by Liz Carlyle
For her part, the Countess of Walrafen was the unpretentious descendant of a title even older than that of her late husband, a fact which had always needled Giles a bit, and for no good reason that her ladyship could see. What good was a coronet, she often asked herself, when the generations of Markham-Sands men had been—and still were—such a luckless and facile lot?
Indeed, the first Earl of Sands had been ennobled by old William the Red himself. In a reign pockmarked by avarice, arrogance, and atheism, the Sands family had been one the few Saxon dynasties that had not only survived but also prospered in the Norman yoke.
And that circumstance had, as far as Lady Walrafen could determine, been the last bit of fortuity to befall her ancestors. Following that, the succeeding noblemen of the Markham-Sands dynasty had managed to situate themselves on the wrong side of every political conflict, civil disturbance, cockfight, dog scrap, horse race, and bear baiting which came their way, all of it culminating with the Divine Right of Kings debacle—which they had assiduously supported—and the Restoration, which they had not.
Cecilia sighed aloud. She had never understood that bit of perversity. All she had understood, and from a very young age, was that it fell to her to look out for both herself and her misbegotten elder brother, the current Earl of Sands. At that recollection, Cecilia sighed and leaned a little closer to her dressing mirror. Oh, was that a wrinkle at the corner of her right eye? Indeed it was. And was that another on the left? Well. At least her life had some consistency. At least her wrinkles matched.
She took up her hairbrush, then thumped it back down again, staring pensively across the dressing table full of bottles and vials. Cecilia simply could not escape the dread feeling that her life had ended even before it had begun. The first anniversary of her husband’s death was now six months gone. Yet here she was, at the grand old age of four-and-twenty, unable to shake the sensation of being in deep mourning.
And why? Had she loved him? No, not as a husband. Did she miss him? No, not greatly, but—
Suddenly a piercing shriek rang out from her dressing room. Etta! Cecilia let her face fall forward into her hands. Lord, what had the girl done now—?
At that moment, Etta emerged from the dressing room holding a length of emerald green sarcenet before her face, peering straight through the big, brown hole in the middle of it. Even through the hole, Lady Walrafen could see the tears.
“Oh lor, Lady Walrafen!” the maid squalled, rolling her damp eyes dramatically. “Look ’ere what I’ve done! Yer ortter ’ave me whipped, and that’s a fact. Yer ortter ’ave me skinned, that’s what—then send me right back to the King’s Arms t’make a livin’ on me tail.”
Cecilia managed a smile. “It’s perfectly all right, Etta. I shall wear the blue silk.”
But, as usual, the maid did not listen. “I just put the iron down for the veriest wee second, and now just look!” Etta shook the scorched sarcenet for emphasis. “Look—! And what you’d be wantin’ with a dresser the likes of me, mum, is more’n I’ll ever know.”
At that, Cecilia rose from her stool and snatched the green sarcenet from her maid’s hands. “Now, just hush, Etta!” she commanded. “I’ll not have such talk, do you hear? It’s a silk shawl, for pity’s sake! I’ve a dozen just like it. Now stand up straight! Who will believe in you, if you don’t believe in yourself?”
“Oh, all right!” Etta gave a last dramatic sniff. “I’ll fetch the blue. But I’m telling you straight out now—it don’t look near so good as this green. And I mean for you to look your best when you go to that Mrs. Rowland’s sore-ee tonight, since you know bloody well—”
“Perfectly well,” corrected her ladyship gently.
“Perfectly well,” echoed Etta without missing a beat, “that old high-in-the-instep Giles’ll be watchin’ your every twitch.”
Cecilia watched as Etta returned to the dressing room, pitched the ruined shawl into one corner, and began to shake out the blue silk evening gown, all without pausing for breath. “And d’ye know, Lady Walrafen, I sometimes suspicion but what ’e ai’t got it a little hot for you, stepson or no. Don’t mean to say ’e likes it none too good—but there! A fellow don’t always get to pick what pricks ’is fancy, if yer take my meaning.”
“Why, I daresay I do,” murmured Cecilia a bit unsteadily, lifting the back of one hand to her forehead. “But I am sure that you are much mistaken. Now, pray, talk of something else. How shall we dress my hair for tonight?”
