The Peer’s Roguish Word

by Archer, Kate

  “Yes, we are near penniless,” Giles said, “but I am sure we will not be forced to return to our father’s estates. The fates are not so cruel as that. I think this circumstance cannot go on forever. Once our fathers perceive that we cannot be forced to marry, they will give it up. The old cabal will have to satisfy themselves that they’ve had their way with Hampton, Lockwood, Ashworth, and Cabot.”

  “I knew we’d be the last hold outs,” Dalton said. “Cabot was hopeless. A horse-mad gentleman develops a preference for a horse-mad lady. I did my best to throw them off, but I suspected all along it was a losing proposition.”

  “So far, all of your propositions have been losing. You could not even keep Lockwood safely above stairs behind a sturdy locked door. By the by, there is a whispered rumor going about that Miss Darlington rode Cabot’s horse for the thousand guinea stakes,” Giles said. “Apparently, the ladies are all finding it highly romantic.”

  Dalton downed his brandy. “Watch that you do not find anything highly romantic this season. Miss Dell, in particular. You fancy yourself in love with her, no doubt.”

  “What matter if I do?” Giles said. “She is a charming lady.”

  “As you may have noted, had you paid the slightest bit of attention, flirtations have a way of getting out of hand. Right out of hand and to an altar.”

  “Come now, Dalton,” Giles said, laughing. “How many years have you known me to be infatuated with a lady?”

  “As many years as I have known you.”

  “And how many years has it been the same lady?”

  “None,” Dalton admitted.

  “There you have it,” Giles said. “Being in love is as air to me, I must have it. However, it is a fickle and fleeting thing.”

  In truth, though Giles was in the habit of spouting off about love, what he felt for the parade of ladies over the seasons was not love. Not in its finest sense. Not as Shakespeare would have it. Not as Byron or Wordsworth or Blake would have it. His experience of love began with a merry chase—and then when the chase was over, the feeling reliably faded. He was fairly sure that love as poets and playwrights imagined it did not even exist.

  He ought to be more than fairly sure. His own parents had come to hate each other. It could not have ever been real love. Nobody in the same house with them now could fail to feel the icicles forming in the air and the dagger looks shot across the room. It was hinted to him once that his father had been besotted, but his mother had married for title. That was an even more ghastly idea. What if real love was possible and he fell prey to it? What if he put himself in the power of a lady? Only to discover too late that she’d only wished to be a duchess…

  He sometimes berated himself for his high-flown ideas about love. It was no wonder at all that real people could not live up to it and would always disappoint. Though he hid all knowledge of it from his friends and understood it to be a fantasy, he could not forsake his volumes of Shakespeare. Many a school break, while closeted in his room as his parents raged below him, he’d lost himself in those volumes. Who could not be touched by Beatrice and Benedick or Rosalind and Orlando? If he were feeling particularly crossed, he might even thumb through Romeo and Juliet. Though, he’d only read the ending once and thought that was quite enough for one lifetime.

  As for Miss Austen, well, those novels were even more hidden from view. Only LaRue knew of their existence. His friends would excoriate him if they ever discovered his appreciation of the lady. Though, who could not pray that Elizabeth and Darcy would come together? Who could not be utterly disappointed in Willoughby, no matter that one had already read the story and knew he would not come up to snuff?

  Those stories were all dreams of what mankind aspired to, but in no way reality. Infatuation was fleeting, though it masqueraded as love. If real love as Shakespeare and Miss Austen wrote it did exist, it would be far too fraught with peril and he would steer well clear of it.

  It suited him to ally himself with Dalton. Neither of them would marry for quite many years yet, and then only to get an heir. Romance was all well and good to play at, but one should not take it seriously. Fire brought warmth, but get too close and be burned.

  He had lost his other friends to the altar, but he would not lose Dalton. At least, he hoped not. Dalton was the only thing between him and a flea-infested flat somewhere in Cheapside. Or even further afield.

