Lady Elinor's Wicked Adventures

by Lillian Marek

  Over dinner, the questions about his travels were curious and interested, not reproachful. And all different. Lord Penworth asked about political conditions. Lady Penworth asked about social conditions. Rycote asked about farming conditions.

  And Norrie asked about his adventures. She wanted to know about everything. What did places look like? How did people talk? What did they wear or eat? What did they do? What was it like in Brazil?

  He laughed at that one. “It was hot. Horribly hot.”

  She laughed right back. “Oh, how could it possibly be horrible to be hot. London has been miserably cold and wet for months.”

  “Hot and steamy is far worse. You have no escape. The air is so thick and heavy all the time that the moment you move, the sweat pours down until you feel as if you’re drowning. All the planters and their families, all the wealthy families in the cities, insist on dressing as if they were in Europe—tight collars and frock coats for the gentlemen, huge skirts for the ladies. Naturally, they can’t do anything except sit around and fan themselves while they complain about the heat and order the slaves about. Slaves do everything.”

  Pip frowned. “I thought they finally abolished the slave trade.”

  That prompted a sour laugh from Harry. “That’s no help for the poor devils who are already there.” He caught the look of concern that shadowed Norrie’s face. “But the jungles are incredible. Plants, creatures, birds, even butterflies in fantastic colors, the likes of which you’ve never seen. And the river—it’s like nothing in Europe. Sometimes it’s hemmed in by jungle, sometimes it spreads out into swamps so broad you don’t know where it ends.”

  Norrie was looking at him skeptically, as if she knew he had changed the subject deliberately. She might not want to be protected from ugliness, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying. There were horrors she should never have to face, not if he could help it. So he grinned at her. “And the most enormous snakes, snakes that could swallow you whole.”

  She gasped for a second, then grinned back. “Beast! I don’t believe it.”

  “I swear. I saw one swallow a pig that was a good deal fatter than you.” He put a hand over his heart, but she just shook her head at him.

  When Lady Penworth rose to leave the gentlemen to their port and cigars, he thought Norrie would object. However, one look from her mother was enough to settle the matter. Everyone obeyed Lady Penworth. That was another thing that hadn’t changed.

  He couldn’t restrain a grin as he watched Norrie leave the room. Without doing anything that could earn her a parental reprimand, she managed to display resentment in every line of her body. And while he regretted her departure, there was something he wanted to know, a question he could hardly ask while she was in the room.

  There was a companionable silence while they slid the port along and got their cigars drawing properly. Tunbury leaned back, hoping no tension showed in his posture, and asked, “How is it that Norrie is still unwed? Or is there something in the offing?”

  Rycote snorted, but Lord Penworth smiled gently and said, “She’s very young yet, barely twenty-one. I’m grateful she hasn’t wanted to rush into an engagement but is taking her time to look about her.”

  Tunbury felt able to breathe again.

  “Taking her time is one way to put it,” Rycote said. “They come swarming around her, but as soon as one of them starts to show serious intentions, she sends him off. This one’s too boring, that one is a fool, another one is only interested in her fortune. And they keep pestering me, asking how to win her favor. As if I would know.”

  “Is she wrong in her judgments?” asked Tunbury.

  Rycote gave an irritated sigh. “No, to be fair she’s been perfectly right. Hamilton is boring, and Wandsworth is rather a fool. As for Carruthers, probably the less said, the better.”

  “Carruthers?” Tunbury sat up in alarm. “But I warned you about him before I left.”

  “Yes, well, I don’t know exactly what happened, but a week or two after that, he fell into a fishpond in the Coopers’ garden. Norrie said he slipped.”

  The three gentlemen looked at each other and laughed.

