“You are not to worry. I may have found an alternative,” she said. “Miss Neville has said I can copy some of their paintings. Several look quite good. I think Mr. Stevenson’s London buyer would like them.”
Rebecca’s expression cleared. “That is wonderful. I am so glad that you are becoming the sisters’ friend too. I knew you would like them once you knew them better.” She stood and went to the door. “I am going to spy into every picture shop we pass while we are here. I think Mr. Stevenson is getting much more than he pretends for those paintings. You would, too, if you could offer them to that man directly.”
Eva guessed she would as well, which was why Mr. Stevenson would never allow her to know that picture seller’s name. As for Rebecca finding him during their visit—London was very big, with many streets and lanes and many picture sellers. They would probably return to Langdon’s End as ignorant of that buyer’s name as when they left.
* * *
Gareth took his guests to the British Museum the next day. The excursion proved both educational and tiring for all. Only Rebecca remained enthralled to the end, and he suspected she would have petitioned to remain longer if Sarah had not complained about her sore feet.
Eva gave most of her attention to the art, especially the Greek marbles. Sarah joked none too subtly about how very educational those nude male sculpted figures must be for innocents like her cousins. Eva smiled serenely at being the source of Sarah’s amusement, and studied the reliefs and statues all the closer, only once sliding Gareth a glance that communicated their private reason for finding Sarah’s innuendos very funny.
The butler eased Gareth aside as soon as he and his guests returned to the house.
“It would be best if I take your guests to the drawing room or morning room, sir,” he said. “The duke and Lord Ywain arrived while you were out and are now in the library. The Earl of Whitmere is with them.”
“The drawing room, then. Please take them up and see about refreshment. I will join them after I see my brothers.”
He found Lance and Ives lounging on divans in the library, still wearing riding coats. Lord Whitmere, one of Lance’s old friends, also appeared to have been riding.
“Imagine my surprise to find these two on the road,” Whitmere said, after their greetings. “An odd bit of fate.”
Blond, robust, and athletic, Whitmere initially appeared to be the light foil to Lance’s dark presence. Unfortunately, he was not. He and Lance normally found each other during spells of recklessness. If fate had brought them together, it was not a good omen.
“I told you he would probably ride down, Gareth.” Ives flourished a gesture toward Lance. “Here he is, in all his ducal magnificence.”
“Indeed I am,” Lance drawled lazily. “Explain to Ives how I must participate in the Season, Gareth, so it is not said I hide at Merrywood due to guilt.”
“He has a good point, Ives.”
“We are in mourning. Deep mourning. Am I the only one who remembers that?”
“I’ll wear an armband, and not dance much,” Lance said.
Ives shook his head. “I would feel better about this if the last time he went out on the town we did not come within an inch of dueling to protect his good name, Gareth.”
Lance shrugged. “Should that happen again, point the man toward me. I’ll not have either of you fighting for me, when I will happily do it myself.”
“Too happily,” Ives said to Gareth, pointedly.
Gareth did not need to be alerted. The truth was Lance looked like hell. If they rode here, they had not brought their valets, and unless his valet shaved Lance, he could not be bothered shaving at all. A rough growth shadowed his lower face, making the scar appear a thin river snaking through a forest. His heavy lids might be due to drinking, or worse.
Ives’s concern said he voted for the “or worse.” Lance sometimes suffered from spells of brooding. Melancholies, their father had called them, although the word was inaccurate in many ways. Lance did not turn sad or anxious during his spells. Rather he became blissfully indifferent to almost everything and everyone around him. He also exuded a fearless indifference to life itself. He would happily duel when in such a state.
Whitmere watched Lance, forming his own conclusions. No doubt he anticipated a wonderful few weeks dwelling in hell with his old friend.
“Ives said he told you about the guests I have imposed on the household,” Gareth said.
Lance barely nodded. “A Birmingham tradesman and his wife, along with the wife’s two cousins, he said.”
