Like a lover. And she felt that stroke in places besides her skin, unmentionable places.
It was too much, especially for a public place. She rose, fumbling her reticule. Heart pounding, she finally forced herself to look away and smiled at Mrs. Lacey, good patient kind Mrs. Lacey with her silver hair and crinkling crows’ feet eyelids, a wayward young lady’s best friend and unjudging companion. No matter how knowingly she smiled. “Surely you’ve long been ready to finish our shopping. Shall we be off to the linen-draper’s, then?”
* * * *
Cumberland seemed distracted.
Rainier leaned back in the coffee house chair and considered. The Duke of Cumberland had sat with them willingly enough, sporting his usual complacent air, and he’d quickly joined their conversation. But it seemed he didn’t accept the bases of Rainier’s related arguments, firstly that taste served as a proxy for breeding, secondly that Romeo and Juliet proved love functioned outside the boundaries of time. He’d been curious to learn Cumberland’s opinion of his little theories, especially the first one; the duke’s Continental education had clearly covered debate and logic, philosophy and poetry, and while he didn’t bother to set fashions, doubtless from his position he could if he desired. It had seemed a splendid opportunity to consult a man with first-rate capabilities.
But even as they conversed, Cumberland’s gaze tended to drift, sliding aside over Rainier’s shoulder and fastening onto something behind him. That complacent air turned appreciative, attentive — more attentive than his conversation — and even admiring. It seemed impolite to take note of his distraction. But then both Culver and Anson followed Cumberland’s lead, leaving Rainier the odd man out, and among sporting gentlemen that was intolerable. Besides, if a well-known fellow such as Cumberland saw fit to make a spectacle of himself in a public coffee house, who was Kenneth Rainier to leave such behavior unremarked?
But when he glanced over his shoulder, tracing Cumberland’s gaze—
A young lady.
Rather a pretty one, with a wisp of pale hair drifting beside a rosy cheek. But still, for Cumberland to permit a feminine distraction was disappointing. The man could have been enjoying their spirited discussion — and no one could deny these were important topics. Rainier had studied taste, style, and fashion since his early education and exercised them assiduously, from the saddle on his horse to the art collection in his library, the most complete collection and engrossing library in town. He’d always been determined to display nothing but the best culture and discernment, especially since he’d matured enough to understand his sisters’ deficiencies.
But rakes were incomprehensible that way. Personally, Rainier had overheard too many of his sisters’ dinner table chats, totting up this fortune or that estate, to be under any illusions himself.
Romeo had been lucky; he’d found Juliet, his one true love, that incomparable woman whose specialness set her apart from those surrounding her, even if the world had subsequently crushed them both for such impudence. But every woman of Rainier’s acquaintance valued money, position, security, and power — not the important things, such as poetry, drama, music, and sculpture. Not elegance, and the entire concept of Romanticism, that most exalting of philosophies, fit them as well as a tattered horse blanket.
Indeed, judging from his sisters Hortense and Lucia, even love could go hang when matrimonial possibilities were under female consideration. But only the Romantic definition of love, the Platonic ideal, the perfection of true soul mates, could ever satisfy his heart. Most days it seemed he’d be alone forever, longing to find his Juliet but instead silently and bitterly resigned to his lonely fate. Or, if he did marry, it would only be to provide the estate with an heir, a cold-blooded breeding rather than a shared immortal truth.
And so, considering that impossible contradiction, no reason could there be for Rainier nor any other man to demonstrate more interest in the opposite sex than was necessary beyond the most general of social interactions.
Rainier would dance with a woman, make idle conversation over the dinner table, partner one at cards, even, with the full expectation of losing. But sit and stare at one in a coffee house?
Disappointing, that Cumberland preferred a gallant distraction to an important discussion. And equally it seemed strange, how Rainier had once raged to the heavens at such callous thoughts — talk before beauty — but now they had become his truisms. Classical Romanticism could not survive in the mercenary modern age, and so he celebrated the Platonic ideal of Romanticism and shut away his heart, never to be consummated.
