First Season / Bride to Be (22 page)

He expected that Emily would expand on this interesting conundrum, but she only nodded, her expression stiff.

“I wouldn't have thought your father would send you to stay with a duchess,” he added, smiling to show he meant it as a small joke.

Emily made a choking sound.

What was wrong with her? She hadn't seemed at all shy when he met her before, certainly not tongue-tied or missish. “What do you think of London?” he asked, confident that she would have an original perspective.

“It is very interesting. My aunt took me to see the pictures at the Royal Academy.”

“Indeed? An odd choice of amusements.”

She gazed up at him, her blue eyes wary.

“Paintings are hardly a novelty in your life, growing up, as you did, with artists. Your aunt might have chosen something less familiar.” She was acting as if he spoke a language that she scarcely comprehended; and as if she weren't very happy to be dancing with him.

“What did you think of them?” he inquired, a bit curtly.

“Of…?”

“The paintings at the Royal Academy. I assume your father's work is more…animated than what the Academy hangs?”

Emily bit her lower lip.

What had happened to her? Or perhaps he had been mistaken in his first impression. He had been rather groggy. Tonight, she was as boring as any deb—more so. “Which pictures, precisely, did you like?” He heard the sarcasm in his voice.

“The portrait of the Duke of Wellington was very fine.”

“So
everyone
says.”

“Yes, well, they say the likeness is—”

“Striking. So I have been told.
Repeatedly
.”

The snub made her flush.

Richard felt a twinge of regret, immediately submerged by impatience. He had a strong desire to walk away. It took a considerable effort of self-control to keep dancing.

“You…you haven't been to see the show?”

“No. I've been rather busy.” Richard's mind wandered back to his own concerns. Busy trying to reassure his mother and separate her from Herr Schelling, busy fending off his friends' assumptions that he would be resuming his old life as if he had never been away. They were all fools, he thought, looking around the ballroom. What would they do if their luxurious life were suddenly snatched away?

He realized that Emily had said something. “What?”

She flinched slightly. “I wondered if you are in town for the whole season?”

“I hope not.”

She looked surprised at his vehemence.

“You are, I suppose?”

Emily nodded.

“My felicitations.”

Her chin came up at this, but it was a pale shadow of the spirit he thought he had seen in the country.

“My aunt has been very generous,” she declared.

“Has she?”

Emily blinked at him.

“What else has she to do? Gossip?”

This elicited a look so timorous that he lost all desire to converse with her. Clearly, he had mistaken her character.

They completed a figure of the dance in silence.

“I trust you are fully recovered?” said Emily then.

“Recovered?” he echoed.

“From the…the incident on the road.”

“Ah.” Couldn't she dare the word
attack
? “Of course.”

“And you have not had any further…?”

Richard waited, but she didn't finish the sentence. “What?” he asked finally.

“Nothing.”

Nothing was the word for it, Richard concluded. She had nothing more in her head than any of the other wide-eyed young debs. He had never had much interest in such creatures, and he had absolutely none now. The music ended; and with relief, Richard returned Emily to the duchess and left her there.

* * *

Emily watched him walk away, feeling rather low. Baron Warrington was quite a different creature from the man she had met at home. He was cold and sarcastic. He spoke as if he were setting traps. She had tried to behave as her aunt had instructed, to show him that she could be at ease in society, where he seemed so perfectly at home. But she had been thrown off by the fear that he meant to gossip about her parents to all his London acquaintances. Would he turn the details of her home into anecdotes for the sniggers of the
ton
? She had experienced that kind of snide mockery often enough in her life, and she didn't like it in the least.

“Did you enjoy the dance?” asked the duchess sharply.

“Not particularly.”

“Emily.”

A young lady does not have strong opinions, Emily remembered, especially negative ones. “I…I mean, yes, aunt, it was very pleasant.”

Her aunt nodded like a governess acknowledging a correct answer. “Was he rude to you?”

“No. Not exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was just…rather sarcastic.”

