Master of Love
Page 19
Marie stood to fetch glasses from the sideboard and Danvers went over to help. The two of them lingered in the corner in a low but animated conversation.
Judging them to be satisfactorily engaged, Celeste turned her attention to her other quarry. Her son took the chair beside her amidst renewed introductions to Lady Beatrice and polite chitchat.
“I’m delighted to see you all looking so well—you in particular, Miss Higginbotham.” Dom smiled ruefully, gazing around at the gay company. “So much for my concern you might be pining away at home alone.”
“Why would you think such a thing, darling?” Celeste scoffed. “A brave and resilient girl like Callista? Goodness, she dealt with that little worm Garforth”—she flicked a perfectly manicured hand—“just as she should have and has put it quite behind her. We’ve moved on to more important matters, like wardrobe planning, haven’t we, dear?” She leaned over to pat Callista’s knee. It wasn’t that she was insensitive to the trauma the girl had suffered; she simply had her own ideas about how a woman best recovered from life’s rocky patches. New clothes and a new lover always did the trick for her.
“Your mother’s kept us quite busy and entertained,” Callista replied with a smile.
“I can see that,” her son muttered, casting Celeste a quelling look she returned with wide and innocent eyes.
“And where is Lady Mildred this evening?” asked Danvers, approaching with Marie and glasses for himself and his employer.
Callista moved to an empty chair and waved the pair down to the sofa she’d been occupying. “Sir George called for her earlier with a picnic basket and an invitation to ride out to Richmond. Lady Rexton seems to think they’re courting.”
“If that’s what the young people call it these days,” Celeste said, sniggering into her sherry.
“Mother! You shouldn’t say such things! George is your brother, and Lady Mildred is Callista’s great-aunt.”
“What a straitlaced stick-in-the-mud you’ve become, Dom! Aren’t you supposed to be ‘Lord Adonis’ or some such nonsense? Why shouldn’t two unattached adults enjoy each other?” Celeste said. “You wouldn’t know, but George had quite the crush on Lady Mildred when we were all much younger. If I had to predict, I’d say a carriage wheel is going to come dangerously loose. There are some lovely inns on the Richmond road!” she laughed.
Before her son could add another word of censure, she continued innocently. “Dom, dear, we’ve been making plans for Lady Beatrice’s annual Society of Love Ball. I was about to ask the young ladies which of my two current beaus I should allow to escort me. Would you care to vote?”
Her son ignored that provocation with a dark look and bowed his head toward Beatrice instead. “Danvers gave me the invitation from this morning’s post, Lady Beatrice. I’d be delighted to attend and make a donation to your cause.” He looked around, as if judging his moment, and then shifted in his seat to take a plunge. “In fact, Miss Higginbotham, I was hoping you’d allow me the honor of escorting you to the ball—unless my mother already has some young beau lined up for you.”
Celeste read the possessive warning in her son’s hard glance and crowed inwardly with delight. Really, they were making this too easy for her.
Callista started her predictable demurrals. “I wasn’t looking for an escort, my lord. I thought I’d simply accompany Lady Beatrice and assist her as needed.”
“Nonsense, Callie!” Beatrice protested. “Since you and your mother were among the founding members of the Society of Love, you’ll stand with me in the receiving line, but you should enjoy yourself after that. Lord Rexton will be the perfect escort.”
It took all three of them to finally drag an agreement out of Callista. After more plans were made all around, Beatrice stood to take her leave with a promise to return tomorrow to begin her ball gown with Marie. The group drifted into the hall, where Margaret stood ready with cloaks and gloves and walking sticks.
Celeste penned a quick note at the writing desk before joining them. Time to put some plans into action.
She walked up to the family secretary. “Danvers, it occurs to me I haven’t properly thanked you for finding me this brilliant young dressmaker, so you and Marie are going to do me a favor this evening.”
“You need us to do you a favor, my lady, so as to thank me?” Danvers inquired cautiously.
“Exactly,” Celeste answered. In her opinion, a bold offense was always best. “You’re not coming to Belgravia for a boring Avery family meal. Instead, you’ll escort Marie to Verrey’s in Regent Street for dinner. I keep an account there, and this note to the maître d’hôtel will announce you as my guests for the evening.” She handed it over to the young man with a serene smile.
“A public room, madame?” Marie looked both scandalized and intrigued.
“No, no, Marie—it’s a most respectable restaurant, with excellent French cuisine. I saw Lady Sawyer there with a party last week, and you know what a stickler that old harridan is. Establishments like Verrey’s will be all the rage here soon, where ladies can dine out with gentlemen, just as they do in Paris’s fine restaurants.”
“It sounds wonderful, madame, and your offer is most generous, but not at all necessary,” Marie said.
Celeste suppressed a sigh. Really, it was tiresome to constantly wade through these polite protests. If only people would do as she planned. It wasn’t generosity motivating her, simply the certainty that she knew best. She went back on the attack, turning to the secretary. “Danvers, would you deprive Mademoiselle Beauvallon of such a perfect professional opportunity to study the fashionable evening wear of London ladies?”
The two young people looked at each other, tongue-tied, and then back at their mutual benefactor.
