Viscount Vagabond (21 page)

“You forget,” she began as soon as she’d crushed down an incipient urge to do him violence, “that Lady Caroline is also accounted mad. She became entangled with Lord Byron because she was not thinking rationally. A sensible woman would certainly keep away from dangerous men.”

“Would she? But you don’t keep away from me, though
my character failings, according to you, are legion.”

“I do try to keep away,” she snapped, “but you are always there.”

“May I remind, you that if I hadn’t always been there, you’d be languishing in a whorehouse now, or getting run down by carriages, or working your fingers to the bone in a dressmaker’s shop.”

“Then you may derive comfort from the fact, My Lord, that I am no longer in any sort of danger, and you need waste no more of your valuable time with heroic rescues. You are at liberty to do exactly as you like. If you have accidentally got into the habit of rescuing helpless women, perhaps you should set about rescuing the one who now has my dress. I daresay that sort of activity is more in keeping with your tastes.”

“Miss Pelliston, that last smacks of jealousy.”

“Oh!” she cried, stamping her foot and thus alarming the horses. “What a coxcomb you are!”

“And what a devil of a temper you have. I suppose you’d like to strike me,” he said with the most infuriating grin. “No, on second thought, I recall that strangling is more to your tastes. Maybe you’d like to fasten those ladylike white fingers about my throat and choke me? Be warned that there’s a deal of linen in the way. Punching me on the nose would be more efficient, though more untidy. In either case, my cravat would suffer and Blackwood would never forgive you.”

“You are insufferable,” she muttered, clenching and unclenching her fists. “How I wish I were a man.”

“I’m so glad you’re not. Manly rage couldn’t be nearly as entertaining as the present spectacle. You look like an outraged kitten. I shall have to call you ‘Cat’ from now on.”

“I never gave you leave—”

“I never wait for leave, Miss Pelliston... Pettigrew... Pennyman... Catherine... Cat. What a lot of names you have, just like a common criminal.”

With a mighty effort, Catherine controlled herself. She would have liked nothing better than to choke the breath
out of him and hated him for knowing it and teasing her with it. She folded her hands in her lap.

“I see,” she said with a reasonable appearance of calm, “that you are bent on provoking me. I suppose that is the most productive activity you can think of.”

“No. Kissing you would be much more productive in that way. Unfortunately, being a mere male and driven by baser instincts, I’m afraid I’d provoke myself even more. Therefore I shall not kiss you, Cat, however much you beg me.”

Catherine stifled a gasp and turned her gaze towards the trees shading the Queen’s Walk. Their leaves stirred in the light breeze, and above them the sky was changing from blue to grey. Her heart was stirring too, more agitated than the gently swaying branches—but that was only because she was so incensed. Of course he didn’t mean to kiss her. He wanted to outrage her, and she was playing into his hands. Catherine decided she’d given Lord Rand enough entertainment for one morning.

“Very well,” she said. “Since you are obviously proof against all my feminine wiles, I am obliged to turn the subject. What is this I hear about Jemmy wanting to become your footman?”

Lord Rand had lost the upper hand so quickly that he felt giddy. That must account for his witty rejoinder.

“What?” he gasped.

“As you probably know, I’ve continued Jemmy’s lessons since that day you so thoughtfully brought him by. Lady Andover has consented to my tutoring him twice a week at the shop because it seems we cannot have him coming to the house. Mr. Jeffers claims that not only does the child distract the servants, but he is sticky. Cook evidently gives him too much jam. At any rate we have hardly begun, and Jemmy tells me he knows enough because he means to be a footman. Your Mr. Gidgeon has apparently encouraged him.”

Lord Rand groaned. “I should have expected it. Well, if that’s what Gidgeon means, there’s nothing I can do about it. My servants do exactly as they please.”

“All the same, I do not see why any servant need be illiterate. I wish you would talk to Jemmy.”

“I don’t see where I come into it. The boy dotes on you. I’d think he’d do whatever you tell him.”