“He is well known for that.”

She had totally mistaken his character in their brief earlier meeting. Her aunt did seem to know best about these unfamiliar creatures—the denizens of society.

“We will call on Lady Fielding tomorrow,” declared the duchess.

Emily gaped at her.

“We must lose no time in cultivating the acquaintance.”

“But aunt, I don't really want…” She could do without further setdowns from Richard Sheldon.

Aunt Julia waved this aside. “If Warrington is seen to spend time with you, escort you here and there, it will be far more difficult for him to spread scandalous stories about your family.”

“I don't think he will wish to escort me anywhere.”

“His wishes are irrelevant.”

“But…”

Her aunt silenced her with a gesture. “You needn't be concerned about this. That is why a girl has a sponsor in society—to manage such things.”

Her cousin George, Aunt Julia's second son, joined them. He had been drafted as Emily's official escort this evening. Large, blond, and good-natured, he closely resembled his father the duke, who had greeted Emily's arrival in his house with absent courtesy. She had a strong suspicion that the duke, and all three sons of the household, viewed her chiefly as an amusement for Aunt Julia, as if she had suddenly taken up horticulture or knitting.

“That Anne is queer as Dick's hatband,” said George. He had been dancing with the daughter of the house, whose presentation ball this was.

“Slang, George,” admonished her aunt.

“I beg your pardon, ma'am. But she is a bit much.”

The countess of Holburn's daughter Anne was tall and sturdy with dark hair and somewhat prominent green eyes. She had an almost insolent air, and when they were introduced, she had concentrated all her attention on George, scarcely glancing at Emily or her aunt.

“You will clearly outshine her,” said the duchess, scanning the room critically. “I haven't seen Maundseley's girl since she was ten. Have you, George? You know her brother.”

“Bad skin,” replied her son.

“Ah,” said the duchess with obvious satisfaction. “And the Wetherby chit seems frightened of her own shadow. No threat there.”

“You make the Season sound like some sort of contest, Aunt,” Emily ventured.

“Not at all,” was the airy response. The duchess didn't shift her gaze from the crowd.

George caught the eye of a servant and provided them all with champagne. Remembering her instructions, Emily merely sipped.

A few minutes later, when her aunt was diverted by an acquaintance, Emily looked up at George. He seemed very much at home in this setting. “Do you know Lord Warrington?” she asked him.

“Eh?” He started as if one of the gilt chairs had spoken to him. “Warrington? Of course.” He seemed miffed at the suggestion that he might not know someone.

“What sort of man is he?”

George goggled at her.

It probably was the sort of question she wasn't supposed to ask, but she didn't care. Fixing her cousin with a steady gaze, she waited.

“Er…he's…” George frowned in unaccustomed concentration. “Got a deuced sharp tongue. Modish; up to every rig and row in town.” His gaze sharpened suddenly. “You ain't setting your cap in that direction, are you, because…”

“No.” She gave him a look that made his mouth snap shut. “Is Lord Warrington a great gossip?”

“Fellows don't gossip,” George protested. At her raised eyebrows, he added, “Know all the
on dits
, of course. Warrington tells a dashed good story. A wit, you know. I remember one time he was…” He flushed and stopped abruptly.

“At others' expense?”

George didn't seem to understand what she meant, but his account agreed with his mother's. Emily felt a lowering of her spirits.

“Ah, here is Beatrice with a partner for you,” declared the duchess. “Young Hanford, I believe. Very good.”

The countess stopped in front of them, facing her aunt. Emily had a sudden image of two duelists extending their pistols, preparing to fire. The air seemed to quiver as the two women smiled at each other.

Emily took the hand of the smiling young man, and moved into the dance. And into the small hours of the morning, this process went on. Either the countess or Aunt Julia would approach with a gentleman in tow, present him, and then send them out onto the floor. Their appearance varied, but all of them were the honorable this or lord that, and they all seemed to say the same things to her. And to expect the same responses. The one time she ventured to stray from the accepted subject, her partner looked down with such a startled expression that Emily subsided, afraid she had made a terrible gaff.

