Chapter Twelve
Seeing Tallboys starting at Sophie like some heart-sick fool sent an arrow straight into Banallt’s heart. And she, of course, demonstrated no awareness whatever that Mr. Reginald Tallboys or His Grace the Duke of Vedaelin had a tendre for her. Her expression was sober, vivid with intelligence as always. God, what a web this was. He knew very well that Mercer was in love with Fidelia. That bit of old news had come to him months ago. Mercer, understandably, had given up hope where Fidelia was concerned. Her father had loftier hopes for his daughter. Christ. He did not care to be at the center of this tangle, yet here he was.
Banallt offered Sophie his arm after Tallboys took his leave, with more apologies to Sophie. He doth protest too much, he thought. The man was too charmed by half. He waited while Sophie watched Tallboys go. Would she take his arm, or was he to have a cold shoulder? “You are uncomfortable,” he said at last. He’d not given the butler his hat nor had he put it back on when he came outside to find Tallboys looking ready to go down on one knee. He had to concentrate on not crushing the brim. “Shall I find someone else to escort you home? I can fetch Tallboys back if you like.” He scowled again. He was damned if he’d send Sophie home with Tallboys. “My cousin, Mrs. Llewellyn, has a carriage here. I’m sure she’ll not mind sending you home.”
She took a breath. “I take it your carriage is waiting?”
“Yes.”
“Then let us go.” She settled into one of her unreadably calm expressions. “I don’t wish to delay you with foolish errands. I’ll finish scolding Mr. Tallboys myself when next I see him.”
If she hadn’t spoken in so fond a tone, he would have felt better to hear she’d been scolding him. As it was, she sounded on far too intimate terms with the man. They hardly knew each other. “Do they call often at Henrietta Street?” he asked. Well. And so. Of course they must. Both of them were free to call when they liked. A knife twisted in his heart.
“Who?”
“Tallboys and Vedaelin.”
“From time to time. He’s amusing. Tallboys, I mean. And he calls, the duke does, when he needs something of John.” She didn’t sound like a woman who understood the many excuses that could bring a man to her home. “Which is often.”
He didn’t know what to say to her after that, and so he said nothing. She walked beside him with a brisk, no-nonsense stride. Their silence was not uncomfortable. Silence between them never had been, unless she was angry with him. He let the silence continue. What, after all, did a man say to the woman who had refused his heart? Though he would allow that perhaps his had been badly offered. In such a circumstance, nothing was the perfect reply. He was aware, damn it all, far too aware, of her dainty figure at his side. He could ignore his response to her. He could. And would.
“Mrs. Evans?” a woman’s voice called out. The tone shrilled in his ears. Years of experience had honed his instincts for the high-in-the-instep matron whose disapproval had just locked on him and must be voiced. He knew, therefore, what he would face if they stopped.
But Sophie stopped and so, therefore, did he.
“Mrs. Adcock. How do you do?” Sophie said.
Mrs. Adcock steadfastly refused to look at him. Such reactions were common enough from certain women. He was amused, or would have been if Sophie weren’t about to be involved. “Pray tell, Mrs. Evans,” she said in a voice of patently false concern, “where has the duke gone? Did I not see you with him these past five minutes?”
“The duke,” Banallt said, “has been called to Whitehall.” Mrs. Adcock refused to meet his gaze. Women like her lived to disapprove, and was not the Earl of Banallt a favorite target of disapproval? Deservedly or not. “As has Mr. Mercer,” he added.
Mrs. Adcock’s attention remained on Sophie. Ah, the cut direct. He stifled a laugh. He’d been cut dead by better women than Mrs. Adcock. “I do hope the duke has not taken ill, Mrs. Evans. Last I saw His Grace, you were with him.”
“Yes,” Sophie said, drawing out the syllable perhaps a moment too long. “His Grace has been called to Whitehall. As has my brother, Mr. Mercer.” She lifted her chin. Somewhere between Tommy destroying her spirit and now, Sophie had learned to stand up for herself. Had she been that way when he came to Havenwood to lay his heart at her feet? Probably. He ought to have noticed and taken that into account. But then, his proposal had been too much about him and hardly at all about her. Vedaelin would do well by her. They suited. Tallboys even better. “Lord Banallt has now the unhappy task of seeing me home. And then he, too, must to Whitehall.”
Mrs. Adcock laid a hand on Sophie’s arm. “One so worries about undue influences.”
“The duke himself asked Lord Banallt to see me home.”
“One never wishes to offend, Mrs. Evans.” Mrs. Adcock firmed her mouth. “I’m sure you must want to think of something else.”
