by Brooke, Meg
She flashed him a genuine smile, but it was gone in an instant. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said, and then, pitching her voice a little lower, “You will do well, Charles.”
“Thank you,” he replied. He glanced at the door again. “You received the money? It would have come sooner, but there were some complications with the will.”
She nodded. “He didn’t have to do that,” she said. “I’m quite comfortable.”
“He should have done much more,” Charles insisted. “He was your father, too, Jacqueline, for all that he never truly acknowledged you."
“There is no proof of that,” she argued, though they both knew perfectly well that there were enough mementos of her mother’s liaison with the previous Duke of Danforth to provide at least circumstantial evidence that Jacqueline Mirabeau was his natural daughter. The money Charles's father had paid and the lavish gifts he had showered upon her were the reason her mother had been able to start this establishment almost twenty years earlier, and the returns on the investments she had made with it were the reason why Jacqueline could afford to keep it up now, with or without the support of a patron.
“I’m glad he thought of you, all the same,” Charles said. “It raises him considerably in my estimation.”
“He was a good man, Charles. Don’t let his human indiscretions lessen him in your memory. He always did what was best for his children—all of them. Oh, Charles, don’t smirk like that. It makes you look like a rake.”
“Perhaps I want to look like a rake.”
She frowned. “But you’re not one. You’ve tried hard, of course, but I don’t think you have the backbone for it. No offense, darling.”
“None taken.” She was right, after all. During his youth, it was true, he had gotten into every kind of trouble there was. There had even been a young lady, his first year at Oxford, who had claimed that her child bore a striking resemblance to him, but he had been able to truthfully say that he had never met the girl in his life, and he had had several friends supporting his case. There were many others, however, who could have legitimately made such a claim if any offspring had resulted from their encounters, and Charles liked to think that he would have paid the price for such youthful indiscretions without complaint. He had certainly reaped all the pleasure they could provide. He had wanted to experience everything his money and name could buy him, and he thought he had nearly achieved his goal, those years at Oxford. But he hadn’t had the heart for it, and after a while the gambling dens and brothels all began to blend together into one dizzyingly colorful blur. He had given it up then, not because it wasn’t pleasurable but because it no longer seemed to make him happy. But it was not until he had come here, to Lady Jack’s, and met the woman he would later discover was his half-sister, that he had begun to see the truth. There was a difference, after all, between pleasure and happiness, and he had found that fine line between the two and tried to walk it ever since then. Jacqueline had been a guiding force in that effort, and he smiled at her now, thinking of all the counsel she had given him over the years when other men thought they were more interestingly occupied.
“When is the Opening this year?” she asked, shifting the subject rather inelegantly.
“Thirty days,” he said.
“Will you be ready?”
He looked up at her. “I have every confidence,” he said.
FOUR
January 7, 1834
“You’ve been invited to take tea with the Duke of Danforth’s sisters?” Cynthia’s father asked, looking up from his newspaper. It took a great deal to tear his attention away from the morning columns. Cynthia chose her next words carefully.
“I met them at Mrs. Baxter’s yesterday.” It was a bold-faced lie, but she met his eyes confidently.
He leveled an analytical stare at her. “I see. And will the Duke of Danforth himself be in attendance?”
“I do not know,” she said. “I have not met him.”
“I did not ask if you had met him,” her father said, his voice icy. “I asked if he would be there. But you must see to it that you gain an introduction. His father was very nearly chosen as Lord Chancellor, you know, before that upstart Brougham took it away from him.”
Cynthia nodded. Her father did not approve of life peers or newly created titles. For a man who claimed to believe in the equal worth of all human beings, he could certainly be a snob sometimes. “I will do my best.”
Her father shook his paper. “See to it that your best is good enough. You are very close to the prize, girl. Don’t disappoint me.”
“Of course not, Papa,” Cynthia murmured. She took another sip of her coffee and then excused herself.
