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‘Not with him, surely? He is not worthy of you.’
‘I shall say who is worthy and who is not.’ Her temper was up and he ought to have known better than goad her, because it only made her more determined to further the acquaintance of the young man in question. Too late, he realised the wisdom of silence and drew up at the door of Stanmore House without saying another word.
He jumped down and strode round the phaeton to help her alight. She jumped from the last step and almost fell into his arms. He caught her and held just a fraction longer than he ought to have done, but the feel of her lovely body so close against his sent tremors of desire through him and he wanted to savour the feeling as long as he dared.
‘Will you come in?’ she asked, looking up into his grey eyes and seeing there a look which she could not fathom. It was sadness and tenderness and humour all mixed up together and it confused her. And there was a strange twist to his mouth as if he wanted to smile, but could not, which made her want to ask him what troubled him and to comfort him. ‘Mama might be back.’
He released her reluctantly. ‘Does that mean I am forgiven?’
‘Of course it does, silly.’ The fleeting moment of intimacy was gone. ‘But you must make recompense.’
‘Oh?’ He raised one eyebrow. ‘And what might that be?’
‘Take me out in the phaeton again.’
‘Of course. It will be my pleasure.’
‘Tomorrow. Early. Seven o’clock.’
‘Now, Vinny, I never said—’
‘You said you would think about it and now you have thought and have decided that there cannot possibly be any harm in letting me take the ribbons in a deserted park. You think you might even enjoy teaching me, always supposing you manage to rise early enough.’
‘Oh, so you are privy to my thoughts, are you?’
‘Of course. You are an open book to me.’
He did not think so, or she would have read the love in his heart, a love which had grown and matured ever since that day, three years before, when he had been introduced to her. His stepmother, who had an unerring sixth sense where he was concerned, had warned him that Lavinia was far too young to be thinking of marriage and, as he was often in one sort of scrape or another, the Duke would never countenance him as a son-in-law until he mended his ways.
Mending his ways had been easy; after all, his misdemeanours had been minor ones, all part of the process of growing into manhood. Changing the way Lavinia looked at him was far harder. She was as elusive as a butterfly, there to be seen and admired, laughing with him, sharing confidences, expecting him to pull her out scrapes, but likely to flit away without warning, leaving him empty-handed. He sighed, just as the Loscoe barouche drew up beside them and the Duchess alighted.
‘James, I had no idea you were in town.’ Almost thirty-eight years old, Frances, Duchess of Loscoe, was as elegantly beautiful and as full of life as a girl half her age.
‘I arrived yesterday, Mama, and, hearing you were here, I came to pay my respects.’
‘And found only Lavinia at home. I am sorry. If I had known…’ She paused to look at the phaeton, while her groom unloaded armfuls of parcels from her carriage and took them into the house. ‘Did you arrive in that?’
‘Yes. I bought it for a song. Its first owner grew tired of it.’ He could not rid himself of the habit of justifying his purchases to her. If it had not been for her careful supervision when he was growing up, he would have dissipated his inheritance before it had been in his hands five minutes. Now, long after he had learned more sense, the habit remained.
‘I am not surprised. It looks very dangerous.’
‘No, it isn’t, Mama,’ Lavinia put in. ‘But it is very exhilarating to ride in.’
‘By that am I to assume you have been for a ride in it?’
‘Only a very little one to the park and James drove very sedately, I promise you.’
Frances made no comment as she led the way into the house and ordered refreshments to be brought to the drawing room. Then she took off her gloves and hat, carefully stroking the long curled feather into place before handing them both to a footman.
‘Now, tell me all your news,’ she commanded her stepson when all three were sitting comfortably with cups of tea in their hands. ‘There is nothing wrong at Twelvetrees, is there?’
‘No, but being a country landlord can be very trying at times, especially with the economy in the state it is. I felt like a little diversion.’
‘You would not feel like that if you were married.’
‘I cannot see how being married would make any difference to the work of the estate.’
‘No, but you might not find is so trying if you had a wife and children to fulfil you.’
‘Oh, Mama, not again, please. I promise to make a push on the matter this Season, will that satisfy you?’ He looked at Lavinia as he spoke, but she was smiling to herself and stroking the tortoiseshell cat which had climbed on to her knee, apparently completely unperturbed. If the Duke were to enter the room the cat would be gone like a streak of lightning.
‘For the moment. I do not suppose you have been in town long enough to receive any invitations yet.’
‘No, but I do not doubt word will soon go round and I will be besieged. Tell me what is planned and where you will be going, then I shall know whom to accept.’
