Doubtless Mrs. Arbuckle had come to inspect Grey in person. He had spent the longest ninety minutes of his life feeding the twins small talk and compliments the previous evening. He could not tell if the young ladies were silly, shrewd, or both, but their mother had sat across the room, sending Grey speculative looks while she’d tapped her fan against her cheek.
He’d limit this call to the prescribed two cups of tea and then get back to the figures Tresham had compiled. He was an earl, for the love of bonnet ribbons, and pouring scandal broth the livelong day was the province of gossips and matchmakers.
Grey tugged down his waistcoat, said a prayer for patience, and let himself into the family parlor. His caller was across the room, her back to him. The line of her spine and set of her shoulders conveyed displeasure and resolve.
The nape of her neck drew his eye, looking all too feminine and alluring.
“Lady Canmore, a pleasure.”
She turned and dropped her arms only long enough to curtsey before resuming the pose of a displeased governess. “My lord. Good of you to see me. I needn’t take up much of your time.”
“I have nothing pressing this afternoon, and a tea tray is on the way. Won’t you stay long enough to at least take a cup with me?”
She wore a simple rose-colored dress with a quilted white spencer. The ensemble showed off her blond hair and blue eyes nicely and did absolutely nothing to distract Grey from the perfection of her figure. Her ladyship was on the petite side and exquisitely curved. She put him in mind of a beautifully carved harp, which conjured music from silence even when sitting idle.
“I did not come here to swill tea and make small talk,” she said, stalking away from the window. “I came to apologize.”
“In what regard could an apology possibly be owing, my lady?”
She crossed to the sofa, skirts swishing, and took the place in the center. “My aunt has made a nuisance of herself again, hasn’t she?”
“Again?”
“Please do sit, my lord, and you needn’t feign gentlemanly consternation. I’ve known Aunt Freddy all my life, and she has about as much tact as a rhinoceros in spring.”
“My consternation is genuine,” Grey said, taking the wing chair nearest the sofa. The elderly Mrs. Beauchamp bore a slight resemblance to the rhinoceros about the jaw and nose. “Your auntie is a delightful lady, and I can’t conceive of how she might be likened to exotic game. Perhaps you could elucidate?”
Her ladyship heaved a great sigh, which strained the seams of her spencer and the limits of Grey’s self-discipline. He was not a schoolboy smitten with the parlor maid, to be so preoccupied with Lady Canmore’s charms, but neither was his attraction to her merely physical.
Lady Canmore was a stranger to deceit, even the social variety that smoothed superficial interactions and simplified life in polite society. She was neither a merry widow nor permanently cast down with grief. She got on with life, disdaining any of the clichéd roles foisted on women in her circumstances.
She could not be neatly labeled and dismissed, and Grey respected that about her enormously.
“Aunt is growing difficult,” Lady Canmore said. “She has always been a determined woman, but then, she’s had to be. Lately, she becomes fixed on an objective, and all threats, arguments, and distractions are unavailing. She foisted another of her orphans onto you, didn’t she?”
Grey’s mind presented him with the wholly irrelevant thought that Lady Canmore would make a fiercely vigilant mother.
“You make it sound as if I’ve been given lifelong responsibility for somebody’s cast-off boot-boy. She’s merely asked me to have a look at a damaged harp, my lady.”
The countess sat up quite straight. “It is not merely a harp. Aunt Freddy has an agenda, one that I am ashamed to discuss with you.”
“Then don’t. I’ll do what I can for a musical instrument in need of a little attention, and she will have her harp back within the week or two. Nobody need admit to or discuss any agendas.”
Where was the tea tray when a countess looked as if she’d bolt out the window rather than stay another moment?
“She is matchmaking, my lord.”
“If matchmaking has become a high crime, then half of Mayfair will soon be housed in Newgate.” Should that occur, finding an heiress would become even more challenging, but oh, the peace and quiet…
“Your inherent good manners have blinded you to Aunt’s stratagems. She seeks to make a match between us.”
