After the Kiss

by Karen Ranney

  The Journals of Augustin X

  "You’re certain you’ve never heard of a woman of that description?”

  Michael sat in Babby’s library, staring at the pattern of smoke from his cheroot.

  Babby glanced over at him, his eyes twinkling. “You must be excessively smitten, Montraine. It’s the fourth time in a week you’ve asked me.”

  “Not smitten, Babby. Simply curious.” Enough to hold onto a glove. A small faded glove with a bit of lace around the wrist.

  “I’ve seen you more in the past week, Montraine, than I have this whole last year.”

  Babby was an amiable friend. His brown eyes were almost constantly amused, as if he saw life as a grand adventure. His round face and portly body looked to belong to a man much older. Michael doubted, however, that Babby would ever reach his advanced years. Babby had three failings. He never missed the hunting season although he was a lamentable shot, his left foot bearing only four toes as proof of his ineptitude. He drank brandy to excess. And, the most dangerous of all, he tended to run afoul of husbands when he openly ogled their wives.

  “You are rarely so intent about a female, Montraine.”

  “I only wished to know more about her,” Michael said. Ever since that night he told himself that she was an interlude in his life. A small wave in the ocean of it. Nothing more. But he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Like a wave she had effortlessly disappeared. Vanished.

  He’d begun to casually ask about her. No one, however, could remember a woman wearing a plain cotton dress and jacket to the ball. Or could link a woman with auburn hair and pale ivory skin to a woman they knew. None of his solicitations ever resulted in a smile, a nod, a fond remembrance. Not one person told him—“Of course, I know her.” No one did.

  Perhaps he had not been descriptive enough. He should have told them that her lips were perfectly formed, the upper as full as the lower, and they curved into a delightful smile. Or that her hand was slender with unexpected calluses on the tips of her fingers, as if she were an avid horsewoman or labored at her needlework too long.

  “Tell me the truth? Is it tres hush hush? One of those government things?” Babby grinned at him. “I’m as silent as a stone.”

  An overstatement. Babby divulged anything to anyone, given the slightest encouragement.

  He should forget her and concentrate upon finding a wife.

  He had not yet broached the subject of marriage and matrimony with any of the male relatives or the women on his list. He had a curious reluctance to do so. An oddity for him, not at all in keeping with his nature. He was a man who, once he’d decided upon a course, acted upon it with little hesitation.

  “I wish I could assist you,” Babby said now. “What does this mystery woman of yours look like again?”

  “Of medium height,” Michael said. “With dark hair. I think it an auburn shade. She has a mole high up on one cheek. Her eyes…” He didn’t know. It had been too dark to see.

  Babby frowned, put his cigar down in a footed porcelain dish etched in gold, then stood and walked to his glass-encased bookshelf, extracted his watch fob, and used the key hanging there to unlock the case.

  “A magnificent figure,” Babby said, turning. “One that tempts you to lift her skirts to see if what her dress hints at is real.” He finished Michael’s musings so perfectly that it was a moment until he realized what Babby was saying.

  He felt a surge of irritation at Babby’s effortless lechery.

  “You know her, then,” Michael said, willing his voice to appear as dispassionate as possible. The anticipation he felt was out of keeping. He should have been merely relieved at finding her. Not impatiently waiting until Babby finally got to the point.

  “I saw her but a week ago. If she’s the woman you mean. It was the beauty spot that did it. You never mentioned that before.” He grinned at Michael. “Is it real, do you think?”

  He withdrew a volume from the case. Holding it gently between his hands, Babby carried it over and placed it carefully on the surface of his desk.

  The cover of the book was brown leather, the shade of a venerable oak. Inscribed within a gilt shield on the front were two initials, A and X. Below that, the title His Tales of Adventure Through Places of Antiquity and Delight had been embossed in the leather.

  “She sold me this book. The first volume of The Journals of Augustin X.” He slid the book across to Michael.

