The Greatest Lover in All England

by Christina Dodd

  Silently Tony handed Lord Sadler’s yellowed will to Jean, and Ann and Lady Honora crowded close, reading it over her shoulder. When they had finished, Jean silently handed it back.

  Ann recovered first. “Lady Honora, what think you?”

  Lady Honora answered, but not the right question. “Sir Danny was saying I was an excellent judge of character, and that’s true.”

  “Fantastic,” Tony murmured. “He’s thoroughly charmed her.”

  Lady Honora continued, “But regardless of the truth of any claim, it’s impossible. A woman of low repute cannot become an heiress.”

  Sir Danny fixed her with his most hypnotic gaze. “Rosie…Rosalyn is not a woman of low repute. I’ve personally supervised her every moment, waking and sleeping. She passes from my hands to the hands of her husband, untouched and unawakened.”

  Lifting Rosie’s hand to his mouth, Tony kissed it with lingering care. “I knew that.”

  She dug her nails into his hand and he quickly let go.

  “Queen Elizabeth is above all a practical monarch, and the truth of Rosalyn’s purity, even her heritage, pales beside the disgrace of her upbringing. Nay!” Lady Honora slashed the air. “With sorrow I must inform you, Sir Danny, that she is not suitable. But”—she lifted a finger—“I would be glad to offer her shelter in one of my homes. Sir Edward Sadler’s daughter must be rescued from the gutters into which she has fallen. She must be trained to behave like a lady.”

  “I have a better idea.” Tony’s cheek quirked in amusement. “Teach her to behave like a lady here.” Rosie jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow, and he grunted. Rubbing his side, he continued, “Teach her not to attack me. Teach her how to behave at table, how to run a household, how to be a correct wife for a nobleman of my stature.” Anchoring her arms with his, Tony picked her up and turned her kicking feet away from him. “’Tis a challenge worthy of you three, is it not?”

  He’d read them correctly. Jean avidly examined the struggling girl. “She has possibilities.”

  Lady Honora listened to the street curses spilling forth. “She needs to be taught when to speak and when to be silent.”

  “Mostly”—Ann sniffed—“she needs a bath.”

  “A bath?” Sir Danny shuddered. “Disgusting concept.”

  “A bath?” Rosie shrieked. “Sir Danny, they want to drown me.”

  Jean went to the door and ordered a tub of hot water, upstairs in the largest guest room, at once. Ann threw a rug over Rosie’s head to subdue her. Lady Honora ordered, “Quiet, girl. We’re going to give you a bath.” Taking a pinch of Rosie’s short, dirty cloak between her fingers, she rubbed it, then dropped it in disgust. “Probably two. Hand her to the serving maids, and be careful of her arm.”

  Everyone watched—the women and Tony in approval, Sir Danny in consternation—as the transfer was made and the screaming bundle was carried off.

  Lady Honora dusted her hands briskly. “We’ll let you know when the deed is done.”

  Tony listened as the howls for Sir Danny and the shouted demands proceeded up the stairs, then went back to the desk and seated himself, prepared to take up the work interrupted by his betrothal. The foundry demanded much of his attention; it should be running soon with improved machinery, and the money which he had so freely invested would at last be returning.

  A shaking finger appeared under his nose, and he looked up at the horrified Sir Danny. “You can’t do this,” Sir Danny said. “She had a bath just last summer, and everyone knows a winter bath will kill a body.”

  Tony picked up his quill and contemplated it. “A bath will not kill her.”

  “Likely tale. If you’re going to torment the poor lass, I’ll take her away and find another method to get her settled.” Sir Danny wheeled for the door.

  “As you wish,” Tony replied. “But if you go up to the bedchamber to rescue her, I think I should warn you—Lady Honora has already mentioned you need a good scrubbing.”

  Sir Danny wheeled back around and stared in terror. Tony nodded a gentle confirmation. Sir Danny fled, not up to the bedchamber, but outside to safety.

  Tony looked out at the line of serving maids who carried steaming buckets. He looked up at the ceiling to the place where he knew Lady Honora and his sisters scoured Rosie. He looked down at his hand, cupped no longer in the shape of Rosie’s breast, but in the shape of Rosie’s womanhood.

