It was a subdued Anna who took his arm.
“We’ll take a hackney,” she said. “I’m not being seen with you in the park.”
“Are you always so decided? I thought I looked rather well today,” he said. “My man assured me of it.”
She gave him a look as he took her arm and steered her down the street. “My parents already think you are courting me. If we walk together through the park others will too.” The paths by the serpentine would be busy on a Sunday afternoon.
“Yes, but that’s less remarkable than you climbing out of a hackney with me in the middle of Mount Street.” Walking with a lady in the park was nothing singular. Being alone in a carriage was. Surely she knew that.
“I’m not dressed for a promenade,” she said, still scornful.
“Yes, you don’t show as well in that drab gown. What happened to the red boots? I liked them,” Alistair said, using the smile that usually let him get away with impudence.
“My mother doesn’t think they are appropriate for church,” she said.
“Do you agree?”
“It wouldn’t matter how I look if you weren’t done up like a peacock. No one would notice us then.”
“I don’t mind being noticed,” he said. “I usually am—so are you, I expect, even done up like a Quaker.” He’d rather have people speculating about unfamiliar beauties on his arm than hashing over his broken engagement.
They turned north onto Sloane Street. “Why doesn’t your son live with you?” he asked.
“Frederick Morris doesn’t permit it. He is Henry’s guardian and his trustee.”
Aunt Georgiana had told him this, but he hadn’t expected Morris would keep the boy from his mother. Alistair waited for a gap in the carriage traffic and stepped off the pavement into the street. On the other side the park unrolled before them like a bolt of green velvet. A stream of Sunday strollers progressed down the paths, congregating in patches of shade. “Is that why you wanted Bagshot? To get your boy back?”
Her eyes darted up to him. “Yes. My father—he’s tried, but he’s too pliant and Frederick Morris too determined. He’s within his rights, after all. The lawyers who would talk with me wanted more money than I could afford. My widow’s portion isn’t large, you see, and Henry has the bulk of my fortune. Or Frederick, rather.”
“Your father wouldn’t pay a lawyer?”
She sighed. “He did try, until I told him not to waste his money. Legal action would take years and I’m unlikely to win. My father already settled most of his money on me when I married. He kept only a modest sum for himself. My husband oversaw the contracts, and my father was too awed by the Morrises to haggle for a better bargain. I was too in love with Anthony to allow it, if I had considered the matter at all. I was young then, you see. Father feels badly about it now, but I was more taken in than he was.”
He covered her hand as they passed into the dappled shade of the park’s giant trees. “I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am,” she said, drawing in a deep breath and straightening her shoulders. “Live and learn, they say. Are you certain you want to accompany me? I can always give my parents your excuses.”
“Why don’t you want me with you? I’ve behaved admirably today.”
She didn’t smile at his jest. “Why waste your time? I can’t afford you, and you need a wife with money. That’s why you were engaged to Sophy Prescott, wasn’t it? I may not have caught all the intricacies of society, but I did absorb enough to know the plight of extra sons. And I read the newspapers.”
He stopped walking, taking a moment to iron his face smooth, managing to keep his tone civil, if not his words. “You’ve a lovely mouth. It’s fascinating—like a viper’s. Did you talk to Morris this way?”
“My marriage isn’t your concern. Nothing to do with me is.”
“You have a very low opinion of me, ma’am.”
“What of it? Need I remind you of your first opinion of me?”
She had him there. “Pax,” he said, lifting his hands. “It means peace. A truce,” he explained, seeing her blank look. “Let’s pretend none of that happened, that we met today at church, not at that ridiculous masquerade—”
“What of your bout of fisticuffs in Green Park?”
“I’d appreciate you forgetting that too.” He offered his arm again, and a conciliatory smile. They walked on, the gravel crunching softly beneath their boots.
“What was your fight about?” Anna asked.
A pause, while he led her into the softer grass. “I can’t get you to believe it never happened?”
“No. Henry loves his new vocabulary.”
