An Infamous Proposal (7 page)

“How lovely!” Emma said, accepting the bouquet. Soames took it away to put the roses in water.

Behind Bounty’s back Nick gave a cynical grin.

Emma invited Bounty to have a seat.

He sat and said, “I am off to London tomorrow, Lady Capehart. I just stopped to ask if there is any commission I can perform for you. No trouble, I assure you. Indeed, it would be a pleasure.”

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Bounty,” Emma replied, “but I can’t think of anything I need at the moment.”

Bounty had received his invitation to Nick’s rout, and they spoke of that for a moment. Emma inquired for his daughter and granddaughters. When Emma offered him a glass of wine, he declined and took his leave. It was clear to Bounty that Hansard planned to make a night of it. No courting could occur under his cynical gaze.

After he had left, Nick said, “There is another potential London guide for you, Emma. Bounty goes often to London to check up on the East India Company. He has some shares in John’s Company.”

“Oh, I hardly think Mr. Bounty would be interested in the theater or such depravities. His notion of a big night is to attend a concert of antique music.” She smiled fondly at the roses when Soames brought them in. “He is very sweet and thoughtful, of course,” she added pensively.

Nick felt a little shiver of apprehension. Her recent run-in with Hunter might have given her a taste for a good, solid, respectable gent like Bounty. He was not that different in either age or interests from John, and she had seemed happy enough with him.

“At his age he wouldn’t want to be attending plays,” he said firmly. “James is interested in the theater,” he added, for no other reason than to put his nephew forward.

Emma gave him a knowing smile. “I shall wait until I have met this penniless paragon before falling in love with him. I have learned from experience that gentlemen are not always as they are described by their relatives. Miss Foxworth forgot to mention her nephew is penniless. I wonder what you are not telling me about Lord James?”

“If I have told you nothing but his good points, it is because I know no ill of him.”

“You cannot be very close to him, though. I never heard you mention him before I threw you into a pelter by revealing my unmaidenly rush to leap at the altar.”

“I have known him from the cradle,” Nick said.

It wasn’t a complete lie. He had known of James forever. He spoke on about his cousin for quite ten minutes, ransacking his mind for any praiseworthy details Lady Revson might have mentioned about her son in her occasional letters.

Emma listened, but was not convinced. “If he’s as wonderful as you say, you’d be looking higher than a baronet’s widow for him,” she said bluntly.

Her plain speaking quite took the wind out of Nick’s sails. He suggested a game of cards and stayed for another hour without mentioning Lord James.

When Miss Foxworth began gathering up her wraps to retire, he took his leave of the ladies, promising to bring Lord James to call the next afternoon.

Chapter Eight

Lord Hansard was well impressed with Lord James when his cousin arrived at Waterdown the next day to begin his visit. Nick’s greatest fear was that James, at twenty-two, might be a little immature for Emma. Although she was also twenty-two, she had been married for a few years and had the management of Whitehern since John’s passing. But when he saw Lord James, his fear vanished.

The lad was as sober and mature as a judge. His conversation was entirely sensible. James related any new occurrences within his family to Nick—a match for his sister Meg was in the offing and his papa had procured another sinecure at court. Next James inquired for any new doings at Waterdown and listened with apparent interest to Nick’s answer.

“What of yourself, James?” Nick asked later. “What are your plans?”

“You are referring to that harebrained scheme I had when I was young of buying a cornet and going to the Peninsula to fight the Frenchies. I gave that up some time ago.”

“I’m happy to hear it.”

“Yes, I feel my calling lies elsewhere. The church,” James said somberly.

“Ah.” This was less pleasing, but a younger son had to make his own way in the world. No doubt James would be happy to exchange a meager living for being master of Whitehern.

At Whitehern, Miss Foxworth had mentioned to Derek that Nick was bringing his cousin to call before the rout. Derek, wanting to please Emma, said the next afternoon that he would remain to meet Lord James.

When the expected call was made, Emma looked with interest for her first view of Lord James. Nick was correct—there was a resemblance between the cousins. Lord James was tall and well formed, with dark hair and eyes. He wore his hair cropped close to his head, brushed back, not forward in the more stylish do. His build was slighter than Nick’s, and his toilette less elegant. His cravat was simply folded, and the buttons on his jacket were small. But overall he made a good, gentlemanly appearance.

