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Chapter 13
When Lady Quamby had left, Theo found that the only company that remained were some gentlemen he had little desire to drink with when his bed was calling him.
He placed the empty brandy snifter on a low table and moved to the door with a backwards glance at the remaining company. By the window were Lords Fenton and Quamby, together with the somewhat dissolute George Bramley, a local squire and an admiral of the navy, if he remembered correctly, warming themselves before the fire as they engaged in spirited debate. Company that was both too good and too bad for Theodore to want to be part of.
He swayed against the doorframe and caught Lord Fenton’s sharp look, which made him jerk upright and leave the room with a parting nod of acknowledgement.
Right. To bed. He needed a good night’s sleep if he were to do justice to his meeting with Amelia tomorrow.
Carefully he followed the crimson and gold carpet runner that led him up the grand sweeping staircase to the gallery above. In the complete quiet, he realised he was more under the influence than he would like, for he rarely drank to excess. Lord, the last few months he’d hardly drunk at all.
Upon the threshold of the Long Gallery, he stopped to contemplate the cavernous distance between where he stood and the bedchambers beyond. From the floor to the top of the lofty ceilings, magnificent artworks could have held him in quiet contemplation all day. He knew a little of the illustrious history of his hosts. Or rather, their forebears, for the incumbents of the title were, it had to be admitted, a rather dissolute lot. Lord Quamby was an eccentric who had never been expected to marry, while his countess was branded anything from a designing jade and an immoral cuckolder to the most beautiful woman of her generation with the portraitists clamouring to render her likeness to immortality.
Lady Fenton, the dark dazzling beauty in contrast to her si
ster’s brazen, irrepressible gold-lustred image, had, however, created the greater scandal, so he had been told, before her marriage to Lord Fenton some years before.
Scandal. He closed his eyes. It did not take much to create scandal, and once the gossipmongers got wind of it, there was little account of the truth. Five years after their respective marriages, Ladies Fenton and Quamby were still whispered about, despite the respectability each had won.
Slowly he wandered through the room, past mighty suits of armour, lances, plaster busts, and a plethora of stuffed animals amidst the great masters.
It was only as he passed an enormous stuffed bear that he was aware of a slight movement from the window seat which caused him to say in some surprise, “Lizzy!” immediately regretting the fact he was now required to stop and further address her.
Far better it would have been if he had simply slipped by unnoticed.
For both of them.
“Theo!” she cried, jumping up and piercing him with an enigmatic look. “I thought I was all alone.”
“Clearly not,” he responded, moderating his tone so that it did not contain any trace of the elevation of his senses that assailed him. He glanced at the doorway at the far end of the passage. “It’s very late. You should be in bed.”
“And so should you though men can do what they like and ladies can do virtually nothing without being censured about it,” she said on a sigh. “Where are you going? Oh, do stay a moment and talk to me, please. I have had no one to talk to all evening, and a great emptiness of feeling has settled upon me which you can dispel with just a few moments of being charming. If you can manage such a thing when I know you are out of sorts with me, though I cannot imagine why.”
Just the mere act of engaging him thus seemed to fuel her vivacity as she added with a wicked twinkle in her eye, “Was it because you saw Mr Dalgleish kiss me under the mistletoe? That’s what it was there for, you know. Lots of couples, married and not, did the same.”
“So, you spent the evening spying, did you?”
Her eyes danced with amusement. “I must confess that when I saw your displeasure at Mr Dalgleish kissing me—for I was certain you’d seen Mr Dalgleish kiss me—I was instantly filled with mortification and thought I must have permitted a terribly grave act requiring your censure. However, Lord and Lady Fenton slipped into the room and kissed several times under the mistletoe—and I know they are married so can do what they like—but I also saw Miss Smythe and Mr Ferrier do it, and Miss Jackson and Mr Botts do it, and neither of them are married and, in fact, are considered quite respectable. And when I was assured that kissing has no irreversible consequences whatsoever, my mind was quite put at rest.”
Theodore found that all the while she was talking, he could not keep his eyes off her prettily formed mouth, which he’d never appreciated as much as he did now she was talking of all the pleasurable uses to which mouths could be put.
He shook his head to clear it. Such thoughts were definitely not to be dwelt upon. Certainly not now when he was alone with Lizzy, and tomorrow he had a very solemn duty to perform with a far worthier young lady.
And when his mind was just a little fuddled with the brandy he’d been drinking when no one would talk to him.
“And what irreversible consequences had you dreamt up?” he asked, only realising he’d spoken when it was too late. Foolishness, to say the least. He took a small step towards the door. He would hear her answer and put an end to their nocturnal chatter before any damage was done.
She bowed her head. “I thought…I feared…a child might result.”
He burst out laughing. “What poppycock is that? Have you never seen a cow give birth? Or horses in the paddocks doing what they do in order to produce the baby foals you young ladies think so sweet?”
“Horses in the paddock? I have no idea what you are talking about? What’s that got to do with begetting a child?”
“How old are you, Lizzy? I suppose it does not matter how old you are, really,” he went on before she had a chance to answer. “You’re considered old enough to marry, and in fact that’s why you are here—to find a husband—yet no one has ever thought to educate you on the serious side of marriage that surely must be a consideration as to whether you are prepared to suffer a lifetime of the man you accept as your husband.”
There was a belligerence to his tone that he realised she’d interpreted as scorn when she said indignantly as she jumped up from the window seat, tossing aside her reticule as she put her hands on her hips, “There you go again, Mr McAlister, accusing me of foolishness, childishness, having no proper consideration for the seriousness of life when, you are perfectly correct, no one has ever told me anything about what is expected of me when I become a wife. Don’t you see; that’s what I was doing earlier this evening with Mr Dalgleish?”
“Educating yourself?”
