Near the sunny west wall of the garden, a fellow in a cap and leather apron was picking peas. Other than that good soul, no staff was on hand. They had doubtless harvested most of the day’s vegetables in the cool of earliest morning and were hard at work turning green beans, butter, and shallots into haricots verts avec beurre et échalotes.
Strips of grassy turf ran between cultivated plots, and the south wall had been modified with a glass-pane abutment that formed a long, low version of a conservatory. Even in winter, Makepeace’s residents would eat well.
“My lord, you must be in error,” Miss Longacre said as we passed a bed of partially harvested asparagus. The hacked-off stems seemed to reproach their thriving brethren, and I was reminded that asparagus had been on last night’s menu as well.
“I searched most thoroughly, Miss Longacre. No tracks, human or otherwise, ran from the summer cottage through the undergrowth to the stable. I did find tracks that led more or less back to the orangery, suggesting Miss West’s attacker was a guest.”
Hyperia pretended to admire the orderly expanse of the garden, though cucumber vines and potted aubergines hardly made for a compelling vista. Her sturdy brown walking dress and serviceable straw hat were a contrast to Miss Longacre’s more extravagant plumage.
For a stroll about the grounds, Maybelle had chosen a fluttery gold muslin walking dress embellished with lacy cuffs, floral embroidery, and a green and blue peacock shawl. Miss Longacre might not be trying to attract the notice of a husband, but neither was she hiding her light under any bushel baskets.
“You had best look again, my lord,” she said. “With sunshine to aid you, I’m sure you will find what you missed by dark of night. I know what I heard, and I trust my hearing more than I do your ability to search the bracken for tracks. The fellow dashed away in the direction of the stable. Tell me, when exactly are you returning to Town?”
Hyperia turned a placid eye on Miss Longacre. “I have asked Lord Julian to remain until Healy can join me. The situation last night has left me somewhat shaken. The presence of an old and dear friend is a comfort.”
Miss Longacre blinked at Hyperia. She tried looking down her nose, and when that tactic yielded no results, she fiddled with her green silk bonnet ribbons.
“I see. Well. In that case, please excuse me. I will entrust you to the company of that dear friend and ask if Mama has any use for me. I believe the schedule calls for battledore this afternoon, and I can help make up the teams. My lord, I saw those tracks myself this very morning. A trail through the trees cuts over to the stable not twenty yards from the summer cottage. Our prankster was doubtless making straight for it.”
Meaning Maybelle had tramped all over the scene and probably taken her own tracks for those of the perpetrator. Prankster indeed.
“What prompted you to go looking for tracks?” I asked as pleasantly as I could.
“I wanted to jog any latent recollections I might have had of the incident. My inspection served only to reinforce the fact that our miscreant bolted hotfoot for the stable.”
She tossed off half a curtsey, which Hyperia returned with casual grace. I bowed, and we were soon shut of dear Maybelle.
“I want to like her,” Hyperia said, “but she has a restless, sulking quality that suggests she was overindulged in childhood. Gracious, I sound like Lady Ophelia. Let’s get you out of the sun.”
“We are in shade, I have my specs, and my hat brim protects my eyes as well. You need not cosset me.”
Hyperia strolled toward the door that led to the orangery. I had no choice but to stalk along beside her, old and dear friend that I was.
“You weren’t this cross before breakfast, Jules.”
“Since last we met, Godmama has ordered me off the property, and Ormstead has cast aspersion on my sanity. Before that, our host gave me my congé. Now Miss Longacre tells me that I can’t read the obvious signs of another man’s hurried progress through dense undergrowth. What does she think I did in Spain and France? Compose odes to my horse?”
“Atlas is a splendid horse.” Hyperia said this with the deadpan earnestness my sisters resorted to when twitting our eldest brother.
“Cut line, Perry. Ophelia shares your opinion of Miss Longacre. Nobody has used the word ‘spoiled,’ but clearly, the young lady did not take in Town and regards that as Society’s loss. Godmama has recruited the likes of Mendel Cleary and Lord Brimstock to take Maybelle off her parents’ hands if the young lady seeks to marry a prig or bounder. In the alternative, those two might inspire Maybelle to sober reflection on the lifelong consequences of youthful folly.”