His bow, when he was presented, had a certain simple grace.

“Hansard has told me a good deal about you, Lady Capehart,” he said, in a low, velvety voice.

“You mustn’t believe everything your cousin says,” she replied lightly.

Lord James appeared baffled. “I’m sure Cousin Nick would never trifle with the truth,” he said.

Emma couldn’t believe the young gentleman Nick had been puffing off to her could be so obtuse. She assumed her guest had the same playful disposition as Nick and retorted, “No indeed, there is nothing trifling in Nick’s way of falsifying matters.”

“Lady Capehart is jesting, James,” Nick said.

“Ah. I’m not sure it’s wise to trifle with a gentleman’s reputation, Lady Capehart,” he said. His gentle voice made it less a reprimand than a suggestion.

Emma looked a question at Nick. He shrugged his shoulders and spoke to Mr. Hunter. Before long the company was laughing at some foolishness having to do with a fixed horse race. Lord James listened closely, shaking his head in dismay. Tea was brought in and the conversation continued. Nick kept Hunter occupied to allow his cousin to make headway with Emma.

“Do you live with your parents at Revson Hall, Lord James?” Emma asked.

“I have been, until the present, except for the Season, of course, when one goes to London. It’s time I find my own way in the world. I have pretty well decided to enter the clergy.”

“I expect your papa has a good living at his disposal?” she asked. Like Nick, she assumed a younger son would leap at the chance of stepping into an excellent estate instead. James’s reply caused a doubt.

“He has two or three, but I have no opinion of plurality. One church and one flock is enough to keep a vicar busy. Actually, I would prefer not to exploit my favored position in Society. I intend to find a small country vicarage on my own and work my way up on my own small merits.”

“That’s very—noble,” she said.

Emma noticed that Nick was listening in on their conversation and directed a long, accusing look at him. She assumed Nick had coached his cousin to propriety, but he had done his work too well. James sounded like a stick-in-the-mud.

“I trust your clerical goals don’t preclude dancing, Lord James?” she said, trying to lure him into more natural conversation. “Nick is having a rout party this evening in your honor.”

“Oh, indeed, I have nothing against dancing. I’m not a Methodist. Every race indulges in the dance. Anything so widespread must be natural to man. Though it is only our decadent society that has turned it into something lascivious. I am referring, of course, to the waltz.”

Emma was rapidly losing interest in him. “Even the waltz can be done decorously,” she said with a flouncing pout.

James’s lips softened in a smile. When he replied, Emma sensed some ambiguity in his words. “Yes, it can, but why put temptation in man’s way?”

His eyes were hot as they moved over the widow’s stormy eyes and pouting lips. He noticed the fullness of her breasts and her dainty white hands. Self-restraint could only succeed so far. Human nature would out.

Nick sensed that the conversation was not going so well as he had hoped. He drew James into conversation with Hunter, and after he rose to fill his teacup, he sat beside Emma.

She gave him a long, questioning look. “Tell the truth, Nick. Did you put Lord James up to it?”

“Up to what?”

“To pretending he is some sort of saint or hermit?”

“Certainly not. What has he said?”

“You didn’t mention that he intends to enter the church—and at the lowest level he can find.”

“A few years ago he wanted to go and fight in the Peninsula. This year it’s saving souls. James never does things by halves. He’d change his mind about the church, if a better offer came along.”

“I don’t plan to offer for him! I’ve learned my lesson.”

“I should have said a better opportunity,” Nick said, cursing his slip.

Emma gazed across the room at Lord James. She was intrigued by a gentleman who would want to don a shako and sword and kill men one year, and become a lowly vicar the next. A gentleman who condemned the waltz, yet who looked at a lady with fire glowing in his eyes. And who was young and handsome and nobly born besides.

“Well, what do you think of him?” Nick asked.

“He’s fascinating,” she said.

Nick looked at her uncertainly. “Are you practicing the art of dissimulation, or do you mean it?”

