as Philip claims she captures his?”

She had captured Pip’s heart? Had he really said so? Patience could not hear properly above the applause for the singing Howell sisters, who stepped to the edge of the performance balcony and curtsied to the audience.

Richard said something she could not make out at all. His posture seemed more rigid than usual.

Pip laughed and flung his blindfold at him, then ruffled the tight curls of the lad who went about collecting the backgammon boards and game pieces.

“Completely infatuated,” she heard Pip say, and inched closer. “Head over heels.”

Who was infatuated? Did Pip mean his fiancée?

Then Pip insisted, “Tell me her name. I simply must meet any young woman clever enough to best me.”

Patience wanted to laugh. A sense of elation welled up within her. She wished she were a cockatoo, that she might sit upon Pip’s shoulder and make noises in his ear and rub her beak against his cheek.

Richard was not so pleased. “I would do her better service in warning her away from you, who are soon to be married.”

Dear Richard, ever protective, even when she had no wish for protection.

Lady Wilmington laughed, eyes narrowing to the shape of crescent moons. Though she could not be certain, Patience thought the lovely young woman looked her way and winked.

“Unfair, Dickey-boy.” Pip chuckled as he swung the bag of coins like a jingling pendulum. “I am not yet leg-shackled.”

Richard frowned. “Would you throw over your betrothed for a complete stranger?”

Patience frowned. That was unfair. She was not a complete stranger.

“Would you call off the wedding?” Richard persisted. “Renege on your promise? Rescind one of the most sensible decisions you have made in a long time?”

“Is it sensible?” Pip muttered to the cockatoo. “If I am so easily distracted from it? I begin to wonder.”

Richard tilted his head, lips pressed together, and shot a glance at Patience. He did not look at all happy with Pip—with Pip’s responses.

And Patience? How did she feel about Pip’s sudden infatuation? Was it not what she had dreamed of? Wished for? Yes. No denying it, but—there was always a
but
—Patience knew how changeable Pip’s mind was. He blew like the wind, always in a new direction.

She reveled in the possibilities his words opened up for her; she even dared to hope her dreams might yet come true, but she had presence of mind enough to shake her head at Richard, hoping he would understand. She did not want him to reveal her as the woman in red. She did not want to read disappointment in Pip’s eyes in realizing his mystery woman was no mystery at all, only paltry Patience, his childhood playmate.

And yet neither did she wish these two dear friends of hers to continue brangling. “Richard tells me I shall like your betrothed. Will I, Pip?”

Pip whirled in a flash of peacock-colored tails.

He stared at Patience for an instant in openmouthed curiosity, and then in dawning recognition, the light in his eyes, the brilliance of his smile thrilling her to the bone.

“Patience!” he cried, grasping her hands and whirled her about in a little dance, so that the cockatoo on his shoulder spread wing and arched high its crest with a disgruntled squawk. “Is it our Patience you have brought me, Dickey? And a Patience all grown-up, just as you did say.”

“So you do remember me?”

“Remember you?” Pip stopped his jig and held her at arm’s length, his gaze raking over her, head to toe. “Look at you, my dear. How could I forget? Surely you must know I will never forget. Do you comprehend how much I have been longing to see you?”

Flattered, breathless, blushing, Patience scolded him lightly: “Not enough to come and visit me, it would seem, old friend.”

Pip had never been one to suffer feelings of guilt. “Oh, but I have been meaning to. Tell her, Dickey-lad. Have you not told our dear Patience how many a time we have discussed coming to see her?”

Richard stood quietly watching, his expression neutral. “Many a time,” he agreed.

Beside him, Lady Wilmington eyed them with guarded curiosity, amusement playing about her lips.

“You must tell me all about your wedding plans,” Patience coaxed. “When shall I meet your fiancée? Will she be here tonight?”

“Sophie Defoe does not come to Vauxhall.” He looked at her as if she suggested the ridiculous.

“Ever?”

“No.” His upper lip quirked. “Did you not know, my dear Patience? Vauxhall is not an altogether proper place for an unmarried young lady to be seen. Certainly not in her first Season.”

“As I am?”

He waggled his brows mischievously. “Precisely.”

“Am I ruined, then?”

“Are you?” he asked with genuine curiosity. “You must tell me.”

He was teasing her, as he always had.

“You are not at all nice to question it.”

“And in so saying would you label yourself ‘not at all nice’ as well?”

“You mean to confuse me. To play games.”

He chuckled. “Always.”

“I have no patience for it. Never did.”

“Ah, but Patience itself is a game, is it not? So you cannot ever completely extricate yourself from play, now, can you?”

“That’s different.”

“Feminine logic.”

