The Husband Hunter's Guide to London

by Kate Moore

  “Well,” said Allegra, “do you wish to join us? Clive has the barouche, so we’ll be quite comfortable.”

  Jane looked from one to the other. Like Hazelwood, they wanted to take charge of her, and like him, they assumed she was helpless to do anything on her own. She supposed she would have to set them straight, and hoped she could do it without giving offense. Even if she could not hire a guide and a pair of donkeys, she was sure she could manage to get to a London dressmaker without special assistance.

  Clive stepped forward. “Cousin, you look uncertain. I’m afraid we’ve surprised you, but Allegra and I want only to welcome you to the family and ease your way in London society.” Clive glanced at his sister as if for confirmation, but Allegra was adjusting the fall of her bonnet ribbons over her cloak.

  Jane smiled the diplomatic smile her father had taught her. A polite refusal seemed best. “Thank you, but I must decline the invitation. You’ve caught me unexpectedly. I have a prior engagement this morning.”

  Allegra expelled a huff of breath. “Where could you possibly be going? You haven’t any acquaintance in town, have you?”

  “Nevertheless, there are matters to which I must attend.” Jane detected a momentary flicker of annoyance in Clive’s eyes, but it passed.

  “Don’t let us detain you.” Allegra’s chin lifted to reveal the elaborate bow of her bonnet. “Come on, Clive.”

  Clive stayed Allegra with a hand on her elbow. “Forgive the unexpectedness of our call, cousin. We would in no way be remiss in duty to a family member.”

  “You can’t go about London unaccompanied, you know,” Allegra added.

  “I won’t.”

  “And you do know you must not stay in a hotel on your own.” Allegra glanced disdainfully at Nell.

  Clive shot his sister a sharp glance. “Jane, may I call you Jane, cousin?” He waited for an answering nod from her. “Please forgive my sister’s frankness. She means well. Surely, you would be more comfortable with family than in a hotel.”

  Jane did not think she had heard the word cousin quite so many times in her life, but she was sure the connection did not entitle these strangers to take charge of her.

  “Oh, you must not worry about my situation. Let me introduce you to my companion.” Jane sent Nell to call Mrs. Lowndes, who stepped into the salon just as a jaunty staccato rap sounded on the suite door and snapped all their gazes around again.

  * * * *

  From the doorway, Hazelwood took in the scene. He found the room distinctly overcrowded for his purpose. In addition to Jane’s formidable chaperone Mrs. Lowndes at her side, Clive Walhouse and his very pretty sister occupied a prime stretch of carpet facing Jane.

  Mrs. Augusta Lowndes was a full-figured woman with waves of sandy hair under a lace cap. Her ample bosom and firm erectness of carriage reminded Hazelwood of a certain tall, upholstered armchair in his father’s study from which Lord Vange had been fond of handing out blistering reproofs. He felt a brief spasm of sympathy for Walhouse. Augusta Lowndes’s respectable figure in gray silk had a dampening effect on a man’s designs.

  He shifted his gaze to Jane’s guarded face. She looked as if she found her cousins’ company smothering. He didn’t know whether she was the sort to be taken in by protestations of familial feeling, but his job was to keep her with him. His mission depended on it.

  “Jane, I hope I’ve not kept you waiting. I know you want to make an early start on our errands.” He crossed the room, taking care to pass between Jane and her relations, making the pair of them step back. He kept his gaze on Jane, showing her as he passed, a basket in which was nestled a flannel-clad bundle. She cast a puzzled glance at his bundle, until she caught its aroma. Her eyes widened appreciatively. He’d not been wrong in guessing that she had a morning coffee habit after her long years in the near East. He deposited the basket on the desk and stood beside her.

  Only then did he turn to the others, assuming a rueful face, as if he’d just noticed them. “Beg your pardon. Morning, Walhouse, Miss Walhouse. Don’t let me interrupt a family visit.” He bowed slightly.

  He met Walhouse’s expressionless gaze and watched Allegra stiffen, her mouth a taut line of disdain as she turned on Jane. “Hazelwood is your prior engagement? You prefer him to family?”

