Unbuttoning the Innocent Miss (Wallflowers to Wives) Page 10

  ‘No, I was already up,’ Jonathon answered just as tersely. He didn’t need small talk any more than Owen needed to give it. ‘If something’s happened, just get to it. You needn’t dress it up for me,’ Jonathon encouraged.

  Owen finally turned to face him. ‘How are your French lessons progressing? Is your fluency coming back?’ His face was haggard as if he, too, had been up all night plagued with worries. There was desperation in Owen’s face, too, as if he could will the right answer from him.

  ‘Yes, I believe it is.’ Jonathon fought his own nerves. Was this about Vienna? Had the post already been decided?

  ‘Good.’ Some of the desperation seemed to ebb from Owen’s pale features. ‘Will you tell me who the instructor is? I would like to congratulate them.’

  ‘No.’ Jonathon moved his attention to a paperweight on the desk. ‘My instructor would prefer to remain anonymous.’ He hadn’t told anyone he was seeing Claire Welton for lessons. At first, he’d done it to protect his pride. He’d been too embarrassed. But now, he wanted to protect her. Perhaps she wouldn’t like it to be known. Claire might have certain qualms about drawing attention to herself, especially if there was a suitor to impress.

  Owen nodded and took the chair next to Jonathon, his expression serious as he dropped his voice. ‘There’s been news.’

  Jonathon’s body went rigid. ‘News’, when said that way, could only mean one thing. ‘Thomas?’ It was almost too much to hope for.

  ‘Perhaps. I’ve prevaricated about saying anything too soon. But if it was me, if it was my brother, I’d want word, any sort of word as soon as possible. But I can’t take this to your father, not yet.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Jonathon understood. Nothing was confirmed. Whatever Owen was about to share was unverified. It wasn’t proof, he reminded himself. It would destroy his father to get his hopes up and it was likely of a confidential nature. Owen was sharing this out of respect for their longstanding friendship.

  ‘There’s word that a man meeting Thomas’s description has been located in a farming village near the River Leie.’

  Also called the River Lys in French. Leie was the Dutch name. The river formed part of the north-eastern border between the two countries. Jonathon knew it and hope surged. Waterloo wasn’t far from the location. It was probable that if Thomas had been lost and wounded he could have ended up there either under his own power looking for shelter, or taken there to recover by a farmer in a cart.

  ‘Is that all we know?’ Jonathon tried to keep his voice calm, after all, it was hardly enough to go on. ‘What do you mean by description?’ Thomas looked like him, but that wasn’t saying much. Thomas shared general features with a lot of people: brown hair, grey eyes instead of brown, tall with broad shoulders. His height might stand out to some. He and Thomas were usually the taller men in any given room, just a little over six foot. But surely there were tallish men everywhere. It wasn’t necessarily extraordinary to be a taller man.

  ‘An Englishman,’ Owen said quietly. ‘The man in the report has your brother’s features and he’s English, or should I say he’s not native, neither French nor Dutch. That’s the part that isn’t quite verified. All anyone knows is that he showed up in the village seven years ago. The timing is right.’

  Jonathon rose. ‘I want to go and see him. I can leave this afternoon.’ He would travel to the ends of the earth if there was the slightest of chances. Maybe his French would hold. Maybe Claire had taught him enough to break through his barriers so he could communicate. Maybe.

  Owen put a hand on his arm. ‘The informant is coming here. He wants to arrange a meeting. There should be word within the next week.’ It would be the longest week of his life and it might be for naught. There’d been sightings before, some quickly smashed, others lingered with potent hope.

  ‘Jonathon, it’s been a long time,’ Owen began cautiously. ‘Perhaps I was wrong to tell you. So much time has passed.’

  He didn’t have to say more. So much time. Either Thomas was dead, had always been dead, or he hadn’t come home. ‘Why wouldn’t he come back if he could?’ Jonathon voiced the question. Why would his brother stay away for years with no word when he knew how worried they’d all be, how devastated they’d all be?

