“Got him!” the maid called triumphantly, scooping up the little boy.
Sylvia rushed to collect her son and carried him back to shore.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his lower lip quivering.
“You do make it impossible to be upset,” she murmured, touching her nose to Vallen’s and rubbing the tip back and forth with hers until he was giggling once more.
Captivated, Clayton stared on at mother and child, that freedom of affection he’d experienced in his own family, but one that was otherwise so very rare amongst Polite Society.
“I am not sorry,” Eris announced when the trio had left and only they two remained.
“Of course you aren’t, scamp.” He tousled the top of her damp brown curls.
Eris giggled and swatted at his hand. “What? I’m not. A person should not apologize for having fun, and I did have a good deal of it. More so than we usually have together.”
“Thank you for that,” he said dryly, and scooped up his boots. He sat down once more, and proceeded to wring them out again.
Skipping over to join him, Eris plopped herself down cross-legged. “I don’t mean to attend you.”
“Offend,” he automatically corrected. “And none is taken.”
His sister watched him as he made futile attempts to dry out his boots. “Yes, there was,” she said, dropping her chin onto her hand. “I do appreciate that you play with me. Seamus never plays with me. He’s ever so serious,” she said of Scarsdale’s illegitimate son. “He always wants to go off and read. And you’re far better at it than Delia with her Shakespeare and Cora with her insects and the rest with all their boring pastimes. And they do play with me, too, but it’s not the same as . . .”
He paused in his efforts to look at his unusually somber little sister. “But it’s not the same as playing with other children,” he said gently.
Her face brightened. “Exactly. There are no children about, but now there is your friend with her son, and he can be another child for me to play with.”
His friend and her son? Another child to play with?
And then what his sister was saying hit him.
“No. Absolutely not. Impossible.” Impossible for so many reasons. She was Norfolk’s widow, and being near her raised the risk of her again caring for him as a friend when he was destined to die.
Eris kicked a foot out, catching him in the shin.
He grunted and rubbed at the offended flesh. “What was that for?”
“I quite like her.”
“She is quite likable,” he agreed. Sylvia always had been affable and charismatic. In short, it was why she’d been a perfect match for one such as Norfolk.
Eris rolled her eyes. “Gentlemen are supposed to have better compliments and words for special ladies.”
Yes, gentlemen were. And many of them did. Clayton, however, had never been amongst them. Oh, he’d kept company with rogues, those fellows with glib tongues. But he’d never been like them.
This meeting, however, had been problematic. Because she was so likable. Because he’d no place admiring or ogling her.
Or kissing her. You have even less place doing that.
And yet, that was what he’d done with risk of discovery from anyone . . . including his youngest sister.
He cringed.
Mayhap he was a rogue, after all.
“Furtherless—”
“Furthermore,” he corrected. Reaching for her foot, he helped her free of first one soaking-wet boot and then the other.
“If you like her, then why wouldn’t you want to be her friend?”
Clayton squeezed the excess water from her left boot. It was a good question. One he couldn’t answer. Not without explaining all that complicated any relationship between him and Sylvia. “Because men and women aren’t friends.”
“That’s silly. I shall be friendly with whomever I wish.”
And Clayton was going to be miserable for it. For there was no doubting that Eris would find friendship if she so wished with men and women alike, and there’d be no stopping it. He shuddered, not wanting to look too far into the future and see the trouble that awaited him there.
“Anwen says the lady was friends with Norfolk.”
He stiffened.
“Is that why?” his sister pressed, entirely too astute for her almost-five years. “Is it because you are sad because you think about the earl and how you miss him?”
“Something like that, poppet.” It was because of Norfolk, just not for the reasons his sister imagined. And one that none of his family or friends could imagine. For unlike society, who still carried remembrances of the free-spirited, jocund earl, for Clayton all those illusions had been shattered . . . as had the high opinion and esteem he’d once held the other man in. No, it was entirely Clayton’s guilt for having been the matchmaker between Sylvia and the late earl that served as the source of his distractedness.
“What is it?” Eris murmured, scooting closer.
“I’m just thinking of what Mother will say, finding you soaked as you are,” he said, tweaking one of her damp curls and earning another giggle.
“She will not be surprised by me. You, however . . .” She waggled her dark brows.
He winced. “Perhaps we’ll both sneak through the servants’ quarters, escape notice, and then meet in the kitchens to steal pastries together.”
“You’re bribing me?”
“Is it working?”
Her smile deepened. “Of course it is.”
Giving up on trying to dry out their wet footwear, he tucked the articles into the crook of his right arm and came to his feet. Clayton extended his left hand to help her up. “Let’s be on, then.”
He tugged her to a standing position, and as they headed through the thankfully still-empty grounds of Hyde Park, he resolved that this would be the last run-in he had with Sylvia.
She could carry on her friendship with his sisters, and Eris would be free to strike up one with Vallen, but anything between him and Sylvia was absolutely forbidden.
And the embrace they’d shared today was proof of it.
Chapter 10
Yesterday morn had been nothing short of a disaster.
Only fate or fortune or good luck, or whatever it was, accounted for Sylvia and Clayton escaping scandal.
