The Baron’s Betrothal: An On-Again, Off-Again, On-Again Regency Romance (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Series) (27 page)

“God save me from the uxorious,” Clun grumbled.

Chapter 23

In which the Fury disapproves of our heroine, giving our hero at least that satisfaction
.

“I
fear your intended is barmy,” began Lady Clun a few days later when Clun could not avoid breakfasting at her usual hour.

“How so?”

“When I thought to offer her a bit of motherly advice,” she said, making his skin crawl, “she told me not to ‘matronize’ her. Matronize, Clun, is not a word.”

He gave a snort of laughter. “It ought to be. Then men can patronize and women can matronize. Makes perfect sense.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. One does not go around fabricating language in polite circles.”

“One must when an excellent notion lacks a satisfactory term. Oh, and Mother,” he lowered his voice to command, “don’t matronize my betrothed again, if you please.”

“Trust you to be perverse,” she huffed. “But then, you’ve always made decisions out of contrariness. You ran off to war and risked more than just your life on the battlefields. You gambled with the title, a proud and ancient lineage and my future as well as your own. Why? Out of spite for me or your father, I could never determine which. Or perhaps it was both. Even now, if you die without issue, I shall find myself beggared.”

“Hardly. Should I succumb at a time inconvenient to you, you’ll have the dower house in Ludlow and a townhouse in London for life as well as a jointure for your support,” Clun pointed out.

“Pft!” She flicked her hand in dismissal. “What sort of life would that be? Ludlow? Russell Square? Whilst some distant cousin inherits the barony and tosses me out of my castle.”

“Then one must hope I don’t take chill,” Clun concluded, as he scanned the
Morning Post
.

“And now this Damogan chit!” Her ladyship continued, giving full voice to her anxious years of uncertainty, “By all means stop wasting precious time. If you don’t care whom you marry, at least choose someone who will marry you and go about providing an heir in a businesslike fashion. Think of the barony and the future. Think of me.”
 

“Lady Elizabeth will do, Mother,” Clun stated. “Better than do.”

An unwelcome thought distracted the baron. The Fury was perfectly right. Before Elizabeth, he hadn’t given a hang whom he married. It’d been a duty to fulfill, nothing more. Now, he cared. In fact, it mattered a great deal more than it ought, given his lifelong beliefs.
 

He’d always taken such pride in his dispassionate good sense. Well, pride goeth before the fall.
 
There was no denying it, he had tripped and somehow fallen. As he ruminated, he missed the rest of his mother’s screed until she brought her fork down hard on her china plate.

“I strongly suggest you reconsider this whimsical chit before it’s too late.”

Too damned late for that.
 

He’d already considered and reconsidered Lady Elizabeth Damogan in uncomfortably explicit detail. He also possessed the dark blue bollocks to show for his careful consideration. Beyond lustful fantasies, he also considered how passionately she expressed herself, how fearlessly she felt things and how loyal she was to those she loved, even when it caused her pain. He didn’t simply lust for her, he admired her and God knows what else.
 

His mind turned to more pleasant thoughts: how his condescending mother had matronized his spitfire of a fiancée and how Elizabeth had pick-axed her presumption with a delectable new word. He chuckled to himself, which rankled the Fury and added to his pleasure at the breakfast table. That is, until he recalled Elizabeth wouldn’t be betrothed to him much longer.
 

After she cried off, oh, how the Fury would matronize him! She’d exult in it and repeat the excuse given, for his mother would winkle the whole from the earl. Worse, she’d coo with delight while comforting him that he was lucky to be rid of her.
 

If only Elizabeth were in truth barmy enough to marry him. He gave it no more than a moment’s consideration, this deeply disturbing notion.
 

Like a splash of cold water, his mother said, “When you come to your senses, Clun, I have a more suitable match in mind for you.”
 

Chapter 24
 

In which our hero and heroine have quite a night at the opera.

O
n the evening of the opera performance, Clun’s neurasthenic valet Fewings dressed him with special care. He trimmed the baron’s hair again and saw his nails were properly buffed because he took rightful pride in the elegance of Lord Clun’s turnout.
 

