Enchanted Rendezvous: A Tangled Hearts Romance (7 page)

“You are doing very well. But what?”

“Nothing, except that he knows that he is attractive to females.” Cecily thought of James Montwor
thy as she added, “I am persuaded that such men spend so much time thinking of themselves that they forget about others.”

Cecily did not add that she suspected Mary of having formed a tendre for Dickinson. The red-haired abigail had worn a new ribbon on her cap each day that week and had begun to hum Celtic love songs.

“Ah, well, they do say that love makes the world go round,” Lady Marcham remarked vaguely.

“What is this about love?”

The new voice was slightly husky and very breathless, and Cecily saw that a tall young woman was standing in the doorway. Her walking-out dress of cream-colored crepe banded with lace was all the mode, but it also emphasized her angular form and thin arms. A poke bonnet of basket willow hid hair that was so fair as to appear white.

Large hazel eyes as timorous as a field mouse’s blinked hopefully as she continued, “Grigg said that you were in the stillroom, Lady Marcham. He was going to announce me, but then he was called away to the kitchen—was I too forward? Perhaps I should have waited.”

“Of course you should not have waited. You know that you are always welcome here.” Lady Marcham glided forward to kiss the young woman’s pale cheek. “Cecily, this is Delinda Howard.”

After her meeting with the colonel Cecily had assumed that any child of his would have to be a griffin. Yet there was no hardness in Delinda, who smiled shyly and said in her breathless way, “I am so glad to meet you, Miss Vervain. You are a heroine—how exciting to be rescued in such a way, and by an unknown rider, too.”

“Did Colonel Howard tell you that I was heroic?”

Cecily could not keep the wry note from her voice, and Delinda looked flustered.

“Oh, no. That is to say, Papa does not confide in me—I cannot blame him, for I am such a goose-cap. Mr. Montworthy told me of your adventure.”

A faint blush stained Delinda’s cheeks. Her eyes sparkled, and she smiled. For an instant the girl looked almost pretty. Then she ducked her head and murmured, “I fear I have taken too much of your time. I must go now.”

“Stay and lunch with us,” Lady Marcham invited kindly.

“Oh, I cannot. I was merely in the neighborhood and wished to make Miss Vervain’s acquaintance. I could not possibly—oh!”

Cecily followed the direction of Delinda’s gaze and saw that the dancing crystals in the window framed a horseman who was cantering toward the house. “It is Mr. Montworthy,” the colonel’s daughter breathed.

His appearance was hardly a surprise. Since Cecily’s arrival, Montworthy had been a frequent visitor at Marcham Place. During those visits he ogled Cecily, brought her bouquets and fruit from his father’s gardens, and paid her many compliments. Irked by the Corinthian’s assumption that she lived for his attentions, Cecily had done her best to discourage him, but nothing she said even dented the young man’s good opinion of himself.

Lady Marcham looked resigned. “Let us receive James in the cowslip room,” she said. “Ring for Grigg, Cecily. And, Delinda, stay at least to take some refreshment.”

“I—that is, I did not plan—” The colonel’s daughter broke off, and Cecily saw that her bosom was rising and falling at an alarming rate.

“Are you feeling unwell?” she asked, anxiously.

Delinda shook her head and hurried to follow Lady Marcham out of the stillroom. She said not another word until they had reached the cowslip room, but as Montworthy strode in, she paled visibly.

The Corinthian did not notice Delinda’s agitation. After bowing over Lady Marcham’s hand and greeting Delinda, he crossed the room to the window where Cecily stood and leveled a speaking look at her. “I’ve waited for this hour,” he began.

“What hour is that?”

Lord Brandon had sauntered into the cowslip room, and as usual, his appearance was worth noting. He had changed yet again and now sported doeskin breeches and glossy Hessians, with an embroidered yellow waistcoat.

Contemptuously Montworthy looked down his handsome nose. “Been taking a nap, Brandon?”

“Wish I was,” the duke’s son replied. “It’s been an exhaustin’ mornin’. My fool of a groom said that my horse needed exercisin’, so I took Ebony through his paces.”

Try as she would, Cecily could not equate the skilled rider she had seen earlier with the dandy before her. “We saw you galloping through the meadow,” she began.

Hooded eyes turned sleepily toward her. “The brute ran off with me,” his lordship complained. “I don’t feel at all the thing, ’pon my honor, I don’t. I was dragged over hill and dale.”

“When Aunt Emerald and I saw you,” Cecily persisted, “you looked very much in control of your horse.”

