Lord Perfect (15 page)

"Your wits are wandering if you
expect
me
to sit at home," she said.

"One of us must go," he said. "One of us
must remain. We cannot travel together."

"Obviously," she said. "But you are too
overset to think clearly."

"Overset?" he echoed incredulously. "I am
never overset."

"You are not using logic," she said. "You
want to keep this quiet, do you not?"

"Of course I—"

"I should attract far less
attention than you," she cut in impatiently. "You cannot
make enquiries about a pair of children without causing talk.
Everything about you screams who and what you are. You will act bored
and sound sarcastic, and behave in that superior way, and simply
assume
you
are in command. It will be as plain to everyone who you are as if you
had a sign hanging from your neck, proclaiming your title and
antecedents."

"I know how to be discreet," he said.

"You do not know how to be ordinary," she
said.

As though
she
could be ordinary, Benedict thought, with that face and body. She
would turn heads wherever she went. She would have men trailing after
her, their tongues hanging out.

He clenched his hands. She, setting out after dark,
traveling alone, in a hired vehicle, without an escort, without so
much as a maid…

Unthinkable.

"You cannot travel alone," he said in the
frigid accents anyone else would have recognized as ending the
discussion.

"I have traveled alone for the last three years,"
she said.

He wanted to shake her. He made himself unclench his
hands. He summoned his patience. "You had your daughter with
you," he said. "People behave differently toward solitary
women than they do toward mothers traveling with their children."

'This is absurd," she said, turning away abruptly.
"It is a waste of time, arguing with you. I shall do as I
planned." She marched to the heap of belongings on the floor and
started to make a bundle.

She had said she was on her way to the pawnbroker.

Benedict wondered how he could stop her, short of
knocking her unconscious or wrestling her into a strait-waistcoat or
tying her to a heavy piece of furniture.

"Stop that," he said, in a tone he usually
reserved for rambunctious MPs. "Never mind the pawnbroker. We
shall combine forces."

"We cannot—"

"You leave us no choice, you obstinate woman,"
he said. "I shall be hanged before I let you set out alone."

WHILE HE WAITED for her to collect her bonnet and
spencer and whatever other items she deemed necessary, Benedict tried
to reconnect his tongue to his brain.

He
never
spoke to women in that way.

He was always patient with them.

But she…

She was a problem.

Matters did not improve once she'd emerged from the
house, after having stopped briefly to speak to Mrs. Briggs.

"A curricle?" she said, pausing on the steps
to take stock of the vehicle standing at the curb. "An open
vehicle?"

"Did you suppose I should take a coach and four?"
he said. "Do you imagine I should wish to bring a coachman along
on such a journey?"

"But this will never do," she said. "It
is far too smart."

"It is hired, it needs a coat of paint, and it is
at least ten years old," he said. "You haven't the least
idea what smart is. Get in."

She clutched his arm, her gaze riveted upon Thomas, who
held the horses. "We cannot travel with a servant," she
said.

Patience
,
Benedict counseled himself. "Someone must look after the
horses," he said patiently. "You will not know he is there.
He will sit in the seat at the back, gazing at the passing scene and
thinking his own thoughts."

She tugged on his arm, to pull him toward her, and stood
on her toes to whisper in his ear, "You must have been
completely distracted to bring him here. Servants are dreadful
gossips, worse than old ladies. By this time tomorrow, everyone in
London will know what you have been doing and with whom."

Her breath tickled Benedict's ear. He was acutely aware
of the slim hand clutching his arm.

He picked her up and tossed her onto the carriage seat.

When he climbed in beside her, she said, "May I
remind you that this is the nineteenth century, not the ninth? That
sort of behavior went out of fashion with chain mail and wimples."

Thomas hastily took his place in the servant's seat.

Benedict gave the horses leave to start before he
answered her.

"I am not accustomed to explaining myself, Mrs.
Wingate," he began.

"Obviously," she said.

