An Affair of Honor (22 page)

Her expression must have given away her thoughts, for he promptly began to defend himself on the grounds that a man ought to be valued for more than the clothes he wore. Since Mr. MacElroy had been enjoying the pleasure of having Nell’s attentions all to himself until Maitherstone’s entrance, his reaction to this statement—utter sacrilege in his opinion—was perhaps more pointed than it might have been. Despite Nell’s attempts to guide the conversation along civil lines, she soon decided that no effort of hers, short of expelling them both from the drawing room, would prevail. They were extraordinarily polite to one another, but a constant stream of verbal thrusts ensued, continuing until she might cheerfully have knocked both their heads together.

The opening of the drawing room doors provided a welcome diversion, but Nell was conscious of a sharp stab of disappointment when it was merely Kit and Lady Agnes who entered. Her brother shot her a quizzical look and she responded by lifting her brows in mock helplessness. Kit grinned but turned away toward the group surrounding Rory.

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Lady Agnes as she followed him and took the seat reluctantly offered to her by one of her granddaughter’s admirers. “What a crush! Nell, dear, have you ordered refreshment? I am persuaded these gentlemen would appreciate some of your papa’s Malaga.”

Since nearly every gentleman present had been there for at least twenty minutes by then, and several had been there a good deal longer, Nell had hoped that the lack of refreshment would recall them to their senses and send them on their way. But to a man they expressed approval of Lady Agnes’s suggestion, and so Pavingham was soon treading his stately measure from one to another with a tray of glasses and a sparkling decanter. In the midst of this cheerful scene, Jeremy pushed open the drawing room doors again and announced Lord Huntley.

Startled, Nell glanced up, an involuntary smile of welcome lighting her eyes. Huntley looked swiftly around the room, his gaze sliding over Rory and her entourage, past Lady Agnes, until it came to rest upon Nell herself. She rose to greet him, and her quick movement brought her two companions scrambling to their feet. Huntley glanced from one to the other, and when his gaze met Nell’s, it was brimful of amusement. Her own eyes twinkled in response.

“You know, Mr. MacElroy, of course, sir, but I do not know if you are acquainted with Sir Thomas Maitherstone. This is the Earl of Huntley, Sir Thomas.”

“We haven’t met,” Huntley admitted, holding out a hand to the younger man, “but you are Lord Edgbaston’s nephew recently down from Cambridge, I believe. His lordship mentioned you only last evening.” He lifted his quizzing glass.

Sir Thomas, blushing under such open scrutiny, acknowledged the relationship. His discomfiture seemed to be caused as much by Huntley’s mention of his noble relation as by his lordship’s slow examination of his person. Nell took pity on him.

“Sir Thomas is a poet, my lord,” she said, preserving her countenance with difficulty.

“Is he indeed?” Huntley polished the quizzing glass with his handkerchief. “I daresay that accounts for it, then.”

“Accounts for what, my lord?” Sir Thomas inquired with a hint of defiance in his tone. Mr. MacElroy hid a smile behind a lace-edged, monogrammed handkerchief.

“Why, for that certain air of otherworldliness which seems to enfold you,” replied Huntley in a bland drawl, lifting the glass again. “I am informed that such an air is
de rigueur
among poets. Have you written an ode to Miss Lindale’s eyes yet? I am persuaded they deserve to be preserved in rhyme.”

“I have,” replied Sir Thomas warily. “Comparing them to dark liquid sapphire pools. And another to her lips. They are like—”

“Rosebuds or ripe cherries, if your previous display of originality is anything by which one might judge the matter,” Huntley said, ruthlessly interrupting this discourse. “Insolent puppy,” he added moments later when Sir Thomas had taken a hasty departure. “Did he actually have the effrontery to make you the object of such dismal stuff?”

“I’ll have you know, my lord, that he has written separate odes to my eyes, my lips, my hair, my chin—”

“Good God! As bad as that? I’ve a mind to speak to that young cockerel. Bad enough that he should appear in a lady’s drawing room dressed all by guess, but—”

“Just what I said myself, Huntley,” put in Mr. MacElroy, lisping slightly as was his unfortunate habit. “Not that the young cub would see reason. Actually said a man’s clothes were unimportant. Unimportant! Did you ever hear the like?”

“You still here, MacElroy?” Huntley inquired gently, raising his quizzing glass again as if he had only just noticed the other gentleman.

