He’d have a proper bath before the Callender do tonight.
In a few hours his head merely ached rather than pounded, and he thought he might be able to eat. And so he made his way down the stairs, his boots and walking stick announcing his resurrection to the household staff, and carried with him his correspondence
The house, he discovered, had been pitilessly cleaned while he’d been indisposed. The furniture and mirrors and silver didn’t so much shine as glare. His eyes shriveled in their sockets in torment and he clapped a hand over them.
He took himself and his correspondence rapidly off to the much darker library.
He threw open a window: The air smelled fresh enough, apart from the usual smells of London life carried erratically in by a breeze: dirt and coal and horse and every now and then a dash of salt and brine blown in off the Thames.
Which he could appreciate now that all smells didn’t make him want to cast his accounts. It was time to address his correspondence.
The first letter was a very welcome one from Kinkade.
Glad you’re in London, you old recluse. Callender’s first, old man, then drinking, and God only knows what then.
Yrs,
K.
Ah, Kinkade. It was reassuring to know that someone still lived in a world of “God only knows what then.” Judging from how he’d felt this morning, he suspected he would have difficulty living in that world now.
It was still difficult for Chase to imagine Kinkade donating the Rubinetto to the Montmorency. Because he did know a bit about Kinkade’s taste in art.
He recalled one typical evening sitting about a fire surrounded by bored soldiers. Kinkade had handed him a sheet of foolscap. “What say you, Eversea?”
In the margin of a letter he’d received from his brother, with the burnt end of a sharpened stick Kinkade had sketched a nude, improbably buxom woman with nipples erect as cannon fuses.
“I think her breasts might be too small,” Chase critiqued dryly.
Kinkade had taken him quite seriously and set to work again with the sharpened stick, refining, tongue between his teeth in concentration.
Tedium was as formidable an enemy as the French during the war. Some men kept journals. Some soldiers, like the Earl of Rawden, the poet known as the Libertine, had written poetry. Some gambled. Kinkade sketched the occasional nude woman, and was generous about passing the sketches around to the men and cheerful about accepting criticisms and suggestions, which he seldom incorporated, as he had his own vision. He signed them O. McCaucus-Bigg.
A new soldier was always puzzled by this, given that this wasn’t Kinkade’s name.
“O. McCaucus-Bigg?”
“Braggart, are you?” Kinkade would roar. “Not as big as mine, laddie!”
A good joke, suitable for thirteen-year-old boys and bored sergeants and subalterns.
In short, unless Kinkade had suffered a conversion to which Chase hadn’t been privy, his tastes in art didn’t run to cows and cherubs and his possession—and subsequent relinquishing—of that painting, if he had indeed donated it to the Montmorency, was puzzling. Perhaps he’d had the paintings foisted upon him as part of an inheritance. Doubtless they came with an interesting story, because Kinkade, thank God, was invariably entertaining.
Chase pictured Rosalind gazing at the painting with that fixity of concentration so singularly hers. Such a cool color, her eyes so like spring. It had always struck him as odd that they could burn so when her temper or her intelligence lit them.
He stared out the window. Saw Rosalind. Not London. And sighed.
Genevieve would likely know about Rubinetto. He wasn’t certain whom else to ask.
If only he hadn’t seen that damned angel at the Velvet Glove, he wouldn’t feel obligated to ask.
He shook his head roughly free of Rosalind—though it was a bit premature for the rough head shaking, and his stomach lurched in protest—then fished out his next piece of correspondence. This one bore the Eversea seal. He hesitated, burning with self-righteousness.
And then he sighed, capitulating, and broke the seal.
Colin’s handwriting. Chase braced himself.
Dear Chase,
The new calf is doing very well, and Madeleine sends her regards. We hope you enjoy your stay in London and look forward to your report about our cousin the potential new vicar. Don’t forget to visit him. We need to know if he’s a bore.
P.S. You really ought to marry. It’s marvelous for the nerves.
