Improper Ladies

by Amanda McCabe

  She would have to content herself with a cup of tea in the drawing room, with those very parents.

  Rosalind stood up and crossed the room to the small mirror hanging on the wall between two bookcases. She feared her reflection would show her inner turmoil, with wild eyes and straggling hair. Aside from a pink flush in her cheeks, however, she looked the same as she always did. Her bright red curls, the bane of her life, were drawn tightly back and covered with a lace cap. The frill of her chemisette was spotlessly white, tucked neatly into the square neckline of her green and gold striped silk afternoon dress. Her blue eyes were brighter than usual, sparkling with the force of suppressed anger, but other than that she was the perfectly proper Mrs. Chase.

  She opened the little hidden drawer in one of the bookcases and took out a small pot of rice powder and one of lip color. She dusted the powder over the faint golden freckles that splashed across the bridge of her nose. Not for the first time, she wished she had Allen’s smooth chestnut locks and clear complexion, instead of the red hair and freckles that came from their grandmother.

  The thought of her brother made her eyes narrow again, and pink spread across her cheeks and down her throat into the ruffle.

  “Not now,” she murmured. “I cannot think of this now. Allen will just have to stew in his own soup for the moment.”

  There was a knock at the door. It was probably Molly, the housemaid, come to tell her that the first of the parents were arriving. Rosalind pushed the powder and lip color back into the drawer, and called, “Come in.”

  It was not Molly’s face that peeked around the door, though. It was Lady Violet Bronston.

  Rosalind couldn’t help but smile at the sight of Lady Violet’s golden curls and merry green eyes. She was one of the best students at Mrs. Chase’s Seminary for Young Ladies, adept at music, watercolors, and French. She was sweet, and friendly with the other girls, a great favorite of the teachers. And of Rosalind, too, if truth be told. Violet’s conversation was always cheerful, despite the fact that her family life was not entirely happy. Rosalind would miss her when she graduated and went on to her first Season next year.

  Yes, Violet was a dear. Even if she was the sister of Viscount Morley.

  “I am sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Chase,” Violet said shyly. She glanced around quickly. Usually only Rosalind and the teachers came into this office.

  Rosalind smiled at her, and gestured for her to enter. “Please, do come in, Lady Violet. You are not disturbing me at all. I was just going to come and be sure that everyone is packed. Is your father here to fetch you already?” She said this most pleasantly, even though her lips wanted to twist bitterly at mention of Violet’s father. The Earl of Athley was certainly an important man indeed, but also a most unpleasant and arrogant one. He was assuredly one of the most difficult of the parents to deal with. Fortunately, she seldom saw him.

  Rosalind also thought Lord Athley could use a thorough lesson in manners.

  Violet shook her head, a relieved smile on her rosebud lips. “No, indeed! Papa could not come today. My brother, Lord Morley, is going to fetch me and take me into Town.”

  Morley again. Could not an hour pass that she did not hear that name? Rosalind covered her chagrin by turning away to pick up her shawl and drape it over her shoulders. “Your brother? We have not seen him here in quite a while.” Not since that one disastrous visit last year. That had not gone well at all.

  Violet sat down on one of the brocade settees, happily oblivious to any possible strife in her small world. She smoothed the skirt of her stylish, pale lilac carriage gown. “He came to see me last month, when you had gone to Bath. He says he will take me to have ices at Gunter’s when we are in London, and to the theater, and Astley’s Amphitheater, so that—well, so that I do not have to spend all my time with Father at Bronston House.”

  Rosalind sat down beside Violet, surprised to hear of such generosity from such an annoying man. “That sounds lovely for you.”

  Violet nodded, and stared down at her lace-gloved hands folded in her lap. “Yes, of course. But I will miss the school so much! And you, and Miss James, and the other girls. I wish ...” She paused and swallowed hard before she went on in a softer voice. “I wish I could stay here.”

  Rosalind nodded. She had had this discussion with Violet before, had listened to the girl when she spoke of her unhappiness at home. It made Rosalind’s heart ache that she could do so little for her. “Some of the girls do stay here for the holidays, of course,” she said carefully. “But most of them have family homes that are far away, not nearby as yours is.”

