by Claudia Dain
“I suppose I can,” Blakesley said, turning his gaze to Sophia and studying her with the same intensity that he had been showering upon Louisa. It was most annoying. “But how do you think to manage it, Lady Dalby?”
“Between Lady Louisa and I, we shall work something out, don’t you think?” Sophia said, smiling politely. “I’m quite certain that Lord Dutton can be persuaded to part with a strand of pearls he can have no use for.”
“Persuaded how?” Blakesley said, ignoring Louisa completely to discuss her pearls, her pearls, with Sophia. It was beyond tolerable.
“Darling,” Sophia said, laying a slim white hand upon his arm, “if you don’t think that, between the two of us, we can manage a single pearl necklace, you don’t know women as well as I thought you did.” And then she laughed.
Feeling like the most common of whores, Louisa felt her cheeks burn bright red in shame.
“I was under the impression, which I see now was mistaken,” Sophia said gaily, continuing on as if Louisa’s face were not the approximate color of a strawberry, “that you and Lady Louisa were rather special friends. You clearly do not understand her at all, Lord Henry. She is a woman most determined. She will have her pearls again. One only wonders what paltry defense Lord Dutton will manage to summon. I do so love a mystery, don’t you?”
Blakesley was kept from answering by the arrival of Lord Penrith to their number. Lord Penrith, after the most cursory of greetings and with a passing remark as to the particular attractiveness of the bolt of gold and red brocade, drew Blakesley off for a conversation about hunting dogs, of all things. Not actual hunting dogs, mind you, but the artistic merit of the hunting dogs on a very pretty length of green and red pictorial fabric. Lord Penrith seemed quite outraged at the angle of one of the dogs’ rear legs.
What was even more remarkable was that Blakesley did not hesitate to argue that he had once owned a dog with precisely that angle of leg.
Perhaps men did care about more than breasts and triggers.
“Such an interesting man,” Sophia said when they were alone in a relatively quiet corner of the white salon. Ruan and Dalby appeared to be getting into quite a heated discussion about the merits of ivory damask as compared to brown on cream pictorial. Dalby, it seemed, favored the damask. Anne Warren looked almost amused by the argument. “I do think Miss Prestwick will be most satisfied with him.”
“I beg your pardon?” Louisa said. If it wasn’t Anne Warren, it was Penelope Prestwick. She was clearly destined not to have a moment’s peace between the two of them, though they could not have been more different.
Sophia looked at her, her black eyes dancing in amusement. “Why, I assumed you knew. You and Lord Henry have a special bond, do you not?”
There was no answer to that which was proper, so Louisa said nothing. She merely looked expectantly and pleasantly into Sophia’s clearly sadistic face.
“I was talking with the Duchess of Hyde recently,” Sophia continued, “and she was quite of the opinion that one of her sons must do his duty and marry. And, of course, I quite agree with her. It is a man’s duty to marry and protect the line. Well, you may or may not be aware,” Sophia intimated, as if they were the closest of friends, which they were not, “that the Marquis of Iveston, Hyde’s heir, is extraordinarily . . .”
And here Sophia clearly searched for the appropriate word. It took all of Louisa’s self-control not to offer backward. Because, of course, she had heard about Iveston. Everyone had.
“Private,” Sophia eventually said, “and, even with five sons to choose from, Lord Henry is the likeliest to marry first and so,” Sophia said with a shrug, “there you are.”
“I beg your pardon?” Louisa said again.
“Oh, haven’t I made myself clear, darling? I’m so sorry,” Sophia said, not looking sorry in the least. “I suggested that Miss Prestwick might do quite well for Lord Henry and the duchess quite agreed and so . . .” And here Sophia shrugged expressively, again.
No.
Louisa was quite well aware of what she was feeling and thinking and it was a profound and permanent no.
She was not at all certain why she was so intensely opposed to Penelope Prestwick marrying Blakesley, but she was. That was all there was to it. She didn’t suppose she need bother thinking anything more about it.
No.
