Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03]

by A Woman Entangled

  Altogether too many mights in that vision of events. In the mirror her mouth twisted with dissatisfaction; she huffed out a small breath that made the candle flame jump. Light skittered out to the edge of the dressing table’s top, momentarily illuminating the tray where the maid always left her mail.

  A letter sat there. The tray had been empty when she’d dressed for dinner; the letter must have come in the late post. It was, if she did not mistake—light had fallen on it so briefly and her heart was suddenly beating so hard she couldn’t be sure of much—franked.

  Franking privileges belonged to members of Parliament. An earl might frank a letter for his wife. Her hand reached carefully out, took up the letter by its corner, and brought it into the halo of candlelight.

  For a moment she could do no more than look. And touch. The paper, a pristine ivory stock heavier than anything she’d ever been privileged to write upon, pleased her fingertips the same way starched linen did. The sealing wax gleamed a painfully elegant shade of gold. Her name, in an unfamiliar hand, had never looked so illustrious. And indeed the letter was franked, the date and signature scrawled with lordly disregard for legibility.

  Her heart climbed up and up her throat as she slid her letter opener under the seal. The contents might poison all the pleasure she took in the letter’s outside—this might be the rebuff she’d cheated Lady Harringdon of delivering in person—but better she should find out at once than delay and wonder.

  The paper unfolded along its neat creases to reveal a very few lines of largely unremarkable text. Thank you for your good wishes, &c, &c, but the signature was all looping distinction and the postscript might as well have been written in letters of fire: I am at home on Tuesdays and Fridays.

  Kate set the paper down, slowly raising her eyes to her reflection. She’d done it. She’d been wrong to doubt herself. Five years of patience and determination had finally, somehow, reaped their reward.

  It’s because she wants to bring you out. The audacious corner of her brain, silent since the trip to Miss Lowell’s, lost no time in speaking up. Well, let it say its piece. Why shouldn’t the countess wish to sponsor a girl whose beauty could take any ballroom by storm? The obstacle of her birth might even make the prospect more attractive to a lady who’d successfully married off half a dozen daughters and probably longed for a challenge of some sort.

  She folded up the letter and put it away in the same drawer where she’d stowed the Pride and Prejudice volumes. The book recovered a bit of its luster, in such grand company. Behind the fanciful love story, after all, lurked an account of how a woman’s prudent marriage might overcome all the mischief of her parents’ incautious union.

  The day after tomorrow was a Friday. Would so soon a call demonstrate an unbecoming eagerness, or fitting respect? Well, she had tonight and tomorrow to deliberate. She closed the drawer, gave one last appraising glance to the mirror, and rose from her chair to go down to the parlor.

  LORD BARCLAY’S letter didn’t tell a great deal more than what Westbrook had already related, but one thing it did tell—from the substandard hand and irregular spelling—was that he’d penned it himself. He didn’t, then, have someone to manage that task for him.

  Nick felt for his glass of port, still studying the letter. “He doesn’t say he’s in need of a secretary, I note. Just someone to train him in speech and argument.”

  “Indeed there’s no explicit mention.” They’d moved to one end of the table when the rest of the family had gone, and Westbrook now sat directly across from him. “I think we may assume, though, that if he did have a secretary, that man would be undertaking the speech training.”

  “Probably.” He mustn’t let his hopes run away with him. “Though I can see how a gentleman of discernment, even if he already had a secretary, would recognize that for those particular skills he could apply to no higher authority than a barrister.”

  “Without doubt. I’d only add that our presumptive sagacious gentleman would also recognize that the most valuable, most effective secretaries are those who begin with education and practice in the law. And that the best among these is the man with political aspirations of his own, who views the position as a kind of apprenticeship toward the day he’s situated to stand for Parliament himself.”

  Nick drank, buying a moment to collect his thoughts. The fine port tasted remarkably like any other port he’d ever sent down his gullet, for all that Kersey across the hall had waxed rhapsodic over the vintage and over the time the stuff spent in wood barrels before bottling.

