Leslie Lafoy (24 page)

Caroline arched a brow without comment and laid her napkin across her lap. Drayton shook his head and picked up the morning paper. Left with her coffee, her ring, and her newfound happiness, Fiona sighed silently and hoped she could find the energy somewhere to get her through her list of tasks that day. That hope, though, paled beside the one for time alone with Ian. What a difference a night made. One conversation, actually. One honest, direct conversation. On a starlit balcony with the soft notes of a waltz drifting around them.

Ian did care about her. About
her
, not just what she could do to make his life easier and his day-to-day world run more smoothly. Had a man ever so easily seen and accepted the error of his ways? And then apologized so deeply and sincerely? Had a woman ever been held so passionately? Kissed so thoroughly? In such a gently ravenous, heartfelt way?

“Good morning, Fiona!”

She started at the familiar voice and, not quite believing it possible, looked toward the dining room doorway. “Charlotte!” she exclaimed, gaining her feet. “Ian!”

Ian, his eyes sparkling as they skimmed down the length of her, grinned and eased the wheeled chair into the dining room.

“Surprised?” Charlotte asked, beaming up at her.

“Delightfully so.”

“I told you it would be more fun to announce ourselves,” Charlotte triumphantly declared, looking up over her shoulder at her guardian. “You owe me a horseback ride.”

“Tomorrow morning.”

A horseback ride? Well, why not? Ian would figure out how to do it safely. He was magnificently resourceful. And kind. And handsome and witty and—

“Ahem.”

Fiona started at Drayton’s subtle intrusion and hurried to practice good manners. “Charlotte,” she said cheerily, stepping over to stand beside the girl, “I’d like for you meet my sister and brother-in-law, the Duke and Duchess of Ryland. For formal purposes. At home, they’re simply Drayton and Caroline.”

“It’s a pleasure,” Charlotte replied, looking between the two and bowing her head ever so slightly in acknowledgment. “Lady Fiona talks about you all the time.”

Drayton bowed. Carrie sailed into the moment with a wide smile. “As she does you, Charlotte. We’re so glad to have you pay us a visit. Have you had breakfast yet?”

“No, we haven’t,” the girl replied brightly while Ian situated her at the table. “We’re running for our lives. We only took the time to get dressed.”

“Oh?” Carrie pressed, a smile tickling the corners of her mouth.

“It’s only a slight exaggeration,” Ian supplied, accepting Carrie’s gesture toward the warming trays on the sideboard. “My mother’s encamped in one of my guest rooms. She was waiting for me when I returned home last night. Discretion being the better part of valor and all that, we’ve gone into hiding until she gives up and goes home.”

Fiona went to get Charlotte a plate of food, asking, “But what about all the workmen that are going to be there today?”

“For ten pounds for every insult they endure from my mother, Rowan and Mrs. Pittman have volunteered to oversee the workers while we find other places to be.”

“Oh, Ian,” she protested. “Your mother can’t be that bad.”

He slid a look her way and cocked a brow. Drayton snorted. Caroline discreetly cleared her throat and then asked, “Did she happen to mention whether or not she plans to attend the engagement ball?”

“I very much doubt it,” he replied, helping himself to scrambled eggs. “And sincerely hope not.”

“She doesn’t approve of me, does she?”

He put down the serving spoon and turned to face her. Placing his fingertips under her chin, he tipped her face up until her gaze met his. “Fiona, darling,” he said softly, earnestly, “I swear on the family Bible that it’s nothing personal. My mother doesn’t approve of anyone except herself.”

“But—”

“No,” he interrupted firmly. “I can see the direction your thoughts are going. My mother can’t be changed, Fiona. Don’t even think about wasting your incredible kindness on her. We’ll all be happier for her absence.”

She was about to insist that she be at least allowed to make a case for herself when the footman arrived at the dining room doorway and announced, “The morning post has arrived, Your Grace.”

Ian smiled reassuringly, winked, and released her as Caroline accepted the mail with murmured thanks. Fiona followed her husband-to-be down the sideboard, filling the plate for Charlotte while wondering how she might go about building a bridge between him and his mother. It was simply unacceptable to have children grow up without ever meeting, much less knowing, their grandmother. Surely even the dowager duchess would have a soft spot for darling, beautiful, innocent children.

