“That is exactly what Miss Stanton said,” Griff said slowly. “That he must have driven them too hard…”
“Did she, by Jove? Damn, I like that girl!”
Griff thought of a pair of intense green eyes, the pressure of a narrow hand on his arm, and warmth flooded his body. More than warmth, really, as he remembered how their shoulders had rubbed together, how his thigh had pressed against hers on the box seat. What a curious girl she was! So socially inept on the one hand, but so adamant, earnest, and through and through goodhearted on the other. Full of pluck, too.
He admitted to himself that he had liked it when she had remained completely unfazed at the signs of his irritation and anger. Instead of trying to placate him, as most young ladies would have done, she had ploughed on until she had made her point. After hearing what Boo had told him, he suspected she had orchestrated the phaeton drive solely for his benefit. The notion seemed fantastic, and yet, strangely enough, he thought such behaviour was in character for her. And not once had she shown any interest in his title or his prospects. No, her interest had been focused on him.
Him.
A hot shaft of pleasure sliced through his brandy-befuddled brain.
“I like her, too,” he said quietly, and then drank. More than like, in fact. Carefully, he put the empty glass back on the table. Pain followed upon the pleasure, and he had to close his eyes. His breath escaped on a sigh. “But I still feel responsible.”
As you bore your family so much pain in the past I expect that you will not disappoint us in the future.
And he had a duty to perform.
~*~
“Do you know what a courtesan is? Lord Chanderley wouldn’t tell me.”
Charlie watched her friend spewing tea every which way. They were sitting in the Brockwins’ small parlour, drinking tea and eating a heap of buttered scones. Emma-Lee turned beet red while she coughed and wheezed. “Charlie!” she finally spluttered. “Now look what you’ve made me do!”
“I am sorry,” Charlie said earnestly, “but—”
“Please don’t tell me that you’ve asked Viscount Chanderley what a courtesan is!” Emma-Lee dabbed first at her dress and then at the tablecloth in the vain effort to remove the drops of spilled tea.
“He brought the subject up,” Charlie defended herself. “I was merely admiring a lovely red curricle.”
“Oh Charlie.” Sighing, her friend let the tea-stains be and shook her head. “You do have a propensity for making a hash of things!”
Defensively, Charlie crossed her arms in front of her chest and put her chin up. “It is this place,” she said in what sounded like mulish tones even to her own ears. “I do not like it.” She chewed on her lower lip for a moment, then added in an ominous voice, “London!” She threw her hands up. “Everything is so different from what I expected it to be!”
Emma-Lee put her head to the side. “But there are the balls. You so enjoyed dancing back at Miss Pinkerton’s. Surely, the balls must be to your liking…” Her voice trailed off as Charlie hung her head. “Charlie?”
Heat suffused Charlie’s face. “I am not…” she tried. “My figure… It is not fashionable. And these—” She touched her spectacles. “And… and…” She made a sweeping upward motion with her hand. “I’m too tall.” Helplessly, she glanced at her friend. “They make jokes about me, Em. They call me a… a giantess. And worse.” She sighed.
“Oh Charlie.”
“It is not all bad,” Charlie said quickly when she read the pity in Emma-Lee’s eyes. “I usually sit with Isabella these days, and she truly is a sweet creature. Her cousin sometimes invites me for a dance, which is very fine of him, don’t you think so?” She felt a small pang because, so far, a certain viscount had not asked her to dance again. Perhaps he had not liked her dancing technique after all. It was a shame, really, because she had so enjoyed dancing with him. Or perhaps he had been put off by their conversation during their drive in the phaeton. She very much feared it might be that. Had it been the mention of the boars that had appalled him so? He had been very annoyed when she had mentioned Jamie Moore. “Mr Cole is a very tall gentleman, so I don’t look at all ridiculous next to him, so…” Charlie took a deep breath, then released it abruptly. “I am babbling, aren’t I?”
Her friend nodded.
Charlie grimaced. “Oh dear.”
“It is that bad, then?”
