‘Please say no more!’ Bea hissed. ‘I find that remark even more unmannerly,’ she spluttered, blushing scarlet.
‘I apologise, then; I merely intended a passing observation that your figure appeared more curvaceous when you were younger.’
He was quelling his humour with a frown, and she guessed he was deliberately riling her because of their prickly parting at the chapel earlier. ‘Please do not explain and add insult to injury. Your opinion of my looks is of no consequence to me in any case.’
Beatrice turned to the pastries and began loading a plate with them while her cheeks continued to burn.
‘If you are about to accuse me of being a glutton, this food is for my papa.’ In her agitation, it had slipped her mind that Walter desired just one fruit tart. Swishing about with a laden plate she moved on.
‘Did you want to speak to me on a matter?’
Beatrice halted, moistening her lips. She’d also forgotten she’d drawn him to her side with a come-hither glance.
‘I...I did want to have a word with you. My father would like you to join him for a chat before you go.’
‘Of course I’ll speak to him.’ Hugh glanced back towards the drawing room, locating the sofa on which Walter was ensconced. ‘It would be my pleasure.’
‘Thank you,’ Bea replied stiltedly.
‘Shall I accompany you now?’ Hugh suggested mildly.
‘If you wish to, sir.’
Hugh’s heavy sigh brought Bea’s eyes darting to his bronzed face.
‘I beg you will not put yourself out for us, though,’ she said acidly. ‘My father would not want that.
‘It is
you
putting me out, my dear. Have you forgotten my name that you continue calling me sir?’
‘Indeed I have not,
Mr Kendrick
,’ Bea returned sweetly on passing him.
‘Will you let me know what Mr Dewey wants to talk about so I might prepare my defence?’ Hugh asked wryly, falling into step with Bea as they wound a path around knots of people.
‘You are not about to be ticked off, I assure you.’ Bea was unable to repress a smile at his ironic tone. ‘I believe Papa wishes to apologise to you.’
‘And how have I redeemed myself in his eyes?’ Hugh politely led the way past a long sofa encircled by chattering ladies. A few yards on, at a quieter spot, he turned back to Bea. His hand was idly planted against the wall, completing her casual entrapment by his powerful body.
‘Papa was most grateful to you for coming to Hertfordshire to convey the news about the dowager’s ill health. I expect he wants to impress that on you.’
‘I recall he said something similar to me at the time,’ Hugh murmured, his eyes lingering on Bea’s mouth as her pearly teeth attacked her lower lip. ‘I doubt he’d make an issue of repeating it. So what else is on his mind?’
‘If we carry on to him I’m sure he will tell you,’ Bea returned.
Barely were the words out when a sudden clap of thunder made her gasp and stumble. She would have dropped her pastries but for Hugh’s steadying hand on her shoulder. Beatrice felt her heart thudding unevenly and the silk of her sleeve seemed to grow unbearably hot beneath his palm. She gave an embarrassed laugh.
‘Heavens! That frightened the life out of me.’ She glanced about to see that she hadn’t been the only lady startled by the storm. Fans were whizzing and a few smelling salts bottles were being wafted amidst nervous giggling. A small crowd had gathered at the windows to watch lightning zigzagging across the heavens.
Bea’s gaze was captured by eyes that had lost their golden tint and now burned like coal embers. His fingers began moving in a slow caress, increasing pressure, as though he would feel her skin beneath the barrier of fabric. Her eyelids became weighty, slowly falling beneath the narcotic effect of his secret seduction.
‘Please don’t... I...’ She finally listened to the inner voice protesting wildly at her behaviour. She sensed he might dip his head and kiss her while she acted like a mindless idiot enthralled by his touch. And at such a time and place as a wake! Despite her chagrin she felt unable to physically move away from him and raised her eyes to beseech him for leniency.
As Hugh withdrew his fingers in a slow stroking movement Bea expelled a breath, darting glances hither and thither, relieved that people were still too preoccupied with the storm to have noticed their indecent intimacy.
Hugh took the plate from Bea’s shaking hand. ‘I’m glad I wasn’t responsible this time for giving you the jitters...or was I?’ he challenged.
In a moment he was resuming their conversation as though nothing had happened, although Bea felt strangely light-headed.
‘As you seem reluctant to help me prepare for a chastisement, let me stab a guess at the bee in your father’s bonnet.’ He paused before asking abruptly, ‘Did you tell him what was in Fiona’s letter?’
