Social Graces

by Wendy Soliman

  Victorian Vigilantes Book 5

  Social Graces

  Wendy Soliman

  Victorian Vigilantes Book 5

  Social Graces

  Edited by Perry Iles

  Cover Design by Jane Dixon-Smith

  Copyright © Wendy Soliman 2017

  This e-Book is a work of fiction. While references may be made to actual places or events, the names, characters, incidents, and locations contained are from the author’s imagination and are not a resemblance of actual living or dead persons, business, or events. Any similarities are coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any method, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of

  The Author – Wendy Soliman

  This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction fines and/or imprisonment. The e-Book cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this e-Book can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the author.

  Chapter One

  London: Autumn 1853

  Olivia Morton smiled as her husband carefully handed their six-month-old son over to his nanny. A prouder or more dedicated father it would, she knew, be impossible to find. Jake’s own childhood had not been a happy one and he was determined that their son would not suffer from the indifference and neglect that had been foisted upon him by parents too wrapped up in their own pleasures to spare him more than a passing glance. Jake was a younger son, born when his mother had assumed herself to be beyond child-bearing years, and she looked upon him as an inconvenience—an interruption to her social whirl that curtailed her pleasures.

  Tom, Olivia’s son from her first marriage—now a rumbustious four-year-old of constant motion and endless questions—watched the baby with a critical eye.

  ‘He doesn’t do much expect sleep, Mama,’ he said indignantly.

  The baby supported his half-brother’s assertion by opening his eyes, giving a wide yawn and promptly closing them again.

  Jake laughed. ‘He is saving his strength so that he can join in your games when he is a little older,’ he assured Tom.

  ‘Oh well, in that case, I expect it will be all right.’

  Tom lost interest in the baby and returned his attention to the small regiment of wooden soldiers lined neatly on the rug in front of him. Olivia tousled her son’s head and sent him off with the nanny and his stepbrother. ‘I wish I could say that he slept as much at that age, but it wouldn’t be the truth,’ she said. ‘I can’t recall Tom ever sleeping for long, or staying still for more than a few minutes at a time for that matter. I declare he was born busy.’

  ‘Unlike Sebastian. Our son enjoys nothing more than a lengthy slumber.’

  Olivia laughed. ‘He takes after his father in that respect.’

  Jake raised a brow in mock disapproval. ‘Are you implying, Lady Torbay, that you regret your decision to marry a somnolent?’

  ‘Merely stating a fact, my lord,’ she responded with a heated smile. ‘After all, you cannot deny that you enjoy lingering in the bedchamber.’

  This time he raised both brows and fixed her with a smouldering look. ‘That is entirely your fault,’ he said.

  ‘Six of one and half a dozen of the other,’ she replied with amused forbearance, standing and wandering towards the full-length window in the drawing room of their Grosvenor Square mansion. The blustery October weather sent leaves dancing across the small park in the centre of the square. The trees were shedding their summer foliage and the bare branches looked stark and sinister against a sombre autumn sky. Dark clouds gathered directly overhead and a few heavy raindrops pattered against the glass. She shivered, even though the room wasn’t cold, pulled the heavy curtains across and turned back to face Jake. He had arranged his tall frame comfortably in his chair but watched her closely as she prowled restlessly around the room.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘It seems strange to be back in London after an entire year in Torbay. I had grown quite accustomed to the slower pace of country life.’

  ‘You regret our return? Why did you not say? We need not have come.’

  ‘Of course we need to be here. Long sojourns in the back of beyond bore you rigid, even though you have an estate to run and plenty to keep you occupied.’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘Oh, take no notice of me.’ Olivia threw up her hands. ‘I’m just tired, I expect.’

  Jake caught her wrist as she walked past his chair and tumbled her onto his lap. ‘You are never tired. Tom inherited his active nature from you.’

  ‘Even so, facts must be faced. I am now a mother twice over and no longer in the first flush of youth.’

  ‘Now you’re just fishing for compliments,’ Jake replied, tweaking her nose.

  ‘It’s the noise, the bustle and the smells that it take one a while to become familiar with again, I suppose. I had become an isolated, lazy, unsociable creature and now I shall have to face my critics again. I confess to being a little daunted by the prospect.’

  ‘You are worried about public opinion?’ Jake scowled. ‘That is not like you. You never used to give a damn what people thought.’

  ‘That was when I only had my own reputation, or lack of one, to take into consideration. Now I am your countess, and that changes everything.’

  ‘Infuriating woman! Don’t imagine I’m not flattered about your concern for my reputation. It’s your double-standards that I find so exasperating.’

  ‘What double standards?’

  ‘As if you were not aware. You were accused of murdering your first husband, tried in the court of public opinion and found guilty, but the censure didn’t trouble you in the slightest.’

  ‘I can assure you that the prospect of being hanged for a crime I didn’t commit troubled me considerably, until you came along and saved my hide.’

  ‘It’s a very attractive hide,’ Jake replied, running his hands down the length of her back and kissing her neck, ‘well worth the effort it took to save it. Now, if the hide in question had been thrown into a gaol cell until it lost its bloom, that would have been a criminal offence of far greater consequence than ridding the world of your worthless excuse for a husband.’

