“A little.” Her voice was growing short of breath as her arm wore out with all the belly-rubbing. “I can sew up torn leather pretty well.”
“Not the same thing at all.”
“Oh Perry,” Grainne huffed. “Don’t you know I pay people to do my sewing? That’s what this countess business is all about.”
Now he laughed in earnest, making the colt — Reynard — lift up his head in alarm. “Silly boy, laughing is a good thing,” he said soothingly, rubbing at the horse’s neck. The taut heat of him thrilled Peregrin. There was so much life and speed and power flowing through this young horse’s body, nearly bursting through the flesh, and he wasn’t even fully grown yet, not even come into the speed he would possess in the months to come. In another year, when he was three, and eligible for the Derby, he would be unimaginably perfect.
The Derby! The Epsom Derby! That was the goal, by God. He gazed at his horse, stepping back again to admire the slope of the shoulder, the matching angle of the croup, the way the croup gave way to the high-set tail and hindquarters that were both long and deep. The colt was but lightly muscled now, but with conditioning and long gallops he would grow into a sleek athlete: his long elegant legs would grow taut with muscle; his coat would grow dappled with good grass and good oats, and so bursting with health they would plunge onto the downs at Epsom and show the world that Peregrin Fawkes was a horseman to be reckoned with.
And with the winnings this colt brought him there would be another racehorse, and another, and another, and someday, somehow he would buy enough land for a stud farm of his own. Peregrin slipped effortlessly into his mind’s eye, building castles in the air, heaping dreams upon dreams. He stopped seeing the colt before him and started seeing whole herds of horses, dazzling green fields that swept down to hedges loud with bird-song and willow-hung creeks, where broodmares grazed while their foals napped in the fitful English sun, and beyond a great training field, where jockeys galloped his beautiful fast horses in sweeping loops across the springy turf. He’d build a stand so that he could climb up and time their works, and he would bring horsemen there to show off his stock and sell his stallions’ services — he’d have several stallions, all top-notch English blood-horses of the very best pedigree — and then it would be off to the races, to Epsom, to Royal Ascot, wherever the purses were fat and the competition stiff, and there would be Mr. Peregrin Fawkes, the king of the turf.
“Have you noticed the way that girl looks at you, by the way?”
“What’s that?” Peregrin broke away from his dreams of Epsom glory with some difficulty. He blinked at Reynard; the horse turned a dark eye to study him in return, as if he knew of the flight of fancy Peregrin had been indulging in. “What girl?” He knew what girl.
“The Dean girl. The one I invited to the country. The one we were just talking about.” There was an edge to Grainne’s voice; she knew he was having her on.
Peregrin went on playing the fool anyway. “I don’t remember much about her. Except for the fact that she’s afraid of horses.” Peregrin remembered plenty more about her — he’d had more time to drink in her beauty while sitting across from her in the sunlit drawing room than he had in the rushed few glances at the Archwood party. He had not been mistaken in her gifts: blue eyes of a remarkable color and quality, gazing at him from a face so white it seemed carved from alabaster. She was too pale for his taste — it signified a wasted life, pent up indoors — but he could not deny that she was strikingly beautiful, nor the little thrill he had felt rush through him when their gazes met. If she learned to ride, if a little color flooded into those ivory cheeks — he felt aroused just thinking about how beautiful she would be, laughing down at him from the saddle.
But he saw no need to tell those things to Grainne.
“I saw you looking at her,” Grainne said.
“Oh?” Damn. “And what about her? What was she looking at?”
“She was looking at you the way Gretna looks at her feed bucket,” Grainne laughed. She stopped rubbing at the horse and stood back, panting with exertion. “I think she wants to eat you up.”
And you’re not the slightest bit jealous, thought Peregrin, although he really wasn’t surprised. It was interesting, though, that she had seen the connection between himself and the Dean girl. But — “Too bad the mama is a fortune hunter,” he said jokingly. “There goes my happiness.”
