A Rogue of One's Own

It was the moment when something possessed Hattie to say: “Lady Lucie has a cat.”

“Oh?” Lady Hampshire said. And nothing more. Her beady eyes, however, were sweeping over Lucie from head to toe, as though she had only just noticed her.

Her mother leaned toward her, ever so slightly. “What breed?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” Lucie said slowly, a little alarmed at having her mother leaning in on her. “She’s black. She’s a foundling.”

“Faith,” Professor Marlow said. “A barn cat—in the house?”

“A misplaced cat, rather,” Lucie said. “Her attitude is far too entitled for a cat of humble beginnings.”

The professor frowned, but her mother nodded, as though she found it a perfectly valid argument, and so Cecily began nodding along, too.

“Her name is Boudicca,” Lucie said, feeling Lady Salisbury’s prodding stare.

“After a belligerent pagan queen,” Professor Marlow said. “How droll.”

Lady Hampshire was still quietly assessing her.

“You are very trim, Lady Lucinda,” she now said, scrutinizing Lucie’s narrow waist. “Have you employed a tapeworm, by any chance?”

Her mind blanked. Was this a trick question? An insult? A jest?

“Excessive slimness in a female is usually a sign of a highly nervous disposition,” Professor Marlow remarked. “I recommend long, regular lie-downs.”

She was of a mind to do the man bodily harm with Lady Salisbury’s cane, but both Hattie and Catriona suddenly remembered they were urgently required at the croquet game, and whether they could be excused, and their arms looped through Lucie’s, left and right, and steered her away.

“Now,” Hattie said brightly as they headed toward the copse, “this went well.”

“Well?” Lucie said. “They loathed me. Tapeworms?”

“She was just trying to make conversation, Lucie.”

“She insinuated I have a parasite.”

“Some ladies ingest them to stay slender,” Hattie said earnestly. “A lot of ladies bond over dieting advice.”

“And yet I cannot see her asking my mother such a question.”

“No. She’d rather discuss hysterical wombs with her in front of a crowd,” Hattie said.

An unexpected giggle bubbled up in her throat. “Oh, Mother was not impressed.”

She glanced back over her shoulder. Her mother was still making conversation with Lady Salisbury. But she caught Lucie from the corner of her eye. Lucie held her gaze. So did the countess. The subtle connection lingered until Cecily leaned in close and drew Lady Wycliffe’s attention to herself.

“I think it was a success,” Catriona said. “You were seen having a conversation with influential people and, most importantly, your mother . . .”

“Look,” Hattie said. “Lord Peregrin is playing—he will let us join.”

Montgomery’s younger brother had already spotted their trio. He delayed his swing with the croquet mallet and raised a hand to where his hat would have been in a more formal setting. He was casual today in one of Oxford’s colorfully striped boater jackets, and his blond hair, lightened by the sun, was ruffled by the breeze.

Catriona suddenly became heavy on Lucie’s arm. A nervous flush had spread over her cheeks. “Perhaps I’d rather go and have some punch,” she muttered.

“You can’t,” Hattie muttered back. “He has already seen you.”

“My ladies, Miss Greenfield,” Lord Peregrin hollered, and as if to leave no doubt that he had seen them indeed, he gave a wave with the mallet, missing Lord Palmer’s curly head by a margin.

“Drat,” Catriona whispered.

It was a little bewildering, seeing her normally unflappable friend so flustered, but Lucie recalled that a few months ago, Catriona had taken Peregrin’s side during a tiff with the mighty Montgomery himself. She slowed, baffled. “Do you . . . like him?”

“Shhh,” hissed Catriona.

“He can’t hear us yet,” Hattie murmured; evidently, she was well-informed on the matter.

“It does not matter, anyway,” Catriona said, sounding glum. “He called me a good chap.”

Hattie came to an abrupt halt, her mouth an O of outrage. “He has done what?”

Catriona adjusted her glasses. “After the episode in the wine cellar, when he thanked me, he said I was a really good chap. Clearly, he does not class me as a female of the species.”

“The cad!”

