Chapter 4
Sylvia hadn’t intended to create a stir amongst the ton.
Just as she hadn’t planned to forge and form a society.
Alas, after a little more than a month of living on Waverton Street, that was precisely what she and her new living partners had, in fact, created.
They had set all the peerage abuzz.
And Sylvia had never found herself happier with her changed circumstances.
Thunk-Thunk-Thunk.
The silver lorgnette, the makeshift gavel that began and adjourned all meetings, landed three times upon the turquoise-painted pine desk. “This meeting is called to order,” the most vocal of their group, Lady Annalee, announced to the crowded room of women. She paused to take a draw from her cheroot, and exhaled a perfectly formed circle. “First order: new business.”
Sylvia looked to her sister, Lila.
Lila, who, following her attack at Peterloo, had withdrawn from the world, and had recently returned to the living, thanks to the support of her now husband, Hugh. And yet, Sylvia still detected a tension and palpable unease in her sister at her changed circumstances. Perhaps it would always be there. “Lila has something to share with the group,” she volunteered in a bid to help her sister along. “Lila?”
All eyes went to the dark-haired woman, now proprietress of her own establishment, where men and women learned the art of self-defense. Lila cleared her throat. “As you are aware, my husband is a carver. He fashioned this for our group and our meetings.” Reaching into her bag, she withdrew a small, circular disc, carved and painted yellow. Next, she took out an intricately detailed gavel; with a ribbed handle and a daisy carved upon the top and bottom of the head, every part had been lovingly attended to. Holding both aloft, she came forward, extending the set to Annalee.
Annalee stubbed out her cheroot in the little porcelain tray of ashes and discarded the scrap, then reached for the offering. “This is . . . splendid,” she said in reverent tones as she took the gifts and held them up for the gathering to admire.
A number of sighs went up.
Nor did Sylvia believe for a moment those exhalations of air were anything but romantic expressions.
After all, it would be impossible to not be in awe of a husband as devoted as Lila’s.
Sylvia stared on, her gaze fixed on that lovingly crafted set Annalee showed to the room at large. A devoted husband, one who supported her dreams and efforts. In short, it was what Sylvia had wanted . . . and for a while, what she’d believed she had.
More fool she . . .
But then, what dreams had she really had? What had she really done in her life other than be the perfect lady and hostess?
Returning to her desk, Annalee set the small yellow disc down and banged it with the gavel. She turned a smile on Lila. “This was long overdue, it was. Many thanks to His Grace.”
“To His Grace.” The other ladies all lifted their fists and pumped them twice in the air in a collective show of appreciation.
Lila inclined her head. “I shall be sure and let my husband know his efforts were appreciated.” A little blush rose in her pale cheeks. “I have been thinking,” she hesitantly ventured as the room attended to her, “about our meetings, and I have some concerns.”
Murmurs rolled around the room.
“Concerns?” Annalee echoed. “What concerns, exactly?”
“About the views expressed regarding men as partners and husbands,” Lila said quietly. “I fear that we are speaking in a blanket way about all marriages and all gentlemen when not everything is so very black and white.”
“Marriage and men are equally terrible.” Sylvia’s response sprang from an automaticity of truth and earned a laugh from Annalee.
Lila shot a look at her childhood friend, and then shifted her focus once more to Sylvia. “Surely you don’t feel that way about all men?” She continued before Sylvia could speak. “What of Hugh? And our brother, Henry?”
“The exceptions,” she said bluntly, and the other members nodded in concurrence. “They are the exceptions.” It was far easier for Lila, who’d not suffered a broken heart, to believe there was good in that union. But she was the exception, not the rule.
“I do not disagree with that assessment,” their sister-in-law, Clara, put in with a husky laugh, rousing like laughter from the other women around the room. A former courtesan who’d saved Sylvia’s brother and ended up falling in love with and marrying him, the music hall owner had every reason to be cynical where men were concerned.
