Читать книгу The Louise Allen Collection: The Viscount's Betrothal / The Society Catch - Louise Allen - Страница 17

Augusta was, predictably, delighted to see her back, completely incurious about her journey and hardly interested to learn how Hermione and Charlton were. But she did blink vaguely at Decima as they stood in her new glasshouse and observe, ‘You are looking different, dear. Have you changed your hair?’

That was typical of Augusta and Decima took no notice. But she was shaken by her dear friend Henry. Sir Henry Freshford rode over from his neighbouring estate the next day, alerted by the infallible country grapevine that she was back.

‘Henry!’ Decima stooped to receive his brotherly kiss on her cheek, so much more welcome than any salutation of Charlton’s. ‘Did you have a good Christmas?’

‘Yes, fine,’ he replied, looking at her oddly. ‘Dessy, what have you been up to?’

‘Me? Why, nothing. Do come and see Augusta’s latest extravagance.’ She tugged his arm until he followed her through to the glasshouse, built out at an angle from the house so that it formed a conservatory extension to one of the sitting rooms. ‘Isn’t it wonderful? She is planning to put ferns and palms and even orchids in here.’

She expected Henry to be immediately interested, to look at the heating pipes and ask about the water supply. Instead he stood regarding her, his head on one side and a smile quirking the corner of his mouth.

Henry Freshford, baronet, was the best-looking man Decima had ever met. Although his height was below the average, his features were classically perfect, his colouring blonde, his eyes a periwinkle blue and his figure elegant. His looks in themselves were enough to draw many female admirers, but his breeding and wealth attracted the young ladies’ mamas even more.

The short man who had to fight off lures and the tall woman who no one would consider marrying had formed an unlikely, but deep, friendship. For Decima he was the brother she would have chosen; for him, she seemed to be the perfect feminine confidante.

‘Why are you staring?’ she demanded, sinking down onto one of the new sofas that had been bought for the glasshouse. ‘I thought you would be interested in what Augusta has been doing.’

‘I’m much more interested in what you’ve been doing, Dessy.’ He sat opposite her and crossed his legs, leaning back to study her face.

‘What do you mean? And, please, do not call me Dessy. I’ve just realised how much I hate it.’

‘Of course, Decima.’ Normally he would have been distracted enough by this to demand to know all about her sudden decision. Not today. ‘Now, stop changing the subject and tell me who he is.’

‘Who?’ It came out as a startled squeak and she knew she had blushed. ‘What can you mean, Henry?’

Now Henry seemed embarrassed. ‘I’m not sure how to put this delicately. I mean you have a sort of…glow about you. A new sort of awareness of yourself. As you know—’ colour touched his cheekbones too ‘—I regard you with absolutely brotherly feelings, but even I am aware of a certain…frisson about you.’ He coughed and tugged at his cuffs. ‘I assumed there was a man who had, um, stirred up some inner, er, emotions.’ He ground to a halt.

‘It shows?’ Decima was horrified. ‘I mean, I have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. Anyone would think I had taken a lover.’

‘And you have not?’ Henry seemed to have recovered from his embarrassment.

‘No!’ Decima looked at his sceptical, trustworthy face and gave up. ‘No, I haven’t, but I nearly did. If you promise not to tell anyone, it would be so good to confide.’

When she had poured out the tale of everything that had happened since that last breakfast with Charlton and Hermione—shorn of a considerable amount of completely unmentionable detail—Henry was positively rubbing his hands together with delight.

‘You see? I have been telling you that there is absolutely nothing wrong with your appearance as far as anyone but your idiotic relatives and a handful of equally idiotic snobs are concerned. And this man proves it.’

‘But nobody else has ever seemed to find me remotely attractive,’ Decima wailed, wanting to be convinced and fearing it was only Henry’s partisanship speaking.

‘I expect this time you had too much else to think about to be working yourself up into being an unattractive spinster,’ he retorted brutally. ‘He saw you as you really are, not round-shouldered and self-effacing and with all your charm and character hidden.’

