Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Thursday was Lady Pevensey’s at-home day, and at the earliest time that could be deemed acceptable, the butler introduced an unexpected pair of callers into the green parlor where Cici sat with her embroidery.
Lucasta had her nose in Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Treatise on Harmony, and Lady Pevensey made no pretense of doing anything but wonder which important people might attend them that day.
“Lord Rudyard, mum, and Miss Lambertina Falstead, daughter of the late Lord Payne.” The butler stood aside to let them enter.
Lady Pevensey dropped her copy of the Ladies Cabinet, trying to school her expression, which ranged from dismay to astonishment to a sly, wild hope. “Lord Rudyard! What an—unexpected pleasure.”
Lucasta struggled to keep her own face from betraying the way her heart leapt straight into her throat, like a ballet dancer.
He wore a beautiful suit of red-brown linen, with rows of enameled buttons lining the double-breasted waistcoat and matching frock coat, and cream-colored suede breeches buckled above the knee.
He swept his cocked hat under one arm and bowed to her ladyship.
His unpowdered hair was brown as chocolate, pulled back in a queue, and his simple linen neckcloth gleamed white.
Even without the striking suit he would be handsome; it was something in his bearing, and in the character that shone through his well-arranged features. Lucasta ruthlessly tamped down a thrill as his eyes lingered on her.
It would not do to become silly over this man. She would not do it.
“Lady Pevensey, Miss Pevensey.” He paused, and did she imagine he spoke her name like a caress? “Miss Lithwick. I wish to make my cousin known to you.” He indicated the girl beside him. “She is lately emerged from mourning and hoping to meet new people.”
His cousin was short and rounded, dressed in a dove-gray gown with a large picture hat pinned to her powdered wig. She looked nervous and ill at ease, and Lucasta’s heart went out to her instantly. She rose and took the girl’s hand.
“How kind you are to call upon us, Miss Falstead,” Lucasta said. “I am new to town myself and in need of friends. Please accept our sympathies for your loss.”
“Thank you, Miss Lithwick.” Miss Falstead spoke in a small voice, but her grip was firm. She looked Lucasta over carefully. “How do you do.”
“I don’t doubt Cecilia will be a very suitable acquaintance for you, Miss Falstead.
” Lady Pevensey scowled at her niece, and Lucasta knew she would hear a lecture later about pushing in.
“She has had the good fortune to be widely received, though this is only her first Season. You have yourself paid her several compliments, Lord Rudyard, if I am not mistaken?”
“All well-deserved,” Rudyard said in the silky voice he had used with Lucasta when he accosted her at the theater. That voice made her nerve endings tingle. His eyes brushed over her as he turned to Cici.
“Perhaps Miss Pevensey will pay us a compliment in return, and reward us with her company in a drive through the park? It would be a shame not to enjoy this first glimpse of the sun in days.”
“The sun is disastrous to the complexion, and Cecilia is already engaged to go driving with Major Mallory in his new high-perch phaeton.” Lady Pevensey pouted. “Perhaps another time, Lord Rudyard?”
He turned to Lucasta. “Certainly. But since it is such a fine day, perhaps Miss Lithwick would care to console us. My pair needs to stretch their legs, and Bertie wishes for a companion more pleasant than I am.”
“Me?” Lucasta blinked. His steady golden-brown gaze made something in her chest lift and execute a slow, unsettled turn.
Fool! How could she be turning into a ninnyhammer over this man, when she knew exactly what he was?
“Oh, but I can’t see that Lucasta…” Aunt Pevensey trailed off as Rudyard rose to his feet.
“You won’t disappoint my cousin, Miss Lithwick? Run gather a wrap. We will have her home before dinner, my lady.”
“The Baron.” Aunt threw a look of warning at Lucasta. Her eyes grew tight at the corners, a look of swift calculation crossing her face.
“Would approve, I hope, of seeing Miss Lithwick do a kindness to my cousin, a marquess’s granddaughter,” Rudyard said firmly.
Miss Falstead made a pretty show of taking her leave, and before she could come up with a reason to deny herself the good fortune of being removed from her aunt’s suffocating parlor, Lucasta found herself being handed up into Rudyard’s calash.
Miss Falstead folded down the rear seat and arranged herself in it, while Rudyard put back the hood.
“The breeze won’t bother you, will it, Miss Lithwick? Or do you find the sun disastrous to your complexion as well?”
