Steeplechase

by Bancroft, Blair

  Davenham blew on the fire, glared at it, as if daring it to die out after all his efforts, then turned, still scowling, toward his wife. “Assaulting an officer of the law. That was the charge, Sal, in addition to gaming. The fine for all the others did not come to half what it cost to pry you out of Bow Street without standing in the dock.”

  “I thought he was a robber,” Sarah wailed. “I had won a vast sum, and that awful man threw himself on it. Naturally, I was going to defend my winnings. How else would you expect me to behave?”

  “You are such a child, Sal.” Hands behind his back, Harlan shook his head. “Anyone else would have known the man must be a Runner and had sense enough to dash for the door, rather than hitting him over the head.”

  “I am not a child,” his wife declared, casting a haughty glance of disgust in his direction.

  “We will let that aspect go for the moment,” Davenham declared. “The matter is done with, though I fear the scandal is yet to come. Now I would have the wood with no bark on it, if you please—what the devil were you doing at Forty Pall Mall? And with Southwaite, of all people?”

  Sarah squirmed. The bells jingled. “I—I merely wished to see a gaming hell. Truly, Harlan, that is all. I had no notion there could be trouble. I mean, you gamble, do you not? And you have never been taken up by Bow Street—”

  “Indeed I have not!” She looked so small sitting there in the big leather chair, hands clasped tightly in her lap, the black gown with the blasted silver bells spilling over the scarlet leather like some dark angel rising above the flames. “Not that I have not had a close call or two,” Harlan admitted. “That is why I usually confine my play to White’s, which is far above Bow Street’s touch.”

  “I never dreamed . . .” Sarah heaved a sigh but did not look at him, keeping her gaze fixed on her silver-gloved hands. “I am so very sorry, my lord. I have been a great deal of trouble. Do you wish me to retire to Chesterton?”

  She expected to be banished like some naughty puppy? To Chesterton, where she would be the invisible wife he had thought he wanted? “We will be going to Chesterton soon enough,” Harlan heard himself say, even as a part of his brain scoffed at his rejection of this excellent opportunity to rid himself of his wife. “We will have a long high summer to enjoy the bucolic splendors of the country. But, Sarah . . .”

  “Yes, my lord?” The faintest rasp of sound.

  “Why Southwaite? If you wished to visit a gaming hell, why did you not ask me to take you?”

  Quite suddenly, the spark in his wife’s eyes was back, rivaling the flames of the now merrily burning fire. She drew a deep breath and looked straight at him. “That,” Sarah declared, “would have violated our agreement. We are to lead separate lives, if you recall. A dance, a few moments’ conversation once a day are evidently acceptable to your notion of separate, but asking you to escort me to a gaming hell—or even to Vauxhall, for that matter—would be quite outside the terms of our contract.”

  “We went to the opera,” Harlan pointed out.

  “That was your idea, my lord, not mine—although I enjoyed it most prodigiously. I believe at the time you considered it a counterattack against the accusations of neglect that have been bandied about here and there. Or possibly Dickon asked you to arrange an opportunity where he might escort Esmerelda for an entire evening. Truly, I do not know, but you cannot say an evening at the opera was my suggestion.” His wife sat up very straight, her small feet in the filigreed slippers barely reaching the floor. “I have worked exceedingly hard at being independent, my lord, just as you requested. You have no right to accuse me of error for excluding you as my escort.”

  Davenham leaned back in his chair and contemplated the fire. The blasted chit was right, of course. Why should she not cut him out of her life as thoroughly as he had excluded her from his? They were to share a name, a house, an occasional dance or walk in the garden. And that was all. Not that he had spelled out the details that day in her papa’s house, but little Sally Ainsworth’s mind was a sharp as her pride was great, and after their quarrel in Brighton she had put her own strict interpretation on their agreement, an interpretation that would allow her to do as she pleased. Befriend a Cit, flirt with a rake, drive her curricle in the park . . . visit a gaming hell.

  No meek miss, the daughter of the Marquess of Rotherwick was getting her own back with a vengeance. Leading him on a steeplechase, by God! That’s what the minx was doing. Ten years his junior, and she had him by the nose.

