Miss Delacourt Has Her Day (18 page)

“I shall buy Grandaunt a gift, one that demonstrates how grateful I am for all she has done for me, and use that as an excuse to go shopping without her. I could hardly manage to surprise her by making my purchase right under her nose!”

Nan appeared to be unconvinced, but she uttered no more objections, all her energy seemingly taken up in staying upright in the startlingly open carriage as the ground was eaten up at what seemed an impossible pace. This lack of conversation left Ginny free to muse on the events of the day. Though she was more than content to shop for pretty things and relieved to be having her final fitting for her wedding gown later in the afternoon, it was the boxing match in which Anthony was to fight that most occupied her thoughts. If she were not allowed to so much as saunter down Bond Street, how was she to learn anything of import?

Once they arrived at the corners of Bond and Piccadilly and Ginny took in the quantity of gigs, curricles, and carriages stopped in the street, her questions multiplied. What could everyone be doing here? Could the plethora of young bucks, corinthians, and dandies milling about be an indication of how far and wide rumors of the fight had spread? Ginny remembered that Lady Derby had mentioned the wager book at White’s being filled with regard to who should be the victor of the match, but surely the members would prefer to await the results while ensconced in the comfort of their club?

“Have ye seen enough, miss?” the driver asked, his whip at the ready.

“I’m not sure. There’s naught to be seen but carriages and a sea of black.”

“I should say so!” Nan, who had replaced her veil, affirmed.

“I wasn’t referring to your veil but to the gentlemen in their dark coats, Nan. There’s not one lady to be seen in all that somber attire,” Ginny said, craning her neck to spot a familiar face in the crowd.

“As long as the man with the bear is not among them, I don’t mind the lack of color,” Nan insisted.

“Miss?” the driver asked, holding his whip ever higher.

Just as Ginny was about to admit defeat, she heard a familiar voice coming from a carriage on the side of the road farthest from the seeming melee down Bond Street. Eagerly, she turned to put a face to the voice and was heartily downcast to be confronted with Lady Derby’s contemptuous smile.

“What a happy coincidence!” she said. “Though, truth be told, I should have guessed we’d find you here. Young maidens from the country have very little sense,” she purred. “And who is this you have with you?” she asked in a voice so cool, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

Ginny had never felt so bereft of speech in her life. Lady Derby was as menacing as ever, but it was the man with the hard, bright blue eyes seated beside her who studied Ginny’s person with a cold insouciance that filled her with an icy sense of dread.

“Ah,” she said, in a futile attempt to form actual words.

“Roxanne! Is that you?” Lady Derby exclaimed, addressing her words to the veiled Nan. “I had thought you said you weren’t feeling quite the thing this morning.”

The man said nothing, but his cold, bright eyes shifted and narrowed as he took in Nan’s appearance.

Nan, blinded as she was, was thoroughly unaware she had been addressed and was silent, as well.

In a stroke of blessed good luck, Ginny remembered that the widow of Anthony’s newly dead cousin was called Roxanne. Under the circumstances, it would not be entirely untoward for the two of them to be spending some time together. It was a scenario fervently preferable to being caught out in public with naught but a ruffian driver and an even younger maiden than herself with infinitely less town bronze. Sending a silent prayer of thanks winging upward, Ginny thought furiously. Lady Derby was the person who could answer her questions, and answer them she must!

“Yes, well, the two of us are out to fatten my trousseau but couldn’t help but be intrigued by the crowd yonder. I wonder if perhaps a carriage tipped over, and all of those people were needed to help set things to rights.”

Lady Derby gave a trill of laughter. “Oh, you are a knowing one, Miss Delacourt! Surely you don’t expect me to believe you aren’t perfectly aware of the boxing match today?”

“Oh, was that today?” Ginny bluffed. “And here I was so sure it was to happen tomorrow,” she added with an airy wave of her hand.

“Did you hear that, Your Grace?” Lady Derby asked of the saturnine man by her side. “I can hardly credit it, but she believed it was to happen tomorrow!” Clearly she found something amusing about this pronouncement, as she went off into gales of laughter, but the lips of the strange man didn’t so much as curve into a smile. He did, however, sit up a bit straighter and regard Ginny with a more avid interest.

