The Unofficial Suitor (10 page)

“But... But... you are supposed to be dead!” the fop declared.

“Many men have tried to effect my demise, dear cousin, but so far I have led a remarkably charmed life,” the new Viscount Westhrop said smoothly.

Taking a different tack, the original and apparently superceded Viscount Westhrop turned to Lady Letitia and said flatly, “This man is not my cousin. He is an impostor, who is only pretending to be Peregrine in order to steal my title.”

“Do not be such a nodcock, Edmund. You do not have a title for anyone to steal, and you never did. Perry has always been ahead of you in the line of succession,” his grandmother replied.

Jumping up and down in his rage and looking, to Cassie, quite like a little puppet being jerked with strings, Edmund Stanier repeated, “But this is not Peregrine! Peregrine is dead! He has to be! I do not know how you can think this—this American is the real viscount. Why, he even speaks with a horrid colonial accent! Somewhere there is proof that my cousin is dead, and I intend to find it even if I have to travel to America,” he said wildly before stalking out—if one could call the mincing steps he took stalking, thought Cassie, suppressing a smile.

“Come sit down, Perry, and tell me about your journey.” Lady Letitia linked her arm with her grandson’s and led him back to where she had been sitting.

“All in good time, Grandmama, but first I would make known to you my best friend in all the world, Richard Hawke.”

Suddenly grabbing Cassie’s arm in a grip so tight it hurt, Ellen whispered frantically, “Oh, we are undone! All is lost!”

“Why do you say that?” Cassie asked.

“Those two men—they were on the stage with us from Cornwall!”

“Why, yes, did you not recognize them?”

“They have seen us—” Ellen was white as a sheet and appeared to be in danger of fainting.

“Well, of course they have seen us. We traveled together for two days.” Cassie was thoroughly bewildered by her step-mother’s reaction. During the trip, Ellen had barely acknowledged the men’s presence and had not actually spoken a single word to any of the three men. So why was she now in such a taking?

“No, no,” Ellen said with a moan, “that is nothing to the point. They have seen us dressed in mere rags—in those hideous dresses and shabby cloaks, without even a decent bonnet. Oh, I have never been so mortified in all my life! They will tell the world, and we will be the laughing-stocks of London. I shall never live down such ignominy! I might as well throw myself into the Thames since my life is now thoroughly ruined.”

“Surely the matter is not that desperate,” Cassie replied calmly. “If they were to spread such tales around London, they could expect us to retaliate by telling everyone they were in a drunken stupor for half the trip.”

Ellen looked at her in disbelief. “You are indeed foolish beyond permission if you think that would stop them. Pray, what is the harm of a gentleman being in his cups, compared to the shame of a lady appearing in public in an out-of-date frock?”

Acknowledging to herself that there could be no meeting of minds on the subject, Cassie forbore to press her arguments. As ridiculous as it might seem to her, her stepmother was truly terrified out of her mind at the mere thought of what the two men might say. Clearly, it was Cassie’s responsibility to do what she could to avert disaster. She could only regret that Mr. Hawke looked every bit as formidable in fashionable attire as he had in his buckskins.

Catching his eye, she stared directly at the man, then shifted her eyes to the left, then back to him, then to the left, repeating several times until she was sure he must have understood her silent message. Then she stood up and moved a few feet away and pretended a great interest in a little china shepherdess on the mantel.

Her ploy worked, and after a discreet interval, Mr. Hawke joined her. “My step-mother is most distressed,” Cassie murmured without preamble.

“So I had noticed,” Mr. Hawke said quietly. “Is there any way I might be of assistance?”

Fighting off the urge to move at least a foot or two away from this overpowering man, Cassie said bravely, “I am afraid you are the problem.”

“I? What have I done to distress Lady Blackstone?”

“You have seen us dressed in—” She could not say rags, because that, of course, was an exaggeration. “You have seen us wearing garments that were not precisely fashionable,” she explained, then waited for him to laugh mockingly. Really, she felt remarkably foolish voicing such a silly anxiety.

To her relief, he neither laughed nor mocked. “You may tell your step-mother that she has nothing to fear. I shall never by any word or action indicate that I have seen the two of you before this afternoon.”

