Vying for the Viscount

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  “Of course.” She swallowed hard and looked at Hudson. “Good morning, my lord.”

  Hudson met her look with an assessing stare. This woman had more than saved his reputation Saturday evening, but he still wasn’t sure what to make of her. A slash of red crossed her cheeks, and she turned her attention back to Mr. Whitworth. “Whatever the reason, I’m glad to see you happy.”

  “It isn’t often I’m asked to manage a man’s entry into society.”

  So much for the man being trustworthy. Hudson glared at the manager, refusing to meet Miss Snowley’s gaze, which would likely have shifted from hesitant to mocking. What sort of viscount asked his stable manager for social assistance?

  Hudson’s glare didn’t make Mr. Whitworth squirm. Instead he shrugged and nodded in Miss Snowley’s direction. “You need help, and she’s the best option you’ve got.”

  “I’m flattered,” Miss Snowley said, her mock surprise tempered by the wide smile on her face.

  Mr. Whitworth glanced around the stable. “Well, you didn’t have much competition for the title of most helpful. Everyone else here is about as socially useful as a saddle without a girth.”

  Hudson wanted to argue, but the idea wasn’t a horrible one.

  Wouldn’t one woman be the best person to teach him how to manage another? It was like learning to ride. One might start on a cart horse before riding a thoroughbred. He turned to fully face Miss Snowley. “I believe we worked well enough at the assembly.”

  “We did indeed.” Her impish grin remained as she nudged Mr. Whitworth. “I’m surprised you would admit to Mr. Whitworth here that you don’t even know how to dance, though.”

  Another chuckle erupted from the manager, and it was echoed by several of the stable hands who were now standing in the entrances to their respective stalls, not even bothering to pretend that they weren’t listening.

  “What exactly is it that you need assistance with?” she continued, ignoring the mild uproar she’d just created.

  “He wants to join the hoard of gentlemen stuffing flowers into Lord Gliddon’s drawing room.”

  Hudson was fast coming to realize the downside of Mr. Whitworth’s candidness.

  “Oh,” Miss Snowley said quietly. Her head dropped until all he could see was the top of her hat. After a few moments, her face reappeared, the smile still in place, though somewhat smaller. “As it happens, I’m the perfect person to help you. I’m not an intimate of Lady Rebecca, so I can’t personally recommend you, but I am excellent at maneuvering through Newmarket without stepping on any toes.”

  “What about the dance floor, though, Miss Snowley?” called a voice from down the stable.

  Hudson spun around, trying to guess which groom had spouted such irreverence, but it was impossible to tell.

  Miss Snowley seemed to know, however, and she didn’t look the least offended. “I’ve never stepped on any toes there either. I’ll need some help teaching Lord Stildon the same skill. I assume you’ll be my first volunteer, Miles?”

  A groom stepped out with a wide smile splitting his dark face. “Of course, Miss Snowley, whatever you need.”

  Mr. Knight shook his head and pointed at Miss Snowley. “You’re not stealing away my grooms, now. I’ve horses that need tending.”

  “And apparently an employer as well,” Miss Snowley returned. “I can hardly teach him to dance without assistance.”

  More chuckles scattered through the stable, and the man named Miles simply grinned larger.

  “Horses, Miss Snowley. Horses.” Mr. Knight crossed his arms over his chest, but he looked more like an indulgent father telling his child she could only have two biscuits instead of an irritated head groom.

  “I’ll need Arthur and Ernest too. You’ll have them back within the hour.”

  Mr. Knight shook his head but waved in her direction as he turned his attention back to the horses.

  “I’ll even take two horses for a ride when I return as a thank-you.”

  “How nice of you to offer such a sacrifice. I suppose next you’ll volunteer to ride Hestia for me?”

  Miss Snowley gave a sigh. “If I must.”

  Hudson blinked. Didn’t Mr. Whitworth say that she wasn’t allowed to ride one of the thoroughbreds?

  Mr. Knight shook his head. “You can have my grooms but not my sanity. You can ride Odysseus later and that will do fine.”

