June Calvin (12 page)

“When was that, Mama?” Davida forgot her own concerns in hearing this unknown story of her parents’ relationship.

“When I nearly died giving birth to your older brother.”

Davida knew her mother had lost a child four years before she was born. Lady Elizabeth’s expression showed that the memory still had the power to cause her pain.

“He was so distraught, so full of fear of losing me. He swore he’d never touch me again in that way, so as never to risk me again. Of course, it was a promise I didn’t want him to keep, but I had quite a time persuading him otherwise.” Lady Elizabeth looked a little embarrassed at this frank speech, but her daughter was soon to be married. She would need to know something of these things. “How glad I am that I succeeded, else I never would have had you, dearest, or Petey.”

“So, you see, love can grow. Don’t despair of good coming from this engagement.” She gave Davida another warm hug.

“Thank you, Mother. I won’t.”

But long after her mother left, Davida’s mind raced back and forth over the delightful sensations she had experienced when Pelham kissed her, and her fears that Lady Elspeth would change her mind. Rarely had she been in such a quandary, torn between joy and misgivings.

She was quite starved when luncheon was served, and went down to find Pelham seated in the dining room with her father and mother. “Ah, there you are, my dear,” her father called. “As you see, we have a guest.”

Davida smiled shyly at Pelham and took her place.

“Thought as I’d been here so long already, might as well stay for a bite and then take you for a drive.”

“Oh! I can’t. I’m promised to Gilbert. For a drive, I mean.”

Pelham laughed. “Daresay he’ll yield to me on the day of our engagement. We’ll look at rings, what?”

“Excellent idea.” Her father shot her an admonitory look.

“Very well, Lord Pelham, if
you
will explain to Gil. He was most insistent that I try out his new team.”

“Surely we can have done with this Lord Pelham business once and for all now.” Pelham laughed. “From now on, I am Monty to you all, and you are Davie, before the whole world.”

“Davida, if you please,” Lady Elizabeth interjected indignantly. “I have a lovely daughter. I heartily dislike hearing her called by a man’s name.”

“Ah, yes, she warned me you’d ring a peal over me about that. Davida, then, at least in Mama’s hearing.” Pelham winked at her in an endearing fashion as he took some slices of thinly shaved ham onto his plate.

Davida felt her heart turn over. How she adored him. How she wished he returned her love in full measure. Instead, she was second best and, she was quite sure, owed her engagement to Pelham’s pique at Elspeth’s announcement. He would wish to be released from the engagement the minute Lady Elspeth broke off with Lord Whitham.

Chapter Thirteen

L
ord Threlbourne stood in front of Davida and Pelham, looking back and forth between them as if believing and hoping one or the other would begin laughing and give the joke away.

“Engaged! You two? Stap me if that ain’t outside of enough. Cut line, will you?”

“Don’t matter how much cant you bedazzle us with, Gil, the fact remains. Today I have asked Miss Davida Gresham to be my wife and she has accepted me.” Pelham’s manner as he repeated his announcement was smug.

“It won’t do, Monty. It won’t do at all. Not good
ton.
”

Pelham drew in a sharp breath. He had known there would be some eyebrows raised at his fiancée’s obscure family. With his title and fortune, he could have looked very high in the ten thousand for a wife. But he certainly had not expected such a good friend to blatantly object.

“Now see here, Gilbert. Won’t have you insulting my intended in that way.”

“Not insulting her.” Threlbourne turned to Davida and took her hand, patting it fondly. “Davida is good
ton
, right up to her pretty little ears. But you, Pelham. This dashing from engagement to engagement just won’t do. You and Elspeth are behaving like children.”

Real temper began to show in Pelham’s voice. “This has nothing to do with Lady Elspeth. I haven’t been dashing from engagement to engagement. And I won’t let you put a damper on our happiness.” He glanced rather anxiously at Davida, who had grown progressively more agitated as this conversation continued.

“Happiness!” Davida tossed her head with a most unladylike snort. “He is only saying what everyone else will say. I tried to . . .”

Pelham quickly interrupted her. “Yes, I know, dear, you tried to get me to postpone our announcement for a while, but I can’t wait to make you mine. Get your pelisse and we’ll go shopping for rings.” He gave her a not very gentle nudge toward the door. “Sorry to deprive you of her company today, Gil, but I know you’ll understand.”

“Oh, I understand, well enough,” Threlbourne intoned gloomily, trailing them down the steps.

Once he had her settled in the curricle beside him, Pelham began a rapid-fire monologue that deliberately gave Davida no opportunity for further discussion.

“Of course, I could give you a family heirloom. Mother is still wearing her ring and wouldn’t part with it, but it wouldn’t suit you anyway. None of our old pieces will, the rings, at least. You have your own style. I picture you with something light. Perhaps a star sapphire set in diamonds. Your eyes aren’t quite sapphire, though.”