“Lady Rhoades has written,” Carrie announced, pulling an envelope out of the pile of correspondence. She broke the seal, opened the flap and pulled out the inside sheet. “She’s remembering Fiona at her ball last Season and hoping that we’ll plan to attend again this year.”

Fiona suppressed a shudder and called herself uncharitable.

“And I’ll bet,” Drayton said dryly, “that in the very next sentence she gushes on about how she’s always felt that Fiona would make the perfect wife for her doughy son.”

“Actually, they’re in the same sentence,” Carrie admitted, shaking her head. “The poor thing actually sounds desperate.”

“She is desperate,” Drayton countered. “For God’s sakes, Dudley has to be pushing forty. And he’s still living at home. Probably in the nursery.”

“I feel sorry for him,” Fiona said with a sigh as she placed the plate in front of Charlotte.

“Oh, please, Fiona!” Ian snorted as his ward smiled her thanks and placed a napkin in her lap. “Dudley looks like he’s been floating in the Thames for a week. If he didn’t actually move from time to time, we’d have to check him for pulse.”

“When he does move it’s with incredible speed and focus, though,” Drayton offered, his smile widening. “I’ve seen him knock as many as a half dozen men into potted palms when dinner’s announced.”

Ian closed his eyes and shook his head. “I’ve been one of them.”

“I think that it’s horribly sad that food is the only thing Dudley finds even remotely exciting,” Fiona said, taking her seat. “It must be terrible to have nothing else to do with your life except eat. Nothing else to look forward to beyond the three meals a day.”

“Three?” Ian posed. “For Dudley, the day is one long, never-ending meal.”

Drayton nodded and then added, “He does have a purpose, Fiona. He spends day after day with tailors having his seams let out and new suits made to accommodate his increasing size. It’s enough to wear a weak man to a nubbin.”

Carrie sighed and shot both Drayton and Ian a warning look that managed to slowly erase the grins from their faces. “Speaking of tailors,” she said, taking a paper-wrapped bundle form the pile and pulling the string. “In today’s post we have received a catalog of Madame Dupree’s latest drawings. Would anyone care to see them?”

Ian and Drayton both shook their heads emphatically. Fiona was silently waving the offer off when Charlotte asked, “Who is Madame Dupree?”

“A dress designer,” Carrie explained, handing her the packet of colorized sketches. She waited a few moments, giving her time to leaf through the pages as she ate. Fiona lifted her cup and smiled around the rim, knowing exactly what her sister was planning.

“So,” Carrie began ever so smoothly. “What do you think of her ideas, Charlotte?”

“Well,” the girl began, carefully restacking the pictures and then neatening the edges as she obviously searched for something diplomatic to say. “Fashions are very different in England,” she finally offered. “No one in India ever dresses like this.”

“Madame Dupree has a unique vision,” Carrie assured her, chuckling. “Even for England.”

“I do like the color of this one,” Charlotte allowed, flipping back through the pages until she came to a ridiculously bustled, hugely sleeved creation in vivid royal blue. “We had peacocks at home, and while they weren’t very nice, I always thought that they were very, very pretty.”

Caroline leaned over to look at the gown and then sat back in her chair to consider Charlotte from a bit of a distance. “Your coloring is suited for the tones,” she said, nodding with certainty. “You could wear them easily.” She smiled and added, “Of course, then Ian would have to glower at all the males whose heads you turn, so it would be something of a mixed blessing.”

Charlotte beamed. And then, in a single instant, her face fell. “That’s kind of you to say, Your Grace,” she replied, summoning a weak and tremulous smile. “But no one’s going to give me a second look. At least not in a way that would be a compliment.”

Fiona watched Ian’s eyes cloud with sadness. Even as he opened his mouth to offer his ward a kind word, Caroline spared him the need to intervene.

“Oh, dear Charlotte,” she countered happily, reaching out to lay her hand on the girl’s forearm. “You are selling yourself so very short. And so needlessly.” She looked across the table at Ian and smiled. “Do you have specific plans made for the day, Ian?”

He blinked, the dazed and uncertain look in his eyes suggesting that he’d only just realized that there was a well-calculated current swirling around him. “Nothing beyond our initial escape,” he answered cautiously. “I thought that we’d see what Fiona would like to do.”

“Beautifully handed off,” Drayton muttered as he scooped up his paper. “A natural born husband.”

