Lady Whistledown Strikes Back (3 page)

Well, the night before had been grisly, and we’d lost many of our regiment.”

She leaned forward, her eyes wide and glowing with
compassion, and when he looked at her, he saw the rose milkiness of her
skin, the light dusting of freckles across her nose—more than anything,
he wanted to kiss her.

Good God. Right there at Lady Neeley’s dinner
party, he wanted to grab Tillie Howard by the shoulders, haul her
against him and kiss her for everything he was worth.

Harry would have called him out on the spot.

“What happened?” she asked, and the words should
have jolted him back to reality, reminded him that he was telling her
something rather important, but all he could do was stare at her lips,
which weren’t quite pink, but rather a little peachy, and it occurred
to him that he’d never, ever bothered to look at a woman’s mouth
before—at least not like this— before kissing her.

“Mr. Thompson?” she asked. “Peter?”

“Sorry,” he said, his fingers fisting beneath the
table, as if the pain of his nails against his palms could somehow
force him back to the matter at hand. “I made Harry a promise,” he
continued. “We were talking about home, as we often did when it was
particularly difficult, and he mentioned you, and I mentioned my
sister—she’s fourteen—and we promised each other that if anything
should befall us, we would watch out for the other’s sister. Keep you
safe.”

For a moment she did nothing but look at him, and
then she said, “That’s very kind of you, but don’t worry, I absolve you
of the vow. I’m no green girl, and I still have a brother in William.
Besides, I don’t need a replacement for Harry.”

Peter opened his mouth to speak, then quickly
thought better of it. He wasn’t feeling brotherly toward Tillie, and he
was quite certain this wasn’t what Harry had had in mind when he’d
asked him to look out for her.

And the
last
thing he wanted to be was her replacement brother.

But the moment seemed to call for a reply, and
indeed Tillie was regarding him quizzically, her head tilted to the
side as if she were waiting for him to say something quite meaningful
and intelligent or, if not that, something that would allow her to
offer a teasing retort.

Which was why, when Lady Neeley’s awful voice
screeched across the room, Peter didn’t mind the sound of it, even if
it was to say: “It’s gone! My bracelet is gone!”

The week’s most coveted invitation is now the week’s most talked about event. If it is possible that
you, Dear Reader, have not yet heard the news, This Author shall
recount it here: Lady Neeley’s hungry guests had not even finished
their soup when their hostess’s ruby bracelet was discovered to have
been stolen.

There is, to be sure, some
disagreement over the fate of the precious jewels. A number of guests
maintain that the bracelet was simply misplaced, but Lady Neeley claims
a crystal clear memory of the evening, and she says that it was
burglary, without question.

Apparently, the bracelet (whose
clasp was discovered to be faulty by Lady Mathilda Howard) was placed
in a candy dish (selected by the elusive Lord Easterly) and set upon a
table in Lady Neeley’s drawing room. Lady Neeley intended to bring the
dish to the dining room, so that her guests might admire its apparent
brilliance, but in the rush to reach the food (by this time, This
Author is told, the hour had grown so late that the guests, famished
all, abandoned decorum and made a mad dash for the dining room), the
bracelet was forgotten.

When
Lady Neeley remembered the jewels in the next room, she sent a footman
to collect them, but he returned with only the candy dish.

This, of course, was when the true excitement began.

Lady Neeley attempted to have
all of her guests searched, but truly, does anyone think one such as
the Earl of Canby would consent to have his person ransacked by a
baroness’s footman? The suggestion was made that the bracelet was
stolen by a servant, but Lady Neeley maintains an admirable loyalty
toward her servants (who, quite remarkably, return the sentiment), and
she refused to believe that any of her staff, none of whom have been in
her employ for less than five years, would have betrayed her in such a
manner.

In the end, all
of the guests departed in bad humor. And perhaps most tragically, all
of the food—save for the soup— went uneaten. One can only hope that
Lady Neeley saw fit to offer the feast to her servants, whom she had so
recently defended against attack.

