Milady in Love (The Changing Fortunes Series, Vol. 5)

by M C Beaton

  After much deep thought and private anguish, Yvonne decided her guardian did not love her in the slightest. This sending her to London was his way of fulfilling his obligations without having to take on any of the responsibilities himself. When they had conversed in Yvonne’s bedroom during her illness, the viscount had often talked with regret about Patricia, saying it was a vast pity that such a seemingly capable and sensible female should prove a villain, and Yvonne, who did not know of the viscount’s guilt regarding Patricia, could only assume he heartily wished she had never been found out so that she might continue to take the chaperonage of his ward off his shoulders.

  For a time, Yvonne was depressed and barely noticed any of the gentlemen who paid court to her. Lady Baillie was pleasantly surprised and wrote to Lord Anselm to say that his ward was a very prettily behaved young miss.

  Gustave, much to the viscount’s surprise, had been ordered by Yvonne to remain behind at Trewent Castle. But Gustave knew why. He, Gustave, was to act as spy on his lordship’s activities and state of mind and send bulletins to his mistress.

  His letters, laboriously penned in shocking English—Gustave was receiving lessons from Mrs. Pardoe—did little to cheer Yvonne. His lordship, he wrote, appeared well and in good spirits and was getting about a bit and had even attended a ball at a country house near Exeter.

  Yvonne eventually replied with a cross and angry letter saying she had come to the conclusion that her guardian had no interest in her.

  Shrewd Gustave thought about that for a long time and then replied there had been no report from Lady Baillie to cause his lordship any concern. He often asked his lordship what the news was from London, and his lordship always replied that Lady de la Falaise was the soul of decorum.

  Yvonne studied Gustave’s letter. Hope that had died in the winter fogs and in the parsimonious cold of Lady Baillie’s establishment began to glimmer again.

  What would the viscount do if he were made to worry about her? Why, he would come to London to see for himself!

  She had used none of her large allowance on clothes, contenting herself by dressing in her Portuguese ensembles.

  All at once, the startled Lady Baillie began to notice her charge was indulging in an orgy of fashion. The house was full from morning to night with dressmakers, mantua-makers, and milliners.

  Then came the evening of the Hartcourts’ ball. Lord and Lady Hartcourt were accounted among the most tonnish of the ton, and the cream of society crowded into the gilded rooms of their Grosvenor Square mansion.

  Lady Baillie saw Yvonne’s outfit for the first time in the glare of the chandeliers when Yvonne appeared in the ballroom, having left her cloak downstairs.

  She was wearing one of the new gauze overdresses. Her slip of an underdress was of the finest muslin and clung to her body in a way that left little to the imagination. Her hair, which heretofore had been severely braided, fell about her shoulders in wanton glossy black curls.

  She not only flirted with the eligible men; she flirted outrageously with all of the ineligible men as well. Feeling faint, Lady Baillie counted three adventurers, two rakes, and one cardsharp in Yvonne’s circle of courtiers.

  Lady Baillie gave Yvonne a terrible tongue-lashing after the ball. As Yvonne shivered on the hearth rug before a glimmer of a fire, Lady Baillie ranted and raved, talking about the reduction in her market value as if she were a commodity on the stock exchange.

  Yvonne sweetly promised to behave herself, with such a penitent mien and downcast eyes that Lady Baillie was confident that never again would her charge behave so dreadfully.

  The following evening at the Italian opera, Yvonne was demurely and fashionably dressed. Once more, her neckline was modest and her hair braided. Like Almack’s, the Italian opera was confined to the Exclusives, apart from the prostitutes in Fops Alley and the servants in the gallery.

  Lady Baillie, as was her practice at the opera, fell asleep five minutes after the curtain arose.

  Wild cheers and shrieks from the audience awoke her from a peaceful slumber, and she gazed at the stage in horror.

  Yvonne, who must have managed to climb down to the stage from the sidebox, was happily engaged in singing a duet with the tenor.

  Her voice was quite good and very sweet, but the enraged prima donna bounded onto the stage and tried to scratch Yvonne’s eyes out. Yvonne tripped her up, and she fell headlong, where she pounded the stage with her fists and went into strong hysterics.

  The bucks in the pit roared their approval of Yvonne and started to throw oranges and rotten vegetables at the prima donna. Law officers were called in to try to quell the ensuing riot, but the evening was wrecked. As was the custom in theater riots, the harp was the first thing to be smashed, followed by the pianoforte.

  Women screamed and fainted. Two men in the boxes started a sword fight. The prostitutes were openly displaying their wares in a quite disgusting way. Someone took out a pistol and tried to shoot out the flames of the candles in the great central chandelier that hung from the ceiling.

  Then someone shouted, “Fire!” and that was the end of the elegant evening at the opera as everyone pushed and shoved to get out.

  Lady Baillie was beside herself with rage, a rage that was heightened to apoplexy point when she found that Yvonne had made her escape through the stage door as soon as the riot had started and was calmly waiting for her in South Molton Street.