“Masculine posturing.”

He laughed. “Do you know, Patience, you are the only female of my acquaintance I never tire of conversing with?”

She blushed, thrilled, and looked away, saying, “You mean to flatter me, as you make a practice of flattering every female you encounter.”

“I am quite serious in my flattery.”

“Then I will politely thank you, and question such a remark in but one way.”

“Yes?”

“Does this mean you tire easily of your fiancée’s conversation? Or does she conveniently slip your mind when you flirt with other women?”

“Sophie’s conversation? Is completely unobjectionable.” He winked at her, and then at Lady Wilmington. “And thus, very tedious.”

“And yet you would marry her?”

He nodded. “Must do. No other course open to me.”

“And so he will tell you, again and again if you are not careful, my dear,” Lady Wilmington warned her.

“I do not understand,” Patience said.

“Nor should you,” Pip said, with a wink for Lady Wilmington, who chortled behind the cover of her fan. So musical the sound of her amusement.

Deliciously circuitous, Patience found their conversation. She felt they might go on for hours thus, without ever tiring, without ever revealing the truths that dangled tantalizingly from such veiled remarks—as though two conversations went on at once, neither of them very forthcoming.

Their interaction intrigued her, set her pulse to racing.

Pip watched her with a most compelling intensity as he spoke, a vibrant, bright-eyed focus that made her feel clever and witty, daring and pretty. It never occurred to her that he meant to be less than forthcoming when he tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow, saying, “My dear Patience, I would much rather hear about you than rattle on about myself.”

Chapter Six

Patience was flattered, pleased. Her heart skipped a beat.

Here was the magic she had been looking for, the attention she craved.

“Come!” Pip suggested. “While Mr. Trumps clears away the games we shall go and observe Madame Saqui.” As if in afterthought he threw the question over his shoulder. “Do you come with us, Lady Wilmington?”

“How kind you are to ask,” she responded with something akin to sarcasm, tipping her head coquettishly. Then she spread her fan and wafted it before her face in a languid manner. “But I fear not. Walking a fine line has never really interested me.”

“It is one of the reasons I cherish your company,” Pip said, and bowed over the hand she extended.

“So nice to be appreciated,” she said, and, turning, dipped a curtsy to Richard.
“Au revoir,”
she murmured, and with a smile for Patience, took her leave.

“And now you must tell me everything, Patience.” Pip gave her hand a pat.

“Everything?” She laughed, the laughter as breathless and bubbly as she felt. “That would prove far too tedious.”

Pip laughed, his laughter far deeper than she remembered—a sound that stirred a flock of butterflies in her heart and stomach. How handsome Pip was in the lamplight when he laughed, curls hazed in a golden sheen, cheek gilded, eyes agleam. He had always been so in her imaginings—her golden darling.

“Everything interesting,” he amended, as he advised her not to walk too fast, for Pippet did not care to be jostled.

Patience had heard the bird complain and so she slowed her step, and, surprised to find Richard did not go with them, turned and asked, “Are you coming?”

Richard looked up from the chessmen he and the lad stashed neatly into a carrying case. “Go ahead. I will catch up.”

“Dickey-boy has seen the tightrope walker many times,” Pip explained.

Patience felt a pang that Richard could so easily abandon her, but, caught up in the gleam of Pip’s eyes, she soon forgot her disappointment.

“You are much taller than when last we met,” she said.

“Indeed.” He grinned mischievously, his gaze darting to the neckline of her dress. “We have both of us grown to advantage.”

She blushed, secretly proud he should notice, and yet she knew it was not at all gentlemanly of him to suggest such a thing. She wondered if perhaps her décolletage was a trifle too low.

Ahead of them the lamplight doubled around a small pavilion, and in the trees above, a rope stretched across an open space, a thin dark line in the golden glow.

A woman seriously intended to walk across such a slender thing? It seemed an impossible feat.

“How many hearts have you broken?” Pip asked, slowing.

“What?” Patience turned her thoughts from broken bones to broken hearts. “Me? None.”

“I cannot believe it,” he teased. “No offers?”

“Offers. Yes. Two,” she said proudly, and as if to accentuate her pleasure in announcing as much, a blue rocket soared into the sky above their heads with a high shriek and a shower of blue sparks.

The cockatoo spread its wings and squawked at the sky.

Pip’s brows arched. “Then you lie to say you break no hearts.”

“Hearts were not engaged,” Patience assured him, distracted by the shower of blue sparks from which a woman in a filmy costume emerged, yellow parasol in hand. Contradicting gravity and science, she stepped into the air between the trees, a bower of leaves and starlit sky her backdrop.

“How can you be sure?”

