Her Fateful Debut: A Regency Romance (Three Gentlemen of London Book 1) Page 6

  “Very well.” That was surely a hopeful sign, was it not? Turning to Elise, she said, “I think we will need our pelisses. It is a bit windy out.”

  Soon, they were emerging onto the back terrace from the French doors off the drawing room. Elise was on the duke’s arm, so Penelope had no choice but to walk with her fiancé. He drew her hand through his arm, and they descended the steps into the garden.

  Wordsworth began well, trotting at their feet. Then he got sidetracked by the butterflies in the garden. Chasing them, he barked and jumped up on his stubby little legs. Penelope laughed.

  “My mother was known for her roses,” Penelope said to the party. “Papa hired a noted gardener this year who specializes in the upkeep of roses so that we could maintain the beds as a memorial to her. They are very beautiful, are they not?”

  “Enchanting,” said Elise. “I have never seen so many varieties. And the scent is heavenly.”

  Penelope inhaled the familiar perfume and used it to ground herself. Mama always seemed to be closer among the roses. What would she truly think of this situation?

  She would have wanted more for her only daughter. Her mother had been a Romantic. Lady Swinton was the daughter of a marquess and had many admirers. But she had chosen a baronet for love and had never regretted it.

  However, Mama did have a practical streak. She had not approved of languishing in real or imagined woes. She could almost hear her saying, “Penny, you are going to make a success of this marriage. Give it your best effort, and you will learn to be an admirable wife. And do not forget that there will be children. You have always been wonderful with children.”

  “Roses are a hobby of mine, as well,” Beau said. “You mother had great success here, it would seem. Some of these varieties are new to me.”

  “I would never have thought you a dab hand at roses, Lord— uh, Beau.”

  “I find it relaxing. Surely that is a Windsor Coral? It is hard to cultivate. Very delicate. See how small the blossoms are?”

  Penelope laughed. “I am sorry, my lord, but it is very difficult to imagine you working in a rose bed. Perhaps you could cut one for your buttonhole.”

  Removing his penknife from his pocket, he carefully sliced the stem of the delicate bloom and placed it, not in his buttonhole, but in her chignon. “Ah! Very elegant.”

  Penelope stood stock-still, surprised at the affectionate gesture. He walked down the path worn between the rose bushes, subjecting them to close scrutiny. “I only have about a dozen in town, but the roses on my estate in Somerset are known throughout the county.”

  “I think you will never stop surprising me, my lord.”

  “Beau.”

  “Ah . . . Beau.”

  “Are you fond of gardening, then, Miss Swinton?”

  “If I am to call you Beau, I insist that you call me Penelope,” she said. “And no, I am afraid I would rather sketch the flowers. I am a student of natural history. I have my own library of books and sketches in an old gamekeeper’s cottage. I bring my specimens there to sketch.”

  “Shall you take us there?” he asked.

  “It is next on the tour.”

  “You and Miss Sukey must have a lot to talk about.”

  “Her beetles are rather incredible. She has a vast collection. I hope to sketch them and publish a catalogue for her.” She indicated a path across the vast lawn. “My laboratory is through the trees on the other side of the green.”

  “You have surprised me again, my dear Penelope.”

  There was an appreciative glint in his eye as he took her hand and placed it on his arm again. For the third time in their acquaintance, Penelope went weak in the knees.

  Chapter Eight

  Beau held back his amusement. A laboratory. Natural History. Almost as unexpected as the vicar’s son. What next? A vision of the sophisticated Rosamund came to his mind, and he very nearly laughed.

  His fiancée was proving to be a delight. And a cardsharp added to the bargain. If they were ever down on their luck, he could send her to the tables.

  He expressed an unfeigned interest as Penelope showed off the former gamekeeper’s cottage that she had fitted out as her laboratory. It sported a cozy, overstuffed chair, a small desk with a ladder-backed chair, and shelves stocked with monographs and slim volumes of natural history. He pulled a book off the shelf and paged through it. It was one of his fiancée’s own works. Wonderful sketches of everything from frogs to dragonflies.

