“I don’t believe so.” Lena considered whether it would be rude to eat the last biscuit. “But I suppose everyone could be, given the proper circumstances. Why?”
“I’ve found a dress or two that I believe will suit your frame and coloring.”
“What does that have to do with superstition?” Lena gave in, spreading the biscuit with marmalade and taking a bite. She let the flavor settle on her tongue before taking a sip of tea.
“Some people wouldn’t wish to wear a dress associated with a public scandal,” Mrs. Tracy said, pitching her voice confidentially.
Caught by surprise, Lena almost choked on her tea. “I suppose it depends on the nature of the scandal and what role the dress played in it. At the same time, I would be foolish to refuse a dress, however scandalous, when I have need of one.”
Mrs. Tracy seemed pleased with Lena’s answers. “I have been authorized to tell you the story, though certainly the story is already well known. It was five years ago, not so long ago that the dress will be too far out of fashion.”
“Before or after Waterloo?” Lena wondered if the scandal had involved officers returning home.
“After. That fall.” A distant look crossed Mrs. Tracy’s face, then disappeared. “Lady Agatha had agreed to chaperone two debutantes—twin daughters of her dearest childhood friend, who had died some years before. The girls found it amusing to have all their clothes made exactly to match, so that they could always claim the other was the culprit in whatever game they were playing. Lady Agatha quickly intervened by having their dresses made in different-colored fabrics. But the girls would simply fool their suitors by exchanging dresses in the withdrawing room of whatever ball they were attending. Lady Ida Talmere discovered their ruse at her birthday ball, but instead of giving up their game, they knocked Lady Ida to the floor, tied her up, and gagged her with the ribbons they tore from her dress, then shoved her into the withdrawing-room closet.”
“How terrible!” Lena shook her head in dismay. “Was Lady Ida hurt?”
“No, Lady Ida eventually managed to escape from the closet. She accused the girls in the middle of the ballroom floor. It was apparently a scene suitable for Shakespeare: Ida with her hair disheveled and clothes torn, raising an arm of accusation before the watchful eyes of the ton.”
“What happened next?”
“The girls each pretended the other was at fault. But Lords Clive and Edmund—who, as you would expect, could always tell them apart—confirmed that the girls had indeed switched dresses after they had arrived. Lady Agatha sent them back to the country that very night, refusing them any item that they had received while in London, including the full wardrobes the duke had bought them. Lady Agatha says you may use the wardrobe as long as you wish. So the decision is yours.”
“We should begin by seeing if any of the dresses fit.” Lena rose from her meal.
“Good girl,” Mrs. Tracy beamed. She opened the door to let in Trudy and Elizabeth. The maids carried a single dress with its accompanying wrap. The dress was a deep scarlet silk, with three narrow rows of gray-green ribbing at the bodice and ankles; nearest the floor were two narrow rows of a cream-colored flounce. The sleeves were long, with the same detailing at the wrists. The wrap was a cream silk, with a wide border of gray and scarlet, with tiny scarlet pompons tied closely to the fabric in neat rows. “If this one doesn’t suit you, there are several others.”
“It’s lovely, more than lovely.” Lena touched the fabric in awe. She didn’t have the luxury of caring about fashion; she had a French dress she wore for meeting partners or clients as well as two dresses for working at the Rotunda. But this dress was more beautiful than any dress she could ever hope to own. And for some reason—she didn’t pursue why—she wanted Clive to see her in it.
“It will be more than lovely if it fits.” Mrs. Tracy waved the maids forward to help Lena into the dress.
Lena stepped into the red silk, wishing—if wishing would help—that it would fit. And it did. Perfectly. In every detail the dress looked bespoke: from the curve of the bodice to the length of the arms and skirt. It fitted her perfectly. She imagined Clive seeing her, his eyes widening in appreciation, and the thought pleased her as much as the dress.
“I thought this one might fit. The twins were country girls, used to doing for themselves, even if that doing was mischief. We’ll move the rest of the clothing into your wardrobe while you are at dinner.”
