The Courtship (3 page)

A
LEXANDRA SHERBROOKE, Countess of Northcliffe, shook out her dark-green silk skirts and rose. Mankin, the Sherbrooke town house butler for the past eighteen years, was, she saw, growing more and more stooped by the year, but it was not because he worked too hard or that his shoulders were rounding with age. No, Mankin wanted to show off his head in all its perfectly round, glittering bald glory. He polished his head. She had seen him doing it once when she'd happened to peer around the corner into the butler's pantry; he'd been using some of Mrs. Hibble's homemade wax. Today, as usual, he had achieved a high shine.

“Lord Beecham, my lady,” Mankin said from the doorway of the first-floor drawing room. He bowed low, bending his head until the very top was in her line of vision. She was nearly blinded.

“Hello, Spenser.” She walked to him, her hands out, smiling. She quite liked Spenser Heatherington, much to Douglas's annoyance. “Please tell me that you are here to murmur sweet nonsense into my ears. I do miss that, you know. You just stopped doing it.”

He gave her a smooth, charming smile, with just enough white teeth to add a little wickedness. “You laughed at me, Alexandra. How can a man murmur love words when the lady laughs all perky and amused in his face? One's manhood can't survive such a tactic.”

“I had forgotten that. Well, that wasn't well done of me. Yes, you must begin again. It always made Douglas red-faced when I told him what you said to me. Ah, but it also made him become ever so attentive. He had to prove, of course, that he could murmur nonsense better than you could. It still riles him no end that I call you by your first name.”

“It took me five years to convince you.”

“You know very well that Douglas detests the familiarity of it. You do it to enrage him. He says I am the one flirting, that I am the one who is encouraging you to think thoughts you should not be thinking.”

He laughed, couldn't seem to help himself. It was his second bout of laughter in under twenty-four hours. He cleared his throat. Was his throat a bit sore from the unaccustomed exercise?

“May I offer you tea, Spenser?”

“Yes, if you wish. Actually, what I would really like is to discuss the finer points of discipline with you.”

Alexandra flushed from her neck to her hairline. She pressed her palms to her cheeks and fanned herself.

“What is this? You get overly warm when just the word is spoken?”

“Don't bait me, sir. Dare I ask where you heard about that?”

He gave her a grin so wicked she wanted to smack him, but she wasn't close enough. She watched him lean back against the mantel and cross his arms over his chest. “You were in the Sanderling's library, speaking of discipline with a big girl who—hopefully—has enough soft ribbons to tie a man down by both his ankles and his wrists. She was discussing various philosophical points, while you, Alexandra, you wanted specificity that you could immediately try on Douglas.”

“Oh, dear. I thought we were quite alone. No, wait. I remember hearing a man laugh. It was you, Spenser? Oh, goodness, better you than Mr. Pierpoint, who would have collapsed of apoplexy on the spot. I never would have been able to face Mrs. Pierpoint and tell her how her husband passed over.”

“Also better my overhearing you than Douglas.”

“I am not so sure. Do sit down, Spenser. You have embarrassed me to my toes. As to Douglas, he would have laughed his head off, just as you did.” She cocked her head at him. “Now just a moment. You of all people do not need any further instruction on various forms of discipline. You already know all there is to know, don't you? I would assume a man of your experience would be well versed in it.”

He looked down at his hands, his long fingers and well-buffed fingernails. He never allowed a hangnail because he did not want to chance hurting a woman's soft flesh when he was caressing her. His dratted imagination again. He cleared his throat and pontificated. “Just as there are many forms of government, there are also no shortage of approaches to the subject of discipline. I am always eager to garner new knowledge, no matter the source.”

She cleared her throat and called out, “Mankin, I know you are standing not two feet on the other side of the door. Your jaw has probably dropped halfway to the floor because you are eavesdropping. Please pick up your jaw, bring some tea, and some of Cook's delicious mince clappers.”

They heard a harrumph from the corridor.

Lord Beecham's eyebrow rose a good inch. “Dare I ask? Did you say mince clappers?”

