Not Quite a Lady (27 page)

“Would you mind very much if I changed my mind?” he said. He bent his head and peered into her eyes. “Would you mind very much if I set you free to marry a duke’s son, or an officer covered with medals or any other of those paragons your father’s chosen for his mating party?”

She nodded. “I should mind very much. I think,” she began, and paused because she saw the smile then, so very faint, curving the corners of his mouth. She saw it more distinctly, a glint in his eyes. “I think,” she said, taking heart, “I would choke you if you changed your mind. I have so looked forward to your courting me. Properly. As you promised.”

“Properly?” He quirked an eyebrow. “I walked with you after church yesterday. How much more wooing do you want?”

“More than
that,
” she said. “I was looking forward to a long, slow courtship. Instead, you barged into it. Though he’s much too discreet to say so, Papa has taken the hint already, I am quite sure.”

“I should be vastly surprised if he hadn’t,” he said. “The village idiot has taken the hint, I daresay. I am not sure how I could have made my intentions plainer.”

“Oh, you,” she said. She went to him again and butted her head against his chest. He brought his arms about her, and she looked up into his laughing eyes. “You cheated,” she said. “I thought you said the mating party would go on as planned, and you were going to persuade me of all your perfections and how unlivable my life will be without you.”

“I said I’d participate,” he said. “I said I’d do a great many things, and I mean to. I never said I wouldn’t cheat.”

“Very well,” she said. “You didn’t say that. What else didn’t you say that I ought to know about?”

“Nothing,” he said. “At any rate, it isn’t cheating, precisely,” he said.

“Then what is it, precisely?”

“I’m simply stealing a march on my rivals,” he said. “Colonel Morrell will understand, certainly, though he won’t like it. I have no dashing uniform, no medals, no—”

“Colonel Morrell?” Charlotte said. “How does he come into it?”

“Ah, yes.” Mr. Carsington studied her face. “I’d forgotten. You have no idea. Not surprising. He isn’t at all obvious. In most cases, that would be a great disadvantage, but he’s no fool, and I’ll wager—”

“What are you talking about?”

“He wants you,” Mr. Carsington said.

She would have laughed, but she could tell he wasn’t teasing her now. Uneasy, she said, “He doesn’t. He can’t. He’s a good friend, no more. I think you see a rival where there isn’t one. I know he’s been invited to join the house party, but that’s because he’s a neighbor.”

“Colonel Morrell has spent most of his life in the military,” Mr. Carsington said. “He did not rise as rapidly as he did by being a fool. He has a strategy, you may be sure. I daresay he’s observed you as carefully as he might observe a town he means to capture. Having observed you, he must have decided that camouflage was in order.”

What had Colonel Morrell seen? Charlotte wondered. And how had she failed to see?

“I should have noticed,” she said.

“Then what?”

“Then I should have done something,” she said.

“Such as?”

“I should have got him to not marry me,” she said. “I’m quite good at not getting married.”

“Are you, indeed?” he said. “I wondered how you managed it for so long. I shall be interested to hear your technique. The question has puzzled me no end.”

She was more concerned with the other puzzle. “Colonel Morrell was in London during the Season,” she said. “He attended many of the same affairs. If he observed me so closely, he must have found me out. Still, I don’t—”

“Don’t fret about him,” Mr. Carsington said. “He’ll understand
my
strategy easily enough. I’m the youngest of a nobleman’s five sons. I have no profession, no source of income apart from my father, and no assets except for a dilapidated estate. My main advantage is proximity to the object of desire. He can hardly blame me for exploiting the advantage. He would do the same in my place. Males will do whatever is necessary in these situations, and they are not overly scrupulous about their methods.”

“You greatly underestimate yourself,” she said.

“Not as a marital prospect,” he said. “I have considered the subject with ruthless objectivity.”

“You have overlooked several other assets,” she said. “For instance, there is your considerable intelligence.”

“Intellect is not necessarily an advantage,” he said. “Many women prefer men stupider than they are, because dolts are easier to manage.”

