by Laura Parker
“Do sit down, Mr. Simmons.” Her pleasant smile did not reach her eyes. “As you will be some little time explaining to me the full terms of the entailment, I wish you to be comfortable.”
Mouth slightly agape, he did just that.
“Aristocrats!” Mr. Simmons muttered when, one hour later, he was finally alone with his cherished decanter of whiskey.
Imagine! A female who knew as much about debits and credits as he! There would be no paring of her cheese. Moreover, he suspected she meant for him to know it! Underestimated her, at every point. He only wished he could be present when Lady Abbott served Miss Hyacinthe her just deserts! No doubt of it, she would. And he had thought her plain. She was, when angered, quite striking. The red hair, it runs true every time, he thought belatedly. The little minx! She had set herself up quite nicely by marrying a doddering old fool. No doubt he had gone to his grave thinking butter would not melt on her tongue. Of course there was a puzzle in that thinking.
He poured himself the usual amount and then added a second measure to his glass. Between the visits of Lord Sinclair and the Abbott ladies he had earned the accommodation of his thirst. He hoped his wife had made roast beef and pudding. He had more than enough with which to entertain her through a substantial meal.
“First he don’t want the title! Now she don’t want the title!”
He would not have believed there breathed a soul on earth who would be willing to give up aristocratic status. Today he had met two.
“Flee the country, that’s what they both want!” He lifted his glass in salute to whatever deity had put the period on this day. “Aristocrats! High-fidgets and Bedlamites, the lot of them!”
Japonica sat in Mr. Simmons’s private carriage, the offer having been extended to her when she realized that the girls had made off with the Shrewsbury chaise. But that was of little moment to her, not while Mr. Simmons’s last and shocking revelation still rang in her ears.
“If one sister marries, she can then assume responsibility for the others. It is the only provision in the codicil that frees you from your obligation to them, my lady. Though I don’t suppose …”
“Neither do I,” Japonica murmured. Hyacinthe, a bride? She shook her head. Laurel? Perhaps, if she could be …. No, it would not serve. “There is no other loophole by which I may divest myself of this responsibility?”
The solicitor shook his head. “In short, the matter is closed, unless you should choose to leave England. In that case, you would forfeit all rights to the dowager’s portion.”
Until that summation, Mr. Simmons’s measured explanations had cheered her considerably, for as a wedding gift her late husband had, as promised, ceded back to her the Fortnum fortune. So then, she was free to do as she wished. She did not need the dowager’s portion or the title of viscountess. There was only one small blot on her freedom. If she left England as she planned, the Shrewsbury Posy would be left homeless and destitute.
“No more than they deserve!”
That ungenerous thought did not last beyond its formation. The sisters’ plight was a great deal more serious than she supposed. The dowager’s portion was in effect only as long as she remained in England. If she abandoned them, they would lose everything. As for marriage … Alyssum held the most promise. Yet such things took months to arrange, if they could be arranged at all.
She could not remain separated from Jamie for that long. The thought of her son squeezed hard on her heart. No, she would not stay long in England. The question is, what in good conscience should her next action be?
She turned her attention to the city moving slowly past her window. The din of the crowd, mixed with the sound of wheels and hooves traveling over cobblestones, was quite overwhelming. As for the air, it reminded her of nothing so much as a great room into which sooty smoke had backed up owing to a faulty chimney. Even at midday the sun was not visible, leaving the maze of busy dirty streets in a permanent state of gloom. So this was London.
She sighed and looked away. She must leave. She was within her rights to leave. Generations of Shrewsburys had dealt with the eccentricity of the codicil and somehow managed to survive. Who was she to try to subvert it? Jamie and Aggie waited for her in Lisbon. Oh, how she missed her son. No inducement in the world beyond her own sense of honor could have pried her away from him. How long would it be before Aggie’s replies came to her letters? She did not know how he was faring, if he was eating, was growing, had sprouted a tooth. Lord Wellington had promised … !
