That Scandalous Summer (29 page)

“Very prettily put,” said Weston. His transparent relief at being rescued did not, precisely, cheer her. But it did free her from the spell. She looked out over the lawn, and when she peeked back, Michael was frowning in the direction of the tennis match.

As for Weston, he seemed disinclined to speak again, and the silence began to strike Liza as awkward. She cast about for another topic, increasingly frustrated when nothing came to mind. This was so unlike her! She wished Michael would walk away; she could not focus with him standing there.

The lull was shattered by a cry from the direction of the tennis game. Liza turned in time to see Jane regaining her feet with Baron Forbes’s aid. Somewhat mysteriously, her tennis racket lay about ten feet away. “Watch where you’re aiming that!” she yelled.

Katherine, on the other side of the net, gave a toss of her head. “The point is to
hit it back
.”

“I do believe someone’s going to die on that court,” Michael remarked. “One solid strike to the temple . . .”

“Had no idea tennis could be so gladiatorial,” Weston replied. “Are you prepared to play doctor?”

“I don’t
play
at it, Weston.”

Was that . . . a note of aggression? “I imagined you would be the first on the tennis court,” she said quickly to Weston. “Do the rumors mislead me? I hear you’re a great sportsman!”

“Such kind rumors,” said Weston, “that I believe it would be rude to deny them. No, you’re quite right, madam; spectatorship has never been my strength.” Good heavens, was that a subtle flex of his arms he’d just performed?
That
was encouraging. “I’ve already challenged de Grey to a match.”

“Which you will lose,” Michael said cheerfully.

“That would be a first,” said Weston, just as cheerfully.

The two men locked eyes, grinning fiercely. Oh, dear. Masculine rivalry. Well, she knew how to take advantage of that.

With a gentle, fleeting touch to Weston’s elbow, she said, “I have every faith in you, sir.”

“As you should,” he said, a touch too seriously. “This one may look strapping, but I promise you, at university, he was a perfect stranger to the playing fields.”

“Imagine that,” said Michael. “I rather thought we were there to learn.”

“And what can’t you learn on the playing fields?” Weston demanded. “Honor, courage, proper bottom, a sporting spirit—”

“Oh, indeed,” said Michael. “All of which would be very helpful when I’m playing doctor.
What ho, a fever? Well, chin up, man; can’t let down the team!”

“Always had his nose in a book,” Weston said to her, then tsked and shook his head.

She managed a distracted smile at this bait, but her mind was wandering. Michael as a bookish boy: the image rather caught her off guard. What had he been like in his youth? Gangly and gawky, she would wager. But already dedicated; already unlike any of the other men of his class that she had known. It made sense that
he would have been studious: one did not become a doctor by following the usual path by which the nobility traveled through their university days—namely, drinking, wenching, and sporting.

“Ah, that’s us,” said Weston—for Jane had stalked off the court, and Katherine and Tilney were jeering. “Shall we, de Grey?”

She mustered herself to the task. After another brief touch to Weston’s elbow, she ducked her head as though her own temerity had abashed her. “Good luck, Lord Weston.”

“Oh, I won’t need it,” he said briskly—a rather off-putting kind of reply.

Michael gave her another wink, to which she replied with the haughty lift of one brow.

As they walked off, she turned to watch them. For a self-proclaimed athlete, Weston moved with a strange stiffness, almost as if he had a steel rod in place of his spine. Very little swivel to his hips, either. A very . . . masculine walk, she supposed. Whereas Michael . . .

Michael
strode
. His movements were decisive. His stride firm and long-legged.

His hips moved fluidly.

He would make an excellent dancer. She already knew what else those hips could accomplish.

She swallowed and turned on her heel. High time to go find Hollister.

During a lazy luncheon by the lake, Liza sussed out Hollister’s potential. They sat beneath an umbrella large enough to screen them both from the sun—a blessing, for he was paler than she, in that manner only dark-haired Irishmen could achieve, his mother, he explained without embarrassment, having hailed from Cork. She decided she admired a self-made man. His eyes were a pleasant, mossy hazel, and nobody would find fault with his features, which were finely, even exquisitely molded. If anything, he was
too
handsome, for a lady did not like to be outranked in that regard.

She forgave him for it, though, because she liked his manner better than Weston’s. He had sculpted lips made for sneering, and his humor matched his capacity: his wit was sharp and his repartee tremendously delicious. On their stroll together back to the house, he commented on Jane Hull, walking ahead of them, her head close to Michael’s: “Climbing like ivy,” he said, “and no blade to hand. Do you mean to fetch one?”

She cut him a surprised look, but after a quick calculation,
did not pretend to misunderstand him. “I have no designs on Lord Michael,” she said.

He lifted his brow briefly. “I do admire bluntness in a woman.”

She’d imagined he would. He was something of a climber himself—a financier who had all but purchased his title. That he should judge Jane for similar ambitions struck her as curious and perhaps concerning. “And what of feminine ambition? Do you approve of that as well?”

“Certainly,” he said. “Though I will admit I reserve my admiration for the more subtle displays.”

His faint smile left no doubt that he recognized her flirtations as the overture to her own ambitions.

Feeling so transparent might normally irritate her. But his frankness left her peculiarly unruffled. When he took her arm to help her over a very unthreatening tree root, she turned her hand in his grasp just so, the better to drag her fingers suggestively over his palm when he released her again.

His smile faded, the look he gave her turning somewhat hotter. But it called forth only the mildest physical reply in her—nothing to compare to the pull she’d so recently known.

She forced away the beginning of a frown. Ahead, Michael was making no similar attempt to touch Jane. A very stupid part of her was gratified by that. The rest of her was irked. If he wanted her aid in circulating rumors of his interest, he needed, at the least, to
act
interested.

