“A fortunate man.”
She frowned at him, and no wonder. He was doing his best to behave as normal, but her warm closeness made it a strain. A glance at the other woman showed dark eyes steadily on him, alert for a threat. Perhaps she’d protect him from himself.
“I assume the house isn’t in a fashionable area,” Lady Ariana said, “Mr. Peake having been a merchant.”
“Not particularly fashionable now, though it was more so a century ago.” He escaped into detail. “Fashionable London is a shifting sand, always drifting, and always westward.”
“Because the only space is to the west. London has always grown along the river, and the east already has the City, the docks, and many activities to do with shipping.”
“You study such matters, Lady Ariana?”
“It’s common knowledge, my lord.”
It was. He was in danger of appearing an idiot. “And now we no longer depend upon the river for transportation, we are breaking free to the north. Hence the Regent’s plan for his grand road and park, ripping through anything in his way.”
When he’d returned to England, to London, he’d been affronted by the drastic plans, but he’d have welcomed them if they’d flattened Burlington Street.
Silence settled again and he embraced it, but then she spoke. “Where is your town house, my lord?”
“I don’t have one,” he said, and looked outside. That should put an end to that.
•••
Ariana met Ethel’s interested eyes. Yesterday Kynaston had said he had no nearby home and now he’d confirmed it. That was hardly believable of an earl. Unless...
Was he all rolled up, as the saying went? Had his rakish ways ruined not only his body and mind, but his fortune? In that case, Lady Cawle could be trying to capture Ariana’s very large dowry for her wastrel, bankrupt nephew. He’d been on the list, and perhaps she’d summoned him from wherever he’d been to make the most of his chances. Had he arrived drunk out of resentment?
Forewarned is forearmed, as Ethel would doubtless have said. Ariana resolved to avoid all future attempts to throw them together.
The carriage stopped on a street of terraced brick houses. Kynaston climbed down and paid the driver, then handed down Ariana. He escorted her to the glossy black door. She’d expected somewhere eccentric, but Mr. Peake’s house was one of a conventional brick terrace probably built a century or more ago. As Kynaston had said, this had once been a fashionable area.
The door knocker was more promising, being a gargoyle with long tongue protruding. Kynaston used the tongue as it was intended, to rap the knocker, and the door was opened almost instantly.
Instead of a footman or maid, however, the door opener was a fashionably dressed lady of middle years wearing black and a dashing dark blue velvet turbanornamented with a black plume. She smiled and said, “Welcome,” but then walked off into a nearby room, where a number of people seemed to be engaged in lively conversation.
Surprise fixed Ariana in place until Kynaston pushed her forward with a hand on her back. Even through gown and pelisse she felt the shock of his touch, and she hurried forward, hearing Ethel close the door behind them. There were no servants in the narrow hall to assist them.
A brown-haired gentleman, probably in his forties, was coming downstairs and he smiled at their confusion. “At a meeting of the Curious Creatures, Peake has the servants stay out of the way, so whoever is closest to the door attends to it. Your outer clothing can be left in that reception room over there.”
He continued on toward the back of the house.
“Curious Creatures indeed,” Ariana said, unsure about removing anything. The modest hall was comfortably warmed by a fire, but did she want to stay in this madhouse? She turned to Kynaston, but he was looking around blankly, and no wonder. They were surrounded by a jumble of the conventional and the extraordinary.
An elaborately woven cane chair sat next to a stern seventeenth-century oak one. A deeply carved chest of rosewood set with mother-of-pearl and semiprecious stones was flanked by a conventional longcase clock and a tall pot holding spears. More weapons hung on the walls and up the staircase, many of them richly ornamented and of a style never used in Britain. They were interspaced with grotesque masks, one of which seemed to be covered by small squares of gold.
Many of these items must be precious, but there was a distinct smell of rot.
Kynaston twitched as if coming out of a reverie. “I’m inclined to leave.”
That firmed Ariana’s spine. “I wish to stay.”
“You, too, are a curious creature?”
“It would seem so.”
He didn’t like that, but he said, “Then onward to the improvised cloakroom.”
They went into the room, but it clearly was not improvised. The walls were lined with hooks, and there were a number of stands to take more cloaks, pelisses, greatcoats, hats, and anything else a guest might wish to shed.
