An Unexpected Gentleman (6 page)

“Is it done, then?” Isobel asked caustically. “Has the fair maiden sacrificed herself to the dragon and saved the kingdom?”

“No.” Adelaide walked very carefully across the room, silently congratulated herself for not tripping, and tossed her mask on the bed. “The realm of Ward remains in peril.”

“Sir Robert didn’t ask?” Isobel looked up from her book, her hard expression replaced with one of confusion. “And you’ve returned?”

“I never went.”

“But you’ve been gone an hour at least. Where have you been?” Isobel squinted. “And why are you so mussed?”

“In a sitting room. In the garden.” She waved her hand about. “There was a breeze. I never made it to the ball.”

“The garden?” Clearly intrigued, Isobel set her book aside and stood. “Whatever were you doing there?”

She tried, and failed, to come up with a suitable lie. “Avoiding Sir Robert.”

“Oh! I knew it,” Isobel cried with uninhibited delight. “I
knew
you would come to your senses.”

“I’ve
lost
my senses.”

“Rubbish. You had lost them, and now you’ve become reacquainted with them.” Isobel crossed the room and patted Adelaide’s arm with exaggerated sympathy. “Poor dear. I’ve heard the process can be quite disorienting. Having never lost my own, I can’t . . .”

Isobel trailed off and sniffed. “You smell . . .” She leaned in and sniffed again. “Decidedly flammable.”

“Oh, I . . . There was a sideboard . . . In the sitting room. I thought perhaps a sip to quell the nerves . . .”

“Are you drunk, Adelaide?” She sounded positively enamored of the idea.

“Absolutely not. I’m . . .” A bubble of laughter escaped. “Embroidered.”

“Embroidered? What on earth does that mean?”

Adelaide shook her head and dragged her hands down her face with the irrational idea that it might wipe the stubborn smile from her face. “It means I’ve made an awful mess of things. Dear heavens, what have I done?”

“Made fine use of an hour by the looks of it.”

Adelaide ignored that, slipped her shoes off, and began to pace between the bed and the door. She told herself to concentrate. She would figure a way out of the tangle she’d created. She would
think
, damn it.

“What in heaven’s name was I thinking?” she muttered.

Certainly, she hadn’t been considering her family, or Sir Robert, or the money she’d spent on a new ball gown. She frowned down at her skirts. It wasn’t the finest silk or the most fashionable of cuts, but the dress was new, and its production had cost a pretty penny. She could have spent that money on new half boots for herself and Isobel. They were in desperate need of new boots. She should have used the money for something more practical.

“I should have gone to the ball,” she muttered.

It was too late now. Even if she were not embroidered, even if she’d not made the promise to Connor, she’d be damned if she kissed one man in a garden and accepted a marriage proposal from another man in the same night. She liked to think she retained some measure of honor.

How long, she wondered, did one need to wait between kiss and proposal?

“A day or two?” She flicked a glance at Isobel who, accustomed to Adelaide’s habit of pacing and speaking to herself, had taken a seat on the arm of the chair.

Isobel shrugged. “You do realize I haven’t the foggiest notion what you’re talking about.”

“Of course I do.” She’d just forgotten for a moment. Just as she’d forgotten how much she needed Sir Robert’s income and how much she had spent on the ball gown.

“I suppose I could try to sell it,” she murmured, but it seemed such a waste, and she was so weary of selling her possessions. Nearly everything of value her family owned had been pawned away for a fraction of its worth.

“It’s not even been used, really.” An idea occurred to her. She stopped and grinned at Isobel. “You should use it.”

“What’s that?”

“You should go to the ball.”

Isobel straightened from the chair, blue eyes sparking with eagerness. “Do you mean it?”

“There’s no sense in letting the gown go to waste.” She laughed as Isobel immediately began to struggle with the buttons on the back of her dress. “You’ll have to procure a new mask from Mrs. Cress, however. Mine has perished.”

Isobel threw a glance at the bed and grimaced. “May it rest in peace.”

Feeling slightly better for having righted this one mistake at least, Adelaide brushed out her skirts and made the clumsy (on her part) exchange of gowns with Isobel. She sat Isobel at the vanity, made several maladroit attempts to do something with her sister’s hair, then gave the task up to Isobel.

Isobel all but squirmed on the bench in her excitement. “Perhaps I’ll meet the gentleman who purchased Ashbury Hall and he’ll fall madly in love with me.”

Adelaide thought of the vast and long-abandoned manor that sat just a few miles from their home. “We don’t know the gentleman who purchased Ashbury Hall. We don’t anyone wealthy enough to have purchased Ashbury Hall.”

“But we might, by the end of the night.”

It took a moment for Adelaide to recognize the glint in Isobel’s eyes. “Right.”

She strode to the bellpull and yanked.

Isobel frowned at her. “What are you doing?”

“You need a chaperone.” She was tipsy, not unconscious.

“I don’t,” Isobel protested. “How am I to have fun with a chaperone looking over my shoulder?”

Rather than answer, Adelaide yanked the bellpull again. Harder.

“Oh, very well.” Isobel gave a disgruntled huff and returned her attention to the mirror. “See if Lady Engsly is amenable. She’s a cheerful sort, and she’s not intimidated by your dragon.”

“Sir Robert is
not
—”

“What shall I tell Mrs. Cress?”

Adelaide blinked at the blatant change of subject. “What shall you tell her about what?”

“You
are
tipsy.” Isobel laughed. “How shall I explain your absence?”

“Oh.” She tried to remember what excuse they had planned for Isobel’s absence from the ball. It certainly hadn’t been that the Ward sisters had been unable to afford the purchase of more than one ball gown. “Tell her I have the headache.”

