Viscount Vagabond (19 page)

Lord Rand was not being deceitful. He was certain the young lady had rather Jack’s company than his own—just as the viscount had rather Lady Diana’s company. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t asked Lady Diana for the confounded supper dance. Mayhap he’d known instinctively that he wouldn’t stay long and therefore had better ask one who wouldn’t miss him.

Perhaps Lord Rand’s thinking was not as clear as it should be. That was his problem, however. Mr. Langdon, upon being granted supper with a book in the form of a most agreeable young lady, was instantly restored to his customary state of abstracted serenity.

While Mr. Langdon recovered from his flirtation with violence, Miss Pelliston was enduring a jovial, avuncular lecture from her former fiance. The lecture would have been altogether unendurable—Lord Browdie avuncular was not a pretty sight—if it had not brought her so much relief. The baron obviously believed the young woman purchased from the bawd was someone else.

Catherine could not appear relieved, of course. She had to feign shock at learning of Lord Rand’s sordid entertainments. Since his vices were a sorrow to her—as they must be to any right-thinking lady—this would not have been so very trying, except that the activities Lord Browdie referred to with such sanctimonious relish were precisely those with which he entertained himself.

Hypocrisy can never be agreeable to an elevated mind. Hypocrisy mouthed by a swaggering drunkard who cares nothing for Mr. Brummell’s dicta concerning clean linen, soap, and hot water is not only disagreeable but unaesthetic. Catherine was disgusted. She would have hastened to Lord Rand’s defense—all in a perfectly commendable battle against hypocrisy, of course—if she had not recalled Miss Fletcher’s remarks about tempering justice with a dash of common sense.

Catherine had to content herself with a show of shocked dismay. She even managed to thank Lord Browdie for his kindly meant warnings. When the ordeal was over, she searched among the crowd of faces for Lord Rand, but he was nowhere to be seen. The supper dance began, bringing Mr. Langdon to her side, full of apologies for his friend’s sudden departure and hopes that Miss Pelliston would not be disappointed in his substitute.

Catherine told herself she was not in the least disappointed as she offered him a welcoming smile. Mr. Langdon’s company was always soothing, and now especially so, after the emotional turmoil of dealing with first a domineering, wild viscount and then an avuncular, unwashed libertine of a baron.

The only problem was that she wanted to unburden her
self, to express her contempt for Lord Browdie’s pious humbug and her relief that it was only pious humbug instead of scorn and insult. Unfortunately, she could confide only in her partner in crime.

“There, Diana, did I not tell you?” said Lady Glencove bitterly. “He takes no more note of you than if you had been a stick of furniture. Which you might as well be, standing in one place the livelong night and never opening your mouth.”

“Yes, Mama.”

‘“Yes, Mama,’ she says—then does precisely as she wishes. Oh, was there ever such an undutiful daughter?” Lady Glencove dabbed her omnipresent handkerchief at her eyes.

“Mama, he is gone. I can scarcely run out of the house after him.”

“He would not be gone, you unnatural child, if you would make but the smallest effort. He admires your looks, for which you ought to be thankful. How many others do you think would want such an Amazon?” the countess complained, as though her daughter had deliberately grown to this abnormal height to spite her.

“My size is hardly my fault, Mama,” Lady Diana answered with a touch of impatience.

“It is your manner that concerns me. If he admires your looks, you should use the advantage. Instead you stand like a dumb statue and leave me to manage the conversation. You are not a stupid girl, Diana. Why must you let him think so?”

“I had not thought the gentlemen overly concerned with female intelligence—”

“He is,” the mama interrupted. “Instead of talking to you, he stays forever with that blue-stocking—and her papa a mere baron, while you are the daughter of Glencove. If he likes bookish women, you must contrive to appear so.”

“Oh, Mama!”

“Why not? She cannot be better educated than yourself.”

