by Aileen Fish
“Lord above,” Charles Calvert grumbled from the seat facing his daughter. “I’d forgotten what a cesspool London is.”
“And yet you intend to abandon me here,” Emily softly rebuked without looking away from the open window and the sights and sounds beyond their carriage. In her elixir-induced state, with her eye lids heavy and her mind enshrouded in cotton batting, she imagined herself floating over those scurrying masses, invisible and untouched by one and all.
“You’ll hardly be abandoned,” her father replied gruffly. “Margaret will see you settled, see you introduced to the best people. And I’ll only be gone two months, three at most.”
“Gallivanting across the countryside while I languish in the stench of coal smoke and unwashed bodies,” Emily accused, her slurred words drifting out the window.
Da reached past her and wrenched the window closed. With a final look at the streets crowded with people hurrying by in worn, ragged clothing, Emily fell back onto the padded seat to find him staring at her with a frown.
“This is not Mayfair,” he explained with forced patience. “You will not be surrounded by coal smoke or unwashed bodies. Your aunt’s townhouse is in Hanover Square, one of the finest areas of London. While I am gone Margaret will take you in hand.”
“I’m to be taken in hand like a child?” Emily whispered as her eyes drifted closed. “I’m not a child.”
“Then quit acting like one,” Da rumbled. “I’ve tolerated your sulks these last weeks but no more.”
Emily peered up at him from beneath heavy eyelids before looking away from his angry gaze. The carriage turned a corner and the road widened into a tree-dappled street lined with neat little houses with bright white doors behind small gardens.
Tilly shifted beside her and Emily turned to watch as the girl obeyed the silent command of her master and rose to trade places with him. Da settled in beside her and reached for her hands, taking them into his big, calloused paws with a gentleness that might have brought tears to her eyes had she not been enveloped in blessed oblivion.
“Listen to me, Em,” he pleaded softly. “These English aren’t like us. They’re a stuffy, proper lot, puffed up on their own consequence. This Mr. Avery is a gentleman and likely as starched and stiff as Pearl’s meringue. You don’t go showing off your wit to the man, Em. You got to hide your light under a bushel.”
Her father paused and looked into her eyes.
“I know you don’t want to hear it, but this might well be your last chance to marry, to have children of your own. I know you, girlie. I know you want a family. If you scare this Avery fellow off with your wild ways, you won’t have another chance. I don’t say it often, but you know I love you, Em. You know you are the light of my life. T’would break my heart if you don’t find happiness in this life.”
“Oh, Da,” Emily whispered as his words penetrated the fog that swirled around her.
“You behave yourself, keep your sassy mouth shut, and you’ll find yourself married to the gent by end of summer. Else, you’ll be an old maid living with me for all your days, nursing me when I’m an old man. This is it, Emily mine, your last chance.”
Emily swallowed, blinked as tears rushed to her eyes, as sorrow and pending loneliness stabbed her. “Yes, Da, I will. I’ll be so sweet, so good, an angel.”
Her father pulled her into his arms for a hard embrace and Emily buried her face against his massive chest, smelled the bay rum he wore, and vowed to herself that she would be good, she would make Nicholas Avery love her.
Emily had fallen asleep in her father’s embrace when the carriage lurched to a stop before a tall, imposing mansion of white stone with immense marble pillars holding aloft a domed portico above a set of massive double doors.
Before her feet touched the ground the doors were thrown open and an elderly man with ramrod straight posture stepped out to meet them.
“Mr. Calvert, Miss Calvert,” he greeted with a bow, his white hair so stiff with pomade not a single lock shifted. He was dressed in black trousers and coat with a stiff cravat tied simply at his throat. His weathered face was without expression, his pale eyes trained on a spot beyond Da’s shoulder. “I am Caruthers, her ladyship’s butler. Welcome to London.”
Emily barely heard him as she looked up and down the street in confusion. This was where she was to live? In this stone and marble wasteland with no greenery but for a miniscule park in the center of the square? The streets were empty of people but for a boy who ambled along lighting the tall lamps lining the walkway at precise intervals. A carriage rode by, but beyond that one show of life, the entire square was deserted.
