A Most Unsuitable Match

As he’d hoped, that teased out a genuine smile—and he had to suck in a breath. The effect was like coming out of a dark cave into brilliant noon sunshine.

Basking in it, he said, ‘May I escort you back to your aunt? Perhaps we can scandalise and confound a few disapproving matrons on the way?’

But she hadn’t completely recovered, for his joking suggestion brought an immediate, alarmed widening of those enchanting blue eyes. Hastily he added, ‘Excuse me, I was just funning. As you can see, the gardens are deserted. I should be able to return you safely to your aunt without endangering your reputation.’

She looked at him, the wry smile on her lovely lips making him wish she were as scandalous as society branded her, so he might kiss that luscious mouth, right here in the park.

While he beat back the desire, she said, ‘You’re right and I apologise. I’ve been suspicious of you at every turn, while you’ve done nothing but seek to protect me.’ She sighed. ‘If only my reputation were less...tarnished. I wish it were sterling enough to allow me to associate openly with the only man I’ve ever met, outside my own family, who hasn’t judged—and dismissed—my character without meeting me or having me utter a word. How I wish we could be friends!’

Somewhat to his surprise, Johnnie had to acknowledge he shared that wish. Outside his own sisters, he had next to no experience of gently bred maidens, having left England right after university and having carefully avoided newcomers from the Fishing Fleet during his time in India.

Not that avoiding them required much effort. With the dearth of single English females in India, the ladies venturing out in search of husbands on the yearly voyages from England had no trouble finding partners. Even those with little beauty and few charms had numerous suitors, clearing the field for him to turn his attentions to the more dashing married matrons.

True, he found Prudence Lattimar’s beauty arresting. He sensed a fire beneath her carefully controlled façade, no matter how stringently she was trying to mask it, that couldn’t help but draw him like the proverbial moth to her flame. He had the tempting suspicion he might be just the man to coax that flame into a very satisfying conflagration.

More surprising, though, he was discovering himself equally captivated by Miss Lattimar’s lack of artifice, her directness and honesty—traits he suspected were in short supply among females looking to attract a husband. Not just husband-hunters, he amended. He’d found those qualities lacking in virtually every female he’d ever known.

‘I would enjoy your friendship,’ he acknowledged—though what he’d do with the friendship of a woman he could neither bed nor wished to marry, he didn’t know. Dismissing that qualm, he said, ‘We must consider ways to make that happen. But not at this moment. Now, let us just enjoy as much conversation as we can squeeze in before I must surrender you to your aunt. So, how goes it with your Duke’s son?’

She tilted her head at him. ‘You truly want to know? I got the impression you didn’t like him very much.’

‘Just because he looked at me in my regimentals as though I were a slug that had just crawled on his shoe, before dismissing me as a nonentity? Excuse me, not just a nonentity, but scapegrace rakehell who shouldn’t be allowed within speaking distance of his—or your—pristine person?’

While chuckling at his description, she shook her head. ‘He did treat you badly, which was not at all well done of him.’

Johnnie shrugged. ‘One can’t expect wisdom or discernment from a university dandy—or a bunch of play soldiers who’ve never been within a musket-sound’s distance of a real battle.’

‘Unlike you, who are a real soldier?’

Grief and pain twisted in his gut. Fortunately, she could have no idea the cost of being a ‘real’ soldier, he thought before he shut down the memories and summoned a smile. ‘Now you’ve caught me being as dismissive of them as they were of me! I admit, I have something of a distaste for Fitzroy-Price’s ilk. I served under too many colonial officials whose chief qualification for the job was their papa’s elevated title or connections. However, though I may have spent most of my adult life outside England, even I am not too dim to recognise that wedding the son of a duke must top even “wealthy”, “young” and “charming” on every fond mama’s list of the sort of husband she’d choose for her daughter.’

She nodded. ‘He would be accounted a prime catch. Especially for someone like me.’

He frowned. ‘Someone like you?’

‘Yes. He’s to receive a living from his uncle, Aunt Gussie tells me. How better to redeem my reputation, than to become the blameless wife of a clergyman?’ Her enthusiasm faded a bit. ‘Though I would hope he would learn not to be drawn in by rough companions and to treat all people with more respect. But he’s young. His solemn role as a spiritual advisor will mature him and endow him with wisdom and compassion, I’m sure.’

With an effort, Johnnie restrained himself from rolling his eyes. In his experience, pampered, wealthy young men went on to become self-important, pompous older men, supremely confident in their superiority and disdainful of the rabble—which included most everyone else in society—beneath them.

But, as young and sheltered from the world as unmarried maidens were, Miss Lattimar had probably not yet learned that lesson. It wasn’t really his place to teach her.

While he worked hard to keep from expressing his opinion, Miss Lattimar said, ‘Enough of Lord Halden. Might I ask you a question?’

Primed now to expect almost anything, he immediately replied, ‘Of course! Although if it deals with society, I can’t promise to have the expertise to accurately answer it.’

‘You absolutely have expertise about this society! I’ve never seen more of the world than our estate in Northumberland, the town house in London and the little I’ve experienced so far of Bath. I’m so envious of the travels and the adventures you’ve had! Please, can you tell me what it was like, living in India?’

‘Tell you about India?’ he echoed, surprised. ‘Ladies usually beg to hear about storms at sea, or pirates. Generally, only men ask me about India.’ And then, mostly for tales about the women.

