Come Near Me (7 page)

He looked at her for a long moment, then
eased the horses into a near walk. “How can you ever forgive me?”
he asked, laying a hand on hers. “Your husband told me how Lord
Dagenham came to be injured. I shouldn’t have said anything about a
wheel. And I certainly should have been paying closer attention.
You’ve got to be terrified of speed.”

Sherry looked down at her hands as they
rested in her lap, Edmund Burnell’s gloved hand lying on top.
“Yes,” she said, uncomfortable for the first time since Edmund
Burnell had shown up in her drawing room, a bouquet of blush pink
roses in his hand, a friendly smile on his face. Was he attracted
to her? She didn’t think that would be wise, for either of them. “I
do like it much better when things move more slowly. I’ve found
that decisions made in haste often are not the right ones, for
anybody.”

“Of course, my lady,” Burnell said, removing
his hand as they crested a low hill and began a careful descent.
“Ah—look. London awaits. You’ll be home and warm shortly, and I’ll
be on my way to the Oxford Arms to meet the marquess and his
friend.”

Grateful for this kind offer of safe
conversation, Sherry smiled, saying, “Mr. Collin Laughlin. I’m so
glad he’s come back to town, if only for Adam’s sake. You’ll enjoy
Chollie. He’s, well, he’s rather unique.”

“How so?” Burnell asked, as the countryside
dissolved into the lumpy, bumpy outskirts of London.

“Oh, dear. How should I say it so that I
don’t sound mean?” Sherry said consideringly, her own eyes
twinkling. “I’ve got it. Let’s just say that if you were to tell
Chollie
that you were the Devil,
he’d
believe
you.”

Burnell’s smile, for all his handsome face,
appeared absolutely and most endearingly devilish. “Oh, this will
be fun, won’t it?”

“Poor Chollie. I shouldn’t have said
anything, should I? Be kind,” Sherry warned, then mined everything
by following her warning with a giggle.

“I’m always kind,” he answered, and Sherry’s
smile slid away.

“You seem to be, Mr. Burnell,” she said, her
now-quite-familiar unhappiness sliding over her shoulders, chilling
her as the curricle drove through the shadow of a building placed
very near the roadway. “And I thank you for it. I’ve had a lovely
afternoon.”

“Next time perhaps we can take my aunt’s
coach, and Lord Dagenham might join us?”

“Oh, could he? Thank you so much!” Sherry put
her hands on Burnell’s forearm, giving it a squeeze. How silly
she’d been, to think that Edmund Burnell had been flirting with
her. He had just been being kind, and had just offered to be kinder
still.

And she liked him. She liked him very much.
She couldn’t allow Richard Brimley to color her life, how she
looked at the rest of the world in general or Edmund Burnell in
particular. That wasn’t fair.

“Shall, we do this again two days from now,
if the weather stays fair?” she suggested, feeling guilty. “I
should be able to bully Geoff into an outing by then.”

Burnell agreed, and Sherry soon found herself
back in Grosvenor Square, deliciously sleepy thanks to the wine and
the brisk breeze. Taking up the vase of blush pink roses Rimmon had
left in the foyer—far be it from Emma to consider it her duty to
carry the vase upstairs—she climbed the stairs, deciding a short
nap to be just the thing before dinner.

How silly she’d been to think, even for a
moment, that Edmund Burnell had been flirting with her. He was just
kind. Friendly. Her husband’s friend. He saw her as Adam had done
in the beginning—as a child to be amused, to amuse in return.

Yes, he’d teased her, especially when he’d
given her these perfect roses. What had he said? Oh, yes. “Until
this moment, my lady, as I see your simple joy in them, it has
astounded me that God should waste such beauty as these roses on
mere mortals. And yet even their beauty pales beside yours.”

She’d nearly begged off from their ride then,
frightened by his words, until he’d smiled broadly and added:
“There, now that we’ve gotten that mandatory social silliness out
of the way, shall we go enjoy ourselves?”

Sherry smiled as she remembered Edmund
Burnell’s smile, his playful wink. Adam had gained a new friend,
and she had as well. She was badly in need of friends.

Placing the vase on the night table beside
her bed, the heady fragrance of roses enveloping her, Sherry closed
her eyes and drifted off to sleep....

Before...

