How to Be a Proper Lady

by Katharine Ashe

  After a bit, it seemed very quiet in the parlor. She looked up. Mr. Yale and Serena were both looking at the spray of sugar across the lap of her pretty green gown.

  “Oh, bother.”

  The next lesson had to do with cutlery, the lesson following that with taking a gentleman’s arm, and the lesson after that with her speech.

  “I know I’ve got an American accent. A little. But I don’t see what’s so bad about that,” Viola said, clutching her bonnet to her head as the sea breeze whipped across the coastal road. The sight of two horses’ rear ends so close in front of her was still a little unnerving, but Mr. Yale handled the ribbons with ease and Serena seemed comfortable. Both had said she must become accustomed to riding in this sort of vehicle.

  “Your accent is charming, Miss Carlyle.”

  “Then what’s wrong with the way I speak?”

  “You must curtail your use of contractions.” He always gave instruction like this, with masculine grace, whether he was sober or inebriated. He had not yet been drinking today but would probably as soon as they returned from their drive. It never seemed to affect his manner with her, though, which remained openly admiring and entirely unthreatening. Why she imagined he should feel threatening, she hadn’t a very clear idea, except that he was an actual gentleman and she had not known one since she was a girl. And he was quite attractive.

  “What’s wrong with contractions?”

  “Not a thing,” he replied readily. “If you wish to appear very fashionable and somewhat fast, you may employ them.”

  “Fast?”

  He lifted a single brow.

  “Oh. I don’t suppose I do. Do I?”

  “Definitely not,” Serena stated.

  Lessons in comportment were interspersed with visits to the nursery to coo and tickle her niece’s tiny fingers and toes, as well as periods of torture visited upon her by Jane and her sister’s haughty maid, whom Serena insisted was quite nice once one got to know her. But since on one occasion she plucked viciously at Viola’s eyebrows until her head ached, on another she commanded the maids to scrub the soles of her feet and elbows and palms with pumice until raw, and on a third submitted her to the sheer boredom of having her nails cut, cleaned, and buffed as though she weren’t capable of grooming herself, Viola had no very high opinion of the woman. When the maid suggested to her mistress that her hair be cut short to suit present fashion, Viola finally balked.

  “My hair stays. When the wind is high, it must be long enough to tie back in a queue.”

  Serena stroked her fingertips through Viola’s thick waves. “It is perfect as is.”

  When Viola mastered the proper use of forks, spoons, and knives, and the task of pouring out tea, she felt ready to move on to more challenging tasks. Her optimism proved overly ambitious.

  “My hands aren’t made for this.” Her fingers, raw from the scrubbing, slipped on the paintbrush. A smear of blue watercolor decorated the paper on the easel before her.

  “Are not suited,” Mr. Yale corrected. “Your hands are not suited to this. But in any case ladies must never speak of their hands.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it gives gentlemen ideas they ought not to entertain in company.”

  Serena’s eyes popped wide. Viola grinned.

  Mr. Yale looked between them, his brows innocently raised. “I understood we were being frank in the service of Miss Carlyle’s education.”

  “We are. But Wyn, really.”

  “My lady, given that your husband was once one of the greatest libertines to grace London drawing rooms, I wonder at your squeamishness.”

  “He is reformed. Of course.” Her mismatched eyes danced.

  Viola dashed more paint onto the canvas and tilted her head sideways. Her ship looked a lot like an armadillo. She sighed. “He has a good point, Ser. It isn’t as if-”

  “It is not as though.”

  “It is not as though I don’t know what men are thinking half the time. I lived with fifty-four men aboard ship-”

  “You have been marginally acquainted with fifty-four- Good God, fifty-four?”

  “I have been well acquainted with fifty-four men for a decade. Men are interested in one thing above all else.” Like the man she had imbecilically fallen in love with who had wanted her only for that one thing… other than bringing her home.

  “Not all men.” Serena dabbed at her own canvas with a cloth, her lip caught between her teeth. “Mr. Yale has spent a sennight helping us school you without any thought of that sort of thing, haven’t you, Wyn?”

