The Bride Hunt

by Jane Feather

  “Burgundy or claret?” he asked, picking up the wine list again.

  “I’m more in a claret mood.”

  “Then, a bon Bordeaux it shall be.”

  Prudence sipped her champagne and leaned back in her chair, looking out of the long windows at the Martyrs’ Memorial in the little square opposite, and the bicycling undergraduates, their black gowns flapping as they pedaled vigorously along St. Giles. Her mood had changed. She was feeling suddenly relaxed, contented, looking forward to her luncheon. Her companion’s attention was entirely on the wine list and she had the opportunity for a leisurely if covert examination of his features.

  The thick hair was swept back off a broad, rather knobby forehead, and she thought his hairline was probably receding slightly. In another five years that broad forehead would be even broader. Her gaze tracked down over the aquiline and very dominating nose, the mouth that she found disturbingly attractive, and the deep cleft in his chin that she found even more so. His hands with their filbert nails were delicate for a man—long-fingered, like a pianist’s. She remembered that had been one of her first observations.

  It had been a long time since she had consciously found a man attractive, even longer since she had found one sexually inviting. She had lost her virginity the year after her mother had died. She and her sisters had made a pact that while none of them were set on marriage, they were determined not to die wondering about sex. So they’d given themselves a year. At the end of that year they were none of them virgins.

  Prudence’s experience had been, she supposed, pleasant enough. Or at least, not unpleasant. But she had certainly felt that something had been missing. Some transport of delight or similar sensation that their reading of Victorian pornography had given the sisters cause to expect. Perhaps The Pearl and other books of its ilk had magnified the transcendent delights of orgasmic spending. But Prudence had definitely been left wondering.

  Now, however, she caught herself imagining those hands on her body. Her mouth already knew about Gideon’s kisses. But the deep-seated thrill of excitement in her belly was not a familiar sensation. It was a shock to admit it, but it seemed that she was attracted to Gideon Malvern.

  How was it possible to be attracted to a man one disliked? Well, at least there would be no temptation to do anything about it. She needed the man’s mind, not his body, and had no intention of confusing the two.

  “Penny for them?” he said, looking up from the wine list.

  Prudence blushed. And the more she blushed, the more embarrassed she felt, and the more she blushed. He was looking at her, his gray eyes searching as if he would read her mind. Her face was as hot as hell’s fire, and, she was sure, as red as a beetroot.

  Then he turned his gaze away to address the sommelier, who had appeared opportunely. Prudence breathed slowly and felt the heat in her face subside. She took up her water glass and surreptitiously pressed it to the pulse below her ear. It had an immediate cooling effect, and by the time Gideon had finished his consultation with the sommelier, she was her usual self, cool and composed, her complexion its customary pale cream.

  “A St. Estèphe,” he said. “I hope you’ll approve.”

  “I’m sure I shall. I never presume to question the choice of an expert,” she said lightly, breaking a bread roll and spearing an artful coil of butter from the glass dish.

  “That’s a sage and intelligent attitude,” he observed. “You’d be surprised how many people lack the sense or are too inflicted with vanity to bow to the voice of experience.”

  Prudence shook her head at him. “Gideon, you may be right, but your manner of being so is sometimes insufferable.”

  “What did I say?” He looked genuinely surprised.

  She shook her head again. “If you don’t know, there’s no virtue in my pointing it out.”

  The waiter appeared and Gideon gave their order before saying, “Point it out, Prudence. How will I ever learn otherwise?”

  And that made her laugh. “You missed the irony in my statement, and you missed it because it didn’t occur to you that I might be something of an expert with a wine list myself.”

  “Are you?”

  “You’d be surprised,” she said, thinking of how much she had learned about the wine trade while manipulating the contents of her father’s cellars with Jenkins.

  Gideon considered her with a half smile as he sipped his champagne. “You know, I don’t think there’s much about you that would surprise me, Prudence. Tell me how you became an expert.”

