Suzanne Robinson

A RISKY INTERLUDE

“I’ve never met a young lady who could quote Shakespeare, or who even wished to read him. You’re different,” Valin said.

The sound of his voice zinged from her ears to her spine! She had to get away from him and compose herself. Drat. What was wrong with her that she couldn’t play a part she’d managed easily in the past?

“You have mysteries about you, Miss Emily de Winter, and I’m going to solve them.”

“What fancies, my lord.” Emmie lifted her skirts and walked up the stairs that led to the front door of Agincourt Hall.

North mounted the stairs two at a time and planted himself in front of her. “You’re unnerved. I can see a tiny vein throbbing at your temple, and you’re breathing as hard as if you’d ridden in the Derby.” He narrowed his eyes as he regarded her. “I’m onto something, by Jove. And it’s important, by the look of you. Who would have thought?” She tried to go around him, but he stepped in her way, bent over her, and smiled lazily.

“What are you hiding, Miss Emily de Winter?”

London, 1860

No one in Society thought Valin North had any right to be as disgruntled and miserable as he appeared. When he wasn’t glowering at someone, people agreed to call him handsome. Certainly he was rich, titled, and endowed with polished manners—when he bothered to employ them—and intelligence, and a family untouched by scandal.

Thus on this fine April evening those invited by his aunt to a musical party at North’s town house found it unpardonable that their host wore a perpetually volcanic expression on his face. For his part, Valin Edward St. John North, Marquess of Westfield, wouldn’t have cared had he noticed that
the various Society biddies clustered about the drawing room disapproved. He was in agony.

Aunt Ottoline had invited yet another flock of eligible young ladies for him to meet, and Lady Millicent Amberley had cornered him. Valin winced as her voice attacked his defenseless ears. Lady Millicent was a racing champion of talkers; she rattled, babbled, and blathered without seeming to take a breath. Valin fixed his gaze on her flapping lips and in a dazed manner wondered that she could find so much to say about nothing.

“And of course for summer I must have gowns of dimity, lawn, and chambray. For winter I prefer cashmere, merino, brocade, and velvet.”

Valin cursed his aunt. Lady Millicent might have a fortune and be the daughter of a duke, but no amount of aristocratic resources made up for her babbling. When she began to describe her preferences in fabrics for evening wear, his brows met in the center of his forehead. He fixed her with his most frightening scowl, but Lady Millicent was entranced with the sound of her own words.
FinenettedtullegauzetransparenttarlatanLyonssilk
. The words ran together like the waters of a flood, causing Valin’s head to hurt.

Then, just as he was about to bark at his tormentor, he felt a strange prickling along his spine, as though battalions of ants were beating a retreat down it. He looked up, over the heads of his
guests, past footmen serving wine and finger sandwiches. Finally his gaze fastened on an old lady shrouded in mourning dress. She had white hair arranged in old-fashioned corkscrew curls and was wearing tinted spectacles.

The peculiar creature was staring at him. Society ladies didn’t stare, at least, not openly. When their eyes met, she didn’t look away, but regarded him with composure through those smoky glass lenses. He glared back, expecting her to turn red and avert her gaze. Instead she squinted at him and smirked as if she knew how irritated he was and why.

Valin swore to himself as he felt heat rising from his neck to his cheeks. No one smirked at him! Least of all pink-cheeked little old ladies shaped like plums. He would not be smirked at, by heaven. Battle-hardened soldiers in the Crimea had melted into their boots under his glare. His menacing stare would have been at home stalking gazelles on the plains of Africa. How dare she smirk at him as if he were a disgruntled street urchin?

Renewing his efforts, Valin furrowed his brow, narrowed his eyes, and pulled himself up to his full height so that he could look down on the offending lady from the greatest altitude possible. He summoned a glower that belonged to a raging god on Olympus and impaled the old woman with it.
To his astonishment, the lady’s veined nose wrinkled, and she did something he could hardly believe. She sniggered at him!

Valin started toward the old woman, but Lady Millicent’s voice stopped him.

“I know you’ll appreciate the lace on my gown, my lord. It’s Honiton.”

