A Valentine Wedding (9 page)

But not the only reason. Although Alasdair hadn’t
admitted it to Emma, he agreed with her that Ned had hoped to achieve a reconciliation between his sister and his friend by throwing them together in such intimate conjunction. It would have grieved him to see how far off the mark he’d been. Alasdair took up his cards, a tiny sigh escaping him.

The subject, as he’d expected, came up within a very short time.

“I hear Emma Beaumont’s back in town,” Lord Alveston commented, pushing a rouleau of guineas across the table.

“Yes, and, as no doubt you’ve also heard, under her brother’s will I am her trustee,” Alasdair said coolly, making his own bet.

“Deuced awkward, that,” remarked a gentleman with a startlingly painted face.

“Oh, and why is that, Sketchley?” Alasdair inquired with a raised eyebrow and a voice with an edge that would cut steel.

Viscount Sketchley blushed beneath his paint. It produced a rather interesting color scheme, Alasdair thought. “Oh, no reason … no reason at all.”

Alasdair inclined his head in mocking acceptance and continued with his play. There was a short awkward silence, then the duke of Bedford, who held the bank, declared, “Rich as Croesus she is now, I hear.”

Alasdair again acknowledged this with an indifferent nod.

“If she still has her looks—” continued the duke.

“Oh, believe me, she has,” Alasdair interrupted, laying his cards upon the table. “My hand, gentlemen.”

“I keep promising myself I’ll not play at your table, Alasdair, and then I forget how damned lucky you
are,” Lord Alveston complained, throwing down his own cards in disgust.

“Oh, it’s not luck, George,” Alasdair said with a laugh. “Can you not recognize pure skill when you see it?”

“So, is she hangin’ out for a husband?” the duke persisted.

“What unattached woman is not, Duke?” asked Lord Sketchley with a little titter.

“You’re not still in the lists, Alasdair?” Alveston asked bluntly.

Alasdair was relieved to have the question at last brought into the open. Once it was dealt with, categorically denied, he hoped the past would be allowed to die. “No, I am not. Emma and I agreed that we would not suit. Nothing has changed. Do you deal, Duke?”

The duke picked up the fresh pack placed at his elbow by a groom-porter and shuffled deftly. “So the field’s wide open, then?”

“As far as I know,” Alasdair agreed.

“And you’ve no say in the matter?” Sketchley inquired closely.

“None whatsoever.” Alasdair made his bet and changed the subject, wondering uneasily just how far Emma was prepared to go with her challenge. Surely not far enough to take such a painted fop as Sketchley for a husband.
Or lover?
He glanced across the table with a violent surge of revulsion at the image of that simpering fool’s hands on Emma’s glorious body. No, it was not possible that she would be so lost to sanity.

His eyes swept the salon, brightly lit by chandeliers whose crystal drops threw back the light of their myriad candles. Was there a man in this room whom he could tolerate in Emma’s bed? The answer was immediately
apparent. It seemed he was suffering from a virulent case of dog in the manger.

“But I daresay your opinion would weigh with Lady Emma?” the duke suggested. “Being her trustee and such a good friend of her brother’s. If you spoke up for a man …”

“Lady Emma has a mind of her own,” Alasdair stated flatly.

Paul Denis played carefully, as befitted a man who was not too plump in the pocket. His émigré status was well understood, and a wealthy émigré was a rarity. He offered no comment on the subject of Emma Beaumont, and his silence went unremarked. He could not after all be expected to contribute to a conversation concerning people he didn’t know. And no one would guess the rapid calculations clicking behind his smooth olive-skinned forehead. If Lady Emma Beaumont was to be besieged by suitors, he could join their ranks without comment.

“Do you return to Albermarle Street, Lord Alasdair?” he inquired as the table broke up in the early hours. “May I walk home with you?”

“By all means.” Alasdair took a glass of iced champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. “Give me half an hour. There are some people I haven’t spoken to this evening.” Glass in hand, he circled the room, making certain that everyone there understood that Alasdair Chase was not holding a candle for Emma Beaumont. That the mortification of three years ago was forgotten. Then he went in search of Paul Denis, who was sitting in the bow window that looked out on darkened St. James’s Street, perusing a periodical.

