Charlie shrugged. Louts! she mouthed back.
“Lud, yes!” the other man now groaned with feeling. “Has she pressed that fat, spotty thing on you, too?”
“Gosh, yes. That one was almost as bad as the tall scarecrow with those ridiculous glasses. You know whom I mean? Most unbecoming chit.”
Charlie froze.
The other man nodded. “Most unbecoming. Didn’t dance with her, thank heaven! But saw poor Doddy doing the rounds with her. She positively dwarfed him. It’s unnatural, if you ask me.” He stared into his glass. “Shall we brave the crowd to get another round?”
They moved way, leaving a devastated silence in their wake.
With shaking fingers Charlie touched her spectacles. “Oh… oh dear. Aunt Dolmore said that height is a great affliction. It seems…” Valiantly, she tried to swallow the lump that kept forming in her throat. “It seems she was right.”
“Oh, my dear.” Lady Isabella’s hand curled around Charlie’s arm. “I am so very sorry. Clearly, these two are no gentlemen. A gentleman would never talk in such a coarse manner.”
“They didn’t see us.” Charlie sniffed. “I believe they thought themselves almost in private.” Another sniff. Her nose tingled so and her eyes burnt. She blinked. How she had been looking forward to London! To the parties and balls—back in the distant Scotland these things had all seemed so glamorous!
Glamorous, my foot! Charlie thought, valiantly trying to keep the tears from falling. I’m such a silly goose!
“Rubbish! Private at a ball? You can’t be private at a ball. They knew somebody would overhear them. They are rude louts and churls and… and…”
“Oafs.” Despite her mortification, Charlie gave a wet snicker. “Oh dear, and I thought my first ball was going so well. But as Miss Pinkerton always says, ‘Pride cometh before the fall.’” She sniffed. “Of course, she also says, ‘So learn how to roll to your feet.’ So...” She turned to Lady Isabella and felt her mouth curve in a mischievous smile. “Now after hearing this, you can’t possibly banish me from your side. It would be cruel. And heartless.”
A tentative smile appeared on Lady Isabella’s face. “Terribly heartless.”
“Exactly. It seems we must sit out all the dances together.”
~*~
“What a damned crush!” Griff muttered irritably. “What does a fellow have to do to get a glass of lemonade here? Mow people down?”
Beside him, his tall cousin chuckled. “It is the Featherstone punch; it’s legendary.”
Boo’s cheerfulness did nothing to decrease Griff’s sour mood. “It’s not the punch, it’s this room. What kind of caperwitted person puts the refreshments in a room the size of a closet? It is indecent, that’s what it is!” He craned his neck in an attempt to catch a glance of the refreshment table. “I say we mow people down.”
An elderly gentleman in front of him turned around and eyed him with dissatisfaction. “What sort of brattish behaviour is this, eh?”
“Mr Greykin—how very good to see you,” Boo cut in quickly. “You must excuse my cousin, sir. He is suffering from a fit of the blue devils because he has been obliged to dance.” His mouth twitched, and Griff just knew that Boo would have burst into guffaws had they been alone.
“Cousin, eh?” Mr Greykin took out his quizzing glass and let his gaze travel over Griff once more. “Lymfort’s boy, is it?” The quizzing glass enlarged his right eye to such unnatural proportions that it appeared to be bulging out of his head. “A rare test to his parents, eh? No wonder, with that kind of history.” Slipping the glass back into the pocket of his waistcoat, he shook his head. Then he abruptly turned to Boo, his eyes narrowed. “What’s he doing at a ball when he doesn’t like to dance, eh? That’s what I’d like to know.” He shot Griffin a last evil glance before he pushed his way towards the door. Apparently, Griff’s mere presence had made him lose whatever appetite or thirst he had felt before.
Griff grimaced and wished himself—not for the first time this evening—a hundred miles away.
“Now that went well,” Boo commented drily.
Griff looked up at his cousin. All the men in his family were tall, but in Boo generations of breeding long-limbed males had produced a particularly tall, bulky specimen. If Boo had been a horse, he would have been a giant, barrel-chested shire horse.
“You have a weird sense of humour, coz.”