How had Cinderella really felt at the ball? she wondered on the way home. How would she have liked hours of fittings for her new finery, instead of having it conjured up in a moment by her fairy godmother? And what had she found to talk about with Prince Charming?

“You have a fitting for your new riding habit at eleven,” said the duchess the following morning at the breakfast table. “Henry's chosen you a horse.” She ticked off two items on a long list that lay beside her plate. “Tonight is the Wetherbys' rout party. We'll call on Lady Fielding in the afternoon.”

“Perhaps another day would be better,” ventured Emily.

Her aunt shook her head. “On the contrary. It is vital that we move quickly, before he has time to…” She waved her hand, indicating disaster.

“I don't think… That is, couldn't we wait…?”

Her aunt looked at Emily with raised eyebrows. “I thought you had decided to be presented?”

Puzzled, Emily nodded.

“You yourself decided?”

What did she mean by that?

“Making one's entrance into society is a delicate process. Particularly when you have certain…disadvantages.”

Emily frowned at her.

“That is not a criticism, merely a statement of fact. I know the system intimately and am expert in working it. I thought you had accepted my guidance.”

“Yes, but…”

“Good. I do have your best interests at heart, you know.”

She did, Emily thought. She had opened her home; she had spent a great deal of money on Emily with apparent pleasure. She was totally engrossed in advancing her niece's interests. And this was familiar territory for her, alien as it seemed to Emily. She reminded herself that she
did
want a more settled life. Aunt Julia was trying to get it for her.

* * *

This reasoning did nothing to calm Emily's nerves as they drove the short distance to Lady Fielding's house. Richard probably wouldn't even be there. Of course he wouldn't be there. Undoubtedly he had his own chambers elsewhere. Reassured, she relaxed in the seat.

When they pulled up, however, they found another carriage waiting. They had barely stepped down when Richard emerged from the front door with his mother on his arm.

“We appear to have called at an inopportune time,” commented the duchess.

“No, no. We were just going to the park,” said Lady Fielding. “Take the carriage back to the stables, Ben. Please come in, duchess.”

Richard looked annoyed, Emily thought.

“Why don't we all go to the park?” said her aunt. “We can take my barouche.”

With a small flurry of conversation, it was settled. Richard handed the three ladies into the carriage and climbed in after them. The driver slapped the reins, and they were off.

“A delightful day for a drive,” suggested the duchess blandly. Lady Fielding agreed, and the two older women initiated a flow of commonplaces to fill the silence. Emily risked a glance at Richard, sitting beside her on the forward seat. He looked intensely bored. Her aunt was staring at her, Emily realized. Guiltily, she straightened in her seat and smiled. Her aunt nodded very slightly and looked away.

The park was busy, as it was, in fact, a very fine spring day. The duchess and Lady Fielding acknowledged acquaintances as they passed. Emily had just concluded that this outing would not be so difficult after all when the duchess said, “Perhaps you would like to walk a little, Emily?”

She had to repress a start at being called back from her own thoughts. “Oh…yes.”

The carriage was stopped and the footman jumped down to open the door. Emily stepped to the gravel drive and hesitated. Was her aunt coming? But both the older women were looking at Richard, who responded by joining her and offering his arm. Not joyously, Emily noted.

“Would you care to see the Grecian temple?” asked Richard in a colorless voice.

Emily glanced up at him. He looked like a man going through the motions. There was no trace of the person she had helped across the fields, the one who had spoken to her forthrightly and without affectation. That was because she had imagined him, Emily told herself sharply. “Yes, thank you.”

He led her along a landscaped path toward a small building ornamented with columns and carvings. Flowers had been planted all around it, and in urns along the pediment. “It's pretty,” Emily ventured.

“If you like fakery.”

This silenced her. They strolled toward the temple, properly in full view of the duchess and Lady Fielding, who sat chatting in the carriage.

