First Season / Bride to Be (30 page)

“I paint as well.”

“You paint…?”

“Pictures,” was the dry response. “A woman is fully as capable, artistically, as a man.”

From Emily's expression, Richard judged that this was a common topic, and not one she was pleased to have broached here and now. He felt a rush of sympathy for her.

“Though, of course, it is made much more difficult for a woman.”

“Is it?” Lady Fielding murmured.

“Hampered by ridiculous conventions, refused admission to the studios.” Olivia Crane shook her head in righteous indignation. “As if the sight of a naked body could corrupt anyone.”

Lydia and Lady Fielding choked on their tea.

“But a girl must be protected…” ventured Richard's mother after a moment.

“Protected from learning? From expressing herself in any way? What rot!”

Richard covered a bark of laughter with a cough. He had never heard a lady of Olivia Crane's standing use such an expression, and he was sure his mother never had either. She looked as if she had been turned to stone. His cousin, however, appeared fascinated.

“But you must admit, there are those who would take advantage of a young girl's…enthusiasms,” Lydia said.

“Oh, yes. Girls should be given pistols, and taught to shoot them, as soon as they reach twelve years of age. If I had not found Alasdair…”

The Cranes exchanged a searing look. Richard was at the same time shocked and envious. Emily appeared to have dropped into despair, he noticed. His cousin was avid. His mother was eyeing Emily with suspicion, as if wondering whether she had firearms concealed in the folds of her skirts. Should he overturn his teacup? Simulate a fit?

“Can't we just have a normal conversation?” cried Emily.

Everyone turned to look at her. She quailed slightly, but didn't retreat.

“What is a normal conversation?” asked her mother.

“Seems quite normal to me,” grumbled her father at the same time.

“You must have had them when you were young?” Emily answered desperately. “When you went about in society.”

“You mean the sort of thing Julia talks about?” Her mother seemed genuinely perplexed, and interested in what she meant.

“Gossip and sport?” barked Alasdair.

“How would I know? I have never seen it. You never talk about anything…”

“Normal?” wondered Lydia.

Richard gave her a look, asking that she be quiet. She pressed her lips together obediently, though her eyes continued to dance.

“Never mind,” said Emily. She looked at Richard's mother. “Please forgive my outburst.”

Her father looked outraged at this apology. He would have spoken, but his wife put a hand on his arm. “Have you been to the opera this season, Lady Fielding?” she asked.

The following half hour was filled with irreproachable, and deadly dull, exchanges about the events of the season, the theater, and possible family connections that—after some truly tortuous examination—turned out not to exist. It was, Richard supposed, a normal conversation for members of the
ton
on such an occasion. And he was finding it deuced difficult to stay awake.

“We should be going,” said his mother. “So pleasant,” she added, fooling nobody.

Their farewells weren't prolonged. Emily looked relieved, Richard noticed, but also miserable. The occasion hadn't gone well, true. But did it really matter? He lingered a moment in the hall, letting his mother and cousin walk on. “Was that the sort of normal conversation you wanted?” he heard Olivia Crane ask.

“How should I know?” Emily replied. “I've only Aunt Julia to go by, and…”

“I haven't been so bored in twenty-five years,” complained her father. “And don't tell me you weren't, my girl, because I could see your eyelids drooping.”

“No, Papa,” conceded Emily in a tired voice.

* * *

“You cannot marry that girl,” said Richard's mother when he joined them in the carriage. “It's impossible, out of the question.”

“Why do you say that, Aunt?”

It was easy for Lydia to enjoy all this, Richard thought. None of it involved her.

“She is utterly unsuitable. That unladylike comment about ‘normal' conversation! What if she were to repeat it in a more public place? And her parents…”

“They are unusual,” began Richard.

“They are outrageous. Was she joking? About the pistols? I suppose it must have been a joke—though she didn't
look
as if it was—but it was in the poorest possible taste.”

“I think she meant it,” offered Lydia.

“Pistols!” repeated Richard's mother. “Can you imagine? Young girls running around brandishing pistols?” She looked from one to the other of her companions. “How can you smile?”

“Well, it is quite a picture,” answered Lydia.

Lady Fielding blew out an exasperated breath. “I forbid you to marry her, Richard.”

This was an odd twist. He had no intention of marrying her, yet he couldn't tell his mother that without revealing things she wasn't to know. He found he didn't much want to, in any case.

