My Lady Nightingale

by Evelyn Richardson

  “But even a butler, no matter how good or devoted he is, cannot supply a woman’s touch.”

  “Very well, Mrs. Reigate, then.”

  “You are impossible, Christian. You know very well what I mean and it is not a housekeeper.”

  “I do. And I have experienced enough of a, er, woman’s touch, as you put it, to know that it means that I shall be required to dance attendance on her, to escort her to all the balls, soirees, routs, and musicales at which she wishes to be seen, and not to the more interesting places I wish to go, such as ...”

  “I should hope not!” Lavinia’s cheeks flushed a deep pink and her delicate brows rose in horror.

  “Such as the theater and the opera,” Christian finished smoothly.

  “Oh, you, you ... And who is to say that women do not enjoy the theater and the opera?”

  “Oh they enjoy it well enough, if there is a sufficiently large crowd to admire them, but they would rather be at a ball where they can hear all the compliments from their admirers without interruption from the actors and actresses or the singers.”

  “You are as dreadful as ever. Not all women are like that. There are some serious sensible ones as well.”

  “I have yet to meet one besides you, my dear, and you know how vast my experience is.” But even as he said this Christian realized that what had been true for so many years might no longer be accurate. He just might, in fact, have encountered his first serious woman, and here in this very house. Recalling the blue eyes flashing in annoyance at his intrusion into the music room, he was not entirely successful in stifling a grin. Yes, perhaps he had actually met a serious woman after all. But even if he was mistaken, he was going to enjoy himself learning more about her. He would have to be careful, however, for even now his sister-in-law was regarding him suspiciously. “Just remembering some of my past experiences,” he explained.

  “Oooh! You are the most provoking man!”

  “There, you see, Lavvy, you should not be in such a hurry to inflict me on some poor unsuspecting female. For if you find me provoking, and you have the patience of a saint—anyone married to Albert qualifies for sainthood in my book—why no other woman would wish to have a thing to do with me.”

  The duchess was not about to let her brother-in-law escape so easily. As a self-respecting female, she knew it was her duty to make sure that such an attractive and eligible man was put in the way of single females. Certainly her husband had made it clear enough that she was responsible for finding his brother a wife who would make him settle down and take up the responsibilities he had so successfully avoided all these years. And besides, it would be so much more amusing to attend the ton events with Christian at her side. He could always be counted upon as a dancing partner while Albert loathed dancing, and Christian’s cynical commentary on the foibles and presumptions of the Upper Ten Thousand was always wickedly humorous and often enlightening.

  Yes, he would definitely make a much more satisfactory escort than her husband, who always made straight for the card room at any fashionable gathering or stood in a corner prosing on about politics with other like-minded and equally dull husbands. Now that Christian was home, Lavinia was going to enjoy the Season more than usual. “There is no escaping it, sirrah, I should be shunned by all of the most important fashionable hostesses if it were to become known that you were in town and I had not made a push to get you out and about,” she declared firmly. “We shall begin with tonight. It is Lady Boroughbridge’s rout and it is sure to be brilliant for it is so early in the Season that no one has yet tired of such things. I will not take no for an answer. Now I must run along and see to it that Cook knows we are dining in tonight before going to Lady Boroughbridge’s.

  Chapter 5

  It certainly did seem, if one were to judge by the press of carriages in front of Lady Boroughbridge’s imposing mansion in Berkeley Square, as though the entire fashionable world was beating a path to her brilliantly lit doorstep. To Christian, who was one of the throng of elegantly attired guests moving slowly upstairs to be greeted by the hostess, it felt like nothing so much as an army massing for a charge. Certainly Lavinia looked prepared to do battle. Cheeks flushed and eyes bright with anticipation, she eagerly scanned the crowd ahead of her, reconnoitering for elegant females.

  “There”—she took her brother-in-law’s arm in a firm grip— “that stately blonde ahead of us with the wreath of roses in her hair is the latest incomparable. All of London is at her feet, but I am sure there is no one as dashing as you paying court to her. She is the youngest daughter of the Earl of Rochfort.”

