Double Deception (29 page)

Athena had been thoroughly confused.

Especially so when the earl had taken her hand and laid it against his lips. She had felt the warmth of his mouth spreading throughout her body, tingling along her nerves right down to the tips of her toes. She had been mesmerized by the glint of the moonlight on his dark hair, the rugged planes of his jaw, the unfathomable blackness of his eyes. She had reached such a pitch of excitement that she had actually prayed for rats to appear on the terrace, for lightning to split the tranquil summer sky, and failing that for an earthquake to jolt her out of her paralysis so that she might fling herself into his arms in panic.

But no such cataclysm had come to release them from the apathy that gripped them. Eventually, she had withdrawn her hand, and the earl had talked on incoherently about lying in the wet grass together, about kisses and caresses she recalled only vaguely.

And then he had pulled her into his arms, and Athena had waited, breathless with anticipation, while he had teased her with that brief touch of his lips on hers. Her heart had been ready to explode with happiness.

And then Perry's voice had shattered the moment and the bliss dissipated.

***

The dawn, creeping over the poplars in the Castle Park, found Athena rinsing out the cloth once again and bathing her daughter's forehead. The skin appeared less dry, but Penelope was still overheated and drank thirstily from the mug her mother held for her.

"May I go riding with Perry today, Mama?" she wanted to know.

Athena chuckled. "First of all, you must get better, my love," she replied, straightening the covers the restless child had dislodged. "Your pony will still be there when you are well again."

"I want Perry," the child mumbled insistently. She had called several times for the viscount, and Athena had promised to send for Perry as soon as he had breakfasted.

"Now I am going to ring for Nurse to sit with you while I change my gown, dearest," she said in a tired voice.

"I want
Perry,"
her daughter repeated pettishly. "He promised to show me the new puppies today."

"What new puppies are these, dear?"

"Why, Pip and Squeak's, of course, Mama. They were supposed to have their first family last night. At least, that was what Tom said. Perry promised I might see them today."

Penny closed her eyes, seeming exhausted by this lengthy explanation. Athena brushed a wayward curl from her face and gazed lovingly at her daughter. In spite of her recent very vocal falling out with the viscount, Penny appeared to be as thick as thieves with him again. And Perry was still making his good-natured promises to the little girl. Penny would miss him when they removed to Rothingham in a few days, she mused. And the viscount was not the only Steele gentleman who would be missed.

Her ruminations were cut short by the entrance of Mrs. Eas-ton with Penny's breakfast tray. While her aunt fussed over the child, cajoling her into taking small sips of the tisane Cook had sent up specially for her, Athena escaped to her own room to bathe and change her wrinkled gown.

When she returned nearly an hour later, the sick room appeared conspicuously crowded. Besides Aunt Mary, who was wringing out the cloth in the bowl of lavender water, Peregrine lounged at his ease beside the bed, his blue eyes sparkling with animation as he described in detail the six puppies waiting in the stable for Penny to get well.

On the other side of the bed, Lady Ridgeway sat spooning a thin gruel into the invalid, punctuating the child's eager questions with each spoonful.

"But I
am
well, Perry," Athena heard her daughter say in a tone perilously close to a whine. "Do say you will let me see them today."

"Let us hear what your mama has to say about that," the viscount remarked with a grin as soon as he saw Athena, deftly shifting the responsibility to her shoulders.

"Oh, may I, Mama?" Penny exclaimed, turning pleading eyes to her mother. "Do say I may visit the puppies this afternoon. If I promise to eat my nuncheon without a fuss?" she added with a grin that rivaled Perry's.

"Only if your fever is gone, darling," Athena said firmly. "It is kind of you to come up so early, Jane," she added; "you cannot have breakfasted yet."

"Neither have you, I wager," the countess responded with a laugh. "Penny has been a good girl and eaten nearly all of hers, so I suggest you and I go down for ours. I swear I am starving." Athena glanced uneasily at her friend. She had intended to avoid the breakfast room mis morning, not wishing to face the earl again so soon after last night's odd encounter.

"Yes, do go down and eat something, Athena," her aunt insisted. "Perry and I will stay with Penny."

