by Brooke, Meg
For that, he would need help.
“I know!” Imogen cried suddenly. Ian dropped the cake he had been eating on his lap, scattering sugar all over his dark trousers. “There’s that woman Mariah Maxwell used when she married Lord Farrington last year.”
“A woman?” Charles asked, trying to remember Lord Farrington. Wasn’t he the one who had fallen asleep during his own wedding? Why anyone would marry him was beyond Charles’s power to understand. If his wife was anything like him he could see why she might have needed a little polishing. But his problems went beyond sitting and standing at the right times and remembering where to seat viscounts. Why would Imogen think he needed a woman to tutor him in those areas?
“Yes, Charles,” Imogen said, sounding rather exasperated. “We women can do more than embroider cushions and sketch, you know. This woman certainly can, anyway. She was very discreet. I can’t think of her name now, but I’ll write to Mariah. She knew nothing about politics or anything academic when she married her husband, and she didn’t want to appear foolish among his friends. She hired this woman to tutor her. Quite the bluestocking, apparently. Knew everything there was to know about Parliament and politics. If you ask me, Lord Farrington probably could have used her help just as much as Lady Farrington.”
Charles groaned. Just what he needed. Another liberal female trying to bend his ear. If she spent most of her time training flighty young society wives, she would no doubt be sour and commandeering, too.
But he did need help.
“All right,” he sighed. “See if you can arrange a meeting for Monday.”
TWO
January 4, 1833
Cynthia took a careful sip of her tea, trying to appear attentive. Really, she had no idea what Mr. Altington was saying, but she thought she was doing a masterful job of looking as though she did, and from the way he kept growing more and more animated, she thought he had fallen for the ruse. She had stopped listening when, trying to impress her, he had misquoted Wordsworth what felt like ages ago. She glanced discreetly at the mantel clock behind him. It had been ten minutes.
She stifled a groan.
Then she heard the words “your father”. She snapped to attention.
“...never knew there were so many mathematicians who were also philosophers,” Mr. Altington was saying. Oh, dear. Another Oxford man. “Truly, it was an eye-opening experience. It’s a shame he’s no longer teaching.”
“Yes,” Cynthia said mildly.
“But it means we are all able to enjoy the pleasure of your company here in London,” he added, smiling.
Cynthia smiled back. Really, she knew Mr. Altington meant well, the bumbling buffoon, but she wished he would leave her alone and allow her to pursue her real quarry.
Across Mariah’s sitting room sat Lady Anna Lucas, the new bride of Lord Frederick Lucas. She was simpering up at the Marchioness of Rowen, looking every inch the silly society wife. She was pretty and poised and seemed not to care a bit that the only things she could contribute to the conversation were her opinions of the latest fashions and reflections on last night’s ball. But Cynthia saw past that. Lady Lucas knew she was ignorant, and she hated it. Cynthia had not failed to notice the way the poor girl blushed every time she was asked a serious question, even if everyone else had.
But she had also seen that Lady Lucas was not stupid. Here was a girl she could mold and shape, a girl who could become a leading political wife, just as Mariah Maxwell and Lydia Baxter were poised to do. Well, perhaps not Lydia Baxter, but at least she no longer confused Baron Brougham and Earl Grey. Cynthia had made both of those women what they were, and she could do it again. She would do it again. If only she could corner Lady Lucas long enough to plant the seed.
As if thinking of her hostess had summoned her, Mariah Maxwell, Lady Farrington appeared at Cynthia’s shoulder. “Mr. Altington, how splendid to see you again,” she said, and the tone of her voice made it sound as though she actually meant it. Mariah smiled prettily. “Would you mind if I stole Miss Endersby away for a moment? I promised to show her the new watercolor my husband purchased last week.”
“I suppose I will just have to do without her,” Mr. Altington said, looking rather put out. Cynthia flashed him her most alluring yet noncommittal smile as she rose and allowed Mariah to take her arm and lead her out of the room and into the well-appointed hall of the fashionable Mayfair townhouse.
When they had reached the study, Mariah closed the doors quietly.
“What is it?” Cynthia asked, for she knew perfectly well that Lord Farrington detested watercolors and preferred oils of hunting scenes. He had told her so himself at that exhibition last year. Had she done something wrong? Had someone mentioned that she had been helping Mariah? She prided herself on her discretion, on appearing to be nothing more than a close friend to the women she had tutored. If someone had given away Mariah’s secret, it certainly had not been Cynthia.
“Nothing to worry about,” Mariah said, and as she moved towards the desk Cynthia saw her cast an interested glance at the newspaper that lay there. Cynthia couldn’t help but smile. She had done her work well. “I have a prospective client for you.”
Cynthia stared at her. She could not imagine Mariah recruiting clients for her—she could not imagine Mariah telling anyone about the tutoring she had received at all. “You have?” she managed.
Mariah smiled. “I have told a few people about what you did for me, Cynthia. Only a few close friends, you know, people who would never reveal my secret. And one of them is the sister of the new Duke of Danforth.”