P.P.S. We’ve named the new calf Charles, after you. His bollocks are impressive. Thought you’d be pleased.
Chase stared. His bloody, bloody brother. He was torn between laughing and crunching the message in his fist and hurling it across the room. Colin had no right to make him laugh.
It was Colin’s fault he was here at all. Colin—who’d survived duels, horse races, ill-advised gambling, nearly drowning, plummeting from the trellises of married countesses, the war, and the gallows—in other words, who was historically great fun—had become, of all things, a farmer after he’d married. It was all he talked about: cows this and sheep that and drainage ditches and crops. Night after night Chase, who relied on Colin to distract him from himself, sat across from his brother and waited for him to cease being insufferable.
But four nights ago at the Pig & Thistle, when Colin had begun to pantomime how he’d assisted with the tricky birth of a calf, complete with exuberant thrusts of his arm to illustrate just how his hand had gone up the cow and imitations of distressed cow noises—for the love of God, distressed cow noises!—while his new wife Madeleine leaned forward, glowing with as much pride and held-breath suspense as if Colin were recounting heroics at Salamanca…
Well, it was more than anyone should be expected to endure. And what Chase had muttered—quite rightfully—was:
“I cannot bear it any longer.”
Colin hadn’t even slowed his narrative. But even through his lovely ale haze, Chase saw Colin’s green eyes flick toward his wife, like a smuggler telegraphing a boat off the coast with lanterns—the sort of thing married people do, in which volumes of information are exchanged, decisions reached, and nothing at all said.
He could imagine what had happened next: Colin had told his brother Marcus, who was throwing darts in the Pig & Thistle to impress his new wife. Marcus had told their sister Olivia, because the two of them were thick as thieves. Olivia, seeing a way to interfere, had briskly gone to their mother, not to Genevieve, who was far too sympathetic and would have come to him with commiseration and warning. And his mother had told their father, Jacob. Who’d sent him to London, because “it would do him good.”
Bollocks, is what Chase thought.
In all likelihood his family couldn’t bear him any longer.
A bird trilled in the garden. It reminded him uncomfortably of the day Colin had been scheduled to hang: the silence in the town house, the oblivious birds singing arias in the garden.
He laid his brother’s letter gently down.
Damn, but the town house was quiet without the rest of the Everseas in it.
He told himself righteously that he preferred it that way.
He reached for another piece of correspondence.
From the seal, he knew precisely what it was. Anticipation was present, but not powerful; he suspected he knew what he’d find inside. He slid his finger beneath the wax, broke it, and learned that the East India Company would indeed welcome an officer of his talents, as he was exceptionally well regarded and came highly recommended, and that the India-man The Courage sailed for India in a fortnight and they would expect to see him on board.
He held it, bemused. It was what he was made for, after all: life as officer of the Crown. Odd to see his future succinctly sketched in just a few lines. Satisfying to be reminded of his strengths when his first day in London in years had been one long reminder of his weaknesses.
He fingered a blank sheet of foolscap, deciding what to do about one of those w
eaknesses now.
Likely there had never been any question that he would do it.
He wrote to his sister Genevieve:
Dear Gen,
Rubinetto. Italian Renaissance painter of landscapes…if you can indeed call this painting a landscape. Has cows, trees, and cherubs. Also busty angel. Very ugly and confusing. Located at Montmorency Museum. Please advise via messenger straight away.
Yrs,
Chase
He sprinkled sand over and pressed it closed with a disk of wax and the Eversea seal. He would send it by messenger rather than post, which ought to alarm his family, but since Colin had become so dull and everyone else seemed to be sinking into the routine of marriage, Pennyroyal Green doubtless needed a bit of stirring up. Which was really the reason he’d done it.
Not even he believed that.
Ah, Rosalind. He smiled half bitterly, mocking himself. Barely a tip of the lips. See what you’ve made me do for you, despite myself?
He need do nothing more, he told himself.
