Shall We Dance?

Mrs. Bateman waved a hand distractedly. “No, no. No hurry. I wonder if Mr. Bateman would be agreeable to just one trip to Hammersmith? He knows I can be quite grateful…”

Georgiana escaped the room as her mother plotted her next move, eager to be on her way.

SIR NATHANIEL RANKIN took the land route to Hammersmith, unwilling to maneuver his way through all the assorted boats moving back and forth in front of the queen’s residence like bees buzzing around a hive.

He still could not quite believe he was on a mission commissioned by, of all people, his dotty aunt Rowena. But here he was, sitting in his curricle, looking at the entrance to the queen’s residence, cudgeling his brain for a reason to knock on the door, ask admittance.

“Hallo. I’m here to offer my services to the queen. What service? Bodyguard. You know, in case Prinney comes tiptoeing around with a hooded man toting an ax?”

“Sir Nathaniel Rankin, baronet, to see Her Royal Majesty. Announce me, man!”

“Sir Nathaniel Rankin to see the queen on a matter of some urgency.”

“Hallo there, beautiful day, isn’t it? Would you care to buy some apples?”

Nate dropped his chin onto his chest. He’d gone mad, that was it. Stark, staring mad. He had no way of gaining admittance to the queen’s presence. And even less idea of what he’d say if he somehow managed to get within earshot of the woman.

An elderly town coach bearing yellow wheels but no crest moved past him and into the circular drive, just to have the off wheels all but tipping the thing into a ditch alongside the drive.

“Cow-handed idiot,” Nate mumbled, mildly interested as the driver set the brake—an unnecessary precaution, as the coach would go nowhere until it was lifted out of the ditch—and opened the door, extending a hand to his passenger.

Nate saw an arm emerge, a hand taking the coachman’s hand, to be followed by the remainder of a female who then paused half in and half out of the coach, desperately trying to keep her skirts at a modest level, her spectacles on her nose and her frankly unbecoming bonnet on her head, all while looking a long way down to the ground.

The coachman struggled one-handed, to put down the steps.

“Putting down the steps won’t help, you twit. She’d have to go uphill to go downhill,” Nate said to himself, tossing the reins to his snickering tiger and heading off across the road, to the rescue.

Actually, the young woman could be said to be rescuing him from having to return to Aunt Rowena and admitting he’d failed in his mission.

“No, no,” he heard the young woman pleading as he neared the coach. “Stop pulling, please. I’ll manage myself somehow.”

Nate snapped his fingers and the coachman, still holding on to the woman’s wrist—cowhanded with more than the reins, obviously—turned to look at him. “There you go, my good man, you’ve got your orders. Unclench your paw and step back. I’ll assist the lady.”

Whether he recognized Nate, or just his finely cut clothes, or if he was simply relieved to hand over responsibility for the young lady, the coachman stepped back sharply.

“Hallo?” Nate called out, keeping his distance even as he leaned forward to smile into the coach, for the young woman had disappeared again—falling back inside once the coachman had let go of her. “I say, may I be of assistance?”

“Good God, yes,” said a muffled voice from the dimness inside the coach, and Nate suppressed a chuckle as one slippered foot appeared, followed by two gloved hands that grasped at either side of the doorway. “If it weren’t for these dratted skirts and this dratted bonnet, I could—who is that?”

“Sir Nathaniel Rankin, miss, delighted to be at your service. Now, if you could just, um, boost yourself toward the door? The coach is listing rather dangerously over the ditch, and I’d hate to see it entirely tip over before I can yank you, er, assist you out of there.”

“I most thoroughly agree!” said the young woman, and more of her appeared in the doorway, minus the now-crushed straw bonnet he’d glimpsed earlier, revealing more of her face. “Hallo.”

Nate smiled. “You know, miss, there really is no entirely polite way to do this. So, if you don’t mind?” Before she could answer, he took her slim waist in both hands and lifted her out and up and then down, once her feet had cleared the bottom of the door.

Her hands were on his shoulders, his still on her waist, as she looked up into his face, her spectacles hanging only on a single ear, so that one rather lovely eye was uncovered and seen to be rather unfocused. “Oh,” she said, but she didn’t let go.

She was slim and rather tall, and with a mass of honey-blond hair that probably fell to her waist when it wasn’t locked inside that thick coil at the back of her neck. Her eyes were blue, like his, but much larger; appealingly large and innocent. She had lovely lips on a rather wide mouth, a tip-tilted nose, and she smelled like violets. He thought it was violets.

