by Beverley, Jo
At ease with the great! Lords Marchampton, Launceston, and Worseley came jostling to beg for the next dance. Lucy fended them off—until she realized that she was waiting for the upstart earl to join them. He needed to marry a fortune after all, and she would relish turning him down.
He made no move, and she remembered him stating rudely that he had no interest in her. Now she could see why. It looked as if he was already partnered with a dumpy, frizz-haired chit.
Thoroughly out of temper, she chose Worseley, looking forward to meeting the deceitful Earl of Wyvern in the dance and showing by chilly distance that in her eyes he was a slug.
The dance, however, was an eight. Three circles of eight were forming in the long set of rooms and the slug was leading his partner into the set farthest away.
Lucy concentrated on Worseley, putting Lord Wyvern out of her mind. Too late she realized that Worseley was now convinced he was her choice! He even asked her for the next dance. Two dances in a row would be as good as a public announcement, so she gave him icy disapproval and chose Marchampton for the next, but she blamed the Earl of Wyvern for all her problems.
He’d returned his partner to an elegant lady. One Lucy recognized. Maria Celestin! She was a highborn lady who’d married a merchant, so she and Lucy’s mother had been friends. That presented an excuse to go over and join the group.
Lucy firmly turned away. This was a crowded ball attended by hundreds. She could and would avoid the wretched man.
The next dance was the supper dance, and she chose Lord Northcliff. According to Clara, he wasn’t a fortune hunter, and he had graciously danced with her cousin. After the dance, they went to the rooms set out for supper. There they joined Clara and her partner and Jeremy and his, a pretty young brunette called Clarabel Ponting. Lucy relaxed, but she didn’t escape Wyvern entirely.
When the gentlemen went to get food for them, Miss Ponting gasped, “So handsome!”
Lucy didn’t think she’d been able to gasp a word, even at seventeen. She thought Jeremy a surprising cause for gasping admiration, but then learned her mistake.
Clara said, “Lord Wyvern,” her eyes as bright. “He’s delicious, isn’t he? I wouldn’t have expected it.”
“An estate steward can’t be handsome?” Lucy asked, irritated by the unfairness.
“Ruggedly handsome, perhaps,” Clara said. “Not in such a polished way.”
Miss Ponting leaned across the table, endangering the arrangement of flowers in the center. “Mama wants me to attract him,” she hissed, “but I’d be too afraid. They called his father the Mad Earl!”
She could also exclaim in a whisper. What a lot of interesting skills the girl had.
“He doesn’t seem to be deranged,” Clara said, but uncertainly. She was looking beyond Lucy’s shoulder, which told her where Wyvern had ended up. The enemy was at her back. The deranged enemy. If Lucy needed any more reasons to avoid Lord Wyvern, there was one. Blood will out, especially insanity.
The gentlemen returned with food. Lucy hoped for a change of topic, if only to horses or hunting, but they, too, were fascinated by the newest earl.
As Sir Harry had indicated, he’d been all around the gentlemen’s part of Town, and even at a house party where noble gentlemen had enjoyed contests in shooting, riding, and fencing.
“Gentlemen still fence?” Lucy asked.
“For exercise only, Miss Potter,” Northcliff said.
“Does Lord Wyvern fence?” Clara asked.
“Not that I know, Miss Fytch, but I saw him show himself very well at the quarterstaff.”
“Isn’t that a rather lowly weapon?” Lucy asked, spearing a piece of pickled herring with her fork.
“Say rather that it is an ancient one, Miss Potter, and thus to be admired. Like the bow and arrow.”
“I’m very good with a bow and arrow.” Miss Ponting fluttered her lashes at Jeremy. He would be a viscount one day. That must be the explanation.
Everyone began to discuss the possibility of an archery contest here in Town, which was a pleasant change of subject but made Lucy feel even more an outsider. She indulged in no arcane exercises, and nor did anyone she knew. She assumed some City men practiced with a pistol as many would carry one when traveling. Her father did. Quarterstaff, though? That was the long pole carried by medieval peasants who couldn’t afford, or perhaps weren’t allowed, something more lethal. Yet here, in this modern age, lords and dukes wielded it.
