Joan Wolf Page 4

  Douglas smiled. “No. I don’t.”

  “The University of Edinburgh,” Ian said in derision. “I should die of the tedium. The only reason I lasted at Cambridge for as long as I did was because . . .” he looked quickly at Douglas and then shrugged. “Oh, it doesn’t matter.”

  Douglas sat up in his chair. “Go on,” he said. “You’ve whetted my curiosity.”

  “I didn’t mean to.” Then, as Douglas continued to look at him expectantly, he relented. “Oh, it was the wife of one of the bigwigs. I had begun to wonder if there was something wrong with me. From what I heard I was the only eighteen-year-old boy at school who had never had a woman.” He frowned. “It was Frances, I suppose. I was too involved with her to think of anyone else.”

  “I know,” said Douglas without expression.

  Ian flashed-him a sharp look but continued. “Anyway, I was beginning to think I had a problem. Then I met—ah, well, I met her. It was an experience.” Ian grinned reminiscently. “I learned more from her than I ever did in the lecture room. She told me I may have to face a lot of problems in my life, but that most definitely wouldn’t be one of them. She was very reassuring.”

  Douglas stared at him for a few minutes without speaking. Ian was contemplating his boots once more and Douglas had a good view of the hard line of his young cheek, shadowed by his down-looking black lashes. There was a sense of power unleashed about Ian. It was what gave his presence its remarkable intensity. And he’s only twenty years old, thought Douglas inconsequently. Ian suddenly rose to his feet. “Anyway, she doesn’t really matter,” he said. “Only Frances matters. And I don’t know what to do about her.”

  “She isn’t going to change, Ian,” Douglas said reluctantly. “You’re two of a kind, I’m afraid. She said you were ruthless when you went after what you wanted. She is too. You’ve just never come up against her before.”

  Surprise flickered in Ian’s eyes. “Have you?”

  A rueful smile crept into Douglas’s eyes. “Oh yes. Frances doesn’t change, Ian. Under her charm and her serenity, she is adamant. She hasn’t changed about you, although she’s had all of Edinburgh and now all of London camping on her doorstep. She won’t change, either. You should have heard her attack Lord Bermington for a remark he made about you last night.”

  Ian’s eyes had a faintly ironical contraction. “Oh, she’s never allowed anyone to point a finger of criticism at me. She thinks, I imagine, that she can see to that well enough herself.”

  Douglas felt a savage pain around his heart. “Don’t you think she’s worth making a few sacrifices for, Ian?” he asked suddenly.

  Ian stared back at him, a look of alarming grimness about his mouth, “if Frances wants a safe, peaceful life with someone who will agree with every word she says, she’d better marry that Sedburgh fellow she was throwing in my face this afternoon. Not me.”

  He strode out of the room, and Douglas leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He had, he remembered, given Frances the same advice himself.

  Chapter Six

  Robin was a rovin boy

  -ROBERT BURNS

  Douglas did not see Ian for the rest of the evening. He discovered in the morning that Charlie had taken him to a new gambling hell that had acquired a rather unsavory reputation.

  “Did you lose much money?” Douglas asked over the breakfast table.

  “No. Charlie did, though. He’s a fool,” said Lord Lochaber’s younger brother. “I will say the wine was good. I drank too much of it.” Ian helped himself to some salmon.

  “You look remarkably fit for one who was out carousing till all hours.”

  Ian looked amused. “Douglas. I was with Charlie. Charlie’s idea of a wild carouse is my idea of a quiet evening. I drank too much out of boredom.”

  Douglas put down his cup. “Is that why you’re staying with me? Because I’m more of a devil than Charlie is?”

  Ian laughed. “You aren’t what I’d call a hell-raiser, Douglas, but your conversation is infinitely preferable to Charlie’s. Ten minutes of him and I’m halfway into a coma.”

  “Your devotion to me is truly moving,” his cousin said with mock solemnity.

  “Stow it, Douglas,” Ian returned inelegantly.

  There was a companionable silence as both men systematically ate their way through breakfast. All the Macdonalds had healthy appetites. Then Douglas said, “What are you doing today?”