  He set his glass down. “There’s the matter of my family.” Obviously there was. He could forget the Blackshear disgrace for long moments at a time in this house, where the Westbrooks’ own outcast state, combined with their lack of interest in social scandal, kept them largely ignorant of these things. In his professional sphere, there was no chance of forgetting. “Do you not think it likely Lord Barclay would prefer to engage a gentleman who brought no whiff of unsavory connections with him?”

  “No, in fact, I don’t.” Westbrook eyed him steadily, which was a trick a good barrister employed when he wanted his listener to believe he was telling the truth. “Recall to whom he wrote in the first place.” He dipped his head in a cursory bow. “If he were truly put off by that sort of thing, he would have had nothing to do with me.”

  It wasn’t quite the same, though. Westbrook had married a woman of virtue and integrity who happened to have worked on the stage. The resulting scandal had all to do with mistaken perception. With people refusing to see beyond that label of actress.

  Too, so many years had passed since then. Nick shook his head. “I’m sure your professional reputation quite outweighs whatever traces of infamy might still cling to your name.”

  “You make my point for me.” Triumph flickered in Westbrook’s eyes before giving way to such fatherly gravity as compelled Nick to avert his own gaze to the letter once more. “People do forget, Blackshear.” The kindness in his voice was nearly enough to make a man wince. “Another scandal comes along and displaces yours in the public imagination. Then another comes to eclipse that, and yet another to shoulder out the third. And all the while you toil on, building your good name in your profession and living a private life worthy of that good name, until finally the only people still inclined to shun you are those whose esteem really isn’t worth much.” He’d picked up his glass and was eddying its contents in small circles. “And I speak as the one who caused my family disgrace, mind. I expect your path back to respectability will be easier and shorter.”

  Nick smoothed the letter’s folds, nodding in a style both thoughtful and noncommittal. The path back to respectability, he might say if he was in the mood for protracted debate, was easier and shorter when your father was an earl. Society hostesses had doubtless been quick in discovering they could overlook the one objectionable connection when it came to including the present Lord Harringdon on their guest lists. Sons and daughters of mere gentry weren’t nearly so much in demand.

  “I’ll grant that it would have been ideal if this opportunity had come a year or so later, when you felt you’d got your good name back.” The click of Westbrook’s wedding ring against his still-circling glass marked off every few words. “However, it’s come now. And you can’t be sure of encountering another one like this. Besides, my credibility is somewhat at stake.” Ah, here came the argument’s death thrust. A shift in his voice, like a musical key change, signaled its approach. “The baron has asked if I know of a man with the skills and inclination to tutor him in speaking. I should like to be able to recommend the best such man I know. Not the second or third best.”

  He would have colored at the praise, were he not so aware of the scaffolding on which it rested. “Flattery and a tug on the bonds of gratitude.” He lifted his port for another drink, partly to mask the smile he could not suppress. “Your tactics lack subtlety.”

  “They don’t have to be subtle. They just have to work.” Westbrook, in contras
t, made no attempt to hide his smile. “Let me furnish Barclay with a date or two on which he can observe you in court. If he then wishes to meet with you, you can decide for yourself whether your circumstances are likely to make an impediment. I’ll wager you ten shillings he won’t care.”

  “A wager, now. Because flattery and the appeal to my sense of obligation were not manipulation enough.” But he was going to say yes and they both knew it. Apart from the chance to make inroads on a political career, there was another advantage Westbrook had delicately refrained from invoking: the honorarium Barclay proposed to pay.

  To stand for a seat in Parliament you needed land; land that could yield an income of six hundred pounds a year—three hundred if standing for a borough. To get that land, you needed money. Through diligent economy he’d managed to put some by, but not near enough, yet. And with so little income trickling in from court cases of late, he couldn’t lightly toss aside the prospect of a few guineas honestly earned.

