Max went to sit at his desk again as the door closed behind Ryder. He felt confidence in the man, both in his discretion and his skill. A few weeks and he would know where he was and how he stood. It was good to have done this at last. For years he had been telling himself that Nevill would make a perfectly acceptable heir. Now he could close his eyes and see the nebulous outline of his own son. The fact that this phantom of the future had only begun to appear since he had met Bree did not escape him.
A son with her blue eyes and his dark hair, or perhaps his brown eyes and her wheaten blonde hair—either was an attractive thought. And a number of daughters, all like their mother.
Max grinned at his distorted image in the silver inkwell, his spirits lifting from what seemed like an inordinate time in the doldrums. Surely, if one was daydreaming about the number of children one would have with a lady, one was beyond the stage of being undecided about one’s feelings? All this needed was very careful timing and complete self-control. And her co- operation, of course. And beyond that, to learn what one had done so very wrong before and not commit the same mistakes again.
By the second circuit of Green Park on Wednesday afternoon with Mr Latymer, Bree had come to the conclusion that she needed at least three new walking dresses if she was going to keep this up. And two new bonnets.
On Tuesday Lord Lansdowne had called and had taken her driving in Hyde Park at the height of the fashionable promenade. She had been acknowledged by a gratifying number of new acquaintances from the Dowager’s ball, despite the Viscount’s protestations that town was virtually empty of company.
‘I wouldn’t be up now if it weren’t that Grandmama wanted to puff off Sophia’s engagement from the town house,’ he explained. He moved the phaeton off again after a stop to speak to three of Bree’s Grendon cousins who were staying up in town while the fine weather lasted.
‘But the Nonesuch Whips are here,’ Bree observed. ‘At least, enough of you to be having meetings.’
‘Mmm.’ The Viscount touched his hat to a barouche full of fashionably dressed young matrons as they passed. ‘I’m here for Sophia’s affair, Greesley’s staying on because his elderly uncle, the one who’s going to leave him all the money, is threatening to turn up his toes, and Greesley’s doing the dutiful. Penrith’s up because his suite at his country seat is being redecorated and he’s fled from demands to choose hangings—at least, that’s his story—and young Nevill’s here because Penrith is. Don’t know what Latymer’s reason is, but once there’s a core of us, then it makes it worthwhile for the others and it snowballs.’
‘Has Lord Penrith told the other club members about my suggestion for them to drive the stage?’ Bree twirled her parasol and tried not to feel guilty about leaving Rosa with a stack of account books. Her companion had protested that she wanted to read them to get a better understanding of the business and had shooed Bree out of the house as soon as Lord Lansdowne had called.
‘Indeed he has.’ The Viscount was enthusiastic. ‘It’s what’s keeping us all up now, the hope we can get at least two outings in while the weather holds.’
‘I really do not understand the attraction,’ Bree said doubtfully, still uneasy that they would try and race. ‘I expect you all have beautiful rigs and very fine teams.’
‘That’s just the point.’ Lansdowne caught the end of his whip neatly round the handle in a way that had Bree itching to learn the trick of it. ‘We spend the money, but is it our horses and our well-balanced rigs that make us drive well? How do we know? If we take a stagecoach, which, forgive me, is not built to the same standards, and have to take pot luck with teams that are not bred for looks or speed, then the man with the better skills will be obvious.’
‘It’s more of a challenge, then?’ Bree could think of one gentleman who more than lived up to it.
‘That’s right,’ Lansdowne agreed cheerfully. ‘Tell me, do you drive, Miss Mallory?’ Once she had recovered from the inexplicable coughing fit, Bree was able to assure him that she was capable of managing a phaeton or a curricle, and to convince herself that admitting to being able to handle the reins of a park carriage did not brand her as a hoyden who drove coaches.
She had enjoyed her drive with the Viscount. Then this morning Georgy had arrived in her barouche to ask whether Bree would like to visit Ackermann’s Repository with her to chose some prints. It has seemed only courteous to agree, although that made a second day when she would be absent from the Mermaid.
‘I’ll show Rosa around, settle her into the office,’ Piers had promised firmly. ‘You go and enjoy yourself.’ Really, if she had not known better, she would have thought Piers and Rosa were in a conspiracy to give her a holiday.
Georgy was intent on buying enough images to make a fashionable print room out of a closet between her dressing room and her husband’s, but the necessity to buy what seemed like hundreds of prints from the shop did not distract her from the lure of fashion magazines, a stack of which were now waiting, oozing temptation, on Bree’s bedside table.
It seemed strange to have a female friend, especially one as au fait with society as Lady Lucas. She seemed to have forgotten that Bree was single and cheerfully chatted of the latest crim. con. scandals, her falling out with her husband over her milliner’s bill and her scheme to put him in a better mood by wearing a quite outrageously naughty négligée she had just purchased.
‘It is the sheerest pink lawn, with deep rose ribbons and lots of lace, which makes it look as though it is quite decent until one moves and then—oh la, la! Charles is going to be beside himself.’
Bree thought of what effect such a garment might have on Max and found the very thought brought a blush to her cheeks. It also brought a very unwelcome tingling feeling in all those places he had kissed and she tried to calm herself by thinking how very unflattering such a garment would be to her complexion in pink. Deep blue, on the other hand …
‘And how is Dysart?’ Georgy demanded, uncannily echoing her train of thought as they sat back in the barouche and regarded their morning’s shopping with satisfaction.
‘I have no idea. I saw him briefly the day after the ball when he called, but that is all.’
‘Really?’ Lady Lucas frowned. ‘How provoking. I would have thought he would have asked you out driving at least once by now.’
So would I, Bree thought.
‘I am convinced you should marry him,’ her companion added chattily.
‘What!’ Bree sat bolt upright and shot a glance at the backs of the driver and groom sitting up in front of them. ‘I am quite ineligible, even were his lordship interested.’
‘Oh, I know I said you had better settle for a younger son,’ Georgy said airily, ‘but now I know you, I think you would do marvellously for Dysart. You have so much more élan than I could have hoped for—you could carry it off.’
‘But I do not want—’
But Georgy was in full flow, although this time she lowered her voice. ‘If anyone can mend his broken heart, I am sure you can.’
‘His what?’ One thing Max Dysart did not appear to be afflicted by was a broken heart. Anyone less lovelorn she had yet to see.
‘They say he fell in love ten years ago and she would not have him, and now he holds the memory of her, for ever frozen, in his heart.’
‘That is a horrid image,’ Bree said robustly. ‘And, in any case, ten years is a long time. Why, he was hardly more than a boy then. Now he’s a man.’
‘Yes, but ten years ago, he withdrew from society!’ Georgy whispered, her voice thrilling. ‘In the height of the Season, he vanished off down to Longwater. That must have been when it happened.’
‘Well, who was she?’ Bree demanded. Max’s words at the