Lady with a Black Umbrella

by Mary Balogh

  And the trouble was, Rose thought, wandering from the sitting room into the equally spacious bedchamber, Daisy probably would too, in a manner that would bring the maximum of embarrassment to both of them. Not that Daisy would notice, of course. She never did.

  For the next three days they lived in splendid isolation at the Pulteney, eating in the public dining room so that Daisy might eye the other patrons and see if she might strike up an acquaintance with someone there. She did on the second day, but the lady with whom they talked for the whole of an hour turned out to be the owner and head teacher of a girls’ academy in Brighton, who was in town in order to meet and accompany a duke’s daughter back to her school. A very interesting lady, Daisy gave as her judgment after they had parted. And she was quite sincere. She seemed to feel no chagrin at a wasted dinner hour.

  They found Bond Street and spent two mornings enjoying looking at all the fashionable shops and people on the streets. Daisy took Rose into the shop of a modiste that looked as if it might be the most fashionable and arranged for a whole new wardrobe for her, despite Rose's protestations that they probably would not after all be spending the Season in London. Daisy even ordered some new gowns and walking dresses for herself.

  And, clad in a new walking dress each, they ventured into Hyde Park on the third day to see if it was true that the whole of the fashionable world promenaded or drove there in the late afternoon. It was true, it seemed.

  “But we might as well be a hundred miles away,” Rose said, capping an argument in favor of returning home the next day that she had been carrying on for the previous ten minutes. “We still know no one, Daisy, and we cannot just walk up to a stranger, introduce ourselves, and ask if she has any spare invitations she can drop our way.”

  Rose wished she had not said that particular speech as she heard the words coming from her mouth. She really would not put it past her sister to do just that. However, she was relieved to note, Daisy seemed not to be paying her a great deal of attention. She had stopped walking and was looking pointedly in the direction of a group of three horsemen who were exchanging greetings with a pair of ladies in a barouche.

  “There he is!” Daisy announced suddenly. “I have been hoping we would see him, Rose. I must confess it has been at the back of my mind all these days. I was only afraid that his injuries might keep him at home for some time. His eye really does look nasty still, does it not?”

  Rose followed the direction of her sister’s gaze and saw the gentleman of the stableyard at the Golden Eagle Inn. Not that she would have recognized him except for his bruised eye. He was without the greatcoat now, and a very elegant figure of a gentleman was revealed to her gaze. And a handsome one, despite the purple eye. She felt acute embarrassment.

  “Let us walk on, Daisy,” she said, plucking at her sister’s sleeve. “It is improper to draw the attention of a gentleman we do not know. Do come on.”

  Rose was to be saved from the embarrassment of seeing her sister wave her closed parasol in the air for all the ton to see as well as the gentleman whose attention it was designed to attract only because that gentleman looked up and spotted them even as Daisy prepared to go into action. He recognized them immediately, that was clear. And he came toward them with no more delay than a hasty explanation to his companions called for. Whether he was glad to see them or not was less clear to Rose. The look on his face could be eagerness or anger or scorn. It was hard to judge when one of the gentleman’s eyes was brightly bloodshot and its surrounds an angry purple. Rose shrank somewhat behind her shorter sister.

  “Miss Morrison,” the gentleman said as his horse came up to them. He removed his hat to reveal a glorious head of thick blond hair. His one good eye looked unsmilingly down at Daisy. It was a clear gray, of the shade that might be described as blue by someone of a poetic turn of mind. “Good day to you, ma’am.”

  To Rose, who was used to encountering the victims of Daisy’s kindness, it was immediately clear that what the gentleman really wished was that a thunderbolt would come down from the blue sky and strike her prostrate on the spot.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” Daisy called up to him, all smiles. “I am so glad to see you on your feet again, so to speak. Your eye is really quite nasty, but I trust that you have otherwise recovered. If you had come inside the inn, as I advised you to do, and applied a beefsteak, I would wager the bruise would not be half as purple. However, I can understand your wanting to get away from that horrid place as quickly as you could. Rose and I refused to stop for breakfast, too.”

