“I will try,” he said wearily, rising from his chair. “But only to make you happy.”
She called after him as he made for the door to his own adjoining suite, “It would make me happier if you put at least a little effort into finding a woman who sparked your interest, dear.”
David shut the door before he said something regrettable. His mother’s final words, and the silence of his own room, inexplicably turned his thoughts toward Caroline Tolbertson. She had sparked his interest today, but not in the way his mother intended. Rarely had he permitted himself to get close enough to a woman to engage in more than a furtive coupling. But his reaction to Caroline had been different. There was little about their exchange on the beach that chased his thoughts in a carnal direction. She should have been nothing more than a reminder of that day eleven years ago, vivid and regrettable and something best avoided.
But perversely, she made him feel safe. Comfortable, as if she shared and understood his past and forgave him for it.
He intuitively knew she didn’t, of course. She had been a child, and could not have understood the dark forces that had brought him out among the waves that day.
But no one else knew about that desperate piece of his past. Not his best friend, Patrick Channing, who lived in Moraig and was always ready to lend a willing ear. Not his former best friend, James MacKenzie, who had still not forgiven him for the few pieces he did know.
As he began the necessary process of shaving, David realized that Caroline Tolbertson alone knew something of what he had faced that day. And as grateful as he was to have come across her this afternoon, he found himself looking forward even more to seeing her again tomorrow.
But first he had to get through tonight.
Chapter 4
DAVID’S ARRIVAL SPARKED no small degree of fluttering and preening among the colorful, vulture-eyed females attending Miss Baxter’s dinner party. He almost turned around at the door, but at the last minute his military training kicked in and steadied his nerves.
Stepping into the parlor, he could immediately see this was no small party, intended for intimate conversation and stealthy flirtations. This was a full-on social assault, with twenty or more young people in an array of dizzying colors.
And there were no appropriate chaperones to be seen.
Within five minutes, David deduced this was closer to the sort of parties he had attended with his friends during his four years at Cambridge, lacking only the fraternal spirit and a few well-paid whores. Necklines appeared to have no southern boundaries in Brighton’s warm climate, and without proper chaperones on the premises, the degree of cleavage on display had reached lewd proportions. Clouds of perfume floated above the room like a floral stranglehold, fragrant weapons dueling for supremacy.
If the new crop of girls looking for husbands looked and smelled like this, was it any wonder they were all so prone to hysteria? The entire thing made him feel drab, inelegant, and about a decade too old.
But then he spied Caroline Tolbertson, hovering at the edge of the crowded parlor, and his distaste for the evening his mother had forced on him settled into something more tolerable.
She was impossible to miss, standing a half foot above most of the other young ladies. She wore an uninspired navy gown that looked to have been fashioned for a woman either incapable of—or uninterested in—displaying herself to full advantage. Her hair was up again, pulled ruthlessly away from her face, but in his mind’s eye he could see it as had been eleven years ago, wavy brown tendrils whipping in the ocean breeze.
In a sea of frivolity and artfully placed curls, she stood out like a lighthouse beacon. Only he was pulled toward, not away from, her rocky shores.
Despite his mother’s strict instructions to seek out Lord Avery’s beautiful and available daughter, he found himself drifting in the direction of this young lady, who was neither Miss Baxter nor beautiful. Without logical explanation, the idea of conversing with the sure-to-be-delightful Miss Baxter paled in comparison to the idea of speaking with the sure-to-say-something-interesting Miss Caroline Tolbertson.
And so he approached her, taking the long way around, ducking and swerving around a clattering flock of girls. He could tell he had surprised his quarry, because she gasped as he leaned over to whisper in her ear, “Wishing for a game of shuttlecock?”
Any other girl would have flushed, he was sure. And she might have, though it was difficult to gauge beneath the unfashionable golden glow of her skin.
But her most discernible reaction was that her body went rigid. She scanned the room before her eyes slid back to his. “I had not realized this was the invitation you referred to so cryptically this afternoon, Mr. Cameron,” she said, her voice a low and unmistakable warning. “I hope you plan to be circumspect about any prior acquaintance.”
He opened his mouth to reassure her that he had no intention of revealing anything of their history, but then a servant rang the bell for dinner, and the crowd began to organize itself.
“Have you any idea how we will be seated tonight?” he asked, turning in a confused circle. Confound it. He should not have arrived so late.
“By precedence, I am sure. Which places us on opposite ends of the table, Mr. Cameron.” She took the arm of a blond woman in a pink dress and began to make her way to the back of the line.
David almost started after her. But then a delicate hand touched his shoulder and he turned to look down upon an angelic vision in white.
She was five-foot-nothing. Had a headful of cascading red curls, which gave off glossy little sparks under the overhead chandelier. Eyes of a color one didn’t have to fumble for: unapologetically green. The lovely Miss Baxter, he presumed, if his mother’s description of the girl was accurate.
“Mr. Cameron.” She smiled. “We are seated together at dinner.”
CAROLINE HAD NAïVELY imagined David Cameron was different from the rest of the summer crowd. He had flirted with her this afternoon, she was sure of it. That business about shuttlecock, and those quick, easy smiles.
