Lady Caraway's Cloak, page 7
Robin’s eyes looked suddenly alert. He did not make the mistake of showing his interest, however. Rather, he displayed a sudden—if extremely false—fascination in the mix of hues Gainsborough used in the execution of the portrait of the fourth earl. As he was scrutinizing an area that could be regarded as turquoise, he murmured that he was certain it had been rye but he could very well be mistaken, for the southern boundary was certain to be fallow and the rye he had just purchased might have been intended for that field, after all.
“But you decided against rye! I remember, for I discussed the issue with the merchant at the time, and the price was prohibitive. You decided to plant tea experimentally in the southern square, despite the fact that the climate cannot generally sustain such a crop. That is why we tried the shelters ... my lord, you must remember it. The planting was completed only two weeks ago. You cannot have forgotten that—it was your suggestion!”
“Mine?” His eyebrows were raised in lazy surprise, though those vivid blue eyes were now more than simply alert—they were riveted.
Fortunately Serena, still trying to recover from the assault upon her senses—and from her errant thoughts that made her desire the whole sorry incident to rec-cur—did not notice in the least. “Yes. It was a very good idea, though I worry so much about the cold. It has not been so fine as I had hoped but with the shelters ...” Her voice broke off midsentence as she realized what she was revealing.
But my lord now seemed interested in the textured execution of the fourth earl’s nose and hardly seemed to be paying her the slightest attention at all, which both relieved her, angered her, and puzzled her.
Lord Caraway had always displayed the most remarkable interest in crop rotation theories throughout the entire course of their correspondence. Could this man, she wondered, be an impostor? The thought flashed through her mind but was dismissed at once. How could he be, when he so exactly matched her recollection of him?
Oh, undoubtedly he had filled out a little since they had last met, and his hair was longer, and he had a certain indefinable arrogance about him that had not been there before, but it was, surely, the same man who had fished her out of the pond all those years ago?
She chose to firmly ignore the thought that she had not immediately recognized him a few hours earlier. How could she have, when she had supposed him safely across the seas, not ambling about the grounds of the Caraway estates? It was reasonable that she had not immediately jumped to the conclusion that he was the breathlessly awaited earl and the sole cause of her immediate troubles.
If it were not for him, after all, she would not now be leaving the home she had lived in all of her life. Neither would she be lying through her teeth about a nonexistent Mr. Addington and making up stories about his siblings in Bath. The situation was preposterous! And when he looked at her so, beneath hooded lashes of dark, silken velvet—or so it seemed—she could hardly think at all.
Unbeknownst to her, beneath those hooded lashes, Lord Robin was regarding her with an interest not derived entirely from his own manly desires, which he had already established she aroused within him. No, his look was speculative indeed, for though he thought furiously, he did not believe he had spoken to anyone about his plans for barley in the northern field, nor did he think the delightful Lady Serena could have the faintest interest—or knowledge—about the planting of tea, which she did. Not only did she have a knowledge of it, it appeared that she was overseeing the process. Curious, rather curious. However, he held his peace.
Serena, anxious to cover any gaffe that she might have made, began to chatter about the portraits, until Robin, with a tolerant air, murmured that he had rather enough of the ancestors for his first morning.
“Oh! Would you like to see the second floor? It is drafty I am afraid, but the library is situated on it and I think my brother made an excellent job of refurbishing the place, although naturally the rest of the castle is in hopeless disrepair. Gaming debts, you know.” Serena made a disapproving face and walked on so quickly that brave Robin Red-Ribbon, formerly of The Albatross, almost had to run to catch up.
“Wait!”
Serena stopped, rather breathless. She was certain it was from her pace rather than from the peculiar sensation she had suffered from all morning. How traitorous her mind was being! It was not, after all, as if she were a green girl. She had been kissed before, though naturally without quite as much ardor or ... no! She would think on it no further—it was merely unsettling. Her biggest problem was to prevent Lord Caraway from suspecting either the loss of her composure, or worse, her ill-kept secret. Ill-kept, because she had thrice nearly revealed herself today. Fortunately, she was positive he had noticed not a thing. She could not, however, rely on his being either blind or stupid much longer. She suspected he was shrewder than he would have the world believe.