Patience tore her gaze from the spectacle. “Of what?”

“How did you know hearts were not engaged?”

How fascinated he seemed to be in her answer, for Pip did not so much as glance in the tightrope walker’s direction. His eyes, reflecting a fresh shower of blue light, gazed fixedly at her.

Unused to such focus, Patience found it most gratifying. It fired within her the sense that she was special, her perspective important, valued.

How had she known? No one had asked her such a question before. Not her father, nor her mother. Neither of her suitors had questioned the matter. She had never really posed the question to herself, and yet here stood Pip, insisting she do so rather than enjoy Madame Saqui’s swaying progress.

“They rushed to ask for my hand,” she explained. “Before they had taken time to know me. And . . .” She hesitated. Her attention wavered. She could not resist turning her eyes again to the spectacle above.

“And?” he prodded.

How brave the young woman was, she thought. How confident. She grew dizzy looking up at her. How could a woman calmly step onto so flimsy a thread?

“Oh, one of them seemed more interested in impressing Father than in impressing me, and spoke of me, in my presence, in the third person, as if I were not there. I could not think why I should love him.”

Madame Saqui’s parasol swayed. The crowd below her perch gasped their concern.

“What a fool!” Pip said.

He did not mean the tightrope walker. When Patience turned to face him again as the woman safely reached the platform at the end of her rope, he watched her, not the performance.

“And the other fellow? How did he reveal his true feelings?”

His persistence was flattering—indeed, invigorating. She smiled and tried to calm her pulse, to subdue the rise of sheer joy that left her feeling as if, like Madam Saqui, she walked on air.

“Mmm.” She had to think back. It seemed so long ago, and she had left it completely behind her. “I suppose it was because he talked of nothing but land and funds and inheritances, and how much his mother was sure to like me. Most disconcerting. I felt always as if she stood between us—as if he regarded me through her eyes rather than his own. I think both of these gentlemen were more in love with the idea of marriage than with me.”

Madame Saqui curtsied from her platform, and as the crowd applauded she ran nimbly across her wire once again.

Pip studied Patience, brows knitted, as she laughed and gasped and applauded.

“How wonderful!” she said.

“Wonderful, indeed, to see you laugh again. How long has it been since we have seen one another?”

“Four years, seven months,” she said, surprised he must ask, and yet unwilling to reveal her disappointment. She concentrated on Madame Saqui. “I wonder how long it takes to learn such a thing. She does not look in the least afraid, does she?”

From the corner of her eye she watched him, saw him flash the heart-stopping smile. He said with a seductive note of mischief in his voice, “Are you not at all afraid of being labeled a fusty old maid?”

She laughed. “At seventeen? I think not.”

He laughed as well, teasing her, as he had always teased her. “And was not your heart engaged even a little, Patience?”

“No,” she admitted. “I liked them both well enough, and was flattered they should offer for me, but in truth I am no better versed in love than they.”

“And did you not think you might grow to love either of them?” He nudged her in the ribs, such contact quite thrilling, if not at all appropriate for a young lady. Here was Pip as she remembered him. Pip the tease. Pip the creature of insatiable curiosity. Her darling Pip. The warmth of his gaze, his touch, his voice, fired within her an unexpected glow, an unexpected intensity of need that he should smile at her again, that he should approve of her, perhaps grow to love her.

How interested in her every word he seemed. How exhilarating his attention.

“Love them?” She shook her head. “Impossible.”

The cockatoo screeched in his ear.

He calmed the bird, his hands gentle and sure. Patience wondered what it would feel like to be stroked so, to be addressed so affectionately, despite the words chosen.

I love you
, she wanted to screech in his ear.

“I mean to give you back to the one-legged pirate from whom I bought you if you do not behave in a more mannerly fashion,” he promised the cockatoo, who bobbed its head and let loose a piercing whistle.

“Your heart has never been touched?” he asked.

He stole Patience’s away with such a question, with his refusal to be distracted from their intimate topic. She drew a deep breath. Their conversation teetered far more dangerously than Madame Saqui had. She could not respond unequivocally in the negative. Her heart had been touched, after all, by him. Since they were children she had loved him, yearned for him, dreamed of him. She longed to tell him as much, here in the moonlight where a woman had bravely walked a fine line among the stars, but she hesitated, unsure of herself, of him, swaying on the tightrope of her feelings.

She thought of Sophie Defoe.

The air smelled of fizzled gunpowder.

When she responded, her voice, too thin, tripped in her throat. “My heart was touched. Once. Long ago. But tell me what it is like to be truly in love, Pip. And loved enough that you would ask for a young woman’s hand. I must learn from your example.”