“Do not worry that they will be a nuisance. You will hardly ever see them or know they are here. They are staying on the third storey, away from the public rooms and your apartments.”
“I do not care if I see them. In fact, if they are here, I should greet them. It is my home.” He sat up. “Where are they?”
“It can wait until you are presentable,” Ives said. “You look like a highwayman.”
“I choose to do it now.” He stood and peered at Gareth expectantly.
“They are in the drawing room,” Gareth said.
Up they went, with Whitmere in tow. Lance came alive with each step. That was unfortunate. Gareth had been prepared to explain later that he was ill.
One could not unexpectedly present a duke, an earl, and a lord to anyone except other peers without it garnering strong reactions. Gareth’s introductions to the disheveled, unshaved Aylesbury fell on the ears of three people who faced Lance gape-mouthed. Wesley mumbled something incoherent. Sarah and Rebecca fumbled vague curtsies. Only Eva acquitted herself well.
To make it worse, Lance decided to play the host, for reasons only he could know. He invited the ladies to sit, then he did as well. Wesley perched his ass too. Gareth remained standing, as did Ives. Ives kept sending Gareth sharp glances that said no one found this situation stranger than Lance’s own full blood brother.
Other than eliciting from Wesley the general nature of his business, Lance led them through ten minutes of the smallest of small talk. Then he stood, excused himself, and walked out. As he passed, he asked Gareth to join him again in the library. Whitmere tagged along. Ives dallied to make his own greetings before exiting.
Down below, Lance sought out the decanters and poured three whiskies. He handed one each to Gareth and Whitmere and tossed back the third.
“The young one is very lovely. A perfect gem, but also painfully innocent and far too young. She will never do.”
“No. Never,” Whitmere agreed.
“Do for what?” Ives asked, coming toward them from the door.
Lance shrugged. He returned to his divan, slouched low and stretched out his legs.
Gareth glared at him. “Do for what?”
Lance yawned. “It would be better if I escorted a lady to the DeVere ball next week, so I make it clear how indifferent I am to the stories about me. I thought one of your guests might do, since I am not in the mood to suffer the company of the women I normally would use. But as I said, the girl is too young. Rumors would start, and I might find myself under obligations I did not intend.”
“Allow me to repeat, once again. You are not going to any balls,” Ives said. “You are in deep mourning.”
“And if you do go anyway, you are not escorting any of those women up there,” Gareth said firmly. “None of them will do. They are not for you.”
“A fine friend you are, Fitzallen,” Whitmere said. “Denying those nice ladies a ball. They will not thank you for it.”
Lance seemed to lose interest. He closed his eyes.
Ives gestured to Gareth. “Let him sleep. We will go to the garden and set the times for our meetings.”
“There is the other one, of course.” Lance’s voice, not loud at all, arrested Gareth’s attention.
“You mean Mrs. Rockport?” he asked.
“No, the other sister. Eliza—Edith—”
“Eva. Miss Russell to you.”
“Lovely name. She is pretty, too, in
her own way. Poised. Nice eyes.” He sat up. “I say, Whitmere, why don’t you escort the girl, and I’ll escort her sister.”
“That sounds splendid. Only you must allow me my time with the elder one. She looks to be a sassy wench, and I’ll be wanting companionship this Season.”
An insinuating inflection of companionship had Gareth thinking murder. He walked over to where Whitmere sat and hovered over him. “If those ladies are not for my brother, they are certainly not for you. The path to their company is through me, and I forbid it. I have not thrashed an earl in several years, but am prepared to do it, so do not doubt my resolve on this matter.” He looked over his shoulder. “Ives, who was the last earl I thrashed? His name escapes my memory.”
Ives scratched his head and pondered dramatically. “Let me see. Not the viscount or the baron, but the last earl . . . Ah, I have it. It was the Earl of Whitmere, wasn’t it? Early one summer morning alongside the Serpentine.”
Whitmere rearranged his limbs on the chair, sucked in his cheeks, and looked anywhere except up at Gareth.
