by Connie Lane
“You should be a philosopher, Willie!” Hexam overheard their conversation and called out his encouragement. “Yours is certainly a most original viewpoint.”
“You sound like Somerton’s doting aunt,” Latimer added.
Lynnette laughed. “And tonight, you are supposed to be nothing but a friend.” She tugged Willie toward the table. “Come. We can wait only so long,” she said, her laughter as light as the frothy concoction of a dress she wore. “Unless Mr. Hexam is planning on keeping it all to himself, perhaps he could pour us a glass of wine.”
“Indeed!” Hexam did the honors. He poured for each of them and when he was done and the drinks were passed, he raised his glass. “To Miss Lynnette,” he said, smiling at her. “And to Willie,” he added, jumping to his feet and lifting his glass in her direction. “The best biscuit maker this side of Delhi.”
“And the best organizer on the planet!” Latimer said.
“And the best thing that ever happened to our friend Somerton!” Palliston added.
“How terribly amusing!”
The husky voice from the doorway made them all turn just as Nick stepped into the supper box. He had the most striking woman Willie had ever seen on his arm.
Lady Catherine Sutcliffe was as dark-haired and as dark-eyed as Lynnette had said. What Lynnette had not mentioned was Lady Catherine’s high cheekbones, or her Cupid’s-bow lips. She had not said that Lady Catherine had eyes the color of the heart of a candle flame or skin that was as clear as daylight and as pure as alabaster. She had not reported that her gown was impeccable or that her figure rivaled Madame Brenard’s in its fullness and sensuality.
And if she had, would Willie have discouraged a meeting between Nick and Lady Catherine?
She pushed the thought out of her mind and realized that she, like all the others, was staring.
It was a reaction that, apparently, Lady Catherine was more than used to. Her supremely confident gaze skipped over the men one by one. They had been introduced earlier in the evening and now, she nodded to Lynnette. Finally, she let her gaze rest on Willie and though Willie had no doubt that Lady Catherine was as passionate as Lynnette said she was, she could not help but notice that the lady’s eyes were as cold as the diamonds she wore in her ears and at her throat.
“You must be…” Lady Catherine paused for the briefest of moments, as if offering a chance for someone to correct her. “Willie?” She looked Willie up and down and for the first time since Nick had proposed it, Willie wished she had accepted his offer of a new gown for the night’s festivities. At the time, it seemed an unwarranted extravagance and even though he’d sent for a modiste who had come to Somerton House with an army of assistants and a great many fabrics to choose from, she had firmly refused.
Of course, that was before she knew her neat but simple gown would be looked on by Lady Catherine as if were no more than a frightful scrap. No sooner had the look touched Willie, the message loud and clear, than Lady Catherine turned to Nick with a smile and wound her arm through his. “I do confess, I am baffled. What is it your friend here said? That Willie is the best thing that’s ever happened to you? Whatever did he mean, Nick dear?”
The familiarity of her words grated on Willie’s nerves. It did not, however, seem to take Nick aback in the least. He conveyed Lady Catherine to the table and when she was seated in the chair to the left of Willie’s, he took the chair on Lady Catherine’s other side. “Palliston is right,” he said, glancing down the table and offering Willie a smile that was not nearly as heated as the look he gave Lady Catherine. “Willie is my majordomo, so to speak. Part steward, part housekeeper, part taskmaster.”
“A servant. How terribly progressive of you. Lawd, Nick…” Lady Catherine put a hand on his sleeve. “You’d best be careful or people will be calling you a Whig!”
It was not an especially amusing jest.
Which didn’t explain why Nick laughed.
Or why he didn’t move away when Lady Catherine slid her hand from his sleeve. From there, when she thought no one could see, she put it on his knee.
What was it Madame had once told her? That men liked their women bold? Nick certainly seemed to. In spite of the fact that they were in so public a venue, he warmed to Lady Catherine like a farm dog to a winter fire and because the very thought and all it meant made Willie’s cheeks flame, she turned in her chair so that neither Lady Catherine nor Nick might notice.
