Out of the Blue (A Regency Time Travel Romance) (27 page)

Hawtrey pulled the phaeton to a stop, causing
the coachman directly behind him to begin cursing his driving. But
Hawtrey ignored him. Bowing from the waist while he tipped his hat,
and very nearly letting go of the reins—Cassandra, muttering under
her breath, reached between them and engaged the wooden brake as
she had seen Marcus do—Hawtrey went about the business of
introducing Cassandra to Marcus’s former mistress.

“Laws, Reggie, I should thank you for
condescending to stop, truly I should, as I have heard so much
about Perry’s little American cousin.” Marianne Carruthers’s simper
set Cassandra’s teeth on edge. “Hello, my child. Are you enjoying
your stay in your mother country? And isn’t Reggie wonderful for
taking you up in his phaeton? It isn’t everyone he allows the
privilege, you know. But then, some of us are in more need of
borrowed consequence, aren’t we?”

This was Marcus’s former mistress? He
actually went to bed with this bitch? Cassandra wished that once,
just this once, she could come up with a really sarcastic line,
just to watch the woman turn white under her artfully applied
rouge. Cassandra knew Marianne’s type. If the woman had been born
in 1960 she would have played tennis at the local country club,
slept with her husband’s boss, and shopped exclusively at
Bloomie’s—and her nickname would have been Buffy. “La, yes, Mrs.
Carruthers,” Cassandra answered at last, as Hawtrey snickered
beside her, “I am indeed blessed. But then, as they say,
youth
has its privileges. Doesn’t it,
Mrs.
Carruthers?”

Marianne’s cornflower-blue eyes narrowed to
slits, but she recovered quickly. Smiling, she inclined her head to
Cassandra. “Ah, the kitten has claws. No wonder Marcus is
diverted—for the moment. Reginald, you will bring her to my party
next week, won’t you? I should like to get to know our little
American better. But now we must move on, for I see that my horses
are on the fret. Good day, Miss Kelley.”

“Good day, Mrs. Carruthers,” Cassandra
answered as the two equipages moved off in opposite directions, and
not a moment too soon for the coachman driving the closed coach
behind them. Cassandra heard the man say none too quietly, “And
about time, too, ya bloomin’ popinjay. I wuz soon goin’ to let
m’cattle take a bite outta yer rump!”

Once they were moving again Hawtrey (who
seemed to have lost much of his former good humor when Cassandra
defended herself against Marianne Carruthers) inclined his head in
her direction—turning his head could lead only to disaster, for
neither his shirt points nor his death grip on the reins allowed
such a movement.

“My Lord Eastbourne seemed a tad put out that
I have usurped his duty to bring you into fashion,” he said
conversationally after a few minutes, obviously trying a new way to
draw blood. “I shouldn’t know why, for I am highly presentable. Or
perhaps he has more than an altruistic interest in his lovely
ward?”

“The marquess?” Cassandra asked, forcing a
laugh, for she was still smarting over Mrs. Carruther’s well-aimed
darts. Tonight, probably just after midnight, Cassandra was sure
she’d come up with half a dozen smart answers she could have
given—maybe even a full dozen. That was how it always happened.
Yet, all things considered, she didn’t think she had done too
badly. “Don’t be silly, Mr. Hawtrey,” she assured him, trying to
concentrate on the matter at hand. “All he cares for are his
intellectual pursuits, and those disgusting specimens he keeps in
jars in his study.”

She shivered delicately, remembering that she
was supposed to be fishing for Hawtrey’s reason for paying so much
attention to her. “I cannot tell you how grateful Cousin Perry and
I are that you have condescended to drive out with me, lending me
your considerable consequence. Why, Perry says this one drive will
absolutely
make
my Season. It must be gratifying to wield
such power, Mr. Hawtrey. Even Mrs. Carruthers remarked on it.”

Gag me,
Cassandra thought, pretending
an interest in the passersby in order to hide her distaste. Being a
pattern-card Regency miss was rather like running for political
office—you’d say anything to get elected.

“Please, Miss Kelley, you don’t have to thank
me,” Hawtrey drawled, inclining his head to a man and woman
approaching from the opposite direction, their combined bulk as
they sat on the bench seat of their phaeton prompting Cassandra to
wonder if they had used a winch to raise themselves onto the seat,
the way the Prince Regent used a winch to hoist himself onto a
horse.