  And he grinned.

  Sir Danny paced the gallery, hearing Rosie’s wails and remembering how, in the past, he’d always raced to her rescue. Sometimes the “other” lads tormented her as a sissy. Sometimes she’d been ill. But most of all, she’d had nightmares. He’d been there for her, always, and now he’d lost that right. Without consulting her, he’d given her up to the past which so frightened her, and now events, and Tony, swept her along.

  A particularly loud shriek ended in a splash of water.

  When would the torment stop?

  Hal stretched his hands out to the red flames of the kitchen fire. They tinted his thin skin scarlet and gave the flesh a transparent glow, and he wondered if the flames of hell would eat him alive. Would he see his flesh consumed throughout eternity to pay for his sins? Would demons dig at him with pitchforks?

  Or had he already died, and the devil tormented him with these stabbing pains in his brain? Would he eternally try to redeem himself, and eternally find himself condemned by God, Jesus, Mary, all the saints, and his fellow man?

  When would the torment stop?

  That old fool Sir Danny had outmaneuvered him. Huddled in the shrubs below the terrace, Ludovic cursed and watched the manor. The old fool and the young lord. Together they’d conspired to establish Rosie so far above Ludovic’s status he had as much chance of having her as of touching the stars.

  But she wasn’t happy. Her screams tore at his heart.

  The laughter of the serving maids infuriated him. Even from outside the manor, he could hear the cold, precise tones of those three women, those witches who directed the torture.

  What kind of man did Sir Danny and that cocky lord imagine him to be? Not a chivalrous fool like these Englishmen, but a real warrior of the north. He would show them.

  Evening fell, lights glowed from the long windows, and still the cruel bath went on.

  When would the torment stop?

  “I’m not the heir!” Rosie sputtered. She stood in the bathtub as the maids sluiced fresh water over her head.

  “Tony is convinced you are.” Jean lifted a gown from a trunk. “What think you, Ann? You have an eye for color.”

  Ann considered the yellow silk, then shook her head. “Nay, ’twill turn her dark complexion sallow. Try to find a really vibrant red.”

  Jean shook out a crimson velvet gown, trimmed in gold braid loops.

  “Aye, that’ll be grand,” Ann said.

  “I have cuffs trimmed with black and red thread that would set off Rosalyn’s hands.” Lady Honora examined Rosie’s nails, then gestured to the maid wielding the well-used brush. “Scrub them.”

  “I’m not wearing those clothes.” Rosie winced as her nails were scoured clean, and she wondered at her own defiance. She’d done everything these three women, these witches, had commanded so far. She’d had no choice.

  She’d taken not one, but two baths. She had been sand-scraped, deloused, and washed until she expected to see long strips of skin lying in the tub. Her protests had been ignored, her threats laughed at. Tony’s two sisters, she realized, had dealt with recalcitrant children before, and such they considered her. And Lady Honora—it would never occur to Lady Honora to be afraid of anything.

  “Of course you’ll wear these clothes, or you’ll go naked.” Jean laid out stomachers until she found one that met Ann’s approval. “We burned those other rags you were wearing. Besides, these may be twenty years out of fashion, but they’re yours.”

  A linen towel enveloped Rosie’s head, and when she emerged, hair tangled, she asked, “Mine?”

  Jean exp
lained, “You’re Edward’s daughter.”

  “I’m not.”

  “The trunks were here when Tony took possession of Odyssey Manor.”

  Urging Rosie out of the tub, Ann held Rosie’s splinted arm out while the maids dried Rosie from head to toe. “Of course you’re the heiress. We all knew Edward. He was a favorite of the queen’s, and we were Her Majesty’s ladies-in-waiting.”

  Rosie grabbed at the towels, trying to cover herself from what seemed like thousands of eyes. Indeed, she hadn’t realized so many women existed on the estate, but everyone wanted to witness the bathing of the new mistress, and the three witches seemed to approve. “Witnesses will quiet any rumors, my dear,” Jean had told her when she protested her embarrassment. “They’ll all have seen your transformation from actor to heir, and there’ll be no talk of a switch.”

  The maids snatched the towels from Rosie, and she found herself dry and bare as a babe. Mocking to cover her discomfort, she said, “Now you’re going to tell me I look like him?”