“Oh!” She leaned forward suddenly and opened the window. There was one action she could take while she contemplated others. She had promised to send provisions to war-torn Lisbon. In her pocket were a dozen requests from Wellington’s officers asking for everything from candles and soap to butter and cheese.
She rapped on the carriage roof and called out to the driver, “Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly!”
Chapter Eight
“So kind of you to see me to my carriage, Mr. Fortnum.”
“No bother, not for me ‘Indian’ cousin come all this way to see us.” Richard Fortnum, great grandson of William Fortnum, the original partner in Fortnum and Mason, gave her a jolly smile. “Wish you’d reconsider me invitation to stop with the family while you’re in town.”
“You are too kind. Perhaps another time.” Japonica turned and stepped quickly inside her borrowed carriage, welcoming its shelter from the snow that had settled over the city during the past hour.
“You will come again while in town, cousin?”
“I hope to. I will certainly inform you of my plans.”
While the footman folded the step, Japonica sat back with a sigh, not knowing whether she had made a useful association or nearly given too much of herself away.
Before he shut the door the footman asked, “Where to, my lady?”
“Indeed,” Japonica murmured. She could not very well take Mr. Simmons’s carriage all the way to Croesus Hall …
“The Shrewsbury residence in Mayfair,” she said on inspiration.
“Very good, my lady.”
As the carriage pulled away, Japonica leaned forward to smile and wave at her newly met relation. “Good day to you, cousin!”
She had made no fuss upon entering the establishment but had gone directly to the office, where a senior assistant took her order of enough supplies to fortify an army—a comparison that was apt considering the amount she was asking to be put on various British officers’ accounts. She might have expected so large a requisition would attraction attention. Or perhaps it was that she signed it with her maiden name. Sure enough, the senior assistant excused himself and within a few moments Richard Fortnum presented himself to her.
Proud to pronounce himself the new majority shareholder in the grocery, he was all charm and ease to learn that she was a distant relation. He showed her to a private room where wine and cakes were served. Cordially he plied her for news from abroad, expressing the desire, but for the press of business, to see for himself the exotic sights of the Near East.
With as much reserve as was possible without being rude, she had spoken generalities in answering his questions about her reasons for being in London. Not having mentioned at first that she was Viscountess Shrewsbury, she could not see a reason to do so afterwards. As she was leaving he asked for her London address that he might send an invitation to dine with him and his family. Flattered, she had let slip that she had no accommodations for a stay in London. Ever the gallant, he quickly suggested that she come and be a guest in his home.
It took her only a twinkling to realize that would not serve. But it left her with a new dilemma. Thank goodness, she remembered the Mayfair house.
Mr. Simmons had described the Mayfair house to her as one of the residences open to her as dowager. Closed these last two years during Lord Abbott’s absence, he assured her it was still in good order, for he paid the wages of the caretaker couple who lived in the attic.
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bsp; She sat back with a smile and opened the handsome tin of Portugal plums Mr. Fortnum insisted she take as a sample of their newest enterprise, Fortnum and Mason Preserved Fruits. For the short remainder of her time in England, she would have a house to herself. Away from the constant fracas of the Shrewsbury sisters! Irresistible!
“Bersham?” Japonica could not contain her surprise when her butler opened the door of the Shrewsbury townhouse.
“How good of you to anticipate us,” she continued, as she pulled loose the strings of her damp bonnet. “However, your good intentions are for naught. The Abbott ladies have returned to Croesus Hall where I’m certain they will have more need of you than I.”
“Thank you, my lady.” The sad-faced man gave her a polite bow. “But I am not in London owing to anticipation. I was sent for.”
“Sent for? By whom?”
“Viscount Shrewsbury, my lady. The summons arrived a quarter hour after your departure for town.”
“The viscount is in residence? Best of luck! He is the very person I wish to speak to.” She handed him her damp outer garments. “Please inform his lordship that I wait upon his convenience in a matter most urgent.”
