by Jane Ashford
“I’m so busy squiring Emma about that Hilda’s being left to herself a good deal. And with Miss Byngham gone—”
“Where?” Randolph couldn’t help asking. Hilda’s former governess had revealed a deep vein of eccentricity during the summer.
Georgina shrugged. “I’m not sure. But Hilda’s becoming rather lonely.”
It was hard to see the girl that way, but Randolph supposed her sister was a better judge. “Sebastian knows London better than I do,” Randolph tried. The girl was Sebastian’s sister-in-law, after all.
“He has a stretch of duty coming up. He can’t get away.”
Randolph sometimes thought that Sebastian’s cavalry regiment took his time when he wished it to and not when he didn’t. But that was unjust.
“I know you’re busy as well,” added his brother’s wife with her lovely smile. “But it would be so kind of you.”
Had Sebastian coached her on just how to appeal to him? That seemed too subtle for his military brother.
“You could take her to visit in Russell Square,” Georgina continued. “She likes Flora.”
“Really?” Randolph gazed at Hilda, who was trying to persuade Sebastian to buy her a sword stick. “She hates books, and Flora nearly always has her head in one.”
“I know. I think Hilda is interested in Flora’s charitable work with street children.”
Randolph was assailed by a vision of Hilda at the head of a gang of grubby urchins, careening through the streets of London bent on mischief. He said as much to Georgina.
She laughed uneasily. “Flora’s charges aren’t grubby. And she wouldn’t let Hilda… The thing is, Hilda’s already sneaked out of the house once, with one of the maids, to visit Astley’s Amphitheatre. She won’t be shut in.”
Randolph couldn’t resist the appeal in his sister-in-law’s gaze. “Oh, very well. I’ll escort her to Russell Square.” Perhaps Robert could overawe the girl.
“And perhaps to the menagerie at the Exeter Exchange?”
“The—?”
But the phrase had caught Hilda’s ear. She leaned forward eagerly. “Are you talking of the animals? They have a lion and a tiger. As well as monkeys, a hippopotamus, an elephant…oh, all sort of creatures. I simply must see them.”
“Lord Randolph might take you there,” said Georgina, evading his reproachful look. “If you behave with some degree of propriety.”
* * *
That was how Randolph found himself in one of his father’s carriages the following morning, shepherding Lady Hilda Stane and a young housemaid to his brother Robert’s home in Russell Square. Hilda had argued forcefully that the menagerie should come first, but Randolph had not been moved.
When they were ushered into the drawing room, they found two callers already present. Robert and Flora seemed glad to welcome newcomers. “You remember Miss Olivia Townsend,” Robert said.
“We met in Northumberland,” said the slender young lady on the sofa. “Well, not precisely met. I don’t believe we were introduced. But I know who you are, of course. This is my sister, Beatrice.”
Randolph made his bow. Miss Townsend’s wide cheeks and pointed chin reminded him of a fox, if one could envision a fox with crimped brown hair, stylish apparel, and shining half boots.
Her sister, who looked to be of an age with Hilda, had to resemble a different parent. She was already taller than Olivia, sturdy and square shouldered, with dark-brown hair and slightly protuberant hazel eyes. Randolph barely had time to introduce Hilda before Miss Beatrice Townsend was chattering.
“Mama was very sorry not to accompany us,” she said. “But my brother Peter broke his arm falling from the chandelier in the front hall.” At the others’ exclamations, she added, “He was very fortunate to escape with only that small injury. He brought down the chandelier with him—a positive blizzard of crystal. We thought the house was collapsing around our ears.”
“It was very expensive,” Beatrice added.
Her older sister nodded. “We decided to take ourselves off until the shouting was over.” The Townsend sisters exchanged a laughing look. “And Beatrice so wanted to meet you because of your success on the stage,” Olivia said to Flora.
“My—” Robert’s wife looked startled.
“I told her how everyone praised your performance as Mrs. Malaprop at our amateur theatricals at the house party last autumn.”
