The Misguided Matchmaker (24 page)

One
face blurred into another as they slowly made their way around the perimeter of
the dance floor to the accompaniment of a great deal of curtsying and bowing
whenever the old lady stopped to chat with an acquaintance. Lady Ursula, Lady
Jersey, and Carolyn trailed behind like the duchess’s retinue.

“Ah,
Viscount Tinsdale, and how are you and your lovely ladies tonight?” The duchess
stopped before a small, somewhat portly middle-aged man whose face was frozen
in an expression so haughty, it looked as if even a hint of a smile might crack
it into a thousand pieces. He was flanked by two petite blondes—one young, one
not so young.

Maddy
registered the look of distress on the face of the younger of the two and
suddenly she knew why she had been singled out to go on the strut with the
duchess. The old she-cat was undoubtedly taking great pleasure in the pain and
embarrassment her cruel public introduction of the Earl of Rand’s fiancée was
causing his former sweetheart.

Caro,
God bless her, left her mother’s side to embrace Lady Sarah warmly. “How
wonderful to see you,” she exclaimed. “We are long overdue for a cozy chat.”
Turning her back on the duchess, she wrapped an arm about Lady Sarah’s slender
waist and hurried her toward a nearby door which Maddy assumed led to the
ladies’ retiring room.

“Well
I never!” the duchess exclaimed. “Someone should teach that gel of yours a few
manners, Lady Ursula.” She yanked her arm from Maddy’s grasp. “I’ve had enough
of this ridiculous walking about. I suddenly find I am unbearably fatigued.”

Maddy
smiled benignly. “I imagine you are, Your Grace. It has been my observation
that exhaustion often sets in once the sport is ended.”

“Well,
I never!” the duchess said again, and stalked off in an obvious huff.

“Oh
my dear, what have you done?” Lady Ursula withdrew a handkerchief from her
reticule and mopped the beads of perspiration from her forehead. “You have been
most foolish. And Carolyn as well. I feel you have both made a powerful enemy.”

“Nonsense,”
Lady Jersey said. “It’s time someone put the evil old besom in her place—and so
cleverly too. Bravo, Miss Harcourt. It was exactly the sort of thing I’m famous
for saying myself. For what it is worth, you have made a friend as well as an
enemy, and I flatter myself I wield every bit as much power in the
ton
as the duchess.”

She
gave Maddy a hearty kiss on the cheek. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I cannot wait
to spread the titillating
on-dit
of how a slip of a girl squelched the
dreadful duchess.” She smiled engagingly. “Would you care to join me, Lady
Tinsdale?”

Utterly
befuddled, Maddy stared after the two women, who left arm in arm. There was
simply no understanding the English.

Viscount
Tinsdale remained where he was, looking more than ever as if he had spent the
last ten minutes sucking a lemon. He raised his quizzing glass to stare at
Maddy. “Your defense of my daughter places me in your debt, Miss Harcourt. If
ever I may be of service to you, please feel free to call upon me.”

Maddy
smiled sweetly at the little viscount. “Thank you, my lord,” she said with
utmost gravity. “You may be certain I shall remember that in days to come.”

She
looked about her for Caro, but neither she nor Lady Sarah were anywhere in
sight. She turned to ask Lady Ursula where she might find the ladies’ retiring
room, but the older woman’s answer was lost in the confusion of a hoard of
nattily dressed dandies descending on them. All demanded an introduction to
Maddy and a good half of them scribbled their names on her dance card despite
her protest she only knew two country dances.

Luckily,
the next set was the Sir Roger de Coverley, one of the two dances her
instructor had taught her, and with an experienced partner, she survived the
ordeal of her first public appearance on a ballroom floor quite nicely.

Before
her next partner could claim her, she slipped behind one of the columns, waited
until the set began,
then
searched out the ladies
retiring room. As she’d suspected, it was here that Caro and Lady Sarah were
hiding out.

“I’ve
told Sarah everything I know,” Caro whispered, to keep from being overheard by
the only other occupants of the room—a woman and her daughter repairing the
damage the girl had sustained to her hemline in the last dance set. “You were
right about women in love,” she continued with a smile. “Sarah said she will do
anything you ask her to if it means there’s the slightest chance Garth and she
can marry.”

