by Jane Feather
“I hope you won’t consider it impertinent if I ask for your help in making myself known in society,” Monsieur Denis asked tentatively as they strolled along Piccadilly.
Alasdair gave him a shrewd glance. “Hanging out for a rich wife too, Denis?” he inquired.
Paul managed to look a trifle self-conscious. “Not exactly … but my situation is a little … well, a little constrained, shall we say?”
Alasdair shrugged. “No more than many, I daresay.”
“Perhaps not. But this Lady Emma, I wonder …” He coughed delicately. “I was wondering if perhaps you could effect an introduction. If you have no objections, of course.”
Alasdair felt a sharp stab of pain somewhere in the region of his breastbone. First Bedford and now this émigré. It seemed that he was to act as pander, procuring potential suitors and lovers for a woman whom he’d just discovered he couldn’t contemplate belonging to anyone but himself.
“I suggest you ask Princess Esterhazy for an introduction,” he said. “I’m not expecting to call upon Lady Emma in the near future.”
Paul Denis accepted this in silence, but his thoughts raced. He had noticed the sudden tension in Lord Alasdair at the card table during the discussion of Lady Emma’s possible marriage. It was well concealed, but not for an eye and an ear trained to notice any shift of emotion, any telltale flicker or hesitancy. It would seem that the governor had been misinformed. Whatever the close connection between Lady Emma Beaumont and Lord Alasdair Chase, it didn’t appear to be a particularly easy one. Lord Alasdair was her trustee; was that perhaps a bone of contention? Whatever the reason for the constraint, it wasn’t going to help his own plans any. He would have to find an alternative route to his quarry.
“You’re very preoccupied this morning, my love,” Maria observed, dipping a finger of toast in her teacup and carrying the sopping morsel to her mouth.
Emma nibbled the end of her quill and then scratched out the lines she’d written. She pushed paper and pen aside and returned to her breakfast. “I have a very vexing issue to deal with,” she explained vaguely.
“Oh, perhaps I can help?” Maria took another finger of toast and bathed it in tea.
Emma shook her head and said with a touch of mischief, “No, I don’t think so. You’re no judge of horseflesh.” She regarded Maria’s steady consumption of tea and toast with customary amazement, while sipping her own coffee and making inroads into a dish of bacon and mushrooms.
“We should visit Princess Esterhazy first this morning, I believe,” Maria said, following her own train of thought. “The next subscription ball at Almack’s is to be on the fifteenth, and we must be sure to have vouchers in time. I think the ball dress of ivory gauze over the turquoise satin would be perfect, don’t you, my love?”
“Mmmm,” Emma murmured, once more engrossed in her letter writing.
“Of course, the bronze crepe becomes you so well,” Maria continued, untroubled by her companion’s lack of concentration on such an important topic. “I wonder if perhaps the gold embroidered scarf would look particularly elegant with it. You should ask Mathilda to look it out, my love, and we’ll decide later.”
“Mmmm,” said Emma, bringing the last line of her missive to a period with a decisive jab of her quill. “That’s the best I can do.” She waved the sheet in the air to dry the ink, then folded it carefully. “I must just get this sent off, Maria. Shall I order the carriage to be at the door in half an hour?”
“Yes, if you can be ready in that time,” Maria agreed somewhat doubtfully. Emma, as was her invariable custom unless she was breakfasting early before a hunt meet, had come downstairs in a wrapper over her nightgown.
Emma laughed at this. “I shall be ready in twenty minutes.” She whisked herself from the breakfast parlor, leaving Maria to finish her tea and toast.
She was as good as her word and was downstairs again well within the half hour, drawing on a pair of lavender kid gloves. “Did you send the message, Harris?”
“Yes, ma’am. Bodley took it straightaway. The barouche is at the door.”
“Here I am … here I am,” Maria trilled as she came down the stairs. “Dear me, I made sure I’d be ahead of you, Emma. I had only to put on my bonnet and pick up my gloves, and you had not even begun to dress.” She ran an appraising glance over Emma’s close-fitting driving habit as she chattered, hurrying all the while to the door. “That dark blue was a very good choice,” she declared as the footman handed her up into the barouche.
