Lord of Secrets

by Erica Ridley

  Even the simple luxury of having nothing to do today but draw was so foreign as to make Nora feel as though she were constantly shirking some important task.

  Drawing Lady Roundtree and her puppy was no chore—it was a dizzying pleasure. Nora would never tire of being afforded the privilege of losing herself in her art.

  Lady Roundtree gasped and lifted her head. “Do you have enough foolscap?”

  The corner of Nora’s mouth twitched. “One page should be enough for one drawing.”

  “You have only one sheet left?” the baroness shrieked in alarm.

  “There is plenty of paper,” Nora assured her. “I have a half-dozen untouched sketchpads. Please don’t worry.”

  The baroness’s fretting over the state of Nora’s art supplies could not help but warm her heart.

  Over the past few weeks, she had come to realize Lady Roundtree wasn’t the judgmental Society matron she presented herself to be, so much as a fussy old lady who loved hearing herself complain.

  The baroness even nattered to Captain Pugboat when she thought no one could overhear. Her criticisms were not personal, or even meant to rebuke anyone. Hers was just the voice of a lonely woman who yearned to be heard.

  Lady Roundtree turned her head toward Nora. “What if it doesn’t come out right?”

  “I promise I’m drawing Captain Pugboat as an astonishingly leonine puppy,” Nora managed to say with a straight face.

  “Not him!” The baroness’s lip trembled. “Me.”

  Nora hesitated. “Are you meant to be leonine as well? Or in a costume of sorts?”

  “Of course not. I’m a baroness. A lady accepts nothing less than the unvarnished truth.” She immediately returned her head to her pillow as if the interruption had never occurred.

  Frowning, Nora stared at her for a long moment before picking the pencil back up and continuing the baroness’s sketch.

  How she loved to do real drawings, rather than caricatures. The level of attention required for a truly realistic portrait was so much more intense… and so much more rewarding than the silly cartoons she dashed off in a matter of minutes. The hardest part of those was managing to add a legible caption.

  The last caricature Nora had drawn had been a few days ago, when Lady Roundtree’s husband had returned home drunk as a wheelbarrow and a thousand pounds poorer. Nora could not imagine possessing such a fortune, much less losing it over a bottle of port at some gaming hell.

  When she’d learned the gambling den in question was an infamous gentlemen’s club known as the Cloven Hoof, her imagination had caught fire. Particularly when the baroness claimed that all any proper lady knew of the club’s enigmatic owner was that he was tall, dark, and dangerous.

  Nora had immediately sketched a rear portrait of a dapper gentleman with impeccable style and cloven hooves overlooking a packed gambling house.

  The caption beneath had read, “The road to me is paved with gold intentions…”

  Nora smiled to herself. Very well, she did occasionally enjoy the caricatures as well. They might not be her passion, like drawing gowns and fashion plates, but they were a welcome release in their own way.

  Most of the time.

  Her smile faded as she thought again about the musicale. What would she do if her publisher forced her to create a cartoon mocking the Grenville scandal?

  She could not bring herself to hurt Mr. Grenville or his family. But if she were faced with a choice between saving face for them, or saving the family farm back home… it wouldn’t be a choice at all. She needed to earn as much as possible while she was still in London to do so. Once she went back home, there would be no time for sketches of any sort. Far too much work awaited her on the farm.

  Lady Roundtree lifted her head. “About what I said…”

  “I vow to sketch you with the unvarnished truth a proper lady requires,” Nora promised.

  “Not completely unvarnished,” the baroness said hesitantly. “But maybe… pretty? I don’t mind if you include Captain Pugboat’s wrinkles, but in the interest of time, I’ll find it acceptable if you fail to capture all of mine.”

  Nora paused. “Pretty, and unwrinkled?”

  Lady Roundtree’s eyes shimmered. “Is it impossible?”

  “Pretty and unwrinkled is what I always see when I look at you,” Nora assured her, her smile gentle. “But I shall ensure such details are not lost to the viewer.”

