Unbuttoning the Innocent Miss (Wallflowers to Wives)

by Bronwyn Scott

  His point exactly. There wasn’t a party all Season that didn’t have the required delicacy. Everything was the same: every night, every day, the same routine of clubs and activities until now. This week there’d finally been a crack in the routine: Vienna and Claire. He was in a sour mood. It was unfair to take it out on Cecilia.

  He had to stop the negativity. He had to remember Cecilia was part of that dream, too. He needed her on his arm to succeed in Vienna; a pretty hostess who could organise parties and make guests feel welcome; a wife who could run a flawless house and command the servants while still looking like perfection at the head of his table; a wife with strong connections to policy makers in England. He would need all that and more. Going to Vienna was about peace in his time certainly. But it was more than that. It was a chance to know at last what had happened to his brother. For the first time, he’d have the authority and resources to retrace his brother’s last steps.

  Jonathon clasped Cecilia’s hand and gave her his best smile to soften the blow. He just needed a night to himself, a night to settle his thoughts. ‘Will you pardon me? I am terrible company this evening. I could not do your sparkling presence justice. I have papers I need to go over for the morning. I’m going to call it an early night.’ He let go and walked away without looking back. His native habitat could do without him for a while.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘You left the ball. Early. Not long after we danced.’ The words brought Claire to an abrupt halt in the garden, forcing Jonathon to stop beside her. After speaking French for the past hour, the English words sounded markedly out of place, almost jarringly so. But perhaps more jarring was the subject matter. They’d been practising a conversation about flowers to give Jonathon a chance to use his vocabulary of colours and adjectives. This conversational topic was definitely a non sequitur.

  ‘I’m surprised you noticed.’ She played with the soft petals of a rose, idly stroking its velvety surface and trying not to look at Jonathon. It was difficult looking at him today, remembering their dance, the heavenly feel of his hand at her back guiding her through the patterns, and then Cecilia’s cruel words ruining the most delightful waltz she’d ever experienced. The girl who was meant to wear Evie’s new dresses would not be bothered by any of it. But the girl she was out of those dresses couldn’t ignore the words.

  ‘No worries. I left early, too. Shh... Don’t tell anyone.’ Jonathon’s voice was a conspirator’s whisper, friendly laughter humming beneath the surface of his words. ‘Your friends came back in from wherever you had all gone, but you weren’t with them.’ There was a spark in his eye. This time she heard the teasing in his voice. ‘Might I hope our dance bore fruit?’

  If you count sour lemons. Your soon-to-be fiancée reminded me our dance was a charity project. But that clearly was not what he was referring to. It took her a moment to understand his meaning. Ah, he meant the ‘suitor’ she was trying to impress.

  When she hesitated, he became concerned. ‘I hope your gentleman wasn’t upset?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t upset.’ Definitely true. Jonathon hadn’t appeared fazed by their dance one way or another, and why would he be?

  Jonathon seemed perplexed by her answer, however. It was clearly not the outcome he’d expected. ‘Did he see us dancing? And he didn’t whisk you off to the terrace to politely stake his claim on your attentions before he lost you to another?’

  The image was so ridiculous the laughter slipped out before she could stop it. ‘Good heavens, what sort of life do you imagine I lead? I hardly have a dance card full of jealous suitors vying for my attentions.’

  ‘You are sure he saw us dancing?’

  ‘Yes.’ Not a lie, but just barely the truth. She knew full well he would misconstrue the answer. She kept her attentions fixed on the rose.

  ‘Well, good.’ Jonathon sounded staunchly positive beside her. ‘Maybe that’s something your oblivious suitor should see again, say tonight at Lady Rosedale’s.’

  Another dance, another chance at heaven. Only this time, she knew the price for it. She was leading him on, letting him believe there was a gentleman of interest. She was leading herself, too. But this time she couldn’t pretend it was a fantasy come to life. She ought to put a stop to it. No good could come of stealing more dances with Jonathon Lashley. She was supposed to win his heart by teaching him French, not by dancing with him. ‘I don’t want charity, Mr Lashley. I can manage my affairs on my own.’ A poor choice of words perhaps.

