Talk of the Ton

by Rebecca Hagan Lee

  “I suppose she did, my lord,” Miss Forsythe said, and nervously cleared her throat as she twirled around, then back again.

  “How odd. I had not mentioned it to your mother.”

  Miss Forsythe shrugged and in doing so, missed another step.

  “Lady Southbridge surely heard it from someone else. I shall have to inquire, I suppose, for I cannot let our personal affairs be fodder for the ton’s appetite, can I?”

  “Of course not,” she said weakly.

  A thin sheen of perspiration had appeared on her forehead. Pity, that, what with the worst yet to come. Poor girl. He stepped toward her and asked, “Do you suppose Lady Southbridge heard something untoward about Mrs. Becket from the same source?”

  The color rapidly bled from her cheeks. She struggled to look serene, but any confidence she had was melting away. “I ah . . . I suppose it’s possible, my lord,” she said in all but a whisper.

  “Interesting,” Darien said, and left it at that for the remainder of the dance. As the quadrille closed, he bowed once more, offered his arm to Miss Forsythe, who seemed almost reluctant to put her hand there. He led her to the edge of the dance floor. “Now don’t go anywhere, will you?”

  “No?”

  “I shouldn’t want you to miss any of the auction.”

  “The auction,” Miss Forsythe echoed dumbly.

  “That’s right, the auction. I shall want to see you clearly when the time comes.”

  Miss Forsythe nodded, and Darien wondered if this time, her faint might be real.

  Chapter Twelve

  She had no idea what he planned; neverthless, Kate wished she could crawl beneath the floorboards and disappear. There were only four items left on the auction table, and the crowd was literally buzzing with the anticipation of what was quickly becoming the greatest offer ever made in the history of the ton.

  The buzz was quite irrespective of the two main parties, as they had not spoken since dancing the quadrille. Of course Kate had seen them—she couldn’t help but watch. And she’d been appalled by the frenzy of whispering and conjecture as they’d danced. Lady Ramblecourt insisted there would be an August wedding, that she had overheard Lord Montgomery’s sister discuss it with Miss Forsythe. On the other side of the room, however, where Kate had gone to escape Lady Ramblecourt’s talk, she had been the recipient of Lady Cheevers’s speculation.

  “He’ll ask for a dower too large for Forsythe, mark me,” she said with a superior sniff. “The Forsythes would do well to keep their enthusiasm under their own roof, if you take my meaning.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Kate said miserably, at which point Lady Cheevers had turned a judgmental eye to her.

  “You might have done as well for yourself, dear, had you been more circumspect.”

  Kate certainly didn’t argue that.

  At the moment, however, Lady Southbridge was announcing the last of the items to be auctioned—a pair of silver candelabras that had been the gift of Prinny to Lord Daniels. As the bidding started—it was a coveted item—Kate used the opportunity to drift farther back, away from the crowd.

  But as Montgomery made his way to stand next to the platform, he let his gaze idly roam the crowd, and it eventually landed on her, standing in the shadows. A small smile tipped one corner of his mouth; a brow cocked high above the other, and she wondered why he must taunt her at this wretched moment.

  She wished she’d never met him. Honestly, she did.

  “Oooh,” Lady Southbridge trilled when the candelabras had been auctioned off for two hundred pounds. “I do believe that brings us to the last item to be auctioned for charity. Stevens, what is the final tally, if you please?”

  “One thousand forty-two pounds, my lady,” her secretary called out. “A new record!” A round of applause went up from the crowd.

  “I’ll add a thousand pounds to the total,” Montgomery called out to the delight of the crowd, and Kate rolled her eyes at the very same moment she felt her stomach roil with her bloody nerves.

  “Oooh, do come up, my lord Montgomery!” Lady Southbridge cried happily, and endeavored to move her girth aside to allow him room. “Two thousand pounds indeed! That’s quite generous, my lord!”

  “Ah, that would be a thousand,” he kindly corrected her as he gracefully hopped onto the platform beside her.

  “Go on, then, Montgomery, make your offer!” a man shouted, and a cry of howling laughter rose from the crowded ballroom.

