“Is he a friend of yours?” asked Diana.
“Absolutely not. Of my husband’s, unfortunately. One area in which we disagree. We simply never discuss the man. I take it you are acquainted with the Great Woman Hater.”
“We met staying at Mandeville, his uncle the duke’s house.” She didn’t mention their more recent meeting, which had both hurt and perplexed her. “As a matter of fact, he’s the reason I’m here. I was interested in what he told me of his book collection, so when I came to South Molton Street to visit the linen draper and saw the bookshop, I decided to come in and investigate.”
“Oh good! I must get you to join the Society of London’s Lady Bibliophiles. There aren’t nearly enough of us.”
“I never heard of such a group.”
“It’s so new we haven’t even had a meeting. I’m still trying to arouse interest. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Lady Chase.”
Diana looked at her with deepened curiosity. The marriage of the Marquis of Chase to a widowed tradeswoman had been much discussed last season. Diana now recalled that there had been something to do with a murder and a collection of books. Being wholly unacquainted with Chase, a famously disreputable peer, she hadn’t paid much attention.
“How do you do, Lady Chase. I am Lady Fanshawe and this is my sister, Miss Montrose.” After the three of them had exchanged the ordinary information about themselves, Minerva declared herself bored and asked Mr. Sancho if he had any good books written by politicians. He took her off to hunt down a translation of Machiavelli’s The Prince. Deciding to worry later about the effect of that classic on Minerva’s forceful personality, Diana settled in for a chat with her new acquaintance.
“Tell me about your society.”
“A group of men started a society of collectors called the Burgundy Club. Iverley refused to let me, or any other woman, belong so I decided to start my own.”
“It’s a lovely idea but a terrible name. The Society of London’s Lady Bibliophiles sounds dreadfully dull. The men’s name is much better. I suppose burgundy is what they drink at their meetings.”
“Actually the club was named for a manuscript.” Lady Chase sounded amused.
“But for the wine too. Because you can be sure they drink plenty of it, and I’d also wager they talk about more than just books. I think you’d attract more members if you expanded the scope. Something like the Society of Books, Bonnets, Manuscripts, and Millinery. Women all love talking about hats.”
“But we want to be serious.”
“Just because we love to discuss fashion, it doesn’t mean we cannot be serious about books too. Think of men and their wine.”
“You make an excellent argument. I could learn something useful too. I know a great deal about books and almost nothing of fashion.”
Diana surveyed her critically. It was true that the marchioness, though extremely pretty, was a little unkempt. Her dress, at least two seasons old, didn’t fit well and her hair was falling down, no easy feat when one is wearing a bonnet. She returned Diana’s examination and concluded her appraisal of Diana’s silk twill street dress topped by a midnight blue velvet spencer with mink trim.
“How,” she asked with a little sigh, “do you manage to look so … sleek? It’s the only word I can think of. Everything about you—shoes, dress, gloves, hair, hat—everything is perfect. I always look as though I just got out of bed.”
“Your husband must enjoy that.”
Lady Chase grinned wickedly. “He does. But speaking for myself, I’d just as soon present myself to the world as a person who deserves to be seen outside the bedchamber. You must tell me your secret.”
“It’s simple. I used to look quite ordinary, you know. The key is, in a single word, Chantal. My maid.”
“She must be French.”
“French, weighs about six stone, dresses entirely in black and is more terrifying than anyone you’ll ever meet. She’s also a genius and I pay her enough to maintain the army of a small country.”
“How does one find such a gem?”
“As soon as Bonaparte fell, my late husband ordered his French business correspondent to find the best dresser in Paris. She’s been with me for five years and I’ve fought off numerous efforts to lure her away. Two duchesses only last week.”
“Yet she remains loyal?”
“She’d love to dress a duchess.” Diana looked down modestly. “I’m doing what I can to help her achieve her ambition.”
“Really? You are being courted by a duke? What’s he like?”
“A duke’s heir, the Marquis of Blakeney. Iverley’s cousin.”
