Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
It appeared Lord Rudyard, if he had heard Lucasta’s remark, did not intend to acknowledge it.
He did, however, intercept Major Mallory as he escorted Cici from the floor. Even from a distance, Lucasta detected the light in Cici’s eyes as Smart Jeremy addressed her.
She also noted the light of interest in many other stares.
“Now what is the man about?” Lucasta muttered.
Selina’s eyes widened. “But everyone knows Lord Rudyard does not dance.”
Lucasta gnawed a fingertip of her glove. Smart Jeremy did not flirt, he did not dangle, and he did not flatter. His gravitas was the reason his pronouncements on matters of dress were taken as objective truth. What interest could he have in Cici?
Informing her, perhaps, that Lucasta was behaving like a spiteful cat and needed to be taken in hand. Aunt Pevensey would relish the proof of Lucasta’s ill breeding. No doubt she had the lecture prepared, the whip coiled and ready.
Smart Jeremy might simply be drawn to Cici’s glowing vivacity. The girl was tiny and quick as a sparrow, with bright, sparkling blue eyes and curls of polished gold.
“Perhaps he is remarking how well that honey silk robe flatters her complexion,” Minnie suggested.
“I would have guessed Lady P would put her in nothing but white all season,” Annis said. “After Rudyard complimented her gown at her come-out ball.”
“If Aunt Pevensey had her way, she would. Cici had to fight to get a gown made in anything other than ivory. I believe they bought the fabric from his shop.”
That foray had transpired before his comment on Selina’s gown, before Lucasta had good reason to take Smart Jeremy in dislike.
She had cried off the excursion anyway, on principle that she had no need of new gowns since her aunt had so generously supplied her from her trunks in the attic.
Instead she had had whisked round to the bookshop for sheet music for a cantata by Johann Christian, the son they called the London Bach, finally being published after his death.
Lady Cranbury detached herself from the group of dowagers beside them and steered in their direction.
Her friends fell back in awe as her ladyship fixed her cold, sharp eye on Lucasta.
Lady Cranbury was one of the more stately and terrifying matrons of London society, an established arbiter of ton, and in a dead heat with Lady Clara to be the town’s most informed gossip.
“Miss Voronsky, I congratulate you on the Count’s dinner. You laid an excellent table and did a creditable job hosting so many important guests.”
Annis dipped a polite curtsey. “Thank you, milady.”
“And the four of you provided a quite charming entertainment with your little quartets,” her ladyship went on. “I always enjoy Haydn.”
Lucasta glowed with pride. She had written the quartets they performed. She was a far cry from Haydn, but if Lady Cranbury could not perceive the difference, she was not about to correct her. “Thank you, milady.”
“Your voice isn’t terrible.” Lady Cranbury studied Lucasta. “In fact I wanted you for a little musical evening I am putting together, something to amuse my nephew when he visits. But your aunt tells me you are too modest to perform before strangers.”
Lucasta felt as if she’d blown too long on a hautboy and made herself light-headed. Lady Cranbury had a Cristofori pianoforte in her drawing room that Lucasta would give anything to play.
Surely vicars’ daughters might perform at small, private musical evenings for genteel guests. Surely her aunt could allow her that much?
“But I am not,” Lucasta said. “Overmodest, that is.”
“I took the liberty of pointing out that you played the cello not half badly at Count Voronsky’s dinner, and your aunt became quite querulous with me. Almost as if she’d had no idea you’d performed there. At any rate, she insisted you were unavailable.”
Lady Cranbury raised her quizzing glass and inspected Selina, who wore a mantua gown of copper silk with a pattern of twining roses. No more stripes for Selina.
“Glad to see you’re bearing up, girl,” her ladyship said. “I told Clara she must invite you. Some pity must be shown to the daughter of an officer.”
Selina’s cheeks flushed with deep color. “Th-thank you, milady.”
Lucasta bit her lip till it smarted. Selina had been admired, not pitied, before Smart Jeremy decided to cut her. A man could turn marquess’s heir and at a stroke destroy lives with his new power, and who would stand to stop him?
And now he had Cici in his sights. She drifted toward them on the arm of the Major, Rudyard strolling alongside, a lion on the prowl, king of all he surveyed.
“Your aunt will be pleased by Rudyard’s attentions to Miss Pevensey,” Lady Cranbury said.
“Mark me, it would make quite a conquest if your cousin snared him. I wonder if the marquess is insisting he marry? With Payne overseas, someone must be trained up as heir. I know of estates in Dorset and Wiltshire as well as the land in the West Indies, and Arendale is quite beautiful, for all it is so far in the north.”
