A Spinster by the Sea Page 7

  He was smiling, mostly with his eyes.

  The sight of him, the simple sight of him, brought Anne’s day to rights. The house-party nonsense, Corbett’s pride, Hume’s hand-patting and winking… They all faded to nothing, washed out to sea by Tindale’s slight, piratical smile.

  “Good morning, Your Grace. As it happens, this shawl might be too light for chillier breezes on the beach. Perhaps you’d accompany me into the house while I fetch another?”

  “Never let it be said that I allowed a lady to bring the wrong shawl to a picnic.” He offered his arm and escorted Anne through the conservatory doors. The air inside was warm, still, and earthy, and the door had barely closed behind them before Anne was kissing him silly.

  Chapter Five

  Anne’s kisses were sunshine on a peaceful ocean and fresh breezes on home shores. She advanced slowly into her kisses, like early spring gently waking the land. She gradually bundled closer and tightened her hold on Augustus’s waist.

  He tried for restraint, tried for delicacy, and only half succeeded. By the time he broke the kiss, he had Anne up against one of the conservatory’s marble columns, and arousal was threatening to put common sense to rout.

  Anne cuddled nearer on a sigh. “I am not by nature impulsive, though I am so very glad to see you, Tindale.”

  That Augustus could inspire her to yield to impulse was almost as gratifying as the resulting kisses had been.

  “One hoped that was the case,” he said, making the effort to step back. “I am only prone to rash behavior where you are concerned. Do you really need a different shawl?”

  “No.” Her expression held a ghost of her younger self, running barefoot half the summer, climbing trees, and galloping headlong over hill and dale.

  “Then let’s get ourselves down to the beach. As much as I want to lock that door and indulge in wild fantasies, we must confer.”

  Anne smoothed her fingers through his hair. “I contemplated sending my regrets this morning. Now I’m glad I showed up. Tell me of these wild fantasies, Your Grace.”

  The intensity of those fantasies shocked Augustus. Would they shock Anne? “First, assure me that Billingsley behaved like a gentleman. You are clearly able to handle him and any presumptions he might be entertaining, but I need to hear the words.”

  “Lord Hume was more than civil. I’ll introduce you to him. About those fantasies?”

  Augustus had seen Hume being more than civil. Billingsley had bent near to Anne whenever she’d spoken, sat right next to her on the garden bench, and patted her hand at least half a dozen times. Lily had counseled patience, while Augustus’s instincts had advised pugilism.

  “We will have no talk of wild fantasies,” Augustus said, “when we must do the pretty before half the nitwits and ninnyhammers in polite society. Lily has spies in London, and they have sent news by express.”

  Anne fussed with her shawl. “Marie has thrown Corbett over for some German noble. Hume wanted to be the first to tell me.”

  Augustus led the way to the doors. “I knew she’d toss him over, but didn’t think she’d manage it in such high style or quite so soon. Then again, a man who will abandon his bride at the altar deserves to be publicly abandoned in turn.”

  Anne remained near the marble column, brows knit. “You think Marie was intent on some sort of feminine justice?”

  “I doubt she was intent on springtime in Berlin, and she had to know Corbett’s parents would cut him off without a farthing if he went through with his latest blunder. Corbett got the least of what was coming to him, and I will ensure that my opinion on the matter is known to all.”

  Anne came along the fern-bordered path and kissed Augustus on the cheek, leaned against him for one sweet moment, then stepped out into the midday sunshine.

  “You are so fierce, Tindale. I understand why Mrs. Northrup’s daughter asked you to advocate on her mama’s behalf. Dukes used to lead armies, and you apparently have an appetite for a fair fight.”

  “I like your other word better—justice. That Corbett behaves like a heedless toddler and suffers no consequences is unjust, to you, to his parents, even to Marie. I considered him a friend—note the past tense—but I knew not to turn my back on him.”

  “To a lesser degree, I feel the same way about Lord Hume. I can’t put my finger on why, but I sense he saw some advantage in attending this house party. Lady Deschamps painted me as bowed down with humiliation, and even Hume knew that could not be the case.”

