The Courtship Read online

  Esther manufactured a smile. “Thank you, sir, and tell me how your sisters go on.”

  He appeared surprised to recall he had sisters, though both attended the same court functions as Esther and many of the ladies present at the house party. Soon enough the steps of the dance saw him partnering other women, and Esther could breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Are you concentrating on the steps, or have you taken me into dislike?” Percival Windham bowed to her jauntily, took both of her hands, and as the dance called for, moved closer. “Or is Sir Jasper overstepping?”

  Esther dropped his hands, turned her back, smiled over her shoulder—who had chosen this particular dance?—and turned back to take Lord Percival’s hands. “I’m concentrating on the steps.”

  They promenaded down the line, hands joined before them. “You’d rather be in the library, curled up with a book by the fire, reading French poems, or possibly German. Tell me, Miss Himmelfarb, do Germans write poetry?”

  He was teasing, but also studying her as he smiled that particular, personal smile.

  Esther dropped his hands and turned a full circle. “I’d be reading Shakespeare sonnets up in my room. Anybody can come upon a lady in the library.”

  Though her room would be stuffy and dank because Esther lacked sufficient strength to pry open its single window.

  “There’s a full moon tonight, Miss Himmelfarb. Why not walk with me in the garden instead?”

  He turned to his corner and whisked her down the line, leaving Esther to wonder if twenty more days—and nights—of this nonsense was worth the effort of seeing her cousin suitably matched.

  As she slipped up to her room an hour later on aching feet, she also spared a thought to wonder whom Percival Windham would have enticed into the garden, and if he’d truly limit his activities there to walking.

  ***

  “The trouble is, we ain’t got a proper dam.”

  Dear Tony was sliding past pleasantly foxed and barreling on to true inebriation, so Percival waved away the footman plying the card room’s decanter.

  “You’re insulting the Duchess of Moreland, Tony, if you’re saying our mother is anything less than proper. One does this at considerable peril to his well-being.”

  Tony continued to stare morosely at his brandy. “That’s what I’m saying. She’s all duchess and no mama. Not mama, not dame, not mother. We’d be back in Canada if His Grace had a notion how to foil her queer starts.”

  “Do you honestly expect me to believe you’re missing Canada?”

  “Not missing it, exactly, but there ain’t any debutantes in Canada, no levees, no duchesses.”

  In vino, veritas. “There are bears and wolves, or had you forgotten?”

  Tony offered his brother a rueful grin. “Wolves don’t sing any worse than those sopranos at the opera.”

  “The sopranos are a good deal better smelling and friendlier.”

  “That they are.” Tony blinked at his drink, perhaps wondering how the thing had gotten so quickly empty. “There’s one little Italian gal from the chorus, and I swear that mouth of hers could devour—”

  “Anthony, we’re in proper company.” To the extent a card room of reprobates and dowagers could be considered proper at the end of a long evening.

  At the peremptory note in Percy’s voice, Tony blinked. “Is it time to go home?”

  Not for another twenty days. “We’re certainly not going back to Canada tonight.”

  “Bloody cold in Canada,” Tony observed, apropos of nothing.

  “True.” Percy set his drink aside and debated whether to leave Tony to his own devices at such a late hour. “At least in Canada the savages announce themselves as such, observe certain rules of engagement, and don’t use the minuet to scout out the opposition.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean!” Tony gestured with his glass a trifle wildly. Then paused as if he’d heard an arresting sound. “I’ll be stepping to the gent’s retiring room for a moment.”

  “Of course.” And Percy would not allow his younger brother to stumble through the corridors, half-disguised, in charity with the world, only to be pulled into a convenient broom closet by some enterprising debutante.

  They negotiated the dimly lit passages without incident—unless a giggle from a secluded alcove on the second floor could be considered an incident. As Tony unbuttoned his falls and took a lean against a handy wall in the men’s retiring room, he aimed an oddly sober look at his brother.

  “I’ve had this notion, lately, Perce.”

  The man could piss and philosophize at the same time—a true exponent of the aristocracy. “Any particular notion?”

  “It’s a queer notion, as queer as considering a vocation in the church.”

  “Which you did for about fifteen minutes, until you recalled that bit about poverty, chastity, and obedience.” For Percy, five minutes’ contemplation of a life in the church had seen him buying his colors. “For God’s sake, button up if you’re done.”

  “What? Oh, indeed.”

  This late in the evening, Tony’s fingers were clumsy, though his brain apparently continued to lumber around and his mouth danced attendance on it. “I’ve had the notion Her Grace might be right. Petey ain’t getting any younger, and his lady ain’t dropped a bull calf in ten years of marriage.”

  Tony was the only person in the whole of the realm who could refer to the Marquess of Pembroke, heir to the Moreland ducal title, as “Petey.”

  “Lady Pembroke could yet conceive a son.”

  “Canada is cold, Perce. It’s full of wolves and savages and colonials with very big, loud guns and little allegiance to dear King George.”

  When Tony had fumbled a few buttons closed in relevant locations, Percy linked his arm through his brother’s. “Are you thinking of selling out and joining the ranks of retired bachelors?”

