Blu also pleaded her terms, which was true, but it was not true that she suffered from them. She brooded before the window, watching July rain pelt the panes, as gray and damp as her thoughts. Mouton and Monsieur called in an effort to cheer her, but she was stubbornly unwilling to be cheered.
She understood she had bungled her first presentation and had consequently appalled Lady Katherine. She had proved unworthy of Cecile’s love and pride. She had failed Aunt Tremble’s trust and expectations.
Finally, there was the Duke of Dewbury, Cecile’s future husband. The man Blu most wished to impress and humiliate.
Sighing, she leaned forward, pressing her hot forehead to the cool, rain-streaked pane. A flicker of anger nipped at her, and she supposed that was an encouraging sign of recovery. But her anger was not yet strong enough to shatter her dejection.
What ground her grizzle was knowing her caw-handed performance had not surprised the Duke. The moment she had gazed into his twinkling gray eyes and observed his amusement, her pride had crashed around her ankles. She had lived on the hope that when she met him again he would be forced to eat his words and choke on them. Instead of the Duke eating his words, she was eating crow. He had watched her and he had smiled. And why not? She had behaved like a buffle-tongued pot boy clumsily floundering in the midst of royalty. If she had done one single thing properly, she could not recall it.
Which meant, according to the etiquette she could not unlearn, that she owed an apology to Cecile and Lady Katherine and Aunt Tremble. Yet how could she possibly explain her behavior?
Closing her eyes, Blu rolled her forehead across the glass, straightening only when she heard Cecile’s rap at her door. She would rather have laced her scurvy corset two inches tighter than face Cecile. But it had to be done eventually. After releasing another sigh, she lifted her head and firmed her chin, then opened her door and prepared to humble herself.
“I have come to apologize,” Cecile said promptly, before Blu could speak. “I hope you will forgive us.”
“You wish to apologize?” Blu’s dark eyes widened. “It is I who owe everyone an apology.”
“As kind and generous as you are, dear Blusette, I knew you would feel that way. But the error is ours. We rushed you into a situation for which you were unprepared. To our shame, no one thought to inquire if you felt yourself ready to be presented.” Mouton winked at Blu over Cecile’s golden head, then quietly stepped outside. “In my eagerness to have you meet Edward, I did you a disservice for which I beg you will forgive me.”
Blu sank to her knees beside Cecile’s chair and took her hand. “No, Cecile. I am solely to blame.” Now she saw the only course open to her. “I thought myself ready, then fell to a bundle of nerves. I did so wish to create a favorable impression on your Edward and merit your trust. Instead, each fault increased my state of nerves and I ended by disgracing you. It is I who beg forgiveness.”
Lifting a hand, Cecile placed her smooth palm on Blu’s cheek. “Oh, my dear. Do you realize what you have just done? You delivered an entire speech without a single ‘bloody’ or a single ‘damn.’ I cannot tell you how proud I am of all you have accomplished. You could never disgrace me, Blusette. I’m so proud of you, my dear sister.”
To Blu’s surprise and embarrassment, Cecile’s generosity raised moisture to her eyes. Until this moment she had not admitted how deeply she feared losing Cecile’s esteem.
“Also,” Cecile continued, pretending not to notice the dampness in Blu’s eyes, “I wish your permission to confide in Edward. Mama agrees he should be told the truth.”
“Which must come near to killing her,” Blu said bitterly, dropping her gaze.
“Edward will soon be family, and I think it unwise to begin our life together by keeping secrets. I do hope you will agree.”
“Oh Cecile.” There would be secrets. There had to be.
“With your permission...”
“Of course you have it.”
A blush tinted Cecile’s cheeks and her eyes turned shy. “What did you think of Edward?”
Oh Lord. “In truth, I was so concerned with my own simkin blunders, I scarcely had a moment to notice him,” she answered carefully.
“He is very handsome, is he not?” The blush deepened in Cecile’s face and she reached her fingertips to her cheeks.
“That he is,” Blu admitted, turning her face to the rain slipping down the windowpanes. After a moment she looked again at Cecile. “You love him, don’t you?”
