by Laura Parker
Devlyn’s snort of amusement reminded Japonica that he had once made a similar observation. “Lady, surely that is hard.”
Lady Simms squinted at the dish of lamb chops brought in to follow her soup. “Lord Abbott roamed the world while he was in it. Did it never occur to you to ask why? To get away from the coven of witches his blighted ballocks produced.”
“Aunt, really!” Devlyn murmured.
She glanced over at Japonica, tongs poised to select a chop. “I have made you blush! Too few blush in the world today.”
“You are wrong about Lord Abbott,” Japonica said carefully. “He cared very deeply for his daughters. They were in his final words and thoughts.”
“Well they might be, when he was about to answer for them to Saint Peter. ’Tis the curse of the Abbotts that they produced only harridans and stoop-shouldered men.” She dropped two chops onto her plate. “Devlyn is what he is because he’s so far removed from the direct line. ’Tis a mercy the main line ended with your husband.”
The harsh words pricked the new protective sense Japonica felt for her new family. “Even if all you say is true, the girls are blameless in their heritage.”
Lady Simms paused to look directly at Japonica for the first time. “That is a pretty speech. Had I not dealt with them my tender heart would be touched. I made an attempt to put a bit of town polish on the elder two last spring. Before the first day’s shopping was done the younger became sick in the carriage, a bonnet was spoiled in a tussle at the haberdashery, and the eldest upended a teapot on a seamstress’s head simply because of a pinprick! I could not bring myself to show my face in Madame Yvonne’s for a full three months afterwards!”
Japonica noticed mirth in Devlyn’s expression but he remained mercifully silent. “They have changed. The girls have gained some maturity and government over their—ah, enthusiasm.”
Lady Simms favored her with a fish-eyed glance. “I cannot imagine the stratagems that would be required to bring them up to the level of merest acceptability. I do not envy you, their new mama, one jot.”
“Perhaps this lady is made of sterner stuff than their previous guardians,” Devlyn suggested.
“She will needs be made of India rubber!” Lady Simms frowned as she stared at the dish of roasted potatoes. “No lady this side of the Channel would agree to the Devil’s pact that marriage to Lord Abbott would have been.” She looked across at Japonica as she spooned potatoes onto her plate. “By wedding you, a commoner, Lord Abbott provided his wretched brood a complaisant mama and a purse. The last act of a desperate man!”
Her selection made, she waved the footman away and looked again at Japonica, who was gasping in unspoken indignation. “Still, you’ve come up in the world, haven’t you? Your dalliance with my nephew may not be entirely held against you. Given your lack of lineage it isn’t as if you were destined to be accepted by the high sticklers. In certain circles of the ton, a notorious reputation isn’t without merit. So then, where to begin with you?”
Japonica could barely speak past the insult choking her. “I suppose you mean well, Lady Simms, but I assure you your assistance is unnecessary.”
Lady Simms glanced at Devlyn. “Is she always so stubborn?”
“Uncommonly,” Devlyn answered.
One raven-black brow took flight as Lady Simms cocked her head birdlike in Japonica’s direction. “I will say this on your behalf. You’ve drawn Devlyn out of his shell. Perhaps he tells his ladylove what he will not say to family.”
She turned her scorching glance on Devlyn. “Amnesia and cracked brains. I don’t believe in it. The truth is somewhere inside you. As for your infirmities.” She picked up her gold-embossed fork and pointed first to his scarred brow. “Of no consequence. In my father’s day when dueling was every true gentleman’s calling, a man without a scar was considered to be a coward or a clergyman. As for this!” She jabbed the tines of her fork at his hook. “Do you need advertise?”
Japonica was astonished that Devlyn allowed anyone to speak to him in so impertinent a fashion. Yet he sat in quiet repose, as if listening to a wiser voice, or even some sound altogether beyond them. She could find no equitable feeling in herself. She had just been called a whore and an interloper and now was being ignored. It was too much!
