Confessions of a Little Black Gown (12 page)

“Marriage?”

“Yes, marriage,” she said, this time with a bit more vehemence. And then she let him have her opinions. “Gracious heavens! It is a wonder any lady marries after listening to him describe such a union. Marriage, indeed! More like transportation to some heathen colony.” She wagged her finger at him. “Nanny Rana said marriage should be a blessed union of joy and pleasure.”

He knew better than to ask, but he couldn’t help himself. “Nanny Rana?”

“Oh, yes, our dear nanny in Constantinople.”

“And she was married?”

Miss Langley laughed. “Oh, heavens no. She was a concubine the sultan gave to Papa after my mother died.”

“A wha-a-at?”

“A concubine,” she repeated. “Do you know what one is?”

He raised his hand to stave her off. “Yes, I know what one is. But I can’t imagine your father leaving such a woman to…to…”

“Care for his daughters?”

“Exactly,” he said with a snap of his fingers. Even if he weren’t supposed to be shocked over the moral implications of such a situation, a very British part of him was truly taken aback.

“He hadn’t much choice. A fever swept through the city. My mother died, as did her maid who had come with them to Constantinople. And there was Felicity and I, but infants to be cared for. Papa was
bereft without Maman, and we were so small…What could he do? Besides, it would have been an insult to the sultan to refuse. As it was, Nanny Rana turned out to be a lovely woman. She had the most expressive eyes and a light, pretty laugh.” She looked away, as if the memories were too dear to share, too intimate.

“And you don’t remember your mother at all, do you?”

She glanced up at him, as if his question had startled her. It had him, for he’d asked it before he could stop himself.

She shook her head. “Not at all.”

“Neither do I,” he told her. “My mother died when I was born.”

Whatever was he doing? This wasn’t his life he was supposed to be telling. He was Milo Ryder, Hollindrake’s godly cousin. Christ, he hoped like the hell Ryder’s mother was dead—not an entirely charitable thought, but necessary.

Larken took a deep breath, trying to shake off the way her wistful speech had lured him into making such a confession, tugging from his heart his childhood memories of loneliness and longing for something he never had.

“Oh, I am so sorry,” she said, reaching out to put her hand on his sleeve. Her fingers curled around his arm and squeezed him. The sudden warmth of her touch, and the intimacy of it, was disarming.

And this time he didn’t feel that she was trying to test him.

No, this was a gesture from Miss Langley’s heart.

And it curled into his chest like a warm ribbon.
The darkness, the anger, the dangerous black void that had followed him home from the Continent, threatening to swallow him alive, lessened, if only a little. Like the first bit of sunlight that pierces a deep morning fog.

“There is nothing to be sorry about,” he told her, pulling away. “It is hard to miss what you have never known.”

If he’d been trying to break away from her, he was failing utterly, for she looked up at him with a sense of understanding. He’d never shared this with anyone else, but telling her opened up a part of him that he’d kept hidden away for years.

Apparently French locks weren’t the only thing Miss Langley could open.

For his part, Brutus broke the spell between them, scratching and barking up a nearby tree. At least the little mutt hadn’t found Temple’s hiding spot.

“A squirrel, I imagine,” she said over her shoulder as she went over to pluck up the spunky dog. “I daresay he’d have no idea what to do with one if he ever caught it.”

Larken laughed. “Rather like chasing after a husband. What does a lady do after she’s caught the poor fellow?”

“Well you won’t find me barking up any trees, if that is how it looks,” she said. “I have no intention of falling prey to Felicity and her
Bachelor Chronicle
schemes—no matter how many earls and viscounts she scatters about the grounds like acorns.”

“Bachelor Chronicles
?”

Her nose wrinkled up. “Felicity’s journal. More of an encyclopedia of eligible men. She’s been gath
ering intelligence and keeping notes on just about every nobleman in England for years. Well, I want none of it. None of her carefully chosen gallants.”

The duchess kept a journal of eligible men? Why didn’t that surprise him? Poor Hollindrake. The man had never stood a chance.