“I hadn’t intended to stay but a day or two, so I hate for you to go to the trouble.”
“Lady Agatha has kept the clothes for just such an occasion as this.”
“Will Lady Agatha be going to the Masons’ family dinner? I would like to thank her.”
“Lady Agatha does as she wishes. If you wish to write a note, I’ll convey your thanks to her. If she chooses to see you, she will send you a card,” Mrs. Tracy explained. “Now slip off that dress while Trudy dresses your hair. Elizabeth and I will find you some slippers and a suitable hairpiece.”
Lena began to object, intending to point out that a low bun would be perfectly suitable, but she stopped herself. Mrs. Tracy had been so kind already that refusing her help would be simply ungrateful. And truth be told, she wanted to see what miracles Trudy and Elizabeth might be able to perform.
Chapter Ten
Clive waited for Lena in the entry hall of the duke’s house. She wasn’t late: he was merely early and anxious. He felt out of control, and he never felt that way.
Since he’d caught her, he felt a natural concern for her well-being. Simply that. He’d remained by her side to ensure that she came to no additional harm, especially while she helped him search for Calder. It was a gentlemanly, disinterested concern, he assured himself, one no different from what he would feel for the workhouse poor, an orphan child, or a mistreated animal. Certainly he could have found Calder’s lodgings without her help, but it would have taken time, and he would have thought the dead body they found was Calder’s. He’d already sent a note to Thacker, the magistrate, giving him Calder’s address and telling him what he would find there.
He touched the scrape to his own hand that he’d hidden from her. Not nearly so bad as hers, it reminded him how things had very nearly gone wrong. He didn’t blame himself for not noticing the damage to the ladder, but if Calder had disappeared, Clive should have anticipated that his business partner could be in danger. Others had already died—he didn’t know how many—at the hands of this gang of murderers, resurrection men who made their own dead bodies rather than go to the trouble of stealing them. Whether she realized it or not, Lena knew something vital—the murder in her rooms confirmed it. But she didn’t yet trust him.
“What does work mean for the son and brother of a duke?” He’d heard some version of her accusation his whole life. As the youngest brother of a duke, he was not guaranteed a living or even a livelihood. But few occupations were open to him: he couldn’t become a cobbler or a tailor, a blacksmith or cabinetmaker, an apothecary, or a baker. While privilege gave him opportunity and connections, it was irrevocably tied to expectation. And that expectation identified as appropriate a particular set of occupations. Their eldest brother Aaron—long dead and largely unmourned—had chosen reprobate, a common enough career for the heir-in-waiting. Benjamin, Aidan, and Colin had chosen soldier, but after Benjamin’s death, his father had refused to send any more sons to war. That left the clergy or the bar, and Clive refused both.
From his boyhood, he’d devoured tales where ordinary men alleviated the wrongs of the day. His brothers—if asked—would say that Clive chose medicine—or rather medical researches—because he’d read Don Quixote too often in his boyhood. What else was medicine but a fight against the windmill of death? And death was always the victor.
But Clive was interested in the skirmishes rather than the war. He wanted to improve life as people lived it: each day. If he’d learned anything from Quixote, it was that impossible battles were the only ones worth fighting. So, he
welcomed each windmill as an opportunity to change the world, and he focused on that world writ large. Clive’s favorite imagined future was one where the wrongs of disease had long ago been righted, where no more children were crippled by rickets, or blind from measles, or deaf from mumps. To achieve that future, he and others had to discover the mechanisms by which a body worked, how it fell prey to diseases, and doing so, learn how to cure them.
That same optimism—or idealism rather—led him to help with investigations for the Home Office—or the secret part of it that employed him occasionally and his brother Edmund more regularly. Drawing on his understanding of the ways the human body died, Clive had found another way to right a different sort of wrong.
