Elizabeth Mansfield (22 page)

“I can’t, sir. You don’t want me to get sacked, do you?”

“She won’t sack you,” Tris said, throwing him another coin. “Hop to it, man.
Now!
”

The butler pocketed the coin, shrugged and went up the stairs. In a moment he returned, followed by two footmen. Without a word, the footmen grasped Tris, one at each arm, and lifted him off the ground. “I’m very sorry, sir,” the butler said as the footmen carried the protesting caller across the hall to the door.

“Then get Lord Smallwood,” Tris shouted desperately, bracing his feet against the door frame to keep the footmen from ejecting him.

“His lordship knows you’re here,” the butler said, rather enjoying this opportunity to ride roughshod over one of the “swells.” “He won’t see you either.” Then, with a grin, he nodded at the footmen to indicate that they were to get on with the job. Obediently, the footmen wrenched Tris away from the door frame, lifted him over the threshold, carried him out the door and deposited him unceremoniously on the pavement.

That night Tris wrote a note to Lord Smallwood, pleading for an interview.
I am at wit’s end,
he wrote.
If you have an ounce of human kindness in your heart, meet me at White’s at one tomorrow. I will be eternally grateful if you grant this request.

At one the next afternoon, Tris was standing in the bow window of White’s club, watching for Lord Smallwood. When a quarter hour had passed with no sign of him, Tris felt so discouraged he was ready to give up the entire matter. But at twenty past one, the Smallwood carriage drew up in front of him. It was with an overwhelming sense of relief that Tris watched his lordship climb down from the coach.

A few moments later they were ensconced in easy chairs in the club lounge, drinks in hand. Tris did not speak until Lord Smallwood had downed half his whiskey. Only then did he feel ready to broach the subject. “Thank you for coming, my lord,” he began. “I’m exceedingly grateful.”

“Yes, so you said in your letter,” Smallwood said brusquely. “But I must be frank, my boy. I did not come to talk about Cleo. I only came to inquire after your mother.”

“My mother?” Tris echoed, surprised.

“Yes. She’s a fine woman. How does she get on?”

“She’s very well, thank you. I’ll tell her in my next letter that you asked for her.”

“Good, send her my best regards. A very fine woman, your mother.”

“Yes,” Tris agreed. But discussing his mother’s character was not the subject that interested him. He took a sip of his drink and plunged in. “I asked you to meet me, Lord Smallwood, to beg you to do a great favor for me.”

“I know what it is, young man, so don’t bother to ask. I cannot intercede on your behalf because my daughter won’t even let me mention your name to her. And, to be frank, I wouldn’t even if I could.”

Tris felt as if he’d been struck in the chest by a hard fist. “Why wouldn’t you?” he asked desperately.

“Because I didn’t care for your treatment of her, that’s why. You won’t get any help from me because you don’t deserve it.”

“I made a mistake, I admit, but surely it was not so dreadful as to be beyond forgiveness.”

Smallwood threw him a look of disgust. “If you don’t think your actions were dreadful, then you’re a worse case than I thought. Any man who pursues one woman while being betrothed to any other is a cad.”

“I was
not
betrothed to another,” Tris declared so loudly that some gentlemen in chairs nearby turned to look.

“Then as near betrothed as makes no difference,” Smallwood retorted. “And keep your voice down. I don’t want my daughter’s affairs bandied about in clubs.”

“I’m sorry,” Tris said sheepishly, lowering his voice, “but this matter is very important to me. I love your daughter. I want to marry her.”

“You do, do you? Then what about Miss Branscombe, eh?” He leaned forward and jabbed at the air with a finger. “What would
she
think of this interview we’re having?”

“She wishes me well in my suit, I swear it! She told me she’d like nothing better than to see me betrothed to Cleo.”

“Hummmph!” his lordship snorted. “It didn’t seem that way to me when I last saw you. You were so jealous of Miss Branscombe’s admirer you wanted to slay him.”

Tris looked down at his shoes. “I know. It was a mental aberration of some sort, too hard to explain.”