Upstairs in her room she locked the door and sat down at her dressing table. She pulled out the top left drawer, which had been shortened to leave a little empty space behind. She reached in and pulled out a dog-eared copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. It was the first edition, and Clarissa had given it to Cynthia on her fifteenth birthday. Hidden within the pages were several banknotes. Cynthia counted them out on top of the dressing table.
Soon.
There was a knock at the door. Cynthia swept the bills back into the book and replaced the drawer. Then she rushed to turn the lock, trying to look as though she had been doing nothing suspicious. But it was only her maid, Ellen, who Cynthia trusted. Ellen had been with her since Miss Cartwright had left when Cynthia was seventeen.
“Your father would like you to wear your green walking-dress this afternoon, Miss,” Ellen said as she came into the room. Her tone was carefully neutral, but Cynthia saw the expression on Ellen’s face, the sympathy and concern her maid felt.
“Of course,” Cynthia said. There was no harm in allowing her father to have control of something so superficial. But as her maid helped her out of her gown, Cynthia couldn’t help but smile at the irony of it all. How could one truly conduct an experiment in free will when the nature of an experiment was careful control? When she looked at her situation objectively—not an easy task—Cynthia could imagine that her father had begun with good intentions, with the earnest hope of giving her the freedom other young women did not have, but that the desire to control every aspect of her life had been too much to resist. He was weak. She would not be.
Once she was dressed, Ellen took a quick look at the door and asked, “Did it work, Miss?”
Cynthia nodded. The night before, she had instructed Ellen to tell Mallory that she had been invited to the duke’s mansion. Mallory had then told her father, who had delighted in being able to surprise her with his knowledge of her movements at breakfast. “Thank you, Ellen,” she said.
Ellen waved her hand through the air dismissively. “T’were nothing, Miss. Now, which bonnet shall you wear?”
When Ellen had gone, Cynthia sat down at the desk beneath her window and stared out into the little garden behind the house, a sheet of paper waiting before her. She tapped her pen thoughtfully against the paper. Where should she begin? With the ladies she had tutored, she had started with a mock-salon where she asked intelligent questions about poetry and politics. She could not very well do that with the duke. She wondered if it might not be a good idea to give him an examination. But he would likely be offended. She would just have to begin at the beginning, then, and trust him to tell her if she was reviewing something he already knew.
She picked up her pen and wrote, Magna Carta - 1215.
Charles was sitting in the Peers’ Dining Room at Westminster with Lord Beresford when Leo strode in, Anders Rennick, the Earl of Stowe at his elbow. The two men had been chatting, but they fell silent when they saw him.
“I suppose Lord Sidney will be back on the Poor Laws again this year,” Lord Beresford said, noticing Leo’s arrival as well.
Charles nodded, waiting for the cut he was sure was coming. Leo and Stowe had made it clear they had seen him. Everyone else in the room knew it, too. Without even glancing up from the table, Charles could feel the interested gazes of at lea
st ten other peers. None of them knew the reason for it, but they all knew that Leo and Charles had once been close friends and now were barely seen in the same room as each other.
Now Leo would lead his friend to a different table, studiously ignoring him, and the friendship he and Charles had once enjoyed would be over.
But then Stowe started toward them, and Leo had no choice but to follow. “Bain,” Stowe said as he reached their table. “Beresford.” He dropped lazily into a chair, regarding them both as Leo took a seat with more reluctance. Stowe turned his attention to Charles. “How are things in Suffolk?”
Charles gave him an appreciative nod. “As well as can be expected. It was...Christmas was difficult.” He did not know why he was saying such a thing to Stowe, whom he did not know well. The man gave an impression of trustworthiness, and it seemed right to tell him.
“And your mother is well?”
