Passion's Song (A Georgian Historical Romance) (12 page)

One of the earl’s guests was James Stanton
Fredericks, Viscount Strathemoore, who, at twenty-four, was a
charming and amiable young man, well liked among men of fashion for
his impeccable taste, his ready wit, and the ease with which he
lost at hazard. He was of above-average height, not yet portly,
with black hair and startling blue eyes that made him a favorite
among women. He was a Whig who, before his father’s death, had
stood as Member of Parliament for one of the boroughs. He had but
once shown his face at the Commons. He took snuff, donated generous
sums to the poor, patronized two painters and one writer, and
attended church on an irregular basis, and after dozing through the
sermon sincerely told himself he would go more often but never did.
His father had left him a large fortune, a country house in
Middlesex to which he repaired during Christmas, Easter, and
summertime, and a medium-sized estate in the county of Devon that
gave him about eighty thousand pounds a year. He was only able to
spend about half of the income from the Devon estate because the
men he left to oversee the place were robbing him of the other
half. The family seat was some one hundred miles or so southwest of
Bath, and he fully meant to visit the place again sometime soon.
Even at the rate the viscount was spending his fortune, it would be
some time before he would need to consider acquiring less prodigal
habits. Currently, he was considering marriage, it being high time
he got himself an heir. The trouble lay in deciding whom to marry.
There were any number of deucedly pretty women to whom he was quite
attracted, but there were slightly fewer who were rich enough. He
had come to Marblestone Park for the sport and because he had heard
the earl’s cook was incomparable. When he saw Lord Chessingham’s
daughter, he saw the woman he meant to marry.

Young Lord Strathemoore rose early one day and set
out with the rest of the guests for a morning of shooting. Two dead
pheasants later he turned back, claiming an injury to his foot. It
so happened he had been able to discover that Miss St. James took
the morning air in the rear gardens, and his trek back to
Marblestone was a circuitous one by way of the back of the house.
He was elated to discover the object of his interest sitting not
twenty feet away from a copse of trees into which he promptly
stepped. He stood there for some minutes while he decided which of
a variety of strategies occurring to him was most likely to succeed
in attaining his object. He was just throwing down the pheasants
when somehow his gun got tangled up in the twigs of a dead tree,
and in jerking it free it went off, but, to his great relief, not
in the direction of Miss St. James. He yelped in surprise and had
just enough time to throw himself to the ground when he heard her
cry out.

II

Isobel was startled when she heard the report of a
gun and, immediately afterward, a shout. She jumped up from her
seat. “Oh, my!” she exclaimed. “Who’s there?” She heard groaning
from the trees. “Are you hurt?” she called out, making her way
toward the agonized moans. She pushed past the branches. “Oh, dear
God!” she cried when she saw a young man lying prostrate on the
ground. She ran to his side and bent down on her knees. “Are you
shot?” She took one of his hands in hers. “Don’t move. I’ll get one
of the servants!” She was about to get up, but his hand tightening
on hers prevented it.

“
No, I’m not shot,” he said
through a grimace of pain. “But I’ve given my ankle a nasty turn.”
He struggled to sit up and held a hand to one booted foot, gingerly
attempting to move it. “Give me but a minute. I’m sure ‘twill come
round.” He looked up at her through thick eyelashes.

“
What were you doing here?” She
eyed the dead birds with distaste. “I’m quite certain there are no
grouse so close to the house.”

“
Pheasants. Miss…?” He looked at
her hopefully.

“
Perhaps you ought to take off
your boot. There’s bound to be some swelling.” She reached out to
his foot but snatched back her hand when he shouted in
pain.

“
I would not be so indelicate as
to expose my unshod foot to your beauteous eye…Miss St. James, is
it not?” He saw her frown and quickly continued: “Would you be so
kind as to help me up? If I could just get to the house, I could
have my man take care of me.” He leaned heavily on her, swaying
when he was upright.

“
What about your things?” She
glanced down at his gun and the two dead birds.

“
I’ll send my man for them later,”
he said as they began to make their way out of the
copse.

