House of Cads (Ladies of Scandal Book 2)

by Elizabeth Kingston

  “I do wish you’d come with us,” she said to Marie-Anne as she put on her bonnet. “The Shipleys do not deserve you. Odious people. If they are horrible to you again, I’ll…I’ll…”

  “You will what?” asked Marie-Anne, curious.

  “I’m sure I’ll think of something. No, I’ll have Stephen think of something, he always does.”

  Marie-Anne helped her to button her gloves, saying, “I am sure I can think of something as well, but I do not believe they will be bad to me. They need me, after all.” She reached up and re-tied the ribbon under Helen’s chin so it laid more prettily. “Now you will go and see your fjords, and then we will all meet again in Bartle in the fall where your husband will pretend to care about the hunting. I promise to save you all the best stories from my summer in London, ma chérie.”

  As they embraced, Helen whispered, “I hope some of them are about the American, if he deserves it – or at least someone else who puts stars in your eyes as he has.”

  How alarming, to learn that he’d managed to put so many stars in her eyes that her friends felt compelled to remark upon it. And it had only taken a few minutes of conversation. She had enjoyed talking to him, more than she’d enjoyed any man for years, and there was no denying that when Stephen had invited her to break a few hearts, her imagination immediately went to Mr. Mason.

  Perhaps she should seek him out again while she had the chance. But first she would learn what mysterious task the Shipleys had in store for her.

  Amarantha Shipley looked very well, if one disregarded her considerable distress. The poor girl was very emotional, which was quite out of character. Or at least Marie-Anne had always known her as a very steady girl, the eldest of the three Shipley daughters and the only one of them who could ever have been described as steady. Even as a very small child, Amarantha considered her own name frivolous and wholly unsuited to her personality, and declared that she would only answer to “Amy” – an act that her mother took as personal insult. And though Marie-Anne did not dislike the nickname, she did privately think it a poor match for the girl’s nature. An Amy should be less serious, and should be able to laugh more at life.

  Alas, this Shipley daughter found no humor in her situation at all.

  “Amy, ma petite,” Marie-Anne soothed, laying a hand reassuringly on her arm. “You must know you can tell me of your sisters’ behavior without any fear that I will judge you by it. If I was inclined to hold your family’s sins against you, would I come to London for you? No, and if this Mr. Harner truly loves you as you say, then he will never let the silliness of your sisters stop him from marrying you.”

  “It isn’t Mr. Harner who is bothered by it,” Amy explained. She chewed briefly on her bottom lip and looked around the little morning room in the Summerdale house where they sat. It was decorated in a cheery yellow, and the elegance of the décor could only bring to mind the far less refined taste on display in the Shipley’s home. “Indeed, he is more tolerant of their nonsense than I am, but he is at the mercy of an uncle who is a very superior sort. If his uncle disapproves of the connection, he will not grant Mr. Harner the living of the parsonage, you see. We’ll not be able to marry.”

  Marie-Anne almost asked if Amy’s marriage portion was so very small before she remembered that of course it would be. The Shipley family were comfortable, but they had three daughters and no great wealth. Even if they could settle a large sum on one of their girls, they would never do so in order for her marry a church man. And though Amy was not as grasping as her mother, she also could not imagine living on such a very reduced income. Not everyone, Marie-Anne reminded herself, was practiced at mending clothes until they were more patches than petticoat.

  “Oh I know it’s selfish, truly I do,” Amy said. “But I cannot believe either Phyllida or Dahlia will be anything but mortified by their own actions in future. I think they too will regret the consequences. They are so impulsive.”

  “And very accomplished, I think, to have found something that unites you and your mother against them – and makes even me welcome in the Shipley home again!” Marie-Anne set her teacup down on the little table, in case she should spill it in shock. “Now tell me, please, what do they do that is so very bad?”

  “They have both gotten themselves engaged to the most unsuitable men. Or I suppose not properly engaged. Nothing has been formalized or announced yet because mother is desperately attempting to change their minds.”

