Elisabeth Fairchild (10 page)

Chapter Twelve

Patience pondered her evening at Vauxhall.

She thought of Pip and promises, and the husky suggestion of his voice, and wondered how soon he would come to her with plots and schemes to chase down a woman of his own imaginings. How was she to tell him that he would ask her to find herself?

She remembered a mindless dash into dark woods, a guilty glimpse at naked legs. She paused, near sleep, curled like a snail in its shell, a caterpillar in a warm cocoon, poised on the edge of a butterfly dream, and could not escape the vision of thrusting buttocks and pale, splayed legs.

Who was it Richard loved? Why did he refuse to tell her?

Her mind’s answer—that it was Lady Wilmington—seemed to hang on the edge of truth, a tightrope walker standing tiptoe among the stars. She tossed about in bed for upward of an hour as light and shadow played across the memory of Richard’s face, as truth gleamed in moss agate eyes like fairy lanterns, and he took her hand in his and led her out of the path of a drunken nightmare.

She fell deeply into sleep at dawn from pure exhaustion, and woke with a feeling that in her dreams all questions had found answers that slipped away again with the light of day. She thought of Vauxhall for several days thereafter, when she might have expected Richard to call, and he did not.

In her heart she believed he had lied to her. In order to protect Lady Wilmington, he lied. It would be much safer for everyone concerned that way. More circumspect. Richard prided himself on his discretion. She reasoned that he regretted having said anything at all—a slip of the tongue, and he was not wont to slip. Indeed, on more than one occasion she had held her own tongue on some untimely remark, beset by the thought, “What would Richard say in such a situation?”

And now he avoided her, no longer brightening her mornings with calls that had become quite regular—even predictable.

“Wherever has the lad gotten to?” her mother asked when the third morning passed without his making an appearance. “Used to be able to set my watch on his appearances, so punctual was he. Did you in some way annoy him in your last outing?”

Patience shook her head and said very logically, “Richard has work to do, Mother, in managing his brother’s properties and investments. We must not rely on him always being able to come to us as often as he has.”

And yet she did rely on him, and missed his company greatly, most especially his conversation.

But it was not Richard, in the end, who came knocking at their door—it was Pip.

Her mother sputtered in her tea when the footman announced the Earl of Royston. “Goodness!” she said. “Can it be?”

Patience jumped up from her chair and ran to meet him in the doorway to the sitting room.

“Pip! At last you come to us.”

“Just as I promised,” he said, and, taking both her hands in his, he gave her fingers a much-appreciated squeeze.

“Philip!” Her mother rose. “How long has it been? Can it be I have not seen you since the funeral? Such a shock it was to lose your father so young.”

“Yes.” Philip looked momentarily uncomfortable. For the briefest instant he seemed but a lad again.

“But I hear we have reason to rejoice in this meeting.” Her mother was quick to fill the silence. “Patience tells me you are soon to be married?”

Patience sighed. For a moment she had allowed herself to forget, to imagine Pip might still be hers.

Pip recovered, the look of the lad gone as quickly as it had appeared. “Do you know the Defoes?”

“Only by reputation, which is much respected, but I do know”—mama wagged her finger at him with coy amusement—“that Patience’s plans are all thrown to pieces by your commitment.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Pip asked, his gaze fixing on Patience, who looked back at him with an equally baffled expression.

The baroness laughed. “She told me once—how old were you at the time, Patience, my dear? No more than seven, if memory serves me . . .”

Patience cringed, a sudden sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.

“. . . that she meant to marry you.”

Patience fell back a step, face flushed.

Pip, her beloved Pip, was laughing. “Is this true?” He chortled. “Dear Patience. Why did you never declare yourself to me, pet?”

“That was a very long time ago, Mama.” Patience forced a laugh, her cheeks burning. “I am surprised you recall such a thing, for it had quite slipped my memory.”

“I was proud of you, my dear. Determined to land a peer of the realm at such a young age.”

Patience wished she might sink into the floor.

“You wound me.” Pip held a hand to his heart. “Is it so long ago that I fell out of favor?”

Patience laughed and tapped the back of his hand. “I cannot mark the exact day. But you’ve no business being wounded, you know, now that you are promised to another.”

He winked. “No business doing all sorts of things, and yet I indulge myself anyway. I suppose you will tell me next that I had no business procuring you and your mother guest vouchers to Almack’s.”

“Oh, have you really?” Patience crowed. “What a dear you are. Who has granted you such a favor, Pip?”

