Lady Windermere's Lover

by Miranda Neville

  “I brought you this,” he said, handing her the cup, which she accepted with an avid thank-you. “Lady Ashfield. What a pleasure to see you.”

  The countess looked at him through a bejeweled lorgnette. “About time you came home, Windermere.”

  “I think so too. I didn’t know you were acquainted with Lady Ashfield, my dear.”

  “She was kind enough to invite me to a dinner at her house,” Cynthia said. “Quite the grandest event I attended in London before today.”

  “Thank you for your kindness to my wife,” Damian said, surprised and touched. It occurred to him that the Radcliffes, for all their vaunted friendship, had never taken the trouble. They should have done so, for his sake.

  “Don’t thank me, young man,” she said scornfully. “I invited her as Anne Brotherton’s chaperone.”

  Cynthia gulped her coffee and set the cup down with a shudder. Apparently she did not like it sweet. Add it to the list of things he had wrong about her. Damian took her hand and rested it on his arm. “Quite absurd to think of her as a chaperone, isn’t it. She is much too young and pretty.”

  “Absurd because she has no idea how to behave! She let Miss Brotherton run around town with that rogue Marcus Lithgow and then, against her guardian’s express wishes, took her off to the country. I’d like to know where Anne is. You can’t just misplace an heiress. It simply isn’t done.” The old witch’s gray curls quivered beneath her turban. “What have you done with Anne and why did you abandon her?”

  Cynthia gripped his arm. “She is spending Christmas in Hampshire with the Duke and Duchess of Castleton. I had planned to do so also, but I came back to town to greet Windermere.”

  “Hm. There’s something fishy going on here.”

  Lady Ashfield might be right. Cynthia seemed uneasy and Damian didn’t think it was just the presence of the old countess, unnerving as anyone might find her. “I am quite sure there is not. Didn’t you just receive a letter from Caro, my dear?”

  She cast him a grateful look, grasped the rope he offered, and lied like a diplomat. “Caro and the duke are both in excellent health and delighted to have Anne with them.”

  “And Marcus Lithgow?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Lady Ashfield harrumphed again but there wasn’t much she could do, short of shaking the truth out of Cynthia. To do that she’d have to go through him. “I don’t know what your father would have had to say. Or your poor sainted mother.”

  “I can’t see why either would have an opinion either way on the whereabouts of Miss Brotherton. I have no doubt that my mother would have found my wife as delightful as I do.”

  “Thank you,” Cynthia said, after Lady Ashfield had sailed off, thoroughly routed.

  “You looked in need of rescue.” He held on to her arm when she tried to move away. “I’m just curious; is the heiress really missing?”

  “She planned to go to Castleton. I just haven’t heard that she arrived.” Her mouth pursed into the little rosebud he recognized as mischievous. “Yet.”

  “What about Lithgow?”

  “I don’t know exactly where he is,” she said evasively.

  “If the pair of them have eloped to Scotland, Lady Ashfield will never speak to me again.”

  “I doubt you’ll be so lucky. Anne would never do anything as scandalous.”

  “Marcus would.” Though he had no particular grievance with Lithgow, who had not been present the night of the great disaster, he’d cast him off as a matter of principle. Viscount Lithgow was not a respectable member of society. “You seem to have made a habit of tangling with my disreputable former companions.”

  He intended the remark idly, but it cooled the temperature by several degrees and killed their lighthearted badinage. She pulled away from him and would have stalked off had it not been for Lady Ashfield, who had sailed around the room, changed her tack, and was coming in to launch another broadside. Cynthia stepped back to his side and they stood arm in arm like the comfortable married couple they weren’t.

  “That woman terrifies me,” she said.

  “She terrifies everyone.”

  “Either you’re very brave, or good at hiding your fright.”

  “I’ve tangled with worse. The courts of Europe are home to many grand duchesses. Lady Ashfield isn’t a bad old thing at heart. She merely thinks she knows everything and that she is always right.”

