by Claudia Dain
Now, why was that? And what had brought him to England now?
Interesting questions, to be sure, but as they had absolutely nothing to do with Lord Dutton she could hardly be expected to actually care about Sophia and her family situation.
“But, as I was saying,” Sophia said silkily, “I’m quite certain we can all agree, even you, Markham, that Lady Louisa is possessed of the most luscious shade of red hair that I have seen in twenty years.”
Louisa fought the urge to clamp her hands down over her head. Naturally, Sophia had hit upon the one point most likely to prick: her hair. Her hair was the reason her father hated her. And because her father hated her, she returned the feeling in good measure. She was not going to be outdone, and certainly not by her father.
Louisa lifted her chin and her resolve and did not put her hands over her head.
“Twenty years?” Ruan said, looking casually in Sophia’s direction and yet not looking the least bit casual.
“At the very least,” Sophia said. “Such intensity, such brilliance, quite above the mark. Very much indicative of the girl herself, I daresay.”
It was fair to say that all the men in the room, and that would be seven if one did not count Fredericks and she most certainly did not count Fredericks, were staring at her. Seven men, staring at her hair. She didn’t like it in the least. This is what became of girls who called upon disreputable people without a proper chaperone, or even an improper one. What her cousin Amelia would think when she found out about this she didn’t care to deliberate.
It was entirely uncertain whether she would tell Amelia anything at all.
“I hope so,” George said in a husky undertone that practically echoed off the walls, rebounding the comment into every ear in the room. Lovely.
“I do believe, George, that you’re halfway to being besotted by the girl,” Sophia said. “Have a care. English women of a certain coloring are rumored to have a certain temperament.”
“Good,” George said, obviously ignoring his father’s stern glance and grunt of disapproval.
“No, darling,” Sophia said, “I believe you’re missing the point entirely. Lady Louisa, with her fiery hair, coiled like twisting flames, will burn you dreadfully, if given half a chance.”
George nodded and, smiling that rather too cheeky smile, revealing that startling dimple, said softly, “Good.”
Blast. She was never leaving the house again without a chaperone, and she was never going to pay another call upon Lady Dalby. Some experiences were too vulgar to be endured. Why, she felt as if the floor itself were heaving around her legs. It was an entirely unfamiliar and unwelcome sensation.
“Oh dear,” Sophia said softly. “I do believe, Lady Louisa, that you have an admirer.”
Yes, well, it was the wrong one, wasn’t it?
Three
LOUISA put the best face on it as possible, she was quite certain of that, but she had not come, without proper chaperone, into Lady Dalby’s rather infamous salon to meet men. Hardly. She had come to discuss methods and means of reacquiring her pearls. She did not see how being subject to inappropriate conversation and, it might be argued, lewd stares, was helping her efforts to obtain Lord Dutton and her pearls. She sniffed in delicate disapproval, shifted the hem of her skirts in cold disdain, and waited for Sophia to do the right thing. The right thing being, in this particular instance, the removal of the men in her salon.
Although why Louisa expected a former courtesan to remove men from her presence was perhaps reaching a bit too high. Unless Lord Dutton was expected? Louisa lifted her bosom just slightly and arranged her hands most prettily and, without being entirely aware of it, looked expectantly and with rather too obvious hope at Lady Dalby.
Sophia Dalby seemed to read her expectant look rather more effortlessly than was entirely complimentary.
But as it was developing into the most unusual sort of day, Fredericks did, at that precise moment, announce yet more callers. Dutton, certainly.
Actually, not Dutton at all, but her cousin Hawksworth, fully before his time, and Lord Henry Blakesley, Blakesley wearing a very sarcastic sort of look, one which he wore upon almost all occasions. If it was meant to chasten her, which it almost certainly was, he was failing wretchedly, as he always did.
She was not the sort of woman to be subdued by a look. She had not been the sort of child to be subdued by a look, which was certainly an advantage when dealing with Melverley, her father. Melverley, almost completely by accident, had taught her quite a bit more than was customary about how to manage a man, particularly if that man was proud and given to making sarcastic pronouncements.
