by Willa Ramsey
Fear seized her chest. It was as if someone had plunged her favorite hairpin there, and she crumpled around the pain.
What had she done to find herself here? Improperly dressed, on the street at an unusual hour, and confident that the strange gentlemen approaching her would expect more from her than from other misses?
Devil take it. Am I a whore, then?
She allowed herself a quick sniffle then erected herself again, taking a moment to make herself taller, straighter, steadier. She even loosened her grip on Toby’s leash, which had already made deep, ruddy grooves in her palms. A fortuneteller outside Covent Garden had once told her that the pattern there—this same delta of thick blue veins, now pulsing wildly under leather-burned skin—meant she would overturn a giant one day.
Was this to be her giant? The oafish and outsized claims of these gentlemen?
A loud clank and a whoosh sounded just behind her, nearly sending her out of her skin. She jumped off the wall, sending Toby skittering to his own feet with a start.
“Miss Caroline Crispin! Is that you?”
She breathed a sigh of relief and managed to eke out the words, “Mrs. Cavel, hello there. Pardon our intrusion on your threshold. My dog and I were just…just in need of a short rest.” She glanced down the street. The man with the sideburns was gone.
“Linger all you want, my dear,” Mrs. Cavel replied. Voluptuous and good-humored, she was old enough to be Caro’s mother and wore a fanciful, peacock-blue dress, edged in black lace. She pushed up her bosom and fluffed at the curls underneath her bonnet, examining her reflection in her front door. “Tell me, how is your father? Perhaps you could mention to him that my façade is in need of some improvement, hmm?”
“Of course, Mrs. Cavel.”
“And that my house needs some work, too,” she added with a wink as she turned and descended the steps.
“I’ll mention it to them.”
She stopped half-way down. “‘Them’? Who is ‘them’?”
Caro sighed. Should she admit to Mrs. Cavel that “them” included Papa and Mama? But that many years ago a wealthy minister, after hearing Mama explain to him the engineering principles of stress and strain, asked Papa never to bring her to his building site again? That another patron insisted their meetings take place at a gaming hell, thereby ensuring Mama could not attend? That still another made a habit of pinching her derriere? And that these and other mortifications gradually nudged Mama’s work—and her genius—into Papa’s long shadow?
There are many insidious ways to check a woman who speaks too loudly, or too often.
No, she couldn’t tell Mrs. Cavel any of these things. And she certainly couldn’t admit that such things were the reason she would never do anything that put her own voice at risk—her own work and independence. She wouldn’t gamble a single guinea of her inheritance, she wouldn’t delegate any of her schemes, and she certainly could never marry. She was even more certain of this now that she’d discovered two men she’d considered her friends thought so ill of her. Who could she possibly trust?
“My father and his pupils,” Caro replied, resignation in her tone. “I’ll tell Papa and his pupils you’d like to speak with them.”
“Good. Now what is that, child?” she asked, nodding at the hem of Caro’s gown.
She looked down. “Dirt, I’d say. Looks a lot like dirt.”
“Dirt, with a light coating of manure!”
Caro managed a laugh. “You should see me on market day, Mrs. Cavel. Blood and grease up to my knees.”
Mrs. Cavel clucked her tongue. “Only you, Miss Caroline Crispin! You could roll around in the gutter and dump flour on your head, and all of society would pretend they didn’t notice.”
“All but you, it would seem.”
“Humph! It must be nice to be the daughter of the Royal Architect.”
Caro was about to reply when it struck her: Chumsley and Strayeth wouldn’t dare speak ill of her at their club—or anywhere else, for that matter. Dukes and bishops and even the Prince Regent himself held Papa in the highest regard, and lesser aristos knew better than to risk rebuke from such powerful people.
In fact, all of society gave her a level of respect not normally due the daughter of a “builder,” because all of them wanted Papa to build them their next home. They turned a blind eye to her dalliances, her love of bawdy talk, and any other “mud” that attached itself to her, as Mrs. Cavel had put it.
