The Unofficial Suitor (16 page)

“Thank goodness you are finally ready to go. Where is your cloak? I have had the horses put to a good half hour ago.”

“Just a minute, Oliver. I am not quite sure I like the fit of this gown. I am considering whether I should change into my green one, even though I have already worn it once before. But if Betty sews some new ribbons on it, perhaps no one will—”

Grabbing his sister’s hand, Oliver began dragging her protesting out of the room.

Behind him Betty, the maid, squeaked out, “Wait, Miss Cecily needs her cloak,” but Oliver was beyond waiting.

“Brothers,” Cecily muttered under her breath, even though she followed him docilely enough. “Since when have you become such a fan of the opera that you cannot bear to be the merest bit late?”

Reaching the foot of the stairs, Oliver was forced to cool his heels a few minutes longer, while the maid hurried down and draped a russet cloak around his sister’s shoulders.

“Oh-ho,” Cecily cried out abruptly. “I know what it is. You are not in a hurry to listen to the caterwauling of a parcel of well-endowed sopranos and overweight tenors. It is obvious that you must be impatient to see a woman—a particular woman!”

Oliver felt his face grow hot, and he knew he must be blushing from ear to ear.

“You are in love,” his sister crowed. “At last you have thrown your heart over the windmill.”

Betty was gazing up at him, her mouth agape, while James, the footman, was staring straight ahead, doing an imitation of a statue carved out of marble. But Oliver well knew that as soon as the door closed behind him and his sister, the maid, and the footman both would be off like a flash to the servants’ hall, there to report what they had overheard.

Unfortunately, there was no way to call his sister a liar—or at least no way that he could possibly convince her she was mistaken since what she had deduced was nothing more nor less than the truth. He was in love, head over heels in love, as agonizingly in love as a callow youth in the first throes of calf-love. And love makes fools out of all men.

Turning on his heels, he stalked out to the waiting carriage, not bothering to make sure his sister was following. She was forced to scramble into the vehicle without any help from him, but she managed with the same ease with which she had as a child climbed trees on their estate. She had apparently not outgrown all her hoydenish ways, even though her London manners were in general quite above reproach.

Seating herself opposite him, she smiled like a cat and said smugly, “I can guess who you have fallen in love with.”

His heart sank, and he considered the possibility of bribing his sister to guard her tongue. But honesty compelled him to admit to himself that it would take more than gold to achieve such a longed-for outcome. Having learned to talk when she was barely a year and a half old, Cecily had been chattering ever since. In short, it would take a miracle to keep her from broadcasting his affairs all over town.

It was enough to make a man flee the country. But if he did, he would never see his beloved again, never look down into eyes that were lifted so appealingly to his, never feel the curves of her waist beneath his hand when they waltzed, never hear the sound of her voice—

“Oh, I shall dearly love having a sister at last. But do you honestly think you have a chance?”

Of course he did not have a chance. It was not only the disparity in their ages, but dearest Ellen, Lady Blackstone, was every bit as much in love with Dillingham as he, Oliver, was in love with her.

“I have heard that Lady Cassie’s brother is determined upon snaring a rich peer for her.”

Lady Cassie? For a moment Oliver’s mind went blank. Then he realized to his vast relief that his sister had misconstrued the entire situation. She thought he was haunting Lord Blackstone’s residence because he was interested in Lady Cassie. Cecily did not even suspect that he had given his heart to Lady Blackstone the first time she had smiled up at him.

Ignoring his sister’s continued chattering, he allowed his mind to drift backward. With feelings of joy that he would be seeing her again, mixed with despair that he would never win her hand for himself, one by one he pulled out all his most treasured memories—each word dear Ellen had said to him, each smile she had bestowed so casually on him, every touch of her hand on his sleeve ...

* * * *

Tonight she would be attending the opera with her dearly beloved Arthur for the first time in fifteen years. Ellen felt bubbles of excitement racing through her veins. Her late husband had never wished to attend any musical event, nor indeed any form of entertainment that did not involve eating massive amounts of food and imbibing great quantities of wine.