  “I shall write to your guardian—express,” said Lady Baillie awfully.

  This statement made Yvonne bear all the subsequent lectures and social disgrace with equanimity. Surely he would come now.

  But Yvonne had not made allowances for Lady Baillie’s great pride.

  They were sitting in silence at the breakfast table some four days later when Lady Baillie broke the silence by saying abruptly, “I have decided to give you one more chance. I have not written to Anselm of your disgraceful behavior. He would consider me incompetent, lacking in authority. We shall go on as if nothing has happened.”

  “Thank you, my lady,” said Yvonne quietly. She left the room and ran upstairs to her bedchamber and cursed and swore.

  After a time, she began to feel calmer. Perhaps all was not lost. The newspapers, of which there were fourteen dailies, had all covered her scandalous behavior in their columns. She lifted out the pile of press cuttings she had saved, put them in a package, and sent them to Gustave with a note telling him to be sure to show the contents to Lord Anselm.

  The viscount was sitting in the library, studying more plans for the modernization of Trewent Castle, when Fairbairn entered and said that Gustave wished to see him.

  “Very well,” said the viscount. “Show him in.”

  He had often wondered why Yvonne had allowed her faithful servant to stay behind. When he went out riding, Gustave often trotted behind him on his placid mount, unasked, saying only that he felt like the exercise. It appeared to the viscount and his staff as if Gustave had transferred all his crusty affection from Yvonne to the master of Trewent Castle—for none of them knew of the bulletins Gustave sent to London, not even Mrs. Pardoe, who often taught the French servant English and entertained him with glasses of blackberry wine in her parlor.

  Gustave strode into the room, a sheaf of cuttings from the newspapers in his hands.

  “Milord!” he blurted out. “We must leave for London immediately.”

  “What is wrong?” asked the viscount, standing up, as visions of marauding Bretons sailing up the Thames to murder Yvonne flashed through his mind.

  Wordlessly, Gustave held out the pieces of newspaper.

  The viscount took them, sat down, and raised his quizzing glass to study them, for the lamps had not yet been lit and the light in the library was poor.

  Gustave waited impatiently while the viscount read them all with maddening slowness.

  “Has she lost her wits?” said the viscount, turning a horrified face up to the old servant. “Singing on the stage like some common trollop. Why did
Lady Baillie not let me know of this?”

  “Perhaps,” ventured Gustave, “this Lady Baillie has not got a strong enough hand to control milady.

  “Milady can be very wild and reckless at times,” he added, noticing with satisfaction the angry flush of color on the viscount’s face.

  “Tell the servants to prepare my traveling carriage,” snapped the viscount. “We leave for London immediately.”

  “I shall go, too,” said Gustave. It was a statement, not a question.

  All during that long journey to London, Lord Anselm fretted and fumed. Throughout the long dreary weeks of Yvonne’s absence, he had carried a tender picture of her in his mind, a picture of Yvonne as she had been when she was ill, delicate, and childlike, and in need of cherishing.

  But her shocking behavior brought back a picture of that other maddening Yvonne, who flirted with her large black eyes and encouraged him to kiss her.

  She was probably flirting with every rake in London. She had behaved like a courtesan, and society would treat her like a courtesan.

  Snow was beginning to fall, and the lamplighter was making his rounds as the viscount’s muddied traveling carriage rolled to a stop outside Lady Baillie’s house in South Molton Street.

  Tired as he was, he could not bear to sit formally in the carriage while his footman sounded the knocker, but jumped down and thundered on the door himself.

  Lady Baillie’s butler, Perkins, was a timid man with an unfortunate stammer—Lady Baillie had hired him at cut rate from an agency—and it seemed to take him hours to choke out that Lady Baillie and Lady de la Falaise had gone to a musicale at the Bentleys’ mansion in Berkeley Square.

  “Then bustle about and show me to a room where I may change,” snapped Lord Anselm. “Gustave, help the servants unload my imperials and send my valet to me immediately.”

  The nervous butler showed him into a bleak bedchamber dominated by a large antique four-poster bed. The air of the room was stale and cold.

  “Why is there no fire?” said the viscount. “Oh, never mind,” he added hurriedly as the butler was winding himself up for a long speech. “Have one lit as soon as possible and bring hot water, lots of it.”

  He did not know the Bentleys, but with all the arrogance of a good-looking man of rank and fashion with a considerable fortune, he was sure of his welcome.

  At last, attired in black coat and black silk knee breeches, with his bicorne under his arm and his hair teased into the Windswept, he set out to walk to Berkeley Square, which was only a short distance away.

  “How on earth,” he raged to himself as he walked along Brook Street and turned into Davies Street, “could Lady Baillie be so stupid as to take her around society after her disgrace?”

  The Bentleys lived at Number 19. A butler answered the door and, after surveying his jewels and his dress, stepped aside to let him past, murmuring that the musicale was in progress in the ballroom.