With a sinking heart, Emily reached into her pocket for the pretty blue bottle and the escape it provided. While her father issued orders to Caruthers and the footmen who’d hurried from the house to unload their trunks, Emily sipped daintily before stowing her precious elixir away again.
“Come along and meet your aunt,” Da ordered, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm to lead her up three shallow marble steps and into the house that would never be a home, into a life she’d never wanted.
Lady Margaret, the widowed Baroness Morris, came down the winding stairs to greet the pair of weary travelers but Emily was too muddle-headed to offer more than a wobbly curtsey and a vacant smile to the elegant woman who was her father’s half-sister.
With little interest, Emily took in the lavender gown the lady wore, the silver slippers peeking out beneath her ribbon-trimmed hemline, the long white gloves encasing her arms from fingers to elbows. Her red-blonde hair was piled atop her head with two ostrich feathers waving jauntily just over her right eye.
“Emily’s tuckered out from the journey,” Da told his sister. “She’d like to lie down for a bit before dinner.”
“But of course,” Lady Margaret replied graciously, her green eyes intent upon her niece’s pale face. “I’ll show you to your room, my dear.”
Emily followed the woman silently up the grand staircase, carefully lifting feet that felt as if they weighed a stone each, fingers trailing along the curved bannister. Her aunt was speaking to her, her voice crisp and precise. Emily made no effort to concentrate on her words, instead allowing them to rush past her.
“As such, I thought we’d do a bit of shopping tomorrow,” Lady Margaret said as she ushered her niece into a spacious room with buttery yellow walls and spindly white furnishings.
Without replying, Emily wandered across the room and pulled the blue and yellow drapes closed, shutting out both the light and sight of the deserted streets and barren little park.
“Here is your maid,” Lady Margaret announced as Tilly breezed into the room, her eyes taking in the luxurious space. “What’s your name, child?”
“Matilda, ma’am,” the girl answered, a smile blooming on her face. “Most folks call me Tilly.”
“Well, Tilly, see to your mistress,” the lady ordered as she stepped back through the open doorway. “I’ll have a tray sent up shortly.”
“Oh, I’m doubting Miss Em’ll eat,” Tilly said with her customary good cheer. “She’ll likely sleep from now until noon tomorrow.”
“Surely not,” Lady Margaret replied.
Dimly Emily heard the conversation that followed, something about Town hours being all well and good. She made no effort to join in, instead lowering herself to the bed and dropping her head forward. With nerveless fingers she fumbled with the buttons of her cloak, only looking up again as the door closed with a soft click.
“Now ain’t she a grand lady,” Tilly said as she approached the bed.
“Help me with these buttons,” Emily replied.
Tilly kept up a string of chatter as she divested her mistress of cloak, boots, gown and stays before tucking her into the big four-poster bed in her shift and stockings. Emily was asleep before the girl had finished her litany of all the wonders they would explore in the coming days.
And the coming days were rather wondrous, especially as Emily spent them in a cozy bubble of la
udanum comfort. She dutifully set out with her aunt to pay call after call upon the greatest houses in Mayfair where she sat quietly smiling as gossip was batted about like shuttlecocks.
She rode through the park in an open carriage, smiling serenely at all who approached to greet Lady Margaret and her American niece, blithely ignoring the slanted looks she received, the whispers that trailed after her aunt’s friends and acquaintances as they strolled away.
“Funny little creature,” one dark-haired man said, his voice carrying on the spring breeze.
“So pale and thin,” replied a blonde woman with dimpled cheeks.
“Quiet as a mouse,” added an older woman who joined them.
Most evenings found Emily wandering around the small garden behind the house, feigning an interest in her aunt’s endless conversations, her ceaseless lessons on the proper behavior of a young lady during the London Season, which would officially begin with Lady Clevedon’s annual ball.
