Beguiling the Beauty Page 13

  The family luncheon went off well enough. Millie and Helena gave an account of their weeks in America. Fitz offered a compendium of news concerning their friends and acquaintances. Venetia engrossed herself memorizing wallpaper patterns and the garland motif on the handle of her fork.

  No one asked embarrassing or potentially dangerous questions. Helena did tentatively inquire into Venetia’s health, pointing out that she seemed unusually lethargic. Well, hearts did not break energetically; torpor and weariness were to be expected. Venetia mumbled something about staying up reading the night before.

  She was back in Fitz’s brougham, the vehicle pulling away from the curb, when she saw Christian coming out from his own carriage. He wore the same slate gray overcoat that he had worn to their first morning walk and carried the same ivory-handled walking stick. But he’d lost weight—there were hollows beneath his cheeks. And faint circles under his eyes, as if he, too, had not been able to sleep at night.

  The ache in her heart turned into a stabbing pain. He was here, in London. And had she risen from luncheon a minute later, they’d have run into each other.

  Almost fearfully she waited for either Millie or Helena to say something. But Millie had her head bent toward her husband, listening raptly to his analysis of some household matter. And Helena was looking out the other side of the carriage, her teeth clamped over her lower lip.

  No one else had seen him.

  Her listlessness evaporated; she vibrated with an uncontainable energy. When the carriage turned a corner and he disappeared from view, it was all she could do to not jump out of the moving vehicle.

  Such a shock, seeing him. Such an electric thrill. And such emptiness, now that he was gone again.

  Helena stared at Venetia’s departing back.

  At the train station she’d looked worn. At the Savoy she’d stared, as if hypnotized, at stemware and crown molding, barely aware of the goings-on. But now, a moment after they’d walked in the front door, she was already running back out, sprouting some nonsense about having left her fan behind at the hotel.

  She hadn’t been carrying a fan. And even if she had, she could have dispatched someone to retrieve it for her. Helena could think of only one explanation for Venetia’s strange behavior—that to this day she could not bear to be reminded of what had happened at Harvard.

  And it was Helena’s fault—at least in part.

  “Here comes Mrs. Wilson with your new maid,” said Fitz.

  Her head snapped up. “When did I acquire a new maid?”

  “As of yesterday, I believe. Venetia said you needed one.”

  The maid, who followed Mrs. Wilson into the drawing room, was Helena’s age, composed and sharp-eyed. She did not look as if she would be easily bribed by offers of free afternoons. Nor did she appear likely to take off with a gentleman friend at the least encouragement. No, this one had the look of a responsible future housekeeper written all over her.

  “Susie Burns, milady, miss,” said Mrs. Wilson.

  The maid curtsied to Millie, then to Helena.

  “Miss Fitzhugh’s luggage should already be in her room,” said Millie to Susie. “My maid can show you where things need to go.”

  Before Susie could say her “Yes, mum,” Cobble, the butler, walked into the room and announced, “Lord Hastings.”

  And in swept in the man to blame for everything.

  In Helena’s mind, Hastings remained the short, scrawny miscreant Fitz first brought home when they’d all been fourteen. Sometimes she conceded that he was no longer short or scrawny, but a miscreant he was and always would be.

  “Where is Mrs. Easterbrook going in such a hurry? She all but shoved me aside,” said Hastings, stalking toward Millie. “And how good to see you after all this time, Lady Fitz. You look marvelously fetching.”

  He took both her hands and kissed the back of each by turn. Millie smiled. “Never as fetching as you, Hastings.”

  Helena failed to see his appeal. He was a shameless flirt, a lecher, a sloth, and—she’d found out all too late—a traitor.

  He turned to her. “Miss Fitzhugh, how I have missed you while you chased bluestockings all over America. How tedious you must have found them.”

  “Allow me to remind you that I am just as overeducated and tedious, my lord.”

  “Balderdash, not you. We all know you went to Lady Margaret Hall just to be fashionable.”

