Loving Lady Marcia (30 page)

But he had.

Perhaps the drawing Joe had included with the invitation had persuaded His Grace. It was of a giraffe named Michael whose neck was so long, his head couldn’t fit into the picture.

At Joe’s urging, Duncan had also issued an invitation to Marcia that morning. But she’d written back that she was still sadly indisposed and wished them a delightful excursion. She’d sent a gewgaw back with her note, the kind that spun in the wind. Duncan had seen some of them at the Reader Street fair.

“This is for Joe,” she’d written, “with love from his friend Lady Marcia.”

Her consistently kind overtures toward his son had touched Duncan like nothing else could.

So it was in that spirit of appreciation that he and Joe, after a very amusing visit with the duke at Exhibit Hall, stopped at a shop filled with all sorts of toys and bought Lady Marcia a beautiful wooden giraffe, painted with a smile on its face. Joe immediately said it was the Michael of his drawing.

“I want to give him to her myself,” he said, holding the giraffe tight under his arm. “Where’s her house?”

“We have to be issued an invitation to visit, first.”

Joe drew in his small, round chin. “But she told me she wanted me to meet her mother. Isn’t that an invitation, Papa?”

“Usually, it is,” Duncan said, “but she didn’t say
when
. She has to tell us that, too.”

“
That’s
stupid.” Joe slid down the carriage seat and onto the floor. He narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips.

“Back on the seat, young man,” Duncan told him sternly.

Reluctantly, Joe returned to his seat and crossed his arms over his chest.

“That’s the way good manners work,” Duncan told him. “I know sometimes they seem stupid. But in the end, they’re not a bad thing. Just imagine if Lady Marcia showed up at our house in the middle of the night, while we were sleeping, because she wanted to visit. And she woke you up, and said, ‘Joe. Joe. Let’s talk and have tea.’”

Joe laughed and uncrossed his arms. “I wouldn’t like that. I like to dream.” He wiggled his feet for no reason at all.

“See?” Duncan grinned. “She’ll give us a time to go see her at her house. And then we’ll go.”

“I won’t if it’s the middle of the night,” Joe said wisely.

That didn’t stop
me. Duncan felt guilty for indulging in a heady flash of remembrance in front of his own son.

“As long as it’s soon,” Joe said, swinging his legs.

He was trying hard to be patient. And it would be marvelous if they could visit Lady Marcia in her own home, have tea with Lady Brady, let Joe meet the Sherwood brothers, and visit their horses in their stables.

But who knew when that would actually happen?

And then Duncan had an idea. “Let’s send Michael over to Lady Marcia as a surprise and let her guess who he’s from. She’ll wonder and wonder if we gave him to her, but we won’t say a word. Not unless she asks us outright.”

Joe’s face lit up. “I like that. We’ll write a note to her from him instead of us. That way she’ll
never
guess we sent him!”

“Do giraffes know how to read and write?”

“Michael does,” Joe said, smirking.

They went to the park again, the side with bluer sky and better trees, happy with their secret mission.

Duncan waited a whole day for the return note from Marcia, thanking them for Michael, but it never came. So he waited for a surprise early-morning visit on the second day—sure she was going to sneak over before the beau monde awoke—but that never came, either.

Which he told himself he was happy about, as her reputation was always at stake when she ventured over to his house.

At one o’clock in the afternoon on the second day, he paid
her
a call, which was expressly against her wishes.

But he had wishes, too, he realized. She could always throw him out.

Good Lord,
he thought when he walked in. It was a zoo in the Sherwood drawing room. Gentlemen callers, young ladies who were friends of Lady Marcia’s and Lady Janice’s, stuffy matrons, and elderly people, too—an ancient baronet, the Jensen sisters, Dr. Trimp …

Everyone felt welcome at the Brady mansion, apparently.

When Lady Marcia saw him, the most interesting thing happened. Her face lit up. But then her smile faded, and she looked away.

He felt a stab of alarm. Perhaps he’d gone too far pretending indifference to her. Had she really been jealous of Lady Ennis at the Reader Street fair? Did she believe he was the least bit interested in the school’s benefactress romantically?

He’d done his best impression of it, although making Marcia jealous hadn’t even occurred to him until he’d seen the way she’d appeared to eye their presence at the fair together with a bit of gratifying feminine suspicion.

