Sheri Cobb South (14 page)

“Sir!” cried Polly. “I can explain—”

“My dear girl, you can tell me very little that I have not already surmised,” he replied, then turned his attention on the luckless Mr. Mayhew. “Mr. Mayhew, the queue for carriages is already forming. You would be advised to get in it without delay.”

“I—I came on foot,” said the sullen poet.

“Very well. If you can withdraw that appendage from your mouth long enough, I suggest you take yourself home in like manner.”

There was nothing young Mr. Mayhew could do but retreat with the tatters of his dignity drawn closely about him. Alone with her rescuer, Polly studied the top button of Sir Aubrey’s waistcoat with great interest, suddenly shy of meeting his gaze.

“I—I am glad you came along when you did,” she confessed. “I only came outside with him for a breath of fresh air. I cannot imagine how he interpreted that to mean that I wanted him to kiss me!”

“Then it is just as well that he did not.”

Polly’s embarrassment fled, and she looked sharply up at the baronet. “On the contrary, sir, he most certainly did! You saw!”

Sir Aubrey shook his head. “I saw no such thing.”

Any gratitude Polly might have felt quickly turned to annoyance. “One would think that I would be the best judge of whether or not I was being kissed!”

“One would certainly think so, but apparently one would be overly optimistic in making such an assumption. That, Miss Crump, was no kiss. This is.”

Before she realized what he was about, he caught her up in his arms and kissed her with a thoroughness that left her knees weak. Although she was overpowered, she knew she should at least try to resist. To this end her hands moved to his chest, but once there, instead of pushing him away, they showed an alarming tendency to clutch the lapels of his coat.

“There,” said Sir Aubrey somewhat breathlessly when he at last released her. “Quite a difference, is there not?”

“Oh, insufferable!” cried Polly, scrubbing at her bruised lips with the back of her gloved hand. “You are no better than he is!”

“I beg to differ. Miss Crump. I succeeded where he failed,” pointed out Sir Aubrey, unrepentant.

“You are both despicable!” declared Polly, outraged. “In fact, I cannot see that there is a ha’porth of difference between you!”

“I am chastened, indeed,” said Sir Aubrey, bowing deeply from the waist. “If you will excuse me, I shall endeavor to console myself.”

So saying, he re-entered the house in Mr. Mayhew’s wake, leaving Polly alone and shaken. He was monstrous, and she hated him! But she had lied. She had said there was no difference between them, but that was not true. Mr. Mayhew’s advances, unwelcome though they may have been, had come with a proposal of marriage, but Sir Aubrey had spoken no word on the subject. And who could blame him? There could be no question of matrimony between a baronet and a shopgirl. Confiding in him had been a foolish, and possibly fatal, mistake, for now that he knew she was not of his class, he believed he might do as he pleased with her. How could she have been stupid enough to let a small show of kindness and a pair of sea-gray eyes cloud her judgment so completely? Perhaps Mrs. Jennings was right when she said Polly was born in sin, for now it appeared she was, at heart, her mother’s daughter.  If her only choices were an honorable attachment with someone like Mr. Mayhew or an indecent connection with Sir Aubrey Tabor, Polly was not at all certain she possessed the moral strength to take the higher course.

* * * *

Once inside Lady Belmont’s crowded salon. Sir Aubrey sought out a relatively private corner where he could brood undisturbed.  When he had first intervened in her obviously unwelcome
tête-à-tête
with Mr. Mayhew, his motives had been purely humanitarian; indeed, he hoped that any gentleman worthy of the name would have done the same for a lady in distress. And yet there was that feeling, engendered that afternoon on the shore, that Miss Crump’s welfare was his responsibility and his alone. His kiss had been purely in the interest of asserting his prior claim—or it had been, at first. But no sooner had he felt her deliciously rounded body in his arms and tasted her soft, sweet lips beneath his than he felt a curious reluctance to let her go. More disturbing still was the realization that he had wanted to kiss her ever since the morning she’d emptied the coffeepot onto his lap. He had been so shaken by the discovery that he had instantly retreated into the role of bored dandy, but inside he felt as gauche and inept as—as— His lips twisted in a wry grimace. He felt as gauche and inept as a lovestruck Ethan Brundy, newly arrived in London and staring slack-jawed across Covent Garden Theater at the beautiful Lady Helen Radney.

