Edith Layton (5 page)

He was not yet at the point of signing a note to her “Rafe.” He hoped to be, soon. “I’ll be back tomorrow. I’d be grateful if you’d let the lady Annabelle know that. Good morning.”

“Good morning, m’lord,” the butler said, gently closing the door in Rafe’s face.

Rafe walked away, deep in thought. She’d see him tomorrow, or the next day or the next. He didn’t give up easily. He couldn’t. He wasn’t guilty of what she’d thought. Someday they’d laugh about this. He wished he could smile now.
So close,
he’d been that close to beginning his courtship in earnest. Now he had to start over again. He picked up his head and his pace and strode on. He could do that. He was very good at campaigning, and impervious to insult. After all, he’d plenty of experience with both.

He made a few stops on his way home, although it took him a roundabout route. He placed an order at a nearby restaurant, stopped a milkmaid he passed in the street and left an order with her. Then he visited an employment agency several streets away. It was late afternoon when he got back to his
own house again. He went up the stair to Eric’s room and halted at the door.

“Ah, Lord Dalton,” the doctor said, straightening from where he’d been bent over Eric’s bed. “No, don’t worry,” he added at Rafe’s startled expression, “our patient hasn’t suffered a relapse. I found time to see him earlier than I’d thought. In fact, he’s doing very well. These tropical fevers take the heart out of a man, but now he’s back on English soil, I predict a rapid recovery. If he gets rest, of course, good nourishment, and takes his medicines.”

“He wants to travel on this week,” Rafe said, his brow furrowed.

“Impossible,” the doctor said, snapping his case shut.

Rafe nodded. “As I thought. Thank you. I’ll see it is impossible.”

Eric sat up against his pillows. “We’re leaving, Rafe. I’m getting better. Didn’t you hear the man?”

“I heard. You didn’t,” Rafe said. “You’re staying, if I have to sit on you.”

“You’ll have to do more than that to get me to stay on. There’s no reason for me to sponge on you any longer,” Eric argued. “I can travel home. It’s only a matter of days.”

“No. Until the doctor says you can walk home if you want to, you stay on here. And there’s an end to it. I’ve already made all the arrangements. I hired on a valet for the both of us and a housekeeper for the look of things. A footman too. And a cook. I’m sending a note to my family to ask the name of a
respectable female relative to come stay on here for the duration too.”

“You don’t need all that help, at least not for my sake,” Eric insisted, “because I’m leaving. And your respectable female won’t stay that way long if she’s all alone in the house here with you—and that’s what she’ll be in a day, I promise you.”

“Now, look—” Rafe said angrily. He didn’t get a chance to finish. Brenna’s calm voice cut him off. He hadn’t seen her; she’d been sitting in the shadows. Now she rose and walked over to the physician.

“Doctor,” she said in her gentle, soothing voice, her dark eyes on his, “forgive me for interrupting, but these two have their horns locked over this. Can we two work out a compromise, do you think? If my brother travels in slow stages, in a well-sprung coach, with me watching over him all the way, being sure he takes all your medicines on schedule, won’t that do as well? After all, as you can see, he’s fretting himself to pieces just lying here day after day.”

“Day after one day!” Rafe said in annoyance.

But neither Brenna nor the doctor paid any attention to him. She smiled at the fascinated physician and went on, “Dear sir, what do you think if we make the trip in three days rather than two? Or four, if we must. He can rest as well in a comfortable coach as he can in a bed, can’t he? Better, perhaps, because if he thinks he’s got his way, he’ll be able to relax and sleep. He can’t do that here, if he’s fussing, can he? We’ll find a middle ground. If we don’t go until the end of the week, will that suit?”

“Why, yes, my dear, if you put it that way, I suppose he can,” the physician said, his eyes on Brenna’s soft smile.

“Damme, but—” Rafe said, and stopped as the physician spun around and glared at him.

“My lord!” the doctor said. “There’s a lady in the room.”

“A clever one,” Eric said, and grinned.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Brenna said, ignoring her brother. “And that way, too, I can pay a call and see if I can mend matters here before we leave.” But now her eyes were on Rafe, and the question in them was for him.

He nodded, grudgingly. “All right. Can’t see it will hurt. But if things go wrong, you’re to turn right around and come back.”

Brenna nodded back at him. He hadn’t said if he meant their trip back home or her visit to Lady Annabelle. She decided he meant both, and she agreed. Both ventures were gambles, after all.