“Will you be at the Fortnams’ musicale tonight?” he asked her when she’d paused long enough in her conversation to take a sip of tea.

A wrinkle formed on her brow. “I’m not sure. We’ve several invitations. I don’t know where we’ll land.…” She threw him a polite smile—warm enough to be friendly but not
too
warm.

She’d put him off.

Quite nicely, he might add.

Hmmm. Maybe she was done with him.

But he doubted it. First of all, because when Lady Marcia Sherwood felt something, she felt it all the way. Second, her eyes kept following him around the room. She was as aware of him as he was of her.

But she made no effort to speak to him again.

That afternoon, a thank-you note for the wooden giraffe, along with a beautiful picture book, arrived for Joe. In a separate note to Duncan, she said, “I’d love to have Joe come play. Could you meet on Half-Moon Street at half noon tomorrow? Both of us in unmarked carriages? I’ll be waiting; I can whisk him away to my house for the afternoon.”

His first reaction was hurt that Joe should be considered a person who couldn’t openly walk into a proper home. He had to be secretly transported there?

But he also knew it was the way of society. Marcia was playing by its rules. Perhaps she had no choice in the matter. He’d give her the benefit of the doubt.

He also couldn’t help noting that
he
wasn’t included in the friendly summons. It was a blow, one he wasn’t sure how to take. Nevertheless, for Joe’s sake, he accepted the invitation on his behalf.

*   *   *

That night he saw Marcia as he was walking into the Fortnams’ musicale. Waylaid by his host and hostess, by the time he was free, she was gone.

Could she have been fixing her hem or adjusting her curls in the ladies’ retiring room?

He waited a good few minutes, enduring a prosy conversation with a couple of matrons before he came to the conclusion that, yes, she’d left the premises. He spied Lord Westdale in a corner, sipping a drink and looking over the partygoers.

“Westdale,” he asked him, “whatever happened to your sister?”

Lord Westdale grinned. “Nice to see you, too, Chadwick.”

“Sorry—it’s just that I was looking forward to seeing her—”

“Were you? Do you mean Marcia? Or Janice? Janice is over there, with your brother.”

“Oh?”

So Finn was back in Town.

“And that rake Hugh Bramwell is hovering, too,” Westdale said. “I swear, I want to pull Janice away from him, but she warned me not to interfere when she’s safe in a ballroom or someone’s drawing room. She insists she’s well able to suss out scoundrels.”

Duncan listened with only half an ear to Westdale. He couldn’t help noticing that Finn seemed different somehow. He looked more mature. Less … frenetic. Perhaps his pride had been taken down a notch when Marcia had uncovered his deceit. Being sent out of Town to lie low had possibly given him time to think, to clear his head about who he was and who he wanted to be.

Finn laughed at something Lady Janice said and then caught sight of Duncan.

Duncan sent him a little salute. Finn nodded in acknowledgment, a gleam in his eye that could only be translated as
Good to see you
.

Duncan was astonished. And touched. They were acting like brothers. Brothers who got along.

Hope kindled in him again, fresh and new.

“I was looking for Marcia, actually,” Duncan said to Lord Westdale.

“Line up, my friend. Wherever she goes, they’re thick as bees around nectar.”

“So I’ve noticed,” Duncan said dryly.

“They’re all catching up, I suppose, on being without her for two Seasons.”

“But she’s disappeared.”

“Has she? Without telling me?” Lord Westdale wore a puzzled frown. “That’s unlike her.”

“Lord Westdale?” A footman approached. “Lady Marcia asked me to tell you just now that she requested the Sherwood carriage to be sent round; she said not to worry. She’s a bit fatigued, is all.”

Fatigued? Duncan had to wonder if she’d seen him and was avoiding him.

Lord Westdale thanked the footman then turned to Duncan. “Ah, well, that explains it. Sorry, Chadwick. Don’t look now, but I see someone who’s spied you and is coming your way. Good luck.”

He slid away quickly.

“Lord Chadwick?” The voice was breathy, babyish.

His heart sank, but he turned to face Lady Ennis with a smile. “Good evening, my lady. Have you just arrived?