Thankfully, she was able to spend the rest of the meal in nearly complete silence. Lady Catherine had stories to tell and she told them with gusto: stories about her travels on the Continent and beyond that made the Dashers—including Nick—smile and ask questions and tell stories of their own.
Stories about parties at her magnificent home in Richmond and country weekends at her vast estates in Northumberland and galas at her splendid houses in town and in Bath that made the Dashers—including Nick—wonder out loud at the woman’s vigor and at the fact that one woman alone could manage so prodigious and demanding a social schedule.
Stories about her marriage to a much older man, who she hinted had far less vigorous appetites than her own and did not mind when she found other outlets for them that made the Dashers—including Nick—laugh out loud and nod knowingly and smile like loons.
Stories that bored Willie nearly to death.
She caught herself in the thought just as the dinner dishes were being whisked away and shook herself out of the daze that had held her in its mind-numbing clutches for the better part of an hour. She was just in time to see Lady Catherine turn to Lynnette.
“They say your cousin is involved in—of all things—a marriage wager. It cannot be true.” She gave a pretty pout that she did not bother to waste on Lynnette but turned full on Nick. “Pray tell, m’lord, you would not be so cruel as that, would you? There will be women by the dozens with broken hearts if word goes around that you are searching for a wife.”
“The wager is Ravensfield’s doing,” Nick explained. “And the man is, as you may have heard, absolutely mad.”
“Does that mean you are not looking for a wife?”
Willie did not have to see the expression on Lady Catherine’s face to know exactly how she looked when she asked the question. Lynnette was sitting directly across from Lady Catherine and Willie saw her roll her eyes.
“I may be looking for a wife.” Nick was not usually so coy and something about his tone of voice made Willie turn to him. She found him staring into Lady Catherine’s eyes as if they were the only two people in the room.
And she suddenly found herself feeling as if her heart had been snapped in two.
Before she could remind herself that it was ragmannered in the extreme, Willie grabbed for the plate that held her biscuits and poked it under Lady Catherine’s nose.
“Kaju badam?” she offered. “Nankhatai?”
“Kaju…” Lady Catherine’s upper lip curled just enough to expose her evenly spaced teeth. She looked from the biscuits to Willie and as if that were all the answer she need give, she turned back to Nick. “Oh Nick, darling, you aren’t really falling prey to all that prattle about the mysteries of the heathen countries, are you?” There was enough of a lilt in Lady Catherine’s voice to tell him she knew it was impossible but she had to ask nonetheless. “Indian food? It’s positively passé.”
“It’s Willie’s speciality.” If Nick heard the edge of acid in Lady Catherine’s voice, he did not show it. Then again, it may have been hard for a man to hear anything at all when the woman sitting next to him was skimming her hand along his thigh.
Rather than watch, Willie stood abruptly. The quick movement was too much for the plate of biscuits and they rained down on Lady Catherine’s head and into her lap and into the deep décolletage of her dress.
Across the table, Lynnette pressed her hands to her mouth, choking back a mumbled sound that might have been indignation. Or laughter. Latimer, Hexam, and Palliston automatically leapt to their feet to help and their hands
were already stretched to where a couple of the biscuits had disappeared into the pillowy softness between Lady Catherine’s breasts when they realized their mistake.
“I am so sorry.” Though it was true enough about the biscuits, Willie wasn’t the least bit sorry that Lady Catherine was so surprised, she stopped caressing Nick’s thigh. Before her expression betrayed her, she stooped to pick up the biscuits scattered around Lady Catherine’s chair. Nick offered Lady Catherine a hand to help her to her feet and when she stood, biscuits and crumbs rained down on Willie’s head along with a look she could feel from Lady Catherine. One that fairly bored through her back.
Nick took charge effortlessly. “Willie is a wizard when it comes to Indian cooking but unfortunately, it looks as if you won’t have a chance to find that out tonight.”