“Sir Nathaniel was it?” she prompted in a very pleasant voice. “You…you can release me now.”

“Hmm? Oh, right. Yes, of course,” Nate said, then grinned. “You first?”

Twin flags of color appeared in her cheeks at once, and she dropped her arms to her sides, as if his shoulders had just caught fire. “How…how rude of me, Sir Nathaniel. I should by rights introduce myself.”

“I would like that above all things,” Nate said, surprised to realize he not only sounded sincere, he was sincere. “Let me fetch that dratted bonnet, shall I?”

“You heard me,” she said, adjusting her spectacles.

“I’m afraid so, Miss—?”

“Penrose. Georgiana Penrose.” She took the bonnet, scowled at it, punched it back into some semblance of shape and jammed it back onto her head, tying the pink ribbons beneath a rather determined chin. “Are you on your way to see the queen, Sir Nathaniel?”

Opportunity rarely knocked to such advantage. “Yes, I am, as it happens, Miss Penrose. May I suggest I have my tiger bring my curricle over here and we might travel the remainder of the drive together?”

Georgiana looked to the curricle sitting across the roadway. “The entrance is only a hop and a skip—but arriving on foot wouldn’t look quite the thing, would it? That would be nice, Sir Nathaniel, thank you.”

Nate made short work of summoning the curricle, putting his tiger to assisting the coachman right the coach, handing Miss Penrose up onto the seat, and then a few moments later depositing her on the ground once more—again by the simple expedient of picking her up at her tiny waist, as she didn’t seem to mind.

Offering his arm, they climbed the front steps, and Nate lifted the knocker, twice, then waited for someone to answer the summons.

That took some time, during which Nate tried for something else to say to Miss Penrose and could think of nothing. How unusual.

The door opened, and a liveried footman eyed them curiously. “The queen, she is not receiving today,” he said with a thick Italian accent, and attempted to shut the door once more.

“Oh, no, wait!” Miss Penrose said, actually putting out her arm to press her palm against the door, an action that classified her, in Nate’s mind, as a real Trojan. “I am Georgiana Penrose, here to see Miss Amelia Fredericks. At her invitation. Please, tell her I’m here?”

The footman looked at Georgiana, looked at her hand, pressed against the door, looked at Nate. “Also to see Miss Fredericks?”

“Naturally,” Nate said as he handed the footman his card, still allowing fate to guide his moves. After all, anything was better than “Would you like to buy some apples.”

“Miss Fredericks, she’s in the bath. Always in the bath, Miss Fredericks. You’ll have to be waiting.”

“We can do that,” Nate said, looking around the marble-lined foyer, wondering how this indiscreet fellow had been set loose to attend to visitors. “Where is the major domo?”

“Scusi?”

“The butler, man. Your superior?”

“Cane grosso!” The footman made several gestures with his hands, none of them flattering. “He has put the tail between the legs and run off.”

“I see,” Nate said, his Italian rusty, but not beyond knowing the footman had called the absent butler a big dog, which he imagined was some sort of insult. “But enough chitchat, my good man, riveting as it has been. Lead on.”

The footman twisted his face into an expression half confused, half amused, and motioned for them to follow him.

Nate once again offered Miss Penrose his arm.

“I thought you said you’d come to have an audience with Her Royal Majesty.”

“I did? Well, curse me for silly. You must have misunderstood,” Nate said smoothly, avoiding her gaze.

“I don’t think so, but it would be likewise silly to argue, wouldn’t it? How do you know Amelia?” Georgiana asked as they followed the footman to a small reception room just to the right of the foyer.

“I don’t,” Nate said, waiting until Georgiana had seated herself before taking up a position of power—he hoped—in front of the cold fireplace; it had always seemed to work for his father. “Would you care for the truth?”

Georgiana looked at him curiously. “You were going to lie? Oh, don’t tell me you’re some nasty journalist, or one of those horrid men determined to destroy the queen’s reputation.”

Nate looked down at himself, then frowned at Georgiana. “I look like a nasty journalist? In this coat? Well, that’s lowering, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, then that determined chin rose once more. “No, I’m not. Why are you here? Amelia is my good friend, and I would be devastated if I’ve somehow aided you in entering an establishment you have no business entering.”