Emma climbed in after her, allowing Maria’s stream of inconsequential chatter to flow over her. Maria rarely required a concrete response to her remarks, and Emma had long perfected the art of appearing to listen politely while thinking her own thoughts. At the moment, those thoughts were entirely concerned with horses.
The Austrian ambassador and his wife lived in a stately double-fronted stucco mansion in Berkeley Square. Princess Esterhazy received her visitors in the upstairs drawing room overlooking the square gardens.
“Maria Witherspoon,” she said with her vivacious laugh. “I haven’t see you in town for months. Are you come up for the entire season?” She didn’t wait for an answer but turned immediately to Emma. A dark eyebrow lifted slightly. “Lady Emma, my condolences on your brother’s death.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Emma bowed. She was aware that her hostess’s scrutiny was somewhat speculative.
“You decided not to go into full mourning, I take it,” the princess stated.
“My brother would not have wished it,” Emma replied.
“Ah. Young people these days … so little respect for convention,” the lady pronounced.
“Oh, that’s a little harsh, Princess,” Maria said, bustling forward. “Emma has been grief stricken for many months. But it was dear Ned’s expressed desire … in his will,” she added fallaciously but with great firmness, “that she set up her own establishment as soon as Lord and Lady Grantley moved into Grantley Manor.”
The princess nodded. Her speculative gaze still rested on Emma’s countenance, and Emma could almost hear her thoughts running along the lines of: Two hundred thousand pounds! Not to be sneezed at, oh, dear me, no. Much can be overlooked for such a fortune.
“Well,” Princess Esterhazy said at last, “I must send you vouchers for Almack’s, mustn’t I? Ill send them around this afternoon. Mount Street, I understand?”
“Yes, a most delightful house,” Maria said. “Lord Alasdair Chase, Emma’s trustee, hired it for her.”
“Ah, yes,” their hostess said. “Lord Alasdair.” Her gaze became rather more intense and it was clear to her visitors that she was recollecting the old scandal.
“Lord Alasdair is a very old and steadfast friend,” Maria stated confidently, looking the princess in the eye.
Any comment the princess might have made remained unsaid as the butler announced Lady Sefton and her son Lord Molyneux. They were followed by Lady Drummond and her three daughters, and the salon quickly became a buzz of conversation. Maria was immediately in her element and there was no further awkwardness on the subject of past scandals. Emma’s return to society drew no comment, although she overheard Lady Drummond murmuring to Lady Sefton, “Is it true? Two hundred thousand pounds?”
“So I believe,” the other replied. “How can it be that she’s still unmarried? She’s well enough looking … although too tall and lanky for many tastes. But with a fortune of that size, a man can overlook a few imperfections.”
“Perhaps she’s difficult to please,” suggested Lady Drummond. “She has a definite air of consequence, wouldn’t you say … and after the scandal …”
Emma moved away, her ears burning. It was most unpleasant to be talked of in such fashion, although she had known it to be inevitable.
“Mr, Paul Denis, ma’am,” the butler announced from the door, and Emma glanced over at the new arrival. He was a man of medium height, black hair curled crisply over a well-shaped skull, very dark eyes gleaming in an olive-h
ued complexion. He bowed to his hostess with a flourish that seemed entirely in tune with his rather exotic appearance and spoke with a faint but noticeable accent.
“Princess, I am come to pay my respects. My father, I believe, wrote to your husband.” He raised the princess’s hand to his lips and kissed it elegantly.
“Oh, yes, I remember. Some family connection … a great-aunt, wasn’t it?” She smiled benignly at this most presentable young man.
Paul agreed that it was indeed a great-aunt who connected them, and kissed her hand yet again. Princess Esterhazy drew him aside and began to question him in her lively manner as to his childhood and present circumstances.
