It skirted propriety because they both knew the kiss was like making love, that there was an exchange, a possession and a submission, a giving and a taking, a forbidden intimacy.
Kate staggered away, her knees weak. She turned rather than meet his eyes, knelt at the corner of the picnic cloth, and began to put silver back in the basket.
“I’ll send a footman out to clean up, you foolish creature,” Gabriel said.
“I’m not a creature, and there’s no need to create work for someone that we could easily do ourselves.”
“I’m not creating work.” Gabriel reached down and pulled her to her feet. “It is their work. And if you don’t think that a footman will leap at the chance to escape Wick’s eagle eye, then you don’t know my brother well enough.”
“Still,” Kate said uncertainly. She glanced over to see him frowning at her. “Don’t start thinking I’ve been toiling as a maid instead of a swineherd,” she told him, turning and walking toward the gate. “I’ve never been a maid.”
“Of course not,” he said, taking her arm. “You’re a lady.”
She glanced suspiciously at him, but he was smiling down at her as innocently as if he’d commented on the weather.
Twenty-five
Clearly, Beckham was a scoundrel. And scoundrels, in Gabriel’s experience, generally showed their true colors when drunk.
He consigned that part of his plan to Wick, telling him to ply his guests with too much champagne. Wick rolled his eyes at this dictum, but at dinner Gabriel noticed the footmen whizzing around the tables refilling glasses, as busy as ants at harvest time.
The plan certainly had a marked effect at his own table. Lady Dagobert’s daughter Arabella stopped throwing him longing, if halfhearted, looks, and bent her attentions entirely on young Lord Partridge, to her left. By the fourth course, she had turned a charming shade of pink and was sagging gently toward Partridge’s shoulder.
Her mother, on the other hand, turned a less-than-charming shade of puce and remained strictly upright.
Still the courses, and the champagne, kept coming. The countess loosened her corset, metaphorically speaking, and told him a meandering tale about an ailing aunt who lived in Tunbridge Wells. “Illness,” pronounced the countess, “should not be encouraged. My aunt has made a lifetime habit of it, and I do not approve.”
Gales of laughter from Kate’s direction seemed to suggest that the conversation at her table was rather more lively than that at his own. The one time he looked over his shoulder, Hathaway was leaning so close that the man could certainly see down Kate’s bosom, and having the opportunity, likely was doing so.
That thought apparently caused an expression of such savagery to appear on his face that Lady Dagobert inquired whether he was having a spasm. “My aunt,” she confided, “claims to have spasms on the quarter hour precisely. I told her that if so she would surely die of apoplexy when the clock struck noon.”
“One has to assume that she did not comply?” Gabriel inquired.
“I meant it in a helpful manner,” the countess said. “If the spasms do not lead to apoplexy, then they are not worth regarding, and should be ignored.”
“I am curious about a guest of mine,” Gabriel said, recklessly abandoning the aunt in Tunbridge Wells. “I know that you, dear lady, are abreast of everyone in London . . . what can you tell me of Lord Beckham?”
She responded to his lowered voice and request for gossip like one of Kate’s dogs faced with a lump of cheese. “Well,” she said, “he’s a nephew of the Duke of Festicle, as you probably know.”
“Festicle?” Gabriel said, rolling the name over in his mind. “A suitable name.”
“Suitable?” Lady Dagobert asked dubiously. “I don’t follow, Your Highness.” Then she pronounced: “He’s not good ton. I don’t hold with that young man.”
Now they were at the heart of it. “My judgment is precisely the same,” he told her, ignoring the fact that he hadn’t actually met Beckham yet. “There is something of the voluptuary about him.”
“He’s a shabster,” the countess said, twitching her turban, which was in danger of plopping into her salmon. It was white satin with a diamond crescent that threatened to scratch Gabriel on the cheek every time she leaned close.
“Do tell me an instance or two of his perfidy,” Gabriel said, giving her the kind of smile that invited secrets.
“I wouldn’t let him near my daughter,” the countess said, poking her salmon with a knife. “He’s ruined more than one reputation, you know. Young ladies aren’t safe around the man.”
