Amanda Scott (21 page)

“Even if that were true,” Brandon said, “Cumberland was there, too, wasn’t he? And the simple fact is that everyone else has been dashed cagey about the whole thing if all Prinny did was fall down while he was practicing some fool dance.”

Feeling warmth flood her cheeks when she realized how near she had been to telling him the truth, she said swiftly, “Where have you been? We have not seen you since my rout party.”

“In London,” he said, accepting the change of subject without comment. “I was run off m’ legs, and m’ father refused to advance me a farthing, so I threw m’self on Ramsbury’s mercy, he being a softer touch than m’ sister Mally’s husband. At first he said I could stay with him and Sybilla till quarter day, but I could stand it only three weeks. Daresay he didn’t like it much either, because he didn’t raise a whisper when I said I’d best dash back to Bath and look in on the old man. Even dug into his pockets—and right deep they are, too—so here I am.”

Laughing, Carolyn said, “How very thoughtful of you—to visit Sir Mortimer, I mean. Do sit down and don’t snap off my nose when I ask if he even knows you are in town. Does he?”

“Well, of course he does,” he said indignantly, taking a seat, “or so I should think. Haven’t seen him m’self.”

“Brandon, it is not natural for a son never to see his father. I think you ought to make it a point to visit him.”

He tilted his head to one side and regarded her for a long moment, speculatively, before he nodded and said, “Tell you what it is, Caro. You’ve got windmills in your head, that’s what.”

“No, I haven’t. What could he possibly do to you? I’ll go with you if you like,” she added impulsively. “I am bored to distraction, and it would be just the thing to amuse me.”

“Now, Caro, really …”

“Oh, come on,” she coaxed. “I’ll wager ten pounds that you cannot get the pair of us into his library long enough for me to have a look at him. There! Will you refuse a wager?”

He grimaced comically. “Now, dash it all, Caro, I wish you wouldn’t put the matter like that. Sneaking a bear into the Pump Room or carrying an egg on one’s nose the length of Pulteney Bridge … Now those are sensible—”

“Sensible!” She laughed.

“At all events,” he said with dignity, “they are more sensible than confronting a cantankerous old lion in his den, and that’s what we’d be doing, my girl.”

“Oh, pooh, I think you see Old Bogey where there is no one but a lonely old man. No doubt your poor papa hid himself away out of his desperate grief for your mother, and even if that is not the case,” she went on hastily when he hooted with derisive laughter, “the fact is that you’re a coward, Brandon Manningford, and that’s all there is about it.”

“I’ll show you who’s a coward,” he said, his expression changing instantly from merriment to grim purpose as he leapt to his feet. “Get your cloak. It’s cold as ice outside.”

Carolyn stood up at once, delighted. “Where are we going?”

“Don’t be daft, my dear. You’ll be the most sought-after dinner guest in Bath once you can tell folks you’ve met the eccentric Sir Mortimer Manningford. Are you coming?”

“Now?”

“Now,” he said severely, “or never.”

Knowing he might change his mind as quickly as he had made it up, she didn’t hesitate for a moment, snatching up her skirt and fairly running upstairs to her bedchamber, where she dragged her red-wool cloak from the wardrobe and flung it over her shoulders. Then, taking a pair of warm gloves from a drawer, she hurried back down, pausing not even long enough to smooth her hair, telling herself the hood would cover it. Downstairs again, she found Brandon awaiting her in the hall.

“That was quick,” he said, “but where are your boots?”

She regarded her thinly shod feet in dismay. “I never gave them a thought. Oh, and it’s still raining, and I left my pattens by the side door this morning!”

“Well, don’t fret yourself. The rain’s eased, and they’re bringing my carriage ’round. Daresay I can contrive to toss you in without straining m’self, so you’ll keep your toes dry.”

“Brandon,” she said when a thought occurred to her as they were hurrying down the front steps, “you didn’t tell anyone where we’re going, did you?”

He shook his head. “Just ordered the carriage brought ’round. Why?”

She twinkled up at him from beneath her eyelashes. “It has occurred to me that, uninterested as Godmama is in my comings and goings, she might be displeased to learn that I had visited your house without a proper chaperon … or with one, I suppose.”

