Somerville Farce (17 page)

He had been right to limit his involvement
with her to that of man and mistress. He had no plans to marry at
the moment, and when he did decide to enter that condition, it most
certainly would not be with a woman who had threatened to expose
his brother as a kidnapper and ruin both William’s and his good
name. That was ludicrous!

So as he walked up St. James’s, the Duke of
Glynde acknowledged that he was embarrassed, ashamed, and confused.
He could live with all those feelings if he had to, he supposed,
for the Season would be over before he knew it and Trixy and the
Somerville twins would be out of his life forever.

But he was also hurt, and hurt deeply, for
he recognized at last that his heart was involved. And that
particular hurt, he knew, wouldn’t pass out of his life quite so
easily.

“What, ho! Harry! Wait up, will you? I’ve
been chasing you for nearly a half-mile, trying to catch you up. I
would have yelled to you, but I’m older now and have learned to be
more circumspect. Where are you off to in such a rush, anyway?”

Harry, who had been running away from
himself rather than heading toward any one place, stopped to see
Sir Roderick Hilliard bearing down on him from behind. “Another new
pair of Hessians, Roddy? You really ought to strive more for
comfort in your rig-outs than for style. You’re not walking—you’re
mincing. Besides, the pain makes you frown. All in all, I’d say
you’re not a pretty sight.”

Sir Roderick, rather breathless from his
exertion, stopped beside his friend to look at him owlishly.
“You’re being rather cutting today, aren’t you, Harry? What’s the
matter? You’ve been acting queer as Dick’s hatband ever since we
got back to town. It can’t be that you’re still worried about how
society feels about your bringing out Myles’s offspring, for
everyone thinks you’re a saint for taking care of the girls after
their rotter of a father abandoned them. Besides, it ain’t as if
the lines are bad or they smell of the shop. It’s only Myles that
turned bad.”

Harry, who was well aware that his
guardianship of the Somerville twins had somehow nominated him for
sainthood—an occurrence more easily understood when his extreme
wealth and considerable consequence were taken into account—merely
smiled and began walking once more.

“Where are we going, Harry?” Sir Roderick
asked, keeping pace with the duke’s long strides only through some
personal sacrifice, since his new boots were pinching abominably.
“It’s too early to be out gaming, as if you haven’t been playing
deep all week long—when you aren’t sitting by yourself in some
corner sulking, that is. You remind me of Salty. When he’s not with
Miss Eugenie, he’s sulking. He’s beginning to get on my nerves too,
now that I think of it.”

Sir Roderick stopped in his tracks, grabbing
at Harry’s arm. “Could that be it, Harry? Are you in love as well?
That would make three of us, you know. Dropping like flies, aren’t
we? Must be something in the air. Who is it?”

The duke, who had been racking his brain for
some way of escaping his loquacious acquaintance, looked at Sir
Roderick blankly. “Who is what, Roddy? What are you talking
about?”

“Why, your ladylove, of course,” Sir
Roderick answered, tipping his hat to two gentlemen approaching
from the opposite direction, and then craning his neck about to
look after them once they’d passed by down the flagway. “Did you
see Freddie’s coat, Harry? What shade of ugly was it, do you think?
I’ve always wondered if Freddie was blind to color—you know, not
seeing things for what they are. It certainly would explain that
coat, wouldn’t it, even if it wouldn’t explain his horse-faced
wife. Now, what was the question? Oh, yes, I remember now. Salty’s
in love with Miss Eugenie, I’m in love with my darling Trixy—whom
are you in love with, Harry?”

“You... you’re in love with Trixy... with
Miss Stourbridge?”

Sir Roderick laughed aloud. “Well, stap me,
of course I am, Harry. Why else do you think I’ve been perched on
your doorstep all week? Whom did you think I was in love with—your
aunt? Salty would have my guts for garters if I looked at his
Eugenie sideways. And I’m certainly not in love with that
doomsday-faced Miss Helena Somerville. You know, for twins, it’s
easy enough to tell them apart. Does she ever smile, Harry?”