His favorite translation of Quixote described the man who fought injustice as a gallant “chevalier in shining armor.” Sometimes, when an experiment went particularly well, or Clive solved a perplexing case for the Home Office, he could imagine himself as that itinerant knight, battling for the health of all men. Sadly, confined to his surgery, his researches rarely included a grateful damsel in distress. Though Lena’s troubles made her seem to fit that role, she didn’t need saving—she was independent, strong-minded, obstinate, and altogether fascinating. Though he could help her through a difficult situation as an episode in his quixotic adventures, he resisted the idea that she might be the whole romance.
Even so, they had almost kissed. She was a beautiful young woman who made it clear that she wished to kiss him. For a moment, he’d been tempted, but he’d decided against it. She was overwrought and vulnerable. Besides, he knew better than to discount Sophia’s injunction not to seduce her painter.
But then he’d seen Lena rushing headlong into the hall: hair long and wild about her shoulders, eyes wide with concern, those perfect lips rosy with exertion. She’d worn such a look of panic on her face that he’d feared her enemies had somehow found their way into the ducal residence. It hadn’t mattered that she was undressed, that her shift clung to her body still wet from the bath, that he could see all the evocative parts of her. Standing there, his heart racing in his chest, he realized his desire for her went far beyond a simple stolen kiss. In that moment, he made a lover’s inventory: slender ankles, muscular thighs, ample hips, narrow waist, lush breasts, wide shoulders, determined chin, cherry lips, and soulful eyes. He added to it less obvious characteristics: a strong will, a quick wit, and a confidence he had rarely encountered in a woman outside the circle of strong women his family clearly valued.
He’d never received any letter that had meant so much to him that he would risk certain scandal to retrieve it. And he found himself jealous that she cared more for a folded packet of paper than for him. He had collected it from the laundry maid just as she was about to immerse the whole in the bath, and he had inspected the outside carefully, hoping to find a name or address that he could investigate on his own. But he found no clues, nothing at least without unfolding the letter, and that went too far, even in the name of protecting her. At the same time, he wanted to open it. He wanted to find that it was the last message of some dear friend who had recently died, or a communication with information vital to the success of her enterprises. The last thing he wanted to consider was that Lena had no need of his help because she already had a man she loved.
He consulted the hall clock. Five more minutes.
He looked around the entry hall of the duke’s house, trying to see the residence as Lena might. The entry alone was larger by far than the whole of her boardinghouse rooms, and the boardinghouse itself could fit in a quarter, or less, of the ducal mansion. He wondered whether her current lodgings, dingy and cramped, were like those she’d had in France. And he wondered where she had lived before that, though he knew already that she was unlikely to confide such things in him. And it only made him want to know her more.
Barlow entered the house from the front drive. “Lady Judith wishes for you to know that she is already in the carriage.”
“Should I ask why?”
“Given that we do not know if Miss Frost gets along with animals, Lady Judith determined it would be best to have Boatswain calm and settled before you and Miss Frost arrive.”
“Is it working?” Clive loved the dog as much as anyone in the family, but he understood his sister’s concerns for Lena.
“Fletcher has contrived a wall of sorts in the well between the seats to help contain Lady Colin’s giant puppy, and the hound seems to be quite contented. He has already chewed half through one of the bars, and I predict there will be none left by the time you reach Hyde Park. Lady Judith is seated beside him on the forward-facing seat, and you are to sit opposite her, so that when Boatswain escapes his cage, one of you can intervene before he reaches Miss Frost.”
“My sister has thought of everything.”
“As is usual, my lord.” Barlow would never admit it, but, after the duke, Lady Judith was his favorite of the Somervilles.
“Can I ask why we are transporting the pup? Or would it be best not to know?”
“There’s no harm in knowing . . . this time. The newlyweds are staying a few days with Mrs. Mason. They wished to ride their new matched pair, but of course that meant that one of the servants would have to deliver Boatswain—or the newlyweds would have to travel separately.”
“Given how reticent Lady Colin is to be too long apart from Boatswain or her husband, I see the problem,” Clive filled in. The family understood that Lucy’s reliance on the pup went beyond mere affection.
“So your sister offered to bring the pup with her tonight, but that was before we knew that you and Miss Frost would be attending, and with all your siblings currently in town, every other carriage is in use.”
