Bath Intrigue: A charming Regency Romance, page 14
Perdita could cheerfully have strangled the older woman. Her husband murmured agreement, but with a sympathetic glance her way wondered if Miss Grant might perhaps not wish …? Midge gave her the kind of look which as a child she had learned to recognize, and which she now correctly interpreted as, ‘For goodness’ sake, girl, do as you are bid and stop making such a fuss!’ It evoked the same mutinous response that it had always done.
More than anyone, she was aware of Lord St Ive still standing near the pianoforte with Lady Arabella at his side, the latter smiling condescendingly at her as Mr Ponsford took on the mantle of persuader.
‘Come, ma’am, you cannot disappoint us!’ There was a general chorus of agreement and glancing around helplessly, Perdita found St Ive’s eyes on her. As her indignation rose, Mr Ponsford continued eagerly, ‘Suppose His Grace were to command you? You could, sir, could you not?’
The Duke had been watching the proceedings in some amusement. ‘Ah, but would she obey me, my boy? There’s the rub. Miss Grant, I fear, has a decided will of her own.’
‘Oh, good heavens!’ Perdita exclaimed, half laughing with exasperation as she capitulated. ‘What a piece of work over nothing! I only hope you may not be disappointed!’
She left her place beside Miss Lynton and walked quickly across to the pianoforte, noticing as she did so that Lady Arabella had sunk gracefully into a nearby chair ‒ whence no doubt she hoped to amuse herself to the expense of the ‘provincial nonentity’. As for St Ive, he remained where he was, clearly intending to turn the music for her as he had done for his inamorata.
‘Thank you,’ she said lightly, ‘but I have no need of music.’
He lifted a sardonic eyebrow but made no attempt to move away, leaning instead against the wall in full view of her, arms folded and with an air of polite expectancy.
If he hoped by this to discompose her, she fumed inwardly, he would soon discover his mistake. Nothing was more guaranteed to put her on her mettle. She had known from the first that she could out-sing and out-play the exquisite Lady Arabella, fine though she undoubtedly was, but until this moment she had felt no desire to prove it. Now she discarded the bright little ditty she had intended to perform and sat for a moment calming her thoughts.
The Handel aria, Care selve, had been her grandfather’s favourite, and perhaps because of this her voice took on an added quality of depth and purity which reduced her audience to rapt silence. As the last notes died away, she sat with her hands resting lightly on the keys, her head bowed to mask the extent to which she herself had been moved by the experience.
When the applause came, accompanied by cries for more, she declined with an abruptness quite out of character for her and stood up. The long windows close by were wide open to the terrace beyond and she slipped through them before the other guests could besiege her further.
The sound of voices grew faint. The night air was balmy, the stars sharp and clear in a velvet sky, but as Perdita walked quickly along the terrace she was aware of nothing beyond the hollowing of pain within her. It was some weeks since she had felt Sir Edwin’s loss with so much raw anguish, but the Handel aria had brought him back to her in a particularly vivid way. She leaned against the balustrade, her arms wrapped about her for comfort.
St Ive had followed her out and stood for a few moments intrigued by the utter stillness of the lone slight figure ahead of him outlined against the night sky. Slowly, he moved forward.
‘Are you all right, Miss Grant?’
She turned her head reluctantly at the sound of his voice, and the lights from the house picked up the sheen of tears gilding her cheeks.
‘Yes, of course.’
The unaccustomed huskiness in the brief utterance moved him strangely. He turned and leaned on the balustrade beside her, looking out over the shadowed anonymity of the gardens.
‘You have a remarkable voice,’ he said quietly, not looking at her. ‘It should be heard more often.’ She made a self-deprecating gesture that prompted him to add, ‘That aria meant something special to you, I think?’
She let out a long shuddering sigh. ‘I should have known better than to attempt it, and am well served for wishing to show off!’ She shook her head at his murmured objection to this. ‘Isn’t it odd how music can evoke memories and emotions in a way that mere words can never do? My grandfather taught me Care Selve when I was a girl and I have not sung it since his death. Yet tonight I felt his presence so strongly in that room that I expected to look up and see him sitting there, the slight movement of his hand marking time as he was used to do.’ She attempted a smile. ‘Which is highly fanciful, wouldn’t you say, if not downright irrational?’
