“I cannot blame you,” Colin said, wondering if his own note had gone astray. “I will not keep you, ma’am. If I may, I will return tomorrow with your other guests.”
“Oh, but the invitation to drive includes you,” she said. “It will be a great pleasure to drive in the park with you and Lady Hodges.”
Colin felt a slight buzzing in his head. “With my mother?” he asked. But he held out no real hope that he had misheard. This was exactly the way his mother manipulated the people around her, and clearly she had decided that it was time he returned to the fold with a bride who would become an ornament to her world of youth and beauty.
“She will be here in…five minutes,” Lady Dunmore said, glancing at the clock on the mantel. “Perhaps you will escort us back downstairs, Lord Hodges, so that we may don our bonnets and gloves and be ready to step outside the moment the barouche arrives.”
He really had no choice, Colin thought. And he wondered if there had ever been a planned tea with family and friends or if Lady Dunmore had been given her orders—disguised as sweet suggestions—by his mother. What he ought to do, of course, was step out of the house and stride off down the street before she appeared. He ought to establish right now that he was not to be manipulated, that he would take possession of the world of his birthright in his own time and on his own terms.
But this was not between just him and his mother, as she would very well know. There were two other ladies involved, most notably a sweet and innocent young girl.
He offered Lady Dunmore his arm and smiled at her daughter as they left the room and descended the stairs he had mounted in all innocence just a few minutes before.
His mother was dressed as usual in white, with a magnificent lace veil decorating the brim of her hat and covering her face. She was seated in a white and gold barouche drawn by the white horses that were also used for her closed carriage. She looked youthful and fragile and ethereally lovely. The four black-clad outriders were gathered a discreet distance behind the conveyance. It was really a quite extraordinary scene, and hideously embarrassing, Colin thought as he stepped outside with the ladies, who were gazing at the tableau with identical looks of awe.
“Mother,” he said, nodding in her direction.
“Dearest.” She moved over on the seat and patted it. “Lady Dunmore, do join me here, and the young people may share the other seat. Is it not a beautiful day?”
Colin handed the ladies in first and then climbed in himself after only a moment’s hesitation, during which he entertained the thought once again of shutting the door and walking away. But he could not so humiliate Miss Dunmore, who was gazing at him with wide eyes and flushed cheeks.
And so he endured an hour’s ride in Hyde Park, being viewed by the whole of the fashionable world and much of the unfashionable one too while his mother wafted one white-gloved hand rather like a queen condescending to acknowledge her subjects. She talked too, praising Miss Dunmore’s beauty, telling her how much she would love Roxingley, urging Lady Dunmore to come and take tea with her one afternoon, congratulating Colin on his good looks and sense of style and on his kindness in dancing with theaging Lady Overfieldat her betrothal ball.
“It is shameful that Sir Geoffrey Codaire was jealous of you,” she said. “It was a shame for her since he cast her off and it is unlikely at her age that she will find anyone else. But I do understand thatyouwere not flirting withher, dearest. Not that I needed to be told any such thing. The very idea is laughable in its absurdity.”
Colin noticed the emphasis upon certain words, implying that Elizabeth had been flirting with him.
“Lord Hodges was indeednotflirting, ma’am,” Lady Dunmore assured her. “It would have been preposterous. I saw the whole thing with my own eyes, and it was entirely the other way around. I heard last evening that Lady Overfield has a history of flirting once she believes she had secured a man, either through marriage or betrothal. It was just unfortunate for her that Sir Geoffrey was unwilling to put up with her tricks but confronted her with them. However, I do not wish to spread any gossip. I took no notice of it, you may be sure, once I understood that no untrue rumors were being spread about Lord Hodges, who behaved with perfect decorum.”
Good God. Oh good God.
I heard last evening…He had been perfectly well aware that there was gossip over that wretched ball, and he had fully expected exaggeration and distortion of the truth. But was all the blame being put upon Elizabeth while both Codaire and he was being exonerated?
And…Lady Overfield has a history of flirting.Who the devil was digging into her past and coming up with such a preposterous charge?Codaire?
“It ought to be mentioned,” he said, “that it was Lady Overfield who broke off the engagement with Sir Geoffrey Codaire. And that at no time during my acquaintance with her has sheflirtedwith me. Or with anyone else to my knowledge. I hold her in the deepest esteem.”
“That is very much to your credit, Lord Hodges,” Lady Dunmore assured him. “For the lady’s brother is married to your sister, and loyalty to one’s family and their connections is always admirable.”
He could argue, proclaim, justify, lose his temper, correct misconceptions and outright untruths, but what would be the point? Rumor and gossip, once they got started, were like a raging wildfire, and whoever had started this one clearly understood that. He ought to have slapped a glove in Codaire’s face after all yesterday morning, Colin thought. He might have to seek him out again if this sort of thing persisted.
He was scarcely aware of the sensation they were causing, especially after they had approached the circuit where the daily parade of carriages and riders and pedestrians congregated each afternoon of the Season. Here was Lord Hodges in an open conveyance, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Miss Dunmore while both their mothers sat opposite them, nodding graciously at all around them, conversing with the greatest amiability with each other, and smiling benevolently upon the dazzlingly beautiful tableau their offspring presented to the world.
He only knew as he set about making himself agreeable to Miss Dunmore that he was seething with an impotent fury and feeling as helpless as he had at the age of eighteen when his mother had planned one of her grand house parties the very day after his father’s funeral. He could feel himself being sucked into his mother’s web—if that was not a hopelessly mixed metaphor.
When the barouche finally returned to the Dunmore home, Colin descended from the carriage to help the two ladies alight, but he declined Lady Dunmore’s invitation to accompany them inside.
“No, ma’am, thank you,” he said. “I will escort my mother home.”
“As a good son ought,” she said, beaming approval upon him.
“How kind of you, dearest,” his mother murmured.
He sat beside her for the journey to Curzon Street and exchanged the smallest of small talk with her even when she tried to draw him out upon the subject of Miss Dunmore’s charms. He was not about to engage in any sort of conversation with her when there were all of five sets of ears—the coachman’s and those of the four outriders—within hearing distance.
He handed his mother down from the carriage outside the door of his house and entered it for the first time in many years. He waited in the hall while she lifted back the veil from her face, removed her hat with slow care, and turned to take his arm while they climbed the stairs to the drawing room. Without the veil, her face revealed itself as a skillful work of cosmetic art. Together with the carefully curled blond wig, it somehow set her at one remove from reality, more like a life-size doll than a live woman.
They stepped into the drawing room, and Blanche rose from a chair and came toward them while Sir Nelson Elwood, her husband, set down his book and got more slowly to his feet.
