Encounter with Venus (2 page)

He found Bernard at his desk going over his notes for a speech he was to give that evening at Brooks’ club. “I wasn’t expecting you this afternoon,” Bernard said, turning his wheelchair about and looking up in surprise. “Didn’t you say you’d pick me up about eight?”

“Yes, but I wanted to tell you about my luncheon with my sister,” George explained. “I agreed to go to her party at the Abbey on the fourteenth.”

“The fourteenth?” Bernard’s eyes widened in alarm. “But that’s right before the ball!”

“A full week before,” George countered. “I’ll leave on Thursday. I’ve only promised for the weekend. I can be back on Monday, in plenty of time for a ball on Wednesday night.”

“You can’t be sure of that.” Bernard wheeled himself in nervous agitation across the room to where George stood. “What if there’s a storm? Or an accident to your carriage? Damnation, George, you know how important the Renwoods’ ball is to me!”

George knew. Bernard was struggling with feelings of love for the first time since their school days. He’d at long last found a lady who attracted him and who’d not shown revulsion at his crippled legs. Women did not often take to Bernard, either when he was standing upright on his crutches or seated in his wheelchair. He was not a handsome fellow to begin with, having a too-large nose and thick, bushy hair that he could not keep smoothed down. In addition, his accident had bent his six-foot two-inch frame into a somewhat hunchbacked shape. George, of course, believed the ladies to be shortsighted. In George’s view, Bernard was perfectly prepossessing—his expression intelligent, his eyes bright, his wit keen. But for most ladies, he had little physical appeal, and ironically, on the few occasions when one did find him pleasing, he found reasons not to like her. Until he met Harriet.

Harriet Renwood was a sweet creature with a soft voice, a warm smile, and a pair of melting brown eyes. She’d sat down beside Bernard at a recent dinner party and engaged him in conversation for the entire evening. She’d even refused two other gentlemen when they’d interrupted to ask her to dance. Her manner had been so encouraging to Bernard’s hopes that he’d been top-over-tail ever since. When, a few days later, he and George had each received an invitation to the very exclusive Renwood ball, Bernard was quite beside himself. George fully understood why. Because of his incapacity, Bernard was seldom invited to balls; therefore, this invitation was, to his mind, proof of the lady’s interest in him. He could hardly wait for the event to take place.

George studied his friend with sincere sympathy. “I know what it means to you, Bernard. I fully intend to be there. But if, as you say, something should occur to prevent me, it shouldn’t matter. Dash it all, man, you don’t need me with you. If that dinner party the other night is any indication, Harriet Renwood will not leave your side all evening.”

“At a ball given by one’s own mother, a girl wouldn’t be permitted to spend the evening exclusively with one gentleman, even if she might wish to. She’d have to fill at least
some
of her dance card. And when she does get up to dance, what shall I do with myself without your company? I’ll have to stand about on the sidelines, leaning on my crutches like a poor, pathetic mooncalf.”

“What rot!” George exclaimed. “As if there won’t be a dozen fellows to surround you, eager to argue about your views on the corn laws, to say nothing of the elderly ladies who always flutter about to mother you. How many times have
I
had to stand about on the sidelines like a lost soul while
you
were otherwise occupied?”

“Stand about on the sidelines, do you?” his friend scoffed. “I have yet to see the day when you don’t have your pick of any of the ladies present.”

George waved away the comment. “Seriously, Bernard, you needn’t let a ball frighten you. A man who can speak his views before packed audiences at every club in town can certainly handle himself at a mere ball.”

“This is not a
mere
ball. My
heart
is at stake. Damnation, George, I’ll need your support that night of all nights!”

“Very well, you’ll have it. I’ll be back in time, I promise.”

Bernard eyed him dubiously. “I don’t understand why you agreed to go to the Abbey in the first place. You’ve never enjoyed your sister’s social events above half.”

“This time I have a special interest. I understand that one of her guests is to be someone I’ve very much wished to meet. I’ve wished it for a long, long time.”

“Oh?” Bernard raised a curious eyebrow. “Who is that? A lady?”