‘I’m sure you’re a marvellous storyteller. And I truly would like to hear about your life there.’

‘Very well, India. Let me see if I can pick out the bits best suited for a maiden of your tender years.’

She giggled. ‘Oh, no! I want to hear all the spicy bits, too!’

Did she have any idea how irresistible she was? he thought, totally charmed. ‘All right, then. Let me see if I can find bits spicy enough to titillate you without losing whatever credit I might have with your aunt for protecting you on your walk back.’

Quickly searching through memory to select a story that might entertain her without veering into the salacious, he launched into a description of the grand procession in the State of the Nawab of Surat in which troops from his regiment had participated. ‘After the termination of the fast of Ramadan, one of the holiest events in the Muslim year, the Nawab ordered a grand parade from his durbar to the principal mosque. A select few of us British regulars marched after him, followed by elephants and camels carrying kettle-drummers and musicians, local men on horseback, their mounts as richly dressed as they were, and finally a state palankeen bearing representatives of the East India Company, members of the ruling British council, the Governor of the castle and the Admiral of the Mogul’s fleet, all in dress uniform. Ah, the noise of the excited crowds calling and hooting, the women ululating, the tramp of boots, hooves and elephant feet! The sound of the drums and the strange melodies of the native lutes, the scent of marigolds, incense, perfume—and dung. And clouds of dust, enveloping us and coating our mouths and uniforms.’

She laughed, her eyes shining. ‘You describe it so vividly I can almost hear it—and smell it! You are a marvellous storyteller! My twin sister, Temperance, who has a great desire to explore foreign places, has collected all the travel journals and memoirs she can find, but hearing such episodes described by someone who actually lived them is so much more fascinating than merely reading about them. Tell me more!’

So he did, secretly delighted when she begged him to continue his tales through one more circuit around the park before he returned her to her aunt.

When they finally turned down the pathway and saw Lady Stoneway and another matron sitting on a bench, her rapt expression faded. ‘I hate it that it isn’t wise for me to associate with you. It was so...energising to talk about something truly interesting, rather than having to confine my remarks to innocuous observations on the weather, or monosyllabic murmurs of appreciation for whatever a gentleman is prosing on about!’

‘Good heavens! Is that what you have to do to look respectable?’ When she nodded, he shook his head. ‘How...stifling. And how much I admire you!’

She gave him a sharp look. ‘It isn’t polite to mock.’

‘No, I’m entirely serious! It’s fortunate I have no desire to mingle in polite society, for I probably wouldn’t last half an hour before I got thrown out on my ear. I’m far too prone to ignore convention and say exactly what I think, hang the consequences.’ He chuckled. ‘Which, probably, is why I was never a success at school and the Army in India looked askance on me. I ask too many questions and probe into too many areas they would prefer left unexplored.’

Miss Lattimar smiled—and she really was temptation incarnate when she smiled, he thought. A soldier ought to get a medal for bravery or restraint for resisting the completely understandable urge to kiss her senseless on the spot.

‘My governess was for ever warning me and Temperance against doing that,’ she was saying. ‘Although Temper is so much braver and bolder than I am. She does tell people what she thinks. Defies them about casting us in the image of our mother, too, instead of trying to deflect them and please everyone, like I do.’

‘It takes self-control and admirable discipline to limit what one says. Particularly when the comment one struggles to suppress is bang on the mark. I’d say that makes you the one who is strong and brave.’

She looked startled, as if she’d never thought that of herself. ‘How kind of you to say so! I only wish I could believe it. Much as I try to be perfectly behaved, so that society will come to believe I am not my mother, I must confess, sometimes I feel like giving up the effort. Abandoning prudence and caution, raising my skirts and running through Sidney Gardens shrieking, just to see the look on some censorious matron’s face. Or stripping off my stockings and wading in the fountain—like Temper and I used to wade in the river at home.’

‘Probably best to suppress such impulses,’ he said—even as it pained him to think she felt compelled to restrain that bright, exuberant spirit. ‘I doubt they would be considered very suitable in a vicar’s wife.’

He regretted the words immediately, for they extinguished the merriment on her face in an instant. ‘I might be able to wade in a fountain, in the privacy of my own garden, with my children accompanying me,’ she said after a moment.

‘I hope you will.’ Yet, he couldn’t help a probably futile wish that somehow, she would avoid a fate that, to him, seemed destined to lock her for ever in a role where her natural charm and zest for life would be straitjacketed.

Just beyond speaking distance from her aunt, she stopped, as if she needed to armour herself to return to the world of rules and subterfuge. Lips parted, she gazed over at him, regret at having to part and longing on her face.

A wave of desire swept through him to carry her away from the propriety-bound world she was about to re-enter, off somewhere they could be alone. Where he might succumb to the urge to kiss her that had dogged him from the moment he saw her again.

From the widening of her eyes and the little intake of breath, he knew she felt that sensual pull as strongly as he did. And he was as helpless to resist it as a cobra hypnotised by a mongoose.

Giving him a tiny negative shake of her head, as if wordlessly acknowledging both the desire and the impossibility of indulging it, she said, ‘I have to go back.’

‘To the world of society and its rules.’

‘Yes. But I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed our walk. Maybe...maybe we can find a way to walk together again in future. I imagine my aunt will be fatigued and want to return home at once, so I’ll say good day to you now, Lieutenant.’

He bowed. ‘And to you, Miss Lattimar.’