Page 17 of A Lady’s Guide to Scoundrels and Gentlemen (The Harp & Thistle #1)

A woman’s voice called out through the corridor of flowers, ending the moment. “Vivian! Is that you?”

It was Anne.

Vivian let the parasol fall away and turned her head to find Anne standing at the tunnel entrance. Earlier in the morning, Vivian had learned her family would be at the flower show as well and would be searching for her. She hadn’t had a chance to tell Dantes, or a chance to tell him his brothers were expected later at the house, though the purpose of their visit remained unknown to her. Thus, she was planning on having everyone for dinner later and couldn’t send Dantes away now. But in this moment, she was angry.

And she felt utterly foolish. Foolish for thinking he was trying to tell her he cared for her, that she could be special to him.

What hit her hardest, though, was she should have known better. She did know better. A knot formed in her stomach at her idiocy.

“Vivian, wait.” Dantes grabbed her hand as she began walking toward Anne, but she pulled it away from him. “Do you want me to leave?”

As Vivian struggled with how to respond, Anne reached them and seemed to mistake Vivian’s silence as nerves. “Of course not!” Anne laughed playfully. “Don’t be silly. There’s plenty of room for you to join. But come now.” Anne gave Vivian wide eyes. “Before your father finds you like this.”

Just then, Father’s profile appeared at the entrance. He called out to Vivian. “Are you coming from the lily pads, dear?”

The trio began walking toward him and she noticed he was with Bernard and another gentleman she didn’t immediately recognize. “The lily pads?”

“That’s the direction of the water plants.”

“Oh!” She responded a bit too brightly. “Of course! Fascinating. Like floating dishes.”

Father laughed and pulled her in for a hug. “My darling Vivian. And who is this gentleman?” The duke eyed Dantes.

She briefly looked back at Dantes, noted how stiffly he stood, and guiltily felt a bit good about that. “This is my friend, Mr. Edmond McNab. You remember him?”

Something flashed in Father’s eyes, and he studied Dantes for a rather long moment, his brow furrowed and gaze sharp. It was the way every suspicious father looked when he saw a new man with his daughter.

“Friend,” she repeated quietly.

Her father gave her back a gentle pat to show he understood and let her go. “Vivian, do you remember my old friend from Cambridge, Mr. Henry Tewksbury?”

She turned to Mr. Tewksbury to say hello and remembered him now. Mr. Tewksbury wasn’t a titled aristocrat, but he was quite wealthy, as he owned a bank, which was how Father knew him. Mr. Tewksbury had become a widower when Vivian had been a debutante—it was terribly sad. At the time, he’d been thirty, and his wife had been killed in a tragic ferry accident. But even at eighteen, Vivian had recognized how despite the age difference, he was quite handsome, for an older gentleman. Of course, this was before his wife had been killed; Vivian wouldn’t have admired a widower in mourning. But even now, the fine lines and a bit of gray in his dark hair only enhanced his appearance.

“Lady Vivian.” Mr. Tewksbury stepped up to her with a small bow, his eyes genuine and friendly, unlike those of seemingly every single gentleman she had spoken to since her inheritance. But of course, her newfound fortune would barely be of interest to him, unlike the spoiled sons of the near-penniless aristocrats who chased after her. No, Mr. Tewksbury held enough of his own fortune that Vivian’s would garner nothing more than a polite smile and nod from him.

He was the exact type of gentleman she should have been going for.

“Mr. Tewksbury.” She gave him a small curtsy. “Truly, I cannot recall the last time I saw you. It’s been a rather long time.”

“Ten years, almost exactly.” He smiled. “I was here in London for the same reason as I am now, a rather boring financial conference.”

She laughed politely as the group began walking, but Vivian and Mr. Tewksbury naturally began strolling together on their own. Briefly, she glanced over her shoulder and found Father and Bernard talking. Anne followed behind, demure. Dantes kept a distance from everyone but walked directly behind her, his attention squarely on her and nothing else. She held his stare for a brief moment until whipping her head back around and placing the open parasol over her shoulder.

“I heard there’s a butterfly garden here,” Mr. Tewksbury said, recapturing her attention.

