Elizabeth Mansfield (5 page)

He held up a gloved hand. “Were they not? I swear I never noticed.”

A laugh hiccoughed out of her. “You lie, my lord, but like a gentleman.”

“What makes you think I lie?”

“Because you say you didn’t notice the legs were bare but noticed they were pretty.”

“I’m a gentleman, my dear, but also a man. As a gentleman, I do not take notice of ladies’ undergarments ... or the lack of them. But as a man, how can I be expected not to notice such pretty legs as yours?”

She blushed. “Then, as a lady, I hope you will permit me to thank you for your gentlemanly discretion and to ignore the... the rest.”

“Done,” he said, and offered his hand.

She took it. “Thank you.” She smiled up at him timidly for a moment before removing her hand and picking up the reins. “And now I think it time we went our separate ways. You are becoming soaked.”

“And so are you. May I not see you home?”

“No, thank you, my lord,” she said, turning her mount about and starting off at a gallop. “You’ve seen quite enough of me for one day.”

6

Lord Smallwood peered over the top of his newspaper with a frown of disapproval. His daughter, who was sitting opposite him at the breakfast table nonchalantly buttering a hot raisin muffin, was, as usual, raising his hackles. Everything about her this morning, from her posture to her dress, was not what he liked. Although Lord Smallwood truly adored his daughter, he didn’t quite approve of her. Widowed when the girl was only thirteen, he was responsible for her upbringing, but he’d often secretly admitted to himself that it was
she
who’d raised
him.

Smallwood was a small-boned, short, soft-spoken man of sixty-two years who’d won the respect of his peers merely by the dignity of his bearing. He had fine features, a head of white hair, a retiring nature that made him avoid confrontation, and a somewhat pedantic, precise habit of mind. Yet his daughter, the twenty-one-year old beauty Miss Cleo Smallwood, had inherited none of his ways. That was the trouble.

He shook his head at her hopelessly. She was casually leaning one elbow on the table as she attended her buttering.
That girl,
he said to himself,
has no sense of decorum.
Not only was her posture rude and her hair unkempt, but her clothes were inappropriate. There she sat, brazenly swathed in a frilly morning robe meant only for the bedroom, with, undoubtedly, nothing underneath but her nightclothes. “Isn’t it time you were dressed?” he asked plaintively.

“I’m in no hurry,” the girl responded without a trace of embarrassment. “I don’t expect my caller until two this afternoon.”

“Hummmph” was her father’s only comment as he barricaded himself behind the
Times.
He knew the identity of his daughter’s “caller,” and he had no intention of entering into another argument over the fellow. If Cleo wanted to attach herself to a country bumpkin, it was her own affair. He was not the sort of father to lay down the law. And even if he were, it would do him no good. Cleo had a very decided mind of her own.

He rattled the newspaper, trying to concentrate on the news of the opening of a new bridge across the Thames, which was named Waterloo in honor of Wellington’s triumph. But he could not concentrate on it; thoughts of his obstinate daughter kept intruding themselves on his consciousness. The girl was a charmer, that much was true. Any gentleman of the ton would agree. Tall and lithe, she had her mother’s laughing eyes, a taunting smile, dimples that would come and go at unexpected times and a head of short, curly hair that set her apart from all the other girls with their loose curls or thick chignons. Her hand had been sought by at least three of the most desirable men in society, one a duke. Several others with lesser qualifications would have liked to ask, but they knew they would be refused. Why this most desirable creature should show a preference for the undistinguished newcomer Sir Tristram Enders was more than her father could see. “I don’t understand you, Cleo,” he muttered, unable to prevent himself. “Your mother, if she were alive to say it, would call you a fool.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” Cleo declared firmly. “Mama understood a woman’s nature. She knew what love is.”

Lord Smallwood sighed. “Yes, she did, bless her soul. She would have known as well as I that what you feel is mere puppy love.”

Cleo, completely unperturbed, continued to smooth the butter on her muffin. “If it is mere puppy love, my dear,” she said complacently, “then it will fade in time. So why don’t we just wait and see?”