“Don’t let him threaten you, Whitmere,” Lance said. “He only did that because you tried to take liberties with his mistress. These ladies are only friends of a friend. He’ll never go through with it.”
Whitmere looked at Lance dolefully.
“As for you,” Gareth said to Lance. “If you are determined to set tongues wagging by attending the ball, you may dance one time with each lady, but only if you are shaved and sober.”
Lance laughed heartily. “You sound like a tutor. Doesn’t he sound like a tutor, Whitmere?”
“Or a vicar. Are you going to take this? By Zeus, I’ve half a mind to— Half a—” Both sides of his mind chose to seek solace in the brandy instead.
“I’m not going to fight him over country women I barely know and that he has chosen to protect, on some inexplicable impulse. You and I will find better things to do than go to that ball, anyway.”
Whitmere blinked. “How did it go from my escorting a rare gem and her fetching older sister to the ball, to my now not attending at all?”
Lance began to ponder aloud the better things to do. Ives caught Gareth’s eye, turned, and walked to the doors to the terrace. Gareth followed, pretending he did not hear Lance speculating on a prank that involved another duke’s carriage and a large amount of horse dung.
* * *
“What was that about?” Ives asked once they were in the garden. “While you did not sound too much like a tutor, you became very pointed very quickly.”
Gareth had no idea what that had been about. He only knew that hearing Lance and Whitmere discuss Eva made him see red. Even now it was all he could do not to punch something.
“I did not like the implications of all that she will do talk. You know those two when they get together and Lance is in one of his moods. I have some responsibility for the ladies, after all.”
“Of course.”
“Nor do they need Lance and Whitmere in order to attend the ball. Lady DeVere is sending an invitation directly to Miss Russell, for example.”
“You arranged that, did you? That will be a treat, although the thought of arriving alone might put her off the idea.”
“I will escort her. Unlike you and Lance, I do not have to pretend I am in mourning.”
“Whitmere may still go, for all of Lance’s hoping they will play at being naughty schoolboys instead. I trust you will not make a scene if he asks Miss Russell to dance. She has caught his eye, that is clear.”
“I may warn her that his intentions are not honorable, but I will not make a scene.”
Ives laughed. “Hell, you do sound like a vicar. Where is all this talk of honorable intentions coming from?” His smile remained broad, but his gaze turned piercing. “What is this woman to you? Is she your lover?”
It was a hell of a question, and unexpected. “No.” The honest truth, in the present tense, not that his body had accepted the new order well.
“Then perhaps you should let the lady draw her own conclusions about Whitmere. She looked sensible and mature. It is unlikely she will not perceive the truth of his intentions, whatever they might be.”
Still angry, but not so inexplicably black-minded, Gareth forced his thoughts to other things. “Tell me about these meetings, so I can make arrangements for my dear guests to be occupied without me during those times.”
CHAPTER 18
Eva dropped the letter of introduction into her reticule, then made her way to Sarah’s sitting room. They would all be on their own today. Gareth had business with Lord Ywain, so he would not escort them around town.
A decision had been made to take the opportunity to pursue their own interests. Wesley planned to visit some men of business that he knew. Sarah wanted to shop, and would take her maid as company. Rebecca had chosen to tag along with Eva while she paid a call on Mary Moser, the woman painter she had long admired.
“You must take the carriage,” Sarah said when Eva arrived.
“You are the one likely to have packages. Rebecca and I will ask a footman to bring a hired carriage around.”
“I will agree, if you promise to be careful and to fight off any young men who start following our perfect gem.” She beamed in Rebecca’s direction. “Of course they all notice her, and some look at her too boldly, to my thinking.”
“I will fight them off myself, Sarah,” Rebecca said. “I do not see much in the young men roving the streets that would be appealing to any girl.”
“They certainly do not look to have the substance of Mr. Mansfield,” Sarah said while she tied on her bonnet.
“Nor the artistic soul of Mr. Trenton,” Rebecca said.
