An Infamous Proposal (19 page)

“You read me like a book, James.”

“So I feared, but I trust we can still be friends. After a few months with Sanichton, you will be glad for a friend like me.”

“I wouldn’t have you for a friend if I were married to Jack Ketch.” She looked at Nick and shook her head. “I take leave to tell you, Lord Hansard, your cousin is incorrigible.”

“Ah, no,” James said sadly.
“You
could have corrected my little ways, had you considered it worth your while, Emma. But then I rather like me as I am. Adieu, my love. One dance, and I shall return to my room to wash off these ashes. They begin to itch.”

“You’re not going into the ballroom dressed like that,” Nick declared.

“Would it be possible to look more ridiculous than Sanichton? I shouldn’t think he would be so eager to announce to Society that Emma has made a fool of him.”

“I’ve promised Sanichton the waltzes,” Emma said. “I really ought to go. They’ll be starting any moment.”

“I shall watch from the doorway, my last view of you, my beloved, in his arms. What a dreadful mistake you are making, Emma. But you will be mine soon enough. You will make a better mistress than wife, I think.”

“And you would make a better—
anything
than a husband,” she retorted, and left.

Emma regretted she had promised the waltzes to Sanichton. He had never seemed less appealing than he did that evening, when he tried to make himself agreeable by being frivolous. His cap and bells did not become him. She liked him better as a prude. But she wouldn’t satisfy James by showing her displeasure. He had come to gaze at her forlornly from the doorway, as promised.

“By Jove, this is something like,” Sanichton said with feigned heartiness, as he waltzed sedately around the floor, bells jingling from the tails of his cap. “Er, your shawl is slipping, Emma. Wouldn’t want everyone gaping at your bare arms.”

“Is something wrong with my arms?” she asked pertly.

“No, not really. They’re very nice arms.”

He wanted to deliver a mild lecture, but he also wanted to compliment Emma and show her his dashing, cavalier side. Unfortunately, he found it hard to talk and dance at the same time, especially with Lord James glowering like a gargoyle from the doorway. Before long James espied a pretty shrimp woman not dancing and invaded the ballroom to accost Miss Allyson. Emma was relieved he had found a new victim.

“Relax, Horatio,” she said. “It’s a party, not a wake.”

“Let us slip out for a minute, Emma. There is something I want to ask you. I can’t do it here.”

She knew what the something was and felt that the sooner it was over with, the better. A life with Sanichton was impossible. She would refuse gently, assuring him that he was much too good for her.

“Very well,” she said, and allowed him to waltz her out the door—into the arms of her papa and Aunt Hildegarde.

Chapter Twenty

Having spent the day on the road, Mr. Milmont and his sister had not changed into evening clothes. He was a large man with black hair silvering at the temples to add to his considerable dignity. He stood like Jehovah, with a thundercloud on his dark visage. His black eyes burned like coals as he stared at his wayward daughter. As he had advanced in years, his eyebrows had sprouted into two tufts that added to his menacing aspect. He always wore black jackets. He considered colors frivolous.

Hildegarde was more lenient in that respect. She permitted herself the indulgence of a dun-colored pelisse that matched her complexion and had the added advantage of not showing the dust.

The unwitting butler had admitted the pair, mistaking them for late-arriving guests. He had not even bothered to call Lord Hansard. Aunt Hildegarde stood beside her brother, her long nose pinched in delighted wrath as she surveyed the throng in the ballroom.

“So this is how you carry on behind our backs!” she exclaimed. “Consorting with dustmen and fishmongers and every sort of lowlife.”

“Papa! How did you get here?” Emma exclaimed.

“When you failed to reply to my letter, Hildegarde and I felt it incumbent on us to undertake the arduous trip to Whitehern.”

“We felt you must be ill,” Hildegarde added. “Mr. Hunter, the beau you left behind at Whitehern, directed us here. And this, I collect, would be the caper merchant who calls himself Lord Hansard?” she said, turning a fiery eye on poor Lord Sanichton.

“Indeed no,” Emma exclaimed.

“I thought not!” Hildegarde cried in triumph. “It is all a hum, Milmont. She hired the house herself, to flaunt her body with this assortment of riffraff. I told you you shouldn’t have left her alone at Whitehern all that time, with too much money and no one to look after her.”

“I assure you, Papa, it is nothing of the sort! It is only a little masquerade party.”