  “No,” Augustus said, escorting Anne down into the garden, “that could never be the case with you. Was our castle obliterated by the high tides?”

  “Alas, yes.”

  “Then we will have to build another, with better fortifications. Somebody spied on us when last we tarried on the beach, Anne. Two women, or two diminutive men. I suspect the Daleys.” She needed to know this, though clearly the news did not surprise her.

  “Spied on us as we played in the sand, debated the merits of Shakespeare’s tragedies, and shared a snack? Hardly the stuff of scandal, Tindale. I hope the spies were sorely disappointed.”

  In the course of that prosaic afternoon, Tindale had fallen in love, or fallen more deeply in love, with his partner in play. The spies probably had been disappointed, while he most assuredly had not.

  He and Anne caught up to the last of the stragglers making their way to the beach, and he shared her blanket when the picnic hampers were opened. They spent just enough time apart to appease convention, then paired up again for the walk back to the house.

  “If looks could wound,” Anne said quietly, “I would be lying in a bleeding heap at the feet of the Misses Daley.”

  “I don’t gather Billingsley is best pleased with me either,” Augustus said, though the fellow had been entirely polite when Anne had seen to the introductions. “I suspect he intends to offer for you.”

  Anne nearly stumbled, but Augustus caught her.

  “Offer for me? He tried that. It did not go well.” She seemed genuinely horrified by the notion of becoming Billingsley’s wife.

  “You were willing to marry him once upon a time.” For which Augustus tried not to resent the handsome, smiling widower.

  “Once upon a time, when I had far less grasp of what a Society marriage entails.” She stared in the direction of the manor house as if all the evils of the underworld lurked within its wall. “If being a mere heiress has subjected me to endless judgment and gossip, then can you imagine what being married to a marquess’s heir would entail? Hume has landed on his feet, as the saying goes. As his wife, I would be expected to entertain, to support the correct charities rather than the meaningful charities, to circulate at the infernal house parties—I hate house parties, Tindale, in case there was any doubt of that. I hate all of it, which is why I could be persuaded to entertain the suit of a duke’s fribbling younger son.”

  Anne’s pace had picked up, though she kept her voice down. “Corbett would never have troubled me much to do the pretty, but Lord Hume, as a marquess’s heir… That would mean court functions and political dinners, state dinners. At the rate the present marquess is drinking, he’s not long for this world, and I am far less gullible than I was several years ago. Hume must be daft.”

  For Anne, this amounted to a tirade, and yet, she was absolutely correct. A Society marriage, a Society life, was one of little privacy and less depth. Augustus had spent the past six months absorbing that lesson until it made him bilious.

  He took Anne’s hand, lest she fly off back to her little cottage and never be seen again. “Billingsley is proud, Anne. You rescued him. Now he wants to rescue you, to be the knight in shining armor.”

  Her steps slowed. “That makes a kind of simple masculine sense, but I don’t need or want rescuing. I will disabuse Hume of his gallant notions, except as you say, he’s not being gallant. He’s polishing his halo before polite society, finding a mother for his boys, a hostess, and proving to my aunt and uncle—and the whole world—that they were wrong about him. The scorned suitor saves the day in every proper farce, doesn’t he?”

  “But you were right about him. He was not worthy of consideration for the honor of your hand, his financial situation aside, because he had failed to win your heart.”

  Anne shifted her grip to Augustus’s arm, the posture of a proper lady with a proper escort. “I did not want anybody winning my heart. Perhaps Hume’s pride took a few blows on that score as well. Let’s look in on Mrs. Northrup, shall we? Then I can quit this infernal gathering and go back to building sandcastles on the beach.”

  Fortunately for Augustus, Lily asked Anne to be her partner at the following night’s card party, and he was thus spared having to beg Anne not to abandon him to the tender mercies of spies and schemers.

  Or beg her to marry him. As he handed Anne up into his coach and endured the fluttering farewells of her widowed cousin, Augustus managed to impersonate a cordial peer, though the day had left him distinctly unhappy.

