“Indeed, Miss Mapleton.” Talbot took his eyes from her and looked from the volumes he held beneath his arm to the Scott volume he had tossed onto the table. “Are you at all romantical, Miss Mapleton? No, do not climb up on your high ropes again. I merely wish to discover if a person of a romantical nature would agree with your preference for this novel over Waverley.”
“Since it is for someone of a romantical nature, I assume that the book is not for yourself, Mr. Talbot.”
Talbot's eyes betrayed a glint of mirth. “No, not for myself, Miss Mapleton.”
“Then choose the Freebooter. Anyone who enjoys romantic adventure will be much pleased with it.”
Talbot gave her a curt bow and walked off with the volumes of The Mysterious Freebooter in hand to make his purchase.
“I say, Amelia, whatever goes on between you and Talbot makes your eyebrows pucker something fierce,” whispered David as he came up behind her. “Don't do much for his eyebrows either.”
Amelia turned to face him and shook her head in frus-tration. “David, he is the most exasperating man, and I cannot like him.”
“Why then, have nothing to do with him, my dear sister. Did you find anything you wished to purchase?”
“No. Have you what you came for?”
“Yes,” nodded that gentleman, holding up a volume wrapped in brown paper and string for her to see. “Let's be off then. I promised to meet Kit at Brooks's not later than three.”
“I wish,” sighed Amelia, “that I had a club to run away to anytime I felt the need.”
David escorted her from the shop and helped her up into his phaeton. Taking the reins from his tiger, he stepped up himself and settled beside her. “Do you feel the need to run away, Amy? I had not thought so. You were so happy yesterday when you came home. A frightful mess, mind you, but happy.”
Amelia looked into the laughing green eyes so like her own and grinned. “I was a mess, was I not?”
“Ramshackle,” he said. “Wet and muddy and grass-stained. I thought Mama would faint dead away when she saw you.”
“But I only had gone riding, David.”
“Yes? Did the horse ride you, then?”
His sister laughed aloud at that, which was the effect he had been attempting to achieve. “Do not let Talbot annoy you, Amy. I do not think he means to do so.”
“Do you like him, David?”
“Yes, I suppose I do. I have only just met him though.”
“Well, I think he is odious and evil and a villain.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes. What has he done to make you take him in such dislike? I realize his manners are rather abrupt but…”
“It has not a thing to do with his manners, David,” interrupted Miss Mapleton with a degree of exasperation. “It is the way he rules his brother. Why, he told me just now that if he decided Lord Rutlidge and I should no longer ride together, that would be the end of it, And that if I did not agree to always take his groom with us, our rides would cease. The man is a tyrant. And I am certain he persecutes his brother unceasingly, for Geordan is frightened even to discuss Talbot.”
“Did he say so? That he was afraid of Talbot?”
“No, but you need only to look in his eyes when his brother is mentioned. I tell you, David, something is very wrong.”
Her brother, privy to the earl's attempt at matchmaking, thought it more likely that the look in that gentle-man's eyes reflected an apprehension that Talbot or Amy might discover his little plot. But Amy's aroused suspicions appealed to David's sense of humour. “You know, Amy,” he offered, “I might get to know the man better. Perhaps, if I gained his confidence, I might discover for you what goes on at Rutlidge House. Robert and he are friends, you know. I could use Northampton as an entree.”
Miss Mapleton's eyes gleamed at the thought. “You mean you would spy on him, David?”
“Well, yes, if you are truly worried. For I will tell you, Amy, that I met Rutlidge at Richmond's and I liked him very well. It would be a shame if he needed our help not to oblige him.”
“Oh, David, you are the very best of brothers!”
“Well, but you must help too, you know.”
“How? What must I do?”
“Why, you must stay on good terms with Talbot so that you may continue to ride with his brother.”
THE earl was in high spirits by the time Talbot arrived home. “R-Robert has b-been here,” he exclaimed, running down the stairs to meet Tony at the door. “And M-Max. And Chet, too. We are all going to a p-play to-night. We may g-go, Tony, may we n-not? It is at Dru-Drury Lane and Mr. K-Kean will b-be in it.”