“I’ve told you: it is this place! It is so different. The people are so different.” Turning her head, she stared out of the window of the small parlour, stared at the front of the building on the other side of the street, and remembered the view over the orchard from her bedroom window at the academy. “Sometimes I wish I’d be back in Scotland,” she said softly. For a ghastly moment she feared she might burst into tears. Swallowing the sudden lump in her throat, she turned back to her friend. “Aren’t I the most morose pea-goose?”
“Oh Charlie!” Emma-Lee came scooting around the table and, putting her arm around Charlie’s shoulders, kissed the top of her head. “I am so sorry, sweeting.”
Charlie sniffed inelegantly and quickly wiped a finger under her eyes, nearly dislodging her spectacles in the process. What a pea-goose she was! As if turning into a tearful fountain would help anybody! Hadn’t Miss Pinkerton insisted one ought to look at the bright side of life? For if you do, Charlie heard her old teacher say, you will soon find that this is the Best of All Possible Worlds. Miss Pinkerton had even instructed Mr Bernstone, the music teacher, to write a song about this axiom.
So, Charlie, my dear, Charlie roused herself, think cheerful thoughts. “Well…” She allowed herself one last, wet sniffle. “It is not all bad. Have I told you that I’ve won the use of a high-perch phaeton for a day? The highest high-perch phaeton in London at that! And the drive with Lord Chanderley was pleasant. Very pleasant, truth to be told.” She looked up at her friend. “I wish you could meet him one day. He is so handsome. Indeed, I should say he is the most handsome man in all of London!” She smiled dreamily. “He can make his eyebrows mesh. Like this—” She curled her forehead, imitating Chanderley’s frown.
“A most peculiar feat,” her friend commented drily.
Grinning, Charlie nudged her with her elbow. “It is. And it has the most peculiar effect on me.” Reddening, she quickly continued, “But he is a charming man. And a nice one. It is not often that one finds a genuinely nice person, is it?”
Emma-Lee made herself comfortable on the arm of Charlie’s armchair. “He certainly sounds very pleasant.”
“Yes, pleasant. And sitting next to him on that box seat yesterday, now that was very pleasant as well.” Charlie grinned up at her. “It is most shocking, is it not?”
“Most,” Emma-Lee agreed. “Do continue.”
Charlie leaned her head against her friend’s shoulder “He smells very nice. And he has those lovely big hands.” She stretched out her right arm in front of her and wriggled her fingers. “They are quite lovely in gloves, but when everybody sits down to supper at the end of a ball, I can’t help looking at them in the, you know—” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “—nude.”
The two girls exchanged a glance before they burst into giggles.
“I suppose he would be much shocked if he knew that I am fantasising about his hands,” Charlie finally gasped.
“Fantasising!” Emma-Lee’s brows rose. “You’ve said nothing about fantasising, Carlotta Stanton!”
“I know, it is most shocking. But his hands are so big and brawny and… and manly.” Charlie gave a happy sigh. “I never knew that hands could be so fascinating.” She glanced up at her friend. “Do you think I might be developing a brain fever? When I sat next to him in that phaeton, my body felt all warm and tingly. Prickly. As if I had fallen into nettles. Though not as unpleasant.”
“One should hope not!” Emma-Lee murmured.
“It was most curious. And I was babbling. I told him the most shocking things. About Jamie Moore and the boar. And about
Old Squire Nettles and Miss Pinkerton. And about Cook and her port…” Charlie sighed and felt her friend quivering. “Em?”
Emma-Lee smothered a laugh against Charlie’s hair. “The poor man!”
~*~
Charlie slid into the chair next to Isabella’s. Lord and Lady Frimsey’s party was in full swing. They had apparently made sure that only very few wallflowers were included on the guest list, so the chairs along the wall were nicely deserted—except for Isabella, that was. “Do you know what a courtesan is?” Charlie asked.
The girl’s head jerked around and her eyes widened. “Miss Stanton!” she exclaimed, then lowered her voice to an anxious whisper. “Please do not tell me that my brother conversed with you about courtesans during your drive!”
