by Edith Layton
When Leonora did not reply, Sybil added, “Although I do not think Mama is as enlightened as I am as to her husband’s doings, for truthfully, Leonora, I do not think she cares. I like Lord Benjamin very well, you see, and have his best interests at heart.”
“And you are saying that Mama does not care for her husband?” Leonora asked disbelievingly.
“Yes, of course, my dear, I thought you knew,” her sister answered with some trace of sympathy in her voice for the first time in the long interview.
As the hackney circled Greene Park again and again, Sybil explained all the things which Leonora then realized that she ought to have known. For it wasn’t only the war office or the foreign office or even the King’s offices which kept her father from home. And there was very good reason for the oddly spaced intervals in which the viscount’s children had arrived. The viscount and his lady had been wed for decades, and for decades they had tolerated each other, but only just that.
A great many couples in society lived in mutual dislike, Leonora learned, that was, if they did not live in mutual hatred. Marriages were contracted for greed, or gain, or social grace, and then, even when undertaken in the best faith, they often grew stale. But divorce was out of the question, since it cost both a fortune and a reputation. So the parties involved, sometimes the females, but most frequently the gentlemen, led lives of very creative duplicity.
As the carriage at last headed for the Viscount Talwin’s house again, Leonora did not know whether to feel ashamed at having been such a thorough fool as to have never guessed at this, or whether she ought to be chagrined because she believed her sister, who might be lying to her for her own devious reasons. So all she could say in a dazed voice was, “But then, you say that all marriages in our circle are like that?”
“Ah no,” Sybil corrected her, “for some unions are genuinely exclusive and seem quite rewarding to both parties. There is, for example, the Duke and Duchess of Croft, and there’s the Mastersons, of course, and the Swansons and the Earl of Skelemore and his Elizabeth, and oh yes, father’s crony Jason Thomas, Duke of Torquay, and his lady. And he was used to be the most infamous rakehell,” she interrupted herself to muse, an unreadable expression coming over her usually serene countenance, “quite insatiable, I believe. But then again, she is not well-born, so I suppose that explains her preferences. And then too, they do not reside in Town.”
“And those are the only exceptions you know?” Leonora asked in disbelief.
“All I can think of at the moment who have been wed more than a year,” Sybil said after a pause, “but then, I never thought to compile such a list.”
“And you are saying that some of this unfaithfulness is caused by the gentlemen’s natural physical demands, but some of it is because the couples simply cannot bear each other even though they reside together?” Leonora mused wonderingly. “But that is to say that every wedded pair you are acquainted with lives in a constant state of hypocrisy,” she continued, thinking to catch Sybil off guard so that she would betray her falsehoods.
“Why, yes.” Sybil sighed with genuine relief and the merest gratified smile. “At last you understand.”
And then Leonora believed her.
Sybil had delivered some more sisterly advice before she let her off in front of the family’s townhouse that day, Leonora remembered now, unconsciously grinning at herself in the looking glass. She especially remembered the serious and detailed speech listing “helpful things to think about during the marital act” For when she had snickered, even then, even as she suffered the pain of her first awakening to adult reality, Sybil had said angrily that her rudeness was distressing but understandable. Her lack of ladylike sensibility was unfortunate, Sybil had declared without the least bit of sorrow, but explicable because she had been so close to her father rather than her mother and sister when she was growing up, and because she had such warm associations with Nurse and other low-bred country folk. Why, Sybil had said loftily, in an attempt to frighten her into paying closer attention, it was entirely possible that Leonora might be the sort of debased female who actually enjoyed such sport.
Well, and if she was, Leonora thought now, it was also entirely possible that she would never know. For if she had learned no other thing that Season, it was that she would never marry, never be party to such a cold-blooded, cold-hearted, and mean-spirited life. She wouldn’t take a husband to her heart only to watch him go off to visit with his Grace Webb, or seek and then take to his own breast some lush, common little tart at Vauxhall Gardens. No, she wouldn’t wed. If those were the stated rules of the game, she simply wouldn’t play. Neither would she be a spectator of such sport. She decided she couldn’t stay in Town to become like the rest of the great parade of hypocrites she suddenly perceived marching in locked step all about her.
