Improper Ladies: The Golden FeatherThe Rules of Love

by Amanda McCabe

  And he could not wait until he saw her again.

  He caught up his hat and walking stick, and ran down the stairs to where his manservant waited with the phaeton.

  “Lord Morley is calling for Mrs. Chase, Your Grace,” the Waylands’s butler announced.

  “Thank you,” Georgina said, and calmly turned the page of her book.

  Rosalind, though, felt no such serenity. She dropped the embroidery she had not really been working on and leaped to her feet. Surely he was early! This could not yet be time for their drive.

  She glanced wildly to the clock on the fireplace mantel. It was indeed the scheduled time for their outing, and she had no opportunity to go upstairs and change her gown again.

  Her hands flew to her hair, which Georgina’s lady’s maid had arranged in a stylish tumble of curls. “Perhaps I should ...” she began.

  “No, Rosie!” Georgina interrupted sternly. “Your hair looks lovely. You mustn’t change it.” She put aside her book, and came to draw Rosalind’s hands down before she could ruin the coiffure. “You look lovely, and you are going to have a splendid time this afternoon.”

  Rosalind left off with her hair, and plucked at the lace trim on the sleeves of her mulberry-colored carriage dress. “Will I?”

  “Yes,” Georgina said firmly. “You will drive in the park, and forget all about your book and your silly brother. What is wrong with you, Rosie? I have never seen you so—so fidgety before.”

  Rosalind did not know what was wrong with her.

  There was no time to figure it out, though, for the butler was ushering Lord Morley—Michael—into the drawing room.

  The park was not yet crowded, it being too early to be truly fashionable. The green spaces were mostly peopled by children with their watchful nannies, footmen walking pampered dogs, and couples who wanted a modicum of privacy.

  Just like Lord Morley and herself, Rosalind realized with a start of surprise. She had never thought to find herself seeking a quiet corner with a handsome young man, just as she had never imagined driving through a London park in a dashing phaeton, wearing a fashionable bonnet. The unlikelihood of this whole scenario happening to her made her laugh aloud.

  Michael turned to her, one brow raised inquiringly. “Something amusing, Mrs. Chase?”

  “Oh, yes,” Rosalind answered. She felt oddly giddy, despite what she had to tell him today. These few moments in the springtime sunlight were unlike any she had ever known before or was likely to know again. All too soon, it would be vanished, like a sweetly remembered dream, and she would be back in her office at the Seminary wearing her caps and planning the new term. There was precious little romance there, amid all her cherished safety.

  She should enjoy these moments while she had them, and come away knowing she had been honest with him. Honest about some things—she would tell him about A Lady’s Rules and perhaps even her troubles over Allen and his loans. After all, he had truly proven to be a help with her brother, and seemed to have given up his utter hostility to the rules. But she would never, could never, tell him of her new feelings for him. Her desire to look foolish only went so far.

  “This whole afternoon, no, this whole time in Town, has been amusing,” she said. “It has all been so very unexpected. I will have something to remember when I return to the Seminary.”

  “Must you return there very soon?” he asked. He drew up the phaeton at the edge of a small pond, where they could watch ducks paddling by and children playing with their toy boats.

  Rosalind sighed, both at the loveliness of the scene and knowledge of how quickly she would have to leave it. “Yes, quite soon. The new term will be starting, and I have to make sure all will be in preparation when the girls return.”

  “Violet will miss you very much,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  She dared not look at him, not directly. She feared all her emotions could be seen in her eyes. So she watched his gloved hand as he wrapped the reins about it. “But I will see her very soon, surely. Unless your father decides to end her enrollment. I do think ...” She broke off, unable to say more.

  Michael’s free hand reached out suddenly to touch her arm. His clasp was warm through the muslin of her sleeve. Rosalind stared up at him, startled.

  “You care about my sister, do you not, Mrs. Chase?” he said.

