Eloquence and Espionage (7 page)

In any other circumstance, she might have
been amused by their reactions. Priscilla straightened, golden
lashes fluttering in rapid blinks as if she simply could not
imagine such a thing. Emily’s mouth actually dropped open.

Daphne frowned. “Who?”

“Jason Sinclair, Lord Hawksbury,” their
mother intoned as if she were a footman announcing the fellow at a
fancy dress ball. “Heir to the Marquess of Winthrop, with income of
more than twenty thousand pounds per annum from his mother and his
own estate outside London. As he is eighteen months shy of reaching
his majority, I had not realized he was seeking a bride.”

Because he wasn’t. He was only three years
older than her sixteen years. Most titled gentlemen did not begin
their bride hunt until they were at least five and twenty.

“How exactly did you meet?” her mother
asked.

How to answer that? She could make up some
proper introduction, but her mother could easily confirm that for a
lie.

Priscilla must have seen the panic on her
face, for she stepped in smoothly. “At Lord Rottenford’s
masquerade. They had a fascinating conversation overlooking the
ballroom.”

“And they’ve met at Hyde Park since,” Emily
put in.

“And Hatchard’s,” Ariadne added,
remembering.

“Where was I in all this?” Daphne demanded.
“Why was I not informed?”

Ariadne cringed, but her mother touched
Daphne’s arm. “Now, then. I know we all expected you to make the
first match as the eldest, but your time will come.” She glanced at
Ariadne. “Indeed, your sister’s fame may well propel you further
into Society. This betrothal is a considerable coupe.”

Oh, but there would be a price to pay when
her mother learned the truth. For now, Ariadne put on a smile and
accepted her mother’s well-wishes. There had been many times over
the years when she’d hoped for a word of praise, when she’d written
a poignant poem or crafted a chronicle she felt worthwhile. It hurt
now to hear that praise finally given and know it was
undeserved.

*

Sinclair stood in the doorway of his family’s
town house off St. James’s. His father sat in his study, as he
often did in the evenings at this time, in an armchair of Moroccan
leather, slippered feet up on a tufted hassock, long fingers
turning the crystal goblet to set the brandy inside to swirling.
The deep amber of the liquid glinted in the light of the fire
nearby.

None of Lord Winthrop’s friends dared
approach him anymore. His ability to slay an opponent with a word
was as legendary as his temper. Once he’d even dueled with a Prime
Minister over some imagined slight. But those days were far behind
him. The wrapping on his foot was testimony to the gout that
plagued him, as was the twist of his mouth that spoke of the pain
inside.

Squaring his shoulders, Sinclair moved into
the room. His father glanced up at him as he came to stand on the
ruby-colored carpet, and it struck Sinclair once more how unlike
his father he was, in every way, from coloring to build to
disposition.

“And here is my heir,” his father drawled,
raising the glass as if in toast. “Have you nothing better to do
than to visit an old man?”

His father had waited until reaching his
forty-fifth year to wed, making him more than sixty now. Sinclair’s
birth had greatly disappointed the distant cousin who had been the
heir presumptive until then.

“I wanted you to be the first to know,”
Sinclair told him. “I am betrothed.”

“To Miss Ariadne Courdebas, Rollings’s
youngest,” his father replied, hitching his velvet banyan closer.
“Yes, so I understand.”

The servants could not have heard and
gossiped so quickly. There simply hadn’t been time. Sinclair’s
hands fisted at his sides. “You had me followed again.”

“You are imagining things,” his father
replied, pausing to take a sip of his brandy. “I am simply well
informed.”

By his goggle-eyed personal secretary Reston
Symthe, no doubt. A pasty-faced fellow with a limp handshake,
Symthe had risen from apparent obscurity to sit at Lord Winthrop’s
right hand and keep up his correspondence. From what Sinclair had
seen, the man’s one goal in life was to ingratiate himself to
Sinclair’s father, perhaps in hopes of a rich bequest on Lord
Winthrop’s death.

“You have no reason to spy on me,” Sinclair
challenged. “Have I ever embarrassed you? Disappointed you in the
least way?”