  Olivia leaned the side of her face against his shoulder and smiled. ‘Happily you didn’t allow me to languish in a cell for long enough to find out.’

  ‘My point is, you showed precious little concern for public opinion then—’

  ‘There was nothing I could do about it.’ Olivia lifted a negligent shoulder. ‘If I’d tried to stem the flow of gossip by publicly claiming my innocence, I would only have created more speculation. Methinks the lady doth protest too much and all that.’

  ‘Your life and liberty hung in the balance, you were alone and unprotected. Yet you had the strength of character to ignore the gossips and pretend not to hear what was being said and written about you. Now you have both the protection of my name and my unyielding devotion, yet worry about the very same gossips you previously found so easy to ignore.’ Jake shook his head in exasperation. ‘Sometimes I can’t make you out at all.’

  ‘We married in haste and took ourselves off for a year.’ Olivia fluttered her brows. ‘Now we return with a six-month-old son. The gossips have an uncanny knack for arithmetic. It is one of their more finely-honed skills.’

  ‘Sebastian is my son and heir,’ Jake replied with considerable pride. ‘If you are concerned about the gossips doing their sums and tutting over our having anticipated our wedding vows then you really are a
goose. Those who once disapproved of you, or doubted your complete innocence, will now court your society because you are in a position to be of use to them. Just you see if I am not right.’

  ‘How very hypocritical of them.’

  ‘That, my darling, is the way society works, but I don’t think you need me to tell you that.’

  ‘And that is also why you avoided it so assiduously when you were single.’

  ‘Quite, but I have you to protect me from the matchmakers now,’ he added, chuckling, ‘so it will be safe for me to show my face again.’

  ‘I cannot imagine why you would want to. You enjoy politics, which again I find baffling, and will take pleasure from being at the heart of things now that parliament is sitting again. But I cannot imagine why you would also want to develop a sociable disposition, to say nothing of laying yourself open to Thorndike’s machinations,’ she added, referring to the prime minister’s aide-cum-fixer. He had helped a young Jake to cover up the accidental death of his older brother, a situation which resulted in Jake reluctantly acceding to the earldom. Thorndike had played upon Jake’s loyalty since then by persuading him to help out in sensitive situations in which the government preferred not to be seen to be involved.

  Olivia knew that if Jake was found to be meddling in areas that could damage the government’s reputation then Thorndike would deny all knowledge of having sought his help and abandon him in the blink of an eye. He had left them alone for their year in Torbay, but despite the fact that Jake had told him he wouldn’t help him again, Olivia wasn’t sufficiently naïve to suppose that Thorndike would take him at his word.

  Olivia most emphatically did not like Thorndike.

  ‘Has it occurred to you that I might want to show my wife off to society’s elite and enjoy the envy of my peers?’

  ‘Frankly no, but it’s kind of you to make the suggestion.’

  ‘We shall do the rounds,’ Jake said, glancing at the growing collection of invitations already lining the marble mantle. It hadn’t taken long for word of their return to spread. ‘In fact, we should hold a soiree here, and entertain on a lavish scale.’

  Olivia sent him a probing look. ‘Are you feeling quite well?’ she asked, touching his brow and affecting an expression of deep concern.

  ‘Never better, my sweet. Now get yourself off and change,’ he said, tipping her from his lap. ‘Isaac and Eva are dining with us, in case you had forgotten. I know that you and Eva have a lot of catching up to do, despite the fact that she spent over a month with us in Torbay. What the two of you find to talk about defeats me, but there you have it.’

  ‘We complain about you and Isaac, of course, and all the tyranny we have to endure.’

  She squealed with laughter as he attempted to recapture her, presumably to punish her with a kiss. And if he did that…well, one thing would lead to another and she would never be changed before their guests arrived.

  Still laughing, she took herself up to her sumptuous bedroom that adjoined Jake’s. They had only been back in London for two nights but thus far Jake’s bed had not been slept in. Olivia doubted if it ever would be, and wondered at Jake’s insistence upon maintaining a charade that fooled no one—certainly not the servants. Presumably Jake’s ancestors had not enjoyed such blissful marriages and looked upon sexual congress as a duty rather than a pleasure, accounting for the lord and lady of the house maintaining adjoining yet separate apartments.

  Olivia pitied them. Her thoughts dwelt briefly upon the torturous times she had lived through during the course of her first loveless and brutal marriage, arranged for her by her parents with no thought given to the compatibility of the parties involved. The agony of being accused of Marcus’s murder and the abject fear she had struggled to conceal when hanging had appeared to be a very real possibility now seemed almost worthwhile, if only for the sublime happiness she had subsequently found with Jake. Sometimes it frightened her to think just how contented she actually was, making her wonder if she deserved to be. She wanted to bottle the feeling and luxuriate in it while she still could, because she lived in fear of it being snatched away from her.

  Susan, Olivia’s maid, came into the room, beaming.