  Violet nodded. “I know, and Father would never hear of my staying here.” She gave Rosalind a brave, bright little smile, and said, “But I promise you, Mrs. Chase, that my time in London will not be wasted! I will work on my watercolors, and my French verbs. And Miss James has assigned us to read Hamlet, which is very good since my brother has promised to take me to see the play at Drury Lane.” She opened her reticule and pulled out a small book, handsomely bound in dark blue leather. The embossed silver letters on the cover read A Lady’s Rules for Proper Behavior. “And I will always be very careful to follow the rules. A true lady is known by her manners, is she not? That is what you always say, Mrs. Chase.”

  Rosalind laughed. “Yes, of course. And a true gentleman, too. Manners are what raise us above the animals in their forests and barnyards. They are the mark of true civility.”

  Violet nodded eagerly. “I read it every night.” She ran her fingertip over the silver words, By an Anonymous Lady. “Do you think we shall ever know who wrote it?”

  “Perhaps not. But that is not important, Lady Violet. What is important is the content of its pages.”

  Violet tucked the book carefully back into her reticule. “Perhaps I should get a copy for my brother?”

  I doubt it would do him much good, he is so far gone, Rosalind thought wryly. But outwardly she just nodded, and said, “I am sure Lord Morley would appreciate that. Now, my dear Lady Violet, tell me what else you have planned for your holiday.”

  She half-listened as Violet talked of tea parties and museums. Yet in her mind she saw the most distracting image of A Lady’s Rules in the philistine hands of Lord Morley.

  For Rosalind had a secret, an even greater one than the rice powder that covered her freckles. She herself was the anonymous lady who wrote the very popular Rules. And the sales of this slim volume, so dependent on its interest among the ton, helped pay her own, and her brother’s, bills. Fortunately for her, Lord Morley and his ilk were in the minority in Society at the moment. A Lady’s Rules had become all the crack among the haute ton. Everyone was eager to buy the book and show how very civilized they were.

  That tiny book was Rosalind’s very life’s blood.

  Chapter Two

  “Young ladies are particularly impressionable, and look to their families for a fine example. Proper behavior and language, while always important, should be especially observed in their presence”

  —A Lady’s Rules for Proper Behavior, Chapter One

  Michael Bronston, the Viscount Morley, drew his phaeton to a halt on the gravel drive outside Mrs. Chase’s Seminary for Young Ladies, and sat there for a moment, studying the surroundings. The Seminary was only a few miles outside London, but it might as well have been on another continent, so different was it from the rush and noise of the city. Situated in its own green, tidy park, surrounded by a high wall, it had almost the hush of a monastery.

  The school building itself was of red brick, faded by time to a rose pink, with neat white shutters at the windows and white pillars lining the portico. Heavy draperies hung inside all the windows, shutting out the light.

  Michael frowned at its terribly tidy, terribly proper appearance.

  A fitting prison for my poor sister, he thought. Then he had to laugh at himself. It seemed the whole “poet persona” he took on himself in Society was beginning to tell on him. He was becoming melodramatic.


  And, prison though the Seminary might be for Violet, it was far better for her than being at home. Their father was a more accomplished jailer than Mrs. Chase could ever hope to be.

  Ah, yes. Mrs. Chase. The beauteous Mrs. Chase, who tried to hide her glorious sunset-colored hair under hideous caps, and whose disapproving moue made her seem far older than she surely was. Michael had met her only once, on one of the occasions he came to visit Violet, but her cool glance had almost frozen him where he stood.

  There was something about her, though, something in the pale depths of her ice blue eyes that made him want to bait her, to tweak her maddening propriety—to make her show some emotion. So he, perhaps childishly, had acted even more the “poet” around her, lounging indolently in the dainty chairs of her drawing room, quoting suggestive verse to her.

  Mrs. Chase had merely raised her chin even higher, and stared at him as if he was an insect on her polished floor. And Violet had berated him for his lack of manners for hours afterward. It had not been his proudest moment. He had been deeply relieved to find Mrs. Chase gone to Bath on his next visit to Violet.