  “Who is one of the warmest men in the country and a fine old family. You won’t go wrong there. Her mother was a Delaville and a great heiress. She herself must have at least twenty thousand a year,” Albert supplied helpfully.

  “Ah.” Christian’s eyes swept past the blond head to a lively-looking dark-haired young matron behind her, who, turning to speak to her companion, had caught his eyes and was now surveying him speculatively under coyly lowered lashes. From what he could remember of ton functions before his sojourn on the Peninsula, it was not the young misses, but their married sisters who offered far more amusement and many more possibilities to the attentive gentleman.

  “Yes, and there is Lady Clarissa Harleston over there. This is her second Season. She took the ton by storm last year, but it is said that she is so extremely nice in her taste that not even Lord Fotheringay could convince her to accept his hand and he is a most unexceptionable young man.” Lavinia prattled on, happily unaware of the glazed look in her brother-in-law’s eyes.

  Why had he allowed himself to be dragged here? Five years away and nothing had changed. The well-bred faces looked just as bored as they had at the rout he had attended with Lavinia the night before he had sailed to Lisbon. Albert now had a touch of gray at his temples and Lavinia’s slender waist had thickened, but aside from that, they had not changed a jot. As Christian surveyed the extravagantly turbaned heads of the dowagers nodding to one another, the graying locks of their escorts carefully arranged d la Brutus or the more daring coup de vent, he surmised that the rest of their peers had undergone a similar lack of transformation.

  It was incredible to Christian, though he knew he should have expected it, that they looked as untouched by the conflict that raged across Europe as if it had never occurred, as if Bonaparte and his Continental system, his code of laws, his conquering armies, did not even exist, had never existed. He could not help wondering, as he surveyed the bejeweled crowd, what Isobel would say to it all.

  Surely her parents had attended similar parties in Paris or at Versailles. Had they been equally unconcerned about the world outside of the ballroom as the people chatting around him at the moment? In 1788 had they expected their crowd and their surroundings to remain as unchanged by 1793 as this scene was for him five years later?

  “... and I would like you to make the acquaintance of...” Lavinia’s voice in his ear broke into Christian’s reverie.

  “I beg your pardon, I was not... I did not hear you and ...”

  “You were not attending.” A dimple hovered at the corner of Lavinia’s mouth. “I could see that you were somewhere else entirely so I thought I had better bring you back to the moment before you were presented to our hostess.”

  By now they were close enough to see the plumes in Lady Boroughbridge’s headdress nodding as she greeted her guests. “And this is the hero returned triumphant,” their hostess exclaimed theatrically when they had drawn close enough for her ladyship’s slightly protuberant blue eyes to sweep appreciatively over Christian’s well-knit frame, imposing in its severely cut coat and satin knee breeches. The simply tied cravat did not begin to compare with the ornate arrangements and absurdly high points of the dandy who had just been dismissed by Lady Boroughbridge, but the contrast between the linen and the deeply tanned skin was all the more striking for the simplicity of his attire. “I vow I do not abhor Boney so much if it means it produces
men such as these.” Lady Boroughbridge fluttered her charcoal-darkened eyelashes at Christian as she extended a plump hand. “Lavinia, I had no idea that your brother-in-law was so well... I mean I had not seen him in such an age. He is nothing like Albert who... ahem, tell me, sir, are you not overjoyed to exchange camp life for the ballrooms of London?”

  “But how could such a lovely lady even pose such a question?” Christian countered, suavely bending over a gloved hand so heavily covered with rings that it was a wonder she was able to lift it.

  “He has not been away at the wars so long that he has forgotten how to charm a lady. It pains me to let such a gallant gentleman out of my sight, but you had best take him along, Lavinia, as there are scores of young ladies simply dying to welcome a poor soldier back to his native land.” With a knowing wink and a chuckle, Lady Boroughbridge retrieved her hand and waved them toward the ballroom.