And when Mama wouldn’t hear of her cutting the Season short to go home at once, and since she refused to have speech with Papa, she had gone and made sure that she was sent home post-haste. And only by the by, she had convinced Sybil that her dire prophecy had come true. But it wasn’t so, she hadn’t enjoyed anything she’d done during that painful blur of weeks. But then she hadn’t done anything that she might even learn to enjoy. Fortunately for the sake of her own soul, they had sent her home before she could actually discover whether or not Sybil had indeed lived up to her portentous name, as she so often pretended that she did.
But, she thought now, grimacing at her own image—that dark and sultry, sensual stranger whose face always stared back at her from her looking glass—it was entirely possible that Sybil did possess some sort of second sight For she had sailed very close to the wind those five years ago, and not a few times had narrowly avoided permanent disgrace, and once had been fortunate enough to have been rescued from worse. Indeed, she owed the gentleman she’d so roundly, if inadvertently, embarrassed the previous night a debt of gratitude for that And she acknowledged it, and more, for him. Yet, instead of feeling constantly relieved that she had always escaped unsullied, as she knew she should have done if she were a proper lady, there were times, there were those few and secret times in the heart of her darkest nights, when she felt not so much grateful as denied.
“Oh, wicked wench,” she whispered to herself, lifting a dark brow and giving the temptress in the glass a look of bold invitation. And then she giggled, because she knew that both the strange wanton that appeared in her looking glass each day, and the stranger yearnings that sometimes visited her in the night, had nothing to do with the reality of the Leonora she knew, and never would. For now, gazing into the glass, she saw mirrored there the dark and pouting sensual face of a passionate pleasure seeker, and right above it, what should have been, if nature had been kind, her true reflection a white, light, innocent countenance, blameless and bland as that of an angel. And then Leonora looked harder into the glass, startled, and spun around.
“Lord, Annabelle!” she sighed, her hand still upon her rapidly beating heart, “you gave rne a turn, creeping up like that behind me. I thought that I was seeing things. How long were you standing there?”
When her cousin did not reply, but only kept her head downcast while a slow pink flush appeared on her neck and cheek, Leonora laughed.
“A long while, I’ll wager. And you thought I’d run mad, didn’t you? Well, my dear,” she said, rising and throwing her wrap around her, “you took a while getting your things, as well you know, and when I’m left to myself I tend to wool-gather. And that is what I was doing, no matter what you may have thought,” she concluded as she led Annabelle out into the hall, although she was still smiling at what she thought the other girl might have imagined as they left the house.
It was still radiant spring out of doors, although the cynics might be pleased to see that it was not quite so fine as the previous day had been, since the breeze was a bit less freshening. But then no one in London expected to live in Paradise for long, and most were happy enough to find it still warm and fair weather. Or so they mus
t have thought, since it seemed that half of London’s society was on the strut this bright and glowing day.
Leonora and her companions walked six long streets, and stopped to converse with several people who were known to them. Although it was only Leonora who conversed, since Katie, her maid, had neither the opportunity nor the place to do so, and Annabelle stood mute as a mummy with her lips sewn together, even when Jeremy Tutton eyed her speculatively. She had even only murmured something mumbled and vague when Lord Greyville addressed a pleasantry to her, and had been totally silent when the dashing Harry Fabian hailed them and passed the time of day with Leonora for a space. It was true that they weren’t highly eligible fellows, Leonora thought, but Annabelle’s demeanor had done nothing to encourage them and so they soon forgot her, even as she stood before them.
