Love and Other Perils

by Grace Burrowes

  The final conclusion to emerge from her musing was that she’d have to do something about Peter. Max Haddonfield might have been humoring her, indulging in an unlooked-for frolic, or something else, but he’d been respectful, tender, passionate, considerate—in every way, he’d been a delightful lover.

  To tolerate Peter’s intimate attentions, even in an abstract sense, was beyond Antonia. She knew that now and was grateful for the clarity her encounter with Max had given her.

  “Though I’m not to get the wrong idea,” she murmured as the coach slowed. “Whatever that meant.”

  Max had been prepared to put up with Lord Hamblin’s bleating over the course of an informal, masculine supper the likes of which he often endured at his various clubs. In his experience, one could either do science or talk about doing science.

  The men and women who did science could be coaxed into discussing their work, but they didn’t wave it about in general conversation like some sign of royal favor. The real scientists tended to gravitate to alcoves, where those who believed in Newton’s corpuscular theory of light could debate with the theory’s detractors by the hour.

  Hamblin, however, had assembled a dozen men, each of whom seemed determined to out-talk his neighbor on some arcane subject or other. The meal was informal, meaning conversation did not limit itself to guests immediately to one’s left or right, but instead flew across the table, up and down, and from corner to corner.

  The debate made up in liveliness what it lacked in academic expertise.

  “But if a miasma is responsible for the spread of disease,” Mr. Peter Nagle said, “then one could reduce the likelihood of contagion by affixing large fans to the rooftops of Mayfair and creating a steady wind in the direction of the river.”

  Nagle had apparently forgotten that people lived on both sides of the Thames, also to the east, west, south, and north of Mayfair.

  “Miasmas have never been proven,” another fellow snapped. “Contagion hasn’t been proven. God’s will controls the spread of disease, but I will be damned if man’s will shan’t control the spread of progress and that means steam power!”

  A thumping round of hear-hear’s followed, while Max took a surreptitious glance at his pocket watch.

  “Away with us to the withdrawing room, friends,” Lord Hamblin said, rising. “Let the footmen be about their work while we solve the pressing problems of civilization.”

  If consuming vast quantities of port was a pressing problem of civilization, Hamblin’s guests were solving it at a great rate. Max had limited himself to one glass to be sociable, but he didn’t particularly care for port.

  “Haddonfield, glad you could join us,” Hamblin said, falling in step beside Max. “What a lot of noise, eh?”

  “Enthusiasm,” Max replied. “Ideas cannot be developed into theories if somebody isn’t enthusiastic about the endeavor.”

  “You have a few ideas, I’m told,” Hamblin said. “Let’s nip into the library, shall we?”

  The herd of guests went arguing and debating on down the corridor, while the library was blessedly quiet. A roaring fire crackled in the hearth, and the scent of beeswax blended with the aroma of old books. The room was elegantly appointed, with oak wainscoting, gilded pier glasses, and the usual assemblage of aging portraits.

  “You have a sizable collection,” Max said. “You must be very proud of your library.” What would Antonia make of his lordship’s literary selections?

  A young woman rose from a reading chair turned toward the hearth. “Uncle, good evening.”

  She was pretty in a pale, blond way, and her gaze said she knew she was pretty. She also very likely knew that standing immediately before the fire in a silk gown emphasized her endowments.

  “My niece,” Hamblin said, clearing his throat. “Miss Jessica Huntly, may I make known to you the honorable Mr. Maximus Haddonfield.”

  Max bowed, though the form of address bothered him. As an earl’s son, on formal occasions he could be announced as an honorable. This occasion was far from formal.

  “Mr. Haddonfield, a pleasure.” Miss Huntly curtsied, tipping forward enough to display her cleavage.

  “You indulging in one of them dreadful novels, Jess?” Hamblin asked.

  “Poetry,” she said. “Mr. Haddonfield, do you enjoy poetry?”

  “I do, particularly the pastoral variety.” Max did not, however, enjoy being waylaid by design. Miss Huntly looked familiar, and she brought to mind a snippet of gossip Max had heard in the men’s retiring room the previous night. “What has caught your fancy this evening?”

