Patricia Veryan - [Sanguinet Saga 01] - Some Brief Folly (2 page)

They presented a dramatic tableau, had any of them but been
aware of it, the two fine young soldiers, the tall, vibrant girl, and
the emotions of the crowd broke loose. Vaille, springing to the statue,
waved one arm and shouted, "Hip… hip…"

The "hurrah" rocked the rafters—or would have, had there been
any.

"So, here I am," smiled Buchanan, comfortably relaxed on the
sofa in the luxurious anteroom, "alive and well. Though how you could
have known I had been brought down is more than I can guess."

"Of course, it is," nodded his sister, refilling his glass and
carrying it to him. "For you are, after all, a mere man." She allowed
her fingers to rest for the briefest moment on his hair, then crossed
to sit in the armchair, where she might more easily watch him as he
sprawled there, long legs stretched out before him. He looked very ill,
she thought, wherefore, of course, she assured him he looked splendid
and said another silent prayer of gratitude because he was alive. And
longing to hurry him home and settle him into bed, she knew she must
not, that he was a fighting man, accustomed to hardship, and would
think her wits to let did she too obviously coddle him. Thus, for a
respectable interval, she allowed him to talk proudly of their fine
victory, of the wonder of being at last over the Pyrenees, of the
invincibility of the mighty Wellington, and of the fact that he had
been personally visited by that great man as he lay in the farmhouse
they had appropriated for the wounded.

Euphemia had toiled in, and wept many nights away over, some
of those farmhouses and fought to keep her voice steady as she
expressed the hope that Wellington had escaped unscathed. "Yes, thank
God!" answered Buchanan fervently. "For lord knows, Mia, what we would
do without him!"

"We shall not have to do so. The 'Finger of Providence' rests
upon him, so he once told me. He believes that, with all his heart."

"Then I pray he is right. Oh, incidentally, he sent his
regards to you."

"
Incidentally
! He never did! Simon, you
are hoaxing me!"

"Devil a bit of it. Told me you was a most striking young
lady, and he hopes when I come back, I'll bring you with me."

A coldness touched her at the words, "… when I come back…"

"Amusing, ain't it?" he said quietly. "He never said, 'Bring
your lovely wife, Buchanan.' Only 'bring your striking sister.' " He
had been twirling his glass, looking down into the amber liquid. Now he
raised his head and with a wry smile met her eyes, toasted her
silently, and drank.

Euphemia bit her lip, and a knife turned in her heart. Simon,
the dearest, kindest, most valiant of men, should have gone straight to
the arms of a loving wife. Instead of which—

"Why do you stay at the New House?" he asked lightly. "I'd
fancied you ensconced in Grosvenor Square. Ernestine said she had
invited you."

It had always been thus. The great house on Hill Street was
the New House because the foundation had been laid in 1740, whereas the
central block of Buchanan Court, their country seat in Bedfordshire,
dated to 1495. Buchanan Court suited Lady Simon. The New House did not,
and the spoiled beauty had pouted, stormed at, and teased her doting
bridegroom until two years ago he had purchased a fashionable,
enormous, and enormously costly mansion on Grosvenor Square. Euphemia
had received no invitation to share her sister-in-law's
"loneliness"—nor would she have accepted had such a courtesy been
extended. Therefore, she kept her lashes down, for once avoiding
Buchanan's searching gaze, as she folded a careful pleat in the cream
satin ball gown that draped gracefully about her. "Oh," she shrugged,
"Grosvenor Square is too grand for me."

"Is it? How long since you saw my wife, Mia?"

"Well, she's down at the Court, you know, and it has been so
very cold, I've not cared to journey to Bedfordshire." How subdued he
looked, poor dear. She should tell him, of course, but this was not the
time. And so she stood, gladly postponing her bitter news, and urged,
"Now come along, you must to bed, for you will be tired, love, and—"

"You are very good," he said gravely. "But I have been to
Grosvenor Square, Mia. I know."

She murmured a helpless. "Oh," and, clenching her hands,
wished she might instead throttle the life from the tiny dark-haired
girl with the petulant mouth, the perfect little nose, the enormous
pansy eyes, who went by the name of Ernestine, Lady Buchanan.

