Anne Barbour (13 page)

She was finding it difficult to concentrate on the frivolous doings of Clifford and Clive, for despite her best efforts, her thoughts insisted on returning to the words Jonathan had spoken the night before. She had tried to believe that he had merely been making small talk, that in truth she did remind him of someone else. But then there was that wicked glint in his eye as he spoke. No, he had deliberately provoked her.

She straightened her shoulders, determined to be all business this morning. Jonathan was due to arrive momentarily (they had agreed that morning visits were liable to prove the least noticeable of any time of day) and she had a neat packet of drawings ready to show him. She had, she felt, adequately transformed the swarthy features of George Wendover into the essence of Corinthian Clive.

She gazed in self-congratulation at a drawing of Clifford and Clive at the Fives Court, which she had created from Jonathan’s description of that haunt of the sporting set. The two scapegraces stood at the outskirts of a crowd surrounding a boxing ring in which a pair of pugilists enthusiastically pummeled each other black and blue. She had included every class of society in the disorderly mob that cried encouragement to the fighters; sailors and navvies jostled elbows with clerks and butchers and peers. From balconies above the ring, dandies raised quizzing glasses to inspect the proceedings.

She smiled in anticipation of Jonathan’s compliments. He had been extraordinarily appreciative of her work, and she basked in his praise. In fact, she had found the hours spent with him over the last week most enjoyable. Their conversation had roamed far beyond the confines of their collaboration. Twice, he had stayed far into the evening, and they had chatted companionably, talking of every subject under the sun.

To her dismay, she was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain her image of Lord Chelmsford as an insolent dandy, the catch of the marriage mart and an insensitive clod. He had displayed none of these loathsome attributes to her, and she certainly could not claim that he was simply making himself charming to her. For he had no reason to cozen her. In truth, she felt oddly comfortable with him, as though there had never been a time when she did not know him. If only....

She looked up as Cat entered the room, and the two exchanged greetings.

“You are looking well,” remarked Cat, “after your night of dissipation.”

“I had a wonderful time,” Tally admitted with a grin. “And I owe it all to you, oh best of my friends.”

“Nonsense. I shall readily take the credit for nudging you into shedding your ill-fitting chrysalis. But the beauty of the butterfly that emerged was all yours, Tally. I swear, you fluttered into some heretofore impregnable hearts last night. Have you seen the flowers already piling up in the drawing room?”

“No! Really?” Tally’s face lit with pleased surprise. “Who would be sending me flowers?”

“Oh, Lord Brindfield, for one. And Philip Shoulton. And there’s young Charlie Brendenwood, who must have bought out every flower woman in Covent Garden.”

Tally remained silent for a moment. Surely, a new gown and a new hair style could not be responsible for this glorious upheaval in her life.

As though reading her thoughts, Cat mused aloud. “Of course, it is not your new feathers that has brought these gentlemen to your doorstep, Tally. It is—oh, I don’t know—a new air of confidence, I guess. When last you stood before the portals of the Polite World, you hardly had two words to say for yourself. It was as though you were a captive, mute and miserable inside those awful clothes. Richard said the same thing last night, just before we retired.”

“Ah,” said Tally, mischief sparking in her eyes. “And how is our wandering lad this morning? Still quivering from his ordeal?”

“Not nearly so much as he would have been were he not in the act of prying Clea’s dainty little claws from his coat when we peeped in on him.”

“Honestly”—Tally’s laughter bubbled—“the look on his face when he turned away from her and saw us in the doorway. I never saw such a pitiful expression of relief in my life. And Clea! I’ll wager this is the first time in her career that a man has ever withdrawn in haste from a tête-á-tête with Lady Belle.”

“Yes,” replied Cat complacently. “I expect I shall savor her expression of chagrin for some months to come. Although I must confess it was all I could do at the time to keep my hands from her lovely white throat. Did you hear her? “Oh, dear me, Mrs. Thurston! I pray you do not think anything amiss! Richard insisted I accompany him to the window at this side of the house to observe the lovely full moon just rising.”  Cat’s magnificent bosom rose on a wave of indignation.  “The wicked, lying bitch! She’d better take care not to creep around my husband again. ‘Lovely full moon,’ indeed! Richard told me she wafted up to him on the dance floor and said that there was someone who very much wished to meet him in private, but when he entered the room behind Clea, there was, of course, no one there.”

