Diane Gaston - Regency Improprieties - Innocence and Impropriety / The Vanishing Viscountess

They hurried to the gazebo door. Inside the servant was sweeping the floor.

His broom stilled when he saw her. ‘Miss O’Keefe, your father told me to tell you to ask the gentleman to escort you home, for Mr Hook told everyone to go home because of the rain and so your father did.’

Rose nodded. ‘Thank you, Mr Skewes.’

The thin wiry man grinned. ‘He said as long as it was the fellow that was here before—’ he nodded to Flynn ‘—he’d not worry about you and neither was I to worry.’

‘You are kind,’ she said. ‘We had better be off, then.’

She and Flynn walked back out into the rain.

There were a few other stragglers walking to where the hackney coaches waited beyond the gate. Rose’s cloak felt heavy from the soaking rain, and she shivered.

‘You are cold.’ Flynn started to unbutton his greatcoat.

‘No.’ She put up a hand. ‘Your coat is as soaked as mine. I will be fine once we are in the carriage.’

They waited in a queue until it was their turn. Flynn lifted Rose into the hack and called out her direction to the jarvey.

They sat closer together than was wise, given how easily passion had sprung up between them. Rose shivered again, more from frustration than the chilling damp, but he unfastened her cloak and bundled it out of the way. Then he shrugged out of his greatcoat and wrapped an arm around her to warm her.

She snuggled close to him and rested her head on his shoulder. The passion that had nearly driven them to a frenzied coupling had settled into something more intimate and infinitely more sorrowful. In silence they held each other all the way across the new Vauxhall Bridge, up the roads skirting the river to the Strand, and into Covent Garden.

When the vehicle stopped on Langley Street, Flynn wrapped Rose in her cloak again and helped her out. Asking the jarvey to wait, he walked her inside her building.

‘Will you be all right?’ He put his hand on her arm as they reached the top of the stairs. ‘Your father will not be angry?’

Rose shook her head. ‘Remember, he said he would not worry if I was with you.’

His fingers tightened around her arm.

He dropped his hand. ‘I must go.’

She did not move.

He started to turn away, already grasping the banister, but he suddenly turned back to her. She ran to him, and he caught her face gently in both hands, kissing her, a slow, savouring kiss more steeped in sadness than in the fires of passion that had earlier burned them both.

Without speaking another word, he released her and hurried down the stairs.

By the next morning, the rain had cleared and the day promised to dry up some of the damp. Still, Flynn was grateful Rose was not scheduled to sing that evening, and she had assured him no plans to dine with Greythorne would be made.

Flynn needed the respite from the turmoil raging inside him, but, more than that, he needed a very quiet place. He closeted himself in Tanner’s library, busying himself with the most tedious of his many tasks.

Tanner breezed into the room, humming a tune, and causing Flynn to lose the tally of the long line of figures he was tabulating.

‘I trust I am not interrupting something important,’ Tanner said.

Flynn had done something uncharacteristic the night before. After leaving Rose, he availed himself of one of Tanner’s bottles of brandy and downed the entire contents in the privacy of his own room. He now paid the price with a killing headache and a foul mood.

Head throbbing, he put down his pen and recapped the inkwell. ‘Did you have need of me?’

Tanner picked up a ledger Flynn had left on the side table. ‘No need, really.’ He leafed through the ledger, slammed it closed, and dropped it with a thud that ricocheted in Flynn’s brain. ‘I did wonder how it went with Greythorne—and Miss O’Keefe, of course.’

Flynn’s mood became blacker. ‘He cancelled because of the rain.’

Tanner laughed, a loud guffaw that rattled painfully in Flynn’s throbbing head. ‘The fribble. He’d give her up to keep his coat dry.’ He laughed again, then drummed his fingers on the wooden table. ‘Did he set another date?’

Flynn gripped the edge of the desk, trying to remain composed. ‘Not as yet.’

‘Rain is good for something besides crops,’ said Tanner cheerfully.

Flynn tried to look composed. ‘It appears he is putting pressure on her father. He paid a sum for the opportunity to dine with her.’

‘Ah ha!’ Tanner cried.

Flynn pressed his fingers against his temple.

‘We have more in our arsenal of weapons besides money, do we not, Flynn?’ Tanner laughed again.

Flynn had not a clue what Tanner meant, but he would rather not ask and prolong this loud conversation.

But Tanner showed no inclination to be quiet. ‘We have cunning, and we have friends in high places.’

‘Indeed,’ muttered Flynn, who did not care what the deuce Tanner meant, if he would only stop talking.

‘Any fellow can throw money at a woman and win her, can he not?’ Tanner went on, walking to and fro as he spoke, his footsteps pounding on the carpet. ‘But we think of voice lessons and opera performances!’

‘I am not getting your point, Tanner,’ Flynn said tersely.

Tanner glanced at him quizzically, then peered at him more closely. ‘You look ghastly, Flynn. What the devil is wrong with you? You look as though you are going to shoot the cat.’

Flynn’s stomach did not react well to this reference to vomiting. ‘I have a headache.’

‘A headache from too much drink,’ Tanner concluded. ‘What did I miss last night?’

‘Nothing. You missed nothing.’ Merely a near-betrayal of all Tanner’s trust in him.

Tanner continued stomping around the room. ‘Good, because it was very fortunate that I was in the company of his Royal Highness, the Duke of Clarence, you know. Friends in high places!’

Flynn gave him a direct look. ‘Am I supposed to understand you?’

Tanner laughed again, this time a loud, barking, brain-joggling laugh. Flynn pressed his temples.

‘No need to heed me.’ Tanner winked.

Did not Tanner need to meet someone at White’s or bid on a horse at Tattersalls, or something? ‘If you require my services, sir, I will endeavour to oblige you, but I was working on these sums …’

Tanner sidled up to the desk and leaned over Flynn to look at the numbers on the page. ‘I trust nothing is amiss?’

Flynn could feel Tanner breathing down his neck. ‘All is as it should be—but I have not tabulated the whole list.’

‘I despise sums.’ Tanner lumbered away, pulling books off the bookshelves, opening them, then slamming them shut again, and shoving them back into place.

Flynn closed his eyes and waited for the wave of hammering in his head to subside.

‘So!’ said Tanner, so loud Flynn thought his head would blow apart. ‘What is next in this game of ours? I say, this is more like a chess game every day, except not so ghastly tedious.’

A chess game, indeed, thought Flynn. The Queen was the prize. And after his behaviour the previous night, Flynn was a rook. ‘It is time to deal with the father. Make the offer.’

Tanner stood before him, hands on his hips, head cocked. ‘I had surmised more pursuit was in order. The girl hardly seems willing.’ He looked pensive. ‘I knew she’d be a challenge. She should come around after Ayrton puts her in the opera. How long do you think that will be?’

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