“You never know,” Grainne said darkly. “It does no one any good to try to predict the future. None of may end up where we expected.”
“Oh, Countess of Tivington, where has my girl in groom’s clothing gone?” Peregrin teased. “The first time I saw you, you were selling a horse to an old man by hitching up your skirts and riding astride.”
“That was a good match,” Grainne retorted, without the least bit of apology. “They are still hunting very happily together. I was very good at matching horses and riders.”
Peregrin just chuckled, although he was secretly pleased they had changed the conversation. He rubbed at Reynard — it was a good name, he thought, for a clever red colt — and let Grainne go on rambling about all of the happy horse and rider partnerships she had created, like some sort of equine society matchmaker, while he tried not to think about what would happen if that beautiful, quiet girl from the Dean drawing room came to live with them at Tivington.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lydia was a wallflower again.
It wasn’t even a dance, and she was a wallflower. Well, it was becoming her natural state. She was comfortable with it, as comfortable as one could be at a dance where no one wanted to talk to one. She didn’t want to talk to them, either, the lot of hypocrites. The lot of traitors, ready to turn their backs on her the moment a chance at a brilliant marriage came their way. She might not harbor any lasting feelings for Lord Hadley, but that didn’t mean she could forgive Alyssa for taking him from her — or her so-called friends for banding with Alyssa in the end.
The only problem with being a wallflower, well aside from the poisonous looks her mother was sending her way, was that the chairs at most parties were not terribly comfortable. The nice ones, the cushioned ones, were claimed by the older ladies the moment they arrived, to sit in court as if in thrones and judge the behavior and gowns of every young lady in the room. The extras, the hired chairs which appeared at every event in town, were meant to be abandoned frequently for dances, for trips to the punch-bowl, for walks on the terrace. They were hard, in short.
Lydia wriggled uncomfortably in a spindly gilt chair in Lady Hastings’ drawing room, while Margaret Brixton, the finest dancer in London, displayed that she had other useful and lady-like talents and played at the pianoforte for the delight of the other guests.
Lydia, who was a dreadful singer but a passing fair player, might have been the one at the instrument, the center of attention, while Lord Sutton stood appreciatively nearby, watching her every move. But she had been too quiet, she had been too retiring, and so Lady Hastings had hardly glanced in her direction before she called upon Miss Brixton to play.
Lydia knew it, and she sat stiffly in her chair and ignored the derisive looks of former friends, faulting her for giving up her place so easily. Lady Katherine knew it, and cast a wilting glance upon her only daughter. Not bold enough, not brave enough, not even trying, she said with every frosty look, and every glare had Lydia glued more and more tightly to her delicate chair. She doubted she would be able to get up and go into dinner. Perhaps they would not even notice her absence. Perhaps she had become so invisible that no one would even comment on the empty chair at the dinner table. In her miserable wallflower state of mind, she could imagine just such an unlikely event coming to fruition.
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to get what she wanted. She ought to pick herself up, she thought, and put on her smile and start flipping her fan at every eligible man in the room, starting with Lord Sutton. Because she wasn’t going to get Peregrin Fawkes. Better put him out of her mind, she told herself. Be
tter stop being a wallflower. Better get up! But she didn’t move.
The wallflower imagined the guests walking past, even pushing past her, mobbing to get to the open door and away from the little cloud in the corner, the disappointed female who was slowly disappearing into the draperies.
And she smiled, just a little, to herself.
It wasn’t just the jilting anymore, although that still smarted. She wasn’t in love with Hadley anymore — just the opposite. She remembered reading those words in the paper that morning, remembered taking slow, steady steps back up to her room, remembered the wild hot tears into her pillow, remembered the cold disgust for the man she had loved and the friend she had adored seeping into her heart.
