His Lordship's True Lady (True Gentlemen Book 4)

by Grace Burrowes

Tears threatened all over again. “Thank you, but if I leave England, then there will be fresh scandal, and I can’t have that.” Then too, leaving England meant never seeing Hessian again.

  Her ladyship nibbled on a plain cake. “Grampion probably develops hives at the mention of scandal, and it’s Grampion you want.”

  “You malign his lordship at your peril, Emmaline.”

  Her ladyship popped the last of her tea cake in her mouth and dusted her palms. “I mean your intended no disrespect. Some men simply have a wide proper streak, my Devlin among them. Those same men can develop a wide improper streak at the most interesting times. You’ve chosen Grampion, and thus we must see that you aren’t shackled to your noddypoop cousin. Has Grampion chosen you?”

  Had he unchosen Lily? Stepped back for the nonce? “I don’t know.”

  “Oh dear. Try the chocolate cakes. They are my favorite.”

  * * *

  A muscular arm landed across Hessian’s shoulders.

  “My commanding officer has dispatched me with special orders. I am to find an opportunity to converse with you privately and nominate myself to serve as your aide-de-camp.”

  Colonel Lord Rosecroft exuded genial Irish bonhomie, as if he’d had a bit too much of Jonathan Tresham’s excellent brandy. Hessian had watched his lordship through a long evening of cards, though, and Rosecroft’s drinking habits were abstemious.

  His gaze was dead steady, despite the jocularity of his tone.

  “Who might your commanding officer be, my lord?”

  “My own dear wife, of course. Tresham, thanks for a lovely evening. Until next week.” Rosecroft bowed to the company of gentlemen putting on hats and greatcoats, and all but dragged Hessian out the door. “Tresham is doomed, poor sod. A ducal heir with pots of money, and he’s not bad-looking.”

  “Why do we refer to a man contemplating matrimony as doomed? I gather in the right company, the result of speaking the nuptial vows is the opposite of perdition.”

  Worth and Jacaranda, for example, were besotted. Rosecroft doted on his wife publicly, and she on him.

  “Lily Ferguson is in fear of a marriage to her cousin,” Rosecroft said. “Which cousin my lady wife will refer to only as The Noddypoop. I gather you are to foil this plot, and I am to assist you.”

  Worth had begged off this evening, claiming that business had overrun his schedule. Hessian happened to know that the business in question was a teething infant.

  “Can you fly, Rosecroft? I’m coming to believe that nothing short of angelic powers will see Lily Ferguson free of her uncle’s machinations.”

  Rosecroft muttered something that sounded Irish and profane.

  Tresham had a set of rooms at the Albany, and thus Hessian and his escort had much of Mayfair to cross on foot in the dark. This was fortunate, for Hessian had no idea where to begin his tale.

  Lily’s tale, in truth.

  “Here’s what I know,” Rosecroft said, “which I gather is the sum of what my wife was able to pry from dear Lily’s grasp, even when aided by the formidable truth potion of tea and chocolate cakes: Walter Leggett has bungled management of Lily’s fortune. He seeks to keep his penury and ineptitude quiet by marrying Lily to his heir. Lily would rather marry you.”

  “Which does not mean that she’s enamored of me. I’m simply the lesser of several evils.” And Hessian couldn’t shake the notion that something worse than a mere reversal of fortunes was behind Walter Leggett’s scheming.

  “Women who spend an hour behind a closed door, sending twice for more cakes, aren’t discussing how best to bring about matrimony to the lesser of several evils, Grampion. How can I be of service?”

  What a kind, tempting offer.

  “You must talk me out of kidnapping Lily Ferguson.” Hessian had spent the past two days in thought—his seventeen days were down to fifteen—and no clever plan, no impressive legal maneuver had occurred to him.

  Though every obstacle, risk, and impediment had.

  “Why talk you out of it? By the time the grandchildren show up, an elopement would make for a good tale and add a dash of derring-do to the family legends. Lily’s of age, and so, my friend, are you.”

  This was not the advice Worth would have handed out. “For me to abscond with the lady opens the door for Walter Leggett to further mishandle her funds. We’ll be years prying any coin from his grasp, if any coin yet remains.”

