Miss Delacourt Speaks Her Mind (10 page)

“Hearken well to her words, Avery. Miss Delacourt has very little experience in emoting a sentiment she does not feel.” Sir Anthony rose and took Lucinda’s hand, raising her to her feet. “But Miss Barrington strikes me as being just the lady to perform a mad scene with great gusto.”

Lucinda’s eyes opened very wide. “Mad scene? Ophelia goes mad?”

“Yes, of course, just before she throws herself into the river.”

“Oh, but she doesn’t die, does she?” Lucinda, who had been looking quite starry-eyed, now grasped the lapels of Sir Anthony’s immaculately tailored evening coat. “I couldn’t possibly play a woman who drowns herself!”

Sir Anthony didn’t reply. Instead, he gazed down at Lucinda’s white hands gripping his coat, then back at her face.

Lucinda gasped exactly as if she had been given a good shake. “I am sorry. I shall play Ophelia if you wish it, Sir Anthony”

There came a loud ahem from the shadows across the way.

Lucinda jumped and whirled around to face Lord Avery. “Whom do you wish me to play, my lord, I mean, Eustace?”

“My flower, do you truly care what I think?” Lord Avery looked deeply into her eyes.

With a flutter of lashes, she stammered, “Of course, Eustace. I wish to be agreeable.”

Ginny, finding all of this painful in the extreme, began to rethink the wisdom of the awakening of beasts. “Why don’t we each choose our favorite Shakespeare soliloquy? There is no reason to do a whole play.” At least, she hoped a clutch of soliloquys would do as well. “Besides, I don’t think Shakespeare ever wrote a play that had only four parts”

Lucinda, who had been looking close to tears, brightened visibly. “That’s a marvelous idea, Ginny! Why, I could be anyone I choose”

“I agree, your idea is a stroke of genius, Miss Delacourt” Lord Avery took to pacing the room. “Especially considering there is no one but ourselves and the good squire and his lady to serve as audience. We shall all be surprised with each other when we recite our lines.”

He put a hand to his heart and raised the other to the level of his eyes. “‘Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio…’” He dropped his hands and exclaimed, “Yes, I think I shall choose a soliloquy from Hamlet.”

“And I shall be Juliet,” Lucinda revealed. “She kills herself too, I know, but at least she doesn’t go mad first. There’s something so romantic about dying for true love, is there not, Sir Anthony?”

There came the sound of parting lips from the shadows.

“I mean, Eustace?” Lucinda quickly amended.

He looked down his very fine nose at her. “I wouldn’t know, Miss Barrington.”

Ginny decided to change the subject before Lucinda burst into tears. “And whom shall you depict, Sir Anthony?”

“I’m not sure. Perhaps Caesar, or maybe Lear. I shall have to study before I choose. Doubtless you have already decided on your subject.”

“I? Not exactly. Why do you say so?”

Sir Anthony brushed a mote of dust from his coat sleeve. “I thought it would be an easy decision. I feel very sure you would make a splendid Kate”

All were frozen in a stunned silence until Lucinda asked, “Who is Kate?”

Lord Avery answered her in an uncharacteristically quiet voice. “Katherine. She is the heroine from The Taming of the Shrew.”

Ginny felt as if she had been struck. Tears sprang to her eyes, but she would not give Sir Anthony the satisfaction of seeing them spill down her cheeks.

Lucinda looked puzzled. “But Ginny is not the least bit shrewish. If she is not a good actress, I should think it would be difficult for her to play one”

Ginny could not resist seeing how Sir Anthony responded to that remark and was gratified to see a wash of color suffuse his face. The muscle around his jaw tensed, and a vein at his temple throbbed.

“You are quite right, Miss Barrington,” he said huskily. “Pray forgive my error. I find Miss Delacourt to be quite the actress, after all.” With that he made a deep bow to the company at large and walked out.

