An Encounter at Hyde Park Read online

  And there was the crux of the entire misadventure. Eleanor had so hoped to have avoided this precise question. There was no side-stepping it, was there?

  Melverley said nothing. Aunt Mary said nothing. Montford looked ready to explode, which would have forced Eleanor to say something immediately, when the entire moment was crushed by the arrival of Elaine Montford and her mystery man.

  Eleanor wanted to kiss them both.

  As was to be expected, the entire story was absurd, the sort of thing narrated in a particularly annoying nursery rhyme. It was a silly, impossible sort of tale that no one would ever actually believe. Unfortunately, they were stuck with it.

  They did amend it somewhat, a mutually agreed upon deception that would serve them both equally well, but no amendment could save it from being a ridiculous bit of farce in the same vein as poisoned apples and magic beans.

  Elaine lifted her chin and recited the tale to the combined mass of outraged and relieved, Eleanor Kirkland showing the most relief, her father the most outrage, people in the drawing room. She had not expected such a large audience but it had been a most unexpected sort of day. To put it mildly.

  “I happened to meet Captain Ellery in the Park,” Elaine began before her father could gather breath to begin a tirade that would last hours, if not days. Her father was normally a calm man, until he got truly angry and then he was angry for days, throwing things about, shouting when one would have supposed the whole issue to have been settled. Her father’s anger was rather like a tiger in a cage; once the cage was sprung, getting the tiger back inside was a terrible chore. “As you may remember, Papa, Grandmama Godwinson used to holiday in Cornwall regularly and she and Captain Ellery’s grandmother were friends.”

  “How does that explain---” her father began, the vein on his forehead beginning to bulge. Elaine cut him off.

  “Captain Ellery’s mother was aware of the connection,” Elaine said, beginning to feel slightly at sea.

  “If I may continue?” Captain Ellery said, stepping forward to stand slightly in front of her, a rather valiant act under the circumstances. No one denied him the opportunity to continue. In fact, Eleanor sat down upon a chair, her hand on her chin, eyes alight with interest. “My mother---”

  “Mrs. Ellery,” Eleanor prompted.

  “Yes. Mrs. Ellery,” Captain Ellery said, giving Eleanor a rather curious look, “was aware that Miss Montford was in Town for the Season and wished to make her acquaintance, the family connection being so old, yet having grown so thin.” Here Eleanor made a noise in her throat that sounded too much like a chuckle. Lady Jordan promptly sat down next to her niece and glared at her. Eleanor looked instantly less delighted. “I was sent to drop my card at your home, Mr. Montford, an invitation to dine with us being my mother’s fondest hope.”

  “You did not drop your card,” her father said, the vein still quite animated.

  “As it happens, purely by chance,” Captain Ellery said, still looking her father full in the face, which was impressive, “I happened upon Miss Montford in the Park.”

  “Yes, that much is known to be true,” her father said.

  “It is all quite true,” Elaine said, taking a seat upon the least comfortable chair in the room, just to be polite. “Our grandmothers were friends, Mrs. Ellery knew of the connection and wished to renew it, and Captain Ellery happened upon me in the Park on his way to drop his card here.”

  “And then?” her father said, his vein looking slightly less robust.

  “And then I was stung by a bee,” Elaine said, “and so Captain Ellery kindly took me to his home, which is much closer to Hyde Park than ours, and Mrs. Ellery bathed the wound in vinegar and put a cold compress on it. And we took tea. The three of us.”

  Absurd. Ridiculous. Yet much of it was the truth. Most of it. The necessary bits.

  The room was silent for far longer than was comfortable. The ladies were seated in what they each hoped was a casual posture and which were not even remotely casual. The gentlemen all stood, each looking prepared to believe anything which would not force them to court scandal by having to be involved in a rushed, forced marriage resulting from a very shoddy bit of chaperoning.

  In that, everyone in the room was in complete accord.

