A Truly Perfect Gentleman

by Grace Burrowes

  Addy set down her tea cup, the day brighter despite the closed curtains. “I hate Lady Antonia.”

  He held out his arms, and Addy was in his embrace. “You don’t hate her, please tell me you don’t hate her, and then we will speak of more cheerful matters while we have the privacy to do so.”

  “I don’t hate her.” But I will if you marry her. “I’ve been reading.”

  “You weren’t at the card party. I assumed your indisposition troubled you. Perhaps a lurid novel kept you company?”

  To wrap Casriel in her arms, to have a conversation while embracing, felt wonderful. He wasn’t aroused, and neither was Addy, but still… The scent and feel of him assuaged a longing of the heart and comforted the body.

  “What do you know of lurid novels?” Addy asked.

  “I’ve read everything Mrs. Radcliffe has written. Life in Dorset is prosaic on a good day, and a bit of mortal peril and derring-do make for fine entertainment.” He turned Addy under his arm and escorted her to the sofa, then came down beside her. “I take it Mrs. Radcliffe wasn’t entertaining you.”

  “Theodosia Tresham lent me a little French medical tome about ladies and babies.”

  “I adore your blushes, Beatitude, but I’m a farmer at heart. I know where babies come from, though I suspect you’re reading about how to prevent conception.”

  She adored him, adored how he could balance blunt speech with true consideration, fine manners with common sense. Addy snuggled into his body heat, trying to hoard affection and closeness, which was pointless. She didn’t want a few stolen embraces. She wanted emotional and social carte blanche.

  “You say things other people only think, my lord, and yet, you say them kindly.”

  “A gentleman is kind and honest. I honestly missed you at the card party, then was tormented at last night’s ball. I had not planned on… had not foreseen becoming… That is to say…”

  He kissed her, thoroughly, deeply, and—how was this possible?—thoughtfully. His kiss was gentle and relentless, searching and respectful. He cradled her cheek against his warm palm, stroked his thumb across her nape.

  Casriel broke off the kiss, his chin resting on Addy’s crown. “I had envisioned a pleasant, pleasurable association with you. I still want that, but such matters are supposed to end with a smile and a fond wave. I cannot see myself managing such a fiction.”

  He was brave to trust her with that truth, or maybe this was more of his kindness. “I’ve missed you too,” Addy said. “You’ll come by on half day next week?”

  “King George can declare martial law and I will still find a way to be with you. Tell me what else was in your French book. Was there a mention of vinegar and sponges?”

  “Yes, and lemons and limes cut in half, and herbs.”

  He kissed her temple and sat back, keeping an arm around her shoulders. “Pennyroyal, rue, comfrey, fenugreek… Some include lavender and Saint John’s wort on the list. Pennyroyal tea is safe enough provided you aren’t carrying already, and has a good reputation as a preventive, though nothing is entirely effective.”

  Was there mint in the scent he wore? Lavender? Wrapped close to Casriel, Addy felt as if a Dorset meadow lay behind her windows, not a tiny London garden.

  “How do you know this?”

  “My father was quite the botanist, and our library at Dorning Hall is rife with all things agrarian. When I became a papa while yet a minor myself, I decided to pay attention to how to avoid future missteps. I shared the information with each of my brothers, at length, repeatedly. I am happy to report that Tabitha has no illegitimate cousins—yet.”

  To sit like this, discussing the most ungenteel subjects, was intimate in a way Addy hadn’t been intimate with her husband.

  “You would blame yourself if your brothers had illegitimate children?”

  He brushed his fingers over the side of her neck. “Not blame myself, but ultimately, responsibility for the child’s care would fall to me, as head of the family. Jacaranda married quite well and will never want for anything. Daisy is much more modestly situated, and I’ve already had to… Why are we discussing this?”

  He’d lent money, or made a gift of money, to his sister’s husband.

  “Because I like talking to you,” Addy said. “I like cuddling up with you, letting the conversation go where it will, while I pet your knee and you stroke my neck.”

