The Waltzing Widow/Smith (18 page)

Carlton’s lips lifted in a quiet, anticipatory smile. “This isn’t the time or place for a match, Avedon, but if you’d care to step into my carriage, I’ll be happy to oblige you elsewhere.”

“Here, and now. You ordered me to leave. I’m staying.”

“You leave me no alternative, old chap,” Carlton said, and raised his fists. “You’d best step inside, Lucy,” he said over his shoulder.

Lucy, of course, stayed rooted to the spot, her eyes gazing in disbelief. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” she said. “I have wanted to see someone teach Lord Avedon some manners from the first time I met him.”

Avedon raised his fists and landed Mr. Carlton a facer. Carlton was caught off guard, for he still couldn’t quite believe that Avedon meant to indulge in a fist fight on the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral. He went reeling back, tripped over an edge of cobbled walk, and landed in the dust.

Inside the Deanery, Bishop Norris was eager to show Lucy her tour of the cathedral so that they might get home before dark. He decided to join her and went for his hat. As he opened the front door, he saw an uncouth lout raising his fists and menacing Mr. Carlton. Even as he looked, the lout struck out, and poor Mr. Carlton went reeling back onto the ground.

The bishop raised his cane and advanced, shouting at Avedon. “Out, cur. Have you no respect for God or man, to institute a quarrel in this hallowed spot!”

For one awful instant Lucy feared her uncle was about to receive a blow on his chin. There was fire in Avedon’s eyes as he turned. But when he saw the gentleman’s age and clerical garb, he was jolted back to propriety. He cast a frustrated glare at Lucy. She was as white as paper and looked frozen.

The bishop continued his verbal attack. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, sir. I have heard of you bucks beating up the watch and terrorizing decent people by overturning their carriages, but this beats all the rest, to attack an innocent man in this holy place. Flogging is too good for you. Lucy, fetch a footman and send him off for a constable. This jackanapes will spend the night in the roundhouse.”

Lucy still stood, transfixed. It was Mr. Carlton who averted disaster. “It’s quite all right, milord,” he said, struggling to his feet. “A misunderstanding. This ... gentleman is an acquaintance of mine. A little the worse for wine,” he invented. “I’ll take him off and sober him up. I am devastated that this should happen on your doorstep. My humblest apologies.”

“You ought to choose your friends more carefully, Mr. Carlton,” the bishop said, but leniently. “Come inside, Lucy. You look like death.” They went inside, and Carlton led a shaken and contrite Lord Avedon to his carriage.

Once they were safely concealed inside, Mr. Carlton could no long contain his mirth. He laid his head back and laughed till his eyes ran tears. “Oh, Avedon, this is worth a quarter’s allowance, to see you make such a cake of yourself,” he gasped. “What on earth were you thinking of?”

Avedon sank his head in his crossed arms and groaned. “Oh, God, I must have been mad.”

“Completely deranged,” Morton agreed, “but it’s a pity this fit descended on you in front of Bishop Norris. He plans to call on you at Chenely.” Another spurt of uncontrollable laughter erupted from Carlton’s throat.

“Let us drive away,” Avedon said grimly. Lucy and the bishop had already entered the house, but he feared they might be looking out the window.

“Where can I take you?”

“What does it matter? I am ruined. What must she think of me, Morton?”

“Lucy, or Sally?”

Carlton decided that only unrequited love could cause the pain and grief he read in Avedon’s eyes. He pulled the check string and the carriage drove off, heading for High Street.

“Go to the Rose,” Avedon said in a dull voice. “I am to meet Tony there. I’ll have to send someone after my mount. I left it tethered near the cathedral.”

“Good God, did you have the lack of sense to bring that cawker of a Tony along with you? Why did the two of you come here to Canterbury?”

“Why do you think? We learned at Rose Cottage that you and Lucy had gone to see the bishop. We thought you planned a hasty wedding,” he said, suppressing his worse fear.

“This sounds like a very extreme case of puppy love, old boy. Not an appetizing sight in one of your years. How could you be such a flat? Did you seriously think we had darted off for a quick wedding? What would be the point of it? Or of your coming hell-for-leather after us, for that matter? We are both of legal age.”

Avedon rubbed his jaw and tried to salvage some shred of self-respect from the debacle. “Tony convinced me you had run off with the widow. After Sal told that wretched story about her ... When did you learn the truth?”

