The Frost Fair (14 page)

“I'm sure they do. But I wasn't aware that you considered me a friend. If my recollection of a recent conversation between us is accurate, you consider me arrogant, unfeeling and offensive. There's not much sign of friendship in those adjectives.”

“Perhaps not, although I suppose one might make friends even with
such
a person. And you have been scrupulously considerate at a host—I grant you that.”

“Thank you. Am I to take it from these surprisingly temperate remarks that you wish to call a truce?”

“Yes, I do. And I wish you to call me Meg.”

“Very well, Meg. Now, what is it you wish me to do for you?”

She turned her eyes up to his and blinked at him flirtatiously, hoping that the blacking she'd applied to her lashes earlier that day had not smudged.
(Oh, why
, she asked herself,
didn't I look in the mirror before I let him in?)
“I was wondering, Geoffrey,” she murmured in her most demure, dulcet tones, “if it would be at all possible to be carried down to your library for a while. It's so dull to be cooped up in this room all day without even a book to read. If I were brought down and permitted to select some books for myself, I'd—”

“Say no more, ma'am. If I were a truly considerate host, I would have seen to it before.” There was a distinct gleam of malicious laughter at the back of his eyes. “I'll get the footman to carry you down at once.”

“The … footman?” she echoed, disappointed.

“Yes, the footman.” He turned to the door, but not before she noted, to her chagrin, that his mocking gleam had extended itself to the corners of his mouth.

“Yes, of course,” she said furiously, “I'd forgotten that you'd found me too heavy a burden for you.”

“Quite,” he agreed irritatingly. Before taking himself out of the room, he looked back at her for a moment, his taunting smile now very pronounced. “For such a tiny favor, my dear, there was not the slightest need for you to go to the trouble of trying to turn me up sweet. With a mother and two sisters forever asking favors of me, I've become completely immune to demure smiles and fluttering lashes.”

“Ooooh!” She picked up one of the pillows and threw it at him wrathfully. But he pulled the door closed behind him in plenty of time to keep the fluffy missile from meeting its intended mark.

Seething, she glared at the door which, to her surprise, promptly opened again. Sir Geoffrey stuck his head in. “Oh, by the way,
Meg,
” he said with an innocently pleasant smile, “I just want to say that the green thing you're wearing suits you. Very fetching.”

And he was gone. She made a face at the closed door. “How fetching can it be,” she muttered irritably, “if the best thing it fetches is the blasted footman?”

Chapter Ten

Isabel bustled into Meg's room carrying two gowns, one over each arm. “Which shall I wear to Lady Habish's tonight?” she asked. “I'm afraid the purple may be too grand for a country
soirée
, but the burgundy is too young for me, is it not?”

Meg put down the book she was reading and glanced at her aunt with a worried frown. Isabel was certainly running about with her usual energy and spirit, but Meg was not reassured about the state of her health. “Why are you dressing yourself so early, Aunt Bel? It's only mid-afternoon.”

“I know. It's the height of foolishness, is it not, to begin to prepare oneself at such an hour? But the Carrier ladies are already closeted in their rooms dressing their hair, and I haven't anything better to do.”

“You could lie down and rest for an hour or two,” Meg suggested.

Isabel threw her niece a look of suspicion. It was two days since that annoying doctor had paid his call, yet both Geoffrey and Meg continued to watch her for symptoms and to nag at her to let the man examine her. “I don't need any rest. I feel perfectly fit,” she said with a touch of irritation.

But Meg was not at all convinced. Her aunt's cheeks were frighteningly pale and her eyes bleary. “Are you certain you wish to go through with this, Aunt Bel? I don't expect it will be an entertaining evening, what with having to endure the stares and effusive compliments of a crowd of bumpkins. We can quite easily claim ill health and stay behind.”

“It's not at all becoming in you, Meg, to treat these people with such disdain. Living in the country doesn't make one a fool, you know. You should not be so quick to pass disparaging judgments on them.”

Meg felt a twinge of shame. “I'm sorry, love. You're quite right. Nevertheless, we needn't go to the party if we are not feeling well enough.”

