“Uh-oh.” Ellery headed for the sideboard and poured himself a grand amount of brandy. “I recognize that expression. It’s the I’m-the-Throckmorton-and-I-have-to-manage-everything expression.”
“Strange. I was thinking how fortunate that you’re seeking handsome young ladies for me.”
Arrested in the act of taking a drink, Ellery said, “Don’t be ridiculous. This one’s mine—although it wouldn’t hurt you to remarry, you know. Since Joanna’s death there hasn’t been a woman worthy of you, and you might not be so bloody grim if you stuck your finger in the jampot occasionally.”
Throckmorton had heard it before. “I’ll worry about my finger, you worry about yours.”
“But you’re worrying about mine, too, or you wouldn’t have arranged this damned betrothal.” Ellery downed the liquor in one motion.
“You draw enough money from the company, you might as well earn your keep somehow.”
“Marrying well to do my part for the company?” Ellery must have been practicing his sneer in private, for that curl of the lips looked almost sincere. “Now there’s a role where I can at last surpass my superior older brother.” Then, before Throckmorton could inquire into the nature of that remark, he asked, “So you’ll find out her name for me?”
This female obviously had Ellery twisted in a knot. “Why don’t you just ask her?”
Ellery turned the glass in his fingers. “She won’t tell me.”
Throckmorton lifted an eyebrow. “She won’t tell you?”
“I met her at the train station. I was supposed to pick up Lord and Lady Featherstonebaugh—”
“What time was it?”
“Just after four.”
“They came in on the two o’clock.”
“That explains why they weren’t there.” Ellery dismissed his godparents with a shrug. “They’ll forgive me.”
Throckmorton agreed. They would. Everyone forgave Ellery everything.
“She was just standing there, beautiful, well formed—”
“Alabaster teeth.”
“I couldn’t see them at first. She got off the train and looked around, lost and alone—”
“Touching.”
“But as soon as I asked her if I could assist her, she flashed the most beautiful smile in the world and said, ‘Greetings, Ellery!’ “
Throckmorton experienced the stirrings of real unease. “She knew you.”
“She certainly did. She knows you, too. She asked about you—I told her you were dull as ever.”
“Thank you.”
“She laughed and said, ‘Of course.’ “
“And thanks to her.” Always good to know one’s repute. Always a relief to know the truth had not yet made its way across two continents to England.
“She asked about Mother. She asked about Tehuti, and wanted to know what kind of colts he’d sired. She asked about Gunilla, and she dabbed sparkling tears from the corners of her eyes when I told her the old dog had died.” Ellery sighed deeply, his broad shoulders lifting and falling. “Her handkerchief was trimmed in lace and smelled of the most exquisite perfume.” Ellery, the connoisseur of all things female, squinted and said, “Citrus, cinnamon and, I think, ylang-ylang.”
“Only you would know that.” Throckmorton shrugged into his conservatively tailored black coat. “So if she knows you, why don’t you know her?”
Ellery poured the snifter full again. “I swear I don’t remember that exquisite creature.”
Ellery remembered every handsome female he’d ever met. “How unlike you.”
“Exactly.” Ellery sipped this brandy with a little more care. “And how could I forget her? She adores me.”
“Find me a female who doesn’t,” Throckmorton said dryly.
“When I mentioned my betrothal, her big hazel eyes filled with sparkling tears again.”
Whoever the woman was, she was obviously playing Ellery as if he were a fine instrument. “So you comforted her?”
Ellery put his hand to his chest. “Just a quick kiss on the cheek to bring that gorgeous smile shining through.”
“Anonymous alabaster teeth.”
“I depend on your good memory to serve us.”
Throckmorton wanted to gnash his own straight white teeth. “Then she’s here.”
“I brought her at once.” Placing the half-full glass on the silver tray, Ellery came to Throckmorton and tweaked his collar. “You ought to go up to your valet and allow him to tidy you.”
Ellery was right, but— “No one will be looking at me anyway,” Throckmorton said. “You’re the bridegroom.”
“Don’t remind me.” Ellery shuddered and glanced back at the brandy.