  “Very well, then.” Miss Snowley moved back toward the door she’d recently entered. “Come along, Lord Stildon. You too, Mr. Whitworth. Since Mr. Knight won’t let me take more grooms, you’ll have to help, too.”

  Mr. Whitworth grunted. With a grin, Hudson nudged the man forward. “At least she won’t be running amok in the stable.”

  “No,” Mr. Whitworth returned, “she’s going to make a mull of your life instead.”

  Nine

  When she’d dressed this morning, the seams of her tailored riding jacket had lain in smooth, perfectly fitting lines. As Bianca led her coerced group of men away from the stable toward the decorative gardens on the other side of the house, the seams constricted until she could scarce take a full breath.

  She circled a hedge and moved toward a semi-secluded section of lawn where they could have their lesson in some form of privacy. Somehow she had to get control of herself.

  Yes, his plans contrasted hers, but that didn’t explain the keen sense of disappointment now stabbing through her. It wasn’t as if she was in love with the man, and in truth he held a higher status than she’d ever aspired to. Still, she’d thought that maybe her connection to his stable and ability to enter his space gave her an advantage.

  It would seem that was not the case. Like so many other men, he was besotted with the idea of Lady Rebecca.

  Bianca wished she could dislike the woman, but the truth was that Lady Rebecca was everything rumor made her out to be. She possessed beauty and connections enough to entice many a man, but she was also sweet and intelligent. Honestly, her greatest flaw was being so perfect as to be boring.

  Lord Stildon would be one of many suitors. Would he be as appealing to Lady Rebecca as he was to Bianca? There were loftier titles, men with greater social presence.

  All Bianca could do was establish herself as a helpful and appealing part of Lord Stildon’s life and hope that either Lady Rebecca chose someone else or the competition was so tedious that Lord Stildon preferred the ease with which he could court Bianca.

  And if he still married Lady Rebecca? Bianca shuddered at the thought of living with Mrs. Snowley’s undivided attention without having Hawksworth as a retreat.

  She stopped in a circle of grass ringed on two sides with elaborate flower beds and the other with rows of tall trees. “This should do nicely.”

  Her strange little crew stumbled into a cluster around her, varying levels of bemusement on their faces. Grooms were hardly the ideal choice of dancing tutors, but she couldn’t trot out here with her sister and the ladies who came around to tea every now and then.

  “Why do I have to be here?” Mr. Whitworth asked, arms crossed, head cocked to the side. “Not that I don’t think it will be entertaining.”

  “Because it is in your best interest for your employer to be well connected.” Bianca met Mr. Whitworth’s gaze and then dropped it, realizing suddenly that it was possible Lord Stildon would one day soon elect to manage the stable himself and put the other man out of work.

  Of course, it was also possible he wouldn’t.

  Bianca was working on optimism today.

  She liked Mr. Whitworth, with his bold frankness and lack of charm, and they’d formed an odd sort of camaraderie over the past year and a half. It would be a sad thing if he were no longer in her life because Lord Stildon did away with his job.

  This moment was about Lord Stildon, though, not for her to try to name why Mr. Whitworth felt like more of a brother than her own did.

  “Before we begin,” she said to Lord Stildon, “I have to ask how it is possible that you have reac
hed the age of . . . I say, how old are you?”

  Bianca frowned and considered the viscount. It was so difficult to determine a man’s age once he’d passed two and twenty. That is, until he approached something closer to forty. That left a rather large range of possibility.

  “Eight and twenty.” He narrowed his eyes at her and took a deep breath through his nose.

  Only four years older than she was, then. She pressed on. “How is it that you reached the age of eight and twenty without learning to dance?”

  “By not dancing.” The flat voice implied the answer should have been obvious and that her questions were useless and unwelcome. New to England, he was now in a corner of his own grounds surrounded by employees and taking orders from a woman who’d tried to beat him with a boot. It was understandable that he found the situation somewhat uncomfortable.

  “They don’t dance in India?”

