Brighton Road (22 page)

"Anyone would think I was in love with the
man," Gwenda grumbled as she sat back down at her desk.

That thought had been occurring to her all
too often of late, a most frightening, distressing thought.
Romantic as it was in books, Gwenda did not care for the notion of
pining away from unrequited passion. She would much rather have a
love that was returned, so that she might be comfortable and
happy.

With Ravenel, that was too much to hope for.
By the end of their journey, he seemed to have learned to tolerate
her, to even be civil to her family. But that was a far cry from
the warmth of feeling Gwenda would require in her lover. She had
not heard so much as a word from his lordship in the past week.

Gwenda reached for another sheet of paper,
then sat staring at the blank vellum. This foolishness would pass,
she assured herself. Had she not fancied herself in love twice
before? She had been much younger then, barely seventeen that
disastrous season. She could smile at her youthful self now, all
those torrents of emotion, the conviction that her heart would be
broken in two if she was not able to marry Jasper. She had survived
that only to be equally certain she would go into a decline and
perish if she did not become Marlon's bride.

She did not experience any such violent
fancies about Ravenel, only the feeling that as each bright
sun-kissed day passed without his presence, the summer sky seemed
permanently washed in gray.

Gwenda thrust the sheet and ink pot away from
her. She was doing no good here She might as well round up Bertie
and take him out for a walk. She retrieved her bone-handled
parasol, then descended belowstairs, whistling for Bert. The lower
floor of the house basked in the afternoon silence, except for the
distant strains of Papa practicing at the pianoforte.

Fitch informed her that the master had
already demanded Spotted Bert's eviction. The dog always howled
when her father sang, so Fitch had been obliged to chase Bert
outside.

But although she stood on the front steps and
called, Bert seemed to have raced off out of earshot. Gwenda could
not face the prospect of returning to her lonely room, so she opted
to venture on her walk without the dog. Yet her listless footsteps
got her not much farther than the seven-foot-tall statue of the
Prince Regent mounted in front of the Royal Crescent. Disgraceful
thing, Gwenda thought. The buff-colored stone had been eroded by
sea squalls until one arm broke off. Most mistook it for a likeness
of Nelson.

She leaned against it, poking the tip of her
parasol in the grass. A party of ladies and gentlemen rattled along
the Parade in their carriage, all of them laughing, apparently bent
on some excursion of pleasure. Then Gwenda watched a family with a
large brood of children go past, likely off for some sea bathing.
Why did the rest of the world always seem to be having a wonderful
time when one was at one's most miserable?

"Hallo there! Gwenda! "

The sound of her brother's voice snapped her
head around toward the distant line of town houses. Jack bounded
down the steps and raced toward the grassy enclosure, waving
something.

He came up to her, panting with indignation.
"That blasted dog of yours is moving on from boots to belts
now."

He thrust a strap of chewed leather in her
face. Gwenda pushed it aside weakly, mumbling that she was
sorry.

Her brother, obviously bracing himself for a
heated exchange, snapped his mouth closed and blinked. "What? " he
asked. "No 'Plague take you, Jack' or 'If you didn't leave belts
lying around, Bertie couldn't get them, Jack'?"

"I am not in the humor for quarreling."
Gwenda sidestepped her brother. She tried to open her parasol, but
the breeze coming off the sea was a shade too brisk. Abandoning the
effort, she trailed away from Jack, heading for the shingled
beach.

Her brother caught up with her and fell into
step. "You are not in much of a humor for anything since you came
to Brighton. I never saw such moping, unless it is that silly dog
of yours. It is beginning to put me in the hips just watching the
pair of you."

Jack scuffed the toe of his boot along the
beach, sending up a spray of smooth, shiny pebbles. "As if I didn't
already have enough to make me blue-deviled. Thorne is about to
descend on us and Papa's cousins from Cheapside. They all want to
see me before I leave to join my regiment."

"That's nice, Jack," Gwenda murmured.

He caught her by the elbow, swinging her
about. "I say, Gwenda. I've got a notion. Why don't you come to
watch the military review on the Bluffs with me and my friend,
Neville Gilboys. He's a first-rate fellow. His family made him join
the army, but he really wants to be a playwright. He's perishing to
meet you and tell you all about this tragedy he means to write
someday."