The mention of such licentiousness was like pouring oil on the fire of Hildegarde’s wrath. “A masquerade party, and poor John not yet cold in his grave.”

“He’s been buried for eighteen months,” Emma pointed out.

“I say!” Lord Sanichton said, putting a protective arm around Emma. Always alive to propriety, he whispered to her, “It might be best to continue this discussion in private.”

Several of the guests had heard the argument at the door and were staring curiously. James happened to glance in that direction. Seeing Emma’s troubled expression, he abandoned the shrimp woman and darted toward her. He smiled blandly at Milmont and Hildegarde.

“What intriguing outfits,” he said. “No, don’t tell me! It’s on the tip of my tongue. Now I have it. You’re Saints—members of Wilberforce’s zealous reform sect. What is it called?”

Milmont and Hildegarde were momentarily struck speechless by such insolence from what looked like a dustman.

“Clapham Sect,” replied Sanichton, who subscribed to the
Christian Observer.

“Come along, Wilber, I’ll find you a pretty wench,” James said, and put his hand on Milmont’s elbow.

Milmont shook him off as if he were a small but tenacious pup. “Who is this whelp, Emma?” he demanded.

James, bridling at this treatment, lifted his chin and replied waggishly, “I’m His Highness’s whelp at Kew. Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?”

“Pay him no heed, Papa. He is a great joker,” Emma said. “This is Lord James Philmore of Revson Hall.”

Milmont looked at the potato bag and dirty face and replied, “And I’m the king of England.” So saying, he pushed James aside to grab Emma’s arm.

“You’re mad enough to be!” James said, with an impertinent smile around the little group at this riposte.

Sensing that James was inciting the guests to greater wrath, Sanichton intervened. “If you’ll just step along, sir, the study is right down the hall,” he said to Milmont.

“I don’t take orders from a clown in my own daughter’s house,” Milmont said, and flung Sanichton aside.

“You have some explaining to do, young lady,” Hildegarde said, shaking a finger under Emma’s nose. “Flaunting your body half naked in public.”

The butler realized his error in having admitted the couple and ran to fetch Lord Hansard, who had gone to his study to take a headache powder. “It seems I’ve accidentally admitted a couple of gentry folks who weren’t invited, your lordship,” he said.

“I’m flattered. I didn’t think my party was grand enough to encourage illicit entry. Are they causing trouble?”

“I fear so, your lordship. I could put them out, but they appear to know Lady Capehart. Her ladyship calls the gentleman ‘Papa.’ “

Hansard froze like a statue. “Good lord! Milmont!” he said in a weak voice.

“That’s the name he gave, and a Miss Hildegarde Milmont.”

Without another word Hansard shot out the door and down the corridor, just as James was shoving Mr. Milmont against the wall. To be fair, Mr. Milmont had shoved him first.

“James!” Hansard roared, in a voice that caused every head in his ballroom to swivel toward the doorway.

“These yahoos are insulting Emma, Cuz,” James said. “The old bint called her a hurly-burly girl.”

“If you’d please step along into the saloon,” Nick said to the Milmonts, with a wary glance at the staring faces in the ballroom. Dancing had virtually ceased, though the music continued uncertainly.

Hildegarde looked at the red jacket on Nick, the blue cuffs and brass buttons. “Are you hiring out rooms to the mail-coach drivers on top of the rest?” she demanded of her niece.

“This is Lord Hansard, Auntie,” Emma said. “This is his disguise for the masquerade party. He most assuredly does not drive the stage.”

The name Lord Hansard was familiar to Hildegarde from Emma’s letters. Derek Hunter had told them Emma was staying in London with Lord Hansard. They knew him to be John’s neighbor and friend. They also knew him to be an extremely eligible
parti
of good character. Hildegarde had been impressed with the neighborhood and the house when they approached it. The butler, too, seemed like a proper butler. Even the accents of the clown and the dustman (for so she considered Sanichton and James) were the effete accents of the nobility. She accepted that they were who they said they were. Mr. Milmont was slower to assimilate these suggestive items.

Hildegarde could not rip up at a lord. She had to take her ill temper out on her niece. “A fine spectacle you are making of yourself, Emma. What will Lord Hansard think of you?”

“But the party was his idea!” Emma said, looking helplessly at Nick.

“It’s no good blaming your hoydenish ways on others. An adult accepts blame for her own doings. It was John who spoiled you. Too soft by half,” she added, forgetting that the blame was only Emma’s.

