A Regency Charade (11 page)

Alec shrugged with indifferent agreement, and the two crossed the ballroom and caught up with the young lady in question just as Lord Champenham was about to hand her over to an eager young gentleman who had evidently engaged her hand for the next dance. Ferdie, however, had no intention of letting this opportunity slip through his fingers. He stepped smoothly in front of the fellow, effectively blocking his path. “Look, Clio, my dear,” he said triumphantly, “I’ve
brought
him!”

“So you have.” Clio smiled up enchantingly into Alec’s eyes and held out her hand. “Well … Alec Tyrrell! At last!”

Before Alec could take the proffered hand, the young fellow (who had been looking forward all evening to taking his turn with this particular dancing partner) leaned around Ferdie’s shoulder. “I believe this is
my
dance,” he said, smiling at the girl hopefully.

Clio turned to him with a charming but obviously false expression of regret. “Oh, Mr. Beddoes, I
am
so sorry! But I really
must
sit down for a while. Will you consent to a brief postponement? You may have the …” She paused and studied her dance-card. “The country dance after next.”

Poor Mr. Beddoes had no choice but to accept with good grace. He made a brief bow and went off. Ferdie chuckled. “That was heartlessly done.”

“Was it?” The red-headed young lady turned to Alec, her eyes glinting tantalizingly. “Do you think so, too, my lord?”

Alec looked down at her with cool dispassion. “Since we haven’t yet been introduced, and I don’t even know your name, I think it would be decidedly improper for me to tell you
what
I think.”

“I sense an air of disapproval. I suspect, Ferdie,” the girl said, keeping her eyes fixed on Alec’s face, “that I have been quite deliberately set down.”

“Well, I warned you,” Ferdie responded instantly. “I
told
you you’d be better off with me. However, you insisted that you wanted to meet this … this clunch, so you have only yourself to blame. I suppose you still wish me to perform my duty, don’t you? Then, if I must: Miss Vickers, may I introduce—?”

Alec’s eyebrows shot up. “
Vickers
?”

The girl laughed merrily. “Exactly. Clio Vickers … your wife’s cousin.” She held out her hand for the second time.

Alec took it absently and bowed over it, his eyes never leaving her face. Priss’s cousin! No wonder there were so many little ways in which she reminded him …

Clio Vickers was fully enjoying her effect on him. “I think I should take offense at your obvious surprise, my lord. We’ve met before, you know.”

“Have we?” asked the bemused Alec.

“I was present at your wedding.”

Alec’s expression hardened. “Were you indeed? I beg your pardon, of course, but since I suspect you couldn’t have been more than twelve years old at the time, I really can’t be blamed for not recognizing you.”

“I was past thirteen,” Clio corrected, “and I was so taken with you that I followed you about all afternoon. You were forced to ask my mother to find something more suitable for me to do.”

Alec had to smile. “Did you
indeed
follow after me? I cannot imagine why, for I was the dullest of dull fellows. But before we go any further, may I suggest that we find places to seat ourselves. Your Mr. Beddoes is observing us from across the floor with a most disturbed expression. You
did
tell him you wanted to sit down, you know.”

Clio cast a laughing glance at Ferdie as she took them each by an arm. “Your friend is somewhat over-scrupulous, isn’t he?” she remarked teasingly.

“A model of probity and rectitude. I told you you wouldn’t like him,” Ferdie said promptly. “He is a veritable precisionist, stiff, pedantic and methodical to a fault.”

Alec laughed. “Thus speaks a man’s true friend. Heaven save me from my enemies.”

They found three unoccupied chairs, but Ferdie refused to join them. “I know when I’m
de trop
,” he said in mock chagrin. “I can’t understand why you should prefer this witling’s company to my own, but since you obviously do, I shall go and drown my sorrows in champagne punch.”

Alec had a momentary feeling of irritation at being left alone with this designing chit, but after a few moments of listening to her describe her early case of hero-worship of him, he found the conversation most enjoyable. In fact, when she dispatched two gentlemen (one who came to claim her for the waltz and one for a country dance) with the same heartlessness with which she’d rid herself of Mr. Beddoes, he felt not a jot of disapproval. It was only when young Beddoes reappeared, bowing stiffly and looking tense about the mouth, as if preparing for another rejection, that Alec stood up to take leave of her. He was too sensitive to pain himself to permit her to cut the vulnerable young fellow again.

