Lady with a Black Umbrella

by Mary Balogh

  She was happy dancing with Lord Doncaster, who kept her amused with a constant stream of teasing remarks and amusing comments on the people surrounding them. And she was happy dancing with Arthur, though by no stretch of the imagination could he be called skilled at that pursuit.

  She liked Arthur a great deal. He was a kind gentleman, a dear friend, the brother she had never had. And something more too. She had looked on him somewhat differently since that morning when he had revealed to her such an unexpected inner glimpse of himself. She would not have suspected that behind the very genuine kindness and sweetness and gentleness there was a certain toughness and a very human resentment of those who saw the surface and not the soul of the man.

  Of course it made sense, Rose had realized in the days since that revelation. No man who was nothing but gentle could hope to penetrate the evil and the corruption that poverty and deprivation had ingrained in the people among whom he worked. Such a man would be laughed out of the slums, if he were allowed out at all. And such a man would crumble under the impossibility of his task or be embittered by repeated rejection. Only a man who was very tough inside could maintain his sweetness and his commitment to love against such odds.

  Arthur smiled ruefully at Rose after apologizing for the third time for his poor dancing skills. He glanced at his brother and the colonel, both of whom were performing the steps and guiding their partners as if they had been born to the task. “I think I am more skilled at walking than dancing, Miss Morrison,” he said. “Would you care to walk?”

  “I would love to, sir,” she said, taking his offered arm. “This place is so very lovely. The lanterns in the trees make it seem an enchanted land. I wonder if it looks quite ordinary by daylight?”

  “The best thing to do,” Arthur said, “is not to come here by day to find out. Some truths are best not known. Let us enjoy the night and keep the memories unspoiled afterward.”

  “A very sensible idea,” Rose said, laughing.

  They strolled along the main path, looking up at the lanterns, trying to name all the colors and shades of colors they could see in the swaying beams and interminglings of light around them and in the lighter and darker shadows.

  “Tell me about the parish to which you will be going,” Rose said.

  “It is beautiful,” he said. “A picturesque village in the Cotswolds. And a small cottage of my own near the church, with a lovely garden that must have been the pride and joy of my predecessor or his wife. Only yesterday I decided finally that I would go there.”

  Rose looked her inquiry. “I thought it had all been settled long ago,” she said.

  “Oh, it was,” he agreed. “But since coming here to spend the spring with Giles, I have seen the extent of the poverty, the extent of the need here, and I have thought that perhaps it is selfish to settle in my peaceful Cotswolds village.”

  He led her without thought off the main path to sit on a wooden bench half-hidden among some of the deeper shadows.

  “But I realized only yesterday,” he said, “that it would be far more selfish to stay here. I have felt no calling to be here in London. If I stayed, it would be only because I feel that I could be important here, that I am needed here, that I do not trust anyone else, even God, to do the work. My calling is to parish duties, where my name will never be famous for spectacular service to the poor.” He smiled. “But there will be poor enough to serve wherever I go. Our Lord himself said that we would always have the poor with us.”

  Rose smiled at him. “The people in your Cotswold village are fortunate,” she said.

  “And you,” he said. “Have you made any decisions about your future? I notice that Sir Phillip is not here this evening.”

  “I rejected his offer two days ago,” Rose said. “I was sorry, for he is a pleasant gentleman and deserves better than rejection. But he also deserves the undivided affection of the woman he will marry, and I could not give him that.”

  “You have done what is right,” he said. He took her hand in his and ran his thumb along the length of her fingers. They sat in silence for several minutes, watching the revelers walk past on the main path, some in noisy gaiety, others in quieter conversation.

  “Life in the country can be very dull,” Arthur said, “after this. Very few entertainments, little that is fashionable, very few people of one’s own class and background.”

  “Only close friends and a warm sense of community and all the loveliness of nature and the changing seasons.” Rose said.

  He closed his hand around hers and squeezed it. “Ah, yes,” he said. “It makes town life sound insufferably dull, does it not?”

