Seduction Regency Style

by Louisa Cornell

  Rosa looked at the horrid book, and Bear’s note. Perhaps Aunt Belle could explain. “Here. I had a note from Mr. Gavenor today.” She passed it to Aunt Belle, who donned her little gold rimmed spectacles and scanned it quickly.

  “Ah. So you are disappointed that he is delayed?” Aunt Belle narrowed her eyes and examined Rosa’s face. “No. Something more.”

  Rosa passed her the book and the bookmark.

  “How pretty!” Aunt Belle said of the bookmark, and, “Andrew Delargey! Why, he is on everyone’s lips, or so I am told. A recluse, they say. No one has met him; not even his publisher. Some think the name a pseudonym, which means he could be anyone. How very exciting to think one might be at a poetry reading and the man sitting next to one might be the poet himself!”

  “The bookmark was in this place,” Rosa said, opening the book to the offending poem. Aunt Belle laughed as she read it. “Yes, I heard that Society’s favorite poet has recently been disappointed in love, and that his latest book is full of allusions to his false lady. Did you think this intended for you, Rosa? Is your husband the kind of man to send such an insult? I would not have thought from his note he was at all familiar with the poet or his poems. Is he likely to have purchased the book on the recommendation he mentioned and just opened the pages at random to put the bookmark in?”

  Rosa nodded thoughtfully. Yes. Very likely.

  “I think, dear child, that I would like to hear more about this marriage that leaves you so unsure of yourself. Yes, and of your husband, too. I daresay it is his fault; he is a man, after all, but you shall tell Aunt Belle everything and we shall see what might be done.”

  “I do not know if anything can be done. He married me because the rector said he must, and because he needed a hostess for his business entertainments and a chatelaine for his home. Oh, and a child, though how that is to happen when he won’t… He said my reputation was of no moment, and that he did not believe what the Pelmans said. Oh, but he does. He does.”

  Rosa burst into tears and entered the arms her aunt held out to her, finding comfort in the silky, perfumed embrace and the murmured endearments.

  She was permitted to indulge for several minutes, then Aunt Belle passed her a handkerchief and commanded her to ring the bell for tea. “Weeping is useful, in its way. But strategizing is better, and for that I need facts, Rosa. Tell me about your reputation. And about the Pelmans, a name I know all too well, to my sorrow.”

  ***

  The meeting with Denthorpe went better than expected. They enjoyed dinner together in a private room at Fournier’s, and hammered out a deal on the townhouse over the exquisite dishes for which Fournier’s had become famous. They even managed to sketch broad areas of agreement on the second estate, the one with twenty or twelve houses, depending on whether anything could be salvaged from those left open to vandalism and Mother Nature.

  Denthorpe and his agent left, promising to sign in the morning, as soon as the papers they had amended a dozen times in the course of the evening had been copied in a fair hand. Lion and Bear lingered for one more celebratory drink.

  “Me for my Dorrie tomorrow, Bear, and you for your Rosa,” Lion said.

  “I’ll drink to that,” Bear agreed. His size was a benefit on such evenings. Both Lion and Denthorpe were more than mellow, and Thomas, the agent, had been drinking lemonade for much of the evening.

  When they stood to leave, Bear caught Lion’s arm to steady him, and they went arm-and-arm through the door of the private dining room and across the floor of the restaurant. Bear paused when he saw Lord Hurley at one of the tables.

  “There is someone I wish to talk to,” he murmured, more to himself than to Lion, but his friend showed the uncanny ability to shake off the alcohol, a skill that had saved him and his command more than once. A keen glint replaced the sleepy humor in his pale eyes.

  “Hurley? I have your back, Bear, but try not to eviscerate him. Fournier’s wife wouldn’t like it.”

  They came up on each side of Hurley, each taking a chair from an unoccupied table and seating themselves uninvited. “Hurley,” Bear greeted his quarry, ignoring the other three men at the table. “Just the man I wanted to see.”

  “You bought it sight unseen,” Hurley said, his slurred voice indicating he had imbibed even more freely than Bear and Lion. “I told you it was a wreck.”

  “Not as bad as I feared,” Bear reassured him. “I did get one surprise, though. One of the cottages I thought was mine turned out to belong to a Miss Neatham and her father.”

