Page 21 of Cupid Comes to Little Valentine (The Venturesome Ladies of Little Valentine #1)

Town bronze and country mice.

The carriage drew up outside Beau’s town residence a little after eleven o'clock that evening.

He jumped down, stretching out the cramps in his legs after too long confined in the carriage.

He had allowed nothing but the briefest stops, too eager to be home.

Yet now, as he looked up at his elegant townhouse, he was strangely reluctant to go in.

“I need a walk,” he told Kirby, who had sulked for most of the journey, making known his displeasure at returning so quickly to London. “I think I’ll visit my club and see who’s around.”

“Very good, my lord,” Kirby said morosely.

Beau opened his mouth to take issue with his gloomy servant but thought better of it. Kirby would get over it soon enough and everything would go back to normal. There would be the usual rounds of parties and social events, and his life would be his own again. It was an oddly depressing thought.

He told himself it was only that London was so scarce of company in the summer.

In a few weeks, most anyone with any sense would leave to escape the heat—and, more to the point, the smell—by retiring to their country residences.

Beau toyed with the notion of a visit Cavendish House.

He’d not been there for an age, and his mother would be delighted if he spent a little time with her too.

Perhaps he would, he mused, as he pushed open the door to White’s and looked around.

It was quiet, making him wonder how many people had already left town.

“Beaumarsh!”

Beau looked around, raising a hand in greeting as he saw a familiar face.

“Stonehaven,” he said, nodding at the marquess, who had been a friend since his school days. “How do?”

“Well enough. This is an excellent claret, care to join me?”

Beau sat down and grimaced. “God, yes. I’ve spent the entire afternoon, and evening stuffed in a carriage with a sulking Kirby, and I’m tired and irritable. I’ll happily drink with you, but I need some food. Anything good on?”

“I had an excellent sirloin. I can heartily recommend it,” Stonehaven remarked, pouring out a glass for Beau.

Beau regarded his friend. He was a tall man, broad and powerfully built, with mid-brown hair and shrewd hazel eyes.

They had been drinking companions and partners in crime since they were young lads sent away to school for the first time.

Stonehaven liked to drink and to brawl far more than Beau, who feared breaking his nose, as Stonehaven had done more than once.

Regardless of their differences, he was an excellent companion, yet Beau was aware he knew little about the fellow, despite having known him for so long.

How odd, he thought suddenly, beset by the peculiar notion his childhood best friend was now a stranger to him.

“So, how are you? What have you been up to of late?” Beau asked with genuine interest, earning himself the quirk of an eyebrow.

“The usual,” Stonehaven replied, regarding Beau with curiosity.

“It wasn’t a trick question,” Beau said irritably, wondering why he was interested now when he’d been too idle or self-absorbed to ask the question in recent years.

“I just wondered… I don’t know. Are you well?

Have you seen your family of late? Do you have plans for the summer? Read any interesting books?”

Stonehaven stared at him suspiciously. “Good God, Beau, I’d heard you’d been taken ill. Did it affect your brain? Do you actually want an intelligent conversation with me? I can prattle as well as any old biddy if you like, but it’s not usually your brand of entertainment.”

Beau glared at him, realising he had been a terrible friend and wondering why Stonehaven had endured his selfishness.

“We talk.” Didn’t they? Did Beau never ask after his family, or discuss politics with him or…

or the weather, heaven help him? Surely they did something other than discuss the latest on-dits and what entertainment they were attending that night.

“Oh, indeed,” Stonehaven agreed with an amiable expression. “We say, ‘look, old chap, the brunette is for me, you take the blonde,’ or ‘deal me in,’ or ‘did you hear about Peterson, he’s up the River Tick and selling those fine greys.’”

“Fine, if you want to be an arse, I’ll find more agreeable company.” It was an unfair comment for Beau was now horribly aware he had been a complete arse, not Stonehaven.

Stonehaven chuckled, still good natured despite his friend’s egocentric behaviour.

“Fine, fine. Have it your way. I am in perfect health. I saw my family three days ago. All are still breathing and spending my money as fast as they can get their sticky paws on it. I recently read Waverley . It’s rather hard going for the first few chapters, but overall, I rather enjoyed it.