‘Lady Graham is holding a ball…’
‘Don’t tell me Constance is not off her hands yet. This must be the third year she has tried to fire her off.’
‘James, I wish you would not be so vulgar,’ Frances said. ‘Poor Constance cannot help being plain, but I am sure some young man will recognise her worth before long.’
‘Well, it will not be me, so you may put that idea from your mind. But if I am invited, then I shall go, if only to dance with you.’
‘And me,’ Lavinia put in.
He inclined his head towards her. ‘That goes without saying, my dear. Now, what else is there?’
Although the Season was half over, the Duchess reeled off a catalogue of events, from musical soirées and routs to balls and picnics, not to mention a visit to the opera and another to Vauxhall Gardens. ‘That is, if this wretched business with the Queen doesn’t upset everyone’s plans.’
‘Then I shall look forward to seeing much more of you both.’
Lavinia began to laugh and they both turned to her in puzzlement. ‘What have I said that is so comical?’ he asked.
‘You have just said the same thing as Lord Wincote and in him you condemned it as bold and desperate. Are you desperate, my lord?’
‘Certainly not.’ Unwilling to enter into a discussion on the topic, he stood up. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I must leave you both.’
Lavinia sprang to her feet. ‘I will come to see you off, James.’
He smiled, took his leave of his stepmother, then left the room, followed by Lavinia. At the outer door, she took his hat and gloves from the footman and handed them to him. Her eyes were alight with mischief. ‘I shall see you tomorrow at seven round the corner in the mews,’ she whispered. ‘We do not want to wake the household, do we?’
‘Vinny, I do not think—’
Before he could go on, she had pushed him towards the door. ‘Good afternoon, my lord.’ He suddenly found himself on the step and the door firmly closed behind him. It was a situation he would never have put up with from anyone else; any other young lady treating him in that cavalier fashion would have been dropped immediately. But Lavinia was different. Lavinia was Lavinia, self-willed, to be sure, but there wasn’t an ounce of malice in her body; she had not meant it as a put-down, simply a way of preventing him from arguing.
He clamped his hat on his head, strode to the phaeton, climbed in and drove off, smiling to himself at the prospect of teaching her to drive it.
‘Vinny, what was all that about?’ Frances asked when Lavinia rejoined her. ‘Have you quarrelled with James?’
‘No, Mama.’ And Vinny, who did not see the need to hide it, told her about the encounter with Lord Wincote and James’s reaction.
‘He was only trying to protect you,’ her ladyship said. ‘You know he is very fond of you.’
‘That does not mean he may act as a substitute father. I am not such a ninnyhammer as to fall under the spell of the first man who pays me attention.’
The Duchess laughed. ‘No, for you demonstrated that very clearly when you had your come-out. Your dear papa thought you were being too particular.’
‘But you did not, did you? You know how important it is to feel comfortable and at ease with one’s choice.’
‘Of course. But there are other things to consider.’
Lavinia laughed. ‘Oh, I know. Good looks and mutual interests and money. I have heard it all before. But I want to be in love. You and Papa were in love, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. We still are.’
‘Then you will understand.’
‘Yes, but you have only just met Lord Wincote. You surely do not think you are in love with him?’
‘No, how could I be? I have barely exchanged half a dozen words with him. I simply wanted to tease James.’ What she did not say was that Edmund Wincote had the most mesmeric eyes she had ever come across. They seemed to have the power to turn her usually iron will to jelly. She wanted to see him again to be sure she had not dreamed it. And if she had not, to explore where the feeling would take her, James’s disapproval notwithstanding.
‘Teasing people,’ Frances said slowly. ‘has been known to rebound on the one doing the teasing.’
‘I know, but James asks for it. He is so…so…stiff sometimes.’
The Duchess laughed. ‘That is the last word I would use to describe him. What is it you do to him to make him behave so out of character?’ The question was a rhetorical one; Lady Loscoe had a very good idea, but it was not for her to point it out. She decided to change the subject. ‘When I left the house this morning, you were intent on doing some painting. How did it go?’
Lavinia scrambled to her feet, her eyes alight with enthusiasm, James and Lord Wincote both forgotten. ‘Come with me and I will show you.’
She led the way down to the ground floor ballroom and flung open the door. ‘There! What do you think of it?’
Frances stood and surveyed the great canvas in surprise for a full minute, then she said, ‘Lavinia, why is it so big?’
‘It is a backcloth to a play.’