  A German tenor was singing Mozart arias to a bored audience.

  Heads turned as he entered the room and then quizzing glasses were raised.

  “I declare,” said an elderly matron next to Yvonne, “that devilishly handsome fellow Anselm is back in London.”

  Yvonne’s heart began to beat hard. She longed to turn her head and look at him but was afraid of the love and longing that would show on her face.

  Lady Baillie had been wise to take Yvonne around in society. So prim had Yvonne been since that night at the opera, so correct in her behavior, that the scandal of her theatrical appearance had begun to be replaced by juicier scandals and she was in danger of being castigated as a missish bore. Only the stern patronesses of Almack’s still eyed her with disfavor and vowed to turn down her application should she prove impertinent enough to ask for vouchers to their assembly rooms.

  The viscount’s eyes raked the room. Then, at the very front of the audience, he saw the top of Yvonne’s neatly braided head.

  He waited impatiently. The concert seemed to go on forever. Light snow was still falling, and outside the windows the plane trees, planted in Berkeley Square at the time of the French Revolution, raised slim whitened branches to the black sky.

  The concert finished with an excruciating series of ballads, sung by a fat lady with asthma, dressed as a shepherdess.

  Then the guests were told to go through to the supper room.

  The viscount waited at the door for Yvonne and Lady Baillie.

  But there were so many people he knew, so many hopeful ladies fluttered about him, that he nearly missed them and just succeeded in breaking away from his adoring audience in time to catch Yvonne by the arm and swing her around to face him.

  Although Yvonne had expected his anger, she had foolishly dreamed that the very sight of her might cause him to melt into tenderness. The reality was very different from the dream. He was glaring at her as if he wanted to wring her neck.

  Blue eyes met black in a long, hard stare.

  “And just what do you think you have been playing at?” snapped the viscount. “Making a fool of yourself at the opera?”

  “You are making a scene,” said Yvonne. “Everyone is looking at us.”

  He flushed slightly as he became aware of all of the curious eyes and listening ears.

  “Anselm,” said Lady Baillie nervously. “To what do we owe this surprise visit?”

  “I shall discuss it with you afterward,” he said. “Now, Yvonne…”

  But Yvonne had pulled free and had already moved into the supper room, and Lady Baillie saw with a sinking heart that she was already beginning to flirt outrageously.

  Yvonne had meant to behave in a contrite manner when she saw him again. After all, she had been prepared for his rage. But the very sight of him overset her. Deep down, she was terrified he might view her with indifference, and his rage was preferable to that.

  Lady Baillie looked nervously at the viscount. He looked as if he were about to explode.

  And then explode he did.

  Yvonne was just about to sit down at table. An adoring cavalier was holding a chair out for her.

  Suddenly the viscount descended on her, his eyes blazing and his fists clenched.

  “On your feet, young woman,” he said. “Come with me.”

  “No,” said Yvonne. “I am very hungry, and I am about to have supper.”

  He let out a roar of rage. As the guests scattered, he snatched her up bodily, threw her over his shoulder, and strode for the door.

  “Oh, the scandal, Anselm!” wailed Lady Baillie.

  Yvonne screamed and pummeled his back with her fists, but he walked straight out of the mansion, only setting her down when he reached the bottom of Hay Hill.

  “Bully!” raged Yvonne. “I shall catch the ague.”

  “Now,” he said, holding her by the shoulders and glaring down at her, “you will tell me what possessed you to perform on the stage and to begin to flirt like a Cyprian.”

  She glared back at him, and then, to his amazement, she began to laugh.

  “Oh, Anselm,” she said with a catch in her voice, “how else could I bring you to London?”

  “What?”

  “As long as you had reports that I was behaving like a well-mannered miss, you seemed content to forget about me. I could not bear that. So I decided to behave badly to bring you to town.”

  He gave her a little shake.

  “Why?” he asked, his eyes burning down into her own.

  Yvonne gave a little shrug. Lowering her eyes, she said, “Because I love you.”

  He put his arms slowly about her and drew her gently to him. He softly kissed her lips and then her cheeks while the snow fell softly all about them.

  “Oh, Anselm,” murmured Yvonne, “is that the best you can do?” She wound her arms tightly about his neck and kissed him with all the passion and longing that had been pent up for weeks.

  Mr. Tommy Struthers, that well-known Bond Street fribble and pink of the ton, went back into the Bentleys’ mansion, b
rushing snow from his hair.

  “Well?” demanded a chorus of voices. “Are they kissing, or is he beating her?”

  “Kissing her.” Mr. Struthers grinned. “I take the money, I think. Pay up, gentlemen. Trouble is, you fellows don’t recognize love when you see it.”

  “Yvonne,” said the viscount finally, freeing his lips. “You are going to marry me.”

  “Very soon?”

  “As soon as possible. Oh, my little love, you are so cold and wet. There are warmer places to embrace.”

  He led her in the direction of South Molton Street, stopping every now and then to kiss her breathless.