The Bluestocking and the Rake (The Regency Gentlemen Series) (16 page)

“Hurry back, won’t you?” murmured the earl.

Miss Blakelow whirled on her lordly neighbour. “Are you satisfied?”

A wicked glint stole into his eyes. “I could be…if you were to give me such an embrace as you just gave him.”

She glared at him with a heightened colour but was too angry to speak.

“What?” he asked, laughingly as he spread his hands.

“You have upset Mr. Peabody.”

“No
you
did that. Something to do with a needle, I believe.”

“How long have you been standing there?” Miss Blakelow demanded, glowering at him.

“Long enough,” he replied coolly, admiring her figure as she bent to fold up the blanket that Lizzy had been sitting on.

“And you didn’t think to make your presence known?”

“That would have been rude in the extreme. Mr. Peabody was making his declaration. It probably took the poor man a month to work up the courage.”

“You feel
sorry
for him?” she gasped.

He shrugged. “I feel sympathy for any man attempting to make you an offer―I know f
rom experience that it is not for the faint hearted.”

“You…oh how I loathe you! You stood there while he was…while he was…”

“Pressing his attentions?” he suggested sweetly.

“Yes…and you did nothing. You did not lift a finger to intervene when you must have known that his suit is not welcome to me.”

“How was I to know that it was unwelcome? You have hardly made me your confidante, have you?”

“You stood there and listened, knowing all the while that his kiss was of all things the most repugnant to me. What if he had gone further? Would you have stood there and watched?”

“Oh, I would have stepped in
then
but you did not look as if you needed my help. You repelled him most efficiently. In fact, I consider myself fortunate to have learned a valuable lesson; when kissing Miss Blakelow, please ensure that any sharp objects, needles, pins, nails and such like are out of arms’ reach.”

She folded up her embroidery and threw it into the basket.

“Dearest, most beloved creature,” he said softly, laughter quivering in his voice.

She glared at him. “Don’t.”

He clutched his hands to his breast in perfect imitation of Mr. Peabody. “My angel.”

She wrestled with the urge to laugh and conquered it. “Lord Marcham, you are the most detestable, odious man alive.”

“Adorable creature, say that you will be mine,” he begged.

She threw a cushion at him and he dodged it neatly, grinning broadly. “I must say, he did talk a lot for a man passionately in love. He should have kissed you,” recommended his lordship. “You can’t berate a man when your mouth is otherwise occupied.”

“No, he should
not
have kissed me,” she flashed, blushing hotly. “I cannot think of anything more repulsive. Except of course, kissing
you
.”

He smiled, unperturbed. “Naturally.”

She glanced up at him over the top of her spectacles as she bent to pick up another blanket. “Why are you here, my lord? Shouldn’t you be fleecing some poor man at the card table or something equally noble?”

“That was yesterday, ma’am,” he replied glibly. “I always fleece men of their property on a
Wednesday. Thursdays are for flirting outrageously with one’s neighbours.”

“And Fridays?” she asked, shaking off the other blanket.

“Oh, drinking oneself into a stupor,” he said, smiling, “but not
all
day―one does need to eat, you know.”

“And Saturday you
spend all day in bed,” she put in before she had given herself permission to speak the words aloud. She had meant that he would spend all day in bed to recover from a day’s drinking but suddenly realising how it could be misconstrued, she stopped and flushed to the roots of her hair. Judging by the look of unholy amusement that came into the earl’s eyes, he had
definitely
misconstrued it. She cursed her unruly tongue. Why did she always manage to put her foot in her mouth when he was near?

“My dear Miss Blakelow, I’m shocked,” he murmured.

“You know very well what I meant,” she said in a stifled voice.

“Do I?” he replied, his eyes dancing, “I hardly dare hope that you were making me an offer.”

“You,” she choked, “are
deliberately
trying to make me blush.”

“True,” he agreed smoothly, watching the delicious pink tinge that coloured her cheeks, “but I assure you it is utterly irresistible.”