  Prudence frowned. She and her sisters were intensely private about their household matters and the shifts they were obliged to make to keep their heads above water. No one in their society must know that the Duncan family for close to three years had dodged bankruptcy on a near daily basis. The Go-Between and The Mayfair Lady were beginning to bring in an income, but they were still far from out of the woods. But then, she reflected, they had no secrets from the barrister, they couldn’t have. He already knew they were in financial difficulties, and why. He just didn’t know that Lord Duncan was kept blissfully unaware of the true situation.

  She waited until they had been served their first course, then as she slowly stirred her soup she explained the situation in all its detail. Gideon, spreading mackerel pâte onto toast, listened without comment until she had fallen silent and had turned her attention to her soup.

  “Are you really doing your father any favors by keeping him in ignorance?” he asked then.

  Prudence felt a familiar prickle of annoyance. There was an unmistakable note of criticism in his tone. “We believe so,” she responded tautly.

  “Oh, it’s none of my business, I realize that,” he said. “But sometimes an outside perspective is helpful. You and your sisters are so close to the situation, maybe you’re missing something.”

  “We don’t think so,” she said in the same tone, aware that she was sounding defensive, which somehow gave credence to his criticism, and yet unable to help herself. “We happen to know our father very well. And we also know what our mother would have wanted.”

  Gideon said calmly, “How’s the soup?”

  “Very good.”

  “And the wine. I trust it meets with your expert approval.”

  She looked at him sharply and saw that he was smiling in an appeasing fashion. She let her annoyance fade and said, “It’s a fine claret.”

  After luncheon they strolled through the city and down to Folly Bridge, where Gideon rented a punt.

  Prudence surveyed the long flat boat and the unwieldy length of the pole with some trepidation. “Are you sure you know how to do this?”

  “Well, I used to. I assume it’s like riding a bicycle,” he said, stepping onto the flat stern and holding out a hand. “Step in the middle so it doesn’t rock.”

  She took the proffered hand and stepped gingerly into the punt, which, despite her caution, rocked alarmingly under her unbalanced weight.

  “Sit down,” he instructed swiftly, and she dropped immediately onto a pile of cushions in the prow. They were surprisingly soft.

  “I feel like a concubine in a seraglio,” she said, stretching out in leisurely fashion.

  “I’m not sure the clothes are quite right,” Gideon observed, taking the monstrously long pole from the boathouse attendant.

  A punt with a trio of laughing undergraduates was approaching as Gideon pushed off from the bank. The punter dug his pole energetically into the mud, failed to pull it up in time, and the punt slid gracefully out from under him, leaving him hanging on to the pole in the middle of the river. There was riotous applause from the spectators on the bank, and Prudence watched with some sympathy as the luckless punter did the only thing he could—dropped into the water while his punt came to a stranded stop a few yards distant.

  “Are you sure you can do this?” she asked Gideon again.

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” he scolded. “I’m not some callow undergrad, I’ll have you know.”

 
“No,” she agreed. “That you’re not.” She regarded him with slightly narrowed eyes. “I wonder if you ever were.”

  He didn’t answer, merely pushed the pole into the riverbed, let it slide back up in his hands with an instant and to-the-manor-born rhythm. Prudence lay back on the cushions, replete with lunch and wine, her eyelids drooping as the afternoon sun warmed them, creating a soft amber glow behind. Idly she trailed a hand in the cold river water and listened to the sounds of the world around her, laughter and voices, birdsong, the steady rhythmic plash and suck of the pole. London seemed many miles away, and the brisk chill of that morning’s drive a mere memory.

  Gradually she became aware that the sounds of other punters had vanished and now there were only the river sounds, the quack of a mallard, the trill of a thrush. She opened her eyes slowly. Gideon was watching her, his gaze intense and intent. Automatically she took off her glasses to wipe them on her handkerchief.

  “Is something the matter? Do I have a smudge on my nose? Spinach in my teeth?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing’s the matter. Quite the opposite.”