  “There, you see, I told you that you would be all the rage. Albert, you need not glower so; naturally everyone is delighted to have your brother back where he belongs. Now run along to the card room for I simply will not have you standing around looking uncomfortable when I know you would much rather be playing cards and I would much rather be dancing with Christian. My feet are a good deal safer with him as my partner than with you.”

  “He is a dear to come with us,” she whispered in Christian’s ear as Albert, sighing with relief, turned toward the card room, “but he is miserable at these things. He simply cannot move to the music and stomps around like a great ungainly bear. One must be exceedingly nimble to avoid being trod upon and my friends simply dread his asking them to dance. It is a great deal better for everyone if he joins his cronies in the card room and settles down to a comfortable game of whist. Now, let me see, to whom do I particularly wish to introduce you? Ah, there is Lady Meldon and her daughter Amelia. I expect that Meldon has already fled to the card room. Albert says he is a very fine whist player and related to all the best families. His sister is the Countess of Halford and there have been Meldons at Meldon Hall since before the Conqueror.”

  Lavinia urged Christian forward within earshot of a hatchet-faced woman in a purple turban who was expounding emphatically to a shy-looking young woman with a wreath of pink roses in her dark curls. “My dear Lady Meldon, how delightful to see you here and, Amelia, how charming you look. How fortunate that we should find you in such a crush for I am longing to present my brother-in-law, Lord Christian Hatherleigh, to you. Perhaps you recall that I once mentioned to you that he has been away fighting in the Peninsula.

  Christian barely had a chance to establish the color of the young lady’s eyes, which were hastily lowered as she gulped and nodded at him, but her mother had no such qualms. He found himself subject to a steely stare before she nodded abruptly. “Very well, you may lead Amelia to the floor in the quadrille.”

  He did not know whether to feel flattered or insulted. Was being a veteran of the Peninsula or brother-in-law to Lavinia enough of a recommendation that someone would hand over her daughter to him without even bothering to ask if he wanted that daughter, or without conversing with him enough to assure herself of his suitability? However, there was no mistaking the tone of command in her voice. Bowing dutifully, he meekly offered his arm to Amelia and led her to the dance floor.

  Apparently none of the Meldons had any conversation, for Amelia said nothing during the entire set. And while it was true that the quadrille did not lend itself to discourse, Amelia did not even have the temerity to mention the weather; in fact, she never truly did look him in the eye. The only indication that she was aware of Christian’s presence at all was the flush that rose in her cheeks every time the dance brought them together. With a dragon for a mother, she was entitled to a certain amount of reticence, but when Christian’s perfectly unexceptionable attempts at eliciting some response from her failed to win more than a nod, he gave up and finished the set in silence.

  After such an experience with Amelia, he might have been pardoned for wondering if five years away from polite society had turned him into such a boor that no gently brought-up young woman would have anything to do with him. This notion, however, was quickly dispelled by his next partner.

  Lady Selina Atwood, youngest daughter of one of Albert’s rabid Tory acquaintances from Parliament, was thoroughly enjoying her first Season. “For at last Papa has allowed me to come to town. I truly thought that I should go mad if he did not, for there is absolutely nothing to do in the country, especially when everybody who is anybody is come to town, and how he could expect me to contract any sort of eligible alliance, buried as I was in the wilds of Oxfordshire, I have no idea. He was of the mind that I had no need of a Season, that he would choose a husband for me without my ever having to leave Atwood Park. Have you ever heard of anything so perfectly Gothic? But Mama would have none of it. ‘Just because Maria married someone she has known this age in Oxfordshire does not mean that Selina will do the same,’ she told Papa. And she was entirely in the right of it. Why I would no more be the wife of a rustic like John than I would ride a cow, ha, ha. No, I want a proper Season with proper gentlemen paying court to me in the proper way.”

  At last she stopped to draw a breath and Christian, who was beginning to worry that she might continue until she turned blue in the face, would have been relieved except for the alarmingly coquettish glance she directed at him. He felt like nothing so much as a poor rabbit transfixed by a predator’s glare.