‘One should never seek to rationalize emotions, Miss Grant,’ he said calmly. ‘Like dreams, they seldom survive the cold light of reason.’
Perdita gave a hiccuping little laugh, for once thankful for his clear incisive manner. She fumbled in her reticule for a handkerchief. ‘There speaks the cynic, sir.’
‘Not at all. A cynic would not admit the reality of the emotions in the first place.’
Her laugh this time was less tremulous, more appreciative. ‘Thank you. I feel much restored already. I do so dislike people who indulge in mawkish sentimentality!’
‘You are being neither, I promise you. Simply human.’
She was dabbing ineffectually at her eyes and without another word he took the scrap of lacy cambric from her and wiped away the tears with infinite care, continuing to stare down into her upturned face long after he had finished.
Darkness blurred the harder stronger edges of his face, lending it instead a kind of brooding mystery that held a strange excitement. She felt herself swaying towards him as though compelled by a force beyond her control, and as she did so he cupped her face in his hands and bent to close each eyelid with a featherlight kiss. Then his mouth was on hers.
‘Piers? Are you there?’
Lady Arabella’s voice, full of dagger-sharp edges, came from the open window. The mood was broken instantly and he straightened up. Perdita thought she heard him swear softly.
‘You go along in,’ she said with amazing normality. ‘I need another moment or two to compose myself.’
When she did return, all trace of her distress had gone and she was able to withstand all the questions and the praise heaped upon her with equanimity. The four older members of the party were about to play a few hands of whist, while the others continued to talk.
‘Shall you hunt this winter, Miss Grant?’ asked Sir James. ‘I have not forgotten how well you acquitted yourself at Melton ‒ two years ago, was it, that we met?’
‘At Lord Rackham’s,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Pray do not remind me, sir! I very much fear that I shall be obliged to forgo the pleasure this year.’
‘Oh, surely not! I am not generally in favour of ladies in the hunting field but for you, ma’am, I would willingly make an exception any time!’ He looked around him with a wheezing laugh. ‘One of the few ladies with the skill to outride most gentlemen in the field!’
‘I can vouch for that,’ said the Duke without raising his eyes from the cards.
‘Indeed?’ Lady Arabella’s voice was all sweetness. ‘How very … enterprising of you, Miss Grant! It has always seemed to me such an energetic pastime. Do you not end up all covered in mud?’
‘Frequently,’ Perdita said cordially. ‘But that is a small price to pay for the invigorating sensation of well-being that one enjoys ‒ and the mud soon washes off.’
‘Well said, ma’am!’ Sir James was growing more enthusiastic by the minute. ‘Why, I well remember …’
‘My love!’ murmured his wife in quiet exasperation.
‘What? Oh, yes ‒ quite so, m’dear.’ He smiled sheepishly. ‘Get me started and I’ll bore on for hours, as my poor Clara knows to her cost.’ He patted his wife’s hand. ‘All horses, hounds and hunting, what?’
Perdita chuckled. ‘Well, it is tempting, especially if one has had a particularly good run! But I must not dwell on the prospect too much or I shall grow maudlin.’
‘But how is this, Miss Grant?’ put in Lord Lyndon. ‘It seems a great pity if you must forgo something from which you obviously derive so much enjoyment?’
‘Oh, it is very fine for you gentlemen, my lord! You are not governed by the proprieties as we are. And even were my circumstances otherwise, I am not sure whether my hunter will be sufficiently recovered.’
The Duke glanced up. ‘Is our beloved Ned out of sorts, then?’
Perdita quite failed to hide her surprise. ‘Why ‒ yes. He was badly cut yesterday as we were riding home.’ She looked across instinctively to Lord St Ive and was in time to see a fleeting expression of annoyance cross his face. ‘But I thought …’
His slight shrug conveyed little. ‘I saw no point in troubling my father needlessly. All that could have been done was done.’
