All I Ever Needed (18 page)

"You take the phaeton?"

"Yes." It was the equipage he had presented to her soon after she became his mistress. They had later gone to Tattersall's where he had chosen a pretty black mare to pull it. "I am judged to be an extraordinary driver, you know."

"Yes, I've heard."

Keeping her smile intact, Annette's gaze swiveled to Mr. Marchman. "I saw you not above a week ago, racing your gray up the center path. You were in the lead, of course, though I cannot say whether you finished at the head. Did you?"

"I am crushed that there is the least question in your mind."

She tapped him playfully on his arm with her closed fan. "That is no answer, Mr. Marchman."

West gave himself full marks for not flinching from her coquettish assault. His friends were no doubt expecting him to brandish his knife. "I won the race," he said evenly. "It was a narrow victory. Barlough pushed his beast hard in the end."

"That was Lord Barlough following so closely? I confess I did not recognize him."

"It was. You know him, then?"

"Oh, no. By reputation only. We are not acquainted." She let this information hang there to see if Marchman would take it in hand and offer to make an introduction. The bastard did not. Annette dismissed him as of no use to her and offered a cordial smile in Northam's direction. "My lord."

"Mrs. Sawyer."

She noted his greeting was considerably cooler than hers had been. "You were not in the race, I collect."

"No, I was not."

"Has marriage curtailed your amusements, then?"

North did not want to respond to any question concerning his marriage, especially one put to him by Eastlyn's former mistress. He was grateful for Southerton perceptively inserting himself back into the conversation.

"Come, Mrs. Sawyer, you know Northam has never had any amusements. How could one hope to measure what influence marriage has had?"

As expected, Annette smiled. "You are right, of course. He is too serious by half." She glanced at Eastlyn. "Is that not what you always said?"

It was Marchman who answered. "Which is only East's way of pointing out the rest of us are too easily diverted."

Annette marveled at the way they instinctively closed ranks to protect one of their own. Was it a trait of all Hambrick schoolboys, she wondered, or these four in particular? She decided she would persevere. North's wife would be returning to his side soon, and Annette was aware she would do well to take her leave before then. She chose to address Eastlyn directly and ignore the wall the others erected around him.

"I suppose I am late in offering your lordship my condolences," she said. She did not pause to allow Eastlyn to feign a lack of interest. "I have only this morning learned that Lady Sophia Colley is promised in marriage to one Mr. George Heath. I trust this will put an end to any residual speculation that she is your intended."

"If it is true," East said carefully.

"I had it from Dunsmore, who had it from his father. I believe the earl's correspondence can be trusted."

Eastlyn wondered what a proper response would be. He was acutely aware that his audience was not limited to Annette and that her timing was deliberate. She knew he would not accuse her of anything untoward in front of his friends. "I was not aware you knew Dunsmore."

"I know many people," she said simply. "It is good news, is it not? She can return to London on the arm of her intended and put a period to this gossip that she is gravid with your child. Unless, of course, she has become gravid with his. That will complicate things, I believe. How will the truth ever come to light?"

Eastlyn was unaware of taking a step forward until he was pressed against Marchman's restraining arm. Mrs. Sawyer was already turning away, her exquisite smile firmly in place.

"East?" Southerton moved to block his friend's view of the departing widow. "You do not want to look as if you mean to do murder. Not with so many witnesses present." He nodded in West's direction to encourage that worthy to lower his arm. "North, you will want to present some obstacle to your wife's arrival here until we can remove East from the premises. If nothing better occurs to you, you might ask her to dance. It has not gone unnoticed by us that you have yet to do so this evening, and we do not find it at all encouraging."

"I have not danced with my wife," North said in arid accents, "because she has ever been at the call of my friends."

"Well," West said, "we insist you take her now. Battenburn is escorting her directly toward us, and East does not yet have himself in hand. He is bound to thrash someone, and you know how badly that can go if you are in the way."

North put two fingers to the slightly crooked bridge of his nose. "You broke this, not East."

"Yes." West continued in reasonable tones, "But I did
not
break his nose, did I? When you recall how often I went after him, that is evidence enough that he is the better fighter."

Eastlyn felt his mouth twitch. "Have off, all three of you. Your methods of diversion are unorthodox but effective. I am all of a piece and will find my own way out." He had to suffer their scrutiny for several long moments while Lady Northam approached ever closer. The proof that they were satisfied with his control came when Southerton stepped aside and let him pass. He heard North's wife inquire after him just as he was slipping through the squeeze at the hall entrance. He did not hear North's reply but depended upon it to be a convincing excuse for his hasty retreat.

It was much later that Southerton found him at the club, but he was not yet so deep in his cups that he could not be counted on for lucid conversation. "I thought you would be for home at this hour," East said. "What are you doing here?"

"You are here, aren't you? It seems to me you shouldn't be compelled to drink alone." South motioned to a steward and requested a whiskey. "You do not mind if I join you?"

"No."

South accepted the terse reply at face value, choosing not to dwell on the tone. "You will never credit it, but Helmsley was robbed this evening. It happened not long after you left. It was good you were gone, for the wait to give statements to the runners was interminable."

"The Gentleman Thief?"

"Yes. And North once more in the thick of it. He will come under suspicion again, and Elizabeth's defense of him will not be heard in the same light as before. It was all very noble when she sacrificed her reputation to prove his innocence, but now that she is actually married to him, her protests do not have the same weight. Something will have to be done."

Eastlyn studied South over the rim of his glass. "I suspect North is already doing it."

South took up the drink that was brought to him and sipped from it as he considered what East meant. "The colonel?"

