Lord Perfect (The Dressmakers 3)

Peregrine should have realized that anything to do with Olivia Wingate spelled disaster. He should have let her go with Nat Diggerby.

But then Peregrine would have missed the adventure.

And the truth was, he was not in any hurry to go to Edinburgh and be bored and aggravated at yet another school, out of which he would soon be chucked.

What troubled him was annoying Lord Rathbourne, who might decide Peregrine was more trouble than he was worth, and upsetting Mama and Papa because they might become hysterical enough to forbid any more visits with his lordship. Otherwise Peregrine wouldn’t have minded continuing with Olivia on her mad Quest. For a young man who planned to travel the Nile, traveling the road to Bristol would be a useful experience.

But there was Lord Rathbourne to consider, and since he hadn’t caught them yet, Peregrine decided he must stop and wait to be caught.

Meanwhile he wanted food. And a bed.

Maidenhead, a good-sized market town, boasted a number of inns. He returned to the Bear, the largest and busiest. As he neared the entrance, he saw Olivia there, waiting, her arms folded. “You are supposed to be my squire,” she said. “Squires are steadfast and true. They don’t abandon their knights.”

“I’m hungry,” he said. “I want to sleep.”

“You can’t do it here,” she said. “This is the biggest inn in Maidenhead. It will cost the earth, and I know they’ll never let us have one of their grand rooms out of charity.” She glanced appraisingly about her at her surroundings. “You can’t expect me to earn any money at this time of night.”

“Earn?” he said. “You mean bamboozle.”

She shrugged. “Your father gives you money. I have to work for mine.”

Peregrine was not sure that sharp practices and outright deceit ought to be called work, but he was too tired to debate semantics. “As a matter of fact, my father does give me money,” he said. “And I do have a bit with me.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“In the first place, it isn’t very much,” he said. “In the second, it’s no use looking at me that way because I never lied to you about it.”

“You never said you had money,” she said.

“You never asked,” he said. “Have you asked once for my advice or help or opinion?” Without waiting for an answer he went on, “I’ll buy you supper and maybe a bed if we’re lucky, if you promise not to tell anybody else about our dying mother—or any other people who don’t exist.”

“Why?” she said.

“It isn’t sporting.”

“It isn’t what?”

“Sporting,” he said.

“You mean it isn’t proper,” she said mockingly.

Peregrine wrenched the door open. “I mean,” he said, “it’s like a great, big fellow picking on a little fellow. That’s what I mean.” He waved her inside.

“Oh,” she said, and went.

She became quiet after that, which suited Peregrine. He wanted to eat and he wanted to sleep. After he’d had some rest he’d be ready to talk, perhaps.

He did rest, very comfortably, though the inn was indeed expensive and they ended up in a cupboard-sized room on hard cots meant for servants.

Though it was more Spartan than anything he’d ever experienced before, even at school, Lord Lisle was sound asleep when Lord Rathbourne drove through Maidenhead at half past three o’clock in the morning.

BENEDICT HARDLY NOTICED Maidenhead. He devoted the first tautly silent moments of travel to trying to revive his famous self-control, gather the remaining shreds of his moral fiber, and evict the alien spirit that had taken possession of him.

Then Mrs. Wingate spoke, and everything went to pieces.

“I think it would be best if we separated in Twyford,” she said. “I shall take Olivia to Bristol and attempt to settle the treasure nonsense once and for all.”

“To Bristol?” he echoed incredulously. “Did you hit your head in Colnbrook as well as your hand?”

“You and I cannot return to London together,” she said, “and you know you must hurry back if you wish to avoid causing a stir. You were to set out for Scotland today, were you not?”

“That is not the point,” he said. “The point is, you cannot travel to Bristol alone.”

“I shall have Olivia with me,” she said.

“You haven’t any money,” he said.

“I have a little,” she said.

“It must be a very little,” he said. “When I came to your lodgings, you were preparing to visit the pawnbroker with a sack of your belongings.”

