Two Corinthians (7 page)

“Morning, Pomeroy,” drawled Lord Winterborne. “A glass house would be a poor choice for a romantic rendezvous, do you not agree? Miss Sutton has been showing me her work.”

Lord Pomeroy visibly relaxed. “Of course. Fascinating. You must tell me about it some time, Miss Sutton. For now, though, the sun is shining and I hope to persuade you to take a turn about the gardens.”

Claire looked at him in surprise, then guessed the reason for his request. No doubt he wished to talk to her about Lizzie.

“Thank you, that will be delightful,” she said uncertainly, hiding her hands behind her. “I shall be with you in a moment.”

Lord Winterborne appeared to guess her dilemma, for he grinned at her and said, “Step outside with me, Pomeroy. We are crowding Miss Sutton.”

She threw him a grateful glance and hurriedly washed her hands in a watering can, then put on her cloak.

The gentlemen were discussing horses when she stepped outside.

“I’ll have Orpheus saddled and ride part of the way back with you,” Lord Winterborne was saying. “I think you will agree that he is a magnificent beast. It is not easy to find a mount up to my weight. Ah, Miss Sutton, even this weak February sun strikes sparks of fire from your hair, but it brings little warmth. Have you no bonnet?”

“My cloak has a hood, sir,” she said, obscurely glad that she had never given in to her mother’s insistence that she should wear a spinster’s cap. “I am quite warm, though.”

“Good. Then I shall leave you to show Pomeroy about your gardens. Your sister walked down to the village, I think, while I was engaged with your father?”

“Yes. I daresay you will meet her coming back if you go that way.”

She took Lord Pomeroy’s offered arm.

“You have no gloves, Miss Sutton,” observed his lordship, sounding concerned. “Your hands will grow cold.”

“Then I shall put them in my pockets. Let us go down this path. There is little worth seeing in the garden at this season, but I hope to find something to show you. I believe flowers bloom year round in Italy?”

“They do, especially in the south. They are not half so well appreciated as are English flowers in spring after a hard winter.”

Claire had expected him to rhapsodise about the glories of a Mediterranean garden. His answer pleased her, as did his reaction to a fountain of golden forsythia. If he was merely being polite, at least his courtesy made her feel comfortable. With more confidence she showed him a patch of fragile Christmas roses. They strolled on into a formal garden surrounded by high, prickly ilex hedges. In a warm, sheltered corner a raised bed glowed with crocuses.

“The purple ones are my favourites,” she said, stooping to touch one delicately. “See the contrast of the petals with the orange stamen. The colours are rich enough for a king’s robes.”

As she straightened, she saw Alfie racing towards them down the garden path. With his pale eyes staring, his carroty hair in spikes, arms windmilling, and mouth gaping for breath, he looked like a madman.

Lord Pomeroy put his arm around Claire protectively. Though she knew the boy was harmless she shrank back, afraid that in his urgency he would be unable to stop before running into them at full tilt.

He slid to a halt in a spray of gravel, his thin chest heaving as he struggled for air to speak.

“What is it, Alfie?” she asked soothingly. “Is Cook angry with you again?”

He gesticulated wildly. “Horse!” he panted. “Master’s big horse coming!”

Claire heard the drumming of hooves. Round the end of the farthest hedge thundered a huge roan stallion, galloping straight towards them. Before she could react, Lord Pomeroy’s strong arms swung her aside, dumping her unceremoniously in the middle of the crocuses. Alfie leapt to join her.

His lordship stood poised on the low stone wall in front of them. Realising it was trapped by the high hedges, the stallion neighed its fury and reared over him, eyes rolling whitely.

Claire huddled back, watching in helpless horror, sure he would be crushed beneath the iron-shod hooves.

Lord Pomeroy waved his arms and shouted. At the last moment the stallion swung aside and pounded away, just as a gaggle of stable hands ran into the garden.

Alfie plucked at Claire’s sleeve.
“Told
you, Miss Claire,” he said proudly.

She took a deep breath and said in a remarkably steady voice, “Yes, Alfie, you told me. You warned us in time. Thank you.” She turned to his lordship.

He was watching the men corner the stallion and calm him.

“A superb beast,” he remarked in a conversational tone, no tremor betraying the fact that he had just risked his life. “I wonder what set him off.”