  “Not like they do here.” He glanced around the small group of people. “Some of the areas of the country with a higher concentration of English families might have had some dances, but there weren’t any where I was.”

  “Well.” Bianca turned her gaze to the people she’d coerced into helping her lesson. “This will be simple enough to solve. Mr. Whitworth, will you please—”

  “I don’t know how to dance either.”

  “Nonsense.” Bianca frowned. “You stood up with Helen after that beastly Lord Davers implied that she shouldn’t have even been allowed to attend Mrs. Wainbright’s party last year.”

  “The lady was not very appreciative of my gesture.”

  No, she hadn’t been. While Helen might have only been a lady’s maid, she was a respectable one. Dancing with a man who worked for a living would have been difficult but acceptable, as she, too, had been forced into service. It was the fact that the man was illegitimate that had made Helen feel her partner was too far beneath her.

  No one ever said whom he was the son of, though Bianca had heard enough innuendo to assume his father was aristocratic. But everyone knew the status of his birth, and Helen wasn’t going to lower herself to associate with him.

  “The point is,” Bianca rushed on, “that you danced. Now, please take Andrew and stand at the top of the formation.”

  The wiry young groom with a wide toothy grin that took up a large portion of his face loped to the place Bianca pointed. “I say, does this make me the woman?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Whitworth said quickly.

  She could have told Andrew he was standing in for the family dog and he still would have smiled at her. Nothing kept the man from being happy, except a problem with one of the horses.

  What would it be like to love life that much?

  Ernest, the third groom she’d called into service, was too shy to tell her no, while Miles wouldn’t have stayed away even if she’d asked. He was drawn to anything that could be considered bizarre. She waved those two grooms into position beside Mr. Whitworth and Andrew.

  “Don’t worry,” Miles said. “I’ll be the lady in our pairing.”

  “Yes. Well. Now.” Bianca turned to Lord Stildon. How was she going to do this? “With only three couples, this won’t be much like a full dance, but it should suffice for explanation of basic formations.”

  Her half-formed idea soon devolved into utter disaster. While Mr. Whitworth gave a valiant effort to go where he was supposed to, he’d been honest in saying that his skill was lacking. It didn’t help that his companion hadn’t a clue as to what he was doing.

  The second pair had even less of an idea. Ernest made matters worse by refusing to look anywhere but at his own feet, so he never managed to move before Andrew would collide with him.

  The entire business was such a mess that she couldn’t even spare a moment to consider her actual pupil, beyond making sure he was physically where he was supposed to be.

  “I think it is safe to say,” Bianca said, clasping her hands together in front of her after her attempts to demonstrate one of the popular country dances had failed even more spectacularly than the last, “that at the very least, the next time you dance you will wear a genuine smile while remembering this moment.”

  Lord Stildon chuckled, the first noise he’d made since the lesson started. “Perhaps I can dance with a woman who has a keen interest in her shoes. I’ll spend the entire set rescuing her and come off as gallant instead of inept. It’s possible I could get out of the dance entirely by escorting her to a corner to recuperate.”

  Bianca couldn’t restrain her own laugh. “To think all along we women have been doing it wrong. We’ve been striving for accomplishment when we should strive to need rescue instead.”

  “Any woman who scares off a horse thief with her riding boot isn’t going to want a man to rescue her from the dance floor.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Bianca said, refusing to drop her gaze to her own toes but having no qualms about a sudden interest in Ernest’s. Surely the man had found something interesting to look at for the past twenty minutes.

  “You’ve no need to be rescued when you are fully capable of doing the rescuing without even leaving the dance floor.” He swept into the edge of her vision with a bow worthy of a royal courtier. “I merely seek my own level of ability because I cannot aspire to yours.”

  “Well,” Bianca said, trying to will away the heat making its way from the tips of her ears to her neck, “they may not dance in India, but flattery seems to be alive and well.”

  “Admiration is a universal occurrence.”

  If Lord Stildon possessed this much charm when he wasn’t trying to be appealing, her chances of becoming mistress of Hawksworth were slim indeed. How could Lady Rebecca not find him engaging?