It was as if she had not spoken. “And what about that Mrs. Rowland?” continued Etta, picking through a handful of undergarments. “Coo! Ain’t she a downy one? Mean-looking, too, with all them sharp bones and high eyebrows. And her husband a cousin to that nice Mr. Amherst! It don’t figure.”
“Like the rest of us, the Reverend Mr. Amherst did not get to choose his relatives,” murmured Cecilia dryly. “And as to the Rowlands, I daresay even they have their uses. If they are so shallow as to crave fine society above all else, I’ll gladly extract a pound of flesh on Mr. Amherst’s behalf.”
From the dressing room, Etta hooted with laughter. “Now ’oo’s the downy one, I arst you, mum? That hoity-toity Mrs. Rowland’ll soon be buying new mattresses for the good vicar’s mission house, or my name ain’t ’enrietta ’ealy.”
“Henrietta Healy!”
“Right, mum!” The maid stuck her head through the dressing-room door long enough to flash a wicked grin. “Won’t Mr. Amherst get a laugh out ’er that! And bless me if that wouldn’t be a sight to fair heat up a room, ’cause that smile o’ his has melted gamer gals ’n me. It don’t seem quite right for a priest to be so purely ’and-some, do it?”
Cecilia had risen from her dressing table and had begun to pick through her jewel chest for something to wear with the blue silk. “Oh, to be sure, he is most striking,” she wryly admitted, pulling out a heavy topaz pendant and laying it across her palm. “But do not mistake him, Etta. He’s deeply devout, though perhaps not in the conventional way. His mission has done a great deal of good in east London.”
Etta, now with pins stuck in her mouth, nodded and rattled on. “Aye, there’s many a uprighter what wants savin’ from them petticoat merchants and he’s the just the gent to—”
Her ladyship dropped the necklace with a ker-thunk! “An ... an uprighter?” she interjected sharply.
“A whore, mum,” came Etta’s garbled explanation around her mouthful of pins. “Beggin’ your pardon, ’n’ all. And speaking of that ’andsome Mr. Amherst, I knows one a sight prettier. That friend of ’is—or friend of the wife’s, more like—that fancy Delacourt. Coo! ’Ave ye ever laid eyes on ’im?”
“Really, Etta!” chided Cecilia uncomfortably. “Do stop dropping your h’s! And we need to know nothing about Lord Delacourt!” Cecilia felt the heat flush up her cheeks.
“Aye, well,” said Etta with an amiable shrug. “He’s a right handsome swell, that’s wot I knows of him,” she announced, leaning heavily on her h’s. “Now, mum, you’ve ’eard me talk o’ me Aunt Mercy, the one ’oo owned a flash-house orf the Ratcliffe Highway?”
“Yes,” agreed Cecilia hesitantly. Etta’s family was legion, and none of them above the law.
“Well,” announced Etta, “she knew a gal ’oo’d been in the theater, very fine in ’er ways, and this Lord Delacourt took a liking to ’er, see? Set ’er up in a fine style, ’e did. Two servants, a carriage, and a little trained monkey with a red waistcoat and bells round its neck. Went everywhere with ’er, that little monkey did—”
“Really, Etta!” interjected Cecilia for the fifth time, hurling herself onto her bed in despair. “I have no interest whatsoever in Lord Delacourt’s trained monkey!”
Indeed, Delacourt was the last man on earth Cecilia wished to think about. She had made a concerted effort these last six years to not think of that self-indulgent libertine. It didn’t matter that his lips were as sinfully full as a woman’s. Or that his sleepy green eyes were as unfathomable as the ocean at du
sk. And that hair! As heavy and rich as burnished mahogany.
Yes, even superficial elements—the low, mocking sound of his laugh in a crowded ballroom, the reflection of candlelight in his eye as he whirled across the dance floor—any of these things could awaken a wrath she did not understand. And that was before one even considered his sadly lacking morals.
Lord Delacourt’s intrigues made for the most common sort of gossip. When he passed through a room, the less discerning ladies of the ton would draw a collective breath, strike simpering smiles, and snap open their fans, fluttering them back and forth as if kindling a fire. But no decent woman would let a man like that cross her mind. Certainly, she had no wish to remember him. None at all.