“I imagine there will be some truth to that in a few hours.”

Adelaide took a seat on the bed and watched Isobel fuss over her appearance. She was such a pretty young woman. So full of life and hope and energy. But that life was stifled by poverty, and Adelaide knew all too well that, unless something changed, the hope would die before long.

“Isobel,” she said and waited for their eyes to meet in the mirror. “Would it be so very terrible, having a wealthy baron for a brother?”

It was a long moment before Isobel spoke, and when she did, her voice was soft and filled with a sadness that tore at Adelaide’s heart.

“I should adore a wealthy brother.” She turned on the bench to face Adelaide. “But I don’t want a martyr for a sister.”

Adelaide digested that in silence. It was the last thing said between them in private that night, and the last thing Adelaide thought of before she closed her eyes and dreamed of dragons and maidens. And a knight with seductive green eyes and lips that tasted lightly of whiskey.

A
delaide rose the next morning with every intention of putting the events of the night before behind her. It was a remarkably easy decision to make, requiring only a brief reflection on what a fool she’d made of herself. Drinking whiskey, kissing strangers in a garden, promising to avoid her suitor—she could scarce believe her own behavior.

She could, however, take very good care not to repeat her mistakes. She would dress, go to breakfast, pay her attentions to Sir Robert, and otherwise pretend she had never met a man named Mr. Connor Brice.

She made good on the first and second intentions. She enjoyed less success with the third and fourth. Sir Robert was not present at breakfast, a detail she all but overlooked during her spectacular failure at ignoring the existence of Connor Brice.

He
wasn’t at breakfast either—she noticed this immediately—and she spent the next hour trying to figure how she might inquire after him without confessing to all that they’d met the night before.

She finally gave the effort up when Mrs. Cress stood from the table and suggested the guests join her for a stroll about the grounds. Adelaide demurred, claiming a lingering headache made her poor company. She added the lie to her ever-increasing list of sins. She hadn’t a headache. She’d woke that morning feeling fit as ever. A small, welcomed, and undeserved blessing.

Her guilt increased when she slipped out one door of the breakfast room just as Sir Robert entered through another. She would speak with him soon, she told herself firmly . . . but not right now. First, she needed a long walk to settle her mind.

She briefly fooled herself into believing that it was fresh air and solitude she sought as she made her way through the garden, taking care to stay well away from the other guests.

It was such a lovely morning, after all. The late summer sun warmed her back while a light wind caught at her skirts and cooled her skin. All around her were the sights and sounds of a well-loved garden—the hum of bees amongst the asters, the tidy mounds of sweet william, and the lush and wild growth of an ancient climbing rose. She concentrated on each, doing her best to distract herself from thoughts of Connor Brice, but her best proved woefully inadequate.

Her mind was filled with thoughts of Connor. She wondered when she might see him again. She wondered
if
she might see him again. She wondered if he might kiss her again. She wondered how and when, exactly, she had become a shameless tart.

Disgusted with herself, she spun on her heel and began a determined march back the way she’d come. She would go to her room and stay there until dinner, or until Sir Robert requested her company. Whichever came first. She passed the rose and the sweet william, turned a corner, and there was Connor.

Her feet came to an abrupt halt. So did her heart, a split second before it started again with a painful thud.

He sat not six feet away, on a bench that had been unoccupied on her first passing. Leaning back, with his long legs stretched out before him, he looked relaxed, confident, and even more handsome than she remembered. Probably, it wasn’t rational to think twelve hours was a sufficient amount of time to have forgotten how someone looked. But she wasn’t inclined to think rationally at present, not while the sun was weaving brighter strands of gold in his hair and he was giving her that wonderfully inviting smile.

“I wondered if I might see you here,” he murmured.

Too late, she realized that she should have been a little less preoccupied with wondering when she might see him and a little more concerned with what she ought to say to him if she did.

Because what she did say—or croaked, to be accurate—was, “Morning.”

And, really, he was the first man she had ever kissed—there had to be an infinite number of more eloquent statements to croak than that.

He shifted his large frame, making room for her on the bench. “Will you sit?”

She shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t. She did anyway and felt like the proverbial moth to the flame.

“You weren’t at breakfast.” Though not a brilliant comment, she deemed it an improvement over her first attempt at speech.

“I rose early.” He turned his head at the sound of distant laughter in the garden. “Why aren’t you with the others?”

She shrugged, affecting a casual demeanor. “I’m not fond of crowds, particularly. I prefer the quiet.”

“Shall I leave you to your thoughts?”

“No. I’m not fond of solitude either.” It occurred to her that he might be angling for a polite way to be rid of her. “Would you care to be alone? I didn’t mean to impose—”

He tilted his head at her, full lips curved in amusement. “Are we back to being shy with one another?”

“I don’t mean to be.” She plucked at an imaginary piece of lint on her gown. “I don’t know why I should be.”

Well, yes, she did. She’d kissed him, an act that should make any decent young lady blush. And now she sat there making idle conversation as if the two of them were acquaintances merely passing the time. It was, in a word, awkward.

“I could fetch a glass of whiskey if you like,” he offered. “Or a fire poker.”

She stopped plucking and laughed. It was a relief to hear him speak so casually of their last meeting. Like poking fun at the pitiful condition of her mask the night before, acknowledging the obvious was far easier than dancing around it.

“That won’t be necessary,” she said primly. “Thank you.”

“Are you certain? You were remarkably confident with a bit of drink in you and a weapon at hand.”

“I cannot believe I was so ill behaved.” She threw him a look of censure, but there was no heat in it. “I cannot believe you would be such a cad as to remind me.”