An Encounter at the Museum

by Claudia Dain

  “Then we must ask the woman who knows all about love and desire, mustn’t we, Jamie?”

  At the crossing, he took the street that would take them to Upper Brook Street, the street where Sophia Dalby lived. He was past, far past, embarrassment or shame. He wanted Elizabeth at any price and Sophia Dalby was just the woman who could manage it.

  They were admitted by Fredericks, who ushered them into the yellow salon, Sophia’s larger and more formal salon. They were made to wait. They waited. He, impatiently and Anne agitatedly.

  Jamie paced, a very bad habit that Zoe had unsuccessfully tried to break him of. Anne sat in apparent comfort upon a chair lushly upholstered in yellow silk damask. The room was yellow. The porcelain was French and mostly blue. That was his extent of his observations of the room. He could only think of Elizabeth.

  Stupid. Illogical. Impulsive.

  True, all true.

  It changed nothing.

  And he knew it was the same for her and that it changed nothing for her. They wanted each other. What more was there to love?

  Sophia entered after what seemed an eternity. He had not seen her in three years, perhaps more, but she looked as darkly beautiful as ever. She was as flirtatious as ever as well.

  “Darling! What a splendid looking man you’ve become. Of course, your darling mother told me as such but one does have to edit what a mother says, love being blind and all that, but she did not do you justice, Jamie. You are quite, quite perfectly delicious.”

  She had kissed him lightly upon each cheek as she spoke, her perfume enveloping him briefly, her smile enveloping him everlastingly. Sophia was the closest thing he had to an aunt, always had been. She had begun flirting with him upon the instant he left the nursery, Zoe delighting in every coy barb. Zoe, French to the core no matter her years in England, fully believed it was part of his education, the ability to flirt with sophistication. As her son, he did not disagree.

  “And you, Sophia, have not aged a day. You are still the reigning beauty of London,” he said.

  Sophia gave Anne a brief hug, studied them both as Fredericks supervised the bringing in of the claret, and said, “Yet not your beauty, isn’t that so? You are in love, Jamie. It shines from you like a beacon fire on a cliff. It is quite charming, I assure you. Who is she?”

  “Miss Elizabeth Ardenzy,” Jamie said, glad to cut to the heart of things so swiftly.

  “We just left the Ardenzy’s,” Anne said. “I thought to introduce him to Mr. Ardenzy. Lord Dutton arrived just as we were leaving.”

  Sophia turned her black eyes upon Anne for an instant, her gaze searching. Anne returned the look.

  “Lord Dutton? But how unusual,” Sophia said.

  “Yes, much that Dutton does is unusual,” Jamie said brusquely, “but about Elizabeth. I intend to marry her.”

  “And the length of your acquaintance?” Sophia said.

  “I met her today. In the Reading Room,” Jamie said. He said it without apology and with no thought that he should need to explain himself.

  “How romantic,” Sophia said, taking a sip of her claret. Jamie set his glass on a table and continued pacing. Anne drank her glass down in four swift swallows. Fredericks promptly refilled her glass. “And how inconvenient. You are leaving for Canada shortly, are you not? Hardly the best time to put forth a successful suit of . . . ?”

  “Matrimony,” Jamie said.

  “But of course. I would have expected nothing less, darling,” Sophia said.

  “My leaving for Canada is the least of it. Her father will never accept me,” Jamie said.

  “And, if the rumors are true,” Sophia cast a glance at Fredericks, who nodded discreetly, “Miss Elizabeth Ardenzy is nearly engaged to Viscount Redding.”

  Jamie whirled, giving the women his back. Nearly engaged. He would not lose her, could not lose her.

  Nearly. Nearly did not count. Nearly was nothing. Or would be nothing if he could prevent it from happening.

  He turned and strode back to Sophia in her chair, her legs crossed, her dark hair piled upon her head, a tender curl escaping down her back. He knelt before her, on his knees, the gallant supplicant, the earnest lover. He knew how to get what he wanted as well as any man. And he had been well-schooled in sophisticated flirtation.