And neither did it seem would Miss Langley. Despite her protests. Her sister would bully her into a lofty marriage.

He choked back a shocked laugh and managed to ask, “I thought it was the aim of every English miss to seek an advantageous union.” He rocked back on his heels and tried to look as pompous as he sounded.

“Not mine!” she exclaimed. “I have no desire to be wed.”

Now this was not the opinion he’d been expecting. Some Wollstonecraft-inspired speech on the education of women and the equality of the sexes, perhaps. But this? No desire to wed? He’d never heard a woman so adamantly declare herself without any intention of marrying.

At least not one who wasn’t over sixty. And even then, only those who were widowed with a dower large enough to keep them in solitary comfort.

Not want to get married? Something ruffled up inside him, almost as if his vicar’s collar tightened to force the words to his lips. “But you must marry.”

“Bah!” she replied. “If marriage means what Mr. Fordyce declares—all that submitting and obedience and meekness—then I shall remain blissfully happy as a spinster for the remainder of my days.” She shot a scathing glance at the book in his hand.
“What a bothersome fellow, Fordyce. And truly, take my advice to heart. Don’t let Felicity see you with that book. She’ll ring a peel over your head you won’t forget easily.”

“Yes, thank you,” he said. Then again, if he was unable to find Dashwell before Sunday, he could always hold a Saturday-night reading from the volume to ensure he was packed off without further ado.

Meanwhile, Miss Langley smiled up at him. “That’s why I’m out here. Her Grace sent me to find you. I fear she commands you to attend her immediately. The tailor is due to arrive, as is the dancing master.”

A tailor
and
a dancing master?

“But I don’t—” He glanced back over his shoulder at the rocks and considered dragging Temple out and finishing his earlier thought of hanging the wily bastard in Dashwell’s place. “No, I really don’t think I—”

“No, I don’t suppose you do,” she said, coming up and curling her hand around his elbow and starting to tow him down the path. “But you haven’t any more choice in the matter than I.”

He shot a glance over his shoulder, aiming it in Temple’s direction.
I will get even with you for this…

Miss Langley continued on, “If I had any say in my life, I would spend my day here, sketching this wonderful place. Why, it is like happening upon some little bit of Italy.” She clapped her hands together and gazed at the stones a bit starry-eyed, but then she sighed and nudged at a tuft of grass with
her shoe. “Or I would find a handful of wildflowers and spend the afternoon with my watercolors trying to capture their hues. But it is not to be. We are both, I fear, subject to her tyranny at present.” She paused and glanced at him, and for a tenuous moment he understood the dismay to her tone, could sympathize with the light of uncertainty in her eyes.

It wasn’t that far from his own feelings, for if he were to tell the truth, his preference would have been to remain in London and not be sent on this fool’s errand. Stayed home to brood in solitude and roam about the city at night in search of…well, what he didn’t know.

She would…
a voice nudged insistently.

Larken ignored it as best he could. “Is there anything else Her Grace has planned for today?” he asked, as he led her from the folly toward the pathway. “Forewarned and all.”

“Well, if you survive the tailor and we pass muster with the dancing master—”

“We?”

He would never have thought it possible, but the cheeky minx blushed. “Yes, we. I daresay she merely suspects that you cannot dance, whereas she knows I am rather…well…“She looked away, as her cheeks pinked to a bright shade of red.

“Miss Langley, are you telling me you cannot dance?”

She pulled to a stop. “No, I cannot. I can do many things, sketch, write a play, manage a decent tune on a pianoforte—at least so I’ve been told. I can even darn a sock, and make toast if it is necessary—”

“Then I will know whom to call if the cook becomes desperately ill and I require toast,” he offered, smiling at the very notion of her in the kitchen.

“It isn’t funny in the least, Mr. Ryder. I’m a terrible dancer. You’ll never believe this, but when I try to dance, my feet go one way, and I go another.”

