Lady of Spirit

by Edith Layton

  “Life is seldom fair,” the earl commented, putting a mark in his book and shutting it carefully, “as witness the fact that your family decided to return you to me forthwith, like a letter that hadn’t been properly franked. I still wonder how you managed that,” he sighed. “A promise of reformation, no doubt. Odd, your mama has her moods, but I’d judged her eminently sane. And touch one drop of port my dear Theo,” he added casually, “and I’ll break your arm. It’s enough that your enchanting parent is always running to me with tales of your dissipation; it would be more than I could tolerate if you made yourself free here before my very eyes, for then I could not pretend ignorance as I so often must do.”

  “Ho! As if a fellow could become dissipated on only two guineas in his pocket,” the young man said gloomily, still eyeing the tray thirstily.

  “Two arms, then, if I must,” the earl said, his dark eyes so hooded by the shadows that it might have been either laughter or displeasure which colored his voice. “Elevate your thoughts, Theo, for you shan’t have a drop tonight, not from my hand. What happened to your allowance this time?”

  “It’s all your fault anyway, Cole, for I went round to visit with your mama this afternoon,” the young gentleman mumbled as if that were explanation enough.

  “Oh,” the earl said, and unmistakably, even in the darkness, his white teeth could be seen gleaming in a smile. “What was it this time? Hazard? Evens and odds? Basset? Faro?”

  “It was the bones, the devil’s teeth, b’god,” young Lord Malverne cried in agitation, “and the boy has the devil’s own luck with the dice, Cole, you never saw the like, they dance for him, they sing for him, they all but speak for him. I left while I still owned my own hat!”

  “That at least was wise of you. But, Theo, gambling with children is a terrible vice, it corrupts them,” the earl said with a great deal of censure.

  “Can’t corrupt that whelp Alfie Johnson any more than you can corrupt old Nick himself,” Theo mumbled.

  “This visit to my mother wasn’t all family duty, then. It’s clear you were only trying to win back last week’s allowance this time.” The earl sighed, taking up his book again.

  “No, wish I was, Cole,” the young gentleman said, sitting up and sounding so genuinely wretched that this time his cousin looked at him sharply and put down his book. “Thing of it is, my mother sent me a letter asking me to trot over to see what I could see. There’s been talk…well, dammit all, Cole, since you’ve taken the title there’s been talk, because they don’t know what to expect of you. It’s stupid stuff, I know. Everyone knew what villains the Earls of Clune before you were, and here you are, more decent than our family has any right to expect, and they watch every move you make even more carefully.

  “The short of it is, Cole,” the younger man said earnestly, “everyone wonders what the deuce is going on. They talk of little else. Yes, they know I caused Miss Dawkins to lose her post, and she’s said to be ill, but for the life of them they don’t know why your mama is putting her up, nor why a parcel of infants is included in the bargain. Miss Dawkins ain’t going to work for your mama, that’s clear, for Old Cold Comfort is still there, and so what’s the gal doing there, my mother wants to know.”

  “And? Go on, Theo, there’s more, I can tell, spill it,” the earl said wearily.

  “Well, they wonder if she’s going to be your mistress or your wife,” Lord Malverne said unhappily.

  “What?” the earl shouted, coming to his feet. “What sort of idiocy is that? The girl was at death’s door. She’s only been with my mother two weeks, and scarcely ever out of bed, and in that bed alone the whole time. I’ve never so much as seen her alone in all that while.”

  And to cover the unmistakable note of grievance that even the speaker detected in his own last statement, the earl said quickly, “And what sort of degenerate do they think me, that I would land my mistress on my mother’s doorstep?”

  The earl fell silent then, hearing his own question and remembering that if Miss Dawkins had breathed “yes” at that long-past moment she would indeed have been his mistress. But then, recollecting that the wish was never the deed, he glowered at his young cousin again. “And do they believe the children to be mine, as well?” he added sardonically.

  Seeing his young relative’s reddened face, the earl turned away, his own stern features more rigid with anger. “Blast!” said the earl, throwing his book down upon the chair he’d just vacated, and wrenching his dressing gown off.