“
So, you have not yet told me why
you were lurking in the trees.”

“
I am ashamed to admit it, miss,
but I was lost! I was heading back to the house and thought to take
a shorter route and somehow I got myself rather turned
round.”

“
I should say you did. Are you all
right?” she cried out when he shouted in agony after he tried
stepping down on his foot. “Oh, dear, I do hope it isn’t broken.
You seem in such pain!” Her voice was all concern now. “You’d best
use me as a crutch.” She placed his arm around her
shoulders.

“
That would be most unseemly, Miss
St. James!” He sounded embarrassed.

“
Well, I can’t carry you,” she
said in frustration. “Can you wait till I get one of the servants
to help you?”

His arm curled around her shoulder. “No,” he said
with a groan, taking a hopping step forward. They were almost to
the house before one of the servants came running out to them.

“
Oh, my lord! Have you broken your
leg?” The chambermaid held her hands to her face when she saw the
leg he held bent back at the knee.

“
Please send my valet down,” he
ordered, before Isobel could tell the maid to take her
place.

“
Yes, milord.” She curtsied, then
ran back inside. Isobel helped him to a seat in the entrance hall
while they waited for his valet to appear.

“
How can I thank you, Miss St.
James?”

“
Thanks are not necessary,
sir.”

He grasped her hand. “James Stanton Fredericks,
Viscount Strathemoore, your most humble servant.” He pressed his
lips to her hand. He looked forlornly at her when he saw his man
hurrying down the stairs. He kissed her hand again. “I am your
slave, Miss St. James.” He let go of her hand when the servant
arrived.

“
Good day.” She curtsied and
walked hurriedly up the stairs.

Lord Strathemoore and his valet hobbled up the
stairs to his room. Once inside he shook off the man’s helping
hands. “I’m quite all right, Lowther.” A puzzled Lowther watched
Lord Strathemoore stride to the door and look out into the hall. “I
left my gun and two birds in the trees in the back,” he said when
he shut the door. “Wait a few minutes and then go get them. Should
anyone ask, tell them I am not as badly hurt as you feared.”

“
Yes, my lord.”

III

“
Rum luck, Strathemoore, your
turning your ankle like that,” Lord Campston said over cards later
that evening. “The cover was excellent!”

“
It’s luck, I’ll own,
Campston.”

“’
Pon honor, you sound glad of
it!” Lord Fistersham said, laying down his cards and scooping up
the pot.

Once sure Chessingham was out of hearing, Viscount
Strathemoore made his announcement. “My friends, I have met Miss
St. James!”

“
The devil, you did!”

“
You don’t say!”

“
She is an angel!” Strathemoore
said.

I

Isobel was glad to return to London. The countryside
was beautiful, but she had had enough of fake ruins, deliberately
planted dead trees, and wild undergrowth left to choke out prettier
bushes. She considered it utter nonsense. The city was a welcome
relief after the solitude her father had imposed on her by
adamantly refusing to introduce her to his guests. Avoiding Lord
Strathemoore had been a trying enough endeavor, but she was looking
forward to the time when she would be properly introduced to the
man. She thought him rather good-looking.

As soon as she arrived in London, she and Julia were
caught up in plans for Isobel’s ball. Lord Chessingham approved
whatever Julia recommended, and Isobel was more than happy to let
her plan the affair. She hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about
such a thing. Her time was taken up with dancing lessons, fittings,
and the fortepiano. In the week before the ball, Julia spent hours
telling Isobel what to expect of every one of her guests. She even
attended one of Isobel’s dancing lessons and pronounced her as
graceful as any woman could hope to be.