“And your friends? Can you speak for them also?” she asked, amazed at her own temerity.

“They will neither of them say a word.”

“Thank you,” she whispered before moving away to rejoin her step-mother. “It is all right, Ellen,” she said reassuringly, “Mr. Hawke has promised neither he nor his friends will say anything.”

Ellen was not completely reassured. Twisting her handkerchief into a knot, she said weakly, “Oh, I do wish we could quit this house immediately. That man makes me so nervous.”

“I am quite willing to return home at once.”

“No, no, we must not leave before our allotted time is up. That would be a dreadful insult to our hostess!”

Cassie sighed. So many rules, and most of them so totally absurd, it might be better if more people did ignore them.

“Mr. Oliver Ingleby and Miss Cecily Ingleby,” the butler intoned.

The newcomers were obviously brother and sister, both tall, attractive, and positively radiating exuberant good humor. After an affectionate greeting for Lady Letitia, the girl immediately made her way to Cassie’s side.

“Oh, I am glad there is someone here under the age of fifty! Aunt Letitia—actually she is my great-aunt—is popping me off this year, although she has told me if I do not meet anyone who suits me this Season, I may wait for next year without worrying that I shall be thought on the shelf. Is this your first Season, too?” Without waiting for an answer, Miss Ingleby continued, “Aunt Letitia is a dear, really, but she has so many old friends—” here Miss Ingleby rolled her eyes, “and I was beginning to think I must be the only young lady being presented this year. I have spent so many hours being fitted for clothes, I vow, I shall be quite exhausted before the Season even begins. Tell me, have you discovered Madame Argenteul? Is she not the most clever modiste?”

By this time Cassie had realized it was pointless to attempt to answer any of Miss Ingleby’s questions, but Ellen was more experienced with such fluent conversationalists, and she simply began speaking at the same time as Miss Ingleby.

“She is a treasure, is she not? I have had two dresses of her—

“Did you see that lovely blue silk she has—”

“—and I am quite pleased with the results—”

“—which is shot with silver threads. I am sure it is smuggled—”

“—and I have already told her I shall be happy to—”

“—in from France—”

Trapped as she was between the two chattering ladies, Cassie’s head was beginning to ache. She looked across the room and discovered Mr. Hawke was watching her again. This time, instead of returning his stare, she dropped her eyes modestly, as her step-mother had instructed her to do. It was unfortunate that Ellen seemed to have forgotten another of her rules, namely that they must hold their visit to thirty minutes, because Cassie was finding it harder and harder to convince herself that Mr. Hawke embodied no threat to her peace of mind.

Richard watched the three ladies conversing by the window. Or rather, he could not keep his eyes off the one whose tongue was not flapping away at top speed. Although he had not previously considered it a necessary requirement for a wife, he now realized that he had no desire to wed a chatterbox. Lady Cassiopeia, fortunately, did not seem to suffer from that affliction.

“Pay attention, Richard.” Perry clapped him on the shoulder. “Ingleby here has just promised he will put our names up for White’s and Brooks’s.”

“But not Boodle’s,” young Mr. Ingleby said with a grin. “That club’s for the dandies, so if you want a membership there, you’ll have to apply to Stanier. Ecod, but I’d give a bundle to have seen his face when you was announced. I’ll wager his nose was bent out of shape when you turned up alive. Don’t quite know how he got it into his noggin that you had to be dead. Quite a few people have gone to the Colonies and returned alive.”

“The United States,” Perry corrected.

“Beg pardon?”

“Not the Colonies anymore. We won our independence,” Perry said quite seriously. “Twice now.”

“Oh, to be sure, to be sure. But you said ‘we.’ Don’t you mean ‘they’ old chap?”

Perry must be the total lackwit, Richard decided, to speak in such a revolutionary way before his grandmother. Although she appeared to be deep in conversation with one of her cronies, Richard was willing to lay odds she was listening intently to every careless word her grandson was saying.

Before Perry could say anything else that might prematurely reveal his plans to return to America, Richard took his elbow and gave it such a hard squeeze that Perry winced. “It is time we were on our way,” Richard said smoothly.