“I’m no bogeyman, Miss Penrose,” Nate said, and gave up telling her anything but the embarrassing truth. “I’m here because my aunt Rowena, a considerable admirer of the queen and missing more than a few slates off her roof, if you must know, believes that the king may be out to murder her. The queen, that is, not Aunt Rowena, although, with my aunt, you can never really be sure. I couldn’t turn down my aunt’s request that I come save the queen from a dire fate—disky heart, you see—and was sitting across the road, cudgeling my brain on how to get myself past the butler when you came along. So, when you get down to the bottom of it, I suppose I’m here to save the queen from the king’s axman, which you have to admit is dashed brave of me.”

Georgiana slowly took off her spectacles, then just as deliberately replaced them. “I see. You’re a madman, Sir Nathaniel, and a very bad liar. Would you mind terribly if I screamed for help now?”

“Oh, must you? Don’t be so chickenhearted, Miss Penrose. I’d really much rather you allowed Miss Fredericks to believe that I am your very persistent suitor, welcomely so, which would give me a jolly solid reason for accompanying you here today, and every day you visit with Miss Fredericks. You do plan to come here often, I most sincerely hope? Aunt Rowena would be over the moon if you do.”

Then he grinned again, knowing that grin to be one of his more appealing attributes (his mother always said so). “Besides, although I’ve only just come up with the idea, it’s rather good, isn’t it? If we don’t look at the thing too closely.”

“You…you want to pretend to be my suitor? Are you mad? We don’t even know each other.”

“True,” Nate agreed, trotting out his smile for another airing. “But that can always be remedied. Please, Miss Penrose, have pity on this desperate man. We’ll visit with your friend, then drive back to town to make a call on my aunt. Five minutes in her presence, Miss Penrose, and I promise you, you will understand everything. Oh, and pity me greatly into the bargain.”

He kept smiling, attempting to look harmless, as she stared at him, seemed to be measuring him up against something or other. “What was that saying about looking a gift horse in the—” She closed her mouth firmly, then began again. “Very well, Sir Nathaniel, I agree. But only for this one time, unless your aunt can convince me to the contrary. Otherwise, my mother will accompany me on future visits here. And you’ll behave yourself? You won’t make a fool of me?”

He sat down beside her, lifted her hand to his lips. “Georgie, my sweet—I can hardly call you Miss Penrose, now can I, and you can call me Nate—Miss Fredericks is going to believe you are the happiest, most adored woman in the world.”

“That’s enough sloppiness for now,” Georgiana said, pulling her hand free. “Our meeting has probably been inevitable. We’re both quite insane, you know. Nate.”

“True enough, Georgie, but no one will notice if you do something about that hair,” he said, pleased with himself. “Fetching color, but it’s sort of falling apart thanks to that dratted bonnet.”

Georgiana hopped up and went to the mirror hanging above a small table. “Yes, I can see that. My brains are leaking out. You wouldn’t happen to have a comb, Nate, would you?”

AMELIA STOOD looking out one of the windows in her bedchamber, rhythmically pulling a silver-backed brush that had been a present from King Joachim himself through her still-slightly-damp hair while she watched the parade of boats. If anything, there were more of them this afternoon.

Queen Caroline had decided to take to her bed for the day, clutching a locket with a lock of Princess Charlotte’s hair inside it, twined with a lock of her stillborn grandson’s hair. The new king had such a keepsake, and Caroline had bribed at least a half-dozen individuals and threatened several more with revealing their past indiscretions, and had at last been delivered of a similar locket only three months earlier. Whether or not the hair truly had come from the princess and the young prince Amelia didn’t know, and didn’t inquire.

Still, rather than cheering her, comforting her, the locket had reduced the queen first to tears, then to anger at the world (and her husband and his family in particular), and then had settled into a deep melancholy that worried Amelia no little bit.

Do broken hearts really kill? If they did, her dear queen would be dead within the year.

Another young woman would worry for her own future, what would happen to her once the queen was gone, but this had never occurred to Amelia. She had been forced long ago to live in the present…except for those times that she lived in her dreams. Dreams that appeared more difficult to come by, as she had left her childhood behind and was now faced with more reality than it might be possible for one determined, yet virtually powerless young woman to deal with, no matter how she might wish it.