Undaunted, Mr. MacElroy assured him that he was indeed still there, and even preened himself a bit beneath the moving glass. “Was enjoying a comfortable coze with Miss Lindale until that demmed popinjay imposed his company upon us. Matter of fact, my lord,” he confided, “I’d consider it a kindness if you was to take yourself off and leave us to finish our conversation.”

“Daresay you would at that,” Huntley agreed. Suddenly the movement of the glass halted, and he peered at his victim more carefully. “I say,” he said, much concerned, “do you know you’ve got smut on your waistcoat? Good thing I chanced to notice. Only think how you’d feel when you discovered it yourself, very likely after visiting any number of people who wouldn’t care to direct your attention to it.”

“Yes, by Jove!” Dismayed, MacElroy looked down at his stomach. There was indeed a tiny smudge of some sort, but not one that would be readily apparent to any but the sharpest eye. The discovery seemed to overset him entirely, and after stammered apologies, his speedy departure left Huntley in sole possession of the field.

“For shame, sir,” Nell scolded as he took his seat beside her and crossed one elegantly clad leg over the other. “I’ll have you know you have robbed me of my two fondest admirers. I am Sir Thomas’s inspiration,” she added soulfully.

“The devil you are,” Huntley replied, grinning. “And MacElroy? Do you inspire him as well?”

“Goodness, I hope not,” she chuckled. “I should dislike very much to have been the inspiration for that outrageous waistcoat.” He made no response, and she regarded him searchingly. “Did you have something you particularly wished to discuss with me, sir, or did you merely desire to clear the room?”

“Nothing of vast importance,” he replied, eyeing the group around Lady Agnes and Rory. “It is merely that I have seen little of you these past few days and wondered if all was going well.”

“She has been up to no mischief that I know about, sir, which is not to say there hasn’t been some.” She grinned at him. “We met the good major on the Steyne yesterday, but when he only bowed in passing, her air of disappointment was enough to convince me that there have been no more assignations, though we are forever running into him at parties, of course.”

“Well, that’s all right. I was afraid she might be fretting you to flinders.”

She twinkled at him. “I do not fret so easily, sir. Besides, we have been too busy. There was a riding party yesterday, and we have been sea-bathing and to several private parties. Rory had not been into the sea since her last visit, you know, and she was so astonished to discover that old Martha Gunn is still operating the ladies’ bathing machines that she quite forgot her sulks.”

“Well, I daresay she will soon forget the major, too,” Huntley said comfortably. “They both know, after all, that nothing can come of their relationship. Even if Aurora were not contracted to me, her parents would never consider such an alliance, you know. Talcott is a younger son, I believe, and your sister would never countenance giving her daughter to a man without solid prospects.”

Nell did not question his reasoning. Though it was inconceivable to her that a man who could afford a majority in the Prince’s Own Regiment could have been born without a shirt, she knew the major’s claims could never rival Huntley’s in her sister’s eyes. So, instead of debating with him she turned the subject to one she considered more suitable to the time and place.

“I have been wanting to thank you for your kindness to Kit, sir. I know you said you had not been harsh with him, but I certainly never expected you to exert yourself so much on his behalf as he assures us you have.”

“Nonsense,” he replied, coloring a little beneath his deep tan. “I’ve done very little of consequence and nothing at all out of the way, I assure you.”

“Oh, of course not,” she agreed promptly. “It must be quite a normal thing for you to take a green young man under your wing and to provide him with the entree to a club he’d not have dared to set foot in on his own.”

“Well, that may not have been such a great service,” he confessed with an apologetic smile. “The play there is nearly as deep as any at Brook’s or even White’s in London, but it is better for him to drop his blunt in an honest game than a dishonest one. And those clubs he’s been frequenting with young Seton are little more than hells that specialize in separating unwary young chubs like Kit from their brass. He’ll come to no great harm at Alcott’s.”

“Well, it was kind of you, sir,” she insisted, “and you can scarcely say it was to save his groats that you presented Kit to the Prince of Wales.”

He chuckled. “I daresay you’ll come to wish I’d never done that, either. But at least I can see to it that he acquires friends of a different stamp than those rattles I’ve seen him with. Someone ought to have introduced him about long before now.”

