How Not to Chaperon a Lady--A sexy, funny Regency romance

by Virginia Heath

  Griff stared at the diagram and then at his newest, wisest best friends in the entire world. ‘And how do I do that? When I am me and she is she and never the twain shall meet?’

  ‘Well,’ said Luke as Piers gestured for more champagne, ‘why don’t we make a list...?’

  Chapter Twenty

  The Marquess of T. was presented with a bill for ten pounds, six shillings and fourpence this morning, after the pleasure boat he stole and capsized on the Serpentine last night sank without a trace. When asked for an explanation of this outrageous behaviour by the park warden on duty, his tipsy lake-soaked companions, Lord E. and Mr P.,

  stated that they were merely celebrating the birth of the future Lord T. and had perhaps taken the tradition of wetting the baby’s head a step too far by thoroughly wetting their own as well...

  Whispers from Behind the Fan

  —August 1815

  Griff’s dark head was bent heavily over a diagram, his hand splayed in his rumpled hair and his expression so perplexed Charity could practically hear the cogs of his mind spinning as he worked through whatever problem currently consumed him so.

  In deference to both the late summer heat and his usual casual attire when working, his coat hung on the back of his chair so he could don it at a moment’s notice if the need arose. Piled high on one corner of his desk was the stack of books on every aspect of child rearing from pregnancy to teaching your offspring to read. She couldn’t help but smile at the leather bookmarks and scraps of paper which protruded neatly from the pages, noting his determined progress in each mighty tome because he absolutely had to understand the mechanics of everything.

  As if he sensed her he looked up, smiled somewhat gingerly then hastily slipped the drawing beneath a pile of others.

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Surely you mean good afternoon?’ She glanced pointedly at the no-nonsense wooden clock ticking on the mantel. ‘You had a late night. I hear Luke and Piers turned up out of the blue and then led you astray.’ He nodded and that seemed to pain him. ‘What time did you get back?’

  It had been the first evening when Griff hadn’t been in the hallway to greet her upon her return from the theatre and she had missed him. She had given up waiting for his return and drifted off some time around midnight. When she had inevitably awoken ill a little before dawn and he hadn’t come in to commiserate with her as he usually did, she had poked her head around their connecting door and found him sprawled face down, stark naked and dead to the world. To her shame, she had lingered over the splendid sight, enjoying the way the sunrise turned all that bare skin golden while casting intriguing shadows over the muscles which lay beneath it. He had a fine pair of shoulders, did Griffith Philpot, and lovely arms too. And his bottom...well that was quite distracting and had certainly taken her mind off her nausea for the minute or so she had gazed at it.

  He smiled sheepishly. ‘Two, I think, though I cannot be sure. My evil companions plied me with liquor and then things became a little hazy.’

  ‘I am sure your bracing swim in the Serpentine sobered you up.’

  ‘Ah...’ He winced. ‘You heard about that, did you?’

  ‘I didn’t hear about it, Griff—I read about it.’ She thoroughly enjoyed whipping the newspaper from behind her back and snapping it open. ‘You are finally all over the gossip columns! All of them.’ For effect, she cleared her throat and then read aloud her favourite sentence from the damning report. ‘Mr P. from Bloomsbury became quite distraught when he realised he had mislaid a single boot at some point during his midnight swim and had to be physically restrained to prevent him wading back in to search for it.’ She shot him her best impersonation of her mother’s disapproving glare over the top of the paper.

  ‘In my defence...’ He huffed out a groan and rested his head on the table. ‘I have no defence. It was an impetuous, reckless and stupid thing to do and I am truly sorry. If it is any consolation, I now have an entire battalion of invisible grenadier guards marching inside my cranium and my stomach has turned into a butter churn. And I loved those boots. They were Hoby’s and cost a fortune. After six months of perseverance, I had finally broken them in, and they fitted like a glove.’

