Carolina felt acutely uncomfortable.
Thomas did not. He enjoyed causing a stir among young females.
“Have you noticed how he keeps staring at you?” whispered Reba.
Carolina had noticed. It was impossible not to notice the openly admiring gaze of the man in the next boat.
“When my brother Bertie called last evening, I asked him if he knew anything about a Lord Thomas Angevine,” little Polly Moffatt had piped this morning just before they left for Greenwich. “And he said”—Polly’s voice had fallen to a scandalized whisper—“that Lord Thomas was the wildest rake London had ever seen and that I was not to get mixed up with him. When I assured him that I wasn't mixed up with him, he said that he was quite relieved, that Lord Thomas had more bastards than could be counted and had ruined three young ladies that he knew of last season alone!”
“I am surprised the father of one of them did not force him to marry her,” had been Reba’s yawning comment.
“Oh, I asked him that and he said that none of the young ladies in question had any real force behind them, no fierce fathers or swordsmen brothers or powerful friends. He said they had simply melted away into wherever one goes at a time like that.”
“Back home,” said Carolina, frowning. “That is where they went.” Or out upon the streets! No, that was too awful to contemplate. “They went home, of course,” she said more confidently.
Now, looking across at Lord Thomas, being rowed so nearly alongside, it was hard to imagine that he had deserted anyone. He had such an open-hearted face, such a winning smile. And perhaps it was all lies anyway. Polly Moffatt’s brother could have been repeating vicious gossip circulated by Lord Thomas’s enemies. And besides—her gray eyes grew dreamy, a shaded silver—a rake could change! With the right woman beside him, of course. . . . Her spirits soared.
The barge continued its stately way downriver toward the sea. Now they had reached that part of the river dominated by the massive bulk of St. Paul’s. Here the river writhed in great sweeping curves that made the towering skyline seem to turn about and regroup. It was a dramatic view but Carolina was covertly watching Lord Thomas instead.
From the front of the barge Mistress Cardiff beckoned toward a group of buildings and gardens on shore. “Look, girls, we are just passing the Temple—see that ancient round church? It belonged to the Knights Templars in the twelfth century!”
“It’s the Inns of Court we’re passing,” said Reba, more practically. “I have a cousin studying law there at Gray’s Inn.”
The adjoining boat was now dangerously close, and its passenger heard Reba’s comment. “It was in those gardens that the Red Rose of Lancaster and the White Rose of York were first plucked,” he commented, smiling at them. “And so began the Wars of the Roses.”
Mistress Cardiff luckily did not hear his comment, and the boatman pulled smartly away to avoid some passing river traffic, but Carolina could not pull her gaze away from the young gentleman who had made the romantic comment. He was still studying her raptly. She blushed and looked away.
King’s Reach, Blackfriars, Southwark, even London Bridge lined with houses that peered down at the water, passed Carolina in a kind of bright blur. She seemed to hear inner singing and it was a siren song, endlessly sweet, that lulled her senses.
Could it be that she had found The Golden Stranger ... at last?
Her enchanted mood continued as their barge rounded the loop of the Isle of Dogs and they all disembarked at Greenwich and stared up at the white expanse of the palace with its lines of pillars on either side, double-curved stairs, and wide sweep of stone balusters.
Exclaiming about the view they would have from the top of the hill, Mistress Cardiff beckoned her charges to follow her and led them upward, trudging through groves of handsome Spanish chestnut trees toward the top, where they could observe the sparkling river winding back through the Old City. There were several other strollers out for the view on this bright day, and among them sauntered Lord Thomas. He did not bother to ascend to the top, but lingered just below, and when Mistress Cardiff, quite winded from her climb, led her charges down, he stepped forward as if to pass them.
At that exact moment Mistress Cardiff, who had turned to speak to one of the girls, tripped (Reba ever after insisted she had seen Lord Thomas stick his foot out) and Lord Thomas adroitly caught her in his arms.
With great formality he set the surprised older lady back on her feet.
“ ’Tis unsteady walking here,” he volunteered.