“That’s true,” she said. “But remember, most women have a keen aesthetic sense, too, as well as a desire to produce strong, beautiful offspring. Consequently, they prefer men who are tall, strong, and attractive. We must add your prodigious good looks to your list of assets.”

“That is not where a man wants most to be prodigious,” he said. “Good looks are common enough. We suitors will be more concerned about the prodigious size of our rival’s procreative organs.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “It’s not as though we can see them and make comparisons.”

“Ridiculous or not,” he said, “it is true. We all behave as though this is something the average young lady, with limited or no experience of such matters, will take into consideration. As though the girls would take out their rulers or measuring tapes and make comparisons.”

Instantly she saw her young cousins, innocents, all of them, with dressmaker’s tapes in hands, soberly assessing the gentlemen’s assets. She let out a whoop of laughter, and hastily covered her mouth.

How on earth was she to behave herself for the next month, pretending to allow him to court her? Properly. She wondered if he knew what
proper
was.

“You’ve made me forget what I meant to say,” he said. “We need to—” He broke off and clamped his hand over her mouth.

Then she heard the voices outside.

She didn’t have time to hear the conversation. Mr. Carsington pulled and pushed her into a far corner of the room, onto a heap of sheets. He picked up a large basket of laundry and dumped its contents onto her. “Don’t move,” he whispered. “Try not to breathe too much.”

She heard him walk quickly away.

Darius had hoped the voices belonged to servants, either coming to deliver more dirty linen or simply passing by. But as soon as he neared the door he recognized the stentorian tones of Mrs. Badgely and the lighter notes of Lady Lithby.

Grimly he opened the door.

“Ah, there you are,” said Mrs. Badgely. “This will not do, sir, you know.”

He did not let his gaze stray to the heap of laundry at the other end of the room. He merely regarded the rector’s wife with an expression of polite inquiry.

“He is a single gentleman, Mrs. Badgely,” Lady Lithby said. “Single gentlemen often find it simpler to send their things to one of the local laundresses.”

“Mr. Carsington is not a single gentleman in lodgings in
London,
” Mrs. Badgely answered. She turned to him. “You are a gentleman of property, sir—a not-inconsiderable property. You will set a bad example, to leave your laundry standing vacant and unused. In doing so, you encourage immoral behavior among the servants. Their sneaking about the stables is difficult enough to suppress. When one leaves buildings unattended, one extends an open invitation to fornicate.”

Let them, Darius thought. It was a natural instinct, and one of the two main pleasures the lower orders had in their lives: copulation and intoxication.

Normally, he would have said as much, thereby enhancing his reputation for being aggravating. That was not the way to get rid of Mrs. Badgely in a hurry, though.

The way to get rid of her was to use the Lithbys’ method: Appear to listen attentively, then do as one pleased.

He said, “Those are excellent points, Mrs. Badgely. I shall certainly take them into consideration. If it is not too much trouble, perhaps you would look about you as you make your rounds of the parish, and advise me as to any superior candidates for the position. Mrs. Endicott is not familiar with the local families, and I’m sure she’ll be grateful to have the benefits of your knowledge.”

“She would, indeed,” said Lady Lithby. “In fact, I wonder if I might prevail on you to help us determine what to do with some ancient gowns of Lady Margaret’s we’ve found here. I think we might keep one or two for fancy dress. But what to do with the rest is the question. There is a great deal of usable cloth in the collection, yet I fear it is too fine for the servants, let alone the poor.”

“Gowns, really?” Mrs. Badgely was intrigued. “I always heard that Lady Margaret was a leader of fashion in her day.”

Mrs. Badgely might be a tiresome scold, but she was a woman, too, and Darius saw her eyes light up when Lady Lithby mentioned the gowns.

In a moment, the two women were gone, the laundry forgotten. He waited until they were out of earshot, then closed the door.

He hastened to the heap of dirty linen in the corner.

An apron caught him in the face.

He saw Lady Charlotte’s upflung hand before he saw the rest of her.

The household linens and items of attire became a writhing mass as she struggled to extricate herself.

She sat up, sputtering, a pair of his drawers on her head. “You,” she said. “
You.”

