Elizabeth Mansfield (9 page)

He hadn’t meant to say the words aloud, but she heard him. “Time?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, deciding to be frank. “Time to ourselves. To improve this acquaintance. That little bit of a race didn’t deepen the acquaintance enough to make you ready to use my given name, did it?”

“Perhaps not quite enough,” she said, softening the words with a small smile, “but the prospect seems less frightening than before.”

His half smile reappeared. “That, at least, gives me hope.” His horse shied, and he bent to stroke the animal’s neck. When he straightened up again, his eyes swept over her with an appreciative gleam. “The race has loosed your hair,” he informed her. “It’s blowing about in delighted liberation. This sight of you looking so unceremoniously windblown certainly increases my feeling of close acquaintance.”

Her smile faded at once. “Oh, dear!” she murmured, trying desperately to gather the strands together. “Tris will be so annoyed with me.”

“Will he?” His lordship peered at her curiously. “Why? What on earth has he to say about it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t... I...” Her voice died away and her eyes fell.

“You have my word that you look quite lovely this way. Does it matter so much what Tris thinks?”

She bit her underlip and held up a hand as if to restrain him from further comment.

He immediately regretted what he’d said. “I’m sorry. It’s not my affair. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, please,” she murmured in a low voice, “you didn’t... It’s not important.”

“I should have remembered what Sir William told me.”

Her eyes flew to his. “What was that?”

“That you and Tris are betrothed. Or almost betrothed.”

“No, we’re not,” she said. Her tone was decisive, more decisive than he’d yet heard it.

“Not even almost?”

“Not even that.”

Tris was coming close. Whatever else Canfield wanted to say to her would have to be brief. “In that case, Miss Branscombe,” he said quickly, “I shall feel free to repeat my request for a dance with you at my very next opportunity.”

She paused in the act of pinning back her hair and looked up at him, a smile lighting her eyes. “Despite the dragon?”

He smiled back at her. “Dragons don’t frighten me. I’m quite capable of fighting them. I’m determined to dance with you one day, no matter how carefully you’re protected by dragons. Or by not-quite-betrotheds, for that matter. So be warned.”

12

Cleo Smallwood had spent the day after Tris’s departure closeted in her bedroom, not even emerging for meals. Her father, listening at the door at intervals during the day, heard either sobs, agitated footsteps or fearsome silences. By evening he was becoming distraught. Such behavior was utterly unwarranted, he believed, and utterly self-indulgent. From time to time he pleaded through the shut door for her to be sensible. “Now, listen here,” he declared when his patience became exhausted, “if you don’t come out at once, I shall ... I shall do something drastic!”

Her response was to ignore this dire threat and remain in seclusion for the next two days.

The following day, however, she emerged from the room in a completely different mood. Her movements were quick and lively, and her eyes glittered with determined animation. She informed her father that she was going out, and out she went, dashing about madly in a whirl of visiting, riding and shopping (each activity requiring a complete change of clothing), and then topping off the day by attending three routs in one evening. When she returned home at four in the morning—an hour at which no properly reared girl would still be awake—her father, who’d been pacing the floor anxiously, attempted a mild admonishment. “I am forced to have to tell you, my girl,” he said as firmly as his mild nature permitted, “that this behavior will not do at all.”

She glared him, ready to do battle. “I am not a child,” she began belligerently, “a mere child who must be scolded for staying out la—” But all at once her face fell, and she burst into a flood of tears. “Oh, Papa,” she wept, falling upon him, “I’m so m-m-miserable!”

“Good God!” he exclaimed, shocked at the vehemence of her emotions. “Cleo, my love, all this rodomontade
can’t
be about that bumpkin Enders, can it?”

“Yes, it can,” she sobbed, “and it is. He’s broken my heart!”

“You poor child, I can see that he has, and I’m very sorry for you,” he said, patting her shoulder, “but hearts can be mended, you know.”

“Yes, b-but how?”

“I don’t know. Time, I suppose. Time will make you forget him. That’s what they say. What I
do
know is that you’ll do yourself no good by indulging in this sort of emotional display.”

“I know. I’ve been very foolish.” She shuddered, gulped down what remained of her tears and sank down on the nearest chair. “But the truth is I don’t wish to forget him. I want him back.”

“If you wanted him so much,” her father pointed out in the foolish way that parents have, “you shouldn’t have thrown him out.”

“No, I shouldn’t have,” she agreed glumly. “But what’s done can’t be undone.”

“Quite. So let’s end this useless discussion and go up to bed. We’ll both feel a good deal better after a proper night’s sleep.”

“Perhaps you will, but I won’t.” She stood up and followed slowly after her father, who’d headed to the stairway. “Papa, would you be willing to help me win him back?” she asked from the bottom of the stairs.

He’d reached the first turning, but he paused and looked down at her curiously. “I? What could
I
do?”

“Something difficult. Important but difficult. Would you do it?”

“You know I don’t think much of the fellow...”

“I know. But you’ll change your mind once you know him better.” She climbed a stair and gazed up at him. “So, what do you say?”

“I don’t know what to say. What is it you wish me to do?”

She twisted her fingers together uneasily. “I want you to accompany me to Derbyshire,” she said in a small voice.

“To
Derbyshire?
”
His voice was a loud squeal. “Are you considering
chasing
the fellow? To the
country?
Have you gone
mad?
”

“I think I have, rather. But the idea is not as mad as you make it sound. He did invite me, once.”

“What sort of invitation? Did it have a specific date?”

“Well ... no, but—”

“Then it wasn’t a true invitation at all. Besides, even if it were, your quarrel would nullify it.”

“I don’t care,” the girl said with a shrug. “Once we arrive on his doorstep, he’ll have to welcome us. He
is
a gentleman, after all.”