He sighed. “My obligations grow and grow. We were arguing about his sister, Sophy. The new Mrs. Bagshot.”
She peeked at him sideways. “You cared about her. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know why you and everyone else should be so surprised,” he grumbled.
“You cannot blame me, they way you spoke at the masquerade—you seemed quite heartless.”
“I expect I was trying to be, then. Not your fault. What cuts deep is that I couldn’t convince the lady I was anything else.”
“Perhaps it’s your habit of looking remote and superior. No, forget I said that,” she said, when he looked up quickly. “I’ll keep the peace.”
“It’s not the done thing, wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve,” Alistair said coolly.
“I know that much,” she said with a sigh. Alistair watched her, wondering if she was thinking of her husband.
Ahead of them the water shimmered white under the high sun. Anna turned her face, shielding her eyes, but Alistair was used to brighter glare and hotter suns. Perhaps she didn’t care for the bedecked crowd clustered around the reedy shore. He changed course, seeking more shade. They found the footpath again, weaving deeper into the trees, their regular tread measuring out his remaining time. He wished he had more of it, but he was for Spain. That couldn’t be changed. Outside their quiet space, beyond the screening trees, the Sunday promenade went on; light muslin gowns and long tailed coats as flat as the French paper puppets his cousin Henrietta had favored when they were children. They looked like figures, not real people, prim young ladies with their maids, dandies with entire bouquets fixed in their buttonholes and—dash it, that one was Cyril.
Before they were seen, Alistair veered towards the carriage way, slowing their pace once they were clear, waiting for her remark. His behavior was too singular to avoid comment. But when she spoke, it wasn’t what he expected.
“Is that why you wanted to see me?” she asked. “Because we both lost what we wanted? I, Tom, and you, Sophy Prescott?”
He swallowed. Perhaps it was. He was hard put to explain his compulsion otherwise. “You must be right.” They’d both played and lost. How depressing.
*****
Anna didn’t trust Captain Beaumaris or like him, but it wasn’t terrible having a handsome gentleman walk her through the park. At the very least, it kept down her nervousness as the approached the Morris door. Captain Beaumaris rapped the knocker.
“Master Henry’s not at home, I’m afraid,” the butler said. “Driving with his grandmother.” He didn’t suggest she come inside to wait.
Anna bit the inside of her lip. This wasn’t the first time a Morris had slighted her. It would happen again, perhaps as soon as the coming week, for Frederick derived particular satisfaction from these taunts. So did her mother-in-law. The last thing Anna wanted was that woman in the vicinity. A hundred miles was too close. “I thought she was visiting her daughter up north,” Anna said.
“I believe she was,” Arden said uncommunicatively. Well, Charlotte Morris probably tried even her daughter’s patience after too long.
“Do tell them we called,” Captain Beaumaris said, extending his card into Arden’s hand.
“Does Morris often do that?” he asked, once they were outside. “Keep your boy from you, I mean?”
“We aren’t on friendl
y terms,” she replied, dreading the questions that would follow. But Captain Beaumaris said nothing more until they reached the end of the street.
“Are you tired? Is the heat too much?”
“It’s not a long walk. I’m neither an invalid nor a cripple.” The words came out more scornfully than she intended, but he didn’t comment.
They said less on the walk home and it was her fault—she still smarting from another Morris jibe. She knew most of them by heart: she was too coarse, too credulous, too plain in her tastes or else too lavish. The litany rattled round her head, whipped faster by anger that again he’d stolen her time with Henry. Unable to drive the thoughts away, she missed one or two of Captain Beaumaris’s remarks, replying at random. She was, however, sufficiently alert to take in his occasional nods or words of greeting to some of the passers-by. His acquaintance seemed to consist entirely of sporting gentlemen, recognizable by their conservative clothes and lack of paunch, and beautiful women. A particularly lovely one with silvery blonde hair, driven in grand style in an enormous barouche, looked like she expected conversation with him. Anna didn’t like to speculate why. And wasn’t she a little old for him? Captain Beaumaris couldn’t be more than thirty.
