Elisabeth Fairchild (15 page)

Nell’s frown deepened, but before she could respond, Mr. Treedle, finished with his measure taking, bowed unctuously before his client.

“Madame, if you are still desirous of perfectly matching the bay, perhaps I might suggest that we could carry a few of the more likely samples of cloth out to the horse.”

“Spendid idea!” Ursula crowed, more than willing to be distracted. Pointing out no more than a dozen possible choices, in corduroy, worsted wool, jean, merino and velvet, she led the way out into the street, followed by the heavily laden tailor and his apprentice.

Nell refrained from joining the exodus into the street.

Beau could not resist observing, “The mountain would not come to Mohammed, so Mohammed went to the mountain. Do you not intend to consult the horse as well, Miss Quinby?” He was surprised that he should suffer feelings of guilt for spoiling the carefully laid plans of so many. His troubled gaze met hers in the mirror as he spoke. He was buttoning up his waistcoat, which had been removed at the tailor’s request, and there was something both in look and action that echoed the moment that morning in the stable yard when he had been required to pull on his shirt with this same young lady intently regarding him.   

“I’ve no great desire to see how well the mountain matches Mohammed,” she said lightly, gaze absent-mindedly fixed on his hands as they buttoned his waistcoat. She reached out in a sweetly unconscious gesture to assist him in finding the armhole as he shrugged his shoulders into the secondhand coat. He wished he might have as unconsciously assisted her family’s search for financial security.

Something in his eyes gave away the deep nature of his thoughts, for when she caught him looking at her in the mirror, her blank look sharpened. She swiftly abandoned her hold on his apparel. Self-consciously, she stepped away from him.

Beau was disappointed, but not surprised she should drop visual and physical hold on him. He found it deliciously provocative donning clothing with a young lady reaching out to assist.

The brown-eyed gaze darted a look, and then flew away again. Her eyes and mouth seemed suddenly serious.

“I am wondering if you would be so kind as to do me a favor, Mr. Ferd?”

He turned away from the mirror to regard her directly, ready to grant her every desire. Her lips had never appeared more provocative, than in this moment, caught up as the lower one was, in the grip of her teeth, as if she meant to bite back her request.

“That would depend on the complexion of said favor, Miss

Quinby. How may I be of service?”

She frowned, gaze drawn to the window, through which they both might observe the tailor, busily draping cloth over the back of the bay, where each shade was carefully regarded with critical eye through Mrs. Dunn’s quizzing glass.

She sighed. “This favor is of a sensitive nature. I dare not ask it of anyone else. I must warn you, should it be discovered you have helped me, my aunt would most assuredly cast you off without reference.”

He studied her profile with interest as he turned back to the mirror to straighten his collar and tie his dreadfully crushed cravat. Her dark hair and eyelashes seemed limed by light from the window. What was she plotting?

“What is this favor?”

She peeped a look at him from the corner of her eye, as if she knew he would not be pleased by what she asked.

“There is a man. . .” She caught at her lip again.

He frowned.

She rushed on in the face of unmistakable censure. “. . .a Captain Jeremy Stiles, stationed here, among the Tenth. “He is an old friend of the family. I must locate him--speak to him.”

Her request annoyed him. He found he was no longer entranced by the disposition of her lower lip. “I will not help a-any young ladyow herself a-a-at a-a-a man,” he said sternly.

“What?” Nell looked at him in dismay. “I am not bent on seducing Captain Stiles,” she said carefully, and then blushed and lowered her gaze. “I am intent on the far more shameful task of begging him for the loan of some monies, and as I cannot very well go barging into the barrack’s asking his direction, I had thought that you might be so good as to locate him for me.”

Beau felt a little ridiculous. “You require money?”

“Yes,” she said ruefully. “I’ve none to speak of, and Captain Stiles may be flush enough to loan me what I require.”

“Why do you need money? Perhaps I could. . .”

She allowed him to go no further. “You are very kind, Mr.

Ferd, but I could not allow myself to be so indebted to you.” She chuckled. “Do not forget that I know how much Aunt Ursula pays you. On such a salary you cannot afford to be loaning me money for a broken down horse.”

