Still, their London cook said the larder had never been so vermin free. She plead endlessly with Aunt Edith to leave a few of the little mongrels behind. Likewise, the groundskeeper was impressed with the lack of small creatures ravaging his work. For her part, Lanora missed the songbirds. If a pair was foolish enough to remain on the grounds, the terriers would wait for the fledglings to leave the nest and snap them up before they learned to fly properly.
“You’re wearing your dead-baby-songbird face,” Grace said. She took up the last of Lanora’s peapods.
“I do wish new ones wouldn’t keep coming.”
Grace shrugged. “It’s nature.” She finished the peas and stood, gathering the shells for the bin. “I was thinking. I should win a prize for shucking more peas than you.”
Lanora narrowed her eyes. “Such as?”
“Such as, for today, you forget about Mrs. Smith.”
A broad smile turned up Lanora’s lips. Mrs. Smith, the only wonderful thing about London. Not that the reason for her was good. Poverty was never a happy circumstance, and poverty was what Mrs. Smith sought to alleviate. Rather, Lanora sought to alleviate it, in the guise of the widowed Mrs. Smith.
Lanora was quite enamored with being unknown enough to wander the streets. At home, her midnight locks and deep green eyes were too easily recognized, even with a cap and spectacles. There were so many people in London, and the wealthy kept themselves so far above the rest, no one Lanora helped as Mrs. Smith had any notion who she really was.
Mrs. Smith was much preferable to her evening role, duke’s daughter. Maintaining that frigid façade was an endless strain. Lanora had little choice, though, if she wanted to survive the season unattached and go on to have a home of her own. All she wished was to keep living the unfettered life she’d enjoyed since her father began his work a dozen years ago.
Besides, the smiling faces and pleasant conversation offered by her so-called peers were as much a pretense as her coolness. No one in London knew her, so how could they like her? Their warmth sprang from regard for her father’s title, or his wealth, or both. Perhaps even from his notoriety as a scholar, but never from caring for Lanora. She’d learned well enough from her charitable works at home the lengths to which his assets would drive people. For most, Lanora was a chance for money, renown or power, nothing more.
“Now you’re wearing your, no-one-loves-me-for-who-I-really-am look.” Grace reseated herself.
“You know me too well.” Lanora sought her earlier light mood.
“I know you very well. You’re like a sister to me, and I assure you there are many people who love you.”
“Here, in this house, and in Father’s country manor, yes.” Lanora waved a hand toward the windows. “Out there? No. They will never come to know me. All they see is Lady Lanora, only child to Lord Robert, Duke of Solworth.”
“You give them no chance to know you.” Grace’s voice took on an imploring note, “If you would, you may find you come to enjoy the company of some of them. Perhaps even a gentleman. You’re too young to have decided never to marry.”
Lanora let out a sigh. “Not this lecture. Not again.”
Grace’s mouth flattened in a mutinous line, but she shrugged. “Well then, about Mrs. Smith—”
“I don’t have all that bread sent to let it be distributed improperly. You know if Mrs. Smith isn’t there to hand out what she paid for, the first people will take more than their share and sell it to those I mean to have it free. The rector of the church is too kind. He’s taken in by any story.”
“You go too often. Too many of them know the Widow Smith now. What if one sees you elsewhere? Word will get back to the rest. The poor feed on gossip.”
Only because they have no real food much of the time. “No one will recognize me.”
“That’s not my true worry, as well you know.” Grace’s features tensed. “Walking the streets of London alone is foolish for any woman, but you, a duke’s daughter, are in even more danger.”
“Again, I assure you, no one will recognize me.”
“Black hair is not common, and yours has been mentioned in the paper.” Grace looked triumphant, as if that point couldn’t be overcome.
“The people I help are hardly literate.” Something that should be remedied. “Even if they are, I doubt they’re reading gossip about debutants. They have better uses for their time.” Like trying not to let their children starve.
“They may not read about you, but they hear things, and repeat them.”
“I powder my hair, tie it up and wear a bonnet when I’m Mrs. Smith.” The powder trick had only worked a short while at home, what with country gossip, but in London, Lanora felt it would last.
“I know. I’m the one who has to clean up after it.”
“I help,” Lanora said, stung.
Grace shook her head. “You’re as good at tidying as I am at sewing.” She pursed her lips. “I’m serious, Lanora. Gentlewomen get kidnapped in London. If you’re lucky, you’d be recognized and ransomed. If not, they’ll sell you into a house of ill repute. I’ve heard the stories.”
Lanora laughed. “And stories are all they are. You’re being dramatic.” Mischief brightened her mood. “Besides, if I’m kidnapped, maybe your Lord Lefthook will come to my rescue.”
Grace’s expression shifted from worry to a silly, moon-eyed look. She let out a sigh. “If only he really was my Lord Lefthook.”
Lanora rolled her eyes. “How you can be so enamored with a man you don’t even know is beyond me.”
“Don’t pretend you aren’t there each morning, right beside me, scouring the paper for his name.”
“And such a silly name,” Lanora said, ignoring that truth. “Lord Lefthook. Couldn’t the editor come up with something better?”
