By a Lady

by Amanda Elyot

  They continued to walk toward the Royal Crescent, maintaining a foot or so of distance between them. “If the truth be told, I had not given the taking of your arm a moment’s hesitation. I do not view myself as merchandise for the marriage mart. Regard me in an avuncular light if it sets your mind at ease, Miss Welles. I am an old widower of thirty-seven, well past my prime, with far too much leisure time on my hands; and to avoid being labeled a useless layabout, I have offered my services to your aunt to guide you about the city should you wish to see any of its sights. My cousin Jane, of course, who was quite glad of your acquaintance, would be happy to chaperone.”

  Now that would be something! C.J. thought, but was quite sure that the earl would wonder should his innocuous comment elicit from her such an excited reaction. Instead, she replied to his lordship’s most surprising, and ridiculous, confession. “Old? You, your lordship? If you will forgive my saying so, that is absolute rubbish! And might I be so bold to add that I could never be persuaded to see you ‘in an avuncular light,’ were you to swear you were as old as Methuselah!”

  “You flatter me, Miss Welles,” Darlington replied with the utmost sincerity. “My dear girl, there are men my age who are marrying off their sons and daughters. Country balls resemble circuses nowadays. But I did not desire to impugn your reputation when I took your arm just now. I crave your apologies.”

  He looked so earnest and so unhappy that he might be the cause of any consternation on her part. “Think nothing more of it,” C.J. said, afraid he might never touch her again. “I was concerned for your reputation as well, your lordship.”

  “You are behaving quite correctly, Miss Welles. But it makes me feel so sober when you speak to me with such formality. I have no wish to keep you at arm’s distance.”

  “Arm’s distance?”

  “I speak metaphorically, Miss Welles.”

  “I knew that—I mean, I thought so,” she responded under her breath.

  Darlington cocked his head toward his companion. “Beg pardon? I could not hear you just now.” He gestured toward his left ear. “A swimming accident when I was a boy.”

  C.J. regarded him quizzically.

  “In Brighton. When I was a lad. Every summer my parents would return to England from their Continental peregrinations, and the family would enjoy a seaside excursion.” The earl’s voice grew soft. His eyes became misty with reminiscence. “One afternoon . . . the season my younger brother was eight years old, Jack swam out too far—farther than we had ever planned, or had been allowed to venture. The current becomes rather swift fifty yards or so from the shore . . . and I heard his desperate cries for help as he began to be pulled out by the tides.”

  C.J. paled.

  “I did reach Jack, but it was barely in time, and by the time we were both lifted from the water and hauled up on the deck of a small fishing boat, I had caught a frightful chill. An infection developed in my head that spread to my left ear, and although twenty-seven years have passed since the unfortunate incident, my hearing in this ear has never fully returned.”

  C.J. placed her hand sympathetically on Darlington’s arm. “I am so sorry. What became of Jack?”

  “At present he is a very healthy vicar in Sussex with four noisy children and a silly wife who dotes on him. He could not be happier. And he has just slaked his thirst for adventure by becoming the partner on a business prospect in the Americas—a mahogany plantation in Honduras—where I imagine he’ll be expected to journey from time to time to inspect his investments.”

  At the foot of Union Passage, Darlington stopped abruptly. “I offer my apologies in advance, Miss Welles, for insulting your intelligence, but I confess that even among my set—perhaps especially among my set—gently bred young ladies are . . . how shall I term it? . . . less well read than you appear to be. I have been thinking on our conversation about Shakespeare and Marlowe.”

  “I confess I am indeed a great reader. Should you wish to brand me a bluestocking, I would not quibble. And after all, my . . . father . . . quoted Shakespeare to me while I was still in the cradle,” C.J. added, improvising wildly.