Arthur, however, was cut from altogether different cloth. Why, the last time he had escorted her, when she was but a young girl of seventeen, he had not even spared a glance for the opera dancers showing off their charms on the stage. And the next day he had told her that when she spoke, her voice was more musical than anything written by some Italian composer.

But the day after that, her father had informed her that Lord Blackstone had offered for her hand.

With a sigh for those few magical days so long gone, Ellen rapped on her step-daughter’s door. When there was no answer, she opened the door and peered inside. Her mood of mellow reminiscence vanished in an instant.

Instead of being occupied with putting the finishing touches on her toilette for the evening, Cassie was lying flat on her back in bed, a folded cloth over her eyes.

Well! If her step-daughter thought she was going to indulge in another fit of the megrims, she was sadly mistaken.

Marching resolutely into the room, Ellen snatched away the damp cloth. She was so upset that she did not trouble to keep her voice well modulated, but snapped out, “What on earth are you about? Arthur will be here any minute, and you are still in your shift!”

“I am not feeling up to attending the opera tonight,” Cassie replied in her mulish tone of voice that always made Ellen want to shake her. “Lord Fauxbridge has already given me a headache, and since you were so helpful as to inform him where we would be this evening, he has announced that he will be sure to seek me out during the intermission. He did not, of course, stop to discover if I wished to set eyes on him twice in one day. If he had, I would have told him point-blank that one hour in his company is more than adequate for a single day—indeed, for an entire week!”

“He actually said he would visit you during the intermission?” When Cassie scowled petulantly and nodded her head, Ellen clapped her hands in delight. “How marvelous! At the rate matters are progressing, I should not be surprised if he soon takes you to meet his mother. What a feather in your cap that will be!”

Cassie sat up in bed and glared at her. “How can you possibly say it is marvelous? The man is a pompous, ponderous, posturing popinjay. I would not wish to meet his mother if she were the Queen of England.”

Ellen again felt the palm of her hand itch with the urge to slap her step-daughter. How could the chit be so unreasonable? So impossibly stubborn? It was all Geoffrey’s fault, of course, for leaving them to rot in Cornwall. Isolated from society for so many years, Cassie just could not be brought to understand which things were important and which were not.

But physical violence had never been the way to win Cassie’s cooperation, and cooperate she must, because it was not every day that one received an invitation to watch the opera from Lady Letitia’s box.

Smiling instead of slapping, Ellen grasped her stepdaughter’s hands and pulled her from the bed. “Of course he is a pompous, posturing, and ... what else did you call him?”

“Ponderous,” Cassie muttered, but at least she appeared to have accepted the idea that she must attend the opera, headache or no.

Feeling quite relieved that the crisis was over, Ellen laughed. “Ponderous—yes, that is exactly the word for Lord Fauxbridge.” She pulled a new white dress embroidered with clusters of red rosebuds over Cassie’s head and quickly fastened it up. Picking up a hairbrush, she began vigorously dragging it through her step-daughter’s black tresses.

“But what you must remember, my dear, is that he is a marquess, and not only a marquess, but a very rich marquess. Think of how wonderful it will be when you can command an army of servants, when every modiste in town is competing to win your patronage, when you can wear the Fauxbridge jewels, which rival the Crown jewels, or so I have been told.”

Cassie muttered something about not caring about such things, and for a moment Ellen wondered if her stepdaughter’s mind was deranged. But time was of the essence, so she could not afford another quarrel. Without giving the recalcitrant chit an opportunity to voice further objections, Ellen continued in a bright, cheerful voice that was deliberately designed to bring Cassie into the proper mood.

“Why, every young lady in London for the Season will be positively green with envy if Fauxbridge does seek you out during the intermission. The gossips report that dozens of ambitious mothers have made a push to capture him, but he has never before shown such a marked partiality for any eligible maiden, although he has been known to pursue the more racy widows.”

