“What nonsense is she spewing then?” Algernon demanded angrily.
Considering carefully, Aurora replied, “It’s not what she’s spewing. It’s to whom she will spew it. I understand from a friend that she has the ear of Lady Habersham, a name everyone here has reason to despise. If we do not handle this carefully, it could well blow up in everyone’s faces.” Lady Habersham had played a particularly gleeful role in Olivia’s ruin, after all.
“It hardly signifies,” Algernon retorted. “Miss Blake has accepted my proposal and we mean to marry as soon as the banns are posted.”
“Sooner,” Miss Blake interjected, sounding quite decisive. “We’ll marry by special license.”
“Which will only support the notion that you are a fortune hunter,” Olivia pointed out. “What we really need is something to use against Mrs. Fennelworth that will sway her into silence.”
The notion of blackmail should have been distasteful, but given the circumstances, Aurora couldn’t help but feel such measures were entirely justified.
“There’s nothing,” Miss Blake protested. “She’s faithful to her husband. She’s a horrid mother, but many women in society have little or no interest in the day-to-day rearing of their children. Well, her taste is questionable. And she’s a bit of a miser. But nothing in that is truly scandalous.”
Algernon sighed. “She isn’t a miser, not to herself, at any rate. Her letters of credit have been revoked at nearly every shop in town and her husband, Mr. Fennelworth, prior to leaving for the West Indies, put her on a very limited budget because he’s hovering on the brink of ruin.”
Miss Blake gaped at him. “How on earth did you find all that out?”
Aurora knew better than to ask. Algernon, when he needed information, knew how and precisely where to obtain it from. He was a good man to have on one’s side and a terrible one to cross.
“I employed your method,” he answered smartly. “I bribed people to tell me what I wished to know. Servants. Shopkeepers. Bankers. Information is easily had if one is willing to pay for it.”
Aurora was aware of the couple speaking, but what they were saying seemed to be private in nature. She was also terribly distracted by the fact that Gavin had stepped closer to her. He stood just behind her, his hand at the small of her back. When he leaned in to whisper close to her ear, she shivered before he’d uttered the first word.
“Do you wish it was you?” he whispered.
“What?”
“Getting married,” Gavin asked her. “Not to him precisely, but to anyone whom you loved and wished to start a life with. I know you say you like your widowhood and the freedom it affords you, but when you speak of your son, I can only imagine that you would be happier with a houseful of children to spoil.”
“No. I’m happy for him. For them both, I think. I’m where I want to be otherwise. I don’t know that I could have more children if I wanted to. It took several years to conceive Will and it was not an easy pregnancy or birth. So, I will content myself with what I know I can have.”
Their quiet conversation was interrupted as Miss Blake’s voice rose, her tone conveying her dismay quite clearly. “She said she had it on good authority from…”
“Let me guess,” Aurora said, stepping forward into the small amount of light. “From Lady Habersham?”
“Yes!” Percy agreed. “Who is this woman?”
It was Burke who answered her. “She’s the woman who is responsible for shouting the news of Olivia’s abduction from the rooftops. If not for her, the entire matter would have been handled discreetly and simply gone away. But she’d discovered it, likely because she was involved in the orchestration of it, and then spread the tale far and wide. She’s a vicious and vile creature who lives for the ruin of others.”
“Oh,” Miss Blake said, the word weighted and heavy. “She and my sister appear to have a great deal in common, then. Daphne… is a very covetous person. She never a wants a thing unless someone else has it, and then there is nothing she will not do to take it from them.”
Aurora was sympathetic. Her own family was not precisely loving and kind. Just look at the lengths poor Helen had gone to in order to be with the man she loved? “I know the sort. My late husband was much the same. Never fear, Miss Blake, for I have a plan. Lady Habersham isn’t the only gossip in the Ton. Lady Deerfield is here tonight, is she not?”
Olivia laughed. “Oh, yes, she is. And she detests Lady Habersham.”
