No Place for a Dame (9 page)

Giles tipped his head. “Why do you ask? I had the distinct impression you and Seward found little to recommend in one another.”

Vedder shrugged. “Just curious.” He turned to Avery. “And now you’ve plucked another unknown from thin air. Tell me, boy, what is it you are genius at?”

“I am an astronomer, sir.”

“I see. Perhaps you can tell me my fortune?”

“Astronomer, sir. Not astrologer. One is science, the other is poppycock.”

Giles sighed again. “He has opinions.”

“So I see.”

“I only tolerate them because this very year he discovered—” He broke off as if recalling himself, pressed a finger to his lips, and smiled from behind it. “But I speak ahead of myself. Leave us say, Avery’s mental prowess is even more pronounced than his social deficiencies. But I am remiss. I have yet to introduce him to Lord Neville. Neville, may I present Avery Quinn. Avery, Lord Neville Demsforth.”

“How d’you do?” The young man who had been standing nearby attempting miserably to pretend he hadn’t overheard every razor-edged word inclined his head, the tips of his ears burning brightly.

He was a very large young man who held his shoulders slightly bunched forward as though uncomfortable with his size. Avery supposed him to be fresh out of his teens and that a last minute spurt of growth had made him self-conscious and awkward. He had a nice, open sort of face, his nose snubbed and freckled, his jaw a trifle heavy, and his carefully combed flaxen hair already receding from a high forehead.

“Come, Vedder, let us leave these two young bucks to trade confidence of the sort we did at that age,” Giles said, and led Vedder towards the settee occupied by Lady Demsforth and her daughter.

For a moment, Avery and the young man stood silently regarding one another. Lord Neville seemed to be waiting for something. She couldn’t imagine what.

“You are an academic then, Mr. Quinn?” he finally asked.

“I am a scientist.”

“I see. And what do you study?”

“The stars.”

“My uncle likes stars.” He looked at her expectantly but she could not think what to reply to this.

She did not simply
like
stars. They were her life. But she very much doubted Lord Neville wanted to hear about Fraunhofer lines. Her gaze drifted uneasily around the drawing room looking for inspiration, noting the marble mantle, the white painted woodwork, the light green damask-covered furnishings. Should she perhaps comment on how chilly the room felt? Did men say things like that to one another?

Lord Neville cleared his throat. “You must be very smart to have attracted Lord Strand’s notice at so young an age.”

“I am.” She reseated the spectacles on the bridge of her nose.

Once more they fell silent, she with mounting frustration, he with an increasingly sympathetic expression.

Why was he looking at her like that? As though he felt sorry for her. Why should he feel sorry for her? She had discovered a comet. What had he ever done? She glared at Giles. He’d put her in this fix. He caught her eye and gave the smallest jerk of his chin in Neville’s direction. Fine.

“You must be great friends with Lord Strand,” she said.

“What? No.” The lad looked taken aback.
Now
what had she said? “I mean, not
great
friends. Why do you say that?”

“Well, here he is back in town but a few days and after being thrown over by his fiancée and here you are. I should think only a friend of long standing and intimacy would present themselves thus.”

She watched in fascination as Neville’s ears once more grew crimson. She bet an anatomist would enjoy dissecting his arterial system.…

Neville cleared his throat, glanced at her, cleared his throat again and stared, stricken mute. Suddenly, she felt impatient with the inanity of it all and frustrated and rueful that she’d unintentionally discomforted this nice boy.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve done it again, haven’t I? Strand is right. I oughtn’t be allowed out in polite company.”

He searched her face and whatever he found there seemed to reassure him, for he blew out a gusty sigh and his whole large, well-dressed, ungainly body relaxed. He grinned ruefully. “No, no, you are quite correct.” He glanced around before looking back down into her face. “But as the old marquess and my father were at school together, and my father once made some mention of how nice it would be should one of his children wed one of the marquess’s and the old marquess didn’t bother to disagree, my mother feels a bargain has all but been struck—and let me tell you she was not happy when Lucy was displaced by Miss North—and that it gives us permission to arrive here so precipitously upon Strand’s return to London and stay far too long.”

Avery regarded him quizzically.

“What I mean to say, Mr. Quinn, is that we
are
being unconscionably forward. But my mother wanted to steal a march on the other Society ladies with marriageable daughters.”

Avery furrowed her brow.

“Now that Strand’s once more in the market for a bride.”

Avery stared at him in dawning horror. “You mean we might expect more ladies to arrive with their offspring in tow?” she asked. This was not how things were supposed to evolve. Not at all.

“I expect so, yes.”

Avery looked at the proposed bridal candidate with increased interest but after a few seconds decided there was nothing there to engage Strand’s notice. Just a pretty girl in a pretty, frothy dress, sitting prettily.

“And you say these ladies will parade their daughters in front of Lord Strand like cattle at a county fair waiting for him to choose from amongst them?”

Neville burst out laughing. His mother glared at him from across the room. He quickly stifled his amusement. “Ahem. In a manner of speaking, I suppose so.”

“But that’s barbaric.”

“You really have been living the life of an ascetic, haven’t you?” Neville asked wonderingly. “Whatever were your parents thinking to let you come to Strand so unprepared?”

Avery was astounded and not only because, frankly, Neville Demsforth did not look any more prepared to deal with Society than he seemed to feel she was, but because no one had ever spoken to her like this before, as though she was slightly below average in some area or other. It was a unique sensation. “I… ah… they’re dead,” she said, offering a silent apology to her very much alive father.

Neville studied her for a moment more before seeming to come to a decision. “You need a guide, my friend. Someone to enlighten you.”