“My lord Marcham, you must allow me to tell you: aware though I am of your…your lifestyle and your…how shall I say?
Misdemeanours,
it is highly improper of you to speak to me of such things as―” She broke off, realising in what dangerous waters her tongue was leading her.

“Yes, ma’am?” he prompted gently.

“Highly improper to speak to me of…of such things.”

“What things?” he a
sked, his face the picture of innocence.

“That I would…that we would…oh, you know very
well
what things!”

“That you would beg me to go to bed with you?” he asked, his voice quivering with laughter.

Miss Blakelow closed her eyes in pained silence. “Did you have to say that
quite
so loudly?”

“You would not need to beg me, however, I’d happily spend all day in bed with you.”

She turned away to hide her face, acutely embarrassed. “You―oh, go away!”

He laughed and folded his arms. “Come here.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “No.”

His lips twitched. “Miss Blakelow, you really should try and improve your manners, you know. They really are not at all the thing. I regret that I find it necessar
y to hint but you should be aware when going about in company it is not at all the done thing to be
quite
so blunt. A few words in the manner of beating around the bush would, I am persuaded, serve you better. An approved response might have been, ‘No, thank you, my lord.’ Now why don’t you try it? These manners may seem strange to you at first but it will get easier in time.”

She listened to this in long suffering silence. “My lord, if you do not wish me to deal you the same treatment I gave to Mr. Peabody, then I suggest you desist baiting me.”

“A truly terrifying prospect to be sure, but as you have now put away your stitchery, I feel tolerably safe. Well, if you won’t come to me, then I will have to come to you.”

She baulked a little as he drew near but she stood her ground, her heart pounding a little strangely as he came to stand directly before her, his body no more than a foot away from hers. She glanced up at him warily as he reached out his hands and before she knew what he was about, gently pulled the spectacles from her nose. So convinced was she that he had been going to kiss her that this outcome took her completely by surprise and she felt excessively foolish, like a green young girl, and wondered if her thoughts had played out across her face.

He watched her with a funny little smile as he took his handkerchief from his pocket and began to clean her spectacles. “Mr. Peabottom’s attentions have smudged your glasses,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, turning her face away in her confusion. She felt naked without her spectacles and hardly knew where to look as she felt his eyes on her.

“Why do you hide your face from me?” he asked gently.

She forced a laugh. “I…I don’t.”

“You always turn away. Do you feel so vulnerable without your glasses?”

“Please may I have them back?”

“What did that fellow mean: ‘our little secret’?” enquired the earl.

She blinked at him, giving her best impression of an innocent wide eyed look.

Lord Marcham frowned. “He said that ‘our little secret’ would prevent you from finding happiness with another man. What did he mean?”

She coloured and looked away. “Nothing. Mr. Peabody pretends an intimacy with this family which is entirely false. He was a confidant of my father and as such he makes it his business to know all our business, whether we wish him to or not.”

“I see…but you did not answer the question, Miss Blakelow,” he murmured.

“May I have my glasses back now?” she asked, disturbed by the watchful expression in his eyes.

“Where
do
I know you from?” he mused.

“I…I beg your pardon, my lord?”

“The first time you came to Holme I was left with the distinct impression that we had met before.”

Miss Blakelow’s heart began to pound sickeningly. “Certainly we have,” she managed as coolly as she was able. “We are neighbours, after all, my lord.”

He shook his head. “I remember you from somewhere else…and I cannot quite place it.”

“Perhaps I look like another lady of your acquaintance?” she suggested.

“Perhaps,” he agreed.

“I am sure you have been acquainted with so many bookish females over the years that we all look the same to you; it must be all that time you spend in church praying for forgiveness.”

“Perhaps you are right,” he agreed, a smile in his eyes. “Because my behaviour is such that I need a lot of forgiving, isn’t that right?”

“Quite so.”

“Here, Miss Blakelow, are your glasses.”

“Thank you,” she replied, lifting her hands to take the spectacles from him. Her fingers brushed against his for the briefest of moments and she felt a tug of attraction so strong that it robbed her of the ability to think or to even breathe.

