“I’m vastly content,” he said, his expression showing it so clearly she had to look away again.
He was delighted with her. Everyone had seen him gazing at this sweet young woman with fixed lust—and whatever else the gossips would certainly invent. They’d also have to see how she looked back at him, with enchanting distraction, and a little fear. Perfect. She could be pretending for his sake or she might be genuinely overwhelmed. It didn’t matter. It would be all over town in hours and on the Scalbys’ plate with their morning paper, if not before.
Things were going just as he planned. He only had to be vigilant and make sure they didn’t go even further than that.
8
The word about Sir Alasdair and his latest flirt went out fast because it was delicious gossip. In fact, the rumor about the infamous St. Erth and his unexpected infatuation with a nobody from the countryside flew so quickly it was old news to many in London by the time the moon set on it.
There were others who were intensely interested in anything to do with Sir Alasdair but who spent their nights in different ways, and so only heard the rumor with the rising sun. But they listened very closely when they did.
It was hard to tell it was morning in the darkened breakfast room. The shutters were closed and the drapes drawn, locking out the bright new day. Breakfast was being served in such dimmed light it might have been dusk except that, as a bow to reality, no candles were burning. The messenger who brought the news to the lady and gentleman couldn’t see their faces as he told them about Sir Alasdair’s latest escapade. He counted himself fortunate.
“I see,” the lady seated in shadow finally said when he’d finished. He stood, turning his cap in his hands. “My man will give you your money, as usual,” she said. “You may leave.”
He bowed, backed away, then turned and scurried out the door into the hall.
“So, what do you think of that?” she asked the man at the head of the table when they were alone again.
He shrugged.
“So,” she said, picking up a fragile teacup in her long thin fingers, “our relatives the Corbets have a lovely daughter. Who would have thought it? Had we thought of it, we’d have acted first, I’m sure. She is, after all, our cousin. Ours. Exactly. Why else would he dance attention on her, pretty though she may be? ’Pretty’ is nothing to him. ’Exquisite’ is nothing to him, for that matter. He has always been hard to predict.”
She took a sip and grimaced, though it had nothing to do with the taste of her morning chocolate. “As now. He could have his pick from the highest, we know he has his choice of the lowest, and yet here he courts our obscure cousin. What do you suppose he wants us to do about it? More to the point, what does he expect us to do about it?”
The man merely picked up a piece of toast, closed his teeth over it with a snap, and began chewing.
“Quite right,” she said, nodding. “Nothing. What can we do, after all, except sit here and wait for him to come to us? We will. And he will, you know. He’ll have to. I doubt he wants to marry our cousin. I doubt he wants to enjoy her in peace and obscurity either. He may, however, ruin her in an attempt to lure us to him. I wish him joy of it. I envy her the joy of it, though.” She laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound.
But it started her companion laughing. That made her wince.
Outside, in the broad light of the new morning, the man who had visited the lady and her husband scuttled through the streets, head down. He held the coins their butler had given him fast in his fist. When he’d gotten far from the elegant district he slowed at last, dropped the coins into a pocket, and began to saunter as though he owned the mean streets he now traveled through. He didn’t, but he was on his way to a man he thought did.
His shoulders went down, and his back grew less straight when he entered the tavern. He was a man who knew how to trim his sails when the wind changed, since his life often depended on it, and his livelihood always did. His always being what people expected to see was the secret of his trade. He snatched off his cap and held it in his hands as he approached the man who’d sent him on his errand.
He gave his news.
“Well, well,” the man he reported to murmured. “So I thought, din’t I? Good, good. Her Ladyship don’t like the news. His nibs and her young cousin making eyes at each other? Ha. But now, the thing is, does St. Erth do it for the joy of the cousin, or the vexation of Her Ladyship?”
The other man shrugged. He was good at his work, he had eyes and ears and knew how to scurry and lurk. But the question he was asked was as yet unanswerable, and they both knew it.
“Aye, there’s the crux, of it, ain’t it?” his employer asked. “If it’s for his pleasure, I want to know about it, ’course I do. But what sort of pleasure is it? If it’s for the pleasure of tormenting the Scalbys, that’s old news.” He raised one stubby finger in the air. “Ah, but if it’s for a different sort of enjoyment, that’s another question.”
He paused in thought. “If he just wanted body work, there’s enough females panting for him, so that ain’t it. Why bother courting a decent woman for that? Ah, but if the gent think he’s grown himself a heart at last…and if he thinks it’s set on this little country mort? That would be something to get my teeth into. Then we’d have something to work with. Well, we’ll have to keep our eyes peeled, won’t we?”
The other man nodded. It was as he expected. And it was good, because it was work for him. And how else was a man to live? No matter if his doing that work in order to live sometimes meant another man might not live for very much longer.
The word went out so fast that when the hour to pay a polite call came, the Swansons’ town house was as crowded as the theater had been the night before. The Swansons were dumbfounded. They’d had more daughters than most families could boast, and since those girls hadn’t been anything to boast about they’d had to pay a small fortune in their time to lure eligible gentlemen to their door. Now they hadn’t done a thing and found they’d never netted so many.