His arm was hard and unyielding under her hand. His face was equally stiff. No one was going to believe that he was enjoying her company. Her aunt's scheme was doomed. She looked around the park, desperate for some suitable, interesting topic. A spot of color caught her eye. “Look.”

Richard turned and the boredom vanished from his expression. “It's a balloon.”

“What?” Emily watched the gaily striped sphere drift upward. It was high above the rooftops already.

“A balloon. A silk bag filled with gas that is lighter than air. That's why it rises.”

“Lighter than air? How could anything be lighter?”

“The various gases it contains have different properties. If one separates out the less dense element, it will lift even quite heavy objects.” His gaze was fixed on the still rising balloon. “It gives us flight.”

“Us?” echoed Emily.

“Mankind. There are aeronauts in the basket hanging below the bag. You can just see it.”

She squinted. There was indeed something dangling from the bright sphere.

“An ancient dream finally coming true,” Richard murmured.

“Wishing for wings, you mean?”

He stared down at her with such intensity that Emily was abashed. “How will they get down?” she asked to divert him.

He continued to gaze at her for another moment. “They let out gas to descend, drop weights to rise higher.”

“You know a great deal about it,” said Emily, impressed.

Abruptly, he looked self-conscious. Turning away from the balloon, he led her along the front of the Grecian temple. “I have read about such things,” he answered, his voice once more emotionless. “Shall we return to the carriage?”

Emily started to ask another question. But something moved in the corner of her eye, and she turned, startled. An urn on the roof of the temple was toppling slowly over the edge of the pediment. In the next instant, Emily was snatched off her feet and tumbled to the ground in Richard Sheldon's arms. The urn crashed into the pavement where they had been standing and shattered in a rain of soil and stems.

Emily felt the flying shards of pottery strike Richard's back. His body had wrapped around hers, shielding her almost completely from the projectiles and taking most of the impact of their fall. She rested in his embrace, breathless and a little dazed. He had moved so fast, and so decisively. There had been no time to think. He had somehow just known. It had been the same when he lunged at Jonathan in the field behind her house, Emily remembered; this very large man suddenly became a blur of lethal motion.

A man shouted behind them. Shrieks sounded from the direction of their carriage.

Richard's body was all muscle, like sprung steel. It felt as if he could hold her forever, effortlessly. Emily began to feel odd, tingling with energy and languorous all at once.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

His lips were inches from her ear, which made the question seem intimate and intensely personal. A flush of heat washed over Emily. She made a soft affirmative sound that surprised her.

Richard untangled himself and rose, pulling her up after him. Emily swayed a little on her feet.

In the next instant, Lady Fielding hurled herself at Richard, keening at the top of her lungs. He caught her and held her against his chest. “It's all right, Mother. No harm done.”

“You were nearly killed!”

“Not at all. We had stepped out of the way. Mother, calm yourself.”

Stepped out of the way? That hardly described it. But watching Lady Fielding wail and wring her hands, Emily could see why he would make light of the incident. She took a deep breath. There had been something just before the urn fell, some small movement barely glimpsed. She took another breath, regaining her equilibrium. Emily started around the temple to look for some sign of what it might be.

“Are you all right?” asked her aunt.

“Yes, I am just going to…”

“What a very distressing accident.”

“I'm not sure…”

“I believe we had better get Lady Fielding home. She is quite…distraught.” The duchess's expression showed her low opinion of such displays of emotion. It also seemed to contain a glint of satisfaction.

“I want to look behind the temple.”

“Behind it? Whatever for?”

Emily didn't feel her aunt would respond well to her suspicions. “We should tell someone about this…accident,” she ventured instead.

“You may be sure I shall. Disgraceful carelessness.”

Lady Fielding had descended into hysterics, Emily saw. She could not keep her from home. With great reluctance, looking back over her shoulder more than once, she returned to the carriage. On the drive back, she bent all her faculties to recalling that moment when she had seen—what? A movement? The urn itself, or someone pushing it?

