Lady with a Black Umbrella

by Mary Balogh

  And Judith interested her. She was certainly pleased that she and Rose were friends. And Arthur Fairhaven, of course, was an angel. Altogether, she thought with a feeling that was almost a pang of regret, as she smiled at her betrothed and seated herself in his box, arranging her gold-colored gown carefully about her as she did so, they would have been a lovely family to marry into.

  There was his lordship, of course. And she really would not enjoy being married to him, even if at this late date she should ever begin to change her mind and think about marriage. She had always thought that she would not be able to bear being married to a man she could easily dominate—and that meant every man she had met so far in her life, Papa included. But she did not think she would be able to endure one who was so stubborn about getting his own way, either.

  All that ridiculous fuss about carrying her about when her ankle had been sprained, even when she was already able to put her foot to the ground without screaming. Every time she had explained to him, using perfectly reasonable and logical arguments, that she did not need to be carried about like a sack of meal, he had merely sat and sulked while she talked, refusing to be drawn into argument, refusing to accept her way, until in the end she had had to give in to him, just because he was acting like a big spoiled child and it was not worth making a huge issue out of something so unimportant.

  She could think of nothing more mortifying than having to be carried wherever she went. Especially when the carrier was a tall and handsome gentleman who had kissed her and held her close in an attempt to protect her honor once upon a time and whose physical closeness now awoke uncomfortable and totally unwelcome memories and sensations.

  “Has no one ever told all those gentlemen in the pit that it is rude to stare so openly through their quizzing glasses?” Daisy asked Lord Kincade.

  “Doubtless their mothers did or their nurses when they were still in the nursery,” he said. “But perhaps no one since then. And not you either, Daisy,” he added hurriedly, having a sudden nightmarish mental vision of Daisy standing in his box and wagging a finger at all the bucks below while instructing them to put away their glasses and watch their manners. “It would not be at all the ladylike thing to do. Try to feel honored that they are interested enough to look at you.”

  “Oh, they are not looking at me,” she said, smiling at him. “Why would they care to look at me? They are looking at Lady Judith and Rose.”

  “Then perhaps I should get to my feet and upbraid them for their lack of taste,” he said. “You are looking remarkably pretty tonight.”

  Daisy laughed merrily. “I think,” she said, lowering her voice and leaning confidentially toward him, “that your sister is beginning to look more favorably on the colonel. And Sir Phillip is very taken with Rose. That is obvious at a glance. Is not everything working out splendidly?”

  “Quite so,” he said, “and if we make just the smallest effort, I am sure we can persuade ourselves that we are entirely responsible for such a happy turn of events. It matters not at all, of course, that Corbett and your sister have been acquainted for only a week and that Appleby is twelve years Judith’s senior.”

  “Well, of course not,” Daisy agreed. “I am glad you see things my way. Have you seen Mr. Kean act before? I am looking forward dreadfully to seeing him. I do not know this particular play. Is it worth watching?”

  Daisy was answering her own questions a short while later. After exclaiming with delight at the great actor’s first appearance on stage, she settled her arms on the velvet rest before her and appeared to go into a trance. Lord Kincade watched her in some amusement. It took someone of the caliber of Edmund Kean, clearly, to silence Miss Daisy Morrison.

  And indeed she did look remarkably pretty, her cheeks flushed with pleasure, her eyes bright, her lips parted slightly. He wondered again, as he had done during other unguarded moments, what her hair would look like loosened from the braids. He imagined it down over her small rounded breasts, her slender body, her slim arms on which she leaned her weight. He imagined it spread on a pillow, his hands in it and his face breathing in the scent of it. His eyes moved down her body, and in imagination he caressed her naked flesh with his hands and felt her slender curves with the length of his own body, pressed her against a mattress with his weight. And...

  And he was letting a very superior performance of a Shakespeare play pass him by. And having very carnal and very schoolboyish thoughts about the woman he was gazing at. He had had her all but mounted in his imagination. Daisy Morrison. Good God! They would be carting him off to Bedlam before the spring was out if he did not take care.

