Dair Devil

by Lucinda Brant

  Rory blinked at the man’s outrageous suggestion that Lord Fitzstuart had managed to undertake and survive perilous and often life-threatening missions only because he had sold his soul to the Devil. But before she could make comment, Lady Grasby confronted Rory, saying with a pout,

  “No one mentioned wanting Fitzstuart dead. If you are not careful such a spirited defense of a gentleman you do not know in the least, and who would not know you from Eve, but whom you readily admit to observing, will be misconstrued as the unhealthy interest of a delusional and plain spinster for a handsome rake.”

  Rory’s face ripened. Spinster she may be. Delusional she was not. Nor was she plain. Her hair might best be described as damp straw-blonde. Her eyes were blue, but so pale as to be thought cold. But her face was heart-shaped, and her skin unblemished, so on balance, she was considered sweet and pretty, if not beautiful. If she was plain, it was only when in the orbit of the dark-haired beauties with cheeks flushed from flitting about the dance floor. But at two-and-twenty she had no expectations of marrying for love or anything else. With no fortune and not enough beauty to overcome a meager dowry, Rory was resigned to living her days as she had begun them, as her grandfather’s dependant.

  Thus, for her beautiful sister-in-law, who was a remarkably pretty brunette with damp brown eyes, to underscore the reality of her situation, in such a blunt manner, and in public, was a piece of spite that bruised Rory to the core. She knew her sister-in-law was not cruel by nature, but having been indulged from an early age, Drusilla did not often think of others before herself, and thus could be unconsciously unfeeling. Rory was surprised yet grateful that Drusilla had not stated the glaringly obvious; that was left to William Watkins, who shared his sister’s unwitting lack of tact.

  He made Rory mentally wince and wish she were a mouse to scurry through a hole in the kicking boards when he said with a sickly-sweet smile of understanding,

  “I am certain Miss Talbot’s interest in Lord Fitzstuart goes no deeper than an appreciation of his exceptional athleticism. As is often the way, what is lacking in ourselves we greatly admire in others. You, my dear Miss Talbot, cannot help being lame, just as I cannot be blamed for my poor eyesight. It is God’s will, and thus we abide it with good grace and forbearance.”

  “If you will follow me to the upstairs drawing room, Mr. Romney will be with you presently,” the butler intoned in the silence which followed Mr. Watkins’ homily, a toe on the first step.

  “You do have your eyeglasses, William?” Lady Grasby asked, bunching up her apricot silk petticoats to ascend the staircase as rapidly as possible in high-heeled mules. “I so want you to examine the portrait, to tell me what it is about it that is vexing me.” She paused on a sudden thought and looked over her shoulder, a gloved hand to the polished balustrade. “Don’t trouble yourself to come up, Aurora. We will not be above half an hour.”

  “That would be for the best,” Rory responded cheerfully, standing at the base of a staircase that would take her twice the time to ascend than anyone else but a child taking its first steps. “I know so little about art that I would be of no help to you whatsoever.” Her gaze swept the hall for a settee or a wingchair. “Mr. Romney must have a suitable vestibule for visitors on this level…”

  She was talking to herself. The butler and Lady Grasby, with her brother a step behind, had disappeared up the staircase.

  One of the painter’s assistants rescued her. He stepped into the hall from the studio at the back of the house, dressed in a smock covered in all manner of colored daubs, and in time to be privy to the conversation. He offered Rory to follow him to a small viewing room off Mr. Romney’s painting studio. There was a fire in the grate and a comfortable chair to sit upon and wait.

  The fire was welcoming, but her interest was not in the many painted canvases stacked against two walls, or in those propped on easels ready for inspection, but in the sounds of commotion coming from the other side of a door left ajar by the assistant. Interest piqued, Rory entered the large well-lit room uninvited, and found it brimming with activity and laughter.