‘He is very tall. He doesn’t realise what a gawky beanpole I am.’

‘Society is full of men at least as tall as you, and taller. That won’t wash.’

‘And he is very odd—he likes my freckles. And he doesn’t seem to think my mouth is too big. In fact, he said I should not pout because he wanted to—’ She stopped, blushing furiously.

‘What?’ Henry enquired, interested. ‘Bite it?’

‘Yes! Now you cannot tell me that’s normal.’

‘It’s perfectly normal. This is an extremely improper conversation, Dess…Decima, but as we’ve gone so far, it is a entirely predictable thing for him to want to do. And liking your freckles does not make him odd. I like your freckles. He sounds a completely typical man with his due measure of healthy masculine desires, to me.’

‘Goodness.’ How did that make her feel? Decima tried to sort out her emotions. Adam wasn’t some oddity who found her attractive for weird reasons of his own or because he was stranded with her and anything was better than nothing. He had kissed her because, according to Henry—who was the most reassuringly down-to-earth male of her acquaintance—any normal man would want to. Her friend was speaking again. ‘I beg your pardon. I missed what you said.’

‘I asked you what is going to happen next.’

‘Why, nothing. Obviously I do not think it would be a good idea to see him again.’ Henry didn’t have to say anything, one raised eyebrow was enough. ‘I told you, he was perfectly horrible about me when he was talking to his friends. He admits he ran away rather than meet me.’

‘But he hadn’t met you then, before he ran, so in what way was he being horrible?’ Henry enquired. ‘You were just as horrible—you ran away rather than meet him and I’ll wager that if you had got here without misadventure you would have indignantly told me all about how your family tried to match you up with some ghastly man you would be sure to take an instant dislike to.’

‘That is not fair!’ Decima stopped, thought, regarded Henry’s face. ‘Oh dear, it is fair, isn’t it? I would never have thought of it like that.’

‘Are you in love with him?’

‘I don’t know.’ Decima stared at him, a frown wrinkling her brow. Something inside her became hollow. ‘How do I tell?’

‘Damned if I know either,’ Henry retorted cheerfully. ‘It hasn’t happened to me, more’s the pity. I imagine when it does, you just think “I’m in love”. Or you go off your food, or dream about the other person all day. Anyways, what are you going to do about him?’

‘I wasn’t going to do anything,’ Decima admitted. ‘I can hardly go chasing after him, now can I? Even if I wanted to,’ she added doubtfully. ‘But the complicating factor is that Pru seems to have fallen for his groom—in fact, quite literally fallen, and I may find myself having to do something about that before very long.’

‘Hmm.’ Henry did not seem to have anything much to contribute to that problem. ‘You need something to take your mind off this, Des…sorry, Decima. Mama’s going to open up the London house for the Season to fire off Caroline into society. I will be going up as well—why don’t you come too and stay with us? Mama would appreciate your company. We are going up at the end of February to get all Caro’s gowns and fallals sorted out early. What do you say?’

It was very tempting. She had already thought about going up for the Season, if only to horrify Charlton, who would be scandalised at the thought of her under any chaperonage other than that provided by one of their aunts or cousins. Decima gave herself a little shake. If she was going to do things only in reaction to her half-brother, then she was just as much in his thrall as she had ever been. She must do what she wanted, for herself. And she wanted to go to London, and find out if what Henry said was true. Could it be that if she was not shy and did not think about being odd, then other people wouldn’t think it either?

And then there was a very good chance that Adam would be in town for the Season as well. Not that she wanted to see him for herself, of course, but if Pru needed help with her improbable romance, then she had to do her best to assist her.

‘Yes, Henry, thank you very much. I would love to come to London and stay with your mama.’

‘What the hell do you mean, you can’t find them?’ Adam Grantham glowered at his agent who stood the other side of the broad desk, a sheaf of papers clutched in his hands. ‘How hard can it be to trace one English gentleman and his family? You have been looking for three weeks, damn it.’