“Oh, come now, Griff, you are in the mops because of the dancing.”
They managed to advance a few steps towards the refreshment table. It would have helped if there had been a queue, yet there was none, only a heaving, bustling crowd. Splendid!
“You would be in the mops, too, if the blushing young debutantes ogled you as if you were a two-headed calf!” Griff gritted out.
Boo shrugged. “Chalk it up to the novelty of seeing you at a ball. My potato nose is already well known; your visage isn’t.”
“A group of them stared at me and giggled behind their fans.”
Once again, the corners of Boo’s mouth twitched in a telltale manner. Yet he replied calmly enough, “Very annoying, giggling.”
“And when I passed a group of chaperons, they started discussing my financial worth—present and future.” Griff frowned. “It’s like bloody Tattersall’s!”
“With horseflesh of the two-legged variety.” Grinning, Boo manoeuvred himself another few steps forward.
The matron at whose elbow he thus arrived turned, her face registering annoyance at the bustling. However, as she caught sight of Boo, her expression lightened. “Mr Cole, how do you do?”
“Ma’am.” Boo made the pretty. “How is the captain’s gout?”
“Oh, dreadful, dreadful, poor man.” She shook her head. “He had to stay at home tonight, putting his foot up. I daresay we’ll have to retire to some watering place or other before the Season is over. And what will then happen to my niece, I don’t know. Her mother is a silly goose and can’t be trusted to bring a girl out in the proper fashion. Whatever my brother ever saw in her, I don’t know. Lies on her sofa all day long with her pug and her smelling salts, a maid fluttering around her in the most annoying manner. And the sniffling!” She rolled her eyes. “I detest sniffling females! Especially sniffling females with lace handkerchiefs—these are the worst.”
Boo made a non-committal sound.
“I say, Mr Cole…” Her expression changed and, taking Boo’s elbow, she dropped her voice to a whisper. Yet Griff, who only stood a pace behind them could still hear every word. “What is it that I hear about Lymfort’s heir—or should I say spare?” She tittered.
The sound raked over Griff’s nerves as if she had applied a set of claws to his flesh. He braced himself for what was to come.
“Is it true that he is searching for a wife?”
“Well, yes, ma’am,” Boo answered, always polite. “I—”
“Lud, so it is true. Our Mimi heard it said—oh well, you know how these young girls are—forever putting their heads together and gadding and getting all kinds of fanciful notions.”
Like the debutantes at this ball, Griff thought with a shudder.
She narrowed her eyes. “But in this case…” She tapped her finger against her nose and threw Boo a meaningful glance. “Given his history, I daresay the girls are not so far off wondering whether that one will turn out to be some kind of Bluebeard. Not something a girl wants in a husband, be he ever so rich, oh no!”
Good Lord! Griff nearly gasped aloud. He felt as if somebody had punched him in the gut. No wonder the young ladies had been staring at him like an exotic animal on exhibit in a menagerie. Some kind of Bluebeard, indeed!
He gritted his teeth.
He should have known what to expect—old rumours and scandals died hard, especially in the small world of London society.
“Mrs Wilson!” Boo cut forcibly into the woman’s tirade, his good-humoured face for once darkening with angry colour. “I wouldn’t have taken either you or your niece as such perso
ns who indulge in malicious slander!”
“Slander? Pah!” Mrs Wilson tossed her head, at which point she finally caught sight of Griff. Without batting an eye, she was suddenly wreathed in smiles. “Lord Chanderley! What a pleasure to see you here, I’m sure.—Oh, la, is that Lady John Brown over there? I must speak to her.” Brushing past them, she waved and started to hail her distant acquaintance. “Ju-huh, Lady John! Lady Jo-hohn!”
Boo glanced at Griffin. “Don’t mind her. Nothing puts her to the blush.—Gad, you’re as white as a sheet,” he added in an undertone, his face full of concern.
Griff moved his shoulders and grimaced. “Now you know why I have avoided ballrooms and other such places all this time.” He had not live as a recluse, by no means. He was comfortable and well respected at his club; he was often invited to dinners—most of them male affairs, though—and he was known to frequent select parties. He detested cliques and so did not belong to any special “set,” but he liked visiting Holland House, where the company could be trusted to be witty and interesting.