  “I will do whatever you tell me, Sophia. I will follow your every command. I, who have known you longest, know you can work your magic on any man, even a man as old and practical as Sebastian Ardenzy. He will follow where you lead, Sophia. As will I.”

  Sophia reached out to him, placed her hand under his chin, and looked at him with a smile of pure delight.

  “Why, darling, how charmingly put. Of course I shall assist you. All shall be managed. I will arrange everything. But you must tell me, is the girl willing?”

  “Yes. Most definitely, yes,” he said.

  Sophia looked at Anne, who nodded, smiling.

  “Then let us each dress for the evening. It shall all turn out as it should, and as you like it, darling. Have no fear.”

  And he did not. He had grown up on stories of Sophia, after all.

  The Viscount Redding had arrived to call just as the Marquis of Dutton was leaving. The look on Redding’s face was nearly hilarious. Or at least Elizabeth thought so. Elena seemed to find Redding less than entertaining. Elizabeth, when she bothered to think about it, which was seldom, found that intriguing. At the start, when Redding had first made their acquaintance, Elena had found him quite pleasant, or so it had seemed. As the acquaintance had deepened, so had her indifference. Elizabeth did not think Redding capable of making any kind of impression, firm or otherwise. She found him imminently forgettable, which would have been a problem if she intended to marry him, but she did not. Not anymore. Not after this afternoon.

  They had exchanged vows. In view of all, her father and her aunt and her sister, they had made their feelings and intentions known. He loved her. He would marry her. They would emigrate to Canada.

  She loved him. She would marry him. She would live with him in Canada, or Africa, for that matter. It did not matter. Nothing mattered but that she would be with him.

  She knew his intentions were honorable. She knew that she loved him. She also knew that she barely knew him, but that was such a dim, whispery thought. Really, she did not need to worry about that.

  Was love really so sudden and so sure? Was this not the makings of a tragedy of Shakespearean scale?

  No. It was not. She would not allow it.

  Elena drifted into her room looking quite the thing in ivory muslin with a train edged in Brussels lace. In her hair were three pink sapphire pins. She looked lovely. And unhappy.

  “You’re wearing that again?” Elena asked.

  “I like this gown,” Elizabeth said. She was wearing her pale cream silk gown with the intricately gathered bodice. Her ear bobs were gleaming pearls.

  “Lord Redding has already seen you in it.”

  “And hasn’t seemed to mind,” Elizabeth answered, not at all interested in what Lord Redding thought. Jamie hadn’t seen her gown and she, sweetly and illogically, knew that she would see him tonight. She must see him tonight. Everything felt so very urgent.

  “You think you’ll see Mr. Caversham tonight, don’t you?”

  It was very inconvenient having a twin sometimes. It was nearly impossible to keep anything private. Of course, before Jamie, she hadn’t had anything to keep private.

  “I don’t expect to, no,” she said.

  Elena snorted lightly and looked at herself in the long mirror while Elizabeth’s maid arranged her hair. “I’ll agree with you that I don’t expect him to have been invited to the Countess of Helston’s tonight. They can’t travel in the same circles, can they? But, going by his behavior this afternoon, I do think he’ll brazen his way in. He has that habit, from what I can see.”

  Elizabeth dismissed the maid with a wave of her hand. When they were alone, she stood and faced Elena in the long mirror. Side by side, they
looked like twin visions is soft white, flowing and feminine, goddesses of old. In her heart, she wanted to plunge a knife into Elena’s throat.

  She might do well in the wilds of Canada, after all.

  “Father is much the same,” Elizabeth said, turning from the mirror. “How else were we invited to the Helston’s tonight?”

  “The Countess of Helston is barely respectable.”

  “Meaning, that’s why we were invited? Because we are barely respectable as well?”

  “We are moving up in respectability,” Elena said. “The countess is moving in the wrong direction.”

  “When one is a countess, being barely respectable is more than sufficient.”

  Elena barked a laugh and followed Elizabeth across the room, a room nearly identical to hers, though Elizabeth’s was done up in raspberry velvet and Elena’s in rose damask. A short stretch of corridor separated them, a pretty little seascape hanging on the wall between the doorways.