“Do you hear me?”

“I am twenty-nine years old, Mother.”

“And acting like a moonstruck stripling. How could you have engaged yourself to such a…a hoyden?”

“You are not being fair.”

“Fair?”

“Her behavior is perfectly…” What? Richard wondered. Understandable? Acceptable? Agreeable?

“Dreadful,” declared his mother. “You must break it off, at once.”

“Even if I wished to, it would not be the act of a gentleman.” And he didn't wish to, he realized. He was having far too much fun. How long had it been since he had had fun?

“We must contrive something. Some excuse. It shouldn't be difficult, with
that
girl.”

“You aren't to interfere, Mother.” He would enjoy the situation to the full, and then, of course, they would end it. That was clearly agreed.

“You expect me to simply let you ruin your life—”

“I am not doing any such thing. And I am perfectly capable of managing my own life, thank you.”

“Oh really?” His mother leaned toward him. “You have engaged yourself to a chit who hasn't a penny to her name. How do you expect to live? I will not help you, not with such a girl as that.”

“I have already said I don't want your help,” replied Richard through his teeth.

Lydia threw him an unreadable look.

“And
her
parents obviously haven't two shillings to…”

“I will be speaking to Taft about what may be done to…”

“I do not understand you at all any more. This is just a disaster. Tell him, Lydia.”

“I don't think, Aunt…”

“Enough.” Richard faced their startled looks directly. “This is my affair. You will leave it to me.”

He had been a bit too forceful, he saw. His mother, in particular, looked frightened. He had to be more careful. But it was damned difficult when he seemed to be besieged from all sides.

Emily was alone the next morning when Richard was announced. Her father had finally snapped at breakfast and insisted that they find their own lodgings if they were to stay in town. Her mother had seen the wisdom of this without much urging, and so they had gone off to look for a suitable place. It was just as well. Richard could tell her, in that roundabout way people used, that his mother had been horrified by the freewheeling Cranes and that he really could have nothing further to do with her. She had heard the same thing, spoken with more or less finesse, a score of times. Her parents' absence would make it quick and easy. No one said such things to Alasdair Crane's face, of course.

But when Richard was ushered into the small parlor they had been using, Emily felt a pang. She didn't want to hear him trying to spare her feelings as he explained that the visit yesterday had been…really…rather…unusual and—and all the rest of it. “Just say it straight out,” she said when he greeted her.

“I beg your pardon?”

“What you have come to say. There's no need to spare my feelings.”

He looked puzzled.

“I've heard it all before. Repeatedly.”

Richard frowned. “I came to say I thought we should make a clear plan.”

She couldn't take it in at once.

“Decide what we are going to do,” he added, “how we will proceed.”

“Proceed?”

“What did you think I was going to say?”

Emily was too surprised to evade. “That your mother was scandalized by us, and you could not keep up the connection.”

Richard looked startled, then self-conscious.

She was right. His mother had reacted just like all the neighbors and acquaintances who had found the Cranes “unsteady” and “unsound.”

“You believe I would say something so rude?”

“Plenty of others have done so.” At his expression, she added, “Oh, not in so many words. But I soon learned what they really meant when they told me the children I had been playing with could not come out or the girl who had joined in my walks was taken ill or the young man who had called was busy with estate matters.”

“They objected to…?”

“Everything. The way we lived, my father's temper, my mother's ideas.”

“I see.”

Emily berated herself silently. If he really had not come to say those things, she had herself given him the notion.

“That must have been very difficult.”

“I love my parents. And I admire the way they have done what they liked.” Pity was even worse than avoidance; she knew from bitter experience.

“Yes. But having chosen for themselves, they might have paid some heed to the consequences for you.”

“They gave me what they prized most.” She could never bear to hear them criticized.

“What?”

“Freedom to find my own way.”

“That is a gift indeed.”

Emily gazed at him. People of their own station in life never saw it that way. Others—Sarah Fitzgibbon, for example—understood, but never the so-called gentry.

“And a bit of a burden perhaps?”

She blinked.

“Obeying the rules is easy, after all. There is no need to think or choose among alternatives. Still less to chart a new course.”

He seemed to be talking to himself rather than to her, but Emily understood exactly what he meant. “Where to begin?” she murmured.

