Chapter Six
“She is lovely.” Terese raised her teacup to her smiling lips.
Clive cast her a withering look as he buttoned his frockcoat.
“It’s been two years since Christine died. You’ve mourned her death.”
He shook his head. More like he’d mourned his failures with her.
“So many ladies are eager to become your new wife.”
“I’m not looking for a new one.” He fumbled with his cravat, grousing to himself that he should have brought his valet with him to Brighton.
She gave him a broad grin. “It appears you don’t have to.”
“Terese,” he pleaded with her, “stop.” Madame Laurant was indeed the only one who appealed to him.
All of her drew him. Her fresh face, her delicate form, her large, almond-shaped blue eyes as she took him in and caressed him with a yearning he wagered she did not perceive.
They had flown kites with Bella for more than an hour—and he could have sworn his heart flew up to frolic with the two little red birds.
Bella had marveled and chuckled, then worn herself out. She was abed, napping from her carefree morning in the sun. He did not have to nap. The memory of that hour still lived within him. It would, he knew, for days or more to come.
When have you known unfettered delight like that with a woman?
Not even when he had courted his wife had he thought he could grab such simple pleasures. No kite flying then. Only quiet picnics. Boring balls. And walks among gardens where conversations were stilted and filled with gossip of the ton.
His sister was still talking, and he stared at her.
“You have not heard a thing I said, have you?” Terese feigned horror.
“I do apologize.”
She flicked a hand and laughed. “Clive, I’d like to see you happy with a woman. Truly happy.”
He gave Terese a sidelong glance. He should be careful with his heart and with Madame Laurant’s. “You are assuming a lot from a five-minute introduction.”
“Sometimes that is all one needs. Ah, I am right, then,” she crooned, and fluttered her long brown lashes. “Lightning can strike in mere minutes.”
“All right.” He plunked his hands on his hips.
How do you know? was the question that sprang to his lips.
But he did not want her to describe his enchantment.
He felt what it was. He did not need a recitation of what he looked like.
He resembled a clown in harlequin or that proverbial besotted schoolboy who hankered after the upstairs maid.
“I must go. Langley will wonder what detains me.”
“I will read and nap. Take your time with your meeting. When Bella awakens, she and I will have tea and sandwiches in the dining room. Then I will ask her to show me how to fly that kite she made.”
He waggled his brows at that. “A trick if it goes again.” Madame Laurant had flown Bella’s odd little worm of a kite.
How she got it up was a mystery, but the contraption flew for at least ten minutes.
He’d been the one to maneuver madame’s kite.
Of course, the darn thing flew like a bird.
While Bella had jumped for joy that both flew, the shared laughter between madame and himself made for a delicious torment. “I wish you luck.”
“Madame Laurant did a fine job of fixing Bella’s creation,” Terese said with wicked glee in her gray eyes. “The lady knows how to please a child. I’d say a man as well, eh?”
“You never let go of a bone, do you?”
“My specialty, darling. Go! Meet Langley. Give him my regards.”
“I will. Do you see him soon?”
“Here? I do hope so. Now leave me!”
Clive waved himself off. At reception, the clerk asked if he needed a carriage, but no, he needed to walk.
Terese, older by two years, knew him well, and she had pricked his memory.
Reflection on the past was not a favored pastime.
Nor was instant enchantment with a lady he did not know his usual practice.
He was so careful. Even to choose a mistress.
Even then, he’d pensioned his latest one off last autumn. Boredom was a terrible calamity in bed.
Was his problem that he was too careful?
Or had fate just played an ironic joke on him? See a lady. Love her looks. Find her once more. Appreciate her kindness, her spontaneity, her reserve. Enjoy her. Ponder why you must not pursue her or have her. Yet his body tingled with the promise of desire.
Such an odd feeling, desire. It came without logic. Dropped before one like the vow of a new world. Pulled one inside and lingered, tested, and teased. And it was all fantasy.
Oh hell. End this!
At a snap, he took the lane up to the Regent’s Pavilion. The sun was murderously bright, hot for June, and his mind went to the matter he would discuss with the Earl of Langley and the prime minister’s aide.
He cocked his ear. A military band played a ditty and the boisterous sound came steadily toward him.
