She giggled, taking it from his outstretched hand. “Thank you, sir.”
Only then did Hayden return his attention to Bernard.
“Out for a morning jaunt, are you, McGowan?” he said pleasantly, not in the least ill at ease.
Bernard glanced back and forth between Hayden and her, clearly uncomfortable. “Not exactly. I was coming to extend an invitation to Miss Chase and Mrs. Walcott and thought I saw Miss Chase here. I didn’t realize you were with her.”
“Didn’t you?” Hayden asked casually.
“No.”
“Ah.”
The two men sized each other up.
“Well, Mr. McGowan,” Amelie said to break the silence. “Thank you for the invitation. I am sure Fanny and I would be pleased to accept.” She glanced at Hayden. “Perhaps Lord Sheffield and Lord Hayden…” She let the suggestion hang.
“Of course!” Bernard said, color rising in his face. She shouldn’t have done it, but she would have breached any line of etiquette to spend another entire evening with Hayden. “I assumed our current visitors would be gone by next week. Apparently I am wrong?”
Hayden shrugged, tucking his hands into his vest pockets and striking a noble pose. “Can’t say.”
“Then your investigations into the anonymous letter have not met with success?”
“No,” Hayden said. “We have no idea.”
“Please, Mr. McGowan,” Amelie said. “We have made a pact, Lord Hayden and I, not to spoil our conviviality with speculations about nonsensical and unpleasant things,” Amelie cut in swiftly. She did not want to talk about that letter. It could only ruin her pleasure.
Bernard blinked at her. “But that is the purpose of his trip—”
“No buts,” she said firmly. “We are determined to be jolly. Are we not, Lord Hayden?”
Hayden turned his warm gaze on her. “How can I be anything else when I am with you?”
Chapter 19
Grey stood on the banks of the creek meandering through his brother-in-law’s property, his hands on his hips and his shirtsleeves rolled up over his forearms. He’d forgotten how bracing the Highland air was. A crisp afternoon breeze riffled his hair as he lifted his chin and drank in the springtime elixir. By his feet lay a tackle kit, the contents a jumble of jigs and lures, flies and feathers. It was a perfect day to go angling for a pretty little trout.
The sun spangled on the creek, and the rush of springwater escaping the mountains played backdrop to the sound of birdcalls. Beyond, the orchid-tinted Highlands rose against a clear blue sky, bracing and valiant.
Like Fanny Walcott. He liked it. The way he liked Fanny Walcott. He liked her prickliness, her independence, her courage, and her coolness under fire.
He’d witnessed it yesterday, when she’d stood in the hall before that idiot vicar. He’d watched her gathering her courage to confront Oglethorpe, and he’d been visited by a sudden insight: She was this little makeshift family’s knight in shining armor, because there was no one else to be. And just like six years ago, the compulsion to go to her rescue, like his own daft version of a knight errant, had swept over him. He’d indulged the compulsion, a simple enough task, given that the vicar was just a common bully.
When he’d heard her laughing at Violet’s curse… Well, it had been the sweetest sound in his recollection.
“Is that you humming?”
Grey jumped at Hayden’s sudden appearance.
“What’s that?”
“I asked if you were humming.”
“What of it?”
The lad lifted one brow at his tone. “Nothing. I’ve just never heard you hum before, is all.”
“Balderdash. I’m an inveterate hummer. Hum all the time,” Grey said without the least bit of guile, despite the fact that this was an out-and-out lie. He wasn’t in the mood to be interrogated by someone with only one foot in the realm of manhood.
“It’s the scenery,” Grey said, waving his hand toward the mountain. “It’s inspiring.”
He turned his attention to the tackle box. His fingers moved idly over the surface of the lures: hare’s ear, ginger quill, red spinner, stone fly, and greenwell. Behind him, he heard Hayden take a deep breath.
“Grey,” he said, “I am in love with Miss Chase.”
“Hmm?” Which lure to use? It was early in the season, so something bold would be called for—
“I said I am in love with Miss Chase.”
—a challenge as well as a lure, something to awaken her fighting instincts as well as her appetite. He hummed another snatch of a music-hall ditty.
