by The Impostor
Kitty smiled back as if surprised that Clara was actually going through with the outing. “Wonderful! I shall fetch Mama and Bitty at once.”
A quarter of an hour later, Clara stood outside the front door of the Trapp house tugging on her gloves. Inside, Beatrice was still haranguing the twins into preparing themselves for a day of shopping.
Clara had come outside to take a moment away from the hullabaloo and because she’d noticed that most of Wadsworth’s servants were out front unloading a delivery cart.
It wasn’t nosy to take a moment of air when one’s neighbor happened to be receiving something, she told herself primly. Besides, she’d seen Rose out there with the others and wanted to give her the signal to trade places with her again tonight.
Mr. Wadsworth certainly ate well, she noticed, as yet another bushel basket of greens was unloaded. A string of plucked birds came next, then a large wooden trough of organs.
The scent of the tripe wafted to Clara and she wrinkled her nose. Ick. Perhaps she didn’t want to sneak into Wadsworth’s tonight to serve after all.
Rose took the trough from the servant before her and turned toward the narrow stairs that led down from the street to the kitchen entrance. The huge wooden platter was so large it dwarfed the little maid. She could scarcely see over it.
Clara almost held up a hand to protest the obvious danger of such a move, then remembered that she could hardly be expected to know that Rose had an unfortunate habit of—
Rose stubbed a toe on the cobbles and stumbled forward. The trough went spinning from her grip. Clara couldn’t watch. She squinted her eyes shut, but that didn’t do a thing to hide the squelching splat of the wet meats hitting Wadsworth’s front steps.
“You useless wench!” Wadsworth’s roar sounded over the street noise. Clara opened her eyes.
Oh, no. Mr. Wadsworth stood in a sea of quivering creature parts. They mounded over his shoes and clung to his jacket and waistcoat. Strands of something unbearable hung trembling from the man’s hair and muttonchop whiskers.
Clara felt the snicker rising from somewhere reprehensible within her and firmly tried to suppress it. If she laughed and embarrassed Wadsworth yet more, things could only go worse for poor Rose.
Even now Rose fluttered about her master, attempting to clean him up with the corner of her apron. The man raised his fist.
“Get off, you stupid cow!” He swung a blow at Rose, who ducked with the ease of long practice, dispelling the worst of the impact. Wadsworth’s swing took him off balance. His shoes slithered in the slime at his feet and he landed with his large bottom directly on the pile.
Clara pressed her gloved fist hard to her lips, but a strangled snort escaped her. Wadsworth lifted his head and glared about him to see who was laughing.
A bedraggled orange tabby cat, attracted by the free banquet spread upon the cobbles, ran out to steal a bite from the mess. Wadsworth roared and took his rage out on the innocent animal in one savage swipe of his foot that sent the cat twisting and yowling through the air into the center of the busy street.
“No!” Clara cried and started forward. It was too late. The poor creature’s cry was cut off abruptly as it landed hard on the cobbles.
Sick with pity, Clara dodged an oncoming cart and ran to the still form. Gently, she laid one hand on its thin side. There was a faint heartbeat, wasn’t there? There had to be.
Carefully, she gathered the limp cat into her arms and carried it to safety. Beatrice stood on the steps with the twins, watching in horror.
“Oh, no! No more strays, not in my house. Clara Simpson, you drop that filthy creature right this minute! Goodness, what are you thinking, running into the street for such a thing?”
With dismay, Clara looked up at Bea standing above her on the steps. She’d thought to nurse the poor cat if she could, but she’d forgotten. This was not her house. If Bea wouldn’t allow the cat inside—and she wouldn’t—then Clara had no recourse.
If only she had her own home. …
Well, she didn’t. She was dependent on Bea and Oswald, at least for now.
“Here, miss,” came a soft voice at her elbow. “Let me take that dirty thing. I’ll put it in the rubbish for you.”
Rose stood beside her, a bruise already darkening her pale cheek. The maid held out her apron to catch the cat.
Bea stamped her foot. “Well, give it to her, Clara! And then go change your gloves. I hope you didn’t get any vermin on that gown. New carpets don’t grow on trees, I’ll have you know!”