The only time Emily found herself even remotely interested, the only time she made the slightest effort to push aside the mist of her elixir induced lethargy, occurred when Lady Morris spoke of Mr. Nicholas Avery.
“Nicholas Avery is the most intelligent man I’ve ever had the pleasure to know,” Aunt Margaret proclaimed repeatedly.
“Why, Nicholas sits a horse as if he were born in the saddle. Oh, the races he has won. And never was there been a better judge of horseflesh.”
“Mr. Avery is wonderfully graceful. Surprising for such a large man. Some strong, muscular men are awfully clumsy. Not so Nicholas. He leads a lady around the dance floor as if on a cloud.”
“Nicholas is a responsible man with an astounding head for managing his father’s estates. He is off in Derbyshire even as we speak, seeing to the family seat. You can rest assured that were he in town he would have been knocking upon my door each and every day. He is that eager to make your acquaintance, to win your heart.”
“Nicholas dotes upon his family. He would do anything, absolutely anything to assure their happiness. He was at his poor mother’s side for weeks before she passed on, reading to her, holding her hand, and singing to her. What a voice the gentleman has.”
“Nicholas is not like some young bachelors, out drinking and gambling all night. He’s a good man. I’m quite certain he has never seen the inside of a brothel, nor kept a mistress. He holds women in the highest regard.”
“Nicholas Avery has a gentle, sensitive soul. He likes nothing better than to spend an evening reading poetry by the hearth.”
“Dear Nicholas will make some young lady a splendid husband. You mustn’t allow some other lady to snatch him away from you, dearest. He is perfect for you.”
One evening, Lady Margaret took Emily’s hand as the sun set and they made their way past rose bushes not yet in bloom. “Nicholas has returned to Town. You will finally meet your betrothed.”
“Betrothed?” Emily repeated in surprise. “But we are not yet betrothed.”
“All but, dearest,” her aunt assured her with a smile that held both anticipation and a sly sort of excitement.
As she retired to her room to prepare for the theatre, Emily wished she might borrow a bit of her aunt’s excitement. Shouldn’t she be happy to finally meet the man she was apparently betrothed to marry?
“All but betrothed,” she reminded herself.
Somewhere in the back of Emily’s mind a voice whispered a warning. Why had this epitome of masculine perfection chosen to marry an American lady whom he had never met when London was full of eligible young ladies just clamoring to marry the son of a viscount?
And most importantly, that shadowy voice, that whisper of reason, asked the most significant question of all: Would Nicholas Avery honor and cherish her, forsaking all others for as long as they both shall live?
It took only another dram of laudanum to quiet the voice, to silence it along with all the others that wanted to intrude upon her blessed oblivion, to crash over her in a cacophony of regret and fear and sorrow.
Chapter Four
“So, Father, when do I meet this paragon of virtue you have acquired for me?” Nicholas Avery sank into an overstuffed chair that had seen better days, wincing as an errant spring poked him in the backside.
“I cannot in good conscious vouch for her paragonism,” Andrew Avery, Viscount Talbot, replied with a chuckle. “Or should one say paragonny? Paragonity? Never mind, I’m sure she is the very definition of a paragon, though I have yet to meet the girl myself.”
Nick smiled at his father’s butchering of the King’s English. “And her virtue? Can you vouch for that?”
“I’m quite certain she’s a good girl, although I suppose at four and twenty she’s no longer a girl,” his father replied. “Margaret would hardly attempt to foist a ruined lady on my son, would she?”
“Tell me again how it is that the lady reached the ripe old age of four and twenty unwed?” Nick didn’t really care about the hows and whys of the thing, or the whens for that matter. He’d resigned himself to the marriage and unless the lady had two heads and a hunchback he’d see it done.
“It seems that her father spoiled her, allowed her to reject a number of suitors, until there were no more suitors to reject.”
“Perfect,” Nick grumbled. “A spoiled spinster. Why has she agreed to marry now after refusing so many offers?” Why to him? A man she did not know.
