Earl's Invention Page 7

  The carriage moved again, then halted in a pool of light, and Bonnie started and glanced fearfully up. But the light was only that of the streetlamp overhead, and when she essayed a sheepish smile at David, who occupied the rear-facing seat, she saw that his sapphire eyes were resting upon her.

  “You must not be nervous,” he said gently. “You’ve learned your lessons so well that I daresay you might almost fool Cornelia herself. And as I mentioned earlier, you are looking excessively handsome, tven handsomer than I had expected.”

  He had, in fact, stated this opinion at considerable length when they met in the vestibule, and—as had occurred then— his undisguised appraisal brought a flood of warmth to Bonnie’s cheeks. She dropped her own eyes, but in the dim glow of the streetlight, the primrose flounce around the bottom of her skirt looked as white as her satin shoes. Not that it signified, for she well recollected the reflection she had studied before she descended to the foyer. And. false modesty apart, she could not have said whether she looked handsome

  or not because the image in the mirror had seemed that of an utter stranger.

  Her gown had presented no surprise, of course, for she had obediently returned to Leicester Square for her scheduled fittings. During the course of these, she had been compelled to own, albeit grudgingly, that Mrs. Pruitt and her brother had chosen the perfect fabrics for her wardrobe—bold medleys far exceeding Bonnie’s limited imagination. She was sure she would never have ordered the dress she wore tonight, but the moment she glimpsed the slip of deep yellow satin, the covering frock of lemon-colored net, the primrose lace trim, she was equally sure the dress would not be half so stunning were it made in any other way.

  At any rate. Bonnie had been familiar with her gown long before Nell withdrew it from the wardrobe, and she had selected her headdress herself. She had, it was true, been armed with Mrs. Pruitt's swatches—and fortified with a generous dose of the mantua-maker’s advice—when she ventured into Mr. Mercer’s establishment; but once there, she had chosen the garland of primrose satin flowers quite unaided. So the only theoretically shocking modification to her appearance should have been that rendered by Monsieur Michel, who had come that afternoon to apply his scissors and numerous other mysterious implements to Bonnie’s unruly hair. But the coiffeur had departed hours since, leaving her ample time to grow accustomed to the short, soft curls which framed her face and ended at the nape of her neck.

  Therefore, Bonnie had concluded as she examined the alien reflection in the glass, she must be reacting to the sudden combination of all these factors. Her gown alone had not seemed strange, nor her headdress, nor even her new coiffure; but put together, they created quite a different person. Added to which, the earl and Nell had relentlessly pinched at her to eat just a little more of this or take another small portion of that, and her face had grown noticeably fuller as a result. Not that this was anything to lament, Bonnie assured herself. To the contrary, her feasting had served to moderate her gaunt, haggard countenance to one of . . . Well, she preferred to term her visage “arrestingly lean,” and she fancied that in this respect she had come to look rather like the earl. A circumstance which would undoubtedly lend credence to their charade.

  But however advantageous her plumper face might be, it was another change, and Bonnie’s fingers stole to her right shoulder. She had initially hoped her bruise would heal before Lady Lambeth’s ball, but she now regarded it as the last tenuous proof of her identity. She entertained an irrational fear that when the faint yellowish circle disappeared, Bonnie Gordon would vanish as well, and the stranger in the mirror would truly become Bonnie Carlisle.

  “Although ..." David cleared his throat. “Although your dress is somewhat less . . . er . . . modest than I had anticipated."

  Bonnie had expected him to bring this up, but she bristled with annoyance nonetheless. Mrs. Pruitt had originally cut the ball gowns to his lordship’s specifications, but on the occasion of Bonnie’s first fitting, she and the seamstress had agreed that the high necks the earl had suggested quite destroyed the lines of the garments. Mrs. Pruitt had consequently altered the bodices in accordance with the current dictates of fashion, and Bonnie could not suppose they were nearly as revealing as those of the gowns David commissioned for his myriad "friends.” She angrily raised her eyes, intending to voice this rebuttal aloud, but she perceived that his expression was one of puzzlement rather than disapproval. He viewed her as she viewed herself, Bonnie realized—saw her as a stranger—and she felt another prickle of fear.

