How to Beguile a Beauty (12 page)

A small smile played around her lips. “Once, in a letter, his very last letter, he called me his dearest Lyddie. You brought that letter to me, remember?”

Tanner remembered. He'd never forget.

Take care of her for me, Tanner. She's so young, so gentle and pure. She won't understand. Promise me! On your mother's eyes, damn it. You'll take care of my
Lyddie. Make her forget me. She needs a good man, a gentleman and a gentle man. You've a good heart, and she needs someone with a good heart. Promise me, Tanner. Don't let me die without your promise.

You're not going to die, you Irish bastard. You'll go home to your Lyddie yourself. Let me talk to the surgeon. I'll find a litter and some men and we'll carry you back to town and—

Don't try to lie to me. I don't have time for lies. I'm sorry, boyo, more sorry than you can know, but my journey ends here. Mine, not hers. Listen to me. She's easy to love, I promise you that. Give her smiles, Tanner, give her little ones to cuddle. Take my hand, Tanner, and look me in the eye. Yes, like that. I have your hand on it now. I'm giving her to you. I'm placing her in your keeping. My Lyddie…

Tanner wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to tell her all that he'd promised the dying, increasingly frantic Fitz in order to help ease his passing. Mostly, he wanted to tell her that he'd never considered that promise a burden. Never. From the instant he'd seen her that terrible day, from the moment he'd held her in his arms, uselessly trying to comfort her in her bone deep anguish, he'd known. He hadn't wanted to let her go that day…he didn't want to let go of her now.

But now wasn't the time. Regent Street certainly wasn't the place. And Malvern would be cluttered with Jasmine and her father and…his competition. The competition he'd talked about so casually with Rafe. If he'd known that competition would have come in the form
of Justin Wilde, would he have been so sanguine, so sure of himself? No, definitely not.

But only by letting her go, letting her move forward at her own pace, experience more of the world, could he hope to win her love. Him. Not Fitz's friend. Not Rafe's friend.
Him.

“Tanner? I've disappointed you, haven't I?

He looked at her in some shock, realizing that once again he'd been silent too long. The cart was finally pushed back up on its wheels, and he released the brake, made ready to move on down Regent Street. “You could never disappoint me, Lydia,” he said with all sincerity.

“Yes, that's very nice, and exactly what you would say. But I've just revealed myself to be shallow and selfish.”

“It's selfish to wish Fitz hadn't died? It's shallow to wish there was no such thing as war?”

At last, she smiled, if that smile only appeared for a moment. “You make it all sound so reasonable. Perhaps I've been thinking too much. Nicole always says I think too much.”

“No, your sister's wrong. The problem, as I see it, lies in that you were searching for logic where none exists. The only answer to the question of why there are wars, Lydia, is that there have always been wars. It's not a logical answer. It isn't even a good answer. But, sadly, until and unless someone finally finds a way to settle matters of ambition and greed without sending vast armies into the field, it's the only one we have. Fitz understood that. He knew what he was doing, and why, when he left you and went to Brussels.”

“Forgive him, and also forgive myself. That's what you're saying, isn't it?”

“I don't see any other answer, do you?”

She was silent for some moments, while Tanner held his breath. A lot was riding on her answer, and he felt they both knew it. Their future, for one thing, if they were to have one, together.

Finally, she shook her head. “He's gone, and I can't change that. But I can do much better now in honoring his memory, without also being angry with him for having died. He was right, Tanner, I was still very much a child when he left me. Now, at last, I think I can forgive myself.” She laid her hand on his forearm. “Thank you, Tanner. Thank you so much.”

There really was nothing more to say, not without beginning the uncomfortable conversation all over again, a rehashing neither of them could possibly want. Tanner lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the tips of her gloved fingers. “And now you're ready to see this shop with me?”

“Of course,” she said, closing her hand when he released it, almost as if she wanted to capture his kiss, hold it. Or at least he'd like to think so, which probably made him fanciful.

Then she frowned as she looked where he had indicated with a sweep of his arm, and then continued her gaze until she'd visually inspected the area from curb to curb. “Where are we? I've been to Bond Street enough to know we're not there. I haven't been paying attention, have I?”