  It was this common desire to believe, to make the whole day something unremarkable, to treat her disappearance from the Park with a strange man and then to be absent for hours from her assigned chaperone, that kept every mouth firmly shut. No one asked how Captain Ellery could possibly have known who she was, or why she would walk off with a man to whom she had not been formally introduced. No one asked to see the bee sting. No one remarked upon the odd coincidence of the whole thing. No one even mentioned that had Mrs. Ellery accompanied Elaine home it would have done far more good to her reputation than hearing the tale from the man who had abducted her.

  Oh, yes. It was still an abduction in Elaine’s mind. What else? But to admit that would be to assign herself to a life as Captain Ellery’s wife. She was hardly willing to aid in that cause. Though, to be truthful, Captain Ellery did not seem overjoyed at the prospect of taking her to wife. Hence, the carefully rendered tale.

  Yet these parts were true, unbelievably true: their grandmothers had been friends, in the broadest definition of the term. They had, most assuredly, known each other.

  Mrs. Ellery had told her son, Captain Roger Ellery, to drop his card at the Montford residence, something which Captain Ellery, as he was a most disagreeable sort of man, had quietly decided that he would do so only if it were highly convenient. By that Elaine could only assume he meant if he happened to trip upon the paving stones and his card somehow fell through a crack in the Montford door.

  She had been stung by a bee. Captain Ellery had insisted, as he always was insistent about one thing or another, that she be seen to by his mother, by which she had learned his name, been taken to his home, been introduced to his mother, and been doused in vinegar and water. Mrs. Ellery was quite an expert on wounds and ailments, it appeared. Captain Ellery had, quite properly, not witnessed the vinegar and cold compress soaking she had endured, which, truthfully, had lessened the pain of the sting quite a bit, but he had been staring at her neck ever since, at the spot right behind her right ear where her hair had been arranged so beautifully this morning and was now a complete ruin, she was certain.

  Staring and staring. It was most rude of him and quite like him.

  Still, the silence. She had no more words to throw into that silence. She and Captain Ellery had not anticipated nor prepared for this silence. They had, by necessity, come to an agreement that would serve them both. She had been forced to forgive him for his intrusion into her affairs in the Park. Well, perhaps not truly forgiven, but she was of a practical turn of mind and there was nothing to be gained by holding onto an anger that would put a lie to everything they must have their parents believe.

  Captain Ellery had, of course, spun his mother a tale. What else? The success of the lie depended upon her father believing it and acting in accordance with that belief.

  Her father stared at her, looking for some sign of depravity in her most likely.

  Her father, whom she loved, make no mistake, was of a very passionate disposition. Her name, in fact, was chosen after his third reading of an ancient text of an Arthurian tale. She was therefore named Elaine, after a character, surely fictional, who had died of grief when Lancelot left her. Elaine was nothing, nothing at all, like that misguided girl. To die for love? To die for a man who did not care to stay in place and do his duty by loving in return?

  Hardly.

  Her mother had wanted to name her Matilda. Matilda, the name of an English queen. It was a better fit than Elaine. But it was too late now. Still, she did wonder if her father saw her as Elaine when she was Matilda in her heart.

  “Where did the bee sting you?” Eleanor Kirkland asked, breaking the silence to bits. It was a relief and Elaine communicated that relief to Eleanor with her eyes.
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  “On my neck. The back of my neck,” Elaine said.

  “Odd thing for a bee to do,” her father said.

  “It must have hurt very much,” Eleanor said. “I have never been stung by a bee before. I hope to avoid it.”

  “It was very painful,” Elaine said. “I was most grateful for Mrs. Ellery’s care. She was most knowledgeable.”

  “I was stung often as a boy,” Captain Ellery said. “My mother, by necessity, became adept.”

  “How often have you been stung?” Eleanor said, her dark blue eyes gleaming.

  “Five or six times, I should think.”

  “That sounds quite ambitious. I think once must do for me,” Eleanor said.