  “Ah, and the disapproval of the mother makes these unsuitable men much more desirable, of course. But are they so disastrous, these men?”

  Amy furrowed her brow, giving the question due consideration. “Well, in Dahlia’s case, I think the match is not an unfortunate one. And I only say he is unsuitable because they seem so very ill-suited to each other. But really, it’s her behavior that is so objectionable. You see, it seemed to everyone early on in the season that Lord Releford would offer for her any minute. He’s the heir to the Duke of Morely.”

  Marie-Anne could not help but gasp. “Oh mon dieu, your mother must have been in raptures!” All Lady Shipley had ever wanted – with an intensity that was deeply uncomfortable to witness – was better social connections, to climb higher and higher in society. Heir to a dukedom!

  Amy rolled her eyes slightly and nodded. When she was young, she and Marie-Anne had joked often about her mother’s more ridiculous ambitions. How unlikely, that she had nearly realized one of them at last.

  “Yes, she was jubilant when we were all certain he would propose. But then something happened. Dahlia won’t say what it was, but suddenly she began to…well, to welcome the attentions of other men, while virtually ignoring Releford. It was all anyone could talk about, how she flirted with every man who crossed her path. I suppose it’s better now that she’s settled on one she says she will marry, and he’s a very good sort even if he’ll never be a duke. But now instead of flirting so very obviously, she takes every opportunity to speak loudly and at length about his wealth and his good looks. It’s so very vulgar! I have overheard many of our acquaintance remark on it a number of times. Our housekeeper told me even the butcher has commented on it. The butcher.”

  Marie-Anne bit her lips together to prevent herself saying, Heaven forbid, that the butcher have a poor opinion of your family! It would be cruel to say it to Amy, who would think Marie-Anne was mocking her. But she did not mock Amy. She mocked the mannered little world in which the girl was caught up. She knew from personal experience exactly how exuberant behavior and loud, public delight was condemned. There were few sins greater than the dread vulgarity.

  Instead, she asked what trouble the last Shipley sister had gotten into.

  “So Dahlia is telling everyone about the money she will marry, I see. And Phyllida? She has refused another duke, perhaps?”

  “Oh no, a duke is not nearly romantic enough for Phyll,” said Amy, who suddenly looked very cross. “She has settled for nothing less than an impoverished poet who thinks himself the next Byron, and spends more time arranging his hair than in writing any sort of verse. I should not mind any of that in the least, even though he is very tedious, but he has worked so diligently at creating a reputation for himself as a libertine that he has actually succeeded at it. No decent girl should be seen in his company at all, much less making calf eyes at him.”

  Marie-Anne picked up her tea again and sipped at it before it grew cold, considering. Well, she had been drawn to London by the promise of a spectacle, after all. And this certainly qualified as entertainment. A libertine poet, a future duke thrown over in favor of a wealthy suitor, two young girls determined to make very public fools of themselves, and a mother who was no doubt tearing at her coiffure regularly over it all. Oh, and a very proper uncle who had the power to withhold a living from Amy’s fiancé. And now, of course, right on cue: Enter the scandalous Frenchwoman.

  “Set it to music and put it on stage, it will make for a most charming opera,” she mused.

  “Music?” as
ked Amy, who had only half-heard.

  She looked pale and so very anxious. She must really be quite in love with this would-be vicar. Marie-Anne finished off her tea and waved aside her flippant remark. An opera was too grand, in any case. This was more suited to a ha’penny puppet play.

  “What I want to know is why you have called me here. How is it that I can help this situation? I think my presence can only make it worse.”

  “Oh no, you must understand how very much both Dahlia and Phyllida admire you,” protested Amy, and Marie-Anne only looked at her in confusion. “They have such fond memories of you, and they loved Richard so very much. We all did. And he loved you in defiance of our parents, whose disapproval has only commended you to girls of such spirit, and with everything that happened back then… Well, it seems you’ve become something of a romantic figure to them.”