Claire could guess what had happened. The breeze was blowing from the north. The horse, her father’s best stud, must have caught the scent of the mares in season, which were pastured on the far side of the gardens. Some unfortunate groom’s moment of carelessness had let him escape.

However, she could hardly explain this to so proper a gentleman as Lord Pomeroy.

“I cannot imagine,” she said vaguely. Then, as he helped her down from among the devastated crocuses, she turned on him a gaze full of admiration and gratitude. “How very brave you were! He might have trampled us all.”

“It was my pleasure, Miss Sutton,” he responded with a nonchalant smile, for all the world as if he had just picked up her dropped fan. “I expect you will want to sit down after your fright. Allow me to escort you back to the house.”

She would have preferred to return to the greenhouse, but after his heroic action she meekly accepted his solicitude and his arm.

He tossed a coin to Alfie with a “Well done, lad,” and they turned towards the house.

Lizzie and Lord Winterborne were in the drawing room with Lady Sutton. Claire had heard something of her sister’s quarrel with Lord Pomeroy the evening before. Nonetheless, knowing Lizzie and beginning to know his lordship, she was not surprised by the unruffled politeness of his greeting and Lizzie’s friendly reply.

Lady Sutton was looking complacent at having two eligible gentlemen in her drawing room. Claire made her excuses and fled before she drew down her mother’s wrath upon her head by distracting either of them from Lizzie’s side. She hoped Lord Pomeroy would not be offended at her failure to extoll his heroism in the incident with the stallion. Lady Sutton was perfectly capable of claiming that the whole situation was Claire’s fault.

Now that she was on her own, she found she did feel a little shaky in reaction to the narrowly escaped danger. She lay down on her bed for a few minutes, but it was colder indoors than out and she soon grew restless.

Reluctantly she recognised that it would be rude to retreat again to her gardening; she ought to change her gown and go down. She looked through her wardrobe with a dissatisfied eye, then laughed at herself. Let only a gentleman display a chivalrous regard for her safety and she immediately wanted to dress up to impress him, like any young miss on the catch for a husband. She did not even like Lord Pomeroy particularly.

All the same, she put on her best lavender merino.

In her absence there had been an addition to the company. A young man lounged against the chimneypiece in a carefully casual pose. Claire was transfixed by his salmon pink coat and pale peach pantaloons, which disappeared into matching boots with silver tassels. For a moment she did not even notice the ermine waistcoat.

Lord Pomeroy moved to her side. “I believe you met my cousin Harrison last night, Miss Sutton,” he said suavely.

Mr Harrison bowed. Claire winced as he narrowly avoided putting out his eyes with his shirtpoints.

“I say, deuced happy to see you again, Miss Sutton,” he assured her, waving a negligent hand to the imminent peril of a Dresden shepherdess on the mantel. “Fine day, what? Thought I’d drive m’sister over and see what Bertram’s up to.”

Claire realised that the inconspicuous Miss Harrison was seated by Lady Sutton. Her ladyship wore the gloating expression of a terrier shaking a rat, while the girl looked frightened half out of her wits.

“Good-day, Miss Harrison.” Claire felt obliged to extricate the poor child from the interrogation. “It is kind in you to visit us when you spent yesterday travelling. I daresay you would like some exercise after being cooped up in a carriage. Do you care to take a stroll in the gardens?”

It was the only escape she could think of; she hoped Lord Pomeroy would not think her utterly lacking in sensibility to suggest returning so soon to the scene of their alarming adventure.

“Always best to get back on your horse at once if you’re thrown,” he murmured approvingly in her ear.

Mr Harrison also approved. “Allow me to escort you, ma’am,” he said offering his arm. “Bertram, daresay you will give your arm to m’sister.”

For the first time Claire saw open emotion on Lord Pomeroy’s face. He looked harried.

Chapter VI—Lizzie

“Shall we go, too?” Lizzie proposed to Lord Winterborne as Claire sent her a pleading glance.

“You are not fatigued after walking to the village already this morning?”

“I am not so poor a creature!”

“Then by all means let us go, if you feel able to control your levity so as not to embarrass Mr Harrison. I must warn you that it will not be easy. Gardens are notoriously dirty places and God forbid he should soil those boots.”