  “Of course I do. Lady Violet has such a sweetness about her, I do not see how anyone could not care about her,” Rosalind said. She did not tell him of the baby she had once lost, early in her marriage, and how she sometimes fancied that, had the child been a girl, she would have been a bit like Violet. Kind-hearted, sunny, pretty. That would sound too silly and sentimental, if said aloud. It was a secret of her own heart—one of many.

  His hand slid away from her arm, and she found she missed his reassuring warmth. “Then Violet will be fine. She admires you so very much. I hope you will always stand as her friend, once she has left your school.”

  That seemed to be a sign that she had to tell him now—tell him some of those secrets she held. You must begin as you mean to go on, she told herself. And she meant to go forward in honesty now. She turned to face him, and blurted out, “We are friends, are we not?”

  He seemed startled, but also very pleased. He gave her a slow smile, and said, “I hope we are. I would like so much to be your friend, Mrs. Chase, though I fear we started on the wrong foot. I behaved like a lout on that first day I came to see Violet at your school, and I fear I have not always been the greatest of gentlemen toward you since. I hope we can begin again?”

  “Exactly!” Rosalind cried in relief that he understood her—understood her thus far, anyway. She feared that anyone as liberal-minded as he was might not understand her authorship of the Rules. “And friends—true friends—are honest with one another, correct?”

  His smile dimmed a bit, but he nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then, as your friend, I must tell you something about myself.”

  Michael laughed. There seemed a strange mixture of disbelief and relief in the sound, with a tincture of light mockery that made her frown. This was a serious business! He rubbed his gloved hand along his jaw, and said, “You have dark secrets, Mrs. Chase? I can scarcely wait to hear them.”

  Rosalind turned away from him, blindly watching the people strolling along the edge of the pond. “I never said they were dark. I am not ashamed of them. They are simply the sort of matters that true friends share.”

  “Very well, then, Mrs. Chase. What are these—mat—ters? I do truly want to hear them.”

  She took a deep, steadying breath, and folded her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking—and to hold herself down, so she would not leap from the phaeton and run away. “I had a very specific reason for coming to London, you see. And it was not just to visit my friend. It—well, it had to do with you, in a way.”

  “With me?”

  “Yes. You see, Lord Morley, I wrote A Lady’s Rules for Proper Behavior, and I had heard that you were breaking them all over the place. I had to find out for myself, because ...” Rosalind broke off before she told him all about Allen’s debts and her financial woes. One confession at a time seemed quite sufficient. She closed her eyes, and waited for his reaction.

  His reaction was—silence. The other noises around them, of children laughing, water splashing, wheels grinding on the pathway, were amplified in the strange quiet.

  Slowly, uncertainly, Rosalind opened her eyes and glanced over at Michael.

  His handsome face was utterly expressionless as he stared straight ahead. Then, as she watched, he began to laugh. At first it was a strange, startled chuckle, but it quickly became a deep, rollicking guffaw. He bent over, clutching at his sides as if they ached with so much laughter. The horses shifted restlessly, and children turned to stare at them.

  Well! Rosalind thought with a huff. She turned away from him again. Here she had told the man one of her deepest secrets, and what did he do? He laughed. Laughed!

  She was not
sure what to do now. She was not much accustomed to being laughed at.

  “It is not so funny as all that,” she murmured. “Many people think I have important advice to impart.”

  She felt his touch on her arm, gentle yet insistent, and she stared down to see his dark glove against the lace of her sleeve. She did not yet dare peer up at his face, for fear of what she might see there. She did not think she could face ridicule right now. Not from him. Not when she had dared to let herself begin to feel close to him.

  “My dear Mrs. Chase—Rosalind,” he said. His voice was thick with his laughter, but there was no hint of mockery. He sounded beseeching. “Please forgive my laughter. That was unspeakably rude of me. No doubt against several rules.”

  So he was making fun of her! Rosalind tried to shrug off his hand, but his clasp was too strong. “Really, Lord Morley ...”