  “I’ll bring you the herbal tea,” he said. “Next week. If you send your maid to the apothecary, she will wonder why you’ve suddenly become enamored of a humble meadow tea. We have all manner of meadow teas and herbal stores at Dorning House, because Dorning Hall has entire fields left over from Papa’s various experiments. If you ever need a pillow stuffed with lavender or a sachet of spearmint, I’m your man.”

  The turn of phrase was quaint, also a little unfortunate.

  Grey Dorning was not Addy’s man. “Next week, you will be my lover. I will look forward to that.”

  “Not half so much as I, my lady.”

  He turned the topic to his various brothers and neighbors, describing each one with a combination of affection and candor. His sisters were given similar treatment, as were his small nieces and nephews. He was truly the head of his family, which was already large and likely to become enormous.

  This was another reason why he would marry Lady Antonia: He had a limitless supply of brothers who would likely sire an army of nephews, and every one of them would expect “Uncle Grey” to find him a post, buy him a commission, or otherwise open professional doors.

  That realization was lowering for a vicar’s hoyden daughter, though probably for the best. Addy wanted Grey to be happy. As devoted as he was to family, he needed to marry well, and she understood why he could not be happily married to her.

  She finished her tea. He finished his. After another kiss behind the locked door, she showed him out, thanking him for all of his work on Aunt Freddy’s ailing harp.

  Chapter Nine

  When in London, Grey attended Sunday services at St. George’s, which activity consisted of a lot of socializing with a few hymns and a sermon thrown in. Sycamore had remained abed, which in theory could see him fined, but in practice would ensure a better mood later in the day.

  Grey walked to and from services, not only to spare the staff having to hitch up a vehicle and loiter away the morning with the horses, but also to afford him an excuse to walk. He missed tramping his fields in Dorset, missed spending most of the day in the fresh air—not that London had any truly fresh air.

  He missed stacking hay, damn it.

  He missed his siblings too. The Dorning brothers improved the choral offerings of any congregation and enlivened all the conversations in the church yard thereafter. They also kept Grey company on the hike back to Dorning Hall, everybody in good spirits for having taken a little care with his appearance and enjoyed some time with the neighbors—and their daughters.

  Grey left the church not in bad spirits, though the sermon on the subject of self-restraint had annoyed him. Why couldn’t the preacher have held forth about joy? About the wonders of creation in spring? About the commandment to love one another?

  “Your lordship, good morning.” Lady Antonia Mainwaring offered him a businesslike curtsey from the walkway. Her Sunday bonnet was no fancier than anything else he’d seen her wear, her smile no more welcoming.

  “My lady. A pleasure. I hope you enjoyed the sermon?”

  “Frankly, no. We get that harangue every year as the Season reaches its peak. Somebody’s darling boy has gambled too much, somebody’s wife has run off with a footman. Then comes the sermon about self-restraint. Why does Vicar never preach on the Song of Solomon? It is unique among all Scriptures, a fascinating piece of literature, and yet, we ignore it.”

  “Excellent point.” Also, perhaps, Lady Antonia’s version of casting a lure, given the focus of those passages. “Might we discuss other sermon topics while I walk you home?”

  In the country, if an unmarr
ied man and woman began walking home from church together, crying of the banns might well follow. In Mayfair, this courtesy was less portentous, though still doubtless noted.

  “Perhaps that’s for the best.” Lady Antonia cast a glance up the walkway, where a maid was in conversation with a footman. “Halpern, McDaniel, his lordship will see me home.”

  The maid curtseyed. The footman grinned and tipped his hat at her ladyship.

  Grey offered his arm and felt like an impostor. He was executing a step in a dance, just as standing up with her ladyship for the supper waltz was a figure in that same dance. The pattern ended at the altar, exactly where he needed it to end.

  But did he want it to end there with this woman? Had Addy avoided services because of him?