  Prudence sat up straighter on the cushions. There was something lurking in the depths of those piercing gray eyes that sent a shiver of suspense up her spine and made her scalp prickle. She had a sense of imminent danger. But paradoxically, no sense of threat. Her own eyes seemed locked on his and she couldn’t avert her gaze.

  Dear God, what was she getting herself into?

  With a supreme effort of will she broke the locked gaze and forced herself to cast an apparently casual glance at the scenery as she replaced her glasses. They had reached a point where the river branched around a small islet.

  Gideon took the left-hand fork and the punt slid past a lush grassy bank with sides that sloped with gentle invitation down to the river. A small hut was set back a little on the bank. “I think it’s safe enough to take this side at this time of year,” he said as lightly as if that intense but silent exchange had never taken place.

  “Why wouldn’t it be safe?” She looked around with sharpened curiosity.

  “Over there lies Parsons’ Pleasure,” he said with an airy gesture of his free hand towards the grassy bank and the little hut. “Had the water not been too cold for swimming, we would have been obliged to take the other side, which is not nearly so pretty.”

  Prudence regarded him warily. There was a distinct note of mischief in his voice, a hint of laughter in its quiet depths. “What’s swimming got to do with it?” she asked, knowing she was supposed to. She felt like a sidekick in a comic routine at the Music Hall.

  “Parsons’ Pleasure is the private bathing spot for male members of the university. Since it’s exclusively for men, bathing suits are considered unnecessary,” he informed her with some solemnity. “So women are forbidden to punt on this stretch of the Cherwell.”

  “Yet another example of male privilege,” Prudence observed. “But I fail to see how women can be forbidden on this piece of the river. It’s a free country, no one owns the water.”

  “I rather guessed that would be your reaction,” he said. “And you’re by no means the first. I’ll tell you a story, if you like.”

  “I like,” she said, once again lying back on the cushions. The danger seemed to have passed for the moment, although she was not blind or fool enough to imagine it would not again rear its head.

  “Well, on one glorious, hot summer day, while the parsons were taking their uninhibited pleasure on that bank, an enterprising group of women decided to protest this bastion of male privilege, as you put it.”

  Prudence grinned. “You mean they punted past?”

  “Precisely. Although I believe they were rowing. Anyway, as the story goes, all the gentlemen leaped to their feet, covering their private parts with towels, all except for one notable scholar, who shall remain nameless, who reacted by wrapping his head in a towel.”

  Prudence struggled to keep a straight face. This was not a tale a respectable gentleman should tell any respectable gentlewoman. The image, however, was deliciously absurd.

  Gideon’s expression remained solemn, his voice grave as he continued, “When questioned by his colleagues as to this peculiar reaction, the scholar is said to have replied: ‘In Oxford, I am known by my face.’”

  Prudence tried; she tried as hard as she could to stare at him with unmoving disapproval. “That is a most improper story,” she declared, a quaver in her voice. “It’s certainly not for a lady’s ears.”

  “Maybe not,” he agreed amiably. “But I doubt the Mayfair Lady would consider it anything other than delightfully amusing.” His eyes were laughing at her. “In truth, I believe there is nothing ladylike about the Mayfair Lady. You can’t fool me, Miss Prudence Duncan. You don’t have a prim and prudish bone in your body. And neither do your sisters.”

  Prudence gave up the struggle and began to laugh. Gideon began to laugh too. In his distraction, the punt pole slipped through his hands, and instead of making contact with the river bottom slid away from him. His laughter died on the instant. Swearing vigorously, he grabbed for it, swaying precariously on the stern of the punt as he tried to get control of the unwieldy pole. Water splashed over the stern, soaking his feet. Prudence was now laughing so hard, she couldn’t speak. What price the elegant, self-assured barrister now?

  Finally Gideon wrestled the pole into submission and resumed his firm but now rather damp stance on the stern. “That was no laughing matter,” he said rather stiffly. He was clearly put out at having been made to look like a clumsy amateur.