The young lady shifted in her chair, glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes, dark as black drifting smoke, met Rainier’s. She froze.
Pretty, yes. And modest, with a becoming hesitancy in her expression. Well dressed, if unexceptionably so. Under his stare, her chin lowered, those dark eyes flickered, and she turned discreetly away, toward her older companion (her mother, perhaps, or a wise and genteel aunt). She held herself well and her movements flowed with natural grace; she’d be a good dancer, a delight to watch when strolling the promenades. Appreciation stirred within him. Perhaps he shouldn’t shrug her off so quickly, particularly not if she’d attracted Cumberland’s attention; if Rainier couldn’t find undying love, he could at least enjoy a spot of sporting competition, and sooner or later, he’d need to secure a partner for that cold-blooded breeding.
Then again, there were Hortense and Lucia and the entire concept of the mercenary modern age. Perhaps he should keep his enthusiasm in chains.
Besides, the young lady and her companion were leaving, gathering reticules and gloves. Her companion stood more slowly, leaning on the table for a moment as if easing her aging bones into motion. The young lady offered her an arm and helped support her weight as they started toward the door; add dutiful and kind to pretty and discreet.
But in passing—
She glanced at their table again. Her gaze touched on Cumberland, flitted aside, then lifted and meshed with his. Rainier felt it as much as saw it, experienced it like a touch in his soul. A dark glance. Warm and sensuous, with hidden, underlying strength. And approving. Cultured, appreciative; someone whose good opinion was worth the having. Surely beneath her ordinary attire beat an extraordinary heart?
His breathing hitched. Perhaps she wasn’t like his sisters at all.
And then they were gone, the young woman and the old, the coffee house door closing behind them. And — no surprise — Cumberland rose, made polite excuses, and followed their path, rather like a hound on a scent.
Indecision tugged at Rainier. Perhaps he shouldn’t shrug her off. Perhaps leaving the field of battle to Cumberland without a fight would prove to be a mistake.
But then there was Hortense. And Lucia.
Rainier shuddered.
Chains; he’d keep his enthusiasm in chains until he found his own Juliet. Yes, someday he’d marry. But despite the ugly necessity, he yearned for true love, for the most exquisite woman in the world. Not a casual competition with a rake in a coffee house.
Rainier turned back to Culver and Anson and their conversation. For some reason, it no longer felt quite as vital as it had before, leaving him free to ask the burning question, “Who was that, the young lady with the dark eyes?”
Chapter Two
Thursday, October 14, 1813 (continued)
Elegant Coralie and her amiable companion glided and hobbled arm in arm across Fleet Street toward the Robinsons’ shop on the far side, dodging the flow of fashionable shoppers along the sidewalk, pausing for a break in the trotting phaetons and coaches on the narrowing pavement. His Grace sauntered, as casually and slowly as he could manage, in their wake. With luck, they’d be fully engaged with the clerk before he arrived, leaving him as a whisper in the background, unnoticed and unimportant.
At least, until the proper moment.
He even turned his back, giving them time to draw well beyond his silent location, and he paused to eye the latest fashion in men’s
hats through the haberdasher’s window. Ridiculous. Hopefully no one he knew would be so weak as to actually wear such monstrosities. The brown one defied even Rainier’s pretentious definition of good taste. Had ever a young man’s education gone so horribly astray? Love, yes, love could occur in a moment, strengthen astonishingly in a brief time. But neither drama, poetry, nor prose could demonstrate that reality, because they were fiction. And the idea of fashion being the equivalent of breeding or even close to it—
His Grace shuddered. At least he hadn’t been forced to dissect that argument.
Despite the haberdasher’s horrors, his chosen distraction served its purpose. By the time His Grace trailed elegant Coralie and the Widow Lacey into the shop, they were well ensconced amongst the establishment’s offerings, and the delectable Dorcas, his former target, had already tugged a bolt of pale cloth from the shelf and unfurled it atop the counter.