“I cannot think who might have done so,” Nell replied, wrinkling her brow. “Crossways might, of course, only I daresay it wouldn’t occur to him unless Kit asked him, which he wouldn’t, not being in the habit of applying to him for anything. And it would never occur to Sir Henry to do so, because he still thinks of Kit as a schoolboy, despite all Kit’s attempts to prove how grown up he has become. Perhaps it would be different if he had gone up to Oxford or Cambridge.”

“He ought to have gone. It would have been good for him.”

“But he is not at all inclined to be bookish,” Nell explained, “and he has no interest in a military career either, though both Mama and I can only be glad of that. He prefers a sporting life to anything else, and I daresay that once Sir Henry places his affairs in his own hands, Kit will retire to the property Papa left him near Patchem and settle right down. Until then, however, he is bent upon cutting a dash, and Sir Henry is bent—with Mama’s encouragement, of course—upon seeing to it that he has as little of the ready to waste as possible. You have had a beneficial influence in that quarter as well, I’m pleased to say.”

“The devil I have! I’ve scarcely exchanged three words with Sir Henry Sinclair. Doing it too brown, Nell.”

She laughed. “No such thing, sir. It’s the truth. Mama has a very strong sense of economy, though I’ve never understood how she came by it unless it was through fear that my father would outrun his fortune and thus prove to her relations that she had married beneath her station. But, whatever the reason, she exerts enough of an influence over Sir Henry that Kit’s allowance has been extremely small. And since Sir Henry thought him a mere schoolboy and disapproved of his friends into the bargain, nothing Kit could say seemed to make any impression at all.”

“What of you? Did you say nothing?”

“Oh, I exerted myself to change Mama’s views, but it was to little avail. And Sir Henry merely pats me on the head and tells me it is not expected that a mere female should understand the workings of the financial world.” Her fingers curled as she said these last words, and Huntley grinned at her.

“Poor Nell.”

“Well, no one would like being spoken to in such a way. But, of course, once he realized that you had taken Kit under your wing, he saw immediately that Kit’s allowance must be increased. And his generosity was such that Kit is practically in alt.”

Huntley frowned and turned a searching look upon her. “You must find it a trifle frustrating that after all your efforts on his behalf, I should succeed without the merest effort and without, for that matter, even knowing I’d done anything out of the way,” he said sympathetically.

Nell shook her head, smiling at him. “Oh, no. How could I be so selfish? I’m truly grateful to you, sir. I’d nearly come to my wits’ end and was beginning to fear that, out of pure exasperation, Kit might work some mischief or other. Especially in view of all the attention being lavished on Rory once she arrived.” She paused, gazing down at her hands, then gave him a straight look. “I’m afraid I even feared he might have encouraged her to drink too much that day in hopes that she might be sent home in disgrace.”

“Well, you can put that maggot straight out of your head,” Huntley said. “I’m certain such a thought never entered his head. Aurora behaved badly, and though I think he ought to have stopped her, I do understand that he, at least, believed himself unequal to the task. Is that young fop with his arm draped over the back of her chair her latest conquest, by the bye?”

Nell glanced over to the other group, noting the elegantly dressed, if unmannerly, young gentleman to whom Huntley referred.

“He is only one of many, sir. I doubt she is very intimate with any of them.”

“I should hope not.”

“No, indeed,” Nell replied with an innocent look. “You’ve much more to fear from Jeremy.”

“And who, pray tell, is Jeremy?” The heavy brows quirked, but she knew he had taken her measure.

“Why, our footman, sir. He and Rory are thick as thieves.”

“Cut line, Nell. I know Aurora well enough to be certain I need have no qualms about a mere footman.”

She chuckled. “Perhaps not. But they are firm friends, nonetheless, on account of Ulysses.” He looked puzzled, so she explained patiently that Ulysses was Rory’s kitten. “The one you allowed her to bring home in your carriage from the esplanade that day, sir. You were afraid of fleas,” she reminded him. He nodded, calmly recommending that she get on with her tale. She dimpled at his stern tone but obeyed him willingly enough. “It seems that the care and feeding of Ulysses have pretty much fallen to Jeremy’s lot. And he is so besotted over Rory that he does her slightest bidding without question. Why, I do believe that if she was to command that he sleep with Ulysses, Jeremy would even do that. I have discovered them more than once head to head in conference over Ulysses’ needs, and I daresay my incorrigible niece has confided more to him than she has any business to confide to any servant.”