When Mr. Darby finally sauntered into the room, they all instinctively paused in their conversation. If he had been elegant in the Golden Hind, he was magnificent in evening clothing. He wore a velvet suit of a dark red color, with a complicated lace neck cloth and lace falling over his hands. To Henrietta’s eyes, he looked terrifyingly expensive.
“Oh, my goodness,” Lady Winifred said in a faint voice. “I remember my father wearing great lace cuffs that buttoned onto his shirt. But one never sees men wearing that sort of thing anymore. You’d think it would look old-fashioned, but it doesn’t at all, does it? I expect my husband will think it rather effeminate.” She giggled. “My husband is so unobservant.”
Henrietta agreed. Lace on Mr. Darby looked anything but effeminate. For years she had welcomed home young ladies from their debut season, girls who returned engaged to marry or not, but universally replete with tales of how exquisite London dandies were, how dazzlingly proper, how gloriously unlike the country bumpkins of Wiltshire. Henrietta had always thought those tales must be exaggerated.
She had mentally produced pictures of foppish, delicate men, mincing about London cobblestones in their high-heeled shoes. But the truth was far from it. She never thought there were such men in the world, men with hair that gleamed in the candlelight, and cheekbones higher than her own, and a languid elegance that spoke of leashed power. Of maleness.
Mr. Darby’s clothes were obviously made in London. But he inhabited them with male grace, and he wasn’t overly fastidious. He wasn’t wearing gloves, for instance. And his hair was much longer than men wore it in Wiltshire and tied at his neck with a ribbon.
Lady Winifred was ogling the man shamelessly. “Lady Rawlings’s nephew, isn’t he? I do believe I met him in London last season. You know, Darby was Rawlings’s heir, at least until Lady Rawlings showed signs of increasing. I doubt not but that he’s come to the country to wait out her confinement.”
“An unpleasant interpretation of his visit,” Henrietta said flatly, as a whole flock of matrons descended on Darby.
A woman with a towering arrangement of hair, only to be outdone by a nose that dominated her face, plumped herself into his way like an iceberg before a ship. “I am Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq of Barret Park,” she announced. “I believe we met last season at Mrs. Crawshay’s musicale.”
Darby bowed. “I am afraid not, madam, as I do not have the pleasure of Mrs. Crawshay’s acquaintance.”
“Well, it must have been somewhere!” she shrilled. “Perhaps it was Bessie’s house—Lady Panton, that is.”
The woman couldn’t know Elizabeth Panton. Lady Panton was so formal that she wore a feathered headdress to a simple musicale; it was impossible to imagine her responding to a name like Bessie. But what was the point of protesting?
“You are likely right,” he murmured, kissing her hand. “I must remind—ah, Bessie—next time I see her.”
Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq burst into an excited medley of speech, overjoyed at having established her friendship with a leader of the ton. Darby let it wash over him, simply nodding at appropriate intervals and surreptitiously gazing around the room. Stout squires and their flounce-trimmed wives sat about fanning themselves vigorously. The only young women he could see were sallow types with slumping shoulders and damp noses. And the lascivious matron whom he’d met on entering the house, Mrs. Davenport. Or rather, Selina, since she insisted within a minute of their meeting that he address her intimately.
Finally, he spied his acquaintance of the afternoon. Even from here he could tell that Lady Henrietta was as poorly gowned as she had been in the afternoon. The color of her gown seemed to be giving her hair an odd greenish tint. Still, he felt a sort of mild interest in making her further acquaintance.
Mrs. Barret-Ducrorq was summoning various ladies, in the manner of one auctioning a prize guinea fowl, and introducing him as her bosom friend: Mrs. Colville, Mrs. Cable (where did she get that grotesque tippet?), Mrs. Gower. Soon Darby was surrounded by a circle of matrons asking him about “events” of the town, and the newest styles. Unfortunately, his reputation as an arbiter of fashion had preceded him to the country.
“I’m afraid that I have no particular opinion of pearls,” Darby said, bowing for the hundredth time or so. “Boots? Well, ladies’ boots…yes they certainly do match the pelisse this season.”