Other young misses were not so lucky, of course; their indiscretions led to their being snubbed and ignored, sometimes even pushed out of society. She had known all of this for as long as she’d known her own name. But earlier, in the confusion and pain of the nook, she’d somehow forgotten it.
“Good day, Miss Crispin,” Mrs. Cavel said as she stepped off the final stair and turned away.
“Good day, Mrs. Cavel.”
Caro loosened her grip on Toby’s leash. She would move on. She would put Strayeth and Chumsley out of her mind, and she would continue to live life as it pleased her.
Mostly, anyway.
Standing ever so slightly taller, she turned Toby toward Cavendish Square again and charged on.
Her chest would stop aching eventually, she assumed.
Chapter Three
It was nearing 11 o’clock when Caro stepped inside the front door following her walk with Toby. Once inside, she found Barclay, Mrs. Meary, and Stinson all waiting to address her. Mama and Papa always hired the friendliest servants they could find; they seemed to find the staff’s chatty, informal company a relaxing tonic after their long and arduous days.
“Good morning, everyone. Have my parents been to breakfast yet?”
“Yes, Miss Crispin. They’re in the studio,” Mrs. Meary replied.
“All right, then.” She unhooked Toby’s leash, and he snuffled off in search of some upholstery in need of more dog fur.
But the servants stayed put.
“Is there something else?”
Mrs. Meary turned to the others, but when they didn’t so much as blink she twisted the slim newspaper in her hands and turned back to Caro.
“It’s just that…”
“Is this about the urn, Mrs. Meary? Because I can explain…”
“Not the urn, Miss. Some of us just feel that…Gah! I’m not sure how to go about this at all. Barclay?”
Caro gave them her most plaintive of looks: I love our frank discussions, but now is not the best—
“We’re not gonna hide your paramours for you, Miss Crispin. We’re not gonna hide your men from your parents.”
Stinson. This lovely outburst was from Stinson.
“I beg your pardon,” Caro began, “but did you just say ‘paramours’?”
“What he means to say,” Mrs. Meary replied, shooting the young footman a look, “is that your gentlemen friends…are becoming a bit of a problem.”
Strayeth and Chumsley, of course. The two lords must have found time to disrupt the servants, sometime between drinking too much claret, insulting her, and flouncing their way to the front door—long after the other guests were home in their own beds, bothering their own servants. Friends, indeed.
“Listen, I didn’t ask Strayeth and Chumsley to linger here so long this morning. Please understand that these are grown gentlemen, capable of being rude at their own initiative.”
All three servants looked at her in horror, their eyes bulging.
“We haven’t seen those gentlemen since dawn!” the housekeeper whispered in a rush. “Not here, Miss. Not in person!”
“Oh,” she replied, her hands finding her hips. “What are we talking about, then?”
“Lord Chumsley’s valet shoved this note at me when I was out with young Toby earlier,” Stinson said, passing her a letter. “I tried to tell you, Miss. But you ran off.”
“What?” Caro asked, her voice thin. The small bit of optimism she’d cobbled together upon speaking with Mrs. Cavel began to break apart again.
“And Lord Str
ayeth’s footman came to the kitchen door this morning, not half an hour ago,” Mrs. Meary added. “He grabbed poor Sophie by the arm and asked her about your plans for the day.”
“This…” Caro whispered, “this is most unusual.”
Stinson snorted. “I dunno if I’d call it ‘unusual.’”
Everyone looked at him.
“Well, we’ve all seen it!” he cried, throwing up his hands. “She gets awful cozy with the gentlemen sometimes.”
“That’s quite enough!” the housekeeper snapped.
“No, no, Mrs. Meary—that’s all right,” Caro replied. “We all know that I’ve…consorted with my gentlemen friends over the years, and that society clucks its forked tongue at such things. But those encounters were fleeting! And private! And…mutual!” She turned the note over in disbelief. She’d been so consumed by the cruel names Strayeth and Chumsley had called her that she’d failed to consider how they might behave in their attempts to win their ridiculous wager. “This, on the other hand? Secret letters and back-door inquisitions? This I didn’t ask for. This is something worse.”