The man went red, but kept his composure. Adam reined in his temper. He had never found Franklin negligent in his duties and had no reason to suspect he was not applying himself now. ‘Sit down, man, show me what you have done so far.’

The agent took the proffered chair and spread out his papers. ‘You told me the gentleman was called Charlton Ross, my lord, but you did not know whether he has a title. His wife’s name is Hermione and he has a sister Decima. He has a house somewhere near enough to Whissendine for his sister’s carriage to have reached the point where you met in one morning in poor travelling conditions. Miss Ross said it was in Leicestershire.

‘So I searched the Peerage, the Landed Gentry and even Crockford’s Clerical Directory just in case he was a clergyman. Nothing. Then I tried the various county directories—including Nottinghamshire to be on the safe side. There is not a sign of a Charlton Ross. There are plenty of entries for Ross, and I checked second names where they were given. Nothing that matches. The carriage appears to have been owned by the family as there is no record of it being hired at any livery stable I can find.

‘Then I tried the Norfolk end of things, but I couldn’t find any single ladies or widows by the name of Ross who might match—and, of course, the lady’s cousin might easily be a widow, or a maiden lady of a different surname. The only trace I have is of a party that matched your description taking luncheon at the Rising Sun just outside Wisbech. After that, they vanish. The number of carriages on the post roads that day was considerable, what with people getting themselves back home after being held up by the bad weather. We tried the turnpikes in all directions, but no one recalled them. I am sorry, my lord.’

‘Thank you, Franklin. I’m sure you have been extremely thorough.’ The man bowed himself out, leaving Adam brooding at the desk he had borrowed in his host’s study. He poured himself a large brandy and thought.

Longminster House, the rural seat of the Earl of Minster, Adam’s uncle by marriage, was en fête for the christening of the first of the Minster grandchildren and Adam had resigned himself to a week of baby-worshipping, dancing attendance on numerous relatives and avoiding lectures on his unwed state.

One of the few avenues of escape he had found was in trying to cheer up a distant relative of his Aunt Minster’s, Olivia Channing. He remembered her from her schoolroom days as tiny and shy. Now she was a little beauty—still tiny, but with all the blonde loveliness of a fairy. Add to that the best of good breeding and exquisite manners and one had the perfect eligible, albeit desperately shy, young lady. But Olivia’s problem was that her family was extremely hard up. Adam suspected that if her dowry amounted to a few hundred, that was all it was.

And she was being dragged about, pushed into society by her desperate mama, when she believed all she could expect was to be snubbed, despite her looks and her sweetness. A month ago he would have shrugged and taken no notice of her. Now, with Decima’s bitter words about matchmakers still ringing in his ears, he regarded her with sympathy and tried to make up to her for the fact that she found herself constantly on the outside of things.

She was a funny little thing, he thought. Even now she was used to him and had begun to chat to him with less constraint, he always had the feeling that she was glancing over his shoulder, checking for something.

He refilled his glass, dismissing Olivia as an insoluble problem. The presence of Peregrine Grantham, the son of his father’s late younger brother, was another matter altogether—both the silver lining to the visit and a heartening reminder that lectures on his duty to produce an heir could be met by pointing out young Perry’s numerous admirable qualities. Not that Perry, or his mother, were holding their breath at the thought of him stepping into his cousin’s shoes.

‘I do wish you’d get married, Adam,’ Perry had complained the day before as they trudged across a muddy field, retrievers at their heels and a dozen pigeons hanging from their shot belts. ‘Here I am, wanting to join up, and all I get from my guardians is lectures on how the heir to a viscounty doesn’t go risking his neck in the army.’

Adam had grinned at him and informed him that he had no intention of getting leg-shackled for his sake and he would just have to wait another couple of years until he could do as he chose.