‘Oh. Have you been commissioned to paint it?’ Frances herself took commissions for all sorts of subjects, most of them family portraits, pets, horses and vistas of people’s estates, the proceeds for which she donated to the orphanage fund. Not surprisingly, she had never been asked to make scenery.
‘No, I just did it. It is meant for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’
‘Yes, I can see it would do very well for that, but that doesn’t explain why you decided to do it.’
‘Mama, you remember the Thespian Players coming to Risley earlier this year?’
‘Yes. The Duke allowed them to put a tent up in one of the meadows, I recall.’
‘It gave me an idea. I should like to put on a play for our friends and acquaintances and donate the entrance money to the orphanage fund.’
‘Oh, I see. It is very commendable, Vinny dear, but have you thought about all the work involved? Where would you find a tent, for a start, and where could you pitch it, considering we are in London, quite apart from providing costumes and seating and finding people to act in it?’
‘They are not insurmountable problems. And I did not think we should need a tent, we could use this ballroom…’
‘Vinny, I am not at all sure your father would allow that.’
‘He would if you asked him. It would only be for one night and we would charge an astronomical amount to come in, so it would be very select. No riff-raff. I have worked it all out, expenditure and income, just as you taught me.’
Frances smiled. ‘Oh, I have no doubt you have and now you think you can wind me round your thumb and make a conspirator of me.’
‘Oh, it will be such fun! Do say you agree.’
‘I shall have to think about it. Whom else do you plan to involve?’
‘James—’
‘James?’ she queried in surprise. ‘Has he agreed?’
‘Not exactly, but he will,’ she said confidently. ‘And then there is Duncan and Constance…’ She reeled off a list of her friends, being careful not to mention Lancelot Greatorex. ‘Augusta and her two little ones, who would make beautiful fairies, if they can be schooled in their parts…’ Augusta was James’s sister. She was married to Sir Richard Harnham and had two delightful children, Andrew and Beth.
‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a difficult play for amateurs, Vinny.’
‘Oh, I plan to condense it. If I leave out the play within the play and stick to the love story, I shall not need so many players. I might even try and simplify the language and set it in modern times.’
‘Might you, indeed!’ Her stepmother laughed. ‘You are certainly not lacking in pluck if you imagine you can improve on Shakespeare.’
‘So you do agree?’
‘Vinny, I commend your enthusiasm, I really do, but you know there is so much going on in town this summer, I cannot help but feel you will be playing to an empty room.’
‘No, for we shall do it after all the fuss over the coronation is over.’
‘But that is not until the first of August—the Season will be over by then and everyone will start going home to the country.’
‘If there is a coronation. James is not at all sure there will be but, in any case, no one will leave town until something is resolved. Everyone will still be fired up with nothing to divert them. There will be a kind of vacuum and we shall be there to fill it. Oh, please say yes.’
‘I shall have to talk to the Duke.’
‘Of course,’ Lavinia said, hoping that her father would be too distracted to pay much attention to what his wife was asking and would give the nod without thinking too deeply about it. And once rehearsals were under way and it became apparent that they needed professional help, she could introduce the idea of asking Mr Greatorex to step in. She decided to let the matter rest for the time being and began talking about Lady Graham’s ball.
‘You owe me five guineas,’ Lavinia said as soon as she had climbed into the phaeton beside James the following morning. It was very early indeed and there was little traffic on the road: a couple of milkmaids were driving their cows from Green Park to the houses where the milk would be sold direct from cow to kitchen maid’s jug; a chimney sweep was striding down the street, his poles and brushes over his shoulder, followed by his tiny assistant scampering to keep up with him; a hackney cab carried a late reveller home; a marauding mongrel and a pair of spitting cats were determined on disturbing the peace.
James took his attention from his driving long enough to turn and look at her. Early as it was, she was looking gloriously vibrant. Her gown was covered by a long cloak whose hood was flung back to reveal her thick chestnut-coloured hair. Not wanting to involve her maid, she had endeavoured to tie it back with a ribbon but several shorter strands had escaped and curled about her ears and neck. Excitement made her green eyes sparkle like emeralds and the early morning air, so much fresher than the heat in the middle of the day, had made her cheeks rosy.
He was almost breathless with longing, but he managed a cool, ‘By that, am I to assume you turned your papa up sweet and he has agreed to allow you to use the ballroom for your play?’
‘Yes, I told you he would, did I not?’
‘There must be a proviso or something of the sort.’
‘No, not at all,’ she said, smiling broadly, revealing perfect white teeth. ‘I told you he would not stand against Mama, didn’t I? She asked him when he came home last night.’