  Hurley flushed bright red. “Who told you that? Pelman? He promised he would never tell. I suppose he wants it for himself, but I’ll tell you this, Gavenor, he already has a wife, so if Rosabel thinks to get his ring on her finger, she’d better watch out.”

  Bear filed the information away. A wife, eh? That might reward further investigation. “You make very free with her Christian name,” he observed.

  Hurley barked a bitter laugh. “My own half-sister, after all. And my uncle leaving her one of the best properties on the estate. Thankfully, her supposed father was too sick for her to attend the reading of the will, so she never knew.”

  The disgusting cur. He’d cheated Rosa of her inheritance. But…Hurley’s half-sister? The pieces slipped into a new pattern. The Neathams had just the one child, after eleven or twelve years of marriage. He’d ignored the rumors that claimed Rosa was the fallen sister’s child, but perhaps they were true. “Your father’s daughter by Mrs. Neatham’s sister Belle.” It was not a question.

  Hurley’s eyes roamed over the other men at the table. “Belle Clifford. My half-sister’s mother was Belle Clifford. I ask you! What would you have done if you found part of your inheritance had been left to a woman like that? The base-born brat of Raithby’s mistress? She had no right to it.”

  Bear managed, with some difficulty, to keep his hands from closing around Hurley’s neck.

  “I was never more shocked,” Hurley continued. “I’d even offered her carte blanche before I found out. Thank God, she turned me down. I could have bedded my own sister! No, better leave her to Pelman. Turned him down, too, but he said he’d have her in the end.”

  “Pelman will not be ‘having’ Rosa,” Bear said with labored patience. “By marriage or in any other way.”

  Hurley nodded, on and on and on like an automaton. “No need to buy the cow when you get the milk for free,” he agreed, at which point Bear’s forbearance ran out and his fist connected with Hurley’s chin, sending the man’s chair tumbling backwards and landing Hurley flat on his back on the floor.

  Hurley’s three friends surged to their feet, and when Bear turned to look at them, they proved their mettle by sidling out the door. Marcel Fournier, the proprietor, appeared from the kitchen, his brows drawn together in a thunderous frown.

  “Please accept my apologies, Monsieur,” Lion said hastily. “The unconscious gentleman insulted my friend’s wife.”

  “Yes. I am sorry, Monsieur,” Bear agreed. “Allow us to take out the trash.”

  Fournier formed his lips into a considering moue. “I cannot allow fisticuffs in my restaurant, gentlemen, but nor can any red-blooded man allow an insult to his wife. Remove the connard, and we shall say no more about it.”

  Bear and Lion carried Hurley outside, where Hurley’s three friends broke, alarmed, from a huddled discussion. Lion appointed himself spokesman again. “You may wish to see your friend home, gentlemen. When he is conscious and sober, tell him that Miss Neatham is now Mrs. Gavenor, and my friends and I hold her reputation as dear as our own.”

  “Who is Belle Clifford?” Bear asked, as they sat in Lion’s library over one last nightcap. “Rosa’s mother, clearly, and sister to Mrs. Neatham, but that scoundrel seemed to think we should know the name.”

  “Raithby’s mistress. Not the new Lord Raithby, but the one who has just died. It has been all over the ton these past few weeks. His widow threw Mrs. Clifford off the Raithby estates, where she has lived
for thirty years.”

  “She was Raithby’s mistress for thirty years?” Impressive loyalty in a courtesan.

  “According to the new marquis, he told his mother—at the top of his voice and at one of the Duchess of Haverford’s afternoon teas, mark you—that La Clifford had been a faithful mistress for thirty years, which was more than Lady Raithby could claim as a wife. Unlike Raithby to make any kind of a stir in public, but he always got on better with his father’s mistress than his own mother. Even when we were at school.”

  “You were at school with the new Marquis of Raithby?”

  Lion nodded absently. “I’ve met her, you know. Lady Raithby looks much more the courtesan than Mrs. Clifford, who is a dainty wee lady, and must have been very pretty in her day. Beautiful manners, too, and very kind to the schoolboys who came visiting with her lover’s heir.”

