The Dangers Of Deceiving A Viscount (21 page)

“Oh, he’s so tiresome!” Jane complained. “And I cannot imagine what you might have said to him, for he asked to partner with me for whist after having sat with you through two rounds.”

“That is not the slightest bit true. Mr. Fitzherbert suggested we all change partners. So did you, Jane.”

Jane shrugged and yanked the bodice of her gown lower.

Phoebe yanked it up again.

“I hope Mr. Remington will return for our country house party. Oh, how I love the very idea of a house party! It makes us rather like Quality, does it not? I’ve always longed for one.”

“Please hold still, Jane,” Phoebe pleaded with her. “It is impossible to pin with you moving about so.”

“Alice doesn’t want a country house party. She wants to go and live behind the blacksmith with Mr. Hughes.”

“Why do you say such wretched things?” Alice asked wearily. “I am very much looking forward to the house party and the company of many families.”

“And the Fitzherberts?” Jane asked, twisting around to see her sister.

“And the Fitzherberts, yes, of course. Why ever not?”

Jane squealed with delight, almost knocking Phoebe over in her zeal. “You do esteem Mr. Fitzherbert!”

“I don’t esteem him, but it seems perfectly reasonable to assume he’ll be our brother by marriage one day,” Alice said.

“Ouch!” Jane cried dramatically when Phoebe accidentally stuck her with a pin.

Alice rolled her eyes and turned around to examine her ball gown, which was still on the dress form. “I think I should like beading on the gown, Madame Dupree. I was impressed with Miss Fitzherbert’s beading.”

God save her if she would now have to fashion the two of them after that woman.

“Oh! And the slippers! I want beaded slippers,” Jane added excitedly.

Phoebe was about to tell her that there was precious little time to bead slippers, but she was interrupted by the appearance of Addison. “I beg your pardon for the interruption, madam,” he said with a bow, then looked at Alice and Jane. If the tips of his ears were any indication, he seemed a little disconcerted.

“Addison, is something wrong?” Phoebe asked.

“No, no, of course not…ahem…Lady Alice,” he said, “a gift has come for you. It is in the main salon.”

Alice instantly dropped the fabric she was studying. “A gift? For me? From whom?”

“I could not say, my lady. But…there is a note.”

“What of me, Addison?” Jane asked, looking absolutely frantic. “Is there not a gift for me?”

“I regret there is not, Lady Jane.”

“But…” Her voiced trailed off, and she looked at Alice.

Alice rushed from the room, Jane fast on her heels.

Phoebe shook her head after the two of them, then smiled at Addison. “Truly, you have no knowledge who sent the gift?”

“Oh, I know,” Addison said with a wince. “No one. I fabricated it completely.”

“Addison!” Phoebe cried with a laugh. “Whatever possessed you?”

He looked over his shoulder and stepped deeper into the room. “I have a message for you,” he said, and thrust his hand into the interior pocket of his coat and withdrew a small folded vellum and held it out to her.

Phoebe stared at the vellum but made no move to take it.

“His lordship bid me bring this to you and await a reply,” Addison said, closing the distance between them. “I beg you make haste, madam, for when Lady Alice discovers there is no gift…”

He had a point. Phoebe took the vellum and quickly unfolded it.

Madame Dupree…

His handwriting consisted of bold, long strokes.

Please accept my invitation to dine with me this evening. I should very much like to continue our discourse.

Phoebe could feel herself color, and with a quick glance at Addison, she turned slightly so that her face was away from him.

I have taken the liberty, on behalf of my brothers and sisters, of accepting an invitation from the vicar to dine with his family this evening. As a result, I shall be quite alone at the supper hour and would enjoy your company. If you will honor me by accepting my invitation, I should be pleased to meet you at the gazebo at half past seven o’clock.

The gazebo? Phoebe glanced at Addison again.

The poor man’s face had turned as red as his ears. “If you would, please, Madame Dupree, write your reply on the back of his note and I shall personally put it in his hands.”

She was too astounded to speak. She was embarrassed, she was intoxicated—dreaming of something and acting on it were two entirely different things. She did not want to cause a scandal in this house. Her mind racing, she whirled around in search of a pencil on her worktable. In her haste, she knocked a pair of scissors onto the floor. It landed with such a rattle that both she and Addison jumped.

