I tipped my head. “You have seen for yourself what terrible things the Veil can cause to happen. How many of your peers do you wish to see caught in the Veil’s bloody games?”
“I could name a few,” Piers said without pause, but his smile edged into a dry slant as he leaned back into his chair. “All right, let me see if I’ve this all figured out. You, dearest sister, are intending to flaunt yourself around as bait for the Veil—or his chosen protectors,” he added when I opened my mouth.
I closed it, gave a nod.
“In so doing,” Piers continued with steady regard, “you expect my reputation to bear the brunt of these efforts.”
“Unlikely,” Ashmore said, earning him a raised eyebrow of such lordly disdain that I was reminded abruptly of the false challenge Ashmore had issued him in the past.
Lord Piers had been rather soused at the time, and on the verge of announcing my presence to the Menagerie. Ashmore’s challenge quite bemused the earl, but the result had lacked blood. I was grateful for such favors.
Ashmore did not flag beneath such prideful disdain. With some centuries underneath his standing, the young lord’s stare likely mattered not at all.
“No doubt you will earn a few sidelong comments,” Ashmore continued, setting his cup down into the saucer with nary a sound, “but it is far more likely that the lady will earn the worst of all Society offers.” His eyebrows, copper bright against his pale features, knotted. “What is your true concern?”
As Piers sat in silence, I linked my fingers upon my lap and said softly, “I believe I might know.” When the lord’s foggy green eyes turned to me, I offered what kindness I could in a smile. “Your fear your mother’s response.”
Pride was not a thing to which Lord Piers was easily suited. His shoulders slumped, deflated by my insight. “She has only just begun to visit again,” he admitted. “I am concerned for her health.”
“I have no intentions to face your mother,” I said. When his chin snapped up, argument clearly ready upon his lips, I asked more firmly, “Can you say for certain that were I to do so, it would solve anything at all?”
I did not often think of the marchioness as a woman of flesh and soul. She had never been anything more than nasty in temperament to me. That her son had married me had created a certain ceasefire in immediate surroundings, but she had never warmed—and I had not attempted to bridge that gap.
On the advent of his murder, all such hopes were lost.
As dreadful as I felt, I could not imagine what terrible grief the marchioness had endured. For this reason, I thought it best to avoid her at all costs.
Piers did not seem to agree. However, he bit off whatever it was he’d intended to say and substituted a sigh of overly dramatic hue. “Very well.”
I straightened, gratitude and relief shaping my smile. “You’re certain?”
“I have no doubt that your latest misadventures among Society’s sharp-eyed gossips will end disastrously,” Piers said, earning himself a bit of a withering glare, “but I am encouraged to think that at the very least, it might be interesting.”
“Ever so kind,” I drawled.
Ashmore quickly stifled his chuckle. “You have our gratitude,” he said, much more seriously than I. “Am I right in understanding that there is a soiree this very night?”
Piers looked up, searching the sunlight speckled upon the ceiling for his answer. Then, slowly, “I do believe you’re right, old bean.” The moniker, one of many such affectations that did not sit right in the young lord’s mouth, earned him another such look—this one from Ashmore. “’Tis unlikely my mother will attend. However,expect some of her salon.”
I graciously refrained from twisting my features into a grimace of distaste. “Very well. It seems as clear an avenue as any.”
“Can you be certain the Veil will be present?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nevertheless, I have little doubt word will quickly spread.”
“You are certain the Veil despises you so much?”
I laughed outright, and did not disguise the crudeness of such open amusement behind a gloved hand, as expected of a lady. “You, yourself, made every effort to turn me over, did you not?”
Lord Piers flushed, a stain that made of his neatly barbered chops a paler swath along his jaw. “I—”
“Do not dare apologize,” I cut in swiftly, standing in a flurry of overly heavy petticoats and crape. I threw the swatch of my veil back over my shoulder when it threatened to tip my widow’s cap askew. “What is done, is done.”
