Celeste Bradley - [Royal Four 04]
Page 6
The handsome, dignified lord, his beautiful young wife, Stanton himself playing the part of the sturdy scion, all living out the roles given them. Meanwhile, beneath that shining façade there lurked hatred and jealousy, obsession and oppression, writhing and growing like the squirming life found beneath a stone.
So young Stanton had observed the lies. He’d seen the way people moved, the way they held themselves, the very manner of their speech, and he had simply known who lied and who did not.
And discovered, of course, that everyone did, in ways that betrayed their very souls to his eyes.
Until now.
The sickening possibility that he might have lost his unique skill caused Stanton to turn to his valet quickly.
“Herbert, I have decided to adopt a goatee.”
Herbert, who was well-known for his disdain of facial hair, nodded without a blink. “Very good, my lord. Very dashing.”
Lie. Stanton nearly closed his eyes in relief. “Or perhaps not,” he said, to provide good Hamersley with a bit of the same. “Rather too devilish, I would think.”
“True, my lord. Too true.”
So his mysterious skill still worked, only not on Lady Alicia.
Why her, of all people? What strange skill did she have, that she could hide from him, yet the world had no doubt of her lies? Why did she affect him so?
She was odd, rude, indelicate, reputedly unchaste, and . . . well, damn it, she was annoying, from her bare feet to her green-as-first-spring eyes!
Bloody hell. Now she had him waxing poetic about her damned eye color!
Yet his two encounters with her had put none of his doubts to rest. She wasn’t lovely, but neither was she stupid. Surely a woman as sharply intelligent as that would not put herself in such a position to be caught sleeping with a stable boy?
Perhaps there was more he ought to know about Lady Alicia Lawrence after all.
To Lady Alicia Lawrence,
While I indeed instructed you to purchase new items as needed for our purposes, I fail to see the necessity of charging the cost of an entire year’s wardrobe to my accounts.
Sincerely,
Stanton Horne, Lord Wyndham
To Lord Wyndham,
I don’t expect you to understand the necessity. You’re a man. You have no idea what a woman of Society requires. You undoubtedly believe we all wake up looking like fashion plates every morning. Pay the bills and let me be.
A.
To Lady Alicia Lawrence,
Why the need to buy a carriage? I will be escorting you to any and all necessary events and I already own several, admittedly not as opulent as the one you attempted to order, but I find them sufficient.
Sincerely,
Stanton Horne, Lord Wyndham
Wyndham,
Oh, very well. Then I shall require the exclusive use of one of your carriages for the duration. You might as well send along a driver, if you can manage to pry his pay from your tight fist.
I have found a suitable house. Here is the address.
A.
To Lady Alicia,
A house? Are you entirely mad? Why in heaven’s name would you need to buy a house? Especially one that is larger and more ostentatious than mine? Why do you need a new address? We will be leaving London in a week.
Wyndham
Wyndham,
I realize that the larger part of the brain of most males resides somewhere other than their skull, but do try to think logically for a moment. No one gossips more than a dressmaker. The fact that you allow me to live in a sewer pit will be all over London—and your precious house party—before we even arrive.
A.
To Lady Alicia,
If you insist upon a new residence—and only for the duration!—then I shall rent you a small, respectable house within the confines of Mayfair. I am confident that will suffice.
It had better.
Wyndham
Wyndham,
It was worth a try.
A.
To Lady Alicia,
I promised to pay your expenses, but I should be highly displeased if you beggar me in the process.
W.
Wyndham,
What are you going to do, ruin my reputation? Oh, worry not. I am only doing what is necessary to create your precious illusion. Besides, mistresses are supposed to beggar their paramours. It’s practically a law.
P.S. I need jewels.
A.
To Lady Alicia,
You’ll buy paste.
W.
Wyndham,
You’re not doing your own reputation any good, you know. Every Society lady worth her salt is trained from birth to spot paste ten yards away.
A.
To Lady A.,
I will take care of the jewels. Do not purchase jewels. At all. In any form. Is that understood?
W.
Wyndham,
Yes, milord. Of course, milord. Whatever you say, milord.
However, must you be so stingy with the salaries for my new staff? We need discreet people who value their jobs. Must I think of everything?
A.
To Lady A.,
I will hire your staff. You may choose your own lady’s attendant. Do not press me further.
W.
To Lady Alicia,
You’ll buy paste.
To Lady Alicia Lawrence,
You have not replied to my letter of yesterday. Did you fully understand my instructions?
W.
W.,
No jewels. Hire a dresser. Don’t press you. Now stop bothering me. You have no idea what a chore all these fittings are. Go take care of some useless male business and let me do my job.
A.
P.S. I do think we ought to run a practice excursion before we attend Lord Cross’s house party. Perhaps you have received a suitable invitation?
To Lady A.,
I think not. It is one thing to bring your mistress to a gathering of sophisticated adults. It is quite another to flaunt a woman of bad virtue before the innocent young ladies at Almacks.
