The Frost Fair (10 page)

Isabel studied her niece curiously. “Has he treated
you
as an incompetent, Meg? Is that why you've developed this unreasoning prejudice against him?”

“Unreasoning prejudice! The fellow has made no secret about
his
prejudice against
me
. He's already called me a simpleton, a jinglebrained ninnyhammer and a plaguey irritation. What have you to say to
that
, eh?”

Isabel gaped. “Meg! You can't mean it. He wouldn't—!”

“He would and he did. And what's more, he implied that I was fat!”

Isabel snorted derisively and got to her feet. “Now I know you're making all this up. Isn't this a story made out of whole cloth?”

“It is not a story. It's completely true—and there's a great deal more I could tell you that's every bit as reprehensible.”

“I'm not sure I want to hear it,” Isabel retorted. “Besides, it's time I went to change for dinner. Since Sir Geoffrey was so tyrannical as to go out in the storm and retrieve our baggage from the wreckage, I may as well shed this travel dress and adorn myself in something more appropriate for the evening.”

Meg grunted. “I suppose you find him heroic! He retrieved our baggage because of gallantry, I suppose. Hah! I assure you, Aunt Bel, that the only reason he went out in the storm was to see the condition of his own carriage.”

“You may be right,” Isabel conceded, going to the door, “but I sincerely hope, my dear, that
you
will not be so tyrannical as to desire me to accept
your
evaluation of the characters of the people we meet above my
own
. I did so in the case of Charles Isham because you know him better than I do. But in this case, I prefer to make my own judgment.”

“Really, Isabel,” Meg said coldly, feeling a bit offended, “I've never tried to influence your judgment. You may feel quite free to think as you please … about Sir Geoffrey or anyone else.”

“Thank you. I'm very much obliged, your ladyship, I'm sure. Now if you'll come down off your high ropes long enough to bid me adieu, I'll take my leave. Are you certain that you don't want the tyrant to carry you down to the dinner table?”

“Quite certain,” Meg muttered sulkily. “I don't want him to carry me
anywhere
. I hope you have a delightful evening without me.”

Isabel, recognizing the petulant self-pity of the suffering invalid in her niece's tone, merely blew her a kiss and took her leave. It would do the girl good to be left in peaceful solitude.

The solitude was not as beneficial to Meg's spirits as her aunt had hoped, for she lay back against the pillows, her eyes shut, and permitted herself to become more consciously aware of the ache in her ankle and the inconvenience of her situation. She had hoped that she would be well on her way to London by this time. She'd left Isham Manor in eager anticipation of a return to her own abode with Arthur Steele as escort. By tomorrow, she'd expected to be sleeping in her own bed, following her usual pursuits and surrounding herself with her own intimates. Instead, she was imprisoned in this draughty old mansion for an indefinite period, prevented from keeping her appointment with Arthur and unable, this time, to steal away down the back stairs or even to free herself from this alien bed. She was in worse case than she'd ever been at Isham Manor. Her thoughts were dolefully depressing, and the sound of the wind howling outside her windows made a completely appropriate accompaniment to the gloom of her mood.

The sound of a tap on the door only irked her more. Would she never be given a moment's peace? “Come in,” she muttered.

“Have I disturbed you?” Sir Geoffrey asked from the doorway. “I've only come to ask if you wish Mrs. Rhys to bring your dinner here, or if you'd prefer to be carried downstairs?”

“I wouldn't dream of asking you to carry me downstairs,” she said sullenly. “Not being a lightweight, I would be too great a burden on you.”

“As to that,” he responded coolly (although she thought there was a tiny hint of amusement in his eyes—the light was too dim to be certain), “I would not let that problem weigh too heavily. I've impressed into your service the footman who is standing here behind me, and he, as you can see, is considerably younger and no doubt much stronger than I.”

Meg ground her teeth in fury. The man had never yet said a word to her that was anything but insulting. “Thank you, sir, but a supper tray here in bed is all I require. And do thank your footman, too,” she added with icy sarcasm. “It was very brave of him to volunteer to perform so
prodigiously burdensome
a task.”

