“And maybe he’ll kill hisself. You didn’t see the look on his face. A fellow loses his pride, his confidence.”
“Oh, pooh. You’re making too much of it, Rob.”
“And you’re making too little.” His face split in a grin, till he remembered the unfortunate earl, and his audience. “Deuce, chickie, you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, innocent miss like you. You ask Henny. At least she appreciates a man for what he is. No matter. Whatever old-maid notion you’ve got in your pretty head, I won’t stand for any more of this tinkerin’ with his, ah, virility. You find some other way of keepin’ his bed empty or him out of it, you hear me, missy?”
“I hear you, Rob. Now can I go for my ride?”
He went back to polishing the tack. “That’s another thing. You’re stirrin’ up talk with your rides in the park.”
“But I don’t speak to anyone, and I have your friend Clarence with me. No one has bothered us since that first time.”
“No, but they’ve noticed. Can’t help it, you ridin’ neck or nothin’ like you was born in the saddle.”
She smiled. “Well, I was, practically. And you taught me everything else.” Clyde came in, so Annalise bent down and scratched behind the little dog’s ears.
Rob looked up, and his weathered face creased in a grin. “Howsomever, you do look a picture on your horse. And all veiled like that, you create a kind of mystery for the paper-skulls with naught else to do but gawk.”
“Those fops and fribbles are harmless enough. The others who are out exercising their horses know better than to come near.”
“Aye, but they’re talkin’.” He turned aside and spit into a bucket halfway across the floor. “London’s a great place for talkin’, you know. Clarence says he heard mention of a lady in green in the pubs.”
“So let them talk.” Annalise kept petting the dog.
“
Thing
is, I have one of my chums on the lookout. Sir Vernon’s sent orders to the Clarendon, where he keeps rooms and a staff. Keepin’ it mum about any missin’ heiress so far, but he’s got men out askin’ questions.”
“But none of his London people know me, and he’s never seen
this
green habit. And I make sure every morning that Clarence remembers to paint the three white stockings and blaze on Seraphina. There is no way Sir Vernon’s people can recognize me.”
“Ain’t many women ride like the wind, chickie.”
“Oh, Robbie, don’t say I shouldn’t go!” she pleaded, taking the harness away from him. “I cannot attend parties or the opera. I must not visit the fashionable shops or booksellers where the
ton
gathers. I can’t even go sight-seeing except dressed as an old crone. Please don’t say I have to stay indoors all day, feeling as depressed as I look!”
“Reckon you’d only get up to more mischief that way, anyhow. Suppose it’ll do, leastways till we hear Sir Vernon hisself comes to town. I’ll have Clarence take another groom along. And maybe you should get to the park an hour earlier, afore the young bucks get there.”
Annalise laughed. “Then we’ll certainly have to convince his lordship to go home early at night, won’t we?”
*
The earl went home and soaked in a hot tub to get rid of the stink at least, if not his despair. His spirits did not rise, however, nor anything else.
He sent his disapproving valet for a bottle of brandy. “But, my lord, it’s barely gone seven.”
“Morning or evening? No matter. Just fetch the liquor, Ingraham.”
Then Ross decided he’d never drink again. Men were often ruined by strong spirits; he’d always heard it was so. Who’d have thought it could happen to Lord Gardiner, though? He’d been a three-bottle, four-barmaid man in his salad days. Obviously his salad was wilted.
Hell, he reconsidered, if he could never go wenching anymore, he may as well drink himself into oblivion. He started as soon as his man returned with the bottle.
Ingraham was shocked. “But, my lord, we have an appointment with Gentleman Jackson for
this
morning, and we are promised to attend a Venetian breakfast this afternoon with Lady Gardiner. Then there is dinner at White’s with Mr. Fansoll.”
“We aren’t going anywhere. Certainly not to be pummeled by any sparring partner or fawned over by those simpering misses. And as for White’s…” He shuddered, thinking of listening to the latest
on-dit,
knowing there was a special place in tattle-monger’s hell reserved just for him. “You can make my excuses, Ingraham. Tell them I’m below par, out of sorts, under the weather. Incapacitated.” He shuddered again.