The duchess was soothing Lady Fielding with her vinaigrette. The latter had subsided into weeping now.

At the house, the duchess took over, sending a messenger for Lady Fielding's physician and summoning her dresser and a covey of maids. All of them supported Richard's mother up the stairs, leaving Richard and Emily standing in the front hall gazing after them.

“She is easily upset since my…absence,” said Richard, as if to himself.

Emily had, of course, heard the story of his shipwreck. It was a choice bit of gossip among the
ton
. “I'm sure she'll be all right.”

He nodded, eyes still on the stairs, then turned to her. “You should sit down. Would you care for anything? No doubt you are quite shaken by the—”

“I think someone pushed that urn. I may have seen…well, I'm not sure.”

Richard looked skeptical.

“There was something,” she insisted. “A movement. Why should the urn fall otherwise?”

“A crack in the base,” he suggested. “A flaw in the wall under it.”

“But after the way those men attacked you on the road…”

“Footpads.”

“They did not act like footpads. Don't you think it suspicious that they—?”

“My dear Miss Crane, you read too many sensational novels.”

“I don't read any.”

“You will
not
mention this foolishness to my mother.”

Emily drew herself up. “I would never do such a thing.”

“Or to anyone else either.” He shook his head. “What an
on dit
that would make. Warrington thinks himself persecuted. I suppose I was deliberately marooned in the wilderness as well?”

Emily hadn't thought of this. “Could it have been arranged?”

Richard gave a harsh laugh. “Indeed. By someone in direct communication with the Almighty. Or perhaps a sorcerer who summons storms? I beg you to curb these idiotic flights of fancy, Miss Crane.”

“You have to admit—”

“Stop it!” His voice was like a whip. “I have no patience with this lunacy. You will drop it at once.”

Before Emily could reply, her aunt appeared at the head of the stairs and began to descend.

“How is she?” asked Richard.

“Better. She is asking for you.”

Richard started up, then hesitated. “Do you need…?”

The duchess waved him on. “No need to see us out.”

With a nod of thanks, he strode up the stairs. Emily turned to walk out with her aunt. She didn't see Richard pause on the upper landing and stare intently after her.

“A volatile woman,” commented the duchess as they returned to their carriage. “She has endured a difficult time, of course. But a bit more fortitude…” She shook her head as they started off.

What was behind the attacks? Emily wondered. If she was right, a determined killer was after Lord Warrington. She bit her lower lip. Was she right? Was she imagining things? She frowned. The men at the pond had been solid and very real. But today…she couldn't be sure. Perhaps the movement had been the balloon? There was no way to know. And it was no business of hers, in any case. Lord Warrington clearly did not want her opinion. She should put the matter from her mind. But she couldn't.

* * *

Stepping down from the carriage in Grosvenor Square, Emily noticed that a caller was departing from one of the neighbors, escorted by all four daughters of the house. That was odd. Only the eldest was out. The younger sisters would not be receiving callers. As her aunt entered the house with a sweep of draperies, she hesitated. The caller made his final farewells and sauntered down the pavement toward her. “Daniel Fitzgibbon,” she blurted out.

The man stopped, stared at her, and then came forward slowly. He didn't look gratified by her notice. And no wonder—the last time Emily had seen him, he had been head of a company of motley traveling players just one step ahead of a magistrate.

Coming up to her, he bowed most elegantly. “Miss Crane.”

“How…how are you?”

“Very well, thank you. And you?” He glanced up at the imposing mansion behind them.

“I'm staying with my aunt.”

“Ah.”

“What are you…?” Emily hesitated once again. Her father had befriended this man, and she rather liked him herself. But he did have some dubious habits; things had been known to go missing from the towns where his company of actors performed. If he was playing these tricks on her aunt's neighbors… Emily glanced uneasily at the house. Aunt Julia would
not
approve of the connection.

Fitzgibbon smiled as if he could follow her thought processes. “I am an exceedingly fashionable dancing master to the young ladies of the
haut ton
,” he told her.