Winter Wonderland (2 page)

His brother, however, showed no such distress. “Come, boy,” he said, his grin reappearing as he took his brother's arm, “and let me introduce you to that charming creature who has you gawking. Don't pay any attention to Honoria's gossip.”

Barnaby blinked at his brother in trepidation. “
Introduce
me?” he asked, so frightened at the prospect of having to speak to the dazzling creature that he almost stuttered.

“Of course. Don't gape at me like a frightened fish. I'll introduce you, and then you will ask her to dance.”

“Dance?” Barnaby echoed. “But I don't—”

“Of course you do,” his brother interrupted as he always did. “Nothing to it.” And, dragging poor Barnaby behind him, he moved inexorably toward the platform where the ravishing young woman stood. “Miss Pardew,” he bellowed as soon as they were in earshot, not at all concerned that he might be interrupting the young woman in the midst of an important flirtation, “how do ye do?”

The girl looked round, her smile fading and her expression becoming guarded—a look often seen in the eyes of mischievous young people in the presence of their elders. “Lord Shallcross, good evening,” she said. If she was annoyed at the interruption, she did not reveal it by so much as a blink. “How kind of you, the guest of honor, to come out of your way to greet me.”

“Not kind at all,” his lordship replied, stepping up on the landing, breaking in on her circle of admirers and lifting her hand to his lips. “I feel it a family obligation to greet you. After all, you are a relation to me, did you know that?”

“Yes, I'd heard something of the sort,” the girl acknowledged, her charming smile reappearing. “I do believe we're cousins, though quite distant.”

The Earl nodded. “Your father was my second cousin once removed, if I calculate rightly.”

Sir Rodney, who'd been standing behind the girl, moved closer to her. “A second cousin once removed, is he?” he muttered in Miranda's ear. “I only wish he'd remove himself further.”

The lovely Miss Pardew could not quite restrain her giggle as she dropped Lord Shallcross a curtsey.

Lawrence chose to ignore Sir Rodney's obvious rudeness. “I'd like to make this young man known to you, my dear,” he said to the lady pleasantly. “He is just out of Oxford and therefore somewhat tongue-tied. I believe he has a request to make of you.” In his blunt, fatherly style, he pulled Barnaby up on the landing and pushed him toward the girl. “Go on, boy! Ask her!” he ordered. Then, bestowing a benign smile on both of them, he stepped down from the landing and walked off, abandoning poor Barnaby to his fate.

Barnaby felt himself redden to the ears as the girl looked him over with cool disdain, taking in his unkempt hair, ill-fitting coat and loose breeches in one disparaging glance. “What can you possibly wish to ask me, sir?”

Barnaby, more humiliated than he'd ever been in his life, could barely find his tongue. “I w-w-wondered, Miss P-Pardew,” he managed, “if I might have the n-n-next dance.”

“Next dance? What gall!” exclaimed one of the men surrounding the lady. “I should say not! Her dance card was filled more than an hour ago!”

“I can speak for myself, Charlie,” the lady scolded, tapping the offending gentleman on his knuckles with her fan. Then she turned back to Barnaby. “Did no one ever tell you, young man, that asking a lady to dance at the very last moment can—in certain situations—be considered an insult?”

“An insult?” Barnaby was sincerely bewildered. “I don't see how—”

“Don't you? One asks one's maiden aunt to dance at the last moment. Or one's little sister. Or a wallflower one feels sorry for. Do I look like someone's maiden aunt? Or a wallflower?”

Barnaby, completely at a loss, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Well,” he muttered miserably, “I didn't … I wasn't … I just …”

“You didn't. You weren't. You just,” she mocked. “A man of few words, eh?”

The men around her laughed loudly. Never had Barnaby felt such a fool.

Sir Rodney put a proprietary arm about the young lady's waist. “What the lady means, you young idiot,” he said with a pitying smile, “is that she is spoken for already. The next dance is mine.”

“I'm s-sorry,” Barnaby stammered, backing away awkwardly. “P-Perhaps some other—” His voice, like his self-esteem, faded away to nothing.

The girl seemed to enjoy his misery. “For a man of few words,” she taunted, “you do keep tripping over them.”