“And knowing a handful of good men is hardly reason for me or any of us to advocate for the prison that is marriage,” Sylvia added when the laughter subsided.
“Not all marriages are the way you are describing them.” Lila spoke with a quiet insistence.
“How many others here have parents who entered into a love match and had it remain so during their union?”
The Kearsley sisters raised their hands.
However, aside from the siblings, not a single arm shot up. Certainly not Lila’s or Sylvia’s, whose parents had had a businesslike arrangement. Yes, there’d been affection, but there’d not been more than that.
Lila, however, clung to that lone family who lent the only support to her argument. “See?” She pointed to the Kearsleys. “Between them and me—”
“You married a gentleman who spent the bulk of his existence outside the ton,” Annalee gently reminded the other woman. “Men who’ve spent their entire lives in this world? They care only about title, rank, and privilege.”
There came more murmurs of assent.
“She isn’t wrong,” Sylvia said for Lila’s benefit. “Peers marry ladies with only one intention . . . to continue their line and maintain their wealth.” And all the while they sought their pleasures elsewhere. They found love with women who weren’t their wives. Once, just thinking that would have cut off her ability to breathe without pain. Now, the realization of who her husband had been and the lie her marriage had been caused only a dull ache in her breast. Pushing back thoughts of her late husband’s betrayal, she refocused on the debate at hand. “As such, given the motives of greed that drive men, I could never, and would never, encourage a woman to entertain the prospect of marriage. Now, is there anything else?”
“I suppose there is not.” There was a sad glimmer in her younger sister’s pretty brown eyes. And there was something more there: pity. At the changes life and love had wrought upon Sylvia? At the cynicism that should exist within a room, when Lila had proven that in the rarest of times, real love could not only exist but also thrive, as it had for her and Hugh?
And if there was even the rarest of times when a woman might want to trust herself to that state, and even . . . find what Lila had, who were they to stifle it?
“Continuing on.” Annalee banged the new gavel, calling the group back to the real focus of the day’s agenda. She looked over to Valerie, who’d become the official secretary of their society. “New business.”
The young woman scanned her notes. “The second order of business pertains to the topic of marriage.” She stole a sideways peek at Lila, and then Sylvia, and cleared her throat. “That is, more specifically”—she turned the page with a flourish—“avoiding the marital state when others within society and one’s family have the opposite expectation.”
As she spoke, everyone in the room sat riveted.
With an almost icy quality to her closely cropped blonde curls, there was an otherworldly quality to the young woman, an aura to her presence. Sylvia had readily seen from the moment she’d met her late husband’s true love just why he’d been so captivated. And then she’d come to know her for herself, and realized how grand of a personality she was. In short, she was a figure to elicit interest and intrigue, where Sylvia had simply been . . . Sylvia.
“We had discussed deterring family members who might attempt to guide us toward that state, and instead, turn the tables so that the obligation and responsibility falls to the male
members of the household. The Kearsleys, who explicitly stated they were indifferent either way as to whether their brother married as long as his attentions weren’t on their unwedded states, were to employ some of the strategies we’d discussed as a group to put guardians and brothers and fathers or mothers off.” Valerie concluded her reading.
Sylvia and the room on the whole looked to the trio of young ladies, aged seventeen to twenty-four, all crammed onto a settee really meant for two: the Kearsley sisters. The sisters of her late husband’s best friend, the Viscount St. John, the young women had proven an unexpected but surprisingly welcome addition to the Mismatch Society.
Anwen, the eldest of the sisters, stood and smoothed her palms down the front of her skirts. “We began by summoning our brother for a family meeting.”
As one, the other members leaned forward in their chairs, hanging on to the young lady’s words. Just as she opened her mouth to continue, her younger sister Brenna Kearsley hopped up.
“And we each agreed to take on the sacrificial role,” she finished, stealing her sister’s thunder as all eyes swiveled to her.