“They say it’s on account of his tremendous left hook.” Grace mimed a punch, eyes wide in an equally round face.
“And the lord part?” Lanora’s voice was thick with derision.
“On account of his noble deeds.”
Lanora had to admit they did sound noble, if one believed the paper. “They’re likely made up. He’s likely made up, to sell more copies. Every parlor in London has the paper in it now, right by the tea tray. Ladies send out for their own, not wanting to wait for their male relations to finish with their copies.”
“His deeds are not made up.” Grace’s jaw jutted out. “I have it from the butcher’s wife that the baker cross town, on Southway, has a client who was set upon one night past sundown and saved by Lord Lefthook. He’s telling true, too. It was in the paper.”
“And did the baker relate this tale to the butcher’s wife before or after he read it in the paper?”
Grace frowned. “And they had that quote, last week, from that woman Lord Lefthook saved. The one coming home through the park alone.”
“I suppose you think that woman is real, as well?” Lanora gave a sad shake of her head. “As if any woman would come home through the park alone, at night. You’re the one who’s too naive for London, Grace, not me.”
“They wouldn’t print it if it wasn’t true,” Grace said with conviction.
“Even if the deeds are real, do you mean to believe there’s but one Samaritan in all of London?” Lanora smiled. “He’s awfully busy, doing good deeds nearly every night.” Lanora loved to tease Grace, but she was interested in the figure of Lord Lefthook. Real or imagined, his work brought needed attention to poor parts of London, for that’s where he roamed.
Since arriving, she’d been horrified by the conditions that existed in the city. No one under her father’s care was permitted to live in such poverty. She would take the forgotten of London back to the country with her if she could, but there were simply too many. Something must be done where they were, in London, to rectify the problem. Especially for the women and children, many of whom bore no fault for their circumstance.
Reminded of the other reason she especially wished to go out, Lanora stood. “I am going,
and that’s the last of it.”
“I won’t help you ready. I disapprove.”
Lanora shrugged. “That’s your right, of course.” She headed upstairs to don her disguise. Grace would follow soon.
Today, once she finished handing out bread, Lanora intended to track down Mr. Finch and have words with him. Mr. Finch was the foreman in charge of building a newly begun home for displaced women, including those with children but no father for them. Last time she spoke with him, he’d assured her that work was about to resume, but it still had not. Lanora was particularly invested in the structure, for she’d begged her father to fund it. Her time in London told her a home for women was the area of greatest need, the way to help the most people.
Her father hadn’t put up the money. He’d given some nonsensical excuse about being a peer, and the politics of the land being resistant to change. Instead, to appease her, he talked his fellow archaeologist, Mr. Darington, into funding the project.
Lanora had never met Mr. Darington, something of a mythical figure to the ton. Every month came word of daring deeds, exotic queens and foreign dangers. On top of that, precious, rare and beautiful artifacts. He was the reverse of her father, who kept quarters in Cairo, while directing excavations, analyzing finds and writing scholarly works.
Not that her father didn’t make excellent contributions to the study of Egypt. He’d located several key sites. It was inevitably Mr. Darington, who’d been working in obscurity for years before her father arrived in Egypt, who excavated them. Her father waited in the relative safety of Cairo for the artifacts to reach him. He was the intelligence behind their years of success, Mr. Darington the dashing figurehead.
One of the reasons Lanora consented to a season was the chance to meet Mr. Darington’s protégé, Lord William Greydrake, only son of the Marquess of Westlock. Lord William had spent his formative years living in the desert with Mr. Darington, before her father arrived. Though he was eight years her senior, Lanora had expected to find a kindred spirit in Lord William.
Lanora’s mother passed away when she was six. Her father, unable to cope with the loss of his wife, ran off to Egypt. Lanora spent a few years with her grandfather, before he too passed. When Lord William’s family suffered their tragedy in his youth, his father sent him to Egypt, to Mr. Darington. Though opposite, Lanora’s and Lord William’s lives were strangely parallel.
Lanora shook her head as she entered her room. She began undressing, able to do most of it herself. Mrs. Smith wore the same undergarments as Lanora did, since no one would ever see them to know they were too fine for a widow who spent all her extra funds feeding the poor.
She still hadn’t met Lord William, and no longer cared to. One look at him across a ballroom had convinced Lanora the years with Mr. Darington hadn’t done him any good. Lord William exuded rakishness. Tousled brown hair, flecked with gold by candlelight. A long, lean frame clad somehow both impeccably and carelessly. His crooked smile, always touched with indolence. Glinting hazel eyes that changed color with his mood.
Grace’s footsteps sounded in the hall. Lanora shook her head to dispel visions of Lord William and resumed undressing. Handsome though he was, it had taken only one look for her to be sure she had no care for Lord William’s hazel eyes, or his moods. On top of his discernable rakishness, his name appeared in the scandal sheets with the consistency of the sunrise. Lanora wasn’t in London on the hunt for a husband, or even friends. If she ever did want either, Lord William Greydrake was the last man in England she’d choose.
