Velvet (21 page)

“Georgie, how wonderful to see you!” Gabrielle flew up the steps and into the hall, arms flung wide to embrace her cousin. “What a wonderful surprise.”

“I couldn’t resist it,” Georgie murmured into her ear as she hugged her. “Simon and Miles are as cross as two sticks.”

Gabrielle gave her a conspiratorial squeeze, then drew back to greet the two men standing behind Georgie, her crooked smile faintly mocking as she saw their clear discomfort. “Simon … and Miles too. How kind of you to escort my luggage.”

“We were just passing,” Simon said, kissing her cheek.

“Yes, just passing,” Miles agreed, taking her proffered hand and raising it to his lips. “You’re looking very … um … very well,” he finished somewhat lamely.

“Positively windblown,” Georgie declared, removing her velvet bonnet and shaking loose her golden ringlets. “What have you been doing?”

“Sailing on the river,” Gabby replied. “Nathaniel was teaching me … where
is
Nathaniel?” She looked
around, puzzled, having assumed he would have followed her up the steps. “He must have come in through the gun room. But why would he do that when he knew he had visitors?”

Miles and Simon exchanged a dourly comprehending look just as Nathaniel entered the hall from the side corridor.

“Well, well,” he drawled. “This is an unexpected pleasure. To what do I owe it? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“We were just passing,” Simon repeated as awkwardly as before. “Just passing and we thought we’d drop in on our way and leave Gabby’s luggage.” He cast a fierce glance for support toward Miles, who was trying to be invisible.

“Yes … yes, just passing,” Miles reiterated, clearing his throat.

“Passing from whence to where?” demanded Nathaniel. “As far as I know, Burley Manor isn’t en route to anywhere that would entice Lord and Lady Vanbrugh or Mr. Miles Bennet in the middle of the Season. Far too countrified.”

A dull flush appeared on Miles’s cheekbones at this caustic statement, and he shot an I-told-you-so glare toward Simon, who pursed his lips but said nothing. Even Georgie appeared to lose some of the assurance that had so far swept all opposition aside.

“For heaven’s sake, Nathaniel!” Gabrielle exclaimed. “Don’t be such a miserable grouch! They’re your friends and they’ve come ail this way to visit you, the least you can do is offer them some refreshment. Besides, they were doing me a favor, bringing my luggage so quickly.”

“I stand corrected, ma’am,” Nathaniel said as sardonically as before. “I was forgetting your own claims on my hospitality. Of course they must extend to your friends.”

Gabrielle drew in a sharp breath, but before she
could come up with anything suitably cutting, Nathaniel gestured toward the library.

“I’m afraid there’s no fire in the drawing room, gentlemen, since I wasn’t expecting guests, but come into the library. I’m sure I can produce a bottle of decent claret. Gabrielle, I will leave you to entertain Lady Vanbrugh.”

“He is so rude,” Georgie declared in a fierce undertone. “How can you stand him, Gabby?”

“All in good time,” Gabrielle said with a grin. “I know perfectly well that’s why you’re here. Let’s go up to my boudoir and we can have a comfortable coze.”

“I beg your pardon, my lady …” Mrs. Bailey, who’d been standing in the shadows, a silent observer of the last minutes, stepped forward. “Should I prepare bedchambers for his lordship’s guests?”

“Yes, if you please.” Gabrielle smiled warmly. “Lord and Lady Vanbrugh and Mr. Bennet will be staying overnight, of course. You’ll know how best to accommodate them.”

“So I’ll tell cook there’ll be five for dinner?” Mrs. Bailey still sounded a trifle hesitant.

“Yes,” Gabrielle said. “And could you send Ellie up to my boudoir with some tea, please. I’m sure Lady Vanbrugh will be glad of a cup after her journey.”

She swept Georgie upstairs to the Queen’s Suite, closing the door firmly behind them.

“What a pleasant room.” Georgie looked around the apartment with a shrewdly appreciative eye, assessing the elegance of its furnishings, the richness of the carpet and draperies.

“It’s a very pleasant house altogether,” Gabrielle agreed, drawing the curtains across the window, closing out the encroaching dusk. “Take off your pelisse and sit by the fire, Georgie. I know how you detest exertion of any kind, and traveling in particular, so only overriding curiosity could have brought you here. I’m deeply complimented, I assure you.”

