A Baron Worth Loving: A Historical Regency Romance Book Read online

  She blinked, momentarily breathless at the effect of Gerard Colbourne reciting Italian poetry so while looking into her face. “My Italian is…not very good,” she said softly.

  “It means, he said, ‘After a horrible storm/ the peaceful skies shine clearly,/ removing from our hearts/ both anguish and fear.’ She goes on to sing something that roughly translates, ‘Thus fortune tends/ to act differently towards us,/ restoring its hurts/ and altering its harshness.’ It is hopeful, yes?”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling a little.

  “So not all things about opera are dreadful,” he said with a smile, turning forward again.

  They arrived at the opera house in due time and disembarked from the carriage in a great, chattering group, Nora on Gerard’s arm, Diana on David’s, with William and James taking up the rear. The opera box was a fine one, taken as it was in the Colbournes’ name, and Nora found herself a little excited despite her expectations as the curtains rose on the stage. The music was not so shrill as she remembered, although perhaps it was the memory of Gerard’s whispered Italian in the carriage that sweetened the experience for her. She found herself unexpectedly caught up in the feelings of the characters and the magical web of intrigue the plot spun. At the intermission, she looked up with mild surprise and saw Gerard smiling at her.

  “What amuses you?” she asked.

  He shrugged, putting on an air of pretend aloofness. “You appear to be enjoying yourself – I’m merely surprised, considering how very averse you were to even the idea of such an opera, that you are smiling and intrigued.”

  She hid another smile and turned from him. “Don’t look so self-satisfied. The whole thing has not ended yet, and doubtless I will find the culmination of my fears in the second half.”

  But she did not. The second half seemed even more intriguing than the first. And though she still considered the idea of poor Griselda accepting the king’s haphazard attentions to be pitiable at best, she still found tears starting into her eyes at the final array of songs.

  As they were walking out to the carriage, however, she felt the magic begin to slip away when she overheard William and Gerard speaking ahead of her in low voices. They clearly intended their conversation to be limited to themselves alone, but Nora pushed aside any thoughts of guilt and bent her ear in earnest when she heard whispers of her own name.

  “Nora seems to be enjoying herself,” William was saying. “Do you find that things are getting on between the two of you?”

  “The arrangement is as agreeable as always,” Gerard answered quietly. “I can see why it is that my mother takes objection to the match, of course, for your sister is hardly what may be described as a typical societal dame. But we’re having a good bit of fun in the courtship, and that’s all that can be required under the circumstances.”

  Nora felt a sharp pain of embarrassment and disappointment at these words. She felt as though she was continually falling into the same dreadful trap – thinking that Gerard considered their relationship to be more than it was, and then being reminded with conversations like this that she was nothing but William’s little sister, accepting a gallant offer of help for the improvement of her own social standing. She was not a typical lady of society, as he said – but Gerard didn’t care because he knew that they had no real future together anyway. He was willing to carry on against his mother’s wishes in the present only because he knew that the present could never last.

  She tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter. Gerard had shown himself, over the past few weeks, to be much more strait-laced than her brothers, and she wasn’t sure that she could spend the rest of her life tied to such a man anyway. And yet…yet she could not get him out of her mind, for in other ways he was just the sort of person a girl could fall for, thoughtful and considerate and patient.

  He was good and honourable and so dreadfully handsome that she had difficulty even looking at him sometimes without losing her breath. She vowed over and over again to think of him only as her brother’s friend, and yet it was the same tonight as it was every day since the beginning of the courtship – she found it difficult to remember all her well-laid plans when he reached down and helped her into the carriage, his hand lingering gently on her own, his smile effortless. She turned away from him, telling herself it was to keep from losing her heart – a lie to cover the obvious fact that it was already lost.

  Chapter 18

  The difficulty with courting Nora, Gerard found over their first month of attempts, was not just that they differed so strongly – it was that the person with whom he shared so much, Lady Katherine, seemed to show up in his life an inordinate number of times considering their previous non-existent relationship. He could only believe that it was his mother’s doing.

  A week after the dinner party, Lady Katherine and her mother ran into him and his at a local teashop. Two weeks after, they both happened upon each other in the park. On all these occasions Lady Katherine appeared to be oblivious to the arrangements, only smiling graciously from beneath her long dark lashes and plying him with innocent and kind questions.

  Gerard appreciated her company, but he couldn’t help thinking about Nora even when he was in the presence of such a lovely lady. It was a strange thing, for he had never before thought of the little Miss Pembroke during dalliances of any sort. But here she was creeping into his thoughts during conversations not at all associated with her.