“Balderdash!” Lord Smallwood was a mild man, but even he could be pushed too far. He drew himself up to his full height and glared down at her. “I’ve never heard of such a thing! Are you actually suggesting that you wish to engage in a pursuit of a man who is quite beneath you? And that I accompany you all the way to Derbyshire to drop in on someone who isn’t even expecting us? You
are
mad! You sound like an immodest, manipulative virago! I won’t even discuss such a brazen idea!” And he turned on his heel and marched up out of her sight.

Cleo sank down on the step and leaned her forehead on the bannister, her mind in a whirl. It
was
a brazen idea, she thought, just as her father said it was. But it was also a good one. There was much she could accomplish in a visit to Tris’s home. For one thing, he would, as her host, be forced by simple good manners to reconcile with her. She would meet his mother, for another. And she would get a glimpse of the mysterious Julie, the “neighbor” who had such power over him that one crook of her little finger had lifted him from her own arms and sent him rushing home. Cleo wanted more than anything else to get a look at that female.

Yes, it was in Derbyshire, rather than in London, that she, Miss Cleo Smallwood, could learn what she needed to know of the real Tris. And if in the process she appeared to her father—and to the rest of the world—to be a manipulative, immodest virago, so be it. It would be worth it.

Of course, she couldn’t make the trip without escort; she wasn’t such a virago as all that. But there was no one other than her father who could escort her. He’d refused to do it, and in terms that seemed to brook no argument. But she could change his mind; his refusal did not worry her. Papa would succumb to her blandishments sooner or later, she was sure of that. By the time she was ready to leave, she’d surely have won him over. She could always twist him round her little finger. When Tris had stormed from the house, she’d worried that she’d lost some of her power to charm men. But not her power over Papa. Good God, no! She couldn’t have lost as much as
that.

13

An hour before the guests were due to arrive for the dinner party, Tris decided to look into the dining room to check on the preparations. What he saw struck him like a blow. This was not the small informal dinner he’d envisioned. The table had been expanded to its fullest length—seating twenty-four!—and was set with the finest china and plate. At least five goblets were lined up at each place, and two footmen were busily setting up floral centerpieces at three-foot intervals on the table, having already adorned the sideboards with an alarming number of decanters, silver servers, chafing dishes, candelabra, epergnes and trays. The room glowed as if in preparation for the regent himself.

Turning quite pale in chagrin, Tris immediately turned about and stormed up to his mother’s bedroom. “Mama!” he shouted, bursting in on her with no more warning than an angry knock. “What have you done?”

She was sitting at her dressing table in an enormous dressing gown, her abigail doing up her hair. “Done about what?” she asked calmly, turning about in her chair to face her son.

“About tonight’s dinner! It was supposed to be
small.
And
informal!
”

“Smaller than twenty-four was not possible,” Lady Phyllis explained, signaling the abigail to leave them. “If, for example, I’d invited the Frobishers without asking the Severns, the Severns would have been dreadfully offended. And the Kentings have two houseguests who had to be included. And the Harroway daughters are back from London, which of course I didn’t know, for if I did I’d never have sent the Harroways a card. Those Harroway girls, you know, are the two most irritating chatterboxes in the world, and why they’re called girls I never will understand, for they are thirty-five if they’re a day! And I couldn’t omit Lady Stythe and her sister—”

“Enough!” Tris said, holding his ears. “I see your point; you needn’t go over the entire guest list. But didn’t you hear me say it was to be informal?”

“Of course I did. The cards all said it would be informal. ‘An informal dinner and musicale’ are the very words I used.”

“Then why are there five glasses at each place, for heaven’s sake?”

Lady Phyllis raised her eyebrows. “Of course there are five glasses. Good heavens, Tris, it
is
a dinner party, after all. You don’t expect the table to be set as for a picnic, do you?”

Tris groaned. “So anything less than five goblets makes a picnic setting, does it? And I suppose everyone will appear in all their formal finery too. Satins and jewels and such?”

“They will be dressed for a dinner party, which is exactly as they should. And if you don’t stop berating me and take yourself off, I shall not be ready to greet the first guests.”

Tris shook his head helplessly. “This is
not
the sort of evening I wished for. I thought it would be like an ordinary family dinner. That was how I described it to our guest of honor—a small, intimate affair, I said. What if he makes his appearance in his riding coat? How will you feel then?”

“He will do no such thing. He is a gentleman, is he not? He knows enough, I’m sure, to dress for dinner.” She turned back to her dressing table, picked up a little bell and rang for her abigail to return. “Now, stop all this nonsense and go along and dress yourself.”

Despite his mother’s serene dismissal of his concerns, Tris remained worried all the while he dressed. He’d given Julie complete instructions on how to behave toward Canfield this evening (“Let yourself be saucy instead of shy,” he’d advised her, “and laugh at anything he says that smacks even remotely of wit.”), but he’d been counting on a small group. Now that the group had become a crowd, there would probably be little chance for the guest of honor to converse with Julie with any degree of intimacy. And if Canfield should clothe himself in too informal a manner, the fellow would be embarrassed into awkward silence and would probably cut out as soon as politely possible. All Tris’s efforts to set up this affair would have been for naught. The evening was bound to be a complete failure.

But Tris soon learned that he needn’t have worried. Just as his mother had predicted, Canfield did indeed know enough to dress for dinner. In fact, when Tris went down to welcome him at the door, he found him quite resplendent in a superbly cut dinner coat and elegantly tied neckerchief. “Peter, you coxcomb,” Tris greeted him as he led him up to the already crowded drawing room, “how did you know to wear such finery when I said we’d be informal?”