by Jenny Brown
Examining Mrs. Atwater, Eliza could barely believe that this was the woman who had played such a fatal role in Lord Hartwood’s life. She had expected to see a glamorous woman. How else had she been able to demand the extravagant necklace from her besotted lover that meant his family’s ruin? But the woman beside her reminded her most forcibly of one of the village women who had come to clean for her aunt, though upon further examination, she could detect the good bones buried beneath the fat that framed Mrs. Atwater’s face. In her youth she must, indeed, have been beautiful. Beautiful enough to ruin Lord Hartwood and his family.
Lord Hartwood turned to one of the ladies who was seated near his mother. “Lady Hermione, may I introduce to you my friend, Mrs. Atwater. I believe that Mrs. Atwater was also acquainted with your ex-husband, the earl, before your divorce.” Lady Hermione’s tinkling laugh was replaced by something more like a nervous giggle as she nodded to the new visitors.
A portly man wearing a barrister’s wig, who was seated between Lady Hermione and Lady Hartwood cleared his throat as if preparing to protest, but Hartwood gave him no time to react before turning back to his father’s mistress. “Mrs. Atwater,” he said. “Let me introduce to you my dear friend Miss Eliza Farrell. As you can see, like my father before me, I have a great appreciation of feminine beauty.”
He turned to Eliza. “Mrs. Atwater was once considered the most beautiful woman in Brighton and was well known for her fine taste in jewelry. Indeed, rumor had it at one time that the Regent’s own mistress, Mrs. Fitzherbert, with whom he had contracted a secret marriage, was quite jealous of the attentions our beloved Regent paid Mrs. Atwater. But Mrs. Fitzherbert need not have worried. Mrs. Atwater’s regard for my father was quite strong. She was unusual for her kind, not being a fickle woman.”
He turned back to his guest. “So how do you find Brighton now, Mrs. Atwater?” he asked smoothly. “Surely it has changed since the days when you formed part of the circle around the Regent and Mrs. Fitzherbert.”
Mrs. Atwater nodded. Her face looked strained, indeed, almost as strained as that of his mother. “I don’t go out much now, Your Lordship. I’m an old lady, and the world is quite different from what it was in my youth, though seeing you today surely brings back the memories of those days. They were fine times indeed we had back then. The balls there used to be, and the riding about in phaetons with the toffs! It seems like only yesterday.” Her voice faded out as she caught sight of the necklace that glittered around Eliza’s neck.
“Dear me, I never thought to see those jewels again.” She sighed. “I had so hoped I’d never have to sell that necklace, I was that fond of your father, and you know it was he who gave it to me. But it was all I had to give my Charles, and he would insist on going to America. There is so little money to be had from keeping boarders.”
The clatter of silverware against china stopped as the diners turned to watch the spectacle unfolding before them. Lord Hartwood turned back toward Eliza, his own supposed mistress. “I say, it is a shame you are not to have the opportunity to observe Mr. Charles Atwater. In his appearance he is most strikingly like my father. Indeed Charles was so like my father, I got a strange thrill the last time I saw him. It was as if my father were alive again. I had to remind myself that Black Neville died in some woman’s arms in Paris so it could not have been him in the flesh.”
“How quickly all our children grew up,” Mrs. Atwater interrupted, the strained look on her face showing how eager she was to change the subject. “Why it seems like only yesterday that you were in short pants, Your Lordship. You had the dearest little sailor suit and you were that proud of it, though you would tear off the neckerchief.”
“I had almost forgot that,” he said with a laugh. “My father would tie it on so tight I was afraid that I would strangle. I remember him bringing me to visit you once. It was a rare treat. He rarely paid me any mind at all. But I could have only been four or five years old back then. How astonishing of you to remember.”
“I could hardly forget. From your father’s description of you, I hadn’t expected you to be such a darling little boy. And you had such good manners, too.”
