Regency Sting (21 page)

Cherry's eyes widened even more as she stared in growing wonder at his face. His entire expression attested to the sincerity of his words. His eyes were glowing, and his lips were very slightly smiling. Her heart lurched, and she yearned to brush the damp lock from his forehead and stroke his cheek. Unconsciously, she leaned toward him. Suddenly their faces were so close that their lips met in a kiss that neither one of them was aware of initiating. For a long while, neither one could think. They floated on a cloud of blissful emotions: surprise, elation, sweetness, forgiveness and promise. It was so good, so inevitable, so
right
that his hands should be clutching hers to his chest, that their lips should meet in soft longing, that they should be sharing this unexpected joy.

It was Arthur whose mind awoke first. With a start, he released her and jumped to his feet. “Oh, my God! What am I
doing
?”

Cherry covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh,
Arthur
!” she said in a horrified whisper.

He turned away and stared into the fire. “I'm so sorry … so terribly sorry! I don't know what … possessed me …!”

Her sympathetic instincts were instantly aroused. “Don't upset yourself, Arthur. It was an
accident
. I … scarcely regard it …”

He turned to look at her, his eyes unconvinced. “Thank you. You are very good,” he murmured, reaching for his coat. “I am truly sorry. I seem to be doing all the wrong things today. I've never
done
such a thing before. Cherry, I don't know what to say except to assure you that it will not happen again.”

“Of course. There's no need to say any more,” Cherry said in a small voice. “We shan't speak of it again.”

She accompanied him to the door. “You've been very kind, Cherry,” he said quietly. “I don't deserve … I only hope that you will forget this whole evening ever happened.”

After he left the room, Cherry ran to the window and watched as he hurried away along the wet street, his collar turned up and his head down. She knew that she would never speak of what had happened—not to anyone. But she would never forget it, either.

Sixteen

The weeks that followed were exciting ones in the Mainwaring household for all but Anne. Lord Mainwaring was invited twice to ride with the Prince. Peter was happily neglecting his studies to make frequent trips in Jason's company to Cribb's Parlour and Jackson's Saloon to watch the boxing matches and to practice the skill himself. Harriet had the pleasure of becoming the envy of her friends for her relationship with the nobleman who was rapidly becoming the darling of the
ton
.

Everything Jason said was picked up and repeated in all the clubs and salons of London, some young men even going so far as to use “shucks” in their own conversations. The story of Jason's race with Miles Minton was again repeated, and he was challenged to repeat the event by every rider who had a hope of success. He was offered membership in all the best clubs, and his appearances at White's, although infrequent, were greeted with eager attention. Matchmaking mamas began to call on Harriet and press her to entice her “interesting” nephew to attend their dinners and balls. Harriet began to wonder if Anne could be right after all; perhaps all this attention would turn Jason's head.

But Jason remained curiously unmoved. He seemed to avoid making close associations with other men, although he was cordial to all whom he met at sporting events or social occasions. He refused most of his invitations, modestly deferring to his Aunt Harriet's advice about those few which she deemed important for him to attend. He didn't spend money rashly, he made no changes in the household, and he did not attempt to rule the roost. If he
were
going to have his head turned, as far as anyone could see, the process had not started yet.

Harriet could find only one real difficulty in their lives since Jason's debut—his relationship with Anne. Although he was as pleasant to her as he'd always been, greeting her at the dinner table, trying to joke with her when they sat together in the drawing room, or offering to escort her to her social engagements, she responded coldly, refusing his invitations, answering his greeting with monosyllables and reacting to his quips with cold disgust. She showed no signs of softening; her anger at what she called his unforgivable deceit continued unabated.

Anne, however, did manage (without revealing her interest to anyone else) to take notice of the females in whom Jason developed an interest. She knew whom Jason escorted to the theater or danced with at the various assemblies. Except for his undisguised interest in Lexie de Guis, there was not one girl of the dozens who had been paraded before his nose who seemed to attract special attention from him. Although he had accompanied Amanda Dabney to Covent Garden, had stood up for two dances in one evening at Almack's with Cynthia Deverill and had shown polite attentions to several others, there was not one who could flatter herself that he was as interested in her as in the detestable Lexie.