His father elbowed himself higher in the
chair, as if trying to tower over Sinclair as he once had. “You
lack understanding. I sold my pride to birth you, boy. I’m not
about to let you run off and get yourself killed fighting a French
madman.”

It was the same argument they’d been having
for three years, ever since at sixteen he’d begged a commission in
the Hussars so he could help his friends who were going off to
fight.

“It was your choice to marry my mother and
the wealth she brought into this family,” Sinclair grit out. “It is
my choice what to do with my life.”

His father leveled a finger at him. “Not
until you reach your majority. And neither can you marry now
without my consent.” He leaned back in the chair, setting the
goblet on the table at his elbow. “And I do not consent.”

This time his father’s bark held no bite. “I
don’t care,” Sinclair told him. “I offered for her because her
father caught us kissing. We have no intentions of marrying.”

“Indeed.” His father eyed him. “I want to
meet her.”

Fire licked through Sinclair. “I’ll not have
you bully her.”

His father’s smile hitched up. “You’ll not
have, eh? Must be true love.” His smile vanished as he shifted
against the pain. “You’d better choose a proper bride, boy. I’ll
thank you not to darken my good name by marrying beneath you.”

“Why not?” Sinclair countered. “You
obviously think you did.”

Those graying brows came thundering down.
“Watch your tone. You forget. I know where the MacDougalls
live.”

He never forgot. His father’s threats were
the reason he hadn’t seen his maternal grandparents the MacDougalls
for nearly ten years. “Leave them out of this,” he said. “I have
done all you asked in their regard.”

“Perhaps,” his father said, eyes glittering
brighter than the brandy. “You just see that you have your girl
here tomorrow evening. I intend to quiz Miss Courdebas until I
uncover all her secrets. If she’s hiding something from you, you’ll
thank me for my intervention.”

Ariadne would never have guessed that all it
took to be popular was for one gentleman to show interest. But she
could not deny that she had suddenly come to the notice of Society.
For one thing, a dozen invitations to balls and routs and Venetian
breakfasts lay waiting on her mother’s desk for response, most
addressed to her mother and Lord Hawksbury’s bride-to-be (“As if I
have no standing of my own,” she’d complained to Emily). For
another, the number of callers knocking at their door had
doubled.

And they were all male.

So she had the singular sensation of sitting
on the brocaded, tasseled sofa of their mother’s elaborate
saffron-colored withdrawing room, surrounded by suitors. None
seemed the least daunted by the fact that she was once more gowned
in insipid white muslin, at her mother’s insistence. To a man, they
sang her virtues and lamented the fact that Lord Hawksbury had
declared himself first. She’d been trying to determine how to
dissuade a fellow whose name she had not caught from petting her
hand as if it were a kitten when she sighted Emily in the
doorway.

“Oh, look,” she said, rising and forcing
them all to their feet as well, “there’s my dear friend. Excuse
me.”

“But I haven’t read you a poem yet,” a
gangly young man protested from where he’d perched on the hassock
across from her. She didn’t have the heart to tell him he was
holding the poetry book upside down.

She wended her way between the other
gentlemen, who stood in groups in their navy or green coats and
fawn trousers, conversing with each other or with Daphne and her
mother, ensconced on chairs by the velvet-draped windows. Every
fellow eyed her as if ready to rush in the moment she smiled in his
direction.

“Save me,” she told Emily, grabbing her arm
and hanging on so hard she set the silk fringe bordering her
friend’s dark blue gown to trembling.

“Certainly,” Emily murmured, glancing around
at the many callers with raised brow. “I had no idea you and Daphne
were so popular.”

“We aren’t,” Ariadne assured her. “Promenade
with me. It’s the only way we’ll ever have a moment’s peace. And
whatever you do, do not meet their gazes. You’ll only encourage
them.”

They set off about the room, the gentlemen
making way for them with nods and engaging smiles. She tried to
pretend they were trees, their voices no more than a summer’s
breeze. Far more real was her sister, looking daggers at her from
across the room.

“In all truth, I don’t know what’s worse,
having to fend off these fellows or watching her be miserable,”
Ariadne confided.

“Have you told her, then?” Emily murmured,
folding her wool skirts a little closer as one of Ariadne’s
admirers nearly collided with them.

