Shall We Dance? (23 page)

“Ah, now, sir,” Clive began, but Perry waved him away and the man escaped to the foyer once more.

“Word has come to me that Rolin has surfaced in Wimbledon, of all places. It would seem he has an aged aunt there who has taken him in. As the Runners I hired have returned from Westham, I've sent them to watching the aunt's house.”

“Until we get there, right?” Nate said, looking eager, as only a young man can. “When do we leave?”

“We don't. Rolin will be back once he's talked his aunt out of a few hundred pounds, and the Runners will follow him. Unless you think I should simply travel to Wimbledon and skewer him out of hand?”

“Well…” Nate said, looking at the carpet.

“Think, my friend. I can't simply attack someone who has not attacked me. He's angry, yes, but a list of names is just that, a list of names. Having me followed? Again, I came to no harm. Rolin may simply be testing himself, deciding whether the risk is worth the revenge.
No, unless he moves, makes some overt act, I in good conscience can do nothing.”

Nate's cheeks were red. “So what was all that running about in aid of, I ask you? Oh, wait, don't tell me. You were being very public about it, now that I think on it. Coaches and outriders, giving everyone your name as you dropped purses while asking for Rolin by name? Dragging me along with you, because I'm really not as good at this sneaking about as I think I am, so all I did was cause even more attention? You were just trying to scare him off, weren't you? Oh, that's just shabby, that is.” He dropped his chin to his chest. “I feel so…
used.
”

Perry laughed. He really did like this young hothead. “Relax, Nate, he'll be back. If he'd run home to his estate, I'd say I'd succeeded in making him see sweet reason. But he only ran as far as Wimbledon. He'll be back. Really, he has no other choice. That's my only regret, you know, that I've left him no other choice. He can't show his face in Society again, not after last month's debacle. His debts have been called, he's lost his few friends, his town house, equipages and horseflesh have been sold—and I hear his estate has been posted for sale. He has nothing left save the hope of some revenge.”

“He could just take what funds he can salvage from his estate and flee the country,” Nate suggested.

“And leave me here, to crow over Society? No, that's not the sort of thing that would sit well with Jarrett Rolin.”

“Well, Nate, as you say, if that don't beat the Dutch,” Georgiana said, striding into the drawing
room ahead of Amelia. “I'm supposed to keep secrets, and then the two of you go all but shouting the man's name. It's a good thing I already told Amelia, or—
oops.
”

Nate rushed to Georgiana's side, but Perry ignored them both as he turned to look at Amelia. To stare at Amelia.

Her cheeks were rather pale, but those deep brown eyes were eloquent with more emotions than she could possibly attempt to hide. Her chin was held high, and her gloved hands were drawn up into tight fists.

She looked wonderful. Fierce. Proud. Angry. Apprehensive. Young and a little frightened, yet determined to brave it out. Mostly, she looked so achingly vulnerable.

And if he told her any of that, he'd probably be ducking a thrown vase a moment later.

“Amelia,” he said, bowing over her proffered hand, still drawn up into a fist, although that was another thing he wasn't brave enough to point out. “I have been counting the moments.”

“While I, My Lord, have been counting the lies. If you'll excuse me,” Amelia said, withdrawing her hand even as she brushed past him, to smile a warm greeting to Nate. “I cannot tell you how cheered Her Majesty has been ever since she decided to host the party for your engagement, Nate. The anticipation has done wonders for her.”

Perry stood and watched as Amelia took her seat and Nate raced to fetch her a glass of sherry, not surprised to realize that, much as he liked the boy, he could cheer
fully have wrung his neck if it weren't for the fact that he knew Nate's heart rested with his Georgie.

Amelia had chosen a chair that kept her back to him, but it wasn't as if he was rooted to this spot, so he walked over to rest his hands on the back of the chair, leaned down and whispered in her ear, “I would have worn sackcloth and ashes but I didn't think the queen would approve. Please, pet, if you refuse to read my notes—and a few of them bordered on the brilliant—then at least give me a chance to speak with you in private.”

She kept her head steady, looking straight ahead of her. “I know all about your uncle, Perry. And this Jarrett Rolin person. And I'm sure you've convinced yourself that, between the two of them, everything you did was totally justified.”