“Yes. Our cook, Mrs. Clapper, is from the far north, just at the southern edge of the Cheviot Hills. The recipe descends from her mother's side of the family, sheep farmers all of them, going back many hundreds of years. It's a special sort of pastry made with raisins, apples, cinnamon, currants, and oranges, all ground together. It is quite delicious, really.”

“It sounds rather strange to me, Alexandra. With all of it ground up, do you think there might be some sheep parts in there she hasn't told you about?”

“If there are, you can't taste them.”

“Perhaps I won't indulge in the clappers at this time.”

“Now, Spenser, you were just saying how there were many different schools of discipline. There are also many different kinds of pastries to be tried. I expect you to be eager to expand your culinary knowledge. In short, my dear sir, don't be a coward.”

“The ultimate weapon, a direct blow to the manhood. Bring on the clappers.”

Ten minutes later, Lord Beecham was enthusiastically chewing a mouthful of clapper when, without warning from Mankin, the big girl came sweeping into the drawing room.

“Alexandra, I will have him chasing at my heels by tomorrow evening, at the latest. Meeting him will be so very easy, and—”

She stared at him, her expression so horrified that he laughed. That made him choke on the clapper. She was on him in an instant, slapping his back so hard he wondered if his ribs would burst through his chest.

He managed to swallow the rest of the clapper, but since he was having a hard time breathing, he just sat there, gasping for breath as he looked up at her.

“Are you all right, Lord Beecham?”

“He still can't breathe, Helen. Give him a minute. Did she cave in your ribs, Spenser?”

Two minutes passed before he had enough breath back in his body to speak. He looked up at the big girl. “You know me?”

“Of course. I imagine that most people know you, particularly the ladies.”

Why did she look flushed? He was the one nearly flattened. When he was finally breathing easily again, he cleared his throat, drank a bit of tea, and set the cup back on its saucer. “The reason most people know me is because I have lived in London since I was eighteen years old and quite know everyone.” He rose, came to within one foot of her, and stopped. She looked him straight in the eye.

“Douglas is wrong,” Alexandra said. “You are at least two inches taller than Helen, just like he is. Douglas was telling her that he was taller than you.”

Lord Beecham looked into those clear blue eyes. “I am one of the tallest men I know.”

“Douglas is taller,” Alexandra said. “By at least an inch. Yes, I can see that clearly now.”

“Well,” Helen said, “I am surely one of the tallest ladies in all of England.”

“You are a very big girl,” he said slowly, wanting to eye her up and down very thoroughly but realizing it wouldn't be a good thing to do in Alexandra Sherbrooke's drawing room. Instead, he picked up his teacup and toasted her.

She laughed, a splendid sound that was full and rich and curled through his innards like a snifter of good brandy. He thought about her lying in the middle of his bed with him over her. It would be early evening, not more than six or seven hours away. His schedule was open.

“Not really a girl anymore,” Helen said, giving him a beautiful smile, all white teeth and dimples deep in her cheeks. “I am twenty-eight, twenty-nine in seven months. I am quite long in the tooth, my father tells me. Just three months ago he was so enraged with me over something—neither of us would even remember what now—he let fly and yelled that I was on the shelf. Whenever I provoke him, he is capable of moaning to the heavens what an unnatural child I am. I am not unnatural, it is just that I am . . .

She stalled, and Lord Beecham smiled. “A big girl.”

Helen gave him that brilliant smile again. “That, too, I suppose.” She stuck out her hand. “I am Helen Mayberry. My father is the eccentric Viscount Prith, the very tallest gentleman in all of England.”

Lord Beecham straightened to his full height—a good two inches taller than Helen—took her hand, and turned it as he leaned down to kiss her wrist. He felt the quiver in her hand. Excellent. Perhaps, if he were suave and a bit lucky, he would have her naked on the sheets in the very early evening, perhaps even in the very late afternoon, exchanging discipline recipes with her while he kissed her silly.

