Amanda Scott (34 page)

“Then tell Nick the whole,” Oliver recommended. “I can’t say how he’ll react without knowing more about it—perhaps not even then. He’s a deep one, is Nick.”

“In everything,” Melissa agreed with a sigh. “I never know what he’s thinking, about me or anything else, and I don’t know how to ask him about his feelings or thoughts, yet I’m nearly certain that he’s …”

“You’ll know what he’s thinking if he ever loses that temper of his with you,” Oliver said when she hesitated. “Lord, the way he’s been squiring you about lately, not to mention this crazy jealousy you speak of, I’d have said he was nutty on you, myself. But if you can’t be plain-spoken with your own husband—”

“Do you really think so, Oliver? That he’s … that he cares about me?”

“He married you, didn’t he?”

“Well, yes, but—” Unwilling to reveal her deeper concerns or feelings to Oliver, she said instead, “I find it hard to talk to him for the very reason you mentioned. He keeps his feelings deep. I suppose I must just try harder, but before I try to sort that all out, I’d like to attend to this one problem of mine. You say you resolved your trouble on your own, and I believe I could resolve mine if I were a man, but a female cannot go out and about by herself, and I dare not take my maid, or—” She broke off again when a thought struck her. The solution seemed too obvious to have missed. She looked at Oliver, wondering what he would say.

“What?” he demanded.

“You could take me,” she said. “Oh, Oliver, will you take me to Vauxhall? I’ve been racking my brain, trying to think how to get there tonight. Nicholas h-had other plans, but if I am to resolve my problem, I must go to the opening. I promise I won’t do anything horrid, and he won’t know a thing about it. He’s meeting Drax and doesn’t mean to go to Vauxhall himself, and no one who sees me with you will think the least little thing about it, so no one will tell him. Oh, do say you will take me!”

“To Vauxhall?” He shook his head. “Don’t think I can do that. Not afraid of Nick, even if we should meet him, but I promised to meet Rigger and some others at the Billingsgate at ten.”

“But—”

“No, really, Melissa, everyone will be leaving town Thursday, if not tomorrow, for the Derby. I’m promised tonight.”

“But not until ten,” Melissa said. “Oh, please, Oliver, you could take me to Vauxhall and go straight on to join your party. I-I don’t want to arrive before half past nine or ten, myself, and everyone will be masked, so no one will pay me any heed once I’m inside the gates. I’m bound to find someone who can escort me home later, or perhaps we can arrange for a coach and driver to collect me.”

“Can’t do that,” Oliver said. “The road’s bound to be jammed full of coaches for hours. Water’s the only way to get there without being stuck in a line of traffic. You could pay a waterman to row you back, I expect, and that would be safe enough if our coachman awaited you at Westminster stairs. Of course, he’d be bound to say something to Nick or my father unless we slip him a few yellow boys to keep mum.”

“Yellow boys?”

“Guineas. Pay him for his silence.”

“I couldn’t. That would be worse than anything. I’ll hire a hack if I must, but truly, Oliver, someone will look after me. In point of fact, I’m mee—” She stopped.

“Meeting someone, are you? Look here, Melissa, if you are thinking of cuckolding Nick, I dashed well won’t help you. For one thing, it ain’t the thing to help my brother’s wife give him a slip on the shoulder. For another, he’d murder me. Come to think of it, if he said you weren’t to go tonight—Did he?”

“He said he wouldn’t take me himself, but there is no one else. Aunt Ophelia is going to a card party, Charley went to Astley’s, and my mother does not go out in public. I’m not doing anything horrid. Oh, please, Oliver, don’t say no.”

“Very well, I’ll take you, but if Nick cuts up rough, you’ve got to tell him you made me do it and that you would have gone alone if I hadn’t agreed to help you.”

“Oh, I will, I promise. I know his temper frightens people witless, and I wouldn’t want him angry with you for this.”

“Well, his temper don’t trouble me for I don’t heed it,” Oliver said unconvincingly, “but I’ve certain important matters of my own to attend to over the next few days. I don’t want to be distracted by one of Nick’s little tantrums.”

She repeated her promise, and dinner being announced shortly thereafter, they repaired to the dining room in complete charity with each other. After the meal, they retired to the green salon to pass the intervening time, and Oliver most obligingly taught her a few more ways to avoid being cheated at cards. The only discord between them arose briefly when he suggested that his friend Rigger might provide her with advice on how she might better understand her husband.

