Improper Advances

by Margaret Evans Porter

  Continuing the tirade, her mother held up Miss Farren as an example of the good fortune that could come to a clever actress. The lovely Elizabeth’s salary had soared to thirty guineas a week before she retired from the stage to wed the Earl of Derby. Harriot nodded at intervals. Lifting her eyes from her sewing, she feigned attentiveness, though in fact she was eyeing the water stain on the parlor ceiling and mentally straightening the framed aquatint on the wall.

  But when the shrill, cutting voice uttered the name Ana St. Albans, Harriot could no longer shut it out.

  “Mark this, my girl. If you don’t escape the influence of that saucy slut, you’re bound to come to grief.

  Unless you heed what I say, do as I tell you, you’ll end your days in a workhouse, a fat and pitiful woman, without a penny or a friend to your name.”

  This was more than she could bear. “You’re wrong about Oriana. And about me. I’ve always been grateful for your care and devotion, Mother. I am obedient. But however hard I try to please, you call me foolish and ignorant. You say I’ve put on too much weight and cultivate the wrong sort of people. But I remember when you encouraged my friendship with Oriana. You wished I could be exactly like her—beautiful, admired, successful. Only after you learned about her affair with Mr. Teversal did you warn me to keep away. She was heartbroken and distraught, and in need. I couldn’t desert her.”

  She left the room hurriedly to evade the vicious tongue-lashing her defiant words would provoke. If she remained in this house one minute longer, her mother would hunt her down. Blinded by tears, she opened the front door and bolted outside. Her escape ended as she started down the steps, when she collided with a solid mass of flesh and bone.

  The object blocking her way was a man—very tall, attractively dark. Blinking her eyes to clear them, she sent the tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “I’ve finally done it.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Made a lady weep.”

  “Oh, no, sir, I started before I bumped you.” She dried her eyes with the dangling end of the kerchief tied over her bosom. “So sorry.”

  “No apology necessary,” he said pleasantly. “You must be Miss Mellon. I’m looking for Mrs. Julian—Madame St. Albans—Oriana—whatever she answers to this morning. My name is Corlett.”

  When he smiled, he was even more handsome, and she wished she had happier news for him.

  Flustered, she replied, “She’s not here.”

  “Has she left for the theater?”

  “No, sir. She’s gone to London.”

  “I might have guessed.”

  The cold fury of his reply was just as unsettling as her mother’s explosive rages. Then his expression changed, and his face looked as bleak and bereft as Oriana’s had been that morning as she climbed into the post chaise to begin her long journey.

  PART II

  Let us not then rush blindly on unto it,

  Like lustful beasts, that only know to do it:

  For lust will languish, and that heat decay,

  But thus, thus, keeping endless holiday,

  Let us together closely lie, and kiss,

  There is no labour, no shame in this;

  This hath pleased, doth please,

  and long will please; never

  Can this decay, but is beginning ever.

  —Ben Jonson

  Chapter 12

  London

  July 1799

  Oriana, her face shaded by her hat’s excessively broad brim, strolled with her cousin beside Hyde Park’s ornamental river. Brilliant sunshine glanced off the Serpentine’s calm waters, and she was trying very hard not to squint. Too many people were watching her.

  “Your first Vauxhall night was successful?” Lord Burford asked.

  “A good beginning to what I trust will be a profitable summer.”

  “But you’ll be at Newmarket, I hope, to see your favorite run. Combustible finished third at Brocket Hall, her first race,” he boasted. “My brother Fred offers himself as jockey for her next.”

  “A racing clergyman—what must his bishop think?” The energetic Lord Frederick Beauclerk’s passion for sport made Oriana smile. “When last I saw him, he boasted of having a saddle built into his pulpit at St. Michael’s so he could preach as though on horseback. The parishioners must be relieved that he doesn’t give his sermons while swinging his cricket bat.”

