Elisabeth Fairchild (4 page)

A reel led Miles Fletcher to his second encounter with his red-haired huntress, Lester’s lamb, one of the reasons he had taken pains to make this trip to Holkham. He had been on the lookout for the young woman all evening. He had, in fact, taken great pains to look his best, determined that they should meet and that she should be impressed by his irreproachable style. His cravat was flawlessly tied, his swallow-tailed coat fit him like a glove. His waistcoat was a favorite.

His gaze knifed through the absolute crush of people that crowded the dining hall at dinner. No Diana, for so he had begun to think of her. He must have passed right over her. Dressed much like any other young woman in the room, with her magnificent hair pulled away from her face and tightly constricted in a twist at the crown of her head, the glow of her was almost extinguished. When he recognized her at last, in the statue gallery, where a chamber orchestra tucked away in the north tribune kept the dance floor filled, she was virtually unrecognizable. Miles did a double-take. Could this be his goddess sublime?

Gone was the defining weight of the dark green Bowman’s Society outfit that suited her so well. The pale, high-waisted round-necked satin and gauze she now wore did not in the least become her. Her coloring was too loud for pastels, her figure too buxom for a dress bound just beneath the breast. She looked as if she had pulled on a satin sack and tied it in the middle. Whoever had the dressing of her should have known better.

Her hairdresser too, was in need of a scolding. The fiery, fox-fur glory of curling hair was pulled too severely from a face heavily powdered in a vain attempt to disguise indisguisable freckles. The graceful huntress looked a pale and uncertain ghost of herself. Among the crush of glittering ladies and gentlemen, the girl was not at ease in her poorly rendered finery. She frequently looked down at her neckline to check the lace tucker that saved her bosom from over-exposure. She plucked and fiddled with the ribbons on her sleeves.

Determined to verify her identity and recole his boundless expectations of a goddess with the reality of this stranger’s awkward femininity, Miles negotiated his way around the crowded room keeping his gaze carefully pinned on her, afraid she might slip away.

She stood alone, uncomfortably framed on one side by the whirl of dancers and on the other by a cluster of young men and women determined to exclude newcomers from their conversation. She edged away from the whirl and the laughter with the guilty sideways glance of someone who has arrived without an invitation at a function where they are familiar with no one. Gone was the self-assurance that had added grace and agility to her every movement out of doors.

Approached by a balding and bespectacled gentleman almost as retiring as she, Lester’s lamb had, indeed, the look about her of a nervous filly ready to bolt. To Miles’s chagrin, just as he managed to break through the crush that separated him from his prize, the sparsely haired gentleman convinced her to dance.

It was a shame really, that the young woman agreed to take the floor. She was no great dancer. Her partner proved equally uneasy with the arrangement of his feet. Between them, they gave the appearance of clumsiness and ineptitude, managing to bump into one another and the couples around them more than once. The young lady’s foot was compromised. Her expression registered shock and then pain as her partner swung her near. The gentleman apologized, contrition written all over his face. She smiled and gamely made the best of her predicament.

It was disturbing to Miles to watch them.  

“The bounder should never trouble any poor female to trip about the floor with him if he can do no better than that in a room filled with priceless Roman marble.” Thomas Coke, his host, dared make such a cutting remark.

Miles greeted him as though they picked up a conversation interrupted only moments before, when in fact it had been months since their last encounter. “It would be a shame to think these time-tested relics have survived the ages only to be overturned by a clumsy lout who does not know right foot from left. Tell me, who is the lovely creature the clod keeps treading on?”

Coke laughed. “Fancy redheads do you? Not your style, young man. Aurora Ramsay is too much a part of the landscape to share much in common with a purveyor of art more comfortable with painted ones.”

Ramsay! So she was the Ramsay he came in search of, the innocent lamb his uncle would not see fleeced. He had suspected as much from the color of her hair. Amusing really, that of all the women gathered here at Holkham Hall, he should be attracted to this one. “Speaking of paintings,” he said, “I am looking forward to examining your landscapes at my leisure, both indoors and out. Rumor has it there are several treasures stashed away in your attic.”

Coke rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “There are a few canvases upstairs--none of them landscapes, but you are welcome to have a peek, if you like. Your sister, too, if she is not easily shocked by the excesses of art. She tells me she means to do several watercolors of the Hall while she is here. Nice girl. Fine, light touch with her paintbrush. I’m glad you brought her with you. She is good company for my girls. I see Lord Walsh wastes no time in dancing with her.”

