by Edith Layton
But Mrs. Haverford saved her from further embarrassment by reminding her it was her son, and never her governess, who was being accused of lechery. For her employer dropped her kindly air, drew herself up regally, raised her handsome head, and spoke in such clear and measured tones that no one, not even Miss Comfort, would dare to interrupt her. In fact the older woman dropped back into her seat and seemed to shrink lower with each word uttered.
“Cole is an honorable man, Comfort, and he’s never given you any reason to doubt it. He might think Victoria the most delectable creature on earth but he’d never forget she was his dependent. He’s not the sort given to pinching servant girls. And indeed, Victoria is no low servant, either. There’s been too much talk of the past here, too many tales of the supernatural shades of that past since we’ve come to this place, I fear it’s clouded your perceptions as much as it’s given poor little Sally the nightmare.
“The previous Earls of Clune might be famous for their cavalier attitudes toward their social inferiors, but don’t forget, for I know he cannot, that Cole wasn’t born to the purple as they were. He earned his bread by the sweat of his brow, and understands what it means to be at another person’s mercy for one’s health and welfare. He would never take advantage of his position for his own gain, of any sort.”
“But what of Miss Dawkins?” Miss Comfort said weakly but tenaciously, holding on to her grim tone of grievance. “What is to say that she will not forget? Have you thought of that? With all this merry thoughtless encouragement you offer, can you forget that a young girl might break her heart at receiving a gentleman’s attentions that society dictates can never go beyond jest?”
“Cole doesn’t give a fig for society,” Mrs. Haverford said angrily.
“He doesn’t?” Miss Comfort replied in a tight arid trembling voice, growing extremely white with anger and emotion herself. “Are you intimating that he would offer for a poor commoner in his employ when he’s all the social world of wealthy and titled young females to pick and choose from? As if you’d countenance it either,” she scoffed, her bitter laughter turning into a creaking sob of rage. “You do Miss Dawkins a disservice even to suggest it. Life is hard enough for a young person in her position without you giving even a careless moment’s credence to such futile air-dreams. Useless dreams that would keep her bound to old women and other people’s children, haunted by dreams of what can never be until it is too late for her to remedy. Better you packed her bags and encouraged her to elope with little Dr. Parker this night, than that.”
“I will not. For whatever Cole wished for, he would see to it,” Mrs. Haverford said, her chin held high. “And whatever he wished, I’d never object to. I wasn’t born to this Hall either, remember,” she said, giving Miss Comfort a haughty look. But in that look she saw how pinched and fragile, how spent from her bout with emotion the older woman appeared to be.
“But what are we doing?” Mrs. Haverford exclaimed in horror. “Brangling over Victoria’s future, putting her to the blush with idle speculation, discussing Cole as though he were some sort of decadent monster, such as his ancestors were. This house must indeed be haunted! See how its cruel aura sets us at each other’s throats. You’ve been in this room too long, Comfort, my dear. I’ll ask the doctor if you may come outside to the garden this very day. And, Victoria,” she said determinedly, “accept our apologies, and never mind our foolish chatter. We’re old friends, Comfort and I, even if we’re supposedly employer and employee. But I suppose I haven’t much noble blood, for I never had any use for that sort of rigmarole.
“Old friends don’t mind their tongues when they’re together, which is also precisely why, I suspect, I never wanted a ‘companion’ so much as I needed a friend. Just as I always told you. Comfort,” she chided her companion, as the other woman sat down at last and sighed in resignation, shaking her head at her employer.
“We’re well used to this sort of wrangling,” Mrs. Haverford explained as she fussed with the older woman’s shawl, trying to straighten it, even as her companion weakly attempted to shoo her away to do it for herself. “We’re both hardheaded females. But it can’t have been pleasant for you. You run along, child, and see to the children and spend this summer day more pleasantly than we began it for you. Never fear, I’ll mend fences with Comfort here, whether she wills it or not, for I’ve an advantage. She’s such a stickler for propriety, you see, she has to practice what she preaches and obey her employer and forgive her, if she demands it. And she does.”
Victoria arose, and seeing that Mrs. Haverford had already coaxed a small smile from Miss Comfort, she was only too relieved to duck a small curtsy and escape the room. But she had a great deal to think about as she made her way to the nursery, where the children were awaiting her. So much had been said and almost said that her mind reeled. She was wretched at the discovery that both women seemed to know of her feelings toward the earl. She was surprised to have found that Miss Comfort, for all her spite, yet seemed to be genuinely concerned for her. But then, overriding all else was the incredible fact, both dismaying and delighting her, that the earl’s own mother did not think a match between an earl and an impoverished commoner was unthinkable. But it was to Victoria. At least in the clear sane light of a summer’s morning it was. Tonight, she promised herself, as another young woman might promise herself a sweet or a treat, tonight, when she was alone in her bed, she’d think on it. And there where the kindly dark made all wild thoughts possible, she might hug it to her heart.
But as it turned out, she had no time for it. For that night Sally saw the ghost. And the next night, Mrs. Haverford and the boys saw it. And on the third night, Victoria did.