“Well, I won’t tell anyone.” He grinned mischievously. “Much better, I think, to keep mum. I believe I now know the perfect way to be revenged upon you if you ever decide to play me any of your tricks.”

“I do not play tricks anymore,” she informed him with dignity. “I have decided to abandon such nonsense altogether and behave always in the manner of a proper lady.”

“Going with me today being but a momentary lapse, is that it?” he demanded, shaking his head at her in amusement. “What stirred this sudden desire for propriety, anyway, Caro? Something happen to teach you the error of your ways?”

She had begun to chuckle at his teasing, but the rider stopped the laugh in her throat, and before she had time to swallow it, he had scooped her off her feet to carry her down to the carriage, which was drawn up to within a few feet of the bottom step.

The footman who was holding the door open for him suddenly looked at a point above and beyond him, giving Carolyn a scant second’s warning before she heard Sydney’s familiar drawl.

“Abducting the lady, Manningford?” he said. “I confess, I admire your practicality in leaving by the front door, and in broad daylight, too, such as it is.”

Still holding Carolyn in his arms, Brandon swung around. “Saint-Denis!”

Sydney remained poised on the top step, his quizzing glass raised to his right eye. “Good afternoon to you,” he said calmly. “Haven’t you forgotten someone?”

“What? Who?” Brandon looked distracted. “Look here, Saint-Denis, this ain’t what it looks like.”

“No, I rather thought it wasn’t, which was why it occurred to me that perhaps you had merely forgotten Miss Hardy’s maid.”

“Her maid! Good God, man, we don’t want her maid!”

“Ah, perhaps not, but I assure you that for you to carry Miss Hardy off without her is not to be thought of.”

“Sydney, stop it,” Carolyn begged, struggling to keep from laughing. “You don’t think anything of the sort.”

“I assure you, my dear, I should take the strongest exception to your driving off alone with him.”

“Brandon is not abducting me,” she said tartly. “Nor are we eloping. Put me down, Brandon.”

“Well then, I will,” Mr. Manningford said, suiting action to words, “but I tell you, my girl, this is no way to win a wager!”

Sydney turned a sharp gaze on Carolyn. “Perhaps you would care to explain this wager to me.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” she said candidly. “In any event, the wager is off. I have changed my mind.”

Sydney said, “How very unsporting of you, my dear, but I daresay he will forgive you. Do you come back inside with us, Manningford?”

“No, I don’t,” Brandon said, adding in a mutter for Carolyn’s ears alone, “You may play this hand alone, my dear. I believe I’d be wise to return to Leicestershire for a time.”

S
YDNEY DARED NOT TRUST
himself to speak as he turned to go back into the house, for he was as much annoyed with himself for allowing his temper to flare at the sight of Carolyn in Brandon’s arms as he was at the sight itself, and the combination was particularly difficult to overcome. He had made it a point to avoid close contact with Carolyn since their return from Oatlands for the simple reason that, in the grotto, he had realized that his feelings for her were beginning to have a far greater impact upon his emotions than was commensurate with the state of calm he had worked for so many years to attain.

With Ching Ho’s assistance, he had advanced far beyond his natural boyish determination to annihilate all his enemies. His mind and body were rigorously disciplined, he had thought, into an inseparable entity. But now, in Carolyn’s presence, although the slightest thought of her produced an undeniable effect upon his body, he could not call the response a disciplined one.

He was still determined, if not to overcome his feelings, to control them until such time as he believed it necessary to make her aware of them. It certainly was not necessary now when she had had so little opportunity to find the hero of her dreams. He knew he was not that man. He did not so much as own a white charger, nor did he wish to pursue a career of rescuing damsels in distress. His wife, when he found her, would be content to love him, would perhaps enjoy a hand of cards of an evening or a game of backgammon or chess, if there were no more amusing entertainment at hand, and perhaps would not object to travel, for he certainly intended to visit China again. But she would not, he trusted, have the unsettling impact upon his emotions that Miss Hardy presently seemed to have.

These thoughts passed through his mind in the brief time it took them to reach the door to the library, and by then he had himself in hand again. He paused there, his hand on the door handle, and said quietly, “I am in something of a hurry. Did you wish to speak to me?”