  “Look to yourself, Dalton,” he said. “See that you do not make the mistake with Miss Danworth. You and the lady of the flowing blond curls are frighteningly well-suited—you both swim in the same chilly sea.”

  “Do you imply we are both cold fish?” Dalton asked.

  “Rather,” Giles said, laughing. “You have said yourself that underneath her smiles she’s as cold as ice. You might stare crossly at each other over a dining table for all your days and neither of you would wonder why the other one scowled.”

  “I can assure you Miss Danworth is no danger to me,” Dalton said. “And I am even less of a danger to her. My father is her father’s entailed heir and I believe it irritates the lady.”

  “Really?” Giles asked. “I didn’t know.”

  “He is a distant cousin, and that side of the family has had a remarkable run of daughters. I do not wish to have anything to do with it and pray the old fellow will remarry and produce a true heir.” Dalton paused, then said quietly, “Though I would pity the woman who married him, he is an unpleasant sort in public and I presume worse in private.”

  “There were rumors,” Giles said, “when his wife still lived.”

  “Yes, there were,” Dalton said briskly. “In any case, make sure Miss Dell remains only a flirtation. Now, we’d better go or we will be late, despite my planning.”

  Chapter Two

  Kitty had arrived at the London house sans telescope. She supposed after all it was no great loss. The houses were so crowded together that she’d have to climb to the roof to see anything interesting. She had managed to smuggle her microscope in an oversized hat box. It had been a sixteenth birthday present from her father and was too precious to leave behind. What if there were housebreakers who perceived its worth?

  On the day she had been given it, her father had pulled her into his study. He’d handed her a small book to go along with the microscope. In low whispers, he’d told her that the lenses in the apparatus were from van Leeuwenhoek’s own collection and the book contained drawings of some of his earliest observations. Kitty had been stunned and asked how these things could possibly have been acquired. Her father would not say specifically, only that there were certain persons to be met in dark and low neighborhoods who traded in such things. He had requested that such a lens be located and brought to him. Three years and a large sum later, it had been.

  It was an extraordinary piece of equipment and she would keep it with her always. She did not expect to see anything remarkable under it in town, though she could at least collect some local flora to examine.

  She had not often been to the house on Berkeley Square and when she had, she’d always stayed in the nursery, sharing a large old, creaky bed with her younger sister. Now, a room and attached sitting room had been prepared especially for her use.

  Her dear mother had arranged everything just as Kitty would wish. The rooms had a soft look to them, filled as they were with rounded furniture and rich velvets in the deep blues and purples she favored. The sitting room had freshly painted white bookshelves, left empty for her to fill. An almost ludicrously overstuffed armchair in navy velvet with silver tacking was ready to accommodate her late-night reading. The thick carpet underfoot imbued the place with a hushed feel. Kitty had sometimes wondered if her love of softness was in some way a rebuke to her intellectual mind. Still, she could not be comfortable in anything over-austere.

  Kitty was well aware that it had been her mother alone who had made all the arrangements. Her father, Lord Penderton, was perennially buried in his books and would not notice if the whole house had undergone a transformat
ion, other than tripping over moved furniture. It was the baroness who was the beating heart of the house.

  Lady Penderton was in the habit of entering a room where her family could be found, sizing the whole thing up, and issuing orders accordingly. On their first evening in town, she had come into the drawing room, stood for a moment, and said: “My dear husband, I can see your knees grow cold though you would not notice, being engrossed in a book as you are. I’ll have a blanket fetched. Kitty, your eyes grow tired, do stop reading for ten minutes to give them a rest. Frederick, do come away from the window. Miss Crimpleton will not pass by for wishing. You’ll feel better if you sit by me and tell me all about your last conversation with the girl. There, now. Have we all been sorted out?”

  And of course, they had been sorted out. Lord Penderton’s knees warmed, Kitty’s eyes felt better, and Frederick relieved his feelings to his mother’s sympathetic ear. After that was accomplished, Lady Penderton wrote a long letter to Kitty’s younger sister, so that she might not feel left out, though she stayed behind in the country.