Throckmorton had no wish to remind Ellery of his dissatisfaction with the Illington match again. No, now was the time for tact and swift planning—tact being one property he labored to attain, and swift planning the attribute at which he excelled. That was how he had arrived at his present position as the head of the Throckmorton empire . . . and his current status within the English government. He would somehow head off disaster.
In a tone that heralded a significant announcement, Ellery asked, “Garrick, you wouldn’t want me to be unhappy, would you?”
“I labor for your happiness,” Throckmorton said.
But Ellery knew nothing of what Throckmorton did for his family, and Throckmorton wouldn’t tell him. Better his brother think him a dull blade. Throckmorton shuddered. For if Ellery, with his discerning honesty and his inability to dissemble, ever got wind of Throckmorton’s true aim, he would demand his chance to help—and disaster would surely follow.
“What’s wrong?” Ellery asked. “You’re looking rather peaked.”
“I was just wondering what you did with your mysterious beauty when you got her here?”
“Lost her! I dropped her at the door, drove the brougham to the stables—”
“You let her out of your sight?”
“The horses, man! I was driving my new matched grays to show to Lord Featherstonebaugh—you know how he is about horses!—and I didn’t dare trust them to a ham-handed new groom. When I got back, she had disappeared.”
“Bad luck.” From start to finish, abominably bad luck.
“None of the servants knew who I was talking about, although they were all atwitter about something.”
“With the guests arriving, they are atwitter about a great many things.”
Ellery ignored that bit of wisdom. “Who could she have been?”
“Perhaps she wasn’t a lady.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, brother, you have a history of confusing actresses and members of the demimonde for ladies, and I end up paying them off to free you from their clutches.”
Offended, Ellery snapped back, “She was dressed in the latest French fashions, she spoke with the finest of accents, and most important, she knew Blythe Hall. She knew us. She knew you. She knew me.”
“Yes, so you told me. But she was alone. Young ladies of quality do not travel alone.”
“You are an old-fashioned fusspot,” Ellery pronounced.
“I suppose I am.” Throckmorton had made his point, and he was content to let Ellery wrestle with it.
“Obviously she was a guest someone neglected to collect, yet when I asked she laughed with a voice like a bell—”
“Church or clock?”
“What?” Ellery’s brow knitted, then cleared, and he smacked Throckmorton hard enough to bruise his arm. “Stop vexing me.”
“All right.” Throckmorton smacked him back hard enough to remind him who was the taller and stronger and had once, in their boyhood, force-fed him most of a bar of greasy gray soap while sitting on his chest. “I will.”
Despite their differences, the brothers understood each other in a way no one else could. They grinned at each other, and Throckmorton laid his hand on Ellery’s shoulder. “Come on, little brother. Let’s go find your exquisite creature.”
2
r /> Throckmorton watched as Ellery craned his head, looking through and over the top of the swirling crowd, trying to find his beauteous maiden.
The music wafted in from the terrace on harmonious waves, the rising sounds of conversation drifting with it. The deep rumble of men’s voices, made jovial with conviviality, provided a balance for the feminine cries of delight which punctuated the air as ladies found their acquaintances and renewed friendships.
Blythe Hall was made for parties. The ground floor consisted of studies and music rooms, ball rooms and the lush glassed-in conservatory. Thirty-three bedrooms and twenty lavatories lined the corridors upstairs. The large attics sheltered visiting servants, and the bottom floor housed a wine cellar and the largest kitchen in Suffolk. All this, in a limestone shell attractively built by two hundred years of wealthy owners, and set in a jewel of a park tended by the best-paid, most important landscaper north of London.
Once Throckmorton got the matter of the exquisite creature out of the way, he looked forward to the evening. Nothing matched the pleasures of making new contacts for whom he might someday do a favor or wrangle a business deal. English society was changing; no one knew it better than he, and no one used those changes as successfully. He asked, “Where is this ravishing lady?”
“I don’t know.” Ellery craned his neck. “I don’t think she’s arrived yet.”
