Knowing there was nothing he could offer to make up for its loss, he was struggling to think of a sympathetic reply while she impatiently swiped the tears from face. ‘I suppose that’s it, then. Unless...’
She rounded to face him, her eyes once again bright with excitement. ‘You are probably right. If I were to go by myself, I’d be forced to have a minimum of conversation. I couldn’t just slip in and remain unnoticed. But if I were to trail along behind someone else... Someone with a well-known interest in railways, someone of importance who would become the focus of everyone’s attention, the obscure young clerk attending with him would be ignored.’
‘No,’ he said flatly.
‘At least consider it!’
‘I wouldn’t bring a mere clerk, who could have little interest in the lecture.’
‘I could be...your young cousin from the country, who’s become interested in railways because of your investments. Your bashful country cousin who has little to say for himself.’
‘No.’
‘Please! I’ll practise in front of a mirror so I can stay straight as stick as I walk. I’ll keep my head down and mumble and slip into the background. The other engineers will be curious to meet you, talk with you. They’d have no interest in a bumbling young cousin who has neither expertise nor money to invest. And...and if the ruse were discovered, you could say you’d done it on a lark. Or a wager! Everyone knows society gentlemen agree to do all sorts of outrageous things on a bet. Even then, no one would discover who I really am. And none of the engineers travel in your social circles, where they might comment on the escapade to someone who knows you. They might shake their heads over you showing such a lack of respect for their organisation, but no one would be offended enough to refuse accepting your investment in their next venture. It could work!’
‘Even if I agreed, how do you think you’d manage to don your “costume”? You could hardly dress in gentlemen’s attire in your own bedchamber—assuming Mary would let you out the door—and then waltz down the stairway and out into the street without some gawking servant noticing you.’
‘I intend to bring the garments to Father’s office. Walk out with him when he leaves for his consultation, circle around to the back entrance and change in the storeroom, then exit the same way. The room contains just surveying equipment and measuring rods, so unless there is an active survey going on, no one goes into it. Please say you’ll do this! Whatever happens, even if I should be discovered, no harm will come to you, and there’s only a very small chance that my true identity would be discovered to embarrass my family. I’ve never wanted anything as badly as I want this, perhaps my one chance to attend a scientific lecture. Please?’
Her pleading face was hard to resist. What he’d read of Miss Jacson’s book and her eloquent comments about the discrimination against education for women made it impossible for him not to sympathise with the restrictions that restrained her. It would be such a small thing—one lecture stolen from the whole realm of study denied her.
He was an idiot to even consider it.
While he dithered, trying to get his tongue to produce the refusal his common sense told him was imperative, her expression altered again, from eager to guarded. ‘Never mind, Dellamont. I shouldn’t have asked. Please forget that I did.’
Her swift change from entreaty to capitulation set alarm bells clanging in his head. ‘Promise me you’re not going to attempt this on your own.’ When she said nothing, merely gazed into the distance, he repeated, ‘Promise me!’
‘I can’t,’ she burst out. ‘It’s bad enough that my options are reduced to marrying someone in order to remain close to the work I love, that I’m barred from practising the trade even though I know I would do an excellent job, as good as Austin or any of Father’s engineers. It’s one small chance to seize something for my own. Besides, I don’t see how it could be that disastrous. Even if I were discovered and word of it reached my sponsor—though I can’t imagine how it could, since no one from the ton would be attending the lecture anyway—if my Season were to be abruptly ended, that would be fine with me. If I were caught out, I’d probably just be escorted out with heavy disapproval. No one there knows me and I doubt I’d be forced to reveal my name, so my family wouldn’t be shamed. But instead of being passive, responding only to what others do, for once I could take the initiative and do what I wanted. I might even succeed.’
‘You’re going to do it anyway.’
She nodded. ‘I think I will. I think I must.’
Should he participate in this folly, if he couldn’t dissuade her? If he were present, he could at least protect her from abuse if she were discovered. He had to admit, he too would be interested in hearing Stephenson speak. He could do as she suggested, grandly announce his presence, make a short introduction of his ‘cousin’ and then monopolise attention, letting her recede into the background.
He was still an idiot to consider it.
But in the end, he was too worried about what might happen to her if she went on her own. While prudence screamed in protest and every instinct for self-preservation argued against it, he said, ‘Very well. I’ll attend and do my best to deflect any attention from you.’
She’d started walking back towards the house, but at that, she stopped short and turned to face him, her eyes going wide. ‘You will? Truly?’
‘Haven’t I told you several times—?’
‘That you never say anything you don’t mean?’ she interrupted. Running back to him, such a look of joy on her face that for a moment he forgot the enormity of the folly he’d just committed himself to, she cried, ‘Oh, Dellamont, thank you! I’ll never forget this!’
‘I should be clapped up in Bedlam. But if we’re going to do this thing, we’d better figure out how.’
Placing her hand back on his arm, she said, ‘Let’s walk, then.’
* * *
For the next half-hour, they considered and discarded plans of action, finally coming up with one he thought had a reasonable chance of not ending in disaster. As they finished the final circuit, she turned to him, smiling. ‘I’ll see you outside the back entrance to Father’s office tomorrow afternoon at three.’
