Confessions of a Little Black Gown (21 page)

“Oh, good God,” he choked out, tripping over the corner of a tile on the terrace.

She glanced up at him. “It isn’t more of your dyspepsia, is it? I can send up Claver with more powders, if you would like. Better yet, I suggest you eat something, sir, to keep up your stamina. I expect all the gentlemen to do their part and ensure there are no wallflowers at my ball.”

Stamina? He would have liked to inform the duchess he’d done his part last night, but thought the better of it.

“No, Your Grace,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to break free of her grasp. “That would be intolerable.”

“Exactly, Mr. Ryder. I knew you would see how important this is. Now come along, for the picnic is about to begin and we have more guests I would like
to introduce you to,” she offered, giving her hand a flourish over the perfectly tended landscape before them, where tables had been set up, even a tent to shade the ladies.

Nearby, the Misses Elsford, Lord Boyce, Sir Robert, and several others he didn’t recognize were bowling on the green, while Miss Browne held court beneath a bright pink parasol, with Cranwich and Grimston on either side of her.

But one lady in particular caught his attention and held it.

Tally. The sight of her fair head bent over a sketchbook sent his heart into a tremulous rhythm. Some young buck stood beside her, making small talk and trying to catch her eye.

Larken didn’t recognize the pup, but had an immediate dislike for him. He glanced around for Brutus and wondered where the devilish little dog was. Why wasn’t the mutt doing his duty and attaching himself to this bothersome fellow’s boot?

The sunlight fell down upon her simple bonnet, and on the single tendril of her blond hair that had slipped free and now lay curled upon her shoulder. His fingers itched to unwind it.

Oh, sweet fair Thalia
, he mused, that wretched need for poetry rising up inside him at the sight of her. Make that something else rising, because when he looked at her, he saw her not in her simple gown, but splendidly naked in his bed.

Just then, she looked up and saw him. Their gazes met and Larken’s heart stilled. Had it just been a few hours ago when they had been so close, so joined that she’d seemed a part of him?

And yet now they stood so very divided by their loyalties.

The duchess, her attention diverted as she directed several of the footmen, had relaxed her hold on him and he took the opportunity to escape.

Make haste, Larken…Go finish this task and be done with the madness…

He glanced at Tally again.
Not quite yet…
For now that he’d seen her, he knew the least he should do was apologize. That was the honorable thing to do…

Honorable?
Guilt slowed his pace toward her. Honorable would be to beg her forgiveness. No, offer for her. Honestly, if he truly possessed a shred of honor, it would have kept him from making love to her three times. He paused. No, make that four times, last night.

The foppish fellow flicked a glance at him as he approached and dismissed his plain appearance as hardly worth noting. But Tally’s gaze was another matter, and he swore he detected a flush rising on her cheeks.

“Lord Norridge,” she said, “would you mind fetching me my drawing case? I do believe I left it in the library.”

The young man’s brow furrowed, for he looked like he had no desire to yield his place beside her. However, good breeding prevented him from refusing a lady’s request, so the hopeful Corinthian bowed and went off with the haughty air of a knight in search of a dragon.

Tally waited for a few moments and then raised the hem of her gown to reveal the box sitting beside
her foot. “Oh, dear, I believe I’ve sent him on a fool’s errand.” A wicked smile tipped her lips.

Larken’s heart did a double thump. He didn’t know what he loved more about her, her conniving wiles or her total lack of remorse.

Loved?
His throat nearly closed. He loved her. No, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

“I do believe you’ve sent the right man for the job,” he said instead.

“More than you know,” she replied, reaching down into her case and fetching a rag. She wiped at a charcoal smudge and then continued working on her sketch.

He glanced down at her notebook—a drawing of Miss Mary Elsford and Lord Boyce—and marveled at her skill, for she had caught them in a moment that captured both their youth and bright spirits. “You’re quite good.”

She laughed. “You needn’t sound so surprised.”

“I’m sorry. In truth, I expected nothing more than a simple landscape.”

“Ah, and that was your mistake.”

“Mistake?” he asked. “How so?”

“Sir, how long have you known me?”

Her question took him aback. “Pardon?”

“How long have you known me?” she repeated.

“Since night before last.”

She paused and glanced flirtatiously over her shoulder at him. “Have you known me to be a woman of simple ideas or talents?”

Touché.

He laughed. “It is just that your skill is of some note. You’ve captured Miss Mary’s likeness exactly
as she is, right down to the turn of her nose. I’d know her anywhere with that sketch in hand. ’Tis a rare talent you possess.”

Gazing down at her, their eyes met, and no longer was he thinking of her skill with a charcoal, but the way her kiss enflamed him. A talent in and of itself.

One of many, he would have liked to add, but the moment had grown awkward enough without his adding to it.

She glanced away and nodded her appreciation. “You sound like my father. When Papa realized how good I was at capturing a likeness, he had me draw all the people we met and he would include them in his diplomatic pouches home.”

“I’m surprised your father never recruited you for the Foreign Office,” he said.

She laughed. “I fear my talents were spoken for long ago and I daresay my employer wouldn’t allow me to go gamboling off for King and Country. She’d claim I have far more important matters to attend to here.”

“Your employer?”

Tally laughed. “Yes, my sister. Duchess latched onto my skills years ago, when we were in school in Bath to be exact. Since then, she’s kept me quite busy drawing bachelors for her
Chronicles
.”

Tally paged through her book. “Yes, here was my first commission. Lord John Tremont.”

“Christ!” he muttered before he could stop himself. The minx had captured the notorious Mad Jack exactly.