  Hazelwood pulled Jane’s arm through his. She made no resistance. “Jane and I are old family friends.” Saying her name was a deliberate provocation, and he waited to see how much of a problem Walhouse meant to be.

  Walhouse’s smile faded. “I didn’t realize you had family friends, Hazelwood.”

  “Surprising perhaps, but as you see, I count Jane as one of them.”

  Allegra tugged her brother’s sleeve, her outraged stare directed at Jane. “Don’t let us keep you, Jane, when you have such friends.”

  Walhouse removed his sister’s hand from his sleeve. She glared at him and spun on her heel for the door. He turned to Jane and smiled again, drawing an envelope from his coat. If Jane Fawkener was any good at reading smiles, she’d see that Walhouse’s smile was as false as wooden teeth.

  “Cousin, even if you are not prepared to accept our invitation today, I hope you will join us for a family musical evening my mother is hosting.” The man leaned close enough to give Jane a whiff of the scented pomade keeping his golden curls in such artful disarray. “You are quite new to London, and I hope you will let your family guide you. We can steer you away from many difficulties.”

  “Thank you, cousin, for this morning’s call.” Jane took the envelope, disengaging her arm from Hazelwood’s. “And please thank your mother for the invitation. It is my second evening invitation, and I shall value it accordingly.”

  Hazelwood admired how neatly the girl did it. She put Walhouse in his place, and he’d never even seen it coming.

  The man had no choice but to bow and follow his sister out the door.

  As the door closed, Jane turned to Hazelwood. “You lied to them.”

  “You’re welcome.” He withdrew the flannel bundle from the basket, and had the satisfaction of feeling her draw closer. No one made better coffee than Nate Wilde. Hazelwood had counted on that and on her long years of living in a world where next to a leather water bag, the coffeepot would be the most valued household item. He’d not been in the East himself, but he’d heard the stories often enough in the clubs.

  “I wasn’t thanking you,” she said as she watched him unwrap the coffee flask.

  “Oh, I think you were.” He grinned at her. “But perhaps you’d feel more grateful if I’d taken stronger measures. I’d be happy to toss your cousin Clive down a stairwell if you like, or offer Allegra’s bonnet to a starving goat.”

  She gave him an arrested look before she spoke. “Surely your role as protocol officer does not include dismissing my family.”

  “Oh, I think you dismissed them. Handily. I was just part of the rear guard, and Mrs. Lowndes, of course.”

  “Entirely unnecessary,” she said, letting her gaze slide from his.

  The alert Mrs. Lowndes set a tray of cups on the desk, and Hazelwood unstoppered the flask, releasing the coffee scent into the air. He began to pour. “What brought them to your door at such an early hour?”

  “They invited me for a tour of the amusements of London.” She watched him pour the coffee.

  “You’ve met your first fellow husband hunter, you know, a rival.”

  “I see that my appointment with the dressmaker is urgent if I am to compete.” Jane accepted the cup he offered and lifted it to her lips. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, the pale flowered cup pressed against the dusky pink of her lower lip. For a moment the coffee clearly transported her to some other time and place. He looked away, offering a cup to Mrs. Lowndes, who declined it, and pouring one for himself.

  Jane’s eyes opened again with just the slightest hint of surprise at her surroundi
ngs. “Where did you get this coffee?”

  “My secret, but I’m prepared to provide it every morning.”

  Her dark eyes turned wary. “At what price?”

  “All part the service. And I can provide a London tour.”

  “And why should I accept your invitation when I just refused my cousins’?”

  “Because I will give you the husband hunter’s tour.”

  She put down her coffee and reached for her bag, drawing out the little blue book. “The dressmaker first, I think.” She flipped through the pages. “There’s a recommendation here.” She looked up. “Madame Celeste.”

  Hazelwood schooled his face to meet her gaze. He did not look at Mrs. Lowndes, who gave no sign that she recognized the dressmaker’s name, though Hazelwood suspected that she did. Celeste’s clients included the most fashionable women of the demi-monde, those whose protectors opened deep pockets to dress a mistress. Once, he’d been one of them.

