“You must pay a call on my lady wife,” Worth said, bowing over Lily’s hand. Though she was mounted, and Hessian’s brother stood at her stirrup, he was tall enough not to be at a disadvantage on the ground.
“That will suit,” Hessian said before Lily could answer. “Perhaps the day after tomorrow?”
Worth stroked a gloved hand over the dog’s head. “Two of the clock should see the princess off to her nap. Jacaranda will welcome adult company at that hour.”
“Two of the clock,” Lily said. “I will look forward to it.”
The dog cast her owner a hopeful look, and they were soon on their way.
“I’ll call on your uncle tomorrow, then,” Hessian said, “and should my schedule take me to Worth’s doorstep at two of the clock the day after tomorrow, do try to look surprised.”
Tomorrow was much, much too soon. “Uncle might not be in tomorrow.”
The groom was walking his horse in a circle, the hoof beats on the cobbles clattering against Lily’s composure.
“Then, my dear, I will persist and make an appointment if I must. Are you afraid of your uncle, Lily?”
She should have laughed again, but instead she took up her reins. “Of course not.”
“But neither can you trust him to have your best interests at heart. Trust me, then. I do not give up easily.”
Hessian extended a hand, though it was always the lady’s privilege to offer her hand first. Lily let him take her fingers in his and bow from the saddle. The gesture was courtly, and public, and the groom would doubtless report it to Uncle before Lily’s mare was at her hay.
“If you could introduce Uncle to your brother, he might look more favorably on your suit.”
Grampion turned loose of Lily’s hand. “He wants Worth to make him rich? Hasn’t Leggett already a fortune of his own and your fortune to manage as well?”
“I wouldn’t know, my lord, but I cannot caution you strongly enough to deal carefully with Uncle Walter. Anticipate dilatory stratagems at least and outright rejection possibly.”
“I am forewarned.”
Lily took her leave of the earl, wanting nothing so much as to disappear back into the quiet greenery of the park. She instead rode directly home, pondering how she might have better prepared Grampion for the puzzle and problem that was Uncle Walter.
When she reached the mews, Oscar was again sitting on the mounting block, another bottle in his hand. He roused himself enough to assist Lily from the saddle, which confirmed that he’d been out all night. Cigar smoke, sour wine, and sweat perfumed his person.
“Greetings, Cousin,” he said, affecting a tipsy bow. “You look very fetching this morning.”
Lily’s habit was at least five years old. “While you look in need of a bath, a nap, and a shave.”
Oscar studied her, while the groom led the mare away. “I’m grieving, or resigning myself to my fate. Your fate too, I suppose.”
“Oscar, are you sozzled?”
“Oh yes, a bit, and soon I’ll be engaged to be married.” He sat once again on the mounting block and urged Lily down beside him.
“Congratulations, I suppose. I hope you at least like your intended.”
“I like her quite well, known her all my life. Capital girl with gorgeous settlements.”
Oscar was smirking at his wine bottle, while Lily’s insides went widdershins. “Do I know this paragon?”
“You see her in the mirror every morning. Uncle has decided we’re to be married, though you mustn’t let on that I told you. Ceremony won’t be until you’ve celebrated your birthday. I’m finding the notion more appealing by the day.”
Chapter Fourteen
* * *
Walter Leggett’s town house was spacious, clean, and somehow… off.
Hessian concluded this before he’d handed his hat and walking stick to the butler, a dour soul who said nothing other than, “Good day, my lord,” and—when Hessian had passed him a card—“Very good, my lord.”
Perhaps the lack of a child in the house made a difference. No little feet pounding overhead, no miniature parasol in the umbrella stand.
Or maybe Hessian was reacting to a lack of flowers. London in spring was gloriously blessed with floral abundance, and yet, not even a sachet of dried lavender hung from the drapery in Leggett’s formal parlor.