  She was halfway across the room and beside a canvas propped on an easel before her trespass was finally noticed by those on the stage in front of her. She took only a cursory glance at the canvas of a half-finished painting, more interested in the group of scantily-dressed females whose modesty was saved by strategically draped diaphanous silks. While these draperies covered their torsos and flowed to their stockinged feet, the sheerness of the fabric did little to hide their limbs and female attributes. All possessed the long shapely legs of the opera dancer. This was confirmed when three of their number broke from the group and danced out across the stage, holding hands and twirling this way and that on the balls of their stockinged feet, slim graceful arms offering an elegant counterpoint to their footwork.

  Their movements caused the silks pinned at their shoulders to slip and bunch at the blue sash tied about their trim waists. Long hair, carefully pinned and decorated with flowered wreaths, unraveled in heavy coils down narrow backs and across small rounded breasts that bounced free; petals dropped from the flowers and were strewn across the stage in the wake of their steps.

  They appeared as Greek statues of glistening white marble come to life with their sculptured white limbs and powdered faces; their graceful movements, as they danced about the stage, mesmerizing. Rory delighted in their exuberance and agility, so much so that it was several moments before she realized she was being addressed, and by the principal ballerina fanning herself by the chaise longue.

  “I beg your pardon. I was so taken with your companions I did not hear your question.”

  CONSULATA BACCELLI did not immediately respond, taking her time to appraise Rory’s gown of striped mint green taffeta with underskirts of embroidered lilac silk, the outer petticoat ruched and bunched behind to affect the fashionable polonaise. Here was a lady of style, if not of the first society, and she wondered where the young woman’s male chaperone could be—a personal maid at the very least—particularly at this late hour. A lady of quality did not venture from her home on her own, and never into the homes of men, painters in particular; all sorts of riffraff could be present. She wondered if Rory had somehow slipped away from her minders, and if she intended to turn and flee in horror at having walked into a room of disreputable dancers.

  Consulata did not have to wonder why the young woman used a walking stick. When Rory had silently crossed the room, it was evident in her awkward gait that she needed it to move about. The short hem of her polonaise, which was some three inches off the ground, exposed her trim ankles in their white clocked stockings and matching heeled silk shoes; an inwardly twisted right foot answered to the uneven gait.

  Rory was all wide-eyed interest, and Consulata thought it a great shame the young woman would never dance or be graceful in her movements, which surely meant she could never show herself to advantage. But her spontaneous delight at watching the ballerinas playfully spin out across the stage decided Consulata here was a young woman without malice, and she immediately decided to befriend her.

  “Signora—”

  “Signorina. Signorina Talbot,” Rory corrected with a smile, gaze turning to Consulata Baccelli, because the dancers were being ushered back into formation by a weary assistant; another hurriedly coming to his colleague’s aid to help adjust drapery and flowered headpieces. “They dance delightfully. I’m sure you all do.”

  “Sí. We do. But me, Consulata Baccelli, I am the most delightful dancer of them all.” The principal ballerina laughed behind her fluttering fan at her conceit. “I would show you but for these outrageous robes Signore Romney he has made us wear.” She indicated the blue damask chaise. “Come, sit here with me.”

  When Rory looked about her, as if a chair closer at hand would be more suitable than sitting upon the stage with the dancers, Consulata smiled and patted the damask cushion.

  “Come. Amuse me until the excitement, it begins.”

 
; Rory reluctantly climbed the three wooden steps and sat where requested, careful not to disturb the bunched petticoats at her back. Her walking stick she kept close to her side, a gloved hand about its mahogany stick.

  “You must be thrilled to have a painter of Mr. Romney’s skill and reputation to immortalize you and your beautiful dancers.”

  “Signore Romney he paints us not as dancers but as part of a Greek allegory. Me? I prefer to be painted as I am, a ballerina most famous. But this—” She waved a plump wrist covered in pearls at the large canvas propped on the easel. “—this painting that has us all dressed in these ridiculous sheets of annoyance, it is painted for the Duke of Dorset. He will hang it in the gallery at Knole.” Consulata leaned in with a sly smile. “And then, because Dorset he is my lover, he will have me painted, dancing. And that painting he will hang in his private apartments, for his eyes only.” Her large brown eyes danced merrily, adding so only Rory could hear, “Dorset, he wants Signore Romney to paint me nude. Perhaps I will allow it, eh?”