“With Lady Judith and me as a barricade, I’m sure that all will work out well.” He looked at the hall clock again: one minute until departure.
Barlow followed his gaze. “I’ll gather your coat and one for Miss Frost.”
Clive stared up the stairs. Mrs. Tracy had promised to escort Lena to the front of the house, and Clive was grateful. He knew that his hesitance to see her again after their encounter in the hall signaled a particular kind of cowardice. But when he remembered her standing there, barely clad, her body revealed imperfectly under the wet shift, he again wished he had not promised to resist her.
Just as the clock began to chime the hour, Lena appeared at the top of the stairs. Lena barely clad reminded him of a goddess, but wearing clothes, she was equally stunning. The red gave color to her cheeks, making them seem fuller, healthier, than before. The gray-green ribbing caressed the gentle swell of her bosom, and the fabric itself fell gracefully to her ankles. He found himself dumbstruck, wishing to compliment her, but uncertain what sort of a compliment would be welcome.
“You wore red.” Even to his ears, the words sounded bald and foolish.
“How could I resist, when such a delicious gown was offered to me?” Excited, she turned a circle to show him the dress. “It’s vermilion actually, but red is fine for a layman.”
“Your hair isn’t red anymore.” He fumbled for better words, but couldn’t find any.
“I was able to wash the paint out.” She touched her hair where the red had been. “What do you think?”
He paused, taking in the full effect. Her coiffure was quietly elegant, her hair brushed up and back, her low bun coupled with an understated braid, the whole wound in place with black pearls. Suddenly he was glad neither of his unattached brothers were expected at Ophelia’s dinner. But as he gazed at her, she seemed to deflate a little, as if she expected him to criticize.
He spoke quickly, his words stumbling out in a rush. “You look stunning, simply magnificently stunning.”
Her smile started as a glimmer, then broadened slowly, until it transformed her whole face. It was a smile that caught him in the gut, and he realized he might never be the same again.
* * *
“As you can see, our cousin has no fear of the current taxes on windows and glas
s.” Lady Judith pointed at a well-lit house in the far distance. The oil lamps in the front windows looked like stars. “Sidney Mason inherited a family industry in perfume, but he contributed to that enterprise an interest in soap.”
“A very profitable interest in soap,” Clive added. “You have likely already enjoyed his produce: no one in the family—and certainly not in the duke’s house—uses any soap but his.”
Lena thought of the delicately scented lemon and rosemary soap that accompanied her bath. “Then I have. It was delightful.”
“You must tell Sidney. After his wife and his heir, he loves nothing on earth more than someone enjoying his soaps.” Lady Judith patted her arm encouragingly.
The Masons’ Kensington home was set well back from the road on a substantial acreage, and Lena watched the house, glittering in the distance, until the carriage turned into the long lane that led to the residence. The house in the distance and the curving avenue that led to it, bringing the house in and out of view, made her think of other homecomings when she was a girl, all more troubled than happy.
She’d been barely ten when her father had sent her away. How he’d chosen Mrs. Edstein’s Finishing School for Young Ladies, she’d discovered later when she’d found a stack of letters, bound in scented ribbon, from the headmistress to her father. The first had arrived shortly after her mother’s funeral, claiming an old friendship with her mother and recommending herself—a widow—as a suitable ear to his grief and sorrow. Some months later, the letters had shifted to the trials of rearing a motherless child, offering her skills as a childhood monitor—all for only sixteen guineas a year. Since all Edstein’s boarding students were orphans, Lena wondered if the headmistress had carried out similar letter-writing campaigns to all their fathers, grieving or not. Lena’s father, a weak man, not unkind, but self-absorbed and willful, had been particularly susceptible to the attention. While alive, Lena’s mother had directed him quietly, making him useful where he would otherwise have been dilatory, and generous where he would otherwise have been profligate. Mrs. Edstein, in letters, presumed to take the place of her mother, directing his decisions as if she were his wife.
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