“Well,” Lady de Lisle said as the new couple vanished into the crowd. “Well, well, well.”
But from behind him, someone sighed. And only one person stood behind him.
There was only one action a gentleman could take, of course. He turned to the lonely young lady left forlorn and gave her his most charming and least rakish smile.
“My dear Miss McTaggart, your new hairstyle is the most exquisite I’ve seen this year. Would you honor me with the next dance?”
Her shining eyes and delighted smile were all the reward he needed. Every young lady deserved for her dreams to come true. And within bounds, he’d do everything he could to help.
* * * *
He’d been blind. Totally, absolutely, ridiculously blind, more so than if he’d worn a mask with no holes through which to see. And only when he’d been challenged by a duke — a flaming duke — had he seen the truth.
Rainier advanced with Miss Busche, her expressive gaze never shifting from his face, then they whirled around each other and retreated back to the lines. She danced fabulously, with grace and energy, an excellent grasp of rhythm evident in her timing and movement. If her slippers touched the floor, he never saw any sign of it. She was brilliance itself, outshining the room and the combined jewelry of every overdressed dandy and dame within it.
The first couple whirled between the lines, leaving them waiting. Rainier cleared his throat. “Admit it, Miss Busche: you overheard my pitiful theory in the coffee house and used its outline to make fun of me over cards.”
Her eyes widened another impossible bit. “I—”
“Oh, I don’t blame you for listening. I’m sure we must have been talking far too loudly, and besides, you exhibited remarkable good manners by not laughing in my face.”
A flash of glee in those bewitching dark eyes, then he and she joined hands and took their turn at the dance, whipping past and leaving the other couples as a colorful blur. At the lines’ head they split off and displaced the first couple, sending them further down as the next began their advance.
“You as well,” she said, a pink flush invading her cheeks from the exercise. “If you’d explained the hidden depths of your meanings in words of two syllables or less, it might have been more appropriate. I’m afraid my understanding of ancient Greek philosophy is sadly limited.”
A man could wake up to those eyes, that beauty, every morning for the rest of his life, without ever becoming immune to that spell. Excitement built in his chest, the emotion of a man who’d found something long sought but little understood. He’d collected art for years, but she put his finest statues and oils to shame. Beauty… how little he’d understood the concept.
“Nonsense.” Gently he tugged down his sleeves, first one and then the other; it would be impossible to bear if he presented a less perfect image than his partner. “Now I see I must modify my understanding of good taste. Clearly the term can still encompass peacock colors, when worn by young ladies who possess such exquisite fashion sense.”
The darkening pink brightening her cheeks could have come from the most perfect damask rose. Her gaze never wavered from his. “And yet, if I’d chosen to embroider this gown not with curlicues and gold thread, but with peacocks in riotous colors—”
“—then you wouldn’t have been the excellent young woman I’ve taken you for.”
She smiled, a deep and captivating smile. His chest might explode; it certainly felt as if it could. If every man in the room wasn’t staring at her, then he was no judge of masculine taste. But he couldn’t drag his eyes from her to check. She was too brilliant, too amazing, too incredibly perfect. And she played whist, competed in earnest, like a professional gambler.
“With such taste in color and line, Miss Busche, you must practice drawing, as well.”
Her high color deepened. “A little. But I don’t think I’m very good at it.”
They stepped down the line as the following couple displaced them, and the leading couple made room. The footsteps clumping beside him sounded remarkably like George Anson, a good athlete but not the greatest dancer. But again, he couldn’t bring himself to glance away.
“That disappointment I can understand,” he said. “I used to draw, to sketch landscapes and people, when up at school. But my skills never equaled my vision, no matter how much I studied and practiced. And I refuse to dabble. I refuse to perform at less than a stellar level.” He waved at her gown, the golden fabric flowing around her in the candlelight like sun-drenched water. “As you’ve done with such ease, in setting the boundaries of fashion for ladies’ gowns this off-season.”