  No matter how she despised him, Kate couldn’t help but admire his calm in the face of this half-drunken, half-deranged crowd. He smiled, nodded as the laughter died down. “My offer to you sir, is a carriage and a driver,” he called out cheerfully, and earned another round of laughter from the crowd.

  Lady Southbridge, obviously not pleased that attention had been turned from her, managed to wedge herself in front of Montgomery and the crowd, her arms high in the air as she tried to quiet them all. “Hear, hear!” she shouted. “Lord Montgomery has made a very generous offer of two—”

  “One,” he quickly interjected.

  “One, is it?” she asked, clearly disappointed.

  Smiling, he nodded. “One.”

  “One then,” she said in a bit of a huff. “He’s made a very generous offer of one thousand pounds to the Ladies Auxiliary charitable fund, and the least we might do is hear his terms!”

  “His terms, his terms!” the crowd began to shout, and a few sympathetic debutantes began to form a protective circle around Miss Forsythe.

  Kate stepped deeper into the shadows as Montgomery moved forward and raised his hands, gesturing for the crowd to quiet.

  “My terms,” he said thoughtfully as the laughing crowd began to quiet. “Are quite simple, really. I will give one thousand pounds to the Ladies Auxiliary in exchange for the repair of my heart, for it has been quite irreparably damaged, I’m afraid. Unable to function, as it were . . . incapable of beating properly.”

  The crowd grew very quiet. Kate closed her eyes and drew a tortured breath; she knew of damaged hearts. He couldn’t possibly know about them, how they weighed a person down, snatched a person’s breath away, what with all their thrashing about like a wounded bird, beating harshly and erratically.

  “I had not known before now how useless a broken heart can be,” he continued to a rapt crowd. “It does not regulate the body properly and puts everything at sixes and sevens. Day becomes night, night becomes day, and a man is given to wandering about aimlessly.”

  What had this to do with Miss Forsythe? Confused, Kate opened her eyes and looked to where Miss Forsythe was standing. She was not alone in her confusion; several heads swiveled between Miss Forsythe and Montgomery.

  “Having suffered this horrible predicament, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is only one thing to be done for it. A lady—”

  A collective gasp went up from the crowd.

  “For whom this old heart is destined, must take it and repair it—nothing else will do. And not just any lady, but one who is kind and charitable. One with eyes as deep as the sea and the warmest smile in all of England, who has a good keen wit about her so that she may keep me quite on my toes, and never let me believe I am more than I am.

  “What I am, ladies and gentlemen, is a man who is quite impossibly in love. There is only one woman who will do for me, and if she refuses me, then I might as well give this heart of mine to the Ladies Auxiliary, too.”

  Now the crowd was wild with anticipation, and Kate felt her own heart sinking deep into confusion from which she was sure she’d never be able to retrieve it. What was he doing? She wanted to cry out, to vomit, to do something, anything but stand here and listen to him profess his love if it was for another woman, for now her hope had been raised up from the dead. From where she was standing, she could see Miss Forsythe staring up at him with an expression of pure fear. She, too, thought this declaration of love was for another woman. Kate’s hope surged.

  “Therefore,” Montgomery said, riveting
everyone’s attention on him again, “I am prepared to offer my name and protection and my lifelong love and adoration to the woman who can repair this heart of mine, if she’ll have me.”

  One could hear the crowd draw their breath and hold it.

  And then Montgomery did something extraordinary. He looked to the back of the ballroom, to where Kate was standing—no, to where she was bleeding—and said, so gently that she wasn’t very certain she heard him, “Will you have me, then, Mrs. Becket?”

  Something snapped inside her—a flood of relief overtook her grief, light covered the dark thoughts she’d had in the last several days. Someone, perhaps Miss Forsythe, cried out, and Kate could hear voices all around her, could feel eyes on her, as she tried to catch her breath.

  Someone shouted that Miss Forsythe had fainted, and Kate was certain she would, too, at any moment, for it seemed as if her knees had ceased to exist; there was nothing to hold her up.

