by Edith Layton
Both gentlemen had avoided her since yesterday, although whenever they saw her grandmother they were all smiles and gallantry. It wasn’t as if they were rude to her, Pippa thought. They just made themselves least in sight when they spied her. She didn’t blame them. What sort of female went from home looking for her lost fiancé, and then ended up in another fellow’s arms? Certainly, the marquis didn’t understand her. But then, neither did she, not anymore.
“We’ll go for a short walk,” Pippa told her maid. “If you get tired, let me know.”
Anne giggled. “Thank you, but I’m from the county, miss, same as you. Not likely to get tired on a walk, are we?”
“No,” Pippa agreed. “So. Now the question is, do we go left or right?”
She startled as she felt a sudden blast of warm air on her cheek and a snorting sound, as a pleasant male voice asked, “How about straight down the middle?”
She wheeled around and looked up. A huge gray horse stood at her side and looked at her with interest. Lord Montrose sat atop it and was smiling down at her as he held the horse still. He wore gray and black, and a high beaver hat sat at a cocky tilt on his dark head. He looked immaculate, as ever, at ease and amused, as always. Her breathing sped up, then slowed as she succeeded in concealing the sudden jolt of joy she felt at seeing him so unexpectedly.
“I’ve taken this fellow out for a run,” he said, patting the horse. “Now, the least I can do is the same for you.”
Her head went up, her nostrils flared. “I don’t need a run, thank you,” she said, smoothing her gloves for something to do instead of gaping at him.
He sketched a bow from the saddle. “Excuse me. Badly put. I meant to say, would you care to come for a ride with me?”
“I’m not dressed for riding as you can see,” she said briskly.
“But you are,” he said. “Not for riding a horse, of course; but perfectly for riding in a phaeton. There’s one in the hotel’s stable ready to be out and around the town, with room for you and me and your maid. I can show you Brighton and tell you its secrets before the noonday sun rouses your grandmother from her bed. Care to go with me?”
It was an irresistible offer for too many reasons for Pippa to consider just now. She nodded. “That would be useful. I’d like that, yes. I know nothing about Brighton and am not likely to be here again.”
“So stay here,” he said. “Let me return this nag. I’ll be back with the carriage and we’ll be off.”
Pippa stood waiting. The sun rose higher. It began to seem like a long time, but she couldn’t be sure because she was so eager to be off. Still, as time went on, she became afraid he’d been making a jest of her. She’d wait, she vowed, just a little longer, and then stride off with her maid. He could catch up with her later, if indeed, he’d even meant there to be a “later” for them.
She was about to step off when a jaunty yellow high phaeton with blue trim rounded the corner with Montrose at the reins. A young tiger, a boy to hold the horse for his lordship when he stopped, was perched on the back axle. The phaeton had two seats, and the boy helped the maid clamber in the back as Lord Montrose extended a hand to Pippa so she could climb onto the driver’s seat with him.
She settled herself and looked at him quizzically. He still wore a dark jacket, but it was a different one, and his hair was obviously damp now, beneath a different high beaver hat.
“I washed and changed,” he said in explanation to her curious look. “Hurriedly to be sure, but thoroughly. I love to ride, but will not put up with smelling like a horse.”
“And so that’s why you’re late?” she asked.
He smiled. “Wouldn’t you rather I be a jot late and smelling like a rose…or rather, a lavender bush?”
She blinked.
“Of course,” he went on, as he picked up the reins, “Bonaparte prefers violets, and wears Seven-Eleven, while our Prince enjoys something sweeter and muskier, but one’s scent is not political, or shouldn’t be, don’t you think?”
He was, she realized, no matter his preference for kisses from females, still a consummate fop. And she oughtn’t to forget it for a moment. Curiously, it both calmed and disappointed her.
“You smell like spring rain,” he went on, “with a touch of lilac. Or is the wind blowing from the direction of those magnificent lilacs there by the corner house?”
“I don’t remember what I bathed with this morning, or put on after,” she snapped. This wasn’t true. She used fine French lilac soap, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing it. He knew too much already. Or did he? She’d had little time to talk with him recently; first, because she’d felt so shy with him after that kiss, and then because they’d never been alone after that until now.
“Have you had any communications with anyone who saw Noel?” she asked now, because her maid was too far back to hear what they said over the sounds of the horse and carriage coursing over the cobbles.
He laughed. “So soon? No, not even I’m that efficient. But I’ve sent out my card to everyone who matters so I’ve hopes of going on polite visits and hearing something new soon enough.”
“Can you think of any reason why he’d have gone to Brighton in particular?” she asked anxiously. “You never really said. I know grandmother and I have followed you like ducklings, but why exactly are we here?”
“Because you wouldn’t go home,” he said pleasantly.
Her smile was tight. “That’s not what I meant and you know it,” she said.
He shrugged.
“Then, I’ll ask a simpler question that won’t bore you. Why did my grandfather recommend you?” she asked.
“I’m never bored with you,” he said. “That’s part of the problem. But good,” he added, slanting a dark glance at her. “Why didn’t you ask that days ago?”
