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Really, the situation was absurd, he thought. He could hardly dash out and haul Tony away from the shrubbery. If that’s where the reckless fool wanted to take Miss Desmond, that was the fool’s problem.
All the same, Mr. Langdon continued to watch. Just as the pair approached the perilous pathway, he saw Lady Streetham shoot out of the house like a rocket and draw Miss Desmond back to the terrace. Jack smiled. Now the countess would send Tony off on one of her errands, as she had been doing practically from the moment the Desmonds arrived.
That was not at all surprising. Lady Streetham had been snatching her son out of the jaws of romantic disaster for years, and entanglement with the penniless daughter of the notorious Devil Desmond was obviously in that category.
Mr. Langdon left the window and reseated himself at the writing desk. Miss Desmond ought to have known better, he told himself, especially after he dropped his hint about the perils of the hedgerows to her yesterday. If she was so set on learning decorum, she really oughtn’t encourage Tony. Surely by now she must have recognised what a rakehell he was. Or at least her father might have warned her. But no. In a mere twenty four hours she had developed all the usual symptoms. True, Tony had needed to add a few coals to the blaze of his charm, but Miss Desmond appeared ready enough now to be consumed.
Jack threw down his pen and went in search of a book sufficiently taxing to occupy his brain more profitably. His fingers flicked over volumes of Euripides, Aristophanes, Aristotle, and Herodotus, but each was rejected as too familiar, even in Greek. Then he found a large, moroccan-bound, heavily gilded volume whose title and author were unknown to him. He drew it out, selected a capacious leather chair, and settled himself to read.
What he found within the covers was not exactly what he’d expected, but after an initial gasp of surprise and a few moments of confusion, he became entirely deaf, dumb, and blind to all else but what he found in those pages.
Utterly absorbed, Mr. Langdon continued reading as late morning warmed into early afternoon and luncheon passed unnoticed. The household being familiar with his ways, a modest array of sustenance was brought to him on a tray. It remained untouched and was later carried away by the same servant, who smiled indulgently as he closed the library doors behind him.
The servant speedily erased his smile a moment later when he met up in the hall with his mistress and Miss Desmond.
Lady Streetham frowned at the tray and then, more deeply, at the servant. “This will not do,” she said. “You will bring him another, Nicholas, and this time be sure he is eating before you leave the room.”
“I am sure I have told them a hundred times not to leave it to him,” said Lady Streetham after the servant had bowed himself away. “One would think after all these years they would learn, but they do not. Of course that tiresome boy will neglect his tea as well, and what good dinner will do him I cannot think, when he only daydreams at the epergne.”
Miss Desmond suppressed her own smile. “I hope Mr. Langdon is not ill,” she said.
“It is a miracle if he is not. He is always engrossed in one book or another, to the exclusion of all else—friends, family, even his own health. I do what I can, because he is very like a son to me, but one cannot watch him every minute.”
Especially not, Delilah added inwardly, when one is maintaining unwinking guard over one’s actual offspring. She had no opportunity to make the obligatory sympathetic response because the butler now approached to inform the countess that Lady Gathers and her daughter had arrived.
“So soon?” said Lady Streetham. “But Tony is not yet retur—Well, no matter.” She turned to her guest with an expression of cold resignation. “Miss Desmond, if you are not too fatigued, perhaps you would enjoy meeting my neighbours.”
“I should like nothing better,” Delilah answered.
Her hostess’s features grew more rigid.
“Unfortunately,” Miss Desmond went on, “I find myself unusually susceptible to the heat and am sure to make but poor company as a result. Would you think it unconscionably rude, My Lady, if I excused myself?”
“Not at all,” said the countess with a shade of eagerness in her customary chilly tones. “Quite oppressive, the heat. Perhaps you will want a long nap before tea?”
“Actually, I had thought I would sit quietly in your cool library with a book. If Mr. Langdon is still there, I will certainly urge him to cease insulting your excellent chef.”
Lady Streetham’s frigid countenance thawed ever so slightly. “Very well,” she said, and took herself away.
“Yes, it is very well, you stuck-up old battle-axe,” said Delilah under her breath. “Far better than having to introduce Devil Desmond’s daughter to your exalted friends.” Not, Delilah told herself as she moved down the long hall towards the library, that she wanted to meet them. Lady Gathers was doubtless another battle-axe and her daughter a demurely proper nincompoop. The entire conversation would be devoted to tearing their friends’ reputations to shreds.