‘Of course...’ Bea replied after a second spent wondering how he could change so quickly from charmer to interrogator.
‘Ah...so I imagine I’m about to be told to mind my own business where Colin Burnett is concerned.’ Hugh’s moulded mouth slanted sardonically.
‘Actually, you are wrong,’ Bea answered, flustered, because just as she’d been recovering her equilibrium he had again upset it. He had a knack of being too forthright for comfort. It was something else he’d acquired along with his money, she was sure, but she wouldn’t be intimidated by it any more than she’d allow his practised philandering to steal her composure. ‘It is I who would ask...insist...you do that. My father, on the other hand, seemed pleased to hear about your uninvited interference in my affairs.’
Bea stared pointedly at his imprisoning arm until lazily he removed it from where it had been propped against the wall. She took immediate advantage of her liberation and carried on towards her father, forcing herself to a leisurely pace so it would not seem she was cravenly taking flight.
* * *
‘Papa seems in good spirits.’ Elise sipped tea following this observation.
‘I think he has sunk rather too far into good spirits.’ Bea put down her bone china cup.
The sisters were side by side on a window seat and had been watching fat clouds travelling over the insipid sky through the square-paned glass. They had turned their attention to their father, still huddled on the sofa by the fire, now with a group of male companions. By his side on the velvet upholstery was the Duke of Rodley. His grace had been topping up Walter’s glass with his fine cognac for at least fifteen minutes while gregariously holding court. Opposite, in a wing chair, sat Hugh Kendrick, also with a replenished brandy balloon and an air of indolent interest in the duke’s conversation. Just moments ago Alex had also joined the gentlemen. He was leaning on the back of the sofa while, at the duke’s insistence, partaking of his late mother’s favourite tipple.
A cosy atmosphere had descended on the drawing room. Most of the guests who lived locally had departed, keen to get home since the storm had blown south. Others, with long journeys in front of them, had taken up the Blackthornes’ offer of accommodation at the Hall while the roads remained bad.
Hugh Kendrick had not bowed to Alex’s insistence that he stay because it would be madness to risk life and limb in such abominable weather. He planned to get going before dusk, much to his host’s disgust.
‘I think I shall go and see Adam before dinnertime.’ Elise found it difficult to spend long periods apart from her little boy.
‘Dinner?’ Bea choked a laugh. ‘I have eaten very well already, Elise.’
‘Oh, the gentlemen will expect their dinner; and their port and cigars,’ Elise declared ruefully, thinking of her husband’s predilection for a smoke and a drink when they had male company. ‘Will you come with me and say goodnight to Adam?’
‘I shall peek at him in the nursery later,’ Bea promised. ‘For now I shall keep the ladies company.’ With a nod she indicated the elderly women she’d seen drying their eyes in the hall earlier. Bea had been introduced to them and recalled that the silver-haired individual with a remarkably hooked nose was called Lady Groves. On her black satin bosom was pinned a huge mourning brooch. The name of the other lady had momentarily escaped Beatrice’s mind.
‘Lady Groves came in her brother’s stead as he is poorly,’ Elise informed her helpfully. ‘My mother-in-law was Lord Mornington’s
chère amie
for a very long time. He is heartbroken to lose Susannah and it has made him quite ill.’
‘Poor man...’ Bea murmured.
‘Lady Groves and Susannah were friends; they were about the same age, I believe, and were widowed at about the same time. Mary Woodley, Lady Groves’s companion, lost her husband in the Peninsular wars.’
After Elise had gone off to the nursery Bea settled in a wingchair adjacent to the ladies with a cheerful, ‘The clouds are fast moving away, thank goodness.’
‘I shall be glad to set off home tomorrow if the water on the roads has drained away.’
Mary Woodley was a lesser mortal than her noble benefactress in the eyes of polite society. But Lady Groves saw her companion as her equal and treated her as such, despite her friend’s impoverishment. She also treated Mary to those things she could not afford to purchase for herself, due to her subsisting on her late husband’s meagre army pension.
‘I’d rather stay here a while longer, Mary, so flooding doesn’t bother me.’ Lady Groves’s greedy black gaze roved her sumptuous surroundings. ‘It is the first time I have visited Blackthorne Hall but my brother told me it was a wonderful sight.’
‘But what about the Whitleys’
musicale,
Gloria?’ Mary mildly complained. ‘I do not want to miss that in case that flibbertigibbet turns up with her aunt, causing us all to gawp at her. Very strange behaviour...very strange indeed.’