  It was with a great sense of having escaped a fate worse than any that had awaited him on any battlefield that he restored Lady Selina to her mama, and he was just beginning to congratulate himself on this when a silvery voice at his shoulder promptly dispelled any hopes he might have had for a few moments of peaceful reflection.

  “Christian, how positively thrilling to see you! I had no notion you were in London. Naughty man! How long have you been here without telling me?”

  He turned to look into the laughing eyes of Lady Jersey. “Sally! Had I known you were that desperate for the sight of me, I should have stopped at Osterly en route from Plymouth before calling in Grosvenor Square.”

  “Silly man. Now you are being absurd.” She tapped him lightly on the shoulder with her fan. “But you may waltz with me by way of an apology.”

  There was no lack of conversation here either, but it was far wittier than Lady Selina’s and Sally soon won a reluctant chuckle from him with her wicked description of Lady Meldon. “What you have done to win that harridan’s approval, I cannot fathom, for she is so high in the instep that she almost dares to give me the cut direct when I approach her. My guess is that the browbeaten Amelia is so cowed in spirit that even those men who are looking for a biddable girl as a wife are scared off. Lady Meldon must be desperate if she is considering a younger son; either that, or your brother must be beating Meldon regularly at cards. But as far as the girl goes, la, one might as well be married to a corpse—a very rich corpse to be sure, but a corpse, nevertheless. We must find you someone more lively.”

  “But perhaps I do not wish for a wife, biddable or otherwise,” Christian protested when at last he was allowed to get a word in.

  “Of course you want a wife! One cannot really begin to enjoy oneself until one is married, you know.” She smiled meaningfully at him and rubbed the thumb of the hand that was resting on his shoulder back and forth. It was the most discreet of caresses, but nonetheless it was provocative in the extreme for the very public nature of it and Christian was left with no doubt in his mind that the lady wanted him.

  “A wife would keep you safe to enjoy yourself without having to worry about being caught in the parson’s mousetrap.”

  “A fear that would be entirely justified since the scene you are imagining would presuppose that I was already caught in it.”

  “Well, yes, you would be, but if you were to choose for your wife a young woman who had no particular interest in you except as an excellent match, a young woman who had her own ah, er, inte
rests, shall we say, then you should not truly be caught in the parson’s mousetrap as much as you would be freed to do whatever you like.” Again, there was the slight but unmistakable pressure of her thumb. “And with whomever,” she finished huskily.

  Fortunately, for Christian’s peace of mind, his partner caught sight of Lady Clarissa Harleston dancing with Lord Eldridge at that particular moment and her attention was instantly diverted. “Why I do believe that this is the second time she has stood up with Eldridge, and it is a waltz at that. I wonder if they are to make a match of it. He is older than her father, how very intrigant.”

  By the time Christian rejoined Lavinia, who had also been whirling around the room on the arm of her cousin Lord Stratford, he was desperate for a moment’s peace and seeing her flushed cheeks, he offered to fetch her a glass of ratafia. She accepted gracefully, allowing herself to be escorted to a chair by the pillars at one end of the ballroom while her brother-in-law went in search of refreshment.

  When he returned she took the glass and sipped it eagerly. “Why thank you, Christian. How lovely it is to be so pampered. You will make someone ...”

  “I warn you, Lavvy, if you refer to me once again in terms of the matrimonial state, I shall most assuredly do you a mischief.”

  Instantly she looked so contrite that he could not help laughing. “Perhaps I shall not go to such an extreme, but as everyone else in this room is bent on doing the same thing that you are, I do rather feel like a fox run to earth or a pig at the market. Let us talk of something else—your daughters, for example. Sophia and Augusta have grown prodigiously. I know that it is five years since I last set eyes on them, but still I was not prepared for them to be such young ladies. Certainly I would not have recognized the grass-stained hoydens who were forever climbing trees in the two young misses who welcomed me to London and offered me refreshment in the most grown-up manner.”