  She felt him stiffen beside her. ‘Charity, is it?’ Now she’d offended him. There probably wasn’t a woman in the ton who viewed a dance with him as charity. ‘Are these French lessons charity? Perhaps I have misunderstood the nature of our association.’

  ‘They’re not charity, you came to me asking for assistance,’ Claire stammered. She could see where this was going and she had no grounds for argument. She could speak four languages and yet she couldn’t carry on a decent, logical conversation with one attractive man in English.

  He gave a ‘my point exactly’ smile. ‘Neither is dancing with you. Dancing, like French lessons, is merely two friends helping one another achieve their goals.’ He gave another considering pause. ‘We are friends, are we not?’

  Claire tried to ignore twin sensations that thought evoked—one of them warm and lovely over the thought of being considered Jonathon Lashley’s friend, the other one slightly more practical. ‘I am your French tutor for the time being. Nothing more.’

  That gave Jonathon pause. She had him there, but there was no triumph in it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be right. Being right certainly didn’t help her cause. She wasn’t supposed to be driving him away, but drawing him in. Beatrice would kick her if she was here.

  ‘Is that what you do? Push people away by telling them how inconsequential you are?’ Jonathon drawled slowly. ‘No doubt, it’s a very effective strategy. I feel obliged, however, to tell you it won’t work on me.’ He gave her a devilish wink. ‘In fact, the effect is quite the opposite. You intrigue me. What are you hiding that must be so vociferously protected?’ He grinned. ‘Claire Welton, do you have secrets?’

  I’ve been crazy about you since I was nine. ‘I hate to disappoint you, but I’m pretty much an open book.’ Her throat was dry and the words stuck.

  Jonathon laughed. ‘You’re a terrible liar, Claire. Don’t ever try out for espionage work.’ He waggled his dark eyebrows in dramatic humour. ‘Everyone has secrets.’

  ‘Even you?’ She couldn’t resist. It was so much fun to play with him like this. He was alarmingly easy to be with. But she’d known that, she’d always known that. It had been a large part of his appeal from the start. More than being good-looking, Jonathon was good company, a rather subtle trait others took for granted.

  He put a hand over his heart in mock shock. ‘Moi? Why, Miss Welton, what a leading question! Are you implying my reputation as a gentleman isn’t pristine?’

  She shot him a coy look, daring a bit of flirtation. ‘Well, is it? Pristine?’ She had a sudden urge to know his secrets, to know a piece of him that no one else knew. She’d had a taste of that unknown and she was hungry for another.

  There’d been years when he’d been gone, war years. A thought occurred. ‘What do you know of espionage, Mr Lashley?’ she joked.

  ‘If I knew anything at all I certainly couldn’t tell you. It would defeat the purpose.’ His tone was light, but some of the twinkle had gone out of his eye. Perhaps she’d dared too much. She hadn’t thought.

  ‘I forget sometimes that you’ve been to war,’ Claire offered, hoping he’d hear the apology in her words. She’d been miserable when he’d gone away. ‘It is difficult to picture you as a soldier.’ That smile, the tailored clothes, the immaculate toilette, all bespoke the well-kept heir, not the soldier.

  ‘Good.’ His grin was back in full force. ‘Then I have
succeeded.’ He bent to pluck a rose from a bush. ‘War is not something anyone should be constantly reminded of. Will you permit me?’ He tucked the blossom in her hair, his fingers brushing the top of her ear. The delicate contact made her shiver. What a dichotomy he was: the warrior, the gentleman, one with perfect manners, the other for whom manners would be a negligible thing. One was safe. The other was dangerous, a man who had seen and done worldly things, who could do those worldly things to her. Another shiver took her. If only the gentleman in him would allow it.

  ‘Now you know one of my secrets, Claire. You must let me guess one of yours.’ Jonathon tapped a finger against his chin and studied her.

  ‘But I don’t have any,’ she protested, suddenly flustered. Would he guess? How mortifying would that be? She would have to deny it. He had not moved away after tucking the flower behind her ear. He stood close, his dark head cocked. She scarcely dared to breathe.

