Anna was most eager for the snoring to commence. She glanced at the clock on the mantel. The last dose had been given twenty minutes ago. Ten long minutes to go.
“Weeks!” Her mother wailed. “Months! The season will be over and I have nothing to show for it but…this.” She waved a hand at her bound leg in disgust. “Oh, that damned Mr. Templerton.”
“He sent roses this morning.”
Madame scowled at her. “One cannot pay the butcher with roses.”
“One might consider selling a diamond necklace or two,” Anna suggested, knowing full well her mother would never consent to such drastic measures. Madame did not relinquish her personal possessions for any reason. Ever. When something had outlived its usefulness, it was stored away, even if that something was torn, or broken, or hopelessly out of fashion. Even if she’d never cared for the item to start, Madame kept it…because it was hers. Templerton’s roses would be hung to dry before the day was out.
Madame gave her a disgusted look. “I cannot believe you would even suggest such a thing.”
“And how else to you propose to settle your accounts?”
“You are missing the point, girl. It isn’t about what I must do now. It is my future of which I speak.”
Lord, the woman was dramatic. “It is a minor break, Madame. You’ll be fit to dance again before you know it. A few weeks—”
“Weeks, she says,” Madame cut in with a disgusted and graceless wave of her arm, “as though it’s but a trifle to disappear from society for such a time. As though that grasping Mrs. Markhouse isn’t plotting to dispossess me of my hard-earned popularity as we speak, and here I am, powerless to stop her. What do you suppose will become of me when she succeeds, hmm?”
“I suppose you will become the second most notorious woman in London.” Anna pulled her needle through fabric. “I shall try to hold my head up through the shame of it.”
“She mocks me. My own daughter mocks me in my grief.” Madame jabbed a shaking, bejeweled finger at her. “You’ve your father’s cold heart.”
“And his plain eyes,” Anna added for her. Madame did so despair of her only daughter’s drab eyes.
“Nothing of the kind,” Madame slurred. “Engsly had beautiful eyes. Not so bright as my own, mind you, but a lovely blue in their own right. I don’t know where the devil you acquired that dreadful gray.”
“Engsly now, is it?” Anna inquired with a small smile. Her mother had named her father countless times. Without, to Anna’s best recollection, having ever used the same name twice. Engsly was but one more gentleman in a long list of sires. “I am a biological wonder.”
“You’re an ungrateful little monster, is what you are.”
Accustomed to her mother’s sharp tongue and unpredictable temper, Anna registered the sting of the words and set them aside in the blink of an eye. “Yes, you ought to send me packing to my father’s. Let him stomach me. Better yet, allow me the dowry you promised when I was a girl and you may be free of me—”
“Dowry?” Madame stared round-eyed at Anna as if she’d grown a second head. “I did no such thing.”
“Five hundred pounds,” Anna reminded her, just as she had reminded her at least once a month since the estimated age of sixteen.
“Nonsense. What would you do with such a sum, anyway? Hide yourself away in the countryside? Good God, what would people say if Mrs. Wrayburn’s daughter was left to such a fate?”
For a woman who had spent her entire adult life bucking convention, Madame was inordinately sensitive to the opinions of others. And for a woman so keen on acquiring the good opinion of others, she was lamentably stubborn in her ways. Anna knew she had as much chance of convincing her mother to hand over the five hundred pounds as she did convincing her to sell a piece of jewelry. Which is to say, no chance at all.
She glanced at the clock. Five minutes. “Tell me of this Mr. Engsly. Is he a gentleman, a tradesman, a—?”
“Oh, for…” Madame threw her a disgusted look. “It is not Mr. Engsly. It is Lord Engsly. Phillip Michael Haverston, the fifth Marquess of Engsly. Don’t be deliberately stupid, girl.”
“I beg your pardon, Madame,” Anna replied calmly. “In the future, I shall endeavor to separate my stupidity from my gullibility.”
“See that you…What the devil does that mean?”
“Nothing.”