The blush darkened further, spreading from her cheeks to her forehead and neck. Beautiful color, beautiful eyes, beautiful woman, a good card player and dancer, and sufficiently interested in the same subjects as he for conversation to never cease. And the soul-drinking way she stared at him…
He’d been wrong, waiting for true Romantic love to appear in the modern mercenary age, and he’d have scoffed at himself if he wouldn’t have looked like a buffoon, doing so in the middle of the ballroom. As his sisters had taunted him again and again, marriage needn’t depend upon love, but while women considered money and position, a man was expected to assess other attributes in a possible mate. As well-chosen and complete as his collected art, statues, and books were, he’d missed something important: a wife. Now he’d found the perfect one. He’d win her and take her home, and his collection would be complete.
If he couldn’t have his own Juliet, he could at least have a competitor’s and collector’s victory over Cumberland.
* * * *
Mist rose off the river with the late night’s autumn chill. By the time His Grace left the Foresters’, church bells — St. Anne’s, St. Clement Danes, St. George’s Hanover Square, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, St. James’s Piccadilly — all tolled the first breath of the next day, hauntingly melodious as the noises of revelers and carriages faded behind him.
Thick tendrils curled between buildings and stretched ahead like a ghostly road, along and above Piccadilly’s surface. Did ghosts need roads? It didn’t seem likely. Perhaps it was the soul of Mayfair, hovering visible in a spectral imitation of the West End’s best known, most memorable of streets. If he walked that foggy road, would it follow Mayfair’s usual map, or take him somewhere he’d rather not go? A graveyard, perhaps?
Nothing haunting about his current game, despite the weather’s shenanigans and the approach of All Hallow’s Eve; nothing disturbing in his pseudo-pursuit of the delectable Coralie Busche. And a tastier morsel he’d never chewed. She responded well to his hints, absorbed his conversational guidance, and turned from him to her intended with warmth and excitement. In some ways, it almost seemed too easy—
Someone stood ahead of him in the fog.
The dark form was half seen, half obscured by the drifting tendrils, and entirely blurry within the shadow of a building corner limned by a streetlamp. The hood of a cloak fell over the figure’s face and the hemline falling to the pavement protected its form and features. But even so, His Grace decided certain assumptions could be made. Not a footpad. Too small, too still, and no footpad hoping to survive on his takings would give such warning to his mark. Not any more threatening criminal, either, for the same reasons. And not a servant on an errand, standing motionless and staring back along the sidewalk. It almost looked like—
Like a small, slender woman. Watching him.
Surely not, not out alone at this hour. A decidedly small man or youth? But the figure seemed too graceful, even while standing motionless with fingers of fog sliding around it.
No, not it. Her. Definitely feminine. The masculine element within him responded far too positively for the form to be otherwise.
His Grace hadn’t realized that he’d paused, staring at the still-distant form. But if a woman was out alone at such an hour, the situation implied she suffered some difficulty and needed assistance. He quickened his footsteps up the sidewalk. He’d offe
r his protection to her doorway.
But he’d taken only a few steps toward her before she whirled about, her cloak flying in a graceful half-circle.
And she vanished.
Like an illusionist on a foggy stage. Or a circus acrobat swirling away in a puff of smoke at the performance’s end.
He stopped again, staring. Had she stepped away into the mist? Into a carriage — although he’d heard none arriving or leaving — through a doorway, or behind a curtain? Her disappearance had seemed too immediate to have been the result only of the fog, but it was impossible to be certain. An odd feeling drifted across his skin, like the touch of a ghostly hand. It was October, after all, and All Hallow’s Eve was approaching.
A strange sort of happening, that had been. Inexplicable. Fey.
His Grace shook himself. Fey, indeed. Ridiculous. It could be no more than the autumn chill, water vapor moving in the air currents between the buildings, causing him to see things. To imagine that he’d seen—
When he arrived at that corner, no one was there. No one was close, no doorway, no carriage, no hovering figure, and his determinedly steady footsteps echoed from the nearby buildings and deadened in the heavy mist.