“
We
are quite well enough for anything, if it is
my
health to which you refer. If you
yourself are
in pain and feel unequal to the exertion, that is quite another story.”

Meg hesitated. Would it be better for her aunt if she pretended to be feeling ill? “Well, I—”

“But it would be most unkind of us not to make the effort, you know. Lady Habish has undoubtedly made all sorts of preparations … and in our honor. She would feel the keenest disappointment if her honored guests failed to attend. And even here, you know, tonight's festivities have been causing the greatest stir imaginable … the maids running about with laces to sew and sashes to press, the footmen racing down the halls with slippers to polish, Mrs. Rhys doing double duty as hairdresser … one would think they were preparing for a royal coronation! It would be cruel of us to put a damper on the excitement—which is what would happen if we were to refuse to attend.”

Meg sighed. “But are you certain, love, that you're up to it? I think this entire adventure—from the moment when we stole from Isham Manor—has been very tiring for you.”

Isabel raised her eyebrows haughtily. “You are thinking of what that dreadful doctor said, aren't you? You may put that incident entirely out of your mind, my dear. The man is an odious fool. I assure you, Meg, that I'm as well as I've ever been in my life. You and Geoffrey give Dr. Fraser's impertinent remarks too much credence. The only thing that tires me is your constant nagging.”

“Very well, Aunt Bel, I'll stop nagging. If you're sure …”

The two women turned their attention to the selection of their gowns, Meg persuading her aunt that the burgundy was not too youthful, and Isabel assuring Meg that her Bordeaux-brown silk crape would not be judged too rakish by the countrybred society. With these important decisions made, Isabel, departed to begin her preparations.

Meg was brushing her hair and waiting for Mrs. Rhys to come and help her put on her gown when Trixie hammered at her door. The girl burst in wrapped in her robe. Although not yet dressed, her hair had already been coiffed and curled for the evening. Meg noted that it was arranged in a most attractive style, pulled back from her forehead and held in place over each ear with ornamented combs, below which her curls fell in free profusion over her ears. Her face would have looked lovely except for the redness of her eyes. “Good heavens, Trixie, you've been crying!” Meg exclaimed.

“Oh, Lady M-Meg, you m-must help me! I'm in the most d-dire straits,” the girl blubbered, dropping into a chair and dabbing helplessly at her eyes. “Geoffrey has just told me that h-he intends to escort us to the Habish's tonight!”

“Escort us?” Meg found the news surprising, but not at all dismaying. “Why should
that
bring on this flood of tears? I should think you'd find it very kind of your brother. I suspects he dislikes affairs of this sort.”

“Kind? Kind?” Trixie looked at Meg appalled. “It's the very w-worst thing that could possibly have happened! Don't you see?”

“No, I'm afraid I don't.”

“He's doing it on p-purpose! To k-keep me from having anything to do with M-M-Mortimer!”

Meg blinked. “Do you mean that he's discovered that Mortimer will be there?”

“He guesses. Oh, I d-denied knowing anything about it. I even suggested that Lady Habish didn't intend to invite the Lazenbys at all (which is an outright fabrication, for I know from Harriet that they'll all be there), but Geoffrey said that his own p-presence at the affair will be his assurance that I will n-not be having anything to do with Mortimer.”

“So … that's why he'd decided to escort us,” Meg muttered, beginning to smolder. She'd permitted herself, at first, to believe that Geoffrey had decided to attend the party because of
her
. In the two days since they'd declared their “truce,” they'd spent some very pleasant hours together; only the day before he'd taken her down to the library (laughingly explaining that the footman was “indisposed”), and they'd spent the afternoon talking of novels, of Byron's new verse-romance,
The Giaour
(which they both agreed was too melodramatically lurid), and of the Regent's apparent swing toward intractable Toryism (which they both felt was a troublesome development). She'd been impressed by signs of her host's extensive erudition, and he had apparently found her conversation to be both sensible and engaging. She'd been quite pleased with herself. Her scheme, she'd believed, was working very well. When she and Isabel would be ready to leave (certainly within a week's time), she would have his heart in her pocket.