Cecile dropped her lashes over flaming cheeks. “Next to you and Mama, Edward is my dearest friend. But Blusette, Edward is the last of the Montmorency line. If I cannot give him an heir... Frankly, my doctors are not hopeful.”
It was Blu who broke the silence. Dropping her head, she plucked at her skirts. “What did your Edward think of me? Was he terribly offended?” A grimace twisted her mouth.
“He was charmed by you,” Cecile insisted loyally.
“Oh Cecile, I do love you!” Laughing and swallowing hard at the lump in her throat, Blu embraced her sister.
~ ~ ~
“She has apologized, Mama. Now we must forgive her state of nerves and demonstrate our faith.”
“But—an excursion in public?” Katherine repeated in a faint voice. The discussion had been raging for more than an hour and she felt her defenses eroding.
“Cecile is correct, Katherine.” Aunt Tremble thumped her cane on the floor to signal her approval. “An outing will do us all pink. We’ve been confined to the house and gardens for two months.” Her eyes widened into a drape of overhanging wrinkles as she contemplated the astonishment of not venturing forth for two entire months. “The summer is half over and we have done nothing to amuse ourselves. No calls, no receiving, no outings. The carriage gathers dust. Everyone is bored. We have not shown ourselves in Hyde Park or Pall Mall in weeks. Weeks!” Her face slackened. “Good heavens! My friends must think I’m dead!”
“Please don’t swoon, Aunt. I need your support. Mama?”
Katherine stood before the windows overlooking the Square. The recent rain had washed the bricks and nourished the plantings, coaxing them into vibrant summer bloom. She felt like a prisoner gazing at a world she had inhabited before life took an unexpected twist down a dark corridor.
“Where do you propose we go?” she inquired at length.
“A brief shopping tour seems harmless enough, does it not? I do so long to show Blusette the shops in the Strand and the new New Exchange. What a pity the old New Exchange was demolished, I thought it much more elegant. We could shop for gloves. You did say you needed another half-dozen kid, Mama.”
“Our Blusette has learned how to behave toward others, Katherine. Well... somewhat. Now she must learn how others are expected to behave toward a lady of quality.”
Blusette? A lady of quality? Tremble had gone mad during the course of the endless last two months. Feeling betrayed, Katherine glared at her.
“Has anyone thought to teach her coach etiquette?” Aunt Tremble continued, warming to the idea of an outing. “The best teacher is experience; someone, I forget who, always said so. We can employ the occasion to begin her instruction. Forgetting precedence in entering or departing a carriage can utterly savage a social career. We must not overlook this item.”
“Very well. We shall go tomorrow,” Katherine whispered, capitulating. “Instruct Mr. Apple to order the carriage for ten o’clock.”
When they had departed in triumph to inform Blusette of her decision, Katherine sank to a chair. Letting her head fall backward, she closed her eyes.
She understood she could not keep Blusette locked in the house forever. September sped forward on swift wings. Tremble was correct; the girl had to have practical experience.
But heaven above, she dreaded it. A public outing was so ripe with possibility for ruin that she could not hope to foresee the vast number of potential pitfalls. There was no possibility of preparing Blusette for all the eventualities that might befall
them.
Gazing into the future, she saw nothing but a series of disasters linked by her own growing sense of despair. Her social ascendency, her life, descended on a slow spiral that would gain terrifying speed as September approached. Then one day soon, she would fall to the bottom of the spiral and discover no door remained open to her. Her soirees and assemblies would be attended only by the disreputables she had scorned in the past. Her name would raise titters of malicious laughter and jests would be bandied at her expense.
A low groan escaped her lips. Her reputation, her name, her life, was in the hands of a pirate’s by-blow who had to be reminded to wear proper underwear.
~ ~ ~
“Again,” Lady Katherine said between her teeth. Her blue eyes steadied to a steely glare beneath the brim of her summer straw. Spine rigid, she did not turn to wither the servants peeking through the windows overlooking the Square but she sensed their presence.
Monsieur, who served as their escort, blotted the July heat from his rouged face, then stepped to the coach and once again opened the door with the Paget crest emblazoned on the side. He returned to the step and silently offered his arm to Aunt. Tremble.