Lucasta had arrived in London prepared to find Cecilia, Baron Pevensey’s daughter by his first wife, quite as vexed at the idea of having Lucasta for a chaperone as Lucasta had been vexed to leave her music.
Instead, she found a charming, utterly artless girl who had won Lucasta’s heart and provided a singular source of warmth under the Pevenseys’ cold roof.
“Though she won’t catch anyone above a second son with a dowry of five thousand pounds,” Lady Cranbury said. “Pevensey should make it ten if he wants to tempt Rudyard.”
“Cici is quite gifted with her watercolors,” Lucasta said. “And musically inclined as well. She has perfect pitch.”
“Dear girl, a woman need only cultivate her looks until the marriage contract is signed and the vows exchanged,” Lady Cranbury said.
“But of course you must interest yourself in how high Miss Pevensey might marry. Your future, after all, depends on how willing her husband is to support his wife’s relations. ”
Lucasta curled her fist around the blades of Minnie’s fan. “But I intend to support myself, milady, with the students in the musical conservatory I plan to establish in Bath.”
Her ladyship’s answer to this was a decidedly unladylike snort.
“How droll. And what will Lady Evers say to see a grand niece of hers turning to trade, like a farmer.” She patted Lucasta’s arm.
“For your sake, child, hope your cousin marries well and secures a place for you. Rudyard.” Her ladyship turned her quizzing glass on the approaching trio.
Rudyard bowed. He was graceful, and that, with his height, contributed to his fine figure.
He wasn’t portly or stuffed into his suit, like some dandies in the room.
Instead he was a tailor’s dream, broad of shoulder, long of leg, with a narrow waist that some men wore corsets to achieve. Lucasta doubted that he did.
“Tell us what you think of Miss Pevensey’s robe,” Lady Cranbury demanded.
The corners of his eyes tightened slightly, as if he disliked the request. Lucasta found that curious. He lived for people hanging on the judgments that dripped from his poisonous lips, did he not?
Only his mouth didn’t look poisonous. His lips were rather shapely, for a man’s.
“The color becomes her, as I am sure she knows,” Rudyard said with a small smile at Cici. Curse him for trying to enchant her!
“More so than white?” Cici peeped from behind her fan, her lips turned up in a merry smile. “For we must have this settled, you know. My stepmother wishes to feel she is exactly informed about your preference.”
That tightness about his eyes again, there and gone. “I do hope your stepmother will place more value on your preferences than mine.”
“You have not remarked my gown, Rudyard.” Lady Cranbury’s gown with its cascading skirts, tight bodice, and loose ruffled sleeves looked much like Lucasta’s, but with a green and pink combination to insult the eye, rather than green and orange. “Yet I am quite sure you admired Clara’s frock.”
He bowed again. “There can be no comparison, your ladyship. Lady Clara could never carry off court dress at an informal evening.”
“I’m going to tell the Duchess of Highcastle you approve of me,” Lady Cranbury cackled. “I heard you hated her headdress.” And she sailed off in triumph to bandy Smart Jeremy’s latest decree about the room.
Rudyard’s assessing gaze moved to Lucasta, and the hair on the back of her neck lifted, the sensation that hit her when she stepped before an audience to sing. That same sense of thrilling expectation, of being awake, alert, and fully alive.
“Miss Pevensey,” he drawled. “I have not the honor of being known to your companion.”
His rich, deep baritone sent a shiver down Lucasta’s spine. He’d run her to ground, like a predator, and now the slaughter could begin.
She straightened her shoulders and waited. She’d brought this on herself, after all. And if he destroyed her gown, and her inside it, perhaps the gossips would focus on that instead of his malice about Selina.
Major Mallory undertook the courtesies. “Miss Lithwick, allow me to present to you the Viscount Rudyard. Rudyard, Miss Lithwick.”
Automatically she extended her hand. “How do you do.”
“A pleasure.” He bent over her hand. As if she were a lady of consequence.
She wished his gloved fingers did not grip hers with such firm warmth.
She wished he would not regard her so steadily.
Jeremiah Falstead possessed a gaze of penetrating intensity, and his voice poured over her like warmed honey.
She felt struck over the head, that voice left ringing in her ear, resonant as a bell.
A screech cut across his next words.
“I beg your pardon,” Lucasta said. “That second violin. He has the most gorgeous instrument, I would guess it is an Amati, yet he plays it like a country fiddle.”
“I asked if you would honor me with a dance.” Rudyard led her toward the center of the room before she thought up a refusal.