People in the street paused to listen and look from what direction they came.
Preston Barracks lay barely two miles north of Brighton, housing artillery and cavalry as well as hundreds of horses in the stables.
Their complement had doubled in the past three months.
With Boney’s La Grande Armée camped directly across the Channel in Boulogne, British defenses along the southern coast had more than doubled.
Soldiers, sailors, cannon, and lorries filled with new rifles and uniforms and God knew what else filled the streets every hour of the day.
If the French came across the Channel, Clive had intelligence that they’d most likely come by boat at night.
Boney, said Clive’s own agent here in town, repeated that he wanted to cross by hot air balloon.
But Clive and Langley, as well as their colleagues in espionage, knew the emperor’s idea was literally full of air.
Still, manpower along the Kent and Sussex shoreline was not up to that of Dover and Hastings.
Staffed by volunteers, the bulk of the defense here—actually twice the number of men stationed at Preston—was civilian home guard.
Insufficient to the task of proper defense, they were mostly untrained.
Many were without rifles, pistols, or even a slingshot.
The truth was that if Boney came, his disciplined, well-armed soldiers would overwhelm the small coastal towns.
In the blink of an eye, one twelve-hour stint, Britain would be French.
Three army officers strode around him. The two young ladies who approached them tittered to each other.
They appeared to be inviting contact. When the girls preened and batted their lashes, the officers tipped their hats but did not stop—and the girls complained to each other as they passed by Clive.
He muttered to himself of his own frustrations as he took a turn into the gardens of the pavilion.
“I say, old man, you look gloomy!” The Earl of Langley rose from the bench outside the door of the regent’s favorite home and strode toward him.
About twenty years older than Clive, Langley was a tall, lean, platinum-haired fellow with easy grace.
He worked for the Foreign Office when he was not attending to his estate, his four brothers, their wives, and their dozen or so offspring.
He was devoted to his wider family, but most especially to his eight-year-old son.
A widower, Langley had not had a happy marriage.
He and Clive had often spoken about how readily young men could marry mistaking lust for love. “What is your problem?”
“Not sure I know! Hello, how are you?”
They shook hands.
“Very well. Shall we go in,” Langley asked, “or prepare here before we go inside?”
“Here, yes.” Clive sat down. “I need to apply my mind to this matter before us.”
“That bad, is it? What ails you? I know you have no problems with money.”
“Never. My father did well by the tenants, and my estate manager is finer than I could ever be.”
“Your sister then?” Langley frowned, very concerned.
“No. She’s perfect.”
Langley nodded. “Good. Glad to hear it. Tell her I said that, will you?” Langley had come to a dinner party at Clive’s London house a few weeks ago.
He had met her the year Terese debuted, but she was soon to become engaged, and Langley was married.
Their interest in each other was polite, even if a spark had burned from then on.
Now both had lost their spouses. When Langley took Terese in to dinner that night at Clive’s, their interest in each other blossomed.
Langley had called two or three times a week to take Terese for carriage rides.
Terese had invited him to her recent garden party.
Clive had been pleased when Terese agreed to come on this holiday with him and Bella.
But he suspected she knew Langley would be in town, too.
“Terese sends her regards.” His sister had married an older man by order of their father, but she had found love with him and, unlike the earl, enjoyed the bliss of it.
Yet her happiness had been short. Her husband died of an intestinal disease years ago.
Terese had found solace in caring for Bella…
and in monitoring Clive’s own despair after his wife’s death.
She knew, as no others did, that he did not mourn Christine’s loss as greatly as he regretted that the two of them had never found any mutual satisfaction in their union.
“I will call upon Terese at the hotel,” Langley said. “Tomorrow, perhaps?”
“She will welcome that.”
Langley looked pensive. “You don’t mind, do you, that I call on her?”
“Dear heavens, no! Why would I?”
“I am so much older.”
“Doddering, are you?”
“I’m fifty-two, Carlisle. How old is Terese?”
“Thirty-seven. But how can age matter more than a meeting of minds? Or the comfort of shared outlooks?” How indeed!
Langley ran a hand through his silver-streaked hair. “Did I say those very words to you last week?”
Clive chuckled and took a look around to ensure he would not be overheard. “When you and I spoke about lust?”