by French Leave
* * * *
Lady Helen had little time to dwell on her sorrows. She and her husband were promised to attend the opera with Lord Waverly and his countess, those two usually combative gentlemen being reluctantly agreed that their appearance, together and apparently on good terms, would serve to scotch any resurgence of gossip concerning Lord Waverly’s abrupt departure for the Continent four years previously. Not that Sir Ethan cared what the tabbies might say about the earl—they could, after all, speak no worse than the truth—but he was well aware of his wife’s rôle in the affair, and did not wish to have her long-awaited return to Society marred by hints of past scandal.
And so it was that when Lord Waverly ushered Lisette into the box hired for the occasion by Sir Ethan, they found their host and hostess already ensconced there. Lady Helen, resplendent in gold lace and diamonds, quite cast Lisette’s white satin and modest décolletage into the shade. But if the young countess was aware of her disadvantage, she was far too interested in her surroundings to give it a second thought. Lisette’s wide-eyed gaze swept the cavernous room, taking in scarlet-curtained and gilt-trimmed boxes occupied by ladies in glittering jewels and men in deceptively sober black and white. Her survey came to an abrupt end, however, at the sight of the woman in the shell-shaped carriage. She was holding court in a box on the opposite side of the opera house. Her magnificent titian hair sparkled with emeralds, and her shockingly low-cut gown clung provocatively to long and shapely legs.
“Dampened,” muttered Lady Helen at her elbow.
This sounded so much like the word which Lord Waverly had forbidden her to use that Lisette was momentarily taken aback. “Pardon, madame?"
“Her petticoats,” Lady Helen explained, giving a slight nod in Mrs. Hutchins’s direction. “She has dampened them to make her skirts cling. It is supposed to be quite the rage in Paris, is it not? But then, I daresay they hardly discussed such things at the convent.”
As if she knew she was under discussion, Mrs. Hutchins chose that moment to glance at their box, her lips curving invitingly. Lady Helen’s suspicious gaze shifted to the gentlemen of the party. Unsurprisingly, the earl had raised his quizzing glass and was ogling his former mistress reminiscently, and as for her husband—yes, he nodded ever so slightly in acknowledgement, a message so subtle it would have gone unnoticed by anyone less intimately acquainted with him, but to a betrayed wife, as unmistakable as if the words had been tattooed upon his forehead.
Sir Ethan, no great lover of opera, soon left the box in search of refreshments, and Lady Helen, seeing Lisette’s attention fixed on the drama unfolding on the stage below, seized the opportunity to address Lord Waverly.
“Mrs. Hutchins appears in excellent looks,” she remarked in as nonchalant a manner as she could contrive.
Lord Waverly’s left eyebrow arched toward his hairline. “What, pray, do you know of Mrs. Hutchins?”
Lady Helen answered the question with one of her own. “How, pray, do men come by the notion that women’s silence on certain subjects must denote ignorance? Of course I knew that you were keeping Mrs. Hutchins even while you were paying court to me. And now that you have returned to Town, do you plan to resume the connection?”
“I am flattered by your interest in my affairs, my dear, but no, I do not. I daresay Mrs. Hutchins has found herself a protector far plumper in the pocket than ever I was.”
“You are correct,” Lady Helen said. “She has.”
The bleakness of her tone and the misery in her eyes told him far more than her words ever could. “0-ho! The sainted Sir Ethan has lost his halo, has he? If you cherished hopes that I might cut him out, I fear you are doomed to disappointment. Having sunk her talons into such deep pockets, Sophia Hutchins will not retract them easily. No, if it is revenge you desire, your best bet is to take a lover of your own.”
Lady Helen regarded him speculatively. “You once offered your services in that capacity.”
Lord Waverly flicked open his enameled snuffbox and availed himself of a generous pinch. “Am I to understand that you have decided to accept that offer?”
“I’m not—that is, I don’t—” Lady Helen glanced across the opera house. Mrs. Hutchins’s box was empty, the courtesan departed and her court dispersed. Was she even now trysting with Sir Ethan in some secluded anteroom? Lady Helen’s chin rose. “Yes,” she pronounced decisively. “I have.”