Louisa could manage Lord Henry Blakesley quite well.
She had spent the better part of two years in her quest for Lord Dutton, and Blakesley had been a sly partner in her quest, not that he had done her any good. She wasn’t Dutton’s wife, was she? But Blakesley, blond and bored and rather more sharp of wit than was entirely comfortable, did entertain her whenever she found herself wandering from room to room during an evening out, searching for the elusive Dutton.
Blakesley, attractive in a rather sharp sort of way, was never boring. In fact, in an odd and completely unexpected fashion, he amused her as few others could.
“Isn’t this charming?” Sophia said, smiling seductively. Louisa could almost ignore her as Sophia seemed to make a point of doing everything seductively. She found it tiresome. The gentlemen, it was quite clear, did not. “A room full of interesting and worldly men. What a delicious day it has become. Don’t you agree, Lady Louisa?”
As Dutton was not among them, she was hardly disposed to agree.
“Completely, Lady Dalby,” Louisa said in the sweetest tone imaginable.
Blakesley chuckled softly and eyed her in almost open derision.
After two years, he knew her too well. It was clearly not to her advantage.
“Lord Hawksworth,” Sophia continued, holding court among the men crowding her salon in complete ease and one would even say delight, “how is it that we have never met? You are, by all appearances, a delightful man of rare deportment.”
Hawksworth, that ill-trained boy, blushed.
Blakesley allowed half a grin to slide across his features before regaining his composure.
Ruan, his green eyes glittering, did not smile.
Neither did Sophia’s son.
“He does not get out much, Lady Dalby,” Louisa said with only the smallest snip of sarcasm. “My cousin is most devoted to his health and the hours of sleep he requires are quite precisely measured out.”
“How very wise of you, Lord Hawksworth,” Sophia said smoothly, in complete contrast to Louisa’s sharp observation. “I, too, spend as much time as I possibly can in bed.”
Upon which, Lord Penrith choked ever so politely on nothing whatsoever.
Of course, it was completely obvious what he had choked on. Certain innuendos simply would not go down without a fight.
It was at that awkward moment that Mrs. Anne Warren entered the white salon. As Louisa did not care for her in the slightest, she was not at all pleased. Things were not going at all as she had hoped. But when did they ever?
Anne Warren was, unaccountably, a special favorite of Sophia Dalby’s. She had been something of a companion, being that she was the very young widow of a minor naval officer, to Sophia’s daughter, Caroline. Now that Caroline was married and out of the Dalby household, one would have thought that Anne Warren would have been out as well.
She was not.
She had, for reasons unexplainable, become engaged to Lord Staverton. Viscount Staverton was old, cross-eyed, and very rich. He was also a very well-established friend of Sophia Dalby’s and had been for as long as Sophia had been in London. Of course, everyone knew what that meant. Staverton had been one of Sophia’s many protectors while she had been on the Town. It was perfectly obvious to everyone, particularly Louisa, that Sophia had arranged for Anne Warren to marry Staverton. It was not at
all obvious how she had done so.
Sophia was, by anyone’s reckoning, extremely good at getting what she wanted.
Of all the skills to possess, certainly that was the one to have. That Sophia had, for reasons unexplainable, decided to help Louisa get her pearls back from Lord Dutton was to her very good fortune. She was not going to antagonize Anne Warren and thereby risk offending Sophia.
Or at least, she was going to try not to. Where Anne Warren was concerned, Louisa had very little self-control. Anne Warren, apart from Sophia’s protection, also had the attention of Lord Dutton. That, clearly, was more than Louisa could be expected to endure.
It was also clear that she was going to have to endure it.
“Oh, Anne, how timely you are,” Sophia said as Anne entered the room.