Eliza saw a look of genuine surprise sweep over Lord Hartwood’s face, softening its harsh planes for just a moment.
“Truly, I am glad to see you, Mrs. Atwater,” he replied, the irony that had laced his voice suddenly gone, replaced by a warmth that stood out all the more clearly in contrast to his previous coolness. “We owe gratitude to those who were kind to us as children. You surely do have mine.”
And then he stood up from his place at the table and strolled over to the sideboard. He picked up a wineglass and gestured to a footman to fill it with claret. “A toast,” he called out, his voice ringing through the silence. “To the women who love us.”
“Hear, hear!” a rumble ran through the guests as they lifted their glasses.
“And to hell with those who do not!” He drained his glass and tossed it against the marble mantelpiece where it smashed, spattering drops of the ruby wine on the Turkey carpet. The guests paused, frozen, their glasses still in the air, their voices stilled, unsure of what to do. Then, guiltily, they brought them down. Dead silence filled the room.
Lady Hartwood lifted one hand in a subtle gesture to the footman to pull her bath chair from the table. “I bid you good night,” she announced. “I fear my health has proven too weak to sustain the challenge of so joyful a reunion. But please continue to enjoy the evening. My son has gone out of his way to provide you with entertainment. You must stay until the show has concluded. It is not often that we are treated to a circus here in Brighton.”
Chapter 8
“The whore must go,” his mother snarled. She lay in the huge bed hung in black curtains that dominated the bedroom to which, somewhat to his surprise, she had summoned her son shortly after the last of her guests had decamped. She was playing the Tragic Mother to the hilt, Edward noted. Even her negligee was the black of full mourning.
“I know you brought her here to annoy me, and you have succeeded. But you have done far more. Your insult has made it impossible for Mr. Snod-grass to consider letting his daughter marry you.”
“You amaze me. I didn’t realize you took such an interest in my future. But pray, why should I wish to marry a whey-faced spinster buried in a cartload of jewelry?”
His mother sniffed. “Spare me your childish attempts at irony. Surely you understand that you must marry wealth. Poor James’s final illness left him no time to straighten his affairs. Even when his will is settled there will be precious little left. No other course is open to you but to make a convenient marriage. Snodgrass is a vulgar mushroom but he wants a title for his daughter badly enough that he might have been brought up to scratch despite your wretched reputation—had you not torpedoed that scheme. I am grateful that your poor dear brother did not live to know of the strait we are in now because of you.”
He began to reply, but his mother cut him off. “And the way you carried on about those sapphires! It is hard to credit that a son of mine could be so vulgar.” Lady Hartwood drew forth a black handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes dramatically before drawing a deep breath and continuing. “To have squandered twenty thousand pounds to buy such a degenerate, wasteful gift and then bestow it on a trollop when I must scrabble each month to pay the house servants!”
“I fail to see how my personal expenditures should have any bearing on the fact you’ve exceeded the income from your widow’s portion.”
A wave of anger swept over his mother’s face. “The lawyers only send me a few pounds every month. They tell me the income that should have arisen from my marriage portion is gone, sunk in the general ruin of our estate. But of course, you’d know nothing about that, since you’ve spent the past fifteen years gallivanting around the world giving no care to what was happening to your family here at home.”
“If I recall correctly, Mother, I was ‘gallivanting,’ as you call it, because you’d forbidden m
e to ever cross your doorstep again.”
“As well I should have, after what you did, ruining that poor girl and who knows how many others,” his mother sniffed. “But that is neither here nor there. The fact is your poor dear brother, James—” she paused here and dabbed theatrically at her eyes “—suffered so terribly during his last years of life that he was unable to give his attention to the management of the estate. And now there is nothing left.”
“And that is why I must find an heiress to marry?”
“As if you didn’t know that at the outset.”
“When you greeted me you told me I hadn’t changed. Now I must return the compliment. It astonishes me to find you still believe that any problem can be smoothed over with an advantageous marriage.”
