Beguiling the Beauty (18 page)

W
ho is he, Venetia?”

Venetia started. She turned toward her brother. “Why are you shouting in my ear?”

An approaching train—likely the one carrying Millie and Helena home—whistled in the distance. The rail guards moved the crowd on the platform away from the tracks, to make room for those who would soon disembark.

“Because, my dear,” said Fitz, in a more normal voice, “I’ve asked you the same question three times and you have not heard me.”

She smiled weakly. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

“Who is he, the man you are thinking of? I’ve watched you since you came back. You hardly eat. You never put more than two stitches in your embroidery. One minute you smile into your lap; the next you are trying not to cry.
And let’s not forget, this morning I stood by your chair for a good five minutes—and you hadn’t the faintest idea I was there.”

He’d eventually tapped her on the shoulder, yanking her out of an extraordinarily vivid daydream in which the first course of Christian’s birthday dinner grew cold while they devoured each other on the table.

Had Claridge’s not been demolished for renovation, she’d have hired a residential suite there for the Season, and Fitz wouldn’t have been privy to the symptoms of her heartsickness. But with the hotel still building—and the need for an extra pair of eyes on Helena—she’d accepted Fitz’s invitation to stay at his town house.

“It’s all this trouble with Helena. I’m distracted,” she said thickly.

Fitz was right about one thing: Every other minute she was close to tears.

Sometimes the crossing on the
Rhodesia
seemed as distant as the antiquities—when the great lighthouse at Alexandria still guided sailors. Sometimes she wondered if she hadn’t imagined the man who adored her for who she was, instead of what she looked like.

Nightly memories of his every kiss burned within her. Each morning she’d reach for him, only to remember that he would never be hers again. Solitude, so long a tolerable state of being, had begun to smother her like a fast-growing vine that strangled its host.

As if he hadn’t heard her, Fitz said, “I know he is not American—you’ve been looking at Millie’s old copy of Debrett’s.”

She could recite from memory the long entry on the Duke of Lexington.

“So who is he? And why hasn’t he broken down my door to offer for you?”

She did not want to lie to Fitz. But neither could she reveal what had happened on the
Rhodesia
.

“Millie and Helena will tell you soon enough what is the matter with me. It is not what you think.”

She had suspected that Millie would have already said something to Fitz in their nearly daily exchange of letters, as Fitz had not once asked Venetia why she’d abandoned the rest of his womenfolk and returned solo.

Fitz placed his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry it is not what I think. I like the idea of you in love. You’ve shut yourself off for far too long.”

Her eyes prickled. She blinked back the tears. “Oh look. I believe that’s their train.”

I
t was Venetia’s idea for them to all take luncheon at the Savoy Hotel. A sadistic notion: Now she’d be able to re-create in excruciating detail the dinner she’d never share with Christian.

And since there were a number of private dining rooms at the hotel, someday she’d ask for a tour of the one he’d specifically chosen for her, so the setting of her imaginary repast would not only be precise, but historically accurate.

The family luncheon went off well enough. Millie and Helena gave an account of their weeks in America. Fitz offered a compendium of news concerning their friends and acquaintances. Venetia engrossed herself memorizing wallpaper patterns and the garland motif on the handle of her fork.

No one asked embarrassing or potentially dangerous questions. Helena did tentatively inquire into Venetia’s
health, pointing out that she seemed unusually lethargic. Well, hearts did not break energetically; torpor and weariness were to be expected. Venetia mumbled something about staying up reading the night before.

She was back in Fitz’s brougham, the vehicle pulling away from the curb, when she saw Christian coming out from his own carriage. He wore the same slate gray overcoat that he had worn to their first morning walk and carried the same ivory-handled walking stick. But he’d lost weight—there were hollows beneath his cheeks. And faint circles under his eyes, as if he, too, had not been able to sleep at night.

The ache in her heart turned into a stabbing pain. He was here, in London. And had she risen from luncheon a minute later, they’d have run into each other.

Almost fearfully she waited for either Millie or Helena to say something. But Millie had her head bent toward her husband, listening raptly to his analysis of some household matter. And Helena was looking out the other side of the carriage, her teeth clamped over her lower lip.

No one else had seen him.

Her listlessness evaporated; she vibrated with an uncontainable energy. When the carriage turned a corner and he disappeared from view, it was all she could do to not jump out of the moving vehicle.

Such a shock, seeing him. Such an electric thrill. And such emptiness, now that he was gone again.

H
elena stared at Venetia’s departing back.

At the train station she’d looked worn. At the Savoy she’d stared, as if hypnotized, at stemware and crown molding, barely aware of the goings-on. But now,
a moment after they’d walked in the front door, she was already running back out, sprouting some nonsense about having left her fan behind at the hotel.

She hadn’t been carrying a fan. And even if she had, she could have dispatched someone to retrieve it for her. Helena could think of only one explanation for Venetia’s strange behavior—that to this day she could not bear to be reminded of what had happened at Harvard.

And it was Helena’s fault—at least in part.

“Here comes Mrs. Wilson with your new maid,” said Fitz.

Her head snapped up. “When did I acquire a new maid?”

“As of yesterday, I believe. Venetia said you needed one.”

The maid, who followed Mrs. Wilson into the drawing room, was Helena’s age, composed and sharp-eyed. She did not look as if she would be easily bribed by offers of free afternoons. Nor did she appear likely to take off with a gentleman friend at the least encouragement. No, this one had the look of a responsible future housekeeper written all over her.

“Susie Burns, milady, miss,” said Mrs. Wilson.