She was still for a moment. “I’m used to following my grandfather’s instructions, I suppose. Now I think I ought not to have gone off so blindly. Why did he send us to you?”
“Your grandfather didn’t ask me. He knew better. I fact, he asked me nothing.”
She sat up straight, her eyes wide.
“He couldn’t,” Maxwell said, “I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting him. Don’t look so shocked. And don’t leap out of the carriage. He asked a mutual friend to recommend someone. I am that someone. And yes, I’ve tracked down missing persons before. The difference is that this time the missing person doesn’t want to be found. Or so I’m coming to believe. Can you think of any reason for that?”
She shook her head. “None. I told you, he was eager to marry me. When he said he had some matters to take care of before we could marry, I never doubted him.”
“Did you love him that much?”
She looked down. “I think I told you that too. I don’t know. Not anymore.”
“Abandonment can harden the heart,” he said blandly.
“Well, it’s that, and that I began to realize I’d been alone too long when I met him. I mean, not exposed to eligible gentlemen. So who knows how I might have felt had I more suitors? That’s as may be. I have to know, why would Noel come to Brighton?…if he did.”
“Why would he go to Bath?” he asked as answer. “Those people I spoke with lead me to believe he did both. Brighton is the closest city to Dieppe, across the channel. Had he relatives or friends in France?”
“You should have asked that before,” she answered testily.
He smiled. “Good parry. So I should have, and so I did. I merely didn’t ask you because I thought he never told you the truth about himself.”
“Well, he mightn’t have, I suppose, but he never mentioned any desire to leave England or any relatives”—her voice dwindled—“anywhere.”
They drove on in silence for a few minutes. The sea breeze couldn’t dispel the growing warmth of the day. Pippa removed her hat, raised her head, closed her eyes, and let the light breeze play with her hair. She thought he might be looking at her, and was glad her eyes were closed. He
was maddeningly attractive, even though she’d never fancied such a man of Fashion before. She’d never met one before, actually. It might have been the fact that all the things he considered essential to his wardrobe, all the airs and graces he affected were so exquisite and fine that they seemed feminine, and because that aspect of him conflicted so strongly with the powerful masculine appeal that emanated from the man.
“Won’t your nose turn pink?” Maxwell asked, cutting into her reverie.
She smiled. Of course a fop would think of that. But she reveled in the way the wind teased at her hair so that it slid from its restraints and grazed her cheeks as silken streamers. And the sunlight on her face felt like a caress. “Powder can conceal it,” she murmured as she stared into the scarlet patterns the sunlight made on her inner eyelids. “Or a concoction of crushed cucumber might do it. I really don’t care. I’ve had much more powder and facial cream than sunshine lately.”
He chuckled. Or clucked his tongue at her, or the horse. She didn’t care. But soon she lowered her head and looked sidewise at him again.
“My lord?” she said so softly he had to incline his head toward her.
“That…incident, the other night,” she went on, avoiding his eyes, “was very wrong on my part, as well as yours.”
He sighed.
“I know,” she said. “We’ve discussed it, but I can’t stop regretting it. I should have known better. I ask again, can we disregard it?”
“I don’t regret it,” he said. “Rather the reverse. But if you like, we can resolve not to repeat it. It doesn’t make me think less of you, by the by. In fact, had you not succumbed to my attentions, I’d think less of you. At least, I would think you weren’t precisely human.”
Her eyes snapped open and she sat up upright again. “Well, if that doesn’t beat all! You think you’re that irresistible?”
“No,” he said, considering. “I know it.”
They fell silent. The next time they spoke was when he pointed out a crew of laborers swarming around a huge domed building by the sea. “There,” he said, “is our prince’s monstrous big erection. Or part of it.”
“My grandmother,” she said through gritted teeth, “is not herself these days. Or rather, if she is, it’s a self I don’t know. But though that might have been said in her youth, deep down she knew it wouldn’t be taken the same way today and was moreover outrageous, and she said it for that reason.”
“I know,” he said more gently. “Is her condition worsening?”
“I don’t know,” Pippa admitted. “I never saw her like this before. She’s happy and healthy, but bawdy and irrepressible.”
“She may only be enjoying masculine attentions after so long without them. Your grandfather may have been enchanted and attracted by her liveliness when she was young, but I take it he keeps to himself most of the time these days?”
“Yes, to his books and researches and his visitors,” Pippa said.
“And as to why your fiancé visited with him?”
“They spoke politics. Noel was researching a paper he wanted to write for the Gentleman’s Magazine. Grandfather is a known scholar. They both were fascinated by Bonaparte.”
Nothing in Maxwell’s expression changed but she got the feeling he was intensely interested.
“In what way?”
“Grandfather said that when a great man arises, he stirs other men to greatness too, and the world becomes a more interesting place.”
“More interesting, and more lethal in this case. Was your grandfather an admirer of Napoleon? Was Noel? Don’t look so shocked, many loyal Englishmen do admire him.”
“No, in fact, the reverse,” she said. “Noel thought he was a great evil, and Grandfather said he was like Alexander the Great or Attila the Hun in that his greatness lay in his ability to change the world, not in his honorable intentions.”