He did not seek conversation from any of his friends, keeping to quieter paths and inoffensive subjects, trying one after another, for they had little in common. She hadn’t seen Kean’s Hamlet, heard Catalani sing or read Mrs. Radcliffe’s new novel. “That’s a relief,” Captain Beaumaris said, capturing her attention at last.
“You don’t like novels?”
“No.”
Anna had no quarrel with that, preferring pamphlets and newspapers herself. She figured it best not to tell him she’d fallen asleep last night reading a soothing description of wounds, their debridement, and the consequences of festering.
But it was distracting, and rather nice, being pelted with questions. She hadn’t been to Carlton house, but she liked hearing what Mrs. Goring wore when she was there. “Is she the one the papers call ‘the Ethereal?’” Anna asked.
“The very same,” Captain Beaumaris said.
“Is she so very lovely?”
“Exquisite, and well aware of it. It’s fashionable to affect modesty, but she never does. I believe I prefer it when a lady doesn’t pretend to be unaware that she’s immoderately attractive.”
She ignored the quick glance over her bonnet and plain dress. “Was Miss Prescott—forgive me, Mrs. Bagshot—that way?”
“Not at all.” He smiled. “She was a Genuine, and rare at that. I don’t think she considered herself beautiful at all. She isn’t really, next to her half-sister.”
“Is that what makes her attractive?”
He considered. “It goes a long way towards it, certainly. She tries on intimidating looks like my aunt, but it never works for her because she spoils it by being a complete wretch.”
“She’s amusing, then,” Anna said, forcing herself to sound interested, not wooden.
“Entirely. But we needn’t speak of her. It’s very rude of me to bring her up with you.”
Curiously, now that he was ready to put this lady away, she wanted to talk about her more. What was it about her that made men like Beaumaris and Tom Bagshot fall at her feet? The only thing Anna’s looks had won her was an indifferent husband and a string of lovers she didn’t like to think about. And she wouldn’t.
“I don’t mind hearing about her,” she said, with a rueful twitch of her brows. “I’m curious—what is it she has that I lack? The person I should ask is Tom, I suppose, but I can’t imagine doing it. I’d blush so deep I’d scorch my ears. And it might be something I cannot change,” she finished, more soberly. She had no reason to confide in Captain Beaumaris—plenty of reasons not to, in fact, including her pride—but the words were coming easily and she didn’t care enough to stop them. His original opinion of her had been so terrible it was impossible to fall in his esteem.
“You could smile more,” he said at last. “I’m sure you have one, but I’ve scarcely seen it.”
Feeling a pinch of annoyance, she flashed him a dazzling array of teeth.
“Gracious, are you going to eat me?” he asked.
Anna wrinkled her nose at him. “Not if you speak nice.” She looked him over, taking in the magnificent uniform and the fine looking set of shoulders. “All that braid and button work would disagree with me.”
He laughed, loud and light. “Frederick Morris should be more careful. You’re a dangerous enemy.”
Yes, just ask my dead husband. “I’ve contemplated revenge a time or two,” she admitted aloud. “Gratifying to the imagination, but impossible. He has every advantage.”
“What would you do to him?” Beaumaris asked, steering her away from the morass of self-pity as lightly as he’d edged her around the uneven pavements.
“Not certain. My mother doesn’t hold with witchcraft.”
“Thank heaven for that! If I found myself alone with you, a belle dame sans merci—” he broke off, seeing her confused face. “Are you unfamiliar with French? Or is it poetry?”
“Both,” she said, unashamed, for there was no censure in him.
“She is the beautiful lady without mercy. I’ll lend you the poem and you can tell me what you think,” he said, his eyes warm with a light she knew had imperiled many hearts. They were so good at saying one thing while his lips said something else. “I’ll bring it round tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Anna asked, her voice dry, though she was secretly pleased. “There’s no need—”
“I leave almost immediately for Spain,” he inserted quickly. “Matter of days.”