  “I am a man who relishes discoveries. I consider them one of life’s chiefest pleasures. As an example of my theme, ever since I was a youth I have had a passion for archaeology, Miss Welles. On the rare occasions when I saw my father, his notion of a proper excursion for a father and son was to join in the excavations at Pompeii—certainly not the usual pursuits for earls and their young offspring—although I prized every chance I was afforded to roll up my sleeves and dig deep into the earth of ancient times. The old earl gave Thom Huggins, our steward at Delamere, a head full of thick white hair before poor Huggins turned thirty. My father, the second Earl of Darlington, knew more—and cared more—about amphorae than farmers. He entrusted Huggins with the entire management of Delamere, but the steward was ill at ease with my father’s frequent and lengthy absences. Huggins had a kindly, albeit weak, disposition. He always wanted to please everyone, and he let too many of the tenants gain his advantage. They abused his munificence.”

  Darlington glanced at C.J., who had become fully absorbed in his story, and he checked his inclination to reveal even more of his past. “But I fear I bore you with the details of Delamere’s mismanagement,” the third earl said. “I merely thought to explain to you my predilection for the past.”

  C.J. found it odd that a man of this era would openly discuss his finances with anyone other than his bank managers, and more particularly a young woman who was scarcely an acquaintance. Perhaps he’d felt the same immediate ease in her company as she had in his. “Then we have a good deal in common,” she exclaimed, spontaneously touching his hand. “A great affinity for the past, I mean.” Their eyes met in mutual understanding. Instinctively, C.J. took his hand in hers. Each could feel the other’s quickening pulse; each noticed the other’s hand was soft and warm.

  “You were about to say something, Miss Welles?”

  How prescient he could be. The sincerity of the earl’s manner caught C.J. unawares. He was no casual flirt, no light cad like Austen’s Willoughby or Frank Churchill. “I was about to . . .” The catch in her throat surprised her. How could she possibly be considering divulging her greatest secret? “It doesn’t signify, your lordship. Merely a remark on the innocuous delights of the day’s weather.” She let go of his hand.

  Much to C.J.’s astonishment, the countess evinced no surprise at C.J.’s reappearance, other than to remark that she was pleased to see that her “niece” had finally elected to take a constitutional after two days spent behind a locked door sleeping off the ill effects of her arduous journey from London. No doubt her ladyship genuinely did believe that C.J. had indeed been exhausted enough to sleep for so long after such arduous servitude for Lady Wickham!

  “Ooh, lovely, Cassandra, I see you have found each other!” she exclaimed, her two Pekinese yapping at her heels as soon as she rose to greet her “niece.” The pups immediately scampered toward the earl when they caught the scent of the fresh buns, for which they received a stern rebuke from her ladyship. “Fielding! Swift! Behave this instant!”

  The two small dogs ceased their clamor at Darlington’s feet and looked profoundly repentant. C.J. knelt to receive their affectionate greetings.

  “Aunt Euphoria, we thought you might like some fresh Sally Lunns. They were to be a treat from me, but his lordship rather graciously stepped in, so you must accept them as his gift.” C.J. rose and bestowed a kiss on Lady Dalrymple’s cheek.

  “Percy, it warms my heart to see you so kindly disposed toward my dearest of kin. Come child.” The countess beckoned C.J. with a bejeweled finger. “Handsome devil, isn’t he?” she whispered to C.J., adding with an impish grin, “You make an old woman very happy.”

  “You are a wise and wonderful woman, Aunt Euphoria.” The dowager Countess of Dalrymple reminded the young actress very much of her late adopted grandmother. Too often, in the apartment they had once shared, C.J. had lain in be
d at night missing the guidance, comfort, and support that had been such a stable element in her life until Nana died. Death had come to Mr. and Mrs. Welles when C.J. was very young, and so she was raised by the mother of her adoptive father, as though she were Nana’s own child. “It’s not the blood that makes you family,” she was fond of saying. “It’s the love.” And here C.J. was, more than two hundred years earlier, finding the same stamp of goodness in Lady Dalrymple, a robust personification of the bountiful Georgian era.

  How increasingly impossible it was becoming for her to straddle two worlds. C.J. had to get back to the twenty-first century within the next three days or lose the role of Jane in By a Lady. As she grew closer to Lady Dalrymple—and even to Darlington—where much was beginning to be expected of her presence, how could she continue to manage the relatively strife-free life of a gently bred young lady in Bath without drawing attention to her urgency of finding the way back home? Permanently remaining in 1801 was an option she refused to consider; and yet the more acquainted she became with her new surroundings and the era’s manners, mores, and pastimes, the more they fascinated her, though she would have been the first to admit that the rosy illusions she had once so innocently—if not ignorantly—harbored had been decidedly dashed.

