“Nothing much.” Wilson cleared his throat and wiped his nose with his sleeve. “At the front they talked about how we need change. They could not agree on what kind. Finally one shouted that the way they were talking nothing would ever be done.”
Not unlike Parliament, Meryon thought, but with a different kind of power, the power to riot at the least, to lead rebellion at the worst.
“The middle crowd was all spread out. Men and women, some with children. I guess they were out of work and looking for some fun.”
“A good observation, Mr. Wilson.”
“The last of them, like the ones that threw the firecracker, they were looking for trouble or a quick bit of cash, pickpockets and the like.”
“I imagine there were some familiar faces there.” Meryon tried for a conversational tone.
“One or two. They wanted me to come along but I told them that I have a regular job working with horses. I didn’t tell them who I worked for, sir, Your Grace. I never will.”
Time would tell on that score, Meryon thought. He could not doubt the boy’s sincerity at the moment. He hoped that well-fed and warm would make up for the long days Wilson spent at someone else’s beck and call.
It could be the crowd—hardly a mob, despite Wilson’s expertise—had moved into the Bloomsbury neighborhood or lived in service there.
As for what Wilson had reported, it sounded innocent enough. No threat to Elena Verano or her household for now.
Next time, for surely there would be a next time, he would find out what interests led the group. Talking to them personally might make a difference, though there was the distinct possibility that the difference would make things worse instead of better.
He could send the Signora a note suggesting caution but thought a word to Lord William might be more wise. He called often enough and, as much as Meryon hated to admit it, Elena would listen to Lord William and only argue with a duke. Her safety mattered more to him than his vanity.
WITH THE PROMISE of the owner’s box at the theater, Meryon ate a hurried dinner while reading through letters from his man of business and his brother detailing the efforts to unearth information on some of the more scurrilous stories involving the Duke of Bendas. There proved to be no truth to the rumor that he had attempted to trade his grandson for a healthier child. Lord William’s parents had been fiercely protective of their son.
Yes, he had dismissed a housemaid when she had made too much noise coming into his room one morning, but there must be a dozen other members of the ton who would sympathize with that. There was no truth to the story that he had beaten a stable boy to death when he had taken too long bringing his horse around, but it was true that he had ordered his carriage to go on when it had struck a man who had stepped into its path.
The most damning of all was Bendas’s general lack of concern for anyone beneath him. The idea that the world lived to satisfy his wants and needs. Another cartoon would tarnish his image a little more, but Meryon knew he had to find something that would set the seal on Bendas so justice would be served.
Meryon found Blix in the dressing room fussing over a waistcoat. Waving approval at the dark green, Meryon thought about his week thus far. There was the usual: time in the House of Lords, reading the mail. And the unusual: hiring a servant himself, spying on a crowd.
Signora Verano fell into a class all by herself. As a matter of fact she had made herself very comfortable in a sizeable portion of his mind, so that she would pop into his head in regard to almost any subject he considered.
She was unique in her aggravating conversation today and every other day, so that it seemed as though she was the one in charge.
Except on the dance floor. He would have to meet her there more often. He had walked out of her house feeling mightily uncomfortable at her insistence that everything run her way. His imagination played with who would have control in bed. He did not know the answer, but Meryon did know that it would be a pleasure to find out.
15
EVERY BOX WAS FILLED to capacity and the pit was as crowded. Meryon made his way to the owner’s box and wondered how Garrett had managed such a coup. They arrived only a few moments before the curtain and Meryon scanned the boxes for familiar faces. He found, to his pleased surprise, Signora Verano with her ward and Lord William. He bowed his head when Lord William saw him and Elena nodded back, with a quiet smile.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.”
Georges was a good-looking man despite the way life had marked him. Not with scars, but with lines of worry that were carved in deep creases on his face. He was not worried now. He bowed to the owner’s box, his eyes on his ducal guest, before he continued his introduction.
“This evening I will present to you, as usual, three vignettes on one theme. Tonight’s theme is greed and pride. All of these vignettes are fiction and every one of them is the truth.”
The crowd settled, unusually quiet. The first piece took the audience to France during the Revolution. A duplicitous maid was eager to condemn her mistress, a comtesse, so that she could claim her employer’s clothes and jewels. The former maid suffers the guillotine when her pride kept her from admitting her humble origins until it was too late.
The audience applauded with gusto, sure that her downfall was her greed as well as her pride.
Meryon watched Elena watch the play. She seemed to lose herself completely in the story, going so far as to cover her eyes when the blade of the guillotine dropped. He wished he were next to her to give her comfort, instead of teasing her as Lord William appeared to be.
The second vignette concerned a prideful man with a beautiful wife. At first the woman was pleased as could be to make such a fine match and flounced out of her house when her widowed mother protested the match.
The man was enchanted with his bride and showed her to all his friends, who were jealous and lustful by turns.
In time he enslaved his wife with his kisses. More often than not, there was a look of desperation in her eyes, beneath a false smile.
