Banished to Brighton by Sydney Jane Baily

Chapter Thirteen

Now fashion’s fairest daughters pace the lawn,

And Mars’ gay sons the lively scene adorn.

– Brighton. A Poem by Mary Lloyd, 1809

HARGROVE BOWED TO HIMbefore speaking. “I haven’t taken up with anyone, Your Highness. I am merely enjoying the company of your guests while in Brighton.”

“You are a rake, to be sure,” the prince insisted, glancing between Glynnis and Isabelle. “But when surrounded by such lovely females, who can blame you going from flower to flower, enjoying their honey.”

The Prince Regent was known for his ribald jokes and innuendo, but after what had passed between her and Hargrove the night before, Glynnis wasn’t in the mood to be the butt of that type of humor.

“If you’ll excuse me, Your Highness, many others wish to greet you,” she said. “Thank you for throwing this wonderful party.” After dropping into a curtsy, she stepped aside and hurried away.

“You are a delight,” the prince called after her.

Glynnis kept moving toward the round refreshment tables covered in white linens and laden with all manner of finger foods, and then past them into the deep orange and yellow ballroom where the musicians were already warming up. Currently empty, revelers would dance long into the night, her included. And Hargrove, too, she supposed.

She sniffed. She didn’t need Hargrove, and swiftly ordered herself to cease thinking about him. Instead, she would find a place to let Lord Dodd kiss her if he wanted to. If he didn’t, so be it. More gentlemen had arrived from London, as evidenced by this party being much busier than the last assembly. Given the air of festivity, she was certain she would leave Brighton with a husband of good quality.

“Miss Talbot,” Lord Dodd had caught up to her. “Did something upset you?”

She slowed her steps. Something had yet it should not have done so.

“I am well,” she said, looking up at him. He had a kind expression.

“Are you going outside?” he asked.

She hadn’t been, but perhaps that was his first move on the chessboard of mating.

“It is growing stuffy in here,” she said. “Shall we stroll around the building before the dancing begins?”

“We can promenade around the lawn on the east side of the prince’s Pavilion,” he suggested.

“Very well.” And just like that, she disappeared into the gathering dusk with a veritable stranger.

At first, they both remained silent, listening to the gentle, low calls of the wood pigeons in the trees and the high-pitched sounds of the swifts still flittering about, searching for the evening insects. At least, she hoped they were swifts and not bats.

Then Lord Dodd cleared his throat. “Are you desperately in love with Lord Aberavon?”

“Gracious,” she exclaimed. “That hardly seems an appropriate question. Why do you ask?” She hoped he asked because he was already falling in love with her himself.

“Ever since I first saw you emerge from the bathing machine,” Lord Dodd said, “I confess to being smitten.”

“Oh.” She had always thought she needed to trick a man into marrying her, yet this one was speaking plainly. Probably if he knew her penniless state, it wouldn’t be the case.

“We — my fiancé and I — we did engage ourselves in a marital contract upon little knowledge of one another, to be honest.” She congratulated herself. That sounded as if there were room for another man in her life, if one swept her off her feet.

“I understand perfectly.” He sounded pleased.

There were other couples strolling in the warm evening air, some even pausing by a tree or against the Prince Regent’s front portico. By the way they were wrapped around each other, she doubted any of them would interfere should Lord Dodd kiss her. There were no chaperones to be seen, nor matrons, nor stern hostesses. Brighton was a different world, indeed!

Suddenly, as they passed a large elm, Lord Dodd pulled her sideways, and they were hidden behind it from anyone looking out the many windows of the Castle. And the Pavilion was empty of observers since everyone was with the prince.

Without hesitation, he drew her into his arms and kissed her.

Glynnis tried to sink into his embrace, to ignore the thoughts in her head, and to let the sizzling and the throbbing begin.

Nothing. His lips were firm, his breath was clean, his nose didn’t knock awkwardly against hers. Yet no part of her body heated and pulsed, and she couldn’t stop comparing the kiss to Hargrove’s. Where was the blossoming passion?

On the other hand, as Lord Dodd tilted his head in the other direction and resumed the kiss, she wasn’t revolted in the least. It was a good, solid kiss. It wouldn’t be the worst thing to kiss this man for the rest of her life. As they became used to one another, as their feelings deepened and she hopefully fell in love with him, and as they enjoyed the other things that husbands and wives did, then she believed his kiss would begin to move her, even to thrill her.

Thus, she was confounded as to why Hargrove’s kiss already had the power to send her to the moon and had from the very first one. It was a conundrum.

