Reassured by his smile, and the appreciative light in his eyes, Sophie smiled back and gave him her hand. Together, they turned to Lucilla.
“I will engage to take all care of your niece, Mrs. Webb.” Jack sent an arrogantly questioning glance across the room.
Lucilla studied the picture they made, and smiled. “I trust you will, Mr. Lester. But do not be too long; Lady Cowper is to call this afternoon, and we must later attend Lady Allingcott’s at-home.” With a graciously benevolent nod, she dismissed them.
It was not until they reached the Park and Jack let his horses stretch their legs that Sophie allowed herself to believe it was real. That she was, in truth, bowling along the well-tended carriageway with Jack Lester beside her. The brisk breeze, cool and playful, twined in her curls and tugged little wisps free to wreath about her ears. Above and about them, arched branches were swelling in bud; the sky, a clear, crisp blue, formed a backdrop for their nakedness. Slanting a glance at her companion, she wondered, not for the first time, just what he intended.
He had, most correctly, escorted her down the steps of her aunt’s house, then blotted his copybook by ignoring her hand and lifting her instead to his curricle’s seat. On taking his own seat beside her and being assured she was comfortable, he had smiled, a slow, proudly satisfied smile, and clicked the reins. The bustle in the streets had made conversation unwise; she had held her peace while they travelled the short distance to the gates of the Park.
Now, with the first fashionable carriages looming ahead, she said, her tone merely matter-of-fact, “I had not looked to see you so soon, sir.”
Jack glanced down at her. “I couldn’t keep away.” It was, he somewhat ruefully reflected, the literal truth. He had fully intended to allow the Webbs reasonable time to settle in the capital; instead, he had not been able to resist the compulsion to take Sophie for a drive, to show her the ton, and display her to them, safely anchored by his side. Staking his claim—and in such uncharacteristically blunt fashion that Sophie’s aunt had seen fit to metaphorically wag her finger at him. Even the weather was conspiring to make him rush on with his wooing, the bright sunshine more redolent of April and May than chilly March.
He had expected some confusion in response to his forthright answer. Instead, to his delight, Sophie raised her chin and calmly stated, “In that case, you may make yourself useful and tell me who all these people are. My aunt has had little time to fill me in, and there are many I don’t recognize.”
Jack grinned. It was close on noon, a most fashionable time to be seen driving in the Park. “The Misses Berry you must recall,” he said as they swept down on an ancient landau drawn up by the verge. “They’re always to be found at precisely that spot, morning and afternoon throughout the Season.”
“Of course I remember them.” With a gay smile, Sophie nodded to the two old dames, bundled up in scarves and shawls on the seat of the landau. They nodded back. As the curricle swept past, Sophie saw the gleam in their bright eyes.
“Next we have Lady Staunton and her daughters. You don’t need to know them, although doubtless your cousin will make the younger girls’ acquaintance.”
Sophie bestowed a distant smile on the bevy of girlish faces turned to stare in open envy as she went by. Despite Jorge’s undoubted expertise, she doubted it was her new carriage dress that had excited their interest.
As she looked ahead once more, she saw a tall woman, modishly gowned in bright cherry-red, strolling the lawns just ahead. Her hand rested on the arm of a rakishly handsome buck. Both looked up as the carriage neared. The woman’s face lit up; she raised her hand in what appeared, to Sophie, a distinctly imperious summons.
The reaction on her right was immediate; Jack stiffened. As it became clear the carriage was not about to stop, nor even slow, Sophie glanced up. Chilly reserve had laid hold of Jack’s features; as Sophie watched, he inclined his head in the most remote of greetings.
The carriage swept on, leaving the couple behind. Relaxing against the padded seat, Sophie forced her lips to behave. “And that was?” she prompted.
The glance she received was dark with warning. She met it with a lifted brow—and waited.
“Harriette Wilson,” came the answer. “Someone you definitely do not need to know.”
His repressive tone evoked a gurgle of laughter; Sophie swallowed it and airly looked around. Lady Cowper’s barouche was drawn up in a curve of the carriageway; Sophie waved as they passed, pleased to note her ladyship’s answering smile. Lady Cowper was yet another old friend of her late mama’s.