  “Yes,” Rose said, her eyes on his long-fingered hand closed around hers.

  “But you have grown up in a grand house with a wealthy father,” he said. “Life in a cottage would be far more restricting.”

  “Papa was very rich, but we lived frugally,” Rose said. She smiled fleetingly up at him. “There are those who would say that Papa was miserly. Your cottage sounds lovely. Is the garden very full of flowers? Are there roses?”

  “Dozens, I believe,” he said. “To match your name.” Rose smiled at his hand.

  “Perhaps you would like some time,” Arthur said after a pause. “To think about it.”

  Rose shook her head.

  “One would like to be able to offer the world and the universe to one’s loved one,” he said.

  “I think that is what you have to offer,” Rose said in such a small voice that he had to bend his head closer to hear what she said.

  “I have always prided myself on my independence,” Arthur said. “I have known myself loved by a great many people, but I have thought that I needed no one but God. And now I see that in that too I have been guilty of pride. We need to depend on others. We need to be vulnerable. You have become very indispensable to me, my little friend.”

  “Have I?” Rose looked up at him, the faint light from the main path revealing the brightness of her eyes. “Have I really, Arthur? I thought you so complete in yourself. I thought it presumptuous to imagine that you might ever need me.”

  “You have become my friend during the past week,” he said. “The only one I have ever had really. I have always been so careful not to disappoint those who have been my friends. But I have shown you my weaknesses, my dear, my pride, my tendency to trust in my own powers more than in my Lord's. And I feel stronger for having done so.”

  “I am glad,” Rose said, gazing up into his face.

  “But I want to be more than your friend,” he said. “I must be more if I am to ask you to share my life. I want to be your lover, Rose. I have never been anyone’s lover, either—you see how poor my experience of life has been? I have no idea how to make a woman happy, how to show my love. But I want to be your lover.”

  “I have never been anyone’s lover either,” Rose said. “But I will give you my heart and my self and my lifelong devotion, Arthur.” She lifted his hand and laid it against her cheek. “I love you, you see.”

  He smiled suddenly. “This is very nearly a public place,” he said, “and we are not even quite betrothed, are we, since I have not spoken yet with either your mother or your sister and indeed have not said the words, ‘Will you marry me?’ But I must kiss you, Rose. May I kiss you?”

  She smiled impishly back at him. “I was just wondering if you were something of a slow top,” she said.

  She was on her feet suddenly, being kissed quite thoroughly enough to answer her doubts by her very tall lover, her head tipped back over his arm.

  “Now,” he said breathlessly when they were finished, bending in order to bring his forehead against hers, “that is acceptable behavior in a clergyman only if the lady is his betrothed. You had better save me from everlasting fire, Rose, by marrying me. Will you?”

  “A foolish question, sir,” Rose said, turning her head so that she could kiss his mouth again. “I do not allow any man but my betrothed to kiss me, you know. That was my first kiss, Arthur, a
nd more lovely than I imagined it could be. Yes, 1 will marry you. Of course I will. Kiss me again?”

  Arthur spent all of five minutes obliging his newly betrothed.

  ***

  By a little before midnight, a little before the fireworks display was to begin, Judith was beginning to look somewhat out of sorts. She had danced with the colonel, with Lord Doncaster, with a couple of other acquaintances from adjoining boxes; she had walked twice with the colonel; and she had sat in their box, eating ham and bread rolls and drinking wine.

  All very satisfactory, one might think. But how could one relax and enjoy oneself, and—more to the point—how could one invite the kisses of the gentleman one was realizing more and more each moment that one loved when every time one turned one’s head one’s brother was there smiling sheepishly at one? Poor Daisy, Judith thought when she was inclined to spare sympathy for anyone but her own poor self. Daisy should be enjoying her first visit to Vauxhall, but instead she was being dragged around by Giles, who clearly did not trust his younger sister’s word, given in a burst of affection and confidence earlier in the week.

