Cupid's Dart (15 page)

Through the Public Rooms he wandered, exchanging a word of greeting, ignoring a snub. He inspected the cold collation, and cast an ironic eye at the boar's head; then he accepted a glass of punch, pausing briefly to observe a game of whist before moving through the crowd to the chamber where the orchestra played. Not that Garth had any especial interest in the dancers. He meant only to make a polite perambulation of the premises, and afterward to take his leave. Then he saw Georgie approaching him through the crowd.

Georgie at a function such as this? Impossible. Lord Warwick frowned at his glass of punch, which he had not thought so strong.

If a vision, she was most corporeal. Georgie tucked her hand through his arm. "Garth!" she said brightly. "Your sense of timing is superb. I believe I have promised you a dance."

Garth realized that the orchestra had indeed struck up a new tune. He transferred his frown from his punch glass to Georgie's face. "Pray try and not look so forbidding!"
she said, quietly. "Consider this: if you do not dance with me, you truly will land me in the scandal-broth."

What she said was true. Reluctantly, Garth led Georgie out onto the dance floor. Apparently she was no longer angry with him, for which he must be glad. However, she had acted precisely as he wished she wouldn't, and publicly allied herself with him, and that caused him unease. "Do you realize what you have just done?"

"I do," retorted Georgie. "And I promise that if you dare once more to lecture me that I shall box your ears right here in the middle of the dance floor. That
would give the busybodies something to chew over their chocolate cups, don't you think?"

Georgie thought Miss Halliday had a nice way of turning a phrase. Reluctantly, he smiled. "Much better!" Georgie approved. "Shall we cry pax, my lord?"

"Considering that you have put your own reputation on the line by championing me, it would be churlish in me to refuse." Several interested observers would later remark upon the particular energy with which Lord Warwick twirled his partner, and dipped her, and swung her around. "It is your own cousin I am said to have disposed of, after all."

Georgie wished her cousin to perdition. Providing that Catherine was not already there. "I know what it is. You do not wish to be in my debt. I cannot blame you! There is no telling when I may call in my vowels."

"Cut line, my girl!" Garth's smile was genuine now. "Pax it is then, Georgie. At least until I again manage to set up your back. How does the lovely Mrs. Smith, by the bye?"

Mention of her houseguest caused Georgie's own spirits to falter. "It has occurred to Marigold that you are companions in misfortune. She was asking about the size of your pocketbook. I told her you are a pauper, but I doubt she believed me. Well you may look horrified! Marigold has decided that you are very handsome. Definitely I shall take up seabathing. It is said to be most beneficial to the nerves."

With great effort, Lord Warwick refrained from inquiring into the particulars of how Mrs. Smith was worrying his companion to death. Not that Georgie looked beset. Garth did not know when he had seen anything so wondrous as Lady Georgiana in her silver-shot dress, her hair arranged in intricate coils and adorned with pearls. "I personally find my nerves most agreeably affected by early-morning strolls along the seashore," he remarked.

"The seashore is very nice," agreed Georgie. "But there is not one handy, and I have grown too warm with the exertion of the dance. I do not know when I have more enjoyed myself. No, I do not require a lemonade. Pray escort me outside. Do not argue! I might still fly into the boughs. Heaven knows I have seen Marigold do so often enough to have got the hang of it."

Mrs. Smith was proving a most unfortunate influence. Garth did not demur, but escorted Georgie into a small but elegant flower garden embellished with classical statuary and narrow, flagged paths.

Lord Warwick and Miss Halliday were not the only of Lady Denham's guests to escape the crush in search of cooler air, although no other departure would arouse such interest, or cause so many people to approach their hostess with scurrilous tidbits of gossip about the viper she had clutched all unconscious to her meager chest. Garth had a notion of the tittle-tattle that flourished behind them. "Now," he said, "would you please tell me just what you are about?"

Georgie had already sat on a rakehell's lap. It would hardly corrupt her further to stroll around a garden with Lord Warwick. "Are you still nattering about my reputation? We are hardly unchaperoned."

