Mistress of the Hunt (25 page)

“You go along, ma’am. I mean to take advantage of Edward’s looking glass to be sure my hair is not all falling down about my neck. I shall be along directly.”

With a chuckle for the vanity of the younger generation, Miss Pellerin took her leave. Philippa spent a number of moments smoothing strands of hair back into her topknot, then twisting loose ringlets carefully round her fingers before she decided she was ready to return to the party. At last, gathering up her skirts, she left the dressing room, carefully shutting the door behind her, only to discover upon turning around again that she was face-to-face with young Mr. Dauntry, who had just stepped out of the small bedchamber across the way.

Startled by the encounter, she realized that that was indeed the room he occupied, and managed a polite greeting before turning to continue on her way.

To her surprise, Mr. Dauntry caught her arm and said anxiously, “Pray, ma’am, don’t go. I should like to … indeed, I must speak with you!”

“Certainly, Mr. Dauntry, but this is scarcely the place for a proper conversation. Do you give me your arm back to the hall, if you please.”

“No, please, Lady Philippa, I have been silent too long already.”

She looked at him then and realized that he was laboring under deep emotion. Recognizing the familiar symptoms, she resigned herself to the inevitable. “What is it, Mr. Dauntry?”

“You are so beautiful,” he said, catching both her hands in his and squeezing them eloquently. “I have sat at the dining table these past days drinking in your beauty. I want to have that privilege all the days of my life.”

“Very prettily said, sir, and it should give you good practice for that day when you will offer your hand to a suitable young lady.”

“But I am offering it to you,” he said in surprise. “Surely you must know that, ma’am. I wish nothing more than to have you for my wife.”

“How old are you, sir?”

“What can that signify, dash it? I am old enough to know what I want.”

“It signifies a great deal, however. A pretty figure you would have me cut. I must be all of eight years your senior.”

“Well, you are out there,” he said, not without a touch of triumph, “for Wakefield told me you are but six-and-twenty. I am only
six
years younger.”

“Oh, well, that must make a great deal of difference,” she said wryly.

“Well, of course it does. When you are fifty and I am merely forty-four, I daresay it won’t occur to either of us to dwell on the matter at all.”

Ruthlessly Philippa stifled the laughter that threatened to overcome her. She liked young Dauntry, and not for worlds would she humiliate him with her laughter. She tried, instead, to administer a gentle damper. “I am Edward’s stepmama, you know, and I could not reconcile it with my conscience to take advantage of one of his friends,” she said.

“But ’tis I who would be taking advantage, assure you,” he protested, pulling her closer and attempting to put his arms around her. “I shall be run off my heels if I don’t make reparations soon, and my father refuses to frank my excesses any longer. Begging your pardon, ma’am, but you should be doing me the greatest service to accept my offer of marriage. Pockets to let, assure you. Can’t even come up with the rhino for a new hunter, and my black lamed himself on a shard of ice not two days ago. Must marry. Nothing else will serve the purpose.”

“Your notions of romance overwhelm me, sir,” Philippa said coolly, attempting to extricate herself. They stood now in the doorway leading from the anteroom into the west stair hall, and Dauntry had backed her against the doorjamb. “Please, Mr. Dauntry, you must let me go.”

“Can’t. Love you.” He leaned closer, and she realized he had had more than his share of port after dinner. “Prove how much I care for you, Philippa dearest.” He planted a damp kiss on her cheek and murmured, “Wakefield said twenty thousand a year. Can’t think why I didn’t fall in love with you when first we met.”

“Because you were sober, for the most part,” she said sourly, ducking to avoid his seeking lips. “Let go, you odious boy, or I shall kick you.”

“You like me, I’ve seen that you do,” he protested. “You even winked last evening when Wakefield was telling tales from school.”

“Why, I never did anything so improper. Perhaps I had got something in my eye, but it can have been no more than that. Now, Peter, do leave go.”

The sound of music from the stone hall increased momentarily in volume, giving her a notion that the door into the stair hall had opened briefly and shut again, but her view of that door was blocked by her suitor’s head, and she was, moreover, fully occupied in attempting to effect her own release. Dauntry had now managed to get his arms fully around her and was plastering his wet kisses around and about her right ear. She tried to kick him but realized after the first effort that satin dancing slippers were poorly constructed for such a purpose.

