Chapter Seventeen
Malcolm had to admit that being friends with Miss Scarlett Perkins made this house party much more enjoyable.
The days after the balloon incident passed in a pleasant blur that made him understand much more acutely why people like his sister and Mrs. Salisbury wanted to have house parties in the first place.
In a highly uncharacteristic move, Malcolm was letting Ezra oversee his responsibilities on the farm, so that he could attend to what was happening in and around Parkhorne Hall itself.
He told himself it was because he cared about George and his pursuit of a wife.
But he also knew that here he lied to himself.
It was for her.
And only her.
Amongst the guests, the long summer days themselves were spent dining, riding, walking, and changing for mealtimes.
The sheer number of times the ladies were expected to change outfits ahead of these different meals astounded him.
In the evenings, after dinner, which usually saw him escorting either Scarlett or Miss Marburry, the ladies treated them to music, and those who wanted to indulge in cards did so.
Occasionally, he played cards, but mostly, after dinner, in the drawing room, he ended up finding himself in a corner with Scarlett, talking about …
well, he hardly knew what. It wasn’t as though they had much in common.
And yet they always seemed to have something to say to one another, whether it was about the events of the day or a tidbit one of them had thought of that they were sure would interest the other.
He observed, too, that his original impressions about Miss Perkins had been wrong. He had assumed her discomfort with the rural Parkhorne setting was the disgust of the city dweller for all things provincial and coarse, but he realized now it had been mere unfamiliarity.
“I’ve spent very little time outside of London,” she told him one evening in the drawing room. “Other than day trips to country estates and things of that nature. But Vera is often poorly, so we never holiday for long, and if we do, it is in Brighton or Bath.”
“You do not hate the country then?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “In fact, I find it improves greatly upon acquaintance.”
The flirtatious glint in her eye made his stomach dip dangerously. He couldn’t be sure, but he was fairly certain that she was implying that Parkhorne wasn’t the only thing that became more pleasing to her as time passed.
Of course, even if she did mean such a thing, it couldn’t mean anything. A lasting attachment—it was not possible or desirable to her. He didn’t imagine he’d improved that much upon acquaintance.
But he told himself that there was no reason why he couldn’t enjoy the company of a beautiful, intelligent woman while it was available to him.
Perhaps, he considered, Beatrice was not incorrect about at least one thing.
Perhaps she was right that shut away in the country, he was not always able to find female society that was the most pleasing to him.
It didn’t mean that he would move to London to obtain it—he had not revised his assessment of himself as unsuited for matrimony.
But he could enjoy this superior society when he found it so close by.
During the day, it was almost easy for him to convince himself of all these reasonable pronouncements.
The nights, however, were a different story.
Because he knew that Scarlett, achingly tempting Scarlett, was just down the hall.
And worse, he knew what she sounded like when she was about to find her pleasure, what it felt like to have her body taut with need against his own, and that she fired him so thoroughly that he could find his release without her even opening his trousers.
Given that they were the only members of the party staying in the hunting lodge, he had taken to riding back with her at night in the gig employed for that purpose. But he would chastely escort her to her room, where her maid waited for her.
It didn’t help, either, that he had the visions of her acquired during the day to fire these nightly imaginings.
Miss Perkins eating raspberries and cream, her tongue slipping out, just only, to swipe some errant sweetness from her bottom lip; the feel of Miss Perkins on his arm, as they undertook a particularly tricky piece of terrain on a walk; the bouncing of Miss Perkins’s bosom when she cheered for the men, him, as they played cricket…
He had seen those breasts bared once, for only a moment or two.
What wouldn’t he give to again have the privilege?
These thoughts only led in one direction.
He would end the night stroking himself desperately to visions of her.
And even after his release, when he fell asleep, he would be visited by even more naughty, impossible images of what he would like to do with her.
He would wake hard and aching again and moan at the futility of his state.
It was agony—and it was heaven.
In fact, such was his fascination with Miss Scarlett Perkins that he was not at all upset to learn that Mrs. Salisbury would need him to dance attendance on her and the other ladies for the duration of the party.
