Dair Devil (15 page)

“You can’t. She isn’t talking to you, remember? Besides, I don’t believe she has any idea what these wives twitter on about behind their fans. She’s just not curious.”

“Curious? That’s one word for it. Eaves-dropper is another.”

Rory pouted. “How can I not be when I am practically the only one at these tea parties who is unmarried? I am four seasons too old to be herded about with girls enjoying their first season, and far too young to sit with the pompous spinsters sporting ear-trumpets. And because Silla is kind enough to take me with her when she goes calling, her friends and acquaintances forget I am unmarried.” She glanced at her brother and said with a shrug as she pulled the woolen shawl closer about her, “And once I am seated, it is not a straightforward thing for me to remove myself from the hearing of such conversations. I don’t like to cause a fuss, and my stick—” She forced a smile. “Why is it that some people think that if you have a limp you must also be deaf? It is all so terribly embarrassing for the person shouting at me to be told by our hostess that just because I walk crookedly, it doesn’t mean I don’t have two perfectly working ears!”

“Rory—forgive me. I didn’t think…”

“Oh, don’t upset yourself on my account. They don’t mean to be rude, and I have grown accustomed to such assumptions.”

“That’s magnanimous of you. Still, to be forced to listen to such distasteful conversations goes beyond the pale. And those wives call themselves respectable. Ha!”

“Oh, but they are. It’s a harmless piece of funning, in its own way.” She smiled cheekily. “As harmless, perhaps, as pretending to be an American savage for a bunch of dancing girls.” When her brother covered his face with his hands, shame-faced, she added seriously, “I am unharmed and uncorrupted by the incident, so no hurt was done. And it helped clear up one matter that has been puzzling me…”

“Puzzling you?”

“Yes. The silly wagers written up in Lady Hibbert-Baker’s betting book… I had an exceptionally limited knowledge of what a gentleman looked like without his clothes; all guesswork. But after last night I no longer—”

“Oh. My. God. I have corrupted my own sister.” Grasby groaned, a hand to his forehead, as if shielding his eyes and himself from any further frank confessions. “Hang me now!”

“To tell a truth,” she said quietly, leaning into him and ignoring his melodramatic outburst, “I was more shocked to discover men have hair here.” She placed a hand to her décolletage. “I was not prepared for that at all.”

“Please, Rory! No more,” Grasby begged, and dropped his head into the tapestry cushion. After a few seconds, he sat up again. Setting his turban to rights, he let out a great sigh. “It is times such as these that I do sincerely wish we had not been orphaned. Only a mother is equipped to answer her daughter’s questions.”

“Silla confided that Mrs. Watkins told her absolutely
nothing
about
anything
.”

“Well that’s at least
something
.” He peered keenly at his sister. “Is that all Silla told you?”

“Most decidedly. Silla told me in a moment of weakness. I think she did so to warn me off, should I try to take her into my confidence, to seek answers to intimate questions she was not prepared to answer.”

He sighed his relief. But no sooner did he allow his shoulders to ease than he had a sudden thought. “I don’t—Rory… I don’t have a hairy chest…”

“No. No, you do not…”

Grasby took a moment to digest this. In that moment, his sister’s face blushed scarlet. He knew instantly whom she had been describing. It turned his frown of puzzlement into one of suppressed anger, and he gritted his teeth. When he could master his emotions he said flatly,

“Watkins said he found you unconscious behind the stage. He intimated you were back there with Fitzstuart for some time—alone. I threatened to knock his teeth out if he ever mentioned that circumstance again. Tell me the truth, Aurora. Were you alone backstage with Dair Fitzstuart?”

Her brother had only ever called her by her full name once, many years ago, and she could not recall there and then why he had done so, only that he had been furious with her—as furious as he was now. Oh dear, she was about to lie for a second time in as many hours, and she felt tears behind her eyes. But she would not give up the memory of the kiss exchanged with the Major. If she did, the kiss would be construed by others as something sordid and undignified, something of which to be ashamed. She was not ashamed, and regardless of how the Major and others viewed that brief intimate moment, she was intent on preserving the whimsy that he had enjoyed their kiss just as much as she.