Sunlight poured through the arched, soaring windows and dust motes twinkled in the afternoon’s brilliance. Displays occupied all three interior walls at three levels. Thick rolls of fabric protruded from circular openings near the ceiling, multicolored spills of damask and patterned cotton draping to the floor. Smaller folded bolts occupied open shelves to head height; numbered drawers stretched from there down to the floor, small square ones interspersed with larger rectangles that could hide a fair-sized and leather-bound Peerage. Low counters protected the wares from customers’ possibly dirty hands; several male clerks assisted a bevy of delightful middle-aged dames and a trio of twittering young débutantes. Coralie’s golden hair blazed in the light.
Unfortunately, his entry brought all those earnest discussions to a full stop, and not without reason. How often did a man stroll into a linen-draper’s establishment, especially one catering to the finest tastes in muslin? How often a duke? It seemed a sufficiently uncommon happening to arouse everyone’s blank-stared attention, and for Coralie and Mrs. Lacey, of course, it couldn’t help that he’d been watching them only minutes before in the coffee house down the street.
But when Dorcas made to leave her customers and wait on him instead, His Grace flashed her a winning smile — she’d always be one of his favorites, tasty morsel that she'd been — and shook his head. Ladies first.
Always.
So the good dames, the sweet debs, and his targeted pair all pretended to ignore him. Coralie, Dorcas, and Mrs. Lacey resumed their discussion over the muslin, a splash of yellow atop the counter between them. And he pretended to ignore them while drifting through the shop, hands folded behind his back, glancing over the wares in passing. But from the way Coralie edged slowly around, one smoky eye always visible no matter where he meandered, clearly she had no intention of letting him wander from her sight. Whatever he was up to, she intended to watch him with her unstudied ease.
Excellent.
It was time to bring this pearl out of her shell. And there, buried on a high shelf behind a far counter, reposed the very thing.
Coralie shook her head over the yellow and pointed past Mrs. Lacey’s shoulder, where more bolts were stacked on the shelves. Pale, insipid, fashionable shades, all of them. Nothing unusual; nothing different. His Grace sighed. Other young ladies could wear such muted tones. They were appropriate and even beautiful, with the proper colors of hair and skin and gently glowing cheeks. But a blazing, sultry torch with eyes of black smoke needed something more dramatic, something that wouldn’t permit her to hide in gloomy coffee house corners.
Something to draw the eyes of the entire ton toward her.
Presumably customers were discouraged from handling the wares. Well, it was easier to seek forgiveness after the fact than permission before it. His Grace slid behind the counter, reached up, and yanked a bolt of brilliant golden crepe from the highest shelf.
Behind him, someone gasped. No need to look; doubtless he had the attention of everyone in the shop. Just as he’d intended.
The moment had arrived. During his months-long observation of her, Coralie had shown herself addicted to beauty in its purest forms. She’d stood motionless, watching brightly fluttering birds’ wings, a magnificent brooch of lapis lazuli in clearest midnight blue, a perfect pink rose, fully open and not yet drooping. She watched a handsome man, a handsome horse, even handsome reflections in a teacup.
She’d not be able to resist the golden crepe.
Soft, softer than velvet, fluid as nectar; the crepe flashed like polished jewelry in the light through the windows as it crinkled beneath his fingers. A discreet twist of his wrist, a lifting and spinning motion, and the gorgeous cloth unrolled in the most exquisite manner, pooling on the counter, a splash of captured sunshine, vivid and astonishing.
Seductive.
A small and shapely hand crept forward, gathered a handful, poured it onto the counter. Again the cloth rippled, flowed, pooled, woven honey, silken metal.
Enticing.
His Grace set the bolt between them. “My dear Miss Busche, how delightful to see you again so soon. Forward rogue that I am, I must ask: will you be at Lady Gower’s card party tomorrow night?”