Ginny didn’t know where to look. “I think I shall retire also. All this drama has left me most fatigued.” Whisking tears from her face, she quit the room and went immediately to the library. It had been a long time since she had read The Taming of the Shrew, and she intended to freshen her memory as to exactly what was so shrewish about its heroine. She found the correct volume, and, after leafing through the pages, her eyes fell on a most enlightening verse. “Her only fault, and that is faults enough, is that she is intolerable curst and shrewd and forward, so beyond all measure that, were my state far worse than it is, I would not wed her for a mine of gold.”

So, this was how he thought of her! She felt the hot sting of tears in her eyes and cursed herself for being a fool. What did she care what he thought? It wasn’t as if she had attempted to engage his interest. Still, it didn’t feel pleasant to be thought of in such a light, even if the poor opinion belonged to someone like Sir Anthony. Especially Sir Anthony. She might as well admit it: She cared. Very much so.

The tears came then in earnest. Ginny tucked the book under her arm and ran from the room. She managed to hold her sobs in check as she dashed upstairs to the upper hallway. Once in her own room she fully intended to sob her heart out.

Thoroughly blinded by tears, she ran down the hall and threw open the door. Just as she was about to launch herself onto the bed and give full vent to her perplexing feelings, she stopped short. There in front of her stood Sir Anthony, his cravat gone missing and his shirt unbuttoned to the waist, his eyes dancing with amusement.

“Have you gone mad?” Ginny cried. “Get out of my room this instant!”

“Ginny, I…” Sir Anthony spluttered. For the second time in as many days, Ginny Delacourt had robbed him of words. Hastily, he began doing up the buttons of his shirt.

Her face flushed a glorious rose, and she turned to face the door. “I will allow you time to … to … then you will leave.”

He swallowed his laughter when he realized her mistake. “I would be most happy to oblige you, Miss Delacourt, but for one thing.”

“What?” she demanded, whirling to face him again.

“This is my room”

“Your room?” Her gaze flew from the dark-paneled wainscot to the paintings of the hunt along the walls. When she saw the spare, masculine bed, the covers turned down and sporting a bloodred satin bed jacket, she gave a little shriek and dropped her gaze to the floor. “I do beg your pardon, sir.”

“It does not signify. It is not difficult to lose one’s way in an unfamiliar house.”

Curiously, her flush deepened and she clutched to her chest the book she gripped in her hands. Her agitation was palatable, and still she would not look at him. “I allow you have most likely been present at far more house parties than have I”

“I expect I have, but never one where I was so rude to a fellow houseguest as I was to you earlier downstairs. I’m sure I don’t know what possessed me” And as long as he didn’t allow himself to think about it for half a minute, he was sure to never find out. “Will you forgive me?”

“Yes, of course, if you can forgive me my shrewish outburst. You can’t imagine what went through my mind when I thought you had let yourself into my room.”

Sir Anthony rather thought he could and carefully schooled his features not to betray his wry amusement. “I see you have found a book. Have you decided on a character to portray?”

Her expression hardened a little. “No. I thought I would do some reading before I decide. Well”-she reached for the door handle-“I should be off. Good night.”

“Of course. Allow me to see you to your room” He put on his bed jacket, and Ginny blushed. In adorable confusion, she cast about until she found the door handle, eager to leave, but he stayed her hand. “I shall just take a look into the hall to see if anyone is about” He peered around the door and spied Mrs. Barrington and Lucinda just emerging at the top of the stairs.

“But Mama,” Lucinda was saying, “I think it monstrously unfair of you to force me when you know I haven’t had even one ball thrown in my honor…”

Sir Anthony yanked his head inside and eased the door closed. He put his finger to his lips and whispered, “Lucinda and her mother. They should be gone soon.”

She nodded and gazed up at him. Her eyes were larger than he had thought, fringed with impossibly long, dark lashes.

“I trust you won’t tell Grandaunt Regina of this. She would have us wed in a hair’s breadth,” Ginny said.

“Would she?” Sir Anthony heard the hard edge in his voice. He hadn’t forgotten his initial suspicions that Grandmama and Ginny were planning his wedding. But could the forthcoming, true-speaking Ginny be capable of such deceit? Her face was always so expressive of her feelings even when her words were not, and she had seemed most ill at ease with this situation from the beginning.