Back at the house, she went to her rooms to bathe and rest. After a few lazy hours set aside for unscheduled amusements, the guests once again assembled in
the larger drawing room, this time to be entertained by the clairvoyant, Signora Garibaldi.

The signora, dark and sloe-eyed and quite trim for a woman of about fifty, might have passed easily for an Italian had her craft not required her to speak. When she did, her vowels slid madly across a geography that had never existed in the real world: a curious combination of France, Trieste, and the slums of London.

For all its unlikely provenance, her low, growling voice caused the assembly to quiet immediately. “I have been summoned here tonight by Madam Chudderley,” she said, pulling her black lace shawl—a peculiarly Spanish touch—tighter around a gown of plain black wool, cut high at the throat and loose over her waist and hips, reminiscent in its own way of the habit of medieval nuns. “But I do not come to serve her. I serve no one and nothing but Truth.”

Oh, that was very good. Liza stepped back a little from the cluster of guests, discreetly watching as two footmen circulated the perimeter of the room, turning down the gas lamps and lighting great branches of candles in their stead.

“Must we endure this without a drink?” came Sanburne’s voice in her ear.

She felt disinclined to humor him. Not turning, she said, “Oh, you’re still here? I wondered if you and Lydia had gone back to London.”

“Went for a walk around ten in the morning,” he said cheerfully. “It turned out to be longer than expected.”

“Oh, I’m
certain
. Will I hear scandalized reports from some farmer whose crops you crushed?”

“No, but Lydia is absolutely fascinated with these cairns. She’d never been to Cornwall. Can you imagine?”

She glanced over at his sigh. He had a dreamy, distracted look on his face. She followed his attention and discovered his wife creeping through the doorway, still smoothing her evening gloves over her elbows.

Liza cleared her throat. “James, it simply grows embarrassing now.”

“In what regard?” He sounded genuinely puzzled.

“The way you fawn on her. You’re in friendly company, of course—”

“Yes, the Hawthornes would make our lord and savior
weep
with approval.”

“You’ll be mocked to kingdom come, all right, if you carry on in town this way.”

“Oh, come now, Lizzie. Are you saying a man can’t be madly in love with his wife?”

Another voice replied for her: “It runs contrary to popular wisdom,” said Michael as he stepped up.

“And how goes that wisdom?” asked James.

Michael shrugged. “Why, that marriage is the quickest cure for love.”

“Ah, yes,” said James. “I believe I’ve heard you say that before. One would hope you’d developed some new witticisms since your school days. If you’ll excuse me . . .” And with a bow to the both of them, he crossed the room to join his wife, who was listening to the signora’s low speech. Indeed, everybody looked rapt save Jane, who was leaning around the baron to steal a peek at Michael.

Liza squared her shoulders. “You’re doing terribly,” she said. “I didn’t see you touch her once today.”

“Must I touch her?” He looked surprised. “I spoke to nobody else at the picnic.”

“You were lecturing her on medical hygiene!”

He pulled a face. “She asked me whether it wasn’t true that soap was injurious to the skin. Really, Elizabeth, I don’t know where you found her—”

“She’s sharper than she seems. Perhaps if you’d treat her as though you take her seriously, instead of preaching at her as though she were a child who didn’t know to wash her hands—”

His hand closed on her arm, exerting a subtle pressure that forced her to turn toward him. In this dim, temperamental light, his face was mostly lost in shadow; she saw only half of his rueful smile. “And now you’re instructing me on how to flirt? Perhaps I should return the favor. Does Hollister really wish to know the mineral composition of your properties?”

She tried to tug free, but his grip only tightened. “He’s a businessman,” she said. “He expressed an interest in the state of the mining industry in these parts.”

“Oh, and I’m sure he has no employees to answer such questions.” His gaze dipped to her mouth. “In fact—I’m wrong. Probably wouldn’t have mattered if you’d nattered on in gibberish. He simply wanted to watch your lips move as you spoke.”

For some reason the implicit compliment irritated her. She jerked free. “Actually, I think he was
quite
intrigued by what I had to say. He complimented me on being so learned. Imagine that: a man more enamored with my brain than with my face!”

He frowned. “And you think I’m not?”

She huffed out a breath. “Recall yourself, Michael. Your interests are not my concern.”

A titillated murmur rose behind them. For one horrible second she feared that everyone had overheard her—that their reaction was for this silly spat.

But, no, Signora Garibaldi had issued some apparently impressive pronouncement. The space around her had widened considerably, as though everybody had taken a step back.

Liza exhaled. Suddenly she felt very foolish. What was she doing over here, quarreling with him? Quarreling like . . . lovers?

“Take heart,” Michael said. “I had it from Weston that Hollister longs to settle down with a woman who will help him win a welcome in the more fashionable corners of society. I imagine you might qualify . . . even if he hasn’t looked this way once.”

“How kind of you to keep track for me,” she said through her teeth. “But don’t trouble yourself. If you’ll watch, now, you’ll see that I require no aid in my own flirtations.”

As she walked away, she caught his murmur: “Oh, I’m always watching.”

His words sent a shiver of pleasure up her spine. She tried to battle it down as she stepped into hearing range—and then promptly forgot it as she absorbed what the signora was actually saying.

“A great war,” she said, her eyes closed, her brow knit fiercely. “Blood in the fields, blood and iron and smoke, unnatural smoke, smoke that kills with the first breath—”

Good God! This was not at all the thing! “Signora,” Liza said stridently, but then Weston cut her off.

“Germans, I’d wager? It must be the bloody Germans!”

“Ja,”
affirmed the signora, “
ohne jeden Zweifel
”—evidencing in the process that her accent did
not
stretch so far east as Germany.
Without a doubt,
she’d said, but she’d mangled it almost beyond recognition.