He was astride a large black stallion, waiting by the park gates. Annalise gave the merest nod, barely acknowledging his presence, although she did note how other riders stayed away and none of the early morning strollers made comment, as had been their custom. Clarence and Mick fell back at a glance from the earl, who took his place at her side with a “Good morning, my lady.” When she simply moved her head, he let the silence fall between them, not hostile or awkward, simply accepting that was the way she wanted it. He followed her lead, kept her pace, all without another word. Annalise could feel his gaze trying to penetrate her veil, but he made no effort to press her into conversation, thankfully, since his curiosity would have put paid to the excursion. The ride was exhilarating, even for a tame park outing, yet Annalise was constantly aware of his presence at her side—and the note that had come for Rob first thing that morning. Company tonight. There were preparations to be made.
She made a jerking motion with her head, indicating the ride was over, then nodded again in dismissal when they reached the gates.
Lord Gardiner bowed from the waist. “My pleasure, ma’am. Tomorrow?”
Annalise made her voice low, hoarse-sounding. “Yes, please. Thank you.”
Gard watched her ride away, memorizing every detail of this intriguing woman and her horse. The mare had the three white stockings he recalled from his first view of the superb pair, two in the front, one in the rear. Oddly enough, he could have sworn they were the other way around the day she jumped the curricle, one in front, two in the rear. His incognita might be a lady, but there was something deuced havey-cavey about her. No matter. He had plenty of time to unravel the mystery, a mystery that only added to his fascination.
*
At an excruciatingly boring reception at Carlton House that evening, Lord Gardiner’s main entertainment was fending off flirtatious matrons, since the fledglings and their mamas were giving him a wide berth after the Drury Lane incident. He’d have to remember to reward Mimi for that bit of deliverance. His other amusement was in seeking his riding companion among the assembled ladies of Quality. Too short, too round, too dark, too blasted talkative—none had her innate dignity or grace of carriage or that delicate, almost fragile look that was belied by her easy handling of the spirited mare.
Oh, well, she would keep till morning. Mimi wouldn’t.
*
No one answered his eager knock at Laurel Street. He pushed the door open and stepped inside. No cheerful fire glowed in the parlor, no wine stood ready to be poured. Only one candle burned in the hall. In the kitchen no pots bubbled on the stove, no enticing aromas came from the ovens. The only food in sight was a big wedge of cheese being shared by a pair of mice in a cage on one of the chairs. It looked like the mice were going to have a better supper than he was, unless the mice were his supper.
“Annie?”
The housekeeper met him at the bottom of the stairs. She was wearing what he was coming to recognize, to his regret, as her damn-your-eyes pose: immovable, implacable, stick-thin arms crossed over nonexistent breasts, pointed chin up in the air, spectacles twitching on wrinkled nose as if she smelled something rotten—him.
“Filthy lecher,” was her evening’s greeting.
So much for the warmer, kinder feelings of two nights ago.
Chapter Seventeen
“Debaucher! Despoiler of children!”
Evidently, Mimi had arrived.
Gard had thought her a trifle young himself, and he never had been entirely comfortable with the situation. Still and all, dash it, he wasn’t going to give his head for washing to some blasted servant. A servant, moreover, who was not some old, loyal family retainer. A servant he didn’t even like!
“Enough, woman!” he thundered. “I am not in short pants to suffer your scold. Nor am I a child molester, dammit. The girl is old enough to know her own mind. She chose me and she chose this way of life!”
“She had no money and no family and the manager threatened her position at the theater if she did not take a lover to bring in more cash,” Annie raged right back, not backing down an inch from the black anger in his scowl. Grown men might take cover at Lord Gardiner’s temper, but Annalise Avery was made of stronger stuff. Besides, she was right. And somehow she was not frightened by this towering storm of male wrath, even if she could see his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, knowing they were aching to get around her neck. She had principles on her side, Annie reminded herself, going on: “She had to have food and clothing and a roof over her head. Do you call that a choice, sirrah?”