From the window, I saw Ashmore’s gaze flick to me, appraisal—and approval—clear within.
What was done was done.
What Ma Zhànzhàn had done in the name of the Veil, what I’d done in the demand for Turkish tar, what Hawke had done to save me from myself—all of it was done.
And what Piers had done in the name of protecting Adelaide Turner was no more reprehensible than the acts I had committed; albeit I might consider his to be less selfish than mine.
If I spent the whole of my days lamenting those wrongs done me, I would never solve anything at all.
I smiled faintly at Ashmore to acknowledge the sentiment.
“All I wish to do now,” I said to them both, “is remove the Veil’s source of power entirely.”
“At the very least,” Piers replied, standing to deliver a gallant bow, “I will endeavor to make for you a charming escort.”
Ashmore cleared his throat.
“When allowed,” the lord added, dry as dust.
I was still laughing when the butler brought word of our things stowed properly. If there was a ball tonight, I’d have little enough time to prepare.
I excused myself.
In my wake, a languorous note I associated with Piers’s usual mask of ennui crept into his voice. “About the case your barristers have withdrawn.”
Ashmore’s reply was curt. “What of it?”
“Is it all right to leave it as such?”
My tutor’s impatience with the matter was palpable. “She is her own woman. You’d do well to understand, Compton.”
A compliment, true, but also a statement of fact I appreciated. I did so enjoy the understanding my tutor favored me with.
“Oh,” the lord said, voice fading as I was led down the hall by a maid in somber gray and a pristine white apron. “Rest assured, old bean. I do. I reallydo.”
I mused on this as we made our way up a polished oak staircase.
Ashmore’s barristers had been, last I had known, lobbying for annulment, given that my husband had been murdered before the wedding night. When the request for examination by physician had been pressed, I hadn’t considered what to do.
Ashmore must have moved to withdraw without me.
A fair enough effort that I did not begrudge him the opportunity. I was not willing to submit myself for examination. The status of my virginity was not the sort of thing I wanted others to know.
That I had never lain with my husband, but had given myself to Hawke some weeks after the earl’s passing, only complicated matters. That Ashmore had lain with me when I had most been in need of company, of distraction, was no doubt part of my tutor’s concern.
I would not apologize for it, but I was afraid of being placed on display.
So I would be stuck with this title for longer than I’d hoped. A burden, tiresome as it was, that had seemed more tolerable when my husband was alive.
Our relationship had been a kind of love, a first blush that had room to grow into something stronger. I’d respected Compton, and in his own way, he had protected me. I recognized much that I had not then.
Without my earl, the title was little more than a prison. Gilded, to be sure, but restrictive nonetheless.
Nothing to be done of it now. “My lady,” the maid chirped, bobbing in a curtsy. “I’ll come back with things for your preparing.”
I smiled at the woman—older than I, with gaunt cheeks and a thin carriage. �
��My thanks.”
The challenge had been set before me. Lure out the Veil with as much gossip as I could accrue. The sooner I did this, the sooner I could vanish once more from Society’s eyes—the wayward countess that would be, I hoped, supplanted by whatever young lady Piers made his wife.
If I were made of less stern stuff, I would have gone to Piers and requested a bit of the opium the lord was known to fancy.
The knowledge of its existence, the certainty that he would no doubt share, was enough to create a pounding refrain of want inside my belly.
That it echoed a sickening lurch of fear kept me from pursuing such avenues.
Ashmore would be disappointed. My family would worry.
I would be forced to endure the illness of withdrawal again, and such pain as the effort produced.
No. I was stronger than that. I would not be defeated by a bit of smoke or resin.
I waited in silence for the maid to return.
Chapter Eighteen
The newly minted earl had something of a wicked sense of humor.
After hours of preparation, I swept down the staircase of his home to find both gentlemen awaiting my arrival.