  That would solve a significant problem for Percy, true, but the idea of boarding a ship for the colonies at the end of the Season and not having Tony there to provide his inane commentary was disquieting.

  “I’m thinking of taking a bride,” Tony said, much of the bonhomie leaving his voice. “You like all that military whatnot, the pomp and nonsense, for King and Country. I like to be warm and well fed, to tup pretty girls, and spend my quarterly in two weeks flat.”

  And so had Percy, until a few years in charge of several hundred younger sons and rascals like Tony had somehow soured the allure of returning to an idle existence. Then Her Grace had taken this notion to recall her sons from the provinces and lecture them about Duty to the Succession, Familial Loyalty, and Social Responsibility.

  The woman put the average gunnery sergeant to shame with her harangues.

  “You are not ideal husband material, Tony.” Percy spoke as gently as he could. “The ladies like some constancy for the first few years of marriage. They like to show off their trophy and drag a new husband about on calls. You’ve got the place in Hampshire, and you’d be expected to tend your acres for much of the year.”

  Tony was silent until they reached the head of the stairs. “You’re saying I’d have to leave my bed before noon. Save the drinking until after supper, show up for parade inspection, the same as in Canada. Scout the terrain, deal with the locals.”

  Put like that, civilian life didn’t sound like much of an adjustment.

  “A wife would take umbrage at the opera singers. She’d expect pin money and babies.”

  “Babies aren’t so bad.”

  Tony sounded wistful, though he was right: babies were dear and about as easy to love as a human being could be. A man with two adorable nieces could admit such a thing easily—to himself. On the one hand, if Tony married and produced babies—male babies in particular—then Percy could sail back to the regiment despite Her Grace’s harangues and blu
stering.

  And yet, on the other hand, to leave Tony behind in the clutches of a duchess-in-training, no older brother to seek consolation and counsel with, Her Grace looming over the marriage with a calendar in one hand and a receiving blanket in the other…

  The Marquess of Pembroke was a decent fellow, but he hadn’t been able to hide from his younger brothers what the duchess’s interference had done to an otherwise civil and sanguine union.

  “You’ll not be marrying anybody just yet, Tony Windham. As a duke’s son, you’re a prime catch. At least look over the possibilities at some length and think of your chorus girl.”

  “Right-o, dear, sweet, little… the Italian—whatever her name is.”

  “The one with the devouring mouth.”

  ***

  A room to oneself was a mixed blessing at a gathering like Lady Morrisette’s. On the one hand, Esther had a little privacy in those rare moments when she wasn’t stepping and fetching for her betters, and particularly for Lady Morrisette.

  On the other hand, a lady with a room to herself had to guard doubly against the gentlemen who “accidentally” stumbled into her chambers late at night. She also had no one with whom to discuss the day’s small revelations, such as how hard it had been not to watch Lord Percival Windham as he showed one lady after another how to hold her bow and let fly her arrows.

  While Esther had lost the archery contest only by deliberately aiming her last shots wide of the bull’s-eye, Charlotte’s accuracy with a barbed comment was not to be underestimated, regardless of how desperately she’d needed Lord Percy’s assistance with her bow.

  Esther flipped back the covers and eased from the bed—the cot. She’d had a choice of sleeping with Lady Pott’s maid in a stuffy little dressing room, or taking this glorified closet under the eaves. The closet had appealed, though on a warm night, it was nigh stifling, and on a cool night it would be frigid.

  “I need a posset.”

  Closets did not sport bellpulls, so Esther slid her feet into slippers, belted a plain dressing gown over her nightgown, and headed down the maid’s stairs to the kitchen.

  A tired scullery maid frowned only slightly at Esther’s request before preparing a cup of hot, spiced, spiked milk.

  “There ye be, mum. Will there be anything else?”

  Esther took a sip of her posset. “My thanks, it’s very good. Does that door lead to the kitchen garden?”

  “It do, and from thence to the scent garden and the cutting garden. The formal garden lies beyond that, and then the knot gardens and the folly.” The maid shot a longing glance at the stool by the hearth, as if even giving these directions made a girl’s feet ache.

  Ache worse. After eighteen hours on her feet, the maid was no doubt even more tired than Esther.

  “I’ll take my posset to the garden.”

  “The guests don’t generally use the kitchen garden, mum.”

  “All the better.”

  This earned Esther a small, understanding smile. The girl sought her stool, and Esther sought the cooler air of the garden by moonlight—the garden where she’d be safe from wandering guests of either gender.

  Kitchen gardens bore a particular scent, a fresh, green, culinary fragrance that tickled Esther’s nose as she found a bench along the far wall. Percival Windham’s comment the day before about the moon being full came to mind, because the garden was limned in silvery light, the moon beaming down in all its beneficent glory.

  “So you couldn’t sleep either?”

  Esther’s first clue regarding the garden’s other occupant was moonlight gleaming on his unpowdered hair.

  “My lord.” She started to rise, only to see Percival Windham’s teeth flash in the shadows.

  “Oh, must you?” He approached her bench, gaze trained on the cup in her hand. “Might I join you? I fear the farther reaches of the garden are full of predators stalking large game.”

