“You’re fibbing.”
“Fine. I’m not fine, but I don’t need to sit.” In truth, she saw more potential harm than good in making an escape to the garden. Father would be furious, as he’d already made it clear that he would be watching her every move. And now that she’d been out in the open, dancing with Lord Leith, Tabitha had no doubt that Lord Oglethorpe, the slimy lout, had noticed her. She fully expected he would follow them and try to get her alone. That was the last thing she wanted to happen.
The dance set them apart from each other for several bars, but Lord Leith continued to watch her with an expression of unease.
Tabitha wanted to scream. It seemed she couldn’t even breathe without one of the men in her life thinking something was wrong, or that they needed to assist her in some way. She was sick to death of their interfering, overbearing ways.
She looked over to Jo. What a queer sensation, for Tabitha to be on the dance floor and Jo to be on the sidelines. Such a rarity. Jo wasn’t alone, though. Lord Devonport stood beside her, and it looked like they were deep in conversation.
But Lord Devonport wasn’t the only one with Jo. Lady Cressica Frost sidled up alongside them and worked herself into their tête-à-tête. After a moment or two, she smiled—an aloof smile, one without any sense of herself within it. Lord Devonport said something more and elicited a tittering, ersatz laugh from the debutante. Then he smiled, and his eyes were full of warmth and earnestness, and all the things that made him...well, him.
They were a mismatch if ever she’d seen one.
With a twirl and a shuffle, Tabitha and Lord Leith were side-by-side again.
“I notice you’re watching Lord Devonport.”
The heat of a blush crept up the back of Tabitha’s neck. How could he possibly notice everything she did? It was as though he was living inside her mind. Terribly frustrating, particularly since he wasn’t actually a relation. “No, I—”
Lord Leith laughed, rich and full. “Don’t tell another bouncer. Not in such a brief span of time.”
She didn’t like to sulk. It seemed such an act of puerility. But in her present state of vexation, she couldn’t stop a mammoth pout from taking over her features. “I despise that you know me so well. And I’ll have you know, I was only looking to see what Jo was up to.”
“Which took you all of three seconds or so,” Lord Leith chided. “And ever since that point, you’ve been watching Devonport and the debutante beside him. But I’ll take pity on you and leave it at that.” His black eyes continued to laugh down at her, even if he did not give voice to his mirth.
He had to leave it be at least for a bit, because the figures of the quadrille had separated them again. As much as she didn’t want to (because Lord Leith was undoubtedly watching her), Tabitha turned her gaze yet again to where Jo, Lord Devonport, and Lady Cressica had been talking. The debutante had left, but so had Lord Devonport.
She tried to focus on the dance and Lord Leith, but her mind refused to cooperate. It continued to wander to Lord Devonport and Lady Cressica. Miss Jennings, at least, was a young lady Tabitha could understand a gentleman being interested in. She could carry on a conversation and seemed genuinely interested in the people around her.
But Lady Cressica? If she was the type of lady who would interest Lord Devonport, then Tabitha ought to altogether thrust any wild fantasies she might have of his flirting with her aside. He had moved on to someone younger, someone more prosaic, someone rather more suitable for a gentleman of his stature in every way imaginable.
She hoped he would be happy with his choice.
As the orchestra signaled the impending end of the set, Tabitha and Lord Leith once again drew together. He winked at her, but she didn’t have enough vigor left to reprimand him for his over-familiarity. That could wait for another day.
“Shall I return you to Miss Faulkner?” he asked, placing her hand in the crook of his arm and guiding her to the side of the room. He was moving in that direction no matter her wishes on the matter. How presumptive of him.
It was a good thing for him that was precisely where she wanted to be. “Yes, thank you. And thank you for the dance, my lord.”
“I should be the one thanking you,” he replied.
Before they reached Jo, however, Lord Oglethorpe had come upon them. “Lady Tabitha,” he rushed out, “I had hoped I could request your hand for the next set.” Lord Leith’s arm tensed beneath her hand. “If, of course, you have not already promised it to another.”