  “No, no, I am sorry. It is just that I feel so foolish for not guessing this before. It all makes such perfect sense.”

  Rosalind relented just a bit, ceasing her struggle to pull away. “What does?”

  “How very proper you are, how insistent on following the rules. How you make certain every girl at your school has a copy of the book and learns to follow them, as well.”

  “I do not make the girls read the book simply because I wrote it. It is very important that they follow rules for proper behavior in Society, so that nothing ill befalls them because of their youth and inexperience. There are many unscrupulous young men who would take advantage of that.”

  “I know that you believe all that, Rosalind, and I admire you for it. Even a pagan like myself should behave properly, eh?” His hand slid down her arm to her fingers, which he lifted to his lips for a lingering kiss.

  Rosalind shivered at the warm-cold sensations of that kiss, at the prickles of delight that went down to her very toes. He was indeed a pagan, a veritable Dionysus who tempted her to fall to his depths, to take off her shoes and run through the warm grass. To lie back in the golden glow of the sun and bask in kisses ...

  No! She could not think such things. Not right now. She removed her hand from his clasp, and placed it back on her lap. “Even pagans must behave with civility now and then, Lord Morley. Perhaps I will convert you yet.”

  “Before I can convert you?” He leaned closer, and whispered warmly in her ear, “Neither of us were thinking of the rules last night on that terrace, were we?”

  Rosalind felt a flood of red heat spread from her cheeks, down her neck into her very soul. That was verily the truth. The rules had been the very last thing she was thinking of last night. All she had been thinking of was him, his taste, his feel.

  “A gentleman would not bring up such a thing,” she whispered back. She felt like such a ninny saying a prissy thing like that, but it was all she could think of. Her mind could not recall such mundane things as words and string them together in ways that made sense.

  “Ah, well. I think we have established that I am not a true gentleman.” He sat back lazily in the phaeton seat, one arm casually stretched along behind her shoulders. “But I hope I do not have an evil heart. I would never wish harm to you, Rosalind, and I apologize if my actions have hurt you in any way. Both last night, and in my dealings with your book.”

  Rosalind studied him closely. His dark eyes, usually alight with some mischief or delight, were uncharacteristically somber, his sensual lips downturned at the corners. He seemed truly sincere in his apology. “Thank you, Lord Morley.”

  “And, since you have been so very honest with me, I have a confession of my own to make.”

  A confession of his own? Rosalind felt the sudden chill of apprehension. Surely any confession of his would be far more scandalous than any of hers could be! “What is it you wish to tell me, Lord Morley?”

  “First, that you should cease to call me Lord Morley. It seems ridiculous, when we are to know each other’s deepest secrets. My name, as you well know, is Michael.”

  She nodded slowly, but in her mind she resolved to wait until after she heard his confession to decide what she would call him.

  “It is really rather funny when you think about it,” he said, with an attempt at his usual careless grin. “And it makes me feel quite foolish, like some bored schoolboy.”

  A schoolboy? That was one thing Rosalind would never think to compare him to. But now she fairly itched to know what his secret could be. She gave him what she hoped was an encouraging nod.

  “One evening, at my club, I saw your brother and two of his friends, Lord Carteret and Mr. Gilmore. I believe you know them?”

  Those two loobies. “Oh, yes. I know them.”

  “We were talking, and the conversation came around to A Lady’s Rules. Your rules.”

  “What about them?”

  “Oh, just how they are everywhere, and everyone is so very eager to follow them. You see, I fear the young men had been tossed out of a rout because of some small infraction of the rules. I stated that that did not seem like fair dealing, and someone—I believe it was Carteret—proposed a small wager. Since I had imbibed rather freely of some excellent port that evening, and was feeling rather out of sorts, I agreed.”

  A wager. Rosalind did not like the sound of that. Wagers always seemed to cause trouble, especially for her brother. She frowned down at her clenched hands. “What sort of a wager?”