The eyes see the open heaven,

the heart is intoxicated with bliss...

—
Johann von Schiller

I
t was like a dream, being
inside Daventry Court. A fairy tale. Such beauty, such order, such
a feeling of stepping from the mundane, everyday world and into a
fantasy land where time stood still, where the outside world went
away, leaving only those favored creatures allowed inside its
portals.

Leaving only Adam Dagenham, Marquess of
Daventry.

Sherry had thought of him all that afternoon. How
handsome he was. How friendly. How he had looked at her with those
dark, brooding eyes that seemed to reach deep inside her, to her
heart, her soul.

She’d made a hideous fool of herself, of course,
behaving like a hoyden with no sense of who he was, of the respect
his station, his very bearing, demanded.

Had she really pushed the Marquess of Daventry into
the stream? Oh, she had, she had! And then she’d handed him her
petticoat, which had been beyond anything stupid. Childish.

And yet?

And yet he had seemed to enjoy her company, had even
invited her father and her silly self to dinner tonight.

How she’d badgered poor old Mary all the afternoon,
trying on and discarding a half dozen gowns and finding none of
them suitable, and all of them too childish by half. She’d insisted
on rosewater for her bath, and she and Mary had taken turns
scrubbing her hair with the finest soaps until it squeaked as
Sherry pulled her fingers through the long tresses now piled on top
of her head, straining to be released from the combs that held the
hopefully sophisticated upswept creation in place.

Mary said she looked slap up to the echo, as fine as
any London lady, but Sherry wasn’t so sure. She wore no lip rouge,
no paint on her cheeks, no fine diamonds in her ears. Her ivory
gown was provincial in the extreme, with a neckline much too high
and a hem that totally hid her ankles. She looked what she was, a
country miss who’d never had a Season, a child who was noticeably
lacking in town bronze.

So what was she doing here, surrounded by beautiful
furniture, fine portraits, vases filled with roses cut from the
marquess’s own gardens? She didn’t belong here. She’d bore the
worldly marquess to flinders inside of a minute.

“Papa—don’t do that. Behave yourself;” she warned in
an almost violent whisper as she turned away from the mirror in the
Daventry drawing morn, disappointed in her reflection, and saw her
father hefting a vase in his hand, as if considering its weight and
worth. “The marquess will be joining us any moment.”

Stanley Victor pulled a face at his daughter, but
dutifully replaced the delicate vase. “Made ‘em in China eons ago,
make ‘em now in some county up north or so,” he said, interlacing
his fingers, then pushing them away from his body so that Sherry
could hear each of his big knuckles crack in turn. “Just wanted to
see if it were the genuine article. Your mama taught me that trick,
looking for marks and such on the bottom, feeling the weight. Could
buy a fine pack of hounds for the price of this useless bit of
plaster here. Pity.”

As Stanley Victor measured everything in hounds,
Sherry only nodded and tried to engage her father in conversation
more suited to the evening. “Are you hungry, Papa? I’m sure you’ll
enjoy your dinner,” she said, hoping against hope he wouldn’t tuck
his serviette into his collar or find it necessary to compliment
his host’s gastronomic offerings with more than two or three
discreet belches. She loved her father dearly, but even her mother
had said the man had the table manners of a pig bumped up to the
trough.

“Hungry, is it, missy? Starved half to death is more
like it. Look at that, gel,” he demanded, pointing to the mantel
clock. “It’s already marched past five-thirty. The marquess can’t
be a hunt man. Any fellow of sense knows we have to sit down within
the minute if I’m to finish in time to get my rest and be up with
the boys.”

The “boys,” Stanley Victor’s hounds, rose at four,
baying and yapping and generally letting the world know it was time
for them either to be fed or gotten ready to chase a poor fox
across the countryside. This explained why Sherry, whose rooms
overlooked the kennels, usually slept with a pillow clapped over
her head. She liked the boys, truly she did, but there were days
she wished her father were more devoted to fishing than hunting.
Fishing was bound to be quieter.

“I’m sure His Lordship will join us shortly,” she
said now, then turned as she heard footsteps in the hallway. A
moment later, a nervous smile pinned to her face and her hands
fully occupied with trying to find a place to put themselves that
wouldn’t look either gauche or idiotic, she watched as a handsome
young man entered the room.

