A Valentine Wedding (10 page)

Emma accepted a cup of coffee from a footman’s tray and moved imperceptibly closer to the princess and her new visitor. There was something about the man that caught her attention. Something almost intriguing about his dark looks, about the way he held himself, as if poised on the brink of some dramatic action. She caught herself noticing that he was stockier than Alasdair, but his clothes didn’t sit as well on his frame. Perhaps they were not so well cut as Alasdair’s, she thought. Alasdair, of course, would know at a glance whether the man had had his coat made by Weston, or Shultz, or Schweitzer and Davidson … or some other, lesser tailor. But then, perhaps it was the frame that was at fault … the shoulders didn’t fill the coat with quite the perfection of Alasdair’s; the leg was not quite as long or well formed, so there was the faintest wrinkle to the pantaloons; the hips were perhaps a trifle foreshortened….

“Lady Emma, permit me to make Mr. Denis known to you.” Princess Esterhazy became aware of Emma standing close by. “He, too, has but newly arrived in town. Mr. Denis, may I present Lady Emma Beaumont.”

“Mr. Denis.” Emma was not sorry to have her comparative assessment interrupted. She moved forward with her hand outstretched. He bowed over it and raised it to his lips. The gesture struck Emma as slightly affected with its courtly flourish, and she reclaimed her hand at the earliest opportunity. “You are French?”

“An émigré family, ma’am.” He smiled, showing very white, slightly crooked teeth. “I was a boy when we fled France in ’91. Some kind friends of my parents living in Kent took us in when we first arrived.”

“Do you remember much of the revolution, sir?” Emma had always been fascinated by the bloody horror of the Terror.

“I have some memories. Do they interest you?” Paul’s smile deepened, his eyes focused on her face, and Emma felt a strange and disturbing intimacy develop between them. He was looking at her as if she had become the only person in the room. It had been a long time since anyone but the lumpy sons of country squires had regarded her with such pointed masculine attention. It was pure flirtation, of course, but she was not averse to the game … no, not at all.

She smiled, her eyes narrowing a little. “I must own to something of an obsession with the events of that dreadful time, sir. If you could bear to satisfy my curiosity, you’d find me a most attentive listener.”

“I should be delighted.” He offered her his arm and
they moved away from the center of the room to a sofa set in a window embrasure.

Princess Esterhazy nodded to herself. She liked to do favors for her friends and relations, and although she couldn’t for the life of her place this great-aunt connection, if her husband said it was so, she was happy to take his word for it. The young man seemed unexceptionable. His manner was well-bred, his dress, if lacking the extremes of dandyism, perfectly conformable. And if he managed to secure the heiress and her two hundred thousand pounds, then the princess considered that she would have performed a very good deed.

Maria Witherspoon, however, was not so complaisant. She had a very simple and pragmatic view of the world. Emma should not be wasting her time on an impoverished and insignificant newcomer. She had come to London to get a husband, and Maria saw no reason why that husband shouldn’t bear the blood of kings.

She bore down on the couple, wreathed in smiles, saying, “Emma dear, we must be on our way…. Oh, how do you do, sir?” She raised an inquiring eyebrow at Emma’s companion.

Emma was surprised. Maria was not usually haughty, but there was a definite loftiness in her manner, as if she were crushing the pretensions of some social mushroom. She made introductions and watched in amazement as Maria bowed coldly. Paul Denis seemed not to notice, and greeted Emma’s chaperone with courtly attention. But as Emma bade him farewell, he gave her a comical look of dismay that brought ready laughter into her eyes.

“I fear your duenna thinks me unworthy,” he murmured
as he took Emma’s hand. “Dare I call in Mount Street, or will she deny me?”

“Maria is not mistress in Mount Street,” Emma said, and then instantly, as she heard her own faint hauteur, despised her arrogance. It was a besetting sin. One, of course, that she shared with Alasdair.

“Then may I call on you?”

“Please do.” She smiled warmly, adding, “Maria is the very best of companions. She watches over me like a mother hen.”