  This reasoning was a factor, because Hessian yet held out hope that Lily—Lilith, his Lily—was entitled to some funds from her mother’s estate.

  “You don’t care half a rotten fig about the money.”

  “Lily might, but you’re right. I also have responsibility for three small children, as you know. Scandal attached to my name is an opening for their aunt, Roberta Braithwaite, to snatch the youngest child, Daisy, from my control.”

  “You’re an earl,” Rosecroft scoffed. “The aunt won’t get a hearing from any court of competent jurisdiction for several years, and by then, the child will be all but grown and quite attached to her dear guardian.”

  True, as far as it went. “Your Bronwyn will make her bow in about ten years.”

  “Go on.”

  “When Bronwyn was conceived, you’d have been mucking about in Spain, chasing the French across the mountains, and trying not to die of dysentery.”

  “Your point?”

  Gone was the cheerful companion who’d while away an evening stroll in good company. In his place was a growling former soldier ready to make a good showing with his fists.

  “You are not Bronwyn’s father, and whatever the legal arrangements, whatever the truth of her patrimony, you are already worried about the reception she’ll receive when she makes her come out ten years from now. She’s an unusual girl with an unusual provenance. Even with an army of ducal relations behind her, she’ll face a challenge.”

  Rosecroft marched along in silence until they came to the next corner. “The widow would not prevail in court, but you’re right: She could make Daisy’s life difficult. Eloping with Lily might, possibly, devolve to Daisy’s discredit. Maybe.”

  “I cannot gamble with that child’s happiness on a maybe, and Lily would not want me to.”

  “You still haven’t told me how I can help.”

  They passed a brothel on St. James’s, the scent of hashish wafting on the night air. Lily might have ended up in such an establishment, but for her uncle’s intervention. That thought alone kept Hessian from cleaning his dueling pistols.

  “Please assure me that this conversation will be held in strictest confidence, Rosecroft.”

  “I will overlook the slight to my honor, because you’re in love, which equates to being half-daft in the newly smitten.”

  If this was love, this endless anxiety, this constant muddle and heartache, Hessian would rather have a toothache, a megrim, and a touch of the Jericho jig.

  “I will convey to you a story,” he said, “of a family well situated but not titled…” He sketched Lily’s past, her mother’s indiscretion, the early years of limited contact, the death of the foster parents, and the years in service at the coaching inn. “And Lily was retrieved from the coaching inn, because the legitimate sister eloped at the age of seventeen with a house steward. She reportedly died in a coaching accident on the way to Scotland with her intended.”

  Rosecroft paused to sniff at a precocious rose growing from a pot beneath the porch light of an otherwise darkened town house. “That is a prodigiously convenient coaching accident.”

  “Convenient for Walter Leggett, who has lied to Lily often and convincingly. Who has kept Lily nearly under guard, who has monitored everything from her correspondence, to her social habits, to which bachelors she stands up with for the supper waltz.”

  “My brother needs to water his roses,” Rosecroft said, snapping off the blossom and tucking it into his lapel. “You think the sister is alive.”

  “Have you fashioned a will, Rosecroft?”

  “Of cour
se.”

  “And is one provision that your daughter inherits her portion upon the sooner of a certain birthday or her lawful marriage?”

  Rosecroft resumed walking. “At seventeen, a woman cannot lawfully marry over her guardian’s objection.”

  “She can in Scotland.”

  “Hence your comment about needing the ability to fly. If the sister is alive and kicking her heels in the Borders, she can sue Walter for mishandling her fortune.”

  “And that brings us back to scandal and to Lily being left with nothing, assuming the older sister is alive and assuming I can find her and produce evidence of her existence in two weeks.”

  “I can see why the ladies went through three plates of tea cakes. What will you do?”

  Scotland was three-hundred-fifty miles away by awful roads, and even if Lily’s sister had married over the anvil at Gretna Green, Hessian had no way of knowing if the happy couple had settled in Scotland or darkest Peru.

  “You ask what I’ll do,” Hessian said. “At first, I cast caution to the wind with Lily, and now all I see are bad options. One hardly knows what to do.”