  Lord Penderton often said he would end up starving if his wife did not direct him to the dining room at the appropriate hour. Kitty thought that was right. None of them would get on very well without Lady Penderton. She was not at all intellectual. She only occasionally picked up a book and then only a novel filled with haunted castles and the poor maidens who attempted to survive them. One might think a scholar such as Lord Penderton and a lady uninterested in libraries would not be well suited. And yet, they were. As Lady Penderton often said, “Knowledge is an excellent thing, but somebody must keep us all alive.”

  Before Kitty and Frederick had left for the much-anticipated meeting of Mr. Lackington at Lackington & Allen, Lady Penderton had issued practical advice.

  “Frederick, dear,” she said, “do keep a close watch on your sister. I understand the place is vast and as it is a vast place filled with books, I do not like to think of our Kitty getting lost in there. Your father was once disappeared into the place for so long that I had to send a footman in after him. He was eventually located, buried under a pile of books about the Roman Empire. It is still not clear whether they fell on him, or if he’d been reading them one by one.”

  Since they’d set off, it had taken nearly an hour to reach Finsbury Square, though they would have easily covered the distance in half the time in the countryside. It seemed everybody in England was out in their conveyance and their own coachman had a time of it, weaving and dodging through the chaos.

  Finally though, they had arrived. Lackington & Allen, Temple of the Muses. Frederick had helped her down to the sidewalk and Kitty took in the premises. Its arched windows and columns beckoned. She was nearly awestruck to contemplate what lay beyond its doors.

  “Miss Dell! I say, Miss Dell!”

  Kitty turned to the sound. To her surprise, Lord Grayson was at once waving and dismounting his horse. Kitty felt the familiar leap in her stomach at the sight of him, and then just as quickly dismissed it. It was one thing to look upon Lord Grayson’s fine person, but another to converse with him.

  “Who?” Frederick said softly to her.

  “Grayson,” Kitty whispered back.

  “Miss Dell,” Lord Grayson said, handing off his horse to a boy and hurrying to them. “You are in town!”

  “Most apparently, Lord Grayson, as you can see,” Kitty said.

  “Yes, I see, indeed.” Lord Grayson looked curiously at Frederick.

  Kitty stifled a sigh. “May I introduce you to Mr. Dell, he is my brother. Frederick, this is Lord Grayson.”

  “Brother? Ah, very good. Of course, brother,” Lord Grayson said.

  The lord, having understood that Frederick was Miss Dell’s brother, seemed to not require any more information about him. He turned back to Kitty. “May I escort you somewhere?” he asked.

  “I am most obviously escorted by my brother, Lord Grayson,” Kitty said. “And, we have an appointment with Mr. Lackington and would not wish to be late.”

  “Lackington?” Lord Grayson asked.

  “Lackington,” Kitty repeated.

  “Oh! Lackington. The shop. The shop right here. Books, of course. I have not forgotten your penchant for them.”

  “And I have not forgotten your aversion to them,” Kitty said in a pleasant tone. “Now, we’d best be off.”

  Frederick bowed to the lord and escorted his sister inside. “My God,” he said to Kitty, “You told me he was a dandy, but he makes your average peacock look positively dowdy.”

  “That is Lord Grayson, Frederick,” Kitty said, “he is like a prettily wrapped box that once opened is discovered to be empty.”

  “Wait a minute,” Frederick said, “he is not the fellow that, well, how do I say it? The one that…leads ladies on.”

  “I would not be surprised,” Kitty said. “There can be no gentleman that surpasses Lord Grayson in inventing ridiculous compliments and high-flown phrases. I imagine some females might be taken in by it.”

  “See that you are not one of them,” Fredrick said in his stern older brother tone. “I would not like it said that my sister was the victim of disappointed hopes.”

  Kitty suppressed a giggle. “Frederick,” she said, “nothing could be less of a danger to me.”