“Much worse,” Stinson said with a nod.
Now Mrs. Meary grabbed three inches of the footman’s arm and twisted them, hard. His “Yowww!” hit the double-height ceiling before bouncing off the walls of the corridors above.
“Begging your pardon, Miss,” the butler said, speaking up for the first time. “But what you’re saying isn’t entirely true. You also received secret letters from Sir Grimbell for a while.”
“Barclay—Sir Grimbell is a cabinet minister! And he wrote to me about dog fighting, after I cornered him at a ball and complained about the goings-on at Westminster Pit.”
“But Miss—suppose Lord Chumsley and Lord Strayeth knew about those letters? They might have thought…”
“They might have thought what?” Her brows went sky-high, daring the butler to speak the words. “They might have thought that corresponding with the minister meant that I was…giving him special favors, of some kind?”
Mrs. Meary looked away, and Stinson examined his fingernails.
“And that I therefore owe them special favors, as well?”
She looked at the old butler, her sometimes-surrogate papa, the man with the ready smile and the sweet treats and the hands that had scooted her along after the bumps and frights of her childhood.
He shrugged.
“Et tu, Barclay?” she croaked.
Shoulders sagging, she glanced into each of their faces and then at the newspaper in Mrs. Meary’s hands. The housekeeper was an inveterate gambler, and frequently sent Stinson to place bets for her on the latest brawls and horse races.
“What day is it, Mrs. Meary?”
“The thirteenth of July, Miss.”
“And most of the ton leaves London for the country by the twelfth of August.”
Mrs. Meary nodded.
“Excuse me,” she said as she turned and made off for the staircase.
Strayeth and Chumsley had one month to seduce her. It wasn’t a lot of time, and judging by the actions of their servants that morning, they were prepared to be rather aggressive about it. She shuddered as she recalled the stranger with the gray sideburns on the street earlier that morning, and how she’d feared what he might expect of her, when no one else was about.
Once at her desk, she dashed off a quick note to Edie. She requested her “calming, comforting presence” at the market, but didn’t mention that something had happened. In fact, she was still so shocked and discomfited by it all—and even a bit ashamed—that she wasn’t certain she could bring herself to tell Edie about it in letter or in person.
Chapter Four
Adam stood in the window, holding a cup of coffee. He barely noticed the fashionable young beauties coming and going along the sidewalk, as he was too preoccupied with whether or not he could squeeze an apple tree into his miniscule front garden. And might a cherry tree do better there? What if it were potted?
He sipped his coffee and laughed gruffly at himself, thinking again about the woman who had planted, so to speak, the subject of flowering flora in his mind in the first place.
Miss Crispin had given him lots to wonder about, indeed.
He loved plants and planting. He’d spent countless hours moving dirt and rock at his estate over the years, digging trenches and building walls, planting and replanting. But he’d never thought it possible to grow much of anything in town.
Not until a certain hostess had suggested it.
“Have you found someone to mate with me yet?” a voice called out from behind.
He turned and watched his sister enter the dining room, an unusual bounce in her step. “Good morning, Edie. You’re more chipper than usual today. And more vulgar.”
She went to the sideboard and picked up a plate. “I refer to your husband-hunting duties, of course. Mother just informed me that if you hadn’t come home from Caro’s ball with a list of possible suitors, I should send you upstairs immediately for retribution.”
He cringed at the mention of his bed-ridden mother. His last glimpse of Father had been in a bed in that same room, some years earlier. That had been before Adam had gone off to school with the promise of a speedy recovery from the physician, and before that promise had been broken.
He pushed the memory down and forced a smile. “And how is our beloved matriarch this morning?”
