“What a chivalrous speech, my lord,” Lady Harriet said archly, but her cheeks colored faintly once more. She hesitated a moment, but then patted the seat of the divan next to her.
The viscount sat down beside her and unrolled his sketch. “Perhaps you can help me. You are much in society. Do you recognize this lady?”
Lady Harriet gazed at it, silent for a long minute, then shook her head. “I don’t think so. There is something familiar about the eyes and the shape of the chin, but I suppose she could be one of a hundred girls. It is not a very good sketch. Who is she?”
“My future,” Pierson said fervently, staring at it. Again he felt that sureness in his veins, that quickening. “She is my future.”
• • •
Amy faced the facts as they trundled back to the ducal residence from the afternoon tea. Lady Rowena was not only determined to remain single, she was equally as determined to enslave every man who came within her sphere, chaining their hearts securely to her petticoats.
The young lady was humming a happy tune and staring out the carriage window as they passed a park. Amy examined her. With every benefit known to womanhood—wealth, indulgence, status—there was united in her life beauty and health. She was the most fortunate of young women, and yet she would squander all of those gifts on a hollow pursuit of every beau she met.
“Why are you staring at me so ferociously, Amy?” Lady Rowena said with a pert smile. “Have I agitated you in some way?”
Hesitating a moment, Amy then said, “No, I am not agitated. Disappointed.”
“Disappointed? I have disappointed you?”
Amy nodded.
Haughtily, the lady said, “It is not your place to be disappointed in anything I do or say.”
“Of course, you’re right,” Amy said, and turned her face away.
There was silence, except for the rattle of the carriage and clop of hooves. It was late afternoon, almost evening, and they would be returning home only to change before the evening’s entertainment, a supper and a ball. The sun was already starting to set, casting a golden glow on the brick walls of the houses and making the park greenery a fierce shade of chartreuse.
“Why would you be disappointed in me?” Lady Rowena finally said, the words rushed.
Amy thought for a moment, wondering why her charge was even asking when she so clearly flouted her chaperone’s authority and disdained her opinion. So, to be truthful or not? Would it gain her anything to tell the truth, or would the lady take one of her famous tantrums? And did Amy really care?
Her livelihood was at stake, no matter what she said. The duke’s only concern was that his daughter be engaged or married by the end of the Season. Amy did not see that happening, not with Lady Rowena’s determined detestation of men and resolve to never marry. So it really didn’t matter what she said. The next couple of months she would have to use planning what to do when the end came and the duke sacked her, leaving her with nothing: no wage, no position, and no recommendation. But in the meantime she could be honest.
“I am disappointed that with so much,” she said, turning her gaze to Lady Rowena and examining the girl’s fair countenance, “with such beauty and wealth and spirit, you would stoop to deliberately turning your wiles on the beaux of other women.”
The girl tossed her head. “I don’t do it deliberately,” she said. “Men just are attracted to me; I cannot help that.”
“I believed that at first,” Amy said, examining Rowena’s profile. “But after today, I don’t. I watched that performance with Lord Newton-Shrewsbury. It is a game with you, I think.” She saw that she had hit her mark when the girl colored faintly. “It is a game, to see if you can attract even a man with another interest. It’s one thing to deliberately ensnare a fellow with no thought to any serious end. When he has no attachments, the worst you will do is hurt him. But when you do what you did today, you hurt another lady as well. And why? For hollow triumph? I feel sorry for you if that gives you some feeling of superiority. I truly pity you from the bottom of my heart.”
“How absurd you are,” Lady Rowena said, attempting to make light of the conversation. “You make it sound as if I am some . . . some Siren, luring men to their destruction. If their interest was so fixed on another object, I couldn’t, with just a look, attract them away, could I? Why, that would make me a very powerful lady indeed.”
