Mistress of the Hunt (28 page)

“So they ought to have gone on to the Earl of Lonsdale today, don’t you think?” Elizabeth asked her guests, arching her eyebrows.

“I should think they would,” opined Miss Pellerin, “if that was their intention. The Regent’s other visits must take second place to his visit here. I should think you may continue to expect their arrival on Saturday unless this dreadful weather should become even worse.”

“At least we shall not be entirely devoid of masculine company until then,” said the dowager. “You were wise, Elizabeth, to think of inviting Wyvern to join us a day before the others.”

“Well,” said the duchess, smiling, “I knew he would not wish to ride about the countryside with the other gentlemen when they escort the Regent, and his health must excuse him from being thought lacking in courtesy. Moreover, Margaret suggested it would be better for him to have a day to recuperate from the journey before the others arrived. Of course,” she added with an arch look at Philippa that threw that lady into some confusion, “I am persuaded Wyvern will suffer little discomfort with Rochford at his side to see to everything.”

F
RIDAY MORNING PHILIPPA AWOKE WITH
a sense of anticipation much like that experienced by a child at Christmas. But Christmas was over and done, and she was not a child, so for some moments after awakening, she could not think why on earth she should feel as she did. Surely it could not be that she looked forward to more of the same entertainment she had enjoyed the previous evening. To be sure, it had been a most pleasant, most relaxing time. The duchess and the dowager were both delightful hostesses, and dinner had been excellent despite the fact that the duchess had apologized more than once for the disorder reigning in kitchens that anticipated the imminent arrival of the royal party.

Conversation after dinner had been lively, too, for the dowager could never be otherwise. Of that Philippa was certain. Duchess Isabella and Miss Pellerin, having been acquainted for many years, stood on no ceremony with one another, and Philippa had quickly come to feel, the first time she had met both the dowager and the duchess, that it would be difficult for anyone to feel uncomfortable in such company. Still, there had been something lacking in the evening’s entertainment, something that would not—if her feeling now was anything to go by—be lacking this coming evening.

Because of the odd, arch look the duchess had shot her way the previous day, she tried to convince herself that she had merely become spoiled through having so much company around her these past weeks, that she missed having a host of young gentlemen gathered in her dining room enjoying too much port and claret after their dinner. But she knew in her heart that there was a better explanation than that for the fact that she so looked forward to the forthcoming arrival of the party from Wyvern.

The door opened and Alice entered carrying a painted wooden tray containing Philippa’s morning chocolate and a copy of
La Belle Assemblée
.

“Good morning, ma’am. Her grace sent up the magazine. Said it arrived yesterday by the post and is the new issue, that you might wish to look it over with your chocolate.”

“Good gracious, is her grace already up and about, then?” Philippa demanded. “It is scarcely nine o’clock.”

Alice laughed, setting down the tray and moving to open the curtains. “She’s up with the birds, that one, her people say. Shrewd as she can hold together. It’s her as runs this house, ma’am, and no mistake, and the duke’s other properties as well. They say the Duchess Elizabeth knows at Cheveley if a sheet has been ripped at Haddon Hall or if a hound’s gone missing at Belvoir, and that she knows it before ever a message could be sent to her, as if anyone
would
send a message on such an account.”

“Well, perhaps if she is as good a manager as she sounds to be, they do send such messages to her, you know.” Firmly repressing all thought of what sort of rumors the duchess might also have gathered by such means, Philippa picked up the magazine, smiling at the extraordinarily elongated lady gracing its cover, and shaking her head a little at a morning dress decked all over with large, pink beads. “Sitting down in a gown like this one must be vastly uncomfortable, don’t you think, Alice?”

Alice glanced obligingly at the cover and gave it as her opinion that a woman as tall as that one wouldn’t fit in anyone’s furniture so the point would never arise. Then she sighed, glancing at the window again. “I don’t expect you’ll be wanting your riding habit, ma’am. ’Tis still as gloomy as an Irish bog out there, and no mistake.” Shaking her head, she moved to the fireplace, where a fire had already been laid and lighted by an earlier-rising servant who had managed the business without disturbing Philippa in the slightest. The fire had chilled, but Alice, wielding the poker deftly, stirred the logs, causing smoke to billow forth briefly before the flames leapt with renewed energy.

