Having emptied one bottle and noticing Coralie’s jealous hold of the other, Mr. Beaumont left her to brood over what he’d said.
He was not, in any case, the kind to watch over the poison seed he’d planted. He didn’t need to. He knew exactly what to say, and chose his remarks according to the nature of his listener. He left the listener to fertilize the noxious garden and reap the evil he had sown.
On Friday, Elizabeth and Emily read in the pages of the Whisperer of their guardian’s heroics in Exeter Street, which included the very interesting fact that Miss Grenville had chased him into the Strand.
On Saturday, a letter arrived express from London, while the family were at breakfast. The girls had time to recognize the exceedingly bad penmanship, along with the Duke of Ainswood’s seal, before Lord Mars left the breakfast table and took the letter with him into his study. Lady Mars followed him there.
Her shrieks, despite the thickness of the study door, were audible. A maid hurried in, moments later, with smelling salts.
On Saturday night, the eldest of Dorothea’s three older sisters arrived with her husband. On Sunday, the other two came with their spouses.
By this time, Elizabeth and Emily had already sneaked into their uncle’s study, read the missive, and sneaked out.
Through numerous ingenious contrivances, Elizabeth and Emily managed enough eavesdropping in the course of the day to grasp the essentials of the family crisis. After dinner, they had only to open their bedroom window a crack and, concealed in the drapery, listen to the men talking on the terrace while smoking—and answering the call of nature, by the sounds of it. The eldest uncle by marriage, Lord Bagnigge, being well into his cups, held forth longest.
“It’s a pity,” he was saying, “but one must think of Lizzy and Em. United front, that’s what one wants. Can’t lend the thing countenance. Scandal’s bad enough. Can’t be a part of it, looking on. Drat the boy. Ain’t it like him? A gel with no connections to speak of, and probably not fit to be spoken of, else someone would’ve heard of ’em by now. And a race. He’ll win her in a race, like a purse. Poor Lizzy. Ready to make her comeout, and how’s she to hold her head up? A common scribbler, the Duchess of Ainswood—and won in a race, no less. Even that old rip, Charlie’s pa, must be turning in his grave.”
Elizabeth beckoned her sister away from the window.
“They’re not going to change their minds,” she whispered.
“It isn’t right,” said Emily. “Papa would go.”
“Cousin Vere was there for Papa, when it mattered.”
“He was there for Robin, when no one else dared.”
“Papa loved him.”
“He made Robin happy.”
“One little thing. Cousin Vere has asked his family to be with him at his wedding.” Elizabeth’s eyes flashed. “I don’t care about her connections. I shouldn’t care if she was the Whore of Babylon. If he wants her, that’s good enough for me.”
“Me, too,” said Emily.
“Then we’d better make it clear, hadn’t we?”
Chapter 11
Wednesday, 1 October
The sun had heavy going in its climb from the horizon. It struggled through the fog rolling from the river, sparkled fitfully through the mist, then was swallowed up in a grey morass of clouds.
Thanks to the morning fog and a last-minute—and futile—attempt to talk Tamsin out of accompanying her, Lydia arrived at Newington Gate with only a quarter hour to spare.
Despite the early hour, not all of the small crowd gathered there was of the hoi polloi. Along with the expected reporters, miscellaneous ruffians, and streetwalkers, she spotted half a dozen male members of the Beau Monde—all drunk, apparently. They were accompanied by representatives of the aristocracy of whoredom—minus Helena, who had a cold and would rather be hanged than seen in public with a red nose.
The bulk of Ainswood’s associates, however, would be in Liphook. According to Helena, Ainswood had sent notes inviting all his friends to help celebrate his victory.
“Sellowby claims that His Grace has obtained a special license, and a ring, and that there will be a minister waiting at the inn to perform the ceremony,” Helena had reported on Saturday.
Lydia had been seething ever since.
Now, however, she wondered whether Sellowby had merely passed on idle rumor.
It was a quarter to eight and Ainswood wasn’t here.
“Perhaps he has come to his senses,” Lydia said as she steered her carriage into position. “Perhaps someone has made him recollect his position and responsibilities. If his curst family cared anything about him, they would not let him make such a ridiculous spectacle of himself. Only think of those two girls, his wards, and how mortified they must be by his methods of winning a wife. He doesn’t consider how the eldest must face Society when she makes her comeout in the spring. He never considers how his scandals affect others, and they’re mere females, after all,” Lydia added tartly. “I doubt he even recollects their names.”
Elizabeth and Emily. Seventeen and fifteen respectively. They lived with their paternal aunt, Lady Mars, at Blakesleigh in Bedfordshire. Lord Mars was one of Peel’s staunchest allies in the House of Lords.
Lydia did not want to think about the two girls, the elder on the brink of entering the social whirl, with all its pitfalls. Unfortunately, she had already opened Pandora’s box last Wednesday, when she’d opened Debrett’s Peerage.
By now she’d collected almost as much information on the Mallory family as she had on her mother’s. While Lydia worked on The Rose of Thebes and the articles and essays needed for the next issue of the Argus, Tamsin had continued what Lydia had begun. After exhausting Debrett’s, the Annual Register, and the standard genealogical resources, Tamsin had turned to the numerous Society publications.
The Mallorys were not Tamsin’s sole research project. She was also becoming knowledgeable on the subject of Trent’s family.
Initially, she’d been trying to discern an event or persons, past or present, that would explain his obsession with Charles II. In the process, she’d discovered that his family had more than its share of unusual characters. She found them fascinating, and regaled Lydia with stories about them during mealtimes.
This took Lydia’s mind off the Mallorys, but never for long. Her thoughts kept returning to Robert Edward Mallory, the young duke, and she found herself grieving for a little boy she’d never met. Soon her reflections would move on to his orphaned sisters, and that was worse, because she often caught herself fretting about them, as though she knew
them personally and was somehow responsible for them.
Worrying about them was absurd, Lydia tried to persuade herself. While Lord and Lady Mars had a large family of their own, that didn’t mean the wards Ainswood neglected weren’t happy and properly looked after.
Lydia told herself this scores of times. Her mind was convinced; her heart was not.
She took out Great Uncle Ste’s pocket watch and frowned. “Less than ten minutes to starting time. Drat him, if he means to default, he might at least send word. Bellweather will claim I made it all up. A shameless bid for publicity, he’ll call it.” She put the watch away. “As though it wasn’t Ainswood who blabbed about the race first, to all his idiot friends. As though I wished all the world to know I let that obstinate, patronizing brute goad me into this ridiculous situation.”
“It was very bad of His Grace to bring me into it,” Tamsin said, smoothing her gloves. “No matter how desperate he felt, he should not have been so unscrupulous—not to mention completely unreasonable—as to work upon your too-kind feelings towards me. One tries to understand, but there is a limit, as I told Sir Bertram.” She let out an impatient huff. “A dowry, indeed. I can well understand why you became so incensed with His Grace, for Sir Bertram did not at all comprehend the principles at issue, and I was strongly tempted to box his ears. Charles II or no Charles II, he might grasp the simple and obvious fact that I can earn my keep. But they will see. They will eat our dust, Lydia, and my ludicrous five thousand will be used to aid those who need help, which I most certainly do not.”
Once Tamsin had recovered from an evening of Bertie Trent—and Charles II—and the shock of getting back jewelry she’d philosophically given up for lost, she’d taken umbrage at the part of the wager connected to her. With what must be the same singleminded determination that had taken her from her Cornwall village to London, she had insisted upon accompanying Lydia. Moreover, Tamsin remained as vexed with Trent today as she’d been on Friday, the last time she’d spoken to him.