  “Very well, you may send him my name.” Equal parts foreboding and hopeful anticipation chased through him. “But if he doesn’t like the name, and writes back to beg recommendation of another, I shall be calling at the first opportunity to collect my ten shillings.”

  “Naturally. We’ll be delighted as always to see you.” He hoisted his glass for what looked like a victory quaff. “Now, what days should I suggest he come watch you? Have you any particularly stirring cases in the remainder of this session?”

  COAXING MISS Rosalind to sing proved easy enough. She was already at the piano turning pages for Miss Beatrice when he entered the parlor. All he had to do was choose a seat near them, and, when the instrumental piece reached its end, request to hear something with words.

  “A duet, if you please,” he added, lest she think to leave the singing to her sister. “It’s rare I visit a family with even one musical person to entertain me. Here I have an embarrassment of riches.”

  “It comes of their theatrical blood, I’m sure.” Westbrook stood near the hearth, his elbow propped on the back of the armchair where his wife sat. “All of Mrs. Westbrook’s family played singing roles from a young age. Myself, I expected all through my youth to be thrown out of church for desecrating the hymns.”

  “Some talent might come from the Westbrook side nevertheless.” Miss Westbrook stood at the tea table, her hands moving lightly from pot to cup to sugar tongs. “Sometimes these things lie low in one generation and come out again in the next. Was our grandmother musical? Our grandfather, perhaps? We hear so many stories of our Stanley relations, and know almost nothing of the people with whom our father grew up.”

  Nick shifted a bit in his place on the sofa. He’d visited here long enough to see more than one of these uncomfortable little dialogues. In general Mr. Westbrook’s relations were not spoken of at all, but every now and then Miss Westbrook must seize at some flimsy pretext to bring them into the conversation. Her father’s family had cut him off before she was even born, and still she seemed to cherish hopes of seeing them all acknowledge one another again.

  “Neither of my parents was musical, to my recollection.” Westbrook accepted the cup his daughter carried to him, and took the seat on the hearth opposite his wife. “I suppose my sister Elizabeth played rather well. But I contend you all owe your talents to your mother.”

  Sometimes he detected a hint of disappointment in Miss Westbrook’s aspect when one of these conversations failed to catch on. This time she merely arched her eyebrows and gave a philosophical tilt of the head before returning to the tea table.

  The requested duet began, and a moment or so into it came Miss Westbrook with his tea. She crossed the carpet so smoothly that scarcely a ripple could be seen in his cup, when she lowered cup and saucer into his hand. She’d remembered how he liked the drink, pitch dark and unmarred by sugar, though it had been some time since his last visit and there were plenty of other barristers and law students who called here, too. Thank you, he mouthed, to not disturb the singers. She sent him a smile every bit as potent as the contents of his cup, and went back to busy herself with everyone else’s tea.

  The song proved to be a maudlin one, all about some noble lady wasting away for the love of some noble man, and the sisters sang it, so far as he could tell, quite prettily. He smiled whenever one of them glanced his way—or, more accurately, whenever Miss Rosalind did, Miss Beatrice being altogether engrossed by reading the music and playing—and idly followed their eldest sister’s tea-serving circuit of the room.

  If she were only a girl too keenly aware of her beauty, too concerned with class and consequence, he would never think of her at all. Not that he did think of her so very much. Certainly not the way he had in the beginning. He had the continuing study of law to keep him occupied, and agreeable colleagues, and now and then an adventurous woman with whom to dally, when he was in a dallying mood.

  That he ever did think of Kate Westbrook had everything to do with those occasional glimpses of kindness and substance beneath the frivolous, self-satisfied mask. Her protective concern for her sister, to take one example. The guileless gravity with which she’d addressed him at dinner. Her consideration in serving everyone’s tea exactly to taste. Even after three years, he sometimes wondered if he really knew her, and sometimes felt he knew her all too well.

  Back and forth she went from the tea table to the sofa where Sebastian sat with a sketchbook on his knee, to the fireside armchairs where her parents held court, to a writing table on the other side of the room at which Miss Viola labored, no doubt on the same opus she’d been authoring since before he’d ever set foot in this house.