“How old are you?” he demanded suddenly, frowning, his mind still evidently puzzling over where they had met before.

She looked up at him. “That is an impertinent question, sir.”

“You cannot be more than five and thirty, surely. To be sure you are not in the first bloom, but you are not yet in your dotage.”

“Thank you,” she murmured. Miss Blakelow who was in fact nine and twenty took this comment in bad part. Then, sensing his amusement, she looked at him and saw the mischievous gleam in his eyes and knew that he said it deliberately for revenge.

“Yes, Miss Blakelow, I am that outrageous and if you come to know me any better you will realise that trying to shame me does not work because I don’t have any scruples. Now, you may leave your shawl here. You cannot play cricket with that thing around your shoulders.”

The Earl of Marcham, dressed in a rich brocade dressing gown at nine the following morning, looked up from his newspaper as the sound of an almighty crash came from the hallway beyond the breakfast parlour where he was seated. He winced and looked at his butler who was clearing the table of the breakfast things. “Davenham, what was that racket?” he asked in pained accents.

“I believe it is your lordship’s sisters, sir. They have come to stay,” said that faithful servant in a quaking voice.

“Both of them?” he demanded.

“Yes, my lord.”

“The devil they have,” the earl muttered, pushing back his chair by its armrests and striding across the room. He yanked open the door and stepped out into the Great Hall.

A succession of trunks and valises and band boxes littered the stone floor in every direction. Servants―
his
servants―were running to do the bidding of the tall imperious woman standing at the foot of the staircase. “You, Brook, is it? Please see to it that my trunk is taken up straight away, I wish to change out of this travelling dress immediately. Davenham? Davenham? Where are you―? Ah, there you are! Please ask cook to prepare us something to eat immediately. I’m famished and I’m sure Harriet is too. Where is my brother?”

Lord Marcham immediately shrank back into the shadows cast by the staircase. He heard his butler clear his throat. “He went out riding, my lady. He is not expected back for some time.”

His lordship, who had in fact already been for his early morning ride, smiled. Good old Davenham. The old man always did cover for him in times of need.

“Gone out riding before nine?” repeated Lady St Michael. “
Robbie
? What, were there worms in his bed?”

“I believe his lordship rises much earlier these days than when you lived with us, my lady.”

“I see. No doubt the influence of his fiancée. Perhaps she is not so bad after all.”

Footsteps ran lightly up the front steps and then a girl, no older than eighteen, burst into the hall. “Is Robbie here?” Lady Harriet asked breathlessly, the voluminous plume on her bonnet wafting in the breeze. “I have
so
much to tell him!”

“Riding,” said her ladyship bluntly. “Can we get this band box out of the way? Someone is going to trip over it in a minute.”

Lady Harriet looked around her in wonder. “What a lot of baggage we have! I knew we should not have gone shopping in Oxford. Oh, Robbie,
there
you are! Why are you hiding in the dark? Come here where I can see you.”

Lady St. Michael spun around and narrowed her eyes on her brother’s rather irritated looking face. She gave him a knowing look. “Hiding from me, Robert?” she asked sweetly.

He came forward, smiling. “Always, dear sister. I find it preserves my sanity.”

She pecked him upon the cheek. “Coward,” she said softly.

“Termagant,” he retorted in kind.

“Oh,
Robbie
,” cried Harriet, hurling herself at his chest. “I’m
so
glad to see you.”

He kissed the top of her bonnet, the only part of her available to him and nearly had his eye taken out by her feather in the process. “Hello minx,” he said affectionately.

“Is it true that you are to be married?” she demanded, her big grey eyes searching his face.

He looked a little taken aback. How the devil did she find out about Georgie so quickly? His mother had been busy, he thought grimly. “I hope to be,” he replied.

“What is she like? Is she pretty? Is she as tall as me? Does she sing and play? Does she dance?”