“No, he refused to do so. That is the problem, you. My good friend Emma-Louise did not enlighten me either, which in hindsight I consider is most beastly of her.” Charlie glanced around the ballroom and spotted Cousin Caroline being led to the dance floor for a country dance. She turned her attention back to Isabella. “Would you mind it very much if my cousin accompanied us on our next drive? She…” Charlie cleared her throat. “She would very much like to meet you, that is.” What balderdash! she thought glumly, but was mindful of her aunt’s admonishments.
Her friend was obviously taken aback, but said good-naturedly enough, “Of course, I don’t mind. Are you two very close?”
Charlie grimaced. “Not exactly. She has been very busy these weeks with the Season and everything.” Making endless rounds of morning calls and running to the modiste nearly every week in an effort to keep up with current fashions was an effort, Charlie supposed. Unconsciously, her hand smoothed over the skirts of her own pale yellow dress, or rather, of Cousin Caroline’s old pale yellow dress with inserted ruffles at the hem and a hastily adjusted bodice. Aunt Dolmore had decided that the dress not only was no longer fashionable, but that also the colour did not suit her daughter at all. It did not suit Charlie either, but nobody had really cared about that.
With an inward sigh, Charlie adjusted her spectacles and forced herself to smile. “But we are making efforts to improve our relationship. After all, one ought to be on affectionate terms with one’s cousin, don’t you think so? And Aunt and Uncle Dolmore have been very good to me, first sending me to school and then taking me into their family and everything.” Charlie wondered whether the effort to school her features into a suitably cheerful expression for this little speech would leave her face frozen stiff. It certainly felt like it. “And Cousin Caroline has been so kind, too,” she added in her merriest voice. “Giving me her dresses and, you know, not minding that I am positively encroaching upon her Season.”
Isabella gave her a strange look, but then her mouth curved into that sweet, kind smile of hers. “Then of course Miss Dolmore must accompany us on our drive. Shall we say the day after tomorrow?”
“Excellent.” With her duty thus discharged, Charlie’s mood immediately brightened and she readily returned to her first subject. “So, what is a courtesan, then? I gather it must be a most dreadful thing because nobody wants to tell me. Still, that Mrs Robinson was driving the most dashing curricle so I don’t think it can be so very dreadful after all.”
“Shh!” Isabella put her hand on Charlie’s arm and glanced around. “You do not mention the names of such persons in polite society!” she then whispered.
“Why ever not?” Charlie asked, at a loss.
With a resigned sigh, Isabella leaned closer towards her. “A courtesan is a… is a woman of ill repute.”
“Ah!” Charlie said, then frowned. “Huh?” At Ardochlan one earned a bad reputation if one put water into the milk one sold or if one’s flour was of inferior quality. However, she would not have taken the woman in the curricle for somebody selling either milk or flour, so obviously inferior food-stuff couldn’t possibly account for becoming a woman of ill repute.
Isabella stared at her. Shaking her head, she finally leaned even nearer and lowered her voice even more. “Gentlemen pay for—” A deep red colour rose in her cheeks. “Well, they pay her for undressing.”
“For seeing her in the nude?” Charlie felt her eyes go round. “You’re funning me!”
Somewhat exasperated, Isabella explained, her head positively glowing. “Well, no, they also do things.” She gave Charlie a meaningful look.
“Do things? Why, whatever—oh.” Charlie supposed she must be a proper slowtop for not having made the connection earlier. Still, this was shocking, indeed! “But I thought this was only done for purposes of procreating,” she whispered agitatedly.
“Not in London.”
Which only proved, Charlie thought, that London was strange in every respect.
The next moment a faint shiver raced down her spin, as a familiar voice said right next to them, “I must say, you look most cosy sitting together like this.”
Her head whipped around, and she perceived Viscount Chanderley standing next to them. In a trice, her face was aflame with her awareness of the man. His… his manliness. This was the closest he had come to her since their drive. Or perhaps, her blush could be attributed to the guilty knowledge that he would consider their topic of conversation most unsuitable for his sister’s ears.
She stole a look at Isabella and saw that her face was awash with colour, too.