13
From the vantage point offered by the high box tucked into the horseshoe-shaped wedge of the theater that projected out over the mass of the audience, a privileged patron could get a clear, unobstructed view of the costumes, shapes, and grace of the almost unearthly beautiful dancers. But if that privileged fellow were also an experienced one, he would know that what he saw from his high seat was not quite what was actually occurring on the wide stage below. It was not, after all, meant to be.
Thus, he would realize that the lovely faces he saw were painted on so that they might be seen even from the worst seats in the house; he’d know that the dancers, seeming to leap as easily as if they were floating, could hear each other grunting and gasping under the music as they exerted themselves; he’d accept the fact that the sparkle in their eyes was belladonna like as not, even as some of the sparkle upon those white shoulders might only be the dew from their exercise, running and reflecting in the dancing stage lights.
And so the Earl of Clune sat back and idly surveyed the crowd at the close of the performance, in no haste to get himself backstage, knowing, indeed, preferring that his chosen ladylove be able to freshen herself before he visited with her in the green room behind the stage.
“Aren’t you coming, Clune?” his companion asked as he rose to leave the box.
“In time, there’s time,” the earl replied laconically.
“For you, sir, you’ve singled yours out already. I, however, am in the market for some company this evening. So I’m off. Dinner was amusing. Let’s meet again, and soon,” the gentleman said, offering his hand. The two parted amiably, and as the earl watched his erstwhile companion hurry through the curtains of the box, he had a moment’s amusement, for he doubted he would ever pass time again with his new acquaintance, chance-met at his club this evening, if, indeed, he ever recognized the fellow again if they did meet.
But most of the gentlemen he’d met this past season that he might call “friend” were out of town now, this being the summer, the time when the ton customarily abandoned London as though the black plague raged through its streets. However, London was large enough to enable him to have spent the last weeks amusing himself anyway in both the highest and the lowest reaches of society. He’d gone to ton parties and low revels, often, interestingly enough, encoun
tering the same gentlemen in both places. But for all his efforts, he hadn’t been as diverted as he’d expected. He’d been, in fact, unaccountably bored and even lonely amid all the gaiety, though he believed this might well have been because no entertainment was quite as enjoyable without one’s good friends in attendance. And his were not.
Most of his older friends, the ones he’d made before he’d come into his honors, were still out of the country where he’d first met them. Those few who were in England were still too intimidated by his new title to be easy in his company. He was, he reflected sadly, as he noted that the theater had emptied enough to make him conspicuous still lingering in his box, truly a man caught between two worlds just now.
Some of the men he’d met over the past year that he might like to befriend, he thought as he strolled along the narrow carpeted hall of the theater, like the lofty Lord Leith, who had also once worked for his bread, and the sly and amusing Duke of Torquay, whom he now spied caught amid a knot of sensation seekers as he was attempting to descend the stair with his beautiful wife, were already wed, and so had little time or inclination to make new male friends. As if to illustrate the point, after he’d greeted them, the flaxen-haired duke and his lovely lady informed him that they were in town on only a brief visit. The earl voiced his polite disappointment, and after sidestepping their invitation for him to join them in the countryside at his leisure, he gave them a pleasant good evening, and continued on his way. Then, reflecting upon their evident content, he considered, rather wryly, that many of his new friends who were unwed also seemed to be heading toward the parson’s mousetrap this season. The Baron Stafford and the slightly disreputable Marquis of Severne were traveling in and out of town these days, both rumored to be occupied with affairs of the heart, affairs that kept them in a mental state of confusion, as well as physically apart from other matters.
It was singular, the earl thought as he took the long gilded flight of steps down toward the stage level, that a great many of the gentlemen he’d been impressed with were those who had slightly raffish reputations as well as lively minds. But they were the ones he’d discovered to be least likely to sneer at him for his beginnings, and most likely to have befriended him, then or now, title or no.
For although he was an earl, and wealthy twice-over, from his legacy as well as from his own efforts, those very efforts seemed to smell rank to those in society who chose to ignore the new spirit in the land, and the very idea of a gentleman dealing in matters of trade. He’d been admitted to Almack’s, invited into those august and socially pure precincts so soon as he’d acceded to the title. But he’d gone there only once. He’d been sensitive then, he knew, but still, from the uplifted noses and quizzing glasses and the cool reception he’d gotten that night, he’d felt as though the haughty members of what he immediately perceived to be a marriage brokerage masquerading as a social club actually thought they could still detect the lower-class stench of the shop about him. Just as they believed a well-bred young lady of fashion ought to be pure of body and mind, they chose to believe that a gentleman of title ought to be innocent of financial affairs.
Truly, the earl thought on a reminiscent smile as he entered the crowded green room where the performers met with their admirers, it was another case of “The Prince and the Peacock” just as Miss Dawkins had giggled. And, he believed, the idea that a gentleman ought to be as idle and ornamental as a peacock was just as empty-headed and banal a concept as that which might occur in that bird’s own dim brain. But the thought of Miss Dawkins led to thoughts which might ruin the evening he had planned, so the earl attempted to banish all thought from his mind as he entered the room. There was enough noise and activity within to make that possible, if not even preferable, to any attempt at cerebration.