  She slanted him a glance. “I prefer French verse at this hour of the day. The French know how to be both subtle and bold, don’t you agree?”

  Oh, for God’s sake. “I am no expert on French poetry, Miss Huntly. My interests are largely scientific.”

  Hamblin patted his niece’s shoulder. “Be a good girl and run along, Jess. Mind you avoid the company parlor. A lot of rogues and scalawags masquerading as men of science in there.”

  He winked at his niece and she offered Max another curtsy, then withdrew, her book forgotten—if she’d been reading one.

  “Dratted girl set her cap for Peter Nagle,” Hamblin said. “Nagle is a handsome devil, and he has possibilities, but that’s about all he has—and charm, of course. I could not humor Jess’s fancies where he’s concerned.”

  Max did not know Mr. Peter Nagle, though he’d heard enough of his bloviations over dinner to conclude that Nagle was no engineer.

  “Perhaps we should rejoin the company in the drawing room?” Max had a sneaking suspicion this chance meeting with Miss Huntly had been anything but chance, and the sooner he returned to the other guests, the better.

  “Jess is a pretty little thing.”

  Clearly, Susannah and Della had been matchmaking—again. “Your niece is lovely. I have no doubt she’ll make some fellow very happy.” And that fellow will not be me. Max started for the door.

  “She has settlements, Haddonfield,” Hamblin said, a bit too loudly. “A younger son like you—a fourth legitimate son—could use a wife with some means. I knew your father, and he was a good soul, but not the soundest manager of finances.”

  “But you know nothing about me,” Max said, which sat ill with him for Miss Huntly’s sake if not for his own. “You and I were introduced only last night, sir, and raising this topic with me now is very close to unseemly.”

  “I know.” Hamblin looked around the library, a literary temple to wealth and comfort, his expression sheepish. “I’m afraid Jess has been a bit unseemly. I am hoping to marry her off before spring.”

  Before another social Season, in other words. “I will wish you the joy of that venture, my lord, but women have means of thwarting schemes they do not participate in willingly.”

  Hamblin led the way into the corridor. “She was willing to meet you, and contrary to your supposition, I know a great deal about you. One of your brothers is an earl, another—from the wrong side of the blanket—is some sort of nabob with a barony—most unusual that, two titles in one family. Two of your sisters married into titled families as did two of your brothers. Jess could do worse, as she well knows. I would make it worth your while, Haddonfield.”

  This scheme was desperate only insofar as it had been attempted without any pretense of finesse. The basic approach—connections on one side, wealth on the other—was the sine qua non of the advantageous match.

  And Max, somewhat to his surprise, wanted no part of it. Not now.

  “Think about it,” Hamblin said, ushering Max into the guest parlor. “That’s all I ask.”

  Max had better things to think about, such as how a librarian came to be riding around London in an elegant coach, and whether that librarian would be glad to see him when he brought Beelzebub around to join Lucifer in protecting the books from nonexistent mice.

  “I saw our host drag you into the library.”

  The voice belonged to Peter Nagle, who was, indee
d, a good-looking blond fellow of medium height.

  “Dragged, Mr. Nagle?”

  “Last week it was Bletchford, an earl’s nephew. It’s plain enough that I’m out-gunned and out-maneuvered, but a prudent man has contingencies in place.”

  Nagle had imbibed freely at dinner, and he held a glass of port now.

  “Contingencies are always a sound idea. Tell me, how do you intend to power those rooftop fans you’d like to install in Mayfair?”

  For most men with an interest in scientific matters, that question should have led to a twenty-minute discourse on failed prototypes, tangential applications of the successful design, and schedules by which the great innovation could be brought profitably to market.

  Nagle grimaced at his drink. “I will power them with good old-fashioned human sacrifice.”

  “Perhaps you’ve had enough port, Mr. Nagle.”

  His gaze fixed on Hamblin, who was in earnest discussion with a knot of acolytes devoted to steam engines. “I will marry for money, Haddonfield. Nothing dishonorable about it. I’ve a second cousin barreling toward spinsterdom for all the usual reasons—poor thing is prim and plain—and she’ll have me if I put a bit of effort into charming her. Women like charm.”