“But if you go ahead and wed him and
then
learn it was only puppy love, it will be too late.”

“I’m not marrying the fellow tomorrow, you know,” his daughter laughed. “Besides, he hasn’t asked me yet.”

“But he will,” Lord Smallwood muttered. “They all do, as soon as you give them the least encouragement.”

Cleo smiled with only her green eyes, like a cat in the cream. “Yes, they do, don’t they?”

Lord Smallwood was accustomed to her immodesty and took no note of it. “If you must be infatuated with someone, why did you choose Enders? The fellow is nothing more than a baron. You could have a duke for the asking.”

Cleo nibbled at the edge of her well-buttered muffin. “The duke did not have Tris’s charm. Nor his dimple. Nor his thick black hair. Nor his interesting blue eyes that show everything he feels. Nor his—”

“Enough!” Lord Smallwood retreated behind his paper. “Dimples, indeed. A good reason
that
is for choosing a mate.”

“It’s as good as any other,” Cleo murmured absently, her mind already dwelling on the ride through the park she would soon be taking in Tris’s ancient phaeton. Her father, taking another glance at her from above his newspaper, noted that she’d already left her muffin discarded and forgotten. After liberally covering it with butter, she was leaving it uneaten. It was typical of her. She would cover a vegetable with hollandaise or a cutlet with sauce and then push it aside after only a bite. He would never understand her.

But Cleo, if she’d been asked, would have explained that she could not keep her mind on food when life was so full of more interesting experiences. Who cared about something so mundane as breakfast? It was a lovely day— warm and pleasant, with a light wind from the south—and she would be spending it with the only suitor who’d ever truly captured her heart. Tristram Enders. Even the name was lovely. She smiled to herself in joyful anticipation.

Today, she was certain, would be the day he offered for her.

As her father watched her abstracted face, trying to read her thoughts, she sat staring with unseeing eyes at the discarded muffin on her plate.
For this special day,
she was thinking,
I
must choose my costume carefully.
After long and serious consideration, she decided on her new rose-and-gold walking dress; it had a full skirt that would flutter enticingly in the breeze. With her wide-brimmed straw bonnet, yellow slippers and pale yellow gloves, she’d be top-of-the-trees. And she’d carry her ruffled parasol. From beneath it, she would gaze at Tris coquettishly from the corner of her eyes, eyes that many men had told her were spellbinding. Tris would not be able to resist. The circumstances were ideal. He would surely declare himself this afternoon. She could hardly wait.

Her father, of course, could not read her thoughts. But the cat-in-the-cream look in her green eyes told him as much as he wanted to know.
Poor Tris Enders,
he thought with a mixture of alarm and amusement,
your goose is cooked.

7

Later that afternoon, when Cleo returned from that eagerly anticipated ride and strode in, alone, to the drawing room, her red-and-gold skirts swished and her mouth was tight with anger. Her father deduced at once that things had not gone as planned. “Aha,” he chortled, looking up from the chessboard on which he was engaged in playing a game against himself, “so the fellow did not come up to snuff after all, did he?”

“No, he did not,” Cleo said, handing her parasol to the butler who’d hurried into the room behind her.

“Good for him. Perhaps he’s not such a bumpkin as I thought.”

“Of course he’s not a bumpkin,” she said in disgust, dismissing the butler with a wave of her hand and dropping down upon the sofa. “But I can’t imagine what’s tying his tongue.”

“Good sense, perhaps,” her father ventured mildly.

She threw him a scornful look but let the quip pass. Instead, she began to review the details of the afternoon in her mind. But she could think of nothing that had gone awry. It was a mystery. She knew the fellow cared for her; she’d had too many admirers in the past not to know the symptoms. But something had kept him from making an offer. Perhaps there was a simple detail... some small thing that had gone askew... that would explain his default. “Is there something wrong with how I look?” she asked, rising and posing for her father. “Is my hat brim too wide? My lash-blacking smudged? My gown too gaudy?”

“You are perfect,” Lord Smallwood assured her. “Absolutely lovely.”