Ingraham attempted to put his hand on the earl’s forehead to feel for a fever. He was roughly pushed aside. “Shall I call a physician, my lord?”
“No, just leave me alone.” Then Gard regretted the real concern he saw on his old retainer’s face. “I just need a few hours’ sleep. Been trotting too hard, is all. Don’t worry, I’ll be right as a trivet tomorrow.”
Ingraham smiled in relief. “That’s all right, then. A day’s rest should put the starch back in your step.”
Too bad that wasn’t where he needed it.
*
Annalise put the mare through her paces, wishing there were a jumping course, a real challenge. As it was, her mind was only half on controlling the playful chestnut. The other half of her thoughts were on Rob’s words, what he’d said about his lordship.
Taking the lustful Lord Gardiner down a peg or two was as satisfying as this morning’s hard gallop on the deserted paths. On the other hand, even she had to admit he was a handsome devil, exuding manliness with every breath. It would be a sin to cause such a virile man permanent damage, even if he was a rogue. Gelding a fractious stallion was one thing, but Annalise never meant to end Lord Gardiner’s career as a rake altogether, just while he was in her vicinity. His morals or lack of them were his own affair, as long as he kept his affairs out of her house.
Unhappily for Miss Avery’s conscience, her grandmother’s directions were not quite as explicit as Annalise could have wished. Most likely the older woman never had occasion to use that particular formula.
Annalise was thinking so hard about his lordship’s condition that she never heard her name called.
“Miss Avery? Miss Annalise Avery?”
By the time the name registered, she and Seraphina and their two escorts were far beyond the caller. Clarence and his cohort were not aware of her real name in any case, just knowing her as a connection of Cock Robin’s. Ma’am, she was to them, or Miss Robin. They never looked back.
Annalise knew the danger and was able to ride on without registering the slightest start at hearing her name, not the smallest jab at the reins to disturb the mare’s easy gait, not the tiniest stiffening of her own erect carriage. She did turn back at the fork in the path, though, cantering effortlessly the way she had come, trying to spot her adversary in order to get a good description of him for Rob. The man called out again as they passed, and she looked right through him, through her veil, with the same haughty rise of her chin she gave the few pedestrians who sought to engage her in conversation. One man whistled and another rudesby tipped his hat and offered compliments on her riding. She kept going, knowing that anyone who sought to follow would be deterred by her companions.
Annalise knew better than to flee the park immediately, so she continued with her ride although her peace was cut up. She thought she’d acquitted herself well, but now she had something else to worry about in addition to Lord Gardiner’s sex life.
Chapter Thirteen
Lord Gardiner slept the clock around. He awoke at dawn refreshed and optimistic. The morning waters always—no, the tide was still out. He decided to go riding despite the dismals. A horse just might be the only thing he’d ever mount again.
Expecting to have the park to himself, he was astounded at the small knots of riders and carriages he saw along the tanbark. Even Cholly Fansoll was out, and Cholly never stirred before noon.
“What’s toward, Cholly?” Gard asked, pulling his black stallion to a halt alongside his friend’s curricle. “A race or something starting here?”
“Where have you been that you haven’t heard the latest—oh, forgot. Sickly, your man said. How are you feeling, then?”
“Fine, fine.” He didn’t want to talk about it. “What’s this about, some new marvel?”
Cholly just smiled. “Wait.”
All eyes were directed toward the avenue along the Serpentine, so Gard looked that way, too, holding his restive horse in check with a firm hand. “I know you want to run, Midnight. Soon, boy.”
In a few minutes a collective sigh went up from the gathered gentlemen as a perfect vision cantered down the path.
“My word, what a magnificent creature,” Gard exclaimed.
“And the horse isn’t half bad, either. Part Arabian from the neck and the small head. She’s got enough speed to give even your Midnight a run for it, I’d guess from the way she’s been showing all the chaps her heels.”