Clio, as she danced off on Mr. Beddoes’ arm, threw back at Alec over her escort’s shoulder a look of haughty resentment. Alec, surmising that she was sufficiently irritated at his behavior to have quite finished with him, was surprised at his feeling of disappointment. But he put the entire matter out of his mind and went off to find his friend. However, just before the two of them took their leave of their hosts to head for Brook’s for their usual hour or two of cards, Clio Vickers found them and brazenly elicited from Alec (although he later could not have said how she’d managed it) a promise to call and take her riding the following afternoon.

It was during that ride, while the two were engaged in a bout of truly entertaining raillery, that Alec caught sight of a familiar figure strolling across the green that the bridle path encircled. It was Sir Blake Edmonds. Alec felt himself whiten. “Good God!” he exclaimed aloud, instinctively pulling his horse to an abrupt halt.

The animal reared. “What is it?” Clio asked in surprise.

Alec tightened on the reins, regained his control of the horse and tried to restore his own equilibrium. “Nothing. Nothing at all,” he muttered. “I only thought I saw … er … someone I knew.”

He nudged the horse into motion again and tried to return to the spirit of merriment that had so enlivened their earlier conversation. But he could not tear his mind away from the sight he’d just seen. Edmonds had not been alone. There had been a woman—a completely unfamiliar woman—on his arm. Who was she? Was the affair between Edmonds and his wife over? All the unanswered questions of his wife’s relationship to this man flooded into his mind again. His attempts to hold a conversation with his riding companion faltered miserably. His responses to her remarks were short and brusque, and he was painfully aware that the girl was regarding him with puzzled concern.

They rounded a bend in the bridle path, and to his intense embarrassment came face to face with the strolling couple. Blake Edmonds looked up at the horseman’s face and his eyes widened in recognition. “Well, well!” he exclaimed with completely unexpected conviviality. “Lord Braeburn, as I live and breathe! Back from the continent at last, are you?”

The riders pulled their horses to a stop. “How do you do, Edmonds? May I present Miss Vickers? Sir Blake Edmonds.”

Clio smiled and nodded. Edmonds led his companion forth. “And this is my wife, Adela. Adela, my dear, I’m certain you’ve heard me speak of Lord Braeburn.”

The men lifted their hats, greetings were exchanged, Clio even managed to make a quip or two, and then they parted. As he and Clio rode off, Alec’s head was in a whirl. Edmonds,
married
! How could that have happened? When he’d last seen the fellow he declared with shattering vehemence that he couldn’t live without
Priss
! Now here he was, strolling through the park with a wife, apparently as contented as a cat on a hearth! The entire matter was a mystery which, at this moment, he couldn’t unravel.

The rest of the ride was passed in almost complete silence. It was only when he delivered Clio to her door that he realized how rude he had been. “Forgive me, Miss Vickers, for my behavior this afternoon,” he apologized with a rueful smile, “but you
were
warned. Not only did you hear Ferdie’s repeated precautions, but I myself told you I was a very dull fellow.”

Her green eyes, glinting enigmatically, met his. “No, my dear sir, not dull. Mysterious, perhaps. Provoking. But not dull.”

“Are you provoked?” he asked with a touch of the raillery he’d employed with her earlier.

“Enough to demand that you make up for today’s fizzle by taking me riding again tomorrow.”

In other circumstances, he would have balked at committing himself to the increased intimacy which a third encounter in three days would signify. But his mind was on other matters, and he absently agreed. Only later would it occur to him to wonder why a young beauty would wish to waste her time with an older man she knew to be completely ineligible.

Meanwhile, he returned home, closeted himself in his bedroom with a glass of brandy and tried to unravel the mystery of Blake Edmonds’ relationship with his wife. He shouldn’t let it concern him, he knew. In leaving her six years ago, he’d made it plain that her romantic life was no longer any business of his. But he had been so convinced that he would return to find her married to Edmonds that this latest development threw him completely for a loss.

