The Love and Temptation Series

by M. C. Beaton

  Miss Chalmers put a restraining hand on Patricia’s arm as she was about to leave the anteroom. “My dear Miss Patterson,” she said, “I can see you are not quite au fait with our London ways. Modest attire is deemed suitable for any young lady making her come-out. Your gown will draw too much attention to you.”

  “It will?” said Patricia sweetly. “Oh, good!” And with that she walked past Miss Chalmers and out into the hall where Lord Charles was waiting for them.

  Mary Chalmers rounded on Miss Sinclair. “I would have thought you, as a woman of sense, would have advised your charge better,” she said.

  “I tried to say something,” said Miss Sinclair, “but Lord Charles did not pay any attention. I am surprised. When we were in Boston, Patricia was a model of propriety.”

  “I shall speak to you further on this matter,” said Miss Chalmers. “The gentlemen do not notice such nuances of fashion. But she will disgrace poor Charles!”

  They, too, went forward to join Lord Charles.

  Miss Chalmers was wearing dove gray silk edged with purple ribbon. Her gown had a modest neckline and long, tight sleeves.

  Lord Charles found himself wondering with a certain amount of irritation whether his beloved meant to get married in half mourning. Again, he blamed Mrs. Chalmers.

  But Mary’s fondness for mourning had little to do with her mother. Mrs. Chalmers was beginning to get worried. Her poor moth of a Mary was completely outshone by the dazzling butterfly that was Patricia Patterson.

  She had begged Mary to encourage a proposal from Lord Charles a long time earlier, saying that if she did not snap him up, someone else would. But Mary had a solid core of vanity and was very sure of Lord Charles. It suited her very well to be courted. She enjoyed her single state and did not wish to hurry into marriage. She had been courted before, many times, because she was a wealthy heiress, but had always considered that her attraction lay in her well-bred and ladylike appearance. The fact that girls much prettier than herself were still unwed, she put down to their vulgar, pushing ways, not noticing that the unwed girls she so pitied had very little in the way of a dowry.

  Love and beauty did not play much part in the Marriage Mart. Marriage was a way of increasing one’s land and fortune. But Mary Chalmers, despite the fact that she prided herself on being knowledgeable about the ways of the ton, refused to grasp these simple facts, and had come to think herself irresistible.

  She had never needed to feel possessive about Lord Charles before this evening. He had dutifully danced with other ladies, but had always returned to her side with a sigh of relief.

  But tonight his pride in his beautiful ward was there for all to see.

  Patricia was mobbed. The gentlemen all swore she was the most beautiful thing they’d ever seen, and the ladies set out to woo Miss Sinclair to try to discover the name of Patricia’s dressmaker.

  Loyalty to Lord Charles rather than loyalty to Patricia kept Miss Sinclair from telling anyone that Patricia had made her gown herself.

  Lord Charles danced twice with Patricia, which was to be expected. But at the end of the evening when he stood up with her for a third time, eyebrows started to raise. Lord Charles knew he was causing gossip, but for once he did not care. Patricia was his ward. It was his duty to look after her. She flirted with him and teased him and he felt light-hearted and amused and much younger than he had felt since his mother had died and saddled him with the worries of bringing six sisters up and “out.” His older brother, the heir, had been no help, being taken up with the cares of the estate.

  When they were promenading after their third dance, he looked down at her, his green eyes glinting, and said, “Now, look what you have made me do. Three dances. I shall never hear the end of it.”

  “Pooh! You are my stuffy old guardian,” laughed Patricia. “And you are happily engaged to a sterling lady. In fact, you are the most respectable person at this ball.”

  His thin brows snapped together in annoyance, and she added lightly, “But you are also the handsomest man in the room.”

  His face lightened. “You are a terrible flirt, Patricia. What of Mr. Brummell over there?”

  “Well, he is very clean. He is the most polished man I have ever seen. His face glows like a sunrise.”

