Laura Kinsale (47 page)

As they neared the rustic gates at the entrance of the Zoological Gardens, Lord Winter’s pace slowed abruptly. “Damnation,” he said under his breath, and as Zenia looked up at him in inquiry, he turned to Mrs. Lamb. “I’ll take her—”

“Winter!” cried a lady’s voice, modulated in the most genteel accents, but carrying well for all that. “How do you do? Your dear mother wrote me the glad news of your return to us unharmed! All the angels rejoice, my dear, but what a horrible boy you are, to give us such a dreadful fright!”

It was a matron of some years and considerable stature who held out her black-gloved hand. As she stood with her companions, two younger women, Lord Winter turned from Zenia and Mrs. Lamb to make a brief bow over her fingertips. “Ma’am,” he said. “How do you do?”

“Of course you have not the slightest notion of me, do you? It is Lady Broxwood, your godmother’s first cousin,” she said imperturbably, and cast a look toward her friends. “We have not met above five hundred times, but since I do not ride a camel, he will have nothing to do with me.”

“Oh, indeed,” said the younger of the two, a pretty, petite blonde girl several years younger than Zenia, “is it—” She stopped, looking self-conscious.

“May I entreat you, Mrs. George, to allow me to introduce Lord Winter to you,” Lady Broxwood said.

The older woman stepped forward and gave Lord Winter’s hand a firm shake, her heavily freckled face lighting with an open, contagious smile. “It is a great pleasure,” she said. The wrinkles of sun and laughter about her eyes made a cheerful contrast to her plainly styled widow’s weeds. “I should very much like to hear of your travels.”

“Mrs. George and her niece are famous travelers themselves,” Lady Broxwood said. “Lady Caroline, I present Lord Winter to you. Winter, Lady Caroline Preston.”

The younger girl shook hands with the same confidence as her aunt. Her face was aglow with such enthusiasm that her prettiness became a positive beauty. “You have no notion how I have longed to meet you, sir! Arabian horses are my passion! Oh, Aunt—Lady Broxwood—you do not treat this gentleman with enough respect! He has brought the greatest mare ever foaled out of the desert, the Jelibiyat String of Pearls!”

Zenia saw the reserved expression on Lord Winter’s face change. He held Lady Caroline’s hand a moment. “You are familiar with desert horses?”

“Oh, a mere dilettante, I assure you,” she said. “But I have an extremely knowledgeable correspondent in Cairo, and another in Bombay. The word, my lord, is that she is beyond price. Beyond imagination. How I yearn to see her! Will you bring her to London?”

“You must come to Swanmere to see her,” he said immediately.

“How wonderfully kind! I should be—indeed, I can hardly express myself! I am euphoric! I had not dreamed of such a chance.” She smiled at him, her hand still in his, and then at Zenia. This open look seemed to prompt the other ladies to her presence, and there was a moment of expectation.

Lord Winter paused, the comer of his mouth turned up a little; an ironic, half-smiling twist as he glanced at her. “May I present—” There was the barest instant of hesitation. “—my good friend Miss Bruce.”

“How happy I am to meet you, Miss Bruce. And who is this?” Lady Caroline asked gaily, turning to Elizabeth after everyone had politely taken Zenia’s hand. She leaned over and pursed her lips, blowing out her cheeks with a great pouf that made Elizabeth squeak and laugh and reach out toward her face. “Is this your jolly little niece, Miss Bruce? What a beautiful child! And fortunate to have an auntie as good as mine, to take you everywhere.”

“This is Miss Elizabeth,” Lord Winter said, into the long lull after her innocent remark. That was all.

It felt a stinging blow. To be introduced as Miss Bruce, to have him fail to recognize Elizabeth as his daughter—a bitter anxiety settled in the pit of Zenia’s stomach. Along with the papers, the contract that would send her to Switzerland, it put a new and chilling interpretation on his sudden gallantry and suggestion that they start afresh. She could not blame him; she had no one but herself to reproach, and yet, after his illness, after she had worried and feared and loved him so much—somehow it seemed that she would have another chance, that he had been giving it to her with his white rose and halting chivalry. For a few moments, for half an hour, she had thought—something. Something that she was not certain now that he meant.

She could see that Lady Broxwood was looking at her in that keen, expressionless way that the Countess Belmaine’s friends had. While Zenia had not gone out into society during the Belmaines’ mourning, she had always been introduced as his wife within the limited circle of Swanmere. If Lady Broxwood was an acquaintance of his mother’s, she must suspect who and what Zenia was to him—and Elizabeth too. Zenia waited apprehensively for some cut or rudeness, but Lady Broxwood only turned her attention to Lord Winter.

“You are a godsend, Winter,” she said summarily. “A fellow of the zoo society, are you not? We were just told to our faces that we must have a member with us to enter today.”

“Yes,” he said, rather coldly. “I am a member.”
 

“Come, you hateful boy—has your lady mother neglected all your manners? You don’t object to taking us through? We will pay our own shilling, I promise you, if your pockets are so much to let!”

“Oh, no—perhaps Lord Winter is engaged—” Mrs. George said calmly. “I have every intention of subscribing myself, now that we are back in London to stay. We shall go through another day.”

“Nonsense,” said Lady Broxwood. “And what has Lady Caroline been pining to do since you both got off the boat? Come, Miss Bruce, I’m quite sure Miss Elizabeth is
aux anges
to ride an elephant, is she not? Lady Caroline can show her the way.”