Vivian forced a smile through the unsettling feeling that Dantes continued watching her. “Yes! I was hoping to see that next.”

The elder gentleman held out his arm. “Shall we, then?”

For the tiniest moment, she stilled, surprised at the offer. But what harm was there in accepting Mr. Henry Tewksbury’s arm to walk about a public place? He was a widower being polite. There were plenty of chaperones around. And so, she accepted the offer of his arm, feeling four pairs of eyes staring into her back, and realized perhaps this wasn’t so innocent, especially since her parasol concealed them both.

The butterfly garden, to Vivian’s great excitement, was positively brimming with butterflies of all types and hundreds of late-spring- and early-summer flowers that attracted them. It was crowded in the large, netted space, yet everyone wore faces of joy, looking up as beautiful, winged insects fluttered by, or down to the flowers, where they rested.

Mr. Tewksbury led her over to a nearby group of flowers. A butterfly fluttered up to her and landed on her forehead, causing her to squeak in surprise, then laugh when it crawled up to her hair.

“Looks like you made a new friend.” Mr. Tewksbury put his hand up to her hair and brought it back down so she could see the butterfly that now sat atop his finger. Its wings opened to reveal several dramatic cream circles. She set the Lady Luck rose on a nearby bench and promptly forgot all about it because Mr. Tewksbury took Vivian’s free hand in his own and gently put the butterfly to her knuckles. It walked over to her finger and she couldn’t help but smile in sheer delight.

It was called the speckled wood butterfly, he explained. “I became a bit butterfly-obsessed after my wife died. She had set up a corner of the garden with plants that attracted butterflies and it became a sort of sanctuary for me those first years of mourning.”

Vivian glanced up. “My father did the same thing with my mother’s rose garden.”

“Yes, that’s where I got the idea from.”

They exchanged a smile and returned to watching the butterfly. It opened and closed its wings several times before flying off to find more nectar. “Goodbye, little creature,” she said after it. She turned her attention to the rest of the group. Anne and Bernard stood nowhere near each other, more like strangers to one another than husband and wife, and Dantes and her father were talking, though she couldn’t hear them. Dantes caught her eye again, but his face gave nothing away.

A few hours later, the group, including Mr. Tewksbury, returned to her home. Vivian had not been expecting him to be a guest but was cautiously pleased by it. The hours spent together at the flower show had been filled with engaging conversation about gardens and butterflies. She’d also learned more about his personal life. He’d made a curious point to mention he and his late wife had been unable to have any children, though he held hope it could still be a possibility for him. And he’d seemed genuinely interested in learning more about her, asking questions that required detailed answers, giving her his full attention as she’d replied.

Everyone gathered in the drawing room, where Anne began playing the piano.

Vivian did her best to remain outwardly cheerful, but despite the time spent with Mr. Tewksbury at the flower show, she was still swimming in a storm of emotions. Dantes was standing in the spot where he had kissed her, and it irritated her because she knew he stood there on purpose. She kept feeling his gaze upon her, caught him a few times watching with that intense stare of his, all while standing in that spot. She did her best to ignore it, but every time she met his eye, the hair on the back of her neck stood up.

She wasn’t sure what to make of him, what to make of Mr. Tewksbury, what to make of any of this mess. Truly, she wanted nothing more than to go lie down in bed.

“Vivian.” Father’s voice cut into her thoughts as Anne’s song ended. Vivian turned to find him with Dantes and Mr. Tewksbury. “Do you still have the photograph of you and Bernard out in the grass? It’s a favorite and I’d like to show them.”

“The one where he’s doing a cartwheel, you mean?”

Father nodded as Anne jumped up. “I know where it is. It’s in the receiving room,” Anne offered. “I will retrieve it.”

Anne rushed out of the room, her face oddly flushed. Concern twisted within Vivian and she looked to Bernard to see if he, too, was concerned for Anne. However, Bernard did not notice his wife’s departure as he gulped down yet another cognac.

*

Dantes frowned deeply when Vivian’s butler, Heaton, appeared with Victor and Ollie following. Vivian went to greet them warmly, but her smile fell away when Victor said something into her ear and handed her a photograph Dantes assumed was the one Lady Litchfield had meant to fetch.