  When Lady Roundtree reclined against her pillows anew, Nora took extra care to depict the baroness as a younger, more carefree version of herself. As carefree as Nora wished she herself was.

  How she longed for the baroness to view her as more than a servant! Nora saw so much more in Lady Roundtree than a patroness. More, even, than just distant cousins. Nora saw her as a person with hopes and dreams. She was beautiful just as she was, wrinkles and warts and all.

  She wished the baroness could see past “Winfield” the employee to the real Nora.

  But of course that could never happen. In reality, even if they truly could become “friends” within private quarters, outside these doors their differing statuses created too wide a chasm to bridge. barons and baronesses would never see someone like Nora as an equal.

  She focused on her sketch. The baroness and Nora could be friends and cousins only inside her active imagination.

  “It’s just… I’m doing this for Lord Roundtree,” the baroness said without lifting her head from the pillows. “A gift. So he can see me even when he’s too busy to come out of his study.”

  Nora’s pencil stilled. “A fine gift for the lord of the house.”

  “He doesn’t approve of pets,” Lady Roundtree added in a small voice. “But I thought… maybe just on paper…”

  Nora’s throat grew tight.

  “I’ll make it perfect,” she promised, her voice firm. “It will be the best sketch I have ever drawn.”

  This was how she could be helpful. How she could prove herself as so much more than some uninterested chit suffering through her employer’s endless stories because she was paid to be there.

  If Nora lived in London with her grandparents, she would voluntarily spend time with Lady Roundtree. And draw her as many pretty, wrinkle-free pictures as she wished.

  “There.” With a final flourish, Nora handed her the drawing.

  Lady Roundtree burst into tears.

  Horrified, Nora reached for the offending sketch. “Wait, I can fix it!”

  “It’s perfect,” Lady Roundtree whispered, clutching it to her chest. “Thank you.”

  Nora wished it weren’t unseemly for a paid companion to give her patroness a warm hug. She had a feeling Lady Roundtree could use one just as much as Nora.

  A knock sounded at the front door.

  Nora scrambled to hide her pencils. “Perhaps Mr. Grenville has come to call.”

  Lady Roundtree shook her head. “No, he just gave me a status update.”

  Nora frowned. A status update about what? Something to do with the baron? Was he visiting mistresses as well as the Cloven Hoof?

  A footman appeared at the door. “Lady Agnes Febland is here.”

  “Show her in, of course.”

  Nora leaped to her feet to be prepared to curtsey. When she recognized the bejeweled guest as the lady in Hyde Park who had hated both Lady Roundtree’s dog and the color of Nora’s hair, little urge to curtsey remained.

  “There you are,” Lady Febland said to the baroness, ignoring Nora’s curtsey altogether. “I’ve just come from the monthly book club gathering and, as one might notice, you were not present.”

  Lady Roundtree placed her new sketch on the side table out of her visitor’s view. “I decided to stay home today.”

  “How boring. It is so good I came.” Lady Febland seated herself across from the baroness and raised her brows toward Nora. “I’m sure the help has a chore she could be applying herself to somewhere else.”

  Nora paused in the act of retaking her own seat, her cheeks aflame.
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br />   “Miss Winfield stays,” Lady Roundtree said firmly. “Did anything of note occur during today’s meeting?”

  Miss Winfield stays.

  Nora eased into a high-backed armchair with far more confidence than she’d felt a moment earlier. Not only had Lady Roundtree undercut the countess’s obvious desire to rid the parlor of pesky companions, the baroness had done so by referring to Nora as Miss Winfield. Not just “Winfield.”

  Miss. As if Nora was just as much a welcome guest as any bejeweled countess.

  Lady Febland wrinkled her nose as if the rebuke smelled like spoilt milk. “In any case, we scarcely spoke about the book. Have you seen the Cloven Hoof caricature?”

  “‘The road to me is paved with gold intentions,’” Lady Roundtree quoted without hesitation. “Not that I approve.”

  “They call him ‘Saint Max.’” Lady Febland’s thin lips curved in a knowing smile. “Because he is anything but.”

