Bronwyn Scott (16 page)

‘Have fun. Shall I tell the Captain to meet you downstairs in half an hour?’ He shut the door behind him and Mercedes set about changing her dress, something that would be appropriate for an afternoon of shopping and for pulling her father’s little gambit later, maybe even something that might keep the attentions of
Lord
Captain Barrington, who worried London would be embarrassing.

* * *

Lord, that woman could wear a dress! Greer watched Mercedes descend the spiral staircase. Today it was a gown of figured-pewter silk with a fitted bodice and pristine white-lace trim at the neckline. The only adornment was a modest bow offset at her waist. The gown was meant to be lovely in a discreet fashion, but on Mercedes’s curves it was an invitation to absolute and complete sin. He was already imagining how to get her out of it before he remembered she was angry with him. Well, maybe not too angry. He noted she’d strung his star-charm on a thin strand of grey ribbon and wore it around her neck.

Still, Greer wished he’d held his tongue about the London comment. She’d been far more sensitive about it than he’d thought. He was so used to her thumbing her nose at the world and its conventions; he’d not anticipated she’d take it so personally or even care. Her silence had spoken volumes.

He moved to the stairs and took her hand. ‘You look lovely, but you always do.’ He was proud to walk through the lobby with her. He was not oblivious to the subtle glances thrown their way by both men and women. He wondered, not for the first time, what his family would make of her. His sisters would adore her. He could already see them pestering her for fashion advice. His brother would be reserved, but she would win him over. Andrew never could resist a pretty face for long. His father? His mother? Hard to guess. His mother would be a polite hostess and not say anything outwardly offensive, as that was her way. His father would simply be dismayed.

At the doors to the lobby he surprised her with a waiting landau. She shot him a look of question as he handed her in to the open-air carriage. ‘I thought it would be easier to drive than to walk, especially if you bought a lot of things.’ He hopped in and took the seat across from her.

‘Easier for you,’ she teased. ‘If we walked, you’d be the one who has to carry all the packages.’

The carriage lurched into motion, slowly merging with the traffic. Greer leaned forwards, encouraged by the teasing. ‘Am I forgiven, then? We’ll manage London somehow.’

She smiled at him and gave him the absolution of a single word. ‘Yes.’

‘Do you want to know a secret?’ Her eyes danced like little silver flames. Of course he wanted to know. How could he not when she looked at him like that?

‘I don’t want to go shopping. Let’s go to the botanical gardens instead.’ A light breeze toyed with her hat and she reached a hand up to steady it, looking charming as she made the gesture.

The detour was a short one. The gardens were only a mile from their hotel and the weather, although overcast, was proving to be mild. Much to his delight, however, the overcast nature of the day had kept people from the gardens and the place was nearly deserted, all the better for having Mercedes to himself.

The manicured lawn leading to the four glasshouses containing different varieties of plants spread before them in verdant welcome, a most relaxing departure from the industrial bustle of the city. ‘It’s hard to believe a place like this is so near the centre of the city.’ Greer held open the door to the subtropical glasshouse for her, catching a delicate whiff of her floral scent as she passed, her skirts brushing his leg.

Mercedes looked about her, the expression on her face one of enrapt wonder, and Greer felt an unexpected surge of pride that he’d been the one to bring her here, even though it had been her idea. He often forgot that for all her worldliness she hadn’t been past England’s shores. Not that it mattered these days: England’s empire was bringing the world here.

Mercedes bent to take in a particularly vibrant red flower with a large stem sticking straight out of its centre, inducing all nature of phallic thought which did not elude Mercedes. ‘Oh my, this is certainly original,’ she exclaimed with a naughty smile. ‘I wonder what it’s called. Too bad there aren’t any placards.’

‘I think my brief foray into botany is about to become useful.’ Greer chuckled. ‘My tutor would be gloating if he were here. This is an anthurium. It’s in the bromeliad family.’ He leaned close to her ear although there was no one to hear. ‘It’s also known as the “boy flower.”’

She gave a throaty laugh. ‘No further explanation needed. It’s a very wicked-looking flower indeed.’

It was on the tip of his tongue to flirt a bit and say ‘you’ve some experience with wicked things, do you?’ but after this morning’s misstep, he thought better of it. Mercedes clearly had some intimate experience beyond himself but she’d never brought it up beyond the game of questions they’d played, a certain indication the situation was as prickly as the long stamen rising from the anthurium.

* * *

They finished in the subtropical glasshouse and moved on to the other features. There were acres of lawn and shrubbery to explore and they conjured up images of home. He found himself telling her about his mother’s gardens and all the time his tutor spent wandering him through them, teaching him all the names.

‘English and Latin? I’m impressed.’ Mercedes laughed up at him.

‘Not that much of it stuck, though.’ He laughed with her. ‘At the time I didn’t appreciate how inventive my tutor was. He could have had me read it all out of a book instead of letting me enjoy the outdoors.’