She stood up abruptly. “I’ve had enough.” The two turned sharp glances upon her. “This is my home. Therefore I can speak my mind. Which is this. I am neither the wanton nor the waster you seem to believe, Lady Simms. Nor, I suppose, are you the inveterate gossip and spoiler you would appear.” She saw Lady Simms’s lips crimp at the corners. “I am rather fatigued and would beg to leave you in the capable hands of your nephew.”
When she had gone, Lady Simms turned to Devlyn. “I like her. She has spirit, wit, and courage. She will do very nicely for you.”
“She has already done very nicely,” Devlyn returned coolly. “She is a viscountess without my help.”
“She is a child, Dev! A lady so young and obviously untried is never long without a trail of randy suitors willing to make up for her lack.”
“Untried? Did you not just tell me half of London supposes I have already ridden her to Londonderry and back?”
“Who listens to gossip?” Lady Simms set her fork aside with a sigh. “I never indulge in it.”
“You show an unwelcome alacrity to poke your nose into what is my business.”
“The presumption of age,” she said carelessly. “After all, you asked my opinion.”
“I did not.”
“No? I must have read it in your face. Do give up that wretched scowl. You are a sour note in the sonata of life. Yes, you’ve been dealt with harshly by Fortune.” She reached and covered his hook with her hand. “But answer me this, Devlyn. Was anything maimed, lopped off or otherwise put out of commission that would prevent you from making some undeserving lady’s life a rope and a toss, with an endless nursery of swaddlings to show for it?”
Devlyn smiled. “Put that way, I should be congratulating myself.”
She bent forward and laid her cheek upon his damaged arm. “Then my dear Dev, you have all that you need to be happy.” She sat up and returned to her chop. “If it be true you’ve lost memory of years of your life it could prove a boon. Think of the ladies who will be willing, nay eager, to refresh your memory of them. ’Twill not be that prong,” she pointed with her knife to his hook, “they will rush to hook themselves upon.”
“You have grown into a bawd, Aunt.”
Lady Simms laughed gaily. “It comes from being a politician’s wife. Leigh despairs of me yet he will tell me the most wicked tales. Have you heard the story the Prince Regent tells about the prodigious size of his own brother’s penis?”
“Aunt!”
“Very well.” She reached for her wine. “Back to Lady Abbott. She positively reeks of the middle class. If nothing else, that reflects poorly upon me. Que faire? I know! I will send my maid to her until I can secure a decent one for her.” She frowned. “Mauvais relatives can be so vexing to one’s social standing. I suppose it is too late to do away with the Shrewsbury Posy?”
Devlyn laughed for the first time. “Yes.”
“A pity. But if we are to stem the talk against Lady Abbott she must be seen in town, instanter. Where will you take her first?”
“We are to dine with the Mirza tomorrow night.”
Lady Simms’s eyes lit up. “But that is wonderful! Few have seen him. London’s hostesses despair of him. He declines every invitation. If Lady Abbott should be among the first to circulate with firsthand news of him …”
She broke off and reached out to pat Devlyn’s chest just over his heart. “Oh, but that will keep. I am so very glad to see you, boy. I could not believe you were gone.” She blinked back the tears that came into her eyes. “No longer a soldier but a viscount! How jolly! You are due a bit of happiness. Promise me you will seek it out. Or better yet let Lady Abbott help you.” She pulled awa
y and returned to her dinner. “She is in love with you. Do you realize that?”
“I think you read too many novels,” he answered neutrally. “Lady Abbot’s feelings for me are decidedly other.”
“For a man of experience and good sense, you are singularly lacking in discernment. Lady Japonica—gad, what a horror of a name!—wed an elderly man, a dying man. No doubt all her lofty dreams of romance remain intact. In fact I should imagine if you have not done the deed that she is still intact.”
The idea should not have shocked him. Devlyn knew every piece of the puzzle. Yet he had arranged them into a very different sort of picture. Wedded but not bedded. That would explain her wariness of him, despite their attraction. “Are you certain? I would swear …”
“Wishful thinking! Men make that mistake nearly every time. Assume the lady knows too little or too much, whatever best suits the gentleman’s best opinion of himself.” Her expression took on a rare thoughtful mode. “So then you have not bedded her. She did not strike me as a siren. Her looks are not those to attract the lusts of gentlemen seeking a meaningless liaison.”
