“Rounds?”
“I go about to see my patients.” He jerked his head toward the open door and his vehicle, a dilapidated black carriage.
Lala looked down at her morning dress and her slippers. His gaze followed hers.
“Of course you don’t,” he said, his eyes going flat. “Miss Rainsford, I apologize for such an untoward request. I must bid you good day.”
“I couldn’t go without a chaperone,” she said, a little breathlessly.
His mouth tightened.
“Just a maid,” she added. “And my bonnet! Wait, please wait. Just a moment.”
Fleming miraculously reappeared and produced her bonnet as well as a maid, because Lala didn’t have a lady’s maid. And asking if her mother’s maid could accompany her would ensure that Lady Rainsford learned of her daughter’s improper excursion.
She was almost in the carriage before it occurred to her that she ought to leave notice with someone other than the butler. She ran back to the house, ignoring the fact that Dr. Hatfield would be able to see her from behind, and said breathlessly to Fleming, “Please tell Lady Adelaide that I’ve gone on rounds.” She turned without waiting for an answer.
Which meant that she didn’t see Fleming smile as he closed the door behind her.
Chapter Twenty-two
As India dressed for dinner that night, her mind kept veering toward Thorn. She gave herself a silent scolding and made herself think about Lord Brody instead, but two minutes later she found herself slipping back to a memory of the way Thorn had kissed her good-night after they’d walked home from the gatehouse.
Probably many women had memories like these. The fact that she’d been happier in the hammock, in his arms, than she’d ever been in her life . . . that was irrelevant. He belonged to someone else. He wanted someone else.
Not her.
Maybe if she told herself that daily for the next year, she would stop thinking about him.
Even so, she dressed with more care than she had dressed for anything in her life, not allowing herself to think too hard about why she was determined to be—what was the word Thorn had used? Delectable.
The gown she put on was very nearly indecent, only because fashion and her bosom were not in agreement. It was made of transparent rose-tinted silk that swooped in drapes around the bodice before falling to the floor. But there wasn’t much bodice. In fact, the top only barely kept her covered and the sleeves were no more than a frail length of gauze. Marie bound up her hair in the front, with one of the newest bandeau, and left all the rest of it to tumble down her back.
“It would be better if I could get your hair to take a curl,” Marie fretted. She was fixing rosebuds to India’s hair.
“I think it looks quite well,” India said. Marie had shadowed her eyes with kohl and painted her lips a darker rose than her gown. Her only jewelry was a bracelet, a thin band of silver decorated with an amethyst, very high on her right arm. “Should you add a few of those amethyst pins?” she asked, standing up and turning slightly in order to see her back in the glass.
“Just a few,” Marie agreed, nimbly setting to work. When she was done, each rosebud had a tiny sparkle, a flicker of purple light that highlighted the unusual color of India’s hair.
India slid her feet into narrow slippers embroidered with spangles, with ribbons that crossed her ankles, just in case a gentleman caught sight of her legs.
She made herself think about Lord Brody as she went down the stairs. Thorn was right. Brody was a far better catch than the men who had courted her to this point: he was powerful and graceful at the same time. You could take one look at him and know that he would fight off a marauding elephant.
What’s more—and even more importantly—she felt instinctively that he wasn’t a bully. He would respect his wife and allow her to make most decisions on her own. He would be a peaceful and calm husband, unlike Thorn, whose wife would probably find herself quarrelling with him once a day.
When she reached the entry, Fleming escorted her to the drawing room and announced her, quite as if they hadn’t been working side by side for the last week.
Everyone turned around when she entered. Eleanor and Adelaide smiled; the duke looked surprised. Thorn was standing at the mantelpiece with Lord Brody. He froze when he caught sight of her, and his whole face changed.
India let a little smile play on her lips, because she liked the look in his eyes.
The duke and duchess walked across the room while she was giving Thorn a silent lesson in all the ways he had been mistaken in his assessment of her wardrobe. His Grace bowed, and drawled, “I will take the advantage of my age to say what every man in this room is thinking, Lady Xenobia. You look extraordinarily beautiful.”
