An Extraordinary Flirtation

by Maggie MacKeever

  Rather, the squire was concerned that something might interfere with his determined courtship. Not that Beau had anything in particular against Paul. Still, he couldn’t resist a little provocation. “I thought hunting season was over, Anderley. Yet here you are, complete with riding crop, as if you’d made up your mind to take the field.”

  Paul realized that he still held his riding crop. His hand twitched. “I reside in the area, in case you’ve forgotten. And since you aren’t a hunting man, perhaps you don’t know that it’s unwise to get between the huntsman and his hounds.”

  Since he would not let her sit on him, Daisy dropped down at Beau’s feet and flopped her head in his lap. He scratched one silky ear. “I wouldn’t say I’m not a hunting man,” he remarked.

  Paul refused to be led into speculating about how many females Beau had brought to ground. If Cara was Venus and Aphrodite and Cleopatra mixed together, her brother was Adonis and Apollo and the Archangel Michael, seasoned with a liberal dash of Casanova and Don Juan. “There is a rhythm to the chase. Disrupt it, and the consequences may be severe.”

  “Such as the hunter giving up because the fox has gone to ground?” Beau moved his skillful fingers to Daisy’s other ear. The dog sighed blissfully.

  Paul gritted his teeth. Cara wouldn’t like it if he flogged her brother. “Foxes are very obstinate. If a covert is deep enough, they often run an hour or more without an attempt at breaking. A skilled hunter learns to bide his time.”

  Beau raised a brow. Cara made an exasperated noise and took the rooster with her to stand by a tall window. Paul glanced over at her, and promptly lost his train of thought, because sunlight silhouetted Cara’s lush body through the thin material of her gown, and glinted in her hair, and he was struck by a queer vision of himself bedding a fox. Not a real fox, of course, although there had been that red-haired vixen in Gloucester—

  Beau’s mocking gaze was fixed on him. Paul hadn’t the slightest doubt that Cara’s brother was aware of the lusty tenor of his thoughts. “The fox that goes to ground may still be dug out of its hole and killed,” he snapped.

  Did Paul truly think of her as vermin to be exterminated? Once they were married, would he set his hounds to tear her limb from limb? “Stop it, both of you! Beau, I’m pleased to see you, but I fear I wouldn’t be seeing you if something wasn’t amiss.”

  That might be, but Beau didn’t care to speak of such things in front of strangers, which despite all his ambitions, Paul Anderley was. He gave the squire a pointed look.

  Paul paused, but Cara didn’t take the hint to ask him to remain. “You’ll wish to speak alone together. I’ll see myself out.” Any intention he might have had to eavesdrop was foiled by Mortimer, who was overseeing the arrival of a fresh tray of biscuits and tea. There were no flies on Mortimer. He relieved his mistress of the rooster, which was also reluctant to leave the premises, and personally escorted both visitors to the front door.

  Beau contemplated the tea tray, and wished for a glass of brandy. Unfortunately, his sister’s suspicions would be roused if he asked for strong spirits so soon after setting foot in her house. “You must surely know that Anderley wants Norwood’s land,” he said.

  Cara sat down behind the teapot. “Of course I know it. I hope you don’t expect me to thank you for pointing out that I am grown an antidote.”

  “Whose fault is that? Not that I’m saying you are an antidote, mind!” Beau looked at the dirt—he trusted it was only dirt—on his sister’s face and skirts. “Norwood left you plenty of blunt. How long has it been since you had a new gown?”

  True that her morning dress was several years out of fashion, but a lady hardly dressed up in all her finery to dig in the garden. True also that some of the garden dirt was lodged under her fingernails. Cara folded her hands.

  “It’s been two years since Norwood paid his debt to nature,” Beau continued, as he slipped the hopeful Daisy a seed cake. “I’m amazed you haven’t expired of boredom. Don’t you think you’ve rusticated long enough?”

  Though she didn’t trust him for a minute, Cara was still glad to see her older brother. Due to the ten-year difference in their ages, they had never been especially close, but the hero worship she had felt for him as a child had evolved into a genuine fondness for the man, despite his myriad faults. “Stop feeding the dog! I’m no longer a girl, Beau. I don’t crave excitement. It’s quiet and restful in the country. I like it very well.”

