The Further Observations of Lady Whistledown (Lady W 1) (41 page)

Susannah felt her lips part, almost in surprise, as his words forced her to think harder and longer about Clive than she had in some time. She thought, and then she turned, and she opened her mouth to speak, but then—

BAM!

Something slammed into her, knocking the very breath from her body, sending her skidding across the ice until she fell heavy and hard into a snowbank.

“Susannah!” David yelled, skating quickly to her side. “Are you all right?”

Susannah blinked and gasped, trying to blow the snow from her face…and her eyelashes, and her hair, and, well, everywhere. She’d landed on her back, almost in a reclining position, and she was very nearly buried.

She sputtered something that was probably a question—she wasn’t sure whether she’d said who, what, or how, and then managed to wipe enough snow from her eyes to see a woman in a green velvet coat skating furiously away.

Susannah squinted. It was Anne Bishop, of all people, who Susannah knew quite well from the previous Season! She couldn’t believe Anne would knock her down and then flee the scene.

“Why that little…”

“Are you hurt?” David asked, interrupting her quite effectively as he crouched beside her.

“No,” Susannah grumbled, “although I cannot believe that she skated away without so much as a query to my welfare.”

David glanced over his shoulder. “No sign of her now, I’m afraid.”

“Well, she’d better have a good excuse,” Susannah muttered. “Nothing less than impending death will be acceptable.”

David appeared to be fighting a grin. “Well, you don’t seem to be injured, and your mental capacities are quite clearly in working order, so would you like me to help you up?”

“Please,” Susannah said, gratefully accepting his hand.

Except that
David’s
mental capacities must not have been in working order, because he had remained in his crouch when he offered his hand, not realizing that he hadn’t the proper leverage to yank her to her feet, and after a precarious moment, in which they both seemed to be suspended halfway between the ice and an upright position, Susannah’s skates flew out from under her, and they both went tumbling down, back into the snowbank.

Susannah laughed. She couldn’t help herself. There was something so wonderfully incongruous about the lofty Earl of Renminster buried in snow. He looked rather fetching, actually, with flakes on his eyelashes.

“Do you dare mock me?” he pretended to boom, once he’d spat the snow from his mouth.

“Oh, never,” she replied, biting her lip to stave off a giggle. “I wouldn’t dream of mocking you, My Lord Snowman.”

His lips pursed into one of those expressions that tried to be annoyed but was really nothing more than amused. “Don’t,” he warned, “call me that.”

“My Lord Snowman?” she echoed, surprised by his reaction.

He paused, assessing her face with an expression of mild surprise. “You haven’t heard, then?”

She shook her head as best as one could in the snow. “Heard what?”

“Harriet’s relatives were rather distressed at the loss of their surname. Harriet’s the last of the Snowes, you realize.”

“Which means…” Susannah’s lips parted with delighted horror. “Oh don’t tell me…”

“Indeed,” David replied, looking very much as if he wanted to laugh but thought he shouldn’t. “My brother must now be correctly referred to as Clive Snowe-Mann-Formsby.”

“Oh, I’m evil,” Susannah said, laughing so hard the snowbank shook. “I am truly an evil, unkind person. But I can’t…I can’t help it…I…”

“Go ahead and laugh,” David told her. “I assure you, I did.”

“Clive must have been furious!”

“That might be painting it a trifle too harsh,” David said, “but certainly rather embarrassed.”

“A doubly hyphenated name would have been bad enough,” Susannah said. “I shouldn’t like to have to introduce myself as Susannah Ballister-Bates—” She searched for an appropriately awful third surname. “Bismark!” she finished triumphantly.

“No,” he murmured dryly, “I can see why you wouldn’t.”

“But
this
—” Susannah finished, stepping right on top of his soft words. “This is quite beyond the…oh dear. I don’t know what it’s quite beyond. My comprehension, I suppose.”

“He wanted to change it to Snowe-Formsby,” David said, “but I told him our Mann forebears would be quite upset.”

“Forgive me for pointing it out,” Susannah replied, “but your Mann forebears are quite deceased. I rather think they lack the capability to be upset one way or another.”

