Jane Feather (10 page)

“I believe Mr. Riverdale does well enough for himself,” she responded distantly. “So have you taken lodgings in London?”

Harry looked askance. “I share lodgings with your brother. I’m surprised he didn’t tell you.”

Imogen was too, but she managed a careless smile. “Duncan is not in the habit of confiding in his older sisters. I think he’s afraid we’ll lecture him too much. Esther and I would love it if he would live properly in Stanhope Terrace when he’s in town, but he uses the house just as his base and a poste restante as far as we can tell. If he insists on living the bachelor life, who are we to stop him?” She shrugged and broke a piece of bread before buttering it. “I’m sure we cramp his style.”

“I can’t believe two fashionable sisters could cramp any young man’s style,” Harry said gallantly, sending Imogen into a peal of laughter.

“Well said, Harry.” She became aware of Charles’s gaze suddenly riveted upon her. Her laugh had reached him up the length of the table and she could feel the hunger in his eyes, an almost envious hunger, she thought, as if he felt her laughter should be reserved only for himself. For a moment their eyes locked and the buzz around the table seemed to fade away, the room itself losing its hard contours, and then Imogen forced herself to look away, up at the footman who was offering a platter of roast pork.

Chapter 10

“Esther, I won’t stay a moment longer than I must,” Imogen warned her sister as they followed the rest of the women to the drawing room, leaving the gentlemen to their obligatory half hour with the port. “I told Charles I would leave as soon as I decently could. Will you come with me, or do you wish to stay?”

“Don’t be so daft,” Esther responded. “Of course I’m coming with you.”

“I wonder if Duncan and his party will be ready to go.” Imogen was not in the least offended by her sister’s scornful epithet. She didn’t know why she’d asked the question in the first place. She was just confused, she told herself. Confused by the muddle of feelings. Sometimes she hated Charles and yet she loved him. He had tricked her, and yet he seemed genuinely remorseful, although bemused, almost as if he really didn’t understand what he’d done wrong.

“My dear Miss Carstairs, how are you feeling?”

Imogen turned, startled at the voice at her elbow. She hadn’t been aware of Miss Elspeth Spencer’s discreet approach. She offered the lady a bland smile. “Perfectly well, I thank you, Miss Spencer. Should I be feeling otherwise?”

Miss Spencer laid a comforting hand on her arm. The hand was encased in silk mittens and a faint odor of must and ancient potpourri wafted from the puce watered silk that clad her angular frame. Her little blue eyes were sharp with malice. “My dear girl, we all feel for you so much, and I can’t tell you how much we admire your courage in coming here today. So brave . . . so very brave. Lady Darwin and Lady Mary were saying the very same thing. We were all in agreement and awe for your bravery.”

Imogen looked at her interlocutor with an air of bewilderment. “But there was no danger in coming here, Miss Spencer. It is but five miles, and indeed, the roads were very dry, not really icy at all. I do believe you showed the greater courage in traveling by carriage from Ringwood—that must be all of ten miles, and the roads are not nearly as good.” Imogen felt Esther’s quiver of laughter beside her but maintained her own resolutely concerned if somewhat bewildered countenance. She took a cup of coffee from the tray passed by a parlormaid, maintaining her faint, inquiring smile.

“Indeed.” Defeated, Miss Spencer moved away with a vague gesture.

“Damn Charles,” Imogen muttered, drinking her coffee quickly, her eyes on the door. “The minute he shows his face,” she continued in a fierce undertone, “we’ll make our farewells and ride home. Duncan’s escort or not?”

“I don’t think it matters one way or the other,” Esther responded. “We can ride home without an escort at this time of day. There are another couple of hours of daylight left.”

Even in London the sisters usually went about without a chaperone, and lived in the house on Stanhope Terrace without a female companion. Of course, there was always the assumption that their brother, as head of the household, was nominally in charge of his sisters and lived beneath the same roof, but no one questioned this too closely.

“I’ll ask the butler to send for our horses.” Imogen set down her cup and went into the hall to find the butler. She had just issued her instructions when the dining room door opened and the male guests emerged on a burst of laughter and chatter. They all looked as if they’d imbibed heartily of their host’s port.

Imogen stood tapping her foot impatiently as Charles, catching sight of her, swiftly crossed the hall to her side. “Are you leaving?” His voice was somber.