“Who the devil is she?” the earl demanded, interrupting Cholly’s continuing enumeration of the chestnut mare’s fine points, from the three white stockings to the white blaze on her forehead.
“Dashed if I know. That’s what all the commotion is about. Fellows are determined to find out. Intrigue fires ’em up, don’t you know. Lady in Green, they’re calling her. Don’t talk to anyone, won’t stop for anything. Bets are on whether she’s just another pretty horsebreaker trying to stir up interest and a higher price, or visiting royalty trying to remain incognito. Eccles has a monkey riding on her being someone’s runaway wife. Alvanley thinks she’s just some demirep with a horrible scar, and that’s why she stays all covered up.”
“I’ll lay my blunt on the princess.”
“But you can’t see her face!”
“She’s just got to be beautiful. Look at that figure. Besides, only a beautiful woman carries herself with such assurance. And none of the Fashionable Impure would ever be seen with two such thatchgallows in tow. Or a veil. Or without her manager, if she’s looking for a new protector. No, she’s a lady.”
“Someone’s wife, then?”
“No one in his right mind would let her out of his sight, and someone would have identified her by now if she was married to any of the peerage. She’s a princess, all right. There’s just something about her.” And something else about her, perhaps the defiant way she raised her head and ignored the stares and whispers, perhaps just the silly green feathers trailing along the cheek he couldn’t see, appealed to him so much that he felt a current stir in himself he feared was dead. He shifted in the saddle and grinned. “I think I’m in love.”
“In rut, more like,” his friend commented ruefully, out of long habit, “though how you can be without ever seeing the female is more than I can say. Still, glad to see you’re takin’ an interest. Some odd stories going a—”
Gard rode forward, to see better. He knew the path the lady was on, but so did the others. He couldn’t get near.
*
Annalise was getting nervous. All those men, all the carriages. Her tension was reaching Seraphina, making the high-strung animal jittery. Annalise turned to her escorts to tell Clarence to close ranks, to ride closer, they’d be leaving the park. But a high-perch phaeton somehow darted into the narrow path between her and her companions. When she looked forward again, a racing curricle was sideways across the roadway in front, and riders and men on foot lined the grass verge on her right side, with the river hemming her in on the left. Seraphina pranced in place uneasily. Annalise stroked the mare’s neck, but her own tension was like a hammer pounding between her ribs.
“A moment of your time, pretty lady,” the driver of the curricle called to her. He was what Robbie would have called a curst rum touch, she could see from his snuff-stained shirt, the pouches under his eyes, the evil grin that showed blackened teeth. She said nothing, allowing Seraphina to back and circle in her fidgets.
She could hear Clarence bellowing behind her, and the sounds of a scuffle where her other guard, Mick, should have been. She did not take her eyes off the dissipated driver in front of her.
“Your name, fair one, that’s all.”
At first Annalise did not understand what kind of game the men were playing. Surely these gentlemen—and she labeled them thus from the expensive equipages she saw and the unmistakably Weston-tailored apparel on many of the leering pedestrians—never meant to offer harm to a well-bred female in broad daylight. Robbie was right, she concluded. She had made herself too mysterious to these profligates with nothing better to do than tease an unprotected woman. They were just curious. She could give them Miss Robbin or something, and they would let her pass.
Then a man in a puce waistcoat, on a winded bay, shouted to the man in the curricle, “No, Repton, that ain’t all. Ask for her price.”
One of the other men who bordered the path, cutting off a possible retreat through the wooded area, yelled, “I’ll match it, whatever you bid.”
Her price? Were they thinking Seraphina was for sale?
Then she heard another voice from behind her. “I say we get a look at her face, see what we’re bidding on.”
Dear Lord, they were discussing her,
Annalise
Avery, as if she were a horse on the block! She looked again at the man in the curricle blocking the roadway. His eyes were glinting and he licked his lips. He actually thought she would go home with
him
if he paid enough! Annoyance gave way to insult, tinged with fear. That man, Repton, they’d said, did not look like he’d accept a polite refusal.