“Indeed it is,” gasped Mistress Cardiff. “And I thank you, sir, for catching me. I must have caught my foot in the turf!”
“Allow me to offer my arm to assist your journey down to your barge,” he said gravely.
It had been a very long time since any young man had offered to assist Mistress Cardiff anywhere— especially one so handsome as Lord Thomas. All the girls held their breath—and expelled it slowly when she bridled with pleasure and accepted the proffered arm.
They were all silent, listening to his easy banter as they went down the hill. And it was no surprise to anyone that Mistress Cardiff, on learning that his boat had mysteriously departed, offered him a place in their barge for the return journey.
“I shall find a seat back here among your charges,” Lord Thomas said easily. “It will advance my education to hear you describe the sights we pass.”
Mistress Cardiff pursed her lips in disappointment but he was already moving to the rear when he paused beside Carolina.
“I have been to a deal of trouble to get here,” he murmured with a smile at Reba. Reba, taking the hint, rose and said vaguely, “I must speak to Binnie about my notes for Latin class.”
Lord Thomas sank into the empty seat beside Carolina.
She learned a vast deal about him on the journey back up the Thames. He was unmarried, twenty-seven years old, had been educated (slightly) at Cambridge, and had traveled (for two whole years) in Europe. His father had died last year and he, an only son, had succeeded to the title and the family estates in Northampton, where his mother and sisters still resided. He had a small town house in London and an excellent income which he did not have to work for. He was in short vastly eligible, and he was telling her so.
What he did not tell her would have interested her even more. He had never been faithful to one woman for more than a few weeks—and usually far less. Of late he had become an even more restless lover, using tactics of “search and destroy” as he mercilessly centered his dangerous attentions on various unlucky maidens. He had been in numerous scrapes and had fought at least two duels, out of which he had come, luckily, unscathed, his opponents being even less proficient with the blade than he was. And last winter a girl he had loved and left—the impoverished daughter of an ancient house—had hurled herself into the Thames and drowned on his account.
He did not tell her any of that— and perhaps with reason. He could easily have assumed that gossips would tell her soon enough.
Carolina, flattered by his attentions and impressed by his travels, listened eagerly and answered all his questions.
No, she was not betrothed. “I may never marry,” she told him with a slanted look through her long dark lashes.
“Ah,” said Lord Thomas. He smiled that sunny smile at her and the sunlight struck his hair in a way that made her heart skip a beat. “One can only hope that you will change your mind else some poor devil be left languishing.” He thought about it. “Have you considered the alternative?”
“Oh, yes,” she said lightly. “I have in mind to become an interpreter. I speak Spanish fluently and know Latin—and a little French.”
“Latin is a dead language,” he pointed out, amused.
“I will become a translator as well,” countered Carolina.
He laughed. It was a very pleasant sound. “I know only boudoir French,” he admitted ruefully. “And boudoir Italian. Of Spanish I am completely ignorant.”
She gave him a look. Boudoi
r French indeed!
“But I will be glad to trade you my boudoir Italian for your boudoir Spanish,” he added outrageously.
Carolina could see this conversation was getting out of hand. It occurred to her suddenly that Sandy Randolph talked in this manner and that it always made her mother laugh. Sandy Randolph, the man everyone agreed her mother ought to have married. . . .
“Are you staying in London long?” she asked.
“As long as you are here,” he said instantly, and she felt her heart give a peculiar thump and then surge on strongly as he murmured, “Tell me, how does one gain access to that school of yours?”
“One doesn’t unless one is related to one of the inmates,” she admitted with a sigh.
“Perhaps I will find a way,” he said genially.
The next day he did.
Carolina was told by a smirking chambermaid that a gentleman had recovered the purse she had lost in Drury Lane and wished to return it to her personally. She tripped downstairs to discover Lord Thomas standing in the drawing room waiting for her. He was debonair as usual, and wearing an elegant suit of ivory satin trimmed in gold that seemed to light up his own sandy mane. She thought breathlessly that he looked like a golden-maned lion as he made her a sweeping bow and rose to fix his smiling blue eyes upon her.