Tanner set the brake and lightly hopped down onto the flagway, a young lad of no more than ten already running toward him with his hand outstretched, eager to trade a coin for watching the horses.

He then helped Lydia down from the seat, perhaps holding on to her waist a heartbeat too long as he looked into her eyes, hoping the shadows were at last gone. His fancifulness continued, because he thought perhaps their lovely blue was a little brighter now than it had been. Justin could probably put the light of amusement in her eyes, with his wit and shameless flirting. But could he give her what she really needed? Gentleness. Undertanding.

God, but he was like a comfortable old pair of hacking trousers, a warm pair of slippers. Could he be more pitiful, more pathetic? Less romantic…

“We're on Regent Street,” he told her rather flatly as he tucked her arm through his and led her a few paces down the flagway. “Number 187, on the block between Conduit and Burlington, to be more precise about the thing.”

“I don't think you need be that specific, no. It's enough that you know the way back to Grosvenor Square. Why are we here?”

Tanner stopped in front of a narrow shop bearing a hanging sign sporting a woodcut of a lady's boot. Also on the sign were the words
JAMs. SLY. Laydies Boot & Shoe Maker. Est. 1808.

It had seemed such a good idea when he'd first thought of it, but now he wasn't as certain. Justin would
have taken her to some fancy milliner's, coaxed her into a ridiculously flattering bonnet with bunches of flowers on it.

He was going to buy her a good, sturdy pair of boots.

Pitiful. Just pitiful…

“Not quite bootmaker to the Queen, but he does come highly recommended for his particular talents.”

“But…but we'll be leaving London tomorrow,” Lydia protested. “Why would I order new shoes today? They couldn't possibly be ready in less than a week.”

He steered her inside the shop, a bell hanging just over the door merrily ringing as they entered. “Ah, but Mr. Sly considers himself a merchant of innovation. I'm told he maintains a rather extensive inventory in addition to fashioning footwear to order. I'm hoping we might be able to find you a suitable pair of boots.”

“Boots?”

He smiled down at her as a gangly youth straightened from behind a stack of boxes and hastened toward them. The entire shop smelled of fine leather and polish. “Yes. Boots. And they're to be my gift to you. Now, aren't you going to ask me why I wish to make you a present of a pair of boots?”

Lydia was looking avidly about the strange shop. A workman's shop, really, with shelves reaching to the ceiling, each of them lined with row upon row of ladies shoes and boots. “I thought I already had. When I said
boots?
And is it proper for a gentleman to gift a lady with a pair of boots? I'm afraid I am not familiar with the boundaries set up by polite society.”

He took hold of her hands. “Polite society never went tramping over the Malvern Hills. I want to show you my home, Lydia, all of it. When I was young, I believed I could see the entire world from the hilltops I hiked, my dogs at my side. Cook would pack me a lunch and I'd be gone for hours. I don't expect you to want to climb all the way to the top of any of the hills, but there are some interesting paths and ancient ruins here and there.”

“It all sounds lovely. And who is to say I wouldn't decide to climb all the way to the top of one of the hills? I might like to see the entire world.”

And he'd like to give her the world. But he didn't say that. He didn't say a lot of things he wanted to say. But he would. Soon.

“Mister Sly will be with you directly, milord,” the young lad said after patiently waiting for an opening. “He's just now finishing up the last stitches on a pair of wedding boots for a young lady. Tapping on the heels, he is, red ones. They're a sight, they are. Would you be her, miss?”

“No, I wouldn't be her,” Lydia said quietly, and then pointed to a pair of tan boots displayed on the countertop. “But I would very much like to look at those, if I might? I may be climbing mountains, you understand.”

A deep, booming voice came to them from the back of the shop. “A fine choice. Turnshoe construction, every bit of it, except for the heels. Three-four lifts in those,” came a voice from the back of the shop. “Best heavy French silk, stiffened, and all lined with softest
linen for milady. But the soles are sturdy, which is the point of the thing, what?”