“Both fellows are pretty enough,” Hyperia said, stepping back so I could hold the door to the orangery for her. “Cleary isn’t all that bad, though he has an exaggerated sense of his own appeal. He’s devoted to his auntie, which speaks well of him. Crumpy says his name came up in the servants’ hall.”
“The maids and footmen will wait until kingdom come for any vails from that one,” I said. “His wealth is almost exclusively agricultural, and his tastes exceed his means. He’s perpetually pockets to let and apparently cheats at cards to make up the shortfall.” Or so his youngest brother had opined. Spendy-Mendy had not endeared himself to his junior siblings.
Hyperia stopped amid rows of potted orange trees. “Mr. Cleary cheats? That’s a serious accusation, Jules. A deadly serious accusation.”
“I had it from his youngest brother, whose path I crossed on the Peninsula. Cleary is prodigiously lucky at cards, too lucky. When I was on winter leave in Town, I confirmed the younger brother’s allegations.
“Ormstead probably fell into Cleary’s clutches last night,” I went on, “or into an overly handy decanter. The question is, where does Mendel spend all that money? His family has some means, and the youngest brother was honorably lamed at Talavera and given desk work thereafter. Nobody seems to know much about the middle brother other than that he’s a spendthrift too. Two sisters have already made their come outs and married suitable partis.”
I had Lady Ophelia to thank for the annotated version of Debrett’s that I carried in my head, that, and a tendency to recall what did not matter while forgetting what did.
“Younger brothers are always getting up to nonsense,” Hyperia said, plucking a ripe orange and rolling it between her hands. “If Mendel Cleary were my older sibling, I’d yield to a pressing need to study Viking runes on Orkney. He’s very full of himself. I do love the smell of oranges.”
She sniffed her prize. “If Brimstock and Cleary are the visual delights of the gathering,” she went on, “then Rupert Westmere and Osgood Banter win top honors for coin of the realm.”
“Both of those bachelors bear the taint of the shop,” I said, which puzzled me. Ophelia was closely connected to any number of titled, wealthy, and powerful families on both sides of the blanket. She truly must not care for Miss Longacre, because the eligibles on hand were all, like Miss Longacre herself, not quite quite.
Not in the first stare. Flawed goods. Crooked lids for crooked pots.
Banter was received everywhere, quite the gentleman. He was gentry on his mother’s side, with an estate not ten miles from the Caldicott family seat, but the paternal branch of the family tree had been in trade in German George’s Day.
Westmere, while even wealthier, bore the same taint a mere two generations back.
“Do you suppose Ophelia wanted Miss Longacre to look favorably on you as a potential suitor?” Hyperia asked, settling on a white wrought-iron bench. “Ophelia can play a deep game, and she cares for you.”
Hyperia’s idle question had the ring of dread possibility. I came down beside her. “I’ll peel that orange for you. Godmama wouldn’t be so stupid. I’ll be leaving tomorrow or the day after at the latest, and Miss Longacre is not… I will never let it be said that I tossed you over for the likes of her.”
Hyperia pitched the orange straight up, and I caught it on the descent. “One is moved by your loyalty, Jules. Truly moved.”
“Sorry.” A change of topic was in order. “What did Crumpy have to say about Cleary?”
Hyperia huffed out the sort of sigh that said further castigation of me, while tempting, was a waste of her time, which it was. I hadn’t truly tossed her over—had I?
“The handsome Mr. Cleary was overheard rowing with a footman.”
“Berating a footman, I can believe, but arguing?” I tore open the skin of the orange, juice spraying over my fingers and the scent reminding me of Spain. “The footman must not need his post.”
“The footman is quite popular belowstairs. Canning, by name. Cleary wanted his services as a makeshift valet, and Canning said something to the effect that if a ducal heir can fend for himself and sleep in a broom closet, then a mere mister could manage to tie his own cravat. The other footmen are taking bets whether Canning will be sacked or promoted.”