  Michael opened the book to the frontispiece. There, penned in a swooping hand, were the words Jerome Esterly, Bookseller and an address in London.

  He glanced up at Babby.

  “His wife,” Babby said, as if the question in his mind had been given voice.

  His wife. Michael frowned. He had spent the week wondering about another man’s wife. No wonder she ran from him.

  He opened the book and scanned it, his fingers turning the pages quickly. As a child, he had been interested by few things outside of mathematics. Consequently, Michael found that the easiest way to return to his true interest was to conquer a boring subject as quickly as possible. He’d taught himself to read quickly, often so fast that his tutors had doubts he had read the material at all. Only his ability to repeat his lessons in full had saved him from being dismissed as a liar and punished with a cane.

  His mind registered the tiny scribbled notations in the margins at each chapter heading before his attention was captured by the passages.

  Michael glanced over at his friend. “I had no idea you collected such things, Babby.” He closed the book and placed it on the desk between them, willing his expression to remain affable, almost disinterested.

  “There is nothing like these books, Montraine.” Babby stretched out his hand and picked up the volume, stroked the leather cover with reverence. “I have since learned a great deal about them. It is said that they were last owned by a general close to Napoleon. How they came to be in England, I don’t know. Probably spoils of war, or something like that.”

  “The bookshop is one you frequent?” A visit would not be an oddity. Once there, he could rediscover the elusive Mrs. Esterly, inform her that he did not dally with other men’s wives.

  “It was until it burned to the ground,” Babby said regretfully. He sighed. “Esterly must have found a new place of business.”

  “How did you communicate with her?”

  Babby’s toothy grin was startling. “I see,” he said. “You want her address. You are indeed clever, Montraine. There’s not a hope of it, though. I’ve sacked that incompetent secretary of mine and hired a new man. If he finds her letter in that rat’s nest of my correspondence, I’ll send it along to you.”

  “Let me know, will you?” Michael stood, buried his disappointment in a smile. A great many pleasantries later, Michael was blessedly quit of the room and left to ponder the mystery before him. Not that of the Cyrillic cipher, nor even of a woman he didn’t know at all. But why he should care.

  It would be better simply to forget the entire episode. Rein in his curiosity and expend his energies on his work and his search for an acceptable wife.

  Not on a woman who danced in the moonlight.

  Margaret leaned against the door frame of the cottage door and watched as Penelope walked down the hill from Squire Tippett’s house. Her bonnet swung by one hand and her step was light, almost skipping.

  A smile curved Margaret’s lips. A week ago Tom had come to see her, delaying his visit until Penelope had gone to the village. His solemn expression and the fact that he had gripped his hat nervously between both hands was a foreshadowing of his words.

  “I’ve a bit of money saved, and a willingness to work hard. I know you’re not her family and all,” he’d said. “But you’re the closest thing she’s got.”

  The stories of Penelope’s youth had not been pleasant ones. Margaret could not help but wonder what untold experiences had marked her life. The relatives she had left behind in London were never mentioned, nor had Margaret ever broached Penelope’s privacy
by asking.

  She nodded, hands folded atop the table. His face was red with embarrassment, his brown hair neatly combed. Even his clothes looked to have been brushed, and his boots shined. His brown eyes looked everywhere but at her, however.

  “She’s my friend,” Margaret said, attempting to ease him in his task.

  “She’s told me that,” he said. “And she thinks highly of you.”

  “That is nice to hear,” she said.

  “I’ve got steady work at Squire Tippett’s,” he said. “I care for the horses there. I’m learning from the head groom and I’ve a future if I stay and work hard.”

  In a burst of enthusiasm and courage he continued. “I’d like to marry Penelope, Miss Margaret. I think I’d do her proper.” He was so intent upon impressing her and so very much in love that it almost hurt to look at him.

  “I think she is very fortunate to have someone like you, Tom. How could I not approve of you? I hope you and Penelope are very happy.”