But where his friend had wed and eventually won his lady, Sir Aubrey had not the freedom to marry to please himself. He was a baronet and the great-grandson of a marquess; he owed it to his name to make a suitable alliance with a woman who would add to his family’s consequence. Love matches with the by-blows of unknown gentlemen, he reflected wryly, were out of the question.

Of course, there was another alternative, one favored by gentlemen who, like himself, found themselves enamoured of women whom, for whatever reason, they could not marry. He might set Polly up in a discreet house where they could live as man and wife without benefit of clergy. Such arrangements were common enough in his world; even the Prince Regent’s brother, the Duke of Clarence, had lived in pseudo-domestic bliss with the famed actress Dorothea Jordan for twenty years, producing no less than ten little FitzClarences, and no one among the
beau monde
even lifted an eyebrow.

He rejected the idea almost at once. While he would be willing to take her on any terms, she would be the one to bear Society’s censure. Polly, who might have been the Countess of Camfield, would no longer be received in polite society, and his mother and Lady Helen would be obliged to turn a blind eye to her if they ever encountered her in public. And while he would not hesitate to acknowledge and provide for any children she might bear him—not for his child the sort of uncertainty that Polly had endured!—any son of hers would be barred by law from inheriting his title. No, it was not to be thought of. He might have been tempted to pursue such a course while he still believed Miss Crump to be a scheming adventuress, but after having heard Polly’s history from her own lips, only a blackguard would make her the same indecent offer proposed by her erstwhile employer—the prospect of which had been enough to drive her to spin a web of lies in order to escape with her virtue intact.

He grimaced.   What singularly ugly thoughts to be entertaining about the woman he loved! And yet, what choice did he have?

Lost in thought, Sir Aubrey was not aware that he was watching the door until it opened and Polly (having lingered on the balcony long enough to recover her poise) re-entered the house. She was claimed almost at once by the stammering young Viscount Sutcliffe, who spent the rest of the evening following her about like a Tantony pig. Sir Aubrey resisted the urge to go to her; he felt singularly unprepared for another
tête-à-tête
just yet, and his cousin, being content to gaze at his goddess, was unlikely to discommode her with unwanted attentions.

The Marquess of Inglewood, however, frowning as he watched his heir’s courtship from the opposite side of the room, was not so sanguine. Slowly, so as not to attract undue notice, he made his way to Sir Aubrey’s corner and trapped his distracted relation.

“I say, Aubrey, what do you know about the Crump chit?”

“What do you wish to know about her?” countered Sir Aubrey.

“How to get rid of her, for one thing!”

Sir Aubrey’s lips twitched. “You and Ethan Brundy would seem to have a great deal in common. Are you sure you won’t let me introduce you to him?”

The Marquess of Inglewood saw no humor in being likened to a weaver. “Don’t change the subject, you impudent puppy! Dash it, Aubrey, my son has been making sheep’s eyes at the girl ever since you introduced them—for which, incidentally, I don’t thank you, sir!”

“I beg your pardon, sir. Believe me when I say that if there were any way to undo an introduction, I would be happy to oblige. I trust you have not been so foolhardy as to suggest to Sutcliffe that you find his choice inappropriate?”

“I did a great deal more than suggest it!”

“A pity. You could not have found a better way of attaching him to her.”

“You’ll not pin the blame on me when you were the one who first made her known to him!” the marquess informed him roundly. “You will oblige me by keeping the girl away from my son!”

“Not to appear unsympathetic, sir, but if you believe Miss Crump has designs on Sutcliffe, hadn’t you best address them to Mr. Brundy? As her host, he is in a far better position to dictate her movements.”

The marquess dismissed this suggestion with a snort of derision. “Bah! Having married above himself, your Mr. Brundy could hardly be expected to understand, much less sympathize with, my position. I’ll have your word, Aubrey, that you’ll see to it the girl doesn’t entrap my son!”

Sir Aubrey withdrew an enamelled snuffbox from his pocket, flicked it open, and raised a pinch to his nostril, all the while steadily regarding the marquess through unwavering gray eyes. “Very well, then, you have my word,” he said at last. “Sutcliffe will not marry her.”

It was a silent and awkward party of three which made its way back to the Marine Parade. Polly, seated beside Lady Tabor on the forward-facing seat of the carriage, stared fixedly out the window in order to avoid looking at Sir Aubrey, who sat opposite on the rear-facing seat and who was by all appearances intent on a study of his evening slippers. Lady Tabor, noting the reticence of her companions and drawing her own conclusions, was moved to remonstrate with them, declaring the sight of them enough to give her a fit of the dismals.