“I am Spenser Nicholas St. John Heatherington,” he said. “You can call me Spenser or Heatherington or Beecham. I was named after Edmund Spenser, of
Faerie Queen
fame. My mother admired Queen Elizabeth and thus chose to name me after Edmund Spenser, a man the queen admired to perhaps an immoderate extent. Who knows? My father even told me it was just possible that I was a very distantly related descendant.”

“It all sounds like nonsense to me,” Helen said.

He grinned at her, toasting her again with his teacup. “I agree, but it makes for an amusing tale. You are telling me you have not yet found a man who suited you to your doubtless quite lovely toes, Miss Mayberry?”

“Perhaps for a relatively short period of time. You know the problem—there are so many boring very short men in England, and it seems that my dear father is acquainted with all of them. I really do not mind short, but boring I cannot accept.”

“I don't mind short, either,” he said.

“And boring? You don't mind boring ladies?”

“Ladies are never boring, Miss Mayberry. Not if they are treated properly.”

“I wonder if I should approve of what you just said.”

“When you have decided, you will tell me. I believe you wished to meet me, Miss Mayberry?”

It was a shot in the dark. Still, when she had come flying into the drawing room talking about meeting someone, looked at him like she could not believe he was actually sitting right there, choking, he had known in his gut she was talking about him.

Instead of acting embarrassed or chagrined and thus tongue-tied, Miss Mayberry nodded. “I don't know how you managed to figure that out, but it's true. It is a pleasure to meet you, my lord. What is even better is that I don't have to bother with any machinations now, although the one I had in mind was really quite efficient.”

He looked at her, fascinated. Say six and a half hours until the early evening, perhaps just five and a half hours until late afternoon. He had enough time. “What were you going to do?”

“I was going to ride you down in the park.”

“You mean trod me under your horse's hooves?”

“Oh, no, I don't want to hurt you.” She paused for a delicate moment, her voice so demurely wicked he nearly swallowed his tongue, particularly when she added, “At least not in that way.”

Had she really said that, right here in the open, right in front of him and Alexandra? He thought about having her naked on the sheets with the mid-afternoon sun streaming through his bedchamber window. Would she insist on disciplining him? He devoutly hoped so.

“I was going to pretend to lose control and my balance and just happen to fall on you.”

“Depending on your momentum, you might well have smashed me flat.”

“Oh, dear, I hadn't thought about that. I might have driven you right into the ground, like a stake, or broken your ribs. Ah, but then I would have knelt beside you and held your hand until you managed to get your wits together again. It would have been just fine. You would have smiled up at me and lifted your hand, weakly, to touch my cheek. Yes, that forms a pleasant picture in the mind.”

“Only your end result. I would have deplored the process. Men do not like to be weak, Miss Mayberry, ever.”

Alexandra cleared her throat. “I know you are much enjoying yourselves, but I must tell you, Spenser, that Douglas grows livid whenever Helen talks about meeting you. He rants, Spenser. He insults you. He grinds his teeth. He ordered Helen to steer a wide berth.”

Helen laughed. “Douglas fears for my virtue with you in the vicinity, Lord Beecham.”

It was very warm in the middle of the afternoon. There would be no need for a fire in his bedchamber even with the both of them naked. He mentally put his mouth and his hands on her. He rose and held out his hand to her. “Well, then, to spare Douglas's teeth, I will simply remove Miss Mayberry from the premises before he returns home.”

“Where would you remove me to, Lord Beecham?”

“To Gunther's. For an ice.”

He had never seen a woman glow so much in his life.

“That would be wonderful. It is my favorite treat since I came to London. How ever did you know?”

Lord Beecham looked over at Alexandra, who was looking just a bit shell-shocked. “Tell her, Alexandra, that I am a man of vast and varied experience. I have the gift of looking at a woman and clearly reading her deepest desires.”

“Perhaps that is true,” Alexandra said as she bit into a mince clapper. “However, I did not know you could guess as deep as Helen's endless desire for Gunther's ices.”