by Amelia Grey
After they’d said what they wanted concerning Lord Greyhawke, Barbara was the next to talk. She was relishing spreading a little gossip about her brother. She’d overheard him telling one of his friends about an unnamed young lady rubbing her foot up and down his leg at a card party. While all listened, Katherine heard voices coming from the front of the house. She set her knitting aside so she could see who had come in when Melba Tiploft bounded into the drawing room. Her eyes were large and her face was flushed with excitement.
“I am sorry to interrupt, ladies,” she said breathlessly.
Katherine immediately noticed that she was not holding her sewing satchel in her gloved hand, but a sheet of newsprint. To Katherine, that did not bode well.
“Melba, what held you up?” Madeline said in a scolding tone. “You’re very late.”
“I know,” Melba answered, looking as though she were the cat that had just eaten the fattest bird in the nest. “I have a very good reason. I was feeling poorly this morning and decided I wouldn’t come out this afternoon but stay home and rest. I wanted to feel wonderful for tonight’s parties. And it’s a good thing I did.” She held up the paper. “This came while I was resting and my maid brought it up to me. After I read it, I threw off my robe and rushed to get dressed. I hurried to get over here before all of you left.”
“What is it?” Madeline asked.
“It must be the gossip column,” Barbara suggested.
“Who is it about?” Agatha asked in an excited voice, rubbing her hands together hopefully.
“Oh, I do hope there’s something in there about me,” Penny said, laying her knitting aside. “I’ve always wanted to be written about in the gossip columns.”
“Then perhaps you should do something scandalously outrageous for once in your life so that someone will want to write about you,” Madeline suggested sweetly.
Everyone laughed.
Including Penny, who added, “I would, but I can’t find a gentleman willing to put me in a compromising situation. They are all afraid they will be caught in a parson’s mousetrap.”
“And they would be,” Fern boasted.
“Ladies,” Melba said in an exasperated voice. “Perhaps I should just get on with it and read this.”
“Go ahead,” Darlene said. “But please don’t try to sound like an actress on a stage. You really don’t do that well.”
“Ah!” Melba objected. “I have never tried to read like an actress in my life.”
“You do it every time you read a poem to us,” Darlene insisted.
“I wouldn’t,” Melba insisted.
“Ladies, this is not the time for idle bickering,” Madeline declared. “Let’s settle down and let her read however she wishes. We just want to know what it says. Shall we?”
“And it is about someone in this room—but no, Penny, not you,” Melba said. “Now, do the rest of you want me to read this or not?”
“Yes,” several of the ladies said.
Melba remained standing right beside Katherine, unfolded the paper, and began to read:
The new Earl of Greyhawke has returned to London and is setting off more fireworks than you can see at Vauxhall Gardens on a dark night. The first and only sighting of him so far this Season, as best determined at this writing, has been at a dinner party given by the Duke of Quillsbury. It is on good authority of the recounting of events which are written here that the duke’s niece was seen in the earl’s arms before the night was over.
A low, slow, collective gasp sounded around the room, and every eye fixed on Katherine.
Melba stopped reading and held up her hand to silence the room. When everyone’s attention centered on her again, she continued.
But as shocking as that may be to the dear readers of this column, there is an even bigger indiscretion that needs to be reported here today. It has been confirmed by more than one that while at the duke’s table, his niece and the earl, who were dinner partners, exchanged dinner plates.
Melba finished with a deep intake of breath and a satisfied smile on her face. “Now, Katherine,” she said as she folded the newsprint dramatically, “you must tell us what you have to say for yourself about this.”
“Did he really pick you up in his arms?” Penny asked.
“What I want to know is what it felt like to be lifted up in those strong masculine arms,” Madeline said.
“Did you see him coming and fall on purpose so he’d be obliged to help you?” Darlene wanted to know.
“Say something,” Barbara insisted.
Katherine gave the ladies an uncertain smile and looked specifically at Penny. “Do you still want to be in the gossip columns?”
It took another hour, which seemed like four, and no small amount of double talk by Katherine to satisfy the Wilted Tea ladies that the story, as told in the column, had been exaggerated by enormous proportions. She had no idea if any of them believed her in the end, but all eventually, though slowly, bade her farewell and took their leave.
After the door shut behind the last member, Katherine hobbled up the stairs to her aunt’s room. The door was open. Her aunt sat at her desk with her back to Katherine. This was not a conversation she wanted to have.
Swallowing past the tightness in her throat, Katherine knocked and said, “Auntie, may I come in?”
Lady Leola turned a blank face to Katherine. “Of course. And yes, I’ve seen it. I expected it. I’m just surprised it’s taken so long for it to come out in the open.”
Katherine’s shoulders drooped and she leaned heavily on her cane as she entered the room. “Has the duke read it?”
“Not yet, but he will. He and Lord Willard left this morning for Kent. Said they’d be back in a couple of days. You know how restless the duke gets if he stays in one place too long.”
Katherine remembered well. When she was younger, they often moved from one manor house to another, then back to London for a few weeks before retracing their steps to the country. He’d tell her that as long as he kept moving, he wouldn’t get old.
“I’m sure this gossip will make him unhappy.”