  He couldn’t help thinking how pleasant it was to engage with her in a witty conversation, to find that she was an intellectual match for him, while he should have been focused on the light and proper conversation Lady Katherine provided at their meetings. In another instance, he found himself talking to Lady Katherine about her father’s work in the House of Lords, while his mind had for some inexplicable reason conjured up a comparison between her tall and stately form and Nora’s small and flower-like complexion. It was confusing, and not at all pleasant.

  Then his mother arranged an evening that brought the comparison to an awkward head. It was supposed to be an intimate dinner party where a few friends, including the Pembrokes and Lady Katherine’s family, were invited over to the Colbourne estate. However, after dinner, Lady Colbourne stood up in front of the group of guests in the parlour and announced that it should be a musical evening, during which all the guests were invited to perform their favourite musical piece.

  Gerard looked across the room at Nora and saw the discomfort on her face. He had never heard her sing or play, but she had mentioned more than once that she didn’t care for either, that she preferred to move about out of doors or paint rather than spend her time perfecting a gift for which she had no natural talent.

  Gerard couldn’t help but wonder if his mother, clearly knowing that Lady Katherine was the superior musician, had set this event up to show him what he was missing.

  Lady Katherine took the stage first, clothed head to toe in a shimmering ruby dress that set off her hair and bright eyes. She gave a little bow of her head and sat down behind the piano, looking every bit the queen.

  “I think I shall do the aria from Griselda,” she said with a smile in Gerard’s direction. He wondered if they’d talked about it and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I love to sing about hope.”

  She began to sing, and it was indeed stunning. Her voice rose and fell through the contralto parts as though she had been Griselda herself in another life. And even though she was accompanying herself on the piano, she seemed able to convey all the heart and emotion of the piece with her face and form alone. As captivating as she was, Gerard found his eyes drifting instead to Nora’s form sitting quite frozen across the room from him. She was watching Katherine too, and in her face was such a wistful longing that it tugged at Gerard’s heart.

  He thought he saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes but could not be certain. At the close of the piece, she clapped properly but looked down at her lap. She would have stayed thusly, he thought, if Lady Colbourne hadn’t stood at that mome
nt and called to her.

  “My dear Miss Pembroke, perhaps you will now show us some of your skill?”

  Gerard’s heart stopped. He knew his mother well, and yet even this seemed startlingly cruel – to compare the young ladies so completely. She ought to have called on a gentleman, or a pair, or anyone but the only other single woman in the room, especially one who had already proclaimed that she had no skill in this arena. He thought at first that Nora would defer but, looking quite white, she stood up and came to the front of the room. She looked almost fragile there in the light of the lamps, dressed in a much simpler white muslin with only a single flower at the base of her ear for adornment, but she gave a childish little curtsy and smiled broadly at the room.

  “I have heard it said,” she said with a twinkle in her eye, “that it is no use for a hill to claim to be a mountain, and so I shall beg you all to view my performance as the former and Lady Katherine’s as the latter. You will be kinder to me.”

  There was a titter of appreciative laughter about the room. Nora gave another weak smile and then sat down at the piano. She was clearly less comfortable there than Lady Katherine had been, but when she set her fingers to the keys a most startling song burst forth. It had none of the sad skill and elegance of Lady Katherine’s performance, but was instead quite upbeat – much like the sailor’s tunes that one might hear at the seaside.

  She sang in a clear, simple voice that reminded Gerard of his time in the highlands, and though it was not to be compared with Katherine’s, there was something wistful and pure about it that made him think of mountain springs and times in the open air.

  “Come down from your high place, you men of the wharves!” she sang brightly. “And open your hearts to the girls you knew before. We’re not the same lassies, you wouldn’t believe; but we’re all here to ask what you’ve brought from the sea!” She went on, singing about all the things the girls wanted the sailors to bring them back from afar. It was hardly a genteel turn of phrase, and the lyrics clearly made Lady Colbourne roll her eyes, but Gerard found himself smiling at the jollity of the tune, and when he looked about the room everyone else was smiling too.

  When she climbed off the piano stool and came back into the crowd, she looked at him for the first time in the evening. She had a polite smile on her lips, but she looked from him to Katherine and then back again with no amusement in her eyes.

  He waited until a few songs later, when an older gentleman was intoning all the verses to a seaside melody that had little variation or tune and slipped over to her side.

  “Are you trying to make my mother dead set against our courtship?” he asked quietly, settling by her side.

