‘It’s true,’ he sighed, apparently taking her comment as no more than a simple fact, ‘but there is only so much that one can do alone to make a tedious evening memorable. I will require your aid, I think.’ He was immaculate as ever, the cut of his coat and the perfection of his linen making most of the other men present appear shabby or over-dressed. He’d be five and thirty now, and despite the sober splendour of his dress, he looked it; his eyes were shrewd as ever, but perhaps a little tired. It would not be fanciful to say that his countenance held a slightly dissipated appearance. She’d heard rumours of huge gambling debts and vast sums owed to tradesmen, of a fortune wasted and public quarrels with his princely patron. ‘Everyone is wondering why you honour us with your company so unexpectedly, madam, but they will not be rude enough to ask outright. Nor will I.’
He hardly needed to. ‘Might I not just have wished for a change of scene?’ She was striving for tranquillity, and a well-bred ease of manner to match his.
‘Of course you might – the country is so dreary, all those vulgar, noisy farm animals making the place untidy, one shudders to think of it, and you have had years to grow thoroughly weary of a rustic existence – but the question is, why now?’
‘I felt a little restless suddenly,’ she said frankly. It was the truth, though not the whole truth.
Trust him to take her up on that. ‘If your understandable discontent with life should carry you so far as the contemplation of matrimony once again, might I suggest myself as a possible husband? You wouldn’t be a duchess any more, regrettably, but think what you would be.’
Such a suggestion would be outrageous, if he meant a word of it. This was her month for shocking proposals, it seemed. ‘I would be the woman who captured George Brummell at last – what a triumph! It is a deliciously tempting offer, sir. But I don’t think I can afford you, much as I might wish I could. I am no great heiress, you know. I have a jointure sufficient for my own needs, but that is all.’ He was not serious – she need not be either. Timid little mice did not do well in his company. This cat had claws.
‘It’s such a pity,’ he responded, smiling slightly, entirely unabashed. ‘You make a good point, madam, but think what an outstandingly handsome couple we would make, which counts for a great deal. Penniless – or at least we would be, once I’d swiftly run through your modest fortune – but so very stylish and admired. And would it not almost be worth it to picture Lord Marchett’s face when he heard the news? He would instantly be possessed with dark imaginings of how I would surely try to play at ducks and drakes with your sons’ patrimony, compromise his position as guardian, and make his life a misery in his twilight years. You’re far too sensible to marry me, but the old man won’t realise that. If you were lucky, an apoplexy might carry him off at the mere thought, and then I should have done you a great service to outweigh all the rest.’
‘That’s perfectly true,’ she said, laughing aloud at the thought. ‘I wonder I did not think of it years ago. It would be worth a larger sum than I can scrape up to be rid of him forever.’
‘Perhaps we should merely announce our engagement, and see how that serves,’ he said lightly. She barely heard him, suddenly distracted. And then after a tense moment, he added, ‘Or perhaps we should not, after all… I understand better now, Duchess. My apologies.’ He was so quick; he’d seen her face alter midway through his teasing speech, when Lord Ventris was announced. She’d betrayed herself, to Brummell at least – but just in that moment, she didn’t care.
Richard Armstrong had been one or two and twenty when she’d last seen him, and though he’d reached his full, impressive height by then, he had filled out in the intervening years. His shoulders were broader and his frame was more robust. Whatever he’d been doing, it seemed to involve a fair amount of exercise. Riding, maybe, fleeing from pursuit – his thighs were unavoidably muscular in his tight black silk knee-breeches. He hadn’t transformed into a tulip of the ton, or anything like one, nor even a dandy in Mr Brummell’s mode; his clothes were of good enough quality, tailored to his strong frame, but not at all extreme or luxurious either in colour, fabric or fit. He wore no jewellery, not even a fob.
Viola discovered in herself an odd reluctance to look into his face, and overcame it. She met his watchful grey eyes, trying to push away the thought that he must be assessing her too, refusing to wonder what he might make of her. She was older, of course she was. No longer the girl he’d known.
And him? He was an adult of three and thirty now, not caught between boy and man as he had been before. His face had never been soft – it was too strongly boned for that – but it had taken on a certain added harshness in the intervening years. He looked uncompromising, remote, and oddly formidable. She wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing for her purposes. There was a sprinkle of silver in his dark hair now, as there was in hers, and new lines about his eyes and mouth. He’d always looked a little like Edward, in features rather than in expression, and he resembled him more now that he was older. She wished he didn’t.