Lady
Sarah gave Maddy a shy smile, so like that of the earl. Maddy liked her
instantly. She returned Lady Sarah’s smile with one of her own, then held her
finger to her lips to caution the two young women gazing at her so hopefully to
keep silent until the woman and her daughter completed their repairs and left
the room.

“I’ve
thought long and hard about what we should do, and I’ve come up with an idea,”
she said once the three of them were alone. “It’s a wee bit daring, but my
father is a stubborn man. Nothing short of Draconian measures will convince him
to relinquish his plan to make me a countess.”

Maddy
studied the pale, taut faces of her co-conspirators. “Are you game, ladies?”

Without
a moment’s hesitation, two blonde heads nodded their agreement.

“Very
well. Then here is what we must do first…”

C
arolyn’s brief note addressed to
Garth was delivered to Winterhaven by one of the grooms from the Ramsdens’
London townhouse. It arrived just as Tristan and he sat down to an early dinner
on a rainy Friday evening the week after the rest of the family had decamped
from the country estates. Garth broke the seal and read it aloud.

My dearest
Garth:

Mama has been persuaded to give a
prenuptial dinner honoring Maddy and you, Friday week at eight o’clock and has
asked me to write you requesting your presence at the affair. Also, please make
certain to bring Tristan with you. The success of the endeavor depends, to a
great extent, on both of you attending. It is terribly important that you do
not fail us in this.

Your loving sister

Caro

Garth
folded the letter neatly and slipped it beneath the rim of his plate. “Now what
the devil do you make of that?” he asked. “It sounds more like a summons to a
council of war than an invitation to dinner.”

He
frowned thoughtfully. “And who could have persuaded Mama to host yet another
dinner celebrating my wedding? I distinctly remember forbidding her to commit
to any social events except those absolutely mandatory to preserve the
proprieties. Doesn’t the woman realize she is pushing me beyond my limits?”

“Harcourt
is probably the instigator,” Tristan said bitterly. “He is bound and determined
to make the wedding the most extravagant social event of the Season.”

Absentmindedly,
Garth toyed with his fork, his fair brows drawn together in a frown. “I suppose
we have no choice but to do as Caro requests.”

“So
it would appear,” Tristan said, though it boggled his mind to contemplate
attending the miserable event. With the utmost effort, he managed to hide his
lacerated feelings beneath a reassuring smile; Garth had enough to contend with
without listening to his problems as well.

He
pushed aside his plate of braised lamb shanks and new potatoes, one of Mrs.
Peterman’s specialties, to which he’d been looking forward just half an hour earlier.
Now the very thought of choking down a morsel of food gagged him. “You will
have to return to the city soon anyway to be fitted for your wedding clothes,”
he reminded Garth. “I suppose Friday is as good a day as any to do so.”

His
brother nodded his agreement. “You are right, of course.” He speared a piece of
meat with his fork, only to return it to his plates uneaten. “And you must be
fitted as well. It would never do to have my best man making a shabby
appearance at the most elegant wedding of the Season.”

Until
this moment, Tristan had managed to keep too busy with the renovation of
Winterhaven to dwell on the prospect of his part in the coming nuptials. Now
all at once he was faced with the reality of standing before the altar of St.
George’s and watching the woman he loved become his brother’s wife.

“Very
well,” he said grimly. “We will go to London and let Weston and his fellows
outfit the both of us. But, on second thought, I believe I shall forgo Lady
Ursula’s dinner and devote the evening to quizzing the lads at Whitehall on the
latest news of the Corsican.”

“But
Caro made it very clear in her note that it is urgent both of us attend,” Garth
said, sounding near to panic. “Do so for my sake, if nothing else. Please,
Tris, I need your support. I cannot face this blasted dinner or any of the
other pre-wedding celebrations alone.”

It
was too much. Something inside Tristan snapped. The emotions he had held in
check all the long, frustrating weeks he’d spent with Maddy, overflowed like a
swollen creek flooding its banks at spring runoff. “Devil take it, Garth, you
ask more of me than I have to give. Do you think you are the only man who has
ever known the pain of heartbreak?”