  But now here he was again, and there was very little hope that Mrs. Chase would not be on the premises. He vowed that this time he would act his age, and be impeccably well-mannered. He had even brought a sort of peace offering, a volume of his newest collection of poems, though he doubted it would thaw any of Mrs. Chase’s frostiness.

  A footman in the school livery came to take the reins of the phaeton, and Michael jumped down to the gravel drive. No sooner had he placed one booted foot on the front steps than the white-painted door opened and Mr. Allen Lucas came barreling out.

  The young man was scowling, distracted, until he saw Michael, and a grin lit up his face.

  “Lord Morley!” he cried happily, and caught Michael’s hand in a hearty shake. “Fancy meeting you here, of all places.”

  Michael remembered then that Lucas was Mrs. Chase’s brother. It was hard to remember that when he saw the young man at their club every week; his behavior and demeanor were so very different from hers. Allen Lucas was one of a group of young men, newcomers to the Thoth Club, who had literary and artistic pretensions and who spent most of their time trying to outdo one another in hell-raising.

  “I’ve come to fetch my sister home,” Michael said, pulling off his leather driving gloves.

  Lucas gave a lopsided grin, which he obviously considered sardonic, and leaned against one of the pillars. “And I’ve just left my sister.”

  “Your sister is Mrs. Chase, is she not?”

  “The very same.” Lucas heaved a deep sigh, full of exasperation. “I vow I will never be able to fathom females! Rosie has become such a dry stick, and I don’t know when it happened. She was always laughing, always game for a lark, when we lived at my parents’ house.”

  Mrs. Chase, of the icy blue eyes and tilted chin, game for a lark? Mrs. Chase, called Rosie? Somehow, Michael could not envision it. But then, he very often could not fathom females, either. “So you are leaving, Lucas?”

  “Indeed, and the quicker the better, before Rosie finds me and rings another peal over my head. See you at the club on Thursday? I heard Lord Waverly and Mr. Gilmore are going to race their curricles!”

  “Not in the club, I do hope.”

  Lucas guffawed loudly, far more loudly than the light jest deserved. “Certainly not! The road to Brighton, I daresay. But it will be on the betting books.”

  “Ah. Well, then, I will see you there. Good day, Lucas.”

  “Good day, Morley!” Lucas bounded down the steps to where a footman held the reins of his horse.

  Morley gave him a farewell wave, and then turned back to the front door. Lucas had left it ajar on his exit, so Michael just pushed it open and went in.

  The foyer was crowded with piles of trunks and valises, with girls in fluttery pastel travel gowns, who called to each other, and giggled, and cried as they tied their bonnet ribbons and draped shawls over their shoulders. Footmen and teachers moved between them, carrying bags away or just shifting them about. Michael glanced back to the door he had just entered. It seemed to be a portal back to sanity, out of bedlam.

  But he was too late. Miss James, one of the teachers, saw him before he could make his escape.

  “Lord Morley!” she called. She handed one of the girls a pink bandbox and made her way over to him, wending past the obstacles of luggage. “How good it is to see you again. Lady Violet has been asking every five minutes when you would arrive.”

  “Hello, Miss James,” Michael answered. He pushed away his doubts about all the feminine fuss, and gave her a polite bow. “I must say I am quite eager to see my sister again, too. It has been far too long.”

  “Such brotherly devotion is most touching, Lord Morley.” Miss James smiled at him rather mistily. “Lady Violet is in the drawing room. Mrs. Chase is serving tea in there, as well. I am sure you must be in need of refreshment after your long drive.”

  “Thank you, Miss James.” Michael bowed to her again, and made his way toward the door that led to the drawing room, trying not to knock over any scurrying young misses or fall over any errant trunks on the way.

  It was slightly quieter in the elegant pale green and cream drawing room. There was no luggage piled about, only the usual chairs and tables and bibelots. Parents, and a few daughters, gathered in clusters and groups, chatting and laughing in perfectly civilized tones. On one large, round table was an array of tea things—cups, pots, tiered trays of tiny sandwiches and cakes.