“Powerful?” Amy frowned and thought. Was Rowena one of those women who relished power over men? “That doesn’t make you powerful. Men, poor creatures, are swayed by beauty. I would think it power indeed if you were plain and poor. Then it would be a feat to attract a gentleman’s attention. But you have everything, including wealth and position. And you are uncommonly beautiful, Rowena; I think you’re very aware of it, so it makes your actions . . .” She steeled herself and took a deep breath. “It makes your actions pathetic.”
“Now you have gone too far, Amy,” Lady Rowena said in a resentful tone as the carriage rolled to a stop outside the ducal manse. “You have insulted me. I won’t forget it.”
Amy sighed and shrugged as a footman opened the carriage door and took Lady Rowena’s hand. So her charge was now furious with her. Since Rowena was generally unpredictable as to her moods, and even the smallest thing could set her off, Amy didn’t think she would suffer any more materially than she did any day of the week. So be it; let her be furious. After all, how much worse could things get?
Five
“I don’t know, Pierson, it’s been three days and no one seems to recognize your fair incognita.”
The two men were strolling down a commercial street on the way to a club on St. James. The weather was fine, a brilliant day with a soft breeze and the promise of a lovely spring to come. For the last couple of days they had been visiting every club and entertainment the viscount was still welcome at, asking anyone they encountered if they recognized the now-smudgy drawing of Pierson’s lady love.
“I know, I know,” Pierson said, only too aware that it was unlikely he would ever find the girl of his dreams, especially since his black reputation barred him from all the most likely places for her to be. He had lived up to his name’s reputation for years now, whoring, gambling and drinking deep. And it wasn’t just that. He had engaged in antics—usually when he was well into his cups—that could only be described as unruly.
From the beginning his quirky sense of humor and impulsive nature had gotten him in trouble. He once dressed a Cyprian up in fine clothes and took her to a ball as his fiancée. That had earned him censure and had seen him barred from most polite homes.
He had stripped off most of his clothes down to less than unmentionables and fallen asleep in Hyde Park. For months he had been the object of derision among the men and censure among the ladies.
So then he had, dressed in a domino, arrived at a masked ball with a filched invitation and danced with the hostess, then whispered a sly invitation to go upstairs to the private chambers for a tumble and a tickle. She had agreed, to his astonishment, and then been furious when she found out who he was. It seemed that the invitation he had arrived with was that of her very own illicit lover. That had resulted in a ban of a more subtle sort, and many in polite society gave him the cut direct after that.
But inevitably being the jester wore thin. He had devolved, in recent years, since being cut off from decent society, into a drunken pariah. It was boring and often lonely. He had chosen a late day to repair the damage, and an elusive object as his inspiration. His success was doubtful, and yet it was what he wanted more than he had ever wanted anything.
Pierson didn’t feel much like talking, so the walk was silent. He was obsessed with finding this lady even though the commonsense corner of his brain told him that he could have no idea what she was truly like. He had assigned virtues and qualities to her just based on a quick glimpse, and surely that was not realistic. He knew that, and yet he could not get over the feeling that his life was about to change, that he was about to change. And
that she was to be the catalyst.
He certainly could not go on any longer the way he was. His estate was depleted, and the last demand for money sent to his steward had been returned with a note from his ancient housekeeper that Mr. Lincoln had disappeared with the estate staff’s quarterly pay and had not been heard of for weeks. He had depended upon his land steward for ten years, and yet now that man had absconded?
In truth, if he faced the cold hard facts, he should be home that very moment sorting it out instead of staying on in London when there was no money to support his style of living. He was in dun territory, but since that was nothing new it didn’t worry him as much as it ought.
Even if he did go to his estate, where to start to retrench and rebuild an estate that was decaying at an alarming rate?
He looked back with some bitter anger at the last ten years since his father had died, leaving him, at eighteen, with no knowledge of how to go on and nobody reliable to guide him, even. He had trusted Lincoln, and it now appeared that that trust had been misplaced. If only he had been content to live on his inherited estate and take the first steps needed on the long road to recover the worth of his inheritance! But he had been eighteen, and Mr. Lincoln had advised him just to go to London and enjoy himself while he looked after all the drudgery, as he called it. It had not taken much persuasion, and he had his father’s example before him to model himself after.