  Judith turned on her brother finally when Lord Doncaster was dancing with Rose and the colonel with Hetty, and Arthur had taken himself off to speak with some acquaintances, who looked like shady characters if she had ever seen any. Daisy was sitting at Giles’ other side, watching the world go by.

  “This is insufferable," Judith hissed. “I wonder you did not just attach my wrist to yours by a chain, Giles, and be done with it. I hate you!”

  “What is this?” Lord Kincade asked in surprise.

  “Don’t act innocent!” his sister said, her dark eyes blazing into his. “You have followed me everywhere tonight. Not only have you not let me out of your sight, you have not let me out of your reach. I thought you trusted me.”

  “And so I do, Jude,” he said in some amazement. “I have not been following you. It is just that Daisy looks for company and has grown fond of you. You wish for a few moments alone? With Appleby, I assume? You shall have them, my dear. We will occupy ourselves alone or with other company for a short while, will we not, Daisy?”

  And he realized immediately the fatal mistake he had made, as soon as he turned and smiled at empty air suspended above the equally empty chair beside him. For the first time all evening he had not held Daisy’s arm imprisoned against his side. And sure enough, she had probably spotted some poor courtesan fleeing along the path, flirting her fan at a panting pursuer, and Daisy had gone crusading off to rescue her. And there she went, almost out of sight already, for all the world like a naughty child escaping its nurse.

  Lord Kincade uttered a series of oaths, did not pause to apologize for the abuse to his sister’s ears, and raced off after his betrothed. This time, he thought as he shouldered and elbowed his way past the press of people in his path and tried not to lose sight of the fleeing figure in white lace ahead of him. This time when he caught up to her and extricated her from whatever embarrassing predicament she had got herself into, she would not escape with a polite scolding. Or with a blistering from his tongue. This time he would surely give her a thorough walloping or—or something, anyway.

  Lord Kincade lost precious moments of time when he missed Daisy suddenly on the path ahead of him and had to decide which of two paths, one bearing to the left and one to the right, she had taken. But a pair of lovers blocked the one to the left, he saw as soon as he turned into it. He headed down the path to the right.

  The sound of voices halted him before he saw her. How would the couple she had come upon greet her arrival? he wondered. He imagined that the man, whoever he was, might well cut up rough. Such a dark path was not likely to have been chosen by a pair merely intent on snatching a light kiss. He might help Daisy better by not rushing ahead too precipitately himself. He crept quietly forward, keeping behind the trunks of trees, though the darkness itself was an effective screen.

  Yet, when he came within sight of Daisy, it was to find that she had only one companion, if one discounted the much larger individual who was himself hidden behind a tree. And if his eyes did not deceive him, Lord Kincade thought, squinting in an attempt to accustom his sight to the darkness and if his ears did not deceive him, Daisy’s companion was Lord Powers.

  “Yes, of course I came,” Daisy was saying. “Did you think 1 would not?”

  “Ah,” Powers said, taking her hands and holding them against his coat, “I feared perhaps you would lose your trust in me, my dear. You have to be very brave to put your reputation in jeopardy thus in order to free yourself from an unwelcome betrothal.”

  Lord Kincade gripped the trunk against which he was leaning.

  “How could I lack courage,” Daisy said, “when I saw that I was fleeing to you, my lord? But for all that, I am not courageous. I am taking the coward’s way out, allowing you to blacken your name because I do not wish to be known as a woman who willingly ends her betrothal. I will not have it that way, sir. I have come to tell you that I shall hold my head high and do this the proper way.”

  “My dear?” Lord Powers said, while Lord Kincade clamped his teeth so tightly together that he might have expected them all to crack had he been free to contemplate the danger. “It must not be. I will not have you spoken of disparagingly.”

  “And I will not have you wrongfully accused,” she said. “I want you to come to Hanover Square tomorrow. And there I want us to make a public declaration of our betrothal for Lady Hetty and my sister to hear. And may his lordship rot in hell.”

  His lordship regarded her neck from behind his tree with more deadly intent than ever before.