Lady Glencove studied the woman in question, who was conversing with Jack Langdon. “She cannot be so bookish as all that,” her ladyship went on, “or Argoyne would never go near her. Really, I do wonder what the men see in her. She is hardly an Incomparable.”

“She listens, Mama. I’d scarcely said three sentences to her before she asked whether I was as devoted to hunting as my namesake.”

Lady Glencove looked blank.

“She meant Diana, the goddess of the hunt. I said I enjoyed it immensely, and immediately she had a dozen questions for me. She is most knowledgeable, though she says the sport is not to her tastes. Her papa is famous for his hounds, you know.”

Lady Glencove discovered in these remarks something more promising than Lord Pelliston’s success in breeding hunting dogs. ‘Well, then, you and the girl have something in common. That is good.” Her voice became commanding again. “Unless you wish to break your mama’s heart, you will pursue the friendship.”

“I wish you would make up your mind, Mama. I thought it was Lord Rand you wanted me to pursue.”

The mother uttered an exasperated sigh. “How better than to be always in company with those he spends his time with? Really, Diana, I begin to believe you are stupid.”

“I am always stupid in Town, Mama. I cannot breathe here and I cannot think and—”

She was cut off.

“You are not going back to Kirkby-Glenham, young lady, so just put that out of your mind. When I think of that person, my blood turns cold. But I will not think of him—and you know better than to do so, I trust. What you will do is form a closer acquaintance with Miss Pelliston.”

“Yes, Mama.”

Mr. Langdon was not accustomed to supping with debutantes. He liked women—worshipped them, in fact, but in the abstract and from afar. Up close they were
problematic. His mother and sisters, for instance, were always pressuring him to marry, and marriageable women made him uneasy. He would always sense in them, after a few minutes, impatience, boredom, some vague irritation. He did not know how he provoked these reactions, but he had little doubt he did.

Catherine Pelliston was different. If he rambled off to ancient Greece or Renaissance Italy, she ambled along with him. No topic was too obstruse for her, and she never seemed to require that their conversation be interlaced with flirtation.

She was a kindred spirit, he thought. In his eagerness to pay tribute to the quiet pleasure she gave him, he piled her plate with enough tantalising sustenance to satiate a soldier after three days’ forced march.

“Oh, Mr. Langdon,” said Catherine with a small gasp, “are you trying to fatten me up too? If I eat but a fraction of this, you shall have to push me about the dance floor in a wheelbarrow.”

Mr. Langdon’s fingers promptly wrought their usual havoc with his hair. How could he be so boorish, so thoughtless? One did not offer young ladies buckets of food as though they were sows. His handsome face reddened as he watched his companion. She was studying her plate as though it were a mathematical problem.

She looked up with a consoling smile. “At least you don’t pretend young women live on air and nectar, like hummingbirds. All the same, I’m afraid you must come to my rescue.” So saying, she took his plate from him and began apportioning the contents of hers.

A few weeks earlier, Catherine had won the affection of an eight-year-old boy with one small gesture connected to food. Mr. Langdon might have two decades’ advantage of Jemmy, but his heart was equally susceptible. In a few words she had put him at ease again, and those words, like the gesture, were so fraught with overtones of domestic intimacy and tranquillity that he felt they’d been friends forever. She might have been his sister—except that any of
those ladies, in like circumstances, would have either burst into tears at the imagined insult or cruelly ridiculed him.

He had no way of knowing that Catherine was accustomed to smoothing over difficulties—or at least constantly trying to do so. He knew nothing of the scenes she endured at her papa’s dinner table, and the quick thinking required to spare an oversensitive aunt’s feelings or distract a drunken parent from some disagreeable topic or behaviour. He did not know that she’d sensed his nervous embarrassment and had acted reflexively to remove it.

Jack knew only that he’d committed a
faux pas.
Since he’d exaggerated its importance, he likewise exaggerated the significance of her tactful response. Gazing at her with relief, he wondered if he was in love with her.

