Viscount Vagabond (Regency Noblemen 1)

“He would not be gone, you unnatural child, if you would make but the smallest effort. He admires your looks, for which you ought to be thankful. How many others do you think would want such an Amazon?” the countess complained, as though her daughter had deliberately grown to this abnormal height to spite her.

“My size is hardly my fault, Mama,” Lady Diana answered with a touch of impatience.

“It is your manner that concerns me. If he admires your looks, you should use the advantage. Instead you stand like a dumb statue and leave me to manage the conversation. You are not a stupid girl, Diana. Why must you let him think so?”

“I had not thought the gentlemen overly concerned with female intelligence—”

“He is,” the mama interrupted. “Instead of talking to you, he stays forever with that blue-stocking—and her papa a mere baron, while you are the daughter of Glencove. If he likes bookish women, you must contrive to appear so.”

“Oh, Mama!”

“Why not? She cannot be better educated than yourself.”

Lady Glencove studied the woman in question, who was conversing with Jack Langdon. “She cannot be so bookish as all that,” her ladyship went on, “or Argoyne would never go near her. Really, I do wonder what the men see in her. She is hardly an Incomparable.”

“She listens, Mama. I’d scarcely said three sentences to her before she asked whether I was as devoted to hunting as my namesake.”

Lady Glencove looked blank.

“She meant Diana, the goddess of the hunt. I said I enjoyed it immensely, and immediately she had a dozen questions for me. She is most knowledgeable, though she says the sport is not to her tastes. Her papa is famous for his hounds, you know.”

Lady Glencove discovered in these remarks something more promising than Lord Pelliston’s success in breeding hunting dogs. ‘Well, then, you and the girl have something in common. That is good.” Her voice became commanding again. “Unless you wish to break your mama’s heart, you will pursue the friendship.”

“I wish you would make up your mind, Mama. I thought it was Lord Rand you wanted me to pursue.”

The mother uttered an exasperated sigh. “How better than to be always in company with those he spends his time with? Really, Diana, I begin to believe you are stupid.”

“I am always stupid in Town, Mama. I cannot breathe here and I cannot think and—”

She was cut off.

“You are not going back to Kirkby-Glenham, young lady, so just put that out of your mind. When I think of that person, my blood turns cold. But I will not think of him—and you know better than to do so, I trust. What you will do is form a closer acquaintance with Miss Pelliston.”

“Yes, Mama.”

Mr. Langdon was not accustomed to supping with debutantes. He liked women—worshipped them, in fact, but in the abstract and from afar. Up close they were problematic. His mother and sisters, for instance, were always pressuring him to marry, and marriageable women made him uneasy. He would always sense in them, after a few minutes, impatience, boredom, some vague irritation. He did not know how he provoked these reactions, but he had little doubt he did.

Catherine Pelliston was different. If he rambled off to ancient Greece or Renaissance Italy, she ambled along with him. No topic was too obstruse for her, and she never seemed to require that their conversation be interlaced with flirtation.

She was a kindred spirit, he thought. In his eagerness to pay tribute to the quiet pleasure she gave him, he piled her plate with enough tantalising sustenance to satiate a soldier after three days’ forced march.

“Oh, Mr. Langdon,” said Catherine with a small gasp, “are you trying to fatten me up too? If I eat but a fraction of this, you shall have to push me about the dance floor in a wheelbarrow.”

Mr. Langdon’s fingers promptly wrought their usual havoc with his hair. How could he be so boorish, so thoughtless? One did not offer young ladies buckets of food as though they were sows. His handsome face reddened as he watched his companion. She was studying her plate as though it were a mathematical problem.

She looked up with a consoling smile. “At least you don’t pretend young women live on air and nectar, like hummingbirds. All the same, I’m afraid you must come to my rescue.” So saying, she took his plate from him and began apportioning the contents of hers.

A few weeks earlier, Catherine had won the affection of an eight-year-old boy with one small gesture connected to food. Mr. Langdon might have two decades’ advantage of Jemmy, but his heart was equally susceptible. In a few words she had put him at ease again, and those words, like the gesture, were so fraught with overtones of domestic intimacy and tranquillity that he felt they’d been friends forever. She might have been his sister—except that any of those ladies, in like circumstances, would have either burst into tears at the imagined insult or cruelly ridiculed him.

He had no way of knowing that Catherine was accustomed to smoothing over difficulties—or at least constantly trying to do so. He knew nothing of the scenes she endured at her papa’s dinner table, and the quick thinking required to spare an oversensitive aunt’s feelings or distract a drunken parent from some disagreeable topic or behaviour. He did not know that she’d sensed his nervous embarrassment and had acted reflexively to remove it.

Jack knew only that he’d committed a faux pas. Since he’d exaggerated its importance, he likewise exaggerated the significance of her tactful response. Gazing at her with relief, he wondered if he was in love with her.

“How kind you are,” he murmured as he took his place beside her. “I should know better, of course—my sisters will never take more than a mouthful in public—but everything looked so tempting.”

“Yes, and all the burden of choosing is yours because you are the gentleman. Women are so difficult to please, are we not?” she asked with a faint twinkle. “If you’d left out something I fancied, I would sulk. You leave nothing out and I complain. But that is for appearances, you know,” she explained, dropping her voice confidentially. “The truth is, dancing makes me so hungry I probably could eat it all— and disgrace myself in Society’s eyes.”

The confiding tones made Mr. Langdon feel warm and cosy. He wished they could be engaged this minute, so that he might have the privilege of squeezing one of the gentle white hand

s that had touched his plate.

He made do with a smile as he replied, “That is because today’s modes are for sylphs. These Grecian costumes are meant for slender faeries—as you are, Miss Pelliston. If, on the other hand, this were the time of Rubens, you’d have to gorge yourself.”

He took up his silverware and took a turn into the early seventeenth century, where Miss Pelliston easily followed. He was soon lost there, oblivious to the rest of the company, and not even altogether conscious of his companion. He never noticed the occasional frown that furrowed her delicate brow.

Miss Pelliston’s partner in crime, meanwhile, was in the process of attempting burglary.

Some hours earlier, Max had made discreet inquiries regarding the baron. That is how he found out where Lord Browdie’s love nest was. The viscount was now standing in a dark alleyway, staring up at the windows of that house.

Clarence Arthur Maximilian Demowery, Viscount Rand, had in the course of his chequered career scaled any number of edifices. To climb the walls of this house was child’s play. He did not hesitate. He grasped a drainpipe, found a toehold between the bricks, and commenced to climb. In a few minutes he’d leapt over the wall of a narrow balcony and stood pressed against the side of the house near the French doors, listening.

He heard, as he’d expected, nothing. The house was dark. Obviously Lord Browdie’s mistress had taken advantage of his absence. Either she was out or she’d gone to bed early. Max would have preferred knowing precisely where she was, and if she slept, how soundly she did so, but a man cannot have everything he wants in this world.

He moved silently towards the doors and tried them. They were unfastened—why not? The citizens of London’s West End had a low opinion of burglars’ intelligence. Perhaps the ground floor was secured, which meant the front door and servants’ entrance were locked at night. Thieves obviously entered a house as everyone else did.

He quietly pushed the doors open and crept into the room. The interior being no darker than the alleyway, his eyes had already adjusted. In what dim light there was he could make out the outlines of furniture. His eyes sought a wardrobe and found it. His feet took him to it.