“Yes,” George said with a grin. “A lovely lady.”

“Very lovely?”

“The loveliest.”

“Do I know of her?”

“No.”

Bernard peered up at his friend with knotted brows. “How is it you’ve never told me of her?”

“I’ve never met her, you see.”

“Never met her?” Bernard shook his head in confusion. “Then how do you know she’s so very lovely?”

“I didn’t say I’d never
seen
her,” George explained. “I only said I never
met
her.”

Bernard stared at his friend in utter perplexity.
“What?”

“Don’t gape at me as if I’d suddenly grown an extra nose,” George said, laughing. “I caught a glimpse of her once, that’s all.”

Bernard threw up his hands. “This is all too much for me,” he muttered. “You’re not behaving like yourself at all.” He wheeled himself about, returned to his desk, and began rummaging through his papers. “That mere ‘glimpse’ hasn’t so greatly overset you as to cause you to change your plans for this evening, has it?”

George snorted. “Good God, no.”

“Then you’ll still be picking me up?”

“Yes, of course.” George started toward the door. “Eight sharp.”

“George?” Bernard asked with an urgent quiver in his voice. “You did mean what you said before?”

George paused in the doorway. “What was that?”

“That you’ll be back from your Yorkshire trip on time, no matter what?”

“I’ll be back,” George assured him. “You have my word.”

Bernard lowered his head to his work again. “I only hope that mysterious lady will make your untimely trip to Yorkshire worth your while,” he muttered lugubriously.

Feeling a bit foolish about the entire matter, George could only answer, “I hope so, too.”

THREE

Bernard may have felt that the trip to Yorkshire was untimely, but to George the time seemed long overdue. In all the years since his first glimpse of his “Venus,” he’d never imagined that he would actually meet her. She’d become, in his mind, a dream, a vision, an ideal beyond reach. Now, suddenly, she was becoming real. A meeting was imminent, and he found himself unwontedly eager for it. Nevertheless, this boyish impatience surprised him. After all, he was a twenty-seven-year-old man-of-the-world, wasn’t he?

You’re no longer a green lad,
he cautioned himself all during the ride to Yorkshire,
so stop behaving like one!
But the trip, which took only seven hours instead of the expected eight, seemed endless to George. He’d chosen to drive his phaeton and pair, and at one point he caught himself urging his matched bays to race at an almost breakneck speed. His young tiger, Timmy, wondering what maggot had gotten into his lordship’s head to make him abuse his favorite horses in that manner, cried out a warning. George got hold of himself and made the bays slow down.
I’m no longer a seventeen-year-old,
he reminded himself. It was foolish to give such significance to what had been a mere moment of his life. But he couldn’t be blamed—could he?—for feeling some excitement at having been given a second chance to learn what might have happened if that moment had not been cut short.

They arrived at Leyton Abbey at sundown. George, windblown and disheveled as he was, leaped from the box, threw the reins to the tiger, and ran up the front steps. His sister was on hand to welcome him, but he gave her only a quick, wordless embrace and dashed past her to the drawing room without so much as a pause to remove his driving gloves.

The room was completely deserted.

He swung about to his sister, who’d followed him down the hall. “Where are your guests?” he demanded in frustration.

“Judging from your eagerness to meet them,” she said in surprise, “one would think I was entertaining the Prince Regent.”

“Never mind Prinny. Where are your guests?” he insisted.

“Prinny sent regrets,” she retorted sarcastically. “The rest are dressing for dinner, of course.” She pushed him toward the stairway. “And so must you. Really, Georgie, you’re behaving most peculiarly. I can’t imagine what’s wrong with you. Where’s your valet?”

“I only brought my tiger, Timmy,” George muttered, trying to hide his disappointment and get control of himself. “He’s seeing to the horses.”

Felicia studied him, puzzled. “I don’t understand you, Georgie. How can you possibly come to a party like this without a valet? Who will dress you?”

“Timmy will do,” George retorted as he started up the stairs. “We’re both quite capable of doing up buttons.”