"I understand," Buchanan said in that quiet, expressionless
tone, "that I am to be congratulated." He put down his glass, turned
his head on the back of the sofa and, looking at her, smiled faintly.
"Ain't you going to congratulate me?"

"Oh…
Simon
!" She choked over the words
and flew to kneel at his side, clasp his drooping hand and hold it
tightly. "I am so sorry! I should have written and warned you, but—it
seemed… I just could not!"

"I understand. Have you… er—seen him?"

She shook her head, her lips quivering.

"My third. She has called him William, I hear." A pucker
appeared between his brows. "After whom, I wonder…" His sister
remaining silent, he stared blankly at his glass for a moment, then
drew a hand across his eyes and muttered half to himself, "I wish they
did resemble me, you know."

Euphemia knew then how very tired he was, or, close as they
were, he would never have voiced so betraying a remark. "Belinda does,
dear," she reminded huskily.

He sat straighter at once, his eyes brightening. "Yes, by gad!
I must go down and see the little lass. Is she well? Una has that good
nurse still, I—" He had forgotten his injury in his eagerness, and
leaned forward too sharply. He broke off with a gasp, then finished a
rather uneven, "I… trust."

Euphemia stood at once. "Belinda is healthy as a horse, which
is more than I can say for her papa! You, sir, shall go nowhere until
you have spent at least the next three days allowing your doting sister
to pamper, cosset, and altogether ruin you with kindness!"

Euphemia's blissful expectations of keeping her favourite
brother beside her for three days were exceeded beyond her wildest
dreams. Exhausted by the journey home and shattered by the news that
had greeted him, Buchanan suffered a setback; the shoulder refused to
mend properly, and two weeks later the deities at the Horse Guards were
still withholding their consent for his return to active duty. He came
home from the most recent of his medical examinations with the word
that his leave had been extended to January, at least. Euphemia was
elated, but he viewed her joy glumly, for, although he knew he was not
in fit condition to get back into action, he fretted against the wound
that kept him in England while his comrades of the Light Division were
in the thick of the fighting.

Tristram Leith visited the New House before his own return to
France and, as usual, renewed his offer for Euphemia's hand. Buchanan,
who wholeheartedly approved Leith's suit, was not excluded from the
proceedings and urged his sister not to accept such a great gudgeon for
a husband, even did he go down on his knees. Grinning broadly through
Leith's warnings of a horrid end, he complained that the children of
such a union must dwarf their poor, averaged-sized uncle. Euphemia
considered her large suitor curiously and, with a pronounced lack of
the blushes and shy posturing the situation justly warranted, enquired
if he
would
propose upon his knees. Ever the
gallant, Leith at once made a great show of dusting the immaculate
floor and dropping his handkerchief upon it, and she stopped him in the
nick of time, by asking whether the life of a country squire would
really suit him.

"Country…'s-squire" he echoed, dismay written clearly upon his
handsome features. "Oh, dash it, Mia, you would not wish me to resign
my commission?"

Such a prospect would have delighted her, but she was not the
type to attempt to remodel the man she chose and thus merely pointed
out, "But you have such a delightful estate in Berkshire. And only
think of how happy your Papa would be did you settle down at Cloudhills
and provide him with all the peace of the country, broken only by the
patter of little feet, to brighten his declining years."

How she had managed to keep a straight face while she said
this, she did not know. Leith's mercurial sire had once been described
by the Countess Lieven as "the most confirmed here-and-thereian" of
that lady's acquaintance and would have fainted had such a prospect
been painted for him. Wherefore, Buchanan gave a whoop of mirth, and it
was a full minute before Leith was sufficiently recovered to gasp out
the shaken observation that Mia would never do so frightful a thing to
a "poor gentleman!"

Euphemia burst into her delightful ripple of laughter and
confirmed this, adding a fond, "Nor to you, my dear Leith. For although
you are quite definitely a matrimonial prize of the first stare and
such as no lady in possession of her faculties would refuse, we would
not suit at all, you know."

He protested this verdict in a lighthearted fashion that
concealed his total devotion and, finding her amused but unmoved,
sighed disconsolately, "Alas, The Unattainable remains so! I warn you,
Fair One, I shall try again."