“I
t was kind of you to see me,” Brenna told her hostess after she was shown into the salon by a footman.

“Mama would have my head for it,” Annabelle said simply. “But she’s out now. If you don’t take long, you can avoid her. I’d suggest avoiding her…Miss…Ford,” she said, reading from the card Brenna had left, as though she hadn’t already committed it to heart.

“Thank you, I’ll be brief,” Brenna said, holding her head high, hating the fact that she’d had to give her name, but knowing there was no other way to have been admitted. “May I sit?”

“Oh, do,” Annabelle said carelessly, as if she didn’t know what a deliberate insult it was to make her visitor ask.

Brenna sat, gingerly, and took a deep breath. She
looked around, trying to regain her composure. It was a lovely room, done up in the latest style with yellow and blue wallpapers in a Chinese theme, matching green draperies, and graceful, expensive furniture, all in the Eastern motif. The lady who sat posed on a long yellow satin settee was no less lovely, graceful, and expensive.

They were both dark-haired women. The resemblance, Brenna thought gloomily, ended there.

Her hostess was dressed in a golden silk morning gown trimmed with white. She had beautiful blue eyes in a no-less-lovely face. She was altogether dainty, curved, milk white and ebony, a little Dresden figure of a lady. Except for her expression. She sat at her ease and eyed her visitor openly, with undisguised distaste.

The lady was so perfectly set in her parlor, she made Brenna feel too big, rawboned and shabby, although she knew she wasn’t. She might have her faults, but she knew very well they were none of those things. She had no idea that her hostess agreed.

Annabelle watched her visitor with concealed chagrin. Her mama spent so much time and money getting this room perfectly right. It had been, until now. The one thing it had lacked, it seemed, was this slender, graceful woman. She completed it. She wore a simple green walking dress, but her looks were as exotic as the distant lands everything in the room came from. Even her faint perfume was spiced rather than sugary.

It made Annabelle doubt her own attractions
again. She’d thought only Damon’s beautiful wife could cause her this kind of confused pain.

But everything she’d seen of this woman so far was shocking and disturbing. She been roaming about a bachelor’s house, half-dressed, or half-naked, depending on how one looked at it. And the look of her! Fresh from a bath and scented like a harem. Rafe had tried to say she was simply his friend’s sister.
A friend’s sister! Dressed or undressed like that!
Even so, if she’d tried to trap him into a proposal that day, she was an unprincipled monster. If it was a lie and she was simply his mistress, it was almost as upsetting. Apart from causing doubts about her own appeal, Annabelle wasn’t used to dealing with that class of woman. The evidence seemed clear that her visitor was not her equal, in class, mind, or principles.

For once, Annabelle wasn’t sure how to deal with a social situation. But if she was interested in any future with Rafe, she had to. It rankled.

“Rafe says you’re not his mistress,” Annabelle said suddenly.

Brenna’s face paled. There was no attempt to sugarcoat the thing, or broach it gently. This was insult, not even thinly disguised. She rose to her feet.

“Oh, bother. Sit down, if you please,” Annabelle said, annoyed with her own clumsiness. “If I meant to insult you, I’d do better than that. It’s just that we’ve no time for trivialities and it’s hardly the place for them. Did you want to discuss the weather or fashion before we spoke about it? We haven’t the
time. Rafe’s a blunt man. I’ll be no less so. Is what he says true? And can you prove it?”

“Absolutely true,” Brenna said, sinking to her chair again. “I’d never met him before we arrived at his house two days ago. He’d even forgot he’d invited us. My brother, Eric, served with him in the Peninsula. They met in a hospital there, when Rafe was wounded,” she added to the faint crease of puzzlement she saw on her hostess’s otherwise unlined brow.

“Oh, yes,” Annabelle said, though she hadn’t known Rafe had been wounded.

“Eric collapsed,” Brenna went on. “We’d just returned from India where he’d been gravely ill, you see. Rafe insisted we stay on with him until Eric could be seen by a good physician.”

“‘Rafe’?” Annabelle asked, her little nose going up as she tried to look down it at Brenna.

Brenna’s face flushed. Her chin went up too. “He insisted I call him that, as my brother does. But you’re quite right. ‘Lord Dalton,’ I should say.”

“So you should,” Annabelle said, “but that at least rings true. He’s very careless with his name.”