  Antonia wasn’t swayed by charm. She appreciated scholarship for its own sake, as well as honesty, affection, common sense, passion. Gifts Max had to give in abundance.

  And she was leagues away from prim and plain.

  “In my experience,” Max said, “which is admittedly based on a very small sample, a bride likes to feel she’s valued for herself, not for her settlements. If you find her prim and plain, she’ll probably sense that.” Max’s sisters had intuition that no sane brother, much less a husband or suitor, would ever discount, and science had nothing to say to it.

  “Antonia isn’t exactly attuned to subtleties,” Nagle replied, tossing back a quarter of his port. “She sent an earl packing last spring. Told him to keep his title and his family seat in Dorset and she’d keep her settlements. He wasn’t old, wasn’t homely, wasn’t lacking in manners. First overture she’d had in ages. She regrets that decision now, I’ll warrant. Somebody has to save her from herself.”

  Max could see his Antonia doing that—telling a man to pike off, regardless of what the world thought of her decision. Perhaps the name Antonia imparted a certain fixity of purpose to the ladies fortunate enough to be so called.

  “So you’ll save her by getting your hands on her funds?”

  Nagle wiggled his eyebrows. “She’ll get her hands on me. Let’s hope I can rise to the occasion, so to speak.” He smiled a conspiratorial male smile, and Max felt a frisson of distaste on behalf of the prim and plain spinster facing such a mercenary union.

  “Do I know this lady?”

  More of the port went down Nagle’s gullet. “You might, being an earl’s son and all. Lady Antonia Mainwaring is long of tooth, short of temper, and no sort of dancer at all, but she’s to be my wife, once I complete a period of mandatory doting. I will fortify myself with dreams of all her lovely money and somehow contrive to go manfully to my fate. Wish me luck.”

  “Lady Antonia Mainwaring?” Max’s own voice sounded far away, and the hubbub of other conversations coalesced into a dull, unpleasant roar.

  “You do know her, then. A long meg, has no use for fashion, deucedly independent, and approaching her last prayers with some dreadful novel in hand. If I’m lucky she’ll grant me a white marriage, though she’ll probably want babies of me.”

  Nagle made that fate sound like transportation to seven years of hard labor.

  “You’ll excuse me,” Max said, clamping down hard on the impulse to plough his fist into Nagle’s gut. “I must bid the company goodnight, though I do have a question for you, Mr. Nagle.”

  Nagle waved an elegant hand in a circular motion.

  “When did your understanding with her ladyship arise?”

  Nagle let out a slow belch. “This very morning after our usual cozy breakfast—kissing cousins and all that. I’m to do the pretty for a bit and then we’ll be married. She can call the tune now, but once the vows are spoken, our household will run as I see fit. Make no mistake about that.”

  Max left Nagle swilling his port, offered Hamblin the barest semblance of a goodnight, and all but stumbled out into the cold night air.

  “Where the ’ell ’ave you been?”

  When Dagger dropped his haitches, he was upset. That fact penetrated Max’s mental fog as the bitter night wind and half-frozen feet had not.

  “I have been out.” Max whipped off his scarf, tossed it at a hook, and missed. “Men of science, port and postulations, Lord Humbug’s dinner.”

  “That lot went home more than an hour ago, and you left early.”

  An eddy of rational thought joined the bewilderment, hurt, and shame swirling through Max’s brain.

  “Spying on me, Dagger?”

  “I waited for you. A bloke ought not to be out on his own, late at night. This time of year can get desperate for them as have not.”

  “Good word, desperate.” Max trailed his scarf along the floor. A single orange paw protruded from under the sofa, but Beelzebub was apparently not in the mood to play.

  Dagger picked up the scarf. “Are you foxed?”

  “Not in the sense you mean. I have not over-imbibed, though I did consider indulging.”

  “You’re talking careful, like all the words are trying to hide from you. Gin does that, makes the words shy.”

  Max hung his cloak on a peg. “Stupidity does it too, though anybody inebriated on gin qualifies as wanting sense.”

  “You have prodigious sense. Take your gloves off, sir.”