He turned to her with an arrested expression, and started to speak. But then he appeared to change his mind, or not to know it fully. There was a silence that eventually grew awkward.

Emily was about to break it when he said, “Have you found it?”

“What?”

“Your own way.”

He wasn't like anyone she'd ever known. And he wasn't at all like the person her aunt and others had made him out to be. It was very confusing, and it made it difficult to answer. Something in his eyes, though, pushed her toward honesty. “Not yet.”

Richard nodded once as if he too were searching for a place, a way to function in the world. Emily dismissed the idea as ridiculous. He was firmly established in society.

“Perhaps we should sit down?”

She started. “I beg your pardon. Of course.”

They sat opposite each other in front of the hearth.

“Have you any more news from your mysterious friends?”

“They have found someone who may be able to discover the identity of the attackers.”

“Someone?”

Emily nodded.

“You do not intend to tell me anything about this person?”

“I can't.”

“Because your friends have forbidden you to do so?”

“They would be angry if I…”

“Have you asked them?” he wondered.

“I don't need to ask. I know how they feel.”

Richard considered this. He looked annoyed. “You know, it will be impossible to pursue this matter if we do not trust one another.”

“It is not that I—”

“And can we? We are barely acquainted. You cannot be sure I will not betray your friends somehow. And I do not know how far I may confide in you.”

Protest rose to her lips, and no further.

“Perhaps our collaboration is doomed before it starts.”

“I don't…”

He held up a hand for silence. She pressed her lips together. “Unless we are both willing to take a chance.”

For some reason, this simple sentence took Emily's breath away. He meant only that they would tell each other everything they discovered. There was no reason in the world for her pulse to pound—no reason for her to feel that he was suggesting a revolution in her life. He was gazing steadily at her, expectant. The risk of speaking seemed overwhelming, as if the wrong words might wreak havoc beyond her comprehension. “I will ask the…my friends if I may tell you,” she managed.

He nodded, satisfied. “Good.”

Emily's relief was equally out of proportion. What was the matter with her?

“So then. A plan.”

Gathering her wits with difficulty, she asked, “You spoke to the groom—the one who was with us when…in the carriage?” Fiercely, she commanded her cheeks not to flush.

“Yes. He seems a trustworthy fellow. He's been with my mother for some years. When we rested the horses at the White Hart, an ostler brought him a mug of beer. It must have been laced with something, and they tampered with the harness while he was drinking it. By the time we set off, he was too befuddled to notice the cut.”

Emily leaned forward. “If we find that ostler…”

“I've inquired. No one seemed to know who I meant.”

She sank back, disappointed.

“A dead end, though it does tell us that a watch is being kept.”

“Someone followed us to Hampstead. And to the park that day.” Emily shivered. It was unpleasant to think of spies observing one's movements.

“You really believe you saw someone push that urn?”

“I can't be sure. It was so quick—a movement in the corner of my eye.” An idea struck her. “We might hire watchers of our own, to see who is following you.”

Richard smiled slightly. “To watch the watchers?”

“Yes.”

“I don't wish to become the head of a circus parade.”

“But…”

“I can keep an eye out as well as anyone. If someone is following me, I will discover them.” He seemed to read Emily's doubts in her face. “I have been stalked for three days running by a jungle cat. I can spot a human hunter. But why am I being hunted?” he murmured. “That is the real puzzle.”

“An enemy?” ventured Emily.

He frowned. The old Lord Warrington had certainly made enemies. He had probably offended most of the
haut ton
at one time or another. Some of them may have wished him dead for the insult or slight, but they were hardly the sort of men to plan actual attacks. Besides, he had been out of that world too long. “None that I can think of.”

“A quarrel?” wondered Emily. “Someone you bested at…something?”

“I have certainly had disagreements and rivalries. But none that warrants murder.”

“Your cousin Donald inherits your title,” she pointed out.

“Donald lives happily and distantly in Yorkshire.”

“He might have hired these ruffians we have heard of.”

“I admit I don't know him well. But all reports make Donald a kindly country-loving man.” He shook his head. “No, I do not believe in him as the adversary.”

Emily reserved judgment on this point. “Who would wish to kill you?”

He shook his head. “I do not imagine myself a paragon of virtue, but I have never offended anyone so deeply, I would vow. My past holds no ruined gamesters or spurned lovers or jealous husbands.”

Emily looked down at her hands.