Philippa wrinkled her nose a little at the smell of the smoke but turned back to her magazine and, after a moment, said absently, “Just fetch out that light green allapeen morning gown you packed for me. Belvoir Castle may be well-appointed and as elegant a country house as one might find anywhere, but its corridors are drafty. I brought the gold-and-green Norwich shawl, too.” She turned a page before continuing, “When you have laid out my things, you needn’t wait, for I shan’t get up just yet. Go instead, if you will, to look in on Miss Jessalyn. One of the maidservants has been asked to wait upon her, but I should like her to know that she is not entirely unsupervised by her nearest and dearest.” She looked up then, smiling.

Alice returned the smile with a knowing one of her own. “I’ll do that, my lady. ’Twouldn’t do for that young limb o’ Satan to be getting up to any of her tricks while we are guests in this house.”

“No, certainly not, although to do her justice, she has behaved very well, and I expect she will continue to do so for the present. She rather likes playing at being grown up, you know, and I don’t believe she will take any risk of being denied permission to attend the christening ceremonies on Tuesday.”

“No, indeed,” Alice agreed, much struck. As she moved toward the door, she looked back over her shoulder. “They say the Archbishop of Canterbury himself is to do the business, ma’am.”

Philippa smiled at her. “Yes, so her grace explained last night. Of course, the young Marquess of Granby will succeed to one of the greatest titles in the land, you know, so one ought not to be amazed by the archbishop’s condescension, I daresay.”

When Alice had gone, Philippa leafed absently through the magazine for some moments longer before she realized that she was paying little heed to its content and that, furthermore, she was restlessly twitching her toes beneath the bedcovers. Stilling them did no good. They stirred of their own accord.

“Ridiculous,” she said aloud in a scolding tone as she pushed the covers aside and stepped out onto the carpet beside her bed. She shivered in the chilly air and reached quickly for the woolen dressing gown left at the foot of the bed the night before. Slipping into it, she shoved her feet into lambskin slippers and moved nearer the fire.

As she stared into the flames, she knew she was as excited as a young girl by the prospect of being at close quarters with the viscount again. That was the long and the short of the matter. Much though she might wish to retain the independence that had been hers since her late husband’s death, she knew she could no longer pretend to herself that Rochford was at all like any of her other suitors. Would she be able to continue to deny her feelings for him once he came to decide that she no longer pined for Wakefield? And if she could not, would she lose her independence entirely?

How, she wondered, could a man who spoke easily, as he had once done, of the sensibility of proper education for women maintain a foolish masculine prejudice against allowing them in the hunting field? And if she bowed to his decision on her behalf in that regard, what other decisions would he insist upon making for her? Truly, the matter of her hunting, having been reduced to a trifle, now loomed large again.

Fortunately for her peace of mind, the duchess was able to provide her with a number of little tasks to make the day pass quickly after she and Miss Pellerin had broken their fast, for the party from Wyvern, having begun their journey at noon, did not reach the castle until shortly before dinner. Philippa was dressing when they arrived, so she did not see Rochford until they met in the pink-and-gilt drawing room just before the meal.

The Lady Lucinda having been sent to dine with Jessalyn and Lady Elizabeth Manners, only the earl, Lord and Lady Kegworth, Mr. Drake, and Rochford were with the duchess and the dowager when Philippa and Miss Pellerin entered the room.

“I see your sister Catherine and Seldon did not accompany you, sir,” Miss Pellerin said to Rochford when they had taken their seats. “I had thought with the fog to keep them in Leicestershire, they might have done so.”

“No, ma’am,” he replied, smiling at her. “Seldon seems to have contracted a head cold over the holiday and had no wish to make a gift of it to everyone here.”

“No, good gracious!” exclaimed the dowager, who was seated on her customary pink claw-footed settee. “Only think what his highness’s reaction must be to being sneezed upon.”

“Prinny quacks himself, if you ask me,” said Mr. Drake austerely.

“Very true,” agreed the duchess. “Why, Mama Isabella, you was used to say yourself that he has himself bled for the least little reason and takes to his bed if only his footman chances to cough behind him.”