“Bonaparte’s only intentions are to better himself,” Maxwell said, turning his attention back to the road. “When the world is in chaos men turn to leaders. Some are born to lead but have the bad luck to be born in peaceful times. The little general was born lucky.”
She shivered. “I hope we are not that lucky on this side of the channel.”
She gasped as they rounded a curve in the road and she saw a long building topped with glittering golden domes and copulas. “That is beautiful,” she said. “I see why they…called it as they did.”
“It is large,” Maxwell agreed. “And rather shocking, to be sure. But that’s not where our prince lives. It’s his new stables.”
“Oh,” she said sadly. “Then I can see why he’s mocked. It’s something out of an Arabian tale, beautiful, but quite out of place here in England. He built it for horses? With poverty being so widespread? No wonder there are those who think Bonaparte’s the better man. I don’t know if he actually helps the poor in France, but at least he says he will.”
“They already helped themselves. He feeds their greedy intentions. But surely you know females aren’t supposed to be interested in politics,” he commented.
She lifted her nose, and tried to stare down its inconsiderable length at him. “That,” she said, “is something I was lucky enough not to be taught. My grandfather admires wit and brain in a woman.” She paused and looked down at her gloves. “My grandmother had that.”
“And still does,” Maxwell said. “I tell you what, my dear,” he added, adopting his bored, amused tones again. “I’ve an invitation to a soiree at our prince’s incomplete pavilion. I do enjoy a good party, but it will also be in the nature of work for me. It’s a fine place to hear gossip, since our prince is here. Should you like to come with me? With your grandmother too, of course, and Whitney. There should be no scandal about an engaged lady going out for an evening with her grandmother and a few of her grandmother’s frivolous escorts. Everyone who comes to Brighton longs to be asked to see the latest treasures being installed in the Pavilion.”
“I’d like that,” she said eagerly. “Will I have a chance to meet him?”
“Our prince? Of course.”
“I’d like that very much,” she said. “So will Grandmother. Wait until Grandfather hears about it!”
“They are your sun and moon, aren’t they?” he asked curiously.
She nodded.
“Then why were you so eager to leave them?”
She held up her head. The sunlight glinted off her hair, making it shine as brightly as the domes they were driving past. “I’m four and twenty now. Noel made me realize time was passing,” she said. “And that I hadn’t yet lived for myself.”
He nodded, and abruptly changed the subject. “Now would you like to see the bathing machines by the sea? Should you like to get out and walk on the strand by the sea for a bit as well?”
“I would,” she said, plopping her bonnet on her head again and hurriedly tying its strings. “That would be wonderful.”
“It would be a way of living for yourself,” he said, “without the encumbrance of a fiancé.”
She sobered. She looked at him and her expression was such that the humor in his dark, knowing eyes faded. She thought that he must have forgotten their incident in the night. Nothing in his eyes or his affect showed sensual awareness of her. He must have been testing her or himself that night. Whatever had spurred his desire for her, it was gone now. Well and good she thought, with disappointment she steadfastly ignored, she could speak to him honestly without that tug of attraction cluttering up her mind.
“I’m not encumbered now, true,” she said. “This whole journey was to find out why. But now I see there’s more to it than that and more to life than I knew. Noel awakened me. When he left and didn’t return I was crushed and felt outcast and shamed. Now I’m grateful, whatever reasons he had. Now I want to see it all for myself.”
“But a female isn’t free in our world if she has no husband,” he said. “So you yourself said.”
“I was wrong,” she retorted. “Just look at me. I am free. Maybe
it’s better to be a disgraced lady than an obedient one. How much scandal can one female bear? I think that if it doesn’t bother her, there’s no limit. If I am whispered about when I did nothing wrong, then there’s little else I can do that’s worse, I think. And since I was only disgraced because someone else acted badly I begin to wonder what exactly is good and bad, and if it matters at all, at least to me.”
“I didn’t mean to start a revolution,” he said with a wry smile. “I begin to think that you ought never to have come to Brighton at all.”
“Revolutions are caused by unhappiness and desperation,” she said, staring straight ahead. “That’s what Grandfather says. And I was suffering from both.”
“And now?” he asked quizzically.
“And now,” she said with defiance, “we shall see, shall we?”
“So,” he said, “we shall. But remember, your time is limited. This is all to pass that time until we can find out what happened to your errant fiancé. And when we do, no matter what you decide, whether you take him up or toss him away, you can’t go capering off all over the world by yourself again.”
She turned to him and smiled. “Why not? Who can say? I’ve only just begun.”
Chapter 8
After much thought and trying on and casting off, Pippa finally decided on a dark blue gown with a filmy silver overskirt to match the colors of the moonlight shadows. Her hair was sleeked and pulled tight to a tumble of curls high on the back of her head. A single strand pearl necklace glowed at her throat. She stared into the looking glass and felt she lacked something. She had little color herself, her lips were pink, her hair light. The effect was elegant, she hoped, and she couldn’t find a fault in her complexion or attire. But she thought she looked perhaps a bit too subtle for such a night of magnificence.