  ‘No need to ask if you are glad to have returned to London,’ Olivia said with a returning smile.

  ‘I can’t deny it, my lady. The country was interesting, but it took me months to get used to it. I couldn’t sleep for the quiet. I’d never been far from London before we went to Devon and I was that afraid—’

  ‘Afraid that your young man here in London would tire of waiting for you.’

  ‘Well, I suppose—’

  ‘No suppose about it, Susan. As I told you at the time, and it bears repeating, if he couldn’t wait for you then he wasn’t truly in love, and was therefore not worth having. I take it from your sunny smile that he did wait and that he is pleased to see you again.’

  ‘I was silly, getting myself into a tizzy for no reason. You were right about that, my lady. Absence has made his heart grow that much fonder. It was right kind of his lordship to offer my Samuel a position here in his London home. I know he will give good service.’

  ‘And you will be able to keep an eye on him.’

  ‘Well, there is that.’ Susan couldn’t seem to stop smiling. ‘Now, my lady, what shall you wear this evening?’

  ‘What indeed?’

  Olivia lapsed into silence as Susan helped her into a gown of autumnal shades and set about dressing her hair. In the mood for reflection, she dwelt upon the changes that had occurred in her life in the few short years since Marcus’s murder. A murder that eventually proved to be a case of fratricide, although the proof had not emerged for two long years after the event. In the interim Olivia was obliged to live under a cloud of suspicion, despite the fact that her innocence had been proven by Jake, who took it upon himself to right some of the wrongs that the establishment failed to address. That, it seemed, was insufficient to satisfy a gossip-hungry society. Unless and until the identity of the murderer could be proved, the finger of suspicion would always point towards the person with the most to gain for Marcus’s unlamented demise—his widow.

  Olivia had pretended not to care about her notoriety, when she actually cared a great deal. Jake saw something in her during the weeks when they were forced constantly into one another’s company. She had never understood quite what, but he invited her to join his band of avenging vigilantes—the only woman accorded that privilege. He taught her swordplay, the basic methods of self-defence and other useful skills such as lock-picking.

  She fell rather hopelessly in love with him during that early period. How could she not when, as a condemned woman shunned by society, the elegant Earl of Torbay chose to take up her cause. He believed her account of Marcus’s death and set about proving that she couldn’t possibly have had any involvement in it. But she had known better than to allow her feelings to show, and kept Jake at arm’s length. It was only because she showed no interest in him as a man that had he recruited her. As a handsome, rich and highly eligible aristocrat, he was relentlessly pursued by females at every turn and Olivia refused to add her name to his lengthy list of admirers. Being admitted to his constant company, being treated as his confidante and friend, would have to be enough for her.

  But a year ago their relationship had taken an unexpected and very passionate turn, which resulted in Olivia falling pregnant and Jake convincing her to marry him. Olivia, at first reluctant, finally agreed. She’d been unsure after her first disastrous marriage if she was willing to risk embracing the institution for a second time. She knew that Jake was an entirely different proposition to Marcus. He would never bully, belittle or ignore her, nor would he use violence against her. He simply being chivalrous, given her delicate situation, but might come to regret marrying a woman with such a questionable reputation. She couldn’t bear it if he were to grow indifferent towards her.

  They had married and spent a year at his country estate in Torbay, where their s
on Sebastian had been safely delivered. Jake had taken on responsibility for Tom, the only good thing to come from her marriage to Marcus, and had afforded him the protection of his name. Jake seemed perfectly content with the turn his life had taken, but Olivia knew he was restless and hankered after more wrongs to right, or at least a cause celebre to challenge his fierce intellect. Now that they were back in London, he probably wouldn’t have to wait too long for one to present itself.

  ‘Thank you, Susan,’ Olivia said, pleased with her maid’s ministrations. ‘It’s time I was going down and doubtless you are keen to check on your Samuel.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Parker will be keeping a weather eye on him and making sure he performs his duties. Never doubt it.’

  Olivia did not. Parker was a great deal more to Jake than a mere butler. He was tough, resourceful, ensured that his houses ran like clockwork and took an active part in most of Jake’s investigations. In short, Jake couldn’t manage without him, and looked upon Parker as a friend and confidante as much as a servant. He knew all of Jake’s secrets and would take them to his grave. Such men were rare and Olivia was grateful that Parker hadn’t taken exception to Olivia when Jake settled his interest upon her, well aware that a man in his position could make Olivia’s life a misery in lots of small ways if he chose to.

  She made her way downstairs and found Jake already changed for dinner, sitting beside the fire with a glass of whisky in his hand as he flipped through some papers that his secretary had given to him to study. Always working, was her intelligent husband, keeping his active brain busy with the myriad duties that fell to his lot. He sensed Olivia’s presence, looked up and smiled at her. The genuine smile that lit up his rugged features and still held the power to turn her insides to mush.

  ‘There you are,’ he said, standing and taking her hand as he motioned her to the couch on the opposite side of the fire. He abandoned his papers and sat beside her, still holding her hand. ‘Are you feeling more settled now that you can anticipate Eva’s company?’