Hilda gazed at Flora with new interest as she shook her head.
“I would be glad to hear any advice you could give me,” said Beatrice. She was uncommonly assured for her age. “I am dedicated to the stage. Particularly the comic roles. I was named for a character in Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing, you know.”
“Not Dante?” murmured Flora.
Only Robert and Randolph appeared to hear.
“Does your family let you act?” asked Hilda.
“However would they stop me?”
“Lock you in your room?”
Beatrice met Hilda’s eyes. Randolph watched the two girls exchange a wealth of silent information. An instant alliance seemed to form, and Hilda went to sit beside Beatrice on the sofa. They soon had their heads together in an intense, inaudible conversation. Randolph was struck by an elusive resemblance between them. He couldn’t put his finger on it at first. Hilda was blond and green-eyed and Beatrice dark, with the stockier figure. Then he got it. They had the same stubborn set to their chins.
Miss Townsend chattered on about Lady Victoria Moreton’s December wedding, in which she had served as a bridesmaid. The topic appeared to amuse Robert and Flora more than Randolph would have expected. He barely listened, straining to overhear what Hilda and Beatrice were plotting. Because they clearly were plotting. They weren’t sophisticated enough to disguise it.
“So Miss Reynolds is also in London,” Olivia said. “Do you have her direction? I should call, of course.”
Flora looked surprised, then pleased. She readily gave the address. A few minutes later, Olivia rose to go. The grins that Hilda and Beatrice exchanged as the Townsend sisters departed only confirmed Randolph’s suspicions. Those two would bear watching.
“A pair of slightly…fatiguing young ladies,” Robert said when they were gone. Hilda frowned at him.
“Their father’s a nabob,” Flora replied. “Positively dripping with oriental jewels.”
At Robert’s raised eyebrow, she looked self-conscious. Indeed, the remark wasn’t like her, Randolph thought.
“I’m quoting an acquaintance,” Flora added. “Their mother is a relation of the Duke of Devonshire.”
“Cavendish or Boyle?”
“I don’t know.” Flora turned away, dismissing the topic with a turn of her shoulder. “Are you enjoying London, Hilda?” she asked.
“I think I shall,” said Hilda, who’d obviously been filing this information away. “Even more than I expected. Miss Beatrice Townsend invited me to call on her.”
“You must ask your sister for permission,” Randolph said.
“Of course I will. But she’ll be happy. She was saying just the other day that it was too bad I hadn’t any friends of my own in London.”
Perhaps he should drop a word about Miss Townsend in Georgina’s ear, Randolph thought. He became certain of it when he mentioned the menagerie on their drive home, and Hilda said, “Oh, never mind.”
Seven
Verity waited while her landlady’s footman knocked at the door of Olivia Townsend’s home in Berkeley Street. The door opened. A tall gray-haired butler looked down at them. He would have been imposing if he hadn’t been swaying visibly, with the two bottom buttons of his waistcoat undone. The scent of brandy wafted down to them.
Verity’s escort looked at her, scandalized. Verity ignored him and mounted the step to the threshold. “Miss Verity Sinclair to see Miss Townsend,” she said.
The butler moved back, allowing them to enter. Verity’s shoe crunched on something as she walked in. There were bits of shattered crystal in the corners of the entry hall, she noticed. A chain dangled high above, where a chandelier would commonly hang.
“If you will follow me,” said the butler, articulating carefully. Walking behind him up a curving staircase, Verity was glad that he held the handrail. If he tripped, he would undoubtedly take her tumbling down with him. The man opened a door on the upper floor, gestured her through, and said, “Miss, er, to see you.” He shut the door on Verity’s heels, leaving her to face what seemed to be a crowded drawing room.
Olivia came forward, holding out her hands. “Verity!”
“‘Why, what’s the matter, that you have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?’” declaimed a girl of fifteen or so who stood by the hearth. She held a book rather close to her eyes.
“Is that beastly stuff supposed to cheer me up?” interrupted a boy of perhaps ten, reclining on a sofa at the side. One of his arms was in a sling.