No prince would come to rescue her, mount her on his large, white charger and take her off to his castle in the clouds. No secret papers covered in seals would show her birth to have been more than it was. No aging, mourning queen would gather her to her bosom and tell her that she was, indeed, her own child, born of a great love between Caroline and some near-mystical hero out of a penny press novel she’d encountered after her banishment from her husband’s side.

Amelia had dreamed the dreams of any orphan.

But she also knew none of that was real. These boats were real. The writ of Pains and Penalties was real. That sad, rapidly deteriorating woman lying in a darkened chamber, clutching a locket to her bosom and surrounded by her powerful enemies and her zealous supporters who cared more for themselves than they did that poor, frightened woman. All that was real.

Amelia sighed, turned away from the window, and allowed her majesty’s maid to sweep her hair into a simple, upswept style, as the housemaid who had left with Carstairs had been hers. “How is your brother doing, Rosetta? Is he enjoying his new position of footman, do you think?”

“Non, Signorina. Gerado, he gets himself all about with each new thing. Too much for his brain, si? O bere o affogare.”

Amelia nodded. To Rosetta, Gerado was in over his head, and did not know whether to drink or drown. Poor fellow. It was time she broached the subject of sending their Italian servants back to Italy. Already their complaints about “this damp island,” and “this strange tasteless food” had become a daily litany.

Besides, Baron Pergami was necessarily absent. No need to have all these reminders left behind, many of them his poor relations, now was there? The queen had enough on her plate.

And when Her Royal Highness found out, as she had to do, that some of their former servants were being brought from overseas just to bring testimony against her, accepting money to do so? Mr. Brougham had taken Amelia aside and told her as much, and the information could not remain hidden much longer.

Yes, the Italians would have to go, much as Amelia would miss them. Because some of them, like Gerado, like Rosetta, had perhaps seen too much.

“I believe fussing will bring no improvement, Rosetta, thank you. Please return to the queen, who may need you, and I’ll finish dressing myself,” Amelia said as she got to her feet. After all, it wasn’t as if she had anything more pressing to do, isolated as they were here at Hammersmith.

“CLIVE, FAR BE IT from me to spoil your fun, as nobody admires a spoilsport, I’m told. But I do believe you’re courting trouble there. In other words, it might be best if you stopped flapping your arms like some flightless bird and sat down. This miserable boat rocks enough as it is, without your enthusiastic assistance.”

“Love the sea, I do, M’Lord,” Clive Rambert said, chancing a look over his shoulder at the Earl of Brentwood, the man he considered to be his real new employer. “Went by ship ta the Peninsula, and back again. Always on the lookout for one of those mermaids. My mate, Sergeant Raymond, he see’d one the onc’t. Masses of purty blond hair, and nary a stitch on her, neither.”

“And you believe this,” Perry Shepherd said, yawning into his hand. “How very droll. However, I had thought better of you than that, my friend.”

Clive sat down abruptly in the front end of the small boat Perry had rented for the trip across the Thames. “He lied ta me, sir?”

“I’m only hazarding a guess, Clive, but yes, I think Sergeant Raymond might have been tugging on your ankle with that one.”

“Well, blast me for a Johnny Raw. Spent weeks peekin’ over the side of the ship, looking for one of them mermaids.” Then he brightened slightly. “Are you sure, M’Lord? Maybe they all left the ocean, and swum themselves up here more? Lovely place, the Thames. Could be dozens of them out there, not just the one I was hopin’ for. I’d swim here, iffen I could swim.”

Perry stuck a cheroot between his teeth and put a light to it. “Then I doubly implore you to remain seated. Because, if you harbor any niggling thought that I might leap into the water after you to effect a rescue, you’d be quite disappointed as you sank to the bottom. Now, straighten your jacket, man. We’ll be there soon enough, once we’re through this press of boats.”

Clive looked down at his new jacket. He was proud of it, he really was, but he wasn’t certain if the earl thought it looked well on him, or was simply amusing himself at Clive’s expense.

The jacket was blue, very dark blue, and with two rows of brass buttons lining the front. There were pretty golden braids on the shoulders, some of the fringe actually hanging over the ends of those shoulders, to drip down his arms.

And the hat. The hat was something very special, that was for sure. One of those high-domed contraptions with wings on each side, and more gold braid. Almost exactly what the captain wore on the ship that had brought him back from the Peninsula.