Damn and blast. She didn’t want to dance with Oglethorpe. She didn’t particularly care to dance again at all, and she wanted nothing to do anything with Oglethorpe or any of his breed. She wanted, more than anything else at the moment, to sit down and rest her ankle. “I—”
“Lady Tabitha has already promised the next set to me,” Lord Devonport interrupted from behind her and off to the opposite side of Lord Leith. Goodness, where had he come from? And why would he tell such an untruth about the next set?
“I’ve done no such thing.” She was unable to stop herself from knitting her brow and frowning as he drew himself up beside her.
Lord Devonport turned to her with an almost haughty expression, one that seemed to command her not to disagree. “But you would have if Lord Leith hadn’t rushed you off to begin your set. You just didn’t have time to grant your consent.”
Unbelievable. “My lord, I am afraid you are mistaken. Perhaps you’ve confused me with Lady Cressica, though I’m uncertain how such a misperception could occur.”
“Then the next set is open?” Lord Oglethorpe pressed on. “Might I have the honor of your hand?”
“You may not,” Lord Devonport said.
“He may,” Tabitha shot back. Then she turned to Lord Oglethorpe with a firm nod. “You may.” Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. What had she done?
Oglethorpe smiled back at her. Or was it a leer?
Upon further inspection, it was most decidedly a leer. A lecherous, exultant, possessive leer.
Jo came up beside Lord Leith and looked on inquisitively but didn’t interrupt.
Lord Leith’s hand appeared at Tabitha’s back, though she was unaware how her hand had left his arm. He seemed almost to draw her closer to him, albeit in a very protective manner. Not anything untoward. But still, it was inappropriate. He oughtn’t to behave in such a manner.
“Lady Tabitha,” Lord Devonport said brusquely, “I beg you to reconsider.” He, too, took a step closer to her, until he and Lord Leith had her virtually blocked between them.
This was swiftly becoming farcical, all of it: from Lord Leith dancing with her, to Lord Oglethorpe asking her to dance, to Lord Devonport practically insisting she dance with him instead. She didn’t particularly care to dance with anyone. But hopefully it would be enough to get Father to leave her alone for a bit.
She’d had all she wanted of their blustering and displays of virility.
Tabitha separated herself from the gentlemen on either side and placed her hand on Oglethorpe’s proffered arm. As he led her to the dance floor, she said a silent prayer that it would all end soon.
~ * ~
“What just happened?” Miss Faulkner asked, casting an accusing look back and forth between Noah and Leith. Her hands were planted on her hips, and her deep blue eyes flashed with shrouded fury. “Why in God’s name is she dancing with Oglethorpe? Uncle Drake ordered her to dance, but he certainly did not order her to dance with that opportunist.”
“I wish I knew,” Noah murmured. By gad, he’d handled that badly.
“Well?” Miss Faulkner demanded. “What are you going to do about it?”
At least her rage was not directed solely in his direction but was shared in equal measure with Leith.
“Come,” Leith said, holding his hand out to Miss Faulkner. “Dance with me. We’ll position ourselves on either side of them. That should give her some defense.”
She narrowed her eyes in Noah’s direction. “Who will you dance with?”
He didn’t want to dance with anyone but Lady Tabitha. Dancing with another lady—any other lady—directly next to her, would be pure agony.
Since the dance would already be torturous, he might as well punish himself fully. “Lady Cressica,” he said. He hoped he would not live to regret it.
Chapter Seven
Tabitha wanted never to get out of bed again.
After all the dancing of last night, her ankle had been left throbbing and swollen like it hadn’t since she was ten years old and fell down a ravine (a feat which, mercifully, she had never repeated—why had she thought Jo’s idea so brilliant again?). And after the spat she’d had with her father, followed by the ridiculous debate with Lord Devonport over whether she had or had not agreed to grant him a dance, her head had been throbbing and swollen to match. Her temples had pounded at the very least.
The concentration of the throbs had only been intensified when both Lords Leith and Devonport had brought their partners to dance on either side of Tabitha and Lord Oglethorpe. This final act had also drawn out Tabitha’s ire at their interference.