* * * *
Lady Helen’s resolution almost failed her when, on the fateful evening appointed for the rendezvous, her husband entered her chamber through the connecting door from his own bedroom. Upon seeing her applying the finishing touches to a toilette of peacock-colored satin embroidered with gold, he was moved to inquire as to her plans for the evening.
“Surely you haven’t forgotten the Lavenham’s ball!” chided Lady Helen. “It promises to be the crush of the Season.”
Sir Ethan grimaced. “Try as I might, I’ll never understand why the prospect of being ‘crushed’ should appeal to me.”
“You don’t wish to go?”
“To be honest, me dear, I’ve made other plans,” he confessed, crossing the room to take her in his arms. “But I’ll cancel mine, if you’ll cancel yours.”
“You would?” Lady Helen asked hopefully.
Sir Ethan snapped his fingers in the air. “Like that,” he declared, then unwittingly sealed his fate. “T’was only a late supper in Green Street. Nothing that can’t wait.”
Lady Helen stiffened in his embrace. “So you propose merely to postpone this—supper—to a later date.”
“Aye, I suppose so.”
“Pray do not trouble yourself on my account,” she said, turning away. “Unlike your ‘supper,’ the Lavenham ball cannot be postponed. He—they will be expecting me, and it would look odd indeed if I failed to put in an appearance.”
Sir Ethan, knowing a lost cause when he saw one, did not press her. She had been in London for less than a se’ennight, and already the loving wife of Lancashire was reverting back to the cold Society beauty he had married four years earlier. He did not begrudge her the gaiety of the London Season; this was, after all, the world she was born to, even if it was one he could never fully share. He had never meant to keep her so long absent from it. Indeed, for a time during the first year of their marriage he had believed, perhaps naïvely, that they might be able to enjoy the best of both worlds. Now, however, he was not so sure.
After seeing his wife on her way, he returned to his chamber and donned his own evening dress, then set out for Green Street. Contrary to Lady Helen’s assumptions, he did not call on Mrs. Hutchins, but instead presented himself at a house some distance further down the street, which had the distinction of being the London residence of Lord David Markham’s political crony Sir Lawrence Latham, with whom Sir Ethan was somewhat acquainted. Upon being ushered into the drawing room, Sir Ethan discovered his host deep in conversation with two earlier arrivals. Although he had occasionally seen Baron Grenville and Earl Grey at Brooks’s, he was not well acquainted with them, and their presence at what he had imagined to be an intimate supper came as something of a surprise. Sir Ethan was not easily intimidated by rank—he had, after all, confronted no less a personage than the Duke of Reddington to demand the hand of his daughter in marriage—but he was slightly taken aback by this gathering of the Whig party’s leading lights under one roof.
“Ah, Sir Ethan, so pleased you could join us,” said Sir Lawrence, coming forward to greet his guest. “Lord Grenville, Lord Grey, allow me to present Sir Ethan Brundy.”
After introductions were made and handshakes exchanged, the dinner gong sounded. Sir Lawrence led the way to the dining room where, over turtle soup and turbot with lobster sauce, Sir Ethan’s opinion was solicited on several bills currently before Parliament and his replies received with nods of approval, leaving him feeling very much like a schoolboy being praised by his tutors. Not until the covers had been removed and the port brought out did Sir Lawrence reveal the purpose
of the gathering.
“You may have heard, Sir Ethan, that the Marquess of Cutliffe was killed in a riding accident,” began his host.
“Aye, that I ‘ave,” agreed Sir Ethan. “I never met ‘is lordship, but ‘is brother, Lord David Markham, is a good friend.”
“And a good man in the House of Commons,” Lord Grenville agreed. “But with his brother’s death, Lord David assumes the title, and must surrender his seat in the Commons.”
“One hopes, of course, that he will remain active in politics by joining us in the Lords,” put in Lord Grey.
“I can’t imagine ‘im not doing so, as soon as ‘is brother’s affairs are settled,” Sir Ethan assured him.