“I hope you won’t consider it impertinent if I ask for your help in making myself known in society,”
Monsieur Denis asked tentatively as they strolled along Piccadilly.

Alasdair gave him a shrewd glance. “Hanging out for a rich wife too, Denis?” he inquired.

Paul managed to look a trifle self-conscious. “Not exactly … but my situation is a little … well, a little constrained, shall we say?”

Alasdair shrugged. “No more than many, I daresay.”

“Perhaps not. But this Lady Emma, I wonder …” He coughed delicately. “I was wondering if perhaps you could effect an introduction. If you have no objections, of course.”

Alasdair felt a sharp stab of pain somewhere in the region of his breastbone. First Bedford and now this émigré. It seemed that he was to act as pander, procuring potential suitors and lovers for a woman whom he’d just discovered he couldn’t contemplate belonging to anyone but himself.

“I suggest you ask Princess Esterhazy for an introduction,” he said. “I’m not expecting to call upon Lady Emma in the near future.”

Paul Denis accepted this in silence, but his thoughts raced. He had noticed the sudden tension in Lord Alasdair at the card table during the discussion of Lady Emma’s possible marriage. It was well concealed, but not for an eye and an ear trained to notice any shift of emotion, any telltale flicker or hesitancy. It would seem that the governor had been misinformed. Whatever the close connection between Lady Emma Beaumont and Lord Alasdair Chase, it didn’t appear to be a particularly easy one. Lord Alasdair was her trustee; was that perhaps a bone of contention? Whatever the reason for the constraint, it
wasn’t going to help his own plans any. He would have to find an alternative route to his quarry.

“You’re very preoccupied this morning, my love,” Maria observed, dipping a finger of toast in her teacup and carrying the sopping morsel to her mouth.

Emma nibbled the end of her quill and then scratched out the lines she’d written. She pushed paper and pen aside and returned to her breakfast. “I have a very vexing issue to deal with,” she explained vaguely.

“Oh, perhaps I can help?” Maria took another finger of toast and bathed it in tea.

Emma shook her head and said with a touch of mischief, “No, I don’t think so. You’re no judge of horseflesh.” She regarded Maria’s steady consumption of tea and toast with customary amazement, while sipping her own coffee and making inroads into a dish of bacon and mushrooms.

“We should visit Princess Esterhazy first this morning, I believe,” Maria said, following her own train of thought. “The next subscription ball at Almack’s is to be on the fifteenth, and we must be sure to have vouchers in time. I think the ball dress of ivory gauze over the turquoise satin would be perfect, don’t you, my love?”

“Mmmm,” Emma murmured, once more engrossed in her letter writing.

“Of course, the bronze crepe becomes you so well,” Maria continued, untroubled by her companion’s lack of concentration on such an important topic. “I wonder if perhaps the gold embroidered scarf would look particularly elegant with it. You should ask Mathilda to look it out, my love, and we’ll decide later.”

“Mmmm,” said Emma, bringing the last line of her missive to a period with a decisive jab of her quill. “That’s the best I can do.” She waved the sheet in the air to dry the ink, then folded it carefully. “I must just get this sent off, Maria. Shall I order the carriage to be at the door in half an hour?”

“Yes, if you can be ready in that time,” Maria agreed somewhat doubtfully. Emma, as was her invariable custom unless she was breakfasting early before a hunt meet, had come downstairs in a wrapper over her nightgown.

Emma laughed at this. “I shall be ready in twenty minutes.” She whisked herself from the breakfast parlor, leaving Maria to finish her tea and toast.

She was as good as her word and was downstairs again well within the half hour, drawing on a pair of lavender kid gloves. “Did you send the message, Harris?”

“Yes, ma’am. Bodley took it straightaway. The barouche is at the door.”