“Horse? Is this horse, a brown and white piebald, with a blaze like a splash of milk running down one side of a face, in which one eye is chocolate brown and the other pale cerulian blue?”

She stared at him a moment, lips parted. “You recognized him, did you?” She searched his eyes for any signs of mockery. There was none to be seen. “I mean to buy him back if I can scrape together the money.”

Beau considered for a moment telling her there was no need to trouble her head further about the old horse, that he had bought Boots himself and shipped him off to his sister. He squashed the impulse. In telling her anything, he must tell her all. Beau was not ready yet to destroy the fragile connection he enjoyed with Fanella Quinby in informing her he was the lying Lord Brampton Beauford, seventh Duke of Heste; inconsiderate, if rich and influential clod who would prove an embarrassment to her sister’s chances of success rather than a boon.

“I will locate this Captain Stiles for you,” he offered.

Knowing full well that his errand was useless, Beau set off that evening to do just that, in the realization that he wove himself an ever tighter web of lies to flounder about in.

Captain Stiles was not to be found at the barracks that housed his regiment at the edge of town. Neither was he at the Old Ship or the Castle Taverns. The next logical place to look was Tagget’s gambling house. There, Beau was fortunate enough to find the room bright with the uniform of the Tenth Hussar.

Said uniform was, Lord Beauford thought privately, the gaudiest peacockery he had ever laid eyes on. No other regiment could lay claim to such ostentatious color and ornament, with less likelihood of seeing battle. The Hussar were the Prince of Wales’s own Dragoons, and it was Priney himself who had a hand in the design of their accoutrement.

From the top of the rakishly tilted, brimless, scarlet and black, cut-cone hat, with its wide, gilded, scarlet tail, that swept down over one shoulder to dangle about its wearer’s scarlet-and gold-ribbed waistband, to the unusual silver-spurred and silver-tasseled canary-yellow Hessian boots, there was no escaping the surfeit of gold and silver braiding, gilt and tassels, until one’s eyes came thankfully to the blank relief of skin-tight, chalk-white pantaloons.

Lord Beauford could not help calculating just what such lavish accoutrement must set its wearer back in coin, and when this sum was considered in juxtaposition with the more than two thousand pounds it took to buy into the position of Captain, one might say an officer wore his wealth with pride.

“Captn Stiles?” Beau enquired of the first uniform he confronted.

The young man pointed unhappily to a table. “There. Not here to play him at cards are you? Man’s had the devil’s own luck this evening. My empty pockets attest to it.”

Beau approached the table with interest. Three officers of the Hussar sat amongst the players, only one of them a Captain. He was the most handsome of the three: tall, with chestnut brown hair, a trim, waxed mustache, and dashing long side whiskers, who looked up from his cards with a trace of irritation when he was addressed.

“Captain Stiles?”

“Who cares to know?” Stiles insisted with scornful hauteur.

“B-B-Beau-ford, sir.” In the midst of introducing himself it occurred to Beau that he must remember he was now plain Mr. Beau Ferd, and not Lord Beauford. The slip of his tongue proved providential, for the pause had been just long enough between the first and second syllable, so that he might continue the myth of his new and simpler moniker.

“And who might B-B-Beau Ferd be?” Stiles quipped, echoing his stammer.

To have his speech cruelly mimicked was not a new experience for Beau. To be denigrated for the handicap of his faltering tongue was something he had spent a lifetime learning to accept. He knew that Captain Stiles, no better than any cruel schoolyard bully, strove to prove his own superiority, in ridiculing him before his compatriots. It was childish behavior, and far too often encountered.

Captain Stiles mockery brought a laugh from his inebriated friends. Beau swallowed the pride that swelled in his throat and resisted the inclination to give this cock-sure young man a smart set down. It would not serve him well to involve himself in a brawl with three of the Prince’s hussar. In the mildest of tones he responded. “I, sir, am coachman for Madame Dunn.”