  Lord Charles laughed appreciatively. The famous Beau Brummell had a habit of scrubbing his face with a flesh-brush until he looked “very much like a man in the scarlet fever.” The result was actually a salmon-colored glow. He was not content with merely shaving, but went over his face with eyebrow tweezers afterward to make absolutely sure that no stray whisker marred his face. His morning toilet took as long as five hours: two hours bathing in water, milk, and eau de cologne, a further hour inching himself into skin-tight buckskin breeches, another hour with his hairdresser, and a final hour discarding as many as a dozen cravats before he was satisfied with the result.

  “At least we must be grateful to the Beau for having introduced clean linen and plenty of washing to the ton,” said Lord Charles. “Many of them are still in need of it. Now, you smell exactly like a bouquet of freshly-picked garden flowers. What is the name of your scent?”

  “I haven’t given it one yet,” said Patricia. “I made it myself in Boston and brought some bottles back with me.”

  “There is no end to your talents.”

  “Perhaps,” said Patricia, flirting with her fan. “Perhaps I have some hidden talents, not yet tried.”

  “Such as?”

  “Making love.”

  “Fie for shame, Patricia Patterson! That is the remark of a member of the demimonde.”

  “You interest me. Do ladies never make love?”

  “Never. They are made love to.”

  “How boring,” said Patricia lightly. “I must search around for a gentleman who does not hold such stuffy ideas. All my heroes cannot be in books.”

  “You will find they are, and better where they are. Or do you dream of some Lochinvar who will ride out of the West to sweep you away?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you will never make a suitable marriage,” he said, suddenly serious. “I had hoped you had grown out of such fantasies. Only look where such nonsense led you when you were sixteen.”

  “You are cruel to remind me of that. I wonder where the dear captain is now?”

  “You are incorrigible.”

  “No, simply young and happy and determined not to die an old maid. Oh, do look at Miss Chalmers. You have neglected her sorely.”

  “You are right. And here is your next partner.” He bowed and left her and went quickly to join Mary.

  “I have had little opportunity to speak to you this evening,” she said when he sat down beside her. “I am very shocked at Miss Patterson’s outlandish gown.”

  “It is unconventional,” he agreed. “But, by George, she knows how to wear it, and what is more, get away with wearing it.”

  Mary smoothed down the silk of her gown. “Dazzling, I agree, but then it will attract the wrong sort of man. Any man who admires that showy style is not au fond a gentleman.”

  He was irritated by her remarks, but, nonetheless, had come to rely on her wisdom.

  On their return to Cavendish Square in the early hours of the morning and when they were drinking tea in the drawing room, Lord Charles pointed out to Patricia that her dress had been a trifle outrageous and was bound to attract the wrong sort of gentleman.

  “What an old-maidish thing to say,” laughed Patricia. “Never mind. I planned to cut a dash on my first evening. Everything I wear from now on would not even raise an eyebrow in Boston.”

  She rose gracefully to her feet.

  “Hey ho, how weary I am of lectures. What a bear you are, my wicked guardian. I shall leave you to your evil thoughts.”

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the cheek, and then turned and tripped from the room. Miss Sinclair rushed after her, and soon Lord Charles could hear the governess’s voice, scolding Patricia for being
so forward all the way up the stairs.

  Lord Charles’s hand strayed to his cheek where she had kissed him. Perhaps he would take her driving in the afternoon and introduce her to some suitable gentlemen.

  But surely he had said something about calling on Mary. He gave a little shrug. It was his duty to concentrate on Patricia. After all, he was going to marry Mary.

  It was sunny in the Park, the dust from the wheels of the many carriages rising in the air, making the multi-colored scene look like a tapestry.

  Patricia sat up beside Lord Charles in his high-perch phaeton, wearing a dashing straw hat, the underside of the brim ornamented with a whole garden of flowers. Her gown and pelisse were of palest yellow muslin and she carried a lace and gauze yellow parasol. She was highly amused and not at all impressed by the various dandies she saw on the strut. “They look like wasps,” she said, “with their puffed-out chests and nipped-in waists and striped waistcoats. That gentleman over there has such high heels on his boots he can hardly walk!”

