Amanda Scott (5 page)

“Not another word,” he snapped, tightening his grip. “Not unless you have a wish to find yourself sprawled facedown across my knee right here and now. You deserve no less.”

Gasping with indignation, she glared up at him defiantly, opening her mouth to dare him to do any such thing. But one look at his angry countenance deterred her. In the past she had thought him no more than aloof, a trifle cold, and rather distant. At worst he had figured merely as one more exasperated adult when she and Christopher had had to face the consequences of one or another of their pranks. Now it was at one and the same time as though she had never known Greyfalcon and as though she knew him through and through. She could not doubt that he meant what he had said, yet she still could not believe he had said such a thing to her. With relief she heard one of the club’s footmen call to ask if his lordship required a carriage.

“No.”

Sylvia protested as he began to drag her beside him along the pavement. “You can’t mean—”

“I told you to hold your tongue. And don’t,” he added, raking her with a burning glance, “lose that damned cap.”

Sylvia clapped her left hand to her head, struggling to keep up with him as he strode along the flagway. By the time they had crossed Piccadilly, she was breathing heavily and finding it necessary to concentrate upon every step in order to avoid stumbling. She had a strong belief that Greyfalcon would merely drag her along behind him if she did miss her step. It seemed to take forever, but at last they reached Curzon Street, and at last his pace began to slow. At the third house from the corner, one that was a good deal larger than most of the others in the street, he turned to mount the steep stone steps.

“Please, sir,” she gasped, pulling back at last. “Where are we?”

Greyfalcon stopped and looked down at her, looming taller than ever, since he stood a step above her. His mouth twisted into a wry grimace. “Surely you will not refuse to enter my house without a proper chaperon, Miss Jensen-Graham. Not after your little May-game at Brooks’s.”

“You cannot do this!” she cried.

“Oh, but I can,” he retorted, turning back toward the door. He did not lift the knocker, but merely turned the latch and pushed the heavy door open. A moment later, she stood beside him in the middle of a broad, two-story hall.

A neatly dressed manservant hurried forward to meet them. “My lord?” His quick gaze took in Sylvia’s disheveled appearance before he looked again at his master.

“Bring a bottle of the madeira to the library in ten minutes’ time, Wigan, but do not disturb us until then.”

“Aye, m’lord.” The manservant effaced himself.

Greyfalcon hustled Sylvia through a pair of tall doors on the left side of the hall, releasing her arm at last. She found herself in a comfortably appointed room, lined with shelves full of well-worn books and boasting rather shabby but comfortable-looking furniture. A fire burned with what she thought to be rather tactless cheer in the small black marble fireplace. She had little time to savor the comforts of the room had she wished to do so, however, for with the snap of the doors shutting behind her, a cold shiver raced up and down her spine that not all the warmth in the room could dispel.

“Look at me.”

She had no wish to obey that particular command, but neither did she wish to make him any angrier than he was already. To do so, she was certain, would be nothing short of folly. Slowly, rubbing her aching arm and drawing a long breath to steady her nerves, she turned to face him.

“Whatever possessed you to do such a foolish thing?” he demanded.

“I—”

But he had not asked the question in expectation of a response. He had asked it merely to give himself a starting point. Without allowing her so much as a moment’s time in which to reply, he continued with a scathing description of her character that spared nothing for her sensibilities, nothing for her pride. His words seemed to hammer at her, and when he informed her in chilling tones that even Christopher would have been disgusted by such a prank, her eyes filled with tears and she had all she could do to keep them from spilling down her cheeks. Never in her life had anyone shredded her character so finely as Greyfalcon was doing now. She had had her share of reprimands and punishments from her parents as a child, and more of the same at school. But even Greyfalcon’s scolding at Miss Pennyfarthing’s had been as nothing compared to what he was saying to her today.

“Just what business,” he said now, “did you have risking your good reputation by storming the bastions of Brooks’s so thinly disguised as a page? Pray tell me, for I should like very much to know.”

A moment of tense silence fell as Sylvia just stared at him, her breast heaving beneath the loose gray jacket, her hands trembling as she attempted to wipe the sweat from her palms on the gray breeches she wore. It was as though she could still hear him shouting at her, as though she still waited for him to run out of words. His anger was so patent that she seemed to hear him even when he was silent.

