Chapter 5
Anthony could not fathom a more hostile environment: a huge, hot press of overdressed giddy people with nothing to do but drink and talk to one another at the top of their lungs with their singular blend of nonsense and idiocy. So full of noise, that the wall of sound blasted enough to make his ears bleed. To lay on a bed of nails for the evening had more appeal.
“I suppose the whirl of silks and satins, the orchestra and so on, must be exciting for you, Miss Thorne.” He wrinkled his nose. Women’s stale perfume and oceans of flowers exuded a cloying sweetness that testified to the fanciful tendencies and ostentatious taste of their host.
She fanned her face with her hand. “I feel like Cleopatra, out to conquer the world.”
His gaze dropped to her lips. “There are other things in the world besides a ridiculous ball. I have long embraced the estimation that the quantity of noise that anyone can tolerate undisturbed survives in inverse proportion to his mental capacity, and consequently viewed as a reasonable good measure of it.”
Up close, Miss Thorne was exceptionally beautiful. Best of all was her mouth and her eyes. Together they created a sort of wry, amused liveliness, as if whatever occurred to her, she would remain calm, composed and unruffled through it all, and then she would find some value in it to make her smile.
“You must admit that the ball is thrilling.”
He leaned into her, dipped a formal bow. “I get the same thrill a chimney sweep does, shimmying down the chimney into a hotbed of ashes.”
She angled her head up. Her lush mouth mocked him. “We must not squander away life in a small corner of the world. To be nourished with new actions, new aspirations, and new events will lend us new visions.”
“More like revelations akin to a rapid current of guests flowing like negative charges into a single room.” He spoke to the air as she whirled away with yet another partner.
Lord Humphrey and his father, the Duke of Banfield, moved beside him. Long time neighbors and good friends of the Rutland’s, it had always been assumed that Lord Humphrey and his sister, Abby would have married.
“You look bored, Lord Anthony,” said Lord Humphrey.
“This is my excited face. You haven’t seen bored.”
“Miss Thorne presents a picture, don’t you think, Lord Anthony?” The Duke of Banfield, pressed on his cane for support. “She hasn’t missed one dance.”
“Our Miss Thorne is definitely enjoying herself with all her suitors,” added Humphrey.
Anthony rolled his shoulders, his frockcoat suddenly tight. Like dogs after the butcher’s cart.
“I see she is leaving the punch table and being guided out of the ballroom with that rake, Sir Bonneville,” said the Duke of Banfield. “Don’t you think someone should do something about it?”
Already on the move and cursing under his breath, Anthony stalked after the dandified profligate. He cursed under his breath. Miss Thorne was a naïve Colonial unaccustomed to the nuances of a degenerate like Bonneville. Or was she? He really had no idea of her character. Was she as innocent as he thought? They had vanished. Anthony parted servants in their finest livery and laden with heavy silver trays of wine glasses and appetizers. He searched down one hall, and then another. No doubt, Bonneville dragged her off to the farthest reaches of the house. Standing where one hall met another, he heard Bonneville’s wheedling voice.
“Miss Thorne, aren’t you the prettiest Colonial I’ve ever seen.”
Anthony’s head snapped around, just in time to see Bonneville lead her into the library…away from prying eyes.
Anthony’s blood rushed through his veins, pounding against his eardrums like thunder as he loomed in the shadows, his quarry unaware of his existence. Miss Thorne was family. Abby would never forgive him if anything happened to Rachel.
“I’m probably the only Colonial you’ve ever seen.” Her laughter tinkled.
Anthony balled his hands into fists when Bonneville took her cup, gliding his fingers over hers…overlong.
Sir Bonneville shifted toward her, his white complexion stretched tightly over bone, like a corpse bleached in the sun.
“Did I tell you that you have the most beautiful blue eyes?”
Rachel kept stepping back until, finally her shoulders hit the bookcase. “Three times. Once when we were dancing, at the punch table, and now.”
“I cannot help it. Your eyes explore my soul and beg my spirit to enter you.”
If that wasn’t a carnal invite. Bonneville was lint on Anthony’s cuff, easy to flick off compared to the farm boys that had honed their skills on him.
“You said there was an original published text in this library by Sir Isaac Newton.”
So that was how she was lured by Bonneville. Her voice raised a pitch, her words dagger sharp. Anthony ground his teeth. No one insulted family.
“May I taste your rosebud lips?” prompted Sir Bonneville.
Anthony clenched his fists harder, waiting for her to rebuff the asinine dandy. How good it would feel to release some energy.
“Rosebud lips?” she scoffed. “I have to go.” She took a step to move around Bonneville.
Teetering with both cups dangling in his hands, Bonneville sidestepped, blocking her exit. He lowered his head, his sight pinned to her bosom.
Blood shot to Anthony’s brain.
He stepped from the shadows and came up next to them. “Is there a problem, Miss Thorne?”
Bonneville twisted his head around and caught Anthony glowering at him that roared, Steer clear as obviously as words.
“Lord Anthony, they let you out of your cage? I had the little Colonial first. Move on.”