“Yes, but it won’t last. He gets over things easily and quickly. Being a duke, he’s always had so many things on his mind to deal with that if he didn’t take care of a problem and then forget about it and move on, he would never get anything done. He is not a worrywart. After he reads it when he returns, the only thing he will want to know is whether I have taken care of the problem. Which I shall do.”
Katherine wasn’t unhappy her uncle Quillsbury was gone. She’d just been hounded unmercifully by her friends, and now she had to get through the same discussion with her aunt. She was glad there would be a reprieve before she had to go through this with her uncles.
She let out a sigh. “It’s just that they made it sound so much worse than it actually was.”
“That is why it’s called scandal, my dear,” her aunt said calmly, and laid her quill aside.
Katherine appreciated that she never heard any condemnation in her aunt’s voice. “What should we do now?”
“Nothing.”
Katherine bristled. She didn’t like that idea. She didn’t want to just give up and let the gossips have their say without fighting back. Living the rest of her life with her aunt and two uncles was not how she envisioned spending her future.
“Nothing,” she repeated. “So this is it? I won’t go to any more of the parties? I’m to be shunned by all of Society?”
“Heavens have mercy, Katherine!” Her aunt rose in astonishment and walked over to her. “Of course you won’t. You are a Wright. Whether or not you are always right, you will hold your head and shoulders high and act as though you are. The duke would never allow a niece of his to be shunned, even if she were caught in bed with a man and with neither of them wearing a stitch of clothing! The best way to put a rumor to rest is to ignore it. That is what we shall do.”
“Good,” Katherine said, feeling somewhat better. “I didn’t like the idea of j
ust giving up.”
“Wrights never give up.” The corners of her aunt’s thin lips turned up in a grin. “We would never do that. Nor will we give it any merit by referencing it or crying foul and furiously denying it.”
“That would only fuel the fire,” Katherine surmised.
“Precisely. We will attend all the parties this evening, and tomorrow evening, and the evening after that, and all the others until there are no more parties to attend. We shall act as if you have been slandered and vilified, but we are above the tawdry efforts of the gossipmongers. We will show them all that you have done nothing wrong, and you have nothing to hide from anyone. Are you up to that?”
“Absolutely,” Katherine agreed.
“Wonderful. We will simply act as if nothing is amiss.” She paused. “Which really there isn’t, right?”
Katherine looked at her aunt but remained quiet. Something was very much amiss, but she didn’t know what she could do about it.
She couldn’t very well admit to her aunt that Lord Greyhawke had kissed her and that she desperately wanted to see him again. When she’d seen him at the park, all she could think of was how wonderful it would be if he could kiss her again. If he held her close and kissed her as he had that marvelous night in front of her house.
But the earl wasn’t cooperating.
Lord Greyhawke refused to come to the parties, so neither she nor any of the other ladies could see him, talk to him, and get to know him. Katherine knew she was supposed to be looking for a husband, a man who would give her strong, healthy children to love and care for. But the only man she could think about was the one who’d said he wasn’t going to marry again. The man who’d obviously loved his wife so much that he became a beast and smashed the furniture in his house when she and his babe had died.
Perhaps that was one of the reasons she’d been so attracted to him. He was unattainable. But he also challenged her. He was the only man who didn’t seem to pander to her limp as much as her aunt and uncles did. He wasn’t bothered by it, either. In fact, just the opposite was true. He thought he could help her learn to walk without her cane.
And to dance!
Could he?
Could she?
After all these years, should she defy the commands of her aunt, uncles, and all the physicians who’d looked at her leg and throw down her cane and try to live without it?
Lord Greyhawke made her think and say and do things that no other man had come close to even tempting her do. But what was she to do with all these pent-up feelings of dancing and womanly desires that he’d stirred up inside her if he wouldn’t come to the balls and parties and make himself available?
Chapter 16
You are not wood, you are not stones, but men.
—Julius Caesar, act 3, scene 2
It was the most nondescript building on London’s most fashionable street. The Heirs’ Club. It didn’t have the notoriety, the membership, or the reputation of the older, prestigious White’s, but it had an exclusivity that neither White’s nor any other gentleman’s club could boast. No gentleman could join unless he was titled or an heir to a title.
Adam stood on the pavement in front of the door to the famed club, waiting, as he always had, for his friend Bray to arrive and gain him entrance, but this would be the last time. In all his years of coming to the club, Adam never thought he’d be a member. With Bray, he’d never needed to be. After today, he would be a member and could come and go as he wished.
While in his twenties, when he was often a guest at the club, Adam was third or maybe fourth in line for the title of Earl of Greyhawke. Inheriting it wasn’t something that ever crossed his mind. And even now, it wasn’t that he wanted or even needed to join, but Bray and Harrison wouldn’t rest until he did.
The Duke of Drakestone had always been his voucher past the stiff-lipped attendant who guarded the door as if the king’s diamond-encrusted scepter were held inside. Unlike Adam and Harrison, Bray had been born an heir. Though his admittance into the elite club hadn’t been easy for him to come by when he came of age. And Adam and Harrison were the main reasons.
