Fran Baker (20 page)

“What’s this?” he asked mildly as he straightened.

“N-nothing!” Amy replied in a suffocated voice. “G-give it to me, if you please.”

His hand paused in the act of reaching toward her and a sudden streak of suspicion crossed his face. Amy’s eyes widened in horror as his hand drew back.

“What could be of such import?” Daniel asked slowly.

“It is nothing of import, I tell you,” insisted the girl in a faltering tone. She stretched out a trembling hand.

Daniel’s hazel eyes traveled from parchment to hand to Amy’s pale face, then back again to the paper in his hand. Against his will, he gradually unfolded it.

She treads the earth, A Golden Goddess
, flowed the script which met his wrathful gaze. Through tight lips, he charged, “You’ve been wearing this against your heart!”

“It—it is not as you think . . .” Amy stammered. Her voice trailed into nothingness as he turned upon her a look of such cold disbelief that her power of further speech was quite thoroughly extinguished. How could she explain to this frozen fury?

“What
I
think seems to be immaterial, miss,” he clipped out. “It is only too obvious that it is the thoughts of Sir Uriah Sampson which are an object with you.”

“No—no!” she cried, recoiling from his vicious tone.

“Even so, Miss Thacker,” he continued harshly, ignoring her feverish protests, “I shall take leave to inform you of what I think. I think you have been playing a very pretty game—a game in which I am the unfortunate loser. But whatever you hope to gain by becoming Lady Sampson, there is one thing, at least, which you shall forfeit.” He was livid with anger as the aggregation of centuries of Phillips pride seemed to spill into him from his ancestors lining the wall. His lips cracked into an ugly sneer. “That is the honest love of a good man.”

By the end of this tirade, Amelia’s shocked despair had given way to injured wrath. In glacial tones, she responded, “Love, Mr. Baldwin? What do you claim to know of love? You disavow your supposed love for me at the first opportunity and without awaiting my explanation!”

“You think you can explain away what my eyes have seen? I am not such a fool, miss!”

With a surge of fresh rage, Amy ripped the ring from her finger and icily begged Mr. Baldwin to remove the offensive reminder of her folly from her sight.

“Gladly! I’m only grateful to have discovered so quickly what a mistake I was making.” With these last harsh words, Daniel turned and strode swiftly away from her.

Amelia watched him go in rigid hauteur. As soon as his form disappeared around the corner, however, she sank back down onto the settee and wept bitterly. She looked with blurred eyes at the poem, the hateful, hateful poem. Then she tore it savagely to shreds. This afforded her little comfort. She would much rather, she decided, have shredded Sir Uriah and Daniel Baldwin each by turns. Men were all abominable creatures, she now realized, and she was better off, much, much better, without them.

At length, her tears ceased to flow and she sat silently in dull misery, staring at her pink kid slipper. She did not know how long she had been sitting thus when she heard a steady footfall. She raised her head to dimly perceive Rose coming toward her.

“Amy! I’ve been searching for you this past hour! You must hurry to get dressed for dinner.” As Rose drew near she saw the red-rimmed eyes, the woeful turn of Amy’s usually smiling lips. “My dear, whatever has happened?” she asked in concern as she took the seat vacated some time since by Baldwin and enfolded the girl in her arms.

Fresh tears welled up in those violet eyes and as they spilled over onto the shoulder of Rose’s best indigo kerseymere, Amy haltingly explained what had happened.

“You see the poem arrived just as we were leaving, so I—I stuck it in my dress to read later. And when it fell out, Daniel thought—Daniel thought—” Amy finished with a dismal sniff.

“Do you . . . care . . . for Sir Uriah?”

“Oh, Rose, he is nothing but a
fop
!” Amy disclaimed impatiently. “He wears his shirt collars so high he cannot even turn his head! And he does not even
know
what a figure he cuts. But he writes such pretty things about me . . . I just wanted to read it . . .”

As the young voice died sadly away, Rose promised briskly to have speech with Mr. Baldwin and do what she could to set matters to rights.

“I do not think that you will be able to repair the damage that I have done, dear Rose,” Amy said mournfully. “But you are the best of good cousins to try.”

Eventually she allowed herself to be led to her bedchamber where she dressed with such an unusual lack of interest that her maid inquired solicitously if Miss was feeling quite the thing.