  Without wishing it, Rory blushed. Consulata Baccelli’s suggestion was an outrageous one, and most inappropriate to a spinster who lived a sheltered existence in the household of her aging grandfather. He would have been horrified to learn his only granddaughter was in the company of a troupe of dancers whose morals were questionable at best. That Rory was conversing with the notorious mistress of the Duke of Dorset was an encounter she decided to keep to herself.

  She knew she ought to take offence at the dancer’s lewd conversation, excuse herself and return to the small waiting room, but she was not the least offended. And lest she be considered prudish, she summoned her courage, looked into Consulata’s large lovely eyes, and said with a smile she hoped oozed a worldliness she did not in the least possess,

  “The Duke is sure to treasure such a painting. A graceful figure as you possess is to be admired, and deserves to be immortalized.”

  Consulata was pleased with this response and beamed.

  “I think we will be good friends. Very good friends indeed, Signorina Talbot. I will have Dorset invite you to dinner. Then you and me, we can laugh and reminisce together about the little escapade Major Fitzstuart he arranges for his pleasant friend.”

  Rory tried to keep the interest from her voice and the surprise from her features. “Major? Major Fitzstuart?”

  She succeeded in appearing none the wiser as to knowing this officer, because the dancer’s dark eyes crinkled with amused mischief. Before enlightening Rory, she turned on the group of females giggling and jostling each other behind the chaise and slapped her fan down hard across the back of chaise’s gilt frame. The dancers instantly swallowed their mirth and were silent and still long enough to be chastised.

  “Stop this instant or not one of you will dance at the Haymarket again.” She jerked her dark head in direction of the windows. “Keep your eyes on the windows, and when the handsome Major and his friend they appear, you will all do as instructed. Sí? Bene,” she added, when the dancers nodded obediently. “Now please to contain your impatience at seeing Major Fitzstuart in all his glory. When he comes through that window, then you have my permission to screech the excitement so loud, his pleasant friend will run into this room and save my life.”

  She turned back to Rory and said merrily, “Soon it will begin, and so you are not alarmed, me I will tell you what is to happen. But first promise me not to tell Signore Romney’s servants. It is most important to keep the surprise so the Major’s pleasant friend, who is naturally infatuated with me, believes I am terrified and he has saved me from a fate worse than death.”

  Rory was so intrigued she could only nod. She shuffled down the chaise longue in anticipation of receiving Consulata’s confidence regarding Major Fitzstuart. But no sooner had she done so than the dancers at her back began jumping up and down and squealing their delight. This had Consulata Baccelli on her feet. At the same time, one of Romney’s assistants threw paints and brushes into the air as if in panic and fled the room, while two of the dancers swept up the trailing folds of their drapery, skipped lightly down the three steps of the stage and ran across the studio towards the three sash windows.

  Such was the instantaneous outburst of excitement from the dancers that Rory instinctively swiveled to look over her shoulder—at them, not out across the studio to see what had caused their agitation. By the time she reoriented herself to look at the windows, an intruder, who had dropped silently into the studio via an open window, was chasing the two dancers across the room.

  Rory was shocked into speechlessness by such outlandish behavior, and while she blinked several times in response, as if convincing herself the scene presented before her was indeed unfolding, she did not sense any immediate danger to her person, or to any of the dancers. This surprised her, because the intruder was male, and naked but for a belt around his waist that positioned a modesty cloth between his legs. Watching him chase after the giggling dancers, who were showing no resistance to being caught, the cloth proved no covering at all, and Rory’s face flooded with the heat of outrageous embarrassment

  And then, within the blink of an eye, her acute embarrassment turned to profound shock, and from shock panic sprang, not for herself but for the intruder. When he came running up the room towards the stage and caught the two squealing dancers about the waist and held fast, Rory saw that his hair was powdered gray, his eyes blackened, and his laughing face disguised with thick stripes of white paint. But it was a thin disguise and would fool no one who knew him. Rory knew him better than anyone else. The naked intruder was Harvel; Harvel Edward Talbot, Lord Grasby; her only brother.

