“You should have done so when you had the opportunity. It’s too late now.”
“So true but I had not yet been born when he was still malleable. When shall I call again, dear Mother Brownlow?”
“You’re too busy to sit with an old woman. Don’t give me a thought. But the door will be open to you any time you care to call. It will do us both a great deal of good to see your pretty face around these dull lodgings, won’t it, Bret?”
“How can my lady doubt it?” he said neatly, with a bow, hand on his heart.
As Lady Roma went out of the drawing room, Lady Brownlow caught the skirt of Bret’s coat. “Don’t hurry back,” she whispered. “I’m an interfering old lady but believe I have your best interests at heart. For both of you.” She released him.
As Bret strode to the door, he felt torn between amusement and shock. His aunt couldn’t possibly mean her words to be interpreted in the first manner that occurred to him. She couldn’t possibly mean for him to make love to her late son’s affianced bride?
Glancing back over his shoulder with a half-smile, he watched as she gave him an encouraging gesture. If it had not been for the extreme good humor and ignorance with which it had been given, it would have been exceedingly vulgar. Bret was still laughing when he came out into the foyer.
Lady Roma glanced at him, a light in her eyes ready to kindle into laughter as soon as he explained the joke. But that, of course, was impossible. He wasn’t sure that he understood it himself.
Chapter Two
The parlor maid brought his overcoat. “The sun is shining, Landon, for the first time since I have come to Bath. I shall dispense with the coat.” Landon looked doubtful.
Lady Roma was speaking to a frigidly respectable and frightfully straight-backed maid. “Mr. Donovan will see me home. Please stop in to Mademoiselle Perrifleur’s and see if those things are ready.”
“I shan’t accept any of her excuses, my lady,” the maid said, while casting her eyes over Mr. Donovan in such a way that he felt his description would be given to Bow Street if ‘my lady’ so much as stubbed her toe on the journey home. “Your umbrella, my lady.”
“If Mr. Donovan can dispense with his greatcoat, Pigeon, I can do without my umbrella.”
“But...” The maid tightened her lips over her protest, obviously reluctant to show any human feeling before an inferior parlor maid and a mere man.
Clapping his tall hat on his head as he and Lady Roma emerged on the top of the steps, Bret offered his arm to the lady. “Do our duties rule out our stopping somewhere for refreshment?”
“After that sumptuous tea?” Lady Roma said quizzingly.
“The cook in that house never can bring the water to a true boil. And two digestive biscuits apiece is hardly a Lucullan orgy,” he said, enjoying the light touch of her hand in the bend of his arm.
“Please, Mr. Donovan, no Roman references. I receive enough of that at home.”
“Yes, you said something about Rome before. Your father is fond of Roman antiquities?”
“Passionately fond, sir. Thus my unfortunate name.”
“Roma?” he said, tasting it in his mouth.
“Alas, I cannot conceive of what my mother was thinking. I can only assume that she was so besotted by Father that she had no will in the matter.”
“I think it is charming.”
“You would hardly tell me otherwise, being not entirely dead to good manners.” She smiled into his eyes, still without flirtation, merely as she might smile at anyone anywhere. “But I assure you if it weren’t that all my other names are equally loathsome, I would even now be using one of them.”
“What are they?”
“Would you have me reveal all my secrets on first acquaintance? How will I intrigue you if you know all my mysteries?”
“Do you wish to intrigue me?” If so, she was going about it the right way, though it was a method no woman had ever used with him before. If she’d been shy or cold, he would have exerted himself to bring her out for Lady Brownlow’s sake and her sake alone. If she’d been a commonplace flirt, he would have enjoyed her arts and thought nothing more of her. But absolute friendliness combined with the demeanor of a lady was something new in his experience. He liked it and her but couldn’t help wondering how deep this quality went. Was it veneer only, an art, or did it issue from her soul?
“Surely every woman wishes to make a conquest of every man she meets.”
“Is that your ambition?”