Eastlyn nodded. "I think it is North's assignment to catch the thief. I've thought so since the rout at Battenburn this summer past. You know how Blackwood despairs of us tripping over one another in the course of our work, so it's no good applying to him for information, but I suspect that he's set North on the trail of the thief. We are out of it, I'm afraid, until our services are requested."

It was a reasonable supposition in the light of the events at the Battenburn estate, South thought. Lady Elizabeth's startling announcement that North had been with her on the night he was alleged to have committed a theft had diverted suspicion from North and created the circumstances upon which a marriage of convenience was formed. "You could be right," South said slowly, letting the idea take shape in his mind. He ran one hand through his bright helmet of yellow hair and regarded Eastlyn with his light gray glance. "Well, that is something, is it not? And me with so little to do of late that I fear I shall expire of boredom."

"It is infinitely preferable to you pushing the rest of us to that end."

South chuckled. "Do you think I might avail myself of your box at the theatre, East? I am of a mind that a comedy at the Drury Lane will provide suitable distraction."

"Of course. Is it the play that interests you or the talented Miss India Parr?"

"I have seen neither so the answer must be both." He eased back in his leather chair and took another swallow of his whiskey. "Is she as talented as they say?"

"I do not know what
they
say. I say she is gifted, but please, use my box and judge for yourself." Eastlyn suspected South had not come to the club to discuss the thief who had been bedeviling the ton or his own need for a diversion to boredom. "Why are you here, South? Did you pull the short broom-straw?"

"Actually, we cut cards for the privilege. I showed the four of spades."

"Rotten luck."

"Yes." His grin removed all possible sting from his reply. "There is no gossip about Lady Sophia carrying your child, East. We would not have kept you in the dark if we had heard of it. Not only did it not come to our attention, but North's mother has been everywhere of late showing off Elizabeth, and she was unaware of any such gossip."

That information pushed Eastlyn perfectly upright. "Bloody hell, South. You
asked
her?"

"North's wife or his mother?"

"Either. Both. It doesn't matter. Even repeating it in the form of a question will start tongues wagging."

South slumped lower in his chair. "If it doesn't matter, then it was the dowager countess we asked. She will be perfectly discreet"

"Hah! That means she will only make the same inquiry of her closest friends, your mother and mine chief among them. How is it possible that we can be depended upon to keep our counsel on the colonel's business and have so little regard for our own affairs?"

"I suppose it is in the very nature of our friendship."

"That is not a good answer. You would not brook this interference. You would not even ask for help."

"You would force it on me anyway."

Eastlyn sighed because it was no good being angry. South was right; they
would
force it on him. He finished his drink and set his glass aside. "Mrs. Sawyer divined what would happen if she spoke her nonsense aloud. That is what bothers me most. We were manipulated by her, South. Never think that she is not quick-witted or that we are too clever to be used in such a fashion. Standing toe-to-toe with the Society of Bishops did not ready us for dealing with the female sex. We are woefully ill-prepared. Woefully. And that is my considered opinion."

South eyed Eastlyn's empty glass for a long moment then gave his friend equally careful study. Shaking his head, amusement edging his mouth upward, he asked quietly, "Precisely how many drinks did you have before I came to your rescue?"

* * *

Sophie leaned forward over her mount's neck, urging him with her posture, not her crop, and let him
fly
between the banks of the meandering stream. Apollo made the distance easily and never broke stride as he started across the open field. Sophie wished she might lie across his back and let him take her where he would, so much a part of him that he would not recognize her weight and form as something separate from his own being. She wondered if the sun-baked desert sands were in her Arabian's blood, whether his dam and sire had pounded across shifting dunes the way he did across this golden English field.

The lowering sun was in her eyes, and for a moment she closed them and let Apollo run with his instincts. Would he take the stone wall? she wondered. Or head into the stand of trees where it was dark and cool? He might circle round to the stream again and balk this time at the breadth of the jump. That would send her sailing over the top of his head and put her squarely in the drink. Apollo was an intelligent animal, Sophie thought, with sense enough to laugh at her for blindly trusting him.

Amused but not foolish, Sophie opened her eyes and regained her proper seat in time to assist Apollo's leap over the crumbling stone wall that marked the edge of the road. Sheep grazing on the hillock waited until the last possible moment to scatter, and then they bleated loudly as Apollo thundered past. Sophie laughed when she heard their intemperate cries. They did not sound so terribly different from Tremont of late.

A sennight had passed since the earl had seen the
Gazette
announcement that the Honorable George Heath, youngest son of Viscount Dryden, had married Miss Rebecca Sayers, politely referred to by Tremont as a Nobody. For her part, Sophie was glad for Miss Sayers and only a little sorry for herself.

Mr. Heath impressed as a man with a kind disposition and even temperament. He was steady and reliable, of moderate intelligence, and given to short discourse in the plainest of speech. He knew a modest amount about many things and almost nothing substantive on any subject, but at least he seemed to be cognizant that this was so and was not given to prattle on in ignorance. Mr. Heath confessed to possessing few talents, and this admission was not prompted by his innate humbleness, but rather because he was agreeably truthful. He did not paint or compose or read novels, and he had not many interests outside of hunting and breeding livestock.

In short, he was wholly unimaginative.

It did much to recommend him to Sophie, rather than the opposite. When she pledged to marry him it was because she meant to embrace the mediocrity of his character. There was no wildness in Mr. George Heath to cause her even a moment's inconvenience. He would not drink to excess, play at cards until dawn, or arrange for his seconds to meet him in some lonely field. There would be no passion between them, only duty, and to Sophie's way of thinking it was an agreeable arrangement. What she might have with her husband would be sufficient for an unremarkable life.