“I’m no physician, but I’m fairly certain this forced bed-rest will kill her,” she replied flatly, filling her plate with eggs and toast. “It’s been two weeks since that mare threw her, and you know that if Mama isn’t thundering about and badgering people, she gets dithery and sore.”
“Well, now that I’m here, I can be of more help. Tell me about this renovation that Mother started,” he replied. He’d decided against taking rooms of his own when he’d arrived in town a week prior. He intended to help Mother however he could while she recovered, and indeed, foremost on her mind was getting him to take up the mantle of finding Edie some marriage prospects. The renovation was a close second. “That scoundrel she hired—how long was he here? A week? His workers seem to have left things even more dilapidated than before.”
Edie looked at him askance as she took her place at the dining table. “Are we living in the same house, Adam? Truly, it’s not so terrible. We’ve closed off the rooms they left in disrepair. The rest is just…old.”
He turned again, and took in the wall of windows. Their Mayfair home was ninety-some years old, in fact, and required regular maintenance he had not kept up since Father’s death. He’d always imagined—had romanticized, in fact—that his future wife would oversee the renovations for which it was due. Yet a month prior, Mother had decided she’d waited long enough for daughter-in-law and renovation alike, and had hired the first architect she’d found who could begin the work at once. But when she’d discovered the man was not an architect at all but a clever fraud, she’d relieved him of his duties. Her subsequent riding accident had delayed the resumption of the project, and she refused to remove herself and Edie to other accommodations.
He took a deep breath. Men like him weren’t supposed to apologize. He’d never heard Father apologize, of course. But he had broken so many of his obligations to the man—what was one more? “I’ve been wanting to tell you that I’m sorry, Edie. I’m sorry you’ve had to live in a moldering home all this time.”
“Adam, you exaggerate,” she replied between bites of toast. “And I can’t tell what’s truly bothering you: that we live in a house that lacks modern features, or that the builders left Father’s old rooms in a bit of a mess.”
Both things. I hate both things. “I’m going to stop avoiding these projects, Edie. I promise.”
She squinted at him, as if deciding whether to allay his guilt or rub salt in his wounds, like any decent sister would. “Fine, Adam. You are a terrible, negligent, mean-hearted landlord. Now go and find me a husband to make up for it.”
He loved his sist
er—his strange, funny little sister with the unkempt hair and intense green eyes, set wide on sun-flecked cheekbones. But he sometimes felt that he barely knew her. They had spent only a couple of months a year together, as he’d gone to Eton and Cambridge while Edie had studied with the notorious Mrs. Hellkirk. Now he avoided big society events by remaining in the country while she remained fascinated by the gritty bustle of town, observing it from the edges of the ton’s best ballrooms. Even when they were in the same vicinity, Edie spent a great deal of time sealed off in her rooms, drawing and scouring the newspapers and who knew what else, while he went off to tour the latest public squares and canal-building projects. “About this husband-hunting, then. It’s not clear to me that you want to be married just yet.”
“Allow me to make it plain: I do not want to be married just yet. Possibly at all.”
Edie’s pronouncement flummoxed him. Didn’t she remember Mother and Father debating the latest from Parliament at breakfast? Issuing subtle glances to one another over their goblets? Perhaps not; Edie had been very young when Father became ill.
He, on the other hand, remembered all of his parents’ sweet rapport. It had given him the hope—nay, the expectation—of marrying for love himself one day. He’d come into town a few weeks each season these past few years, hoping to meet a woman he could take back to the country, back to his books and his earth-moving.
But between his quiet nature and his insistence on a love match, his conversations with society’s more demure young ladies went nowhere. It didn’t help that he became irritable whenever someone brought up his family’s fighting legacy, or assumed he was a bruiser.
But Miss Crispin, now! Miss Crispin, with her open and engaging demeanor, had piqued something in him that had never been piqued. He wondered how soon he could see her again—and if it might perhaps lead to a courtship.
Edie cleared her throat, yanking him back from these pleasant musings.
“If you don’t want to marry, Edie, then why are you prompting me to find you a husband?”