  “It’s all very well,” he said gruffly, standing in his shirtsleeves and ringing for his valet so that he might get dressed to go out, “to say that gossip does not bother me, for it doesn’t you know. But I won’t have anything bothering my mother, and since my sister wed Axelham last autumn, and his family’s as priggish a bunch of puritans as I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet, I don’t like controversy swirling about her head either. I’ve lodged the girl with my mother until she’s well enough to take up a decent post again, and for more reasons than I care to go into, the children are part of the bargain—they’re her responsibility as well. And I am not related to them by the furthest stretch of fevered imagination. And I am in the meanwhile actively seeking a position for Miss Dawkins to take on as soon as she can stand on her own two feet—and not with or under me either, for that matter, is that understood?” he roared, pointing at his cousin.

  “Oh, understood, Cole,” Theo said happily. “I’m glad to see you mean to straighten the matter out. For I’ve a wager on at the club that your mistress is to be Melissa Careaux, the filly from the opera, the one with all the jet curls, you know, the one everyone said you ogled the other week at the theater? Most chaps have laid odds it’s to be Lady Lambert,” he went on smugly, never seeing the arrested look of horror in his cousin’s dark eyes, “and a few are still holding out for Amy Farrow, for since she’s had a tiff with the Baron Hyde she’s been saying she fancies your sort of looks. But I think you’ve better taste than that,” Theo said loyally, “and then too, Melissa Careaux has the biggest, most enchanting…ah, er…” He paused with his hands still sketching something prodigiously curved in midair as his cousin’s valet entered the room. “.…prominences, you understand,” he ended weakly, quickly inspecting his fingernails, as both his cousin and his cousin’s valet gazed at him in amazement at his sudden fit of discretion.

  The earl dismissed his young relative, and then went to his room and dressed rapidly. He uttered not one word to his man after he announced his change in plans and prepared for an evening out, which was unusual. For he was an employer who seldom stood upon ceremony, never spoke down to a servant, and tended to treat all his fellowmen with the same easy graces. This was, his valet felt, unfortunate but understandable, since it was known that the earl had not been brought up in expectations of his title. The lapse could be excused, since in sum he was a fair employer and a credit to a valet when he cared to be turned out properly.

  But for all the sensitivity to his fellowman which his servant found deplorable, this evening the earl hadn’t a care for his valet’s sensibilities, he was too bedeviled with his own thoughts. This was the first night he’d planned to pass at home in the past weeks, and he’d been expecting to spend it in the way that suited him best, reading and relaxing before his own fireside. This was, after all, the first evening that the physician had declared Miss Dawkins entirely out of danger. Her fever had gone, the continuance of life was thus assured, and at last he could spend a night in his own quarters, and one without pacing or broken snatches of sleep stolen between vigils. But surprisingly, with all the danger and drama of the sick young woman struggling for her health upstairs in his mama’s best guestroom, it hadn’t been that unrelentingly grim at the Haverford town house where his mother held state. For he’d had the children to deal with, and had discovered that they entertained him far more than he’d diverted them from their worries about their governess and friend.

  He’d thought his mama had been inordinately pl
eased at their arrival, for few society matrons would countenance, much less celebrate, a pack of slum brats being landed upon them. But his mama was never a society matron, and since they’d come to her, he’d come to realize how flat she must have found life now that his sister was wed and in the North Country, and his brothers had gone off, respectively, to a naval career and to university, and he to his own lodgings. She’d taken charge of the situation at once, and lodged the four of them in the disused nursery in the attics without hesitation. Then, in the past week, between fretting over “poor Miss Dawkins” and fussing over the Johnson ménage, he’d seen that she’d seemed to positively bloom, rather than flag, from all her unaccustomed activities.

