The Indian Maiden (6 page)

When her last conscious thought of the night came—and with it, the vision of dappled sunlight and the scent of pines, for it was an image of the dashing gentleman the noblemen at the house party had called the Viking—she smiled. Though admittedly, his presence had been oddly disturbing, unlike the lusty fellows that name they’d given him implied, he’d seemed more intent on warning her to behave properly than set on ravishment.

Perhaps, she smiled into her pillow as the feathers in it winged her away across the night, they ought to have called him the Missionary instead.

The gentleman drew his dressing gown more closely together about his naked form and belted it around himself. Then he smiled, on a yawn, and picking up a crystal decanter, raised it and a tawny brow as well at his unexpected visitor.

“No,” he yawned again, even as he poured out two glasses, “unfortunately you have not interrupted anything. This is the countryside, remember, sir. This is Stonecrop Hall. When I go to my chambers here, my bed is just as chilly and empty as my ancestral halls are at this hour of the night. It’s odd, I grant you, but when I’m in residence in London where there are several hundred people
I
know and wish to avoid, I can take whomever or even whatever I choose to my bed because it is the City, and I’m not as likely to be remarked upon. But here, where my nearest neighbors are pheasants, I repair to solitary sheets, to preserve,” he grimaced, “my good name.”

Then he grinned as he presented a glass to his visitor, who was already seated at his ease in the library, and taking a twin goblet to his own lips, he drank before settling in an adjacent chair near the newly laid fire.

“Pheasants,” mused his visitor, “and the Duke and Duchess of Marchbanks.”

“On the whole,” the gentleman mused, holding his glass to the firelight and watching the light dance in the amber liquid there, “I prefer the pheasants. They’re wittier, and I can shoot them if I wish.”

“But it is about Marchbanks that I’ve come,” the older gentleman said softly.

“Really?” his host asked, running a hand through his tousled, varicolored hair. “Then I must be sleepier than I thought, or it’s possible that I’ve not really wakened to find you here. Because I’d doubt very much if you’d make this trip down from Town to have me sniff out treason at Marchbanks. The duke thinks Prinny’s the greatest radical he’s ever clapped eyes on, and I’ll wager all he knows about Napoleon is that he makes a ‘demned fine brandy,’ ” he mocked in very much the same gruff accents as his neighbor the duke often employed.

“But he has an unwed daughter,” the bland older gentleman said softly.

“Oh please, sir,” Lord Deal said in what might even have been real terror, “not that. Anything for my country, but never that. I’ve had a glimpse at that house party, so loaded with eligibles of the
ton
for the young lady’s delectation that I doubt there’s a coherent word spoken from dawn to dusk there these days. I think the range of discourse runs from simper to guffaw to giggle and back, but that’s the limit.”

“Methley is there,” the older gentleman put in.

“Methley,” Lord Deal said, suddenly serious, “is badly dipped, so he’d likely be anywhere money was. But whatever else I may think of him, I doubt he’s a traitor, although that well may be the only treacherous thing he’s not.”

“There’s also a pair of Americans there, I understand,” the other gentleman persisted.

“I know the breed. They’re formidable,” Lord Deal said, gazing at his glass in the firelight and now remembering where he had lately seen that exact shade of honey glimmering in the light, “but I didn’t think a stray pair of them would be enough to terrify the foreign office.”

“Ah Barnabas, my friend,” the other gentleman sighed, “ordinarily not, and in this case, very likely it’s a flap over nothing. But then, we chase wild geese over our desks as a matter of course in London. Then we send you chaps pursuing them around the country. Remember the beacons on the cliffs last year that turned out to be those boys and their secret meeting
place for roasting chestnuts? Or the odd merchant in Torquay who was nervous, it transpired, only because he was smuggling watered wine instead of the good sort we all buy?

“Now, true, we’ve got the duke’s brandy-maker snug and safe at St. Helena, so you’d think we would relax. But there’s always some who’d like to see him off for another tilt at the world. We hear there’s a contingent from New Orleans, more than a pair of them at that, eager to give the fellow a boat ride around that little island, and over to their further shores. And we remember the time you were of some service in that far country, and how well you a
c
quitted yourself, and how nicely you got on with those you met there. And lo, here’s this new pair, right on your doorstep.

“
I
really don’t think there’s anything to it,” the older gentleman sighed, “but rumors disturb my sleep even more than I interrupted yours tonight. The young woman, I understand, is supposedly here to find herself a noble mate. But why should a rich young female I hear is as lovely as a summer’s day need to travel all this way to find a suitor? And if she has, I wonder why it is, then, that I’ve heard she discourages the gentlemen’s interest rather than angling for it? And since her companion is a handsome, likely lad, I wonder why she didn’t settle for him? It puzzles me. So if you’d be so kind, I’d like it if you’d make their acquaintance, if only to oblige an old gentleman.”