“As well as can be expected. She will come down next month to begin preparing for Gillian’s come-out,” he added, glancing at Leo. When Leo’s twin sisters had come out the year before, Charles had dutifully danced with them at every ball, and it had been at Leo’s provocation. Terrified that his youngest two sisters’ reputation for being unholy terrors had preceded them, and would discourage potential partners, he had practically begged both Stowe and Charles to do a good turn by his sisters, and they had obliged. It was that attentiveness that had led to the unfortunate business at the Middlebury’s house party. But Charles could hardly blame Leo for his own foolish behavior. He could have exonerated himself, he supposed, but poor Maris would never have forgiven him if he told her brother the complete truth, and anyway he was smarter than that. He should have prevented the whole thing. The man had every right to be ignoring him as he was doing now.
For a moment, each man at the table stared at the others in silence. Then Stowe, seeing that no one else was going to say anything, said, “So, you’re taking up your father’s seat?”
Charles nodded. “I only hope I can do him justice.”
“It’s to be the Tories, then?” Stowe carefully hid any trace of expectation from his voice.
Charles shrugged, trying to sound cryptic. It was too hard to resist having a little fun at their expense. “You have to admire the way Peel’s beginning to strike out away from the rest.” He cast a surreptitious glance around the table.
Stowe gaped at him. Even Leo was staring.
“Oh, all right,” Charles said, throwing up his hands in mock surrender. “I suppose I could give you lot the benefit of my name.”
The other three breathed a collective sigh of relief. “I thought I was going to have to hit you with something heavy,” Beresford said.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t try,” Charles said. “I would have had to thrash you, and this is a new coat.”
Stowe actually laughed. “It will be good to have you, Bain, especially if we are actually to see any movement on the report of the Poor Laws Commission this year.”
Charles made a note to ask Miss Endersby about the Commission.
Finally, Leo spoke. “That essay by Malthus is being circulated again. Seems at least two members of the Commission subscribe to his position.”
Charles made another mental note.
“I’ve read it,” Stowe said. “Clarissa says he’s claiming that population growth only compounds poverty.”
Leo smiled. “It’s a good thing you have her to tell you that.” Charles remembered that Stowe’s wife had a reputation for being something of an intellectual. He wondered if she was one of Miss Endersby’s former pupils. It would hardly be polite to ask her. Charles felt rather out of his depth in the situation. He had been carefully schooled in the rules of the ton, of course, but they did not proscribe appropriate behavior when dealing with a tutor who was also a gently bred young lady.
Stowe nodded and then stood. “Speaking of, I should be getting home. Clarissa insisted on bringing the twins to town, and the house is in a state of perpetual chaos.” He said it with a weary tone, but his broad smile told Charles that Stowe was not at all displeased with his situation.
Leo rose to follow him out, the two of them speaking in hushed tones. Charles stared after them. He had never pictured Stowe—or any of their group, really—enjoying fatherhood as he seemed to do. Was this the wedded bliss that awaited them? Charles could not believe that one in a million men could be as lucky as Stowe in their choice of bride.
Putting voice to Charles’s thoughts, Beresford said, “Did you ever think of any of us being fathers? Least of all Stowe.”
Charles shook his head. “I must go, too, I’m afraid. I have another appointment.”
As he left, Beresford called out, “Don’t worry about me. I’ll just be here, finishing the rest of the cakes. I’m quite at my leisure.”
“Who is Malthus?” the duke asked before the door to the library had even closed behind Cynthia.
“Good afternoon, Your Grace,” she said, crossing the room to join him and trying not to look surprised to hear that name on his lips. He was not sitting behind his desk, but at a table that took up much of the right side of the room. “Thomas Malthus is a curate in Surrey. He is also one of the leading authorities on population growth.” She removed her bonnet and set it down on the table, then went past him to the shelves beyond. “You may very well have a copy of his Essay on the Principle of Population here. I must say, this is a very well-organized library,” she added, seeing that everything on the shelves was categorized and labeled. She found the section she was looking for and began scanning the books.