“Righty-ho,” agreed Etta cheerfully as she tugged out a pair of new silk stockings. “Got orf me subject again, didn’t I? What I meant to be telling you was that I seen ’im meself once. With Aunt Mercy in the Haymarket, it was, and Gawd bless me—!” The maid’s eyes rolled back in her head. “A finer set of shoulders and a snugger rump I never did see on a gent! And they do say Lord Delacourt is about the best thing a gal can get between ’er legs on a cold ni—”
“Etta!” screeched Cecilia. “That will do. Really! It’s excessively vulgar! Moreover, I have seen Lord Delacourt and his—his fine shoulders. I see nothing in him at all. Nothing but a handsome debauchee. And where is your aunt’s friend now, Etta, I ask you?”
Etta shrugged. “Couldn’t say, mum.”
“Well, I can!” Cecilia’s fervor ratcheted sharply upward. “She’s starving in some workhouse, old before her time and riddled with the pox, I do not doubt. Whilst his lordship and his snug rump are being cossetted by a bevy of expensive servants down in Curzon Street.”
It was precisely half-past six when Lord Delacourt and his aforementioned rump arrived at his sister’s imposing brick town house in Brook Street. Lifting his gold-knobbed stick, he rapped his usual brisk tattoo upon the door. It was immediately opened by Charles Donaldson, her ladyship’s butler.
“Ah, good evening, Charlie,” said the viscount, smiling widely as he slid out of his elegant black greatcoat. “How the devil are you?”
Donaldson lifted the coat from Delacourt’s fine shoulders. “Well enough, m’lord. Yerself?”
The viscount forced a bland expression. “Ah, Charlie, you know there’s not a fellow in all of England more content than I! Now, where might I find her ladyship? Not, you understand, that I am fully certain that I wish to.” He flashed the butler a dry smile.
Donaldson nodded knowingly and draped the coat over one arm. “Aye, my lord, she’s a wee bit fashed t’day,” he confessed. “And wearin’ out the rug in the book-room.”
“A bad sign, that,” muttered Delacourt. “Is there brandy, Charlie?” He really didn’t know why he asked. There was always brandy. And always his brand, the very best cognac money could buy. Donaldson made sure of it.
“Aye, m’lord. I’ve set a bottle of your favorite atop the sideboard.”
Then, very discreetly, the butler cut a glance up and down the corridor, and bent his head to Delacourt’s. “And if ye dinna mind a word o’ warning, m’lord, she’s scratching out some sort o’ list. It does’na look gude.”
“Hmph!” Delacourt’s dark brows drew together. “Has Mother’s footman been round?”
Grimly, Donaldson nodded. “Brought anither note, he did.”
Delacrout’s jaw hardened. “Damned plaguey women,” he grumbled. “Where’s Amherst? Out saving more harlots from a life of sin and degradation?”
“Aye. Ye’ll have tae manage her w’out ’im.”
But in the end, all Delacourt managed was his thirst. He’d downed but half a snifter of his sister’s fine cognac before she set about her business. Watching her brother out of the corner of one eye, Lady Kildermore paced thoughtfully back and forth along the rich Turkey carpet of her book room, pencil and paper in hand. Outside, the early evening traffic rumbled up and down Brook Street. Impatiently, she sighed.
It was very hard to concentrate amidst all the racket of town when one had grown so used to the country. But her husband’s work here was pressing. Nonetheless, he had faithfully sworn that they would soon return to Elmwood. And her husband was a man who always kept his promises.
Comforted by that thought, she paused to bite the tip of her pencil. “Very well, David. Here’s one I think shall do quite nicely,” she announced, turning the paper a little to the candlelight. “Miss Mary Ayers. She’s young, biddable, and has very large—”
Suddenly, Lord Delacourt set his cognac down with a clatter. “I don’t want large anythings, Jonet!” he interjected, shoving back his armchair with a vengeance. “I swear, you just will not listen, will you? I do not want a wife. Not Miss Mary Ayers. Not Lady Caroline Andrews. Not—good God! Not anyone. Stop bedeviling me!”
Jonet tossed her paper down with a huff, slid one hand beneath her stomach, and eased herself gingerly down into the chair opposite. “David, my dear,” she began, her voice exasperated, “Lady Delacourt is seven-and-sixty! She wishes to see her grandchildren before she dies! If you cannot marry out of love, then marry for her, and for the sake of the title.”
