“Of course it matters.” David’s body still felt coiled tight, but this, finally, was getting at what this conversation ought to be about. It would pain him to see her happy with someone else—he was man enough to admit that. But he needed to do this for himself, as much as for her.
His palm twitched, wanting to brush a wayward wisp of hair out of her eyes. He curled his traitorous fingers into a fist instead. “That is what I have been trying to tell you, Caroline. I found my perfect match, once upon a time. I wish the same thing for you.”
Her gaze jerked up to meet his. “You would subject me to this sort of pain?” She met his gaze with a doubtful, arched brow. “Your whole body tenses up when you speak of the girl you loved. It looks as if a lifetime of shuttlecock would be more enjoyable, if you will forgive the observation.”
David welcomed the return of the sharp tongue he admired to the conversation. “I was unlucky to lose my match, but it does not mean you will be. There is a man somewhere in Brighton, and quite possibly on this dance floor, with whom you might have a happy future.”
He swallowed his regrets, and let his smile stretch higher, false though the sentiment might be. “And while I cannot be that man, I can promise to help you find him.”
Chapter 16
SO THIS WAS what four glasses of champagne felt like the next morning.
Caroline woke to a vicious pounding, not unlike church bells on Sunday, clanging in her skull. Except she was quite sure it wasn’t Sunday. It was Thursday.
The world shifted. Tilted. Slid back into place.
She opened one protesting eye to sunlight streaming across her headboard. It was morning, which meant her hellish night was finally over. But it also meant she must face the day, and that was a thought worth haggling over.
She slid a glance toward Penelope’s bed. “Pen?” she whispered. There was no answer.
Indeed, there was no Pen. Her sister’s bed was neatly made up, the pillows tucked away beneath the smooth, uncreased coverlet. What time was it, if Penelope had risen before her and already tidied her bed?
Caroline buried her face in her pillow, breathing in the familiar smell of the lilac sachets she helped Bess make for the linen closet. The feeling in her head came again. Less of a pounding than a knocking. She should not have had that fourth glass of champagne.
But then the memory of what had driven her to consume the last glass reinserted its ugly head, and she wondered if four had been enough.
Because despite the drinks’ clear effects on her head, they hadn’t erased the memory of her painful conversation with David. Or how she had felt afterward, when he had encouraged her to go on laughing and dancing and—dare she acknowledge it—flirting with other gentlemen, as if he had not just inverted her world and tossed it onto the rubbish heap.
The last glass of champagne and David’s departure soon thereafter had freed her. There had been offers to dance. So many she lost count. She had thrown herself into the remainder of the evening, convinced that nothing else that might befall her that evening could be worse than what had already happened. For the first time in her life, she hadn’t cared what kind of an impression she was making, or whether her eccentricities might scare off a potential suitor.
Anything to prevent her from thinking of David’s heart-wrenching past, and his inability to move on from the woman he had loved and lost.
More knocking interrupted her thoughts. She groaned. Burrowed under the covers. Willed it to stop. It was curious how the sensation ebbed and flowed. She would have thought post-alcohol misery to be a constant thing, like a hammer chained to one’s bones.
The sound of the bedroom door slamming proved the worst possible accompaniment to the racket that would not loosen its grip on her skull. “Caroline!” Pen’s excited voice reached beneath the covers. “You have to s-s-see!”
Caroline pulled down her coverlet and blinked up at her sister’s flushed, pretty face. Penelope was still wearing the same gown she had worn to the dance at the pavilion last night, a sea foam green silk had been remade from an old evening gown of Mama’s. Had she been to bed at all?
“Fl-flowers!” Penelope snatched up Caroline’s hand, tugging harder now. “Delivered this morning. An entire h-house full of them.”
Caroline let Pen pull her to sitting, though the movement sent the room into a nauseating pitch. “From Mr. Cameron?” Her heart began to match the rhythm in her head, foolish, stupid organ that it was.
Although, now that she considered it, her head wasn’t actually knocking. The sound came again. Someone was knocking on the front door that sat right below her open window.
Pen shook her head. “Not that I saw. The first two deliveries were from Mr. Branson and someone named Mr. Adams.” At Caroline’s bleary-eyed gawk, she flushed. “B-but Mama and I stopped reading the c-c-cards after that.”
Caroline stared at her sister, aghast. None of this made sense.
The knock below her window came again, more insistent this time, and Caroline could hear Bess muttering something from the porch below. Mama’s higher-pitched, excited exclamation soon followed.
Penelope’s blue eyes danced over the commotion. “Heavens, it sounds like there’s another deliveryman at the door.”
Caroline swallowed. “Another deliveryman?”
“The sixth so f-far.”
Caroline contemplated pinching the skin on the underside of her wrist just to see if the pain might be real. The circumstances called for something drastic, because nothing else about this morning could be distinguished from a dream.
“And there’s more.” Penelope rattled a newspaper in front of Caroline’s eyes. “You, my d-dear sister, have made the social section of the Brighton Gazette.”
A HARSH COUGH tore David’s eyes from the heap of coddled eggs on his plate.