  The gentleman inclined his head, but showed no inclination to pursue this promising line of conversation. “I have been hoping to encounter you somewhere in London,” he said. “You neglected to leave your direction with the innkeeper, ma’am.”

  “Ah,” Daisy said, smiling more brightly. “So you did go back to settle your account. I knew you would. No, sir, I did not think it necessary to leave my direction. You would have thought I was expecting you to seek me out with your thanks and repayment of the money I spent on your behalf. And both are quite unnecessary. I was only too pleased to help out a fellow traveler in distress.”

  The gentleman bowed his head again. It looked to Rose as if he were making a heroic attempt to hold on to his temper. She bit her lip.

  “May I present myself, ma’am?” he said curtly. “Giles Fairhaven, Viscount Kincade, at your service. Perhaps you would give me your direction now, ma’am, so that I might call upon you and speak in more privacy?”

  “We are at the Pulteney,” Daisy said, “and would welcome your call, my lord, though you must not think it necessary to come with your thanks or your money. But we would be most grateful for your help, would we not, Rose?”

  The viscount looked at Rose for the first time. And she noticed before she blushed with mortification and proceeded to engage herself with an examination of the grass at her feet that his expression softened somewhat.

  “May I do myself the honor of calling upon you tomorrow morning?” she heard him ask.

  Daisy curtsied. “It will be our pleasure, my lord,” she said. “You know, you were fortunate not to have permanent damage done to that eye. It is quite dreadfully red, is it not? But you are able to see?”

  He nodded curtly and turned to rejoin his two companions, who were waiting for him at a discreet distance. “Good day, Miss Morrison,” he said without answering her question. He nodded in the direction of Rose. “Ma’am?”

  Daisy took her sister’s arm and squeezed it as they walked on. “I knew that something wonderful would happen for us if we merely had patience,” she said. “You will have your introduction to society yet, dear, and your brilliant match. The viscount will see to it that we are introduced to the right people. He cannot fail to do so, you know, as he owes us something. He really owes us nothing, of course, as I did not help him with the idea of being repaid. But being a gentleman he will feel the obligation, you see. We would be doing him a kindness by allowing him some way of showing his gratitude.”

  “Daisy,” Rose wailed, pulling her arm free and turning to confront her sister, although there were no fewer than six pedestrians about to pass them on the path they walked along, “you cannot be thinking of asking such a thing of Lord Kincade. Oh, indeed you cannot. He is a stranger, Daisy, and a gentleman and a nobleman at that. Oh, it would not be at all the thing. He will think us quite vulgar, you know, and he will have good reason for doing so.”

  “Nonsense,” Daisy said, smiling happily and strolling on. “I will not ask him to escort us anywhere, of course. That would be most improper. I shall merely ask him to introduce us to a suitable lady. He must have all sorts of female relatives and friends here. I think he might be a quite extraordinarily handsome man without the eye, do not you. Rose? And the two gentlemen with him were well-looking too. And he looked at you appreciatively too when I mentioned you. Oh, Rose, this has been a good afternoon’s work. I scarce know how I shall contain my excitement until tomorrow morning.”
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br />   Rose opened her mouth to speak, and shut it again. What was the use? She would leave it to the viscount to depress Daisy’s hopes. She had seen in his face and heard in his voice that his purpose in wishing to talk privately with her sister had nothing to do with any desire to repay a debt of gratitude, though it probably had a great deal to do with a desire to repay a monetary debt. Lord Kincade did not feel kindly disposed at all to Daisy. Not at all!

  Of course, Daisy had seen none of that. Daisy was living where she always lived: at one remove from reality. Daisy saw what she wanted to see and heard what she wanted to hear. And dear Daisy! She lived in a world which she could make perfect for those she loved and in which her own comfort and happiness mattered not at all.

