“Hazelton was listening at keyholes and the terror of every polite gathering,” Louisa countered.
“You get on famously with him now,” Eve chimed in. “Lionel has little to recommend him except a stylish bow and some fashion sense. Word has it his finances are embarrassed.”
Louisa lingered with her sisters among the ferns at the edge of yet another ballroom, though even in their relative privacy, Eve kept her voice down.
“Well, you needn’t fret that you’ll have Lionel for a brother-by-marriage.” Saying it should have been harder—much harder.
Jenny tore the end of a leaf off a fern. “Have you quarreled with him?”
“Not yet.” Louisa watched as her sister acquired greenish fingers demolishing the fern leaf. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Choose another flirt,” Eve said, her tone chillingly practical as she surveyed the ballroom. “It works for me, though I’m better served when I pick three or four each Season. They are less likely to get presuming notions if they’re never singled out.”
While Louisa cast about for a reply, Timothy Grattingly approached them.
“Mr. Grattingly.” Louisa held out her hand. She couldn’t quite be glad to see him, though his arrival cut short what was no doubt going to be a grueling interrogation from her sisters. “Is it the supper waltz already?”
“Already?” Grattingly smiled, though it struck Louisa as more of a leer. “I’ve been counting the minutes, the seconds even! Come, my lady, lest there be no place for us on the dance floor.”
Louisa rose, but from the same place in her mind that informed her she would not be diverting herself with Lord Lionel any longer, she made a further decision that she could not turn down the room with this lumbering idiot again either, not even for the ten minutes—or six hundred seconds—generally required for a waltz.
“Might we take some air in the conservatory, Mr. Grattingly? It’s too chilly outside, but I confess I have an interest in lining up for the buffet a trifle early.”
“You don’t care to waltz?” His expression reflected consternation, and it was indeed the first time Louisa could recall declining an offer to stand up.
Beside Louisa, Jenny had stopped fiddling with the fern and put her gloves back on. “If you’re intent on dancing, Mr. Grattingly, I can oblige.”
Jenny’s offer was beyond forward—it was fast. Also completely in character for Jenny to the extent she’d be making a tremendous sacrifice.
“Nonsense.” Louisa wound her arm around Grattingly’s sleeve. “Mr. Grattingly won’t mind obliging me.”
Except he apparently did mind. They promenaded the ballroom in the opposite direction of the conservatory, stopping to chat with everybody and his or her maiden aunt. They even ran into Lionel, with whom Grattingly exchanged oblique civilities while Louisa attempted to smile and not look bored.
Lionel was in lavender, gold, and white tonight. Louisa’s algorithm, with symbolic variables for waistcoat, coat, breeches, and stockings, flitted through her mind. Later in the week, he’d trade waistcoat and stockings to present an ensemble in pink, gold, and white. After that it would be brown, gold, and white…
“Shall we?” Grattingly bowed her through the open door to the conservatory, and Louisa felt the touch of humid, earthy air on her face. The place was reasonably well lit for a conservatory and blessedly quiet, though there were no doubt other couples using it for a respite from the ballroom.
“Shall we take a seat?” Grattingly asked. “Don’t mind getting off my feet, myself.” He offered another one of his unappealing smiles.
“That bench will do,” Louisa said, pointing to the first one she saw.
“How about we find the famous Christmas orchid first? I’m told it’s blooming, and the Botanical Society comes trooping around daily to sketch it, sniff it, and refine on its features.”
Louisa had seen orchids before, but Grattingly was towing her by the hand deeper into the conservatory. “I wasn’t aware our hosts boasted orchids in their collection.”
Grattingly stopped at a shadowed bend on the gravel path. “Let’s sit here.”
He stood so he was between Louisa and the way back to the ballroom. Grattingly wasn’t much taller than Louisa, but he was stocky enough standing there in her path that something crawly rose to life in Louisa’s belly.
“Mr. Grattingly, while we might tarry in the conservatory in plain sight of the open door, the location you’ve chosen—ooph!”
