“What do you mean?” Violet asked. “He’s from a small farm in the Highlands. Lord Greycliff said so.”
“No such thing anymore. All that’s left there are the great estates and sheep. Rest are crofts—it’s why we had to leave.”
So Arthur had lost more than a family. He’d lost an entire way of life.
“Well, hello, darling.” Phoebe strode into the room and stared at the shawls draped over a chair, then let her gaze drift toward Alice. “Taking tea with your maid. How . . . democratic of you.”
The poor girl jumped to her feet and scurried to tidy the offending garments. With a regal nod of approval, Phoebe plonked herself in the chair, giving the stack of ladies’ journals a disinterested perusal.
“Thank you, Alice,” said Violet. “We will continue this conversation after Lady Phoebe has said whatever she came here to scold me about.”
Alice curtsied and made a quick exit.
“How did you know I came here to scold you?” Phoebe asked.
“You have that look. Like I’ve set fire to your boots or matched a striped bonnet with a paisley shawl.”
“Paisley and stripes are a crime against humanity. You are a murderer of fashion, and I will never stop wanting justice for it,” Phoebe complained. “Do you have anything to drink?”
“Why do you pretend?” Violet asked.
Phoebe froze for a moment, then tossed a journal to the floor and tilted her chin sideways, showing the line of her neck from the most flattering angle.
“What you said to Alice . . . ,” Violet began.
Twitching away from Violet’s remonstrations, Phoebe adjusted her skirts. “You cannot expect the daughter of a marquess to slurp tea with an uneducated—”
“You were the one who introduced Alice to the works of Giovanni Plana in the first place.” Violet threw aside her lap blanket and went to the fire, prodding the smoldering coals in frustration.
She turned and examined her friend. The beautifully trimmed gown of bruised rose silk hung loose at Phoebe’s waist, and her mahogany hair did not have its usual shine.
“Why play the pompous aristocrat when we both know you don’t believe that nonsense?”
A shaft of sunlight fought its way through the gloom, and Phoebe reached out a hand as if to catch the beam.
“Odd, isn’t it?” The drawl slipped from her voice as she turned her palm this way and that in the slanted square of illumination. “However much I try to slip free of my father’s influence, it is his prejudices I parrot.”
The muscles in her face constricted, creating a smile so taut it exposed the skull beneath her porcelain skin. “Prodding at someone weaker when one feels low is a Hunt family failing, I’m afraid. To my credit, I don’t limit my antipathy to the lower classes. Grantham came in for his fair share.”
So much energy wasted erecting a facade of ambivalence. The truth was that Phoebe Hunt felt too much, cared too deeply, to walk comfortably in her skin.
Sunlight brushed past Violet, washing the walls with timid strokes. “You rescued Maisy White from her husband,” she said. “You stood by me when everyone mocked the idea of Athena’s Retreat. Why not let the rest of the world see your heart?”
“Shine a light into the dark corners?”
For a fleeting moment, their gazes met, and another woman stared out through Phoebe’s eyes: uncertain, lost, and in need of her friend. Violet froze, but a trace of sympathy must have revealed itself. As if sensing their attention, the sun withdrew, and Phoebe closed her fist hard on the sudden shadows. Throwing back her shoulders and baring her teeth against the very idea of vulnerability, Phoebe forced a brittle laugh. “Darling, the heart is nothing but a muscle with an outsized reputation.”
Letty popped her head around the door. “I’m sorry to intrude, my lady. I hoped . . .” She faltered when she saw Phoebe. “Oh. Excuse me, Lady Phoebe. I did not see your card downstairs.”
Silently, Violet cursed the interruption with a naughty word she shouldn’t know.
For her part, Phoebe squeezed her misery behind a mask of cool amusement and tossed her head, determined to act as though her encounter with Violet had never happened. She gestured to another armchair, hidden beneath a pile of books and papers.
“No, it’s good you’ve come, Letty. We’re here for the same reason, I suspect.”