All the same, it was rather hard to be treated like a leper, for heaven’s sake, when one’s blood was every bit as blue as theirs. Bluer. In Charles II’s time, the Melgraves had been mere jumped-up squires, while her papa’s family had been Norman barons long before the Conqueror was an illicit gleam in his father’s eye.
Caught up in her angry reflections, Delilah neglected to knock. As soon as she entered she perceived that knocking would have been futile anyhow. Mr. Langdon did not even look up when she flounced into the room.
He ought to look up. He ought to have looked up at least once in the past twenty-four hours. She had not needed Lord Berne’s lyrical compliments last night to be assured that her new amber gown became her. Even this simple sprigged muslin fit her to perfection, and it had cost Papa a substantial sum. Mr. Langdon might at least show some aesthetic interest.
What on earth was so fascinating about that stupid book? She crept noiselessly to his chair and glanced down over his shoulder at the volume that lay open on his lap. Then she gasped.
Mr. Langdon came abruptly to attention. “Miss Desmond,” he began, but the look on her face stopped him.
“You!” she cried. “You-you beastl”
“Miss Desmond—”
“Don’t you speak to me, you wretched man. How dare you?”
“I—I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Langdon, much taken aback. Bent over him was a flushed, furious, and blindingly beautiful countenance whose wrath seemed to set the very air throbbing. Certainly it had his senses reeling.
“A sneak. A horrid, sneaking thief. And I felt sorry for you. Oh, I wish Papa had killed you. No, I wish I had done it myself.” Her hand went to the neckline of her frock, then halted.
It dawned on Mr. Langdon that he was for some unaccountable reason in very real danger. The gesture had puzzled him only for an instant, until he’d guessed that she’d gone for her pistol, which, luckily for him, was not at present upon her person.
Quickly he stood up, the volume clutched under his arm.
“Miss Desmond, you are distressed. Shall I—”
“Distressed?” she echoed wrathfully. “You have stolen my father’s manuscript and sit here coolly reading it, when anyone might come in and—and—” She paused. “Good Lord, are you mad?”
“I am not mad, Miss Desmond,” he said in the soothing tones usually reserved for sufferers of delirium. “I fear, however, that you are hysterical. This volume belongs to your father?”
“No,” she snapped. “It is the property of the Archhishop of York. Of course it’s my papa’s. Surely you noticed that the pages are handwritten—that it is a manuscript, in fact—that it is my father’s?”
“Yes, I noticed all that.”
“Well?”
“I also could hardly fail to notice that it was here on the shelves with the rest of our host’s collection. I assumed your father had given it to Lord Streetham. My own collection contains some unpublished efforts by friends—though I must say this is far more w
orthy of publication.”
The angry flush on her cheeks faded to a more becoming pink as her fury subsided, to be replaced by discomfiture. She did not answer, however, only gazed unhappily at the book he held.
“You are telling me, Miss Desmond, that this book does not belong to Lord Streetham?”
“No, it does not,” she answered in a choked voice.
“Then why was it here, and enclosed in this odd binding?” He moved closer to show her the richly tooled cover. “This is supposed to be a work on horticulture.”
“Yes, I know. I can read Greek,” she said stiffly.
“You can?”
“Don’t patronise me, sir.”
“I beg your pardon. I meant no offence. It’s just that young ladies—”
“Oh, don’t, please.”
To his surprise, Miss Desmond threw herself into the chair he’d vacated and clutched her head in her hands. Several pins flew out, and the gleaming black tresses they’d contained slipped out after them to dangle against her shoulders.
Jack politely looked away.
“Young ladies,” she muttered. “Yes, a fine lady I am, don’t you think? Make a fool of myself first, then think after. That’s the way of it. Good grief.” She looked up, her grey-green eyes clouded with remorse. “I’m sorry I called you those horrid names. In case you had any doubts, I have a beastly temper. And no one knows where I get it from because Mama and Papa both are so—oh, never mind.”
Though he was unaccustomed to coping with overwrought young women—that was more in Tony’s line—Jack had lived with three short-tempered sisters. “I don’t mind,” he said, trying for the airy tone he often took with Gwendolyn. “It was all very exciting, actually—though I was grateful you hadn’t a weapon handy. As the child’s rhyme goes, names will never hurt me.”
“Oh,” she moaned, twisting herself into the corner of the chair and burying her face in her arms. “Now you’re going to be gallant. I can’t bear it.”
“Shall I call you names, then, and make us even?”