  She and Viola both looked at him for confirmation.

  “Quite so,” he said without inflection.

  “See?” Serena returned her attention to her painting.

  The gentleman’s mouth lifted at the corner and he winked at Viola.

  She laughed. “Don’t fret, Mr. Yale. I know you haven’t that sort of interest in me.”

  His eyes widened. “I beg your pardon. I am as susceptible to a pretty face and form as the next fellow.”

  “You don’t have to- That is, you needn’t pretend indignation with me, sir.” She flapped the paintbrush back and forth.

  “I shall endeavor not to consider that an insult.”

  “Oh, you shouldn’t. Mustn’t. Although I’m- I am still uncertain as to why you remain here helping when you are not interested in me in that manner.”

  Serena chuckled. “You are as refreshingly honest and confident of your charms as ever, Vi. I adore you for it.”

  “Was I confident when we were children?”

  “Entirely, to the very moment those sailors walked up that cliff and strode toward us. You flicked your black lashes and gave them a saucy grin, demanding in the sweetest tones imaginable that they state their names and business on your father’s land. They were so bemused that I believe if we had thought to run we would have had plenty of head start on them.”

  “But we did not think to run. And now I am here learning how to paint watercolors instead of having already mastered it ten years ago.”

  “You never would have mastered it.” Mr. Yale peered over her shoulder. “You haven’t a jot of natural talent for it. Piano, anyone?”

  Serena set down her brush. “What a relief. I don’t care for painting in the least.”

  “Then why on earth have-”

  “You said you wished to learn a lady’s every accomplishment.” Serena moved toward the door. “The piano is in the drawing room, as well as the harp, of course, and so shall tea be in a quarter hour.”

  Viola watched her sister disappear and chewed on the end of her paintbrush. She glanced back at her mishmash of a painting. Her shoulders sagged. Merely seven days of this and already she’d had enough. She would master it, but she wished painting and eating and walking were as easy as tying an anchor bend or rigging a jib sail.

  Mr. Yale stood and offered his arm.

  She expelled a frustrated breath. “I don’t really need to take your arm to walk to the drawing room two doors away, do I?”

  “Practice, practice.”

  She eyed him. “You are as disinterested as you insist, aren’t you, Mr. Yale?”

  “Not disinterested, Miss Carlyle,” he said quite soberly. “Merely loyal to a man who has saved my life more than once.”

  She stared.

  “Ladies do not gape.”

  She snapped her mouth shut and stood. She looked down at their feet, his shining shoes, her delicate slippers peeking out from beneath her hem that did not look like her feet or hem at all.

  “Tell me again how you and he know one another.”

  “I am not at liberty to divulge that.” He drew her hand to his forearm. “But perhaps if you ask him, he might be inclined to tell you. I suspect indeed he would.”

  “You have mistaken matters, you know.”

  “I am quite certain I haven’t.”

  A sick sensation lodged in her stomach. “What did he tell you?”

  Mr. Yale reg
arded her for an extended moment then said, “He did not tell me anything. He did not need to.”

  “Well, you are wrong. But I don’t believe I will ever see him again to ask him anything, anyway.”

  “I fear I must churlishly insist, madam, that you are quite likely to be disproven in that.”

  “Do you know, Mr. Yale, I think the greatest challenge to becoming a lady is accepting that gentlemen seem to think they know better than me. In fact, I have quite a strong suspicion that I won’t ever manage that. So perhaps I will never be a lady after all.” She flashed him a smile. “Oh, what a relief. I was beginning to worry.”

  She turned and left the room without any assistance from him or anyone.

  “His Excellency refuses to sell.” Viscount Gray sat across the rough wooden table from Jin, the late-summer morning spreading the pub with murky light. The establishment tucked in a quiet corner of London was empty of all but the pair of them. Like Jin, the viscount had dressed simply for their rendezvous, but the confident set of his jaw and his direct gaze marked him unmistakably as an aristocrat.