It was a lack of trust, and a lack of optimism, and a sense of disillusionment, that had seated Lydia on a chair in the corner and robbed her of her popularity. Just for a moment, things had looked up — the spark she had felt in Fawkes’ arms, the Countess of Tivington’s unheralded interest, the brief moments when she thought she had really managed to wrangle a trip to Tivington. There were fantasies built up in those few happy hours — settlements from the wills of distant relatives, grants from mysterious benefactors, even, although it was most naughty of her, the indignity of a hasty marriage of necessity. But what was the embarrassment of a forced marriage when the result was a life with one’s true love?
And then there was the disappointment over the trip to Tivington. The canceled trip, the never-really-happening trip. Why had she thought, even for a moment, that her mother would let her go? Mary, she decided. Mary had put that thought in her head. And for a little while, while Margaret Brixton’s elegant white fingers tripped their way through a fluffy piece by Brahms, she thought she could actually blame Mary for the little bit of optimism she had felt tonight. Perhaps Mary had done it on purpose, so that she would be disappointed! So that she would listen to Mary next time. Wasn’t that Mary’s favorite thing, to bully her mistress into listening to her, to always remembering that Mary Knew Best? This might well have been a ploy on her maid’s part to remind her who was in the more clever one in their relationship.
But no, that wasn’t so, and it was shameful for Lydia to think such a thing. As the audience around her clapped with genuine murmurs of appreciation for the pleasure of Miss Brixton’s playing, Lydia sat stiffly in her lonely wallflower’s chair and knew that she could not blame Mary. Perhaps she and Mary were not getting along right now, but her maid, her friend of so many years, was not cruel. She was bossy and she was assertive and she was, Lydia was slowly realizing, disappointed with her station in life, but she was not cruel, and she still held some love for Lydia, somewhere beneath her hardening exterior. She wouldn’t have deliberately raised Lydia’s spirits only to see them crushed later.
Margaret Brixton launched into another tune, a more rollicking country song, and Lord Sutton actually put down his glass on the shining lid of the piano and did a little jig. The room burst into laughter; Lady Katherine chuckled obediently and shot dagger-eyes at her daughter.
Lydia just sighed and smiled weakly. But she knew she was going to have to do better. There would be no Tivington, there would be no Peregrin Fawkes, there would be no mysterious benefactors and there would most assuredly be no impropriety that would result in a special license and a country wedding. She knew that. Enough childishness, Lydia, she told herself sternly.
After the music had been passed back to the paid musicians, who went on sawing away at their string quartet with a little more cheer after the ale they’d been served in the kitchen during Miss Brixton’s interlude, Lydia got up and went to stand near the punch bowl. She was very thirsty, but she knew that if she actually served herself a glass of punch, her mother would probably die of shock and horror right there in Lady Hastings’ glorious claret-and-gold drawing room. And as unhappy as her mother made her, Lydia had no wish to make such a scene. So she stood near the table where the refreshments had been laid, and smiled around the room as if she was generally appreciating the ambience of a good party, and was only in-between partners to talk to.
And that is when Lord Sutton walked over to greet her.
Of course they had been introduced early in the evening, as soon as Lady Katherine could arrange it without actually skipping past Lady Hastings and snatching the poor man by the arm. So there was nothing improper about his approach now. But Lydia could not help the hammering of her heart or the flush of pink which crept up from her chest to her cheeks. He was quite a handsome man, it must be admitted, and he was already a viscount and someday to be an earl, and he already had a dizzying fortune. He was the man her mother had picked out for her and he wasn’t even a consolation prize for all the men she had let slip through her fingers (her mother’s summation) or that her mother had declined (the truth). If she could make him form an attachment to her, she could end all this miserable wallflower stuff forever. She could end all her mother’s poisonous glares and late-night diatribes. She could just get married, the way she was supposed to, and just be done with it.
It was the most relaxing idea she had had in months. To just be married and done with it. Yes, Lydia decided. Win him, and be done.