“I’m afraid he puts up with the lessons only for the sake of my company. That’s flattering, of course, and I would not complain except that all he wants to do is talk about the livery he’ll wear one day and tell me what fine fellows Mr. Gidgeon and Mr. Blackwood are. Mere grammar cannot compete with those paragons. However, he seems to have some respect for you as well, so I ask you to use your influence.”

Lord Rand had begun to think that in spite of his earlier confusion, he’d managed to make a decent start in driving Miss Pelliston off by showing her what an ill-behaved lout he was. Now she was entangling him again in what was plainly her affair. What was it to him if Jemmy was illiterate? In fact, if she had to give up this tutoring business, that would be one less commitment keeping her in London.

The trouble with her—or one of the troubles—was her obsession with being useful. She’d returned to Louisa mainly because she believed Louisa needed her. She continued teaching the boy because she believed he needed her.

What the girl truly needed was a permanent occupation—like a husband. The sooner she got one, the faster the viscount could wash his hands of her and her plaguey problems. She needed Jack Langdon, and though Jack wanted no tutoring, he did need someone to take him in hand. They were perfectly suited. They would speak of books the livelong day and night and bore everyone else but themselves to distraction.

Lord Rand smiled benignly upon his companion. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll talk to the br—boy.”

Following the drive in Green Park, Lord Rand took himself to Gentleman Jackson’s boxing establishment. The viscount had an excess of nervous energy and physical exertion was the obvious cure. Today the Gentleman himself deigned to accommodate his lordship. At the end of the exercise Max was pleasantly fatigued, his nervous energy dissipated in perspiration.

He even lingered for a while after, watching the other gentlemen at their labors and offering the occasional piece of unwelcome advice to his less agile fellows. Thus he had the surprise of his life. He was just preparing to leave when Jack Langdon entered.

The probability of finding Jack Langdon in a boxing saloon was approximately equivalent to that of encountering the Archhishop of Canterbury at Granny Grendle’s— though the odds were rather in favour of the Archhishop.

“What the devil brings you here?” the viscount enquired of his friend.

Mr. Langdon stood for a moment looking absently about him as though in search of something he’d forgotten. “Not the most pleasantly fragrant place, is it, Max?” he noted in some wonder. “Odd. Very odd. I count three viscounts, one earl, a handful of military chaps and—good God—is that Argoyne?”

“Yes. One duke.”

“All come, it seems, for the express purpose of letting
some huge, muscular fellow hit them repeatedly.”

“So what’s
your
purpose?”

“I suppose,” Mr. Langdon answered rather forlornly, “I’ve come to be hit.”

This was insufficient explanation, as Max promptly pointed out.

“I’ve come to be more dashing, as you advised. I’ve been thinking over what you said the other day, and I concluded ‘Mens sana in corpore sano,’ in the words of Juvenal... or as Mr. Locke so aptly put it, ‘A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.’ Physical prowess accords self-confidence. Boxing is reputed not only to increase physical strength and skill but to improve one’s powers of concentration. Just the thing for me, I decided.”

“So you mean to leave off meditating and hesitating and prepare yourself for action instead,” said Max. “Well, they do say love works miracles.”

Mr. Langdon flushed. “I was referring to what you said about throwing books at twenty paces. No reason I should be letting a gangly, decrepit drunkard twice my age push me about.”

Jack plainly did not care to be teased about Miss Pelliston. If he wanted to believe that manly pride had brought him to the boxing saloon, that was perfectly acceptable. At least the chap was making an effort, and that ought to be encouraged. A hesitating, insecure Jack Langdon did not bode well for Lord Rand’s plans regarding a certain young lady’s future occupation.

“Right you are. No reason on earth, my lad. Wait here a minute and I’ll find Mr. Jackson for you.”

Lord Rand might have taken his friend to the famous boxer instead of the other way around, but he needed to talk to Mr. Jackson privately first. The viscount did not want Mr. Langdon discouraged in his first efforts, and decided to drop a gentle hint in advance regarding the care and handling of dreamy-eyed intellectuals.