  There was a small, barely perceptible lull in the conversation when Michael appeared, and a few female glances turned his way. He was not entirely thrilled to meet the dark gaze of Lady Clarke. They had flirted casually at a ball or two, but she had soon spread the word that Michael’s poem, “Alas, fair cruelty,” was about her. It most decidedly was not. She gave him a little wave of her dainty fingers.

  Michael acknowledged her greeting with a brief nod, but his own gaze was caught by the woman who stood next to the tea table—Mrs. Chase. She had not seen him yet, and was talking to one of the parents. She nodded at whatever the other woman was saying, and tilted her head thoughtfully to one side. Her hair was smoothed back beneath an ugly lace cap, but one flame red curl had fallen from its confines and tangled with a pearl drop earring. She reached up absently to brush it back, and the curl twined around her slender finger before she managed to confine it.

  Then, unexpectedly, she laughed. Really laughed. The sound reached all the way across the room to him, wrapping around him silkily, as her hair had caught on her finger. It was sweet and rich, surprisingly dark, like a Spanish sherry. It transformed her entire being, making her face, usually so pale and distant, glow with an incandescent radiance.

  “Aurora, the dawn . . .” he whispered.

  As if she heard him, though that was impossible from across the room, she looked up and saw him standing there. The laughter faded as if it had never been. Her eyes turned from sky blue to ice, and her lips thinned.

  Michael wanted her laughter back—more than wanted, he needed it. He could not have said why he mourned the loss of this woman’s merriment. She was a person he hardly knew, did not even like. But there it was. He found he would do anything to hear her laugh again.

  As if in some sort of a trance, a daze, he took a step toward her, then another.

  The invisible cord that pulled him to Mrs. Chase snapped when he heard his sister’s silvery voice call, “Michael! Here you are at last.”

  Michael blinked, as if awakening from some dream, and rubbed his hand roughly over his eyes. That—that whatever it was that had come over him dissipated, and he found himself still in the school drawing room. He glanced quickly over to where Mrs. Chase had gone back to her conversation, half turned away from him. She was hardly an Aurora; she was just a stern schoolmistress.

  “I am sorry I was delayed, Vi,” he said, catching his sister’s hands in his and leaning down to kiss her dimpled chee
k. “There was a great deal of traffic on the road from London. It was all coming here, I see.”

  “Oh, yes, indeed! It is always crowded before holidays.” Violet smiled up at him, those dimples flashing. “It is very good to see you again, Michael.”

  “And it’s good to see you, Vi. It has been far too long.” His sister was looking very well, he thought, as he held her away from him so he could study her. She had always been a pretty girl, the very image of their late mother with her golden curls and grass green eyes. But she had always been rather quiet, too, lost in her own world. Here, away from their father, she seemed more confident, more a part of the world around her.

  If only she would learn to follow her own way in that world, and not follow in the paths of others so much.

  “Oh, Vi!” he teased. “When did my baby sister grow to be such a grand lady?” He caught her up in a hug, until her little feet left the floor.

  “Michael!” she squealed, pushing him away. “There are people watching.”

  He laughed. “So, since people are watching, I am not allowed to greet my sister?”

  Violet frowned up at him, her pink and white forehead puckering, her lips drawn together in a perfect imitation of Mrs. Chase. She opened the reticule that dangled from her wrist and drew out a small, blue leather-bound book. She flicked through the pages until she found what she was looking for, and she read aloud, “ ‘A gentleman shall never be overexuberant when greeting a lady, even one nearly related to him. Bowing over the hand, or, if closely related, a kiss on the cheek, will suffice.’ ”

  Michael laughed again, thinking she could not be serious. But Violet’s frown deepened, and she even tapped the toe of her kid half-boot against the floor.

  “Michael!” she scolded. “The rules are not to be mocked. They are important. Manners are what make us civilized.”

  “What on earth are you spouting about, Vi?” Michael asked, and grabbed the book out of her hands.