The parlor itself was generously appointed with upholstered chairs and a velvet sofa in shades of gold and green. The Axminster carpet echoed the same scheme with dashes of rose and cream, while the landscape on the wall was more green with a rosy-tinted sky and cream-colored sheep.
The house struck Hessian as a theater set: Prosperous London Town House. A giggling housemaid with her cap askew would soon enter from stage left, or a footman spouting humorous disrespect for the senior staff from stage right.
And yet, Hessian’s business with Walter Leggett was serious indeed.
Would Lily listen to the exchange from behind a door? Would she join them?
“My Lord Grampion, what a pleasure to see you!” Walter Leggett strode into the parlor, hand extended. “I had no occasion to remark it at your recent dinner party, but you are the image—the very image—of your late papa. Let us be seated, and you must tell me how your dear brother goes on and all the news from Cumberland.”
At Hessian’s dinner party, such effusions would have been overheard by a dozen other guests. This was a performance for the benefit of an audience of one.
“Leggett, how do you do? I had hoped for more time with my guests when last we met, but the evening did not go as planned.”
Thank heavens.
Hessian took a seat on the sofa, which, like many sofas, was more ornamental than comfortable. Leggett swept out his tails and appropriated the chair to Hessian’s left.
“The dear ladies make a plague of themselves, don’t they?” Leggett said. “I am fortunate not to be burdened with a title, or the poor darlings would be climbing my trellises and stealing into my town coach.”
What an odd observation from an unremarkable older man. “Speaking of the ladies, will Miss Ferguson be joining us? My Daisy has taken a particular liking to her.”
“Lily is very likely still abed, my lord. She’s not the type to bestir herself much before noon.” Leggett’s tone, more than his words, fondly chided such laziness, though during the social season, much of Mayfair slept their mornings away.
“I enjoy hacking out first thing in the day myself,” Hessian said. “Will I see you in the park at an early hour?”
Hessian had intended a very different conversation: I esteem Miss Ferguson greatly and would like to pay her my addresses. Simple enough, but not a conversation to undertake without assessing his host’s receptiveness either.
Leggett’s dissembling—Lily had willingly ridden out early—suggested more reconnaissance was in order.
“My habits are variable,” Leggett said. “Does your brother enjoy the park at dawn? You have been conscientious in renewing your acquaintance with your dear papa’s friends, but Sir Worth cannot claim the same.”
The implied scold was also… off. Sir Worth had been kicking his heels in London for the past decade. Leggett had had thousands of opportunities to pay a call on Hessian’s brother if he’d cared to.
“Shall I have you to dinner again?” Hessian said. “Your family and mine, and I’ll invite Worth and his lady as well. Informal meals with friends can be among the most enjoyable.”
“I have always said as much, and speaking of sustenance, shall I ring for tea?”
“No need.” Especially if Lily wasn’t to pour out. “My staff frets if I don’t consume frequent, prodigious meals. You have a son, don’t you?”
Leggett waxed effusive about his charming, dear, good-looking “boy,” whom Hessian estimated to be at least twenty-one years of age. Lily had never said anything critical of Oscar Leggett, but neither had she complimented him.
“I have hopes that Oscar might go into business,” Leggett said. “
He has the friendly manner of the successful solicitor, the common sense of the man of affairs. Your brother is known to employ myriad subordinates, and Oscar might be a fine addition to their number.”
“You must broach that topic with Worth, or perhaps Oscar might take that initiative?” For if Worth Kettering rewarded any quality in his employees, it was initiative.
“You’re right, of course,” Leggett said. “Though I do believe Oscar’s focus is in a different direction these days.”
What direction could be more compelling for a young man than securing his financial future? “Most young men need a few years to sort themselves out before settling to a profession.”
Hessian had spent those years married to a woman he hadn’t understood, while Worth had gone forth into the world and earned a fortune.
“Or the young fellows have sense enough to find a lady who can sort them out,” Leggett said. “I’m hopeful that Oscar has finally found such a woman right under his very nose, so to speak.”