Evidently this was an important man and as such was perhaps better informed than even Lady Derby. Ginny cast about for something to say that might elicit an illuminating response without exposing her total lack of real knowledge. This proved to be a most taxing endeavor, and the four of them sat in silence for what seemed to Ginny to be an agonizing length of time.

Finally, she hit on something suitable. “It is wrong. What they say… it is all quite wrong,” she hedged.

“Oh?” Lady Derby asked with a knowing glance for her companion.

“Lord Crenshaw does not fight for my honor, as there is no need for it to be expunged. I am guilty of nothing more than speaking aloud my observations.”

Lady Derby’s companion tilted his head in interest, his gaze never leaving Ginny’s face even as he leaned back to hide his expression in the shadow of Lady Derby’s bonnet, an enormous contraption of green-glazed chipped straw adorned with a clutch of faux cherries at the brim. Ginny thought how very well matched the cherries were to Lady Derby’s faux red lips, especially in contrast to her creamy white pelisse of soft wool with red braiding and frogs and very smart cloth boots, dyed red, as well. Ginny, in a pelisse of palest old rose and a bonnet devoid of any adornment but the wide green ribbon tied in a jaunty bow under her chin, felt a perfect dowd in comparison.

“If that is true, Miss Delacourt, I wonder that you have not spoken aloud your sprightly observations on the carriage race tomorrow or the balloon ascension the day after,” Lady Derby mused openly. “If I were to speak aloud my observations, in just your so refreshing manner, I would say that it was most odd you were off to buy bride clothes when the fate of your marriage hangs so precariously on the outcome of something as uncertain as a boxing match.”

Ginny, the breath frozen in her lungs, was saved the impossible task of formulating a reply by the sudden furor down the street. Huzzahs and shouts of “He’s done it!” rang in the air, causing the horses all up and down Bond Street to become restive and whinny, adding to the near-thunderous roar of confusion.

If only she knew what it was he had done.

Anthony, pacing his rooms on Jermyn Street, wondered what he had done. If he had hoped to keep the boxing match from ever reaching Ginny’s ears, all hope of that was lost. The hue and cry that rose to greet him as he stepped outside of Gentleman Jackson’s Boxing Academy could be heard as far as Chester. Worse yet, the fact that he had engaged in a boxing match with his own valet would be the on dit of the season. As tempting as it was to whisk Ginny away to the country to keep her from ever learning the truth, they would never be able to return to London without some gudgeon putting a flea in her ear about the three tasks her husband was adjured to accomplish and from which he had fled.

There was nothing for it but to follow through on his promise to his uncle to the best of his ability. To that end, he called Conti into his presence with the intention of laying plans. He was expected at Wembley House in a matter of hours, and every minute counted.

“Conti, let us make matters clear between us. Your cousin . .

“Yes! I am Conti, but my mother was a Fagniani!”

“Yes,” Anthony said through gritted teeth, casting about for a way to get through the conversation with the loquacious valet as quickly as possible. “Your cousin is the illegitimate daughter of the dancer known as Fagniani and the old Duke of Queensbury, is she not?”

“Si! No! I shall explain. There are several claimants to her patronage, but Old Q left my cousin Maria a very large legacy een the case that he was her papa”

“So, Maria, your possible cousin, is sitting on the specialized carriage, the one of which I am in desperate need, of her possible father?”

“Si! No! I shall explain. Maria, she ees my cousin, si! She married the Earl of Yarmouth, but they did not like each other so well. Even before the Old Q died, she went to Paris and has lived there ever since.”

“So…,” Anthony drawled. “The carriage is in London or in Paris?”

“No! Si! My cousin, she ees een Paris. The carriage…?” Conti shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows?”

