by Willa Ramsey
They had come to know each other to an unusual extent, and through unusual circumstances. They had endured the strife of the wager together, and they had done it with laughter, respect, and cooperation. That had to be the basis for something strong when it came to a marriage. And of course, they had their silliness.
All that was left was to ask the question, receive an answer, and secure the blessings of her father and mother.
His spirits soared, higher even than Bertie II.
“Miss Caroline Cris—”
He wasn’t able to finish, as the carriage came to a stop and someone began knocking on the door and calling for Caro.
“Miss Crispin?”
It was a male voice—a lord, by the sound of it—and both their eyes went wide.
They waited a moment, huddled together, hoping for the voice to go away. Instead, it called out even louder.
“Miss?”
Devil take it. Caro was, pending her answer to his proposal, likely to be his fiancée—and soon. The wager was over, by God, and he needed this. Could he please have some time with his bride-to-be? Would whoever it was who had interrupted his proposal please exit his soon-to-be connubial bliss, for good? These seemed like reasonable expectations.
Bang, bang, bang. Now the mysterious lord was knocking with considerable force.
She looked at him with her head cocked, frustration and sympathy written in her brow. She came closer, her lips grazing his ear as she spoke, her breath a bath of steam against his skin: “Get onto the seat as much you can, so that you can’t be seen. I’ll see to whatever this is, and tell the coachmen to head to Mayfair.”
She was right. Nearly engaged or no—it was best not to be seen alone in the carriage together.
When she pulled away—leaving him colder, quieter, and with growing ire at lords of all kinds—he nodded and got up onto the seat. It must have been a comical sight: all six feet and four inches of him, curled up like a conch shell.
Caro felt as light as air, and as optimistic about the future as she had ever felt.
Mind, she was also quashing all sorts of pleasant new sensations from the carriage ride, and irritated to be doing so. But for the most part she was giddy, and resigned to waiting a little longer to explore them with Adam.
She opened the door and was surprised to see Lord Quillen standing there.
His brow weighed heavily on his face, which was whiter than she remembered it being. He was only a few years older than Adam, but the lines around his features suggested that he had aged considerably more in his three decades. She accepted the hand he offered and stepped down.
“Miss Crispin—please, allow Barclay to escort you inside, where Lady Edith awaits.” She looked up and noticed Barclay standing at the top of her steps, looking every bit as grim as Lord Quillen. “And I know this is untoward, but if you have no objection, Miss, I would like to take a ride in your carriage.”
“Right now?”
“Yes, Miss Crispin. Right now.”
Something was dreadfully wrong. But she knew Lord Quillen through her parents—he had introduced them to a number of new patrons over the years—and she trusted him. “Of course,” she replied, curtsying.
“Drive,” he commanded the coachmen, who looked to Caro for confirmation. She nodded quickly and Lord Quillen alighted the carriage in a single step, just as the horses were taking off.
When she entered the house, Edie ran toward her from the top of the stairs. She was breathless.
“Caro—oh, God, Caro,” she gasped. “You’ll never believe it.”
“What is wrong, dearest?” she asked, her thoughts racing.
Edie shook her head and reached for her. She couldn’t get her words out, and she clasped Caro by the forearms, putting all her weight on them.
“Breathe, Edie. Just breathe,” she soothed. She turned and glanced around. “Barclay, what is going on? What is the meaning of this?”
He wrung his hands and stepped closer. “I don’t know, Miss. Should I call a physician?”
“No…” said Edie, shaking her head. “It’s the paper…it’s…it’s bull.”
She jerked her head back, perplexed. “What paper?”
Edie nodded to a side table. Barclay picked up a newspaper there and brought it over.
Edie let go of her, now that she was no longer heaving and could stand on her own two feet. “What am I looking for?” Caro asked as she took the paper from Barclay.
It was the afternoon edition of the Gabster.
Her heart felt weighted all of a sudden, as if a rock had been dropped into the center of her chest.
“They’re saying…” Edie said, still struggling for words, “they’re saying that Chumsley got into your carriage this morning…and that the windows were blacked out.”
She scanned the page, her eyes glistening, unable to make out the words.
“They’re saying you’re the lady in the wager, Caro! And that’s not all. They’re suggesting that…that Chumsley has won it.” She spoke with disbelief—as if it were an outrageous hypothesis that she hoped would be quickly disproved.
Caro swallowed. She’d begun shaking, hard, and when she tried to reach up and untie her bonnet, she found that she couldn’t. She returned her trembling hand to the paper.
“Speak to me, Caro. Tell me what happened this morning.”
But she couldn’t speak. Instead, she slowly handed her the paper, which Edie grabbed and threw onto the floor.
“I cannot believe they mentioned the windows,” Caro said finally, her voice devoid of any notes, any temperature.
“You must talk to me, Caro!” Edie grabbed her by the shoulders. “You must help me tell everyone that these claims are egregiously false, or you will be ruined!”
She thought a moment. This could not be true—could it? Was she ruined? What was Edie saying? The rock in her chest went lower, sinking and pulling her toward the floor.