But he was not attending the Habish party because of a wish to be in her company. He was only reverting to his tyrannical behavior and trying to maintain his iron control over his sister. That realization made her furious, and her fury was made all the more intense by her awareness of her own sense of disappointment. Why did this small evidence that she'd not yet conquered him cause her such a twinge of pain? She was only playing a game with him, after all.

“Don't redden your pretty eyes with crying, Trixie,” she said with sudden resolve. “Tears, you know, never do a bit of good. We must come up with a scheme to outwit him, that's all.”

Trixie's head came up eagerly. “A scheme? Oh, Lady Meg! Do you think we could?”

They could … and they did. It took Meg only twenty minutes to concoct a very promising plan. By the time Mrs. Rhys arrived to help Meg dress, Trixie's eyes were shining and the plot was already in motion.

When Geoffrey arrived at Meg's door promptly at seven to say that Lady Habish's carriage had arrived and that he was ready to take her downstairs, he stopped in the doorway, astounded. Meg was standing up, her weight on her good leg and leaning for support on a bedpost. She was looking ravishing in a gown of lustrous brown silky crape cut scandalously low over the bosom. Her thick, red hair had been pulled back into a tight knot at the back of her head, but enticing little tendrils had already escaped and were framing her face with a soft halo of glowing color. The word glowing described her perfectly. Even her skin seemed to give off a warm incandescence. He found himself, for a moment, completely unable to do anything but stare.

Meg, too, found herself staring. Geoffrey in his evening clothes seemed a very different man from the saturnine fellow in hunting togs she'd seen in the taproom of the Horse With Three Tails. The cut of his coat would have done justice to any London tailor, his shirt-points reached a height of perfect style without rising to the extremes that a dandy might have preferred, his neckcloth was impeccably tied in the admirable but not overly intricate
Waterfall
, and the leg revealed by the skintight breeches was as shapely as a tailor (or a lady) could desire. Even the expression of his face seemed changed—it was warmer and more … accessible. If he'd approached her in a London drawing room looking like
this
she was not at all certain, as she'd been earlier, that she would have cut him.

She was the first to recover. “Look, Geoffrey, what Mrs. Rhys and I have concocted!” she said, pointing to the bed. On the spread lay a broom from which the straw had been cut away. A thick padding, made of several strips of folded flannel, had been sewn over the stump.

Geoffrey stared at it in complete puzzlement. “What is it?”

“Don't you see? It's a crutch. With the padded end under my arm, I can manage to hobble about on my own, without requiring anyone to assist me.”

Geoffrey looked dubious. “I don't see why you should have found this necessary. We have a household full of people ready to give you an arm—”

“But requiring the assistance of others every time one wishes to move about is so galling you know. With this, I can move about quite well. Watch.”

She spoke with more assurance than she felt, for she had not had time to practice. However, she did manage, albeit clumsily, to hobble out of the room and down the hall, Geoffrey following anxiously behind. At the top of the stairs, however, she paused. The stairway, curving down below her, seemed horridly formidable. Before she could dredge up the courage to attempt it, she was swept up into his arms. “That was a plucky exhibition, my dear, and I'm all admiration, but I draw the line at permitting you to maneuver the
stairs
with that contrivance,” he told her as he started down the stairs.

He's going to ruin the plot
, she thought worriedly as she clutched him round the neck with one hand and held on to the crutch with the other. Everything hinged on her being able to use the device when they arrived downstairs. But the awareness of his arms about her, the closeness of his face to hers, and the perceptible beating of his heart distracted her from her plotting. The sensations she felt when he carried her were becoming disconcertingly exciting. She could feel her pulse begin to race. Could he hear her heart as she could his? Was he aware that the rhythm of its beat had decidedly accelerated since he'd lifted her up against his chest?

All too quickly they reached the bottom, and he set her on her feet, keeping a hold on her so that she would not have to put her weight on her injured ankle. But standing there with his arm about her was not the way Meg could catch her breath or concentrate on the execution of her little plot. She had to distance herself from the distraction of his closeness. Gently, she disengaged herself from his hold and leaned back against the newel post of the stairway. While she regained her breath, she cast a surreptitious look at him through lowered lashes and noticed, with annoyance, that he was not in the least discomposed by having held her in his arms.