  Suddenly, that seemed an omen. The sea, separating them. She wanted that, desperately. Oh, not the separation from Elena, but the oneness with Jamie. If having Jamie meant putting an ocean between she and Elena, so be it.

  What a heartless sister she’d become. She supposed love did that to a person. It was certainly doing it to her.

  “You’re thinking of him, aren’t you?” Elena said, tugging at the hem of her long glove, her eyes on the carpeted floor beneath their feet. If Elizabeth’s feet were dragging because she knew that Redding would be at the Helston’s she did not think it was obvious.

  “Redding?”

  Elena chuckled. “Hardly. What is it about the Caversham fellow that has you so turned about? He’s not worthy of you, Elizabeth. He has no future.”

  “His future is in Canada and I expect that future to be very fine. He seems a man made to do things, doesn’t he?”

  “If by doing things you mean talking up a proper girl in an improper fashion, then yes.”

  They descended the stairs to the front hall side by side, their white gowns whispering about their feet, their satin slippers peeking out from beneath their hems, their gloved hands sliding lightly along the twin bannisters. They kept their voices lowered. Aunt Edwina’s hearing was quite sharp even if her teeth were going.

  “You will admit, he is very handsome,” Elizabeth said.

  “He has no name, Elizabeth. It is impossible to be handsome enough to overcome that.”

  “Is it?” Elizabeth answered, looking askance at her sister. “Do you hate him as much as you pretend?”

  Elena snorted softly and looked at her. “No. Not really. I just don’t want you to be hurt.”

  “He couldn’t hurt me.”

  It was a ridiculous thing to say, and really, how could she know such a thing? Nevertheless, she knew it was true. Jamie would not, willingly, ever hurt her.

  “He will hurt you. You will marry Redding and you will be hurt because you yearn for Caversham. And you shan’t have Caversham, Elizabeth. Father won’t allow it.”

  “Redding would allow it,” Elizabeth said. “Redding doesn’t care for me, not really. And if Father could have Redding, he wouldn’t care who married him. Would you take Redding, Elena? Would you let me have Jamie?”

  “People cannot be traded,” Elena said in a stiff whisper. They had reached the bottom of the stairs. The Helston party awaited. Father was walking down the stairs with Aunt Edwina, Edwina’s snappish replies felt if not distinctly heard.

  “Would it be so bad to be Redding’s wife?”

  “You apparently think so.”

  “Not until I met Jamie. Please, Elena. Please.”

  “It’s not a thing that can be done! How can you think it could be?”

  “Anything can be done. If we try.”

  “I suppose you think that’s what a Canadian would say,” Elena said, a smile tugging at the edge of her mouth.

  “Perhaps,” Elizabeth said, grinning at her sister, her dear twin sister who could read her so well, and wouldn’t that come in handy tonight?

  “We’ll see,” Elena said, trying for a serious face.

  Elizabeth, knowing her sister, knew what that meant. She smiled all the way to the Helston’s on Upper Grosvenor Street.

  Neither Sophia nor Anne had been invited to the Countess of Helston’s to dine. Naturally, James Caversham had not been invited. He had never met the countess, though he had come close to tumbling into her second daughter’s bed.

  The Helston’s had produced four daughters, two of them promptly married and just as promptly widowed. As Bernadette, the dowager Countess of Paignton, collected men the way small boys collected seashells, Jamie had declined the invitation. He had no interest in being a notch on Lady Paignton’s bedpost.

  Sophia, by various means, had discovered without any trouble at all that the Ardenzy’s were attending a dinner at the Helston’s on Upper Grosvenor Street. Sophia, being casual friends with Yvonne, the Countess of Helston, French by birth and someone Sophia gave the impression of having known during some time in the distant past when she had lived in France, obtained an invitation to dine. Jamie was attending as her escort. Anne Staverton, after an intensely whispered conversation with Sophia whilst he paced the yellow salon, had formed other plans. He thanked her for all she had done for him; she demurred that it had been little enough. They embraced warmly and she departed swiftly.