  “Why are there so many people like that?” she said with feeling. “I try to keep an open mind.”

  “Let’s leave,” Damian said. “I don’t think I can stand this place a minute longer.”

  “Don’t you want to stay longer with your dear friends?” Cynthia said, then realized it was foolish to argue with a suggestion that so exactly matched her own fervent desire. Though the demands of the day had challenged her self-assurance and social graces, she thought she had done well with the Radcliffes and the other guests. Her husband was responsible for buffeting her emotions and making her testy. He’d bewildered her with his mixture of consideration and disdain.

  “I will be glad to go home,” she said, “if you don’t think it unmannerly to leave so early.”

  “Frankly, I don’t care.”

  As he talked his way smoothly through the obvious displeasure of their hostess, Cynthia maintained an unyielding smile and wondered what was coming next, scolding or fence-mending. The atmosphere within the dark confines of the carriage seemed thick and tense.

  “Your French is excellent,” he said. Goodness gracious! He had actually noticed.

  “You ordered me to work on the language. It was one of the reasons I came to London, to find a teacher for French conversation.”

  “I commend your obedience to my wishes.” His tone was dry. She braced herself for the scolding that was surely imminent. “You did well today,” he continued in a softer tone. “Very well indeed. I would venture to say that no lady could have handled herself better, even those with far more experience that yourself. Your management of the grand duchess was masterly.”

  “Truly?” she said, surprised at his praise. “All I did was have a very ordinary conversation with her, such as I might enjoy with any new acquaintance.”

  “If it always works this well, I suggest you continue to treat imperious members of royal families as though they were ordinary people.”

  “I was quite nervous about meeting her,” she admitted. “Luckily Prince Rostrov coached me in the proper method of address. I don’t generally call people Your Serene Highness.”

  “Grand Duchess Olga might be able to forgive London merchants for failing to bring the entire contents of their warehouses to her hotel, but failing to adequately Serene her might have led to war.”

  The word warehouse put her nerves on edge. If he intended to torment her with his silence, he achieved his goal. “I had no idea I was so important.”

  “I was joking, you know.”

  “So was I.”

  “You seem nervous, but there is no need. Tonight I am proud of my choice of bride. You would be an ornament to any embassy.”

  “How gratifying. For you.”

  Was he never going to bring up what had happened yesterday? He sat so still, as perfectly turned out as when he’d left his valet’s hands, unruffled by the stresses of the evening, the swaying of the carriage, or, apparently, the perceived peccadilloes of his wife.

  Instead of giving her a chance to explain, he was congratulating himself for choosing her, the bride he’d taken virtually sight unseen as the price of an estate. He hadn’t thought much of her a year ago but she now passed muster and he was proud of his choice, as though the credit was all his. He didn’t care that it had taken hours of painstaking reading of French texts, as well as long conversations with her tutor, to reach her current fluency. He hadn’t even asked how she’d done it. Did he think she’d gone from dowdy companion to fashionable countess with a wave of the magic wand? It took work to look this good. He hadn’t said a word about Beaulieu an
d had no idea of the care she’d lavished on the place. Even Windermere House had been spruced up.

  True, she’d introduced a few ugly and overpriced objects to the London house. All right, many extremely ugly and shockingly expensive items. But Damian Lewis, Earl of Windermere deserved a little teasing for his horrible treatment. And it had been in a good cause.

  The time had come to tell the truth. And if he didn’t like it, too bad. She refused to be ashamed.

  “Damian,” she said. “I didn’t steal your money for myself.”

  “No,” he said. “I guessed as much. I may not have been an ideal husband, but I don’t believe I have been a miserly one. I left orders that you could spend what you wished.”

  “On gowns and furnishings, yes. But not on other things.”

  His voice hardened. “Not on your lover.”

