Susan Paul - Beguiled

“The gentlemen you were expecting have arrived, my lord. I’ve put them in your study.”

“Thank you, Willis. I’ll be there in a moment.”

Margaret was already gathering her things. “I’ll leave you to tend your business, Aaron. You do keep the strangest receiving hours.” She stopped at the library doors. “One night while we’re here, you must put a few hours aside and play a game of chess with me. Do you remember how we used to play?”

He nodded. “I remember that you generally beat me.”

She laughed. “My only area of victory over you.” She put her fingers on one of the door handles. “Good night, Aaron.”

“Margaret,” he said, stopping her. “Don’t worry about Lily. Everything is going to turn out very well, I promise you.”

She gazed at him for a searching moment. “I know better than to ask that you accompany us to any of the outings the girls have been invited to, but I would make one request of you.”

“Anything.”

“Will you dance with Lily at the girls’ comeout ball? I know it’s been a great many years since you had your lessons as a boy, but surely you remember enough to partner her in a country dance? It would mean a great deal to her.”

He let out a groaning sigh, knowing full well that if anyone else had asked this of him he’d have dismissed them without a thought.

“One dance,” Cardemore told her. “Only one.”

The warm smile she gifted him with before she left the room was more than worth the regret he felt at giving the promise.

The early-morning air was bracingly cold, and the two lone men mounted on horseback in Hyde Park shrugged more closely into the warmth of their coats while their steeds moved impatiently beneath them.

“I hope you won’t mind me saying this,” said Lord Daltry, the words puffing small clouds into the air, “but this is the damnedest idea you’ve ever had.”

“I didn’t ask you to come along,” Lord Graydon replied calmly. “And I’m not keeping you here. Go home to your warm bed, if you like.”

“And leave you to the mercies of two country-bred females?” Lord Daltry asked with mock dismay. “What sort of friend would I be? Besides, you need me to occupy Lady Isabel while you make your apologies to Lady Lillian. I can’t see the chit keeping her mouth closed long enough for you to so much as say good-morning unless I keep her otherwise engaged.”

Lord Graydon smiled. “You’re a good fellow, Matthew, but I’m perfectly capable of managing two young females without any help, thank you.”

“You might be able to handle Cardemore’s sister,” Lord Daltry agreed affably, “but I’d wager a pony you can’t handle Lady Isabel Walford, even if you could catch up to her long enough to get her attention, which is unlikely.” He shifted in his saddle and scanned the horizon. “The girl rides like a demon. Not even the grooms can keep up with her.”

Lord Graydon looked at him with surprise. “You’ve seen her ride?”

A stain of color crept across Lord Daltry’s handsome face. “Ah, well…yes, I have. Yesterday, as it happens.” At his friend’s accusatory grin, he added insistently, “Cerberus needed exercising.”

“At this ungodly hour?” Graydon asked, laughing. “Matthew, in all the years we’ve been acquainted, I’ve never known a mere horse to get you up so early. Certainly not when you could just as well send a groom to exercise him.” Leaning toward his discomfited friend, he added in a conspiratorial tone, “Lady Isabel’s caught your interest, has she?”

“That mannish female?” Lord Daltry was indignant. “Have you lost your senses? The very idea makes me shudder.”

“I found her to be quite charming,” said Graydon.

“Charming,” Daltry grumbled, “is not the word Lady Isabel brings to mind. God’s feet, here she comes. Look! Do you see?”

Graydon saw, and gave out a soft whistle as a slender, sapphire-clad figure, bowed low over the neck of a magnificent black steed, raced full out across the empty park.

“What did I tell you?” Lord Daltry demanded angrily, pulling up his horse’s head. “Dratted female’s going to break her neck.”

“She’s magnificent,” Graydon declared with admiration. “What a seat—she must’ve been born in the saddle.”

“Seat, my eye,” Daltry said. “What her seat needs is a good paddling. Of all the foolish, brainless—Damnation! She’s not going to take that fence?”

Graydon opened his mouth to reply that, yes, indeed, she was, but never said a word. Daltry had already taken off after the girl, presumably to rescue her from harm. The effort would prove a needless one, Graydon imagined, as it was obvious that Lady Isabel was a skilled rider. Returning his attention to the direction from which Lady Isabel had appeared, he was greeted by the sight of Lady Lillian, followed by two grooms, riding at a more sedate, ladylike pace. She had seen and recognized him and now was gazing at him warily, clearly uncertain as to whether she should continue on or turn back.

“Lady Lillian,” he said when they’d neared each other, “what a fortunate occurrence. Good morning.”

God’s mercy, he thought as his senses registered her beauty anew. She was almost too good to look at. The proper black riding outfit she wore only served to accentuate her white-blond hair and crystalline eyes. Such beauty would certainly gain her favor in the eyes of any normally blooded gentleman, while with the ladies of the ton…well, some of them were bound to be obdurately jealous. He began to ponder how he would manage to get around those particular ladies when he belatedly realized that he and Lady Lillian were simply sitting in silence, and that her expressive face had taken on a look set somewhere between caution and embarrassment. She lifted one hand suddenly toward her wrist, as if to grasp hold of something—her glove, he thought, or perhaps a bracelet—then stopped, biting her lower lip with obvious distress.

With a mental shake, Graydon smiled too brightly and said, in an equally bright tone that made him inwardly cringe, “What a pleasurable accident to have met you here.”

Oh, gad, he thought as her eyes filled with bewilderment. He’d already said something like that. He’d never known, until that moment, how much he always depended on women to make conversation.

He was about to speak again, to say only heaven knew what, since he didn’t have an idea, when she lifted one gloved hand and touched her lips, tentatively, with her forefinger. She hesitated as color mounted in her cheeks, and then she pointed at him, then at some flowers beneath a nearby tree and then at herself. Pressing her hand flat above her left breast, she made a slight bowing motion with her head.

“Oh,” said Graydon, mortified that he was unable to understand whatever it was she was trying to tell him. This was horrible. He felt like an idiot. “Uh…yes.”

Her face was flaming now, but she drew in a breath and repeated the motions, pointing first at him, then the flowers, then herself. By the time she finished, realization had blissfully struck.

“The flowers I sent?” he asked. “You liked them?” When she nodded he uttered a laugh, relieved. Unable to keep the grin off his face, he said, “I’m glad if they brought you pleasure.”

She placed her hand over her heart and made the bowing gesture again, and he said, “You’re very welcome.”

Her answering smile made him feel dizzy, as it had on the floor at Almack’s, and a flood of reassurance waved through him. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be quite as bad as he’d thought.

“I have a confession to make,” he said, and she tilted her head questioningly. “It isn’t by accident that I met you here this morning. I knew that you and Lady Isabel ride here every day at this time, and I purposefully came and waited, hoping to meet you.” The wariness was back on her face again, mixed with surprise. “I owe you an apology for my behavior at Almack’s two nights ago, and I wanted to make those apologies without anyone else present. I was afraid that perhaps you might be further distressed if I expressed such sentiments before others.”