“I take leave to tell you, Mrs. Wilberforce,” James said, “there is not a soft bone in Emma’s body. She is steel to the marrow. Did she not this very day rescue herself when I abducted her? Tell her, Emma.”

“It’s Miss Milmont, James,” Emma said.

“Abducted!” Hildegarde shrieked, and drew out her hartshorn. “Ruined. You’re ruined, child. There is nothing so ill-bred as being abducted. No decent gentleman will ever have you now.”

“Rubbish,” James said. “She is as good as engaged to Lord Sanichton. You won’t find a more upright bore in all of London.”

Nick cast a commanding eye at Sanichton, who stared at Emma as if the scales had just fallen from his eyes, and he beheld the scarlet face of shame and degradation. He still loved her body, but a young lady who allowed herself to be abducted, and who came saddled with such a family as this besides, was really too much for him to contemplate marrying. He liked peace and quiet in his life. There would be no peace with Emma. She drew chaos as the flame draws the moth.

Hildegarde looked at Sanichton consideringly. She saw the reluctance on his silly face. She was not one of those who disliked to say, “I told you so!” She said it with relish, “I told you so! No decent man—”

Nick stepped forward and put a hand on Emma’s arm. “You are mistaken, ma’am,” he said. “I have this very day asked Emma to marry me.”

“My sister said no
decent
man,” Mr. Milmont said, glowering. “This is the sort of scarecrow you will end up with and deserve, Emma. A mail-coach driver.”

“No, no, Milmont,” Hildegarde said, rather urgently. “He really
is
Lord Hansard.” Disappointment warred with glee in her bosom. “I told you so,” were hard words to eat, yet to claim kinship to a marquess proved a tasty sauce! “Emma?” she said, rather commandingly.

Emma stared at Hansard, trying to read his mood. When she said nothing, but simply stared at him with a question in her dark eyes, he took her hand in his. “And she has done me the honor to accept,” he added firmly, squeezing her fingers.

“Is this true, Emma?” Mr. Milmont asked hopefully.

“Are you calling Lord Hansard a liar?” was James’s unhelpful comment.

“Of course it’s true, Papa,” Emma said in a trembling voice.

“The masquerade is our engagement party,” Nick said. “You will not want to join the dancers without a costume, but perhaps you will help us celebrate with a glass of champagne—in the saloon.”

He feared champagne might be on their interdict list, but for such an occasion they accepted.

“Perhaps just one glass, to celebrate,” Hildegarde said in a whole new voice. The Marchioness of Hansard! What a coup! And he was young, too. He would accomplish what Sir John had not—give Emma children to settle her down.

Lord Sanichton had slipped quietly away during the discussion. Lord James, however, who enjoyed any sort of imbroglio, tagged along, leaving a trail of ashes on the marble floor and Persian carpet.

Nick led the group into his saloon, whose grandeur removed any lingering doubts as to his character. A man with such fine furnishings as the room held was obviously honorable. The old paintings on the wall alone were sponsor enough. Nick asked his butler to bring the wine and glasses.

To pass the time until the wine arrived, he said, “I hope you will do me the honor to stay here with me overnight. You won’t want to be going to a hotel at this hour.”

“Very obliging of you, milord,” Hildegarde said, then smirked.

“Who has been chaperoning you, Emma?” Milmont asked, but he asked it in a pleasant tone, not accusingly.

“Miss Foxworth,” she said. Then as she recalled her papa’s views of that dame, she added, “And Lady Gertrude, Nick’s aunt.”

“I should adore to meet her,” Hildegarde said, and smiled. “But we shan’t interrupt your little party, Lord Hansard. Tomorrow will be soon enough.”

The wine came and was drunk while they discussed the details of the marriage.

“If the wedding is to take place soon, we can stay for it,” Hildegarde said hopefully.

“Actually, we plan to be married at Waterdown, Nick’s country place,” Emma said. She feared Nick had only proposed to save her from her family’s ire. Delaying the wedding until an excuse could be found to terminate the engagement, if that was his wish, was the least she could do.

“How soon?” Miss Milmont asked eagerly.

“Next autumn,” Emma replied. “Nick is very busy just now with political business. The prime minister quite depends on him.” Hildegarde smiled fondly. She could not object to the delay when the cause was so high in Society. “He won’t be free for a honeymoon until the end of September.”