Lord Dodd was breathing hard when he broke away, clearly more stirred than she was. How she wished she felt the same! In time, she would, she promised herself.

“I burn for you,” he declared.

Enough to offer her his hand?she wondered.

“I am engaged, as you know,” Glynnis said. “Thus, there is nothing we can do about your feelings. That is, unless you can think of some remedy.”

“We shall see,” Lord Dodd said, and nothing more.

As they approached the assembly room, she startled. Up ahead, Hargrove stood just outside the door, arms crossed. She would vow he’d been scanning the area for her.

“You look like a porter,” Lord Dodd quipped and led her past him. Her gown even brushed the viscount’s leg.

Glynnis would swear she could feel waves of anger emanating from him, and she was compelled to look back, catching his eye. Hargrove’s gaze was decidedly condemning, as if he knew what she’d been doing behind the elm tree.

Inside, little had changed. Isabelle was still by the prince’s side, a glass of champagne in her hand. But the Castle’s master of ceremonies signaled the dancing was about to begin with a vigorous shake of a bell.

“May I claim the first dance?” Lord Dodd asked.

“Yes, of course,” she said.

They began with a minuet, which was easily arranged in the eighty-foot ballroom. The space appeared even larger due to the strategically hung mirrors placed on opposite walls, with three lamps in every girandole sconce between each looking glass. The light reflected from side to side, creating a dazzling effect, and illuminated the Wedgewood cameos and delicate moldings around the room’s perimeter.

Hargrove partnered with a blonde from the picnic, and Glynnis wished she wasn’t so aware always of his location.

After the first dance, when Lord Dodd had finally excused himself, Hargrove approached her.

“Will you dance with me?” he asked.

“I’m surprised you wish to,” she said tartly. “You haven’t spoken a word to me all evening.”

He pursed his lips. “How was your stroll outside?”

Unthinkingly, she put her gloved hand to her mouth, and Hargrove’s gaze narrowed as his jaw tightened.

“You’re playing with fire again,” he muttered.

“Don’t tell me Lord Dodd is a petticoat-pensioner or married or a terrible libertine.”

“No,” Hargrove bit out. “None of those things. Must I remind you that you are engaged. You are putting your future happiness at terrible risk.”

What could she say to that?Glynnis shrugged.

Without another word, he swept her into his arms for a waltz, and she did two things. She sniffed the familiar scent — something expensive and custom-made for him from Floris on Jermyn Street, she guessed — and she started to tingle all over. Maybe she’d caught an illness the first time he’d kissed her, a germ from his mouth to hers that would forever cause her to react strongly to him. Perhaps he was a curse to her constitution!

She didn’t know. All she knew was no one else made her feel this way, and that was a shame.

After the second turn down the length of the room, she asked, “Why did you change your mind about Miss Montrose?”

His blue eyes met hers. “I’m not sure I understand your question.”

“Last night, you didn’t care for her. Yet tonight you escorted her and fawned all over her.”

“I didn’t fawn,” he insisted. “As it happened, I saw her crossing the street at the same time as I was, and it would have been beyond rude for me not to accompany her.”

She fell silent. Maybe it wasn’t his fault. There might be no conceivable way for a man to ignore a woman who was wearing a sheer gown with nothing underneath.

“What was terribly rude was Lord Dodd not escorting his aunt,” Hargrove said.

“By marriage,” she reminded him.

“He should have at least brought Isabelle across the street.”

“Because she is a doddering old auntie?” Glynnis shot back. “In a translucent dress!”

Hargrove barked out a laugh before he could stop himself.

“That dress!” he remarked. “I think she would be more at home in Paris.”

“Is that how they are clothed there?”

“The courtesans at the Palais Royal are.” Then Hargrove sobered. “Anyway, why do you mind if I escort a woman to a party? It should be nothing to you.”

“It’s not,” she insisted. “No more than my taking a lovely stroll to listen to the birds ought to be of any interest to you.”

“With Dodd,” he muttered.

“The prince said he was a good man.”

Hargrove’s eyebrows drew together. “Did he? I wouldn’t count his recommendation for much. After all, Prinny has two wives and at least that many mistresses.”

She shook her head. The Regent’s father was considered above reproach, salt of the earth, and interested in agriculture and in hunting more than in affairs of state. And certainly not one to have any other kind of affair either. Yet he and his devoted Queen Charlotte had managed to sire more than one dissolute son. Now the eldest and some said the most unprincipled ruled the kingdom as regent, and the only thing he seemed to have inherited from his moral-minded father was a love of art and music.

