Emily Hendrickson (11 page)

When the dowager entered the room she gave Julian an assessing look, then turned her gaze to where Lady Chloe stood far from his side. Chloe appeared ready to erupt.

“Your port will be here directly. Tea for you, my dear?” she asked Chloe, who looked surprised to be consulted.

“Indeed.” She sent Julian a challenging stare, daring him to approach her grandmother with any sort of a request.

“I have been considering the work of this evening, ma’am,” he said politely to the dragon. “Do you not believe it might be well to have Lady Chloe appear in public as soon as possible? I should like to offer my services to that end. I thought perhaps a drive in the park tomorrow at five in the afternoon might have a dampening effect on any gossip flying about.” He assumed a casual pose near the fireplace.

The dowager considered his words and kind offer while Scroggins served the tea, port, and a light supper.

“I suspect you are right,” she admitted at last, over a plate of smoked salmon, macaroni salad, and a cream cake.

“Good,” he said, feeling like his plan just might work. “I shall be here.” He chatted a bit longer while consuming the excellent port, then bid the ladies good night.

Jauntily running down the stairs and out to the street, he hailed a hackney and headed for White’s. He wanted to know what was being said, and where better to begin?

“Well, well,” came a hearty voice the moment he stepped into the gaming establishment and most desired gentlemen’s club. “Hear you were one of the select this evening. Dashed clever drawings, so I heard tell. Wish she would get them published so the rest of us could see them. Doing Sally Jersey as a butterfly,” the portly Austin-Featherstone declared, “was rich, but I’d give a pony to see the Princess Esterhazy as a poodle.” He gave a genial laugh at the very image it evoked.

“Did she actually portray the Lieven as a snipe?” asked another who leaned against the stair rail while Julian walked up the steps.

“Better than a widgeon, perhaps,” Julian replied with a lift on one brow and a knowing grin.

“True, she is always whispering into someone’s ear,” the other man replied, then drifted off to share his new information with those in the other room.

It proved to be not nearly as bad as Julian had feared. Brummell declared that from what he had heard the raven was most elegantly portrayed and that he thought the girl dashed clever. He as well wished he might see the collection of drawings. “I should like to see you as a lion rampant. However do you suppose she arrived at
that
image of you?” he added with a disparaging twist of his mouth.

“Imagination, I fancy,” Julian replied with his temper well under control.

“It is a nine days’ wonder,” Brummell concluded to Julian in an undertone while others had turned the conversation to the next race at Newmarket.

“They haven’t heard all of it,” Julian offered, knowing the Beau would like to be first with a tidbit of gossip.

“And what might that be?” came the bland, but intent, question.

“That I find Lady Chloe to be utterly charming. Taking her for a drive tomorrow afternoon and I suspect you will see me near her more often in the coming days,” Julian replied with a most offhand air.

“What about Twisdale?”

“Well, the chap’s bad ton, is he not? It would never do to see talent such as Lady Chloe reveals to be stifled beneath a load of criticism. Understand he intended to do a bit of training,” Julian concluded with an exchange of looks.

Brummell gave a nod of understanding. “Quite so, old boy.”

Julian drifted off, then later watched to see others crowd around Brummell. Soon after, Julian left for his home, certain that he had deflected the plan that Elinor was trying to place into effect. Courting Lady Chloe was a small price to pay for escaping Elinor’s clutches.

He could always manage to slip out of any entanglement later. He always had in the past.

* * * *

Chloe hurried up to her room after her grandmother had excused her for the night. First she placed the drawings in a large folder, then into the back of a drawer in her highboy chest. Then she slumped down onto the small chair near the fitfully burning fire.

Ellen quietly entered, stirred up the blaze, then began to arrange Chloe’s night things for her. “Good evening?”

Surprised at the question from her usually taciturn maid, Chloe shook her head. “Someone—my aunt, I think—came up here and made off with all my drawings.”

The maid stopped her preparations to stare at Chloe. “And?”

“Everyone at the party inspected my work. I never intended that
anyone
should see those drawings. Grandmama is right—they are very wicked.”

“I will ask around to see if Mrs. Hadlow has been here,” Ellen offered.

