“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 dinner before all the best tables are taken. There’s nothing here of interest.”
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 manners obviously forbade him from deserting the scene in favor of the summer rooms, a bolt hole that seemed to appeal to him very much more than continuing to be in such close proximity to Lord Undercliff and his loud, crude, uninvited guest.
“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.”
“That’s Symington, my lord,” Herbert Symington broke in rather rudely even as Lord Buxley, known far and wide as a true stickler for the conventions, sharply turned on his heel and strode away.
Lady Ariana didn’t know which of the two gentlemen she disliked more at that moment: Christian St. Clair for forgiving her, or Lord Anthony Buxley for having the courage to defy the man. Lord Buxley, probably, for now the smiling Miss Laurence and her most annoying, vulgar beauty mark were standing directly beside the baron, basking in the glow of his approval.
“Symington, you say?” St. Clair inquired casually, again employing his quizzing glass to great effect as he inspected the mill owner from head to toe, but quickly, as if the sight of the man’s poorly cut brown jacket and too-tight breeches were offensive to his sensibilities.
“La, sir,” the baron continued, “I can’t imagine why you have taken it into your head to believe I care either way what name you give to yourself. But, please, we are most avidly interested in what you have to say, as it is obvious you are operating under some sort of strain. You look, to be frank, as if you have just recently been ridden hard, and then put away wet. Not that such things matter in light of other, more interesting gossip. Miss Laurence here, for one, appears to be eager for news of the Peacock. Whatever has that terrible, terribly exciting creature done this time?”
And now, at last, Lady Ariana understood. How could she have been so stupid? The baron was attempting to protect Lord Undercliff, his inquiry deliberately bypassing Undercliff’s association with Symington to concentrate on the much more provocative subject of the Peacock.
And the rest of the evening’s guests also understood and would not speak publicly of Lord Undercliff’s acute embarrassment, knowing St. Clair would not be best pleased if they did so. Oh, he was clever, Christian St. Clair was, earning himself the powerful Lord Undercliff’s undying gratitude while still indulging Society’s appetite for scandal. Everyone was happy. Everyone save Lady Ariana, and Herbert Symington.
“What did he do?” Symington bellowed, causing Lady Ariana to bring herself back to attention after indulging herself in a lesson on how St. Clair’s mind worked. “I’ll tell you what the Peacock did. Just tonight he robbed me of my new coach and then burned my new house straight down to the ground!”
“’Tare an’ hounds! Another house? That’s the second this month,” someone behind Lady Ariana exclaimed.
“And the sixth—no, the seventh—this year,” another gentleman added, before both subsided, probably realizing that such intimate knowledge of the Peacock’s activities might urge the others present to look at them and wonder if they, like Lord Undercliff, might owe some part of their