Danvers recovered first. “Of course not, Lady Rexton.” Although he still looked rather broadsided, his dancing eyes as he bowed toward her and Marie told Celeste all she needed to know. “It would be my greatest honor and pleasure to escort Mademoiselle Beauvallon to Verrey’s this evening.”
Marie blushed again, and Danvers’s eyes took on a hotter hue.
Yes, that affair would work out fine. “Good, that’s all settled,” Celeste purred. “Now, Marie, go change for dinner whilst your young man fetches a cab. And, Danvers, make sure you get a hansom—so much more elegant than a tired old hackney.”
“But I’d need at least an hour to prepare for such an engagement!” the Frenchwoman sputtered.
“Nonsense! If you looked any more beautiful than you do right now, poor Danvers would expire on the spot and I’d have to ship you back to France for unfair competition. Just go!” She shooed Marie up the stairs and linked arms with Danvers to lead him down the hall.
At the door, she reached up to straighten the cravat of his elegant evening wear, just for the devilish delight of watching him squirm. “You’ll adore Verrey’s. Get the five-course dinner,” she instructed him. “I recommend their filleted sole—it’s the specialty of the house—and order a soufflé to finish. And you must certainly choose a good bottle of champagne.”
He surprised her then, by leaning down for a quick peck on her cheek. “Thank you, Lady Rexton. You are, as always, a marvel.”
“Save that for Marie, you naughty boy,” she said, swatting at him. “Although you’re right, of course—I am.”
She waved him down the steps with a pleased grin and turned to Callista next. “And you, my dear, I will see tomorrow night at Rexton House. I am most looking forward to Dominick’s dinner party.” Her next plan involved ensuring her son and this girl had some time alone to themselves after the dinner. Watching their smoldering looks and lingering hand-holding as they bid each other good night in the doorway, Celeste feared a conflagration if the sparks between them snapped any hotter. She could almost feel sorry for these young people—they were so pitifully slow and incompetent at managing their own affairs.
She tossed Dom her ermine pelerine and allowed him to settle it around her shoulders as they stepped into
the chill of a darkening Bloomsbury Square. They strolled toward the corner where Meacham held the horses as the lamplighter fired the gas down the street. Carriages clattered by, and top-hatted gentlemen walked home carrying work satchels. Looking up at her son’s chiseled profile, she was struck again by how beautiful he was—a ruggedly masculine version of herself, playing at the same society games of love she did. Yet few could tell he played to lose himself. A mother knew, however; the games only deepened his buried sadness. She tried to search his dark eyes, but their mask of shadows hid his true self even from her.
Maudlin dramatics, indeed. Those two needed to resolve their attraction, soon.
“You’re at the top of your form this evening, Mother,” Dom commented dryly, after he’d settled her into the carriage.
“I am, aren’t I?” She hunched her shoulders in delight and ticked off couples on her gloved fingers: “Marie with Danvers, you and that delightful Miss Higginbotham, and me with my two young bucks, clothed in a fabulous new wardrobe.”
The whip cracked and the horses’ harness jangled as the carriage started to roll. “Not everyone appreciates you arranging their life for them,” Dom grumbled. “I don’t need to be set up by my own mother.”
“Certainly not. Not the Master of Love.” She reached over to pat his cheek. “I only want you to be happy, dear.”
Dom rolled his eyes. Were not his mother a widow with enough money to do as she pleased, a generous heart, a reputation during her marriage free of any scandal, and a woman still celebrated as the “Celestial Beauty,” she’d have suffered more social censure for her ways. As it was, Jane and he marveled at how much she got away with. But he loved his outrageous mother, and he’d never doubted she loved him.
Unlike his father.
He asked a question much on his mind of late, aided by the gentle rocking of the carriage and the deep gloaming within it. “Why did you marry Father?”
She shrugged and seemed to take his inquiry in stride, almost as if she’d anticipated it. “He was intelligent. I knew he’d produce bright children. I didn’t count on his being so difficult toward you, however.”
“You married him because he was intelligent, a philosopher and scholar?”
“Of course, darling! Intelligence is what really matters, along with basic kindness. Everyone knows that.”
At his puzzled frown, she gave a little smile and sank back against the cushions as the horses clattered over the stone pavement of the city streets. “I seduced him deliberately. I’d already had a dozen or more splendid proposals, but the men all seemed so . . . flighty compared to your father. I wanted smart children. My parents hadn’t allowed me to study with George and his tutors—your grandmama always said brains didn’t become a lady. Pooh!” She flicked a hand. “What nonsense! I made sure Jane was well educated beyond the typical drawing-room accomplishments, even whilst I taught her how to hide it from men.”
“So Father was attractive to you because he was intelligent?”
“I already said that, Dominick. Do try to focus. Of course intelligence is the most attractive quality in a man. It would be in a woman as well, if men weren’t so stupid and shallow.”
“Did you love him, then?”
“Love?” She wrinkled her nose. “That’s such a newfangled notion, and a dangerous one in my opinion. One loves children and dogs. One enjoys a lover. And if one is lucky, one gets along with a spouse. Your father was an appropriate match with an excellent fortune, willing to sign a marriage contract for a most generous jointure—one thing your grandmama was smart about—and, as I said, in possession of a solid intellect. I thought that would be enough.”