“Only for you, sir.” Lord Deal sighed. “And is there anything else you’d care for, a quart of my blood perhaps?”

“A bed for the night, so I can be gone before dawn,” the older gentleman said. “And my thanks, Barnabas, though not my sympathies, for she’s most attractive, I hear.”

“And so was Delilah, and so was Eve, and so was Salome, and so was Helen of Troy, and so was Jezebel, and so was Lilith
...”
recited Lord Deal as he rose and led the other gentleman up the stairs to the room his servants always prepared for occasional visitors.

“And,” Lord Deal paused at the top of the stairs to ask, with a show of uncertainty, “correct me if I’m wrong, sir, for you’re the classical scholar, but wasn’t there also some talk about that other lovely foreign lady, Lucretia Borgia?” And then, despite the lateness of the hour, their unbridled laughter drifted down the stair.

FOUR

Some of the young
people wanted to play at lawn bowls, just as that amusing young American Miss Hamilton suggested. But several mamas frowned at the idea, and not a few of the young ladies who wished to be styled as
“
fragile” resisted as well. No one wished to go riding, as the older gentlemen had done hours ago, since no one could come up with workable, amiable groupings for the venture. They had picnicked the day before, similarly, croquet had already been deemed a bore, and only three persons voted for an archery match. Everyone was growing irritable, and as one guest remarked, it didn’t even have the decency to rain and cancel all their options. No, it was a beautifully sunny day they had somehow to get through until night. The night would bring a dance party, but it was fully eight hours away no matter how you wound your watch, another guest grumped.

Someone suggested that they get blankets and cushions and sit out on the lawns again, but the mere thought filled Faith with loathing. She couldn’t understand how it was that they all looked forward so to the dancing this evening, when most of the people who would be in attendance there were already sitting about in the same room together right now, obviously bored to pieces with each other already. She’d been told that several of the young persons had serious intentions toward several of the others in the room, but, she wondered, how could they contemplate a life together when they could scarcely pass a summer’s afternoon with each other without dozing?

“It isn’t afternoons that they think about spending together when they think of marriage,” the earl said languidly after she’d whispered her query to him. Even as she
flushed, he added, “It’s settlements and annuities, my dear—why, you’re blushing, you naughty thing.”

She grinned at him. Lady Mary was unavailable, since as hostess she must not closet herself with any one guest. And as Will was desperately attempting to alter that circumstance and so hovered around her shoulder more closely than a shawl, Faith had been left to herself. She didn’t wish to make any further blunders and so this afternoon avoided dangerous chatter with the more flighty members of the party, since exhibitions of lack of wit sometimes goaded her to excess, while a companion with too high spirits might carry her away. But the earl, as always so cool, laconic, and entertaining, was the perfect gentleman to linger with.

He stood beside her now, or lolled there, she corrected herself, smiling bemusedly and observing the follies of the company through half-closed eyes. He was as different from the rest of them as she was, although as an earl of the realm he had every reason to be precisely like them. But not only was he a head taller than any in the room, in his habitual night-black raiment there was no doubt he was paler and thinner and more elegant, and much older than any of the others, as well. Perhaps it was that which linked them, Faith thought. For where she was an outsider in an alien land, he appeared to be an alien within his own circle.

There was nothing romantic in her friendship with the earl, the mere thought of that was absurd. Not only was she a girl who steadfastly resisted such nonsense, but even should she indulge in foolishness, she thought, this sardonic, elongated, and distant nobleman was not the sort of fellow to stir those sorts of notions. There was nothing in the least loverlike in either his attitude or his conversation. She thought of delicious quips when she watched those pale thin lips, not kisses, and no more considered the possibility of being caught up in his long-limbed embrace than she would have entertained the idea of sparring with the gentleman. Neither did he ever treat her in the least as though he considered her a woman in the sense of the word which would have made her nervous.

Actually, she hadn’t the slightest idea of why he should be included in this company, keeping her company. But then, she couldn’t be expected to, she wasn’t English after all. It might, she thought nebulously, have something to do with his friendship with the duke. The fact of his bachelorhood did not weigh with her, for he didn’t play the cavalier with any of the young ladies present, neither did he seek the company or conversation of any of the younger men, just as he assiduously and with killing politeness, avoided contact with the mamas and chaperones. But he was exceedingly witty and scathingly clever, and he was always available for a chat with Faith, which was just as flattering to her as it was amusing. In sum, she thought him an excellent companion.