But here he sat, in the middle of the crush—nay, at the head of the table. To his right, Miss Baxter was chattering away like a locomotive on a track to nowhere good. It would be only a matter of time before David either heard the whispers regarding Caroline’s ill-fated kiss, or started more on his own. He wouldn’t even have to do it purposefully. A casual mention of their history, an innocent slip of the tongue, would be more than enough. David’s dinner companion was a self-admitted gossip, and would probably like nothing better than to propagate such a titillating bit of rumor.
And that, Caroline knew, would be the end of any hope she held to attract a suitor.
Her mother’s pronouncement about the state of their finances had dogged her all through the evening. Mama was right, even if it pained her to admit it. A good match would solve their problems. In some ways, she had been acting selfishly, depending on Mama’s meager savings to see them through. She had always known this path was expected of her. She had just not anticipated her feet to be put to the fire quite so soon.
Then again, she was already three-and-twenty. Surely that fire was starting to go out.
But between herself and Penelope, she wasn’t sure who was less likely to marry. She was the too-tall Tolbertson sister who kissed like a boy, and Penelope was the shy spinster whose thoughts got tangled on her tongue.
It was a wonder the men weren’t beating down their door.
Dinner was interminable, a fact worsened by her acute awareness of the man seated at the far end of the table. Minute by minute, she watched David Cameron fall under the spell of the enchanting Miss Baxter. Honestly, how had a girl with such coloring escaped the freckles that plagued Caroline’s own skin? David laughed often, bending his blond curls toward his partner’s red ones, and Caroline could not help but wonder if the humor was at her expense.
Oh, but he looked handsome tonight, very nearly the image of the man her dreams had built him up to be. Tonight his strong jaw
showed to prime advantage working the overcooked bit of beef. The sun had turned him golden on his afternoon walk, making him appear as some tanned Grecian god, dropped from Mount Olympus.
Or some such poppycock.
As the endless meal dragged on, she was quite sure she had never wanted to see the back side of a dessert, or an evening, so desperately. But then they were through, and eight bottles of the absent Lord Avery’s best wine had fallen to the wolves, and Mr. Dermott was calling for the start of the promised parlor games.
And Caroline realized she had never wanted to return to an ill-prepared pudding so much in her life.
She seated herself on a settee facing Penelope, at the far edge of the crowded parlor. Nothing of note had happened so far during the evening, beyond the fact that Penelope had struck up a conversation with a red-haired young man who spoke with animated interest on the subject of the new process of developing photogenic drawings. Most importantly, Mr. Dermott had not approached her. Miss Baxter had greeted her arrival with a tentative smile. The beef sitting precariously in her stomach had not insisted on making a return appearance.
But these small miracles did not keep her from looking for danger, uncertain of when it would come but so sure of the attack she couldn’t breathe.
Of course, her difficulty breathing might have also been influenced by the cheroot someone had lit, just behind her. Several young men were passing it around.
“What is that odor?” Penelope paused in her conversation with the young photographer to sniff the air.
Caroline followed her sister’s line of sight, her nose wrinkled in distaste. “The cheroot?” She might be an uncultured girl from Brighton, but their mother had instructed them in social niceties. Even she understood that women were not supposed to be subjected to such indignities. That was the entire purpose of men and women separating for a time after dinner.
This crowd, however, seemed uninterested in following such conventions.
“It has a peculiar fragrance,” Penelope mused.
“That’s because it is cannabis, not tobacco.” The red-haired man with whom Penelope had just been conversing reached out to take his turn at the end of the cheroot as it was offered to him. He inhaled, making a great show of his skill at holding the smoke in his lungs before exhaling it through his nostrils. He pulled it out and glanced at it with a critical slant to his brow. “Christ, what a waste. Hashish is best when eaten.”
Caroline was as shocked by the idea as by the man’s appalling language. Cannabis was . . . was . . . well, “forbidden” was the word that came to mind. Laudanum was the only medicinal drug permitted in the Tolbertson home, and that was reserved for matters of extreme need.
Such as her mother’s threatened headaches.
“I’ve read it is supposed to b-be less hallucinogenic when inhaled.” Penelope watched in fascination as the gentleman took another pull at the end of the lit cheroot. “It is supposed to induce more of a state of relaxation than torpor.”
Caroline choked, as much on surprise as on the cloying smoke. Who was this curious creature masquerading as her bookish sister? Right when the cheroot was poised to sail on by, Penelope reached out her hand and lifted it to her own lips.
“Pen, no!” Caroline gasped. They were already on the fringe of social acceptance. What was her sister thinking?
Undeterred, Penelope inhaled, and then her whole body convulsed on a jagged sputter.
Caroline leaped to her sister’s side and clapped her on the back, unable to sort out whether her panic was due to the party’s forbidden offerings, the lack of any apparent chaperone over the age of forty, or her sister’s uncharted daring. She was quite sure this was not the sort of dinner party her mother had imagined them attending.
The gentleman who had given Penelope the cheroot scrambled backward, whether from shock at seeing one sister attack another, or to give her more room to maneuver, she could not be sure. As Penelope’s coughs grew more strangled, Caroline whacked harder, right between her sister’s hunched shoulder blades. The motion sent Penelope sprawling onto the carpet in a puddle of pink striped fabric, and the group of young men who had started the proceedings into peals of laughter.
