The Forthright Lady Gillian, The Fickle Fortune-Hunter

by Amanda Scott

  Freddy paled. “Yes, sir, but Sir Richard said only the other day that I might walk them if he was away long, so I thought he would not mind. And, even though he did not say anything about walking them today, he did tell me to, mind them while he was inside. I did just as you taught me till that dog ran under their feet and they bolted. I wasn’t strong enough to hold them.” Tears welled in his eyes. “I ... I’m sorry.”

  “You’ll be a deal sorrier before I’ve done with you, you young idiot. I mean to give you the thrashing of your l—”

  Felicia interrupted furiously. “You will do no such cruel thing, my lord. The child did no more than he has been led to expect would be acceptable, and for that you have only yourself and Sir Richard to blame. He was perhaps a bit thoughtless—”

  “He was a good deal thoughtless,” Crawley snapped. “He was damned irresponsible to boot.”

  “He may have been irresponsible,” Felicia said, her voice rising on the last word, “but children are expected to be irresponsible. One expects such behavior from a child.”

  “If I am meant to understand from that remark that I am too old to be irresponsible, you have missed your mark, my dear, and as usual do not know what you are talking about. But leave that. For the moment at hand, let me tell you what I think of your behavior, for a more irresponsible act than yours I should be hard-pressed to imagine. What the devil were you thinking?”

  “Oh, stop asking me that!” Felicia shrieked. “I am sick and tired of being asked about my motives. Everyone says, ‘oh, let Felicia do it. Ask Felicia! Tell Felicia your troubles, and Felicia will make them go away. Felicia knows what to do. Felicia is competent! Felicia is reliable! Felicia is always perfectly behaved and never puts a foot out of step.’ Well, let me tell you, my lord, Felicia is none of those things. Felicia is a person like any other person, with faults and virtues all her own, and she neither wants nor needs to have the troubles of others thrust upon her, for she has plenty of her own and no one to tell them to, because no one cares. All anyone ever cares about, for better or for worse, is that Felicia always looks after others and does as she is told, never shaming her family with a public display of emotion, and never being a worry or a bother to anyone. And Felicia is bloody sick and tired of it all! So there!”

  Applause broke out all around her, and when she snapped her head around to stare in appalled dismay at the crowd that had gathered, Crawley said with a chuckle, “Never a public display, my dear? I think perhaps you have just blotted your perfect copybook.” But Felicia barely heard him, for it was as if the earth had opened up beneath her at last. Without a word, she slumped where she sat and fainted dead away.

  15

  CRAWLEY LEAPT FORWARD to catch Felicia before she fell off the black into the street. His first thought was that she had somehow been injured in her wild ride, and the terror that had haunted him as he chased her down Piccadilly rose again with a vengeance as he caught her and held her against his chest.

  Freddy shouted, “What’s wrong with Aunt Felicia?”

  “Can I be of assistance,” an elderly man demanded from a nearby carriage. “Bravest thing I ever saw, that young woman. Offer my assistance in any way. Put her in my coach, sir.”

  Crawley was tempted to accept the offer, but he did not know the man, and Felicia had begun to stir. He knew then that she had fainted upon becoming aware of what she had done and what a spectacle she had made of herself. She would not want a crowd of strangers, or even one stranger, hovering over her when she came to her senses. He must get her out of this before that happened. Turning quickly to the kind gentleman, he said, “If you would help with all these horses until I can get her settled in the phaeton, I will be most grateful, sir. That is all the aid I require, but I do require that much.”

  “Done,” said the gentleman, opening the door of his coach and stepping down into the street.

  The traffic had come to a complete halt, and the chestnuts, though still nervous, had settled down a bit. Freddy was able to hold them while the elderly gentleman tied the black and the bay gelding to the rear of the phaeton and Crawley lifted Felicia to the seat.

  Crawley realized at once that she had not roused sufficiently to sit upright without support. Climbing up beside her, holding her, he looked speculatively at Freddy.

  “Will she be all right, sir.”