“Am I too fast for you?”
My lord’s eyes twinkled. “You answer me that, lady Serena! Are you too fast?”
Serena colored. “Now you are absurd, sir. You deliberately misunderstand me and most ungentlemanly you are, too. I shall slow my pace to match your own. No, better yet, I shall leave you to your own devices. Doubtless you can find your way around without the guidance of an ignorant female. Take the winding stairways—they bypass the main ballrooms and lead you far faster to the living areas. The library is unmistakable. The handle on the door is a lion etched in brass.”
“How fanciful! The work, I infer, of the dowager?” His eyes twinkled, for even now he could remember the numerous pronouncements Mr. Addington had made on the countess’s love of the Gothic, the thematic, and the simply bizarre.
Serena laughed. “No, the handle is too classical, I’m afraid. Not at all in her style. But here, my dear sir, I must love you and leave you.”
The eyebrow raised at this was quizzical in the extreme. “Must you? I mean, naturally you must love me, but is it really quite essential that you leave me?”
Serena’s eyes held answering laughter despite her reservations. “Utterly, sir, if you propose to outwit me at every turn of speech. As for loving you, it would, I suspect, be an extremely foolhardy thing to do.”
“Oh, quite definitely. But such a small consideration as that would not stop you, would it?”
“Not if I really did love you.”
“Then I can hope?”
“You are absurd, my lord! You forget you are in England, land of the gossipmongers. Your antics are in the Tatler at regular intervals, I assure you.”
“How intriguing! What antics, if I might make so bold as to be interested in my own concerns?”
Serena flushed. She did not care to quote him all his inamoratas as outlined by the Caraway Crier, the Tatler and the Morning Post. Generally, she did not stoop to reading gossip, but his name always seemed to just jump at her off the page—it was really quite extraordinary.
“If you do not know, it is not my place to tell you.”
“Oh, Miss Prim and Proper! Perhaps I should just compound my sin again and kiss the truth from you.”
“You would not dare! At all events, there is Miss Waring. I can see her now.”
“Where? I do not see her at all.”
“But I do. Julia! Julia!” Craven, Lady Serena drew down a glass pane and yelled down to the prettily clad young lady in the topiary gardens below. She was rewarded for her efforts by a shy wave, which Serena immediately announced was a summons.
“Come, my lord, we must go at once. Julia needs us.”
Robin, his eyes alight with ill-concealed amusement, allowed himself to be bullied down the staircase once again. After all, he reasoned, the topiary gardens must surely be a welcome relief from the ancestors. Serena seemed to have forgotten her intentions to desert him. Yes, following on Lady Serena’s heels was definitely the better option, and he rather enjoyed Lady Serena Caraway’s rear view as she made her hurried escape right past him. If her sleeve happened to brush, for the fraction of an instant, with his own, none but the most uncharitable would say that she noticed.
Chapter Seven
“What the devil are you doing here?” Lord Robin, rather the worse for a sleepless night pondering the various charms of a certain young lady resident in his castle, positively bit his bosom bow’s head off.
“I say, Robin, you are being mighty uncivil this morning! I rode over here just as fast as I could escape Mama, which was no small feat, I can tell you! By the bye, I believe I passed your baggage carriage along the route, for I took the roads—much safer, you see, with my town chaise. Mind if I help myself to this ... What is this?”
“It is a salmon mousse, of sorts. Not at all, do sit down and make yourself perfectly at home.”
Captain McNichols grinned. “You are out of sorts! I cannot for the life of me think why—it is not every day one takes possession of a castle. It looks in fine nick, too—”
“Then you must be blind! It is freezing and the plaster is cracking off most of the sills—”
“Oh, grumpy, grumpy! Nothing that a good mason cannot fix. You must employ a French chef, Robin—This mousse is magnificent.”