Peregrin’s face swam before her eyes as she tried to focus on Lord Sutton; the two could not be more different. Sutton was tall and broad from his forehead to his shoulders to his hips. He was, simply put, a very large man. He was powerful. He was a little dangerous. He was handsome, but there an edge to his jaw, and she could see a darkness where his beard fought against his valet’s close shave. His black hair was swept back from his face and cut short around his ears and neck, and his eyes, dark blue, glittered at her with a hunger that was nothing like the smoldering desire that she had seen in Peregrin’s gold-flecked eyes. He was like a panther she had seen in paintings from India, ready to pounce upon her. She could not help a little quail of fear, and yet, at the same time, a shiver of sensation through her middle that she was realizing was arousal. She didn’t like him, instinctively, but there was a magnetism to him, a maleness that her body could not ignore.
I love Peregrin, she thought desperately, remembering the tenderness of his smile as they had parted that afternoon in the drawing room. But it doesn’t matter, Lydia. And if you must settle, at least Sutton is handsome.
And so she smiled, as brilliantly as she could manage. And if it wasn’t the guileless trusting smile that she had dazzled the ton with nearly two years ago when she had made her bow, at least it was still a beautiful smile. She could see it in the way his face changed: his interest was piqued. His eyes flashed and his smile widened: white teeth gleamed at her. He was a panther, he was coming to eat her up.
He was the man she was going to have to marry, and she had made him notice her. Oh, well done, Lydia!
“Miss Dean,” he was now saying gently, his voice deep and rich, rich in nature and rich in gold both. He sounded every inch the landed nobleman, educated to a fare-thee-well, tamed and trained a courtly scholar. He was, in short, dazzling, even to a girl who had already lost her heart to another man. “I am sorry I did not have the pleasure of hearing you play tonight. I hear you are a lovely musician yourself.”
He had? Who on earth had told him that? Lydia managed to not shame herself by voicing her incredulous thoughts, but it was a near thing. Fortunately, she remembered everything. Lydia, the practiced flirt, was back in the game. “You are too kind, my lord,” she said, instead of asking him who on earth had told him such a falsehood about her musical talents, and then fluttered her fan to great effect, flicking her wrist and showing him her dainty hands. Then she lowered her eyelashes for good measure. “I am but a modest player,” she murmured, as if embarrassed. “I love the music, but it does not always love me back, you see.” A little wit, to show she was not stupid, but not too much, to hide that she might be clever.
“Hah! I am sure you not giving yourself enough credit. Perhaps later you will humor me and give me a song to dance to?” He put up his elbows and screwed
up his face comically and performed a few steps of a jig for her, as if they were in some common bar-room.
Lydia clapped her free hand to her mouth and giggled. “Stop, my lord! You will have the entire room looking at us.”
He was suddenly very close to her, very close and very large. How had he done that without her realizing and stepping backwards? She could feel his very heat, emanating from that broad chest, a furnace of muscle and flesh hidden beneath layers of wool and linen. “If they look at us, it will only be with envy,” he said quietly, and his hazel eyes were hot with an energy she could not name.
Lydia was utterly lost. She barely knew her own name with that erotic gaze on hers, and a reply would have been quite impossible. In a breach of manners that should have been disastrous, she gaped up at him with open mouth and wide eyes, speechless.
He smiled very slowly, very wolfishly, and her entire body seemed to wobble a little. She felt a clenching within that she could not name, and it was enough to make her close her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, his dark blue eyes were still intent upon hers, like a predator who has stalked its prey to ground and wants only the perfect moment to pounce.
“Let me get you a glass of punch, Miss Dean,” he offered, his voice husky and low-pitched, as if he was offering her something much more risque than a glass of punch.
She nodded, still unable to get command of her own tongue. He looked at her for a moment as if pleased with the state he had got her in, and then stepped around her to pour a glass of punch with markedly steady hands.
This, Lydia thought, was something she could not explain. This attention, this feeling, what was going on? He didn’t make her feel at all the way Peregrin did — there was no warmth of feeling here, there was no tenderness of emotion or desire to protect. Lord Sutton wanted her in that most rapacious male way, the very thing she had been warned about, and she was horrified to think that her traitorous body was responding to his every command.
The Honorable Nobody (Heroines on Horseback Book 2) Page 7