  “The bishop’s secretary assured me that no offer could tempt him to relinquish any part of his collection of Eastern art. Especially not that piece.” Gray lifted his tankard of ale. He glanced over the rim. “What is in the box, Jin?”

  “Nothing of note.” Only his identity.

  “Then why ask me to assist you? You have never asked for my help with anything before.” His voice remained mild, his posture relaxed. But Colin Gray was no fool. The Admiralty and the king did not trust the head agent of their secret little club without good reason.

  “It seemed the most likely route to acquiring it.”

  Gray nodded. “Of course.”

  Neither needed to speak the truth: Jin held the respect of several commissioners of the Board of the Admiralty. But Gray had social connections that made making an inquiry into the sale of an antiquity in a lord’s private collection unremarkable.

  “Given that I have assisted you without question, however,” the viscount added, “I might be granted an explanation.”

  “Your assistance has garnered me nothing. And if you had not wished to render it, you need not have.” Jin moved to stand up.

  The viscount’s hand wrapped about his wrist like an iron band.

  “You asked me because you wish anonymity in this.” An edge sharpened Gray’s voice. “I expect to know why.”

  “Take your hand off of me, Colin, or I will cut it off.”

  Dark blue eyes locked with Jin’s. “You are unarmed.”

  “Are you quite certain of that?”

  Gray released him but his gaze remained unyielding. “Seven years ago when we began this I did not understand why Blackwood trusted you so thoroughly.”

  “Didn’t you? Then what game have you been playing all this time to include me in your Club? Hold your friends close but your enemies closer?”

  “Perhaps at first. You were a remarkable asset, with your connections at ports and through every layer of London, it seemed. And your ship.”

  Jin leaned back and crossed his arms loosely. “I have my uses, then?”

  “But I soon came to see what Leam knew long ago,” Gray said as though he had not spoken. “You and I have never seen eye to eye. You are unpredictable and your every move appears designed to further only your own goals. But appearances are deceiving. Beside Leam, Jinan, you are the one man with whom I would entrust my life.” He held his gaze. “Tell me. I may be able to help.”

  Jin studied the nobleman. Gray pursued his mission not because he must; his wealth and title were secure. He served king and country because honor and duty meant more to him than his life. Gray considered each one of his fellow agents in the Club-Leam, Wyn, Constance, even him-part of that duty. Indeed, his first duty.

  “This is not entirely about me, is it, Colin?”

  “Blackwood. And Yale. I know better than anyone what you have done for them. I know you shielded Leam from me when he wished to escape the Club. You took your ship to the North Sea to hound those Scottish rebels when you wished to be already sailing west. You did it because you hoped it would deter me from involving Leam.”

  Jin did not deny it. Gray was wise for a man only a few years his senior.

  “And although Yale has never said a word about it, I know you were there the night he shot that girl. I know Constance has asked for your help with him, and suspect that you have just seen him not because he sought you out upon your return but rather the opposite.”

  “Do you know all that? And what did you learn from it, I wonder?”

  Gray ran his hand behind his neck. “Good Lord, it’s like speaking with Socrates. An improvement over speaking to thin air, though, after sending you letters for a year and a half that you did not answer.” He stood up. “Jin, if you find you should need my help, you shall have it. Until then, the director must know whether you can be counted on to see to the trouble in Malta. Yale told you of that matter, I hope.”

  “He mentioned it.”

  “Are you with us still, or have you gone the way Blackwood has after all? Constance insists you are yet part of the Club, but I will have it from you now, finally.”

  Why not? He might as well sail across the Mediterranean on another errand for the king and the Falcon Club’s secret director. For the first time in two years he had nothing better to do, and distance from this island would suit him well. The box he wanted was not within his reach, nor the woman. Both were now part of a society that, like this man, tolerated him for his skills but would always mistrust him because of those same skills. He had forged his reputation on violence and he was not, despite all, one of them.

  “I will contact you.”

  Gray nodded. “I expect to hear from you soon.” He extended his hand. Jin grasped it.

