St. Clare listened to his friend’s words with avid attention, all the while wondering how to reconcile the picture Mattingly painted of a fiery, hoydenish hellion with the wan, quiet figure who had fainted into his arms in his library. An illness, her maid had said. What sort of an illness? And did she suffer from it still?
“Miss Honeywell doesn’t strike me as a temperamental sort of female,” he remarked absently.
“No? She was buzzing about you a fair bit just now. What was she saying, St. Clare? Looked to me as if she was calling you to account for something.”
“Did it? How odd. We were simply discussing the play. Miss Honeywell is quite passionate about Shakespeare.”
“Hmm. Well, it stands to reason that she’s not going to be as high-spirited as she once was. Advanced age, you know.”
St. Clare flashed his friend an amused smile. “She’s hardly in her dotage.”
“She’s five and twenty if she’s a day. And still unmarried, by Jove. Hardly seems possible.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He’d been perplexed by that fact himself. “Were there never any serious admirers?”
“Loads of ’em! I know of at least six chaps who made her an offer. Decent fellows, too, and all but one of them with a respectable fortune. Miss Honeywell refused them out of hand. As for the rest… Timid chaps all. Quickly stung and easily dispatched. Not that it mattered in the end. Come to find out, she was wearing the willow for another fellow.”
St. Clare looked at him sharply. “Who?”
Mattingly shrugged. “Some soldier. I never met him. And seeing as how she’s still unwed, I suppose nothing came of it. Perhaps the poor sod died in the war?” He cast a brief glance at St. Clare as they shouldered past a group of raucous young men. “Burton-Smythe’s an admirer of sorts.”
“I’m aware.”
“The way I hear it, he’s been trying to fix his interest with her for ages.”
“And failed, it seems.”
“She’s poorly suited for him, anyone can see it. He needs a nice quiet mouse who’ll never say a word against him.” Mattingly chuckled again. “Now you… Well, I should have known you’d take an interest. Miss Honeywell fits the pattern card.”
“What pattern card?”
“Miss Honeywell is your type is what I mean.”
St. Clare gave an abrupt laugh. “I won’t deny it. But I can’t think how you would know one way or the other.”
“Quite easily. When Vickers and I first met you in Italy, the only females that ever caught your attention were the ones with dark hair and blue eyes. The bluer the better. Vickers used to make a joke of it. Anytime a fair-skinned gel with dark hair and blue eyes passed by, you’d do the most damnable about-face. As if you’d seen a ghost. Never failed to send Vickers and me into whoops.” He laughed at the memory, but at the sight of St. Clare’s grim expression he quickly schooled his features into more somber lines. “Not that I’m comparing Miss Honeywell to a continental light-skirt, mind. She’s a lady. No one would dare say otherwise. All I’m trying to say—and badly, apparently—is that Miss Honeywell fits the pattern card.”
St. Clare was silent for a moment. When he finally responded, his words were quiet ones, inaudible to his friend and quickly lost in the noise of the crowded theater. “Miss Honeywell is the pattern card.”
The following afternoon when Maggie and Jane returned to Green Street after a morning of shopping, culminating in a lengthy visit to Hookham’s Library, they were met by a note from Lord St. Clare.
“Rather presumptuous of him to write you, don’t you think?” Jane asked, stripping off her gloves. “But then, perhaps such things are done with ladies on the continent? What does he say, Margaret? Is it a love letter?”
“No, indeed.” Maggie skimmed the note. “It’s the veriest commonplace. He’d like to pick me up for our drive an hour earlier. I prefer it, actually. But it hardly gives me any time to get ready. I shall have to go up and change directly.”
Jane ushered her toward the drawing room. “There’s time yet for a cup of tea. Carson? Tea and biscuits, if you please.”
Maggie sank down on the sofa, the note still held in one hand. She looked at it again. Properly looked at it. And then she stared.
“Is anything the matter?” Jane came to sit next to her. “Margaret?”
“What?” Maggie glanced up, startled. “Oh, no. It’s nothing. I only thought…for a moment…” Her heart was hammering so swiftly, she scarcely knew what she thought.