Emma accepted a cup of coffee from a footman’s tray and moved imperceptibly closer to the princess and her new visitor. There was something about the man that caught her attention. Something almost intriguing about his dark looks, about the way he held himself, as if poised on the brink of some dramatic action. She caught herself noticing that he was stockier than Alasdair, but his clothes didn’t sit as well on his frame. Perhaps they were not so well cut as Alasdair’s, she thought. Alasdair, of course, would know at a glance whether the man had had his coat made by Weston, or Shultz, or Schweitzer and Davidson … or some other, lesser tailor. But then, perhaps it was the frame that was at fault … the shoulders didn’t fill the coat with quite the perfection of Alasdair’s; the leg was not quite as long or well formed, so there was the faintest wrinkle to the pantaloons; the hips were perhaps a trifle foreshortened….
“Lady Emma, permit me to make Mr. Denis known to you.” Princess Esterhazy became aware of Emma standing close by. “He, too, has but newly arrived in town. Mr. Denis, may I present Lady Emma Beaumont.”
“Mr. Denis.” Emma was not sorry to have her comparative assessment interrupted. She moved forward with her hand outstretched. He bowed over it and raised it to his lips. The gesture struck Emma as slightly affected with its courtly flourish, and she reclaimed her hand at the earliest opportunity. “You are French?”
“An émigré family, ma’am.” He smiled, showing very white, slightly crooked teeth. “I was a boy when we fled France in ’91. Some kind friends of my parents living in Kent took us in when we first arrived.”
“Do you remember much of the revolution, sir?” Emma had always been fascinated by the bloody horror of the Terror.
“I have some memories. Do they interest you?” Paul’s smile deepened, his eyes focused on her face, and Emma felt a strange and disturbing intimacy develop between them. He was looking at her as if she had become the only person in the room. It had been a long time since anyone but the lumpy sons of country squires had regarded her with such pointed masculine attention. It was pure flirtation, of course, but she was not averse to the game … no, not at all.
She smiled, her eyes narrowing a little. “I must own to something of an obsession with the events of that dreadful time, sir. If you could bear to satisfy my curiosity, you’d find me a most attentive listener.”
“I should be delighted.” He offered her his arm and they moved away from the center of the room to a sofa set in a window embrasure.
Princess Esterhazy nodded to herself. She liked to do favors for her friends and relations, and although she couldn’t for the life of her place this great-aunt connection, if her husband said it was so, she was happy to take his word for it. The young man seemed unexceptionable. His manner was well-bred, his dress, if lacking the extremes of dandyism, perfectly conformable. And if he managed to secure the heiress and her two hundred thousand pounds, then the princess considered that she would have performed a very good deed.
Maria Witherspoon, however, was not so complaisant. She had a very simple and pragmatic view of the world. Emma should not be wasting her time on an impoverished and insignificant newcomer. She had come to London to get a husband, and Maria saw no reason why that husband shouldn’t bear the blood of kings.
She bore down on the couple, wreathed in smiles, saying, “Emma dear, we must be on our way…. Oh, how do you do, sir?” She raised an inquiring eyebrow at Emma’s companion.
Emma was surprised. Maria was not usually haughty, but there was a definite loftiness in her manner, as if she were crushing the pretensions of some social mushroom. She made introductions and watched in amazement as Maria bowed coldly. Paul Denis seemed not to notice, and greeted Emma’s chaperone with courtly attention. But as Emma bade him farewell, he gave her a comical look of dismay that brought ready laughter into her eyes.
“I fear your duenna thinks me unworthy,” he murmured as he took Emma’s hand. “Dare I call in Mount Street, or will she deny me?”
“Maria is not mistress in Mount Street,” Emma said, and then instantly, as she heard her own faint hauteur, despised her arrogance. It was a besetting sin. One, of course, that she shared with Alasdair.
“Then may I call on you?”
“Please do.” She smiled warmly, adding, “Maria is the very best of companions. She watches over me like a mother hen.”
“That has its comforts,” Paul said with a gravity belied by the expression in his eyes.
Emma laughed. “Yes, indeed it does, sir. I give you good day.”
She made her farewells, conscious of a lighthearted and exuberant feeling of gaiety; a feeling that hitherto she had always associated with her music, with dancing until dawn, or after a particularly splendid run with the hounds … or after some mad prank with Ned and Alasdair.
“I wonder if Mr. Denis is quite the thing,” Maria ventured, once they were back in the barouche.
