by Laura Parker
Sabrina shook her head slightly to clear it, so caught up was she in her own thoughts that she had heard only the tail of her cousin’s pronouncement. “What is this?”
McDonnell’s expression remained a study in distaste. “It will not longer be my duty to chastise and humble your proud spirit for the sake of your soul. On the morrow I shall accept Lord Merripace’s offer for your hand.”
Sabrina felt as though ice water were flung in her face. “That old reprobate? He’s trice my age and his drool smells of snuff. I will not marry him.”
“You have no choice.”
Sabrina’s smile turned sharp at the edges. “If you attempt to force me into marriage, I shall tell Merripace myself what occurred this night. And make no mistake, when I’m done telling the tale he will not wish to wed me. How then, cousin, will you dispose of me in a light favorable to your plans?”
McDonnell rose from his chair and this time approached her. “You dare threaten me?”
Sabrina hesitated. She had suspected for some time, though she could not prove it, that her cousin was in league with those who plotted behind Sir Robert Walpole’s back. Court politics had never been of interest to her yet she was willing to use any cudgel that came to hand to beat back the fate he planned for her.
“I know very well that you back Sir John Barnard’s attacks on the king’s man, Walpole, for his lack of vigor in pursuing a war against Spain. I have heard you and the men who come here to meet under the shroud of night deplore the king’s signing of the Treaty of Seville as a craven policy of conciliation with Catholic France and Spain.”
Assured by the rapid blinking of his thin-lashed eyes that she had hit upon the truth, and thereby a weakness, she advanced a step toward him. “If you force me to wed, cousin, I shall use my acquaintance with aristocratic friends to find an excuse to appear before the king’s eye. There I will denounce you for the intriguer you are!”
His arm snaked out so quickly Sabrina did not have time to dodge the blow. His palm struck with stunning force across her face, knocking her back a step. Her boot heel caught in the hem of her cloak and she tripped and fell, as he did nothing to try to prevent it.
“Whore! Devil’s consort! You will not defy me in this!”
Sabrina stared up at him from the floor, her battered cheek cradled in her hand as she blinked back the tears of pain she could not control. “Touch me again and Lord Lovelace will hear of it.”
His expression altered, becoming once more a remote mask of ruthless but deliberate disdain. “I do not think so. In fact, I’m certain no one shall hear anything from you again for quite some time to come. In order to protect you against your own worst proclivities I have no choice but to remove you from all influence outside my own.”
Sabrina held her breath. If he consigned her to a madhouse or house arrest with his Calvinist kindred, as he had Kit, she would run away.
“You will be sent at first light into the care of my ailing Aunt Thaddeus, who resides in Bath.”
Sabrina dropped her lashes over eyes she knew were suddenly too bright. Her delight nearly betrayed her as a smile struggled on her mouth. She was being sent away from London! No torment that, no ignominious banishment, but freedom! Her guardian hated the country. He would never come to Bath. He had unknowingly granted her her two most fervent wishes in the same breath. She was leaving London—and escaping the possibility of marriage!
She knew better than to acquiesce too quickly. “ ’Tis autumn. The roads will be muddy, travel difficult. Bath will be damp and full of gouty nobles seeking the cure.”
“Things to be endured.” He sounded inordinately pleased by the hardships she had mentioned. “A chastening of the body may improve your soul. Mrs. Varney will, of course, accompany you. I recommend her piety and humility as a pattern for your own life.”
“Sir, you are too kind,” Mrs. Varney gushed. “If I can be but a pale example of the exemplary conduct shown by you, sir, I should be grateful to the Almighty.”
Sabrina disliked toads in any form and spies even less. She glanced pointedly at Mrs. Varney. “The highways are scarcely safe this time of year, cousin. The gazettes are full of tales of travelers who have been accosted by every sort of brigand and highwayman.”
“Highwaymen?” Mrs. Varney repeated in a faint voice.
“You will needs provide us with an armed guard,” Sabrina continued. “I hear they are for hire quite reasonably.”