He pushed himself hard away from the desk, as if to disassociate himself with that letter and what it meant, and took himself downstairs for some more coffee. He would need to fortify himself to prepare for the “God knows what then” that would follow Callender’s ball this evening.
Chapter 8
Carriage after carriage had rolled up to the Callender town house to disgorge passengers until the square was quite clogged with motionless conveyances and frustrated horses. New arrivals had no hope of getting anywhere near the house. Philosophical drivers were swigging from flasks and conducting cheerful, ribald shouted conversations to each other across the tops of barouches and landaus and hacks; party guests threaded gingerly and philosophically through it all, prepared to walk miles if necessary. A small price to pay to attend what promised to be a legendary crush.
Rosalind peered out the window of her hack. From a distance the house was so extravagantly lit it appeared aflame; closer, she discovered it buzzed like a hive of angry bees, the result of hundreds of voices all shouting at once to be heard. She congratulated herself on her timing: entering the party unnoticed depended upon a substantial crowd already being present.
Her hack, like so many others, was forced to stop a good distance from the house. She walked the rest of the way to it, gown clutched up in her fingers, as London streets generally featured a variety of shoe-ruining liquid and solid surprises. But the night was pleasant and still, with a bit of a breeze, and she completed her journey without splashing her shoes or hem or sweating unduly and promptly, surreptitiously attached herself to a large laughing group of men and women who shouldered their way past the footmen.
Surely no one would look at her twice, she thought, when the woman next to her was sporting what appeared to be an entire pheasant wing dyed red protruding from a tightly wound turban. The group was laughing uproariously about something, so Rosalind laughed merrily, too, her head thrown back to show her teeth and disguise her face, her fan already out and whirring the air in an attempt to dizzy the gaze of the footman who impassively—but accurately, she would have surmised—studied everyone to ensure no interlopers breached the entrance.
And thus the shiningly groomed human tide swept her through the door, no footman set dogs upon her in order to drive her out, and she was inside the Callender town house, pushed genteelly this way and that like driftwood by all the other humans.
Music, lively, lilting, and accomplished, poured up from the ballroom, and down the stairs she went toward it with the rest of the partygoers. Feeling increasingly rash and giddy.
When she saw the swarm of people—brunette heads, blond heads, redheads, beplumed and coroneted and complexly coiffed—she was dizzied and mesmerized, as if she were standing on a cliff’s edge staring out onto the sea. How in God’s name had she thought she could find Kinkade in this crowd, when she hadn’t seen him in five years, and when one crisply dressed man here blurred into another? Below her, white smiles were as ubiquitous as strings of pearls, and overhead a chandelier of swooping ropes of crystals and dangling crystal bagatelles presided like a new kind of moon. She’d been too long in the country. The glitter hurt her eyes.
Everyone was shouting in order to be heard at all. It was overwhelming.
She did, however, love beautiful gowns. And here they abounded.
Her eyes greedily took in virginal whites and subtle jewel tones, intricate beading and embroidery, somberly dressed matrons and widows. She assessed jewels and coiffures. She had no doubts about her own simply pinned-up hair, which was quite good, shiny and thick and enviable, and she saw no need to feel modest about it. And as her senses began to accommodate the spectacle, her heart remembered how it felt and she began to wish she could dance. The way she hadn’t since Belgium. Since her innocence, such as it was, had been lost to war and the d’Alignys and to Chase.
Since she hadn’t precisely been invited, however, it was likely her hostess would quickly note her, should she reel her merry way across the ballroom.
But surely no one would mind if she at least tapped her foot? She tucked herself between a large laughing group and a corner occupied by a regal pillar. Her slipper patted the floor, her shoulders began to sway, her fan waved beneath her chin, and then she saw Kinkade.
She sucked in a gasp and pressed herself against the wall.