“She didn’t have to choose the life of an actress, deuce take it! She could have gone into service, a hundred things. Instead, she decided to use her looks and what talent she possesses to better herself.”
“Better? You call this”—wildly waving her arms at the house, the darkened hallway—“better? You call selling a young girl’s body better than honest work?”
“I call it the way of the world! And your sanctimonious ranting isn’t going to keep her out of my bed, because that’s where she wants to be. If not mine, someone else’s.”
Annie stamped her foot. “How can she know what she wants? She’s just a frightened little girl. But that man is forcing her into prostitution! He gets a share! Did you know that?”
Gard knew he was on shaky ground here, so he blustered even louder, shaking his fist in front of Annie’s spectacles in case that old bat was even more nearsighted than she was narrow-minded. “Of course I know the man is paid. It’s deplorable, but that’s how these things are handled, the same as an agent takes a share from an actress’s salary for getting her the role. That’s his job, to handle the details. The theater manager will keep any rough customers away from her”—at the thought of Repton, Gard was not even sure of that—“when he can.”
“And give her to villains like you instead!”
“Otherwise she’d be in a brothel, giving a bigger share to an abbess, or walking the street, prey to every pimp, pervert, and footpad.” He was satisfied with Annie’s horrified gasp. At least he’d managed to shock the virago into silence. “You might find that terrible to consider, but I find it outrageous when one of my own employees considers me so steeped in sin that nothing is beneath me! I’d dismiss you in a minute if I thought you’d leave. You’re like a burr beneath my skin, Mrs. Annie Lee, and I’ve a mind to end my irritation!”
“That’s right, pick on me when your position is indefensible.” She sputtered in outrage. “Oh, you are so righteous in your indignation, so noble, so honorable. By all that’s holy, my lord, what did you plan on doing with that child, read bedtime stories?”
He flushed, but gamely persevered. “I didn’t plan on raping the chit, you shrew. I wasn’t even looking forward to taking her maidenhead, if it truly exists. Some men thrive on being the first, you know, so a virgin is considered a delicacy; the fee is commensurately higher. There are even specialty houses that cater to such desires, houses which I have never visited, blast you for thinking the worst of me. I happen to prefer women who know all about pleasure and pleasuring a—”
Annie clapped her hands over her ears. “I couldn’t think that badly of you! I didn’t even know such horrors existed,” she screamed like a fishwife. “I have learned more about debauchery in this last sennight than I’ve known in all my twenty-one years!”
That took him aback. “Twenty-one years? You are one and—”
“In all my twenty-one years of service, of course.” Annie took a deep breath to calm herself before she made any more errors. Before the earl could ask another question, she went on the attack again. “How can you live with yourself, leading an innocent into your life of sin?”
“Deuce take it, the girl isn’t as pure as driven snow. Your chaste little Mimi blew me a kiss in front of half of London. All this nonsense about her innocence is pure fustian.”
“She was raised in a convent!”
“Gammon. You fell for her Banbury tale, that’s all,
and you are quick to blame me. Why she sought your sympathy, I don’t know, except she must have figured you’d take anyone else’s side but mine. She’d have done better to come to me if she wanted to inflate the price.”
“This is not about money, you…you…” His raised eyebrows belatedly reminded Annie that she was theoretically in this man’s power. “Your lordship.”
He shook his head, half in wonder that he didn’t beat the infuriating female. “I’ll never understand how you keep your naive morality in this house, Annie, but money is precisely what this is all about, not any act of conscience or otherwise. There is no way in hell that woman—not child, mind you—does not comprehend and approve what she is doing.”
“Then why is she upstairs right now, crying her eyes out?”
*
Lud, the girl did look like a babe, lost in the big bed. She was sixteen at the most. Hell, maybe fifteen. Ross’s stomach twisted. She was sleeping and her flowing blond locks were in schoolgirl braids on either side of pale, tear-stained cheeks. She was wearing a voluminous flannel nightgown—undoubtedly one of the housekeeper’s—instead of the flimsy lace thing laid over a chair.
