Elizabeth Mansfield (19 page)

“Prue?” asked Roger innocently. “I don’t think so. I planned this so that you and Letty could have some time in each other’s company. Prue would spoil everything. Besides, Lady Upsham never permits Prue to come along when Letty and I go riding.”

Brandon could think of nothing else and relapsed into a worried silence. Roger whistled cheerfully until they drew up in front of Lady Upsham’s residence. Promising Brandon a speedy return, he jumped down from the phaeton and went inside. In a few minutes he returned leading a puzzled-looking Letty to the carriage. She started at the sight of Brandon. “There!” Roger said in a self-satisfied way. “I told you I had a surprise for you.”

“B-Brandon,” Letty stammered uneasily, “what are you—? That is, how v-very nice to see you.”

Roger helped Letty into the phaeton beside Brandon and vaulted up to the box. “It seems to me such a shame that a betrothed couple cannot spend any time together, so I made up my mind to give you both the opportunity to do so. You needn’t mind me, you know. I’ll just drive and think my own thoughts. Just pretend I’m not here.”

Brandon and Letty exchanged helpless looks behind Roger’s back, and Brandon shrugged to indicate that he couldn’t have done anything to avoid the situation. Letty tried to fill in the dismaying silence by asking loudly how Brandon’s ankle was getting on. Brandon answered in such complete detail that Letty could find nothing more to say on the subject, and another interminable silence ensued. Finally Letty asked brightly if Brandon had had any time to pursue his studies. To this Brandon responded that he’d had little time since his accident to spend on his books because of all the callers who had come to pay their condolences and because of the assistance his mother had required in preparation for her dinner party. “However,” he added, “I did manage to read the translation of Horace that Roger was good enough to lend me.”

“Oh, yes,” Letty said with sudden interest, “you
did
tell me that Lord Denham is a scholar of the classics. I didn’t think you had interests along those lines, Lord Denham.”

“Are you speaking to me?” Roger asked guilelessly, turning around to look at them.

“Yes, I am,” Letty said. “Brandon tells me you’ve studied the classics. I was surprised to learn that you have interests in that direction.”

Roger’s eyes twinkled maliciously. “You are surprised, Miss Glendenning,” he said, parroting her words of the night before, “only because you had prejudged me before we were fully acquainted and arrogantly decided that I had no accomplishments.”

Brandon was appalled. “Oh, I say, Roger,” he objected vehemently, “you can’t call Letty arrogant! That’s coming at it a bit too strong, isn’t it?”

Letty laughed and put a restraining hand on Brandon’s arm. “He’s only teasing, Brandon. That’s what I said about
him
last night. And besides, I can now toss his reply to
me
right back at him.”

“What reply was that, Miss Glendenning?” Roger asked.

“Experience has taught
me,
my dear sir,” she replied archly, “that noted Corinthians like yourself, who spend their time in gaming, in sporting pursuits, or in … er … other adventures, have little time for books.”

“Touché,” Roger admitted with a grin. “It would seem, ma’am, that we
both
have been guilty of misjudgment.”

Roger turned back to his horses, leaving Letty and Brandon with the problem of finding something else to talk about. They succeeded in finding only the merest commonplaces, and both of them took every possible opportunity to draw Roger into the conversation. The halting and stilted exchanges were so amusing to the eavesdropper on the box that he had a difficult time keeping his shoulders from
shaking.

After a while, Roger discovered that he’d taken a wrong turning. Seeing a cottage nearby, he excused himself and climbed down to seek assistance from the inhabitants. Letty seized the moments of privacy to ask Brandon how this terrible state of affairs had come about. “I don’t know,” Brandon said miserably. “He acted as if he were doing me the greatest favor. I didn’t know how to refuse him.”

“Do you think he’s testing our story?” Letty asked worriedly.

Brandon shook his head. “Confound it, Letty,” he groaned, “I wish I’d never agreed to your silly scheme. He’s the best of good fellows, and I hate to play him false in this way.”

Letty couldn’t dispute him. “I know,” she said disconsolately. “I don’t like it, either. But we’ve gone too far to deny it now. There’s nothing for it but to play the game out.”

“Very well, if we must. But Letty, I don’t even know what to say to sound like a man betrothed to a girl. What do betrothed people talk about to each other?”