Lord Leith arrived at Parkhorne with his and Beatrice’s children one week into the festivities, as scheduled, but his appearance did not even out the numbers after all.
Mr. Harold Jones had to rush back to London on an urgent matter of business—there were whispers that a great-uncle from whom he expected to inherit had fallen gravely ill.
When Beatrice and Mrs. Salisbury explained the situation to Malcolm the evening before Leith’s arrival, he had acquiesced quickly.
Too quickly, he realized, when he saw his sister’s shrewd eyes twinkling in amusement.
But it didn’t matter. He was too charmed by Scarlett. He was enjoying himself too much to care, itself a novel experience for him.
Now, this evening, as he entered the drawing room after the customary separation of the sexes immediately following dinner, he was looking forward to another cozy tête-à-tête with Scarlett.
No, he couldn’t have her as his own. But he liked to forget that.
When he gazed at her, when he drank in her beauty and grace, he found he could wish for little else in this world at the present moment.
But he saw immediately that this evening was to be different. Because when he entered the room with the other gentlemen, Beatrice announced that they were to play forfeits—and that she would be the judge.
Dear God.
It could hardly be worse. And he didn’t exactly trust Beatrice not to embarrass him.
Already, she was handing around a box meant to take the personal items of the party.
When the box came to him, he attempted to keep passing it, as he saw the matrons and older gentlemen doing—but his sister called across the room, “Don’t even think of it, Malcolm!”
He suppressed a groan.
This prohibition could not be ignored. And it highly suggested that his sister had a plan for him.
He unclipped his watch and put it into the box. It landed atop all the other men’s watches and the ladies’ trinkets.
He hadn’t played forfeits since he was a boy. He could hardly believe that the supposedly elegant ladies and gentlemen of London spent their evenings occupied with games meant for children.
It was clear that the game had not changed at all since those long-ago afternoons with other children from the village.
Beatrice’s hand went into the box and pulled out a watch that he knew belonged to Severn.
Severn raised his hand in acknowledgment.
“A very fine watch,” Beatrice said with a smirk. “I do not know when, little brother, you became such a dandy.”
The crowd murmured in laughter, and Severn chuckled.
Given how much time he spent with Beatrice in London, and how alike in nature the two could be, Malcolm did not worry that his sister did not know the line where his sterling sense of humor left off and his hotheadedness began.
Further, Beatrice was essentially patroness to their whole family, but to none of them more than Severn.
He lived with her in London for nothing, coming and going as he pleased, which offset his naturally small income very handsomely.
“What should I make him do to get it back? Perhaps he shall have to sing for it—or bark like a dog. Or tell a story. Yes, I think tell a story. Tell us a story, Severn—an embarrassing story about yourself.”
Severn smiled in the dim light, and he didn’t look too vexed, even though something flashed in his brother’s eye that was not quite pleasure.
“I almost never embarrass myself,” Severn said to the crowd. “As you all know.”
Malcolm didn’t doubt that Severn could come up with an amusing story that involved him in some indecorous scrape. He doubted whether it would be appropriate for a mixed audience.
But he underestimated his brother.
“However, my love of fine things has gotten me into trouble a time or two. Long ago, when I first arrived in London and hoped to show my knowledge of fashion…”
What followed was a genuinely very funny story of Severn commissioning a pair of silk dress shoes for a ball in what he thought was a handsome shade of green.
When he received the pair, he thought they looked peculiar, but since they essentially fit, except for being rather tight, he wore them anyway.
After all, he was unfamiliar with London fashion.
He was enjoying himself at the ball and had decided to stay longer when his sister and Leith announced their departure.
However, one of their friends, the Viscount of Tremberley, pulled Severn aside not long before they left and informed him that he strongly suspected that he was wearing slippers meant for a lady.
“I nearly sprinted to my sister’s carriage,” Severn said. “And I returned home to a note from the shoemaker begging my pardon for sending a pair of green silk dancing slippers meant for a Mrs. Kendall to my address instead.”