“A paltry record, really.” The old Warrington had been a paltry fellow. “A life without high drama.”

“Yet you do have an enemy.”

“Yes. Peculiar. And a bit heartening? Perhaps I wasn't such a negligible fribble after all.”

She gave him an odd look. “It is not a joke.”

Richard let out a breath. “No. But it is far more diverting than I thought London would be.”

The look he gave her then made Emily's pulse flutter.

“You are as fascinated as I,” he added almost teasingly.

“I am concerned…”

“Nonsense. Why should you care anything about me? We had barely met—indeed, we hadn't even met—when this began. The mystery of it draws you.”

He was right, she thought. Curiosity, the challenge, had driven her into this search. But then, oddly, it seemed there was something else. She couldn't quite grasp it.

“Admit it,” he insisted.

Emily nodded, unwilling to delve further into this slippery subject.

He smiled. “We are alike in that.”

He gave one satisfied nod, and his eyes smiled into hers for a moment. Their hazel depths were mesmerizing. Emily felt a strange little lurch, the sort of tremor she'd felt when looking down from a great and precipitous height.

“So. You will speak to your friends, and I will keep a sharp lookout for these watchers.”

“Perhaps you should find out if anything went on while you were away,” Emily suggested.

“Went on?”

“You were out of the way,” she reasoned slowly. “And someone clearly wants you out of the way. Why?”

“You are suggesting it might not be personal?”

“You said you have no enemies. If not, then it must be something else.”

“What?”

She shrugged.

Richard rose. “A question for another day. I must go. I promised my cousin I would take her driving in the park to observe the smart set.”

Emily stood also. “Mrs. Farrell?”

He nodded.

“Is she making a long visit?”

“I hope so,” was the fervent reply.

He took his leave, and Emily returned to the armchair. She had been so despondent earlier when she'd feared he had come to end their connection. Why didn't she feel better now?

* * *

To Emily's astonishment, Daniel Fitzgibbon readily agreed to see Richard. Indeed, he offered to take him to meet the Bruiser at his earliest convenience. He really didn't wish to remain in contact with the fighter and his circle, she realized, which made her a bit wary about the whole matter.

The difficulty arose not over Richard, but when Emily herself insisted on coming along. “You shouldn't be acquainted with no one like the Bruiser,” Daniel insisted.

“But I am acquainted with pickpockets and confidence men and ladies of…of dubious reputation…”

“Never mind them. They don't hurt nobody. Not really hurt them.”

“And the Bruiser does?”

Daniel looked torn. “It's not him so much. I mean, he beats coves bloody in the ring, but that's the game there. It's the people he knows. They ain't so particular about where they put their fists.”

“But we aren't meeting them.”

“No.” He drew the word out dubiously.

“I promise you I have no intention of doing so.”

He shook his head.

“You have no objection to taking Lord Warrington to meet the Bruiser, however? Because he is a man, I suppose.”

“Seems he can take care of himself,” Daniel declared.

“How can you know that?”

“Fought his way through a jungle full of tigers, they say.”

“You've heard of that?” asked Emily, too curious to correct the zoology.

“It's talked of in the pubs.”

“Oh.” She took this in before returning to the real topic. “I am going,” she told Daniel. “I am working with Lord Warrington on this matter, and he never would have found the Bruiser without me. I won't be shunted aside.”

“He'll forbid you to go,” asserted her father's old friend.

“Forbid me?”

“What sort of man would let his promised bride risk herself that way?”

“The sort who is confident of her abilities,” she responded automatically. But as soon as she spoke, she suffered a qualm of doubt. If the question were put to Richard, would he want her to come? Would he side with Daniel against her?

In the end, it was Sarah who convinced her father that it would be grossly unfair to exclude Emily from a scheme she herself had made. Sarah threatened him with various forms of retribution until he gave in, with poor grace, and agreed to escort both of them to a rendezvous with the fighter.

She wouldn't tell Richard of his reluctance, Emily decided on her way home. In fact, she would tell him that Daniel would only do this favor if she were along. There was no sense having the argument all over again. The second time, she might lose.

* * *

Two days later, Richard sat in a hack facing Daniel Fitzgibbon as it wove its way through some of the seedier streets of London. Emily, beside him, was silent. She didn't seem the least bit intimidated, however, as the neighborhood grew less savory and the noise outside the vehicle more raucous.