Anne Barbour (2 page)

With an expression of distaste, the viscount eased himself out of the clerk’s obsequious grasp.

“Nothing for me, thank you, Porlock. But perhaps some tea for Miss...er, Miss...” He turned questioningly to Tally.

“My name is Talitha Burnside, my lord. And, thank you, I do not wish for any tea.”

The clerk deigned to glance at Tally.

“Miss Burnside? Yes, I believe you, too, have an appointment with Mr. Mapes. If you will wait here, Mr. Mapes will see you--after his business with his lordship is concluded, of course,” he said with condescension.

Tally stiffened. Though she had chosen in her correspondence with Mr. Mapes to represent herself as plain Miss Burnside, she was unused to being spoken to in such a manner by persons of Mr. Porlock’s order.

She turned to the clerk, drew herself up to her full five foot two inches, and in a voice of calm authority said, “But, my appointment was for four o’clock, was it not? And it is now just a few minutes past. I’m afraid his lordship will have to wait his turn.”

Mr. Porlock’s mouth dropped open. Before he could deliver a reply, the viscount interjected, and Tally could have sworn she heard amusement in his voice.

“You are absolutely correct, Miss Burnside. It is I who am at fault, for I am quite half an hour late for my own appointment. By rights I should forfeit my precedence. However, I wonder if I might prevail on your good nature. You see, I am expected elsewhere soon at another appointment—an important one, I’m afraid. May I see George ahead of you? I shall only be a few moments. Please?”

Again, his smile bathed Tally in its blinding warmth. She cast her eyes down, and in doing so, caught sight of the untidy bundle of parchment she still clasped in her arms.

“That will be agreeable, my lord. I believe it will take several minutes for me to rearrange my drawings more presentably.” She nodded her head regally, wishing she did not feel so stiff and stilted and foolish.

With another smile the viscount walked from the anteroom into the passage beyond. Rigid with disapproval, Mr. Porlock waved Tally to a seat and returned to his own desk, where he busied himself with some papers, refusing to look at her again.

Tally sank onto the hard wooden chair and let her papers fall into her lap. She began smoothing them out, but after a few moments her fingers stilled. She lifted her head, and her eyes gazed unseeing at the back of Mr. Porlock’s head.

She thought back to her descent from the carriage a few minutes earlier and relived the subsequent collision and the instant she had found herself clasped in the arms of Lord Chelmsford. She could still feel their strength and warmth.

She had recognized him at once, of course. It was obvious that he did not remember her, but she had not expected that he would. Why should the ton’s most notable ornament remember a single dance that had taken place five years earlier? A dance in which he had partnered one of the ton’s most unremarkable young misses.

It had been a dance Tally would never forget.

Chapter Two

Even after all these years, Tally could not look back on the night of her come-out ball without experiencing a tightening of her throat and a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She pictured herself at seventeen, small and thin, all big, scared eyes and awkward angles. She had no doubt she resembled a fledgling stork rather than a young lady making her entrance into the Polite World.

She had been sponsored by her mother’s sister, Sophronia, Lady Spilting, an elderly widow of reclusive habits, who lived in a cavernous old town house in Cavendish Square. She had selected Tally’s wardrobe with an eye more to durability than fashion, and the pale pastels favored by the ton for debutantes did nothing to enhance Tally’s delicate features and honey gold complexion.

Not that Tally cared. She had resigned herself at an early age to the fact that she would never be a beauty. Even her father had once told her, “Never mind, my dearest, you are lovely inside--and that beauty will endure long after Jeannie Fox’s golden curls have faded, or Sarah Smythe-Beddoes’s figure has given way under all those comfits.”

Tally didn’t believe any of it for a minute, but when it became apparent that her fingers contained a special magic, she was able to persuade herself that her talent outweighed her plainness. She became immersed in her drawing. Now, a social gathering was merely an opportunity to study faces and forms. On this particular evening, therefore, she did not feel slighted that her only partners were young men who had been coerced into the position by propriety-conscious mamas. At least, so she told herself.