“The location I’ve chosen is perfect,” Grattingly said as he mashed his body against Louisa’s. He’d shoved her back against a tree, off the path, into the shadows.
“Mr. Grattingly! How dare—”
Wet lips landed on Louisa’s jaw, and the scent of wine-soured breath filled her head.
“Of course, I dare. You all but begged me to drag you in here. With your tits nigh falling from your bodice, how do you expect a man to act?”
He thrust his hand into the neckline of Louisa’s gown and closed his fingers around her breast. Louisa was too stunned for a moment to think, then something more powerful than fear came roaring forward.
“You slimy, presuming, stinking, drunken, witless varlet!” She shoved against him hard, but he wasn’t budging, and those thick, wet lips were puckering up abominably. Louisa heard her brother Devlin’s voice in her head, instructing her to use her knee, when Grattingly abruptly shifted off her and landed on his bottom in the dirt.
“Excuse me.” Sir Joseph stood not two feet away, casually unbuttoning his evening coat. His expression was as composed as his tone of voice, though even when he dropped his coat around Louisa’s shoulders, he kept his gaze on Grattingly. “I do hope I’m not interrupting.”
“You’re not.” Louisa clutched his jacket to her shoulders, finding as much comfort in its cedary scent as she did in the body heat it carried. “Mr. Grattingly was just leaving.”
“Who the hell are you,” Grattingly spat as he scrambled to his feet, “to come around and disturb a lady at her pleasures?”
Somewhere down the path, a door swung closed. Louisa registered the sound distantly, the way she’d notice when rain had started outside though she was in the middle of a good book.
Though this was not a good book. Instinctively Louisa knew she was, without warning or volition, in the middle of something not good at all.
“I was not at my pleasures, you oaf.” She’d meant to fire the words off with a load of scathing indignation, but to Louisa’s horror, her voice shook. Her knees were turning unreliable on her, as well, so she sank onto the hard bench.
“What’s going on here?” Lionel Honiton stood on the path, three or four other people gathered behind him.
“Nothing,” Sir Joseph said. “The lady has developed a megrim and will be departing shortly.”
“A megrim!” Grattingly was on his feet, though to Louisa it seemed as if he weaved a bit. “That bitch was about to get something a hell of a lot more—”
Sir Joseph, like every other guest, was wearing evening gloves. They should not have made such a loud, distinct sound when thwacked across Grattingly’s jowls.
Lionel stepped forth. “Let’s not be hasty. Grattingly, apologize. We can all see you’re a trifle foxed. Nobody takes offense at what’s said when a man’s in his cups, right?”
“I’m not drunk, you ass. You—”
“That’s not an apology.” Sir Joseph pulled on his gloves. “My seconds will be calling on yours. If some one of the assembled multitude would stop gawping long enough to fetch the lady’s sisters to her, I would appreciate it.”
He said nothing more, just treated each member of the small crowd to a gimlet stare, until Lionel ushered them away. Nobody had a word for Grattingly, who stomped off in dirty breeches, muttering Louisa knew not what.
Sir Joseph asked no permission. He lowered himself to sit beside Louisa while she fought an urge to tuck herself against him and mutter a few curses of her own.
“Louisa
?” The gentleness in his voice was unnerving. “Are you unharmed?”
She nodded, but it was a lie. If Joseph hadn’t come along, then that crowd would have seen far, far worse than a disarranged dress or Grattingly dusting dirt off his satin-clad arse.
“You’re shaking.” Sir Joseph handed her a handkerchief. “Next come the chills. Sometimes I’d cast up my accounts too. Once, to my unending horror, I cried. Fortunately, only my horse witnessed that indignity.”
“Grattingly has been trying to kiss you too?”
“Good girl.” How could a man put such approval and warmth into two stupid words? “Care for a nip?”
“Your special brew?”
He passed her his flask. “Nothing else is quite as effective. I have to ask again, Louisa: Are you unharmed?”
“I’ll have some bruises. Did you follow us in here?”
“I did not. I came here for the warmth and quiet.”