“Last night.”

Avedon scowled at this evidence of intimacy. “Odd you didn’t mention it at Milhaven. Not knowing that you knew the truth, Tony thought it was not a wedding license you were after, you know, but something else.”

“No more it was a wedding—nor an abduction, either, if that is what you are implying. I’m highly flattered, of course, that you should believe me so dashing. I merely delivered Lucy to meet Bishop Norris—you can imagine why I was eager to ingratiate her and him. As to that business of her being a widow, no such a thing.”

Avedon was glad to have a justified excuse to fly into a rage. “Now don’t start that old scandal up again. She is a widow! I saw the papers myself.”

“What you saw, if I’m not mistaken, are the papers announcing her brother Alex’s death in Spain.”

“Brother? But why would she mislead us about the relationship?”

“The intention was to pose as Alex’s wife to ward off unwanted suitors—like you. But once she got a look at Tony’s
beaux yeux,
she changed her mind and decided to enjoy the relative freedom of being a widow instead. There’s a reason for it,” he added, and explained about Mr. Pewter.

Avedon’s shoulders slumped. “You mean to tell me she’s rich, along with all the rest?” he asked despondently. His wealth was his last trump card.

“Rich as a nabob, not that it will do us much good. She don’t really fancy Tony—or me. As to yourself—” He hunched his shoulders.

“If I’d had any idea, I never would have offered her a carte blanche,” Avedon said earnestly.

“Carte blanche!” His companion’s eyes goggled. “Now this she didn’t tell me!” he said, eyes glistening avidly. “Do you know, Avedon, I begin to wonder if there isn’t a spark of life in you after all. I had pretty well decided you were hopeless, but you force me to reassess your character. Today’s spectacle, coming on top of a carte blanche, however ... I fear you may have gone too far for even me to pull your chestnuts out of the fire, Cousin.”

Avedon gritted his teeth. “You don’t have to tell me. I was only temporarily insane. I still have the use of my wits.”

The carriage drew up at the Rose. “Have you had lunch?” Morton asked.

“I don’t know—er, no, I don’t think so.”

“Perhaps it’s starvation that has turned you into a babbling idiot. Come along, I’ll feed you. We must make plans.”

As they entered the inn, Avedon said in a humble voice, “I would appreciate it if you don’t tell Tony about—”

Morton patted his arm reassuringly. “Do you think I shall boast of being knocked down by you? Not likely, Cousin.”

Tony did not return to the inn for another hour. He had met a chap from Oxford on High Street and had to give his rattler and prads a try.

“What is to be done?” Avedon asked. They sat in a private parlor, where Avedon toyed with his food and drank his wine. He had been brushed and washed and combed, to give at least an impression of respectability.

“Our best hope is that Norris doesn’t recognize you when he goes to Chenely.”

“We can’t let him go there now!”

“Dear boy, do you really think Sally will let you prevent him from coming, when she wants that position for Rutledge? You might as well try to stop the wind. Make that a hurricane,” he amended, as a picture of Lady Sara’s determined face swam in his mind.

“I’ll have to leave—go to visit one of my other estates till the bishop has left.”

“That would give Lucy time to cool down, too.” Carlton nodded.

“I have given up any hope of healing the breach there,” Avedon said curtly.

“Of course you will see her and apologize before you leave.”

“I shall write her a letter.”

Carlton shook his head. “Pride, Cousin, is a wicked fault. You made a ridiculous spectacle of yourself. Swallow that ostrich egg in your throat and admit it—to Lucy. Tell her you are sorry. Tell her why you went darting off half-cocked.”

As Avedon jerked at his collar, the old arrogance began peeping through. “It is true, I only went to Canterbury because I feared she was in danger. One cannot like to see a young lady jeopardize her reputation....”

“Oh, I shouldn’t tell her that, Avedon. I should tell her the truth, if I were you.” He lifted his wine glass and smiled over the rim. “I liked you much better during these few hours when you unaccountably turned into a human being. I daresay Lucy would prefer that to a statue as well.”

Avedon’s first, instinctive response was to assume his haughtiest expression. Carlton watched with interest as the incipient sneer softened to a smile. “She is enough to melt ice, isn’t she, Morton? Her eyes...”