“I happen to know,” Louisa said haltingly, “that my cousin, Lord Hawksworth, has expressed an interest in Miss Prestwick, though I have no idea how serious his interest is.” It was truly amazing how quickly she threw Hawksworth into the gaping jaws of Penelope Prestwick. Truly amazing. “Certainly, as Hawksworth will be a duke one day, Miss Prestwick should not rush into anything with Lord Henry.”
Upon which, Sophia laughed most delicately. “But, darling, Hawksworth is a boy. He is far too young to marry, and Miss Prestwick is most eager, I’m told. As is the Duchess of Hyde, to be perfectly honest. No, it must be one of hers to satisfy her. It is not for Miss Prestwick that the deed shall be done, you understand; it is purely to satisfy the needs of the Hyde line. As it ever is.”
Yes, that was certainly true, but Blakesley? Why did it have to be Blakesley who was to be sacrificed to Penelope Prestwick?
“I’m not at all certain that Lord Henry is ready for marriage,” Louisa said.
“And what man is?” Sophia said. “It is a woman’s pleasant duty to bring a man to a point of readiness, is it not? And what fun it can be to do so.”
It sounded quite wicked, but then most of what Sophia Dalby said sounded quite wicked. She clearly did it intentionally.
“I think, Lady Louisa, that you must learn the pleasant art of a proper pursuit. I shall instruct you, shall I?”
Positively wicked.
“Now,” Sophia said, “first let us talk plainly about your pearls and Lord Dutton’s possession of them.”
Finally.
“It is perfectly obvious,” Sophia continued, “that he had some devious purpose in acquiring them.”
“I believe it was because your daughter requested a strand of pearls,” Louisa said stiffly. She knew the facts of the situation, and she was not going to allow Sophia Dalby to lay any blame on Dutton. Caroline had been the instigator, with a very healthy prompt from Sophia, of that there was no doubt whatsoever.
Sophia smiled and said, “Isn’t it rather odd that Lord Dutton presented Caroline with a strand of pearls when she had no interest in him at all and had certainly never made her preference for pearls known to him?” And when Louisa opened her mouth to defend Dutton and only mildly castigate Caroline, Sophia continued, “If further proof is required, you have only to consider that Dutton presented your pearls to Mrs. Warren only minutes after Caroline refused him.”
Mrs. Warren?
It could not be true. And yet, it sounded so exactly like Dutton.
“I beg your pardon?” Louisa said, her voice sounding quite un-attractively tight. One might well have said she squeaked the question. “I mean to say, did she . . . are you saying that Mrs. Warren is now in possession of my pearls?”
To which Sophia laughed in delighted cruelty. Oh yes, laughter could be quite cruel. A fact which Sophia Dalby proved most regularly. Louisa did not know what she had been thinking to come here, to this house, to this woman. She felt positively ill.
“Darling,” Sophia said softly, leaning forward in deceptive sympathy, “you know quite well, from Mrs. Warren’s own lips, that she has no interest in Lord Dutton.” An obvious lie. There wasn’t a woman alive who didn’t have an interest in Lord Dutton. It was a well-known fact that he was irresistible. “You must have no worry from that quarter. I promised you that I would help you get your pearls back around your lovely throat and that is exactly what I shall do. Unfortunately, it is not as simple as asking for them from Mrs. Warren. No, Lord Dutton has them still. And it is from Lord Dutton that we shall get them.”
Well. That sounded better. She could almost breathe again. Having to beg Mrs. Warren, poss
essed of red hair much like her own but with the inexplicable addition of having somehow gained Dutton’s attention, for the return of her necklace would have been too, too much to bear. But she would have done so, for her pearls. And for Dutton. Unfortunately and inconceivably, Mrs. Warren, for all that she claimed she did not want Lord Dutton, could not return his affections to her. Although return may have been a most inaccurate word since, as far as she could tell, she had never had Dutton’s affection to begin with.
Love, she had well learned, could be almost as cruel as laughter.
“How shall we accomplish it?” Louisa asked, leaning forward so that she and Lady Dalby could whisper comfortably. “Shall I chance upon him in the park?” She had heard a rumor that Caroline had done just such a thing with Lord Ashdon in Hyde Park and that the results had been remarkable and swift.