But, as it turned out, Timmy did not do at all. The lad was wonderful with horses, but he had no experience with dressing a gentleman. He botched the ironing of George’s neckcloth, dropped a shirt-stud and spent long minutes searching for it, and clumsily tore the rosette from one of George’s evening slippers. By the time this last disaster was discovered, it was so late that George feared everyone would have gone in to dinner without him. Hastily, he ripped the rosette from the other shoe and ran down the stairs toward the drawing room.

As he approached the doorway, the sound of laughing voices assured him that the guests had not yet gone in to dine. He paused in the doorway to get his breath and study the assemblage. They made a festive-looking group, the men standing about with their preprandial drinks in hand, their black evening coats making a dramatic background for the colorful, shimmering evening dresses of the ladies seated among them. George remembered that Felicia had said there would be ten at table, but he could see only seven in the room. He stood looking at them for a moment. One of them was bound to be she—his Venus. From his vantage point, he could see four ladies: a matronly woman standing with his brother-in-law, Leyton; his sister Felicia chatting with someone seated in an armchair and hidden by its wings; and two young ladies perched on a sofa, one of whom he recognized as the talkative Beatrice Rossiter. But the other, a decidedly pretty creature, was unknown to him.
Could she be
—
?
he wondered, his pulse beginning to race.

At that moment his brother-in-law noticed him in the doorway and instantly approached. Montague, Lord Leyton, was a string bean of a fellow with a keen mind and a kind heart. George was quite fond of him. “There you are, Georgie!” Leyton greeted eagerly and, clasping him affectionately by his shoulders, added in a whisper, “Thank goodness you’re here. The Thomsett brothers haven’t yet arrived, and we’ve no other bachelor on the premises but you to entertain three single females!” Then he drew his brother-in-law into the room, saying loudly, “Come, let me make you known to everyone. I say, Sylvia,” he cried to the matronly woman, “this is Felicia’s brother. George, this is Lady Sylvia Stoneham.”

“I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you, Lord Chadleigh,” the lady chirped in a birdlike voice quite unsuited to her voluminous frame. “Felicia sings your praises quite constantly.”

“Something she never does to my face,” George quipped as he bowed over her hand.

Felicia looked up at those words, said something to the person in the wing chair, and approached. “Don’t mind him, Lady Sylvia,” she said with a laugh. “He knows very well that he’s my favorite brother.”

“Of course, since he’s your
only
brother,” Leyton put in. “But never mind the nonsense, and let me introduce George to Lord Stoneham.”

Lord Stoneham, large-bellied and pompously slow, came up beside his wife. “Howdedo, Chadleigh.” He lifted the monocle that hung on a cord round his neck and peered at George through it. “Yes, I thought so. You’re George Frobisher. You won’t remember, but I played against you in a cricket match at school. I played for Queens, and you for Trinity. You were just a freshman, do you remember?”

“Yes, of course,” George lied. “How good to see you again.”

“This is no time to speak of sports and games,” Felicia said decidedly, taking George’s arm. “He must meet the others.”

Relieved and thankful to be spared more school reminiscences, George let his sister lead him to the sofa. He was introduced to Miss Beatrice Rossiter first.
Ah, the talkative one that Felicia said was shy,
he reminded himself. She held out her hand to him, her full cheeks turning red and her light blue eyes not quite meeting his.
Yes,
he thought,
she is indeed shy.
It was a quality he had no recollection of, but in order to move on to the next introduction, he quickly declared, “I remember you very well indeed.” Then, with an eagerness he feared was more appropriate to a seventeen-year-old innocent than a twenty-seven-year-old sophisticate, he turned toward the other young lady on the sofa. “And you are—?” he asked, his eyes raking over her burnished coppery curls, her soft eyes, full lips, and her full-bosomed form that looked utterly enticing under a mauve peau-de-soie gown. Though her curves were more ample than his memories of his Venus, he excused her in his mind.
Ten years,
he thought in generous forgiveness,
might have added a bit of fullness to those delicious curves I remember.
He was quite willing to be pleased.