The three of them had met at Eton. All were tall, strong, and capable of most anything for their young age, and they had done plenty that was foolish and often dangerous, too. They excelled at whatever they did and seldom had to put in the same amount of study time as most of the other boys at the school, which left the trio with time and an eagerness to do the things they enjoyed. That usually meant getting into trouble with the headmaster and Bray’s stern father, who had been a hard taskmaster.
Years ago, the three of them had almost caused a rift in the membership at the Heirs’ Club. Some of the oldest members didn’t want Bray to join because they knew he’d invite Adam and Harrison to join him there—often. Which he did. With little chance of Adam and Harrison ever being an heir, at the time, most of the members didn’t want the well-known troublemakers in their quiet, respectable club.
No surprise to any of them, Bray’s father, who was a powerful duke himself at the time, had remained silent on the matter, but Bray had an older friend who’d stood up for him, and the disgruntled members had been forced to back down. So even though Adam, Harrison, and Bray had enjoyed their raucous game of cards complete with ribald jokes, loud, salacious songs, and an abundance of fine brandy when they were at the stilted Heirs’ Club, they’d managed to stay just under the threshold of getting kicked out onto the street and told never to return.
The brisk wind whipped around Adam’s neck and he lifted his collar, wondering how long he’d been waiting for his friends. Either he was early or they were late.
He tipped his hat to a couple of older ladies who walked by. He shifted his weight and looked up and down the street. No sign of Harrison or Bray. The door to the club opened and he nodded to the gentleman who walked out as he passed.
“Lord Greyhawke.”
Adam looked up to see the old attendant, who’d managed the door ever since he’d been coming to the club with Bray, smiling at him. The man had never had a pleasant expression for him.
“No need to stand out in the cold. Come on in and have a drink while you wait. I’ll tell the duke you’re inside.”
That was a big change. Adam had never been allowed entrance before Bray arrived. But then, he’d never been an earl when visiting the club, either.
He handed off his coat, hat, and gloves to the man and then made his way to the taproom. From another part of the club, he heard the sound of billiard balls smacking together, followed by muted laughter. Someone was either very good with a cue stick and getting the accolades he deserved, or he was very bad and getting punished with laughter.
Adam smiled to himself and followed the direction of the hum of chatter down the corridor and into the taproom. He couldn’t help notice that several of the patrons looked up at him and the room slowly fell silent as he entered. Their reaction didn’t surprise him. No doubt the members still considered him the wild youth he was a few years ago and, as always, every time he entered they wondered if this would be the time he disturbed the peace and quiet of their respectable club.
Except for the Duke of Quillsbury’s dinner party, he hadn’t been to a public gathering since arriving in London. Though it wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about attending the evening parties. He’d even wanted to when he’d first arrived. What he hadn’t expected was to gaze into sparkling green eyes and be mesmerized by a young lady who refused to dance with him.
Ever since that first look, his feelings for Miss Katherine Wright had taken root, and against all his efforts they were deepening. There was something about her that gave him a warm, contented feeling when he thought of her. And after his stint on the cold northern coast, it was damn hard to deny himself someone as intoxicatingly sweet as Miss Wright.
Adam asked for ale as he passed the bar and picked out a table in the far corner to sit down. He hoped Bray and Harrison arrived soon. He didn’t want to have time to sit and think. When
he did, it was usually Miss Wright he was thinking about.
He’d been tempted to attend the parties the last couple of nights just so he could see her. It had been difficult, but he’d managed to resist the enticement to go. Seeing her in the park had convinced him he needed to keep his distance. Knowing that he wanted to see her made him realize he didn’t need to see her. And that was the very reason he was declining all invitations. He hadn’t come to London looking for a young lady to bewitch him with her charms, and she was very close to doing that.
“Who am I trying to fool?” he whispered. She wasn’t close to bewitching him. She had. All he thought about when he looked at Miss Wright was that he wanted to make her his. But that could never happen.
After spending his days trying to make sense out of ledgers and documents, he’d been filling his nights reading the history of the Greyhawke legacy. Since he was never supposed to be the earl, he hadn’t been schooled on the extensiveness of the entailed property or what the first Earl of Greyhawke had done to receive the peerage from the king.
Another thing Adam wouldn’t allow himself to think about was his two best friends’ wives being in the family way. He was happy for them. Bray and Harrison needed sons; they deserved sons. But their wives’ upcoming time wasn’t something he wanted to hear about.
He was also spending more time with Dixon each evening, teaching him how to play chess. The lad seemed to have a keen aptitude for strategy, which kept the pastime from being boring. Reading and the games had kept him occupied so he wouldn’t change his mind and go to the balls.
As soon as the server set his tankard down, Adam saw Bray walk in.
“I know I’m late,” Bray said after they had greeted each other and he had taken the chair opposite Adam. “I thought Harrison would be here by now, too.”
“I just arrived myself. For the first time, the attendant at the door offered to let me come inside rather than have me wait outside for you. Perhaps that’s why I feel like everyone is looking rather strangely at me today.”
“I don’t think any of the members of the Heirs’ Club would be happy to hear one of the staff had left an earl outside in the cold. But it could be that others are looking at you for another reason.”