  “A romantic figure,” echoed Marie-Anne. She was immediately visited by the romantic memory of the chilblains on her fingers that first winter in Bartle, and having to choose between wearing her only pair of wool socks on her feet or on her hands.

  “It must seem terrible. I’m so sorry. But you know what young girls are.”

  “Yes, they do love a tragedy.” Try as she might, Marie-Anne could not quite produce a lighthearted smile. Nevertheless, her lip curled upwards. “A forbidden love affair, a scandal, a lover who dies young. A miscarriage and a banishment. I may even have declared that I would never love again, when they said he would not live. Such a drama it was, of course they would make me a heroine.”

  “They have taken to heart the notion that you gave up everything for love.” Amy said it like an apology. Her cheeks were turning a delicate pink.

  What very silly girls. But then, how could they know that Marie-Anne had had nothing to give up? Being with her Richard, in any capacity, could only have given her more, not taken anything away. It had given her more, for the little time they were together.

  “They would like to vex your mother, then? And so they think to be like me.” Marie-Anne began to regain her humor at the idea. “It is a perfect chance for me to make some mischief, your mother must see that. And yet she has said she also wants me here. Ah, this explains why she invited me to stay in your home – to make me feel obliged, I think?”

  That was what she said, but what she thought was: to try to win me over, to try to write over the old story of animosity with new flattery. She did laugh a little at that, to herself. Lady Shipley probably could not conceive that one could resist flattery, since she herself was so susceptible to it.

  Amy cleared her throat, and the delicate pink on her cheeks turned a little darker and spread to her ears. “She agrees that Dahlia and Phyllida will listen to you and follow your advice. But I must confess now to what you will surely understand after only the briefest conversation with my mother – that her opinion of your character has quite radically changed since she learned of your close friendship with the Earl and Countess of Summerdale.”

  Marie-Anne’s mouth slowly dropped open in amazed discovery. “Mais bien sûr,” she breathed. “I am her golden goose!”

  “Her beanstalk, I would rather say,” replied Amy in a muffled voice.

  Marie-Anne hooted with laughter. “She will climb me! To reach giants!”

  It was too perfect. There was really no other response than to laugh – and laugh, and laugh, until even Amy could not help but join the inelegant guffaws. It could only be this funny with Amy – oh, and her Richard, of course, who she liked to imagine was chuckling somewhere in Heaven. That Lady Shipley’s greatest ambitions could only be realized through Marie-Anne, of all people, whom she had described as “that brazen French hussy” who was destined to “ensure generations of disrepute for the Shipley name!”

  “You should have seen her face when she heard your name in connection with Summerdale,” giggled Amy, who had been such a tender age when she reported the Brazen French Hussy remark. “It brought on an acute attack of dyspepsia that lasted days.”

  Marie-Anne caught her breath and willed herself to stop laughing. If only she could have been there for the moment that Lady Shipley had swallowed that bitter pill.

  “One can only imagine she recovered by pretending she always liked me,” she said. This was how Richard’s mother had always gone about her life: convincing herself of a new reality every time the old one was inconvenient or uncomfortable. “Well, she is lucky I like you more than I dislike her. Which means I like you very, very much. Now, if I have so much power over these silly romantic girls, I must know how you want me to use it. Phyllie must end the infatuation with this libertine poet, true?”

  “Oh, if you could only make her see him for what he truly is, Marie-Anne! Phyll is not entirely brainless, she’s only been taken in by his affectations.”

  “He is very handsome?”

  “I suppose, if you like that sort,” said Amy, wrinkling her nose a bit. “Dark eyes and pale skin, and he does have quite good hair. But he’s forever bursting into verse about the lambent light in Phyll’s eyes or how her cheek is the rosy hue of dawn’s first rays. And he has a bit of a limp, though he’s quite heroic about walking in spite of it.”

  Marie-Anne blinked in the face of this breezy nonchalance.

  “What?” Amy was nonplussed.

  Marie-Anne stared at her, willing her to hear herself. But sweet, practical Amy seemed utterly uncomprehending, which forced Marie-Anne to an irritated bluntness.