  “Oh!” Daisy looked around at him suddenly, her expression indignant, so that Lord Kincade thought for one dazed moment that she had somehow observed his eyes unclothing her and read his mind putting her to bed beneath him. “How very obnoxious that Antonio is and Bassanio and their friends. I look forward to seeing Shylock vindicated at the end of this play.”

  “Er, Shylock is the villain of the play,” he whispered as she turned to face the stage again.

  “Oh, what nonsense,” she said, turning large eyes on him again. “If someone called me dog and spit in my beard—not that I have a beard, of course, because I am not a man—I would think twice about giving him a loan too. They will come to grief before the end, mark my word.”

  Lord Kincade smiled quietly to himself as Daisy became absorbed in the action again. Only his betrothed could ever conceive such a ridiculous notion.

  ***

  Judith and Rose sat with their heads together during part of the interval while Sir Phillip and Arthur took themselves off to visit acquaintances in other boxes and Colonel Appleby chatted with Lady Hetty and Lord Kincade. Daisy uncharacteristically was still gazing at the empty stage, apparently oblivious to the conversation.

  “He wrote to me again today,” Judith said, “and he loves me as much as ever. He says he cannot endure being parted from me for much longer.”

  “Should he not just go to your brother openly if he feels so?” Rose asked doubtfully. “Or better still, to your papa in Bath? I cannot understand the necessity of all the secrecy.”

  “But he knows that Giles and Papa would reject his suit,” Judith said. “He is a reformed man, you know, but he will readily admit that he has lived a wild youth. The worst of it is that he has squandered all his own money, even though now he would know how to use it wisely. He does not mind that for himself, for he says that he can exist on very little, but of course he knows that Giles and Papa will not want to see him allied to me. And it hurts him to know that he would not be able to support me in the manner to which I am accustomed.”

  “Are you quite sure that he would not squander your fortune too?” Rose asked. “I do think you are far better-off with the colonel, Judith. He is an exceedingly amiable man.”

  “I like him,” Judith admitted. “And twelve years is not an impossible gap in age, is it? Papa is ten years older than Mama, but one would scarcely know. They are excessively fond of each other. But it is dreadful to have on one’s conscience the breaking of another’s heart. And that is what I will do to Lord Powers if I desert him now.”

  Rose stared at her friend for a moment. “But you cannot have a proper relationship if you merely pity him,” she said.

  “He is such a very sad character,” Judith said with a sigh. “His father the marquess will not help him out, though he is fabulously wealthy, according to Lord Powers. Not that Lord Powers wishes help from his father anyway. He says he does not deserve it. Oh, Rose, he is so noble! He wants to arrange to meet me the night we go to Vauxhall. He says that if I can seem to be compromised, Papa will be forced to let me marry him and we will not have to elope either. How can I possibly say no?”

  “How can you possibly say yes?” Rose asked, squeezing her friend’s hand.

  They were interrupted at that moment by the return of Arthur to the box. He smiled at both of them. “This looks like a very private conversation,” he said. “Ma
y I break in on it?”

  He sat talking to Rose for the minutes that remained before the play resumed, while Judith was drawn into the conversation of the main group.

  “Are you enjoying the play?” he asked with a smile.

  “Yes, indeed I am,” Rose said. “It brings alive the text I labored over in the schoolroom.”

  “At home?” he said. "Or did you go away to school?”

  Rose shook her head. “Papa never sent us,” she said. “But I was glad. I never wanted to leave home.”

  “Did you not?” he said. “I often think that young boys and girls are sometimes wrenched from their parents at far too young an age. And now, do you like to be away from home?”

  “Yes, ” Rose said. “Daisy has worked hard to be able to bring me here. I am privileged to have a Season. To see and be a part of all this. And I have to find a rich and distinguished husband, for Daisy’s sake.”

  He raised his eyebrows and looked at her gently. Rose had two spots of color high on her cheekbones. “For your sister’s sake?” he said, “Not for your own?”

