The Society Catch (Harlequin Historical)

by Allen, Louise

  ‘You are, look at the way you handle Moonstone. But a woman’s muscles are more slender. See.’ He traced his index finger down the back of her forearm. It was Joanna’s turn to go still. For a long moment they looked at each other, then Giles said lightly, ‘As I said before, I appear to be having the most improper conversations with you, Miss Fulgrave.’

  ‘I expect it is because I seem to get myself into such improper situations,’ she said with equal lightness. ‘Giles, you haven’t said why you have no shirt on and are so wet.’

  ‘I was helping Alex’s head groom, Hickling, with a mare who has just foaled.’

  ‘Oh, how lovely! May I see?’

  Giles stood her on her feet and got up. ‘Not today,’ he said drily. ‘Anyone looking at you would have the impression that you have just been kissed, rolled in the hay and then pressed up against a very wet surface. Somehow I do not think this is a picture Hebe would wish you to present to the outdoor staff. I am afraid that hiding you from all of the indoor staff is going to be impossible. My only hope is that I am going to feature in belowstairs gossip as the rescuer, not the ravisher.’

  ‘You are teasing me,’ Joanna said stoutly, well aware that Giles was trying to make light of the possible embarrassment awaiting them. ‘I am sure Starling will not permit any gossip.’

  Even so, the butler’s professional imperturbability was hard pressed by the appearance on the doorstep of Colonel Gregory in a deplorable state of semi-nakedness and grime accompanying Miss Joanna, who appeared to have been…

  ‘Miss Joanna has had a most unfortunate encounter, Starling, although she is thankfully unharmed. If Lord Clifton should call she is not, under any circumstances whatsoever, at home. Regardless of who Lord Clifton is with. Now, if we can just get her upstairs before her ladyship…’

  ‘Starling, what are you whispering about out here?’ Hebe emerged from the dining room, a large lace tablecloth in her hands. ‘Oh, my goodness!’

  ‘I am absolutely fine, Hebe…’

  ‘No need to worry, I know it looks…’

  ‘I am quite sure, my lady…’

  ‘Oh, be quiet, the three of you.’ Hebe regarded them severely. ‘We will go upstairs, Joanna, and you can tell me all about it. Giles, put some clothes on, for goodness’ sake. You will frighten half the house-maids into hysterics and the rest will fall in love with you. No, Starling, do not fuss, I promise I am quite all right.’

  She placed the tablecloth in Starling’s hands, linked her arm through Joanna’s and proceeded up the shallow stairs. Joanna sent Giles a rueful look and allowed herself to be borne away.

  Once away from the men and in the seclusion of her own room, Hebe proved to be far more worried than she had let herself appear. She sat Joanna down and held her hands, gazing anxiously at her bruised mouth.

  ‘Whatever happened, darling? You and Giles have not…?’

  ‘No! Certainly not! As if Giles would do such a thing.’

  ‘Well, no, of course not, although sometimes men just do not know their own strength.’ Hebe’s voiced trailed into silence in the face of Joanna’s furious indignation. She watched her cousin’s face for a moment, then added, ‘I am sure Giles is always the perfect gentleman,’ and hid her own inward enlightenment at the sight of Joanna’s rosy blush.

  ‘But if you and Giles have not been, er, romping in a hay stack, what on earth has happened?’

  ‘It was Rufus Carstairs.’

  ‘Lord Clifton? But he has not been here today. Starling would have told me, even if he had told Lord Clifton that we were not receiving.’

  ‘He did not go to the house. I think he must have seen me in the grounds and followed me without announcing himself.’

  ‘Disgraceful! Had you told him you were here?’ Hebe was obviously adding general bad manners to Rufus’s sins.

  ‘No.’ Joanna twisted her handkerchief tight in her lap. ‘I think Mama must have done that.’

  ‘Aunt Emily. Of all the misguided things… Try not to be so upset, dearest. He is very eligible and I am sure she thought she was acting for the best.’

  ‘I know. But that is why she sent me all those clothes, you see, Hebe. And I thought it was as a present to show me she had forgiven me.’ Joanna tried to stifle her misery, but the tears were running down inside her nose and she ended up producing a pathetic sound between a sniffle and a sob.