“Yes . . . or at least Esther and I are. I just asked your butler to send for our horses.” She moved ahead of him towards the drawing room, brushing his hand aside as he laid it on her arm. “I must thank you, Charles, for a delightful luncheon party.” Her smile was as artificial as her voice and made him grit his teeth.

“It was an honor and a pleasure, ma’am,” he responded in the same tone. “A pleasure I hope we can repeat soon.”

“How long are you in the country?”

“That depends,” he said.

“On what?”

“Oh . . . this and that,” he returned with a careless shrug, his eyes unreadable. “May I fetch you coffee?”

“Thank you, no. If you’ll excuse me . . .” She drifted away from him, making the rounds of the room with her goodbyes, Esther on her heels. A footman discreetly informed them that their horses were outside, and they slipped from the drawing room. Imogen caught Duncan’s startled glance as they left the room and he took a step to the door, but she raised an arresting hand and walked into the hall.

“You didn’t tell Duncan we were leaving?” Esther inquired as she put on her fur-trimmed hat and drew on her gloves.

“It was obvious enough,” her sister replied, buttoning her jacket. “I’m sure they won’t be ready to leave for some time. If anyone offers a game of billiards and a cigar . . .” She left the sentence in the air as they went outside into an increasingly gloomy afternoon. The morning’s sun had disappeared, and the low clouds were gray and heavy.

“Feels like snow,” Esther observed, mounting with the help of a waiting groom, who then turned to give Imogen a leg up.

Imogen settled into the saddle, and her horse sniffed the air with what sounded like a rather disapproving whicker. “I think Sadie agrees with you.” She leaned forward to pat the mare’s neck. “Let’s get a move on.”

They gave their mounts their heads, letting them choose the pace over the ice-rutted lanes and then across the gorsy heath, where the wind whistled ominously. “Did you know Duncan was sharing lodgings with Harry Graham, Esther?”

“No.” Esther looked interested. “I know he doesn’t often sleep at Stanhope Terrace, but I hadn’t realized he had officially moved elsewhere.”

“According to Harry, he has.”

“But why waste the money when he has a perfectly good home at one of the best addresses in London?”

“A question to which I have no answer, my dear,” Imogen responded, but her words were lost in the wind, and they gave up conversation until they turned into the sheltered driveway of Beaufort Hall.

“Home,” Esther declared, and her horse raised her head and sniffed, increasing her speed as she sensed the warmth of her stable and the bran mash that awaited. Sadie followed suit. A footman emerged as they reached the front steps. He put two fingers to his lips and sent a piercing whistle into the freezing air. A groom appeared around the side of the house at a run as the women dismounted. The boy took the horses and the sisters went into the warm welcome of the house.

“I suppose we have to change for dinner,” Imogen remarked as she headed for the stairs to take off her riding clothes. “Duncan and his party will be back. I doubt Charles will be inclined to entertain them all evening.”

“Since you were the sole reason for the invitation, I should think that highly unlikely,” Esther responded with a chuckle, following her upstairs. “Poor Charles, his little scheme did rather backfire.”

“Oh, he makes me so cross,” Imogen declared, turning aside at the head of the stairs to her own room. “How could he imagine that throwing me into that den of gossips would put things right between us? But, of course, he didn’t imagine it, not that or anything else. Why someone with such a creative soul should be so utterly blind to the feelings of others is a complete mystery to me.”

“Does he have a creative soul?” her sister inquired with interest.

Imogen felt her cheeks warm a little. “Yes, as it happens, he does. Music, theater, art . . . he’s passionate about them all.” Although the truly creative aspects of his soul, his more extreme flights of fancy, he kept for love play, she reflected, but that was not something to be shared with her sister, however dear she was.

Esther nodded with a murmured, “I see. I suppose having to maintain a neutral attitude all the time in the law courts must spill over into his everyday attitudes, don’t you think? I mean, he can’t crack a smile in front of a judge or show sympathy.”

“He can do both of those if he thinks it will advance his position in a case,” her sister returned smartly. “It’s not genuine. I’ve heard him give the most impassioned pleas to a jury in his summing-up about the innocence of some appallingly guilty creature, a man he knows perfectly well is as guilty as sin.”

“I suppose that’s what makes him so successful,” Esther observed. “A barrister doesn’t become a QC without rising to the top of his profession.”

“I am all too aware of that,” Imogen said glumly. “And I’m sure he has his sights set on a knighthood, just like his father.”