The points of his lordship’s shirt collar were becoming without excess, simply what looked neat — nothing higher, pointier or more dandified. His dark green cutaway coat and buff breeches
fit him to a fare-thee-well. The baron wore an ivory satin striped silk and wool waistcoat with buttons covered in the same fabric and a snowy linen cravat tied in a ridiculously exact series of subtle folds and creases that fluffed as a slight, white extrusion at his throat. Fewings proudly named his invention the Geometrical, though Clun suggested he call it ‘Mail Coach in a Ditch.’
 

The earnest valet bore his lordship’s witticisms with a martyr’s fortitude, but begged him not to fuss with the neckcloth. He also insisted on referring solemnly to the plain white color of the baron’s stocks as
blanc d’innocence virginale.
His man’s man was less than two years in his position and from Shropshire, for God’s sake, so it mystified Clun where he’d picked up this nonsense. Indeed, it so amused Clun to hear Fewings say the phrase, he found every excuse to bring it up.
 

Perhaps once his valet settled in, he’d realize solemnity would not quell the baron’s puckish sense of humor, only exacerbate it. Till then, Clun couldn’t resist trying to lighten his valet’s over-serious perspective on the subject of cravats.

“What do you call this color, Fewings?” Clun asked, dipping his chin into it to give it a look (thus inspiring his valet’s little gasp of horror).

“It is
blanc d’innocence virginale
, my lord,” Fewings replied still ruffled.
 

“Looks more like
neige blanc à la vestale
to me,” Clun replied, waiting for his man’s reaction.
 

Fewings did not disappoint.

“Respectfully, I must beg leave to disagree, my lord, this is
blanc d’innocence virginale
. I’m not familiar with
neige blanc à la vestale
.”

“No? Perhaps I’m thinking of the color of Lord Seelye’s exquisite stocks. Pity, it’s a handsome shade. Possibly my favorite.”
 

He let poor Fewings digest this for a moment before giving up the jest and reassuring him gently, “Fewings, I’ve been a soldier for years, I wouldn’t know
vestale
from
virginale
. White is white to me. You mustn’t let my jokeative nature distract you.”

“No, my lord,” Fewings said gravely, “I do try not to.”

“I know you do and thus I redouble my efforts. Tonight, as a change, I will restrain myself so you may do your good work and I may look civilized.”
 

He smiled down at his valet. Fewings would not meet his eyes. Poor man took everything much too seriously, but this evening was not the time to tease him out of it. Clun wanted to look his best.
 

Arriving at the Theatre Royal, Clun sent his carriage back to North Audley Street. After the performance, Ainsworth would insist they end the evening at Grosvenor Square to recuperate from the caterwaul. The two men would play billiards, smoke cheroots, drink brandy and say nothing much about anything as compensation for what they’d suffered in the previous hours.
 

His lordship found the duke’s box and was shown inside. He bowed over the duchess’ hand. He and Ainsworth exchanged wry looks as Prudence tried to drum up some enthusiasm for the upcoming performance.
 

Clun scanned the hall. It took no time to find her. Elizabeth sat resplendent in a shimmering, pale blush silk gown almost directly opposite them in the Morefield box also on the third tier balcony beside the stage. With her sat Mr. Traviston, Viscount Speare and two exquisite blondes, the older beauty was Traviston’s wife, Lady Petra, the other, their daughter Constance. He looked daggers at Speare until satisfied that the viscount devoted most of his attention to the younger blonde at his side. Elizabeth sat upright staring directly at him across the hall.
 

He squinted to try to make out her expression.
 

Looking around, he spied the duchess’ lorgnette, a feminine contrivance decorated in lustrous mother of pearl and festooned with an opulent spray of ostrich plumes dyed to match her gown.
 

“May I, Your Grace?” He asked and pointed to the dainty thing in her hands.

She held it out to him and said, “I had not thought you a Mozart aficionado.”

He grimaced. Without a word, he swung the frilly glasses open on their thin handle and peered through them. He ignored both the low snorting of His Grace and Her Grace’s gurgles as he stared across the way to watch Elizabeth, who at that moment was laughing till she choked behind her fan.

Rrrrgh.
 