Shock.
Disbelief. Stunned realization. In rapid succession the feelings spawned by
Tristan’s impassioned words played across Garth’s ashen features. “Dear God,”
he moaned. “How could I have been so blind? All this time, I have been
wallowing in my own self-pity you have been suffering as well. Why didn’t you
tell me you were in love with Miss Harcourt?”

Tristan
opened his mouth to protest that his affections were not attached, but closed
it again instantly. He could see from the look on Garth’s face that it was too
late to deny the truth he had inadvertently blurted out.

“What
would I have accomplished with such a confession?” he asked, cringing at the
anguish in his brother’s eyes. “What have I accomplished now with my stupid
outburst, except add to your misery?”

Garth
rested his forearms on the table and pinned Tristan with a look that demanded
nothing short of the complete, unexpurgated truth. “Does Miss Harcourt know how
you feel about her?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.”

“And
does she feel the same about you?”

Tristan
slumped in his chair and stared morosely at the food congealing on his plate,
unable to meet his brother’s penetrating gaze. “I have reason to believe she
does.”

“I’m
sure you do. How I missed it, I cannot imagine. Now that I think about it,
every word she’d uttered since our first meeting has pertained in some way to
you.”

Garth
pounded his fist on the table. “The cit and his threats be damned. I will
cancel my engagement to Miss Harcourt and find some other way to put my affairs
in order. Nothing could induce me to save my own skin at the expense of my
brother’s happiness.”

Tristan
bolted upright. “You will do no such thing. Your magnanimous gesture would be
for naught. Harcourt would never agree to his daughter marrying a nameless
bastard, much less and impecunious one. I have resigned myself to the fact that
Maddy can never be mine; I am only grateful that in marrying you, she will be
spared the cruelty and abuse suffered by most women who are married solely for
their dowry.”

Grimly,
he folded his serviette and placed it on the table before his plate. “Her
courageous spirit has survived the tyranny of her grandfather and the foolish
scheming of her father. I could not bear to see it trampled beneath the heels
of a blatant opportunist who saw in her nothing more than the means of getting
his hands on a fortune.”

The
sudden flush suffusing Garth’s cheeks reminded Tristan he has just verbalize
the very reason why his brother had agreed to the marriage in the first place.
“You know what I mean,” he finished lamely.

“And
you know full well no woman will ever experience anything but kindness and
respect from me. But I doubt that will make Miss Harcourt any happier to become
my bride.” Garth searched Tristan’s face with troubled eyes. “Nor, I think,
will it ease your loss sufficiently to make you wish to spend the rest of your
life watching her be wife to your brother. I know I could not stand to see
Sarah once she wed another.”

“Lord
Castlereagh has asked me to represent him in either Vienna or Paris once
Bonaparte is put to rout. I have agreed,” Tristan said simply.

“As
I thought.” Bitterness sharpened Garth’s voice. “In gaining the solution to my
financial problems, I shall lose the two people I love most in the world—Sarah
and you. I am beginning to think the price of being the Earl of Rand is too
dear to pay.”

“But
one you will pay, nevertheless, because the alternative is even more
unthinkable.” Tristan rose from his chair and clapped a hand to Garth’s
shoulder. “Be of stout heart, my brother. I am told time heals all—even broken
hearts. In the meantime, we can but take it one day at a time.”

He
managed a halfhearted smile. “What say we ride up to the city tomorrow morning
instead of waiting ‘til Friday? We can dispense with the tedious business at
Weston’s, then take rooms at the Clarendon and live the life of carefree bachelors
for the balance of the remaining days—and nights. It has been years since we
have enjoyed the pleasures of London together.”

He
shrugged. “Who knows, I may even agree to accompany you to Lady Ursula’s dinner
once my mind is sufficiently fogged with brandy and exhaustion.”

The
hour of eight had come and gone by the time Tristan and Garth arrived at the
Ramsden townhouse on Friday evening. But then, time had become so blurred
during the sen’night they’d been on the town, they had long ago ceased to distinguish
day from night.

A
bit worse for wear, they departed the hackney coach they’d hired to transport
them from the Clarendon. Standing together at the base of the stairs, they
regarded the imposing door of the townhouse with a certain amount of trepidation.

Garth
was the first to break the uneasy silence. “We must be more than an hour late.
Mama will be furious. She is a stickler where promptness is concerned.”