He started to grind his teeth. He
made himself stop, and reminded himself of the rule:
Women
and children, possessing smaller brains and thus a smaller capacity
for reason, require a correspondingly greater degree of patience
.

Now he said, patiently, "Thomas is not a
London-bred servant. He is a countryman, who grew up on the family
property in Derbyshire. Though he is now my footman, he is as
competent with horses as any of my grooms. I took him into my
confidence weeks ago, when Peregrine began his drawing lessons. I
would not have entrusted so delicate a business to him had I not
complete confidence in his discretion."

Mrs. Wingate let out a huff, sat straighter, and folded
her hands in her lap. "I beg your pardon for questioning your
judgment," she said. "It is nothing to me, after all, if it
proves faulty. I am not the one responsible for the Marquess of
Atherton's heir and sole offspring. I am not the one who will be
toppled from my pedestal if the world learns I have not only
permitted but encouraged my nephew to associate with the most
shocking persons. I am not the one who—"

"I wish you were the one who had
heard of the rule
Silence is golden
,"
he said.

"I am not a politician," she said. "I am
accustomed to saying what I think."

"I should have thought that anxieties about your
daughter would fully occupy your mind."

"I greatly doubt Olivia will come to any harm,"
said her mama. "I only wish I could say the same for those who
cross her path."

Chapter 7

THOUGH THE CURRICLE WAS MUCH TOO DASH-ing a vehicle for
people who wished to remain anonymous, Bathsheba had to admit it had
certain advantages, like speed and maneuverability.

They halted near Hyde Park Corner shortly before the
church bells chimed six o'clock.

While not as busy as it would be during the daylight
hours, the area was by no means deserted. The waterman still carried
buckets to the hackneys lined up at the coach stand. Some soldiers
gossiped under a street lamp. A milk-woman carried her empty pails
back toward Knightsbridge. The tollgate keeper would continue to work
through the night.

At least some of these people had been about during the
afternoon. If Olivia had been here, some one of them would have
noticed.

Here, therefore, Bathsheba alit, while Rathbourne drove
on, as he'd finally and not very graciously agreed after a short,
fierce argument. She would meet him a short distance down the road,
opposite the Horse Barracks.

The first person she spoke to was the waterman. He had
no trouble recollecting Olivia. He wasn't the only one. As one might
expect, she'd caused a scene.

Not long afterward, Bathsheba was climbing back into the
carriage. "Well?" Rathbourne said.

"My daughter's so-called squire, Nat Diggerby, has
been brought before the magistrate for causing a disturbance,"
she said. "Olivia, in true DeLucey style, abandoned him and
found another pigeon. A pie seller heard my daughter tell a young
farmer a heartbreaking tale of a sick mother."

She described the ensuing scene, adding, "Lord
Lisle must have a chivalrous streak. Olivia would have left him
without a second thought. But it appears that someone has inculcated
in him a sense of responsibility."

She strongly suspected the someone was Rathbourne.
Despite the light way he spoke of the boy, she'd sensed a strong bond
between them from the first. His rage with Lord Atherton's method of
dealing with Lisle had made clear how important his nephew was to
Rathbourne. Olivia's mad act might jeopardize that relationship.

Typical
,
Bathsheba thought gloomily. Whenever a Dreadful DeLucey appeared on
the scene, someone's life was sure to change, and seldom for the
better.

"Though his parents have failed to recognize it,
Peregrine is mature for his age," Rathbourne said as he set the
horses in motion. "He would consider it unthinkable to allow a
twelve-year-old girl to travel completely unprotected."

"Among the lower orders, a twelve-year-old is, to
all intents and purposes, an adult," Bathsheba said. "Olivia
has not lived a sheltered life. Furthermore, she has inherited my
family's talent for talking or cheating her way out of any
difficulty. The tale of the sick mother is a perfect example. I
wonder why I waste money sending her to school, when she might be
making us a fortune by writing melodramas for the stage and the more
sensational periodicals."