“Whoa, hold on,” Talbot grinned, putting an arm around the earl's shoulders and holding him to a rather sedate pace back up the stairs to the first floor, “What play is it, scamp?”
“It is called O-th-thello. M-Max has invited us. We are all g-going to s-sit in his b-box, P-Please say yes, Tony. I have n-never been to a p-play in my whole l-life.”
Talbot steered the earl into the library and shoved him down, unceremoniously, into a green chair before the fireplace. He set the volumes he carried upon the mantel and rested his shoulders against the mantelpiece. “It sounds like an excellent idea to me, Geord. Who else attends?”
“I t-told you, Tony.”
“No one else? Not the rest of Lord Mapleton's family?”
“Oh, I s-see,” grinned the earl. “You are afraid Miss Mapleton will b-be there.”
“I am not afraid of Miss Mapleton, brat. I wondered is all.”
“Max d-did not mention her. P-Please may we g-go, Tony?”
Talbot stared down into his brother's eager face and a smile twitched at his lips. “By Jove, but you are impossible, Geordan. How can I say no when you look at me like that? Yes, of course we shall go. I shall send a note to Mapleton's presently, accepting his invitation. Do we meet them at the theatre?”
“Yes.” Geordan's gaze wandered to the package on the mantel.
“In the lobby?”
“Yes.”
“Are you certain?”
“Uh-huh. T-Tony, what is in that p-package?”
“It is a present for you. A novel. You do still like novels? Or have you grown-up so very much that you now disdain them?”
“I l-love them,” stated the earl with great conviction. “They are the m-most f-famous things.”
“Well, I hope that this one is famous. I will tell you what, Geord. Since we are to attend the play tonight I shall read you some of this book this afternoon if you like.”
“And w-what must I d-do?” the earl asked suspiciously.
“Why nothing at all, Geordan.”
“I do n-not believe you, T-Tony. You will m-make me do s-something for it. What?”
Talbot shrugged his shoulders, picked up the volumes, and began to tear the paper from them. “To tell the truth, I had not thought much about it. But now I expect I shall make you lie down on the couch in the drawing room while I read.”
The earl's face began to pout, then abruptly ceased to do so. “All r-right, Tony. I w-will. But I do n-not need to d-do so because I am n-not going to be ill ever again.”
“Of course you aren't, scamp,” Talbot replied bracingly. “But you cannot blame any of us for worrying about you. You know how upset Mama would be if you did not rest once in a while. And this seems as likely a time as any.”
As it turned out, the earl, who had been turning the house and the staff upside down and inside out since five o'clock that morning by gravely and sincerely assisting everyone with everything, fell asleep on the couch a few pages into the second chapter. Talbot, however, was well caught by then and continued his way silently through the next eight chapters before closing the volume and setting it aside. “Tarnation,” he mumbled, remembering that he had not sent a note of acceptance to Lord Mapleton.
He had just left the drawing room and started back toward the library to rectify the omission, when he heard Simpson open
ing the front door. He strolled to the staircase and leaned over the rail to see Lord Mapleton handing his hat and gloves to the butler. “Mapleton,” he called, “just the man I wanted to see. Come up.” Lord Mapleton did so, taking the stairs with a bounce in his step that belied his fifty-plus years. As he reached the first floor, he took the hand Talbot offered him and shook it heartily. “I was just about to send a note around,” Tony drawled. “Come into the library and we'll have some brandy, no?”
“Definitely,” grinned Lord Mapleton. “I hope the note was not one of regret, Talbot?”
“Not at all, my lord,” Talbot responded, ushering his guest to the green chair before the fireplace and crossing to the brandy decanter that sat rather inconspicuously on a carved oak table before the windows. “I was about to write and gratefully accept. Here you are,” he added, carrying a crystal glass of the golden liquid to Lord Mapleton. Tony then pulled another chair up before the fire, which had been laid and lit as soon as the sun had set, and settled into it, a glass of brandy in his hand as well.