Silently, Lord Warwick escorted her into a dark and relatively secluded corner of the garden. So much, reflected Georgie, for his care what people thought. He turned to face her. "Why are you doing this?" he asked.

Georgie looked at him. Garth made a very noble appearance in the black-and-white evening attire made popular by Brummell. Briefly, she was tempted to make a flippant remark.

As it turned out, she could not. "Because I cannot help myself," she said quietly. "You know that. You have always known that. I am sorry for what I said to you the other day. It was most unfair."

Her hair had begun to curl around her face in the cool night air. Garth brushed an errant ringlet off her forehead. "I have no right to even speak with you. I was such a fool. I don't know why things happened as they did."

"I do," Georgie said wryly. "Catherine set her cap at you. There was no resisting Catherine when she wanted something—or someone. I saw it happen time and again." She looked up at him. "What do you truly think happened to Catherine?"

Even in the shadows, Georgie could see the grimness of his expression. For a moment, she thought he would not reply. "I think that my wife developed a partiality for someone else, and ran off with him," Garth said, at last. "But I do not know the identity of the fortunate—or unfortunate!—gentleman, and I have not been able to trace her one step."

Georgie was more than startled by these revelations. "You mean that she—um—"

"I mean that Catherine did not consider fidelity a virtue," Garth responded wryly. "In a husband or a
wife. I doubt that she was faithful to me beyond the honeymoon, if that. I suppose I should be grateful to her for not providing me an heir, because I should have always wondered who the child's true father was."

"Garth!" Georgie said again, appalled. 'Yet you let the world think that—" She paused. "Oh. I see."

"Rather a murderer than a cuckold?" Garth shrugged. "Something like that. To say the truth, I was not altogether certain Catherine was not playing some monstrous practical joke. We had quarreled just before she disappeared."

Georgie tried to assemble her scattered wits. "It was not the first time you had quarreled, I'll warrant."

"You think me high-handed." Ruefully, Lord Warwick smiled. "Truly, Georgie, my intentions were the best. I dreaded the consequences you would face, were your name linked with mine. And I will quarrel with you no more about it. The damage has been done."

What Georgie meant to do, she later was not certain, but she started to move toward Lord Warwick, and her delicate evening slipper slid in the damp grass. Instead of moving toward him, she tumbled right into his arms. Garth caught her up against his chest. Georgie turned her face up to his. He raised one hand and rubbed his thumb along her lush lower lip.

Georgie shivered, but not with cold. "Garth," she whispered.

That whisper was Lord Warwick's undoing, such longing did it express. He lowered his lips to hers.

How gentle were his kisses, then how rough. How sweet and strange were the sensations those kisses aroused. Tingles and trembles and shivers—Georgie wasn't certain she could still stand.

Garth inhaled deeply, then he removed her arms from round his shoulders, and stepped back. That kiss—or kisses, to be precise—had affected Georgie no more than they had affected him. Garth wished he might sweep her up into his arms and make sweet, passionate love to her right there in the middle of Lady Denham's garden, and be damned if the entire world was looking on.

"My dear, I wish to do much more than kiss you," he murmured. "Prudence dictates that we stop."

Georgie recognized the remote expression that had descended upon Lord Warwick's features. "If you turn away from me now, I swear that I shall scream! What do you think
that
would do for my blasted reputation, pray?"

Garth regretted that he had put Georgie in a temper. He drew her back into his arms. "Turn away from you? I shall never do that. Oh, my dear, what are we to do about this?"

Georgie knew what she'd like to do—or if she didn't know exactly, had a fair idea. It involved divesting oneself of one's clothing, first of all. Georgie wouldn't at all have minded divesting herself of her clothing at that particular moment, even if they were in the middle of Lady Denham's garden. She snuggled closer to Garth.

Lord Warwick reached a decision. He put Georgie away from him and heroically refrained from planting kisses on the creamy flesh so charmingly revealed by her low-cut gown. "I am going to be absent from town for the space of a few days," he said abruptly. "Much as I dislike to leave you at the mercy of your Mrs. Smith."