“Not if they left behind legal documents barring monetary inheritance by anyone who drops the Mann name.”

“They didn’t!” Susannah gasped.

David merely smiled.

“They didn’t!” she said again, but this time her tone was quite different. “They did no such thing. You only said that to torture poor Clive.”

“Oh, it’s
poor Clive
now,” he teased.

“It’s poor anyone who must answer to Snowe-Mann!”

“That’s Snowe-Mann-Formsby, thank you very much.” He shot her a cheeky grin. “My Formsby forebears would be quite put out.”

“And I suppose they also blocked inheritance by anyone who drops their name?” Susannah asked sarcastically.

“As a matter of fact, they did,” David said. “Where do you think I got the idea?”

“You’re incorrigible,” she said, but she couldn’t quite manage an appropriately horrified tone. The truth was, she rather admired his sense of humor. The fact that the joke was on Clive was merely the icing on the cake.

“I suppose I shall have to call you My Lord Snow
flake
, then,” she said.

“It’s hardly dignified,” he said.

“Or heroic,” she agreed, “but as you’ll see, I’m still trapped here in the snowbank.”

“As am I.”

“White suits you,” Susannah said.

He gave her a look.

“You should wear it more often.”

“You’re quite cheeky for a woman in a snowbank.”

She grinned. “My courage is derived from your position, also in a snowbank.”

He grimaced, then nodded self-deprecatingly. “It’s actually not too uncomfortable.”

“Except for the dignity,” Susannah agreed.

“And the cold.”

“And the cold. I can’t feel my…er…”

“Bottom?” he supplied helpfully.

She cleared her throat, as if somehow that would clear her blush. “Yes.”

His green eyes twinkled at her embarrassment, then he turned serious—or at least more serious than he had been—and said, “Well, I suppose I ought to save you, then. I rather like your—don’t worry, I won’t say it,” he interjected upon her gasp of horror. “But I wouldn’t want to see it fall off.”

“David,” she ground out.

“Is that what it takes to get you to use my name?” he wondered. “A slightly inappropriate but I assure you most respectful, comment?”

“Who are you?” she suddenly asked. “And what have you done with the earl?”

“Renminster, you mean?” he asked, leaning toward her until they were nearly nose to nose.

His question was so odd that she couldn’t answer, save for a tiny nod.

“Perhaps you never knew him,” he suggested. “Perhaps you only thought you did, but you never looked beyond the surface.”

“Perhaps I didn’t,” she whispered.

He smiled, then took her hands in his. “Here is what we are going to do. I’m going to stand, and as I do so, I’ll pull you up. Are you ready?”

“I’m not sure—”

“Here we are,” he muttered, trying to heave himself up, which was no small task given that his feet were on skates, and his skates were on ice.

“David, you—”

But it was no use. He was behaving in a predictably manly fashion, which meant that he wasn’t listening to reason (not when it interfered with an opportunity to make a show of his brute strength). Susannah could have told him—and in fact, she tried to—that the angle was all wrong, and his feet were going to slide out from under him, and they’d both go toppling down…

Which is exactly what they did.

But this time David didn’t behave in a typically manly fashion, which would have been to get quite angry and make excuses. Instead, he just looked her straight in the eyes and burst out laughing.

Susannah laughed with him, her body shaking with sheer, unadulterated mirth. It had never been like this with Clive. With Clive, even when she’d laughed, she’d always felt as if she were on display, as if everyone were watching her laugh, wondering what the joke was, because one couldn’t truly count oneself as part of the most fashionable set unless one knew all the inside jokes.

With Clive, she’d always known the inside jokes, but she hadn’t always found them funny.

But she’d laughed all the same, hoping that no one noticed the incomprehension in her eyes.

This was different. This was special. This was…

No,
she thought forcefully. This wasn’t love. But maybe it was the beginnings of it. And maybe it would grow. And maybe—

“What have we here?”

Susannah looked up, but she already knew the voice.

Dread filled her belly.

Clive
.

