With an effort, Jane tugged her gaze back to her dining partner. “I’ve no doubt he does,” she said airily. “But they don’t matter.”
“You are a remarkably tolerant woman, then, aren’t you?”
“No. I’m not.” She considered her reply. Knowing Edmund didn’t care for Bellamy made her a little more cautious. “Everyone has a right to privacy,” she finally said.
Bellamy merely looked skeptical and started fooling about with his utensils.
“That knife is for fruit, I think,” Jane murmured.
“Are you certain of that?”
“Mostly.”
Lady Alleyneham, blithe and breathless as always, spoke above the quiet chat around the table. “How I do admire those pearls! And it’s so good to see you out and about. Are you feeling quite the thing, Lady Sheringbrook?”
At the sound of the name Sheringbrook, Jane dropped her fork. But the voice that replied to the name was cultured and female. “I am well, thank you.”
Sanity returned in a quick flash: Lady Sheringbrook. The mother of Jane’s nemesis. Dowager viscountess and unfortunate mother to a card cheat, she sat close to the head of the table: a woman in late middle age, her hair prematurely snowy, her posture straight and proud. Gray silk and a set of large and beautifully matched pearls added to her dignity.
Yet as Jane watched, a tremor shook the woman’s hand, and her fork clattered so that all the food fell from it.
“I do beg your pardon,” she said. The statement sounded tired, as though it had been trotted out too many times.
Freddie Pellington, a friendly young dandy to the dowager’s left, said, “Dash it, Lady Sheringbrook, won’t you allow me—”
“I’m fine, Mr. Pellington, as I have told you before.” The woman’s voice was steel beneath velvet-soft diction. “Simply because my hands grow disobedient does not mean you need be.”
Abandoning her fork, she clasped her hands together. Twitches racked the folded fists every few seconds. She had no more control over her own extremities than she did over her son. Yet she sat straight, her face serene.
Pity was too small an emotion for a woman with such determined dignity. Jane decided on respect instead.
Louisa broke the awkward silence. “Will you try the brioche, ma’am? The pastry cook is most eager that we should admire his talents. I believe he uses cheese curds in the making of it.” At the foot of the table, Louisa took a bit of the rich bread for herself, then motioned for a footman to hand the platter around.
By tacit agreement, brioche became the new staple on everyone’s plate. When everyone was crumbling bread about, the viscountess’s hands might do what they wished, and she need not go hungry.
Well done, Louisa. Jane grinned at her friend and stuffed a bite of the buttery bread in her mouth. The crumbs melted on her tongue, salty-sweet.
In the delight of eating delicious food and admiring her friend’s perceptive manners, Jane had forgotten her dinner companion. “You seemed startled, Lady Kay, to see Lady Sheringbrook here.”
She turned back to Bellamy to see him regarding her closely. Close indeed; their faces were but a foot and a half apart. She had never noticed before how much gray threaded through his hair. Though she had assumed he was in his late thirties, he must be older.
The notion that she had seen him incorrectly unsettled her, though it was none of his doing. “Not at all. I’ve never met the lady before.”
“Yet her name means something to you?”
Jane waved the hand that held her brioche. “I’ve met her son before. That’s all. I think everyone’s met her son.” She gave a little laugh to show that the subject was of no importance.
Bellamy seemed interested, though. “Her son? He’s—oh, what’s the popular cant now? Not the thing?”
“I would hardly say so, with his mother sitting at the same table.” Jane kept her voice low.
“But in private company . . .”
She gave in. “Private company with Lord Sheringbrook is no place to be.”
Bellamy settled back in his chair. “Please forgive my curiosity, Lady Kay. I simply don’t want to make a blunder by falling in with the wrong sort. A man of business must be careful. You understand?”
“Oh, I do indeed. A woman of not-business must be careful, too.” She paused. “You’d best call me Lady Kirkpatrick.”
“Your wish is my command.” His smile was all white teeth and roguery.
When Edmund had spoken that phrase—your wish is my command—Jane had wished for him. Now the phrase itself reminded her of her husband. How unfair, that he should take ownership of simple phrases when the world already contained far too many reminders of his presence.