“I don’t know,” Letty said, chewing a nail nervously. “How much they love each other, I suppose. Fulsome compliments, dreams, and plans for the future … But Lord Denham will not expect us to talk about such things when he’s seated right there within earshot.”

“Then what
can
we talk about to each other?” Brandon asked in desperation.

“Well, I have an idea. There’s to be a ball at the Upper Rooms next week. Ask me if I intend to go and suggest ways that we might be together without calling attention to ourselves.”

“But, Letty, I can’t attend a ball with a sprained ankle,” he objected.

“There comes Roger now,” Letty said hurriedly. “You
can
attend if you don’t dance. There’s no time to think of anything else. Please, Brandon, do the best you can!”

The conversation between them, after Roget’s return, did not differ in quality from their earlier attempts. Although they discussed the ball at great length, Brandon showed rather too much unloverlike politeness in his oft-repeated request that Letty spend some time at the ball sitting out the dances at his side. Letty, realizing that the conversation between them lacked the sparkle of a couple in love, cast a number of agitated glances at Roger’s unresponsive back, but in truth, Roger had long since given up paying any attention to what his passengers were saying to each other. The lack of intimacy in their tone of conversation had already convinced him that his estimation of the situation was correct—their betrothal was not based on love. His mind was grappling with a more perplexing problem.

Now that he was convinced that their betrothal was not a love match, he had to determine what had brought it about. The most obvious solution was that it was nothing but a ruse, designed to keep
him
from pursuing Letty. He spent the remainder of the ride trying to understand why a girl whose eyes brightened when she looked at him, whose mind seemed closely attuned to his, who so delightfully responded to his quips, his tastes, and even his kiss, should go to such lengths to keep him at a distance. He could find no answer.

But one fact was glaringly, upsettingly clear. Letty was firmly fixed on preventing him from making her another proposal of marriage. The girl, for all the signs of her attraction to him, did not want Roger for a husband. He sighed in discouragement and wondered how he had permitted himself to occupy this position of humiliation—the position of
an unwanted suitor who has not the sense to take himself off.
Perhaps he should oblige Letty and restore his self-esteem by giving up the pursuit. With every day that he lingered in her vicinity, he found himself more deeply attached to her. The longer he remained, the greater would be the pain if he ultimately failed to win her. Perhaps now was the time to give up the struggle and return to London.

They drew up outside Lady Upsham’s lodgings. He jumped down from the box while Letty said her goodbyes to Brandon. Then he reached for her hands to help her down. She paused on the carriage
step and looked down at him, her eyes searching his face for a clue to his thoughts. For that moment, time seemed to stop for him. What was it he read in her expressive face? Fear and uncertainty, surely, but just as surely there was something else. Without conscious awareness, Roger smiled comfortingly at her and was rewarded by a sudden glimmer of luminescent gratitude, which sprang into her unbelievably speaking eyes. Confound it, he thought, why did he always feel that they could converse with eyes alone? Fool that he was, he knew that he would not go away just yet. He would play out the game until the bitter end.

As if she had read his thoughts, her eyes dropped, her cheeks crimsoned, and she withdrew her hands from his clasp. Without a word, she ran to the door and disappeared inside. He stood there staring after her long after she’d gone, and it was not until Brandon gave an awkward cough that he was brought back to consciousness of where he was.

***

“My very first ball, and I don’t even want to go,” Prue said glumly to her reflection in the mirror as she sat brushing her curls into a sophisticated hairstyle known as the Sappho. Katie stood behind her, watching admiringly and making herself useful by handing Prue hairpins and combs as they were called for. “’Course you want to go,” she said sensibly. “You’ll be in high leg soon as you’re tiffled up and see how pretty you look.”

“I
won’t
be in high leg, as you call it. I’m in the dismals and will probably remain there all evening. The ball is bound to be deadly dull. I know every young man in Bath, and none of them is capable of brightening a girl’s disposition.”

Katie looked at her archly. “Not even a certain Mr. Peake?” she asked with brazen insolence.

Prue frowned at her. “You go too far, Miss Katie-from-the-kitchen. One of these days, I’ll box your ears and send you back to the scullery.”

Katie, having heard those threats many times before, merely ignored them. “If you know’d what I know’d,” she said tauntingly, “you’d be took out o’ the dismals like a shot.”