“He will not see you, my lady. I have orders that he is home to no one.”
“I am not a guest. I am a relation,” Japonica declared with more certainty than she felt.
The sound of raised feminine voices made her glance toward the closed doors of the first salon. “Is he entertaining guests already?” The idea pleased her, for it would seem to make him a gregarious and accommodating gentleman. Then too, the sooner they met, the more quickly the matter might be settled.
She patted her damp curls into place saying, “Don’t bother to announce me.”
“But—but, my lady,” Bersham sputtered to no avail. She sailed past him and parted the doors.
“Do forgive my intru….” The smile on Japonica’s face froze. There sat the five Shrewsbury daughters squabbling over tea. The viscount was nowhere to be seen.
The sisters’ heads turned the moment she opened the door, their expressions matching hers in reflecting unpleasant surprise.
“It’s her!” Laurel turned to Hyacinthe. “I told you she could not be trusted.”
Japonica closed the doors quickly behind her. “I thought you were returning to Croesus Hall.”
“We thought you agreed to leave us in peace.” Hyacinthe’s cup made a distinct click as she placed it in its saucer. “Why ever are you here?”
Japonica swallowed her disappointment that the viscount was not present. “I have come to see the viscount.”
“I knew it!” Laurel rose from the settee, scattering crumbs from her lap onto the floor. “You have come to scheme behind our backs.”
“He will not see you,” Hyacinthe said with a finality that spoke of certain knowledge.
“And why is that?” Japonica moved into the room. “What have you said to him about me?”
Malice laced Laurel’s smile. “Whatever makes you think we would speak to him of someone quite beneath our regard?”
Japonica tucked her thumbs into the crooks of her elbows, mimicking Aggie’s stance when in high dudgeon. “So then you haven’t spoken with him?”
“He w-w-wouldn’t …”
“Peony!” her four sisters cried in chorus.
“He would not see you?” She gave Peony a warm look, for she had gained at least one ally. “But he will see me. I am the dowager viscountess. Unless he is married, I have the distinction of rank.”
Laurel’s gaze narrowed with the mention of the viscount’s marital status. With her cheeks reddened by the wind and her hair loosened from her usually dowdy caps and bonnets, her step-mama looked, well, almost fetching!
“He’s a doddering old fool. A confirmed bachelor.” Laurel looked back over her shoulder for assistance from her sisters. “Besides, he is ill. Most likely it is the plague,” she elaborated. “It’s the pustules, you see.”
“You have seen his pustules but not the man? However did you manage that?” Japonica inquired politely.
“Bersham told us that he is ill,” Hyacinthe answered, giving her sister a withering look.
“He is ill,” Alyssum said apologetically. “Bersham will confirm it.”
Japonica gave the remaining girls a glance and realized that there was dissention in the ranks. Alyssum looked as if she had been weeping while Cynara possessed an expression that would spoil beets. Only Peony offered her anything like a smile, slight and guilt-ridden though it was. Yet she did not want to single the girl out, knowing that her eldest sisters would be certain to torment her for her broken allegiance.
“Cynara? Is my luggage still in the Shrewsbury chaise?”
Cynara hung her head. “Yes, miss.”
“Good.” Japonica’s gaze next picked out Laurel. “I had a notion it might have been thrown into the Thames.” Laurel reddened then glanced away.
Finally she turned to Bersham, who had followed her into the salon. “Have my things brought in.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“You cannot mean to stay here?” Laurel exclaimed in annoyance. “What about the fever beneath the roof?”
“Would you prefer that I accompany you back to Croesus Hall?”
Realizing she was outmaneuvered, Laurel plopped back down on the settee, her disappointment turned into a pout.
“As I thought. Until I have spoken with Lord ….” Japonica paused with a frown. “What is his name?’
“S-S-Sinclair,” Peony supplied.
“Lord Sinclair. Until I have spoken with Lord Sinclair, you have my permission to remain beneath this roof.”