  Bits of nonsense. Meaningless chitchat, and yet the silence was broken and would stay broken. Lady Jordan asked Father if she might have a sip of tea before departing into the chill of late afternoon. Father mumbled an apology and rang for tea and then remarked to Lady Jordan that the weather had been more damp than was his preference. The Marquis of Melverley paid scant attention to anyone in the room once Eleanor had asked about the bee. Melverley walked to one of the four windows in the room and stared out at the street, his hands behind his back.

  Elaine could feel Captain Ellery relax, and so she relaxed. They had done it! She glanced up at him and found him looking down at her, his cool blue gaze upon her neck and the back of her hair. She put a hand up without quite realizing it, smoothing her hair, feeling the damp roots where the scent of vinegar still clung, touching the tender spot where the bee had made its mark.

  And he stared and kept staring, and she felt herself flush with discomfort and a sense of mild alarm, and was angry at him all over again for everything.

  There was something about Captain Ellery that was most aggravating. It was beyond the fact that he was overbearing and domineering, though he was certainly that; it was that he was so very sure of himself and of what he was doing, and he would not listen to a single word to the contrary. Even though she had made it clear to him again and again that he was wrong about nearly everything.

  He should have left her alone in the Park, once Mr. Grey had been chased off, to be sure. That had been rather nice, though hardly as heroic an act as he seemed to believe. He should never have taken her to his home and introduced her to his mother, which was how he had wormed her name out of her. She could refuse him her name, but not the innocuous mature woman with shining warm blue eyes who sat upon her divan in homey comfort. Elaine had relinquished her name. Captain Ellery had smiled to hear it. It was then that he had, on the spot, come up with the fabrication that he had been to her home and dropped his card and found her in the Park and whisked her to his mama to be tended.

  In an instant, the merest of moments, the lies had come tumbling out.

  It was hardly a recommendation.

  It was not the sort of skills a gentleman should be proud to possess.

  Captain Ellery, on the contrary, had seemed quite pleased with himself, and of course, once the lies were told, his mother snatching them up, believing them, acting on them, vinegar and all, then what could she have done? He had caught her up neatly in his scheme and that was that.

  Now they were bound by a common lie. A lie of necessity, but a lie, nonetheless.

  Elaine was not so high-minded that she did not believe a necessary lie was often the best choice in certain situations; she did not, however, lie with as easy a way about it as Captain Ellery did. He had not looked one bit guilty about it either.

  “If there is guilt to be found in this situation, I will take my full portion of it,” Captain Ellery said at that precise moment.

  It was such a nuisance that he seemed so attuned to her thoughts and leaped in ahead of them.

  “I should think so as all the guilt is yours,” she murmured, smiling as the tea things were brought in, leaning forward in her uncomfortable chair. The house was not theirs. They had not purchased the furnishings.The chair was too small for her and the seat uneven. When one was living in a house that was not one’s own, one made do. When she was mistress in her own house, she would have only comfortable chairs. “What do you take in your tea, Lady Jordan?” she asked, ignoring Captain Ellery who was looming behind her chair.

  “Sugar, if you would be so kind,” Lady Jordan said. Lady Jordan, from Elaine’s brief acquaintance with her, was not normally so . . . docile, was the word that leapt to mind.

  “Lady Eleanor?” she asked as she handed Lady Jordan her cup.

  “Milk,” Eleanor said, and with a grin, added, “if you please, Miss Montford. I do hope your wound is not aggravated by pouring.”

  “I believe it is,” Captain Ellery said. Captain Ellery said! As if he had the right to speak for her. The man was impossible. “It is looking quite red, the blister spreading.”

  “I shall thank you not to speak for me, Captain Ellery,” she snapped, her hand going to the wound and covering it. It did feel hot.

  Her father looked over at them from his place by the door, too obviously eager for everyone to leave so that he could question Elaine himself. Elaine was less eager for them to leave almost instantly. She could manage her father, true, but that was not to say that she enjoyed the exercise.

  She had sounded too sharp with Captain Ellery. She must maintain the lie that they were cordial.

  Oh, how she wished she had any talent for theatrics.

