The dinner table conversation did not demand much of his brain. He was able to do a great deal of thinking at the same time.
He could not marry Miss Effingham.
Neither could he disappoint his grandmother. Was he the only one who could see the rigidity of her bearing and the deep lines on either side of her mouth, both indications of suppressed pain? Or the brightness of her eyes that masked bone-weariness? And yet this garden party extending into a dinner and entertainment for the Harewood guests had been her idea. Rannulf glanced several times at her with fond exasperation.
And there was Judith Law. He wondered if she realized that two men had panted equally for her this afternoon. To his infinite shame he had wanted her quite as desperately as Effingham had. Pale and disheveled and bareheaded, she had looked achingly appealing, and her trembling bewilderment had invited him to comfort her in other ways than the one he had chosen.
He had sat beside her in the summerhouse, imposing rigid control on his own urges, concentrating every effort of his will on giving her the quiet, passive comfort he had sensed she needed and castigating himself at every moment with the knowledge that he was not far different from Effingham.
He had always seen women as creatures designed for his personal pleasure and satisfaction, to be taken and used and paid and forgotten. Except for his sisters, of course, and other ladies, and all women of virtue, and even those few of questionable virtue who had said no to him.
The trouble for women as voluptuously gorgeous as Judith Law must be that men would almost always look on them with lust and perhaps never see the person behind the goddess.
His grandmother interrupted his rambling thoughts by rising from her place and inviting the other ladies to join her in the drawing room. It was tempting after they left to settle in to the port and congenial male conversation for an indefinite length of time, especially since he suspected that Sir George Effingham and a number of the other gentlemen would be quite happy to spend the rest of the evening at the table.
However, duty called and he had promised himself that he would play host and lift some of the social burden from his grandmother’s shoulders. He stood up after a mere twenty minutes, and the gentlemen followed him to the drawing room.
He had no intention of having the same few young ladies as usual entertain the gathering with their pianoforte playing, Miss Effingham inevitably keeping the instrument all to herself once she had occupied the bench, with him as her page-turner.
“We will take tea,” he announced, “after which we will all entertain one another. AM of us who are—let me see—all of us who are below the age of thirty.”
There was a chorus of protests, most of them male, but Rannulf held up one hand and laughed.
“Why should the ladies be the ones expected to display all the talents and accomplishments?” he asked.
“We all, surely, can do something that will entertain a gathering of this nature.”
“Oh, I say,” Lord Braithwaite cried, “no one would wish to hear me sing, Bedwyn. When I joined the choir at school, the singing master told me that the kindest comparison he could think of for my voice was a cracked foghorn. And there was an end to my singing days.”
There was general laughter.
“There will be no exceptions,” Rannulf said. “There are more ways to entertain than by singing.”
“What are you going to do, Bedwyn?” Peter Webster asked. “Or are you going to exempt yourself on the grounds that you are the master of ceremonies?”
“You may wait and see,” Rannulf told him. “Shall we say ten minutes for tea before we have the tray removed?”
He went first. It seemed only fair. He had learned a few conjuring tricks over the years and had been fond of entertaining Morgan and her governess with them. He performed several of them now, foolish tricks like making a coin disappear from his hand and then reappear out of Miss Cooke’s right ear or Branwell Law’s waistcoat pocket, and making a handkerchief suddenly transform itself into a pocket watch or a lady’s fan. He had, of course, the advantage of being able to plan well ahead of time. His audience exclaimed in wonder and delight and applauded with enthusiasm, just as if he were a master of the art.
A few of the guests had to be coaxed and one of them— Sir Dudley Roy-Hill—refused categorically to make an idiot of himself, as he phrased it, but it was amazing over the next hour to discover what varied and sometimes impressive talents had lain hidden through the first half of the house party. Predictably, the ladies entertained with music, most either vocal or on the pianoforte, one—Miss Hannah Warren—on the drawing room harp that Rannulf could never remember hearing played before. Law sang a woeful ballad in a pleasant tenor voice, and Warren sang a Baroque duet with one of his sisters. Tanguay recited Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” with such passionate sensibility that the ladies burst into appreciative applause almost before the last word was out of his mouth. Webster did a creditable imitation of a cossack dance he had once seen on his travels, bending his knees and crossing his arms and kicking his feet and leaping and singing his own accompaniment and succeeding in convulsing both himself and his audience in helpless laughter before collapsing in an inelegant heap on the carpet. Braithwaite, perhaps encouraged by the reception of his choirboy story, told three more tall tales about his school days, all at his own expense, embroidering the details with humorous exaggeration until the ladies and even a few gentlemen were mopping at their eyes while still laughing.
“Ah,” Lady Effingham said with a sigh when Braithwaite sat down, “that is everyone. I could continue watching and listening for another hour. But what a splendid idea, Lord Rannulf. We have all been royally entertained. Indeed I—”
But Rannulf held up a staying hand.
“Not so, ma’am,” he said. “Not everyone. There is still Miss Law.”
“Oh, I really do not believe Judith will wish to make a spectacle of herself,” her fond aunt said hastily.
Rannulf ignored her. “Miss Law?”
Her head had shot up, and she was gazing at him with wide, dismayed eyes. This whole scheme of his had been designed for just this moment. It really had infuriated him that she had been made into an invisible woman, little more than a servant, all because that puppy of a brother of hers had thought he could live beyond his means and be funded by the bottomless pit of his father’s fortune. She should become visible, even if just once, while all the guests were still staying at Harewood, and in all her greatest magnificence.
It had been a gamble from the start, of course. But it had been planned before the distressing events of this afternoon. All evening he had toyed with the idea of leaving her invisible.
“But I have no particular accomplishment, my lord,” she protested. “I do not play the pianoforte or sing more than tolerably well.”
“Perhaps,” he said, looking directly into her eyes, “you have some verse or some passage from literature or the Bible memorized?”
“I—” She shook her head.
He would leave it at that, he decided. He had done the wrong thing. He had embarrassed and perhaps hurt her.
“Perhaps, Miss Law,” his grandmother said kindly, “you would be willing to read a poem or a Bible passage if we were to have a book fetched from the library. I noticed in conversation with you this afternoon what a very pleasant speaking voice you have. But only if you wish. Rannulf will not bully you if you are too shy.”
“Indeed I will not, Miss Law.” He bowed to her.