In no learned tome on gentlemanly deportment could Grey have found a suitable reply to that expostulation. “The notion offends you?”
“Of course… not. Not in that way, but yes. I find the notion troubling.” The countess rose and resumed her post by the window. “I don’t need my aunt, or anybody else for that matter, meddling in my business.”
A woman of fair complexion could not hide a blush, not even by turning her back on her host.
Perhaps this was best. A frank discussion that put to rest all silly fantasies and worries. Grey rose and joined the countess at the window, the weight of duty and decency turning his mood sour. The garden was coming into its late spring glory, with roses blooming white and pink against the wall and heartsease bordering the walks.
All was sunshine and birdsong in the garden. Grey longed to sit out there with her ladyship and listen to her read her favorite French poems. Instead, he’d have an adult discussion with her, offer her a cup of tea, and be about his fortune hunting.
“Mrs. Beauchamp could leave me a different broken harp every day of the week, and I’d never assume that entitled me to a claim on your attentions. I truly was passionate about the harp as a youth, and the occasional music room project is a pleasant diversion.”
Her ladyship faced him, the sunlight finding all the highlights in her hair—gold, copper, russet, wheat. Painting her would be like painting a sunset, a thousand details adding up to one memorable impression.
“You don’t know Aunt Freddy,” the countess said. “She’ll hare off to Bath, and when you have the latest instrument put to rights, she’ll send you a note telling you to drop it around at my house. She’ll have another wounded harp sent to me, with instructions to leave it in your keeping.”
Her ladyship wore a subtle gardenia scent, both light and rich, an olfactory oasis of pleasure amid the rank odor of London. Grey had always favored gardenias and was relieved Papa hadn’t appropriated that name for a girl child.
The countess was honestly vexed, and that bothered Grey on her behalf. “I see now the unspeakable skullduggery your aunt is capable of, sending broken harps all over the realm, expecting me to pay a call or two on you, and expecting you to receive me, of all the outrageous notions. The shameless baggage should be pilloried for such scandalous machinations.”
Lady Canmore aimed the full brunt of her blue-eyed cannon on him. “You are joking, aren’t you?”
“I am joking, also sincerely admiring. Last night, I endured an execrable rendering of a Haydn flute sonata while the Arbuckle twins pressed me, one on either side, as if I were the world’s largest wine grape. When they weren’t dropping their programs, the better to show off their feminine endowments, they were whispering some mangled French inanity directly into my ear. That you witnessed this farce gilded the absurdity with embarrassment. Matchmaking that involves social calls and ailing harps sounds downright dignified by comparison.”
Lady Canmore studied him, while Grey studied her. She was no schoolgirl, but she had a vitality and confidence that appealed to him more strongly than any tittering debutante ever could.
“When I said I wasn’t offended…”
“Yes, my lady?”
“I didn’t mean—”
Whatever she’d been about to explain was interrupted by the damned tea tray.
“Thank you,” Grey said as Crevey bowed and withdrew. Her ladyship resumed the place on the sofa, and Grey repaired to his wing chair. “How do you take your tea?”
“You don’t want me to pour out?”
He’d amused her, and how he loved that impish version of her smile. “I suspect you are called upon to fulfill that office routinely. I’m a confirmed bachelor of mature years, and if I sat around waiting for somebody to pour my tea, I’d live a pathetic, tea-less existence such as no Englishman could possibly endure.”
“Two sugars, no milk.”
Grey peered at the tea and decided it needed to steep. “Your expression suggests perplexity, my lady.”
She drew off her gloves and set them beside her on the cushion. “I’ve tried to puzzle out why you are not like the other men cluttering up the ballrooms. You are a confirmed bachelor, aren’t you?”
He offered her the plate of cakes. She chose the one with lemon icing.
“What do you know of my late father?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She bit off a corner of the cake. “I know you have many younger siblings. Six or seven?”
“Eight, including five unmarried brothers.” And they were by no means his only dependents. “My father was a botanist. Hence the names.”
