Miss Lindel's Love (11 page)

The letter she wrote to her mother made no mention of their landlord. She also concealed behind a screen of cheerful words her growing anxiety about Mrs. Paladin. Her notions of a proper young lady’s actions did not march very well with Mrs. Lindel’s. Mrs. Paladin was always urging Maris to be less reserved, to show more vivacity. “Don’t stand there like a sacrificial maiden, girl. Smile at the gentlemen. Flirt with your fan. Let them see your interest.”

Lilah demonstrated these arts to perfection in the privacy of their rooms, yet Maris did not notice her actually using any of these techniques when evening brought about another formal affair. Though Lilah was punctiliously polite, missing none of the forms of polite society, she did not show any particular rapture at being solicited to dance. The dry wit that Maris was rapidly coming to cherish was not on view for gentlemen. Mr. Nehemiah Preston would find no rivals in London.

Waiting by her chaperon’s chair, Maris noticed that, once again, many eyes seemed fixed upon her.

Considerable whispering broke out wherever she went, though neither fact seemed to daunt the gentlemen soliciting her hand for various dances. There were more than yesterday, yet Maris could not feel gratification. Some of the younger gentlemen seemed less interested in dancing with her than being seen to dance with her. There was nothing specific to put her finger on; just something in the way they looked past her, nodding and grinning at their friends off the floor.

When the stirring, staring, and whispering grew more pronounced, Maris glanced about with a frown. Looking toward the entry, she sighed blissfully. Lord Danesby had arrived.

He did not approach her for more than an hour which, as he appeared after the hostess had retired from the doorway, left Maris with some dozen dances to labor through. She tried to be pleasant to all who solicited her to dance, yet she kept one eye out for a glimpse of his dark head. She marked how he danced first with the hostess’s rawboned daughter. Miss Hester Devoe’s lack of beauty would place no bars to her making a high marriage, not with ten thousand pounds waiting on her majority. As for Lady Clarice Shallcross, her beauty would more than reconcile any husband to her father’s fatal gambling habit. As for all the other honorables, misses, and ladies, she envied them nothing except that they danced with Lord Danesby before she did.

Yet at last, shortly after the supper interval, he appeared before her, making his bow. “No, sir,” she said in answer to his query. “I am not engaged for this.”

“Excellent.” His smile at Mrs. Paladin was a trifle tight as he looked to her for tacit permission. She waved her large fan and gave him an eager nod.

But Maris felt no surge of exhilaration as she had the night before while holding his hand in anticipation of the first beat of the music. He seemed far away, not smiling at her but looking rather grimly over her head. When he did smile, he looked more like an animal baring its teeth than a man reveling in amusement. His eyes were hard as he dared those who stared and whispered to meet his gaze.

In the dance, he moved like an automaton, his steps perfectly executed but without emotion. Even his fixed smile had more than a passing resemblance to the half-opened grin of a clockwork doll. Maris had always found such toys rather eerie, as though everything needful were present to create a human being except a soul.

When the dance ended, Maris sighed and said, “Thank goodness,” just audibly. Lord Danesby glanced at her sharply.

“Permit me to find you some refreshment, Miss Lindel.”

“That is very kind of you, my lord, but I am quite well.”

“I insist.”

She had not will enough where he was concerned to resist. He sat her down on a small sofa, just big enough to permit a tête-à-tête while not allowing space for a gooseberry. There were many such scattered about the big room, a conceit of their hostess.

To her surprise, he did not hurry away in search of cooling drinks. He snapped his fingers and a waiter appeared, already bearing two glasses of champagne on his silver tray. “I came prepared,” Lord Danesby said with a bow and his first genuine smile as he handed her the glass.

She took it in her gloved hand but couldn’t stop her face from scrunching up as she sipped the wine.

“You don’t care for champagne?”

“Not very much,” Maris admitted. “Terribly provincial of me, I know.”

“Not at all.” He leaned toward the waiter and exchanged two words. Then Lord Danesby sat down beside her. “We have only a few minutes to talk,” he began. “I must be brief but we have much to discuss.”

Maris felt an odd flutter of anticipation within her. What was this leading to? Was another of her dreams, the tenderest of them all, about to come true? “Have we?”