His eyes widening, Valin growled and spun on his heel, leaving Millicent to gape at wide shoulders covered in an immaculate evening coat. He took refuge in a group of older men clustered near the fireplace. There a place of honor had been reserved for Tuppy Swanwick, a family friend and ancient veteran of the Napoleanic wars. Valin tried to master his foul humor while listening yet again to Tuppy’s story of how he’d lost his leg at Waterloo. He could feel the tension draining from his body as he half attended to Tuppy’s quavering voice, and he’d almost forgotten about the inane Lady Millicent when that unusual old lady walked by in the company of other black-clad dowagers. As she passed she shot a look of amusement at him.

“I see what you mean, Mrs. Whichelo. Permanently ill-tempered indeed.”

Valin’s mouth dropped open, but before he could collect himself, the ladies passed out of the room and into the salon. Valin excused himself and followed them, but everyone was gathering to hear the pianist Aunt Ottoline had asked to perform
this evening, and he lost sight of the woman in the crowd. Rows of gilded chairs filled the long chamber, and he was commandeered by his brother Acton to join the family in the front row.

He sat down and twisted his neck to peer at the guests filing in, but the old lady was nowhere to be seen. He glimpsed a black gown beaded with jet disappearing behind a fern near the door, but Aunt Ottoline slapped him on the arm with her fan and hissed at him.

“Saints and Providence give me patience!”

“What?”

“You were rude to Lady Millicent after all the trouble I took to get her here.”

Valin’s scowl returned. “She’s a blatherer.”

“A what?”

“A blatherer. She drones on and on, endlessly, about nothing. I can’t marry her. I’d shoot her on the honeymoon.”

“Oh, Valin!”

Ottoline’s voice rose to a whispering screech that reminded Valin of an angry parrot: hoarse and ear-splittingly loud. He watched her master her irritation with difficulty.

“And what about the Honorable Miss Gorst?”

“Too religious. She should have been a nun.”

Ottoline pursed her lips. “You can’t say that about Lady Gladys.”

“Lady Gladys is stupid.”

“Va—lin,” Ottoline growled.

“It’s not my fault. The woman thinks Scutari is an Italian dessert and that Istanbul is a kind of cow.”

Aunt Ottoline closed her eyes briefly before soldiering on. “Then what about Miss Hayhoe?”

“Miss Hayhoe possesses tact and intelligence.”

His aunt began to smile.

“Unfortunately she laughs like a zebra.”

“Oh, Valin!”

“Never mind that,” Valin said before his aunt could embark on a scolding. “Who is that curious old dowager in the tinted spectacles?”

“Really, Valin, I can’t keep introducing you to young ladies and have you chew them up and spit them out. Soon no one will allow you to meet his daughter despite your rank and fortune.”

“Aunt, who is the lady in the tinted spectacles?”

“Spectacles? Oh, a friend of Lady Buxton’s down from the North Country. The Honorable Miss Agnes Cowper, I think her name was. She rarely comes to town. Prefers the wilds of Northumberland.”

“Don’t invite her here again.”

Ottoline slapped him with her fan again. “Nonsense. I can’t invite Lady Buxton and not include her guest. It isn’t done. Really, Valin, your manners are growing more and more barbaric. It’s the war. I told you not to go. You didn’t have to serve.
I’ll admit you were gloomy and ill-tempered before you went, but when you came back you’d turned into a snarling beast.”

Valin ceased listening to his aunt’s complaints. They were well rehearsed, and he wasn’t about to tell her the truth. He’d hidden it, buried it deep in his soul where it festered and corrupted his life, kept it silent since that day of horror when he was seventeen. The rest of the family didn’t need to know what had really happened, and he deserved to carry the burden of his guilt alone.

Dragging his thoughts back to the present, Valin found that he was still furious at that bespectacled old lady for routing him. The next time he saw her, he’d teach her not to smirk at him. He’d reduce her to a quivering blancmange with his most terrifying grimace. The triumph would recompense him for the torture of looking for a suitable wife—a wife he didn’t want or merit.