Sheri Cobb South (16 page)

Sincerely,

Peter Fanshawe

He stared at the damning paper in his hands for a long moment, then looked up at Aunt Hattie. She regarded him steadily, but her expression was more wounded than accusing. He cleared his throat, opened his mouth to speak, then shut it and cleared his throat again.

“Useless, I suppose, to suggest that it was somehow delayed in the mail and I, now fully recovered, somehow contrived to pass it on the road?”

She shook her head. “Quite, quite useless.”

James sighed. “Yes, I suppose one violent attack of influenza and another by footpads are a bit much for one person to endure. I suppose it will have to be the truth, then, insofar as I am able.”

“Usually the best course, I have always found,” Aunt Hattie observed, waiting expectantly.

James took a deep breath. “Like yours, mine was an honest mistake, at least at first. I truly was set upon by footpads, and left for dead. When I recovered my senses, I had no memory of who I was, where I was, or what I was doing there. Then Miss Darrington came along, and seemed to have no doubts at all upon that head. You will have noticed that your niece is a decisive young woman.”

Aunt Hattie, finding nothing in this appraisal with which to take issue, merely nodded.

“I came to Darrington Place, then, supposing myself to be the person Miss Darrington clearly believed me to be. When at last my memory returned, I realized that to reveal the error would make things a bit awkward for everyone. Then there were—other circumstances—which also made it seem best to maintain the
status quo ante,
at least for a time.”

Aunt Hattie plunged a hand into her pocket and withdrew a scrap of lace-trimmed cambric, with which she dabbed at her eyes. “Say no more! I confess, I have sometimes wondered if you and—but I must say no more on that head. Only tell me, if you will: if you are not Peter Fanshawe, then who are you?”

“I am not at liberty to say, at least not yet. I must ask you not to give me away to Miss Darrington, but let me tell her myself, as soon as I may see my way clear.” Seeing that she was unconvinced, he hastened to add, “I realize I have given you no reason to trust me—quite the opposite, in fact!—but I assure you I mean no harm toward Miss Darrington, or anyone else in your family. Indeed, I hope that I may one day be in a position to—but such speculations are premature. Will you keep my secret, Aunt Hattie?”

Even as she hesitated, assailed by doubts, the front door opened in the hall below and feminine voices wafted up the staircase. Margaret and Amanda had returned. For an endless moment, James and Aunt Hattie’s gazes locked in mutual dismay. Then he smiled uncertainly at her, and she came to a decision. She placed the letter on the fire, and together they watched as the paper curled and blackened, and finally burst into flame.

“Thank you, Aunt Hattie.” He took her plump hand and raised it to his lips. “Thank you.”

Chapter 11

The days leading up to the Palmers’ entertainment were to live on in Margaret’s memory as some of the happiest of her life. To be sure, they were busy ones, as well; the baking, laundering, and other chores necessary to the running of a household would not wait for even the gayest of parties. But in the evenings, after dinner was over and the family relocated to the drawing room, the Darrington sisters and their aunt set to work refurbishing their finery with needle and thread. On these occasions, James fetched the violin from his room and entertained them with music, accompanied more often than not by Philip’s rendering of raucous lyrics of his own invention. In such a manner the nights passed swiftly, until at last the long-awaited event was at hand. Margaret, in all the glory of lilac lace over satin, allowed James to hand her into the family’s ancient closed carriage, where she took her place beside Aunt Hattie in the vehicle’s forward-facing seat.

She could not quite like the sight of Amanda (in stunning looks tonight, although with a hectic color in her cheeks, which Margaret put down to nervous anticipation) sitting next to the tutor in the rear-facing seat, but as they comprised the junior members of the party—Amanda as the younger daughter of the house, and James as its paid employee—there was little Margaret could do about it. To call attention to the seating arrangement, much less to try and alter it, would only imbue it with an importance it did not (she hoped) deserve.

Once inside Sir Humphrey’s door, the Darrington party quickly dispersed. Aunt Hattie bore James off to the card room, where he was obliged to endure several hands of whist before good manners would permit him to surrender his place at the table to another, in this case a widowed lady very nearly Aunt Hattie’s own age.

