Winter Wedding (7 page)

Miss Muldoon thought it over a moment and decided this line of talk was acceptable. “It is from Mademoiselle du Puis in London,” she said, with great condescension. “She makes all my gowns. Of course my riding habits are made by an English modiste. The French cannot make a decent riding habit. They refuse to allow breathing space, and when one really rides, one needs that. Do you ride, Miss Christopher?”

“A little,” Clara answered. She doubted at the moment whether what she did on a horse was really riding.

Miss Muldoon regaled them with a tale of a hunt she had participated in, in which she got bloodied, was given the tail, and generally distinguished herself above all: both by her English-cut habit of scarlet and her superior riding over field, hedge, and water.

“How nice,” Clara smiled.

“You must have improved tremendously,” Lady Marguerite said tartly. “You fell off your mount the one time I hunted with you, and that was less than a year ago.”

“Benjie has been giving me lessons. He is a great hunter, and says I must learn if I... He says I must learn,” she finished archly, content that she had let them know her meaning without saying it.

“Certainly you must if you don’t want to break a leg,” Lady Marguerite said. With an impish smile she added, “If you lamed any of Ben’s nags, he’d have both you and it shot.”

It seemed a long while before the gentlemen began straggling into the saloon, but when they did, Miss Muldoon came to sharp attention. Allingcote was a step ahead of the others. After a quick look around the room, he headed straightway to the three ladies in the corner. He seemed happy or perhaps just relieved, to see peace reigning there. But when first his sister, then Clara, rose quickly and dashed off, he assumed Nel was not finding any favor with the ladies.

Clara claimed she must speak to Lady Lucker and darted toward her. After exchanging a few idle remarks with her hostess to lend credence to her excuse, she joined Lady Marguerite by the grate. “Ugh,” the young lady said bluntly. “If Ben brings that witch home as his wife, I shall leave the house.”

“She is rather—trying,” Clara said, in a certain tone that conveyed more than mere words. “Is he likely to, do you think?”

“It begins to look that way, but of course Nel is a dreadful liar. Perhaps she believes her own stories, who knows? In any case, she would not be trying to make
me
jealous of my own brother, so unless
you
are the butt of her jibes, Miss Christopher, I don’t see the point of her stories.”

“I cannot think they were directed at me, a mere acquaintance,” Clara said quickly.

Marguerite turned her sharp eyes, so like Lady Lucker’s, on her new friend. “She is ravishingly beautiful, of course, and that would count with Ben.”

“She is remarkably pretty, certainly. Is she an old friend of the family?” Clara asked, in a voice of the utmost civility and indifference.

“Not exactly. Her uncle, Lord Anglin, was a close friend of my papa, and since she’s been staying with Anglin the past two years, we’ve seen more of her than is entirely comfortable. She’s only seventeen. Till she left school last year she was not considered eligible. Since then, Ben has seen a good deal of her. That he spent a whole week there looks ominous. And especially his choosing to hide it from me and Mama. He knows a match in that quarter would be unpopular with us.”

Marguerite slid a look to the corner of the room just in time to see Nel lay a fluttering white hand on her brother’s arm and smile up with a languishing look. Clara followed the direction of her gaze and saw Allingcote lay his hand on top of Nel’s.

“If she doesn’t nab him, it won’t be for lack of trying,” Marguerite scowled.

While they chatted, Clara fell to wondering why Miss Muldoon should contemplate running away from Allingcote in the dead of night if she was in love with him. A frown creased her brow, and a little later she risked another glance toward the corner.

Allingcote was gazing steadily at her. From the still position of his body, it seemed he might have been staring for a little while. He smiled across the room, and Clara found, when she glanced away, that she had forgotten to observe Nel. She also noticed that her heart was beating faster, and soon she noticed that Lady Marguerite was looking at her with a very lively interest.

“The merest of acquaintances, are you?” she teased. “I am surprised you admit to knowing him at all. He said you are very cautious, but I think you are very sly, Miss Christopher. May I call you Clara? And I hope you will call me Maggie.”

Clara blushed up to her eyes. “Certainly you may, but I don’t know what you mean by calling me sly.”