“Then don’t bother. Explanations won’t help your cause with me in any case. Or with Cleo either.”

“Are you sure of that, my lord? If she understands that my feelings for Julie were merely brotherly, and that I love her and no one else, couldn’t she find it in her heart to forgive me?”

“No, she couldn’t,” Smallwood said flatly, putting down his glass. “She no longer has any interest in you.” He used his cane to help him to his feet. “Do yourself a kindness, my boy,” he said, frowning down at Tris, “and go back to Devon. Forget about my daughter. She wants nothing to do with you.”

Stricken into discouraged silence, Tris watched Lord Smallwood make his limping way to the exit. “I won’t give up, no matter what you say,” he muttered under his breath.

At the doorway, Lord Smallwood looked back at him. “Don’t forget to give my regards to your mother,” he said. “A very fine woman, that. Don’t know how she bore such a cad for a son.”

32

The message Julie received from Tris could not be ignored.
Cleo won’t have anything to do with me,
he wrote.
I
need your help, even more than you once needed mine. I know how you hate the idea of coming to town, but this is most urgent. I am at the end of my tether. Come at once. Please! Tris.

With the note clutched in her hand, Julie went to her mother. “I must go to London at once,” she said firmly, handing over the missive for her mother to see. “Today, in fact.”

To her astonishment, her mother gave her no argument. “Of course you must,” she said. “It wouldn’t be right to ignore such a forlorn request. However, my love, I cannot permit you to go without chaperonage. London is not Amberford. A young woman cannot dash about town unescorted.”

“I’ll take one of the maids,” Julie said promptly.

But that was not what Lady Branscombe had in mind. “I’ll go with you, and so will Phyllis,” she said with brisk finality. “We’ve wanted to take you to London for years. This will be our chance.”

“But, Mama,” Julie objected, “I’d prefer—”

“If you want to go to London, my girl, you will go with our escort. Like it or not.”

Like it or not, that was how Julie went. And that was how, the very next day, she found herself standing in the lobby of the Fenton Hotel surrounded by the great number of bandboxes, trunks and portmanteaus that her mother and Phyllis had packed for the occasion. While the two older ladies made arrangements with the desk clerk for their accommodations, Julie looked about her with the fascination that a country girl feels in a large city. There were more people rushing in and out of the hotel lobby than she would see in the Amberford square in a week. And they were of many more varied styles, styles that seemed to typify London. Moving about among the potted palms were several elegantly clad ladies, with curled plumes on their bonnets and gold tassels hanging from the tips of their pelisses, details of adornment quite unknown in Amberford. Some of the ladies were accompanied by gentlemen so well dressed they would have won approval from Beau Brummel himself. But not all the women milling about were refined ladies, nor all the men nonpareils: there were overdressed dandies whose high-pointed shirts and tight-fitting coats were too ornamental to be comfortable; harried footmen whose uniforms bore more gold braid than a general’s; housemaids and abigails in black bombazine dresses and white, frilled caps; draymen whose dark work clothes were covered with striped aprons; women of the “muslin company” whose loud, revealing gowns gave garish evidence of their trade; businessmen from the city in neat, conventional blue coats; and tradesmen whose ill-fitting coats were more practical than dandyish. Such color and variety, Julie thought, wide-eyed, could be found nowhere but in London.

She found herself looking more than once at a lady pacing about impatiently near the outer doors. The lady stopped after every dozen or so paces and peered out the windows that flanked the doorway, obviously watching for someone who’d not arrived on time. The woman was young—Julie estimated her age to be about twenty-two— and very beautiful. It was no wonder, for her eyes were green and framed by thick, black lashes, her hair was coppery-red and topped with a straw bonnet tied fetchingly under her ear with wide green ribbons, and her green jaconet gown, cut low across the bosom, revealed a figure both slim and seductive. What struck Julie as remarkable was that although everything the young woman wore seemed to call attention to itself, none of it could be called vulgar or lacking in taste. The gentleman for whom the lady was waiting so anxiously (for Julie was certain that only a gentleman could cause such impatience in a woman’s step) must be, she thought, a very lucky fellow.