“I assure you, Miss Vervant, I was in great distress.”

He began to perambulate toward a chair, but Montworthy stopped him. “I say, Brandon, I’ll ad
mit you’ve got a fine brute in that stallion. Carries a good head, and his quarters are well let down. But I’ll lay you a monkey that he can’t take my Hannibal in a race.”

“Of course, dear boy, if you say so,” was the equable reply.

Montworthy blinked. In a somewhat dampened voice he queried, “But don’t you want to race him—prove which is faster?”

“You already said your animal was faster, didn’t you? Ton my honor, Montworthy, I wish you’d make up your mind. This ditherin’ about is fatiguin’.”

Slowly, like an accordion folding, Lord Brandon sank into a buttercup-yellow armchair. “Lady M., is it too much to ask that you ring for a small refreshment before luncheon? Gooseberry tarts, Mrs. Horris was bakin’ this mornin’. The smell alone transported me to the gates of heaven.”

He kissed his fingers, and Montworthy gave a disgusted snort. “All you can think of is food and clothes. There’s other things in the world, give you m’word.”

“Like smugglers, you mean?” drawled Lord Brandon.

“Mr. Montworthy is correct.” Like a child about to recite a lesson, Delinda sat up very straight in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. “It is well known that the Dorset coast is swarming with smugglers bringing in contraband. These wicked men are undermining the economy at a time when England needs to combat the colonials in America. Anyone caught smuggling or aiding the smugglers is worse than a lawbreaker. He is a traitor to the crown.”

“Well said!” Montworthy exclaimed.

Flushing, Delinda murmured, “Oh, Mr. Montworthy, you are so kind, actually, it was Papa who
turned the phrase—he feels so strongly that we should crush the colonials once and for all, that weak-kneed politicians are traitors. He has no use for peers like the Duke of Pershing, who counsels peace—”

She broke off, glanced at Lord Brandon, and turned a fiery crimson. “I am so sorry,” she murmured. “I should not have said—I beg your pardon. I must leave, now.”

She got to her feet so swiftly that she upset a small table and a porcelain figure of a yellow dog. In a soothing tone Lady Marcham said, “La, Delinda, do not refine on it. Differences of opinion are what make the world interesting. If you stuffed a pork roast with only one herb, would you have an interesting dish? No, indeed.”

“Pork roast—oh, Lord, I almost forgot.” James withdrew an envelope from his breast pocket. “It’s from the pater,” he said. “An invitation.”

Though he spoke to Lady Marcham, his eyes were on Cecily. Noting that Delinda’s eyes were sad, Cecily wondered if the Corinthian was completely insensitive or merely thick.

She concentrated on her grandaunt, who had slit the envelope and was reading the contents. “Sir Carolus has been kind enough to ask us to attend a dinner party at the end of this week,” Lady Marcham said. “He says here that he is anxious to try a new recipe: a pork roast in new milk.”

“There’ll be dancing, too.” Montworthy looked meaningfully at Cecily. “Not like London, but a country hop’s better than nothing.”

“I do love to dance,” Delinda said wistfully.

Montworthy did not hear her. He was saying smugly, “I’ll look forward to the honor of a waltz, Miss Vervain.”

Both thick
and
insufferable. But before Cecily
could think of a proper set-down for him, Lord Brandon lifted a hand. “Stop, Montworthy. What colors predominate in your drawin’ room?”

“My—how the devil should I know? Green, I suppose. Or blue. What do you want to know for?”

“By now you should know that I refuse to enter a room with which my costume would clash,” Lord Brandon replied gravely. “Blue or green is possible. Yellow is allowable. But should your walls and draperies be maroon—Well, well, Andrews will find out for me. He always does.”

Andrews reported that Sir Carolus’s drawing room was decorated in tones of silver, a color that was deemed acceptable by his lordship. Consequently, on the evening of Sir Carolus’s party Lord Brandon appeared in a gray swallow-tailed coat, a shirt of dazzling white with frills, gray breeches, and white silk stockings that disappeared into high-heeled black shoes with silver buckles.

“I wanted to wear gray pumps,” he confided to Cecily as they awaited Lady Marcham in the ground-floor anteroom, “But Andrews was against it. He was really adamant about it, so I let him have his way.”

He paused and raised his quizzing glass. “You are very fine tonight, Miss Verving. That shade of ivory emphasizes the cream and roses of your cheeks and turns your eyes to silver. Most becomin’, ’pon my honor.”

