The Madcap (9 page)

In all of the planning, Marianne had not counted on
a suitor like Alasdair Braden. In her planning, she’d
imagined her suitors to be like young Kentworth, a
decent-looking fellow closer to her own age, easily
managed with a quick smile. While there were plenty
of young men like Roberta’s cousin who were happy to
be part of her court, Alasdair was the only one who
stood out. It wasn’t that he was the only full-grown
man-there were others in her little court who had
reached the prime of their maturity-but none of them
drew her like Alasdair.

Marianne stopped at a cluster of flowers and cut
some to make a bouquet around the flower whose stem
she’d ruined. Satisfied with her cuttings, she dropped
them into the basket on her arm and continued her
slow perambulations, assessing Alasdair.

Indeed, it seemed to her that no other man in London possessed his charm, not even the dashing Earl of
Camberly. An extra sense told her when Alasdair was
in the room. Her skin prickled at the very nearness
of him. It had been hard work simply to sit beside him
the night before and pay any attention to the fine music. The day he’d escorted them to Hatchards, she’d
been acutely aware of his presence, the faint scent of
his soap and morning toilet that clung appealingly to
his skin and clothes. The smell was as complex as the
man himself was proving to be.

Was Alasdair Braden another money-hungry peer
or a genuinely ardent suitor who merely had the mishap of being surrounded by unpleasant gossip? Marianne
knew about both. The newspapers in New York had
made no attempt to dress up the reasons the Duke of
Marlborough had been courting Consuelo Vanderbilt.
She’d also experienced firsthand the power of rumors
to define one’s realities. She’d be the last one to try
and pigeonhole Alasdair into any stereotypes. Still, it
would be much easier to decide how best to respond to
him if she knew the truth about him.

All of these speculations skirted the larger issue:
What did she want from Alasdair? Did she want him
to declare himself as a suitor? Marianne cut a vibrant
magenta bloom from an azalea bush and pushed it
behind her ear. What did it matter how indecorous it
looked? There was no one to see. No one was expected
today, which was just as well. She had too much to
ponder. Her thoughts easily drifted back to Alasdair.

She was undeniably drawn to him, but it was safer
thinking of him as a friend, no matter how American
that notion appeared to be. Seeing London up close,
firsthand, Marianne was starting to realize there were
things for which she could not plan. The intricacies of
life among London’s peers was an entirely different
culture. If she were to cast her lot with the aristocracy,
she’d forever risk being a fish out of water. How would
she learn to function as the titled wife of a viscount or
earl? Marianne sat down on a stone bench on the edge
of a gravel path. She began picking the lingering petals
off of a wilting bloom.

The image she had of herself as a countess like Audrey St. ClairMaddox would be humorous in some circumstances. She could imagine shocking the servants
when she went below stairs to make bread. She could
imagine horrifying the footmen when she fetched her
own vase for flowers. She would laugh at giving them
fits, but Alasdair wouldn’t find that kind of woman
amusing, at least not as a wife.

He would need someone who could command a battalion of servants, lay out immaculate dinner-seating
charts and see that everyone got to the table in the right
order of precedence without creating tomorrow’s scandal. Marianne doubted she’d be capable of that, or that
she’d want to devote herself so tirelessly to such behaviors that were, in her opinion, close to meaningless.

It simply wasn’t in her. She had not understood that
when she’d embarked on her impulsive campaign to
snare an English title. There’d be a husband that went
with it, and there’d be more than that. One man could
be managed. But there would be families and traditions
that went back far longer than her country had even
been on the map.

Perhaps it would be enough to say she’d succeeded in London and to go home without a title. That
should be enough to show the snobs in New York that
they’d been wrong about her. It wasn’t like her to quit,
but she wasn’t quitting. She’d stay in London and enjoy
the Season. She would merely reshape her goal into
something more practical. There was no sense in cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. In this situation,
the old adage fit perfectly. She wasn’t going to ruin her
life by taking on a burden she didn’t want just to show
the New York nobs she hadn’t deserved the cut direct.