It had been a long time since I’d seen Lord Piers in such finery, and I admit that I had never before seen Ashmore in the same. From the black tailcoats, beautifully fit trousers, white gloves, crisp shirts, and matching bow-ties to the top hats they wore in similar design, they were the very image of proper form for a formal soiree.
Piers’s golden chops gleamed in barbered perfection upon his jaw, while the darker red sideburns at my tutor’s temples provided emphasis to his aristocratic handsomeness. The mustachioed butler helped Piers into his greatcoat, as the evenings still brought a bit of chill. The tempered humidity brought by the coal smoke below did not soften the bite above.
It would not warm enough to forego heavier outerwear at night until spring slowly began to ease to summer.
As I made my way down the polished steps, it was the earl who spied me first, and his approving whistle would have been of poor taste were I anyone else.
Ashmore followed the earl’s attentions. “Excellent,” came his compliment. I would take it for what it was worth.
The maid Piers had sent me had been rather more skilled than I expected for a girl in a bachelor’s employ. Though my gown was still unrelieved black, I had foregone the restrictions of deep mourning and taken on the accoutrements of second mourning; to wit, the net my long curls had been contained in was studded by jet beads, and the jewelry at my throat was obsidian. I did not bare too much décolletage, as fashion suggested for a ball gown, but wore a black lace shawl as Spanish ladies might. My widow’s cap was firmly pinned in place, the veil swept back in artful ruffles that framed my face.
The trim upon the heavy crape gown was lined with similar black beads, the bodice dotted with the same. I could barely breathe in the corset Society now demanded from its fashionable ladies, but I could not deny it made of my posture something magnificent. The only color about me came from my hair, my eyes, and the white petticoats beneath that still retained its mourning ribbon.
I felt every inch the lawless woman I would no doubt be painted.
Lord Piers offered a gloved hand, to which I slipped my own black-gloved fingers within.
He escorted me off the final steps. “I admit to a certain interest in the ripples you will make.”
“I have never thought you to be wholly respectable,” I replied in kind.
His laughter came free and easy—so much warmer than the grief he had suffered. Ashmore took my other hand, lifting my knuckles to his lips. “You are the very picture of impropriety,” he assured me, with such cordiality that it sounded a compliment. The nerves bundled beneath my corset squirmed. “Well I know,” I admitted. “Piers, where are we going tonight?”
He took from the butler a fashionable cane, and tucked this under his arm with a panache that came easy to him. His lips quirked. “An engagement ball.”
I should have been more surprised. As it was, all I could do was slant my host a wry smile. “You have the very Devil’s own sense of humor, don’t you?”
“Why, my dear Lady Compton,” replied the earl, gesturing us out the front door with an elegant motion. “What ever do you mean?”
A fine enough thing to laugh at, but the truth of the matter was thus—no matter my intentions, secret as they were, there would be no cause great enough to excuse the blight I would be forcing on the soiree.
According to matters of comportment, while a young widow could bring her black trappings to an event, it would be exceedingly unseemly to do so at an engagement gala. In fact, it was utterly beyond the pale.
And yet, off I went.
Ashmore and Piers occupied the seat across from me in Piers’s large gondola, a matter of courtesy as well as space. Between the bustle I was forced to wear, and the sheer amount of heavy crinolines, petticoats and skirts shaping my gown, there would be little enough room for either man—and utterly scandalous of either to sit so close.
After some time of silence, each lamp and lit bridge we glided under painting the interior with brief washes of light, my nerves took the best of me. “Piers,” I began.
Perhaps the tone of this was adequate warning, for he raised a white-gloved hand and said steadily enough, “I have on good authority that what is done, is done.”
It was all that needed saying, and so we drifted along the fog in silence. Soon enough, the nostalgic sound of a crowd gathering—well-heeled and filled with gaiety—encroached upon us. Outside of the fine glass window, lanterns affixed to gondola prows dipped and swayed, and the faint tinkle of music danced just out of certain hearing. Our gondolier, skilled in the ways of such functions, navigated us through the throng.