  ‘I know,’ he said after a while. ‘Have you ever been kissed, Claire?’

  That was even more embarrassing. Maybe he should have asked if he was her secret crush instead. ‘I cannot possibly answer that. A lady never tells.’ Claire took refuge in the high moral ground.

  ‘Correction.’ Jonathon leaned an arm against a low-hanging branch, his posture lazy and close. ‘A lady never tells just anyone. A lady might endeavour to tell a friend.’

  Back to that, were they? It seemed this conversation had started out with such a discussion before it had meandered in this very dangerous direction. How had they gone from French lessons, to a game of twenty private questions? ‘I had a marriage proposal once.’ There was no good answer. If she said no, he would think her prudish, a dried-up stick. If she said yes, he might think she was loose.

  He wagged a scolding finger. ‘Tut-tut, Claire. That’s not what I’m asking. Have. You. Ever. Been. Kissed?’ There were dangerous glints of mischief in his blue eyes now.

  She wanted to take a step back, but there was nowhere to go. She dropped her eyes. If she said no, would he kiss her now to remedy it? She hoped not. She didn’t want a charity kiss any more than she’d wanted a charity waltz. And yet, she did want him to kiss her. Just not like that.

  ‘Ah,’ Jonathon said softly. ‘I have my answer. Never fear, Claire. It will happen when it should.’ He dropped his voice low. ‘Now, we know each other’s secrets. We are really truly friends.’

  She should let it be. But the statement provoked Claire. Couldn’t he see how impossible it truly was? ‘Men and women being friends? Is such a thing realisic, Mr Lashley?’ She moved the discussion back to the intellectual high ground where she was more comfortable. This was a debate she could win, although at the moment she wasn’t sure why it was so important to win it.

  They began walking again and she was glad to give her body something to do besides look at him, besides imagining a kiss that couldn’t happen. ‘Society doesn’t think so. It has numerous rules in place to keep men and women apart aside from the purpose of marriage.’ She made her case. ‘For instance, does Miss Northam know you visit me daily for French lessons?’ There. That would be a bucket of cold water on a conversation that had gone astray. She already knew the answer. Cecilia had no idea how Jonathon spent his mornings. Most didn’t. It was a source of embarrassment for him. To have those lessons from her, a wallflower out for three years and a noted bluestocking, would further that humiliation no matter how neat the bloodlines of her birth. ‘How would Miss Northam feel if she did know?’ Another rhetorical question. She already knew the answer. ‘Miss Northam would see me as competition.’

  ‘But that’s ludicrous!’ Jonathon began his rebuttal and she tried not to be hurt by the truth. It was ludicrous. The old doubts surfaced. How could she possibly compete with Cecilia Northam? Why would a man like Jonathon, who had everything, have an illicit interest in someone like her when he had Cecilia draped on his arm.

  And yet, it was what she’d hoped for, wasn’t it? Had waited years for: a moment when Jonathon would see her for herself and love her for it.

  ‘I think we should prove them wrong,’ Jonathon said. ‘We should declare ourselves friends and we can start by dispensing with the “Mr Lashley” bit. Let us be Jonathon and Claire,’ he declared with an elaborate expansiveness that made her smile as he stuck out his hand.

  She took Jonathon’s hand and shook it, meeting his warm eyes. Oh, foolish, foolish hope. She was too late. Cecilia had all but claimed him. She was setting herself up for failure and heartbreak and she couldn’t seem to stop herself from doing it. Just for a moment, she let herself believe in the impossible: He’d missed her. He had noticed she’d left the ball and then he’d left early, too. He found her intriguing. Those were words she could live on for the rest of her life.

  * * *

  What the hell was he doing, asking for friendship from the likes of Claire Welton when he knew better the impossibility of such a thing? Jonathon was still asking himself the question as he walked down Bond Street that afternoon.

  It wasn’t just the social impossibility of such a friendship. Claire had made good points there and he felt compelled to agree with her. Men simply weren’t friends with young, unmarried women of good breeding, especially when the man in question was committed to another.