“You are right.” Devlyn sighed. “She is more wren than raven.”
“Did I say she’s dull stuff? Nonsense! She’s got pluck. Did you hear how she contradicted me when I attacked the Shrewsbury brood? There’s passion in her, as well. I saw the way she looks at you, Devlyn. If you don’t want her ruined, leave this house at once.”
Lady Simms’s personal maid assured Japonica that the hairdresser she had engaged was skilled in working with all types of hair. Yet she was in doubt about using his services. “Perhaps we should leave it as it is this time.”
The maid’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, my lady, do you think so?”
Japonica looked in the mirror. The Grecian knot she had attempted looked more like Vesuvius after an eruption. She turned to the hairdresser, a fellow in a wasp-waisted coat who wore his breeches too tight. “What do you think?”
He shook his head. “With your permission I will attempt something more complimentary yet demure. Lady Simms remarked that it won’t serve upon your first public appearance to strive for the top kick of fashion.”
Japonica frowned. There seemed to be a formidable number of things that fit into the “Do” and “Don’t” categories of being a London lady, many of which were beginning to pinch her like a pair of too-small shoes.
“Very well. You can do no worse than I have done and doubtless can do better.”
Japonica could not decide whether she liked or detested Lady Simms. Even if she had sent round her maid and hairdresser and two boxes of Belgian chocolates before nuncheon, the lady did not seem someone who could be trusted. Or maybe it was only that she resented the distorted public mirror Lady Simms had held up to the relationship between Lord Sinclair and herself.
Lord Sinclair’s mistress! All of London speaks of it. A harem!
She could not long dismiss from her mind the strange and acutely embarrassing conversation of the evening before. It was shocking and mortifying, damning to others’ reputations as well as hers.
Luckily Lord Sinclair had been absent from the house all day so that she had not been required to meet him in the hall or at any meals. She doubted she could have remained, otherwise. She had seen the annoyance in his expression the one time she dared glance at him during his aunt’s recitation. But it gave her no real clue to his deeper feelings in the matter.
Her own feelings were appallingly obvious.
Before being accosted by Lady Simms at dinner she had thought the best and worst of yesterday had already been hers. Marooned for over an hour in their damaged coach, she had dozed in Devlyn’s arms only to waken to the certain knowledge that her feelings for the man were exactly the reason she must never again allow him to touch her. Despite every caution and danger, she had become attached to a man she scarcely knew, and understood even less. Yet here she was, preparing to go out with him this evening as though yesterday and last night had never occurred.
“You are a fool, Japonica Fortnom Abbott!” she whispered under her breath.
Lord Sinclair had sent a note informing her to be ready to dine out this evening. A public outing, after what she knew was being whispered about them? How could he, how could she hold her head up?
“What of this, my lady?”
Japonica looked into the mirror and the reflection it offered made her smile. Her pile of irregular curls had been twisted into a curly topknot caught back in a silver net cap lined with purple silk and trimmed with a silver tassel that dangled by her left ear. “You are a wonder! Wherever did you find the cap?”
“Lady Simms had me bring it along.” The hairdresser turned his head to one side and then the other. “You could crop the front a bit, my lady. But the color’s good and the effect delightful.”
“You have certainly helped me put my best foot forward,” Japonica acknowledged. She hoped she could put on the proper face to go with it.
Minutes later she stood in her dressing room waiting to don her gown when Lady Abbott’s maid brought out the green silk.
“That is not the gown I laid out.”
“No, my lady.” The maid blushed and curtsied. “But Lady Simms was most particular that you wear this one. The other gown, while quite nice, isn’t smart enough for dinner. Now this ….” She swung the gown out so the skirts danced across the floor.