  THREE

  E ARLIER, LORD GRASBY had tiptoed behind Dair, staying close in the darkness as his friend navigated the pathways of the small garden at the back of George Romney’s townhouse. Dair knew his way in darkness. His night vision was considered second to none and had been used to good purpose while leading many late-night scouting parties into enemy territory. George Romney’s garden and house were definitely enemy territory. He knew the painter’s studio was conveniently located on the ground floor at the back of the house, because he had paid a visit to the painter’s house earlier that day to reconnoiter.

  A soldier did not go unprepared into battle. With the promise of half a shilling, one of Romney’s assistants agreed to leave a window ajar in the studio. For the promise of the other half, this same servant would ensure his master was momentarily called away from the studio at the agreed hour. He then offered Lord Fitzstuart a tour of his master’s painting studio, even going so far as to show him the little garden at the back of the house, and the high stone wall with its door that gave access to Red Lyon Lane. That, too, would be unlocked at the specified hour.

  Mr. George Romney’s secretary had then discovered his lordship wandering the studio alone and offered profuse apologies at Mr. Romney’s absence. Perhaps he could be of assistance? Dair said he could. They then discussed his lordship’s desire to commission a portrait as a gift to his mother. This was a half-truth. The Countess of Strathsay had been haranguing him to have his likeness painted since he was decommissioned the previous winter. She wanted him presented as the noble heir to the earldom of Strathsay. She showed no enthusiasm for the full-length portrait unveiled at his recent birthday celebrations. Painted in the regimental regalia of the 17th Light Dragoons, Farrier holding the reins to his mount, Phoenix, against the backdrop of battle, the portrait was not two minutes on the wall of the ancestral Gallery when the Countess made her opinion known. The portrait was striking, but it would be replaced with a more suitable portrait, possibly a half-length, that better befitted her eldest son’s place in Society as the great-grandson of Charles the Second, heir to the Strathsay earldom. As was his usual practice in response to his mother’s proclamations, he smiled blandly and made no comment, but kept to his mantra: Hell would freeze over before he allowed her, or his sanctimonious noble relatives, to fashion him into a proxy of his contemptible father.
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  “Dair! Psst! Dair?” Grasby hissed in his ear. “Is this it? Is this the window?”

  Dair snapped back to the present and nodded. They were crouched under one of three sash windows, this one with the window pushed up off the sill and the velvet curtains pulled back on the night. He took a peek through the window. Grasby joined him, nose just above the sill, blue eyes very wide.

  Candlelight blazed everywhere. At the far end of the room on a raised platform, with a backdrop of white linen drapery, half a dozen scantily-clad beauties giggled and flirted with two soberly-dressed gentlemen attempting to position them in some sort of order around the back of a damask-covered chaise. Here on a chaise reclined the well-known Italian ballet dancer Consulata Baccelli, fluttering a fan and in conversation with a female who was obscured from the line of sight of the window by a third Romney assistant, who was ordering his two fellows assistants about.

  Neither Dair nor Grasby was interested in this unknown female. If anything, her presence was a complication Dair could do without. Consulata had made no mention of a companion, and the fact she was not dressed like the dancers meant she was possibly an annoying patron, come to see the painter about a portrait. Dair dismissed her as unimportant, and soon forgot all about her as he joined Grasby in admiration of the mesmerizing sight of a troupe of beautiful ballerinas in thin silks, their milky white breasts freed of the restrictive confines of stays. These exquisite orbs of fascination jiggled and swayed with intoxicating movement as the dancers playfully jostled one another and teased the painter’s ever-patient assistants doing their best to reposition flowered wreaths atop teased and pinned coiffures.