  He looked so mortified, and so tragic, Charity resisted the temptation to sit upon his desk and stroke his hair. ‘Piers is in a worse state apparently and had to sit through Faith’s blistering lecture while hugging a bucket in his lap and Hope sent Luke straight to the doghouse the moment he returned because he in his drunken state fell over his own feet, broke the dressing table stool and woke the baby. He was last seen snoring on a bench in his garden still clutching the bunch of yellow roses he had hacked out of my mother’s garden, so he’s in the doghouse with her too. I know all this, because she sent me a note this morning inviting me to resume my music lessons with her and Signor Fauci this afternoon.’

  Griff lifted his head enough that he could glance at her mournfully. ‘When you deliver your blistering lecture, can I ask you not to shout? Or at least have enough mercy to postpone the shouting for an hour or two until I feel better? I only went out in the first place because they had extended the hand of friendship and I thought it might aid family relations.’

  ‘I shan’t be shouting.’ She smiled in sympathy. ‘I shan’t even be lecturing. Because it was good of you to try to heal the breach and I know what a bad and persuasive influence Luke can be. I am also quietly relieved to discover that you aren’t quite as sensible as you have always led me to believe...and because I am more than guilty of the odd impetuous, reckless and regrettable impulse one time or two, I am in no position to judge. People in glass houses should never throw stones.’ Then the smile turned wicked. ‘Although that pious magnanimity doesn’t mean I won’t be gloating for quite some time at your outrageous drunken exploits. Who’d have thought I would ever see the day that Gruff Griff the Kite-Hogging Fun-Spoiler would be hauled over the coals by the authorities for theft and wanton destruction?’

  ‘I think I was threatened with breach of the peace too.’ He looked thoroughly sick to the gills and miserable. ‘For singing at an ungodly volume on Piccadilly in the small hours before the unfortunate incident with the boat.’ That conjured up a hilarious image.

  ‘What were you singing?’

  ‘For the life of me, I cannot remember but by the hoarseness in my throat I do not doubt it was at volume.’

  ‘It sounds like you had a momentous night.’

  ‘One that I am still paying for now.’ He sat upright again and attempted a valiant smile despite his slightly grey pallor. ‘But it was self-inflicted, and while I am supremely grateful you have seen fit to spare me a blistering lecture, I deserve no sympathy for the state I am in and shall stoically soldier through it. So enough about my stupidity, how are you feeling?’

  ‘Oh, you know. It comes and goes. At the moment it is gone and I am grateful.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it.’

  The ever-present awkwardness began to descend again and before it settled fully Charity decided to end the conversation before it became stilted. ‘Anyway... I only stopped by to tell you that I am off to my mother’s now for that lesson in an attempt to further heal the chasm we created and then I am meeting Dorothy afterwards at the modiste’s for the final fitting of her wedding gown.’ She wanted to ask if she would see him later once she was done, but that felt too wifely.

  ‘Why don’t I drive you?’ Before she could answer he rang the bell to summon Mrs Gibbons and then, no doubt, his shiny red curricle. As he stood, she watched him briefly waver against the effort of it before he blew out a very controlled breath and shrugged on his coat. ‘We could have a spot of supper after all your visits and then I could take you to the theatre too. I might as well do something useful with the day as I think it’s fairly safe to assume that I am in no fit state to get any meaningful work done.’

  ‘Are you in a fit state to drive
? You do look a little...fragile.’

  ‘It will pass.’ He adjusted his cuffs and squared his shoulders. ‘And the fresh air will do me good.’

  Despite Mrs Gibbons also questioning his intention, Griff would hear none of it and not ten minutes later he lifted Charity on to the perch and climbed up beside her.

  It was the first time she had been in his curricle and with him beside her, the two-seater bench definitely erred on the cosy side. Her thighs, hips and upper arms pressed intimately against his, so close Charity could feel every corded muscle she had gazed so shamelessly upon this morning. She used some idle conversation to distract her from that delicious image as they set off.