She didn’t look at him. Instead she stared down, mesmerized, captivated by the crepe. A gentle flush darkened her cheeks. Tendrils of her hair fell over one shoulder and tangled with her pelisse’s collar, amber against heavy cream, and her curving lips — her tantalizing, tempting lips — fell open into the most inviting moue. Her hand stroked the crepe again and again. Her eyes glowed, sparks within smoke, and her bosom — oh, yes — shivered beneath shallow, panting breaths.
“Yes.” He’d heard her voice before, but not like this. Deeper even than her usual disciplined alto, yet little more than a throaty whisper, Coralie spoke in the voice of a woman spellbound, seduced. Enticed. The golden crepe spilled over her hand like liquid sunlight. “Yes, I shall.” Finally she glanced up, met his gaze, and blinked, as if waking from deep sleep, surfacing from tropical waters. “Why do you ask?”
* * * *
“My dear, I promise you, it was absolutely dreadful.” Hortense rolled her eyes as if shocked and dismayed, rather than relishing her tale.
Rainier wasn’t fooled. His sister lived for gossip, collecting it, treasuring it, and spreading it far and wide. If presented with a story, she’d ensure every broadsheet in the ton printed every juicy detail in their next issue. She had to correspond with half the scurvy tale-tellers in town, and likely invited the other half in for tea whenever he was gone. Some women raised children or assisted their husbands in business; Hortense supervised the gossip trade in Mayfair with a swift efficiency that left him speechless despite his disapproval.
Hortense’s gesture of disdain ended as a sage nod. “Miss Kringle may have thirty thousand pounds, but unless her parents are hovering over her like watchful eagles, she hasn’t a modicum of sense or propriety. Mark my words, she won’t marry well.”
On the table’s other side, his younger sister Lucia leaned over her plate. Her amber cross, on a gold chain about her neck, swung forward with the movement and dangled bare inches above her plateful of roast smothered in gravy. “Down the middle of the street, you say?”
“Like the most common hoyden. And George Anson running right behind her, laughing every step of the way.” Hortense shook her head. The row of dark curls aligned across her forehead didn’t even shift with the motion, as if they’d been glued into place, a precise quarter inch between each curl.
Rainier eyed Lucia’s cross as it danced closer and closer to the gravy; he’d watched the curls enough times to know they wouldn’t budge short of a drenching thunderstorm or furious wind. Of course, Lucia would never actually lean forward enough to put her jewelry on a first-name basis with her dinner. Both of his sisters had enjoyed a worthy governess who’d overseen development of their deportment and accomplishments, but who hadn’t given them any practical or philosophical knowledge worth the mention. A pity, that; a classical education might have modified their mercenary outlook. Propriety, position, and procure
ment were the most important things in his sisters’ lives, although not necessarily in that order, and it was normally unheard of for Lucia to even permit an element of risk to impinge upon their well-ordered lifestyle.
But he could dream.
He continued eating as they continued gossiping. Hortense occupied one side of the long table, the side nearest the simple white marble fireplace, and Lucia the other. Beyond the table’s empty foot arched the doorway leading to the drawing room, out of sight on the right, and its waiting fire sent flickering reflections across the tiled wall in the hallway. Overhead, seams along the plain white-stuccoed barrel roof marked off the steps to his eventual escape. Rainier had designed the dining room himself and liked its simplicity; Hortense insisted it should be redecorated “in the French style” but he disagreed. And although she managed the household, he held the purse.
Only at mealtimes. That was the only time he had to be in his sisters’ company, when they gathered about the mahogany dining room table, and it really boiled down to the occasional dinner. His habit of rising early, no matter how late his evening entertainments ran, ensured he breakfasted and started the day before they appeared downstairs, and by ensuring an invitation of some sort was scheduled, he generally managed to avoid them in the evenings.
Unless they all happened to stumble into the same soiree, of course. But that happened sufficiently rarely for his confidence to remain strong whenever he strode into a host’s home. Only occasionally, at the Foresters’ or Holly Hall or at one of Lady Gower’s routs, would he run into Hortense and Lucia, and those houses were so large that if he couldn’t escape them there, then he deserved to suffer their cloying company for an evening.
Shenanigans in Berkeley Square Page 2