Unable to come up with a suitable excuse, Athena allowed her friend to link her arm and escort her downstairs.

To her relief, the gentlemen had already finished their repast and gone down to the stables, according to Jackson. But Athena was mistaken in thinking that Lady Ridgeway would allow her to finish her meal without recounting the events on the terrace the evening before.

"It looked so promising, my dear Athena," the countess confided as soon as the butler had served their tea and withdrawn. "Martin was so sure that St. Aubyn was ready to declare himself. How very provoking of him to waste the time conversing with you, instead of getting to the point."

"Are you telling me that your husband is forcing St. Aubyn to act against his will?" The notion was so mortifying that Athena felt quite ill. No wonder the earl had waited so long to kiss her, she thought, disgusted at herself for not realizing it sooner. Perhaps he had only done so out of pity, sensing that she expected him to. That explanation pleased her even less. But then again, she could be wrong. She wanted most desperately to be wrong.

"No, of course not, you silly goose," Lady Ridgeway exclaimed with an unladylike gurgle of laughter. "I swear you are as provoking as his lordship, my dear. Anyone with half an ounce of wit can see what ails the man."

"Well, I must be particularly feeble-minded," Athena said with some asperity, "for I confess I was at a loss to understand him last night."

"What you need is a stroll in the garden, my dear," the countess said briskly, setting down her cup and rising from the table. "You have not had enough sleep and are peevish this morning. I can tell. Come, Athena, the fresh air and exercise will do you good." She held out her hand invitingly, and reluctantly Athena rose to her feet.

"Only if you promise not to abandon me as you did last night," she murmured accusingly. "I cannot endure another hour of his lordship's odd confessions, let me tell you."

And she could not endure another half-hearted kiss either, she added to herself.

***

Midway through the following morning, Sylvester came to the unpleasant conclusion that Mrs. Standish was avoiding him. She had refused to meet his gaze during tea in the garden yesterday, and had escaped up to the nursery after dinner on the pretext of attending to her daughter.

This morning she was absent from the breakfast table.

Disappointed and vaguely uneasy, Sylvester spent the day escorting Sir Henry and Lord Ridgeway around the estate, stopping off at the White Stag Inn in Camelford for a hearty meal, washed down by the landlord's famous dark ale. Sir Henry was a jocular sort of man, a typical country gentleman with few pretensions to either fashion or London gossip. He was obviously delighted to be reunited with his daughter and grandchild, and repeatedly thanked his host for bringing this family reunion about.

"It was kind of you to give my granddaughter her first pony, my lord," Sir Henry remarked as the gentlemen finished up the last of Mrs. Hardy's plum tarts and called for the reckoning. "I rather envy your son the delight of setting Penelope in the saddle for the first time. If she is anything like her mother, she will make a fine little horsewoman. I remember when Athena was her age, we could not keep her away from the stables."

"That sounds just like my Jane," Lord Ridgeway drawled in his rich baritone. "I still cannot keep her away from the stables. Her ladyship originally caught my attention when I learned she had taken out my curricle and four. I did not believe it until I saw it with my own eyes."

"Your chestnuts?" Sylvester asked in a startled voice.

Martin grinned, and Sylvester could not miss the indulgent pride in his friend's voice when he responded. "Yes, my lad, the chestnuts. And you may not believe this, but Jane drives her own curricle and owns a team of grays that I would give my eye-teeth for."

Sir Henry looked askance at Lord Ridgeway, his blue eyes bemused. "Surely you jest, my lord. And in any case, the horses now belong to you."

"You try telling that to my lady," Ridgeway said wryly, his grin growing a shade more fatuous.

"My little Athena was always a handful as a child," the baronet said with obvious affection. "And Penelope appears to take after her mother. My only regret is that I have missed so much of her life. If only I had known ..." He hesitated briefly. "My granddaughter should have been born at Rothingham instead of in some army surgeon's tent in Spain. An army baggage train is no place for a gently bred female."

"Mrs. Standish appears to be a resourceful woman," Lord Ridgeway put in gently, and Sylvester glanced at his friend gratefully. He envied Martin his ready sympathy. As for himself, the mere thought of the hardships Athena must have lived through in Spain made his tongue freeze, leaving him speechless.