David tossed off the rest of his glass, eyeing her swollen belly and weary countenance. “You look as if you’ve had a shade too much love in your life, my dear,” he said dryly. “Moreover, I do not give one bloody damn about the title, Jonet. And you know why.”
Jonet shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Yes, and you’re rich as Croesus without it. But that does not make a man happy.”
David looked at her derisively. “Oh? And you and Mama—with your damned lists and smuggled missives and your Miss Marys and Lady Carolines—that will make me happy? I swear, I wish I’d never introduced you two meddling women.”
Jonet’s angular brows snapped together. “Lady Delacourt wants what’s best, and Cole says that a man cannot be truly fulfilled until—”
“Oh, no—!” David cut her off at once. “No, no, no, Jonet! You’ll not drag your husband into this! Cole does not concern himself with my affairs, nor I with his. Men, my dear, do not meddle.”
Jonet threw back her head with laughter. “Oh, David! For such a clever man, you can be shockingly naïve! Do you really imagine men to not meddle?”
“Indeed not! They have better things to do.”
Again, she laughed. “Oh, my dear! Women are cast utterly into the shade by men when it comes to manipulation. Indeed, do not men always think they know best?”
“And they often do!”
“Yes, sometimes,” she graciously admitted. “But I know my husband. As between us, he’s by far the more devious.”
David let his eyes drift down her length. “Really, Jonet. You say the most outlandish things when you’re increasing.”
Smugly, Jonet smiled. “What you need, David, are children of your own. I see the desire in those wicked green eyes of yours, every time one of my girls crawls into your lap. You’ll get nowhere playing the hardened rake with me.”
David cast her a disparaging glance and bent forward to refill his snifter from the round crystal decanter. “Come, sister! Have done tormenting me. Let us speak of something else.”
“Very well,” said Jonet silkily.
Her voice settled over David with an uncomfortable chill. It was perfectly disturbing when his sister feigned surrender. Absently, he picked a bit of imaginary lint from his fine wool trousers. “Speaking of the girls, how do they go on? Has my Bella stopped biting her governess?”
Jonet’s gaze was drifting aimlessly about the room. “Oh, yes. Almost.”
“Good! Good! And by the by, I wish to give Davinia a pony for her fifth birthday. I trust you have no objection?”
“No, no. None whatsoever.” Jonet made an impatient little gesture with her hands, then clasped them tightly in her lap.
David lifted his brows inquiringly. “And what of you, my dear? How do you feel?”
“Fine, David. I f
eel fine.” Nervously, her thumbs began to play with one another.
“And Cole? The ... the Mary Magdalene Society—he is pleased?”
“Oh, yes! Donations are picking up.”
“Ah! Capital. Just capital.”
The hands twitched again. Jonet could obviously bear no more. “Listen, David—just tell me this. Are you happy? Truly happy? That is all I wished to know. I wish only for you to be content, as I am content. I know it makes no sense, but I cannot bear thinking that you might be lonely or sad.”
Jonet watched as her brother pushed his glass disdainfully away and jerked from his chair. “You simply cannot leave it, can you, Jonet?” he answered, striding toward the window. With one hand sliding through his thick, dark hair, he pulled open the under-drapes with the other, and stared out into the cold winter night.
“You’ve already cast off that red-haired dasher I saw you with in Bond Street last week, have you not?” she said softly.
“I’ll likely find another soon enough,” he returned, speaking to the window panes. “I hope you do not worry, dear sister, that I lack for feminine attention.”
“Not at all,” agreed Jonet easily. “Indeed, there seems to be an overabundance of it. She was the second you’ve broken with this year, and it is but February.”
“Your point?” he sharply returned. “I’m not sure I take it.”
“And there were eight last year. Darling, that’s a new mistress every six weeks.”
“Not quite—but what of it? I see to their every comfort whilst they’re under my protection, Jonet. And I provide for them well enough when it is over. No one suffers.” He laughed a little bitterly. “Indeed, many have profited quite handsomely.”
“And what of you, my dear?” she asked softly. “What have you profited? Have you gained the whole world yet lost a little bit of your soul?”