  It was a particular talent of his that he never said more than two sentences without making her want to reach for a sharp implement.

  Cobble had already vacated the drawing room. Mrs. Wilson and Susie, too, were discreetly making their departure.

  “Susie, leave my luggage for the time being. Air out the gowns I did not take with me first.”

  One should never speak to a servant while there were guests present—it would give the impression that household staff didn’t know their tasks. But Helena had counted on secreting Andrew’s letters in a more secure place before someone else handled her belongings.

  “Yes, miss,” said Susie.

  Her instruction did not escape Fitz and Millie. They exchanged a glance.

  “Would you mind taking a turn with me in the garden, Miss Fitzhugh?” asked Hastings.

  This was the opening she needed. “Of course. Let me change into more comfortable shoes.”

  If Hastings had the run of the house due to his long friendship with Fitz, then Helena need not stand on ceremony, either. She rushed upstairs to her room, sent Susie out to buy something irrelevant, unlocked her trunk, and gathered Andrew’s letters. Tomorrow she would take them to her office at her publishing firm; now she locked them in her bedside drawer.

  Hastings was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs when she came down again.

  “Love letters,” he murmured. “So gratifying to receive, so troublesome for the remainder of their natural lives.”

  She pretended not to hear. “Glad you could find time in your busy schedule of wenching and general wastreling to call on us, Hastings.”

  He offered his arm; she ignored it and walked ahead.

  The Fitzhugh house backed onto a private garden shared by the adjoining houses. In a few weeks the plane trees, fully sprouted, would provide green, dappled shade. But now the leaves were tiny green nubs too shy to unfurl. Finches hopped from bare branch to bare branch, pecking at last year’s seed balls. A three-tiered Italianate fountain sparkled in the sun.

  “Hullo, Penny,” Hastings called cheerfully.

  “Hastings, old fellow,” answered Lord Vere, one of their neighbors, from his perch at the edge of the fountain. “Marvelous day for October, is it not?”

  “It’s April, Penny.”

  “Is it?” Lord Vere looked befuddled. “This year’s or last year’s?”

  “This year’s, of course.”

  “Well,” huffed Lord Vere, “I don’t know what I’m doing out here in April. Everybody knows it is always raining in April. Good day, Hastings. Good day, Miss Fitzhugh.”

  Hastings watched Lord Vere return to his own house. “You should have said yes when he proposed last year. Were you Lady Vere, it would have been nobody’s business but your own where and with whom you spend your nights.”

  Of course it was just like Hastings to approach the subject so baldly. “I do not marry men who do not know what month it is.”

  “Yet you’d gladly lie with a man who dallies with virgins?”

  She ignored that jab. It was hypocrisy of the highest order for a man who slept with everything that moved to criticize one who took risks for love. “Are you happy now that you have my family in a state?”

  “What would you have done in my place? If it were your best friend’s sister teetering on the edge of ruin?”

  “Save your hyperboles. I’ve never been anywhere near the edge of ruin. And if it were my best friend’s sister, I certainly wouldn’t engage in double-dealing.”

  Hastings raised a brow. “Allow me to refresh your memory, Miss Fitzhugh.
For a kiss, I promised not to reveal the identity of your illicit lover. I did not promise that I would keep your family in the dark altogether concerning your furtive activities.”

  “All the same,” she said, giving him her falsest smile, “you duplicitous pig.”

  “Admit it—you enjoyed the kiss.”

  “I would rather eat a live snail than endure anything of the sort again.”

  “Ooh,” he murmured, his eyes alight with speculation. “With or without its shell?”

  She flicked a dismissive finger. “Save what you think of as your wit for a more gullible woman. What do you want from me, Hastings?”

  “I’ve never wanted anything from you, Miss Fitzhugh—I’ve only wished to be of service.”

  She snorted, this from the little snot who used to try to maneuver her into cupboards and steal kisses.

  “Seeing as it was I who introduced Andrew Martin to you,” he continued, “I feel a deep sense of responsibility toward your welfare. At the risk of damaging my health, I have decided to offer to see to your needs.”

