Out of the Blue (A Regency Time Travel Romance) (14 page)

She whirled to face him, her expression one
of dawning dismay, but when she spoke he realized it was not his
carefully pointed out
situation
that bothered her—but his
heart. “Why didn’t I think of this before? You’re already in love
with someone. Oh, Marcus—what a mess. How are you going to explain
me to the woman? No wonder you said I was to be Perry’s cousin. But
what’s going to happen to me when you marry? Perry and I can’t
continue to live here, that’s for sure.”

Then her expression cleared and her eyes
narrowed. “Wait. Something’s wrong here. I think I’d better back up
a minute. Aunt Cornelia told me you’ll never marry. She was adamant
about that. And you’re not—well, never mind what you’re not, but I
can tell that you’re not. Women know these things. What’s wrong,
Marcus? Do you hate all women? Did some woman turn you down, break
your heart—and now you’ve sworn never to marry?”

Marcus rose, standing stiffly, with all the
dignity he could muster. In truth, he would have liked nothing
better than to throw Cassandra over his knee and thrash her for her
insolence. Did she honestly believe that he didn’t know she had
nearly catalogued him as a man-milliner, a lover of men? “You, Miss
Kelley, are the most pernicious, nosy,
indelicate
female it
has ever been my displeasure to encounter. No, I have not been
disappointed in love. I have merely found my life less encumbered
without having to deal with feminine whims and wiles—feminine whims
and wiles women of your time, Miss Kelley, seem to have elevated to
an art form.”

He walked to the door, laying a hand on the
knob as he paused to put in a parting shot, a crushing setdown
meant to put this topic of conversation to rest once and for all.
“I have no need to set up a nursery, as I have an odiously wealthy,
passably responsible distant cousin to whom I will be grateful to
turn over my title and any entailed estates upon my death. This
house, my favorite estate in Surrey, and a generous allowance will
go to Perry, so that he will never want for anything.

“I have had—and I know this plain speech will
not put you to the blush—and will continue to have suitable
arrangements with discreet, willing women who accommodate my needs.
I am leading a life that I enjoy, pursuing my studies and interests
to the top of my bent. In short, I have a comfortable, pleasing
existence. I see no need to clutter that life with a wife. And
that,
Miss Kelley, ends this discussion.”

He bowed deeply from the waist, then added,
“Oh, and by the by, Miss Kelley—I am
not
chickenhearted. If
I were I should have stood back and let the Reverend Mr. Austin
harangue you into insensibility, then had you dragged off to Bedlam
so that you could no longer plague me out of my mind. And now, good
night. Please ring for Rose to help you out of your gown and get a
good night’s rest. We begin our lessons in the morning at nine in
my study. You are to be prompt.”

“But, Marcus—”

He didn’t wait to hear what she had to say,
what insanely logical argument her quick, entirely too intelligent,
inventive mind had come up with while he had been speaking, but
only opened the door and all but barreled through it, slamming it
behind him. And he had actually considered kissing the woman? He
could count upon less entanglement if he were to embrace an
octopus!

Peregrine was just outside in the hallway,
pacing, and nibbling at one side of his left index finger. “Hullo
there, Marcus,” he said, his grin sheepish. “About time you showed
your face. You’ve been closeted in there for nearly an hour, do you
know that?”

“Yes, actually, I did. But thank you
so
much for that most intriguing bit of information. I
believe I shouldn’t know what to do without you about to point out
the obvious. What are you doing here, Perry, other than counting
off the minutes?” Marcus asked, longing for the solitude of his
study and his decanter of brandy.

“Me? Well, that’s simple enough. There’s no
need to put your back up, Marcus. Corny shooed me up here to find
out what’s keeping you. You should have been downstairs with us,
you know. We had a devil of a time ousting the vicar. There’s a
fellow who’d come for the wedding and stay for the christening, as
my father used to say. It wasn’t until Corny thought to offer him
that nearly full snifter of your best brandy from your study that
be got off his knees and stopped ranting and raving about the
devil’s doings coming to Mayfair. Creepy sort of fellow, the vicar
is. Ran from the house clutching the decanter to his breast,
completely ignored Corny’s arguments that she had offered him a
snifter—and not the whole piece.”

Marcus’s curse was low and impassioned.

