Unbefitting a Lady (15 page)

‘Phaedra, go up to the house,’ Giles instructed, attempting to
speak around Bram’s broad-shouldered blockade. ‘I will sort everything out.’

Bram could feel Phaedra bristling at his back. ‘Like you did my
horse?’ Great, now he was caught in a sibling crossfire.

‘Phaedra, please go up to the house,’ Bram tried. This time she
obeyed, but not before she shot Giles a hard look that would have melted stone.
Bram didn’t relish being Giles when he returned to the house. He had no
illusions Phaedra’s departure made things better. Giles would not take well to
disobedience from his sister when she gave another man acquiescence.

‘Is this your idea of heeding my warning?’ Giles growled. ‘Was
I not explicit enough this afternoon?’ He eyed Bram with speculation. ‘Or did my
warning provoke you to speed ahead, thinking you’d lose her to a
worthy
gentleman?’

Bram lunged, catching Giles by the lapels of his coat and
hauling him against the wall. ‘You know nothing about her. If you did you’d
realise I’m not the one losing her, you are. Let her race her horses, Montague.
She’s going to do it anyway.’

Bram’s breath came fast and hard. Giles Montague was a strongly
built man. He wouldn’t be held for long. To prove it, Giles gave a hard shove
that sent him sprawling backwards, his shoulder knocking against a tack
cupboard.

‘Don’t tell me about my sister! You’re a bounder and a cad to
take advantage of an innocent young girl.’ Giles leapt for him but Bram rolled
away and regained his feet. Innocent young girl? Phaedra was a woman full of
passion, not that Giles would want to know that.

They were grappling now, their hands at each other’s throats.
This time, it was Bram against the wall, Giles’s face a savage red. He would
hear no wisdom in Bram’s words. Why should he listen to the man who wanted to
seduce his sister? ‘You don’t have two days, Basingstoke. Get your hands off my
sister and get your sorry self off my land.’

Chapter Fifteen

‘Y
ou look a treat, miss.’ Henny stepped
back from the mirror to examine her work. Phaedra dutifully turned her head side
to side, showing off the brilliants pinned in her coiffure. Henny
had
outdone herself but that didn’t make Phaedra any
more desirous of going downstairs. The day had been a disaster from start to
finish.

She had fought with Giles, or at least she’d
tried
to fight with him. She was spoiling for a good
argument, but Giles had refused. He’d been aloof and chilly, hardly responding
to her hot words. She’d called him stubborn and controlling, drunk on his own
power. She’d railed at him about the colt, about curbing her own freedoms, but
mostly she’d railed at him over Bram. Bram had been dismissed and now he was
gone without so much as a goodbye.

She should be thankful. Bram’s very unsuitability had been the
saving of him. If Bram had been a gentleman of any standing, Giles would have
seen them married with all due haste. That didn’t change the fact she was
reeling from his desertion.

She’d only begun to realise last night when she’d fled to the
stables how much she’d come to depend on Bram’s presence.

She’d spent most of the day at the stables, avoiding Giles and
party preparations and hoping to catch sight of Bram, hoping they could talk.
But Bram had left early, before first light according to Tom Anderson, and the
stables felt the emptier for his absence.

There was no question this affair which had started as a
physical experimentation had become much more for her. Yet she was left
wondering in the end, what had she meant to him? She hated herself for caring
what that answer might be. She’d not wanted this to become anything more and yet
it had.

Henny was staring at her with a funny look. Apparently she was
expected to say something. Oh, yes, they’d been talking about her hair, a rather
minor subject when her life was falling apart.

‘It looks lovely, Henny, truly it does.’ Phaedra reached for
the heart-shaped locket on her dressing table. ‘Help me with this, we’ll have to
hurry if we don’t want Aunt Wilhelmina breaking down the door.’

Aunt Willy
. She wouldn’t be able to
hear that name again without thinking of Bram. Aunt Wilhelmina would be in alt
tonight. The whole day had been spent in preparation for the evening, most of
which Phaedra had thankfully avoided. Phaedra had no doubt the house had bustled
with workers arranging flowers and decorating the saloon where the party would
be held since sunrise. A London debut wouldn’t be any more elaborate than Aunt
Wilhelmina’s ‘simple party.’

The whole countryside was invited, from the magistrate, Sir
Rufus, on down to Reverend Seagrove. Aunt Wilhelmina had condescended to invite
Alicia for the sake of appearances. Even Sir Nathan and Captain Webster had been
on the guest list.

