“Well, I for one,” Lydia returned, picking up her petit point and jabbing her needle through it with viciousness, “would never be able to hold my head up again if my son were denied vouchers to Almacks. And I happen to know that St. James has not been sent vouchers for that establishment in years!”
Andrew said, “Oh, Almacks is a bloody bore, mother. I should be happy if I were to be taken off their precious list.”
“Do not curse, Andrew, in the presence of ladies. And you would do yourself better to attend Almacks more often instead of hanging about Whites or Boodles and those other unsavory places.”
“St. James hangs about a good deal more unsavory hells than that, and he has come out all right.”
“Enough!” the Duchess cried before her daughter-in-law could respond, and hence the argument should go further. “Lydia, you keep your son on much too short a string. He shall turn out even worse than St. James if you continue to nag him to death. He is twenty-three years old. You can not expect him to hang about dancing attendance on your every smothering whim. And as for Almacks, I merely need to say the word and I could have vouchers for St. James tomorrow, if I so wish. And I guarantee that rather than reluctance, the committee ladies would fall all over themselves with eagerness to provide them. For if they quit sending them to him, it is only because he has never stepped foot in that place once in all his years and they had given up on luring him in.” At the end of her words, she banged her cane for her butler, who had left the room some time ago, as was his custom. “Ashton!” When he opened the door, she told him a good deal out of humor, “You may assist me up the stairs now, for I am ready to call it a day!”
Andrew came over to her even before the butler with his aged strides could reach her. He kissed her wrinkled cheek, which she turned up for him to do so, and he whispered, “I am sorry if we have upset you, grandmother.”
“Not at all,” she returned, but when her daughter-in-law bid her good night, her head once again bent over her sewing, the duchess merely said, “And good night to you, also, Lydia,” and allowed Ashton to help her from her seat.
It was well past eleven and although she was now comfortable in her bed, the lamp still burning beside her, a novel held in her fragile hands, and a plate of wafers at her side, she could not concentrate on reading, and she knew herself also to be unable to sleep if she tried, although she was quite tired.
She had her concerns. Oh, indeed, she had her concerns.
It was not often that she allowed Lydia to upset her with her strait-laced views. For she knew her daughter-in-law to be such a slave to the conventions as to be blind to any other consideration in life. But her accusations of St. James' very public and unrepentant behavior coupled with Andrew's offhand summary of why he behaved as he did had disturbed the Duchess greatly.
She had realized for years what St. James was about, although she could not approve of his methods. And as much as she would like to see the perpetrator of the crime that had robbed her of so much, had indeed been the greatest grief in her life, brought to justice, she was reluctant to see her most doted upon grandson continue in what was beginning to seem to her a futile quest. He was nearly beyond the recall of all civilized boundaries of society, as Lydia had so spitefully pointed out, and she had a sudden fear that she would see him go beyond the recall of even herself.
St. James had always heeded her to a degree, more to indulge her, she had the suspicion, than because he truly took her advice to heart. But if she were to see him make any sort of life for himself beyond this unholy mission he had set for himself, she was going to have to make a valiant effort to take him in hand, a final time, and convince him that all he had done these many years was enough, and that it was time for him to move beyond. If the murderer of those many years ago had been findable, surely St. James would have found him by now!
It was time for him to stop, before he spiraled further down a path that would result, she was now sure, only in his own self-destruction.
Somehow, this sudden involvement of a mysterious Squire's daughter did not bring her any comfort but more of a feeling of foreboding. She could not credit that even an incomparable could manage to halt Dante long enough in his tracks to have him for an instant take anything or anyone else into consideration, not when he was so bent on vengeance. From what Tyler had told her, this Miss Murdock was not an incomparable.
This Miss Murdock was merely brown.
There was no rhyme nor reason to any of it, and she felt that there was something spinning in St. James' unfathomable mind that was going beyond even his usual tactics. And his usual tactics were quite deplorable enough.
There was a tap on her bed chamber door, and rather than being annoyed to be interrupted at this late hour, she rather welcomed it, for it at least stopped her mind from the endless circles it had been moving in. “Yes. I am awake, you may come in,” she bade, and moved her thin-fleshed arms to aid herself in sitting up further.
It was Soren, her lady's maid, as bowed with age, nearly, as her employer. “I am sorry to interrupt you so late, milady, but I thought you would wish to know that your grandson, milord Duke of St. James, has just arrived.”
“Here?” her ladyship asked, surprised. “If he has blown back into town, I can hardly see why he would come here instead of his own townhouse. Has he asked for me?”
“No. He did not wish to disturb you, but. . .” and Soren paused for a delicate moment, “he has asked that a guest room be made up for a young lady that will be arriving. He says that he has already notified you of her visit, but that it has been pushed unforeseeably up and he expects her here within the hour.”
“My God,” Lady Lenora exclaimed. She glanced at her clock. “It is past midnight now!”
“Yes, milady. It is highly irregular, milady, and I thought you would wish to know.”
“You are indeed correct, Soren. You had better help me into my dressing gown so that I may go below and find out from him just what is the meaning of all this. He had told me in his letter it would be several days before she arrived, and he said nothing of returning himself to London.”
