by Willa Ramsey
“On that note,” Edie began. “We must take our inspiration from Caro’s courageous actions, and think of ways to return her good name—”
She snorted.
“All right. To return her decent name to rights.”
“Even if both of you went door-to-door in Mayfair, telling everyone that Chumsley lied, I fear it would do little good,” she replied. “You could mount a counter-attack the likes of which would make Lord Wellington weep with envy, and it would do little to convince a majority of the truth. People are simply too eager to believe in an illicit affair.”
“And besides,” Mariah added sadly, “with the season over, most of society has retreated to the country, anyway. We cannot mount a counter-attack when our adversaries will be hiding out the next several months.”
Caro chuckled. “I don’t know, ladies. Perhaps I was wrong to indulge this need I have to always make things right and fair. Bah! I should have been content with a reputation that was only lightly scandalous. Now it is quite heavily so.”
“No!” Mariah exclaimed, taking her dainty fist and hitting it against her own knee, then Caro’s. “You were standing up for yourself, and every time a woman does that, it makes it a little easier for the next one to do so. I commend you, Caro! And together, you and Edie and I will find a way to ensure your life is not too changed by this—we must!”
Caro blinked at her. Her friend was but little, but she was fierce.
Barclay entered again, to more furious hoof beats in Caro’s chest. “Miss Crispin, a Lord Ryland is here to see you.”
“Ah,” Edie began. “He might be here to collect me—”
“I don’t want to see him,” Caro interrupted in a rush.
Edie sat back, surprised. “But you and Adam are so—”
“I cannot see him, Edie. Not now. Barclay, please make my apologies to Lord Ryland, and tell him that I am not receiving any more visitors today.”
As she spoke, Edie squeezed her hand. “But perhaps he has some news.”
“Please, Edie. Not today—I cannot bear it.” She looked at the ceiling and blinked back the emotions that threatened to breach her cheeks, hoping her friends would not press her further. She could handle the aftermath of Chumsley’s horrid actions, but she could not handle discussing her feelings for Adam—and the lost opportunity, the lost life, the lost happiness they contained within them.
Edie nodded, whispering. “Of course, Caro. But I should probably take my leave, for now. Will you be all right, ’til tomorrow?”
She nodded, and Mariah added, “I will come back in the morning, too.”
She couldn’t yet tell these wonderful women—her wonderful friends—that she couldn’t accept what they were offering. That they would, sooner rather than later, need to join Adam in the long, long list of people who could not see her anymore.
Adam paced the entrance hall. The Crispins’ butler lingered near the wall, busying himself with the lighting of candles, to replace the fading, late-afternoon light. He was likely accustomed to dealing with lords and ladies who came into his home with unreasonable demands. Still, Adam did not want to be lumped in with them.
“My sister is inside,” he blurted out. “I must wait for her.”
“Yes, my lord.” He did not look up.
“And, more importantly, I am a friend of Miss Crispin’s.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Adam ached to get some glimpse of Caro’s face, to have some sense of her emotions. She was tough, to be sure, but the news that a man had sullied her reputation would flatten even the toughest of women.
It was nearly flattening him.
He stopped pacing, wondering if he had heard something slightly…off in the butler’s tone earlier. “She is a fine young lady, wouldn’t you agree?”
Now the man did look up. “Indeed, my lord. She is a most remarkable young woman.”
Aha! Adam knew faint praise when he heard it. Society valued conformity, and ‘remarkable’ was not always brandished as a compliment. “She is the best kind of woman, Barclay.” He didn’t know why he felt the need to tell this to someone, but something about stating the words aloud was like a small dose of strength, delivered straight to his heart.
“My lord, I have known Miss Crispin from the cradle. She surprises me every day, and every day I endeavor to make her way in life a little easier.” With that, the butler turned and lit another candle.
Adam thought he was finished when he added, “I am more successful on some days than others.”
The sound of a door opening upstairs stopped Adam’s pacing. He looked up and saw Edie emerge on the landing.
“Barclay, you’re needed in the drawing room,” she said as she arrived at the ground floor. When she reached Adam, she let out a sigh so forceful it could have lit a fire in an ice storm—certainly with the help of the heated look in her eye.
“What news?” he asked.
She shook her head. “None. Everyone is still quite shocked, and unsure what to do. Caro seems to feel…”
“What? What does she feel?” he asked impatiently.
“Defeated. She seems to feel defeated, and that is not like her at all. And Adam—she has said nothing of you, but it hasn’t been difficult to discern that the two of you…have grown close.”
“Edie, I intended to propose to Caro today. I had begun to, in fact, when we were interrupted in the carriage.”
His sister’s face lit up as he’d never seen it, her eyes taking in all the light in the room and shining it back at him. “Oh, Adam! I am so pleased!”
“She has said nothing of me?”
She frowned again. “Adam—today’s events have but little to do with you. This is Caro’s life we are discussing, so please, let us work together to help her. Now—what news have you?”
He told her that Chumsley was bankrupt, and because he desperately needed money, had tried to force Strayeth’s hand in the wager.