Miles drew forth his quizzing glass and studied the dancers. A well-built, handsome fellow of impressive stature and musculature, Walsh was not to be missed. A vigorous dancer, he trounced Grace about the floor with admirable enthusiasm.

As the couple swept past them in a wind of their own making, Grace shot her brother a desperate look. Miles understood. She required rescuing. He smiled and nodded. Time enougho save his little sister when the music stopped. In the meantime, there was more to be found out about the canvases in the attic.

“Do you not care for these paintings? I am sure I could find a buyer for you if they do not suit.”

“Care for them? They’re first rate, lad. I would not dream of parting with them.” Coke lowered his voice. “They are, however, a trifle suggestive. In the Classical mode of course, but I’ve impressionable daughters. As a man of the world, I’m sure you understand. My wife will not have them hanging about, putting romantic notions in the girls’ heads.”

“I see,” Miles said, without really seeing at all. The nudes lining the gallery in which they stood might be labeled suggestive and the tapestry wall hangings in his rooms were none too prudish. The paintings in the attic must be striking indeed to be banned from view!

Miles allowed no hint of disappointment to surface in his expression at the news Coke had no inclination to sell. He had heard the canvases were excellent. A list of potential buyers was filed away in his head. A peek in the attic was a welcome invitation. If these suggestive paintings were as good as rumored, Tom might yet be coaxed around to the idea of selling one or two. If not, Miles would enjoy the viewing, pay rapt attention to a sheep shearing, do his best, as his sister suggested, to learn in a fortnight what it took to run an estate and perhaps most important of all, introduce himself to Aurora Ramsay.

He returned his attention to the graceless antics of the less than sublime goddess of the dance floor. Coke could tell him more about the girl he was sure, if only the matter were approached in the right way. “The Ramsay. Is she cut from the same rough cloth as her brothers ‘Rakehell’ and what is it the brother is called who has the pox? ‘Rogering’ Ramsay, isn’t it?”

“Aurora, like her brothers? By no means. I would not allow her near my girls if that were the case. The girl takes after Rue, if she resembles any Ramsay. He comes here as her escort though he hasn’t the slightest interest in sheep, dear boy. Aurora makes him bring her every year. Likes to stay abreast of the latest agricultural and stock raising trends. Remarkably informed young woman. Has a love of the soil, Aurora does. Not at all afraid to get her hands dirty. Her brothers would not have an acre left between them did she not manage the tenants and fields now that their father is gone. A pity, but she may not be able to hold onto what little is left if her siblings continue to indulge themselves in the habits of wine, women, dice and cards.”

Miles’s eyes narrowed. How like his Uncle Lester these Ramsay’s sounded. “Losing heavy and riding life hard, are they?”

“No more than usual, if I am to take Rue at his word. Holed up as usual, in the library, he is perhaps the best of the lot, other than Aurora, judging reputation by the foolish nicknames they are all of them saddled with.”

“Do tell,” Miles winced as he continued to observe through his quizzing glass, the gyrations of the couple who plowed their way across the floor. This Aurora Ramsay was in need of rescuing far more than his sister--and in more ways than one.

Coke counted them off on his fingers. “Let me see if I can keep them straight. ‘Rash’ Ramsay, the eldest, his real name is Charles, has gone to Persia in an effort to revive the decimated family fortunes. In his absence, ‘Rakehell,’ the brother with whom you are familiar, is fast gambling away what little capital is left. He is ably assisted in his endeavors by his younger brothers ‘Rogering’ Ramsay and ‘Rip’ Ramsay, who gets very loud when he drinks too much, which is more often than not from all accounts.”

Miles felt a sense of regret that made little real sense given the fact that he had never so much as met his fair, arrow-slinging Diana. “Bad blood?” he suggested.

Coke shrugged and sighed. “Nay, never that! It was no more than the loss of both their parents that sent them all to seed.”  Tom’s voice went soft with affection. He cleared his throat and the air, by saying gruffly, “Great go of a girl. Nothing vaporish, missish or retiring about her.” He lowered his voice to confide, “Mark my words. Were I a younger man, and unattached, I would bend knee to her despite the drain her brothers would be on any man’s pocketbook. As I am neither, I am pleased she chooses to hang about the place. My girls are completely overawed by her. She stretches the boundaries of femininity, you see.”

