“Really, Jack,” Belinda said, laughing up at him, “you are a brave man to take on Colin at a time like this.”
“Stuff,” he scoffed, and moved toward the empty chair across from Linnet, but he kept his attention on the baby. “What’s the problem, little chap, hmm?” he asked as he sat down. “Giving Nanny no end of trouble again today, I see. You shall be quite the hellion when you grow up.”
Red-faced, his round cheeks streaked with tears, Colin wailed even louder in response and batted Jack’s shoulder angrily with a chubby fist.
“Yes, yes, you’ve every right to be upset,” Jack murmured, twirling the shortbread in his fingers in front of the baby’s eyes. “Nannies are no fun at all. They shove you around in a pram where you can’t see anything, then they make you have tea alone in the nursery afterward. What fun is that?”
“Isn’t that where babies are supposed to be when they cry?” Hansborough asked, raising his voice a bit to be heard above the din.
“What’s wrong, Hansborough?” Jack asked, transferring his gaze to the viscount, smiling a little. “You look terribly grim. Don’t you like babies?”
“I like them well enough,” Hansborough answered, staring back at Jack. “When they’re not mimicking Irish banshees.”
His voice was even, but despite Colin’s wails, Jack heard the peeved tone of his voice.
Linnet heard it, too, he noted, watching as she turned her head to give the viscount a thoughtful, considering glance, and after last night’s events, that was something Jack was quite gratified to see.
“Babies cry, Hansborough,” he said with a shrug, and returned his attention to Colin. He pressed the biscuit to the baby’s quavering lower lip, making soothing noises.
Colin, however, would not be soothed. He stopped crying just long enough to mouth the biscuit for two seconds, then with another wail, he grabbed the shortbread and hurled it past Jack’s shoulder across the grass.
“You don’t seem to be having much luck calming him down,” Hansborough commented, acid in his voice.
“That’s all right.” Jack twirled another piece of shortbread in front of the baby. “We’re just beginning, aren’t we, Colin?”
Hansborough’s reply was tight. “Lovely.”
“Unless . . .” Jack paused, smiling faintly at the other man. “Unless you’d care to have a go?”
“God, no.” The viscount sounded appalled. “Crying babies belong in the nursery with the nanny, not out and about, irritating the guests.”
Linnet was still watching Hansborough as he spoke, and Jack felt positively gleeful when her thoughtful frown deepened. The viscount must have sensed her gaze on him, for he turned, giving her what Jack could only think was a pathetic attempt at a smile. “Crying babies need a nanny’s comfort.”
“Of course,” she murmured, her frown vanishing. She smiled politely back at him, but Jack felt a surge of triumph, for he knew the damage was done.
Hansborough knew it, too. He studied her face for a moment, then with a stiff movement, he took up his gloves and stick from the grass beside his chair and stood up. “If you will pardon me, Miss Holland,” he said, bowed to her, then he turned in Jack’s direction to go back toward the house. As he passed Jack’s chair, he muttered something under his breath. It sounded like, “Bastard.”
Jack laughed, turning to look over his shoulder as the viscount walked away. “Don’t forget your gloves.”
If the viscount made a reply to that wicked parting shot, Jack didn’t hear it over Colin’s crying. Still grinning, he turned back around in his chair to find Linnet watching him, and something in her face caused his grin to falter and his satisfaction to evaporate, and he wondered if what he’d just done had been an utter waste of time.
Chapter 15
“What did you mean about gloves?” Linnet asked, and she couldn’t help noticing that he wasn’t looking quite so pleased with himself as he had a moment ago. “Hansborough had his gloves in his hand,” she added, frowning in puzzlement. “So what did you mean?”
He gave a shrug. “Last night after you left us, Hansborough suggested we both take off the gloves. That’s boxing cant. It means—”
Colin interrupted this explanation by striking him again in the chest and wailing even more loudly. Jack held up the shortbread, but again, Colin remained unimpressed. Since most of her friends were married by now, Linnet was quite accustomed to babies and could have offered him some advice, but she refrained, deciding after his mischievous teasing of Hansborough, a very angry baby was no more than he deserved.
