|
|
JAMES, EVER APPRECIATIVE of the absurd, showed what he thought was a very reasonable amount of delight when Julia and Louisa informed him on the way to the masquerade of the “husband order” they had determined to place for Julia. He promised, with a rebellious twinkle in his eye, to help root out someone first-rate for her.
This casual attitude offended Lady Irving.
“I think it’s a very sensible idea,” she barked. “Julia’s got her eyes open. A young miss ought to have her eyes open when she’s sorting through a lot of riffraff, which today’s young men are.” After a long pause, she grudgingly added, “Present company excluded.”
“How charming you always are, my lady,” James said with a grin. “Such great age brings great wisdom as well.”
And thus, with the score tied one to one between the countess and the viscount, the party entered Xavier House.
Lady Irving ran on ahead, crowing about finding Lord Xavier and getting together a “spirited” and “fun” game of whist for “real stakes,” which her relatives now knew was likely to involve some shockingly deep play. For James, the fun began not with cards, but when his acquaintance Freddie Pellington darted up to the remaining three members of the party and pumped the viscount’s hand energetically.
“Dash it, old boy, it’s dashed good to see you. Damme, I didn’t know you were back in town. Thought you’d run off to the country for good. Back in London, though, ain’t you?”
“Yes, here I am, as you see,” James replied patiently, accepting Pellington’s energetic clap on the back. Freddie Pellington was a kind enough young man, but definitely not the brightest fellow of his acquaintance.
And that’s when his brilliant idea struck.
He couldn’t say he had relished the idea of helping Julia through a courtship. The idea of logically identifying a husband had seemed amusing when she and Louisa had first revealed their scheme, but it hadn’t sat well with him once he had a chance to mull it over. He was meant to help sell her off? Never mind that it was to be to someone who was kind, funny, handsome, wealthy, warm-hearted, et cetera, et cetera. If such a paragon existed—which was doubtful—why on earth would James ever want to spend any time around him? He would feel positively inferior, and honestly, he would probably want to slug the fellow for making eyes at Julia.
He couldn’t just refuse to cooperate with his betrothed’s request, though. However . . . he realized now that he could honor the letter of the request, if not the spirit. He would find Julia exactly the type of man she had requested in a husband. No less, but certainly no more.
He felt better already.
“My dear Louisa—Julia—please allow me to introduce Mr. Frederic Pellington,” he said triumphantly, then introduced the ladies to the young man in return. With a speaking look to both women, James added, “He’s a very kind man. Aren’t you, Freddie?”
“Charmed, charmed,” burbled Pellington as he made his bow to the ladies. “Any friend of Matheson’s, you know. Friend of mine. Happy to meet you.” James’s words seemed to sink in just then, and he continued, “Dash it, Matheson, no need to go on about me. Always try to be kind and whatnot, but you know, definitely a man of the world.”
James nudged Julia significantly and nodded to drive the point home unmistakably. Her eyes widened in surprise, and she darted a quick look at him, as if to say, Really?
He couldn’t blame her for being suspicious. Perhaps he’d stretched the limits of her credulity too much by presenting her with Pellington right off. The man was usually a positive pink of the ton, but tonight he had outdone himself for the masquerade. He was wearing a gold waistcoat with an untucked shirt under it for modesty’s sake, extremely baggy purple trousers, and—most unfortunate of all—a scarlet turban exactly like the one Julia was wearing.
Still, it was worth a try to throw the two together. If Julia gave him the slightest encouragement, Pellington would talk her ear off all evening and she’d never have the opportunity even to look at another man. And then she’d be safe from suitors for the night, because there wasn’t a chance she’d take Freddie seriously as a possible husband.
Finally, Julia replied to Pellington, and James knew she had taken the bait. “How . . . how nice to meet you,” she faltered, making her curtsy. “I think your costume is very interesting.”
Pellington’s eyes blinked wide open, and a bright smile spread across his face. “Do you really? Dashed kind of you, I must say. I wasn’t sure about it myself, but Xavier insisted on fancy dress. Never fond of a costume in the common way, but decided I’d get a bit creative this time. All among friends here, you know; just a very small gathering.”
