An Extraordinary Flirtation

by Maggie MacKeever

  Fitz had come equipped not only with his vinaigrette, but also with a lavender-soaked handkerchief and, just in case, a spare. This, he graciously extended to Colin. “Camphor. Among your uncle’s other misfortunes is a damaged back. As well as a fiancée.”

  Gingerly, Colin accepted the handkerchief, which was edged daintily with lace. “Wish you joy and all that, but isn’t it a little sudden, Unc?” Conversation paused then, as the barouche swerved to avoid colliding with a pedestrian. The marquess groaned. Fitz offered his vinaigrette. Nick glared at him.

  It was that rarest of occasions, a sunny London day, and a great proportion of the populace was taking advantage of the weather to crowd into the streets: town criers in cocked hats and flaxen wigs; postmen in red and gold; ruddy-faced countrymen and porters with their loads; housewives on their way home from market; bowlegged ostlers; sharp-eyed lads in dirty salt-and-pepper coats and battered low-brimmed hats. As Lord Mannering’s barouche wound its way through hackney coaches and fine carriages, carts drawn by donkeys and others by small boys, past a heavy dray laden with beer barrels, and around a bailiff’s wagon piled so high with household furnishings that it looked like it would at any moment collapse, Fitz explained to Colin how his uncle had been accused of attempting to ravish a damsel on her papa’s hall stair steps, although as it turned out she was trying to ravish him instead; and about the older woman whom he had ravished; and how the two of them had ended up together with him in a bed, along with a dog. Fitz considered it time Colin knew about such things. Nick gritted his teeth against the swaying of the cart, and tried not to groan.

  “Are you trying to humbug me?” Colin inquired.

  Fitz snorted. “I’d come up with a better tale than this if I was! Unfortunately, it’s all true. He’s in love with her, else he wouldn’t be behaving like a jackass. And she’s in love with him. Lady Norwood, that is.”

  Despite himself, for he was quite out of charity with both his companions, Nick asked, “How do you know that?”

  Fitz leaned forward, the better to speak to the fascinated Colin. “She called him a satyr, toad, goat, lying cur, dastardly rat, and lustful slug. Not to mention pond scum. In my experience, only true affection inspires a woman to such heights.”

  “You forgot maw-worm.”

  Fitz ruminated. “I don’t remember her calling you a maw-worm.”

  Nick sighed. “That was the time before.”

  “I say!” said Fitz. “You don’t mean to tell me that you and Lady Norwood, ah—”

  “Several times. Both then and now.”

  “One hesitates to ask”—Fitz didn’t—”but when was then?”

  “Before she married Norwood.”

  “In that case, why did she marry Norwood?”

  Nick looked his most sardonic. “My dear Fitz, the lady is a Loversall.” He clasped his hands on the handle of his cane and leaned slightly forward in the hope that this change of position might ease the strain on his back. “I hesitate to mention this, but Zoe called me a swine.”

  Fitz shrugged. ‘That don’t signify. She ain’t in love with anyone but herself.”

  “Narcissus!” Colin was pleased to make a contribution to the conversation. “Narcissus was punished by Nemesis for his cruelty to Echo and the other nymphs, and fell in love with his own reflection in a pond, and pined away, and died.”

  Said Fitz, disapprovingly, “Sounds like a blasted Loversall.”

  “Hera took away Echo’s ability to speak after Echo kept her distracted while the nymphs Zeus had been dallying with escaped. See, I have been tending to my studies, Nicky,” Colin concluded. “What’s a Loversall?”

  “I believe you,” protested Nick. “It’s your mother who thinks you’re preoccupied with things such as greased pigs. More to the point is me escaping from the nymph with whom I didn’t dally, I think.”

  Colin shook his head. “And you called me a cabbage head! I may have got sent down, but I’m not a penny the worse for it, which is more than can be said of you. I am sadly disillusioned, Nicky! Here I thought you were up to all the rigs, and it turns out you’re as great a jingle-brain as anyone else.”

  “Maybe worse,” mused Fitz. “Remember that dog in his bed.”

  Colin snickered. Fitz grinned. “I’m glad the two of you are finding such amusement in my predicament!” Nick snapped.