Oh. She shouldn’t be surprised. He was interested in her because they’d both been slighted, that was all. Besides, he needed to marry money and she no longer had hers. “I’ll have to read quickly. Is it a long poem?”
“Don’t sound so resigned! It’s not long at all, and very beautiful.” His eyes were speaking again, saying things he wasn’t going to say aloud. Unless she was a victim of her own imagination.
“Tell me about your family,” she said. He knew more than enough about hers.
“My father’s seat is in Kent and he spends most of his time there due to poor health. My elder brother is currently in town, but he’ll take himself off to Brighton shortly,” he said.
She nodded so he would go on; not hearing what he was saying so much as sharpening her liking for the cadences of his voice. A woman could grow tipsy listening to those perfectly enunciated words.
Reciting the names, titles and whereabouts of his relations took the rest of the walk home. “Will I have to repeat this performance over dinner?” he asked good-naturedly. Of course it was boring him.
“No,” she said quickly. “My parents won’t ask about that kind of thing.” They had little use for gentry. If her mother hadn’t decided a year ago that the best thing for Anna was a second marriage—a happier one—they would probably have given Captain Beaumaris short shrift.
The rest of her confidence deserted her when they entered her parents’ drawing room. Oh, it was fine enough; well-furnished, with no hint of anything shabby, but nothing was fashionable or lovely. The drawings on the walls were maps and indifferent watercolors done by her father’s surveyor friends on voyages to the Americas, and her mother still insisted on displaying Anna’s first, badly-executed sampler. Blessed are the pure in heart, it intoned ironically from the wall in crooked red letters, only slightly less wobbly than the parade of yellow birds in the row beneath. Then there was the miniature of her brother, framed with a lock of his chestnut brown hair, and her mother’s books, all sermons and essays, scattered on the tables.
“You have a talent for organization, I see,” Alistair said to her mother, glancing in an open memorandum book where she recorded the minutes of the Benevolent Society. Her mother accepted this topic of conversation as happily as always, describing the Society’s mission, her hopes for the dispensary, and her opinions of the m
edical profession. No matter how often Anna peeked at Captain Beaumaris, he never looked bored, though his responses took on a rehearsed quality. It was subtle, though. If she hadn’t been jumpy as a cat, watching for things he might store up to laugh over in private, she wouldn’t have noticed.
Dinner, of course, was unfashionably early and hearty too. Neither of her parents cared for French sauces or foods they couldn’t recognize or pronounce. Anna marked how much he ate, trying to judge if he was pleased with the meal or merely being polite. She couldn’t tell. At least the wine was good. Too late, she realized she hadn’t been watching, and might be on her third glass. Admonishing herself to be more careful, she ate quietly, letting him laugh with her parents, who had never been told, in Anthony Morris’s iciest accents, that immoderate feelings were not displayed in company.
“They worry about you,” he whispered to her, when her mother purposely asked her to walk him alone to the door. It was late now. They’d talked long after dessert.
“I know,” Anna whispered back, feeling harassed by their embarrassing expectations. “It can be something of a trial.”
His expression told her immediately that she’d spoken ill. “I would be happy to claim affection like theirs,” he said, and Anna caught a glimpse of a home like the Morris’s: chilly, polite, and no place for a boy.
“That’s not what I meant,” Anna said hastily. “I’ll explain to them why you called. In friendship—they’ll understand. I don’t want their expectations to make you uncomfortable—” She should stop now before embarrassing herself further.
Alistair turned away from her, darting into the boot room to retrieve his hat. Anna followed him, despite the uncomfortable motion in her stomach.
“I understand what you mean,” he said, keeping his back to her. Impossible to say for certain in this dim light, but his neck might have been flushed. He set the hat on his head, carefully adjusting the angle, then turned and walked past her, heading for the door. Before the breeze of his passing died, he was back at her side, pressing her hand. “I’m not uncomfortable. I should be, but I’m not. Thank your parents again for dinner.”
Incognita (Fairchild Book 2) Page 9