The men rose, introductions were made, the Marquis of Penrith looked at Mrs. Warren entirely longer than was necessary, as did her cousin Hawksworth, as did Lord Ruan. The Indians smiled rather too broadly at Anne, and Lord Dalby even went so far as to kiss her on the cheek. The only man in the room, in fact, who did not positively swoon over the completely ordinary Anne Warren was Blakesley. Blakesley was looking at her, a twisted smile upon his face, his blue eyes almost maliciously amused.
“I am so delighted that you made it back in time. It would not have done at all for you to miss this impromptu gathering of London’s most interesting people,” Sophia said.
It was completely obvious to Louisa that Sophia had intended to say London’s most interesting men, but she had remembered Louisa at the very last moment and amended her statement so as not to obviously insult her. Not obviously insult her. Still, the unspoken word hovered in the air of the white salon like rotting herring.
Blakesley, as usual, was silently laughing at her.
Louisa, as usual, did her very best to ignore him. She was very good at it as she had had so very much practice.
Anne, looking typically and irritatingly beautiful, said, “I’m so sorry. I do hope I’m not interrupting, Lady Dalby. I’ll just tell the boy to put the fabric in my room until—”
“No, no, not at all, Anne,” Sophia said. “Have it brought in. I’m quite certain it will amuse the gentlemen to help us decide upon which fabric to use in this room. I’m redoing it, you see,” Sophia said to the men scattered about the room, “and I do so enjoy a man’s opinion on something as essential as the proper color for my favorite room.”
Oh, bother. It was perfectly obvious to Louisa, indeed, to any girl over the age of six, that men of any age disliked looking at anything that did not involve either breasts or triggers.
But, as it was Sophia Dalby making the request, the men in this particular room looked positively delighted at the opportunity to consider swatches. All except Blakesley, that is. He looked undelighted, yet undisturbed. But then, Blakesley had that way about him of looking undisturbed by most everything. She found it a particularly restful quality, truth be told.
“What of the white?” the Earl of Dalby asked. “This salon has been white for years.”
“And, while it amused for a while, all pleasures must eventually pall,” Sophia said, gazing at the Marquis of Ruan. “I do so enjoy a change of scene.”
The Marquis of Ruan returned Sophia’s gaze with the barest smile touching his lips. It was a look which quite suited him, and Louisa, for all her devotion to Lord Dutton, could feel her heart flutter in something very close to titillation just watching him watch Sophia.
What must it be like, to have a man of Ruan’s obvious appeal look on with such obvious interest and in a room full of witnesses? Certainly, Dutton had never looked in any way approaching interest at her. She would have known it if he had for she was always watching to see exactly what he did or did not do.
What he did not do always far exceeded what he did do.
“What color would interest you, Lady Dalby?” Ruan asked, moving closer to Sophia as the footmen came in holding bolts of costly fabric in a variety of hues. The whole room shifted and parted, forming smaller groups within the whole. Blakesley took the opportunity to move next to her, while Hawksworth, that coward, took the opportunity to move away from her, closer to Anne Warren, she could not but note.
“Which of these colors intrigues you, Lord Ruan?” Sophia asked in reply.
“I’ve always been fond of blue.”
“How very unfortunate,” Sophia said. “Blue would not compliment the light in this room at all. We see things very differently, I am afraid.”
“I am not so untutored that I cannot find my pleasure with other hues,” Ruan said.
“How very accommodating you sound,” Sophia answered softly, running her hand over a lovely length of crimson velvet. “How very practiced at accommodation. One can’t but wonder where you learned the skill.”
“At my mother’s knee?” Ruan said, lifting a dark brow.
“At someone’s knees,” Sophia said softly, smiling in a brief flash of humor.
Louisa was aware that she was witnessing something that she should pay careful attention to, but she was not at all certain what to do with it.
“What are you doing here?” Blakesley said in a harsh whisper, dragging her attention completely away from the exchange absolutely rife with undercurrents between Sophia and Ruan.
“Choosing fabric?” Louisa said. “What are you doing here? And what are you doing with Hawksworth? I thought he was for the Prestwick town house?”