The staff rushed around, stowing capes and cloaks, greatcoats and walking sticks. The butler sent footmen to the cellar to bring up more wine, the housekeeper badgered the cook, who dispatched servants to the shops for more cakes to serve. The Swansons entertained lavishly, out of habit. They’d always had to in the past. Today their callers only seemed to want or need a look at their country cousin.
But Lady Swanson hadn’t already married off three of her difficult daughters because she was slow on the uptake. The company would be served lavishly anyway, and maybe her own purposes would also be served.
“Now, look,” she told her three older unmarried daughters after she’d assembled them in her bedchamber so she could lecture them. “Our drawing room is filled with the most eligible men in town. I know they aren’t here to see you, but they aren’t here to see Sibyl either, so stop complaining about her. She’s down there with her cousin, which is how it should be. They’re here to see Kate.
“Stop blaming Kate, too. It’s not a situation that has anything to do with her looks or wiles. It’s a matter of common curiosity. Or, uncommon, I should say. The men are here to look Kate over because of Sir Alasdair. He showed a preference for her, and they’re all dying to see why. So what if that’s the reason? They’re here. That’s the point. There’s only one of her and three of you. Get dressed, get downstairs, and be charming.”
“Much good that will do,” Chloe muttered. “They’ve seen us before.”
Her mother nodded. “So they have, so it will be easy for you to strike up a conversation then, won’t it? It wouldn’t be the first time a fellow who came to see one young woman walked off with another. But it would be a miracle if you look like that—and I tell you if you continue to, I’ll be very angry.
“Worse,” she said, as they kept glowering at her. “You’ll be very lonely, too, that I promise you. Because I won’t spend another groat on you if you don’t cooperate in this. So. If you want to stay here with your sisters forever
, fine. Remain in your rooms, continue wearing those bilious expressions and mumbling together about how cruel fate is. And prepare to spend a lifetime together, too.”
“You always say that,” Henrietta complained. “About how we should befriend other girls, because who knows if we won’t net a fellow who can’t get them, or meet his best friend, or his cousin or some acquaintance?”
“Well, I know,” Frances spat. “We meet them, and the gentlemen marry them or their friends, and we’re always left to meet other girls, and the same thing happens, and that’s that.”
“Try befriending them for themselves, for once,” their mother blurted, because she was at the end of her patience, and that patience had held for too many years. “Try a smile, or a kind remark about someone, anyone, sometime. Try being nice once in a while! Or don’t,” she said, turning to leave the room. “I wash my hands of you, and if I do, how can you expect any gentleman to take you off my hands!”
Her daughters stared at her, then at each other. It was more than Lady Swanson had meant to say, and less than she wanted to. She stormed from the room. It had been cruel, it was harsh, it was necessary, she decided as she went downstairs to oversee the formidable amount of company at her house that morning.
Her youngest, Sibyl, wore another white gown, and seemed ever paler in her nervousness at all the attention she was getting from those gentlemen callers who hadn’t managed to wedge themselves into the tightly packed circle grouped around Kate.
Kate was dressed in a pretty concoction, a breath of a gown of striped shell pink. It made her glow as much as all the flattery she was receiving did. The gown hadn’t looked remotely charming when Henrietta had worn it only the month before. Henrietta grimaced when she saw it, though, when she and her sisters arrived in the drawing room within a half hour of their mother’s lecture.
Lady Swanson was gratified to see them there, and pleased to see them dressed well, too. With a sigh of relief and a short prayer for success, she turned her attention to the company again, smiling and chatting with as many men as she could. She tried to charm the cream of the ton who graced her salon so they might come back again, even when they didn’t need to find out more about her husband’s cousin.
But she frowned when she noticed the men her eldest daughters were spending their time with.
Henrietta and Chloe had cornered Lord Markham, or had he cornered them? Their spite would have drawn him like a magnet. The room was full of acceptable gentlemen, he was barely that. Dark of eye and mood, attractive in a sullen way, the fellow had a title and some money, but he spent that money on himself and let his estate go to wrack and ruin. He also had a vile disposition and few friends, and those he had were no better than he was. A widower whose wife had died young, it was a measure of his popularity that some said she did it to escape him and others whispered that he did it to be rid of her, but that she was better off either way.
Even so, Markham was seen everywhere because of his name, and the fact that there were still some mamas who thought a good woman might be the making of him. Lady Swanson wanted her daughters married, but even she wasn’t that desperate. She frowned to see her daughters so interested in him, not because she thought they were in any danger, but because she knew them well.
The lady’s brow furrowed further when she saw her daughter Frances in close conversation with Eugene Polk. They were more than likely tearing apart someone’s reputation, a thing they both did constantly. He was a weedy, spotty youth whose braying laugh made him an unpopular guest, though he was tolerated because he always knew the latest gossip. Well, that might be a match, Lady Swanson thought, and shuddered.
It was much more pleasant to entertain her other guests, because every man there was trying equally hard to please her. It was a novelty and a pleasure, and she made the most of it, because single daughters or not, a person had a right to a little amusement now and then. But she worried about why her elder daughters looked so pleased as they conferred in whispers with Lord Markham and Mr. Polk. And so when a sudden hush fell over her company her heart sank, and she wondered if it was anything they had said.
