The Unlikely Lady

by Valerie Bowman

  She was plump and plain. Well, perhaps not plump, not any longer, but she’d always be plump in her head. And the plainness, that would never go away. Perhaps with the demimask on her face and the large quantity of alcohol Upton had obviously consumed last night, he’d been momentarily lulled into the belief that he was with a beautiful woman. But nothing about last night had been true. That’s why she hadn’t told Lucy or Cass about it. That’s why she could never let Upton suspect it was her. It wasn’t just the potential embarrassment. It was because it was only a figment of her imagination, or might as well have been.

  * * *

  Garrett glanced away every time Miss Lowndes, uh, Jane—he needed to think of her as Jane now that he’d kissed her senseless last night—looked at him. He was beginning to feel conspicuous about it and was certain she’d noticed. Jane was intelligent. She may have already realized it had been him last night. He couldn’t look at her. But he did. Again. As if his eyes were drawn to her. He wanted to see her, really see her. In the past he hadn’t given a passing thought to her looks. She was just Miss Lowndes, Lucy’s friend who drove him a little mad with her know-it-all attitude and penchant for making fun of him.

  Now, all he could think about was her luxuriant hair, the smell of her perfume. Lilacs. Why did it have to be lilacs? That little spot just under her chin that tasted so damn sweet. Christ, what had come over him? The urge to snatch off her glasses and pull the pins out of her hair and look upon her face and see the woman he’d been with last night was nearly overpowering. If they were alone, if they weren’t at a table full of people in the open air, he just might do it. What would Miss Lowndes do if he dared?

  He tried to concentrate on chewing and swallowing his food. Somehow that had become a difficult task. It was a mad, mad day already. Why was Isabella being so unpleasant to Jane? At first, he suspected Isabella had been as bothered by Jane as he always had been. Jane didn’t back down from a fight and Isabella had got a taste of Jane’s sharp tongue. But he couldn’t help feeling admiration for Jane when she stood up to Isabella. It truly was none of the other woman’s concern why Jane preferred to remain unmarried. He’d always had the same preference, and felt a sort of closeness with her. He needn’t have worried. Jane had promptly snapped back a volley of replies that had surely left Isabella thinking she just might do better to keep from engaging Miss Lowndes in a battle of words in the future.

  He’d been in his share of word fights with her, himself, and often came out on the losing end. He smiled to himself and looked at her once more. She turned to speak with Owen Monroe, who happened to be sitting next to her again. She didn’t notice Garrett’s slow perusal of her. Today she was wearing a white gown that did nothing for her considerable assets. It was the type of thing she normally wore. Where in God’s name had she got that blue gown she’d been wearing last night? It had transformed her.

  Garrett took a long sip from his wine glass and watched her over its rim. He growled under his breath. Owen Monroe was sitting a bit too close.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Garrett was sitting alone in the library, reading, with his booted feet propped on an ottoman and crossed at the ankles when Cassandra found him that evening just before dinner. There was to be a dinner and a dance—not a ball, Lucy had insisted, just a dance. Garrett looked forward to neither.

  “Garrett, there you are. This is the last place I expected to find you,” Cassandra said, a bright smile on her face. Her blond hair was swept up atop her head and she wore a fetching lavender gown with pearls at her neck.

  Garrett quickly uncrossed his feet, stood, and bowed. “Don’t tell Miss Lowndes. It may ruin the bad opinion she has of me and my lack of reading habits.”

  “I won’t tell if you won’t,” Cassandra said in a conspiratorial voice.

  “Agreed,” he answered.

  Cassandra made her way to him and sat on the settee across from him.

  “It’s interesting that you bring up Jane, however”—Cassandra plucked at her sleeve—“because that’s precisely who I wanted to speak with you about.”

  Garrett’s gaze snapped to her face. “Jane?”

  “Yes.” Cassandra calmly folded her small hands and placed them in her lap.

  “What about her?”

  “I wanted to say … It’s come to my attention…” Cassandra blushed beautifully and glanced away.

  “Yes?” he prompted.