  “My friend, Sir William Osbert, will be someone you will wish to cultivate. He has been all over India, China, and even into Japan. Ozzie is also a brilliant sketch artist. His work taken from the game in India, particularly, is breathtaking. Tigers and elephants aplenty.”

  Penelope’s eyes sparkled. “It has been a secret longing of mine to see India,” she said. “I do not suppose you would consider taking me there?”

  Her request startled him. “I can tell you are going to shake up my staid and boring life. I shall have to introduce you to Ozzie at first opportunity.”

  “He is the one who taught you Jujutsu?”

  He nodded, running his eyes over her shelves. “Ah! Gelson’s biscuits. My favorite!”

  She took down the tin and opened it, offering him one of the lemon confections. The duke and duchess entered at that moment and, offering them a biscuit as well, Penelope explained about her laboratory.

  The duke nodded his appreciation. “Very commendable, Miss Swinton.”

  “Penelope, please, Your Grace. I am your little cousin by marriage, and you have been so kind to me.”

  “I am impressed, my dear,” said the duchess, picking up a sketch of a squirrel sitting on her work table. “Has Miss Sukey seen your work?”

  Penelope explained her beetle project. Beau admired the way her eyes lit. India? He had never considered it. But maybe it lay in his future after all.

  Unbidden came the memory of their waltz. She had been like goose down in his arms, and he had detected a woman’s desire in those violet eyes. He remembered the quickening of his pulse as the dance lengthened. There had been an attraction there. But that had been before this engagement had been forced upon them. She seemed more distant now. Had his vicious attack on the Frenchman estranged her?

  After dinner that evening, they listened to the very accomplished duchess perform on the piano and, after the baronet had retired for the evening, played a rubber of whist. His bride-to-be hid very well behind her success as a card player. He watched as she bit her lower lip between her straight white teeth when contemplating her hand. It was an endearing habit.

  Her unabashed pleasure in life will certainly seem amiss among my jaded friends. How long will it be before she loses that naïveté?

  When he retired that night, he had much to think about. He knew from the discussion he had overheard that she was aware of the existence of Rosamund.

  He had grave doubts about being the proper husband for Penelope. But he had taken away her future. If he did not marry her, she was ruined.

  And there was that waltz. It niggled at his heart. How might things have developed had they not been interrupted by the attempt on her life and forced into this engagement?

  It was a long time before he slept.

  -P-

  He was glad the next day when they started back to London—relieved at the chance to ride outside the carriage and think his own thoughts throughout the journey. Although he liked what he knew of his fiancée’s father, he suspected that the man held doubts about his future son-in-law. As he possessed those doubts himself, Beau did not hold the fact against him.

  During the journey, Penelope was again at her best when at the card table. One night, between rubbers, he dared to ask about the vicar’s son.

  “If you are really to marry me, I feel I must make this man’s acquaintance. If I am not mistaken, he played a significant role in your childhood. When am I to meet the man?” he asked.

  “I promise you shall make his acquaintance when we are
next in Northamptonshire. He has just come down from Oxford. He is serving as curate in a nearby vicarage.”

  “Curate? Surely that is far too tame for such a fellow!”

  “That is what I think,” she said with a laugh. “But he has very little choice. There is no money in the family. Not even enough to buy him a pair of colors. He would much rather have been a soldier.”

  “Surely that would have suited him far more.”

  The next night, she said, “If I am really to marry you, Beau, I think it is time you told me about your siblings.”

  “I have a delightful sister of sixteen who wants very much to meet you. She lives with me, along with her governess and companion. We shall arrange it as soon as you like.” He shuffled the cards. “As for my brothers, you are not likely to become acquainted with them for some time. Manfred inherited an estate from our uncle in Northumberland. He does not come south often. My other brother, Ernest, is a naval officer, currently serving aboard a frigate fighting the war in America.”

  “I should like to have brothers,” she said. “Are you in communication with them?”