"On the day you come to me in smock and gaiters, Tristram,"
she smiled, "I may take your proposal seriously. But—"

The thought of the dashing Colonel thus clad sent Buchanan
into hysterics, and soon they were all enjoying a merry half hour of
their customary easy raillery. But Leith's laughing eyes saw more than
they appeared to, and he left Hill Street secure in the knowledge that
if his admired Euphemia was not yet ready to wed him, neither had she
given her heart to any other.

Sir Simon, however, took a less amiable view of the matter,
and the moment Leith's fiery chestnut stallion had pranced, danced,
jumped, and sidled his high-bred way around the corner, he went
shivering back into the house and proceeded to take his sister to task
for rejecting so unexceptionable a suitor. "Indeed, Mia," he said
severely, warming his hands at the fire, "you must be all about in your
attic! London positively bulges with young ladies who would swoon with
joy did Leith so much as glance in their direction."

"You know," she mused thoughtfully, "you are right."
Buchanan's hopes rose, and she went on, "I seem to recall that the mere
sight of him in his full-dress uniform once sent Miss Bridges to the
boards in a dead faint."

Her mischievous smile won a stormy reception, her brother
advising her that Alice Bridges had ever been a silly goose. "But you
are not," he went on, "and must certainly be aware of how splendid a
fellow he is."

"He is indeed. Though not always to his subalterns, I hear.
And—"

"I have yet to hear Leith rage at his officers or his men,
unless they did something damn ridiculous!"

"—And," she resumed, serenely ignoring his bristling
defensiveness, "is not in love with me, my dear. Oh, he thinks he is, I
grant you. Or…" Her smooth brow wrinkled, "Or is it, I wonder, that he
feels we are such very good friends, and I might make him an agreeable
wife. He was impressed, you know, when I accompanied Papa on his last
campaign." Her brother's eyes saddened at this reference to the
so-missed gentleman who had been their father, and she went on quickly,
"But neither am I in love with Tris, though I
do
love him— never doubt it."

"What a romantic," he teased. "And do you mean to wait for the
one and only man in the world who can claim your heart? Terribly
bourgeois, m'dear!"

"Poor Simon, to think you have nurtured a bourgeois sister to
your bosom all these years and never known it."

"Oh, have I not! You and your poems and romances! How well I
remember Miss Springhall grieving lest you become a bluestocking!"

"Yes, and peeping into my books herself, so soon as she
fancied me asleep! But it was in one of those books that I came across
a little rhyme…" She rarely experienced shyness with this loved
brother, but now she looked down at the hands folded in her lap, and
rather diffidently recited. " 'Riches or beauty shall ne'er win me.
Gentil and strong my love must be.' " Meeting his eyes then, she found
them grave and without the mockery she had half expected and, with a
faint heightening of the colour in her cheeks, added, "It is very old,
of course, but… it fairly describes the man for whom I wait."

He settled into the nearest chair and, knowing that she was
deadly serious, pointed out gently, "And fairly describes Leith. On all
counts. Is it possible, little puss, that you love him and are as yet
not aware of it?"

"When I meet the man who will claim my heart," she answered,
looking at him in her level way, "I think I shall know him at once."

She probably would, he thought. And having a shrewd idea of
how deep was Leith's
tendre
for her, experienced
a pang of regret. "What if you should not find this peerless
individual?"

"Why, then I shall die a maid. For I mean to be quite sure,
you see, that I will love as deeply as I am loved." She had spoken
lightly, thinking of Tristram, but had no sooner uttered the words than
she could have bitten her tongue, knowing how Simon would interpret her
remark. She was correct.

"Admirable," he said slowly. "God knows, I only wish I—" He
checked, frowned, and finished, "—wish I may be allowed to give you
away."

She managed a bright, "
Certainement
," and
moved to poke up the fire and conceal her distress. Simon had visited
Buchanan Court twice since his return. On the first occasion he had
come home almost feverishly cheerful and told her that Belinda was
adorable and his wife looking lovely as ever. He had not stayed, he
explained airily, because the house was so dashed full of people he
scarcely knew, he'd decided he would recuperate more rapidly in Town.
The second visit had been at the beginning of the week, and he had as
yet said nothing of it. "I should not ask, I know," she said, still
turned away from him. "But—what do you mean to do?"