  “He is not . . .” What was the use? He wouldn’t believe her. “Julian introduced me, but the arrangement was between Hamble and me alone.”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  She sensed weariness in him, perhaps a softening of his stance. “I would like to explain myself, but I’d rather show you. First we need to go home and collect something. I think a couple of stout footmen wouldn’t be a bad idea either.”

  “Why?”

  “We are going to an insalubrious part of town.”

  Chapter 17

  To Damian’s certain knowledge, London was the biggest and noisiest metropolis in the world. It wasn’t quiet on the evening of Christmas Day, but the traffic that usually clogged the thoroughfares of the west end of town and the City was light and their progress brisk. Damian gave up trying to interrogate his wife about their destination, or the contents of the hampers strapped onto the back of the carriage. The whole errand seemed remarkably unwise but he was in the mood to humor her. And he wanted an explanation for her fraudulent ruse. Past Bishopsgate the streets became darker, narrower, and meaner.

  “Don’t worry,” Cynthia said. “We’re almost there and I’ve never had any trouble at Flowers Street. The people who live there look out for each other.”

  Damian hoped so. The street was so narrow the coach barely fit and a fast escape would be out of the question. His coachman, he noted, knew the way and stopped at the right house without being told the address. Other than helping her down from the coach, he let Cynthia direct the operation. One of the footmen held up a lantern while she knocked on the freshly painted door of a house in markedly smarter condition than its neighbors.

  “Merry Christmas, Aggie,” Cynthia said to a young woman with a babe in her arms.

  The girl, barely more than a child herself, beamed. “Merry Christmas, my lady! We didn’t expect to see you today.”

  “I meant to come tomorrow but decided to bring your gifts now. His Lordship has offered me company. Let me present Aggie Smith, my lord. And this little angel is her daughter, Hannah. May I?” She took the little bundle from the girl and kissed the infant’s nose. “I believe she has grown since last week, Aggie. And become even prettier.”

  “How do you do, Mrs. Smith,” Damian said with a nod.

  The girl managed a wobbly bob of a curtsey and a noise something between a choke and a giggle, the latter perhaps inspired by his use of the honorary missus. He’d be very surprised if Aggie Smith, who wore no ring, was married.

  “Will you ask the men to bring in the hampers, my lord?” Cynthia asked. “Put them on the floor in here.” She walked into a room in which a chorus of female and childish voices arose, along with the cry of another baby.

  The inhabitants of Flowers Street might look after their own, but Damian wasn’t going to trust them, after dark, with the Earl of Windermere’s coach and horses. Leaving the driver and one of the footmen to guard his property, he helped the other haul in the hampers. Landing on the floor with a pair of thumps, they were at once engulfed by a mass of shrieking bodies while his wife, still holding Aggie’s baby, laughingly protested.

  Damian decided to enforce the protest. “Stop! Let’s have a little order.”

  The seething mass withdrew and resolved itself into half a dozen children ranging from a couple barely toddling to a skinny boy on the verge of adolescence. They gazed at him with open mouths and an appropriate hint of alarm. “Tha’s right,” yelled another young woman, slightly older than Aggie but also burdened with an infant. “You wait for ’Er Ladyship.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Cynthia said. “I know you are all anxious to see what I have brought, but first you must be introduced to His Lordship and wish him a merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas, ’Is Lordship,” the youngsters cried in dutiful unison, their eyes never shifting from the baskets.

  Damian tried to follow the introductions. In addition to Aggie, there were five grown women, though two of them were sadly young to be mothers, and another, younger still, was pregnant. The eldest was presented as Mrs. Finsbury, a widow with four children. No other husbands, dead or alive, were mentioned. As the children named themselves he noted that the room, which occupied most of the ground floor, was clean and freshly painted, simply but comfortably appointed with strong, practical furniture.

  “Very good, children,” Cynthia said, once the formalities were concluded. “Did you all have your supper already?”

  “Yes, but I’m still hungry,” said the oldest boy. “I’m always hungry.”

  “I wonder if there’s anything to eat in here. What do you think?”

  “Look inside!”