  “Not at all.” Lady Honora’s deep tones disapproved of her frivolity. “You look like her.”

  “Her?”

  “Your mother.”

  Her mother? She’d never thought about a mother.

  “You did have a mother, forsooth.” Jean pressed her lips together.

  Bewildered by the undercurrents, Rosie asked, “Didn’t you like her?”

  “She almost ruined Edward.” Ann dropped a cambric smock over Rosie’s head, helped her pull her splinted arm through, and loosely tied the strings.

  “Ruined him?”

  “The queen does not like her courtiers to wed,” Lady Honora intoned, “and Edward was one of her favorites.”

  “We never knew what he saw in her.” Jean wrapped a silk-covered stomacher around Rosie and when it was approved, a maid laced it to her body. “She was skinny like you.”

  “And brown like you.” One by one, Lady Honora tried caps on Rosie until one, a black cap trimmed in pearls, won approval.

  “No charm at all, but Edward couldn’t resist her. He built this manor for her. ’Twas called Sadler House then, of course.” Ann handed her maid a petticoat of black mockado, followed by one of red serge, and the maid tied the points to the stomacher. “Then he married that woman without the queen’s permission.”

  “Forsooth, she was with child.” Jean peered at Rosie. “With you. Edward was quite foolishly pleased when you were born, and presented you to the queen as her future lady-in-waiting.”

  “He had an insolent charm.” Ann sighed and smiled.

  “You were in love with him,” Jean accused.

  “As were you, sister.”

  Lady Honora put an end to their squabbling. “We all were.”

  “What happened to my mother?” Rosie queried.

  The sisters grinned at each other slyly, realizing she’d laid a claim to the Sadler heritage, but Lady Honora said, “She died.”

  “Oh.” Everyone died. Everyone abandoned Rosie. Why had she even asked?

  “Edward never looked at another woman, except the queen, and we all knew he cultivated her for your sake.” Jean wrapped a bum roll farthingale around Rosie’s hips. “Luckily, Queen Elizabeth never knew how much he adored you, or she would have been jealous of you, too.”

  “As it was, she searched for you most assiduously when you disappeared, and mourned Edward with real grief.” Ann wiped a tear from her cheek. “She said she promised him to care for you should anything happen, and she felt she’d failed in her duty. Your arrival at court should make her very happy.”

  “If we can make a lady of you,” said Jean.

  Lady Honora put the period on Rosie’s fate. “We will make a lady of her, one worthy to wed a nobleman—although not Tony. He’s mine.”

  “For Edward’s sake.” Jean put out a hand to her conspirators, and each laid a hand atop hers.

  “For Edward’s sake,” they agreed.

  11

  See where she comes, apparell’d like the spring.

  —PERICLES. I, i, 13

  “Hey, Sir Danny! Look at this costume.” Rosie skipped along the long gallery toward her guardian. Branches of candles sent a glow around the waxed and polished wall paneling and illuminated the vivid colors of the tapestries. The tall glass windows glistened, black and shiny with encroaching night, but at each end of the gallery, a huge fireplace roared with a conflagration that hurled warmth into the cool atmosphere and challenged the darkness.

  Sir Danny turned from the flames, and his eyes widened at the spectacle Rosie presented as she whirled before him.

  A single hand on her elbow jerked her to a stop.

  “Ladies do not run nor do they prance,” Lady Honora said in reproof.

  “They glide,” Jean said.

  “Lest their petticoats fly up or they trip on their high heels.” Ann minced along on her own heels. “Embarrassing and all too common among women who should know better.”

  “Nor do they demand admiration from their friends for their clothing.” Erect with pomposity, Lady Honora folded her hands in front of her.

  Rosie stuck out her lip, and Jean pinched her cheek. “Ladies do not sulk.”

  “After all, you have a responsibility.” Lady Honora nodded a greeting to Sir Danny. “You must acquit yourself well, or you’ll be a disgrace to us.”

  Bowing with a flourish, Sir Danny proclaimed, “These ladies are as fresh as the first buds of spring, bursting forth in color and glory to proclaim, ‘Winter is vanquished. Let us frolic in the breeze and dance under the sun.’”