“You don’t deserve cheering up,” replied the reader. “Not after wreaking havoc.” She savored the final words like a connoisseur sipping a fine wine. “And it’s Shakespeare!”
A tall, square-shouldered woman rose from a chaise and moved languidly forward. “Mama, this is Miss Verity Sinclair,” Olivia said. “I told you about her. Verity, my mother.”
Verity bobbed a curtsy. “Very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Townsend.”
Her hostess greeted her with a sweet, if lazy, smile.
“And that is my dramatic sister Beatrice,” Olivia continued, indicating the girl holding the book. She pointed at the boy with the sling. “My reprehensible brother Peter.” The boy made a dreadful face at her. “My sister Selina and brother Gerard.”
Verity guessed that the latter two were about eight and five. They were bent over a board game and barely acknowledged her arrival.
“And that is the lot of us, except the oldest,” Olivia finished. “Winthrop is away at school.”
All of the Townsend brood resembled their mother, sturdy and dark-haired, except Olivia. “I’m the image of my father,” said the latter, seeming to read Verity’s expression. “Everyone remarks on it. Winthrop is the same.”
Mr. Townsend must be a rather small, slender man, Verity thought. She wondered if his wife dwarfed him.
“We don’t stand on ceremony here,” drawled Mrs. Townsend, returning to her chaise.
It seemed an understatement. In any household Verity had ever visited, children this age would be in the schoolroom.
Selina reared back and whacked Gerard over the head with a throw pillow. He retaliated by pelting her with game pieces.
Mrs. Townsend laughed. “Barbarians.”
“Get a pillow of your own,” Peter urged Gerard. “You’ll soon run out of ammunition.”
No one looked at all self-conscious, Verity noticed. She would have been mortified at such a scene in her own home. She couldn’t even imagine a parallel at Dean Sinclair’s staid residence. Of course, she had no brothers or sisters.
Selina and Gerard swatted at each other with pillows for a while. Peter cheered them on. Beatrice paged through her book. Mrs. Sinclair laughed at them. After a bit, as the shock wore off, it began to seem rather…refreshing.
“Come out of this bedlam,” said Olivia then. “We’ll go to my room, where we can hear ourselves speak.”
Beatrice made a move as if to join them. Olivia put her off with a gesture, and the younger girl looked hurt. But only briefly. She returned immediately to her book.
“I suppose you think you’ve entered a madhouse,” said Olivia as she led Verity up another flight of stairs.
“Oh, no.”
“Of course you do. With my raucous brood of brothers and sisters. And Cranford off somewhere watering the wine and filching the brandy. We call him our bibulous butler. But this is how we are. Mama married my father to escape a direly strict family. She says she was never so happy as when they cast her off entirely. She teaches us the proprieties, of course, but she vowed to let her children do as they pleased at home, and generally we do.” Olivia smiled down from an upper step. “Papa was raised without any manners at all in a dreadful slum. Instead of learning polite behavior, he became very, very rich. He says that caring what other people think is like locking on your own manacles.”
Verity felt dazed at this spate of personal information. “You don’t worry that people will…object?”
Olivia laughed, sounding remarkably like her mother. “Oh, I’m exaggerating for effect, as Beatrice would say. Generally I behave. Last fall in Northumberland I spent several weeks as chief toadeater to an earl’s daughter.”
Verity shook her head. “You did not.” She couldn’t imagine her unconventional new friend in such a role.
“I assure you, I did.” Olivia opened a door off the upper corridor and led Verity into a bedchamber.
Verity stopped short, dazzled by a riot of multicolored silk. Long swaths of the fabric draped the ceiling and walls, the bed and the two long windows. Scarlet, cobalt blue, emerald, gold, too many hues to count. “Oh!”
“Do you like it?” asked Olivia. “They’re saris—the things women wear in India. Papa brought them back. I think they’re lush!”
“They’re astonishing.” Verity felt as if she’d stepped into a fairy tale.
“Would you like some? I can get all I want from Papa.”