“A bad hat, as your Duke of York has it,” Gabriel suggested.
“Don’t know about his hat,” the countess said, pursuing her own train of thought. “But all these ladies—the ones whose reputation he ruined—apparently acted the jade around him. Now I’m not saying that we don’t have some young ladies who aren’t better than they should be.” She paused.
“It is so in all the world,” Gabriel said encouragingly.
“But if I were young and foolish, and prone to act the mopsie, which I never was,” the countess said, “it wouldn’t be with him, if you catch my meaning.”
“Precisely,” Gabriel said, nodding. “You are very perceptive, my lady.”
The countess blinked at him. “Continental flummery,” she pronounced. “I’ve had enough of this salmon.” She summoned a footman.
“More champagne,” Gabriel told the footman. He was curious to see whether Lady Arabella would actually collapse into the young lord’s arms.
After most of his guests had toddled out of the dining room (and those who couldn’t toddle were supported thence by footmen), he tracked down Beckham in the billiards room.
The man was lounging at the side of the room, watching Toloose defeat Dimsdale, or Algie, as Kate called him, with mathematical precision. It seemed that Toloose, if no one else, was untouched by the sea of champagne that had sloshed through the dining room.
There was a general stir as Gabriel entered the room, of course. The group watching the game began a twitching appraisal of their breeches and coats. As if a prince—or anyone else with a title, for that matter—cared if their breeches bunched around their rods. Toloose looked up from the table and snapped him a bow; Algie’s was deeper, and definitely unsteady. One had to hope that they weren’t playing for money.
Gabriel greeted all the gentlemen in turn. Lord Dewberry, bluff and hearty, chomping on his cigar; Henry’s Leo, Lord Wrothe, holding a glass of champagne, naturally, but looking none the worse for it; finally, Beckham.
Beckham, it turned out, was a man with no chin.
None whatsoever.
His head rose in a smooth curve from a slim neck to a mustachioed mouth, and then up to a wide and rather graceful forehead. The unfortunate absence of a chin meant that his head resembled a squat bowling pin. He was around thirty; he smelled like a civet cat and had dyed his whiskers. One had to appreciate that the mustache was an attempt to widen the bottom half of his face, but the effect was unfortunate.
Really, Effie was generous when she called him a toad, Gabriel thought, lavishing a smile on him, the kind a mongoose gives a cobra.
“When will your betrothed arrive?” Beckham was asking.
“One hopes before the ball,” Toloose said, carefully wiping down his billiard cue. “Every flower in England is here, hoping to be plucked by His Highness, and they won’t give up until the bride actually arrives. No one even deigns to flirt with the rest of us.”
Beckham laughed. “You insult our host, Toloose, old fellow. The Continent is more formal than we are amongst ourselves. You must forgive the man,” he said, turning to Gabriel and lowering his voice. “Ribald but well-meaning.”
Gabriel met Toloose’s eyes over Beckham’s shoulder. “In this case, Toloose is correct,” he said. “I do not know the bride whom my brother has chosen for me. Yet we have—how do I say?—a few weeks, a period of time in which to reflect on each other.” He deliberatel
y added a certain awkwardness to his speech. Englishmen invariably underestimated those who did not speak their language with fluency, a foolish habit that would get them in huge trouble someday.
“And in the meantime you can survey our English beauties,” Beckham said, giving him a jolly tap on the shoulder.
Gabriel stopped himself from swatting the man like a gnat. “The young English ladies are so exquisite in their . . . exquisiteness. A garden of delightful flowers, as Mr. Toloose has called them.”
Toloose snorted, over where he was chalking his stick, so Gabriel threw him a warning glance. “My dear Toloose introduced me to a charming girl this very morning,” he said. “Miss—what was her name?—Effie something. With lovely blue eyes. I am quite taken with her.”
Toloose’s eyebrow jerked up; of all the men in the room, he knew for certain that he had not taken Miss Effie Starck anywhere near Gabriel.
There was a little silence in the room, as the cluster of men presumably tried to figure out how to deliver the nasty bit of gossip Beckham had put about.