There. Does that satisfy your need for conversation? ”

“You are an absolute pillock,” Beau said, but without heat, too relieved to discover he had not done irreparable damage to a friendship that was almost as old as he was.

“Oh, very well. I’ll indulge you and ask what you have been up to of late, does that make me a better friend?” Stonehaven asked, leaning across the table towards him, curiosity alight in his eyes.

“Marginally,” Beau grumbled, making a show his irritation so Stonehaven didn’t think him entirely deranged, but still took the opportunity to talk.

He had the sudden desire to tell someone about Little Valentine and, whilst Stonehaven would surely think he’d lost his mind, he needed to explain that the place was special in ways he could not articulate, and that the people too, had struck him as real in a way he did not quite understand.

Except so much of his life was spent putting on a spectacle, presenting Beau Beaumarsh to his peers so they might admire him and ape his superior way of speaking, dressing and being his wry, cynical best. They did not know him at all, for he did not allow them to do so.

Yet, in the brief time he’d been in Little Valentine, he’d been entirely himself.

“Little Valentine?” Stonehaven repeated sceptically. “Did you make that up?”

“No,” Beau replied, irked. “It’s quaint, I grant you, but the town is utterly charming.

It’s all winding cobbled streets and pretty cottages, and I swear the sea is as blue as any you’d see in the south of France or in Italy.

The people, too, were most kind,” he added, realising too late there had been a slightly wistful note to his voice.

“Oh, now I understand. There’s a woman,” Stonehaven said, smirking.

Beau scowled. “There is not a woman. I am trying to explain that it felt different, more honest than the life we lead in town! The people cared about each other,” he exclaimed, throwing up his hands and then crossing his arms tightly across his chest.

Stonehaven looked at him, frowning with concern. “All right,” he said slowly. “I’ll quit ragging on you. Tell me about this little town. What was there about it that has you reevaluating your life? I take it that is what we are doing here?”

Beau continued to glare at him but could not keep it up.

Instead, he sighed. “I suppose so,” he admitted.

“I’ve finally realised how shallow my existence is, not that I wasn’t aware of it, but to realise how little it matters to anyone, myself even, is an uncomfortable feeling.

Oh, ignore me. I’ve probably just enjoyed a little respite from the real world and now I’m feeling out of step with my old life. ”

“Probably,” Stonehaven agreed amiably. “Tell me anyway.”

So Beau did. He told him about Captain Dearborn and Major Hancock, about the Honeywell family, about the reverend and his daughters, about Miss Honeywell’s plot to entrap Edwin and its satisfying denouement.

“The reverend is a wise old bird, you know,” Beau said, watching as Stonehaven refilled his glass. “He seems to know what you are thinking, to know you when he doesn’t know you at all. Isn’t that strange?”

Stonehaven shrugged. “Not really. If anyone ought to understand and know human nature, one presumes it would be a man of the cloth.”

“He said I was a good man,” Beau mused.

“I take it back. Man’s a fool.”

“Arsehole.”

Stonehaven grinned at him. “There, see? I rest my case.”

“If you’d stop acting the halfwit for five minutes, you’d realise that the fellow made me think,” Beau replied, still rather astonished that he was having this conversation at all.

“He’d lost his wife, you know. Years ago.

He raised his daughters single-handed. Yet he was so filled with gratitude for having had the woman in his life.

Mary, her name was, and Reverend Honeywell loved her with every fibre of his being.

I could tell that without him having to say so, though he did say it too. It shone from him.”

Beau shook his head and raked a hand through his hair. What the devil had got into him?

“Sounds like an interesting fellow,” Stonehaven said, his tone neutral.

“Yes, and you think I ought to go and have a nice lie down in a dark room until I’m feeling better,” Beau said, his lip curling cynically.

Stonehaven chuckled and shook his head. “It might surprise you to learn I’m not as shallow as you might assume. I think the reverend sounds a fascinating fellow. Truly.”

“He said I should find my soulmate and marry for love.” Beau could have bitten his tongue off, for he wished the words unsaid the moment he’d uttered them. Glancing at Stonehaven, he expected to find disgust or, at the very least, mocking amusement in his expression. He did not.

Instead, Stonehaven looked interested. “Fellows like us don’t do that.”