“If you would ask one question at a time, I might stand a chance of answering you. Yes she is pretty. Yes she is as tall as you…rather taller in fact. And I have absolutely no idea as to her accomplishments.”

Lady Harriet looked perplexed. “You have no idea of her accomplishments?” she repeated. “How can you fall in love with someone and not know their interests?”

He carelessly flicked a forefinger against her cheek. “You do it all the time, love.”

“Be serious, Robbie. I heard that her family were horrid fortune hunters. Are you certain that she feels for you just as she ought?”

“I think there is every chance that she feels precisely nothing at all for me,” he said, guiding her into the library.

“Then why are you wishing to marry her?” asked Lady Harriet as her sister came in and closed the door.

His lordship looked from one sister to the other and sighed. “Don’t you wish to change your clothes after such a long journey?”

“In a minute,” replied Sarah, Lady St. Michael, folding her arms. “Answer the question.”

He looked down at his hands. “Because she intrigues me…and I haven’t felt like that in a long time.”

“Then Robbie, what I have to say will shock you exceedingly. I was at the Grant’s ball last week and I wore my celestial blue crepe with the rosebud trim and you needn’t roll your eyes at me, it is of all your habits the most annoying. And Anne Ellis said that Sir William Blakelow’s pockets are to let. She said that he does not have a penny to pay his London debts let alone save Thorncote. He was planning to throw one of his sisters under your nose so that you might marry one of them. Miss Marianne Blakelow is a trap set for you. I had it from my friend who had it from her brother who is a friend of William’s.”

“Er…and why are you telling me this?” asked Lord Marcham, utterly uninterested in anything William Blakelow did or said.

“Why are we…? Because you are going to marry Marianne Blakelow. Don’t you see? He is on the hunt for a fortune for his sister.”

He stood up and moved behind his desk. “Oh, I am well aware of that. But you seem to be misinformed―which given that you have just spent
several hours in a carriage with Sarah, is surprising. Miss Marianne Blakelow and I are not now, nor have ever been, engaged.”

His youngest sister looked from him to Lady St. Michael and back at her brother again. “Not engaged? But you just said that you were!” cried Lady Harriet, much confused.

“I said that I
hoped
to be…but the lady I spoke of was not Miss Marianne.”

His youngest sister clapped her hands together with glee. “Didn’t I tell you, Sarah? Didn’t I tell you that Robbie wouldn’t marry such a horrid scheming creature as Marianne Blakelow? Oh, why did you not tell me, Sarah? How infamous of you to keep me in the dark all this time! Who does Robbie wish to marry? Who is she?”

“Keep your voice down; the servants will hear you. She is a worse match for him than ever Lady Emily Holt was,” said Lady St. Michael coolly, “which is why I was not going to give credence to the rumour in the carriage with our maids listening in on everything.”

“Thank you Sarah,” murmured the Earl, “but I will marry whom I choose, I believe.”

“Refreshments are served in the breakfast parlour, my lord,” announced Davenham with exquisite timing.

“John?”

“Yes, my lord?”

“Remind me to increase your wage,” said a very grateful Lord Marcham.

* * *

The Earl’s discomfort was markedly increased when an hour later his mother arrived, complaining about the damp and immediately set about stoking up the temperature in the drawing room to such a degree that he could not bear to be inside it with a coat on for longer than five minutes.

“Robbie!” she said, waving him down to kiss her cheek, bestowing upon him a smile so sickly sweet that he immediately became suspicious.

“Mama,” he replied, by this time dressed in a beautiful wine coloured coat and pantaloons the colour of oatmeal. “To what do I owe the honour?”

“We were worried about you.”

“Really?” he asked doubtfully. “Should I be flattered?”

“You know, you wretched boy, that I am worried sick about this proposed match of yours.”

His lordship cast his eyes heavenward in a bid for divine assistance. “Please, Mama, let us not discuss it again. I have no wish to argue with you.”

“Darling Robert, you were always my favourite, you know,” she said softly.

Lord Marcham struggled to hide his irritation. His mother’s tricks had ceased to work on any of her children many years ago once they had realised how adept she was at playing one off against the other.