  Let her dream, Rose thought with a rush of warm affection. Let her enjoy this afternoon in Hyde Park, strolling shoulder to shoulder with the beau monde. Rose had a feeling that they would not enjoy many more such afternoons.

  ***

  There were two possible ways to react to public humiliation, Lord Kincade had decided in the past two days or so. One could face it head-on, accept it as unavoidable, and determinedly and patiently live through it in the certain knowledge that very soon some other poor victim of gossip or scandal or ridicule would surely step forward and take his place. Or one could hide one’s head, lie low, keep out of the public gaze, confident in the hope that if one did not die of boredom in the meanwhile, one could eventually step out again into a world that just might have forgotten.

  He chose the first course.

  How word had got out and spread in such a raging hurry he would never know. But then, having lived in London for all of seven years, he supposed he should not be particularly surprised. None of the servants at that infernal inn, surely, would have had the opportunity to tattle, unless someone who did enjoy spreading gossip had stayed at their inn the night after his sojourn there. Mr. Martin had been an amiable and an indulgent man. It seemed unlikely that he would have posted back to London in all haste to spread the word. That left the two females, presumably sisters. The Misses Morrison.

  However it was, and whoever had made public the details of his humiliation, he did find himself two days after his return to London the butt of everyone’s jokes, the man who single-handedly supplied the beau monde with the laughter needed to keep them healthy.

  His appearance was bad enough. He had already braced himself to hear the usual comments on his face and had armed himself with the usual and universal reply: “Ah, but you should see what the other fellow looks like.” He was only thankful that he was not married so that the range of jokes was necessarily cut in half.

  But even before he sallied forth to one of his clubs in order to face the music, he discovered that his appearance would not be the half of it. Not nearly half! His closest friend, Lord Doncaster, wandered in on him during the second morning after his experience on the road to Bath and eased himself into a chair in his dressing room while the viscount examined in the mirror some bruises that had come to light after his recent shave.

  “If they had only been obliging enough to do the like to your other eye, Giles,” Lord Doncaster said, “you could go to a masquerade with only a domino to hide you and no mask at all. Think of the sensation you would cause at unmasking time, though.”

  Lord Kincade frowned into the mirror before turning resolutely away. By no stretch of the imagination would he be able to persuade himself that he did not look too bad, after all. “You don’t seem surprised, Peter,” he said. “And thanks for the sympathy. You could almost hook your grin over your ears, you know.”

  His friend laughed outright. “Are you planning to come to White’s?” he asked. “You do know what is facing you there, do you not?”

  The viscount looked his suspicious inquiry.

  “It is the barmaid detail that is the real coup de grace,” Lord Doncaster said. “Tell me, Giles, my boy, was she at least worth the price? I could probably lure away a duke’s mistress for that sum. Did you at least make use of her for the whole night? Didn’t fall asleep after the first mount or two, did you?”

  Perhaps it was not apparent beyond the disguise that was his face just how aghast Lord Kincade was. “Good Lord,” he said, “how do you know about that? I haven't told Arthur that one. And I haven’t told anyone else about anything. And how much was she paid, anyway?”

  His friend roared with laughter. “You can’t expect to keep such a delicious story under wraps, you know,” he said. “And at that, I am not sure that the barmaid detail is quite the most delicious. A small female in a white nightshirt and wielding a gentleman’s umbrella, Giles. A strange little angel of mercy, to say the least. Was it really a nightshirt or has that detail been twisted in the telling, alas? Could you see her ankles, m’boy? Her knees? Or were you too preoccupied with more personal matters to take note of such unimportant details?”

  Lord Kincade, turning his back on his friend in order to don his watch and his fobs, was somewhat more interested in the little angel’s neck at that moment. He wished he had his hands around it.

  “She has been deriving a great deal of enjoyment out of the telling of the story, I see,” he said. “Clearly it is also common knowledge that she paid my bill, my gaming debts to a man I had never met before, and the barmaid who was obliging enough to warm my bed for much of the night. And so I perceive I am the laughingstock, Peter. And there are so many delightful details to the story that I am like to remain so for quite some time to come unless someone is obliging enough to murder his grandmother in the middle of Kensington Gardens within the next day or so.”