  This morning Miss Dawkins had looked up at them, her face little more colorful than her pillow slip, save for those enormous golden eyes, shining with intelligence and not fever at last, and she’d smiled wanly, sensible at last, and thanked him at the last, before he’d left the room, for seeing to her. Then he’d gone to round up Alfie from the stables, where, after what must have been a shocking confrontation, to judge from the evidence of blackened eyes and bruised knuckles on the pair the first day they’d met, he’d obviously found a kindred spirit and boon companion in Jack, the earl’s tiger. After Alfie had been summoned and his siblings sent with him to Miss Dawkins’ bedside, the earl hadn’t thought it odd in the least that the sight of the five of them reunited to celebrate Miss Dawkins’ recovery brought tears to his mama’s eyes, or even a certain mistiness to his own. But then too, he had never doubted his responsibility to her, or to the children, for a moment.

  Boarding and succoring a nonentity of a governess and a pack of grubby urchins did not seem to him to be irregular in the least. And this, as his valet flinched to contemplate, was not just a charming eccentricity such as one often found among the nobility, although the servant steadfastly maintained otherwise when chatting up his fraternity in the tavern.

  For the earl knew that his relative had lost Miss Dawkins her means of livelihood and indirectly but definitely brought her low. If he and his family had had no direct hand in reducing Alfie and his siblings to their circumstances, once having seen them and met them directly, there was no possibility that he could have turned his back upon them. Although this was singular behavior for a nobleman, the earl, after all, as his valet sadly acknowledged, had not been bred to his title.

  But he had been raised as a gentleman, and he knew how pernicious gossip could be. Miss Dawkins was on the road to recovery. The Johnson children were out of immediate danger. It was as well then that young Theo dined out on gossip and drank in every nuance of it. It was time to prepare for the determination of all of their futures; it was past time to set matters right again. And this very evening, the earl thought, checking his appearance in the glass and approving of the sober but correct evening garb he’d donned, he would at least make a beginning. He would start scotching the worst of the rumors.

  He’d offered Miss Dawkins the post as his mistress on that distant afternoon, and the only thing he found shocking in it now was that he’d offered the position so quickly. For it had been a valid offer, the situation was vacant, it would have paid well, and if he’d not read her character wrongly, there would have been nothing amiss but for the speed with which he’d made up his mind, without so much as a fair trial, that she’d suit him. But, he reasoned now, he’d been very much taken with her, she’d caused an instantaneous response in him, he’d thought he’d caused a similar reaction on her part, and he’d believed her eligible for such a post. She was not, he had not, she would not, so be it; he shrugged now, inadvertently causing his valet to worry about whether it was his response to his cravat, which was, as the fellow thought with some trepidation, a “Trompe d’amour” tonight and not the “Waterfall” he usually wore.

  There was a planet full of willing females, the earl thought, never noting the change in cravat style, and dismissing his man, he went down the stairs musing that there wasn’t the slightest need for him to pine for one, however tempting, who had the impediment of virtue to hinder a possible relationship. He’d not set up a mistress in town, and had come to know a man of his position was expected to. But that wasn’t why he’d been interested in filling the void. When he’d seen and spoken with Miss Dawkins, he’d suddenly realized he was weary of having to go out to seek a new companion to fill his bed each night that the spirit moved him. He discovered he was tired of all the arrangements he had to make in order to provide for each evening’s sport. No matter it hadn’t worked out, it was as well that she’d started that chain of thought; it was time, he believed, that he had such a convenience available for himself.

  There had been, after all, he reminded himself, even as he called for his carriage, the steady arrangement with Genevieve, the planter’s wife, his first year in the islands, and then Marie, in the small apartments in Kingston Town, and then Sukey, who had been a constant inconstant lover for an entire two years, until they’d both been bored to tears by each other despite all their games. He’d always preferred such dealings in intimate matters to intermittent impersonal transactions. The only reason he hadn’t set up such an accommodation since he’d taken the title, he imagined, was that he hadn’t the time for it. Then too, perhaps in the back of his mind he’d considered the predecessors to his earldom, and hadn’t wished to heap even more scandal upon the name. And by so depriving himself, he thought now, as he entered his carriage and directed it to the opera, he’d caused even more.

