Anne Barbour (24 page)

“Oh—no, of course not. That is—oh, I don’t know. I guess I did not expect him to accept it so tamely. And then to go about flirting with every female in town—which I did not think he so much as knew how—as though he had never felt anything for me at all. Well, it is very lowering.”

“I’m sure it must be. But,” Hester concluded bracingly, “no doubt you will get over it. After all, it is not as though you felt any real affection for John.”

“N-no, I suppose not,” Chloe replied dubiously.

Hester returned to her breakfast, feeling that the matter of Chloe’s future was well in hand. She wished she felt so sanguine about her feelings for the earl. She must stop this ridiculous tendency to turn into a blancmange at his slightest touch.

Hester might have been considerably surprised to know that Thorne’s reflections at the moment were remarkably similar. He had decided on an early morning ride in the park, and cantering along Rotten Row, he was aware of a sensation of utter bafflement as he considered last night’s incident in Vauxhall Gardens.

He had had no thought of dalliance in mind when he had swept Hester into the shadowed path that wound away from the crowd. He had turned to look at her, and suddenly his breath had caught in his throat. With that absurd cap askew and her hair tumbling out of its rigid captivity atop her head, her gown sadly rumpled, and her shawl in a twist over one shoulder, she had put him so much in mind of a ruffled bird that he was forced to smile. When he reached to tuck a stray tendril of hair back into place, his fingers brushed her cheek, and it was as though someone had reached inside him to clutch his heart, twisting it unbearably. He was swept by such an unexpected wave of tenderness that he almost gasped with it. Her nearness, the scent of her, his sudden need to pull her against him had overcome him. Such feelings were not foreign to him, of course. The proximity of a beautiful woman always aroused him.

But his desire for Hester was different somehow, wasn’t it?

For one thing, she didn’t possess the attributes that usually appealed to him. She didn’t exude allurement, and she was endowed with neither extraordinary beauty nor the seductive charm that he required in his inamoratas.

For another thing, Thorne was not accustomed to feelings of tenderness for a woman. Nor had he ever experienced the raw hunger that had surged through him when she had pressed her slender body into his and offered her lips for his taking.

What the devil was going on? he wondered frantically. The desire she engendered within him aside, he had never known a woman whose company alone he found stimulating.

He had still not availed himself of Lady Tenby’s charms, and the ladies at Desiree’s must by now be wondering at his absence. Good God, it had come to the point where he felt whole only when he was with Hester, and somewhat diminished when he was not. What a ridiculous state of affairs.

In addition, the lady in question, although she seemed to find him attractive and had admitted that she enjoyed his kisses, regarded him as a combination of the worst attributes of Don Juan and Attila the Hun.

It was time he brought himself to the sticking point in the matter of marriage. He had long ago resigned himself to the knowledge that he must marry sometime, and a marriage of convenience was the most palatable arrangement, certainly. Such a union would demand nothing of him—would not lead him into the kind of relationship he had always avoided. He did not wish to wed a woman who would weep and rail at his infidelities, nor did he expect his wife to remain faithful to him—provided she was discreet. This was the way of the world, and it was the way he had always expected to conduct his domestic arrangements. He tried with only minimal success to suppress the empty, faintly sick feeling his reflections engendered within him.

It was time, perhaps, that he proposed to Barbara.

In the meantime, it would behoove him to steer clear of small, vocal, bewitching feminists.

This course of action, however, proved difficult to put into effect. The following weeks saw an increase in the already frenetic social pace of the Season. Parliament was in full swing, and the town houses of London fairly quivered with gossip and the bustling of servants and the comings and goings of the country’s most select families. Every evening, the inhabitants of Bythorne House must make a choice among several balls, a rout or two, and perhaps a musicale. Days were filled with Venetian breakfasts, garden parties, shopping, and visits to the Egyptian Hall or to Somerset House to visit the Royal Academy Art Exhibitions.

As head of the household in Curzon Street, it was up to the earl to squire his little family to many of these functions. Thus, he found himself in Hester’s company with greater frequency than was good for his equanimity. Oddly, the fact that Lady Barbara was also among those present a good deal of the time caused him no discomfort at all. Nor did he take any of the opportunities afforded him to make a formal declaration.