He would have told her she needn’t go to great lengths to convince him, when the image of her teetering along in her high-heeled slippers across the grass, and tripping in them not once but twice, rather proved the matter.

“And now,” she continued, “Felicity is insisting on throwing a ball the evening after next, and expects me to make a good show of my ‘accomplishments,’ as she calls them.”

“Haven’t you been to other balls?”

“Yes, to one last winter, but I was able to cry off the rest of the Season…for the most part, because of Pippin, but Felicity has declared that we will rise above our disgrace and make our first public outings here and now.”

“Disgrace?” he murmured, guiding her along the path and steering her around a muddy spot.

“Well, yes,” she replied, picking up her skirt and frowning down at the mud that now decorated the hem despite his efforts.

Could one steer this sort of woman?

“Pippin…” she began, then corrected, “I mean, Lady Philippa, whom you met this morning, fell in love with a man Felicity did not favor.” She said it as if her cousin was over the moon for a shoemaker or a butcher, rather than one of England’s foremost enemies. “And when it was discovered that she found
him preferable to any other man, well, Society was not kind.” She paused before she finished. “There was a bit of a scandal.”

A bit? A hurricane, more to the point, but he wasn’t going to stop her from sharing her confidence with him. “Yes, I suppose Society isn’t as forgiving as one might hope.”

Miss Langley nodded. “This house party is as much about seeing us put back in those elevated circles as it is to renew Felicity’s place as the
ton’s
best matchmaker.”

He stumbled a bit when she said that and this time she steadied his pace. “The wha-a-at?”

Miss Langley glanced up at him. “The
ton’s
best matchmaker. I assumed that’s why you wrote to her, to enlist her services.”

He quashed the questioning light in her eyes as quickly as he could. “Of course, yes, her skill as a matchmaker. I didn’t realize she was as well known as you say. I just merely—”

“Merely? There is nothing ‘mere’ about Felicity. You’ve unwittingly engaged the most determined woman in London. England, even,” Miss Langley replied. “She’s made, oh, now, let me see…“She tapped her fingers to her lips as she counted.

With each one, Larken felt as if he were being struck by arrows.

“One, two, three, four, five,” Miss Langley paused. “Shall I count her match with Hollindrake? For that was all her doing.”

“I suppose you must,” he told her faintly. What did he care after the third tick of her fingers? By the second one he’d been nearly overcome by the usual
panic that every unmarried man felt at the mention of that word.

Matchmaker.
And here Larken had thought himself made of sterner stuff. Yet this assignment was suddenly taking on the sort of hazard that one usually associated with breaking into a Paris prison.

“Oh, yes, I suppose I must include Hollindrake,” Miss Langley was saying. “Well, that makes six then. And she means to have an even dozen to her credit before the summer is out.”

“A do-do-zen?”

Miss Langley nodded. “Yes. And over the course of this house party.”

“So soon? So many?” he gasped. Was it he, or had his collar suddenly tightened, cutting off his air? Even though they had just left the woods behind and were now coming to the wide meadow that ran up to the formal gardens, the bright sun sparkling down on them, Larken had the sensation of being thrust into a deep, dark cave.

“Of course,” she was saying. “For what is the point of going to all the bother of this,” she waved her hand at the line of wagons coming up the drive, where the guests and supplies were coming in a steady stream, “if not to make as many matches as possible?”

But six matches? Before he could stop himself, he asked the inevitable. “How are so many possible?”

“Well, there’s you, me, Pippin, Miss Browne, Miss De Fisser, the Elsford sisters, and of course, Lady Standon.”

“Which one?” he remarked dryly, forgetting himself momentarily.

“Minerva, I suppose, since she was invited.” Then
she smiled. “I daresay having all three of the Lady Standons bickering amongst themselves is bedeviling Hollindrake, and Felicity in turn. Mayhap I should suggest to her some way of getting the three of them married off, if only to divert her for a time.” She sighed. “Not that it would work for long, I suppose. She’s bound and determined to make her dozen before winter and return to Town quite triumphant.”