  After that, Sophia had pushed him from the house to dress for dinner. It had taken him less than an hour and he was back again, pacing her white salon this time, waiting for her to come down so that he could escort her to Helston House and claim Elizabeth Ardenzy as soon as possible. Likely, upon his first sight of her.

  “Show some patience, darling. You can’t simply carry her off,” Sophia said, Fredericks standing sentinel at the open door.

  Sophia looked as seductive as a nymph and as elusive as a zephyr. She could not possibly be the mother of two grown children, yet she was. And she enjoyed her beauty so fully and so openly; it put him in mind of his mother, actually. No wonder they were such famous friends.

  “Can’t I?” he said. “I fear I am forgetting why I cannot.”

  “Jamie, you are the most romantic, most impulsive man of my acquaintance,” she said, coming to stand in front of him. Laying a hand on his cheek, she added, “And you put all of them to shame.”

  There was some deeper meaning to her compliment; he could see it in her fathomless black eyes, but what it was, he did not know. He would never know. Such was Sophia.

  “Thank you, Sophia. Fine words, unless I fail.”

  “You shall not fail. You would not allow nor accept it. And neither would I,” she said on a lilting laugh. “Now, come, let us go forth and conquer. Why else does London Society exist if not to be conquered?”

  It was upon those strange words that they left Dalby House for Helston House. It was not a long journey, even though the street were clogged, as usual. The street in front of Helston House was jammed with carriages and piles of dung, horses stomping, drivers swearing, the candlelight glowing from a score of windows and from within the open doorway. A London dinner in a great London house.

  He had no qualms at all about leaving it all behind for Canada. As long as he did not leave Elizabeth behind.

  It was strange, more than strange, that he should have become so attached to a woman he had just met. He could not explain it. It did seem terribly abrupt and very likely ill-advised. He was very certain that he should stop and think, at the very least.

  He did not see how he could, but he probably should try.

  “What is your plan, darling? Breech the castle? Save the damsel?” Sophia said as they climbed the stone stairs to the front door.

  “Kill the dragon,” he said with a smile he did not feel.

  “Is the dragon the father or the aunt?”

  “I will bow to your judgment.”

  “My favorite response,” Sophia said on a trickle of laughter.

  And then they were
admitted and Lady Helston, silver-haired and regal, was introduced to him and he made the proper replies and Sophia said quite a lot about something or other, but he paid no attention to any of it because Elizabeth was climbing the stair to the first floor, trailing a graceful hand upon the bannister, the candlelight setting her hair to gleaming gold, the back of her slender neck as delicate as crystal, and, yes, her sister, her identical sister walked just a step ahead of her, graceful and golden and slender, but nothing like Elizabeth. Nothing.

  How to be logical in the face of that?

  He was walking up the stairs without even thinking of doing it, just walking toward her, mesmerized. Sophia, God save her, took his arm and held him back, a gentle reminder to behave. “We are fourteen at table, Mr. Caversham,” she said, forcing him to walk at her pace, one small step at a time, pausing to study a completely ordinary portrait of some entirely forgettable ancestor. “The Ardenzy’s and the three of Helston’s girls, not Lady Lanreath, who I do think should get out more. Do you know Lady Lanreath? Antoinette?”

  “I don’t believe so,” he murmured. Elizabeth was off the stair and entering the salon to the left.

  “But you do know Lady Paignton, do you not? She is here, dear thing.”

  “Yes. Slightly,” he said.

  “Only slightly? That’s good then. That might have proved awkward,” Sophia said. “She is not as discreet as she might be. The two youngest Thorns, Camille and Delphine are in attendance.”

  “I don’t know them.”

  “Lord Quinton, you’ve met him, have you not?”

  Jamie paused, nodded abstractedly. He knew Quinton, though not well. The Earl of Quinton was of an age with his father. They did not travel in the same circles.

  Elizabeth disappeared into the salon. Sophia lingered on the stair. He wanted to throttle something in frustrated impatience.

  “Such a lovely man. We are old friends. He shall be no trouble to you at all,” Sophia said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Sophia turned her face from the portrait to him, her dark eyes shining. “Quinton has no interest in marrying again so you need not worry about any competition from that quarter. Viscount Redding, now he’s something else again.”