If the young ladies of London seemed to hold no special interest for Jason, politics did. He spent the better part of each morning carefully perusing both the
Morning Post
and the
Times
. To Lady Harriet's horror, she discovered that Jason had become a subscriber to a notorious weekly called
The Examiner
, a journal edited by the essayist and poet Leigh Hunt and his brother John, and markedly liberal and reformist in its opinions. When she requested Peter to ask Jason to cancel his subscription, Peter laughingly refused, telling her she was being childishly timid. Finally she broached the subject to Jason himself. “You don't want people to take a notion that you're
revolutionary
,” she warned him.

Jason couldn't help laughing. “But, my dear, how can an American be anything else?”

“Really, Jason, I think it's time you stopped calling yourself an American. You are now an English peer, and it's time you remembered that fact.”

Jason, his smile fading, opened his mouth to respond, but evidently thought better of it and shut it again. “Never mind, Aunt Harriet,” he said at last in his easygoing way. “Reading
The Examiner
has never caused anyone to be drummed out of the House of Lords, as far as I can ascertain.”

With that Lady Harriet had to be content. Jason had explained to Peter that it was only in
The Examiner
that he could learn anything about the real situation between the United States and its problems with England. The other English newspapers devoted very little attention to the upstart little nation across the sea.

It was in
The Examiner
that Jason learned about the
Little Belt
affair; neither the
Post
nor the
Times
had bothered to report it. Jason chortled as he read that the forty-four-gun
President
, a newly commissioned American ship, had attacked and defeated the British
Little Belt
. Ever since 1807, when the British
Leopard
had set upon and defeated the smaller American ship
Chesapeake
, American pride had been smarting. This situation was exactly the reverse, and Jason understood how delighted the news must have made the Americans.

That very evening, Jason dropped in at White's. There in the foyer, handing his hat to a footman, was an acquaintance of Jason's, Lord Castlereagh, the British Secretary of War. “I notice that the press is silent on the
Little Belt
affair,” Jason couldn't resist remarking to Lord Castlereagh after they'd exchanged greetings.

Lord Castlereagh raised an eyebrow. “Do you imply, Mainwaring, that we are
ashamed
of the affair? The
Little Belt
was hopelessly outweighed and outgunned by the
President
, you know.”

“Not any less than the
Chesapeake
was outweighed and outgunned by your
Leopard
, if you remember,” Jason pointed out. “I suspect that the British papers were full of
that
affair.”

Castlereagh laughed. “You have me there, old fellow. Your point!” He put an arm across Jason's shoulders as the pair walked to the card rooms. “But, if I can tell you in strictest confidence, I'm just as happy to see nothing of the affair in the newspapers. No good can come of arousing the public. We don't want war with America.”

“On
that
point,” Jason assured him, “I'm in wholehearted agreement. America doesn't want war either.”

Castlereagh sighed. “I hope you're right. But I hear that the American Congress is full of hotheads, like that fellow Clay. Do you know anything of the new firebrand the south has elected? His name is Calhoun, I believe.”

“No more than you, I'm afraid. I've been away from the States for almost six months,” Jason answered. But he was impressed with Lord Castlereagh's knowledge of the happenings in America. He could only hope that the Americans were equally well-informed about the British.

The night of the Prince's dinner party was, in many respects, as exciting to the people in the Mainwaring household as the night of Jason's debut. After all, it was not every day that one was honored with an invitation to dine with the man who was, in all but name, the King of England. The magnificent, colonnaded facade of the Prince's London residence, Carlton House, was familiar to everyone in London, but of the three members of the Mainwaring party attending the Prince's dinner, only Lady Harriet had ever seen Carlton House from the inside. It was, therefore, an evening they all knew would be memorable.