He bit his lip. He coughed. He snickered. And finally, he let it out, a great whoop of laughter.

She scowled at him. “I was afraid to breathe,” she said. “Then my nose itched, and I dared not scratch it. Then—”

She broke off, glaring at him—no doubt because he must be grinning like an idiot.

“What?” she said. “What?”

“On your head,” he said. “My drawers.”

She looked up.

“You have my drawers on your head,” he said.

A pause.

Then, “Oh, that,” she said. “Yes. I do that sometimes. Wear drawers on my head. It’s one of those interesting habits one gets to know about the other person as one gets to know the other person.”

“I should not wear them outside if I were you,” he said.

“Oh, very well.” She sighed. “I suppose you want them back.”

“Well, they are mine.”

She lifted them off with two fingers and threw them at him.

Seeing her sprawled among rumpled bedclothes, he could easily picture a future involving pillow fights…and underwear flung hither and yon…

The thought warmed him.

It warmed him quite a bit.

“I’d better go back,” she said. “If they’re going to talk to Mrs. Endicott, Molly might decide she isn’t wanted and will come looking for me.”

She started to get up, then paused, a comically baffled look on her beautiful face. She twisted to one side, her hand searching among the linens. “I’ve lost my shoe,” she said.

She turned about onto all fours, and started crawling about over the sheets and pillowcases. “I can’t believe this,” she said. She turned her head to throw him an exasperated look. “Don’t just stand there. Help me. I can’t leave without my shoe.”

He knelt upon the tangle of laundry. He began looking for the shoe.

This would have been easier if she hadn’t been crawling over piles of bed things and bath things and kitchen things and stray underwear, her derrière swaying as she moved.

Don’t look,
he told himself.

He tried not to look but he couldn’t shut out the teasing rustle of movement nearby.

“I cannot believe I lost my shoe,” she muttered. “The curst things
tie
!”

He tried not to look but he could see, out of the corner of his eye, the light muslin dress with its feminine froth of ruffles. He recalled then, vividly, her sitting upon the desk last Friday, in her too innocently feminine dress. He saw her hands pulling the skirts up to her knees and telling him to touch her.

“I thought you sent your laundry out,” she said. “I cannot believe your valet would let your drawers be jumbled among the bed linens.”

Darius could almost feel the slope of her insteps under his hands, the slender ankles, the elegant curve of her legs.

“Charlotte,” he said, “you have to get up. Now. And go to the other end of the laundry.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Why?”

“Because,” he said.

“Because…?” She waited for clarification.

“Because Mrs. Badgely is right. Laundries are dens of iniquity.”

She started to get up. Then she sank back onto her haunches. “Did she put indecent thoughts in your head?” she said.

“No,” he said. “
You
put indecent thoughts in my head. And it won’t do. I made up my mind to woo you properly. I made up my mind that the next time we made love it would not be furtive and hasty. The next time we made love, we would be wed, and have all the time in the world, and we would take all the time we needed. I would undress you, slowly, and learn every inch of you.”

He heard her breath coming faster, as his did.

She folded her hands against her stomach, as though she must hold herself back. “I love when you touch me,” she said. That was all.

He remembered how she had touched him. His body remembered, in a rush of heat that thickened his mind.

“We’d better find your shoe,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “You’re right.”

She never moved, though, only sat looking at him, her folded hands tight against her belly.

He crawled to her, over the discarded sheets and towels and aprons and underwear.

“I think about you all the time,” she said. “I can’t help it. Last night, I lay in bed—”

He put two fingers against her lips. “Don’t tell me.”

She took his fingers away. “Is it wrong?” she said. “Am I a hopeless wanton? Am I too bold?”

“No,” he said. “Oh, no. Not for me. With me you need never hold back.”

“Then I won’t,” she said. She put her hands up and cupped his face and kissed him, sweetly, lingeringly.

His arms went around her, helplessly.

He leaned in, and she fell back, and he with her, onto the heap of laundry.

He felt her laughter against his lips, and he was laughing inside, and laughter should have been enough to keep desire at bay.