“Which is where he found me.”
“What were you doing there? Not to see Penelope?” she said with more snap than was entirely appropriate, but Penelope was practically desperate to marry and everyone knew it. Blakesley could and should do far better than Penelope Prestwick.
“And why not? She’s pleasant enough,” Blakesley said.
“At the moment, I’m quite certain that’s true,” Louisa said. “She is, after all, determined to marry the first man who asks her. I should be very wary, were I you.”
“Why? I don’t plan to ask her and she can hardly ask me.”
An answer which calmed her considerably. She liked Blakesley too much to see him saddled with Penelope, who might be both beautiful and wealthy but was hardly the sort of girl one wished upon a friend. And Blakesley was her friend, albeit a rather odd one in that he never complimented her or cajoled her or loyally took her side in every debate. A very odd sort of friend, indeed. One had to wonder why she tolerated him as well as she did. A mark of her good character, no doubt.
“I’m delighted to hear it, Lord Henry,” she said. “I value you too much to see you in a misalliance of even the most casual sort.”
Blakesley made a face, just this side of pleasant, and then indicated with a motion of his head that she should stand and accompany him to a more private part of the room. As the occupants of the white salon were shifting quite drastically, the Indians leaving and Anne Warren more fully surrounded than ever by Penrith and Hawksworth and Dalby, Louisa was more than happy to follow Blakesley to whichever corner he wished.
“Why are you here, Louisa?” Blakesley said in a hoarse undertone, his blue eyes a trifle more sharp than was usual. “You don’t have any special fondness for Lady Dalby.”
“I’m paying a call, Lord Henry,” she said primly, though it was difficult to maintain a prim exterior when Blakesley adopted that particular look and that particular tone. Nevertheless, she did it. “I have been known to do so.”
“Not at Dalby House,” he said. “You want something, and I think we both know what it is. Or who.”
That was a little too close to the mark for her enjoyment and, naturally, she was left with no other recourse than to do something about it. Namely, to redirect his attention to other, less humiliating, conclusions.
“If you must know,” she hissed, turning so that she faced the room from beyond the mound of Blakesley’s shoulder, “I want my pearls back. Melverley had no right to sell them.”
Blakesley looked rather more closely at her than was enti
rely comfortable, but she bore up admirably and returned his speculative look with one of pure annoyance.
“He had the right,” Blakesley argued, “but perhaps not the need.”
“Trust you to cut it so finely,” she snapped. “I want my pearls.”
“Sophia doesn’t have them.”
Louisa snorted delicately. At least, she was fairly certain it was delicately. “Can you think of a better person to advise me on how to get them back? If any woman knows how to wring a strand of pearls from out of a man,” she said, and then added, “and speaking of that, why did you give Caroline pearls that night? I had no idea she was such a favorite of yours.”
“And you had no idea about Penelope Prestwick either, Louisa,” he said stiffly. It was absolutely impossible to talk to Blakesley when he got his back up. Bother it. “There is much you are not aware of, apparently.”
“Apparently,” she said, moving away from him. He followed her, which she had anticipated. At least she knew how to manage Blakesley. Usually. When he was in the proper mood. “But I do know that I want my pearls, that Lord Dutton has them, and that Sophia Dalby is more than willing to help me get them back. I think I know enough, don’t you, Lord Henry?”
Blakesley didn’t answer directly. No, he was too contrary for that. He looked at her in what could only be called bald speculation, his eyes positively gleaming as he studied her. She stood up to it rather well, in her experienced opinion. Blakesley could often be found studying her; she’d developed quite a talent for enduring it placidly.
“But why would Sophia help you?” he murmured.
It was hardly flattering. It was so very difficult to remain placid when one was continually being insulted in one manner or another.
“Because, darling,” Sophia said, coming up behind Blakesley as silently as a swan on a lake, “I do so ardently believe that a woman should never be separated from her jewelry. You can believe that, can’t you?”