“No. I’ve been chatting with my friends. Did you not see me?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

No doubt she’d sensed the restlessness in his tone when she put her hand possessively on his arm. “Tell me, my lord, which do you prefer: the blue gown I’m wearing tonight, or the pink from last night?”

Wherever he went in the evenings, Lady Ennis seemed to find him. It was all his fault, of course. If he hadn’t been so interested in prying into Marcia’s business, he’d not have taken the viscountess to the fair. And if he hadn’t taken the viscountess to the fair, he’d not have been tempted by the insane impulse to make Marcia jealous when she showed up there unexpectedly. And if he hadn’t been so bloody solicitous to the viscountess, he wouldn’t now be enduring an inane conversation with a grasping woman who looked like a large doll.

He’d be at home in the comfort and privacy of his library, pretending to read while really daydreaming about Lady Marcia Sherwood. But what choice did he have at the moment but to be a gentleman?

“It’s an impossible decision,” he told her. “You’re beautiful in both colors.”

Lady Ennis’s eyes glowed at the predictable compliment. “I’m thirsty,” she said in a practiced, petulant voice. “Let’s get some sparkling wine, shall we?”

Chapter Twenty-seven

A week passed—a long, dull, insipid week in which Duncan attended too many social events to count and fended off the aggressive flirtation of Lady Ennis. Wherever he saw Marcia anywhere about Town, she would disappear quickly.

He finally put two and two together.

She was avoiding Finn.

She couldn’t be avoiding
him.

No. The logical answer was that she couldn’t bear to be around Finn. His brother was on his best behavior, Duncan was grateful to see, but he was everywhere, it seemed.

Lady Ennis continued to be, too. Duncan wondered how she couldn’t possibly have gotten the message that he wasn’t interested in her.

Meanwhile, another week had begun, and Marcia sent yet another invitation for Joe to visit.

The previous week Joe had visited the Sherwood household twice. Both times Duncan had met Marcia in a different location in an unmarked carriage. And both times, he’d seen very little of her.

She’d stayed in the vehicle and said good-bye to him as swiftly as possible, although she’d appeared wistful, as if she truly missed his company.

She was a study in contradictions. He’d come to expect that in the fairer sex—women were largely a mystery to him—but he couldn’t help feeling that all was not right in Marcia’s world.

This morning, he’d try to alleviate any confusion he might have brought to it.

He hoisted Joe into the carriage and onto the seat, then looked directly at her. “I want you to know I have no designs on Lady Ennis, just in case you think I might.”

She blushed. “I—I never considered the notion, either way.”

“Oh?” He didn’t believe her, of course. She was being her stubborn, independent headmistress self. He knew she’d sooner die than admit she could be jealous of another woman—or crave the attention of a man, especially a man who’d made her beg for sexual favors.

He ran a warm gaze over her. “You look stunningly pretty today.”

Her eyes widened with surprise, it seemed, and then her expression became shuttered again. “Thank you.”

“So you’ve got a Venetian breakfast and a card party later?”

“Yes.” The polite smile again, followed by a real one. “Somehow I have to get to both.”

“I’ve been out every night, but we’ve yet to cross paths long enough to have a decent conversation.” As if that were all he wanted! “Perhaps I’ll see you at the Morriseys’.” Their third daughter was making her debut that evening.

Marcia actually looked vaguely alarmed for a moment, but she recovered and pasted her false smile on again. “That would be … lovely, my lord.”

Duncan intentionally lingered. “The duke came to play with us yesterday in the park, didn’t he, Joe?”

Joe nodded. “Duke is fun. His belly shakes when he laughs, and he gives me sweets whenever I wink at ladies going by.”

Duncan and Marcia exchanged amused grins.

For a few seconds, things felt back to normal.

In a way.

Duncan leaned against the carriage door. “I’ve decided it’s because of the duke’s friendship that this morning I received a voucher to Almack’s. I never thought the day would come. I never
cared
that the day would come, actually.” He gave a wry shrug. “Who wants stale cakes and weak lemonade? And to dance under the watchful eyes of those dragons?”

Marcia blew out a breath. “I couldn’t agree more. Everyone ogles each other as if we’re wax figures in a gallery. And we’re all terrified of antagonizing the patronesses. Janice seems to enjoy it, but perhaps it’s because she loves a good challenge. As for me, I could happily never go again.” She paused. “Will you go next week?”