“You’ve gone as white as the paper that note is written on. Here—” Jane plucked the missive from Maggie’s fingers. “What has he said to upset you so? Let me see…” She quickly read the note. “He’s only requesting you respond and tell him if four o’clock will suit. There’s nothing shocking in that. No doubt you misread his handwriting.” She squinted at the scribbled blotches of ink. “Heavens, what an atrocious scrawl. It’s a bit like those Egyptian hieroglyphs one sees in the British Museum.”
“Yes. It’s very untidy,” Maggie said distractedly. She moved as if to get up. “I shall have to write out a reply.”
“Don’t trouble yourself, dear. I’ll play secretary.” Jane rose from her seat.
Maggie was grateful for her friend’s solicitude, even as she regretted the necessity of it. Her head was spinning, her mind tumbling over itself at the possibilities raised by that note. The very real—very stark—possibilities. She prayed Jane wouldn’t press her on the subject. Not now. Not when Maggie could barely comprehend the matter herself.
“Hold a moment, Carson.” Jane went to a small escritoire in the corner, pulled out a sheet of paper, and took up her quill pen. “A single sentence stating that four o’clock is agreeable?” she queried Maggie. “And I’ll sign your initials, shall I?” She wrote out a few brief lines, folded the paper, and sealed it with a wafer. “Take this round to Lord St. Clare at once,” she instructed the footman. “He’s presently at the Earl of Allendale’s residence in Grosvenor Square.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Carson said before exiting the room.
“Clearly he’s trying to get you alone in the park before the fashionable hour.” Jane resumed her place beside Maggie on the sofa. “It may be that he doesn’t want the two of you to be observed by all of the ton. Or I suppose there’s always the chance he has some nefarious scheme in mind. A kidnapping, perhaps. Spiriting the unmarried heiress away to Gretna Green so that he can gain control of her fortune.”
Maggie managed a wry smile. “If that’s his plan, he’s in for a very unpleasant surprise. At any rate, I don’t believe the viscount to be a fortune hunter.”
“Nor do I,” Jane admitted. “And yet…I don’t know exactly what to make of him. Oh, he’s gentlemanly and polite, to be sure. Not but that I don’t think he’s sneering a bit at everyone under all that civility. But there’s something else. Something not quite right. I can’t put my finger on it. Then again, I have little experience with rakes. And even less with truly dangerous men.”
“Dangerous?”
Jane nodded. “Oh yes. To hear George tell it, St. Clare is absolutely lethal. The way he recounts that duel…”
“Gentlemen are far too easily impressed. To hear them talk, you’d think it was the most difficult thing in the world to hit a target at fifteen paces. Why, at Beasley Park, I’ve hit an empty bottle off of a fence at twenty, and a bottle is a far smaller target than a man.”
“Yes, dear, but the bottle wasn’t firing back at you.”
“Perhaps not. But to think he’s dangerous merely because of his ability to shoot straight is an utter absurdity.”
“It wasn’t merely that. It was his cold-bloodedness. He stood still as a statue as Fred’s bullet whizzed past.” Jane held her arms stiffly at her sides, affecting an air of boredom as she watched a make-believe bullet go by. “And then, he raised his pistol.” She lifted her
hand as if holding a weapon. “And fired.” Her finger pulled an imaginary trigger. “‘My dear fellow, if you’re going to act the brutish country squire—’”
“No more!” Maggie protested with a groan. “It’s bad enough that I must hear it thirty times from George, but when you begin to recite it, it’s the outside of enough.”
“Come now, you can’t pretend to be unimpressed.”
“I’m not unimpressed. Neither do I stand in awe. According to St. Clare all of the Beresfords are skilled with a pistol. It’s no great accomplishment for them. By the by, speaking of the Beresfords, I must remember to return Lord St. Clare’s flask to him.”
“And you must take your new parasol,” Jane advised. “The sun is out today, and as pale as you are, without it you’re likely to burn. And you mustn’t overtax yourself. No matter how ardently Lord St. Clare presses to prolong your outing—”
“Ardently,” Maggie scoffed. “Really, Jane.”
