Regency for all Seasons: A Regency Romance Collection

by Mary Lancaster

  *

  Bellamy shut the door behind him and smiled. There were some advantages to appearing as old as Methuselah. No matter how great a personage arrived at the door, they would state their business in all haste when they noted him clutching the doorknob. His footmen thought the whole thing a jolly bit of fun, and he did too.

  And then to be questioned on the doorstep as to his master’s location? He thought Lord Hampton rather naïve. Bellamy never gave away his master’s whereabouts. If his master was in Surrey just now, gathering information on the unfortunate Miss Knightsbridge, that was his master’s business.

  Bellamy could not say he fully understood the ins and outs of the whole thing, but Miss Knightsbridge had something to do with that God-forsaken pact. Whatever efforts could be made to thwart the demands of those inconvenient fathers must be made. Bellamy had no wish to find himself faced with a Lady Dalton. He and his lord had a most comfortable set-up, they didn’t even employ a housekeeper and had maids come in on a day basis. The house went on comfortably male—he, the cook, and the footmen had an endless amount of wine and little real work to accomplish. The grooms made certain the lord’s horses were well taken care of, and then lounged at their leisure. There was no room for a lady that might get ideas and attempt to change their way of going on. Or, heaven forbid, a housekeeper. Those awful persons had the unfortunate habit of peering into every nook and cranny and glaring at any lazing staff.

  *

  Cassandra and Lady Sybil sat cozy in the window seat at Marksworth House as Sybil described the courses at the Jennings’ dinner. Cassandra was not sorry to have missed that particular engagement, it sounded like an overly formal and stultifying affair. The only particular thing of interest was that two gentlemen of the pact had been there.

  “As there were sixty attending,” Sybil said, “I thought my chances of avoiding them rather good.”

  “And did you?” Cassandra asked.

  “I did,” Lady Sybil said, “and lucky I was. Lord Cabot and Lord Grayson appeared very glum, as if they were both in a sulk. Mrs. Jenning seemed to notice, and not take it kindly. Poor Miss Danworth went into dinner with Lord Cabot and she looked as if she worked very hard to entertain, all to no avail.”

  “Well,” Cassandra said, “if Miss Danworth cannot entertain with all those marvelous blond curls of hers, the lord must have been very determined to sulk.”

  “She shook her curls around very charmingly, yet he was entirely unmoved,” Sybil said, laughing.

  Before Cassandra could answer, Sybil pointed toward the window and said, “Ah, look, there is Lord Hampton, going to see Lord Dalton.”

  Cassandra turned more eagerly than she had the first time the lord had been spotted on Lord Dalton’s steps. She would not say her conversation with the gentleman the evening before had been carefree, but it had got a deal more comfortable when they’d got on the subject of dogs. After that, they’d even discussed saddles and the modification she had made to her own to include a double girth. She had almost hesitated in mentioning it, but in fact the lord had seemed interested in the improved safety of it. His own sister had experienced a serious head injury in her youth from a slipping sidesaddle.

  Now, Lord Hampton leapt off his horse, as handsome as ever. Cassandra had begun to think that part of his attractiveness stemmed from his seeming carelessness of his appearance. Of course, he could not be careless, nobody careless was dressed as he was. Yet, his mode of dress was not over-studied. She had now met her share of dandies, their neckcloths tied in fabulous configurations, and she did not care for it.

  As the lord stood at the door, speaking to Lord Dalton’s butler, Cassandra said, “I have not yet told you that I was taken into dinner at the Sedways’ by Lord Hampton.”

  Sybil laid her hand on Cassandra’s arm. “My poor darling, how did you manage through it?”

  Cassandra reddened, seeing that she had painted such a grim picture of Lord Hampton that it must now be modified.

  “It was not as you think,” she said. “Remarkably, it was rather enjoyable. It began as awkwardly as you might guess, but somehow got a deal more pleasant when we got to talking of dogs.”

  “Dogs?” Sybil said, laughing.