A gurgle of delight met this pronouncement. Not from Robin, who seemed unusually wrapped up in his thoughts, but from a pretty young maiden who did not fit Mrs. McNichols’s description of his projected bride one iota. This maiden was all rosebuds and pink muslin and shiny curls. Her vivacious eyes nonetheless seemed awed by the sight of two fine gentlemen at the breakfast table.
Captain McNichols rose at once, but the pleasant, lighthearted creature waved him to sit almost immediately and commented that she could not help but overhear his admiration for the mousse.
“I made it, you know, for Serena is forever telling me that it is imperative for the lady of the house to know more than her housekeeper, though how in the world she thinks I am going to ever know more than Mrs. Dumpley, I cannot think, for it is an age she has been at Caraway, and had the running of it even before Mama married the previous earl ... Oh! My tongue is running away with me again!” This, as she tentatively took her place at the furthest end of the table from the gentlemen, she still being a little shy at finding such unusual breakfast guests at Caraway.
Captain McNichols increased her confusion by passing her the tray of fresh buns, completely bypassing the hovering footman. His eyes were bright, as they flickered across to Robin.
“Yes, but it is such a delightful tongue, is it not?” asked his lordship promptly, his previous bad temper momentarily forgotten in this easy flirtation. Truth to say, flirtation came as naturally to him as breathing. He acquired, for his pains, a firm kick in the shins from Captain McNichols, who was staring at Julia—for naturally, it was she—as if quite transfixed.
Miss Waring, singular among ladies in that she was perfectly immune to Robin’s charms—being a little in awe of him, and also several years younger—retorted that he was talking a great deal of nonsense and that she was sorry to have interrupted their meal. “We plan on removing to the dower house today, my lord. It has been ready this age but Mama ... well, Mama ...”
“Has not been equally ready?”
Julia nodded at the earl’s quick understanding. “It is hard to leave one’s home, sir. Mama is very attached to the castle.”
Lord Robin thought it politic at this point not to point out that by all accounts the lady was more attached to her status than to the dilapidated eaves themselves. He was just nobly swallowing a particularly wry response when his thoughts were mirrored almost precisely by a second female voice.
Lady Serena, having cast aside her blacks for a sunny periwinkle blue, languidly entered the room. Her eyes sought Robin’s almost instinctively, then looked away almost equally instinctively. It was ignoble of him to return her glance with one of his own! One, moreover, that made her knees feel like jelly—which they weren’t, being both strong and elegant—and her heart race within her breast, a sensation she found decidedly uncomfortable, not to mention wholly annoying.
She had not reached her ripe age just to start behaving like any green ninnyhammer just out of the nursery! She had enjoyed a certain pleasant interlude with the new earl and must on no account read anything more into the matter. She was certain he would not, though he was being extremely unchivalrous in regarding her with such a meaningful expression and such amusement in those bold, dark blue eyes! Honestly, if she had him to herself again, she would be inclined to strike him once more to wipe that smirk off his face. Look what ignoble thoughts he engendered! It was really, she thought in annoyance, the outside of enough.
Turning quite pointedly from his offending countenance, she addressed her next remark to Julia. It was this remark that had so exactly matched Lord Robin’s private thoughts. “The dowager countess will never feel herself ready, Julia! It is a sad fact that she stands on her dignity far too much to care to remove to the dower house. She must be made to face the fact and at once, for I am perfectly certain his lordship does not want to be troubled by a household of womenfolk at his breakfast each morning.”
“You make the notion not unattractive.”
But Serena ignored this murmured remark, not feeling it worthy of a reply, since Lord Robin was determined to be disagreeably flirtatious this morning and it was her firm intention to quash such a dangerous practice if she could help it.
