Improper Ladies

by Amanda McCabe

  She would get to see him again tomorrow? Caroline’s heart gave an unwilling little leap of expectation. She quickly reminded herself that this was strictly business, and said, “Yes, quite convenient. I live here at the Golden Feather, but you will have to knock at the side door.”

  “Very well.” Lord Lyndon looked about at the shambles of the gaming room. The footmen had cleared out most of the quarreling patrons, but tables were upended, flowers and cards thick on the floor, and a couple of gilt chairs were broken. The elegant patrons of the “members only” Golden Feather had behaved as if they were in some pub in Whitechapel.

  “Good evening, then, Mrs. Archer,” he said. “If I dare call it a good evening.”

  Caroline laughed, suddenly exhausted and giddy. Perhaps it had not been a good evening, strictly speaking, but it had certainly been a different one. Not the usual evening in the gaming establishment at all. A handsome man and a brawl, all in one night. It was suddenly too much. She longed for her bed, for peaceful sleep.

  “Yes. Good evening, Lord Lyndon.”

  He bowed over her hand again, then turned and left the chaotic room. Caroline watched his tall, dignified figure until the front door closed behind him. Then she knelt down with a sigh and began to pick up some of the rubbish on the floor.

  Tomorrow. Lord Lyndon had promised to come back tomorrow.

  She laughed again, as silly as a schoolgirl. Oh, this was bad. She should not be all calf eyed over some handsome lordship, not when a new, bright future lay before her. It could only ever lead to trouble.

  She still couldn’t help but laugh, just once more, as she thought of his lovely blue eyes.

  “What were you thinking of, Harry?” Justin looked grimly across the darkened carriage to where his brother huddled in the comer. They had left Freddie and his lady friend and Mrs. Scott at their respective houses, and were now alone.

  And it was a long ride back to Seward House.

  Harry pressed his handkerchief against his nose and said sullenly, “Whatever do you mean, Justin? You sound as if I just committed murder or something!”

  “And you sound as if this evening were just a harmless lark.”

  “It was! Sort of. That old monkey Burleigh insulted Mrs. Scott. A gentleman would never let such an insult stand.”

  “A gentleman would never get into a public fight as you did, young pup. You made an absolute cake of yourself in front of dozens of people.”

  “It was not worse than any number of the hums you got into. At least I’ve never fought a duel. And remember that opera dancer who actually came to Seward House one night and threw rocks at the windows and shouted for you for hours?”

  Justin winced. He did indeed remember those duels and that opera dancer. They had not been his proudest moments. “I was once as young and foolish as you, Harry. But I learned my lesson, and I learned it the hard way. I had thought you might be spared what I went through, that things could be easier for you.”

  “So send me to India, then!” Harry burst out. “How hard could it be there?”

  “How hard could it be? You cannot even imagine, not living this sheltered English life. There are snakes there as long as your leg, venomous enough to fell ten horses with one strike. They curl up in the garden and slip into the house by night; you never know where they might be, where you could fall over them. There are natives who would just as soon kill you as look at you. Bandits who waylay travelers and strangle them with red scarves in the name of their goddess. Mosquitoes whine incessantly at night. The wet heat drains away all energy, all thought. And it is terribly lonely. There are no gaming hells, no racetracks, and very few Englishwomen.”

  Justin leaned his head back against the leather squabs as he fell silent, drained by his recitation, by the memory of all those things. India had been those things, true, and the thought of them made him shudder. But it also held its own strange enchantment. Especially the nights.

  He recalled those nights, so warm, so full of the exotic scents of spices and sandalwood and strange flowers. Near his bungalow there had been the ruins of a Hindu temple, filled with bizarre, entrancing sculptures. He remembered how the moonlight would fall like pale, shimmering silk over this temple, how sitar music would echo off the ancient walls.

  Mrs. Archer reminded him of India. She possessed that same strange, mysterious enchantment, the same exotic, fragrant allure....

