Slightly Scandalous (7 page)

"You have been the Marquess of Hallmere for longer than six months, Joshua," she explained when he asked if she had one more leaf to add to the dining room table-and perhaps one more wing to add to the dining room itself. "It is high time you took your rightful place in society instead of chasing all over the country in search of amusement with low companions."

"But amusement is so . . . amusing, Grandmama," he said with an exaggerated sigh. He did not add that some of his "low" companions were aristocrats and the sons of aristocrats.

"It is time too that you returned to Penhallow," she said, not for the first time. "It is yours, not just as a possession, but as a responsibility too."

"My aunt lives there," he reminded her, "and my cousins. It would only upset them-and me-if I went to live there too. My aunt always had the running of the place, you know, even when my uncle still lived. He did not mind. I would."

"Well, and so you ought," his grandmother said, rather exasperated as she folded the last invitation and rang the bell to have a servant take it and deliver it. "You must go and exert yourself and make other arrangements for the marchioness and her daughters, Joshua. There is a dower house at Penhallow, is there not? Goodness! When your grandpapa died and Gregory became Potford, I would no more have dreamed of remaining at Grimley House than I would of flying to the moon. Gladys would not have liked it, and I would have liked it less."

Joshua stretched his legs out in front of him along the sitting room carpet and crossed them at the ankles. "Exert myself?" He grinned at her. "That sounds remarkably painful, Grandmama."

"Joshua." She turned in her chair at the escritoire and regarded him with some severity, "I have always chosen to believe that you were in France and other countries of Europe during the past five years risking the dangers of capture in an enemy nation merely for the amusement of indulging in such a prank. But I have always realized deep down that there was a far more alarming explanation for your presence there. Do not think now to convince me that you are a lazy care-for-naught intent upon nothing but your own amusement."

He raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. He had, of course, been spying for the British government on the military forces and maneuvers of Napoléon Bonaparte, but not in any official capacity. He had no military rank or diplomatic status.

"Ah, but it was amusing, Grandmama," he told her.

She sighed and got to her feet. "What you should do," she said, "is choose a suitable bride, take her to Penhallow, and begin the new life that is yours whether you ever wished for it or not."

"I did not," he said decisively. "Albert was the heir and I never envied him his future prospects."

"But your cousin died five years ago," she reminded him-as if he needed reminding. "It is not as if your new status was sprung unexpectedly upon you when your uncle died."

"Except that he was a robust man when I went away," he said, "and died far sooner than I expected."

"Despite that ghastly scene in the Pump Room," she said, taking a seat close to his, "I cannot but admire the forthright manner in which Lady Freyja Bedwyn confronted what she had perceived as an unpardonable offense. Most ladies would have turned a blind eye or gossiped privately and blackened your name before you had a chance to defend yourself."

Joshua chuckled. "Most ladies would not have been walking alone in the park or would have turned tail and fled at the first sound of some other poor female screaming."

"She is Bewcastle's sister," his grandmother continued. "There is no higher stickler than the duke, or one of greater consequence unless one ascends into the realm of the princes themselves."

He looked more closely at her, suddenly alerted.

"You are not, by any chance," he asked her, "suggesting Lady Freyja Bedwyn as a bride?"

"Joshua." She leaned forward slightly in her chair. "You are now the Marquess of Hallmere. It would be a very eligible match for her as well as for you."

"And that is what this is all about?" he asked her. "This grand dinner?"

"Not at all," she said. "This dinner is to restore the proprieties in the eyes of all doubters. It really was a ghastly scene though I must admit to having enjoyed a private chuckle or two since over the memory of it."

"She throws a mean punch," he said, "as I have twice learned to my cost. Yet you think she would be a suitable bride?"

"Twice?" She looked sharply at him.

"We need not make mention of the other occasion," he said sheepishly. "I am sorry to disappoint you, Grandmama, but I have too great a regard for my health to launch into a courtship of Lady Freyja Bedwyn. Or of any other lady, for that matter. I am not ready for marriage."

"I wonder why it is," she said, getting to her feet again, "that every man when he says those words appears to believe them quite fervently. And why does every man appear to believe that he is the first to speak them? I must go down to the kitchen and see that all is proceeding well for tonight's dinner."

And why was it, Joshua thought somewhat ruefully, that all women believed that once a man had succeeded to a title and fortune he must also have acquired a burning desire to share them with a mate?

Lady Freyja Bedwyn!

He chuckled aloud and remembered her as she had looked yesterday afternoon in Lady Holt-Barron's sitting room-on her haughtiest dignity and bristling with barely suppressed resentment and hostility. And unable to resist at least one barbed gibe by implying that she knew very well he had been about to kiss that serving girl.

He wondered if she would appreciate the joke of his grandmother's preposterous suggestion. He really must share it with her, he thought, chuckling again-and keep a wary eye on her fists as he did so.

There was no one at Lady Potford's dinner that Freyja did not know. She felt perfectly at ease in the company. It took her a while, though, to realize that most of the other guests were far from at ease in hers. They must be wondering, she thought, whether she was about to make another spectacularly embarrassing spectacle of herself tonight.

How foolish people were. Did they not understand that gentility had been bred into her very bones? She conversed with her neighbors at the dining table with practiced ease and studiously ignored the Marquess of Hallmere, who was seated at the foot of the table looking handsome enough in his dove-gray-and-white evening clothes to seriously annoy a Greek god or two. He ignored her too if one discounted the single occasion when their eyes met along the table. She was sure it was not a trick of the flickering candlelight that made it appear as if he blinked slowly-with one eye.

Well, every day brought something new, she thought, renewing her efforts to be sociable to the very deaf Sir Rowland Withers to her right. She had never been winked at before, unless it was by one of her brothers.