  Burford was as typical an English nobleman as could be found in the park this afternoon. After serving his king and country in the army for more than a decade, including a stint in Canada, he’d stood for Parliament. When not occupied with countryside matters, he attended sporting events. In the earl’s face, as in her own, Oriana could trace the unmistakable imprint of Nell Gwynn, their legendary ancestress—plump, soft lips and pointed chin, prominently arched brows, and hair that was tinted with copper. A passionate interest in Newmarket racing was another St. Albans legacy.

  He’d found her in her music room, fingers dancing across the keys of her pianoforte as she sang from the depths of her lonely heart. After she had performed a pensive Manx song in a minor key—which swelled her nostalgia for the island—he had invited her to join him in a jaunt through the park. She had accepted, for what was the point of having a new promenade gown if she wasn’t going to show it off?

  To maintain her place in the forefront of fashion, she’d called in her seamstress. This extravagant enterprise, like her constant vocal practice, helped to fill a void that hadn’t existed before her Isle of Man holiday. Suke Barry was a grateful recipient of her cast-off garments. All the ladies who so slavishly followed her modes would hurry to their own dressmakers when they saw that Ana St. Albans had bestowed last season’s wardrobe upon her maidservant.

  As Oriana and her cousin strolled along at the edge of the busy carriageway, sharp feminine eyes studied every detail of her attire, from the number of nodding plumes atop her large hat to the deep, lace-edged flounce of her indigo gown. The gentlemen also looked at her. The riders slowed their hacks as they went by, the drivers whipped the teams pulling their curricles and phaetons in an effort to impress her. One bold pedestrian stopped, ostensibly to ask the earl’s opinion of the costly and pampered horseflesh on parade. But she and Burford both knew that his real purpose was to flirt with her.

  When they walked on, she searched for familiar faces among the fashionable throng. Any combination of dark head, broad shoulders, and exceptional height never failed to catch her attention, and inevitably caused her pulse to race.

  Stop being so silly, she chided herself. There was no chance that she’d find Sir Darius Corlett in this gathering. He was far, far away, either in Liverpool still, or back on his island.

  Ignoring the display of privileged humanity, she let her mind carry her off to a distant glen, undisturbed by carriage wheels or chattering voices. Its silence was broken only by birdsong—or the honk of a territorial goose. A gem of a house stood atop a green hill. Its owner was closeted in his study, composing another treatise on the origin and antiquity of Manx rock formations.

  “Looking for someone?” Burford inquired.

  “No, no,” she answered briskly.

  Dare Corlett had once followed her across the Irish Sea, from Ramsey to Liverpool. It was madness to suppose he might travel all the way to London, a place he professed to dislike, after so firm a dismissal. Besides, by now her infamy had surely been revealed to him. Henceforth he would regard her as a fallen woman—a duplicitous one—unworthy of trust or affection.

  She often wondered whether he had wanted her for his mistress, as she’d assumed, or his wife. His precise intentions would remain a mystery. If, like Thomas, he needed a willing bedmate, he’d have to look elsewhere. And if he had marriage in mind?

  Impossible, replied her more rational self. The disclosure of her illegitimacy and her profession, combined with her uninhibited behavior in his library, had destroyed any chance of his making an honorable proposal.

  As though read
ing her thoughts, her cousin abruptly announced, “Fred believes you ought to find a husband.”

  Oriana laughed, and asked idly, “Has he got someone in mind?”

  “We agree you should have a chap with heaps of money and a string of racehorses, who wouldn’t mind your larking about London.”

  While he was describing the perfect match for her, she made up her own list of desirable husbandly attributes. Perceptive eyes, appreciative of her beauty but never dazzled by it. Strong arms to hold her close, a chest as solid as a Manx boulder. Masterful hands that could smooth her hair or dry her tears or worship her body. An ability to make her laugh, whatever her mood. Devotion, honesty. Physical strength combined with a formidable—and invigorating—intellect.

  A passing horse kicked up a piece of quartz-flecked gravel, which dropped into Oriana’s path. She paused to examine it. Deciding that it was pretty enough to keep, she stuffed it into her reticule.