“Pellington’s wealthy, too,” James added ruthlessly. “And he’s fond of children.”
“Are you really?” Julia replied weakly, shooting another are-you-sure-about-this look at James, which he met with his brightest, most open smile. All right, maybe it was more of a grin.
“Oh, well, dash it, Matheson,” Pellington replied, blushing. “Haven’t got any children myself; not that type of a fellow. But someday, you know, and all that. Always liked them. Seem like nice little creatures. Have quite a knack with them, actually.”
A memory struck him. “Did you know you can soothe a baby with brandy? I mean, it always works to settle me, but I wouldn’t have thought a baby would have a taste for it. But I tried it on my brother’s baby when he was fussing—the baby, I mean—and the little fellow took to it dashed fondly.”
“You . . . gave brandy to a baby?” Julia looked pale under her shocking red turban, the heavy weight of which was already beginning to shift to one side. Blinking in agitation, she shoved it back into place, wreaking unwitting havoc on her pinned-up hair.
Louisa, under cover of the long, gauzy folds of her Classical dress, ground one delicately slippered foot onto James’s boot. His boot was thick enough that he could hardly feel it, but he still got the idea. All right, time to salvage the situation.
“Pellington was just joking. Weren’t you?” He shot the other man a significant look.
“What? Joking? No indeed,” that young man replied, completely missing the meaning of James’s glance. “Mind you, didn’t give the baby very much. Only a few drops. Although,” he confessed, “his mother caught me at it, and she was dashed angry. Made me swear not to do it again. Can’t see why, because it worked like a charm. But promised her all the same.”
He smiled ingenuously. “Always want to keep a female happy, you know. I say, have you met our host yet? I’d be dashed glad to introduce you, if you’d permit me the honor.”
He seemed to come back to an awareness of his surroundings then, and added, “Dash it, Matheson, would you mind if I took Miss Herington off your hands? I’d consider it quite an honor. Love to show her around and take her to Xavier and whatnot.”
Without daring to look at Julia for fear his face would crack into a laugh, James nodded and waved the pair away. “I leave her in your capable hands, Pellington. It’s very kind of you.”
Julia looked back at them once, desperately, as Freddie Pellington bore her off. James could overhear him saying, as they walked, “Went to school with Matheson, you know. Dashed good fellow. Bit of a stick, though. Didn’t even come in fancy dress. So you really do like mine?”
That had worked better even than he had hoped. There was absolutely no way Julia would be meeting any potential husbands tonight.
The thought probably ought to make James ashamed, since it went against the express wishes of the two gently bred ladies who had asked for his help. But it didn’t. He felt positively triumphant.
James’s triumph was interrupted by another surprisingly hearty stomp on his foot.
“Really.” Louisa looked at him reproachfully as soon as Pellington and Julia were out of earshot. “That was unkind of you, James.”
“Unkind?” he repeated, unable to resist. “All right, maybe he’s not exactly the type of man she’s looking for. But he really is everything she asked for in a husband.”
Louisa continued to stare at him as if he were a fool.
He folded his arms and looked back at her defensively. “He is. That’s what she gets for not specifying intelligence.” He knew it was a childish response, but he was feeling a bit childish right now.
Louisa raised her gaze to heaven. “Fine. Please add ‘intelligence’ to the list of qualities Julia is looking for in a husband.”
She had him cornered there. If Julia had ever managed to escape Pellington’s verbal cage, James had had a string of vapid young time-wasters in mind to keep her occupied throughout the evening. Now he would have to think of someone she might like, or Louisa would see through him in a second.
In fact, she already seemed to be seeing through him with uncomfortable clarity. “What are you doing, James? You know perfectly well Pellington isn’t the sort of man who’d make her a good husband. Why even encourage her to spend any time with him, beyond a courteous introduction?”
“He’s not a bad fellow,” he excused. “And she seemed interested in him.”
“She was being polite,” Louisa replied, smiling sweetly over gritted teeth. “Which, by the way, is the only quality that is keeping me from kicking you behind the knee and making your legs buckle, right here in the drawing room of Xavier House.”