“Mr. St. Aubyn is coming around tomorrow to take me for a drive. I wonder how
that
will go?” She gave up trying to stay awake and mull over her dilemma. With eyelids that declined to remain open, she had best sleep now.

Yet once in bed, sleep refused to come and it was some time before she succumbed to her fatigue.

* * * *

Chloe decided that her feelings were somewhere between delighted and dismayed. She faced St. Aubyn arrayed in her best gray pelisse and bonnet, which, while trimmed in gray, had a clutch of jaunty green feathers tucked behind the satin ribbon. She suspected that Ellen had raided the box in the attic again. And Chloe wondered if the feathers fluttered as much as her heart did.

The drive to the Stanhope Gate was unexceptional—unless you consider the instructions given her on how to flirt while in a carriage. It was when they entered the park that her ordeal began with stares from all sides and amused looks from several. Others bestowed glares of outrage and Chloe felt her heart sink.

“Courage,” Mr. St. Aubyn murmured as they viewed Elinor Hadlow approaching in the carriage driven by Lord Twisdale.

“What a peculiar pair they make,” Chloe whispered, placing that confiding hand on his arm just as he had ordered. She received a most puzzling reaction to this gesture. She felt oddly comforted and yet stirred by her proximity to him. That firm, well-muscled arm felt more than just reassuring to her. It gave her other, stranger sensations.

“Now give me that melting look you practiced while on the way over here,” he muttered at her. The other carriage was drawing close enough to see a facial expression and he wanted Elinor to realize that he had no intention of bowing to her wishes.

Lady Chloe obediently turned to bestow a warm look of regard on him. Her look of adoration and trust had a most profound effect on his senses. Innocence, he decided. It was most likely as dangerous to a bachelor as consoling a new widow. Although he admitted that his reaction to her confiding touch surprised him. He’d been pawed by a number of ladies and normally shrugged it off. Chloe’s gentle touch was different—not to mention the delicate scent of heliotrope that always surrounded her.

“Mr. St. Aubyn—Julian,” Elinor purred a trifle stridently—which made it sound more like a snarl. “Is it not a lovely day? Although I am surprised you are out, Chloe, I must say,” she added in a less than gracious manner.

“Indeed,” Lord Twisdale began with pompous intonation. “Thought you would have the good sense to remain secluded after the debacle of last evening. Poor judgment, my girl.”

He frowned at her and Julian could see why she drew him as a serpent. Bloody snake-in-the-grass! How could the dowager even think of letting that blasted fellow lay a hand on the fragile Lady Chloe.

Julian narrowed his eyes at Twisdale and said in a dangerously bland manner, “I was not under the impression that you had a jot to say about what Lady Chloe does, Twisdale.”

The older man blustered, “Her grandmother decides what is best for the chit.”

“Quite so,” Julian said smoothly. He hoped the self-assured tone of his reply rattled Twisdale’s complacency. And he also counted on Elinor seeing which way the wind was blowing and looking elsewhere for a husband.

“We are holding up the parade,” Lady Chloe murmured with another look of seeming adoration at Julian.

“So we are,” Julian agreed, gazing down at her with what he hoped to be fond regard. With a flick of the reins, his superb grays were off through the traffic and lost to the fulminations of Twisdale and Elinor.

‘There is something between you and my aunt,” Lady Chloe observed. “Do you find her appealing?”

Shocked that Chloe would ask such a thing, he snapped, “No, and you ought not ask.”

“Why not? Oh, I know it is impertinent, but I suspect we have gone far beyond that point. She is very beautiful,” she concluded a trifle wistfully.

“First of all,” Julian said, bending his head so she could hear, but none other, “she knows she is beautiful and uses her beauty in a cunning, displeasing manner. And you, my dear Chloe, have an inner beauty that Elinor Hadlow does not know exists.”

“That was a very pretty speech,” Chloe replied, looking up at him with a skeptical expression on her sweet face. “Is that a part of flirting? Making a girl feel special?”

“Blast it, I meant what I said.”

She did not look one whit convinced. Julian sat in silence for a time, fuming at relatives who depressed a girl’s natural beauty and dressed her in dowdy clothing.