“God alone shall protect the righteous,” Cousin Robert intoned.
“Then Mrs. Varney will feel herself well-protected against the likes of ‘Blackjack’ Law.” Sabrina offered the shaken woman a malicious smile. “Blackjack is said to be most hospitable to his female victims. He rarely steals more than their virtue.”
“That will be enough of that!” Cousin Robert bent a blighting glance upon his ward. “You will go to Bath and Mrs. Varney will accompany you.”
Sabrina held her tongue this time because, in point of fact, she was too glad to be leaving London to care to destroy his design. Only one thing more would make her life complete. “May Kit visit me there?”
Sabrina stiffened as her cousin’s dark eyes, which had blazed moments before, grew distant and chill. “You do expect that I will reward you for this night’s work? I am sending you away that you may neither speak to nor see anyone until after you are wed.”
He stared at the young woman at his feet, an unholy amusement kindling in his gaze. “Besides, they tell me your father’s bastard is ill again and unfit for travel.”
Sabrina rose to her knees, her pain forgotten. “Kit? What’s wrong with him?”
He gave her a pitying look, his voice laced with scorn. “How kindly you speak of your father’s by-blow.”
Sabrina rose with surprising grace, if a little unsteadiness, to her feet. “Kit’s mother and my father were wed.”
His voice did not rise to her challenge this time. “Not according to God’s law.”
Sabrina met his stare with flat determination. “Handfast has been sanctioned for generations in the West Country.”
“The king saw fit to rule otherwise,” he said in a dismissive tone. “Your father’s bastard has been disowned.”
The king’s verdict was less than three months old and galled Sabrina still. “You were behind that deed, as well. It could perhaps be rescinded were the truth known. The king would be interested to know that by denying Kit his birthright, he has allowed you to fund your causes against him with my father’s fortune.”
“Your reckless words simply prove my point. As for the bastard, I am considering sending him to the workhouse. My patience with him is at an end.”
Sabrina blanched. “Consignment to a workhouse would kill him.”
“Mayhap so,” he rejoined with a small smile.
In that moment Sabrina understood she had made a mortal enemy.
All feelings of concern for herself dissolved. There was only one person she loved in this world and that was Kit. After the death of his mother, she had cared for him and been as much a parent to him as any. She had ached and fretted over the parting from him this last year. Now he was in mortal danger and she, feeble female that she was, was his only hope for rescue.
Swallowing the bitter bile of resignation she lowered her head and said in a tight voice, “Very well, I’ll go to Bath.”
Seemingly pleased to have wrung a rare concession from the proud girl, he nodded. “There you will remain until the marriage contract has been signed. ’Tis hoped you would learn a degree of humility from an isolated contemplation of your former life. Anything less and you may depend upon it that you will never see your father’s bastard again.”
Sabrina abruptly turned her back and walked away, no longer able to endure the sight of him. She paused when she reached the door and glanced back over her shoulder to where her guardian stood staring after her.
“I will find a way to best you, Cousin Robert,” she said
under her breath. “I swear upon my father’s grave! Even if I must seek aid from the devil himself!”
Chapter Two
“Hold there!” cried the Lovelace butler as the masculine intruder made to push past him.
He put his arm out to block the entrance to the earl’s Hanover Square residence, but the “gentleman” struck him on the back of the hand with the spines of a very feminine ostrich feather fan, and cried in a throaty contralto, “Stand aside, Geoffrey!”
The poor man’s eyes widened in uncharacteristic surprise. “Oh! ’Tis you, m’lady!”
“Of course, ’tis I.”
Lady Charlotte Lovelace sailed past her startled butler into the front hall to the accompanying swirl of a voluminous black cape and the powdery scent of a gentleman’s full-bottomed wig.
As she continued in an elegant glide toward the dining salon, the butler scrambled ahead of her to snatch open the doors to allow her entrance.
Once inside the dark-paneled room she stopped short. One glance was enough to reveal her worst fears—here was indisputable proof of her earlier activities.