“Geordie informed me that Robert and Chet were to attend as well?”
“Yes, and Kit and David have joined the party it seems. You will not mind, will you? My sons are at loose ends this evening.”
“Not a bit of it, my lord. I think I rather like your sons. I find it a pity we did not meet before Aunt Theckla's party. Geordie said we were to meet you at the theatre in the lobby?”
“Yes, well, that was the original plan.”
“But?” Mr. Talbot asked with a slight grin.
“Yes, 'but,'“ laughed Lord Mapleton. “It is always so, is it not? One plans and suddenly there is a 'but' involved. We would like you and Lord Rutlidge to join us all for dinner at White's and then go on from there. Is it possible, do you think?”
“Depends upon the time, my lord.”
“Oh, we've plenty of time, Talbot. And it is not a requirement that any of us look uniquely presentable. ’Twill just be we gentlemen after all, no ladies to impress.”
“Thank goodness,” sighed Tony. “I fear I am beyond impressing any ladies at all this evening. What time White's?”
“Now.”
“Now? Surely you jest, my lord.”
“I wish you will call me Max. Geordie does.”
“Why does he?”
“Hmrnm?”
“My brother, why does he call you Max? I have wondered since first he did so at Aunt Theckla's.”
“I expect that I told him to at one time or another. After all, Talbot, Geord and I have known each other for years.”
“You have?”
“Indeed.”
“I expect then that you have been many times at Westerley?”
“Many times.”
“It is odd, is it not, that I never met you there?”
Lord Mapleton stretched his legs out toward the fire and smiled fondly into the flames. “Nothing odd in it,” he murmured. “You were away at school. When I had business with your father, I rode down to Westerley or he rode up to London.”
“Yes, but it is odd that my mother should not mention you.”
“Do you know, Talbot,” Mapleton laughed soft “you are so like my Amy that I cannot believe you did not spring from the same stock. She, too, finds mystery in the most ordinary things. Why, my lad, would your mother tell you that a man your father did business with had come to Westerley this time or that time while you were away at school?”
Talbot grinned rather sheepishly. “I expect she would not.
“So, you will call me Max, will you?”
“And you will call me Tony.
“Agreed. Where, by the way, is Geordan? I had expected to have seen him by now. You both ought to be dressing.”
CHAPTER TEN
AS it turned out, all of the gentlemen had a rousing good time. They managed to work their way through five courses at White's, including the finest baked ham any of them could remember, drowned in cloves and orange sauce and well marinated in brandy; a pheasant stuffed with sage, mushrooms, and wild onion; and a golden brown Yorkshire pudding as temptingly light as any one of them could wish. Lord Mapleton and the earl inhaled three helpings apiece of the broccoli covered in a white cheese sauce, and between them annihilated an extraordinarily large serving of brains. “I would not have believed,” Kit announced awestruck, “that there was a person in the world could eat those things without choking on them except my father.”
The earl, who had snatched the last of the dish from under Lord Mapleton's laughing eyes, stared haughtily across the table in excellent imitation of his brother. “I f-force myself,” he drawled. “I am t-trying to eat enough of them to re-re-p-place the brains I have lost.”
Talbot, having just taken a sip of burgundy, reached hurriedly for his napkin before he sprayed the wine back out over the tablecloth. He ended in choking which, coupled with his laughter, brought tears streaming to his eyes. The rest of the gentlemen roared with hilarity at the look on Kit's face. “Geord is bamming you, gudgeon,” Northampton laughed. The earl, fighting to keep a straight face, a maddeningly triumphant twinkle in his deep blue eyes, stood up from his chair and bowed.
By the time they reached Drury Lane, all of them were in exceeding good humor and ready to be well-pleased with Mr. Kean 's performance. Geordan, already thoroughly impressed by the grandeur of the theatre, could not take his eyes from the passionate actor who stalked the stage. Talbot, whose attention was drawn considerably more often to his brother's enthralled reaction than to Mr. Kean's performance, thought he had never enjoyed an evening quite as much. “He is enraptured,” Max whispered into Talbot's ear as he, too, studied Geordan. “I have no idea how you convinced your mother to let him come to London, but you have done me a great service, Tony. Just watching him makes me feel twenty years younger.”