“Yes. No! It doesn’t matter!” Amy had snapped in reply before descending to bleakly partake in dinner.

Chapter 14

Swan giblet soup and stewed eels were lavishly followed by a saddle of mutton, roasted guinea fowl and pigeon pie, which in turn, were removed to be replaced with the main course of oyster patties and fricassee chicken. Each succeeding course of the princely meal was served in the grandest of style and seemed interminable to more than one of the earl’s guests.

Conversation was as a result on the desultory side and as the meal wore on, Hallbrook had turned more and more often to Miss Lawrence to sustain the discourse, which she did in her usual collected manner. The old man had been much impressed at the lady’s cool observation that there had never yet been a minister to equal Sir Robert Walpole and from that moment on, the earl had begun to favor her with his opinions on the current outlandish policies of the Regent’s ill-run government. As both Miss Lawrence on his left and Miss Helen on his right were good listeners, the earl was one of the few present to thoroughly enjoy his meal.

For her part, Rose had cause to be grateful to the golden French cherub who held aloft the candelabra, for effectively blocked her view of the viscount. Since her brief but unsettling encounter with Stratford that afternoon, she had humored herself for a time with wishing she had not come. But not being one to indulge in such fruitless conjecturings for long, Rose had soon put aside all fancies and reconciled herself to a trying visit. It was not as if she did not have anything to occupy her mind, she reflected facetiously, what with Mr. Baldwin and Amy rigidly exchanging commonplaces across the table and Helen returning Stratford’s pleasantries with a subdued abstraction. It was a matchmaker’s nightmare and she was still puzzling over how she would disentangle the twisted affairs when Lady Minerva finally stood to signal the removal of the dishes.

Neither of his grandsons appeared disposed to linger over the port so it was not long before Hallbrook suggested they follow the ladies. When they entered the Keep’s elegant Grand Salon, they found one member of the party already gone, for Miss Thacker had retired immediately after supper, declaring herself to be excessively fatigued. This highly unusual circumstance was questioned by no one, though her mother had focused upon her a searching regard which Amy was unable to meet.

Baldwin seemed inclined to echo Miss Thacker’s sentiments and withdraw, but he was thwarted in his attempt to do so by his grandfather who thrust a glass of claret into his hand and demanded to know what it was he saw in the flighty young miss.

“I regret to inform you, sir,” Daniel replied as he stiffly as he sat, “that you are laboring under a misapprehension. Miss Thacker and I have come to the conclusion that we should not suit.”

“Eh? Well ’tis like for the best, my boy. There’s no denying that she’s a taking little thing, but there’s plenty more of her sort about and make no mistake,” asserted the earl while shrewdly watching the young man from beneath half-closed lids.

Daniel colored, but made  no reply and the old man soon shifted his eyes to the others in the room. As they came to rest upon Miss Lawrence seated on a remote sofa, he remarked in a less caustic tone, “Now there’s a woman of sense.”

Following the earl’s gaze, Baldwin instantly agreed. “Miss Lawrence is most worthy, sir. I have the highest regard for her.”

“To my way of thinking, it’s a great pity a gel such as that ain’t married,” asserted the earl, stabbing a bony finger into the air. “That’s a waste of a fine woman.”

His grandson appeared much struck with this observation. “Yes, sir, I believe it is,” he said in a thoughtful tone.

By then the earl had moved on to loudly demand of his daughter what she meant by foisting that mealy-faced schoolroom chit Jane onto the Andells, for if she thought to catch the young marquis with such a namby-pamby miss as that she would soon learn her mistake, and Daniel’s words were lost in the ensuing hostility as his mother rose to the defense of his young sister.

Crisis was avoided when Rose, seeing her sister turn white at the upraised voices of the earl and Lady Minerva, pleasantly inquired if a servant might not be sent to her rooms to fetch her sewing. “It is most relaxing, you know, and after such a busy day I dare say my mind could benefit from the soothing qualities of taking a stitch or two.”

Her request was immediately granted and Elizabeth Thacker took the opportunity to suggest a game of whist, having heard the earl was one of the finest players to be met. It proved to be the perfect answer of how to occupy the remainder of the evening for both Hallbrook and Lady Minerva were avid card-players and all mention of Jane was forgotten as a table was made ready.