When at last the day of the ball arrived, she was
calm while Bridget painstakingly pulled her hair into an upsweep
and adorned it with a ribbon of the same sky-blue satin as her
gown. It was a color she had always disliked, but Julia had
insisted she looked divine in it, and Isobel reluctantly deferred
to her judgment on the matter. The underskirt was a darker blue
silk revealed all around at the points where small dark blue bows
held up the overskirt. She had been adamant that the rows of bows
at the elbow-length sleeves be removed in favor of just one at each
cuff. She was calm while the buttons of her dress were being
fastened. By the time the maid had fastened the gold buckles of her
dark blue satin slippers, she felt like someone’s pattern doll and
she was thoroughly disgusted with the entire process. Up until she
took her father’s arm and stood with him at the door to greet the
guests, she was calm. But as people began to arrive and she saw the
looks of curiosity on their faces, she began to wish she could just
go upstairs and wait until the ordeal was over.

As her father escorted her into the ballroom to
dance the first minuet with her, she felt her mouth go dry. When it
was over she whispered to him to take her to the punch bowl so she
might wet her parched throat. It would also give her something to
do. She was not at all convinced anyone would ask her to dance, and
she was surprised when she was instantly surrounded by men begging
for the honor. She supposed they were obliged to out of courtesy.
Soon, however, all the glib phrases Miss Steadly had taught her
became indispensable as she was spun around the floor and handed
through the intricate dance patterns. Did these elegantly dressed
men really think her stupid enough to believe the nonsensical
drivel they were spouting at her? Could she do anything but look
away as though suddenly shy when some ridiculous fop told her she
was a divine creature, that her eyes reminded him of a stormy sea,
or that she was more graceful than any swan? It would have been
funny if they had not so sincerely expected her to believe them.
She was grateful it was considered polite to look away at such
times; at least then she could hide her scorn for some of the more
outrageous comments.

Isobel took a deep breath as Lord Hartforde expertly
handed her through another minuet. She was looking fixedly past him
and so missed the raised eyebrows and appreciative look downward as
he took in the sudden swell of her breasts against her neckline.
Until she saw the décolletage of the gowns other women wore, she
had thought her own to be terribly daring. She had been watching
him surreptitiously all evening, hoping he would dance with her.
Just when she had given up, he had bowed gracefully and asked her.
She had been half inclined to tell him she was engaged, but when
she looked into those green eyes she was mesmerized. She was so
intrigued by the man that she had actually gone to the trouble of
obtaining copies of all his speeches. She had learned that, in
spite of his comment that she sounded like a “dashed colonist,”
Lord Hartforde had been a vehement supporter of the colonists in
the American war, having upon the opening of Parliament in October
of ‘81 made his first impassioned speech against continuing a war
that, in addition to being immoral, he argued was incapable of
being won. The news of the fall of Yorktown on 19 October, received
just a few weeks after his speech, had been an incalculable
embarrassment to George III and his prediction of disaster had not
endeared him to his Sovereign. Isobel sighed again. Her studied
indifference to him was becoming difficult to continue. His hand,
whenever it rested lightly on her back, seemed to burn through the
fabric of her gown. He was a wonderfully graceful dancer; the other
men she had danced with were oafs by comparison. And he was so
unconcernedly handsome!

“
Is something amiss, Miss St.
James?” he asked, dismayed that she seemed distracted.

“
I’m afraid I’ll make a fool of
myself and step on your toes.” She looked directly at him for the
first time and blushed when she realized what a ninny she sounded
like.

“
But you dance divinely.” He
laughed at this example of what he took to be coquettishness, and
when next he held her hand, he grasped it a little closer. He
decided he liked the sound of her American accent after all. She
was quite striking when she smiled, he thought, and, truly, she
filled the modest neckline of her gown in a most fascinating
manner. It was no wonder every man in the place was panting for a
chance to dance with her. Rich and beautiful—what man could resist
that combination?

“
To tell you the truth, my lord, I
feel like somebody’s prize horse at an auction,” she said,
surprised that, after an evening of guarding her tongue, she could
say what she really thought. But, then, how could she let him think
she hadn’t a thought in her head but the fear of stepping on his
toes? “My father can’t wait to marry me off so I may produce him an
heir. I’ll wager he spends his evenings working up bloodlines.” She
was hurt when he threw back his head and laughed. “You wouldn’t
think it so amusing if you were in my place!”