by Jo Goodman
Sherry held out his hand and waited until she slapped the letter opener smartly in his palm. To quell further temptation, he opened a drawer under the desktop and slipped it inside.
“It is merely a curiosity,” he said by way of explanation. He waved her back to the chair before he returned to his seat. “As I mentioned, it all happened with surprising speed. It is difficult to order the particulars in one’s mind.”
Cybelline did not think Sherry had ever experienced this difficulty before. He was maddeningly analytical. Aunt Georgia despaired that it was a flaw of character, though she cheerfully exploited it when Sherry’s assistance was required to solve some nettling problem. Eyes narrowing, she asked, “You were not foxed, were you?”
“No.” That she would ask, surprised him. “You know I do not drink to—”
“Excess,” she said. “Yes, I do know. Clouds the mind; dulls the faculties. Bad form and so on.”
It pricked him a little to have his views on the subject repeated to him in such a dismissive fashion, but other than a fractional lift of one of his eyebrows, he made no response. In any event, Cybelline was honing the point of her discourse and would not be easily stopped.
“I was wondering about the influence of Miss Dumont. She is a person known to invite—”
“Excess?” Sherry inquired mildly.
“Excitement.” She cleared her throat and plunged on. “I realize you think it improper for me to raise the subject of your mistress, but I—”
“Improper and distasteful.”
“Very well,” she said, accepting the quiet reproach as due. “Improper and distasteful. Still, it does not mitigate the necessity of plain speaking. I love you to distraction, Sherry, and I would have you do so much better for yourself than Miss Dumont. By reputation she embraces all the things you despise. She has no heart, Sherry. Opportunity, not principle, guides her.”
“At the risk of encouraging you to continue swimming in these dangerous waters, Cyb, permit me to say that I have no interest in Miss Dumont’s heart, and I would not be flattered if she were to attach herself to mine. You are wrong, though, that she lacks principle, and correct that she sets her course as opportunity presents itself. They are not mutually exclusive.”
“I cannot like her influence,” Cybelline said tartly.
There was a moment’s pause, then Sherry gave a shout of laughter. “I confess I have been slow off the mark, but I see your argument has nothing at all to do with Miss Dumont’s influence. My ignominious brush with footpads is only an excuse for you to once again enumerate the reasons Miss Anne Meadows must be of interest to me.”
Cybelline’s blush made denial a hopeless defense. “You have admitted yourself that she is passingly lovely.”
“I believe I said she is lovely in passing.”
“You paid her the great compliment of not being without intelligence.”
“As are even God’s lowliest creatures.”
“When you partnered her at Almack’s you stated quite convincingly that she was accomplished.”
“At counting the steps,” he said. “Not in their execution.”
Cybelline tried to pin Sherry back with a flinty, accusing glance, but it was useless. His smile melted her resolve to press on. “I shall be wary of all compliments from you from this point forward.”
“Why? I say precisely what I mean.”
“But not all you mean. I am understanding therein lies an important distinction.”
One corner of his mouth lifted as he regarded her with approval. “You are also not without intelligence.”
She laughed and reached for her bonnet. “I will take my leave before you toss more insults in my direction.”
Sherry stood. “It was good of you to come. I would have called on you later today, you can depend upon it.”
“I know,” she said softly, knotting the ribbons to one side of her chin. “But the on dit was as frightening as it was delicious, and I could not wait to have the whole of it from you.” She hesitated. “You will be careful, won’t you, Sherry? I do not think I could bear it if you came to harm.”
He rounded the desk and went to stand before her. He took her hands in his and gave them a small shake. “Look at me, Cybelline.” When she did, he set about easing her fears. “Miss Dumont is in no way at fault for what happened last night. The theatre was my idea as was the walk afterward. I was bracing myself for the inevitable bad end to the evening, for I was determined to break things off with her. Now, are you quite satisfied? I have told you more about my private affairs than I intended, and I am telling you not because you asked but because I abhor the notion that either you or Aunt Georgia will congratulate yourself for influencing exactly this end.”
Sherry did not miss his sister’s small start, though she was making an admirable attempt to school it. “There,” he said, amused and accusing at once. “I can see that you will take credit notwithstanding my efforts to the contrary. I advise caution, however, because I have not made the break yet and might be moved by purely spiteful motives to reconsider.”
“You would not,” she said certainly. “You have not a spiteful inclination in your head.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “but you would do well not to plant the seed there.”
Standing on tiptoe, Cybelline raised her head and kissed his cheek. It was easy for her to forget what a tall, impressive figure he cut. Reaching for him reminded her. He gently steadied her until she was grounded again.
“Will you come to dinner this evening, Sherry?” she asked.
He picked up her shawl and fixed it about her shoulders. “I am playing cards at the club, then I have a business matter to which I must attend.”
She realized he was speaking of Miss Dumont. Strange, she thought, that one’s arrangement with a mistress was naught but a business matter. Was it always thus? she wondered. Or always thus for Sherry?
Sherry did not like the speculative look that came into his sister’s eye. He gently took her elbow and steered her toward the door. When she was moving briskly on her own, he let her go.