Miss Lawrence firmly declined to play as her sewing was all she wanted of the evening. Miss Helen begged to be allowed to make her excuses, for though her stay in London had accustomed her to late hours, she wanted to be fresh for a promised early morning ride across the Keep’s estates with Lord Stratford. With a curtsey, she was gone, leaving Baldwin to make the fourth, for Stratford insisted piquet, not whist, was his game.

The party settled down to a quiet murmur over the card table while in her corner Rose began neatly stitching a monogram on a square of linen. The viscount paced the room several times, occasionally pausing to watch Miss Lawrence as her head bent over her nimble fingers. He was arrested in midstride by a curt command from his grandfather to make himself still or quit the room.

Stratford cast himself into a wingback chair which stood opposite Miss Lawrence. Stretching out his long legs and hunching his shoulders into the corner of the chair, he studied her from beneath his heavy lids. Each stitch went up and came down methodically and gradually the broad shoulders relaxed, the set of his lordship’s jaw eased. Rose’s gaze came up from her needlework to meet his. She smiled and the viscount was conscious of a rare feeling of contentment.

“You are a most . . . restful . . . woman, Miss Lawrence,” he said before she could return to her work.

Her smile broadened. “Now that, at least, is a compliment I do not suspect you of practicing!”

“I cannot claim to have known many restful women,” he admitted with a rueful smile. “Tell me, what is it you are sewing?”

“It is to be a gift for Helen—a wedding gift,” she replied with only the ghost of her smile remaining. “I am working her new monogram upon it now.”

The unhappiness which crossed his face tore at her, but she fought against showing any of this and said instead, “Do you know, back home in Willowley, I would have been abed an hour ago? I believe I must get my rest now or I shall not be a very restful woman any longer.”

Her attempt at raillery brought no response from Stratford, though he stood and moved to open the door for her. As she retired to her room, Rose sighed a little at her inability to have spoken, as promised, with Mr. Baldwin on Amy’s behalf, but she could not have borne the sweet torment of his lordship’s company throughout the whole of the card game waiting to do so. As it was, her peace of mind had been quite thoroughly uprooted. She would, she vowed with determination, think only of catching Mr. Baldwin at the first opportunity on the morrow.

But it was of a pair of dark, downturned eyes that she dreamt.

*****

In the event, Rose did not have to search out Daniel Baldwin in the morning, for the gentleman appeared as she was leaving the breakfast room to beg a few moments of her time. With a quizzical life her brow, she went with him to a small but cheery sitting room the east windows of which afforded an excellent view of the Keep’s well-manicured gardens. Turning her back upon this superb view, Rose sat on a bright green crocodile couch, folded her hands in her lap and waited calmly for him to begin.

He appeared to be having some difficulty collecting his thoughts, for twice his mouth opened and twice it closed before he nervously cleared his throat.

“Mr. Baldwin, if it is about your  unfortunate misunderstanding with Amelia that you wish to speak, let me say that I am already fully informed of the circumstances,” Rose said helpfully.

“No! That is to say, yesterday’s occurrence only served to open my eyes to the folly I had committed in thinking Miss Thacker a suitable wife for me,” he responded with force.

“But she is! She loves you so very—”

“Madam, I’ve not come to speak of Miss Thacker,” Baldwin cut in. “Let me make it clear to you that the association is finished.”

“Oh, surely not! Such feelings as have passed between you—”

“Are now, gratefully, a thing of the past. Though I cannot deny certain . . . feelings still exist, they will no doubt diminish with time.”

“Mr. Baldwin, you would do well to reconsider. Amy’s indiscretion was not due to any lack of love for you, but to the natural flattery derived from Sir Uriah’s poetry. Why, she does not even like the man!”

“Which makes her behavior in encouraging him all the worse. I am no flatterer, ma’am, and if Miss Thacker will only sip from a honeyed cup, then we are much better parted.”

His expression was closed and Rose saw that it would be useless at this point to protest further. Having two stubborn brothers had taught her a great deal about argumentation and she felt that if she waited, another opportunity to convince him otherwise would present itself. It was with a sense of shock that she realized he was speaking to her.