  He shook his head fiercely to clear it of such thoughts. Women like Mrs. Archer, as lovely as she was, held no place in his life now. His focus had to be on his family and his proper place in life. He could not be distracted by lovely owners of gaming hells, or the siren song of India and all it stood for.

  Harry, who had fallen silent after Justin’s outburst, said, “Well, I thought all India teaches is how to be a stuffed-up old prig. You sound just like Father, Justin. And you used to be such fun.” The words were meant to sound defiant, but they came out instead sounding uncertain and very, very young.

  Harry was scared, Justin could tell. And so he should be.

  The carriage came to a halt outside Seward House, and a footman hurried to open the door and lower the steps.

  “Go to bed now, Harry,” Justin said, so unutterably tired that he could scarce hold up his head. It had been a very long night, and he was carrying the weight of knowing how much he had let his brother down. “We will discuss all this in the morning.”

  Harry started to climb down from the carriage, then paused, glancing back at Justin uncertainly. “You ... you won’t tell Mother about this, will you, Justin?”

  Justin closed his eyes. Lord, had he ever felt this weary before? “That remains to be seen, doesn’t it, Harry?”

  Chapter Four

  It was quite an unseasonably warm day. It was almost summer, but Caroline could not recall it being this warm until July at least. She opened the windows in her small office, letting in the noise from the street as well as what meager breeze there was. She even went so far as to take off her shoes and stockings. Deeply improper, of course, but who was there to see? Far better to be comfortable.

  Caroline sat back down at her desk, where the accounts waited for her attention. She had received two good offers to buy the Golden Feather, and she wanted to be sure all her finances were in order before she accepted one and started to pack her trunks. She was in a great hurry to settle the sale and be gone, but somehow her mind would not stay on numbers today.

  Her thoughts kept drifting away, to last night—and Lord Lyndon.

  With a sigh, Caroline tucked her left foot under her right knee and absently rubbed at the thick scar on her ankle. She had had it for years; she and Lawrence had quarreled rather actively one night. He had broken a vase in his drunken rage, and she had accidentally tripped and cut her ankle deeply on the shards—and lost the baby she carried inside of her. It still itched on hot days or when her mind kept going over and over one subject without ceasing.

  Caroline frowned. Why she would be so wrapped up in thoughts of Lord Lyndon she did not know. She had met dozens of men since Lawrence’s death. Handsome men, rich men, witty men. Some of them, anyway, mixed among the ridiculous fools. Lord Lyndon was handsome, of course, and rather exotic with his India-dark skin and sad smile. And he was probably quite wealthy, if his large ruby stickpin, his fine carriage, and the way his brother threw money about were any indication. But really, how could he be different from any of those other men?

  Oh, but he is, her secret, deepest inner voice whispered.

  Caroline sighed again and stretched out her foot to prop it on the desk. Her blasted inner voice was right, as usual. Lyndon was different from the other men she had met, as different as a winter snow-storm from a hot summer afternoon. He had not been just rich and handsome; he had been kind.

  He had spoken to her as if she were a person, a lady, who was due courtesy. He had not propositioned her or leered at her or peered ostentatiously down her bodice with a quizzing glass. Instead he apologized for his brother�
��s bad behavior and offered to pay for the damages without any goading or arguing at all.

  Most unusual.

  Caroline reached out to rub at her scar. Very few men these past four years had bothered to speak politely to her. Manners, coupled with Lyndon’s undeniable good looks, were a heady thing.

  And that was surely all it was. Probably when he called today, if he called, his behavior would be very different. He would resort to typical maleness, would behave as all men did—in their own best interests.

  She laid her hand flat against the scar.

  Well, she could not afford to be distracted by any man, polite or not, no matter how handsome. She had to look after her sister, to rebuild their family, their lives. In a few short days, she would be respectable again, would go out into the world as Mrs. Caroline Aldritch again. She couldn’t let a pair of handsome blue eyes threaten that, not even for a second.