  It was even more ironic, he realized, grinning to himself in the darkness, that all his proper meetings with the proper Miss Dawkins, and every respectable gesture he’d made toward her since that improper offer she’d refused, were precisely what were sending him out into this night in search of improper diversions to end gossip.

  Miss Melissa Careaux could not dance a graceful step onstage and had a voice much like an ill-tuned bagpipe, so it was as well that she had nothing to say and only simpered frequently. But she did have curls as black as night, and when they were upon his pillow it was hard to see where his head left off and hers began, but since there were no spectators and as they were seldom apart for most of the night anyway, it hardly mattered. And once they were entangled there, the earl discovered that everything else young Theo had claimed about the young woman was similarly true, even down to the impressive prominences he’d stammered over. She was an obliging armful, dusky, perfumed, supple, all pouting lips and accommodating in every particular of her mind and body.

  And not a thing that happened between them through the night was remotely proper, not one minute that passed, nor any action undertaken. But then too, neither was any of it any enormous pleasure to him either, or at least, never so much as he wished it to be. None of it was the eager opera dancer’s fault, if fault there was in it. It was only that the gentleman found that incredibly enough, despite both their laudable efforts, he couldn’t seem to keep his mind on improper matters.

  Perversely, when he understood the nature of the difficulty, he tried even more valiantly to achieve bliss, so much so that the young woman never forgot him, nor did she ever wish to, even though the morning brought her only a handsome sum and never the offer of the more permanent employment that she’d been hoping for and that he’d originally hinted at.

  It was a most unlucky night for young Lord Theo Malverne too, for his cousin lost his wager for him. But then, no one won immediately, since the morning after Colin Haverford had done interviewing Miss Careaux for the vacant post of mistress to the Earl of Clune, it seemed he hadn’t a thought to conducting further auditions for the position. It was also decidedly odd that after such an evening, he bathed and dressed again with not a thought of getting a wink of sleep to separate his days. Then he left his bachelor fastness and went to visit his ancestral town house again.

  For Miss Careaux hadn’t failed him at all. She’d indeed been everything he’d expected, and less. The night had brought him more than pleasure. It had convinced
him that whatever else transpired, he must see to it that the unemployed governess, Miss Victoria Dawkins, left town, and very soon, as soon as she was able, if there were ever to be any peace for him, or surcease from gossip for his family.

  7

  The room was flooded with sunshine, light streamed in and lit the silken cerise peonies as though they rioted in a country garden rather than upon a lady’s boudoir walls. The tiny golden roses and ivory rosebuds that paraded on the bed hangings, flourished along the carpet’s edges, and trimmed every porcelain fitting on the washstand glowed in the bright spring light as well. There was no way anyone, save for a dead person, could lie still in bed while all the world shone with spring, Victoria thought the moment she opened her eyes to the glorious light that poured into the room as the maid pulled back the curtains.

  But because she feared the doctor’s wrath, dimly remembering him to be a fiercely opinionated person from the hazy recollections she had of him forcing her to quiet and insisting on her drinking down his evil drafts, she remained beneath the coverlets. All her body yearned to be up and out from this bed. Now that she could think clearly at last, she ached to be out entirely from this elegant room where she lay, feeling more prisoner than patient, awaiting the doctor’s visit. It was never that she was ungrateful. No, she felt she could live out another lifetime and not be done with her gratitude to the doctor and her hostess and all within this house for what she was convinced was the gift of her very life. But now that she could reason, she couldn’t bear to increase her debt to them. She’d been mortally ill; she understood that now. That day she’d arrived here, she’d almost turned back at the door when the knocker had spun around so many times she’d wondered if she could ever catch it to lift it to ask to come in. Then, when she’d seen the earl and supposed him still planning to entice her, with no respectable chance to earn her keep in sight, it seemed that was the last bit she’d needed to overset her entirely. The rest was still a jumble. But first she’d blazed with heat, then she’d been sure she’d seen the infamous Mother Carey leering at her, and then she’d seen dragons and angels and phantoms everywhere.