And one can be sure, Dear
Reader, that This Author shall continue to comment upon this latest
on-dit. Is it possible that a member of the ton is nothing more than a
common thief? Nonsense. One would have to be most uncommon to have
spirited away such a valuable piece, right under Lady N’s nose.

LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS, 29 MAY 1816

“And then,” gushed some elaborately dressed young gentleman,
speaking in the tone of one who is quite certain he is always aware of the
latest gossip, “she forced Mr. Brooks—her own nephew—to strip off his coat and
allow two footmen to search him.”

“I heard it was three.”

“It was none,” Peter drawled, standing at the entrance of the
Canby drawing room. “I was there.”

Seven gentleman turned to face him. Five looked annoyed, one
bored, and one amused. As for Peter, he was profoundly irritated. He wasn’t
certain what he’d expected when he’d decided to travel to the opulent Canby
residence in Mayfair to call upon Tillie, but it hadn’t been
this.
The spacious drawing room was overfull with men and
flowers, and the small bunch of irises in his hand seemed rather superfluous.

Who knew that Tillie was so popular?

“I’m quite sure,” the first gentleman said, “that it was
two
footmen.”

Peter shrugged. He didn’t much care if the fop had the truth
or not. “Lady Mathilda was there as well,” he said. “You can ask her if you
don’t believe me.”

“It’s true,” Tillie said, smiling at him in greeting.
“Although Mr. Brooks did remove his coat.”

The man who had claimed that three footmen had been searching
guests turned to Peter and inquired, somewhat archly, “Did you remove your
coat?”

“No.”

“The guests revolted after Mr. Brooks was searched,” Tillie
explained, then changed the subject by asking her assembled beaux, “Are you
acquainted with Mr. Thompson?”

Only two were; Peter was still rather new to town, and most
of his acquaintances were limited to school friends from Eton and Cambridge.
Tillie made the necessary introductions, then Peter was relegated to the
eighth-best position in the room, as none of the other gentlemen was willing to
relocate and allow another any advantage in courting the lovely—and
wealthy—Lady Mathilda.

Peter read
Whistledown;
he knew
that Tillie was considered the season’s biggest heiress. And he recalled Harry
saying—quite often, actually—that he was going to have to beat off the fortune
hunters with a stick. But Peter hadn’t realized until this moment just how
assiduously the young men of London were fighting for her hand.

It was nauseating.

And in truth, he owed it to Harry to ensure that the man she
chose (or as was more likely the case, the man her father chose for her) would
treat her with the affection and respect she deserved.

And so he turned to the task of inspecting, and then when
appropriate, scaring off the lovesick swain surrounding him.

The first gentleman was easy. It took mere minutes to
determine that his vocabulary did not reach into the triple digits, and all
Peter had to do was mention that Tillie had told him that the activity she
enjoyed above all else was reading philosophical tracts.

The suitor made haste for the door, and Peter decided that
even if Tillie hadn’t actually mentioned such a predilection to him the night
before, the fact remained that she was certainly intelligent enough to read
philosophical tracts if she so chose, and that alone ought to disqualify the
match.

The next gentleman was known to Peter by reputation. An
inveterate gambler, all he required to bid his farewells was the mention of an
impending horse race in Hyde Park. And, Peter thought with satisfaction, he
took three of the others along with him. It was a good thing that the horse
race was not fictitious, although the four young men might be a bit
disappointed when they realized that Peter had misremembered the time of the
event, and indeed, that all bets had been placed some sixty minutes earlier.

Oh, well.

He smiled. He was having considerably more fun than he would
have imagined.

“Mr. Thompson,” came a dry, feminine voice in his ear, “are
you scaring off my daughter’s suitors?”

He turned to face Lady Canby, who was regarding him with an
amused expression, for which Peter was immensely thankful. Most mothers would
have been irate. “Of course not,” he replied. “Not the ones you’d want to see
her marry, at any rate.”

Lady Canby just raised her brows.

“Any man who’d rather throw money on a horse race than remain
here in your presence isn’t worthy of your daughter.”

She laughed, and when she did so, she looked a great deal
like Tillie. “Well spoken, Mr. Thomspon,” she said. “One cannot be too careful
when one is the mother of a great heiress.”