  Caroline swung her foot back to the floor and reached for the nearest ledger book. She had work to do, and nearly all the morning was already wasted.

  But she had barely totaled up two columns of sums when a knock sounded at the door and Mary stuck her white-capped head inside. She, too, wore a half-mask, as she always did when admitting callers.

  “There’s a caller, madam,” she said. “A man.”

  Despite her resolution of only moments ago, Caroline felt an excitement, an expectation, fluttering in her throat. It was he, Lyndon, it had to be!

  She took a deep breath and closed the book. “Did he give his name, Mary?”

  Mary handed her a card in reply.

  Caroline looked down at the small, cream-colored square. In black print, it read, “Justin Seward, Earl of Lyndon.”

  Justin. So that was his name. Justin Seward. It sounded rather familiar, as if she had heard it somewhere before. But probably that was only because his brother, or someone else, must have mentioned it in passing. If he had been in India for years, surely he would not have been in the papers recently.

  “I told him you never accept callers before luncheon,” Mary sniffed, interrupting these ruminations. “But he said that he is expected.”

  “Indeed he is. His brother was the one who caused such a fuss last night, and he offered to pay for the damages,” Caroline answered, carefully laying aside the card.

  “Well! That is a first, madam.”

  “Yes, isn’t it?” Caroline stood up and went to fetch the wig and mask that lay on a small table under the mirror. “Just give me five minutes, Mary, and then send him in.”

  After Mary left, Caroline went through the familiar motions of tucking her own cropped blond strands under the red wig, styled today in a simple upsweep. She tied on a blue satin mask and knelt down to retrieve her shoes from beneath the desk.

  She debated putting her stockings back on, as any proper lady would, but then decided against it. It would take too much time, and Lord Lyndon would never notice if she remained seated behind the desk the whole time. She stuffed the flimsy bits of silk into a drawer and went to sit down and await the arrival of Lord Lyndon.

  “Justin,” she whispered to herself, then laughed at her own folly.

  Justin followed the black-clad masked maid from the side entrance of the Golden Feather down a long, dim corridor to what he assumed would be a sitting room or office. He looked about in interest, never having been behind the scenes at a gaming house before. The private apartments were not at all the same as the public rooms, and not at all what he had expected. There was very little gilt or velvet, and no marble at all.

  Instead, through half-open doors he could see cream-painted walls, old-fashioned furniture upholstered in pastel colors, piles of books, and well-executed landscapes in simple frames. Light, cream-and-gold striped draperies offered privacy from the busy city street but allowed the sun to filter into the small rooms.

  It was a cool, pretty, inviting place, as elegant as anything his mother or one of her friends would have decorated. He could have stayed there happily all day.

  Justin looked down at the long, pink-and-cream needlework rug beneath his boots.

  All last night he had lain sleepless in his bed, thinking about the happenings at the Golden Feather and the mysterious Mrs. Archer. It seemed now that the conclusions he had reached at four in the morning were true. Mrs. Archer was a lady of some sort. Perhaps the ruined daughter of some country squire or a rich man’s former mistress set up now in her own business.

  Her voice had been educated, though pitched low and quiet, her gestures refined and polite. There was no coarseness about her, nothing that might be expected of a woman living the scandalous life of a gaming house keeper.

  But, of course, those had all been impressions gathered in night’s mysterious cloak. Darkness could hide a wealth of flaws and sins—as could a mask.

  No doubt in the light of day, without the concealing scrap of silk, she would appear very different. Old, maybe, or pockmarked, or simply rude. She could not be what his fevered imaginings had suggested. That was impossible.

  Just as he had thought it impossible she would wear a mask in the daytime. Then the maid ushered him into an office, and he saw that Mrs. Archer did indeed wear her concealing mask, even in this hot afternoon.

  Her red hair was styled simply today, and her blue silk mask matched her very proper pale blue muslin day dress, but she still looked impossibly exotic in the spartan office.

  Justin was seized with the desire, more intense than any desire he had ever known, to see what was beneath the mask.