“I really can’t accept this, you know,” she laughed, as he held out a dark blue velvet purse of a distinctly different shape from the one she had lost.
“Consider it not a purse, but an excuse,” he declared urbanely. “A foot in the door, a chance to get you alone.”
“Not alone for long,” she warned him, looking through the drawing room doorway into the empty hall. “For Mistress Chesterton, our headmistress, is expected back momentarily and she will come directly into this room when she arrives.”
“Mistress Chesterton?” He thought a moment, then he snapped his fingers. “Jenny Chesterton! Yes, I think I know her. Have I not met her in Lord Ormsby’s company? But”—he looked startled—“you say that she is a schoolmistress?”
Carolina choked back a laugh. “If you have met her in Lord Ormsby’s company, you had best not say so! She wants none of us to know that she is his mistress!”
“Tell me,” he said abruptly, “the names of your schoolmates. I realize that I was presented at the barge but I was looking at you and their names escaped me.”
Surprised, Carolina reeled off their names and he nodded with satisfaction.
“But why do you want to know—?” She fell silent as Jenny Chesterton entered the room and stopped dead in the act of removing her gloves.
“Do I know this gentleman?” she asked in a frosty voice.
“Lord Thomas Angevine.” Lord Thomas came to his feet and made her an even more elegant bow than he had made Carolina. “A friend of this young lady’s family,” he added hastily.
“This young lady is from the Colonies. She has no family friends here.” She studied him. “You will no doubt be the man who helped Mistress Cardiff down the hill at Greenwich yesterday and about whom she babbled all through dinner. Carolina, you may leave us.”
Reluctantly, Carolina went.
Left alone, worldly wise Jenny Chesterton gave Lord Thomas a sunny smile that matched his own. She had not accepted his breezy “friend of the family” routine. Indeed she had gazed at him from her depth of experience and known him at once for what he was: a London rake up to no good with one of her charges. Still ... he was most attractive. There was no great hurry to close the door in his face.
“Friend of the family or no, I would like to call upon Mistress Lightfoot,” said Lord Thomas bluntly.
The headmistress gave a leisurely pat to her chestnut curls.
“I am afraid that will be impossible,” she said indifferently.
His smile grew even more genial. The embroidered fleur de lis flashed from his satin cuffs. “It is entirely possible that I am a friend of the family of more than one of your students,” he remarked. “I believe I know Jane Blackwell’s parents in Surrey. I am quite certain I know the little Ross girl’s aunt in Kent. Come to think of it, I believe you and I have a mutual friend—Lord Ormsby.”
Mistress Chesterton’s smile grew somewhat stiff as he went on and her gloved fingers tapped her violet skirts. “Perhaps I could get Lord Ormsby to vouch for me. I could even ask his help in contacting the parents of your other young ladies in an attempt to verify my eligibility.”
Across from him the woman in violet tensed. She knew she was being blackmailed. But she also knew that she had had a tiff with Lord Ormsby yesterday and if he withdrew his support she would be entirely dependent on this school for her income—and she could not afford to lose it. And her mirror had told her there were delicate crow’s-feet lines about her eyes and the beginning of a slight droop to her chin. Lord Ormsby, if he decided to graze in other pastures, would be hard to replace. She was in no position to refuse the smiling confident man who watched her cat-a-mouse.
Her hazel eyes hardened. “Very well,” she said briskly. “Since you come so—so well recommended.” Her voice shook a little. “I will reconsider. You may call upon Carolina.”
“And take her out walking?”
She nodded, frowning.
“Unchaperoned,” he added lightly. “Since I am such a close friend of the family.”
Mistress Chesterton looked astonished. Such a request was surely unthinkable. Even he—! She looked into his glittering blue eyes and saw there a hardness that matched her own. If she did not yield he would not hesitate to bring her house down about her ears.
“Yes,” she choked. “But if you get her into trouble—!”