Far from being either deterred or depressed by this cold response, Robin turned his charms on Miss Julia, which infuriated Serena all the more, certainly not because she was feeling any twangs of envy, but because she disapproved of his indiscriminate use of his undoubted charms. It was well enough for her, perhaps, but Julia was a most impressionable child and it simply would not do.
But Julia, confronted with her first real male attention, did not seem to see the matter in the same sensible light at all. After all the necessary introductions had been made, she blushed, and giggled, and confided all manner of nonsensical things to her male audience, including the fact that Serena was an out-standing gardener, an excellent rider, and a dab hand with the accounts, which she was not, being so featherbrained as to not know one column of figures from another.
None of these gentlemen seemed to hold her at any real fault for this, though Serena wanted to throw a pillow in her dear niece’s face to stem the sudden flow of chatter. Next she would be mentioning how Serena had taken over the estate books and transformed Caraway from a ramshackle liability to a profitable venture! She did not, for Julia knew nothing of the accounts, but there was still ample reason to throw a pillow in her direction to stem the lively flow. Robin, Serena noticed, looked enraptured.
In the event, by dint of breathing deeply and asking herself why in the world she was so perturbed, Serena restrained her mischievous impulse and contented herself with pouring a scalding hot cup of tea. This she calmly drank, not wincing in the slightest, and wholly ignoring the look of amusement on Lord Robin’s face. He seemed to read her thoughts, that man! She must keep them shuttered, else he would suspect the truth—that she was not what she claimed to be—and she would very likely die of mortification.
“Isn’t that wonderful, Serena!”
“Isn’t what wonderful, Julia?”
“Serena, I can swear you have not heard one word in six this morning! I am guaranteed not to be a wallflower at my first entrance to Almack’s, for both Lord Caraway and Captain McNichols have secured my hand for the opening dances!” Julia sounded genuinely overjoyed, not at all coy or missish, a fact that made Serena regret her first impulses. Julia was a dear, it was not fair becoming angry with her for what was, after all, a very minor offense. If Serena did not fear exposure, Julia’s chatter would not be a problem.
“How lovely!”
It was pointless, Serena thought, to point out that Julia, with her bright golden curls and delightfully open nature, had never been in any danger of wallflower status. On the contrary, more like a honeypot to starving bears.
“You could never be a wallflower, Miss Waring. It defies belief!”
So: Lord Caraway had wrested the thought from her head and turned it into a prettily turned compliment. She wondered why she felt so out of sorts about it, for Julia was behaving very prettily and dimpling quite adorably as she always did when she was pleased.
“Oh, no, you can have no notion of how I have dreaded being left without partners! It must be so mortifying to be dressed in one’s very best, with the orchestra playing something quite jolly, and not being able to join in. It happened to one of the Appleby sisters, though I cannot understand why, for Delia was dressed to the rig just exactly as if she had stepped out of a fashion magazine, which I am sure she might have done, for she was forever being fitted in London, and you know what modistes there are like!”
My lord nodded seriously, which, sad to say, encouraged Miss Waring all the more, for she had quite forgotten her shyness in the great barrage of compliments she had been receiving. Captain McNichols, not to be outdone, took her hand and announced that he would slay any man not sensible enough to immediately be struck by Miss Waring’s worth.
“Then I shall not lack for any partners, sir!”
“No, indeed! We shall have to fight our way through the throngs, won’t we, Robin?”
Robin dutifully conceded that they would, but his eyes were full of mirth as he glanced sideways at Serena.
“A conquest, methinks.”
“You are very bad, my lord! You are not to trifle with her.”
“And why not, pray? She looks no worse for trifling. Indeed, she looked a trifle peaked last night and now she is flushed with health.”
“Flushed with flattery, you mean! And I take leave to tell you, sir, it was my syrup of negus that put the color back in her cheeks, not any flirtatious wiles of yours.”
But Robin only laughed, and said he’d suspected all along that Miss Waring’s assessment of her talents had been true.
“What can you mean?”
“Only that if you make syrups you are a capable nurse, housekeeper, and gardener.”