Aunt Hattie, it must be said, was not at all pleased with this turn of events. Not only had she enjoyed a very profitable evening with James as her partner, but she was not at all satisfied with the lady who was to act as his substitute.

“Hsst!” she urged in a sibilant whisper. “Not her, I beg you! You must know that lady is—”

Alas, it was too late. James had already risen from his chair, and was settling her nemesis, Mrs. Thornton, in his place with many expressions of gratitude and hopes for her good fortune.

He reached the ballroom (actually the yellow saloon, denuded of its Axminster carpet and most of its furniture in order to accommodate the dancers) just in time to see Margaret led onto the floor by a portly man of middle age. Deprived of his primary object, he settled instead on her sister, and offered Amanda his arm.

In fact, he very nearly missed both of the Darrington sisters, for when he approached her, Amanda was debating the wisdom of hiding behind the large potted palm that filled one corner of the room. One might have supposed her to be having a fine time at her first ball, as she had stood up for every dance, and even had to turn down prospective partners on more than one occasion. But she knew it could not be long before Peregrine was released from his duties as guest of honor (which, as frequent and furtive glances in his direction informed her, seemed to consist primarily of allowing Lady Palmer to present him to all the county’s most influential citizens—an elite group of which the Darringtons were not a part) and came to claim his dance.

Her fears were well founded. No sooner had James surrendered her to her next partner than Peregrine appeared at her side.

“My dance, I believe,” he said, taking her elbow preparatory to leading her out onto the floor.

Young Mr. Christopher Higgins, newly arrived from Oxford for the sole purpose of waltzing with the belle of the district, bristled at this cavalier treatment.

“I believe you are mistaken, sir,” Mr. Higgins protested. “This dance belongs to me.”

Peregrine turned to Amanda. “Does it indeed?”

Amanda unfurled her fan and studied its thin wooden sticks, each of which bore the scrawled signature of one of her eager partners. “I fear Mr. Higgins is quite right, Mr. Palmer. In fact, all my dances appear to be taken.”

He held out his hand. “Let me see.”

Amanda surrendered her fan.

Peregrine studied the names. “Why, so they are.”

Whereupon he closed the fan with a flick of his wrist and promptly snapped it in two, then handed the broken pieces to Mr. Higgins and led the sputtering Amanda back onto the dance floor.

“This—this passes all bounds, sir!” she cried, fairly quivering with outrage. “I shall expect you to replace my fan.”

“I cannot think of anything that would give me greater pleasure,” he declared, then frowned as he considered this pronouncement. “Actually I can, but I shall settle for a waltz, at least for the nonce. Come, Miss Amanda, admit you were equally at fault for giving away a dance you had already promised to me.”

Amanda could not deny it, nor could she explain the impulse that had inspired her to commit such a breach of etiquette. Her instincts had undoubtedly been correct, however, for although she had found great enjoyment in whirling about the drawing room with her brother’s tutor, she took no pleasure whatsoever in an exercise that made her feel light-headed and weak-kneed. Peregrine held her a precise and proper twelve inches away, but his hand at her waist burned through the thin muslin of her gown like a brand, a maddening mockery of a lover’s embrace.

“Oh! You are insufferable! You are rude, and arrogant, and—and I don’t know why you will persist in tormenting me! What have I ever done to you?”

“Why, only enchanted me, Ceres. Have I not said so?”

“Do not call me that! I am well aware that you must have met dozens of females far more enchanting than I. You see, I—I know who you are.”

“Oh? Who am I?” Peregrine asked, grinning in anticipation of the insult he felt sure would follow.

“You may call yourself Mr. Palmer, but I know you to be the duke of Montford.”

Peregrine froze in mid-step, causing another waltzing couple to careen into him. He stammered a disjointed apology to the glowering pair, then turned his attention back to Amanda.
“What
did you say?”

“I know you are the duke of Montford. I found your papers, you see. You left them in my basket.”

Peregrine made no very comprehensible reply, merely muttered something under his breath.

“You do not deny it?” Amanda challenged.

“I can, and do! The very idea is preposterous.”

Finding himself adjacent to the French windows opening onto the terrace, he deftly steered Amanda off the dance floor and out the door.

“Thank God for that, anyway! At least now we may talk undisturbed.”