A slight frown had appeared between her two arching brows. Lady Roma looked down the street but not as if she were seeing the horse and cart that stood there. “I have been told that it should be my ambition. I have been told that I am ‘on the shelf—detestable phrase— and should stir myself or be left to look no-how as younger girls marry.”
“What ninnyhammer told you such a thing?”
That brought her back to the here and now. The pleasure returned to her voice. “How shockingly rude of me, Mr. Donovan. Please forgive my abstraction.”
“What sin should I forgive, Lady Roma? You but did me the honor of speaking to me as a friend.”
“Which we are not, sir. Merely new acquaintances.” Her smile soothed the sting. “Has anyone ever told you that you are outrageously easy to talk to, sir?”
“I have heard it before. My brother officers often brought their troubles to me.” In answer to her bright, questioning look, he added, “Not for a lady’s ears.”
“Did you always find a way out?”
Bret laughed. “No. Sometimes a way through and sometimes a way under.”
“You must be very clever.”
“Not always. For instance, I don’t know how to encourage a lady to confide her second name to me.”
“Still worrying that bone?” she asked. She walked well, neither dragging behind nor hurrying on, but matching their steps to a nicety. He acknowledged an unworthy wish that he was taller than she. If they were both barefoot, he might overtake her by an inch, but not more. He toyed with the thought of asking for a slightly higher heel on that new pair of boots but dismissed the thought as small-minded.
“You have piqued my curiosity.” In more ways than one, he added mentally.
“And you will not rest ‘til it is satisfied? Are you part cat, sir?”
He shook off the memories that name conjured up. “I have been called so. But, I must be fair so I propose a trade. One of your names for one of my secrets.”
“Have you any secrets of interest?” she asked, one brow lifting in a charming arch.
“Ask me whatever your fancy demands.” He touched the brim of his hat to an old card-playing acquaintance on the other side of the street. They’d emerged into a much busier thoroughfare, shops on both sides and the clatter and growl of traffic passing over the stone-paved streets making it harder to hear each other. Bret was suddenly glad that she wasn’t some tiny creature whom he’d have to bend down to hear.
“Who is that beautiful girl?” Lady Roma asked, glancing over at the guinea golden-haired girl mincing down the far side of the street with a hard-faced chaperon at her shoulder. Many young and not-so-young men were turning back to look at her. The divine girl dimpled and nodded as Bret glanced at her, but the chaperon’s distressing purple pelisse instantly screened the maiden from his view.
“Is that your question?”
Her smile turned roguish. “Is she one of your secrets?”
“Lady Roma,” Bret said, letting his voice deepen as if by shock. “Miss Fiddyment is a graduate of a most select Young Ladies’ Academy brought to Bath by the express wish of her guardian, who finds himself in rather low ebb at the moment.”
“The delights of London proving, he fears, too much for his ward’s health? And his purse?”
“Naturally, he wishes to keep her under his eye.”
“And away from any young men who might wish to show her the pleasures of the town.”
Though her cheeks had grown slightly pinker than wal
king could explain, Lady Roma met his eyes without a blink. “I am considerably more than seven, Mr. Donovan. My . . . my father had a little dove in his keeping for some years.”
“You knew of it?” Now Bret was shocked. In his world, men might indulge in unlawful affection, but they did not share the details with their daughters.
Then he recalled that she and her father had only each other for companionship. “I suppose you and Lord Yarborough are the best of good friends.”
“No, I should not presume to say so,” she said slowly. “I am fond of him, very fond, of course, but I should not say we are friends. He is my father. I have the greatest respect for his attainments. He is a very wise, very knowledgeable gentleman. His heart is kindness itself.”
“I see,” Bret said, somewhat taken aback by this cool recitation of her parent’s virtues. Though he could not have listed a similar catalog for his own late father, he smiled whenever he thought of the old rascal and cherished the bits of advice, mostly scandalously immoral, he’d let fall during his lifetime.
