“Arabella!” Lady Mowbray exclaimed, pausing at the top of the Grand Staircase. “Why have you only one glove?”
Belle stopped and raised her hands, the left encased in white kid, the other embarrassingly bare. Where could her right-hand glove have gone?
“You removed it when you made your obeisance to the queen,” Aunt Elizabeth reminded in a whisper. “You should have put it back on when we left the Drawing Room.”
Belle thrust a hand into one hoop pocket, and then the other, but of the errant glove there was no sign. “I must have dropped it.”
Lord Mowbray gave an imperious wave. “Send one of the guards to retrieve it.”
“But I know just where I was standing. It will be faster if I go myself.”
“My dear Lady Culmaily! I hardly think—”
But the rest of Lady Kerr’s protest vanished in the din as Belle rushed off, swimming against the tide of the departing crowd. Back through the Guard Room, the Presence Chamber and Privy Chamber, until she caught sight of the faded crimson curtains, the tarnished silver-gilt chandelier, the staid portraits of the King’s Withdrawing Room. Yes, there, right where she had curtsied to the queen, Belle spied a spill of white kid on the gleaming wooden floor.
Trying to appear as unobtrusive as possible, Belle inched past the handful of courtiers who had still not left the apartment, then knelt down to where her glove had lain. A difficult feat, with such wide skirts and obtrusive hoops, but somehow she managed to touch the floor.
But instead of cool kid, her fingers met warm, living flesh.
A hand far larger than hers, palms and finger pads rough with calluses, grasped hers and drew her upright.
She stared at the high, tanned forehead, the tousled brown curls glinting in the sunlight flooding in from the south-facing windows, the green eyes animated with the keenest of interest as they roved across her face.
“Captain Rye.” Good heavens, surely her voice had not wavered…
“Lady Culmaily,” he said, his own voice tauntingly calm. “A vital element of your court caparison seems to have gone astray.”
“Yours as well, captain,” she replied, casting a significant glance down at their bare—and still-entwined—hands.
But neither her raised eyebrow nor her subtle rebuke seemed to disconcert him at all. At least not enough to remember his manners and release her hand.
She could always pull hers from his. But was that not just what he wished, for his own provoking behavior to provoke her?
Besides, she had no wish to show the presumptuous fellow how much the mere touch of his hand was affecting her.
What was it about this soldier, that such a touch could make not just her fingers, but her entire person prick with unfamiliar awareness?
“Ah, but I know where my glove has gone—right into my left-hand pocket, alongside its mate. Too warm today to keep the hands covered a moment longer than necessary, do you not agree? I wonder, though—are you aware of the fate of your own?”
The smile on those generous lips, the gleam of amusement in those green eyes—why, the man was not simply trying to provoke her. He was actually flirting with her!
Lady Kerr and Lady Mowbray, for once putting aside their differences, had both warned Belle against the coquetries in which men at court were all too wont to indulge. But she’d paid them scant mind, certain that the proper dignity of her own behavior would discourage any such advances, or make them easy to instantly check.
Yet here she was, still allowing a man she barely knew to hold her ungloved hand in his…
“I suspect, sir, a scoundrel has absconded with it,” she replied. “But he may prove himself worthy of a more respectable sobriquet by returning said object to its rightful owner.”
“Or perhaps he glories in the epithet. Perhaps he means to retain the glove as a sign of the lady’s favor.”
“Favor? When the item was stolen away without her knowledge? Hardly a sign of freely bestowed regard.”
“But perhaps the scoundrel does not wish the lady to know of his devotion. Perhaps he fears his feelings are unrequited.”
“Or perhaps he fears the wrath of her five guardians, should they discover the rogue importuning her in such an impertinent manner?”
“Five? Five guardians?” Captain Rye’s eyebrows rose to an almost absurd degree.
Belle could hardly believe Patty had failed to inform him of the fact. Still, she felt her lips quirk at his exaggerated show of dismay. “Not just five guardians, but three of their wives, as well,” she added with a wry smile.
The gold buttons on the captain’s uniform jiggled as he gave a comically exaggerated shudder. “And here I thought being subject to the constant demands of a grandfather and an elder brother an intolerable burden. No wonder you’ve slipped the reins….”
Belle’s smile disappeared. “I might not feel the need to ‘slip the reins’ if I still had a father or elder brother to act on my behalf.”
He blinked and dropped her hand, obviously surprised by the sudden shift from dalliance to dismay.
She took a step back and bit her lip.
From the pocket of his gleaming white waistcoat, he pulled her missing glove and pressed it into her palm. “Forgive me, my lady. I lost my parents many years ago, but I well remember the sting of grief.”
“Rye?” Belle heard Patty’s voice pipe from behind her. “My apologies for sending you on a fool’s errand. I found it right here, in my pocket.”
Belle glanced over her shoulder to find her old friend waving a glove of her own in the air, a triumphant gleam in her eye.
“And Belle, what luck!” Patty grasped Belle’s hand, lacing together their fingers. “Did you see what happened? Poor King George, I do hope he will be all right. But I can’t help but be glad that the Drawing Room broke up early, for that means you will have time to attend our performance this afternoon!”
“My dear Patty, you can hardly expect Lady Culmaily to attend an exhibition on such short notice,” Captain Rye protested.
“Oh, pish! What might be short notice to others is nothing to a loyal friend. Belle, will you not come?” Patty exclaimed, laying her free hand on Belle’s sleeve. “As a special favor to me?”
Return to Not Quite a Countess
