My Lady Gloriana

by Sylvia Halliday

  “And Lady Gloriana is another Baniard daughter, forced to take to the streets in desperation?” Perhaps his vision of loveliness had only pretended to be low-bred, to confound him.

  “Pshaw! Scarcely that! She’s as common as dirt. Except for Lady Ridley, the original family is all dead now. But Charles, Sir William’s only son, had escaped his bondage and fled back to England, where he was a hunted fugitive. God knows what he did in the intervening years to keep body and soul together. There was even talk he’d become a highwayman. But by the time he was reinstated to his title, he had decided to marry…” DeWitt shrugged, “…the common London whore he’d been living with.”

  Thorne felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. “Gloriana,” he said hoarsely.

  “Yes. Sir Charles was not himself, you understand. His cruel indenture seems to have affected his brain. He lived a wild life, I’m told, even after he reappeared in society. Gambling, whoring, flouting his reinstated position. On the very day of his marriage to his whore, he quarreled with the guests at Baniard Hall, got into a duel, and was killed.”

  “And the Lady Gloriana?”

  “She lives at Baniard Hall with her sister-in-law and brother-in-law. When the Ridleys aren’t in residence in London, you understand. Morgan House is a splendid place. Have you seen it?”

  Thorne brushed aside the question. “But the lady, damn it!”

  “They don’t dare bring her to London, of course,” said DeWitt with a sneer. “Think of the scandal! But they have to be nice to her. Because of the child.”

  Would his disappointments never end? “Sir Charles’s child?”

  “Yes. The new baronet. The Hall has been entailed to the child, to be held in trust until Ridley’s death. But it must be awkward for His Lordship and wife. To be forced to be gracious to a lowly street doxy. Even more awkward as the child grows up with a mother like that!”

  Thorne shook his head. “What a story.” And to think he’d nearly succumbed to the creature’s charms. He’d look like a fool if he appeared in London society with a common whore on his arm. His friends would wonder if the great Duke of Thorneleigh had lost his reason!

  But later, as he lay in bed and tried to sleep with the moonlight still streaming in through the window, all he could see was her bewitching face. Her tempting, womanly form dancing magically in the night.

  “Begone, apparition,” he whispered to the darkness. Why had he thought that she might be different from other women? If a gentlewoman practiced casual betrayal, a whore made her living at it, flitting from man to man without a twinge of conscience.

  He groaned. Oh, Gloriana, he thought in anguish, if only you had been what you seemed.

  • • •

  “No, no, no, Lady Gloriana!” The tutor swirled away from Gloriana’s writing desk, the skirts of his fancy coat flying, and paced her drawing room in a peevish stride. “You must form your Os with a graceful loop. Allow the pen to flow across the page. And don’t pinch it as though you were afraid it would fly out of your fingers! Can you never get it right?”

  “Bloody hell!” Gloriana scowled at the large inkblot left on the paper by the scratching quill pen. She picked up her ink bottle and hurled it across the room. It left an ugly smear on the blue damask wall covering. Barbara, her maid, gasped and ran to fetch a cloth. Gloriana shot her tutor a malevolent look. “I don’t give no tinker’s damn about writin’ proper-like. Why do you torture me, you cross-eyed excuse for a man?”

  He took a slow breath and managed a thin, condescending smile. “A lady should know the arts and graces of society. Lord and Lady Ridley are extraordinarily kind to take such care with your education. How else are you to get on in the world?”

  “It never stopped me afore now,” she muttered. She was tired of the months of lessons—reading and writing and dancing and singing and deportment—all designed to turn her into something she wasn’t. Nor ever would be, however much she yearned for it. “There weren’t a day in London that I didn’t have somethin’ to eat. And I didn’t need no readin’ to see a tankard hangin’ over a tavern, tellin’ me there were food and drink inside! I paid my way, and then some.”

  Barbara, sulkily blotting at the spreading ink stain on the wall, gave a soft snort under her breath.

  Gloriana marched across the room, clapped her hand on the girl’s shoulder and spun her about. “I weren’t no whore!” she shrilled.

  The girl’s face dissolved into a deferential smirk, but her eyes held mocking laughter. “Of course you weren’t, milady. No one ever said so.”