“She’s a strong one.”
“What did you expect, with those shoulders?”
“Not much to look at, is she?”
Caroline froze under the weight of those anonymous snatches of conversation. Thankfully, they were directed toward her, not her sputtering, cheroot-trying sister. She had felt the rumbles all evening, the undercurrent of whispers that told her Mr. Dermott’s comments had left their mark.
But Penelope, thank goodness, did not appear to be their prime target.
David Cameron materialized from the depths of the party to lift her still-coughing sister back to sitting. “It is meant to be inhaled gently,” he told her, a half smile etched on his handsome face.
“Or not at all,” Caroline added, her heart thumping against her ribs. At first she thought it was her body’s reaction to the man’s proximity, or to her worry he might have overheard the ill-spirited comments about her lack of femininity.
But then she realized the feeling was not occurring in an even rhythm.
Was . . . was a drum being played somewhere in the house? Yes, it was. And another reveler was belting out an ill-kempt time on a piano, singing like a sparrow whose feathers were being plucked out, one at a time. She felt as if she might be hallucinating, and she had not even taken a turn at the end of that cheroot.
“Oh my.” Penelope pulled a stunted version of the cheroot from her mouth. “I think I sw-swallowed some of it.”
At that very moment, Miss Baxter materialized in a rush of heated white silk, glaring at the young men who were still snorting with laughter and making a great show of lighting another cheroot. Dread seeped beneath Caroline’s skin. Miss Baxter lived to spread gossip. Thrived on it, in fact. This was not the person she wanted around Pen at the moment.
And yet, this wasn’t exactly the composed young woman Caroline had seen earlier in the night. At this moment, Miss Baxter looked dreadful, in a pretty-girl-from-London sort of way. Her copper curls had started to frizz, no doubt because several of the partygoers had flung open the terrace doors to let in the humid night air, and her face was flushed a most unbecoming shade of red. Caroline was struck with the uncharitable thought that, at times, being beautiful had its drawbacks.
Such as the stark contrast when one did not look one’s best.
Miss Baxter plucked the glowing cheroot from the young man’s fingers and deposited it in an empty wineglass someone had left too close to the edge of side table. “There will be no smoking inside the house, gentlemen. My father does not permit it.”
“Your father isn’t here in Brighton,” one of them had the gall to say.
Which, Caroline considered with new understanding, explained both the dinner’s descent into debauchery and Miss Baxter’s earlier lack of chaperone on the beach. A hesitant vein of respect stirred in her breast. She hadn’t imagined a well-bred girl from London could possess such daring. And Caroline could respect a rebellious skirting of propriety, even if her own choices didn’t involve parties that threatened a house fire.
Miss Baxter morphed into a red-haired paragon of virtue, pointing an angry finger toward the open terrace doors. “Nevertheless, please take yourselves outside to the terrace, if you must indulge in such a disgusting habit.”
“It’s just a little cheroot,” one of them protested, waving a fresh one about for his friend to light from another smoking tip.
Miss Baxter snatched it from his hand, any pretense at polite discourse gone. “And please remove your feet from the furniture!” she snapped. “We are renting the house for the summer. My father will be very upset if he arrives on Saturday to find the place in shambles!”
Caroline was shocked to see the gleam of perspiration on the girl’s face. Somehow, she summoned the good spirit to feel sorry for the chit. But Miss Baxter had or
ganized this party, apparently without her father’s knowledge, and left the mechanics of the evening’s entertainment up to Mr. Dermott. What on earth did she expect?
As the raucous group of young men made a great show of trooping outside, Miss Baxter put a gloved hand to her temple and groaned, “Heavens, what was I thinking. And that noise. Where is it coming from? There are far too many people here, and I—” The sound of shattering glass filled the room. “The china!” she gasped, whirling toward the dining room.
As Miss Baxter’s heels clicked a furious retreat on the tile floor, Caroline risked a glance at her sister. “Are you set to rights, Pen?” she asked, concern for her sister superseding any concern she felt for herself or the curious Miss Baxter.
“Y-yes,” hiccupped Penelope, arranging her skirts on the settee with a limp hand. A smile had bloomed across her sister’s face. “It didn’t work. I had wondered if c-cannabis might help my stammer. B-but still, this is ever so much fun.”
Caroline blinked. “Fun” was not the word Caroline would have reached for.
Of course, she had not swallowed the end of a cannabis cheroot.
She spared a glance for David, who had settled himself in the space next to her. His large frame hovered an inch away, and it occurred to her that despite their long history, despite a good number of formative years imagining his touch, she had never so much as felt contact with the man’s gloved hand. This was the closest she had ever been to him.
And all she could think was how much she wished she wasn’t here.
She sat there, rigid, thinking the evening couldn’t get any worse. And then Mr. Dermott staggered into the room and clapped his hands.
“It’s time for Shadow Buff!” he declared, swaying under the effects of the one bottle of wine he had consumed, all on his own.
Summer Is for Lovers Page 5