One finely arched eyebrow winged up. “You don’t believe me, is that it?”
Not a single word. “Of course I believe you, Madame. Why would you lie?”
“Oh, I lie for all sorts of reasons,” Madame replied with a breezy wave of her hand. “Mostly for my own amusement.”
“That, I believe,” Anna murmured.
Her mother appeared not to hear her. “But Engsly…I lied about Engsly for your own good.” She sniffed dramatically and adopted a tragic expression. “I’m not so terrible a mother, you know. I don’t look to hurt you.”
“I’m certain you don’t.” That would require an expenditure of time and energy Madame had never appeared inclined to spend on her only child.
“You’d have sought him out,” Madame explained. “I didn’t want that.”
“And why not?” Anna inquired without even a remote interest in what answer her mother might care to offer. Lord Engsly was not her father and there was only one reason Madame wouldn’t want Anna to seek out other family…She didn’t want to share.
“Coldhearted, just as I said. He would have looked for ways to hurt you.”
Anna tugged on her thread, completing a tight French knot. “Then I am grateful for your protection.”
Her mother made an unpleasant noise in the back of her throat that Anna hoped indicated she was nearer to sleep and snoring. “Don’t believe me. No one ever believes me.”
Only those with sense. “That is not—”
“I’ve proof, you know.”
The hand holding the needle stilled.
This was new.
Her mother had given her plenty of names over the years, and a variety of fantastical stories attached to those names. Her father was Robert Henry, the courageous officer killed in battle whilst defending Wellington himself. He was Charlie Figg, the sweet son of a vicar who met with a tragic fate at the end of a highwayman’s pistol. He was Raphael Moore, the dashing highwayman who’d met his somewhat less tragic fate at the end of the gallows’ rope.
Anna had taken the stories with a grain—or bucket, as need be—of salt, but never before had her mother offered proof.
Curious but skeptical, Anna narrowed her gaze. “What sort of proof?”
“A contract,” Madame replied with an airy smugness. “Made him sign one, same as the others.”
“You had a contract with my father?” She’d never considered that a possibility. She’d been born before her mother had married Captain Wrayburn and, shortly after his death, become the Notorious Mrs. Wrayburn. It had never been clear (nor of particular interest) to Anna whether or not her mother had made official arrangements with men in the distant past.
“Much good it did me,” Madame grumbled, her voice becoming notably more slurred. The glaze over her eyes grew thicker.
“Where is it?” Anna demanded, but her mother’s gaze had tracked to a corner of the room where it remained, unfocused and unseeing. Anna tossed her embroidery loop aside and reached out to give the woman a quick shake. “Madame, where is it?”
“What?” Madame blinked at her like a sleepy, irritated owl. “Where is what?”
“The contract you had with my father, where do you keep it?”
“With the others, of course. Must you be so loud?” She pushed away Anna’s hands. “Let me be.”
Anna flicked her gaze at the ceiling. The others were no doubt in the locked sitting room off the master bedchambers. Madame liked to keep her most prized possessions nearby.
“I want to see it. I want…Madame?” Anna watched in frustration as her mother’s eyes slid closed. “Madame.”
It
was no use, Mrs. Wrayburn had succumbed to the laudanum at last.
Damn it.
She scowled in defeat at the sleeping form.
Damn, damn, damn it.
“Now you give me peace?” she groused. “Confounded, disagreeable—”
“I wish to see that contract.”
Anna started at the husky voice that sounded behind her. Turning in her seat, she found her companion, and one-time governess, standing in the open door of the room.
A remarkably large-boned woman of advancing years who towered over Anna by more than half a foot, Mrs. Culpepper possessed hands that looked strong enough to crack walnuts, shoulders broad enough to be mistaken for a man’s, and unbeknownst to most, an enviable mane of thick black hair she kept tightly bound beneath a frilly cap.
Anna had heard the nickname “Ogress” whispered by a gentleman once. It was the only occasion in which she had requested her mother remove a specific guest from the house. The request had been denied, but she’d felt the better for trying.