  There she sat, meek as milk, yet it was he who was losing the battle.

  “An interesting point of view, my dear,” Harlan conceded. What was that expression about discretion being the better part of valor? Time to close this discussion and hope that matters would look more rosy in the morning.

  Doubtful, but he could always hope.

  Lord Davenham rose, offering a hand to his wife. “I shall escort you up the private staircase to your room.”

  “You will frighten Finella half to death.”

  “She will be aux anges,” Harlan returned suavely, “thinking you have succumbed to my charms at last.”

  Sarah rounded on him, pounding on his black jacket, still wet from her tears. “Do not make more of a mockery of our marriage than you already have, you—you philandering beast!” She broke away, looking perfectly horrified, then dashed back the way they had come. He heard her running feet on the entrance tiles, the mad jingling of the silver bells, the soft pad of her slippers, a faint ding or two, fading away as she climbed the carpeted front staircase.

  He had asked for an explanation, and now he had it. Lady Sarah Ainsworth had agreed to his proposal of a mariage blanc. To postponing marital responsibilities until some vague time when they were both ready. But, in typical female fashion, she seemed to have changed her mind. She was constantly getting into difficulties from which he must extricate her, and he was beginning to suspect it was quite deliberate. His wife was leading him on a steeplechase with enough hazards he could well come a cropper, if not break his neck. If, that is, he did not die from Southwaite’s bullet.

  Clever little minx. Was it possible she was jealous? Merely possessive? Or did she actually care for him . . . at least a bit?

  Slowly, Lord Davenham picked up the candle snuffer and put out the lights. With a single taper wavering in the darkness, he made his way to his bedchamber where Morgan took one look at his master’s face and stifled all questions about how Lord Davenham had spent his evening.

  Lady Davenham put her morning cup of chocolate into the saucer resting on her bed tray and stared blindly at the beverage swirling slowly in the delicate hand-painted china. She was disgraced. All who knew her would give her the cut direct. She had been taken up by Bow Street. Penned with a mass of tarts, hardened gamesters, drunks, and thieves. Bought out of captivity by filthy lucre Harlan had likely won at faro. The irony was appalling.

  As was her behavior. It was not as if she had set out to tempt fate . . .

  Yes, it was. And now she would be served with her just desserts. By whatever mysterious method gossip was instantaneously transferred throughout the beau monde, news of last night’s escapade was spreading over every breakfast table in Mayfair. She was ruined. If Harlan did not wish to give her houseroom at Chesterton, perhaps papa and mama might allow her to hide at Ainsworth Abbey.

  Sarah took another sip, wrinkled her nose over chocolate gone cold. With the cup poised half-way between her mouth and the bed tray, her hand froze as yet another horrid thought struck her. Callers! Merciful heavens, there would be callers this morning. “Finella, tell Hughes I am not at home to anyone.”

  “I fear it is too late, my lady.” Finella dropped a curtsey from the door to the Sarah’s dressing room. “Lord Southwaite is already waiting below.” She held up an elaborate gown of deep gold with a swagged hemline and enormous puffed insets at the top of the long sleeves. “I thought this might do, my lady.”

  Sarah groaned and waved the dress away. “One of
my old gowns, Finella. The ivory muslin sprigged in blue, I believe. Yes, yes, that will do nicely. I would not wish to keep Southwaite cooling his heels too long. Indeed, I am quite anxious to hear what he has to say for himself.”

  Twenty minutes later, when Sarah swept into the drawing room, Geoffrey Hatton unfolded from the chair in which he had been patiently waiting, took one look, and favored her with a decisive nod. “The very picture of innocence, my dear. Well done. You must, of course, persuade Davenham to spend the day at your side, including a drive in the park and eschewing the gaming tables this evening in favor of the ballrooms of as many hostesses as you are able to fit in. That should do the thing properly. Though it is indeed fortunate you are a married woman and not some fragile bud still in search of a husband.”