Still, she loved to dance, and when, inevitably, she found herself partnerless at her aunt’s side, she gazed longingly at the couples whirling about like brilliant blossoms tossed in a stream. Suddenly Lady Spilting had hissed in her ear.

“Well! You can count your evening a success, my dear. Chelmsford has honored us with his presence.”

Tally turned to look and then caught her breath at the magnificence of the tall stranger who had just entered the ballroom. His mahogany-colored hair was cut in a careless Brutus style, and his eyes, the color of summer mist, were a pale blaze against his bronzed skin. The quiet elegance of his evening attire made every other man there seem just a little shabby, and his lazy smile seemed to warm the entire room. When he dutifully presented himself to Lady Talitha for one of the country dances, she was overcome with shyness. To his polished courtesies she responded with mechanical civilities, uttered in a strangled monotone.

When the music died away, the viscount brushed her fingertips with his lips and turned to seek entertainment elsewhere. His course led him unerringly to a beautiful, vibrant creature who had been the center of attention all evening. She was tall and slender, and from behind her fan, eyes of twilight blue flashed and sparkled at her court. Golden curls tumbled over a perfect forehead of smoothest ivory and drifted airily about classically curved cheeks. Her mouth, red and full-lipped, trembled in a coquettish smile as the viscount swept her into a waltz.

Then, scarcely an hour after he arrived, he was gone. Aunt Sophronia frowned in exasperation.

“Not that one would expect him to linger,” she grunted. “The man is notorious for his lightning appearances. I suppose we must count ourselves lucky that he showed up at all. His mother must have exerted her influence. Lady Chelmsford and your mother were bosom bows at school, you know.”

“And the lady he partnered for the waltz?” Tally asked in a carefully casual tone.

“Umph. Clea Montmorency. ‘The Unattainable,’ they call her. She’s the youngest daughter of some baronet that nobody ever heard of, but Clea has made quite the splash. Has half the blades in London mad for her. According to the on-dits, she’s hanging out for a title and money—lots of it. Looks like she may have found her target there in young Chelmsford. Heaven knows, he has both in abundance.”

Tally experienced an unexpected pang at these words, but she chided herself immediately. Surely, she was not a susceptible widgeon, driven to rapture by a godlike countenance. And even if she were, what possible chance could she, a dull country wren, have against the exotic beauty of Clea Montmorency?

Suddenly weary of the scented ballroom and the buzz of stilted conversation about her, she slipped off to seek a moment’s solitude in an alcove near the cloakroom. Just before she reached the little nook, she met the viscount, who had donned his evening cloak and was making his way toward the staircase, As Tally moved aside, he smiled at her, then paused.

“Your ball appears to be a success, Lady Talitha. I look forward to encountering you again — perhaps at Almack’s?”

Her eyes met his, and she returned his smile shyly. Just then a shrill, masculine voice burst from the interior of the alcove, piercing the subdued hum of voices and sedate string music that surrounded them.

“Confound it, Mama, I’m not going to dance with the Burnside chit! You always force me to stand up with the drabbest nobody in the place, and I’m sick of it. And she’s only moderately endowed. Get Roddy to do it! God knows he’d be happy to propel the Witch of Endor around the floor if she had but tuppence to her name!”

Tally stood paralyzed in the echo of those wounding words. The viscount’s eyes still held hers, and for an instant, she stared at him in shamed horror. A single embarrassed titter from the surrounding group of listeners caught her with the force of a blow, and with the instinct of a wounded forest creature, she whirled to flee. To her dismay, the viscount grasped her wrist, forcing her to immobility.

“Please,” she whispered in a choked sob. “Please—let me go!”

“Don’t be a fool.” The words were spoken in a tone of cold disinterest. “Do you wish to be perceived as a spiritless ninny--as well as a drab nobody?”

Tally whitened, and the viscount continued brusquely.

“I fail to see why you should crawl into a cave and whimper just because some idiot has chosen to vent his extremely ill-bred spleen in such a public manner. Come.”

The viscount, calm and smiling, swept his cloak open and tossed it to a nearby lackey.

“But I cannot leave without one more dance with you, Lady Talitha.” He did not raise his voice but somehow made his words heard clearly to those surrounding them. “May I claim your hand for the waltz?”