“Caro,” Edie said, a touch softer. “You must—”
“Stop, Edie. Please. I cannot think straight. I cannot…” Words eluded her, and she swayed involuntarily.
Edie’s face grew grave. She stepped forward and grabbed her. “Barclay, help me with Miss Crispin.”
He came at once and they each took one of her arms.
“I was there, Edie,” she whispered as they led her up the stairs. “I put bootblack on the windows—”
“Shhh, Caro. Please rest. I shouldn’t have pestered you—”
“But he did not win the wager, Edie. They didn’t win…”
If she hadn’t been so distraught, she would have found it funny that the chaise they placed her on in the drawing room—just as the world began to go black—was affectionately known in their family as the ‘swooning chair.’
She had never had a need of it before.
Adam uncurled himself as his friend stepped into the carriage.
“Ryland?”
“Quillen.”
“I am glad to see you!”
“I cannot say the same!” Adam thundered. “What the devil is this about?”
He rubbed a hand all over his face. “Forgive me; I expected to find Chumsley here. But I am supremely glad to find you, instead.”
Adam raised a hand and looked sternly back at Quillen. “Listen, man—I don’t know what you’ve heard, or seen. Miss Crispin did go for a ride with Chumsley this morning, but it was part of a scheme to teach him a lesson about his habit of wagering on ladies’ virtue.”
“’Struth?”
He nodded. “I helped her carry it out, in fact, as she required a twelve-foot snake and could not lift the thing herself. I’m told the lesson was quickly learned.”
He expected his friend to be amused at this, or at least impressed, but instead concern tugged at his brow. “Unfortunately, Ryland, I am here because Chumsley had a scheme of his own.”
“What do you mean?”
“He invited a man from the Gabster to wait outside his home, to witness his getting
into the Crispins’ carriage.”
Adam pawed at the back of his neck. “You’re having a joke, right, Quillen? Tell me you are having a joke.”
He shook his head. “The man saw the blackened windows, and he claims to have caught a glimpse of Miss Crispin inside the door. Now that I’ve seen her, I have to admit that he described her attire correctly.”
“Please tell me you know this because you’ve apprehended the man, Quillen, and have him tied in a cellar somewhere.”
He shook his head again and pulled a folded paper from his pocket.
Adam took it and opened it—the latest edition of the Gabster, printed hastily in cheap, smudged ink. He saw the item in question and bent forward, his head landing in his palm. “They printed her name?”
“Yes, unfortunately. Apparently, Chumsley told the man he would only give them the information he had if they promised to print the lady’s name.”
Adam looked at the roof of the carriage. “How the devil do you know all these things?”
“Because I’ve been following Chumsley for some time. He is heavily indebted to a number of people, some of whom I know, and some of whom are rather…well, let’s just say they are unpleasant.”
“Indebted? How much?”
“Ten thousand, or thereabouts.”
“’Struth?”
He nodded. “He’s in quite deep, and I believe that he set Caro up this morning, rather carefully. He needed to make his supposed conquest of her very public, because his goal was to force Strayeth to pay him the hundred pounds from the wager.”
“So he believes Strayeth will pay him, if the ton believes that he…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the words. “…that he’s been successful with Caro?”
Quillen nodded. “He’s probably hoping Strayeth will see paying out as the honorable thing to do, despite the fact that he didn’t abide by the terms of their deal. He has no written acknowledgment from the lady, of course.”
Adam leaned onto the cushion next to him.
“One other thing, Ryland. Chumsley set his plan in motion before your lady scared the daylights out of him with her snake. So I wonder, now, what his next move will be. His list of angry enemies—angry, capable, enemies—grows more impressive by the day.”
Adam wiped his face down with both hands. He couldn’t think. And he needed air.
“Out of curiosity,” Quillen continued, “what did the rest of Miss Crispin’s scheme entail?”
“It entailed taking Strayeth up in her parents’ balloon, free of any tethers with the ground, until he was so terrified that he begged her to take him back to Mother Earth.”
Quillen tapped his cane against the floor of the carriage and bowed his head, huffing once with amusement. “I thought as much. You have quite a lady there.”
“You have some stake in finding Chumsley, then?” he asked.
“Yes. His debtors want me to…find him at once.”
“You’ll have to beat me to him.”
“Shall we do it together?”
He reached out and shook Quillen’s hand.
Chapter Twenty-One
Afternoon sunlight overtook the Crispins’ drawing room, an unrelenting and too-cheerful invader. Caro sat on the swooning chair still—it was more a swooning chaise, really—facing the tall front windows and squinting at the bits of dust that tumbled in the air. Edie poured her a cup of chocolate and put another biscuit on her plate.
“Please eat something, Caro. You’ve been staring at that window for an hour.”
“She’s right, dearest,” Mama added, sitting across from them. Papa leaned on the chair-back behind her.
Still, she said nothing.
“How long have you known?” Edie asked. “And why did you not tell us?”
Caro adjusted her focus—from the dust in the air to the glass of the windows, then from the windows to the building across the street.
She squeezed her eyes tight, letting her chin fall to her chest. Edie moved closer and took her hand.