“Ephronsia Starck is a bit old,” Beckham himself said, with a tittering laugh. “Must be well into her twenties.”
“She hasn’t the best reputation,” Dewberry said, “but I’ve never cottoned to it myself. Think there was some misunderstanding.” He chomped on his cigar and looked straight at Beckham.
“Yes, because who could believe that little Effie would choose Beckham?” Lord Wrothe said softly, coming closer. By that point in the evening, he had to have drunk a few bottles of champagne, but miraculously he was steady on his feet. “We love you, of course, Beckham, but . . .”
Beckham’s color rose above his high collar and he tittered again. “I’ve had my admirers,” he said.
“What was the story?” Algie asked, in his usual bumbling fashion. “Did she kiss you or something, Beckham?”
“Dear me,” Gabriel said. “I trust she didn’t give you an unwanted kiss, Lord Beckham? Though one must ask whether there is such a thing as an unwanted kiss from such a delightful young lady.”
“More than a kiss,” Beckham said, a trifle sullenly. He seemed to have grasped that the atmosphere was not entirely charitable.
Gabriel turned around and gestured to the footman stationed at the door. “Champagne for everyone.”
Dewberry was the sort of man who wouldn’t tolerate unfairness; Gabriel could see that at a glance. Wrothe looked like the sort who might drink himself into a stupor, but even inebriated wouldn’t lose his sense of himself as a gentleman.
“From what I heard,” Toloose called from the billiard table, where he was setting up the balls again, “she was so overset by your indescribable charms, Beckham, that she attempted an intimate caress.”
Gabriel let his eyes drift from the top of Beckham’s head, pause in the area where a chin should have been, down to the padded shoulders, pinched-in waist, and buckled slippers. “Odd . . . Not that I mean it as an insult, my dear Lord Beckham. But young ladies are generally so frivolous, are they not? So prone to look to the outside, rather than ascertain the inner worth of a man.”
“The odd thing, to my mind,” said Dewberry, “is that Miss Effie ain’t alone. One of my cousin’s gals, visiting from Scotland, had a similar type of story bruited about. Except that the little gal, Delia, supposedly dragged Lord Beckham into a closet.”
Beckham glanced toward the door, but Gabriel was standing squarely between him and escape.
“So adventuresome, these English lasses,” Gabriel commented. “Yet they look as if—how do you say?—butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.”
“That’s just it,” Dewberry said, coming to stand at Gabriel’s shoulder. “Delia weren’t an adventuresome sort of girl, and she had a different tale about what happened.”
“Really?” Gabriel said. “You were lucky that her father didn’t take up a disagreement with you, Lord Beckham. But of course on the Continent we are so much more prone to turn to a rapier to resolve our differences.” He rested his forefinger on the handle of his rapier, and Beckham’s eyes followed the movement.
“Delia was betrothed already and now she’s got two little ones of her own,” Dewberry said. “But she had no father to take after His Lordship. The same as Miss Starck, though I didn’t think of it until now.”
“I fail to see what any of this has to do with the prince’s original question,” Beckham said in his light, high voice. “Elegance will always awaken a woman’s ambitions, you know. If you gentlemen would like a few tips on how to heat up a woman’s appreciation, I’d be happy to pass some on.”
It was a masterly attempt. “You think that Effie Starck was overcome by lust for your costume?” Toloose said, drifting over to stand at Gabriel’s other shoulder. “Odd, because, if you’ll forgive me, Beckham, she’s never made the slightest approach to me.”
Toloose was without doubt the most elegant man in the room. He didn’t have a pinched waist or a waxed mustache, but Gabriel judged that even his brother Rupert would have lusted after Toloose’s swallowtail coat and French cuffs.
“Well,” Beckham said, “ladies generally prefer an air of refinement, Toloose. If you’ll forgive me,” he added.
There was something aggressively masculine about Toloose . . . perhaps it was the look in his eye. Or the way he was holding his billiard cue. It was amazing the way a man in an embroidered coat could take on the air of a dockworker.
“I’m not following,” Algie complained. “Either Effie dragged Beckham into a closet or she didn’t.”
“She didn’t,” Beckham stated.