He was apparently oblivious to the fact that as a young girl just making her come-out, she could not have received the requisite permission from the patronesses of Almack’s to participate in that controversial dance. Without waiting for an answer, he brought Tally’s hand to his lips and, still holding her icy fingers clamped in his own, strode into the ballroom. He swung her into the rhythm of the dance, and, observing the tears that threatened to overflow, he bent to remark caustically, “Apparently, I was right. You are a spiritless ninny. Fortunately for you, I have determined that you are not to give way to an attack of the vapors, or whatever else you may have planned to relieve your bruised sensibilities.”

Tally gasped as though she had just been drenched in ice water. How dare he speak so to her! She tried to break free of his grasp, but his slender fingers imprisoned hers with a grip of steel.

During the course of the dance, he maintained a flow of light conversation, sometimes throwing his head back in laughter, as though Tally had overcome him with her wit. In truth, she had almost nothing to say. Inwardly, she raged at the viscount’s incredibly insulting behavior, but could not form the words to give him the set-down he so richly deserved.

The eyes of the gathered ball guests were on her, and all she wanted was to find a dark corner in which to lick her wounds. What right had he to drag her from the refuge she sought—and in such an insufferable manner? He had as much as told her she was indeed a drab nobody! She felt suspended in a nightmare, all her pain centered on the man who held her so lightly. To her cringing senses, he represented the entire Polite World, with all its arrogance and casual cruelty.

Suddenly she was fired with a determination that neither he nor any of the bejeweled butterflies surrounding her should discern her anguish. She glared straight into Chelmsford’s cool gray eyes, and with her head held high and an expression of inutterable boredom on her face, she floated over the floor in the viscount’s arms.

When the music stopped, Chelmsford bent to whisper in her ear, and though his words expressed the most commonplace sentiments—“Thank you for a most enjoyable dance, Lady Talitha.”—his demeanor spoke of future assignations in secluded bowers. He was making a joke of her humiliation! Of all the insensitive boors! As though he guessed her thoughts, he laughed down into her eyes. Tally would have given all she possessed to plant a jarring slap right across those perfect teeth.

He pressed a warm, lingering kiss on her hand, then bowed himself away, conveying the impression that it was all he could do to tear himself from her presence.

Still seething, Tally turned once again to seek haven, but to her surprise, her hand was claimed by an aspiring dandy who had earlier passed her by without a second glance. By the end of the evening, a puzzled but gratified Aunt Sophronia had seen her niece become the most sought-after damsel in the room. Clearly the Viscount Chelmsford’s gallantry, even for a few moments, was enough to guarantee a flattering degree of attention from every other male in the room who aspired to fashion.

It did not last, of course. The next day several gentlemen called in Cavendish Square, but when it became apparent that Lord Chelmsford was not to be among them, interest in the Earl of Bayfield’s unprepossessing little daughter waned, and by the end of the week, the flow had dried up completely. Soon even Aunt Sophronia had forgotten Tally’s spurt of popularity.

But Tally did not forget. Over the years she had come to realize that the viscount’s blunt tactics had prevented her from making a further fool of herself by hurtling out of the room in tears. She was far from understanding his motive in interfering in her predicament. An arrogant whim, perhaps—a desire to prove that he had it in his power to transform her in an instant from a scorned outcast to the belle of the ball. He had been insufferably rude, and—and he had laughed at her! She was sure she hated him.

But the image of the viscount’s cloudy eyes laughing into hers remained permanently etched in her mind. She would always know the feel of strong fingers cupping her hand in his. The memory of his powerful stride—the very cologne and leather scent of him still haunted her dreams.

The sound of a door opening and a rumble of jovial voices from beyond the antechamber jerked Tally from her reverie. She looked down to find that the parchment sheets were still scattered in disorder over her lap.

“Ah, Miss Burnside.”

It was the voice of the viscount, and Tally, relieved as she was that no memory of her humiliation lingered with him, experienced a pang of disappointment that he did not remember her at all

“You see,” he continued, “I have honored my promise. I kept George occupied for less than ten minutes. Now, he assures me, he is completely at your disposal.”