“Well, that’s no bad thing,” her sister said pragmatically. “Lady Riverdale would have had a nice ring to it. And,” she reminded, “whatever his personal faults, you were still prepared to marry him. Nothing about his professional life, his ambitions, or his talents has changed in the last few months.”

“True enough,” Imogen conceded. She shook her head. “Honestly, Essie, sometimes I don’t think I have a clear thought in my head. I can’t help wondering what Mama would say. I wish she was here,” she added wistfully.

“I think she’d tell you to follow your heart, not your head,” Esther said with a considering frown. “If your head’s so muddled, maybe your heart’s a better compass.”

Imogen laughed without much amusement. “I don’t think my heart knows true north either. I’ll see you in the drawing room at six.”

Charles waited impatiently for his guests to leave. He wanted time to himself, to think about his next step. He tried to imagine how he would proceed if this were a court case, what arguments would he summon up for the defense—and he was, without doubt, the defendant. He knew he had a reputation for a silver tongue, and he knew how to use it to best advantage. In the same way, he could use his tongue like the sharpest knife when it suited his purpose. But Imogen knew all his tricks, and they
were
tricks. Tricks of his trade. Perhaps he needed a completely different approach.

His guests started to leave eventually, all except for Duncan and his party, who had colonized the billiard room and were deep into Charles’s port and cigars. As the front door closed on the last guest who seemed aware of the time, Charles went into the billiard room, where the players had all shed their coats and were playing in shirtsleeves, very much at home.

He stood for a moment leaning against the door at his back, and Duncan, flushed with drink, looked up from the cue he was positioning. “Riverdale, come and join us. We’re trying to beat Harry’s score, but he’s the very devil at this game. Won’t you try your hand?”

For all the world as if he were the host and Charles the guest, Charles reflected. He was debating a harsh put-down when Harry Graham spoke up, throwing an arm lightly around Duncan’s shoulders. “Duncan . . . Duncan, dear fellow. You forget yourself. We’re monopolizing our host’s billiard room, and I’m sure he’s wishing us to the devil. It must be near dusk.”

Duncan looked startled, glanced towards the window, where the daylight was definitely on the wane. “Good God, Charles. My apologies. Having such a good game, we quite forgot the time.” He dropped his cue on the table and reached for his coat, shrugging into it. “A splendid afternoon, sir. A most delightful luncheon.”

“My pleasure,” Charles murmured, standing aside as his guests filed past him into the hall. “Send to the stables for my guests’ horses, Neal.”

“Immediately, sir.” The footman bowed.

The small party stood awkwardly in the hall, and Charles was not in the mood to fill the void with small talk. He had always found Duncan Carstairs an irritating young man, and he wondered now what Harry Graham saw in him to make the intimacy of shared lodgings a viable arrangement. Graham was very different, nothing of the dilettante about him. His gaze was particularly sharp and seemed to indicate a brain equally as sharp. From what Charles knew of the young man’s career at Oxford, he had excelled both academically and athletically, so what did he see in Duncan Carstairs? Obviously the attraction was not an intellectual one, but then, when it came to attraction, there was no accounting for tastes, he reflected wryly.

“The horses are here, sir.”

With relief on all sides the party broke up, and Charles was left to the peace and quiet of his own house. His own houseguests had departed the day before, and he was relishing his solitude. An only child, he had been very much left to his own devices while he was growing up. His father, Sir Daniel Riverdale, QC, an eminent barrister, had supervised a rigorous education, and his mother had lived so much in her husband’s shadow that Charles often found it quite difficult to conjure a clear image of her. She had always seemed a pale and insignificant figure, choosing the shadows rather than the bright light of day.

Thoughtfully he went into his study, a small, paneled room off the drawing room. In truth, it was the only room in the house he liked. The rest of the place was like a mausoleum, but this room he had turned into his own, with his own books on the shelves, his own furniture and carpet, his own pictures on the walls.

He poured himself a goblet of brandy and sat down in a deep armchair beside the fire. He had gone away to school, then to Oxford, and then straight into his father’s chambers at Lincoln’s Inn. At Oxford he had had the occasional flirtation with a sister or cousin of one of his undergraduate friends, and his sexual initiation with a young woman from the town, with whom he’d conducted what at the time he considered a very daring and torrid affair. Town and gown were very separate in the rarified atmosphere of the university, and he had developed something of a reputation among his peers for this reckless association, an association which, if discovered by the university proctors, would have had him sent down for at least a term.