“Unfortunately.” Lady Catherine’s voice was no warmer than the look that met Willie when she stood. But though it was as cold as ice, it didn’t last long. The next second, Lady Catherine turned and put a hand on Nick’s arm. “I hear the fireworks here are the product of wizards, as well.” She lifted her chin, aimed a sleek smile at Nick and wound her arm through his. “Why don’t you take me now to see them, Nick darling.”
She had not thought to see Nick until the next day.
If then.
Which was the reason Willie was immensely surprised to turn from where she’d been watching the fireworks display and find him standing behind her.
It was just as surprising to see that he was alone.
“Lady Catherine—”
“She’s gone.” As if it were all the explanation he needed, Nick twitched his broad shoulders. “Off in her carriage and headed toward home last I saw her. Though if it was her splendid home in London, the magnificent one in Richmond, or the impressive one in Bath, she did not bother to say.”
His sarcasm was not lost on Willie, she simply didn’t care to acknowledge it. She had spent nearly an hour ooh-ing and ahh-ing with the rest of the crowd, pretending to be interested in the pyrotechnics when all she could think about was Nick and Lady Catherine and what fireworks would erupt between them once he accompanied her home and they were alone together.
She should have been feeling relief at the realization that the lady in question was gone and that apparently, Nick was not especially bothered by the fact.
Which did not keep her from seething with anger and resentment. Whether she was angry and resentful of Lady Catherine for being so beautiful and so charming and so attractive to Nick, or angry with herself for reacting so to the realization, she did not know. She only knew that her stomach was tied in knots, that her heart ached, and that she felt hollow and alone.
She did not like the feeling.
“Home you say?” Try as she might, Willie could not quite make her voice sound as aloof or her words as flippant as every amusing syllable that fell from Lady Catherine’s beautifully shaped lips. “And you, sir, are not headed there with her?”
The last of the sparks of the Catherine wheel spinning wildly somewhere on their right glowed in Nick’s eyes when he looked down at her. “Did you think I would be with her?”
As serious as the question was, Willie could not help herself. She barked out a laugh. “Lady Catherine certainly did.”
“Yes, she did.” Nick expression was unreadable. “She asked me to accompany her.”
“But you refused?”
He did not answer but turned from the display and offered Willie his arm. She knew it wasn’t wise to allow herself such close contact, but she also knew it was impossible to ignore the offer. She put her hand on his arm and fell into step beside him.
They made their way in silence for some time toward the place where Lynnette and Nick’s friends had gone for refreshments and she assured them she would meet them after the fireworks show. All the while, Nick greeted those of his acquaintance whom he knew, tipping his tall top hat to the ladies, smiling and nodding to the gentlemen and taking no notice whatsoever when each and every one of them looked at Willie with a question in their eyes. The longer he pretended they had nothing to discuss, the more sure Willie was that they did.
They were almost to the Grand Walk that ran the length of Vauxhall when she could no longer contain herself.
“You cannot keep doing this, you know,” she told him.
He glanced at her. “Doing what?”
“Rejecting marriage partners.”
“Possible marriage partners,” he corrected her.
“Possible marriage partners,” she conceded. “You cannot keep rejecting possible marriage partners.”
He stopped and untangled her arm from his so that he could face her. “Did you ever think that rather, they are rejecting me? In droves, I might add, which is not an especially pleasant thing to have to admit.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Willie waited for him to declare that he was exaggerating or perhaps fabricating the story altogether; he simply looked at her levelly.
As confused as she was confounded by the look, she threw her hands in the air and walked away. “They cannot be rejecting you. In droves or otherwise. It’s impossible.”
The last sound she expected to hear from Nick was a laugh. He caught her up and walked beside her. “And what makes you think that?”
“Because…” It was impossible to tell him what he should have already known. What she knew all too well. What she felt in every inch of her body. And every ounce of her being. What pounded through her heart with each staggered beat it took when he was anywhere nearby.
That no woman in her right mind could reject Nick.