It was on an afternoon when Thorne had absented himself from his duties, however, that Hester was put in possession of the missing piece of the puzzle regarding Robert Carver and Barbara. The two ladies had just returned from a morning expedition to Leicester Square, where they had indulged in an invasion of several of the mercers’ and drapers’ establishments in that area.

“You really are going ahead, then, with your plans to lecture in Seven Dials?” asked Barbara, accepting a cup of tea from her hostess. “Thorne still seems very much opposed to the idea.”

“Oh yes,” Hester replied blithely. “Several schools have opened up in London under the auspices of various ladies’ groups, and I wish to make their availability known to some of the girls who, I’m afraid, now earn their livelihoods on their backs. It’s such a splendid opportunity for young women to learn not only skills such as millinery and dressmaking but mathematics and proper grammar, so that they may become—”

“Yes, yes,” interposed Barbara hastily, “but, you will have to admit those are perfectly dreadful environs. I’ve heard that rioting has occurred during speeches made by some of our reformers. I heard that Mrs. Fry barely escaped with her life from an appearance she made in the north last month.”

“I’m sure the incident was much exaggerated. In any event, the lecture cannot he held in Westminster because of that ridiculous new ruling against meetings with more than fifty persons in attendance. In addition, I shall have plenty of protection with me. Trevor will be with me, and”—she ignored the indelicate sound of derision that issued from Lady Barbara’s perfect lips—”and,” she continued, “I shall make sure that we are accompanied by some stout footmen and grooms. Also,” she added casually, “Robert has said he will be there. Can I count on your company, too?”

“Robert?” The perfect lips screwed into an expression of dismay. “Oh, I don’t think—

“Barbara, Robert will be in town for an extended length of time. You cannot continue to blanche like a boiled bed-sheet every time you come within ten feet of him.”

Despite the care with which Barbara set her cup and saucer on the tray before her, the fragile porcelain still rattled alarmingly. She folded her hands tightly in her lap and turned to face Hester.

“Robert and I were more than just acquaintances many years ago. We were betrothed.”

Hester drew in a sharp breath, and Barbara glanced up quickly. Her gaze fell again almost immediately as she began a conscientious pleating of her skirt.

“My brother William and Robert were at Harrow together, then Cambridge. He visited our home fairly frequently, and, of course, I was always there.” Barbara smiled. “I was tall for my age, and too thin, with bony arms and legs that seemed to extend in all directions at once. Robert treated me as though I were his little sister as well as Will’s. They teased me unmercifully, sometimes to tears. Not that I couldn’t hold my own,” she declared with some satisfaction. “I was positively fierce!”

“Then, during Michaelmas one year, he came to the Abbey—and something was different. I had grown up a great deal—I wasn’t thin and bony anymore, and I had several beaux in the neighborhood. Robert and I were awkward together. It was very strange and uncomfortable, but one day”—Barbara’s voice softened—”it was in the midst of a house party. It had been raining all morning, and after luncheon we all went up to the attic to plunder the trunks for costumes. Some of my friends and I were getting up a theatrical. Somehow Robert and I were separated from the rest of the group. I berated him for having neglected me—and he responded with something cutting about my spending ail my time soaking up compliments from every sprig within twenty miles of the Abbey. I snapped back and in a few minutes we were embroiled in a full-fledged battle. I burst into tears. Oh, Hester, I was simply appalled—and I was so miserable. Robert put his arm around me and began apologizing—and the next thing I knew—he was kissing me—and I kissed him back!”

Barbara paused for a few moments, gazing ahead of her—or rather, Hester thought, backward through time and space.

“Within a week, he had declared his love for me, and I confessed I loved him, too. We talked of marriage, though we were both too young to make any concrete plans. In addition, Robert held some silly notion that the third son of an obscure baronet could not be considered anything close to an acceptable
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for the daughter of an earl. Of course, I said this was nonsense. His birth was respectable, as were his prospects, and I knew my parents liked him and would consider my happiness rather than their own worldly interests.”

