Lord Perfect (The Dressmakers 3)

“It would seem that you’ve mistaken me for someone who was born yesterday, my lord,” she said.

“It would seem you are completely blind to the obvious, to suppose I should deceive you about such a thing,” he said.

“I am not blind,” she said.

“You are not using your head,” he said. “Try a little common sense. I am not a younger son. I haven’t the luxury of being the family scapegrace. That is Rupert’s job. My world is a small one, where liaisons are nearly impossible to keep secret. They might, however, be kept quiet, if they are too boring to interest the gossips and the scandal sheets. You are much too exciting. If I became intimately involved with you, I should be made a public spectacle—as Byron was, but worse. The caricaturists would be thrilled. I should not be able to stir a step without seeing my exaggerated image, captioned with what passes for witticism these days. The prospect does not enchant me.”

Bathsheba was aware that Lord Byron had been ridiculed mercilessly. She had seen some of the cruel caricatures.

With Rathbourne, it would be worse. The higher a man stood in the public eye, the keener the world’s delight in his fall.

“Oh,” she said, deflated. Disappointed, too. For a moment she had almost believed that she made Lord Perfect as witless and immature as he made her.

“My offer is a respectable one,” he said. “I know of a set of rooms in Bloomsbury that might suit you. The landlady is a war widow. The rent should be within your means, if I have calculated correctly. If one multiplies one-fourth the rate you charge for Peregrine by your eight students on Mondays and—”

“You calculated my income?” she said.

He explained that much of his parliamentary work involved computation. Consequently he understood what a budget was and how to balance it. He was aware, furthermore, that some people had to live on very little money. He and a few colleagues had founded enterprises aimed at bettering the condition of war widows, veterans, and others for whom neither the government nor the parish provided adequately or at all.

“Oh, yes, your famous philanthropy,” she said, her face burning. She did not want to be one of his charity cases.

“This is not philanthropy, madam,” he said coldly. “I am merely saving you the trouble of finding Mrs. Briggs on your own and wasting time roaming unsatisfactory neighborhoods like Soho. The rest will be up to you. Would you like to see the place?”

The chill tone was calculated to subdue the listener. It made Bathsheba want to shake him. She had her pride, after all, which rebelled at being treated like an unintelligent, lesser being. Still, Olivia’s future was more important than her mama’s pride.

Bathsheba swallowed it in a gulp. “Indeed, I would,” she said.

She had not understood the directions he’d given the hackney driver, and the rain was so heavy now that the world outside was a blur. When the hackney stopped, and Rathbourne alit to help her out, she must simply trust that he was taking her to Mrs. Briggs of Bloomsbury Square, and not his private love nest.

She could see that the blood of his savage ancestors still ran in his veins. She could see that he was a good deal too accustomed to telling others what to do and too little used to their contradicting him.

She had trouble, however, seeing him as one who lured women to their undoing through deceit and trickery.

To lure a woman, all he had to do was stand there, looking bored with being perfect.

Her instincts proved correct. Mrs. Briggs turned out to be a respectable lady of middle years. The rooms she offered, while far from luxurious, were neatly kept and furnished. The price was a bit higher than Bathsheba liked, yet lower than what she’d assumed she must pay in this part of London. Within an hour, all was settled, and she was in another hackney with Rathbourne, on her way home.

En route, he gave her financial advice. His assuming that she was financially incompetent was annoying, but she supposed he couldn’t help it. He was in the habit of arranging the lives of the less fortunate. In any case, he had experience with this sort of thing, and only a fool would refuse to listen.

She was surprised, though, when he took out one of his calling cards and on the back wrote the names and addresses of shops to whom she ought to bring her watercolors and drawings. Were her art hanging in Fleet Street or the Strand, it was more likely to attract those with the means to purchase it, he told her. Moreover, she must raise her prices. “You do not value your work sufficiently,” he said.

“I am a complete unknown,” she said. “I do not belong to any prestigious art society. One must value the work accordingly.”

“Your name, as I pointed out earlier, is far from unknown,” he said. “What you are is naïve.”

She almost laughed. She had lost the last of her naïveté by the time she was ten years old, thanks to her parents. “I am two and thirty, and I have lived everywhere,” she said. “While I may not have seen everything, there is not a great deal I haven’t.”