“Names, my lord?”
“My siblings are Daisy, Jacaranda, Oak, Ash, Valerian, Hawthorne, Sycamore, and Willow.”
She dusted her hands. “Might I ask what your name is?”
Her curiosity pleased him. The brisk manner in which she put the question also pleased him. “I was christened Grey Birch Hallowell Runnymede Dorning, and you are…?”
“Beatitude Marie Maude Purvis Canning. You may laugh, but you are sworn to secrecy regarding the Maude part.”
He poured her a cup of tea, more touched than amused that she’d given him that confidence. He did not laugh, though he did smile. He added two lumps of sugar and set a spoon on the saucer. “Were you named for somebody, my lady?”
“Aunt Freddy’s late sister. Aunt Maude died without issue and left me a competence. I have had reason to be very grateful that her name gave me a connection to her.” She stirred her tea and took a sip. “What of you? Were you named for somebody?”
“That brings us back to my father, the botanist. I and several of my brothers were named for his greatest passion, the forests of England. He tramped from one end of the realm to the other, and we have plantings at Dorning Hall from all over Britain. A family was very much an afterthought for him, as if children sprang up in the nursery like volunteer saplings at the edge of an orchard. For most of my life, Papa puzzled me.”
She finished her cake. “Which implies that at some point, he ceased to be a conundrum.”
“Papa never planned to marry, never planned to have children. He realized the earldom was not wealthy and intended that the title pass to a cousin better situated than he was. I see the wisdom of his scheme now, when I have younger brothers who need a start in the world and the earldom has little means to provide one. If I had only myself to consider, I’d be content to raise my sheep, maintain good relations with my neighbors and tenants, and read agricultural pamphlets of a winter evening.”
She took another sip of her tea. “As a younger woman, I scorned mere contentment. Now…”
She gave Grey a smile such as no debutante could have given him. Commiserating, sweet, a little sad. A woman’s smile, not a girl’s.
“I married for love,” she said, “and far above my station. My husband was an earl’s heir. I was the outspoken daughter at the vicarage. I was mad for him, and not only because everybody with any sense disapproved of the match.”
Grey hadn’t known she’d been raised in a vicarage. “And if you had to choose again?”
“No regrets, my lord. I loved my husband, for all his faults, and he saw something in me, despite mine. We were not content, but we did care for each other. Aren’t you having any tea?”
Grey poured himself a cup. His appetite for tea was sated until Michaelmas, but this conversation—a little personal, nothing scandalous—was a pleasure.
Also a torment. “I am the sort of man most parents will approve of as a son-in-law. I will provide for my wife and children, I am titled, my estate in Dorset is well cared for, and my nature is temperate. Nobody will regret marrying their daughter to me, and yet…”
She patted his hand. “You like your life as it is. I like my life as well, for the most part. Nobody warns you about the loneliness, though, do they?”
What loneliness? Except, the question had barely formed in Grey’s mind and he already knew the answers, plural. The loneliness of a man at the height of his physical powers who had no intimate companion—not simply a mistress willing to tolerate his advances in exchange for coin, but a woman who’d chosen him because she was attracted to him.
The loneliness of an earl without a countess.
The loneliness of a patriarch who had no partner to confide in or with whom to discuss the family’s joys and tribulations.
The loneliness of a brother watched beloved family members, one by one, leave the family seat for other horizons. What loneliness, indeed.
“I should not have asked that.” Lady Canmore set down her tea cup. “Consider the question rhetorical rather than impertinent. Are we agreed that Aunt Freddy is not to inconvenience you and embarrass me with her little schemes? You must be firm with her, my lord. Tell her the press of business and the obligations of your social calendar do not permit you to take on more of her orphans.”
Grey sipped his tea, ignoring the hunger he’d made worse by gobbling cakes for the duration of Aunt Freddy’s visit.