Phaedra had disapproved of their inclusion but Aunt Wilhelmina
had been adamant: if there was to be any slighting it wouldn’t be on the
Montagues’ part. It would be too obvious an oversight to leave them off the list
when appropriate guests were a bit thin on the ground in this part of the world.
Derbyshire, Aunt Wilhelmina had reminded her, wasn’t exactly brimming with
peers.

Henny helped her with the clasp and Phaedra studied the effect
of the simple gold jewellery against the bare expanse of bosom on display.
Phaedra tugged at the low bodice. ‘Do you think necklines will ever go up,
Henny?’ It was hard to condemn a man for ogling a woman’s bosom when fashion
demanded it be practically thrust in his face.

Henny laughed. ‘Lord, no, miss. Necklines aren’t going up any
time soon unless fathers and brothers decide to petition for some decency on
behalf of their daughters and wives.’

The maid winked mischievously. ‘But I don’t see any men
complaining.’

Henny sobered. ‘Speaking of men, I hope I am not too bold. We
were sorry to hear about Mr Basingstoke. The girls at the house liked him. He
was always full of manners and a bit of the devil.’

Phaedra blushed. News had certainly travelled fast. She hoped
not all of what had transpired last night had made its way through the servants’
grapevine.

‘Phaedra!’ Giles called impatiently through the door. ‘You
can’t be late to your own party.’

Henny gave her a smile. ‘Go on, there are lots of nice young
men downstairs who’d consider themselves lucky to have a girl like you.’ She
gently pulled Phaedra’s hands down. ‘Stop with your fussing. You look lovely
even if we had to rush.’

The rush had been Phaedra’s fault. She’d stayed too long at the
stables trying to make the event disappear by ignoring it. Her strategy hadn’t
worked. Here she was at half past seven, hair pinned up, and dressed in a gown
of worked Union silk, a fashionable confection of blush pink trimmed with
expensive blond lace. No London modiste could have done better. Matching
slippers with tiny satin bows peeped from her skirts and a scarf of China crêpe
embroidered with pink flowers at the tails waited on the bed to grace her
shoulders. No lamb led to slaughter had ever looked finer.

Phaedra took one last look at her reflection. The woman in the
mirror was a lovely liar, the epitome of a perfectly turned-out debutante. There
were no telltale signs she’d spent the day in breeches working her colt or that
she’d been caught in the arms of a most unsuitable man the night before. The
woman in the mirror looked entirely innocent of such heated wrongdoings. That
would make Giles happy. She couldn’t promise she could make him happy after
tonight. If she meant to be at Epsom for the Derby, she’d need to leave
soon.

Giles knocked again, the short rap indicative of his
impatience. ‘Phaedra, are you ready? Auntie will have my head if we’re not
downstairs in five minutes.’

Phaedra opened the door and played the ingénue. ‘Is it time
already?’

‘Father wants to see us before the guests arrive.’ Giles
flicked his cuffs in a quick inspection.

‘Father’s coming tonight?’ Father kept to his rooms these days.
He hardly came to any social events. The last one had been a disastrous dinner
meeting with Kate’s husband, Virgil.

Phaedra took the silk scarf from Henny and settled it about her
shoulders, trying to cover up the bare bodice.

‘It’s your big night, Phae. Of course he’ll be there.’ It was
the nicest thing Giles had said to her since last night. She fought the urge to
wince and failed. She didn’t want this to be her ‘big night.’

Giles gave her a placating smile, the kind big brothers perfect
for cajoling stubborn little sisters. ‘It won’t be that bad. There will be
dancing and food. It will be nice to have a party. We haven’t had one since
Kate’s wedding.’ He squeezed her arm affectionately. ‘Maybe it’s time we started
having parties again. Maybe it’s time you start meeting nice young men. Lily
tells me Mr Chesterton will be here tonight. He’s a poet. He’s just published a
volume of poetry dedicated to Prinny, studied literature at Oxford. His father’s
a baronet from Wessex. He likes to travel.’

Phaedra listened half-heartedly to Giles’s well-intended
recitation of Mr Chesterton’s fine attributes. She didn’t want a
poet
,
she wanted a man who
smelled like wind and spices, whose chest was a granite slab of strength, who
could waltz divinely in nothing but a haphazard kilt made from a quilt. She
wanted Bram.

Aunt Wilhelmina assembled the family in the little-used music
room at the front of the main house. The Montague children, one and all, had
preferred outdoor pursuits to the elegant, polished harpsichord Aunt Wilhelmina
had imported from Italy years ago for the ‘betterment of their musical
instruction.’ Lumsden was on hand with flutes of iced champagne. ‘Lady Phaedra,
would you care for a glass?’ He offered her the tray. ‘Your aunt wants a
toast.’