‘The war’ll be over by then,’ Perry had retorted with good humour. ‘No, the answer is to get you married off, Adam.’

That evening, stretching long legs in front of a blazing fire and sipping Minster’s best liqueur brandy, Adam found himself contemplating matrimony seriously for perhaps the first time.

He was not staying single for Perry’s sake; the lad had too much intelligence and ambition to wait around for dead men’s shoes. No, Adam was unwed simply because no lady had ever piqued his interest enough to give up his independence and privacy. Except one.

He had set Franklin on Decima’s trail as soon as he had realised he could not find any mention of her brother in any of his reference books and that the polite note of thanks he had received three days after her departure gave no address. At the time he had not asked himself why he wanted to find her, only that he needed to make sure she was all right. The fact that her note left him in no doubt of that was beside the point.

Now Adam reluctantly faced the fact that he missed her. It was not just that his body ached for her, although it certainly did. He wanted to get to know her better, to hear that rich, wicked chuckle again, to dance a waltz with her and tease her about her cookery. He wanted to make her blush and cajole her out of her sudden fits of shyness. And he wanted to find out whether this unfamiliar ache around his heart was love.

And now, with the paperwork spread out before him detailing false trail after false trail, it seemed she had vanished. The only thing he could think was that she had not given him her true surname and, if that was the case, even setting the Bow Street Runners on her was not likely to be productive. It seemed that she was not as interested in resuming their strange friendship as he was himself.

He roused himself at the sound of the changing gong and made his way upstairs, only to remember that tonight was the occasion of the dance Aunt Minster was throwing to celebrate not only the arrival of her first grandchild, but also the betrothal of her last and youngest daughter, Sylvia.

There would be a family dinner first, then the arrival of guests and the prospect of a long night of dancing and making conversation in an overheated ballroom.

‘What are you about, Greaves?’ His valet was stropping a razor and regarding with some satisfaction his master’s newest and most elegant evening clothes laid out on the bed.

‘I had made sure your lordship would require to shave before dinner.’ He shook out a towel and waited patiently beside the chair, managing to ignore the singular lack of enthusiasm on his employer’s face.

With a sigh Adam cast himself down on the chair and did his best to suppress his bad humour. Greaves did not deserve having his employer’s disappointment and frustration taken out on him, nor was it his fault that Adam was in the worst possible state of mind to appreciate the elegance of the new satin knee breeches or the gloss the valet had achieved on the dancing pumps.

‘I’m not in the mood for a party, Greaves,’ he observed mildly as the man whipped up a lather and began to apply it to his face.

‘No, my lord. I have observed, if I might be so bold, that dances at which most of the partners are in some way related to a gentleman rarely offer him as much entertainment, however select the company.’

Despite himself Adam grinned. No, this was not likely to be the sort of party at which one could entertain oneself with dashing matrons or semi-respectable widows.

He went down to dinner only to realise that more guests had arrived, necessitating the butler to order all the extra leaves to be put in the dining table.

Perry wandered up to him, looking disgruntled. ‘I say, Adam, all the card tables are set out for whist for the old tabbies; we’re going to have to dance all evening.’

‘Well, find yourself some pretty girls to flirt with,’ Adam retorted unsympathetically. Perry was still at an age when girls were at best incomprehensible and at worst frightening. ‘What about Olivia over there? I’m sure she is your type. We’ll go over and you can practise on her.’

Perry, suspecting teasing, shot a hunted look in the direction of Adam’s gaze and relaxed. ‘Oh, Olivia Channing. I’m sure she’ll take no interest in me with you around.’

Adam put this down to adolescent insecurity and ignored it. The chit looked suitable for helping overcome Perry’s awkwardness—there was a sweet expression on her face and an air of modest shyness about her that was appealing. She would gaze at Perry as though he were wonderful and not make him feel threatened.

Adam took his cousin firmly by the elbow and began to make his way through the dinner guests, only for them to be hailed imperiously by his Aunt Minster.