  “I'm afraid so,” his friend said, a trifle more sympathetically than he had been behaving thus far during their conversation. “You could make yourself scarce, you know. That is why I came here, in fact, instead of meeting you at White’s. You were on your way to Bath. Why not resume your journey and let the laughter die down a little?”

  The suggestion was tempting, especially as he still felt the need to go there. But who would believe that he had not merely run from embarrassment? No, he must go about his life as if nothing had happened, as if he did not have a shining black eye that would catch the attention of the beholder from half a mile away, as if he had not been made an utter fool of by a small baggage of a female who had a loose tongue among other undesirable attributes.

  And he must stay merely in the hope that he would come across her somewhere in London. If she had any pretensions to gentility, there was at least the chance that he might. And then he would deal with her, making sure that he did not carry out his plan to strangle her in too public a setting. He would find out what her motive could be for holding up a total stranger to the ridicule of the whole of the fashionable world and a significant portion of the unfashionable world too—he did not doubt that his experiences were provoking as much laughter belowstairs as they were above.

  And so, when Lord Kincade spotted Daisy Morrison in Hyde Park while he was riding there in company with Arthur and Lord Doncaster, he was not totally surprised. He had been on the lookout for her despite the fact that his search had taken him right out into the public eye, where he tired almost to the point of violence of smiling good-naturedly at all the teasing remarks that no one else seemed to consider unkind, and parried with repartee that he had practiced during a whole evening and night alone.

  He made hasty excuses to the Misses Harlow, with whom they were talking, directed his brother and his friend to wait for him, and walked his horse through the press of riders over to the footpath where the woman was waiting for him, daring to smile.

  He was surprised to find that she did not look any more like a fiend than any of the other ladies strolling around her. Indeed, she looked rather fetching in a russet walking dress and straw bonnet, wisps of fair hair framing her face, wide and candid gray eyes smiling up into his. A little slip of a thing, who looked as if she might blow away in a strong wind. The cream-colored, frilled parasol that she carried looked decidedly more femini
ne than the umbrella he had last seen her wielding and poking at the midriff of a poor unfortunate thug.

  He was, in fact, amazed to realize that he had recognized her at all. Her face did not glisten on this occasion, but beamed rosily up at him. She had freckles on her nose.

  He treated her as courteously as he must in such a setting. And she readily agreed to allow him to call upon her the following morning. Perhaps she did not realize that that slender neck that stretched her face up to him was at dire risk. Perhaps she had no conscience at all. Certainly she did not appear to be stricken by it while she talked with him.

  Tomorrow he would deal with her. Lord Kincade found that he was relishing the thought as he turned his horse back in the direction of his waiting companions. He almost hoped that she would greet him with the same smile as she had worn today. He would enjoy wiping it from her face and grinding it underfoot. He would enjoy letting loose on her a few home truths before he finally came to the much-awaited finale of his visit and would at last be able to clasp his hands about her neck and squeeze to his heart’s content.

  “Pretty,” Lord Doncaster commented. “Especially the blond in green who was hiding. Whatever did you say to make her blush so, Giles? And no introduction, my friend? You must keep them both to yourself?”

  “You are angry,” the Reverend Arthur said quietly, looking closely at his brother’s face. “Let us ride on. Don’t explode here, Giles. Keep it inside for a while yet.”

  Lord Doncaster turned his head sharply in the direction of the disappearing ladies and looked back at his friend with heightened interest. “Who were they?” he asked.

  “Miss Daisy Morrison,” Lord Kincade said shortly, smiling and touching his hat to an elderly lady who passed at that moment in a landau, a female companion at her side. “Ah, ma’am,” he said, raising his voice in reply to a remark that the former had made and injecting just the right tone of light humor into his voice, ‘‘but you should see what the other fellow looks like.” He lowered his voice again. “And her sister, Miss Rose Morrison, I believe.”