He was lying. Making a gallant job of it, but for the first time in Louisa’s acquaintance, Sir Joseph was dealing in untruths. Still, with Sir Joseph sitting calmly beside her, and his special brew leaving a bracing heat in her vitals, Louisa began to let that quiet and warmth restore some of her equilibrium. “You aren’t actually going to meet that idiot over pistols, are you?”
Sir Joseph took a sip from the flask then passed it back to her. “Grattingly might choose swords, though I can give a good account of myself with either. Wellington required it of his staff in addition to competence on the dance floor.”
“I see.” She held the flask out to him.
“Keep it. What do you see?”
“My brothers would be off in corners, whispering plans as if their womenfolk had never heard of dueling over a lady’s good name. You sit here and casually admit to me you expect to fight a duel on my behalf.”
She wanted an argument, with him, with anybody. The need to verbally brawl was another reaction to being assaulted, but knowing that still didn’t put Louisa in charity with her rescuer.
“In truth your brothers had asked me to keep an eye on your situation, and I had yet to find a way to gain your permission to serve in that capacity. Here is how I see it, Louisa: Firstly, you would do me an injury were I to pretend you should not trouble your lovely self over this matter. Secondly, your honor was thoroughly slighted before an audience that is already spreading to all the world what few details they observed. I can accept Grattingly’s apology, assuming he’s bright enough to make one, which will do nothing to rehabilitate your reputation.”
“And fighting a duel will?”
“Perhaps not, but it will at least serve to keep my honor intact, won’t it?”
She turned and rested her forehead on his meaty shoulder, the full import of the situation landing on her like a cold, reeking mudslide. Her breath caught in her chest, and the back of her head started to pound.
“I am ruined, aren’t I? One stupid turn in the conservatory with that cretin, and years of behaving myself count for nothing. At least if I had committed some sin, I might have the memory of it to entertain me in years to come. But no, none of that. Doubtless I lured Grattingly in here, just as I have lured many a man to his doom in gardens and parlors. For my unending wickedness, I got Grattingly’s fetid breath, bruises, and—”
Sir Joseph’s arms came around her. By the time her sisters found them, Louisa had almost convinced herself nobody would know she’d been crying her heart out.
Nobody but Sir Joseph.
***
“I’ve half a mind to challenge the bloody bastard myself.” His Grace, the Duke of Moreland, paced to the window and spun on his heel with military precision. “St. Just is already on his way down from the North, and I know Valentine would heed any summons sent in his direction. This is bad, Carrington. This is very bad.”
“It will also be over and done with by this time Friday, Your Grace.”
“For you, perhaps, but what about for my Louisa? What about for her sisters?” His Grace groped for the arm of a reading chair, settling himself as awkwardly as Joseph might have settled himself on a particularly cold night. “What about my dear duchess? She’s gone quiet. Hasn’t scolded me since this happened. When the Duchess of Moreland stops scolding her duke, the natural order is imperiled.”
Joseph pushed himself out of his chair and went to the sideboard. He sniffed a couple decanters, decided on Armagnac, and poured the older man a drink. “For medicinal purposes, Your Grace.”
Moreland took the proffered glass but merely held it. “If I didn’t think my wife would expire with wrath, by God, I would issue my own challenge, Carrington.”
Joseph returned to his seat. “Except a duel is intended precisely to stop a grievance from escalating into a feud, Your Grace. Grattingly’s family is wealthy enough and ambitious enough that they could make some trouble for the Windhams, and I must admit two of your sons entrusted me with Lady Louisa’s welfare.”
His Grace raised a pair of keen blue eyes to Joseph’s face. “They asked you? Without telling me?”
Joseph decided a drink was in order after all and gained some time to organize his arguments while he poured out a tot of brandy for himself. “Nasty damned weather.”
“Hang the bloody weather, though at least it isn’t snowing again—yet.” His Grace tossed back his drink in one swallow and held out his glass. “What’s this about my boys passing off the job of looking after their sister onto you?”