“That has its comforts,” Paul said with a gravity belied by the expression in his eyes.

Emma laughed. “Yes, indeed it does, sir. I give you good day.”

She made her farewells, conscious of a lighthearted and exuberant feeling of gaiety; a feeling that hitherto she had always associated with her music, with dancing until dawn, or after a particularly splendid run with the hounds … or after some mad prank with Ned and Alasdair.

“I wonder if Mr. Denis is quite the thing,” Maria ventured, once they were back in the barouche.

“He’s related to Princess Esterhazy, Maria. How can he not be?” Emma tucked her hands into her sable muff against a sharp gust of wind whipping around the corner of Curzon Street.

“I don’t know, my love. But there was something about him that I couldn’t quite like.”

“Oh, stuff, Maria,” Emma scoffed lightly. “He’ll be seen everywhere. Do you imagine Princess Esterhazy is going to deny him a voucher for Almack’s?”

“I daresay not.” But Maria remained unconvinced and was uncharacteristically silent on the drive back to Mount Street.

Once inside, Emma cast aside her muff and her
gloves and strode energetically to the music room, unpinning her velvet hat as she went, handing it to an attentive footman. She was under a familiar compulsion. “I’m going to practice for a while, Maria.”

Maria understood that to mean that she would probably not see Emma again until the evening.

Chapter Five

“Good afternoon, Harris. Is Lady Emma in?” Alasdair strolled up the shallow stairs into the hall. “Ah, yes, I hear that she is.” He nodded in the direction of the music room, then cocked his head. “Must be in a good humor,” he observed, tossing his driving whip on a pier table and turning to allow a footman to help him off with his driving cape.

“Yes, sir,” Harris said. He had been butler in the Grantley household since Ned’s birth and understood exactly what Lord Alasdair meant. Lady Emma was playing an aria from
The Magic Flute.
She tended to play Mozart when she was in particularly good spirits.

Alasdair grinned and strode across the hall to the door at the rear. He opened it very softly and slipped inside, closing it soundlessly behind him. He stood quietly listening with an ear that was both critical and appreciative. A branched candlestick threw light over
the music stand, but it was a light that paled against the brilliant winter sunshine pouring through the French doors that opened onto a walled garden at the rear of the house.

Emma was wearing her hair in one of the new classical styles, a silver fillet banding her brow, her hair looped over her ears at the sides and swept up at the back and tucked into the fillet. Her exposed neck was slightly bent as she played, and Alasdair’s gaze was riveted on the tender groove running from the base of her skull, disappearing into the high collar of the driving habit she still wore from the morning’s visiting.

He moved forward under a compulsion he could not resist. She was absorbed in the music and heard nothing of his step on the thick Axminster carpet. He bent his head and lightly kissed the nape of her neck, his hands coming to rest where the graceful slope of her shoulders blended with her upper arms.

Emma’s hands stilled on the keys, her head falling forward as if under some weight, although the kiss had been the merest brush of his lips.

“Forgive me,” Alasdair said before she could speak. His hands dropped from her shoulders. “Outrageous, I know, but I couldn’t resist.” He made his voice light and jocular as if what had just occurred were a mere commonplace.

Emma raised her head, straightened her spine. The back of her neck was warm, still tingling. She looked over her shoulder at him in silence.

Alasdair gave her a rueful smile. “You know I’ve never been able to resist the back of your neck.”

“Don’t!”
she said in a stifled voice. “For God’s sake, Alasdair!”

He held up his hands in conciliation. “It didn’t happen,”
he said. “Listen, I had an idea while you were playing. Let me sit down.” He gestured that she should move up on the piano bench and make room for him. “A more exaggerated pause between these notes … here … and again here.” He played several bars one-handed, his other beating the time. “See? And then when Papageno comes in … here … it lifts the tempo, makes the conversation even livelier.”

Emma nodded. “I wonder why Mozart didn’t think of that,” she said with a grin.