The years had passed swiftly, and he had seen little reason to go where there was no warm family memories to welcome him, and where the decay was a constant reproach. So he had spent the off-season hunting with the few friends he still had, visiting at country house parties where even a pariah, if he was titled, was welcome, and finding, in other words, every way of keeping his mind off his birthright, Delacorte, his country estate. He visited there seldom, and when he did stayed only a couple of days at a time. The place was depressing to the spirit.
And that was the quandary he found himself in. Every time he started thinking about the estate, he felt the urgent need for a drink. And then, when he drank, he gambled. He was currently, like most men of his age and class, living on credit, but would soon need to start selling off the family’s meager collection of jewels to repay some of his living expenses, and he had sworn some years before that he would never do that. His heir was a cousin, a boy of eleven whom he never saw, but as things stood he would hand at least some of the remaining Pierson estate over to the new heir intact if he should shuffle off the mortal coil early and without an heir of his own body.
An heir, he thought, a tiny wellspring of hope burbling in his heart. What an incentive to work hard and recover his estate that would be! A child, a boy child. Perhaps a son with silvery blond hair and an alabaster brow.
He shook his head, a little disgusted with himself and the futility of hope. He might just as well face facts. He was never going to find the lady, and even if he did, what did he have to offer her? Years of toil and heartache without respite; drudgery and travail, living with little hope but to make some headway every year on regaining Delacorte’s once-legendary beauty. Perhaps fate was merely teasing him, showing him a glimpse of what he could never have. Perhaps it was too late for him.
With that gloomy thought, he said to his friend, “You know, Bain, old man, I am beginning to think that I will never find my . . .” He stopped in the middle of the walkway and gaped, his mouth open.
Bainbridge stared at him with alarm. “Pierson, what is it? You look as if you have just seen a ghost!”
“That is her . . . that is my fair angel.” Pierson gazed at a carriage from which two ladies were just descending.
“Which one? And how can you tell?”
“The blond goddess, idiot, in the pale green dress.” She was there, just across the street, his seraph, the archetype of all that was good and pure, all that was most unlike himself.
“Her?” Bainbridge, his gray eyes wide, stared at the young lady then slewed his glance back to his friend. He grasped Pierson’s arm and said, “Good God, man, she is the one? That is Sylverton’s spawn, the beauteous Lady Rowena Revington. You remember the other day, the literary tea, the girl who supposedly stole away Shrewsbury, m’sister’s . . .”
Pierson heard words coming from Bainbridge but could assign no meaning to them. “I cannot believe I have seen her again. Cannot believe . . .” Suddenly speechless, he took one step toward the street.
“If you had ever bothered to step foot in a respectable family’s drawing room and behaved yourself long enough to be welcome, you would have known who she was immediately. She is wealthy, beautiful, a paragon of purity and virtue, untouched, unsullied . . . and unwed. Unbetrothed even, apparently.” Bainbridge shook his head. “The complete aristocratic innocent, according to reports. The flawless diamond of every London Season since her first, three years ago. And that is who you choose to fall in ‘love at first sight’ with?”
“How does that happen,” Pierson asked, in awe, gazing across the street at the two ladies, “that she remains unwed?”
Bainbridge shrugged. He frowned and stared at Lady Rowena, who was fussing with her gown, which had become tangled with the step of the carriage. “I don’t know. It’s odd; she’s been asked enough. She’s just never said yes. But even the fellows she has turned down are still head over ears in love with her, even if they’ve selected another bride.”
“So, she really is perfect?”