“Miss Thorne is not a piece of property to be claimed.”
Jacked-up on sour gin, Bonneville was inspiring. Victory was won by miles but in Bonneville’s case it would be inches, as in, how many inches could Anthony slam his fist through Bonneville’s face?
“It would be a very rash presumption to think that nowhere else in the cosmos has nature repeated such a strange experiment as your birth, Bonneville.”
“You think I’m afraid of you.”
“You should be.”
“Why? Are you going to zap me with your electrical fire?”
“The idea has merit.”
Rachel put her hand on Anthony’s arm like a schoolmarm warning a recalcitrant boy. “An incident would be disastrous.” She referred to the toll on her reputation. Then there would be the consequences of his father learning of his son’s brawling at a ball.
“You’re right, Miss Thorne.” Anthony offered his arm and turned her toward the exit. She trembled. Fire hardened his muscles and licked through his veins. How he hated Bonneville for putting Rachel in a compromising situation.
Bonneville dared to put a hand on Anthony’s shoulder.
Anthony kicked his leg back, at just the right angle, his heel smashed into Bonneville’s kneecap with the same thrust he’d use to kick down a stall door. He felt the crack through his boot. Rachel turned and Anthony followed her line of sight, shrugging with innocence. Bonneville was down. In misery. Punch stained his orange en chenille frock coat, breeches, and splattered his cadaverous face. An improvement.
Rachel blinked. “Did you do that on purpose?”
“Do what?”
“Trip him.”
“He fell, merely a gravitational force. The punch adds color to his complexion don’t you think?”
Her smile made his spirits soar.
“I’m glad you did. I was thinking more of Newton’s impulse of force, if extracted and found to be equal to the change in momentum of an object provided the mass is constant. Do we concur that Sir Bonneville’s mass is constant?”
Smart girl. They rejoined the Duke of Banfield and Humphrey. A flurry of servants fled down the hall in the direction of the library. The wailing Sir Bonneville had been discovered. No need for any questions. Anthony would deny they were in the library and the Banfield’s would back him up−an unwritten code between neighbors who lived side by side for four centuries.
Humphrey grimaced. “Gossip at the ball claims Lord Ward is not going to quit.”
As if on cue, Lord Ward and his wife appeared. “Humphrey’s right, I’m not quitting.”
Anthony scoffed. “Not quitting? You never started. No doubt you’ll dazzle us with parlor tricks, hanging orphans from the ceiling and charging them with electricity or shocking dead cats to jump.”
Lady Ward worked her fan with the passion of a blacksmith on his bellows. A woman in her thirties, she was beautiful in a hard and glittering manner, except for her ridiculous pouf hairstyle. Indeed, an architectural feat, erected with scaffolding of wire and gauze and covered with fake hair set with flour and lard, and then topped with ostrich feathers. Built so high that Anthony considered how it might interrupt bird migration patterns. He was glad Rachel did not adopt the high powdered fashion and kept the rich glow of her chestnut hair.
“Miss Thorne, I understand you are a Colonial?” Lady Ward’s purr was a subtle intimation, connecting Rachel to what was considered the rude and democratic tide that had swept over the Colonies.
“From Boston,” Lord Banfield answered for Rachel. “I take your pettiness as a personal affront.”
Undeterred, Lady Ward smacked her lips. “Any relation to Captain Thorne?”
“A very distant relation.” Anthony cut in, blunt to the point of insult. He would nip Lady Ward’s wagging tongue before it had occasion to start.
“But a patriot, everyone must assume.” Lady Ward dipped a patronizing smile with the same predatory relish that a vulture shredded carrion with its beak.
Rachel needed his protection, vulnerable to the subtleties of Lady Ward whose personal mission was to vulgarly flaunt her rank and socially destroy those she considered inferiors.
“Must be terrible without civilization, all savages and wigwams.” Lady Ward’s ostrich feathers fanned a breeze over Anthony’s heated face.
Rachel cranked her neck to peer at the towering mass of Lady Ward’s hair that dwarfed her husband by two feet. “We ill-bred Colonials have a saying that a donkey looks into the mirror and wonders at the charm of her own reflection.”
Lady Ward inhaled, her ostrich feathers trembling.
Anthony smirked. The Yank could take care of herself.
The Duke of Banfield stomped his cane unable to contain his chortle. Lady Ward glared at him then pivoted her attention to Anthony. “How are your experiments?”
Rachel’s lips took on a mutinous tilt. “Lord Anthony is soon to unveil something so spectacular it will set the world on end.”
Lord Ward took a pinch of snuff. “You are young, Miss Thorne. How tragic.”
“Are you sure a flower pot did not fall on your head?” Anthony scowled. The falling urn incident at the Chelmsford lay fresh in his mind.
Lord Ward narrowed his eyes. “So glad the pot missed you, Lord Anthony. Of this I am most sincere.”
Anthony took a step toward Lord Ward. “I have learned a little sincerity is a dangerous thing. A great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”
“Ah. Well. We must not monopolize your time.” They bowed and drew back. “Magnificent ball.”