Melissa Careaux was flushed with success, giddy with attention, and only a trifle elevated by the champagne that had been pressed upon her by someone in her crowd of admirers. Her inky curls were in delightful disarray, her ample figure was covered by a gaily patterned wrap that she’d thrown about her half-costumed person, although she kindly loosened her grip upon the front of it every now and again, when she laughed, just to be fair and display a peek of her lavish bounty to those not fortunate enough to afford to get a private viewing later on, closer up.
For Melissa was a kindly girl, and at the peak of her form in all ways, but a girl had to take care of herself, for Gawd knew, as everyone backstage said, that no one else would. She’d made her way out of the slums the only way many another female had, by vending that which nature had given her. But what she’d been given most of, although lavish, was purely physical, and so, as even she knew, was like any other sort of fleshly commodity sold at market or in barrow, in that when it was no longer fresh, it was no longer salable. So when she noted the Earl of Clune’s dark face in the crowd, with its sardonic but admiring expression that was usually enough to melt the last of the buttons on her wrap, she grew pensive for a moment, before she sipped at her champagne to cover that lapse and then gurgled a giggle at some florid compliment someone threw to her like a rose. Because although she knew she’d give up a great many sensible things in order to gain the comfort of his arms, and even more to gamble on his longer-term patronage, in light of his hesitation so far to commit himself to even one full week, she wondered if she could afford such rash gaming.
But for all her resolve she was still young, and even women of pleasure can sometimes think of their own pleasure. So she gave him such a warm smile of greeting that Lord Hoyland, that fattish, baldish perennial denizen of the green room, sighed with resignation and looked about for another light lady to finance for the night, or however many nights she might grant him until someone more wealthy or expert happened along to steal her away from him.
“You were magnificent tonight,” the earl said, taking her hand to his lips, although his eyes denied his words and she was too occupied with staring at his lips to mind his words.
“I danced for you,” she sighed.
Her bramble-black eyes were moist with desire, she ran the tip of her little pink tongue over her pink-painted lips, and the look she gave him then was so replete with the promise of all the things she’d do to and for him later that poor Lord Hoyland, who’d chanced to glance back at her, was heard to gasp in wonder at the look that was never for him, and that indeed no female—even, or especially, his own wife—had ever given to him. But the intended recipient of that heated gaze looked back at her and could only think that he’d done it already, she was only reminding him of what had been, last month, last week, and the night before, and that, to his great and terrible shock, he really didn’t care to go through all that all over again. At least not all that playacting, he thought defensively, not all that unbuttoning and posturing and emoting and exertion, he rationalized wildly, and all for nothing but a brief spasm of relief and a feeling of lassitude and a desire to be all alone again in his own wide bed at the end.
“Melissa,” he said then, for he was now operating solely on instinct, as something hideous had occurred to him, only to be pushed back again to the unexpected depths it had sprung from.
“Melissa,” he breathed, for he was proud of his quick thinking in all emergencies, “I only came tonight to tell you how much I enjoyed the performance. I only stayed so long, in fact, to tell you that much. And now I must leave you. For,” he said, as amazed as she was by his words, although his face, at least, was trained not to show it, “it seems I have the headache.”
After he had left the shocked opera dancer to the humble but expensive attentions of a dazed but abjectly grateful Lord Hoyland, the earl strode off into the night. He marched straight into his carriage and didn’t give his driver his direction, even when asked twice, so that canny fellow contented himself with driving slow circles around Piccadilly until his master came to his senses.
After several long circuits, to prevent the horses from getting dizzy the driver headed the team toward the earl’s town house. But by th
en his master had recovered himself a little. It was incredible that he’d offered a cozy, obliging armful such as Melissa Careaux an excuse he’d heard gentlemen quote from their disinterested, disheartened wives for decades. But he’d had time to work the thing out since he’d entered the carriage, and decided that it was only that he was of an age and of a temperament now to dislike sexual favors he knew he was paying for. It had to happen, he told himself with relief as he sat back in the carriage. After all, he’d been in a falsely domestic situation at High Wyvern Hall for weeks, among children and with his parent, and with a young woman very like the sort of…
“Here, John,” he called to his coachman, “to the Swansons’, on Grosvenor Square. If the soiree’s still in full cry, I’ll disembark there.”
The soiree at the Swansons’ was running at full tilt when the Earl of Clune was announced. It was summer, of course, but since chickenpox had struck their country home, the Swansons were marooned for a summer in town. The cream of the ton was in the countryside as well, at least those not venturing abroad now that Nappy seemed to have been bottled up again after his recent debacle in Belgium at Waterloo. But there were still enough socially important persons left in town for various other reasons, or at least enough to fill up the ballroom. And having produced a clutch of daughters, filling their ballroom had been a primary concern for the Swansons for years.