They all peppered her with advice. The next day a larger than normal number of ladies came to work. When the gowns arrived all painting stopped while Madame LaTour held up the likely choices so all could comment and give opinions.
Consensus settled on an ivory satin gown with silver threaded embroidery all around the lower part of the skirt. One of the ladies removed some silk flowers from another gown and proceeded to fashion a headdress.
No one went home that evening. Some helped her bathe. Others helped her dress. Still others hovered while discreet, artful painting enhanced her eyes and lips. Marielle felt like a bride being prepared for her wedding with all these handmaidens chattering around, laughing and increasing the excitement.
Finally, all was done. She stood to a group evaluation. Most of the eyes glinted with joy. A few did not, notably the ones owned by Madame LaTour.
“No jewels. Surely someone has something we can use.” She patted her upper chest which, on Marielle, displayed nothing but skin. “You are so lovely many will not care, but the vacancy will be noted.”
“Will this do?” Dominique asked. She held out a little box.
Madame LaTour opened it. Her eyes widened. “Is this yours, Madame Beltrand? It is very fine.”
“I wish it were mine. It was delivered today, while Marielle bathed. A footman came with it.”
“Ah, it is from him, Marielle. Look, look.” Madame LaTour held up the necklace of finely worked gold. From the delicate chain a pendant hung with diamonds set in a gold filigree field. She came over and clasped it around Marielle’s neck.
Marielle looked down on the jewel. Kendale had chosen well. This appeared costly without calling so much attention to itself as to be gauche.
The sounds of the coach arriving could be heard through the window, attended by the sounds of the lane reacting to its arrival. Dominique hurried down to the door.
Instinctively Marielle reached for her dark Venetian shawl.
“Not today, mam’selle,” Madame LaTour scolded, snatching it away. She held out in its place a soft wrap of raw silk that had come with the other garments. A pale primrose, it added a nice splash of subdued color to her ensemble. All was complete when one of the women pulled a pair of silk slippers from a little sac she had brought.
Madame LaTour tweaked at her hair, pinched at her cheeks, rubbed at her lips while chanting instructions about comportment when meeting the duke and duchess. “Be proud, Marielle. Such people do not respect the demure and docile.”
Marielle hugged her, then gazed at the sparkling eyes of the women who had helped her prepare. She was going to a ball and, in their minds, all of them were going with her.
“You are determined to be the subject of gossip, I see,” Southwaite said while he looked to the clutch of women five feet away.
Kendale had just arrived, and Cassandra and Emma had taken Marielle aside to admire her and to point out various notables in the crowd. Feminine fingers aimed here and there while Cassandra whispered in Marielle’s ear.
“Surely there is better gossip to be had than me.” He found it hard to keep his eyes off Marielle. Her beauty astonished him tonight. He might have appeared normal when she walked down the stairs at her house, but inside he had been gawking the way the children did on the lane when his coach rolled up.
“Not much,” Ambury said. “I warned you that it would be like this. No one thought you would ever pursue a woman, or have a liaison, so this is of great interest. I am only sorry that I did not lay down bets on the matter when I suspected something was afoot.”
“Nor have you been especially discreet,” Southwaite said.
“I have been very discreet. Not as discreet as you would have been, but far more so than Ambury here. It is not as if I was seen leaving her home in the middle of the night.”
Southwaite enjoyed Ambury’s discomfort on that. “Do not worry,” he said. “Soon some young man will get caught doing something inappropriate with some girl, and you will be forgotten.”
He shrugged. “If they gossip, I can’t stop that. Nor do I care.” He did not give a damn what anyone said. Let the gossip fly.
The two of them exchanged glances.
“That necklace looks expensive,” Ambury said. “It suits her. Did you choose it yourself?”
“I did. Do you approve?”
“I think it is handsome,” Southwaite said. “I am trying to picture it, however. You at a jeweler’s shop, poring over baubles. Try as I might—” He shook his head.
“He probably did it in his Kendale way,” Ambury said. “He visited the first jeweler he saw once he had made up his mind, peered at three or four items, picked one, and was out in five minutes.”
“Do you think he had decided on a necklace before he went? Or just stumbled into it?”
“Stumbled. Jewelers know his sort. They aim high, assuming the gentleman will not bother to ask to see more in his haste to be done with the chore.”
“Well it is much more attractive than I would have expected from him. Who would have guessed that Kendale had an eye for artistic design.”
That continued on like that. He preened like an idiot at the evidence that he had not condemned Marielle to wearing jewelry that no woman would want. He had not done it in “his Kendale way” at all. It had taken him over an hour to choose that necklace while he suffered bouts of unaccustomed indecision.
The lights in her eyes when she thanked him had made it worth every minute and every shilling. Thus, he supposed, did the wrong kind of woman lead a man to ruin. He was damned lucky she was not that sort or he might be doomed.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I think I will ask a lovely lady to dance.”
They glanced at each other, then stared at him. Southwaite placed a politely restraining hand on his arm. “Do you know how to dance? I am aware that you have seen it often enough, and probably assume that through force of will and intellect alone you can imitate that which you have seen, but it is more difficult than it appears.”