Georgie was not a whit put out by this teasing, she was far too accustomed to it. Her cousin had always been three times as energetic as herself, and the contrast between them was something of a family joke.

“Well, you really are behaving scandalously,” she declared, tossing her pelisse over a chair and bending to warm her hands at the fire. “If word of this gets out, I dread to think how you’ll be received in London. Why, you might be denied vouchers for Almacks.” Georgie’s tone invested this last hideous possibility with suitable solemnity, but her eyes, burning with curiosity and excitement, belied the tone.

“Stuff,” Gabrielle scoffed. “It’s not going to get out unless you or Simon or Miles blabs about it … and I know you won’t. I shall simply let it be known that I returned to France for a couple of months.”

She regarded her cousin through narrowed eyes. “Come clean, Georgie. You don’t have a prudish bone in your body and you’re certainly not here as chaperone to safeguard my precious reputation. You’re here because you want to see for yourself what’s going on.”

Georgie laughed and sat down by the fire. “Yes, I do. So tell all, and start from the beginning.”

“Listen closely,” Gabrielle said in the hushed tones of one about to tell a scandalous
on dit
in the greatest secrecy. Georgie’s benign thirst for gossip would be easily quenched with the surface truth—the actual facts were so far from her experience, she wouldn’t be able to credit them anyway. Gabrielle was a past master at entertaining her cousin and knew exactly what details of her liaison with the misanthropic and utterly discourteous Lord Praed would amuse Georgie.

Downstairs, Simon took a glass of wine from his still-unbending host and coughed. “I suppose you’ve a right to resent the intrusion, Nathaniel. But Georgie insisted on checking up on Gabby.”

“Insisted?” Nathaniel’s eyebrows lifted incredulously as he took the scent of his wine.

“Insisted,” Miles put in. “She’s a DeVane,” he added, as if this were sufficient explanation for all but the village idiot.

“You have my sympathies, Vanbrugh,” Nathaniel said coolly. “And how long do you imagine it will take your wife to complete her … her checking up? An hour, maybe, two at the outside?”

“For God’s sake, Praed!” Miles exploded. “You’re not going to throw us out tonight, surely!”

“There’s bound to be an inn in Lymington,” Simon said stiffly. He stood up, placing his half-empty glass on the side table. “Forgive us for the intrusion. Perhaps you’d ask a servant to summon my wife and have the horses put to the carriage again.”

Nathaniel’s lips twitched and bright laughter sprang suddenly into his eyes. “If you leave in high dudgeon, Simon, that
enfant terrible
you foisted on me will probably string me up by my thumbs. You may be married to a DeVane, but I tell you, only those who hold their lives cheap would go in the ring with Gabrielle de Beaucaire.”

There was a stunned silence as Nathaniel’s visitors struggled with this abrupt volte-face. Then Simon’s rigid features dissolved into their customary warm geniality.

“You bastard,” he said, punching Nathaniel with some force on the shoulder. “You knew how much at a disadvantage we were, and you took shameless advantage of it.”

“Habit,” Nathaniel confessed with a half-smile. “I hadn’t expected to be pleased to see you, but curiously, I find that I am.”

Miles gave a guffaw of laughter. “Gabby’s clearly a miracle worker.”

“She has some small talent,” Nathaniel agreed, refilling their glasses.

It occurred to him that this unexpected visit might well prove fortuitous. At some point, when he could
separate the two men, he’d sit down with Simon and go over Gabrieile’s qualifications for the service with him again. Now that he was no longer against the idea in principle, he’d be a little more searching in his questions.

Jake was full of curiosity when he tapped on Gabrieile’s door just before six. He’d heard the arrival of the visitors, and Miss Primmer and Nurse had been discussing them while he had his supper. His godfather was here, but there was another lady too, something that intrigued Jake mightily.

He entered at Gabrieile’s bidding and gazed wide-eyed with frank curiosity at the pretty woman sitting by the fire. She wore a driving dress of soft beige and the blouse beneath had high ruffles that brushed under her chin. She struck him as soft and curvy and smiling, and her hair gleamed gold in the firelight. Gabby wasn’t soft and curvy and golden, he realized, but with a rush of fierce loyalty he decided that she was much more beautiful than the other lady.