  “Open it!”

  “If someone will take Hannah from me, I’ll see if there’s something in here that will help those hunger pangs.” Aggie retrieved the baby, and Cynthia blew the little creature a kiss. Falling to her knees and throwing aside the lid of the first basket, she looked as adorably excited as the others and almost as young. She lifted out a cloth-covered dish and took a deep breath. “Mm. This smells good. What do you think it is?”

  The children shrieked with joy.

  “Cake!”

  “Roast beef!”

  “Pie!”

  Pretending it was so heavy she could barely lift it, she carried it over to a table at the far side of the room and removed the cover. “Pie it is. Mincemeat, I think. Is it big enough to fill you up, Tom?”

  “I never seen one so big,” the boy replied, “but I bet I could eat it all.”

  “Let’s see what else we have.” She produced bread, cakes, jellies, sweetmeats, cheese, and a huge ham. She continued to tease the youngsters, showing unabashed delight at their reactions and a playfulness that enchanted him. He wanted to snatch her up, twirl her around, and kiss her until neither of them could breathe. His heart expanded with a spirit of Christmas that had been singularly absent at the Radcliffes’ lavish dinner.

  Soon the table groaned with enough food, in Damian’s inexpert estimation, to feed the household for several days. The children, though eager to fall on the feast, held back. None was plump but they appeared to be well fed and decently dressed. Thanks to the machinations of Lady Windermere and Mr. Hamble, he assumed.

  The former, having consulted the mothers, bade each choose one thing to eat. “We’ll keep the rest until tomorrow when you will enjoy a big dinner.”

  Under the watchful eye of one designated mother, they made their selections. Damian began to distinguish between them, and find them interesting. Tom was jealous of his prerogatives as the eldest and kept the middle ones in order, while making sure that the youngest got their due. The two middle ones, both girls, seemed to be the same age, perhaps twins though they didn’t look alike. They whispered and giggled a lot, drawing the scorn of Tom. All were united in adoration for plump little Pudding, a child of indeterminate sex who waddled about with an infectious toothy grin. To a boy and girl they wore expressions of ecstatic bliss as they tasted their carefully chosen sweetmeats, savoring each morsel as though they might never eat again. Damian tried to remember when he’d been happy about something so simple.
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  If the children had temporarily forgotten the second hamper, Cynthia had not. She produced some greenery and a bright sprig of holly, which she arranged on the mantelpiece over the small fireplace. By this time the children were ready to take an interest in what else would emerge from the casket of wonders.

  He watched the ceremony from the fringe, as his wife distributed her largesse with unaffected grace and obvious pleasure. She’d taken trouble to select gifts that were both useful and suited to each individual. All ages received warm clothing, and cloth to make more. For the children there were small toys and books, received with more cries of rapture.

  For Cynthia, he observed, charity was not only about giving money. It was warm and personal. She cared deeply about these waifs and strays she’d taken under her wing. She hadn’t merely spent the last year shopping and visiting and consorting with the Duke of Denford. His wife had a whole life he knew nothing about and wished he did.

  She seemed to have a particular bond with Aggie and her baby. When everyone else had received their gifts, Cynthia unwrapped a silver tissue package to reveal a blob of fine lace.

  “It’s for Hannah,” she said with a rueful smile, placing the tiny cap on the baby’s head. “I know it’s impractical, Aggie, but the minute I saw it I had to buy it. I couldn’t resist. Doesn’t she look perfect?”

  Damian stepped closer to look at the little red face in its white frill and at his wife’s tender gaze. “She looks like Lady Ashfield,” he whispered in Cynthia’s ear. She gave a repressed snort at the private joke and elbowed him in the ribs.

  Aggie fingered the lace with reverence. “It’s too fine for the streets around here, my lady. She’ll only wear it at home.”

  “You and the other Spitalfields weavers make the finest silks in the world,” Cynthia argued. “Why should you not enjoy wearing beautiful things too?”