  Hebe wrapped her arms around her and hugged her tightly. ‘I shall write to Aunt Emily today and tell her just how she is deceived in the wretched man. And I shall threaten to keep you here for ever unless she promises never to allow him close to you again.’

  She received a watery smile and a murmur of thanks, but Joanna would not meet her eyes and a sudden unpleasant thought hit her. ‘Joanna, he did not do anything other than kiss you, did he?’

  ‘No. He hurt my arms holding me so tightly, but all he did was kiss me until I could not breathe. I honestly do not think he would have done anything else, Hebe. He was just so angry with me for not behaving as he thought I should. He is a collector, you see, and he has decided he wants to collect me for some reason. Statues and paintings do not answer back or try and run away, so he is not used to rejection.’

  She hesitated, glancing sideways at Hebe. Now was, perhaps, the only opportunity to ask a question that was intriguing her. ‘Hebe, why do men set such a store on virginity? He was obviously very concerned that I had not lost mine in the course of whatever scrape I had got myself into. And the horrible couple who kidnapped me were most adamant that that was the most important thing.’

  ‘Joanna! What a question to ask me. Well, I suppose men want to be certain that their children really are their children—at least the first born,’ she added scrupulously with a thought to many a society marriage. ‘And those horrible brothels—perhaps that is rarity value, or power, or wanting to hurt someone powerless.’

  ‘And the wedding night, of course, I suppose that is something special,’ Joanna mused and was startled at the rosy blush that stained her cousin’s cheeks. ‘Hebe! You don’t mean that you weren’t?’

  ‘We were shipwrecked in France,’ Hebe said defensively. ‘This is thoroughly improper and we are not going to discuss it any more and you are most certainly not going to do what I did.’

  ‘I doubt I would ever be shipwrecked with—’ Joanna started with a giggle and suddenly broke off, appalled at how close she had been to saying Giles’s name.

  ‘With…?’

  ‘We are definitely not going to discuss this any more,’ Joanna said firmly. ‘I am quite all right and I will be very grateful if you would write to Mama and tell her about Rufus. Now, are you not going to ask me why Giles had no shirt on?’

  Hebe gave up her attempt at luring Joanna into revealing the name and said with a laugh, ‘I am not sure I feel strong enough to know, but you had better tell me. Did it all end with a fight?’

  Joanna told her about the foal, which Hebe appeared to find a tame explanation, and then described what had happened when Giles had burst into the loose box.

  ‘He only hit him once? I find that very disappointing. I was hoping that you would say he had knocked out his front teeth and broken his handsome nose for him.’

  ‘How bloodthirsty you are.’

  ‘Only when wretches like that hurt my family. Now, I am going to ring for my maid, have my stays unlaced, put on a wrapper and take a light luncheon up here. Why do you not do the same?’

  In the event the cousins spent an indolent afternoon in a state of déshabillé in Hebe’s room, glancing at fashion plates, gossiping, discussing whether the latest hair styles could possibly flatter anyone under the age of thirty and catnapping.

  It was therefore two well-rested, enchantingly gowned and frivolous young women who came downstairs when the dinner gong was rung and it was quite twenty minutes into the meal before they realised that they were sharing the table with two unusually silent men.

  Hebe broke off an amusing tale concerning a neighbour a
nd her trials with an unsatisfactory governess and regarded her husband, her head on one side. ‘What is the matter, Alex? I declare you are positively dour and you have not touched that terrine, which is usually your favourite. Are you not pleased about the new foal?’

  ‘Nothing is the matter, my dear. I have just got rather a lot on my mind. The new foal? Yes, excellent news, she is one of the Starlight line so I have high hopes of her. I must see about a bonus for Hickling.’

  ‘And for Giles,’ Hebe teased.

  ‘Nonsense. He is eating us out of house and home, it was time he earned his keep.’

  Giles, who was making substantial inroads into the roast goose, raised a quizzical eyebrow at his friend but did not say anything.

  Hebe rolled her eyes expressively at Joanna and announced, ‘Well, coz, I can see we must bear all the burden of the conversation ourselves. Let us discuss hemlines.’