  “She will. How are you?”

  “I’ll do,” Freddy said gravely. “I never knew such a thing could happen. I deserve whatever you mean to do to me.”

  Crawley nodded. “You do, at that, but just now I want you to answer exactly the question I ask you. Don’t say what you think I want to hear but only what you honestly believe.”

  Looking perplexed but willing, Freddy nodded.

  “Very well. If I ask one of these gentlemen to guide the phaeton into Albemarle Street—that’s the one just there to our left—do you think you can drive this team back to Park Lane? I will tell you how to go, and I’ll be right here beside you, but if you are still too shaken to remember your lessons, I will have someone else do it. I don’t think it wise to wait till your Aunt Felicia regains her senses, or to allow someone else to go with us back to the house if we can avoid that. But I will understand if you think the task a bit beyond your capabilities just now.”

  Instead of looking uncertain as Crawley had expected, Freddy glowed. “You would trust me? After what happened?”

  “You kept your head when the horses bolted,” Crawley told him. “You did nothing to make matters worse. You did not even cry out, which might well have frightened the team even more.”

  “I was too scared,” Freddy confessed.

  Smiling at him, Crawley said. “All the better that you can admit that. Can you do it, do you think?”

  Freddy nodded, turning his attention back to the horses with that air of fixed concentration that Crawley had noted many times before in him.

  The elderly gentleman, with the aid of several others, guided the phaeton, with the black and the bay tethered behind, into Albemarle Street, and from there Freddy drove through quiet Berkeley Square to Mount Street, and back to Park Lane. Long before they passed Charles Street, Crawley felt Felicia stiffen in his arms, but when he looked down at her, her eyes remained firmly closed. Since her cheeks were deeply flushed, and her breathing seemed to have quickened, he decided it was better to say nothing, to let her pretend to be still unconscious.

  Felicia first became aware of the relative silence. The last thing she recalled before fainting was a thunderous din and the dreadful applause of the spectators. The thought that she, of all people, could have provided such a public spectacle made her wince with horror. Her only thought had been for Freddy, until she had caught the runaway team.

  The memory that she had not been solely responsible for Freddy’s rescue came back to her at nearly the same time that she realized she was being held. She was not merely being propped up against the seat of the moving carriage, either. She was sitting on Crawley’s lap, cushioned against his muscular chest, with his strong arms around her, and her right cheek resting comfortably against his shoulder. Through her lashes she saw that Freddy was driving, and past him, she saw South Audley Street, recognizable at once by the sight of Grosvenor Square’s west end a block away.

  Realizing that they were close to Park Lane, she stirred, meaning to take her place on the seat before she was seen by anyone who might recognize her. Crawley’s arms tightened.

  “Be still,” he murmured. “You are quite safe.”

  “I must get off you, sir,” she said, opening her eyes at last and looking at him.

  “You will for once,” he said firmly, “do as you are told. Now be still or you will frighten the horses again.”

  Certain he exaggerated the danger, particularly since Freddy relaxed his concentration long enough to shoot him a look of indignation, Felicia nonetheless sighed and said, “You always must know best, sir. It is what I like least about you.”

  “And I about you,
my sweet Felicia. We must discuss the problem in more detail, but not just at this present, if you do not mind. Once we get you safely back to Adlam House, I have a good many things to say to you. You have been a goose, my dear, and deserve to be well scolded.”

  Remembering the dreadful things he had shouted at her and the worse ones she had shrieked at him in the street, Felicia was well aware of what she deserved. It was precisely the sort of thing she had always dreaded, and now that the crisis was over, she remembered with appalling clarity that she had simply rucked up her gown and flung her bare legs over the black’s broad back. What a sight she must have made! And what she must have looked like when she fainted, she could not bear to think about. Never again would she be able to hold up her head among the members of the beau monde.

  Crawley gave her a shake. “Bear up, sweetheart. I don’t intend to eat you, merely to make a few matters quite clear.”