He strode across to the tall window, turning his back to his mother and looking out into the dark where, unseen, ocean waves rolled in over the beach, ending their long journey from France. “How much it must pain you to realize that your precious James gambled away the fifty thousand pounds you got him in Amelia’s dowry. How even more painful it must be to have to admit to me that he squandered that fortune, when it was my sacrifice that secured her precious dowry to him. And now that James has gone on to his much-deserved reward after destroying the little security you thought to have in your old age, you must start the whole distasteful process again. The Neville coffers must be replenished as always, by enticing yet another victim into the matrimonial bed.”
“There is nothing of the victim about it,” his mother protested. “I was proud to be able to bring your father a large dowry in exchange for the honor of assuming his noble title.”
“And out of the bottomless kindness of your heart you have decided to give the same opportunity to the button maker’s faded daughter as you did to the chit you foisted on James.” He sneered. “Your life is just one act of charity after another.”
He paused for a moment before continuing. “But you needn’t exert yourself any further on my account. I’m as fond of the fine traditions of our nobility as the next man, but this is one tradition I’m afraid I must break with. I shall not marry some antidote to restore our family’s fortunes.”
“Of course you will,” his mother said scornfully. “There’s no other way. It’s the only honorable way open to those of us in the nobility. Your father and his father before him did what they ought. If there is any shame involved, it falls upon Charles II. It was wrong of him to grant your great-grandfather a title without granting him enough land to provide the income needed to sustain it!”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Our noble liege was remiss, indeed, not to realize that the men of our line would never get the hang of gambling successfully while in their cups. Your sainted James exceeded even my dear father in his ability to throw away good gold at the gaming table. Fifty thousand pounds in six years! But knowing dear sainted James as I do, I suppose the whole sum cannot have been lost just in gambling. No, there would have been ruby necklaces and diamond bracelets, too. That wealthy wife you found him was an ugly girl and James always had an eye for beauty.”
“You will not speak that way of your brother,” his mother snapped. “He was worth ten of you, and it was not his fault that Amelia turned out sickly. If you had done your duty, you would have found some way to keep him from gaming. The two of you were close when you were children. You could have stopped him from ruining himself if you had tried.”
He fought the impulse to stride out of the room. He had forgot how angry it made him that his mother could always find a way to blame him for anything. “No one could have stopped James from ruining himself,” he answered coldly. “He had been spoiled since he was a boy. You and Father never forbade him any pleasure. You paid off his debts and his doxies. I doubt he would have stopped his gambling—or the drinking that made him so inept at it—at a word from me.
“But that is besides the point. Unlike my sainted brother, I do not drink and I do not gamble. And since I had no reason to care what society might think of me, I didn’t consider myself too aristocratic to dabble in trade. It may come as something of a surprise to you, Mother, but there are other ways to find a fortune besides marrying one. Unlike my father and brother, I did my gambling sober and confined myself to games of skill. With the money I earned at the tables I invested in India traders. Through their successful voyages I realized a profit of several hundred thousand pounds, which now sits safely in the care of my banker at London.”
“Hundreds of thousands of pounds? A fortune earned from trade?” His mother’s cloudy eyes had opened wide. “How long have you had this fortune?”
“These past three years.”
Lady Hartwood opened and closed her mouth twice, as if unable to bring herself to speak. Clearly his news was unexpected. Then she finally spoke. “To think, that with all that money, you did nothing to help out your brother, even when he lay dying. You did nothing to discharge my debts. You are a selfish child!”
“Very selfish indeed, Mama. Exactly as you say. But odd as it might seem to you, when I earned my fortune, I believed that I had already fully contributed my share to the family. Without my sacrifice, Amelia would have never married James and the family would have had fifty thousand pounds less to squander. And besides, you had forbidden me to ever cross your doorstep. I didn’t think you’d wish to dirty your aristocratic hands with the money I’d earned from trade—though it might interest you to know that the money you’ve been receiving as your widow’s portion these past two years has come from me. The income from James’s estate was gobbled up by his unfortunate tendency to pay his debts with post-obits.”