This was part of the reason Sir Joseph wanted nothing to do with a title. It required dealing with other titles, old fellows with high opinions of themselves or young fellows with more influence than sense and high opinions of themselves.
“St. Just sent word he’d appreciate my taking an interest in Louisa’s social situation in his absence. I reported this state of affairs to Westhaven, though he has since left for Surrey, claiming he had to nip out there before joining the family in Kent.”
His Grace dispatched his second drink as quickly as the first. “My guess, and it’s only a guess, is Lou threatened to hare off to the North, and St. Just wanted warning if she bolted in his direction. The boy’s still a bit jumpy from too many battles. Her Grace worries about him too.”
While His Grace was at least looking a little more thoughtful.
“Another drink, Your Grace?”
The duke cast a rueful glance at his empty glass. “Best not. Her Grace takes a dim view of over-imbibing. The situation calls for a clear head.”
“It does at that, so let me explain my reasoning to you.”
His Grace listened, hearing Joseph out from start to finish without a single interruption. When Joseph had laid his arguments before the duke, a silence descended in the ducal sitting room, one broken only by the hiss and pop of the fire and the soughing of the winter wind against the mullioned windows.
His Grace stopped staring into the flames and turned to regard his guest. “I must discuss this situation with my duchess, Carrington. I was fortunate to make a love match before such a thing was common in good society. It has turned out rather well, and I hope my father and mother are taking note of that from some well-appointed celestial nook. Theirs was a dynastic union.”
Joseph understood that warning: assuming he survived to week’s end, and assuming the lady in question assented to one of his plans, her happiness on earth could become his responsibility. The prospect was not as daunting as it ought to have been, looming quite to the contrary like a Christmas gift out of all proportion to the receiver’s desserts.
“I comprehend your concern, Your Grace. If Lady Louisa is not pleased with my plan, then I will withdraw the offer immediately.”
Another silence, while Joseph bore the scrutiny of shrewd blue eyes.
“Very well, Carrington. I’ll send Louisa in to you, but wish me luck with my duchess. If I thought the resulting row would put Her Grace back in form, I’d drain every decanter on the sideboard.”
Joseph eyed those decanters while he waited for Louisa to
join him. The duke had twelve, while Westhaven’s library had boasted six. From a place near the cheery fire, Joseph was considering his own little flask—his spare, for Louisa now possessed the better of the two—when Louisa appeared in the doorway.
“Sir Joseph. His Grace said you were asking to speak to me.”
“Actually, I was asking him if I might discuss marriage with you.”
He put his flask away and took encouragement from the fact that Louisa did not bolt from the room, screaming for all she was worth.
Seven
“What do you want?” His Royal Highness made it sound as if Hamburg, of all the toadying ciphers at Carlton House, was the most offensive. He wasn’t, but the little man took perverse pleasure in withstanding royal abuse. The Regent found it easy to oblige him on this freezing, blustery, useless day.
“I do most abjectly beg Your Royal Highness’s pardon for imposing, but the year will soon draw to a close, and there is the matter of—”
Prinny waved a hand unadorned with rings, the weather having caused the royal case of rheumatism to take a nasty turn. “The blighted honors list and the peerages. Do you think of nothing else, Humbug?”
“You pay me to think of little else, Your Royal Highness, and as a symbol of the realm’s grandeur and enduring nobility, there is nothing that compares—”
“Stow it, man, or I’ll pay you even less than I do.”
This apparently crossed the line from coveted royal abuse to sincere threat. Hamburg’s bald pate turned pink, and his pruney lips pursed into silence.
The Regent lay back on his well-padded chaise and scanned the long list before him. Drunks and thieves for the most part, and the occasional drunk or thief married to a whore-for-the-cause. A few among them were shrewd enough to donate to various projects before they held their hands out for royal favor.
“I thought I told you to add Joseph Carrington to the list.” After suggestions from no less than Wellington and Moreland, he had told Hamburg this very thing. Catching the man in his error—if an error it was—brightened an otherwise dreary day.
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