Marianne stood up and brushed at her skirts. Her
meanderings were getting out of hand. She hadn’t even
determined that she had a real suitor yet, and here she
was already deciding to reject his marriage proposal.
This must be what English girls on the marriage mart
did all day since they were forbidden to do anything
else.

She made her way back to the house, basket in hand
filled with flowers to arrange, when she encountered
the object of her morning ruminations. Alasdair was
coming down the walk toward her, his stride wide and
quick, his face lighting in a smile at the sight of her.
Marianne remembered too late the azalea blossom
tucked behind her ear. She left it there. She liked the
sweet smell of it and that was all that mattered. If her
ruminations had led her to any useful conclusions it
was that she was Marianne Addison, and she could be
no other.

“Your mother said I could find you out here” Alasdair took the basket from her arm. “I left the others inside.”

“Others?” Marianne asked.

“Camberly and his wife, Carrington and Stella. It
was such a lovely day that we decided to drive over and see if you were free. We’ve got an impromptu
picnic arranged. Please say yes. I know it’s short notice, but you’ll adore Regent’s Park. There’s a lake for
boating-more like a placid river, really-and Camberly is having the archery butts set up. He’s got a silly
competition with Carrington going on that I don’t pretend to understand.”

Alasdair was completely irresistible as he enumerated the benefits of a picnic. “Stop!” Marianne laughed,
her earlier anxieties swept away in the wake of his boyish arguments. “You had me hooked at the first mention
of a picnic. Give me a moment to change”

The picnic was unlike anything Marianne had ever
attended. Camberly’s servants had gone ahead of them
and erected a three-sided pavilion at the park. Inside, a
portable round table and folding chairs had been set
up near a long sideboard holding an enormous quantity of food. The table itself was covered in white
linen and china plates. On the other side of the pavilion was a small outdoor seating area with pillows and
chaises for the ladies. “The better to watch our display
of prowess at the archery butts,” Lionel commented
with a waggle of his fair eyebrows.

“Well, my prowess at least,” Camberly joined in,
helping Audrey down from the carriage. “I’m not sure
about Lionel’s.”

Everyone laughed, and Marianne was overwhelmed with a sense of belonging. She’d never had friends
like these people before. They included her in all their
activities as if she’d been one of them from the start.
Clearly, they had all been together for ages. It was
hard to imagine that Audrey had only joined their ranks
a few years ago. The American who’d become a countess fit seamlessly among them.

Marianne felt a twinge of envy watching Lionel with
Stella and the earl with Audrey. The earl had seemed
relatively reserved at the social events where she’d seen
him, but here, under the sunny skies of the park and
with his wife on his arm, the earl was an entirely different man. It was all too easy to pretend that today she
was Alasdair’s and the group was a sextet of couples.

“Do you shoot, Miss Addison?” the earl asked once
everyone had been settled to his satisfaction.

“Guns,” she replied automatically.

Lionel laughed hysterically. “You deserved that,
Camberly. Haven’t you been around Americans long
enough to know that archery isn’t really our thing?
We’re all about guns, Camberly. Arrows aren’t much
use are they, Marianne, on the Barbary Coast?”

Realizing the earl’s intended meaning, Marianne
laughed too. “No, I’m afraid I don’t do any archery,”
she said once the laughter subsided.

“What’s the Barbary Coast?” Stella asked, looking
around the group. “I am assuming we’re not talking
about pirates?”

Lionel drew a deep breath to calm his laughter. “It’s a rather unsavory section of town in San Francisco,
where gambling hells, brothels, and all nature of vice
is available. There are stories of men who go in to get
a drink and that’s the last anyone sees of them. Bartenders slip drugs into drinks and harlots slip money
out of wallets while the clients are drugged. Some of
them wake up on a ship bound for India or China. Others just wake up in a gutter.”

Stella shuddered. “San Francisco sounds very dangerous. Is that why you’re so handy with a gun, Miss
Addison?”

“Call me Marianne, please” Marianne wanted to
laugh at the very obvious divide between English and
American behaviors among friends. Lionel had called
her Marianne, but Camberly and Stella had clung to
the formality of her last name.