Yet ballrooms, assemblies, and places like Almack’s he had always avoided, for there that thousand-tongued monster Fama dwelled and writhed and multiplied with indecent abandon. It chewed its victims between its vicious teeth and crooked jaws, and hardly ever spit out anything again. Moreover, as had just been demonstrated, it never forgot old gossip and scandal.
Griff’s insides clenched, and his stomach felt as if he had swallowed a load of bricks. He gritted his teeth and idly wondered whether he would disgrace himself and cast up his accounts in Lady Featheringham’s refreshments room.
Beside him, his cousin cursed under his breath. “We’ll just get that damned lemonade for Izzie and then we can get out of his bloody crush.”
Fortunately, they were not waylaid by any more gossipmongers. As some more minutes had passed, they finally reached the refreshments table without any further mishap and armed themselves with a glass of punch each, besides obtaining the lemonade for Griff’s little sister.
When they came back to the place where they had left Izzie, a surprise awaited them: Izzie, who had been either gawked at or simply been ignored for most of this evening, was talking animatedly to a woman whose dark hair was put up in a rather simple, almost spinsterish style. At the men’s approach, the two women turned around, and Griff saw that far from being a spinster, Izzie’s new acquaintance was a girl still—unfashionably tall, rather thin, no breasts to speak of, and the ugliest glasses in all of London.
“There you are!” Izzie gave them a broad smile. “George, Boo, I must introduce you to my new friend Miss Stanton.” She half turned back to the girl and clasped her hand.
Griff’s brows rose.
As did the young woman at Izzie’s side, her mouth curving into a charming smile. Nobody in his right mind would have called that mouth a rosebud—it was much too wide for that—but the smile was sweet, crinkling the corners of her eyes.
Her eyes…
Oh my!
For the second time this evening Griff felt as if he had been punched in the gut—only this time it was for completely different reasons.
Behind the ugly spectacles, Miss Stanton’s eyes were intensely green and sparkled with… something Griff couldn’t quite name. She looked alive, brilliantly so. More alive than any other person he knew. Certainly more alive than he himself had felt in a long, long time.
“Miss Stanton, these are my cousin, Mr Cole, and my brother, Lord Chanderley,” Izzie said, fortunately oblivious to his thunderstruck moment.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” Boo sketched the girl a slight bow.
Her smile deepened, and for one absurd moment Griff thought she would actually burst out laughing. It was a muttonbrained notion, of course, for there had been nothing in Boo’s address to make her laugh. Yet surely it was not merely his imagination that her eyes sparkled even more than before.
As she turned those wonderful green eyes on him, his brain stuttered to a standstill. It was ridiculous, really—she a girl hardly out of the schoolroom and he a man of experience, at least ten years her senior if not more so. But still, his heart thundered in his breast and his flesh felt alternately hot and cold. He managed a “How do you do?” and then blurted out inanely, “We have brought you a glass of lemonade, Izzie. Here.” Then he thrust out the glass like a muttonbrained idiot.
~*~
They were tall, both of them, was what struck Charlie first. A blessing indeed in a town that to all appearances was generally not blessed with tall gentlemen.
Both were blond, with a distinct family resemblance in the slant of the cheekbones and the form of mouth and jaw. One was built like a bear, with a friendly, homely face, while the other was slightly shorter and slimmer, his face cast in rather stern lines. That one wore elegance and breeding like a cloak. Even Charlie, untrained in the art of London fashion, could see that his clothes were of the finest cloth and cut, fashioned without unnecessary frills, but in such a manner as to accentuate a set of nice shoulders.
He did not strike Charlie as an approachable man, yet her new friend exuded unvarnished pleasure at seeing the two men and enthusiastically introduced them.
The bear—Mr Cole—sketched Charlie a friendly bow and called her ma’am, which struck her as hilarious. The po-faced man—Lord Chanderley—, by contrast, only muttered something unintelligible before he thrust a glass of lemonade at his poor sister.
Lemonade! When the ladies’ retiring room was upstairs!
Lady Isabella’s eyes widened in evident alarm, and she cast an imploring look at Charlie.