  “Colin.” He paused, uncertain. The words came then without thought, from a place within him he did not wish to acknowledge. “Thank you.”

  The viscount’s dark eyes glinted. “You are welcome.”

  Jin sat in the pub alone for only minutes before Mattie and Billy arrived.

  “Matouba says as he’s tried out this place afore and they don’t like his sort, he’s waiting at the ship.” Billy grinned, sliding into a chair.

  Mattie grunted at the barkeep and lowered his mass. “We seen His Lordship leaving. Looked black as Matouba. Put his knickers in a knot, did you?”

  Jin leveled an even look at him. “Have you learned anything of value?”

  “Junior footman. Not many of them in the house, though. Bishop’s got a load of goodies he don’t want servants messing with.” Mattie’s thick brow furrowed. “Don’t know if this’ll be an easy one to nab.”

  “When’s that ever stopped us afore?” Billy showed all his teeth.

  Mattie shrugged and took up his glass.

  “What is this junior footman’s name?” Jin asked.

  “Hole Pecker.”

  He lifted a brow.

  Billy smiled even broader. “Mattie and I didn’t believe it neither, Cap’n. But that’s the name his mum gave him.”

  “His schedule is regular?”

  “Leaves the house ’bout ten o’clock, when the bishop turns in.” Mattie swallowed the last of his brew and laid his palms on the table. “See here. Billy and me and Matouba, we want to do this ’stead of you.”

  “I have no intention of doing anything at this time. Merely an innocent interest in the bishop’s household staff.”

  Billy’s eyes went wide. Mattie’s narrowed. But Jin had intended the warning in his tone.

  “Listen here.” Mattie’s hand fisted. “You can’t be doing this sort of thing no more.”

  “He’s right, Cap’n,” Billy piped, his smile momentarily dimmed. “Ain’t right no more.”

  “I am doing nothing, as I have just said. We are no longer in that line of business, gentlemen. At least not as long as you work for m-”

  “He’s gonna say we got to keep out
of his business now, Bill,” Mattie broke in. “Reckon Miss Carlyle weren’t wrong when she said we got us the most stubborn arrogant ass of a captain this side of the world.”

  “She sure did say that.” Billy’s head bounced thoughtfully.

  Jin’s mouth crept into a grin.

  “I sure do miss the lady.” Billy’s downy cheeks shaded to pink. “How’s she doin’ in that big ole house, Cap’n?”

  “Well, when last I saw her.”

  “Were she well, then?” Mattie leveled him a penetrating stare beneath bushy brows.

  Billy grinned. “Bet Lady Redstone’s got her tricked out in skirts and ribbons and all them lady things.”

  As it should be. And it still astounded him after these weeks that the only place he wished to be was there with her. Wherever with her, wearing whatever she chose. Or nothing. “Gentlemen, is the ship fitted out?”

  “Right ready to haul away. We going somewheres?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Mattie pursed his fleshy lips. “You ain’t going to bribe Pecker into stealing that box for you, then, or p’raps unlocking the back door so you can go on in and steal it yourself? ’Cause I thought maybe that’s what you’d been planning.”

  “No plans, Matt.” He stood. “Idle curiosity.”

  He left them then, walking through the streets busy with the traffic of carriages and pedestrians, hawkers and flower girls and all the whirl of London he had come to know years earlier when he had first made his way to England in search of atonement in the land of half his ancestors. The unknown half.

  Gray was right. All of London’s strata were known to him, from the lords who sat in Parliament to the boys who filched those lords’ billfolds to feed hungry families. He had known it all, and the life he led had satisfied him to some extent.

  No longer. Restlessness spun through him now, and he could find no peace. But neither did he have a goal any longer, and the one avenue of hope he had retained after leaving Viola in Devonshire was closed to him now. Perhaps his father had been a gentleman of name and means. Perhaps. Without that box he would never know.

  He paused to slip a guinea into the pocket of a blind beggar woman. Fast as a whip she gripped his fingers.