  Beau didn’t believe a word of it. Nor would he have, even had he not noticed how his sister’s hands clenched in her lap. No matter how she might try and forget it, Cara was a Loversall. All the family craved excitement, whether they wished to or no. Their own Grandmother Sophie had likened her own turbulent desires to tornadoes sweeping across a burning desert. Not that Sophie had ever seen a desert herself, but she freely admitted to numerous adulterous affairs—there was hardly any point denying them, since she painted her lovers in the nude—and had even spent some time in a convent after a certain foreign dignitary was caught lacing up her stays. Her son, Cara and Beau’s father, Kenelm, had vowed to pluck as many posies as possible before he shuffled off this mortal coil, and had utilized his charm, good looks, and unfailing panache to acquire a veritable fleet of paramours. The Loversalls combined bedazzling beauty with a voracious appetite for adventure. Had they a family motto, it would be: “Love fully, with complete abandon, and always with great style.”

  Yet here was Cara, hiding herself away in the country. In the past two years, she had resisted all efforts to dislodge her from the Cotswolds. Today Beau didn’t mean to leave without her, even if it meant bearing her off bundled up in a burlap sack.

  Cara watched the play of expression across her brother’s handsome countenance. “Why are you so Friday-faced?”

  Beau gazed at her over his teacup. “Zoe means to drive me into an early grave. You needn’t tell me I may only blame myself, because even if it’s true, it’s quite beside the point.”

  Cara relaxed slightly. Beau’s daughter was willful, and charming, and dreadfully spoiled. And beautiful, of course. “What has she done now?”

  “It’s not what she’s done so much as what I fear she’ll do.” Absently, Beau stroked Daisy’s soft fur. “I found a gray hair the other day. Flitwick plucked it out.”

  Cara sympathized. Was she not at the point in her own life when all that was left to her to hug was Daisy and a kumquat tree? She reached for a cucumber sandwich. “You’re only seven-and-thirty. Loversall men don’t grow old. May I remind you of Great-Grandfather Gervase?”

  Beau winced. The ancestor in question had possessed a voracious appetite for gentlemen and no more discretion than a cat in heat; had enjoyed dressing up and prancing about in lace ruffles, with long curls flowing from beneath a dainty cap, until one last rapprochement in a damp grotto had led to his demise from an inflammation of the lungs at the advanced age of ninety-three. Were that what he had to look forward to, Beau thought he might shoot himself. “Zoe’s turned into a flirt.”

  Cara paused with her sandwich halfway to her mouth. “Zoe’s a flirt? What did you expect! You’re a flirt, I’m a flirt, the family has turned flirting into a fine art. And since when have you had anything against flirtation? Listen to yourself.”

  “I am, and you needn’t think I like it.” Beau sounded so melancholy that Daisy opened one brown eye and thumped her tail. “Anyway, I don’t deny that I’m a flirt. It’s quite a different thing when one’s own daughter is batting her eyelashes at every man in town.”

  Cara tried unsuccessfully to repress a smile. “I have learned a great deal about chickens since I married Norwood. One cannot help but muse upon their tendency to come home to roost.”

  Beau nudged Daisy aside so that he might stretch out his legs. “What is it with you and chickens? And you needn’t look so damned smug. This is your niece we’re talking about. The little minx is running her beaux in circles. She says it is amusing to keep them dangling at the end of her s
tring.”

  Cara remembered a time—oh, so long ago—when she’d done the same thing, and enjoyed it very much. “Admirers are amusing,” she pointed out.

  Beau shot her a darkling look. “Some may be. Others are as old as I am myself. God’s bones, she’s only seventeen!”

  Cara refrained from inquiring whether Beau numbered among his own conquests any damsels of his daughter’s age, because of course he did. Even Cook’s eleven-year-old daughter had taken one look at Beau and professed herself love-struck. “If it’s one of Zoe’s swains that has you in such a fluster, why don’t you simply forbid her seeing him?”

  Beau snorted. “Would you have let yourself be warned off an unsuitable tendre? Cousin Ianthe is in a constant fret.”

  This didn’t surprise Cara. Their cousin had highly developed sensibilities, and was easily hurt. “Zoe has been developing unsuitable attractions ever since she was in the cradle, most memorably for the butcher’s boy. I doubt you have cause for real alarm.”