  Except behind my back, Gloriana thought bitterly. She knew what the servants in Baniard Hall thought of her. She could see it in their eyes, hear it in the quiet snickers as they passed her in the rooms. Well, damn their eyes, she’d show them! She was the widow of one baronet, the mother of another. A lady didn’t tolerate insolence.

  But how was she to deal with it? She didn’t have the elegance of Charlie’s sister, Allegra, or the imposing presence and high-flown language of Lord Ridley. She felt helpless, bested by this chit of a girl.

  She did the only thing she was capable of, under the circumstances. She drew back her hand and slapped Barbara sharply across the face. “I’ll have none o’ your brass, you minx!” she cried. “Quit my side!”

  Barbara began to wail, cradling her cheek in her hand. “But, milady…”

  “Out, you foul jade!”

  The girl scurried from the room.

  The tutor cleared his throat and frowned, tight lips pursed in disapproval. “That was entirely uncalled-for, Lady Gloriana. A lady…”

  If he said lady in that tone once more, she knew she’d scream. As though he was certain that the child of a Gypsy and a thief could never be a lady.

  Her own sense of inadequacy fueled her anger. She advanced on him, her hands balled into fists. She towered over him. “A lady don’t have to endure the likes of a priggish jackanapes, I reckon. Not if she don’t want to. And I’ll wager I could hoist a little squint-a-pipes like you and toss you out on your arse.”

  He began to quake. “Lady Ridley will hear of this,” he said in a quivering voice, backing toward the door.

  “Out, you worm!”

  He fled. She slammed shut the door after him with a savage kick to the paneling.

  But when he’d gone, she buried her face in her hands. She knew she treated the servants with too high a hand, shouting too often, striking occasionally, playing the proud and haughty Lady of the Manor. But how else was she to get their respect if she didn’t demand it? “Oh, Charlie,” she whispered. “You were a rum enough cove. Why did you do this to me?” Child or no child, she should never have agreed to the marriage.

  The Lady Gloriana Baniard. She gave a laugh filled with self-mockery and sank into a deep, graceful curtsy. “How do you do, your lordship?” she said to the empty room, making a conscious effort to lower and soften her voice. “It be… it is my pleasure to make your acquaintance. Will you take tea?”

  She went through the pantomime of pouring, handing around imaginary cups, and murmured polite small talk. “Milady, I ain’t never… have never seen such a fine gown. Were the season… was the season in London pleasant this year, your lordship?”

  She sighed. It was still so difficult to remember all her lessons. And the tutor—and even the servants—made her feel like a fool, treating her with a lack of respect that curdled her soul. She didn’t yet have the courage to show them that she was learning. If she slipped, in an awkward moment or a burst of anger, she feared she would slide back to her old ways of speaking and acting. And then their mockery would bring a humiliation she wasn’t prepared to endure. And though the Ridleys would be kind and understanding at her lapse, she dreaded to read pity in their eyes.

  No. It was better to pretend to be unteachable—waiting for the moment when she could emerge from her coarse background and appear before them all as a perfect lady—than risk her pride.

  She sighed again and glanced o
ut the window. Evening was falling. They would expect her at supper. She dreaded it. She moved into her bedchamber and stared at herself in the large mirror. She didn’t have the courage to call back Barbara to help her change her gown. The tale of her high-handed treatment of the girl would already have found its way to the servants’ quarters. They would all be laughing at her by now. She couldn’t bear the contempt.

  Her afternoon dress would have to serve for supper. She appraised it with a critical eye. It looked so plain, so sedate, with its prim neckcloth that hid her fine bosom—stays so tight they flattened every curve. And why did she have to wear black, day in and day out? She had only been Charlie’s wife for a few hours before he was killed, yet she was condemned to this unending drab color for a year. And to make matters worse, her scarlet hair—of which she was unashamedly proud, and the only bit of color on her person besides her green eyes—had been fashioned by Barbara into a knot on top of her head and covered with a large white cap, trailing black widow’s weeds.

  “God rot them all,” she muttered. If Charlie were alive, she’d be wearing low-cut cerise or golden silk, festooned with the jewels he’d given her, her face enlivened with plenty of rouge and powder.