“I only knew about Father’s arrangement with Miss Fitzgerald when she wrote me a most concerned note. Naturally, I called upon her.”
“You called upon your father’s ...” Bret was still shocked, but a tincture of amusement had begun to mix in. Was she phlegmatic, unimaginative, or simply the bearer of such amazing self-possession that she could not see the oddity of such behavior?
“What else could I do? The poor girl was quite beside herself with anxiety, not to mention in dire financial straits. Having been often in the same case, I could sincerely sympathize.”
Bret stopped dead, lost in a tongue-tangling fit of half-begun sentences. “You . . . she . . . same circumstances . . .”
For the first time, a hint of blush appeared in her smooth cheeks. “Oh, dear,” she said, lowering her eyes. “I hope you haven’t misunderstood me, though I see how you might. You see, my father is a very forgetful man. If someone offers him a glimpse of some new find, he will erase from his mind every other obligation in order to seek it out. He left my governess and me quite alone in Tunbridge Wells for six days upon one occasion, when a friend of his unearthed half a legionnaire’s helmet in Worcester. He went hotfoot across country that very afternoon without leaving so much as a note and me with not five pounds to my name.”
“And he’d acted in the same fashion toward this incognita... Miss ... Miss ...”
“Miss Fitzgerald? Yes. He’d promised faithfully to attend upon her with the wherewithal to settle some trifling debts before departing to enjoy her companionship upon a visit to a hunting lodge owned by ... a friend. Well, the hours passed without a sign of him until she was forced to dismiss the postillions. When she’d paid them, she had nothing else. I admit, in her shoes, I might have gone to a pawnshop with several of his choicer gifts, but I can quite understand her reluctance to do so. Knowing Father, it might have been a long time before she could redeem them.”
“What did you do?” Bret asked, fascinated.
“Which time? In Tunbridge Wells, or in town?”
“Both,” he demanded with a grin.
She answered it with one of her own, as brash as any boy’s. “In Tunbridge Wells, I took some few items of clothing to a pawnbroker, as well as my governess’s grisaille snuff box. He advanced me enough for my immediate needs. I knew Father would either return to our hotel or to our home. In either case, he would soon recall my presence and rescue me from any dire consequences. Failing that, I could always have taken the recourse of writing to his solicitor. He would have advanced me enough to pay the hotel and hire a carriage to go home. In the event, however, Father did return before the hotel grew too suspicious of me.”
“And what was your governess doing all this while? It should have been her business to lay things away in lavender.”
With avid curiosity, she demanded a translation. “What does that mean? Does it mean to visit a pawnbroker?” He nodded. “Men do have the most marvelous ways of expressing themselves,” she said. “Poor Miss Tendews. She thought when she was asked to be the governess of an earl’s only daughter that she would be living in quite a different style. But we are a sadly vagabond household, ever on the move.”
“Why so much?” Bret asked. “Your father can’t spend all his time chasing after Roman artifacts.”
“No, though he spends a good deal of his time doing so. He has also financed several excavations, usually in remote locations where we are fortunate to find a tumble-down inn or an unoccupied cottage. When winter comes, we generally retire to Yarborough where he codifies and classifies his finds.”
“You help him with that, I suppose.”
“Oh, no. He usually finds a young scholar to help Mm with that. Wearisome task. I’m afraid, too, that Father doesn’t quite trust me to be accurate. Ever since I was a small girl, I have had rather a blind spot when it comes to the difference between Cato the Elder and Cato the Younger. I feel he’s never quite trusted me on history since.”
Lady Roma had such a gleam of laughter in her roguish eyes that Bret could not tell if she was serious or joking. “You are a complete hand, my lady.”
“I’m sorry to be chattering like a magpie,” she said. “I don’t, usually.”
The tilt of her head was similar to the bird she’d called herself. Yet her eyes looked steadily and a little fiercely into his. Bret felt she’d not really seen him until this moment except as a respectable example of gentleman’s tailoring and a more-or-less pleasant set of features. He found she had a most clear-seeing pair of eyes, hard to meet, and rather disconcertingly penetrating for quite a young lady.