“Indeed, yes. Through no fault of your own, Miss Lindel, you have become involved in an intrigue.”

“An intrigue?” she echoed, lost and disappointed. She’d known how impossible her dreams were yet it hurt nonetheless when they came to nothing. Then her wits came back to her. “Does this have anything to do with a certain Mrs. Armitage?”

“You’ve heard the rumors then?”

Maris looked down at her hands, folded in such a ladylike way in her lap. “Not all rumors are false, my lord.”

He crossed his legs uneasily. “No. What have you heard?”

“That you and Mrs. Armitage were ...” She cast about for a ladylike term.

“These are not matters with which you need concern yourself. All that is past. But she is a vindictive creature, more so than I would have believed.”

“You broke with her?”

“Yes. And with considerably less tact than I might have used. I felt...” A dark look came into his eyes, but Maris could not tell where his loathing was focused, whether on Mrs. Armitage or upon himself. “I felt as though I were riding very fast toward a ravine and if I did not instantly turn my horse, I should be lost.”

“Yes, I know what that is like,” Maris murmured.

“There was no time for tact. I merely wanted to divert disaster and I have done so but I never meant any mud to touch you.”

“I? I’m sure I have nothing to fear from Mrs. Armitage.” Nothing except a further reference to sheep’s eyes—revolting term!

“On the contrary. We both have much to fear from her vituperative tongue.”

“Gossip? Why should I fear gossip? I’ve nothing on my conscience. I’ve done no wrong.”

“I’m afraid in our world, Miss Lindel, that innocence is no guarantee against calumny.”

“‘Be thou as pure as snow, as chaste as ice…’” She thought it very unfair that she was both pure and chaste yet would receive no protection.

“Precisely.” He smiled for the first time with that genuine warmth that never failed to steal her breath. “Isn’t it amazing how Shakespeare always has the last word?”

“He shares honors with the Bible, I think.”

‘Yes. ‘All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.’“

Maris thought for a moment. “I don’t know that one.”

“It’s from the Apocrypha. You wouldn’t know it but it’s interesting.”

“I’m no bluestocking, heaven knows, yet sometimes I do envy men their greater opportunities for learning. If ... if I knew more,” she said, hesitating over a new thought. “If I knew more, perhaps I’d understand why someone whom I hardly know and have never harmed ...” She bit her lip. “Perhaps I’d know how to defend myself and, even, how to carry the war into the enemy camp.”

“Would you?” He looked at her as if he’d never seen her before, not only a stranger but one to be admired. She felt she would do anything to keep that glow in Lord Danesby’s eyes.

“I could show you how,” he said, then bit his lip as though to recall the words. He shook his head so sharply that he disarranged his hair. He pushed it back, uncaring of his reputation as the neatest man of his generation. He felt as if he’d done more with half a dozen words to ruin her innocence than Flora Armitage had done yet.

“Forget that I spoke,” he said.

“No, I cannot. If you have a plan to discomfit her, I am willing to assist you.”

“I would be compounding my own villainy if I did anything of the sort. It is my fault that Mrs. Armitage is angry. I shall mend what I can and hope that her native good sense returns. You have your friends to help you with whatever mud may splash on you. Is your mother returned yet from her journey?”

“Not yet. I had a letter from her today. She is still concerned about my sister’s health but in her postscript Sophie says that she is well.”

Realizing that she’d been beside him for far too long if she was to be safe from more gossip, Kenton stood up. “Shall I return you to your chaperon?”

“Of course,” she said, smiling and gathering her shawl about her shoulders. She was lovely when she smiled with her small dimple peeping out. It was buried in the soft corner of her rosebud pink mouth, a most kissable corner. Kenton passed his hand over his eyes. He had no business noticing such things.

By the end of the first week, Kenton’s frustration with the bullheadedness of society had grown to the point where he could hardly contain himself. Even his closest cronies were met with a glare if they so far forgot themselves as to make a joke about his supposed flirt. Only Dom, of the abstracted calm, could approach the subject without receiving a savage set-down.

“Dragons proving harder to vanquish than you thought?” he asked quietly one evening when Ken-ton had returned home from a card party.