“And she wishes to engage my services?” Cynthia asked. She knew there was a new Duke of Danforth, of course. She had closely followed the previous Duke’s career, if only because he seemed to be one of the most vocal opponents of the causes she held dear. He was unmarried, so perhaps his sister meant to play hostess for him.
Mariah shook her head. “No, not Imogen—her brother.”
Cynthia gaped. “Her...her brother? Do you mean her younger brother?” There were two Bainbridge brothers, she thought. Certainly it was the younger, who was probably a boy still, who wanted her help?
“No, dear. Charles Bainbridge, Duke of Danforth, wishes you to tutor him.” Mariah looked almost gleeful at the prospect of a duke needing tutoring in the world of politics and the law. Cynthia didn’t blame her. She knew the Duke of Danforth by reputation, and she was aware that he was a bit of a rakehell, but the idea that a man who had been a marquis all his life and was now a duke would need her services was a little frightening. Seeing that she did not know what to say, Mariah went on, “He is going to take up his seat in Parliament when the session begins in February. Before that, he needs a little...polishing.” Cynthia thought Mariah might actually have giggled a little at that last word. And it was rather laughable. But it was also terrifying. Were these the men who had the ear of the king? By all accounts, William IV was not well. It was falling increasingly to the peers to make the decisions that would affect the kingdom with very little input from him, and the Great Reform had only made Parliament stronger. With all the uncertainty surrounding the king's health and the fitness of the Princess Victoria, his child heir, parliament was trying to push through as many changes as they could now, before William died and left the young princess—or worse, her overbearing Hanoverian Mama and her cronies—in control of the kingdom. Last year they had finally, completely abolished slavery in England and its protectorates, and she knew that this year it was to be a reform of the inadequate and crippling Poor Laws. There were certainly a great many decisions to be made, many of them requiring great care and deliberation, but Cynthia was horrified to think that a Member might need help from her to make such decisions.
But if anyone was qualified, it was her. One thing her father had not taught her was false modesty. Cynthia knew her strengths. She knew how intelligent she was, and she knew that she had been a student—not a formal one, but a student nonetheless—of one of the greatest polit
ical minds of his generation. If she knew how to turn a ninny like Lydia Baxter into a poised, intellectual society belle, then she could teach a duke, who would surely have intelligence and a quick wit, to be a leader amongst his colleagues at Westminster.
She lowered herself into the chair Mariah offered. “I’m listening,” she said.
It was nearly four when Cynthia arrived home. When they had moved to London, she had still not truly understood how large the inheritance her father had received was. But when she had seen the fashionable townhouse in Cavendish Square, she had realized that he had, indeed, come into a great deal of money. The house was a four-story affair built in the Georgian style. Inside well appointed if narrow hall led into the formal rooms: a parlor, a sitting room, and a dining room. At the back of the house a door led out to the garden, and another led down to the kitchens, which were the domain of their long-suffering cook. Cynthia had only been down to the kitchens once or twice. Usually she met with Cook, whose last name was Bludderidge, in the dining room after breakfast had been cleared away. Her father had a large and varied appetite, and often gave Cynthia instructions about dinner at the morning meal so that they could be passed on—he never dealt with Cook or any of the other servants directly unless it could not possibly be avoided. There weren’t many—besides Cook, there was the butler, a round, officious looking man called Mallory, Cynthia’s ladies’ maid Ellen, one other upstairs maid and another girl who worked in the kitchens. Cynthia did not know any of them besides Ellen particularly well. Her father’s household was given to a fair amount of turnover in staff. But she had still managed to create a well-run and tidy household. It was another of the many skills Miss Cartwright had imparted, though perhaps not one on which her father placed much value.
Mallory greeted her politely as she came in. “Is my father at home?” she asked as he took her mantle and bonnet.
Mallory shook his head. “No, Miss.” Cynthia did not know the man well enough to be sure, but she thought she heard a note of relief in his voice. Mallory was their third butler since they had moved from Oxford to Cavendish Square almost four years ago. Her father was not an easy man to have as an employer, but Mallory had managed to stick it out for over a year, and Cynthia had high hopes that he would be able to withstand her father’s temper, at least for the foreseeable future. The last search for a new butler had taken far longer than Cynthia would have liked—indeed, she had begun to wonder if there was some sort of underground butler’s society where word had spread that Mr. Endersby of Cavendish Square was not the sort of employer one wanted. But she had tempted Mallory with some of Cook’s best sweets during the interview, which she thought might have swayed him, and he had, thankfully, stayed. Indeed, it seemed that Mallory’s middle grew a little rounder every time Cynthia’s father had one of his fits of temper. Cynthia often wondered whether Mallory used cakes and tarts to calm his nerves as some men used drink.
She thanked her lucky stars daily that there was no way she could have inherited the temper that had driven away their last two butlers, for all that her copper-bright hair would have indicated otherwise. Cynthia had known for three years that there was no chance of her bearing any of the traits she so feared in her father.
She was not, after all, his true daughter.
Three years ago, not long after he had inherited his fortune and moved them to London, her father had called her into his study on the second floor and explained that Cynthia’s childhood and everything she had ever known about herself were all carefully crafted falsehoods.