Phaedra dutifully took a cut-crystal flute. She understood.
This was her penance, the price of her indiscretion. She’d ventured outside the
prescribed behaviors for a girl of her rank and birth. Now the family was united
in its attempt to salvage her virtue.

What there was of it. By that she meant the immediate family,
not her virtue. The family assembled was made up these days of Aunt Wilhelmina,
a frail duke, one older brother and another brother’s widow. Out of a family of
eight, only four of them were gathered. She felt the absence of the other four
keenly, even more so when she saw her father in the big green armchair by the
fire. He was thin and pale, a shadow of the man who had gamboled on the
Castonbury lawns with his children in the long summers of her youth.

‘Come here, Phaedra.’ Her father held out a papery hand to her.
‘Come let me look at you.’ His grey eyes were bright and alert, unclouded by
medications. He stared hard at her as if he had never seen her before. Then he
smiled. ‘You look like your mother. You’ve got her hair and her face. You and
Edward got the best of her.’ His eyes misted for a moment and then he was off on
another tangent. ‘I hear you have a new colt in the stables.’

They talked a few minutes about Warbourne. She told him about
the colt’s speed and the ebony sheen of his coat but nothing that would upset
him. There was no mention of Bram, no mention of Epsom. Since Jamie’s death, the
implicit rule had been ‘say nothing to upset father.’ Their father had done a
good enough job of that on his own, retreating into a world of memories where
his two dead sons were still alive.

Alicia touched her lightly on the arm, looking pretty in a
plain ball gown of pale blue. ‘Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt but Aunt
Wilhelmina wants to toast now and then you’ll need to go with Giles and greet
the guests.’

None of which would be Bram.

* * *

Bram put the finishing touches on his cravat and thrust
an emerald stick pin through its snowy folds for decoration. He consulted the
small round mirror in his room at the Rothermere Arms for any errors in his
toilette. It felt odd to be wearing his usual clothes after so many weeks
without them. The dark evening trousers and the layers of coat and waistcoat
over his shirt felt constraining. But the days of Bram Basingstoke the head
groom at Castonbury were behind him now, or almost behind him.

He was going to the party. He owed Phaedra that much. He’d left
things awkwardly with her the night previous regardless of Giles’s intrusion.
He’d not offered her reassurance when she’d sought it. She’d been devastated to
hear he was leaving and he’d said nothing to assure her he was just as
disappointed. Instead he’d acted nonchalant, as if he were ambivalent to the
situation when he wasn’t ambivalent in the least. Then he flirted with her,
promising to make the last two days count. He meant to keep that promise by
showing up tonight.

That was a piece of chivalry he didn’t want to take out and
examine too closely for fear of what he’d find. He wasn’t used to women who
brought out his finer qualities. But Phaedra had and she deserved to know he
hadn’t simply walked away from her at her brother’s decree.

Beyond that, he wasn’t sure what else he could offer her, what
else he
should
offer her. He was a rogue and a rake
with little to bring with him aside from scandal. His reputation hadn’t bothered
him before but it was bothering him now that he’d dusted off his little-used
conscience.

Bram gathered up a walking stick from the bed. It would be easy
enough to infiltrate the party. No one turned a well-heeled gentleman away. No
one would be looking for Bram Basingstoke the earl’s son, and no one would take
this fashionable gentleman for Bram Basingstoke the groom. People saw what they
expected to see.

Whistling, Bram headed downstairs to the public room. It was
quite convenient to be persona non grata for the evening. He would dance with
Phaedra and kiss her goodbye and Giles Montague—and everyone else—would be none
the wiser.

* * *

Giles Montague needed to be more careful about who he
hired to work in his stables. Sir Nathan patted the inner pocket of his evening
coat, a fine swallow-tailed affair in black wool that had just arrived from
Buxton along with this most important letter. Phaedra Montague was about to be
up to her pretty neck in scandal unless she saw her way to obliging him.

Sir Nathan chuckled, stepping down from his carriage and
looking up at the impressive facade of Castonbury Hall, light and music spilling
from its windows. He’d have to play his cards diplomatically though. He didn’t
want to advertise this scandal to the general populace. That would only serve to
chase Phaedra into Basingstoke’s arms—society would require it. He wanted
Phaedra in
his
arms. He’d paint himself the rescuing
hero, the supportive neighbour willing to take tainted goods off Giles
Montague’s hands, horse and all. By the time the night was over, Giles Montague
would appreciate him as a man of great refinement and discretion.