“May I help?” Addison asked.

“No, please, do not trouble yourself,” she said, and stooped to retrieve the scissors. She tossed them onto the table and picked up the pencil.

This was absurd. Phoebe understood very well why Summerfield was inviting her to dine with him, but she was not sure how to phrase her response. She was keenly aware that whatever she wrote could be interpreted in any number of ways. She wrote:

My Lord Summerfield, her handwriting flowing and light, Your invitation to dine is insupportable. I am at a loss to understand why you would ask me to risk my good reputation in such an infamous manner as dining al fresco in a dilapidated gazebo.

She paused, bit her lower lip, and tapped the pencil against the tabletop. She could picture him standing in his study, awaiting her reply. She could see the long, lean line of him, could see the fever in his eyes, the sensual curve of his lips. She could almost feel those lips on hers, his hands on her body.

The weight of her response was growing heavier and heavier.

I am quite unaccustomed to dining on dirty stone benches, as I rather suspect are you, and I therefore can only conclude you mean to use the gazebo for something else entirely.

Mme. Dupree.

There, then. Phoebe hastily folded the vellum before she lost her resolve and added a note that she would indeed come. She whirled around, thrust it at Addison. “Please take that to his lordship.”

Addison quickly stuffed the note into his breast pocket. He gave her a curt nod. “Good day, Madame Dupree.”

“Good day, Addison,” she chirped in return, and watched as he walked swiftly from the workroom. When he’d gone, Phoebe sank onto a chair and released the breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding.

She was still sitting in the chair, staring out at the window, imagining all the many things that might have happened, when Addison returned. He walked in the open door, and without a word held up a vellum.

“Again?”

“Again.”

With a sigh, Phoebe gained her feet and moved to fetch the vellum.

Mme. Dupree,

You do me a grave dishonor to suggest that I should “use” the gazebo to dine or to seduce. It is merely a familiar meeting point. I have in mind something far more appealing and chaste, something that should bring you out of your square little rooms and into the warm summer night’s fragrant air. There are no “dirty stone benches.” If you prefer to remain cooped up with your dress forms and needles and whatnot, then by all means, you must do so. However, I would very much enjoy your company, and if you think there is even the slightest chance you might enjoy mine, I will invite you once more to meet me at the gazebo at half past seven.

S.

A thousand things raced through Phoebe’s mind at once—that she could think of nothing else that would delight her or ruin her more quickly than accepting his invitation, that there was an unspeakable danger in her deceit, that she was at least as foolish as Ava or Greer might ever have imagined, and that she had to find something suitable to wear.

But neither could she stop thinking that for the first time in her life—if not the last—she was free to feel the fever.

She picked up her pencil.

My lord,

You must believe I am terribly naïve if you think that I am the least swayed by your earnest declaration of chastity in thought. I find your game to be a very dangerous one. That being said, I cannot possibly meet you a moment before eight o’clock.

Mme. D.

She quickly folded it and nervously handed it to Addison, unable to meet his eye. With a bow, Addison went out. The moment the door shut behind him, she whirled about and ran to her wardrobe in search of something suitable to wear.

Nothing. She had nothing.

But then she spied a blue silk with long sleeves she’d worn to her nephew Jonathan’s baptism. An idea came to her. She fetched a pair of scissors from her workroom and cut the sleeve from the gown. When she held the gown out to examine it, she smiled. Perfect.

A t the end of that long summer day, the sun was just beginning its descent into night when Phoebe hurried through the parterres like a woman rushing to meet her lover. She could see him at the gazebo waiting for her, standing with one shoulder propped against the entrance, watching her walk across the grass.

He looked…magnificent. Virile in a way that made Phoebe’s belly do a queer little flip.

She had lost her mind, had let it turn to cabbage. What in God’s name was she doing? She was teasing a dragon, that was what, for this was no flight of fancy, no game of make-believe. He was stunningly real.