Victor meandered over to a chair Winthrop lounged in with another drink, when Vivian announced Lady Litchfield had become ill and left for home. Winthrop said, “Oh, should I go check on her?” and began to rise from his chair when Victor forced him back down into his seat, causing the man’s drink to slosh over the edge.

Dantes furrowed his brow as he watched Winthrop lick spilled liquor off his hand. What had happened when Lady Litchfield had left the room? She’d seemed perfectly fine only minutes ago.

His interest in the photograph now lost—not that it was for him to see anyway, it was for whoever the blazes this Tewksbury was—he went over to Victor.

“What are you doing here?” Dantes muttered darkly.

“I told you, I need to speak with Vivian about a loan.”

“And I told you no .”

“Tough.”

They glowered at each other and Ollie did his best to break up the tension. “Who’s the old chap?” Ollie nodded over to Tewksbury, standing with Vivian and her father. As the three brothers watched, Tewksbury said something, and Vivian laughed.

Ollie raised his eyebrows at this and Dantes gave him a deeper scowl than he had Victor and went to sit on the sofa. They would figure it out soon enough, and he would never hear the end of it.

The flower show had been utter torture. Even Lady Litchfield had asked what had happened between him and Vivian. He’d given her a non-answer, of course. But, blast, only he could profess his affections to a woman and have her walk away convinced of the opposite.

But nothing could top the butterfly garden. While Tewksbury had wooed Vivian with a butterfly, her father had asked Dantes how, if Vivian had been inside the pub with him when The Harp & Thistle had caught on fire, where had the newspapers had gotten the idea he’d escaped from his flat?

Dantes, completely caught off guard by this, stammered like an idiot before giving the nonsense answer of, “ah, you know how the newspapers are.”

The duke didn’t respond, but he did give Dantes a drawn-out, studious look over. Not the first one, either.

Truly, this day couldn’t get any worse. Unless Tewksbury proposed to Vivian at the table. It would be just his luck.

As they were seated in the dining room, Tewksbury sat to Vivian’s left while Dantes couldn’t have been farther away. As Winthrop and his father began to talk with Ollie and Victor about the railway business the McNabs were no longer a part of, Dantes realized he didn’t know a single thing about Tewksbury except that he was a widower. He could have been a decent person, aside from getting in Dantes’s way. Nothing about Tewksbury seemed off. He wasn’t even pompous.

Dantes shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Vivian hadn’t said a word to him since their argument, though they had caught each other’s eye a few times. What he was going to do about all of this, he hadn’t the faintest idea. Ollie’s question had been poking at him all day, however. Did he love Vivian? He couldn’t answer that. But, using Mr. Jensen’s words, he knew he was smitten with her.

As the main course was set before everyone, Ollie leaned toward him. “What did you do?” he whispered.

Dantes ignored the question as he cut into the meat on his plate, paying no attention to what the food was. Ollie dropped the subject, at least for the moment, because everyone began talking about their plans for the summer holiday next month. Well, everyone who wasn’t a McNab. The brothers didn’t go away for holidays, and they had to focus on getting the pub back up. But Vivian had inherited her grandmother’s seaside cottage in Brighton—if a mansion could really be referred to as a “cottage”—and her family would be joining her down there. Soon, she would be gone for several months. He tried his best to ignore the dread that filled him upon this realization.

“Lady Vivian,” Tewksbury said farther down the table. Dantes couldn’t help but overhear. “Unfortunately, my visit to London ends tomorrow and I rather enjoyed our time together today. I do, however, summer in Brighton, and I hope to get better acquainted this summer.”

The duke studied Tewksbury, then Dantes. When he looked down at his plate he shook his head with apparent pity.

Dantes choked on his food. Ollie, alarmed, gave him several swift hits on the back, dislodging it.

“Heavens, Mr. McNab, are you all right?” Vivian asked with evident alarm from the head of the table. Everyone else stared. Dantes cleared his throat and did his best to act like nothing had happened.

Blast it all. This turn of events was more blasted bad luck, and it seemed the day would not end.