As it turned out, however, Jack proved more adept with babies than she’d have thought. After studying Colin’s furious face for a moment, he shifted the child a little and reached down, working to free the T-bar of his watch fob from the buttonhole of his waistcoat. With the pocket watch free, he held it up by the chain, dangling it and the winding key in front of Colin. Startled by the sudden appearance of this shiny new object, the baby stopped crying.
“Deuce take you,” Jack said, laughing as if he was as surprised as the baby.
Linnet sniffed. “It would have served you right if he wailed all afternoon, and Nanny refused to take him back.”
He looked up, and his grin was back in place as he rolled the chain in his fingers, twirling the watch and key before the baby’s eyes. “That wouldn’t matter,” he said. “I’d never abandon Colin to Nanny. That would be deserting a friend in need.”
He returned his attention to the baby. Lifting the watch higher, he began to swing it back and forth, and Colin tilted his head back, following the movement as if entranced. Suddenly, he reached up, grabbed the watch, and yanked it out of Jack’s hand. With a gurgle that sounded decidedly possessive, the baby gripped the watch in both hands and jammed it partway into his mouth, sucking on the smooth brass edge.
Linnet burst out laughing, and Jack laughed with her, shaking his head at the baby. “Really, now, old chap. I gave you some delicious shortbread, and what you want to suck on is my watch?”
It seemed so, for Colin mouthed the watch with obvious contentment.
“Most people don’t know what to do with crying babies,” she said, watching him. “They feel helpless and uncomfortable.”
“Are you making excuses for Hansborough’s boorish behavior?” Jack leaned back in his chair, watching her as he leaned back in his chair and settled Colin on his lap. “Or perhaps you agree with him that babies ought to be shut up in the nursery when they cry?”
“Neither. But he was right that a crying baby irritates some people.”
“Colin ruffled his feathers, certainly.”
“Not just him. When you brought the baby over, nearly everyone started edging away from you as if you’d caught the plague.”
He studied her over the baby’s head. “You didn’t.”
She smiled a little. “Yes, well, I like babies, even when they cry.”
“I like babies, too, Linnet.”
With those words, her smile vanished, her throat went dry, and she had a sudden, strange notion that she was looking into the future. That picture tilted the whole world a little off its axis. “Is that what this was about, then?” she whispered. “Bringing Colin over to impress me with your talent for babies to make you seem a better marriage prospect?”
“Well, yes, that’s part of the reason.” He grinned, holding up one hand, fingers crossed. “Did it work?”
She very much feared it had, but she sniffed, striving to seem unimpressed. “You’re holding a baby, not performing a miracle,” she said. “Any man might hold a baby.”
“Any man but Hansborough.”
She laughed, all her efforts to be unaffected going to the wall. He laughed with her, but after several moments, their laughter faded, floating away on the warm afternoon air, and in the silence, she watched him with the baby, and her heart constricted, making it hard to breathe.
She forced herself to say something. “You were terrible to tease Hansborough. When you s
aw how annoyed he was, you should have taken the baby away.”
“And miss showing you how much he dislikes babies? Not a chance.”
She stared at him, frowning. “How do you know Hansborough doesn’t like babies? How could you possibly know something like that?”
“Nanny Brown brought Colin in when we were having port the first evening because Nick had just arrived home from America and wanted to see his son. Colin started to cry, and I noticed Hansborough’s reaction. He was quite put out about having the port interrupted by a crying baby.”
She felt a pang of dismay. “So it wasn’t just to impress me with your abilities. It was also to show him up?”
“Oh, he deserved it, Linnet. After his obnoxious reference last night to what happened in Newport, he needed to be taken down a notch.”
“Why? Because he pointed out that your behavior on that occasion was less than exemplary?”