"Aye, that she is, my lord," the baronet said gruffly. "But I count myself guilty for not insisting that her father-in-law, that stiff-rumped Wentworth, be more forthcoming about his son's whereabouts when I called on him. Claimed not to know where the major had taken his new wife, and sounded as though he did not care overmuch. I should have suspected something was amiss when the eldest son came into the title and refused to receive me." He sighed gustily and rubbed a hand over his face.

"That jackanapes deserves to have his neck wrung," Ridgeway muttered viciously under his breath. "Remember him from Oxford, Sylvester?" he added. "Always a self-righteous bastard, full of his own self-consequence."

Sylvester remembered the hulking Standish heir only too well, but he was concerned now with the future not the past. Athena Standish's future. And his own, he thought morosely, which seemed to be presently at a crucial crossroads. He knew which direction his heart wanted to take, but events seemed to impel him down the opposite road, taking him farther and farther away from the woman he loved. It was a sobering thought.

"Yes, that is the impression I got when I went up to London all those years ago to see him," Sir Henry muttered, taking another deep draft of ale. "Said he had not heard from his brother in years. Now I can understand why. My girl tells me the bastard cut them off without a groat." He seemed lost in thought for several minutes, then his scowl disappeared.

"But that is all in the past now, thank the good Lord," he said to Sylvester, his good humor restored. "And I have you to thank for it, my lord. Which reminds me," he added in his hearty voice, "I hope you will forgive me if I take my two gels home tomorrow. They have been without a real home far too long, and I aim to make it up to them, believe me."

Sylvester shot a startled glance at his friend, who gave a fatalistic shrug of his broad shoulders.

He heard nothing of the baronet's conversation as they rode back to the Castle. That crucial crossroads loomed even closer than he had imagined, and Sylvester knew with appalling clarity that if he did not make the right choice, he would regret it for the rest of his life.

Suddenly he was quite sure which choice he was ready to make.

***

After hearing from Lady Ridgeway that the gentlemen had ridden off together and would not be back for tea that afternoon, Athena allowed Penelope to join the ladies on the lawn under the oak trees at the tea hour. As usual, Lady Sarah asked her to attend to the formalities of pouring tea, while she and Aunt Mary discussed a card party they had been invited to attend at a neighboring manor house.

The only gentleman present was Peregrine, who had entertained Penny with a boisterous game of croquet before flinging himself in a chair next to Athena. He appeared somewhat ill at ease.

"There is something of importance I wish to discuss with you after tea, Athena," he muttered under his breath as she handed him his cup. In answer to her startled glance, he added tersely, "It concerns my father."

Athena felt a tremor of apprehension at the mention of the earl. She had not set eye on him since dinner last night, but he had been constantly in her thoughts. Although she deplored her own cowardice for deliberately avoiding Lord St. Aubyn, Athena had reluctantly come to the conclusion that he had no real interest in her. At least, none that would be acceptable to her. As a result, she had thought it prudent to leave trie Castle at the earliest opportunity and had so hinted to her father when he had visited his granddaughter the evening before.

Having made the difficult and painful decision to follow her common sense rather than her heart, Athena did not relish listening to Peregrine's confidences about his father. Whatever transpired between father and son was no longer her concern, she reasoned, and she would much rather not be dragged into their family conflicts.

Nevertheless, and as much as she tried to deny it, her heart yearned to hear his name spoken. A foolish piece of missishness she told herself, but once she removed to Rothingham with her father, there was little or no likelihood that she would ever encounter Lord St. Aubyn again. The idea depressed her, and she wondered if she had perhaps been premature in suggesting their early departure from the Castle to Sir Henry.

Even after the tea things had been removed by the footmen, Lady Sarah and her Aunt Mary lingered in the warmth of the summer afternoon, listening to Lady Ridgeway's spirited account of her mother-in-law's reaction to her son's unexpected nuptials to a confirmed spinster. It was Penny who eventually broke up the prolonged tea-party, demanding that Perry take her down to the stables to see the puppies, as promised.