At James’s startled look, she explained logically, “Well, I can hardly kick you in the shin. My slippers are far too soft; I’d hurt my foot more than I’d hurt you.”
“Your point is taken,” James said calmly. “I promise to introduce her only to the finest men in England from this point forward.”
Inside, however, he seethed just a little. Why should Louisa assume that he’d be willing to go along with this harebrained scheme of theirs? Who ever heard of ordering a husband like a Christmas dinner? He felt like he was the poor goose in question, pursued, caught, and roasted. These women were using him.
To be fair, Julia was to be family, so they must think he would be willing to help with any favor they deemed necessary. And he should; he really should.
Except this one was difficult for him. Unexpectedly difficult. He knew it shouldn’t be. After all, he wasn’t permitting himself to think of Julia in anything but the most friendly, casual way. Usually.
He decided to drop that thought and try to enjoy the rest of the evening. He tossed the end of his cape over one arm—despite Pellington’s assertion, he had come in a costume, albeit a cursory one of a domino over his usual evening clothes—and offered Louisa his arm. He might be a goose, but he need not act like a pig as well.
“Come along, my dear. Let’s see who else is here.”
Louisa came with him willingly enough, and over the next few hours they spoke with nearly everyone at the gathering. As their host, Lord Xavier was the first person they sought out to pay their respects.
This young gentleman, dressed as a Georgian of their grandparents’ generation in powdered wig and knee breeches, with a black mask over his eyes, was regaling a group of bachelor friends with a decidedly improper story involving an opera dancer, a bottle of champagne, and a pineapple. James was interested in hearing the ending of it, but the young man stopped the tale as soon as he saw Louisa.
“Ah, you must be Miss Louisa Oliver,” he transitioned smoothly, making his bow and kissing her hand. He lifted his mask to his forehead to remove any obstruction to his vision. “How enchanting to meet you at last. Or should I call you”—he cast his eyes up and down her form, taking in the details of her costume—“the goddess Diana, perhaps?”
“Lord Xavier.” She curtsied. “The honor is all on my side. And Helen of Troy was the intention, though that’s a bit presumptuous of me, isn’t it? Diana is equally flattering and will certainly do very well.”
She arched a brow at the young earl’s flattery, and James felt proud to be escorting her. She could hold her own socially, he knew it. See how the young men who had been speaking with Xavier were now looking at her? They gaped at her, dazzled by her Classical beauty, as if she truly were the goddess he had called her.
“Xavier,” James acknowledged his friend. “Thank you for the invitation. Are you portraying our ailing, lamented king in his youth?”
“The Sun King, rather, I think,” Xavier drawled. “Our George never enjoyed wine, women, and song nearly so much as did Louis the Fourteenth. You could hardly expect me to portray a dull creature, now could you?”
He smiled, slow and dangerous and lewd, and Louisa drew in her breath sharply. Was she indignant? James, mindful of his duty to safeguard her from impropriety, nodded to his friend and thanked him again, drawing her away from the group of men.
“I don’t think he would do for Julia,” Louisa whispered in his ear, casting a dubious glance back over her shoulder as they walked away. “That look he gave me—I felt positively undressed. It was very uncomfortable.”
“No,” James said shortly. “He wouldn’t do.” Behind him, he heard the Sun King resume the tale about the pineapple. He looked back to see his old acquaintance’s eyes still on Louisa, thoughtful and dark, even as he held his friends spellbound with his bawdy story. “He definitely would not do at all.”
“He’s a friend of yours, though?” she asked doubtfully, a worried crease between her brows.
“Yes, he is,” James replied. “We grew up together, as Pellington and I did. I don’t know that I’ve got all that much in common with either of them anymore. Xavier’s still very wild. He came into an enormous fortune at an early age and seems to be doing his best to run through it in any number of creative ways.”
“He’s quite handsome, though,” Louisa mused. “And obviously intelligent.”
