Friends and Foes (4 page)

“A walking stick?” Lizzie replied with obvious amusement.

“Did she not twirl it at her side when she strolled into the room?”

“She was already in the room when I entered.” Lizzie turned back to Miss Kendrick. “You never carried a walking stick that year in London.”

Philip leaned casually against the back of a nearby wingback chair. “Perhaps it is a recently acquired—”

“—affectation,” several voices finished with him.

Philip raised an eyebrow in challenge. How, he wondered, would Miss Kendrick respond to that? He assumed she’d throw back some biting retort. He considered the far-fetched possibility that she might blush or, even more far-fetched still, that she might smile or look remotely impressed at his quick retorts. He’d held his own, after all. He’d dealt a sound blow in their verbal brawl—a turn of events he doubted occurred often, considering her obviously quick wit.

Her eyes snapped back to his, something sparking in them. She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders but didn’t sit up, didn’t rise. “A woman fashioning a walking stick offends your visual sensibilities?”

“Soon all of London’s fashionable females would be limping through balls and musicales.” No dandy would embrace such a thing.

“An impossibility, then,” Miss Kendrick replied, her expression all but blank, her tone uninterpretable. “A lady with a limp being considered beautiful.”

“In our society, appearance is everything.” Philip knew that well.

“On that point, my lord, we agree.” Miss Kendrick shifted quite awkwardly until she sat forward, her feet in front of her on the floor. “Now, if you will excuse me, my affectation and I feel the need for a change of scenery.”

She grasped her walking stick without hesitation and rose slowly, unsteadily to her feet. A fleeting look of pain crossed her face before being replaced by cool indifference. Miss Kendrick bowed her head ever so slightly before turning away. To say she limped would be an enormous understatement. She leaned heavily on the aforementioned walking stick and moved as one in a tremendous amount of physical agony, as if her right leg functioned only minimally and only with great effort.

Philip watched her go amidst the total silence in the room. His smile vanished. His smug satisfaction dissipated. The entire room watched Miss Kendrick exit.

“Sorrel,” Miss Marjie called after her sister.

Miss Kendrick waved off the plea and continued her struggled walk out of the room.

“I had no idea,” Lizzie said quietly. “She didn’t used to have a . . .” Lizzie looked uncomfortable with the word “. . . a limp.”

“Apparently my foot still fits in my mouth,” Philip said, resisting the urge to run his fingers through his hair.

Lizzie looked to Mrs. Kendrick. “What happened? She walked without a limp when last I saw her.”

“Oh . . . we . . . well . . .” She stuttered and waved her hand in an awkward display of apparent dismissal. “Oh, my, do look. It is snowing.” Mrs. Kendrick flitted to the far window, leaving behind a roomful of astonished onlookers.

“We rarely talk about Sorrel’s condition.” Miss Marjie offered her quiet explanation. “Sorrel rather prefers it that way. Mother quite insists on it.”

“An injury?” Lizzie asked.

Miss Marjie nodded. “About two years ago.”

“Is that why she did not return to London for her second Season?”

Another nod.

“She never mentioned it in any of her letters.” Lizzie’s eyes were still glued to the door through which Miss Kendrick had passed. “I never knew.”

“If you will pardon me.” Philip bowed to the room in general. “I have an apology to make.”

Insufferable, horrible man!
She should have forced her walking stick down his dandified throat the first time she met him. The unfeeling, detestable—

“Miss Kendrick.”

Sorrel didn’t bother to stop or even attempt to turn around. The tap-and-drag rhythm of her walk echoed in the empty corridor. She already felt the awkwardness of her gait; hearing the syncopation of it, too, only added to her frustration.

“Miss Kendrick.” Curse his fully functional limbs. The infuriating popinjay arrived at her side before she’d had the chance to escape. “Miss Kendrick.”

“You, apparently, have learned my name.” How she hoped he heard the acid in her tone!

He stepped around and faced her. “I wish to apologize, Miss Kendrick.”

“For being a pompous dunderhead?”

The Earl’s jaw tightened momentarily. Did he expect her to simper at his offered regrets? To be won over by an apology he most likely did not remotely feel? Perhaps he simply thought his overly bright sense of fashion would leave her weak in the knees. The fribble!

“For my thoughtless words,” he said. “I did not intend to be offensive.”

“And I did not intend to be contentious.” She would concede that much.

“Shall we cry pax?” He smiled as though it were a settled matter.