Sophie’s chin went up. “I’m sure I don’t,” she said. Banallt knew Sophie well enough to understand she wasn’t so much defending him as she was defending herself from Mrs. Adcock’s scorn. Though he wanted to flatter himself to think she might be defending him at least a little.
“Well. I am very sorry to hear that!”
“Lord Banallt,” Sophie said. “We’ve delayed too long. I should hate for His Grace to call you to account for any further delay.”
“He did ask that I join him as soon as possible,” he said mildly. He speared Mrs. Adcock with his iciest gaze and was pleased to see her blanch.
Mrs. Adcock removed her hand from Sophie’s arm. “But, Mrs. Evans.” She leaned in. “Ought you to be seen leaving with Lord Banallt, of all men? Is it wise?”
Sophie’s hand tightened on his arm. He saw her eyes go wide and innocent. “The Duke of Vedaelin himself left me to Lord Banallt’s care. Should he not have?” She didn’t give Mrs. Adcock a chance to answer. Instead, she turned to him and said, “Ought I walk home, my lord, over Shooter’s Hill and with rain threatening?” She stuck out a foot. “These slippers will be ruined, I’m sure.”
“No, ma’am, you ought not.” He reached into his pocket for his watch and consulted it. “Forgive me. Time grows short.”
Mrs. Adcock sniffed and took a step back. “Mrs. Evans,” she said with a darting look at Banallt. “I’m shocked by the company you choose to keep.”
“Thank you for your concern,” Sophie said. She curtseyed. “Good day, Mrs. Adcock.” She walked away so quickly Banallt actually had to take a long step to catch up to her.
When they were walking down the front stairs to his waiting carriage, Sophie having retrieved her cloak from a servant, she exploded. Her voice remained low, but anger vibrated in her words. There was rain now, big heavy drops that hit the ground and splattered. The sky and the road were precisely the same shade of gray. “The nerve of that woman, Banallt,” she said.
He raced after her, opening his umbrella and holding it over her head. He didn’t think she noticed. “How dare she suggest that my brother or the duke would leave me in the care of a man whom they did not trust! How dare she insult you!” At the curb they waited for the groom to lower the carriage step. Banallt handed his umbrella to the servant. She stomped one foot on the flagstone. “Honestly,” she said. “She was beyond anything.”
He was rather smug about the fact that he’d brought his enclosed carriage out to Hampstead Heath rather than his phaeton, even though the morning had begun with blue skies. A stroke of good fortune, since otherwise he would not have been able to drive Sophie home. His coat of arms was uncovered, and his earl’s coronet gleamed splendidly amid the gilt. When he knew he was driving here, he’d brought along four burly footmen as well. Their livery was most impressive, he thought.
She hardly gave the vehicle a glance. She was irritatingly immune to displays of position or wealth. “It’s beyond anything, I tell you.”
“London. Twenty-six Henrietta Street,” he told the coachman. He took her hand and helped her inside, ducking a little as he generally must when a servant holding an umbrella was shorter than he was, which was most of the time. “Yes,” he said, getting in after her. He sat on the backward-facing seat. The door closed, but the interior lanterns were lit, so it was not gloomy at all. “The problem,” he said, setting his hat on the seat beside him and brushing off drops of rain, “with having reformed one’s life is that so many others have not.”
He sat across from her and thought that had they been alone like this two years ago, he would not have stayed on his seat. He leaned an elbow on the ledge of the window. Raindrops glistened in her hair. Her frock of blue muslin wasn’t the least in fashion. Nor the blue ribbon twined through her hair, nor the lace-edged bow decorating her cap. Pale blue, an insipid color best suited to one’s most ancient aunt, looked fetching on her. A good color for a brunette with eyes that shifted between blue and green. Despite everything, despite the silence, he felt very much at ease with her.
“Have you enjoyed London so far, Sophie?”
Her fingers spread out a pleat in the fabric of her coat. “John has been so busy with Vedaelin. Besides Cavendish Square, today is only the second time we’ve left the house.”
The other time, evidently, having been their visit to Gray Street.
“Hampstead Heath is a pretty village,” she said.
“Then you are bored.”
“Not much. I’ve been very busy with settling us in, and John has a thousand things he needs of me. Tell me about London, Banallt.” She lifted her chin, determined, it seemed, to be polite. “You’ve lived here for years. What is there to see?”
“London is…another world.” He leaned back so that he had a better view of her face. She was one of those women, he’d long ago decided, whose appeal did not lie in repose, but in action, in the change of expression, the quick, intelligent eyes. “Town is noisy, exciting. Thrilling. You may find something of everything in the world. The poor, the rich, young, old, ugly, all that is lovely, sublime, or pathetic. Love and danger and amusements of every sort.” He set a hand on the top of his hat and brushed away raindrops that weren’t there. “Some you would approve of and many you would not.”