One of the young women interrupted Faith’s thoughts and electrified the company by calling out rather breathlessly, as though she herself was so staggered at the thought that she’d had such an idea that she wanted it out and aired before her poor wits forgot she’d begotten it, “I say, let’s decorate the ballroom!”

Lady Mary clapped her hands together and turned such a radiant face to her companions that Faith actually saw poor Will draw in his breath at the vision she presented.

“How clever of you, Anne,” she said delightedly. “We can get flowers, and ... no, no, first we’ll think of a theme, and each of you will get a chance to suggest one, and then we’ll vote on it, and—”

“But my dear,” the duchess said reprovingly from the
corner
of the vast saloon where she’d been holding quiet court with a number of visiting mamas, “have you forgotten? We already decided that this evening was to be a celebration of Midsummer’s Night and I’ve already tended to the decor.”

“But Mama,” Lady Mary said, so carried away by the idea of a scheme that would fill up the entire long afternoon that she forgot herself so much as to dispute her parent, “we only have a few vases of flowers and the usual greenery draped over a wooden trellis near the musicians, just as we always—”

“Mary!” the duchess interrupted in grim accents, rising to her feet as she did so, looking very like a startled pigeon in her purple gown with her white fichu rising and falling rapidly over her swollen breasts with each new outraged breath she drew. It was a constant wonderment to the
ton
that the short, plump duchess and her rotund husband had produced such a beauty as Lady Mary. Even her brother, the marquess, had been known affectionately as Owl in his schooldays because of the goggle eyes his father had passed on to him along with his noble title. But though friends might warn besotted gentlemen that the Incomparable might produce surprises when she produced offspring, it was impossible for them to think of such her
e
ditary dangers when they looked deep into her beautiful blue eyes. Although it must be admitted that not a few of them had found themselves hesitating before they’d made their offers, at the exact moment that they’d tried to look the most sincere and had gazed into the duke’s wide, bulging, but otherwise quite similarly hued, bright blue eyes.

“But Mary,” the duchess now huffed, “you cannot remember, you admired the idea very much originally and,” she added with a broken laugh to assure everyone of how foolish young girls were, “we cannot redecorate the room each time time hangs heavy on your hands. Why don’t you all go for a stroll?”

“Yes, Mama,” Lady Mary said dutifully, as, Faith realized, she always did. When she rose and put her hand upon the arm of a surprised and gratified Will, she looked very much like the sort of girl Faith had taken her to be when they’d first met: a lovely, lifeless, and passionless creature. So she always seemed in the company of her parents; it was as though they leached the life from her.

Yet, Faith remembered, in the company of her own parents she too was transformed. But that pair usually made her into a wild and volatile thing, which was why she’d gone to live with her grandfather all those years ago. Perhaps it was better to rage than buckle, Faith thought, looking at the vapid creature so unrecognizable from the spirited girl she had giggled with last night. Although thinking of herself and of how she sat in a room three thousand miles from home, against her will, even though she did it through love, not blind obedience, Faith couldn’t feel she exemplified the virtues of any sort of behavior right now.

“A brief rebellion, quickly doused. Be thankful, Miss Hamilton, that Lady Mary was not one of your forebears, or we’d still be countrymen right now,” the earl commented as Faith rose to go for the required stroll. It was at such moments, when she felt sympathy for one of his victims, that Faith felt least in charity with her companion. But if he noticed her lack of response to his sally he didn’t mention it, and that was one of the other things Faith liked about him—he demanded very little from her.

Though Lady Mary had capitulated instantly, there was nevertheless a good deal of muted mumbling as the various other guests arose and prepared to go for the stroll that no one save the duchess, who didn’t have to go at all, had desired. And even that lady gave her daughter an ill
-
favored glance for her abortive attempt at disobedience. So it was an out-of-sorts, disappointed, and rebellious group that turned, as one, when the butler entered the salon they were just about to vacate, to announce a visitor.

And he, standing just behind the servant, had a moment of sudden, irrational discomfort, seeing the mass of ill
-
tempered people looking up glumly at his arrival. But even as the butler pronounced, “Lord Deal to see you, Madame,” the faces brightened, shoulders were thrust back, and smiles appeared. The gentleman could be forgiven if he’d been puffed up at this miraculous transformation at his entrance, but there was no need of such charity, he’d long since learned to ignore the reactions of this set of persons.

“Your grace,” he said at once, coming into the room and taking the duchess’s plump, beringed hand in his, “your pardon if I interrupt something.”