The beau monde should be the monde fou.
They were about to rise from the supper table when Stevenhope walked into the room, paper in hand.
“To Miss Potter!” he declaimed. “A sonnet in praise of the admirable frailty of a goddess!”
The whole room fell silent, and Lucy felt pinned in place like a butterfly in a collector’s box.
The poem was worse than usual, packed with delicacy, sighing, and even fainting. She’d never fainted in her life!
He ended with:
Thus Aphrodite is a wilting bloom
To flourish soon as goddess of my drawing room.
He couldn’t even get the rhythm right.
Lacking any alternative, Lucy said, “That was very touching, my lord.”
“But will you marry me?”
She assumed a wilting pose. “You must not press me, my lord. I am quite overwhelmed.”
“I will protect you!”
Lucy was aware of smirks all around—was he not?
“Please, my lord . . .”
He took what she assumed to be a tragic-lover stance. “I shall compose an epic, Miss Potter, on the subject of broken hearts.”
He stalked out of the room and laughter and chatter broke free. Lucy had turned to watch his departure and her eyes clashed with Lord Wyvern’s. He might as well have said it: See how you drive men into making fools of themselves, you wicked woman.
She turned away, seething, but made herself dally a while, smiling and talking to show she was unaffected by Stevenhope’s idiocy. As soon as possible she murmured to Clara that she needed the ladies’ room and they both left. Alas, Miss Ponting came with them, going on about how stupid Stevenhope was, but somehow implying that Lucy was, too.
The retiring room was busy, so there was no opportunity for private conversation, and indeed, what did she want to say? Her thoughts and observations were for her journal alone.
In poetic lines.
Heaven help her.
She survived the next few hours by concentrating fiercely on the dancing and not allowing herself to notice the Earl of Wyvern at all. However, as she rattled home just before dawn with her aunt, Clara, and Jeremy, the talk turned to Wyvern like a compass needle to north.
Her silence might be obvious, so eventually she said, “He seemed to favor a very ordinary young lady.”
“Miss Florence,” Aunt Mary said with a disapproving twitch of her nose. “Lady Vandeimen’s niece, or to be precise, the niece of her late husband, Celestin. A merchant and, worse, a foreign one.”
Lucy remembered now that Celestin had died. So Maria had married a lord, returning to her true world, as Lucy’s father would put it. Had Maria’s second marriage bolstered her father’s obsession?
“The girl’s fortunate that Maria Dunpott-Ffyfe made a more suitable marriage the second time around,” her aunt went on. “If a marriage can be suitable when the husband is nearly ten years the wife’s junior.”
“My goodness!” Lucy said, genuinely startled.
“Quite,” Aunt Mary said. “Be sure you do nothing so foolish.”
Marry a lad of eleven? Lucy managed not to say it.
“A wild young man to boot. Lost his whole fortune at cards.”
“I would have thought Maria too sensible for that.” When her aunt showed surprise, Lucy had to explain that she knew Maria.
“Alice and she must have appreciated congenial company, situated as they were. Note, girls, that a lady takes the station of her husband, and folly can carry her into very uncongen
ial company.”
Lucy couldn’t resist a contradiction. “The Celestins lived in Mayfair, did they not? I assume they mingled with the ton?”
Aunt Mary’s nose pinched even more. “She was a Dunpott-Ffyfe, and thus related to all our best families. Also, Celestin had already made his fortune when they wed.”
Unlike my father, who was living in rooms over a warehouse.
A disturbing thought stirred. “Celestin was very rich. His niece is probably well dowered.”
“Almost as well as you, dear,” Aunt Mary said, not seeming to see any significance in it.
Lucy told herself there was none. She wasn’t on the hunt for a husband, so she couldn’t consider Natalie Florence a rival. And if she were on the hunt for a husband, the despicable Earl of Wyvern would be the last man she’d choose.