“Or she’s outside on the terrace.”
A man’s authoritative voice announced, “There they are!”
Heads turned at the exclamation.
“Our host and the lucky man who won our sweet Hyacinth’s heart.” Lord Longshaw made his way through the crowd.
The crowd who moved hastily out of his way.
A thin, esthetic man, Lord Longshaw looked like a starving Cambridge professor and suffered the well-deserved reputation of a rabid wolf. Regardless of his aristocratic heritage, he had pursued business relationships and made fortunes in the name of power—power he wielded ruthlessly. Only with his wife and daughter did he soften, and when Hyacinth had expressed a wish to have Ellery for her bridegroom, Lord Longshaw had come to Throckmorton and struck a deal.
A deal, Throckmorton knew, which Ellery had better fulfill, or all the Throckmortons would be playing cricket in hell. Stepping smoothly in front of his distracted brother, Throckmorton said, “Lord Longshaw, we were just drinking a brotherly toast to your daughter’s health and happiness.”
“Capital. Capital!” Lord Longshaw rubbed his gloved hands together in simulated glee, but his gaze darted between the brothers. “Looking forward to your wedding night, young Ellery?”
Ellery chuckled uneasily. “Lady Hyacinth’s father would be the last man I would admit that to, my lord.”
“Quite right.” Lord Longshaw grinned to display his gleaming, twisted teeth set beneath a dark, shaggy mustache. “Good sense, young Ellery. Glad to see you’ve got some.” Turning to Throckmorton, he gestured through the windows to the terrace where the servants could be seen lighting torches. “Nice atmosphere. Informal.”
Sensing criticism, Throckmorton assured him, “There will be balls. This betrothal will be the most celebrated of the year.” As would be the wedding, even if he had to deliver the groom tied into a parcel.
“There you are, Ellery, you naughty boy. I have been looking everywhere for you!”
At the sound of a sweet, feminine voice, Throckmorton whirled in alarm, then slumped with relief when he saw the large, effusive and elderly Lady Featherstonebaugh bearing down on them. This woman most definitely wasn’t the exquisite creature of the train station.
“Throckmorton. Lord Longshaw.” Lady Featherstonebaugh nodded at them, the large pale-blue feather waving in her headdress. “Ellery, where were you today? We waited at that wretched train station for over an hour.” She extended her hand to her godson.
With every appearance of normalcy, Ellery bent over her fingers and smiled roguishly. “I got the time wrong, ma’am. Will you forgive me?”
Lady Featherstonebaugh had once been a beauty, standing as tall as most men and looking them right in the eye. Now age had stooped her shoulders, rheumatism slowed her progress and a steadily increasing girth strained her corset strings. But she spoke with a directness that made her a cherished friend. Lady Featherstonebaugh was the original dear little old lady.
“Today is the happiest day of my life. I had quite despaired of ever seeing you betrothed, young Ellery.” She rapped him on the arm with her fan and turned to Lord Longshaw. “A wild youth, my lord. Our Ellery was a wild youth, but always so handsome and kind, always dropping by for a visit when we least expected him—”
When he could charm a loan out of them, Throckmorton thought.
“—And always willing to take Lord Featherstonebaugh to the races and talk horses until I thought I would faint from boredom.”
“Nonsense, ma’am, you talk horseflesh with the best of them.” Ellery placed her hand on his arm.
Lady Featherstonebaugh wagged her finger at him. “Don’t tell my secrets, young man. Ladies aren’t supposed to care about bloodlines and racing.”
Ellery smiled into her face. “In the run-of-the-mill ladies, it is most unattractive when they show such interest. Only ladies as lovely as you can get away with such impropriety.”
Lady Featherstonebaugh actually blushed, her withered cheeks coloring. “Come away with me. We will find Lord Featherstonebaugh and you shall give him the details of the matched grays you just bought. He is most eager to hear about them. Gentlemen.” She dismissed Lord Longshaw and Throckmorton, two of the most powerful men in the country, with a decided nod and hobbled away on Ellery’s arm.