“Damn and blast!”
The girl’s eyes snapped open. They were as large as he remembered, a pretty blue even, but red and swollen. He took a deep breath. “Mimi—”
She sobbed once and reached out for Annie, who gathered Mimi into her thin arms and sat on the bed, glaring at the earl. At least he supposed she was glaring through the spectacles. He would be, in her place. Tarnation, the chit was afraid of him! “Mimi, chérie, please do not be frightened. No one will harm you. I swear.”
She looked up uncertainly, clutching harder at Annie. “Mignon, monsieur. That is my name. Mignon Dupres.”
“Mignon? You are the same girl who waved to me from the stage, aren’t you?” Maybe there had been a terrible mistake. And maybe the theater manager would live till next week. Both were doubtful.
“Oui. They called me Mimi.”
The earl looked triumphantly at Annie, still holding the girl’s hand on the bed. “And you knew what that meant, that I might seek your company?”
“Oui, monsieur.”
She spoke softly, but he made sure Annie heard. “Why did you do that, mademoiselle, if you didn’t want to, ah, become—”
“Monsieur Bottwick said I must, to pay for the voice lessons, n’est-ce pas, so he could give me a bigger part in the next play.”
“Was there no one else to help with the cost? Your family?”
“Gone,” she whispered. “Papa was a wine merchant. But he was a royalist.”
It was a common enough story, except the Dupres family were not decadent members of the aristocracy, they were solid, middle-class citizens. The ones with all the morals. Oh, Lord. Annie was wearing that smug half smile he hated. Ross had to be sure. “This”—indicating the bedroom, the filmy negligee, his own presence—“is not what you want?”
While Mignon sobbed again, Gard felt his same presence looming larger and larger in the room, clumsy, overbearing, de trop. Annie handed the girl a handkerchief. After Mignon blew her nose, she looked up at him with watery eyes, full of fear.
“You can tell me, petite, tell me what you do want.”
“I want to marry a nice man and have babies of my own.”
Gard ran his hands through his already disturbed dark hair. He turned, not able to look in Annie’s direction, and muttered, “Why the bloody hell did you have to choose me?”
He thought it was a rhetorical question, but Mignon answered, “Because they said you were, how do you say, impuissant?”
“I know how to say it, blast it! And it’s not true!”
Annie staggered into the dressing room, her hand to her mouth. Gard couldn’t tell if she was laughing or embarrassed or merely sparing his blushes. He grimaced, feeling the heat in his cheeks. Blushing at his age, and in front of a puritan and an infant! What a damnable coil.
Mignon hiccuped and sniffed and gave him a valiant smile. “Then if it’s not true, monsieur, I shall try to be brave.” She scrunched down in the bed, her eyes screwed shut, her arms rigid at her sides.
“Blister it, I don’t take unwilling women! Or children.”
“Then that chien Bottwick will find someone else,” Mignon told him in a pitiful little voice.
It was true. That’s how the whole hobble began, trying to keep her from Repton. Devil take it, the girl’s fate was sealed anyway, he could at least make it as pleasant for her as possible. At this moment, however, he felt about as much desire for the chit as he did for Annie.
“No, dash it, there has to be another way. I’ll find one somehow. Heaven alone knows where. You don’t move from here till I decide what to do,” he ordered sternly, making it plain that while he was taking responsibility for her, he was not best pleased. The door slamming behind his departure reinforced the message.
Annie came back into the bedroom and hugged the girl, not even noticing when her eyeglasses became dislodged, she was so relieved. There was nothing she could have done for the girl, nowhere she could have sent her, and not enough money to keep her from harm’s way for long. Lord Gardiner had done the honorable thing. He may have needed a nudge in the right direction to get his attention above his britches, but true nobility won out. “He’ll take care of you, Mignon,” she reassured the girl. “You can trust him, once he gives his word.”
She knew it to be true. She smiled and went down to give the mice another bit of cheese.