Just then Selina Davenport managed to push her way into the circle and leaned toward him in such a way that her breasts bounded slightly into the air.
“Mr. Darby, I am simply longing to be told some tattle from London,” she said roguishly. “Due to illnesses and death in my family, I shall be visiting London this spring for the first time in years.” She fanned herself vigorously, her eyes making an unspoken invitation over the edge of her fan.
“I’m sure that you could tell us some fascinating tittletattle about Rees Holland, Earl Godwin, for example.” She leaned forward, and her breasts almost escaped and brushed his coat. “Is it quite true that he has installed an opera singer in his house?”
“Rees and I are such old friends that we are utterly uninteresting to each other,” Darby said. “I have never asked him.”
“His wife is here.” Selina nodded across the room. Sure enough, the countess was seated at the pianoforte. “I insist that you share the truth about his domestic situation. But we should move away from this area, so as not to upset the countess, should she hear us.” She took his arm firmly and led him away from the goggling matrons.
Damn it all, the last thing he wanted to do was wander about with a lascivious woman who offered an affair, not marriage, given that he had almost decided to seek a wife.
Not thinking too hard, he led Mrs. Davenport directly to the table where Lady Henrietta was seated. “What a pleasure to meet again,” he said, bowing.
“Indeed,” Henrietta said. “How are your stepsisters?”
“They are safe in the hands of Lady Rawlings’s nanny, who appears to be most competent, and unlikely to leave Anabel in wet clothing. I knew you would appreciate that, Lady Henrietta.”
He was right. She had a truly remarkable smile.
“We are just taking a stroll,” Selina said with a roguish smile. “Mr. Darby has promised to tell me London gossip.”
“Perhaps you should introduce him to the conservatory,” Lady Henrietta said. “Likely Mr. Darby has never seen such exceptional roses at this time of year.”
His eyes narrowed. She was throwing him to the hounds, the little vixen. She gazed at him with limpidly innocent eyes and the faintest smile and yet—and yet. She had quite interesting eyes. They tipped up slightly at the edges, and they were fringed with the longest lashes he’d ever seen. And he’d seen plenty.
He turned to Selina and took a quick glance at her truly magnificent bosom. The woman was wearing a girlish little gown but it suited her. The cotton looked frail, as if it were about to collapse under the weight of those glorious breasts. Darby felt a stirring in the region of his loins. Selina Davenport was beautiful, luscious, and clearly available. Lady Henrietta’s gown was indeed a muddy green crape that dulled her hair. Moreover, it not only didn’t display her bosom, but the neckline was so prim that ruffles almost brushed her ears.
He bowed over her hand. “Your servant,” he murmured.
The expression in her eye was as effective as an icy shower. She was amused. No two words about it. She knew precisely what his reaction would be to Selma Davenport’s bosom, had cataloged it and expected it, and was now showing pleasure that the little dog had jumped through the appropriate hoop.
Darby’s teeth involuntarily snapped together.
“I believe I have more familiarity with exceptional beauty than you believe, Lady Henrietta,” he said with a wolfish grin. “I should wish nothing more than a stroll in the conservatory with Mrs. Davenport.” And he walked away.
Henrietta was disappointed. No two ways about it. For whatever reason, she thought Darby would react with slightly more sophistication to Seli
na’s obvious ploys. But the moment Selina Davenport sauntered toward him, he turned to her like a bee drawn to a flower. If you could imagine a fleshy flower made up of a creamy pair of breasts, precariously bound in violet ribbon. It seemed that even the exquisite London breed of men were turned into jelly by swelling mounds of exposed female chest.
Darby didn’t reappear in the Rose Salon for well over twenty minutes and when he did, he didn’t even glance in her direction. He appeared to be deep in conversation with a gray-haired gentleman, although of course she didn’t watch him all the time. Then, quite suddenly, he raised his head and met her eyes. Swift heat raced down her body. At first she thought it was embarrassment—after all, she’d been caught peeking. But the heat didn’t melt away. He kept looking at her, and there was something in his eyes that made her feel a bit dizzy. If she’d been standing, her leg would surely have given way.