“You’re really in love with Trixy?” Harry
seemed to be having some difficulty assimilating this one single
fact. “Truly?”

Sir Roderick stopped dead in order to make a
show of crossing his heart. “Truly, Harry. Oh, I know you’re
surprised, as well you should be, for I’ve never really been much
in the petticoat line, but Trixy isn’t quite your ordinary miss,
you know.”

“Yes,” Harry answered carefully, “I have
become almost painfully aware of that fact. But do you really think
you have been in her company long enough to be certain of your
feelings? I mean, there may be facets of her character—that is, of
her personality—that you wouldn’t like.”

Sir Roderick’s grin faded, to be replaced by
a scowl. “I say, Harry, that’s not nice. What do you have against
Trixy, anyway? It isn’t like you to... Oh! I get it now. You don’t
want me to be in love with Trixy because you are yourself! Of
course! I should have seen it sooner. My God, Harry—we’re rivals!
I’m not quite sure that I like that.”

“We are not rivals, Roddy, and I’m not in
love with Miss Stourbridge. Sometimes you make less sense than
William or his half-witted friend, Andrew.” Harry waved to a
passing hackney coach, flagging it down with the intention of
climbing into it and getting himself as far away from Sir Roderick
and his questions as was humanly possible.

Sir Roderick was nothing if not persistent.
“Well, then, Harry, if you want me to believe you—tell me whom you
are
in love with, if you can.”

“Why do I have to be in love with anyone?”
Harry countered when Sir Roderick seemed determined to get some
sort of answer out of him before allowing him to enter the hackney
cab.

“Because you’re acting as queer as Dick’s
hatband. I already told you that,” Sir Roderick persisted, ignoring
the hackney driver’s admonition to the gentlemen to either climb
aboard or shove off, but to do it quickly, as he had five mouths to
feed at home and needed as many fares as he could get before his
nag died of old age waiting for gentry morts to make up their minds
whether or not they wanted to go anywhere.

Harry turned to his friend. “I’m sorry my
disposition bothers you, Roddy, but I promise you I am not in love.
Perhaps my liver is just slightly off or something. Now, please, I
must be on my way. Mention of my brother and his friend has
reminded me that I heard the two of them mumbling something this
morning at breakfast about a cockfight taking place somewhere. I
want to make sure they didn’t bet over their heads and end up
stuffed into the basket over the arena or some such thing.”

At last Harry was safely in the hackney cab,
and safely alone, since Sir Roderick had sworn long ago—after
ruining one of his best jackets by sitting on something
unrecognizable but decidedly vile while riding in one—that he would
never set foot, or rump, in one of the contraptions again.

“Deny it all you want, old man, I still say
you’re in love with someone,” Harry could hear Sir Roderick call
after him as the cab pulled out into the light early-afternoon
traffic. He slunk down on the greasy leather seat, determined to
spend the remainder of the day and evening finding himself another,
less discerning set of friends.

A
ndrew Carlisle
wandered aimlessly into the morning room, his long, pointed chin
nearly dragging on the carpet. London should have been more fun
than it had proved thus far, he was sure of it, but even the
thought of a rousing cockfight hadn’t been enough to budge Willie
from the house that day. Nothing, not even a trip to Astley’s or
one of the infamous inns in Tothill Fields or even a chance at
sneaking into a gaming hell seemed to be enough to propel Willie
more than a pebble’s toss from the place, as a matter of fact.

It was damned depressing, that’s what it
was, to see his best friend moping around from morn till night
hoping for a smile from the fair Helena, who had been smiling even
less than Willie had been, now that Andy considered the thing.