Surrounding several card-strewn tables, rush-bottomed chairs had been pushed back in haste, evidence of her guests’ abrupt departure. Sputtering tapers still cast flickering reflections in the pewter surface of candlesticks and flatware. The ruins of her four P.M. supper, the fashionable hour for dining in town, had congealed on platters and plates and in spatters upon the linen cloth of the long center table.
“Geoffrey!” she called in her carrying voice. “Geoffrey!”
“Yes, countess?” the butler replied from a safe distance in the open doorway.
She made a short sharp gesture with her fan. “What is the meaning of this? Why has the table not been dealt with?”
Geoffrey said soothingly as he approached, “ ’Twas on your ladyship’s instruction that the table not be cleared each evening until after his lordship has returned for the night.”
“Ran is not yet home?”
The brightening of her spirits revealed itself in her extraordinarily blue eyes. In hopes of inspiring jealousy in her often-absent husband, she had for weeks deliberately left evidence for her own abandoned pleasures. But tonight she wished him to think her as solitary as a pigeon in a parsonage.
“Then there is still time to reap victory from what I deemed certain defeat. Clear the table at once.”
“Yes, my lady.” Geoffrey tried not to stare at the slightly askew wig upon the countess’s head. Because she was a tall woman, he had to lift his chin in order not to seem to be peering at her from beneath his lids. “His lordship has just sent word to you to expect his return shortly.”
“Shortly?” The countess’s cerulean gaze recalculated the possibility of removing the telltale signs of her former company. Yes, it could be accomplished. “Then why do you stand there? Have the table cleared. Immediately, do you hear me!”
All too well, thought the much put-upon butler. His mistress of eleven months was always clear in her needs and wants, though she changed them with even more frequency than her gowns. “It will be done, my lady.”
“Another thing.” She swung her head toward the old retainer, meeting his eye with a frankness most ladies would never have thought to spare an inferior. “Upon his lordship’s return, inform him that I have retired for the night and bid him not to disturb me. ’Tis imperative! Disaster shall befall all of us if you fail me!” With a sweep of her great cape she turned and departed the room.
As he rang for the understaff, abed this last hour, the Lovelace butler wondered how it would all end. He had witnessed during the earl’s rollicking bachelorhood rows between Lord Randolph and several jilted mistresses. One had involved an intoxicated duchess with a predilection for throwing breakable objects. Yet he had never met a lady to equal the new countess. Her titian hair, when a wig did not muffle it, was proof not only of her temper but also of a will to match. Only the earl, being the sort of man he was, could control her. Yet it was clear that things were at a sad state between the pair.
It was common knowledge that the earl had married for that rarest of all reasons, one that the nobility considered the frailest foundation for such an alliance. Lord Lovelace had married for love. Yet, after the first blissful weeks, things had deteriorated with a shocking rapidity. Their lovers’ spats had become more frequent and sustained. Of late the respectable old residence had rung regularly with the sounds of their quarreling.
Geoffrey shook his head as he bent to pick up the ostrich fan the countess had dropped. It was like her to abuse so elegant a bit of frippery. The earl could be equally negligent, leaving behind him a trail of mallaca canes, jeweled snuffboxes, and the occasional glove. The trouble was they were both like children, headstrong and unable to admit to error and apologize. Her ladyship had too much money, too much time, and too few interests to occupy her, while the earl was far too preoccupied with the affairs of state and therefore sadly neglecting his pretty wife.
The butler frowned as he fished a snuffbox with the initial “M” set in diamonds on the lid from among a pile of cards and chips scattered on one table. Sir Millpost’s, no doubt.
He did not approve of all the countess’s guests, especially Sir Millpost, an acquaintance of Lord Lovelace’s bachelor days. There was a gentleman more than willing to incite a slighted wife with the on dits of the less respectable members of the Beau Monde. Yet her ladyship had not, for all her youth and recklessness, seemed the sort to be taken in by rakes and rogues.