  “I would be happy to pour,” Eleanor said, glancing at Mr. Montford and Lord Melverley, both of them studying her. Bother it all.

  “Thank you so much,” Elaine said, rising to her feet and walking across the room, leaving Captain Ellery behind, one hoped.

  It was not a day for hopes.

  “You can’t be cross with me,” Captain Ellery said, because he had followed her across the room and was now staring at the same seascape that she was pretending to study. Of course he had. “We are bound in this together. We must not give anyone cause to doubt.”

  “That you’re a liar? You are very good at it. I am not. I clearly lack the experience.”

  He stood a bit straighter and his eyes squinted a bit more intensely. She had lived with her father all her life; she was neither impressed nor intimidated.

  “I am a soldier, Miss Montford. I do what is necessary when the situation calls for it. I do not have the luxury of choice that a woman of your standing does.”

  Luxury of choice. There was a lie if ever there was one. She had no choices. She had to marry well, to provide her father and mother and two brothers will the life of luxury that they all believed was due them. That there was an earl in their family tree, and that they were a tiny, weak branch of that tree, was the family calamity. Her duty was to marry and to marry well. That was her only choice, and that was why she had to do her duty and play her part in the fiction Captain Ellery had begun. She could not be ruined. She could not be cast out of the Marriage Mart upon her very first step into it. And she could not, would not, find herself married to Captain Roger Ellery.

  “Captain Ellery,” she said, a pleasing note to her voice, entirely false but so necessary, “you must have been gone from England for quite some time if you believe that young women of my station, or standing, as you put it, have the luxury of choice. I may not be a soldier, but I am under orders. May I assume you know to what I’m referring?”

  Roger Ellery, his pale blue eyes quite severely slanted, gave her such a look in that moment. Such a look of understanding and respect and empathy that, if she did not know him as she did, she would actually be quite flattered by it. Still, even knowing him, it was a look to make her tingle.

  “Miss Montford, I do,” he said, his voice a warm and husky murmur. The tingle quivered through her blood. “I am sorry to have caused you distress. I thought I was saving you.”

  He said the last with a smile, a small, crooked smile that tipped the outer edges of his eyes down and corners of his lips up so that he looked quite jovial.

  Captain Ellery? Jovial?

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bsp; “I know,” she said in an undertone.

  The room felt too suddenly full, too noisy and busy and chattery, and she felt the odd need to speak to him in undertones and whispers, smiling secret smiles and speaking secrets never meant to be shared.

  “If you will allow me,” he said, “I will save you still.”

  His eyes were the lightest, cleanest blue. His nose the most perfect shape, and his lips the most beguiling form. And there was that curl of black hair that still, even now, twined under his ear. Strange curl, to hover so.

  “I am no damsel in need of saving,” she said. It was a lie. She knew it was a lie. But she had to lie. In this lie there was safety, a brand of anonymity that she desperately needed.

  “Aren’t you?” he whispered.

  Were there other people in the room? She couldn’t tell anymore. Everything and everyone but Captain Roger Ellery was pushed away and out of sight, out of hearing, out of mind. Had he stepped closer? Was he not too close? Was his mouth not indecently seductive?

  “From what will you save me, Captain?” she asked.

  “From myself, Miss Montford. I must save you from myself,” he said, and he did not smile and there was no amusement in his voice, and the quivering, shivering tingles caught fire.

  He was on fire for her. He could not have her, but what was that? He had known from the moment he learned her name that he could not have her, should he even want her. And he had not wanted her, not at all, not at the start. He had thought to rescue her from an Indian and he had, somehow and quite impulsively, thrown her reputation high into the air to tumble end over end until someone, somehow rescued it. And her. Rescued her.

  She was stubborn. Hostile. As twitchy and nervous as a falcon. There was nothing there to tempt a man, certainly not a man who made his hard way in a harsh world under impossible conditions.

  But then she had been stung by that blessed bee and she had not shrieked or even cried out. She had slapped the bee, killed it, and tossed it from her in a single, smooth motion, without even a hitch in her breathing in her tirade at him.