“And has this overawing Aurora a nickname too?” Miles lowered his glass.

Coke laughed. “As a matter of fact, she does.
L'Amazon
, she is called, by those who pander to the fashion of Frenchifying everything. ‘Riding’ Ramsay by those who do not. Ride she does, as though she were born in the saddle. Never have I seen a woman with a finer seat.”

It was unfortunate that hard on the heels of such a compliment, Miss Aurora Ramsay’s partner managed to thoroughly trip her up. As the final chords of the dance were struck, she stumbled into the path of Lord Walsh and Miles’s sister, Grace. Walsh was so completely unbalanced by the unexpected interruption to his enthusiastic progress, that with an ungentlemanly grunt, he crashed to the floor, taking Aurora with him in a tumble of pale petticoats and a painful thumping of limbs.

The chamber orchestra sawed to an uneasy halt.

Every couple on the dance floor stopped to observe. Every head in the room, swiveled.

“Oh my. What have we here?” Coke leapt forward to help the fallen to their feet, but Miles, who had anticipated the tragedy of clumsiness before it occurred, beat him to it.

Aurora Ramsay groaned as she stared up at the exquisitely coffered ceiling and the elegantly gilded chandelier. She took a deep breath and held the angry exclamation she would have liked to have shouted, firmly in check.
Damn
the clumsy twit who had dared ask her to dance when he had no more idea than she how to go about it.
Damn
her own stupidity in accepting his assurances that there was nothing to it. Dancing was not her strong suit. She had never taken the time to master the art. Why had she not acknowledged her ineptitude and clung to the wall and the punchbowl like any other wilting flower, never setting slipper to the polished wood floor where everyone whirled as gracefully as falling leaves? Why did dancing look so simple, effortless and easy, when it was anything but?

Of all people to drag down in a clumsy heap in the middle of a crowded dance floor, it must be Lord Walsh-- Walsh, whom she had decided she must marry--huge, handsome, sandlewood-scented Walsh, who had landed on top of her as they stumbled to the floor and was crushing the life out of her even as he breathed a spate of oaths into the lace tucker she was sure did not cover enough of the cleavage of her bosom. Dear Lord above! This was, of course, the very position she had hoped to one day share with this man, but the mode and manner of their achieving such a stance exceeded the scope of her imaginings. What a mess! Her face burned. This was not at all the impression she had planned to make.

Lord Walsh got off of her quickly enough but when she put her hand out, expecting his assistance in rising, she was surprised to find another gentleman took her hand with alacrity. He was a stranger to her, a vaguely familiar stranger with exceptionally fine legs encased ie long, snug black pantaloons buttoned above the instep that Beau Brummel had made popular in certain sets for evening wear. His shoes were as black as his pantaloons and noteworthy for their glossy shine. The stranger who wore them struggled manfully not to smile as he raised her to her feet.

He smelled faintly of citrus. They were of a height. He looked her straight in the eyes as she rose. She was struck by the darkness of his hair, by the chiseled sharpness of his features, by the deep blue gleam of his eyes.

“Are you badly bruised?” His tone was as formal and polished as the floor of the statue gallery she had just risen from. “Do you wish to sit down?” he asked politely. His face, his look, even the question he asked had a sharpness to it. Cheekbones, chin and nose--he seemed chiseled from the same pale, Italian marble that stared blankly down from the wall behind him.

“Sit? No!” she snapped, rubbing the aching hip upon which she had landed. “I do not want to sit. The problem is in having chosen the floor to sit upon, as it is.”

The blue eyes sparkled with suppressed glee. His mouth, the only softness in his sharp-edged, clever face, twitched with withheld laughter. She marked him a dandy by the dazzling, white de Chasse knot at his throat and the impeccable cut of his coat. It was so perfectly tailored to his measurements she was amazed the seams did not split immediately asunder when he exerted himself in helping her to her feet. Impeccably accoutered in broad lapels, long coal-black tails, high stock, pristine white gloves, and an unusually fine, figured white-upon-white waistcoat, his sleek, black hair spoke of the dandy too, cut short on the sides, long and curling on the top. Add to this his clean-shaven chin, a heavy gold watch fob and the mirrored shine of the quizzing glass he raised to regard her and she felt the perfect clodhopping dowd beside him, even in her ball gown.