The young man smiled uncomfortably. “I’m sure we don’t mean any insult by the matter.”
“But take this friend of yours, for example. He was a handsome enough fellow – if I remember correctly – but he hadn’t any scope of imagination for speaking about things that a lady might enjoy. I don’t mean that he ought to have talked about needlepoint, but perhaps the classics or the turning of the seasons or even politics.”
“I wasn’t aware that ladies enjoyed politics.”
“Some do.”
The man seemed to pause and tilted his head to the side. “Earlier, you said my friend spoke at length of Tattersall’s?”
“He had a racehorse he bought there – probably his first, as he was still a young man at the time – and it was clearly the first really beautiful thing he’d ever owned. He spoke on and on about its attributes, and though I remember very little about that day, I can still tell you that Prince of the Isle is a good hand taller than his counterparts and well-suited to day-driving.”
Nora stopped suddenly, pulled up short by the expression on the face of the gentleman she was talking to. His gaze had gradually iced over as she spoke, and now he drew his heels together like a general preparing to light into her with a real fury.
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling suddenly embarrassed. “I suppose I allowed myself to get carried away and speaking of your friend in an uncharitable way is likely frustrating. I really don’t know what came over me –”
“I think I could easily have allowed you to speak at length about the foolishness of my friend, Miss Pembroke,” the man said coldly, “as I’m sure ladies are wont to do when behaving in a flirtatious way with a gentleman.”
“Flirtatious –?”
“But I am afraid my pride cannot recover from the realisation that not only are your insults directed against me, but you have completely forgotten that I am the fool about whom you are speaking.”
Nora drew in her breath. “You mean…?”
“Prince of the Isle was my first racehorse, and I’m sure I was speaking about him because I cared about him a good deal at the time. But I see no harm in that compared with the scandal of having a young lady such as yourself speaking so openly and disrespectfully about the gentlemen in her company. I came over here to speak with you, hoping that some of the wild, country manners I had observed as a young man had mellowed over the years. But I see now that your faults are the same as they always were.” He shook his head.
“To think a moment ago you were talking about how we gentleman should watch our conversation in the presence of ladies. To think you were advocating for bluestocking behaviour in a roomful of fine people.” His voice was raising embarrassingly loud. Nora felt the eyes of the room turning to her. The gentleman leaned close. “I am relieved only that I have escaped the prospect of a dance with you. And, if I were you, I would look carefully at my complexion and remember that my name is Robert Manion. That way when you meet me again you do not mistake me for my friend.”
Robert turned on his heel and made his way quickly across the floor. Nora felt a flush climb into her cheeks, and she saw out of her peripheral vision that not only the people closest to her but also Gerard in the corner had overheard Robert Manion’s outburst. She put a hand to her cheek and turned to leave, but David was there in a moment. His face was gentle and worried.
“I only heard part of that, Nora. Are you all right?”
She shook her head. “I made a fool of myself.”
“Come,” he said. “Explain it to me.”
She shook her head. “No, I’d like a few moments alone, please.”
***
Rum punch. Nora sighed and let her head drop into her hands. She wasn’t intoxicated by any stretch of the imagination, but she’d heard enough from one of the servers to know what elixir had loosened her tongue so profoundly earlier in the evening. She couldn’t believe how far she’d gone, speaking so frankly to a virtual stranger about his friend; discovering that it was the man himself, and all in front of Gerard – that was what bothered her the most, if she was really honest with herself. All this in front of the man who had earlier seemed so uninterested in her, the man she considered so handsome and genteel. But why should he be interested in her, after all? Why, when she was so clearly intent on driving her own reputation into an early grave?
She sat down on a window seat at the edge of the room, wondering how far the whispers would go. Her parents had been near at hand when Robert Manion had put her in her place, but she knew that enough wagging tongues were there to ensure that by the end of the night Mr and Mrs Pembroke knew just what her daughter had done. Worse, they would probably hear about things she hadn’t done that had been embellished in the story.
As if in answer to her thoughts, Nora suddenly saw the gentleman in question, Robert Manion, walking by arm-in-arm with a young lady. In the next moment she recognised Miss Eleanor and, feeling uncomfortable, shrank into the window seat so as to be undetectable to the passing conversationalists, inadvertently placing herself in a position to eavesdrop.