Mrs. Culpepper was no ogress. She was a friend and confidante, a woman of uncommon intelligence and admirable character. Had the offending idiot troubled to set down his drink and look beyond what was merely different, he’d have seen she was also quite handsome, with a well-proportioned nose, large brown eyes, and full lips that were more often to be found smiling than not.
Anna gave her mother one last look of disgust, then left her seat to meet with Mrs. Culpepper in the hall.
“Were you eavesdropping just now?” Anna teased, pulling the door shut behind her.
“Nothing of the sort. I overheard the two of you speaking whilst passing in the hall.”
“You overheard an entire conversation in passing?”
“Indeed.” Mrs. Culpepper took her arm and ushered them both down the hall at a clipped pace. “Come along, dear.”
“What? No.” She took a fretful glance over her shoulder, half expecting her mother to come stalking out the sick room. “We cannot go snooping about Madame’s chambers.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s wrong.” She’d have thought that fairly obvious.
Mrs. Culpepper threw her a bland look without slowing her pace. Right and wrong were primarily academic considerations in Anover House.
“Very well,” Anna conceded, “because Madame will hear of it and rain hell upon our heads.”
“By locking you up like a princess in a castle?” She pulled Anna up a back stairwell. “Yes, we should hate to see that happen.”
“She might ban me from the library.”
“The marvelous thing about libraries is that their contents can be easily moved.”
“But what if she—?”
Mrs. Culpepper stopped at the top of the stairs, turned, and took Anna by the shoulders. “Now you look at me, and you listen carefully. Your mother is on another level of this house, where she will remain unconscious for the next eight hours, thank you, heavenly Father. Anyone else who might give a fig is out of the house and fully occupied devising the means that will allow them to remain out of the house for as long as possible. Everyone else can be bought off. You are not likely to see this opportunity again.”
All valid points, but before Anna could nod agreement, Mrs. Culpepper turned and marched resolutely down the hall. Anna followed cautiously, casting furtive looks behind her, then watched in awe as the woman who’d once been paid to be a child’s moral compass slid a key into the lock of the most sacred, most forbidden of rooms at Anover House.
“Where did you get that?” Anna demanded in a whisper as her friend opened the door.
“Never you mind. Suffice it to say…Oh…” Mrs. Culpepper went still at the sight of the sitting room. “Oh, saints preserve us.”
Anna peeked around Mrs. Culpepper and sucked in a quick breath. “Good Lord.”
The room was filled, positively filled, with…everything.
Boxes and chests, furniture and clothing. There were crates and trunks, and odds and ends—some odder than others, and some of them unidentifiable—covering the crates and trunks. An épée peeked out from behind an armoire, the familiar glitter of diamonds spilled out of a hat box, and everywhere one looked, there were piles upon piles of paper.
Some women used their sitting rooms to write correspondence and receive friends. Mrs. Wrayburn used hers as a vault. These were the items she considered too valuable to be stored in the attic. These were her most meaningful, most treasured possessions.
Anna’s eyes widened at the sight of an old-fashioned gentleman’s nightcap perched atop a fraying parasol sticking out of a boot.
Shaking her head in wonder, she said the only words that came to mind. “My mother is most odd.”
“Indeed,” Mrs. Culpepper agreed with feeling. “Well, no use in dillydallying. Older paperwork is over here.”
Anna dragged her eyes away from the bizarre assemblage and watched Mrs. Culpepper pick her way expertly across the room. “You’ve been in here?”
“I have. Madame likes to have things dusted out and reorganized every now and then. With careful oversight, mind you.” She lifted her skirts to step over a stack of books. “But it was not so filled as this the last time I was allowed access.”
Anna glanced nervously over her shoulder at the door. “We ought not be doing this.”
Mrs. Culpepper calmly opened a small wooden chest and began to extract stacks of letters and papers. “Breaking into your mother’s sitting room? Too late, I’m afraid. But if needs must, I shall blame this escapade on you. Dragged me straight inside, you did.”