He gripped the edge of his chair as he watched his mother set down the paper she had been reading and labor to draw a proper breath. Hers was a battle he could not help her with, though he would have gladly given one of his lungs had he the ability to make the sacrifice.
“I’d like to fetch a doctor this morning,” he insisted when his mother leaned back against the mountain of pillows. “You seem a good deal worse than when we arrived last week.”
She shook her head, setting limp gray curls bouncing on either side of her nightcap. “I am fine. Just a little tired.”
“But perhaps one of the Brighton doctors could—”
“No.” Another cough racked her frail body, but she fought through it. “By my bones,” she gasped, “I would rather expire on the spot than be bled again, David.”
He absorbed her words, contemplating his choices. He could fetch the doctor against her express wishes. Insist she suffer through whatever archaic treatment the man recommended. Demand she put off this foolishness and return home to Moraig, where she had a bevy of household servants and David’s father to dote on her.
But none of those choices would make her happy. By bringing her to Brighton, David knew he had pleased her, even if he wasn’t making her better. And the memory of the last doctor, who had chased his poor prognosis with a recommendation to bleed her every other day until she either improved or succumbed, kept David’s arse settled in the chair.
His mother dabbed her mouth with a napkin, some delicate bit of frippery embroidered with the Bedford Hotel crest. “Let us finish our breakfast without talk of such unpleasantries.” She picked up her crumpled newspaper again. “And please,” she said, nodding toward his plate. “Eat your eggs.”
David stared down at his plate, his stomach objecting to the very idea. He had been eating breakfast with his mother every morning since they arrived, both as a way to spend precious time with her and to surreptitiously sort out whether she showed any signs of improvement. But between the emotional thrashing he had subjected Caroline to last night and the worry he felt for his mother this morning, food was the last thing on his mind. The Bedford boasted an excellent kitchen staff, but even the mo
st accomplished of chefs would have found it difficult to bring life to his appetite this morning.
His mother was visibly, painfully ill. Caroline was probably sick at heart.
And he didn’t see how eating his eggs was going to mend either of them.
He pushed the jiggling yellow mess around on his plate until his mother made an odd noise.
“Is something wrong?” David looked up in alarm.
There was no immediate answer. From the position of the Gazette in his mother’s hands, he could see that the upcoming swimming competition was featured on the front page, the headlines declaring it the “Race of the Decade.”
David drew in a sharp breath at the reminder. He didn’t even know if the competition was still a possibility. He had no hope of winning without Caroline’s instruction, and after the muddle he had made of things last night . . . He had done his best to patch things over before he took his leave, but he would not have been surprised to learn that she had returned home and given in to a good cry into her pillow. He hoped she would still want to continue their clandestine swimming lessons.
But he wouldn’t blame her if she changed her mind.
His mother’s voice intruded on those troublesome thoughts. “I see you’ve made the social section.”
David shifted in his chair. Why did his mother sound so accusing? She was the one who insisted he traipse about Brighton’s social scene when the sun went down.
“It says here you danced with Miss Julianne Baxter.” The baroness leveled a shrewd glance in his direction over the top of the paper. “And that you danced with someone named Miss Caroline Tolbertson. I’ve met Miss Baxter, of course, and she is a lovely chit. But when were you going to tell me about Miss Tolbertson?”
David caught his breath. “She . . . is a lovely chit as well,” he finished, unsure of what else he could say. He shoveled a forkful of eggs into his mouth and swallowed the curdled mass far more easily than he swallowed the latest twist to the conversation.
His mother’s lips turned up into a faint smile that seemed at odds with the shadows haunting her eyes. “Well, you’d best move fast if you’ve an interest in that one, dear. Because according to the newspaper, Miss Tolbertson is the surprise sensation of the summer.”
Chapter 17
YET ANOTHER DELIVERYMAN knocked on the door by the time Caroline made her way downstairs. She stared in amazement. Bouquets sprouted from every conceivable vase, and even an old, chipped pitcher Bess must have scrounged from a forgotten kitchen cupboard. The fragrance of all those hothouse blooms was dizzying in and of itself, but the knowledge that the combined cost of those already-wilting flowers would have been enough to feed Caroline’s family for at least the next month made her stomach turn.
Her mother looked up from where she was admiring an arrangement of pink clematis and calendula. Her sharp blue gaze settled on the frayed cuffs of Caroline’s sleeves, and her mouth turned down. “Please tell me you are not planning on wearing that gown today, dear.â€
Caroline looked down, belligerence welling up inside her. The faded blue print of her dress wasn’t much to look at, she knew. But at least it didn’t pinch her about the shoulders, or squeeze about her neck. “I haven’t another clean dress, Mama.â€
“What about your navy serge gown?â€
Caroline winced. That ruined garment was tucked under a bush on the beach at her swimming cove. It had seemed safer at the time to keep it there for David’s daily lessons.