“This time I am remaining inside the coach,” Aunt Tremble announced, lisping around her plumpers and beginning to sound out of sorts. “I’m too old to continue hopping in and out.”
Age having been venerated, Monsieur proceeded by title and escorted Lady Katherine to the coach step. Once inside and seated beside Aunt Tremble, she leaned to the window and narrowed her gaze on Blusette waiting on the step.
As Monsieur and Mouton settled Cecile inside the coach, Katherine spoke, anticipating Blusette’s protest.
“You are last because—”
“Because I have no title or standing,” Blu snapped.
Perspiration trickled along her jaw and between her breasts. This tune, by God, she would step lightly on the iron rung. She would not place her entire weight on the step and rock the coach, thus sending the occupants pitching about inside. This time she would do it perfectly.
“Who in the bloody hell could have guessed it would be so scurvy damned difficult just to get inside a bleeding coach? A pox on it!”
Pretending he had not overheard, Monsieur solemnly took her arm and escorted her to the coach door.
Once she had dropped—lightly—to the seat beside Cecile, she scowled at Lady Katherine. “Well?”
“A cow could have done it with more grace, but at least this time you didn’t pitch Tremble or myself to the floor. Proceed,” Lady Katherine said through the window to Monsieur, whose expression lifted with relief as he hastened to climb up beside the liveried coachman.
“Now for inside etiquette,” Cecile began, giving Blu’s gloved fingers a squeeze.
“There’s more?” Dejection tugged her lips.
“It’s simple, really. Age and the highest title always take the facing seat.” She nodded to Aunt Tremble and her mother. “Youth and lesser titles take the seat looking backward.”
“When we enter a shop,” Lady Katherine instructed, “you are not to speak. I wish you to practice making your desires known with a glance or with the angle of your chin and the set of your carriage. One does not discourse with shop people.”
“Or creatures of the street, dear,” Aunt Tremble added, leaning forward over her cane. When Katherine turned to look at her, she shrugged slightly. “We cannot assume she knows, Katherine. One must touch all points.”
“You’ll do fine,” Cecile assured her, giving her hand another squeeze.
It was so good to be outside. The rain had settled the dust and the breeze blew toward the city, bringing the scent of newly mown hay and summer earth. As they rolled over the cobblestones the scents changed, the sweetness giving way to hints of sewage and sweating horses and packed bodies and street droppings and rotting food and rubbish fires and the myriad other smells of life in the city.
Forgetting herself, Blu held on to her hat and leaned from the window to see everything. Excitement and awe sparkled in her dark eyes. This was London, in all its squalor and splendor. Now that she no longer feared it, she could sense its seduction and feel herself succumbing.
“Where on earth is Mr. Jamison taking us?” Aunt Tremble inquired, peering out the side window. “This is not the route we usually take.”
“I suspect Monsieur has arranged a tour,” Katherine guessed. She considered opening the roof door and delivering the lecture Monsieur and Mr. Jamison no doubt waited to discover if they would receive. Then, lulled by the pleasure of the long-delayed outing, she decided to allow Monsieur his presumption and thus prolong the moment when they must alight and expose Blusette to public view. She imagined Monsieur and Mr. Jamison exchanging conspiratorial glances before they bent to the task of plotting their tour in earnest.
“How lovely,” Cecile cried as she understood.
Immediately she and Aunt Tremble began vying with one another to point out the sites of interest and importance, directing Btu’s attention to first this window then another. Their faces glowed with pride as they viewed their city through the eyes of a stranger and listened to Blu’s exclamations.
Monsieur’s tour carried them past Whitehall and St. James gardens, slowed for a glimpse of Pall Mall, and took a turn through Hyde Park, which was mercifully deserted, Katherine noted with vast relief. They stopped briefly before the obelisk commemorating the great fire of the last century, drove through the City and past the Old Exchange, passed in fits and starts before the Rag Fair and curved around the river, crowded with masts and wherries and river traffic. They rolled through Covent Garden, with Blu hanging out the window hoping for a glimpse of Isabelle, and pointed out the King’s Theater and the Duke’s Theater, and the market stalls.