Her elder sister glowered, but oblivious to anything other than the attention now trained on her, Brenna continued, sharing the clever, intricate way in which they had gone about bringing the viscount around to being the one to sacrifice his freedom, all the while preserving theirs. “We each of us took a turn, insisting that we would be the one to make the noble sacrifice.”
“Everyone from Mother on down to my four-year-old sister,” Anwen hurried to interject.
The pair went back and forth, each filling in the masterful details of a plot that had been hatched in this very room and orchestrated . . . to flawless perfection. When they’d concluded, both ladies curtsied and then sat beside Cora, who, as she so often did, had buried her head in a science periodical.
“Brilliant,” Annalee whispered, lightly clapping four fingers against her open palm. She reached for another cheroot and lit the scrap with a burning candle. “Hear, hear,” she said, banging the table.
All the women stomped the floor with their feet, sending up a rolling applause.
“You fended him off attempting to see any of you wed, while he took on the sacrificial role. Well done! I would classify this as a triumph.” Valerie looked to Sylvia, who gave the nod for their secretary to make the statement official.
That triumph proved short-lived.
The doors flew open, and the rotund head housekeeper, Mrs. Flyaway, burst into the room. “There is a . . . man!” she announced, out of breath and her cheeks red.
Everyone flew to their feet.
What in blazes?
“My—” Father-in-law. Sylvia attempted to get the rest of that out. And failed.
“Not the duke”—Lila’s husband—“and not your brother, my lady.” Mrs. Flyaway pressed her hands to her cheeks. “And he is . . . inside.”
What?
An unheard-of silence descended upon the room . . . followed by a rapid flurry of staggered whispers.
Mrs. Flyaway hung her head. “I’m ever so sorry, my lady.” Fire sparked in the old woman’s eyes. “I’ll be knocking Mr. Flyaway good upon the head for this.”
Sylvia made a soothing sound, and crossing over to her head housekeeper, she gave her a gentle pat of assurance. “It is not your fault.”
“It’s that horrible man. A right brute, he is.”
A brute?
That managed to stymie the chattering as each lady hung upon the words being spoken by the housekeeper, who in turn grew several inches over the attention now swung her way.
“All men are brutes,” Valerie muttered, earning another concurring stomp from the group.
“But this one,” Mrs. Flyaway went on. “He is the absolute worst. Big.” She flung her arms wide on each side of her. “As tall as my Mr. Flyaway.” She stretched her palms high above her head.
Shock brought Sylvia’s eyebrows shooting up. “As . . . tall as Mr. Flyaway?” She couldn’t stifle the unease that crept into her voice.
Her housekeeper nodded furiously. “Indeed he is, my lady.”
Seven inches past six feet, the head butler was a veritable monster of a man. It had been why, when unwanted visitors, disappointed and angry papas, and husbands had come calling, it had been so very easy to turn them away. Until now. Until it appeared the old fighter had found his match in size. Panic gnawed inside her.
Lord Prendergast. There was no one else as manipulative or as dangerous as to fight his way inside. He had vowed he’d be unrelenting in seeing Sylvia’s son, and that he’d ultimately have his way.
“And an angry beast he be.” Mrs. Flyaway quickly lifted her hands into makeshift claws, wringing gasps from the group. “Has to be to have gained entry past my sweetie.”
Several of the ladies clamored to hide behind one another.
“He is just a man,” Sylvia said to the room at large in a bid to both assure and ease the over-the-top panic.
“And did this gentleman give a name?” she asked quietly, for the other woman’s ears only.
“Not that I’m aware of, my lady,” she returned in an equal quiet . . . that lasted only as long as her next words. “I overheard him talking to my dearie, and he informed Mr. Flyaway that he knew you were not receiving visitors at this time but said he’d not be deterred, and that he would wait”—every emphasized word earning a greater gasp amongst the ladies in the room—“as long as need be for an audience.”
Determined to calm their members, Sylvia held up a hand. “He is not the first gentleman who has shown up these past weeks.” Every last insolent one of them had been run off by their unconventional butler.
