by Lara Temple
She’d wandered off with Mrs Pritchard before he’d been able to object, and so tonight once again he was flanked by Lady Sarah and Lady Sophronia. He had nothing against pretty girls—quite the opposite—and he appreciated beauty. But he was not in the mood for flirtation and that was pretty much all they wanted from him. That and tales of grand adventure he had no wish to indulge them with.
At least Julian was similarly besieged. The bubbly Burford chit—Lady Calista, or Calamata, or something—was doing her best to monopolise his cousin’s interest, while on his other side was a pretty brunette someone had mentioned stood to inherit ten thousand pounds, who was casting him occasional birdlike glances of mixed interest and fear.
Kit watched in appreciation for a moment as Julian skilfully navigated both those very different flirtations. But then, in the moment of shifting his attention between the two women, he saw Julian fix his gaze upon Genny, who was seated opposite him.
It was the matter of a second—like a bird tipping its wing mid-flight before correcting course. Julian’s smile changed from charming and attentive to rueful and real, and then went right back to one of flirtatious enjoyment as he engaged Lady Calista once more.
Kit’s gaze went to Genny. She was entertaining the elderly whist lovers while she kept an eye on the rest of the players at the table and remained in constant silent communication with the servants in the background. But, like Julian, for that moment she’d let her guard slip and smiled a real smile—also rueful, and a little weary. And in another moment, as Julian’s attention was engaged elsewhere, her gaze fell to the table, her smile faded, and she looked...lost.
The clinking and buzzing and rumbling and chattering seemed muted, as if they’d all sunk below the water. Even the colours, bright and brassy in the light of dozens of candles, became hazy.
She didn’t look like Genevieve Maitland at that moment, but the Genny she had been in Spain—slight, watchful, quiet, and much more that he hadn’t seen then but realised now. She was full of fierce determination and carefully sheathed pain.
The officers had laughingly tolerated her hold over her grandfather, but Kit realised now that General Maitland had seen everything that his granddaughter was and everything life would never allow her to become and tried his best to give her...something.
It was not enough. All that force, and passion, and need—wasted on organising dinner parties, curbing his grandmother’s temper, and now finding husbands for the Carrington women.
Then she straightened her shoulders, raised her chin, and turned and met his gaze. It felt like a slap. His whole body took the brunt of the blow, short and sharp and followed by a surge of molten heat, and he pressed back against his chair.
She held his gaze, held him, her cool grey eyes carefully blank. But her shields weren’t doing their job. If she’d stood and upended the table—china, silver, crystal and all—it would have felt more natural than her sitting there in her pretty pale blue gown, with her rebellious hair tamed into Grecian braids.
He let the image come—her standing like Dido among the ruins of Carthage, her honey-and-fire hair set loose to brush over her skin, her cool eyes in full storm. She would come towards him and—
‘Don’t you agree, Lord Westford?’
Lady Sarah’s question dragged Kit’s attention back to reality as abruptly as the erotic image had dragged him out of it, and far less pleasantly. In the haze of confusion, he considered agreeing blindly to whatever politeness she’d offered, but something in her eyes stopped him.
He managed a smile. ‘I apologise, Lady Sarah. What must I agree to?’
‘I asked whether you preferred flower arrangements or epergnes as a centrepiece,’ she replied with mock demureness.
He glanced down the dinner table to where a lovely arrangement of peonies did nothing to impede his vision of his grandmother. Thankfully his view of Genny was now blocked by one of the rotund whist partners. He turned to the fine view of his grandmother down the miles of linen. She glared at him.
‘Whichever is taller,’ he said, in reply to Lady Sarah’s enquiry.
She cast a quick glance down the table and hid a giggle in her napkin. ‘I quite see your point. I had never thought of an epergne as an aid to digestion, but one learns something new every day.’
‘That is a positive outlook on life. What else have you learned today, Lady Sarah?’
‘The same thing I learned yesterday, unfortunately. That my host would far rather be elsewhere.’
He raised a brow in surprise. This was a very direct approach.
He decided to meet candour with candour. ‘I’m sadly deficient in that role, aren’t I?’
‘Not at all. You are usually engaged in discussions of greater interest than epergnes, or the weather, or the latest on dits. It is merely unfortunate that so many men with similar interests are assembled here. It makes it hard for those of us not up to snuff in matters of antiquity to compete for attention. I must endeavour to improve myself.’
He could almost hear his mother, chiding him for his ill manners. ‘You do not need improving, Lady Sarah. You might equally claim that us old bores must improve ourselves, by broadening our horizons to matters other than musty antiquities.’
‘But they aren’t in the least musty. You have such beautiful treasures here.’
He smiled, waiting with resignation for some mention of pirates, but she surprised him again.
‘For example,’ she continued, ‘that wonderful little vase in the drawing room that looks as if it has caught the sunlight, so you can see the little drawing as if the people are dancing.’
He frowned, trying to place it. ‘Ah, yes. The alabaster vase. It is Egyptian, and probably some two thousand years old.’
‘Oh! Was that when Queen Cleopatra was alive?’
‘Close enough.’