Lady Caroline laughed. “Oh, indeed, but you must not look so horrified, Miss Brace! I very well can, you know. I was riding an elephant when I was but four days old. You must not be frightened of them. They are the gentlest of creatures in the proper hands. They can pick up a feather off the floor.”

“Or out of your hat,” said Mrs. George. “Let us not blame Miss Bruce if she maintains a prudent respect for the creatures. You, my young lady, are entirely too sanguine, and will undoubtedly come to your just end one fine day.”

“Why, when I have seen you ride Tulwar straight at a tigress, Aunt! Mrs. George is perfectly intrepid, I promise you—far braver than I, and cunning too! There is not a hunter in India who would not take her advice on tracking wild boar.”

“Come, child, you are embarrassing me extremely,” her aunt said, with a little sharpness under her amiable smile. “That is not at all true, and hardly the sort of thing that will draw admiration in polite circles.”

“Then I think polite circles entirely foolish,” Lady Caroline declared stubbornly. “If they do not appreciate you as they should, then I shall have nothing to do with them! What do you think of it, Lord Winter?”

“I believe polite circles are tolerably foolish,” he said.

‘There. Our oracle has spoken,” Lady Caroline said. “Let us go in to the animals! Miss Elizabeth and I are on pins to ride the elephant!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The afternoon took on a nightmarish quality to Arden. He made abortive attempts to assert some sort of authority, some organization that might separate him and Zenia and Beth at least a few yards from the rest, but of all the things he had no notion how to command, a herd of women, he discovered, was the foremost in perversity and festive obstinance.

He found himself entering the Lion House carrying Beth, with Lady Caroline beside him and Zenia trailing behind in an ever-changing regrouping, sometimes with Mrs. George, sometimes with a stone-faced Mrs. Lamb, and now and then, to Arden’s dread, with Lady Broxwood. He did not trust that woman to be kind, or even civil—he had no idea of what she knew or assumed, but Lady Caroline kept addressing questions to him, perfectly intelligent, provocative questions about the animals and the Zoological Society’s intentions in collecting them, forcing him to answer or to pretend he had not heard.
 

She must think him remarkably deaf by now, but no matter how he tried to fall back and walk beside Zenia, he was cut out by one or the other feminine claim on his attention: Lady Broxwood’s demand that he tell Mrs. George of the highest recorded temperature in the Arabian desert; Mrs. Lamb’s curt mandate to give Miss Elizabeth to her for a change of napkin; Lady Caroline’s questions about the different syllables used to command camels. Only Mrs. George seemed content to walk quietly, mostly beside Zenia—which finally seemed the least of evils to Arden, and so he ceased trying to rearrange it all and let them have their way.

The decided odor of exotic animals assailed them as he held open the door into the big cats’ abode. The ladies filed past him. He held Beth close, walking well in the center of the long, wide corridor. It was dimly lit and stone cold, lined down both sides with barred cages.

On such a bright day in winter, there were not many patrons viewing the exhibit, only a few serious-looking gentlemen, one seated with a sketch pad before the black leopard, and a boy who was asking the attendant eagerly when feeding time would be. His high-pitched voice echoed in the hall, and somewhere down the row a lion’s grumble escalated into an impressive roar. As the reverberations died away, Lady Caroline said softly, “That makes my heart go hot and cold.”

Arden looked at her with some interest. She was an unusual girl; he would have liked her rather better than he did if she had not been such a damned inconvenience. For a female, she was easy to talk to; certainly charming to look at—in his present state of long privation he was extremely easy to please with regard to feminine anatomy, and Lady Caroline’s pink soft skin and shapely bosom positively endeared her to him in that respect. He felt like a lecherous bastard, but he was so shy of Zenia, so afraid of a repulse, of saying the wrong thing again, and Zenia gave him no help; she did not chatter easily like Lady Caroline or ask him things to which he instantly knew the answer or come and stand beside him and breathe in that exuberant way that made her breasts lift and pull at the tight buttoning on her military-style jacket. No, Zenia hung back even when he tried to join her, slowing her steps until they were almost standing still, which made the whole group pause and gather about them, remarking on whatever bird or beast happened to be nearest, as if that were what had caused them to halt.

He had given up on it by the time they reached the end of the aviary. His afternoon with Zenia was hopelessly scuttled; he decided that he would at least enjoy the time with Beth, who was boisterously delighted by every animal, and perhaps then he could take them home, and go in, and talk to Zenia, and if he made himself particularly affable, perhaps if he was exceptionally fortunate and she was feeling particularly affectionate...

He stood holding Beth, contemplating the sexual act in powerful and vivid detail, hardly aware that he was staring at Lady Caroline as she stood before a tiger’s cage; only conscious of the cat’s rhythmic prowl and turn, back and forth and back and forth across the narrow limits of its cell, a vigorous beat to the cadence of his imagination.

Lady Caroline looked over her shoulder at him, frowning a little. “You will say I am a sentimental miss, but I cannot help but wish they could be free. Look at how he paces; how vehement his eyes are. He longs to be gone; to be back in his element.”

Arden wrenched himself back from erotic invention to the present moment, profoundly embarrassed. “Yes,” he said, his own voice sounding too loud in the echoing hall. He cast a guarded look to see if Zenia had been watching him. He thought she was, though he could not turn to be sure.