He waited for that to settle in. Clearly she’d not known of that, either.
Finally his mother spoke. “What James did or did not do is all water under the bridge. Now that you are Hartwood it’s your responsibility to care for the family. You must pay off the mortgages James was forced to put on all his properties, and quickly. If the payments are not made within the month, this house and all the others will be lost.”
“I know,” he replied languidly. “But there’s no point in paying off the mortgages if I’m to forfeit the properties. And that’s what will happen if I give in to the temptation to bid you adieu and return to London before the fortnight is over. Remember the terms of James’s will. Not only would it cost me a lot to discharge the mortgages, but James made my inheritance dependent on my tolerating you for an entire fortnight.”
He had been standing near the foot of her bed, but now he took another step toward her, allowing time for his words to sink in. When he again spoke he made his voice low and threatening. “I have come in response to your most reluctant invitation but I have still not decided if it is worth it to me to remain. If I don’t, you’ll have to find yourself somewhere else to live—and some source of income to sustain you since the trickle you still get—which I have been paying—will cease.”
His mother paled. “I cannot move from here!” she protested. “I have lived here these past fifteen years. I’m a poor sick woman. I can barely walk. How can I possibly find a new home or hope to earn an income?”
“You might have asked your poor dear James the same question, since it was his failure to make any arrangements for your support that put you in these circumstances. However, if you can manage to curb your hostility to me and to the delightful woman I am fortunate to be able to call my friend, I am willing to try to last out the fortnight here and secure your home for you.”
“So I see. It all comes back to your whore,” his mother said with bitter satisfaction. “I cannot fathom what you hope to achieve by flaunting her at me this way. I already know what you are. I have always known it.”
“And I madam, could say the same of you. But if you wish me to remain, you must treat Eliza with the same courtesy you would extend to a wellborn lady. She may have sold her body to me for money but she had no other choice. Her honesty in doing so is far more pleasing to me than the hypocrisy of the well-raised ladies who�
�d prostitute themselves to me for a title. Though of course, I must pay my sweet Eliza to get her between my sheets, while your gently bred ladies would pay me for the privilege—just as you did when you let your father’s money buy my father’s title for you.”
“I should have strangled you with your cord,” his mother snarled. “I should like to have the footman throw both of you into the gutter where you so rightly belong, but you have the advantage of me now and have tied my hands. I shall make no more attempts to find you a wife. Go marry your vulgar little whore if it pleases you. The two of you would suit.”
“Perhaps we would,” he replied carelessly. “I had not considered the idea. But it has some charm. If nothing else, it would be the first time since our ennoblement that a Neville married a woman whom it was not a penitence to bed.”
Eliza knew better than to listen at keyholes, but even standing several yards away from Lady Hartwood’s door, it had been impossible for her not to overhear Lord Hartwood’s angry interview with his mother. She had been making her way down the hallway that led to his bedroom dressed in a scarlet satin night robe, as instructed, when she had heard the sound of argument proceeding from his mother’s room. She had not intended to eavesdrop, but once she caught a few words of the conversation she found it impossible to draw herself away. She was shocked by the cruelty of his mother’s assault and at the pain fueling Hartwood’s snarling attempts to protect himself. He had not lied about his mother’s rage, only about his indifference to it. She had become accustomed to his brittle irony, but hearing him express it in this context explained so much more about why he resorted to it.
A sudden rustle behind her in the hallway drew her attention away from the conflict taking place on the other side of the door. Attracted by the same loud voices as herself, a crowd of footmen and maids had suddenly found small tasks that needed to be done in the upstairs hallway. They swept carpets, straightened paintings, and dusted woodwork industriously, keeping as quiet as possible so as not to miss a word of the struggle that was going on between mother and son.