Between acts Lord Mapleton's box attracted so many visitors that they overflowed into the hallway. Viscount Eliot made an appearance with Mr. Eversley and Sir Damon Hamilton. Several of Kit's and David's compatriots also appeared, not having seen the brothers since both had resigned their commissions. Talbot was amazed to confront a veritable legion of old school friends he had not seen in years, and Northampton and Bristol were kept exceedingly busy introducing the earl to a score of acquaintances. Through it all, Lord Mapleton simply leaned back in his chair and smiled. When at last the visitors returned to their own seats, he caught Geordan's eye and winked at him. Then he stood and, taking the earl's hand, tugged him to one corner of the box.
“When next the curtain descends, Geordie, you and I will wander out for a breath of fresh air,” he whispered. “We will leave it to Robert and the others to keep Tony from noticing.” The earl nodded and then slipped back to his seat.
True to his word, at the next break Lord Mapleton took the earl’s hand in his own and together they slipped, unnoticed, out into the hall behind the boxes. Geordan needed no urging to accompany his friend down the staircase and through a long hallway which turned abruptly to the right and led them to a huge room behind the stage itself. “This is called the Green Room,” Mapleton explained, as a number of people who had been milling about began to quiet and stare in their direction. “It is the place where the actors and actresses gather.”
Through a door at the opposite end of the room, a figure Geordan recognized immediately strolled toward them. “Max!” the large-eyed, swarthy man exclaimed shaking Mapleton's hand, “I got your note. You have been absent so long I thought never to see you at Drury again. And this must be Geordan,” he added, offering his hand to the thoroughly stunned earl.
“It is,” Mapleton chuckled. “Your lordship, may I present Mr. Edmund Kean. Edmund, Lord Rutlidge.”
“I am very pleased to meet you,” Mr. Kean grinned, shaking the earl's hand.
“M-Me, t-too,” Geordan stammered in wonder.
Max, whose note had reached Kean earlier, had gone to great lengths to explain in it the earl's particular circumstances, and Mr. Kean, whose persona
lity was generally brash, hasty, and overbearing, now amazed his coworkers by taking the hand he had shaken into his own and leading the earl about the room, introducing him with great care to each of them. He then led Geordan to a red plush couch against the north wall and sat speaking with him in a gentle voice, listening with uncharacteristic patience and interest to the earl's replies, and responding himself with a high degree of clarity and courtesy. Mapleton, seeing that Kean had understood his note perfectly, relaxed his vigilance and went himself to speak with other members of the group whom he had known for years on end. Usually brief, Kean stretched this particular break to a good twenty minutes, subordinating the audience's expectations to the singular needs of one of its members.
When at last Max and Geordan returned to their box, they discovered a frowning Talbot standing outside the door, his booted foot tapping impatiently against the hard floor.
“I g-guess they could n-not keep Tony from n-noticing long enough,” the earl sighed, as they faced his brother.
“No, I dare say they could not,” Talbot growled. “Will one of you be so good as to inform me of just what is going on? Geord, where have you been? And what right had you, my lord, to aid him in his disappearance?”
“Oh, pshaw, I am 'my lord' again,” sighed Lord Mapleton melodramatically, making the earl grin in spite of his brother's anger. “Really, Tony,” he continued, “you must allow that gentlemen do have a right to some privacy.”
“Where have you been, Geord?” Talbot asked again, ignoring Mapleton and staring sternly into his brother's eyes.
“I have b-been to m-meet Mr. K-Kean, T-Tony,” the earl answered in a quavering voice. Geordan had never before seen such a stern look on his brother's face, and it was obvious to both Mapleton and Talbot that the experience frightened him.
“Let it go, Tony,” Max said softly. “If there is fault in it, it is mine. I wished it to be Geordan's experience and did not want him to be overshadowed by the rest of you.”
Amelia's Intrigue (Regency Idyll Book 1) Page 9