  Even this dire threat did not appear to register with the men who spoke when spoken to, assisted the ladies punctiliously to whichever dish they required and otherwise remained silent.

  ‘They are communicating with each other, you know,’ Hebe said in exasperation as she and Joanna retired to the panelled chamber, leaving Giles and Alex to their port.

  ‘I have seen them do it before,’ she continued, sinking on to a chaise longue and thankfully putting her feet up on the footstool which Joanna fetched. ‘They lapse into long silences, occasionally make eye contact and grunt. Then the next day they have apparently planned a journey, or decided what to do about poachers or announce they are going to a prize fight. I challenged Alex about it once. He just said that when men know each other really well, as he and Giles got to do in the army, then they don’t need to talk. Or prattle, as he rather unkindly put it.’

  ‘Then what are they planning now?’ Joanna asked.

  ‘I do not know. I just hope it isn’t—’

  The door opened and the men walked in. ‘Would you mind if we play billiards?’ Alex said.

  ‘No, of course not.’

  Alex got as far as the door before turning. ‘Oh, yes, I almost forgot. I will have to go up to town tomorrow. Some slight matter of business.’

  ‘I thought I would go with him,’ Giles added. ‘We will be back on Wednesday.’

  ‘No!’ Hebe said with such emphasis that Joanna jumped. ‘No, you will not do anything so foolish, either of you.’

  ‘What?’

  Hebe turned to her, anger sparkling in her eyes. ‘Ask them why they are going.’

  ‘But Alex said, a matter of business.’

  ‘Ask them what business.’

  Joanna had never seen Hebe so furious. More out of anxiety to keep her calm than a desire to interrogate her host, she said, ‘Please explain, Alex. Hebe seems rather upset.’

  Alex’s face wore the darkly severe expression that had led others to describe him as looking like a member of the Spanish Inquisition. ‘We have to talk to a man, that is all.’

  ‘Which man?’ Hebe asked Joanna between gritted teeth.

  Feeling as though she was caught up in the midst of a farce, Joanna dutifully repeated, ‘Which man?’ and was met by two equally stony and uncommunicative faces.

  ‘Nothing you need worry about,’ Alex said, fatally misjudging his wife for once.

  ‘In that case, Joanna and I are coming with you.’

  ‘I forbid it.’ A shiver of awed excitement ran down Joanna’s back. Alex in a towering rage was a force to be reckoned with.

  ‘And I forbid you to fight duels,’ Hebe snapped back.

  ‘I am not…’

  ‘But Giles is, is he not? And you are going to stand his second. And, if he kills that wretched Carstairs, the pair of you will have to leave the country. And if you think I am going to have a baby all by myself, Alex Beresford…’

  ‘I am not going to kill him,’ Giles said, managing to get a word in between the furious married pair.

  ‘But you are going to fight him,’ Joanna stated, cold gripping her heart.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if he kills you? Do you think I want that on my conscience, Giles Gregory?’ She found she was standing toe to toe with him, glaring up into his face. Behind her Alex and Hebe had fallen silent.

  Giles laughed contemptuously. ‘Kill me? I hardly think so.’

  ‘Oh, you arrogant, infuriating, pig-headed…’ Joanna struggled to find a bad enough word and finished ‘…man!’

  Giles’s laugh turned into one of pure amusement. ‘I will admit to the last charge. Ouch! Stop that!’

  Joanna, infuriated beyond words, had begun to hit his broad chest with her clenched fists, ignoring the tears running down her face. ‘Please, Giles, do not do it. He isn’t worth it…’

  Giles caught her pummelling fists in one hand and held them just tight enough to stop the blows. ‘Shh, little one. There is nothing to worry about.’ Joanna blinked back her tears and looked up at him through soaked lashes. His expression was so gentle the breath caught in her throat.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered.

  As he bent his head to catch the word, Hebe said sharply, ‘The risk to Joanna’s reputation is too great. There is no saying who he has told he was coming here. He reappears in town with, I presume, a bruised face and the next day her cousin’s husband and his friend descend and call him out. Do you think the gossips will have no difficulty putting that puzzle together and making a very pretty picture of it?’