“If anything will bring on the dismals. Mama, it is a rout,” replied Sir Aubrey. “I have always found these affairs a deadly bore.”

“And what of you, Miss Crump?” demanded Lady Tabor. “Did you find the evening a bore, as well?”

“No,” Polly confessed shyly, and with perfect truth, “although I will own I had hoped to see the Prince. What a pity that he did not attend after all!”

“Between you and me and the lamppost, he’s not much to look at,” confided her ladyship. “The King’s sons were all remarkably good-looking men in their heyday, but they’ve run sadly to fat with age.”

Since neither Sir Aubrey nor Miss Crump had anything to say on the subject of the royal family, Lady Tabor was free to expound at will, and in this manner they returned to the house in Marine Parade. Once inside, Polly headed straightway for her room, while Sir Aubrey charted a direct course for the bottle of brandy he knew he would find in Mr. Brundy’s study. The bottle and a pair of glasses rested on a small table beside the bookcase, exactly where he had expected them to be. More surprising was the presence of Mr. Brundy, seated behind the desk penning a response to a letter which had been forwarded to him from London.

“You still here, Ethan?” asked Sir Aubrey, decanting the golden liquid into one of the glasses. “I thought you would have long since retired. I trust Lady Helen is recovered?”

Mr. Brundy nodded. “She says she is. I put ‘er to bed, nonetheless,” he added with a touch of wistfulness. It was not how he would have chosen to spend a rare evening alone with his wife. He watched in mild curiosity as Sir Aubrey tossed off the contents of the glass in a single gulp and reached once more for the bottle. “Aubrey, what’s ‘appened?”

“I owe you an apology, Ethan,” confessed Sir Aubrey flippantly. “I seem to have botched the job rather badly.”

Mr. Brundy leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, ‘“ave you, now? In what way?”

“I’ve allowed myself to become attached to your Miss Crump.”

Far from being shocked, Mr. Brundy merely nodded. “I’ve ‘ad me suspicions things were ‘eading in that direction.”

“Well, you jolly well could have informed me!” muttered Sir Aubrey.

“What are Miss Crump’s feelings, or do you know?”

Sir Aubrey pondered the question, a thoughtful frown creasing his aristocratic brow. To be sure, he had given her little enough reason to love him; from the very first, he had all but accused her outright of being a liar and a fraud. And he had been right on both counts, although her motives were not the mercenary ones he had supposed. Yet she had confided in him of her own free will, and although she had vociferously objected to his kiss after the fact, he had not forgotten the hands that crushed his lapels, pulling him closer.

“I have reason to believe my cause is not hopeless,” he said at last.

“So what are your intentions?”

“Intentions?” echoed Sir Aubrey.

“We’ve an old custom in Lancashire,” Mr. Brundy explained patiently. “When we fall in love with a lady, we marry ‘er.”

Sir Aubrey raised a cynical eyebrow. “My dear Ethan,” he drawled, “I might as well plunge a dagger into my mother’s bosom!”

Leaning forward, Mr. Brundy propped his elbow on his desk and rested his chin in the cleft of his thumb and forefinger. “You’d best drop that Society act of yours, Aubrey,” he advised. “It doesn’t fool me. Miss Crump may not be me sister, but she is a guest in me ‘ouse, and as long as I’m responsible for ‘er, any advances you choose to make ‘ad better be with marriage in mind.”

“1 say, Ethan, is this the face you show your workers? If so, I sincerely pity them!” complained Sir Aubrey, feeling ridiculously like a recalcitrant schoolboy called on the carpet by an exacting schoolmaster, when in fact he was the elder of the two men by more than a year. Reminding himself of that fact, he met his friend’s gaze squarely. “To be perfectly honest, I haven’t a clue as to my intentions. Marriage, I’m afraid, is out of the question.”

“Why? Are you rolled up, Aubrey? Do you ‘ave to marry money?”

Sir Aubrey winced at the question. “You’re nothing if not blunt, are you? But no, I’m perfectly capable of supporting a wife.”

“Then I don’t see the problem.”

“The ‘problem’ is that I don’t know anything about her antecedents.”   He recited a highly edited version of the conversation they’d had that afternoon on the beach.