Clara eyed Rose, who gave her a small wink. “I’ll put it far away, miss. No one will ever see it.”
Clara hid a smile. Good old Rose. The cat would be waiting in the attic tonight, she’d wager her stockpile on it.
‘Thank you. I’ll let you see to it, then.” She placed the cat gently into Rose’s apron and watched as the maid returned to the kitchen, her bulky apron convincingly wadded up to her bruised cheek as if to soothe it.
Bea’s housemaid trotted forward to hand Clara a new pair of gloves. After donning them and giving the girl the bloodied pair to dispose of, Clara turned to Bea, who was now leaning from the carriage window. The look on her face did not bode well.
The footman opened the door and held out a hand. With yet another sigh, Clara stepped up into the vehicle, sure that her afternoon of fashion was going to be a tedious one.
Chapter Eight
“My God, Etheridge. Don’t you look the first stare of fashion!”
Dalton forced a pleasant smile on his face while he bowed low to the Prince Regent. Being called unexpectedly before England’s ruler was always a bit nerve-wracking. Being forced to show up in full Thorogood finery ranked somewhere just past nightmarish.
Especially since Prince George the IV liked this hideous costume. With every fiber of his being, Dalton prayed that the Prince would not decide to adopt such rainbow-hued regalia, thereby sending every gentleman in England to outdo each other in slavish imitation.
He straightened to find George regarding him with greedy eyes. Oh, hellfire. Male dignity was doomed. Then Dalton pictured Lord Liverpool dutifully rigged out in poisonous colors and high heels. Perhaps there was a bright side …
Feeling better, he was able to greet the Prince with a very sincere smile. “Good afternoon. Your Highness.”
“I say, you do look fine, Etheridge.” The Prince Regent walked once around Dalton, finger tapping his chin. “Bother that Beau Brummell anyway, making us wear funeral dress all the time.” George sniffed. “I used to wear a waistcoat like that, back when a man was allowed to show a little color. Who is your tailor, anyway?”
“Dead,” stated Dalton flatly. “Fell over dead last week, just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
George furrowed his brow. “Pity. I could have made him a very rich man.” He sighed. “Ah, well, I suppose such ostentatious dressing would look bad in wartime, eh?”
“Very wise observation, Your Highness.”
“Humph.” George didn’t look as though he appreciated such speedy agreement. “Still, your shoes? You must give me the name of your cobbler.”
Dalton supposed that another sudden death for the cobbler might cause suspicion. He nodded. “I’ll send his direction to your valet.” Poor Button. Dalton didn’t want to be nearby when the little valet learned that he’d missed a royal opportunity due to his own untimely death.
Casting a glance down at the results of Button’s latest act of vengeance, Dalton wondered if perhaps he ought to leave town for a while.
“So, sit and share my tea,” invited George, waving Dalton to a table absolutely groaning with food. Tea for the portly Prince Regent was apparently a week’s feasting for anyone else. “Tell me about this Thorogood. Found him yet?”
It wasn’t policy to give his report over Liverpool’s head like this, but who was he to refuse a royal edict? So Dalton related the entire case history to George, aware that he had little to show for several days’ work.
&
nbsp; George nodded and grunted here and there while he polished off platter after platter. One would have thought he was scarcely listening had it not been for the occasional probing question and intelligent aside. Dalton never underestimated the Prince Regent. He was a brilliant man, swift and decisive when he wanted to be.
Pity for England that he so rarely wanted to be.
“I see,” George said as he dabbed his mouth with a regally monogrammed napkin and tossed the priceless linen into a puddle of prune sauce. “A two-pronged investigation. I approve. Well, carry on then. I want to meet Thorogood when you find him, by the way. Preferably before Liverpool gets him. Our dear Prime Minister never wants anyone else to have a bit of fun.”
The Prince shook his head. “I really don’t know how you managed to survive being raised by the man. He still thinks he can scold me like a boy. Just this morning he was waxing livid over some boyish prank I committed when I was sixteen.” George chuckled. “Perhaps I can convince Thorogood to do a cartoon about Liverpool. Damned funny fellow. Damned funny.”