But then, Leonora thought with a little spurt of vexation, the girl did not have much conversation. Oddly enough, in the wilds of the North country, where all was serene, Leonora hadn’t noticed her silence so much as she did here in the throbbing heart of London. Perhaps it was because then she had been so happy to find someone near her own age to speak with that she had done all the talking. Now that all her tales had been told and she wished to share the pleasures of Town with a lively companion, her cousin’s taciturn nature became more noticeable.
Leonora briefly thought again that it was a pity that all her one-time London friends had been either wedded or warned away from her, and that she had so few peers to befriend in the countryside, for she realized that poor Annabelle thus bore the entire weight of all her expectations. And that, Leonora admitted to herself, was far too great a burden for anyone, much less someone with such narrow shoulders, to carry.
“We’re going to Mr. Reynolds’s bookshop instead of Hatchard’s today,” Leonora said pleasantly enough as they turned down Oxford Street.
At her cousin’s curious expression, Leonora said hurriedly, “Well, I thought that it was time to try some new bookseller’s.
“And,” Leonora went on doggedly, continuing her uphill conversation by ignoring Annabelle’s silence and the knowing look that came into the eye of Katie, who trudged behind them, “then too, I’ll admit it, we’re less likely to run into the Marquess of Severne there. He positively haunts Hatchard’s, you know. It amazed me how we were forever running into him there.”
At a sound that was suspiciously like a stifled laugh coming from Katie’s general direction, Leonora added hastily, “But I don’t think I can quite face him today. Not after I made such a cake of myself last night Imagine, saying “divorce” just when I thought it and then compounding the issue by apologizing all over the lot He doesn’t deserve to be subjected to me again this morning, and I certainly don’t think I could carry it off either.”
Leonora was still grimacing at her own folly and looking back at her companions as she achieved the doorway of the bookseller’s, and so did not pay full attention to the gentleman coming out through the door. She almost collided with him, but her peripheral vision saved her from that embarrassment. She looked up with a great smile upon her lips at her narrow escape, and met the steady gaze of the Marquess of Severne. Even through her own blaze of embarrassment, she noted that he wore a rather strained expression as he began to make his bows to her.
She wanted so very much to right the wrong she had done him the previous night, and to impress upon him her sincerity, and to give him some little hint of how very much she admired him, without causing him to think that she was pursuing him or calling on his friendship with her father to plague him. But she also had very much not wanted, nor expected, to see him so soon, nor to literally fall over him in public so as to seem that she was panting after him.
It had been a long time since Leonora had had any dealings with sophisticated London gentlemen. And longer still since she cared a rap what any of them thought of her. She drew in her breath and sought the exactly right words to say as he straightened from his bow.
“Lady Leonora,” he greeted her most correctly, schooling his face to impassivity, but not quickly enough to hide the hunted, beleaguered look in his startled, startling blue eyes.
“Oh no!” thought Lady Leonora, in sympathy and pity for him, and despair and fury at herself. And then her hand went to her lips in horror as she realized that in her distress, she had spoken the words aloud.
From Katie’s gasp and the interested stares of not a few patrons of the crowded bookshop, Leonora knew that she had erred again. She could only stand and stare at him mutely, as horrified as if it had been she who had received not only the insult, but a wet fish across the face as well. But the gentleman was not a reputed spymaster’s familiar for nothing. He only blinked as he quelled an involuntary start, and then said at once, smoothly and with a world of regret in his rich warm voice.
“Oh, yes.” He sighed ruefully. “I’m afraid, my lady, that it does seem as if I’ve been following you about the Town, and that might well be discomforting for you, no matter how a lovely lady such as yourself may have gotten used to us poor smitten fellows forever tagging after you. But rest easy please, for it wasn’t Cupid, it was only that other mischief maker, coincidence, at work.
“I know that we seem to be running into each other everywhere these days. And knowing that Hatchard’s is one of your favorite places, I deliberately avoided it today and came here so as not to appear to be hanging on your sleeve. However now, seeing you so radiant this morning, my lady, I begin to wonder if I haven’t been wasting my time by not following you as closely as your own shadow.”