Throckmorton recognized Ellery’s relief at escaping the clutches of his future father-in-law, and he hoped Ellery would stay with his godparents long enough to allow Throckmorton to escape, too. For if Ellery found his exquisite creature without Throckmorton at his side, there was no telling what folly Ellery might commit.
With a twist of the lips, Lord Longshaw stared after Ellery and Lady Featherstonebaugh. “What a handsome piece he is. Able to charm old ladies and young alike. Not worth a damn, of course, but Hyacinth—” He collected himself as he remembered to whom he spoke. “Well, they’ll make pretty babies, at any rate.”
Throckmorton wasn’t about to address Lord Longshaw’s opinion. “I shall follow and see if I can pry Ellery away from his godparents and the other well-wishers. You see if you can retrieve Hyacinth from her mother and the ladies who wish to exclaim over her ring. We’ll meet in the middle and match them together.” He started off and pretended not to hear Lord Longshaw’s call of, “Where?”
Ellery stood conversing with his godparents, but he paid them only cursory attention. He craned his neck, tried to see around the celebratory throng in the largest drawing room, yet Lady Featherstonebaugh held him captive with his hand and Lord Featherstonebaugh spoke with such animation, Ellery couldn’t slip away. And Ellery was many things, but curt to his godparents he would never be. He had a good heart, Throckmorton knew; if only he had a good head to go with it.
Ellery’s distraction gave Throckmorton opportunity. He slipped through the crowd, greeting his guests, examining every face while looking for the glorious, honey-haired damsel Ellery had so aptly described.
The house party appeared to be proceeding smoothly . . . but where was the lady Ellery had described? Who was the lady Ellery had described? Throckmorton half-hoped she would disappear into the ether never to return. But that wouldn’t do, either. Ellery would search for her until he found her. No, better that she appear and Throckmorton would neutralize her. With a hefty cash payment, most likely, to make her leave, and a hair-curling threat to make her stay away.
Finally, as he stepped onto the terrace, he saw her . . . it had to be she.
She stood at the top of the stairs that led down to the garden, her back to him, looking about as if searching for someone. Searching for Ellery.
Ellery hadn’t lied about the gi
rl’s fashion sense. A plain, full bell skirt of rich velvet of the same intense azure as the blue in Throckmorton’s rug swirled around her feet and rose to embrace a tiny waist. She clutched handfuls on each side, holding the hem slightly aloft, as if prepared to flee at any moment. The off-the-shoulder gown framed a narrow, elegant, exceptionally erect back and made her long, slender neck appear even longer and more slender. Tiny puff sleeves left her arms bare to the top of her long gloves, and a shawl of black Chantilly lace hung artfully draped across one shoulder. The girl sported a head of golden-brown hair, dressed in braids at the back, and it wasn’t the color of honey, as Ellery had claimed. The strands resembled nothing so much as the old gold of the Spanish doubloons displayed in a locked glass case in the main foyer of Blythe Hall. From here, she looked like Cinderella, poised at the top of the stairs and waiting for her prince to recognize and claim her.
But Throckmorton couldn’t allow such romantic nonsense to lay waste to his carefully designed plans. He moved purposefully toward Miss Exquisite Creature, wanting to know her name, planning to eject her if she was, as he suspected, uninvited and undesirable.
With every intention of frightening her, he stood directly behind her and said, “I don’t believe we’ve met, Miss . . . ?”
In a rich swish of velvet, she swung around.
He started. “Celeste!” And all became clear.
The skinny, sad-faced girl who had left Blythe Hall four years ago had returned in triumph. She was Ellery’s exquisite creature. She could not be sent away. She was the governess Throckmorton himself had hired.
“Mr. Throckmorton!” Her generous mouth curved in a smile that told him everything. That she knew that the gardener’s daughter shouldn’t be present at a celebration for the ton. That she knew she had the grace, manners and charm to pull off such an appearance. That she waited to see how he would react. “How good to see you again.”
And he didn’t know how to react. This turn of events staggered him, left him unsure—he who was never unsure. “Celeste . . . I didn’t realize you would arrive so soon.”