Her lady's maid fetched the required garment, helped the Dowager to sit on the edge of the bed and assisted her into it. Then she removed her sleeping cap for her, ran a comb through the still considerable length of her thin, white hair and then pinned it up, the Dowager's pink scalp showing through beneath it.
Then the dowager, muttering with exertion and annoyance, struggled to her feet with the aid of her maid, procured her cane which had leaned against the bedside table, and then as she stood on her flimsy, shaking legs, she began the trek below stairs on Soren's arm, banging the cane beside her.
Her grandson was in the salon. Evidently he had heard her coming, as she had wished, for he was standing awaiting her when she struggled into the room. “Grandmother,” he said, and came to her. He took her aged hand in his, kissed the back of it, and then retaining his hold on it, said with quiet concern in his voice, “I did not wish you to be disturbed.”
The dowager dismissed her maid before turning her faded eyes to her grandson. She took in his appearance, going over his face detail by detail and at last settling on his eyes. “You look like hell!” she said, her voice harsh. “When is the last time you slept? You ate? And you have been drinking again, I have no doubt, for there is the smell of now stale booze upon you.”
He chuckled, his eyes glinting and there was a suppressed excitement in them that worried her, for that look could only be associated with when he was enjoying himself, and enjoyment for Dante usually meant something bordering on outrageous. Or dangerous. “I slept for an hour this morning. I ate immediately afterwards, and yes, I have been drinking, but that has been some hours ago now.”
Her faded eyes went over him in critical assessment. “Well, whatever damage you have done yourself, I can see that you are in good spirits.”
He suppressed a smile, and she could almost feel the secrets he was suppressing along with i
t. “Fair spirits, yes, grandmother. Fair.”
“Humph!” she snorted. “You may help me to a seat, you young rascal, and then you can explain what trouble you are about now.”
“Trouble, grandmother?” he asked as he helped her into her seat. “Why ever would you think I were about some sort of trouble?”
“Because your eyes are glinting in that way they have when you are feeling particularly pleased with yourself. Although,” she added as she settled back into her seat, “you are not normally wont to go on a binge when you are occupied by something that you find promising. So, really, I do not know what to think, Dante. But whenever have I known when it comes to you,” she ended with tartness.
He smiled but his voice was sober. “Well, I shall not lie to you, for I have been on quite a tear, I regret. Nearly two solid days, but as you know, the mood comes upon me from time to time and there is nothing for it but to ride into that blackness until I ride out of it again.”
“Hmm,” she ruminated, her eyes missing nothing about his demeanor or expression. “And this Miss Murdock that I understand is to arrive rather prematurely within the hour. Is she connected to this latest lapse?”
“Somewhat,” he told her, and his eyelids which had been up and unguarded, came half down, cutting her very much off from him.
She sighed. “I see you shall be as stubborn as your groom was. Curse you, Dante. What is it that your are taking such pains to hide from me?”
He was silent, and to her regret, he moved to the sideboard where several decanters of excellent liquor remained out. He searched through the crystal bottles, settled at last on a light sherry, which mollified her to some degree. He poured into a slender glass, turned to her. “Would you care for one, grandmother?”
She waved a hand, indicating that he should pour, which he did, and then he came back to her, a glass in either hand and offered one to her. For another minute, they each drank in silence, and the Duchess felt again that vague foreboding that she had felt earlier in her bed chamber. At last she said, “You do not mean to tell me, do you, Dante?”
“No, grandmother,” he replied. “I know that you would do anything that I ask, but in this case, all I ask of you is that you make Miss Murdock welcome when she arrives. She has had quite a trying time, of which I am, I am sorry to say, directly responsible for.”
His grandmother choked a little on her drink. “Egad, St. James! Do not tell me that in some drunken state you have compromised the girl!”
To which to her puzzlement, he laughed with very real amusement and said, “No, grandmother. Nothing quite that drastic, for she is as pure as the driven snow, I dare say, if rather somewhat browner.”
“Brown!” the Dowager said, irritated. “All I can gather from you or your groom is that the young lady in question is somewhat brown. Whatever do you mean?”
“I mean that her eyes are as softly brown as a hart's and that her hair is as velvety brown as cattails in summer, and that her skin is as freshly brown as creamy tea. And as a guinea hen hides in the bushes she hides in her brownness and thinks herself undetected. But she is as steady and riveting as a hummingbird in motionless flight as she flits nearly silently about, never realizing that her very brownness and her very solemnity draws the very attention she thinks she is so adroitly avoiding,” he told his grandmother. And he took a long, debating swallow from his glass as she watched him, and when he met her eyes there was an expression of regret in them, as though in finding something, it were somehow eluding him.
“Well,” she said, her voice faint. “I am certainly looking forward to meeting this Miss Murdock.”
St. James thumped his drink down upon the sideboard, still half full. “She shall need a lady's maid, grandmother, for she has none.”
His grandmother gave a sharp twist to her head as she turned to him. “Who is escorting her here, then?”