“Huh, good question. I never thought to inquire,” his father admitted with a shrug. “I’m certain the lady has her reasons. Perhaps she likes the idea of marrying a gentleman. Nothing but barbarians in the colonies I’ve heard. Maybe she desires to marry a man who bathes regularly.”
“They are no longer the colonies,” Nick pointed out. “The Americans I’ve met take offense at the term.”
“Bah,” his father replied, waving his hand in the air.
“Back to my original question, Father. When will I have the pleasure of making my future wife’s acquaintance?” Nick asked again. “What’s the lady’s name? Eleanor? Esme?”
“Huh, I’ll be damned,” his father mumbled.
“You don’t remember her name?” Nick demanded.
“Hell, Nicholas, she’s your betrothed and you don’t remember her name either.”
“We’re not betrothed yet, Father.”
“All but, son.”
Nick watched as his father sauntered out of the library on wobbly legs. They’d been drinking steadily all night, starting at dinner with a toast to Nick’s future bride. Why couldn’t he remember her name? Emma? Evangeline? It started with an E…he was almost certain it started with an E.
Nick had clearly seen the relief on Oliver’s face when he announced he would marry the girl. The lady. Four and twenty, on the shelf. Oliver’s wife, Joan, had joined the family at eighteen. Now, six years later, she was an old married lady, the same age as Ellen the Spinster. Esmerelda?
Oliver may have looked at his brother with relief, but Joan had looked at him with sorrow. They all knew, the entire Avery clan, what the Viscount’s insistence and Nick’s acquiescence truly meant. Never mind the much-needed fortune the American heiress would bring to the family. The reality they all silently acknowledged was that Joan would never produce an heir. The responsibility of begetting the next heir to the title herewith fell to Nicholas, the second son. Nick and Edith. Eve?
All but betrothed.
It sounded so final. So permanent.
Nick was not opposed to marriage. He had always known he would marry eventually. He’d thought that someday he would find a young lady of good family, one with a sense of humor and a ready smile.
Edwina needn’t be beautiful, although it would be a boon. Passably pretty would do, even moderately plain.
Nick didn’t need to love his wife, though it would certainly be nice. He would settle for liking his wife. She would, of course, like him in return. Well, hell, Edna would love him as any good wife should.
It would be beyond nice if Evelyn t
urned out to be a passionate woman, warm and welcoming at the least. He couldn’t imagine spending the rest of his life with a woman who cringed every time she was forced to perform her wifely duty. The whole point was to produce an heir, after all.
She must be fertile. It wouldn’t do to end up with a barren wife. Like Oliver.
Poor Oliver. Worse yet, poor Joan.
Intelligent. Nick sincerely hoped Eugenia wasn’t dim-witted. He could tolerate many things in a wife, but stupidity was not one of those things.
Nick was interrupted from his musing when Oliver sat down in the chair across from him.
He watched as his brother stretched out his long legs, the toes of their boots almost touching.
“So, when do you meet the fair Miss Calvert?” Oliver asked, raking back a wayward curl that had slipped across his brow. Nick looked into the face so like his own, so like their father’s. The three Avery men had the same blue eyes and wavy golden hair with matching unruly cowlicks.
“Do you remember her given name?” Nick asked.
“Eloise?” Oliver replied.
“Elsa?” Nick offered.
“Emmanuelle?”
“Maybe it doesn’t start with an E at all,” Nick ventured.
“I’m almost certain it does,” his brother disagreed.
“Me, too.”
“Do you mind?” Oliver asked after a lengthy silence during which Nick racked his brain for other names beginning with the letter E.
“Not terribly,” Nick replied. “Surely I’ll discover her name before we marry.”
Oliver laughed before saying, “Not the fact that you can’t remember her name, the fact that you have to marry her.”
Nick thought about his brother’s question, thought about the concern in his eyes. “Not especially, though I might like to have met her before we became betrothed.”
“You’re not betrothed yet,” Oliver said. “You can refuse. Find another lady to marry, one of your own choosing.”
“And spoil Father’s plans? And Margaret’s?” Nick asked.
“Margaret’s?”