Handsome? Yes, James knew Xavier’s lean, dark looks appealed to many women—as did his air of barely curbed wildness. Intelligent? That too. He could read people with uncanny swiftness, he always rose the winner from a game of cards or chance, and he could be very quick-witted, even uncomfortably so.
However . . .
“He’s not kind enough,” James informed her. “Not for Julia. Of the two, she’d be much better off with Pellington.”
Louisa shuddered. “Then we obviously need to find a third possibility for her.”
As it turned out, Julia found that third possibility herself. Pellington had steered her around the room and into a smaller side salon, introducing her in his fractured, enthusiastic style to several acquaintances. At the moment James and Louisa reencountered them, they were speaking in the smaller room with Sir Stephen Saville, a baronet in his late thirties.
“Damnation,” James said when he saw them, ignoring Louisa’s gasp at his unguarded language.
Pellington was hovering around Julia and the baronet as they sat on a sofa, interjecting frequent comments that were mostly ignored by the other two. Sir Stephen, wearing a simple black domino with its accompanying mask flipped up atop his head rather than over his face, was staring spellbound at Julia, holding onto her every word as if it were a gem. Julia, for her part, was chattering away merrily to the older gentleman, darting occasional replies to Pellington and frequently shoving her slipping turban back into place atop her now-untidy hair.
“This looks much more promising,” Louisa commented in James’s ear. “Who’s that with Julia and Pellington?”
“Sir Stephen Saville,” he replied shortly. “Widower. Childless. Lives in Surrey much of the time. Known to be on the lookout for another wife.”
“Is he kind?”
“Yes, if you like stuffiness.”
“Intelligent?” Louisa asked, ignoring James’s editorial comment.
“I suppose. We’re looking together at a parcel of land near his estate; I rather thought I could learn something about hog farming from him.”
“Really,” said Louisa, and James could almost hear the wheels turning in her head. “So, financially solvent, too.”
“Yes,” James reluctantly admitted. “He is.”
“Well, then, I think our search is over. Probably the best thing you or I can do is leave them alone,” she decided.
“I want to hear what they’re saying,” James protested, and tugged Louisa’s arm. He couldn’t help himself. What was Julia saying that had the older man so transfixed?
“A kitchenmaid or scullery maid only wants a bit of kindness,” she was telling the baronet as they drew closer. “I do understand that the poor creatures can be skittish, but a housekeeper or cook who shouts will only make matters worse. Why, we haven’t had a single broken dish since we gave the cook a rise in wages and added an extra scullery maid at Stonemeadows. The cook is so much happier now, and the maids are, too.”
All right, James thought with relief; so at least it was hardly romantic.
Sir Stephen, however, reacted as warmly as if Julia had stripped off her clothes right in front of him. More warmly, in fact, considering the man’s well-known sense of propriety.
“Really?” the baronet replied, astounded. “So you take quite an interest in the staffing of a household, then?” He looked at Julia as if she were delicious, and he were starving.
Unable to help himself, James cleared his throat loudly to draw their attention to his presence, ignoring another of Louisa’s discreet stomps on his foot.
Julia turned at once, and beamed at him. “I wondered where you’d got to. Have you two met Sir Stephen Saville?”
“Indeed, I have had the honor of long acquaintance with his lordship,” the baronet explained, standing to acknowledge the arrival of the domino-clad viscount and Helen of Troy.
James took his cue to present Louisa, who responded to her introduction to Sir Stephen with more warmth than James had almost ever seen her display. She was almost . . . effusive.
Lady Charissa Bradleigh bounced up just then, saving James from having to decide how to respond to what seemed to him a horribly obvious attempt on Louisa’s part to throw Julia together with a man who was patently much too old for her, and much too dull. Even if Sir Stephen did, technically, have all the qualities Julia was looking for in a husband—well, damn it, the fellow simply wasn’t right for her.
Charissa demanded all their attention at once. “Oh, do come,” she gasped, without greeting or preface. “Lord Xavier has promised that we may have dancing, and that there will be a waltz!”