“I asked a question, Sylvia,” he said finally, grimly. “I expect an answer. And take off that damned cap.”

At last the words penetrated the dense fog in her mind, and she looked up at him. His brow was furrowed, his eyes narrowed, and his lips were pressed together as though he were forcing himself with great effort to keep silent, to allow her to respond. He looked so angry, so damned righteous. The last thought cleared the pain from her eyes, brought anger in its stead. She looked at him directly now and drew herself up, pulling off the cap and wishing, not for the first time in her life, that she were at least three or four inches taller, and also that she had the nerve to tell him she had never given him leave to address her so informally.

She could not bring herself to do so much as that, but she could give him what he had asked for. “You wish an answer, my lord?” He nodded, still grim. “Very well, sir, though I doubt you will like it much. I dared search for you at Brooks’s, because the message I bore was important, because you have ignored your duty until your mother is well nigh frantic, until your estates are in peril of their future, and because you have ignored all pleas for your return. I wanted to see for myself that you actually received that message and that you would pay proper heed to it. No doubt you will think me presumptuous, and no doubt you are in the right of it in many ways, but you do most certainly have a duty, my lord, and I mean to do my part to see that you attend to it.”

Greyfalcon grunted. “That duty, as you call it, Miss Jensen-Graham, is not yet mine but that of my trustees. Thanks to my father’s whim, I shall not be my own master for nearly a year yet. I’ve not the slightest intention of attempting to take reins that will not be willingly relinquished into my hands.”

So bleak did he look as he said those words that Sylvia nearly blurted out the truth, that his primary trustee would be only too happy not merely to relinquish but to thrust those reins into Greyfalcon’s hands at the earliest opportunity. She held her tongue, however, for the simple reason that she was not by any means sure the truth would get him to Oxfordshire. He was still angry. That much was only too easy to see. But his tirade was over, for the moment at least, and she had no wish to start it up again. And she could not think he would take her confession lightly. Not now. Once he was safe in Oxfordshire, perhaps. So long as he believed Lord Arthur meant to publish the humiliating letter, he would go home to stop him. And home was where she wanted him. She kept her gaze fixed upon his face with difficulty. “Your mother needs you, sir.” That much was true at any rate.

He grimaced. “My mother needs a shoulder to cry upon, that is all.”

“Well, I have been that shoulder for six weeks, and I do not wish to retain the position indefinitely,” she said more tartly. “Though it may come as a shock to you to hear it said, she is your responsibility, sir, not mine.”

The corners of his lips twitched, surprising her. It looked as though she had almost made him smile. The look disappeared, however, when the doors opened behind him to reveal the manservant with a tray of refreshments. Sylvia looked at it appreciatively. There was not only the madeira that Greyfalcon had ordered but also a platter of little sandwiches and cakes. Suddenly she realized she was hungry. She beamed at the manservant, then turned to draw up a nearby chair as the man set the tray down upon the library table.

Greyfalcon dismissed the manservant with a brief order to send the housekeeper to him at once. Noting that Sylvia had begun to help herself from the tray, he said then with a touch of that unpleasant chill in his voice, “Don’t get too comfortable, my girl. I’ve still a thing or two left to say to you.”

“Well, I’m hungry, and I intend to eat,” she informed him with a saucy smile, no longer frightened of him despite his tone. “Say what you will, my lord. By the by, how did you come to recognize me?”

“’Tis a wonder everyone did not recognize you,” he said in a near growl. “That flimsy disguise—”

“It wasn’t flimsy—it isn’t.” She looked down at herself, pushing hair out of her face and brushing a crumb from the borrowed jacket. “No one recognized me but you.”

“Most fortunately for you, that is true. I should like to say I would have recognized you as a female in any case, but that is not true. I recognized your face. I have, after all, watched you grow from a toddling child into a young woman. Slight as you are, I doubt anyone who had not known you so long would realize you were not a boy. Still, it was a foolhardy and dangerous thing to do. Your reputation might have been damaged irreparably.”

She shrugged. “Much I care for that. What should I miss, living in the depths of Oxfordshire as I do, flirting with all the eligible gentlemen at Almack’s? With your drunken friend Lacey, perhaps?”