“Aren’t you going to say something?”
The question really wasn’t what lure to use, he realized; it was how to present it. As in much of life, enticement was all a matter of presentation—
“Well?”
“Yes, yes, I heard you,” Grey said, snapping down the lid of his tackle box. The boy was not going to leave him alone until he’d spilled his heart out. Youth. They could not resist sharing every page of their internal diaries. “You’re in love with Miss Chase. I heard you the first time. That’s splendid.”
“You mean, you approve?” Hayden asked, wide-eyed. Quickly, he regrouped. “Not that I need your approval.”
“Of course you don’t,” Grey agreed, fervently wishing the boy would go moon about under Amelie Chase’s window. He had important matters to consider, a slippery little fish to entice.
“You don’t seem very surprised.”
“Not in the least. Of course you’re in love with the girl. What red-blooded young man wouldn’t be? A pretty princess ensconced in a tower—I realize their house is hardly a tower, but you see what I’m getting at—by a dastardly father—though, in all fairness to Colonel Chase, I wouldn’t call him so much dastardly as a world-class crackpot,” he finished. “Indeed, I should have been surprised if you hadn’t fallen in love with her.”
Amelie marched down the hall toward a familiar whooshing sound coming from the breakfast room. It was eight o’clock in the morning, and she’d been up two hours preparing what she would say. Because she knew that at the first opportunity, Bernard would tell Fanny about seeing her and Hayden at the river’s edge. He would doubtless consider it his “duty.” She needed to prepare her response to Fanny’s hearing of this news.
And Fanny, being Fanny, and therefore overly cautious of intense emotion and mistrustful of spontaneous attachments, would object and caution and fret and stew and perhaps even turn Hayden away. Which wouldn’t do a thing to dampen Amelie’s love or keep her from seeing him, but would cast a pall over her romance. It was time Fanny abdicated her role as teacher and caretaker, and assumed one of friend. In Amelie’s mind, they were peers, no longer pupil and instructor.
Bolstered by these thoughts, Amelie opened the door to the breakfast room to the sight of Fanny taking practice swings with her golf club, her head bent over an imaginary ball. She was humming.
“Fanny,” she said firmly and without prelude, “we need to talk.”
Fanny didn’t look up. “Must we?” she murmured.
“Yes. About the night before last.”
Fanny blushed.
What did Fanny have to blush about? Unless… Could Fanny have witnessed the precise five seconds (after hours of reliving the event, Amelie had determined that it had lasted exactly five seconds, no more, no less) when Hayden had held his lips to hers? Heavens, how embarrassing! Heat welled up into her cheeks.
“I’m sorry if you are shocked, Fanny,” she said, “but I feel no remorse, nor can anything you say induce me to regret one second of those lovely five seconds, and they were lovely, Fanny. Truly.”
“Five seconds?” Fanny raised her head from scrutinizing her imaginary golf ball. “What five seconds?”
Ah! Fanny hadn’t seen The Kiss. “Never mind. I have something important to tell you.”
“By all means, proceed,” Fanny said, returning to her phantom golf shot.
“Fanny, I am in love wi
th Lord Hayden Collier.”
Fanny swung through, barely brushing the thick pile of the oriental carpet beneath her, her head lifting to follow her shot and her gaze fixed on an imaginary ball flying over an imaginary lawn. “I see.”
She reset her golf club’s head on the carpet, adjusted her stance, and was about to take another swing when Amelie said, “‘I see’? That’s all you have to say about— Would you please stop swinging that golf club? This is important.”
Fanny straightened and leaned nonchalantly on her club like a dandy on his walking stick.
“You must have some opinion,” Amelie said plaintively. She’d expected Fanny to raise objections, to caution against hasty attachments, at the very least to question the legitimacy of a love formed in the course of one short evening. Had their roles been reversed, she certainly would have.
“Well, Amelie,” Fanny said mildly, “you’re a healthy young woman. He’s a very comely young man, and he has that knight-in-silver-armor effect working for him, doesn’t he? Quite dashing, and a bit of a young blade if I read him correctly. If I were of a romantic disposition, I might have fallen in love with him myself.”