  “Indeed, dogs,” Cassandra said. “As it happens, he owns a mastiff, too, and was quite voluble on the subject. And kennels. Oh, and then saddles. It turns out we are of the same mind on those subjects.”

  “Dear me, you almost seem as if you like him, Cass,” Sybil said in wonder.

  “Like him! No, I would not go so far as that,” Cassandra said hurriedly. Though, as she said it, she was mortified that it did not sound completely true. “I would say that I do not dislike him as much as I did, which is a very long way from liking.”

  “Let us hope it is a very long way,” Sybil said, “else you might find yourself an unhappy duchess someday.”

  Cassandra smiled at her friend, even as she felt the pink spread across her cheeks. “Now you are being ridiculous, Sybil.” She meant the words, it was just entirely unfortunate that Lord Hampton was so agreeable to look at, and now he’d begun to make himself agreeable to speak with.

  She watched the lord go back down Lord Dalton’s steps without being admitted. He leapt on his horse and clattered down the street.

  Ah well, it was true she had encountered the lord twice in short order, but London was a big place and the chances of encountering him so often in future were unlikely. Further, the rest of the dinners on her calendar would be a deal larger and so the odds were greatly diminished that she would be taken into supper by that gentleman.

  She could not ascertain whether that was a welcome idea or not.

  *

  Mr. Tuttle had earned his scratch on his most recent assignment. Lord Dalton had been well-pleased with the sworn statement from Mr. Longmoore. Tuttle had thought that had been the end of it. Though the point of the job had baffled, he’d eventually come to the conclusion that the information against Miss Knightsbridge was to be presented to one of Lord Dalton’s friends who thought of engaging himself to the lady. He’d managed other arrangements where a gentleman’s friends had taken measures to separate him from an unsuitable match.

  That had not been the end of it, though. It turned out Lord Dalton wished the information to be spread far and wide, and he did not wish to personally do it, as he did not want to be in any way connected to the scheme.

  It was to be Tuttle’s job to get the information spread throughout London.

  Tuttle had balked at the idea. He was not so certain that Mr. Longmoore had been completely honest. He rather felt Longmoore was a blowhard who would invent no end of fictions to protect the delicate ego that every blowhard proudly owned. Further, he had never involved himself in a public campaign to impugn the reputation of a lady. At least, not on such flimsy evidence.

  Still, Dalton had offered him such a sum that it could not be turned away. He could send that money to his widowed sister in Manchester and she might live comfortably with her two young boys, no longer taking in sewing or washing. If he were to weigh the fate of his long-suffering sister against a privileged miss from Surrey, he must always come down on the side of his sister.

  Tuttle could all too easily guess why Lord Dalton had offered such a handsome payment. It must seem to the lord a difficult thing to plant a story all over town with nobody quite knowing from whence it had come.

  Tuttle knew otherwise, of course. He did not have access to those places filled with the chattering women of the ton, nor did he need to. It was not in the elegant drawing rooms that the idea would put down roots. It was below stairs and in the attics. It was through a carefully curated labyrinth of connections.

  It was through the lady’s maids.

  Tuttle had made it his business to cultivate relationships with all manner of staff and there was not a well-heeled house in town he could not slip into via the servants’ entrance. Though he knew his share of housekeepers and butlers, it was lady’s maids who had th
ose confidential conversations with the mistress that allowed for the spread of gossip. In truth, the ladies of the ton expected their maids to deliver whatever interesting chatter they’d heard from other servants.

  The lady’s maids would, for a few pounds, repeat the story. It would be impossible to know from where it had first arisen. It was only necessary that the first group of maids be given a copy of the declaration from Mr. Longmoore and become apprised of Miss Knightsbridge’s inclinations to ride without a groom and shoot like a man. They each would take bits and pieces to compose their own version until the story would swirl into the air like a whirlwind of veracity.

  All the hints and innuendos taken together, it would not be a week before Miss Knightsbridge was known as bolder than any Mary Wollstonecraft.