Cybelline did not pause until she was standing on the threshold. She did not turn completely but rather glanced over her shoulder at him. “Do you know, Sherry, that I will think Miss Dumont the veriest fool for giving you up.”
Francine Dumont was no one’s fool. Sherry had considered this carefully when choosing the piece of jewelry that would serve to end their association in an amicable fashion. He counted himself as fortunate that he had not been robbed last night. The hapless footpad might have made off with the velvet-lined box he had carried with him to the theatre and the emerald earbobs that were the box’s valuable contents. The loss would hardly have been worth his life, though he was not certain that Francine would not have thought so.
He lay in bed, sated, if not precisely satisfied, and stared at the ceiling. At the bedside, the candle flame flickered, creating the play of light and shadow across the plasterwork that claimed his attention.
“You are zinking about last night, perhaps?” Francine Dumont propped herself on one elbow and regarded Sherry’s profile. “What is it, Sheridan? You have deep thoughts, non?”
“No.”
“Zen not so decent thoughts, eh?” she teased, her accented English thickening. “D’accord. I have a fondness for your not-so-decent thoughts. You will like mine.” She placed two fingers on his bare chest and began to walk them slowly toward his groin. She frowned when he caught her wrist just as it slipped beneath the sheet. “Qu’est-ce que c’est? Are you not well?”
Sherry released her wrist. “This is the last time I will visit here.”
“Est-ce que c’est vrai? Zis is true?”
“Yes.”
She sat up. Her breasts lifted invitingly as she tossed her hair over her shoulder. She noted with some satisfaction that his eyes followed the movement, and she stretched deliberately, arching her back to entice him with her rosy, beaded nipples.
“I never said y
ou were not without your charms,” he told her.
The absence of inflection in his voice warned her she was defeated before she could fire the first salvo. To salvage a measure of pride, she said, “I can make you want me.”
“Never doubt it.” His cock was stirring now. Leaving her was not about what she could give him but about what she could not. He did not try to explain this to her; she would not understand. Indeed, his arrangement with her came about in no small part because she could not understand. She was not complicated that way, and he did not desire a complicated life. A straightforward agreement was what he required and precisely what he received. To that end, it was very good. Very, very good.
Sherry watched her flatten the generous line of her mouth. “Tu es agitée,” he said softly. “Je comprends, et je regrette.”
“Merci.”
Chuckling deeply at the back of his throat, Sherry pushed himself upright. “You will be wise to spend some of your earnings on French lessons. I said that you are annoyed and that I understood and that I’m sorry. It was not precisely a compliment.”
“Then you shouldn’t make it sound like one,” she snapped.
Sherry smiled now. Her lamentably accented English was noticeable for its absence. “The trickery was always beneath you, Fanny.”
“Oh, do not call me that. I detest that name.”
“It is a perfectly fine name. Is it really yours?”
She reached for the silken robe that lay at the foot of the bed and slipped it on. “Yes,” she said, biting off the single syllable as she knotted her belt. “Not Francine or Francesca or even Francis. Fanny.”
“And your last name? Is it Dumont?” He actually blinked at the glare she served up. “Oh no,” he said, thinking it through. “Never say . . . du mont . . . mountain . . .” He was tempted to raise a hand to ward her off. He could not acquit her of wanting to scratch out his eyes. “Hill,” he said. “You were born Fanny Hill.”
Sherry did have to move quickly then, for she threw a pillow at him and was scrambling for her brush on the bedside table. He ducked when it came flying at his head. “Have off! A truce.” This would cost him dearly, he suspected, but it was worth every farthing he’d pay out. He regarded her almost as warily as she regarded him. “Finished?”
Fanny relaxed her grip on the mirror she held. It was a favorite of hers, and she would not have liked to see it broken. That, more than Sheridan’s call for a truce, decided her. “I am not that Fanny Hill,” she said smartly. “She was . . . she was . . . common.”
“Of course, you are not.” He did not point out that John Cleland wrote Memoires of a Woman of Pleasure more than fifty years earlier. He wondered if she had read the book or if someone had told her about the erotic adventures of its heroine, Fanny Hill. He decided it was the latter, else she would not have characterized the fictional Miss Hill as common. It had always seemed to him that Fanny Hill was unburdened by regrets and liberated by pleasure, which made her a decidedly uncommon woman in any time. “I understand that you would not approve of comparisons,” he said, “but she is not a woman without her virtues.”
Fanny’s suspicious glance did not waver, but she did finally set the mirror down. “You will not tell anyone?”
“A gentleman doesn’t.”
Inexplicably, Fanny thought she would cry. She hardened herself against that urge and moved off her side of the great bed. “I will want the house for at least another month, perhaps two.”
Sherry found his drawers and put them on. He was of the unwavering opinion that negotiations were better conducted with one’s trousers on. “I am willing to give you three, but I am unconvinced you will need so much time to find another protector.”
“Oh,” she said, interested in spite of herself. “You have heard something?”
“Something,” he repeated. “You are acquainted with Makepeace?”
“Sir Charles Makepeace?”
“The very one.”
“He is looking for an arrangement?”
“I cannot say if that is so, but surely how it turns out has something to do with you. I know that he is at loose ends.”