In her present mood, Gwenda shuddered at the
thought of meeting an eager would-be writer.

But her brother persisted. "Do come!
Neville's devilish handsome. Just like that Roderigo chap you're
always dreaming about with blond hair and a trim mustache—"

"Roderigo doesn't have a mustache. He has
ebony hair and dark eyes, dark as the sea at midnight." Hugging her
skirts close against the wind, Gwenda stared forlornly at the waves
breaking over the shore.

Jack vented his breath in a frustrated sigh.
"What's amiss with you, Gwen? I've never seen you like this
before."

When she didn't answer, he planted himself in
front of her. "I won't go away until you tell me." He injected that
cajoling note into his voice that only Jack knew how to use so
well. He always managed to wheedle her secrets out of her, and
Gwenda knew she would be given no peace until she confided in
him.

"I—I think I have fallen in love," she
said.

"Not again! "

Gwenda did not appreciate his brotherly
frankness, not when she had just bared her soul to him. "If you are
going to take that attitude ..." She began to walk back up the
beach, but he caught her, forcing her to halt.

"No, no, Gwen. I am sorry. Come back. Who are
you in love with this—" He amended hastily. "I mean, who is the
lucky devil?"

She tried to maintain a stubborn silence, but
instead she found herself resting her head against Jack's shoulder,
tears beclouding her eyes. "Lord Ravenel."

"Ravenel! Old Sobersides?"

Gwenda straightened immediately, her cheeks
firing with indignation. "Don't you dare call him that odious
name."

"I didn't mean anything by it. It is just
that he does not seem in your usual line. Although he behaved
splendidly fighting that smuggler for Bert, his lordship is not the
most dashing sort." Jack hesitated, then blurted out, "In fact,
there is rather something about him that reminds me of Thorne."

"Ravenel is not in the least like Thorne!"
Gwenda bristled, then remembered that she had once told the baron
the same thing. "Well, maybe only a very little at times. But
Thorne would feel quite self-righteous if one got hurt doing
something wrong. Ravenel is the sort of man who, if I accidentally
set the house on fire, would give me a blistering scold. But first
he would make sure I hadn't been burned."

"I see," Jack said, then infused his voice
with a generous enthusiasm. "Of course. The very sort of thing to
make a girl dote upon a chap."

"You don't see at all." Gwenda shifted her
gaze to the sea as though somewhere on the bright sparkling waters
she would find the words to explain it to him. "Beneath his
starched cravat, Ravenel is dashing. When I have dreams about
Roderigo now, it is always Ravenel that I see coming through the
mist. He has the most handsome eyes and when he kiss—" She broke
off, heat rushing through her at the memory. She stumbled on. "It
is not any grand gesture that makes him heroic, but all manner of
foolish little things like tucking his coat around my shoulders in
the rainstorm even when he was angry, and saving Bert even after
Bert had chewed up his boot, and asking me if I was unharmed after
his own head had nearly been broken by Quince's fist."

"You must be in love." Jack nodded solemnly.
"You are not making any sense. If you care so much for him, why did
you let Papa send him away when he had offered for you? "

"He does not love me. There is someone else.
Not that I believe he is in love with Miss Carruthers, either, but
she is so much more proper than—"

"Belinda Carruthers? " Jack interrupted.

"Aye. Have you met her? "

"No, but I know of her. I ran into old
Huddersby at the Ship Tavern just yesterday. Poor fellow was badly
cut up; lost a big wager. It seems he had bet this Carruthers chit
would wed the Earl of Smardon, but the earl didn't come up to
scratch."

"And now I suppose Belinda will be only too
pleased to receive Ravenel's addresses." Gwenda flushed with anger.
"She has treated him so shabbily, keeping him dangling, telling him
she is recovering from a broken heart. Some tale of being in
mourning over—" Gwenda searched her memory for the name Belinda had
mentioned that day, "—a Colonel Percival Adams of the Tenth
Cavalry."

"The Tenth?" Jack said. "That's Neville's
regiment."

Gwenda added bitterly, "Somehow I never
believed a word of what she said."