“You’ll find all the books in good condition, I’m sure,” he drawled, leaning back in his chair to watch her. “Most of them have never been opened.” Was it her imagination or had she heard a note of self-deprecation in his voice?
“That is a shame,” she said. “Ah, here it is.” She pulled the book off the shelf and put it on the table. “I wouldn’t bother with the later chapters, but the first four are very instructive.” He stared at the book as if surprised that she actually expected him to read it, then picked it up and began flipping the pages. She sighed and took a chair across from him. “I thought we might begin with some history,” she said.
He looked up from the book. “Excellent notion.”
“Good. Now, you know William the Conqueror and the Normans, I suppose.” He nodded. “And the Witenagemot—”
“The what?”
“The Witenagemot? The precursor of our modern Parliament?” He shook his head, looking uncertain. “No matter,” she said. “It’s unnecessary to our purpose here. Let’s begin with the Magna Carta.”
“I know the Magna Carta,” he said, sounding exasperated.
“Very well. Then let’s move on to 1258.”
“All right.”
“1258 was the year the barons signed the Provisions of Oxford, forcing Henry III to give up much of his power to Parliament. No British monarch since has had more power than Parliament. When Edward I came to the throne—”
“Longshanks?” the duke asked.
“That was his moniker, yes,” Cynthia replied evenly, trying to hide her surprise. He had looked so bored that she had assumed he was no longer listening. “Anyway, Edward I came to the throne he needed Parliament to support his efforts to unite England, Scotland and Wales. Then he was deposed, and his son and grandson found themselves dependent on Parliament’s goodwill for their crowns. By the time the Tudors came to power, the monarch no longer had a seat in either chamber. The position of Speaker was created so that Parliament would still have a means of communication with the king.”
“If the king was Henry VIII, I don’t think I’d want that job,” the duke said.
Cynthia had to force herself not to smile. “That’s why the Speaker is dragged to the chair once he has been elected, you see,” she said.
“Listen,” the duke said before she could continue. “I know all this rubbish about the kings and queens. I memorized it at Eton. Could we
possibly skip to the more interesting bits?”
Cynthia bristled a little at that—she thought she had chosen the most interesting bits. But she stood slowly, returned to the shelves, and stayed there until she had found another volume. She laid it atop the Malthus. “This is the first volume of the Hansard Parliamentary History from 1625 through 1803. The earlier volumes dating back to 1066 are on the shelf as well, but you’ll find this more to your taste. Would you prefer to study it tonight and have me quiz you on it tomorrow, or shall I just highlight the key points?”
He grinned. “By all means,” he said, leaning back into that casual position he had adopted the day before, elbow on the arm of his chair, “tell me.”
Cynthia regarded him as calmly as she could for a moment before she picked up the book. If this was how he meant to spend each of their afternoons together, she was doomed. She opened the book to a random date. “Ah,” she said, “January 30th, 1649. The beheading of Charles I.”
Charles listened raptly as Miss Endersby explained the reasons behind Parliament’s decision to execute a monarch of Britain and the rise of Oliver Cromwell. Well, perhaps he didn’t listen raptly, but he was certainly studying her attentively. How did the chit store so much information? She was rattling off names and dates and places as though she had an entire encyclopedia memorized. Perhaps she did. Perhaps her gift was not so much intelligence as it was memory, though he very sincerely doubted it. She was, he thought, the most intelligent person, man or woman, he had ever encountered.
“...and then he was made Lord Protector. But he was dead little more than a year later. And two years after that, the Council of State restored Charles II to the throne.”
“He was the one who had all the mistresses, wasn’t he?” Charles asked, hoping for a blush or even a falter from Miss Endersby.
But she just stared at him. “Yes, I believe he was. He had...oh, let me think...at least nine or ten natural children he acknowledged. Certainly an embarrassment for the crown, although he ended up making most of the males dukes and earls eventually. One of the benefits of being king, I suppose, is being able to raise the obscure and the deserving alike to positions of wealth and rank.”