Summerfield was dressed in a black coat and gray trousers tucked into a pair of Wellington boots. The cut of his coat was exquisite, fitting his broad shoulders and trim waist like a second skin. His neckcloth was fashioned from white silk and was tied in an artful knot above the lapels of his black waistcoat. His hair curled in natural waves around his face, and as Phoebe walked across the grass to him—her heart beating wildly, her palms damp—his dark lips spread into a smile against his bronzed skin.

Heaven help her.

She worried about her gown, now indecently sleeve-less, but rather fetching to Phoebe’s eye. She’d put her hair up as best she could, holding it in place with hairpins tipped in tiny crystals that matched those that hung from her ears. When she’d finished dressing, she’d stood gazing into the mirror in her workroom, listening to the breeze rustle the leaves of the trees outside her window, imagining herself a woman of certain experience.

But she was nothing of the sort. She was a woman working very hard at playing a fool, each step carrying her closer to madness. She could assume a false identity and possess it, could play with a fire that could very well engulf her, but she couldn’t really change herself. She was still Phoebe underneath the façade, and Phoebe worried that she was an even bigger fool than she could have imagined, for her heart leapt at the sight of Summerfield, and all thoughts of disastrous folly flew out of her head.

Like magic, she was transformed into an actress on a stage, and her heart thrilled with the possibility of shedding the suffocating mantle of being a proper young miss.

As she neared him, he stepped down the steps of the gazebo. She came to a halt before him, smiling wryly. He held out his hand, palm up. Phoebe looked at his palm, the tantalizing bit of ink on his wrist, then at him. “I have agreed only to dine,” she said.

The corners of his mouth turned up. “You have my word I will not seduce your hand.”

She smiled with the devilish confidence of Madame Dupree. “It is hardly my hand that concerns me,” she replied, and slipped her hand into his.

He instantly lifted it to his mouth, pressing his lips against her knuckles. “How beautiful you are, Phoebe. At every meeting, I find I am even more astonished by it.”

“Hence, the seduction begins.”

He smiled fully and put her hand on his arm, covering it with his own. “Come, then, before I am accused of more.”

“Where?” she asked, peering toward the lake.

“It is a surprise.”

“A surprise?” She laughed. “I fear your surprises, my lord.”

“You? A woman so fearless that not even wild horses or dancing Gypsies can sway her into alarm? No, I do not believe you fear my surprise. You fear your reaction to it.”

Astoundingly true.

“Rest easy, madam,” he said with a slow smile. “I shall surprise you gently.”

That remark certainly caused a flutter deep inside her, but Summerfield was moving, guiding Phoebe down to the lake, then into the tall reeds. As he pushed a path through them, giant dragonflies swarmed around Phoebe’s head.

“What are we doing, precisely?” Phoebe asked, swatting at one of the dragonflies.

“Looking for your chariot,” he said enigmatically, and letting go her hand, disappeared into the reeds.

Phoebe waited, swatting at dragonflies, until she heard the sound of him splashing about in water. She paused in her swatting. “My lord?”

A moment later, Summerfield reappeared. “This way, if you please.”

“Where?” she asked, trying to see through the reeds.

“Will you not trust me, if only a little? Come, Madame Dupree,” he said, gesturing for her.

Phoebe stepped forward, lifting her skirts high above the ankles to move through the reeds, and saw that just below them an old rowboat was pulled up on shore.

Summerfield lunged forward on one leg to pull the boat up a little higher.

“I beg your pardon?” Phoebe exclaimed. “Do you mean for me to get in that?”

“On my life, I have never known a more obstinate woman,” he said with a smile. “Look there,” he said, pointing across the lake. “Do you see that island?”

She followed his gaze. In the middle of the lake was what looked like nothing more than a copse of trees, an island no bigger than an acre, perhaps two at most. She looked curiously at Summerfield.

“You like surprises, do you not?” he asked with a wink.

“Yes, but…” She looked down at her gown of beautiful blue china silk. Summerfield must have surmised what she was thinking, for he moved before she could voice her objection, sweeping her up in his arms as if she were a child.

Phoebe let out a shriek of surprised laughter as he spun around, splashed into the water, and deposited her effortlessly in the middle of the boat. Phoebe threw her arms wide for balance and froze. “Oh dear. Oh dear,” she said again as the boat tilted.