  “Charlie has his uses,” Ian returned. “He’s taking me to Jackson’s boxing saloon. What about you?”

  “I am painting Frances this morning,” said Douglas imperturbably.

  Ian’s black brows contracted. “Are you? Well, I hope she’s in a better temper than she was yesterday.”

  “She will be. The only person Frances is ever out of temper with is you.”

  “I know,” Ian said gloomily. “I know.”

  * * * *

  Ian had a very satisfactory morning. He met three of Frances’s suitors at Jackson’s, and they made the mistake of challenging him. Lord Morton was the first. He assumed, like all the others, that Ian’s youth and probable inexperience would more than compensate for his obvious physical strength. He had a moment’s doubt when he saw the breadth of those shoulders and that strongly muscled chest, but decided almost immediately that his own superior science would triumph.

  He was wrong. So were the Earl of March and Lord Barrow. Ian did not rush enthusiastically to his own defeat, as everyone had securely expected. He played his opponents along, waiting with watchful competence for his opening. When it came he took it without hesitation.

  He felt in a much better humor afterwards and spent a pleasant hour sparring with the great Jackson himself. That worthy had been anxious to discover who Ian’s teacher had been.

  “I learned from a book,” said Ian laconically and with perfect truth. “Then I practiced with the crofter’s lads back home. Now, they are tough.” He looked scornfully at the flower of English manhood assembled around him that morning.

  “I’d like to meet some of those lads,” said Jackson.

  “They’d like fine to meet you,” returned Ian, with his endearing boyish grin.

  * * * *

  Frances dressed with particular care for the ball she was going to that evening. Douglas had promised to bring Ian. She chose a dress of pale green feather-light gauze, cut, as she thought, daringly low. She sat patiently while her aunt’s dresser coaxed her magnificent ash-gold hair into a knot high on her head from which a few curls were allowed to fall artistically. When the maid had finished Frances looked appraisingly in the tall glass. “I’ll do,” she said.

  The dresser looked at the girl before her. “Yes, miss,” she said dryly. “You’ll do.”

  Frances was, as usual, besieged for dances as soon as she and Lady Mary made their appearance in the ballroom. She smiled and responded and all the while kept an eye out for Ian. He arrived with Douglas shortly after eleven. He came in, looking tall even in that room full of people, saw her dancing with Robert Sedburgh, and settled back to wait for the end of the set.

  Lord Robert saw him too. “I see your friend Mr. Macdonald has come in,” he observed to Frances. “I understand he was wreaking havoc at Jackson’s boxing saloon this afternoon.”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Merely that Mr. Macdonald is extremely talented. Jackson was very impressed.”

  Frances suddenly chuckled; she had a marvelous laugh, soft and warm and infectious. “He probably wanted to hit me,” she said candidly. “If I know Ian, though, he’s feeling much better. Knocking a few bodies about has always done wonders for his disposition.”

  Lord Robert looked a little shocked. Unconsciously he had expected Frances to disapprove of Ian’s fighting, All the women he knew did. Or at least they pretended to. Frances looked at his face and suddenly sobered. “I don’t think I should suit you, Lord Robert. I really don’t think I should.”

  “Don’t say that,” he responded wi
th unaccustomed harshness.

  The set had come to an end, and Ian was coming toward them. Lord Robert looked from her to the approaching boy with inscrutable blue eyes. His smile was not welcoming.

  Ian didn’t notice. “Have you saved me some dances, Frances?” he asked her, his black brows quizzical.

  “Yes, the ones you requested,” she lied. Her voice was mild but the green eyes were imperious. “You’re just in time to claim this next quadrille.”

  Ian looked into the familiar glinting green and gave her a look he meant to be casually amused. Lord Robert, however, caught a glimpse of Ian’s glance, and the expression in those dark eyes made him catch his breath, He did not need to wonder any longer about the nature of Ian Macdonald’s feelings for Frances. And he was sensitive enough to appreciate that in this tall, black-haired boy he had a formidable rival.