“Rigger’s as sharp as he can stare,” Oliver assured her. “He pays heed to how people think, you see, which is what makes him such a dashed fine gamester that
he’s
never in debt. He’d understand how Nick thinks, if anyone can, and he’d have good advice on how to manage him, too. He’s a knowing one, is Rigger. Only one he has trouble reading is his father. Does something he thinks will please the old fellow, and sure as check finds out he was wrong. He’s always putting his foot in it with Yarborne. Of course there’s nothing odd about that. Don’t understand my own father from day to day. But Rigger is a knowing one, so—”

“If you please, Oliver, I’d as lief you did not discuss me with him.”

“Well, I think you’re missing an excellent opportunity.” He said no more about Rigger, however, and Melissa was glad, for her opinion of his friend was not high.

Shortly after nine, Oliver drove her to Westminster Bridge in his curricle, leaving it in the care of his groom at the landing, to await his return. A slight hitch arose as they prepared to hire one of the twenty-foot water taxis, when he discovered that she expected him to pay the fare.

“Look here,” he muttered indignantly, “you might have told me before you let me request a second oarsman.”

She chuckled. “Oh, Oliver, gentlemen always pay for such things, so it never occurred to me that you would not wish to. Moreover, I heard the man tell you what the rates are. The extra oarsman will cost you only a shilling.”

“That’s a shilling each way, I’ll have you know, which means two each for the oarsmen, plus another for the sculler. I wish I’d thought to drive to Lambeth Bridge, but we always go from Westminster. Have you no money with you?”

She thought of the hundred pounds in her reticule. Lady Ophelia had given her bank notes, and she could almost hear them rustle, but there was no reason to tell Oliver about them. Not only had she carefully secured her reticule to the sash of her gown beneath her voluminous pink domino, as a precaution against thieves, but that money was useless for the purpose at hand. Therefore, she said, “I have a few shillings, I think, but I might need them to get home again, so you will have to frank me now. Does one pay to get into the gardens, by the bye?”

“One certainly does,” Oliver said with a groan. “Three and six if I remember correctly. Seems to me, they raised the rates a couple of years back.”

“You seem very concerned about money,” she said. “I thought you said—”

“You need not repeat what I said for all the world to hear,” he told her, flicking a warning glance toward the nearest waterman. “It’s just that I’ve better use for my blunt than to waste it on wherries and tickets of admission. Look here,” he added, his gaze sweeping over the crowded river, “are you sure you can manage by yourself in that place? All London seems to have turned out for this dashed opening of yours.”

Determined to see the matter through now that she had come this far, Melissa suppressed her own alarm at the size of the crowd, put up her loo mask, and said, “No one will know me from any other female. However, you can stay with me if you like.”

“Not if you don’t wish it,” Oliver said. “If there were some way to warn Rigger and the others not to expect me … But there ain’t. It’s just that …” His voice trailed off again, and she could see that he was peering into the distance. He said, “I say, isn’t that Lady Caroline Fiske and her mama?”

Following his gaze to a passing boat, Melissa saw a young woman whom she had met several times before, and agreed that it was certainly Lady Caroline.

“Well, that makes it all right then,” Oliver said, relaxing. “They will have got through the water-gate before you pay for your ticket, but you’ll catch them up quickly enough. I needn’t worry about your safety if you’re with them.”

“No, certainly not,” Melissa said, settling herself beside him in the wherry.

When the oarsmen maneuvered their craft alongside Vauxhall Stairs, she restrained Oliver when he would have disembarked and escorted her to the gate, saying firmly, “You will lose your wherry, sir. I’ll be quite all right now. Thank you very much for bringing me.”

He still looked doubtful, so she slipped quickly into the crowd, keeping a wary eye out for Lady Caroline and her mama. She felt oddly safe in the bustling crowd, but put up her hood and kept her loo mask in place even while she purchased her ticket.

Passing through the water-gate, she moved with the crowd along the lighted walkway past a colonnade and the entrance to the Rotunda, trying to imagine how she was going to find the statue of Milton by half past eleven. She could see that the gardens were larger than she had expected, because far ahead, beyond two temples marking the distant corners of the rectangular green, she could see more lighted walks and shrubbery. Water spouted high in the air from a large, circular fountain nearby, reflecting light from a myriad of lanterns. An orchestra played beneath a gilded cockleshell in the center of the green. Semicircular rows of patrons’ boxes, filled with masked and costumed merrymakers, surrounded the orchestra, facing the green.