  Well, that was arguable. He wasn’t technically committed to Cecilia. Even as his mind made the debate he felt guilty. He was playing with semantics now. But who could blame him? Claire had caught him entirely unprepared: the feel of her in his arms as they danced, the look in those sherry eyes, all of that intelligence, all of that innocence turned on him. It had been a heady combination on the dance floor. Hell, after a week of lessons, it was becoming a heady sensation wherever she was: the garden, the ballroom, the library. He wouldn’t for a moment suggest Claire Welton was naïve. Naiveté implied the person in question was unworldly and she was far too intelligent to ever be that. She was merely untried, her desires and dreams untested beyond the confines of her quiet life.

  And she was ready to test them. The answer came to him so suddenly he nearly tripped over a crack in the pavement. The new clothes, the desire to actively pursue her erstwhile suitor. It was all there. She was ready to break out of her self-imposed exile, a butterfly emerging from the cocoon, still somewhat fragile, still learning the powerful of its wings, its beauty. After all, she’d left early for whatever reason. She had not told him why she’d left, but since it hadn’t been to sneak off to the terrace with her beau, he could only conclude that the lack of success in that regard had encouraged her flight.

  Jonathon stopped outside the window of his usual florist’s on Bond Street, studying the blooms on display. He could help her with the metamorphosis and not only with dances. The bell over the door jingled as he entered the exclusive Bond Street florist. The man behind the counter looked up from where he stood arranging a bouquet of yellow and white daisies, one of a hundred he did daily for the aspiring debutantes of the ton and their hopeful suitors.

  ‘Ah, Mr Lashley!’ He wiped his hands on his wide apron and hustled forward with a smile. ‘Have you come for something for your lovely girl?’

  ‘Yes, the usual for Miss Northam, if you please.’ He always sent a bouquet of pale pink roses, her signature colour, to Cecilia on the days she and her mother hosted their at home. ‘And the irises in the window, I’d like to send them to a second address.’ He pulled out his card case from the pocket of his coat. ‘Perhaps, you could mix in something yellow to go with them?’ He wrote a short sentence carefully in French on the back of his card. ‘Send this with it.’

  Phipps nodded. If he thought anything above the ordinary about two separate orders to two separate women, he gave nothing away. ‘I have some daffodils that have just arrived.’

  ‘I leave it to your discretion, Phipps.’ It would be a vibrant but sophisticated arrangement, not a mere debutante’s bouquet. ‘I would like them d
elivered this afternoon.’

  Jonathon signed the bill, feeling very smug imagining Claire’s surprise when the flowers arrived, and then the surprise of her suitor when the man realised he couldn’t take her affections for granted, that there was, perhaps, another hound at the hunt. He had expected the action to leave him with a feeling of accomplishment. He’d done something to help a friend. But the feeling eluded him. Why did he feel more like a dog in a manger than that hound at the hunt?

  Chapter Nine

  He was prepared for her that night at the Rosedale ball. He signed not one, but two dances on the little card dangling from her wrist, making sure that the second one was late into the evening to ensure that she stayed.

  The first dance was early, a lively country romp that left them breathless and laughing. ‘I haven’t danced like that in ages!’ Claire exclaimed between gasps, reclaiming her breath afterwards. It had been exhilarating. If he’d thought, or hoped, that the waltz had been an anomaly, that he couldn’t possibly feel after a country dance as he had after that waltz, he was wrong. Incredibly so. If anything, he felt even more alive. When he was with her, some of the suffocation of his life receded.

  ‘I need some air, would you come out with me?’ Jonathon asked, struggling to get his own breath back. The floor hadn’t been as crowded as it would be later. There’d been plenty of room to whirl and turn, and they had with his hand firm at her waist, holding her tight, her face turned up to his, laughing, and for a few minutes he stopped worrying about everything—about French, about Vienna, about Cecilia—and it seemed she had, too.

  He noticed, because he missed that sense of relaxation as soon as they stepped outside. She was tense again. ‘Tu es nerveuse?’ he asked in low tones, moving them down the shallow stone steps into the Rosedale garden.