He wended through the crowd with a nod here, a greeting there. She knew why she’d spotted him: he seemed scarcely to have aged at all since she’d last seen him, where Chase had hardened. Though the omnipotent chandelier might simply be casting everyone in flattering light. He was still lean and angularly handsome. His face turned toward her and his eyes flashed silvery for an instant, and for a heartbeat she thought he’d seen her.
But no: his expression didn’t change. He heartily greeted another man but kept moving. He seemed to have a specific destination and was heading determinedly toward it alone.
He would disappear unless she followed him, and she might not see him again.
She watched the back of Kinkade until he turned up a staircase. Deeper into the family quarters, no doubt.
She hesitated. The stairs weren’t precisely guarded by Scylla and Charybdis, she told herself. She could lie easily enough if she were caught.
And so she waited, tapping out a few bars of the music with her slipper.
And then up the stairs she went, too.
Chase gamely plunged into the ball crowds scaling the front stairs of the Callender house in pairs and groups and managed to insinuate himself through it, sparing smiles for acquaintances who shouted greetings he couldn’t hear over the noise, and offering up lingering smiles for the ladies, because why shouldn’t he, and it was a pleasure to freeze a few in their tracks and know that their eyes remained glued to his back as he passed.
“Captain Eversea. Very good to see you in London, sir.” The Callender footman had an impressive memory. But then, so did Chase.
“Thank you, Morton. I’m happy to be here.”
But he was less and less certain this was true.
A cascade of screechy feminine laughter cut through the roar of voices. Someone was clearly already drunk and in decidedly high spirits, and more than one woman would lose consciousness and need to be hauled out to the garden for a wrist patting tonight or the Callenders would consider the evening a failure.
His thoughts must have shown on his face, because he detected what appeared to be a flicker of sympathy in the footman’s eyes.
“If you’d like to join Lord Callender and Mr. Kinkade, sir, and a few other gentlemen, they’ve gone up to the library. I’ve had instructions to send you there—and I should tell you I was requested to repeat this verbatim, sir—‘Should you deign to show your misbegotten visage at all this evening.’”
Dancing was something he did only awkwardly these days if he did it at all, and he took no real pleasure in it, so heading straight for the cigars and conversation riddled with horses, women, carriages, guns,
politics, money, war, epithets, and the like, sounded like a perfectly agreeable way to at least begin the evening.
He chose the second set of stairs, the one leading up, knowing he would likely find the library on the second floor. By the first landing it was mercifully, significantly quieter; by the third landing the hum of voices and music were made ghostly by distance.
He made a right turn: he’d heard masculine voices and a scattering of laughter of the unfettered, ribald quality one hears near battleground campfires, and toward it he went.
The library floor was thick with oxblood-and-cream-colored carpets imported from Persia, and it silenced his footfall. He’d taken two of those plush, silent steps when he stopped abruptly.
Interesting.
He thought he detected the scent of…roses.
He frowned. It was faint. But it was enough to send a sizzle of awareness and suspicion down his spine.
But doubtless hothouse roses were crammed into a vase here in this library.
“…and I said, gaslight is the way of the future, old man.” Sounded like Ireton.
Chase saw immediately this was a robust library, the work of a serious collector. Tall, elegant shelves lined not only the walls but ran at angles to each other, too, with narrow passages left between, so that he needed to weave among them to get closer to the fire and to his friends, whom he could hear but not see yet. Each shelf was stuffed full of books that looked as if they might even have been read at one time or another. Gold glinted dully from lettered spines as his boots and walking stick sank into the carpets.
He stopped abruptly. The scent of roses was suddenly stronger. And potently familiar.
He knew. He knew before he saw her.
And at first he simply stared and thought: Impressive. Because apart from the dull sheen of her dress, nothing sparkled about her—no jewelry, no combs, no coronets—but the lyrical shape of her body elevated to stunning the simplicity of her gown. The shade of her dress blended her with the shadows on the rugs and shelves. She could easily have passed for a ghost. But really, he—or anyone, for that matter—might just as easily have missed the woman lurking among the rows of shelves.
Since the Surrender Page 9