  Chapter Ten

  Of period pastimes, a portrait, planets, and a pretentious parvenue.

  C.J. WAS RELISHING the quiet, candlelit evening at her “aunt’s” prior to their departure for the Assembly Rooms. Although the music commenced at seven, balls rarely got underway until nine; and as it was not the fashion to be one of the first arrivals, the early hours of the evening were spent in other social pursuits.

  Apart from the occasional yapping of Fielding or Swift, who craved a treat from their indulgent mistress, or Newton calling out bids while Lady Dalrymple’s visitors played hands of écarté, the tranquility of C.J.’s new surroundings both calmed and energized her. For a young woman accustomed to the clamor and cacophony of a twenty-first-century metropolis, a lifestyle where nothing was demanded of her beyond a cheerful countenance, a pleasant disposition, and witty discourse, while otherwise left to her favorite activities—reading, needlework, the taking of fresh air, and shopping—presented itself as a paradisiacal holiday.

  Mr. and Mrs. Fairfax, the evening’s callers, were amiable enough, decent sorts, although Mrs. Fairfax was something of a parvenue. Throughout the evening she continued to lament to Lady Dalrymple how sorely disappointed she was by what she considered the “leavings” in Bath. As far as she was concerned, anyone who was anyone had deserted the town earlier in the season, and only the nouveaux remained. Bath, she bemoaned, was no longer what it used be in her day. Mrs. Fairfax held every hope that her adversaries at cards would assist her in securing proper husbands for her two eligible daughters, Harriet and Susanne. The one had a predilection for soldiers; the other a propensity toward Scots, and Mrs. Fairfax proclaimed that for the life of her, she could not rightly discern which was worse.

  Through a quick reading of Mr. Fairfax’s expression during his lady’s energetic discourse, C.J. judged that the gentleman most distinctly wished that he were somewhere else—anywhere else perhaps—than across the table from his prattling wife and in the company of the most feared dragon of the ton. Lady Oliver did little to conceal her disdain for the nattering drivel of Mrs. Fairfax, as well as the person who uttered it, and had even less use for the husband who was fool enough to have married the woman.

  Lady Dalrymple was all for playing ombre but received a derisive scolding for choosing a game that was hopelessly old-fashioned. The hostess was outvoted when Mrs. Fairfax, who took great delight in being able to trump her aristocratic evening companions with some precious tidbit of arcana, asked if she might introduce a new game to them, which she had taken the liberty of bringing with her, ordering the beleaguered Mr. Fairfax to fetch her satchel. She had even persuaded Lady Oliver to join in. Pope Joan, the convivial combination card and board game, was named for a ninth-century pontiff, and the board was illustrated with such provocative demarcations as “Intrigue” and “Matrimony,” as well as “Pope Joan,” “Ace,” “King,” “Queen,” “Knave,” and “Game.” What distinguished the deck was that the eight of diamonds had been removed, which, to C.J.’s mind seemed a completely arbitrary excision.

  An indifferent card player herself, C.J. watched the proceedings comfortably from an ormolu-mounted mahogany window seat upholstered in apple-green silk. Besides, had she elected to participate, she would have hazarded embarrassing herself to no end in the present company, certain she would be expected to have some familiarity with several of the more popular card games. When Lady Dalrymple helpfully informed her that ombre was played much like whist, it meant nothing to her. C.J. pleaded ignorance of cards, claiming quite honestly that she much preferred to embroider or bury her nose in books. So she had asked her “aunt” for a piece of needlework to stitch while she enjoyed her solitude, and Lady Dalrymple was only too happy to provide her young charge with a bit of crewelwork intended to be the cover for a footstool. The countess complained that nowadays, in the candle glow, the close work hurt her eyes, and her hands were becoming too stiff of late to ply the needle as she had done with such dexterity in her youth. She had provided C.J. with the most cunning contraption: a lit candle placed behind a globe filled with water, the effect of which was to magnify as well as illuminate the needlework.