“Lord Sefton of the Four-in-Hand club, whose wife is one of the patronesses. He tells me to warn you to beware Mrs. Drummond Burrell, who is quick to condemn young women whose behavior is in any way perceived reprehensible.”

“Oh, dear, yes,” her mother agreed. “If anyone might find your high spirits objectionable it would be Mrs. Burrell.”

“And Miss Defoe? Will she be there? Shall I have a chance to meet her at last?”

“Highly likely,” he said. “But if you find you do not care for her, there is always the card room to escape to. Sophie does not care for cards.”

“I dislike her already,” Patience said at once.

“Patience!” her mother exclaimed.

“Because she will not play cards with you?” Pip asked.

“No.” She shot a sly look in her mother’s direction. “Because she cannot possibly make you happy if she refuses to play cards with you.”

“She does play backgammon. And I am teaching her to enjoy the game of chess.”

“Ah. Then perhaps I condemn her prematurely.”

Pip grinned, the white flash of his teeth setting Patience’s heart aflutter. “I must admit,” he confided, “she has not the head for it. You are far better at both than she could ever hope to be.”

Spirits buoyed, hope restored, Patience said graciously, “I think I shall have to like her then after all.”

Chapter Thirteen

Patience was in heaven. Her feet no longer touched earth. Her heart beat to a new rhythm, a wilder, more ecstatic rhythm that left her giddy and breathless and perched on the edge of the carriage seat.

First she had been promised a night at Almack’s, and now Pip wanted to show her the pony he meant to buy. Her mother had agreed to the outing. And so it was just the two of them, facing one another in the open-topped landau, flanked by two buff-liveried footmen, the coachman snapping his whip smartly as they set out for Tattersall’s.

The auction house was tucked down a narrow lane near Hyde Park, opposite a tavern called the Turf. No question they were getting close. The smell of hay, and manure, and horse soon outdid the aroma of roast beef, sausages, and fermenting ale. Dogs barked, with an accompaniment of neighs and whinnies to give them the stable’s direction.

It touched her deeply that Pip wished to spend time with her in spite of his promised state, that he valued her opinion with regard to his purchase. She wondered why he did not include his fiancée on such an outing, but dared not ask—in fact, did not want to ask, for in many ways the less she knew of Sophie Defoe the easier it was to pretend she would not, in the end, steal Pip away from her.

“Have you seen the woman from the gardens?” Pip asked as they stepped from the carriage.

Pip tried to sound casual in the question. He was so transparent at times. Again she longed to laugh at him—and with him—to tell him at once how he sought the intriguing woman in all the wrong places.

Every morning
, she wanted to say.
In the mirror.

“Do you mean the woman with red hair, or the one who wore red?” she asked coyly, and wanted to laugh, to cry out,
Can’t you see? She stands before you.

“Of course I mean the woman in red. Woman with red hair? Cannot imagine who you mean.”

“And I cannot imagine how you could forget her. She was strikingly pretty, with Titian hair. You stood talking to her before we ate. I asked Lady Wilmington who she was, and she would not tell me. Said I must ask you myself.”

Pip tugged at his neckcloth. “Saw that, did she? Was she miffed?”

“Who? Lady Wilmington? Why should she be miffed?”

Pip took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and said, “Never mind all that. We were discussing the young lady in red.”

“Still set on meeting her?” Patience could skirt questions as nimbly as he. She felt a twinge of guilt when he laughed and flung wide his hands in a gesture of frustration.

“I must. You see, no matter how often I tell myself this fixation is quite foolish, I cannot purge her from my mind.”

Cannot purge her? But what about me?

Patience strangled her impatience, a wrenching sadness squelching her earlier sense of glee.

“Fixations are foolish indeed,” she said, her condemnation meant more for herself than him.

He did not understand.

“It is unkind of you to tease me,” he muttered snidely.

Through a gateway they turned, past an enclosed grass ring with a single tree in the middle along a gravel path. In the ring, a sleek bay riding mare was being led through its paces by a stable lad.

Patience, who felt she goaded Pip through a different set of paces, made up her mind that it was time to explain the game she played on him, for while it was quite flattering that he had become so attached to the woman in red, there was also a crushing insult to be found in his lack of recognition, his assumption that a stranger must be more interesting, better suited to his idea of attractive femininity than she. Patience tired, too, of maintaining the stupid, tiresome lie. She did not care for lies, certainly not between friends.

But before she could speak, Pip nodded toward the ring and said, “Viewing day.”

The words did not make sense in the context of her thoughts. She stared at him blankly.

“Mondays are the auctions,” he went on. “That’s when Tat’s truly comes to life. You would not believe the crowds, the noise, the smell of horse.”