“I have been told I can be heartless.”
Mrs. Culpepper flicked her a stern look. “You shouldn’t repeat such nastiness, even in jest. It gives the words a weight they do not deserve. Now come along and help, dear.”
Poking fun at her mother’s sentiments seemed the very thing to lighten their sting, but experience told Anna that this was not an argument she was likely to win.
With a shrug, she forged her way through the room to Mrs. Culpepper and picked a mound of papers to dig through. She found receipts, correspondence to her long-deceased great-aunt, a number of invitations to balls and dinner parties, and what looked to be pages that had been removed from at least two ledgers. All of it more than a decade old. She found much the same in the next pile, and the next, and the one after that.
“This could take days,” Anna muttered after what felt like hours of searching.
“I may have something,” Mrs. Culpepper announced, and Anna looked up to see her opening an oversized, unmarked book. “It’s a journal. It’s…Oh my.” Mrs. Culpepper’s eyebrows winged up as she turned one page, then another. “It is a most explicit journal. She names her paramours, the generalities of their contracts, her opinions of their particular…er, charms and…and…” Mrs. Culpepper tilted her head and grimaced. “Good heavens, did you know your mother can sketch?”
“No.” Anna leaned forward for a look, but Mrs. Culpepper drew the book away. “I suppose the value in such a book would be in blackmail.”
Mrs. Culpepper shook her head and gingerly turned another page. “Any gentleman in search of a discrete affair would keep well away from your mother. Although, some of them might be willing to pay to have these sketches destroyed. Particularly Mr. Hayes.” She squinted a little at the page and tsked in sympathy. “…That poor man.”
Anna had been introduced to Mr. Hayes two years ago. She recalled a rail-thin man with dull amber eyes who had introduced himself to her bust. “May I see?”
Mrs. Culpepper yanked the journal away again and pressed the open pages against her chest. “Certainly not.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Anna groaned, dropping her hand. “I am the grown, illegitimate daughter of the Mrs. Wrayburn. Who the deuce will know or care if I see another naughty drawing?”
“I do, and so would your mother.”
“Have you gone daft?” At the estimated age of ten, Anna had been given a detail
ed accounting of what went on between men and women behind closed doors. The lesson had been delivered at her mother’s orders and had included a variety of visual aids. According to Mrs. Wrayburn, carnal innocence was but a silly euphemism for ignorance, and ignorance was but an open door for curiosity and its many unpleasant consequences. It was rare for Anna to be in agreement with her mother on anything, but in this matter, they were in complete accord.
Anna reached for the journal again. “I’ve seen dozens—”
“There are several self-portraits.”
“Oh.” She winced and drew her hand away. “Oh, ick.”
Mrs. Culpepper sniffed. “Indeed.”
Wrinkling her nose, Anna waved her hand in the general direction of the offending book. “Look at the older entries.”
Mrs. Culpepper flipped through page after page of the journal. “The earliest is well after you would have been born. I think…” At last, her eyes landed on a page and stayed. “Wait…Wait a…Here it is. Good heavens, here it is. Listen to this…‘Anna’s birthday approaches. I sent word to her father but naught will come of it. There will be no response or visit from Engsly.’”
Mrs. Culpepper caught Anna’s gaze over the book in the ensuing silence. “Well,” she said at length. “It would seem you really are the daughter of the late Lord Engsly.”
“It would seem I am,” Anna agreed. Pushing aside an old cloak and a pair of half boots, she took a seat on one of the trunks and waited for a feeling of excitement or recognition, or even anger, but nothing came. She felt strangely detached from the news, as if she were hearing of someone else’s lineage. “Is there anything else?”
Mrs. Culpepper scanned the page. “Let us see…‘no word or visit from Engsly,’” she repeated, “‘though perhaps it is best, as the child grows uncommonly…’” Mrs. Culpepper trailed off, lifted her eyes from the page, and cleared her throat. “There’s no need to read this. We have the information we need.”
Practically Wicked Page 4