“Impossible. They’re not dragons; they’re hydras. Lop off one head and three more grow. I’ve tried showing an avuncular interest in the girl. The gossips reply that I’m trying to lull her suspicions of my reputation. I ignore her and I instantly become a heartless rake bent on flirtation. Can’t a man and a woman exist in a peaceful state of neither love nor hate? Can’t they be friends?”

“They can, I suppose. I have never met such a pair, but then I am not widely traveled.”

Kenton dropped wearily into a chair. “If it weren’t a coward’s part, I should go home. But I cannot allow Miss Lindel to face this alone.”

“Surely they would soon forget?”

“Not they,” Kenton said with a snort. “I’m afraid this has already gone too far to permit her to continue without fingers continually being pointed at her. Poor thing. It’s none of her fault.”

“I do have a suggestion.”

“Go ahead. I’d take a recommendation from the devil himself at this point.”

“I’m not quite so cunning as that.”

A hint of wariness in his friend’s tone made Ken-ton raise his eyes from their contemplation of the hearth rug. “Well, go on. I promise to keep my temper.”

“That’s something at any rate. My plan is that you return to Mrs. Armitage.”

“As a lover? I’d dance with the devil first. She’s shown me her true nature—mercenary, vindictive, cruel.”

“Are you so surprised by it? Come, Ken, don’t play the innocent. You knew what she was when you began. A married woman allowed to run her length by an indulgent, stupid husband and a world that will let a woman commit any folly so long as she is reasonably discreet.”

“You wrong the world, Dom. She is not received everywhere.”

“Are you?”

“As a rule, yes. I am an eligible gentleman, no matter what follies I may have committed. So long as there is some hope that I shall marry one of their daughters, the marriage-minded mamas will never desert me.”

“And when you marry, will all evils be forgotten?”

“It’s not fair, no. A man may sow wild oats as he will before he is married. But that is the way of the world.”

“When Miss Lindel marries, will her unfortunate entanglement in your romantic affairs be forgotten?”

“I imagine so. I doubt anyone believes in their heart of hearts that Miss Lindel is a Jezebel. One need only look into her eyes. Her eyes are very clearly those of an innocent and unspoiled girl.”

Dom steepled his fingers in front of his nose. “Then, logically, the answer to your difficulty is to marry Miss Lindel yourself. Both your reputations will be mended and your former inamorata will be left with nothing to say that will interest even the worst gossip in London. You will, in effect, have spiked her guns.”

“Marry Miss Lindel? Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Dom. She’s just a snip of a girl, hardly fledged yet.”

“You’ve not done so well wooing more mature charmers,” Dom said pitilessly. “Besides, I haven’t liked to mention it but I’ve noticed a certain cynicism growing in you since we left school. These mercenary affairs may have convenience to recommend them yet I cannot choose but to think they are damaging to the soul.”

“Return to your sermons, Father,” Kenton said, tossing a book at his tall friend. Without disturbing himself, Dom caught it, glanced at the fly leaf’, and began to read it. He was comfortably set for hours. Kenton found no such peace. At last he went out again, though he’d previously refused with thanks the invitation to a cotillion ball.

* * * *

“He never took his eyes from you the entire evening!” Mrs. Paladin said, rejoicing. “Oh, nothing was ever more certain than this.”

Maris turned carefully away from the mirror, the huge circle of her hoops swaying broadly. “More certain than what, ma’am?

“Why, what else?” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Lord Danesby’s head over ears in love with you.”

“Mother,” Lilah said warningly from the floor. She had taken the pins out of her mouth when Maris moved.

“You may say what you choose, Lilah, but you will look nohow when dearest Maris is ‘my lady.’“

The hired maid came to the door before Lilah could make the sharp reply Maris could all but see trembling on her lips. “Beg pardon, Mrs. Paladin,” she said. “Lady Osbourne has called.”

“Lady Osbourne? Heavens and me with my skirt all over snips!” Brushing at herself, she hurried out.

“Turn this way again, Maris,” Lilah said. “This skirt needs another breadth turned up or you’ll trip when you make your curtsy to the Queen.”

“I still cannot thank you enough for offering me the use of your presentation gown.”

“Pish. I shan’t use it again. A few new trimmings and lace and no one will know it ever appeared before.”