Mr. Jackson proving a sympathetic soul, Jack Langdon’s introduction to the manly art was considerably less debilitating than that, for instance, of an insolent young sprig of the nobility whom the professionals in the place all agreed wanted taking down a peg or two.

Mr. Langdon, in contrast, was handled with the proverbial kid gloves, and vigorously encouraged by both Max and the Gentleman. Both repeatedly pointed out that the neophyte, despite his sedentary habits, showed great promise with his fives.

At the end of his exercise, Mr. Langdon was glowing, literally and figuratively. In this malleable state he was open to every one of Lord Rand’s suggestions regarding another manly art—courtship.

“Almack’s tomorrow,” Max reminded as they left the saloon. “It’s her first time, and you have to get a waltz. More romantic, you know.”

“I know. The trouble is, I have to face one of the Gorgons first and they all hate me because they heard I called them Gorgons.”

“What in blazes are you talking about?”

“The waltz. The Gorgons—the patronesses—have to give her permission to waltz, and that means they pick a suitable partner and I’m not suitable. If I go up and ask them, they’ll laugh in my face. The only reason they let me in the door is so they can humiliate me at their leisure.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You’ve been away too long, Max. You don’t know what cats they can be. If I ask to waltz with Miss Pelliston, they won’t just refuse me. They might even not let her waltz at all with anyone, just for spite.”

“They won’t alienate Louisa.”

“They don’t care who they antagonise. Don’t you know they wouldn’t let Wellington in one night because he was a few minutes late? And another time because he wore trousers instead of knee breeches?”

“No, I don’t know it, but I ain’t surprised. Of all the dull, stuffy stupidity that passes for entertainment, Almack’s is the dullest, stuffiest, and stupidest. So naturally that’s where everyone wants most to be. If Society had half a grain of sense it’d shun Almack’s like the plague.”

“But it doesn’t,” said Jack. “So I can’t waltz with her.”

“All this means is you can’t have the first one,” Max answered bracingly. “HI take care of that. Then you have to make sure you manage the rest.”

What he meant by taking care of the matter was that he’d find someone who had less to fear from Almack’s patronesses. Not himself, of course. Though Lord Rand was afraid of nobody, there was that nagging problem with Catherine Pelliston’s proximity. He had enough trouble sitting beside her in a carriage. Whirling about a dance floor with his arm about her waist was an invitation to disaster.

He reported none of this to Jack Langdon because Jack would feel obliged to analyse the problem. Max didn’t want anything analysed. He just wanted Catherine Pelliston to go away.

Having nudged Mr. Langdon gently but firmly down the path to matrimony, Lord Rand went home with equally charitable resolve to release Miss Pelliston from her onerous educational responsibilities.

Jemmy, Mr. Gidgeon reported, was belowstairs assisting Cook.

“Annoying him, you mean. Girard doesn’t know any English and I’ll eat my hat if the brat knows a word of French.”

Mr. Gidgeon politely responded that the scrubbing of pots did not require bilingual skills. “Cleans ‘em very well, My Lord, ‘e does. As ‘e does everything. A most enterprising lad. Wotever we sets ‘im to, ‘e does it—with a vengeance, if I may say so.”

“Well, set him to come up to see me in my den—library— whatever you call it. I want a word with him. While you’re at it, you might as well send a bottle along with him. My throat’s dry as the Pharaoh’s mummy.”

Mr. Gidgeon withdrew. A few minutes later he returned with Jemmy, who bore a tray upon which reposed a decanter of Madeira and a sparkling crystal wineglass.

The boy carried the tray and set it down with a deft grace that astonished Lord Rand and brought a satisfied smile to the butler’s face. Mr. Gidgeon had preceded the tray into the room in order to lend the ritual the appropriate dignity and ceremony. Now he withdrew.

Jemmy remained by the sturdy, marble-topped table upon which he’d placed the tray, and looked about him with an air as complacent and proprietary as that of the butler.

“You’re a lad of many talents, Jemmy,’’ said Lord Rand as he poured himself a drink.