“Neither.” How odd. I had a champion of sorts in Canning, while my social equals felt comfortable insulting me. “Lady Longacre cannot afford to sack anybody for the duration of this gathering, and two weeks from now, she won’t give a wilted rose for Cleary’s lopsided cravats. If Cleary offers for Miss Longacre, Canning might have to endure a scold or two, but he’s too well suited to his job to be cut loose for one outburst. The other footmen would pout, and Lady Longacre knows better than to foment domestic discord when she has a daughter who isn’t launching successfully.”
Though the aging Miss Cleary—Maria—had brought staff with her. Why couldn’t Mendel make do by borrowing one of his aunt’s footmen if he was too tight-fisted to bring along his own valet? Perhaps he was too proud to impose on such an elderly relative?
Hyperia passed me a handkerchief that was more embroidery than linen. All bright flowers and foliage and a light lavender scent. “You think like an officer.”
“I am… I was an officer.” Properly addressed, I was Lieutenant Lord Julian Caldicott, though I preferred to be spared the military rank.
I tossed the peels into the camellias, and Hyperia and I shared the orange. She had given me a few things to think about. What was Godmama truly, truly up to? Sabotaging Maybelle’s chances, ensuring Maybelle had a second Season to choose from a wider field? Presenting Hyperia to me in a field where my former not-quite-intended was the clear standout?
Why did I feel a nagging unwillingness to return to Town when I wasn’t in demand to captain a bowls team, or any other team?
Not that I cared for bowls.
“Let’s have a look at the summer cottage path,” Hyperia said when we emerged from the orangery. “Miss Longacre was all but insistent that you study it again.”
“Then study it, we shall, though bright sunlight has disadvantages when it comes to tracking.”
“How can that be?” Hyperia trundled at my side as we crunched along the gravel path. “I can barely do close work unless I’m sitting in bright sunshine.”
Then her handkerchief represented many sunny hours spent squinting at her embroidery hoop.
“I don’t know why, but tracks are often more clearly visible if the light is minimal and you set a lantern on the ground. The low angle of the illumination makes the tracks show up more easily, which is part of the reason I had a look last night.”
“What’s the rest of the reason?”
“Sightseers will obscure the signs, just as Miss Longacre doubtless did this morning.” Then too, I’d been upset for Hyperia’s sake last night and eager—even desperate—to put what skills I had to use.
We did, indeed, find indications that Miss Longacre had tramped this way and that. Just as she’d said, somebody else wearing larger footwear had marched off through the undergrowth to the path that led to the stable.
“What?” Hyperia asked, coming up on my elbow as I stared at tracks I’d apparently missed the night before.
“Either I am losing my powers, or something is very wrong.”
“I doubt you are losing your powers, but I suppose both could be true, couldn’t they? Somebody is out to do mischief, and you aren’t feeling quite the thing? This house party has to be a strain on your nerves.”
I resented her understanding bitterly, which was ridiculous of me. “Let’s proceed with the out-to-do-mischief hypothesis. I’ll need my sketchbook, and you can sit along the walkway, distracting anybody who thinks to take a spontaneous ramble through this undergrowth.”
Hyperia scuffed her toe through the leaves at her feet. “Must we? I’m fine, Jules. I see no need to stick our noses any further into this situation. If you think it’s not safe for me here, then I can come down with influenza and take my leave.”
Her departure would be blamed on me, but more to the point, Hyperia should not have to retreat from the gathering. She deserved to look over the eligibles, dubious though some of them were. She ought to have her turn twirling down the room in a pretty frock, and God knew she did Society a favor by putting Miss Longacre in her place.
“I’ll explain why the tracks bother me,” I said, “because they do. Very much so.”
“The degree of wilting tells us a lot,” I said, holding up two little branches of rhododendron. “This one,”—I twirled the specimen in my left hand—“was broken off last night and left dangling in the breeze. I saw it, and it helped confirm that your attacker returned to the orangery.”
