Courting Chaos (Dunaway's Daughters Book 2)

by Lynne Barron

  “Knighton? Oh good Lord, I am such a bubble-head. But of course his name doesn’t begin with N; it only sounds as if it should. And here I was thinking I might extend things to fourteen just for the pleasure of adding Lord Knighton to the mix. Melissa Cartwright’s cousin’s friend says he is a marvelous kisser. Though I can’t say as I’ve noticed much difference between kisses. My favorite so far has been from Malleville, if I’m perfectly honest.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  Madeline gave her head a little shake as if to clear away thoughts of kissing Lord Knighton, which irritated Harry for no good reason. “I thought Knighton began with an N so—”

  “Yes, I understood all of that perfectly,” Harry interjected. “You kissed Lord Mallevile? Lilith’s husband?”

  “Of course. Don’t you remember how he kissed all of in his exuberance after Lilith brought Jamie into the world?”

  Jasper Grimley, Baron Malleville, had in deed kissed every one of Lilith’s sisters after his second child was born. As Harry remembered it, those kisses had been no more than quick busses in the general vicinity of lips. The kind of kiss any brother would share with his sister if he were feeling particularly happy.

  Harry expelled a little laugh. “Those are the sort of kisses you’ve been spreading about like sweetmeats to dirty little urchins?”

  Madeline blinked, giggled, and blushed just a tad. “Well, I would hardly offer up the other sort of kisses to near strangers. Those sorts of kisses seem so…I don’t know…intimate.”

  Harry was no expert on those sorts of kisses, but she’d experienced one or two. Three to be precise. Intimate was not the first word that came to mind when she thought of those three kisses. Messy, yes. Wet, certainly. Clumsy and crude, undignified and unimpressive, disappointing and dissatisfying. If there’d been intimacy, she had taken no notice of it. Though now she thought on it, Harry wasn’t entirely certain she would recognize intimacy if it walked up and swatted her on the bottom.

  “Is there some particular reason you’ve chosen to kiss lords alphabetically?” Harry asked.

  “I hadn’t intended to do so, but after I kissed Lords Applebee, Beauchamp and Charleston in quick succession, it seemed logical to continue on in the same vein.”

  “Logical?” Harry inflected the word with a wealth of skepticism, all of it well deserved.

  “Yes, logical and orderly, so I wouldn’t lose count.”

  “And yet, lose count you did, as by my calculations you’ve puckered up for eleven men rather than ten.”

  “Do you suppose I ought to count Malleville, then?”

  “Most definitely,” Harry retorted. “Though, should Lilith ever press for a reckoning, you’d do well to change the topic with all haste. I might suggest steering the conversation toward something of which she knows absolutely nothing. Perhaps the proper length of tea gloves this season or the care and feeding of domesticated grasshoppers.”

  “Can grasshoppers be domesticated?” Madeline asked.

  “I suppose it depends upon whether one has small children residing in one’s home,” Harry replied. “Now then, must number twelve be a peer or was that element of your indexing as haphazardly decided upon as the other?”

  “As if I were as high in the instep as all that,” Madeline replied with a toss of her head she clearly regretted as the yellowish cast to her face transformed to a rather putrid green. “It’s only that, in the normal course of events, I tend to encounter a great many titled gentlemen. What with Mother’s aim fixed so high.”

  “Then we shall skip Lord K altogether and move right along to Mr. L.”

  “Must we?” the girl asked with a sad smile. “I rather fancy ending my kissing spree with the divinely handsome Lord Knighton.”

  “While I can appreciate your desire to end your spree with something of a grand finale, kissing Lord Knighton would be the epitome of foolishness.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Had Lord Knighton been privy to the conversation taking place in the barouche winding its way through Hyde Park, he might have been amused to hear his kiss described as something of a grand finale.

  As it was, Phin was quite some distance away when he spotted a blindingly bright green bonnet bedecked with ribbons, bows and an entire bouquet of purple blossoms bobbing above the turned-down hood of the carriage.

  “Oh, look, it’s that lovely lady with the ridiculous bonnets,” Miss Eloise Griffith exclaimed at precisely the same moment Phin recognized the woman who’d haunted his dreams the previous night and who was therefore directly responsible for his peevish mood this morning.

