Lord Perfect (The Dressmakers 3)

Benedict returned the letter to his coat pocket. “I had the same thought,” he said. “I could not believe Peregrine had fallen in with her plan. Her latest letter, you must have noticed, names one Nat Diggerby her chosen escort and refers to Peregrine’s misgivings about her quest. He must have tried to dissuade her. In which case, one might reasonably suppose he went to stop her. I came here, hoping he’d retrieved her and brought her home.”

“Not on his own, he couldn’t,” she said. “If he’d asked my advice, I should have recommended he take a law officer with him. Or a large body of soldiers.”

Any other mother would be in fainting fits or hysterics, Benedict thought. She did not even appear anxious. She was definitely out of temper, though.

“Not being a thirteen-year-old boy, I shall not require a regiment,” Benedict said. “Not that I should dream of alerting the authorities. The last thing I need is for anyone to hear of this.” If any member of his set found out, the story would be all over London within hours. It would reach Atherton in Scotland within days. That was not a pretty prospect.

“The footman Thomas should be sufficient for my purposes,” he went on. “Between us, I reckon we can recover a pair of children.” He started for the door.

She moved quickly to block his way. Her blue eyes flashed, and he almost took a step back—in surprise, that was all.

“You are distressed,” she said. “I excuse your obliviousness on those grounds.”

“You excuse my what?”

“This is Olivia’s doing,” she said, “and Olivia is my problem. I understand how her mind works. I know where she is going. I am the one who will search for her.” The color came and went in her cheeks. “However, you can save me time if you would lend me the money to hire a vehicle.”

His jaw almost dropped. He caught himself in time.

“You have taken leave of your senses if you believe I should sit at home twiddling my thumbs while you hunt for my nephew,” he said. “He is not your responsibility but mine.”

“Your wits are wandering if you expect me to sit at home,” she said.

“One of us must go,” he said. “One of us must remain. We cannot travel together.”

“Obviously,” she said. “But you are too overset to think clearly.”

“Overset?” he echoed incredulously. “I am never overset.”

“You are not using logic,” she said. “You want to keep this quiet, do you not?”

“Of course I—”

“I should attract far less attention than you,” she cut in impatiently. “You cannot make enquiries about a pair of children without causing talk. Everything about you screams who and what you are. You will act bored and sound sarcastic, and behave in that superior way, and simply assume you are in command. It will be as plain to everyone who you are as if you had a sign hanging from your neck, proclaiming your title and antecedents.”

“I know how to be discreet,” he said.

“You do not know how to be ordinary,” she said.

As though she could be ordinary, Benedict thought, with that face and body. She would turn heads wherever she went. She would have men trailing after her, their tongues hanging out.

He clenched his hands. She, setting out after dark, traveling alone, in a hired vehicle, without an escort, without so much as a maid . . .

Unthinkable.

“You cannot travel alone,” he said in the frigid accents anyone else would have recognized as ending the discussion.

“I have traveled alone for the last three years,” she said.

He wanted to shake her. He made himself unclench his hands. He summoned his patience. “You had your daughter with you,” he said. “People behave differently toward solitary women than they do toward mothers traveling with their children.”

“This is absurd,” she said, turning away abruptly. “It is a waste of time, arguing with you. I shall do as I planned.” She marched to the heap of belongings on the floor and started to make a bundle.

She had said she was on her way to the pawnbroker.

Benedict wondered how he could stop her, short of knocking her unconscious or wrestling her into a strait-waistcoat or tying her to a heavy piece of furniture.

“Stop that,” he said, in a tone he usually reserved for rambunctious MPs. “Never mind the pawnbroker. We shall combine forces.”

“We cannot—”

“You leave us no choice, you obstinate woman,” he said. “I shall be hanged before I let you set out alone.”

WHILE HE WAITED for her to collect her bonnet and spencer and whatever other items she deemed necessary, Benedict tried to reconnect his tongue to his brain.

He never spoke to women in that way.

He was always patient with them.

But she . . .

She was a problem.

Matters did not improve once she’d emerged from the house, after having stopped briefly to speak to Mrs. Briggs.

“A curricle?” she said, pausing on the steps to take stock of the vehicle standing at the curb. “An open vehicle?”

“Did you suppose I should take a coach and four?” he said. “Do you imagine I should wish to bring a coachman along on such a journey?”

“But this will never do,” she said. “It is far too smart.”

“It is hired, it needs a coat of paint, and it is at least ten years old,” he said. “You haven’t the least idea what smart is. Get in.”

She clutched his arm, her gaze riveted upon Thomas, who held the horses. “We cannot travel with a servant,” she said.

Patience, Benedict counseled himself. “Someone must look after the horses,” he said patiently. “You will not know he is there. He will sit in the seat at the back, gazing at the passing scene and thinking his own thoughts.”

She tugged on his arm, to pull him toward her, and stood on her toes to whisper in his ear, “You must have been completely distracted to bring him here. Servants are dreadful gossips, worse than old ladies. By this time tomorrow, everyone in London will know what you have been doing and with whom.”

Her breath tickled Benedict’s ear. He was acutely aware of the slim hand clutching his arm.

He picked her up and tossed her onto the carriage seat.

When he climbed in beside her, she said, “May I remind you that this is the nineteenth century, not the ninth? That sort of behavior went out of fashion with chain mail and wimples.”

Tho

mas hastily took his place in the servant’s seat.

Benedict gave the horses leave to start before he answered her.

“I am not accustomed to explaining myself, Mrs. Wingate,” he began.

“Obviously,” she said.

He started to grind his teeth. He made himself stop, and reminded himself of the rule: Women and children, possessing smaller brains and thus a smaller capacity for reason, require a correspondingly greater degree of patience.

Now he said, patiently, “Thomas is not a London-bred servant. He is a countryman, who grew up on the family property in Derbyshire. Though he is now my footman, he is as competent with horses as any of my grooms. I took him into my confidence weeks ago, when Peregrine began his drawing lessons. I would not have entrusted so delicate a business to him had I not complete confidence in his discretion.”

Mrs. Wingate let out a huff, sat straighter, and folded her hands in her lap. “I beg your pardon for questioning your judgment,” she said. “It is nothing to me, after all, if it proves faulty. I am not the one responsible for the Marquess of Atherton’s heir and sole offspring. I am not the one who will be toppled from my pedestal if the world learns I have not only permitted but encouraged my nephew to associate with the most shocking persons. I am not the one who—”

“I wish you were the one who had heard of the rule Silence is golden,” he said.

“I am not a politician,” she said. “I am accustomed to saying what I think.”

“I should have thought that anxieties about your daughter would fully occupy your mind.”

“I greatly doubt Olivia will come to any harm,” said her mama. “I only wish I could say the same for those who cross her path.”

Chapter 7

THOUGH THE CURRICLE WAS MUCH TOO dashing a vehicle for people who wished to remain anonymous, Bathsheba had to admit it had certain advantages, like speed and maneuverability.

They halted near Hyde Park Corner shortly before the church bells chimed six o’clock.