Japonica bit her lip. According to Lady Simms, everyone knew Lord Sinclair had bought that gown for her. If she wore it she would be stoking the fire of her supposed infamy. Yet the black frock she meant to wear was so dowdy. Some indignant and defiant spark took flame inside her. If she were to be thought a mistress, she might as well dress the part.
“Very well.”
Devlyn appeared at the Shrewsbury residence a little before nine o’clock. He had moved out earlier in the day and dressed at his club. His aunt would be proud to know he had banished his hook to the bottom drawer of his highboy and ordered new shirts with the hem of the right sleeves sewn shut. He wished he could be equally proud of her, yet her behavior toward Japonica the night before had left him in doubt of her good sense. But perhaps he had been too long away from London and lost his taste for mocking wit and stinging humor. Certain that his aunt had inflated the public interest in the viscountess, he learned different before noon. Someone had set spark to wick over the matter of the viscountess and the smoke of that rumor was rapidly covering London.
While abroad during the day he learned he had the wagging tongues of Howe and Frampton to thank for it. They had told all over town how they had come to meet the dowager viscountess. His subsequent reluctance to partake of the public spectacle that was London society, coupled with the mysterious arrival of the “Indian Viscountess” as she was being called in some circles, had set other more malicious tongues wagging. As remedy, he could do no other than push them both into the spotlight and hope the truth would dampen speculation.
He poured himself a single small brandy as he waited grimly for her to appear. He did not give a damn what people thought. But her? She had so many strikes against her, a widow, a colonialist, a common merchant’s daughter wed to a dying nobleman twice and again her age; any of them was a daunting hurdle. Braced together they presented odds against public acceptance that an inveterate gambler might shy from accepting.
He finished his glass in a gulp and turned as someone entered the room.
The dress he had purchased off a modiste’s mannequin now graced one of the best figures he had ever seen. Shaped to her bosom, it fell in sheer tiers that draped and clung to her hips and slender thighs as she approached. Her hair was caught back from her face in a net bonnet with short burnished curls framing her temples. The only discordant note in the whole picture of prettiness was her expression. Was it nerves or anger? He could not tell. But he knew he would have to do something about it.
She paused a few feet from him, her expression stiff. “You approve?”
“Turn around.”
At once resentment brightened her dark eyes. “I am not a mare for sale on market day.”
In answer he made a circle with his fingers. Though her expression retained its mutinous glare she turned slowly about.
As she moved, his gaze fixed for a moment on the thrust of her beautifully rounded bosom when she turned in profile and then on her superbly molded back and shoulders. How could he ever have thought her dowdy or plain? Dress the wren in peacock feathers and what a brilliant little bird she made! Was that part of the mystery he had always suspected? Or had he already known this about her?
He shied away from the temptation to cudgel his brain for lost memory. Tonight he needed all his wits without the threat of headache and temper to distract him.
When she had come full circle Japonica held perfectly still under his golden regard. But her heart pounded with heavy strokes beneath her skimpy bodice. She felt naked and foolish. No matter what her mirror told her, she had yet to see a single glimmer of response to her display in his expression. Oh, but she had been wrong to wear it. She knew it!
“I will change.”
“No.” He reached out to stop her with the lightest of touches on her shoulder. And then he smiled full, the charm of it more potent for its rarity. “Forgive me. I am at a loss to convey my admiration, Lady Abbott.”
She crossed her arms under her bosom. “You might have said so at once.”
Devlyn gave a fleeting glance to the enticements she unconsciously drew to his attention and felt a quickening in his loins. If she realized how she affected him, he suspected she would refuse to go anywhere with him. Now, more than ever, he wanted to be seen in public at her side. “So then, you are ready?”
She nodded. “Will Lady Simms be joining us?”
“Decidedly not! She has been told to keep away from you.”
“Why?”
Her beseeching gaze begged him to reassure her that his aunt’s on dits were no more than wind whistling down a chimney. He could not. He would not know how much damage had been done to her reputation until she had spent an evening in society. How much crueler it would be to lead her out tonight without her guard up. Better she should go forth armed with righteous and wary indignation.