She hated to interrupt, so animatedly did he speak, hands gesturing, as if he would conjure up a vision of it. She did not want to watch the light in his eyes fade, the smile to fail her.

But she must tell him. Today, at an appropriate moment.
Yes.
When the timing was perfect, she would find just the right words before the day was out.

For now she would enjoy their outing, and his company, and the infatuated look in his eyes when he mentioned the woman in red. She must learn to accept the hard truth that it was not an expression she had any hope of stirring in him for her own sake.

How it pained her to face that reality. Even more, it would pain her to put all her cards on the table, to watch his face fall in defeat, for she stood to lose as much as he, perhaps more. The woman in red was but the dream of a few days’ time for him. For her, Pip had been the dream of a lifetime. No need to rush the moment. Was there?

They had the grounds largely to themselves. There were any number of stable lads carrying buckets of water, bags of feed, boxes of currycombs and hoof picks. There were lads leading horses, and walking dogs, and mounted on horses they meant to show to visiting clients. But these were few. They were among the only visitors. No more than a handful of fellows crunched along the graveled walkway before and behind them, come to view the horses.

It was wonderful—just the two of them walking side by side, talking and laughing, his hand brushing hers on occasion, his fingers like lightning, sending jolts of humming excitement through her—just like in her dreams. Rather odd, really. She could not remember another time when it had been just the two of them on an excursion. Nothing seemed quite real.

“That’s the subscription room.” Pip pointed. “The courtyard there is where the auctioneer calls the bid, and here”—he guided her into a pungently odoriferous lane of stalls—“the horses and dogs are kept.”

He braced her elbow and nudged her out of the way of a pile of dung with a sharply voiced, “Have a care!”

So like Richard was such a gesture that she asked, “Have you seen Richard of late?”

Too fast the words blurted from her mouth. Richard was not at all what she wanted to talk about with Pip. Too often he played third wheel in person without her raising thought of him on the one occasion he did not stand between them. What was this game her mind and mouth played? What possessed her?

Pip seemed unfazed by the question. “Richard? Not since the gardens. Why?”

She pretended interest in a roan that swung its nose out over the stall door as they passed, stopping to stroke the silky neck. “No reason, really. He was in the habit of calling on us every other morning, but we have not seen him of late.”

Pip shrugged. “Likely it’s something to do with Chase losing a great deal of money at cards, or the horses, or the latest prizefight. He has had a devilish bad run of luck lately.”

“Has he?” His words troubled her far more than she liked to let on, and suddenly she was glad she had asked about Richard, for here was her chance to discover what she dared not ask of Richard himself. “Is Chase as much of a drain on the estate’s resources as Mother claims?”

Pip bent to polish away a smear on his boot tip with the paisley belcher she had seen him use as a blindfold. “More so. Keeps Richard in a dither, rearranging the finances.” He rose and eyed the gleaming boot with satisfaction. “Bets on everything, Chase does, and loses more often than not—I know half a dozen gentlemen who seem just as determined to run through their inheritances as Richard’s elder brother, but none who seem set on flinging themselves into the fray with such abandon, as if it were but a great game with no penalties.”

“How foolish of him. How dreadful for Richard.”

“Yes. Not much he can do about it, except give his brother the occasional tongue-lashing—to which Chase pays no mind at all.”

“And pick up the pieces,” she said.

“Eh?”

“Financially,” she clarified. This she knew all too well. Her mother had mentioned more than once Richard’s clever handling of his brother’s estate. “Richard will sell something and make things right again. I wonder if Chase will ever recognize what it is Richard actually does for him and his progeny, should he ever settle down enough to have children.”

Pip stopped before one of the stall doors and, leaning in over the edge of it, said, “Here is the pony. What do you think of him?”

Patience peered in. Hock-deep in clean straw stood the tiniest pony she had ever set eyes on, regarding her through a thick blond forelock, its mane and tail and long eyelashes all the same pale blond, while the body of the pony itself was a rich, tawny brown.

“Oh, Pip!” she said under her breath. “It looks like a toy. A beautiful little toy! I’d no idea ponies could be so small.”

“Isn’t he wonderful? Comes all the way from the isle of Shetland, funny little thing.” Pip held out a bite of carrot to the pony, who stepped hesitantly forward to snatch it from his fingers. “Can you not see him fitted out with a cunning little saddle for my new tiger, Tom Thumb? Have you met him? He’s a bandy-legged, odd-voiced, dwarfish little man just the right size for this pony. We shall need baskets on the back of the saddle—or better yet, a tiny little wagon to carry my game boards.”