Aurora nodded. “Then, get her to this room. You, Westerhaven, are responsible for luring Mrs. Fennelworth here.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that?” he demanded.
A hush fell over the room, as if everyone was somewhat surprised to hear a duke speak so roughly.
“Don’t say ‘hell’ in front of ladies, Your Grace,” Aurora corrected gently. “It’s considered to be impolite.”
“Noted. But my question hasn’t been answered,” Westerhaven insisted.
Algernon interceded then. “Tell her I’m about to propose to Miss Blake. It’s an event she’d do anything to halt.”
Aurora grinned. “Precisely. Lady Holland, you go first. Get Lady Deerfield here, and once she’s here, Westerhaven can fetch Mrs. Fennelworth.”
“So, what precisely is this plan?” Algernon demanded.
Aurora stepped forward. She took Miss Blake’s hands in hers and ignored Algernon entirely. “I know this must be very difficult for you, given the circumstances. But whatever my past is, it is my past. Algernon is a dear friend and nothing more. All I want for him is happiness, and it is abundantly, glaringly clear that his happiness is dependent upon you. What I mean to do here is to expose your sister. If we can reveal her machinations to Lady Deerfield, and also Lady Habersham’s involvement, then we effectively neutralize the threat they both pose. But it may come with some embarrassment for you.”
Miss Blake began to laugh then. “Lady Sheffield, if you only knew how I’d embarrassed myself already, you’d understand that the world knowing my sister is a horrid person is the least of my worries.”
And then the strangest thing happened. Both Algernon and Miss Blake began to laugh. They laughed like two hysterical lunatics while everyone else simply stared on.
CHAPTER NINE
One Week Later
Aurora was smiling to herself as she browsed through the fabrics on display at Madame de Roussard’s. It was a good day. The gossip rags had finished reporting on the marriage of Algernon Dunne to Persephone Blake, and they’d also stopped speculating about the degree of her heartache at such a union. She’d received a letter from Helen. They were returning to London, and just in time, as she’d received a message from her brother demanding to know when his daughter would be returning to his abode as he had business with her. It would be too late for that, of course. She and Stephan St. James were married already, the union consummated and ironclad. No doubt when Rothsey discovered that Helen was no longer virginal, he wouldn’t want her as a wife anyway. Still, she’d be glad for Helen’s return so the whole mess could be at an end.
Picking up another sample, Aurora draped it over her arm and felt a thrill of appreciation. She didn’t require another ball gown, but she did want one. Preferably one that would be so stunningly beautiful that Gavin Barreten would forget how to speak entirely when he looked at her. There was a length of midnight-blue silk that she was very tempted by.
“It’s a lovely color.”
Aurora looked up and found herself face to face with a woman she did not know. And yet, based on the menace she saw in the other woman’s gaze, it was quite apparent the woman knew her. Being in the woman’s presence reminded her of those times when her late husband had smiled and laughed all throughout a party or gathering and yet his hand on her arm had been crushing and bruising the entire time, an indication of what would occur once they were returned home. Perhaps it was that experience that told her not to show fear, not to appear cowed at all. If she did, then all hope was lost. “It
is. I think I shall commission a gown in it.”
A smirk lifted the woman’s lips as she plucked at a loose thread on one of the samples. “Although, given the gossip of the day, perhaps one in crimson would be better suited to you, Lady Sheffield.”
“You appear to have me at a disadvantage,” Aurora said coolly. “You know who I am, and I do not know who you are.”
“Westerhaven knows who I am. Perhaps the two of you can stop pawing at one another long enough to ask him,” the woman replied coldly.
“So, you are the bigamist,” Aurora surmised and watched the other woman’s eyes flare with anger. “How does one forget that one already has a husband?”
“I forgot nothing. I assumed he was dead,” she replied. Leaning over the width of the table, she uttered in a conspiratorial whisper, “He should have been. Heaven knows I’d given him enough poison! Sadly, the old sot had drank so much that he caset up his accounts and most of his ‘tonic’ along with it. The only time drunkenness ever saved a man.”