Anthony folded his arms across his chest and narrowed his eyes at his so shortly ago brilliant but now utterly deranged valet. “So, you are suggesting I rap on the door of the Earl of Yarmouth, an acquaintance of mine, by the way, and request the use of a carriage that he might or might not have in his possession, that might or might not belong to his estranged wife, who might or might not have inherited it from someone who might or might not be her father?”

“Si!” Conti exclaimed, throwing his hands into the air in triumph.

Anthony pressed his lips together and silently counted to ten, then ten again.

“Conti, this is piu importance! Do you know any of the servants in the earl’s household?”

“Ma certo! When my cousin was a bambina with her mama, we used to laugh much together, but once she married and became a countess, I was allowed in only through the kitchen door.”

“I see. And since her erstwhile flight to Paris?”

Anthony was amazed to see the look of pure abashment on Conti’s face.

“Si, I still go to the home of her husband. The old cook, she ees very good!”

Anthony raised his eyebrows. “By that I assume you refer to her cooking?”

“Si, but what else?” Conti said with a shrug. “This English cooking ees no good. How else am Ito fill out my fine clothing to perfection?”

“Then it is settled. You shall go at once to Yarmouth House in Regent’s Park and get your hands on that carriage!”

“And eef the carriage is no more?”

“Then we shall have to make our escape in a balloon,” Anthony said.

“What ees this? We are to travel in a balloon?”

“Not you and I, Conti, Miss Delacourt and I. Unless, of course, you know how to fly one,” Anthony said with an ironic laugh.

“This, too, ees not beyond my power,” Conti said with a bow.

Anthony rapped him on the back and bade him stand. “Conti, my man, you are a wonder! I shall endeavor to keep your genius under wraps, or Miss Delacourt might leave me for the better man.”

“No, my lord, she sees none but you”

Anthony smiled at the sudden mist that rose in his eyes. “I do believe you are correct, as usual, Conti.”

“You are a man that draws a woman’s eye, my lord,” Conti observed as he headed out the door to execute his orders.

“My thanks, Conti. I hadn’t known you thought so highly of me”

`Bet is not the man, my lord, but the clothes on hees back!” Conti declared, just managing to close the door behind him before the volley of objects thrown by his master damaged his own finely turned-out ensemble.

With a sigh, Anthony turned to the mirror to inspect his appearance one last time before his departure for Wembley House. After the bout at Jackson’s, Conti had insisted Anthony change his attire, something for which he could not fault the fastidious valet. In his dark blue coat, buff pantaloons, and that touch of lace at throat and wrist Ginny so loved, Anthony was pleased to admit he looked bang-up to the mark. What’s more, the bruising on his knuckles was fading, and the boxing match with his valet had spared him any discoloration to the face. As he was disinclined to marry with a purple eye or bulbous nose, this was a circumstance wholly desired.

During the ride to Grosvenor Square he flirted with the idea of opening his budget to Ginny and telling her the whole. He knew she had learned of a boxing match and a wager from Lady Derby, but how much more of the story she was able to share with Ginny before he came on the scene at Almack’s, he knew not.

How Lady Derby had learned of today’s events was a more sizable mystery. What she intended to do with the information, had she the chance, was entirely predictable. Surely it would be better to tell Ginny the truth before she heard of it from someone who hadn’t a care for her feelings. Yet he couldn’t bear the thought of the blow to Ginny’s happiness should she think for one moment their wedding might never come to pass.

Worse yet was his being lowered in Ginny’s esteem once she learned of his feeble submission to his uncle’s meddlesome demands. It would no doubt be much more comfortable to confess all once they were safely on their way to their wedding breakfast. Or, perhaps, after the honeymoon. Dash it all, if he made a clean breast of it following the birth of their firstborn, it would be none too soon!

By the time he arrived at Wembley House, he was on pins and needles. Keeping the truth from Ginny was one thing; staying silent when Grandmama knew all was another. Would she expect him to tell Ginny about the fight today and the carriage race tomorrow, or had Grandmama taken it upon herself to do so in his place? Making a mental note to keep her in the dark with regard to any plans for the days hence he had made or might ever make well into his uncertain future, he dashed up the front steps and rapped on the door.