“Don’t you, Clara? You can trust me. I am as silent as a giraffe when I want to be. I shan’t say a word. And to show you how much I approve, I’ll spell Ben from the beauty so he can come to you. I shall let on I want to talk to her. Now that, you must own, is a great sacrifice on my part.”

Clara was surprised at the rushing forward of intimacies between Ben’s sister and herself. She would not have presumed to use Marguerite’s first name for another week at least. Marguerite rose and tipped across the room to make a few joking comments to her brother. In a gratifyingly short space of time, Allingcote rose and crossed the room to possess the chair left vacant by his sister.

“Deserter!” he challenged. “Why did you and Maggie shab off on me?”

Clara examined him with great curiosity. He was as well as saying he didn’t care for Miss Muldoon’s company, yet he had, surely not under constraint, spent the past week with her. Had indeed spent some considerable part of the past year with her, teaching her to ride.

“Speechless with guilt, I see,” he went on, but when he glanced back to Miss Muldoon’s corner, he cast a fond smile on Nel, and she waved back merrily. “She’s fagged from the trip and other exertions,” he said. “I’d like her to get to bed early tonight, if you don’t mind leaving this party soon— in an hour or so, if that’s all right?”

“I’ve been under more exertion than I am accustomed to myself lately. I shan’t mind leaving early. Not that I’ll sleep.”

Allingcote studied her face and a frown formed between his eyes. “I don’t see why you let Charity run you like a servant,” he said gruffly. Clara blinked in surprise, and he continued in a lighter tone. “You are not standing high enough on your dignity as the groom’s cousin, Miss Christopher. But you may sleep tonight without a single fear—or hope—of finding Nel’s bed empty in the morning. We have had a heart-to-heart talk, and I’ve convinced her.”

“Of what?”

“Of there being no point in her leaving tonight.”

“Tonight, but tomorrow I shall have the pleasure of a sleepless night?”

“One day at a time. That’s the way to proceed in these perilous ventures. Tomorrow night, Maggie will take your place.” He extended a hand and patted her arm in an avuncular manner. It was a mere nothing, but Clara felt his touch clear up to her head and down to her toes.

“You busy servants need your rest. You’ll be placing Max the pincher between two appetizing morsels of femininity if you don’t have your wits about you.” Glancing around, he added, “That’d be between yourself and Nel. The party is noticeably lacking in pulchritude.”

A compliment placing her in tandem with Nel Muldoon found little favor. Clara said, “Does Maggie—your sister—know of this arrangement?”

“We call her Maggie,
en famille.
I am happy she has asked you to do the same. I know the cautious Miss Christopher would not have advanced so fast without a hint. I haven’t told her yet, but she always does what I ask, and sometimes what I want even without being asked. A darling sister, don’t you think?” he asked with a lazy smile that set Clara to wondering what had passed between brother and sister.

She also noticed that he used that “darling” in a careless way. Perhaps it did not signify, his calling Nel a darling. Clara cleared her throat and expressed some mild approbation of Maggie.

Allingcote shook his head. “I used to think calmness was your outstanding characteristic, Miss Christopher, but I begin to see caution runs it a close second.”

“Hardly an attribute you will regret in the present circumstances, when your friend requires such a deal of it,” she replied blandly.

“Not an attribute to be despised at any time. Or almost any time,” he added deliberately. His dark eyes, studying her, seemed to suggest some particular significance in the present moment. “But I think I prefer your calmness.”

It was not easy to remain calm under his penetrating gaze, while a little smile hovered on his lips. “Ah, the tea tray,” Clara said, happy for a diversion.

“Saved by the pot,” he laughed. “Shall I get you a cup? A little milk and no sugar, right?”

Clara looked at him in fascination. “Are you a mind reader, Lord Allingcote?”

“No, ma’am. I wish I were, but I have often gotten tea for you in the past, and I am blessed, you recall, with an excellent memory.”

“But so long ago!”

“It has seemed
ages
to me,” he said softly, leaning his head closer to hers and looking at her with such a meaningful expression that her poor mind went reeling.

She thought if this intimate behavior was kept up, her calmness would vanish, but it did not continue. When Allingcote returned with her tea, actually with more milk than she liked, he settled down to some amusing but innocuous discussion of the wedding, the family—his own and Prissie’s—and after a quarter of an hour he rose and excused himself to converse with others, just as he should. A little later he was required to rescue Nel from the advances of an elderly roué at whom she had been rolling her eyes.

