A Lady Unrivaled

by Roseanna M. White

  “I can’t argue with that, much as I might wish to do.” He nodded toward the driveway of the manor—and to the blond figure meandering toward its end. “But I will say this—I’d rather you were meeting Cayton.”

  Ella only chuckled her response, not wanting to say any more as they drew nearer, lest Catherine overhear them. She said a silent prayer of thanks that the woman had come out again—and another for wisdom.

  Whitby made a quick, curt greeting and left Ella standing there with Catherine, saying little as he headed up the driveway toward the manor—no doubt prepared to watch for her return from the village and walk her back to the castle again.

  It was good to have a father around, even if he was borrowed.

  Ella smiled at Catherine. “You came. I’m surprised.”

  “I came with a counter-offer, actually.” Catherine inclined her head toward the manor. “Cayton apparently doesn’t take tea—his daughter is napping now, so he vanished to somewhere or another. But Cris and I were planning on having some together. You could join us.”

  “Oh.” Not what she had planned, not at all what she had planned . . . but aside from the unease that was to be expected, she heard no clanging alarms in her spirit. She put on a smile. “All right.”

  Eighteen

  Cayton took a step back, surveying the canvas with a critical eye. Morning light would have been more useful for determining whether he had the shading right, but morning only came once a day and never lasted long enough. He squinted at the flow of the unicorn’s mane. It looked right, wind-caught. He would have to add a kiss of moonlight to the locks, but he would wait for morning for that. He wanted a kiss of it, not a torch.

  The cloud castle had given him a bit of trouble, but it was turning out better now. Wispy here, voluminous there. And his princesses were lovely as they ran up the star-studded cloud steps. Their dresses, too, trailed off into wisps of vapor in the trains.

  He smiled a bit as he bent close to add a touch more black to the lowlights of Addie’s hair. He had used his imagination, and photographs of himself and Adelaide as children, to guess at what she’d look like in a few years. He didn’t want her deciding at age five that she didn’t want the painting in her room any longer because he’d painted her as a baby in it.

  The other princess he probably shouldn’t have put in at all. But she’d been there, in the story. He was just the brush that told it.

  “Anything else you’re keeping from me, Cayton?”

  Cayton spun, brush still in hand, so shocked at hearing a voice other than Evans’s up here that he couldn’t place it until he saw Whitby standing, bizarrely, in his garret doorway. A flash of familiar jacket behind him explained, at least, how he’d come to be up here. “Evans, I’m going to sack you yet!”

  His valet’s laugh trailed him down the hall, leaving him alone with his cousin’s father-in-law. “Whit.”

  Whitby had been a recluse himself. He ought to have appreciated Cayton’s wish for secrecy and understood that this room was off-limits. But he stepped in, neck craning this way and that to take in all the drawings and paintings and pastels and brushes and pads of paper scattered about. “Not a passing fancy of yours, it seems. You’ve been doing this a very long time.”

  “Don’t tell Stafford, would you? He’d laugh about it.”

  Whitby sent him a look the very color of Mother’s when she rebuked him for going to the races. “I believe you have one duke confused with his predecessor, my lord. This,” he said, motioning at one of his better paintings of the fish pond at dawn that was drying near the window, “is nothing to laugh at.” He moved toward a stack of canvases leaning against the wall. “May I?”

  They weren’t his best work, but they weren’t his worst. He hadn’t wanted to gesso over them—not yet anyway—but had no place in either of his homes to put them. He shrugged. “What brings you to Anlic, my lord? Tea? I believe the Rushworths are having it downstairs.” Not that he could imagine Whitby wanting to partake with them.

  “I know, Ella is with them. I walked with her.”

  Cayton’s fingers went tight around the dainty brush. He had just walked with her a few hours before, once he’d pried her out of the library, and had told himself to dismiss her from his mind again until the next day.

  The second, red-haired, princess laughed at him.

  “Did you try to talk her out of it? Tea with them, I mean?”

  Whitby snorted a laugh. “Would it have done any good? My daughter has rubbed off on her too much, I think. When first we met, Ella could be swayed most anywhere—these days her smiles are all stubborn. But . . . ” He flipped the first canvas toward him, revealing the second behind it. His take on Arthur and Excalibur, he believed.