  She’d been refraining from the moment he arrived, but she could no longer: Her eyes rolled of their own accord. “Your altruism astounds, Hastings. I am shocked you haven’t been canonized yet.”

  “I quite share your opinion, my dear Miss Fitzhugh.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “An unmarried woman passionate enough to flout all rules and jump into a man’s bed? Your needs just might cripple me.”

  A flush of heat rose along the column of her throat. She walked faster and made her voice frigid. “I’m touched by your willingness to sacrifice. Nevertheless I must turn down your lavish and magnanimous offer.”

  He kept pace. “That is unfortunate, Miss Fitzhugh. For I am a far better choice in this matter, not already being another woman’s husband.”

  “Too bad you’ve nothing else to recommend you, my lord.”

  “As I thought, you are still completely insensible. Very well then, if you won’t think of yourself, think of your beloved. His mother is not a forgiving woman and he always cringes to be thought ill by her. Imagine her reaction should she find out that he’d compromised a virgin.”

  Andrew was in awe and mortal dread of his mother; there was no disputing that.

  “Don’t fool yourself into thinking that because his mother doesn’t find you objectionable, she would condone such action on his part. She wouldn’t. She would crush him with her disdain.”

  Helena worried the inside of her cheek. “We don’t plan to give ourselves away.”

  “I’m sure you don’t, but have you taken into full consideration Mrs. Monteth’s ratlike tendencies to sniff out all wrongdoing?”

  Mrs. Monteth was Andrew’s wife’s sister, a self-righteous woman who lived to expose the faults and weaknesses of those around her.

  “If you love him, leave him be.” Hastings’s drawl had turned steely—it still amazed her that his tone could shift so, from velvety indulgence to cold implacability. “Or, mark my word, you will make him live in misery for the rest of his life.”

  He bowed. “And now I’m quite finished. I bid you a good day, Miss Fitzhugh.”

  At the steps back into the house he turned around, an ironic smile on his lips, once again the roué. “And in case you are curious, my offer still stands.”

  My dear boy,” said the Dowager Duchess of Lexington, who had come up to London with Christian.

  “I recognize that tone, Stepmama,” he answered from before the window. “You have become privy to a particularly succulent piece of gossip.”

  Children frolicked in the small park across the street, flying kites, feeding ducks, playing hide-and-seek. One boy managed to slip away from his governess long enough to feed an apple to the horse harnessed to a hansom cab parked by the curb.

  “And a rumor of the very rarest sort, too: one concerning you.”

  “I see.” It had been too much to hope that word wouldn’t spread until he’d first had time to secure his beloved’s hand.

  The boy’s governess scolded him and removed his hand from the horse’s coat, no doubt warning him of fleas and other undesirables that were sure to be associated with such a common animal. Did the curtain covering the hansom’s window flutter? The cabbie, having finished his paper, now pulled something that resembled a crumpled penny dreadful out of his coat.

  “Since we arrived in London this morning, I have received not one, not two, but three separate notes concerning a torrid affair you conducted during your crossing. In plain view, no less.”

  At least now he could speak of her. “Yes, it’s true. All of it.”

  Did gloved fingers grip the edges of the curtain on the hansom cab?

  “Surely not all of it. Some of the rumors declare that you have married her.”

  He turned around. “That, no. But not for lack of trying.”

  The dowager duchess, who had been in the middle of rearranging a bouquet of tulips on a console table, stilled. She, too, turned around—a pretty woman in her early forties, only thirteen years older than Christian. But instead of immediately blurting out a response, she sat down on one of his Louis XIV chairs and arranged her skirts with a deliberate thoroughness. “You proposed?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have not said a word.”

  “The situation is somewhat complicated. I did not want you to worry.”

  “And I’d worry less when I learned it this way?”

  He bowed his head to let her know that he’d heard her reproach. “My apologies, madam.”

