Kate Moore (7 page)

He laughed, an undeniably pleasant sound. “Long-nosed effrontery? Dance with me, Mrs. Bowen.”

“Pray, excuse me, Lord Warne.” She rose abruptly, intent on distancing herself from him, but he stood, catching her wrist and holding it so that she was obliged to stand at his side. She looked pointedly at the gloved hand gripping hers. After a moment his hold gentled, and he released her.

“Mrs. Bowen, do not deny that you have been longing to dance this evening.”

Susannah stared at him and shook her head. How had he recognized her longing?

“If not to please me, then for your cousin’s sake,” he said. “To show the world there is no ill will between myself and the Lacys.”

There it was, just as she’d suspected. He had been looking for her weakness, hoping that she might be the one to tell him what he wished to know about their adventure. Oh, he was clever. He guessed how susceptible she would be to a little flattery, a little attention, a chaperone in her cap, a widow, no doubt starved for a man’s notice. But she had her unruly spirit firmly in hand now.

“I am glad you harbor no resentment against Miss Lacy,” she said carefully. “My cousin can hardly be held responsible for the acts of rash young men or for her mother’s indiscreet tongue. I promise to do my best to keep her from incurring your displeasure.”

The blue eyes narrowed dangerously. He understood her.

She offered him a parting nod and made her way to Juliet’s side, smiling at the gentlemen around her cousin. She would see Juliet safely wed no matter what Lord Warne had to say.

9

With a rare burst of sense, Evelina insisted that Juliet not be at home to callers the day following the Shalford ball. She seemed to realize that Juliet had had an unexpected degree of success and argued that her daughter should keep any interested gentlemen waiting. They shopped and made calls and returned to find the basket on the entry table filled with cards.

The Marquess of Warne sent roses for Juliet and violets for Susannah. Juliet pointed out to her mother that the card with the roses was indeed the same card the highwayman had given her, which prompted Evelina to say, “He means to court you, dear. I knew Esther made too much of that episode.”

She drifted off to consult Mrs. Chettle, and Juliet turned to Susannah. “I wonder what he means sending
you
flowers, cousin?”

“He means it as a courtesy to you, I imagine,” Susannah replied.

“I don’t think so.” Juliet gave Susannah a curious glance. “He talked more to you than he did to me. I suppose you are more nearly his age.”

Susannah did not reply. If Lord Warne meant to weaken her defenses with violets, he was mistaken in her character.

***

Kirby made three visits to Lackington’s in Finsbury Square before he was rewarded by the sight of Miss Lacy among the shoppers. She looked particularly fine in a close-fitting blue jacket and dainty white bonnet. She took no notice of the books, but began at once to look about at the other customers. He had positioned himself in the corner where two rows of scholarly works in Greek were kept, and his prior visits had convinced the clerks that he was an elderly pedant interested in the current debate on Homer’s authorship of
The Iliad.
In spite of the itchy discomfort of the false beard and moustache, he had been following Archer’s treatise in favor of a single author for the epic.

He had picked Lackington’s because the size of the establishment invited wandering and permitted private conversation, but he saw an additional advantage to such a meeting place as Miss Lacy’s cousin gazed in wonder at the floor-to-ceiling shelves. A clerk approached the two ladies, and after a short exchange led the cousin to a section Kirby knew to be devoted to modern poets. Miss Lacy trailed behind.

Her cousin accepted a volume from the clerk and on opening the book seemed to forget Juliet, who hesitated less than a minute, then began making her way around the large room, looking closely at the other patrons. He returned his book to the shelf and leaned on his cane, moving with a slow hobble toward the girl. Their paths crossed at one of the tall ladders to the highest shelves. He pulled a volume from the shelf on his side of the ladder and held it out to her, saying, “Excuse me, Miss . . . Lacy, but can you read this title for me? I can’t quite make it out without my eyeglasses.”

She whirled to face him, and he knew he was smiling idiotically.

“You,” she whispered. “I’m so glad. I thought we would never make it here.”

“Was it so difficult to manage?”

“You have no idea. Mama and Susannah have insisted on so many calls and errands. And,” she confided, “to have pressed Susannah when she knows I am not at all bookish would have made her quite suspect my motives.”

“She doesn’t suspect?”

Miss Lacy glanced over her shoulder. “Not at all.”

“Good,” he said.

A clerk approached to move the ladder, and Kirby put aside his book and offered his arm to Miss Lacy. “Come along, miss,” he said in an avuncular tone. “Let’s find that book you mentioned.”

“I looked for you at the Shalfords’ ball,” she confided when they had passed beyond the clerk.

He stopped and turned so that he could keep an eye upon her cousin on the opposite side of the great circular counter.