“Olivia and I have always traveled with very little money,” she said. “It is not as though I plan to hire a post chaise. We can walk.”

“To Bristol? Are you mad? That is nearly a hundred miles.” He recalled the men’s reaction to her provocatively swaying hips at the Kensington tollgate.

She was proposing to swing those hips over a hundred miles of road along which mainly men would be traveling.

“It is out of the question,” he said. “I will not permit it.”

She turned in the seat to look at him. Her knee bumped his thigh. He set his jaw.

“Where on earth did you obtain the mad idea that you had any say over my doings?” she said. “Oh, never mind. I had forgotten. With you, it is force of habit, ordering everyone about. Very well, my lord. Go ahead and tell me everything I may and may not do. I had rather spend the next few miles laughing than fretting about my exasperating daughter.”

“You say she is exasperating, yet you mean to indulge her,” Benedict said. “What have you in mind, exactly? A visit to your relatives’ mausoleum in the dead of night? I have an interesting picture in my mind of the pair of you in hooded cloaks, Olivia carrying a dark lantern and you with a spade on your shoulder.”

“Like many great estates, Throgmorton is open to visitors on certain days,” she said. “I shall take her to the mausoleum and let her see how scrupulously the grounds are tended. She will see for herself that, had any treasure been buried there, the gardeners or men making repairs would have found it ages ago. After that, perhaps we shall amuse ourselves looking for smugglers’ caves.”

“In other words, you do not mean to return to London for some time.” He ought to be glad. He would not be tempted to hunt for her when he returned from Scotland. In time, this damnable infatuation would pass.

“Certainly not,” she said. “You will be in Edinburgh with your nephew. What is there for me—for anyone—in London when Lord Rathbourne is not there?”

He glanced at her. She turned away again, her countenance sober, but not before he saw the glint of mirth in her eyes.

“You are laughing at me,” he said.

“On the contrary, my lord,” she said, “I am trying desperately to contain my grief at your impending departure. I am smiling bravely, not laughing. Well, I am not laughing very much.”

Troubled as he was, he couldn’t help smiling, too. But then, he was bewitched.

She looked away, to the road ahead, and her expression sobered. “It will not be a laughing matter if we do not take care,” she said. “You know we must separate as soon as we recover the children, and you must take Peregrine to Scotland without delay. If you are only a day or two late, his parents will not make a fuss.”

“They always make a fuss,” he said. “His parents are the least of the difficulty. By now my household will be aware that something is amiss. Someone will talk and some sort of rumor will begin making the rounds. I shall need a good lie.”

“I shall need one as well, for Mrs. Briggs,” she said, “to explain my extended absence.”

“Write her a note when we get to Twyford,” Benedict said. “You are needed to nurse your sick relative. I shall see that the note arrives quickly. As to my story: Perhaps I shall say that Peregrine took it into his head to join a traveling acting troupe or a band of gypsies. Or perhaps he became enslaved by the charms of a peddler’s daughter and followed her. That is the sort of rom

antic idiocy his parents would accept implicitly.”

“They do not know Lord Lisle very well, do they?” she said. “Even I, knowing him for only a few weeks, would never believe it for a moment.”

“What I cannot believe is that his parents had anything to do with producing him,” Benedict said. “All the Dalmays are emotionally extravagant, and they tend to choose spouses of the same temperament.”

“He is an aberration,” she said. “It happens all the time. I only wish it had happened in Olivia’s case.”

“Then Peregrine would have missed an adventure,” Benedict said. And so would I, he thought.

The end of it was approaching all too quickly.

“If only it were no more than that,” she said. “But it is not, and I don’t mean to let her off easily.” After a pause, she added, “Rathbourne, what shall we do if it is found out that we traveled together?”

He had no trouble imagining that possibility. He knew that the darkness was not a completely reliable shield. He realized that someone might have recognized him at some point along the last twenty-odd miles.

He was well aware of how swiftly gossip could travel.