“I’m not,” Brenna said, her voice firmer, because she was done playing cat and mouse with this woman. She had something to say; she’d say it and be gone. “Nor am I careless in any other way with him. I’ve come to tell you that. I’ve got no reason to lie. We’ll be gone from his house, and London, by week’s end. It would be a pity if a simple mistake on my part ended your relationship with him.”

Brenna looked down at her hands in her lap. “Yes, I certainly ought to have remembered I needed a chaperon if we were going to stay in a bachelor’s house with him. I shouldn’t have answered the door in my dishabille either. But I didn’t even consider it.” She glanced up at Annabelle again, and a rueful smile touched her lips. “I thought I’d open the door and dash upstairs again. That’s how seductive I felt I looked. I’d taken a bath. I thought it was him at the door needing to be let in. Foolish and careless, I know. But that’s all it was, and it was only because I was so preoccupied with my brother’s health that I didn’t think.”

Annabelle saw how her visitor’s face lit from within when she smiled. Anyone could see how a man might be attracted—but her story rang true. She tapped a fingernail on the arm of her settee. “As I said, can you prove it?”

Brenna laughed, startling her hostess. It was a full, throaty laugh, as earthy as it was genuine. “My dear lady,” she said, “no, of course not. But consider the facts. I’d never met him before. I’ve been in India for the past four months. We arrived in London the day before. Do you think Lord Dalton is so irresistible that I landed on his doorstep and went straight to his bed? With my own brother in the house? Lord Dalton is attractive, but I’m not mad.”

Annabelle studied Brenna, watching her eyes. The woman was calm, but she couldn’t conceal the fires that sprang up in those dark sloe eyes of hers. “Is he attractive then, do you think?” Annabelle asked honestly, unable to stop herself. “Odd, I like him well
enough, but I’d not thought it. Or is red hair a new passion in the East?”

Brenna sobered. “I’m not from the East. Or that far east, at least. We’re from Shropshire. But I do think he’s attractive. And it means nothing, because I’ve no relationship with him whatsoever. My feeling for him is gratitude for his kindness to Eric. And you may believe that or not, my lady. I’m going home in days and will likely never see him again. I just thought it would be a pity if you did the same, since he has a care for you, it seems.” But her voice clearly implied she couldn’t understand that.

She rose to her feet again. “Thank you for your time. I hope you consider what I said. I’d feel guilty if I were the cause of any grief for Lord Dalton, after he did such a good turn for us. Good day.”

Annabelle didn’t get up. It was another studied insult. Brenna went to the door, her hands gripped tightly on her recticule.

“It will take some time and talking to make my mama see the light,” Annabelle said. “If, indeed, it turns out to be light and not just a will-o’-the-wisp. But I find myself believing you, and so she may come round—in time.”

“So it will be forgotten?” Brenna asked eagerly.

“If you leave, and if it’s true,” Annabelle answered thoughtfully. “I tend to think it is. It’s unlikely you two were secret lovers. Or that you were his mistress. It’s doubtful that such is your usual occupation either, as mama insists. But you can see the problem, can’t you? After all, you so looked the part the other day.”

Brenna’s jaw set tight. She forced a light laugh. “And not today? The less I dress, the better I look? Thank you for the compliment. It’s usually only the gentlemen who see that.”

Annabelle flushed. She watched her visitor leave. Only when she heard the front door close did she relax. “Well, what did you think?” she asked as the door to the connecting room opened.

“She’s not his lover,” her mama said. “If she’d a claim, she’d have made it. I asked Lady Claire, who knows everything, and Mrs. Teller, who makes up everything she doesn’t know. Neither of them had heard of any such liaison. Dalton’s had his share of ladybirds, but everyone knows their names, and no one ever heard of any dark, foreign-looking chit. She comes from Shropshire? The Fords, from Shropshire? I don’t know them. I’ll have my Betty ask her friends to find which of them come from there. Servants know every scrap of gossip. We’ll discover all, don’t you worry.

“But whatever the wench’s past, and she looks as though she must have one—did you hear that laugh?” the countess asked, diverted. “A courtesan’s, mark my words. Be that as it may, I doubt she has a past with Dalton. The dates don’t agree, for one thing. For another, as he said, he’s too clever to have asked us in if they had been lovers. He’d hardly have forgot she was there if they were. She’ll be gone at week’s end. The rest is up to you. He’ll be ready to do anything for you if you take him back now.”

“He’d be ready anyway,” Annabelle said. “But she likes him. She’d have him if she could,” she mused.

“Well, why not? There’s an income,” Lady Wylde said. “Good family. Good friends and entrée anywhere. But you could do better.”