Or . . . a misunderstanding on Vallen’s nursemaid’s part as to the reason Sylvia had been soaked from head to toe in Serpentine water.
Either way, Sylvia had been spared from questions as she’d returned home with an equally drenched son and nursemaid in tow, and neither Valerie nor Annalee had probed.
For the understanding had been clear: two troublesome children had led her and Marin into the waters.
Not a passionate embrace with the estimably proper Viscount St. John.
“Sylvia?”
That gentle prodding brought her back to the moment.
Valerie’s eyes revealed her concern.
“She’s not listening,” one of the girls was saying. “I do not think she heard . . .”
Jerked back to the moment, Sylvia felt her cheeks warm as the eyes of all members of the Mismatch Society landed upon her.
“Oh, dear, did you catch chill yesterday?” Valerie came quickly to her feet, and crossing over, she pressed a hand to Sylvia’s cheeks.
Her heated cheeks.
“You’re warm,” her friend murmured, glancing over at Annalee.
“I am fine,” Sylvia hurried to assure her protective friend. Of course, she couldn’t very well say that she’d been reminiscing about the embrace she’d shared in Hyde Park. She, who’d never felt passion with her husband and believed herself incapable of it, had behaved like a wanton, rubbing herself against Clayton like a cat in . . .
Sylvia fanned her cheeks as she caught herself. She forced her hands onto her lap. “I am fine,” she repeated for good measure, attempting as much to convince herself as she did the young women who were all too concerned with her well-being.
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“She is flushed,” Miss Gately unhelpfully pointed out.
“Yesterday was warm. How might she have taken chill?” Miss Dobson put to the group at large.
Drinking deeply from a glass of whiskey, Annalee swiped at the corners of her lips. “She took a swim in the Serpentine.”
Whispers went up around the room.
“I did not take a swim,” Sylvia called loudly to no effect from the shocked group. She gave Annalee a look.
Her friend winked and lifted her glass in salute.
“That is so peculiar,” Anwen Kearsley murmured. “Because my brother also went for a swim in the Serpentine yesterday.” And just like that, Clayton’s eldest sister brought the group to a collective quiet. “He tried to keep it a great secret, sneaking inside through the servants’ entrance, but my youngest sister sang like a lark. It was all rather shocking, as Clayton does not tend to do anything scandalous like swim.”
There were several beats of silence.
Please, have them speak of something else. If only they would let the matter rest.
Sylvia would not ever be so lucky.
“That is . . . rather interesting,” someone murmured at the back of the parlor. “That they were both swimming at the same time.”
“We were not swimming,” Sylvia said, exasperated to the extreme. “And certainly not together.”
“Vallen and Lord St. John’s sister Eris did, however, go for a swim,” Valerie explained to the room at large.
The collective heads tipped back in understanding. “Ahhh.”
“But it was like you were swimming, wasn’t it?” Miss Dobson ventured. And apparently she didn’t require confirmation, for she went on, speaking in halting tones that grew increasingly quick, as if she were a detective who’d at last assembled the details to solve her case. “Because the two children were swimming, and you both saw the children swimming, and you decided to join in the fun.”
“No,” Sylvia said emphatically. “That is not what—”
“And I think it is admirable for Lady Norfolk to prove that a woman can be so free as to swim at Hyde Park, or at any lake if she so chooses.” Miss Dobson clasped her joined hands to her chest. “How often were we told as children that it was forbidden of us to swim?”
Yes, because that was the way. How many times had Sylvia and her sister been forbidden from partaking in those pleasures when they’d gone off to their family’s country seat? And she’d always complied.
“And now Lady Norfolk decided that she wished to swim with Lord St. John.”
Bloody hell with this. “No. That is—”
“I swim at my family’s property in Loch Carron in Scotland,” Cora piped up, as all attention went swiveling to the pale-green parcel-gilt armchair and the lady who occupied that pretty seat.
By her wide, dimpled smile, Cora reveled in the collective admiration she’d gathered from the group. “For why shouldn’t a woman swim?” she went on. “Isn’t that right?”
All the girls nodded.
And Sylvia let some of the tension go from her shoulders as she and the subject of her ignominious swim in the Serpentine were forgotten as all focus shifted onto Clayton’s sister.
The young woman looked Sylvia’s way, and the two shared a smile . . . so that Sylvia almost believed the young lady had known precisely what she was doing in diverting the crowd’s attention.
“And why shouldn’t she swim with my brother or any other man if she so wishes?” Cora added, just like that, quashing the illusion of shared camaraderie and ending the all-too-brief reprieve. “Men and women should be able to be friends and do wild things without judgment from—”
Lila cleared her throat. “Perhaps we should return to the focus of today’s agenda?” she ventured, and Sylvia would be forever grateful for having a loving, devoted sister.
“Agenda. Agenda,” Valerie muttered to herself, skimming the back of her charcoal pencil along her notes. She glanced up. “Are all wantons ready to begin?” she said teasingly, earning laughter amongst the members.