“Why, then I must be prepared to deal with it,” he said silkily. “As indeed I will. Shall we say that I will call tomorrow afternoon and take Mistress Carolina for a stroll?”
Jenny Chesterton nodded silently. She had been vanquished. After Lord Thomas had gone she sat for a long time with her head in her hands and then rose to peel off her gloves and go back to her room. She felt old today and—worse—she was beginning to look old. And what happened to roses after they lost their bloom?
When Carolina, curious to see if Lord Thomas was still there, found an excuse to come downstairs and passed her in the hall, the headmistress gave her a rather wistful look.
The girl is lost, she was thinking. But—she realized cynically—she will no doubt enjoy the road to her downfall! Certainly she herself had enjoyed it when Lord Ormsby had discovered her, thrown from her horse and limping, on a country road, and forthwith had taken her into his carriage and not long after into his bed. . . . Her expression changed to envy as she watched Carolina’s lighthearted walk and swinging skirts. Oh, to be that young again!
“However did you manage it?” Carolina asked breathlessly, when she found herself the next afternoon, strolling unchaperoned down Drury Lane with Lord Thomas.
“I persuaded your headmistress that I was indeed a friend of your family,” he told her. “And on the basis of that, she agreed that I could take you out whenever I liked.”
Carolina gave him an uncertain look. She did not know how he had gotten around Mistress Chesterton, but she did not think the sophisticated headmistress had bought that story!
“This is the first time I have seen you wear a mask,” he said, smiling down at her as he guided her past an orange vendor. The mask was black. He approved of it—it gave her an enchantingly clandestine look.
“It is the first time I have worn one,” admitted Carolina ingenuously. “’Twas Mistress Chesterton’s idea. She met me as I was going out and told me that I should have a care for my complexion, that London’s soot would leave its mark if I did not—and she gave me this mask. I think that was very nice of her,” she added.
Lord Thomas laughed. Jenny Chesterton was afraid her young charge would be recognized, perhaps by the mother of one of the girls, and the school would fall into disrepute. “Very thoughtful of her,” he agreed dryly.
Carolina g
ave him another puzzled look. That explanation had not yet occurred to her, for back in Virginia her mother—when she noticed Carolina at all—had usually been chiding her for not wearing a hat in the sun.
But whatever magic Lord Thomas had used to persuade the headmistress to give Carolina so much freedom did not seem to matter. In the crisp late fall weather Carolina found herself whisked away to plays, she walked beside Lord Thomas in the gardens of the Inns of Court and leant down to bury her hot face in the last late-blooming roses that haunted sunny spots, while Lord Thomas paid her extravagant compliments.
He was forever inviting her to visit his town house and she was forever declining. For in the street he could be passed off as a distant cousin escorting her home, but if she were to venture across his threshold unchaperoned she felt she would become an object of gossip and she was wary enough to want to avoid that. For twice they had run across old flames of his—girls whose cheeks had flamed at sight of him, who had stared indignantly at Carolina and then cut him dead. And Lord Thomas’s colorful past was beginning to shape up before her eyes.
There was an even more exciting day when a coach nearly ran them down on Picadilly. Lord Thomas jerked her out of the way at the very moment that a dark-haired woman in a plumed hat leaned out of the coach and focused a pair of black accusing eyes upon Lord Thomas. “Murderer!” she hissed as the coach clattered by on the cobbles.
“Who was that?” gasped Carolina.
“An unimportant woman on some no doubt unimportant errand,” ground out Lord Thomas. His ivory suit had been splattered with mud by the coach. He bent down, trying to brush it off the fleur de lis embroidered on his orange cuffs.
“But she called you a murderer!”
“Her younger sister drowned last winter in the Thames,” he explained without looking up. “I was not even in the city at the time.”
But she believes it was your fault. . . . Carolina looked down on that bent fair head. “It was an accident?”
“No, she threw herself off London Bridge.” Lord Thomas straightened up and looked squarely into her eyes. His tone was crisp. “Surely it was not my fault that I could not love her!”
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