Viscount Vagabond by Loretta Chase
Not that she meant to become a coquette. Even if capable of so far lowering her standards, Catherine was incapable of playing the part. She’d only look ridiculous. She wished she could find some safe island between prudery and impropriety—but the Beau Monde offered no solid moral ground. Hypocrisy seemed to be the fashionable equivalent of propriety, discretion indistinguishable from morality, and the rules seemed to constantly shift on whim.
Still, that was the way of the world. If Lord Rand could navigate these treacherous waters with such skill, there was no reason an erudite young lady could not.
Chapter Eleven
As long as he’d already plunged into the turbulent waters of the Beau Monde, Lord Rand decided he might as well swim the distance. Dutifully he called the following day upon the young ladies with whom he’d danced. Among these was Lady Diana, whose mama beamed as the viscount entered her ornate drawing room.
The young lady was fortunate, Max thought, to have been built to such generous proportions; otherwise she’d have been lost among the bric-a-brac. The room was large enough, but so thickly furnished with ancestral wealth that it seemed a museum whose collection had outgrown it. The walls suffocated under the weight of heavy tapestries and massive paintings, the latter encased in thickly carved gilded frames. Everywhere was gilt and ornate carving— chairs and tables so ponderous that any one would require a dozen strong men to lift it.
Lady Diana managed to hold her own among this gilded magnificence. She accepted with quiet graciousness his tribute of compliments and all the other nonsense he uttered about the pleasure of her company the previous evening. As he found himself speaking mainly with her mama, the disloyal thought occurred that perhaps gracious acceptance was the sum of Lady Diana’s conversational talents.
Her mother must have had the same thought. Out of the corner of his eye Lord Rand noted the minatory glance Lady Glencove shot her daughter.
“My Lord, I am so glad you found a moment to stop with us,” Lady Diana obediently began. “I had been endeavouring without success to locate upon Papa’s maps the town you described so beautifully last night. Is it part of the United States proper?”
Lord Rand ought to have been flattered that the young lady had exerted herself to examine maps. It did not occur to him to be flattered. Between his starched neckcloth and the oppressive room he was certain he would be asphyxiated, and his mind was fixed on getting out to the street where he might loosen his cravat and breathe.
Not until he’d left the temple of the goddess and arrived at his sister’s residence did the viscount realise he’d forgotten to invite Lady Diana to drive with him. Oh, time enough for that. He’d stop in again one day soon.
When he entered the saloon, he found Jack Langdon entertaining the ladies. At Max’s entrance, Jack glanced at the clock and exclaimed, “Good grief, you sweet creatures have let me run on well past my time. Miss Pelliston, you must not ask such thorny questions about Herodotus when a fellow’s allowed only a few minutes’ visit,” he gently chided, looking thoroughly embarrassed.
“I suppose you’d have answered well enough if I hadn’t kept interrupting,” said Miss Pelliston.
“If you hadn’t, Jack wouldn’t have let you get a word in edgeways,” Lord Rand put in. “We once spent four hours debating Herodotus’s explanation for the difference between the Persian and Egyptian skulls.”
Miss Pelliston’s obvious astonishment at this hint of his erudition would have put Max completely out of temper if her blank look had not immediately given way to one of dawning respect. He barely heard, therefore, Jack’s overlong leave taking, and scarcely noticed his exit. Max was too busy scrambling through the recesses of his mind for the section labelled Ancient Authors to even notice himself dropping into the chair nearest the young lady instead of that next his sister.
“What is your opinion, Miss Pelliston?” he asked. “You have an abiding interest in hard heads, I recall. D’you think the Egyptians did have thicker skulls than the Persians, and that it was on account of shaving their scalps?”
“Really, Max, must we discuss such morbid topics?” said his sister with a ladylike shudder. “Skulls and scalps, indeed.”
Catherine intervened. “Actually, I was curious about just that matter. Perhaps it is morbid of me—but that is not Lord Rand’s fault.”
