A Husband's Wicked Ways

by Jane Feather

  Lady Lessingham stood out in the crowd. Aurelia had thought before what an imposing figure she cut, and she seemed to stand out like a peacock in full feather among the more subdued English ladies. A mantilla was fastened to her jet-black hair, her curvaceous figure encased in a dramatic afternoon gown of coffee and cream lace.

  Aurelia moved towards the group of women, smiling, acknowledging greetings with a small bow and a handshake. “Lady Lessingham, how are you?” She shook hands. “Have you been out of town? I haven’t seen you in a week or two.”

  “I was in the country, Lady Falconer…oh, do permit me to congratulate you.” The lady spoke with a slight lisp as she fluttered her eyelashes behind a skillfully manipulated fan. “Such a surprise. Is it true…an elopement? How romantic.”

  “We felt that a very quiet ceremony would be appropriate,” Aurelia said calmly. She was getting used to the slightly scandalized questions, and quite adept at deflecting them, but they did grow tiresome and she couldn’t wait for the nine days’ wonder to be replaced with another. “You’ve been in the country, you said?”

  “Oh, yes…I have been nursing one of my countrymen.” The countess was happily diverted. “So ill, after the most dreadful journey, such a narrow escape from Spain, with the barbarian at his heels.” She sighed behind her mantilla.

  “Countess Lessingham…our dear Spanish friend, you are so good to your fellow countrymen,” Edith declared, patting the lady’s arm with her silk-mittened fingers. “And so welcome among us…poor King Carlos…to have been forced from his throne by that monster.” She gave a well-bred shudder.

  “I’m so glad to run into you here, Lady Lessingham,” Aurelia said warmly. She slipped an arm through the countess’s and adroitly drew her slightly apart from the circle around the fire. “I’m so curious about your country and I haven’t had the opportunity to ask you any of the hundreds of questions I have. Do tell me about Madrid. I must own to a long-standing urge to see the Prado…such a beautiful palace, from everything one has seen and heard.”

  “Yes, indeed…” The countess sighed heavily, helped herself from a plate of sticky sweetmeats on a side table, and launched into a description of the exquisite marbles, frescoes, and paintings in the royal family’s palace.

  As soon as Greville had asked her to further her acquaintance with the countess, Aurelia had set herself to learn enough about Spanish customs and art to be able to pose intelligent questions and murmur sympathetically at the losses her companion had sustained. Within fifteen minutes the countess had insisted she call her Doña Bernardina and was announcing to their hostess that nothing would do but that she be partnered at cards with dear Lady Falconer.

  Even if Greville thought two tours de force in one day no great achievement, she certainly did, Aurelia reflected, as she played to her partner’s ace. Doña Bernardina’s skill at the cards was everything she had been led to expect. They partnered each other well, and at the end of the afternoon were, to all intents and purposes, the best of acquaintances.

  “My dear Lady Falconer, you must come to one of my soirees,” the lady said as they made their farewells. “I hold a small salon for my unfortunate compatriots every Friday evening…they are so grateful to be able to talk with their own countrymen, and we have some most stimulating intellectual discussions…I’m sure you would find them so entertaining. You are so knowledgeable about the art and culture of my country.”

  “You flatter me, Doña Bernardina,” Aurelia demurred. “I have but a smattering of knowledge, but I own to a great interest, and a desire to learn more.”

  “Then you will come?” Doña Bernardina clasped her mittened hands in front of her with an expression of delight.

  “I should be delighted. Only…only, forgive me, Doña Benardina, but my husband is also…”

  “Oh, splendid…nothing could be more delightful,” the lady exclaimed. “I shall send you an invitation directly.”

  Aurelia’s smile gave no inkling of her triumph as she made her farewells to her hostess and fellow guests. She rode home behind Jemmy with her blood singing in her veins, wondering how she could ever have reached the grand age of thirty without ever really knowing this astonishing exultation at performing a difficult task to perfection. She raised her head, smiling up into the sky, where the first faint glimmer of the evening star showed. Fanciful, foolish, an impulse born of this moment of jubilant self-congratulation…but she enjoyed the moment nevertheless.