She considered this. “A man never does well in that state.”
“My thoughts exactly. We are at our most vulnerable.”
“Not you, Sheridan. You are ruthless in your own fashion. I do not believe you have ever been at a loose end. You would cut it off rather than have it exposed.”
She was closer to the mark than he had thought possible. Before she made the logical leap and realized that was precisely what he was doing now, he pointed to his frock coat. “I brought you a gift.” He saw her eyes brighten and knew there were no more thoughts of loose ends. Avarice was perhaps her most honest emotion, and he did not fault her for it. He watched her search the coat and laugh delightedly when she found the box.
“Oh, Sherry,” she said on a breath of sound, awed by the emeralds. “What beautiful jewels!”
He crossed the room to stand beside her. “Regardes-moi, mon petite.” He touched the tip of her chin and tilted her enchantingly greedy face toward him. “Francine Dumont would say it just so: Quels jolis bijoux!”
It required only three days for Sherry to set his other affairs to right. None of them involved a woman, so choosing presents as carefully as he would choose his words did not delay his departure for the country. He canceled all his engagements for the next month, sending his regrets unaccompanied by any explanation. He knew the wags would have it that he was leaving because he had killed that cutpurse. There was never any chance of turning that story, and Sherry did not even try. He returned to the site of the failed robbery for clues about the thief, but no one he suspected of having information would speak to him long.
The gangs from the meanest streets of Holborn, the ones that roamed Covent and Vauxhall, and the pupils from the schools for thievery that were instituted in St. Giles-in-the-Fields and St. Martin’s, were a closed bunch. Talking to them was a challenge, for when they did not wish to be understood, they spoke in a cant that was impenetrable to his ear. It was English, to be sure, but the phrasing and meter was more foreign to him than French was to Fanny Hill.
Inquiries about the thief, even the most inoffensive ones about his health, were met as often by blank stares as they were by suspicious ones. There was no one he could give money to for the man’s care. There were plenty who would have taken it; indeed, he had to check his pockets constantly to be certain he still had it, but he had no faith that his sovereigns would ever be used to improve the man’s care if he lived or provide a Christian burial if he didn’t.
In the end there was nothing for it but to cut the loose end. Miss Hill was correct in her judgment that he had no use for them. It was just as she had said: he was ruthless in his own fashion.
It mattered not a whit to Sherry that the ton assumed he was running from something. The truth was that he was running to it, and he had made the decision a full month before the evening at Covent Garden. Arriving at the decision had actually led to that night at the opera, not the reverse.
London never held the appeal for him that it did for so many others in his set. He liked the card play well enough, the camaraderie of the clubs, the politics in or out of Parliament, the women in or out of bed, the occasional ball, and less occasionally a turn on the floor, but the carousel-like quality of it all bored him near to madness. He kept the house because it belonged in the family, and he could not ignore all the responsibilities of his position in town, but it was only at Granville that he could renew his spirit.
He needed to breathe unfetid air, paint as the mood seized him, ride hell-bent-for-leather across green fields, bury his hands deep in the fecund soil of the farm, and renew acquaintances at his leisure, not on demand.
Sherry stood with his back to the library entrance, making a last inspection of the shelves to see if he had missed a volume or two that he would enjoy taking with him. The carriage had been drawn up to the front of the house, and Ke
arns would arrive soon to inform him that all had been made ready.
The commotion in the hallway did not make him turn toward it. The brief attention he gave it was to suppose his housekeeper would see to it. Mrs. Ponsonby knew her duties and knew what he liked. There had never been anything she couldn’t manage.
The shout, when it came, gave him some concern, but he let it pass. He did not recognize the voice. It had a youthful timbre and all the outrage that only youth can fully express. It actually made him smile. A lad from the kitchen, no doubt, unhappy with some duty he was expected to perform and too foolish to realize Mrs. Ponsonby would never let him out of the kitchen again.
There was another shout, more of a cry this time. A different voice, though. And then another cry, yes, definitely a cry this time. Mrs. Ponsonby, he decided. A yelp, a squeal, caterwauling, cursing, and still more shouts, some of it sounding as if spoken in a foreign tongue.
Unable to imagine the thing that Mrs. Ponsonby could not manage, Sherry turned and walked slowly to the open door. His presence and a single raised eyebrow had the desired effect: immediate quiet. The problem was that it did not last nearly long enough. In the space of a single heartbeat, three of the scruffiest street urchins he had ever beheld pushed past Mrs. Ponsonby and charged at him. He neatly stepped aside so when they skidded to a halt they were trapped in the library.
“I’ll send for the authorities,” Mrs. Ponsonby said.
“A few moments,” Sherry told her. “I’ll tell you when.” He was already backing into the library when Mrs. Ponsonby’s lower jaw sagged. He firmly shut the door on her gaping countenance and turned toward his uninvited guests. As he suspected, they all began speaking at once, and he didn’t understand a word of it.
Two
Sherry learned quickly that a raised brow was ineffective with these young squatters. They’d already seen the limits of its use in the hallway and were apparently willing to take their chances that the other eyebrow was similarly without consequence.