“I overheard Strayeth and Chumsley when they first made the wager. The morning after our ball—the one with the apples.”
Edie sat back. “A whole month ago?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Edie. I decided that I would teach them both a lesson, and you know how I am about my schemes.”
“I certainly do,” she replied softly, a thread of hurt in her tone.
“But I eventually realized that I did need some assistance, because I needed a man to go to White’s for me.”
“Who was it?”
She lifted her head. “His identity shall have to remain a secret.”
She couldn’t bring herself to tell them of Adam’s involvement in the wager. She had to protect him, now—protect him from any association with her and her scandal.
But she supposed she could tell them the rest of the story.
“I am sorry, Caro. I’m sorry you were not able to succeed,” Edie said softly, squeezing her hand. “Those men are utter bastards.”
“Oh, I succeeded, Edie. Very much so.”
All three of them looked at her blankly.
“Well, I ran Strayeth out of town, didn’t I?”
“That was your doing, after all?” Papa asked, tossing up his hands and stepping away, infuriated.
She nodded. “I cut the tethers, yes. I’m sorry, Papa. I’m sorry, Mama.”
The elder Crispins sighed together. “Please go on,” Mama replied, taking a sip of her coffee. “Tell us the rest at once.”
She told them how Chumsley had frightened her, mentioning her window and repeatedly attempting to grab her.
Her mother sat back; her father straightened.
“How awful. How…menacing,” Edie said softly when she had finished. “And you bore all this on your own?”
“I didn’t take his threats as seriously as I should have. I see that now.”
Then she told them about her morning in the carriage, taking care to omit the name of the person who loaned her the snake, and giving Edie a sharp look to indicate that she mustn’t mention Mariah’s name, either.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Edie said. “How did the events of the morning make it so quickly into the Gabster? Particularly given that Chumsley must have been convinced not to say a word after you frightened him with suffocation and snake-bite.”
Barclay entered then, as he always did when he wanted to announce a guest. Caro’s heart leaped in her chest, as her thoughts went immediately to Adam.
Had he come to her? What could she say to him, knowing that she was entirely scandalous now, and soon to be cast out of society? Their hopes for being together were impossible now. If they married his entire family would be tainted, and Edie would never be able to marry. She shuddered; she was not an especially spiritual person, but it seemed to her that something was taking leave of her person. Something precious—something life-giving.
“Lady Mariah Asperton to see you, Miss Crispin.”
Caro let out the breath she’d been holding. “Please show her in, Barclay. And bring some fresh coffee, when you can.”
Mama stood up and took a step forward. Papa came out from behind her chair and followed. “We will leave you alone with your friends, dear.”
She looked into their faces, questioning old certainties about the way they had brought her up. What if they had curbed more of her behavior? What if they’d minded when she disappeared behind those curtains and those plants? She’d always thought that their permissiveness had been good for her; it had made her the capable, confident person she was. But perhaps growing up under more watchful sets of eyes would have had its benefits, too.
They approached and kissed her on the cheek. “We’ll speak to you later on,” they whispered in turn when they squeezed her hand.
“I’m afraid you’re joining us at a difficult time,” Caro said when Mariah had settled into the chair previously occupied by her mother.
“I know. That is why I came!�
�� she replied with vigor. She had always been delicate and fair, her eyes two scoops of meringue outside a glossy, hazelnut center. Today, something different was going on behind them, but Caro couldn’t say what. “I went for a walk, and was appalled when I overheard someone mention what was in that dreadful paper.”
She got up and flew to the swooning chaise to sit on Caro’s other side.
“People are already talking of it, then,” Caro muttered to no one in particular. She told Mariah what she’d already told Edie and her parents.
“I cannot believe it!” Mariah said. “How brave of you, Caro. I would have suffered in silence. But you took matters into your own hands.”
She laughed and took hold of Mariah’s hand. “I love you, Mariah, for finding what must be the only positive outlook to all this. But unfortunately, you see where my actions have gotten me. I’m not sure I’m cut out for the revenge business, after all.”
“Oh, but it wasn’t revenge! Revenge is when you challenge someone to a duel, for honor’s sake, or find a way to make someone suffer for a wrong they have done you. But you strove to ensure those gentlemen wouldn’t repeat their actions on someone else. And that is what is honorable—particularly coming from a woman! Our hands are too often tied when it comes to arranging our own affairs,” she added wistfully.
“Indeed,” Caro replied, “that was my main motivation. I wanted to show Strayeth and Chumsley that they couldn’t trifle with a woman’s reputation like that. In fact, that’s precisely what I said to…” She stopped abruptly, realizing too late that she was about to mention Adam. If she wanted to conceal his involvement, she needed to stay alert to the way her thoughts—and words, and heart—ran back to him, every time she loosened the reins on them.
“What you said to whom?” Edie asked.
“What I said to Toby,” she concluded, laughing nervously. “I confided to Toby that I find it abominable that the word of a man can effectively destroy a woman’s life. Whether it be matters of the heart or flesh, a man’s word seems always to be deemed believable, while a woman’s is cast in suspicion at best, utter contempt at worst.”