  ‘I am looking forward to getting back to lessons again. With everything, I haven’t been able to see Signor Fauci in weeks...although I cannot say I am particularly looking forward to spending time with my mother. She is over-critical of my singing at the best of times without the added ammunition of being royally disappointed in me.’

  ‘Why on earth would she criticise your singing?’

  ‘Because she has been doing it for years. Because she thinks she always knows best and because she is my mother.’

  ‘Ah...yes. There is that. Mothers are tricky.’

  ‘That trickiness is multiplied when your mother is Roberta Brookes—who has apparently forgotten more about singing than I could possibly know. Who has an opinion on everything I do and who disapproves of some of the liberties I take in the cadenzas especially.’

  ‘What’s a cadenza?’

  ‘It’s a passage written into the music which the composer has left to the singer’s interpretation. Usually at the end of an aria.’

  ‘The final flourish?’

  ‘Exactly. It’s a chance to play. To impress the audience. Dear Mama is a purist and thinks I play around with those far too much. Whereas I think they were put there to do exactly that and that the amount I play with it should depend on each audience and situation. What brings the house down on one night might fall a little flat another, so I change things to anticipate their needs and to keep myself amused.’

  ‘What does Signor Fauci think?’

  ‘He has never said—largely because my mother is so infuriated by my continued rebellion on the subject that he likely cannot get a word in edgewise.’ She shrugged, resigned to it after so many years of butting heads with her. ‘While I trust her ear and her experience explicitly, and I appreciate that she means well and only wants the best of me, as I have become more experienced I also have my own ideas. Things which I think suit my style and my voice better.’ The last thing she ever wanted to be was a pale imitation of her mother. ‘Faith has similar battles with my father. She wants to paint her way and he thinks his is superior. It is one of the perils of working with family, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s always been the same with me and my father.’ They were pressed closer as he turned a sharp left on to Russell Square, and he made no attempt to shuffle back the few inches he had shifted during the manoeuvre. ‘But our working relationship has improved since we mostly work under different roofs. Perhaps you should consider that too going forward? Retain some lessons with your mother so that you benefit from some of her wisdom but tread your own path in the rest of them.’

  His suggestion made sense. ‘I suppose I could move some lessons to Signor Fauci’s house but Bayswater is such an effort to get to.’

  ‘Why don’t you have them at our house?’

  Our house. How lovely that sounded.

  ‘Because our house has no pianoforte and my mother’s music room has absolutely every conceivable thing that any musician would need already. Not to mention it is conveniently only around the corner.’ And to prove that, they turned again into Bedford Place. ‘Thank you for driving me...surprisingly, all the fresh air combined with the motion of this sporty gig hasn’t made me half as nauseous as the carriage does.’

  He drew the curricle to a gentle stop then hopped down. ‘Surprisingly, thanks to all the fresh air, I only feel half as nauseous now as I did ten minutes ago, so I think it is fair to conclude that my sporty gig has quite restorative properties as well as making me look dashing.’ He grinned as he held out his arms. ‘Once more into the breach.’

  ‘Are you braving my mother’s wrath too? I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to escape as you’re bound to get a blistering lecture from her for last night—among other things.’

  ‘We are in this together, Wife.’ His hands spanned her waist as he lifted her and didn’t let go the second her feet hit the floor. ‘And a blistering lecture will be worth it if I get to spend the day with you.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It is rumoured that Mr and Mrs Grenville Philpot of Bloomsbury will today lay on one of the most lavish wedding celebrations the ton has ever seen, after their daughter, heiress Miss Dorothy Philpot, marries the dashing cavalry officer Captain William Sinclair...