Chapter Three
William knocked. The townhouse stood on a street outside the most fashionable part of London. The neighborhood was safe, maintained, and known for housing the mistresses of London’s most wealthy men. He waited, not begrudging the time it took for Lady Cecilia’s maid to open the door. The girl could be anywhere in the house. He would give Cecilia more servants, but that would only increase the chance the marquess would find her.
“My lord,” the maid said as the door swung open.
“Is Miss Chastity at home?”
“She’s always at home to you, my lord.” The girl gave him a knowing smirk.
William offered a look somewhere between amused and bored. The girl backed inside, leaning forward as she curtsied. It would take a better man than William not to avail himself of the view her low neckline offered, but he was eager to see the lady of the house. He brushed past the maid and jogged up the steps to Cecilia’s private chambers. Once there, he looked up and down the hall and knocked softly. It was a courtesy no man would pay his mistress.
“Enter,” she called.
William entered to find his stepmother, Lady Cecilia Greydrake, third wife to the marquess, seated near the window. She stood, and smiled. He closed the door and offered a bow.
“You’re early,” Cecilia said.
“Please, sit.” William crossed the thick carpet to take the chair opposite hers as she sat. “I have news.”
“Good news?” she asked brightly.
Four years his junior, Cecilia had an effervescent quality that matched her spritely features and build. William could only thank God he’d removed her from the marquess before that joy was beaten out of her. She smiled at him now, her look expectant.
When William’s first stepmother, his sister Madelina’s mother, had mysteriously fallen to her death after her forth miscarriage, William had hoped the marquess wouldn’t remarry. He’d done all in his power to appear the perfect son, to give the old man no reason to want a third wife. Apparently, his powers were limited. In William’s twentieth year, the marquess brought a sixteen-year-old Cecilia into their home, and the nightmare began again. William had been too young to save Madelina’s mother or his own, but, so far, he hadn’t failed Cecilia.
He stretched out his legs. A smile crept over his face, despite his dark thoughts. “The marquess is dying.”
Cecilia’s mouth dropped open. She shut it. “Are you certain?”
He nodded. “Lethbridge is.”
She leaned forward, eager. “Is he very ill?”
“We can only hope so. I haven’t been to see him, but I will.”
Her expression shifted to concern. “You don’t need to. Not on my account. I’ve waited six years. A bit more won’t hurt.”
“I want to see him for myself.” William grimaced. “Maybe I can get out of the new torment he’s devised for me.”
“You mean, beyond demanding you conduct yourself as the most pompous, destructively wealthy rake in London?”
He grinned. “That was never his exact order. He said I must prove I’m not soft like my mother. No caring for anyone beneath me, no charity, no compassion. I added in the rake business.” He affected a bored tone. “He left me few avenues for happiness.”
Cecilia wrinkled her nose. “Ply your act somewhere else, William. I know you aren’t a rake. You use those clubs and private rooms just as you do this house, as cover.”
He shrugged. He did. Sometimes, it grew difficult to give up the act, even with Cecilia. He’d played a bounder for over a decade. “I won’t need to for much longer.”
She gave him a happy smile. “And I won’t need to hide in this house. Do you know how long it’s been since I stepped outside these walls?” She turned her face toward the window, leaning into the streaks of orange light from the setting sun.
William clamped his mouth shut over a reprimand. He didn’t like her to get too close to the windows. Even after so many years, the marquess routinely set men to follow him. Though William never provided any evidence, the old man seemed to sense his son wasn’t who he wished. William unclenched his hands from the arms of the chair. Cecilia’s rooms were on the back side of the house. He was being overcautious.
Or was he? She had only a week in the marquess’s clutches to go by. His mother survived seven years before fleeing with William. After they disappeared, the marquess had her declared a murderess, mad, and then dead. Later, when he had William back, he invented
the fiction of Egypt to cover William’s decade-long disappearance, and paid Darington to help sell the tale. A man that devoted to his reputation, that ruthless, might do anything to Cecilia should he find her.
“What will you do once he’s gone?” Cecilia turned back to him. The sunlight reddened her white-blonde hair.
“I shall set you up in the Greydrake home, for a start, or in your own, if you prefer. You’ll be the dowager marchioness.”
She laughed. “A dowager at twenty-two. I shall feel so old.”
“You won’t be. I’m sure you won’t lack for suitors, if you wish a new life.”
“I don’t know. What if…” She twisted her hands in her lap. “I didn’t choose your father, mine did, but I didn’t protest. The marquess seemed mysterious and handsome. Aloof, yes, but that was all.” She turned her hands over, palms up. “I’m obviously not a good judge of men.”
“You were sixteen. I’m sure you’ll do better now.” He grinned. “Besides, I know every rake in London. If one dares approach you, my dear step-mama, I’ll shoot him.”
“That’s very sweet of you.” She studied him. “You haven’t answered my question, though. I meant, what will you do for yourself, not for me.”
“That depends on the next score of days.” His smile evaporated. “The old bastard says I must marry by then, so he can approve my bride, or he will sign everything over to Madelina.”
“She’s only sixteen.”
“Lethbridge will be her guardian.”
Cecilia frowned. “That’s not good. I don’t trust that man. No one could work for your father for as long as he has and be honest.”
The Archaeologist's Daughter (Regency Rendezvous Book 3) Page 2