  “You must not laugh so openly at them,” warned Lord Charles. “They can be malicious.”

  She looked at him curiously, at the elegance of his clothes and the strength of his legs in their leather breeches, and asked, “And what are you, my lord? Dandy or Corinthian, Choice Spirit, Fop, Pink of the Ton, or Buck?”

  “I am myself,” he said. “I have never tried to set the fashion.”

  “And yet you do!” exclaimed Patricia. “Several gentlemen I danced with last night were more interested in the name of your tailor than they were in any of my charms. I was quite cast down, I assure you.”

  “A little casting down might be good for you, Patricia. You are too ebullient. One is not supposed to appear to enjoy the Season.”

  “I should behave like this?” Patricia leaned back in the carriage and adopted an air of petulant world-weariness.

  “Something like that,” he laughed. “Are you enjoying your drive?”

  “I always enjoy being with you,” she said in a casual voice, and he looked at her sharply.

  “I am flattered,” he said. “I thought you considered me to be as old as Methuselah.”

  “That was when I was sixteen. Now I am older and more mature, I think you are quite the right age.”

  “For what?”

  “I cannot possibly answer that. You are affianced to Miss Chalmers.”

  “That cannot possibly prevent you from answering my question.”

  “You are being deliberately obtuse,” said Patricia. “You know exactly what I mean.”

  He felt a dangerous, heady excitement as if he were slightly drunk. To change the subject, he said, “Is there anything else in London you would like to see?”

  “All the unfashionable places,” said Patricia. “I would like to see the wild beasts at the Tower.”

  “Very well.” He neatly turned his carriage about and started to drive smartly toward the gates of Hyde Park.

  “Never say you are taking me there,” said Patricia, much amused. “The great Lord Charles behaving like the veriest yokel. People will say I have bewitched you.”

  “How could they say such nonsense when all the world already knows I have been bewitched by Miss Chalmers?”

  Patricia tilted her parasol to hide her face. She did not believe for one moment he was in love with Mary Chalmers. One had only to see them together. Patricia’s conscience gave her a sharp stab. It was really rather a dirty trick to try to woo Miss Chalmer’s fiancé away from her—unlikeable and prissy though she might be. But I am only borrowing him, she told herself fiercely. He is not in love with Mary, and so, after I have rejected him, he will return to her arms with a sigh of relief and their marriage will probably be happier than it would otherwise be.

  “We are to go to Vauxhall tonight,” said Lord Charles, breaking into her thoughts. “Did Mr. Johnson tell you?”

  “Yes,” said Patricia. “Or rather he told Miss Sinclair, who told me.”

  “You and Miss Sinclair must have become very close in Boston.”

  “Not exactly,” said Patricia cautiously. “I was very friendly with Margaret Munroe and Miss Sinclair spent most of her time instructing the young Munroe boys. She likes to teach and is a good instructress. It is a pity, however…”

  Patricia bit her lip and fell silent. She had been about to add, “It is a pity she is so silly.” But that would have been unfair. Patricia thought a great part of Miss Sinclair’s silliness was caused by the governess’s forming a tendre for Lord Charles. She had suspected it, but had not been sure until she had begun to notice Miss Sinclair’s breathless excitement as they approached London and how often she studied her face in the glass.

  “What is a pity?”

  “Oh, nothing,” said Patricia vaguely. “Who is going to be at Vauxhall?”

  “There’s you and Miss Sinclair, myself and Miss Chalmers—”

  “And, of course, Mrs. Chalmers,” said Patricia wickedly.

  “And, of course, Mrs. Chalmers,” he said equably. “Then there are the Lucases, and a friend of mine from my army days, Colonel Brian Sommers. Very handsome.”

  “Perhaps I shall fall in love with the colonel.”

  “You could do worse. He is an amiable man and a bachelor.”