“Army officers dance all the time.”
“In general they do. The question is whether you do. I have never once seen you dance, Kendale. Not once. Not even when we were of an age when dancing was the only way to touch a woman, and even that through two levels of gloves.”
“That I did not choose to dance does not mean that I did not know how to dance.”
“You cannot know how to dance if you never have danced. There is an element of practice. There are men who know how to shoot a gun but their aim is horrible and they are better off never shooting. It is much the same with dancing.”
“It is embarrassing if you get the steps wrong,” Ambury hastened to add. “Your spoken faux pas of the past will be nothing compared to the scene if you trip up a whole line of dancers by hopping right when you should hop back.”
“I do not know what I would do without the two of you mothering me like I had hatched out of an egg yesterday. Now, excuse me.”
He walked over to the ladies and asked Marielle to dance. The other ladies appeared shocked. Cassandra gestured for Ambury and mouthed something that might have been, For goodness’ sake, stop him.
“Why are they so astonished?” Marielle asked, looking back over her shoulder while he led her to take a place in the line.
“I cannot imagine.”
“Emma is twisting her hands together.”
“It might be better if you pay attention to this rather than to her. I am told that precision matters. We do not want to knock anyone over.”
She laughed. The sweet woman thought he had made a joke.
The music started. The steps unfolded. He trusted his mind to call up their order from the hours of enforced practice when he was a boy. Between that and keeping a close eye on the fellow next to him, he managed well enough with only a few, barely noticeable missteps.
When it wa
s their turn to walk down the line, Marielle favored him with one of her sparkling, coquettish smiles. “You do this very well, Lord Kendale. I would not have expected you to be a dancer.”
“I have never called myself one, that is certain.”
“You do not enjoy dancing?”
“I do tonight. Do you?”
“Very much.”
That delighted him. He even enjoyed it himself a bit after that. The next time they passed together, her smile held less mockery and a good deal of warmth. “You do not normally dance, do you? You are doing this for me.”
“Nonsense. I am euphoric with pleasure.”
“When was the last time you danced?”
“A while ago. A few years.” He had to laugh at her skeptical expression. “Twelve years.”
The music ended. He bowed to her curtsy. Supporting her hand he returned her to the ladies. Cassandra could not leave well enough alone.
“You amaze us all, Lord Kendale. Who ever guessed that your refusal to conform to social niceties really did derive from scorn, rather than incompetence.”
“Are you saying you feel bad that I never asked you to dance, Lady Ambury? I imagine that I could keep this up for one more turn, and make amends, if you like.”
“Oh, dear, what a disappointment, Ambury has claims on the next one.” She turned her head this way and that. “Where has he gone to?”
“I will find him and remind him of his obligation.”
He set off to do just that, lest he find himself doing a country-dance under Cassandra’s critical eye. Spying Ambury by the far wall, he made his way there.
Two other heads came into view as he neared. Southwaite and Penthurst. Whatever conversation they held did not appear a pleasant one. All three expressions looked stone serious.
Penthurst excused himself and walked away. Kendale joined his friends. Southwaite wore the smile that never boded well.
“Have we just been scolded, Ambury, or warned?” he said through a tight smile.
“I choose to think the latter, but I cannot disagree there was some scold in there too.” Ambury moved slightly to accommodate Kendale’s presence into what became a tight little group around which the crowd milled. “Be glad you chose to dance, Kendale. If you had been here, I worry there would have been fisticuffs in the garden by now.”
“I can still challenge him and thrash him, if you want. Has there been a turn off the road to reconciliation?”
Southwaite looked around, then gestured for them to follow him. They strode out onto the terrace and down into the garden. Even after finding privacy within a boxwood-hemmed circle of benches, he spoke lowly.
“He informed us that we are the subject of suspicions in both the Home Office and the War Office.”
“Surely they do not think you are disloyal.”
Ambury threw up his hands in exasperation. “Hardly. What a mind you have. It is the opposite. There has always been discomfort with that network of watchers on the coast, and now they worry we are planning something more intrusive.”
“How irrational of them.”
“Not entirely, of course,” Ambury said. “I told you, Southwaite, that our little excursion to France last year would not remain a secret. Now whenever there are whispers of other such missions, all eyes turn to us.”
“That was a rescue mission,” Southwaite said firmly. “Penthurst knows that. Hell, Pitt knows that. We were just accused of something quite different.”
“As was Kendale here. Oh, yes, the warning was for you too.”
Kendale just listened. He could think of nothing to add to the conversation.
“Absurd, of course,” Southwaite said after a curse. “Bizarre! What possible motive would we have to invade France? Where would we find the army to do it? Hell, if I collected every man I could trust with such a thing it would not fill a pleasure yacht. And once there, what would we do? March ourselves twenty strong to Paris and liberate the city from the revolutionaries? I find it hard to believe anyone is taking this seriously.”
“Strange,” Kendale muttered. “Bizarre, as you say.”