“You misunderstand me. Grey. I am not only in love with Miss Chase. I love her. Truly,” Hayden said somberly.
“But,” Grey said slowly, his attention finally engaged, his left eyebrow arched, “you haven’t said as much to her?”
“Of course I have.”
“You think I’m just a child, Fanny, but you are wrong,” Amelie said forcefully. “I love Hayden and he loves me. And should he ask me to elope, I would do so in an instant, even knowing that I risked my inheritance.”
“What?”
Chapter 20
Grey pounded on Quod Lamia’s front door. Beside him Hayden beamed like a coal miner’s lantern. Hayden caught his eye, and Grey manufactured a weak smile. Damn Collier for allowing him to bring the boy here. Now he was obliged to play surrogate papa, and he was ill-equipped for the job. Besides, he was furious—at her, at Hayden, at the girl, but most of all at himself.
He’d believed Fanny Walcott had no ulterior motives in her dealings with them. Ha! He’d believed she was simply the affectionate friend of a lively young girl, concerned for Amelie’s poor heart. And while he’d been so solicitously reassuring her, Amelie had been with Hayden, inveigling him.
She must have known. Fanny’d been up and about when he’d arrived at her house. No woman got dressed in ten minutes.
She’d betrayed him. She’d led him down the garden path and he’d followed like a puppy. Like a besotted, eager, gullible puppy.
Grey banged on the heavy door again, rattling it on its hinges. Luckily, Hayden was too lost in a walking daydream to note. Poor Amelie’s heart? What of poor Hayden’s? The boy was moonstruck by the girl.
Had Grey ever imagined he’d have to pilot his nephew through the first throes of love, he would never have brought him along. But who in his right mind would expect to arrive in the hinterlands of Scotland and find an attractive, vivacious girl who liked music-hall tunes and was au courant with the latest Parisian fashion? In other words, a pretty pitfall for a like-minded young man.
He pounded savagely on the door, this time winning a surprised look from Hayden. “I think the old duffer who acts as butler might be a little hard of hearing,” he explained with feigned composure. The door swung open, revealing Violet’s grubby little face.
“You back agin? Wot is it wid you showin’ up so blinkin’ early? Not that I’m unconscious of the service you done me. But still, it ain’t even nine o’clock.”
“What is she talking about?” Hayden asked.
“Who can say?” Grey answered, before turning to Violet. “Kindly inform Mrs. Walcott and Miss Chase that we are here.”
“Are you expected?” the girl asked suspiciously.
“No, but I am sure we will be welcome,” he said, impressed at how genial he sounded, “if you would only inform Mrs. Walcott of our presence.”
“No need to shout. I’ll see,” grumped the girl. “Wait out here.” The door slammed shut on them, leaving them waiting outside.
Grey continued to smile, inwardly seething.
Hayden’s arrival here must have proved an irresistible opportunity for Fanny. Amelie Chase was, if not precisely unweddable, an undesirable match. Her childhood had been fraught with peculiar incidents that had led to an unexpected departure from London amongst rumors of witchcraft. From there, she’d spent her entire adolescence in exile to a tiny, Gothic Scottish village. No. She was hardly the ideal wife for a baron.
She was lovely, yes, and heir to a respectable estate, but that couldn’t compensate for the rest. Not amongst the elite set where she might have done her husband-hunting. And none knew this better than Fanny, who’d experienced the vagaries and closing ranks of the upper class after her husband had absconded. But then Fate—with a nudge from Grey—had dumped a viable matrimonial candidate in Fanny’s lap (and he assumed it was her plan, because he simply could not picture Amelie Chase having the cunning necessary to devise an impromptu scheme).
Collier would never stand for it. Watching his father-in-law come apart under the influence of table rappers had left him with his own strong distaste for anything supernatural.
By now Amelie would have informed Fanny that she’d extracted a vow of love from Hayden. She would be celebrating. At least the young jackanapes hadn’t offered marriage.