He waited only long enough for the sound of her disclaimers to die away before he said, with a shake of his tousled head, “I am a gudgeon, my dear lady. You kindly sent me an invitation for the festivities tonight, and like a chucklehead, I sent back my regrets.” He hadn’t needed to check this detail with his secretary. It was a thing done as matter of course, since that worthy young chap had seen the invitation in the trash with others of the sort where they always were deposited by his employer immediately after being delivered, and he’d fished them out and written polite regrets, as he always did whenever he discovered them crumpled there.

“But I was too hasty, and have come to tell you that the urgent affairs which required my presence tonight happily have already been taken care of. Is it possible, my dear duchess, that I am still welcome?”

It took several minutes for the duchess to finish telling Lord Deal the many ways in which it was not only possible, but desirable and vital to the course of all her future happiness in life that he come this evening to her little soiree. Lord Deal might be a recluse, he might have a decidedly odd reputation, but he was a nobleman, he was a neighbor with a matching estate, he had more funds than she could count, and he was notoriously single. And even though he had all these virtues, she and the duke had never considered him as a possible match for their daughter. Because never in a thousand years had they ever thought he would actually come to one of their parties.

After she’d done with assuring him of his welcome, the duchess paused and frowned. It was one of the few times in her life that she regretted an earlier decision she’d made. For here the young people were already reluctantly beginning to leave the room upon her express orders, and there her daughter was about to stroll off with an obscure American, while the greatest catch in the shire was left to stand with her mama. So it was understandable that she looked forlorn when he made his good-byes, claiming that duties prevented him from going along on that fascinating promenade with the houseguests. She brightened when she realized that he would, after all, be returning with the dusk, but her upturned lips compressed into a rigid slit when she saw him pause to have a word with her other American guest before he left. Thus, for the first time in her life, the duchess of Marchbanks became political, as she decided that there was a new nationality in the wide and unworthy world to dislike.

As Lord Deal made the most perfunctory bow to the earl’s chillest smile of greeting, Faith realized that the two were almost of a height. Yesterday, Lord Deal had been astride a horse, and somehow the earl’s extreme lankiness made him appear to be so extraordinarily tall that no man in the company seemed his equal. Perhaps it was so, but gazing up at the pair now, Faith could see that the sun
-
streaked locks of the other nobleman came almost to the earl’s own dark brow. It was only that Lord Deal was so balanced in proportions that unlike the lofty earl, the first thing that struck one about him was not his height. Even as Faith’s eye registered this, her ear took in the fact from the merest of civilities being exchanged, that the two were on the barest of speaking terms.

But then Lord Deal bent his full, white, warming smile upon her. After she’d noted bemusedly how his tanned cheeks creased symmetrically just to the side of his lips when he did so, he smiled again as he told her how well she looked, how he looked forward to seeing her this evening, and how regretful he was that he could not accompany her on this exciting excursion around the grounds of Marchbanks. He left them then, and Faith in turn smiled after him as she realized that even when he spoke insincere social nonsense, when he spoke without censure or warning, it was very pleasant to hear.

“Charming, charming,” the earl said softly, watching her reaction to Lord Deal’s departure. Then taking her arm and walking her out the long french doors to join the sullen strollers, he went on to say negligently, “Our Viking has some manners, to be sure, though he’s quite out of practice. Fancy him attending the dance tonight though. One would have thought he’d had his fill of debutantes, but then, perhaps a decade of avoidance may have whetted his taste for them again.”

When Faith looked up, interested in hearing more about the gentleman but not wishing it to seem so, the earl, as he always did with gossip, obliged her by going on to say without prompting as they paced onward, “Oh yes, it’s been a while since he was in society. For all the outdoor glow, my dear, he’s of an age with your humble servant. Yes, he’s got two and thirty years in his dish, even as I have. We were at school together, the Viking and I, a century ago, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know,” Faith answered with genuine surprise, for she could scarcely imagine two more unlikely schoolmates. Envisioning Lord Deal as a boy might be amusing, but she discovered such a stretch of imagination impossible in the earl’s case. “And,” she asked, “is that where he got his nickname?” before she wondered at whether it was a politic question, since such names were often affectionate tributes given by one’s peers, and the earl evidently had none.

“Lud, no.” The earl laughed, showing his long white teeth in genuine mirth, causing several fellow strollers to swing their heads around to look enviously at the fellow who seemed to be wringing some enjoyment from the day. “That came afterward. He had to earn his name in adulthood.”

“It’s not because of his ancestors?” Faith asked, confused at how her question provided her escort with so much merriment.