* * * *

Lucy stopped inside the front door of the Deanery and escaped her uncle by going to fetch her bonnet. She wanted a few moments to herself to collect her thoughts. She was mystified at Avedon’s ghostlike appearance at the door, till she remembered his desperate question. “Are you married yet?” His voice was hoarse with anxiety and his eyes staring from his head. That was what had brought him pelting through the mud to Canterbury—concern that she had married Morton. That was what had turned him into a caveman and a raving lunatic. In theory she deplored such uncouth behavior, but when the cause was fear of losing her, she found it not only forgivable but gallant. Morton, the sly weasel, hadn’t told the family that he was bringing her to meet Uncle Norris. Had he done it on purpose?

She wore a smiling face when she returned to the dining room. “Will you take me around the cathedral now, Uncle? I am very eager to see it. Such a pity Mrs. Percy is not here.”

Yet she could not have repeated a word of its interesting history after the tour was over. She saw Avedon’s glowering face in every leaded window and floating around the vaulted spaces of the clerestory. She was on pins to return to Rose Cottage for another round with him. The bishop droned on with the cathedral’s history of burnings and rebuildings through the centuries, and Lucy said, “How horrid!” and “How interesting!” at what sounded like the proper times.

“And now we had best be on our way if we wish to arrive before dark,” he said at last. “Mrs. Percy will be wondering what keeps us. I hope she isn’t feeling poorly?”

“Not at all. She is on pins to see you.”

“I’ll just get my cases, and we’ll be off.”

Mrs. Percy, the real Mrs. Percy, now able to shine forth in all her widowed splendor, was curious at Lucy’s state when she returned from Canterbury. Surely it was not just seeing her uncle again that put her in such a high state of fidgets. Her cheeks were as pink as peonies in full bloom. Her eyes held some secret glow, and her nerves were in tatters. She jumped like a grasshopper every time anyone spoke to her. She instituted no conversation of her own, and as often as not didn’t even give a coherent reply to a direct question.

No interrogation could be instituted while they sat having dinner with the bishop. “We had a lamentable incident in Canterbury,” Bishop Norris said, and told Mrs. Percy the story of the layabout who had attacked Mr. Carlton in front of the Deanery.

“That is shocking,” Mrs. Percy exclaimed, but even that did not seem sufficient to account for Lucy’s trembling smile while Norris relayed the story.

After dinner the bishop retired to the study to read some literature picked up at the conference, and Mrs. Percy took the advantage of his absence to quiz Lucy.

“Lord Avedon stopped by this morning,” she said in a tone of studied nonchalance. “Twice, actually. Higgs spoke to him the first time. The second time he came around to the garden, and I had a word with him.”

Lucy smiled that dreamy smile. “What had he to say?” she asked politely.

“Not much. He just inquired when you had left. I daresay what he really wanted to know was when you would return. Perhaps he’ll stop by this evening.”

Lucy was coming to know him well enough to realize he would need more than a few hours to compose himself. “I shouldn’t think so,” she replied. “I told Morton not to call till tomorrow. Uncle will want an early night.”

Was it Morton Carlton who had turned her into a moonling? “Call on the bishop?” she asked eagerly. “Do you mean he wished to speak to him about an offer?”

Lucy looked stunned at the suggestion. “Good gracious, no. There is nothing like that between us, Auntie. Morton is just a friend. A good friend,” she added with another soft smile as she remembered his quick-wittedness in hustling Avedon from the scene of his disgrace. As a last effort, though she knew it was no good, Mrs. Percy said, “Bigelow was with Avedon this morning.”

That got a surprising response. “Was he? That’s odd. I didn’t see him at—” She came to an abrupt halt and blushed.

“At Canterbury?” Mrs. Percy prodded, trying to quell down her eagerness.

“Yes.”

“You saw Avedon there?”

Lucy began a violent pleating of her skirt. “I believe Morton had a few words with him,” she said evasively.

“Oh, really! Now what could have taken him to Canterbury? Odd he didn’t mention to me that he was going.”

Lucy looked up uncertainly. She was bursting to tell her exciting story to someone and said shyly, “The stupidest thing, Auntie. He took the notion we were seeing Uncle to get a special wedding license. He was quite upset.”

“I see!” Light dawned, and Mrs. Percy moved her chair closer so that conversation could be carried on in the enjoyable conspiracy of whispers. “That bothered him, did it?” she said encouragingly.