Garth was leaving Brighton? The warmer the embrace, the farther he must distance himself from her, it seemed. Georgie would chew glass before she betrayed her bitter disappointment. "We are not yet at point non plus," she responded lightly. "I daresay we shall contrive. But we have given the gossips enough to jaw about for one evening, don't you think? Let us go back inside."

Chapter Nineteen

Andrew was feeling sadly out of curl. Agatha's most recent attempts to physic him, involving as they had cold water and stewed prunes, and snails mashed with mallets, had proven little more beneficial to his nerves than the newspaper accounts he currently perused. Andrew was sorry to read that matters in the Peninsula had degenerated into a waiting game, where the French and British armies were evenly matched, and both commanders waited for the other to make a mistake. While Wellington's officers leisurely explored the city, and Old Douro himself was feted and kissed by Spanish ladies everywhere he went, the troops endured scalding sun and bitter cold, choked down breakfasts of beer and onions after performing outpost work all night, and burned emptied coffins for firewood because no other kindling was to be found in the almost treeless terrain.

Andrew exercised no vast imagination; these details and others were laid out before him in black and white. Leakage of vital military information was an ongoing problem. The croakers, in their grumblings, gave away intelligence to the enemy; and many details of soldiers' letters home were transformed into newsprint to be read by friend and foe alike. Andrew tossed the newspaper aside. As many another soldier before him had discovered, after the heat of battle, civilian life seemed damned flat.

If Lieutenant Halliday found Brighton dull this morning, he was in the minority. Even in the bath establishments created for those individuals who did not wish to dally on the seashore or jostle for a bathing-machine, the most notable of them Wood's Baths and William's New Baths, which stood within a few yards of each other on the south side of the Steine, the atmosphere was gay, and orchestras played.

Andrew had not chosen to submerge himself in the hot baths or the cold, and certainly he had no curiosity about a method of curing the gout by means of an air pump. He had come merely to drink the waters, not because he had any great faith in their efficacy, although they must surely taste better than stewed prunes and mashed snails. Simply, he had sought an excuse to leave the house. On the floor beside his chair sprawled Lump, who was under strict orders to behave himself. Lump looked most incongruous in these elegant surroundings, which were pedimented and colonnaded, and boasted crystal chandeliers and furnishings in the latest style.

It was that incongruity which first caught Lady Denham's eye. A large, damp, ill-mannered dog with a great many teeth, which looked as though he had been splattered with paint from several different pots—she couldn't think who had been asking her about such a beast. Doubtless she would eventually remember. Just now, she had something in particular to say to Lieutenant Halliday.

"I wish a word with you, young man!" said Lady Denham, and deposited herself in a nearby chair. Behind her, Sarah-Louise hovered nervously.

Lady Denham looked quite spectacular in a walking dress of Pomona green merino cloth with a stomacher front and a ruff of triple lace; long, full sleeves tied up in three places with colored ribbons; and a frilled edging to the hem. Upon her coal-black hair perched a narrow-brimmed bonnet with a high crown covered in feathers and flowers. Lump perked up his ears and drooled.

"No," murmured Andrew, recognizing an incipient canine interest. "If you do not behave I shall make
you
drink the waters. Good morning, Lady Denham. Miss Inchquist." Sarah-Louise was wearing stripes again, he noticed. This day they were orange.

At the suggestion that it was a good day, Lady Denham snorted. "Don't try and change the subject! What do you know of Lord Warwick, young man?"

Warwick? Andrew frowned as he tried to place the name. There had been some business with his cousin Catherine—but Andrew had been in the military then, with scant interest in such stuff.

Lady Denham, however, seemed very interested. Cautiously, Andrew said, "I've never met the man."

"Humph!" With the force of her emotion, Lady Denham's feathers swayed. Lump parted his great jaws, and panted. Andrew frowned at him. Thwarted, Lump laid his head back down on his paws. Oblivious to this byplay, Lady Denham continued. "I would not want you to think me a tittle-tattle—I had not wished to mention it—then I decided that I should! I'm sure you will forgive my boldness when you hear what I have to say. To give you the word with no bark on it, you may not have met Lord Warwick, Lieutenant Halliday, but your sister has! She not only waltzed with him, she disappeared with him into the garden for quite fifteen minutes at my rout."