“Perhaps you are a scoundrel after all,” she said in very soft tones that he barely heard.

A strained silence existed in the carriage all the way back to the Dancy house, where the dowager reigned supreme for the nonce.

When they paused inside the door—Julian having left his superb grays in the care of his expert groom—he stared down into that artless expression she wore with such success. “I may have earned the sobriquet of scoundrel but that does not mean that I am not sincere.”

“I must learn to discern that particular moment, is that it?” she said, her incipient dimple flashing into reality when she gazed gently up at him, her smile as fleeting as it was pretty.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you have a lamentable sense of humor?” He shook his head at her, liking her candid, open gaze.

“Quite often, I fear. It is what drew me into trouble, if you recall,” she said, grinning when he made a face at her dreadful pun.

Julian groaned, then considered her somewhat elfin charms. That dainty heart-shaped face revealed little of what went on in her active mind. What a clever chit she was proving to be.

His somewhat reluctant admiration grew when she patted his arm and said, “It ought not be so terrible, you know. We can pretend to rub along tolerably well for a time, then just drift apart once Aunt Elinor has turned her attentions elsewhere and Lord Twisdale has found another to be his bride—or my dearest mama returns.” She prudently withdrew to a discreet distance. Even if Ellen lingered in the shadows and servants crisscrossed the rear of the hall from time to time, she appeared to be concerned about appearances.

“Of course.” He studied her, wondering why he had thought her plain. She had magnificent eyes when she dared to raise them. And her hair made him wish to thread his fingers through the curls to see if the color gave it a vibrant warmth of its own. She definitely had possibilities. Pity there was not someone truly knowledgeable to guide her into a better choice of clothes and bonnets, a more self-assured manner. She could be quite bewitching.

He cleared an odd obstruction from his throat and sketched a slight bow. “I had best depart. Intend to stop by White’s for dinner and then on to the Kitteridge party. Nothing like London in the height of the Season.”

Chloe murmured an appropriate farewell, then watched him leave the house. Scroggins appeared seemingly from nowhere to open and close the front door with great ceremony. He bestowed a cold look on Chloe which prompted her to pause before going up to her room.

“What time did my Aunt Hadlow come yesterday? I was sorry to have missed her.” Chloe slipped her bonnet off and fiddled absently with the gray satin ribbons, watching Scroggins with an uncertain gaze.

“She arrived whilst you were at the bookshop, milady,” the butler intoned with sublime dignity.

“What a pity I was not here to see her. Grandmama, as well, since no one saw fit to announce her.”

“The Dowager Lady Dancy,” he said in a voice loaded with starch, “does not receive Mrs. Hadlow, ever.”

“Nor do I anymore. Mark my words, Scroggins, Mrs. Hadlow is not to be permitted in this house again. She greatly displeased my grandmama by her actions yesterday. Were I to inform the dowager of your part in the fiasco, I have no doubt you would be fired.” Chloe made to turn, then paused again to add, “I trust that is perfectly clear?”

The normally hatchet-faced butler actually looked a trifle shaken at Chloe’s words. “She indicated she wished to return or retrieve something, I do not recollect which,” he began in his defense, an indication of how badly he was rattled.

“Just see that you
recollect
that she is denied entry into this house under any and all circumstances.
I
shall try to remember not to inform on you.”

With that thrust Chloe trudged up the stairs, wondering if she would remove a spear from her back when she reached her room. At least it felt as though the stare given her would result in something projecting from that part of her anatomy.

When she reached the sanctuary of her room she found an agitated Ellen.

“What has stirred you to such a dither,” she asked, surprised to see her normally uncommunicative maid so highly upset.

“I ought not say, milady,” Ellen said, burying her nose into the depths of a scrap of cambric.

“If I ask politely will you tell me?” Chloe said with a twinkle in her eyes.

“While I was in the kitchen fetching you a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits, I found that poor little Rose in a heap, crying her eyes out. It that affected me.” Ellen blew her nose again, then sniffed a couple of times.

The plight of a scullery maid was far from her thoughts at the moment, yet Chloe halted by her bed, recalling the pitiful sight of the too-thin child who had no doubt slept under the kitchen table.

“Now what?”