Aurora felt a chill wash through her. It wasn’t that the woman spoke so casually about attempted murder; it was the fact that she’d considered doing just that so many times during the course of her marriage. It was the fear of failure that had kept her from it. If she’d tried to kill him and failed, he would have made her pay dearly.
“Not the only time, but decidedly inconvenient for you as you had elected to move on to greener pastures,” Aurora observed. “You clearly don’t love him, so why did you marry him?”
“Barreten?”
“I’d hardly be curious about your other husbands,” Aurora replied.
The woman smirked. “He’s handsome. And I don’t suppose I need to tell you about his prowess. You’ve got the look of a woman well pleased by her man.”
Aurora felt a blush stain her cheeks as Madame de Roussard glanced at them out of the corner of her eye. The bell above the door tinkled, and the dressmaker walked towards it.
“Forgive me, ladies. My shop is closed for now. Private appointment,” she said in her heavy French accent. “You come again tomorrow, I will make you the most excellent of dresses, no?”
The woman before her raised her eyebrows at that. “I see this is hardly neutral ground! How novel to see a friendship between a shopkeeper and a woman of your standing!”
“What is it you want, madame?” Aurora demanded, at the end of her patience with all of it.
“You may call me Meredith. And you may tell Gavin, whether it’s legal or not, I am his wife,” the woman stated firmly. “And the length of time it will take him to prove otherwise would see you both ruined regardless. Tell him that, will you? That I can be found at the Lion and Dove Inn on Fernwick Street. I’ll be expecting him by noon tomorrow, or else I will go to every scandal sheet in London and introduce myself as his discarded duchess!”
“I will relay your message.”
Meredith cocked her head. “You needn’t end your affair, you know? I don’t care who he beds. I only care that I get what is mine. His fortune. His title. His prestige.”
“You’re not entitled to any of it, as your marriage isn’t legal.”
Meredith smiled chillingly. “I wish him the best of luck in proving that. The judge who presided over our annulment was a hundred years old even then. Good day, Lady Sheffield.”
The woman reached the door and Aurora was waiting with bated breath for her to exit. But then the woman turned back to her. “That shade of blue,” Meredith said. “It is the exact color of your son’s eyes. I can certainly see why you’d be drawn to it.”
The bell above the shop’s door tinkled but Aurora didn’t hear it. She didn’t hear anything but the echo of those last words rattling about in her mind. “She’s seen Will. Oh my god.”
Madame de Roussard came forward and took her hands. “You will go upstairs to your rooms, and I will send word to the duke to come here. And I will go to the school and check on your son.”
“I can’t ask you to do that,” Aurora said. “That woman is clearly mad and quite dangerous.”
“You saved my business and in doing so saved my life,” Madame de Roussard said. “Without your patronage none of the other ladies in society would have come to me. I would still be doing stitch work in the back of a dingy shop owned by someone else. I will do this for you because you are my friend! Now go upstairs. You are white as a sheet. Anyone who sees you in the streets will suspect something is wrong.”
Aurora nodded. “You are quite right. I would also not be surprised if that odious woman isn’t watching.”
“She will not see me. I will wear a heavy cloak and go through the back. All the doors will be locked while I am gone. You let no one in but me or the duke. That woman is not to be trusted.”
Gavin was at his desk, reviewing the letter he’d received from Stephan. The couple was en route to London, where they would confront Helen’s father. It would likely be a terrible scene and it would be doubly so for Aurora.
The door opened after a brief knock. “Your Grace, a letter has arrived by special messenger, and there is a woman here to see you. A tradeswoman. I have put her in the drawing room, as she insisted it was a personal matter that brought her here.”
He could hear the censure in his butler’s voice, but frankly, he didn’t care. “The letter first. I will see the woman after.”
The butler stepped forward, bearing the note on a silver tray. Gavin took the note, broke the wax seal, and stared at the words before him with a growing sense of dread.