  She entered the house on South Audley Street still on wings. Morecombe was no longer in the hall, and she guessed he was having supper in the kitchen with the twins. She hurried to the library, flinging open the door with a dramatic gesture, standing on the threshold, one hand on her hip. Only the room was empty.

  Ah, well, she should have expected it. With a shrug Aurelia turned back to the hall. She had rather hoped, after their play that morning, that Greville would have arranged to spend the evening with her…she had also rather assumed that he’d be waiting to hear the result of her afternoon’s excursion. Not so, it seemed.

  She went up to her bedchamber, feeling deflated for the second time that day. Quite clearly she had not fully grasped the importance of this work, she decided as she went into her chamber. It wasn’t a game, where jubilation and congratulation at a win might be appropriate. In this business, one might be entitled to indulge such feelings if one succeeded against expectation. But she expected herself to succeed. And Greville certainly did. This morning he had indulged her need for praise, but she was fairly certain he wouldn’t always do that. They were partners and she was no novice who could be allowed to make mistakes. And she couldn’t expect a reward just because she didn’t make mistakes.

  A good lesson. Aurelia rang for Hester and unpinned her bonnet. Greville would have no inkling of her moment of weakness and subsequent revelation. She was going out for the evening, and if he came in before she left, then she would tell him what had happened, and if she didn’t see him until later, then she would describe the afternoon’s action in as cool and businesslike a fashion as he could wish for.

  And he didn’t return before Lord David Forster came to escort her to Almack’s Assembly Rooms. Greville had made it clear from the beginning that standing idly around the Assembly Rooms with an insipid glass of lemonade or a dish of tea and a piece of wafer-thin stale bread and butter watching decorous couples circling the dance floor was not his idea of an entertaining evening. Aurelia had laughed and said he was not alone in that opinion, and she would not expect his escort on the occasions that she felt obliged to attend the weekly Wednesday ball.

  Livia, before her marriage to Prince Prokov, had needed a chaperone to attend the Assembly Rooms, otherwise she would have incurred the powerful censure of the patronesses of Almack’s, and Aurelia and Cornelia had faithfully performed their duty, but now there was really no need for either of them to expose themselves to the tedium. But occasionally they went together just to keep themselves in the social eye. They could always find some old friend to escort them, and this evening Lord Forster had volunteered.

  Punctually at ten o’clock he was waiting for her in the hall, immaculately clad in the required uniform of black silk knee britches, white waistcoat, black coat, white stockings, and buckled shoes. He bowed with an appreciative murmur when Aurelia came down the stairs in a gown of orange-blossom crepe, an Indian muslin shawl draped over her elbows, her hair gathered into a knot on top of her head, a cluster of ringlets framing her face.

  “Beautiful as always, ma’am.”

  “Flattery as always, David,” Aurelia accused, smiling. “But don’t let me stop you.” She gave him her hand and he kissed it gracefully. “Is Harry escorting Nell tonight?”

  “I believe so. Your husband is otherwise engaged, I take it?”

  “He’s made certain of it,” she said with a laugh, allowing David to drape a fur stole over her bare shoulders. “He loathes Almack’s.”

  “Can’t say I blame him.” David offered her hi
s arm as Jemmy pulled open the heavy front door. “But we must show our faces lest society forget us.” He gave an elaborate shudder at such a prospect.

  Aurelia glanced once quickly along the deserted street before climbing into the carriage. Not a sign of a watcher anywhere. She settled into the closed carriage beside her escort and decided she was going to relax into the comfortably familiar, routine tedium of this evening and enjoy it. She had no need to be on her guard, no need to play a part.

  “I’d as liefer be at the theatre, I own,” David said, rapping on the roof to give the coachman the order to drive on. “What a piece of ill fortune that both Covent Garden and Drury Lane should burn to the ground within months of each other.”

  “They’re being rebuilt, though,” Aurelia pointed out. “And they’ll be even more magnificent than before, I’m sure. Although it’s said that Kemble and Sheridan will never recoup their losses.”