Her surprised look told him she was serious. “No, he really is fascinating. I look forward to knowing him better.”

Nick’s mind told him this was an excellent thing. It would be good for James, good for Emma, and good for himself to have a sensible neighbor. But the satisfaction and pleasure he expected wasn’t there. In its place was a worm of discontent, as Emma gazed across at James with that faraway look in her eyes while he expounded some salutary tale on the evil of gambling to Mr. Hunter. That Mr. Hunter was listening to him with apparent interest was the greatest surprise of all.

“Of course, James is very young,” Nick heard himself say. “Still wet behind the ears, really. His next notion may be to turn Whitehern into an orphanage or some such thing. One never knows what freakish start he’ll come up with.”

He expected a scold for having brought a gentleman of such unstable ways into her company, and after puffing him off as unexceptionable as well.

Emma smiled softly. “That’s what is so fascinating about him. But don’t worry that I would let him turn Whitehern into an orphanage. I have a little experience in handling gentlemen, you must know.”

“I’m glad you like him,” Nick said.

She tilted her head to one side and sat a moment, thinking and darting glances at James, across the room. “I haven’t said I liked him. I only said he’s fascinating. Snakes are fascinating, too. It doesn’t mean one approves, only that one is interested. He may prove too volatile for me to handle.”

But the little smile at the corner of her lips told him she was looking forward to trying. Lord Hansard soon left, taking his cousin with him.

“We shall see you all this evening, then,” he said, making his bows.

Lord James cast a long look at the widow and said in soft, caressing accents, “Perhaps I was a little hasty in condemning the waltz, Lady Capehart. As you said, it can be done decorously. Will you save me the waltzes?”

“I look forward to it, Lord James,” she replied, and gave him her hand. He lifted it to his lips. Custom decreed that the hand should stop an inch below his lips. Emma thought perhaps it was James’s gazing at her so intently that made him misjudge the distance, but his lips definitely grazed the back of her hand for a longish moment. When she felt a flicker of moisture on her flesh, she gave a start of alarm.

Hansard took James’s elbow and said, “One would think you hadn’t been fed!” and, in a thoroughly bad humor, led his cousin out the door. Nick was accustomed to having the waltzes with Emma. He had been looking forward to it.

As they drove home, Lord James chided gently, “You didn’t warn me the widow is a beauty, Hansard. I was quite unprepared for it. I fear I may have misbehaved. It was kind of you to call my attention to my lapse, for I quite lost my head. It was her perfume, I think, that did it. That lovely scent of mimosa. A light-skirt I had under my protection last year used that perfume. She was a hellion in bed. Mimosa acts like an aphrodisiac on my senses.”

Nick gasped in astonishment. “A light-skirt? I heard nothing of this.”

“Papa did an excellent job of hushing it up, as he always does.”

“I’m packing you off home tomorrow, at dawn.”

“Ah, Cousin, you wrong me. I am a changed man since my affair with Lily. I have learned the unwisdom of consorting with the muslin company. Only think, a child of mine being raised by a light-skirt.”

“You got the woman enceinte?”

“So she would have me believe. At it turned out, she was three months pregnant when I first knew her—intimately. No, the child was not mine, but it might have been. It taught me a lesson. I have reformed. That is what decided me to enter the church and lead a life of sobriety, doing good to atone for the ills of my scarlet past.”

As James was only twenty-two, Nick assumed he was not yet a hardened rake. He was young enough to change his ways. Marriage would be an excellent thing for him. “Whitehern is a very profitable estate,” he said.

“Yes, and of more interest,” James murmured, “did you notice that Lady Capehart’s eyes, if I am not mistaken, had the leer of invitation?”

“Lady Capehart was not leering! She is a perfectly respectable widow, and I expect you to remember it.”

“I shall certainly try, Hansard. I have a dreadful weakness for ladies, you know. I had hoped that daily doses of prayer might cure me, but prolonged abstinence is taking its toll. I am quite determined to behave myself, however. I shall go to my room when we return and read a few sermons by John Donne. Don’t let me read his poems. They incite me to ... Ah, but you wouldn’t understand. You are old and settled in your ways.”

“I’m three and thirty. Not exactly Methuselah!”