  “Are those lavender flowers or feathers?” asked Miss Evelyn Griffith, younger by a mere fourteen months. “Can you see her gown?”

  “It’s hidden beneath her pelisse, and no wonder. One would think it February rather than June this morning.”

  “I imagine her gown is green to match her pelisse.”

  “Sapphire,” Eloise argued with a shake of her head, her own perfectly plain straw bonnet not so much as moving atop her chestnut curls. “She’s adorned in sapphire silk trimmed in green, with an amethyst broach pinned to her bodice to tie it all together.”

  “Striped or only embroidered along the hem?” Evelyn asked, squinting her eyes as if she might somehow see beneath the bright-green wool pelisse. “Striped, I think.”

  “Embroidered with tiny leaves and vines,” Eloise argued. “Similar to the gown she wore three weeks ago. You know the lovely saffron worsted silk with little fuchsia bows sewn along the neckline to match the ribbons on her bonnet.”

  “Are you acquainted with Miss O’Connell?” Phin cut in before his sisters could launch into a prolonged debate upon the merits of bows versus embroidery.

  “Miss O’Connell?” Eloise repeated, wrinkling her nose as if she’d caught a whiff of something unpleasant on the frosty morning air. “Can her name truly be Miss O’Connell?”

  “And here I’d imagined her to be French,” Evelyn said. “With an exotic name like Mademoiselle Rachelle La Fontenelle or Lissette Antoinette d’Marcelline.”

  “I assure you the lady is English,” Phin retorted as the carriage slowly trundled nearer. “Miss Harry O’Connell of Wellclose Square.”

  “Harry?” Evelyn repeated. “Short for Harriet?”

  “Perhaps Henrietta or Hortense.” Yet one more thing for Phin to question, consider and ponder.

  “Are you acquainted with Miss O’Connell?” Eloise asked with another little twist of her nose. “She isn’t one of your paramours, is she?”

  “Don’t be daft,” Evelyn said. “Miss O’Connell, if that is in fact her name, is far too expensively attired to be the paramour of a poor man.”

  “Let’s have a go at this from another direction.” Phin turned his mount down a narrow path that wound around to a small knoll from which much of the park could be seen from a safe distance. His sisters, dutiful to a fault if not altogether proper, followed without a word of urging. “How is it you know what gown Miss O’Connell wore three weeks past?”

  “Her gowns are nearly as unforgettable as her bonnets,” Evelyn answered.

  “Do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in the same bonnet twice,” Eloise said.

  “She likely barters them all away after one wearing,” Phin muttered.

  “Do ladies do that?”

  “Are there shops established for ladies to sell off their bonnets?”

  “So others might rent them by the day?”

  “Or perhaps by the week?”

  “Like lending libraries for books?”

  “Only for bonnets?”

  Experience had taught Phin there was no point in attempting to squeeze in a word when they got going, tossing out comments and questions and finishing one another’s sentences.

  “If there aren’t—”

  “There ought to be.”

  “Why stop at bonnets?”

  “Why not lend out gloves.”

  “And slippers and fans.” />
  “No, not—”

  “Slippers.”

  “Who’d want to wear slippers—”

  “Another lady had worn—”

  “Just the week previously.”

  Phin ignored his sisters’ chatter as best he could, knowing there was nothing for it but to allow them to worry the notion to a frayed thread.

  When they’d reached the top of the knoll, Phin spied the open barouche still crawling along the path below at a snail’s pace. Harry and her companion sat on opposite seats and appeared to be engaged in animated conversation, the former’s hands waving about from time to time.

  Phin suspected she was entirely unaware of the manner in which she punctuated her thoughts with her hands.

  Not big, broad gestures, but rather small, delicate movements. The flick of a wrist when she was agitated. An aborted slash through the air when she was in disagreement. A gentle pat on the arm or squeeze of the fingers in appreciation or affection.