  Too cliché to display, even if it had turned out well. Except that he had used his memories of Stafford as a lad for Arthur. And he certainly wasn’t going to admit to that, ever, in public.

  Whitby didn’t seem to care that it was an overdone theme. He studied it rather intently.

  “But . . . ?” Cayton slipped his brush into a jar of turpentine.

  “Hmm? Oh.” Whitby looked up, down again. “But I didn’t realize she was coming here to meet Catherine. I thought she was headed to the tea room to meet you.”

  Apparently Rushworth’s spies weren’t the only ones who noticed their promenades. Cayton blew out a breath and rubbed at the back of his neck. “It’s just a front. To convince—”

  “That’s what Ella said.” He eased the Arthur painting forward too. The next one was a landscape, with Ralin Castle in the distance. “Do you really expect me to believe it?”

  Did he? Cayton stared at his canvas rather than his uninvited guest. He could still remember, all too clearly, the day that Whitby had shown up at Azerly Hall—uninvited then too—back before he’d met up with Adelaide again, when they’d all assumed he and Melissa would marry. Melissa hadn’t even been in Yorkshire at the time, but Whitby had just found out about their trysts and been none too pleased.

  That was when Cayton had decided he’d winter in London that year, where he could still call on Melissa. Without hard-eyed, threatening uncles watching.

  He hadn’t realized Whitby considered Ella as part of his family too. Though he supposed he should have. How was one to see all that bright, smiling innocence and not want to protect it? “Whit . . . you needn’t worry. About Ella and me, I mean. I’m not . . . I have no intentions, noble or otherwise. It is only a farce, for the sake of keeping everyone safe. She understands this.”

  Mostly. Perhaps. Maybe. Though he couldn’t quite tell where amusement ended in her gaze and something deeper began. What was jest and what was . . . more.

  It couldn’t be more, so it wouldn’t be. End of story.

  “Mm.” Whitby flipped that canvas too, and then let out a bark of laughter.

  Cayton leaned forward to see what he had revealed. His lips curved up. This one had been a continuation of his Arthur theme, but rather than have Brook be Arthur’s Guinevere, he’d made her instead the evil Morgana, her rage letting loose a terrifying torrent of rain and blackest clouds.

  “Brook would love this. I always say she is sunshine or tempests, but nothing in between. I wonder what she’s shouting there.”

  Cayton slipped one hand into his trouser pocket. “I couldn’t tell, it was in Monegasque. Something ferocious.”

  Whitby chuckled and eased the paintings in front of it to the side, crouching down to study this one head on. “She doesn’t often show you her soft side, does she.”

  “Has she one?”

  Whitby grinned. “Had it been she you hurt, she would have forgiven it long ago. But it was Melissa.”

  “I know. I understand. For that matter, I completely agree with her.” He turned back to the painting underway, but his fingers didn’t know what brush to reach for. What paint to daub it in from his palette. “I was a complete blighter. I’m lucky she lets me in her home, much less . . .”

  “Cayton.” Whitby
straightened again and turned from Brook-Morgana. “I was not thrilled, three years ago, with the idea of you courting my niece. The company you kept, the rumors I heard—and then when I realized how the two of you were carrying on . . .”

  His neck felt hot beneath the hand that had taken to rubbing at it again. “I know. I know.”

  “Then when you tossed her over for Adelaide—well, I was quite happy to loose Brook and all her fury upon you.”

  Brook had been sickeningly polite then, when she first met the shy, quiet Miss Rosten. So very polite that he had wondered what foul tricks she was plotting for him to stumble into. Lucky for him, she and Stafford had fought that day, and all her ferocity was directed at his cousin rather than him.

  Ah, memories.

  Whitby took a step closer. “But you’re not that man anymore. The Cayton I have seen grow and evolve this past year . . . He is a man I can admire. A man I am proud to know. I man I would have welcomed into my family.” He nodded toward the cloud-castle painting. Or rather, to its redheaded princess who had Addie’s hand clasped in hers.