“As you wish, ma'am,” he said and turned to dismiss the footman. But not before Meg caught a glimpse of the slightest twitch at the corners of his mouth. This wasn't the first time she'd suspected that he'd enjoyed a secret laugh at her expense.

He remained in the doorway after the servant had left, studying her through narrowed eyes. “Are you in much pain?” he inquired.

“Why do you ask?” she responded sullenly. “Are you trying to convince me that you're suddenly willing to become ‘involved' in my problems?”

He came in and sat down beside her on the bed. “Are you still smoldering over our little altercation at the inn? I think it's time you stopped dwelling on that bit of nonsense.”

“That ‘nonsense' was directly responsible for everything that's happened to me since. If you'd
helped
me with Mrs. What's-her-name—”

“Perkins.”

“Yes, Perkins. If you'd given me some assistance with her, I might well be on my way home by this time, without this broken ankle and the lump on my head.”

“Or you might still be lying in a ditch somewhere in Mrs. Perkins' rickety equipage, dead as a doornail and buried, unnoticed, under two feet of snow.”

“I would
not
be—”

“Don't act the fool. It was not a night to be out traveling. I'd hoped, by putting a damper on your plans, to force you to spend the night at the inn, which is what anybody with a grain of sense would have done. Instead of which you managed to procure a carriage somewhere else. Where did you get that phaeton, by the way?”

“That, sir, is none of your affair.”

He shrugged. “Yes, I'm aware of that. I'm also aware that there's something havey-cavey about your acquisition of that rig. I don't care whether or not you choose to confide the circumstances to me, but when the snow melts—as it surely will within the next few days—and the magistrates make their way to my door, I shan't be able to fob them off if my information is inadequate.”

“You needn't trouble yourself about the magistrates. I can take care of them myself … quite well. I've managed for many years to deal with my own problems, and all without help from you.”

“Very well, ma'am, please yourself. Although I don't think my behavior at the Horse With Three Tails warrants quite such vehement antagonism. Your ankle must be paining you quite severely.”

She drew herself up in disgust. “That is just the sort of arrogant interpretation of my mood which I might have expected from you, Sir Geoffrey. If I show antagonism, the cause, of course, cannot be
your
fault—oh, no! It must be something else … like my injury!”

His eyebrows lifted again. “Is there something else that I've done which angered you?” he asked in what seemed to be sincere surprise. A look of unmistakable amusement shot into his eyes. “It can't be that I complained about your not being a featherweight, can it? Surely you must have received enough compliments about the perfection of your form to withstand a little teasing. I imagine that half the men in London must have told you—”

“
All
the men in London have told me about the ‘perfection of my form'!” she declared grandly. “And for you to believe that I'd fall into the sulks over your slights is the
greatest
of the insults you've yet heaped on me.”

“I was not aware of heaping any insults—”

“No, of course you were not! You think so little of the members of my sex that you're not even conscious, I suppose, of how you disparage us.”

“Come now, your ladyship,” he remonstrated patiently, “you mustn't let a small injury cast you so deeply into the dismals that your reason and your sense of humor are affected.”

Her eyebrows lifted superciliously. “It quite amazes me, sir, how you condemn yourself with every word you utter. If I dare to find any faults in you, I must be either mentally deranged, lacking in humor or suffering from my injury!”

“Not at all,” he said, his patiently pleasant expression darkening with a puzzled frown. “I don't claim to be without faults, I assure you. But my faults had not, before this, kept me from maintaining cordial relations with the guests of this house.”

“They must all have been men,” she retorted.

He gave a little snort of laughter and, with a shrug, as if to say that it was quite hopeless to reason with a female, made one last attempt to placate her. “I'm sorry, my dear, that you feel in some way offended, but is it quite fair to assume that
all
your sex would find me similarly offensive?”

“It is not an assumption but an almost proven fact.”

