Captain Langthorne's Proposal. Elizabeth Beacon
properly put me in my place. If I might suggest you take a few lessons in rebuffing a gentleman’s hopes and dreams with finesse before you brave London society once more, Lady Summerton? Or perhaps it should be the other way about and your potential suitors are the ones who need their courage honed by an expert? At least giving lessons to them will help me pass any tedious moments during our stay, and I feel uniquely placed to offer such forlorn hopes my wise counsel.’
‘You can’t possibly live with us!’ she heard herself say, as if everything was settled and nothing left to do but decide where they would reside.
‘I really don’t see why not. Even the most exacting chaperon would trust your reputation to Cousin Estelle and my sister.’
‘Your cousin wouldn’t notice if you held an orgy under her very nose!’
‘An interesting notion, but I think I can restrain myself. And my sister would be justly furious if we abandoned her to Cousin Estelle’s tender mercies. She would never see the outside of the nearest library or Hatchards.’
‘You would be there,’ Serena protested, but her resolution was faltering.
She recalled the circus that was the London season for debutantes such as she and Rachel had once been with a shudder. To leave Rachel to face all that in the care of bookish, otherworldly Miss Langthorne would be distinctly unfriendly, and she knew she couldn’t do it.
‘My presence will make matters worse,’ she defended herself weakly, feeling she was leading a forlorn hope against a superior tactician.
‘Rubbish. Nothing could be worse than poor Rachel spending months being carted from one blue-stocking salon to another on my cousin’s coattails, and you know it—unless you’ve become as blue as my esteemed relative.’
‘You know perfectly well I haven’t,’ she told him, ‘and nobody could call Miss Langthorne formidable,’ she added lamely, quite ruining her effect.
‘I prefer to call her a force of nature,’ her undutiful cousin said with a surprisingly affectionate smile for a relative who benignly ignored him and everyone else most of the time.
‘That’s one alternative, I suppose.’
‘It is the only description I ever found that fitted her.’
‘As she has a reputation for speaking her mind, I can’t think why you consider her a suitable chaperon for myself or your sister, given that she will doubtless refuse to attend any event that’s unlikely to amuse or interest her.’
‘Which is precisely why I need your presence. Cousin Estelle, eccentric though she might be, would never permit immorality to flourish under any roof where she was residing,’ he replied, with every appearance of shocked virtue himself. ‘Any more than I would dream of suggesting it.’
‘I should stop right there, Sir Adam. You were doing so well until you got carried away,’ she said, with a frown that was only partly in jest.
‘Then ignore my pleas and come for Rachel’s sake. It could be a bigger disaster than her first season if you don’t support her.’
‘I really don’t see what I can do that any other widowed lady might not do better,’ she protested.
‘You have the sophistication of taste to see my sister is dressed to suit her own looks, rather than those of whichever blonde beauty the dressmakers are promoting this season—or you have when you choose to employ it,’ he said, with a disapproving glance at her very plain gown and shabby cloak.
‘You have a way of flattering a lady that is almost unparallelled, Sir Adam,’ she forced herself to parry lightly, but he had given her pause for thought and she suspected he knew it.
‘What do you think the Bond Street Beaux would say about my sister if she turned up in the salons of the ton in her current guise?’ he challenged her.
‘Poor Rachel,’ she said unwarily, as she considered her friend as she had last seen her clad in a tobacco-brown stuff gown that had never been fashionable, even in the dim and distant past when the village dressmaker had made it up for her.
‘Then you’ll do it?’
‘I’ll talk to Rachel, and if she truly wishes to go I’ll support her in any way I can.’
‘Hmm, an admirably evasive reply. You’ll support her, but is that to be from a distance or at her side, where she needs you?’
‘Where she needs me, of course. It’s time I returned the favour.’
Chapter Four
Sir Adam gave her a sharp look, but Serena focused her attention on the east lodge of Windham looming on the horizon as if she had never seen it before. She had never discussed the darkest days of her marriage and widowhood with anyone but Janet and Rachel, from whom it had been impossible to hide her unhappiness, and she refused to start now.
‘Thank you,’ he finally said quietly, and she turned to look at him at last.
She could see nothing on his face but relief that she had agreed to his scheme. He was a good and thoughtful brother, yet she couldn’t dismiss the idea that she had just conceded the first round of a match that was more important than she knew—and to a master of strategy as well.
‘Unless you wish to be invited for dinner at Windham tonight, I suggest you set me down by the picket gate into the park, Sir Adam, so I can walk to the Dower House unremarked,’ she said, rather helpfully for someone who had been so neatly outmanoeuvred.
‘Will you be there?’ he asked, and she tried not to care that he asked as if his enjoyment depended on her company.
‘Luckily my sister-in-law takes my no for an answer, but you wouldn’t be so fortunate, I dare say,’ she said lightly.
‘Then I shall do as you say, my lady, and trust such humility will lead you to greet me with a little more than bare civility when next we meet.’
‘I hope you don’t think me so rude as to ignore my neighbours, sir?’
‘Well, that is good. I must put myself forward more often,’ he replied, with a decided twinkle back in those rather fascinating eyes.
She really must concentrate harder on winning their battle of words and wills if she was to see him every day when they went to London, she decided. Refusing to dwell on his victory, she graciously allowed him to tie the reins to the kickboard once more and hand her down with due ceremony.
‘Thank you, Sir Adam. You have saved me from arriving home all aglow from walking home on a warm day.’
‘I have, haven’t I? What a splendid gentleman I am,’ he said, in a self-satisfied tone that had her hiding a smile despite her resolution to be all dignity and propriety with him from now on.
‘That you’re not. I’m too much the lady to say what you really are.’
‘Very commendable, my dear,’ he replied, then gave her such a warm smile before he touched his hat brim with his whip and drove away that he left her feeling as flustered as if she had run all the way home after all.
When she reached the Dower House her flushed cheeks and windblown hair led the Dowager to inform her that she looked like a milkmaid, which gave Serena a good excuse to seek out the privacy of her chamber while she restored her appearance to suitably subdued order. A quiet evening at the Dower House with a cosy fire and a good book was, she decided, just what a female under siege from a determined gentleman and her own wayward inclinations needed to restore her peace of mind.
Sir Adam made sure the whole household knew he would be busy with his account books and correspondence that evening. He even managed to give them some attention—until his sister came in to inform him he was very poor company and she was going to bed. He murmured something suitably infuriating, before going back to his figuring as if lost in concentration, then sat back in his comfortable