  Feeling sudden tears in her eyes, she muttered, “How do you always know what I’m thinking?”

  The sound of his chuckle was reassuring. “You speak as much with your expressions as with your words, Miss Adlam. Remember that in future, and always speak only the truth to me.”

  “I do speak only the truth,” she said indignantly.

  “Bits of it,” he retorted. “Sometimes, I fear, that bits are all you can see, or all you think others can see.”

  Instantly she assumed he spoke of the forged invitations, and she wanted nothing more than to tell him he had misunderstood that situation entirely. Since she could not tell him the whole truth, however—he was certainly right about that this time—she feared she could tell him nothing that would convince him of her innocence. And since he would now add her unspeakable conduct of this afternoon to his list of grievances, she could not look forward with any confidence to a tête à tête with him. But surely, he would not dare to demand such a thing, not when they were not and probably never would be more than just friends.

  She tried again when they reached the house to disengage herself from his embrace, but he would not allow it.

  “Truly, sir,” she said, “I am perfectly able to stand, even to walk, by myself.”

  “Perhaps, but I have no intention of allowing you to do so. Peters,” he shouted to the footman who appeared in the open doorway as the phaeton came to a halt, “come hold these horses until I can rout out Vyne to look after them.”

  “Jack there will take them,” Peters called back, gesturing to a lad who was running up the areaway steps from the kitchen, followed by the little gray dog. “I sent for him from the stables after you rode off, sir, which is what I ought to have done when Sir Richard first arrived.”

  “And would have done,” Felicia muttered, “had anyone listened when he tried to ask what ought to be done.”

  “Hush,” Crawley told her, then added in a louder tone to Peters, “Good lad. Just come down then and help me get down without dropping Miss Felicia. She has been shaken up and must lie down to rest at once. Freddy, you go with Jack and take that mongrel with you. He mustn’t be left out front again.”

  A window overhead was flung up, and Theo leaned out, calling, “What is wrong with Felicia, Crawley? Has she been injured?”

  She was pulled back inside, and Sir Richard’s head took her place. “Dreadful manners, that wench, to be shouting down to the street like that. What the devil are you doing with my rig, Ned? If those horses are blown—”

  “They are,” Crawley snapped, “and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll make yourself scarce before I explain to you in exact detail just why they are blown.”

  “Please,” Felicia begged, “not here, my lord. May we not go inside? The neighbors will—”

  “Hang the neighbors,” he retorted, but he allowed Peters to help him get down so he would not have to relinquish his burden.

  Sir Richard was shouting orders from the window now to the stable boy, telling him he meant to remain in Park Lane for dinner, so the rig might just as well be put up in the stable mews until he required it again.

  Felicia was grateful when Crawley began moving toward the steps. Any moment now, she thought, and they would have gathered as great an audience as the horrid one in Piccadilly.

  Her gratitude came too soon. Crawley stopped in his tracks when a familiar voice demanded, “What goes on here? Whatever is the matter with Felicity? I declare, this household is going to rack and ruin. First Selena faints dead away, then awakes insisting Sir Richard is going to murder us all in our beds. You must come up to her at once, Felicity. She has been distraught ever since my arrival, insisting that something dreadful must have occurred to keep you away from her just now.”

  Felicia struggled to get down, but Crawley held her. “Please, sir, I must go to her.”

  “No, she can wait. And so can anyone else who wants you. Forgive me, Lady Augusta, if I ask you to step aside and let me pass. I wish to get Felicia upstairs to the drawing room, where she may be made comfortable. She is a trifle shaken just now.”

  “Shaken? Good gracious, why should she be shaken? Peters related some unnatural tale or other to me, but it was so utterly ridiculous that I simply refused to listen. Would you believe he actually tried to convince me that dearest Felicity had ridden a horse in her afternoon frock? But I do not believe all I hear. Pure poppycock, that was, as I did not hesitate to tell him.”

  “Perfectly true poppycock, nonetheless,” Crawley said, pushing past her into the hall with no further ado. He turned toward the stairs, and Felicia leaned her head against his shoulder.