  ‘We all wear masks, Jonathon. I do, you do. You put on that handsome smile of yours and no one guesses there might even be an ounce of darkness in you. Why should Thomas be any different?’

  ‘I just can’t imagine what reasons he’d have,’ Jonathon admitted. Thomas had everything: a family, money, social status. He was well liked.

  Owen rose, signalling the conversation was over. ‘We’re getting ahead of ourselves. It might not be him.’ In fact, it was unlikely that it was after seven years. What it could be was dangerous. This could be a trap, an attempt at extortion that played on a family’s desperate hopes. It wouldn’t be the first time. There’d been earlier attempts right after the war to claim money in exchange for ‘information’ about Thomas. Those attempts had devastated his parents.

  ‘The best thing you can do is go brush up on your French.’ Because Vienna loomed, because if there was a chance this fellow was Thomas, Jonathon would have to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.

  Jonathon stood, too. He knew what he needed to do. He needed to find Claire and step up the lessons. He needed to forget about kisses in the Rosedale garden, or lowered bodices, or sherry eyes that sparkled when she looked at him, or the feel of her dancing in his arms. He needed to concentrate all of his attention on the lessons as if his life depended on it, because it did—his and quite possibly Thomas’s.

  * * *

  Of course, he had to find her first. For a person who claimed her life was uneventful, she was proving difficult to track down. She wasn’t home and neither was Lady Stanhope, which meant no one precisely knew her direction, only that she was out making calls. The butler did, however, know where Lady Stanhope had gone: Lady Morrison’s, the ton’s most notorious gossip. For a man to show up there was nothing short of walking into the lion’s den.

  * * *

  Jonathon tried there, but it only earned him a tepid cup of tea and crumbly cakes. Once he’d been announced, he had no choice but to put in his fifteen minutes before he could leave again. In exchange, though, he got a rather shockingly long list of possible locations from Lady Stanhope. He might try the Worths or the Penroses or the Milhams, she told him, eyeing him speculatively as she gave the advice. ‘The flowers you’ve been sending are positively gorgeous, Mr Lashley,’ she added with sly calculation. He didn’t imagine it. Every ear in the room perked up at that.

  He left the moment those fifteen required minutes were up, but fate was determined to play with him a little. He called at the Worths, the Penroses to more tea but to no avail, the calls eating up more of his time before he arrived at the Milhams, only to be told the ladies were indisposed at the moment by a butler who was a stickler for propriety, even though they both knew very well the lady he was after was inside somewhere.

  After a sleepless night and dubious news over Thomas, Jonathon was in no mood for mannerly games. He stepped around the butler and into the hall. He was a man who believed in never leaving a place until he got what he came for and, right now, what he needed most was Claire Welton. He spied a sitting room off the corridor. ‘I’ll wait.’

  * * *

  Claire couldn’t wait. She blurted out the words, ‘We have to stop. It has gone too far’, as soon as the foursome was seated in the Milham’s garret the next day. She’d been up all night thinking it through and she knew her decision was the right one. Apparently, fate agreed with her. Jonathon hadn’t shown up for the lesson that morning and she knew why; things had got out of hand in the Rosedale garden.

  ‘It sounds to me like it’s gone just far enough,’ Beatrice argued with a twinkle in her eye. ‘He’s sending you flowers and dancing wit
h you every night.’

  Claire gave an exasperated sigh. How many times did she have to explain it? ‘Only because he thinks I have a gentleman whose attentions I would like to attract.’

  ‘You do.’ May laughed over the rim of her teacup. ‘His.’

  ‘But he thinks it’s someone else and I’ve let him,’ Claire insisted. ‘He thinks he’s helping me in exchange for the French lessons.’ While that line of reasoning explained everything up to a point, that point had run out fourteen hours and eleven minutes ago.

  The words came out in a rush. ‘Last night, he kissed me.’ Everyone began to talk at once, but she raised her voice to be heard. ‘This morning he didn’t show up for the lesson.’ She didn’t want him to quit the lessons over a kiss. He needed them too badly, more than he needed to feel remorse over a kiss. Had it been such a poor kiss that he didn’t want to see her again, not even for lessons? She had thought it was rather nice. More than nice...extraordinary.