Hyperia scowled at the twig. “Must we call him my ‘attacker’? Can’t he be the ‘culprit’? The ‘scoundrel’? The ‘malefactor’?”
She was doing what every soldier did after a hard battle, mentally distancing herself from the experience. The near misses, the fallen comrades, the stink and gore and sorrow. Some used humor, some used drink, some memorized Bible verses, but we all tried to shove those days to the back of our mental catalogs until we’d revised them into occasions memorable for bravery, luck, and skill.
“Very well,” I said. “The culprit. Compare last night’s twig with a broken branch I found this morning.” I held up the specimen in my right hand.
“Not as wilted,” Hyperia said. “Might the second bush simply have been in wetter soil?”
“Neither bush shows any curled or drooped leaves, and they are less than twenty feet apart. Both have had adequate rain, though you raise precisely the sort of question a competent tracker would. This bit in my right hand was clearly broken off hours after the one in my left, and there’s more.”
Hyperia looked unconvinced. “More what?”
“More indications that somebody with mischievous intent came around after I’d looked the scene over last night. They sought to create evidence to support Miss Longacre’s version of events.”
“The ran-off-to-the-stable version,” Hyperia said. “Sound can play tricks, especially as the dew is falling. Miss Longacre doubtless had a few glasses of wine with her meal.”
“I trust your hearing,” I said. “I trust that you would note where your… where the wretch went, lest he turn and attempt to make off with you again.” I put the twigs on a nearby rock. “He was already pelting through the trees for the nearest crowd when Miss Longacre insisted he’d lit out for the stable.”
Hyperia studied the two wilting exhibits from the prosecution. “You are saying that my… the culprit had an accomplice. Somebody who wanted to cast suspicion on the stable lads, or somebody who offered that suggestion to the real scoundrel so he could come back and arrange matters for his convenience.”
“Possibly, or over cards last night, somebody—without any nefarious intent—recounted Maybelle’s words about the stable, and the miscreant himself got ideas. In any case, we have further indications that the man who put his hands on you was a guest. We still don’t know why.”
“Because he thought I was somebody else. Nearly every woman used the retiring room after supper, Jules.”
Hyperia clearly wanted that explanation to suffice. I wanted to get to the truth.
“Before we tackle that part,” I said, “let’s finish with the evidence. This morning’s footprints are not the same size as last night’s, though they are fairly close, and the ones leading to the stable were made at a more deliberate pace than those leading to the orangery.”
“How can you tell?”
“Most of us amble about, landing on the heel first and pushing off with the toe as we prepare for the next step. If you’re running, your weight lands with greater force, and your stride lengthens. The fellow bolting for the orangery took long strides—nearly as long as my own running stride—and his heels made fairly deep depressions in the soft ground. This morning’s intruder was shuffling about by comparison. He had a short stride and left nowhere near as deep an impression. Either the second person was considerably lighter despite having roughly the same size feet, or he was merely toddling.”
Hyperia scowled at the undergrowth. “Or both.”
“Or both.”
She struck out for the summer cottage. “You are sure these other tracks weren’t here last night? Sure you didn’t miss them?”
“Almost. I am a thorough tracker, Hyperia. I was good at it, and one doesn’t lose the knack any more than one loses the knack of forming letters into words.”
She plunked down on the steps leading up to the summer cottage, a two-story whitewashed stone structure with a wide porch encircling three sides. The cottage had been built to nestle against the shade of the home wood and catch a prevailing southerly breeze. Had not Makepeace been sitting seventy-five yards away on its majestic rise, I would have enjoyed biding in such a place.
“How do you learn to track?” she asked. “It’s not as if the squirrels will tell you, ‘I passed this way on Thursday at noon, and that’s where the cat came along to sniff my trail on Saturday.’”