“Why not? I don’t claim he’s after your hand, but your late-night visit to see him has clearly aroused his interest. Perhaps he means to make you one of his flirts? You needn’t look put out by the idea. There are worse ways to spend the season than being chased after by a golden-haired viscount, you know. And only consider, while he’s pursuing you, I shall no doubt have the constant company of Lord Mattingly.” Jane paused, before confessing, “I had the most awful tendre for him the year of my come out.”
“Lord Mattingly?” Maggie gave her friend a quizzical smile. “You never mentioned that before.”
“Considering that the highlight of my first season was Lady Barbara Latimer christening me ‘Spindleshanks’ and all the rest of the young ladies, and most of the young gentlemen, gleefully taking up the moniker, it has seemed to me that those few months of my life are best forgotten.” Jane’s own smile became rueful. “Besides, it’s a dreadfully depressing story. Lord Mattingly was a dark and dashing Corinthian, and I was then much as I am now. Too tall, too plain, with nothing to recommend me but my brains. And you know how gentlemen feel about ladies with brains.”
Before Maggie could make a reply, the door to the drawing room creaked open and a rustle of twilled silk announced the entrance of Jane’s aunt Harriet.
A small woman with snowy white hair and a wrinkled face that put one in mind of a bleached walnut, she shuffled into the room with the aid of her ebony cane. “There you are, my dears,” she said in a warbling voice.
“How was your nap, Aunt?” Jane asked.
“What’s that?” aunt Harriet slowly lowered herself into a wing chair. “My cap?” She touched a blue-veined hand to the delicately beribboned bit of lace tied over her thinning locks.
“Your rest!” Jane said a little more loudly.
“Yes. Quite right. It is the best of all my caps.” Aunt Harriet leaned her head against the velvet-upholstered wing of her chair. “I shall close my eyes for just a moment until tea. You must rouse me when the tray comes, Elizabeth.”
Maggie cast a bewildered look at Jane.
“Elizabeth is my mother,” Jane whispered, stifling a grin. “Did I not tell you my aunt Harriet would be the best chaperone in the world?”
At promptly four o’clock, before the drawing room clock had even finished chiming the hour, St. Clare arrived in Green Street driving a dashing black curricle drawn by a pair of glossy, temperamental-looking match-bays. Maggie had been watching for him, and as he pulled up in front of the Trumbles’ townhouse, she hurried down the front steps to meet him.
At the sight of her, St. Clare ordered his tiger to go to the horses’ heads and jumped down from his curricle. “Miss Honeywell,” he said solemnly, making his bow.
“Lord St. Clare.”
He surveyed her fitted blue kerseymere pelisse and matching bonnet with an appreciative eye. “You look very well.”
“As do you.” And it was true. St. Clare’s figure was marvelously displayed, from the crown of his beaver hat to the mirror shine of his Hessians, and all the powerfully muscled, expertly tailored acreage in between.
He gave a sudden, slightly sheepish, grin. “I’d intended to come to the door and call for you properly.”
“Had you?” She was a little chagrined. Why had she run out to meet him so impetuously? So eagerly?
It was just the sort of thing she was used to do when Nicholas would call at the front entrance of Beasley Park, begging her company on a drive into town in the gig. “I’ve been charged with delivering these preserves to the vicarage,” he would say. “Pray come with me, Maggie, and lend me a bit of countenance.”
At the memory, Maggie felt the same sense of bewilderment and uncertainty that she’d felt when she read St. Clare’s note. “Well, it doesn’t matter, in any case. My chaperone, Miss Trumble’s aunt Harriet, is fast asleep and you’ve already made the acquaintance of Miss Trumble herself. So there’s really no need to go inside. Unless…you don’t feel as if you must, do you?”
“No,” he answered after a moment. “As you say, there’s really no need.”
Maggie walked ahead of him to the curricle’s step and waited. When he stopped beside her and didn’t immediately offer his hand, she looked up at him inquiringly. And she had to look up, up, up, for he was infuriatingly tall. How had she not noticed before how diminutive she was when compared to him? She scarcely reached his shoulder!