“I don’t know what she could have been thinking of,” replied Tally. “All London knows that Richard is fidelity personified. He worships you, for heaven’s sake!”

“No,” Cat chuckled. “that he does not. Nor would I want him to. I can think of few fates more dismal than to be placed on a pedestal and adored from afar, for all the world like a lump of sculptured marble.”

Tally laughed, but her thoughts drifted, as was their annoying tendency, to Jonathan. That was the look in his eyes, when he watched Clea, wasn’t it? Adoration? Tally had the feeling that Lady Belle very much enjoyed accepting the homage of her worshipers from atop a pedestal. But surely, adoration was not a very good basis for a lifelong relationship, was it?—even if the idolatry were mutual, which Tally somehow felt it was not.

Uncomfortably, she pushed her chair away from the table and picked up her sketchbook. Bidding good-bye to Cat, she made her way to her newly created workroom next to Richard’s study to await Jonathan.

Once alone, however, the words Jonathan had spoken last night began their merciless repetition in her mind. “Someone I met several years ago—years ago—years ago.” She put her hands over her ears and shook her head to no avail. “Someone who looked like you—ooh—ooh,” the din continued.

There was no escape. Jonathan had recognized her as the social reject he had made sport of so many years ago. And he had made fun of her—again! How could he! He must have known how she had suffered on that occasion. How could he have been such an insensitive boor!

But wait a minute. Not once in the brief time she had known him since she returned to London had he given any indication of being other than a warm, sensitive, caring human being. Was it possible that she had misjudged him?

Once more her thoughts returned to the fateful night of her come-out ball. For the first time she considered what the effect might have been if, as she cringed in the black reverberation of those hurtful words, Jonathan had offered an expression of sympathy, or said nothing at all—or had simply turned on his heel and walked away.

Why, Tally thought slowly, she would have been utterly undone. She would have raced from the room in tears, thus adding to her humiliation by making a complete fool of herself. Had Jonathan known that? His brusque demeanor had turned her shame into an enveloping rage, resurrecting the tattered rags of her pride. Had he acted so by design?

So deep was she in her reverie, that when Jonathan slipped into the little room a few moments later, she stared at him blindly. For a moment, he seemed to her the reflection of her thoughts, taken solid form.

“Did you really say those dreadful things on purpose?” The words flew out of her mouth without thought, and she would have given anything to have them back.

Oddly, Jonathan answered her question without hesitation, as though his thoughts had been running parallel to hers.

“Of course I did,” he said simply. “I could not think what else to do.” His dark brows lifted questioningly. “Surely, you realized what I was about—at least, later, when your very understandable rage had dissipated.”

Jonathan moved to grasp her shoulders lightly, and he was instantly transported to that night. The Viscount Chelmsford of that long-ago time was certainly no rescuer of wounded doves. It seemed as though Clea had absorbed what few gentle emotions he possessed. But he could not stand by and watch another human being disintegrate before his eyes, particularly one so terrifyingly vulnerable. For years the vision of those great brown eyes had stayed with him. Why had something not told him at the time that... He dropped his hands abruptly.

“You were—what, seventeen?” he asked. “You cannot think I ripped at you for the sake of hurting you even further? Good God, what sort of a monster have you thought me all these years?”

Tally forced a smile to her lips, but the deep breath she drew was shaky. “I can only say that I have misjudged you, and—and, I’m glad I now have the opportunity to know the real Lord Chelmsford.”

Jonathan’s expression was unreadable as he stood back several paces to look at Tally, long and searchingly. He said nothing further, but, as though having made his mind up about something, he gave a little nod and smiled.

Stepping to the table upon which Tally had been working, he picked up the packet of sketches and began scanning them. To Tally’s dismay, a frown shadowed his forehead, which grew steadily deeper as he perused them further. He looked up, finally.

Tally, these are very good. That is, the characters portrayed are excellent, but the background is all wrong.”

“But I have drawn them just as you described them.”

“No, no — look here at the Fives Court.” He spread the sheets out. “The ring is much too small. And there is no balcony such as the one you have drawn.”

