by Edith Layton
3
The sensation of touch is the first to return to those who have been drowned in sleep, so the first thing that Lord Leith was aware of when he opened his eyes to the shallow light of the morning was the cool breeze that flowed over him. Then he saw the white curtains at his windows billowing out like miniature sails and he lay back upon his bed in contentment. It was a chill wind, but he made no move toward the windows to close them. He always cracked his casements ajar before retiring, no matter what the weather, no matter what protests from any companion who chanced to share his sheets, just so that he might feel the constant reassuring English breeze when he awoke. In that way he was sure to be reminded each morning of his life that no matter where he was, he was at least, at last, no longer in India.
It was the freshening wind that he had missed the most during his seven years in India. In the southern parts where he had spent his time, the air could never have been said to be salubrious. At best, when it was fanned by servants, it could have been said to have been moved, but no more than that. Only once since he had returned home had he let a single little clinging female winsomely coax him into closing the shutters tight. He had woken in the morning suffocated and alarmed, in some still-sleeping part of his mind convinced he was back in Bombay. Since then, the light ladies who wished to spend their nights with Lord Leith had to brave the night’s breezes or do without his company. However much they distrusted the evil miasmas said to lurk in the night air, most felt it a fair trade-off and reckoned the gentleman’s reassuringly large frame sufficient to protect them from drafts.
This morning the tall gentleman found himself in his own bed and quite alone. His mouth felt fresh, he had no pounding at his temples, nor did he experience dizziness when he swung his legs to the floor and stood upright. So he wondered why he should feel less than perfectly at east upon awakening. He strode to a chair and picked up a dressing gown and covered himself. Sleeping without any bodily coverings was another strange un-English habit he had acquired abroad, though it must be said that few of his night’s companions had ever protested against that peculiarity, however alien it might appear to be to them.
When his valet scratched lightly upon the door and entered with a tray and pot of coffee, Lord Leith had already performed his morning’s ablutions and was just completing the chore of shaving himself. His valet clucked beneath his breath. Of all the heathen habits the gentleman had come home with, this, in the eyes of his man, was the worst. No matter that the master explained patiently that since he had seen what had happened to an acquaintance of his in Calcutta, whose native servant had gone amok and removed a large part of his master’s throat along with his stubble, he preferred to shave himself, it was lowering not to be allowed to perform that task for one’s gentleman. Still, the long-suffering valet sighed, on balance he was an excellent master, and no man could have everything.
“Good morning, my Lord,” he said as he placed his tray upon a table. “And might I inquire as to whether you had a good evening? As you requested, I did not wait up for you past midnight, but I heard you arrive shortly thereafter.”
“Damn,” said his master, sitting upright as though stung, “that was it!” Seeing his valet’s curious look, Lord Leith permitted himself a smile. “No, nothing you said. It’s just that you reminded me of something I had rather have forgotten. Ah, well, best to get it over with. Lay out some courtesy clothes, Taunton, for I’ve a polite visit to pay before the morning’s out.”
As his valet hurried to put out fresh neckclothes and silently dithered over a choice between buff breeches or the new blue ones he admired, Lord Leith sat back and frowned.
It had been badly done, he admitted. He had promised Ollie he would do the pretty with his young protégée, but then after one petty insult, he had turned tail and gone off in high dudgeon. It hardly mattered if the chit had the manners of a boor or even if she had possessed the face of a baboon, for he had given his word. Not that he had seen her face, he recalled; he hadn’t even given himself time to do that properly before he marched off. Then he had been forced to amuse Prinny upon his entrance and stay with him for the brief moments he decided to honor the ball with. Only then, on the heels of his Regent’s departure, could he take his own leave. But not before, he remembered sourly, he had heard that Ollie, his aunt, and the farouche young female they had dragged along with them had themselves departed.