“You pay attention,” I said. “You listen to anybody with tracking knowledge, and you set up little studies for yourself. Tramp through a muddy patch one day, come back the next and look at how the footprint has changed. Look closely enough to sketch it. Break off a twig and note how quickly that variety of shrub wilts on a hot day versus a cold day, a windy day, a foggy day. Expert trackers have a nearly mystical ability to read signs, but they tend to do best in their own locality. They become intimately familiar with the weather, the behavior of the soils, and the flora and fauna of their home territory.”
Hyperia plucked a sprig from the bed of lemon balm growing on either side of the steps. “I don’t believe I’ve heard you string together that many words since you last came home on winter leave.”
Hyperia paid attention too. I’d do well to remember that.
“This tracking business, Jules, the deducing and peering beneath rocks, you like it.”
“I was valued for my reconnaissance skills in Spain. Tracking is one way to add to the store of facts at an officer’s command and to reduce the degree to which his decisions are based on conjecture. Tracking skills come down on the side of reason and logic. If they can be of use bringing a criminal to justice, I will offer what I have to give.”
“And if he wasn’t a criminal?” Hyperia asked, crushing the lemon balm in her fist and releasing its characteristic tangy fragrance. “If he was a trysting partner who simply got hold of the wrong woman? That is the most likely explanation, and we do nobody any favors by ferreting out his identity.”
The scent of the herb was pleasant and soothing. Hyperia’s company was pleasant and not soothing. Her questions reminded me that though we’d known each other forever and been almost engaged, we’d also spent little informal time together in adulthood.
And no time at all lounging on shady porch steps, actually conversing about something other than the latest risqué wager at White’s or a younger son gone for a tourist one step ahead of his creditors.
“Two factors weigh against your hypothesis of a bungled assignation, Hyperia. First, if you were embraced in error, why go to all the trouble to manipulate the evidence? House parties are nothing if not occasions for frolic, and a mere kiss by moonlight hardly signifies, no matter who the parties were, provided both are willing.”
She sniffed at her fingers. “If Lord Longacre was expressing his affection for Lady Ophelia, I doubt Lady Longacre would view the situation benignly.” Hyperia clearly took a dim view of marital infidelity, which was nearly quaint of her, given the circles she traveled in.
“If Lord Longacre or Mendel Cleary, for example, took liberties with you in error, they would apologize, beg your pardon, and hope nobody saw anything. They would claim to have stumbled in the dark, to have meant nothing by their clumsiness. They would not steal away like an inept thief.”
Hyperia turned her face up to the sun, exposing her graceful profile. “If those gentlemen were thinking clearly, they’d smooth the moment over. If they were very ashamed or facing grave consequences for erring, they might panic.”
She had a point. A man didn’t panic over stealing a kiss at a house party. He laughed it off, expressed contrition, and wiggled away from responsibility for his actions—unless others could construe the situation as compromising the lady’s good name, which this batch of guests would be only too happy to do.
Who was the most profligate bachelor among those assembled? Would the prospect of matrimony to Hyperia have sent him into a panic?
That same possibility had sent me into a panic, though I’d had my reasons.
Hyperia tossed the mangled lemon balm into the bed from whence she’d plucked it. “You said two factors weighed against dismissing the whole thing as a bungled overture. The first is all the fussing about in the bracken, though I take leave to debate your conclusion. What’s the second?”
“You are distinctive.”
She glowered at me. “You mean I am short.”
“You are petite, dark-haired, and you’ve set aside the insipid pastels the sweet young things are adorned in, despite pale colors suiting few of them. I suspect Miss Longacre’s bolder wardrobe is an attempt to emulate you.” Though both ladies had worn pale shawls the previous night, a factor that supported Hyperia’s mistaken-identity hypothesis.
Hyperia wrinkled her nose. “Lady Longacre should have made Maybelle wait a few years to leave the pastels behind. I’m on the shelf now, or as good as, and I have my own funds. Maybelle is barely out of the schoolroom, and her money is all tied up in trusts and competences until she turns one-and-twenty.”
“How do you know that, Hyperia?”
“Healy came across the information.”
“Why do I have the sense you came across the information and passed it along to Healy?” As any good reconnaissance officer would.