Maria Celestin had always seemed so composed and mature, sleekly perfect in appearance and far above folly. Why on earth had she given herself and her fortune to a young wastrel in her second marriage? It had to be that madness called love.
Perhaps insane love had plunged Maria into her first marriage as well, for even a rich merchant had been a misalliance.
Maria was yet more proof that succumbing to irrational passions could lead to disaster.
Chapter 10
A long night’s dancing had tired Lucy out, so she should have fallen asleep easily, but she lay as if on a bed of thistles, plagued by him.
The Earl of Wyvern.
A wyvern was a type of dragon, and there was something predatory about him.
He should indeed have been a clodhopper, or at least ill at ease, but instead he was every inch a ton beau comfortable with the great. She’d learned that the “heir to Belcraven” meant that the Marquess of Arden would one day be a duke, and his ruby-wearing wife had been Wyvern’s first partner.
What had such a man been doing in Winsom’s, disguised as a simple country gentleman?
Up to no good, that was sure, but apparently not after her dowry.
Why not? Everyone acknowledged that he was here to hunt a fortune.
Was he playing a deep game and pretending lack of interest in order to trick her in some way, like a merchant turning away from goods he wanted in order to make the other party more eager to bargain? That must be it. But was he expecting her to pursue him? He’d catch cold at that! But he was a very dangerous man. Dangerous in the way he’d dealt with Outram and Stevenhope. Dangerous in his ease in the highest reaches of the beau monde. Dangerous in the effect he could have on her.
No, she was secure because marriage, especially to a nobleman, would end any hope of involvement in trade. She would never risk it. The Countess of Wyvern, accepted by the men in the City. Laughable!
She woke heavy-eyed to hear various clocks striking the full twelve of noon. Finally, she was sleeping like a fashionable lady. Clara was still fast asleep, so Lucy slipped out of bed, put on her dressing gown, and went to her desk.
She would record her first grand ball for Betty in a letter. It was time to let her friend know how things were. She chose not to relate the shortcomings of her life here. Instead she offered a detailed description of the Earl of Charrington’s fine house, including the rooms opened up for dancing and the decorations of plinths, urns, and flowers. She wished Betty were across the road so she could go to her and express all her confused irritation over the Earl of Wyvern. But perhaps that would be too revealing even for a friend. Some things were better not put into words at all.
She did share Clara’s whimsy about giving suitors vouchers.
She’s cleverer than she seems, and perhaps we were as silly at seventeen. When she steadies with age she’ll probably be a sensible woman, and kinder-hearted than her mother. . . .
“What are you writing, Lucy? About the ball?”
Lucy twitched with embarrassment, as if Clara could read what she’d written. “A letter to a friend,” she said, folding it. “Shall I ring for our maids?”
Not knowing she’d be sharing a room, she’d brought Hannah, which was proving to be awkward, though not when everyone was preparing for a significant event such as a ball. Aunt Mary had hinted that Lucy should send Hannah home, but she’d ignored that. Hannah would be enjoying being part of a ton house and why shouldn’t she have some fun?
Clara’s maid, Ann, responded to the bell, but then both returned. Ann had the washing water and Hannah carried the breakfast tray containing chocolate and sweet rolls. Perhaps they were sensibly combining their duties.
When she and Clara sat to their breakfast, Lucy asked, “What do we do today?”
“Morning visits and the theater, I think. Some routs before, of course. And company to dine. Associates of Father’s. Dull company.”
Dull was better than dangerous. A Wyvern-free day.
In that, she wasn’t quite right. Everywhere they went people speculated about him.
He was surprisingly handsome.
He was surprisingly well-mannered.
He was surprisingly at ease with eminent friends.
Again, Lucy couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for him. Probably some of these ladies had expected her, too, to be like the unfortunate corn merchant, completely out of place.
Then the speculations became odder.
“He was like a prince in waiting,” Lady Christina Fanborough said to Clara and Lucy over tea at Mrs. Fox-Langley’s. “Because the Mad Earl murdered any heir, he was concealed as a peasant until the day came for him to announce himself.”