There were extenuating circumstances, Lord Leith tried to tell himself as Taunton helped him into his tightly fitting brown jacket. It had been stultifyingly hot, more crowded than a thieves’ den, and both noise and temperature had been a dismaying contrast to the soft London night he had come in from. The cooing and outsized admiration he had been subjected to by the ladies in attendance had been especially annoying in contrast to the reception he had gotten at the last ball he had attended at the Swanson home.
That, Lord Leith thought as he nodded in satisfaction at the fall of his cravat, could hardly have been Ollie’s fault. If anything, the memory of that ancient shame should have made him doubly anxious to assist the old fellow. For it had been a decade ago almost to the night when as a stripling youth of nineteen, he had been subjected to far worse insult in that very room.
It had been their eldest daughter the Swansons had been feting then. He had been standing close to the dining room, anxiously awaiting the call to dinner, when he had overheard the chance remark that had changed the course of his life. A potted fern had obscured the speakers, but not their carefully enunciated, cultivated voices.
“Yes,” the female whisper had come clear to his ears, “he is extraordinary-looking. Very dashing, quite beautiful, in fact. But, Georgette, my dear, quite ineligible.”
“But, Melissa,” the other lady, whom he had only just done standing up with, complained, “he is so elegant.”
“Elegant, yes,” the other had replied, “but far too expensive for you, my love. He hasn’t a farthing, my dear. His brother’s got it all and Leith has naught but the clothes he stands up in. In fact, I do believe he’s come for the dinner as much as he’s come to have sheep’s eyes made at him. It’s likely that there’s more food on that table than he’s had to dine on for weeks.”
“Poor fellow, then I’ll ask him to dinner,” said the other, pouting.
“Do, and Mama will have your ears, sweet,” the unseen adviser countered before the music struck up to drown out their laughter.
He had left immediately that night as well, but with his ears burning and his stomach rumbling. He had felt ill, but that had nothing to do with the loss of an anticipated dinner, though, in fact, he had been just as hungry as the observant female had thought. Now he could smile back ruefully at the incident, for he had long since learned in more difficult ways that a full stomach is worth any embarrassment. But if it was youthful folly that had sent him hungry into that lost night, Lord Leith decided as he dismissed his valet, his leavetaking last night had been just as callow and foolish a gesture.
It was never Ollie’s fault that the country bumpkin he sponsored had so neatly recalled the other incident to mind by offering him rejection. Nor would any other excuse do for it. He had broken his word, whatever the spur, and now he must make reparations.
Lord Leith waved away any suggestion that his phaeton be brought around. It was a fine spring morning and the walk to his aunt’s house was not so far that he required to ride. He would, he decided, send for his equipage later, after he made his apologies. Then he would take Ollie’s young miss for a ride around the park. He would, he swore as he strode along, go round and round the damned park until she was dizzy and every member of the Ton saw what a pretty couple they made. It would be the least he could do to make amends for the consequences of his touchy pride. He would ride with the chit, he vowed, even if she resembled a gorgon and had the conversational skills of a gnat.
The tall gentleman in buff breeches, brown jacket, shining Hessians, and snowy neckcloth had to stop every few paces and greet some of hi
s many acquaintances that were on the strut. He was now more than merely eligible. He had friends among the Corinthian set, for he was said to be a sportsman and a bruising rider. He had acquaintances among the dandies, who swore by his way of arranging a neckcloth and envied his taste in waistcoats. He was admired by the intellectuals, as they claimed he could appreciate a sonnet as well as any man who had a rare eye for art, while a few famous rakes called him friend and thought more of his eye for an ankle. In truth, while he was welcomed by all, he belonged to no one set, and no man could claim to know him entirely, though not from want of trying.
It was acknowledged that Leith was a closemouthed fellow who kept his own counsel. His elders approved that not till the admiration of his fellow man or woman seemed to turn his head. For while no sane man could fail to be touched by such constant acclaim and appreciation, still Leith, it was generally agreed, had his two feet on the ground. But it was not so much that as it was that he kept one foot firmly in the past. Not all the sighs, nor all the invitations could erase the fact that he had possessed the same face, form, and wit a decade before, without receiving any such approval. It was only his pockets that had undergone any great change. They, and not he, he often thought, smiling, had grown deeper.