  He then began to tell her about Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens on the south side of the river, describing the music and fireworks, and Patricia scowled under the shade of her parasol, feeling he was once more talking to her as if she were a child.

  The Tower of London loomed up against the clear blue sky.

  “Where are the animals kept?” asked Patricia.

  “In the Lion Barbican. I do not know if they make an impressive spectacle. I have not visited the Tower since I was a boy.”

  “Did your mother take you?”

  “No, of course not. My tutor took me along once on my birthday.”

  “Were you always in the care of servants when you were small?”

  “I was, as is everybody.”

  “Not everybody. You mean only the small world of the ton. I have observed the lower orders do not leave their children to the care of others.”

  “You do not approve of servants bringing up children? Yet you seem to have been much indulged by your nanny and Miss Simpkin.”

  “I was lucky. Others are not, I believe, so fortunate. Besides, it strikes me as unnatural. If I had a baby, I would wish to caress it and sing it lullabies.”

  “In my case,” he said, “my mother was ailing for much of my childhood. When she died, my father and elder brother did not know what to do about launching my sisters into the world. Either I would have to undertake the task, or they would have been left with the servants at home. I had no desire to see them suffer. The servants were… unkind. I took the house in town, engaged an elderly aunt as chaperone, and did my best for them. An unusual arrangement, I think.”

  “And they all married well?”

  “Very well. They are spread throughout the country and all of them now have children of their own. They do not come to London, which is why you have not met any of them.”

  “But a man to have charge of six girls! I suppose that was why my father decided to leave me in your care.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps he did not know of any suitable female. Here we are.”

  He jumped down and then held up his arms to help her from the carriage.

  She tumbled forward so that he had to catch hold of her tightly. For a brief moment, a delectable bosom was pressed against his chest and a beautiful, laughing face was turned up to his own. He realized to his horror he had been within an ames ace of kissing her as he quickly released her and turned sharply away.

  “Has there always been a menagerie here?” asked Patricia, hurrying to keep up with his long strides.

  “I think it was started in the thirteenth century by Henry III. He started off by keeping a polar bear. It was a great success until he ordered the sheriffs to pay fourpence a day for its upkeep.

&nbs
p; “Mind you, the animal was a great favorite and crowds would flock to watch it fishing in the river. After that, Henry then instructed his sheriffs to build a house at the Tower forty feet by twenty to house his elephant. I think the original site of the menagerie must have been somewhere in the Outer Bailey. King Henry’s elephant died after only two years of captivity and the elephant house was turned into a prison.

  “By Edward II’s reign the Keeper of the King’s Lions and Leopards was a regular appointment carrying a fixed wage and lodgings within the Tower.”

  They walked along beside the cages examining the dusty, ragged-looking collection of beasts. The air was hot and stifling and the smell was abominable.

  “Let us go,” said Patricia miserably. “It is not at all what I expected. Poor animals.” She had forgotten for the moment to try to charm Lord Charles, but as her eyes filled with tears, he felt a tugging at his heart and a longing to take her in his arms.

  She looked so sad and forlorn as they drove off that he racked his brains for something to distract her.

  “The Monument!” he said, seeing the tall pillar rising ahead of them. “Would you like to climb up it? The view is said to be very fine.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Patricia brightening.

  The Monument to the great fire of London—“The loftiest stone column in the world”—rose 202 feet high above the surrounding houses. On a plaque on the side, the “Popish faction” was blamed for starting the fire, although there was no proof of the Catholics having had anything to do with it whatsoever.

  When they were about to climb up the 311 steps on the inside of the pillar, Lord Charles hesitated. It was getting late, and he had really meant to call on Mary after that drive in the Park.

  But Patricia had already started to climb, and so he followed her, determined to make his peace with Mary later.

  Flushed and breathless, Patricia at last stood on the platform at the top. London lay spread out at her feet, seeming to swim in the hazy golden light of afternoon. A whole forest of masts bobbed lazily in the waters of the Thames below.