“Yes, m—” he began, but his sentence was cut off by a loss of balance; he'd backed to the edge of the landing and stumbled off the edge. He lurched backwards down the three steps, not quite falling but merely looking like a clumsy ass.

The girl looked down at him as he steadied himself, her brows arched in amusement. “You not only trip over your words, but your feet. What a delicious combination of gracelessness and gaucherie!”

There was another roar of laughter from the gentlemen, but Miss Pardew merely smiled. Nevertheless, Barnaby could see that she was enjoying herself. She seemed to find it amusing to turn a man into a fool. Barnaby was not so green that he didn't recognize her delight in flaunting her power over him, and in having Sir Rodney witness that power.

Barnaby blinked up at her, wondering how to end this torture. No longer did she seem beautiful or desirable. The only desire he felt was an urgent wish to be gone from her presence. “Excuse my p-presumption, ma'am,” he said, making a quick but clumsy bow. “I obviously made a mistake. I wish you g-good evening.”

But she was not yet through with him. “I would wish you good evening in return, sir, but it seems I've forgotten your name. Or did Lord Shallcross fail to give it to me? What
is
your name, fellow?”

Barnaby had the urge to tell her to take a damper. To cut line. To cease her gibble-gabble. His brothers would not hesitate to say those things.
Rudeness
, he wished he had the courage to retort,
is only weakness masquerading as strength
.

“Did you hear me, fellow?” she persisted. “What is your name?”

He stared up at her, tongue-tied. What did she want with his name anyway? To use it as the subject for her mirth after he was gone?
Never mind my name
, his mind said silently.
I only want to say that this meeting was a pleasure
—
if not in the arrival, at least in the departure
. But overwhelmed with shyness and humiliation as he was, he was incapable of defending himself in any way, of paying her in kind, or even of making that mild rejoinder. He could only answer helplessly, “My name is Bar—”

But she held up a restraining hand. “No. On second thought, don't tell me. Please don't give me your name.” She flipped the upraised hand in a gesture of airy rejection. “I'd rather dismiss you
incognito
.”

The onlookers roared at this riposte. And the lady, having reduced the poor fellow to quivering jelly, was now ready to return her attention to Sir Rodney, her main objective. She turned away at last, leaving Barnaby free to make his escape. As he pushed his way through the crowd, he could hear her tinkling laughter as it merged with the hoots of hilarity the others were expelling at his expense.

He got through the rest of the evening somehow, and later, at home, he sat down in front of the sitting room fire to think over the event. The evening had been a battle, just as he'd anticipated. And he'd lost it. He had to admit that. He'd lost it ignominiously.

He stared at the dying fire, experiencing the humiliation of defeat. But he didn't wallow in mortification for long. He was too young and too hardheaded, he decided, to let one defeat overwhelm him. There were many battles of the sexes still ahead of him. He would enter the fray again, and the next time he would be better prepared.
The war's not over yet
, he said to himself, squaring his shoulders.
Not by a long shot!

One

Honoria, Lady Shallcross, had a select circle of friends—like herself, refined, mature ladies of impeccable taste and breeding—who gathered in her drawing room weekly to do what ladies of such refinement are wont to do: drink tea and gossip. And one of their favorite subjects of gossip was Honoria's own brother-in-law, Barnaby Traherne. What made him interesting was the paradoxical fact that, although he was tall, handsomely featured, and reasonably well-to-do, none of the marriageable young ladies of the
ton
seemed inclined to set their caps for him.

The subject became almost heated one day when Honoria, pouring out the tea for the large-bosomed Lady Lydell, chanced to remark that this was Barnaby's thirtieth birthday.

“It's positively shocking,” Lady Lydell observed, helping herself to a buttered scone, “that such a catch as Barnaby is, at his age, still a bachelor.”

“I don't understand it,” the white-haired Jane Ponsonby mused. “The girls should be pursuing him relentlessly. Why aren't they?”

“Because,” Honoria replied in that tone of unalterable affection with which she always spoke of him, “he's shy.”

This response brought forth a burst of satiric laughter. “Shy, indeed!” the sharp-tongued Molly Davenham, Honoria's closest friend, exclaimed. “The man's as shy as a shark!”

Honoria stiffened. “Molly! How
can
you say such a thing?” she demanded furiously.

“I can say it because it's true.” Molly stirred her tea with perfect calm. “A man with a stinging wit can't be called shy.”