He had gone to Ollie on a long-past morning in search of advice. For he had known that he had nothing, nor any expectations, since his older brother had gone through all his patrimony. But when he asked Ollie which regiment he ought to link up with, his old family friend had sighed. He had said, sadly, that while the army would lose a capital fellow by what he was about to say, in all conscience he must say it. There was precious little lucre to be earned in the service of one’s country, and if it was fortune a fellow was seeking, a meeting would have to be arranged with a friend in the East India Company. The army was for glory, Ollie counseled, but the Company was for gold.
Alexander had met with the gentleman from the Company. Ollie’s crony eyed him up and down, and said that if he were to be an industrious, clever, and scrupulous young gentleman, he would become a well-to-do young spring in the service of the Company. But if he were to be industrious, clever, and a little less scrupulous, he might become a nabob. For three years Alexander had labored in India. At the end of that time he longed for home and, adding up his accounts, realized that he was well-to-do by anyone’s standards. But it was not till four years later that he went home at last, and then he was a nabob.
Now as he strolled the streets of London, he knew he had everything he wanted, almost to excess. He had funds, fame, and acceptability. He had no lady, for he had many ladies. No one friend, but a host of those who would call themselves such. All this amused him greatly. And amusement was the only thing he still sought. After all those years of privation, amusement was the one thing he believed he had earned—and the only thing left that he desired.
Ollie had advised him well and steered him to his destiny. He could do no less than to try to repay his old friend by doing the one favor he had ever asked. En garde, Miss Eastwood, Lord Leith thought as he strolled the fashionable street with a wry smile that sent a passing female’s hopes careering off in the wrong direction, I shall bring you into fashion, like it or no.
“Take a seat, Alex. I’ll ring for tea. Or sherry, or whatever you will,” Lady Grantham greeted him distractedly as he entered her small salon and took her hand. “It’s good of you to come today, but I, for one, would not have held it against you if you had not. Indeed, Selby left not just two minutes past—I wonder you did not fall over him on your way here—and he was of the opinion that he was in your bad graces. I shouldn’t wonder if he’s not calling at your house now to apologize to you. Excuse my going on like this, Alex, but I’ve had such a morning, I cannot think straight.”
Lord Leith seated himself, crossed his long legs, and smiled at his aunt.
She was a slender woman past her middle years, tall, as all the family were, with gray hair and a haughty demeanor that was more a matter of childhood training than personal bent.
“Best of Aunts, I don’t care how you rattle on,” he said soothingly, “I’m just grateful that you didn’t decide to part my hair with a table leg when you saw me. It was wrong of me to leave you in the lurch last night and I’ve come to offer up myself and beg forgiveness.”
“It won’t do, Alex,” Lady Grantham said weakly, sinking back on the chaise.
“Bad as that? Then I’ll order up burnt offerings. You’re not going to turn your back on me after an acquaintance of nine and twenty years, are you? Not to mention blood ties and ancestral obligations,” he went on, rising and going to sit beside her.
“Oh, it’s not you, Alex,” the lady said, taking his hand and looking at him with fond approval. “You’d have to do a great deal to put me off; in fact, you have, and I’ve never lost my affection for you. It’s that girl of Ollie’s. She’s driven me to distraction.”
“Ollie’s girl?” Lord Leith frowned.
“He acts as though she were,” his aunt said in agitation. “I suppose it comes from his never having any children of his own, no matter that he says it’s due to his respect for her father’s memory. But in any case, both he and I have spent the morning trying to put things right. For she was going to leave this morning, she was all packed and ready to call a hackney. I knew Ollie would fly up into the boughs if she did, so I forestalled her whilst I sent him a message. And when he arrived, it took the two of us the better part of an hour convincing her to stay on here. Which she agreed to only on sufferance, for it looked as though Ollie were going to have a seizure. I shot her a look she could not miss, and she at last agreed to stay on. Ollie is a dear friend, Alex. I almost wed him, you know, centuries ago when we were young. But it’s as well I didn’t, for we have become the best of friends, and that, as you know, would scarcely have happened had we married.”