Tanner watched as a rotund man with bright red cheeks and puffs of white hair perched on top of his ears but nowhere else on his shiny dome of a head pushed his way through parted curtains and into the crowded shop. “Yes, yes, finest leather soles and heels, and with thirteen pairs of lace-edged holes, for fashion, you know. And all done up with a single cord laced up from the bottom and then back down again so the bow can be seen peeking out from under the hem of milady's skirt. Practical doesn't mean there's no need for pretty, what? Some of my best work, if I do say so m'self. Made up two dozen pair, knowing they'd fly out the door. All the world will soon be doing what I do. But I'm doing it first, and better than anyone else. Robert, don't just stand there, boy. Fetch me my forms.”

In short order, Lydia was seated in a chair elevated from the floor on a box of sorts, and James Sly was looking down at her feet and urging her to lift her hem, “Just enough to stay decent, if you take m'meaning,” and Tanner was deciding whether the glint in the jolly man's eyes belonged to his love of his boots or a taste for ladies' ankles.

He decided it was the ankles.

The boot maker sat himself down on the low stool his apprentice had placed in front of Lydia, his knees spread as he shifted the stool closer to her, and grinned at her. “If you'd just slip off your right—ah, yes, that's the ticket. Robert, come here. Now, look at that foot,
will you? Long, slender. See the height in the arch? There's beauty for you, shows the lady here is no slouch. Like to walk, do you, miss?”

“Yes, um, I enjoy walking. I've been walking nearly all of my life.” She looked up at Tanner, and shrugged as if to say, “What else would I do—flap my arms and fly?”

Mr. Sly—and Tanner was beginning to think the man's name fit him very well—cupped his hand beneath Lydia's stockinged foot and lifted—lifted!—her leg a good two feet off the platform. She quickly put her hands on her gown, trying to keep her leg covered.

“Here, now—” Tanner protested, but Mr. Sly paid him no mind as he turned Lydia's foot this way and that as if examining it for flaws.

“Now, Robert, I'm going to have your opinion, if you please. Which form would you first think a match? Come on, quickly, lad. The six? Or the seven?”

“Um…er…” the apprentice glanced at Lydia's foot and quickly looked away. “The seven?”

“Ha! Thought you had half a chance of being right, did you? As if I'd make it that easy for you. The five, Robert. I'd wager your supper on that.” He shifted his hand so that now he was cupping Lydia's heel and she had managed to all but wrap her hands around her leg, pulling her skirts close in an attempt at modesty.

“The Number Five, sir,” Robert said, handing the man a wooden form of a foot—rather well carved, actually. Dear God, the man had actually carved a set of toes onto the form. Was that dedication, or a fetish?

The boot maker positioned the form alongside Lydia's foot. The two matched in length. “Do I have an eye, Robert? Yes, I do. You've a pretty foot, miss, I'll say it again. Classic.”

Tanner restrained himself from kicking the fellow off his stool, but it was a near-run thing.

Fortunately, Mr. Sly didn't seem to trust his apprentice enough to have him bring the correct boots from the shelves. “You may put your foot down now, miss,” he told Lydia, and then hauled himself to his feet and hustled to the shelves lining the right wall.

“Enthusiastic, isn't he?” she said, smoothing her skirts as she neatly hid her stockinged foot beneath the hem.

“This may have been a bad idea on my part,” Tanner said quietly. “Would you rather we left?”

“I'd say yes, except that I do want to go tramping your Malvern Hills…and the boots really are quite lovely. Imagine, Tanner, the man has found a way to measure feet beforehand and make shoes to fit them. How many sizes are there to feet, do you think?”

“An even dozen, miss,” Robert whispered, one eye on his master. “Mr. Sly, he worked it all out. Five is not all so common. Most of the ladies fall in the higher numbers. We tell them the higher numbers are better, but they're really just bigger. When I open m'own shop, I think I'll use names of flowers or some such, and no numbers.”

“Yes, I can see the point of that,” Lydia said, winking up at Tanner. “Dear lady, you are a day lily, how exem
plary.” Then her smile faded as Mr. Sly returned carrying a pair of boots, ready to take up his seat in front of her once more. She all but slammed her hands down on her skirts.