“I trust you are correct. Nevertheless, there remains the problem of his vacated seat.”
“We hope to persuade a promising young man to stand for election in Lord David’s stead,” explained Lord Grenville.
“You’ll ‘ave an ‘ard time finding someone even ‘alf as competent,” observed Sir Ethan sympathetically.
Three pairs of eyes pinned him with a look. “You underestimate yourself, Sir Ethan.”
As comprehension dawned, Sir Ethan set down his glass with a thud. “Did I miss something?”
“I think we understand each other very well,” replied his host. “We want you to consider standing for election to the House of Commons—specifically, for the seat soon to be vacated by Lord David Markham.”
“And what,” asked Sir Ethan slowly, “makes you think I would stand a chance of being elected?”
“I suspect your chances are better than you think,” asserted Sir Lawrence. “Only consider, you are in the unique position of being able to attract both the common workers, who will no doubt embrace you as one of their own, and the landed gentry, by virtue of your wife’s connections.”
Sir Ethan smiled. “As to me wife’s people, I wouldn’t count on getting any support from that quarter, if I were you. They’re all dyed-in-the-wool Tories.”
* * * *
Lord Waverly paced the marble floor at the foot of the grand staircase, glancing up to check the time on the hall clock. It was already past ten o’clock, and the Lavenham ball had begun over an hour earlier. It was expected to be one of the crushes of the Season, and he and Lady Helen had determined that their brief absence from the festivities would go undetected in such a crowd. Furthermore, the architect who had designed Lavenham House early in the previous century had possessed the foresight to equip the ballroom with any number of conveniently placed alcoves where assignations of an amorous nature might be kept with no one the wiser. Anticipation made him impatient. In less than an hour, he would finally have the woman who had haunted his thoughts for four long years—and at the same time have his revenge upon the man who had humiliated him, the same man to whom he was now, most gallingly, deeply in debt. He glanced at the clock again. Lady Helen would already be there, no doubt wondering what was keeping him.
A movement from above caught the corner of his eye and drew his gaze up the sweep of the great staircase. Lisette, her nose in the air, slowly descended the stairs. She wore the same white satin gown she had worn to the opera—it was, after all, the only evening dress she possessed—but now its demure folds were plastered to her legs, and water dripped from the points of its van-dyked hem.
“Have we had a sudden rainstorm?” Waverly asked this vision in some bemusement.
“I have dampened my skirts,” Lisette announced unnecessarily. “I am very daring, n’est-ce pas?”
“Indeed you are,” the earl agreed. “You risk catching your death of cold.”
Lisette’s face fell. “That is what you think of when you look at me, that I will catch cold?”
“That, and the likelihood that you will ruin the carpet.”
“You did not think of colds and carpets last night, when Madame Hutchins wore a gown so!”
“No—nor, for that matter, did I think of Mrs. Hutchins at all,” said Waverly. Ah, but could you say the same of Lady Helen Brundy, an unwelcome voice intruded. In an attempt to drown it out, the earl barked at Lisette, “Go to your room and change your clothes. Do not wait up for me; I shall see you in the morning.”
Lisette regarded him with a wounded expression. “You would go without me?”
“My good child, you have nothing else suitable for evening wear,” Waverly pointed out in some exasperation. “What would you suggest I do?”
“You could stay home and keep me company,” she said coaxingly.
The earl looked away. “Impossible. We have already promised to attend. I will make your excuses to Lady Lavenham.”
Having dispatched Lisette to her chamber, Waverly set out on foot for Lavenham House, but the episode was sufficient to destroy his anticipation for the approaching rendezvous. He had, he reminded himself, no reason at all to feel guilty. He had never promised Lisette that he would be faithful to her; in fact, quite the reverse: he had been brutally honest with her regarding his past behavior, assuring her that, while she could rely upon his discretion, she had best not look for fidelity. Indeed, he was probably wise to take a lover at once, lest Lisette note his abstinence and develop unrealistic expectations. Yes, he would establish an amorous connection with Lady Helen, at least until—until what? Until they tired of the game, he supposed, or until Ethan Brundy discovered the arrangement and dragged his errant wife back to Lancashire, rendering it necessary for him to establish a new inamorata. That, he reflected bitterly, was the trouble with marriage: it made the simplest things so damnably complicated!