Peter paused, unsure whether that comment was meant to be
more pointed than her tone might imply.

If Lady Canby knew who he was, and she did—she’d recognized
his name immediately when they’d been introduced the night before—then she also
knew he had little more than pennies to his name.

“I promised Harry I would look out for her,” he said, his
voice stolid and resolute. There could be no mistaking that he meant to fulfill
his vow.

“I see,” Lady Canby murmured, cocking her head slightly to
the side. “And that is why you’re here?”

“Of course.” And he meant it. At least he told himself he
meant it. It didn’t matter if he’d spent the last sixteen or so hours
fantasizing about kissing Tillie Howard. She wasn’t for him.

He watched her conversing with the younger brother of Lord
Bridgerton, gritting his teeth when he realized that there wasn’t a single
objectionable thing about the man. He was tall, strong, clearly intelligent,
and of good family and fortune. The Canbys would be thrilled with the match,
even if Tillie would be reduced to a mere Mrs.

“We’re rather pleased with that one,” Lady Canby said,
motioning one small, elegant hand toward the gentleman in question. “He’s quite
a talented artist, and his mother has been my close friend for years.”

Peter nodded tightly.

“Alas,” Lady Canby said with a shrug, “I fear there is little
reason to hold out hope in that quarter. I suspect he is just here to merely
placate dear Violet, who has despaired of ever seeing her children married. Mr.
Bridgerton doesn’t seem ready to settle down, and his mother believes he is
secretly besotted with another.”

Peter remembered not to smile.

“Tillie, my dear,” Lady Canby said, once the annoyingly
handsome and personable Mr. Bridgerton kissed her hand and departed, “you have
not yet chatted with Mr. Thompson. It is so kind of him to call, and all out of
friendship for Harry.”

“I wouldn’t say
all,”
Peter said,
his words coming out a little less suave and practiced than he’d intended. “It
is always a delight to see you, Lady Mathilda.”

“Please,” Tillie said, waving good-bye to the last of her
lovesick swain, “you must continue to call me Tillie.” She turned to her
mother. “It’s all Harry ever called me, and apparently he spoke of us often
while on the Continent.”

Lady Canby smiled sadly at the mention of her younger son’s
name, and she blinked several times. Her eyes took on a hollow expression, and
while Peter didn’t think she was going to burst into tears, he rather thought
she wanted to.

He immediately held out his handkerchief, but she shook her
head and refused the gesture.

“I believe I shall fetch my husband,” she said, rising to her
feet. “I know he would like to meet you. He was off somewhere last night when
we were introduced, and I— Well, I know he would like to meet you.” She hurried
out of the room, leaving the door wide open and positioning a footman just
across the hall.

“She’s off to go cry,” Tillie said, not in a way to make
Peter feel guilty. It was just an explanation, a sad statement of fact. “She
does still, quite a bit.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She shrugged. “There’s no avoiding it, it seems. For any of
us. I don’t think we ever really thought he might die. It seems quite stupid
now. It shouldn’t have been such a surprise. He went off to war, for heaven’s
sake. What else should we have expected?”

Peter shook his head. “It isn’t stupid at all. We all thought
we were a little bit immortal until we actually saw battle.” He swallowed, not
wanting to feel the memory. But once summoned, it was difficult to hold back.
“It’s impossible to understand until you see it.”

Tillie’s lips tightened slightly, and Peter worried that he
might have insulted her. “I don’t mean to condescend,” he said.

“You didn’t. It’s not that. I was just … thinking.” She
leaned forward, a luminous new light in her eyes. “Let’s not talk of Harry,”
she said. “Do you think we can? I’m just so tired of being sad.”

“Very well,” he said.

She watched him, waiting for him to say something more. But
he didn’t. “Er, how was the weather?” she finally asked.

“Bit of a drizzle,” he replied, “but nothing out of the
ordinary.”

She nodded. “Was it warm?”

“Not especially. A bit warmer than last night, though.”

“Yes, it was a bit chilly, wasn’t it? And here it’s May.”