Perhaps he had overestimated the countess’s good sense. For had he not just been shocked to glimpse Lady Lovelace’s legs encased in a gentleman’s blue silk breeches and white silk stockings? What his lordship would make of that he did not wish to imagine!
A quarter of an hour later, Lotte, as Lady Charlotte was referred to privately by her husband, reclined in an elegant sprawl of dishabille upon the pile of pillows propped on her bed. Minus the wig, her natural titian-hued curls fell in artful arrangement about her perfectly sloping shoulders. The sensual lines of her voluptuous body were merely suggested beneath the folds of her silk wrapper. The expression on her face, a trifle wide at brow and jaw for fashionable beauty, suggested boredom. Beneath half-moon brows, her clear pansy-blue eyes reflected an inward preoccupation while her mouth was set in a contemplative pout. No one who might chance upon her reverie would suspect her of the mischievous nature that had fueled the evening’s escapade. Yet her air of careless indifference was a well-practiced pose. Behind her serene expression, Lotte was furious.
It was Jemmy’s fault!
A pucker of annoyance momentarily marred her boredom. A fine cockscomb he made! James Branston had run away like a green maiden when the night watch unmasked their little ruse. If sweet Sabrina Lyndsey, her young companion, had not had the wit to suggest a bribe to the guard then they might have both been hauled before a magistrate. As it was, the guard had insisted upon accompanying them to their homes.
Lotte closed her eyes as the first stirring of emotion rouged her cheeks. As if Ran was not already completely out of charity with her over her extravagance, her gambling debts, her choice of friends and, not least, her failure to conceive again.
Lotte’s eyes snapped open, her soft mouth crimped in one corner by anguish. She was sorry she had miscarried the child conceived in the fourth month of their marriage. Yet the nine weeks leading up to the loss had been terrible enough. The constant sickness, the plaguey poor feeling, the debilitating exhaustion, and then the sudden sharp pains knifing through her and the blood, so much blood! She knew then how much worse the pregnancy might have been. Her own mother had died giving birth to her.
No, she did not want to conceive again. Had consulted a midwife in Hackberry Lane for advice on how to make certain she would not. Of course, she had not told Ran what she was doing. He talked constantly of having a child.
A shiver passed over Lotte’s skin as delicately as a ripple on a sti
ll pond. What her husband would have had to say about that she could not bear to entertain. He was cool enough toward her as it was.
A fresh sense of unease gripped her. Hugh Millpost had passed on the news to her as a bit of idle gossip, as if he supposed she must already be aware.
Ran had taken a mistress!
“I do tho admire your huthband’s tathe in women,” Millpost had whispered in her ear between sets of cards, his speech impediment serving to make his tattle all the more venomous. “Hith stamina wath alwayth rumored to be prodigiouth. Two redheads, yet! My dear, you muth find a match for the pair of grays he purchased for her. They tho perfectly compliment her new carriage. But hith choice of lodgings… even Queensbery ith more particular about the location of hith mithrethes.”
Lotte snapped her mouth shut before a profanity could escape. It was bad enough Ran neglected her shockingly for his political friends. Now he had openly set up a mistress. She had no reason to doubt it. Rumor carried by Millpost was always wickedly precise. There had been mistresses before their marriage, for Ran was too virile a man to live otherwise. But that he had taken another, before a year of marriage was up!
Lotte made a moue as she rearranged the folds of her Chinese green silk wrapper to cover her bare legs. No, she would not think about that any longer.
All their troubles were the fault of his friends, she was certain of that. They saw to it that he was too occupied by political intrigue to provide her with protection and advice, and keep her out of trouble. He must dine with those who thought themselves superior to her because they spoke of treaties and war over their partridge, and of alliances and tendered bills for the House of Lords over port while she nodded off out of boredom. How she hated them all! A proper husband would have been here tonight to prevent his wife’s folly. She was innocent, completely above reproach in the evening’s events.
As she liberally applied this salve to her stinging conscience she dipped into her bonbon box, choosing a candied orange rind coated in marzipan. There was only one more tiny cloud on her horizon. How would she ever raise the money to pay her gambling debts?