  “The deuce I don’t!” said Beau, and snatched up a seedcake. Daisy looked hopeful, but this one he ate himself. “I tell you, Cara, I’m not going to let Zoe blot her copybook.”

  This from the greatest copybook-blotter of his generation? “Why not? The rest of us did.”

  Beau frowned at her. “You didn’t.”

  Not for the lack of trying. Cara pushed away the memory of her own unsuitable attachments, and the days when admirers had still wished to kiss and hug her, before she’d grown so old and drab. “Zoe falls out of love as easily as she falls into it. She’ll eventually grow bored with her new conquest, and order will be restored.”

  “Not this time it won’t.” Beau ran his hand through his rumpled hair. “She’s made up her mind. I mean to see her safely settled while I still can. That’s where I need your help.”

  Caught half-envying Zoe her infatuation, Cara sat bolt upright. “Beau—"

  He raised his hand. “Let me finish. You’re the only female in the entire history of the family who hasn’t followed the tradition of loving unwisely but too well—’Just one more romance, one more throw of the dice,’ wasn’t that what Grandmother Sophie always said?—and though it seems very dull of you, things have worked out well enough. And if they haven’t, I don’t want to know! You have a good understanding, Cara. I’ve always said so.”

  Cara regarded her brother skeptically. “Next you’ll mention that I have a strong sense of propriety.”

  “None of us do! There’s the rub. But Zoe won’t drive you to distraction like she does poor Ianthe. When she enacts you a Cheltenham tragedy, you’ll just box her ears.” Beau looked even gloomier. “And then she’ll fly into a passion and drum her heels on the floor and hold her breath until she turns blue.”

  Cara set down her uneaten sandwich. “What an enchanting prospect! You exaggerate, I hope.”

  He didn’t, not really; Zoe was either making kick-ups or shedding floods of tears and wailing that she wanted to Experience Life. Damned if Beau didn’t feel like going on a repairing lease himself. “You wouldn’t know if I was or wasn’t, since you ain’t seen the chit in so long. Shame on you! My poor Zoe needs an aunt’s guiding hand. Anyway, you know you’re tired of remaining cozily at home counting your sheep. Come to London and you may renovate my gardens. And visit the Horticultural Society, where they’re doing experiments on strawberries and nectarines. Then there’s the Herbarium at Kew.” Cara looked intrigued, and he grinned at her. “Speaking of going to ground.”

  Cara had to admire her brother, shameless manipulator that he was. “Does Zoe know you’ve come to fetch me back to be her chaperone?”

  “Zoe will enjoy spending time with her favorite aunt.” Cara looked skeptical, and Beau sighed. “Hell and the devil confound it, you’re my only hope. Whether you act on it or not, you know what’s right. And for the most part you have acted on it, because the worst that’s said of you is that you’re An Original. Which when you think on it, is a damn queer thing for a Loversall.” He eyed his silent sister. “I’ll even stand the business for your new clothes.”

  Cara raised her eyebrows. Beau was notoriously tight-fisted. “You must be desperate.”

  Beau reached for the teapot. “I am.”

  Cara watched her brother pour tea into her cup as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps it was for him. She wondered how Squire Anderley would react were he to discover that his quarry had escaped, and whether he would set out in pursuit or simply look about for another fox. “Don’t tease yourself. I can buy my own clothes.”

  If Beau lacked the family dimples, his smile was still dazzling. “Does that mean you’ll come?”

  As if there were any question. Dared she refuse, Beau would immediately remind her that loyalty had been a family tradition ever since the Battle of Hastings, when two Loversall brothers, after having done considerable damage with a homemade slingshot and a large Danish battle-ax, noted which way the wind was blowing and prudently removed themselves from the Saxon lines. “As you say, I know my duty, whether I abide by it or not. Although I don’t know exactly what it is you think that I may do.”

  Nor did Beau. “Drop Zoe a hint or two. Set her a good example. Prevent her from tossing her bonnet over the windmill. Blast it, Cara, someone must do something and there is no one else but you!”

  Now she was a good example. How very depressing. Cara rose and Daisy leapt to attention, as if hoping her mistress would throw her a stick. “No, Daisy! Sit down. Just who is this unsuitable tendre who has you in such a taking, Beau?”