‘Your mother’s gardens sound beautiful. Our garden back in Brighton was already landscaped when we moved in. It’s gorgeous, of course, but it doesn’t have the thought or the scholarship of your mother’s design.’

Her astute comment was disarming. Such a comment would charm his mother, Greer realised. Few people understood the aesthetic difference between a hand-planned garden and the generic but expensive urban garden like ones behind the terraced houses in Brighton.

‘I wish you could see it. It will be in full bloom about now,’ Greer ventured cautiously. He didn’t want to stir up more dissension between them.

‘Well, you know what they say about wishes.’

Mercedes smiled ruefully and he didn’t pursue the argument. Instead he said, ‘There’s a teahouse up ahead. Why don’t we stop? I think there’s enough time before we have to meet your father.’ But the thought of Mercedes meeting his family, which had taken root in the lobby of the hotel, was starting to blossom into a tangible fantasy, one that his overactive mind was starting to play with on a more frequent basis. There were other fantasies that were coming to life as he watched her pour out the tea at their little table, her gestures graceful and confident. His mother would say she could pass for a lady, but he didn’t want that. He didn’t want Mercedes to ever pass for something she wasn’t. He wanted her just the way she was: bold and passionate, insightful and intelligent.

Today had proven to him his attraction to her went far beyond the passion. He’d suspected it had long before now, but he wouldn’t be the first man blinded by the power of sex. Today, she’d listened to his stories about home, about his mother’s garden and she
understood
what that garden meant on a fundamental level that had transcended the conversation. How would he ever give her up when the time came? Therein lay the burgeoning fantasy: maybe he wouldn’t have to.

* * *

‘Greer, I asked if you wanted the last scone?’ Mercedes poked him with her finger, a most unladylike gesture.

‘Let’s share it.’ Greer picked it up and broke the pastry. The scone crumbled into unfair halves and they laughed together. His heart soared from the simple joy of it. Never had it felt like this,
never
.
This
was good and he’d have to find a way to fight for it. He’d fought for England—surely he could fight for Mercedes.

Chapter Seventeen

T
he subscription room was sophisticated and avant-garde, allowing women to sit on the sidelines and watch the men play. It was a novel experiment and not necessarily one that was succeeding.

The women, Mercedes noted, were well dressed, but with a tinge of that inherent gaucheness often attached to those who are newly come to money. Their clothes bordered on garish, their jewels on gaudy. These women were not the fine ladies of Bath with their understated elegance and fifth-generation pedigrees.

The men were no better with their brightly striped waistcoats and colourful jackets. Expensive to be sure, but tasteful? One look at the room’s population and Mercedes knew exactly what her father wanted to do. He wanted to run ‘plucking peacocks’, his favourite gambit.

‘Are you ready?’ she asked Greer quietly, taking up residence at the brass railing that separated the tables from the viewing section.

He rolled his eyes and consented before moving off to the bar to fetch them champagne. They’d done smaller variations of ‘plucking peacocks’ before. She knew he disliked it. He thought it was dishonest. She had laughed the first time, arguing that it wasn’t their fault people were stupid. A smart man would
never
take the bet. It certainly wasn’t her fault there were so few smart men in the world.

‘Remember, Greer,’ she prompted, taking her glass from him. ‘We aren’t making anyone do anything against their will. If they bite, they bite.’

They settled in to watch. Her father was playing very well. She’d not seen him play any of the newer versions of the game before where there was no longer any alternating of turns. Instead, players put together runs and shot until they missed, making it possible for a player to clear the table without the other getting a single turn.

Her father potted the last ball to a smattering of applause. She tossed Greer a quick glance. That was their cue. A little way into the next game, she leaned over and blew in Greer’s ear. The public display drew a few looks their direction. Now it was Greer’s turn. He started to heckle. ‘Good shot, old man. I’m surprised you can see the ball well enough to hit it, let alone sink it.’

Mercedes laughed and kissed his cheek, earning them a few censorious looks. But her father had chosen this crowd well. It was before dinner, so ‘crowd’ was a relative term. The population in the club wasn’t nearly as large as it would be later in the evening and these men weren’t gentlemen, merely apeing them. A little action wouldn’t be terribly amiss to them. It would be exciting.

Her father shot them a withering look and went back to his game, making a difficult shot. Greer gave a mocking round of applause. ‘Bravo. I’d like to see you make that shot again.’ His sarcasm was evident. He made an aside to Mercedes loud enough to be overheard. ‘He’s a lucky old bastard. I bet he couldn’t do that again. It’s one shot in twenty.’ They laughed and then she kissed him full on the mouth, becoming very distracting for everyone in the room.

‘We’re trying to play over here,’ her father’s opponent called over, pointedly gesturing to the money stacked on the table to indicate the game was serious.