“Darling Philippa,” he murmured against her ear.

“Good God, Mr. Dauntry, do give over. You are mussing my dress and my hair, and I promise you I should never agree to marry anyone capable of making such a cake of himself.”

“No, indeed,” said a quiet, amused voice by her right shoulder, “I shouldn’t advise any lady to contemplate matrimony with such an idiotish cub.”

Dauntry went rigidly still at the first sound of that voice. When he pulled his head away from Philippa’s ear—to her profound relief, for she was in danger of succumbing to the alcoholic vapors that wafted beneath her nostrils whenever he sighed—she had a good view of Rochford, standing close beside them but making no effort to separate them. The viscount merely looked on with arms folded across his broad chest, as though he found their antics interesting.

“Rochford, do something,” Philippa demanded.

At that Mr. Dauntry fairly flung himself away from her. “No need, ma’am, assure you. Just going. Your servant, my lord.” And he scuttled away, opening the door into the stone hall and shutting it quickly again behind himself.

Philippa was left to face Rochford alone. “If you must make a practice of rescuing me from embarrassing situations,” she said, glaring at him, “I do think you might have interfered earlier.”

“He was no match for you, my dear,” the viscount said, taking a handkerchief from his inner pocket and employing it to remove some smut from her chin. “It wasn’t until I realized you stood in danger of injuring your dainty foot upon his shin that I decided to take a hand.”

“I must look a sight,” she said with a small sigh.

“You look charmingly,” he said, pinching up one of her puffed sleeves and smoothing a lock of dark blond hair off her cheek.

His voice was low and contained a note in it that brought a flush to that same cheek. Extraordinarily conscious of his nearness and of the fact that they were quite alone, Philippa experienced a dizzying sense of danger that had been altogether lacking in her confrontation with young Dauntry. In an attempt to break this strange mood, she said, “That idiotish boy said he needs to recoup his losses, that his father refuses to frank him any longer. Would you believe, sir, he actually seemed to believe such a reason would entice me to accept his hand?”

“Sheer foolishness,” said the viscount in that same caressing tone of voice. “Altogether unromantic and shortsighted. That’s what comes of dallying with younger men, my dear.”

“But I wasn’t dallying. Oh, you are being ridiculous, my lord, and I wish you will take me back to the dancing. I cannot think how you came upon us, anyway,” she ended a trifle lamely.

“Why, I missed your charming presence, of course, and I had seen young Dauntry follow you and your cousin from the hall. Having been nauseated from the outset by the damned sheep’s eyes he persists in casting your way, I suspected he might choose such a moment to waylay you.”

“Did you, indeed?” She looked at him then, and her eyes narrowed. “Since Cousin Adeliza and I left the hall some fifteen minutes ago, my lord, and Mr. Dauntry, if he did indeed follow us, must have done so immediately, you certainly did take your own time in coming to my rescue.”

“Did I say I came to rescue you?” He grinned at her. “That was not my intent. I waited until Miss Pellerin had returned without you, and then I waited a moment longer, so as to ensure that my arrival would be welcomed by you, and then—”

“I hope,” Philippa said awfully, “that you will not take it amiss, sir, if I tell you to your face that you are a … a …”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Well, what am I, sweet Philippa?”

“Words fail me.”

“I thought they might.” He was still quite close to her, and now he took her hands in his in exactly the same way that Dauntry had done. Somehow, though, her hands felt much more comfortable in his. She looked up at him questioningly, and he smiled. “The problem is, I think, that the lad is inexperienced. He ought to have known better than to thrust his attentions upon a lady. A younger lady would be frightened by such precipitate action, and a lady with experience greater than his own must certainly be seriously annoyed. He would have done better to have approached you gently, to have taken your hands in his, thusly. Then, when you looked up at him, as you must”—Philippa looked up almost shyly to find his gaze warmer than ever, his eyes twinkling with affectionate amusement—“then, and only then, should he have kissed you. Like this,” he added, bending his head slowly, mesmerizingly, toward hers, and suiting action to words.