  “That’s the third stone you’ve picked up. Starting a new fashion?” her cousin teased.

  “Not intentionally.”

  “Look there,” said Burford. “The Earl of Rushton bows to you. Wishes he were walking with you, I’ll wager.”

  “I doubt it. He’s too respectable a personage to seek my company in a public place.”

  He gave her arm a consoling pat. “You make too much of other people’s opinions. I’m calling on my father and sister before I leave town. Care to accompany me to Mansfield Street?”

  Whatever her observers thought as she exited the park, she had the secret satisfaction of knowing that her destination was a ducal residence. Her connection to his grace of St. Albans could not shield her from wagging tongues and rampant speculation, but it would always be a source of comfort—and a reminder of her pleasure-seeking parent.

  Dare leaned wearily against the tall iron railing that enclosed a spacious garden at the center of Soho Square. He was surrounded on all sides by neat town houses, varying only in their doorway architecture or the number of sash windows set into the facade.

  Across the way, a stout female in a shabby riding habit trotted over the raised pavement. Dare, determined to accost her and question her, stepped away from the rail-just as she darted into a corner house.

  “I’ve got a new toy.”

  He turned. The small, high-pitched voice had risen from the garden shrubbery and belonged to a boy with plump cheeks and cherubic golden curls.

  “Show me,” he said encouragingly.

  The child emerged from the thicket of leaves and branches. Tucked under his arm was a miniature horse with uniformed rider, set on wheels. He set it on the pathway and tugged on the attached string. As he pulled, the toy rolled forward. The mechanical horse lifted its forelegs, and the cavalryman raised his sword arm.

  “It came from Hamley’s shop,” the boy explained.

  “What a lucky fellow you are,” said Dare.

  “I know. I’m Merton Pringle.”

  “Do you live nearby?”

  “Over there.” The lad reached through the iron bars and pointed in the general direction of Frith Street. “Mamma is Lady Pringle and Papa is Sir Walter. My brothers board at the academy on the other side of the square. Walt is called Pringle Major and Antony is Pringle Minor.”

  Dare decided to cultivate his new acquaintance. “You have many neighbors in this square. Do you know their names and houses?”

  Young Merton’s bright head bobbed confidently up and down.

  “I’m looking for a lady who lives here. Do you know Ana St. Albans?”

  Said the child solemnly, “I’m not s’posed to talk about her.”

  “No? Whyever not?”

  “Mamma says she’s wicked and immoral and depraved. I don’t know what that means, but it’s something bad. Lizzie, our housemaid, told me Madame St. Albans has many lovers. Lovers are men who like to kiss ladies. Is kissing depraved?”

  “Sometimes,” Dare responded grimly. “Depends who’s doing the kissing. And how it’s done.”

  Many lovers. Immoral and depraved. This information contradicted his own impressions of Oriana, and refuted her statements to him. I’m no whore, she’d said when refusing to accompany him to his Liverpool hotel. I’ve been fending off advances for many years now, she’d claimed during their conversation in the dark churchyard.

  Oriana’s elusiveness infuriated him, and the demands of her profession were bothersome, yet they hadn’t quenched his need to possess her. Her collection of gentlemen was an unexpected complication, though.

  “Sometimes I see Papa kissing Lizzie behind the parlor door, and in that shadowy place under our staircase. I think he must be a lover.”

  “I daresay,” Dare responded absently. The intrigues within the Pringle household were of no interest to him. He was trying to decide how to wrest Oriana away from her assorted paramours.

  “Mamma calls the ruffle on her skirt a St. Albans flounce. Lizzie had one, too, but Mamma wouldn’t let her keep it.”

  “Show me the house where Madame St. Albans lives.”

  “That one over there,” said the boy, pointing his stubby finger.

  “With the drawn shutters? Or the one beside it, where the carriage is stopping?”

  A masculine figure had emerged from the vehicle.

  Merton whispered, “He’s one of the lovers. A lord, Lizzie says. I think he might be Thomas, the man in the song.”