When the set had ended, Tabitha headed straight for her father and begged to have the carriage called so she could go home. Her ankle could simply not handle another moment of dancing, or she would have to beg for amputation.
Sleep had provided no balm for either ailment. The incessant knocking at her door was having a decidedly provoking effect upon those same afflictions. “What in God’s name do you want at this hour?” she groused.
Tabitha’s lady’s maid, Hester, stepped inside. “You’ve received a bouquet of flowers, my lady. What would you have me do with them?” She came over to Tabitha’s four-poster bed and pulled back the curtain. Her face was alight with pure joy. “They’re really quite lovely.”
In her state of joint pain and half-sleep, Tabitha was certain she’d misheard the girl. She placed a hand over her eyes, blocking the sun from blinding her. “Flowers? Surely not.”
No one had sent her flowers since Lord Pargeter had finally given up his pursuit. She’d been one-and-twenty at the time. Tabitha had assumed other gentlemen who might have had an interest in her had taken notice of the manner in which Lord Pargeter had sought solace in the arms of an impoverished viscount’s daughter. He then proceeded to marry the girl—thereby proving himself not to be the fortune hunter she’d accused him of being as she chased him out of the house, throwing his bouquet of roses at his retreating backside. Or perhaps they had simply deemed her a shrew.
Either way, no one had sent her flowers in nearly eight years. Not even James Marshall. Her ears must have deceived her.
“Yes, my lady,” the girl said with no small amount of delight in her voice. “A lovely bouquet of daisies. Yellow and white. Would you like to come down to the drawing room to see them?”
Tabitha had no intention of moving. “No. Leave them there.”
“Yes, ma’am. Shall I have them put in a vase?”
Waving the hand that had been covering her eyes dismissively, Tabitha said, “Do whatever you’d like with them, Hester. You could take them to your quarters, if you wish.”
“Oh, no, ma’am. I’ll just have them put in a vase and then set them in the drawing room,” the maid said, bobbing a curtsey. She started to back out of the room, but kept talking, almost as though to herself. “Though it is such a monumental bouquet, we might need to split the flowers into two or three vases.”
“Yes,” Tabitha said. “Fine.”
Hester stopped just before going through the door. “Oh, Lady Tabitha? I placed the card that came with them on your escritoire.”
But Tabitha placed her hand over her eyes once more, and merely managed a grunt in response. She lay there for quite some time, attempting to sleep without success, until the next knock sounded at her chamber door.
When she failed to respond, the door opened anyway and Hester stepped jauntily inside, grinning from ear to ear. “You’ve received more flowers, my lady. Daffodils! You simply must come and see them. They’re lovely.”
“Perhaps later.” Tabitha, however, had no intention of following through with that comment. “Please have a tray sent up for my breakfast. I do not wish to go down just yet.” For that matter, she didn’t particularly wish to go down ever. That might be difficult to manage, though.
Hester hurried over to Tabitha’s escritoire again to leave the card from the daffodils, then ducked out of the room.
When the next knock sounded, Tabitha had roused herself enough to put on her wrapper and was perched by the window. She expected it to be a maid with her tray. It was. But Hester had returned yet again.
“No more flowers,” Tabitha grumbled.
Hester clucked her tongue. “I’ve never known a lady who would not be delighted to receive flowers. Indeed, if you were to see them, I doubt you could be in such an unfriendly mood. Perhaps I ought to have them brought up to you. They might just break through your fit of the blue devils.” The maid crossed her arms over her chest, doing her best imitation of Tabitha’s mother.
Tabitha shook her head, laughing. “Please don’t. I promise I shall endeavor to behave myself the rest of the day.”
A curt nod was her response. “Now, break your fast and be sprightly about it. We have to get you dressed. You have a gentleman caller.”
Tabitha’s head jerked up and she bumped her hand into the cup of chocolate she’d been reaching for, knocking it over. Hester righted the cup and sopped up the mess with a rag she had pulled from thin air before Tabitha could even cry out in shock.