  “It’s come to my attention that, well, there’s no easy way to say it…” Her words fell from her mouth in a mad rush. “It appears that Jane is madly in love with you.”

  Garrett’s jaw dropped. All he could do was blink. “Jane is— Pardon?”

  Cassandra didn’t meet his gaze. Her hands remained unmoving in her lap. “Yes. She is.”

  Garrett stood and scrubbed his hands through his hair. He strode to the fireplace. “That is preposterous. That is ludicrous. Why, that is—”

  “Impossible?” Cassandra supplied.

  He turned to face her. “Yes. Impossible.”

  Cassandra’s deep blue eyes rose to meet his. “I’m afraid it’s quite possible and we, Lucy and I, thought you should know.”

  Garrett narrowed his gaze on her. “Lucy is often wrong about these things, Cassandra. You know she was convinced I was in love with you until recently.”

  Cassandra fluttered a hand in the air. “I know. And it’s not like that. This is different. It’s quite confirmed.”

  “Confirmed, how?” His eyes remained narrowed.

  Cassandra cleared her throat. Her voice went up a notch. “By Jane.”

  His hand dropped like a leaden weight to his side. “Jane said that? She said she loves me?”

  Cassandra bit her lip and nodded. “As I said, Lucy and I thought you should know.”

  Garrett leaned back against the window frame; the air rushed from his lungs. It was as if he’d been slammed to the earth. He struggled to breathe. It couldn’t be true. Could not be true. It made no sense.

  But if Jane had told Cassandra …

  He stared unseeing into the fireplace and rubbed a hand roughly across his forehead, squeezing his eyes shut. “Thank you for telling me, Cassandra.” Not that he knew what the hell to do with the information.

  * * *

  Cass hurried out of the library, wringing her hands.

  “Psst.” Lucy motioned to her from behind a potted palm at the far end of the corridor. “Over here.”

  Cass peeked over both shoulders to ensure no one would see her before picking up her skirts and hurrying to join her friend behind the tree.

  “Did you do it?” Lucy asked, her multicolored eyes sparkling.

  “Yes. I did it.” Cass groaned. “Heaven knows I shall be struck dead by a lightning bolt for being such a fibber. I deserve this red spot on my nose. I deserve another for what I’ve done. I deserve an entire face full of them. I detest lying.”

  Lucy’s dark eyebrow rose in a semblance of skepticism. “Oh, really? You detest lying? After pretending to be Patience Bunbury last autumn? If that didn’t cause a face full of red spots, nothing will.”

  Cass scowled at her fiercely. “Point taken, but we should have asked Derek or Julian to tell Garrett that awful lie instead of me.”

  “We’ve been over this,” Lucy replied. “Derek and Julian wouldn’t have agreed to this in a hundred years. They would have given us a lecture about how it isn’t the right thing to do. And it’s not an awful lie. Not really.”

  “Perhaps it isn’t the right thing to do, Lucy. Lying to our friends feels wrong.”

  “Look at it this way.” Lucy pushed a palm frond away from her forehead. “You’re not fibbing so much as you’re helping them. You saw how Garrett and Jane acted at the picnic. Something is definitely happening between them. We’re simply giving them a small push. Now, tell me, what did Garrett say?”

  Cass tugged at one of the leaves on the palm tree. “He was shocked to be sure, quite shocked.”

  “Did he believe y
ou?”

  Another tug on the long green leaf. “I do think I was able to convince him, though he was skeptical for certain.”

  Lucy clapped her hands together. “Perfect. The first phase of the plan has gone off splendidly.”

  “What about you?” Cass let go of the palm leaf. It sprung back into place. “Have you told Jane yet?”

  Lucy shook her head. “I’m on my way to speak to Jane now. The second half of the plan is to commence shortly. I call it Much Ado About Something.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “You must be jesting,” Jane said five minutes later as Lucy sat on the end of the bed in Jane’s guest chamber. “I cannot believe for a moment that Upton is in love with me.”

  “I didn’t believe it either, at first,” Lucy said with a nonchalant shrug, “but Derek and Julian both told me the same thing. When Garrett was in his cups the other night, he admitted it to them.”