  “I’ve often wondered,” her ladyship said as they walked in the direction of Grosvenor Street, “how services would be different if women managed them. Would the sermons be about heeding the call of adventure rather than self-restraint?”

  Her ladyship’s stride would get her across any pasture in good time. “I’m not sure I take your meaning.”

  “Who needs to be reminded to restrain himself? Ladies are taught restraint from when we’re in leading strings. We restrain our laughter, our voices, our opinions, our appetites. If lectures regarding restraint have any effect on us, that effect has been gained before we take our first communion.”

  “Gentlemen are taught restraint as well,” Grey said, “though in my case, the lesson was a little late to take hold.” She might as well know this now.

  Lady Antonia sent him a look from beneath her bonnet brim. “One wonders if you had a misspent youth. Some of the most sober-appearing gentlemen did.”

  “And if I made a few errors in my younger years?”

  Her pace increased. “Then I would tell you to make a few more. One wants an adventure or two to recall in one’s dotage. One is dull company otherwise.”

  Did she find him dull? “Have you had adventures about which you don’t speak, my lady?”

  “Of a certainty. I went out without my parasol last Tuesday. I returned a book to the lending library two days late and wasn’t even scolded. I read Bryon, which I’m told is unfit literature for a lady, though his lordship himself is accounted good company.” She came to an abrupt halt at a street corner. “Are you considering courting me, Lord Casriel?”

  Am I…? She’d ambushed him, though probably without meaning to. “Why do I feel as if my dance partner from the other night has been whisked away by the fairies and a more interesting and unhappy woman has taken her place?”

  She dropped his arm and fished in her reticule for something known only to her. “Your legendary good manners must be a burden sometimes, just as my contrary nature is.”

  “I find you lively rather than contrary. My sister Jacaranda is contrary.”

  Her ladyship produced a large iron key and started across the street. “She married Worth Kettering. They were said to be a love match.”

  “They very much are a love match, but first she kept his country house for him. An earl’s daughter ran off to take a position in service, because in her words, if she must drudge all day on behalf of a lot of ungrateful males, she’d at least get paid for it.”

  Lady Antonia came to a halt before the wrought-iron fencing around Grosvenor Square. “You consider that contrary?”

  Grey took the key from her. “You don’t? I corresponded with her, I kept an eye on the situation, I intervened when the matter required a show of family concern, but had not Kettering fallen arse over teakettle for her, she’d be drudging still out of sheer fixity of purpose.”

  He opened the gate and bowed the lady through, then gave her back the key. “You asked if I’m courting you. Manners cannot inform my answer, for if I say no, and you were hoping for an affirmative reply, I have hurt you. If I say yes, and you were hoping for a negative reply, I have put you in a very awkward position. As a gentleman, I desire your happiness above my own, so what answer would you prefer?”

  “I think I followed that. Shall we sit?”

  He did not want to sit beside her and watch the other residents of the square whiling away their day of rest. A dandy with a large dog was allowing his canine to investigate the hedges. A little girl trotted along beside her nurse. All very safe, all fenced in with iron railings to keep out the people truly in need of respite.

  Now was too soon to embark on a courtship. Doing so would mean Grey could not call on Addy in the capacity of a lover. He wasn’t ready to give up the hope of some intimacy and companionship with her before he consigned himself to being his intended’s dutiful swain.

  And yet… Sycamore was apparently in difficulties, or soon would be.

  Ash’s silence from Dorning Hall boded no good for the hay crop.

  Fraternal correspondence that went around Grey rather than through him suggested more bad news was on the way—another leaky roof, another draft team gone lame.

  He had given up rental income on the town house to facilitate his fortune-hunting, and now he’d lose the rental income from the dower house as well.

  “I should marry you,” Lady Antonia said, taking a seat on a bench beneath a maple.

  Grey’s heart physically ached at her words. “Any man would be honored if you looked with favor upon his suit.” Just please, not quite yet. Another week, a fortnight…

  Three days from now, but not yet. His longing was foolish, because parting from Addy after another encounter would be harder than parting from her now. And he would part from her.