Mrs. Flyaway’s eyes bulged, and her voice dipped when she spoke. “But this one, my lady . . . he . . . sat.”
Pandemonium ensued.
“Sat?” Annalee seethed.
Whispers born of horror and outrage all buzzed throughout the room.
While Valerie came to her feet and tried to bring the group together, Sylvia inhaled slowly. Perhaps it wasn’t her father-in-law. Why . . . why . . . it could be anyone. Weren’t unwanted visitors—fathers, guardians, and mothers of existing members showing up to collect their “wayward” child—becoming something of the norm?
The more prominent their group became, the more attention they earned from displeased members of the peerage who insisted on taking their daughters or wives with them. But those men had all been turned away, adhering to the strictures of Polite Society because they were operating under the norms of the life that Sylvia and her friends, and the women they called friends and compatriots, now lashed out at. Yes, it was surely that. It didn’t have to be her late husband’s father . . . this time.
And as the head of both the society and the household, she had a responsibility to assert herself . . . before whichever insolent guest had arrived. If she allowed whoever it was out there entry to this parlor, then this parlor would fall.
And she would be damned ten times to Sunday if she let this new society created by herself, Annalee, and Valerie crumble because some man disapproved of their purpose. Brutish monster be damned.
Setting her jaw, Sylvia lifted her hem slightly and marched for the door.
“Where is she going?” someone called.
Several girls cried out.
From behind her, the commanding voices of Annalee and Valerie rose above the racket as they called for order from the group.
Sylvia didn’t slow her stride. In fact, with every step that brought her closer to the insolent nobleman who’d camped himself in her foyer, her ire grew. This was their world. One where, even after marriage and as a widow, she’d still be expected to answer to displeased gentlemen. Men who wanted her and the women who came here or resided here to be a certain way. To fit a certain bill.
Well, that stopped now.
Sylvia skidded to a stop at the entrance of the foyer.
Mr. Flyaway, her gruff, towering bear of a butler, who inspire
d fear in all guests . . . was shaking.
Nay, not shaking. He was laughing.
The tirade she’d mentally composed en route to the brutish beast Mrs. Flyaway had described left her. What in the Devil?
Whatever the horrifying monster said just then earned another round of laughter from Mr. Flyaway.
Humph. And here these past two months she’d believed her butler knew only two sentiments: stern-faced or stone-faced.
Sylvia folded her arms at her chest and waited for the pair to notice they were no longer alone.
“Nottingham reel . . . I would have thought it was the only way to go . . . ,” Mr. Flyaway was saying.
“I wouldn’t have disagreed with you, either. It has that wide drum—”
“Aye,” her butler interjected, excitement bringing his tone up an octave from its usual deep baritone. “Spools out freely, it does.”
Just a handful of the gentleman’s response peppered the air and reached her. “. . . geared multiplying reels . . .”
Mr. Flyaway scratched at the small patch of coarse black hair he’d still retained at his advanced years. “You don’t say?”
“Oh, I do say, though it is a secret I don’t share with just anyone.” The latest interloper said something that brought a loud guffaw.
Sylvia angled her head this way and that in a bid to glean the identity of the latest intruder, this one who’d managed to charm her butler, a butler who seemed to barely tolerate Sylvia, Valerie, and Annalee most days. She knew that voice. How did she know that voice?
Sylvia cleared her throat.
“Never would have thought of it . . .” Her butler laughed once more.
Ruthless visitor, indeed.
“Ahem.”
Mr. Flyaway jumped an inch, turning quickly to face her, his tall frame blocking the gentleman behind him. “Forgive me, my lady. Didn’t hear you coming. I was talking to the gentleman caller.”
“I see that,” she said dryly. She gave him a pointed look.
The butler hesitated a moment before ducking his head and stepping aside so she could, at last, face her nemesis head-on.
Someone Wanton His Way Comes Page 6