“Permission?”
“How dare …’ ”
“Could she really put us out?”
Japonica turned and walked quickly away as the girls erupted in a cacophony of accusation, recrimination, and ill humor.
“So the widow arrives, as well. Confound it! The house becomes infested with Shrewsburys!”
Devlyn Sinclair sent his glass of claret hurtling across the room to smash into exquisite shards of crystal against the far wall.
“Those were Lord Abbott’s favorite glasses,” Bersham said quietly.
Devlyn swung around on the heel of one boot “They now belong to me. I may break every damn one of them if it pleases me to do so!”
The old man lowered his gaze. “Quite right, my lord.”
Devlyn swung his right arm across the tabletop where the remains of his dinner had been congealing, scattering china and silver serving dishes. Gravy and bones and bits of roasted potato flew in all directions before it all landed on the floor with a resounding crash. Only one of the three bottles of claret escaped his swipe, the one that still contained wine. Grabbing it up, he moved rather unsteadily toward the fireplace then sat a little heavily in a well-preserved Queen Anne chair.
Bersham winced as the antique chair’s narrow legs creaked under the unaccustomed bulk. “You may wish to have a care, my lord.” He moved closer as if he were readying to lift his master off the piece of furniture. “That chair’s old and unreliable. Shall I have the footman fetch a more commodious one?”
Lord Sinclair did not answer. He sank lower in its depths and thrust his booted legs out toward the hearth from whence came the darkened bedroom’s only light.
Hissing and leaping, the flames seemed to gather in the man’s strangely golden eyes. But far more disturbing was the way the firelight played along the curve of the wicked hook thrust out past his right cuff. The effect quite unnerved Bersham but he dared not show it. No telling what the new viscount might do next in his inebriated state.
Drink was all Lord Sinclair had done since he turned up unexpectedly at the house in the wee hours. So said the pair of servants who lived in the attic rooms. Not knowing what else to do, they had sent for Bersham. All the Shrewsbury servants looked to the family retainer to guide them but, for the moment, Bersham wa
s as wary as they. The last time he had set eyes on Devlyn Sinclair, a full ten years earlier, he was in full military uniform and as brash and arrogant as a young nobleman of spirit was wont to be. This harried and haunted-looking man with the scarred countenance and missing hand was a dangerous stranger to be watched and guarded against.
“What the devil do an elderly hen and her brood want with me?” Sinclair said suddenly.
“I could not say, my lord.” Bersham wondered if he should disabuse his lordship’s view of the dowager as ancient but suspected he would not be thanked for it. If present circumstance were any indication, he would soon dislike the new viscount as much as any man he had ever met, equal or superior. “Would you like me to inquire?”
“Good God, no! They are nothing to me! Nothing!”
“As you wish.” Bersham moved to ring for a servant to pick up the dishes, barely able to contain a tut tut as he noticed the dent in the lid of one particularly fine piece of Charles the Second silver. He would have to set it aside for the tinker’s next visit.
Pointedly ignoring the servant who came to right the mess, Devlyn rubbed the scar slanted across his brow behind which his head throbbed like a drum. The more he tried to remember things the more it ached. He was the new viscount Shrewsbury. The thought would not stick. He could not remember the late viscount or this house, or even how he came to be here.
The solicitor attempted to explain it, something about his being seventh or eighth in a line of males that had dwindled rapidly over the years. “The last of the line of Shrewsbury,” Mr. Simmons had proclaimed in officious tones.
“Better have said the last of a line of flaming madmen,” he muttered to no one. There was little money in the inheritance and a great deal of debt and responsibility. The very house he sat in, built a hundred years earlier, was dilapidated, while its gardens sprawled out behind with a glory to rival the King’s own. Lord Abbott’s contribution to the science of botany, Bersham had proudly exclaimed. He had walked there awhile, hoping the fresh air would cool the pain. But London had little of that.