  “Never mind,” soothed Fitz. “We’re going to stick as close as court plasters lest you tumble into worse trouble yet." He regarded his friend’s pale, set features, and decided a diversion was in order. The remainder of their journey to the Park was enlivened by his explanation of the intricacies of the violet cloth wound around his throat, which had been laid first on the back of the neck, the ends brought forward and tied in a large knot, the ends then being carried under the arms and tied in the back, thereby making a very pretty appearance, and giving the wearer a languishingly amorous look.

  All the beau monde promenaded in Hyde Park on this fine day, as a result of which the ducks had retreated to the safety of their shelters, as had the cows and deer. The Prince Regent and the Duke of York; Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire; the Ladies Cowper, Foley, Hertford, and Mountjoy; the Earl of Sefton and the Ladies of Molyneux—all these worthies were known to Lord Mannering, as he was to them, and all were eager to say hello, and to comment on his upcoming nuptials—although only Prinny dared chuckle and chide him for getting caught—and then to murmur among themselves that the marquess looked less like a man about to contract a marriage than one who’d just been told he’d got a case of the pox.

  On the pathway just ahead, a young lady held court. She was dressed in a pale brown riding habit, and a hat with a jaunty plume, and mounted on a pretty chestnut horse. Flocked around her were admiring gentlemen of various ages, as well as several women whose noses appeared to have been put out of joint.

  She shimmered, and sparkled, and shot out rays brighter than the sun. “That” said Fitz, “is a Loversall.”

  Zoe rode over to the barouche, causing her abandoned admirers to glower and mutter among themselves. “Hello, Lord Mannering. I’m glad to see that you can walk. Or sit, anyway! You look especially fine today, Baron Fitzrichard. I have a gown the same color as your cravat.” Her curious gaze moved to Colin. Her eyelashes fluttered. “And who is this?”

  “My nephew, Colin Kennet. Colin, this is Miss Zoe Loversall.”

  “The heir!” said Zoe, and dimpled. “You poor thing. I am sorry to cut up your hopes. But it may not come to that, you know, for your uncle is quite old.”

  She was vivid, luminous. She had dimples. She was terrifying. Colin looked at his uncle. “Old?”

  “She refers to the siring of children,” Nick said sourly. “Heirs. That sort of thing.”

  Fitz flicked his handkerchief. “Should you require further enlightenment, Colin, you need only ask.”

  Zoe regarded the baron’s handkerchief, and then one that Colin clutched forgotten in his hand. She sniffed the air. “Lavender-scented handkerchiefs? Is that the new rage?” Fitz contemplated his handkerchief, and gave it an experimental twitch.

  Nick had wondered how Colin might react to Zoe. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that the boy looked thunderstruck. “Your aunt isn’t with you?”

  “When I last saw Aunt Cara she was having that ugly tree of yours carried out into the garden.” Zoe moved her flirtatious gaze from Colin to his uncle. “I wonder if it would be possible to speak with you privately, my lord.”

  “No!” Not for all the tea in China. “I have no secrets from Colin and Fitz.”

  “Very well, then!” Zoe urged her horse closer, and leaned forward confidingly. “Beau is deaf to reason. He’s being obstinate. Unless we are very clever, it will be St. George’s, Hanover Square, with or without a wedding list—we have all refused to make one up, you see, but that won’t stop Beau!—and Aunt Cara will have her heart broke. I think you should elope. Then I can be the one to nurse a broken heart.”

  On general pr
inciples, Lord Mannering didn’t care to do anything his fiancée wished. “Thereby destroying both your aunt’s reputation and my own. I think not. Perhaps I’ll just cry off instead.”

  “You can’t!” cried Zoe, loud enough to cause several curious glances to be cast in their direction. She lowered her voice. “I won’t let you. I’d look the veriest pig-widgeon if you did.”

  “You’d look the veriest pig-widgeon if he eloped with your aunt,” Fitz pointed out.

  “That’s different!” protested Zoe, with a pretty pout. “If he eloped with Aunt Cara, everyone would assume her tumultuous passions had got the better of them both.” She dimpled at Colin. “It’s a family trait. And if Aunt Cara won’t agree, he’ll just have to carry her off.”

  “With his back?” interjected Fitz. “Not that Lady Norwood ain’t a fine figure of a woman. I wouldn’t mind carrying her off myself, if I were inclined toward that sort of thing, which I ain’t, but it wouldn’t resolve this fix.” The marquess clenched his teeth, due not to any unease caused by the baron’s suggestion, but to the agony that this excursion was causing his abused spine.