“On the other hand,” Hargrove said, “perhaps we shouldn’t judge Prinny too harshly. Rumor has it he’s turning this very ballroom into his own private chapel after he shuts the Castle’s doors at the end of the year. Thus, one could give him high marks for his faith.”

She glanced around her as he twirled her past the maroon sofas lining the walls, and tried to imagine them as hard wooden pews. Men were a mystery to her.

When the dance ended, Hargrove left her with a bow to go to the card room, the third largest of the Castle Hotel’s public rooms. She danced a few more dances with men whom she couldn’t imagine as her husband, and then it was time for dinner in the hotel’s dining room, which Prince George had rented out in its entirety.

As if by magic, Lord Dodd appeared by her side to escort her to dinner and be her partner. He was attentive and thoughtful. He drew out her chair, then naturally looked over her shoulder and down the front of her gown as he pushed her in. If he hadn’t, she would have been worried.

The tables had been pushed together into three long rows, and Hargrove and another woman whom Glynnis didn’t know sat at the far end of a different table. She didn’t bother looking for Isabelle, as she could not possibly care less.

Stripping off her gloves and laying them upon her lap, she picked up the already-filled wine glass and turned her full attention to the man whom she decided would become her husband.

***

ALTHOUGH MISS TALBOThadn’t needed him to escort her into the dining room, James kept his eye upon her. He couldn’t particularly say anything against Dodd. He didn’t really know the man. He knew Dodd’s father had married a much younger woman after he’d become a widower, hence the youthful “Aunt” Isabelle.

When Payton had joined him at cards earlier, James asked him if he’d heard anything alarming. The answer had been a disinterested no.

So why was he bothered by seeing Miss Talbot firmly attached to Lord Dodd all night?After all, he didn’t know Lord Aberavon either, nor did he particularly care if the man were cuckolded even before his wedding day.

James’s concern was all for the lady. He didn’t want her hurt by some scoundrel, even if she were careless with her attention and her affection. Why on earth she’d let him into her room and almost into her bed the previous night, James still couldn’t fathom.

Sighing, he gestured to a server to refill his wine glass and realized he was already tired of Brighton. With any luck, he could get Prinny to spend a serious moment looking at the art he’d managed to bring back from Paris.

Would he be dissatisfied and decide some nasty fate for James or pleased and send him back to London?A yea or a nay was all he needed to decide his future.

Glancing again at Glynnis, he thought the best thing would be to get away from the seacoast as quickly as possible.

“What about you, my lord?” came the voice from the woman beside him, and he wrenched his gaze from the dark-haired minx who’d captivated him.

“My apologies, I missed the question.”

The woman sighed. He’d been apologizing to her throughout dinner, but he couldn’t seem to remember to listen to her and was grateful each time she turned to the gentleman on her other side and talked his ear off instead.

“You, my lord, are a boorish dining partner.”

That much he heard.

“Why didn’t you make it a point to dine with that dark-haired lady if you were going to give her all your attention?” she asked.

He was being so obvious as if he cared about Miss Talbot. Irrational, foolish — what was he doing? He certainly wasn’t behaving like the care-free and unattached bachelor that he was.

“I’m behaving like an ass,” he confessed to the lady whose name he didn’t know but who deserved better. “How can I make it up to you?”

“You can’t. The pudding course has come and gone, and I’m glad we shall soon be set free.”

On that point, he wholeheartedly agreed. When the Prince Regent rose from his chair, appearing overstuffed and uncomfortable, James quickly drew out the lady’s chair and watched her flee from his poor civility.

Sighing, he looked once more toward Miss Talbot, but she was already showing him her back, striding away from the table on Dodd’s arm. He knew he would have enjoyed the meal had he been seated beside her. So far, he’d liked most every minute he’d spent in her company.

And the longer she spent with Dodd, the more miserable he became.

“Why are you looking like a dog who has lost his dinner?”

James smiled at Payton. “Prinny asked me to keep an eye on a young lady so she wouldn’t get into trouble,” he confessed.

“And you desperately want to be rid of her?” Payton asked, scanning the room as if she would have a sign over her head.

“I desperately want to get into trouble with her.”

Payton barked out a laugh. “So why don’t you?”

“She’s engaged. What’s more, I like her. It would be cruel to ruin her just because I can.”

Payton stared at him, then he crossed his arms.

“What do you mean you like her?”

James rolled his eyes. “As a person and as a female, she seems...,” he trailed off. “Never mind.”

“Do I know her?” Payton asked, back to looking at the other guests.

“I don’t think so. Miss Talbot—”

Payton’s head whipped around, and he gawked at him. “Not the Miss Talbot, the one you said was a conniving wench?”