“’Fraid so, old man,” Bainbridge answered. “She is apparently boringly, stultifyingly, perfectly innocent and pure.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“So Lady Rowena is your fair vision, eh? I would never have guessed it from the picture. Ought to fire that artist. Lady Rowena is much more beautiful than the sketch shows.”
“Yes, I can see that now. I can very well see that.” And how would he ever approach someone so perfect and lovely? How could he even stand in her radiant presence?
• • •
It was to be a day spent shopping, so Amy followed in her charge’s wake, descending from the carriage in front of the milliner’s shop. Lady Rowena had been on a tear all morning, in as foul a mood as she ever got into. In truth, things had not returned to any semblance of their former understanding since Amy had called her behavior pathetic, and it was possible that it never would. Lady Rowena tolerated her, it seemed, because she could not go anywhere without her for fear of looking fast or immodest. Some ladies did so, calling carriages for themselves, asserting their independence, but the Times had printed many articles decrying such behavior and bewailing the crumbling of good society in the wake of such conduct. Lady Rowena was always, in public, resolutely ladylike.
Amy could not really blame Lady Rowena for her ire. No one besides her father had ever spoken to her that way. Lady Rowena was the daughter of a duke and therefore one of the foremost ladies in the land. Amy had sorely overstepped her bounds, and she knew her position was only secure because her charge needed a chaperone to maintain her freedom of movement. If there had been any other choice, Amy would have been sent packing.
She disliked being at odds with Rowena but could see no way back into her good graces short of apologizing, and even though her disposition was mild, she could not lie. To apologize for saying what she felt was the truth would be a lie. So she was caught in an untenable position, one that could not continue indefinitely, but to which there seemed no ready solution.
Once Rowena had fussed her gown into tidiness, they began their ascent up to the steps. The owner himself bustled out the door to greet them. He knew they were coming and liked to be seen on his front step with the daughter of the great and powerful Duke of Sylverton.
That was when the placid morning split open into confusion.
Amy had noticed a pretty gray and white cat creeping up the stairs behind them, and thought maybe it was the shop owner’s cat. If so, she would be happy to sit with it and pet it while Rowena decided on the decoration of her hats.
It brushed past Amy and rubbed up against Rowena’s leg. She shrieked in alarm, while Amy cried that it was only a cat. But Rowena kicked out at it and screamed. The shopkeeper grabbed a broom from beside the door and started swatting at the cat, who, frightened, made a dash for the shelter of Lady Rowena’s skirts, which caused her to scream even louder.
• • •
Pierson, in conversation with Bainbridge, heard the first shriek, and was aghast to see the shopkeeper beating at Lady Rowena’s legs with the broom. A cat cowered there, and he could see immediately that the poor thing was frightened for its life. What on earth was the shopkeeper thinking?
He dashed across the street and bounded up the steps, snatching the cat out from under the lady’s skirts with one hand while trying to catch the broom in the other. He succeeded only after the shopkeeper accidentally smacked him on the ear with it.
“Cease, idiot, you are beating the poor thing to death, and the lady, too!” Pierson shouted, as he hugged the cowering cat. It clung to him, digging its claws into his shoulder. He settled it quickly and turned to the two ladies. “My lady, your poor pet. I hope this imbecile has not caused it any harm.”
“The screeching monster is not my—” She stopped abruptly.
He gazed raptly at her, holding the cat out, and saw her lovely face relax into a beatific smile.
“Thank you, kindest sir. Poor puss!” She turned to the shopkeeper with a pretty pout on her face. “What were you thinking, Mr. Lance, to beat the poor kitty that way?”
He stammered, “I’m s-so s-sorry, my lady, but I didn’t know the creature was yours. I th-thought it was one I have seen skulking around the alleyway for a few days now, trying to get in.”
“Can’t you see how beautiful it is?” Pierson said, reaching out and stroking its fluffy head, feeling almost dizzy with joy, as the motion forced him nearer the lovely Lady Rowena. “Such a clean and lovely creature could not possibly be a stray.”
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