It was a very pretty speech, delivered in front of a growing and appreciative audience, and given, moreover, without the least hint of the insincerity its author felt, or its recipient suspected.
At that point Leonora could have simply simpered, curtsied, and walked away from a social blunder that had been neatly turned into a small social coup for her. But she had never chosen the easy path. And his politic retrieve of a disastrous situation reminded her of another embarrassing time when he had saved her from herself. Even worse, for all his coolness, she detected a flash of humor in his sparkling eyes.
She was tired of amusing him and disgracing herself, and furious with her own clumsiness. She knew she was not a graceless female, yet in all her dealings with him, somehow she always put her foot wrong. And as always, she was impatient with hypocrisy, even her own. She had been the one who had discovered his favorite bookshop, and she had been the one who had found herself patronizing that same shop almost daily from the moment that she had made the discovery. She had run the poor gentleman to earth today, if only by chance, and she had been the one to insult him, however unwittingly. Yet here he stood, apologizing to her amid a crowd of strangers, for all the world as though he were at fault, and even adding the notion that it might be because he admired her so well, which she knew was never true. It was not fair. It was time for her to take some responsibility for her own actions. She was not a child. She decided that her own honor, as well as his, called for her honesty about her part in this meeting.
“Your lordship,” she said clearly and with decision, squaring her shoulders and leaving off her apologetic air, “I appreciate your gallantry. But I insist, you are not at fault. It is I, and I assure you that this is true, who avoided Hatchard’s today, for I was the one who earnestly attempted to avoid you today.”
A profound silence greeted this statement, for in many ways it appeared to have turned all the surrounding eavesdroppers to stone. Seeing the immediate look of shock in the marquess’s wide blue eyes, Leonora belatedly reviewed her speech. As the marquess tightened his lips, nodded, and walked away, she could only say faintly, “Oh, but that is never what I meant to say.” Then she could only stand and stare after his retreating back and wait for some kindly providence to take pity on her and come and cause an earthquake to swallow her up completely.
FOUR
A great many gentlemen pride themselves on their utter inability to fathom the feminine mind,
as though that were some sort of hallmark of their own masculinity, but Joscelin Kidd, Marquess of Severne, was not among them. It wasn’t that he considered himself omniscient, or even a jot more gifted than any of his fellows, it was only that he had always believed and acted upon the notion that except for a few areas of human experience, the minds of males and females were more similar than not This belief had always served him well. So as he strode away from his disastrous encounter with the Lady Leonora, he wondered just what in the fiend’s name he had done wrong.
He could hear the whispers of gossip picking up behind him even as he walked away, but that did not bother him, it had not for years. More disturbing was the thought that somehow he had wounded the lady, and that was why she sought to pay him back. It was inconceivable that she had acted as she had for no reason, few young persons could be that venomous, and the only cause that he could see for such an attitude would be a desire for revenge for some mortal insult that he had given her. But as he walked the streets of London lost in thought, reviewing his past relationship with the young woman, he could not discover a clue to her malice.
Because, he concluded after a few moments, so far as he knew, they had no past relationship that he could dissect.
He had met the lady five years ago, when she had first come out, even though he had not been present at her formal presentation. Her father had invited him, of course, but he had known it was a courtesy, and out of courtesy, he had stayed away. He owed the viscount a great deal, but it would have been wrong, the young marquess had decided, to repay such a gesture of friendship with an action that could only cause unhappiness. For a gentleman who had just come through the divorce courts, and who still bled the ink of scandal from every caricature and broadsheet in Town, could scarcely go unremarked at a young woman’s come-out ball.
But like all other incendiary matters, scandal’s smoke blows away quickly if there is no fire to feed it. And it was not long before he had been able to attend some affairs, and since his affairs had required that attendance, it hadn’t been long until he had met the lovely Lady Leonora.