  Bear took another sip, absorbing all he had learned. So, Rosa’s aunt, really her mother, had not died as Rosa thought, but was still alive, and currently adrift somewhere in the world, having been evicted by her lover’s jealous wife. Lion’s sympathies were clearly with the mistress and not the marchioness. A dainty wee lady. The villagers all said Rosa took after her aunt. Perhaps he should find Rosa’s mother, and make sure she was safe. Safe somewhere far away from her daughter, whose reputation did not need another scandal.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Aunt Belle was not well enough to sit up for long, but insisted upon spending part of each afternoon in the parlor, where she and Rosa exchanged stories and grew to know one another. She was deeply distressed by Rosa’s report of the attacks on her reputation. “My fault. All my fault,” she mourned.

  “Mr. Pelman’s fault,” Rosa retorted. “I have done nothing to deserve his persecution.”

  “I remember him as an infant, and his sister, too. She was a most unpleasant child.” Aunt Belle laughed. “To think, if their father had been sincere in his protestations of marriage, I would have been their stepmother. I had a narrow escape.”

  She confirmed much of what Rosa had already heard or deduced. At just fifteen, two years younger than her cousin Amanda and five years younger than her sister, she had imagined herself in love with the baron’s factor, a charming young widower with two children. He assured her he returned her devotion, and that his public courtship of the squire’s daughter was just a show to blind people to his real purpose, since he simply had to see her, and her age made any approach to her uncle impossible.

  Belle hugged the secret to herself until the day her uncle announced a ball to celebrate his daughter’s betrothal to Mr. Pelman. Shocked, she burst out with what she thought was the truth; that Pelman was marrying her, not Amanda; that they had been meeting in secret; that they loved one another.

  Squire Threxton rode for Thorne Hall, where Pelman lived, and was carried home later that day, having suffered an apoplexy. Within days, however, he was well enough to break off the betrothal, and to cast Belle from the house with only the clothes she wore.

  “Pelman told him that he had taken what was on offer, which was true enough, but it amounted to a few kisses, and nothing more. My uncle believed the worst, of course. People do. Pelman was waiting for me, but I told him I’d rather starve in a gutter than be his mistress.”

  “Good for you,” Rosa said. Another way in which she and Aunt Belle were alike.

  “Matthew, Lord Hurley’s nephew, was a captain in the militia and looked very fine in his uniform. I went with him, and if you think your first night with your Bear was a shock, imagine mine! Matthew was kind enough, in his way, but very self-centered.”

  They talked no more that day, since Aunt Belle was taken by a fit of coughing that left her tired and pale, and Maud and Rosa put her to bed.

  The following afternoon, Aunt Belle did not pick up her story, but instead demanded to be told about Bear’s courtship of Rosa.

  “It was not precisely a courtship,” Rosa said. “More a business negotiation.”

  Aunt Belle, when she had heard the whole story of the proposal, the betrothal, the wedding night, and the aftermath, said, “He blames himself, silly man, and has retreated to lick his wounds.”

  “He blames himself? For what? I disappointed him.”

  Aunt Belle laughed. “Rather a lot, poor man. When he comes back, you will forgive him, and welcome him to your bed, and all shall be well, Rosa. Don’t expect him to say that he is sorry. Men tend to give presents rather than apologies, I have found. Even Raithby.”

  The deceased Marquis of Raithby, Rosa had quickly discovered, was Aunt Belle’s measure against which all other men were found wanting.

  “Bear has been sending me presents, Aunt Belle. Things to help me be the kind of wife he contracted for.”

  However, Aunt Belle, having read the letters and examined the presents, insisted her view was the correct one. “He is apologizing in his own way, Rosa.”

  The most recent present was a silver dressing set, with painted ivory inset into the handles, the tray, and the backs of the mirror and brush. “Fairies.” Aunt Belle’s eyes grew misty. “Raithby used to say I was his good fairy.”

  “You loved him very much,” Rosa stated. Was he my father? She had not yet asked whether Aunt Belle was her mother. She could hardly demand to know whether Raithby had sired her, especially since the man who had raised her lay upstairs, miserable with the ague he had not been able to shake off.

  “I was his mistress for thirty years. Twenty-eight, in truth, though few would believe it. He rescued me when I was very ill, and asked only my friendship. It was two years before he came to my bed, and then only after his wife had taken up with one of her lovers.”