  Giles raised his head and looked across to Alex, then at Hebe. His grasp remained tight around Joanna’s trembling hands. At last he said, ‘You may be right. I just hate to think of him getting away with this.’

  ‘He has not,’ Hebe said with conviction. ‘The word will go round that he is not to be trusted with young ladies. Soon he will find that he is not welcome to pay his addresses when he seeks a wife of the eligibility his pride demands. No one will know quite why, just that his perfect reputation will be ever so slightly tarnished. He will hate that.’

  ‘Good,’ Joanna said, her voice sounding distant even to her own ears. Something very odd was happening. Surely she was not going to faint? She never fainted. Even that dreadful night at the Duchess of Bridlington’s ball she had not fainted. Even this afternoon in the stableblock she had only been dizzy….

  She came back to consciousness to find herself being carried in Giles’s arms. He seemed to be climbing. ‘Where am I?’

  ‘On your way up to bed.’ He glanced down at her and his arms tightened. Joanna fought the instinct to wrap her arms around his neck and bury her face in his chest. ‘You fainted.’

  ‘I never faint. Where is Hebe?’

  ‘Downstairs making up with Alex. She sent Starling for your maid to meet you in your chamber, so there is no need to worry about the proprieties.’

  ‘I was not,’ she protested. ‘Giles, please promise me not to fight Rufus.’

  ‘Very well, I promise. Why are you so against it? Surely you don’t think I would either kill that fool or let him kill me, do you?’

  ‘I have caused you more than enough trouble,’ she mumbled against his shirt front.

  ‘You have certainly caused me trouble,’ he agreed. ‘Can you stand? I had better set you down here.’ Then, to her amazement, as he put her on her feet outside her chamber door he bent and kissed her forehead lightly. ‘Whether it is more than enough trouble remains to be seen.’ On which enigmatic note he strode off down the corridor.

  Chapter Eighteen

  For three of the residents of Tasborough Hall breakfast the next morning was an uncomfortable meal. Hebe was pale with dark shadows under her eyes, but although Alex tried to insist she go back to her room she protested that she was too restless to settle.

  Alex ate with a darkly severe eye on Joanna, who was convinced he blamed her for the previous day’s alarms and arguments and therefore for Hebe’s discomfort. Uncomfortably torn between meeting his judgmental gaze, flustering Hebe by looking at her and appearing to fuss and catching Giles�
�s eye, which for various reasons she was reluctant to do, Joanna kept her eyes on her plate.

  Only Giles appeared to be in good humour. Seeing the reddened and grazed knuckles of his right hand, Joanna assumed he was pleasurably satisfied at having delivered such a devastating blow to Rufus Carstairs. Men, she gathered, set a lot of store by that kind of thing. At least he did not appear to be repining at not challenging him to a duel.

  Joanna had lain awake half the night worrying that Giles might slip away up to London, even if Alex could not for fear of upsetting Hebe. He had promised not to call Lord Clifton out, but she was certain there were ways in which he could turn the tables and publicly provoke Rufus into issuing a challenge.

  And during those long, restless hours Joanna had found her memory was all too vivid and awake. Rufus’s assault troubled her not at all. What kept her tossing and turning was the memory of Giles’s body sheltering hers, his anger for her, the tenderness in his eyes as he looked at her cradled in his arms. And that enigmatic remark as he had left her outside her room; almost as though he wanted her to cause him more trouble. But that was absurd.

  Hebe crumbled a roll and said, ‘That is a very fetching habit, Joanna. I like the pale revers.’

  Thankful for something to talk about, she replied eagerly, ‘Yes, it is nice, is it not? Mama sent it. The skirt is lined with the same colour as the revers so it shows a little when I am mounted and the hat and veil are very dashing.’

  ‘Is it not too hot to ride?’

  ‘I was going to go after breakfast. I was only going to get a little fresh air in the paddock. Unless you would like me to stay?’

  ‘No, dear, you go out, the fresh air will do you good.’

  That appeared to exhaust everyone’s capacity for conversation. Joanna glanced round the table and saw Giles was smiling at her. He raised one eyebrow and glanced sideways at Alex and Hebe with a rueful expression. She could not help but smile back, wondering if she dared give into temptation and ask if he would ride with her.