Innuendo wafted around Leggett’s smile. The only lady under Oscar’s very nose would be…
“He’ll take a bride before finding a means of supporting her?”
Leggett’s chuckle was rusty and forced. “Younger sons in titled families must find a calling, true enough. The rest of us with means can be more lenient with our offspring. Oscar is my sole heir, and did I not enjoy managing my affairs above all else, I’d be turning the lot of my investments over to him. He’ll do better for learning the ways of commerce at another’s elbow. Then he can step into my shoes without having been lectured by his papa for years.”
A son often learned life’s lessons best from anybody other than his father, but Leggett’s recitation had the quality of a speech, an oration delivered to convince.
“Some of my fondest memories,” Hessian said, “are of riding Grampion’s metes and bounds with my father. He knew every tenant, every acre of the land, and every fox in every covert. I saw firsthand the standard I was to aim for, and the example has stood me in good stead.”
The cushion beneath Hessian was lumpy to the point of causing discomfort, if the conversation weren’t already making him uneasy. The set-piece parlor, the innuendo regarding Oscar’s choice of bride, the speechifying about why Oscar wasn’t to learn his family’s finances from the only person who could instruct him on the matter…
An ill-fitting boot of a social call.
“I’m sure you miss your father very much,” Leggett said, “but the aristocracy will regret clinging to the land as its sole source of wealth. Mark me on this, my lord, for I know of what I speak.”
“Perhaps young Oscar would benefit from your thoughts on that subject,” Hessian said, rising. “I am expected elsewhere, though you may anticipate a dinner invitation from my household to yours in the near future.”
Was that relief in Leggett’s eyes? Satisfaction?
“If you’d rather not go to the bother of hosting company, Oscar and I could meet you and your brother for dinner at my club,” Leggett said. “The ladies find talk of business and politics tedious, just as we fellows find talk of balls and millinery a trial.”
“I must disagree,” Hessian said as his host escorted him down to the front door. “The company of the ladies, with their poise and graciousness, is preferable to a lot of pontificating men and their stinking cigars. Hosting your family for dinner will be my pleasure.”
Provided Lily was among the guests.
Leggett hovered, smiling and chortling, until Hessian was physically out the door.
The entire encounter had been disappointing and disquieting. Was Lily engaged to her cousin?
Was Leggett rolled up?
Hessian turned at the street corner and took himself into the alley that ran between two rows of town houses. A mews sat near one end, along with a carriage house likely shared by several households. The alley was a quiet, shady stretch of cobbles, just like hundreds of other alleys in London. Hessian sauntered along, a gentleman who preferred quieter environs than the main streets, until he’d counted enough back gardens to find himself behind Leggett’s town house.
The garden was another theater set—a sundial in the middle, a small patch of overgrown grass between walkways and hedges—but not as well maintained as the rest of Leggett’s property.
“Can I help you, sir?”
The question came from a slight fellow in workingman’s clothes. He smelled of horse, and his hair needed a trim.
“If I and a few other fellows wanted to toss a note onto the balcony of Mr. Oscar Leggett, or perhaps serenade him with a humorous ballad some night when the rest of his family was out, which window might we assemble beneath?”
The man’s smile revealed a total of six teeth. “Mr. Oscar Leggett has that room above the terrace, sir. His pa’s to the right, and the young miss is on the left-hand corner. They’d both hear you and your mates, if you chose the wrong evening.”
Hessian passed the man a coin. “We’ll choose carefully.”
The groom returned to the stable, while Hess visually measured the distance from the top of the gazebo to Lily’s window. A bow window beneath made the climb reasonably safe, though where was a handy balcony when a fellow needed to turn up swainly by moonlight?
Hessian consulted his watch—he’d promised Daisy a midafternoon picnic if she finished letters to her brothers—and went upon his way.
The meeting with Leggett had not gone as planned, not at all, but Lily would pay a call tomorrow at Worth’s, and Hessian would then ascertain if her question about eloping had been idle curiosity or a broad hint.