“Fiona?” Carrie asked, smiling sweetly.

“I’m open to any suggestions you might offer,” she replied on cue.

“Well, I’m sure Ian wouldn’t find it at all interesting, but I think it would be great fun for Charlotte and I to spend the day designing her an all new wardrobe.”

“Oh, no,” Charlotte gasped, her eyes wide. A flicker of hope brightened the darkness of her eyes. And beneath the hope eddied the unmistakable light of regret, of the suspicion that hoping really wasn’t possible. “That isn’t—”

“Carrie’s the designer that Madame Dupree would love to be,” Fiona leaned close to say softly. “Trust me, Charlotte. You
do
want to do this.”

She swallowed and drew a deep breath. “It wouldn’t be an imposition?”

“Not in the least,” Caroline declared, beaming in victorious satisfaction. “Finish your breakfast, dear. You’re going to need your strength. We have a grand and glorious adventure ahead of us today.”

Charlotte looked down at her plate, grinned and laid her fork aside, declaring, “I couldn’t eat another bite.”

“Then gather up Madame Dupree’s drawings and we’ll be off,” Caroline instructed as she tucked her napkin under the edge of her plate. She rose, picked up the stack of mail, and handed it over to Drayton. “Here, darling, you finish going through the mail.”

He sat there blankly looking at it as Caroline drew Charlotte’s chair back from the table and then wheeled her out of the dining room.

Amazed by how the bounds of propriety loosened once there was a ring on a woman’s finger, Fiona considered the unexpected possibilities of the day. The most delightful of them was the chance to spend time alone with Ian. It was also the most reckless. “I hear,” she offered, “that Dr. Fuller is delivering a lecture on the causes and treatment of gout this afternoon.”

Ian snorted and replied dryly, “Well, he should know all about gout.”

“I take it it that you’re not all that interested in attending.”

“He just wants everyone to look at his toes and feel sorry for him.”

“You two,” Drayton drawled, setting the mail aside and going back to his morning newspaper, “have the most interesting conversations.”

They didn’t seem the least bit strange to her and, given the way Ian’s brows were knitted, he didn’t consider them odd, either. “Crossing a dubious medical lecture off the list,” she mulled aloud. They needed something in public so that tongues didn’t wag, but not so public that they’d be required to share their time with others. “How would you feel about going for a picnic at the zoo?”

“I like that,” he said, his eyes sparkling, a slow grin lifting the corners of his mouth. He reined it in to slide his gaze over to Drayton and ask, “Do you have any objections to the idea, Your Grace?”

“It’s
Drayton
,” he corrected without looking up from the paper. “And no objections. Just a word of advice. Stay well back from the monkey exhibit. They throw things.”

Ian chuckled. “Duly noted.”

Before Drayton could change his mind or offer to go along as a chaperone, Fiona rose from her chair and headed for the kitchen saying, “I’ll go talk to Cook and see about getting a hamper packed. I’ll be back shortly.”

Ian watched her go, mesmerized by the sway of her skirts, and thankful that the goddesses of fashion dictated designs that so perfectly displayed narrow waists and the sweeping curves of delightful hips. He could do without the buttoned-to-the-neck design of day dresses, but the close fit of the bodices tended to compensate enough to keep his imagination from starving to death.

“Ahem.”

Jesus. Caught ogling the man’s sister-in-law. He swallowed and softly cleared his throat. “Despite appearances, I’m trying very hard to be a gentleman. I’ve been keeping my hands to myself.”

“I’ve fought the good fight, too,” Drayton said, nodding slowly. “And lost it just like you’re going to.” He met Ian’s gaze from across the table and cocked a brow. “I can’t expect you to be any more of a saint than I managed to be. We’re all human. But understand that when you cross the line, you’re committed to meeting
my
expectations.”

“Which, in the larger scheme of things, aren’t at all at odds with my own.” Ian smiled. “Your warning has been duly noted, Your Grace.”

“Are you interested in politics?”

Ian weighed honesty against the requirements of family harmony and struck a balance. “I’m interested in certain areas of social reform. If being involved in politics could achieve the ends, I might be interested.”

Drayton laid aside his newspaper, propped his forearms on the edge of the table and slowly smiled. Ian drew a slow breath, and knowing just how a bird felt when trapped by the cat, sacrificed himself for the sake of making a more positive impression on his future brother-in-law.