From any other gentleman this would have been a compliment. Lord Brandon spoke the words with dispassionate interest.

“Your hair is exquisite, too,” he continued judiciously. “I am gratified to see you didn’t torture it by crimpin’ it into one of the popular styles. A pity that you needed to confine it into that chignon,
however. Hair like yours should be allowed to flow free—like a dark waterfall.”

As he spoke, he reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. The words, the gesture, were so at variance with his stilted speech that Cecily stared in astonishment. Then he raised a hand to hide a yawn.

“A curl had fallen upon your cheek,” he explained. “Charmin’, of course, but it spoiled perfection.”

She could still feel his fingers against her skin. Assured and cool, they had seemed to pulse with an inner fire. With some difficulty Cecily shrugged aside such imbecilic imaginings and replied, “I am not fond of perfection, Lord Brandon. It is cold and haughty.”

“Who is cold and haughty?” Lady Marcham asked. She had just appeared on the stairs and looked magnificent in her green silk slip with its overdress of silver gauze. Emeralds and diamonds glistened at her neck and in her ears and on her fingers and in her crown of silver hair.

Cecily clapped her hands together in admiration, and Lord Brandon bowed with languid grace. “Madam Godmother, you look the way a queen would
want
to look.”

As he escorted them toward the waiting barouche, he regaled them with amusing stories about royalty with whom he was apparently on good terms. In his languid fashion he kept the ladies entertained while the coach followed the sea road, circled Lady Marcham’s woods, and then rattled inland across the meadows to Montworthy House.

Though not overlarge, Montworthy House was a handsome property. Sir Carolus’s ancestor had built his home in the time of the Tudors, and at that time it must have been an austere and rather formidable
place. Now, under the squire’s hand, it had changed its character. The front of the house was set off with roses and friendly summer flowers, and a large kitchen garden could be glimpsed in the back.

Sir Carolus himself came trotting down the stairs to greet them at the door. “Dear Lady Marcham,” he chirruped, “I am honored to see you. Miss Vervain, your most obedient. Lord Brandon, one makes bold to say that you will not be disappointed tonight. Together with the pork roast in new milk, there will be a mushroom pasty cooked with onions and cream.”

“Your creation, Sir Carolus?” Lady Marcham smiled.

“Alas, no. One wished to assist in its preparation, but the cook would not allow it.” The little squire sighed deeply. “One must expect disappointments in life.”

He escorted them up a curved staircase and into a foyer where an orchestra was playing for the pleasure of the arriving guests. “We shall have dancing later,” Sir Carolus explained diffidently. “One feels too old for such pastimes, but James insists that a party without dancing is like lamb without the mint. Ah, here is the drawing room. Will you come this way?”

As Cecily started to follow her Aunt Emerald, Brandon slid an arm through hers. “Don’t,” he said.

She turned to look wonderingly at him, and he nodded to a thin matron in a plum-colored dress and matching turban. “See that female bearin’ down on Lady M.? That’s Lady Breek. She’s a gabble-monger who clacks away like a Spanish dancer’s castanets. Listenin’ to her is almost as bad as dancin’.”

“I collect that you do not dance.”

Lord Brandon looked pained. “Pershing insisted
we learn, and it was worse than learnin’ to ride. Dancin’ is an exhaustin’ pastime, ’pon my honor. What do you think, Miss Verving?”

Before Cecily could reply, a loud male voice exclaimed, “I tell you this. If those rebels don’t watch themselves, they’ll soon be dancing to another tune.”

Lord Brandon winced visibly at Montworthy’s declaration, and Cecily glanced askance at a group of young men nearby. All of them, except for an officer in scarlet regimentals, wore gold braid on their sleeves.

“The colonel’s Riders,” Lord Brandon sighed. “We are caught between the devil and the dark blue sea.”

Cecily glanced hopefully toward Lady Marcham and noted that she and Lady Breek were deep in conversation. At least Lady Breek was doing the talking, and Aunt Emerald’s eyes had become glassy as she listened.

Montworthy was declaiming, “It’s as Colonel Howard says. We’re a great nation. Damn it, Jermayne, we can easily crush America.”

Beside Cecily, Lord Brandon stiffened. He looked hard at the officer in regimentals, who was protesting, “Not that easy to fight a whole nation. By Jove, no. You’d have to hire mercenaries. It’ll beggar the treasury.”

A chorus of disclaimers rose at once. The officer shrugged and turned away, and Cecily caught a glimpse of a sun-darkened face with a puckered scar seaming one cheek.