He caught and held her eyes with his deep cobalt gaze. “Lovely eyes, bright blue with flecks of white and amber like little lights in them. First thing that I really noticed about you, Davida, was your sparkling eyes. And don’t shoot fire at me with them now, missy. It don’t become you!’

“Spanish coin, sir,” she began, but he leaned over and stopped her protest with a quick, firm kiss on the mouth, then laughed gleefully at her discomposure.

“Mother will be so pleased. She thinks highly of you, you know. We’ll call on her later this afternoon and tell her the news.”

Davida clearly recalled his mother’s rapture when she thought there was a rapprochement between Pelham and Elspeth. “No, Monty, I must insist you tell her alone. It isn’t fair to her. She hopes you’ll marry Elspeth. This will come as a shock to her.”

Pelham knew his mother would be surprised and somewhat disapproving of this sudden engagement, not because she wanted him to marry Elspeth, but because she had urged him to give himself time to be sure what he wanted. She would be most censorious of his precipitate action in proposing to Davida. So he dropped the subject of visiting his mother that day.

“Let’s agree not ever to mention a certain young lady’s name between us. It will lead to a much more harmonious relationship.” He lifted her hand, turned it over, and kissed it warmly at the wrist, just above her short gloves. Davida drew in her breath, feeling a tingling begin at her wrist and spread through her like lightning. He knew just how to get around her, she thought, tugging indignantly on her hand.

He refused to relinquish it, however, but held it in his own as he drove. She allowed herself the luxury of enjoying his touch, quite forgetting that three days before she had been wondering if she could ever endure any man’s touch.

By the time the fashionable hour for driving in the park had arrived, Davida was possessed of a lovely sapphire ring just as Pelham had described. As they greeted acquaintances, her newly acquired fiancé saw that the news of their engagement began to spread. Soon they could not move two paces in the park before being stopped by someone wanting to know if it was true.

Her ring was admired and Pelham congratulated until Davida thought she would cry, for she felt sure that most of those smiles and expressions of delight were thinly disguised sneers of derision at this hasty engagement. She felt sure all recognized it for what it was, a reaction to Pelham’s being jilted. Indeed, more than one supposed well-wisher alluded to the coincidence of their becoming engaged on the same day as Lady Elspeth and Viscount Whitham’s announcement.

Pelham seemed unaware of any such undercurrents, but after a time he realized that she was miserable. “Are you getting the headache?” he asked, looking at her with concern as she frowned and bit at her trembling lip. Trying hard not to let him see the tears beginning to gather in her eyes, Davida nodded.

Her distress bothered him, and he searched for words to relieve it. “I’ll take you home and you can rest for a while. You’ll want to be fresh for the Talbots’ ball tonight. What a pleasure it will be to escort my beautiful fiancée there.”

Davida turned her head aside. “I mean it, Davie. I’m very proud of you. I’m looking forward to showing you off.”

“I . . . we weren’t invited to the Talbots’ ball. We were to attend a musicale tonight. In fact, I am to sing.”

“In that case, we’ll go to the musicale. I’ve been wanting to hear you sing.”

“Have you really, Monty?” Davida searched his face hopefully.

His expression was warm, almost tender. “Yes, Davie, I have. Very much. I’ve been told you have a lovely voice. When we are wed, I will have my very own opera singer!”

Tears threatened to overwhelm her, and he turned his horses toward the gates, picking up the pace to prevent further interactions with the fashionable
monde.

After the musicale, Lord Pelham sat with his friend and mentor, Stanley, Lord Carrothers, cracking a bottle at White’s.

“She sings like an angel. And she’s pretty as she can stare. Good-natured and affectionate . . .”

“Then I may take it you are happy with your choice,” drawled Lord Carrothers.

“Very. No self-righteous posings for my Davida. Not that she isn’t a good girl. She is all that is proper. But not starchy and supercilious like—like some I could name.”

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

“Hang it all, Stanley, you sound like her. I’m convinced she’s the best choice for me. Don’t you think so?”

“I never interfere in affairs of the heart, dear boy.”

“Well, this isn’t exactly an affair of the heart. Mean to say, I’ve made a rational choice for a change. Not that I don’t care for her.” His lips curved in a reminiscent smile. “You should have seen how she melted against me when I kissed her. She’s a bewitching armful. And I am beginning to believe Curzon may have had the right of it when he hinted she had a
tendre
for me.”

“Rational choice, eh? Yes, I can see that!” Carrothers chuckled.

“Rational choice doesn’t rule out affection,” Pelham snapped.