But she and the marquess ignoring each other was not, of course, the purpose of the evening. As soon as the gentlemen had joined the ladies in the drawing room after dinner, entertainment was called for and Miss Fairfax obligingly seated herself at the pianoforte and played a couple of Bach fugues with admirable flair and dexterity.

"Lady Freyja?" Lady Potford asked when she had finished. "Will you favor us with a piece or a song?"

Oh, dear-her close acquaintances had learned long ago that Lady Freyja Bedwyn was not like other young ladies, willing and able to trot out their accomplishments at every social gathering. She decided upon candor, as she usually did-it was easier than simpering.

"After I had had a few lessons at the pianoforte as a young girl," she explained to the gathered assembly, "my music teacher asked me to raise my hands and declared himself amazed that I was not in possession of ten thumbs. Fortunately for me, two of my brothers were within earshot and reported the remark with great glee to our father-intending the joke, of course, to be at my expense. The music teacher was dismissed and never replaced."

There was general laughter, though Lady Holt-Barron looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"A song, then?" Lady Potford asked.

"Not alone, ma'am," Freyja said firmly. "I have the sort of voice that needs to be buried in the middle of a very large choir-if it is to be aired at all."

"I sing a little, Lady Freyja," the marquess said. "Perhaps we can join our voices in a duet. There is a pile of music on top of the pianoforte. Shall we see what we can find while someone else entertains the guests?"

"Oh, splendid," Lady Potford said, and there were a few other murmurings of polite interest.

She should, Freyja realized belatedly, have made mention of rusty saws in connection with her singing voice, but she never liked to be quite untruthful. Hallmere was, as she expected, looking at her with polite interest-and a gleam of amusement in his eyes. And everyone else was observing with keen interest this first exchange between yesterday's antagonists.

She got to her feet and approached the pianoforte, near which he was standing.

"Miss Holt-Barron?" Lady Potford was asking politely, and Charlotte without a murmur of protest approached the instrument and began a flawless performance of some Mozart sonata.

The marquess picked up the whole pile of music and carried it to a wide, velvet-padded window seat. He sat on one side of it and Freyja on the other.

"Might I be permitted to observe, Lady Freyja," he said, "that you look particularly fetching in that shade of sea green? It matches your eyes. And might I apologize for not believing your claim to be the sister of a duke? No duke's sister of my acquaintance, you see, sleeps in unlocked inn rooms without any accompanying maid, or walks in a public park without a chaperone. Or punches men in the nose when they displease her."

"You would deny, I suppose," she said, picking up a sheet of music that announced itself as a song for two voices. But she saw at the very first glance that the singer of the top part had to soar to a high G and slipped the music to the bottom of the pile. "You would deny, I suppose, that you were about to steal a kiss from that poor girl?"

"Oh, absolutely," he agreed.

"Then you lie!" she retorted, snatching another sheet for a song in more than one part off the pile and glaring at him. "I am not quite stupid, despite your insinuation yesterday morning to the contrary."

"No!" he said, his eyes laughing at her-he was making no attempt to look through the music himself. "Did I do that? But why would I do something so ungentlemanly when the ghastly truth must have presented itself to the intelligence of everyone gathered around? It was rather a large gathering, was it not?"

Freyja was given the distinct impression that she might have met her match-something that rarely happened outside the members of her own family. She gave her attention to the music in her hands. It was all about cuckoos, and the songwriter appeared to have devised his whole piece so that the two voices-no, four-might deceive the audience into believing they were a flock of demented birds in a dither and unable to utter any sound but their own names. It was the sort of song most gatherings would exclaim over in delight and admiration. Freyja set it at the bottom of the pile.

"I feel compelled to defend my honor yet again," the marquess continued. "I was not about to steal a kiss, Lady Freyja. I was about to convey one and have one conveyed willingly in return. I cannot tell you how ill-timed your interruption was. She had lips like cherries and I was within moments of tasting their sweet nectar. Does one suck nectar from a cherry? But I daresay my meaning is clear enough anyway."

If his eyes danced any more merrily, they would be in danger of dancing right out of his head. And he was wearing some perfume. Freyja despised men who wore perfume, but this was subtle and musky and wrapped enticingly about her senses. Her eyes dipped to his lips, which had come so close to kissing the maid in the park, found them as perfect as the rest of him, and dipped lower to the pile of music. She had just remembered that those lips had actually kissed her.

"You are supposed to be helping me select a duet to sing," she said.

"I thought I would leave it to you," he said. "If you did not like my choice you would doubtless quarrel with it and with me and find some reason for punching me in the nose, and it is altogether possible that other people in the room might notice. And even if they did not, I derive no great pleasure from having my nose punched. Now why are you frowning so ferociously?"

"Nymphs and shepherds and Phyllises and Amaryllises," she said, frowning down in disgust at the music in her hands. "The last one was all about cuckoos." She set the piece with the other discarded ones beneath the pile and found another duet.

"Are you always so cross?" he asked her.

"In disagreeable company, yes," she said, looking coldly at him.

He grinned at her. "Do you ever smile?"

"I have been smiling all evening," she told him. "Until, that is, I was forced into this tête-à-tête."

"Almost, Lady Freyja," he said softly, "I am led to believe that you are trying to deliver me a resounding setdown."

"Almost, Lord Hallmere," she retorted, "I am led to believe that you must have some intelligence."

He chuckled softly, a sound that was drowned beneath the polite applause that succeeded Charlotte's playing. No one else took the instrument. Card tables were being set up and the guests were taking their places. No one attempted to include either of the two sitting on the window seat.