“Your brother officers must have found it difficult to keep any secrets at all while you were in their barracks. Such powers of sympathy must be invaluable to you. I suppose many ladies have told you so.”
He didn’t answer. “What became of your father’s petite ami?” he asked.
Lady Roma seemed glad to return to such relatively neutral subjects. “I assisted Miss Fitzgerald with her most pressing needs, informed her of my father’s probable address, and advised her that her position was precarious at best, humiliating at the worst. She really was a very sweet-natured girl and deserved a gentleman who would pay rather more attention to her than my father could. I believe, in all honesty, that he was attracted to her in the first place only because she bore a startling resemblance to a bust purporting to be of Caesar’s third wife. It’s in our stairwell at Yarborough.”
“Did she take your advice?”
“I had heard that she later married a lawyer and emigrated to America, but I cannot be certain.” She put up her gloved hand and whisked away a drop of water from his face, holding up her finger to show the water mark on her glove. “It’s a touching story,” she said, “but not that touching.”
Bret caught at his hat as a cool breeze kicked up, driving some scraps of paper and a few leaves down the street. This brought his attention to their surroundings. “Where in the name of mercy have we got to?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t recognize this street,” she admitted, following his glance. “We must have taken a wrong turning. Do we go back or forward?”
“What is your preference, my lady?”
“Oh, toujours l’audace,” she said, quoting Napoleon’s reputed favorite maxim. “Let’s go on.”
The streets were narrower here than was common in modern Bath. Bret was reminded that the town was older, far older, than its heyday of fifty years past. This street had quite a medieval look, with a gutter running down the middle of the broken brick pavement and alleys no wider than his shoulders opening every few yards between thin and crooked houses. He said as much to Lady Roma.
“Yes, quite. All it needs is a few pigs to look entirely period. But I am more interested in the look of the sky.”
Raising his head, Bret saw that the sunshine which had tempted him was being forced back to the west by the advent of towering billows of black clouds, edged with brilliant w
hite. If he’d seen those clouds in a painting, he would have scoffed at the artist’s over-fondness for the palette knife. But one could not criticize nature’s artistic merits.
“I think,” Lady Roma said, “you will regret the leaving of your coat, sir.”
“I regret your umbrella more. I’ll knock at one of these doors,” Bret said. “Someone is sure to give us shelter.”
“Why?” she asked merrily. “I assure you I shall take no harm from a wetting. I have fallen in brooks, held an umbrella over a Roman pavement in a thunderstorm, and ... I fear I am boasting.”
“Not at all. No one would take you for anything but intrepid.”
“Oh, dear,” she said, her eyes laughing. “How alarming. Shall I turn my ankle to show true womanly quality?”
“Not if I may reserve my coat to myself rather than holding it over you without being thought no true gentleman.”
“You may keep it with my good will, Mr. Donovan. Besides, my maid never lets me stir from the house without a thick pelisse, as you see. Oh, curses,” she said, with less theatricality. “I shall never hear the end of my folly from Pigeon if I come home soaked after refusing my umbrella.”
“We shall hurry, then. She had the look of a domestic tyrant.”
“A Heliogabalus in skirts,” she said. Bret waggled a finger at her.
“Ah-ha, no Roman references,” he admonished, and she laughed.
“A bad habit.”
They reached the end of the narrow, medieval way. Lady Roma looked about her with a bright, inquiring eye. “Oh, I know where we are now. That way.” A rumble of near thunder cut across her words. “It’s not far to my cousin’s house. I don’t think we’ll make it all the way home.”
The first cold drops fell with a clatter like a handful of thrown pebbles. A rush of wind came swirling down the street, throwing up an eddying spin of paper, leaves, and other rubbish. Lightning glowed somewhere behind the clouds, and the thunder followed closely. Another dash of rain and then a pause came, the last calm as the storm gathered its strength.
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