“A gentleman caller?” Tabitha repeated. Impossible. That was another thing that hadn’t happened since the days of Lord Pargeter’s pursuit. Indeed, he’d been her only gentleman caller ever in her entire life.
One half of Hester’s thin-set mouth turned down in a frown. “Yes. Livingston’s shown him into the drawing room, so I suppose you can see your flowers when you go down to meet him.”
Surely the butler wouldn’t have breached protocol in such a way. “But why has Livingston already shown him in? What if I don’t want to see him? I’ll have Father reprimand him for that. He knows better.”
Hester nudged the plate of sausages and eggs closer to Tabitha on the tray. “Eat. And I sincerely doubt your father will reprimand Livingston for doing precisely what he ordered the man to do.” The maid slipped from the chamber into Tabitha’s dressing room, humming to herself as she went.
Oh, lud. This was maddening. Tabitha forced herself to chew and swallow. She couldn’t very well face this day without something in her stomach. Not with the way it was shaping up.
When she finished with her meal, Hester came back in. “Will it be the rose or the jonquil?” she asked, holding aloft two afternoon dresses. She shook the jonquil dress a bit. “I think the jonquil. It will look lovely with your daisies and daffodils.”
Tabitha didn’t care at all which dress to wear. “Fine. And who is the caller?”
“No idea,” Hester said. She untied Tabitha’s wrapper and pulled it off her shoulders. “Livingston ushered him in and requested that I to get you ready.”
And another knock sounded at the door. “What now?” Tabitha asked in dismay.
“Good morning to you, too,” Jo said as she let herself inside. She squinted at the sun through the window. “Or afternoon, whichever the case may be. Livingston sent me to hurry you along. You now have two gentlemen callers waiting.”
Good God. Had they reached the end days and no one saw fit to inform her?
“Well,” Jo said with a wave toward Hester, “keep going. We cannot keep the gentlemen waiting all day.” She sat down before the tray that Tabitha had abandoned and helped herself to a sausage. “Not the pink,” she said to Hester with a wrinkle of her nose.
Tabitha sighed as her maid lifted the nightrail over her head and set to work dressing her for the day. “Did Livingston happen to tell you who the gentlemen were?”
“No. But I imagine they would b
e the same gentlemen who sent you flowers. He mentioned that you’d received two bouquets.”
“The cards are on the escritoire,” Hester called out from beneath a heap of fabric.
Jo reached across and snatched them up. “Excellent. This first one, the one on bottom, came from Lord Oglethorpe.” She pinched her lips together into a frown.
“That would be the daisies, my lady.”
Blast. She hadn’t wanted to encourage him. Not at all. But the thought of allowing Lord Devonport to dictate her dance partners had seemed far more brackish at the time. Why had she been so impetuous? Now it was all coming back to haunt her in more ways than she’d ever imagined. “And the other?”
Jo looked up at her with a crafty smile. “Lord Devonport.” She seemed to linger over his name, drawing it out so that it would hang in the air between them.
“The daffodils.” Hester had moved on from dressing Tabitha and was now tackling her hair, trying to sort it into some sense of order. “Which, by the way, are simply magnificent.”
“And copious,” Jo cut in. “I passed no fewer than six footmen carrying arrangements of them into the drawing room.”
Lovely. Based on the interaction between the two gentlemen the previous evening, Tabitha expected the atmosphere downstairs to be as relaxed as a pent-up feral cat. Precisely how she wanted to spend her day.
Another knock. “Come,” Jo called out.
A maid stepped in and curtsied. “Miss Faulkner, Livingston asked me to inform you that Lord Leith is also in the drawing room, hoping to call upon you. He went to your father’s home first, but was informed that you would be here, ma’am.”
“Thank you. Lady Tabitha and I shall be down momentarily.”
Hester finished tugging at Tabitha’s hair and stood back to get a good look. “I think that will do. Do you agree, Miss Faulkner?”
At Jo’s nod, Hester excused herself and went back into Tabitha’s dressing room.
“Come along,” Jo said, linking her arm through Tabitha’s. “We shouldn’t keep them waiting any longer.”
Wallflower (Old Maids' Club, Book 1) Page 9