“You don’t seem to understand your potential customers,” he said. “This makes me wonder if you are truly one of the Dreadful DeLuceys. You have failed to take advantage of common human weaknesses. It has not occurred to you to exploit your notoriety. You seem unaware that the more expensive an item is, the more people value it. Such is the case, in any event, with Fashionable Society. When you set a rate of quadruple the usual to teach Peregrine, my respect for you increased proportionally.”

It was no use trying to read his face. Even if his were not a tell-nothing countenance, the light was too dim. She could not decide whether or not he was being sarcastic. He sounded bored.

“I advise you to make them pay,” he said. “You cannot change Society. Despite my privileged position, I cannot, either. Even I must live according to the rules, as I said before. It is tiresome, but the price of breaking the rules is excessive. In addition to causing my family distress, I should lose the respect of people necessary to passing bills, instituting reforms, and supporting various other efforts that give my life purpose. You have already paid a high price because your late husband broke Society’s rules. What do you owe the Beau Monde, then? Does it not owe you? Why should you not require ample payment for the work that supports you and your daughter?”

The bored drawl could easily make one believe the subject was merely tedious to him. He sounded the way he’d looked in the Egyptian Hall, at the moment she’d first seen him: the very model of aristocratic ennui.

The carriage interior was small, though, and she sat too near him not to sense something amiss: a tension in the air, perhaps. Or maybe it was the way he held his head and shoulders. Whatever it was, she doubted that the man on the inside was fully in harmony with the one on the outside.

“Perhaps I have fallen into a bad habit of being humble,” she said. “How shocked Papa and Mama would be!”

Neither of her parents would have hesitated to exploit others’ weaknesses. Neither of them knew what a scruple was.

“There is that,” he said. “Another trouble is, you are not a Londoner. You do not know how to take proper advantage of the place. Like most of my acquaintance, you know your bits of London, but you do not know her in all her infinite variety.”

“London is like Cleopatra to you?” she said, smiling at the image of the bored aristocrat fascinated with this vast, smoky metropolis. “ ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.’ Is that your view?”

He nodded. “You know your Shakespeare,” he said.

“But not my London, it would seem.”

“That would be impossible,” he said. “You have lived here for how long? A year?”

“Not quite.”

“I have spent the greater part of my life here,” he said. “I am obnoxiously knowledgeable.”

He proceeded to demonstrate, with a detailed description of the environs of Bloomsbury, including the shops and vendors worth patronizing and those best avoided.

They reached the Bleeding Heart Tavern all too soon

for Bathsheba. She could have listened to him for a good deal longer. He loved London, clearly, and the picture he painted transformed it for her. This afternoon it had seemed a cold fortress, shutting its gates to her. He opened it up, and turned it into a haven.

That was not all he’d done for her this day, she realized. A short while earlier, she’d felt bowed down by the weight of her cares. Rathbourne had lightened them.

This had never happened to her before.

Her parents spent their money as fast as they got it, and went on spending when there wasn’t any. When creditors and landlords became difficult, Mama and Papa packed up and moved, usually in the dead of night.

Though Jack was far more honorable, he was no more helpful. He had loved her passionately, but he was hopelessly irresponsible. The practical problems of everyday life were completely outside his experience. He couldn’t see them, let alone analyze and solve them. He had no notion of the value of money. The concept of living within one’s means was beyond his comprehension.

This man, who did not love her, had sorted out her finances, guided her to precisely the sort of home she’d hoped for, and advised her how to make and save money. He’d even taken London apart for her, as though it were a mechanical toy, and shown her how it worked.

The carriage stopped. She was not ready to part from him but she had no excuse to stay.

“Thank you,” she said, and laughed a little. “Two paltry words, not a fraction of what I feel. If only I were Shakespeare. But I am not. Thank you must do all the work of reams of clever verse.”

She meant the words to do all the work.

But her spirits had lifted, and for a moment anything was possible, and so she dared to lean toward him and lightly kiss him on the cheek.

He turned his head at that moment, and then his mouth was moving over hers and his hand was curling round the back of her neck, and she was on her way to perdition.

BENEDICT SHOULD NOT have turned his head.