“Perhaps it is time I took the gloves off.
You see,” he continued silkily, “I have been fascinated with the
stories my dear aunt, Lady Blakewell, has been prattling on about
these past weeks—fantastical tales of speaking in tongues and
second sight and the like. Not to wrap this business up in fine
linen, I’m afraid the Reverend Mr. Austin has quite a hold on my
aunt’s pocketbook, which I vow I cannot like, and I wish to prove
his theories incorrect. Yes, the man needs his comeuppance. Hence
my interest in you. So sorry, my dear, if you were holding hopes in
that quarter. I do not wish to bruise your tender heart but, alas,
matrimonially, I am otherwise committed.”

He smiled at her, and Cassandra’s flesh
crawled. This guy could give vanity lessons to Donald Trump!
“Although I must say,” he continued, “I wasn’t best pleased last
evening when you told Byron that little faradiddle about
Missolonghi. You made absolutely no impression upon him, I fear,
but to my aunt? Well, let us just say that the woman has
ambitions.”

Here it was, the reason Hawtrey had invited
her out for a drive, and the reason she had accepted. Marcus was
right. Lady Blakewell
was
up to something, and she knew just
enough to cause trouble if she should start going all over town
blabbing about Cassandra’s warning to Byron. Thank God she hadn’t
told Marcus what she had said.

“Ambitions, Mr. Hawtrey? I don’t
understand.”

“Of course you don’t, my dear,” Hawtrey
answered as, thankfully, they completed the circuit and he moved
the phaeton toward one of the exits. “I shouldn’t imagine that you
do, although you should, if my aunt’s conclusions were
correct—which, of course, they are not. My aunt, you see, believes
she has a chance to replace Lady Hertford in Prinny’s
affections—the two women being much of a pair in girth, if not in
intellect.

“My dear aunt, you must understand, is smart
enough, but she lacks intelligence. If she should be able to
whisper in Prinny’s ear, tell him of the future—ah, that would go
far in evening the odds. Of course, she would assure him
she
had seen into the future. It wouldn’t do to tell him she had
gleaned her information from a fey Irish nobody from the colonies.
God’s teeth, Miss Kelley, whoever heard of an Irish oracle?”

Cassandra pressed her hands to her cheeks,
nearly toppling from the seat as Hawtrey’s cow-handed driving took
the off wheel through a muddy ditch on the side of the road.
Hawtrey didn’t think his aunt was smart? “You’ve got to be pulling
my—I mean—my dear Mr. Hawtrey, you mustn’t tease me so! Lady
Blakewell wants
me
to tell her the future? I wouldn’t do
such a thing, even if I could, which I can’t.
Nobody
can!”

The phaeton turned into Grosvenor Square and
Cassandra bit her bottom lip, determined not to say another word
until they reached the mansion. But Hawtrey pulled the horses to a
halt just inside the square, a good five hundred yards from the
mansion, although Cassandra didn’t notice this at first. She was
still too angry over Hawtrey’s Regency Era Irish jokes.

“And this business about flying, Miss
Kelley?” he persisted, his sly smile making her see red. “You were
funning with the good vicar with that ridiculous thinker, weren’t
you?”

So much for resolutions. The guy was really
beginning to get to her. “No kidding, Reggie,” she blurted, looking
down at the roadway and mentally gauging the distance from seat to
street. It wouldn’t be a graceful descent, but she could manage it.
“That idiot preacher needed his guns spiked, so I made it up. It
served him right. Now, are you going to drive on, or am I going to
have to jump for it?”

“Jump, Miss Kelley? Don’t be ridiculous. We
will move on in a moment. Directly after you tell me about
Missolonghi. As I recall, you told Byron you occasionally get
‘feelings.’ Precisely what sort of feelings, Miss Kelley? You
realize I must return to my aunt with a full reporting of all you
have said, or else we shall be forced to do this again. Come, come
now, tell me about these feelings, and then I will deposit you back
in the bosom of your family. You’re so close to that family, aren’t
you, my poor, dear Miss Kelley, so close and yet so far.”

Cassandra made a fist of her right hand. Boy,
would she like to pop this guy one, square in his grinning,
self-satisfied face. “I’ll give you this much, Reggie—you’re a real
piece of work. Tell me, when you were younger, did you get your
kicks pulling wings off flies?” She knew she was losing her temper,
but she just didn’t care anymore. “You might think you’re hot
sh—hot stuff, trying to bully a woman, but you don’t scare me.
You’re nothing but a joke. You act as if you’re God’s gift, but you
can’t move without asking your aunt first. You can’t do
anything.
Yes, you talk big, and you get off playing your
sick little games, but when Auntie says jump, you ask ‘How
high?’”