“Lemonade!” Charlie promptly exclaimed, snatching the glass out of Lord Chanderley’s hand. “Please allow me—I’m positively famished!” Which she was, so it was not a lie. But she felt she ought to prove her point, and so she valiantly gulped the whole glass down in one go. “Ah,” she sighed when she was finally finished (too much sugar in the lemonade). “I needed that.”
Lady Isabella beamed at her, whereas the two gentlemen stared at her with varying degrees of disbelief.
Charlie felt her cheeks heat up. “I was very thirsty,” she said defensively.
“Absolutely.” Lady Isabella nodded. “You looked positively withered. Very understandable since… since you’ve been dancing so energetically. Miss Stanton is a splendid dancer—I was watching her, you know.” She winked at Charlie right before she turned to her brother. “Now that you’ve saved her from a dire fate of perishing from thirst, why don’t you invite her to dance, George?”
The look “George” bestowed on his sister was one of pure horror. He probably did not care for girls afflicted with unbecoming height either, Charlie thought on a sigh.
“Now, look, Izzie—”
“I think it’s a splendid idea,” Mr Cole cut in, his eyes suddenly twinkling in what was surely mischief. “Let me take your glass, Griff. You probably wouldn’t like the punch anyway.” Grinning, he took Chanderley’s glass and then, with another bow, Charlie’s. “You won’t need that any longer, will you, Miss Stanton? And you’re lucky: a new set is just beginning.”
With a forced smile, Chanderley held out his arm to Charlie. “Shall we, Miss Stanton?”
Charlie was of a mind to tell him to go to the devil, but at Lady Isabella’s beaming face she found she did not have the heart to disappoint her new friend. “With pleasure.” She slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and then remembered to tag on, “My lord.”
The muscles under her fingers were rather stiff and the lines around his mouth seemed to deepen as he led her to the dance floor. Indeed, he looked very much like a man on the way to his own execution.
Charlie frowned.
Surely her tallness could not affect him in such an extreme manner—or could it? After all, he was a few inches taller than herself, which certainly constituted a novelty that evening. “If you’d rather we didn’t…” she began tentatively.
He pressed his lips together and shook his head. Then h
e glanced down at her. “I am afraid you will find me an indifferent dancer, Miss Stanton. My technique is far from splendid, and I’m sadly out of exercise in the art of the country dance. So I fear you will be in for a disappointment.”
Charlie searched his face—all in all, it was a nice face, despite its stern aspect. His chin was square and firm, the shape of his lips rather becoming, the nose straight and slightly bony, and his eyes the colour of a horse chestnut. A lock of blond hair flopped endearingly down over his forehead. As she watched, a nerve jumped in his cheek.
It occurred to her then that the poor man was probably horribly nervous—Mr Bernstone had warned them that there existed gentlemen who might feel uncomfortable dancing and had a propensity for stumbling over their own feet. One had to look at such unfortunate persons with charity, he had impressed upon the girls at St. Cuthbert’s. Under no circumstances must such poor people be teased or bullied or their frocks decorated with slips of paper bearing comic inscriptions.
After listening to the deprecating remarks made about her own person, Charlie was in no mood for teasing anybody this evening anyway, and so she adjusted her spectacles with her free hand and gave Lord Chanderley an encouraging smile. If he was indeed so bad at dancing, it was no wonder the poor man looked like three days of torrential rain. “I believe we will get on famously,” she said, and made her voice light. “Listen—they are playing are slow dance. We will do splendidly, I am sure.”
He inclined his head. “As you wish.”
While he led her to a place in the long row of dancers, Charlie cast about for a subject that would put him at ease. Her acquaintance with gentlemen being limited, this presented somewhat of a problem. She supposed that Mr Bernstone did count as a gentleman even though he was only a music teacher. But he was a very good one, and, besides, had a friend in far-away places who regularly sent him copious amounts of Turkish delight, which he was happy to share with the whole of St. Cuthbert’s. Apart from music, Mr Bernstone was rather fond of fishing. On a sunny day, he could be often found standing in the shallow stream not far from the school, casting his rod and letting the line dance over the water.
Springtime Pleasures Page 4