Letty turned and regarded Violet with such sweet seriousness Violet’s stomach pitched.
“Nothing’s exploded, has it?” she asked. Milly and Willy had seemed suspiciously cheerful yesterday.
“Fanny Armitage’s head last night,” Phoebe answered. “It nearly separated from her scrawny little body with excitement at gossiping about you.”
Letty nodded in reluctant agreement. “I heard the story from Lady Olivia’s cousin. She was at my father’s emporium, gossiping with her aunt. It wasn’t terrible, not anything they haven’t said before . . .”
“It was bad enough,” Phoebe said.
Drat.
“Grantham is to blame for that mess,” Violet said, brushing coal dust from her hands. “He picked out the Thornton-Hammersmith ball and then never showed up. If he’d been there, Fanny would’ve never noticed me. What use is that blond gorgeousness of his if he won’t distract those nasty hens from pecking defenseless young ladies to death?”
Letty’s brows drew together in confusion, and a sense of unease climbed Violet’s spine. She crossed her arms, tucking her hands against her chest, chilled despite the fire.
“Lady Olivia reported your behavior as beyond eccentric,” Letty said.
“The ladies of my family have always had reputations as originals,” Violet reminded them.
“Yes, that is the problem.” Phoebe straightened in her chair. “You already have a history of social failure. Until now, you’ve managed to walk the line between unorthodox and outrageous. Your title and the support of members such as myself help keep you upright.”
The sight of Letty nodding piqued Violet’s temper. Weeks of rows between the two of them, and they picked today to link arms and lecture her. She’d been debauched (in the best way possible) in a moving carriage, and her world now stood upside down. Who had time to listen to a speech on etiquette?
“All I did was introduce Althea to a young man whose name I’d forgotten.”
Phoebe’s brow quirked. “This has nothing to do with Althea.”
“What else could it have been?” Violet asked.
Letty and Phoebe exchanged incredulous glances. Foreboding fluttered in Violet’s stomach, and she sat back in her chair. At her feet lay the ladies’ journal splayed open to the picture of the green gown.
“I saw you with him,” Phoebe answered, her voice soft with rare sympathy.
For one terrible moment, Violet thought Phoebe was speaking of what had happened in the carriage—the unbearable intimacy of her tears and Arthur’s touch.
“How could you have seen anything?” she whispered.
“I was there. You waltzed right by me,” Phoebe retorted. “I’m not surprised you didn’t notice, considering the looks that passed between you.”
“It was just a dance.” The lie was unmistakable.
Phoebe leaned forward. “I poured champagne down the front of Sir Peter Forthingull’s pants when he called Miss Lucy Petershaw a cow, and no one blinked an eye, because they were watching you dance.”
Letty nodded her approval at Forthingull’s fate, but the furrows between her pale brows remained. “According to Lady Olivia, Mr. Kneland hauled you away like a brute, without saying a word. She says you pressed yourself so close the cellist tipped over his chair in shock at the display.”
“How lurid,” Violet exclaimed, pulling the blanket back onto her lap, fussing until it lay perfectly smooth. “I had no idea Lady Olivia had the brains to invent such a story.”
“That was Fanny’s desc
ription, you can be sure,” said Phoebe. “As soon as the ladies began talking, I told everyone Kneland was the man who took a bullet for Dickerson. That may not have helped. Dickerson is a boor, with questionable ideas about hygiene.”
Curse Fanny Armitage. She’d stained the kindness of Arthur’s rescue.
“Regardless, you cannot act like the rebellious daughter of a marquess ‘giving one’ to a groomsman,” Phoebe scolded. “The end result will be worse than an irate papa running after the man with a bullwhip.”
“Mr. Kneland is not a servant, and that is a bizarre analogy,” Violet said. “It was one dance in public, not my first kiss behind the barn.”
Letty couldn’t help herself. “Did your papa really take a bullwhip to your groom?” she asked Phoebe.