“Was it?” It was a new question for him, whether his mother had been satisfied with her marriage. She was such a social butterfly, a reigning beauty even as she aged, setting fashion trends and flitting gaily from party to party. As a boy, he’d assumed that meant she was happy with her husband and that his own inability to please the man only served to prove Dom was a failure.
“The one area in which your father disappointed me,” she answered slowly, rearranging the folds of her cloak, “was his coldness to you and your sister. He had no idea how to relate to children and truly didn’t care for them. But worse in your case was his cruelty about your studies and your looks. Do you know what he told me once? That he’d never known anyone to pick up Latin as quickly as you did. Your first tutor said you had the makings of a genius.” She glanced at Dom sadly. “Your father fired him the next week.”
“But why?” His question held all the bewilderment and pain of a boy who could never please his father and never understand how it was he always failed.
She sighed deeply and held on to the strap as Meacham turned the horses onto the Strand to set them trotting smartly toward Belgravia. “Your father was a very insecure man. He’d agonize over his writing, worried it was never as good as some rival philosopher’s work. He didn’t want you to become a competitor.”
“But I wouldn’t have! I’d have been his student, perhaps eventually a collaborator.”
“He couldn’t see that,” she said, shaking her head. “He saw you as a rival, so he became an impossibly demanding perfectionist who put you down all the time. He took pleasure in dismissing you as my ‘mama’s boy’ because you favored me so much in looks. The more handsome you became, the more it gave him an excuse to mock you and your studies.” She cocked her head at him. “Do you still have those essays you used to work at, Dom, or any new ones?”
He was certainly avoiding that question. “Father made me believe my mind was worthless, that my only value was in this bloody face!” He hated that he couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. In angry frustration, he lifted the curtain to look out the window at the pools of gaslight shining through murky patches of fog.
“You know better than that, dear. I’m afraid it’s your cross to bear in life that you’re both brilliant and the most comely man in all of England,” his mother teased.
He cast her a sour glance.
She continued more gently. “You can’t let the past determine your future, Dom. What’s important now is Callista and what comes next.” She appraised him with a sideways look. “You two are good for each other. And the girl comes from fine stock, even though her family is impoverished. You could marry her, you know. We don’t need the dowry.”
“I wouldn’t make her a fit husband—I’m a fraud,” he mumbled.
She clucked her tongue. “Such self-pitying dramatics, Dom. Is it really as bad as all that?” She arched an eyebrow slyly. “Why don’t you take her as a lover, then? Say tomorrow, after the dinner party?”
“Mother! She’s a respectable woman! That’s what the whole party is about—remember?” The irony was not lost on him that his mother was suggesting exactly what he had in mind. He just didn’t want her saying it, for God’s sake.
“Having a lover is a perfectly respectable thing to do. Leave it to me. I’ll arrange it.”
“No—no!” He leaned forward, waving his hands. “Don’t do anything!”
His mother took his hand and patted it reassuringly. “Don’t worry, dear. What matters here is Callista. I think you’ve finally found a woman who means something to you.” She gave him an arch look. “Perhaps it’s time to be Master of Love for real.”
A strangled laugh escaped him.
His mother was right about one thing, however: nothing mattered but Callista. Suddenly, his doubts and hesitations fell away.
He didn’t know how it would all work out.
But she was his, and it was time to make it so.
Chapter 13
It was entirely inappropriate for her, an unmarried young woman, to remain after the dinner party as the last guest of the evening. But Dominick and his mother arranged it so smoothly, with even more than their usual share of charming finesse, that they pulled it off without a hitch. Callista’s heart quickened as she realized what it meant.
She was alone with him.
Sir George left next with her great-aunt—whispering something naughty in Lady Mildred’s ear, to judge from her giggled “Oh, George!”—and headed off to a card party hosted by friends. Dominick’s sister and her husband, Gideon, Lord Yarborough, offered to take Callista in their coach; Lord Yarborough had been particularly congenial all evening, as Callista had procured him a signed original edition of Machiavelli’s The Prince to present to the prime minister. Lady Rexton, however, told Gideon she and Dominick would see Miss Higginbotham home to Bloomsbury, as Lady Rexton had an evening engagement to the east and her son could drop them both off before heading to his club.
A few hearty handshakes at the door ushered everyone out. With a wink, Lady Rexton slipped out last, in a midnight-blue creation by Marie that had her son studiously fixing his eyes above her neck all evening, as though he could steer all other men’s eyes thusly. She disappeared into a phaeton waiting up the square manned by a smart-looking buck.
Dominick picked up from the hall table the boxed set of Seneca’s early essays that Lady Beatrice had brought as a gift. “An excellent choice on your friend’s part. I remember mentioning to you just last week how I was searching for these essays. It’s quite an amazing coincidence”—his eyes twinkled—“that Lady Beatrice presented them to me this evening.” He held out a hand and adopted his most innocent tone. “Before I take you home, Miss Higginbotham, perhaps you could show me where we should shelve this new acquisition?”