They passed many others; Jack knew them all. His running commentary kept Sophie amused and distracted. She was content to enjoy his company and his apparent liking for hers; she would dwell on what it might mean later. So she smiled and laughed up at him, basking in the glow of his very blue eyes.
“Jack!”
The hail jolted them from their absorption.
It emanated from a young, dark-haired gentleman, clearly of the first stare, who, together with his similarly well-turned-out companion, was perched on the driving seat of a swan-necked phaeton, approaching at a clipping pace. Jack reined his horses to the side of the track; the elegant equipage executed a neat turn and came to a swooping stop beside them.
“Been searching for you forever,” the young gentleman declared, his eyes, also deeply blue, passing from Jack to Sophie. He smiled with cheery good-humour. “Dashed if I’d thought to find you here!”
Glancing up at her escort’s face, Sophie saw a whimsical smile soften his hard features.
“Gerald.” Jack nodded to his brother, his knowledgeable gaze roving over the finer points of the pair of high-bred horses harnessed between the long shafts of the phaeton, itself spanking new if its gleaming paintwork was to be believed. “Where’d you get this rig?”
“The phaeton’s fresh out of old Smithers’s workshop. The nags are Hardcastle’s. He’ll let me have them for a tithe their true value—five hundred the pair. The phaeton’ll be full price, though, and you know what Smithers is like.”
Brows lifting, Jack nodded. With a deft twirl of his wrist, he looped his reins and offered them to Sophie. “Will you do me the honour, my dear?”
Scrambling to hide her surprise, greatly pleased for she well knew that few gentlemen would entrust their horses to a mere female, Sophie graciously nodded and took the reins. With a reassuring smile, Jack climbed down. The horses shifted slightly; determined to keep them in line, Sophie kept her eyes firmly on them, her brow furrowing in concentration.
Hiding his grin, Jack paced slowly around Gerald’s carriage and horses, his blue eyes shrewdly assessing. Gerald and his friend watched with bated breath, their eagerness barely suppressed. Then, rejoining Sophie and retaking possession of the reins with a warm smile, Jack nodded at his brother. “Not a bad set-up.”
Gerald grinned delightedly.
“But allow me to make you known to Miss Winterton.” Jack paused to allow Gerald to bow, lithely graceful. “My youngest brother, Gerald Lester.”
Having had time to note the similarity between Jack and the youthful gentleman, also dark-haired, blue-eyed and broad-shouldered, but without the heavy musculature that characterized her escort’s more mature frame, Sophie showed no surprise.
While his brother introduced Lord Somerby, his companion, Jack cast a last glance over the phaeton and pair. His lips quirked. Turning to Gerald, he smoothly said, “And now you’ll have to excuse us. I’m overdue to return Miss Winterton to her home.”
“Jack!” Gerald’s pained exclamation was heartfelt. “Dash it all—don’t tease. May I have them or not?”
Jack chuckled. “You may. But make sure you get an account from Smithers. Drop by this evening and I’ll give you a draft.” Although it was his own money Gerald would be spending, as his trustee until his twenty-fifth birthday, Jack had to approve all his youngest brother’s transactions.
Gerald’s smile was ecstatic. “I’ll be around at seven.” W
ith an insouciant wave of his whip, he touched his horses’ ears. As the phaeton disappeared along the avenue, his gay carolling rolled back to them.
Smiling at Jack’s exuberance, a sort of boundless joie de vivre, Sophie glanced up at her companion.
As if sensing her regard, Jack’s smile, distant as he contemplated his brother’s delight, refocused on her face. “And now, I fear, I really should return you to Mount Street, my dear.”
So saying, he whipped up his horses; they took the turn into the main avenue in style. As they bowled along, a stylish matron chatting idly with an acquaintance in her carriage, glanced up, then waved them down. Jack politely drew in beside the lady’s barouche.
“Sophia, my dear!” Lady Osbaldestone beamed at her. “I take it your aunt has finally arrived in town?”
“Indeed, ma’am.” Sophie leant from the curricle to shake her ladyship’s hand. “We’ll be here for the Season.”