  Phin had noticed her penchant to make free with both her hands and her affections the night of Dunaway’s ball. At one point or another, she’d touched each and every one of the earl’s daughters. She’d tidied a wayward curl at Lady Southerby’s temple, brushed at a speck of lint or dirt on Lady Annalise’s shoulder, playfully swatted Miss Price’s arm, tugged up Lady Madeline’s slipping glove and clasped Lady Malleville’s fingers, holding on tight for minutes at a time.

  Now she sat in a carriage hand in hand with the youngest of Dunaway’s daughters, riding through the park so slowly a toddler might easily overtake the carriage. While it was early and most of Society was still ensconced in their beds, there were a good number of ladies and gentlemen taking advantage of the relatively deserted park to enjoy a good gallop along the many paths.

  Again it occurred to Phin that Miss Harry O’Connell was hiding in plain sight. But hiding what, precisely, and from whom? Whatever the mystery might be, Phin had no plans to unravel it just now.

  “Yes, you’re right.”

  “Gloves and fans and jewels only.”

  “We ought to open just such a shop.”

  “In a middling neighborhood.”

  “Where merchants’ wives and daughters—”

  “Might pay to wear such items for a special event.”

  “But near enough to the better areas—”

  “So ladies of quality can sell off their trinkets when they’ve played too deep.”

  “And reclaim them when their allowance is forthcoming.”

  “Why has no one ever thought to open such a shop?”

  The question silenced his sisters, a fact of which Phin was quick to take advantage. “Someone has opened such a shop. In fact, there are many such shops all over London. Pawn shops, they’re called.”

  “Oh, is that what a pawn shop is?” Eloise asked, her hazel eyes widening. “I thought pawn shops had something to do with chess.”

  “A shop selling custom boards and pieces,” Evelyn agreed a bit sheepishly. “La, the world’s a wondrous place.”

  “Will you take us to a pawn shop?”

  “Not with the intention to purchase.”

  “But only to peruse the cast-off gloves and whatnot?”

  “I can’t see any harm in it,” Phin said even as he recalled there was a pawn shop on St. Sebastian Place. “Provided you tell me, quickly and concisely, how you know Miss O’Connell.”

  “We see her every Wednesday at the museum,” two voices replied in unison.

  “When Mrs. Doherty chaperones the lot of you ladies to scavenge for treasure?” Phin couldn’t imagine Miss Harry O’Connell rushing about a dusty old museum with a hoard of young ladies, all of them squealing and giggling as they searched out clue after clue in hopes of finding the day’s treasure. “Miss O’Connell plays along with you?”

  “Good gracious, no,” Evelyn replied with a roll of her eyes. “Though she has given us little hints from time to time.”

  “Week before last she whispered ‘Thomas Hayworth was a great one for hiding little red flowers in his paintings, poppies mostly.’” Eloise, ever the mimic, got Harry’s voice nearly perfect, soft and faintly acerbic.

  “We quite despaired finding a red flower trampled beneath a child’s feet,” Evelyn added. “We might never have found Hayworth’s Little Lord Left Unattended on our own as it hangs in the Red Gallery.”

  “We were meant to find Charles Paxton’s Blessed be the Child.”

  “Mrs. Doherty was most displeased we snuck into the Red Gallery after she’d repeatedly warned us we must not.”

  “She gave the prize, two silver hairpins, to Elizabeth Culpepper and Alice Lofton.”

  “Still, it was worth the loss of the hairpins.”

  “Plain silver and not the least fine.”

  “Just to see all those lovely portraits and sculptures.”

  Phin had heard the Red Gallery of the Montclaire Museum housed some fine pieces of artwork, much of it unsuitable for viewing by innocent young ladies barely out of the schoolroom.

  “I am convinced Mrs. Doherty set a trap for us.” This from Eloise who sensed a trap around every corner, seeing as she was something of a prankster and like supposed like. “We win nearly every week, while her daughters have never once found the treasure.”

  Phin suspected it was Miss Harry O’Connell who’d set a trap for the girls. He could easily imagine her standing back to watch the drama unfold with that queer little quirk of her lips he’d initially mistaken for mockery but was coming to suspect might signify genuine amusement. “A connoisseur of humanity’s frailties, follies and foibles.”

  “A connoisseur of what?” Evelyn asked.