  “What song is that?” An elderly manservant had answered the door, and the visitor was going inside.

  In a piping treble, the child enlightened him.

  “Of all the beauties in London town

  The dark, the fair, the slender or round,

  There’s a songbird who makes the most

  glorious sound

  Her name is Ana St. Albans.

  Vainly do gentlemen sigh for her charms

  They suffer heartburnings and many alarms

  But she’s happiest locked in wild Thomas’s arms

  The lovely Ana St. Albans.”

  When Dare had learned the ugly truth about Willa Bradfield, the evidence had been presented all at once.

  With Oriana, there was a steady stream of damning information.

  The lovely and charming widow who had shied away from his kisses had turned out to be a famous stage performer, and was the bastard daughter of a dissolute duke. She and one of her many lovers had inspired a naughty song. Her current protector was an aristocrat who owned a fine coach with a crest on the door panel, and he visited her in the middle of the day.

  Just like Dorrity Crowe, he thought, flitting from man to man. Insatiable, ever seeking fresh amusement, unwilling to settle down. And worst of all, thoroughly deceitful.

  “I must go,” he told the boy abruptly, and marched across the street.

  Grasping the brass door knocker, he banged out his anger and frustration.

  The aged servant, startled by the violence of his summons, asked his business.

  “Inform your mistress that an acquaintance wishes to pay his respects. And don’t tell me she’s not receiving, because one caller has already gained entry.”

  Taken aback, the butler—or steward—said meekly, “Step inside, sir.” Gingerly accepting Dare’s hat, he handed it over to a young footman wearing buff livery trimmed with blue. “What name shall I give?”

  “Corlett.”

  Dare made a circuit of the small antechamber, absorbing every detail. The arrangement of the chairs around the hearth was informal, and the presence of a gate-leg table indicated its use as a breakfast parlor.

  He peered into the adjoining room, much larger and filled with evidence of Oriana the singer. A pianoforte with a straight-backed chair, sheet music stacked upon a tabletop, a wooden music stand in the comer, and a guitarlike instrument lying on the sofa. This, he surmised, served her as both music room and library. The majority of the volumes in the bookcases were extremely old. On a lower shelf were some antique folios, very tall—musical scores, perhaps. A selection of
theatrical pictures adorned the walls. Sally Vernon, clutching a nosegay, smiled saucily at him from one frame. He found Joseph Vernon, Oriana’s grandfather, hanging between two brass sconces.

  In this attractive, cozy dwelling, Oriana sang and played and dallied with her lovers. Despite his pain and fury, he was conscious of how clearly it was marked by her personality and her interests and her background. In her womanly way, she’d created a home whose warmth and style he coveted. His own house, grand though it was, had no history yet—nor any contents.

  Hearing movement on the stair, he turned away.

  “Madame St. Albans will see you,” her servant announced, not quite able to conceal his amazement.

  Up the staircase he went, his heart thudding in unison with his heavy footsteps. Would she be angry?

  Alarmed? Ashamed?

  He entered a drawing room. She occupied a settee and spoke earnestly to her visitor, a slender gentleman with gray-flecked temples. Her appearance was remarkably angelic. Her high-waisted gown was a white cloud formed by many layers of diaphanous material, its scooped bodice exposing a wealth of creamy flesh. A pale ribbon held her loose auburn curls away from her face. Her casual attire, combined with her guarded expression, fired his rage.

  “Sir Darius, this is an unexpected pleasure.” Her voice was soft, but with an undercurrent of dismay.

  “What brings you to London?”

  Before Dare could answer, the nobleman said, “My dear, it’s perfectly plain. You do.”

  Chapter 13

  “I can speak for myself,” Dare said.

  His abrupt answer made Oriana smile, and her companion frown.

  Throughout his long and tedious journey from Liverpool, Dare had carefully composed his declaration. Now that he was with her again, the words had flown from his mind. And it didn’t even matter, because he hadn’t found her alone.