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An adult ought not be coaxed into courtship as a child is coaxed to eat his peas, he thought, unconsciously paraphrasing one of Miss Pelliston’s remarks. Not until he reached the entrance to White’s did he realise that he had paraphrased her. Really, wasn’t it enough that the chit had forced him to chase all over town for her? Must she now formulate his thoughts for him as well?
Two glasses of wine were required to mollify him. Then Jack accosted him and undid all the good the spirits had done.
Jack Langdon might live in a jumbled dream world haphazardly composed of history and fiction. He might be considered an eccentric. All the same, there was no denying he was a good-looking enough chap, with a more than respectable income, not to mention clear prospects of a title. He might have been married long since if only he could have kept his mind fixed on the matter. Jack Langdon, however, rarely fastened on anything in the present for more than ten minutes at a time, doubtless because his brain was too crowded with historical trivia.
Now, unfortunately, he had battened his mind on Catherine Pelliston, and Lord Rand had consequently to endure an overlong soliloquy about that young lady’s perfections. Max was a man of action. He thought that if Jack was so very much taken with the female, he had much better set about taking her in fact—to the altar, if that’s what he meant—instead of plaguing his friends with the young lady’s views of Erasmus, Herodotus, and a lot of other fellows who’d been worm meat this last millennium.
Lord Rand shared this view with his friend.
Mr. Langdon’s dreamy grey eyes grew wistful. “That’s easy enough for you to say, Max. You’ve always been a dashing fellow. You can sweep women off their feet without even thinking about it.”
“That’s the secret, don’t you see? Can’t think about those things or you end up thinking and hesitating forever.”
“Like Hamlet, you mean.”
“Exactly. There he was meditating, waiting, and watching—and where does it get him? His sweetheart kills herself. Don’t blame her. The chap wore out her patience.”
Mr. Langdon considered this startling theory briefly then objected to it on grounds that Hamlet was not first and foremost a love story. There was, after all, the matter of a father’s murder to be avenged.
“On whose say-so?” Max argued. “A ghost. He had no business seeing ghosts. If he’d attended to the girl properly, he wouldn’t have had time to see ghosts. If you want Miss Pelliston, my advice is to go and get her, and never mind palavering at me about it. While you’re thinking, some other more enterprising chap’s going to steal her out from under your nose.”
Mr. Langdon stared. “Egad, you’re right. There’s that stuffy Argoyne and Pomprey’s younger brother and Colonel—”
“Argoyne?” Max interrupted. “Lord Dryasdust? What the devil does he want with her?”
“He approves of her views on agriculture.”
Jack stopped a waiter and ordered more wine before turning back to his friend. “I hear he had his face stuck in Debriefs all morning, rattling her ancestral closets for skeletons.”
“Why, that pompous ass—” The viscount caught himself up short. “There you go, Jack. Three rivals already. No time to be wasted. Now, can we find ourselves a decent game in this mausoleum?”
Three days later, Catherine Pelliston was perched upon an exceedingly high vehicle pulled by two excessively high strung horses. She was nervous, though that was the fault of neither carriage nor cattle. If the fault lay with the driver, that had less to do with his obvious skill in handling the delicate equipage than the nearness of a muscular thigh encased in snug trousers. The scent of herbs and soap, today unmixed with other aromas, seemed more overpoweringly masculine than ever. At least she hadn’t to cope with the viscount’s intense blue-eyed gaze as well, because he had to keep his eyes on the crammed pathway.
They had discussed Egyptian customs between the inevitable interruptions of stopping to greet acquaintances. These were short delays, Lord Rand having scant patience with the gentlemen who stopped them from time to time to pay their compliments to Miss Pelliston.
“Curse them,” he muttered after the fifth interruption. “Can’t they do their flirting at parties instead of holding up vehicles in both directions?”
“Oh, they weren’t flirting.” Catherine coloured slightly under Lord Rand’s incredulous gaze. “Were they?”
“They meant to if given half a chance. Only I don’t mean to give it them, inconsiderate clods. Good Lord, is all of London here?”
“It’s past five o’clock, My Lord, and Lady Andover says everyone parades in Hyde Park at five o’clock.”
“Like a pack of sheep.”
“Very like,” she agreed. “This is one of the places one comes to see and be seen. At least we are not at the theatre and they are not rudely ignoring the performance. Really, how provoking for the actors it must be to find their best efforts—their genius, even—utterly thrown away upon ninety percent of their audience.”
“I’ll wager you’d like to stand up and read them a lecture, Miss Pelliston.”
“I should like, actually, to heave them all out at once. I’m sure my thoughts last night were as murderous as those of Lady Macbeth.”
“Do you often have murderous thoughts, ma’am?”
“Yes.” She stared at the toe of her shoe.
“Such as?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“They must be quite wicked, then.”
“Yes.”
“Are they? That is very exciting. Do tell.”
“You are teasing me,” she reproached.
“Of course I am. I know you never had a truly wicked thought in your whole life. Not even a naughty one, I’ll wager. You don’t even know when a fellow’s flirting with you. If that ain’t innocence, I don’t know what is.”
“That is lack of sophistication.”
“Then enlighten me, Madam Choplogic. What is wickedness?”
“You know perfectly well. Besides, I thought you considered it lowering to be instructed in wickedness by a girl of one and twenty.”
“In dissipation, perhaps. But I won’t tell if you won’t. Come,” he coaxed, “tell me a murderous, wicked thought.”
She scowled at her shoe. “I have wanted to strangle my papa,” she muttered.
“Egad! Patricide. Well, that’s a relief,” said he with
a grin. “I thought I was the only one. Still, you probably had more provocation. My father at least never tried to force me to marry someone twice my age, and one who don’t bathe regularly to boot. That Browdie is a revolting brute, I must say. I wonder you didn’t run off the same day you got the happy news.”
“I would have,” she grimly confessed, “only I had no idea where to go and needed time to plan it out. I thought I had planned so carefully.”
Max gazed at her in growing admiration as she went on with his encouragement to describe her elaborate arrangements—the governess’s garments she’d sewn with her own hands, the route she’d planned that would get her to the coaching inn unremarked, the weary trudging through fields and little-used back lanes.
Had he been in her place, with her upbringing, he wondered where he’d have found the courage to embark upon so complicated and hazardous an enterprise. Why, Louisa had gone off with her maid in tow, in her own father’s carriage, and only a few miles at that. This young woman had no adoring relative to hide with, only a prim governess who might send the girl right back to her papa.
“I never thought about what slaves to propriety women of the upper classes are,” he admitted. “But there’s really nothing you can do unchaperoned, is there? I can drive you in the park in an open carriage or take you to Gunner’s for ices... and that’s about the sum of it. Confound it, if I were a female, I’d want to strangle everybody.”
“Fortunately, you are not. You may do and think what you like, for the most part. The world tolerates a great deal from a man.”
“Oh, yes. We can drink ourselves blind, gamble away the family inheritance, beat our wives and cheat on ‘em and no one turns a hair. Is that what you mean?”
She nodded.
“We live, Miss Pelliston, in a corrupt, unjust, hypocritical world. In the circumstances, you’re justified in thinking murderous thoughts. If you didn’t, I’d have to suspect your powers of reason.”
He was at present suspecting his own. What did he know of injustice? He’d spent his life raging over what he now saw were a few paltry duties, minor irritations in a life of virtually uninterrupted freedom. She, on the other hand, had attempted one small rebellion—an act he’d engaged in repeatedly since childhood—and had very nearly been destroyed.