  Pandemonium erupted; people crowded around her, some smiling, some frowning, but the only one she wanted to see was Darien. And then he was there, standing before her—she hadn’t even realized she’d made it halfway to the platform to reach him until she felt his hand on her arm, the other on her waist, steadying her.

  She tried to smile, but she was so shocked, she couldn’t even breathe. “Kate,” he said, his voice penetrating the din around them. “Come with me, Kate, say you’ll come with me now,” he said earnestly.

  “Anywhere,” she whispered hoarsely, and impulsively threw her arms around his neck, oblivious to the cheers surrounding them, oblivious to everything but Darien’s arms around her, holding her tightly, his face in her neck, breathing her in.

  Several days passed after the Southbridge Charity Auction Ball, the newspapers ceased to carry the “Montgomery Offer,” as it had been dubbed, in the gossip columns, and turned instead to the speculation of whether or not Lord Frederick, a close and personal friend of Montgomery, would offer for Miss Forsythe in the wake of this trauma.

  She was reported to have said that she would have refused Montgomery’s offer, had it been made to her, and that she never expected such a thing.

  Darien and Kate never heard the latest gossip flowing in and out of salons in Mayfair, for they had departed London a scant two days after the Southbridge ball for Gretna Green, along with Darien’s sister and her family, and Kate’s father. It was the third Sunday church service Kate had missed since arriving in London.

  After a fortnight had passed, the weather was so fine that Lady Southbridge decided to take her two dogs on a doggie walkabout, and had her butler leash them up properly while her lady’s maid saw to it that Lady Southbridge was properly leashed up. In Hyde Park, where she had paused and instructed her footman to see to the dogs’ needs, preferably behind the bushes, she had occasion to meet Lady Ramblecourt.

  The two friends exchanged pleasantries, and as they waited for the footman to return with the two yapping dogs, Lady Ramblecourt said, in a soft voice so that no passersby would hear, “Have you heard, Elizabeth? The child?”

  “W-what?” Lady Southbridge demanded, focusing all her attention on Lady Ramblecourt.

  “The widow, of course!” the woman hissed, looking around them covertly. “They say she’s with child!”

  “No!” Lady Southbridge said, aghast.

  “Mmm,” Lady Ramblecourt said, nodding adamantly. “That explains quite a lot, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Indeed it does!” Lady Southbridge loudly agreed.

  And in truth, the information bothered her the rest of the afternoon. It was a mystery, she confessed to her good friend Lady Marlton, why Mrs. Kimbro would want another child, having birthed six of them already.

  “Because,” Lady Marlton said authoritatively. “She’s taken a lover.”

  “Who?” Lady Southbridge demanded.

  “Lord Tarelton.”

  Lady Southbridge fell back in surprise. Lord Darlington was at least ten years Mrs. Kimbro’s junior. Would the wonders never cease?

  Clearly a Couple

  REBECCA HAGAN LEE

  Chapter One

  London, February 1813

  “I don’t know what to do with her,” Lord Admiral Sir Harold Gregory admitted to his friend, Lord Davies. “Or what to say. She’s spent five years in the Topkapi.” Sir Harold threw up his hands. “Her whole world has changed, and everyone she loved is dead.”

  “Except you,” Lord Davies pointed out.

  Sir Harold snorted. “I was away so much she barely knew me.” He took off his hat, tossed it on a chair, then raked his fingers through his hair. “This was all my fault.”

  “How so?” Lord Davies frowned. “Unless you’ve begun underwriting Barbary pirates . . .”

  “I insisted that Louisa—” He squeezed his eyes shut at the sound of his daughter’s name. “And Travis send India to us so her grandmother and I would have an opportunity to get to know her. But Louisa didn’t want to let her go.” He opened his eyes and looked at his friend. “She had suffered so many disappointments. . . . Lost so many babies. India was her little girl. Her only little girl. And Louisa refused to send her until India was old enough to begin preparing for her presentation at court.” He snorted once again. “That’s how we . . . how I persuaded my daughter to part with her only child. . . . I reminded her that India needed a proper English education in order to make her curtsy to the king and her debut into London society.” He paused to gather his thoughts. “In truth, it was simply a way for her grandmother and me to get to know our granddaughter.” He scratched his head. “I saw her several times over the years. I made it a point to see her whenever I sailed to India, but Jane . . .” Sir Harold closed his eyes again at the memory of the wife he’d loved for so many years, the wife who had died alone while he was at sea fighting Bonaparte’s navy. “God rest her soul. Jane was a terrible sailor. She’d only seen India four times in fourteen years. I wanted Jane to have the chance to spend time with Louisa’s child. And I wanted India to get to know England in the hopes that she would consider it as much home as she did the country for which she was named.”