  “No, I’m sure of it. Sheridan, in particular, is close to bankruptcy, if I hear aright. But we’ll see Siddons’s Lady Macbeth again, mark my words.”

  “And that actor, what’s his name…Kean, Edmund Kean, there’s much talk about him playing one of the new theatres.”

  “He’s made a name for himself in the provinces, certainly.”

  They chatted pleasantly until the carriage drew up outside Almack’s Assembly Rooms in King Street. A linkboy, holding a pitch torch aloft, opened the carriage door for them, and David jumped down to offer an assisting hand to Aurelia as she stepped out. Light poured from the open front doors of the building, and the discreet strains of the orchestra drifted into the night. Carriages were discharging their passengers, and Aurelia paused on the flagway for a moment looking for familiar faces. She couldn’t see the Bonhams as yet, but a familiar voice separated itself from the generalized hum.

  “It’s Letitia, let’s go in quickly,” she whispered to David, who grinned and promptly offered his arm.

  “She is certainly a pill,” he murmured as he escorted Aurelia up the wide staircase to where Lady Sefton, one of the patronesses, stood scrutinizing the guests as they arrived.

  “Lady Falconer…Lord Forster, I bid you welcome.” A chilly smile accompanied the greeting, but since neither David nor Aurelia expected an effusive greeting from the lady, who was generally considered to be excessively high in the instep even for a patroness of Almack’s, they merely bowed politely and walked on into the main salon, where the orchestra was playing.

  “Refreshments, or would you care to dance?” David asked cheerfully, as he raised his quizzing glass and examined the assembled crowd. “Or shall we do the promenade and greet our fellow revelers?”

  “The latter,” Aurelia said. “There’s Nell, over in the embrasure with Nick.”

  They threaded their way around the wall, past the seated chaperones, who were watching their maidenly charges, eagle-eyed, making sure they didn’t dance more than once with a partner or spend too long in conversation with any one man.

  Cornelia greeted their arrival with relief. “Nick and I were wondering why we came. Harry’s gone off to the card room, grumbling about having to play for penny stakes. The only good thing about the evening so far is the absence of Letitia Oglethorpe.”

  “She’s right behind us,” Aurelia said with a chuckle, opening her fan. “I heard her braying in the street.”

  “Vicious, aren’t they?” David observed to Nick with a conspiratorial wink.

  “Certainly not mealymouthed,” Nick agreed.

  “Then why don’t you go and engage the lady in conversation?” Aurelia inquired with a sweet smile. “I’m sure she’d be delighted to regale you with her latest purchase.”

  “I have a better idea.” David extended his hand with a bow. “May I have the honor, ma’am?”

  Nick took Cornelia onto the floor for the country dance that was just forming, and the two couples chatted with all the ease and intimacy of long-standing friendship. But as David handed her up the dance, Aurelia saw Countess Lessingham enter the salon on the arm of a man some years her senior. A distinguished looked, white-haired gentleman whom she didn’t recognize.

  “Do you know who that is with Lady Lessingham, David?”

  David turned her beneath his arm, before looking towards the door. “Oh, is that the countess…the Spanish lady I’ve heard so much about? She’s with the Earl of Lessingham at any rate.”

  “What have you heard about Doña Bernardina?” Aurelia exchanged partners with her opposite number in the line and didn’t get her answer for a few minutes until she returned to David.

  “Only that she’s rather flamboyant, rather exotic, an unusual choice for Lessingham, who’s known for a somewhat scholarly bent and no interest at all in social frippery. I don’t recall ever seeing him at Almack’s before…not his thing at all.”

  “Perhaps he’s obliging his wife,” Aurelia suggested, stopping as the music died, fanning herself vigorously in the overheated room. “Do you care for an introduction?”

  He looked surprised. “Are you acquainted with the lady?”

  “Yes, not wonderfully well, but well enough for it to look strange if I didn’t acknowledge her.” Aurelia began to move towards the countess and her husband, then stopped suddenly. It was a minute before eleven o’clock, the hour beyond which no guest was admitted to the Assembly Rooms, and just as the clock was striking from the head of the stairs, Greville Falconer strode into the salon and stood on the threshold, quite clearly looking for his wife.