W.
W.,
“A woman of bad virtue”?
Couldn’t have put it better myself.
A.
To Lady Alicia Lawrence,
I assume from your lack of correspondence during the past two days that you are busily preparing for our departure. I will arrive at your new residence tomorrow morning to escort you to Lord Cross’s house party. The journey will take less than a day.
W.
To Lady Alicia,
Did you receive my earlier notice of our departure tomorrow morning? I received no reply.
W.
W.,
I shall be late.
A.
To Lady Alicia,
You shall not.
W.
Stanton folded his admittedly terse note and sealed it absently. He ought not to have written that about the “woman of bad virtue.” He had slipped into a strangely informal correspondence with Lady Alicia over the last week and had not been taking careful note of his tone.
Well, there was little he could do about it now, although he would make a point to apologize tomorrow. In fact, it would be an opportunity to model some pretty manners for the woman. Hers could do with improvement.
Herbert tapped at the door of Stanton’s study. “My lord, Gunther is here to report.”
Oh, dread. What was the maddening creature up to now?
Gunther stepped into the room and bowed. “My lord, you wished to be informed whenever her ladyship made plans without you.”
Stanton nodded at Gunther with a wry twist to his lips. “So I did.” He’d taken Gunther from his own household and installed him at Lady Alicia’s on the off chance the man would be useful. It turned out that he’d been vital to keeping Lady Alicia’s excesses in check.
“Her ladyship has arranged to attend the final performance of the opera this evening. She has reserved a very prominent box, where sh
e will be sure to be seen.”
Stanton narrowed his eyes and considered his options. Lady Alicia had already proven her complete lack of discretion and decorum. There was no telling what mayhem she might ignite in the torridly dramatic setting of the opera.
“Should I try to talk her ladyship out of her plans?”
Stanton eyed the overeager Gunther sourly. “Thank you, no.” Then he smiled slightly. “I haven’t been to the opera in years.”
If Lady Alicia thought he would turn her loose on an un-suspecting London, she was sadly mistaken. He would meet her there and keep her contained. She would accomplish her goal of putting herself on tawdry display and he would be able to keep an eye on her every move.
And you’ll be in public, so you’ll be safe.
Stanton dismissed that errant thought. Ridiculous. As if he needed protection from one wayward lady!
Although Alicia had vowed never to care what a man thought of her ever again, she found herself wondering what Lord Wyndham would think if he could see her now.
The gown she’d chosen for the opera was an opulent concoction of midnight-blue winter velvet and gold lace.
“I feel rather like a stage curtain,” she muttered as she twisted and turned before the mirror. “From a very disreputable stage.”
When she’d ordered the gown, she’d been aiming to cause shock and consternation, and possibly to prompt a few ladies to cover their gentlemen’s eyes. The skirts of the gown were designed to cling and sway with her figure’s movements, with very little in the way of petticoat beneath. The bodice was boned and padded, secretly of course, to lift and expose every legal inch of skin . . . and then a bit more.
Seeing the upper half-moon of her own areola peeking above the neckline proved to be too much for even Alicia’s determination. She took the length of gold lace which had been intended to be used in her hair and tucked it into her décolletage.
Much better. Still daring and still shocking, for the fine lace was anything but solid, but at least she now felt able to leave her own dressing room.
Garrett, her lady’s maid—whom she’d hired in an impulsive attempt to irritate Lord Wyndham, but who had turned out to be invaluable in her quest to be outrageous—entered the room carrying the fur cape he had been brushing out for the evening. He stopped when he saw the lace alteration she’d made. “Coward,” he said accusingly.
“I know. I simply couldn’t.” Alicia spread her arms and turned for his viewing. “Will it do, d’you think?”
He tilted his head and folded his arms, studying her. “Do what, milady? Scorch their eyeballs? Yes. Put you down in history as the most scandalous lady in all of England? Possibly, although you’d really need a royal affair to truly make your mark.”
Alicia considered herself in the mirror. A royal affair? “Hmm.”
Garret shook his head. “Don’t shoot at the moon, my lady. Prinny has got himself a brand-new lady and he won’t tire of her for months, by all accounts. Besides, I believe that copious amounts of giggling is required in that position. You don’t giggle.”
Alicia shrugged and let it go. “True. Although I should probably learn to, don’t you think? Don’t all mistresses giggle?”
“Shouldn’t worry about it now, milady. Himself doesn’t seem the type, anyway. I think he likes you for your mind, scrambled as it is.”
Alicia turned to glare at Garrett. “I told you before, I am not trying to win Lord Wyndham. He and I have a business arrangement, that is all.”
“Sure, that’s all it is now. But he’s unmarried and so are you and I’m a lady’s maid. It’s my job to make matches.”
Alicia narrowed her eyes. “You’ve been a lady’s maid for all of a week. I made you and I can break you.”