  Before the card party began, Lady Dalrymple had proudly shown C.J. the set of curtained bed hangings in her chamber. C.J. had marveled at the yards and yards of creamy duchess satin that the sixteen-year-old countess-to-be had spent months intricately embroidering as a wedding gift for her husband, the Earl of Dalrymple. The old earl’s portrait still hung in a gilt frame opposite the heavily canopied four-poster, and his widow wiped away a tear as she described her freethinking, progressive husband.

  “He was such a helpmate, Cassandra, and I was the envy of the ton,” she had said, mopping her brow with a plump hand and tucking a pewter-gray curl back into her lace cap. “Of course, to look at me now, you would never think that I could have turned heads—I was a slender little creature then—but I had eyes for none but Davenport Camberley. ‘Portly,’ I used to call him—fondly, mind you.

  “When all the gentlemen would retire after supper to brandy and cigars, Portly would insist on my accompanying him. It raised many eyebrows, I can tell you, Cassandra, and several times we were nearly cut for his eccentricities. Men might include their mistresses among such company from time to time, but never their wives. I used to return to the drawing room, my garments reeking of tobacco smoke; my maids pleaded with me for mercy,” she laughed. “They detested airing my gowns after such outings. Some of my friends would fairly beg me to tell them what their husbands conversed about outside their presence. Others, of course, were just as glad to be rid of them for an hour or two. Among our set were dozens of aristocratic ladies, legally compelled to share their husbands’ beds in loveless marriages and bear them lawful heirs, but who knew nothing about them, nor did their spouses care to learn what interested their wives. Such concerns were not the way of the world when I was a young girl. Of course, not so much has changed. True love, my dear, is the exception in high society, rather than the rule. The upper classes are expected to forge alliances of money and property—not passion. For passion, one takes a lover—providing it is discreetly done—unless of course you’re a member of the royal family, in which case one dares not question your behavior. But I adored Portly. I used to dance for him, Cassandra. Not the sort of dancing one does in the ballroom, which of course we both enjoyed immensely. But late at night, in the privacy of our bedchamber, I . . .” She broke off her narrative when her voice began to break. “One day, I hope you will know the kind of love I had. And you will want to dance for your husband.” The countess reclaimed her emotions and gave her “niece” a wink. “It puts a little ginger in a marriage.”

  C.J. returned her focus to her tapestr
y. She had been daydreaming again, an easy feat when Lady Dalrymple became engrossed in one of her card games. No one thought to trouble her, and she found it rather refreshing to be left alone.

  “Miss Welles.”

  C.J. glanced up from the embroidery hoop and saw Lady Oliver beckoning her with a jeweled finger. There was something about this woman that truly unnerved C.J., although she did her best to try to conceal her apprehension. She felt as though Darlington’s aunt could see right through her new sarcenet gown and her cambric undergarments, straight to the marrow of her bones, whereupon the dragon would publicly denounce her as a fraud.

  C.J. dropped a quick curtsy before her judge. “How may I be of service, your ladyship?”

  Lady Oliver recited the facts in a steely voice. “My nephew has invited you to dance at the Assembly Ball this evening in the Upper Rooms. You have accepted his invitation.”

  “Heavens!”

  The entire party was startled by this rude interjection. C.J. turned to face the speaker and stifled a laugh. The culprit, now feigning disinterest, gnawed on a bit of biscuit at the bottom of his gilded cage. C.J. smiled at Lady Dalrymple, who assumed a sober countenance and nodded to Willis to place a cloth over Newton’s residence.

  Lady Oliver elected to ignore the parrot’s editorializing. “It is most improper. Most improper indeed. You have come from nowhere, child. You may have just as well dropped down from the sky. Your father was—nay, is—such an objectionable creature that we do not even speak of him in polite society.”

  “And yet this is the second time I have heard your ladyship mention him in as many encounters,” C.J. replied boldly, adding, “And as this evening has been pleasant and genial thus far, and I may allow that I have been passing it in polite society, it would be proper indeed if neither my father’s name nor mention of his unfortunate circumstances—nor even, by extension, my own—should pass from our collectively respectable lips.”