“Jake, come and meet Lady Vanbrugh.” Gabby held out her hand to him and he stepped forward, bowing with jerky formality to her guest.

“This is Jake, Georgie,” Gabby said, drawing him against her with an encircling arm. “Nathaniel likes to see him in the library before he goes to bed, so we usually go down together.”

Georgie smiled at Jake. “I have a little boy too, but he’s much smaller than you.”

“What’s his name?”

“Edward … we call him Ned.”

“Oh … are you going to tell me a story tonight, Gabby?” Jake dismissed the unknown Ned in favor of his own pressing concerns.

“Perhaps not tonight,” Gabrielle said. “Since Papa has visitors. And your godfather is here too. Let’s go down to the library.”

Jake hung back, chewing his lip, then said, “Papa doesn’t let me go to the library when he has visitors.”

“Oh, but this is your godfather,” Gabrielle said. “And these visitors are my special friends, so I’m sure he’ll want you to be introduced. Are you coming, Georgie? Or would you like to go to your own bedchamber and dress for dinner?”

“Oh, I’m coming,” Georgie said readily, rising to her feet.

Gabrielle chuckled. She hadn’t expected anything different.

If Nathaniel was put out by the interruption, he gave no sign. Gabrielle seemed to have taken charge of the situation anyway, he reflected, watching as she presented Jake to Simon and eased the meeting of the shy child with his awkwardly hearty godparent. Miles had had little to do with his godson hitherto, and little experience of children in general, so his attempts to put Jake at his ease tended to create the opposite effect.

Despite Gabrielle’s efforts, however, Jake showed little reluctance when Nathaniel sent him back to the nursery after fifteen minutes. He bade a formal good night with his stiff, jerky little bows to all except Gabby.

“Won’t you tell me a story?” His voice was barely above a whisper as he approached her.

“Not tonight, love. I have to dress for dinner, but I’ll come and kiss you when you’re in bed and sing you one of my funny songs. Actually, there’s one that Georgie and I used to sing together. Do you remember it, Georgie? The one about the man with the beard that the birds nested in?”

Nathaniel listened to the women’s laughter, recognizing the intimacy of shared childhood. Simon shared it too, to a lesser extent, he realized. He certainly had an almost brotherly ease with Gabrielle. The three of them were trying to remember the words of the silly schoolroom songs they’d sung together, and their laughter
was so infectious that even the timorous child was smiling, clinging to Gabrieile’s skirts, watching the adults’ faces with his round brown eyes.

A wash of loneliness surprised Nathaniel as he suddenly saw himself at Jake’s age. A lonely little boy living on the periphery of adult lives. He couldn’t remember being touched, not in the way Gabrielle was always touching Jake. He’d been touched by nursemaids in the general day-to-day business of caring for a child. His father had laid a hand on him only in punishment He didn’t think his mother had ever touched him.

“I hate to interrupt this merriment, but we should change for dinner,” he said, rising to his feet. “Jake, it’s past time you were upstairs. Nurse will be looking for you.” He hadn’t meant to say anything like that. He’d wanted somehow to join the laughing group, to be acknowledged by them and to have a part in the union Gabrielle so obviously shared with his son. But he heard his voice, sharp and disapproving, speaking narrow, mean words.

The laughter left the child’s eyes and he went with instant obedience to the door. Nathaniel felt a sudden ache beneath his breastbone, as if something had been twisted there. It wasn’t physical, yet it felt as powerful as if it were. As the boy passed him, he put his hand out and ruffled his hair as he had done the other night. And as it had done then, the gesture startled them both.

“I don’t fully understand.” Later that night Simon paced the library, a perturbed frown disturbing his usually equable expression. “What is it that you suspect Gabrielle of?”

“Nothing at this point,” Nathaniel said with more patience than usual. He was leaning against the mantelshelf, comprehension in the brown eyes as he regarded his guest’s agitation. It was never comfortable to
have one’s judgment questioned, particularly when it related to a close friend.