Chapter Nine
Saturday, October 23, 1813
“Coralie, dear.”
The harp’s music died away as Mrs. Lacey stilled her hands on the strings, and Coralie glanced up from the sheet music on the stand in front of her. As usual, she’d concentrated so on the composer’s intentions, one note flowing into the next, that the music room had faded around her until she’d seemed suspended in a cocoon of sound, fluid and sheltering like a thick woolen blanket on a chilly evening. The interruption shattered the moment and brought her back to the music room, pale blue walls soaring to the acoustic ceiling, to the open midnight-hued curtains flooding them with brilliant sunlight, to Mrs. Lacey behind the harp, performing one of the few duties she insisted upon retaining even as her fingers began to fumble the more distant notes. To Franklin standing smiling in the doorway.
His smile broadened. “You do take your practicing seriously, don’t you?”
“It’s merely an act and I’ve fooled you all.” Coralie folded her hands atop the sheet music. A little thrill of delight shivered within her; he used to sneak in to hear her practice all the time but hadn’t done so for, well, for a very long time. “Good morning, Franklin.”
Hard to believe that even a doting elder brother found that weak line worthy of a chuckle. But a glimmer of something lit his smile from within, as if more than her little sally contributed to his exceptional good humor. He almost seemed… yes, almost excited, and her pulse quickened in response as she wondered.
“Good morning to you,” he said. “A little bird informs me that you made quite an impression at the Foresters’ shindig last night.”
Ah. Of course. Not only reports traveled from the War Office to Franklin’s desk, and Stuart brought more than dedication when he reported for work. Without gossip, the Ministry would collapse upon itself like an empty house of cards, and then how would Napoleon be defeated?
“It was a lovely evening.” But she’d concede no more than that.
“Is there anyone…?” Franklin paused, eyebrows up.
But she’d waited a long time — forever, it felt like — for this moment of triumph, and she’d not permit him an easy escape. Coralie hiked her own eyebrows, pretending not to understand his unspoken request. “Anyone…?”
Franklin chuckled, satisfaction matching his excitement. “Let’s say, anyone I should invite to dinner.”
“Mr. Kenneth Rainier.” She held her breath.
Franklin’s eyes lit and his smile deepened. Clearly the prospect of such an alliance did not disturb her brother. He nodded once and began to withdraw; knowing him, he’d ask Stuart to send the invitation before the morning was over.
But she’d be remiss if she left the guest list so thin. She had no clue of His Grace’s true motivations, but she owed him at least a dinner for his efforts on her behalf. Besides, if Mr. Rainier’s two sisters accompanied him, they’d need at least one additional gentleman to balance her and Mrs. Lacey at the table. So before Franklin had quite withdrawn, Coralie said, “And…”
Franklin froze in the doorway, his eyes widening with glee. “Oh, indeed. And?”
Despite the necessity of the inclusion, she couldn’t stop herself from flushing. Hopefully Franklin wouldn’t misunderstand, but then, how could he not?
She swallowed. “And His Grace, the Duke of Cumberland.”
Silence. Sudden, heavy, dragging silence. Franklin seemed frozen, as if the words had been some magical spell that bewitched him in place. His eyes widened and he seemed to swell, rather like a enchanted bullfrog sucking in air. At the thought, she battled a giggle.
Let him send that report to Whitehall.
* * * *
Monday, October 25, 1813
…if thou think’st I am too quickly won,
I’ll frown and be perverse an say thee nay,
So thou wilt woo…
A knock sounded at the distant front door, the sound reaching down the corridor to the golden morning room at the house’s sunny back. It could only be a caller for her — Franklin had left for Whitehall — and so Coralie closed the leather-bound volume of Shakespeare’s tragedies and set it aside with a thoughtful frown.
