“It was either that or boxing at Jackson’s Saloon.”
“For shame, that being compelled to escort me has deprived you of this restorative violence,” she remarked with nonchalance.
“’Tis a burden I shall bear.”
“Just pray remember that I did not summon you. Lady Upton did.”
“Has she likewise rearranged your diary?”
“I have come to anticipate her commands.” She laughed softly and looked away again, but not before he saw the expression in her eyes change—lightening, warming, losing for a moment the watchfulness that had become so much a part of her lately. He liked her thus—more than he ought.
The Park, when they reached it, presented exactly the scene he had expected and precisely the one he would have avoided if left to his own devices. Carriages moved in elegant procession. Riders drew rein where they might best be noticed. Ladies inclined their heads to one another with measured civility while privately conducting appraisals of gowns, equipage, daughters, and prospects. Young men loitered in little knots, pretending to have arrived for air and exercise when in truth they had come to be seen.
Arch tossed the reins to the tiger, jumped to the ground and handed Francesca down from the stylish vehicle. At once, he understood that Lady Upton had engineered the afternoon with infernal skill. Before they had advanced ten paces, three ladies of his mother’s acquaintance claimed her on one side and two gentlemen on the other. Lady Upton was visible just beyond, perfectly placed beneath a line of bare-branched trees. His mother greeted them with a look that inspected first his coat and then Miss Vale’s gown and found both satisfactory.
“You troubled yourself to dress properly, I see,” she murmured as he kissed her cheek.
“I shall cherish the praise.”
“Miss Vale,” Lady Upton continued, taking Francesca’s hand, “you look exactly as you ought. Fresh, composed, and not at all as though you had spent the morning resisting excellent advice.”
Francesca’s expression did not alter. “I did not resist so much as ask for justification,” she clarified to Arch.
His mother smiled the smile of a woman who had heard defiance before and preferred it tidily spoken. “Too much resistance ill becomes perfection.”
Arch, having previously witnessed his mother in warfare, stepped back half a pace, knowing resistance was futile. It was not long before the admirers arrived.
They did not descend all at once in comic formation, as Baines would no doubt later describe them, but they came quickly enough to produce the same effect. Mr. Harcourt arrived first, handsome and polished and carrying his reforming sympathies like a perfectly cut coat. Lord Ashbourne appeared next, his manner stiff with the sort of superiority that took centuries to cultivate. He was followed by two or three younger men who mattered less in themselves than in number, though each plainly believed his own attentions of consequence.
They praised the weather, the drive, the theatre, the colour of the sky, the crush in the Park, and, the lady at the centre of it all.
Miss Vale seemed either oblivious to the male attention she was garnering or entirely unaffected by it. Arch suspected the latter, although now and then she said something with such perfect unconcern that he wondered if perhaps she truly had not been trained by vanity to register admiration as power. She listened, answered, and occasionally redirected an entire conversation by the simple force of asking a more intelligentquestion than the one put to her. If anything, she seemed amused.
He stood a little apart at first, not because he wished to, but because to thrust himself at once into the ring would have been to acknowledge he was part of her court. Instead, he watched.
Harcourt distinguished himself by saying exactly what ought to please without ever sounding as though he had rehearsed it. He had a gift for making agreement appear like insight. If Miss Vale remarked upon the Park’s absurdity, he granted that public display was often mistaken for social necessity. If she mentioned the discomfort of being observed, he agreed that London transformed private character into public entertainment with tiresome efficiency. Arch could not decide whether the man was genuinely congenial or merely infernally practised at toad-eating. Either way, at that moment Arch would not have minded facing him in the ring at Jackson’s.
Ashbourne, by contrast, displayed no such congeniality. His compliments had weight rather than wit. They carried implication. He did not merely admire Miss Vale’s turnout; he approved it. He did not merely express pleasure at finding her well; he seemed to place health itself under his patronage. There were women, no doubt, who found such attention a compliment. Miss Vale did not appear to be among them.
“You were much discussed after Lady Stratton’s ball,” Harcourt said at one point, with just enough ease to make the remark seem accidental.
“Was I, indeed?” she asked. “How tiresome.”
“It was in an admiring manner, I assure you.”
“I had hoped to be inconspicuous.”
“You could never be that, my dear.”
Arch saw Ashbourne’s mouth alter at the presumption. While not enough to call it irritation, it was just enough tosuggest that Harcourt had trespassed upon a tone he preferred to reserve for himself.
“Attention,” said Ashbourne, “is one of the natural taxes upon consequence.”
Miss Vale looked at him with grave curiosity. “Then consequence is overtaxed.”
Harcourt laughed. Ashbourne smiled, though he looked as if he had not entirely decided whether the remark had been wit or insult.
Arch, aware he had been silent too long, said, “That depends upon who is collecting.”