“Wasn’t he the earl’s estate manager?” Lucy asked.
Lady Christina gave her a reproachful look. “Concealed all the same. Or the earl would have murdered him, wouldn’t he?”
Lady Christina flounced off, and Lucy looked to Clara in bewilderment.
“The Peasant Earl,” Clara explained. “A novel. That’s the exact plot.”
“How does it end?”
“With him marrying his one true love, a shepherdess called Iphigenia.”
“A shepherdess with a name like that? Surely not.”
“She is, of course, the lost daughter of the king.”
Clara’s lips were twitching, and Lucy burst into laughter. She smothered it as an attack of coughing, but she wished she could share that story with . . .
Drat the man!
She was wishing she could share it with the simple country gentleman of Winsom’s with whom she’d bantered so enjoyably, but that hadn’t been the true man. He’d been an earl masquerading as a peasant. She was fully aware of the silliness of the thought, but she liked it. The Peasant Earl indeed.
That evening they went to the theater. This wasn’t a novelty for Lucy as she had attended performances at various theaters all her life and her father had always rented a box. Then, however, she’d been anonymous. Now as soon as they took their seats she was aware of attention.
“I wish people wouldn’t stare and comment,” she said to Clara.
“It’s what one does before a performance. Look, there’s Lady Christina attended by Lord Wareham. Might it be a match? He must be more than ten years her senior.”
To play her part, Lucy said, “I see Maria Vandeimen and Miss Florence, but without Lord Wyvern in attendance. Instead, Miss Florence has a dashing blond beau.”
Clara giggled. “That’s not her beau, Lucinda. It’s Lord Vandeimen.”
“Maria Celestin’s husband?” Lucy couldn’t keep the astonishment out of her voice. She’d gathered that Maria had married a young rake, but she’d not expected him to be quite so dashing and handsome. No wonder she’d been tempted.
But, she quickly reminded herself, how very, very foolish Maria had been to succumb.
* * *
The next day was Sunday, which by Aunt Mary’s edict must be quiet and thoughtful. Lucy only wished that were the case. On the way to church and on the way home talk flowed like the Thames. Lucy wondered whether her hook-nosed uncle, slumped in his corner of the coach, had learned to be deaf to it.
“I do not approve of masquerades,” Aunt Mary said.
They had also heard that Lord Marchampton had lost ten thousand at hazard.
“Gaming is the work of the devil,” Aunt Mary declared.
Lucy was in agreement with her there. If it ever came to marriage, Marchampton would be off her list.
Lord Howton was said to be bringing a crim con case against a Mr. Thrayne.
“I hope he wins enough to destroy the man,” Aunt Mary said. “Of all things, I abhor a scoundrel seducing a lady from her duty.”
If she were feeling foolhardy, Lucy would have asked if it could not have been the lady seducing the gentleman. Even in the Bible Delilah and Salome came to mind. Whichever the case, it was yet more evidence of the destructive power of love.
* * *
“A shame Miss Potter didn’t attend our church,” Susan said to David as they walked home, Con on her other side. “As she wasn’t at Lady Wraybourne’s last night, you’ve left the field clear for your rivals.”
“Need better intelligence,” Con said. “Spies in the household.”
“This is not a laughing matter!” Susan protested. “Thirty thousand pounds.”
“With a person attached,” David said. “I’m not going to marry her.”
Susan stopped. “Why not?”
“Because she’s quick and clever—”
“Miss Potter?” she interrupted, astonished.
“And thus, deceitful.”
As they walked on, he told them about the way she’d reacted to the duel, and also about the encounter in the bookshop.
“It’s not a sin to dress plainly for a visit to a shop,” Susan said. “I like her spirit.”
“So might I if she were honest with it, but she’d still not be a suitable bride. She’s active, forceful, and holds strong opinions on the Freetrade. I could hope she’d be too clever to betray a husband, but when she’s so skilled at deception, I’d never be able to trust her.”