At length, Mr. Jamison carried them to the Strand and halted his team before the New Exchange. Monsieur helped them alight and noted with pleasure their smiling faces and chattering voices. His satisfied smile did not fade until he turned to confront Lady Katherine. Then he lowered his chin and waited in silence to be admonished, but his bright eyes twinkled behind his goggles.
“The journey seemed rather lengthy today,” was all Katherine said. He smiled and bowed, then stepped to the back of the coach. Mouton, who had ridden behind in place of a footman, unstrapped Cecile’s chair and handed it down to Monsieur.
Blu waited on the thronged pavement before a row of elegantly appointed shops, her eyes bright as she eagerly watched the heavy flow of street and pedestrian traffic. Already she had begun to love London Town. She felt its pulsebeat beneath her high-heeled slippers, inhaled the stink and sweetness of its breath, heard the vibrancy of its voice in the coachmen’s shouts and the rise and fall of the conversations jostling around her.
If she hadn’t been absorbed in her blossoming love affair, she would have immediately spotted the Adam-tiler standing off from the coach, sizing Lady Katherine for a bleater. She saw him nod, but didn’t register the nod as a signal until his partner rushed forward and bumped Lady Katherine.
“You clumsy oaf!” Lady Katherine complained, scowling. Then her scowl shifted to dismay and she cried out. “My reticule! He stole my reticule! And—oh dear God—he took my ring!”
“Not your wedding ring!” Aunt Tremble gasped, her face turning ashen beneath a liberal coating of rouge.
“Yes, he—”
It was all Blu needed to hear. Before Lady Katherine could draw a second breath, she had grabbed up her skirts, kicked off her high-heeled slippers, and was sprinting up the Strand in pursuit of the bugger who had dared nick her mother’s purse and ring.
The corset cut her speed but even with this handicap her stockinged feet flew. She easily kept the dodger in sight as she slapped aside anyone obstructing the chase. A smile of satisfaction curved her lips as she saw she would catch him, and a burst of exhilaration freshened her wind. It felt so good to run, to feel her hat fly away and the breeze lift her hair. She was unaware that carriages slowed in the street
to witness the astonishment of a lady of quality pelting full tilt up the Strand, or that pedestrians halted in their steps and stared openmouthed after her flying petticoats.
The dodger dashed across the coach-clogged street thinking to elude her, but Blu followed hot on his heels. Heedless of the appalling risk, she ducked under the nose of a rearing horse and slipped between two skidding coaches, then, her eyes fixed on the dodger, her mind concentrated, she closed the distance.
Catching up, she lunged forward and grabbed his shoulders from behind, then hurled him flat against a shop wall. Instantly she was on him, slamming her gloved forearm across his windpipe, thus effectively pinning him to the wall. When he tried to throw her off, she growled a warning and increased the pressure against his throat.
“I’ll break yer scurvy neck, ye filthy pile of pig’s offal!”
The dodger stared into her blazing eyes before tears of pain blurred his own. Swallowing convulsively, or trying to, he hastily surrendered Lady Katherine’s reticule, throwing it to the pavement as if the embroidered silk suddenly scalded his fingers. Apparently he thought she was enough of a flat to release him to retrieve the reticule, but he was mistaken.
“I dint mean no harm, miss,” the dodger gasped when she failed to drop her arm. “‘Twas only a bit o’ foolery.”
“Flam!” Blu leaned so near their noses almost touched. She could smell his fear and the sour stink of his body. “Now I’ll have me mother’s ring, ye rotted stinking swine!”
Much as she expected, he raised both hands close to his face, palms open to show her he did not have the ring. Above her arm across his throat, he tried to smile, his eyes rounded and attempting innocence.
“About as innocent as a running sore!” she swore. Enjoying herself tremendously, Blu raised her left hand and pinched off his nostrils as she leaned against her forearm. Now all she had to do was wait. He couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t swallow.
In less than a minute, his month popped open and she released his nostrils to dig inside his mouth. With a cry of triumph, she pulled her mother’s ring from behind his back molars.
Lady Reluctant Page 22