She caught the twinkle in his eyes. “Do as you please, milord. I daresay we are all eager for sunlight after these dreary days.”
She told her stomach not to leap and swirl as he mounted the carriage and settled his lean, strong body on the front seat beside her.
She would keep her head at all costs. The expression on her aunt’s face had been as clear as if she’d written it on paper.
Aunt Pevensey wanted Lucasta to be in trouble with the Baron.
His lordship would punish Lucasta at the least provocation, beginning by taking away her chance to arrange the benefit concert.
But a few turns around Hyde Park would not sink her, particularly if they were discussing musical arrangements.
There would be no sniffing, as his lordship had implied, nor any other untoward activity.
Rudyard gathered the ribbons, and Lucasta considered his hands, strong, wide, long-fingered. His hold was as light and sure as Mlle. Beaudoin’s skill as she had measured, draped, and pinned Lucasta at her shop.
Was the girl his mistress? If so, Rudyard was not an unkind protector. The young woman had been all cheer and grateful smiles at Lucasta’s visit. And she spoke of Rudyard as if he had hung the stars in their constellations.
Lucasta would have no clients for lessons, no students for a musical school if she were known to consort with the mistresses of a known beau. She was about to change her mind and ask to be let down when Rudyard clicked to the horses and they set out at a sedate walk.
“Bertie, find a place for that thing on your head,” he said over his shoulder. “There is not enough room in the vehicle for the three of us and that hat.”
His scent nudged Lucasta’s senses, as unsettling as the warmth that rose from his body.
The street was clogged with traffic and vendors, and it felt very dangerous to be so close to the horses, rather than shut away in a closed carriage where one could not see the various obstacles and accidents that came at one from every part of the street.
But Rudyard’s hand was expert and his pair well-trained, and he guided them easily around a pair of sedan chairs whose occupants were engaged in a heated argument over right of way.
“I cannot imagine I am any consolation for Cici,” Lucasta remarked.
“I wanted you,” he said, and her heart gave a nervous shiver when he threw her a smile. “Mallory was bragging that he had engaged Miss Pevensey for a drive, so I saw my chance. Bertie agreed to play chaperone, because she is an obliging sort of person, and also desperate to escape the house.”
“It is nice to have an airing without Mama,” Miss Falstead admitted, looking about them with interest.
“You wish to discuss the concert?” Lucasta pushed away the quiver in the belly that his words produced. I wanted you.
They had not parted amicably after their excursion to Charles Street. But perhaps he wanted her to fawn over him about the fabrics he’d given the Gorgons. Like most men, he would assume all cruelties could be made right with a handsome gift. It was how the Baron proceeded with his marriage.
“I hope to introduce you to someone very dear to me,” Rudyard said.
Lucasta glanced behind, where Miss Falstead sat cradling her enormous hat. The girl smiled.
“The pleasure would be all mine, but he is thinking of someone else,” she said. “Did you tell her nothing, Jem?”
Jem. His family called him Jem, and now she knew that. It felt like a gift.
“Someone who might perform at the concert?” Lucasta ventured. There was no other reason he would invite her out. She had insulted this man on the occasion of their first meeting, and they had quarreled in their every interaction since.
And he had repaid her with compliments, gifts, and now a reprieve out of doors.
“This person enjoys music very much but does not get out to hear it. I thought I might as a result bring you to her,” Rudyard said.
Lucasta bit her lip. He had invited her out to please another woman. Who? An admirer? Another mistress? Someone he hoped to make his mistress?
“I have missed Judith,” Miss Falstead remarked as the small carriage jostled comfortably along. “Mama did not think it proper to call upon her while I was in mourning. And with the little ones there—well.”
“Yes, I am well aware of how Aunt Payne feels about the rest of them.” Rudyard clicked at the horses to guide them around a stopped cart. “But I hope you will call on Judith whenever you wish.”
He would not bring his cousin on a visit to a mistress.
Perhaps this Judith was someone he was wooing, or hoped to woo.
Lucasta shied as the huge draught horses pulling a cart stamped in their harness and one snorted on her shoulder as they passed.
She did her best to push her stomach out of her throat and back to its normal position.
“On the subject of music.” She held one hand to her hat. “I suspect I have you to thank, milord, for the extraordinary opportunity I have been offered. The governors of the Foundling Hospital invited me to get up a benefit concert,” she told Miss Falstead.