Catriona sighed. “He’s hardly the first to do so. Onward.”

Pay him no mind, Lucie wanted to say. At nineteen, Lord Peregrin was wet behind the ears compared to Catriona’s three-and-twenty, and in any case, he was underservant of her brilliance. However, there was apparently, sadly, no logic to emotions pertaining to men. As they had approached the group of gentlemen, she had caught herself looking for a tall libertine with copper hair among them, despite his crimes being far more insulting than calling her chap.

She took Catriona’s hand and nodded at the players. “Will we have to feign ineptitude and miss all the goals?”

“Of course,” Hattie said cheerfully. “At least if you wish for one of these gentlemen to ask you to dance tonight. A waltz, wasn’t it? I recommend Lord Palmer, he has light feet and a secure grip.”

“I despise having to hit a croquet ball at just the wrong angle.”

Catriona clasped her hand more tightly. “I shall win it for us,” she said softly. “I never dance.”

* * *

Tristan couldn’t recall a ball duller than this, and it had not even begun. Cecily hung on his arm, smelling and looking like a rose in a pink gown with rows of tassles and pleats. He was shadowed by Lucie’s taciturn mother and Tommy Tedbury, who held a grudge against him, and the constant presence of the trio felt more constricting than the knot of his bow tie, which was choking him unpleasantly ever since he had picked up Cecily and the countess from their suite.

As they crossed the Great Hall, a few chaps of the old Eton posse loitered in his path, tumblers in hand. Weston, Calthorpe, Addington, and MacGregor, from what he could tell at a glance, and they promptly cried his name with brandy-inspired enthusiasm.

He turned. “Tommy. May I entrust you with Ceci for the remainder of the way?”

He was already planting her gloved hand on his former playmate’s arm.

Thomas Tedbury gave him a sullen stare. “It’s hardly seemly to pass a lady off like a parcel, Ballentine.”

“I’d never consider her less than precious cargo,” Tristan said, and sauntered off toward the cluster of Etonians.

Their demeanor had hardly evolved since boarding school days; it was the same banter, the guffaws, the shoulder-slapping. The changes were on the surface; hairlines were receding, floridness advancing. Still the better company right now, all things considered.

“I would rib you about your pretty poetry,” Addington said, tipping his glass toward him, “but I’m not hankering after a knife in my back when I least expect it.” His grin didn’t touch his eyes. Addington had earned a proverbial knife or two in his back at Eton, because a younger boy’s only option to defend his place in a boarding school hierarchy was to become creative. And what Tristan had lacked in discipline, he had always more than adequately compensated with creativity.

He signaled for the footman carrying a tray with refreshments and chose a brandy for himself. “How’s estate business, Weston?”

Weston’s country exploits were known to bore Addington, and he reliably launched into a lengthy oration about his bovines. Until his voice faltered. His eyes widened, and he whistled softly through his teeth. He must have spotted a woman.

“I’ll be damned. That’s the Tedbury Termagant.”

It took some effort to not just turn around but to do so with a measure of visible disinterest.

He caught her descending the last few steps of the main stairs.

And the Great Hall fell away. For a beat, there was only the dainty woman in red. Not red; crimson. Like his favorite coat. Like the ruby on his ring. Like the color of blood on its way to the heart.

His mouth went dry despite the brandy.

With her light hair, she was fire and ice. An evil genius had attached a gauzy, crimson cape to the back of her sleeves, the fabric so fine it gently lifted up around Lucie at every step, giving the impression that she was floating down the stairs on a breeze like a creature with wings.

  She was a phantom of delight,

When first she gleam’d upon my sight

A dancing shape, an image gay,

To haunt, to startle, and waylay . . .

The voice was all but blaring inside his head. It was Wordsworth.

He raised the tumbler to his lips, gulping down the contents. Wordsworth meant he had it bad. His stomach churned with an emotion he found difficult to endure while standing still.

“I say. She scrubs up nicely.” Weston sounded impressed.

“Don’t be fooled. She would still freeze your bollocks off,” Calthorpe said.

“Withering them, with a glance,” MacGregor added, sounding worried.