  “Nothing wrong in that,” Lord Davies pronounced. “I would have done the same. She was born in Calcutta, but she’s English.”

  “If I hadn’t insisted she come to London, India wouldn’t have become so homesick for her mother and father that we feared for her health. It broke Jane’s heart to see her suffering. Still, I shouldn’t have sent India back to Calcutta. I should have taken her myself.” Sir Harold sighed. “Lud! She hated it here. I suppose she loved us, but Jane and I were strangers to her. And she hated the cold and the damp. India found London colorless, and no doubt it did seem colorless to a girl who had spent her formative years in the tropics.” He looked over at his friend, allowing Lord Davies to see the stark pain in his eyes. “So I bought her passage back to Calcutta. I put her on that ship. . . .”

  “You could not have known it would fall prey to pirates,” Lord Davies said. “I’ve lost three of my ships to the scurvy bastards in the past two years, and I never dreamed pirates were operating in those waters.” Lord Davies shuddered. “We knew the French were a threat, but not pirates.”

  The loss of a vessel was always tragic for navy admirals like Sir Harold and for owners of merchant ships like Lord Davies. Lord Davies had experienced the devastation of losing lifelong friends—captains and crewmembers—who had been with him from the beginning. He understood the value of a lost cargo, but he couldn’t begin to fathom the pain of losing a wife, a daughter, a son-in-law, or a granddaughter. Over the course of five years, Sir Harold had lost his wife to consumption, his daughter and son-in-law to a cholera epidemic that swept through Calcutta, and his granddaughter to Barbary pirates. Lord Davies couldn’t imagine the pain his friend had endured.

  “India left England a schoolgirl,” Sir Harold continued. “And she’s returning from a life as a concubine.”

  “Through no fault of her own,” Lord Davies reminded the ad
miral. “The important thing is that you managed to capture the ship responsible for taking the Portsmouth. The important thing is that you persuaded that knave of a captain to save his own neck by providing you with enough information about India and her governess’s whereabouts to pressure the sultan into accepting payment for them. The important thing is that she’s returning. It’s a miracle she survived the ordeal at all. Her governess did not.”

  Sir Harold squeezed his eyes shut and fought to maintain control of his emotions. “And she’s ruined.” He opened his eyes. “What are her chances of making a life for herself here now? When everyone knows what happened to her? Where everyone knows she spent five years in a harem? What gentleman is going to offer for her under those circumstances? Especially when she cannot be presented into society?”

  “You might be surprised,” Lord Davies told him.

  “I’m not a nabob like you,” Sir Harold replied. “I’m comfortably well off, but I can’t afford to provide a dowry generous enough to persuade a gentleman to overlook her loss of virtue.”

  “The right gentleman won’t require it.” Lord Davies gave a slight smile. A year ago, his daughter, Gillian, had foolishly eloped to Scotland with a scoundrel who abandoned her there after their wedding night. And while it was true that he had offered his current son-in-law a considerable fortune to marry Gillian in order to save her reputation, Colin had wanted Gillian more than the fortune. No one looking at Colin and Gillian today would ever guess that Lord Davies had blackmailed Colin McElreath, Viscount Grantham, into marrying his only daughter. Their marriage of convenience had turned out to be a love match. “There are men who will see India for the courageous young woman she is. Men who will admire her for surviving her ordeal, rather than condemn her for the manner in which she survived it.” He looked at Sir Harold. “But I think we may be getting a bit ahead of ourselves. First, we bring India home safely and allow her to settle in before we begin worrying about providing for her future.”