  “What?” Jane glanced from one face to the other. “You both frown as if I had mentioned the unmentionable.”

  “Not at all.” Hazelwood turned to Mrs. Lowndes. “But let’s send Mrs. Lowndes ahead with a list of your requirements, so that Celeste will be ready for you.”

  Mrs. Lowndes met his glance with a steady one of her own. They understood each other. “A good notion, my lord. I will let Madame know the sort of client Miss Fawkener is and what she will want in the way of day dresses and evening gowns. I assume the girl needs a court presentation dress?”

  Hazelwood nodded, and Mrs. Lowndes excused herself to get her coat and hat.

  When he turned back, he found Jane regarding him with an assessing glance.

  “My lord? That’s something you neglected to tell me yesterday when you introduced yourself as my protocol officer. Should I be calling you Lord Hazelwood?”

  In spite of himself he looked away from that direct gaze. He returned his cup to the tray. “Don’t be misled by the title. In my case the ‘lord’ is a mere formality. There’s no ancestral pile surrounded by vast acres, and no ten thousand pounds per annum.” He picked up her cloak from the back of a chair and held it out to her.

  She regarded him coolly without moving. “It cannot be usual practice for the government to employ lords as protocol officers for mere misses.”

  “Nevertheless, as my family doesn’t object, the government is quite free to make use of me in the service of the British nation. You may call me Hazelwood without fear of offending.” He kept his voice flat and unrevealing. She had seen the Walhouses’ reaction to his presence, and she would hear soon enough how polite society regarded him. “Now, shall you have that tour of London? What does your book advise you to see?”

  She turned to accept the cloak he held. He draped the wool folds over her shoulders. It was a common gesture of gentlemanly etiquette taught to him at an early age. He had practiced on his mother from the time he’d passed her in height. Since then he’d held a lady’s coat indifferently or impatiently hundreds of times, so he should not suddenly feel that he was offering protection rather than politeness, and it should not matter that his fingers brushed her shoulders or that her scent rose to dizzy him a bit.

  She turned and tied the cloak strings with swift assurance. “Do gentlemen usually accompany ladies to their dressmakers?”

  “Protocol officers always do.”

  She was halfway to the door. “And when did I become ‘Jane’ to you?”

  “When we became such old family friends, remember?”

  She stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “And if we are such old family friends, then surely I know what sort of ‘lord,’ you are.”

  “A viscount,” he said through his teeth.

  * * * *

  Not twenty minutes after his fruitless interview with Jane Fawkener, Clive watched from his barouche as Hazelwood drove off with the girl, and without the chaperone.

  Clive’s plan to offer his orphaned cousin the shelter of their family’s home and name had gone badly wrong. It had been a mistake to bring Allegra along, but it had been Hazelwood’s unexpected arrival that caused the most trouble. How the devil had such a disgraced wastrel come into the girl’s life? And what did the dragon of a chaperone mean to let Hazelwood drive off with her charge?

  Clive tried to think of the last place he’d seen Hazelwood. Clive was sure that the man had neither been sober nor perfectly upright at their last encounter. His claim of a long-standing friendship with Jane was a problem. Their mother would not want to take in the girl if her ties to Hazelwood were generally known.

  Hazelwood’s carriage turned the corner. The barouche could not follow the lighter vehicle easily, but Clive noted a fellow in a slouch hat on a hired horse who took off in pursuit. The thought that Malikov arranged it crossed his mind. Malikov’s information about Jane Fawkener had been incomplete at best, and now perhaps his Russian friend wanted to know more. The question was why.

  Beside him Allegra twitched her cloak around her knees, and settled her muff in place. “Can we go now? I’m freezing, and Mama will not be pleased when I tell her what you got us into this morning.”

  “You won’t tell her anything.”

  “Won’t I? You take out the barouche and offer an invitation to my party to a plain girl with no fashion sense and very bad taste in friends.”

  “She’s our cousin.”