  The barouche crept ahead again, and even as Bonnie blinked against a sudden blaze of light, the carriage stopped, and a liveried footman bounded forward, opened the door, and extended a hand to assist her out. Her nagging fear turned at once to total panic, and she cast a look of frantic entreaty at the seat across. But the earl was climbing out the opposite side of the carriage, and Bonnie took the proffered hand and stumbled down the step to the footpath. She swayed a bit when the footman released her, but before she could inform David that she was entirely too ill to attend a ball, he seized her elbow and began to usher her up the shallow stairs to Lady Lambeth’s door.

  Another footman escorted them from the entry hall to the first story and along the corridor to the second-floor staircase, which was clogged by a lengthy line of guests awaiting admission to her ladyship’s ballroom. Bonnie was much relieved by this latest delay; with any luck, she thought optimistically, she would collapse and die on the stairs before she was required to speak to anyone. But she did not, and far too soon the butler was announcing them to the assembled multitude. At the sound of her name—“Miss Elizabeth Carlisle” —Bonnie fancied she would collapse after all; but the earl, as if he had sensed just such a possibility, tightened his grip on her arm and tugged her toward the receiving line.

  “Carlisle?” Lady Lambeth echoed.

  Actually, Bonnie now observed, the receiving line consisted solely of their hostess: a very plump, prodigious homely woman well into her middle years. Though David was bowing gallantly over her hand, the viscountess’ gray eyes were fastened on Bonnie, and her brows had met in a frown.

  “Yes, Lady Lambeth, pray permit me to present my niece. Miss Elizabeth Carlisle, who is familiarly known as Bonnie.”

  The earl nudged his “niece,” none too gently, and she managed to bob her head in greeting “Lady Lambeth," she murmured.

  “Carlisle!” her ladyship repeated, the gray eyes widening in startled comprehension. “Yes, that is the man Cornelia married, is it not? That . . . that—”

  “I daresay you will be delighted to learn,” David interposed smoothly, “that Thomas has been immensely successful in Barbados. I infer from Bonnie’s description that his principal plantation puts Sedgewood quite to shame, and it, of course, is but one of his many enterprises. But we should not be surprised, should we. Lady Lambeth? We have long been aware that those with the courage and foresight to emigrate to the colonies often accumulate vast fortunes.”

  “Vast . . . fortunes.” The viscountess moistened her lips, then kindly patted Bonnie’s shoulder. “My son is circulating among the company, but I shall be certain you meet him before the evening is over, Miss Carlisle.”

  It seemed, Bonnie reflected wryly, that a “vast fortune” could atone even for the sin of dubious breeding.

  “David may or may not have mentioned that his late mother and I were close friends. Your grandmother, Miss Carlisle.” Evidently the subject of breeding was on Lady Lambeth’s mind as well. “As a result of our friendship, I had the good fortune to be well acquainted with Cornelia in her girlhood, and I was enormously fond of her. For many years, as I recollect, she had the most adorable dog. Did she chance to mention it to you, dear?”

  “A-Annie,” Bonnie stammered as the earl succumbed to a sudden fit of coughing. “Her poodle, Annie.”

  “Annie; that was it. Yes, Cornelia was always mad for dogs, and I should guess you have hundreds of them on your estate in the Indies. Fortunately, my son
also loves dogs, so you and Hugh will have a great deal in common. I shall definitely be sure you meet him, Miss Carlisle. My son, Viscount Lambeth,” she added, lest there be any lingering confusion as to his identity.

  “It is very good of you to extend such a warm welcome to my niece,” David said.

  Perhaps she knew him better than she’d fancied, Bonnie thought distantly. To the untutored ear—and apparently Lady Lambeth’s were among these, for her plump face was wreathed in a happy smile—the earl’s tone would sound as pleasant as his words, but Bonnie detected an unmistakable sharpness round the edges.