“You belittle and insult me before a roomful of people who have yet to form opinions of me and insinuate that my less-than-graceful gait makes me less than ladylike. You make my early moments at a monthlong house party embarrassing and difficult, and a simple ‘I apologize’ should placate me?” How many ways could this man hurt and belittle her? “Did you not exact enough satisfaction several evenings ago depriving me of my crutch? Why do you find it absolutely necessary to add salt to the wound?”

“I did not realize at the time that you had a legitimate reason for carrying a walking stick.”

“No. You assumed I obsessed over my appearance like—”

“Like I do?” The Earl’s blond eyebrow arched in obvious disapproval at her insinuation.

“I know a tulip when I see one.”

“Perhaps now
you
are the one being judgmental. Assuming based on appearances that—”

“Someone once told me that appearance is everything,” she said, not caring for the social niceties at the moment. “I daresay you know precisely what your appearance communicates.”

“You know nothing about me, Miss Kendrick.” Now the blue eyes were icy cold.

Sorrel didn’t flinch. Let him be angry. Let him feel half as affronted as she did. “I know far more than I care to, Lord—” Except she didn’t know his name. And he realized it. A smile of satisfaction crossed his unfairly handsome face. Why couldn’t villains all be hideously ugly?

“Philip Jonquil, Earl of Lampton.” He bowed rather smugly.

“Fop,” Sorrel mumbled under her breath.

“I fear we are at an impasse, Miss Kendrick. Could we not reach for a cessation of hostilities?”

“I doubt you would hold to a truce, Lord Lampton. Not with such cannon fodder as I am certain to provide you with.” She tapped her walking stick for emphasis.

“Would not my mannerisms prove ammunition for you as well in this war of words?” Lampton smiled smoothly. “The quizzing glass and what.”

“The quizzing glass and
what
?” Sorrel asked, determinedly keeping her eyes from his too-easy smile, concentrating instead on his knife-edged words of earlier. “How highly armed am I likely to find myself these next four weeks?”

“I do not believe it a good battle plan to point out my own strategic vulnerabilities to an enemy,” he said.

“Am I your enemy, then?” she asked.

“If we cannot trust each other to maintain even a temporary peace, what else could we possibly be?”

She met his challenge with a raise of her chin. “It is to be a battle, then?”

He nodded. “Until one of us cries pax.”

“Agreed.”

“Agreed.” Lampton smiled far too triumphantly. Far too confidently. “Might I offer you my escort somewhere?”

“No.” Sorrel knew she must look confused. She
felt
confused. Hadn’t they just agreed to be bitter enemies?

Lampton offered a bow before sauntering almost blithely back to the west sitting room. So the confounded man looked forward to the coming clash? Excited about their declared animosity? Sorrel smiled mirthlessly. She knew she could hold her own in a verbal match; bitter experience had taught her to fight tooth and nail for everything.

*   *   *

Philip stopped at the door of the sitting room and glanced back toward Sorrel. Somehow, he couldn’t think of his newly sworn enemy as
Miss Kendrick
. They were at war, after all. No British soldier would use his drawing room manners with Bonaparte.

Lampton War Tactic Number One: Do not think of the enemy as female; think of females as the enemy. Or something like that.

His female enemy slowly, determinedly staggered away down the windowed rear corridor. Admittedly a formidable foe, and a fighter to the core, he’d wager. He certainly felt up for the challenge. He needed a strategy. Philip narrowed his eyes as he watched what he labeled as Sorrel’s retreat. Yes, he needed a strategy, and another tactic.

Lampton War Tactic Number Two: If the enemy’s hair shines like onyx in the morning sun, it is best not to notice. Or pretend not to. Or at least disregard the shine. And the hair.

Philip’s passage into the sitting room came rather abruptly but did not go unnoticed.

Mater wasted no time letting her thoughts be known. “I certainly hope you apologized.”

“I did.” He offered an abbreviated bow but held back a smile.

“Well.” Mater looked duly relieved. “I am happy you are forgiven.”

“On the contrary,” Philip quickly corrected. “Miss Kendrick”—he would keep tactic number one under wraps: too many females who might misunderstand—“has declared my apology insufficient and insincere and swears she will not forgive me but has every intention of disliking me with a passion.”

Jason looked smug. Corbin seemed a little surprised. Lizzie appeared horrified. Mater had that intrigued look once more, so Philip turned abruptly away. His gaze, however, fell on Catherine—sweet Catherine, so like a younger sister to him. She looked concerned, but for
whom,
he couldn’t say. A hint of disappointment hung in her eyes, and it cut at him. No wonder Crispin would do anything for his wife. She could pierce with a look. At least Sorrel only pierced with words.