Roger Endersby was a genius. There was no question of that. He had read everything there was to read about natural law, about the evolution of human understanding, about the very purpose of society, and even written a few treatises of his own. And he had a naturally curious mind. He could not stand not knowing, not possessing knowledge. He had not said these things to Cynthia, but he had taught her to be an observer of human nature, and she had a keen mind. She saw how little he cared for other people, how much trouble he had seeing them as anything but obstacles to the knowledge he craved. So she had not really been surprised when he had told her that she had never actually had a mother, that he had never been married, that the woman he had almost never spoken of had not died in childbirth as he had given her to assume, but was still alive and well—he presumed—in a brothel in York. The only reason she was living in a gentleman’s house and not in that same brothel was because he had taken her from her whore of a mother when she was an infant and raised her as his own. He had done this so that he could conduct an experiment.
That was all Cynthia was: an experiment, a grand exercise in free will. Her father had wanted to see if a female child could be raised up beyond the expectations society had for her sex. So he had taught her math and engineering and philosophy, forbade her fairies and magic and princesses, and punished her when she had shown interest in anything frivolous. He had done it for her own good. And here she was, now, his grand creation. His, he had said, as though she were no more than a piece of property. In truth, he had paid for her. He had purchased her. Perhaps he did own her.
Cynthia had sat across the desk from her father thinking back on the years she had spent cowering before him, wondering why he didn’t love her, and imagined ways to bring about his death. She could do it. He had bought her books about plant tinctures and forensic methodology. She could quietly poison him, and no one would ever have to know.
But there was one thing Cynthia had not learned from her father, but from her girlhood best friend: humanity. It was a terrible inconvenience at that moment, when Cynthia wanted nothing more than to see her father suffer. She could have done it, but it would have cost her the last little piece of her soul, and she refused to give that up, no matter how tarnished it was. So she had sat stoically as her father had explained that she had an opportunity few other young ladies had, now that he had inherited a great fortune from a relative Cynthia had never known he had. She could take the world by storm. She could influence the greatest minds of the day. But in order to do those things, she would have to marry a man with influence. It had not been the original intention of the experiment, which Cynthia surmised had been to create a truly liberated woman. But as with all things, her father had a knack for turning a pure, honest philosophical exercise into a stepping stone to power. When she had turned ten and had begun to develop into a beauty, he had seen a greater possibility.
“Imagine,” he had said to her, as if it were not her life he was talking about but some theoretical universe far away, “if you were married to the Prime Minister, or the Lord Chancellor. Imagine what we could do.”
Cynthia noted that he did not say she, but we. And as she watched him ruminate on the possibilities his grand experiment might have created, she made a decision.
She would never marry. To spite him, of course, but also because she could not imagine deceiving another human being as he had deceived her. She also could not imagine telling another person the story her father had just told her. She felt filthy just listening to it. And what man would marry her, knowing she was the daughter of a whore, nothing more than a plaything for a man who was incapable of seeing human beings as anything but toys?
Her whole life had been a lie. But Cynthia had refused to break, just as she had always done. Even when she had been a girl and he had stood over her, his face red with screaming, she had always stubbornly refused to break. She would come through this, she had told herself, and when she reached her majority at twenty-five—now she saw why he had made it twenty-five—she would go as soon as she could afford to do so. But if she were truly to be free, and she could not marry to escape him, she would have to find another way.
At first she had thought of taking work as a governess, but then she would have been answering to another master. So she had come up with a different plan. Carefully, cautiously, she had made friends with some of the silliest women she could find, women whose parents had wanted them taught to sew and sing and sketch and n
othing more, women who hungered for something beyond the drawing room skills they had been learned at finishing school. And then she had showed them what they’d been missing. They had been grateful. The day after her first successful soiree, Mariah Maxwell had sent Cynthia a sapphire bracelet that had fetched a tidy sum in a pawnbroker’s shop in Piccadilly. Just a week ago, Lydia Baxter had sent her a small Delacroix study that she had sold to a dealer for twice what the bracelet had fetched. Women wanted what Cynthia could provide, they longed for it, and she would continue to do it until she had saved enough money to get away from Roger Endersby forever.
She thought of the rewards she might receive from the Duke of Danforth. If she did as he wished, he would certainly feel obliged to provide her with generous recompense. Perhaps even enough to rent a small home of her own somewhere in London—for Cynthia loved the city and had no wish to leave it—and live the life she had dreamed of for so long.
But working for someone as visible as the duke would also come with risks. So far, Cynthia had been able to keep her father from discovering her plan. He thought that she was making friends in society, mixing with young men and women of quality, and seeking out a spouse poised to do great things. She made up little vignettes about her afternoons in the drawing rooms of the well-to-do, her evenings at balls and the theatre, that made it seem as though she was doing exactly what he wanted. If she was lucky, he wouldn’t find out until she was already gone. If not, well, she had reached her majority at her last birthday, and she was technically free to do as she pleased.
The Duke of Danforth could help her do exactly that. It was a risk she could not afford not to take. He wanted to see her on Monday. She would go.