Time seemed to be suspended for a moment, both of them frozen, but inevitably, it restarted with a jolt. He crossed the room with an athlete’s fluid grace and bent over her hand, brushing it with his lips. She’d thought he might, and was prepared for the fleeting contact, which seemed to burn through her evening gloves to her sensitive skin beneath them. ‘You are lovelier than ever, your grace,’ he said, his voice seeming deeper than it had been years ago. She couldn’t tell if he was mocking her.
‘I am more than a decade older, so I doubt that can be true. You said in your letter that you knew I preferred the word with no bark upon it. There’s no need to play off insinuating airs on me.’
‘I’m not,’ he said easily. ‘I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true. You were beautiful, and you are. I won’t say “still” – that’s an insult in itself. I daresay you will be so when you are eighty.’ If she had been inclined to blush and simper at this compliment, which she decidedly was not, she would have been vexed beyond all measure by his next words. ‘Your mother is everywhere spoken of as a remarkably attractive woman, so I expect you have inherited your looks from her.’
If George Brummell had spoken words of farewell, she hadn’t heard them, but he’d gone from her side without her noticing, though she could not doubt he was watching her still from the crowd, eager for gossip, missing nothing. It must be a delicious sight – the widowed Duchess and the man of scandalous repute. They were observed by many, she did not doubt it, but nobody was standing close and so they could not be overheard. Which was just as well.
‘My mother is a widow too, and even more notoriously fertile than I am, especially if you have no fixed objection to daughters,’ Viola said with a glittering smile. ‘But at fifty, perhaps a little too advanced in years for your purpose, Lord Ventris.’
‘I had considered that,’ he said, firm mouth quirking with inappropriate amusement. ‘It’s a pity, but there we are. I’ll have to make do with you. I assure you, it will be no hardship.’ His voice caressed her, just as if he’d trailed his long fingers very slowly over the exposed skin of her neck and upper breasts, and she could only be grateful that her gown was thick velvet, not thin, clinging silk like Lady Caroline’s. She felt quite naked enough in his presence. Her skin was tingling as though he’d really touched her.
‘In point of fact, I have not said a word to make you so confident that I will marry you.’ This between gritted teeth.
‘But you are here – despite the fact that you so rarely come to London since you were widowed. That must count for something.’
God, had he always been so irritating? ‘I am free to come and go as I please. To socialise with whom I please. I am under no obligation to explain my movements to anybody.’
‘And heaven forbid that I or anyone else should try to interfere with that,’ he said piously. ‘Why did you come, though, Viola, and summon me to your side? You know we can’t talk here… or do anything else that we might wish to do.’
His voice was silky, deep, always teasing. Damn him. If only it were possible to control one’s blushes. ‘I wanted to see you,’ she answered flatly and honestly. Useless to lie to him. ‘Nothing more than that. In a public place.’
‘Well, there we differ; you should know. I’d much rather see you in private. All of you.’
He was smiling, and she wanted to hit him. ‘Don’t,’ she said involuntarily.
His smile grew broader, and his tone was that of tolerant understanding, which was unbearable. ‘Will you write to me again? I can’t help tormenting you a little, but I shouldn’t. I’m sorry. Our situation is confoundedly awkward, and I have made it more so. Write to me, and I will come and call on you at any time or in any place you choose to appoint. We do need to talk in private, you must admit. You can always send me away… after.’
She didn’t like the significant little pause and the sly way he saidafter– after what? But she nodded wordlessly, and he bowed over her hand and moved away from her. She did not watch him go, or seek to see with whom he spoke next. It was to be hoped that their little tête-à-tête had appeared to be nothing more than a conversation between cousins by marriage who had not met for a while, brief and now over, nothing to see. Brummell knew better, of course. He might gossip about it to half of London, or he might keep silent. He was famously quixotic, and she barely knew him; it was impossible to tell.
And here the Beau was, back at her side again, like a very stylish gadfly. He said evenly, ‘Your face is calm – well done, Duchess, keep smiling just as you are – but a pulse is beating wildly in your throat. You’re wondering if you should appeal to me to keep silent about whatever it was I just witnessed, or if speaking of the matter openly will show how much you care, and encourage a worthless fellow such as myself to gossip all the harder. And now you are wondering if I say all that merely to tempt you into further indiscretion. Do I have it right?’
Exactly right, but she need not tell him so. She had the headache suddenly, and wished she’d never come. ‘I have not heard that you were ever unkind to a woman without cause,’ she managed. ‘I do not know how many other men in this room that could be said of, if truth be known. Isn’t that shocking?’
‘Including our host, of course, and your recent companion, as you so elegantly imply? His reputation is such that cruelty in a drawing room is the very least of it, to be sure. But you have done me no harm, you mean, and there is no reason I should do you any.’
