Sheri Cobb South (15 page)

James sketched an ironic little bow. “I am gratified to know that I am providing such excellent entertainment for you.”

“Look here, James.” Peregrine leaned forward, his expressive countenance suddenly serious. “I know the heart is its own master, and all that, but feeling as you do, is it wise to fix your hopes on a lady as—well,
ambitious
as Miss Darrington?”

“Oh, but I don’t think she is—at least, not for her own sake. But she has been carrying far too heavy a load for far too long, with very little assistance.”

“I confess I find it hard to take so sympathetic a view of one who would force sweet, innocent Amanda Darrington into marriage with a rich old man.”

“I believe you have a point there,” marveled James, much struck. “Although we did debate the eligibility of brutes and half-wits, I do not believe any mention was made of the prospective bridegroom’s age.”

“Brutes? Half-wits? What the devil—?”

“Never mind,” said James, laughing aloud at his friend’s bewilderment. “I shall explain it later. But come, Perry! You are worldly enough to know that the Misses Darrington have few other options besides marriage, save for dwindling into poverty-stricken spinsterhood. Would you prefer to see Miss Amanda obliged to hire herself out as a governess?”

Peregrine recalled the cringing, colorless female charged with the thankless task of educating his flighty young sisters, and barely repressed a shudder. “Good God, no!”

“Then perhaps in future you will be less critical of Miss Darrington’s decisions.”

A hint of steel undergirded James’s pleasant tenor voice, and his engaging smile grew decidedly wintry. Peregrine stiffened, ready to take offense, but even as his eyes flashed and his nostrils flared, the absurdity of the situation struck him. He threw back his head and laughed.

“And to think I had trouble picturing you as a duke until this moment! As they say, blood will out. Speaking of which—” He reached into the pocket of his coat and withdrew a sheaf of papers bearing a broken seal of red wax. “I have something that belongs to you.”

His memory now fully restored, James recognized Peregrine’s burden at once. He unfolded the sheets of crackling vellum and spread them upon the table. “I never thought to see these again! Where did you find them?”

“Beneath a hedge on the Montford road.”

“I say, is that my blood? That must have given you a rare turn!”

“I should say it did! I fully expected to discover your lifeless body ‘round the next curve.”

“And I, for one, am very glad you did not. Still, I think I had best ask you to keep these for me yet a while longer,” said James, folding the papers together and pushing them across the table toward his friend. “It would not do for one of the Darringtons to discover them.”

“Very well, they shall remain safely hidden until King Cophetua has won his beggar-maid!”

James, having caught sight of the clock over the mantel, let this sally pass with no more response than an appreciative grin. Citing the need to return to Darrington House and check on his pupil’s progress, he thanked Peregrine for his discretion, and the two young men parted on excellent terms. Peregrine remained behind long enough to settle the bill—shaking his head at the irony of being obliged to stand squire for a man who could buy him several times over— then tugged gloves of York tan over his well-shaped hands, set a curly-brimmed beaver on his head at a jaunty angle, picked up the sheaf of papers still lying on the table, and departed the premises.

He was hauled up short at the sight of a charming figure in green sprigged muslin emerging from a shop on the other side of the street with a basket over one arm. Without further ado, he hurried across the street to intercept Amanda Darrington.

“Well met, Miss Amanda,” he said, sweeping an elaborate bow. “And just in time, too, as you are obviously in need of assistance. Pray allow me to carry your basket.”

“It is not at all heavy,” she protested. “It contains nothing more burdensome than ribbons and lace.”

“On the contrary, I also see a paper of pins, and nothing can be more wearisome than to be obliged to haul pins about the countryside,” retorted Peregrine, wresting the basket from her unresisting grasp. “But I gather from the contents of your basket that you are soon to be occupied with your needle. Are you to have a new gown for my aunt’s party?”

Amanda, seeing the way he commandeered her basket, recalled that she disliked Mr. Palmer excessively. Still, she saw no need to make him privy to the information that she was not making a new gown but retrimming an old one. Rather than disabuse him of this false assumption, she merely nodded.

Peregrine dropped James’s papers into the basket, the better to take Amanda’s arm. “Will you save a dance for me? The first waltz, perhaps?”