  “But that’s the way the common women dress in London,” Allegra had told her, meaning to be kind. “Not fit for your station now, my dear.”

  She said “common women” not “whores,” thought Gloriana. But that’s what she had been thinking.

  Gloriana stamped her foot. “I weren’t never no whore,” she said darkly, then corrected herself. “I was never a whore,” she said in a haughty tone.

  True, she’d trafficked the London streets with her Da. But only to lure men into dark alleys, where Da could relieve them of their purses. He’d wanted her to stay a virgin, and she had agreed. She’d seen too many harlots go to their deaths, riddled with disease and corruption.

  But fate had made her tall and strong as she grew. Seeing a larger profit to be made, Da had trained her to be a female gladiator, fighting in the pits of theaters for the amusement of the gentry. And I were… was the best there was, she thought proudly. She’d never lost a match in the three years she’d been part of the sport.

  “Put your guineas on Glory,” the gentlemen would say. “She never loses.”

  But as much as she had enjoyed the ring, she’d loved the training even more. Old Diggory, the blacksmith in the squalid corner of London where they’d lived, had set her to work beside him in the forge, strengthening her arm muscles and increasing her endurance until she was a match for any other female, and a few men besides.

  She had never been happier than when she was bent over the anvil, hammer in hand, sweat running down her face and arms and back. Old Diggory had even taught her to fashion glowing iron bars into graceful curlicues, turning out wrought-iron fences to grace the elegant town houses of the gentry. And then he’d let her ride the horses they had shod, galloping through the cobbled streets with reckless abandon.

  No. She wasn’t a whore, and never had been, though Charlie had thought it. “My sweet whore,” he’d called her to his underworld companions, as though it were a term of endearment. But he’d been so drunk the first night he’d taken her, he’d never noticed her virginal flinch of pain, the spot of blood on the sheets. And the name “whore” had stuck. It hadn’t bothered her—until now.

  She wasn’t sorry she’d gone with Charlie. Da had been dying, and they both knew it. She would be safer with a man she could call her own. Someone to protect her. And Charlie made good money, robbing stagecoaches as a masked bandit. He had been good to her most of the time, only blacking her eye or swatting her to the ground when he was drunk, or filled with dark thoughts of his past. And faithful, except for a few lapses.

  Not that he loved her, of course. Or she, him. The denizens of London’s underworld couldn’t afford such niceties as romantic love. But she’d found an unexpected joy in their coupling, an enthusiasm for making love that had astonished her. She’d wait impatiently for him to come rolling in from an evening at a tavern or gin shop, and tug at his breeches, eager to feel him inside her.

  That’s what she missed when she thought about Charlie. The wild romps, the frantic thrashing and groping in the dark. The release of pure animal passion. The few gentlemen she’d met since she’d come to Baniard Hall—friends and business acquaintances of the Ridleys—had seemed soft and pampered, scarcely the type to give a lusty woman pleasure in bed. And why would they want a woman of her sort, anyway?

  She’d found some physical relief in her wild nocturnal rides. She’d bribed a stable boy to look the other way whenever she sneaked into the stable and took out a horse. She would gallop across the countryside and come back to her rooms at the Hall, tense with desire and sexual yearning. Lying in bed, she would pleasure herself until she exploded in release, then drift off into a contented sleep.

  Except for last night, when that blasted Peeping Tom had disturbed her solitude. She’d come back too angry for pleasure, her blood boiling at his arrogant self-confidence. Naked in the tree—she’d seen that much. Was he hoping for a tussle, the wretch? She wished she could have seen the villain’s face. She hoped he’d snagged his prickle on a branch on his trip down, and spent the night nursing his parts.

  “Filthy rogue,” she muttered. He’d got more than he bargained for, curse his prying eyes!

  Chapter Three

  When Gloriana finally came down the broad staircase, Charlie’s sister Allegra, Lady Ridley, met her at the door to the eating parlor. A handsome woman with black hair and dark, soulful eyes, Allegra bore a striking resemblance to her brother, except that her sweet face was round and full, echoing the roundness of her pregnant belly, covered by a somber mourning gown. She moved gracefully toward Gloriana, a warm smile on her face, and held out her hands.

