Lord Perfect (2 page)

He then offered his views on religion, the same views
that had led to his being chucked out of one school after another.
Out of consideration for her weaker and less amply educated feminine
brain, though, he gave a simpler and shorter version.

When he paused for breath, she said
scornfully, "That's only your opinion. You don't
know
.
There
might
have been a Holy Grail. There
might
have been a Camelot."

"I know there weren't any dragons," he said.
"So you can't slay any. Even if there were dragons, you
couldn't."

"There were knights!" she cried. "I can
still be a knight!"

"No, you can't," he said, more patient than
ever, because she was so sadly confused. "You're a girl. Girls
can't be knights."

She snatched the sketchbook from his hands and swung it
at his head.

DISASTER WOULD NOT have occurred had Bathsheba Wingate
been paying full attention to her daughter. She was not paying
attention.

She was trying desperately to keep her gaze from
straying to the bored aristocrat… to the long legs whose
muscles the costly wool trousers lovingly outlined… the boots
whose dark gleam matched his eyes… the miles of shoulders
bracing up the window frame… the haughty jaw and insolent
nose… the dark, dangerously bored eyes.

Bathsheba might as well have been a giddy
sixteen-year-old miss when in fact she was a sober matron twice that
age, and she might as well have never seen a handsome aristocrat
before in all her life when in fact she'd met any number and even
married one. She was not herself and she didn't know or care who she
was.

She only stood for a long time, trying to pay attention
to the Egyptians instead of him, and oblivious of the minutes passing
during which Olivia might easily re-create some of the more harrowing
scenes from the Book of Revelation.

Bathsheba forgot she even had a daughter while she stood
as though trapped, her heart beating so fast that it left no time or
room to breathe.

This was why she failed to notice the signs of trouble
before it was too late.

The crash, the outraged yelp, and the familiar voice
crying, "You great blockhead!" told her it was too late at
the same time they broke the spell. She hurried toward the noise and
snatched the sketchbook from Olivia's hands before she could throw it
across the room—and break a priceless object, beyond doubt.

"Olivia Wingate," Bathsheba said, careful to
keep her voice low, in hopes of attracting as small an audience as
possible. "I am shocked, deeply shocked." This was a
hideous lie. Bathsheba would be shocked only if Olivia contrived to
spend half an hour among civilized beings without making a spectacle
of herself.

She turned toward the flaxen-haired boy, her daughter's
latest victim. He shifted up into a sitting position on the floor
near his overturned stool, but that was as far as he came. He watched
them, grey eyes wary.

"I said I was going to be a
knight when I grew up and
he
said girls couldn't be knights," Olivia said, her voice shaking
with rage.

"Lisle, I am astonished at your
flagrant disregard of a fundamental rule of human survival,"
came an impossibly deep voice from somewhere nearby and to
Bathsheba's right. The sound shot down to the base of her spine then
up again to vibrate against an acutely sensitive place in her neck.
"I am sure I have told you more than once," the voice went
on. "A gentleman
never
contradicts a lady."

Bathsheba turned her head toward the voice.

Ah, of course.

Of all the boys in all the world,
Olivia had to assault the one belonging to
him
.

SHE WAS THE sort of woman who made accidents happen,
simply by crossing a street.

She was the sort of woman who ought to be preceded by
warning signs.

From a distance, she was breathtaking.

Now she stood within easy reach.

And now…

Once, in the course of a youthful prank, Benedict had
fallen off a roof, and briefly lost consciousness.

Now, as he fell off something and into eyes like an
indigo sea, he lost consciousness. The world went away, his brain
went away, and only the vision remained, of pearly skin and ripe plum
lips, of the fathomless sea in which he was drowning… and then
a pink like a sunrise glowing upon finely sculpted cheekbones.

A blush. She was blushing.

His brain staggered back.

He bowed. "I do beg your pardon, madam," he
said. "This young beast is far from fully civilized, I regret to
say. Get up from the floor, sir, and apologize to the ladies for
distressing them."

Peregrine scrambled to his feet, countenance indignant.
"But—"

"He will do nothing of the kind," said the
beauty. "I have explained to Olivia time and again that physical
assault is not the proper response to disagreements unless one's life
is in danger." She turned to the girl, a freckle-faced redhead
who bore not the slightest resemblance to her mama—if mama she
was—except in the eye department. "Was your life in
danger, Olivia?"

"No, Mama," said the girl, blue eyes flashing,
"but he said—"

"Did this young man threaten you in any way?"
said her mother.

"No, Mama," the girl said, "but—"

"Was it merely a difference of opinion?" said
her mother.

"Yes, Mama, but—"

"You lost your temper. What have I told you about
losing your temper?"

"I am to count to twenty," the girl said. "And
if I have not regained it by then, I must count to twenty again."

"Did you do so?"

A sigh. "No, Mama."

"Kindly apologize, Olivia."

The girl ground her teeth. Then she took a deep breath
and let it out.

She turned to Peregrine. "Sir, I most humbly beg
your pardon," she said. "It was a ghastly, unspeakable,
heinous act I perpetrated. I hope the precipitous fall from the stool
did you no permanent or disfiguring injury. I am so deeply ashamed.
Not only have I attacked and possibly maimed an innocent person but I
have disgraced my mother. It is my ungovernable temper, you see, an
affliction I have suffered since birth." She fell to her knees
and snatched his hand. "Can you be so good, so generous, kind
sir, as to forgive me?"