Lampton War Tactic Number Three: It is best not to think of one’s relationship with the enemy in the same way one thinks of his best friend’s relationship with his wife. Period.

“Now, Catherine,” he hastily entreated, “do not look distraught. I only make a spectacle of myself so Crispin will appear to all the more advantage in your eyes. He is rather a bumbling wreck at times, though it pains me to say such about my oldest friend.”

At that she smiled and shook her head amusedly. “On behalf of my husband and myself, I heartily thank you.”

“Yes. Such a noble sacrifice.” Crispin had crossed to his wife’s side. “And one you have apparently made often. For I believe you have been making a spectacle of yourself for years.”

Philip had to laugh at that. So did the rest of the room, quite successfully breaking the tension. Philip casually crossed toward Miss Marjie, still engaged in a somewhat neglected game of backgammon with Stanley. Philip kept his gaze, however, directed at Crispin and Catherine. Lord Cavratt held his wife’s hand quite gently in his own and said something too low to be overheard. She gave him a look of blatant adoration and love. No person had ever looked at Philip that way. The realization rankled.

“Miss Marjie,” he addressed the young lady whose side he had reached. “As your sister will not accept, please allow me to offer my apologies to you. I realize my words were unkind and hurtful, though unintentionally so.”

“You couldn’t possibly have known, my lord.” Miss Marjie smiled back. “You, unfortunately, chose a particularly sensitive topic on which to be at odds with Sorrel.”

“As I have discovered,” Philip acknowledged. “But then I have never been one to do things by halves.”

“And neither has Sorrel.” She sighed somewhat regretfully. Philip vowed to eventually learn what past discretions had inspired such a tone. “If she has sworn to dislike you, I fear she will.”

“I fully believe you.” Philip lowered his voice so only she would be privy to his admission. “She has gone so far as to declare the two of us at war. I am to fortify myself against all manner of attacks against my person.”

With her voice equally low and her expression entirely serious, Miss Marjie offered a warning. “Do not underestimate Sorrel.”

Lampton War Tactic Number Four: When the sister of one’s enemy suggests caution, be cautious.

He spent the remainder of the day on strategy. Philip decided he needed to maintain the upper hand, stay one step ahead of General Sorrel. He knew enough of her quick mind from their two encounters to be certain she would not be easily outwitted. He needed the element of surprise.

Philip wandered to the window of his bedchamber, glancing out across the front grounds of Kinnley and down toward the sea, barely visible as darkness approached. He’d have to be downstairs in a few more minutes for the evening meal.

But how to outmaneuver the enemy? She, he did not doubt, would come to the meal fully anticipating a battle. She would be ready for him. Philip stepped back to the full-length looking glass. He could simply begin talking before she had a chance and not give her a moment to respond. He tugged at the sleeves of his deep-blue coat. No. Rambling would be too transparent.

Perhaps he should ignore her. Philip took another look at his cravat. Avoiding Sorrel would, no doubt, convince her he was afraid or not up to the challenge of facing her. That would never do. If he could predict the direction from which her attack would come, he could at least anticipate her objections and thwart her efforts.

Philip studied his reflection. Brummel would have approved of the more subdued tones he’d chosen for that evening’s meal—Philip’s usual colorfulness had been the one point of fashion on which he and The Beau did not agree. Sorrel would certainly not find anything objectionable in his appearance.

He could think of a handful of ladies who would not only not object but would have positively fawned on him. That fawning had historically rendered him rather ill, though he always took pains to hide it. That night he might have preferred the simpering. He could have spent the evening spouting meaningless compliments and not worrying himself over the poisonous barbs sent his way.

Philip stopped mid-tug of his butter-colored waistcoat. Meaningless compliments. Flirtations. A mischievous smile spread across his smoothly shaven face. General Sorrel would
never
anticipate that strategy.

She had declared them enemies, predicted their endless brangles, pronounced herself prepared for battle. She would be anticipating an onslaught, an opponent. The she-warrior would get just that, but not in the way she anticipated.

Philip flirted masterfully. He knew how to compliment, how to offer sugary sentiments and bring a smile and a laugh to a lady’s lips. He’d wager Sorrel would have no idea how to respond.

Lampton War Tactic Number Five: Always catch the enemy off guard.