Hecate gave him a peevish expression that would have been adorable but for the circumstances, and even then…
Phillip was certain that a gentleman suffering the frustrated pangs of inchoate passion did not tug at his falls, so he offered his arm and tried to steady his breathing. They were off the bridge and halfway to the garden before a whiff of fancy shaving soap alerted him to the identity of the spy.
He bowed his good night to Hecate on the back terrace, resisted with the fortitude of Saint George himself the temptation to kiss her one more time, and returned to the shadows of the garden.
“Show yourself,” he said over the trickling of the fountain and the chirping of crickets, “and be prepared to give a very good account with your fives, because right about now, I would cheerfully put out your lights.”
Chapter Nine
Gavin DeWitt paced beneath the torches on the terrace while Phillip watched Hecate slip into the house. Another fifteen minutes on the bridge, and he’d have been offering the lady a proper tryst rather than lovely preliminaries.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps he’d once again fall under the spell of intimacy of the heart and spirit as well as of the body. Thank heavens Hecate seemed equally enthralled with closeness that encompassed more than a mere romp.
“Are you even listening to me?” DeWitt asked, fetching up against a statue of some half-bird, half-woman creature whose bodice had slipped to a significant degree.
How could one ignore the third-act soliloquy DeWitt had been offering? “You report that the gentlemen—using the term in its ironic sense—left off maligning the ladies long enough to malign me as well. Had it not been imperative for them to join those same ladies over the teapot, they might well have moved on to casting aspersion on their host, our gracious king—after they toasted him, of course—and the apostles in alphabetical order. You are the experienced fribble, DeWitt. Why didn’t you throw them off the scent?”
“Because the decoy then becomes the prey. Watch Winover especially. He’s devious by nature, and the Winover family hires only old, plain housemaids. The Corvisers are competitively reckless. If Boots puts a frog in your jewelry box, Shoes will put half a dozen in your bed.”
“That pair couldn’t catch a frog stone-cold sober in broad daylight. Toads are much calmer by nature and make easier quarry, not that the Corvisers could tell one from the other.”
DeWitt kicked a pebble that skittered across the terrace and bounced down the steps. “They will put the stable boys up to the actual catching. They will turn your horse loose, put manure in your best boots, and affix notes to the back of your evening coat under the guise of delivering a friendly whack to your shoulder.”
Phillip wanted solitude to ponder the wonders of privacy with Hecate, because all the talking and cuddling and quiet had been profoundly intimate. A type of closeness new to him and apparently to her as well. A sharing and trusting that went so far beyond what he’d imagined courtship offered that…
“We should leave,” DeWitt said. “You are off on the wrong foot with the wrong people. They will bear tales in Town about you.”
“They are fribbles, DeWitt, and you might mean well by suggesting we decamp, but that won’t stop them from jeopardizing on my good name.”
“A strategic retreat would allow your lecturing to fade over the course of the next two weeks while some other diversion caught their attention.”
Phillip wanted to say that DeWitt was overreacting, but DeWitt had seen polite society as one of its number and, then again, as a lowly player offered a pittance to entertain his supposed betters.
“If a mild reproof to some half-sozzled brats in breeches earns me Society’s contempt, then I won’t have to learn the rubbishing quadrille after all,” Phillip said. “I will be dropped from guest lists, I will be spared all the starch and lace, and I can resume tending my acres in peace.”
And that had, until very recently, been the sum of his ambitions.
“What of Miss Brompton?” DeWitt said. “What of Tavistock, for whose sake you have taken up this apprenticeship in manners and deportment? Will you content yourself to be Squire Bumpkin for all the rest of your days?”
No, Phillip would not—another recent development—not unless Hecate was willing to become Lady Bumpkin, and she deserved much more than that.
“I refuse to admit defeat after one skirmish,” Phillip said, struck by the notion that DeWitt wanted to leave for reasons of his own. “How do you suggest I thwart my detractors?”
“You don’t. You prepare to be pranked and made the butt of practical jokes, and you bear up with good grace. Your penance is to look like a fool and seek no redress. Acknowledge that you overstepped, and they will consider the score even.”
“I did not overstep. They forgot the basic manners any boy learns by age seven.”
DeWitt pushed away from the winged creature. “The truth doesn’t matter here, my lord. Society turns on appearances, innuendo, whispers, and wagers.”
How had Hecate learned to navigate such waters with her dignity intact? “And stupidity.”
“Pride. You insulted fellows who were jabbering simply to hear themselves talk. Bachelors who have failed to earn the reward of a woman’s trust and loyalty.”
Men who’d been exiled, at least for the nonce. That perspective gave Phillip a bit of purchase on his temper.
“I am tired.” Phillip was abruptly aware that he’d been up early and put in hours of hard work before he’d joined Hecate in the gallery. He wanted to wallow—Hecate’s word—in the memories he’d made with her this day and to let his imagination roam freely over memories yet to be made. “I promised Travers I’d be back at the scything in the morning.”
“Don’t let the other guests catch you at it.”
“Right. Or they will make a jest of that, too, though without fodder in winter, their handsome cattle will starve. Such hilarity. Do me a favor, DeWitt.”
“Another favor.” The tone was so aggrieved that Phillip realized DeWitt was even more uncomfortable at this house party than Phillip himself.
“Keep an eye on Portia and Flavia,” Phillip said. “A discreet eye. DeGrange might assist with the task, and Mrs. Roberts strikes me as sensible too. Portia is working up to a tantrum of some sort.”
“How can you know that?”
“Broodmares,” Phillip said, starting for the house. “I watch them by the hour, and pay particular attention to the eyes. Portia has the look of a junior mare contemplating the unthinkable folly of challenging the herd’s reigning duchess. Portia cannot abide life at the bottom of the pecking order, and despair will make her foolish.”
DeWitt fell in step beside him. “And encouraging Hecate Brompton to twine about you as if you’re her personal maypole is wise?”
“If I’m her personal maypole, then I will enjoy the privilege. Miss Brompton twines herself where and how she pleases.”
DeWitt stopped on the threshold. “Be careful, Phillip. You might enjoy the lady’s attentions, but she is not well liked, and you could too easily give the gossips enough ammunition to ruin her. If I saw you two on the bridge, somebody else might have as well.”