Willie decided she could not even try to explain. It was too personal a thing to confess and besides, they were in too public a place. “It just is,” she told him instead. “It’s simply impossible and you know it.”
“Do you mean that you can’t imagine any woman who would dare refuse me? Do you think my title that attractive?”
“Your title?” It was her turn to laugh. “I suppose there are those who would think so.”
“But you are not one of them?”
Willie shook her head, amazed. There was no surer proof of the gulf that existed between her world and his than this. The very fact that he did not realize it only made the gulf seem wider.
“A title is only important to those who think it might be within reach,” she told him. “To the rest of us—”
“It is irrelevant. Yes. I was afraid so.” Nick brows dropped low over his eyes. “It isn’t easy to think that most of the population finds one extraneous.”
He was so serious, Willie had to smile. “Not as extraneous as simply beyond expectation. A title is impressive, surely. As are vast estates and splendid homes and—” Before he could hear the acid in her voice, she swallowed the rest of what she might have said to parrot Lady Catherine. “But, don’t you see? It is all a world apart from everyday existence.”
“Which doesn’t explain why I’ve yet to find a woman to scoop up my title and me along with it.”
“No, it doesn’t.” It was her point exactly and she didn’t understand why he did not see it. “Which means, I do believe, that you are the one delaying the inevitable.”
“Only if you think of my marriage as inevitable.” He sighed because, of course, he knew it was inevitable, too. “Perhaps there’s something wrong with me.” He couldn’t be serious and yet Nick looked sincere enough. “What do you suppose it is, Willie? Is my personality that dreadful?”
She thought back to the first night she’d met him, the preposterous wager the Dashers had made with the Blades and the even more preposterous way they had gone about winning it.
“Not usually,” she told him and when he looked cut to the quick she added, “There are times you are charming and thoughtful and even kind.”
“Well, thank you.” He didn’t look especially pleased by the compliment. “Then perhaps it’s the way I look,” he suggested. “Am I too tall?”
She took the measure of him, looking up
from the tips of the boots Rooster O’Reilly had shined to within an inch of their lives, all the way to the top of Nick’s hat. “You are taller than some,” she said. “But not so tall as others.”
“Too fat then?”
“Hardly.”
“Too much a dandy?”
She need only look around to know the answer to that question. Compared to some of the bejeweled, bedazzling fops who paraded the grounds of Vauxhall, Nick was positively somber.
“You are well dressed and most of the time, well behaved. You are not too tall and I can’t think I’ve ever heard a man say as much about himself in the first place. You are not too fat. What you are is a terrible procrastinator. You know you must get this over with. You must find a wife with a healthy income or find yourself in terrible straits.”
“Is it the color of my eyes, then?” He took a step closer and caught Willie’s gaze.
“The color of your eyes…” Willie heaved a sigh of impatience. She was trying her best to reason with the man. The least he could do is try to be reasonable in return. Instead, he was teasing. She could see as much in his eyes and in the tiny smile that played around his mouth. Rather than think about either, she untied and retied the ribbons of her bonnet.
“The color of your eyes is fine,” she told him.
“How do you know? You haven’t looked.”
She adjusted the loops of the bow at the same time she gave him a little harrumph of displeasure. “I do not need to look.” It might graciously be called an understatement. What he did not need to know is that his eyes and the way they sparked when he laughed tickled her dreams and her imagination. He did not need to know that she could close her eyes and see the color. Or that even when he was gone from a room, she could feel the way he sometimes looked at her. And the heat that erupted each and every place his gaze alighted.
Willie looked down at the tips of her shoes. “Your eyes are blue,” she said.
“How blue?”
He was an exasperating man and just to let him know, she snapped her gaze to his.
“Ah, that’s better!” Before she could move out of his reach, he cupped her chin in his hand. He was wearing gloves of the softest kid and the leather caressed her skin like a whisper. “Now, Willie, look.” He tipped her chin up a fraction of an inch. “Is it my eyes, do you think? Is it the shape or the color that makes the ladies reject me?”