  ‘He kissed you?’ Evie’s eyes were dreamy, but May’s eyes were sharp.

  ‘Well, this is certainly a development,’ May drawled. ‘He didn’t need to kiss you in order to help you. I’d call that progress in the right direction.’ May fixed her with a hard stare and Claire braced herself. ‘You wanted Lashley, Claire, and now it seems you can have him. You can’t stop now. You do want him, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ More than before if that was possible. After spending hours with him in lessons, walking and talking with him, she was discovering a whole new Jonathon Lashley. When she’d started this, it had been with the intention of showing him a different side of her. She’d not bargained on also seeing a different side of him. Now, there were consequences she’d not planned on. ‘But not like this—’ Claire insisted.

  ‘Like what?’ Beatrice interrupted. ‘We’re doing what every woman since Eve has done to get a man and that’s use our assets to attract a man’s notice. The last time I checked, that wasn’t a sin.’

  ‘But if I hadn’t forced my way into his life, he would still be on a trajectory headed for Cecilia. I don’t want to steal another girl’s beau.’ Even if that girl was Cecilia and there was definitely some settling to do between the two of them.

  ‘I think your definition of stealing is a bit too liberal, Claire. There’s been no formal announcement, except for Cecilia clinging to his arm for the past year.’ May shook her head. ‘If that was all it took to claim a man, we’d all have the husbands of our dreams by now. If he wants to marry her, he will. It’s simple.’

  ‘It’s not simple at all, May.’ Because Jonathon was not simple. He had layers beneath that easy smile, layers she was just beginning to discover. ‘He can’t sell himself to her. She will never understand him. You heard her, he’s nothing but the “colour” of the month.’

  She had to tell them. ‘You’ve all worked so hard for me and I appreciate everything you’ve done, I truly do. Evie, your gowns are lovely and I feel beautiful in them. Bea, you gave me the courage to seize my moment and I did. May, you made everything happen by setting up seats at the dinner and dropping the right hints at the right time. It all worked wonderfully, but I don’t want to stoop to Cecilia’s level,’ Claire said firmly.

  She hoped they wouldn’t notice how hard it was to say such a thing calmly. It had been a difficult decision to make. She wasn’t as sure as May and Beatrice that the kiss signified progress, but if there was even a flicker of ‘progress’ it was even harder to give up knowing she might have success. But at what price? She did not want to ‘lure’ Lashley away. After last night, she felt that might be the case. ‘I think it’s gone too far.’

  He’d kissed her out of desperation over his own circumstances or over hers. And that was the ‘good’ explanation. Perhaps he’d kissed her because he felt sorry for her, the poor blue-stocking girl who had never been out in a garden with a beau before. She looked her friends in the eye. ‘I have to give him up.’ It was the right thing to do. Il n’y a pas d’oreiller si doux comme une conscience claire—there is no pillow softer than that of a clear conscience, as the French would say.

  Beatrice was staring at her, dark eyes hard. ‘I would say it hasn’t gone far enough. I thought you wanted more than a few stolen moments and a couple waltzes. I thought you wanted Jonathon.’

  She did. ‘I do, it’s just...’

  ‘What? Hard?’ Beatrice was relentless. ‘Of course it’s hard. You are going to have to fight for him. You’re going to have to fight Cecilia and you’re going to have to fight yourself. In fact, you’re probably your worst enemy.’

  Claire bristled, Bea’s comments stoking her anger. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Bea, be careful,’ May warned, looking between the two of them.

  Beatrice flicked stern eyes in May’s direction. ‘No, she has to hear this. We’ve coddled her too long.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Coddling me?’ Claire was angry now. Had her friends been keeping secrets? About her?

  ‘We let you retreat, Claire, when we should have pushed you forward. You are not a wallflower, but we let you play at it until you became one. You’ve changed and not for the better. You’ve created far more doubt for yourself than Cecilia Northam ever could.’