All thoughts of Clayton and their embrace yesterday vanished as Sylvia’s belly churned. For even as it might sound and actually be ridiculous that Polite Society had applied the title of “wanton” to them, it was still . . . damning.
“Or should I say . . .” With a flourish Annalee brandished in her hand the latest scandal sheet and held it out for the room at large. “Harlots?”
Valerie gave the other woman a look.
Sylvia’s stomach sank even further. This was so much worse.
Society had already begun looking unfavorably upon them because of the perceived scandalous nature of their meetings. But this? Being referred to and thought of as a harlot? It only opened Sylvia to the very trouble her mother had predicted she would find.
“Mayhap it’s not in all the papers?” Lila put in with her same hopeful optimism. Scoffing, she reached for the newspaper still held in Annalee’s hand. “After all, being written poorly of by a reporter with the name”—Lila turned the paper around and skimmed the headline—“Busy Bottoms of The Tattler, it’s hardly reason for worry.”
Anwen timidly raised a copy of the morning’s Times. “It is here, too.”
“And here.” Cora lifted up a different newspaper whose title Sylvia could not see. Nor, however, did it really matter. The fact remained the same: the Mismatch Society and, by default, she were at the center of Polite Society’s gossip.
Silence descended upon their usually voluble group.
“Mother said as long as our group was not immoral, I was welcome to be part of it,” Emma’s sister, Isla, whispered to herself.
Emma gave her a firm look. “We are not immoral. It is simply what some small-minded, insecure men are writing about us. Men,” she spat.
That was the rub, wasn’t it? Ultimately, it all came down to perception. And if it were only Sylvia, she wouldn’t care. She’d happily tell all the busybodies and bastards where they could go. But she didn’t have that luxury. She had to care. For Vallen.
“It isn’t hopeless; if we simply reveal that we are a gathering group of scholars, then surely we can cut off the gossip,” Valerie volunteered.
Anwen perked up. “I agree. Why, we are no different from the French salons! They’d be inclined to let us be and go on to gossip about someone else.”
“Ah, yes,” Cora drawled. “Drawing a connection between those societies that led to the guillotine and the heads coming off the nobility should go over smashingly.”
Anwen tossed a satin, circular pillow at the other woman, catching her square in the face.
Annalee banged the gavel several times and hard enough to penetrate the sisterly squabble. “Enough! There is no resolving the ton’s gossip. To waste our time speaking about them and what they are saying about us squanders any moments to create real change for us and all women. Is that clear?”
Except it wasn’t quite so black and white for someone like Sylvia. For a young mother who had a child dependent upon her, and said child could be taken away if she were deemed unfit. And the missives her father-in-law had persisted in sending, demanding to see Vallen, had also begun to include scathing opinions on her character.
“With the misery they bring, is it really a wonder that women don’t want to marry?” Cora muttered to herself. “When this is the manner of rubbish we have to deal with?”
One of their newer members, Miss Kate Milsom, coughed lightly into her gloved hand—a tightly clenched hand. She was all of ten inches past four feet, and slender enough to be knocked down by a London breeze. “Not all women are unamenable to the idea of marriage.”
“All the women here are,” Brenna said with a slight emphasis.
Sylvia looked to Brenna and spoke loudly enough so she could be heard over the quiet chattering. “Let Kate speak.”
All eyes went to the young woman.
That, however, had been one of the rules that had guided their group, that each woman listened to her fellow
sisters.
Miss Milsom’s cheeks blossomed pink.
Those blushes and averted gazes and quietly uttered words were a mark of most of the women who’d arrived in the parlor. That obsequiousness was an indication of how women of Polite Society were expected to be. Along the way, just like Sylvia and every other lady of the ton, they’d become empty shadows, murky figures that people looked through but never at.
Invariably, after but a handful of meetings, each lady tended to grow more comfortable in having her voice heard.
“Uh . . . yes,” Miss Milsom began in halting tones. “It is just . . .” She stared down briefly at her joined hands, and then back to Sylvia.
Sylvia smiled patiently, allowing the young woman the time she needed to form the thought that was so important to her.
“His Grace created a beautiful gavel.” There were murmurings of assent that seemed to give the girl courage, for Miss Milsom’s voice grew steady and clear. “That is . . . I thought of it a good deal the other day when it was first revealed. And he supports her business.” A boxing club that trained men and women in self-defense that had both scandalized and intrigued the ton.
Valerie guided Miss Milsom back to her point. “And what is it you wish to say?” she urged.
Miss Milsom turned up her palms. “It’s simply that, I’m not sure why, if Lila has shown that young women can have loving, devoted husbands, we should not wish for the same for ourselves?”
“This was already settled earlier in the week,” Cora pointed out. “We discussed the possibility of considering marriage, and decided collectively against supporting that state.”
“Men are the worst,” Brenna muttered from where she sat with her knees drawn to her chest.
Yes, they absolutely were.
A memory flitted in. Not a glum one sprung from a bitter past, but a recent one, from just yesterday, when Sylvia had discovered Clayton playing a child’s game with his young sister.
I fear you’ve caught me at one of my least fine moments. I’m not usually one who’d enlist assistance . . . That is, when it comes to hide-and-seek . . .
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