“And they did not?”

Barbara laughed mirthlessly.

“The matter was never brought before them. About a year later, Martin Denby, the Marquess of Bentwaters, came to the Abbey. He paid violent court to me, and—and I—oh, Hester, I never felt anything for him, but he was so very dashing. He showered me with pretty compliments, which Robert never did, and—well, yes, my head was turned. But, it was all so meaningless—and if I led him on, it was mostly to make Robert jealous—just a little. You see, once he had declared his love for me, Robert seemed to take our relationship very much for granted. I wanted to— well, shake him a little.”

“And you overdid it.”

“Apparently, for he grew resentful. He took me to task several times, but I merely laughed. Unheeding, I continued to accept Denby’s attentions. I was so sure that, underneath his crotchets, Robert understood that I was not serious. I even thought he might realize that I really only wanted him to pay me a little of the same sort of attention. When he continued to take me to task, however, I grew sullen, and— well, the whole situation escalated until he began to grow distant. I was sure that he had conceived a disgust of me, and I convinced myself that I did not care.

“Oh, Hester, we never really had a final quarrel. That might have led to a reconciliation. We just grew farther and farther apart until, at length, he stopped coming to the Priory. I told myself it did not matter, and eventually I was able to believe that it did not. Robert left the country for several years to attend to family business on the Continent. I paid little attention to Martin after that, but I immersed myself in the social whirl, and then Thorne came along, and—”

“And it was not until you saw Robert at Bythorne House the night of the meeting of the Friends of Ancient Literature that you realized the treasure you had slip between your fingers. That is—” amended Hester. “Oh, do forgive me, I’m afraid that was the novelist in me talking. But, I think I am not far off.”

She gazed searchingly at Barbara, who flushed and attempted to smooth out the punishment she had inflicted on her skirt. “No,” she said in a low voice. “You are not far off.”

“Well, this is a sad misunderstanding, to be sure, but it does not seem to me that it is irreparable.”

Barbara lifted her head abruptly.

“And just what do you suggest?” she asked in a sharp voice. “I can scarcely walk up to him and say, ‘How could you have been such an idiot as to let me go, when I am obviously the love of your life?’“

Hester laughed. “No, I suppose not, although that would certainly get his attention. I expect we shall have to work out something a little more subtle.”

Barbara stared at her in astonishment. “We?”

“Well, of course. I told you, I hold Robert very much my friend, and I have come to regard you in the same light. Since both of you seem sadly disinclined to gather up the tattered remnants of your—oh. Sorry. What I mean to say, is that it looks as though you could stand a modicum of help.”

“But, what about Thorne?”

‘Thorne?”

“Yes, we have had an understanding for a number of years, and—”

“Barbara, do you think his heart is truly engaged? I—I would not have him hurt.”

The words lodged in Hester’s throat. She had convinced herself that Thorne did not really care for the scintillating Lady Barbara Freemantle, and the idea that she might be wrong was almost too painful to contemplate.

Barbara sighed. “No, he likes me well enough, and I think he feels he and I would suit in the kind of marriage he envisions for himself, but he is certainly not what you could call an eager suitor. Actually, I think that is why I have allowed myself to dangle after him in such an unbecoming fashion. I have always known that he would never really come up to scratch, but at the same time, I more or less put myself off limits to the attentions of other men.”

Hester cocked her head curiously. “You did not find it insulting that he should let the world think the pair of you, er, semi-betrothed, while he dashed about town with his high-priced Cyprians.”

Barbara picked up her cup once more and sipped thoughtfully. “I suppose I might have if my heart were truly engaged. And, really, he had no conception that he might be wounding me. None of his flirts mean anything to him.” She glanced swiftly at Hester. “I think any woman who intends to engage his heart must understand that.”

Hester shook her head. “It looks very much as though the Earl of Bythorne has no heart to give,” she said, striving to keep her voice steady.

‘That may be true—although, at times I have wondered ... Thorne’s parents,” Barbara continued slowly “were—”