  “I live three streets that direction and serve a fine nightcap.”

  “Thank you, but I must decline, for some course of action must be settled on, and I do my best thinking in solitude. I have too much supposition and not enough facts.” All the logic in the world still required some basic facts to reason from.

  “Much like being a parent,” Rosecroft said. “You do the best you can and hope divine providence weighs in favor of your children. The offer of a nightcap stands.”

  “Perhaps another time. Please keep a close eye on Lily for me, and if you can spare Bronwyn for an occasional outing to the park, Daisy and I would be most appreciative.”

  “And about this other?” Rosecroft waved a gloved hand that encompassed stolen fortunes, elopement, an illegitimate daughter, and at least nineteen other scandals.

  “I will begin with a trip to Chelsea tomorrow and then pay a call on the Duchess of Quimbey. I’ll confer with my brother thereafter and then start packing for a trip to the north.”

  “So you do have some notion of how to go on?” Rosecroft asked as the bells of St. Paul’s tolled in the distance. “A strategy?”

  “I have a hunch, and a fortnight to prevent disaster, scandal, and heartbreak.”

  “Best of luck, Grampion, and you will most assuredly need it.”

  * * *

  Lily came awake when a cool breeze wafted across her cheeks—and there he was, standing in the shadows by her bedroom window.

  “Hessian.”

  “You should be in bed, madam.”

  Had he hoped to find her in bed? The mantel clock said Lily had slept for only a few minutes, and yet, exhaustion had molded her to the deep cushions of the reading chair.

  “I was thinking,” she said. “I must have nodded off. How are you?”

  He looked tired and serious, also a bit wicked. His attire was dark, not even a white neckcloth relieving the black, no signet ring on his finger, no pin winking from the folds of his neckcloth.

  “I am… Is the door locked?”

  “Yes.” Lily had started taking that precaution as a result of Oscar’s gleeful hand-patting. When in his cups, he might attempt to anticipate vows Lily would never willingly speak.

  Hessian took the hassock, rather than open his arms to Lily or draw her to her feet. “Ephrata Tipton appears to have departed from Chelsea, at least temporarily.”

  The hollowness Lily had carried in the pit of her stomach since learning of her mother’s death years ago opened up wider. “Where would she go?” Please let her be safe. And then: Why would she leave me?

  “On her wedding journey, as it happens.”

  Anxiety receded—it did not vanish, for not all wedding journeys were happy—and yet, Lily was also aware of a touch of envy.

  “Good for her. I hope he’s worthy of her.”

  “He’s a retired Navy captain who frequently visits friends at the royal hospital. He and Miss Tipton struck up an acquaintance nearly a year ago. I have his name and direction, though the cottage in Chelsea has yet to be vacated.”

  Lily had to touch Hessian, even if he merely tolerated the overture. She leaned forward enough to run a hand through his hair.

  “You have learned much, and yet, you don’t appear pleased with yourself. I am pleased to see you.”

  His gaze brushed over her. “I am pleased to see you as well. I engaged in a subterfuge.”

  “You would abhor subterfuge.” Did he abhor her?

  “My opinion on the matter has grown complicated. We learn the classic works of drama because they are art, a form of great literature. We play charades at every house party to pass the time in harmless diversion. We tell tall tales over a pint in the pub… I told the innkeeper that my sister-in-law was a former charge of Miss Tipton’s, and I’d offered to look in on the old dear.”

  “And now, having told a harmless fabrication, you feel like a confidence trickster?” What did that make Lily, who was fraud wearing a ballgown—or a nightgown.

  Hessian’s smile was crooked as he tucked Lily’s lap robe over her feet. “I feel clever, which is very bad of me. The innkeeper volunteered that I sounded as if I’d grown up in the Borders and bided there still. Perhaps I lived near my brother in Birdwell-on-Huckleburn?”

  That smile… that smile was not among the smiles Lily had seen on Hessian to date. It brought out the resemblance to his brother, Worth, and went well with the dark clothing.

  “What has Birdwell-on-Anywhere to do with Tippy?”