“Are you warm enough?” asked his lordship rather sharply.

“Yes…but
―”

“Good, then you won’t mind me opening one of the windows, will you?”

The countess spluttered, looking for an answer that wouldn’t further set her son’s back up and decided that that particular battle would be better saved for another day.

“Has Sarah tol
d you?” the countess asked.

“Has Sarah told me what?” he asked with a feeling of distinct foreboding.

“Harriet is to have a ball.”

“Jolly good. Just don’t expect me to come and she can have as many as she chooses,” he returned crisply.

His mother coughed. “Harriet wishes to have a ball…
here
.”

“I’ll wager she does. I wish to fly to the moon but it ain’t going to come true.”

“Now, Robbie, don’t be difficult,” said his mother. “It was her home too, remember?”

“So it was. But it is my home now and I do not wish to host a ball,” he said, casting himself onto a sofa.

“Why? What objection can you have?” his mother demanded.

“Objections plural.”

“Such as what? What pray do men know about organising a ball?”

“They know about paying for them, ma’am, and that is my first objection: the expense.”

“Oh, pooh and nonsense. What is there to pay for in a trifling ball?”

“Flowers. Food.
Champagne. Candles. The orchestra. Not to mention the rig you will turn her out in with jewels and the like. Slippers. Stockings etc. Etc.―no, Mama, let me finish. The fuss. The servants have enough work to do in this house without organising a ball. It needs to be co-ordinated and I have no inclination to waste my time in such a fashion. The noise. The night of the ball, I will not be able to sleep with all that racket going on so I will be forced to attend or go for a prolonged stay with Uncle Angus in the Hebrides because he will be the only one of my relatives not at the ball. The crush. No doubt everyone will want to be there and you won’t be able to get to the food for wading through feathers and waistcoats and sweaty bodies. Not to mention the heat, swooning females everywhere and matchmaking mamas all dead set in pairing me off with their hatchet-faced daughter. The hassle. Ten to one Harriet will fall in love with some unsuitable wretch, as she always does at these things, and then it will be up to me to play the tyrannical brother and sort it all out. And finally, the infernal giggling. Guaranteed that every female within a fifty mile radius will be prating on about the wretched ball every minute of the day; what they will wear, how many feathers they will put in their hair and who they will dance with until every gentleman, including me, is driven to distraction.
No
, Mama. I do not want a ball in this house.”

A short silence greeted this little speech.

“Well if they are your
only
objections, I cannot see that it is insurmountable,” said the countess.

His lordship opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again.

“You may invite Halchester’s daughter,” she added as a sweetener. “I heard that you were fond of her…”

Lord Marcham nearly threw his teacup at the wall. “I have no interest in inviting Lady Mary. But as you bring it up, that is another objection. I would be forced to invite her, for it would look very odd if I did not.”

“Has he agreed, Mama?” asked Harriet, popping her head around the door at that moment.

“Nearly, my love, nearly,” replied the countess.

His lordship closed his eyes.

“Oh, Robbie, wouldn’t it be famous?” cried Harriet, coming to sit on the sofa beside him. She grabbed his hand and held it tightly in her own. “I am so grateful to you for letting Holme host my ball. I think we will have a splendid time. Dearest, best of brothers, I
knew
that you would agree. And you may bring your mysterious lady too.”

“I have
not
agreed to host your ball and I realise at this juncture that you may wish to take back the part about ‘best and dearest of brothers,’ but so be it. I do not have the time or the inclination to host your ball, and I rather think you are much better off using Hock House in Grosvenor Square. I will happily hand you the keys. There you may invite who you like, when you like, and arrange it all to your own satisfaction. I will even assist you with paying for it.”

Lady Harriet’s face fell. Large glistening teardrops welled in her eyes. “Oh, Robbie, you don’t mean it.”

“I
do
mean it. And you can forget the waterworks. They ain’t going to work on me. I have resisted women ten times as manipulative as you in my time.”