She looked up and smiled in relief. The room had grown still because the star of the morning had just given his cloak and hat to a footman and was entering the room.
“Sir Alasdair,” she said, as she hurried across the room to greet him, “and Lord Leigh! Good morning, gentlemen, do come in.”
The company in the room all looked to the newcomers, ignoring Lord Leigh, who was fashionable but never newsworthy. Instead, they greedily noted St. Erth’s clothes and bearing. They saw his slow smile growing at the attention he was getting—and his dark eyes narrowing as he spied the woman he’d obviously come to see. He gazed at her intently, taking in her appearance from the curls on the top of her head to her toes, as he advanced toward her.
Kate was being entertained by a cluster of town clowns, the sort of fashionable men who were always willing to even the numbers at a dinner party or take a wallflower off a mama’s hands in exchange for the latest jokes or gossip. One moment she was paying attention to them and the next…
It was as if she felt the force of Sir Alasdair’s gaze, or so the impressionable among the company later said—though some argued it was the draft from the opened door that had warned her of his arrival. But she looked up and saw St. Erth, and smiled with sudden joy of recognition, looking as though she’d been treading frigid water in the company of sharks and he’d just thrown her a lifeline.
He advanced, took her hand, and smiled at her like one of those sharks.
“Good morning, Miss Corbet,” he said, everyone hanging on his every word. “Have you recovered from the crush at the theater—not to mention the performances there—yet?”
She laughed. “I have much to talk about when I get home.”
“But now you’ve dimmed my day,” he protested. “Let’s not think about such unhappy events, especially since the future is so uncertain. Instead, let’s celebrate the present. It’s such a lovely day Leigh and I thought that if you were free after this morning’s calls, we could take you and your cousin for a whirl around the Park.”
Her face lit—before she quenched the sudden excitement that had leapt to her eyes. She cast her gaze down. When she looked up again she was obviously under control. “A whirl?” she asked with a quirked grin. “On horseback? I don’t think I’m a good enough rider for that! In a carriage? Dangerous, I’d think. On foot? That would be delightful, if dancing through the Park is permitted. And if my cousin agrees. And of course, if Lady Swanson gives her permission.”
Alasdair smiled. The other gentlemen exchanged glances. No wonder Sir Alasdair was interested in the chit, she had a sense of humor. And courage, to banter with the devil like this. They turned to hear St. Erth’s answer, glad, to a man, that they’d come there this morning. This was better than a night at the theater.
Alasdair inclined his head. “I’d be happy to waltz through the Park with you, Miss Corbet, but I imagine Lady Swanson wouldn’t be as pleased. Actually, it was a carriage ride to the Park I had in mind, with a walk once we got there.”
“I’d like that,” she said simply.
The other men looked cheated. They had been. It was so early into the morning call they hadn’t had the time to get to know the girl well enough to ask her out. That devil, Sir Alasdair, did know her, and knew their habits, too, and so in one bold move had stolen a march on them. But they couldn’t compete with him for her, and not just because they never had been able to.
She was respectable, and so their interest in her had to be as well. And it couldn’t be. They could call on her once or twice, of course, and ask for a dance the same number of times, but asking her out was drifting into dangerous territory. In their world marriage was a business undertaking for men who couldn’t go into business, a venture embarked on for profit and betterment. Most men only got the one opportunity at it and so had to take their best chance at improving or consolidating their holdin
gs and positions. This woman had little to offer on the marriage market. She had scant money and no rank, everyone knew that. St. Erth didn’t care. But perhaps he wasn’t seeking her hand? The morning became even more fascinating.
“Now, shoo! Go away, Sir Alasdair,” one of the callers said with a wave of his hand to show Alasdair he was only joking. “You’ve got her for the afternoon, so let us poor creatures have at least this hour.”
Alasdair bowed and left to find Lady Swanson to get her permission. He was sure he’d have it. He kept his hands at his sides to keep from rubbing them together. The morning’s encounter would be through the polite world by the time luncheon was served. That, along with his appearance at Kate’s side last night, would double the talk. He’d see what he could do in the afternoon to triple it. He wouldn’t have to do much. Which meant he could just enjoy himself.
He looked back at Kate as she stood listening to various fools and fops trying to amuse her. She sensed he was watching, and cast a roguish conspiratorial grin toward him before she turned it into a laugh at something someone said. He corrected himself. No, that meant he could really enjoy himself. The thought bothered him for a moment before he dismissed it. Nothing wrong with finding pleasure in one’s work, after all.
9
“So cruel! But so true!” Kate laughed.
Alasdair looked down at her where she walked by his side. Her head came up to his shoulder, and when she turned her gleeful grin up at him he almost missed his step. She made him forget what he’d said to make her laugh, but he was very glad that he had.
“I’m having such fun!” she went on. “You’ve turned a walk in the Park into a party. It’s not so much what you say as how you say it—no, it is what you say. Outrageous! But so funny. Whatever your other plans are, whatever happens with them, know this, Sir Alasdair. You’re giving me the time of my life. I’m so glad I fell in with your mad scheme.”
Edith Layton Page 10