“There is nothing to tell, Harvel. I said the same to Grand. I fainted at the first drop of blood. I have no stomach for men hitting each other. I am grateful to Mr. Watkins for carrying me to safety. It was truly frightening.”

“Frightening? I don’t doubt it! You should never have been subjected to such a God-awful sight. Never.” Still furious, Grasby hit the painted sill with the side of his fist. “Bloody Dair, always playing the hero! Always getting himself into some scrape that has him beaten up at best, and almost killed at worse! Sometimes I wonder why I tolerate his damned heroics.
Bloody
idiot
… Rory, he’s my best friend, but you are my sister, and if I thought he had taken advantage of you—touched as much as a hair on your head—that would be an end to our friendship. I’d defend your honor, the consequences be damned.”

“I know that, Harvel,” Rory replied quietly. “I also know the consequences of such an encounter would be one-sided. He is a soldier; you are not. He has been trained to kill; you could not. And he would kill you…”

As if to underscore the truth of her statement, there was a burst of harsh laughter from the garden. Rory pressed her forehead to the window pane and saw the subject of their discussion. The Major had a firm buttock propped on a low stone wall, long booted leg swinging as he leaned into a lighted taper, held out to him by a footman, to bring his cheroot to life. Her grandfather was standing next to him holding a small porcelain basket. She knew the container. It held crumbs for the school of carp that lived in the pond surrounding a central fountain of leaping dolphins. The water to the fountain had been turned off to allow for routine cleaning, which was why their conversation, if not their words, was audible. The Major exhaled a stream of smoke into the blue sky and said something which made her grandfather laugh and shake his head.

Brother and sister observed the two men in silence, Grasby sitting back once his grandfather handed off the porcelain basket to a lackey to resume his stroll with Dair amongst the topiary.

“Forgive me, sugar plum,” he said quietly, calling Rory by an old nursery nickname. “I have shamed myself doubly. Last night I acted the complete lunatic and today I’m swearing my head off. I am a disgrace, and have no excuse.”

Rory slid down the window seat to embrace him.

“You are the best brother in the whole known world and I would not trade you for anyone. Yesterday I would not have thought you capable of swearing, least of all of running about an artist’s studio naked, and you surprised me by doing both! Of course, such behavior behooves me to remove your halo and replace it with little horns and a forked tail. But I shan’t love you any the less.”

He shook his head with a smile, realizing she was trying to make light of his gross transgressions for his benefit, but he saw no humor in his ungentlemanly conduct. He pulled back to look in her blue eyes.

“Thank you. I deserve to have my halo confiscated. My brother-in-law now thinks me a lascivious freak. My grandfather shakes his head with disappointment, and my wife… Silla is so disgusted by my behavior she wants nothing more to do with me. She blames Dair and demands I cut the connection. That’s her stipulation for a reconciliation between us.”

“But… Surely she can see that the three of you were merely having a lark. There was no real harm done. And if we—Silla, Mr. Watkins, and myself—had not happened upon your mischief, then she would have been none the wiser to it.”

“She is not as charitable with her forgiveness as you. She has never approved of Dair, though she cannot give me a reasonable explanation for her dislike. I had no idea just how much, until his return from the fighting in the Americas. This last six months she has taken every opportunity to revile him, and now her attitude has become something of an embarrassment. You’re right. It was just a lark. And there was never any danger of me being unfaithful. So I told Silla. But will she listen to reason? No. She merely becomes hysterical and throws things at me! I told her she must accept my friends as they are. I will not give them up. Dair Fitzstuart is my best friend.”

“But Silla is your wife, Harvel.”

“So you see my dilemma. She must be made to understand. I will not be swayed. Until she does, we will remain estranged.”

“Then we had best put our heads together to find a resolution acceptable to you both,” Rory replied, glad the focus of their conversation had shifted away from her involvement in the Romney studio raid, yet disturbed that her brother’s marriage was in such strife.

“And what better way to do so, than over a cup of tea?” she added in a much brighter tone, for the benefit of her maid who had made her presence felt with a slight clearing of her throat. “I’ll pour, Edith. Thank you.”