  Though Kitty might have said more of Lord Grayson, her thoughts were wholly captured by what lay before her. The massive circular counter with its high dome overhead, generously staffed, where anybody might pay for a book they had longed for, or perhaps had not even known existed. The bookshelves themselves, soaring toward the sky, their upper limits reached by rolling ladders. The people, everywhere, looking at a book or having an intense conversation about a book. Stairs leading to even more rows of books. It was glorious.

  Frederick told a clerk their purpose and they were speedily escorted up those stairs and to one of the private apartments set aside for ladies and gentlemen requiring quiet.

  Though it was a lovely room, with rare books carefully placed under glass and large bow windows overlooking the square, Kitty could settle her eyes nowhere. She was to finally meet Mr. Lackington.

  Frederick had a cursory look at the books under glass, quietly sighed, and took himself to the window.

  Kitty turned as she heard the door open.

  Mr. Lackington was a smartly dressed gentleman in his middle age, only an ink-smudge on one of his cuffs giving away his profession. To Kitty’s surprise, he was accompanied by a very tiny older lady in dark bombazine, her small head topped off by a frilled a lace cap. Kitty presumed it was Mr. Lackington’s mother and supposed it was a particular honor that he should bring her.

  “Miss Dell! Mr. Dell!” Mr. Lackington said, coming forward to greet them.

  Kitty said, “How pleased I am to finally meet you in person, Mr. Lackington.”

  “The pleasure is mine, I can assure you,” Mr. Lackington said gallantly. “I have received your letters with much eagerness over the past two years.”

  Kitty blushed, wholly unused to anybody beyond her father remarking that the ideas she’d written about so fervently were particularly interesting.

  “Your visit could not have been better timed,” Mr. Lackington said, “as I would wish to introduce you to this lady. She has been most interested in my tales of a learned young women from Devon. May I present Mrs. Caroline Herschel.”

  “Mrs. Herschel,” Frederick said, bowing. “Delighted.”

  Kitty sunk into a curtsy low enough for the Queen, herself. Caroline Herschel! The famed astronomer. The discoverer of comets. The only female scientist to ever receive a royal pension. Caroline Herschel was being introduced to insignificant Kitty Dell. While the lady was shorter than Kitty by more than a foot, she was a veritable giant in astronomy.

  “Miss Dell,” Mrs. Herschel said, her English tinted with a slight German accent, “I am gratified to know that a young lady pursues scientific interests. Of course, we are all capable of it, but so few women dare to explore. Though,
I am familiar with your father’s work and so I should not be surprised.”

  “Mrs. Herschel,” Kitty said, “I am honored, well, I am near overwhelmed, you are, well of course you know—”

  “None of that, please,” Mrs. Herschel said kindly. She held out her arm and said, “Now do walk with me and tell me how you confirmed the hemi-parasitic properties of Cornish eyebright.”

  As Kitty took the lady’s arm, all thought of Mr. Lackington flown from her, she heard Frederick say quietly, “God, the eyebright again.”

  *

  Giles remounted his horse and watched Miss Dell disappear into Lackington and Allen. He had been very surprised to spot her on a London street and his address to her had been exceedingly clumsy. How stupid not to have instantly noted that the lady so interested in books stood in front of the largest bookstore in town. Had he taken a moment to think about it, he might have casually strolled in and encountered her there. He might even have claimed she’d awakened an interest in books in him via their fascinating conversations at Newmarket. There was little a lady liked better than to believe she had affected some positive change in a gentleman. Men were never appreciated more than when they revealed themselves to be clay in a woman’s hands.

  But no, he’d been rash about it and had not even stopped to compose himself before throwing himself in front of her. And her brother. That person clearly took only the most cursory care with his dress. Giles supposed the fellow would think of himself as a man’s sort of man—pretending to hardly care what he looked like. It was the height of posing, as absolutely everybody cared how they appeared. Dalton was of that devil-may-care ilk, but let him find a stain on a particular coat he was set on and very suddenly the devil cared very much.