“I swear, Uncle, I have never felt like this before. I am an entirely new man.”
“Ah, love!” Grey ground out. Luckily, he knew his nephew like he knew, well, himself. Any hint of disapproval and Hayden would be hell-bent on securing that which was denied him. So, after his initial involuntary outburst, Grey had been careful to project nothing but congeniality. He planned to convey something entirely different to Fanny Walcott.
“Have you ever been in love?”
God, deliver him. Was he to be reduced to trading girlish confidences with his nephew?
“I’m sorry—it’s none of my business,” Hayden apologized, exhibiting the sappy hypersensitivity people who supposed themselves to be “in love” often did.
“Not at all,” Grey said. “I was just trying to recollect.”
“Then you’ve never been in love,” Hayden pronounced with the sanctimonious certainty of the love-enlightened. “Because if you had been you would never need to pause to recollect.”
“Ah! How instructive. Thank you.”
The door swung open again, and Violet reappeared. “You kin come in. Follow me. The ladies is out on the terrace taking tea. I suppose you’ll be wanting some, too?”
“That would be lovely, Violet,” Hayden said, bestowing such a dazzling smile on the girl that her grim expression dissolved under its power.
Grey grasped his nephew by the elbow and marched him past the smitten maid.
He had no trouble navigating through the cluttered hall and rooms filled with what the other day he’d perceived to be nothing but toys and indulgences. Today he saw them as the attempts of an intelligent and inquisitive mind to reach out and connect to a world beyond her prison.
Grey frowned. What else would you call a place you could not leave? What must it be like for an intelligent, agile-minded individual to be stuck here, knowing the world was transforming daily with advancements and new discoveries and that she could not be part of it? He had to admire the efforts she had gone to in order to stimulate her charge’s mind and bring what she could of the world to Little Firkin.
Yes, fine. The woman was not entirely without merit, but that did not excuse her from attempting to ensnare Hayden for her charge.
They exited through a set of French doors that led onto a stone-lined terrace directly below a second-story balcony. Grey looked around. The terrace had been as carefully staged as any fakir’s parlor, and very prettily done, too. Flowering chestnut trees spilled their petals onto the flagstones, and urns teeming with sweet peas and carnations lined the edge
s of the terrace. A wrought-iron table situated at the edge of the terrace overlooked a meadow beyond, its lace tablecloth billowing gently in the mild air.
But the pièce de résistance of the pretty vignette was sitting gracefully upright on a small, wrought-iron chair in profile to him, calmly sipping tea from a china cup, her face shaded by the brim of the most enormous hat he had ever seen. The straw confection of pale ribbons and mounds of brilliantly colored silk flowers sat at a pert angle atop hair piled into the most glorious disarray of black curls he’d even seen. Adding to the remarkable and unexpected allure of the thing, a single fluttering ribbon swept down off of the broad brim, brushing her cheek.
A snug, figure-revealing sheath of white lace eyelet covered her from neck to toe. She was utterly feminine, lovely, ravishing.
His eyes narrowed and he mentally rubbed his hands. She’d donned battle gear. En garde.
“What is that on your head? It looks like you ran amok in your greenhouse,” he said, striding forward.
She slowly turned toward him, lifting one dark, winged brow in his direction. “Ah, Lord Sheffield.”
Her gaze climbed his form with the negligible interest of the casual buyer. “Gracious as usual, I see,” she murmured softly. “This is a hat. It is au courant in Paris. Not that I would expect you to know that.”
“It”—he paused—“is strangely becoming.” He took a seat, crossing his legs. “Indeed, most captivating.”
Her eyes widened in confusion at his compliment. She wasn’t alone. That hadn’t been what he’d meant to say. From a nearby flowering tree, birds began to warble, adding their melodic charm to the scene.
He recollected himself. He was not here to pay this woman compliments. “I expect you know why I am here?”
“To thank us for dinner the other night?” she asked sweetly. “I’m afraid I didn’t receive your note.”
He blinked, caught off guard.
“No?” she said. “Well, then as this is not a courtesy call, why are you here?”
So Enchanting Page 17