  He sounded tired and not the least flirtatious. Esther pulled her skirts aside when what she ought to be doing was returning to the stuffy, mildewed confines of her garret.

  She took a sip of her posset and waited.

  “How do you do it, Miss Himmelfarb?”

  “My lord?”

  He sighed and stretched long legs out before him, crossing his feet at the ankles and leaning back against the wall behind them. Moonlight caught the silver of his shoe buckles and the gold of the ring on his left little finger.

  “How do you endure these infernal gatherings? They are exhausting of a man’s fortitude if not his energy. If one more young lady presses a feminine part of her anatomy against my person, I am going to start howling like a wolf and wearing my wig backward.”

  His lordship sounded so put upon, Esther found it difficult not to smile. “May I ask you a question, your lordship?”

  “Lord Percy, if you must stand on ceremony—or sit upon it, as the case may be.”

  “Do you take snuff?”

  He peered over at her in the moonlight. “I do not. It’s a deucedly filthy habit. Nor do I use smoking tobacco. I’m convinced my father’s frequent agues of the lungs are related to his fondness for the pipe. If you were to ask to borrow my snuffbox, you’d find it holds lemon drops.”

  He reached over and plucked Esther’s cup from her grasp, raising it up. “May I?”

  What was she to say to that? “You may.”

  He helped himself to a sip of her posset, and the idea of it, of this handsome lordling drinking so casually from her cup, was peculiar indeed.

  “Are you flirting with me, my lord?”

  He set the cup down between them, his lips quirking. “If you have to ask, Miss Himmelfarb, then I’m making a poor job of it, aren’t I?”

  He hadn’t said no. “May I ask you another question?”

  His lordship closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “I’d rather it be a flirtatious sort of question now that you raise the subject. You’re very pretty, you know, and I’ve lately concluded the entire purpose of this gathering is to develop one’s stamina as a flirt. Like field maneuvers, I suppose.” He cracked open one eye. “I apologize if I’m being rude. That’s a truth potion you’ve slipped me.”

  He settled back against the wall, shifting broad shoulders as if to get more comfortable. With his eyes closed, Percival Windham by moonlight was…

  Handsome. Still, yet, more… deucedly handsome, to use his word. Lord Percival was the spare, but he had “duke” stamped all over him. The height, the self-possession, the charm…

  “So you’re not averse to another question, my lord?”

  “If we’re to be drinking companions, Miss Himmelfarb, then the ‘my lording’ has to cease. Mind you, I am not flirting with you.”

  He was humoring her, though. Or something. “Do you frequently bathe in company?”

  A beat of silence went by, while Esther wondered if perhaps that posset wasn’t truth potion after all.

  “Miss Himmelfarb, this version of not-flirting holds a man’s interest. Whyever would you ask?”

  He sounded amused and genuinely intrigued.

  “I am appeasing my curiosity. Young ladies gossip almost as much as young men do.”

  “They couldn’t possibly. To answer your question, it might have escaped your notice, but my dimensions are such that I rather take up the available space in most tubs. I am not in the habit of entertaining callers when I’m at my bath, despite what our hostess appears to have told half the women in the realm. You never did answer my question.”

  Esther cast back over their short, odd conversation. “How do I endure house parties?”

  “Without committing hanging felonies on your fellow guests, all of whom seem intent on mischief. It’s worse than an entire regiment of Scottish recruits on leave.”

  He wasn
’t simply tired, he was exasperated and not a little bewildered. Esther picked up the posset and handed it to him.

  “Do you miss Canada?” This was what she should have asked him, not those other questions—the ones that Herodia, Charlotte, and Zephora would not believe the answers to.

  He drank deeply from her cup and kept it in his hands. “I wish I missed Canada. The land is so beautiful it makes your soul ache, but pitiless, too. In any season, Canada has ways to kill a man—snakes, locals, diseases, itching vines, and lunatic commanding officers.”

  Perhaps he was a little drunk, or a little homesick for somewhere neither Canada nor Kent.

  “You could transfer elsewhere.”

  “And it would be the same, Miss Himmelfarb, because it would still be His Majesty’s military, and I would still be the Moreland spare.” He fell silent, Esther’s cup held in his two hands on his flat belly.

  “You were treated differently because your father is a duke?”

  “I was. By some I was treated worse, by others better. At my last post, I was bitterly resented by my superior officer.”

  This was far, far worse than flirting, or even that whispering-in-her-ear thing Percival Windham could do in a room full of people. Still, she asked the next question.

  “What happened?”

  He grew still, the darkness seemed to gather closer, and Esther caught a whiff of his cedary scent on soft night air.

  “I will tell you, Esther Himmelfarb, because I am a just a wee bit in my cups, or perhaps it’s the moonshine loosening my tongue. In any case, we will both wish—and in the morning pretend—that I had kept my own counsel.” Another pause, another sip of her posset. “My unit was between posts—there are no roads worth the name—and we came upon an encampment of natives. There are all stripes of Indians in the Canadian woods, some friendly, some murderous, and some both, depending on the day of the week. We encountered not even a gesture in the direction of hostility from this group, which upon inspection turned out to be a function of their menfolk being off on a trapping expedition.”