“I heard what just transpired,” Eleanor was saying as they came to a stop in front of a well-placed fern. “I really don’t know what has got into that Miss Pembroke. Her brothers seemed like they turned out so well, but you know what people say about the youngest children never having a chance to learn what they need to do well in the world.”
Nora blushed in frustration, nearly rising from behind the fern to interject herself, but Manion’s comments put her back in her place in a moment.
“I knew her briefly a few years ago. She was younger then, but just as headstrong. I think it’s what comes of a lady determining that her country upbringing is sufficient to carry her in the world outside her own county. You can’t rely on what your governess taught you anymore. You can’t rely on your country manners.”
Nora listened, feeling the hurt stab into her with every word. She was angry too. Angry that these people felt they had the right to gossip about her. Angry that they considered themselves so superior to her. But beyond that, angry that she was letting their opinion matter. Always before she had been able to distance herself from public complaints by determining that they were of no real importance. Always before she had been happy to say that as long as she had the good opinion of her brothers and her family, she would be satisfied. But for the first time she felt the genuine sting of knowing that she had been misunderstood and misjudged, and she knew at the heart of it that she was bothered because of the memory of the tall, handsome man who had seen it all happen.
Chapter 6
“What was that about?” William walked across the room and stood by Gerard and David.
Gerard looked at David, who nodded back at him. “I think Lord Colbourne was close enough to hear the entire exchange.”
“I feel uncomfortable relaying it,” Gerard said slowly. In truth, he had been rather startled by Robert Manion’s response to what he had viewed as an innocent mistake and, even in the most negative of lights, simple teasing comments from Nora. But she had been so very forward, and men in this city did not much like having their faults held up before them like a mirror.
“I would like to know what I can do to help,” William said soberly.
Gerard sighed. “The gentleman was Robert Manion, a dandy from Manchester who frequents London in his down time. I know him only in passing ways, and don’t have a very high opinion of him.”
“It feels like you are building a defence for something Nora did.”
David raised his eyebrows. “Wise, my brother is.”
Gerard shook his head. “I can only tell you what I saw. She mistook this fellow for his own friend, and when he was engaging her in what might be considered conversation marked with romantic interest, she spoke about a bad impression she’d received four years ago at a picnic of sorts, when his friend kept on talking at length about Tattersall’s and his racehorse.” Gerard suddenly felt the urge to smile, remembering how flippantly N
ora had told off the man, not knowing his true nature. “And if I recall she did stray a bit into a discussion on politics and the unfair stigma against bluestocking women.”
“A favourite topic of hers,” David said drily. “Hold on, though. I remember this fellow at the picnic. We were all there, William, and we heard him going on and on about his horse and trying to show off to the ladies. We joked about him for weeks…” he trailed off suddenly, and Gerard could see that no further explanation was necessary, either to him or to William.
“That man was Robert Manion,” William said quietly.
“Yes,” Gerard said. “He seemed to take some offense to the comments and left in a hurry.”
David rolled his eyes. “My heavens,” he said. “These people do have a droll way of carrying on. It isn’t Nora’s fault, is it, if a gentleman can’t find it in his nature to take a joke? And how was she to know – that’s an awful long time ago and I didn’t even recognise the lad. He’s all grown now, with the most dreadful sideburns.”
“But the Manions are well-respected,” William said. Gerard could read in his friend’s voice the rest of his fear, that Nora had inadvertently poked a beast that would not soon forget the insult. The Manions were social powerhouses in London during the season, and doors would begin closing as soon as the ball had drawn to a just conclusion.
As the night progressed, however, Gerard saw that his prediction had been too conservative. The gossip and cold shoulders seemed to have taken a stern hold even before the ball was finished.
Gerard heard a few whispered statements, and then came upon a group of women who, not seeing him with any of the Pembrokes at that moment and not knowing of his intimate connection with them, pulled him aside and begin enquiring at once after his knowledge and association with the now infamous Nora Pembroke.
“The remarkable thing,” one of the older women said, fanning herself furiously and talking in the loudest whisper that Gerard had ever heard, “is that I remember when young Miss Pembroke was first introduced to society. At that time, I thought to myself that she would be an insult to the propriety of the landed gentry, and I told everyone so. Don’t you think it was absolutely scandalous what the girl did to poor Mr Manion?”
Gerard blinked, taken aback by how direct this gossip had become. “Were you there, Mrs Wilson,” he enquired slowly, “that you should have such an intimate idea of the nature of the conversation?”