“Here I am … here I am,” Maria trilled as she came down the stairs. “Dear me, I made sure I’d be ahead of you, Emma. I had only to put on my bonnet and pick up my gloves, and you had not even begun to dress.” She ran an appraising glance over Emma’s close-fitting driving habit as she chattered, hurrying all the while to the door. “That dark blue was a very good choice,” she declared as the footman handed her up into the barouche.

Emma climbed in after her, allowing Maria’s stream of inconsequential chatter to flow over her. Maria rarely required a concrete response to her remarks, and Emma had long perfected the art of appearing to listen politely while thinking her own
thoughts. At the moment, those thoughts were entirely concerned with horses.

The Austrian ambassador and his wife lived in a stately double-fronted stucco mansion in Berkeley Square. Princess Esterhazy received her visitors in the upstairs drawing room overlooking the square gardens.

“Maria Witherspoon,” she said with her vivacious laugh. “I haven’t see you in town for months. Are you come up for the entire season?” She didn’t wait for an answer but turned immediately to Emma. A dark eyebrow lifted slightly. “Lady Emma, my condolences on your brother’s death.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Emma bowed. She was aware that her hostess’s scrutiny was somewhat speculative.

“You decided not to go into full mourning, I take it,” the princess stated.

“My brother would not have wished it,” Emma replied.

“Ah. Young people these days … so little respect for convention,” the lady pronounced.

“Oh, that’s a little harsh, Princess,” Maria said, bustling forward. “Emma has been grief stricken for many months. But it was dear Ned’s expressed desire … in his will,” she added fallaciously but with great firmness, “that she set up her own establishment as soon as Lord and Lady Grantley moved into Grantley Manor.”

The princess nodded. Her speculative gaze still rested on Emma’s countenance, and Emma could almost hear her thoughts running along the lines of:
Two hundred thousand pounds! Not to be sneezed at, oh, dear me, no. Much can be overlooked for such a fortune.

“Well,” Princess Esterhazy said at last, “I must send
you vouchers for Almack’s, mustn’t I? Ill send them around this afternoon. Mount Street, I understand?”

“Yes, a most delightful house,” Maria said. “Lord Alasdair Chase, Emma’s trustee, hired it for her.”

“Ah, yes,” their hostess said. “Lord Alasdair.” Her gaze became rather more intense and it was clear to her visitors that she was recollecting the old scandal.

“Lord Alasdair is a very old and steadfast friend,” Maria stated confidently, looking the princess in the eye.

Any comment the princess might have made remained unsaid as the butler announced Lady Sefton and her son Lord Molyneux. They were followed by Lady Drummond and her three daughters, and the salon quickly became a buzz of conversation. Maria was immediately in her element and there was no further awkwardness on the subject of past scandals. Emma’s return to society drew no comment, although she overheard Lady Drummond murmuring to Lady Sefton, “Is it true? Two hundred thousand pounds?”

“So I believe,” the other replied. “How can it be that she’s still unmarried? She’s well enough looking … although too tall and lanky for many tastes. But with a fortune of that size, a man can overlook a few imperfections.”

“Perhaps she’s difficult to please,” suggested Lady Drummond. “She has a definite air of consequence, wouldn’t you say … and after the scandal …”

Emma moved away, her ears burning. It was most unpleasant to be talked of in such fashion, although she had known it to be inevitable.

“Mr, Paul Denis, ma’am,” the butler announced from the door, and Emma glanced over at the new arrival. He was a man of medium height, black hair curled crisply over a well-shaped skull, very dark
eyes gleaming in an olive-hued complexion. He bowed to his hostess with a flourish that seemed entirely in tune with his rather exotic appearance and spoke with a faint but noticeable accent.

“Princess, I am come to pay my respects. My father, I believe, wrote to your husband.” He raised the princess’s hand to his lips and kissed it elegantly.

“Oh, yes, I remember. Some family connection … a great-aunt, wasn’t it?” She smiled benignly at this most presentable young man.

Paul agreed that it was indeed a great-aunt who connected them, and kissed her hand yet again. Princess Esterhazy drew him aside and began to question him in her lively manner as to his childhood and present circumstances.