“And where would you find another male lady’s maid so perfectly designed to cause scandal and gossip?” He paused to smooth his golden hair in the mirror. “Especially one so handsome and virile and guaranteed to cause prurient speculation in the most pristine of minds?”
“Ha,” Alicia groused. “You’re a grandstanding tea-leaf actor and half the world knows it.”
He smiled and patted her shoulder comfortingly. “But not the half which you are trying to shock. And so I carry on, poof though I am, gazing at you with seething passion when someone else is in the room and dressing you like a wicked man’s darkest dream.”
He frowned at the lace in her bodice. “Now stop being a marshmallow and strike as if you mean it, which you do—or you will if you’ll stop thinking about what Himself ’ll think of you.”
Alicia toyed with her neckline uncertainly. “I do mean it . . . or at least I did mean it.” She pressed her cool fingers over her hot eyes. “I thought I knew what I was after, but now I’m completely turned about.”
“Perhaps if you remember what Lord Almont did to you—”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to think about Almont right now. Tonight is about my family. Almont’s lies were terrible, but what my own flesh and blood did to me . . .”
Hot betrayal rushed anew through her veins and she regarded her neckline with newly heated resolve. With a sharp movement, she yanked the concealing lace away. “There,” she said with satisfaction. If only her family could see her now.
You were so ready to believe the worst of me—well, here you are then. Your worst nightmare come to life. Now you’ll be the object of gossip and dismay, you’ll be rejected by your peers, you’ll be the ones sitting in silence day after day, welcome nowhere, no visitors, until you think you might go mad from the ticking of the clock.
She raised hot eyes to meet Garrett’s in the mirror. “Now, I’m ready to go to the opera.”
7
Stanton leaned back in Lady Alicia Lawrence’s viewing box and regarded the ongoing opera with a level of boredom of which he hadn’t thought himself capable. Oh, the soprano was very talented and the set was extravagant, as was the pageantry of the cream of London Society that swirled below him—but Lady Alicia was not here.
Apparently she was making a fashionably late appearance. Since the performance was nearly half over, even the unpredictable Lady Alicia must surely arrive shortly.
Not surprisingly, the orchestra had just begun the next movement when the curtains parted behind Stanton and an usher bowed Lady Alicia through. Stanton stood to greet her.
She seemed startled to see him, hanging back in the shadows that overtook the rear of the box. He smiled cordially enough. She did not seem reassured. “What are you doing here?” she hissed.
“Did I not make myself clear? I am to be your escort at all times.”
“You were entirely clear. I simply ignored you.” She looked behind her as if contemplating a quick escape.
Stanton debated engaging in a bit of timely sarcasm, but unexpectedly felt no need. In fact, he felt inexplicably lighthearted this evening. He smiled easily at her. “You must be warm. Why don’t you let me take your cape?”
She tucked the collar of the cape closer to her throat, hesitating. “I—” She pressed her lips together and gazed at him in irritation. “Oh, I simply do not care what you think!”
She abruptly stepped forward, out of the shadows and into the play of light from the stage lanterns. She dropped the cape and raised her chin defiantly.
Stanton felt his mouth go dry.
It wasn’t her. It could not be her. Lady Alicia Lawrence was a blotchy, ill-kempt creature, swollen like a grape and not as appetizing.
Before him stood a faultlessly elegant lady, posed with her head high and her shoulders back, showing off a truly prepossessing figure, if one was inclined to prefer a bit of plump abundance with one’s morning cup of tea . . .
She wouldn’t be elegant in his arms. She would be earthy and untamed and shameless—
Stanton blinked. That thought had flown through his mind like an outlaw’s arrow, coming from nowhere.
It wasn’t her.
Yet lively cat-green eyes gleamed at him knowingly.
> “You seem taken aback, my lord. And rather boring. In the last week I’ve spent more money than the Prince Regent’s new mistress! Have you nothing to say about my accomplishment?”
She looked like a prostitute—a beautiful, opulent, extravagantly endowed prostitute with sexual fire alight in her eyes.
She was the embodiment—oh, dear God, that body!—of every man’s most wicked dream.
Whose dream? Theirs . . . or yours?
The air came back into Stanton’s lungs in a rush. “What in the seventh level of hell are you wearing?”
He hadn’t meant to bellow and he certainly hadn’t realized that the orchestra was just finishing the last movement, and he sure as hell hadn’t meant for his question to echo through the opera house like a bass crescendo.
“Oh, well done,” Alicia murmured to him.
He turned to gape down at her. She patted his arm with a pleased smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Then she stepped away from him in a dramatic flounce of skirts. “You beast!”
Again, her voice carried over the hall as if she stood on the stage itself. Every neck craned to see. A soggy sob followed, and then she turned back to him, dramatically wiping her eyes. “You horrible, cruel . . . man! First you seduce me, and then you denigrate me for it!”