“I am, it was,” Perry said, feeling hopeful…and realizing that never before in his life had he even come within a mile of the sort of abject groveling he was prepared to do now.

“And I forgive you. For that. But you made a fool of me, Perry, and I let you. That is not so easily forgiven.”

“No, I imagine it's not,” he said, moving away from her just as Clive
harrumphed
in the doorway and announced, “Her Royal Majesty, Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, Queen Consort of England!”

Everyone who hadn't been standing, stood, and they all bowed or dropped into deep curtsies as Caroline Amelia advanced into the room. Her cheeks were rouged, her eyes blacked with kohl. Her hair was a mass of ebony ringlets crowned by a wreath of palest-pink
rosebuds. Her gown…Perry had to remember to lock his jaw; otherwise it would have fallen open.

He'd heard about this sort of gown from some gossipy matron who'd seen Her Majesty on the continent, and then had read a snippet of a letter written by Lady Bessborough that Sir Willard had somehow gotten his paws on in one of his dubious ways.

Was this the same outrageous rigout the queen had worn for a fancy dress ball in Genoa? Could there possibly be two?

Lady Bessborough, Perry remembered, had written that she'd been appalled, sorry and ashamed, and could not bear to listen to the whispers and the snickers that had accompanied the then Princess of Wales as she danced at the ball.

A gown of some white stuff, fashioned to resemble a child's frock except that the shoulders, back and front all dipped dangerously low, cut to expose Her Highness's flesh to the middle of her stomach.

As Perry did his best not to look at Caroline's fat, flabby, pale, exposed skin, he could only think that Lady Bessborough had been kind in her description.

Seeing the queen, in the flesh, as it were, lent credence to other stories Perry had heard over the years. Of the parties, the outlandish pantomimes where Her Highness performed for her servants; even the supposedly shell-shaped phaeton, pulled by two piebald horses, that she'd ridden in beside that Pergami fellow in Genoa, Her Highness rigged out in a huge pink feathered hat and a gown that stopped just at her knees. Not
to mention the driver, purported to be a child clad only in flesh-colored tights, playing the role of operatic cherub.

When Perry saw the Italian footman, dutifully holding Her Majesty's train, he nearly sighed in relief to see the man dressed in the queen's livery.

“Your Majesty,” Amelia said, once Caroline had bidden her rise from her curtsy. “It is so good to see you escaping your chambers, and with the glow of health surrounding you.”

Gad! How did the girl keep a straight face, spouting such nonsense? How did Amelia stand it…or did she simply accept what she saw as nothing out of the ordinary?

No, that was impossible. She'd been in society. Granted, foreign society, but she'd been in the company of English subjects traveling abroad; she had to know that the queen was outrageous, more than outrageous.

As the queen inclined her head to him, Perry approached, bowed over the woman's hand, which she turned at the last moment, obviously expecting him to kiss her palm. For his sins, he did just that, careful not to notice that the woman's nails were none too clean.

He stepped back when he was dismissed and watched as Nate and Georgiana paid homage to the bizarre queen. He could not suppress a sigh of relief when the chinless, knee-knocking little man, who could be no one save this Nestor fellow Clive had spoken of, entered the room to announce that dinner was ready to be served at the queen's pleasure.

 

A
MELIA DIDN'T KNOW
whether to be relieved, proud or nastily amused as Her Majesty made it a point to flirt most outrageously with Perry throughout the dozen courses served in the large, horribly stuffy dining chamber. Her Majesty then kept him close by her side once they'd all returned to the drawing room. The queen did not allow gentlemen guests to be on their own for port and cigars; not when she wished them with her.

Perry had kept her amused with light banter, silly gossip and more than one joke he'd leaned close to whisper into Her Majesty's ear, causing that woman to laugh so heartily that twice she'd snorted wine up her nose and dissolved into fits of coughing.

“My friend Perry seems to have made himself a conquest,” Nate said as Georgiana, Amelia and he sat on a pair of couches, the queen and Perry moving about the large drawing room, arm in arm, admiring the art on the walls, and cabinets filled with jade figures and other collections. “You wouldn't be jealous, would you, Amelia?”