“Hmm,” Edie began, rubbing her chin. “If Chumsley has been running around town racking up debts and hiding much of it, some in society will question his claim about winning the wager.”
“That is what I am hoping,” he replied. “And if Strayeth can be found, perhaps he can be convinced to spread the word that his old friend is a cheat and a liar. Especially now that he is trying to extort one hundred pounds from him.”
“But how is Lord Quillen involved? I was shocked to find him here this morning, even before I had arrived.”
“He is the one who knew the full truth of the bankruptcy. He will help me spread word of Chumsley’s debts, and find the both of them.”
“Good. This is good, Adam! This is a beginning. I will spread the word, too.” She put her hand on his sleeve, and he looked up. “And don’t worry. It’s likely that she just needs time.”
“But Edie,” he continued. “There is one other thing. If this scandal sticks to Caro, and she and I were to marry, your own hopes for marriage would be—”
“Adam! Do not speak of that! I love Caro.”
“But your suitors, Edie—”
She held up a hand and began to walk off. “Honestly. Do not speak at all, Adam.”
“Edie—please consider. The men who will want to marry you do not know Caro as we do. They will have pause when they consider that an alliance with our family, so tainted, would taint their own.”
Edie marched to the door, calling back, “I believe I told you to stop speaking.”
“Edie, by God, you are the most stubborn sister in all of Britain! I’ve no less desire to marry Caro than I did this morning. That’s not what this is about.”
Stinson had already opened the door for her, but she stopped and turned back.
“I suspect that Caro will no longer accept me. She will be too concerned about you.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
How had she never noticed before how very incessant, how very obnoxious, the bracket clock on the mantle was? It was t
icking and tocking and ding-ding-dinging far more than it had a right to. Caro put down her book and wiggled her bottom from side to side, struggling to claim another inch of the cushion from Toby’s haunches.
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
She wrapped her shawl around her shoulders; it had been a month since the carriage incident, and autumn had arrived in London. She picked at the remains of the cake Mrs. Meary had brought her, hours earlier, then got up and shuffled to the table by the door, where a letter from Adam lay unopened. She picked it up and put it in the decorative snuff box where she had placed all the others—all of them still sealed—then closed it with a listless snap.
She could not—she would not—think of him.
Well…
…perhaps she could think of him just this once.
She hastily removed the letter and tore into it:
* * *
Dear Miss Crispin,
I hope that you are well, and that you have received my recent letters, twenty-seven in total, conveying my eagerness for a meeting on our project. Please advise me at your earliest convenience when I may call on you to discuss our plans.
Regards,
Ryland
She’d just finished reading it when the door opened and Edie entered, Barclay just behind her. She hid the letter behind her back and wiped an errant tear with the back of her hand.
“Any more replies, Barclay? To the dinner?” she asked.
“None, Miss.”
“Oh, and Barclay?” she called out as he went to leave. He came back and she handed him the letter from Adam. “Please bring this to my parents, and make sure they read it at once.”
He nodded—with a bit of melancholy in his eye, she thought—and left.
She and Edie sat on the daybed, on either side of Toby.
“I haven’t had an invitation in days,” she said, knowing that if she could feel sorry for herself at any point in the day, it was with Edie.
“I am sorry, Caro.”
“What parties are there, coming up?”
“None of interest—”
“Please tell me.”
Edie sighed. “There’s nothing to speak of—truly. Very few people remain in town. And you know me. I don’t care much for parties, unless…” she stopped herself.
“Unless I am there?”
Edie nodded.
“I’ve had some correspondence, actually,” Caro continued, picking at a fingernail. “Nearly everyone I invited to your birthday dinner has replied that they cannot attend.”
“It’s kind of you, but I don’t require a dinner, Caro.”
“And Mariah will not be in town then, so I suppose it will just be the two of us.”
“Again—I am sorry, Caro. But listen! I have some news that might be of interest to you,” she said, more chirpily than usual. She laid a newspaper in Caro’s lap and pointed to a headline.
“‘Lord --- on the Rocks.’ What does that mean?”
“It’s Mrs. Fripp’s gossip column. She’s written about Chumsley’s debts for the third day in a row, and makes no mention of the wager. That’s great news, if you ask me. Chumsley’s bankruptcy scandal is competing with yours for column inches, and it’s winning.”
“It’s lovely of you to try to cheer me,” she replied, her voice low. “But there are a half-dozen such columns, and most of them have not forgotten the wager.”
“As a matter of fact,” Edie replied, reaching for her reticule, “Tildie and I have made a study of the gossip columns and society pages, and we’ve noticed a decided shift from talk of the wager to talk of Chumsley’s lurid financial affairs.”
She sat up and looked at Edie’s lap, where rolled-up and folded-over newspapers spilled from her delicate drawstring bag. “His situation really is so bad, then?”
“Oh, it’s dire. He hasn’t a sixpence to scratch with, Caro, and hasn’t for some time. By the end of the last London season, he’d already gambled away everything that wasn’t entailed. Money, properties, investments. Even his silver, china, art, and wine cellar! So for some time he’s had nothing left to sell, save his precious phaeton, to pay off his debtors. And there are some scary fellows among the lot, banging down his door for payment. Or so Adam says.”