His lips were warm against hers, and soft, at first. Then, as she moved responsively, he let go of her hands and pulled her gently into his arms, his mouth moving more possessively against hers as he did so. She was aware of his hands on her back, but she scarcely noticed when her arms went around him, urging him to hold her more tightly. When his fingers caressed her, it was as though the silk of her gown didn’t exist, as though he touched bare skin. There was a warm, tingling sensation wherever his body touched hers. And when the moving fingers of his right hand drifted lower to her hips, then up again along the curve of her waist to her breast, the distant sound of music in the stone hall faded away altogether as the humming in her mind swelled to a thunderous crescendo worthy of Mr. Handel at his finest hour.

A moment later he set her back upon her heels, and Philippa stared up at him breathlessly. When she could speak, she said, “Rochford, why?”

He grinned at her. “I shouldn’t like you to think I’ve retired from the lists, my dear, though I’ve certainly better sense than to press my suit upon you at such a time as this.”

“Well!” she said, her sharp tone covering a wave of disappointment that she would not have cared to attempt to explain to anyone. “I cannot conceive of why you should think tonight a worse time than any other, when I am scarcely flattered by such attention as Mr. Dauntry’s at any time. I fear Wakefield was right when he said I should be happiest to remain a single lady. No one cares a jot for anything but my fortune.”

The expression in the light gray eyes hardened suddenly. “If I did not care prodigiously, my girl, you would precious soon come to understand that I won’t tolerate having that accusation flung at me more than once. I do apologize, however, if my levity was offensive. I had forgotten for a moment how distressing this time of year must be to you.”

Having listened to his first words with skepticism, she eyed him now in bewilderment. “Distressing, sir?”

“Do not feel you must be on your guard with me,” he said gently. “My mother has been gone these eight years and more; yet, at Christmastide, the good memories flood my mind, and it seems like the event occurred only yesterday. So I know well that even when one believes one’s period of bereavement to be over and done, the holiday season can be trying. And this past two weeks or so have been more than ordinarily difficult for you.” He paused, regarding her closely, then added more gently than ever, “Perhaps it will relieve your mind a little to know that I’ve no intention of saying anything further about that no-trespassing business.”

“Your silence has already made that clear,” she said, relieved not by his words so much as by the fact that he had got onto another subject. Though she had felt a wave of compassion when he spoke of his mother, she was not by any means certain she was ready to attempt to explain her feelings for the late baron to him, for the disappointment she had experienced upon his saying he would not press his suit had been replaced by a small sense of relief that she could not explain even to herself. She went on now, quietly, “I should not have expected you to crow over me, in any event, sir. You have always shown yourself a gentleman.”

“Not always, my pet, but in this particular instance your instincts are not at fault. Nothing would be accomplished by pointing out your errors again to you, and I have never thought you did not believe you had the right to act as you did. To discover that you had not must have come as a bitter blow.”

She looked up swiftly from under her eyebrows, for she thought she detected a quizzing note in his voice, but he was regarding her blandly. Drawing a deep breath, she said, “I have no quarrel with what has come to pass, sir, but I do think that if we are to avoid undue comment, we must return to the dancing.”

He bowed, and if she was disappointed that he did not solicit her hand for another dance, she managed to keep that disappointment from showing; however, it was hours after her last guest had departed before she fell asleep that night, so jumbled were her thoughts.

Christmas morning was peaceful for the simple reason that, except for the servants, everyone slept through most of it. At eleven, when they gathered in the breakfast parlor, Philippa, Miss Pellerin, and Edward received the small gifts Jessalyn had made for each of them and exchanged gifts with one another. Later, gifts were handed out to the servants before the four attended services at Saint Mary’s Church in Melton. They had no sooner returned to the house, however, than it was time to dress for the journey to Wyvern Towers.

Both Miss Pellerin and Jessalyn were ready long before Philippa was, for she had wanted her appearance to be perfect, and both of them came to her bedchamber to urge her to greater speed and to confer over her choice of attire. She looked her stepdaughter over critically, and the child shifted from foot to foot anxiously, awaiting her verdict.