‘I’ll wait until four. If you haven’t appeared by then, I’ll know something came up to prevent you.’
‘Yes. Any later, and we would miss the beginning of the lecture.’ She shook her head wonderingly. ‘I can hardly believe it. I shall actually be able to attend a meeting of the Institution and listen to George Stephenson speak. It’s a dream come true. I cannot thank you enough!’
Throwing her arms around Crispin, she went up on tiptoe and kissed him.
What she lacked in expertise, she made up for in enthusiasm. Response roaring through him, he pulled her closer, deepening the kiss, captivated by the honeyed taste of her, the rapture of pulling that luscious body close to his.
From a distant somewhere, a voice pitched with outrage seemed to be hailing them. As if suddenly awakening to what she’d done, Miss Cranmore stepped back abruptly, requiring him to release her.
‘Now, Mary,’ he heard her say, his wits still foggy with passion, ‘you mustn’t rail at Lord Dellamont. It was my fault.’
‘Sure and it was,’ the maid scolded, watching them from the turn in the pathway. ‘What will his lordship be thinking of you? If you wasn’t a lady grown, I’d take a switch to you. You come in now and let me fix your hair before it comes altogether unpinned.’
The glare Mary gave Crispin told him that Miss Cranmore’s accepting blame for the kiss hadn’t exonerated him completely. Standing with hands on hips, the maid waited for her charge to accompany her.
‘I’d better soothe Mary’s ruffled feelings, or she’ll not let me out of the house tomorrow,’ she told him softly, a thrill in her voice. ‘What an adventure it will be!’
‘I only hope it won’t end with me clapped up in
Newgate,’ Crispin muttered. ‘Very well, I’ll bid you good day, Miss Cranmore,’ he said more loudly. Nodding to the maid, he walked towards the house.
As he passed Mary, she murmured, ‘You will protect her, won’t you?’
Surprised, he checked his step long enough to murmur back, ‘You can count on it.’
Giving her head a satisfied shake, the maid walked over to collect her mistress.
* * *
Still somewhat astounded by what Miss Cranmore had induced him to agree to, a few minutes later Crispin found himself back outside on the street. Their careful planning having ensured as much as possible that disaster would be avoided, he would worry no more about it.
And despite the risk of all the things that could go wrong, he felt himself catching Miss Cranmore’s enthusiasm, his thoughts turning instead to what a grand adventure it could be if all turned out right.
As long as he was able to steel his response to seeing her lovely body revealed in breeches. Fortunately, travelling to and from the meeting in his phaeton with his tiger up behind and sitting in the midst of a group listening to a lecture on bridge construction—with his ‘cousin’ dressed in male attire—ought to hold in check his desire to kiss her again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Precisely at three the following afternoon, Crispin pulled up his phaeton on the narrow alleyway behind Richard Cranmore’s engineering office. Telling his tiger to walk the horses back towards the street, he hopped down from the carriage and walked to the door to the servants’ entrance.
He trusted his tiger, but he’d rather the boy not know precisely where his passenger had come from—and have as little chance as possible to observe her walking.
A few minutes later, a slim figure emerged through the doorway. He halted, watching her as she walked towards him.
Even her brilliant smile couldn’t distract him from the effect of seeing her in male garb. Saints preserve him, she looked every bit as fetching as he’d feared.
The fashionable coat nipped in snugly at her waist, and though the tails belled out in the back to end below her thighs, masking her derrière, it was open in front to reveal trousers that hugged her belly and showed tantalising glimpses of her legs—her long, lovely, shapely legs. His mouth drying, his gaze traced them down to where the trouser legs topped polished shoes.
While he tried to unstick his tongue from the roof of his suddenly dry mouth, he noticed how stilted she was as she advanced towards him, obviously trying to remove the natural sway from her gait.
‘What do you think?’ she asked, beaming as she halted beside him.
‘I think I just made the most colossal mistake of my life.’
Obviously too excited to be abashed by his comment, she only laughed. ‘Now you’re just being pettish. I thought I looked quite well—the style not so exaggerated as to draw the eye, but the suit well enough put together not to invite comment.’
Well put together. More like excellently put together. So excellently, he was seized by the desire to march her back into the storeroom and remove all those garments. Slowly, one by one, his hands cherishing her calves, thighs, belly...
Sweat broke out on his brow.
Dragging his thoughts from the physical, as he forced himself to make a more objective inspection, he realised she was right. Her ensemble was stylish enough, but not too stylish, the garments neat and well made, but not extravagant enough to draw unusual notice. She’d got the tone just right, appearing to be exactly what she sought to be: a young, well-to-do but not flashy ton gentleman.
‘I suppose you’ll do,’ he admitted at last. ‘As long as none of the engineers looks at you too closely.’
As long as no gentleman’s eye lingered on the unusually rounded swell beneath the neatly tied cravat or the extravagant curve of hips under her jacket.