Patience had no idea what he was talking about.

“What’s become of Mr. Trumps?”

Pip waved his hands airily. “Tired of the lad. And that screeching bird, always squawking in my ear. They had lost their panache. I found myself in need of a fresh spectacle to keep my players entertained, and was sure I had found it in Tom Thumb, but a miniature man on a miniature horse is far better. Do you not agree?”

Patience felt she had been left behind in the conversation. She floundered in his logic and, knowing Pip would one day tire of the pony just as swiftly, could not begin to match Pip’s enthusiasm for its purchase. How lovingly he stroked and crooned to the animal as he fed it more carrot. And yet the words, his emotion, rang hollow—even callous. She had never known anyone who threw away pets and people as easily as old shoes.

“But what has become of the boy? The bird?”

“Now, do not fret,” Pip soothed. “Or I shall accuse you of sounding just like Richard, who, as you have just said, makes things right. Quite slipped my mind. He was here at Tat’s on the day I first caught sight of the pony.”

“Here?”

Pip stroked the pony’s velvety nose. “Arranging the sale of one of Chase’s horses. Said he was in need of the money, which is why I had it in mind Chase had lost a recent bet. Tapped out, as I recall, but nothing unusual in that. Chase gets far more than his money’s worth out of the miserly allowance he pays Richard to manage his effects.”

“Why did you allow him to pay for the food and wine at Vauxhall if Richard is so strapped?”

Pip’s elegant brows rose. “Dickey-boy paid? I’d no idea.”

“Yes, I offered him my purse but he refused.”

Pip shook his head, golden curls drifting across his forehead. “How very Richard. Foolish fellow. He should have said something. Wilmington has deep pockets. I thought he had seen to it. Speaking of Wilmi, he and Melanie will be at Almack’s.” He laughed.

“Melanie?”

“Lady Wilmington.”

“Oh, Pip . . .” Perhaps now was the time to tell him, after all.

He rubbed his hands together gleefully. “I am convinced we shall find my lady in red there. Don’t ask me why, but I have this deeply rooted sense of certainty that I am meant to meet her, to dance with her, perhaps to win her heart.”

Patience wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “Perhaps you shall,” she said as the stable lad came to lead the pony into the ring.

Together they followed the swaying blond tail to the ring—just as she must follow her tale of the woman in red, Patience thought, a swaying tale that grew longer and curlier with every day that passed, and always at the back end of the horse. She must tell Pip the truth of the matter. It was stupid, really, not telling him. She could no longer remember why it had seemed so important that Pip not know it was she who had beaten him at games.

She leaned against the pole fence as the pony was urged to go from a walk to a trot, and eyed Pip’s perfect profile, the breeze riffling his hair, the sun creating a glowing nimbus about his head. Her angel. How she loved him. How wonderful this moment, the two of them alone.

She realized with a guilty start that the time had come—the perfect time for the truth to be revealed. She took a deep breath, gathered her courage, and opened her mouth to explain.

But again Pip beat her back from the moment of revelation with a cheerful suggestion, his gaze fixed on the pony, his smile of satisfaction in anticipation of his purchase. “You must see to engaging Wilmi in a game of whist, if he is not already encamped in the card room,” he said.

“Pip. There is something—”

“He’s keen for whist.” His tone was persuasive, the twinkle in the quick sideways glance he shot her way meant to sway her. She had seen him use it on others. Especially women: Lady Wilmington—Melanie. Her mother.

“Artful at it,” he said.

And indeed he was. She frowned at him, frowned at the sun, directly in her eyes now; it left her squinting. She was much struck by the image of what he proposed, unhappily so, for it did not sound in the least entertaining. “You would relegate me to the card room at a society ball? How can you ask it of me, Pip?”

“I do not mean you should spend the whole evening there.”

“I would much rather dance than play cards.”

“Yes, but you promised to look for her.” He leaned closer, wielding the words deftly, his hand covering hers on the middle bar of the pole fence. “It is logical to assume that a gamester good enough to foil me twice would be in the card room.”

“Unless she would rather dance,” she said petulantly, and pulled away. It was all so topsy-turvy. She really must tell him. “You see, Pip—”

“I shall have to entertain my fiancée, of course, and your mama.”

The pony was chirruped into a leg-churning gallop, his gait smooth, seemingly effortless. Why must it prove so difficult to set right the truth? Why did her little lie charge along with great clodhopping feet of its own? Why must Pip always look elsewhere for the right woman? Her heart ached every time he looked at her without seeing who she really was—and how she felt for him.