“Not
to worry. Lady Ursula is a dear soul who will excuse our tardiness when we
explain the reason for it,” Tristan said with far more assurance than he
actually felt.

Garth
looked skeptical. “What
is
our reason?”

Tristan
racked his exhausted brain for a plausible answer to his brother’s weighty
question, but the effort proved to be beyond him. “I shall think of something
if the subject arises,” he said vaguely. “Which I doubt it will. There are
always so many people at these affairs; we have probably not yet been missed.”

He
glanced about him, suddenly aware that the multitude of carriages which normally
lined the street when a member of the
ton
entertained was nowhere to be
seen. He recognized one of the only two drawn up before the townhouse as Caleb
Harcourt’s landau, but he could not place the fashionable black barouche that
sat behind it.

“This
is Friday, isn’t it?” he asked as a suspicion dawned that in their frantic, and
fruitless, pursuit of pleasure since arriving in London, they might have
managed to outrun time itself.

“I
feel quite certain it is.” Garth rubbed his temples as if the very act would
stimulate his sluggish brain. “In fact I know it is. I distinctly remember one
of the porters at the hotel mentioning as much.”

“Then
this is either a very small dinner party or we are, in fact, early rather than
late.” The thought was so heartening, they immediately advanced up the stairs
arm in arm, raised the brass doorknocker and gave it a resounding rap.

The
footman who answered the door was the young Irishman whom Lady Ursula had
insisted on bringing up to London from Winterhaven. Relief was apparent on his
freckled face. “‘Tis glad I am to see you, milords. You’re the last to arrive.
The other guests are all in the small salon off the dining room.”

“All
of them?” Garth raised an eyebrow. “It’s a small dinner party then.”

“Very
small, milord. A table of nine to be exact.”

“Nine?
That in itself is odd. In fact, this dinner party grows odder by the minutes.”
Garth glanced uneasily at Tristan. “Mama is usually so careful to perfectly
balance her guest lists. I cannot understand what she is thinking of.”

“Actually,
‘tis Lady Carolyn who done the invitin’, with Miss Harcourt’s help, of course,”
the young Irishman vouchsafed. A pixie-like grin tipped the corners of his
generous mouth. “Lady Ursula has had other things on her mind, if you take my
meanin’.”

Tristan
surmised he referred to the upcoming wedding. He couldn’t imagine what else
could be occupying the countess’s mind with the event but three weeks off.

The
footman relieved them of their hats and gloves, then ushered them down the
hall. “I’ll be announcin’ you meself if you’ve no objection. For ‘tis that
anxious the two young ladies are, and I’ll not keep them waitin’ for old
Frobisher, the butler, to do the honors.”

So
saying, he threw open the door to the salon and announced, “‘Tis them as you’ve
been waitin’ for milady.”

“Garth!
Tristan! Thank heavens you’ve finally arrived.” Lady Ursula left Caleb
Harcourt’s side to glide toward them, a euphoric smile wreathing her face.
“Cook just informed me she cannot keep dinner back one more minute and
Frobisher is positively incensed over the disruption to his household
schedule.” She blew them each a kiss, sent one Harcourt’s way as well, and
glided on to the bell pull hanging beside the doorjamb. “I’ll ring the testy
old grouch to let him know you’re here,” she said with what sounded
suspiciously like a giggle.

Tristan
exchanged a quizzical look with Garth. He could scarcely believe the fey
creature who’d greeted them so blithely was the same prim and proper woman he
had known since a lad of six. Nor could he equate the huge man regarding her
with a mooncalf grin on his face to the stern-featured cit he had dealt with in
the past.

But
a minute later, he forgot both the countess and Caleb Harcourt. Like a homing
pigeon gone to roost, his gaze flew to Maddy, to the exclusion of everyone and
everything else. She was standing against the far wall, talking to Caro, and
she was wearing the same leaf-green frock she’d worn when they’d said their
good-byes at Winterhaven. The sight of her literally took his breath away.

His
woolgathering was interrupted by a strangled, keening sound, much like that of
a morally wounded animal. Startled, he realized it emanated from Garth, who
stood beside him in the doorway, his gaze riveted on three people seated on a
jade-green Kentian settee a few feet from where Maddy and Carolyn stood.