His voice, she thought, was like dark brown chocolate. ‘No, my lord. Only to shop. We must leave soon, now the days are shortening,’ she said.
‘Indeed. You’ll need all the light we have left. Have you been long in Richmond? How could we have missed seeing you there?’
A smile lit up the almond eyes at last with the lift of her brow. ‘As to that, sir, anyone could miss us quite easily, even at church. My niece and I have seen little of society since we arrived. May I introduce her to you? Miss Caterina Chester.’
At last, Caterina’s moment had arrived. She stepped forward from her vantage point to make the prettiest bob she could devise while she had their entire attention and, though she ought to have kept her eyes demurely lowered, her natural urge to discover what effect she was having got the better of her.
‘My lords,’ she whispered, allowing her bright goldenbrown eyes to reach the younger lord’s attentive face for another glimpse of his crisp dark thatch before he replaced his hat. It seemed to fall quite naturally into the correct disorder but his eyes, she noticed, held only a neutral attempt at friendship before focussing once more upon her aunt. Inwardly, she sighed.
Lord Elyot, however, saw that one of his queries had been avoided. ‘Is your stay in Richmond permanent, Miss Chester?’ he said.
‘Oh, yes, my lord. We’ve been there only five weeks and two days and there’s such a lot for us yet to see.’ And do, she thought. Again, her gaze turned hopefully in Lord Rayne’s direction, but noticed only the quizzical nature of his examination of her over-frilled and beribboned day dress and braided spencer, her flower-bedecked bonnet and the lace gloves that she had believed were all the thing. Until now.
‘Oh, you’ll need several seasons to see all that London has to offer,’ Lord Elyot replied, ‘but shopping must come first. My brother and I called in to purchase a gift for our sister’s birthday, but we possess neither the flair nor the time to find exactly the right thing. I wonder, my lady…’ he returned his attention to Amelie ‘…if you and your niece could help us out. Your taste,’ he continued, glancing at the counter covered with pieces she had bought, ‘is obviously of the most sophisticated. Do you have any suggestions as to what would please a sister most?’
‘Without knowing her, sir, that would be difficult. Is she single or married? Young or…how old will she be?’
The two men exchanged blank stares until Lord Rayne offered some statistics he was reasonably sure of. ‘Well, she’s three years older than me, married with two bra…bairns…er, children.’
‘And she’s two…no, three years younger than me,’ said his brother. ‘Does that help?’
Amelie’s smile might have grown into a laugh but for her effort to contain it, and Caterina noted again the devastating effect this gentle bubbling had on the two men, for it was genuine yet controlled. ‘That is some help. Does she have a star sign?’ Amelie prompted, twinkling.
The blankness returned.
‘The beginning of September? Or the middle?’
‘The end,’ said Lord Rayne, warming to the theme.
‘No, somewhere near the middle,’ said Lord Elyot. ‘I think. Look, may we leave this with you, if you’d be so kind? Mr Bowyer here will charge the cost to my account and send it to Richmond. We’re in a bit of a hurry.’
Smiling broadly, Mr Bowyer assented.
Amelie agreed, wondering at the same time why they had stopped to choose a gift if they were in so much of a hurry. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Miss Chester and I will surely find something appropriate in here.’
Lord Elyot bowed. ‘You are too kind,’ he said, formally. ‘I am in your debt, my lady. I hope we shall meet in Richmond.’
There was something about his eyelids, Amelie thought. He was a man of experience, and he knew how to look at a woman to make her feel as if she were the only person in the room to matter to him. He had spoken to Caterina like that too, and the child had noticed and wished the brother had done the same.
Bows and curtsies were exchanged once more and the meeting was curtailed as Caterina instantly began a search for something that would fritter away someone else’s money. The men made for the door, their voices carrying easily across the subdued interior.
‘I didn’t know we were in so much of a hurry, Nick.’
‘Well, we are. We need to return to Richmond tonight. A problem to sort out for Father. Rather urgent.’
‘What kind of a problem?’
Lord Elyot tucked his cane beneath one arm and picked up a silver snuff-box, turning it over to examine the base. ‘Oh, just some loose screw or other springing young nob-thatchers and bairns from the local workhouse,’ the deep voice drawled softly, distinctly bored. ‘Anybody who thinks that a bit o’skirt with a bun in the oven is worth rescuing must be an addle-pate, don’t you agree, young Rayne? But the Vestry want it stopped. It’s only a twenty-four-hour job, but we have to make a start before we get a new plague of vagabonds. You can help, if you like.’ He replaced the snuff-box. ‘Come on. It won’t take all that long, then we can go and look at some new cattle, eh?’
‘Stupid do-gooders! Ought to be locked up themselves. If only they knew the trouble they cause.’
They passed out of the shop into the sudden clamour of Ludgate Hill, where the street-criers and rattle of wheels drowned the rest of their conversation, and Amelie was left doing what her niece had done earlier through salt-cellars and candlesticks. She watched them pause as her own barouche drew to a standstill outside the shop and the footman leapt down to hold the horses’ heads. Her heart hammered with sudden fear.
Loose screw…springing young nob-thatchers and bairns from the local workhouse…bit o’skirt with a bun in the oven…do-gooders…
It was not so much the vulgar cant that raised Amelie’s hackles, for the men were entitled to say what they wished when they were alone; it was the revelation that they had a particular problem to solve for their father, whoever he was, which was apparently upsetting both him and the Vestry. And without a shadow of a doubt they were, without knowing it, speaking of her, Lady Amelie Chester, for she was the ‘dogooder’ in question whose deep commitment to the plight of unfortunate women would never be understood by toffs of their kind who didn’t know the date of their sister’s birthday, or even how old she was. She felt the surge of fury, resentment and disappointment like a pain as she heard their mocking voices again. She watched them linger outside to examine her new coffee-coloured barouche with its cream-and-brown striped upholstery, its Italian lamps, the dapplegrey horses, the eight-caped coachman and liveried footman in brown and pale grey as neat as could be. They would not find any cattle to beat that showy pair, she thought, turning away with a frown. It had all ended on a very sour note, for she had liked their manner until then. She would find it even more difficult to fulfil her promise now she had seen the kind of men she had agreed to oblige. ‘Caterina dear, have you seen anything suitable?’ she said.
Wallowing almost knee-deep in expensive metalware, her niece had suddenly become animated and was eyeing a pair of very pretty silver chinoiserie cake-baskets that Amelie would not have minded owning.
‘Mm…m,’ Amelie said. ‘Pretty, but…’
‘Well, then, what about a large salver? They’re always useful. One cannot have too many salvers, can one?’
The catalyst was the word ‘useful’. If there was anything a woman disliked being given for her birthday, it came into the ‘useful’ category unless, of course, she had asked for it. Like a carriage and a pair of horses. Eagerly, she looked around for the largest, the most tasteless and most expensive ‘useful’ item on display, though it was Caterina who spotted it first, a massive silver and gilt tea urn with three busty sphinxes holding up the bowl on their wings and a