  “I’ll be damned,” she muttered, thankful that only David could hear her. “What is Greville doing here? I’d have laid any odds he would never set foot here.”

  “Perhaps you should find out,” David suggested.

  Aurelia eased through the chattering throng to the door, David just behind her. Her husband looked his best in the regulation costume, she thought, surprised by a little thrill of pride. His height, the breadth of his shoulders, the assured air of control, made him, to her mind, the most powerful presence in the room.

  As she watched, Lady Sefton approached him, and to Aurelia’s amusement she saw that the sheer physical force of Greville’s presence had affected that lady. She was simpering as she gazed up into the somewhat battered countenance that Aurelia found so attractive. When Greville gave her his white flash of a smile and that twinkling glint of his dark gray eyes, from beneath those impossibly lush, long eyelashes, Aurelia was not at all surprised to see Lady Sefton lay her hand on his black-clad arm and flutter her own much sparser lashes at him.

  “Good evening, Husband,” Aurelia said as she reached them. “I was not expecting to see you here tonight.”

  “I came home rather earlier than I had expected to, my dear,” he said smoothly, “and I thought to make the acquaintance of the charming patronesses of Almack’s.”

  “Well, I’m afraid you must be satisfied with just me, Sir Greville,” Lady Sefton said with another simpering smile. “My friends are otherwise occupied tonight.”

  He bowed. “Dare I say, ma’am, that their loss is hardly felt in your company.”

  “Oh, shameless man!” she declared, tapping his arm with her furled fan. “Lady Falconer, take your husband onto the dance floor before he puts us all to the blush.” She floated away in a rustle of silk, her cheeks rather pinker than usual.

  “You flirt,” Aurelia accused with a bubble of laughter. “Outrageous, Greville. I would never have believed you would stoop so low.”

  “I was merely charming my hostess,” he protested, raising her hand to his lips and lightly kissing her fingers, a wicked glint in his eye. “Would you have had me do otherwise?”

  He turned with a smile to David. “My thanks for taking care of my wife, Forster.”

  David grinned. “I take it I’ve been declared surplus to requirements. In that case I shall follow Harry to the card tables.” He bowed to Aurelia, offered a mocking nod of a bow to Greville, and strode off to the double doors at the far end of the salon.

  �
�I hope he wasn’t offended,” Aurelia said.

  “Good God, why should he have been?” Greville demanded. “I’m sure he’s more than happy to receive his congé and drink tea over the cards.”

  “You sound as if you would be.” She opened her fan. “Why are you here?”

  “I wanted to know how your afternoon went.” He reached to take a glass of lemonade off the tray held by a passing waiter. “You look a little warm, my dear.”

  “It’s stuffy in here, and I’ve been dancing.” She wondered why she felt annoyed. She had been pleased to see him, but now he seemed to be deliberately putting a damper on her pleasure. He might at least have pretended that he’d come to find her for her own sake.

  “I’m sure the account could have waited until I got home,” she said coolly, sipping her lemonade. “But as it happens, the countess is here tonight.”

  “Ah…where is she?” He looked over the crowd, an easy feat given that he stood head and shoulders above most of the patrons.

  “Over by the windows, with her husband and Lord and Lady Buxton.”

  “The rather ample lady in the scarlet mantilla?”

  “Yes.”

  He let his gaze roam casually over the salon, and no one would know that he had taken note of everyone with whom he was acquainted even as in that one glance he absorbed every aspect of Lady Lessingham’s attire and appearance. “Perhaps you should introduce me,” he suggested, taking Aurelia’s empty glass from her and putting it on a small table.

  “Yes, perhaps I should.” She moved ahead of him, saying casually over her shoulder, “I’m guessing that’s the real reason why you’re here.”

  “One of them.” His eyelid flickered in an unmistakable wink that banished her earlier flash of annoyance on a bubble of laughter.