Even as she watched he courteously disengaged himself from the gentleman he was speaking to and walked straight toward her. It was as if she called him, she thought numbly.
As if she—she—had Selina’s power. She almost glanced down at her gown, but she knew full well that her breasts were exactly what they had been that morning. Quite nice in their own way, but nothing like the bovine-like exuberance of Selina’s.
He must not know about her hip. Her common sense filled in the rest for her. If he was a bee, he’d picked the wrong flower.
This one had no pollen to give away.
9
Of Fox Hunts and…Other Sorts of Hunts
“May I join you?”
“Naturally you must do whatever pleases you.”
Darby was utterly stunned by the vision that jumped into his head in response to the question of pleasure. Surely not. He was used to being chased by women, not hankering after them. And certainly never after young—or youngish—virgins endowed with undoubted respectability and fierce temperaments.
It must be the accrued shocks of the day. He was deranged by the conversation with his aunt. He should retreat to his bedchamber and recline on the bed.
Although he would thereby pass up the attentions of at least fifteen country gentlemen with perfectly good daughters on the market. Daughters he ought by all rights to be assessing for their motherly qualities. Henrietta Maclellan wasn’t a candidate for wifedom, given her propensity to throw water on small children. That particular trait reminded him of his own mother.
He sat down anyway.
It wasn’t that Henrietta was unfriendly. She looked at him with a perfectly cheerful air, as if she had been joined by a maiden aunt. There was just a trace of irony in her gaze, a look that dared him to live up to her expectations of manhood. She didn’t look at him with the slightly hungry awareness that he was used to.
Your comeuppance has arrived, Darby thought with some amusement.
“Are you enjoying Limpley Stoke?” she asked. Perhaps he thought her blue eyes were clear only because there wasn’t even a hint of smoky awareness in them. Intelligent curiosity—and nothing more.
“The better for your company,” Darby said, suddenly finding that he was enjoying himself very much.
“I suppose you find us countrified, if not worse.”
“To some extent.” The wallpaper was lined with bunches of posies, but none so jovial as the faces around them. Wiltshire society was a hearty, cheerful lot, interested in farming and hunting and, to a lesser extent, London and London matters. London matters covered a range of sins from Parliament to the Regent himself.
“Well, at least we’re welcoming,” Henrietta said, bristling at his bald agreement with her description. “From what I’ve heard, the city can be an unfriendly sort of place.”
“Actually not everyone here has been welcoming,” Darby said. “I haven’t the faintest interest in drains and farmland, and I’m afraid that several worthy gentlemen have found me incomprehensible…even contemptible.”
“That is surely too strong a word,” Henrietta said with the strong suspicion that he was absolutely right.
“One Mr. Cable was particularly taken aback by my admiration of his waistcoat.”
Henrietta smiled faintly. “Mr. Cable has jaundice, and I believe that sours his judgment. Moreover, his wife was recently converted to a rather vigorous form of Christianity by a traveling Methodist preacher, and lately she speaks primarily in Bible verses. I’m afraid his home life is rather uncomfortable at the moment.”
“In the future, I will not mention a word about his sartorial efforts,” Darby promised.
Henrietta was rather fascinated to find that the man had a way of laughing without even opening his mouth. The laughter was in his voice and his eyes.
“What can you expect if you wear lace around your neck?” she asked. For he didn’t seem in the least perturbed by the slights dealt out by Wiltshire gentlemen. How could he be so confident and yet so out of place?
“I like lace,” Darby said. She was right: he was unperturbed. “Lace has a symmetry, a perfection to it, that pleases me.”
“Symmetry? I think of lace as girlish.” There was no getting around the fact that lace didn’t look the least girlish on him, however.
Darby shrugged. “It pleases me. Symmetry is a quality of beauty, Lady Henrietta. Now you…you are quite pleasingly symmetrical. Your eyes are perfectly spaced in relation to your nose. Did you realize that beauty is intricately connected to the space between one’s eyes?”