Amanda’s heart beat faster at the thought of whirling about the ballroom in Mr. Palmer’s arms, but she was determined to put this presumptuous young man in his place. “You are very kind, Mr. Palmer, but I fear I must decline. It is only fitting that I should reserve the first waltz for Mr. Fanshawe, since he was kind enough to teach me the steps.”

“Your scruples do you credit, Miss Amanda, but I feel I should caution you that Mr. Fanshawe intends to solicit your sister for that honor.” He regarded her with limpid brown eyes. “I warn you not from any self-serving motive, of course, but only that you may not find yourself languishing against the wall for lack of a partner.”

Amanda’s urge to give Mr. Palmer a set-down warred briefly but violently with her desire to attempt the new and slightly scandalous dance that had taken London by storm. The end, however, was never really in doubt. “Very well, Mr. Palmer, the first waltz is yours. I should hate to find myself a wallflower, and Aunt Hattie assures me that it is the height of incivility to decline one gentleman’s solicitation to dance only to accept when a better—I mean,
another—
offer comes along.”

He grinned appreciatively at this home thrust. “It is a great relief to me to know that you rate my charms higher than those of the wall, at all events. But let us leave off pulling caps! Have you finished your shopping? May I escort you home?”

Amanda had indeed finished her shopping, but she was not at all certain she was ready to have done “pulling caps,” as Peregrine had so inelegantly phrased it. In fact, she was not quite sure which she found the most objectionable: the skill with which he had manipulated her into promising him the first waltz, or the eagerness with which she had seized upon the first available excuse for doing so. She suspected that to meet with a rebuff must do Mr. Peregrine Palmer a great deal of good, and she was gratified to be presented with a second chance to render him this humble service.

“Escort me home?” she echoed with no small sense of satisfaction. “I fear I must decline, sir, for I promised my sister that I would meet her at the apothecary after I had finished at the emporium.”

“Very well, then I shall have two lovely ladies to attend, rather than just one.”

“By all means, sir, since you are so determined. Although I have no doubt you will look very silly trudging along behind our gig.”

“Oh, cruel!” Still retaining his grasp on her elbow, he began to steer her in the direction of the apothecary’s shop. “If you will have it, then, the apothecary it is.”

“I assure you, your gallantry is misplaced,” protested Amanda, grabbing ineffectually for her basket. “I am quite capable of finding the apothecary on my own. It is only a step away.”

“Just so. Surely my company for so brief a time cannot be so very objectionable.”

“You underestimate yourself, sir.”

Peregrine merely grinned, his withers unwrung. “I wonder, Miss Amanda, what I can have done to give you such a disgust of me?”

In fact, Amanda was not entirely sure upon this head herself. It was not as if she had never been the object of masculine admiration before—no, indeed! Every man in Montford had attempted to flirt with her at one time or another, from callow youths who stammered out incoherent compliments to grandfatherly types who chucked her under the chin and called her a pretty piece. But there was something distinctly different about Mr. Peregrine Palmer’s attentions, something she was not at all certain she liked. To be sure, he paid her all manner of extravagant compliments, but she could not shake the uncomfortable conviction that he did not mean a single one of them. Indeed, it seemed at times almost as if he were mocking her.

One could hardly make a present of this information to such a discommoding gentleman, however, so in the end she was forced to fall back upon a disdainful sniff and the retort of wronged females since Eve. “If you do not know what you have done, it would clearly be useless of me to try and tell you.”

It was enough. Peregrine lapsed into grinning silence for the duration of the short walk to the apothecary, where he exchanged civil greetings with Margaret before handing both ladies into their gig. It was not until after the rutted village streets had given way to the open road that Margaret inquired as to the success of Amanda’s mission.

“The ribbons and laces, I mean,” she explained, finding her sister apparently wool-gathering. “I trust you were able to find something suitable?”

“Oh, yes indeed,” Amanda agreed hastily, with only slightly feigned enthusiasm. “Only wait until you see—”

As she reached into the basket, however, it was not ribbons and laces that met her fingers, but a thick packet of papers bearing a broken seal of red wax. Amanda was generally a very well-behaved girl, but such a temptation was not easy to resist; she, in any case, was not proof against it. She unfolded the crackling sheets and scanned the first page.

Margaret, intent upon keeping her sway-backed hack from wandering off the road to sample the grasses growing along the ditch, spared a quick glance for her curiously silent sister. “What do you have there, Amanda?”