“You admit, then, that we have much to talk about,” she said accusingly.

Peregrine gave a short, humorless laugh. “Oh, I’ll admit that readily enough! I can see how you came to the conclusion you did, but I assure you I am not the duke of Montford. I am merely holding the papers for him until—well, until he requests that I return them.”

Amanda’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, but she could find no trace of mockery in his voice or manner. “I don’t believe you,” she said anyway, just in case.

Peregrine shrugged. “Believe anything you like, but believing me to be a duke will not make it so.” He frowned. “Is it so very important to you—that I be a duke, I mean?”

Her gaze fell before his curiously intense expression. “I am sure it is nothing to me
what
you may be!” she retorted, tossing her golden head in a gesture somehow more indicative of pique than nonchalance.

“Oh, but it must be,” chided Peregrine in quite his old manner. “How else are you to know how to style yourself once we are married?”

At this home question, whatever crushing rejoinder Amanda would have made died a-borning, leaving her to gape at her infuriating swain with bulging eyes and dropping jaw.

Peregrine, taking advantage of her unaccustomed silence, seized the opportunity to possess himself of her hands. “You will marry me, won’t you? If you don’t, I’m going to feel like an awful fool.”

She made a half-hearted attempt to free her hands. “It would be no more than you deserve,” she said, but her tone lacked conviction even to her own ears.

Peregrine, at any rate, was not deceived. He released her hands, but only so that he might take her into his arms. “My darling girl!”

After a prolonged and rather disjointed conversation, which would have been of interest to no one but themselves, Amanda bethought herself of the duke who had indirectly brought them together.

“Are you truly acquainted with the duke of Montford?”

“Indeed, I am—quite well, in fact.”

“I can see you must be, if he would trust you to keep his papers for him, but why would he ask you to do such a thing?”

“He—er—he does not wish to be known as the duke just yet.”

“This is famous!” cried Amanda, scenting an intrigue. “Is he here tonight?” She peered through the French windows over his shoulder, but could see nothing more fascinating than the sight of Mr. Fanshawe guiding her sister through the final movements of the waltz. “Oh, look! There is Meg. Won’t she be shocked to learn I have found a husband all on my own, without ever setting foot in London!”

“You dislike London?”

“I have never been. I daresay it must be a very nice place to visit, but I should miss the people of Montford.”

“Then I shall ask my uncle to give us the dower house, so that you need not be far from your family. Except for the honeymoon, of course, where I shall insist upon the strictest privacy!”

Amanda blushed so charmingly at this prospect that Peregrine felt compelled to kiss her again.

“Speaking of my uncle,” he continued, having completed this exercise, “I’ll see if I can roust him out of the card room. A toast is clearly in order, and his cellars must boast something worthy of the occasion.”

With impassioned promises not to be separated from his betrothed for a moment longer than was strictly necessary, Peregrine took himself off in search of Sir Humphrey. Amanda gazed adoringly after the departing form of her betrothed until he was swallowed up in the crowd, then returned to the ballroom to seek out Margaret. She found her deep in conversation with Aunt Hattie and her erstwhile whist partner, Mrs. Emmeline Thornton.

“Who would have thought it?” Aunt Hattie exclaimed. “It was not dear Emmy who cheated me out of my ten shillings, but that dreadful Mrs. Blakeney!”

Her companion nodded, setting the plumes adorning her spangled turban aflutter. “Quite right, Miss Darrington. She tried the same thing with me—not once, mind you, but twice! Others have remarked upon it as well; in fact, between you and me and the lamppost, she has made herself
persona non grata
with the ladies’ Wednesday afternoon ombre circle.”

“And to think I might never have known had not Mr. Fanshawe insisted that she take his place at the card table,” sighed Aunt Hattie.

“Indeed, yes! An old friendship might have been lost forever. Depend upon it, Hattie, it was a happy day when your family engaged that young man.”

“Oh, Meg, is it not wonderful?” Amanda interrupted, giving her sister’s arm an affectionate squeeze. “I am to be married!”

Margaret could not help smiling at her obvious delight. “Of course you are, my love! Why, you are the belle of Montford; you will have no trouble at all in finding an eligible husband. I shall not be surprised if you have all London at your feet by Easter.”