  “Would you not tell her that I’ve spoken with you, then, Miss Margaret? I have it in my mind that it should be something of a surprise,” he said, his face almost radiant with joy.

  He had beamed at her when she had agreed, ducked his head, and left the cottage. She had walked to the window and watched him. Halfway up the lane he threw his hat into the air and danced a circle beneath it.

  Now Penelope echoed that same delight. Her face was alight with a smile as she reached the cottage, her news expected. “Tom’s asked me to marry him, Miss Margaret,” Penelope announced, her eyes shining.

  “I am so very pleased for you,” Margaret said, hugging her friend. “Tom is a wonderful young man.”

  “But I’ve no wish to leave you alone here,” Penelope said, pulling back.

  Margaret smiled, the expression surprisingly difficult. “It’s not me we should be thinking of, but you, dear Penelope. Have you decided when?”

  “I can’t wait another year, Miss Margaret,” she said. “Tom’s got the squire’s blessings for a few weeks from now. We’ll have to live with his mother for a time, until we can afford our own place, but we can make do.”

  It would be unwise to wish for a different future. Or remember the man who sometimes colored her dreams. She had almost kissed him. Montraine. Margaret turned away, closed the cottage door, and stepped inside.

  The boundaries of her world were small indeed. The walls were too close, the roof too low. Sometimes she had to escape, to walk upon the Downs and seek out the highest place she could find.

  She had done the same with her thoughts, perhaps, in trying to escape the truth of her future. It loomed before her, black and gray, tinted by the color of her widowhood.

  It would do no good to wish for what she could not have.

  The Countess of Montraine announced herself to Smytheton, sailing over the threshold of Michael’s library like a queenly ship followed by three dinghies.

  His butler knew that he was never to be disturbed unless he was expecting a visitor. The only exception to that rule was his family. Besides, Michael wasn’t at all sure if even Smytheton could keep them out if they were determined to see him.

  He leaned back in his chair, set aside his paperwork, and waited.

  He did not, like so many of his contemporaries, employ a secretary. It was not only that the nature of his work made such an intrusion unwise, but mostly because he was an intensely private man. He did not want another person rifling through his letters and reading copies of his notes. He understood the necessity of servants even as he made little use of them. His valet, Harrison, was likely to go for days without seeing him, a fact the man reminded him of often.

  His mother looked determined and his sisters had varying expressions on their faces. Elizabeth looked amused, Ada bored, and Charlotte worried. An indication, then, that this was to be a confrontation of sorts. Michael wondered if they knew how tentative a hold he had on his temper right at this moment.

  He had just reviewed the quarterly accounts. Despite the fact that she knew quite well their financial situation was perilous, the knowledge did not stop his mother from charging an entire wardrobe on a whim. “My dear boy,” she would say each time he spoke to her, “you cannot expect us to look like paupers, especially when we are attempting to launch your sisters. It’s important that they look their very best.”

  He leaned back in his chair, frowned at them. Elizabeth only smiled. Ada, his oldest sister, looked away. Charlotte, the middle one, feigned an interest in the study of her fingers.

  His sister Charlotte had his mother’s blond hair and deep brown eyes. But her expression, more often than not, was pinched and unhappy. As if she envied everyone and everything she saw.

  Ada, on the other hand, seemed to do everything in her ability to minimize her good looks. The oldest and the tallest of the three sisters, she tended to hunch over until she looked almost spinsterish. He did not doubt that he would have to support Ada for the rest of her life, what with her disgust for marriage and her fine-tuned ability to scare away every suitor from here to Cornwall.

  Elizabeth was a muted version of their father, with her soft brown hair and light blue eyes. She even had his charm, as if the paternal influence had been stamped firmly upon both her features and her nature.