The music was stimulating, the laughter and merry chatter of the crowd around her were contagious, and suddenly she wished she were not alone. The night was meant to be snared with a friend, or a lover. She wished she were with Nicholas.

Since Yarborne had her watch, she had no easy way to know the time. She had hoped to find a clock tower, but not seeing one, she decided that she had better stop enjoying the sights and find Milton. Perhaps Yarborne would be early. She prayed that he wouldn’t be late and that, if people unmasked at midnight, like they generally did at costume balls, she would be away from Vauxhall long before then.

Hoping the garden was not littered with statues, she decided to follow each walkway until she found Milton, and lengthened her stride to do so as quickly as possible. She was just passing the huge fountain when the sight of a tall, broad-shouldered figure some distance ahead, approaching the nearside temple, stopped her in her tracks. Even from the back, she recognized Nicholas easily, but not until that moment did she realize she had not believed for a moment that he really would be there.

Someone bumped into her from behind. “Take care,” a feminine voice said sharply, “you’re blocking the way.”

Melissa had already begun to move forward, but as the woman pushed between her and the fountain’s low rim, she caught a glimpse of sparkling jewelry and tendrils of blond hair beneath the hood of a domino almost the same shade of pink as her own. Impulsively, she said, “Lady Hawthorne?”

Starting, the woman turned, her features behind her lace-trimmed loo mask already composing themselves into polite curiosity. She said, “Do I know you? I’m dreadfully sorry if I seemed rude, but I’m in a tearing hurry to catch up with my party, you see. Won’t you excuse—” She broke off, recognition dawning. “Why, hello, my dear. Have you misplaced your escort?” Her mouth twisted with wry amusement. “I must say, I didn’t expect to see you here. Indeed, I was quite sure that Nicky—That is,” she added in a more polite tone, “I’ve heard a vast deal about you of late, and I’d just love to become better acquainted with you, but I simply cannot stop now. I’ve a gentleman waiting for me, you see.” Her smile broadened smugly, and as she turned away, Melissa saw unmistakable triumph in her eyes.

The look was too much. Melissa had always been quiet and reserved, and had never before in her life responded with violence toward another human being. But at that moment, in the face of Lady Hawthorne’s smug look of victory, feelings she had never known she could possess rose up and consumed her. Without a single thought for the consequences, completely ignoring the crowd that milled around both of them, she put both hands out and shoved. Lady Hawthorne stumbled, caught her foot against the side of the fountain, and tumbled in with a mighty splash as a veritable cloud of pink satin billowed up around her.

Gasps and shrieks from people nearby brought Melissa to her senses. Aghast at what she had done, she waited for someone to accuse her but soon realized that in the swirl of nearly matching pink dominoes, no one had seen her push the woman. People exclaimed in dismay, and as several moved to help the dripping Lady Hawthorne from the fountain, Melissa melted into the crowd, wanting to disappear as quickly as possible, and wondering at her own effrontery. Remembering all the warnings she had received about her husband’s temper, she knew she had not yet seen the worst of it. She wondered how long it would be before Lady Hawthorne carried this tale to his ears, and decided she had better find Yarborne before that happened.

Walking quickly past the temple, she kept a wary eye out for the tall, broad-shouldered figure she had seen earlier, but saw only men of average height ahead. She reached a broad walk lighted by hundreds of Chinese lanterns, and paused, unsure which way to go. Like the rest of Vauxhall, the walk was crowded, but most people were turning right. She went with the crowd, pausing a moment later for what she promised herself would be only a second, to watch a rope dancer.

“Clara?” His voice came from so close behind her that Melissa nearly jumped out of her skin. As she turned, she remembered that Lady Hawthorne’s domino had been the same color as her own, and held her mask firmly in place. Knowing she was of a height with the woman, that the lantern light changed the color of her hair, and that her own, less buxom figure was concealed by voluminous folds of pink satin, she was not surprised when Nicholas went right on talking. “Where the devil have you been? We’ve well nigh turned this damned place upside down looking for you!”