Alec knew quite well that he was not adept at understanding the thinking and behavior of members of the
ton
, so he suspected that the solution to the mystery was beyond him. But he attempted to think the matter through by using the same logical procedures he would have used to solve a problem in battle strategy—by listing all the possible alternatives and evaluating each of them one by one. In the matter now before him, the alternatives could be narrowed down to only two: either Edmonds had changed his mind about his feelings for Priss, or Priss had changed her mind about her feelings for Edmonds. Good logical reasoning so far, he congratulated himself sardonically. Now to the evaluation:

Presumption Number One:
that Edmonds had fallen out of love with Priss
. Circumstantial evidence seemed to support this thesis, for it was Edmonds who had married. However, this was an extremely unlikely situation, evidence notwithstanding, for two reasons—first, that Edmonds declaration of love for Priss on that fateful night had been so passionate and genuine that the probability that such feelings could fade seemed remote; and second, that Edmonds wife did not seem to be the sort who could easily steal a man’s affections from a girl like Priss. Alec had to admit that his knowledge of Edmonds’ wife was far from adequate—a brief glimpse in the park was certainly an unfair way of making a judgment—but the woman had appeared to be rather plain in appearance, and her personality was far from sparkling. Tentative conclusion:
Presumption Number One
—
unlikely
.

Presumption Number Two:
that Priss had fallen out of love with Edmonds
. The evidence to support this theory was very appealing. Blake Edmonds had never struck Alec as a man of strength or character, and perhaps Priss had discovered this for herself and had cried off. But Alec had learned in his military experiences that those theories which one most wished were true were the very ones to guard against. Wishes or desires were very powerful deterrents to objective evaluation. When wishes or desires were involved, it was more important than ever to draw conclusions from
facts alone
. And what were the facts in this case? He had only one: Priss had told him with her own lips that she loved Blake. Love, of course, was not a permanent condition. People
did
fall out of love. But he had no evidence at all to show that Priss had done so. Tentative conclusion:
Presumption Number Two
—
insufficiently proved
.

With both his presumptions seeming to be unlikely, a third possibility nagged at the back of his mind. But it was one that he didn’t want to face. It was a theory that had been gnawing at him for many weeks, even before he’d come upon Edmonds and his wife. Even now, however, it made him sick in the stomach to contemplate it. It was this feeling in his insides that, every time the idea had popped into his head before, had always been strong enough to deter him from examining the matter more fully. He’d pushed it out of his mind with a sense of relief.

But his military training had taught him that the propositions one doesn’t wish to face are precisely the ones which can wipe out an army. He had seen with his own eyes how Wellington would demand to hear the worst news first, how he would face the most alarming facts with firm-lipped dispassion and make the most unwelcome decisions because of them—decisions which later turned out to be wise judgments. Perhaps wisdom in one’s private life could be achieved by demanding of oneself the same mental rigor.

Very well, then. Presumption Number Three:
that Priss and Edmonds had not fallen out of love at all
…
that instead they were or had been engaging in a clandestine affair
. The evidence to support this theory was considerable. Priss had evidently married Alec in the first place because of her (or her mother’s) desire for financial advantage. (Edmonds had said something that night about having come into an inheritance, but it was unlikely that his legacy could compare to Alec’s present and future worth.) Six years ago Alec had been too naive to believe that a girl of Priss’s quality could be induced to marry for wealth, but his recent exposure to society had revealed that such marriages were commonplace. Perhaps (and here the feeling in his stomach became almost unbearably oppressive) Priss had decided to hold on to her financial advantage by remaining married to him while at the same time indulging in a romantic liaison with her lover. It would not be the first time such things had happened. Hadn’t he himself been invited more than once to participate in just such liaisons?

Of course, Edmonds now had a wife. Would he have married while maintaining a clandestine love affair with another? The answer was obvious:
why not
? A proper wife, submissive and undemanding, would be the perfect mask for any illicit dealings. What a perfect way for Priss and Edmonds to have their cake and eat it too! Conclusion?
It was damnably obvious
!