  He shifted uneasily on the seat. “That some people need not follow all the rules in order to be accepted, even admired, in Society. In truth, I have no excuse for doing such a thing! I was simply tired of seeing people like Violet behaving like automatons. Yet if I had known that this was your book, I never would have spoken about it.”

  Rosalind sat in silence for a long moment, absorbing all this strange—nay, ridiculous—information. So this was why her sales had fallen, the popularity of her rules waned, because of a wager. She could scarcely believe it. “So it was quite all right to do harm to someone when you did not know whose rules they were?”

  “No!” he protested vehemently. “Of course not. I simply never considered that A Lady was a real person, with real needs associated with this book. Now I see that I was wrong about that. And I see what Lucas meant when he came to me ...

  What Allen meant! Rosalind swung around to face him. “What did Allen come to you for? What did he say? I knew he wanted to visit you before returning to school, but surely he did not tell you ...”

  Michael held up his hand, as if to fend off her rapid-fire questions. “Nothing very great, I assure you! He was simply worried about you, and feeling ashamed of himself. He came to talk to me about his returning to Cambridge. He felt sorry for causing you trouble.”

  Rosalind sank back a bit against the seat cushions. She rarely allowed her temper to get the best of her—she would not let it now, no matter how much she wanted to hit him over the head with her reticule. “Tell me exactly what you and my brother spoke of.”

  “He simply told me he had been having some—difficulties lately, and he feared their effect on you. He told me he has a few debts, and you had been worried about them.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “I simply tried to be his friend, to reassure him that these matters can be resolved, that no lives need be ruined over them. I certainly did not encourage him in running up those debts in the first place. Please believe me, Rosalind, I want only to help your brother—and you.”

  Rosalind gave him a short nod. She knew he meant no harm. They had come to know each other better in these last few days, and she knew he had no evil in his soul. But he did have mischief, and he did not realize that his very behavior, his very presence at that club, could influence young men like Allen.

  “I know that you want to help,” she conceded.

  “Allen is young, though, and impressionable. He should not be prattling about our private family business. I’m sorry he burdened you, especially when you were so very busy breaking the rules.”

  “He did not burden me!” Michael
protested. “And I told you I was sorry about the blasted rules. They don’t matter. Please, Rosalind. Let me help you, if I can. Let me make some amends for my foolish behavior.”

  Rosalind was confused and suddenly very tired. Her head was beginning to ache, with that telltale throb over her left eye. She did not know how she felt about all of this—about Michael, about all of the whirlwind changes her life had encountered in the last few days. She was used to quiet and order, not wagers and confessions and idiot kisses! She needed to be alone, to think.

  “I would like to return to Wayland House now, please,” she said.

  He opened his mouth, as if to protest, but then shook his head. His fist clenched on the reins. “Of course, Mrs. Chase. But will you at least think of what I have said? Think of forgiving me?”

  “Of course I will think about what you have said,” Rosalind answered. It was all she could say; her head ached in earnest now.

  He nodded shortly, and pulled on the reins to guide the horses out of their shady shelter back into the bright light of day.

  That had not gone as badly as he feared it might, Michael thought, as he steered the phaeton back onto the pathway. Yet neither had it gone all that well.

  Rosalind was the most difficult woman he had ever met. Most ladies let him know, through means both subtle and decidedly not so, that they either appreciated his interest or just wished he would go away. With Rosalind, he was never sure. She was always so very still, so serene, so blasted polite. But sometimes her eyes would flash at him with a brilliant light, or she would stiffen in a fury of temper all too quickly contained.

  Or she would kiss him with heated passion on a terrace.

  He had known, from the time he encountered her alone in her office, that there was much more to her than what she showed the world. Their time together in these last few days had only proven him right. She was fiercely protective of her brother, of her school and the girls who attended classes there. She was intent on being respectable and proper at all times, that was true, but there was also a yearning for life deep inside of her. He saw it in her eyes when they ate ices at Gunter’s and watched the actors at the theater. She longed for excitement, for wonder, even though she would not admit that to herself.