  The Countess of Montraine, however, eclipsed all her daughters in demeanor and force of character. She was always dressed exquisitely, today in an outfit of green silk—something new and ruinously expensive, no doubt. Her pale blond hair was arranged in ringlets beneath her fashionable bonnet. The picture of a wealthy, titled woman pleased with her life. Except, of course, that the coffer was empty and her expression was nowhere close to being amenable. Her eyes, an angry brown, were riveted on him, her mouth pursed in a moue of disapproval. He wondered what he had done now to earn that fierce look.

  “You simply cannot constrain us to four hundred guests, Michael,” she said angrily, thereby declaring war with her first words.

  “I cannot?” he asked. He leaned his head back and studied the ceiling. The corners of the room were adorned with four intricately carved plaster cherubs who held ribbons leading to the center of the ceiling. There, a painting depicted white clouds limned pink and indigo against a pale blue sky. Dawn in heaven. The Italianate composition never failed to make him smile. Except in moments like now.

  “It will not do, my dear boy. This ball is one of the premier events of the season.”

  “If we could only entertain at Setton. It is so much larger than their country house,” Charlotte said.

  “Whose house?” he asked, frowning.

  “The Kittridges, Michael,” Elizabeth supplied. She smiled at him and then looked away when their mother frowned at her.

  The animosity that existed between his mother and Helen Kittridge dated from their first season. The other woman had been a reigning beauty at the same time his mother had been presented. The two had considered each other rivals from the first. Nor had the antipathy eased over the years. Sally Kittridge, Helen’s daughter, was the same age as Charlotte, a case of history repeating itself. Perhaps that was the reason his mother was desperate to get them all married advantageously—to outdo Helen Kittridge in this one matter.

  “The Kittridges have entertained twice as often as we have, Michael. Your sisters are so much more attractive than that Sally girl.”

  “Their house is much larger than ours, Mother,” he said patiently. “Is it your plan to buy another?”

  “Could we?” She looked hopeful.

  He restrained his comment by a hair’s breadth and merely shook his head.

  His mother had already hosted two large events this season, and he had paid for both of them without a comment. Plus, his sisters had spent enough to outfit the whole of England, and he’d not said a word. But this last extravagance seemed excessive. Especially in view of their last quarter’s expenditure. His temper was nudged up a notch.

  “Instead of increasing the guest list, would it not be bet
ter to shorten it?” A sensible notion, one his mother did not seem to understand.

  “Do not be boorish, Michael. It is doubtful all who are invited will attend. Even if they did so, people ebb and flow through these events all the time. One guest leaves, another arrives.”

  “So you would have us provide food and refreshments for how many?” The ball in question was taking on the look and feel of a military campaign.

  “I would stop below a thousand, surely,” she said.

  “How much before a thousand?”

  “Eight hundred,” she said, and frowned down at him.

  “Make it three hundred,” he said, irritated, “and I will not cavil on the cost. More than that, and the money must come from somewhere. Either from your annual allowances, or by avoiding next season altogether.”

  Ada gasped. “You would not think to oppress us by keeping us at Setton, Michael.”

  “The choice is yours to make, Ada,” he said with equanimity.

  “I doubt that Sally Kittridge’s brother is as mean as you!” This from Charlotte. He simply sent her a look that stifled any further complaints.

  “Very well,” his mother said, evidently recognizing just how far he could be pushed. “Three hundred.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “But I do hope, Michael, that these economies will not continue for long. You are taking steps to ensure that fact?”

  “In due course,” he said, realizing that time was against him.

  As annoying as they were, they were his family. He was bound by his honor and his duty to protect them, even if it meant sacrificing himself upon a matrimonial altar.

  The irrefutable fact was that he was going to have to marry an heiress. And soon.

  Chapter 6

  Beauty means little when it is

  all on the surface.

  The Journals of Augustin X

  Penelope occasionally remained in the cottage during the girls’ lessons. They had come to look upon her as another teacher. While her experience in the classroom might be lacking, she made up for it with uncommon common sense. Today, however, she was intent upon attacking the lean-to in the back of the cottage, clearing it of debris and making room for the chickens that Margaret planned to purchase soon.