“Indeed she would,” Ginny replied. “She may be eccentric, but she is terribly hard-nosed about certain proprieties. Rather like her grandson.”

He gave her his most devastating smile, one he hadn’t occasion to use in quite some time, and briskly said, “It signifies not what Grandmama would do. The question is, would you?”

“Would I what?”

“Would you marry me?”

The look of sheer astonishment that crossed Ginny’s face convinced Sir Anthony she had no part in a plot to make them tenants for life. She was too artless, even ingenuous. How could he have been so cruel as to imply that her tears earlier that evening had been affected?

“Am I to take that as an offer for my hand in marriage?” she gasped.

“What if it was?” Sir Anthony knew he shouldn’t tease her but found that he was enjoying such unguarded emotion, so rare among the lords and ladies of his set. He carried her hand to his lips. “Would it be a fate repugnant or one cherished?”

Her hand began to tremble in his, and she clutched her book tighter to her chest with the other. “I am sure the Barringtons must have passed by. It should be quite safe for me to go to my room.”

He knew she should return to her chamber, but he was filled with an inexplicable desire to learn how she felt about him now that he knew her face could not lie. “Ah, but Ginny, you have not yet answered my question.” He was surprised when she flicked her hand from his and her eyes flashed with anger.

“You are being impertinent, sir! I do not answer impertinent questions, nor do I consider the intentions of a man who has deemed me worthy of his notice for a mere two days to be motivated by any finer feeling.”

Sir Anthony was taken aback. He had expected her to laugh, lecture him on his faults, let him down gently, or, though it was a stretch, fall into his arms in blissful adoration. Instead, she had given him a scathing set-down while betraying precious few clues as to how she might answer in more ideal circumstances. And just when he thought he had the key to her thoughts.

What a fool he must seem to her. For a moment he had made himself vulnerable, and with growing wonder he realized how very much it hurt. He gazed down into her face, her eyes sparkling with anger, her cheeks flushed, and felt a tide of emotion too precipitate to define. Finding he could look at nothing but her lips, he put a hand on her waist to draw her close and another to the back of her head to prevent her escape. The anticipation he felt had nothing to do with the silk of her hair where it trailed along his hand or the supple curves of her waist and back. No, all he wanted from this kiss was to know how she truly felt. He had never known a kiss to lie.

Suddenly there was a loud thunk. His already erratic heartbeat jumped to new heights until he remembered the book Ginny had been holding and was now hastily retrieving from the floor.

He stepped back and took a few deep breaths. How did he let the situation get so out of control? He must make an attempt at normalcy. “I recall that you planned to do a little reading before bed, Miss Delacourt. Don’t let me keep you”

Ginny stood up, her eyes full of angry tears. “No, I shan’t let you keep me, and if you think I would let you have me, you are like all the other men I have known, to my regret.”

Sir Anthony felt that familiar imperturbability come over him, almost unbidden.

“I am most sorry if I have offended you. I haven’t the faintest idea why I would do such a thing.”

Ginny’s eyes blazed with fury. “Perhaps this will help you remember,” she said. Then she hurled the book at him.

He wasn’t sure when Ginny actually left. He thought he heard the door slam, but it was difficult to tell with all the ringing in his head. The chit certainly had good aim. This time she had caught him without the protection of headgear, and there would be a good-size bruise on his forehead come morning.

He bent for the book and all the blood rushed to his head. He swore, long and competently. At least he knew what book she had chosen. The Taming of the Shrew wasn’t exactly what he would have selected as a sleep tonic, but it was better than some. Not that he would need aid in seeking Morpheus tonight. He was exhausted from reining in every emotion known to man in one short evening.

He finished undressing and climbed into bed. It felt wondrously good to close his eyes and rest his aching head on a soft pillow. If only he could banish the memory of Ginny’s tear-filled eyes from his mind, he could get the rest he longed for. He willed her from his head, from the house, and finally to Hades, but to no avail. She would not go.