Alasdair chuckled. “All art is open to individual interpretation. Sing it; let’s hear how it sounds.” He swept his hands over the keys in preparation, then began to play.

Emma hesitated for barely a second, then began to sing. She had a contralto voice, well trained with perfect pitch, but she’d be the first to admit that it lacked true power. But then, both she and Alasdair were perfectionists, as critical of their own performances as they were of others’. But the aria was pure delight to sing, filled with sunshine and laughter, and she let her voice run with it to Alasdair’s accompaniment. And when he joined in with his own pleasant tenor in counterpoint, Emma closed her eyes and lost herself in the sheer joy of making these beautiful sounds with someone so perfectly matched and so filled with the same pleasure.

She held the last note, her voice soaring, after Alasdair’s fingers on the keys had fallen still and his own voice was quiet. The note faded slowly, perfectly controlled, and in the silence the sweetness continued to ring in sonorous echo for seconds after the note itself had died.

Alasdair let his hands fall from the keys. “You have more power than when I last heard you sing.”

“My voice is better trained now,” she said, rising from the bench as with the end of the music she became aware of Alasdair’s thigh pressing against her skirt.

“Did you continue with Rudolfo?”

“Through two summers. He came to the country and stayed in the house and drove the staff insane with his fussiness. He’s such a valetudinarian. But an amazing voice teacher.” She straightened a pair of candlesticks on the mantelpiece, tidied a pile of sheet music on the table, her eyes darting restlessly, her fingers unable to be still.

Alasdair swung around on the piano bench and watched her for a second. “So, what did you wish to see me about?”

Emma’s restless fidgeting ceased. “Horses,” she declared. “I intend to purchase a curricle and pair. Oh, and a riding horse,” she added. “Aunt Hester decided that all my horses belonged to the estate.” Her eyes sparked golden fire with remembered indignation.

“Of all the unmitigated old cats!” Alasdair exclaimed. “It’s not as if she could ride them herself.”

“No, indeed,” Emma scoffed. “I should like to see her try. She’d be thrown before they left the stable-yard. But they are to remain as part of the estate.” Her lips were tightly compressed and she stared for a minute unseeing at the garden through the window.

“You couldn’t lay claim to them?”

“If you mean, were they clearly my own … gifts from Ned or whatever … no. Strictly speaking, the old cat was right. They belong to the estate.” She fell silent, her hands clenched at her sides, then she continued
briskly, “So, I intend to set up my stable.” She turned to him, saying with a touch of belligerence, “You have no objection, I trust?”

“No, why should I?” Alasdair responded amiably, ignoring the belligerence, rightly assuming that for once it was not really directed at him. If Aunt Hester had been in the room, it would have found the right target.

Emma flushed slightly and said more moderately, “I need you to escort me to Tattersalls to buy my horses. I know I cannot go there alone.”

“You cannot go to Tatts at all,” Alasdair stated, taking a lacquered snuffbox from his pocket.

“Why ever not?”

Alasdair examined the snuffbox minutely. “Because, my dear Emma, women do not frequent Tattersalls.”

Emma regarded him in bewilderment. “But I went there with you and Ned once.”

“Good God!” he said solemnly. “Whatever can we have been thinking about? It’s not at all the thing.”

“Alasdair, you’re Winning,” Emma accused. It was impossible to imagine Alasdair giving a tinker’s damn for pointless conventions. Three years couldn’t have changed him that much.

“No, indeed not,” he denied vigorously, but Emma could read him like a book and the little glimmer in his eye did not go unnoticed.

“Don’t be absurd,” she said roundly. “You know perfectly well that while a woman buying her own horses might be unusual, ifs not a fatal flying in the face of convention. As long as I have a suitable escort, of course. And who more appropriate than my trustee?”

“Ah, so I have some uses after all,” he observed,
flicking open the snuffbox and taking a delicate pinch between finger and thumb. He looked at her from beneath lowered lids, his mouth curving in a wicked smile.