  “Yes. Well.” She lifted her face while avoiding meeting anyone’s gaze—particularly Mr. Whitworth’s. “We’ve not enough people to do a quadrille, but we’ll try to make do.”

  The next half hour felt approximately like four hours as she attempted to instruct Lord Stildon, and, by extension, the three grooms. Mr. Whitworth was somewhat better at the quadrilles and offered a few helpful suggestions, as he had performed the dance as a man maneuvering around ladies’ trains and, well, she’d always been the one in the skirt.

  When she attempted to show Lord Stildon a reel, it was such an utter failure that she abandoned all hope. Likely this entire morning had caused more detriment than Lord Stildon’s simple admission of inability would have done.

  “I think,” she said through heaving breaths that proved dancing one part of a reel was nowhere near as difficult as attempting to dance six parts, “that we’ve done quite enough for today.”

  Ernest and Andrew all but fled from the clearing, the ordeal proving too much for even Andrew’s indomitable spirit.

  “Will it be enough?” Lord Stildon asked.

  “You won’t be proficient.” Bianca paused to catch her breath. “But you won’t be entirely clueless.”

  “You can blame any other fumbling on it not being a popular dance in India. None of them will know any different.” Miles gave a shrug before ambling off in the same direction as the other two grooms. “The others are going to love hearing about this,” he called over his shoulder. “Don’t worry, my lord, I’ll keep it in the stable.”

  Bianca winced. Why hadn’t she considered that this foray would cost Lord Stildon some of the respect due an employer? Mr. Knight was not going to thank her for that or the work he’d have to do to set it all to rights.

  Mr. Whitworth crossed his arms over his chest and looked from Bianca to Lord Stildon and back again. “You aren’t going to teach him how to waltz?”

  “I don’t really think—”

  “I saw the announcement for next Saturday’s assembly. Every third dance will be a waltz.”

  Bianca frowned. There was nothing wrong with the waltz, and she never gave a second thought to dancing it at assemblies, but here, in the privacy of Hawksworth’s garden, she understood why some thought the dance scandalous. Without the benefit of o
ther couples, it seemed far more intimate, especially given her intentions toward the man. As her goals were now in jeopardy, she wasn’t sure she wanted to participate in an activity that might encourage more emotional attachment.

  Disappointment she could handle. She wasn’t so sure about heartbreak.

  Mr. Whitworth smiled, but it didn’t hold the same quality his rare smiles normally did. His gaze was narrowed instead of glinting. “A woman being courted will expect Lord Stildon to waltz.”

  “Yes,” Bianca murmured. This awkward situation was of no one’s making but her own, and now she had to see it through to completion.

  “Very well,” she said with an outward smile and an inward wince. “I’ll teach him to waltz.”

  And she dearly hoped she wouldn’t regret it later.

  Ten

  In the amount of time it took for a horse to make a chunk of sugar disappear, Hudson’s dancing lesson shifted from an indulgent amusement to a treacherous threat. Until that moment, it had been rather like putting a horse in a race with a pack of goats—amusing, but not noteworthy and certainly not productive.

  In the face of Mr. Whitworth’s suggestion, Miss Snowley’s confidence disappeared, even as she agreed to its necessity. Was a waltz some sort of painful or traumatic ritual that he would be expected to perform in order to court a lady? Perhaps England was not as civilized as he’d been raised to expect.

  He cleared his throat. “What is a waltz?”

  “A dance.” Mr. Whitworth looked from Hudson to Miss Snowley and back again, his face devoid of expression and his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

  “A scandalous one.” Miss Snowley lifted her nose in a gesture that should have appeared haughty but only made her look more nervous. “We don’t even know if Lady Rebecca has permission to dance it.”

  Hudson’s brows flew upward. A few moments ago, Miss Snowley had taught him—or rather attempted to describe—how to do a dance in which he spent as much time, if not more, dancing with the other ladies in the set than with his chosen partner. To Hudson, that seemed rather scandalous, not to mention ridiculous.