“And a good thing, too! It’s entirely more than time you were amongst us again.” Her ladyship’s eyes gleamed with a fervour to which Sophie was innured.
Jack was not so fortunate. He exchanged nods with Lady Osbaldestone, wryly resigned to being ignored for at least the next ten minutes. Lady Osbaldestone’s lack of concern in finding a young lady with whom she clearly claimed more than a passing acquaintance alone in his presence registered—and made his inner smile even more wry. There had been a time, not so very far distant, when she would not have been so sanguine. However, over the past year, his acknowledged search for a wife had gained him, if not immunity from all suspicion, then at least a certain acceptance amongst the grandes dames. He suspected they viewed him as a leopard who, at least temporarily, had changed his spots.
That much, he was willing to concede, might be true. Nevertheless, the underlying temperament remained.
As he heard her ladyship’s plans for Sophie’s future unfurl, his instincts rose to shake his complacency.
He waited until they had, at last, parted from his ladyship and were once more rolling towards the gates before saying, “Lady Osbaldestone seems quite determined to see you well wed.”
Totally unconcerned by her ladyship’s grand schemes, which had even stretched as far as the Duke of Huntington, Sophie smiled gaily. “Indeed. They are all of them busy hatching schemes.”
“All of them?”
There was something in his flat tones that made her glance up but her companion’s expression was inscrutable. Light-hearted still, even light-headed, the aftermath, no doubt, of an uninterrupted hour of his company, Sophie grinned. “All of my mother’s old friends,” she explained. “They all look upon me as a motherless chick—one and all, they’re determined to see me ‘properly established’.” She uttered the last words in a passable imitation of Lady Osbaldestone’s haughty accents.
She glanced up, expecting to see him smiling, laughing with her at the prospect of so many matrons busily scheming on her behalf. Instead, his face remained stony, devoid of expression. Jack felt her glance. His emotions straining at the leash, he looked down.
Sophie met his dark gaze, and felt a vice slowly close about her heart. Avid, eager to find the reason, for that and the force that held them in a curious hiatus, out of time, she searched his face and his deeply glowing eyes. Jack watched as her smile slowly faded, to be replaced with puzzlement—and a clear query.
“Sophie—” He drew in a deep breath and glanced ahead, just in time to avoid colliding with a natty trilby, swung through the gates far too fast.
Jack swore. In the ensuing chaos as he calmed his own horses, then received the shrill and abject apologies of the trilby’s owner, a young sprig barely old enough to shave and, in Jack’s pithily offered opinion, of insufficient experience to be entrusted with the reins, the purport of Lucilla’s words returned to him.
As the trilby crept away, Jack turned to Sophie, his expression carefully blank. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” Sophie smiled brightly up at him, while inwardly she wondered if that was strictly true. The instant before the trilby’s advent had left her nerves stretched and quivering.
Jack forced his lips into an easy smile. “I’d better get you back to Mount Street forthwith, or your aunt will doubtless forbid me your company. It’s well past our allotted hour.”
Sophie kept her own smile light. “My aunt is very understanding.”
That, Jack thought, as he eased into the traffic, was undoubtedly the greatest understatement he had ever heard. He made no effort to break the silence until they reached Mount Street. Even then, relinquishing the reins to Jigson, whom he had left awaiting his return, he eschewed comment, reaching up to lift Sophie down to the pavement in what was rapidly becoming a charged silence.
As he expected, she showed no signs of fluster. Instead, she stood before him, her face turned up to his, her query contained in the gentle lift of her delicate brows.
Despite himself, Jack smiled—his slow, sensuous smile, the one he was usually careful to hide from well-bred young ladies.
Sophie didn’t disappoint him; she studied his face, openly gauging his smile, then, lifting her eyes to his, merely raised her brows higher.
Jack laughed softly but shook his head. “The time is not yet,” was all he dared say. Holding her eyes with his, he raised her gloved hand and, most reprehensibly, placed a kiss on her bare wrist. Then, placing her hand on his sleeve, he covered it with his and strolled with her up the steps. As the door opened to admit her, he bowed. “Once again, my dear—until next we meet.”