“Thank you, but Lord Strand—”

“Is a generation removed from you and has enough ton bronze on him to stand in for a statue. Besides, he is… well, I can’t think you two have much in common.”

She glanced at Giles. He embodied élan, his easy, clever manner merely an extension of his self-confidence, his unassailable superiority. Though only thirty feet separated them, she had never been more aware of distance. Not only physical distance, but the distance between their experiences and lives.

And futures.

Neville was right: Giles belonged to a world she would never fully understand, one that even in her disguise she could participate in only on the fringes. But while she was here it would be interesting to learn something of it. Like a tourist at some foreign port of call.

“I offer my services as a far more likely alternative,” Neville said, smiling solicitously. It did not offend her since there didn’t seem to be anything critical in his assessment, only honest concern.

She couldn’t recall the last time someone had exhibited any sort of protective impulse towards her. She’d run free under her father’s benign indifference, and the old marquess had shipped her off without a second thought to whatever illustrious scholar would have her. She knew how to take care of herself.

“And how exactly would you do that?” she asked.

“We could take a ride in my new curricle ’round St. James Park or even in the city proper. Streets aren’t nearly so crowded now that the Season’s over.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, mindful of her promise to Strand that she would remain hermitized in her rooms. “I came to London to study stars, not the ton.”

“You will be studying stars. London has her own set of luminaries, Mr. Quinn, ones that can rival in brilliance any stars you have hitherto known. Though with the Season over they are much more elusive. Makes it all a better game, eh? It will be fun, I promise you.”

Games?
Fun?
He was twinkling at her in such a good-humored sort of way that she didn’t want to disappoint him. It had been a long time since anyone had suggested she do something simply for pleasure.

“We shall see.”

“I’ll come by Friday afternoon.”

She had no intention of going, but neither did she want to get involved in some silly pull-and-push conversation and this had all the earmarks of becoming one. Neville looked so eager. So determined. He looked, she realized, more in need of a friend than she.

But she’d always been very independent and quite satisfied with her own company. Yes. Quite satisfied.

She would send written word tomorrow or the next day politely declining his offer and that would be that.

“Say you will.”

“Perhaps.”

Neville gave a knowing nod. “Good. Now, let us go rescue my poor sister from Strand’s attention. She looks likely to disappear under the cushions at any moment.”

Chapter Nine

G
oodness. How ever did it grow so late?”

After stretching the bonds of even the most liberal rules of etiquette by more than an hour, Lady Demsforth finally noted the time and only then, Strand was certain, because her son was holding his pocket watch open five inches beneath her nose. Vedder had left a half hour earlier.

“If we have stayed a bit too long, Lord Strand, it is entirely your own fault for being such a congenial host,” she cooed. “Naughty man. But then, time does have a way of disappearing when the company is so pleasing. Don’t you agree, Lord Strand?” She tipped her head blatantly in the direction of her poor daughter. Lucille turned pink.

“Indeed, yes, Lady Demsforth,” Giles replied, feeling sorry for the girl. She so clearly felt her mother’s vulgarity.

Normally, Giles managed to dodge Lady Demsforth and her ardent and ill-fated pursuit of his coronet, but when Burke had brought her card, he’d remembered that her brother was president of the very society Avery wished to join and so had received her and her progeny.

But why
had
Vedder accompanied them? Though he and Vedder both belonged to White’s Gentlemen’s Club and moved in the same circles, they could hardly be called friends. Indeed, Vedder had never called on him before. It was a unique event and Giles distrusted unique events. What did Vedder hope to gain?

“You must promise me,
promise,
that you will call on us this week. We shall be home every day,” Lady Demsforth said, interrupting his speculation.

Neville’s cheeks grew ruddy with mortification.

“I shall try, ma’am, but I do have obligations to my protégé.”

Lady Demsforth cast a quick glance at where Avery sat teetering on the edge of a chair like a giant egg about to topple over.

“Yes. Well. Bring him along.” She reached out and rapped his hand sharply with her fan, smiling coquettishly. “Promise.”

“I shall endeavor,” he said, fearful he would otherwise end up spending the next hour fending off her demands. Happily, her son took matters into his own hands—literally—by clasping hold of her upper arm and hauling her bodily to her feet while still somehow managing to make it look as if he were simply a dutiful son attending his mother. Clearly, Neville had unforeseen potential.

“There, Mother. Off we go,” Neville said with forced cheer. “Lucy?”

With what Giles would have considered unflattering alacrity had it not been so amusing, Lucille jumped to her feet and, with a quick bobbed curtsey, dashed out of the room, leaving her brother to drag their parent along in her wake. Giles grinned after them, turning to see if Avery shared his amusement—

She did not.

She’d stood up, hands on her hips, the furry brow lowered in a thundercloud of displeasure. The tip of her mud-encrusted shoe tapped ominously.

He strangled back the smile that threatened, deciding it would be impolitic, but really, what in the Almighty’s name had she done to achieve such a shape? She looked like a giant apple. Every feminine contour had been obliterated by whatever means she’d used to achieve that figure. And she’d apparently glued something between her brows to make them meet over the bridge of her nose.

He approved the spectacles. They reflected back much of a room’s light, hiding the extraordinary midnight color of her eyes and her long, spiky lashes. It would be better, however, if she didn’t need to keep pushing them up on her nose. It drew attention to hands both too elegant and too slender to be masculine.

And though it had been necessary, he regretted the loss of her hair. It had been irrepressibly feminine, falling about her shoulders in a riot of undisciplined auburn coils, like shining corkscrew ribbons on a present. The thatch of remaining curls looked boyish enough, though still untamable.