“You would do well to keep silent on that head,” he warned. “I made a threat to you earlier that I shall be pleased to turn into a reality if you do not set a guard upon that impulsive tongue of yours.” He watched her for a long moment, but when she applied her attention to the sandwich in her hand, he continued, his tone still grim. “Who else knows of this little escapade of yours?”

“No one,” she replied hastily, nearly choking.

“Don’t mistake me for an utter fool, Sylvia. You did not come to London alone, and you are not staying at some inn in Cheapside. Nor do I believe you contrived all this without assistance.”

“Well, I did contrive the whole,” she protested. When he looked ready to take up his reading of her character where he had left off, she added hastily, “I’m not lying, I swear it. Not that
no
one knows, precisely, but only one other person does, and she does not count, for she would never breathe a word of it to anyone.”

“Your maid?”

“No, of course not. I don’t even have a maid. What servants we have are mostly for Papa’s comfort, not mine. Have you been away from Oxfordshire so long as that, my lord?”

“Sylvia.” He said no more than that, but the warning was clear.

She sighed. “I came to London with Mrs. Weatherly, the Mayfields’ housekeeper, who has come up to visit her brother.”

“Mayfield? Ah, yes, the vicar with the rather pretty daughter. Good family, that. The chit came out last year, I believe. Their housekeeper, you say? Did you expect to return with her?”

She paid no heed to his use of the past tense. “No, of course not, for she has a fortnight’s holiday, and Papa expects me to return long before that. And before you leap into the boughs again, Greyfalcon, let me tell you that Joan would never let me return to Oxfordshire without a maidservant, nor would Harry.”

“Joan? Lady Joan Whitely?”

“Yes, of course, although she is Lady Joan Gregg now, for she married Reston but kept her own title. Only think of dearest Joan a countess. She has been married for nearly three years now, and I still find it difficult. Surely you knew.”

“I daresay I did, but Reston does not number among my closer friends, so I had forgotten.”

Sylvia chuckled. “I daresay he doesn’t,” she replied, mimicking his tone as well as his phrasing. “Harry is younger than you but a good deal more skilled at dealing with responsibility than you are. And he hasn’t got any actresses dangling after him.”

A moment later she could have bitten her tongue out, so much did she wish the words unsaid. The look on his face made her fear for a moment that he intended to carry out his earlier threat. Indeed, he took two steps toward her, making her glad that the library table stood between them. Had it not—had she been close enough for him to grab her before he thought better of it, she thought he might very well have given his temper full rein.

As it was, Greyfalcon contained his temper with difficulty. When he spoke, his words were carefully measured. “You will write at once to Lady Joan, informing her that your mission has been successful and that we will depart for Oxfordshire at once. You will request that she entrust your things to the messenger who will deliver your letter.”

“I shall do no such thing,” Sylvia said fiercely.

“Oh, but you will,” he retorted. “If you do not, I shall go alone to Oxfordshire, where my first deed will be to inform your father about your visit to Brooks’s. I am not generally one to carry tales, but I am persuaded that Lord Arthur never intended for you to deliver his letters personally, certainly not to a gentleman’s club. Indeed, under any circumstance, I am certain that he expected you to employ a courier, if he even knows that you came to London at all.”

“Of course he knows,” Sylvia said indignantly. But she knew Greyfalcon had won the hand. She had no wish for him to discuss the matter with her father—not ever, if she could prevent it. Capitulation was definitely in order. “I’ll do as you ask,” she said quietly. “How soon must we leave?”

“You may tell Lady Joan that we mean to leave the city at once,” he said.

“Very well.” She watched while he strode to the large, leather-topped desk that occupied nearly the entire space under the tall, street-facing windows, opened a drawer, and extracted a sheet of gray letter paper. There was an inkstand upon the table. The quill, when she attempted to use it, appeared to be split, and she handed it to him wordlessly to mend for her. It was the work of but a moment before he returned the little penknife to his pocket and handed her the pen. There could be no more delay. Reluctantly, she began to write, keeping the letter as brief as possible, admitting nothing, saying only what he had told her to say. Joan would no doubt guess the rest, but that would not be nearly so bad as having to tell her.