It was, however, four hours before it was even remotely acceptable to make a morning call, ample time for Cairnyllan’s ebullient mood to evaporate. Though he stretched his ablutions and choice of garments as long as possible, he still had hours to sit in the library and consider how Alicia would take his apology. There was no reason, he knew, for her to receive it kindly. And if she did, she might well dismiss him forever afterward. Perhaps he deserved as much. But he didn’t want to think of such an outcome.
Thus, it was with a set jaw and very upright carriage that Cairnyllan rang the bell at the Alston townhouse at midmorning. Admitted to the hall, and then the drawing room, he remained rigidly formal, his uneasiness disguised by this facade. But it began to crack as the minutes stretched out.
Alicia, informed of his arrival while still at breakfast after a restless night, had fled at once to her bedchamber. She brushed her hair, and started to change her gown, then buttoned it again with trembling fingers, and finally stood in the center of the carpet and tried to nerve herself to go down. She was being ridiculous, she thought firmly. This was a man she had met numerous times; they had dined, danced, conversed.
Yet since yesterday, everything was changed, for she knew now that she loved him. If he had come to continue their dispute, she did not think she could endure it. At last, however, she could delay no longer, and raising her chin and letting her eyelids droop haughtily, she marched downstairs to the drawing room.
Not surprisingly, the meeting was extremely cool. Alicia was distant and Cairnyllan stiff. When they had sat down on opposite ends of the sofa, a silence fell in which the mantel clock and the sounds of passing carriages beneath the windows seemed very loud.
Alicia grew puzzled, then tremulous. What was he about? Why had he come—to sit and stare at her until she fell into a fit of the vapors? For his part, Cairnyllan was commanding himself to speak and stop being an idiot. Yet words did not form in his mind. He gazed at Alicia, fascinated by her beauty and frightened by the thought that he might never see it again after today.
“Was there something you wished to discuss?” asked Alicia finally, unable to bear the silence. Her voice sounded high and unnatural in her ears.
“Yes,” he replied, tension making his tone abrupt and harsh.
She looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“I have come to apologize,” Cairnyllan forced out.
“Apologize?” Alicia was so surprised, she could only repeat the word.
“Yes. You were quite right about the duel, of course. It was a ridiculous notion; I shall drop it entirely. And…” He faltered again, then rushed on. “I must apologize to you as well. I had formed a mistaken idea of your character early in our acquaintance, and treated you according to it. I…am sorry for the pain this must have caused you.” He felt this to be lame, but could not think how to better it.
Whatever Alicia had expected, it was not this. Her cheeks crimsoned as she thought of the occasion that had given him the incorrect impression, then paled when she met his eyes and saw the intensity burning there. Her throat was tight, but she must speak. “I…I was partly responsible for your mistake,” she choked out. “I was…I never before…” She trailed off; it was impossible to explain her feelings then, or now, to him.
Her confusion gave him hope. “I too have behaved in uncharacteristic ways with you,” he offered. “Yesterday, for example, I was inexcusably rude—more than rude. Can you forgive me?”
The memory of their kiss in both their eyes, they gazed at each other in silence for a long moment. Then Alicia nodded and looked away; she could not speak.
The earl longed to sweep her into his arms; he could see the trembling of her slight frame from where he sat. But he was still uncertain.
“Thank you,” he added, and searched for a way to go on. “That would seem to settle things between us,” he heard himself say, and cursed inwardly.
Alicia nodded again. He would leave now, she supposed. They would meet as before at the ton parties, perhaps dance, but the other dimension of their relationship would be gone. She felt a sharp pain at the thought.
I must either rise and take my leave or speak, Cairnyllan was telling himself savagely, but he did neither.
They sat very still through a trembling eternity, each filled with a burning protest. Things should not end this way between them after all they had been through. Then Alicia’s butler entered the room.
“Excuse me, my lady,” Bates said, “but a footman has just brought this note, and he is instructed to wait for an answer.”
“Oh.” She took the folded missive.
Lord Cairnyllan stood. “I must speak…”
But he didn’t get a chance. In the next instant, the room was filled with three small, yapping bundles of hair careening off the furniture and nipping at their ankles.
“Oh dear. Oh dear,” cried Lavinia Alston, running into the drawing room in a flutter of shawls and reticule. “Bess! Boadicca! Alfred! You know you are not allowed in this room. Come here at once. Oh. Alicia. Lord Cairnyllan. Bess get away from Lord Cairnyllan’s boot. Now, madam, away!”