‘Goodness. It might have been a gift to her from Julius Caesar.’
He smiled at the awe in her voice.
‘I don’t think he would have been allowed past the first portal with such a modest gift. She was probably accustomed to her admirers presenting her with far more substantial offerings.’
‘Size isn’t all that matters,’ she replied with suspicious demureness, before adding, ‘Though it is, of course, important.’
Kit was saved from replying to this suggestive comment by his grandmother, signalling that it was time for the women to withdraw. Lady Sarah impressed him further by showing no sign of regretting the interruption, but he had little doubt this had only been her first sally.
As the men stood he met Julian’s gaze and his cousin raised his glass slightly.
Kit wasn’t certain if his lopsided smile was mocking or commiserating.
* * *
‘Damn the boy. He’s disappeared again.’
Genny didn’t even have to guess who Lady Westford was referring to. She’d noticed Kit absconding not ten minutes into the game of charades that was currently holding the guests rapt in laughing attention as Lady Calista and Serena tried to depict Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps, elephants and all.
‘He shall probably return soon,’ she replied lightly, not in the least convinced that he would.
This wasn’t the first time he’d slipped away from the after-dinner entertainments these past few days. He’d behaved admirably during the first week, but this second week she’d often had to run him to ground, either in the library or in the garden.
The first two times she’d been sympathetic. The coy picking over of his bones that society engaged in behind his back and sometimes not very far away was enough to put a strain on anyone’s composure. But she was just as exhausted, and she did not allow herself to go and put her feet up in the library and read a book while the house was full to bursting with his guests.
‘“Probably” won’t cut it. The dancing will begin in half an hour and he’d be
tter be here,’ Lady Westford replied. ‘Tell Julian to fetch him.’
Tell him yourself, Genny thought mulishly, but kept silent. Just as she’d kept silent throughout most of this hellishly long fortnight.
‘I don’t wish to interrupt his flirtation with Lady Sarah. I’ll go,’ she replied.
Lady Westford gave a short snorting laugh. ‘That little minx is making headway with both of them, eh? Good for her. You go, then. And have a word with my grandson. He listens to you. Society might have taken him to its bosom for the moment, but it’s fickle and they’re watching him. One misstep and they’ll roast him over an open fire.’
Genny raised her brows at this image. ‘I think we have a little more leeway than that. Lord Westford’s entertainments have become the talk of the season.’
‘For the moment. Title and wealth and a damned pretty face are excellent shields, but they aren’t impenetrable, Genevieve Maitland, and his flaws run deep. Now, go and fetch the rogue.’
Genny did as she was told, happy to get away. But she knew Lady Westford spoke the truth.
It was true that everyone wanted to be invited to Lord Westford’s entertainments.
Everyone spoke of how tasteful they were...how they married the right touch of intellectual interest with excellent food, wine, and music.
Everyone was now enamoured of this new jewel in society’s crown.
Everyone wanted to see Lord Westford.
Lady Westford’s now all too frequent ‘At Home’ hours had become a parade of ambitious matrons angling for invitations. Genny sat through them with a smile pasted to her face as she listened to the fruit of her labours being extolled by those hopeful mamas.
‘What a fascinating man Lord Westford is.’
‘So cultured.’
‘Such good taste.’
‘Such surprisingly fine manners.’
‘And so, so much more handsome than Lord Byron.’
And on and on and on—until Genny felt queasy and found some excuse to leave the room before she let slip that, far from being as enchanted with them as they were with him, the handsome and charming Lord Westford was counting the days until he could escape.
All too often—like now—he had a tendency to disappear from his own festivities and had to be coaxed back like a skittish filly. And then, damn him, he had the audacity to look at her as if she was forcing him to do Latin declensions, when all he had to do was charm a bevy of beautiful women—an action which evidently came as naturally to him as breathing.
No wonder Julian envied and resented him. She envied and resented him herself.
The transition from light and laughter to dark silence as she stepped out through the library door into the garden was a blessing. For a moment she just stood there, soaking in the night. The quiet. The pleasure of being utterly alone. She walked to the end of the patio, where darkness hid the gardens, and leant her palms on the stone balustrade, breathing in the cool night air overlaid with the city smells of smoke and refuse, coming through the green scents of the garden.
Carrington House was set at the edge of town, its face to ever more tightly packed buildings, while its back still clung to the illusion of country, with a lush garden and trees beyond. From upstairs she could see the lights of houses in a very different part of London, to the south of them, but from here she could for a moment imagine she was back at the Hall in Dorset, with its far more impressive garden leading to open cliff faces and the bay.
Just the thought of walking down to the bay and sinking her feet into the cool damp sand where the waves kissed the shore calmed her jangling nerves.
She stood listening to the music from the house for a moment. Mozart sounded softer here, slipping beneath the gurgle of the fountain. Suddenly all the noise she’d left inside seemed brassy and discordant.
She gave a sigh of relief—and then almost fell off the patio as a dark form appeared beside her out of nowhere.
‘Kit! You walk like a cat,’ she admonished, her heart in full gallop.