  Sarah had remained standing during Lord Southwaite’s somewhat startling speech, anger rising with each word that dropped from his mouth. Hands on her hips, she glared at the Wicked Baron. “After abandoning me to Bow Street, you dare offer advice! Outrageous, my lord, perfectly outrageous.”

  “Sarah, my dear, I am most sincerely sorry, but I was dragged off. It could not be helped—”

  “He came straight to me,” said a voice from behind her. “Though I will not comment at this moment on Southwaite’s ill-judged complicity in your visit to a gaming hell, my lady, he did make it possible for you to be retrieved before further damage was done.” Lord Davenham proffered a stiff nod in the baron’s direction. “For that we may be grateful.” The look he added to his temperate statement, however, spoke of hot words yet to come, with the distinct possibility of pistols at dawn.

  “Miss Twitchell,” Hughes announced into the sudden tension.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Oh, goodness!” Miss Esmerelda Twitchell murmured as she took in the triangle of stiff-necked combatants clustered in the center of the drawing room. “I have come at an inopportune moment. I merely wished to have a comfortable coze with Sarah—Lady Davenham. I will return another time.”

  The truth, as Sarah well knew, was that Esmerelda was all agog to hear about her evening at a gaming hell. And at this moment female support was devoutly to be wished. “No, no, please stay,” Sarah declared. “We were all about to be seated, were we not?” And, suiting actions to her words, the viscountess sat on the scarlet settee and waved Miss Twitchell to a seat beside her. The two men, as stiff-legged as dogs before a fight, seated themselves in chairs angled to face the ladies, but at opposite ends of the settee.

  Cold crept through Sarah’s body. Harland and Geoffrey were going to meet, and it was all her fault. She could see herself kneeling on the grass, holding Harlan’s body in her arms, blood flowing over her hands, over her skirts and into the ground as her husband’s life drained away. They could not duel. They must not!

  Into the awkward silence the butler announced, “Lady Rotherwick, Miss Amalie Ainsworth.”

  Sarah’s mind went numb, unable to decide if she should be overjoyed by the interruption or appalled that her mama and sister had already heard of her disgrace. As they undoubtedly had. The men bounded to their feet, as did Esmerelda, but Lady Davenham’s legs had turned to water. “Mama, Amalie,” she murmured faintly, “how kind of you to call.”

  The gentlemen swiftly rearranged the drawing room chairs to accommodate the new visitors. With an audible sniff, Lady Rotherwick accepted an armchair that looked suspiciously like a throne. “I see,” she declared, “that a conference post mortem is being executed. How fortunate that we have arrived at precisely this moment.” She pinned Esmerelda with a gimlet eye. “And were you part of this disaster as well, Miss Twitchell?”

  “Oh, no!” “Indeed not, my lady.” The ardent denials of Sarah and her friend clashed, competing for their listeners’ attention.

  “I am delighted to discover that at least one of you has the sense God gave her,” Lady Rotherwick pronounced in arctic tones.

  “Sarah, how could you?” Amalie wailed. “My sister has taken up with a rake, a Cit, and Bow Street!” she proclaimed. “I have seen the last of Parkington, I know I have.” Miss Ainsworth pulled a lace-edged handkerchief from her reticule, sobbing into it with considerable fervor.

  “I do not believe Parkington is so shallow,” Sarah told her sister in an oddly self-righteous twist. “But . . . perhaps it is all for the best.” If that did not make Amalie stop and think . . .

  “Parkington will keep,” Sarah’s mama pronounced. “Let us return to the discussion at hand. Davenham, what is to be done? I rely on your savoir faire to carry this off. And yours as well, Southwaite,” she added with considerably less warmth, “for no matter what is said of you, you are part of the prince’s set and very well connected.”

  “I believe Lord Southwaite has already proposed—” Davenham broke off as sounds of a disturbance came from the entrance hall.

  “Sal! Sal! Where the devil are you?”

  “Lord Richard Ainsworth,” Hughes announced with resignation after the second son of the Marquess of Rotherwick had already burst into the drawing room.