Stagehands lit the footlights to signal the start of the performance; others rushed to draw away the heavy curtains. From his vantage point, Clun saw the chaos of activity in the left wing. Two burly men dunked armloads of blankets into a tub of water. By law, theaters had to have at least eight wet blankets on hand in case draperies or scrims caught fire during a performance.
 

Throughout the hall, pages used long-handled snuffers to put out the candles in the many chandeliers dangling from the balconies. When the hall was dark, the orchestra struck up the overture. Singers began wailing and squawking soon after.
 

Still he stared.
 

Elizabeth turned toward the stage and only occasionally glanced sideways at him. He, on the other hand, watched her through the feminine frills of his purloined lorgnette till the interval.

Clun noticed the box across the way filled quickly with visitors, Wilder among them. The oleaginous grub bent low over Elizabeth’s hand and she smiled up at him. In a blink, he flicked apart his coattails and seated himself in a vacant chair beside her. That cocklebrain somehow made her smile.
 

Rrrrrrrgghhh.

His anger was reaching the point of combustion.

“Enough, Clun! My wife would like to see the second half, if you please.” The duke leaned over to tweak the lorgnette out of Clun’s hand. Its plumes were sadly crushed in his fist.

“My apologies, Duchess,” Clun grumbled. “Forgot myself.”
 

“Perhaps you should stretch your legs,” she said and patted his arm. “The performance is making you tense. Though I assure you it ends happily.”
 

“I am never tense,” he replied.
 

“Of course not,” the duchess said in an unmistakably matronizing tone.

His lordship sank low in his seat and glowered directly across the way until the interval ended. Wilder lingered. Only when the performance resumed did Clun excuse himself to stalk 180 degrees around the curving hallway to the Morefield box and tap on the door. He almost regretted being the ninth wet blanket. A page opened it, and his lordship told the young man to convey his compliments to Lady Elizabeth and to request a moment with her.
 

From the doorway, Clun overheard the page whisper his message, and her reply, “A word with me? Who?”

“He wouldn’t say,” the page answered, “and I dared not insist, my lady.”

“Make the gentleman come in, Lady Elizabeth,” Wilder teased. “Let’s have a look at him.”

“That wouldn’t be wise, Mr. Wilder.”

Clun waited impatiently until Elizabeth opened the box door and slipped into the hall.
 

“I saw you staring at me through those ludicrous glasses, Clun. Everyone did,” she whispered.

“What of it? I’m short-sighted,” he hissed back. He reached behind her to close the door.
 

“Well,” she replied, “do you disapprove of something?”

“No. Yes. Why must you let that empty rattle Wilder hang all over you that way?”

“You could’ve taken advantage of the interval to kick up a fuss. What took you so long?”

“For a time, common sense prevailed then principle overcame it,” he grumbled, looking her up and down.
 

Her pale skin flushed wherever his glance rested. This pleased him. So did the low-cut gown she wore upon closer inspection. The color, though pale, made her skin luminous in the half-light. And there was so much creamy, mounded amounts of her bared beneath his nose, it made his mind skitter from one inappropriate thought to the next.
 

How was a man supposed to concentrate when so much had so little restraining it into order?

“Well?” She recalled him to the moment, “Have your say, I’m missing the performance.”

He drew her away from the door to the other side of the hallway. Gruffer than usual, he said, “Wilder will disappoint you, Bess.”

“When did my disappointment become your concern, Lord Clun?”

“It has always been,” he said and looked away, “and so long as we’re betrothed it will remain my concern, right or wrong. You deserve better than Wilder.”

“I do?”

“Much better.” Clun took her upper arms in a firm grip and repeated, “Much.”

She studied his face in silence and he felt his throat ripple with each hard swallow.
 

“I appreciate your concern, my lord, and I will take it into consideration.” She continued to stare, but he couldn’t bring himself to let her go. She glowed as if moonlit, which of course was impossible.

“Clun, you are staring at my bosom.” Her tone was calm and steely.

His eyes snapped up to meet hers. “Not at all, Elizabeth. I was merely lost in thought.” As he spoke, his gaze drifted down again to her celestial orbs as if pulled by the natural laws of gravity.