  Lord Powers lifted one of Daisy’s hands to his lips, “Bravo, my dear,” he said. “And now, shall we go to my carriage? It is all ready for our little ride.”

  “No,” Daisy said. “It is quite unnecessary, sir, and will only add scandal to the ending of my betrothal. You must be patient and come to me tomorrow morning.”

  “Ah,” he said, lifting the other hand to his lips, “but patience is not my strong suit, my dear. Just a very short ride?”

  “None at all,” Daisy said briskly, trying to withdraw her hands from his.

  “But I must insist,” Lord Powers said, refusing to relinquish his hold on her.

  “You must unhand me immediately, sir,” Daisy said, "or I will think you no gentleman. I will think that perhaps you, like all the rest, are interested only in my fortune.”

  “You will think what you will, my dear,” Lord Powers said. “But I am not fool enough to let you go until I have some positive assurance that you will be mine. You see how desperate is my love for you?”

  “Or for my fortune,” Daisy said tartly. “Unhand me, sir, this instant.”

  Lord Powers laughed low. “You are almost magnificent when you are angry,” he said. “Come, let us not quarrel. My carriage awaits. And so does my coachman.”

  “Oh,” Daisy said, turning toward the giant of a man who had just stepped from behind a tree and stood silently in front of it with folded arms. “I have met you before, if I am not mistaken. In the stableyard of the Golden Eagle Inn. And on Bond Street, though you were uncivil enough to run away when I approached.”

  Lord Kincade was torn between his desire to rush to her rescue and his certain knowledge that he would be of little help if he emerged from his hiding place at just that moment. He would be no better than Daisy Morrison herself, he thought somewhat uncharitably before focusing all his attention on the scene developing in front of him.

  “Come, my dear,” Lord Powers said, a hand firmly against the small of Daisy’s back.

  “I am not going one step with you, sir,” Daisy said. “You may go to hell alone or in company with your coachman for all I care.”

  Lord Powers tutted. “Such sentiments from a lady,” he said. “Enough talking. You will come quietly, my dear, or by force. The choice is yours.”

  His final word ended on something of a grunt as one of Daisy’s fists connected wit
h his stomach and the other bounced rather harmlessly off his jaw. The next moment she was engulfed in the giant man’s black cloak, lifted unceremoniously from her feet, and borne kicking away under his arm.

  “Take her! I will join you later,” Lord Powers managed to hiss alter his father’s servant as a human cannonball launched itself at his midriff and deprived him far more effectively of breath than Daisy’s fist had done a moment before.

  ***

  Daisy, struggling in vain inside a moving coach to free herself of the foul-smelling cloak or blanket or whatever it was that covered her from head to knees, and from the bonds that held her wrists behind her and her ankles immobile, wondered why she was alone. That bully who had carried her away from Vauxhall was evidently driving. She would like just one chance to remove the yellow teeth that remained in one half of his mouth, and she envied the person unknown who had already performed that office for the other half.

  But where was Lord Powers? Was she to be driven around for an hour alone like this, half-suffocated, fully blind, the circulation in her feet and hands cut to the point of total numbness? And no one on whom to vent her anger? Or was she being taken somewhere? And where was that? And what of Judith? Was she being similarly abused? Was Lord Powers himself racing toward the Scottish border with the foolish girl?

  Perhaps she should have told Lord Kincade, after all, and enlisted his help, was Daisy’s final thought before the carriage jolting to a stop hurled her to the floor, where she lay, kicking and struggling quite uselessly until she felt herself being hauled out as if she were a sack of meal and hurled over someone's shoulder. The breath went from Daisy’s body in a whoosh and she struggled to regain it.

  When she finally came right side up again, she found her feet on firm ground, and to her great relief hands undid the bonds around her ankles, lifted away the heavy cloak, and released her wrists. She turned to face her grinning assailant.

  “You coward and bully!” she scolded. “Are you capable of attacking only females, my man, or gentlemen when you have two other bullies to hold his arms for you?”