She searched her mind for an appropriate explanation. “Er . . . I believe it is ripped.â€
Her mother pressed exasperated fingers against both temples. “By the stars, child. Must it always be so difficult with you? Go upstairs, right now, and change into something of Pen’s. Her yellow day dress, I think.â€
Caroline snorted. “Pen is at least six inches shorter than I am.â€
“But she has more of a bosom, dear. Surely that extra fabric will balance out somewhere around your feet.†Mrs. Tolbertson clapped her hands together. “Quickly, as fast as you can. I have a feeling—â€
Before her mother could finish the thought, a knock came at the door. Bess peered through the front window. “Heavens,†the servant exclaimed, wiping the window with a corner of her apron and leaning over for a closer look. “It’s a gentleman caller!â€
Her mother’s hand crept up to smooth soft, blond curls back from her temples. “So early, these boys are. Why, when I was being courted, no one would have ever dared call before two o’clock.â€
“We are in Brighton,†Caroline pointed out. And according to the clock she had passed in the upstairs hallway, it was a few minutes past eleven o’clock. Given the predictable heat of the day, the trend of paying early social calls in summer made good sense.
“I am very aware of the fact that we live in Brighton,†Mama said, her voice sharp as the thorns Caroline could see on the nearest bunch of roses. Her mother’s brows pulled down in thought. No doubt she was trying to weigh whether it was better for her youngest daughter to be seen in an unattractive dress that fit, or a prettier one that gaped about the chest and showed far too much ankle.
A regretful sigh escaped her as she eyed Caroline once more. “I suppose the blue will have to do for today. But I declare, our appointment with Madame Beauclerc cannot come soon enough.â€
“Mr. Gabriel Adams is here for Miss Caroline,†Bess sang out from the door. The servant stepped back, a surprised hand fluttering about her chest. “Gor, and Mr. Branson too!â€
The walk to the parlor would have been awkward enough with one man to deal with, but with two it proved a veritable gauntlet of stilted discourse. Caroline chose her wingback chair out of habit, while Pen cleared three books and a leather-bound journal away from her usual spot. This left the settee for the two men, who sat stiff-backed and bristling on the delicate piece of furniture, trying not to touch each other.
“Thank you for the flowers,†Caroline said, trying to ignore the sight of Mr. Branson’s elbow catching Mr. Adams somewhere in the vicinity of his liver.
“The roses are mine,†Branson said, pushing the words through gritted teeth. “Not that you can find them in that circus of a foyer,†he added under his breath.
“I sent the clematis,†Mr. Adams grunted, rubbing his chest and shooting Branson a glare. “Roses are far too predictable.â€
The two men began to argue about the merits of choosing flowers. Mr. Branson was of the opinion that garden-reared flowers were superior in form and fragrance. Mr. Adams felt that hothouse flowers conveyed a more appropriate sentiment of worth.
Penelope took advantage of the bickering to lean in close. “Mr. Adams is the c-cousin of a marquess,†she whispered.
Caroline choked back a startled gasp. She at least recalled dancing with the brown-haired young man last night, which was a miracle considering that by the end of the evening, the dances had all started to blur together. Then again, she had danced with him before the muck she had made of things with David. But good heavens. What had possessed the cousin of a marquess to ask her to dance last night, much less call on her this morning?
And when had Penelope become such an authority on the lineage of the summer set?
“How did you know that?†she hissed.
Pen’s eyes lit with amusement. “The social section of the Gazette, of course.â€
Caroline studied the gentleman beneath her lashes as he was battered by Branson’s lengthy verbal discourse on how to select a rose based on the length of its thorns. Mr. Adams had moderately straight teeth. Better than Mr. Branson’s, though not nearly as nice as David Cameron’s.
A wicked voice—her own, not Pen’s—whispered in her ear. What does it matter how straight they are? Those teet
h belong to the cousin of a marquess.
Bess popped her head through the parlor door. “Oh my heavens, miss,†she squeaked, wringing her hands. “Another gentleman has arrived. You’d best come out here for this one, though.â€
Caroline excused herself and stepped out of the parlor with a far-too-curious Penelope in tow. She could immediately see why the newest arrival had not been escorted to the parlor to join the others. He was a bit younger than the other men who had called this morning, twenty if she had to hazard a guess, with a thick black mustache and matching sideburns. But despite his tender age, he looked to have been cleaning his plate for most of those years.
His addition to the foyer took up the space of two or three men.
With a great deal of effort, Caroline resurrected the barest memory of waltzing with this bear of a man. The recollection took shape and filled with color and texture. Ah, yes. He had stepped on her toes four times. And asked her for another dance soon after, which she had sidestepped on the grounds of propriety.
Her mother’s wide smile offered a brilliant contrast to the worry line drawn between her brows. Caroline would have laughed, had her still-rolling stomach been up to the task. Apparently her mother’s experience with managing multiple suitors was a matter of quantity, not density.
Pen leaned over to whisper in Caroline’s ear. “Mr. Duffington is the third son of the Earl of B-Beecham.â€
Ah. Duffington. The name clicked into place. Caroline stared in wonder and amazement. Not at Duffington, who, despite his impressive bloodlines and expensive clothing, was not much to look at.
No, Caroline stared at her sister.
An interest in the Gazette was something Pen had inherited from their father, but she spent most of her time reading the editorial section. Never once had her sister showed the slightest bit of interest in a social section. Heavens. Caroline wasn’t even sure she realized there was a social section in the Brighton Gazette.
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