Everything I Ever Wanted (3 page)

One could be forgiven for supposing that was her game.

There was a slight commotion at the back of the room as India's dresser pushed her way in. With the brisk determination of one who wants to see her duty done, she began moving the admirers aside. Her spine was stiff if slightly curved, and her shoulders sloped forward, hunched as though against her will, as if she had not yet surrendered to the realities of her age. She carried an armload of material with her, but from beneath that mound the sound of her clapping hands could be heard as she started to shoo the crowd. "Out wi' ye now," she said firmly. "Miss Parr's a rare one, it's true, but she cannot lally here. Go on wi' ye."

Tipping her head back in the direction of the door, she exhorted the squeeze of men all around her to use it. Her lips pursed tightly so that vertical creases deepened around her mouth. A large brown mole sporting three frighteningly aggressive hairs actually twitched on the corner of her right cheek. Her nostrils flared, and even the stalwarts among Miss Parr's legion of devotees shrank back in anticipation of flames roaring from those dark openings.

There was a rolling wave of bobbing heads at the door, then the hall, and very slowly the room began to thin. South stayed his ground, though he would not have been surprised if his rumpled coattails were now singed. From somewhere behind him he heard the familiar voices of his friends trading easy barbs as they worked their way against the exiting tide.

He stepped into the breach when the dresser began another harangue and his closest competitor for Miss Parr's attention was carelessly diverted.

He inclined his head toward the actress much as he had from the marquess's box. "Viscount Southerton," he said by way of introduction.

"My lord."

Her eyes were most definitely brown, he decided. Like windows at night, they had become dark mirrors, reflecting his own image back to him and hiding what was just beyond the glass.

"Your servant, Miss Parr."

She smiled slightly, and the coolness of it touched her eyes briefly. "My heckler, you mean."

He did not apologize again for it. "Aaah, so I am unmasked. It is not to be as I hoped, that I was safe from your scrutiny in the low lights."

"Safe enough," she said. "But your voice gives you away. It is unquestionably distinctive."

"Really?"

"To my ears."

South considered those ears in turn. They were small, delicate pink shells, perfectly symmetrical in their placement on either side of her head. A veritable chandelier of paste diamonds hung from each lobe and glittered brightly as she fractionally lifted her chin. "Truly wondrous, your ears."

Her lush mouth still creased with its slim smile, she casually unscrewed each earring and pressed them into her fist. "So they have been remarked upon." She regarded him patiently as he simply stared at her, and when he didn't speak, she prompted, "If there is nothing else, my lord"

"What? Oh, yes. The reason I have come. Pray, do not look, but just beyond my shoulder hovering in the hall are three wholly disreputable" He sighed, his voice dropping huskily as her glance shifted in the exact direction he had asked her not to look. "Don't look ," he said, drawing her attention back to him. "They are hardly worthy of your notice."

"I believe they are your friends, my lord. I recognize their laughter."

Indeed, they were chuckling again and working out the details of another wager. This time it was the dresser whose antics had their mirth and money engaged. The old woman was none too gently using physical persuasion to remove the hangers-on from her employer's dressing room. Safe as East, West, and North were in the hallway, they were no doubt waiting for the dresser to turn her attention in his direction.

"Pretend I have given you a grave insult," South said quickly. "And chuck me on the chin."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Go on. It's all right. I'd rather not insult you, and I am not concerned a blow dealt by your hand will hurt overmuch."

India Parr said nothing for a moment."You are a bedlamite, aren't you?" It was the only plausible explanation for his behavior. She was more curious than alarmed. One cryfrom her lips, and any number of the men Mrs. Garrety had herded out would simply stampede back in. She was likely to be hurt in the crush before she was harmed in any way by the oddly engaging viscount. "Is there nowhere you can go this evening? Perhaps Mrs. Garrety can arrange for a room here for one night."

He shook his head. "Just here," he said, tapping the side of his chin lightly. "There's nine shillings in it for me. I am quite willing to share my winnings."

This did nothing to clarify the situation for Miss Parr. Her dresser's voice had risen shrilly as another man was shooed from the room."Oh, please, Mrs. Garrety," she said after a long exhale. "Put a shiv between their ribs if you must, but remove the last of them quietly. I cannot bear more caterwauling."

South's brows lifted in tandem. In the hallway the rest of the Compass Club fell silent. The last two admirers slipped out. And Mrs. Garrety's jaw clamped shut.

India Parr raised her glance to South. Her lips moved around words he could barely make out as she murmured to herself, reviewing their conversation as if she were reaching for her lines. "Now, where were we ? Servant heckler voice ears grave insult" She caught herself, and her expression became considering. "Yes, grave insult. Very well, though you may wish you had delivered one, you know."

Rearing back, she plowed South's jaw with her weighted fist.

The blow actually moved him off his feet. He shifted right, caught himself, and cupped the left side of his face in his palm. He felt a warm trickle of blood against his hand. His slow smile was a trifle disjointed as he worked the kinks out of his jaw. "I forgot about the earrings," he said.

India's expression was without remorse. "I thought you might have." She glanced over his shoulder toward the hall. His friends were gaping at her. Over the top of the armload of clothes she still held tight to her bosom, Mrs. Garrety was also openmouthed. "Will that be all, my lord? Or do you seek another boon?"

South's humor asserted itself. "One boon is all these bones can stand." He pulled out a handkerchief and touched it to the corner of his mouth. Even when she saw the evidence of his blood, she remained unapologetic. "You know," he said, "about our laughter during your performance. I feel compelled to point out that the play was a comedy."

"It wasn't that amusing."