“Well, I may have said so, but I should never be so daft as to say such things to his head, Elizabeth, and you ought not to repeat them in company.”

The duchess did not appear to be at all cast down by this rebuke, but looked up, smiling, when Douglas entered just then to announce that dinner was served. “Shall we go in?” she asked, adding flirtatiously to the earl, “You shall give me your arm, my lord.”

Rochford offered his arm, by virtue of her rank, to the dowager, whereupon Mr. Drake turned a compelling eye upon his niece’s husband. “I daresay, Kegworth, that you will not object to escorting two such lovely ladies as your wife and Lady Philippa,” he said suavely, “while I lend my arm to this charming lady.” He bowed to an astonished Miss Pellerin, who must have expected to escort herself, since there were no other gentlemen present and since both Philippa and Margaret must take precedence over her. Indeed, only after Lady Margaret laughingly insisted that she did not object in the slightest to sharing her husband’s escort with Philippa, did the older lady place the fingers of her right hand on Mr. Drake’s forearm and allow him to take her into the dining room.

Philippa smiled at Margaret. “Really, I am guilty of the most regrettable lack of forethought. I ought to have insisted that Wakefield and his cronies put off their visit to Mr. Dauntry’s father, in order that they might even her grace’s numbers at table.”

Her good mood lasted through dinner, for her gaze encountered Rochford’s more than once, and when the duchess arose to indicate that the ladies should leave the gentlemen to their port, she was unsurprised when he shook his head and said that he, for one, had no wish for port that evening.

“Indeed, ma’am, I had thought that perhaps if Lady Philippa has not seen your picture gallery, I might have the pleasure of introducing her to Holbein’s King Henry the Eighth.”

The duchess assured him that she believed Lady Philippa would adore to see the Holbein, ruthlessly stopped the dowager from saying whatever appeared to be on the tip of her tongue, and ushered the other ladies from the room.

Philippa stared at Rochford, but he merely gestured toward the door at the end of the room opposite that through which the others had departed. “The gallery is the next room to this one, you know. Will you come?”

“Yes, thank you,” she said, aware of the odd humming in her mind again.

The picture gallery, another ivory-and-gilt room, was long and narrow with a decorated barrel-vaulted ceiling. The carpet and furnishings were simple so as not to detract from the lovely paintings, which ranged in style from Holbein’s huge portrait of Henry to smaller, less magnificent, but entirely admirable renderings of the hunt by John Ferneley. Neither Philippa nor Rochford commented upon the pictures, however.

“I have missed seeing you these past days,” he said quietly.

“Have you, sir?”

“Indeed, I was sorry to be obliged to deny you your hunt.”

“You need not apologize, sir,” she said, smiling at him. “I am persuaded it would have been a tame affair at best.”

“Well, in this weather, of course—”

“Oh, Rochford, give over, do.” She chuckled. “The weather has nothing to do with it, and you know it. Will you dare to tell me to my face that the hunt you had planned for your sisters, Jessalyn, and me would have been anything like the hunt I joined in progress some weeks ago?”

“Well, no, of course not,” he said, frowning. “I have already expressed my views with regard to ladies attempting the fast-paced hunting that true sportsmen demand, my dear.”

“So you had planned a nice, quiet day of riding after foxes in the old style, had you not? No grand runs at a full gallop, just a nice dignified trot after the huntsman and his hounds, the latter still coupled and on leashes, I daresay.”

“Philippa, for the love of heaven, why must you insist upon putting your lovely neck at risk? You are not, I thank the fates to say it, a man with a man’s strength and stamina. Surely you must realize that your limitations are greater.”

“That may be so, my lord,” she said calmly, willing him to listen and to understand, “but I should like to be given the opportunity to discover my limits for myself, not to have limits imposed upon me by others.”

His jaw tightened, and she could see that he was becoming angry, but she refused to unsay the words. Though she had come to realize that she cared greatly for this man, even perhaps loved him, it was impossible to believe that she would continue for long to love a man who insisted upon wrapping her in cotton wool. Until he agreed to allow her to hunt in her own style—to make such decisions for herself, in fact—they would have little upon which to build the sort of relationship she would wish to establish with a husband.