Freddie Ponsford was also watching his friend in a puzzled way, but thought better of adding to his discomfort. Ivo had ever been a law unto himself.
The Duke’s expression was unreadable, though Perdita had a feeling that he would not be content to leave matters as they were. No doubt explanations would be demanded later. She had no idea why St Ive had not told his father about the accident, but the change in his manner towards her this evening, inexplicable as it was, prompted her to say something by way of mitigation.
‘Lord St Ive has been more than kind,’ she said, very conscious of his eyes upon her. ‘His groom is already performing wonders and has quite won George over! But I fear it will be some considerable time before Ned is able to gallop over Claverton Down again, and that I am going to miss quite abominably!’
The Duke studied her face for a moment in silence. Then he returned his attention to the card table as if to signify that the matter was closed, and the conversation moved on to other things.
It was only later, going home in the carriage, that Perdita again fell to wondering why the Marquis had been so secretive about the accident. He really was the oddest man! Every time she thought she had his measure, he did something new to confound her. Miss Midgely had enjoyed her evening enormously and was more talkative than usual, so that she hardly noticed how quiet her companion had grown.
The Duke of Anderley had also enjoyed his evening. Only one thing had marred it. As he limped from the room on his way to bed, he turned and fixed his son with an uncompromising gaze.
‘Piers, be so good as to accompany me, if you please. There is a small matter upon which I would value your opinion …’ and so that there could be no doubt of his intention, he added softly, ‘It is a matter of some urgency.’
Chapter Fourteen
Harry and Amaryllis had come home briefly from London before going up to Warwickshire to spend August with Amaryllis’s mother. It was duty rather than pleasure for Harry, who found his mother-in-law a sore trial.
‘No matter how I put myself about for her, she manages to make me feel inadequate! Know what I mean?’
Perdita laughed. She had only met Amaryllis’s mama once, and had found her to be a restless ambitious woman, forever complaining, and so protective of her one and only daughter that it was probable that she had still not forgiven Harry for robbing her of the cachet of being able to claim a marquis for a son-in-law.
‘By the by,’ he said, ‘your cousin has not been here inflicting himself on you again, has he?’
‘No.’ Perdita felt a slight sinking of the heart. ‘Never tell me he’s purse-pinched again? I thought you said he had won a fortune or somesuch?’
‘Well, not a fortune, precisely ‒ and what there was would probably have burned a hole in his pocket until he’d wagered it all to perdition again, though I have no way of knowing that.’ Harry grinned at her horrified face. ‘No need to get yourself in a pucker! I wouldn’t have mentioned the fellow, except that I saw him not two days since ‒’
‘Here?’ Perdita exclaimed.
‘Well, not in Bath precisely. I’d been over to Charlcombe and was riding back when a Stanhope passed me. I only had a glimpse, but the driver did look remarkably like Tillot.’
‘If Bertrand was driving a Stanhope, he must be well in funds,’ Perdita said. ‘In which case he would be unlikely to seek me out. Even so, I do hope you were mistaken.’
She asked Mrs Windlesham about it when they met in Milson Street, where the latter had been purchasing some new ribbons to trim one of Clarissa’s bonnets. ‘Only think, my love, that new woman ‒ Mrs Gay ‒ is charging threepence for the paltriest of satin! If they had not been exactly the colours I was wanting, I declare I would have left the counter. But you may be sure I let her know how absurdly expensive I thought them.’
Perdita hid a smile, knowing full well that it was a point of honour with her old friend to complain about prices. She deftly changed the subject and was considerably reassured to learn that Mrs Windlesham had no knowledge of Mr Tillot’s having returned to Bath, ‘and even if it had escaped my notice, you may be sure Mr Windlesham would have heard of it, and would have mentioned it to me.’
From here her grasshopper mind turned to the Duke’s party yet again, though she had thoroughly dissected it on the morning after when she had called upon Perdita.
‘Are the Marquis’s guests still at the Court, do you know? We still talk about the evening, so very pleasant as it was ‒ and everyone so friendly.’
Perdita thought of the way Lady Arabella had slighted Mrs Windlesham and could only be thankful that she had not been aware of it.