“I wasn’t,” the lady said, clearly not picking up on the root criticism in Gerard’s words. “But I hardly think I needed to, after hearing the story from Mr Manion’s own lips.”
Gerard felt a surprising well of frustration in his chest, as though the woman were attacking his own sister. “Mr Manion thought it the gentlemanly thing to walk about sharing such information at will?”
“You needn’t sound so reproving,” another of the women interjected coldly. “It wasn’t just this one incident. It was also a matter of course that Miss Pembroke on many occasions behaved towards Mr Manion and others in a way not befitting of a young lady. And as we owe so much to the Manion family, I think it hardly worthwhile to further encourage friendships with such a destructive girl.”
“And others?” he said quietly.
“Pardon me?”
“You said Mr Manion and others were affected by Miss Pembroke’s presumed rudeness. Would you care to tell me who these others are exactly?”
The women looked at each other, clearly having no one to back up their claims, but Gerard could see just as surely that they would continue believing the worst about Nora until some other thing were discovered in her favour. Feeling mildly disgusted, he extricated himself from the group and walked across the room towards where Nora was sitting by herself.
As he approached, he slowed, for a group of five young women Nora’s age were passing her in a huddle. He didn’t want to get in the middle of that mass of conversation, but just as he was planning to go in the other direction, he saw Nora stand to curtsy to the girls, and instead of talking to her they drew tighter together, turned their heads away, and kept walking.
Gerard had never paid much close attention to William Pembroke’s younger sister, but he knew with certainty that she had never been one to back down from a fight, and she was always, for better or for worse, at the centre of the social circle in which she ran. To see her outcast like this over what amounted to an abuse of a misunderstanding was distressing.
To add to that, instead of demanding a confrontation, Nora turned and walked out of the room, down one of the side hallways, deeper into the Emersleys’ estate. It was unlike her, and it told Gerard in a glance that she had suffered more cold shoulders than these in the past few hours. He followed her almost without thinking, without stopping to consider that perhaps David or William or even James would be a better choice to comfort her.
He wondered as he walked if he was feeling guilty for how short and sharp he had been with her earlier, how he had let his mother’s pressuring encourage him to jump to conclusions he shouldn’t have indulged. He should have just talked to her like she was a normal, intelligent person, instead of assuming she had some sort of untoward designs in his direction.
He was surprised to see her slim yellow-clad form pass the first few doors and turn instead at the end of the hall, clearly wanting to be as alone as she could manage. Still, Gerard pressed on. He passed through the door she had used and out onto the back balcony, a full floor above the garden. It was quieter here, though the strains of music could still be heard reaching fingers through the garden, and he could almost hear the breeze in the well-manicured leaves and grounds below.
He looked and saw that Nora had taken up a position at the far end of the balcony, sitting down on a bench. She had her knees drawn up under her chin, her feet up on the bench like a little girl, and her head tipped down. Gerard hadn’t expected that. He felt he might now be intruding, but he also felt that he’d gone too far to turn back now. He stepped out onto the balcony and cleared his throat lightly to alert her to his presence. She jumped visibly, her head snapping up at once, and she drew back into the wall as though for a moment she thought she could hide in the shadows and go unnoticed.
“Miss Pembroke?” He took a step further into the moonlight. She looked up at him, her knees still drawn up beneath her chin, frozen like an animal about to run. He was reminded again of how lovely she had become, and there in the silver moonlight her eyes looked like jewels. “May I disturb you?”
She came to herself then and seemed to realise how much impropriety was conveyed by her chosen position. She dropped her knees at once, tucking in her ankles and arranging her skirt. “Lord Colbourne. I’m…I’m so sorry. Were you wanting some time on the balcony? I can slip away.”
“No, actually.” He came over and held out a hand to the expanse of bench beside her. “I was hoping to speak with you for a moment. May I?”
She looked from him to the empty bench as though it was a snake waiting to strike and he the handler venturing to charm it. “With me?”
“Yes.”
“Of course,” she scooted even further away. “Of course you may sit. I can think of no reason why you shouldn’t sit.” She sniffed quickly, but the movement was so short and brief that he couldn’t be sure she had even been crying. She had tucked away the girl who had fled out here to weep as quickly as she’d allowed the girl out in the first place. “What was it you needed to discuss with me?”
A Baron Worth Loving: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 4