“Oh, everything’s my fault,” he answered carelessly. “You aren’t morbid at all, Miss Pelliston. Your interest is scientific. You seek wisdom.”
“Then she seeks at the wrong fount,” said her ladyship.
The viscount threw his sister a quelling glance which was utterly wasted.
“Louisa refuses to hear our speculations about the effects of exposure to the elements upon the human skull. We’ll have to talk about the elements themselves, I’m afraid.”
Miss Pelliston looked disappointed, but bravely took up the subject. “Very well. A lovely day, is it not? Rather warm for this time of year.” She frowned. “That was not very scintillating, was it?”
“Of course not. How in blazes can talk of the weather be scintillating? Oh, you do it well enough, Louisa, but then you’ve scads of practice. My sister,” he explained to Miss Pelliston, “has had years to develop the art of making the dullest topics sound horribly scandalous. I suppose you’ll learn all that in time, but I’d rather you studied it with some other fellow. Shall I take you driving, so that we can talk morbidly to our hearts’ content without offending her delicate sensibilities?”
A pair of startled hazel eyes met his gaze. “Driving?” she echoed faintly.
“Max, you’re impossible. Catherine can’t just dash out of the house at your whim.”
“Why? Have you got an appointment with another chap?”
“Oh, no, My Lord.”
“She’s expecting callers, you inconsiderate beast.”
“I see.” Of course she’d have more callers. Bound to, when she’d danced until the wee hours. He had no reason to wish the whole lot of capering jackanapes at the Devil.
“Then what about tomorrow?” he asked.
Tomorrow the two ladies were promised to the Dowager Countess of Andover.
“Then the next day,” he suggested.
That would not do, either. They must meet with Mrs. Drummond-Burrell in order to satisfy that august personage as to Miss Pelliston’s eligibility for vouchers to Almack’s. After that, they had an appointment with Madame Germaine.
“Then the day after,” Lord Rand persisted.
“Yes, I suppose that’s all right, if, Catherine, you have no objections? Max is an excellent whip, so you need have no fear for your safety.”
A rather stunned Miss Pelliston had no objections she could voice. A time was settled upon, and shortly thereafter the viscount took his leave.
“That was very obliging of him,” said Catherine when he was gone. Frowning, she studied the lace at her wrists.
“Max is never obliging if he can help it, dear. I rather think he enjoys your conversation.”
Miss Pelliston expressed disagreement and began to fuss with the lace.
“Well, at least you do not make him impatient,” said the countess. “Not once during supper last night did I see that caged animal expression he normally wears in fine company.”
Lady Andover’s glance dropped from her protegee’s face to the hand tugging nervously at the delicate fabric. “Obliging or not,” she continued, “you must contrive not to look so thunderstruck when a gentleman seeks your company, my dear. It makes them conceited. At any rate, being seen with Max will do you considerable good—though of course I would not say so before him. People may call him Viscount Vagabond, but he’s a great catch for all that. Your driving with him will arouse the competitive instincts of the other gentlemen.”
Catherine had no opportunity to rebut, because at that moment the Duke of Argoyne was announced.
“Invited her for a drive?” Lord Andover repeated. “All on his own? You never had to drop a hint?”
&nbs
“Amazing,” said her husband. “Should I demand his intentions, then? In loco parentis, I mean. As you told her, Max is an excellent catch... though I was certain he’d set his mind on that great gawk of a girl of Glencove’s. She’s the right altitude for him, certainly, even if she hasn’t a thought in her head that wasn’t put there by her mama first.”
“Regardless her size, Lady Diana is a fair catch herself.”
“Oh, I daresay. She has certainly developed well enough, and the Glencoves are prolific, are they not? Five sons and two daughters.”
“You needn’t be vulgar, Edgar. I know precisely why Lady Diana is one of Papa’s half dozen eligibles.” Lady Andover climbed into bed and snuggled next to her husband. “I also know that she’s a sweet girl. She will make an agreeable wife and a kind mama and would never give Max a moment’s difficulty or disquiet.