“Have you met the king? Or the prince?”
“Yes. As to both. The king does not go about anymore. He is quite mad, they say. I see the regent from time to time but avoid him, as he is all too likely to ask me for a loan.”
Her fingers smoothed the pleat of her coat then creased it again. “Tommy always promised to take me but never did.”
“He would not have known what to do with you here.” Must she constantly link him to that blasted Tommy Evans? “His notion of amusement would not have suited you.”
“No doubt.”
The last thing he wanted to talk about was her husband. “I’ve not thought of London as anything but my home for so long I’ve forgotten some of the very things I most love about the city.”
“Such as?”
“Hyde Park, as far from Rotten Row as it’s possible to be. Kew Gardens. Marylebone. King’s Theatre. If I were not engaged with Vedaelin and his business, I would go to the Royal Academy several times in the month. Vauxhall amuses. Your brother should take you. Ask him. I’m sure you can persuade him. There is the opera. The ballet.” He smiled. “Astley’s to see Il Diavolo Antonio on the slack wire.”
Her eyes turned dreamy. He imagined gazing into her eyes while she came to passion. Inappropriate, yes, but he was a man, after all, and he was not over her no matter how often he told himself that he was. “How thrilling that sounds.”
“Naturally, my experience of Town is different from yours. When you do go out, you will not find the same city as I.”
She frowned at him, but it was a good-natured frown. “London Bridge won’t fall just because I’ve decided to pay a call.” She put her nose in the air and looked aggrieved. “Will the Thames alter course merely because Mrs. Evans gazes upon its waters?”
“London Bridge and the Thames are on the periphery of my life in Town.” He leaned toward her and caught the scent of orange water. “I do not find them entertaining. No doubt you will be at least a little diverted by Bond Street and Ackermann’s, both of which I avoid like the plague. You’d be sipping chocolate and wondering if anyone would invite you to walk Rotten Row while I—I am a man, and I move in different circles.”
Her eyes settled on him. “What is so urgent, Banallt, that Vedaelin and my brother must be called to Whitehall? Is it the war? Has it started?”
“Not yet.”
She sighed. “Forgive my asking. I oughtn’t pry.”
“No fear, Sophie. I shan’t tell you what I am not free to divulge.”
“I didn’t think you would.”
He’d hurt her feelings. “Sophie.”
When they arrived at Henrietta Street they listened to the coachman climb down from the box, boots clomping, breath huffing, neither of them knowing what to say to break their long silence. Sophie turned her head to the street. A moment longer for one of the grooms to see the horses were settled. Their gazes met, and this time, their silence was not so comfortable.
As Banallt waited for the step to rattle down and the door to open, he understood with a quick and inexplicable intuition that the attraction between them was mutual. He’d always known she found him handsome, but an ocean lay between a woman thinking a man was handsome and thinking she’d go to bed with him. The ocean between him and Sophie had just gotten smaller.
“Banallt,” she said.
His heart leaped. “Yes?”
She leaned toward him, hands clasped on her lap. “Is there no hope for my brother and Miss Llewellyn?” How like her to get right to the point. “If ’tis true they love each other, can we not set aside our differences? Or are you determined to marry her yourself?”
“Are they in love?” he asked. The door opened with a roar of rain on the umbrella held by one of his footmen. The poor man was getting drenched, but he had his pistols tucked safely out of the way. Banallt put on his hat and stepped out. He dipped his head to avoid being hit by the umbrella and helped her down. When he felt her hand on his, he steadied himself.
“I’m told John is very much in love with her,” she said.
“I’ve not forbidden her.” He smiled. “I wouldn’t dare. I’m not a fool who doesn’t understand the allure of the forbidden.”
She squeezed his hand. “John must feel he can’t declare himself for her. Not with you and I at loggerheads. Please, let’s not keep them apart.”
“It’s her father who ought to worry you.” He took the umbrella from the footman and headed toward number 26. “My cousin has some absurd notions about whom Fidelia should marry.”
“Has he?”
“You know what they are.”
“And?”
“I’ve not made up my mind.” On that subject, he refused to say more. Fidelia did not interest him, but as he watched Sophie, he thought, why not? If Sophie married Vedaelin or some other more worthy man, and if Fidelia was amenable, there were more reasons than not to marry her, chief among them the consolidation of family holdings. At the door, he bowed, and she disappeared into the house he’d been forbidden to enter.