India smiled at him and dropped a curtsy. Eleanor leaned forward and whispered, “I’m seeing a whole new India.”
“I am retiring,” India explained. “I felt some new gowns were called for.”
“At this rate, you will cut a swath through the ton,” the duke remarked. “Perhaps I should warn the unsuspecting men in my club.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” the duchess said, her eyes dancing. “My guess is that India will be affianced before the next season begins.”
“I see no need to rush,” India told them.
Lord Brody joined them. “Lady Xenobia,” he said, dropping into a bow as he took her hand and kissed it. “You take my breath away. That,” he said, straightening, “is a tired remark, but nonetheless true.”
Thorn strolled over, but his face was not nearly as admiring as Lord Brody’s. He bowed, but he didn’t add a flourish, nor did he kiss her hand.
“Lady Xenobia,” Lord Brody said, turning his back on Thorn. “Would you walk with me?”
India took his arm and let herself enjoy the sensation of walking away from Thorn, so that he could see her hair down.
Lord Brody shared Thorn’s overtly masculine air, but at the same time, he was civilized. They moved slowly around the room, talking of his stables. Before she knew it, India was offering suggestions. They had just rounded the corner when she said, “For example, why do stalls always have swinging doors? It would be much easier to negotiate a horse out of a stall if the door slid, instead of swinging open.”
She looked up at that moment to discover Thorn blocking their path.
“No one told me this was the time to promenade,” he said, his tone growly and irritated.
India wrinkled her nose at him. “Thorn, don’t you agree that stalls should have sliding doors rather than swinging ones?”
Brody made a sharp movement and—too late—she realized that she had betrayed an entirely scandalous intimacy. “Do forgive me for addressing Mr. Dautry with such familiarity, Lord Brody. He and I are quite like siblings, as I have long been friends with Her Grace.”
That was true . . . and not true. It was true that she had been friends with Eleanor for years. It was most decidedly untrue that she had sisterly feelings for Thorn.
“In that case,” Lord Brody said, “I insist that you use my Christian name as well. Would you do me the honor of addressing me as Vander?”
“His real name is Evander,” Thorn told India. “We both arrived at Eton as boys, whereupon Vander had to pummel any number of boys who thought it amusing to address him as Eve.”
“Did you always win?” India asked Vander, delighted to think of the two of them as boys.
He looked at her with a warm light in his eyes that was remarkably attractive. “The only one I couldn’t beat was Thorn. And that’s because he’s an underhanded fighter—as you can imagine.”
India raised an eyebrow. “Indeed?”
Thorn rocked back on his heels, and the look in his eyes wasn’t warm but scorching, and made her think about the night before. And Feather’s exploits. “Those fellows were bound by the rules of civility,” he said, drawling the words so that he sounded exactly like his father, the duke. “I never have been.”
Vander intervened. “Lad
y Xenobia,” he said, “I would love to discuss sliding doors, but I see that Lady Adelaide is summoning you.”
“You look exquisite!” her godmother cried a moment later, squeezing India’s hands. She bent close and whispered, “And both those young men are completely smitten, my dear.”
“You are mistaken,” India replied, as softly. “We both know where Thorn’s affections lie, and I have barely met Lord Brody.”
Adelaide chortled. “Oh, really? What do you think they’re discussing right now?”
India glanced over her shoulder to see that Vander and Thorn were indeed talking to each other with unhappy looks on their faces. One might even say angry looks.
“You’ve set them against one another,” Adelaide said happily.
“They are probably discussing the weather,” India said firmly. “I haven’t said hello to Lala yet, and I must inquire about Lady Rainsford’s health.”
Lala and Eleanor were seated in chairs that India had arranged before the great windows looking toward the back gardens. She and Adelaide joined them, and discovered that Lala—who, in India’s experience, was almost always silent—was babbling about having accompanied Dr. Hatfield on his rounds.