* * *
“You leave me thinking the worst, Oscar Leggett, the very worst, then take yourself off to sleep the morning away in the stables.”
Lily was still angry with him for that, for spending the past two days hiding from her, pretending a megrim, then sneaking out of an evening rather than dispelling the nasty, outlandish implications of their last conversation.
She’d risked confronting him at his midday meal, which for him was an early breakfast.
“If you must scold, at least cease racketing about while you do,” Oscar said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “I was giving you time to reconcile yourself to your good fortune. Honestly, Lily, you could do much worse.”
No, she could not. “Why are you awake and dressed before sundown?”
“You informed the stables that you’d need the carriage for a two o’clock call. If we’re to be married, we must comport ourselves like a couple, and that means we pay calls together.”
That was Walter Leggett’s logic, also an excuse to tighten the noose of surveillance Lily had lived with since the age of fourteen.
“I’m going hat shopping.”
Oscar slurped his coffee. “Mustn’t lie, Lily. That’s not what you told the butler.”
And the coachman would disclose any and all locations Lily had visited. “I’m going hat shopping after I pay my call.”
“Excellent. I adore lounging about among ladies’ fripperies, flirting with shop girls, and consulting on purchases. I’m quite good at it.”
Lily took the seat at his elbow, when she wanted to toss the coffeepot at his head. “Because you indulge your mistresses.”
“One at a time, but of course. Mistresses are an exercise in mutual indulgence.”
“Mistresses are a means to contract horrid diseases, waste coin, and act like a fool in public.”
Oscar set down his coffee cup and selected a triangle of buttered toast. “If you intend to be that kind of wife, we can live apart once you’ve presented me with a pair of sons. I don’t plan on being difficult about Papa’s scheme, Lily, but you clearly do.”
Why hadn’t she seen this coming? Why hadn’t she made plans to run away years ago? A woman at age twenty-one became an adult in all particulars. Lily had less freedom than Daisy, who was closely supervised at every hour.
“Oscar, we are cousins. Surely you agree that cousins should not mar
ry.”
“Tell that to King George or his sainted father. Nothing illegal about keeping wealth in the family with an occasional marriage between cousins. Why is there no marmalade for my toast? I always take my toast with marmalade.”
A lifetime of listening to Oscar whine for his marmalade was the best Lily faced as his wife.
“And look how His Majesty’s marriage turned out,” Lily muttered. “I can assure you, there will be no children. You will never know a husband’s privileges, Oscar, not with me.”
He brushed toast crumbs from his cravat. “You think to keep me from your bed because we are cousins? The church has no objection to such a match, and as to that, I doubt we are anything approaching cousins.”
All the worry, resentment, anger, and bewilderment in Lily came to a still point of incredulity. “I beg your pardon?”
“You bear a resemblance both to my cousin Lily and her late mother, but my cousin hated animals of any kind—horses, cats, dogs, birds. Never had a kind word for any species besides her own, and seldom for that one either. You dote on that slug of a mare, sneak treats to that feline hearth rug you call Hannibal, and can’t walk past a dog without petting it.”
“For God’s sake, Oscar, you cannot think… people change. They mature.”
“Horses made Lily itch, cats made her sneeze. She was honestly terrified of birds, because some woman at church got a sparrow stuck in her bonnet one Sunday, and the creature ended up dead—the sparrow, that is.”
“I am Lily Ferguson, and you are my cousin.”
“You are a very good actress, but the Lily Ferguson I knew as a boy was a fiend for the piano. You can barely get out a party piece.”
Oh God, oh God, oh God. “Skills grow rusty.”
“My cousin couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, which I suspect is why she became so proficient at the keyboard. You sing like a nightingale.”
All the years of scrubbing floors at the inn in Derbyshire, all the summers spent hanging linen on the wash line had been leavened by the simple folk tunes that made a workday go more easily.
His Lordship's True Lady (True Gentlemen Book 4) Page 18