“Nothing!” Amanda dropped the papers back into the basket as if they had burned her, and clenched her fingers tightly in her lap in an effort to control their violent trembling. “That is, only some papers Mr. Palmer mislaid.”

“Does it appear to be anything important? Should we turn back, or perhaps stop by Sir Humphrey’s—?”

“No, no!” Amanda objected, fully cognizant of the absurdity of her protests.
Not important,
indeed! “That is, it appears to be nothing that will not keep until next Sunday, when I may return them to him at church.”

Margaret appeared to accept this answer, for which Amanda was grateful. She did not want to tell her sister—not yet, not until she had some time in which to ponder the implications of her discovery before coming face-to-face with its object. The prospect of such a meeting filled her with dread. For although much of the legal language escaped her, the gist of those papers was clear: the young man she knew as Mr. Peregrine Palmer was, in fact, the duke of Montford. She was not quite certain why he was visiting the Palmers under a false name, nor why the very correct Lady Palmer should support him in this deception, but she supposed the duke of Montford must have at his command methods of persuasion which were denied the mere Miss Amanda Darringtons of this world.

The duke of Montford! Small wonder she had so often suspected him of mocking her. He probably found it vastly amusing that a mere country nobody might suppose even for an instant that his attentions were serious. She derived what satisfaction she could from the knowledge that she had never given him the least encouragement, but since her treatment of him had been uncivil to the point of rudeness, this was but small comfort. The party to which she had looked forward with such eager anticipation now loomed before her as ominously as Judgment Day to the infidel. How would she ever face him? Yet face him she must, for she had promised him—indeed, he had all but demanded!—the first waltz. Nor did the prospect of her imminent removal to London offer respite, for when Mr. Palmer returned to Town (she
would
persist in thinking of him as Mr. Palmer, rather than his Grace!) he would doubtless tell all his friends of her impertinence. Her Season would be over before it had even begun, for surely no gentleman of sense would wish to marry such a rag-mannered creature as she. Her whole family would suffer, and all because she had foolishly allowed her head to be turned by the first London beau to cross her path.

Staring bleakly at the road unwinding before her, she returned only half-hearted monosyllables to Margaret’s recitation of the latest village gossip. If only she had not insisted on new trimmings for her sister’s old gown! But she had fancied herself too fine a bird to wear secondhand feathers, and now she would pay the price for her vanity. As for precisely why she had thought it so important to have a new gown for the occasion, her bruised heart shied away from too keen an analysis.

* * * *

Arriving at Darrington House on foot only a few minutes ahead of the ladies’ gig, James entered the drawing room just in time to see Aunt Hattie, sitting beside the fire reading a letter by its flickering light, suddenly leap to her feet and clasp the single sheet of vellum to her ample bosom in a manner that could only be described as clandestine.

“Love letters, Aunt Hattie?” he chided teasingly. “Fie on you!”

At any other time she would have laughed and scolded him fondly, but today she flushed as guiltily as if she had been discovered rolling about on the carpet with the butcher’s boy. “Oh, Mr.—! Oh, how you startled me!”

His smile faded, replaced with an expression of concern. “I can see that. I beg your pardon. I hope nothing is amiss?”

“No, no! It is only that—it was an honest mistake,” she babbled. “My eyesight is not what it was, you know, and although I see now that it was meant for dear Margaret, I had already started reading by that time, and—well, I could not stop.”

Having delivered this disjointed explanation (of what, precisely, James still was not quite certain), she appeared to have run out of words. She held out the letter in surrender, and James, curiosity getting the better of him, took it and scanned the shaky script.

Dear Miss Darrington,
it read,
I fear you can have no very high opinion of me after my failure either to meet you at the appointed time and place or to inform you of my change of plans. Please believe that only the direst of circumstances could have compelled me to behave in such a fashion. In fact, only two days before my departure for Montford, I was stricken with a violent attack of influenza, which, my physician informs me, settled upon my lungs. After many days in which it seemed uncertain as to whether I should live or die, I have only recently marshaled sufficient strength to put quill to parchment. I hope your young brother has not fallen too far behind in his studies as a result of my absence. I am assuming you have already engaged another tutor to take my place, but if you still have need of my services, you have only to write, and I shall join you as soon as my physician gives me permission to travel.