Such as, well, his presence itself. Jane peeked at him beneath her lashes. He was still in conversation with Louisa’s aunt, Lady Irving. Whatever she was crowing about, he gave every appearance of being fascinated.
Lord, he had good manners.
Jane turned away from him. “Tell me, Mr. Bellamy. How long were you in India?”
His smile slid to one side. “Would you care to make a guess?”
“I shouldn’t. I don’t want to sound insulting or ignorant, and I don’t have enough knowledge to avoid them both.”
“The two greatest sins of society. You are right to avoid them. As a matter of fact, I’ve been away for twenty years.”
“You must have been very young when you left.”
He shrugged. “Some would say I was old enough to know better. Though some would say I never learned to act my age.”
Jane cast another glance in Edmund’s direction. Now he had the countess pounding his forearm and chortling.
“Age doesn’t matter at all,” she said. Certainly Lady Irving had more energy than any young woman Jane had ever met.
“Ah, you are flattering me!”
Jane turned back to Bellamy with some surprise. “No, I wasn’t speaking of you.” She realized this wasn’t precisely polite. “I mean, I’m sure it’s true of you as well. As it is of . . . many people.”
He let her floundering pass. As the meal meandered on, the hard look never returned to Bellamy’s eyes. Instead, as he spoke with Jane—asking her questions about London, tugging forth her opinions—he seemed to soften. There was something lonely about the man. He’d been gone for so long, England must now seem foreign to him. Perhaps he had even left behind loved ones in India, though he never mentioned a family.
“Do you have a family?” She couldn’t resist asking, though the question had nothing to do with his just-completed tale about an elephant that had been trained to pick peaches and drop the food for poor children.
“Ah.” He shifted topics smoothly. “You are the first to ask me such a question, my lady.”
He looked up and down the length of the table; Jane couldn’t tell if his gaze snagged on Edmund, or if it only seemed that way because hers did. “I had a family once, long ago. Before I left for India. But they were lost to me.”
“I don’t mean to pry.” Jane paused. “Well, yes, I do. Did they meet with an accident? I only wonder because you seem to be missing them. Or someone.”
“Yes, they met with an accident, and I lost them all at once.” He smiled. “But it was so long ago. We should not allow the events of decades ago to spoil our lives now.” He raised a wineglass, which he’d had filled rather a lot of times. “If there’s anything I miss while I travel, it’s good company. And that’s not found by poking through old memories. It’s found at table.”
As he spoke, his voice rose, drawing more than a few curious glances. “Hear, hear,” chimed in Freddie Pellington, who clinked glasses with Lady Sheringbrook.
As others followed suit, a round of impromptu toasts circled the table. Lord Weatherwax, a cheerful inebriate with wild white hair, toasted the drink itself. Lady Irving toasted Louisa and Xavier, calling the latter a “rapscallion.”
Jane approved. Raising her own glass, she announced, “I don’t have anything to say
. But I’ve never given a toast before, and I wanted to.”
“A good enough reason. Drink up, everyone,” barked Lady Irving.
Xavier shook his head. “Jane, you are a rascally imp.” He lifted his glass. “To my rascally imp of a cousin, and my old friend Kirkpatrick. I can think of no one in whose hands I would rather have placed Jane, except for those of a madhouse keeper.”
Jane frowned. “Wait. Are you giving me a compliment or him a curse?”
“My dear cousin, it is a fervent hope for your future happiness.”
“Then just say that instead.”
“Now it won’t sound original.” Xavier regarded his glass with some doubt. “Ah, well. For a good cause. Best wishes for future happiness to our newly wed pair. And to the rest of you, too. Why should all of you be denied my best wishes, simply because you didn’t happen to marry my cousin Jane?”
At the opposite end of the table, Louisa added, “Very diplomatic, and sensible, too. Good wishes cost the giver nothing, but may mean everything to the one receiving them.”
“Lady Xavier is always saying wise things like that,” Xavier said.