“Now why didn’t I think of that when I was looking for a wife?” his lordship asked.
The countess kindly proceeded to unravel this knotty problem for him.
At the moment Lord Rand was demanding his own intentions. How the deuce did he expect to make progress with the fair Juno when he was gallivanting about town with Miss Pelliston? She had been engaged today, and he should have let the matter drop. He’d only asked her on a whim because he’d rather talk of the Egyptians than the Americans. He’d been at the time sick to death of the Americans. Lady Diana’s mama evidently knew his hobbyhorse and had ordered the girl to humour him. He hated being humoured. It made him feel like a recalcitrant little boy.
An adult ought not be coaxed into courtship as a child is coaxed to eat his peas, he thought, unconsciously paraphrasing one of Miss Pelliston’s remarks. Not until he reached the entrance to White’s did he realise that he had paraphrased her. Really, wasn’t it enough that the chit had forced him to chase all over town for her? Must she now formulate his thoughts for him as well?
Two glasses of wine were required to mollify him. Then Jack accosted him and undid all the good the spirits had done.
Jack Langdon might live in a jumbled dream world haphazardly composed of history and fiction. He might be considered an eccentric. All the same, there was no denying he was a good-looking enough chap, with a more than respectable income, not to mention clear prospects of a title. He might have been married long since if only he could have kept his mind fixed on the matter. Jack Langdon, however, rarely fastened on anything in the present for more than ten minutes at a time, doubtless because his brain was too crowded with historical trivia.
Now, unfortunately, he had battened his mind on Catherine Pelliston, and Lord Rand had consequently to endure an overlong soliloquy about that young lady’s perfections. Max was a man of action. He thought that if Jack was so very much taken with the female, he had much better set about taking her in fact—to the altar, if that’s what he meant—instead of plaguing his friends with the young lady’s views of Erasmus, Herodotus, and a lot of other fellows who’d been worm meat this last millennium.
Lord Rand shared this view with his friend.
Mr. Langdon’s dreamy grey eyes grew wistful. “That’s easy enough for you to say, Max. You’ve always been a dashing fellow. You can sweep women off their feet without even thinking about it.”
“That’s the secret, don’t you see? Can’t think about those things or you end up thinking and hesitating forever.”
“Like Hamlet, you mean.”
“Exactly. There he was meditating, waiting, and watching—and where does it get him? His sweetheart kills herself. Don’t blame her. The chap wore out her patience.”
Mr. Langdon considered this startling theory briefly then objected to it on grounds that Hamlet was not first and foremost a love story. There was, after all, the matter of a father’s murder to be avenged.
“On whose say-so?” Max argued. “A ghost. He had no business seeing ghosts. If he’d attended to the girl properly, he wouldn’t have had time to see ghosts. If you want Miss Pelliston, my advice is to go and get her, and never mind palavering at me about it. While you’re thinking, some other more enterprising chap’s going to steal her out from under your nose.”
Mr. Langdon stared. “Egad, you’re right. There’s that stuffy Argoyne and Pomprey’s younger brother and Colonel—”
“Argoyne?” Max interrupted. “Lord Dryasdust? What the devil does he want with her?”
“He approves of her views on agriculture.”
Jack stopped a waiter and ordered more wine before turning back to his friend. “I hear he had his face stuck in Debriefs all morning, rattling her ancestral closets for skeletons.”
“Why, that pompous ass—” The viscount caught himself up short. “There you go, Jack. Three rivals already. No time to be wasted. Now, can we find ourselves a decent game in this mausoleum?”
Three days later, Catherine Pelliston was perched upon an exceedingly high vehicle pulled by two excessively high strung horses. She was nervous, though that was the fault of neither carriage nor cattle. If the fault lay with the driver, that had less to do with his obvious skill in handling the delicate equipage than the nearness of a muscular thigh encased in snug trousers. The scent of herbs and soap, today unmixed with other aromas, seemed more overpoweringly masculine than ever. At least she hadn’t to cope with the viscount’s intense blue-eyed gaze as well, because he had to keep his eyes on the crammed pathway.