Elena watched this piece with her hands over her mouth.
Trapped in a nightmare marriage, the heroine of the piece decided to run away, going back home to find that her mother had died. Her husband found her there and she pleaded with him to take her back. He did, but the final scene left little doubt that her life would be even worse now.
The intermission was called and the audience buzzed with excitement. The sexual overtones of the second piece were shocking. And exciting. Meryon had no doubt there were any number of women of the ton who would trade pride for pleasure.
Like the rest of the ton, Meryon and Garrett left their box and mixed with their acquaintances in the passage. They came upon Lord William’s group as Miss Castellano was asking if anyone knew Georges.
Garrett launched into a story of his connection with the new playwright. Within a minute it was clear that his story was as much a piece of comic fiction as anything on the stage.
Meryon offered Elena his arm. She accepted his escort with alacrity and they proceeded from group to group of acquaintances exchanging comments about the show. He did not think they had ever been so comfortable with each other before. Her hand lay in the crook of his arm and he could not feel one bit of tension but rather a connection.
When one of the women began to speculate on which actress was Georges’s current mistress, Elena did not have to say a word for him to know that she would prefer to move on, until they found a spot that was relatively private.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her breath teasing his ear. “There is so much worth talking about, and they can only discuss which actress is the prettiest.”
He patted her hand. “When the truth is that not one of them can hold a candle to you.”
“Nonsense. They all have youth on their side.”
This time he kissed her gloved wrist and felt her fingers curl around his for a moment. “You make youth sound desirable, signora. Tell me you would prefer to be eigh
teen again and I will not believe it.”
“Would you?”
“Never,” he said fervently. “I was in constant fear that I would put a foot wrong, make some girl think I was interested when marriage did not appeal to me at all. My father cancelled my Grand Tour because of the unrest in Europe and I did not think I would ever be able to discuss art or music with confidence.” He shuddered. “Not eighteen. No.”
“I would. It was the year I sang in public for the first time. I knew I would never be good enough to sing on stage, nor would it have been proper, but I found an audience among society in Italy and I was as happy as I had been since—” She stopped and didn’t finish the sentence.
“Since …,” he encouraged.
She looked down so he could not see her face and shook her head. “I had not been that happy in a very long time.”
He kissed her cheek and spoke softly. “‘A complete fool’ is the only way to describe someone who would hurt you like that.”
She smiled and touched the spot with her hand.
The thought came to him that between one sentence and the next they had moved beyond flirting to the kind of conversation they’d had the first night they met.
“Pride. It was pride that caused it. If that is the theme of these short pieces then my story could be staged as easily as the others.” The first bell sounded and they automatically turned around. “That horrible man in the second play was as prideful as the woman,” Elena insisted. “Why did he not suffer?”
“In our world men are rarely made to pay for their pride. I do not need to know your experience to know that pride is more often seen as a man’s right, and not as arrogance.”
The answer might have been honest but it did not please Elena.
“I have heard that some of these stories are ongoing,” he went on. “That Georges will do another where the man will face the consequences of his actions.”
“I hope so. A man can ruin a woman’s life and there is no penalty for it. I wish Georges would allow a woman to write one of his plays.”
Meryon laughed. “He is the man of rank in this theater and I do not think his pride will allow it.” Change the subject, Meryon. “The first piece had a more just resolution and could have featured either a man or a woman.”
“Yes,” Elena agreed, somewhat mollified. “Lord William saw a version last week in which the servant was a man and the comte insisted he wear his clothes. The servant died despite his protestations of innocence.”
“You see that is another lesson we can draw from the first piece tonight. It makes me wonder what would happen if my son traded clothes with my groom.”
“Do not say that out loud, Your Grace.” Elena raised a hand to his mouth to stop him from speaking. Her fingertips barely brushed his lips but his whole body envied the touch. Elena dropped her hand as fast as she had raised it. She let go of his arm, but stayed beside him.
“Mia did it once with her maid and I still have not forgiven her. She is as precocious as Lord William. In that I do not think they are well matched, if only because they are so much alike. I suppose they will work that out for themselves. Neither one of them will listen to me.”
He recognized the rush of words as a way of covering her embarrassment. Elena had felt the same shock that he had at her touch.
As the final gong sounded they made their way back to her box. He bowed over her hand and strolled back to the owner’s box with Garrett, only half listening to what his brother-in-law said. “I wish my sermons would generate half this discussion.”
“Hmmm. Yes, I’m sure,” Meryon muttered.
“If they did, I could tell them that the days of the dukedom are numbered and I should be their leader.”
“Yes.” Meryon stopped and tried to replay what Garrett had said. “That is total nonsense, Garrett.”
“I said that to prove that you can still hear in spite of those lovebirds singing.”
Meryon ignored the comment and moved his chair so he could see Elena as well as the stage.
The last piece was a comedy as Meryon expected it would be. But one with a lesson as powerful as that of the other two.
The mayor of a small town in France had a daughter who was her most beautiful when she played the piano.