  “However, we must take no more of your time. Others are waiting to greet you.” David inclined his head toward the entry, and the gray threads in his hair turned to purest silver in the soft light of the chandeliers. “We shall consequently beg to be excused.” He executed another courtly bow. seized Bonnie’s elbow again, and jerked her unceremoniously into the ballroom.

  “Lambeth!” he hissed when they were safely beyond her ladyship’s hearing. “His mother has been attempting to marry him off for years, and her failure can come as no surprise to anyone who knows him. He is quite the dullest fellow I have ever met and as knocker-faced as she is.”

  “Umm,” Bonnie grunted noncommittally.

  “As knocker-faced as she and the same sort of insufferable hypocrite. Lady Lambeth and Mama were very far from being close friends, and I doubt she encountered Cornelia more than half a dozen times. And she certainly could not have found Annie adorable. Indeed, she would not remember the dog at all were it not for the circumstance that Annie bit her ankle during the course of a ball at Sedgewood. The poor creature was not herself at the time, being in an advanced state of pregnancy—”

  “David!”

  Bonnie had never before seen him so mifty, and she could not conceive why Lady Lambeth’s innocuous “hypocrisy'’ should prompt such a venomous outburst. Whatever its genesis, his tirade was beginning to border on the shocking, and she glanced apprehensively about, fearing to discover a horrified eavesdropper nearby. But most of the guests were on the dance floor, stepping through a quadrille, and Bonnie experienced a sudden rush of excitement.

  This was the London she had dreamed of, and, from a distance at least, the scene fulfilled her expectations. From her perspective at the perimeter of the floor, the women were colorful clouds of muslin and net, silk and satin—clouds lent definition by the ostrich plumes gracefully swaying above their heads and the glitter of jewels in their ears and round

  their necks. Nor was the glitter altogether confined to the female gender: the men attired in military uniform fairly sparkled with the medals arrayed upon their chests.

  However, the majority of the men were clad in traditional evening garb, and they looked . . . Well, if David was any indication, they looked rather better than they did in their everyday clothes. Bonnie peered at the earl from the comer of her eye and reminded herself that Papa had always preached— publicly and privately—that appearances were unimportant. But without Papa to guide her thoughts into suitably lofty channels, she had been unable to refrain from remarking that David’s breeches and stockings and wasp-waisted coat rendered him excessively handsome indeed. Made him appear even taller and leaner than he was and revealed muscular, shapely calves—

  The quadrille ended, and Bonnie hastily redirected her attention to the center of the room. The orchestra retuned their instruments a moment, then launched into a waltz, and the assembled company began to whirl around the floor.

  “But let us talk no more of Lady Lambeth,” David said. Bonnie judged this a monstrous good idea. “I now realize that I neglected to inquire whether you know how to dance.”

  On this head, if on no other, Bonnie was compelled to own a debt to her former employer. She had not, in fact, known how to dance when she left Stafford; but several years after her arrival in London, Mrs. Powell—as part of her inexorable campaign to school Maria and Anne in the social graces—had engaged a Viennese dancing master. Apparently fearing that the physical contact requisite to his instruction might drive Herr Mueller to tender an indecent advance to her innocent daughters (which seemed prodigious unlikely in view of the circumstance that he was fully seventy years of age), Mrs. Powell desired Bonnie to supervise the girls’ lessons. However, Herr Mueller, who spoke very limited English, clearly failed to understand Mrs. Powell’s explanation of Bonnie’s role, for he at once took to addressing her as “Fraulein Powell” ano directed his tutelage more to her than to her "little schwesters.’

  After an interval of vain argument, Bonnie determined to capitalize on his confusion; and over the ensuing months, she had mastered the quadrille, the waltz, the boulanger, the quick step, and a whole host of other dances, which, she suspected, were so esoteric as to be unknown to any but Herr Mueller and his fellow professionals.

  “Yes, I know how to dance," she responded aloud.

  “Then I daresay no one will look askance if I stand up with my niece."