  “I wish you would elope,” said Colin. “Because I’ve decided I don’t want to be your heir. What if you were to pop off tomorrow? I never thought of it before, but look at the condition you’re in. I’m only nineteen! That’s too young to become a marquess. Come to think of it, I may always be too young to become a marquess.”

  Zoe stared at him in astonishment. “How very ungrateful of you!” she said.

  “Oh?” inquired Colin. “And it’s not ungrateful of you to entangle my uncle in this muddle when it’s clear as noonday that who he really wants is your aunt?”

  Zoe could hardly stamp her foot since she was on horseback, and there was nothing throwable within her reach. She had to settle for a sneer. It was a masterful sneer, of course, complete with twitched nose and curled lip. “You, sir, are very rude!”

  Colin shrugged. “And you’re a flirt. Uncle Nicky should cry off. He can hardly make you look a greater pig-widgeon than you make yourself.”

  Zoe stared at him with open-mouthed astonishment. Nick twisted painfully sideways on the seat to regard his nephew and heir. Elegantly, Baron Fitzrichard wafted his handkerchief—the Fitz flourish, he would style it—and said: “I believe I’ve just hit upon a scheme.”

  Chapter 20

  While Lord Mannering and Miss Loversall were rendezvousing in Hyde Park, Lady Norwood was wandering along the crushed stone pathways of her brother’s garden and contemplating the very real possibility that she might be a goose. Daisy kept close to her side. The setter was less ebullient than usual, in deference to her mistress’s mood.

  Late afternoon shadows crept through the overgrown garden. Cara paused by the old mulberry tree. She had run away from Nicky once because she feared the intensity of her feelings, and now what had she done but practically fling herself back into his bed? Yes, and she would probably run away again, this very moment, if not that if by so doing she would abandon him to Zoe. Moon-madness, she told herself, and walked farther along the path. If she couldn’t think clearly in Nicky’s presence, she was doing little better out of it.

  Ah, but the world was a different place with Nicky in it, colors brighter, textures more complex, the air itself sweeter to breathe, as if only in his presence did all her senses come alive. When Cara had first known him, and loved him, she had been so giddy with the wonder of it that her feet had scarcely touched the ground. Then, with the suspicion of his betrayal, she’d landed with a thump, and taken refuge with a kindly, elderly gentleman who would never do her harm. Fortunate for Nicky that she had done so. Cara wasn’t the type of Loversall to fall upon her lover’s sword, but rather—like Great-Aunt Judith—to take a sharp weapon to his more vulnerable parts. At least that was said to have been Judith’s intention before Reynaldo took her in his arms and subdued her with a rapier of a different sort.

  Odd to equate love with weapons, mused Cara, as she paused by the neglected pond where a single daffodil poked its head through the weeds. But love was a struggle, was it not? If not with one’s lover, then with oneself, for it was so intoxicating to surrender to another, and yet so dangerous. Despite all her dramatic posturing, Zoe had no notion what it truly meant to have one’s heart crushed underfoot. Yet if Nicky spoke the truth, he had been guilty of no betrayal, and all the pain Cara had suffered she had caused herself. She bent down and pulled away the weeds from around the daffodil so that it might breathe. Since no one had known about her feelings for Nicky—they had been too new, too precious, to share—there had been no one to whom she could turn for consolation or advice. Beau had been, as always, wrapped up in his own concerns, and Ianthe preoccupied with Beau and Zoe. If Norwood had suspected that her heart belonged to another, he had never said a word.

  Her heart! How melodramatic. Was she a ninnyhammer, given a second chance, yet still to hesitate? If Nicky made the world brighter, he also made it infinitely less safe. Could he be faithful? Could she? Odds weren’t in their favor, given her family history, and if Cara had never wanted anyone else, she wasn’t so naive as to delude herself that Nicky had waited for her all these years. A gentleman didn’t become so skilled a lover by simply thinking about the thing.

  If only Beau weren’t so deaf to reason. Were Zoe truly forced to marry Nicky, Cara might well visit the Temple and make her brother a present of Casimir’s bear. She knelt down in the dirt and attacked a particularly stubborn patch of broad-leafed spurge with her trowel, and wondered about the length of an ursine life span. Daisy sprawled, dozing, by her side.