  Cayton sighed. “Ella isn’t in your family.”

  “She might as well be.”

  “But I’m not . . . we’re not . . .”

  Whitby moved again, until he stood shoulder to shoulder with Cayton, regarding the unicorn with its spreading wings. The night sky twinkling behind it. The two beauties running up the clouds. He’d have her forever here, at least. Paint on canvas. Enough.

  “You have changed, Cayton, so very much. But you have changes yet to experience. You have yet to learn how to embrace the gifts God gives you. How to hope again.”

  He knew full well how to embrace the most important gift—by scooping her up and tickling her tummy until she let loose a giant, baby belly laugh.

  Other gifts . . . that was too much to expect. Life had only so much joy in it, and Addie was all of his. “Addie is my hope.”

  “Part of it. But not all, I think. You need her,” he said. “You need her laughter. You need her hope.”

  “No.” He turned away, not letting himself think of that laughter filling one of his rooms downstairs, weaving its magic around Rush and Kitty, prancing up the stairs to weave itself into Addie’s dreams. “I would destroy it.”

  Kira replaced the last of the letters in the box, unable to keep herself from casting a glance over her shoulder, even though she knew Lady Pratt would still be down in the drawing room, having tea with her brother and Lady Ella.

  The letters were useless. From a collection of acquaintances chattering about nonsense like new wardrobes and who they suspected was involved in an affair with whom.

  Exactly the kind of nonsense Kira was accustomed to reading in her own correspondence. Nonsense. Emptiness. Nothing.

  There remained nothing else to search through, not here. Not in a borrowed room in a friend’s home. If they left and went to Yorkshire, to Rushings, then perhaps she would have better luck. Or perhaps in Lord Rushworth’s room.

  She didn’t dare search in there. Not with so many people about, and Dorsey always coming and going. Given the way the valet smiled at her, she could probably flirt her way out of many situations—but not that one. She had absolutely no legitimate reason to go poking through the lord’s chamber, and well he’d know it.

  Maybe sometime they’d all be out at once, Dorsey included. She’d keep alert for such an opportunity.

  On the bed she’d left an evening gown for Lady Pratt to don for dinner, if it met with her approval. That had been her pretense for coming in here. She’d lined up the items for a bath, too, if her ladyship had the desire for a soak, and set out the one book she’d found among her things—some novel Kira had never heard of. Things she might have been tempted by on a spring afternoon, had her life been her own.

  The hallway was dim and cool and quiet, the back stairs squeaky when she stepped down them. Voices came from the direction of the kitchen, but she avoided those. She would slip down and into her shared room and do her exercises—Felicity would hopefully be with her aunt or others of the staff for a while yet. She had rested after their morning walk.

  She’d still been rubbing at her ribs though. Claiming the babe was making her uncomfortable, but she had let Kira prod a bit at her abdomen. It had taken all her years of practice, first as a midwife in training and then upon the stage, to keep her face clear. The babe was in the right position, and growing enough that he could be kicking her so high. Except that she had felt the feet pressing on the opposite side, down farther. And Felicity’s face and hands were so swollen. And Kira had caught her, a few times in the last couple days, rubbing at the bridge of her nose as if she had a headache.

  From the crying, Felicity had said.

  Kira prayed it was so. And feared it wasn’t. Headaches, swelling, pain in the right-side ribs . . . She would keep an eye on her. And perhaps tell Felicity to see the midwife in the village and get her opinion.

  She listened for a moment outside her door but didn’t hear any rustling from within. Still, in case, she knocked lightly before she entered. Then came to an abrupt halt a step inside the door.

  Someone was there. But it wasn’t Felicity.

  Lady Pratt sat on Kira’s bed, an unfolded piece of paper beside her and a box in her hands. No, not a box. The box—the one holding the jewelry she hadn’t wanted to leave in Paris.

  Heat bubbled up, sure and fast. “What are you doing?” The words came out in Russian. She had to try again to manage the English, and even then they were so anger-laced that she doubted they were coherent.