  Prudence took off her glasses again to wipe her eyes as tears of laughter streamed down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to laugh at you. But you looked as if you were wrestling a sea serpent. A truly modern Laocoön.”

  Gideon didn’t deign to reply. She took her trailing hand from the water, aware that her fingers were growing numb with the cold, and said solicitously, “Your feet are so wet. Do you have any dry socks?”

  “Why would I?” he asked somewhat sourly.

  “Perhaps we could buy some on our way back to the hotel. You can’t squelch your way back to London. You’ll catch your death. Perhaps we could get you a mustard bath at the Randolph before we start driving home. They say it can ward off a chill. You wouldn’t want— Oh!” Her sweet-voiced speech was abruptly cut off by a shower of water as Gideon pulled the pole from the river with sufficient vigor to send a significant quantity of the Cherwell spraying across the punt.

  “You did that deliberately,” Prudence accused, brushing at the drops scattered across her dress, shaking out her booted feet.

  “Not a bit of it,” he said innocently. “It was purely accidental.”

  “Liar. I was only thinking of your well-being.”

  “Liar,” he fired back. “You were making mock.”

  “Well, it was rather funny,” she said. “On top of the story.” Her laughter, her pure enjoyment of the last few minutes, had brought a soft glow to her cheeks, and once again, with her glasses now in her lap, the lustrous sparkle of her eyes was revealed. Gideon began to think that his momentary discomfort had probably been worth it just to produce that effect.

  “Well, since we’re both somewhat damp, I think it’s time to turn around,” he said, glancing up at the sky through the yellowing tendrils of the weeping willows that lined the bank. “It’s going to get really chilly once the sun goes down.”

  “It’s going to be a very cold drive home,” Prudence observed. She replaced her glasses, well aware of his thoughtful scrutiny of a minute earlier. Thoughtful and definitely appreciative. The air between them was taut and singing with tension.

  “You have your furs,” he reminded her. “And we’ll break the journey in Henley for dinner.”

  They handed in the punt and began to walk back briskly towards St. Giles. “Gideon, I can hear you squelching,” Prudence said as they passed a men’s outfitters. “Go in there and buy yourself some socks.”


  “I’m not going to admit to some shopkeeper that I got wet in a punt,” Gideon stated.

  “Then I’ll buy them.” Before he could argue, Prudence had disappeared into the shop, setting the bell ringing. She emerged within five minutes with a paper bag. “There.” She presented it to him. “One pair of black socks. Large. I guessed the size, but I don’t think you have particularly small feet.”

  He took the bag, peered inside. “They have a pattern on them.”

  “It’s just the ribbing on the silk,” she said. “It’s not really a pattern at all. You should be grateful I didn’t buy you plaid.”

  Chapter 13

  They stopped at the same hostelry in Henley where they’d stopped for coffee that morning. It was dark by then and Prudence hurried into the warm, softly lit lounge, already glad of her furs. She wondered for a fleeting instant if Gideon had reserved a table for dinner, but it was only a fleeting instant. He was not a man to leave anything to chance. They were greeted as expected guests, ushered into a cozy private room, where a fireplace gave out comforting warmth. Sherry and whisky decanters stood on the sideboard, and as Prudence shed her outer garments, Gideon poured drinks.

  “They seem to know you here,” she observed, taking her glass and sitting down in a deep chintz-covered armchair beside the fire.

  “It’s been a favorite spot of mine since my undergraduate days.” He took the opposite armchair. “I took the liberty of ordering dinner beforehand.”

  “On the telephone?”

  “How else?” He sipped his whisky. “The Dog and Partridge is renowned for its local Aylesbury duckling. Plain roasted with a touch of orange sauce, it’s hard to fault, so I hope you like duck.”

  Prudence thought he sounded a little anxious and found it both refreshing and surprisingly endearing that over some things he was not surging with confidence in his own supremacy. “I love duck,” she said.