As if to illustrate their vast difference in size, he didn’t simply hand her up into the curricle as any other gentleman might do. Instead, he clasped his large hands lightly round her waist, and without the least visible effort, lifted her up onto the seat.
Maggie’s cheeks flushed at the intimate contact.
St. Clare gave no sign that anything was out of the ordinary. He leapt into the curricle beside her, and before taking the reins, paused to spread a rug over her knees. “Comfortable?”
Maggie wasn’t comfortable. St. Clare’s muscular thigh was brushing against her leg. And her waist was still tingling from the pressure of his hands. “Yes, thank you.” She was mortified by the squeak in her voice.
St. Clare gave a curt nod. His own smile had faded. His gray eyes were a bit more watchful. Perhaps he was feeling the effects of her closeness just as she was feeling the effects of his? “Stand away from their heads, Enzo,” he called to his tiger. And taking up his whip, he gave the horses the office to start.
The tiger, a thin, dark-haired boy with obsidian black eyes, ran behind them for a few strides and then hopped onto his perch.
Maggie hadn’t been for a drive in an open carriage in many years. Her own phaeton had been sold long ago, and at Beasley Park, since her illness, she’d been restricted to riding in a closed coach lest she overexert her lungs. She’d missed the freedom of it most dreadfully, and as St. Clare put the bays through their paces, her embarrassment at being so close to him was rapidly replaced by exuberance.
She sat up tall in her seat, the wind whipping the curled feathers in her bonnet and playing havoc with her carefully pinned hair. “Oh, is it not glorious!” she exclaimed. “To be up so high and going so fast!”
“You’re not afraid?” St. Clare asked, expertly maneuvering his team through the streets.
“Why should I be? Your curricle is well sprung and you seem skilled enough with the ribbons. And your horses…” She gazed at them in frank admiration. “What sweet goers they are. Devilish quick and not a bit choppy.”
“At this speed, most ladies would be holding white-knuckled to the side.”
“Would they indeed, my lord? What poor-spirited ladies you’ve been driving with.”
St. Clare’s bays chose that moment to take exception to a passing carriage pulled by four matched chestnuts. They skittered and danced, ears flattened and teeth bared. He steadied them easily, guided them past the carriage, and then, with awe-inspiring expertise, feather-edged a corner as he turned toward the entrance into
the park.
“You mistake me, Miss Honeywell. I was speaking in generalities. In truth, you’re the first lady I’ve taken driving since my arrival in London.”
Maggie’s smile dimmed. It wasn’t true, of course. How could it be? Even last night at the theater, he’d been in the company of beautiful women. “How long have you been in London, my lord?”
“A month, approximately.”
“And before that?”
He cast her a fleeting glance. “I was most recently in Italy.”
They passed through the gates of Hyde Park at a brisk trot, St. Clare’s bays exhibiting a forward-action that any connoisseur of fine horseflesh would envy.
Maggie unfurled her dainty silk parasol and tipped it back against her shoulder as she looked around. There were quite a few other carriages about, including a barouche occupied by three young matrons, and a high-perch phaeton driven by a gentleman who clearly had no idea what he was doing, but the traffic was nothing like it would be during the fashionable hour. “Why did you ask me to come at four o’clock instead of five?”
“Why did Miss Trumble respond to my note instead of you?” he retorted.
Maggie stilled, feeling a faint trembling in her stomach. “How do you know it was Miss Trumble who responded? It was signed with my initials, wasn’t it?” She waited for him to answer her, but he did not. Goaded, she said, “There’s no great mystery, I assure you. Miss Trumble often does little things to assist me if she fears I’ve overtaxed myself. She’s the best-natured creature in the world.”
St. Clare focused on calming his horses as they trotted around the young matrons’ slow-moving barouche. Once past it, he began to direct his team farther away from the rest of the afternoon traffic.
“When I invited you for a drive yesterday evening,” he said, “I was hoping you and I might have a bit of privacy. A few uninterrupted moments in which to talk to one another. It didn’t occur to me until this morning that at five o’clock, with all of the ton in attendance, privacy would be impossible. That’s why I requested that we drive at four. I hope the change in time hasn’t inconvenienced you too greatly.”
Gentleman Jim Page 8