  “A bit much,” Rosie murmured to him, but Ann tittered, Jean inclined her head, and even Lady Honora smiled cordially.

  Sir Danny shot Rosie a triumphant glance, then graciously said, “You do look lovely. I especially like the sling, which matches your gown, Rosie.”

  Lady Honora cleared her throat and frowned.

  “And you do look clean.” Sir Danny frowned back at Lady Honora. “I hope this ‘bath’ has no ill effect on her.”

  Looking equally severe, Lady Honora intoned, “A bath never hurt anyone, as long as it is administered in a well-heated room with the proper herbal additions, and not more than four times a year. But Sir Danny, I must warn you against calling Rosalyn by that dreadful name.”

  “Dreadful name?” Sir Danny seemed confused.

  “Rosie.” Lady Honora made it sound like an insult.

  Bewildered, Sir Danny asked, “What else should I call her?”

  “Her Christian name is Rosalyn”—Lady Honora pronounced it carefully as if to educate his ear—“and since she is the daughter of an earl, she should be called ‘Lady Rosalyn’ by all but those closest to her.”

  Sir Danny and Rosie exchanged eloquent glances.

  “Since you are a mere actor,” Lady Honora continued, “you should certainly call her by that title.”

  Rosie realized they were already trying to separate her from the man closest to her heart. She might be angry at him for his high-handed dominion of her fortune, but, damn it, she would decide his punishment, and not because his rank was less than hers. Furious, she demanded, “Does his position as my savior count for nothing?”

  Ann clasped Rosie’s free hand between her own. “It sounds cold, I know, but you must realize that the tale of your life must be strongly edited. I think we must say that Lady Honora found you living in the care of one of her kindly old aunts.”

  “I have no kindly aunts,” Lady Honora said.

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Rosie muttered.

  Jean was patient with her literal friend. “We’ll pretend.”

  “We do know how to pretend, don’t we…Rosie?” Sir Danny softened his defiance with a charming smile and offered his arm. Rosie came forward to take it, but Lady Honora stepped in front of her and accepted it as if it were her right.

  Ann took it on herself to explain the order of rank to the gaping Rosie. “We go in one at a time in order of the nobility. Lady Ho
nora enters first, forsooth, for she is a dowager duchess and has inherited a barony of her own. Jean goes next. She is a dowager marchioness and the daughter of an earl. You and I are of equal rank, both being daughters of earls. However, I married down. My husband is only a baron, so I am properly known as Lady Ann, the daughter of the earl of Spencer since that is my higher title. Since I’m older than you, and you’re unmarried, I will enter next.” Observing Rosie’s wide-eyed wonder, Ann asked kindly, “Do you have an inquiry?”

  Rosie gulped. “How do you remember all that?”

  Ann laughed, a tinkling, young sound. “Wait until you go to court. There, you’ll have to remember everyone’s title and the order of precedence.”

  “You’re going to frighten her away, Ann.” Tony’s warm voice broke Rosie’s horrified trance, and he swung her around with his hand on her waist. “Let me see you.”

  See her? See him. See all of him, in an elegant black velvet outfit with lace at the neck and lace at the sleeves and red-thread embroidery and a small stiff ruff. Such an outfit would have worn a lesser man, but Tony wore the outfit. Maybe because she remembered how he looked this afternoon—proud and naked.

  What did he think of her? She stood still, shoulders back, telling herself that his regard in no way differed from the regard of an audience. If anything, it should be easier to accept with equanimity. But somehow, Tony’s regard felt different than the regard of an audience. Her skin was too clean—dry, bare, unprepared to shed its camouflage of dirt and reveal itself. Or perhaps it wasn’t her skin, but her spirit which lay exposed to Tony’s observation and awaiting his verdict.

  But when his verdict came, it was no eloquent soliloquy, but a breathlessly simple, “You’re fine as a new-minted fivepence piece.”

  Rosie gathered comfort from the thought that he failed to realize how he disarmed her. He had the dazed appearance of a man drunk on good fortune and insensate to nuances. She replied with the same simplicity. “Aye. I always thought I made a good-looking woman.” Prosaically she tweaked her skirt and made her first bid for freedom. “But I don’t intend to dress like a woman all the time.”