“No, no,” Sophia said, shaking her head and, yes, laughing at her. Really. Lady Dalby was possessed of the most awkward sense of humor. She appeared to enjoy laughing at anything. Most unrefined. “Nothing so forward with the skittish Lord Dutton,” Sophia continued, after she had stopped chuckling. One could almost believe that Louisa was the butt of some very tawdry jest. “We must proceed circuitously. He must never see it coming.”
Odd phrasing, to be sure. One would think they were planning an assault upon Lord Dutton’s very compelling form.
Louisa felt a thrill of excitement down deep in her heart just thinking of it. She’d been right, after all; coming to a former courtesan had been exactly the right idea.
“Now, I will assume,” Sophia said, “that you wish to begin immediately.”
“Of course,” Louisa said, nodding her head in what she was certain was a most unbecoming and eager fashion.
“What are your plans for this evening? I assume you have plans?”
“Naturally.” Really. Did Lady Dalby think she sat at home waiting for the elusive Lord Dutton to call? No, she did what any intelligent and attractive young woman did: she went out and hunted him down. “Lady Amelia and I, attended by Hawksworth, are to enjoy dinner at the Duke of Hyde’s.”
“Most convenient,” Sophia said, her dark eyes sparkling with an altogether dangerous gleam. “How very astute of you and your cousin to manage an invitation to a ducal residence. I do think,” she said, rubbing her ring finger against her lower lip, “that a ducal residence is just the place to launch our initial attack in what I am certain will be a very brief, but perhaps amusingly bloody war.”
“War?” What sort of courtesan spoke of war? This was all of love, of deep and lasting love. “I have no intention of making war against Lord Dutton.”
Sophia eyed her with a frozen gaze.
“You want your pearls, am I correct?” Lady Dalby said, her voice soft and chill.
“Of course.”
“Then a small war may be necessary, Lady Louisa. You must trust me. I do know more than a little about the various ways of acquiring jewels.”
There was hardly any doubt about that.
“It is only that I,” Louisa said in a hesitant manner that was positively mortifying to her and which she was incapable of stopping, “I should not enjoy causing Lord Dutton any . . . unpleasantness.”
Sophia’s left eyebrow rose fractionally. “Surely Lord Dutton can tolerate some unpleasantness in his life. He is a man, after all, and men are rather good at tolerating unpleasant things. The same should never be said of women. We may occasionally be required to endure unpleasantness, but we should, at all costs, avoid become adept at it.”
Louisa could only gape. She had never in her life been exposed to such a philosophy.
As philosophies went, this was by a wide margin the most sensible and appealing one she had ever heard. She planned to adopt it immediately.
“I daresay I agree with you completely, Lady Dalby,” Louisa said in that same earnest tone that she feared was becoming a rather permanent feature in her conversations with Sophia Dalby.
“I daresay one would hardly know it from your past behavior with and toward Lord Dutton,” Sophia said coolly. “Now, about tonight. I think your aunt would be better suited to our plans than your charming cousin. The proper chaperone is so important, isn’t it?”
Louisa blanched and then flushed. She could feel the ebb and flow of emotion all over her face and throat.
“Darling,” Sophia said, leaning forward with all the grace of a swan and laying a white hand upon Louisa’s arm, “all will be avenged. Trust me to see it done. You shall have your pearls and, upon my word, Dutton shall feel the sting of it.”
“And my past behavior?” Louisa managed to ask. If her devotion to Dutton was obvious to Sophia, then she was of half a mind to speak openly of it. Pearls or not, she meant to have Dutton, and perhaps Sophia could help her more if she better knew her desires.
“Will remain in the past,” Sophia said. “’Tis a new day, darling, and we will accomplish all your desires. All,” she finished with a knowing gleam.
Then again, it was entirely likely that one did not need to flagrantly discuss such things with a former courtesan. Louisa was more than certain that Sophia knew exactly what she was about.
Which was entirely the point.
Four
WITH Hawksworth having fulfilled his purpose and been dispatched, Louisa walked in to her father’s house with all the casual innocence of a woman who’d been out shopping and returned home more bored than when she left. It was a fine bit of acting. Not that anyone was around to notice.
