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Lady Ariana was stung into replying without first measuring her words. “I believe I might be better served to join forces with Miss Laurence and see if we couldn’t discover some way to put you out of favor, Christian.”
St. Clair’s shrug was entirely French, for if he was every drop the Englishman, he had spent the years following Waterloo enjoying Parisian society, obviously taking on some of their more eloquent ma
“If you must, my dear,” he returned affably. “I am naught but a momentary whim, like poor Brummell before me, and exist merely at the pleasure of Society. But, then, as I recall, it took both Pri
Lady Ariana looked closely into St. Clair’s now deeply blue eyes and wished herself out of this potentially dangerous conversation, which she had only entered into because she was upset at the man’s attention to the Laurence chit. She was within a heartbeat of going too far with the usually affable baron, and she decided to pull back.
“Forgive me, Christian,” she said, smiling apologetically. “I have barely eaten all day in order to be certain the line of my gown would be as you desire it. I am all out of sorts tonight, I suppose.”
Then she turned toward the doorway and the sound of raised voices that had momentarily ceased but had now begun again. “Christian? Do you think something is wrong?” she asked, gesturing toward the doorway with her fan.
St. Clair turned and lifted his stemmed quizzing glass to his eye. “How fatiguing. I’ve heard less ruckus in a fish market. Not that I’ve ever visited any such establishment, but I have heard stories, you understand. Comment—do you suppose the place has caught on fire? That is what will come of layering the place with bunting. Come, we will make our escape.”
St. Clair offered Lady Ariana his arm and they made their way toward the main doorway, becoming part of the throng of partygoers now congregating there. He stopped just beside the equally tall but darkly handsome Lord Anthony Buxley, who, Lady Ariana was depressed to see, had the opportunistic Miss Gabrielle Laurence hanging from his sober midnight-blue sleeve.
Almost immediately, seeing that the four purest diamonds of society were in their midst, several people politely gave way, until the quartet of exquisites had a clear view of what was transpiring in the hallway just outside the ballroom.
“And I’m telling you, Undercliff,” a red-faced, corpulent man of at least fifty was informing their host, “I don’t give a bloody damn if you’ve got the bleeding king inside. I swear it, the Peacock’s come to Little Pillington. We have to talk, Undercliff! Now!”
“Good Lord, Miss Laurence,” Lord Buxley declared clearly above the sly titterings of the onlookers, trying to draw his companion from the scene, “it’s naught but some importuning tradesman. Come away and we’ll go down to di
Miss Laurence, however, appeared to have no intention of removing herself from the inquisitive throng. “What would his lordship have to do with a tradesman? And didn’t the man say something about the Peacock?” she asked Lord Buxley, whose good ma
“Please, Miss Laurence,” Lord Buxley repeated quietly, looking to Lady Ariana, who believed she interpreted his glance correctly, and he wanted nothing more than to be shed of the situation. She felt much the same herself. No wonder her papa spoke so highly of the man. Pity he wasn’t a duke, for she had set her cap for a duke and would not settle for less.
“Why, my lord?” Miss Laurence persisted with, to Lady Ariana’s mind, no more intelligence than she expected of the young woman. After all, hair that red was bound to have singed the girl’s brain. “All I asked was what the man might have to do with Lord Undercliff.”
“What would his high-and-mighty lordship have to do with me?” Herbert Symington all but shouted, having heard Gabrielle’s artless question in the silence that had immediately followed St. Clair’s polite, suggestive clearing of his throat.
Symington took two steps forward, showing all intentions of not stopping until he was nose to nose with the curious beauty, and said, “We’re partners in business, Undercliff and me, little missy, even if he don’t want anyone to know it. Partners in the Symington weaving mills, in Little Pillington.”
A ripple of excitement, of disgust, of amused understanding, ran through the crowd of peers who considered any endeavor even vaguely related to trade to be a sin on a par with treason or even incest—although those two transgressions could be excused if there existed ample motive for either profit or personal satisfaction.
But to descend to trade! It was the outside of enough, completely beyond the pale, as poor Lady Undercliff immediately proved by fainting dead away in Lord Buxley’s reluctant arms.
Lady Ariana, sensing a golden opportunity to show Miss Laurence in an ill light, snapped open her ivory-sticked fan and began waving it as she pronounced clearly, “I should hope you’re happy now, Miss Laurence. Thanks to your unseemly curiosity, poor Lady Undercliff has swooned in embarrassment. St. Clair, be a dear and assist me in extricating myself from this sad crush of titillation-seeking nosey-parkers.”
Now, she then thought, inwardly preening as she looked to the frowning baron. You have no choice, St. Clair, but to cut her now!
Lady Ariana held her breath. She could feel the hesitancy and indecision that held the remainder of the partygoers frozen in place, awaiting St. Clair’s decision as to the correctness of their presence at Lord Undercliff’s social destruction. By simply turning his back the baron could destroy the Undercliffs, and Miss Gabrielle Laurence as well.
St. Clair lifted his quizzing glass once more, leisurely surveying the multitude, hesitating as his gaze took in the puce-faced Herbert Symington, the visibly quavering Lord Undercliff, and the obviously unconscious Lady Undercliff.
“Tiens! Do I detect a want of steadiness in our small group, an unwillingness to act? Very well,” he then drawled affably, “as it would appear it is left to me to take charge, I will. Lord Buxley, I commend you on your timely capture of our dearest hostess in her time of need. Perhaps you will now retire and give her over to the servants—with Lady Ariana’s assistance, as she considers herself too angelically pure for such goings-on as we are witnessing—while we vile, despicable souls remain riveted here at gossip’s head table, ravenous for sensation and unabashedly avid to lap up any drop of scandal. After all,” he continued, allowing the quizzing glass to drop, “as some observant wit has written, ‘Society in shipwreck is a solace to us all.’”
Lady Ariana winced as the shaft of St. Clair’s verbal arrow unexpectedly sank home in her chest. He had not cut Gabrielle Laurence. He had turned the weapon of his tongue on her instead, damning her with faint praise, calling her angelic when what he’d really meant was that she was a stiff-backed prude who had not insulted just Miss Laurence but all these several dozen milling people who were eager to witness Lord Undercliff’s very public embarrassment.
“Christian,” she began, squeezing his arm as she looked up at him, “please—”
“Tut, tut, my dear,” he broke in as two footmen came to Lord Buxley’s aid, taking the slowly recovering but still unsteady-on-her-feet Lady Undercliff away, “don’t say another word. We are all human, and therefore we all understand. Of course you may remain—you and Lord Buxley both. I know I could not leave now, even if I shall most sincerely hate myself in the morning—as we shall all most sincerely berate ourselves for our eagerness to hear what Mr. Simons here has to say.”