“No,” Ariadne admitted, lowering her voice
to prevent the gentleman or her mother from hearing. “I can’t very
well explain the situation without admitting Lord Hawksbury’s true
calling.”

“For by admitting it, you end it,” Emily
pointed out. “And in the process most likely earn his everlasting
enmity.”

Ariadne sighed, detouring around a
particularly eager quartet of fellows. “This is all too much like
keeping the secret of Lord Snedley’s identity.”

“True,” Emily said, giving the gentlemen a
glare that set them to studying their boots. “Although it was quite
understandable why you did not reveal the truth in that regard.
Sales would have dried up immediately.”

“And Mother would be mortified to no end.
I’m certain she’d recognize herself in the pages if she ever
bothered to look. This is one time I considered myself blessed she
reads so little of what I write.”

“You are missing an opportunity, though,”
Emily said.

Ariadne frowned. “What opportunity?”

Emily waved a hand, bringing a half dozen
fellows to their feet. “They all know you are engaged to Lord
Hawksbury. They would expect you to talk about him.”

“But I know very little about him,” Ariadne
protested as her admirers converged on them.

“You don’t,” Emily said. “They do.”

Of course! She must be careful how she
phrased her questions, but surely she could learn something of her
so-called intended. So, for the next little while, she and Emily
quizzed her callers about Lord Hawksbury. The picture the gentlemen
painted was not unlike the subject of one of Emily’s
paintings--confidence, loyalty, intelligence, athleticism. Small
wonder everyone congratulated her. She’d betrothed herself to a
paragon.

She had just about exhausted their knowledge
when the gentleman with the upside down poetry book returned to her
side and bowed. “I must go, my dear Miss Courdebas, but I promise
you I shall never forget these precious moments we spent
together.”

She had a feeling his definition of never
and hers must differ, for she doubted she’d remain on his mind
beyond the next quarter hour. Still, she inclined her head, and he
smiled devotedly before trotting off.

Another fellow moved forward to take his
place at her side. “Miss Courdebas, I rushed to extend my
congratulations, but I see I am not the first.”

Horatio Cunningham offered that grin that
had once made her spill rosy red punch all down the front of her
white gown. Now the loss of the gown seemed more tragic than the
change in her feelings toward him.

“Nor, I suspect, will you be the last,” she
told him. “You remember my friend Lady Emily.”

He inclined his curly-haired head, golden
locks in charming disarray as they tumbled over a forehead she had
previously considered noble. “Of course. And I believe
congratulations are in order for you as well. Did I not hear that
you are betrothed?”

Emily raised her head. “Not yet, but I hope
to make such an announcement shortly.”

“To the consternation of everyone who knows
you.” Acantha Dalrymple pushed her way into their circle. Ariadne
hadn’t seen much of her former classmate since Acantha had thrown
over the Duke of Rottenford at the masquerade, declaring that she
could do better than the feeble-minded fellow. Now she stood with
arms akimbo, giving everyone a view of the fine blue cambric gown
she wore, and stared at Ariadne and Emily.

“First Priscilla Tate accepts some
nonentity,” she complained, “and then you declare your love for a
common constable. Really, the only one of you with any sense is
Ariadne. She caught the heir to a marquess!”

Her nasal voice obviously carried, for
everyone else in the room stopped their conversations and glanced
their way. Ariadne thought her cheeks must be as pink as Emily’s.
Only the four of them knew that Emily’s father had yet to allow Mr.
Cropper to request her hand. The Duke of Emerson was a very busy
fellow now that Napoleon was rampaging about the Continent again.
Emily’s father rarely had time for her, much less her suitor of
questionable background.

But that didn’t mean Acantha had cause to
gloat.

“In the first place, Miss Dalrymple,”
Ariadne said, raising her chin, “Priscilla Tate is marrying a man
of intellect and integrity, whom His Grace the Duke of Rottenford
not only relies upon but calls cousin. In the second, no one with
half a brain in her head would consider a constable equal to the
highly prestigious Bow Street Runners, who count Mr. Cropper as one
of the youngest ever admitted to their exalted ranks. If you intend
to find fault, at least get your facts straight.”