“Would you have danced with me?” he asked, drawing another book from the shelves and opening it.

“Of course.”

“Though we’ve not been properly introduced?” He found the title page.

“I suppose you think me overbold or foolish,” she said, looking down for the first time in their conversation.

With two gloved fingers he gently lifted her chin. “Nae,” he said. “Did you enjoy the ball?”

“I met a great many gentlemen,” she told him. “Including Lord Warne.” Her eyes searched his face.

“Did you tell him about our meeting?” he asked, studying the book in his hand as a clerk passed.

“You asked me not to,” she said, obviously offended that he would suggest it, but ill at ease and toying with her bonnet strings. After a pause she admitted, “He knows you gave me his card.”

“That’s good. That’s what I wanted him to know.”

“Am I never to see you without a disguise?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Would you mind very much if we know each other just for awhile?”

“You are only amusing yourself with me then,” she protested.

“Hardly!” The word came out more strongly than he’d intended. “But I can make no promises to you. I . . . I am like a soldier going off to war. I don’t know what may happen to me.”

“Will you hold up more coaches?”

“Nae,” he said, and laughed when her face fell. “But I plan to do a few things more daring still.” He saw the cousin lift her head and look their way. “Take this book,” he ordered, pushing the fat volume into her hands. “Start toward your cousin.” He stepped back and faced the shelves, allowing himself to watch Miss Lacy with a side glance.

She turned, held up the book, and smiled across the room at the other woman.

“How will I see you again?” she asked, her head slightly tilted his way.

“What are your engagements?” he whispered to her back. “I can find you if I know.”

“Tonight, a dinner. Tomorrow, the theatre. Wednesday, Almack’s, of course. And Saturday another ball, but I don’t know where.”

“I’ll find you,” he told her and began to hobble away without looking back.

“Susannah, look what I’ve found,” he heard her say. “
The Spanish Brothers.
Don’t you think that sounds intriguing?”

***

Lady Lacy’s regular at-home day brought two of Uncle John’s acceptable suitors to the blue and gold drawing room, but Susannah’s efforts to encourage Juliet to notice them failed miserably.

Lord Brentwood called and soon found himself addressing an empty chair. Lord Atwell, a second gentleman from Uncle John’s list, presented himself with little more success. A widower with two daughters, and a passion for politics, he was lean with thinning hair, pale blue eyes, and sharp features. Susannah found him intelligent and informative, though she suspected he rather failed to see any point of view but his own. However, she was the only one interested in what Lord Atwell had to say. Juliet appeared not to notice when he left.

Evelina greeted their next callers, three young gentlemen in elegant coats and ear-scraping collars, with more apparent delight, and they settled themselves in blue-cushioned gilt chairs for an extended visit. These were just the sort of young men who must please—handsome, well-born, and fashionable, her aunt confided to Susannah. Juliet cheerfully confused one with the other.

“Mr. Garrett,” she asked. “Are you the hunting-mad gentleman, or is that you, Lord Eastham?”

When Eastham acknowledged that he might be described by his passion for the hunt, she smiled at the third gentleman present and said triumphantly, “Then you, Sir Miles, must be the one who told me about his horses.”

Sir Miles Newbury nodded. Susannah suppressed a sigh and prayed silently that Juliet’s directness would do her no harm in the eyes of her callers. However, when Juliet abruptly abandoned the gentlemen to greet the Phillips twins, two smart brunettes, who arrived with Mrs. Pemford, Susannah’s hopes for the morning dimmed. She smiled at the three astonished young men and quietly moved to Juliet’s side, suggesting that their new guests might wish to be presented to the gentlemen.

The Phillips twins, when presented, showed a gratifying interest in Juliet’s visitors, and Susannah withdrew, picking up an embroidery frame and settling herself in the windowseat in a patch of pale sunlight. Tomorrow she would rise early and walk and clear her head and decide how to encourage Juliet’s notice of appropriate young men.

In the center of the young people, Juliet offered her opinion that London was sadly flat, and her companions protested loudly. The squabble reminded Susannah of geese vying for a farmer’s wife’s attention. It stopped abruptly when Chettle announced the Marquess of Warne. Susannah lifted her head. His glance rested on her briefly before he turned to his hostess.

***

The blue and gold drawing room was too fussy for Warne’s taste, and must explain why his gaze went first to the slim, straight back of Mrs. Bowen. Her gray silk gown had the dull sheen of pewter, and that delicate back moved him more than the round swell of breast displayed by the other ladies present. Her head was bent over some needlework, and the sheer fabric of her cap caught and held the light while the sun picked out fiery gleams in her dark hair. Her hands moved lightly as she set stitches in a frame. He felt he had not
seen
her properly before. She looked up, and with an effort he withdrew his gaze and greeted his hostess. He had come to find out more about Miss Lacy’s connection with his card thief.