“He’s related to Princess Esterhazy, Maria. How can he not be?” Emma tucked her hands into her sable muff against a sharp gust of wind whipping around the corner of Curzon Street.
“I don’t know, my love. But there was something about him that I couldn’t quite like.”
“Oh, stuff, Maria,” Emma scoffed lightly. “He’ll be seen everywhere. Do you imagine Princess Esterhazy is going to deny him a voucher for Almack’s?”
“I daresay not.” But Maria remained unconvinced and was uncharacteristically silent on the drive back to Mount Street.
Once inside, Emma cast aside her muff and her gloves and strode energetically to the music room, unpinning her velvet hat as she went, handing it to an attentive footman. She was under a familiar compulsion. “I’m going to practice for a while, Maria.”
Maria understood that to mean that she would probably not see Emma again until the evening.
Chapter Five
“Good afternoon, Harris. Is Lady Emma in?” Alasdair strolled up the shallow stairs into the hall. “Ah, yes, I hear that she is.” He nodded in the direction of the music room, then cocked his head. “Must be in a good humor,” he observed, tossing his driving whip on a pier table and turning to allow a footman to help him off with his driving cape.
“Yes, sir,” Harris said. He had been butler in the Grantley household since Ned’s birth and understood exactly what Lord Alasdair meant. Lady Emma was playing an aria from The Magic Flute. She tended to play Mozart when she was in particularly good spirits.
Alasdair grinned and strode across the hall to the door at the rear. He opened it very softly and slipped inside, closing it soundlessly behind him. He stood quietly listening with an ear that was both critical and appreciative. A branched candlestick threw light over the music stand, but it was a light that paled against the brilliant winter sunshine pouring through the French doors that opened onto a walled garden at the rear of the house.
Emma was wearing her hair in one of the new classical styles, a silver fillet banding her brow, her hair looped over her ears at the sides and swept up at the back and tucked into the fillet. Her exposed neck was slightly bent as she played, and Alasdair’s gaze was riveted on the tender groove running from the base of her skull, disappearing into the high collar of the driving habit she still wore from the morning’s visiting.
He moved forward under a compulsion he could not resist. She was absorbed in the
music and heard nothing of his step on the thick Axminster carpet. He bent his head and lightly kissed the nape of her neck, his hands coming to rest where the graceful slope of her shoulders blended with her upper arms.
Emma’s hands stilled on the keys, her head falling forward as if under some weight, although the kiss had been the merest brush of his lips.
“Forgive me,” Alasdair said before she could speak. His hands dropped from her shoulders. “Outrageous, I know, but I couldn’t resist.” He made his voice light and jocular as if what had just occurred were a mere commonplace.
Emma raised her head, straightened her spine. The back of her neck was warm, still tingling. She looked over her shoulder at him in silence.
Alasdair gave her a rueful smile. “You know I’ve never been able to resist the back of your neck.”
“Don’t!” she said in a stifled voice. “For God’s sake, Alasdair!”
He held up his hands in conciliation. “It didn’t happen,” he said. “Listen, I had an idea while you were playing. Let me sit down.” He gestured that she should move up on the piano bench and make room for him. “A more exaggerated pause between these notes … here … and again here.” He played several bars one-handed, his other beating the time. “See? And then when Papageno comes in … here … it lifts the tempo, makes the conversation even livelier.”
Emma nodded. “I wonder why Mozart didn’t think of that,” she said with a grin.
Alasdair chuckled. “All art is open to individual interpretation. Sing it; let’s hear how it sounds.” He swept his hands over the keys in preparation, then began to play.
Emma hesitated for barely a second, then began to sing. She had a contralto voice, well trained with perfect pitch, but she’d be the first to admit that it lacked true power. But then, both she and Alasdair were perfectionists, as critical of their own performances as they were of others’. But the aria was pure delight to sing, filled with sunshine and laughter, and she let her voice run with it to Alasdair’s accompaniment. And when he joined in with his own pleasant tenor in counterpoint, Emma closed her eyes and lost herself in the sheer joy of making these beautiful sounds with someone so perfectly matched and so filled with the same pleasure.