“And didn't he win a DSO for his bravery at Waterloo?” Jane Ponsonby asked. “Hardly the act of a shy man.”

“But … but that doesn't mean—” Honoria sputtered.

“I heard, from my nephew in the Foreign Office,” Lady Lydell cut in, “that your Barnaby is the only man there with the backbone to stand up to the Prime Minister. So how can he be shy?”

Honoria brushed back a lock of gray-streaked hair with fingers that shook with anger. “Nevertheless—”

“Never mind your neverthelesses,” Molly Davenham said bluntly. “The fact is that every young lady I've tried to push in Barnaby's path was afraid of him.”

“
Afraid
of him?” Honoria stared at her friend in disbelief. “What on earth can have made them afraid of him?”

“He's forbidding,” Molly said, reaching for a cucumber sandwich, “and if you can't see that for yourself, I can't help you.”

“Forbidding?
My
Barnaby,
forbidding
?” Honoria looked round the circle for support for her position, but there was none.

“I know what Molly means,” Lady Lydell said thoughtfully, “although perhaps it's hard to describe just what it is that makes him forbidding.…”

It
was
hard to describe, but everyone who knew him agreed that there was something about Barnaby Traherne that put one off. He had a strong, lean face and a body that showed not an ounce of self-indulgence, qualities not necessarily daunting in themselves (in fact, most females found him quite attractive), but when combined with a certain glower in his expression, forbidding he became. His dark eyes, which glittered with saturnine intellectual acumen, had a way of cutting through a lady's pretensions; his manner of responding to most questions with brusque monosyllables quickly exhausted most ladies' efforts at conversation; and his icy witticisms easily discouraged the most persistent of flirts. And though his normal expression was only mildly thoughtful, the least annoyance caused it to give way to a frown so glowering that most observers backed out of range.

But Honoria, who had no children of her own and who'd helped raise Barnaby since he was ten, saw the man with a loving mother's eyes. “What nonsense!” she insisted sternly. “My Barnaby is as shy as a wallflower. You may take my word on it.”

But none of the ladies took her word. They all had eyes and ears, and from the evidence of those most reliable of organs, Barnaby Traherne was anything but shy.

Honoria didn't pursue the subject, though she knew how wrong they were. There was much they didn't know about her Barnaby, but his story was not one which she wished to tell, even to these close friends.
If only you could have seen him as I did
, she sighed to herself as she sipped her tea,
eleven years ago, back in 1806, when he attended his first ball … that dreadful ball that altered his character forever.…

Honoria remembered that ball better than she remembered her own wedding. It was one of those affairs given to honor her husband's coming into his titles. After a year of mourning for his father, Lawrence Traherne, the fourth Earl of Shallcross, was ready to celebrate his new position. It was a happy time, a time of celebration in the family, for not only had their year of mourning come to an end, but Terence, the second brother, had become father to a bouncing boy, and Barnaby, who'd been an excellent student despite his shyness, had won his Oxford degree with honors.

To celebrate, Lawrence had taken the whole family to London for a season of gaiety. Many of the
ton
held fêtes for the new Earl. During that season, Honoria had often tried to entice the shy young Barnaby to accompany them to the festivities being held in his brother's honor, but Barnaby had been too shy to go. This time, however, something had made him change his mind.

Honoria was delighted. She'd looked forward to this particular affair, for it was being given by her good friends, Lord and Lady Lydell. She remembered how excited she'd been as she'd climbed the stairs of the Lydell town house in Portman Square, her husband holding her right arm, and Barnaby, her left.

But as soon as they approached the ballroom doorway, Honoria was struck with misgivings. Perhaps she shouldn't have urged Barnaby to come. Honesty demanded she admit to herself that she'd not thought things through. She'd been too eager, too hasty. Barnaby would not be presented at his best. There had not been time to prepare him properly. He'd not been schooled in ballroom etiquette; he'd not been warned of the many social pitfalls; he'd not even been dressed to advantage. The boy's hair had not been cut, his borrowed coat now seemed a poor fit, and his breeches positively baggy when compared with the exquisite tailoring exhibited by the other guests.
This is all my fault
, she berated herself.
I should not have permitted him to attend his very first ball so ill-prepared
.