You may have any lover you choose, even Lady Sheffield, so long as I am permitted to take my rightful place as your duchess. If you deny me this, then be prepared to mourn her. I will not kill her. I will harm not a hair on her head. But I will destroy everything she holds dear and she will blame you for it.
—M
Gavin rose and made for the drawing room. Was it her? Had she decided to end her cat-and-mouse games to confront him directly?
When he entered the room, he knew immediately that was not the case.
“Your Grace,” the woman said, her French accent very thick. “I am Madame de Roussard. We have a mutual friend, do we not?”
“Where is she?” Gavin asked.
“She is in her rooms above my shop, Your Grace. There was a woman who came today. A most unpleasant woman. I fear our friend was very upset by what was said.”
“And what precisely was that?”
The dressmaker looked about, noting the servants in the hall beyond. “There were references made to our friend’s son that indicate this woman has seen him and is, in fact, quite familiar with him. It was vague, Your Grace, but it was a threat nonetheless.”
Gavin considered the words of the note. Their meaning was quite clear now. “Thank you, Madame de Roussard. I will see you home.”
She laughed. “No. I am home, Your Grace, or near enough. I have a house not far from here. You might say that I have an arrangement of my own not so dissimilar to that between you and our mutual friend. But first, I make my way to Eton to check on young Lord Sheffield.”
“Ah,” Gavin said. “In that case, I will go to her and we will sort this out. Thank you for coming to me and for seeing to her.”
“You are most welcome, sir.”
After the modiste left, Gavin did so as well. Not bothering to offer any information to his servants about where he was going or when he would return, he simply exited the house and made for Bond Street and Madame de Roussard’s shop. He didn't make it that far. Meredith was waiting for him. She stood outside the window of the shop next door, idly browsing gloves and bonnets.
“Have you come to her rescue then? Does she play the damsel in distress so well then, Gavin?” Meredith asked as he approached.
Gavin’s steps slowed in response to that voice, a voice he hadn’t heard in years but would know anywhere. “Meredith. What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to take my rightful place in society: at your side, husband,” she sneered.
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“We are not married. Not legally. The annulment was granted.”
“Prove it,” she smirked. “Oh, that’s right. You cannot. Because the papers documenting that are now in my possession and will never see the light of day again.”
“There are records in America of the proceedings,” Gavin stated reasonably. “It will only take my getting copies of them.”
“Yes, but in that length of time, you will be ruined socially, and so will your Lady Sheffield. I’ll make her hate you, Gavin. I’ll take her position. I’ll take her son. I’ll make her life such a misery that she will not be able to abide the sight of you or the sound of your name being spoken in her presence,” Meredith hissed out between clenched teeth.
“What is it that you really want, Meredith? Money? I will give you money. I can settle a fortune on you right now and you may take yourself off to Europe and marry some nobleman living abroad. Assuming you haven’t already acquired more husbands,” he stated flatly.
“But I want to be a duchess,” she said. “And only you can give me that. I know the truth of it, Gavin. I’m not as beautiful as I once was. Certainly not as pretty as your Lady Sheffield is. Not anymore. I’ll never catch anyone with a title like that ever again.”
And so Gavin used the greatest weapon at his disposal. “We both know I’m a bastard. My mother had numerous affairs on my father after they were wed, and I was the product of one of them. I have proof of my illegitimacy, Meredith, and if you force my hand, I will use it. I’ll not be a duke at all if it means having you by my side.”
“The scandal—”
“Scandal be damned,” Gavin warned coldly. “Take the offer. Ten thousand pounds and you disappear. Stay, and I’ll see us both ruined before I spend my life tied to you.”
She eyed him coolly, sizing him up, testing just how serious he was about it. He meant it, of course. He’d do whatever was necessary to get her out of his life and out of Aurora’s. But apparently his complete sincerity rang through.
The Other Wife (The Dunne Family Series Book 3) Page 7