  If Anne now dreaded the prospect of marrying a future marquess, what on earth could induce her to marry a duke?

  “We owe this to Tindale,” Charlotte Daley said, capping the ink bottle and sprinkling sand over the missive. “Solicitors are accustomed to consorting with criminals, and now here’s His Grace, bumbling about among the cream of Society. The duke can’t possibly know what association with that creature will do to his reputation.”

  “To his children’s reputations,” Roberta replied, pacing before the sitting room hearth. “Why the Duchess of Tindale doesn’t take him in hand, I vow I do not know.”

  Charlotte had almost forgotten there was a widowed Duchess of Tindale. Jennifer or Janine—Eugenia? “She’s a mousy creature. Her people were in beer, or coal, or something dreadfully plebeian. Besides, as all of society knows, she failed…”

  Roberta joined in, “To provide her husband an heir. Poor thing.”

  Charlotte shook the sand from the page. “We really are awful, Bobbie, but in the nicest possible way.”

  “In the prettiest possible way. I do think Lieutenant Thurlow fancies you, Charl. He’s not bad looking, if you don’t mind that weathered-sea-captain complexion.”

  He also had that magnificent military posture and was ever so quick to fetch a lady’s fan. “He hasn’t a feather to fly with, alas, though he does seem to be lucky at cards. If you wear my green sarcenet, he’s sure to ask you to partner him.”

  Roberta peered out the window, which overlooked the front drive. “I’m saving your green sarcenet for flying kites.”

  “But any decent breeze will lift the skirts halfway to your knees if you wear that dress, it’s too… You devilish creature. You want to show off your ankles.”

  “She’s finally leaving.” Roberta twitched the lacy curtain aside. “Taking Tindale’s coach to go precisely one mile down the beach to that poky little inn.”

  Charlotte joined her sister at the window. “Is she taking her poky cousin with her? I would not put it past Helen Saunders to set her cap for Lord Hume. Both are bereaved, both have children. She hasn’t let her figure go, we must give her that.”

  “Must we? She looks a bit droopy, to me, and skinny. Childbearing destroys a figure.”

  Charlotte watched as Miss Anne Baxter was handed into the coach by no less personage than His Grace of Tindale.

  “He fancies her,” Charlotte said, a forlorn note creeping into her words. Something about the way Tindale bowed over Miss Baxter’s hand and leaned closer to her while offering his farewells stirred a longing Charlotte would not admit to even her sister.

  “He fancies her money,” Roberta retorted. “The last Duke of Tindale was very likely as land-poor as the rest of us, and now the present duke, who has little enough in the way of private means, must somehow bring it all to rights.”

  “I don’t think that’s it, Bobbie.” Tindale had been a successful solicitor, and they generally did all right for themselves. The previous Duke of Tindale had been a prudent sort, save for his choice of duchess.

  Roberta flounced away from the window. “Then Tindale can set the Baxter Bride up as his mistress, if our plans for her fail—though they won’t. Your idea is brilliant, Charl.”

  Roberta’s gift for nicknames was brilliant, if a trifle nasty. “I think you fancy Lord Hume, don’t you, Bobbie?”

  Roberta examined her reflection in the cheval mirror for the twentieth time that day. “Lord Hume’s first wife was brunette. I am brunette. His first wife was demure and sweet. I am demure and sweet, at least when the gentlemen are within earshot. She was a fine dancer—one must be honest about that—and I am an excellent dancer. I do believe Lord Hume and I would suit.”

  “You’d leave Tindale to me?”

  Roberta sent a particular look over her shoulder. In public, Bobbie was vague about which of the Daley sisters was the elder, but in private, she occasionally resorted to the status of older and wiser sibling.

  “Tindale is a duke, so of course I could never castigate any woman for securing his suit, least of all my own sister. But, Charlotte, you will have your work cut out for you. He’s from a cadet branch of the family, a solicitor is not a gentleman in the received sense, and he’s… His proportions bring to mind plows and forges rather than quadrilles and card parties.”