A small smile touched Louisa’s lips. “Lord Xavier thinks he can discomfit me by analyzing everything I say. But if he recalls the fact that I married him, he will surely realize that I cannot be discomfited.”
Jane said, “Xavier, I think she just gave you a compliment and a curse, all at once.” The rest of the table relaxed into chuckles and chattering.
“Happiness in marriage,” Bellamy muttered at Jane’s side. “There’s a fable as sure as the City of Atlantis.”
“Not at all. Why, just look.” She indicated the foot of the table, from which Louisa regarded her husband with a smile. It was the sort that ought to be reserved for private moments, intimate pleasures. There was nothing salacious in it; it was just so honest. The smile of a woman delighted to be in company with the man she loved; the smile of a woman in love.
“Miracles do happen,” Bellamy admitted. “Families are lost, then found again. Men are born who change the course of a nation. Today of all days, we should remember that.”
“Why today?”
He blinked at her. “Why? Well—because. We’re drawing near Christmas.”
“Then why today? Why not . . . oh, five weeks from today, or however long it is?”
“Ah, Lady Kirkpatrick, when you reach my age, you’ll regard every day as an opportunity. To right a wrong, to do one’s best.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Jane decided.
The meal continued with toasts and brioche and the promise of new day after new day. It was all going rather well. Eventually she would master this life as a baroness.
Since she wasn’t given all that much to master, it ought to be within her power.
Again she searched out Edmund across the table. He was in full bloom, bringing a laugh to Lady Irving’s lips and a smile to the watching Lady Sheringbrook.
His mouth made all the right shapes, but there was no joy in his eyes. Had they always been like that, or had she never looked closely enough to notice before?
Jane wondered whether happiness in marriage—though not a fable—was a rarer miracle than she had supposed.
Chapter 12
Concerning Revolution
All through dinner, Turner had chatted with Jane, playing the man of business, the world traveler. And all through dinner, Edmund had been forced to play a part, too: the friendly bridegroom who had nothing on his mind but the meal before him. And the conversation of his hostess’s blunt-spoken aunt, Lady Irving, who sat at his right.
“You’ll never keep that wife of yours satisfied if you can’t keep her closer than this,” the widowed countess said after two glasses of wine, not that she needed the assistance of spirits to speak her mind. “Brides need a lot of tending, you young rogue.”
“Tending? Like gardens?” Edmund blinked innocently at his dinner companion.
“I thought you’d enough experience with women not to be such a ninny.” With a practiced hand, she straightened her bright orange shot-silk turban. “Tending, man. Tending. Make her feel—hmm.”
“Treasured,” said Edmund, just as Lady Irving added, “Pleasured.”
They looked at one another and grinned. “Treasured would work, at that,” the countess granted. “But she’s neither treasured nor pleasured while she’s sitting next to that jumped-up ninny of a tradesman.”
Edmund could hardly disguise his pleasure in hearing Turner called a jumped-up ninny. “Perhaps,” he replied, “my wife is so well satisfied with my company that she has no need for large doses.”
The countess’s smile vanished. “It would be dangerous to think so.” She set down her wineglass, turning its stem between her fingertips. “Dangerous to take a wife for granted, especially at this early stage of your marriage.”
“Dangerous? How so?” Edmund tried for a light tone. From the corner of his eye, he watched Jane and Turner. The false Bellamy. The liar who held Edmund’s past and future in his blunt-fingered hands. Hands that he had just lain over Jane’s.
Edmund’s insides felt knotted and acid-burned. Somehow, he had to get Turner out of his life and away from those who relied on him, but he had no more notion how to do that now than he had twenty years before.
Lady Irving rested her hand on his arm, drawing his gaze back to her. “Think about the sort of marriage you want, young man. If you’d like to whore around London, coming home only to get an heir, then by all means, carry on.”
“I would never treat my wife thus.” Well, not the whoring-around-London part.
Spin spin spin. Lady Irving rotated her wineglass by its stem again, then folded her hands in her lap. “I suppose not. But Jane is my niece’s cousin-in-law, which makes her almost my family. I would hate to think she married a damned fool.”