  “You know, of course, that I am not a virgin.”

  “Pardon me?” Amy asked faintly.

  “Forgive me, you are not Catholic and you do not know it is very rare that a saint is not a virgin. So I think it is unlikely I can perform miracles.”

  “Oh,” Amy frowned, struggling to keep up. “Do you think it will be so very difficult?”

  Marie-Anne turned her eyes up to the ceiling but refrained from crossing herself in her silent prayer for patience.

  “Dark eyes, beautiful hair, young and handsome, making poems to her cheeks!” Amy only looked blankly at her. “Penniless!” she continued insistently. “A limp!”

  “But I am sure if you say you find him unappealing, she will agree,” Amy said earnestly.

  “And will I convince her that puppies are not adorable, too? It is so simple, I will do it just after I make many loaves and fishes appear.” Marie-Anne sighed at Amy’s stricken look. “Oh, ma petite, you are so very much not fanciful that you will never see his appeal. But of course I will try. I will meet him and we will see if I can find something unattractive enough to aid our cause. So that is Phyllida. Now tell me what you think I must do for Dahlia. Push her into the arms of this son of a duke, this Releford man?”

  “Oh, if you could persuade her to return Lord Releford’s affections, Mother would kiss you!”

  “I would rather kiss the ass of an ass, so another solution is preferred.” Marie-Anne tapped thoughtfully on her chin. “It is only that she is so vulgar about this rich man she has chosen, non? You do not mind the man himself?”

  “Not at all. Though I don’t think their characters are well-suited, I like Mr. Mason very well indeed. Mother and Father do not like that he is American, that is their greatest objection. Of course they would so much prefer her to have Releford, but–”

  “Mason, you say?” Marie-Anne felt her eyebrows raising with the pitch of her voice. “American?” Higher still, and Amy nodded. “Handsome and prosperous?”

  She stopped before she began chirping. Already she wore the most idiotic expression of bright inquisitiveness, her head tilted just the slightest bit in perfect imitation of a bird. Like a bird wit. Bird brain. Birds of a feather. Birds and the bees.

  Oh mon dieu, this was not good at all.

  “I suppose he is handsome if one does not object to red hair,” Amy was saying. “He’s not at all refined in looks or manner, but he seems a very fine American gentleman nonetheless. Though Father says we should not call him a gentleman, but a businessman. He deals in
all kinds of wood. Timber, you know. Marie-Anne?”

  Marie-Anne tore herself away from a fervent contemplation of brioche, and made herself say, “But I met him only last night at Lady Huntingdon’s ball.”

  “Did you? He’s a very good sort, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he was…very agreeable.”

  Amy went on about her mother’s horror of passing up a future duke in favor of an American – “If he distinguished himself in politics and appeared favorably in the papers, she might be persuaded to think well of him” – but Marie-Anne returned to her deep longing for brioche. Probably Helen’s cook could make some. She’d like to soak it in some kind of sauce, a good, thick kind of gravy. Or maybe soup? Men were very disappointing. Or soda bread would be good too, Maggie had used to make it sometimes, served with butter and honey. It had only been a few minutes of conversation. She had thought she would not see him again anyway. Perhaps there was some toast left over from breakfast. A great deal of butter was called for.

  “Would you like to come with me?” Amy asked.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Marie-Anne, “I was lost in my thoughts. It is a great deal to think about. Come where?”

  “To Gunter’s. I’ve said I would meet Dahlia and Mr. Mason there so I can ride home in the carriage. I knew Dahlia would insist on coming with me today if they knew I was calling on you, so you’ll be a surprise. If you want to, of course, the walk is not far at all.”

  “A surprise,” she repeated. She thought back to this morning, her friend’s worry that Mr. Mason was a charlatan of some sort. Well, if he would flirt with her and put stars in her eyes while his…his unofficial fiancée was not looking, he was certainly at least a little false. “He does not know of me? My history with your family, I mean to say.”