  “Not at all as much as I should be,” he said, not caring to tell her that his mother’s preference for him had crowded out any interest she might have had in her younger sons. It had caused a schism between them which he had never been able to mend.

  Perhaps Penelope’s warm heart can help me there.

  By the time they arrived in the capital midway through the third day of their journey, he was feeling very much better about his forthcoming marriage. He had even learned to anticipate it.

  He left Penelope settled at Blossom House with a promise for her to meet Arabella the next day. Beau then went on to Wellingham House around the corner. He needed to go to the club and find out the latest word from the ton concerning his upcoming marriage.

  After bathing and dressing in his jonquil-colored suit of clothes, he took his curricle to White’s. It was the first time he had appeared there since the Devereaux affair and his engagement.

  “Beau!” exclaimed Sir Bertie Backman, swaying a bit drunkenly. “There is the man of the hour! Where have you been? Hiding yourself away?”

  The viscount clapped his good friend on the shoulder. “Meeting my future papa-in-law. Getting leg-shackled in a few days, you know.”

  “Ah, so it’s true, then!” Bertie said. “Marrying the Swinton girl? Heard she was an Incomparable. Are we going to get the full story there?”

  Viscount Strangeways joined them. “Yes. Saw the body. Jujutsu, I take it. Protecting her virtue? Rather far to go, eh? What’s she like?”

  He had known that if his friend Strangeways saw the body, he would recognize the technique. There were only three men in Britain who could kill a man that way. Strangeways, Ozzie, and himself.

  Bertie laughed. “You certainly snatched her up in a hurry.”

  “You will be able to judge her beauty for yourselves. I think she is quite lovely, of course.”

  Lord Cumberland approached at that moment, a glint of trouble in his eye. “Who was this man you killed? The newspapers were quite silent on the subject.”

  “Riffraff,” Beau said. “Got in at the garden gate.”

  “And Miss Swinton?” the bested suitor inquired. “Last I saw, you were dancing the waltz.”

  “She was overcome with the heat. First ball and all that. Felt quite faint. I took her outside for a breath of air. Things turned ugly in a trice.”

  Bertie said, “You can bet that if Beau killed the beggar, he needed to be killed, Cumberland. My word on it.”

  Beau was prepared for the scandal-mongering. Strangeways and Bertie were his closest friends. He could depend on them, even if they guessed there were things he could not reveal. Cumberland was another story. The man had his own reasons for coloring the incident in disgraceful hues. If Penelope’s reputation was ruined, he could offer himself as her “protector.”

  Beau turned to the man, his eyebrow raised, his manner icy. “It won’t do you any good to look for what isn’t there, Cumberland. I’m marrying Miss Swinton come Saturday.” Turning to his friends, he said, “Now, tell me, there must be a new on-dit! I have been gone fully a week!”

  Strangeways harrumphed. “But your adventure has everything, Beau: danger, death, a beautiful innocent . . .”

  “I guess I have all the luck,” Beau said with a smile. “Must be my fashion sense.”

  Cumberland sneered, “I’ll wager there’s more to be told. If one could just ask in the right quarter.”

  Devil take it. He had not counted on Cumberland’s jealousy.

  Changing his manner, Beau clapped the man on the back. “I will treat her well, man. Don’t worry.”

  The peer shrugged. “If I find anything havey-cavey about this business, I will not hesitate to make it known.”

  Beau wondered if the man meant to call him out. After one dance? The fellow must be truly smitten. But then he remembered the effect of Penelope’s charms upon his own jaded senses.

  “Dog in the manger is what you are,” said Bertie to Cumberland. “I vote that Beau stands us all a glass of champagne to celebrate his health and marriage.”

  This intervention by his friend put Beau in his debt. “To be sure.” He caught a waiter. “Cigars and champagne for the lot of us.”

  “And who might that be, my lord?” the waiter asked.

  “Everyone present this afternoon. To celebrate my engagement to the Incomparable Miss Swinton!”