  “And what, pray tell, is so complicated about the situation? When the Duke of Lexington proposes, the lucky lady accepts. That’s the end of it.”

  If only it were that simple. “She was traveling under an assumed name.”

  The moment he stepped onto English soil, he’d arranged to see someone familiar with German aristocracy. The Seidlitzs were a notable Prussian clan. The Hardenbergs were Silesian nobility. But there was no Baron von Seidlitz-Hardenberg on record—and therefore not a single Baroness von Seidlitz-Hardenberg.

  So much for the always minuscule chance that she had been using her real name—and could therefore be found without the whole Continent being torn apart.

  The dowager duchess sucked in a sharp breath. “An assumed name?”

  “I have also never seen her face.”

  She blinked, stunned.

  “As I said, it’s quite complicated.”

  “Really, Christian.” She tapped her fingers once against the armrest of the chair. “Hundreds of properly credentialed young ladies at home and you offer your hand to someone whom you wouldn’t even be able to recognize if you passed her on the street?”

  “She is the one I love.” That should be justification enough, but somehow it did not sound quite adequate, in the face of all the unknowns. “You will adore her—she puts me in my place.”

  Her Grace was unconvinced. “I’d like to meet her and judge for myself.”

  “I will arrange it as soon as I can convince her to accept my hand.”

  “And how soon can you manage that?”

  “On my birthday, I hope—she has agreed to meet me for dinner at the Savoy.”

  The duchess rose. “You know I trust your judgment, Christian. I have trusted your judgment since we first met. But I will be remiss if I do not point out the extraordinary irregularity of the circumstances. You have put yourself at a great deal of risk here—and I do not mean your prestige or your coffer.”

  He deserved the warning. “I’m afraid my heart is wholly taken. I shall be miserable if I do not marry her.”

  “You can be just as miserable in a marriage—by then it will be too late.”

  “It is already too late. If I cannot have her I will have no one.”

  She sighed. “You are sure about this?”

  “Yes.”

  An echo of something—fear, perhaps—rattled inside him as he gave that unequivocal answer. He’d been just as certain, upon seeing Mrs. E
asterbrook for the first time, that she held the key to his happiness.

  “Be careful, my love,” said the dowager duchess. “Renew the offer of your hand only if she proves to be worthy of it.”

  He tried to lighten the conversation. “So says the woman who would have been happy to have me marry any female with a pulse.”

  “Only because this one has the power to injure you, my love. Only because of that.”

  With all the hansom cab’s flaps down to hide Venetia from view, the air inside, already heavy with the odors of tobacco and gin, grew staler with each passing minute.

  She couldn’t care less.

  The sight of her lover had turned her delirious. She couldn’t reason. She couldn’t think. The only thing that mattered was that she should see him again. She had no idea what she hoped to accomplish by that, but the forces driving her toward him were greater than any she could muster to keep herself away.

  She’d set out from Fitz’s house walking. Somewhere along the way she realized that it would take her far too long to walk to the Savoy Hotel, so she stopped and hailed a hansom cab.

  Her cab reached the Savoy Hotel just as the duke climbed back into his own carriage and drove away. She followed him to his home, a very fine neoclassical structure that she despised. Perhaps if its walls were made of glass she wouldn’t mind it as much. Then she might see him moving about inside, doing whatever it was that he did when he was not making her fall head over heels in love.

  But she saw nothing. The governesses in the park were becoming very suspicious about the hansom cab. And it wouldn’t be long now before a bobby came around and asked the cabbie what he thought he was doing loitering about outside the homes of dukes and earls.

  She could not sit here indefinitely.

  One more glimpse. She just wanted one more glimpse of him.

  The gods were listening. A carriage emblazoned with the Lexington coat of arms drew up at the curb. A minute later, he walked out of the front door and entered the carriage.

  She had her “one more glimpse.” But it was like receiving a single grain of rice when she’d starved for a week.

  “Follow that carriage,” she instructed her cabbie. “And don’t lose sight of it.”