Greer grinned and rose. ‘Oh, there’s money on this?’ He took in the pile of pound notes. He withdrew a wallet from his pocket and pulled out some bills. ‘You want to make some real money? I’ll bet Grandpapa here misses the next shot.’

Her father’s opponent leaned on his cue and gave Greer a look of disbelief. ‘Are you joking? My opponent’s had the devil’s own luck this afternoon and the next shot is easy.’ It was, too, Mercedes noted, just a soft straight shot into the side pocket. But she already knew just how her father would play it. It wasn’t all that different from the shot she’d missed the evening she’d played Greer.

‘Exactly. I’m betting his luck just ran out.’ The room had gone silent, everyone watching Greer make his offer.

‘Double it, darling,’ Mercedes called out in sultry tones.

Greer gave a cocky grin. ‘Seems my lady wants me to sweeten the pot.’ He tossed down another stack of notes.

That did the trick. The man fairly drooled at the sight of easy money. ‘Well, all right, mister. If you’re aiming to give it away, I might as well take it.’

Her father chalked his cue and gave a fair imitation of feeling the pressure. He even tried to talk the man out of the wager for good measure. Then he aimed, a soft rolling shot positioned a little too high up on the ball. It hit the edge of the pocket and slid away to the amazed groans of the room, no one more amazed than her father himself. His opponent paid up, begrudgingly, and not without a few deprecating words for Greer, who tucked the pound notes away and simply smiled before looping an arm around Mercedes and walking out. Only Mercedes sensed the tension simmering in the muscles beneath his coat. She didn’t have to be a mind reader to know a storm was coming.

* * *

‘I’m not doing it again,’ Greer announced as soon as they sat for dinner in the hotel dining room.

Ah, the storm was breaking. Mercedes settled her napkin in her lap and looked steadily at her lobster. Her eyes drifted covertly between her father and Greer.

‘You were absolutely brilliant.’ Her father ignored Greer’s comment by overriding it with a compliment. He turned to Mercedes, seeking to draw her in as a neutral buffer. ‘And you, my dear, were a genius. “Double it, darling.”’ He chuckled. ‘Brilliant. Couldn’t have done it better myself.’

‘It’s not right,’ Greer said again with more insistence. ‘That man had no idea.’

Her father set his fork down. ‘Of course he didn’t. However, such is the nature of any gamble a person takes in any aspect of his life. No one made him take the offer. He considered his options and decided he would.’

‘But his options were an illusion.’ Greer laid down his fork as well. Eyes clashed across the table. ‘There was
never
a chance to win.’

‘You listen here, Barrington...’ Lockhart took the challenge.

Mercedes drew a sharp breath. How many conversations had begun that way over the years? But Greer was a man and an officer. He could not be handled like a recalcitrant child. It was doubtful he could be handled at all.

‘There was
nothing
illegal in what we did.’

‘That doesn’t make it right.’

The men were halfway out of their seats and Mercedes cast about for a way to divert the impending scene, anything...

‘Why, Allen Lockhart! I thought that was you.’ The masculine depths of the intruding baritone froze Mercedes in her seat. Anything but that, not
him
. It was what she’d feared in coming to Birmingham, although her father had assured her that in a city of thousands the odds were in her favour. She schooled her features and looked up into the chiselled features of Luce Talmadge. His arrival may have squelched the quarrel brewing between Greer and her father, but in the future she’d be more careful about what she wished for.

‘Ah, Mercedes.’ Luce grinned, flashing straight teeth. He took a lot of pride in those teeth. They were quite the luxury when one grew up in the rougher neighbourhoods of Birmingham. ‘You’re as lovely as ever. Lovelier even.’ He pulled up a chair without being invited, audacious as always and just as tenacious. It was hard to believe she’d once found those traits attractive.

Luce sat and then half rose when it became apparent no one was going to introduce him to Greer. ‘I’m Luce Talmadge.’ He leaned over the table and offered his hand, but to her great satisfaction Greer merely inclined his head and offered nothing more than a glacial stare.

‘Shall I order champagne for everyone? We should celebrate running into one another.’ Luce pushed forwards, undaunted by Greer’s snub. ‘It’s been ages since we’ve all been together, but I still recall how much you liked champagne, Mercedes.’ He tossed her a wink that made her stomach curdle. How had she ever found him appealing? He was a boor, even if he was good looking. Greer would never have put a lady in such an untenable position, would never have insinuated himself into a conversation where he was not welcome, let alone someone else’s dinner table.

‘I hear there’s a tournament in Brighton, an All England Championship. It’s your doing, I suppose?’ It was Luce’s usual strategy—how it all came flooding back to her. He’d just keep talking, a rapid chatter filled with bonhomie until people just gave in and tolerated his presence or forgot they hadn’t invited him.