At the mention of Adam’s name she began to perspire, and her breathing became uneven. Since the Gabster article appeared, she hadn’t been able think of him without sensing that she had been rapidly bled of something—some humor, some plasma—that had become essential to her well-being.
So she did her best not to think of him. She set aside his letters each day, and when he came to call—sometimes with Edie, sometimes on his own—she told Barclay to send him away with the same excuse: Please give Lord Ryland my apologies, and inform him that I am not receiving any more visitors just now.
Perhaps he would stop coming one day soon. From sheer frustration, or from good sense, or some other perfectly understandable reason. She knew that must happen eventually, but she couldn’t bear to think of it so she didn’t think of him at all, if she could help it. It was as if she could slow the erosion of it all somehow, if she just refused to acknowledge it. She could cling to the shifting sands a little longer.
“I know you haven’t wanted to speak of Adam,” Edie began softly. “But I thought you might like to tell me why you won’t see him. I won’t share anything with him, I promise.”
Caro crossed her arms and squeezed herself tight, then leaned forward until her forearms rested on her knees.
“He’s afraid you’ve decided against accepting him,” Edie continued, “because you believe it will spread scandal into our family. And if that is the case, you should know that I think it’s nonsense. And that Adam remains committed to you. Very much so.”
“I haven’t wanted to say it, Edie,” she said in a muffled voice, her head still in her lap.
“I cannot hear you, Caro.”
She jerked her head up. “I can’t bear to say it, Edie. I can’t bear to say it even to you, but yes—I wanted to marry Adam, and now I cannot. It is very much out of the question now.” She got up and walked to the center of the room, still hugging herself. “Edie, if I became part of your family, it would ruin your prospects for a match! And I cannot allow that.”
“Pish.”
“No—it’s true, and you will have to stop visiting me, too, although I don’t know how I shall bear it.”
“You will never be rid of me,” Edie said, her voice breaking. “You know this.”
She closed her eyes and exhaled, spying some newspapers on a table at the center of the room. She went over and rifled through them and, when she found what she was looking for, turned back to Edie. “I’ve been scrutinizing the papers too, you know. Stinson and Mrs. Meary seem to like this Mayfair Breeze—have you read it? Their readers must be quite consumed by the wager, because they still write of it every day.”
Edie clucked her tongue. “That rag is the lowest of the low, Caro. It isn’t even sold in Mayfair.”
“Oh, but it is! All the valets and ladies’ maids buy it up in the early hours and leave copies for their employers, who are all too proud to admit they hang on its every word.” She pointed to a line and smiled without amusement. “Look at this! They’ve taken to calling me ‘the Teasin’ Tart.’”
Edie snorted. “That’s almost as many letters as ‘Caroline Crispin’.”
“I don’t think they’re trying to save space,” she replied. Then she cleared her throat and read:
Lords—and indeed, all respectable gentlemen—do not take kindly to low-born ladies who flit about and throw themselves in their path, as if they weren’t flinging mud on everyone present with their garish behaviors. One only hopes the Teasin’ Tart will take the much-overdue cue from this paper, and from her newly diminished stature, and find a place outside of society that is better suited to her slatternly ways.
Edie got up, snatched the paper, and went straight to the fireplace. “I’ve been thinking,” she said as
she tossed it behind the grate. Caro walked over and joined her, transfixed by the flames. “We took Strayeth and Chumsley to be the bogeymen in all this, but what of these columnists and their publishers, who print such things about women and their worth? What of people like Lady Tilbeth and her gaggle of loose-tongued harpies, all of whom buy them and read them? And what of those of us who don’t speak up in protest when we hear such things repeated? There is no one bogeyman. There is only all of us.”
They watched the fire consume the last of the cheap paper.
“You sound like Mrs. Hellkirk,” Caro whispered, her face hinting temporarily at a smile. She turned to Edie. “I’m sorry that I’ve refused to answer your questions about Adam, Edie. I just haven’t known how to understand my feelings in regard to him. I feel…overturned. I certainly do not care for him any less—” she said, her voice breaking, “but I fear I must change my ways when it comes to men.”
“Caro—”
“No—please listen, Edie. My behavior with men has always been too forward. Not just when we were younger, when I kissed half the gentlemen between here and Yorkshire, but also in my response to Adam when he showed an interest in me.”
Edie put her hand on her arm. “Has something happened? Something more…intimate?”
She smiled into the fireplace, shaking her head. “No. But all of these assignations, assignations that I thought were harmless—that I thought I deserved—were really just indulgences on my part. Why did I think I was any different from any other young woman, Edie? I have been selfish. I have made excuses for what was simply a reckless curiosity about men…and about men and women. And I need to take responsibility for it now.”
“What are you saying?” Edie asked, taking her hand in both of hers.
“I’m saying that, between you and I, I’m taking a solemn oath right here and now to swear off men for a while.” She chuckled. “And ironically, it’s more or less the same advice your brother gave me, when all of this started.”