A Desirable Husband

They mounted and set off, entering Hyde Park by a gate close to Knightsbridge barracks, and were soon riding down Rotten Row.

‘I suppose we shall be denied this pleasure when they start building the Exhibition hall,’ Rosemary said.

‘Possibly,’ Myles agreed. ‘The details have yet to be worked out.’

‘Well, I think it is too bad. It is so handy for me if I want to ride or come out in the carriage and it will all be spoiled. I am disappointed in you, Myles, really, I am.’

‘It is not my project, ma’am.’

‘You support it. I should have thought you would have had more family feeling.’

‘My feelings for the family have not changed. I support the idea of an exhibition because I think it will be good for the country and good for the working man.’

‘You will give him ideas above his station. There will be unrest and violence, fuelled by all the foreigners roaming about with nothing to do but cause trouble. Indeed, Rowan thinks…’

‘Oh, please, do not argue over it,’ Esme put in. ‘It is too nice a day to be at odds with each other.’ She looked about for a way of diverting them. ‘Oh, look, there’s that gentleman we saw yesterday.’

‘What gentleman?’ her sister asked.

‘That one.’ She lifted her crop to point him out. The young man, dressed in a single-breasted brown wool jacket and matching trousers, was busy as he had been the day before, sketching and making notes.

‘Oh, no. I do believe he does it on purpose.’

Felix looked up and, catching sight of them with Myles, stood watching them approach.

‘Do you know him?’ Myles asked.

‘No, we do not,’ Rosemary said sharply. ‘But he is insufferably impudent. He seems to think he can smile and doff his hat and that is as good as an introduction.’

‘Oh, in that case, let me do the honours.’ Myles drew rein beside Felix and the two ladies had perforce to stop beside him. ‘My lady, may I present Lord Felix Pendlebury? Pendlebury, Viscountess Trent. And this…’ He turned to Esme with a twinkle in his eye, which told her he had connected her question earlier that morning with Rosemary’s comment about smiling and doffing hats. ‘This is Lady Trent’s sister, Lady Esme Vernley.’

‘Ladies, your obedient.’ Felix bowed to each in turn.

Rosemary’s slight inclination of the head was the smallest she could manage without snubbing him, which she could not do, since he had now been properly introduced.

‘Oh, it is so nice to have a name for you, my lord,’ Esme said. ‘What are you drawing?’ She indicated his sketching pad.

‘It is an imaginary scene, my lady.’ He proffered her the pad, which she took.

‘And you have put us in it. Look, Rosemary, there’s you and there’s me.’ She held it out for her sister to see, but Rosemary hardly glanced at it.

‘If it is meant to be us, then I think it is an impertinence.’

‘None was meant, my lady,’ he said. ‘I was simply drawing what I thought the scene might look like when the Exhibition building is completed.’

‘I like it,’ Esme said, handing it back to him. Their hands touched as he took it from her and she found herself tingling all over from the shock of the contact. But it was far from an unpleasant feeling and she wondered if he felt it, too. He was looking up at her in such a strange way, his eyes moving over her face, as if he were studying her features, trying to memorise them. She found that that was what she was doing to him, storing up a picture of his lean face, high cheek bones, the well-defined brows, green eyes with their little flecks of brown, his smiling mouth, his proud chin held above a purple silk cravat. Was he teasing her? Did she mind? She did not.

‘I did not know you knew Myles,’ she said.

‘We met last night at the banquet and found we had much in common.’

‘He tells me it was a great success. Did you find it so?’ She ignored Rosie’s fidgeting beside her.

‘Indeed, I believe it was.’

‘Did you come to town especially for it?’

‘No, I have other business and visits I must make on behalf of my mother.’

‘Then perhaps we shall come across each other again. I am here to visit my sister for the summer—’

‘Esme!’ Rosemary’s tone was furious. ‘I am sure Lord Pendlebury does not wish to know that.’

‘On the contrary, my lady, I am delighted to hear it,’ he said. ‘Since my father’s death brought me back from the Continent two years ago, I have been kept busy at home in Birmingham and have sadly lost touch with the beau monde; I shall be glad to see someone I know.’

‘The horses are becoming restive,’ Rosemary said. ‘Come, Esme, it is time we resumed our ride.’

‘Then I bid you au revoir, ladies.’ As they moved off, he turned to Myles, who had watched the exchange with some amusement. ‘Until this afternoon, Moorcroft. Two o’clock we said, didn’t we?’

‘Yes, two o’clock,’ Myles answered and hurried to catch up with his sisters-in-law.

‘Esme, your behaviour has put me to the blush,’ Rosemary was saying. ‘You were openly flirting with the man and we have no idea who he is or anything about him. I am ashamed of you.’

‘Why, what did I do wrong?’

‘Telling him you were here for the summer and hoped to meet him again. I never heard anything so brazen. You would have been asking him to call on us if I had not stopped you.’

‘Oh, no, I wouldn’t do that,’ Esme said blithely. ‘It is your home, not mine; besides, if he came to the house he would only quarrel with Rowan, considering they are on opposing sides over the Exhibition.’

Myles was chuckling. Rosemary turned to him in exasperation. ‘It is all very well for you to laugh, Myles, you do not have the responsibility for this wretched sister of mine. I shan’t be able to let her out of my sight for an instant all summer long. She will talk to anyone. I cannot remember Lucy or I being allowed such licence.’

‘Times are changing,’ he said evenly. ‘Young ladies are allowed a little more freedom to say what they think nowadays.’

‘That is what worries me. Just who and what is Lord Pendlebury? I have never heard of him. He says he has returned from abroad. Where abroad?’

‘France, I believe. Or it might have been Venice. He was working abroad when his father died and he returned to take over the family estate near Birmingham.’

‘Working! Oh, now I see what you have in common, you both like to get your hands dirty.’

‘He doesn’t have dirty hands,’ Esme protested. ‘They are very clean and long-fingered, an artist’s hands. Is he an artist, Myles?’

‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘But judging by that sketch he was doing he has a talent in that direction. I believe his business is in the manufacture of glass.’

‘Well, I think he is an artist,’ Esme said.

‘What you think of him is of no account,’ Rosemary said. ‘He is a manufacturer, a tradesman, and you will not think of him at all, do you hear?’

‘I hear.’ Esme told her, but she didn’t see how she could obey. Her thoughts could not be commanded like that. They wandered about in her head, jumping from one subject to another, and she could not say when a thought of the handsome Lord Pendlebury might pop into her mind, let alone tell it not to. She was thinking of him now, especially of his eyes. She had thought at first they were laughing; indeed, they had been full of amusement when Rosemary had been so haughty towards him, as if he understood and did not care, but when he spoke of being abroad, a shadow had passed across them, like a cloud on a summer’s day suddenly excluding the sun. There had been unhappiness in his life. She wondered what it was that made him suddenly sad and wished she could banish it and bring back the sunshine. Which was nonsense, of course.