  “Then he’s a loon when he’s in his cups,” Jane replied, shaking her head.

  Jane’s voice was protesting, but her mind was preoccupied with examining this news. It couldn’t be true. Could it? Garrett? Garrett Upton? Rake, gambler, and general profligate, in love? With her? If Lucy had told her this news two days ago, Jane would have laughed her out of the room. But today. Today was the day after she’d nearly been ravished by Upton on the settee in the upstairs drawing room—and liked it. Today was the day she’d gone on a picnic and noticed Upton glancing at her every time she looked at him. Today everything had changed and Lucy’s story didn’t seem quite so far-fetched.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, Lucy, but wasn’t Upton madly in love with Cass until recently?”

  Lucy twisted her lips. “Oh, ah … about that…”

  Jane narrowed her eyes on her friend. “What?”

  “It seems I was mistaken about that.” Lucy traced her fingernail along the pattern in the bedspread.

  “Mistaken?”

  “Yes.”

  “Upton wasn’t in love with Cass?”

  “No.”

  “Ever?”

  “Never.”

  Jane crossed her arms over her chest. “How did you make such a mistake?”

  Lucy raised both palms toward the ceiling and shrugged. “He was always there, you know, sitting next to her and being nice to her, and well, Cass is so pretty, and accomplished, and so … Cass. I just assumed…”

  Jane pushed up her spectacles and nodded sagely. “That explains it. You’re only assuming now, aren’t you? Upton’s no more in love with me than he was with Cass.”

  “No, this time I’m quite sure.” Lucy nodded firmly.

  Jane narrowed her eyes. “Sure, how?”

  “I told you, he admitted it to Derek and Julian.”

  Jane searched her friend’s face, arms still resolutely crossed over her chest. “But did he tell you?”

  Lucy didn’t meet her eyes. “Telling Derek is as good as telling me.”

  Jane had to concede that point. She was skeptical, but even Lucy, egregiously behaved Lucy, wouldn’t lie about such a thing. She might hint at it. She might heavily imply, but coming right out and declaring that her husband had told her the exact words, that was too much even for the most outlandish of all of Lucy’s plots.

  “Now that you’ve told me, Your Grace, what do you suppose I do with this information?”

  Lucy leaned back on her palms. “Nothing, obviously. You’re a confirmed bluestocking spinster, after all. I just thought you should know. In case Garrett is perhaps”—she eyed Jane carefully—“acting differently toward you or something of that sort. Is he?”

  “Is he what?” Jane’s words were a bit too rushed.

  “Acting differently toward you.”

  Jane let her hand slide over the copy of Montague’s Treatise on the History of Handwriting and Graphology that sat on her writing table. “No, not that I recall.” Oh, yes he was. But she’d die of embarrassment before she’d tell Lucy about it.

  “Not a bit?” Lucy prodded.

  “Not that I’ve noticed.” Liar.

  “Very well, then. I suppose you should just go about your business as usual and pretend as if you don’t know. In the meantime, we should discuss our plan for Mrs. Bunbury’s introduction to your mother in a few days.”

  Jane shook her head to clear it of the prior subject. In the wake of this news about Upton, her plan to fool her mother didn’t seem quite as pressing, but Lucy was correct. Jane’s mother would be appearing in a few days and they needed to have a solid plan in place. Jane’s first attempt at scandal had ended hideously. She was wary of a second attempt.

  “I, er, I cannot think of a sufficient scandal,” Jane mumbled.

  “We’ll need a secondary plan in the meantime. Here is what I propose.” Lucy stood and shook out her skirts. “Between the three of us, you, Cass, and myself, we shall endeavor to keep your mother guessing. ‘Why, Mrs. Bunbury was just here not five moments ago, didn’t you see her? No, she’s not here now, but I just saw her near the refreshment table a bit earlier.’ That sort of thing.”

  It sounded insane. But then again, most of Lucy’s plots sounded insane. That was the beauty of them, but even Jane had to admit they usually worked.

  “Very well, we’ll take turns,” Jane agreed.