Edith had gently parted the curtains, and was flanked by two upstairs maids, one with the tray of tea things, the other with the silver teapot and its warming stand.

Grasby continued to brood, staring out the window while his sister fussed with the tea things. He watched his grandfather and his best friend stop at an intersection of paths. Here the old man counted off using his forefinger and fingertips, Dair nodding in response as he smoked his cheroot. He remembered Dair telling him once that soldiers smoked; officers dipped. He knew Dair was not partial to snuff, and had little time for those of his fellow officers who stayed well out of the line of fire, taking snuff in a striped marquee, while soldiers were being blown to bits on the battlefield. So he smoked in their company to annoy them. And he could annoy them. He, heir to an earldom, socially outranked most of them, who were the second and younger sons of noblemen and had no title to look forward to, other than the rank bought on commission in the army.

But what annoyed these officers more than Dair’s disregard for social rank, and his care-for-nobody attitude, was that the ordinary foot soldier would follow the Major headlong into battle, no questions asked. And so his fellow officers called him arrogant and foolhardy, and had no time for him or his heroics because it showed them up for what they truly were—painted papier-mâché fighters. One spark from Dair’s cheroot and up in flames they would go.

Grasby smiled and found himself sipping hot milky tea before he realized he was holding a porcelain cup and saucer. He pulled himself out of his abstraction enough to say grimly,

“Truth is, Rory, I have no right to curse Dair for his reckless antics. He is the bravest man I know. With his family—his father in particular—holding him in little regard, is it small wonder he has little regard for his own safety? No, Rory. I will not abandon him. I cannot. It is Silla who must see why I cannot, or she will be miserable, and make me miserable into the bargain.”

Rory had to ask the question. “Why, Harvel? Why risk your marriage?”

“If not for Dair Fitzstuart, you would not have a brother, Silla would not have a husband, and Grand would not have an heir to his title and estates.”

T
EN

W 
ITH
SUCH
A
WILLING
and sympathetic ear, Grasby was soon confiding in Rory details and anecdotes about his best friend that, had Dair Fitzstuart been consulted, would have remained buried in the past, not to be repeated, and certainly not to the granddaughter of his mentor.

“Second year at Harrow was when Dair first came to my defense. I was being pummeled to a pulp by Bully Biscoe, a great big ape of a boy one year above us. Can’t recall what for. I don’t think he liked the color of my hair. Or was it my blue eyes? Whatever it was, it was not something I could alter about myself, even had I wanted to. Cedric did his best to pull the ape off me, but his chums got hold of Cedric, who had a pretty good fist on him, and held him down while Bully got to work on me. That’s when Dair stepped in. In those days, he wasn’t much bigger than me. But he could fight! Had Bully knocked cold before he knew who had hit him!”

“And so you became fast friends… You, Mr. Pleasant and Lord Fitzstuart,” Rory stated to move the conversation along when her brother paused and shook his turbaned head at a memory. “When was the second time he defended you?”

“Second time?”

“You said Lord Fitzstuart came to your defense for the first time when you were at Harrow… So there must have been a second time.”

“Clever! But it wouldn’t be right of me to tell you the particulars. Suffice it for me to say I was staring down the long length of a blade, point held to my chest by a man who believed I had taken liberties with a—um—
female
under his protection.”

“His sister? Wife? Not his daughter?”

“No! No! No! Not that sort of female or that sort of protection.”

Rory’s eyes widened, but she was matter-of-fact. “A whore. Please continue. Unless I am in the wrong and you need to correct me…?”

“No. No correction necessary. It was just before Dair headed off to join his regiment and Cedric and I were off to Oxford. We were celebrating the birth of his—well, that doesn’t matter. We were out celebrating and ended up at a particular direction that welcomed young gentlemen. The man with the sword fancied himself in love with my—friend. I was not in a position to defend myself. He had every intention of spilling my blood. Dair got himself involved and to bring the story to its conclusion, he mortally wounded the man. It was a fair fight, with seconds, and a fair outcome. The man knew how to wield a blade, and if not for Dair, I would have been the one bleeding to death all over the floor.”