  Thirty years, and I am thirty-six. Raithby was not my father, then.

  Aunt Belle didn’t notice her preoccupation, being absorbed in her memories. “God will take that into account, do you not think? That we were faithful to one another and did as little harm as we could? I am certain Raithby must be in Heaven, waiting for me.” She squeezed Rosa’s hand, which she was holding. “I think I will rest a little now, my dear girl.”

  Aunt Belle seldom complained, but Maud confirmed Rosa’s fear that she was fading. “My lady was sick before his lordship died, ma’am. But with him gone, she does not want to live, and that’s a fact.”

  “The journey cannot have been good for her.”

  “Coming to you was good for her, ma’am. She rallied for that. It didn’t last, but she will die happy knowing what a sweet lady her sister raised.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  At Lion’s suggestion, Bear took his questions about Pelman to Wakefield and Wakefield, an enquiry agency with a reputation for knowing everything, or being able to discover it. The principal of the firm proved his worth within minutes, looking thoughtfully at his own ceiling and then announcing, “Interesting. Excuse me one moment, please.”

  He exited by a door at the back of his office, and returned a few minutes later with a scrapbook, open to a newspaper clipping of an advertisement. The name of the newspaper was neatly written above the clipping, along with the date, March 15th, 1810. Six years ago.

  “Misters Jarrod and Evan Throckwhistle offer a reward of seventy pounds for information leading to discovery of the whereabouts of Lawrence Pelman and his sister Olivia Pelman.”

  Bear let his raised eyebrows ask the obvious question, and Wakefield obliged. “We were asked by a colleague from Glasgow to find out whether the man had come back to London, which Mrs. Pelman (sister to the Throckwhistle brothers) understood to be his childhood home.”

  “Mrs. Pelman.” Bear tapped the clipping with one finger as he considered that. “He abandoned his wife, then?”

  “After divesting her of her dower fund,” Wakefield said, adding, with a tight smile, “which makes her brothers most anxious to find him.”

  “He has spent the last six years in Kettlesworth on the Wirral Peninsula, south of Liverpool.”

  “His sister, too?” Wakefield took paper fro
m a drawer and wrote down the locations. “I understand Mrs. Pelman has a few jewels she wishes to recover from Miss Pelman.”

  Poisonous pair. Bear hoped the Throckwhistles caught up with them. “Miss Pelman, too.”

  Wakefield blotted the sheet carefully. “I shall send a message to Glasgow immediately. Thank you, Mr. Gavenor.”

  “One more thing. I’d like you to find someone for me.”

  When he explained the details, Wakefield refused the commission. “I have already been employed to find Mrs. Clifford. The Marquis of Raithby is most anxious to return her to her home in Trenton. The lady is ill, I understand, and Raithby believes himself under an obligation to ensure that his father’s dear friend is safe.”

  “Will you at least let me know if Raithby is successful? I believe the woman to be related to my wife, and I would like to be able to tell Mrs. Gavenor that Mrs. Clifford is being cared for.”

  With Wakefield’s agreement, Bear was content. More than content. In a few days, he would be home.

  ***

  Aunt Belle spoke frankly about physical intimacy between men and women, advising Rosa about what to expect, but she refused to discuss what she called harlots’ tricks.

  “Tricks to deceive one another have no place between lovers, Rosa. That is what you want, is it not? For your husband to love you as you have begun to love him? I know how to weave a spell of sensation into a rope to lead a man by his cock, and I know the limits of that cord. It will snap at the first tug, the first frost.” For a moment, she looked unseeing at her cup of willow bark tea, sweetened with honey. Her eyes were bleak. The lines around her eyes spoke of the pain she mostly ignored, or an older pain from the years before Raithby.

  “I found that out. Matthew lost interest and passed me to a friend, though I had borne his child and given it up as he demanded.”

  Me? Rosa wanted to ask. Was it me?

  Aunt Belle was still talking, “So, I determined to learn all the courtesan arts, and I was sought after, Rosa, do not doubt it. For what good it did me. When I conceived again, and was so ill they thought I was dying, they all deserted me. All but Raithby. He was not one of the men I entertained, but he took me home and had me nursed until I was well again.”