"Then, my dear sister, the thing to do is to
eliminate this unworthy Miss Carruthers as a rival."

Gwenda slowly shook her head. She was not
sure that Ravenel would care how sly Belinda was, merely that she
would know the correct way to conduct herself as the future Lady
Ravenel. Even without Belinda, Ravenel would not willingly consider
Gwenda for that role. What had his lordship called her once?
The
mistress of disaster.

Her shoulders sagged. This conversation with
Jack had only succeeded in lowering her spirits. Debating the
matter with her brother had done nothing but to convince her how
very much she was in love with Ravenel, and how hopeless it all
was.

"It was most kind of you to listen, Jack,"
she said. "But there is nothing to be done. I assure you I will
recover." This time she turned and hurried back to the house, not
giving him a chance to overtake her.

As Jack Vickers watched his sister racing
along the beach, he made no effort to follow. She would recover,
Gwenda had declared, but her brother was not so sure. He had never
seen that kind of dull pain in her sparkling eyes before, a
heartbreakingly wistful kind of despair.

"Damme," he muttered. "How can I just march
off to enjoy myself shooting Frenchmen, leaving poor Gwen in such a
state? My only sister, after all."

Thoughtfully he walked along the sands,
letting the water froth to the very tip of his boots. But the
somber mood didn't last long. His spirits were as ebullient as the
waves. Mad Jack Vickers never accepted any cause as hopeless. There
was always something to be done.

Donaldson's Lending Library was a gathering
place for the haut ton that flocked to Brighton for the summer: a
place to hear the latest gossip, to play at cards, to try out some
new sheet music upon the piano forte--in brief, to do anything but
select a book to read. Or so it seemed to Gwenda.

She irritably brushed past the group of
ladies crowded upon the veranda, smoothing out their light muslins,
chattering about how positively dowdy Mrs. Fitzherbert had looked
while attending the theater last night.

Inside the library itself was no better. To
even reach the book stacks, Gwenda first had to skirt by three
dandies studying copies of the latest caricatures by Gilray through
their quizzing glasses.

"Dashed amusing, 'pon my soul," one of them
drawled. "Depicting that rascal Bonaparte as a pygmy. What will
Gilray think of next?"

The dandy's voice sounded oddly familiar to
Gwenda. She angled a glance from the corner of her eye and was
horrified to recognize the Honorable Frederic Skeffington, the man
who had accosted her in the inn yard of the Dorset Arms. Mindful of
Ravenel's admonishment that Skeffington was a "loose screw," Gwenda
ducked behind one of the bookshelves before Skeffington spotted her
yet again without any female chaperone.

While waiting for the three gentlemen to move
on, she feigned to examine Volume Four of the latest edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, never intending to eavesdrop on the
conversation But when she overheard one of them mention Ravenel's
name, her heart skipped a beat and she could not help listening
more intently.

"Yaa-ss, Sobersides Ravenel has been behaving
in a damned odd manner of late." There was a pause, then a loud
sniff. Gwenda realized that the speaker had stopped to take a pinch
of snuff and waited in an agony of impatience for him to
continue.

"Met him along the Steine the other day when
me and Froggy Blaine were comparing times of our last run to
Brighton. Did it in four hours, fifty-two minutes, I said. Then I
asked Ravenel most civilly how long it had taken him. 'Three days,'
said he, and broke into hysterical laughter."

Gwenda bit back a rueful smile of her own,
but she heard Skeffington and the other man exclaiming in
shock.

"Sobersides? Laughing?"

"'Pon my word, who would have thought
it?"

"And there is worse," the first man said. "I
chanced to make some little jest about that old fool Stanhope
Vickers and Ravenel glowered at me like a mad dog. Said if I had
half as much wit as Lord Vickers, I might know when to keep my
mouth shut."

Gwenda, as astounded as the others to hear
this, dropped the encyclopedia volume on her toe. Stifling an
outcry of pain, she bent to retrieve it. It might well have been
Skeffington's other friend who had been struck, however, for the
man gave a low moan.

"That tears it, then. I was one of the few
who wagered Belinda Carruthers would have Sobersides in the end.
But if Ravenel is going to start acting as queer as Dick's hat
band, he'll never win the fair Belinda."