“No, Delia did that,” Gabriel put in.
“Oh, so there were two of them,” Algie said. “I thought the one girl had done it all. Effie Starck is a bit small for dragging men about, don’t you know? Not up to the task, I would say.”
“Seems to me there was yet a third,” Wrothe put in. He was lounging to the side, looking highly entertained. “Wasn’t there a story going about, years ago, Beckham? Some lusty wench took after you in Almack’s.”
“No!” Gabriel exclaimed. “But this is remarkable. A man so fortunate as to have driven three ladies to the point of an indiscretion.”
“But here’s the question,” Algie said, slurring his words a bit. “Did the third gal have a pa, then? Well, I suppose we know she had a pa, but was he living?”
“Good point, my dear nephew,” Gabriel said. “A very good point. Lord Wrothe, do you remember the young lady’s name? Or”—he turned back to Beckham—“surely you must, my lord. Even though these events seem to happen to you with distressing regularity . . . still you must remember the ladies in question.”
Beckham shrugged. “All this questioning . . . so unpleasant, gentlemen. Am I expected to remember every coquette whom I’ve met in my years? Almack’s is full of dissipated fair ones.” He drained his champagne. “I really must retire to bed.”
“No, no,” Gabriel said gently. “There is no reason for flummery amongst ourselves, Lord Beckham. Do you or do you not remember the name of the third young lady whom you accused of making an unwanted advance?”
Beckham set his teeth.
“I’ve got it,” Wrothe said. “Her last name was Wodderspoon, though I’ll be damned if I can remember the rest of it.”
“Sir Patrick Wodderspoon,” Dewberry said, drawing his brows together. “Died years ago; we were at Eton together.”
“No pa,” Algie said mournfully. “She had no pa either.”
“Dear me,” Gabriel commented. “England seems to have suffered a rash of trollopy young ladies without fathers.”
“All right,” Beckham snapped. He jerked his chin at the footman. “You. More champagne.”
There was silence as the wine gurgled into his cup. He drank, and looked up, a fugitive sort of courage burning in his eyes. “They wanted it anyhow,” he said. “They’re all nothing but cattle in fine clothing. Scratch the surface of a supposed lady and you find nothing more than a slattern, opening
her legs to any spark of the first stare who happens by.”
“But you are no spark of the first stare. An obscure phrase, but clear enough,” Gabriel said. He turned and nodded to the footman. “Please fetch Berwick. Lord Beckham will be leaving shortly.”
“He could have done that to my Victoria,” Algie said, staring at Beckham with a kind of blurry horror. “She ain’t got no pa either. And then she’d have been ruined.”
“At this point it’s too late to help Miss Wodderspoon,” Dewberry said, folding his arms over his chest. “And Delia is married, snug and tight. But Miss Effie Starck—now that’s a problem. Because I would guess that the young men aren’t taking to her, not after your story.”
“He should marry her,” Algie said. “And he should promise on his word of honor that he’ll never do anything like this again.”
“He hasn’t got a word of honor,” Dewberry said, at the same moment that Wrothe said, “I doubt Miss Effie would take him. He’s too ugly, among other things.” He said it coolly, over the rim of his glass.
Another blotchy flush was rising up Beckham’s neck. He turned his back on Lord Wrothe and snapped a bow to Gabriel. “I ascertain that you’d like me to leave this moldering pile of bricks, Your Highness, and I will. Gladly.”
“Not just yet,” Gabriel said. “You will be leaving; my inestimable Berwick will help you along on your journey. But first . . . we really do have to discuss the question of making amends to Miss Effie Starck.”
Beckham’s titter had a virulent undertone to it now. “I’ll go out there and tell the pack of them, shall I? I’ll tell them that I had a kiss off the wench and she kissed like a dead fish, so I saved other men the trouble.”
Gabriel’s fist slammed into Beckham’s jaw. He flew backward, smashed into the edge of the billiard table, and caromed to the floor.
“Is he out?” Toloose asked, after Beckham didn’t stir.
“No,” Algie said, carefully pouring his champagne over the man’s face. “I think his eyelids are twitching.”