He bowed and made a perfectly natural and friendly greeting even as Lucy started, guilty and hot, shutting the sewing box as though she’d been caught stealing sweets.
“Has Lucy told you where we’re headed?” Miss Sedgewick asked him. “To her very own nirvana—Somerset House. Some of your friends will make up our party—Mr Warde, Lord Kiethly. And some of my own—Mr Thornton and so forth. I think you know him a little. And Mr Cotton is a member of your club.”
Jack frowned at the mention of Mr Warde. “And is George coming too? Surely he must.”
“He had a prior engagement, unfortunately,” replied Miss Sedgewick smoothly while Lucy did her best to hide another anxious start. Yes, they ought to have thought to invite George! How strange it would look that he was omitted from the party. But in all the plans they’d made yesterday, today’s excursion had been forgotten.
“An engagement is exactly what he has, so I hear,” Jack said with a smile and a glance at Lucy. “I came to offer my congratulations.”
“Isn’t it wonderful!” said Miss Sedgewick. “I hardly thought our sensible George capable of such a whirlwind romance. Butour dear Miss Fanshaw is a rare creature that no man of sense could be immune to.”
If she said this last part with a significant twinkling smile aimed at Jack, he himself seemed immune to that, saying only, “Yes, quite.”
Then he tilted his head with a quizzical glance at Lucy. “But the engagement is a secret outside our little party, is it not? Then as far as the world knows, Lucy is still as unprotected as she was before.”
What a time for Jack to start getting intelligent! It was very inconvenient. But that Jack believe the engagement was real‘for his own good’Miss Sedgewick had insisted, whatever that might mean.
“It is only…only temporarily secret,” Lucy said. “Until our relatives are informed.”
“I hardly think she’s in danger in a large party on a visit to Somerset House,” said Miss Sedgewick.
“Maybe,” said Jack. “But I’m still coming with you.” He flashed Lucy a smile. “I can play cicisbeo. I’ll be George’s proxy, his second. The Lord knows he’s been mine often enough, and in far less appealing circumstances.”
“Let us hope there are no duels to threaten the artworks,” Miss Sedgewick said with a roll of her eyes. How lightly they both took it! While she trembled, hot and cold in turns! She would finally enter the hallowed ground of Somerset House and might be sick all over it.
Jack stepped closer to Lucy while Miss Sedgewick rang the bell to ask William to find a hackney. He squeezed her fingers. “You look horrified! Don’t worry. I’ll not spoil your excursion with mockery of the artwork as I used to do in the galleries back home, horrible little boy that I was. You were quite right about that. But I hope I’ve improved. I’ll be quiet, and good, and even attempt to look intelligent.” He gave her another dazzling smile.“I’ll stand my guard in the background, and you’ll barely know I’m there.”
Eighteen
Jack decided his intrusion into the Somerset House party was entirely justified when Captain Sedgewick arrived almost at the same time as their conveyance and with the clear intention of playing escort to the ladies. That he’d somehow heard of the expedition, and that his sister appeared to be embarking upon it some half hour before the time he’d been expecting, Jack learnt by unashamedly eavesdropping on the exchange of caustic whispers and scowls he was familiar with from his own siblings.
Miss Sedgewick clearly suspected her brother. And it was equally clear she was doing the little in her power to shield Min from him. Jack’s breast swelled with a tolerably powerful feeling. He liked Caroline all the better for the care she took of Min. It gratified him that others now looked out for her the way he’d always done. That they recognised her worth. It gratified him that George had…that George had… He frowned down at the hand in his as he helped Min into the carriage, swiftly taking the seat beside her before Sedgewick could. But really, there was simply no room inside the grubby little hackney for the two mento sit shoulder to shoulder. Jackhadto sit beside Min, and there was no more proper place for Sedge than beside his own sister—a fact Caroline seemed equally aware of from the twinkling smile she gave Jack as she took her own seat, arranging her skirts and smoothing the lap of her pelisse.
“Very cosy,” she murmured, with laughing eyes. “What a perfect party we make. I can’t think why I didn’t include you from the start, my dear Lord Orton.”
“Probably because Jack can’t abide art,” said Sedge, venting his irritation at the seating arrangements with this uncharitable broadside. “Whereas I, Miss Fanshaw, happen to be a great lover of it.” He gazed greasily at her across the footwell. A distinct downside to their seating arrangements. Min had nowhere to hide, and she hated being looked at. Jack set his jaw while she ran the beaded tassel of her reticule through her fingers, eyes intent upon the distraction.
It was a decidedly pretty little bag. Jack hadn’t seen her with it before. The whole outfit was decidedly pretty. A very natural shade of pale pink, like the tint just under the skin of an apple. Or a lady’s lips. Or a lady’s—
No, no. Jack swung his head to stare out of the window. Some thoughts were entirely too inappropriate with a woman pressed up against you, hip to elbow. Especially when that woman was Min.
“If you think us military men too rough to appreciate the finer things in life,” continued Sedgewick, “let me be a lesson to you. I’ve always enjoyed looking at paintings and the like. I’ll have you know I went to a very obscure little exhibition at Soho some years ago, that Blake fellow, and I stayed almost half an hour.”
“Lost, were you?” enquired Jack.
“No!” said Sedgewick with a glare. “Heard he had a painting of Nelson, but I can’t say it looked anything like him. Seemed more like a painting of faeries or something. Probably he nevermet the man. Or maybe it was…ah…what do you call it? Artistic interpretation? Is that the word, Miss Fanshaw?”
“Quite possibly,” she replied in a very small, very polite voice. And probably only Jack, whose arm was pressed up against hers, was aware of the quiver of suppressed laughter that shook her. It was wholly alive, that flutter of mirth, her arm warm and soft against him, even through the thick fabric of her pelisse.
Darting a glance at her, he spotted the telltale curve hidden at the corner of her lips, the roundness of her cheek visible below the sweep of her bonnet, and the dimple threatening to break out between the two. Just the dimple alone would have made him smile, but so did this reminder of the little devil that lived inside her, laughing at the world. He’d once lived for the joy of coaxing it out, a secret shared between them. Yes, she was quiet, and yes, she was sweet, but she could also be scathing and secretly cutting in her own hidden world, and who had ever glimpsed it but him?
He smiled so wide he had to hide it behind his hand and watch the crowded streets pass, especially when he remembered the story she’d told him about the dog she’d gifted her aunt.
The short carriage ride continued in much the same vein, and by the time they reached their destination, Jack was desperate to pull Min to one side and laughingly recount the whole. But though he tucked her hand into his elbow, where it felt very comfortable indeed, and, smiling, bent his head ready to begin the dissection, they were immediately hailed by Warde, Kiethly, and the others of their party. Caroline detached Min from him and took her away into the chattering centre of their circle.
Jack subsided, remembering his reason for being there, and took up a position at the edge—a sort of surveillance position, he thought to himself with a degree of amusement, where he could observe the sallies made on Min’s citadel and be ready to step in whenever the need arose.
It also gave him plenty of time to think, which was a highly unpleasant way of spending an afternoon, especially when there was very little in his mind he wished to dwell on. Thinking was almost as dreary as being dragged from one muddy coloured painting of a complete stranger to the next.