He allowed his hostess to present him to the other ladies as if he were a prize she’d captured, endured their appraising glances, accepted the lingering touch of several soft hands, and avoided looking again in Mrs. Bowen’s direction. If he must play the suitor to Miss Lacy, he would. The talk in the circle around Miss Lacy, and she was the center of it, was all of the delights to be enjoyed in London, yet the young lady seemed unconvinced. She turned to him, asking, “Have you ever done anything truly daring, Lord Warne?”

Like hold up a coach on Hounslow Heath
? He held the words back and watched the girl. She colored as with some belated recollection of the unwisdom of putting such a question to him, and looked as if she might willingly unsay it.

“You put me in an awkward position, Miss Lacy,” he said. “If I say yes, I appear to be boasting. If I say no, you will condemn me for dullness. Perhaps you should define what you mean by truly daring.”

She smiled, too direct to conceal her relief that he had not made more of the opening her question had given him.

“I merely meant the sort of doings one reads of. The Spanish brothers are forever tangling with . . . highwaymen and pirates and fighting desperate battles and rescuing gentlewomen.”

“In London?”

“No, of course not. That is my complaint. Such things are hardly possible in London,” she said.

“I suppose the age of highwaymen is over,” he agreed. “No Dick Turpins to be hanged at Tyburn any longer.”

“Hanged!” she said, rising a little out of her chair and shooting a brief glance at Mrs. Bowen. She lowered her voice. “They hang them? Not if . . . no one is hurt or . . . nothing is taken?”

“I saw a fellow hanged once,” said Sir Miles with a slight shudder. “Didn’t care for it. Wouldn’t go again.”

One of the Miss Phillipses pressed Sir Miles, in spite of his obvious repugnance, to tell more about the execution, but Miss Lacy continued to stare at Warne. Her blue eyes suggested that the young lady was doing a great deal of rapid thinking.

“What was the fellow hanged for, Newbury?” asked Eastham as Sir Miles came to the end of his story.

“Don’t know,” said Sir Miles.

“They shoot traitors now,” offered Mr. Garrett. “The French even shot Ney!” He shook his head.

“But Lavalette escaped,” Warne added for Miss Lacy’s benefit. She looked decidedly pale and strained.

“Disguised himself as an English general, got clean away. Now that’s daring for you, isn’t it, Miss Lacy?” asked Sir Miles.

“Yes,” she said, brightening. “A disguise. I like that.” She smiled wanly.

“What would you say to a masked ball, then, Miss Lacy?” asked Eastham. He led the conversation back to the pleasures of the season, and Warne took care not to alarm Miss Lacy again. She made no obvious slips, but in a nature as open as hers there were still signs. She was hiding something, something that had not come out in the story her mother had so carelessly spread.

When the group around the girl broke up, he turned to Mrs. Bowen. She stood but made no move to speak to her aunt’s guests as they took their leave. Just such distance separated them that he was sure she had heard every word of the conversation, but for him to cross to her, to take any notice of the chaperone, sitting apart, would call attention to her and raise doubts about his intentions. She was safe from his questions, and when her gaze met his, he knew she knew it.

***

Susannah walked early. A cold, dense mist shrouded the park. Her brown pelisse and a mulberry muffler were insufficient warmth for true comfort, but the pleasure of being alone and moving freely was worth numb fingers and a reddened nose. She stuck to a narrow footpath over the coarse dry grass rather than the main tracks. She had no wish to be ridden down by some gentleman out for an early gallop, and she could not expect to be noticed in the fog. The quiet, the chill, the loneliness suited her purpose admirably, for she meant to sort out her thoughts.

Juliet’s indifference to eligible gentlemen made Susannah uneasy. She had lain awake much of the night imagining the end of the season, when she would not be welcome to return to Uncle John and no cottage would be waiting in Wincanton. She would not apply to her brothers for help, and in any case, Richard would never help her and Henry could not. She would be forced to sell herself into some sort of servitude unless she could bring Juliet around to a sensible match. Still she would not despair.

She would compose a letter to Uncle John. He would be impatient to hear how Juliet was getting on with the gentlemen he had chosen for her. Susannah would adopt a tone of cautious optimism. She would emphasize the amount of time Juliet had spent in Brentwood’s company at that first ball and note that Lord Atwell had been prompt to call. She would even mention the unexceptional young men who had crowded Lady Lacy’s drawing room the day before and indicate that she thought them worthy of investigation by Drummond and Drummond. It was too soon to point out that Brentwood and Atwell were unlikely to suit, and she would say absolutely nothing about the young highwayman or the Marquess of Warne.