Phoebe snorted. “Of course not. He wouldn’t waste the energy on a mere groom. He had his valet do it for him. Papa saved the real punishments for . . . Never mind. You are correct, Violet. Kneland is not a servant.” She dropped her air of bemusement. “He’s not a gentleman, either.”
“The reason everyone remarked on it is because you don’t go out to parties or balls, my lady,” Letty said. “They don’t know what you look like when you are happy.”
Violet turned her hands over in her lap. She’d managed to smear coal dust not only on the palms, but over the back of her glove as well. The situation required her close examination until she gathered her composure.
“Happy or in heat, it doesn’t matter,” Phoebe said. “If you’re going to tumble with the help, do it after the event.” She stalked across the room and peered out the window. “I have to get back to my work this afternoon. I’ve long overdue correspondence to finish with Herr Kolbe before I get to the next step in my research. Now, let’s make this clear. You are in trouble, Violet.”
“No one has said anything directly . . . ,” Letty began.
“They will,” Phoebe interjected. “You’ve caught Fanny Armitage’s interest. She’s the worst of the lot and has never liked you since you married Daniel. She’d been angling after him for ages.”
“They would have been much better matched. I never lived up to his expectations.”
Phoebe turned, a militant light in her eyes. “That is because he was cruel. He couldn’t stand that you had a better mind and tried to make you small in other ways.”
Was this true? Did Daniel cause Violet’s insecurities, or were her faults there all along, and he merely pointed them out?
“Blaming Daniel is easy because he isn’t here any longer,” said Violet. “If I had stood my ground in the beginning and insisted my work come first, things would have been different.”
“How could you? You wanted him to love you,” Letty whispered, as though it were shameful.
There it was, said aloud for all to hear. Violet’s greatest regret. She had wanted Daniel to love her, and no matter what she sacrificed, how she stuffed away anything he found objectionable—he never did.
If her husband couldn’t find a way to love her, why would anyone else?
“All this introspection is fascinating,” drawled Phoebe in a manner designed to let them know it was the opposite. “It doesn’t change the facts. The rumor mill is turning. This is the opposite of what we wanted. You must remain as far away from Mr. Kneland as possible.”
“Lady Phoebe is correct,” said Letty, as surprised as any of them that she and Phoebe agreed. “Rumors of any impropriety on your part spells disaster for us all.”
* * *
ARTHUR DONNED A mask of indifference and nodded at appropriate intervals, hands folded in his lap, body still.
No one would guess that all he could think of was kissing.
Kissing and . . .
“Have I not made myself clear? Shall I repeat my objections for the thousandth time, Mr. Kneland? Are you even listening?” Letty’s voice flattened into an unintelligible drone as two sides of an argument raged in his head.
One part of him insisted he should never have touched Violet in the carriage last night. Grey had hired Arthur to protect his stepmother, not seduce her. Even worse, Arthur cared about her feelings. He’d spoken to her of Deoiridh, let himself comfort and be comforted.
How long would it take to push those memories back down?
A darker, more forceful part wanted to follow Violet to her room to finish what they started. It hadn’t been enough, that one taste of her. If only they’d had more time.
Unaccustomed to his basest urges having any part of his decisions, Arthur suspected the fault lay with Violet. She might be an evil genius who’d invented a concoction to make men insane. Why else would his hard-won experience and common sense go flying out the window at the sight of her?
Hell, even at the scent of her.
If anyone had told him three weeks ago that the combination of slate, lilies, and ethanol would arouse him, he’d have laughed in their faces.
Well, not laughed. He wasn’t one for laughing. Since he met Violet, however, he’d been visited more than once by the urge to chuckle. Grin, even.
“In conclusion, as the Athena’s Retreat club secretary and in compliance with the bylaws of our club, specifically rule number 13, subsection 6, paragraph 18b, you cannot station a man at the connecting door between the front and the back of the club to check members’ names and likenesses against your list.”
Letty was pelting Arthur with arguments from behind a desk in the Athena’s Retreat office, the polished rosewood gleaming in a slice of sunlight. An echo of the softness of Violet’s skin tickled his fingers as he argued with himself.