  A frisson of panic slid down Nora’s spine. Who had referred to the club’s owner as Saint Max? She certainly hadn’t. The drawing hadn’t even shown his face, because Nora had no inkling as to what the man might look like. She had been taking such care to avoid another “Lord of Pleasure” situation!

  Lady Roundtree reached for her cup of tea. “I don’t even know the man.”

  “I’ve heard he’s worth getting to know,” Lady Febland said with a wicked smile. “If one doesn’t mind being relegated to the shadows. Thanks to that caricature, he’s all anyone can talk about. Even the men are in a tizzy to declare themselves patrons of Saint Max.”

  Maxwell Gideon was a vice merchant, Nora reminded herself firmly when her stomach began to churn. The man ran a gaming hell designed to take people’s money. By the sound of it, his club was more popular than ever. Nora had inadvertently done him a grand favor.

  But she had nothing to do with his ironic new nickname.

  “My husband frequented all the best establishments long before there were caricatures,” Lady Roundtree said. “I’m surprised his face was not among the gamblers pictured.”

  “I didn’t recognize a single one,” Lady Febland agreed, then lowered her voice. “You don’t suppose the artist is trying to show that the club is primarily frequented by commoners?”

  Nora heroically refrained from groaning aloud.

  The artist’s sole intention had been to help feed her family, without inventing new gossip for the sketch’s subject, nor implicating anyone else in the process. The faces in the background had been invented whole cloth on purpose.

  Even the caption was no earth-shattering revelation. The gaming hell was literally named the Cloven Hoof. The pun had been right there all along. Nora had simply been the first to think of it.

  “I don’t think one should obsess about such silly things.” Lady Roundtree lifted her tea. “We have given this anonymous caricaturist far too much power.”

  Nora stared at the wealthy titled women chatting over a gold-embossed tea set that was worth more than her family’s farm.

  Power? The word tasted foreign on her tongue. From the moment she had arrived in London, she could not have felt more powerless. And yet Lady Roundtree was right: Nora’s drawings indeed held power. They allowed her a say in a world in which she was otherwise silenced.

  “I, for one, cannot wait to see what he makes of the Grenville scandal,” Lady Febland continued. “I was shocked by the complete lack of caricatures after the eldest became an opera singer, of all wretched things, but I know he cannot disappoint me again. The upcoming wedding is simply too delicious an opportunity.”

  Lady Roundtree put down her cup. “I believe Camellia Grenville made a good match.”

  “Oh, she certainly did. What one cannot stomach is our own Lord of Pleasure, not just gadding about as if she made a perfectly acceptable countess, but openly gawking at her during performances as though the Grenville chit were a siren who had bewitched his very soul.”

  Nora’s spine straightened. She did not know Camellia Grenville or her betrothed, but she was nonetheless indignant on their behalf. How could being in love with one’s talented wife possibly be construed as something to be embarrassed about?

  The only thing shameful about it was his peers’ gleeful delight in mocking the happy couple for achieving what the others had not.

  Love.

  “I hope the next caricature is of her getting the comeuppance she deserves for strutting about on stage like a common actress,” Lady Febland said. “Or of Lord Wainwright returning to his ‘Lord of Pleasure’ ways in a dark theater box while she warbles below.”

  Nora stared at the countess in horror.

  Those were ghastly ideas, mean-spirited and cruel for no reason other than to deprive someone else of their happiness. To make women like the countess feel even more superior to those around her.

  Nora’s mind immediately filled with a much better scenario. She would give gossips like Lady Febland the opposite of what they wanted to see.

  Instead of ridiculing Camellia Grenville or Lord Wainwright, Nora’s caricature would mock Society’s ridiculous taboo against a perfectly happy husband in love with his marvelously talented wife.

  Caption: “Bad ton! Not done!”

  “I’m afraid I cannot stay.” Lady Febland rose. “If I’m to pick out a tiara for tonight’s ball, I simply must come to a decision between sapphires and emeralds.”

  Nora scrambled to her feet. She had never been happier to dip a farewell curtsey in her life.