“That all females find me offensive?” He stood up and stared down at her, one eyebrow raised in sardonic disbelief.

“If you hold my sex in low esteem, they
must
find you so. I've listened all afternoon to your own mother and sisters, and I've learned from them the extent to which you use your position of responsibility to disparage them, control them and tyrannize over them.” She could see him stiffen, but she went heedlessly on. “From the first moment I saw you, I found you arrogant and unfeeling. And everything I've learned since only reinforces that impression. If I am showing ‘vehement antagonism,' it is not my ‘small injury' which causes it—or even my irrationality or my lack of humor. It is nothing but you yourself!”

Every muscle in his face seemed to have hardened, and his eyes glinted like steel. “I had hoped we could brush through this enforced proximity with a minimum of tension,” he said icily, “but I see that the difficulties are not to be avoided. Well, then, ma'am, since my family has seen fit to pour out our intimate secrets into your ears, I may as well be equally frank. Yes, my dear, I
do
hold your sex in low esteem. I have to deal daily with a mother whose propensity for gaming is quite out of control, with one sister whose attraction toward fops and coxcombs is completely indiscriminate, and with another who imagines she suffers from every disease listed in the
Encyclopaedia Medica
. It is my onerous duty—without a bit of compensatory satisfaction, I assure you—to keep their various idiosyncratic proclivities under some sort of restraint. If this duty (necessitated by these
felicitous
examples of feminine virtue) has failed to endear your sex to me, I plead guilty. But I warn you, ma'am, that my esteem for womankind will not be a bit enhanced by the addition under my roof of still another female to harass my peace—one who is so foolishly self-admiring that she reads into every one of my casual remarks a personal affront! You would be well advised, if you wish this period of our enforced association to pass with a minimum of friction, to keep your hostility to your host from showing too blatantly, to refrain from encouraging his family in their excesses, and to behave with some modicum of the sense you claim to possess. And now, goodnight to you, ma'am. I will see that Mrs. Rhys brings you a supper tray within the hour.” And with that, he stalked from the room, shutting the door firmly behind him.

She gaped at the door openmouthed. His cold disdain had left her speechless and shaken. Never in her life had she been spoken to in such a way! How dare he treat her as if she were just another burdensome female he was forced to endure?

She found herself seething. She was quite unaccustomed to being belittled by the gentlemen she met. Wherever she went—in the most fashionable circles of London society—the gentlemen all danced attendance on her, eager to do her least bidding, exerting themselves to earn her slightest smile, vying with each other to win her favor. Why, even the Regent himself, during a dinner at Carleton House, had stumbled over his tongue trying to make a favorable impression on her. Yet this impertinent rudesby presumed to treat her with such contempt! If he'd approached her in a London drawing room—a mere country baronet—it would have been she who disdained him!

That was the problem, of course—she was in his realm, his castle, his kingdom. Here she was forced into situations where their confrontations had not been favorable to her. She'd always been in some way a supplicant. Everywhere she'd encountered him, she'd had to beg for his assistance—in the taproom, at the scene of the wreckage, and here at Knight's Haven. She had needed his help, his support, his indulgence. He'd never seen her in situations where
she
could be in control … and where
he
might have to play the supplicant. Oh, how she would love to see their roles reversed! How she would love to drive him to his knees before her so that she could have the exquisite pleasure of laughing at him—of declaring to him that she found him beneath contempt, that she was not at all interested in “masculine fripperies,” or that she found him nothing more than a “plaguey irritation.”

She sat up in bed, a smile suddenly lighting her face. To reverse their roles might not be a very difficult task to accomplish, she realized suddenly. Not at all difficult. She need only remember who she was. She was Lady Margaret Underwood, the toast of the
ton
! All she need do is make him aware of it, too.

Yes, even here in his realm she could manage it. There in the dressing room were several of her London gowns and all the accessories and accoutrements she would need. With only a few of her very effective mysterious smiles, a glance or two from under her lowered lashes, the merest brush of her hand against his cheek, and he, like so many others, would be hers for the asking.