“Bother you, eh, Marcus? Heirloom, ain’t it?
Aunt Cornelia says it’s too bad, seeing as how the decanter has
been in the family for ages, but she says it’s a small price to pay
for being rid of the vicar. Anyway, Corny’s gone stomping off to
bed with the headache, so you’re safe for now. But she also said to
tell you she’ll be waiting in the drawing room at three tomorrow,
ready to tear a strip off your hide for bringing home another
stray. I can’t say I like that above half, Marcus, being called a
stray. And don’t say she didn’t mean me as well as Cassandra
because it won’t fadge. Lord knows she takes every chance she gets
to jab at me.”

Peregrine’s expression was so woebegone and
his tangled recital so absurd that the marquess, whose nerves had
been stretched almost to the snapping point, could only throw back
his head and laugh out loud at the mental image of the righteously
holy Ignatius Austin chasing himself down the street, the filched
brandy decanter tucked up under one bony arm.

He laughed for some moments, clutching his
arms to his waist and shaking his head until, once more gaining
control of himself, he belatedly sought to soothe his friend’s
injured sensibilities. Taking only a moment to look back at
Cassandra’s closed door, he slipped a companionable arm around
Peregrine’s shoulders and began leading the other man back down the
hallway. “Corny doesn’t mean any harm, Perry. She just likes to
remind you now and again that, although she considers herself also
to be a stray, at least she is a connection of mine. Would you like
me to adopt you, old friend? That should serve to spike her
guns.”

“Adopt me? Marcus, if that don’t beat the
Dutch. First I’m saddled with an American cousin, and now you want
to sweep me into the bosom of your family. In the space of one day
and night you’ve thoroughly bungled my family tree, you know that?
We Waltons are not so shabby on our own, you know. I can trace
m’ancestors back to Prince Charlie—even if it is on the wrong side
of the blanket. But thank you anyway.”

As they neared the staircase Perry looked
back down the hallway. “How is she? Fainted dead away, didn’t she?
I hadn’t thought she was the sort, although I have to own it, the
Reverend Mr. Austin is enough to make
my
knees shake like
dry bones in a sack.”

“Miss Kelley is bearing up nicely under the
strain of making an utter fool of herself, thank you,” Marcus
replied, only vaguely ashamed of himself for speaking flippantly of
his beleaguered time traveler. “And she is not slow to come up with
ways to protect herself. She suggested we become betrothed in order
to shield her from Corny’s matchmaking attempts—and as a way to be
alone with me, out of sight of people who might not understand her
ways.”

Peregrine tripped on the stairs and would
have fallen if the marquess had not swiftly steadied him.
“Betrothed? You? Oh, Marcus, that is rich, isn’t it? You?
Married?”

“And what would be so odd about that?” Marcus
felt stung into replying. He might not wish to marry, but he did
not quite care to hear that his good friend found the notion
laughable. “Am I such a poor candidate for a husband?”

Now it was Peregrine’s turn to collapse into
laughter, and he leaned against the curving wall that stood to one
side of the wide staircase. “The worst, Marcus. The absolute worst!
Racing about the countryside whenever the whim takes you, digging
up moldy ruins or picking weeds to see if they’d make good
medicines, and losing yourself in books for days on end, either
reading them or writing them. And what about those bottles in your
study? What woman of any sense would want jars stuffed with birds’
eggs and creepy, crawling things cluttering up her household?”

Marcus brushed past Peregrine and continued
down the staircase at a rapid clip so that his friend had to hurry
along or be left behind. “Intellectual pursuits, Perry, all of
them. I served my country with Nelson, I have taken up my seat in
Parliament, I am a good landlord to my tenants at my estates in
Sussex and Surrey. It isn’t every man who is content to be a
drawing room ornament, or happy riding neck or nothing to hounds,
or committed to dedicating himself to gaming too deep.”

“That’s true enough, I suppose,” Peregrine
said. He held tightly to the bottom of the banister and swung
partway around, landing gracefully on the tiled foyer floor, then
followed the marquess as that man headed for the rear of the
mansion and his private study. “The ladies don’t much like any of
that business above half. Now that I think on it, there’s a
precious lot of things the ladies don’t like. My aunt Lillian once
chased my uncle Henry halfway around the downstairs, waving his own
dueling pistol at him because she found a bill for a diamond
necklace he gave to one of his Covent Garden dancers.”