“And does Madame Dunn, dun me, along with every other tradesman in Brighton? Tell your employer she shall be paid. I am come into some money this evening.” He clinked one of the stacks of coins on the table before him with a smile.

Again, the Captain’s friends found him vastly amusing.

Somewhat less entertained, Beau pressed gamely on. “I have been sent by Mrs. Dunn’s niece, a Miss Quinby, sir, who desires speech with you.”

As his mates guffawed again, Captain Stiles smug expression underwent a profound change. Drunken condescension was replaced by drunken interest.

“Here, here, man. What do you mean bandying about the name of a lady in a tap room?” He took Beau’s arm roughly in his own, and dragged him out of hearing range of his drinking cohorts. “She is here, man? In Brighton?”

Beauford calmly removed Captain Stiles’s hold on his person. “She currently resides with her aunt.”

Before he could go on, the Captain crowed, “Aunt Ursula! Of course. How very clever of Aurora.” Disregarding his own advise about bandying a lady’s name about in a taproom, and the sudden change in Beau’s expression, he chortled gleefully to his companions, “Listen up, chaps. Aurora has given up on chasing off to London after all. Rather than dance attendance on a duke, she has come to Brighton!”

The two recipients of this happy news lifted their cups, shouting out, “Au-ROAR-ah,” as if her name were a battle cry.

“Begging your p-pardon, sir,” Beau interrupted, amused he should be privileged to hear this slighting opinion of himself, from a man he had never so much as been introduced to until this moment. “It is Miss Fanella Quinby who wishes to speak to you.” “Nell?” Stiles repeated, aghast, as the battle cry of the other Miss Quinby’s given name continued to resound from the rafters. “Aurora came not with her?”

Beau shook his head.

“Blast!” Captain Stiles said with feeling, and whirling on his fellow officers, drowned out their happy chorus with a fierce shout. “Hold tongue, will you? A man cannot hear himself think, much less engage in conversation.” He rounded on Beau, scowling mightily. “You, c-c-coachman,” he teased. “Do you know I have heard that the Duke of Heste speaks no better than you do? Can you picture it, man? The fairest young woman in Christandom, beholden to a man who cannot string two words together.”

The duke was filled with a loathing of this man’s contempt for him, filled with a need to give him a scathing set down. He was saved from his own foolish pride when a familiar voice said lazily from the next table. “But sir, the Duke of Heste is not in London at all.”

Charley Tyrrwhit leaned his chair away from the table, blowing a cloud of smoke from his pipe.

“Not in London?” Stiles blustered. “And where else would he be then, man?”

Beau gave his friend a warning look.

Charley smiled blandly. Turning his gaze to the ceiling as if to find an answer, he said, “Was it here in Brighton I have seen him”

“Never say it is so.” Stiles chortled. “That would be too rich.”

“No, you are quite right,” Charley agreed, with a quick wink. “It was at the races in Epson, this Tuesday last.”

“I hope to God you’ve the right of it.” Stiles raised his cup.

“Without doubt, sir. You may depend upon it. He was there.” Grinning cheekily, Charley turned back to his cards.

Beau longed for the door. What if he should encounter someone else who might recognize him? “Miss Quinby?” he prodded Stiles gently. “What shall I tell her was your r-response?”

“Who, Nell?” Stiles smiled, well pleased with Charlie’s remark. “Tell her I’ll make a point to call on her, if only to hear what word she may have of Aurora.”

Beau sketched a bow, and made his exit. As he went, he heard, like a rowdy echo, the name of the fine young woman that his sister Beatrix had been so set on his having to wife, as it was toasted to the rafters, “A-ROAR-ah!”

Chapter Eleven

Nell wondered on the following morning, if she had been in error, in exposing so much of her intentions to Mr. Ferd, regarding money and Captain Stiles. Her doubts were erased however, when, as a direct result of his efforts, she ran into none other than the Captain, as she came down the steps of Mr. Donaldson’s lending library, where her aunt had engaged herself in a game of Loo, and she had herself obtained several books pertaining to Greek and Roman mythology, from which she intended to derive a costume for the masquerade ball that was to be held in the Promenade at the end of the month.