As a matter of fact, there didn’t appear to
be anybody doing a precious lot of giggling in Portman Square these
days, except maybe for Lady Amelia, who seemed to be having the
time of her life presenting the twins, or that jaw-me-dead Sir
Roderick Hilliard, who fancied himself in love with Beatrice
Stourbridge and could talk a three-days-dead corpse into picking up
his coffin and toddling away. Andy wondered how in love Sir
Roderick would stay if he ever turned around one fine night to see
Trixy pointing a pistol at him.

So lost in his brown study was Andy that it
took him a few minutes to realize that he wasn’t alone in the
morning room, that a chair in the far corner was occupied by a
weeping Somerville twin—which one, he could never be sure, for they
were as alike as two peas in a pod.

Willie would have known, for Willie had
vowed a thousand times that Helena, who had a single burnt-cinnamon
fleck in her left eye, was by far the prettier of the two. Andy,
who couldn’t have cared less for flecks—cinnamon or otherwise—or
for females in general, for that matter, saw the Somerville twins
only as blond, annoyingly prone to tears, and totally unnecessary
to his happiness.

He looked about the room for a moment,
deciding whether it would be safer—if rather cowardly—to leave
before the chit spied him out, but as her weeping turned to rather
loud, nerve-shredding sobs, he manfully approached her chair and
asked if there might be anything in particular he could do to be of
assistance.

He sincerely hoped she would simply thank
him for his offer but say no, for she might just take it into her
head to ask to borrow his handkerchief, and if there was one thing
Andy was sure of, it was that if he lent the thing for her to use,
he most certainly didn’t then want her to hand it back to him.

A moment later his worst fears were
realized, and he reached into his pocket and reluctantly passed
over the handkerchief before turning to beat a hasty retreat before
she could return it.

“You’re so kind and thoughtful, Andy, even
if your face looks as if you should be preaching dusty sermons and
telling everyone it’s a terrible sin to have fun,” Miss Somerville
said on a sob, halting him in his tracks with the unconscious
insult. “I shouldn’t be in here, I know, where just anyone could
walk in on me and see me at my worst, but Eugenie is closeted
upstairs with Lacy, doing something with her hair—I think she plans
to wear it in the Grecian style tonight—and I had nowhere else to
go.”

Andy gave a single nod of his head. All
right, so now he knew that the watering pot was Helena, Willie’s
object of passion. He had also learned a lot of things he didn’t
much care to know about, but that was the way women talked, he
knew, always saying tons more than any man of sense needed to
hear.

“What are you bawling about, anyway,
Helena?” he asked baldly, finesse never being his forte. “Don’t
tell me you’re mooning over Willie, for it won’t fadge. He’d have
you in a minute, and well you know it.”

“Willie?” Helena blew her nose prodigiously,
then looked up at Andy in confusion. “Willie has developed a
tendre
for me?” Her gaze slid away from his. “Oh, isn’t that
kind? He is adorable, isn’t he, Andy? I like him ever so much, and
he is very pretty, as I told the duke, so much so that I did
believe for a moment, no more, that I might care for him, but...”
Her voice broke on yet another, to Andy, annoying sob. “But my
heart... my heart is pledged to another!”

Andy plopped himself down in a nearby chair,
his long, bird-thin legs jutting out in front of him. “Well, if
that don’t beat the Dutch! Here I am in London, ready to kick up a
lark or two, and all I’m doing is kicking my heels around here,
watching Willie go all arsy-varsy over a chit who thinks he’s
pretty—but is crying buckets over someone else!”

He made to rise. “Excuse me, won’t you? I
want to go run Willie to ground and give him the good news. Maybe
there’s still time to catch the cockfight. Oh, by the by, you can
keep my handkerchief. I don’t really think I want it anymore.”

He had taken no more than three steps before
Helena’s sobs stopped him in his tracks. Obviously she hadn’t liked
that bit about the handkerchief. “Oh, good grief!” he exclaimed,
his mama’s lessons about damsels in distress and all that terrible
garbage he’d had to listen to when his cousin Lizzie had visited
last summer forcing him to turn around and offer his gentlemanly
assistance yet a second time.