  Lady Pratt lifted a necklace heavy with sapphires and dangled it before her. “My very question, Sophie Lareau. What are you doing? Here, working as a maid? Running from whomever you lifted these?”

  She had been accused of many things in her life—most of them, unfortunately, true—but never thievery. She flew toward Lady Pratt and snatched the box away, and the necklace from her fingers. “They are mine, and you have no right to go through my things.”

  Lady Pratt’s expression didn’t so much as shift. “I have every right to know if I’m harboring a criminal. Those aren’t paste—no maid could ever afford them. Nor could a midwife’s daughter.”

  Kira dropped the necklace back in the box, not caring if it tangled with the bracelets and other necklaces, if the earrings dripping diamonds wrapped around it. She snapped the lid shut. “I was not always a maid. And I am not a criminal.”

  “What were you then, Sophie Lareau, who moves with such grace and hides jewels among her layers of coarse cotton? Some man’s mistress?”

  Her teeth hurt from clenching them. Her chest hurt from the pounding within it. Her eyes hurt from trying to not see Babushka’s disappointed eyes. She pulled open the drawer and tossed the box back into it. “It is no business of yours what I was.”

  Paper rustled. “My French is not so poor that I fail to understand this. ‘My darling. I miss you. I miss your arms around me . . .’”

  Kira spat out her opinion of her employer—but in Russian, so she would catch only the sentiment—and snatched the paper away.

  A letter. From Andrei, though he had signed it with only an A.

  But she’d had no letter from Andrei among her things, so . . . She checked the date at the top, grabbed the envelope from the bed. Part of her wondered how he’d known where to write to her. Part of her knew better than to ask such a stupid question.

  She read quickly through the letter, knowing he wouldn’t be so foolish as to put anything incriminating in it, but needing to make sure. It was all a bunch of nothing. How he missed her, how he’d eaten at her favorite café the other day and thought of her, how he’d seen the ballet and it wasn’t the same without her—a statement that could have implied “without her by his side in the audience,” not necessarily “without her on the stage.”

  Then a sentence in Russian. I expect an update soon.

  She had the overwhelming urge to ball up the letter and toss it in Lady
Pratt’s snide face. “Get out of my room.”

  Lady Pratt leaned back against the wall at the head of the bed, arms crossed. “I’ll have an explanation first, thank you.”

  “You already guessed it, and it is as simple as that. Yes, I was a man’s mistress. But he plans to marry, and I will not . . . I will not carry on so with a married man. So I left.”

  Lady Pratt snorted and pushed to her feet. “So funny, the lines we draw for ourselves. That you consent to such an arrangement, but not if he’s married. Does that make you feel more righteous? More likely to see your precious Kiev resurface?”

  “Kitezh. And who are you to judge me? I saw your wedding announcement among your things, and your son’s birth announcement seven months later.”

  The lady’s eyes flashed, dark and menacing. “Going through my things too, are you?”

  Kira lifted her chin. “It is my job to order them.”

  Lady Pratt made no immediate reply. She just stood there, making the room shrink with her expensive perfume and her silk tea gown and her perfectly coiffed hair. Then she leaned close. “I loved him. Whatever my mistakes, they were born from love. Not some . . . monetary arrangement. So yes, I will judge you. And I will warn you—don’t get any ideas about finding another such arrangement here.”

  Kira stood straight, her feet in second position, her spine balanced and ready to move. To bend, to lean, to leap away. Though Lady Pratt seemed more the type to attack with vile words than with her claws, one never could tell. Kira stood straight, and she held her head high. “You need not worry, my lady. I will never stoop so low again.” She would never need to, not if she went back to Andrei with the information he needed. Not if she handed him this arrogant, hard-hearted woman on a silver platter.

  Babushka’s imagined eyes swelled with imagined tears. “Do what you should, rebonok. Do what you should.”

  Lady Pratt lifted a single finger, pointed it at her, drilled it into her shoulder. “If you tried it, you would regret it. Lord Cayton is too reliant on the good graces of his sainted cousin to ever risk such an arrangement, and my brother—” Another flash of lightning in her eyes. “Steer far clear of my brother. The last pretty little maid of mine he dallied with ended up dead.”