  *

  Later that evening Tunbury sat by the fire in his room, his slippered feet stretched out to the warmth of the blaze. A wood fire, not coal, because Lady Penworth preferred the smell of wood in the bedrooms. The room was as familiar as the smell, the room he always had when he stayed with the Tremaines in London. It had the same big carved mahogany bed with the posts he used to measure himself against. He remembered how proud he had been the year he grew so much that he had topped two whole knobs. There was the same mahogany wardrobe, the same marble-topped dressing table with the brown and white pitcher and basin. It was as if everything had just been waiting for him to return.

  There were even some of his old books still on the shelves by the window—The Three Musketeers, Waverly, The Deerslayer. That last was the one that had made him determined to go to America on his travels, but he hadn’t found any Indians in the woods of New England. On the western plains, but that wasn’t quite the same. Well, that war had been a long time ago. He didn’t suppose there were many Jacobites lurking in the Scottish heather anymore, either.

  His clothes had been unpacked and put away, his shaving gear was set out, and the bed was turned down. It was as if he had never been away.

  He was back with the Tremaines, in the one place where he had determined never to intrude again. Apparently, he was the only one who realized it was an intrusion, that he did not belong here.

  They had all—Lord and Lady Penworth, Pip, and Norrie—welcomed him as if he had just been away at school for a term. The younger children actually were away at school.

  It was not that the Tremaines had failed to notice his absence. They were all eager to hear about his travels. But there was no coolness, no resentment at his abrupt departure with no real explanation, no complaints about his failure to write. They had expected him to return, and they were glad he had.

  Now he was trying to make sense of the day, trying to make sense of himself. This was precisely why he had fled England four years ago. He hadn’t wanted to bring the ugliness of the sordid de Vaux mélange into this house, into this family. He had run away. Cowardly, perhaps, but he never wanted them to know his family secrets. What was common knowledge was bad enough.

  He had tried to convince himself that he wanted to be forgotten. He had behaved in ways that were probably best forgotten. But the moment he heard Lady Penworth’s familiar voice call his name, the years fell away, and he felt like a schoolboy again, reveling in the warmth of her welcome. When he walked into the drawing room of Penworth House, he felt as if he had come home. How could he cut himself off from all that had been best in his life?

  And then there was Norrie.

  She had hugged him right there on the street, and this evening she had teased him just the way she teased Pip. She twitted Pip for his new moustache and she twitted him for being still clean-shaven when even her father had grown a small beard. In short, she treated him like a brother.

  He had thought that was what he wanted. He had told himself he would be able to think of her as a sister.

  He had been a fool.

  She was so damn beautiful, even more so than when he left. She had been a lovely girl then. Now she was a beautiful woman. Not one of those simpering little dolls that seemed to be the fashion. She had a luscious mouth that begged to be kissed, and a bosom that promised paradise. And then there were those aquamarine eyes. He could never decide if they actually did tilt up at the edge or if it was just the way her brows slanted. A man could spend hours just staring at her eyes.

  She may not have been married, but it was still true that she treated him like a brother, just as she always had. Why wouldn’t she? For all those years he had been turning up for school vacations along with Pip, and the three of them had played together, gone fishing together, gone riding together. He and Pip had even taught her to play Rugby footba
ll, and she had mastered the tackle very well. He could remember her delight the time—she couldn’t have been more than nine—when she knocked him sprawling in the mud. Why wouldn’t she think of him as a brother?

  All right. He could manage that. One thing he had learned in his travels was a bit of self-discipline. It would not be easy to treat her like a sister, to have her treat him like a brother, but if that was all he could have, so be it. At least he would be able to see her and be part of her family. He would be able to protect her.

  It would not be easy, but it was better than nothing.

  *

  Lady Elinor allowed Martha, her nursery maid turned lady’s maid, to remove her clothing, hand her the soap and towel to wash, brush and braid her hair, tuck it into a nightcap, and put her into a warm flannel nightgown. But instead of snuggling under the covers as she usually did, once the maid was gone, Elinor wrapped herself in a woolen shawl and curled up on the window seat to look out on the darkness.

  She smiled when she saw that a few stars were actually visible in the London sky. What with the rain and the fog, that didn’t happen very often. Perhaps it was a good sign.