“Adam, I don’t see why I should be dragged into this
bound to be stultifying din—” the young man began, then stopped
dead, staring at Sherry. “Well, hello there, dear lady,” he went on
quickly, recovering nicely, if she didn’t count the embarrassed
rush of color in his cheeks.

A moment later her hand was lifted to within an inch
of the young man’s kiss, then held for a few seconds before he
released her. “Dear lady. I am Dagenham, for my sins, and you must
be Miss Charlotte Victor. M’brother failed to mention that he’d
invited an angel to dine with us, a goddess. Our humble home is
more than honored, and I shall have to slay my brother at once, for
seeing you first.”

He then turned to bow to Stanley Victor, who was
looking the stylishly dressed young man up and down with a fairly
baleful eye and a slightly curled lip. “Greetings, good sir,” he
continued, his voice full of fun, of joy and mischief. “You must be
my assignment for the evening. How jolly. Would you care for a
drink? Lemonade for you, Miss Victor, of course.”

“A drink, is it?” Stanley Victor blustered. “Now
there speaks a man of sense, even if he does dress like a popinjay.
Oh, close your mouth, Sherry, I’m not going to say anything to put
you to the blush. Boy knows he looks like a popinjay. He’d have to,
stands to reason. Probably even does it on purpose, thinks himself
to be right pretty. Don’t you, boy?”

“I often find myself to be adorable, yes,” His
Lordship answered, winking at Sherry, so that she no longer felt as
if she had to grab hold of her father, stuff her reticule into his
mouth, and drag him back to Frame Cottage.

She watched as the elegant Lord Geoffrey Dagenham
strolled to the drinks table, silently marveling at the dangerous
height of his shirt points, the intricacy of his cravat. He poured
out two glasses of wine and her lemonade, then served them to his
guests, his tongue still behaving as if it were hinged at both ends
as he prattled on about the weather, his own hounds, the tour of
the Daventry kennels he would give her papa after dinner—all
seemingly without taking a breath.

He was a handsome young man, almost classically so.
His smile was Adam Dagenham’s smile, his eyes, although lighter in
color, held the same twinkle. His form, tall and muscular, mimicked
that of the marquess, and his hair, dark blond to his brother’s
black, displayed the same tendency to wave, to resist attempts to
keep one unruly lock from falling forward onto a smooth
forehead.

He was also nearer her age, probably splitting the
difference between hers and his brother’s. He was still young
enough to be silly, to be amused by her unsophisticated ways.
Handsome and witty enough to turn any female head, win any female
heart. She liked him immediately, was not in the least in awe of
him, and felt she could hold her own with him in any conversation.
He didn’t frighten her, as the marquess frightened her, intrigued
her.

And yet Sherry could only see him as a slighter,
paler imitation of the marquess. He didn’t make her heart skip when
he looked at her. Her stomach didn’t do a small somersault when he
bent over her hand. Her knees didn’t turn to jelly at the sight of
his smile, the sound of his laugh.

How odd.

Fortunately for Sherry’s still-jangled nerves, by
the time the marquess entered, apologizing for being late even as
he shook hands with her father, Lord Dagenham and Stanley Victor
were deep in conversation centering on the “boys,” and her father
was too busy to disgrace himself further with remarks about the
lateness of his dinner.

Unfortunately, also for Sherry’s still-jangled
nerves, that left her and the marquess quite alone together as they
sat near each other on matching couches—she waiting for some kind
soul to announce dinner before her heart stopped completely.

The silence in their corner of the drawing room was
deafening as Daventry sipped from his wineglass, looked at her over
the rim.

She put down her own glass, aware that it was either
be rid of the thing or risk spilling lemonade all over her gown.
Did he have to look quite so intense? Half so handsome in his dark
blue evening dress? So very different from the laughing man who’d
just this afternoon sat rump-down in the stream, then used her
petticoat to wipe at a smudge on his cheek?

“You’re frightened to death, aren’t you, Miss
Victor?” he said at last. “Why?”

Another young woman might have laughed off his
question, or gone racing from the room, crying. Most every other
young woman would have dissembled, lied to him, told him he was
mistaken, that she wasn’t in the least frightened. Frightened? How
silly! Why on earth would she be frightened?