“Izzie? Miss Stanton?” Not surprisingly, a note of suspicion had crept into Lord Chanderley’s voice. While he glanced frowningly from one to the other, the stern lines around his mouth seemed to deepen. “What have you been talking about? Miss Stanton, I hope you have not unduly shocked my sister with one of your stories about boars and such things.”
To Charlie’s surprise, his sister cut him short. “Boars? What fiddle-faddle you talk, George! If you must know, I have been telling Miss Stanton what a sore affliction a surfeit of male cousins and siblings is.” Her eyes sparkling, she turned to Charlie. “Would you believe that when I once followed my brothers and cousins into the wood as a small girl, I caught them relieving themselves against the trunk of a hapless tree?”
Charlie shot of a look of incredulity.
“This is a most unfitting topic for a ballroom conversation,” Chanderley grumbled somewhere above them.
His sister slanted a glance at him. “I know, George. But truly, you sound like a stiff bore.” She turned her attention back to Charlie, her eyes twinkling. “Granted, when I caught them doing you-know-what, they were very young. I believe they were trying to find out who could produce the highest arch.” Her lips twitched.
“You must be funning me.” As Charlie tried to envision small boys doing that against a tree, hilarity bubbled up inside her. “Oh… oh my,” she said in faint tones, valiantly suppressing her mirth.
But then she happened to look into Isabella’s face, and the two of them burst into shouts of laughter.
“I was in stitches for weeks,” Isabella finally managed, wiping her eyes. “It was the most ridiculous thing I have ever beheld.”
“I am glad to be the source of so much amusement,” her brother drawled.
Isabella patted his arm. “Don’t look so glum, George. I suppose you couldn’t help yourselves, being of the male persuasion and all that.” She gave him a sweet, mischievous smile of the kind Charlie had never seen her use before.
For a moment Chanderley stared at his sister, his expression frozen. Then his features softened and he reached out to tweak one of her curls. “Brat,” he said, his voice sounding curiously scratchy all of a sudden.
Something passed between brother and sister.
Isabella’s smile deepened as she took his hand. “Dear George,” she said. Then, as if suddenly remembering Charlie’s presence, she glanced at her and added, “Have you come to ask Miss Stanton for the next dance?”
Charlie felt her face fill with embarrassed colour once again when Chanderley looked at her—only this time, his brows did not mesh in a frown. Instead, his brown eyes glowed with warmth. “I
will most gladly ask Miss Stanton for the next dance if she is not bespoken yet.”
“Oh, I’m not!” Charlie blurted out—and could have bitten off her tongue. Or at the very least crawl into the nearest available mouse hole. Not that she suspected mice to live in the Frimseys’ very elegant town house. She took a deep breath, called herself a silly pea-goose for changing colour every which way, and continued, “It is very kind of you to phrase your invitation as if I might have been.”
Clearly perplexed, he stared at her.
“Bespoken, that is,” she added helpfully for his clarification. “Truly, I never knew that height was considered such an affliction!—Not for gentlemen, of course,” she hastened to amend. “But—ah, I suppose this is one of those London peculiarities.”
His face very serious, he said, “Probably it is. But I daresay it cannot be much worse than being afflicted with a surfeit of male siblings and cousins.”
And then he winked at her.
Chapter 9
in which our hero & heroine end up
not where they ought to be
Brain fever, Griff thought as he found himself bewitched—again!—by a pair of very green eyes. By God, he had tried to resist her, had stayed away from her whenever they attended the same social events. But how could he resist her tonight of all nights when she had given him back the sister he had deemed lost forever? At the moment he felt a rather desperate urge to kiss Miss Stanton’s face, which was so sweetly upturned to his. He should have taken his chance when they had been rattling along Brighton Road. He imagined it, as he had done then: feeling her mouth move under his, touching his tongue to hers…
What a laugh it was, for a man of distinction like him to find himself ensnared by an utterly unsophisticated girl, who, one must own, was for the most part a walking and talking social disaster. Purity of motive, a warmth of feeling and an excess of pluck and determination counted for very little these days—not when one was a debutante afflicted with the most hideous spectacles, a surfeit of unmodish and most unflattering dresses, and, last but not least, the epithet “giantess” attached to one’s person.
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