“Damn you, Jules. Lady Ophelia let it slip, or pretended to let it slip. Healy has no need to marry for money, but some man will come into significant means if he can talk Miss Maybelle around.”
Actually, the talking-round would be aimed at Maybelle’s father. She was not of age in the marital sense, and a match undertaken without parental approval could be set aside by the bishops.
“Who else among the ladies here is petite, dark-haired, and no longer wearing vestal robes?” I asked.
Hyperia rose. “I’d have to think about that. One or two of the chaperones. I wish you’d let this drop.”
I was on my feet as well, though the shady steps and the lazy droning of honeybees tempted me to linger. I hadn’t spent much time in the country since coming back from France, and rural life had its charms.
“That’s what you want?” I asked, peering down at her. “Put it aside, a minor mystery of no consequence?”
“That’s what I want. Further inquiries into a passing incident can only inflame tempers and fuel gossip. Healy ought to be here tomorrow, and then you can return to Town.”
She wanted me to drop the matter, and yet, she also wanted me to remain on hand until her brother arrived. I concluded that the passing incident had upset her more than she cared to admit, while for me the notion that some other fellow could hold top honors in the scoundrel department, albeit temporarily, appealed too strongly.
Explaining the evidence to Hyperia had also reminded me that I’d had some skills—once upon a time in a land far away—and I had enjoyed using those skills again, however modestly.
I returned Hyperia to the manor house, where she joined a group of ladies intent on practicing their battledore. I then shut myself into the conservatory, where Ormstead yet communed with Morpheus, found a comfy reading chair, and mentally began reviewing the guest list.
Despite Hyperia’s request, I would keep an eye out for any petite, dark-haired chaperones and the bachelors who either pointedly ignored them or made too much of them. I was looking for a man nearly my height, based on his length of stride, and—this came to me as I was halfway asleep—a gait rendered slightly uneven by the application of Hyperia’s heel to his foot.
I hadn’t asked her which foot had been her target, more’s the pity, but I could watch carefully and wait, at least until Healy arrived.
Battledore was intended to be an amiable diversion, the shuttlecock genteelly lobbed back and forth among the players while laughter filled the air. The nitwit bachelors Lady Longacre had assembled were determined to turn a boring game into successive displays of single combat.
A lady and a gentleman were paired on each side, making up two teams of two each, but after the third quartet of contestants had quit the court, the nature of play had been set. The ladies stood by, rackets nominally at the ready, while the idiots—I could not refer to them as gentlemen—whacked at the shuttlecock as if they’d ram it down one another’s throats.
This was all supposed to be great good fun until Osgood Banter miscalculated in his attempt to break Cleary’s nose and gave Miss Henrietta Ellison a shiner instead. I expected Lord Longacre to put a stop to the nonsense, but he was deep in conversation with one of the local squires and gesturing frequently in the direction of the yearling paddock. Lady Ophelia wasn’t on hand to speak peace unto the heathen, and Lady Longacre was pretending grown men typically tried to commit murder with a bunch of cork and feathers.
“Champagne, my lord?” Canning kept his voice down, but I gathered he’d been hovering at my elbow for some moments.
“Thank you.” I took a glass, but did not drink. “Did somebody lose more than he should have at cards last night?”
“Several somebodies,” Canning said softly, his gaze straying to Miss Ellison, who was protesting that her eye would be fine, really, even as redness became redness-and-swelling. “Mr. Cleary enjoyed extraordinary luck.”
Canning’s tone discreetly conveyed that he disapproved of such luck. Another slight breach of decorum.
“He asked you to valet him?”
“He assumed I’d be delighted. He had no clue how impressing me into his personal service would have burdened the rest of the staff. I’ve no wish to stay up until all hours waiting for the dashing swain to stumble into bed, just so I can untie the cravat he’s too drunk to remove himself.”
Canning’s speech was educated, and yet, his sentiments were pure infantry. “Did you take the king’s shilling, Canning?”