They had discussed Egyptian customs between the inevitable interruptions of stopping to greet acquaintances. These were short delays, Lord Rand having scant patience with the gentlemen who stopped them from time to time to pay their compliments to Miss Pelliston.
“Curse them,” he muttered after the fifth interruption. “Can’t they do their flirting at parties instead of holding up vehicles in both directions?”
“Oh, they weren’t flirting.” Catherine coloured slightly under Lord Rand’s incredulous gaze. “Were they?”
“They meant to if given half a chance. Only I don’t mean to give it them, inconsiderate clods. Good Lord, is all of London here?”
“It’s past five o’clock, My Lord, and Lady Andover says everyone parades in Hyde Park at five o’clock.”
“Like a pack of sheep.”
“Very like,” she agreed. “This is one of the places one comes to see and be seen. At least we are not at the theatre and they are not rudely ignoring the performance. Really, how provoking for the actors it must be to find their best efforts—their genius, even—utterly thrown away upon ninety percent of their audience.”
“I’ll wager you’d like to stand up and read them a lecture, Miss Pelliston.”
“I should like, actually, to heave them all out at once. I’m sure my thoughts last night were as murderous as those of Lady Macbeth.”
“Do you often have murderous thoughts, ma’am?”
“Yes.” She stared at the toe of her shoe.
“Such as?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“They must be quite wicked, then.”
“Yes.”
“Are they? That is very exciting. Do tell.”
“You are teasing me,” she reproached.
“Of course I am. I know you never had a truly wicked thought in your whole life. Not even a naughty one, I’ll wager. You don’t even know when a fellow’s flirting with you. If that ain’t innocence, I don’t know what is.”
“That is lack of sophistication.”
“Then enlighten me, Madam Choplogic. What is wickedness?”
“You know perfectly well. Besides, I thought you considered it lowering to be instructed in wickedness by a girl of one and twenty.”
“In dissipation, perhaps. But I won’t tell if you won’t. Come,” he coaxed, “tell me a murderous, wicked thought.”
She scowled at her shoe. “I have wanted to strangle my papa,” she muttered.
“Egad! Patricide. Well, that’s a relief,” said he with
“I would have,” she grimly confessed, “only I had no idea where to go and needed time to plan it out. I thought I had planned so carefully.”
Max gazed at her in growing admiration as she went on with his encouragement to describe her elaborate arrangements—the governess’s garments she’d sewn with her own hands, the route she’d planned that would get her to the coaching inn unremarked, the weary trudging through fields and little-used back lanes.
Had he been in her place, with her upbringing, he wondered where he’d have found the courage to embark upon so complicated and hazardous an enterprise. Why, Louisa had gone off with her maid in tow, in her own father’s carriage, and only a few miles at that. This young woman had no adoring relative to hide with, only a prim governess who might send the girl right back to her papa.
“I never thought about what slaves to propriety women of the upper classes are,” he admitted. “But there’s really nothing you can do unchaperoned, is there? I can drive you in the park in an open carriage or take you to Gunner’s for ices... and that’s about the sum of it. Confound it, if I were a female, I’d want to strangle everybody.”
“Fortunately, you are not. You may do and think what you like, for the most part. The world tolerates a great deal from a man.”
“Oh, yes. We can drink ourselves blind, gamble away the family inheritance, beat our wives and cheat on ‘em and no one turns a hair. Is that what you mean?”
She nodded.
“We live, Miss Pelliston, in a corrupt, unjust, hypocritical world. In the circumstances, you’re justified in thinking murderous thoughts. If you didn’t, I’d have to suspect your powers of reason.”
He was at present suspecting his own. What did he know of injustice? He’d spent his life raging over what he now saw were a few paltry duties, minor irritations in a life of virtually uninterrupted freedom. She, on the other hand, had attempted one small rebellion—an act he’d engaged in repeatedly since childhood—and had very nearly been destroyed.