‘There you are, Peregrine. Stop gossiping to Adam about shooting or horses or whatever you are doing and come and talk to the admiral.’ She detached Perry from his grip, hooked her own hand through his arm and carried on in the direction she had been heading.

Deprived of his companion, Adam carried on to Olivia’s side. She bobbed a curtsy. ‘My lord.’ Her voice was soft and slightly breathless and she regarded him with wide eyes.

Too young, too spiritless and far too short, Adam thought, his mind suddenly full of a tall, unconventional lady a good eight or nine years older than this child. And her mama should never have dressed Olivia in that daring style with such low-set sleeves. It was more suited to a married woman. Then his natural kindness took over and he set himself to charm her out of the worst of her nerves.

She certainly opened up a little in the interval before dinner was announced, although Adam once again had the uneasy feeling that she was constantly looking behind him at someone or something. As he took her arm to take her to find her dinner partner, he glanced back and recognised her parents. They seemed to be keeping a very close eye on her, although, with her seeming so nervous, perhaps that was only to be expected.

Dinner was as boring as he expected, trapped between an aunt who twittered and a matron who showed a disconcerting inclination to flirt with him. Adam was aware of drinking steadily and of an overwhelming desire to escape as soon as the covers were drawn. What he wanted was an unconventional lady to talk to, to tease, to—

‘Grantham!’

He looked up, startled out of his reverie.

‘You are chased,’ his uncle said sternly and he found that, indeed, the decanters were at his elbow. With a careless hand he filled his glass and pushed them on down the table.

When the gentlemen made their way through to the ballroom he looked around for escape. Good, the conservatory looked like a shaded haven of palms, comfortable seating and solitude. It was too early in the evening for daring couples to seek it out for a little dalliance or for desperate wallflowers to retreat there to hide.

Snagging a glass of champagne off a tray as the footman passed, Adam slid in through the nearest door and retreated as far into the leafy sanctuary as he could.

Now, at last, he could sit and think in peace about what he was going to do about Decima. A swish of skirts made him stiffen and draw back. He could glimpse a blonde head through the foliage and the sound of a bravely suppressed sob.

Damn it. It was Olivia. Adam eased round until he could see her, head bent, applying a fragile scrap of lace to her eyes. With a sigh he reached into his pocket and found a clean handkerchief.

‘Olivia?’ She started dramatically and stared at him.

‘Oh, thank you, my lord.’ As he pressed the linen into her hand her fingers gripped his and he found himself on the seat beside her.

‘Olivia? What is wrong?’ Hell, what did one say to weeping girls? ‘There, there.’ He patted her shoulder, wishing he hadn’t had quite so much to drink and could think about what to do for the best. Fetch her mama? She gave a gasping sob and the next thing he knew he had an armful of quivering young lady.

Instinct took over and Adam gathered her into a comforting embrace, only to find that her gown appeared to have a life of its own and was sliding off her shoulders. Under his palms he could feel soft, bare, heated skin.

‘Olivia? You must try and…’ Her face tipped up to his, piquant with some trembling emotion he did not understand. Her lashes were spiked with tears, her soft pink lips parted. So he kissed her, a gentle, chaste kiss intended purely to comfort.

‘My lord!’

‘Adam!’

Startled, he twisted round, instinctively sheltering Olivia in his arm. Facing him were both her parents and his Aunt Minster. And even as he stared at them he realised that Olivia was tugging at the neckline of a bodice which had fallen quite scandalously low over her pretty breasts.

‘Well, my lord,’ Mr Channing uttered in outraged tones, ‘just what do you think you are about?’ Beside him his wife could not quite keep the look of triumph off her face.

Under the circumstances, what was there to say? Or even to do? He was caught by the oldest trick in the book. ‘Mr Channing.’ Adam got to his feet, keeping his body between himself and Olivia, who was frantically trying to rearrange her bodice. ‘I will do myself the honour of speaking to you tomorrow morning.’