  This was stunning. It was definitely not what one expected to hear from one’s friends. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Just uncomfortable. She’d come here anticipating that they would all nod their heads and gather around her in support of her decision to give up Jonathon. They’d fought the good fight, gave it a good run and all that, but in the end it was probably best to stop here. Claire stared at her friends, each of them in agreement with Beatrice. ‘Et tu, Evie?’

  Evie nodded. They were disappointed. In her. Why shouldn’t they be? Hadn’t she thought much the same thing lately, although not quite in Beatrice’s succinct terms? She was different when she was with Jonathon, bolder, braver, stronger. And it scared her. She liked that girl. She didn’t want to lose that girl again. It was a big risk to take. Maybe too big.

  ‘Excuse me, Miss Evie.’ The butler coughed discreetly to announce his presence. ‘Pardon my interruption, but there’s a gentleman downstairs who is asking to see Miss Welton. He’s quite insistent. He says he’ll wait. I think he means it. He’s been here a half-hour already. What shall I tell him?’

  Claire stiffened. Everyone looked at her, even the butler. No one actually expected Evie to answer. Beside her, May murmured in I told you so undertones, ‘He’s come for you. It seems he doesn’t want to be dismissed. Perhaps he didn’t mind that kiss so much after all.’

  Bea gave her a challenging stare. ‘Begin as you mean to go on, Claire.’ Apparently she wasn’t giving him up after all.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jonathon rose the instant she entered the room and came to her, his hands gripping hers, his face tight, devoid of his usual smile. She searched his face for a clue. Something had happened if he’d made the effort to follow her here.

  ‘Claire, I apologise for the intrusion, but I must speak with you right away.’ She felt the hard pressure of his hands where they covered hers. Her mind slowed down over that one thought, repeating the idea once more: Something had happened and when it had, he’d come to her. Another sort of woman might have taken a vindictive sort of pleasure in knowing that he’d rushed to her and not to Cecilia. But Claire was far more concerned about Jonathon to spare thought for a petty girlish rivalry.

  He glanced towards the door, indicating he’d rather not talk here. She understood at once. He wanted privacy. ‘We can walk in the key garden just across the square.’

  * * *

  Claire was all efficiency, calling for her maid and her pelisse. Within moments she and Jonathon were out of the house. The key garden was quiet, frequented only by nannies and prams and a few small children who were too busy to notice them. ‘Now, tell me what�
�s happened.’

  ‘We have to step up the French lessons. I have to get my fluency back faster.’ Get it back? That was an odd word. She’d been unaware he had any fluency to ‘get back’.

  ‘All right.’ Claire hoped she sounded patient, sounded calm. Her mind was reeling with questions. What had sparked such urgency? She assumed it must be the Vienna position. ‘We can meet twice a day or for a longer period of time.’ The idea that the Vienna position had been moved up would also mean her time with Jonathon had been shortened as well.

  ‘No, that’s not enough,’ Jonathon said hastily, his own impatience showing in the roughness of his tone. ‘I think I need a more immersive experience,’ Jonathon argued.

  She knew what he meant, but it would be more difficult to arrange. Claire nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking about that, too, only I had thought to wait just a bit longer. But you’re right. You need to be able to speak French without the safety net of English in order to truly test how much you can do. There are eating houses in Soho that are French and other small businesses that cater to the expatriates. We should go there.’ There was an entire French émigré society living in London. They could make use of that, but he still hadn’t told her why.

  ‘Yes, we could go to a restaurant or two, a bookshop perhaps.’ Jonathon paused, perhaps realising the implications. A man could go anywhere he liked any day of the week, but a woman had limitations. Gently bred girls seldom left Mayfair. ‘Would you be able to get away?’

  She ought to say no. It wasn’t just the getting away part that created difficulties. What he proposed was more than slightly scandalous, especially if she did it without her maid in tow. Unmarried women weren’t allowed alone in a room at home with an unmarried man without a door wide open or chaperon present. To go out in public was, well, frankly unheard of, but she found herself saying, ‘I can manage something.’