  The afternoon passed in mild hilarity, and the Cumberland incident was forgotten. Beau hoped he had heard the end of it, but suspected not. Penelope’s reputation could not be hurt by the truth, but were the French spy St. Croix to hear of it, he, not knowing Devereaux’s true colors, could very well decide to wreak vengeance on Beau himself. That, of course, would please Cumberland immensely.

  After dinner at White’s, he went home to change into soberer attire for his evening meeting at the Foreign Office.

  -P-

  Lord Castlereagh, the fair, lean secretary for foreign affairs, congratulated him on his engagement before their meeting began.

  “Don’t know the gel, but that don’t signify. I hear she’s Kingsborough’s granddaughter. Cousin to Ruisdell’s wife. Good show. Time you were married and settled.”

  There was serious business to discuss. The war with the Colonies had been going on for a year while England was simultaneously fighting Napoleon.

  “The prime minister is growing even more concerned about the increasing opposition in the House to the taxation we have had to levy to support the war effort,” Castlereagh said. “With Napoleon busy on his eastern front, our army is close to idle and ‘eating their heads off,’ as the Whigs are saying. They want the money spent closer to home.” He turned to Beau. “Lord Wellingham, tell the Committee what Mr. Devereaux had to say about Napoleon’s plans.”

  “He intends to turn west and finish us off on the Peninsula as soon as he’s dealt with the Prussians. Though he’s been beaten soundly by the Russians, he doesn’t intend to lose Spain and Portugal. They are vital to his imperial ego, if nothing else. It’s smarting.”

  The men around the table nodded and voiced their agreement with this assessment of Napoleon.

  Beau continued, “He said the French were weakening. The Corsican is still trying to whip them up into a frenzy, but his men are growing weary after the winter they had in Russia. The spy gave me some troop positions, which I sent to you by courier. He thought we could have Napoleon defeated before the year is out if we continue our present course.”

  “Hear! Hear!” Mr. Davies pounded the table, and the men cheered.

  “Any news on the prospects for peace in America at the moment?” asked Beau. “Are they ready to consider the Indian buffer state with Canada?”

  “The Colonies are unutterably opposed to it,” Mr. Crocker said. He had recently returned from a mission to meet with their forces across the Atlantic. “They have had some success on the
Great Lakes and in the Southwest, but our blockade is seriously affecting their treasury, and we are routing them in the Chesapeake. I would call it a draw at the moment.”

  “Perhaps it’s time we stopped referring to them as ‘colonies,’” said Beau. “They consider themselves an independent nation.”

  “They are hardly that,” said Castlereagh. “They have no idea how to go about statecraft, and they will lose this war.” He shifted in his chair and eyed Beau with disfavor. “To change the subject, will there be problems arising from Devereaux’s death?”

  “Not if the people who know he was a double keep it under wraps. There is another spy in the country at the moment: Monsieur St. Croix. He didn’t know that Devereaux had been forced to turn, of course. He may seek vengeance, but I judge that a problem for me alone. I will take care of him, if necessary.”

  “Any chance he can be turned?” asked Lord Castlereagh.

  “According to Devereaux, St. Croix is the real article,” said Beau. “He would rather be hanged first.”

  After more discussion, during which time Castlereagh related Prime Minister Liverpool’s directives, as well as reports from Field Marshal Wellesley in France, Beau said, “We must think further about the spy St. Croix. I would like to learn who his contacts are and shut down that leak of information. Do we have any idea?”

  Mr. Lawrence spoke up. “I have an idea that he is trying to connect with wounded officers who may be disaffected. Colonel Westfield is home recovering from an amputation of his arm. He reported to me that he was approached by a man, purportedly an émigré who gave the name of Fousard, but he matches the description we have of St. Croix: large nose, eyes set too close together, one ear standing out from his head.”

  “I would like to follow up on that, if you agree, my lord,” Beau said.

  “You are likely to be a bit busy in the near future,” remarked Castlereagh.

  “My lord?”