Peregrine, who had listened to this speech with
increasing bewilderment, was, for perhaps the first time in his life,
struck dumb.

The mother rolled her outrageously blue eyes. "Get
up, Olivia."

The girl clung to Peregrine's hand, her head bowed.

Peregrine threw a panicked look at Benedict.

"Perhaps now you comprehend the folly of
contradicting ladies," said Benedict. "Do not look to me
for rescue. I hope it will be a lesson to you."

Speechlessness being alien to Peregrine's character, he
swiftly recovered. "Oh, do get up," he told the girl
crossly. "It was only a sketchbook." The girl didn't move.
Voice moderating, he added, "Uncle is right. I ought to
apologize, too. I know I'm supposed to agree with whatever females as
well as my elders say, for some reason or other. If there is a proper
reason. No one has ever explained the rule's logic, certainly. At any
rate, you barely hit me. I only fell because I lost my balance when I
ducked. Not that it matters. It's not as though a girl could do much
damage."

Olivia's head came up, and her eyes shot deadly sparks.

The boy went on, oblivious, as usual. "It wants
practice, you know, and girls never get any. If you did practice,
you'd strengthen your arm at least. That's why schoolmasters are so
good at it."

The girl's expression softened. She rose, the subject
having diverted her, apparently. "Papa told me about English
schoolmasters," she said. "Do they beat you very often?"

"Oh, all the time," Peregrine said.

She sought details. He provided them.

By this time, Benedict had recovered his composure. So
he believed, at any rate. While the children made peace, he allowed
his attention to revert to the breathtaking mama.

"Her apology was not necessary," he said.
"However, it was most—er—stirring."

"She is dreadful," the lady said. "I
tried several times to sell her to gypsies, but they wouldn't take
her."

The answer startled him. Beauty so rarely came coupled
with wit. Another man would have rocked on his heels. Benedict only
paused infinitesimally and said, "Then I daresay there's no
chance they'd take him, either. Not that he's mine to dispose of. My
nephew. Atherton's sole progeny. I am Rathbourne."

Something changed. A shadow appeared that had not been
in her countenance before.

He had presumed, perhaps. She might be as beautiful as
sin and she might have a sense of humor, but this did not mean she
was not a stickler for certain proprieties.

"Perhaps a mutual acquaintance is idling about who
would introduce us properly," he said, glancing about the
gallery. At present, the space held three other persons, none of whom
he knew or could possibly wish to know. They looked away when his
gaze fell upon them.

Then a shred of sense returned and he asked himself what
difference a proper introduction would make. She was a married woman,
and he had rules about married women. If he sought to further the
acquaintance, it would only be to violate those rules.

"I greatly doubt we have a mutual acquaintance,"
she said. "You and I travel in different spheres, my lord."

"We're both
here"
he said, his tongue getting the better of Rules Regarding Married
Women.

"As is Olivia," she said. "I can tell by
her expression that she is nine and a half minutes away from getting
one of her Ideas, which puts us eleven minutes away from mayhem. I am
obliged to remove her."

She turned away.

The message was plain enough. As plain as a bucket of
ice water thrown in his face. "I am dismissed, I see," he
said. "A fitting return for my impertinence."

'This has nothing to do with impertinence," she
said without turning back to him, "and everything to do with
self-preservation."

She collected her daughter and left.

HE VERY NEARLY followed her from the room.

Unthinkable.

True, nonetheless.

Benedict had even started that way, heart pounding, when
Lady Ordway burst from a doorway and surged toward him in a flutter
of ribbons, ruffles, and feathers. These, given her advanced state of
pregnancy, created the effect of an agitated brood hen.

"Tell me I am not seeing whatyoucallems," she
said. "Those things they see in the desert—not oases,
Rath-bourne, but when one sees an oasis that isn't there."

He directed an expressionless gaze
into her cheerfully stupid, pretty face. "I believe the word you
seek is
mirage
."

She nodded, and the ruffles, ribbons, and feathers of
her bonnet danced giddily about her head.

He had known her forever, it seemed.
She was seven years his junior. Eight years ago, he had very nearly
married her instead of Atherton's sister Ada. Benedict was not sure
matters would have turned out more happily if he had. Both women were
equally pretty, equally wellborn, equally well-dowered, and equally
intelligent. Both were more handsomely endowed in all the other
categories than in the last.

Still, precious few women had the wherewithal to offer
true intellectual stimulation. In any case, it was Benedict who had
failed his late wife, he was all too well aware.

"I thought it was a mirage," said Lady Ordway.
"Or a dream. With all these strange creatures about, one might
easily think oneself in a dream." She gestured at the objects
about her. "But it was Bathsheba DeLucey truly. Well, Bathsheba
DeLucey that was, for she was wed before I was. Not that the Wingates
will ever acknowledge it. To them, she doesn't exist."

"How tiresome," he said while he stored away
the not-unfamiliar names. "Families feuding over an ancient
triviality, no doubt."

He was sure he'd gone to school with
a Wingate. That was the Earl of Fosbury's family name, was it not? As
to the DeLuceys, Benedict couldn't remember having met any. He knew
his father was acquainted with the head of the family, the Earl of
Mandeville, though. Lord Hargate knew everybody worth knowing, as
well as everything worth knowing about them.

"It is far from
trivial
,"
Lady Ordway said. "And pray do not tell me it is un-Christian to
visit the sins of the elders upon the children. In this case, if one
accepts the children, the elders will come, too, and they are so very
dreadful, as you know."