  She could hardly believe that Harry was back. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed him. It was as if she saw him on the street and thought, “Oh yes, that’s what I’ve been missing.”

  She didn’t know why—it couldn’t be anything romantic, after all—but he just seemed so much more real, so much more alive than any of the other young men she knew. Maybe it was just that he had gone off and had adventures, wandered around the world and seen all kinds of different people, done all sorts of things. Everyone else she knew had just done all the expected things, turned up at dinners and dances, said all the things they were supposed to say, done the things they were supposed to do.

  Just as she had.

  Was she bored? She considered that possibility. No, that wasn’t it precisely.

  She was envious—that’s what it was.

  Harry had gone to exciting places and met exciting people while she had stayed home and done nothing, nothing more exciting than flirting and dancing. It had been fun, and she had enjoyed it, but it didn’t seem to be enough. She wanted more.

  Did she seem terribly dull to him? He had probably met sophisticated and glamorous women—and maybe done more than just meet them. After all, he had been gone for four whole years. It would be foolish to assume he had led a monkish existence. Even Pip, stuffy though he might sometimes be, had affairs that she and Mama pretended not to know about.

  But that didn’t matter now. Harry had come back. He even seemed glad to be back.

  She was so glad to have him back.

  Three

  Rycote was a member of White’s. Of course. Tunbury could not keep from grinning. Lord Penworth was a prominent reformer, an outspoken opponent of the Crimean War, a critic of the country’s India policy, a proponent of universal education, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Naturally his son was a member of the stuffiest, most conservative club around.

  Well, perhaps not completely stuffy. Tunbury caught sight of the famous betting book. This was, after all, the club where Alvanley had once bet £3,000 on the speed of a raindrop. Tunbury left Rycote to order a bottle of wine and strolled over to see what was occupying the minds of the aristocracy these days. One glance was all it took to turn him to stone.

  “What’s caught your eye?” Rycote looked over his shoulder. “Oh.”

  Of course. The thing might as well have been written in scarlet letters ten feet high. “Lord M wagers Lord B that Lady D will change lovers at least twice before Easter.”

  He felt his friend’s hand on his shoulder. He didn’t need the comfort. Not really. But he felt it.

  “These fellows don’t know what they’re talking about most of the time. And there are half a dozen Lady D’s.”

  Tunbury turned to face his friend. “But we both know they mean my mother, Lady Doncaster.” His mouth twisted. He was trying for a smile but it probably came out a grimace. No matter. “Don’t worry. I stopped fighting over remarks about her honor—her lack of honor—years ago.”

  Yes, he’d stopped fighting during his second year at Rugby. He’d gone home to Bradenham Abbey before going to Penworth Castle for Christmas. His sisters were babies then—Julia just three and Olivia still an infant—and he’d wanted to see them. But he’d made the mistake of opening the door to his mother’s sitting room without knocking and found her copulating with one of the footmen.

  He couldn’t remember ever loving his mother. She had never been enough a part of his life to prompt any feeling one way or the other. But after that he had been unable to think of her with anything but disgust. Was his father’s drinking a response to her behavior? If so, it was a cowardly, contemptible response.

  He’d never told anyone about that scene, not even Pip, but thereafter he’d greeted comments on his mother’s activities with an indifferent shrug, the same way he treated remarks about his father’s drunkenness. As for the whispers about the bad blood of the de Vaux family, he pretended he didn’t hear them. What he couldn’t do was ignore the fear that those whispers might be true, that he had inherited that bad blood.

  Rycote led him to a pair of leather chairs in a corner, leaving the fireplace seats to the elderly members, and began talking about the new orchards he was planting at the estate his father had turned over to him on his twenty-first birthday. He was discussing apple varieties—Foxwhelp, Tremlett’s Bitter, Knobbed Russet, Winesap from America, and Muscadet de Dieppe from Normandy.