In fact, couples were already beginning to trickle into formation for a country dance, right there in Lord Xavier’s drawing room. Wonderful. Perfect. Sir Stephen would ask Julia to dance, and his regard would be absolutely cemented once he had her all to himself for another half hour. Any man’s would be.
His sigh drew Charissa’s large gray eyes to him. “Ah, Lord Matheson! Don’t you intend to dance?” She batted her eyelashes at him with what was probably meant to be appealing flirtatiousness.
“Yes, of course,” he said hurriedly, with a speaking look to Louisa. Without a word, she accepted his hand, and he led her to the bottom of the forming row of couples.
“Thank you for that,” he said in a low tone as they waited for the dance to begin. Sure enough, Julia and Sir Stephen were right behind them, followed by the determined young Lady Charissa dragging a cheerfully protesting Freddie Pellington by the elbow.
“For what?” she asked, puzzled.
“Coming to dance with me,” he prompted. “Getting me away from . . . ah, you know,” he indicated Charissa with an incline of the head. Although perhaps he did owe the energetic earl’s daughter a debt of gratitude for interrupting the world’s coziest conversation between Julia and Sir Boring. Sir Much Too Old for Her. Sir Stick in the Mud.
The fact that such thoughts were beneath the dignity of a grown man, and a viscount no less, did nothing to temper his desire to boot the baronet out of Lord Xavier’s house.
Louisa replied to his thankful admission with a wry smile. “Isn’t it my duty to follow where you lead?”
And before he even tried to wrap his head around what that might mean, the music began, and the dance separated them.
***
THE NIGHT ENDED LATE, with much more dancing followed by a spirited and not precisely proper game of charades. Lord Xavier had apparently determined all the clues with the help of several other eager young gentlemen, because the company found itself acting out “Madame de Pompadour,” “Mrs. Fitzherbert,” “Nell Gwyn,” and a series of other royal mistresses. Xavier’s eyes glittered with amusement at the young ladies, especially, as they attempted to create a tableau that would reveal the answer without compromising propriety.
James thought this not quite well done of the man, but had to admit that he himself seemed to be the only gentleman, besides Sir Stephen, not laughing uproariously and having an excellent time. Good Lord, he had never expected to be in company with Sir Tedious. Maybe he really was sobering up now that he was an engaged man.
Thinking of his engagement, as his party began hunting for Lady Irving in preparation for their departure at the end of the night, he had the uncomfortable feeling that he might not have done right by Louisa on this evening. She had asked for his help, and he had given it only reluctantly. She hadn’t seemed to think his behavior odd, but he wondered if she wondered why he’d acted that way.
Honestly, he wondered why as well. Why couldn’t he just let Julia find a kind, intelligent, et cetera, et cetera man who would treat her well, as she deserved? Didn’t she deserve to be as happy as Louisa?
Ah, as happy as Louisa.
Now how happy was that? He couldn’t help but wonder, as he watched her cameo-calm face, her eyes searching the crowd for her aunt’s familiar bobbing ostrich plumes. He had absolutely no idea how happy she was. But he certainly hadn’t helped matters with his reluctance to fall in with her husband-finding scheme. He hoped she wouldn’t look too deeply into his reasons, and he would try not to either.
Lady Irving made her appearance from a second side salon, followed by several other card players. She was holding the corner of her black domino in front of her to create a makeshift pouch for her winnings.
“Forgot my blasted reticule,” she explained. “Look what I’ve won, though; I skinned Sylvia Alleyneham alive tonight. The poor woman’s never had a head for whist.”
“Aunt,” Julia said sweetly, coming up next to James, “isn’t it vulgar to display your winnings like that?”
James grinned at Lady Irving’s nonplussed expression. After a frozen moment, she barked, “For you it would be. Don’t you worry about me, though, young miss. I’d like to see the person who would call me vulgar.”
“I think you just did,” James replied. Her ladyship’s annoyed harrumph of reply was more beautiful in his ears than any music could have been.
That was why he didn’t want to introduce Julia around. Fulfill her list of requirements though he might, Sir Stephen would never, never appreciate her sense of humor.
Not like he did.
Damnation, there was another one of those thoughts he ought not to be having.