“And I could do worse,” her daughter said, thinking of all the things her visitor hadn’t said, things she’d read in her eyes when she’d spoken about Rafe. Things she herself hadn’t seen in him, but only sensed. Things that made her too uneasy to dwell on now. “But Lud!” she sighed. “That hair! Still…that’s why God made razors. All right. I’ll give it a week more, at least. Then if she’s left as she said she will—we’ll have him in for tea. Not too soon, though. There’s no sense rushing things. The Season hasn’t even started yet. He’ll keep.”

“Like mullet on ice,” her mama said, and laughed. “I’ve been speaking to the servants too much!”

Annabelle didn’t laugh. Her lovely eyes narrowed. She raised a finger. “Yes. Exactly. Good point. Let’s not keep this to ourselves, Mama. We can’t. You’ve been asking around about her. They’ll wonder why. Who knows who might discover the real answer? Let’s nip it in the bud by letting the story out to show we don’t care. If I do decide to have him, it won’t do for it to look as though I was his second choice, even for a night.”

“As if there were a chance of that!”

“But I’ve been a second choice before,” Annabelle said.

Her mama’s laughter stilled.

“And I’ve been the object of gossip before as well,” Annabelle went on, a note of pain she was
unaware of in her voice. “I won’t have it again. Let me clearly be the wronged party this time. Why not? It might have been innocent on her part—but it might not have been. We can’t give her the benefit of the doubt. Doubt gives too many easy answers to gossipmongers. The woman set a trap. It wasn’t his fault. We were clever enough to realize it and absolve him. There it is, and so we’ll say.”

“Why, just so,” her mama said. “Isn’t that what I’ve been saying?”

Annabelle smiled. Life hadn’t treated her well, but her mama always did. But now Life might have just decided to make it up to her. If not by getting her the man she wanted with all her heart, then at least by giving her one who’d devote himself to her with all his heart. She’d see. She had all the time in the world—or at least until the end of this Season—to pick a husband. Many things could happen in that time. She might even take Dalton. He needed a closer look. She deserved someone who doted on her after all the disappointment she’d had. And it wasn’t as if no one else wanted him, after all.

Brenna drove back to Rafe’s house, her thoughts on where she’d just been. She laid her cheek against the carriage’s window glass to cool it, because her face still burned with embarrassment. It had been a demeaning interview. But necessary for Annabelle and herself. No wonder Rafe was fascinated by the lady. Her reluctant hostess had been beautiful, ele
gant, and yet seemed strangely vulnerable. She’d also been rude, even crude at times, and thoroughly vindictive. But she’d a right to be.
She must love him very much,
Brenna thought sadly.
Well, but who would not?

“You took my knight,” Brenna said with interest.

Rafe sat back from the chessboard. “I did. Don’t see why you’re shocked. It was indefensible.”

“She’s more than shocked,” Eric commented from a chair by the fireside, “she’s staggered. She usually beats men at the game. They’re so busy flirting they never see how clever she is.”

“A blatant lie,” Brenna said calmly, though her eyes sparkled in the firelight. “It’s just that gentlemen don’t think we females can reason, and so while they humor us by playing chess with us, they don’t expect to lose. That’s when they do. Lord Dalton took me seriously. That makes him a good opponent.”

“Thank you,” Rafe said.

“And I didn’t lose yet,” she added.

“You will,” Rafe said. “I see where you’re going, and you won’t get there. I’m an old soldier, Bren. I take every opponent seriously. Maybe if I’d only fought on battlefields, I wouldn’t. But some of our most clever foes were female, and they fought in ballrooms and in bedr—other places,” he said quickly. “Dam—drat, but you’re such a good companion, I forget your sex when we talk too!”

Some of the sparkle went out of Brenna’s eyes; she looked down at the chessboard with concentration.
“Don’t leash your tongue on my behalf,” she murmured. “I’ve spent the past three months visiting an army hospital. I’ve heard it all.”

“I advise you to try to forget that, Bren,” Eric said. “The world isn’t like our friend Rafe. He appreciates loyalty. But there are too many who’ll think worse of you because of it. It was folly for you to leave home and hearth and race across the world on your own to see to me. I said it then, I’ll say it now. I wish you hadn’t, though I admit if you had not, I might not be here to wish it.” His smile was sad. “She chivied the nurses, Rafe. You should have seen her, just like a little border collie, nipping at their heels. She yapped at them too, if she had to.”