“No, San Francisco is much changed from what it
used to be. We have safety committees and organized
groups that keep the town law-abiding. We even have
churches,” Marianne teased dryly. “I learned to shoot
because I traveled with my father to Denver a few years
ago and we stayed with some avid hunters. It seemed
the thing to do”

“Well, when in Rome, one must do as the Romans
do” Alasdair held out his hand to her. “Come with me
and I’ll show you how to `shoot’ English style. We’ve
a long tradition of famous archers, you know. Robin
Hood and all that” He winked. “You’ve heard of
Robin Hood?” he said in mock seriousness.

Marianne swatted at him for good measure. “I know
your Robin Hood, but in America we have Jim Bowie
and Davy Crockett”

“Are they archers?” Alasdair asked, picking up a
bow and testing it.

“No. Bowie was known for his knife work” Marianne grinned.

Alasdair gave an exaggerated sigh. “Then we have
a lot of work to do” Everyone laughed and Marianne
followed him out to the butts.

“This is Audrey’s, so the weight should be fine for
you,” Alasdair said as he handed her a well-carved
bow. “Pull back on the string and let’s test it before we
use an arrow.”

Marianne held the bow flat out in front of her and
pulled on the string only to have Alasdair say, “No,
not like that. Lift it up to nearly shoulder level, as if
you mean to shoot it. Like this.”

In an instant, Alasdair had his arms about her, his
hands on hers, guiding the bow into position and helping her to pull back the string. A tremor ran through her
at his nearness. Up close, she could smell the exquisite
mix of his soap: sage and thyme with a subdued hint of
lavender and perhaps something else. She could feel his
body pulse around her, the muscles of his arms drawn
taut against her, proving that this man had the ability to
mesh both the world of the drawing room and dance
floor with the rigors of the outdoors.

Too soon, Alasdair stepped back from their instructive embrace. “I’ll get an arrow” he murmured in a
husky voice that suggested to Marianne that he was
quite possibly as moved by the encounter as she was.

He took his time getting a few arrows and removing
his coat before he returned to her side. When he did,
all traces of huskiness were gone from his voice, making Marianne think perhaps she’d imagined it.

“The arrow fits like this,” Alasdair aptly demonstrated. “Then we pull it back. That’s called `nocking’
the arrow. And we let it loose” Alasdair closed one eye
and sighted the target, hefting the bow and loosing the
arrow in a single fluid motion. The arrow gave a soft
thud as it hit the target. “Now you try it,” Alasdair encouraged, passing the bow back to her.

Marianne did her best to copy Alasdair’s movements,
but nocking the arrow was harder than it looked. The
arrow kept slipping.

“Here, let me help,” Alasdair said gently, coming
around her again and placing his hands over hers. Together, they let the arrow fly. It landed near the center
of the target and Marianne clapped in delight. The next
one she did on her own, thrilled that the arrow didn’t
slip even though it did miss most of the target, landing
on the far edge of the butt.

Beside her, Alasdair handed her another arrow.
“Keep trying-you’re getting it.”

She smiled and attempted to concentrate. After a few more shots, she was able to hit the target more
respectably. The little group in the pavilion applauded
her last effort before Audrey called them over for lunch.

Camberly opened a bottle of champagne and everyone assembled plates of cold chicken, strawberries
and other summer delicacies before sitting down at
the table. “We must have a toast,” he said, still standing. “To Miss Addison. Here’s to the addition of another fabulous American among us”

Glasses clinked, and while Marianne was moved by
the gesture, and indeed by all the kindnesses the group
had shown her, she couldn’t help but wonder why they
had befriended her. Watching her father do business
over the years, Marianne had learned that no one did
anything without reason.

Across the table, Alasdair gave her a warm smile.
She’d like to believe that they’d invited her into their
group simply because Alasdair was courting her. But
since she wasn’t even sure he was courting her or that
he was in any position to be courting her, she could
hardly draw any further conclusions.

After lunch, the men suggested a row on the little
river that ran through the park, to give the servants time
to clean up from the meal. Alasdair offered his arm to
her for the short walk to the boat shed, and once again
Marianne was struck by how right it felt to be a third
couple among the group.