  *

  Cassandra curled up on her bed, just now in receipt of two letters from home. She had opened the one from her friend Lily Farnsworth first, and it was just what she had expected. Lily prattled on about ribbons and shopping for ribbons and thinking about what sort of ribbons she would design, had it been her business to do so. She asked that Cassandra write her in minute detail of any interesting ribbons she had seen in the London shops. After Lily had done examining the idea of ribbons, there was a lengthy paragraph on the decorating of a bonnet.

  Cassandra might have thought the girl shallow to have written such a long letter on the subject of ribbons and bits and bobs, but she knew the Farnsworths to be a fine family financially strained. Poor Lily’s father had inherited an estate badly managed and plagued with debt, and he’d made it his life to drag Farnsworth House out of that quagmire. He’d done a remarkable job, and put a respectable amount away for Lily’s dowry, but there were not extra funds for much else. Lily was not in the habit of acquiring new dresses and bonnets, and so freshening up what she already owned consumed her imagination.

  Cassandra was determined to bring home a basketful of interesting notions for Lilly so that she might refurbish to her heart’s content.

  The second letter was from Cassandra’s father, and it contained all the usual news of the estate. The pigs did well on the new feed, the hunting dogs were in fine form, and her own dog, May, had shredded a volume of poetry, though the viscount did not suppose he would miss it. The viscount’s views on poetry were scathing—he condemned those persons who puttered around all day attempting to pretty up the English language as a bunch of layabouts. The sun was the sun and if a gentleman were to agonize over whether or not he should call it a giant orb or some other nonsense, that gentleman ought to join Brummel on the continent. Mayhem, if she had done anything at all, had rid his sanctum of a book that should never have had the audacity to be there in the first place.

  That idea was nothing less than what Cassandra would expect from her father. What was not expected was the news near the end of his letter.

  You will hardly be surprised, I think, as you have made your opinion known on the gentleman, that Mr. Longmoore appears to have taken a bad turn. Some say it is his habit of too much drink, others say he must have been hit on the head. He’s taken to talking to himself aloud on various street corners in town and they say his business does very badly as he is rarely there. Some of the lower elements of the neighborhood follow him into the Beef and Boar of an evening as he has got into the habit of buying ale all round. One wonders where he gets the money for such idiocy, as he does not tend to his business. Those that drink with him say he laments about a trickster’s bad dealings with an innocent man and how our heavenly father will no doubt understand the innocent man’s mistake. I am of the opinion that the fellow has lost his wits. I suppose we shall see how he gets on, though I expect things will only go downhill from here. (Once a rational mind is lost, it is not easily found again.)

  They say too much drink can permanently addle the mind, and so for myself I stick to only six glasses of ale and three glasses of port a day to avoid the state.

  Though Cassandra did hold a very low opinion of Mr. Longmoore, she was surprised at this turn of events. She had thought he would go on as he always had done—drinking to excess and importuning women. She had assumed at some point some woman would agree to his propositions, that lady likely to require the financial security of his situation and able to overlook absolutely everything else about Mr. Longmoore’s person.

  She supposed she ought to pity the man out of simple Christian charity. She was determined she ought to. Though, she understood it would take some work on her part to see her way clear to accomplishing such a thing—he was an oaf of a man.

  Her father had ended his letter more cheerfully.

  I do hope you get on with your aunt and do not cause her too much trouble, though I doubt you do, as you have never caused any trouble to me. Feel free to give those young bucks roaming London a good deal of trouble, as they have no doubt earned it somewhere in their lives.

  Cassandra smiled. She supposed she had given a young buck some trouble, though she’d not set out to do it. Of all people, her father would not be surprised at her interactions with Lord Hampton, though perhaps not wholly approving of her talking about her skill with a shotgun. Still, he would sympathize with how she had been provoked.

  In any case, as gruff as her father could be, he was never harsh with his daughter. Her entire childhood had been one of racing up and down stairs and through rooms, breaking things as she went—the breaking of things only compounded when May came on the scene. Her father had watched the shattered porcelain and broken plates swept up in all good humor.