  Charlotte liked his proportions. One could not say that. “He’s not stupid.”

  Roberta went back to the window as Tindale’s matched grays moved off to circle the fountain before the house.

  “You have that much right, Charl. His Grace’s show of attention to the Baxter Bride is shrewd. He’s seen as taking pity on a fellow outsider, which makes him look gallant and above it all. But we saw them on the beach, playing in the sand when they might have been trysting in that little cottage. A man—a duke—does not while away an afternoon in the most idle of pursuits when he’s private with a woman who interests him.”

  Charlotte had tried to reassure herself with that very point. “But if Helen Saunders was doing her bit as chaperone, then the cottage would not be available for Miss Baxter’s ruination.”

  “Simpering Saunders spends her afternoons playing whist with the other widows. She’s all but tossing her cousin under the wheels of scandal while pretending to be a conscientious relative. Not everybody is as loyal to family as we are, Charl.”

  The coach rolled away, and Tindale remained on the steps, watching its departure. Not until the conveyance turned at the gateposts did he disappear inside the house.

  I want a man who watches my departing coach like that. I want a man who will idle away an afternoon on the beach with me. I want a man who is genuinely gallant and above it all.

  “Speaking of loyal family, do you think Papa really means that this will be our last London Season?”

  Roberta’s perpetually assured air faltered. “Mama will bring him ’round. She scored a coup securing this invitation for us, and Papa has to be sensible of the challenge we face. How is a gentleman to choose between us?”

  Bobbie offered that perennial jest with a hint of desperation.

  “I don’t need a duke, Bobbie. If Thurlow offered for me, I’d accept him.”

  “Nonsense, dearest. You are to have Tindale if it’s Tindale you want. I will have Lord Hume, and Papa will see that every bill from the milliners or glovemakers was paid to good effect. Let’s seal up your letter and find a footman to send it up to Town for us. An express should be there by morning, and Lord Corbett might well join the party by supper tomorrow.”

  “We are to attend the final ball,” Helen said, fingering a cream stock invitation. “Yesterday’s little outing to look for shells must have convinced Lady Deschamps that Tindale is interested in you.”

  How Anne hated—hated—the speculation in Helen’s tone. The maid had already come by to clear up the breakfast dishes, and if the sunshine pouring down on Rose Cottage’s terrace was any indication, the day would be even more glorious than yesterday.

  Why couldn’t this respite by the sea truly be a respite? “I would rather not attend any balls, Helen.”

  “You want to waltz with Tindale. I know you do.”

  Anne wanted to do much more than waltz with His Grace. “And you want to dance with Lord Bertram?”

  Helen set the invitation aside. “He’s comely. He’s an excellent conversationalist and every inch a gentleman.” She sat up a little straighter. “I suspect he’s lonely. He loves his children, Anne, but to be a Papa unable to dower one’s daughter is a terrible thing.”

  The morning light revealed what candlelight kindly did not. Helen would not see thirty again, and yet, the life of a widow—providing chaperonage, making up numbers, raising half-orphaned children—had not been in her plans.

  Helen was lonely, too, and prepared to do something about it.

  “I like Lord Bertram,” Anne said, “and if you are asking me to dower his daughter, should you and he marry, I would be more than happy to. We can make those arrangements in your settlement agreements, or I can simply gift the girl with the money anonymously. I have reason to hope, though, that Lieutenant Thurlow’s situation will soon improve.”

  Helen’s countenance brightened. “He intends to offer for you?”

  “I certainly hope not,” Anne replied, rising, “but why must everything, every single, blasted thing, revolve around who is marrying whom? I would not accept Thurlow’s suit if he were titled, wealthy, a decorated war hero, and the last bachelor standing.”

  This week by the sea had taught Anne that much. Tindale had said it indirectly: Anne had been foolish to think a practical match would suit her, despite practical matches being the preferred choice in polite society. She could be content with that sort of arrangement, but she could not be happy.