“I enjoyed the last project she sent me, and I will enjoy this one as well. I believe the harps give her pleasure, and I like hearing her stories about life in the late king’s day. I cannot turn away an elder for the sake of something as paltry as my convenience.”
Lady Canmore rose. “You are kind, my lord, but you are also stubborn in your gentlemanliness. I won’t waste any more of your time, and I will thank you for the tea and conversation.”
Grey got to his feet, her smile making him uneasy. “Have I offended?”
She beat him to the door, their hands colliding on the latch. She stepped back, and he opened the door for her.
“I doubt you know how to give offense.”
This too, somehow, was a transgression in the lady’s eyes, or possibly a disappointment. Grey escorted her to the front door, telling himself that if Lady Canmore was unhappy with him, that made his life simpler.
“Thank you for paying a call, and when I am finished repairing your aunt’s harp, I will return it personally to her.”
A parasol of the same rose hue as her dress lay on the sideboard. Grey passed it over, feeling as if something more ought to be said, not knowing what that something might be.
“May I offer your lordship an observation before I go?”
No servants lurked, not even Crevey. “Of course.”
“You are a contented bachelor, so naturally the notion of change is disquieting, and yet, here you are in London, looking quite determined to find a bride.”
“I haven’t made a secret of my unmarried state.” Though determined to find a bride wasn’t exactly how an eligible bachelor wanted to be described. Dashing was out of the question for a glorified sheep farmer, but gentlemanly, solid, honorable… Those qualities might have come to mind instead.
“If marriage is in your future,” her ladyship said, “then might I suggest that marriage to the wrong woman will, indeed, diminish your peace, but marriage to the right woman will increase your joy. I’ll bid you good day.”
She curtseyed, he bowed, and then the lady was gone, a waiting footman joining her at the bottom of the steps.
What was that about? Grey liked Lady Canmore, and he was attracted to her, but he was uncertain if she liked or was attracted to him, not that her predilections were relevant. He might marry the right woman, he might marry the wrong woman, but at all costs, he must marry a wealthy woman.
And whoever she might be, the next Countess of Casriel would not be Lady Canmore.
Lad
y Antonia Mainwaring was wealthy, attractive, and losing her mind one ball, card night, and boating party at a time.
“Mr. Anderson is coming this way,” Beatitude, Lady Canmore, muttered. “We’re for the retiring room.”
Antonia let the countess link arms with her and turn her toward the steps. “We’ve already visited the retiring room twice, and both times all we heard was gossip.”
“But not about either of us, so those trips were wasted.”
The countess had the knack of moving through the crush at the Bowlers’ ball without appearing to hurry. She was smaller than Antonia—most women were—and like the British navy faced with the Spanish Armada, agility and purpose accomplished what size and power could not.
“Do you truly lurk in the retiring room to hear gossip about yourself?” Antonia asked as they made a decorous progress up the steps.
“One must remain informed. My old abigail pounded that into my head when I became engaged to an earl’s heir. She also told me that my London lady’s maid was to wait out a social evening in the retiring room, rather than enjoy the fare below stairs. A maid in plain sight could both suppress gossip about me among my peers and catch the stray slanderous comment from the unwary.”
“Let’s admire portraits or play cards.”
Lady Canmore surveyed the ballroom below with the dispassion of a general. “You’re safe. Mr. Anderson has attached himself like a barnacle in rough seas to Miss Drusilla Arbuckle’s arm.”
Thank God. “Why would a frivolous man seven years my junior think I’d consider his suit?”
Lady Canmore’s gaze became sympathetic. “Because he is seven years your junior?”
That was honest, also true. “I’m an earl’s daughter, with wealth of my own. He’s a coal nabob’s insolent puppy with wandering hands.” The feel of those hands on Antonia’s person was enough to make a nice, quiet nunnery with a decent library look appealing.
“Better him than the coal nabob with foul breath. Even insolent puppies can dream, and being insolent, they usually dream of their own wishes being gratified. Are you considering accepting anybody’s addresses?”
A Truly Perfect Gentleman Page 3