“You think that’s what bothered me?” He made a sound of derision. “I couldn’t care two straws what he thinks of me. But that reference to Newport embarrassed you, and that bothered me enormously.”
Pleasure welled up within her, but she worked to tamp it down, reminding herself of his keen ability to take advantage of any situation. “So when the nanny was strolling by with Colin today, you decided it was a perfect opportunity to exploit his dislike of babies? Or perhaps you even arranged for Nanny to come by?”
He hesitated and shifted in his chair, looking a bit guilty, confirming her guess, and more visions of the future flashed into her mind, a future of sons who would look just like that after being caught red-handed with a stolen batch of strawberry tarts. Black-haired, dark-eyed sons with knowing smiles and a talent for playing her like a violin. “You did,” she whispered, and shoved visions of a future with him aside. “You staged the whole thing.”
He was saved from replying by the approach of Lady Trubridge. “I see someone has stolen your watch, Jack,” she said, pausing beside his chair, smiling at her son as she held out her hands.
“Oh, yes, now you want him,” Jack complained as he stood up. “After I’ve got him nicely settled for you.”
“Well, of course,” she agreed at once. “You don’t think I wanted him when he was screaming loud enough to wake the dead, do you?”
Linnet watched as Jack pressed a kiss to the baby’s head, and her heart constricted in her breast. What he’d done had been a ploy, a calculated move to manipulate her, she knew that, and yet, even now, she felt as if her heart were hovering on the brink, ready to fall into his hands as inevitably as a ripe plum fell from a tree.
As he handed the baby to his sister-in-law, Linnet jerked to her feet and turned her back on him and the rosy picture of the future he’d been attempting to paint for her.
She heard him call her name, but she pretended she hadn’t. She kept walking toward the house, but, of course, he didn’t let her get away. She’d barely reached the flagstone walk that led to the terrace before he fell in step beside her.
“Yes, I staged it,” he admitted. “Well, not the crying part. That was pure good luck.”
“Good luck?” She shook her head, amazed at how he defined things. “Exploiting a crying baby to do another man down is good luck?”
“Given the fact that it got you to see what sort of father Hansborough would be, I’d say it was damned good luck, yes.”
“Why is it that every man who isn’t you is somehow a bad choice for me?”
“Linnet, I’m only doing what you wanted me to do.”
She stopped, so abruptly that he’d gone three steps farther before he stopped as well. “What I wanted you to do?” she echoed as he turned to face her, not quite able to believe she’d heard him right. “It’s a ploy, a calculated move. It’s not real. How could you ever think something so artificial would be something I’d want?”
“It’s not artificial if it’s the truth. I like babies. Hansborough doesn’t. Those are facts.”
“Convenient facts that show you in a good light and him in a bad one, so that I’ll deem you a better choice as a husband than he.”
“Of course, but so what? Everyone in the world does that sort of thing every day. We all present ourselves in the best light we can to impress others. I’m doing it, yes, but Hansborough is free to do it, too. We all do it, even you.”
She started to deny that, but he interrupted her. “I’ve seen you in an evening dress, Linnet. Those low-cut necklines of yours are a form of manipulation, too, at least by your definition of it.”
“Oh, that’s absurd. It’s not the same thing at all.”
“No?” He folded his arms. “How is it different?”
“Well, for one thing, it’s much more innocuous.”
“But still the same thing: an obvious ploy to elicit a very specific result.”
“And the result you hoped for was that I’d think you a good candidate for fatherhood merely because you can pacify a baby with your pocket watch?”
“It’s not as if we have time for a long, drawn-out courtship where you have plenty of opportunity to determine my winning ways with children. You wanted to know what sort of father I’d be, so I decided to show you the only way I could think of in the limited time we have. You say it’s artificial, but these are artificial circumstances. It doesn’t make what I did any less genuine or what I showed you any less true.”
“Still, a demonstration at Hansborough’s expense was hardly necessary. You could have explained those things to me.”
“I could have. But my words and explanations don’t seem to impress you. Like my words about how that kiss in Newport was for me, or the fact that I’m in love with you.”