Now he adopted the impassive, middle-distance gaze of the well-trained footman—or soldier at attention. “Three years. I was a sharpshooter for most of that.”
One out of every sixth British male had worn a uniform in recent years, and one out of ten had carried arms in battle. We were no longer the nation of shopkeepers various Frenchmen had labeled us, if we ever had been.
“God bless the Rifles,” I said, lifting my glass and reciting a prayer common to many an officer. With modern weapons and eagle eyes, the sharpshooters of the 95th Regiment of Foot had become legendary, and deservedly so. They were often the first into battle, and unlike the usual infantry unit that formed squares and fired a general volley at an advancing enemy, the sharpshooters aimed their weapons with deadly accuracy from strategically chosen cover.
“God bless the Rifles,” Canning said, “but wearing livery is much safer than wearing a uniform, my lord. Ye gods, her ladyship will allow play to resume. I’d best fetch Miss Ellison some ice, if you’ll excuse me.”
He marched off toward the refreshment tent, while Miss Longacre stepped in to take Miss Ellison’s place. Cleary was apparently as stupid as he was lucky, because not two minutes later, his shot whizzed by Miss Longacre’s ear, close enough that the feathers of the shuttlecock caught her earbob, and the whole business became tangled in her hair.
My sisters would expect me to intervene before one of the ladies was maimed. I was already persona non grata and planning to leave on the morrow, so what could speaking up possibly cost me? I set my champagne aside, brandished my plain linen handkerchief, and approached the latest victim of Cleary’s bad sportsmanship.
“You are bleeding,” I said, passing Miss Longacre my handkerchief. “Hold still, and I’ll get the blasted thing free of your hair.”
Lady Longacre chose now to get to her feet and bustle over, all maternal concern. “I’ll see to my daughter, my lord. Maybelle, one can use the racket to deflect a shot, you know.”
“Mama, I’m not a child. Did he ruin my earbob? Why did I have to wear my pearls today?”
I was halfway succeeding at freeing Miss Longacre from the shuttlecock, so I pressed on despite Lady Longacre’s clear wish that I remove myself from the vicinity of her daughter’s person.
“My lord,” Lady Longacre said, all but cramming her elbow into my ribs, “I can manage quite well if you’ll—”
“There.” I held out Miss Longacre’s pearl earbob and stuffed the shuttlecock into my pocket. “Your bauble appears undamaged, though we can’t say the same for your ear. You’ll want to repair your coiffure as well, I’m sure.”
The men appeared to find the whole situation amusing, with Sir Thomas cuffing Cleary playfully on the shoulder and some other fellow pantomiming a hit to the earlobe.
“Thank you,” Miss Longacre said, snatching her earbob from my grasp and shoving her racket at me. “If you’ll excuse us, my lord.”
She sent her father—still oblivious in the shade of the refreshment tent—a glower, then stalked off, her mother fussing and fretting beside her, while I… I considered the racket Miss Longacre had passed into my keeping.
In my head, I heard my brother Arthur, sounding very much like our late papa, warning me to resist temptation. Don’t be an ass. Don’t stoop to their level. Tantrums are for children.
I hefted the racket and assayed my emotions. I was angry, though I was not having a tantrum. The other fellows, bringing their resentments from the card table to the battledore court, were behaving badly.
“Maybe you should play for the ladies,” Sir Thomas sneered. “But then, you’re the next thing to an invalid, from what I hear. Too mentally unsound to recall what most of us will never forget. Wouldn’t be fair to the distaff to saddle them with the likes of you.”
In point of fact, I had not been included on any team, though had Healy West been present—he for whom I temporarily stood in—he’d doubtless have been near the top of the roster.
“Right,” I said, smiling at Sir Thomas. “Seeing as the ladies are down a few in numbers, I’ll happily join their side. Cleary, I believe it’s my serve.”
Osgood Banter tossed his racket to a footman. “I’m for a glass of champagne. You’re on your own, Caldicott.”
That’s Lord Julian to you. “No need to state the obvious, Banter. Cleary, shall we enjoy an exhibition match?”