Lady Julia relaxed back against her cushions and said with self-satisfaction, “You can imagine the gossips have had a field day with all of this. The girl is quite ruined of course, and her hopes of ever being accepted into polite society completely dashed. But to think that if she hadn’t miscalculated, she’d be lording it over the rest of us as Lady Nash,” she tittered. “Designing little piece, that Kitty La Bijou, though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. And the gossip sheets can’t seem to get enough of her, forever lauding her performance as Desdemona these days.” She sighed. “It becomes quite tiresome after a while when there’s nothing else to read.”
Lord Beecham chuckled and patted her cheek fondly. “My dear, you’re among the worst! You simply can’t get enough of such titillating gossip!”
It was, however, Lissa who couldn’t get enough of what she was hearing—which indeed was news in the kind of detail she’d not heard. And not the kind of detail she wanted to hear.
She put her head down and tried to hold back her tears of shame. For months, she’d suffered the ignominy of her thankless role as Miss Lucinda’s governess. When she’d been placed in this position by Sir Edward Keane of the Foreign Office, she’d been filled with hope and pride.
At last, she, the unacknowledged illegitimate daughter of Lord Partington, was going to prove her worth. She would keep her head down and her ears attuned to any suggestion of Lord Beecham’s involvement in the attempted assassination of a cabinet minister several years before, and a spate of extortion attempts on members of the aristocracy. Beecham had been an associate of Viscount Debenham since their involvement in the radical underground Jacobin movement of the 1790s, a time when both men had no aspirations toward noble status.
Now with seats in the House of Lords, it was Sir Edward’s belief that Beecham and Debenham had found more inventive ways to exploit their changed circumstances, using the criminal associations they’d made several decades before. There were old scores to be settled, and it seemed, forever empty pockets to line.
Political malice or criminal greed? Or had Lord Beecham shed his shady proclivities with his change in status?
Lissa no longer answered to Sir Edward, now a diplomat in Constantinople, but to the Treasury Solicitor’s Office and the shadowy Lord Carmody of the Home Office, a man who kept up Lissa’s belief in her noble cause by his regular praise of her detailed drawings and observations.
One day, Lissa hoped, her work would be acknowledged as having helped flush out the profligacy, promiscuity, violence, mendacity, and outright criminality which many of those with whom Beecham and Debenham had once associated still peddled. If her observations could link Beecham either with Debenham, or just one ringleader in the underground rabble of counterfeiters, extortionists, and even murderers who plagued society, she’d consider it a job well done and herself a success.
But Lord, what would their mother say to Kitty’s shocking exploits? The girl had nearly wed Lord Nash? Then she’d been caught in flagrante with Lord Silverton within half an hour of the truncated nuptials and was now his mistress?
Something inside Lissa seemed to curl up and die. Where had Lissa gone wrong? She’d tried so hard to be the mother Kitty had missed out on, reading her stories, drying her tears. Of course Lissa denied it, but even she could see that their mother seemed to have little affection for her bright and joyful youngest and had become even more distant following the unexpected birth of her last child only a few months before.
Reluctantly, Lissa accepted that Kitty had had little incentive to remain at home caring for a demanding mother and newborn sister, but her latest exploits were too much to condone.
Not only had she destroyed all claim to ever being accepted into the ranks of the respectable classes by becoming an actress, but she’d taken up with Lord Silverton who was himself looking into the affairs of Debenham and his ilk—Lord Smythe and the radical shoemaker, pamphleteer, and suspected counterfeiter, Buzby. On the surface, he appeared urbane and inclined to pleasure-seeking with dubious rascals, but he was very much committed to the same cause as Lissa. And now Lissa’s sister had become the mistress of this very man.
“Are you all right, Miss Hazlett?”
Lissa hadn’t realized she’d made a sound. She looked from the droplet of blood on her finger where she’d pricked herself with her embroidery needle then toward Lord Beecham.
“Quite all right, my lord. But if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time I saw Miss Lucinda to bed.” She rose and beckoned to her charge, who sent her a somewhat sour look as she put down the lid of the piano but rose nevertheless.
Meanwhile, Lissa’s thoughts were in turmoil. It was now imperative to find Kitty and explain to her that she must end her contact with Silverton. Not only was it unseemly, it was wrong.
Lissa knew where to locate her. Several months before, she’d attended the theater and seen Kitty perform, dashing off a sketch because she’d been so enthralled. When Lord Ludbridge, the brother of Lissa’s admirer, Ralph, had begged to acquire it, she’d torn it off the sketchbook so that it didn’t identify Kitty. It had seemed somehow wrong to show her little sister dressed in man’s attire and performing on stage to all the world.
What had struck Lissa, however, was how carefree and happy Kitty had appeared whenever Lissa had secretly observed her; a great contrast from the isolation and daily pressure Lissa felt.
But the idea that little Kitty was Lord Silverton’s plaything, as Lady Julia had put it, and that this was public news, distressed her beyond measure.
And now Lord Silverton’s betrothed was to arrive soon in the capital? Lord Silverton was to be married, yet was keeping Kitty as his mistress? The idea filled her with horror. What would become of Kitty? Would she be cast into the gutter? Lord Silverton might be on their side when it came to apprehending Lord Debenham, but he was an out-and-out cad to be exploiting innocent, credulous little Kitty.
Her outrage at these ponderings made her say more sharply than she intended, “Hurry now, Lucinda. There’ll be no time for reading. It’s far too late for that.”
“I’m seventeen, not seven, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Lucinda muttered as she preceded Lissa up the stairs, adding as she turned, “And in four months, when I’ve had the most successful debut of the year and found myself a husband who will make all the other debutantes green about the gills, you’ll be looking for a job and someone else to send to bed early.”
Lissa sighed inwardly as she counseled herself not to respond. It was wisest not to when Lucinda was in low spirits as she certainly must be, seeing Lord Beecham making so much of his companion, Lady Julia. But she couldn’t help herself.
Lucinda had turned upon opening her bedchamber door, and now Lissa regarded her with a look full of sympathy.
“Do not take Lord Beecham’s criticism to heart. He is far too old and experienced for you. In three months, all the young men will be falling over themselves in their desire to court you.”
Lucinda reddened. “How dare you suggest I have an interest in Lord Beecham!” she muttered, thrusting the door wide and stumbling over t
he threshold. “If you ever allude to this again, I will find a way to have you instantly dismissed.”
It felt like a slap in the face. Lissa turned back toward her own bedchamber. “Good night, Lucinda,” she said wearily. She’d been up since before six, mending a tear in a chemise which Lord Beecham intimated belonged to Lucinda, but which Lissa knew belonged to Lady Julia. How it had become torn could only be wondered at, for it was not Lissa’s place to question her employer’s requests. It was not her place to do anything but obey if she and her darling Ralph were to finally be together.
In dismal spirits, Lissa trailed along the passage to the small, sparsley-furnished room she inhabited, trying to bolster herself with thoughts of the young man she’d loved with quiet, frustrated passion for so long—brave and enterprising Ralph Tunley. Dear Ralph was long-suffering secretary to—of all people—Lord Debenham, the man the Foreign Office and now Home Office had in their sights; the man who was married, most inconveniently, to Lissa and Kitty’s’ half-sister, Araminta.