“Yet someone is,” Ambury said. “Penthurst spoke as a friend, he said, but it was clear that he has been told more than theories. Someone has decided they have some kind of evidence on which to base these suspicions.”
“Perhaps something happened on the coast of which we are not aware,” Southwaite said. “You and I have not been there in months. Kendale here has always made the journey.”
An odd quiet fell on the circle within the boxwood. Southwaite and Ambury looked at each other through the night, their expressions visible due to a party lamp hanging from a nearby tree. The whites of their eyes appeared to grow larger.
“He wouldn’t,” Ambury said.
“Wouldn’t he?” Southwaite said.
“If Kendale were going to do such a thing, it is unlikely the ministers would find out.”
“He cannot act alone. Others can be careless in ways he would never be.”
Ambury frowned over that. “All those rides to the coast. We forced it on him, of course. But while there he could have put such a plan in place.”
“And after last year, when we all went over, he would know quite a lot about how to do it. I daresay if this is afoot, it began then.”
“Could he pull it off? Is he that good?”
“Damn, yes, he is that good. As to pulling it off, he had better or we will be on another rescue mission.”
“I am standing right here,” Kendale said.
“So you are,” Southwaite said. “Standing there and saying not a damned word.”
“I am not sure you would want to hear what I have to say.”
“If it is that you are planning a visit to France, you are right about that.” Southwaite looked to the sky and uttered a curse in a tone of astonishment and resignation.
“Our government will not stand for it, Kendale. Hell, what if you are caught? Can you imagine the implications? It will be assumed by the French that you are a spy. They will execute you for sure, and make the most of the show. It will demoralize our own people, and delay any possible diplomacy between the two countries,” Ambury said.
His scold sat there in the air, waiting for a response that Kendale had no intention of giving.
Exasperated, Southwaite kicked one of the stone benches. “Hell and damnation, he is not denying it, Ambury. Whatever you are plotting you had best call off, Kendale. If Penthurst suspects, others do too. An army may be waiting for you when you make your move. Maybe ours. Maybe theirs. It is not worth it, whatever the scheme might be.”
“That is an odd advice and judgment coming from you, of all men, Southwaite,” he said. “You do not know what the scheme might be, if there is one, but you are sure it is not worth it. Not worth as much as the last time, I assume you mean. Not worth as much as rescuing the ne’er-do-well relative of your lover. Did I refuse to join you on that foolhardy mission, or harp on the price to our necks and England’s diplomacy if it failed?”
Southwaite’s posture lost its rigidity. He gazed at the ground between them for a long pause, then spoke with calm thoughtfulness. “No, you did not. Nor would we have succeeded without your leading us. My worry for you obscured my memory of that debt. I must seem an inconstant friend compared to your loyalty. Instead of expressing annoyance, I should be asking instead if you need my help now in return.” He looked up. “Do you?”
Not long ago he might have invited their help. Not now. Both of them had too much to lose now, and he doubted they would be effective comrades on any such adventure as a result. Besides, he needed soldiers, not gentlemen who debated honor at every turn.
“If I now planned another foolhardy mission, I would be sure to call the debt. Since I do not, your help is not needed. As for Penthurst, he is too interested in me these days. Perhaps he
resents that I have not held out the olive branch as quickly as the two of you, and conjures up reasons to blame me for that instead of himself. Now, we are neglecting the ladies. Yours will not mind, since she has many friends in that ballroom. Mine, however, might need my attendance.”
He stepped out of the grass circle and turned to the house.
“This is about Toulon, isn’t it?” Ambury said. “You have cooked up some scheme of revenge, haven’t you?”
He did not answer, and walked away.
Angus was waiting outside the duke’s house when she and Kendale emerged. He stood next to her carriage as if he were a footman, but his expression revealed he had come for some other purpose.
He waited until she had been handed in before whispering to Kendale. Whatever he had to say did not take more than a few words. Kendale did not react at all. He merely said, “A horse.” Then he climbed up and joined her in the carriage cabin.
“Did you enjoy the ball?” he asked.
“It was different from what I had imagined. Busier. Crowded. The music was heavenly, as was the dancing.” She stretched to give him a kiss. “Thank you for that. For dancing with me.”
“It was my pleasure, as is so much where you are concerned, Marielle.” He moved beside her, so he could embrace her with one arm. The streets grew silent as they rode through town.
She had packed a valise to take to the cottage, and his boot rested against it. He seemed very aware of that boot and what it touched. Several times she found him looking down at it.
André pulled up at the cottage in Hampstead. While André helped her out and carried the valise into the cottage, Kendale untied a horse from the back of the carriage and led it around to the back of the building. André built up the fire in the hearth in order to banish the spring’s damp and the stone’s cold. He was gone by the time Kendale entered the cottage himself, carrying his frock coat. There was a small stable beyond the garden and she assumed he had dealt with the horse despite his formal attire.
“Do you intend to ride back in the morning?” she asked. “In hose and pumps?”
The Counterfeit Mistress Page 24