  “Sister. Dear one,” she said. “May I have a moment of your time before we go in to supper?”

  Gloriana bit her lip, feeling a guilty blush color her cheeks. “If it be about the ink stain, I’ll sell one o’ my jewels to pay for it. Never you fear. I pays my debts.” She heard the sound of her own coarse words and cringed inwardly.

  Allegra gave a gentle laugh. “Don’t be absurd. We all have accidents.”

  “It weren’t no accident,” she said reluctantly. She couldn’t lie to this kind, trusting woman. She seemed so wise and mature that it always surprised Gloriana to remember that Allegra was only nineteen, a year younger than she herself was. “I did it a-purpose.”

  Allegra kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I have no doubt you did. I’ve just spent a most unpleasant quarter of an hour with your tutor. He would vex a saint! Of course, I dismissed him on the spot. Why didn’t you tell me he was so difficult?”

  Gloriana burned with remorse. “It weren’t his fault,” she muttered. “He were only tryin’ to teach me proper ways. And I be a dolt at learnin’. As for hittin’ Barbara…” Allegra would have heard that story; she might as well confess.

  “Oh, pooh! Barbara is a sulky girl, given to insolence. Mrs. Carey, the housekeeper, should never have allowed her to be your maidservant. I truly wanted Verity to serve you. She’s a sweet-tempered lass. But Mrs. Carey needed her elsewhere. Well, I regret to override my housekeeper, but I’ll insist she make the change. As for the tutor…” She slipped her arm around Gloriana’s waist and gave her a gentle hug. “Perhaps Grey and I have pushed you too fast and too hard. It must be so difficult for you, in these new surroundings. I blame myself for your unhappiness.”

  Gloriana gulped back her tears. How could they be so kind, when she behaved like an unruly ingrate? They were so far above her, and yet they treated her with patience and understanding, ignoring her crude speech, tolerating her outbursts, forgiving her wild nighttime rides, which surely caused them anxiety. “It aren’t your fault,” she said hoarsely. “I should have died with Charlie.”

  Allegra looked horrified. “Never! You and little William are the best legacies my brother c
ould have left us.”

  “But…”

  “Not another word. We’re proud to call you family. As for the tutor, I think we won’t hire another for a while. There will be time, when you feel more at ease here. Would that please you?”

  She nodded dumbly, too filled with gratitude to utter a word.

  “As for the ink stain,” Allegra went on, “the wall covering can be replaced, of course. But it occurs to me that I’ve been remiss in doing you honor. I never even asked you if the decorations of your apartment pleased you. Perhaps you find them not to your liking? Tell me, and I shall have the joy of consulting with you to redo your suite.” She laughed and patted her belly. “I have a month yet, till I’m brought to bed. Time enough to make a change in your surroundings.”

  Doing her honor? She couldn’t bear their kindness and respect. She had been accustomed to surly words, a cuff on the ear, insolence from tradespeople, and scorn from the gentry. “I don’t deserve no fancy rooms,” she said, choking with emotion. She felt so unworthy in this household that she wanted to die.

  “Nonsense. You’re Lady Baniard. And my dear sweet sister. You deserve all that position entails.” Allegra slipped her arm through Gloriana’s. “Now come in to supper.”

  Allegra’s husband, Grey Ridley, came around from his seat at the head of the table and put his hand under Gloriana’s arm, guiding her to her chair. He saw to her comfort, then turned to his wife. “’Od’s blood,” he said with a laugh. “You’ve grown so large, I think I should carry you to your place.”

  Allegra gave him a mocking smirk, but her love shone in her eyes. “I’m not quite helpless yet.”

  He kissed her softly on the neck as he seated her, and whispered something in her ear that made her blush.

  Gloriana swallowed a sudden rush of emotion. How she envied them! She hadn’t thought about love very often—in her old life, it had been something distant and unattainable for people of her kind. When you worried about the next crust of bread to sustain your body, how could you have the time to worry about an emotion that didn’t seem vital to survival? But in this household, watching the Ridleys’ devotion to each other, she felt like a starving beggar.