  David had never released her elbow, and he now guided her onto the floor and spun her smoothly into the rhythm of the waltz. He was an excellent dancer, Bonnie judged—nearly as accomplished as Herr Mueller himself—and she was at a loss to comprehend why she found it so difficult to follow his lead. Probably, she surmised at length, it was because the earl was far taller than Herr Mueller, whose bald scalp had barely reached Bonnie’s nose. His lordship, on the other hand, fairly towered over her, and the disparity in their heights created the illusion that he was terribly . . . terribly close. Indeed, he seemed so very close that Bonnie could scarcely breathe, and the insufficiency of oxygen set her heart to pounding most painfully against her ribs. She was confident she could recover if David moderated his movements a bit, but he was vastly stronger than Herr Mueller as well—his arm like a steel vise around her waist—and she could only struggle to match his steps as he whirled her dizzily about the floor.

  The set ended at last, and Bonnie gazed guiltily up at the earl, thinking to apologize for her clumsiness. But he was regarding her with the same odd expression of puzzlement he had worn in the carriage, and in the superior light of Lady Lambeth’s ballroom, his sapphire eyes seemed peculiarly dark—closer to violet than blue. Somehow Bonnie found this scrutiny even more discomfiting than his customary bold appraisal and, altogether losing her tongue, she accompanied him silently off the floor.

  “Lord Sedgewick!"

  The female voice, which emanated from behind them, sounded quite as breathless as Bonnie felt; and when David dropped her arm, she turned curiously around.

  “Lord Sedgewick!” the woman repeated, reaching his side. “I saw you when you arrived, but as I was dancing at the time, I had no opportunity to greet you. If I may say so now, you are looking exceedingly well.”

  “Thank you. Lady Pamela,” David rejoined politely. “You are also looking very well.”

  Bonnie fancied he would have conveyed a similarly courteous sentiment had Lady Pamela been as “knocker-faced" as Lady Lambeth. However, at first glance, the former did appear a very handsome woman—considerably shorter than the average and extremely slight, with luxuriant golden-brown hair and large, thickly lashed green eyes. Only when one took a second, harder look did one perceive that Lady Pamela was no longer in the flush of youth; there was a tiny sunburst of lines round either eye and small telltale grooves at the comers of her mouth. She was far nearer thirty than twenty. Bonnie estimated, and a third and still more careful inspection suggested that Lady Pamela took advantage of her diminutive stature to create the impression that she was years younger than she was. The simple white muslin gown she wore would quite have suited a girl of eighteen, and Bonnie suspected Lady Pamela had chosen the dress with precisely that effect in mind.

  “As I indicated. I was dancing when you arrived . . ."

  Her ladyship’s voice was a ruse as well, Bonnie conjectured. She had no doubt trained herself to speak in this breathless, uncertain, girlish fashion, rehearsing for endless ho
urs in the privacy of her bedchamber . . .

  "... and when the quadrille was over, you stood up with . . . with ...” Lady Pamela transferred her great green eyes pointedly to Bonnie.

  “With my niece," David supplied, somewhat more heartily than Bonnie deemed necessary. “My niece. Miss Carlisle. This, Bonnie, is Lady Pamela Everett.”

  ‘‘Lady Pamela,” Bonnie dutifully muttered.

  ‘‘Miss Carlisle.” Her ladyship flashed a brief, cool smile, and Bonnie was pleased to note that her front teeth were a trifle uneven. ‘‘Your niece. How lovely. Although”—her brows formed a pretty frown—‘‘I do not believe I was aware you had a niece. Lord Sedgewick.”

  “Nor was I until dear Bonnie appeared upon my doorstep.” David threw his arm enthusiastically round her shoulders, and Bonnie managed a tight smile of her own. “Appeared—was it a week ago yesterday, Bonnie?” She obediently bobbed her head. “Bonnie is the daughter of my sister Cornelia, who lives in Barbados. Perhaps your parents have mentioned. Lady Pamela, that Cornelia’s marriage caused a most lamentable rift in our family. A rift—I am happy to say—that Bonnie is well in the way of healing.”