‘I believe Sir James and his wife have now gone, and the Lyndons, but Lady Arabella is still there ‒ and Mr Ponsford, though I doubt her ladyship will remain much longer. She finds the country very slow, I think.’
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Windlesham with an arch smile. ‘But we all know why she stays, do we not? And so long as the Marquis feels it to be his duty to support his papa, she will not, I am sure, find life wholly unsupportable!’
Her presence did, however, diminish Perdita’s pleasures somewhat. Ned’s incapacity was an added blow and meant that she must either drive to the Court in the gig, walk through the woods, taking the path she used to frequent with Ned ‒ a not unpleasurable pastime on a fine summer’s day ‒ or forgo her visits altogether.
In the event she compromised, going less often and reluctantly deciding to use the gig. She had walked a couple of times but felt inexplicably nervous as she had never done on horseback ‒ every unexplainable rustle in the undergrowth seemed to have a sinister cause. It was that absurd accident, she told herself, angry that she should have permitted it to affect her so. And when, on the second occasion she walked, someone had fired off a shotgun close by her, making her jump almost out of her skin, she decided that the gig would be less nerve-racking.
Upon reaching the Court, she had mentioned the incident to the Marquis, but though he said little she was left with the distinct impression that he thought she was simply starting at shadows.
‘And he could be right,’ she told herself mockingly. But the feeling remained and she resolved to be watchful.
However, her situation was to improve in a totally unexpected way when the Duke came to see her, driving in an open landau ‒ and trotting alongside, ridden by a groom, was a beautifully behaved bay mare ‒ full of go, if Perdita was any judge.
‘Why, what is this, sir?’ she exclaimed, coming forward to run an appreciative hand down its neck.
‘I thought you might appreciate the loan of a prime little goer to tide you over until Ned is fully fit.’
‘Oh, my dear sir, what can I say? “Thank you” seems so inadequate.’
The Duke’s eyes glinted. ‘Your obvious pleasure is all the thanks I require. It occurred to me that I had a dozen or more horses eating their heads off in my Gloucestershire stables. What could be simpler than to send Maxwell along there to bring one back? You will have the satisfaction of knowing that you are keeping at least one of them exercised.’
‘I shall take the greatest care of her,’ Perdita said with enthusiasm. ‘What is her name?’
The Duke regarded the animal with careless affection. ‘She answers to “Lady”. I think you will find her well-mannered ‒ she’s a good little goer and jumps strongly off her hocks, should you wish to hunt her.’
‘Oh, but I am hoping that Ned will be fit again by the winter.’
‘Doing well, is he?’
‘Far better than I had dared to hope, thanks to Lord St Ive’s groom. If you would care to drive round to the stable, you may judge for yourself and we shall see how he takes to his new stable companion.’
The mare settled down at once, her temperament being both lively and tractable. She had not been accustomed to carrying a lady, His Grace told Perdita, but she took to it as agreeably as she did all else, and Perdita was overjoyed to be able to resume her early morning rides. She had always, for propriety’s sake, taken the under-groom along, though at that hour they seldom met anyone else and he was invariably left well behind when she gave herself up to a good invigorating gallop.
On the second morning after Lady’s arrival, when she had taken her up to Lansdowne to try out her paces, Perdita was surprised to find that she had company. She was even more surprised to discover the identity of her fellow rider.
‘Good morning, Miss Grant,’ said Lord St Ive, reining in and raising his hat to her. Seeing her expression he added imperturbably, ‘You mentioned the other evening that this was one of your favourite haunts.’
Perdita regarded him suspiciously. ‘If you have come to brangle …’
‘Why ever should you think that?’
‘How should I know? Except that you seldom seek me out unless it is to provoke a quarrel ‒ indeed, it has been your avowed intention, from the first to oppose me at every turn.’ She threw back her head to challenge him, eye to eye. ‘But if you mean to cut up stiff about my accepting your father’s kind offer to loan me this beauty …’ She ran a gauntleted hand down the mare’s neck, to the animal’s obvious pleasure.