  Adlam stood at the top of the stairway, glaring at them. “May I inquire just what you think you are about, young man, to be carrying my daughter?”

  “I am taking her upstairs to the drawing room, sir,” Crawley replied, moving steadily toward him.

  “Take her to her mother instead. Then, perhaps Augusta will let well enough alone, as she is always telling others to do, and stop deviling me, of all people, to look to Selena. Never paid a lick of heed to aught I tell her. Won’t start now, I’m sure, but Felicity manages her well enough. And while you’re about it, Felicity,” he added, speaking just as though Felicia stood on her own two feet and no one else was within hearing, “speak to Theo. She has been telling me she means to marry that dratted painter, and I won’t have it. Nonsense to think of throwing herself away on a man like that. A painter!” And turning on his heel, he disappeared into the bookroom. The door slammed behind him.

  Crawley crossed the gallery toward the drawing room, but Felicia said, “Not in there, sir. Sir Richard and Theo are in there. Do put me down. I must go and talk to Papa and see what I can do to smooth things over for Theo. It will not do to have her plans go awry now when they are just in a way to being settled, and then I must go to Mama, for she must be thinking something dreadful has happened to me. Put me down, my lord!”

  Clearly having gone deaf, he walked down the corridor and into the morning room, and kicked the door shut behind him. Over his shoulder, Felicia saw the outraged face of her aunt and realized that Lady Augusta had tried to follow them.

  “My aunt! Oh, sir, you have shut the door in her face! She will be livid. Oh, you must—”

  Her words broke off with a shriek when Crawley dumped her unceremoniously onto the sofa. There was an alarming crack from one of the slender mahogany legs, but it held. Indignantly, Felicia began to sit up but stopped midway when he said in a voice that froze her where she was, “Stay right there until I have finished talking to you.”

  “But I—”

  “Silence,” he roared.

  Gasping, she fell back, wondering if he had gone mad.

  “Now,” he said in a more controlled tone, “you will listen to what I am going to tell you, and you will not speak until I have finished. Is that quite clear?”

  She nodded, scarcely daring to breathe.

  “You, Miss Adlam, spend entirely too much time trying to smooth the way for others, and all you get for your trouble is one headache af
ter another. Your mother enjoys her ill health. Your father doesn’t care a rap for anyone but himself, and the children—as Tom has proved very well—will do better for being allowed to cope with as many of their own difficulties as they can. I was never allowed to attend to such things, because I had a father who assumed he could do everything better than I could, and found it easier to do things himself. You are guilty of that, but you once compared me to Freddy, and in many ways you were right to do so. Now, however, I take the liberty to inform you that you are more like Sara Ann, in that you make up worries before you have cause. What is worse is that you ignore your own needs in favor of tending to the others.

  “No, don’t speak. I do not want to hear another word about what you must do for the leeches in this house. I want to talk about you, and about me. You said something else a few moments ago that made me think, and I want you to think about it, too. You said the thing you liked least in me was that I always believe I know what is best to be done. Correct?”

  “Well, to be quite—”

  “Just answer yes or no, Felicia.”

  “Yes, then.”

  “Very good. Now, I said that was the same thing I liked least in you, did I not?”

  “Yes.” She wrinkled her brow. “I do behave that way from time to time, I suppose.”

  “So do I. I was not denying it. But something Dawlish said to me, and Belinda as well, I suppose, in her own way, has come back to haunt me, for I realized they were perfectly right. Dawlish said men are too apt to condemn in others the very things they do themselves. Think about that, Felicia.”

  Her eyes widened. “Why, only this afternoon, Sir Richard said he had come to realize that he condemned the same things in Theo’s behavior that he does himself. I think Dawlish has been talking to others besides you, sir.” She sat up straighter.

  “No doubt, but look here, my dear girl,” he said, sitting down beside her and taking her hand in his, “we are not much the same, aside from that one little factor. I know I have given you cause to think me irresponsible—”