“What’s that?” Prue asked curiously.

“That Mr. Peake will be there this night.”

“Don’t be silly. He can barely walk with a stick, so why would he come to a dance?” Prudence asked logically.

“’E’ll be there. You ain’t never knowed Katie to bamboozle you, ’ave you?”

Prue stared at her abigail suspiciously. “How do you know? Who told you?”

“Oh, I ’as my ways,” Katie said superciliously, having learned to enjoy her reputation as a “knowing one.”

Prue, convinced, found that, as Katie had predicted, she was rapidly becoming quite cheerful about the prospects for the evening. The blue silk, which had been rejected on the night of Mrs. Peake’s dinner party because of its low décolletage, was deemed suitable for a ball, and by the time the dress had been donned, Prue’s mood had changed from dismal to radiant.

Letty, on the other hand, saw no prospect of anything but a dull evening. She had determined to spend a good part of it at Brandon’s side, for she was sure the two of them would be observed by the omnipresent Lord Denham. She knew that
she
could summon up the spirit to smile and flirt with Brandon with enough enthusiasm to confound Roger, but she had no confidence in Brandon’s ability to be equally convincing. Brandon had no ability to act a role. Naive, innocent, and straightforward, Brandon’s discomfort when forced to practice deception was obvious to any observer, and a man of
Roger’s perspicacity would never be fooled.

The two sisters arrived at the Assembly Rooms in completely opposite states of mind. Their eyes searched the room for the same young man, but one looked with eyes of eagerness and the other with eyes of dread.

Brandon, even with the assistance of his mother, was not able to make his way to the Upper Rooms easily. Therefore, it was quite late when they made their appearance in the ballroom. Mrs. Peake helped her son to a vacant chair and left him to join the elderly ladies who spent their time at dances watching and gossiping. Brandon sat back as comfortably as he could on the spindly chair and looked at the dance floor. The first thing to attract his eye was Prue’s red-gold hair. She was spinning by on the arm of Sir Ralph, who was whirling her around the floor in a waltz with rather unexpected expertise. The waltz, while still restricted at Almack’s in London to couples under the sanction of the patronesses, was indulged in quite freely in the more limited society of Bath. Brandon had never thought about it before, but now he was struck with disapproval. It was, he decided, a tasteless, indecent display, and Prue should have known better than to permit herself to indulge in it.

When Letty came up to him a few moments later, he greeted her with a strong reproof, blaming her for neglecting her sisterly duties. “How could you have permitted your sister to make a spectacle of herself on the dance floor?” he demanded.

Letty, taken aback, responded with annoyance, “You are being positively gothic, Brandon,” she told him shortly. “
Everyone
dances the waltz in Bath. Even my aunt sees nothing objectionable in it, so I don’t see why you should disapprove. Of what concern can it be to you, in any case?”

Brandon, having no answer, lapsed into a glum silence. Letty would have liked to walk away from him, but she caught a glimpse of Roger across the room, talking to Mr. Eberly but looking directly at them. She pulled up a chair and sat down beside Brandon with a sigh. “Don’t glower so, Brandon,” she begged. “Roger is looking at us.”

“Bother Roger and bother this ball,” Brandon said pettishly. “I wish I hadn’t let you talk me into coming. By your leave, Letty, I’m bound to tell you that every time I let you persuade me to do anything, I soon regret it.”

“Of all the ungallant things I’ve ever heard you say,” Letty said in chagrin, “that is the worst. I never thought, Brandon Peake, that you could be so churlish and unkind. I thought you were my
friend
.”

Brandon, completely unequal to feminine attacks, completely unable to withstand their flashing eyes and quivering voices, subsided at once. “I … I’m sorry, Letty,” he mumbled uneasily. “I didn’t mean—”

“For heaven’s sake, don’t look so miserable,” Letty said uncomfortably, keeping her eye on Roger as she spoke. “How can Lord Denham possibly believe that we’re lovers when you look so glum in my company.”

“Lovers!” Brandon groaned. “How does one look like a lover?”

“Stop asking me those silly questions. Just look at me and
smile.
Talk to me! Say something … anything! We used to have very interesting conversations when we first met. Can’t we do so now?”