“Are yer sure, M’Lord, that I can be wearin’ this? I look like a bloody admiral.”

“Please, Clive, let’s not insult officers of the Royal Navy with such comparisons. It’s as I told you—the newest thing, all the crack. Why, I saw three very important hostesses in the Park yesterday, in much the same outfit. Long skirts, mind you, and not Wellington trousers, but still, much of the same style.”

Clive’s beady eyes all but bugged out of his ferret face. “Wimmen? I looks like wimmen? Here, now, that’s not nice. Sir Willard warned me about yer, that yer’re always on the look-see for a lark, but that’s just not nice, to be usin’ me for a giggle, M’Lord.”

“You’ve never wished to captain a ship, Sergeant? I most distinctly remember, back in that most amusing shop we found, you telling me that perhaps you’d made a mistake, not going to sea, as you greatly admired the uniforms.”

“Yeah…that’s right enough. But wimmen? I’ll not be wearin’ this again, M’Lord.”

“Dear me, man, of course you won’t. One should never repeat oneself, once one has made one’s first impression.”

“Who’s one? You talkin’ about me again, M’Lord?”

“Never mind, Clive,” Perry said, taking another puff on his cheroot. “Go back to playing captain of the seas, if it pleases you. We’ll be docking shortly, and I’ll be damned glad to be off this leaky tub.”

As the leaky tub was actually a wide, flat-bottomed contraption boasting not only four heavily muscled oarsmen but a white silk canopy (fringed) that provided shade for His Lordship, who had been sipping wine from a real crystal goblet and munching on grapes from a large basket of assorted fruit, Clive only rolled his eyes and muttered, “Officers. Bloody soft, all of them. Took umbrellas into battle with them, they did. Twits.”

“What was that, Clive?” Perry asked, barely able to stifle a chuckle.

“Nothing, M’Lord. Just thinkin’ about this lady what yer’re goin’ ta see. Goin’ ta impress her all hollow with this here boat.”

“Yes, the boat. Heaven knows she won’t be in the least taken with me. How you cheer me, Clive.”

The runner hid a grin. “About time,” he told himself, and snuck another look over the side, because Sergeant Raymond still could have been speaking the truth.

“IF WE’RE STILL SPEAKING with the gloves off…Nate…I think I should—”

“That’s it, Georgie. Nate. Use it until my name spills right off your tongue. We wouldn’t wish to stumble at the first gate, now would we?”

“If you’d stop interrupting? I was making a confession here,” Georgiana said, pushing her spectacles back up onto the bridge of her nose.

“Good grief. I’m courting a sharp-tongued miss, aren’t I?”

Georgiana bit on the inside of her cheek for a moment as she stared at him, then asked, “Finished?”

“Done for, I think would be the proper term,” Nathaniel said, bowing to her.

“Good. Now, what I told the footman? That I’d sent round a note and Amelia knows I’m coming here today? That, um, that wasn’t quite truthful. I said it first to my mother, and it seemed like a good thing to say to a mother to placate her, but when Amelia sees me you’ll know I was, um, as I said, stretching the truth a little.”

“Stretching the truth? I think that would be more in the way of a lie. And a whacking great one, at that. Tell me, is she going to toss us both out on our ears?”

“No, no, of course not. We’re the best of good friends, even if we haven’t seen each other in years.”

Nate tipped his head and looked at her with blatantly teasing scrutiny. “Anything else, Georgie?”

“Yes. Don’t call me Georgie. I hate it.”

“Well, that puts me in my place. So sorry, Georgiana.”

“That’s much better, thank you.” Georgiana struggled for something else to say, wondering what was keeping Amelia. They’d been waiting a good quarter hour now, and no one had so much as brought in a tea tray.

“And you’ll allow me to send your carriage home while you accompany me to meet my aunt Rowena?”

“I said I would, didn’t I?” Georgiana snapped, then immediately apologized. “I’m…I’m not very good at all of this, you know. They only just opened my cage and set me free from the country a month ago.”

“Keep you locked up, do they? Somehow that doesn’t boggle my mind as much as it probably ought.”

“Oh, shut up,” Georgiana said, very much at home with this strange man, which probably only proved that she was not fit for Polite Society. The man had a title, for goodness sake! “No, don’t do that. Tell me again how very respected your family is, and how my stepfather will be throwing himself at your shoetops in gratitude that you’ve deigned to look my way.”