‘You scratch like one, so we’re even. Have you come to herd me back inside?’
Even his smile looked feline in the dark, and his eyes caught the faint glimmer from the windows farther away in the house.
‘Lady Westford wanted to send Julian, but I didn’t want to interrupt his flirtation with Lady Sarah.’
She tried to gauge his response to that, but he merely leaned against the balustrade, his back to the darkness.
‘They were making too much noise. I couldn’t hear the music. Listen.’
The quartet of players were keeping to their instructions to be unobtrusive until called upon to play dance music, and so had chosen a slow, soothing tempo. But Mozart’s genius defeated their aim—the violin sang in such sweet sorrow it was impossible not to be drawn in.
They stood side by side, listening, and when the tune slipped into another, warmer piece, she gave a little sigh, reluctant to let the pleasure of that moment go.
He shifted a little beside her, his voice a low murmur. ‘Remember Los Dos?’
Genny gave a gasp of surprised memory. They’d been two Spanish liaison officers who had served with her grandfather for several months and travelled with beautifully crafted guitars. They would play in the evenings as they sat in courtyards or on boxes beside tents. She could almost see the flicker of campfire and smell the dust, wood fire, and jasmine.
‘Ramirez y Ramirez,’ she murmured, smiling. The two men had been unrelated but had borne the same name, and had soon come to be called Los Dos. ‘I missed their music when they left. I missed those evenings.’
‘I miss music all the time—especially when we’re sailing. I have some music boxes and my bosun plays the guitar, but not as well. I shall have to find some musically talented sailors before my next voyage.’
‘Will you be leaving directly after the wedding?’ she asked, keeping her voice light.
‘Yes. I have to sail the Hesperus to Portsmouth for some repairs, but she should be ready by then. My grandmother will be relieved to see the back of me. Julian too.’
She didn’t bother denying this. ‘The Ton will be disappointed.’
He gave a low laugh. ‘I daresay they will. Toddlers never like to have their toys snatched from them. But I prefer not to linger until they become bored and decide to toss me out of their perambulators.’
‘I didn’t realise you saw yourself as a baby’s rattle.’
‘I thought that was your opinion of me, Miss Maitland,’ he said, and smiled, turning to look at her. ‘All flash, no substance.’
‘Now you are fishing for compliments. You know that is not in the least my opinion of you.’
‘I admit I am not at all certain what your opinion of me is.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Indulge me.’
‘It strikes me that you have been indulged enough. I prefer not to fall in line with the rest of the female species.’
‘It isn’t like you to evade giving an honest opinion. It must be bad, then.’
‘It isn’t—and you know it. I have, for the most part, recovered my grandfather’s opinion of you. However, he might have had a few words to say about your tendency to wander off in the heat of battle and leave your subordinates to hold the line.’
He laughed again, folding his arms. ‘You have it topsy-turvy, Genny. You’re the General here. I’m merely the battalion to be brought in with drums and flutes to make a great show at one end of the battlefield while you are engaged in flanking action on the other. It’s all bells and whistles here.’
‘That is arrant nonsense. If you are trying to make me feel sorry for you, you are failing miserably. You are luckier than you deserve, Kit Carrington. You have a life to go to. A life you love.’
‘And you don’t.’
It wasn’t a question.
She tu
rned away but he touched her arm, stopping her. ‘I shouldn’t have been so blunt. Forgive me.’
‘What for? It is the truth. I don’t love it, but I am content. I am luckier than most.’
‘Resigned isn’t content. Why don’t you find a way to leave? You are intelligent enough to do so.’
A slash of fear struck through her and she almost asked him—where to? But she pushed it aside and clung to the one important thing. ‘I won’t leave Serena. Not when she needs me.’
He sighed. ‘It is a waste for someone like you to set her life aside for another. And have you considered that Serena might not want this particular form of salvation? You cannot save people against their will, love.’
She squirmed at the casual endearment. It wasn’t in the least complimentary. More pitying.
‘I can do my damnedest,’ she snapped.
He held up his hands. ‘It wasn’t my intention to upset you. Certainly not when I owe you so much.’
‘No, you don’t. What I do, I do for myself.’
Guilt joined the bubbling cauldron inside her. He wouldn’t be quite so grateful if he knew of her pact with Lady Westford.
Suddenly it felt horribly wrong.
What would he do if she told him...everything?
She opened her mouth and raised her eyes to his. He was looking at her with that intent look she sometimes saw on his face when she caught him watching her—as if he was trying to decipher some runic inscription.
It felt invasive...dangerous.
‘We should rejoin the others,’ she said, her words rushed. ‘The dancing will begin soon.’
‘In a moment, little shepherdess. From the sound of those squeals they are still in the middle of one of those awful games. I have a few more moments of reprieve, and so do you. Your brief is to ensure I perform, so help me practise my quadrille.’
He took her hand and bowed over it, and as if on cue the musicians slipped away from Mozart and into a tune she did not recognise.
‘What a talented quartet to anticipate my needs,’ he murmured. ‘This has the distinct flavour of a waltz to it. Come, let us see if we can’t do better than our last attempt.’