“Already I don’t like him, if he’s related to that man.”
“Iverley doesn’t like him, either.” Diana couldn’t suppress a gasp of laughter at her new friend’s single-minded scorn for Sebastian.
Lady Chase smiled. “In that case I have no doubt he’s a splendid gentleman. Is he handsome?”
“Divinely so. And such address.”
“Nothing like his cousin then. Does he collect books?”
“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t.”
Lady Chase shrugged. “Nobody’s perfect. And that can change. Cain, my husband, only bought books to read before he met me.”
“I used to think books were meant to be read, too, until Mr. Iverley told me all about his collection of book bindings.”
“I will allow Iverley to be a discriminating bookman. But otherwise there’s nothing to be said for him at all. You’d do much better to stick with your duke.”
Chapter 11
Diana’s willingness to follow Lady Chase’s advice and stick with Blakeney was thwarted by the abundance—or perhaps elusiveness—of Leicestershire’s foxes. But while the marquis was absent from London’s drawing rooms, the new Lord Iverley became something of a fixture.
The second time Diana saw him enter a room—at Lady Storrington’s musical recital—she was prepared to forgive his previous discourtesy. Towering over the other new arrivals, he surveyed the guests as though searching for someone. He saw her and unmistakably he paused for a fraction of a second, unnoticeable had she not been looking. Then his gaze moved on until he spotted his quarry.
Lady Georgina Harville.
Diana was so distracted she allowed Mr. Chandler, a handsome fortune hunter she despised, to find her a seat and join her for the soprano’s performance of which she heard not one single note.
Later, trying to shed him, she joined a group in which, it turned out, Iverley and Lady Gee were the center of attention.
“I do believe peacock feathers are becoming more popular than ostrich,” he drawled.
Unbelievable! Iverley talking about millinery. And in such an affected voice.
“My friend Compton assures me that peacock will be all the rage next season,” he continued.
The surrounding ladies clucked avidly at a prognostication Diana didn’t believe for a moment. Tarquin Compton’s taste was impeccable and peacock feathers, in her opinion, were dreadfully vulgar.
“What do you think, Lady Gee?” he asked with a smile that Diana could only categorize as roguish. “Your headgear is always most striking.”
Striking indeed! While not quite as deluded as Marianne MacFarland, Lady Gee was notorious for the excessive ornamentation of her bonnets. Mr. Chandler entered the lists on Diana’s behalf.
“No one in London,” he said, “has more elegant hats than Lady Fanshawe.”
“Indeed,” Iverley remarked with a nod of the head in her direction, then turned back and continued his conversation with the rest of his company.
Her original idea that he had changed his appearance and manners to impress her was revealed as sheer vanity. She could only now conclude that his inheritance had gone to his head.
She turned to Mr. Chandler and asked him to take her to find a glass of champagne, though she knew she’d regret it when the tiresome man started proposing marriage again. It would do Sebastian Iverley good to see her flirting with
a good-looking gentleman, and show she didn’t care a jot for him. Why should she? His small talk might be as modish as his attire, but he was no longer the thoughtful, intelligent, grunting man she’d known at Mandeville.
Sebastian watched them leave, his inane chatter covering scorching anger. He prayed his spectacles disguised the hunger in his eyes as he saw Diana flirt with that worthless idiot Chandler. The fact that he had to ape the conduct of such fribbles was another charge to mark up to her account.
Meanwhile he continued to pontificate about hat trimmings, shocked by how easy it was to behave like a fool. Later he’d break the news to Tarquin that he’d launched a new fashion for peacock feathers.
“Enough of my hunting stories,” Lord Blakeney said. “I’m sure you must be bored to death. Let’s talk about something else.”
Yes, please, do let’s, Minerva silently begged.
“Oh no, Blake,” Diana said. “Tell us about the third run.”
Nooooo!
And he was off, with a minute by minute account of each field crossed, every fence jumped. Minerva would have been bored to death had she bothered to listen. Of all Diana’s friends who called at the Portman Square house, Blakeney was the most tedious. Diana, on the other hand, was gazing at their visitor with a look of utter fascination plastered over her face.