“The baby,” Lala was saying, “is no bigger than a scrap.” She cradled her arm to show Eleanor the size. “But she has a tuft of red hair, and she was quite good at nursing!”
“Did Dr. Hatfield allow you to see a child being born?” Adelaide asked, scandalized.
In the normal course of events, no young lady was allowed to witness something so indecorous. Last year, however, Mrs. Carlyle had demanded that India hold her hand, and Adelaide had given in. India had found it fascinating. A bit terrifying, but fascinating.
“Certainly not! Little Martha is two weeks old,” Lala said.
Her eyes shone, and she went on to discuss the medical aspects of the mother’s confinement in a way that made India seriously rethink the commonly held presumption that Miss Laetitia Rainsford was missing a carriage wheel, if not two.
This must be what Thorn sees in Lala, she thought, losing the thread of the conversation when Lala went on to tell Adelaide and Eleanor the proper treatment for scabies. No one in society had glimpsed this side of Lala, but Thorn must understand her better than anyone.
When the dinner gong sounded, the duchess took her husband’s arm and said to Thorn, “Darling, please accompany Miss Rainsford to the table. Lord Brody, would you be kind enough to offer an arm to both Lady Xenobia and Lady Adelaide?”
Adelaide chattered all the way to the dining room; India silently held Vander’s other arm. He glanced down at her and his smile widened. Thorn, on the other hand, was obviously still cross; as he pulled out Lala’s chair, he snapped India a look that held more than a hint of fury.
Though what he had to be angry about, she didn’t know.
True, Starberry was no longer her concern, but she couldn’t help but notice how well the staff had followed her directions regarding the table setting. Lush white peonies in low baskets graced the middle of the table, and the linens—she had bought three different settings—were slate-blue Japanese silk brocade that accented the gray-green walls.
She slid her fingers from Vander’s arm as he pulled out a chair for Adelaide, and in the second before he turned back to her, Thorn appeared at her side and said, “You’re sitting beside me.”
He whisked her around the table so that she was opposite Vander. “That was extremely impolite, even for you,” India observed when he sat down between Lala and herself.
“In truth I am showing my first signs of civilized behavior,” Thorn said. “If that bodice falls off your milky way, I shall throw my napkin over you before Vander ogles you even more than he already is.”
“He is not ogling me!” India hissed.
“Bosh,” Thorn retorted. “He’s eating you alive and you’re oblivious.”
“There’s no call for you to—” India began, but then she realized that the duke, seated at her right hand, was listening with apparent interest. “Please forgive me, Your Grace,” she said, turning her shoulder to Thorn.
“I too find my son to be extremely irritating,” the duke said. “I have nothing but sympathy. Do tell me, Lady Xenobia, who painted the swallows on the walls?”
During the meal India talked primarily with the duke and also with Vander, who completely ignored the protocol that dictated one should not speak across a table. They began by talking of Italian painters, but quickly turned to the duke’s new silk top hat.
“I was hoping to cause a riot by wearing it in public,” he said in a disappointed tone. “But not even one woman fainted.”
“Am I to infer, Your Grace,” India asked, enjoying herself enormously, “that your attire regularly causes loss of consciousness?”
Eleanor clapped her hands, and it turned out that Vander had a most appealing laugh, low and husky.
“You injure me, my dear,” the duke protested. “Not long ago, John Hetherington wore a top hat and caused a riot. He was fined five hundred pounds for creating a public disturbance. I wore a similar top hat to the opera a mere six months after his, and not even a dog barked at me.”
“London is used to you being in the very forefront of fashion,” his wife said soothingly, but there was a twinkle in her eye.
“I grow old, I grow old,” the duke said, not mournfully. “Soon I shall wear flannel waistcoats and my trousers rolled, and all this elegance will be naught more than a distant memory.”
India laughed at that, as did Eleanor, both of them perfectly well aware that when the duke was laid to rest—hopefully many years from now—he would be the best-dressed corpse in all England.