The maid curtsied to Millie, then to Helena.

“Miss Fitzhugh’s luggage should already be in her room,” said Millie to Susie. “My maid can show you where things need to go.”

Before Susie could say her “Yes, mum,” Cobble, the butler, walked into the room and announced, “Lord Hastings.”

And in swept in the man to blame for everything.

In Helena’s mind, Hastings remained the short, scrawny miscreant Fitz first brought home when they’d all been fourteen. Sometimes she conceded that he was no longer short or scrawny, but a miscreant he was and always would be.

“Where is Mrs. Easterbrook going in such a hurry? She
all but shoved me aside,” said Hastings, stalking toward Millie. “And how good to see you after all this time, Lady Fitz. You look marvelously fetching.”

He took both her hands and kissed the back of each by turn. Millie smiled. “Never as fetching as you, Hastings.”

Helena failed to see his appeal. He was a shameless flirt, a lecher, a sloth, and—she’d found out all too late—a traitor.

He turned to her. “Miss Fitzhugh, how I have missed you while you chased bluestockings all over America. How tedious you must have found them.”

“Allow me to remind you that I am just as overeducated and tedious, my lord.”

“Balderdash, not you. We all know you went to Lady Margaret Hall just to be fashionable.”

It was a particular talent of his that he never said more than two sentences without making her want to reach for a sharp implement.

Cobble had already vacated the drawing room. Mrs. Wilson and Susie, too, were discreetly making their departure.

“Susie, leave my luggage for the time being. Air out the gowns I did not take with me first.”

One should never speak to a servant while there were guests present—it would give the impression that household staff didn’t know their tasks. But Helena had counted on secreting Andrew’s letters in a more secure place before someone else handled her belongings.

“Yes, miss,” said Susie.

Her instruction did not escape Fitz and Millie. They exchanged a glance.

“Would you mind taking a turn with me in the garden, Miss Fitzhugh?” asked Hastings.

This was the opening she needed. “Of course. Let me change into more comfortable shoes.”

If Hastings had the run of the house due to his long friendship with Fitz, then Helena need not stand on ceremony, either. She rushed upstairs to her room, sent Susie out to buy something irrelevant, unlocked her trunk, and gathered Andrew’s letters. Tomorrow she would take them to her office at her publishing firm; now she locked them in her bedside drawer.

Hastings was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs when she came down again.

“Love letters,” he murmured. “So gratifying to receive, so troublesome for the remainder of their natural lives.”

She pretended not to hear. “Glad you could find time in your busy schedule of wenching and general wastreling to call on us, Hastings.”

He offered his arm; she ignored it and walked ahead.

The Fitzhugh house backed onto a private garden shared by the adjoining houses. In a few weeks the plane trees, fully sprouted, would provide green, dappled shade. But now the leaves were tiny green nubs too shy to unfurl. Finches hopped from bare branch to bare branch, pecking at last year’s seed balls. A three-tiered Italianate fountain sparkled in the sun.

“Hullo, Penny,” Hastings called cheerfully.

“Hastings, old fellow,” answered Lord Vere, one of their neighbors, from his perch at the edge of the fountain. “Marvelous day for October, is it not?”

“It’s April, Penny.”

“Is it?” Lord Vere looked befuddled. “This year’s or last year’s?”

“This year’s, of course.”

“Well,” huffed Lord Vere, “I don’t know what I’m doing out here in April. Everybody knows it is always raining in April. Good day, Hastings. Good day, Miss Fitzhugh.”

Hastings watched Lord Vere return to his own house. “You should have said yes when he proposed last year. Were you Lady Vere, it would have been nobody’s business but your own where and with whom you spend your nights.”

Of course it was just like Hastings to approach the subject so baldly. “I do not marry men who do not know what month it is.”

“Yet you’d gladly lie with a man who dallies with virgins?”

She ignored that jab. It was hypocrisy of the highest order for a man who slept with everything that moved to criticize one who took risks for love. “Are you happy now that you have my family in a state?”

“What would you have done in my place? If it were
your
best friend’s sister teetering on the edge of ruin?”

“Save your hyperboles. I’ve never been anywhere near the edge of ruin. And if it were my best friend’s sister, I certainly wouldn’t engage in double-dealing.”

Hastings raised a brow. “Allow me to refresh your memory, Miss Fitzhugh. For a kiss, I promised not to reveal the identity of your illicit lover. I did not promise that I would keep your family in the dark altogether concerning your furtive activities.”

“All the same,” she said, giving him her falsest smile, “you duplicitous pig.”

“Admit it—you enjoyed the kiss.”

“I would rather eat a live snail than endure anything of the sort again.”

“Ooh,” he murmured, his eyes alight with speculation. “With or without its shell?”

She flicked a dismissive finger. “Save what you think of as your wit for a more gullible woman. What do you want from me, Hastings?”

“I’ve never wanted anything from you, Miss Fitzhugh—I’ve only wished to be of service.”

She snorted, this from the little snot who used to try to maneuver her into cupboards and steal kisses.

“Seeing as it was I who introduced Andrew Martin to you,” he continued, “I feel a deep sense of responsibility toward your welfare. At the risk of damaging my health, I have decided to offer to see to your needs.”

She’d been refraining from the moment he arrived, but she could no longer: Her eyes rolled of their own accord. “Your altruism astounds, Hastings. I am shocked you haven’t been canonized yet.”

“I quite share your opinion, my dear Miss Fitzhugh.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “An unmarried woman passionate enough to flout all rules and jump into a man’s bed? Your needs just might cripple me.”