What was the matter with her? She loathed and detested hunting and never ceased to complain about their mother’s passion for the sport. If she married the marquis was she prepared to spend the rest of her life hearing about ditches and oxers, coverts and earths?
Diana had been glad to invite Min to live with her so she could dispense with the presence of their mother’s elderly aunt, who had kept her company at Portman Square during the previous season. Minerva had to pay the price of listening to her sister talk about her longstanding infatuation with Blake.
Personally she couldn’t see the point. He was of course marvelous to look at. That part of his appeal Minerva understood. But the Montroses had been brought up to judge appearance of little importance. Intelligence, education, and character were what mattered in a man. And in a woman too. On the evidence so far Minerva found Lord Blakeney lacking in all three. It did cross her mind that Diana’s passion for him seemed more a habit than deep-seated affection. But Minerva would be the first to admit that at the age of sixteen she was observing the couple from a position of ignorance. Her own parents had completely different interests and got along perfectly well.
Nevertheless Minerva was disappointed that the son of one of England’s most prominent political figures so lacked interesting conversation. The Duke of Hampton was immensely influential and had almost become Prime Minister. If his heir should follow in his footsteps, then Minerva would be impressed.
“And we lost the scent and while the hounds regrouped my groom brought up my second mount.”
“Did they find it again?” Diana asked.
Longingly Minerva eyed The Times, sitting on the table next to her chair. Blakeney’s arrival in Diana’s drawing room had interrupted her reading about the petition for an enquiry into the conduct of the Manchester magistrates. Diana insisted it was rude to read while they had callers, but she wasn’t looking and Blakeney certainly wasn’t. She picked up the newspaper and was soon engrossed in the political aftermath of the recent massacre, now dubbed Peterloo.
In years of living with her mother, Diana had perfected the ability to listen to hunting anecdotes with an air of spurious interest while half her attention was elsewhere. Elsewhere in this case being contemplation of her companion’s appearance. He’d seated himself next to her on the sofa and his proximity let her enjoy his lovely blue eyes gazing appreciatively at her face while her mind contemplated the joys of being a duchess. A vision of Lady Georgina Harville groveling for an invitation made the subject of the third, and even the fourth run bearable.
Finally Blake exhausted the subject of his recent sojourn in Leicestershire. “Guess whom I ran into at White’s this morning? My cousin Sebastian Iverley.”
“I saw him at Lethbridge House,” Diana said with an indifferent air. “And once or twice since.”
“I hadn’t laid eyes on him since Mandeville. He’s quite transformed. I wouldn’t have believed it possible.”
“I suppose he has neatened his appearance somewhat. I hadn’t really noticed.”
“You know, Diana.” He moved a little closer and lightly touched her knee. “Had I realized the old Owl could cut such a good figure I wouldn’t have encouraged him to …” He broke off, throwing a quick glance in Minerva’s direction. He also, alas, replaced his hand on his own thigh.
Minerva looked up from the newspaper, which she thought Diana hadn’t noticed her reading. “You didn’t tell me you’d seen Mr. Iverley.”
Minerva had, for some reason, taken a fancy to him. She’d asked about him several times since they arrived in London. Diana hadn’t been able to bring herself to explain that their shabby guest had become the ton’s latest darling, a fashionable viscount who showed no signs of wishing to renew his acquaintance with Diana.
Diana didn’t understand why it bothered her and she was beginning to find her preoccupation tiresome. It wasn’t as though she wanted him for herself, or ever had. She was, she thought with a flash of rueful self-knowledge, piqued that he seemed to have got over their encounter so thoroughly.
To think she’d worried he might take their kiss too seriously! No chance of that. The new Lord Iverley appeared gratified to receive overtures from a dozen women, not all of them single. The interest of the unmarried girls was understandable. But quite a few married women were also in the hunt. Nothing demonstrated Sebastian’s transformation better than the fact he was now considered lover or flirt material.