According to Anderson, the butler, her aunt Mary, Lady Jordan was napping. Her father, the Marquis of Melverley, was out, likely at either White’s or his current mistress’s house on George Street. Of course, as the innocent and unmarried daughter of a marquis, she wasn’t supposed to know about such things, but as her father made rather an open habit of having a mistress or two, she didn’t suppose she could be blamed for knowing what was obvious to all.
The only person who was home was the same person who was always home, Louisa’s younger sister, Eleanor. There was absolutely no point at all in acting a part with Eleanor as an audience. She was the most jaded cynic Louisa had ever met, and that included the cynical Henry Blakesley. Having Melverley for a father gave one rather a hand up on being cynical.
Eleanor was in the library, just to the left of the vestibule. It was a massive room, fully the largest in the house, and had the happy situation of being flooded with western light for the better part of the day. But it was not the light that drew Eleanor; it was the books. Row upon row of the most beautifully bound and inexpressibly boring books. Louisa didn’t know how Eleanor stood it, being surrounded by so much reading material of the most tedious variety. Why, there was a whole shelf devoted to classical architecture. She knew for a fact that Melverley had bought the books by the crate and for the prettiness of their spines. He had as much care for classical architecture as she did, which was to say, none at all.
“How’s Lord Dutton today?” Eleanor said from her slouch. She was buried in her usual spot, a pile of faded silk cushions cocooning her upon the sofa, a book in her lap.
“I haven’t seen Lord Dutton,” Louisa said, plopping down upon the opposite end of the sofa and reaching up to take off her hat.
“He wasn’t in the park?”
“I would hardly know as I wasn’t in the park.”
“Nor on Bond Street?”
“I did not travel to Bond Street.”
Eleanor put her book completely down and stared at her.
“What does Lord Henry Blakesley say to this? Isn’t it his duty to track Lord Dutton down for you? You shall need to find a new hound, Louisa, if this is the best he can do.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Eleanor,” Louisa snapped. “Lord Henry is no such thing.”
“Isn’t he?”
“Naturally not.”
“What have you been doing, Louisa?”
“I’ve been calling on . . . a friend.”
“A . . . friend?�
�� Eleanor said, tucking her feet up underneath her and dislodging one pale blue pillow from its nest. “Is this friend a man? Don’t tell me you went alone. Where’s Amelia?”
“Of course I did not go calling on a man,” Louisa said sharply. “With or without Amelia, I would never do such a scandalous thing.”
“But you did go without Amelia.”
“She was engaged.”
Eleanor only raised a dark red eyebrow at that rather blatant evasion.
“You didn’t go calling on Lord Dutton, did you?” Eleanor said.
“Of course not! And I’ve already told you,” Louisa said, “I haven’t seen Lord Dutton today.”
“That doesn’t mean you couldn’t have called on him,” Eleanor said matter-of-factly, dipping her head back into her book. “You could have called on him and found him not at home. You then, if you were very silly, might have walked past St. James Street in hopes of seeing him.”
“I would do no such ill-bred thing!” Louisa said. “What nonsense are you reading that gives you such forward and ill-mannered ideas?”
“Shakespeare,” Eleanor said lightly, “but that is not where I get my ideas. You could then have wandered along the edge of Hyde Park, hoping to see Lord Dutton riding by, and having failed at even that, you might then have walked across Park Lane onto Upper Brook Street and knocked upon the door of Dalby House.”
Louisa was standing by this time, her hands clenched into white knots of fury and mortification. Eleanor did not seem at all intimidated, which was precisely what was wrong with Eleanor; she could not be intimidated. A most irregular and even more irritating trait for a younger sister to possess. From what Louisa could gather, younger sisters were supposed to live in absolute terror of their older siblings. Not so Eleanor. It was most, most inconvenient.
“You followed us,” Louisa whispered hoarsely, stating the obvious.
“And a merry chase it was,” Eleanor answered brightly.
“Alone?” If Eleanor had wandered London without an escort at the tender age of sixteen, her aunt Mary would never forgive her. What her father thought she could hardly have cared less.