Falling in love at a glance had worked for Romeo and Juliet. But they were literary figures, not any of flesh and soul, and so she couldn’t honestly use them in a comparison with her own situation. Was it possible that what she felt for Mr. Rainier was not love, couldn’t be due to the lack of time — was it no more than a fancy born of loneliness and yearning? Was it too soon to know her heart?
Was that what His Grace had tried to tell her?
No, and there she could be certain. He’d spoken of good breeding and good taste, comparing one to the other, and while his true meaning remained as hidden as his motivation, he’d not mentioned time nor duration at all. Oh, if only she’d studied logic instead of netting; understanding herself had to be more important than making purses.
Rushing footsteps on the hall’s carpet warned her, then Lissie slipped past the butler at the door and hurried across the morning room to her. Wisps of flyaway hair formed a halo beneath her bonnet and her gown fluttered behind her, as if she’d raced across the Berkeley Square common in her eagerness to visit.
Startled, Coralie shot to her feet. “Miss McTaggart, what a delightful surprise. And what a beautiful walking gown. Where on earth did you find sprigged muslin in that shade of blue?”
“Thank you, the Robinsons’ shop on Fleet Street, of course, and my friends call me Lissie.” Firm hands seized Coralie’s and dragged her back down onto the dark yellow sofa with a whump, then Lissie glared at the doorway until Severidge vanished. “Now, tell me what on earth is going on.”
For some strange reason, through her surprise — had their casual conversation over hairstyling invited such confidence? — Coralie also felt cornered, as if she’d done something wrong and hadn’t expected to be caught. The white scroll molding at the plain ceiling’s line encircled the room, a handy distraction when she needed a moment to think. “Going on?”
Lissie rolled her eyes. “The Duke of Cumberland is one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. He’s also got a reputation that could curdle milk in a snowstorm, and I have no idea how to reconcile those opposing distinctions. Yet you treat him like a brother while he smiles at you like a wolf.” Suddenly she stopped and stared, tucking her chin. The stand-up collar of her walking gown tightened around her neck. “He’s not trying to make Mr. Rainier jealous, is he?”
Heat invaded Coralie’s cheeks. It had been years since she’d shared her thoughts with someone her own age, or even with Mrs. Lacey. But Lissie seemed to expect it and showed no awkwardness in asking. The yellow-gold walls formed an especially beautiful contrast with the molding above the copper-toned curtains, where sunlight spil
led through onto the chest where she stored her fabric. “I cannot see how that could be the case, as Mr. Rainier didn’t know I existed until after His Grace began eyeing me. Whatever his motivation, I don’t know him well enough to ask.”
“Does anyone? Know him well, I mean.”
None of this made any sense. Coralie shook her head. “Why are you questioning me?”
“Because that’s what friends do.”
“Question each other?”
Lissie huffed. “They talk with each other and share important events in their lives. Though you seem rather out of practice.”
The heat in her face deepened. Lissie’s offered friendship seemed sincere. But even if she felt no awkwardness, Coralie did, and wasn’t certain how to get past it. Another beautiful contrast was formed by the bronze-toned travertine of the fireplace, soaring up the wall and vanishing into the ceiling, the molding breaking around it. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a friend.”
“Well, that seems remarkably wrong.” A strange look crossed Lissie’s face and she drew back. “We are friends, aren’t we? I presumed…”
Yes, Lissie was sincere. One of the fashionable crowd, a friend of Violetta de Lisle and Deborah Kringle — and with the thought, a wave of giddy, flattered delight pushed up through Coralie’s fumbling awkwardness. She couldn’t stop a smile, even though it had to make her look like an idiot escaped from Bedlam. The molding’s path around the ceiling could wait for another day. “If you like.”
“You do have something to say on the matter, you know.” Lissie settled back on the sofa and stuffed a pale yellow pillow behind her. “But if you have no major or immediate objections, then tell me about the handsome Mr. Rainier.”
Shenanigans in Berkeley Square Page 7