“Oh! Thank you. Yes.” Not that she’d be allowed to drape her room in this way. Not yet. But when she had a house of her own, she’d do as she liked.
“Splendid,” said Olivia. “You can leave your bonnet on the bed.”
Inspired by the household’s free spirit, Verity untied the ribbons and tossed her hat onto the silken coverlet. Her pelisse followed with a flourish.
“Come and sit.” Olivia plopped down in a brocaded armchair beside the fireplace. Verity took its mate on the other side. “Now we will plot,” she added. “I’m sick to death of being meek.”
“No one would call you meek,” replied Verity.
The other girl looked pleased. “I shall see that they don’t. This is my London season. Well, my first, anyway. I intend to make it epic.”
Verity nodded. She felt just the same. She wanted to grasp every chance for some adventure.
“And I’ve decided that Thomas Rochford shall be my project.”
“Your… What do you mean, project?”
“I’m going to make him fall in love with me. Only think what a triumph!”
“You want to marry him?” Verity asked.
Olivia laughed. “No, no. In due time I shall find an extremely amiable husband with tub loads of money who wants to spoil me utterly. I only want to…enslave Rochford.” Olivia nodded. “Yes, that’s the word. Enslave.” She seemed to taste it on her tongue.
Verity was fascinated by the idea. Olivia was full of thoughts that Verity had never had.
“Even Emily Cowper will envy me if I have Rochford languishing at my feet. I’ll be famous!”
“But how will you manage it?” Verity asked. “It’s difficult even to speak to him.” She frowned. “And he didn’t seem the sort of person to languish.”
“That’s why I need a good plan. And your help.”
“Mine?”
“Yes. I require a truly bold friend. Like you.”
“You think I’m bold?” Verity was flattered.
“Of course you are. Look at the way you rallied ’round when I stopped Rochford in the park. While Emma drooped as if she might faint. She’s far too timid.”
“But what do you expect me to do?”
“We shall see. I wanted to be certain you were on my side first.”
“Yes, but—”
“Splendid!” Olive leane
d back with a pleased smile. “Is it true you’re to sing at Carleton House? At one of the prince’s receptions?”
“You heard about that?”
“It’s the latest on-dit. So it’s true?”
Verity nodded. “He… The invitation said it was a private party. Quite exclusive.”
“You’ll be famous,” Olivia crowed. “How lucky you are.”
“Do you think so?” Verity was happy to have her opinion confirmed. Everyone else had seemed to have doubts.
“Of course. Every girl coming out this season is trying to distinguish herself somehow. You hardly had to lift a finger.”
“It’s not quite that easy. We have to prepare a program of songs.”
“You and Lord Randolph Gresham.” Olivia’s eyebrows worked up and down. “So handsome. Hours alone bent over a steamy pianoforte?”
The phrase made Verity laugh. “Mama sits with us as we rehearse.”
“Oh, pooh. No chance even to steal a kiss?”
Even as Verity shook her head, the thought took hold of her. The scene ignited her imagination—the music ending, him bending near, the touch of his lips—and a bolt of heat shot from her cheeks…downward. Her breath caught. She wasn’t going to settle for a country clergyman, but surely she could flirt with one. He sang so beautifully. A stolen kiss was such a delicious idea.
“Aha!” said Olivia.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing in the world,” her friend replied with a wicked grin.
Verity pretended not to know what she meant.
“Speaking of kisses, I’ve just played the funniest joke,” Olivia added.
Her sparkling eyes and impish smile were infectious. “What?”
“I sent Miss Reynolds a huge bouquet.”
“The girl in the park?” asked Verity, puzzled. She’d thought Olivia disliked her. And why would she send another girl flowers?
“The same. And I put in a mooning note that hinted the flowers came from Charles Wrentham. If only I could be there when she reads it!”
Verity tried to work this out in her head. “But if she should speak to Mr. Wrentham…”
“I know,” crowed Olivia. “I wonder if I can arrange it? Somewhere I could watch.”