He allowed her own words to sink in, let her critique serve in place of one that he might have offered, then said rather drolly, "You cannot expect that I will always save you, Miss Parr."

On his way out he dropped five shillingsthe better part of his winningson top of the dresser's stack of clothes.

Only South did not retire to his town home straightaway. His friends did not pry when he merely said he was about the colonel's business. They had all been about the colonel's business at one time or another. Sometimes they were all engaged at once, though rarely toward the same end. It was better that way. Soldier. Sailor. Tinker. Spy. It was bound to become complicated if they were tripping over one another. East was apt to shoot someone, and Marchman always had the knife. North's affairs were apt to be tangled, and for proof of that one had to look no further than his recent marriage of convenience to Lady Elizabeth Penrose.

Deuced inconvenient, South thought, though he liked the lady well enough and had a hand in bringing the thing about. It was another of the colonel's schemes in which South had had to assume a variety of roles but was not privy to the whole of it. So he had played all his parts with industry and inspiration, though nothing like what the colonel usually required of him. No, during this summer recently past he had been Cupid, companion, and, on more than one occasion, fool. Whatever served the meeting of those two he had done, and if it did not end well and happily for North and Lady Elizabeth, he would force the colonel to explain himself. South was certain he deserved that much from the man.

Although it was late when South arrived, he was shown directly to the colonel's sitting room above stairs. The colonel had been carried there some hours earlier by two servants and cared for by his valet. Now he sat in a wheeled chair beside the hearth. A lamp burned on a table beside him and cast his thin face into harsh relief. A plaid rug covered his legs. His lap held an open book and he was running a single finger down one page as South entered. Neither man spoke until the colonel had finished reading and marked his place.

"You'll want a drink, I expect," John Blackwood said, setting the book aside. He looked South over in much the same way he read: quickly, thoroughly, with an eye to what was on the surface and what was between the lines. "In the sideboard as always. Scotch for me. There is a story that explains the swollen cheek and lip, I collect."

Matthew Forrester felt the stirrings of an old memory, one that did not often come to him. This evening's play had something to do with it, he was sure. There had been the odd moment when he had been reminded of Hambrick Hall days. Something the characters did or said pulled him back to that time; the farce of the courtroom scene was an obvious reminder. He hadn't been alone in those memories, because it was at the root of all the outrageous laughter and ill manners on display this evening in Eastlyn's box. None of them had been as foxed as they wanted to be, so there was no blaming it on drink and a thick head.

But if he had been thinking about the Society of Bishops and their silly tribunal earlier, he thought now about the first time he had seen John Blackwood. There had been that glimpse in his father's study of the pose struck just so, the one that he had adopted to such good effect for the Bishops. Insolent. Mildly challenging. Daring.

It was a posture Colonel Blackwood could no longer affect. His wasting illness had weakened the muscles of his legs, made his balance uncertain, and slowed his reflexes. This evening his hands were steady. That was not always the case. He was still a handsome man with his shock of black hair. True, it was thinning slightly at the crown and seeded with gray, but it was not what one noticed about the colonel at first glance. It was the eyes that captured attention at the outset and made one stand one's ground, not out of any sense of bravery, but because it seemed quite impossible to move until permission was granted.

From behind a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles those dark-brown eyes watched South now. Insolent. Mildly challenging. Daring South to express even a hint of pity for him. Time and illness could not change that. It made the viscount smile to realize how wrong he had been.

"Scotch, eh?" South said."What does your doctor say?"

"He doesn't advise me in regard to my libations, and I don't call him a charlatan. We find that to be a satisfactory arrangement."

South chuckled, then winced. He touched his fingers to his lip, wondering if the small cut would scar. He opened the sideboard, withdrew a decanter of Scotch, and poured two tumblers, not stinting for either of them. Returning to where the colonel sat, he handed him one of the tumblers, took a moment to stoke the fire, then eased his long, athletic frame into the wing chair opposite him.

"I went to Drury Lane this evening," he said.

"Alone?"

"No. North needed a diversion. The dowager countess is showing her daughter-in-law off again."

The deep creases around Blackwood's mouth eased a bit. His smile was gentle."Elizabeth." He said her name fondly. She was a blood relation, the daughter of his dear first cousin, long gone. "She deserves to be shown off, not relegated to the country or playing handmaiden and companion to Lord and Lady Battenburn. Is she well?"

"Better than well." South chose to remain quiet about the Baron and Baroness of Battenburn. Let Northam extricate his wife from their influence. There were some things a husband should be required to manage on his own.

Blackwood nodded and returned to their business. "So you and Northam went."

"Eastlyn also. It's his box. And Marchman, of course."

"No, you couldn't very well leave West behind," the colonel said wryly. "I trust you managed some discretion."

Staring at the contents of his glass, South cleared his throat. "I rather suppose that depends on one's definition."

The colonel's eyes narrowed. "My definition is widely accepted as standard: demonstrating good judgment; prudent. Above all that you were circumspect, not attracting notice."

"Aaah," South said, one dark brow kicking up as he raised his glass."Well, there you have me. Afraid I attracted some notice."

Blackwood merely stared at him before he finally surrendered a sigh. "You might as well tell me the whole of it now. I find the application of thumbscrews so tedious these days."

Grinning, then wincing anew, South launched into his tale of his evening at the theatre, sparing himself nothing in the telling of it. His recitation was no more flattering to his character than the actual events had been. Since there was no point in taking refuge in his own embarrassment at having allowed things to get so completely out of hand, South simply acknowledged it, apologized, and went on. At the conclusion he was still stretched negligently in the wing chair, but with the tumbler of Scotch pressed lightly against his cheek and the corner of his lip. It was a small concession to his injury at the hands of Miss India Parr.