CHAPTER SIX
FOR SOPHIE, the rest of Tuesday and all of Wednesday passed in a rosy-hued blur. As expected, Lady Cowper called, promising vouchers for Almack’s and her most earnest endeavours. Lucilla and her ladyship spent a full hour with their heads close together; Sophie stared absent-mindedly at the window, her expression distant. Recalled to the present when her ladyship rose, she flashed a bright smile and bade Lady Cowper farewell. The smile lingered, muted but nevertheless present, long after her ladyship’s carriage rattled away down the street.
“Well then, my dears.” Lucilla swept back into the drawing-room. Clarissa followed with Sophie trailing in the rear. “In the light of Lady Cowper’s remarks, we had best reconsider our strategy.”
Closing the door, Sophie made for the chaise, a slight blush tinting her cheeks. “How so, aunt?” She could not, in truth, recall all that much of Lady Cowper’s conversation.
With a long-suffering air, Lucilla raised her brows. “Because, my dear, if the ton is already in town then there’s no reason not to steal a march on those who have planned their entertainments to coincide with the usual start of festivities and already sent out their invitations.” Reclaiming her seat, she gestured to the pile of white cards upon the mantelshelf. “The list grows every day. I have it in mind to make our mark with a tactical manoeuvre, if I have the phrase correctly.”
Sophie tried to concentrate on her aunt’s meaning. Yet at every pause, her mind slid sideways, to ponder the subtleties in a certain deep voice, and the light that had glowed in his eyes. Frowning, she struggled to banish her distracting fascination. “So you mean to bring Clarissa’s come-out forward?”
Deep in thought, Lucilla nodded. “It seems strategically imperative—if she’s not out, she cannot be present at the rush of balls and parties which, as dear Emily pointed out, are this year going to precede the usual commencement.” Lucilla pulled a face. “Yet it’s not the sort of decision one takes lightly.” She pondered a moment, one elegant fingernail tapping on the chair arm. Then she straightened. “We have Lady Allingcott’s at-home this afternoon and Lady Chessington’s little party tonight, then Almack’s tomorrow—even they have started early this year. I pray you both to keep your ears open. Depending on what we all hear, I think we might start with an impromptu party, just for the younger folk, next week. And plan Clarissa’s ball for the week after that. My ideas are already well advanced; it will simply be a matter of bringing them for
ward a trifle.” Nodding to herself, Lucilla turned to Clarissa. “What say you to that, my dear?”
“It sounds wonderful!” Clarissa’s eyes radiated excited relief. “Indeed, I wasn’t looking forward to missing the balls in the next weeks.”
“And why should you?” Lucilla spread her hands wide. “This is your Season, my love; you’re here to enjoy it.” She smiled her subtlest smile. “As Madame Jorge said; we will contrive.”
Sophie had nothing to say against her aunt’s plans. Mr. Lester, of course, would not be present at the small, informal parties and dances held by the families with young girls making their come-out, to help the young ladies gain their social feet. Until Clarissa was officially out, the Webb ladies would be restricted to such tame affairs, which were all very well if there was nothing else on offer. But this year, this Season, was going to be different—and it wasn’t only the weather that would make it so for her.
They attended Lady Allingcott’s and Lady Chessington’s entertainments, and on Wednesday called on Lady Hartford and the Misses Smythe, then danced at Almack’s, all the while listening to what their peers had to say of projected entertainments.
Over breakfast the next morning, Lucilla called a council of war. “Now pay attention, Sophie.”
Thus adjured, Sophie blinked. And endeavored to obey the injunction.
“I’ve consulted with your father, Clarissa, and he’s in full agreement. We will hold your come-out ball at the end of the week after next.”
Clarissa crowed. Her younger brothers pulled faces and taunted.
“In the meantime, however,” Lucilla raised her voice only slightly; as her eagle eye swept the table the din subsided. “We’ll hold a dance at the end of next week—on Friday. An informal affair—but we need not restrict the guest list solely to those making their come-out. I see no reason not to invite some of those amongst the ton with whom you are already acquainted.”