“Jack.” She glanced around, but thankfully, no one milling around the lawn was within earshot of where they stood, though several people, including Lady Trubridge and her mother, were watching them.
“Those declarations didn’t do much convincing, as I recall. My words seem to bounce off you like arrows off stone walls.”
“That’s not true,” she protested. “I—”
“I could have sworn up and down hill and dale how much I adore babies, and that, unlike Hansborough, I’d never have the nanny take the baby away just because he’s crying in front of the guests at our latest party, but would it have made any difference?”
He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “I could have explained that unlike my father, I don’t believe in keeping the children scuttled away in some dark, depressing part of the house with only Nanny for company. I could have said that sending them off to boarding school before they’re ten years old is not acceptable to me, and that seeing them only once or twice during the summer holidays isn’t good enough, and that a good thrashing with a riding crop isn’t the solution to every disciplinary problem.”
“Good God.” Linnet stared at him, her chest tight as his words sank in. “Is that what your childhood was like?”
He looked away, staring out over the grass. “I could have told you that if my son were a champion footballer, I’d actually attend the festivities on Prize-Giving Day,” he went on, and she had the answer to her question. “And if my son ever got into trouble at school, it would occur to me that his wild behavior might be a bid for my attention, not a demonstration of his worthlessness. And I’d never ridicule him, or belittle him for being merely the second son, and I wouldn’t withhold his allowance on a whim just because I could.”
She made a wordless sound, appalled, appreciating the connotation.
“Yes,” he added, returning his gaze to her face, his dark eyes glinting with defiance, “now you know why I would insist on an income being spelled out in our marriage settlement. My father, and my brother after him, loved holding my quarterly allowance over my head. They knew it was my only source of funds, and they found it vastly amusing to keep me in a perpetual state of suspense.”
Linnet stared into his resentful face. “I never dreamed you were refusing it for that reason.”
“It doe
sn’t matter.”
“But it does.” She swallowed, pain on his behalf making her throat tight. “You should have told me, explained—”
“Again, would you have believed me? I doubt it,” he added before she could answer. “You asked me what sort of husband and father I’d be, but how is a man supposed to define those things in words?”
“You seem to be doing fine with words right now,” she murmured.
“Nonetheless, I decided a demonstration of my fondness for babies was a simple, expedient, and far more effective way to show you what sort of father I’d be than to tell tales of my rotten family and tragic childhood.”
He didn’t give her a chance to reply. Instead, he turned, and this time, he was the one who walked away.
DURING THE TWO days that followed, Jack was a perfect gentleman.
In the mornings, as she rode the park with Carrington, he hoped the duke was explaining the latest political maneuverings of Cecil’s cabinet and boring her to tears, but he didn’t try to encourage the duke in that regard, as tempting as it might be.
Tufton’s efforts to capture her attention, he was happy to see, went nowhere. Whenever she was with the marquess, Jack could observe her leaning back or edging away, and though he did feel a bit sorry for the chap, he was of no mind, in the name of fair play, to advise Tufton to gargle eau de cologne or chew a bit of parsley.
And though Jack had demonstrated Hansborough’s abysmal lack of paternal capability, Linnet seemed of no mind to forgo his company. And though every time Hansborough danced with her or laughed with her or admired those low necklines of hers, Jack’s ever-inventive brain conjured up plenty of other ways to show up the viscount to his own advantage, he didn’t act on them.
No, though it was the hardest thing he’d ever done, Jack behaved himself. He made polite conversation with her and her mother over tea, and he tried not to dwell on all the devious ways he could have maneuvered Helen into leaving them alone. If there was dancing in the evening and he was lucky enough to have a waltz with her, he kept their bodies the perfect, proper distance apart and made polite, proper conversation. And if he happened to encounter her during a rare moment when she was alone, he bowed, said a few innocuous words, and moved on, just as a gentleman should.
Catch a Falling Heiress: An American Heiress in London Page 25