Oh, she was on a roll now. Sheila would have
been proud of her. Reggie Hawtrey was sitting completely still, his
mouth hanging open. She didn’t have to wait until midnight to get
this guy. She had the snappy lines all ready for him—and he was
going to hear them all! “You want answers, buddy? Okay—I’ll give
you answers. I’m a witch, Reggie baby. A broom-flying,
cauldron-stirring, future-telling, card-carrying
witch!
I’d
turn you into a toad, to prove it to you, but somebody already beat
me to it. But don’t come near me again, buster—ever—or I’ll make
your nose grow. Let’s see how fast you’d marry a fortune then. Oh,
yeah, and one more thing—you
dress funny!
”

Before he could answer, and before she could
think of anything else to say, Cassandra felt someone tapping her
on the shoulder.
“Now what?”
she demanded in exasperation.
She turned quickly, angry enough to curse whoever was bothering
her, and saw Peregrine Walton standing beside the phaeton, his cane
raised like a sword. She had never been so happy to see anyone in
her life. “Perry!”

“Yes, it’s me. Hullo, Cousin Cassie,”
Peregrine responded, frowning. “What are you doing sitting up
there, in the middle of the Square? We live over there, you know,”
he said, using the cane to point down the Square toward the
mansion. “Hawtrey, you picked her up. Should have known that,
shouldn’t you, even if m’cousin don’t? She’s Irish, you know, and
can’t help it. At least that’s what Marcus told me to say whenever
she acts queer.”

Hawtrey opened his mouth to speak, but
Cassandra wasn’t about to let him get a word in sideways. “Never
mind that now, Perry,” she said, holding out a hand to him.
Reaction was setting in. She felt as if she was shaking all over.
“Just help me down. Mr. Hawtrey has an important appointment with
his aunt, and doesn’t dare be late.” She landed gracefully—at
least, she thought, gracefully for her—and turned to look up at the
man, deliberately crossing her eyes, as if she had been possessed
by spirits or something. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Hawtrey?”

He was staring down at her, bug-eyed. It was
great to watch his Adam’s apple ride up and down his throat as he
struggled to locate his voice. “A-an appointment? Oh—oh, yes! An
appointment! Walton—will you be so kind as to escort Miss Kelley
home?”

Peregrine slammed his fists onto his hips,
shaking his head, and stumbled backward as Hawtrey drove off. The
oaf had nearly run over Perry’s toes in his haste. “Well, if that
don’t beat the Dutch. You’d think the devil himself was after him,
wouldn’t you, Cousin Cassie? Told you I don’t like him. Don’t like
him above half.”

As they turned toward the mansion, Cassandra
slipped her arm through Peregrine’s and laid her head against his
sleeve, seeking his comfort. “You’re so brilliant, Perry,” she
said, smiling up at him. “And such a great judge of character. Now,
please—let’s go home! Oh, and Perry—we’ll keep this our little
secret, okay? There’s no reason to worry Marcus about it, is there?
I’ll tell him all he needs to know.”
Marcus will blow his top if
I tell him everything,
she thought.
So I won’t, that’s all.
I just won’t. If Peregrine cooperates, that is.

And, luckily, Peregrine was most
cooperative.

“Marcus?” The rotund little man rolled his
eyes in comedic terror. “Wouldn’t tell him anything, Cousin. Not
about Hawtrey. He’s been prowling his study like a caged beast,
growling at everybody, waiting for you—which is why I went out for
a stroll. No, least said, soonest mended, I always say. Or was it
m’mother who said that? Never mind. Shall we be off, Cousin?”

C
assandra lay on her
bed, her hands tucked behind her head, a small smile playing around
her lips as she watched Marcus untie his banyan. For the past two
weeks it had been as if they were married—at least until it was
dawn, and time for him to return to his own room.

Marcus had accepted her explanation for Lady
Blakewell’s interest in her, for she had told him the truth about
the woman’s belief that Cassandra’s “feelings” might give her an
entry to Prinny’s affections. He had been angry but Cassandra
convinced him that she had lost her taste for moving about in
London Society, and he had at last agreed not to confront either
Lady Blakewell or Reginald Hawtrey with that anger. He opted
instead for allowing Aunt Cornelia to tell everyone that Miss
Kelley was “ill, most probably a reaction to her uncomfortable
crossing.”