  Once the countess was gone, Lady Roundtree poured herself more tea. “Agnes is far from the only person entertained by others’ sudden falls from grace. The ‘Lord of Pleasure’ sketch was a dangerous precedent, if you ask me.”

  Nora swallowed hard.

  Lady Roundtree would have no way of knowing that the artist had also been shocked by the overnight infamy of her sketch, and had sworn to never again invent tongue-in-cheek nicknames for the sake of captioning a caricature. From that moment, Nora only sent home drawings featuring the same information printed in any number of scandal columns within the popular newspapers.

  But that wasn’t enough. If her plume had power, it should be wielded for good works. To defend the innocent and point out hypocrisy.

  More importantly, her family was counting on that money.

  Carter had intended to buy more sheep with what she’d earned so far, but between refilling the larder, patching a neglected roof, and hiring a surgeon to finally address their grandparents’ various ailments, not a penny had remained.

  Without the extra income from Nora’s cartoons, there was no hope of lifting the farm from poverty. The caricatures were their only way out.

  Chapter 13

  Days later, Nora had just finished playing an after-luncheon round of Casino with Lady Roundtree when a footman came to announce that Mr. Grenville had come to call and had been shown into the front parlor.

  Her stomach immediately filled with both dread and excitement. All she could think about was how much she truly liked him, and how furious he would be if he ever found out who she really was.

  “Show him to the front parlor,” Lady Roundtree ordered. “We’ll be there presently.”

  Nora looked up from the cards she had been straightening. “We?”

  Lady Roundtree frowned. “You are my companion, are you not?”

  Nora gulped. That was indeed one of the things that she was. She was also in deep trouble.

  For the past week she’d found herself sketching fantasies of Mr. Grenville when she should be doing other things. Drawing impossible dreams. Him, as her suitor. Her, attending his sister’s well-publicized wedding. She and Mr. Grenville, locked in an embrace.

  Nonsense, all of it. Nora knew better. Her days here were numbered.

  No good could come of any relationship between them, no matter how platonic and benign. Yet the more fervently she resolved to keep her distance, the more irresistible the idea of him became.

  Was he not perfect i
n almost every way? Clever and kind, handsome and happy, popular and powerful. It was that last point where things got sticky. Even without the shameful secret she must keep from him at all costs, his title elevated him well out of her grasp.

  And yet, her sketchbooks overflowed with moments they would never share.

  “Perhaps I should stay here,” she suggested. “Didn’t you say he was working on something for you? I’m sure you don’t want anyone to overhear.”

  “Come, come,” Lady Roundtree said in bafflement. “A servant can put away the playing cards. You are meant to be accompanying me.”

  Nora rose on unsteady limbs. Yesterday, she had become “Miss Winfield.” Today, she was not a servant.

  Mayhap it was not quite the same thing as “cousins” but it was an acknowledgement so much greater than Nora had ever hoped for.

  Even if such praise was only in private, it meant more to Nora than brand new boots and pretty gowns. For a baroness like Lady Roundtree, money was meaningless. Until recently, Nora had been meaningless, too.

  Today, she mattered more than before.

  After ringing for footmen to help the baroness with her wheeled chair, Nora nervously smoothed the soft pink percale of her day dress.

  Mr. Grenville was waiting on the other side of the townhouse. He might think of Nora as Lady Roundtree’s servant, but he had never failed to address her as Miss Winfield. As if she deserved the same courtesies as any other young lady of his class.

  How she wished it were true. That she were of his class, that she were like all the other young ladies.

  Instead, she was a simple country girl with a complicated double life. A secret that would erase the warmth from Mr. Grenville’s hazel eyes forever.

  As she followed Lady Roundtree and the footmen from the room, Nora glanced at the Ormulu clock upon the mantel. Her reputation, such as it was, only mattered for the next month or two. Yet she must guard it carefully in order to maximize this opportunity for her family. Time was limited. She could not risk exposing the truth—or her heart—to Mr. Grenville. Yet the pull was impossible to deny.