When we bumped ever so gently against the pier, Piers exited first. After him, Ashmore, who turned to escort me from within.
However, to the surprise of us both, it was Piers who claimed my hand and threaded it through his arm. When I made to extricate, a protest forming, he clamped his hand over mine at his elbow and said with a smile, “Trust me, sister mine. This will be well worth it.” Ashmore remained at my other side, but he shrugged faintly with a lackadaisical air—as though it did not matter.
To be sure, it freed him to nose about in other ways.
Then again, I wondered what it was my brother-in-law hoped to gain by this. The mode of my dress earned attention by virtue of its dreary color amidst a flock of songbirds, but I hadn’t intended it to sparkle so much. The lanterns caught on jet and obsidian, glittering in eye-catching display. Had I been paying more attention during the selection process, I might have considered the purpose of so many beads.
Even a widow in second or half-mourning would want to shine, wouldn’t she? Especially a young one.
Bloody bells.
Piers and Ashmore escorted me to the ladies’ sitting room, wherein I might have matters of dress attended. So bleeding extravagant were ball gowns and various accessories that many a lady arrived with a split or a missing button or some such to be mended.
The maids so detained within were at a loss as to my presence. Out of kindness for their bemusement, I allowed them to take my shawl, baring the décolletage I’d meant to keep hidden. Nevertheless, it was not so low as fashion demanded, and the choker at my throat was of acceptable style. In deference to the heat that always afflicted such soirees, I carried a slender fan, black Spanish lace and lacquered wood to compliment my attire.
It took all I had to remain where I was, and await my escorts as they divested their accessories and outerwear in the gentleman’s apartments. One maid dutifully re-arranged the ruffles made of my veil, pinning it rather more sharply than it had been. Wise, likely. While I would not be expected nor permitted to dance, the heat of a gala never failed to wilt the flowers or feathers placed in the hair.
I already dreaded the weight of the thing I was forced to wear.
When Piers and Ashmore
returned, conversing like old Eaton friends of years past, I was all but ready to flee the premises—and the stares I was collecting like pigeons to crumbs.
By the time we’d made our way through the queue formed for announcements, those nearest had already spread word of the widow in their midst. Yet the final blow came upon the obviousness of the earl’s attendance—and every eye that flitted to the widow upon his arm.
I had never until that moment felt the weight of such horror and dismay, not even at the onset of the marchioness’s cut direct. While another lady, one of perfect reputation, might be afforded a kindness for her youth, I was certainly not the bearer of a perfect reputation.
I was little more than Mad St. Croix’s daughter, the uppity chit who’d married an earl and gone and run off when he’d died so mysteriously.
I was the vexing wart of the Society I had returned to, and the palpable waves of scorn and curiosity thrust from the gathering Piers escorted me into were enough to take my breath away.
Piers did not allow me the courtesy of a pause. Instead, taking advantage of my sudden state, he tugged me full into the crowd. The ball had long since started, though this was a matter of course for men like the earl. To arrive late was to be fashionable—and it saved us three the need for promenade or any such tediousness.
Unfortunately, it did not allow me the opportunity to ease into a world I had been out of far too long.
Everything about me was a whirl of color and sound. The orchestra played a clashing serenade that suited the country dance formed upon the floor, while skirts of every color swished and swayed. The ball room was quite large, but not large enough to suit the attendance list.
The wide windows had been left open, allowing a bit of the spring air to creep inside the humid confines, but the soiree was already a crush. Not enough guests had sought the cooler terrace to ease the interior.
According to the strictures of etiquette, I was not permitted to dance. Were I not a widow, it would be considered the earl’s duty to furnish me with a dance card, as my escort, and place his name upon it. Any gentlemen he introduced to me would ask of me a dance, and if I was not already engaged, I would allow each gentleman to place his name within.
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