She stared at him, clearly shaken out of her own thoughts. “I … I thought you would want an explanation. I know you were jesting when you suggested an elopement, but you must have wondered why Brandon was carrying me.”

“I supposed he was helping you to keep your feet dry,” he said. “You would both have done better, of course, to have considered how such a scene might have appeared to the servants or to anyone else who might have observed it.”

“Not to you, however,” she said, the tension in her voice making it clear that her temper was on a short rein.

“No, not I,” he said, ignoring an urge to draw her into the library and tell her precisely what he thought. “Is that all?”

“You don’t want to know where we were going?”

“That is not necessary.”

“Not necessary!”

“You didn’t go,” he said matter-of-factly. “Now, if you don’t mind, I was on my way to the stables when I saw you and only came back for a book I promised to take to Sir Percival Melvin, with whom I am dining tonight. He is also a collector and wants my advice regarding some articles he is thinking of selling. In any case, you must be longing to take off your cloak. The smell of damp wool does not become you.”

A moment later, Carolyn found herself alone, glaring at the library door, which had closed rather abruptly behind Sydney.

“Is something wrong, Miss Carolyn?” It was the footman Abel, and he drew back in haste when she whirled abruptly, without altering her expression.

Seeing his reaction, she strove to compose her countenance, and said in a tolerably mild tone, “No, nothing. You may go.”

Why, she wondered as she turned toward the stairs, had she thought Sydney was angry with her? And why, thinking him angry, had she not been distressed, but rather stimulated instead? And why was she angry now, rather than relieved to discover that he was not angry? Having set herself to flirt with him, behaving as foolishly as ever Miss Laura Lovelace or any other of her ilk had done, she had compounded her error when she had turned her wiles upon the royal brothers in order to show him she could manage any man. Then, when she had failed dismally at that venture, was it any wonder that she had expected him to be vexed? But he had scarcely noticed her activities or cared much when he did.

And that, she thought shrewdly as she made her way up the second stairs, was most likely what had cut her to the quick, that added to the sad fact that he had not so much as commented upon her exemplary behavior since their return from Oatlands. It was not, she assured herself, that she had any particular need or desire for his approval. It was just that he might have said
something
to show that he was at least aware of her efforts.

These thoughts did nothing to pacify her temper, nor did the fact that he had not seemed to care in the slightest when he found her practically being carried off by Mr. Manningford. Indeed, that last thought acted upon her in such a way that by the time she reached her bedchamber door, she was seething, and determined by fair means or foul to make Sydney react in a more predictably male fashion. It was not until she saw Ching Ho moving down the corridor, the hat and coat he carried indicating his immediate intention of going out, that she had any idea of what she meant to do, but that sight affected her in precisely the same way that years before at Swainswick, on holiday from school, she had been affected by the knowledge that Sydney’s bedchamber, an arena ripe for mischief, was empty and waiting.

On the thought, she sped down the corridor, pausing only long enough at Sydney’s door to listen for any sound that might mean another servant was still within. There was none.

Cautiously opening the door, she saw at once that the room was empty and tiptoed swiftly to the doorway into the adjoining dressing room. It too was vacant. Pausing, she glanced first around the larger room and then the smaller, wondering what she might do that could not fail to stir him, either to merriment or to fury. At that moment, all emotions were as one to her.

Her gaze came to rest at last upon the dressing-room commode cabinet, and she remembered his admission, only weeks before, of his vexation that night years ago when, as a mischievous child, she had pasted his slippers to the floor. If that prank had vexed him, she reflected, perhaps something of a like nature would distress him even more.

Unlatching the little front door of the cabinet, she opened it and gazed with profound satisfaction at the floral-patterned Sevres chamber pot that resided there. She had no need to lift the lid to know that the pot would be empty and shining clean, for even if the chambermaid had been remiss in her early-morning duties, Ching Ho would never have allowed his master’s commode to go untended for long.

Before her mischief could be accomplished, however, it was necessary for her to go to her own room to throw off her damp cloak and fetch the glue that Maggie had used to repair her hat, but once she had found the glue and returned, it was but a few minutes work to achieve her purpose.