  Rose, gazing back into his eyes, looked for a moment as if she were drowning. “I had never thought of it,” she said. “I want to marry. I want a husband and a family. I want a home of my own. But I had always thought of accepting a man I found amiable. Someone I could be comfortable with. I knew I was being brought here to meet gentlemen. But I did not know until today that I was under an obligation.”

  Why was she saying this to him? Rose wondered. Because he was a clergyman perhaps, and one instinctively felt it safe to confide in a man of the cloth? But she had never confided in the rector at home.

  “I cannot believe that you are under any obligation,” he said gently, laying a hand over hers for a brief moment. “My dear, your sister is the kindest of ladies and lives only for your happiness. I cannot be mistaken, surely.”

  “No, you are not,” she said. “Daisy is the very best of sisters. I love her more dearly than anyone else in the world. She has sacrificed so much, worked so hard for me. Now I must make her happy.”

  “Yes,” he said with a smile, “you are exactly right. You must make your sister happy. But I think—forgive me for criticizing you—that you do not know what will make her so. Your happiness will make her happy, my dear. She thinks you will be happy with a distinguished and fashionable gentleman. And perhaps she is right. But he must be a man of your own choosing. If you marry someone merely to please her, then you will end up making her the most miserable of ladies. Because she will live to see you unhappy. Come, smile at me. Rose.”

  She was looking at him, her eyes suspiciously bright, when it became evident that the play was about to resume. Rose smiled at Sir Phillip, who took his place beside her again.

  Daisy, meanwhile, who had been so rapt in the First half of the play that she could not force herself to concentrate on or participate in the conversation during the interval, missed the first five minutes of the second half of the play because her mind had been quite unwittingly distracted by something even more absorbing. She now had to grapple with a new problem. How was she to rescue Lady Judith from the scheming clutches of Lord Powers at Vauxhall?

  Colonel Appleby departed with Judith and Arthur as soon as the farce at the end of the play was over. Sir Phillip Corbett escorted Lady Hetty and Rose to Lord Kincade’s carriage. The viscount himself and Daisy were almost the last to leave the theater, as Lord Doncaster had strolled over to their box to pay his compliments and apologize for not doing so earlier.

  “I had to call on my grandmother and my aunt during the interval,” he said. “Veritable dragons, the pair of them. I would never have heard the end of it if I had failed to put in an appearance in their box. Nor would my mother.”

  Daisy was still disturbed over the unfair ending of the play and amused Lord Doncaster to no small degree by indignantly berating William Shakespeare for writing such a very stupid play.

  “For one expects the bad characters to come to grief at the end,” she said, “and the downtrodden to be vindicated. I do not say that Shylock was right to demand his pound of flesh even after Portia had pleaded so eloquently for him to show mercy. But I can understand his need for revenge, and I really do not think those other characters should have prospered as they did.”

  “What an interesting point of view,” Lord Doncaster said with a grin for Daisy and a wink for his friend. “I do not believe anyone else in England would dare criticize the great bard, Miss Morrison. I do believe it might be a capital offense, you know.”

  “What nonsense!” Daisy said, laughing nevertheless when she realized that she was being teased. “I do not like the play, I must confess, though I did think Mr. Kean quite splendid.”

  The theater was almost deserted by the time the three of them emerged onto, the pavement to find Lord Kincade’s carriage awaiting them. Daisy, her arm linked through the viscount’s, gazed about her while he said a final good night to his friend.

  And then she was marching purposefully away to her right, realizing only when she was already in motion that she had no umbrella or parasol or even reticule in her grasp. But she did not slacken her pace.

  Lord Kincade, too startled to react for a few moments, gazed after her, saw the object of her mission, understood all too clearly, and tore after her. Lord Doncaster, an interested spectator, heard a muttered “I'll wring her neck!” as he watched his friend depart.

  Daisy was bearing down on a street prostitute, whose arm was in the ungentle grasp of an elegant gentleman and who was obviously in the middle of a heated argument with him.