  “Any woman with sense would be pleased for you to pay her addresses, my lord. Any reasonable woman.”

  Lady Antonia was more rational than most men Grey knew, including at least three of his brothers. He tried for a pleased tone. “Shall I court you then, your ladyship?”

  Beatitude, my love. I miss you. I will always miss you.

  “I am not only contrary,” Lady Antonia said, “I am a romantic.”

  God have mercy on an impecunious bachelor. Poetry and flowers, then. Moonlit strolls… and beyond that, Grey could not think. Even waltzing with her ladyship was more an athletic undertaking than a pleasurable dance.

  “I have not the luxury of a romantic choice,” Grey said, “though I will make every effort to show my intended that I esteem her.” He did esteem Lady Antonia. He esteemed Mrs. Beauchamp too.

  “The realization that I am a romantic is recent and unwelcome,” Lady Antonia said. “I would rather be an eccentric. I am too homely to be an original and too ancient, but an eccentric is granted a certain latitude that a Long Meg of a spinster is not.”

  The dandy with the dog went mincing past, his collar points so high they prevented him from turning his head.

  “You are neither homely nor ancient, and I will pummel any man who says otherwise.”

  “That is precisely the problem. Shall we take a turn around the square?”

  “I would rather we remain here, my lady, and conclude our discussion. Perhaps you might explain this problem to me?”

  In small words, so that a man more upset than he had a right to be could follow them. Grey liked Lady Antonia, he’d exerted himself to charm her, and now they were to court. No giggling Arbuckles, no mercenary Miss Quinlan. He should be pleased and grateful that his aims had been accomplished so easily.

  He was, instead, on the verge of shaking his fist at the sky and roaring profanities in public.

  “The problem is, you are a good, decent man, and I like you.”

  “I enjoy your company too, which bodes well for our—”

  She touched his arm and shook her head. Because of her blasted bonnet, Grey could not read her expression.

  “You frighten me, Lord Casriel.”

  While she baffled him. “I would never, ever raise my hand to a woman. Not only are you safe with me, my first obligation as a gentleman is to keep you safe from all other perils as well.”

  She scooted and turned, so he could see her face. S
he was actually quite pretty, with serious gray eyes and—if a man bothered to look—faint freckles dusting her cheeks.

  “I am afraid that I will marry you,” she said. “You have taken notice of me, the first to do so in at least three years. I’ve had the same fortune all along, but I’m so…”

  “Do not say plain, ancient, or contrary, for you are none of those.”

  “So unremarkable, that even the fortune hunters now give me a pass. I have become invisible and lonely. Then you strut into the ballroom, all handsome and mannerly, and my resolve weakens. You tempt me. I wish you did not—I wish you could not—but you do. I must stand firm against pretty manners and lovely eyes, though, or I will end up even lonelier than I am now.”

  The impact of her decision settled slowly, a warm blanket of relief in a chill wind of duty. She would not marry him, in other words. She would not compromise her standards or yield to battle weariness.

  And right behind his relief came a good quantity of admiration.

  “I think you are extraordinarily wise, my lady, and I wish you every happiness.” She was also extraordinarily wealthy and could afford to be resolute in her search for a spouse. Still, for a young woman to eschew the married state was a testament to substantial fortitude. “Is there anything I can do?”

  She looked away, at the girl now skipping beside her nurse—on the Sabbath. “Do?”

  “Anybody you’d like to be introduced to? Any gentleman who has caught your fancy who might benefit from hearing what an amazing conversationalist you are?”

  “What they say about you is accurate, then. You are a truly perfect gentleman.”

  “Not always. Sometimes I curse and kick walls and rant at my brothers. Sometimes, I lose patience with my tenants and nap during sermons.”

  She regarded him again, all seriousness. “But have you returned a book two days late? Perhaps you need an adventure. You mentioned youthful indiscretions. I know about your daughter. She attends school with one of my younger cousins. They both like horticulture.”