“That’s what I thought. Then where can I have gone amiss?”

“Perhaps you overwhelmed the fellow. He’s just a country bumpkin, after all.”

“I wish you’d stop calling him that, Papa. He’s as self-confident as any London native. And he was not the least shy during our ride. He joked and teased and was in every way perfectly comfortable with me.”

“Then I see no reason for you to be in such a taking.” He returned his attention to the chessboard and moved a pawn. “He probably merely decided to make his offer at another time and place,” he added absently.

Cleo blinked at her father in sudden apprehension.
“Yes,”
she breathed, “I think you may be right! When he set me down, he did ask if I would be at home tonight. I was tempted to tell the idiot my evenings were engaged for the rest of the month, but...”

“But—?” her father asked, looking round at her curiously.

She smiled ruefully. “But his eyes looked so hopeful, I couldn’t hurt him. I told him to call at nine.” She sank back against the sofa cushions, her mood having swung from irritation to eager anticipation. “Do you suppose he plans to do it
tonight?”

Lord Smallwood did not look up from his game. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

But she didn’t need her father’s agreement. “Of
course
he does. How foolish of me not to have seen it! A shabby old phaeton in broad daylight would not seem a romantic setting to a man like Tris. He means to ask me tonight! Here in a proper drawing room. In candlelight!”

Her father turned about on his chair. “But you don’t intend to accept him, do you?” he asked, suddenly worried. “You said this morning that you would wait and see.

“That was this morning. Now I’m absolutely certain of my feelings. I love him, Papa. I truly do. When he asks me, I shall leap into his arms.”

“Good God!” Lord Smallwood winced and put a hand to his forehead in a gesture of helplessness.

Cleo saw it, and her smile faded. She knew she often behaved with callous selfishness, but she truly loved her father. She hated to see him so upset. Rising again from the sofa, she crossed the room and propped herself on the arm of his chair. “Don’t look so alarmed, Papa,” she said gently. “You’ll learn to love him, just as I did.” She leaned down, brushed back a wisp of her father’s white hair and kissed his forehead. “He’s not as shallow and foolish as my usual swains, you know. He cares a great deal about politics and the state of the world. He spoke to me about the plight of the poor Derbyshire workers, just as you did. He’s as sympathetic to their riots as you are. And you mustn’t think he’s a mere country squire. He has a lovely, large estate in Derbyshire and is delightfully plump in the pocket even though he does drive about in that aged phaeton. After we’re wed, you shall spend months at a time in the country with us and dandle your grandchildren on your knee.”

“Grandchildren!” Lord Smallwood shuddered. She was moving much too fast for him.

“Yes, grandchildren. You’ll come to bless this day, really you will!” With that, she took hold of his chin and made him look up at her. “You
will
make yourself scarce tonight, after he comes, won’t you, dearest Papa? To give us some time alone?”

The poor old fellow was, as always, putty in her hands. “You are a shocking minx,” he muttered in a last-ditch struggle. “Do you think I can permit you to visit with a man without chaperonage?”

“Don’t be so medieval. We’ve a houseful of servants at my beck and call should I need them. And I assure you, I won’t need them. Tris is every inch the gentleman.”

The white-haired man sighed in surrender. “Very well. I’ll spend the evening at my club.”

She threw her arms about him and planted another kiss on the top of his head. Then she ran to the door. “I think I’ll wear the ivory satin tonight,” she said over her shoulder as she flew down the hall. “It has a shocking décolletage. I was saving it for the Harrington’s ball, but tonight is more important. Yes, the ivory satin. It will drive him wild!”

A few hours later, when Tris was admitted to the candle-lit drawing room, he was indeed driven wild by the sight of her in the ivory satin. He actually gaped when he caught his first glimpse of her. She was standing before the fireplace, her slim body profiled in the firelight, her elbow resting on the mantel and her head turned toward him over her shoulder, her chin high. The firelight gave the room, her hair, the side of her face and the curves of her breast a golden glow. “You are a
vision,”
he whispered in a kind of breathless agony. “I never want to take my eyes from you.”