Which one? Liverpool or Thorogood? Dalton didn’t ask, not sure he wanted to know.
The Prince Regent walked from the room laughing, leaving Dalton amid the wreckage of their “tea,” feeling rather like he’d had another near miss with an ale wagon.
Anyone looking at the three men gathered next to the stall of a promising two-year-old gelding would have thought they were perhaps discussing the virtues of the horse.
Anyone would have been wrong.
“He was seen being admitted to the Prince, I tell you! For all we know, he could be spilling everything he knows this very moment!” The portly man was red of face and virulent of manner. “He must be removed from the field of play!”
“First of all, we don’t know that he has anything to tell The drawing was damaging, true, but it could have been worse.” The tallest man, a fair-haired gentleman, leaned indolently on the post at the corner of the stall, never taking his eyes from the horse. “By the by, who is your informant in the palace?”
The third man, small and thin, looked from side to side fearfully. “Oh, who gives a damn? The point is, we should leave now! If the Prince gets wind of us, if he remembers Fleur—”
“He isn’t likely to connect Fleur with anything,” the fair-haired man said soothingly. “I still think our best course lies in discrediting Thorogood. That way, everything he says will be suspect.”
The fat man growled. “Now that he’s made himself a spectacle, all the more reason to remove him. With as many enemies as he’s made, no one will be able to trace anything back to us.”
The fair-haired man gazed worriedly at the gelding. “Don’t do anything rash. This is not the time. Shall we meet tomorrow night to discuss it? The pieces are not yet in place, you said so yourself.”
“The pieces are my players. Don’t forget who invited you into this game.”
The fair-haired man turned to look at his companions for the first time. His gaze was calm but direct. “I may be new to this game, my good man, but I have been playing since I was born.”
He pushed himself from his slouch against the stall. “Now, if you’ll kindly excuse me, I believe I shall go buy this horse.”
The modiste’s boutique was stuffy and overly warm. Clara found herself rather inclined to yawn. After she had chosen a half-dozen styles from Madame Hortensia’s pattern book, she submitted to being measured. Of course, Beatrice insisted that it be done while Clara’s corset was tightly laced, although not as tight as it had been the other night.
Madame, a severely stylish lady whose once heavy French accent had mellowed since war had been declared against Napoleon, nodded and clucked approvingly over the measuring process. However, she protested when Clara chose from the shop’s slim supply of ready-made gowns.
The overly flounced dress was made in a girlish pink satin and vastly overdecorated. It had clearly been a custom order, for flounces had been out of fashion for years. Even Clara knew that much.
Madame Hortensia paled. “Th-this one? But madame, you will look like an overturned feather duster! The style this season is a narrow silhouette. One must drape, madame, not flounce!”
The woman was so distraught that Clara almost felt sorry for her. “I need a gown tonight, and this one fits.” It also cost the moon, with all its bows and tiny pearls. It hurt her to spend so, after saving so carefully. But all her work would be for naught if she didn’t maintain an adequate disguise. “This dress is perfect. I shall have it, or I shall go elsewhere.”
Apparently taste was no equal to profit. Madame Hortensia nodded. “Very well. But if Madame will indulge me … perhaps if anyone asks where you obtained this gown …”
Clara smiled. “I shan’t breathe a word.”
“Thank you, madame.” Looking dazed, the modiste wandered off to note the rest of Clara’s order.
Through all of this, Beatrice had only nodded approvingly. “Silly fad, this Grecian style. I myself like a flounce or three.” She looked thoughtful. “Perhaps I’ll have Madame Hortensia make a few up for me, as well.”
Outside the curtained fitting area, the silver bell that hung over the door rang. A familiar voice called out for Madame Hortensia. Beatrice flew to the slit in the curtain and peeked through.
“Oh, it’s that horrid Cora Teagarden!” she hissed over her shoulder. “And she has a man with her. He’s handsome and young, but not too young for you, Clara.”
She straightened and tugged her neckline tidy. Then she swept through the curtain. “Cora, darling I How lovely to see you. And who is this handsome fellow?”