*
Cholly was concerned about Lord Gardiner’s problem. Not Mimi, just the odd rumors, and now this French ladybird Gard couldn’t talk around.
His round face puckered in consternation. “Wasn’t expecting to see you here tonight.” “Here” was White’s, where the earl found his friend sprawled in a comfortable leather chair with a book, a glass of port, and a cigar. “Mean to say, I’ve got a houseful of sisters, nowhere I can go to blow a cloud. Thought you had other plans.”
“They didn’t work out.” Gard sighed as he lowered himself into the chair and signaled for a glass.
“Want to toddle over to Mother Ignace’s? I hear she’s got some new girls.”
Gard shuddered, thinking of those new girls, tender young females, crying their innocence away. “No!” Cholly looked startled at his vehemence, so he explained, “Imagine your sisters lost and hungry. Maybe in a place like that.”
Cholly sat up and frowned. “That’s revolting, Gard. I’d call a man out for saying such things if he wasn’t my best friend. And a better shot.”
“No offense meant, Cholly. Just, oh, blast, that little French warbler turned out to be a littler French Cit. Selling herself instead of starving, with that bastard Bottwick’s help. I just can’t stomach it.”
Cholly loosened his neckcloth. “I see what you mean about m’sisters. I might wish them to the devil, but still and all, mean to take care of them.”
“Still and all, they are all somebody’s sister! Or daughter, or something! I never thought about it much either till this blasted Mignon turned into a watering pot in my bed.”
“So what are you going to do with her?”
Gard took a sip of his drink. “Damned if I know. Imagine if I took her home to the countess. She’d skin me alive. And if I adopt the chit, pay for her singing lessons and stuff, no one will believe I’m not keeping her anyway. She’ll never find that husband she wants. For sure I can’t throw her back to that shark Bottwick, either.” He had another drink.
“What can she do?” Cholly wanted to know.
“You mean besides stir up hornets’ nests? She sings a little, and that blasted convent must have taught her something. Needlework, pianoforte, I’d guess.” He laughed. “If you’re thinking of recommending her for a governess, I’d add that she speaks French like a native.”
“Not a governess, exactly,” Cholly deliberated, puffing on his cigar. “You know, m’sisters could use a little polish. Trying to fire a
ll five off at once was a mistake. Told my mother, but they’re all of an age, or near enough as makes no difference.”
“I danced with one of them at Almack’s, didn’t I? Sorry, I can’t remember which. She had your color hair, though.”
“Carroty. They all do. And no one can tell them apart, and not just the twins. They’re pretty enough, and all have respectable dowries, but they’ve got no style. Just country girls, after all.”
“Young misses aren’t supposed to cut a dash, Cholly.”
“Yes, but m’sisters get lost there with the Incomparables and the heiresses,” he noted dismally. “They need something to set them apart.”
“Something like a French doxie? Your wits have gone begging!”
“You said she’s innocent, and I never did see a Frenchwoman without a good sense of fashion. Told m’mother the chits needed dressing up, but she’s more interested in her roses and dogs.”
“You really think you could hire Mignon on as some kind of fashion adviser?”
“Got to do something if I’m not going to have all five of them around the rest of my life! She’d be more like a companion or something. You know, go about with the girls, show them how to go on, music lessons, a little French. M’mother won’t care that the chit’s been on the stage; she ain’t so straitlaced. She’s only concerned with bloodlines for her hounds.”
“But what about the expense?” He knew his friend wasn’t plump in the pocket, but Gard couldn’t give insult by offering to pay Mignon’s salary, although he’d gladly pay it, twice over.
“Well, m’brother—he’s the head of the family now, don’t you know—holds the purse strings for the girls’ come-outs. Guess he’d be as happy as I am to do anything to get them off his hands. I could tell him it’s an investment.”
“And I’ll convince Mignon she’ll be happy as a grig.” Gard leaned back in his chair, his muscles finally relaxing. “What would I do without you, Cholly?”
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