  Max took off his gloves and looked at his hands, hands that had worshiped a woman who apparently thought a lark on a library sofa was a fine way to celebrate her betrothal to Mr. Peter Nagle.

  “My data does not support your hypothesis, Dagger.”

  “Boots next, sir. What hypothesis would that be?”

  The hypothesis that I was special to Antonia—Lady Antonia. Max sat on the sofa and pulled off a boot. He’d worn his good pair, which Dagger took great pride in keeping shiny and spruce.

  “Sorry, Dagger. These will need some attention.”

  “I’ll have ’em cleaned up before cockcrow. Tell me about your hypothesis.”

  Talking over an affair of the heart with a boy made about as much sense as talking science to a lot of cats, but Max’s sense had deserted him the moment he’d become Lady Antonia Mainwaring’s lover.

  “I have been a fool,” Max said, pulling off the second boot. “There’s abundant data to support that conclusion. I had hoped I was through being ridiculed, humored, and condescended to.”

  Dagger set Max’s boots beneath the window. “Did the other fellows at supper laugh at you?”

  “They did not. Failed experiments befall us all. A true scientist feels no shame in proving a theorem faulty. Science advances on the strength of such proofs.” How lofty that sounded, how ridiculous.

  “Then what the ’ell is plaguing you?”

  “My pride, I suppose.” And the sense of having read a set of results all wrong, having missed clue after clue as to the true nature of the undertaking. Perfect speech and manners, a thorough knowledge of literature such as only a woman of leisure could acquire. Fine clothing, a solid command of French. . .

  And yet, for an heiress, Lady Antonia had seemed genuinely distressed at the thought of losing her post at the library. She was honestly concerned that each patron have the books that would please them and meet their needs. She’d been sorely vexed by Paxton’s idiocy but hadn’t known how to manage him. She had been genuinely moved by Lucifer’s situation.

  No pattern emerged to explain those contradictions. “Have we any brandy?”

  Dagger sneezed and sniffed. “Your head won’t thank you in the morning for adding brandy to whatever’s ailing you. You never did check my calculations.”

 
“Use your handkerchief, for pity’s sake.”

  An odd sound came from under the sofa.

  “Dagger, what was that?”

  Dagger abruptly busied himself banking the fire, making a particular racket with the poker and tongs. “Probably old Hannibal having a dream. Maybe he fancies some lady cat who’s not having any of his—”

  “Hannibal is too cerebral for such mundane pursuits.” Lady Antonia was not mundane. She was fine, intelligent, lovely, and apparently free with her favors despite having plighted her troth to Peter Numbskull.

  Except, Antonia was no flirt. Max knew that the same way he knew Lucifer was happy in his new home, the way he knew his sister Della was not happy and hadn’t been for some time.

  The odd noise came again, not a growl or a meow, much smaller than that. “Dagger, what have you done?”

  A very small white paw darted from beneath the sofa and then disappeared.

  “You said Beelzebub was leaving, so that meant we needed a replacement.”

  “We do not need replacements. We make room for them.” An inaccurate statement. Max needed the replacements. He needed to know that even as his science went nowhere, and his family regarded him as a harmless eccentric, he could effect some positive change in the world even if only for stray felines.

  The white paw appeared again, then a second paw, then a tiny pink nose followed by the head of a small white kitten. Very small.

  “He were all alone,” Dagger said, “curled up in the hedge, no mama, no mates. Little bloke was probably waiting to die on such a night.”

  Was there anything more wretched than a skinny kitten? “You gave him a very small portion of milk?”

  “Lapped it up like a seaman at his grog, then I offered him a bit of haddock. He knew exactly what to do with that too.”

  Max gently extracted the kitten from its lair and held it up. The little beast’s coat was clean—when a cat’s hygiene went to pot, the animal was truly doomed—and its eyes were a beautiful, clear blue.

  “He’s likely deaf,” Max said. “That might be why his mother turned her back on him. He’ll need an indoor home or someplace with a very high walled garden.” A dwelling with that luxury was a rarity in London. Lady Antonia might enjoy such an amenity, having a claim to a pile of lovely money.