“So would I.”
With a low bark of laughter, the countess said, “That’s a start, young man. That’s a start. Now, mind you keep her pleasured and treasured.”
“I’m trying,” Edmund muttered. “If she would only let me give—”
He cut himself off, not wanting to discuss the failure of his usual being-good-to-everyone methods on Jane, but the countess seemed to understand. “It’s like that, then; I see. Jane can be a stubborn wench. Just like her aunt-in-law, or whatever relation I am to her.”
Her garish orange turban slipped, loosing a few strands of auburn hair. “I might have spoken out of turn; I can guarantee it won’t be the last time I do so. But mind you think less about what she won’t allow and more about what she will. Don’t give up on that wife of yours. She’s a girl after my own heart, and that means she won’t give hers lightly.”
“Yes,” Edmund said, not knowing exactly what he was agreeing with. Jane had told him—once, only once—that her heart was already his. But for how long if there was always a wall between them, whether of plaster and brick or of deathly politeness? How long could love last, unfed and unwatered? And did he even want it to?
At the mere thought, fed, his stomach wrenched with a protest. With Turner across the table, and Lady Irving testing his resolve to keep a damned smile on his face, he regretted every bite he’d choked down.
Fortunately, the conversation around the table took a turn then, and the group started toasting one another. By the time the women rose to leave the dining room, Edmund had put a lid on the dreadful feelings Turner awoke. He had slipped once, early in the meal; Jane had caught him glaring at Turner. She could not have known why, yet the distance that slivered between her and Turner had pleased Edmund.
She came no closer to Edmund, but as long as she was farther away from Turner, he would settle for that. And though there was no opportunity to speak to her before the women trailed into the drawing room, leaving the men behind at table, her departure placed walls between her and Turner. Physical walls, surely more of a barrier than the one between her and Edmund.
He would settle for that, too.
>
Around the long wooden table, Xavier offered cigars. “From Fox of St. James’s,” he said, naming one of the ton’s favorite tobacconists. Port came next. The ever-tipsy Lord Weatherwax, whose blunted nose was already beginning to redden, took a glass in each hand and had drained both before the other men had laid hold of their own port.
“Dreadful weather and whatnot,” said cherubic Freddie Pellington, standing before the fire and rubbing his hands together. “Dash it, London’s no place for a gentleman in autumn. Can’t keep my cravat starched properly with all the mist in the air.”
“Damned nuisance to come back to London so early.” Lord Alleyneham, a stern-faced earl, hooked his ebony-headed walking stick on the back of his chair, then belched and stretched out a hand for a glass of port. “Ought to be in the country shooting, what? I would be, but for the damned rebels at Peterloo. Bloody traitors.”
Ah, the Peterloo massacre, as the papers were calling it. Edmund had lately been so caught up in his own problem—the problem that now stood in the corner of the dining room, playing with a gold cigar case—that he’d forgotten the lords who had left town had been recalled for a special session of Parliament. Over the summer, a peaceful worker protest in Manchester had been broken up by cavalry, with gruesome results. The Prince Regent and Home Secretary were determined such a thing would never happen again: not the attack, but the very act of protest.
“Ought to have been shot, the lot of them,” Lord Alleyneham was now adding. His tongue chased the last drops of port around his glass.
“Many of them were shot,” Xavier said. “Yet they were not armed, were they? They were simply hungry. On the backs of people like these rests our livelihood; should we not lessen their burdens when we can?”
Lord Alleyneham’s mouth went flat. “Sounding rather Whiggish, aren’t you? Thought you were a good Tory. Member of White’s and all that.”
“Goodness has nothing to do with one’s political leanings.” Xavier bowed his head to the older earl. “Though I am honored that you should associate goodness with me in any way.”
Turner flipped open his cigar case, then snapped it shut. “If the Peterloo crowd had gone at the cavalry with bricks and bats, there would be none of this puling. Either they’d have got what they wanted, or they’d be punished right clear.”
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