Julie’s attention was distracted by a hotel footman who asked permission to begin carrying up the luggage. When she looked over at the doorway again, she was just in time to see the young woman cast herself into the arms of the newly arrived gentleman. Julie couldn’t see the gentleman’s face, for his back was to her, but the lady’s face expressed an enviable joy. The sight of the happy embrace made Julie smile. She watched as the gentleman took the young lady’s arm and led her out the door. Though she was not usually given to idle curiosity, this time she couldn’t help watching for the pair to pass the window, just to glimpse the gentleman’s face. When she did, however, her heart lurched in her chest. It was Peter! The man was none other than Peter Granard, Lord Canfield!

She felt a stab of pain so sharp it made her stagger. To avoid falling, she sank down upon one of the boxes and tried to catch her breath. Her mother and Phyllis approached her at that moment. “It took some doing,” her mother was saying, “but we managed to cajole the manager into finding three adjoining rooms for—” She stopped short when she saw Julie’s white face. “Julie? What’s amiss? Good God, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost!”

“No, it’s nothing, Mama,” she said, forcing a smile and jumping to her feet. “Nothing at all.”

Lady Branscome knew her daughter well enough to realize that
something
had occurred to upset her, but she also knew that Julie could not be coaxed to explain when she wanted to keep silent. Therefore, after exchanging a speaking look with Phyllis, she proceeded as if nothing had happened, directing an army of footmen in the disposition of the baggage and herding her friend and her daughter toward the stairs. “We must all lie down for a nap,” she commanded them, pretending not to notice how shaken her daughter still was, “before we meet Tris for dinner.”

After an hour alone in her room, Julie managed to recover her equilibrium, if not her spirits. She’d given herself a good scolding for her unwarranted reaction to what she’d seen. It was excessively foolish, she told herself, to be shocked at the sight of Lord Canfield with a beautiful woman. It would be shocking if he were not. Handsome and desirable as he was, he was probably never without a woman on his arm. The only thing that should have astonished her was to see him here, at this very hotel, on the very day of her arrival.
That
was a shocking coincidence, but nothing else she’d seen should trouble her. There was nothing between her and Canfield that would justify these feelings, so she had no choice but to rid herself of them. She had to try to forget the incident, and to forget him.

When Tris tapped at her door before dinner, in the hope of exchanging a few words with her alone before meeting with their mothers, she was able to face him with the appearance of normality. He perched on the window seat and gave her a brief account of what had passed—or, rather, not passed—between Cleo and himself. As he spoke, she studied his face. It was lined with sleeplessness and despair, and her heart went out to him. She gave the circumstances several minutes of serious consideration before suggesting that perhaps she herself should try to talk to Cleo. “Perhaps your defense will be more convincing coming from me,” she said. The mere suggestion so filled him with hope that his spirits rose. As a result, he was able to be a charming host to the ladies at dinner.

The next afternoon, he drove Julie to the Smallwood townhouse himself. “I’ll wait right here for you,” he said, almost breathless with tension, “but talk to her as long as she’ll let you. Don’t worry about keeping me waiting. The longer it takes, the more hopeful I’ll feel.”

Julie mounted the steps and tapped at the door. When the butler invited her in, she threw Tris a smile of encouragement before stepping inside. After sending up her name, she was kept waiting an interminably long time before she heard Cleo’s footsteps on the stairs. She looked up and almost gasped. Cleo, who’d always been a veritable fashion plate, was now pale and unkempt. Her once-bouncy curls lay flat, her eyes looked red-rimmed and without sparkle, and, though it was late afternoon, she was still wrapped in a wrinkled morning robe. “Forgive me for not being dressed,” she muttered as she greeted Julie with a weak handshake. “I’ve not been feeling quite the thing today and decided to stay abed.”

“I’m sorry,” Julie said hurriedly. “If you’d rather not see me now, I’d be happy to come back at a more convenient time.”