In his present state of mind, he was hardly surprised when he arrived at the Lavenham’s ball only to discover (by dint of a few discreet inquiries) that Lady Helen had already left. Biting back a curse, he danced once with his hostess’s homely daughter, escaped to the card room where he won fifty guineas at whist, and took his leave as soon as he could do so without attracting comment.
He returned to his own house to find it dark, save for a branched candelabrum on a side table in the foyer. He was aware of a pang of disappointment. Had he, perhaps, expected Lisette to wait up for him after all? How deucedly awkward that would have been, to find one’s wife awaiting one’s return from trysting with another woman—never mind how unsatisfactorily that proposed tryst had turned out. Picking up the candelabrum, he mounted the stairs to his bedchamber.
Upon reaching the second-floor corridor, however, he paused for a moment outside Lisette’s door. He turned the knob and opened the door, lifting the candelabrum to illuminate the darkened interior. The bed curtains were drawn back, revealing a slumbering Lisette swathed in crisp linen sheets. Her cropped and tumbled curls surrounded her head like a halo, and he thought what a waste it would have been, hiding them forever beneath a nun’s wimple.
Tearing his gaze away, he surveyed the room. A smile tugged at his lips at the sight of the saturated evening gown draped over a towel-covered chair, drying before the smoldering fire. He hoped he had not been unduly harsh with his young wife. Perhaps he should take her to the Exeter Exchange upon the morrow, just to show her he bore her no ill will; she had, as he recalled, expressed an interest in seeing the “damned raccoon” she had so nearly resembled. He made a mental note to keep her away from the duck pond, lest she have any more ideas about dampening her petticoats. Softly, so as not to wake her, he stepped back into the corridor and closed the door.
Chapter 8
She is a winsome wee thing...
This sweet wee wife o’ mine.
ROBERT BURNS,
My Wife’s a Winsome Wee Thing
The following morning, Sir Ethan and Lady Helen visited the Exeter Exchange, their twin sons having expressed somewhat vociferously an interest in seeing the animals housed in the menagerie. Alas, the outing could not be considered an unqualified success. Although she kept her hand tucked within the crook other husband’s arm as they strolled past the various cages, Lady Helen’s manner was distant, and her responses to her children’s effusion
s rather mechanical. Sir Ethan, for his part, was equally preoccupied. As recently as a fortnight earlier, he would have confided in his wife and solicited her opinion, but in view of her current aloofness, the timing hardly seemed appropriate.
In fact, he was not sorry when they encountered Lord Waverly and his countess, and the two parties blended into one. Lisette and the children greeted each other as old friends, and one dragged the others (it was not immediately apparent just who was dragging whom) off in search of raccoons. It said much for Sir Ethan’s state of mind that he did not object when Lord Waverly fell into step beside Lady Helen, and the two soon fell behind, allowing Sir Ethan to ponder his situation in relative privacy. He might have been less pleased, however, had he been privy to their conversation.
“Where were you?” Lady Helen chided, speaking softly lest her husband should hear. “I waited at the Lavenhams’ as long as I dared, but you never came.”
“Domestic difficulties,” replied Waverly, adding by way of explanation, “Lisette decided to dampen her petticoats. I daresay the carpet still squishes when one sets foot on it.”
“Oh, dear! Whatever possessed her to do such a thing?”
Lord Waverly’s left eyebrow rose. “Can you doubt it? You did, of course.”
“I? I never told her to do any such thing!”
“My dear Helen, no one need tell Lisette anything. One has only to put the idea into her head—which, I understand, you did by pointing Sophia Hutchins out to her.”
“Did I, indeed? If that was the case, I am sorry.”
“No harm done,” Waverly assured her, “only a slight delay. Tell me, do you plan to attend the Warrington musicale tomorrow evening? No convenient alcoves, alas, but while the guests are congregating in the music room, it should not be difficult to slip away to one of the bedchambers upstairs.”