Lady Grantham looked thoughtful, as though somewhere in her spate of words she had said something she ought not to, and her nephew repressed his smiles and said quickly, “Then I’ve come at a good time. I’ll settle matters with Ollie’s little filly, butter her up to her ears, and she’ll settle down comfortably with you again.”
“That she won’t,” Lady Grantham said dispiritedly, “for it isn’t just what happened last night, you know. She refuses to be compliant on all things. She won’t dress properly or attend social dos or even accept the fact that she is a young woman. She acts as though she were that wretched Red Jack’s son rather than his daughter.”
“Red Jack?” Lord Leith asked, and then answered himself, “Ah, yes, the famous father.”
“Infamous is more the word.” Lady Grantham sniffed. “I speak ill of the dead, Alex, though it pains me to. For I met him many times through dear Ollie. And he was a feckless, reckless dashing fellow who never appeared to wish to grow up. Ollie may lionize him, his daughter may light candles to him, but so far as I could see, he hadn’t any more sense than a boy, all his life. After his wife went, he left his daughter there alone in the wilds of Yorkshire, and see how she turned out.”
“Then why not simply let her collect her fortune and return to the wilds?” her nephew asked dryly.
“There isn’t any fortune, Alex. Ollie is sure of it, and who would know better than he? For the fellow ran through money as fast as he ran away from obligations. The girl’s only hope is to marry—if not well, at least securely. But we don’t dare mention the word ‘marriage’ to her. Ollie tried the once, and she almost bit his head off. A wedding don’t figure in her plans at all. She’d sooner run off to sea than even contemplate running off with a man. But if she attracted attention, she might change her mind. It’s not impossible for even such an unnatural girl to have her head turned by some clever fellow. She has birth, and some wit, I’ll be bound, and she might look well enough if we could dress her up a bit. But on that head, as on any other that runs contrary to her belief, she is obstinate.”
“Then why not simply wait until she is told the truth,” Lord Leith
asked reasonably.
“I should be pleased to do so,” Lady Grantham complained. “But Ollie is convinced she’ll dash back to her home and live wretchedly, for she’s too proud to take a cent from him.”
“You know, my dear Auntie,” Lord Leith said with a melting smile that made the lady feel as though she were at least a decade younger, “I wonder that you believed my asking her to dance would do a thing. For it wouldn’t, you know. Not the Beau, nor even the Prince could have turned the trick. You can’t bring a half-wild colt to market and expect to sell it as a gentleman’s mount.”
“Inelegantly put,” Lady Grantham declared, making a displeased face at her nephew, “but true, we were desperate. Don’t sneer, Alex, it puts years on you. I suppose you could have come up with a better scheme?”
“I do. And I have,” Lord Leith said, rising to his feet. “Now you must go abovestairs and have a nap or a fainting spell, or whatever it is you have to when you wish to escape company, and send the young woman to me. I think I know just the thing to put things right. At least temporarily. You hesitate. Don’t you trust me alone in a room with your tempting little visitor?”
“I shouldn’t trust you alone with a young female anywhere on the face of this earth,” Lady Grantham declared fervently. “But in this case I should feel no qualms at leaving her alone with you in your bath. It’s not your seducing her I fear, it’s the likelihood of your slaying her. You do have the family temper and she is enough to try the patience of a saint.”
“Which I am,” her nephew replied, easing the tension in her aspect and causing his aunt to laugh merrily as she rose to pat his cheek.
“Do you remember that, Saint Alex,” she cautioned as she swept from the room, her spirits much restored.