Gazing at the seeming carpet of small dogs about his feet, the earl smiled. But when he turned automatically to share the humor he saw in the situation with Alicia, she was looking unreasonably irritated. “Lavinia,” she said, “you promised to keep your dogs upstairs.” Alicia’s bitter frustration with the situation had been transferred to the spaniels.
“I know, dear. We were just going up. We have been out for a walk, you know, and…Alfred! Off the sofa, sir, this minute!”
Cairnyllan lifted the offending Alfred off the cushions. He understood Alicia’s reaction. Indeed, he himself was unbearably chafed by their estrangement. But he could not vent his emotions on this innocent older woman. His sense of justice, and the habit of years, was too strong. He made a massive effort. “What fine-looking King Charleses. I’ve never seen any so glossy and full-coated.” He tried to smile at Lavinia.
“But if you could remove them from the drawing room,” put in Alicia.
The annoyance in her voice made Lavinia start and scurry to gather her charges.
“They are not doing any harm,” Cairnyllan had to say.
“They will leave hair on all the furniture,” she retorted, “and they may ruin the carpet.”
“They seem much too well trained to do anything of the kind.” He did smile at Lavinia this time. She had reduced the animals to a silent row.
“They are,” she agreed, unable to resist defending the spaniels. “At home, they come into all the rooms, and they have never destroyed anything.”
“They have distinctive names,” added MacClain placatingly. “What was this one? Boadicca?”
A flush reddened Lavinia’s thin cheeks. “Yes. I have named them all for ancient kings and queens of Britain, for King Charleses are royal dogs, you know. No one can forbid them entrance to theaters or any public buildings, by order of King Charles the second.”
“Indeed? You know a great deal about them.”
His interest made Lavinia expand almost visibly. “I am one of the foremost breeders of King Charles spaniels in England.” Her face fell. “Or I was. Before…that is…”
“Before you came to London?” guessed MacClain.
Lavinia nodded.
“It must have been very hard to leave your home, in that case,” continued the earl. “I suppose you had kennels and were very busy there.”
“Prodigious busy. But I never minded that, of course.” She looked proud. “I developed that shade of coat you see in Bess. It is known all over the country. The Duchess of Bedford has bought pups from me more than once.”
Alicia marveled. Lavinia spoke of her kennels just as other Alstons talked of Morlinden. But why had she never shown such enthusiasm before?
Lavinia was shaking her head. “It was difficult to move to town, but I felt it my duty. When one is needed…” She stopped and sighed, as if not certain about that need. “I so look forward to the day when I can go home.”
Alicia could scarcely believe it. She had not been at all pleased to have a chaperone, and she had assumed that the objections were all on her side. Now, she saw that there were other points of view.
This brief, incongruous interchange had affected her deeply, in her already sensitized state. That Cairnyllan, in their present situation, could kindly question Lavinia, and show Alicia things about her that she had not discovered in years, was astounding. And she suddenly saw that she had not been particularly considerate of her older cousin during their association. Concentrating on her own feelings and reactions, she had never paused to think of Lavinia’s. Various examples of slight rudeness or lack of sensitivity occurred to Alicia, and she flushed. She felt herself wholly in the wrong, an unfamiliar sensation. And for the first time since the gambling incident at Perdon Abbey, she felt that Ian MacClain had behaved much more correctly than she. She had known for some hours that she loved him, but she would not have included the kindness and intuitive understanding he had exhibited just now among his sterling qualities. Now that she had seen them, she realized that he was more complex than she had thought, and even more admirable. She had seemed harsh and unfeeling in contrast.
Alicia blinked back tears. Everything was ruined. She could not speak to him now of love. He must be despising her selfishness, as she did herself. No wonder he had never wished to marry her.
“I must get the dogs upstairs,” said Lavinia, herding them out before her. “Good day, Lord Cairnyllan.”
When he had held the door for Lavinia, the earl turned back, feeling much less constrained. This homely interlude had warmed him, and he felt he could speak to Alicia now.
But Alicia, mortified, was unfolding the note Bates had brought with numb fingers, a defense against meeting his no-doubt accusing gaze. “It is from Marianne,” she said mechanically. “She asks if she may go to the Gerards’ ball with us as your mother has gone out of town.”
“What?” Diverted, he took the paper from her and read it himself. “I was told nothing of this.” He stopped abruptly, frowned, then crumpled the letter in his hand. “Your prediction has come true. They have eloped!”
This broke Alicia’s preoccupation with herself. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Sir Thomas is gone out of town for a week. My mother has left London without informing me. She has never done anything of the kind before.”
“I am sure there is a simple explanation.”
“Yes! I have driven her into an elopement.”
He turned on his heel and strode out, Alicia just behind.