“No, I didn’t,” Henrietta said. Somewhat to Darby’s annoyance, she didn’t seem to have even realized that he was offering a flirtation. Instead of giggling in delighted appreciation, her brows knit.
“There is a milkmaid in the village with one blue and one green eye, Mr. Darby. And she is considered quite lovely. In fact, all the village lads are striving mightily to gain her attention. Wouldn’t that fact suggest that you are wrong about the underlying attractiveness of physical symmetry?”
“I believe not. There an opposite theorem might take precedence. Luck is generally attached to matters of dissymmetry, as it is to a four-leafed clover.”
“A four-leaf clover is quite symmetrical,” she pointed out.
“As is a three-leaf clover. But in the case of a four-leafed clover, its uniqueness makes it unsymmetrical.”
“Your theorem is unreliable. My milkmaid is beautiful by right of being unsymmetrical, but only when the word is twisted to mean unusual.”
“Let’s return to your personal symmetry,” he said silkily.
But she changed the subject as if he hadn’t spoken. “Mr. Darby, I have been wishing to apologize for assuming that Josie and Anabel were your children and acting on that assumption. I should never have spoken to you in such a forthright manner.”
“Please do not give it a second thought. Your advice was admirable. The employment office in Bath is sending me two nurses for review tomorrow morning, and I shall be sure to ask them their views on wet clothing.”
She leaned forward, her eyes alive with interest. “Josie needs a particularly kindly woman, Mr. Darby. I’m sure you realize this, but perhaps you could find someone who knew of loss herself.”
“Josie—” He broke off.
“She appears to be suffering mightily from grief for her mother.”
“Josie hardly knew her mother. I much doubt that my stepmother did more than greet her at Christmastime, and perhaps on her birthday—although I rather doubt that, because Josie’s birthday falls at a most inconvenient time of year.”
At Henrietta’s inquiring look, he said, “April 16, just at the beginning of the season. Josie presumably met her mother some four or five times in her life, and several of those when she was too small to have a perfect understanding of the occasion.”
“Then why is she so despondent?”
“The devil if I know. Perhaps it is the shock of moving to London after my stepmother died.”
Darby looked down and realized he was drumming his fingers on the table. He did need to find a wife. Perh
aps a widow with children of her own who would know why Josie behaved like a wild animal. Lady Henrietta didn’t seem to know any more about children than he did.
“I suppose it is possible that Josie is simply responding to change. May I say again how very, very sorry I am to have behaved so outrageously? I only hope that I didn’t cause Josie any lasting distress.”
Darby grinned. “There’s no need to worry about that. Josie has had the time of her life regaling the servants with details about her interesting encounter. Luckily, she didn’t quite catch your name and is describing you as Lady Hebby, so you won’t be reviled in the neighborhood.”
The annoying thing was that Henrietta’s lips were outrageously sensual: a deep rose color that owed everything to nature. Moreover, they were full, and soft, and looked ripe for kissing. And kissing them was what he wanted to do. Lean across the table and forget the irritating problem presented by his sisters by tasting Lady Henrietta.
He did need a wife, so why not Henrietta? She seemed quite engaged by the children, even if she didn’t know much about caring for them, and she was remarkably lovely.
It was a rather terrifying thought for some reason. True, he needed a wife. But he had always thought of a wife as a decorative appendage he might acquire at some point in the future. She had to be beautiful, of course. And of good birth. But other than that, he supposed his only requirement was that she have little temper. He’d seen enough in his early years to be wary of shrieking women.
And one could hardly say that Henrietta had no temper, he thought, remembering the look of surprise on Josie’s face when water cascaded over her head. As a matter of fact, that was just the sort of thing his own mother might have done.
“Josie will mature and join the rest of the human race in a short time,” he said. “I imagine the country air is already doing her good. May I bring you something to eat?”
“But Mr. Darby—”
“Lady Henrietta, I have been inexcusably rude. I owe you enough for rescuing Josie and Anabel this morning. I should not bore you with my family exigencies.”