  Chapter 12

  “He was not willing to pay her what she asked,” Daisy was explaining to a fascinated Lady Hetty and an interested Rose in the carriage on the way home from the theater. “And he was trying to drag her off by force. It was most ungentlemanly of him, especially when it seemed perfectly clear that he could afford her price.”

  “My dear,” Lady Hetty said faintly, “it is as well to ignore such sordid matters, pretend that one sees nothing. Such creatures are beneath our contempt and deserve whatever happens to them.”

  “Oh, no,” Rose said, turning eyes full of concern on her hostess. “Almost all of them are poor unfortunates, you know, who have been forced into their way of life by the necessity to survive.”

  Lady Hetty patted her knee. “You sound just like Arthur, my dear Rose,” she said. “And I am sure you are right. My words were without feeling, were they not? But we can do nothing, you see. Perhaps Arthur can do a little because he is a man, and a clergyman too. But ladies must keep clear of such matters.”

  “Well, ” Daisy said, “I certainly gave that particular gentleman the length of my tongue. He took himself off in high dudgeon, and the girl was saved from him.”

  “For which favor she will doubtless be eternally thankful.” Lord Kincade spoke from behind his hand, which was spread over his face, his thumb and forefinger pressing his temples as if he had a massive headache. His eyes were closed. “She lost a lucrative customer.”

  “It is a good thing that you knew the gentleman,” Daisy said, looking at him, “and that there were a few other people passing on the other side of the street. I had the feeling he was about to cut up nasty.”

  Lord Kincade did not change his position. “Doubtless the black umbrella would have made him take to his heels without further ado if only you had had it with you,” he said.

  “Yes,” Daisy agreed. “But I would not think of taking it with me to the theater.” She added, frowning, as Lord Kincade finally looked up at her in disbelief, “Besides, it would have been inside the carriage, and I would not have had the time or forethought to grab it.”

  Lord Kincade resumed his private meditation as Daisy continued to regale the two ladies opposite her with her opinion of gentlemen who thought they could treat females in any way they pleased merely because they had been created with superior physical strength.

  “Hetty,” Lord Kincade said when
they had arrived at the house in Hanover Square and a footman was already handing Rose out, “I wish to speak with Daisy for a few minutes. Alone.”

  “Of course, Giles,” Lady Hetty said, sounding almost relieved. “Here? Would you be more comfortable in the house? I will have candles lit in the salon while Rose and I retire to my sitting room for a cup of chocolate.”

  He nodded and vaulted out of the carriage after her before turning to hand out his betrothed.

  Daisy turned to him as she entered the salon, smiling warmly. “How kind it was of you to come after me,” she said. “I do thank you, though I could have handled the situation perfectly well on my own.”

  “I did not follow you out of kindness, Daisy,” he said. “I did so out of desperation. And if you knew what danger your neck was in of being snapped off your shoulders, you would not be standing there now smiling at me as if I were your best friend in all the world.”

  Her smile did not falter. “I do not believe he would have actually become violent,” she said. “After all, he was a gentleman, I suppose.”

  “I was not talking of Fotheringham,” Lord Kincade said.

  “Oh.” Daisy seemed lost for words for the moment.

  “Daisy,” he said, stepping closer, “you must stop these zealous crusades of yours. Maybe, just maybe, they are acceptable in the country. Here they are not. I turn hot and cold when I think of how the ton is going to react to the delightful news that Miss Daisy Morrison rushed to the rescue of a whore plying her trade outside the theater. And by noon tomorrow I will wager that there will not be a single member who will not know. Not to mention all their servants belowstairs.”

  “But why should that fact upset me?” Daisy asked. “I have no wish to be conspicuous or to be talked of, but if I must be both, then I am glad it is because I was defending one of the downtrodden.”

  “What you did, Daisy, was deprive the poor girl of a night’s earnings,” Lord Kincade said, glaring down at her and feeling his temper tauten despite his resolve to remain cool. “She is probably swilling gin at a grog shop at this very moment raining down curses on your head.”