  After Ian finished dancing with Frances, he looked around for Douglas. His cousin was conversing seriously with a broad, ruddy-faced man, and when he saw Ian he beckoned. Douglas’s companion was Col. Richard Frost, one of the mainstays of the Horse Guards, and Ian eagerly joined in what he found to be an absorbing discussion of the Peninsula War.

  They talked through three sets. Frances, dancing again with Lord Robert, looked for the twentieth time at the trio in the window and asked, “Who is that man Douglas and Ian Macdonald are talking to?”

  Lord Robert looked. “Colonel Frost. He’s at the Horse Guards.”

  Frances gazed steadily at the three men, her fine brows drawn together, her face intent and stern. “Oh. The Horse Guards.”

  “Is anything wrong, Miss Stewart?” Lord Robert asked with concern.

  “No.” She gave him a brief, strained smile and changed the topic.

  Ian’s conversation was interrupted by his hostess, who arrived and ruthlessly bore him off to be introduced to one of the forgotten debutantes whom Frances’s success had relegated to the sidelines.

  Miss Abbott was seventeen, reasonably pretty and very shy. She acknowledged Lady Hester’s introduction with a blush and looked, worshipfully but not very hopefully, at Ian. She had danced only twice that evening.

  If she had been a beauty, Ian would have unhesitatingly extricated himself, but those shy brown eyes appealed to his essentially kind heart. He got Miss Abbott a glass of punch and then asked her to dance.

  “You are a friend of Miss Stewart’s, are you not?” she asked diffidently as they danced.

  “Yes.” Ian looked at the wistful small face turned up to him. The top of Miss Abbott’s head just reached his shoulder. “Miss Stewart should be ashamed of monopolizing all the eligible men the way she does,” he said sympathetically. “It must make life difficult for all the rest of you pretty girls.”

  Miss Abbott blushed even harder at being called a pretty girl. “She can’t help it, I expect. She is so beautiful. She always reminds me of some lines of poetry I once heard. ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Illium?’ “

  At Ian’s amused glance she blushed even more furiously.

  “Do you know Miss Stewart?” he asked, tactfully ignoring her confusion.

  “No. We have never been introduced.”

  “I’ll introduce you,” he said decisively. Frances would know how to manage things for small Miss Abbott. He smiled at her reassuringly. “You’ll like her. She is much nicer than Helen of Troy.”

  So he ushered his innocent little chick over to meet Frances, who was expectedly efficient. Without quite knowing how it had happened, Miss Abbott found herself dancing with the Earl of Chilton, engaged to dance with three other men, and spoken for supper by Lord Robert Sedburgh, who had already ascertained that Frances was engaged.

  Ian took Frances into supper, and as they walked together toward the room Lady Hester had set aside for refreshments he looked with approval at her figure, slim and supple in its pale green gown. “Thank God you’re tall,” he remarked. “I have a crick in my neck from talking to Miss Abbott.”

  She shot him a look from under her remarkable lashes. She was burning to know what he had been saying to Colonel Frost, but decided to hold her peace. She didn’t want another public quarrel with Ian, and that topic would invariably lead to argument.

  “I have to thank you for sharing your worshippers with her,” he continued. “The poor little thing looked quite forlorn.”

  She looked up into his face, a smile on her lips but a certain gravity in her eyes. “You don’t worship me, do you Ian?”‘

  He returned her look, unsmiling, and for a minute they were alone in the middle of Lady Hester’s crowded ballroom. “No. I don’t worship you,” he said. His deep voice was calm. “I love you.”

  * * * *

  Two girls left the ball that evening with their thoughts on Ian. In the coach that was taking them home, Mrs. Abbott ran on enthusiastically about all her daughter’s noble partners and their prospects. Miss Abbott listened quietly, but her mind was filled with the memory of a dark face with hard, exciting cheekbones and a sensual arrogant mouth. In her opinion, no one she had ever met was half so magnificent as Ian Macdonald.

  Frances worried all night about Ian’s conversation with Colonel Frost. Toward the end of the ball, however, Ian had had a momentous meeting with someone else that was to have a far more lasting effect on Frances’ life. He had met the young man who was representing in London the newly declared independent country of Venezuela. The man’s name was Simon Bolivar.