When they arrived, Jason and Anne looked about the rooms with fascination. The rooms were dazzlingly decorated. The Prince received his guests in a room whose walls were hung with blue silk covered with gold fleur-de-lis. After being received, the guests could wander through the rooms at will. Each room they saw was lavish with beautiful paintings: there were van Dykes and Vernets, Le Mains and Greuzes to be seen and admired wherever one turned. The apartments were lavishly furnished with objects d'art: girandoles, clocks, looking-glasses, bronzes, Sevres china and Gobelin tapestries. The cabinets, chests and tables had been made by the finest craftsmen in Europe. There were marble busts by Coysevox, bronzes by Keller and candelabra by Thomire. As Anne moved through the magnificent rooms on Jason's arm, she couldn't help wondering if he found the rooms too ornate for his simple American taste. But his face gave away nothing of his feelings, and she did not have an opportunity to question him in private before dinner was announced.

The guests were seated, and Anne found herself at some distance from the head of the table, while Jason had been placed quite near the Prince. With the forbidding Lord Hertford beside her, and the imperious Lady Holland opposite, she relapsed into an unaccustomed shyness and rarely lifted her eyes from her plate.

Her shyness, however, did not prevent her from taking note of the sumptuousness of the dinner. The footman behind her chair offered her so many dishes that, when the number passed sixty, she lost count. After four different soups were offered, there followed a large number of fishes, among which were a fish stew, trout Provencale and a piece of delicious English turbot with lobster sauce. These were followed by broiled ham, braised goose, pheasant, partridge and several other fowl, as well as beef smothered in glazed onions and succulent little lamb cutlets. The number of side dishes was stupefying: truffles Italienne, cabbage flowers sprinkled with Parmesan cheese, tomatoes with sauce Hollandaise, stuffed mushrooms, puree of kidney beans, a salad of fish filets with oysters, little puff-pies filled with mince-meat and a memorable chicken sausage with Bechamel sauce.

As if these were not enough, the footman offered all sorts of rolls, breads and pastries from among which Anne selected a biscuit flavored with orange rind which she found remarkably light and tasty, and a cheese roll which looked delectable but which she found she was too full to eat. Reluctantly, she had to refuse all the cakes and desserts which were passed before her eyes—a
Charlotte Americaine
(which the Prince announced was named in Lord Mainwaring's honor), a nougat cake, a French banana cream, an apricot souffle and a little basket of sweetmeats.

Anne was able to observe, too, that Jason was continuing to enhance his reputation by his quips and witticisms, for the laughter from his end of the table was frequent and prolonged. She wished she had been seated closer to him and could hear what he'd said. But Harriet was not very far removed from the head of the table and would undoubtedly repeat his
bon-mots
when they returned home. Anne could not guess that by the time they returned, Jason's social success would be shockingly reversed.

It was Lady Hertford, acting as the Prince's hostess, who rose and invited the ladies to adjourn to the music room. As soon as the gentlemen were alone with their port, the conversation turned to politics. Jason had heard rumors that the Prince favored the Whigs, who expected to be returned to power the following year when the Prince would have the authority to change the government. But as Jason listened to the talk around him, he was struck by the strong Tory sentiment expressed by the guests, and the Prince's lack of Whiggish feeling. Jason refrained from expressing his own opinions, however, until the subject of America's stiff-necked opposition to England during this difficult time was mentioned.

All eyes turned to Jason. “If you're askin' me if American sentiment is with Napoleon, I'd say probably not. If you're askin' me if America will ever get into this war on the side of the French, I'd say it depends.”

“On what?” asked Lord Castlereagh promptly.

“On how far you British go to drive us into the arms of the French,” Jason answered.

“Are you saying that America's actions depend on
us
?” Lord Hertford asked naively.

“Of
course
our actions will have an effect on the American policy,” Lord Castlereagh interjected impatiently. As Secretary of War, he was the one gentleman in the room fully cognizant of the tensions existing in the current international scene. “But you'll have to admit, Mainwaring, that President Madison is inclined to favor the French, no matter how little tangible evidence he has that Napoleon is a real friend of America.”