The mayor was anxious to marry her off to a wealthy man and invited a candidate to dinner even though his daughter did not like him. In retaliation, the daughter deliberately played badly in the wrong key and the would-be suitor, who had very sensitive ears, left shortly thereafter without so much as hinting at interest in the daughter.
Her father was so angry that he moved the pianoforte to the city square and insisted that she play to earn her keep. She was too full of pride to ask for forgiveness and did as he commanded. As the curtain fell, it had begun to rain onstage and a gentleman stopped his carriage to offer her a ride. The girl’s father ran after the carriage, realizing that it was not only her pride that had led to her downfall, but his own as well. He was run over by the piano, which had suddenly developed feet and come after him.
As the story unfolded, Meryon saw Elena grow more and more stricken.
She did not laugh at the machinations between the father and daughter, who were too much alike and thus doomed to dissension.
She did not laugh as the daughter played the wrong notes and winced at her own poor performance. He stopped watching the action onstage and kept his eyes on Elena, willing her to look at him, to ignore whatever caused her pain.
When the short play ended with the girl’s obvious fall from grace, Elena stood up and left the box precipitously. Lord William and Miss Castellano followed in some confusion.
On impulse, Meryon made to follow her. At that moment, with the last of the applause fading, Georges himself came into their box, and whatever Meryon had hoped to do for Elena was squelched by the requirement of good manners.
Garrett and Georges greeted each other as old friends, which answered one question. Even if his story to William and Miss Castellano of his friendship with Georges had been preposterous, the two knew each other. From the war years; Meryon had no doubt of it.
Georges accepted Meryon’s praise with modesty, insisting that storytelling had always appealed to him, and “Is it not fortunate that I have so many stories to tell.”
They talked about how he would accommodate the crowds once the Season started, and about the unlikelihood of a visit from the Regent, since too many of the stories would seem to be critical of him. Finally, Georges declined to join them for supper as he had “a lady awaiting my attention.”
Garrett was unusually quiet all the way back to Penn House. Meryon welcomed the chance to think through Elena’s reaction to the last story. And his as well. He would have done anything to ease her hurt. That she had not once looked at him or sought him out told him that the trust he longed for was still not complete.
TINA! LEAVE ME SOMETHING to wear to the Straemores’ this evening,” Elena begged. “They did not promise the gowns for today. They were only hopeful.”
“Si, signora.” Tina spoke with an absentminded air, intent on emptying the clothes press. There was an impressive stack of apparel of all kinds on the nearest chair.
“Wait, wait.” Elena walked back into the dressing room. The small space was a complete shambles. Despite the neat piles, it looked like the press had exploded, with bunches of fabric landing everywhere. She pointed to the stack that was almost as tall as Tina. “These are the dresses we are keeping, yes?”
Tina shook her head. “No, signora. They are sadly out-of-date and should be given away. Or perhaps some of the better material can be remade.”
“I cannot replace my entire wardrobe. It would cost a fortune and six more trips to the modiste.”
“Cara signora, you have a fortune. Why not enjoy it?”
One of the more timid housemaids appeared in the door. Tina waved her into the room and ordered her to collect the gowns that were no longer useful.
“Do not take eve
rything. I ordered nothing for a ride in the park.”
“What ride? With who?” Tina sounded more like a governess than a maid.
Elena cleared her throat. “On Wednesday, with the duke.”
“The duke is taking you up in his carriage!” Tina dropped the clothes and all but leapt for joy. “It will be the perfect way for you to meet more of society.”
“Tina! You speak as if that is all the Duke of Meryon is good for. I happen to like him.”
“What do you see in him, signora? Or is it that you are trying to prove to yourself that you will never find love so you will not make the effort? For it is clear to me that this duke is not at all worthy of you.” She made his title sound like the name of some mangy cur found in the mews.
Tina did not wait for her mistress to try to make sense of her theory.
“I know the perfect dress, signora. The deep violet, the one that has the matching velvet cloak with the fur trim. That wonderful bonnet you found in Paris will be perfect with it. How fortunate it is still cool enough for it. I thought that it would be much too out of style before you had an opportunity to wear it again. Let me find it and make sure it does not need pressing. There may even be time to add another row of ruffles; they are so in fashion now and with your height it would not look as stupid as it does on most women. Now you will need…”
Tina hurried back into the dressing room, her monologue continuing no matter that Elena could not hear her. She did not need to. Both of them knew that since her appearance at the Regent’s dinner party, Elena’s social life had increased significantly, and even with the new gowns she would be hard-pressed to have enough for the entire Season, especially once Mia made her bow and they were out every night.
Elena sat down and began going through the gloves that Tina had directed her to sort. Mia would look wonderful in white but even better in white washed with pink or a pale blue, perhaps with a pattern embroidered around the décolletage since the girl could not yet wear more than a string of pearls or a simple locket. It was easier to think about what colors would suit Mia than to think about her own upcoming ride in the park with the duke.
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