  She didn’t turn to look at him, her face still pleasant and set in a light smile but answered him out of the corner of her mouth. “I do not think anyone could make your mother do something she did not already wish to do,” she said. After a moment, she asked, “I take it you did not take kindly to my little tune?”

  “It was a pretty turn of phrase, but not the sort you would expect at such a gathering.”

  “You mean not the sort Lady Katherine would have sung.”

  He turned to her in surprise. “What is this, Nora? Do I detect a hint of jealousy? I thought you and Lady Katherine were friends.”

  “We are friends,” she said quickly. “You detect nothing more or less than what I said, Lord Colbourne.”

  They sat in silence for the remainder of the performances, but Gerard found that he couldn’t keep his mind from turning the issue over and over. He was not going to leave his courtship with Nora to pursue Katherine, not only because of his promise, but also because he was enjoying his time with Nora. Still, he couldn’t help but think about the point his mother was trying to make with all this business surrounding his marriage.

  He had a crumbling estate on his hands, and the thing to do when one had a crumbling estate was to marry prudently, and well. He looked at Nora, sitting so quietly beside him, and wondered whether or not she was a prudent choice. She was unexpected, and at times unreliable. And what of his heart…? But his heart did not matter, of course. The arrangement between him and Nora was not one of the heart, it was one of mutual agreement, and business.

  He turned back to the front and listened to two of the women warble out the strains of a duet together. He wondered why it was that, even looking away from her, he could feel Nora’s emotion so clearly. She was restrained, careful. Two behaviours that were unlike her in situations like this.

  At the end of the performances, she stood and slipped away from his side. Gerard wondered what more he could say to her, but in the end, he didn’t have a chance to find out – she had gone back out to her family carriage and ridden away before he could solicit her for more conversation.

  Chapter 19

  “I wondered when I would see you again,” Katherine said brightly the day after the dinner party, when Nora came to call on her. “You’re just in time, for I was growing weary here about the house, and had just decided to go out for tea. Will you accompany me?”

  Nora stood for a moment in the doorway, uncertain. It had taken quite a bit of courage to come and visit her friend this particular morning, for the events of the night before were still rollicking around inside her head, and as much as she wanted to see Katherine as her bright, lifelong friend, she couldn’t help but see the gorgeous and willowy woman who had so stolen Gerard’s attention the night before.

  She had decided, in the end, that she would overcome any feelings of insecurity by reaching out to Katherine in friendship first. But now that she could see her friend’s light-hearted nature, she wondered if broaching the subject of Gerard Colbourne was really the best idea after all.

  “Tea sounds quite all right,” she said after a moment’s pause. “If you’ll accompany me.”

  The two girls set out into the bright spring air, and as they walked Nora tried to reassure herself of the facts of the situation. Katherine was still her dear friend, and it was clear that, as uncomfortable as Nora’s own affections for Gerard were proving to be, Katherine was not to blame for the divide in his attentions. She had been put in a situation in which she had no control, and her good looks and genteel nature were not faults, even if they did bring out the more insecure parts of Nora’s nature.

  In the past, she’d always been proud of her cousin, the illustrious and talented Lady Katherine, and happy enough to glide along in the other woman’s shadow. There was no reason why she should harbour feelings of frustration about those same qualities that had before endeared her cousin to herself. Nora looped her arm through Katherine’s.

  “Tell me,” she said with a smile, “what you thought about the events of last night.”

  “I had a lovely time,” Katherine answered slowly, taking a tell-tale moment to pause before answering. It betrayed that feeling of slightly tense discomfort that Nora had already sensed. “And you?”

  “I find that I am not at my best in situations that call for musical prowess,” Nora said with a shrug, “but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying other people’s performances.” She walked on in silence for a moment, and then decided to approach the situation head on, without any pretences. “Katherine, we’ve been friends for some time, and I must ask you something directly, something I’ve already hinted at more than once, I’m sure. Would you feel comfortable telling me what exactly your feelings are for Lord Colbourne?”

  Katherine was silent a few beats longer than was perfectly comfortable. When she spoke at last, her voice was cautious still. “I and the rest of London are under the impression that you and Lord Colbourne are seeing much of each other, Nora. I do not know how my own feelings should factor into that equation.”

  “I don’t know that I’m the best fit for him,” Nora said. The words, though true, still sliced at her heart as she spoke them. “We’re very different, and I know that his mother – at least – believes that a woman of your training and elegance would be a better helpmeet to him in London
society.”

  “Lord Colbourne does not seem to be the sort of person easily swayed by public opinion.” Katherine gave a little laugh, but it was not quite genuine enough to fool Nora, who could hear in her friend’s voice a certain wistfulness.