“But you said there was an upper tier which runs around the perimeter of the room.”

“Well, yes, but it is not an open balcony. It is more like the walls to a second floor — a mezzanine, if you will, but it has walls, into which are set windows—”

He stopped short, as Tally simply stared at him in confusion.

“An enclosed balcony — with walls?”

“Well, no, not precisely.”

Jonathan picked up one of Tally’s pencils and attempted to modify the sketch, only to render it completely useless as an illustration.

He set it aside in dismay and turned to another drawing, this one of the Cock Pit. Tally’s pencil had caught the cruelty of the sport. One of the fowls was in the process of disemboweling the other, as the spectators, eyes glittering greedily in the lantern light, urged their favorites to greater carnage.

“Yes, but Tally, there are no windows in the Westminster Cock Pit. And look at that fellow in the basket. He looks like a prize piglet about to be tucked under the arm of the farmer’s wife and taken off to the fair.”

Tally stared at him in growing apprehension.

“It’s not supposed to be a real basket, don’t you see? It’s more like a little cage, actually. And the fellow’s smiling! Don’t you remember? I told you that when someone wagers, and then can’t pay the bet, he’s hoisted up in the basket until he makes arrangements to pay. Now, would the fellow be happy about that?” He shook his head. I don’t know, Tally. Your drawing talent is extraordinary, but you simply don’t know the territory.”

Tally stiffened. Was he saying that he couldn’t use her drawings? She felt herself grow cold as she saw her hopes for a career as an artist go aglimmering.

“No!” she cried, placing her hands over the drawing in an instinctive gesture. “You are quite right—about not knowing the territory, I mean. But I can fix that!”

“How? I described these places as best I know how. I suppose we could go through every drawing line by line, but that would take forever, and it probably wouldn’t answer, anyway.”

“I don’t know,” responded Tally desperately, “but I’ll think of something. Just give me a day or two. I’ll think of something.”

Jonathan regarded her uneasily. “You would not consider going to any of those places yourself, would you?”

“Of course not. At leas--no, of course that would not be possible. Would it? I mean, if you were to come with me—”

“No,” replied Jonathan flatly. “A gently born female would no sooner be seen in any of those places than she would sign on for duty in a sultan’s harem.”

“Mmm.” Tally’s brow furrowed in thought. Catching Jonathan’s extremely dubious eyes on her, she brightened and smiled disarmingly. “Well, if that won’t fadge, I shall just have to work out something else. And I shall, you know. You’ll see.”

Jonathan took his leave then, and mounted his curricle outside the Thurston home with some misgiving. He wondered what plot Tally might be hatching. In his short acquaintance with that resourceful damsel, he had learned to appreciate her determination to make her own way in the world. He very much feared that if she had decided that it was necessary for her to visit the Fives Court, and the Cock Pit, and Cribb’s Parlour, and all the other males-only locales patronized by Clifford and Clive, that would be precisely what she’d do.

As he guided his team deftly through the heavy midday traffic of Mayfair, he mused on his new partner. Certainly, she was unlike any other female of his acquaintance. He smiled as he recalled the painfully shy, uninteresting little dab he had met those many years ago. Now, she had acquired her own coating of town bronze and had been transformed into an enchanting pixie.

Strange, how much he enjoyed her company. It was as though they had known each other for years. He thought of Clea and wondered that he had never been able to converse with her as he did with Tally. It was well-nigh impossible to imagine an evening spent with Clea by the fire in lively conversation. But then, Clea was nothing like Tally. Clea was a glorious, golden goddess. Tally was wholly of this earth — a vibrant little creature of laughter and surprise. Clea was his deity, and Tally.... He was puzzled and not a little alarmed at the feelings that were developing within him toward his new friend.

Yes, that was it! Of course, that was it. What he felt for Tally was friendship. He had not recognized it as such because he was unused to feeling in such complete harmony with a woman. His relationship with the fair sex had been full and varied, but always on the most physical of levels. Except for Clea, he hastily assured himself. His feeling for Clea was deep and spiritual — of course. A picture of her honey blond loveliness swam before his eyes. His pulse quickened as he envisioned satiny skin molded into enticing curves that, at last, welcomed his caress. His lips curled in an ironic smile. Well, perhaps not altogether spiritual.