Ellen abruptly became aware that her wayward tongue had gotten her into deep water. Such scandalous on-dits were not at all suitable for the tender ears of an unmarried maiden like her step-daughter. And more important, knowing about such liaisons, which were, after all, quite normal among gentlemen, was only likely to make Cassie even more reluctant to accept Fauxbridge’s suit if he did come up to scratch, which Ellen had every reason to expect he would.

Tossing down the brush, she hurried to the door, where she paused only long enough to utter a feeble explanation for her hasty retreat. “I find I must, after all, summon Annie to finish your hair. It is not responding to my efforts in the slightest.”

So, thought Cassie, watching her red-faced step-mother flee the room, My Lord Fauxbridge is not only ponderous, it appears he is also a womanizer.

What a bargain she would be getting. No, she corrected herself, the gains would all be on Geoffrey’s side. Once she was safely wedded to Lord Fauxbridge, her brother could raid the marquess’s purse with impunity since Fauxbridge was too stiff-rumped to allow the slightest hint of scandal to besmirch his family name. Never would he allow a brother-in-law to be cast into debtor’s prison.

Cassie blinked back tears at the thought and wished that she could bestow her unsuitable suitor on one of the multitude of young girls supposedly pining after him. Although when she thought about it, the image of Fauxbridge surrounded by a sea of adoring females was completely ludicrous. More than likely it was only the matchmaking mamas who considered him an eligible parti.

The door to her room opened again, but this time Cassie was relieved to see it was Annie, the only member of the household Cassie considered a friend.

“What did you say to Lady Blackstone to put her in such a taking?” Annie asked, coming over to where Cassie sat and picking up the discarded brush.

“All I did was tell her my honest opinion of the ponderous Lord Fauxbridge,” Cassie replied vehemently. “I wish certain people would understand that I would truly rather starve in the gutter than marry such a—such a jackass as Lord Fauxbridge!”

Twisting Cassie’s hair up on top of her head and pinning it securely in place, Annie said quite prosaically, “I have tried starving in the gutter. If I were you, I would sooner accept an honorable proposal, because in the gutter all you will be getting are dishonorable propositions.”

“That does not matter. I shall simply tell them all no also.”

“A fine plan indeed. But unfortunately men do not willingly accept a refusal from a defenseless woman in the gutter. They would consider you fair game—a tasty morsel to be gobbled up without a second thought.”

“How can you talk that way?” Cassie protested. But even as she said the words, her eyes met Annie’s steady gaze in the mirror, and Cassie had to admit the justice of the Scottish girl’s statement, unpalatable as the truth might be. Cassie had only to remember several unfortunate women she had known in Cornwall to accept that a female was powerless to protect herself when a man decided to use his superior physical strength against her.

Cassie’s heart went out to the Scottish girl, who must have suffered terribly after her husband died. “Were you ...” Cassie did not know how to phrase the question in such a way that it would not cause offense—or additional pain.

Instead of being embarrassed, however, Annie smiled broadly. “You needn’t worry about me. My husband taught me to defend myself. Used properly, a small dagger can compensate for a large difference in size.”

Eagerly, Cassie jumped to her feet. “But that is the answer! Do you not see, Annie? If you teach me to use a knife, then I can also defend myself—then I will not need a husband.”

“No,” Annie said flatly, “that is not what you need to learn.”

Feeling betrayed by her one and only friend, Cassie balled her hands into fists and glared up at Annie. “Why does everyone assume that I am totally incompetent and incapable merely because I am smaller than the average woman? You just told me yourself that a knife is a great equalizer, so why will you not teach me to use one? Do you think I am incapable of learning anything?”

“Oh, no, I think you are quite capable. You can undoubtedly learn how to conceal a knife about your person, and I can teach you the proper way to hold it. And it is not difficult to learn where to slice a man if you wish to maim him permanently, or where to slip in the blade if you wish to kill him instantly.”

Cassie felt herself growing faint at the images that Annie’s words conjured up, but she did her best to hide her weakness from the other girl. “So, what is the p-problem then?”

“The problem is,” the Scottish girl continued relentlessly, “that I cannot teach you or show you or give you the resolution necessary to actually use those skills against another human being.”

“Oh, Annie,” Cassie said, swaying on her feet.