“Yes, I suppose you would know his lordship,” she said, one brow arched regally. For what agent
in His Majesty’s service didn’t know Lord Jack or hadn’t passed through his estate near Hastings on their way to the smuggler’s ships he arranged to give them passage to France and beyond.

Ships that had included Dashwell’s infamous
Circe
.

Larken stepped back, the ground as unsteady as if she’d just pulled the rug out from beneath him. For here she’d made her point quite clearly—she knew exactly who he was—and gone back to absently flipping through her sketchbook as if it was no matter that he wasn’t the duke’s cousin, rather a spy sent to uncover her secrets.

No, indeed there was nothing simple about Tally Langley.

Since he’d never been unmasked before, he tried to find something to say. Something to counter her only-too-correct assumption, but instead his gaze fell on the passing parade of drawings in her sketchbook as she turned the pages.

Drawings of Brutus, Lady Philippa, the duchess, an elderly lady knitting, even Miss Browne, though he did his best to ignore the horns protruding from her head and the tail that stuck out from the back of the lady’s gown.

“How is it that you can do that?” he asked, grinning at the rendering of Miss Browne. She actually looked more jovial with the horns.

“Do what?” she asked, glancing down at the drawing.

“Bring someone to life like that?”

She shrugged, “Papa always said it was because I see people differently.”

“Differently? How so?”

She paused for a moment, as if not sure how to explain. “I don’t see the outward lines of a person, but what is in their heart. Their ‘essence’ is what our Nanny Rana called it.” She continued paging through her sketches.

“Stop,” he said, pointing at one.

“I thought you might recognize him,” she said.

“Dashwell,” he said softly.

“Yes, Dash. I drew it last winter, if you must know. Before he was caught,” she said quite pointedly as if his capture had been an evil wrongdoing.

He would have liked to remind her that even then, Dashwell had been a wanted man, so her aiding him before the Setchfield ball where he’d been captured had been as treasonous as her help in freeing him from Marshalsea. He was about to ask her which part she’d played in the act—the old woman or the driver—but she countered him by saying, “Hardly the fearsome devil everyone makes him out to be, wouldn’t you say? And your friend once, or so I am told.”

To his consternation, she’d caught the very essence, as she called it, of Dashwell—that Irish sparkle to his eyes, and the jaunty tip of his square chin that made him look more like a boon companion than England’s great enemy.

“That isn’t a matter for me to decide,” he said stiffly, reverting to his Mr. Ryder persona. The stuffy fellow was handy at times. And to change the subject again, he nodded over toward Lady Philippa, who stood under a tree with Lord Gossett. Tally’s cousin appeared quite entertained by the dazzled
viscount, who was doing a bit of slight of hand to enchant the lithe beauty.

“Your cousin looks amused.”

“She’s always been happiest in the country.”

“And you?”

Tally’s nose wrinkled. “Not I. I love city life. More people, more entertainments. Places to explore.” She sighed. “When the wars are finally over, I intend to go back to Paris and Vienna and Naples and see them all over again.”

“Alone?” For a very proper, stuffy English propriety reared its head inside him. Tally traveling about the Continent on her own? Never! Not if he had anything to say about the matter.

But that was the point. He didn’t. He wouldn’t. He shouldn’t even be here, dallying after her like that foolish pup had been doing before him.

She shrugged, not answering his question. Flipping a few more pages, she was coming to the end of her collection, when one drawing in particular caught his eye.

“That one—”

“This one?” she asked, flipping to a drawing of Brutus and a boot—of course.

“No, the other one—of the woman.”

“This one?” she asked, turning the page. “Do you know her?”

“No,” he said almost immediately, that is until he looked at the page again, the image from his dream rising forth like a ghost and blending with the likeness before him. “Good God.”
Aurora?
It could very well be. “Perhaps, I do,” he admitted. “Who is she?”

“I haven’t the vaguest notion,” she said, tipping her head to study the picture anew. “I saw her at the posting inn when we changed horses the other day. I thought she had an interesting air about her. But I haven’t got her quite right—”

“Her brow,” he suggested. “Her brow should be a little more pronounced.” He glanced up at the company of other ladies. “Rather like Mrs. Browne’s.”

She glanced at the lady and then down at the drawing. “Why, yes, yes, that’s it.” She reached for her rag, rubbed at the lines there and then set to work putting it to rights.

When she’d finished, she looked up at him. “Are you sure you don’t know her?”

“No.” He tried to sound firm, but inside his head a furious argument ensued.

But you do know her. That is her.

In Sussex? At a posting inn? Whatever would
she
be doing here?

You aren’t considering all the facts…

The last voice sounded very much like his father’s. He’d always been one to want to weigh everything before coming to a conclusion. But then again, that hesitancy had cost the elder Larken his life.

“No, I haven’t the vaguest notion who she is,” he repeated.

Tally sighed and studied the drawing. “You know, now that I think about it, I wonder if it is her trunk that I have. She appeared more of the sort to wear those shoes than I.”

Larken laughed. Actually he quite liked the way she wore them, but he wasn’t to tell her that.

She continued her story. “She arrived by post-
chaise just as Felicity had all the baggage in a terrible jumble all over the yard at the inn.” She paused for a moment. “Oh! That’s it. It must be! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.” She grinned up at him. “My lord, I do believe you’ve solved a mystery.”

Larken felt a shiver run down his spine, as if the threads that held this entire case together tugged at him deliberately to pay heed.

To a story about lost luggage and traveling widows? Now he was going mad.