“I have enlisted Bertie, and his younger brother Ryan, to bring her up in their barouche. And of course, Bertie's groom is along with them.”
“Still hardly respectable, Dante.”
“Rather more so than if she had ridden up alone with me in my curricle,” he returned. And the Duchess had to accede that point.
“If she is to be here for the season, as you indicated in your letter,” she told him, “it will still not do for it to be made known that she arrived in London in the middle of the night with only the Tempton brothers to chaperone each other.” Without waiting for any response from him, she added on the heel of her words, “Ashton!”
Her butler came in, his clothing as perfectly pressed as though it were the beginning of the day, instead of well into the next one. “Yes, milady.”
“I shall need you to procure a lady's maid for our guest that is arriving. Have her here by morning, before the house is awakened. It will be said she arrived with this Miss Murdock tonight so that the servants should not gossip.”
“Yes, milady,” her butler replied, seeing, evidently, nothing at all amiss with having to acquire a lady's maid to start immediately at nearly one a.m. in the morning. He withdrew as stoically as he had arrived.
St. James told his grandmother, “Very good, grandmother. That is one point I should have covered had I not been so damnedably tired.”
“You should go home, now, Dante. Get some sleep. I am capable of making Miss Murdock comfortable when she arrives.”
“I am certain that you are,” he agreed. “But I am also certain that you are capable of prying a good deal of information from Bertie and Ryan when they arrive with her, and I would lief stay around and make sure that they remember themselves.”
“And what of your Miss Murdock?” the Duchess asked somewhat piqued, for it had been very much in her mind to grill the two Temptons without mercy when they arrived. “Is she so unaware of whatever plans you have that you need not worry about me gaining information from her?”
“No, blast it,” he said with sudden vehemence. “For she managed to get a great deal more of my motives out of me than I was readily willing to give! And she may, in fact, tell you the all that she knows.” He ran a finger along his upper lip before adding, “I do not think she shall though. At any rate, there is nothing I can do about it if she does, and as I say, there is a possibility that she will not. Whereas the Temptons on the other hand I know to not be equal to the task of evading your questions.”
The Dowager could not resist a slight smile, for it satisfied her old heart to know that she was still quite capable of being terrifying when she wished it. But she did have to admit, as much as it galled her: “Tyler, on the other hand, is quite impervious to my attempts.”
St. James smiled. “Yes, grandmother. That is the only reason I entrusted him with those letters rather than going to the bother of hiring a messenger.”
“Letters?” she picked up, causing him to grimace and again reach for his glass to sip from it. “There was more than one letter? To whom did another letter go?”
“My solicitor,” he admitted. “But thanks to Miss Murdock, it was quite unnecessary. For now. All the same, I shall leave it as it now stands in his hands, for I should only have to make the proper arrangements again soon, at any rate. Mayhaps, I should visit him tomorrow, to ensure that he understands precisely what I wished him to do,” he added to himself.
The Dowager's fingers found the gold head of her cane and rubbed there as she fully prepared herself to dog this subject until she had as many details as she could win from him, but there was a slight tap on the door and Ashton put his head in to announce, “Lord and Mister Temptons, and Miss Murdock, milady.”
“Ah, yes,” the old Duchess said. She could not keep the eagerness from her voice as she responded, “You may show them in, Ashton.”
She had enough wit to her to observe her grandson, for he had turned at Ashton's words and was engrossed upon watching the threesome come in the door of the salon. His face was tight, concentrating, a question within himself waiting to be answered. And when the Temptons and Miss Mu
rdock entered the room, came close to where St. James stood by the sideboard and his grandmother sat a few yards away in her chair, the Duchess still did not turn her head to observe the new-comers, although curiosity was eating at her, for she was much too intent upon watching her grandson's face with him unaware of it.
She watched as his eyes sought out and settled on the Squire's daughter, and as he gave her rapid appraisal, the questioning went out of his face and there was an odd look of contentment in his eyes for the brief second she had to observe it. Then his eyelids came half down, hooding any expression in them at all, and his face took on the unreadable quality he was capable of when he most wished to keep his thoughts to himself.
Only then did the Dowager turn her head the slight degree that was needed to observe Miss Murdock, and if her delayed reaction in greeting that young Miss made her seem very haughty and untouchable indeed, she was quite unaware of it.
Adding to her aloofness, she still did not acknowledge the new arrivals, but scanned Miss Murdock from head to foot, ignoring the two Temptons that stood to either side of her. Unfortunately, their presence as twin footmen, so to speak, made Miss Murdock appear all the shorter, as they were both quite tall, and their fine red hunting jackets and snowy white cravats, well shined boots and silky black breeches made her brown, worn cloak and brown, somewhat battered bonnet appear all the more shabby. Ashton took these items from her and the dress beneath was as brown and shabby as the rest.
Brown, indeed, was the first word that came to the Duchess's mind. And where her grandson's description had led her to believe that although this Miss Murdock was not an incomparable, that she would at least be uncommonly pleasing, if perhaps in a way contrary to what was fashionable, what the old Duchess saw now quite dismayed her. For besides being exceedingly brown, the miss in front of her looked exceedingly plain.
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