Clara had been watching Nel’s new flirtation with some interest, wondering how long it would take Allingcote to become incensed with it. He seemed more amused than angry at first. Clara did not find him a fiend of jealousy, but eventually he did make his way toward Nel. As the hour was a little more than up by this time, he brought Nel toward Clara. “Ready?” was all he said. She nodded, and the three of them left the room together.

Chapter Seven

There was no hope of congenial conversation in the carriage with Miss Muldoon on the way to the inn. She had only one interest: herself. She complained at having to leave the house, complained of the cold, of the dullness of the party just left, and prophesied unaired beds and lumpy mattresses at the inn.

“You’re overly tired,” Allingcote said forgivingly.

“I am not tired,” she declared, and in a final fit of pique added, “at least I trust you will not register me as Nellie Muldoon.”

They were just descending from the carriage, and Clara frowned at her charge, wondering what she meant.

“Who are you tonight, Nel?” Ben asked. “Mrs. Siddons, perhaps. Or is it a princess in disguise?”

“Don’t be silly. I’m much too young and pretty to be Sarah Siddons. I shall be Lady Arabella de Coverley, and Miss Christopher will be my abigail.”

“I expect Miss Christopher will have something to say about that,” he said, and strode to the desk. “Miss Nel Muldoon,” he said in a loud voice.

Nel regarded him with loathing and said, “Come along, Miss Christopher.”

The interaction between Allingcote and Nel seemed less lover-like at every moment, and Clara’s curiosity mounted higher. “Why do you call yourself Lady Arabella?” she asked.

“Nellie doesn’t suit me. It is a name for a dairymaid, or a servant girl. My name is actually Helena, but people call me Nel in spite, for they know I hate it. Arabella suits me better.”

Clara mentioned that she doubted there was any spite in it. Nel was a common nickname for Helen, but the common quality of it was exactly what irked the beauty. Nel flounced her shoulders and went on to mention a few other names she considered worthy of herself and occasionally used: Cecilia, Aurora, Naomi. Clara concluded this was a childish game invented to give herself airs and added a few likely ones that Nel had omitted. Thus occupied, she did not observe that Lord Allingcote was for some few minutes in conversation with the proprietor. She had no way of hearing the questions he was putting to the man, or what answers he received.

“Has a young dark-haired gentleman been asking for Miss Muldoon?”

“No, sir. No one has inquired for her at all.”

“If he shows up I would like to be notified at once,” Allingcote said. “No matter what hour, wake me any hour of the night. And—ah—no need to let the gentleman know I have been inquiring.” He slipped a golden boy into the innkeeper’s hand and received a hearty, “Right you are, milord,” in reply, before returning to the ladies.

They were no sooner shown into their rooms—fine, spacious, clean rooms—than Nel began finding fault. The bed was too hard. She couldn’t sleep on a hard bed. Clara offered to change, but hers was too soft. The rooms were cold and drafty with a dozen wrong things, but when all her complaints were uttered, Ben said flatly, “They’re the last empty rooms in the place. It’s here or the stable, Nel.”

“Let me have your room, and you can have mine. I wager your bed has a good mattress.”

“A charming idea, but it has slipped your notice that your room adjoins Miss Christopher’s, without benefit of door. Just the curtained archway, you see.”

“Oh poo!” She tossed her curls, flung her bonnet on the dresser, and said. “You shan’t care about that.”

“Miss Christopher shall, however. Unlike yourself,
she
has some sense of propriety. Go to bed now,” he said, and turned toward the door.

“I’m hungry,” she called after him.

“It is not two hours since dinner.”

“Dinner was horrid. I didn’t eat a bite. I’m starved. I can never sleep when I’m hungry.”

“Try, Nel.”

“A bowl of gruel would not take long,” Clara suggested, to have done with it. “We could have it sent up.”

Miss Muldoon stared at her as if she were insane. “Gruel!”

“An excellent notion,” Allingcote grinned. “I shall ask to have a bowl of gruel sent up.”

“I don’t want gruel. I hate gruel.”

“You are not getting belowstairs tonight, Nel,” he said firmly. “I’ll order gruel if you think you’ll expire before morning, but it comes up. You don’t go down.”