  She had come to Surrey a few days ago, convinced that her Mrs. Bunbury plot was the most complicated thing in her life. Now she wasn’t certain about that. Not certain at all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Garrett scrubbed a hand through his hair. There was only one way to get to the bottom of this. He was going to bloody well ask Jane Lowndes himself. Was she or was she not in love with him? First, he would ask her to dance. The Morelands were having a dance tonight. A plain little dance. No dominoes, no hidden identities. It was quite simple.

  He hadn’t been able to get what Cassandra had told him earlier out of his head. Jane Lowndes was in love with him? Could it be? It was true that she had been quite … congenial with him the other night, but that had been when they didn’t know who the other was, hadn’t it? Or had she known all along? No. It couldn’t be.

  He was tired of guessing. He would ask her to dance, they would talk, and he would be able to tell by her reaction whether she was in love with him. It would be simple enough. Didn’t women who were in love simper and bat their eyelashes and that sort of thing? He could hardly imagine Miss Lowndes doing something like that. Normally, if she did anything of the sort, he’d probably ask her if she had something in her eye, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that there must be some sign, some tell, of a woman in love, some indication of whether Miss Lowndes, Jane—why was it so difficult to remember to think of her as Jane?—was such a woman. He would know soon enough.

  Garrett squared his shoulders and took a deep breath, then made his way to the refreshment table where Jane hovered near the teacakes. She wore a light pink gown that wasn’t at all hideous. In fact it enhanced her figure. Had he ever seen her in pink before? Bloody hell, this was going to be awkward enough without him thinking about her figure again.

  “Miss Lowndes?”

  She swiveled on her heel and turned to face him, a large, telltale lump of teacake pushing out her cheek. She had the look of a hare trapped in a game warden’s snare. Pure fright.

  She had the grace to chew and swallow before she responded. “Upton,” she said, gulping down the last bit. “What can I do for you?”

  He bowed slightly. “I’ve come to ask you to dance. Would you do me the honor?”

  She glanced back as if she expected another lady to be standing there. “Me?” She pointed to herself, eyes wide.

  He had to smile. “Yes, you.”

  Without looking, she set her empty plate on the table, pushing it behind her with a flick of the wrist. “I suppose I can dance with you.”

  He bowed to her. “Thank you.” He held out his arm. She took a step forward and put her hand on his arm. He led her to the dance floor.

  Was
her hand trembling?

  He pulled her into his arms as a waltz began to play. He’d tipped the musicians a goodly sum to play this waltz. It afforded the perfect opportunity to speak with Jane.

  He spun her around. “Are you having a good time?”

  Again, she had the look of a hare caught in a trap. Her eyes were wide and she was trembling. “Here? With you?”

  “I meant at the party in general,” he said.

  “Yes, of course.” She didn’t meet his eyes. A sign of a woman in love, was it not?

  He laughed. “You’re lying. You’ve never enjoyed a party before in your life.” Her throat worked. Another sign of a lady in love?

  “Then why did you ask me? I’m doing my best, Upton. Don’t I deserve credit for that?” She met his gaze this time and her dark brown eyes were bright and full of mischief. Quite charming, actually. Damn it. Now he had to look away.

  He smiled at her. “You do indeed. Tell me, how is your plan coming? Done anything scandalous lately?”

  * * *

  Jane blinked at Upton. She’d spent the last several minutes desperately attempting to interpret everything he’d said and done. He’d made his way directly to her and asked her to dance, hadn’t he? Very not Upton-like. That had to be a sign he was in love with her, didn’t it? He hadn’t mentioned her teacake consumption. Also quite un-Upton. Now he was being nice to her and laughing when she said something funny, a third entirely probable sign that the man was madly in love with her.

  This was difficult. Why couldn’t it be something tangible to interpret like, say, handwriting? She’d learned a great deal about handwriting of late. For instance, if a letter written to someone contained wide, scrolling letters, it meant the author was infatuated by the recipient. Would it be odd to ask Upton for a sample of his handwriting? It would, wouldn’t it? She shook her head and refocused on his question. “Something scandalous?” she managed to ask in a tone she hoped sounded nonchalant.