“How kind you are,” he murmured as he took his place beside her. “I should know better, of course—my sisters will never take more than a mouthful in public—but everything looked so tempting.”

“Yes, and all the burden of choosing is yours because you are the gentleman. Women are so difficult to please, are we not?” she asked with a faint twinkle. “If you’d left out something I fancied, I would sulk. You leave nothing out and I complain. But that is for appearances, you know,” she explained, dropping her voice confidentially. “The truth is, dancing makes me so hungry I probably could eat it all— and disgrace myself in Society’s eyes.”

The confiding tones made Mr. Langdon feel warm and cosy. He wished they could be engaged this minute, so that he might have the privilege of squeezing one of the gentle white hands that had touched his plate.

He made do with a smile as he replied, “That is because today’s modes are for sylphs. These Grecian costumes are meant for slender faeries—as you are, Miss Pelliston. If, on the other hand, this were the time of Rubens, you’d have to gorge yourself.”

He took up his silverware and took a turn into the early seventeenth century, where Miss Pelliston easily followed. He was soon lost there, oblivious to the rest of the com
pany, and not even altogether conscious of his companion. He never noticed the occasional frown that furrowed her delicate brow.

Miss Pelliston’s partner in crime, meanwhile, was in the process of attempting burglary.

Some hours earlier, Max had made discreet inquiries regarding the baron. That is how he found out where Lord Browdie’s love nest was. The viscount was now standing in a dark alleyway, staring up at the windows of that house.

Clarence Arthur Maximilian Demowery, Viscount Rand, had in the course of his chequered career scaled any number of edifices. To climb the walls of this house was child’s play. He did not hesitate. He grasped a drainpipe, found a toehold between the bricks, and commenced to climb. In a few minutes he’d leapt over the wall of a narrow balcony and stood pressed against the side of the house near the French doors, listening.

He heard, as he’d expected, nothing. The house was dark. Obviously Lord Browdie’s mistress had taken advantage of his absence. Either she was out or she’d gone to bed early. Max would have preferred knowing precisely where she was, and if she slept, how soundly she did so, but a man cannot have everything he wants in this world.

He moved silently towards the doors and tried them. They were unfastened—why not? The citizens of London’s West End had a low opinion of burglars’ intelligence. Perhaps the ground floor was secured, which meant the front door and servants’ entrance were locked at night. Thieves obviously entered a house as everyone else did.

He quietly pushed the doors open and crept into the room. The interior being no darker than the alleyway, his eyes had already adjusted. In what dim light there was he could make out the outlines of furniture. His eyes sought a wardrobe and found it. His feet took him to it.

Only when he’d opened the wardrobe door did he note the flaw in his plans, such as they were. The small space contained several items of clothing, all of them female at
tire. So far, so good. However, while one might distinguish by touch silk or satin from muslin, one’s touch was not so refined as to distinguish a peach-coloured frock from one of any other hue. He cursed softly to himself.

At that moment a candle flickered into light and a soft voice murmured, “If it is a dream, I do hope I don’t wake up.”

Lord Rand turned towards the bed and found himself staring down the barrel of a pistol.

At the other end of the weapon was a comely brunette. The candlelight was gentler upon her countenance than the grey daylight of Hyde Park, and she was not so heavily painted now. Max judged that she was pretty, though in a rather blatant way.

He smiled, the pistol notwithstanding.

“I suppose,” he said calmly, “you wonder why I’m here.” He had not attended Eton and Oxford for nothing. Max knew how to preserve a mask of indifference even when in the throes of the greatest inner misery. At the moment he was not miserable, only a tad concerned that the weapon might have been constructed with a hair trigger, and thus might accidentally go off... in his face.

“Only if I am awake,” Lynnette answered, quite as calmly as if she too had known the privileges of public school education. “If I am, I expect I’d better shoot you and have it over with, because whatever the reason, it must be a wicked one. Either you’re here to murder me, or...” Her voice trailed off invitingly.