Minerva looked at her reproachfully. “I really liked him. Does he know I’m staying with you? He told me he’d call.”
Blake turned to Minerva, whom so far he’d mostly ignored. “He said that to you? He never speaks to females if he can help it. Especially young ones. You should have seen the way he ran away from my sisters when we were young.”
Minerva looked at Blake coldly. “I suppose they teased him.”
“We all did,” Blake agreed. “But he’s a grown man. He should have got over it by now.”
“If by getting over it you mean his dislike of women,” Diana said, “it seems to have happened. Lord Iverley is flirting quite shockingly with Lady Georgina Harville. All the gossips are agog.”
“Lady Gee! I can’t wait to ask Harville what he thinks of old Sebastian making up to his wife. What a joke!”
“I don’t believe Lady Gee is serious in encouraging his attentions.”
“Of course she isn’t. And it wouldn’t do her any good if she was. My cousin can’t have changed that much.”
Diana wasn’t sure he was right about Sebastian, though she agreed that Lady Georgina probably wasn’t looking for an affair. Conducting an open flirtation with the new Lord Iverley would do wonders for her reputation as a dashing young matron. Diana was beginning to find the whole subject irritating.
She was thus grateful when Minerva decided to practice her political hostess skills on Blake, though Diana could have told her she wasted her time.
“Tell me, Lord Blakeney,” Minerva said in her best sixteen-going-on-sixty voice, “what do you think of events since Peterloo? Do you feel the government has responded with unnecessary harshness to the radical threat?”
“Good Lord, Miss Minerva. That’s no question for me. I care nothing for politics. Just ask my father.”
“I would be honored to hear his opinion but I am not acquainted with the duke,” Minerva said hopefully. She was dying to meet and converse with Blake’s powerful father.
In one sense the entire Montrose family, as neighbors, knew Blake’s family. Diana had called on the duchess during the season and they exchanged polite greetings when they met. But her position didn’t extend to arranging such a meeting for a sister who wasn’t eve
n out.
Despite Blake’s failure to rise to her bait, Minerva hadn’t given up. “A petition for an enquiry is to be presented at the Home Office tomorrow afternoon. The organizers have obtained thousands of signatures. I would like to see it delivered.”
“I’m sorry, Min,” Diana said. “I promised to drive out with Lord Blakeney tomorrow.”
Minerva looked beseechingly at their guest but it was clear, though he was too polite to say so, that he didn’t give a damn what the magistrates had done and wouldn’t care if they marched in triumph down the street with a fanfare of heavenly trumpets.
“I’ll pick you up at three, Diana,” he said and took his leave very correctly after a half hour’s visit.
“Sorry, Min,” Diana repeated, once they were alone. “I could have asked him to drive both of us to Whitehall but he’d be bored. Wait until I’ve married him. Then I’ll make sure you meet the duke. And with those connections you’ll have your choice of every up-and-coming young politician in the country.”
Sebastian had taken the day off. No morning calls, no afternoon breakfasts. No driving in the park with Lady Georgina Harville, an experience he fervently hoped never to repeat. If he didn’t get Diana’s attention soon he would either die of boredom or burst from frustration.
His life, his very thoughts, had become dominated by his need to impress a woman who both fascinated and repelled him. When he entered a drawing room he sometimes felt like an automaton going through his clockwork social paces until Diana’s presence brought him to life. Too much so. At the sight of her he’d be thrown into a maelstrom of contradictory emotions that set his head spinning in a manner quite foreign to the experience of his well-ordered masculine existence.
Three hours browsing the superb books in the library at Westminster Abbey soothed him. Tonight he had a choice between a musicale and a card party, either of which Diana might attend. But maybe he’d take the evening off too. He might track down Tarquin for dinner and a strategy session. Or dine at home and read. An evening spent forgetting he’d ever set eyes on Diana Fanshawe would be a relief. There were moments, and this was one of them, when he wished he could make that state of oblivion permanent.
The Dangerous Viscount Page 10