‘You’ll be there to deflect attention and make sure no one gives me a second glance,’ she replied. ‘I’d worried over how to camouflage my excessive amount of hair, but I’ve managed to sweep it up underneath and pin the top down over the fullness, most of it hidden under the wide neck of the cravat, so if I remove my hat carefully, I think I can get by. I can’t thank you enough for this! But shouldn’t we be going? It would be better not to be the focus of too many glances by arriving late.’
Nodding, Crispin paced to the end of the alley and waved to his tiger, who turned the horses and brought the equipage to them. About to offer her a hand up, he remembered just in time and watched instead as she grabbed the strap and jumped up herself.
‘Wonderful,’ she murmured to him after he’d climbed up and set the team in motion. ‘So much easier than if I’d been wearing skirts!’
He gave her a warning look, jerking his chin towards the tiger perched behind them and hoping the clatter of wheels on the cobblestones had muffled her words. ‘Better start being bashful and monosyllabic now.’
Nodding, she slid a finger across her mouth in a ‘my lips are sealed’ gesture—which, alas, only recalled his attention to that tempting mouth.
Clearly unaware of the havoc her apparel was causing him, as merry as a child given a bag of sweetmeats, she grinned at him, her eyes dancing and her whole body almost vibrating with excitement.
While his vibrated with tension of a different sort.
Or rather, two sorts—the sensual response he must hold in check, and dread over how this episode would end.
* * *
All too soon, they arrived at the institution’s headquarters, a fine Georgian building in Westminster. The game begins, he told himself as he watched her hop down, then climbed down himself. After sending his tiger off to a nearby posting inn with enough coins to buy himself some ale and a meat pie, Crispin turned towards Miss Cranmore.
She’d been practising keeping silent during their drive, but now he could feel her anticipation as they stood facing the entry stairs. ‘Ready?’
‘Beyond ready,’ she answered.
Reminding himself not to offer her his arm, he walked up the steps beside her, having to check a grin when, halting before the entry door, he heard her long, awed sigh. ‘Don’t you dare swoon on me,’ he murmured.
She turned to him with a chuckle. ‘That wouldn’t be very politic, with me in trousers. No, I shall be serious, respectful, and defer completely to you.’
‘If only you had deferred to my request not to go ahead with this enterprise,’ he retorted.
‘Don’t be a spoilsport. Shall we enter?’
He anticipated that two of the greatest hurdles would be getting past the attendant who took their hats and canes and then the member taking their tickets. To his relief, both events occurred without incident, Miss Cranmore’s hair remaining securely hidden as she doffed her hat, and neither man sparing her a glance.
They proceeded into the vestibule in front of the assembly room where the lecture would take place, Crispin halting at the edge of the room so that Miss Cranmore would be able to stand behind him by the wall, partially shielded from view. The few engineers already present, who stood around chatting, nodded to acknowledge their arrival.
Then, as he’d feared and anticipated, one man detached himself from the group and came over to them.
‘Lord Dellamont, isn’t it?’ he asked. When Crispin nodded, he continued, ‘I thought I recognised you. I sat in the gallery near you during Parliament’s debate about the Great Western. Did you decide to invest in it?’
‘I did.’
‘A chancy endeavour. But Isambard Brunel and Richard Cranmore are excellent engineers. I’d give good odds for it being successfully built, although it remains to be seen if construction costs can be kept low enough to make it profitable. But here, I’m forgetting my manners. I’m Forsythe, Reginald Forsythe, a member of the Institution’s Board of Directors. How pleased I am to welcome such a forward-thinking investor to our lecture today—and your com
panion, of course,’ he added, gesturing to Miss Cranmore.
‘John Mathews, my young cousin from the country. He’s still at school, but has become infected by my enthusiasm for railways.’
The three exchanged bows, Crispin checking a smile over how correct Miss Cranmore’s was, just the right angle and degree of bend. She must indeed have been practising in front of her mirror.
Several other gentlemen come over to join them, Forsythe performing the introductions, before talk turned into a general discussion about the tunnels, bridges and viaducts the assorted engineers were building or in the process of designing.
Crispin asked a question here, made a comment there, ensuring the conversation flowed briskly. As he’d hoped, the fully engaged gentlemen completely ignored the shy young man standing behind him.
He didn’t dare look at her himself. She was probably bursting to take part in the conversation. He didn’t want to do anything that might encourage her to abandon her prudent silence.
Once he’d decided they’d chatted long enough, he said, ‘The lecture will begin soon. We’d better take our seats, don’t you think?’
With a murmur of agreement, the group set off. Ever conscious of the potential for discovery, Crispin chose chairs at the side of room furthest from the entry door, where they would not be immediately seen by everyone who came in or went out, in a shadowy corner furthest removed from the pale afternoon light filtering in through two large windows.
A few minutes later, the chairman of the lecture series rose to welcome them and introduce their speaker. A stir went through the room—Crispin heard Miss Cranmore’s sharp intake of breath—as the guest lecturer walked in.
A tall, genial, grey-haired man, George Stephenson greeted the group, nodding to several he recognised in the audience. Speaking in his north country accent with the assurance of vast expertise, he launched into a discussion of the factors to be considered in the design of bridge spans, noting the advantages and disadvantages of construction wholly with stone versus a combination of stone and iron.
Harlequin Historical July 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 Page 38