  “Is it true?” Richard demanded. After taking a good look at the faces arrayed before him, his expression plummeted into gloom. “I see it is,” he groaned. “Sal, how could you be such an idiot?”

  “Lord and Lady Marchmont,” Hughes intoned in failing accents. As official guardian of the gate, on this particular morning he was a blatant failure.

  “Oh, good God!” Harlan moaned, head in his hands, before jumping to his feet to welcome the earl and his countess. He was caught in the midst of a French farce. All that was needed was for Amaryllis LeFay to be added to the mix. Though poor old Hughes would probably go off in an apoplexy if she actually appeared at the door. Particularly at this moment.

  After another flurry of chairs being drawn into the circle, silence fell heavily on the drawing room in Margaret Street. “Are we too late?” Lady Marchmont inquired at last. “Has it already been decided what must be done to restore our dear girl to the bosom of the ton?”

  “My lady,” Sarah cried in wavering tones, “you are too kind. Truly, I do not deserve your magnanimity. I have told Harlan—Davenham—that I must go to Chesterton.”

  “Nonsense,” said Lady Marchmont. “If we had ten guineas for every scrape Davenham has been in since he was your age, our fortune would rival that of the legendary Croesus. We never thought an insipid miss would do for Harlan and are perfectly delighted he has had sense enough to choose a girl of intelligence and spirit. Naturally, Marchmont and I will do everything in our power to stem the scandal. I daresay anyone supported by both the Rotherwicks”—she nodded graciously toward the marchioness—“and the Marchmonts will not be shunned.”

  “Indeed not,” Lady Rotherwick seconded. “We may be appalled by the actuality, but we will support you, my dear.”

  “Indeed, papa told us we might not say anything else,” Lady Amalie muttered.

  A bark of laughter, quickly choked, was heard from Baron Southwaite.

  “If we may return to our previous topic?” Harlan declared. “Now that quite all the conspirators are present, allow me to tell you that Lord Southwaite has offered a proposal of some merit.” Davenham proceeded to outline the plan he had overheard before joining his wife and the baron in the drawing room.

  “Perhaps we might borrow the landau, mama?” Lord Richard said. “Then Miss Twitchell and I could accompany Harlan and Sal while driving in the park, thus demonstrating the family’s solidarity.”

  To Lady Rotherwick’s credit, she hesitated for only a moment as she considered whether Miss Twitchell’s support was a plus or a minus in Lady Davenham’s restoration to the good graces of the ton. Grandly, she nodded, granting her son the use of her elegant open carriage.

  Plans were quickly agreed upon for the evening, so that all interested parties, even the absent Marquess of Rotherwick, might be present at each function attended by Lord and Lady Davenham. In the parlance of the army, the two families, plus Miss Esmerelda Twitchell, the he
iress from Kidderminster, were forming a square and preparing to fend off the enemy to the death.

  Their plan seemed to be working. On this, the third night of the determined campaign to rescue Lady Davenham from social ostracism, not a single mama jerked her daughter out of Sarah’s way, only a minimal number of heads dipped to whisper behind their fans as she passed by, and glances of outright horror or disdain had been reduced to the highest sticklers.

  It had not been easy. Even with her husband clinging to her side like a limpet, Sarah considered the ordeal of flaunting herself in the face of the ton the worst possible punishment anyone might have devised for her lapse in judgment. And surely it had not been so very bad; hundreds of ladies visited gaming hells. It was simply unkind fate that had trapped her in Bow Street’s net, taking her within a hair’s breadth of mounting the dock. It was not her fault, truly it was not.

  Yet every minute of every hour she was in anguish, knowing her family—even her papa, the marquess—and Harlan’s family, Southwaite, and Esmerelda expected her to carry out her part in this silly charade, head high, shoulders straight, pride of the Ainsworths and the Dawnays triumphing over all. It was Perfectly Awful. Because everyone else was watching to see if she would be shunned, rejected, cast off . . .

  If she survived, she would be a model of propriety, indeed she would. No more escapades. She would . . . she would . . . Oh, no! She could not possibly give up Esmerelda and Geoffrey. That would be too, too cruel. They were her only true friends.