“Pink leather!” Lizzie dissolved in giggles again. Her mother looked at her in suspicion. She tugged on his sleeve, hurrying him after the others before Lady Sutton could demand to know the source of her indecorous mirth.

As they left the house, her father approached from the stables and hailed Lord Winterborne. “A word with you, my lord. If you will just step into my office, I won’t take but a moment of your time.”

“But I am presently squiring your daughter,” pointed out his lordship coolly. “Later perhaps. You were saying, Miss Lizzie?”

Sir James looked thoroughly disconcerted. He nodded, and muttered, “Later then.”

Without a backward glance, Lizzie and Lord Winterborne strolled on.

“Famous!” she crowed, scarcely managing to keep her voice low. “Perhaps that will convince Papa that his daughters exist. I wish you were my father, sir.”

It was his lordship’s turn to look disconcerted. “I am not quite old enough for that honour,” he assured her with a show of indignation.

Lizzie regarded him thoughtfully. “No, I beg your pardon, of course you are not. And Mama considers you of a suitable age to be my suitor. Perhaps the same sort of gentleman I should like to have for a father would make a good husband?”

“Undoubtedly. Would it serve to remind you that I am not yet in my dotage if you were to call me George?”

“But you are a peer!”

“Not I. My father is a peer, true, but I am a mere commoner until I inherit, which I pray may be many years hence.”

“Truly? I expect Mama explained it to me once, for she sets great store by such things, but I do not often listen to her. Claire taught me better. I wonder where she is? I know she wanted me to help her entertain the Harrisons.”

“They must have turned a different way. What do you mean when you say that she taught you better than to listen to your mother?”

“I had not thought you slow witted!” said Lizzie, surprised. “You have heard how Mama browbeats Claire. She endured eight years of such treatment before I was born and even then, though she was just a little girl, she vowed that I should not suffer so. You see, Papa wanted a boy. He blamed Mama when his first child was a girl, and she retaliated against Claire.”

“So Claire tried to teach
you
to ignore Lady Sutton’s reprimands.”

“Yes, and she succeeded very well for though Mama irritates me, nothing she says hurts me. It is otherwise with Claire. For too many years she had no defence. If you were forever being told you were plain and totally lacking in countenance and charm, would you not be shy? And then Mama forced her to have a Season and blamed her for not attracting any offers. Now she is using that as an excuse to deny
me
a Season, which is why she is so anxious that I should bring you up to scratch.”

“If she hears you calling me George, she will suppose me upon the point of a declaration.”

“Yes, so I will do it. And you will call me Lizzie, of course. How surprised she will be when you leave without making an offer! She will scarce find time to ring a peal over me, though, for Claire and I shall go to London soon.”

“Your sister has conquered her distaste for Society, then.”

“Not really, but she will do it for my sake. After her dreadful Season, she developed a sort of shield of absent-mindedness. And then her godmother left her enough money to escape from the family altogether. She has found life easier since, though she has stayed to keep me company.”

“Still waters run deep,” said George obscurely. “I was sure that there was more to Miss Sutton than met the eye.”

“Claire is the most wonderful person in the whole world,” Lizzie assured him. “I would do anything for her. I mean to get married as soon as possible so that she can retire to her Bumble’s Green house and grow roses in peace.”

“You don’t hope to find a husband for your sister, then?”

Lizzie looked at George in surprise. “I never thought of the possibility! What a selfish ninnyhammer I am! Just because she thinks herself on the shelf and with Mama always calling her an ape leader, I never considered it. Only, she really is shy,” she added anxiously, “and she says herself that her Season was disastrous. Do you think she can overcome that?”

“She will need help and encouragement.”

“I shall help and encourage her! And you will too, will you not? You do like her, don’t you?” Lizzie awaited his answer with bated breath. If he did not like Claire, she could not be friends with him, and he was a most comfortable person to talk to. She had never met anyone she liked better. Perhaps Mama was right for once and he would make her a good husband. He was not so
very
much older.

“I am beginning to conceive a great admiration for Miss Sutton,” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, I will help you. How expert you are at drawing me into your schemes! You know, I believe this one also is best kept secret, if you can keep a secret from your sister.”