“And that’s another thing,” Marcus persisted,
pushing past the hovering Goodfellow and into his study. “I keep
but one mistress at a time—and very discreetly, I must add—and, am
conversant with the social graces. My face is not such that it
sends young children running for their nurses when I ride in the
park, my dress is unexceptional, even according to Beau’s
standards, and I never drink myself into a stupor. And—and to top
it all off, I’m sensitive.
Damned
sensitive!” He collapsed
into a leather wing chair, ending, “I have all the makings of an
exemplary husband.”

Perry, pulling at his collar as if the action
would facilitate regaining the breath he had lost in this mad chase
his friend had led him on through the house, sank into a facing
chair. “Well, now that you put it that way, Marcus,” he offered
apologetically, “I suppose you’re right. Cassandra is right. Isn’t
it above everything wonderful how that all worked out? My
felicitations to you both.”

Peregrine’s last words brought Marcus back to
full attention. He longed for an end to this conversation but,
knowing Peregrine, if he didn’t make himself clear he would wake
one morning to see that his friend, acting as Cassandra’s cousin,
had sent out notices of the betrothal to the newspapers.
“Felicitations? Perry, there are times when you are a great
disappointment to me. Haven’t you been listening? I am not going to
become betrothed to Miss Kelley. I’m not even sure if I
like
the young woman. She’s entirely too argumentative for my taste, for
one thing, and considerably forward in her manner.”

“Really, Marcus?” Peregrine shook his head.
“Seems nice enough to me. Warned me about Harriette and her
memoirs, you know.”

Marcus sighed. “Perry, in all the years I’ve
known you, you’ve never so much as said boo to Harriette Wilson—or
any of her sisters.”

“I know that, Marcus,” the other man answered
testily. “But I might have. Someday. Only now I won’t, of course.
See how much trouble Cassie has saved me?”

“Cassie?” Marcus didn’t like the sound of
that. It sounded entirely too familiar.

Peregrine nodded, grinning. “Gave me her
permission. Wouldn’t be so free otherwise, for I’m up to snuff on
the social graces m’self, you know. Stands to reason, though, me
being her cousin and all.
Cassie.
You couldn’t be so
familiar, of course, as you’re not related. Cousin Cassie. Cousin
Cassie. Nice. Has a bit of a ring to it, yes?”

It had been a very long day, which was
probably why Marcus felt pushed to retort hotly, “Much as I
appreciate the wholeheartedness of your commitment to this
endeavor, Perry, may I remind you that Cassandra is
not
your
cousin? She isn’t
anybody’s
cousin—at least not anybody who
will be born for more than another hundred and fifty years.”

Perry smiled—quite smugly, or so Marcus
thought—and folded his arms across his pudgy middle. “No need to
fly into the boughs, my friend. You could call her Cassie, too, if
you were betrothed to her, that is. Yes, the more I refine on it,
Cousin Cassie has come up with a splendid notion. Might even be the
making of you, Marcus. Shall we talk about it awhile—especially
about how we’ll go about breaking the news to Corny? Call me a
stray, will she? Now I’m to be a member of the family—and you won’t
have to go to the bother of adopting me.”

The marquess, a student of strategy since his
days sailing with Nelson, was aware of the benefits of diversion,
especially when he knew that any other course could end only with
his rising from his chair and flailing his good friend heavily
about the head and shoulders until he had beaten some semblance of
sense into the man. “You know,
Cousin
Perry,” he said
conversationally, “with all that has transpired in the past
twenty-four hours, I believe I have forgotten to mention an
extremely interesting book on ancient mazes that I discovered in
one of the book stalls the other day. There is a certain passage in
it concerning the Troy Town maze that I found particularly
interesting. Would you care to have me read it to you?”

Perry came out of his chair like a shot fired
from a cannon. “Love to, Marcus. Truly. Mazes? Interesting.
Absolutely top rate. But just remembered—I promised Georgie
Prankenham I’d meet him at Boodle’s for a late round of cards.
Can’t imagine how it slipped my mind. Not polite, is it, when
you’re making up the fourth? See you in the morning?”