Clara rolled her eyes as she pulled her plain black gown back on. It was going to hang on her with the corset laced this tightly, but she simply didn’t feel like waiting one more moment to leave this torture chamber.
She’d just about worked her head to the neck of the gown when it was snatched directly off her.
“You are not going out there in this rag,” whispered Bea furiously. “That’s Cora Teagarden’s cousin’s nephew out there, and he’s a lord? With a house on Grosvenor Square!”
“Shall I greet him in my corset, then, Bea? Give me back my gown.”
“No. I’ve sent for Madame. She’ll help us.”
Clara snatched for the gown, but Beatrice flung it to the floor and stood on it.
“Bea! You’ve ruined it with your shoes!”
“Good. It’s naught but a rag anyway.” She grabbed Clara’s arm. “Listen to me. Sir Thorogood is a fine target, but with your looks and figure you could do better. Out there is a perfectly gorgeous lord, who’s likely bespoken to no one as he’s been in Vienna until a few months ago.” She leaned close. “If you land him, it will open doors for Kitty and Bitty.”
“Then let Kitty and Bitty have at him.”
Beatrice pursed her lips. “I love my girls, Clara, but we both know they aren’t quite up to a lord. Perhaps if they had a brain between them—” She shook her head. “It doesn’t signify. The important question at this moment is, what are you going to wear out of this shop?”
What she wore was a very elegant walking suit in green satin that made her eyes gleam like emeralds, despite their usual rather muddy color. Clara stared at herself in the mirror, turning this way and that. The gown even came with a hat, for the original buyer had asked for it to be trimmed in the same green satin.
“Oh, Auntie Clara,” breathed Kitty. “You look like a duchess!”
“Indeed, madame. And not a flounce in sight!” Madame Hortensia was practically cooing with satisfaction, both from aesthetic joy and from the hefty bonus Beatrice had forked over for another customer’s finished gown.
Clara turned to her sister-in-law. “Bea, I can’t let you do this.”
“Consider it an investment. When you’ve landed a rich husband, you may pay me back. With a tiny bit of interest, of course.”
Vintage Beatrice. Clara hugged her impulsively. “Of course.”
Then Bea swept bac
k the curtain and greeted her life-long nemesis once more. “Cora, you remember Bent-ley’s darling widow, Clara, don’t you?”
Clara ducked to manage the bonnet through the curtain. Then she straightened to come face to face with the fair-haired gentleman from the Rochesters’ ball.
He smiled, “Ah, I see I have managed my proper introduction after all!” He bowed deeply as introductions were made.
Clara froze. Rochesters’ ball—solicitous gentleman-unstrung corset—
This had to be the single most humiliating moment of her life.
Nathaniel Stonewell, Lord Reardon—and persistent knight errant—rolled his eyes at his cousin’s boasting and Beatrice’s avid curiosity. “I feel rather like a prize pug,” he murmured in an aside to Clara. “What do you suppose would happen if I bit you?”
There was nothing but playful interest in his eyes. Not a speck of prurient awareness, not a single knowing gleam. It could not have been him. Clara smiled in relief as much as at his mischief. “Beatrice would no doubt consider that tantamount to an engagement.”
He grinned and offered her his arm as both parties concluded their business in the shop. “The day is fine. Would you care to take a turn in the park?”
Clara tucked her arm into his. Why not? He wasn’t serious-minded and he was far too well-born for her, not to mention much too handsome. No danger of a true match at all. And it was surely an improvement over shopping.
Looking at his perfect profile from the corner of her eye, she decided that it was a vast improvement. Besides, she was tired of contemplating Sir Thoro-rat’s ruination at dinner tonight.
Clara felt conspicuous in the elegant walking dress, although she suspected that she now fit in better than she ever had. She was dressed much the same as the other ladies walking down High Street with their escorts.
Perhaps it was the way the other gentlemen’s eyes slid in her direction and stayed. Perhaps it was in Lord Reardon’s solicitous attitude—the way he kept his fingers touching lightly to her elbow as they walked, as if she were so delicate she was scarcely able to walk on her own.