Her father broke in and she could have kissed him. ‘You’re not welcome here, Talmadge. I must ask you to please leave.’ Greer was tense beside her, ready to second her father’s request, even though moments before Luce’s arrival he’d nearly been at her father’s throat.

‘Surely, Lockhart, you’re not going to let the past keep us from friendship. That was nothing more than the foolishness of youth.’ Luce waved a hand dismissively. ‘Hardly worth carrying a grudge over. We’ve grown up and moved on.’

When her father didn’t budge, Luce’s smile turned mean as his attention focused on Greer. ‘I was once sitting where you are. It’s the good life, isn’t it? Doing Lockhart’s bidding? I think of all I learned on the road with him: how to win, how to lose, how to hustle, how to live the high life, which wine to order, which fork to use. Those were good years and they made me into the gentleman I am today.’ He held out his arms to indicate the expensive suit he wore.

Mercedes gave a snort of disbelief. The suit was garish and he looked more like the peacocks at the subscription room than a subtly dressed gentleman. Greer would look like a gentleman dressed in a potato sack.

Luce glared at her and rose, finally understanding his welcome wasn’t going to get any warmer. He was leaving. She started to breathe easier, thinking she might get out of this encounter unscathed. But Luce wasn’t done yet. ‘I think of those days with nostalgia, Mercedes. However, I see things have turned out for the best.’

He nodded in her father’s direction. ‘Best of luck with your new protégé and, Mercedes...’ his dark eyes rested on her with the devil’s own intentions, ‘...best of luck with your—what shall we call him? Your new lover? Your
husband
? Well, maybe not a husband. After all, I am fairly hard to replace and you aren’t into long-term arrangements.’

How dare he! White fury gripped her. Mercedes seized her water glass and threw the contents straight into his face seconds before Greer’s fist found Luce’s jaw with a blow that made casualties of the dishes lying between them. The blow took Luce and most of dinner to the floor. Well, she hadn’t had much of an appetite for the lobster anyway.

* * *

The bastard! Greer’s blood was pounding by the time he was straddling Talmadge, the lapels of his gaudy green-checked coat in his hands. Some vague part of him was aware that his hand throbbed. He shoved the pain aside. Greer dragged Talmadge to his feet. Talmadge protested the brutality, looking entirely aggrieved as if he were the wronged party. ‘We are both gentlemen here,’ he sputtered, trying to simultaneously clutch his jaw and swipe at the water running down his face.

‘One of us isn’t. You work out who that is,’ Greer snarled. He caught Mercedes’s eye. She was pale and her hand shook where it clutched the stem of her empty water glass. ‘Excuse me for a moment, my dear, I have to take out the rubbish.’

Greer roughly escorted Talmadge to the door, pointedly ignoring curious looks from the serving staff and the other diners. So much for discretion, but he’d be damned before he let a man treat a woman as poorly as Talmadge had treated Mercedes.

‘You can have her, you know.’ Talmadge tried to jerk free. ‘She and that meddling father of hers will never mean anything but trouble to any man. They’re users, both of them.’

Greer’s answer to that was a hard shove that set Talmadge staggering into the lobby. He watched Talmadge disappear into the street still reeling and off balance.

Certain the bastard was gone, Greer gripped the door frame, finally letting Talmadge’s comments sink in. He was reeling too, albeit in a far different way. Mercedes had been married and apparently divorced to the likes of Luce Talmadge, a bounder on all accounts. Impossible.

Greer fought the urge to race back to the table and demand the truth in the hopes that Talmadge had been lying. But that was a slim hope indeed. The pallor on her face at the sight of him was proof enough. For a woman of Mercedes’s remarkable steel such a reaction was telling in the extreme.

Racing back to the table would solve nothing if his emotions weren’t under control. He needed to face Mercedes with a cool head. He’d punched Talmadge mostly for Mercedes’s sake but also in part for himself. He was
not
Lockhart’s protégé. He was nothing like that man, had no intentions of being like that man. But it did raise the question of guilt by association and it was high time he grappled with that particular dilemma. This evening in the subscription room, he’d glimpsed just how far he’d fallen and he hadn’t even realised it.

* * *

By the time Greer returned to the table, Mercedes had gone. While he’d been marshalling his emotional troops, she’d been marshalling hers. It was just as well. Anxious as he was for answers, this was a conversation best held in private. As for the fantasies he’d harboured about showing her his mother’s gardens, they’d just become a little more complicated.

Escorting her around London was the least of his worries. Now she wasn’t merely the daughter of a celebrity billiards champion, she was also a divorced woman. Of course, she’d been that from the start. She just hadn’t told him. He had to wonder what else she hadn’t told him? What else was there to discover? What other reasons were being hidden behind the promise that he not fall in love with her? More importantly, did those reasons change how he felt about her? Her absence made it clear she thought they would.