  “The innkeeper was showing off, flourishing his eye for detail. Somebody has been writing regularly to Miss Tipton from Birdwell-on-Huckleburn. I grew up in Cumberland and have occasion to know that Birdwell is a market town not far from Dumfries. Her Grace of Quimbey confirmed that Lawrence Delmar had been a braw, bonnie Scot and that he and Walter Leggett quarreled loudly on the eve of your sister’s elopement.”

  Hessian’s recitation provoked such a degree of upset, Lily put a hand over his mouth. “A moment, please. Somebody has been writing regularly to Tippy from Scotland?”

  He took her hand, his grip warm. “Mrs. Lawrence Delmar. She is among Miss Tipton’s most faithful correspondents. She writes every other month, has no need to cross her letters, and seals them with a family crest.”

  Hessian was trying to convey information—facts, implications, conclusions. Lily could not make her mind work to grasp any of it.

  “My sister is alive, and Tippy never told me?” Lily wanted to shout, to throw things, to climb out the window and dash headlong for Birdwell-on-Deception. “I don’t know whether to be… but Annie is alive—she was always Annie to me—and surely that is a miracle. I refuse to cry, because this is good news. It must be.”

  “And yet,” Hessian said, “you are dealt another blow to learn you’ve been subjected to yet another falsehood. I’m sorry, Lily.”

  She did not want his apology, because he hadn’t wronged her by bringing this truth to light. “Hold me, for the love of God, please hold me.”

  He plucked her from the chair and carried her to the bed. Lily had turned the sheets back to warm and scooted under the covers, while Hessian tugged off his boots.

  “Get in here,” Lily said, untying her dressing gown and flinging it to the foot of the bed. “Get in here and tell me everything you know, Hessian Kettering. I will not engage in strong hysterics, despite the temptation, but neither can I promise you a ladylike vocabulary.”

  He draped his coat and waistcoat over the back of the reading chair and drew the window curtains closed before coming to the bed.

  He stood for a moment, gazing down at Lily as she lay on her side, willing him to join her.

  The mattress dipped, and he was drawing the covers up over them both. “We must conclude your sister is alive and thriving, Lily. She doesn’t need to skimp on paper to the extent of crossing her letters. She uses a famil
y crest to seal correspondence. She has the leisure to write regularly, and in all the years she’s been corresponding with Miss Tipton, her direction hasn’t changed. She’s not haring about after a man who can’t hold a job, not fleeing the law, or using an alias.”

  “You are trying to reassure me.”

  Hessian tucked an arm under Lily’s neck and drew her along his side. “Is it working?”

  His sane, sensible conclusions would sink in after he’d left. What calmed Lily was his nearness. “Some. What did Her Grace of Quimbey have to add?”

  Hessian had a way of holding Lily that was at once snug and easy. The bed was immediately warm with him in it, and despite all the clothing—far too much clothing—the fit of his body to Lily’s was comfortable.

  Also comforting.

  “Her Grace explained London to me. I seldom use my Town residence and haven’t paid much attention to domestic details. Most neighborhoods use the same dairy, the same bakeshop, the same laundresses and tinkers. The dairy maids, night soil men, crossing sweepers—they all share news and gossip, and they carry it from one back entrance to another, one stable to another.”

  “You did not know this?” If there was any pleasure associated with working at a coaching inn, it was the sense of having all the news from every corner of the realm. A crop failure in Dorset, a spectacular barn fire in East Anglia, a great fair in Yorkshire—the coaching inns heard about everything in first-person accounts.

  “I did not grasp the extent of a wealthy widow’s news sources, and for years before her present union, the duchess was widowed.”

  Lily untied Hessian’s neckcloth and drew it off. “How is this relevant?”

  The linen smelled of him, of soap and cedar, and faintly of starch. She tossed it in the direction of the reading chair.

  “Her Grace of Quimbey keeps journals and thus was able to regale me with astonishing details. Lawrence Delmar was an exceedingly handsome, friendly fellow. The ladies all noticed him, from the maids, to the laundresses, to the occasional visitor paying a call on Walter. Delmar lived in and served as much as a man of business as a house steward. For a young man, he had a lot of responsibility, but he also rose to whatever challenge Walter Leggett threw at him.”