  In the shadows of the mulberry tree, Paul Anderley stood watching. Never had he known a woman who could look so desirable while so rumpled, her dress wrinkled and grass-stained, a streak of dirt across her cheek. Underhanded tactics, to bribe the butler to reveal her whereabouts, but one could never underestimate the element of surprise. “Cara,” he said.

  Cara roused from her reverie, realized she was kneading the dirt as if it were a certain marquess, and rose hastily to her feet. “Paul. What are you doing here? No, Daisy! No jumping, if you please.”

  The setter ignored this poor-spirited request. She ran toward the squire, tail wagging in greeting. “Sit!” he said sternly, and she flopped at his feet.

  If only Cara were as obedient. “I apologize for disturbing your solitude, but it’s damned difficult to speak privately with you. You’ll be returning to the country soon, after your niece is wed. Perhaps you will allow me to oversee the arrangements. And then we may pick up where we left off.” Paul had had quite enough of London. Nothing that had happened here thus far had changed his opinion of the blasted place.

  Cara wondered guiltily if she had encouraged the squire to think things that he shouldn’t. This sojourn in London had enabled her to clarify her feelings about him, even if it had left her even more confused about everything else. “My niece isn’t going to get married. At least not to Lord Mannering.”

  Paul wasn’t pleased to hear this, for his suspicion that Cara might fancy Mannering herself had been temporarily set to rest by the newspaper account of her niece’s impending nuptials. “They’re betrothed. I read it in the Gazette.”

  “One cannot believe everything one reads.” Cara gestured vaguely with the trowel. “I was thinking of planting lilies here. Did you know that Elizabethans laid red vermilion or cinnabar and blue azure of the yellow mineral orpiment at the roots of lilies to modify the color of the flowers? Roman gardeners soaked lily bulbs in purple wine to induce purple tints.”

  Paul was accustomed to her efforts to throw him off the scent. “Elizabethans also steeped cloves in rose water, bruised them, and bound them about the roots of gillyflowers in the hope of producing clove-scented flowers. You see that I’ve read up on the subject. Are you telling me Mannering isn’t betrothed to your niece?”

  “No, but he isn’t going to marry her. Have you seen the rose garden?” Cara pointed out an Alba rose with its pale
pink buds and gray-green foliage, used as a hedge plant; Banksea roses of white and yellow, vigorous climbers with virtually no thorns; China roses and Damask; Centifolia with its hundred petals; red Gallicas with their green button eyes. Paul broke off a Rose du Roi and handed it to her. Cara regarded the flower and recalled that out-of-season blooming betokened a disaster in the family. “I do not plan to return to Norwood House soon.”

  Paul looked around, in search of patience. Lady Norwood was being particularly annoying today. His gaze fell upon the Sophora japonica drooping in a shaft of sunlight. “What the devil is that?” he said.

  Cara touched a leaf. “My Sophora japonica. Also known as a Chinese scholar or Japanese pagoda tree. It will bear yellow flowers in late summer. Lord Mannering gave it to me.” She raised her gaze to his face. “In regard to his lordship, there is something I must tell you, Paul.”

  “I didn’t come here to talk about Mannering!” Nor did Paul want to hear what he suspected Lady Norwood was going to say. “Be done with this nonsense. I’ll take you back to Norwood House, and—”

  “It’s you who’s talking nonsense!” Cara interrupted crossly. “I’ve already said that I’m not going back to Norwood House. I mean, of course I’m going back to Norwood House, but not with you. How many times have I told you that I don’t mean to marry, Paul?”

  Numerous times. Times beyond counting. Paul had chosen to ignore them all. “I’m beginning to think myself trifled with,” he said, in an effort to lighten the mood.

  Cara turned away. That the man cared for her, she knew. She wondered if he realized himself that he cared more for her property. “Yes, well, perhaps you were,” she said, and walked farther down the path.

  Daisy followed, her tail wagging. Paul trailed after them. “This isn’t like you.”

  Cara glanced back over her shoulder. “I don’t know why you should think you know what I’m like. You’ve never made any effort to find out.”

  Paul stared at her in astonishment. “How can you say that? I thought we were friends.”