  *

  As the world turned on its axis and the days and hours passed, whispers of a certain Miss Knightsbridge spread throughout London like a monstrous sea creature with endlessly growing tentacles. The whispers began below stairs and slithered their way up polished staircases and down carpeted passageways to the hushed sanctums of lady’s bedchambers. From there, they hopped into carriages and skipped into drawing rooms, creating doppelgangers as they went, who then slipped into different carriages and made their way to new drawing rooms. One told one and two told four and four told eight and so on it went.

  For those who knew each other well, the news was generally relayed forthrightly.

  “Jemima, do come in. Have you heard the dreadful tale of Miss Knightsbridge?”

  “Goodness, who has not? It appears she is the most determined flirt.”

  “Flirt? My dear, a mere flirt does not take the thing all the way to an engagement. At least three engagements, none sanctioned by her father, and she jilted in every one of them, all the while firing a shotgun at anything that moves.”

  “I did not realize it was as bad as that! I wonder she has the audacity to hold up her head.”

  “Appalling. There is no other word for it.”

  More distant acquaintances began the tale in a cautious manner. A lady might begin with something suitably vague such as, “Heavens, one hears such shocking things these days.” Of course, the lady would be pressed to reveal the shocking thing, which she would invariably do, looking prettily shocked all the while.

  Mamas everywhere were only too happy to hear of the ghastly story that was told in hushed whispers. After all, one less female out husband hunting was always to be celebrated. It was the general consensus that there was one less female out husband hunting, as who would take such a lady on?

  Perhaps no end of gentlemen might have taken the lady on, but as with all rumors and innuendos, the story had grown in its scope and seriousness. There was even talk of Miss Knightsbridge having engaged herself to five different men at the same time, with her father none the wiser, and having shot at a farmer she did not like for her own amusement.

  That the tentacles had wended their way through London was not surprising, nor was it surprising that the person named in the story and those closest to her remained unaware of it. After all, it would be bad form to repeat the story to the person it concerned, and everybody knew who was connected to who. The Blandings and the Sedways and certainly Lady
Marksworth herself were to remain blissfully unaware that something was afoot. Miss Knightsbridge would be the very last to hear of it, as that was part of the grand tradition of unfounded gossip.

  Nobody in Lady Marksworth’s house had in the least noticed that invitations arriving at the door had begun to dwindle. Why would they, when so many invitations had already been received? A hostess did not wait until the last moment to secure her guests and so invitations to most of the season’s events had been received and accepted long ago.

  As it happened, no hostess had yet had the nerve to rescind an invitation already given to Lady Marksworth and Miss Knightsbridge. They would not know how to go about such a thing and, in any case, Lady Marksworth was not a figure to be trifled with. Most of the ladies simply hoped that the offending persons would leave London and not trouble them further.

  That, of course, was impossible. The offending person and her close circle had not yet any idea they offended.

  Chapter Six

  Edwin had finally heard from Dalton in response to his note to put a halt to digging up gossip against Miss Knightsbridge. He could not say it was a satisfactory response, as it had only said, “You had best come and see me.”

  He supposed his friend would argue for going on with the scheme to cause talk about the lady, but Edwin was more determined than ever to put a stop to it.

  Regardless of his opinions of Miss Knightsbridge, and those opinions had undergone a fairly radical transformation, it was not acceptable to toy with another’s reputation in such a manner. He need only think of explaining the scheme to his grandmother to acknowledge the ungentlemanliness of it, the very lowness of it. The dowager had ever been his moral compass and while he could not always predict what she would say to a thing, he could very well predict it in this instance.

  He had arrived at Dalton’s house in all haste, in case the man was set on taking himself off to Surrey sometime soon. As he had dismounted his horse, he had surreptitiously glanced at Lady Marksworth’s house across the street, looking for any flutter of curtains to say that his arrival had been noted. He saw nothing and forced himself not to ponder the notion that any in that house would ever understand what his current errand was about.