‘I heard that Miss Rawlings wasn’t even officially invited to the Clemences’ that evening.’ Lady Groves tutted at such vulgar conduct as gatecrashing. ‘Country bumpkins!’
‘Miss Rawlings?’ Beatrice echoed faintly, too shocked at hearing her rival’s name to take umbrage at Lady Groves’s all-encompassing insult to people like herself who hailed from the shires.
‘I doubt you would know her my dear.’ Lady Groves patted at Bea’s fingers, tightly curled on her lap. ‘She is a gel about eighteen and new to town—from the Yorkshire area, we believe, don’t we, Mary? She is out this year and is being chaperoned by her aunt. Nobody knows much about them, you see...but the bold chit seems determined to change that.’
But I think I might know about her
... The words rotated in Bea’s head but she managed to keep them from tripping off her tongue. It seemed these two ladies were ignorant of her being jilted, and therefore didn’t know that the ‘
bold chit’
they spoke about had stolen her fiancé.
‘Dolly Pearson told me that the aunt says her charge is secretly engaged.’ Mary was pop-eyed while giving this news.
Lady Groves snorted her wordless opinion on that. ‘If Miss Rawlings
does
have a fiancé I’ll wager the fellow is unaware of her flirting.’ She inclined forward to whisper, ‘I saw her fluttering her eyelashes at...’ She left the sentence unfinished but her eyes darted sideways to where the gentlemen were grouped. ‘If she thinks she has a chance of snaring
him
she’ll be sorely disappointed.’
‘No respectable young lady has a hope of catching Hugh Kendrick’s eye,’ Mary scoffed behind the fingers fluttering in front of her lips. ‘He has no interest in debutantes, no matter how irresistible they find him.’
‘No wonder he’s oblivious to decent gels with those two doxies fighting over him. Then there’s the shocking
other business
to keep him occupied...’ Lady Groves rumbled.
‘
Other business...?’
Bea echoed the phrase back at the woman.
Lady Groves looked extremely discomfited by her slip, but nevertheless patted again at Bea’s fingers before attempting to change the subject.
‘Is Mr Kendrick a villain?’ Bea insisted on knowing, and received a shocked look from Mary Woodley at such impertinence as cross-examining Lady Groves.
‘You are a sweet innocent and need not know the details of a gentleman’s behaviour when he is freed from the restraints of a civilised society...’ Lady Groves said, fingering her throat in embarrassment.
‘I assure you I am not about to swoon on hearing that Mr Kendrick has female friends.’ Bea realised she sounded vulgarly inquisitive, and very unladylike, but she couldn’t help herself. She craved to know more.
‘Miss Rawlings and her aunt
did
leave the Clemences’ early with a gentleman but I’ve no idea who he was,’ Mary burst out, returning to gossip she deemed more seemly. ‘I was coming out of the retiring room and saw the trio suddenly disappearing down the stairs.’
‘I didn’t see the fellow, but possibly he was her father, come to take her home before she disgraced herself,’ Lady Groves sniffed.
‘He seemed far too young for that, Gloria!’ Mrs Woodley disagreed. ‘Perhaps Dolly might know who he was. She seems to find out everything first, though I doubt she spotted the fellow either, for his arrival and departure seemed as one.’
‘Dolly Pearson is my aunt.’
Beatrice could think of nothing more to say at that point. She knew she should feel grateful that the argument between Hugh and Colin had been very discreet, and few people yet knew the details of it. But preying on her mind was the scandal concerning Hugh to which Lady Groves had referred but had refused to explain.
‘I do recall, now you mention it, that you are related to Dolly.’ Lady Groves beamed, having fully recovered from her shock at Miss Dewey’s audacity a moment ago. ‘My brother, Lord Mornington, told me that your sister was Dolly’s niece. I’ve always found Mrs Pearson a charming woman,’ she added graciously. Glancing at Mary for a comment, Gloria found the woman peering beneath her pale lashes at the group of gentlemen. ‘What’s the matter with you, Mary?’ she asked.
‘Do you think Mr Kendrick overheard us talking about him?’ Mary whispered, aghast. ‘He seems to be staring at us rather too frequently, Gloria.’
Lady Groves frowned thoughtfully, then looked at Beatrice. ‘You were talking to him earlier, weren’t you, my dear?’