  She walked as though on clouds, the eldest Westbrook daughter did, a beatific, almost secretive smile on her face. She’d seemed so little troubled by her failure to get her father talking about his family, too. Once or twice her glance connected with his and he felt her happiness like an electrical charge. What could have happened, in the half hour since dinner, to put her in this mood?

  Enough of that. Here was Miss Rosalind looking his way again, to see that the song was meeting with his approval, and that was the glance and those the spirits to which he ought to be paying attention, as indeed he ought to be paying attention to this dirge of a tune she and her sister were performing for his benefit.

  And by the time the thing reached its fittingly dismal conclusion—the young lady succumbed to the ravages of her despair, leaving the young man to recognize, too late, the value of that devotion he’d so little regarded—he was ready with a good-natured jibe about the appetite for melancholy in modern young women. One or two teasing remarks more, concerning the feminine predilection for horrid novels, and Miss Rosalind settled on the end of the sofa nearest his chair, coaxed out of her diffidence into an earnest defense of the volume she presently had out from the lending library.

  “I advise you to admit defeat now, Mr. Blackshear.” Miss Westbrook slipped in from his left to hand her sister a cup of milky tea. “You may have studied disputation for four or five years, but she’s had that many years at our family dinner table, and twice that many in the most contentious nursery you could ever hope to see.”

  “More to the point, Mr. Blackshear doesn’t read novels.” Miss Rose lobbed this intelligence to her sister. “So he’s just said.” With her mind occupied in organizing arguments, and her face aglow at the sense of carrying her point, the girl bore no resemblance to that muted creature who’d all but faded into the dining room wallpaper. “Therefore he has no grounds at all upon which to criticize them.”

  “Indeed he hasn’t. The nerve of him.” Miss Westbrook had pivoted round behind her sister and now threw him a look that stopped just short of a wink.

  Without question something had happened to alter her spirits. He’d have to see whether he couldn’t prize it out of her, later on. For now he shot her an answering smile and dove back into the argument, just for the pleasure of seeing how far he could debate a subject on which he was so utterly uninformed.
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  “WELL DONE,” Kate said later, under her breath. She’d waited for this opportunity, watched Mr. Blackshear even while she’d drifted among siblings and parents, passing out cups and praising whatever creative endeavor engaged them; and when their caller had excused himself from a visibly revived Rose and gone to replenish his tea, she’d contrived to encounter him over the cream and sugar and cake. “I don’t mind admitting you made a much better job of that than I would have done. No, this smaller pot has your murky devil’s brew. The other is merely tea, such as refined people prefer.”

  “Refined people don’t know what they’re missing.” Of all Father’s young protégés, none sparred so readily, or with such good cheer, as Mr. Blackshear. He leaned in a bit, holding out his cup, and lowered his own voice. “You give me too much credit, though. I only followed your own instructions, asking her to sing and then engaging her in conversation.”

  “No, you did better.” She refilled his cup and set down the pot. A little to the left was the bay window that overlooked Gower Street; she could draw him that way and then they’d have the piano between themselves and the rest of the room, and they wouldn’t need to keep their voices quite so low. “You engaged her in argument. You didn’t simply make her feel attended to, as I would have had you do. You made her feel clever and capable.”

  “She is clever and capable, and a seasoned disputer, as you said.” He followed her to the window and took up a place on her right. “It’s nothing to do with me.”

  “For Heaven’s sake, take the compliment, Mr. Blackshear. If there’s one thing I can’t abide it’s false modesty.”

  “Indeed.” He eyed her sideways, one brow arching as he lifted his cup. “I hadn’t noticed you to have much use for modesty of any kind.”

  So he was in that sort of mood, was he? Good. She could keep up with all the plaguing he cared to throw her way. “Ah, I take your meaning.” She shaped all her features into an exaggerated show of comprehension. “You think me vain of my looks.”