“No, of course it don’t. In fact, I agree with you, rationally speaking. Mean to say, Elspeth is the fashionable beauty, of course, blondes being all the crack. But you have the right of it. Her looks won’t hold up like Davida’s, that’s for sure. And in all points relating to temperament Davida is clearly superior.”

“Not that I care a pin, but how can you doubt Elspeth will remain a beauty? Her features are quite classical, like a miniature bit of Greek statuary come to life.” Pelham felt himself oddly inclined to be insulted by this slight to his former fiancée.

Adopting a professorial tone, Stanley lectured, “True, but compare the mothers. Now if a man wishes to make a
rational
choice”—Stanley gave the word ‘rational’ an ironic twist—“he will pay less attention to the daughters, and more to the mothers.”

In his mind’s eye, Pelham pictured Lady Howard and shuddered. She was a forbidding-looking woman, short and very round, with three chins and a basilisk stare.

“Quite so!” Stanley gave his pupil a quick grin. “Lady Elizabeth is matronly, to be sure, but very nicely proportioned, and with a very pleasant demeanor.”

“And only one chin!”

“You begin to understand me. I have to admit, now that you are well out of it, I have been worried for you a bit, my boy. Lady Howard’s personality has quite a chilling effect on one, and Elspeth bids fair to be just like her.”

Pelham was much stricken by this observation. It was good to have Stanley’s support, for he was painfully aware that his fiancée and his mother, to say nothing of many members of the
ton
, felt he had engaged himself to her entirely in retaliation for Elspeth’s engagement announcement. To have his good friend applaud his actions was a longed-for balm.

“Then I am, as my mother said, well out of it, on yet another ground.” Somewhat morosely he drew the brandy bottle to him and poured another drink.

“Dipping deep, tonight, Monty. If you are so pleased with your choice, where is the worm in the apple?”

“There’s no worm. None at all!” Pelham’s denial was truculent.

“You still love Elspeth.”

“No, hang it, I don’t. That harpy has quite killed any feelings I had for her.”

“Then what?”

“Let go, Stanley.”

“If you wish it. But you are down-pin about something, and I’m ready to listen.”

“You know me too well.” Pelham dropped his head into his hands. “Davida thinks I only proposed to her because of Elspeth’s engagement.”

“Which is not true.” Stanley quirked an inquisitive eyebrow.

“No, damn it. As I said, I was planning to move in that direction anyway, though by means of a carefully planned courtship. When I heard that she’d turned Curzon down, I was very relieved. Especially after he as good as told me he thought she had a
tendre
for me.”

“But you rushed your fences, eh?”

Pelham lifted his head and met his friend’s sympathetic brown-eyed gaze. “Yes. I jumped in and proposed when I heard about Elspeth’s engagement, without preparing the ground. I had it in mind to court her, to win her, but now she thinks it’s all to spite Elspeth. It’s hurting her, and I hate that.”

“Unfortunately, most of the
ton
thinks the same.”

“That’s part of what is upsetting her. But it’s not true. Not at all. Except for the timing, I mean. So what’s to do?”

Stanley shook his head. “It’s not a game I play well, or I suppose I wouldn’t still be a bachelor.”

“I’ll make it up to her. S’all I can do. Take her everywhere, let her see I don’t care a snap for Elspeth.”

“And if you find out that’s not true? If she changes her mind and wants you back, can you honestly say you won’t want her?”

“Hang it all, I won’t. But even if I did, I wouldn’t hurt Davida by crying off. Never cry off, no matter what!”

Stanley’s mouth curved in an ironic smile. “Yes, that should certainly make Davida happy, to marry her but prefer Elspeth.”

Pelham brought an angry fist down on the table. “Told you! I’m well over Elpeths . . . Elspeth.” He stood up, aware that he had consumed too much brandy. “Can’t make even you believe me, can I? Much less Davida. Going home.” He stumbled slightly as he made for the door.

“Methinks he doth protest too much,” Stanley intoned grimly, watching his friend’s unsteady departure.

***

The next Sunday found Davida, her parents, Pelham, his mother, Sarah, and Sarah’s aunt, in St. George’s Cathedral listening to the banns for the approaching marriage. Davida tried to imagine the reception the banns would receive in their home parishes, where they were also being read this morning. Would Pelham’s neighbors be astonished and derisive at his sudden change of fiancées? Would Sarah’s father, the Duke of Harwood, feel the slightest twinge of regret?

After many tears and considerable soul-searching Davida had decided to make the best of it, to pretend all was perfect and hope with all her heart that pretense would become reality. So she put away her misgivings and looked up at Pelham with a brilliant smile that caused him to draw in his breath with awe.

She really is a splendid girl
, he thought, taking her hand.

He’s so dear to me. I hope I can make him happy
, Davida thought, letting her hand rest confidingly in his.