Sarah shook her head in exasperation, then looked around for her reticule. “Where did I—”
A rap on the door interrupted. Her maid hurried over to see who had come. A white letter passed out of a footman’s white glove. With an expression of surprise, the maid brought it to Eva.
Eva examined the letter. She had never seen anything quite like it. The paper must be the finest made. Thick, heavy, and rich, its finely laid surface might have been velvet under her fingers. An elaborately engraved escutcheon decorated its outside. With Rebecca and Sarah hovering near her shoulders, she opened it.
The finest hand had written a personal invitation for Miss Russell to attend a ball being held by the Earl and Countess DeVere next week.
“Well, I’ll be—” Sarah muttered in a voice full of awe. “Do you think a mistake was made and it was intended for Rebecca?”
“Of course, no mistake was made,” Rebecca said. “I think a countess knows that if one addresses a letter to Miss Russell, it will go to the eldest sister.”
Eva was not so sure. A mistake made more sense than this coming to her.
“You must go,” Rebecca said.
“I am not sure I must, or that I want to. It makes no sense that I received this. I do not know these people, nor do they know me.”
“Someone arranged it, then,” Sara said. “Mr. Fitzallen perhaps.”
“If so, you really must go, Eva,” Rebecca said. “It would be rude to refuse, after all his hospitality. And it is an earl’s ball.”
“But we will not even still be here next Tuesday.”
“We will be now,” Sarah said. “I’ve no idea what you will wear. I brought a ball gown, just on the chance that it would be needed. It will hardly do for such as this, however, no matter how hard we try to improve it.”
A bit of pique penetrated Eva’s astonishment. Surely Gareth knew she would be ill-equipped for such an invitation. She could hardly attend wearing her blue pelisse.
She stood, tweaked her bonnet’s rim, and pulled on her gloves. “I will decide later what to do. I cannot think now. Come along, Rebecca.”
“I’ll be seeing if any dressmakers do fast orders,” Sarah called after them as they walked to the stairs. “And I’ll look in the warehouses for lace and such.”
“What trouble
and nonsense,” Eva muttered.
* * *
The house on Upper Thornhaugh Street appeared handsome if modest. Eva handed her card and Miss Neville’s letter of introduction to the servant who came to the door. She and Rebecca waited a good while before the woman returned.
“My lady will see you, but it cannot be for long.”
Eva’s excitement built with every step up the stairs. They were not taken to a drawing room or library. Instead the servant opened a door on a bedchamber. An elderly woman sat in a big chair beside the bed, covered in a blanket. Anyone who saw her would know she was ill, even without the scent of a sickroom that defied the spring breeze leaking in the window that had been set ajar a few inches.
The servant moved two chairs nearby. The elderly woman raised her gaze from Miss Neville’s letter. A wry smile formed. “Welcome, Miss Russell. Who is your companion?”
Eva sat in her chair and introduced Rebecca to Mary Moser, one of only two women who had been made members of the Royal Academy of Arts thus far, and one of its founders. Although she had married years after she had established her reputation, everyone referred to her by her maiden name.
Mary’s eyes narrowed as she examined Rebecca. “Lovely. Have you come to town for the Season, child, so men die from heartbreak over you?”
Rebecca shook her head. “We came to see the art and sights. I would not want anyone to die from heartbreak in any case, and I would hope my mind and character would be at least as much interest as my face to a man.”
Mary chuckled, and waved the letter. “I think Jasmine has been influencing you. How is she faring up there in her rustic abode? Terrorizing the locals with her strong opinions?”
“She is quite the original still,” Eva said. “We are both grateful for her generosity.”
“She says you are an artist. With whom did you study?”
“Only a talented governess, but I work on my own. I think I have improved. I have done copies of fine pictures, and Miss Neville has offered me others from her own collection for further study.”
A very polite smile grew on Mary’s face while Eva talked. It was the kind given when a conversation had taken a boring turn.
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