“Do you own a top hat, Lord Brody?”
“I’m decidedly not in the forefront of fashion,” he said, grinning at her.
“I suppose we’re lucky that you’re even wearing a cravat,” the duke said. “The younger generation takes no pride in their appearance.”
“I’m properly dressed,” Vander protested. But anyone could tell by looking at him that he wouldn’t be caught dead wearing lace cuffs like those peeping from the duke’s velvet sleeves.
After that, the conversation wandered, from the new smallpox vaccine, to the new book of poetry called the Lyrical Ballads that the duke declared to be audacious, shocking, and ultimately tedious. The duke’s dry witticisms and Vander’s sardonic parries kept making the three of them break into laughter.
Thorn, Adelaide, and Lala, on the other hand, were engaged in a serious discussion of childhood mortality in the countryside. India found it a particularly unhappy topic, because two years ago she had spent a month with Lady Brestle, who was experiencing a difficult confinement. Alas, she’d lost the child.
India had been the one to order the coffin—a box so tiny that it was painful to think about. She removed the rough cambric the village carpenter used to line it, and replaced it with the finest azure silk she could find, because that was the color of the family’s crest.
She did not want to think about that baby. Instead, she wanted to flirt with Lord Brody under her lashes and look speculatively at his shoulders, and wonder whether he kissed the way Thorn did.
She suspected that no one kissed the way Thorn did, not with his roughness and heat . . . but if any gentleman did, she thought Vander might be that gentleman. Perhaps she would kiss him tonight, and then she would have grounds for comparison. With that thought, she gave him a smile that made him raise an eyebrow and then give her a surprisingly attractive, rather crooked, smile in return.
When dinner concluded, the ladies retired to the sitting room for tea and the men took themselves off to the library for brandy. India listened to Adelaide’s chatter for a short time, before excusing herself. She wanted to drop by the dower house, just to make certain that Rose was comfortable and happy.
In the entry she told Fleming that she’d like the pony cart in order to drive herself to the dower house for a visit. As she pulled on her glo
ves, Lord Brody walked out of the library.
“That was a quick brandy,” she observed.
“Thorn deserted us—characteristically rudely, without explanation—and the duke began a game of chess with himself, a pursuit that is profoundly tedious to watch. Where on earth are you going at this hour, Lady Xenobia?”
“I mean to take the pony cart for a turn around the estate.”
“Excellent! I shall join you. Fleming, my coat, if you would.”
A minute later, despite India’s protests, they were sitting side by side in the cart. She tried one final desperate appeal. “Lord Brody, I fail to see why you are accompanying me. This is not entirely proper.”
“We are in the country, not town. And no lady will venture alone into the darkness while I am here,” he said, as the groom standing at the pony’s head stood back. “Fleming didn’t like it. One must always listen to the butler; it’s the fundamental rule of polite society.”
Fleming had gently made his disapproval clear.
“Thorn wouldn’t like it either,” he added as they began to head toward the dower house.
“That is irrelevant,” she said, turning her nose up slightly. “Mr. Dautry takes advantage of our long acquaintance. I begin to think he is a bully.”
At that, Vander gave a shout of laughter. “You begin to think? Thorn gets his way. Always. He’s been that way since our first term at Eton, when he was the only one I couldn’t thrash.”
“Men are quite odd,” India said, thinking about that.
“We’ve had each other’s backs ever since,” he said, glancing down at her. “Where would you like to go, Lady Xenobia? And may I say that if you are planning to visit Miss Rose, I would like to meet Thorn’s ward. I know his secret.”
“It was my idea to house the child apart from the party,” India confessed, “but I feel terrible about the necessity.”
“If I were Thorn, I would tell the woman to go to—” He checked himself. “To keep her opinions to herself.”
“If he were to do that, he wouldn’t be able to marry Lala,” she told him. “He told me that she’s perfect for him. And he meant it.” She glanced at Vander. “Lala is not as unintelligent as most people think, and Thorn recognizes that.”