“You need to stay away from Lady Greycliff.”
Jerking his head in surprise, Arthur cursed himself for his inattention. “I beg your pardon, Miss Fenley. What was that about subsection 6?”
“I finished speaking on that subject five minutes ago,” Letty snapped. “You were paying as little attention to our rules as you have the rules of society and the state of Lady Greycliff’s reputation.”
Could she know what had happened in the carriage? How?
Arthur swallowed his apprehension. “I aim to oversee security so Lady Greycliff can work on the formulas. If this conflicts with her reputation, so be it. The safety of the public takes precedence.”
“The safety of the public compelled you to dance with Lady Greycliff at the Thornton-Hammersmith ball?”
Arthur tapped his finger—once, twice—on the arm of his chair, regarding Letty without blinking.
The tiny mathematician was made of sterner stuff than most women, for she returned his stare with a fiercer one. “And after you pasted yourself to her like a stamp to an envelope . . .”
What? He’d done nothing of the sort, for goodness’ sake. Pasted himself?
“. . . you proceeded to drag her outside, like a marauder flinging his spoils over his shoulder and disappearing into the night.”
“That is a description straight from Minerva Press,” Arthur said. “I didn’t fling anyone. I offered to dance with Lady Greycliff so I could protect her.”
“From the bomb-wielding radicals on the dance floor?” she asked, her sarcasm as pointed as her chin.
He resisted the urge to cross his arms. “No. From the insult-wielding ladies.”
Sighing in acknowledgment, Letty rubbed at a spot on the desk with her finger. “It is not your place to intervene, Mr. Kneland. Those women are bored and vicious to an unreasonable degree. Fanny Armitage lives for another woman’s downfall, spreading spite across the ton as though it were butter.” Her finger pressed so hard against the wood the material began to pill.
“Do you know her well?” he asked.
Letty’s movements stilled, and she thrust her hands into her lap. “Only by reputation. I am not of sufficient social standing to mix with such elevated personages as Mrs. Armitage and her friends.”
“Lady Greyc
liff has family who will rally around her,” Arthur said. “Greycliff won’t stand for any slander.”
“And if it is not slander? If your past comes to light, Mr. Kneland?”
The crack of the broken arm of his chair punctured the sudden silence. With great care, Arthur unwrapped his fingers from the wood.
“Who did you hear it from?” he asked.
She jerked her chin up, her voice thinning in defiance. “Does it matter? The story is out there. I am not the only one who has been told. It is a matter of time before Lady Greycliff hears it.”
The longer the silence stretched, the more Letty fidgeted. Either she hadn’t meant to speak of the old scandal, or she felt guilty about how she’d revealed it.
“My past has nothing to do with my ability to protect Lady Greycliff,” Arthur said. This was the truth.
Letty frowned as though disappointed with him. “That is a matter of perspective. She will still have to go out in society after the Omnis have been thwarted and you have moved along. You know how those people are, Mr. Kneland. London society, the aristocracy—all of them. They won’t let people like us be happy.”
While not “of sufficient social standing” to be welcome in high society, Letty Fenley must have somehow suffered at their hands. Who had thwarted her happiness? Was she now seeking revenge?
“Lady Greycliff might be able to salvage her reputation,” she said, “but she will not be able to save this club if it is mired in scandal. This club is her life.”
“It is not much of a life if she cannot be herself.”
“Mr. Kneland,” she said, a thread of pity in her tone. “Lady Greycliff survived years of ridicule and cruelty to create Athena’s Retreat. A place that guarantees security and respect. She has a good life here among us. Please, do not be the one to take it away from her.” Compassion cushioned her words. “Grantham can take care of that lot. Once he marries her, Lady Greycliff will be protected. There is no good can come of people like us mixing with the aristocracy. It’s as I said: They are bored and cruel and cannot be secure of their elevated status unless they’re standing atop of the rest of us.”
A Lady's Formula for Love Page 12