“Nate, stop it,” Georgiana said, looking at Amelia with such sympathy in her eyes that Amelia had to suppress a frustrated scream. “We all know Perry is simply being polite. Isn't that right, Amelia?”

“I'm pleased to see Her Majesty in such good spirits,” she said, noncommittally. “And I'm quite sure I wouldn't mind whatever Perry would do. I…I could not care less what he would do.”

“Oh, that's putting it on too thick and rare,” Nate said,
settling back against the cushions, resting one ankle on his knee.

“Nate!”

“No, no, Georgiana, don't scold him. I admit it, Perry is being quite charming.”

“Oh, that's him all right,” Nate agreed. “Charms the ladies all hollow, that's what I've heard. All that money, all those smashing good looks. And the oddest thing. Runs from marriage, but that's not it, lots of us do.”

“Nate…”

“Sorry, Georgie.
Some
of us run from the parson's mousetrap. Not me, oh no, not me. Can't wait, and that's no lie. In any event, Perry over there? I heard he don't dance. Props up the pillars at all the balls, is polite to a turn with the ladies—but he don't dance. I'd ask him why, but he's not the sort you ask, even if you might think about it.”

Amelia chanced a look at Perry when the queen giggled, sounding happy as a young girl. “I'm sure I shouldn't wonder why he does it—or doesn't do it. Not dancing, that is. It makes him stand out, I should imagine, makes him seem more…more unattainable. Just the sort of thing he'd do. After all, he's really nothing more than a fribble. He's said so himself. Just as he's told me he's a bad, bad man.”

Perry and the queen turned, and Amelia quickly lowered her gaze to her hands, ashamed to realize that those hands were trembling. “I think he frightens me.”

Georgiana leaned forward to whisper, “Oh, don't, Amelia.”

Amelia blinked at the tears stinging her eyes. “I can't help it. I don't know who he is. I don't know what he wants from me.”

Nate had also leaned forward beside Georgiana, and reached across the low table to pat Amelia's hand. “He wants to keep you safe, Amelia. I mean, I know I wouldn't want to be Jarrett Rolin right now, not for anything.”

“That has little to do with me. The way Georgiana explained the thing, I would only be a tool for Mr. Rolin, to hurt Perry.”

“Yes, that's exactly it,” Nate said, grinning in triumph. “And would Perry care a snap if he wasn't all arsy-varsy over you?”

Amelia bit her bottom lip as she chanced another look in Perry's direction. He was looking at her, his expression unguarded, and Amelia felt herself melting beneath the heat of his gaze.

He excused himself from Her Majesty, who seemed to be wilting from the exertion of the evening, and motioned for Nate to attend her as he returned his gaze to Amelia. He inclined his head toward the French doors.

As if in a trance, Amelia got to her feet and went to him, stood very still as he lifted her shawl from the chair back where she'd draped it earlier, placed it over her shoulders and escorted her out into the dark gardens.

“I shouldn't leave Her Majesty. She might need me,” Amelia said as Perry turned to close the French doors behind them.

He turned once more, held out his arm, and she slipped hers through his elbow. “Nate will dance atten
dance on her. He's had plenty of practice, I understand, dancing attendance on old ladies.”

“His aunt Rowena,” Amelia said, nodding. “Yes, I've heard all about her from Georgiana. Although I doubt Her Majesty would thank you for terming her an old lady. Where…where are we going?”

“After my bungling? I should think that would be up to you, Amelia. I know I should like us to take up where we left off when my stupidity was revealed.”

“I understand what you did and why you did it. Georgiana explained all of that to me,” Amelia said as they walked along the terrace in the light of a full moon. “What I don't understand is why you couldn't be honest with me.”

“Ah, the same question I've asked myself a dozen times or more. I don't know, Amelia. I suppose I thought, foolishly, that as I wasn't going to dance to my uncle's bidding in any case, there was no reason to tell you.”

“And Jarrett Rolin?”

She watched as Perry's lips drew into a tight line. “Miss Penrose has told you everything, hasn't she? Yes, pet, and Jarrett Rolin. I didn't want you frightened. It was bad enough I had exposed you to danger.”