Lord Banfield laid a detaining hand on Anthony’s shoulder. “Cowards make the best bullies. They understand fear and know how to use it. Don’t waste your time.”
Anthony saw the worry that darkened Rachel’s expression. His hands remained fisted.
“Both were so smug, but do you think Lord Ward might have been the one who tried to kill us with the flowerpot? Do you think he killed your lab assistant?” she asked.
“I have the same concerns. Lord Ward has the money, the influence, and the motive. He is a strong opponent to my father’s policy in the House of Lords to end the costly war in the Colonies.”
Rachel sighed. “I’ve made a mess of things tonight. I fell for Sir Bonneville’s ruse to lure me to the library, and then I was far too outspoken with Lady Ward.”
With an I-told-you-so look about the loathsomeness of balls, Anthony parroted her earlier remark. “To be nourished with new actions, new aspirations, new events will lend us new visions, won’t it, Miss Thorne?” His broadside earned a pained expression from her.
Humphrey snorted. “Don’t mind Lady Ward. She has nothing to offer the world except a headache, existing to parade her own equation between status and human worth.”
“If anything, the evening is entertaining. Say whatever you like, Miss Thorne, I’ll back you up completely,” said the Duke of Banfield.
Rachel laid a hand on her heart. “I had no idea that there could be a creature as condescending as Lady Ward.”
Difficult to tamp down the devil in him, Anthony said, “Lady Ward is not at fault.”
Rachel groaned. “Which makes my comment all the worse.”
Anthony observed the pasted tower of Lady Ward’s hair bobbing and weaving through the crowd, a cat whiskers-width away from a candelabra. How many minutes for the confection to blaze from the start of ignition to her scalp? “As a cure-all, Lord Ward shocked her. A curiosity she’s not a smoking crater on the carpet.”
Rachel smiled and her happiness caused an unfamiliar lightness in him. Risky. Dangerous to fall under Rachel’s spell. He began to move away, but she tugged his arm and raised her feathered brow in an aren’t-you-going-to-ask-me-to-dance question.
“I don’t know how to dance.”
“I doubt that. Sir Jameson was ready to ask me again, and he can sneeze with enough force to put the planets out of alignment.”
“He asked you to dance. Twice.”
“Does that bother you?”
He pulled her onto the dance floor. “How diverting, the odds of being struck by lightning opposed to the odds of being killed by lightning.”
Rachel pealed with hilarity, her laughter was like the first ray of light of God’s creation. “For someone who cannot dance, you surprise me, Lord Anthony, with your fluidity.”
“You do not think a duke’s son would have refinements?”
She lifted her eyelashes. “Admit it, you are having fun, and if you wish to have more enjoyment, I can explain the science of what people are now thinking.”
“Go ahead and divine your prophetic wanderings of the human mind. There’s Lady Ward, tell me what she is thinking.”
“That’s easy. She is ready to roast me on spit.”
“Wrong. She doesn’t think. There is nothing there to think with.”
Rachel giggled. “Her hair, to think it would make a perfect target for an archer’s arrow.”
“Don’t tell me archery is another of your talents?”
“Living with savages and wigwams, one must be prepared. My brother, Ethan, taught me.” She gave Anthony a shy smile, and then angled her head to the sidelines.
“Look at that man in the orange frockcoat. He’s staring off in the distance, dreaming of a long lost lover.”
“He’s dreaming how he can escape his nagging wife and go fishing.”
“That is unfair. You have a history of people that I don’t have.”
Her radiant smile made the millwheel spin. The evening had not been a waste of time and Anthony pondered that notion, for everything he did in life was arranged to eradicate randomness and remove chance. Control was his expertise—anticipating every possibility, foreseeing every response, and molding reality toward the desired outcome. With Miss Thorne, his world was turned upside down and dropped on its head.
Friends? Brother, she had called him. For the first time in his life he was unable to handle that disconnect. Platonic? How tragic. Plato would have an opinion. How about friends delving into a base and carnal nature?
“I suppose you can tell me what I’m thinking.” He hoped not.
“Absolutely.”
“Amazing because I don’t even know my mind.”
“You are thinking about getting back to your laboratory. Look over my shoulder, the man conversing with Lord Banfield…the man with the glass eye. He sends shivers down my spine. He is malevolent. He has a secret. There is anger.”
Anthony snorted. “That is my Uncle Cornelius, Duke of Westbrook. He’s been looking like that ever since your cousin, Captain Thorne captured his ships. Almost bankrupted him.”
Anthony escorted her off the dance floor and Rachel unconsciously leaned into him. He liked her bending into him. “Don’t worry, he’s harmless.”
“You are the student tonight,” she reminded him. “Now tell me what I’m thinking.”
He looked her up and down. Beneath soft brows were eyes a mystifying violet and he imagined, when her moods changed, were endless shades of lavender and blue lilac. “I haven’t a clue.”
Rachel waved her hand over the broodmare competition. “All this and I’ll never marry.”
“Why not?”
Her fingers twisted in his, and he barely caught her muttered words before someone took her for another dance.
“Because I’m not desirable.”