Perry did retain a modicum of good sense, and without any objections, he took his farewell of his grandmother, who then held out her hand to Richard. Bowing over it, he said all that was polite, and moments later he was safely out on the street with his companion.

“Were you deliberately trying to stir up a hornet’s nest in there?” Richard asked.

“My wits must have gone begging,” Perry admitted. “I can’t believe I spoke that carelessly in front of my grandmother. Thank goodness I at least had enough common sense to drag you along to London with me. Well, no harm done.”

Easy to say, thought Richard, but he doubted Lady Letitia had missed the implications of the word we even if Perry thought she had. Excusing himself on the grounds that he had pressing business to look after in the City, Richard waited until he was safely seated in a hack before opening the note Lady Letitia’s butler had slipped to him along with his hat.

Lady Letitia wasted no time. As soon as the butler had left the room after serving them their dinner, she began her attack.

“My grandson has mentioned you in many of the letters he has written me. You are not precisely the English gentleman of leisure you are now pretending to be.”

Now is the time, Richard thought, to prove I am as adept at getting out of a tight spot as Perry thinks I am. “I am English, at least,” he replied mildly, “and not at all a savage. You will notice I am quite adept at eating with a knife and fork.” He held up his utensils in mute testimony.

His hostess took another sip of her wine. “But you are not a gentleman born, nor are you a man of leisure. Wealthy, I will grant you, but none of it appears to have been inherited, which you must agree is the mark of a true gentleman.”

“Delicious salmon,” Richard said. Perry’s grandmother was turning out to be every bit as formidable as he had said. It was too bad Perry had written such informative letters.

“I do not think my grandson has any idea of your past,” she continued, “other than the part of it with which he was involved.”

Reminding himself never to play cards with this old lady, Richard continued eating as if Lady Letitia’s words had not bothered him. Just how much did she know?

“You were, I believe, a member of the crew of the ship Golden Dreams, were you not? Which ship was lost in the Caribbean during a storm?” Her expression gave away absolutely nothing of what she was thinking, but for some reason he could not define, Richard began to suspect that she might not be an enemy.

“You did not hear that from Perry,” he said.

“No,” she admitted. “But I have many sources of information.”

“And,” he continued, “you did not hear that as part of idle gossip. Which leaves me to believe that you have deliberately hired someone to pry into my life.”

“I am afraid,” she said, and this time she allowed a smile to show on her face, “that prying is one of the things I do best.”

“Has no one ever told you that curiosity killed the cat?”

This time her smile was genuine. “I am in no danger from you. The reports I have received from Perry and from my other—shall we say merely, from my other sources?—have all been in agreement that you are a man of honor.”

“But not a gentleman of honor?”

“No, not a gentleman. An adventurer, a risk-taker, and, if I may quote my grandson, ‘a devilishly good friend to have at one’s back when one is in a tight spot.”

“So, since you know I am a fraud, do you intend to destroy my standing in society?” Richard asked, pushing his plate away and making no further attempt to act as if they were merely engaging in idle small talk—as if his whole future were not held firmly in this old lady’s hands.

“That depends,” she replied, “on what you are trying to achieve by pretending to be a gentleman. Perhaps you would like to say a few words in your own defense?”

How much to tell her, that was the question. And how to phrase it so that he would not give away Perry’s plans. “As I have said, I am an Englishman. And having acquired sufficient wealth, as you have discovered, I now wish to purchase an estate and settle down to the life of a country squire. When I do that, it will be much easier to gain acceptance if my neighbors do not know that I have been in trade.”

She nodded, as if satisfied with his answer, then casually moved to cut his legs out from under him. “I have always felt that half-truths are better than lies when one wishes to deceive someone. It would appear that you have come to the same conclusion, because you have quite neglected to mention your intentions in regard to Lady Cassiopeia.”

Richard had not, however, come this far in life without learning a few tricks about disarming his opponents. “I intend to marry her,” he replied.

“I can prevent that,” Lady Letitia said. Her voice was still casual, as if she were simply inviting him to have more wine.