  Whispers from Behind the Fan

  —August 1815

  If fate was having fun at their expense, then there was a cruel irony that their first official public appearance as man and wife was at the exact same church where they had hastily taken their own vows only two weeks ago. Except today, there was a wholly different atmosphere in St George’s and he couldn’t help but be envious at the air of excitement and joyousness at his sister’s nuptials which had been sorely missing at his. His mother wasn’t crying for a start and when she inevitably did, she would shed happy tears not disappointed tears of shame—but at least she was speaking to him again. In deference to the occasion, everyone was speaking to him again, though a great many still did so through obviously gritted teeth.

  The congregation fell silent as the organist began to play and every head turned to witness the arrival of the bride. Dottie looked beautiful and was beaming from ear to ear on his father’s arm, but although it was her moment, Griff’s eyes were automatically pulled to her bridesmaid who was doing her level best not to outshine the bride but managed to do so anyway without trying.

  At least to him she did.

  It was unorthodox to have a married woman as a bridesmaid, but as the arrangements were already made and she was his sister’s oldest and dearest friend, Charity hadn’t been replaced.

  As she approached the altar, her eyes flicked to his and she smiled, her way of informing him that she was perfectly well so he really shouldn’t fuss, even though they both knew that she wasn’t. She had been ill half the night and most of the morning and no amount of peppermint tea or fresh air had helped alleviate those awful symptoms which seemed to plague her constantly. Not that any of that was the least bit visible now. For the sake of her friend and everyone else here present, she had strapped on her actor’s mask exactly as she did for her audience every night, ensuring that nobody knew how much effort her performance took or that it was even an effort at all. Thank goodness her understudy was stepping on the stage in her stead tonight; after five back-to-back performances and today’s inevitably long day, she needed some time off.

  The ceremony was short and sweet. The love between the bride and groom shimmered off them in palpable waves. Overwhelmed, Captain Sinclair stumbled twice over his vows and practically slumped in relief as Dottie said hers, almost as if he couldn’t quite believe that she hadn’t had a change of heart at the very last moment. He was so beside himself with joy when the vicar declared them husband and wife, he did the unthinkable and kissed her in front of everyone. Then kissed her again as they passed under the arch of sabres from his comrades in his regiment.

  His exuberance and delight at his good fortune soon became infectious, and as the newlywed couple were showered with summer petals while their carriage pulled away, several of the married couples were similarly swept away with the romance of it all. Griff’s father kissed his mother. Augustus and Roberta Brookes held hands. Piers slipped his arm proprietorially around Faith’s waist and tugged h
er close while Luke, who had never been one for propriety at the best of times, tugged Hope behind a wall and when they emerged some minutes later he looked quietly pleased with himself while she looked guiltily dishevelled. The only two people not overcome with the sudden need to be affectionate were Griff and Charity and that depressed him. Instead, they stood somewhat awkwardly together, focusing on the back of his sister’s departing carriage and pretending they were oblivious to it all until it was time to head back to their own carriage.

  ‘That was a nice service, wasn’t it?’

  Griff nodded, still too unsettled by their reality for comfort despite his best efforts to the contrary. ‘It was exactly as a wedding should be.’

  Her blue eyes clouded behind her cheerful façade for the rest of the congregation. ‘Not like ours, you mean? Solemn and tense with nary a smile to be seen? What a drab day we had in comparison.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I think we had better music. I’ve always thought “The Lord is My Shepherd” is more of a funeral song so I have no earthly idea why Dottie chose something so dreary. At least our hymns were lively.’

  ‘That is something, I suppose.’ She sighed as Griff closed the door, the weight of the jovial mask slipping as she leaned heavily back on the seat.

  The carriage springs bounced as the coachman climbed up on the perch and she winced then closed her eyes, a tactic she had taken to using to ease the sudden bouts of dizziness which mercilessly plagued her. Beneath the artfully applied subtle rouge and powder, she was pale and he knew that the motion of the carriage in the busy midday streets wouldn’t do her any good. She was much better in his curricle but with half of London invited to this service and carriages queued up, there would have been nowhere to leave it so he had reluctantly brought the coach.