  Beau grabbed the setter’s collar. “It’s not only that he’s unsuitable, he’s also above her touch. The blasted man must have had as many amours as I have myself. You think I overstate the case? Zoe has set her cap at no less than Mannering himself.”

  Mannering! Just one more romance, one more throw of the dice—”I’ll have Barrow pack.”

  Chapter 3

  “What in blazes,” inquired Lord Mannering, “do you have wrapped around your neck?”

  Baron Fitzrichard twisted on the carriage seat, the extreme dimensions of his shirt points and highly starched cravat making it impossible for him to properly turn his head. “D’you like it, Nicky? I ain’t named it yet. I was thinking about the Coup du Foudue. Or perhaps the Preux Chevalier.”

  Nick eyed the neck-cloth. “The Faux Pas. The Mal-Apropos. The Imbecile. You see how I enter into the spirit of the thing.”

  “By Jove, that’s unkind! After I canceled all my engagements this afternoon just to drive out with you. I’d meant to visit Lock’s and order a new chapeau and then perhaps take a turn around Piccadilly and Pall Mall—Watch that donkey cart! Damned if you ain’t making the flesh crawl on my bones.”

  Lord Mannering, who was an excellent whipster, deftly avoided the donkey cart, and charitably attributed his companion’s mistrust of his driving to a well-known horror of heights. It was for that reason that the marquess had today bypassed his high-perch phaeton in favor of this somewhat less dashing curricle, drawn by a perfectly matched pair of bays, with a groom perched up behind.

  All danger of donkey carts averted, he returned his attention to his companion, who in addition to his amazingly arranged cravat wore an exquisitely cut orange coat, ribbed kerseymere pantaloons, Hessian boots with heart-shaped top and tassel, a lavishly embroidered waistcoat, and a tall beaver hat perched atop carefully styled brown curls. “Anyone who drinks four bottles of champagne at one sitting deserves to have his flesh crawl on his bones, Fitz, not to mention a troop of devils banging cymbals in his head.”

  The baron winced at this reminder of his excesses of the night before. Still, a man had his reputation to maintain, an endeavor that in this instance had involved playing macao at Watier’s late into the night. And then what must Nicky do but rouse him from his slumbers at the very crack of noon? Fitz blinked as the curricle turned into Berkeley Square. “Gunter’s? Are you in your dotage? Because I can’t think of any reason why you mi
ght want an ice. Unless—You ain’t ordering a wedding cake!”

  Lord Mannering maneuvered his curricle through the crush of carriages. “No, and not a turkey preserved in jelly, or a ham cunningly embalmed in rich wine and broth. You are here, Fitz, because your presence is required.”

  Fitz’s brown eyes narrowed. “So you said, but you ain’t said why.”

  Lord Mannering raised an eyebrow. “To lend me respectability, of course.”

  Fitz snorted. Nicky required no one’s countenance to add to his own. Damned if Fitz knew how his friend did it, for the man was deuced careless of his appearance—breeches and top boots, of course, and the jacket he wore so casually was by no less than Weston; but his cravat was tied in an ordinary manner, and his dark hair was worn in the simplest style, as if he didn’t care how he looked. Despite this apparent disinterest, the marquess was tall, dark, and saturnine, immensely wealthy, and irresistibly handsome in the wicked way unmarried peers often were; and it hardly made a difference what he wore anyway, when so many ladies seemed intent on undressing him. “Respectability,” Fitz muttered. “Now there's a fine bag of moonshine.”

  Berkeley Square, laid out in the 1730s, consisted of long ranges of stone-fronted terrace houses where various luminaries had dwelt, including Clive of India, who had resided at No. 45 on the west side from 1761 until his death in 1774 from an overdose of laudanum. In the center was an oval garden with long borders running parallel to the buildings on each side. Thirty plane maples grew there. In the center of the garden stood a little pump house with a Chinese roof.

  A large number of carriages were gathered in the shade of the maple trees. Waiters from Gunter’s hurried across the pavement with ices and sorbets, while gentlemen lounged against the railings and chatted with perfect propriety to the ladies in their carriages, no small feat in an era when a well-brought-up young lady wasn’t allowed to be alone with a man for even a half hour lest her reputation, not to mention her sensibilities, be shredded beyond repair.