  It seemed that was not to happen, not today, anyway. Mrs. Archer rose behind the large, cluttered desk and held her hand out to him with a smile.

  “Good afternoon, Lord Lyndon,” she said, in the same low voice he remembered. “Won’t you please be seated?” She gestured toward the straight-backed wooden chair situated across from her.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Archer.” Justin placed his hat and cane on the desk beside the pile of ledger books, and sat down. “I trust you have suffered no ill effects from last night’s ... incident?”

  Mrs. Archer laughed. “Certainly not! It would take a great deal more than that little fight, I assure you. I am very glad to see you today, though, Lord Lyndon.”

  She was glad to see him? He felt an unwilling little frisson of excitement. “Are you indeed, Mrs. Archer?”

  “Oh, yes. I have received two very good offers to buy this place, and I am sure I would have to lower my price if the necessary repairs are not made to the gaming room. Your offer of assistance does expedite things greatly.”

  “So you are really leaving the Golden Feather? My brother said something to that effect.” Justin was unaccountably disappointed. Even if she stayed at the place for the next ten years, he could not come back here. Why would he care if she were there or not?

  But he found he did care.

  “Yes. I hope to be gone from here very soon.”

  “I am sure all your patrons must be desolate,” he said, carefully impersonal.

  She shrugged. “The new owner will keep things much the same. No one will notice the difference.”

  “I know that is not true. My brother calls you ‘the incomparable Mrs. Archer,’ and says you are the only reason so many flock here.”

  “Did he indeed? Your brother is very sweet. I trust he is not too ill today.”

  “He was still asleep when I left the house.”

  She nodded. “Sleep is the best thing for him. Perhaps when he wakes you could give him a glass of carrot juice mixed with one raw egg. It always helped my hus—” She broke off abruptly, her gaze falling back to the desk. “That is, I have heard many people swear by its efficacy after a night of overindulgence.”

  Had she been about to say her husband? Justin wondered, with a small jealous pang. Exactly what kind of man was Mr. Archer—or had he been—to deserve a wife like this one? “I wish I had known of such a cure in my younger days.”

  She smiled at him. “Were you a wild young man, Lord Lyndo
n?”

  “I was terrible. Far worse than Harry.”

  “But India wrung it out of you, so to speak?”

  “Indeed it did. It is hard to play the rake properly when one is laid low by humid heat and snakebite.”

  The satin of her mask wrinkled a bit as she frowned. “Were you bitten by a snake, then?”

  “Twice. After that I learned to be wary. I was lucky to have a servant who knew all about how to treat such things, so I suffered no permanent ill effects.”

  Mrs. Archer propped her chin on her palm and said in a thoughtful voice, “India must have been very fascinating.”

  Justin looked at her and noticed for the first time that her eyes were brown. Deep and rich, like a cup of chocolate.

  “Yes,” he murmured. “Fascinating.”

  She stared back at him for a long moment. Then she seemed to recall where they were, who they were. She shook her head and sat up straight in her chair.

  “Here is a list of all the damages,” she said briskly, handing him a sheet of paper. “I estimated the cost of the repairs, which you will see here down at the bottom.”

  Justin dragged himself out of the enchanted circle of her eyes, her perfume, and forced himself to look down at the paper. The neatly printed words refused to come into focus.

  He handed it back to her. Their fingers brushed briefly, warmly. The gold of her wedding band, thin and worn, glinted up at him.

  That ring, a symbol of things respectable and permanent, seemed to slap him across the face.

  He meant to find a proper wife, to do honor by his family. He should not be losing his senses over a pretty gaming house owner!

  “It all looks satisfactory,” he said quietly.

  “Good. If you would like to leave the money with my maid, then, we shall be settled.” She rose again to her feet, and Justin followed.

  She continued, in an oddly rushed and breathless voice, “I am sure you must be very busy, Lord Lyndon, so I won’t detain you any longer.” She turned to walk around the edge of the desk. “I will see you to the door....”