Chapter 5

Both Mann-Formsby brothers were in attendance at the Moreland skating party, although it can hardly be said that their interactions were amiable. Indeed, it was reported to This Author that the earl and his brother nearly came to blows.

Now, that, Gentle Reader, would have been a sight to see. Fisticuffs on skates! What could be next? Underwater fencing? Tennis on horseback?

L
ADY
W
HISTLEDOWN
’
S
S
OCIETY
P
APERS
,
4 F
EBRUARY
1814

W
hen Susannah placed her hand in Clive’s it was as if she’d been transported back in time. It had been half a year since she’d stood so close to the man who’d broken her heart—or at the very least her pride—and much as she wanted to feel nothing…

She did.

Her heart missed a beat and her stomach flipped and her breath grew shaky, and oh, how she hated herself for it all.

He should mean nothing. Nothing. Less than nothing if she could manage it.

“Clive,” she said, trying to keep her voice even as she tugged her hand away from his.

“Susannah,” he said warmly, smiling down at her in that oh-so-confident way of his. “How have you been?”

“Fine,” she answered, irritated now, since, really, how did he
think
she’d been?

Clive turned back around to offer a hand to his brother, but David had already found his feet. “David,” Clive said cordially. “I didn’t expect to see you here with Susannah.”

“I didn’t expect to see you here at all,” David replied.

Clive shrugged. He wasn’t wearing a hat, and a lock of his blond hair fell forward onto his forehead. “Decided only this morning to attend.”

“Where is Harriet?” David asked.

“Off with her mother near the fire. She doesn’t like the cold.”

They stood there for a moment, an awkward triptych with nothing to say. It was strange, Susannah thought, her eyes drifting slowly from one Mann-Formsby brother to the next. In all the time she’d spent with Clive, she’d never known him to be without words or an easy smile. He was a chameleon, slipping and sliding into situations with perfect ease. But right now, he was just staring at his brother with an expression that wasn’t
quite
hostile.

But it certainly wasn’t friendly.

David didn’t seem quite right, either. He tended to hold himself more stiffly than Clive, his posture always straight and correct. And in truth, it was a rare man who moved with the easy, fluid grace that Clive epitomized. But now David seemed almost too stiff, his jaw too tight. When they’d laughed so hard, just moments before in the snowbank, she’d seen the man and not the earl.

But now…

The earl was most definitely back.

“Would you like to take a turn about the ice?” Clive suddenly asked.

Susannah felt her head jerk with surprise when she realized that Clive was talking to her. Not that he would have been likely to want to take a turn about the ice with his brother, but still, it didn’t seem quite appropriate that he do so with her. Especially with Harriet so close by.

Susannah frowned. Especially with Harriet’s mother so close to Harriet. It was one thing to put one’s wife in a potentially awkward position; it was quite another to do so with one’s mother-in-law.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she hedged.

“We should clear the air,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. “Show everyone we’ve no hard feelings.”

No hard feelings? Susannah’s jaw stiffened. What the devil did he think he was talking about?
She
had hard feelings. Very hard. After last summer, her feelings for Clive were bloody well as hard as iron.

“For old times’ sake,” Clive cajoled, his boyish grin lighting up his face.

His face? Really, let’s be honest, it lit up the entire pier. Clive’s smiles always did that.

But this time, Susannah didn’t feel her usual jolt of excitement. Instead she felt a little irritated. “I’m with Lord Renminster,” she said stiffly. “It wouldn’t be polite to abandon him.”

Clive let out a little howl of laughter. “David? Don’t worry about him.” He turned to his brother. “You don’t mind, do you, old man?”

David looked as if he minded very much, but of course he merely said, “Not at all.”

Which left Susannah even more irritated with him than she was with Clive. If he minded, why didn’t he
do
something about it? Did he think she
wanted
to skate with Clive?

“Fine,” she announced. “Let us be off, then. If we’re going to skate, we might as well do it before our toes freeze to black.”

Her tone couldn’t have been called anything but snippy, and both Mann-Formsby brothers looked at her with curious surprise.

“I shall be over by the vat of chocolate,” David said, giving her a polite bow as Clive looped his arm through hers.