  “Never mind,” Phin muttered. “So every Wednesday you see Miss O’Connell at the Montclaire Museum?”

  “But for Wednesday last,” Eloise replied, quite unnecessarily as Phin knew precisely where the lady had been Wednesday last.

  “We’ve lost two consecutive Wednesdays,” Evelyn added. “We simply despair the thought we might lose again Wednesday next. Whatever shall we do if the clues are difficult and Miss O’Connell is absent yet again?”

  “One missed Wednesday in nearly two years is hardly cause for concern.” Still, Eloise looked decidedly concerned. “We’ll worry only when she’s gone missing three Wednesdays.”

  “You’ve been seeing Miss O’Connell at the museum for two years?”

  “Very nearly,” Eloise answered. “Perhaps you ought to accompany us Wednesday next.”

  “Splendid notion,” Evelyn agreed, bouncing about in the saddle. “Surely if you exert yourself just a tad, you might charm Miss O’Connell into assisting us in a more constant manner.”

  “Say, every week without fail.”

  “Rather than only here and there as the moods strikes her.”

  “Not a chance.” It was one thing to search for Harry in every face he passed on the street, to watch her across a theatre or from atop a hillock in Hyde Park. It was quite another to court temptation.

  He told himself he was not intentionally putting himself in temptation’s path when he sat down to dinner with the Marquess of Marchant that evening. After all, they had much to discuss in regard to their joint agricultural venture. Not the least of which was the merits of hiring more reapers as opposed to paying a higher wage per acre to those already retained. Surely it was coincidence that the figures Marchant spouted in regard to exponential decreases and fractional differentials sounded remarkably similar to Harry’s ale consumption equation. And pure happenstance that led the fussy marquess to make mention of the lady’s habit of attending church with the infamous Alabaster Sinclair every Sunday morning, rain or shine.

  Coincidence or happenstance, Phin’s thoughts went wandering eastward.

  So it came as no real surprise when his legs did the same on Sunday morning, and he found himself standing outside a little gray-stone church in Bloomsbury.

  Phin wasn’t so lacking in self-control as to actually approach the two women, nor di
d he put himself in their path later that afternoon when he saw them entering the little bakery on St. Sebastian Place, presumably to partake of currant scones.

  He ought not to have been in Wellclose Square at all. But for some quixotic reason, he’d felt compelled to take another look at the bonnet which had inspired Harry O’Connell’s voice to take on a note of wistfulness.

  For twenty minutes he stood there staring at the absurd concoction of ribbons and gems crowned by two peacock feathers. Questioning, considering and pondering the woman who, in a few days’ time, would be wearing the convoluted bonnet.

  It was madness. Sheer and utter madness.

  Monday he determined it best for his sanity if he remained safely within the bounds of Mayfair. He might even have held to that determination, and a small measure of his wits, had he not spied Harry rushing along on the opposite side of Oxford Street to the fencing academy on the corner.

  With his ability to reason sorely jeopardized by that one fleeting glance, it came as no great shock when he allowed his sisters to manipulate him into escorting them to a pawn shop that evening. As if further proof of his recent bout of madness were needed, he chose to bypass three shops of the same variety while journeying to Castaway’s Second Hand Mercantile in Wellclose Square.

  It was only the flamboyantly festooned women parading into the shop that prevented Phin from allowing Evelyn and Eloise to descend from the carriage. And even then it was a near thing, as he found himself weighing the pros and cons of exposing two innocent young ladies to the seamier side of life.

  Tuesday he relinquished the last vestiges of his sanity to spend the entire day lurking along St. Sebastian Place, following Harry as she collected numbers for Mr. Prince from nearly every resident and merchant on the street. After which Phin rushed to Portman Square to pay a call on a shipping magnate’s two perfectly pretty, perfectly proportioned and perfectly dowered daughters.

  He’d very nearly convinced himself either one of the Misses Hamilton would make a fine wife when he made the fatal mistake of returning to Wellclose Square.

  Teddy Luther had invited Phin to join him for another night of debauchery, suggesting they get an early start following some sort of literary event the publisher hosted every Tuesday evening.