  Tunbury let the names wash over him. It sounded so sane, so clean, rather like the entire Tremaine family. Rycote was doing this deliberately, he knew, trying to distract him. As if he could ever forget what his parents were like. “The Degraded de Vaux” one schoolboy wit had called them, and the fellow’s friends had laughed. Harry had to fight that time, and Rycote had joined him. When it was over, he’d thanked Rycote but told him that he shouldn’t have bothered. What they said about his parents was perfectly true. All the more reason they shouldn’t say it, Rycote had replied.

  How could he have survived without Rycote’s steady friendship and loyalty?

  What would have become of him without the Tremaines?

  A wave of guilt washed over him. For all those years when he was growing up, he had the Tremaines. He could forget that he was the son of the Earl and Countess of Doncaster because he almost never saw them. After a while, it had become possible for him to go for months, even years, without thinking about his family.

  To his shame, that meant he had ignored his sisters as well as his parents.

  Did his sisters have anyone to help them? They certainly didn’t have their brother. He had left them behind when he ran off four years ago, never giving them a thought in his eagerness to escape. Not that he had given them many thoughts before that. If anything, he had simply assumed that they were safe enough in the care of nurses and governesses. As a boy, he had been powerless to do anything for them, so it was easier to not think about them.

  Had they been safe? They had no way to get in touch with him. Had they needed him? That was a joke. Why would it even occur to them that he might help them? He never had before. What had he given them? An occasional visit of a few days when he could be sure his parents weren’t in residence at the Abbey?

  But he was no longer a boy, and his sisters weren’t babies anymore. Julia must be…seventeen. Was she making her come-out this year? Good God. The poor girl, to be introduced to society by the most notorious whore in it. There must be something he could do about that. He had no idea what, but there must be something.

  He would have to go see them.

  “What do you think?”

  Tunbury blinked. What did he think about his sisters? But Rycote couldn’t know he was thinking about them. “I’m sorry. I was woolgathering.”

  “Obviously. I was saying that my father is suddenly looking old. Is he ill, do you think? Or just tired?”<
br />
  It immediately struck Harry that Rycote was right. The marquess couldn’t be more than fifty-five or so by Tunbury’s reckoning, but he had looked drawn and haggard. Harry had noticed it when Penworth came in the evening before, but the impression had faded in the pleasure of their talk.

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Are you worried?”

  Rycote shrugged. “Yes, a bit. He spends too much time in the Lords, fighting too many losing battles. I think Mama is worried too.”

  Rycote was not one to parade his feelings. That he had even mentioned this meant that he was very worried indeed.

  *

  The next day a footman brought Harry an invitation to join Lady Penworth in her sitting room. A bit surprised, even unnerved, by the formality, Tunbury promptly presented himself at the door of the chamber overlooking the garden. It had not changed much since he first saw it as a boy, and it had been old-fashioned even then. Pale curtains were pulled back to allow as much light as possible to enter through the tall windows. The marquetry table had been there as long as he could remember, always with a vase of flowers on it. Hothouse flowers at this time of year, but still scenting the air.

  The upholstery and draperies must have been replaced from time to time, but always in the pale colors of the past, not the deep hues currently in style. Lady Penworth was not one to let the coal dust of London defeat her. Light colors, painted wood, and walls covered with watercolor sketches of her children made the marchioness’s room seem full of sunshine even in late January.

  Lady Penworth’s smile was full of sunshine as well when she looked up to greet him. He could not resist smiling in return. She looked so much like Norrie, though he supposed he ought to say that Norrie looked like her mother. The same dark hair, the same lovely oval face, the same slightly tilted blue eyes. Well, Norrie’s eyes had a bit more green than Lady Penworth’s did. All in all, it was one more piece of good fortune for the man who married Norrie—his wife would be beautiful all her life.

  “Harry, thank you for coming. I need your advice.” She gestured to the chair facing her beside the fire. “I am worried about Penworth.”