  Chapter Seven

  Had we never lov’d sae kindly

  Had we never lov’d sae blindly,

  Never met—or never parted,

  We had n’er been broken-hearted.

  -ROBERT BURNS

  Bolivar, the future liberator of Spanish America, was at this time twenty-eight years of age and poised upon the initial undertaking of his great enterprise. He had come to London to try to win British aid for Venezuela, but Britain was allied to Spain at the time and Spain was not pleased with the developing situation in South America.

  Venezuela had voted for independence on April 19; Buenos Aires had followed on May 25; and Santa Fe de Bogotá and Santiago de Chile would declare themselves within two months. The Spanish-speaking New World was following the inspiration of the United States of America, and Bolivar envisioned a great new country, to be called Colombia and to be modeled after the successful American example. He was a man with a dream, and in Ian he found an eager listener.

  The two young men spent many hours together. Frances knew nothing of South America and saw nothing to object to in Ian’s pleasure in Colonel Bolivar’s company. Douglas, who was much more politically aware than she, was concerned but held his tongue.

  Several weeks went by, and the impasse between Ian and Frances still stood. Ian found himself drawn into a daily round that consisted of club in the morning, calls or a ride in the afternoon, dinner parties and balls in the evening, followed by whatever else he could find to occupy himself until three or four in the morning when he would tumble, not tired enough, into bed. As the days went by he felt within himself a growing longing to get away, away from the gossip and the talk of war, and the talk of government policy, away from the suffocation of conforming to armchair social rules.

  If he should lose Frances—he did not see how he could bear to live without Frances. But neither could he bear to live with her, not under the terms she would impose. He needed to get away from it all, to breathe again. He longed wildly to be gone from London.

  A break in the stalemate occurred when both Ian and Frances received an invitation to join a house party at Wick, home of the Earl and Countess of Darlington. Lady Darlington had brought out her daughter Catherine that year and, along with the other mothers of marriageable daughters, she couldn’t wait to see Frances safely out of competition. She had her eye on Lord Robert Sedburgh for Catherine, and was not at all pleased by his obvious predilection for Frances. However, she had not missed Frances’s equally obvious predilectio
n for Ian. Lady Darlington therefore evolved a very simple policy: throw Frances and Ian together as often as possible, preferably under the jealous eye of Lord Robert. This strategy resulted in a series of invitations that surprised all the recipients. However, they accepted.

  Wick was in Surrey, so it was not much of a journey. Lady Mary Graham accompanied Frances. She was in favor of Robert Sedburgh’s suit and was pleased when Lady Darlington had said he would be present. She was not pleased when Ian arrived. She had not expected him. She couldn’t help but like Ian; women always did. But she did not want her niece to marry him, a younger son with no prospects. Frances could do so much better.

  The first few days of the house party were tense. Frances spent a good deal of time with Lord Robert and avoided Ian. The result of this tactic was to put him into a savage temper, which he alleviated by riding hard all day and drinking more than was good for him at night. After three days of this he determined to have it out with Frances.

  Lady Darlington had arranged an afternoon riding expedition consisting of herself, Lord Thorndon, Catherine, Lord Robert, Frances, and Ian. They were to go as far as Rudgwick, but after they were out for an hour the sky clouded over and darkened ominously. Lady Darlington insisted they turn around and head for home. She also managed to arrange things so that Catherine and Lord Robert rode together, with herself and Lord Thorndon following. This left Frances and Ian to bring up the rear.

  Frances was fully aware of Ian’s growing fury, which she regarded with considerable satisfaction. She would teach him that others were willing to accede to her wishes even if he continued to be stubborn. Since she had a healthy respect for the temper she was so blatantly provoking, she took care to keep from being left alone with him. She had felt Lady Darlington’s presence as chaperone would be protection enough on the horseback expedition. She had not reckoned with the countess’s ambition for her daughter, which thrust Frances into Ian’s company, nor had she reckoned fully with his ruthless ability to go after what he wanted.