  “Humpf! She’s old. She should be wearing lace caps, and she’s nothing like us. Did you see her bonnet? Really, my maid wouldn’t wear such a thing. Worse still, she’s a friend of Hazelwood’s. Mama won’t like it at all that you exposed me to his company.”

  Clive signaled the coachman to start his team and turned to his sister. “Jane Fawkener is family, and we’re going to keep her close.”

  “Since when have you cared about family? You’re always wishing you had any family but ours.”

  “You mistake me, Allegra. I want only the best for our family.”

  “Well, Mama will be vexed. You know Hazelwood’s reputation better than I, I dare say, and I have to be so careful, you know. It’s my Season.”

  Clive took Allegra by the shoulders and pressed her back against the carriage squabs. She had no idea in her pretty little head how much her season depended on George Fawkener’s fortune remaining in their father’s hands.

  “Forget Hazelwood, Allegra. You may tell Mama that we invited our poor, orphaned cousin to a party, our cousin who desperately needs Mama’s guidance as she has no idea how to get on in London.”

  Allegra tried to squirm out of his hold. “Clive, stop. You’ll bruise my shoulders.”

  “Give me your word, Allegra, that you’ll say nothing to Mama.”

  She nodded, glaring at him, and he let her go. In one way Allegra had helped him. He found his mind quite clear. He had to get Jane Fawkener out of Mivart’s Hotel and into his mother’s house.

  It is a rare woman who can rate her merits as others do. She can consult her mirror or her fond friends in vain for a true estimate of her personal recommendations, for both will flatter her. She can note with what care persons unknown to her scrutinize her visage in the crowded sphere of public life. Again she is likely to miss the mark in estimating her worth on the marriage mart. So how is a sensible woman to determine whether her aspirations in regard to a certain gentleman are reasonable, or likely to invite private disappointment of the sort that may diminish her bloom and lessen her chances for real happiness?

  Is she a gentleman’s daughter? Is he a gentleman? So far, all is well. Or perhaps she is the daughter of one of the great merchants of London, and he is the son of another. All is well. It is not unreasonable to look for a rough equality in the station of one’s parents and the parents of a prospective husband as a first indication of the appropriateness of a match. On the other hand, it is dangerous to set one’s sights on a gentleman whose rank
far exceeds the rank of even a lady’s most distinguished relations. In such cases all the initiative in the acquaintance must come from the gentleman, and all caution, must be exercised by the lady.

  —The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

  Chapter Six

  Viscount Hazelwood was proving to be a bigger problem than Jane had at first anticipated. He had seen through her effort to escape her cousins, he’d made it impossible for her to escape his company, and he had separated her from her chaperone.

  She concentrated on overcoming the sensation of being lifted into his carriage by a pair of strong hands at her waist. As the impression of those hands faded, other sensations intruded. Hazelwood’s shoulder under the capes of his wool coat rubbed against hers with the movement of his hands on the reins. Their hips met on the narrow seat, and their bodies leaned in unison each time the carriage took a corner. With her face deep in the poke of her bonnet, Jane had to turn her head to see either her companion or the landscape, and it was much safer to look at the scenery. Hazelwood was too near.

  At least at the moment he was attending to his driving and not looking at her. She’d already figured out that he was like Papa in the way he appeared to take no deliberate notice of others, while seeing a great deal, too much really. And then there was the problem of his voice, the pull of it, the warm gravelly undertow of it that came and went with his audience. It had been instructive to hear him speak to her cousins in a different voice, an icy drawl that disappeared as soon as they left.

  His vehicle, drawn by a matched pair of coffee brown horses with black manes, rolled smoothly over the cobbles. She concentrated on the feeling, which was nothing like riding a swaying camel. The height gave her a view of velvet curtains framing elegant rooms in rows of houses pressed together like the spines of books on a crowded shelf. By the time the first street opened into a wide square where the cold wind hit them, she felt herself ready again to deal with her companion. They angled across the square’s end, turning south a block until Hazelwood pulled up across from the columned portico of substantial church.