Lady Beware

by Jo Beverley

  It was, but from Thea’s point of view it had been a dull and disappointing evening.

  The next day was Sunday, and she and her parents attended service at St. George’s, Hanover Square, which they often did. Despite the name, the fashionable church did not sit in the square, but it was close enough to be a natural place of worship for Lord Darien. The plan was that they again show their favor, but Thea attended church in an unseemly eagerness. She looked forward to discussing last night’s triumph and how he was feeling about the Rogues.

  She saw him across the church, noting as well the people who were still uneasy. Quite a few would be residents of Hanover Square with good reason to distrust a Cave. One of them could be the person responsible for splashing blood on his doorstep.

  She leaned close to her mother to murmur, “No more bloody doorsteps?”

  “No, but the Rogues set people to watch the house at night.”

  “Even before yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  Thea hoped he never learned of that.

  Darien was with a fat young man in ridiculous clothes. Surely not his beloved brother. No, he’d be in uniform anyway. She wondered who he was. He didn’t look like Darien’s type at all.

  After the service, her mother went straight for Darien and his companion, who was introduced as Mr. Uppington, who’d been a subaltern in Darien’s regiment. As an explanation, that left a lot to be desired. The young man seemed both willing to please and very stupid.

  She had no opportunity for private conversation with Darien. Most people dined country style on Sunday, quietly with family in the early afternoon. Thea’s mother invited Darien and his friend, which gave Thea a moment’s hope, but he and Uppington were engaged to dine at Maria Vandeimen’s house. How very unfair.

  Chapter 24

  Darien had no idea why his goddess looked cross, but he would have liked to spend time with her and find out. Having Pup around, however, was like having a troublesome child. He couldn’t be let out of sight without some mishap—last night it had been cockfighting and he’d had his pocket picked and his watch stolen—but Darien was busier than ever. He needed a keeper, preferably a wife, and Maria had offered to help.

  As they walked to Van’s house, Darien tried to prepare the ground. “So, Pup. What are your plans?”

  “Plans?” Pup repeated the word as if this might be a new game. Then he said, “Astley’s?”

  Astley’s was the theater known for circuses and spectacles.

  “I mean for your future. Now you’ve had a taste of London, are you ready to settle down?”

  “Settle down?”

  Holding on to his patience, Darien laid it out. “You’ve a neat little fortune now, Pup. You’ll want a place of your own. A house. An estate. A wife.”

  “Wife?”

  “A pretty woman to come home to. Someone who’ll delight in arranging everything just as you like it.” A sensible person who’ll take care of you like the overgrown child you are.

  “Oh, a wife,” Pup said, as if it were a novel idea. “Don’t know about that, Canem. Ladies don’t seem much interested in me.”

  Darien almost said, You have money now. You only need to show yourself to be hooked. That wasn’t the image to plant in Pup’s mind.

  “You’re here in London in the season. Lovely ladies hanging on every bough, waiting to be picked.”

  “Like at Violet Vane’s?”

  “Ladies, Pup. Respectable women. The sort you marry.”

  “Oh. Wife, eh?” Pup said, clearly still getting to grips with the concept.

  His tone was that of a lad presented with his first hunter—thrilled, but nervous about the animal’s size and power. He’d never been a coward, however. Foxstall would say he hadn’t the wits to know when to be afraid, and he might be right, but that meant that if the right lady could be found Pup would probably mount her without flinching.

  Darien pushed that image out of his mind and steered Pup into Van’s house.

  Maria greeted Pup with good manners and a motherly touch, instantly putting him at his ease. As they dined, she gently interviewed him, framing questions so simply that he soon relaxed and adored her. Darien began to worry that Pup would try to become Maria Vandeimen’s lapdog. He’d not intended to off-load his burden in that way.

  She introduced the subject of marriage in a roundabout way, rambling on about her first and second marriages. Both were painted as havens of calm and stability. Darien knew nothing of her first marriage, but if Van provided calm and stability, Canem Cave was a ninety-year-old washerwoman.

  Amusement died when Maria turned to ask Darien about his own marriage plans.

  “None as yet.”

  “You will want an heir,” she stated, ringing for servants to bring the second course.

  “Doubt it. Frank may oblige. If not, the Cave line will die. Who will mourn?”

  “It deserves to live if only for you.”

  That startled and perhaps embarrassed him. “We’re here to discuss Pup’s prospects,” he reminded her.

  “I am capable of driving two horses at once, Darien.”

  “In different directions?” he countered, and she chuckled.

  “Touché. I will steer one and then turn my attention to the other.”

  “My head’s spinning at the image presented.”

  She laughed again. “You are very literal, are you not? Ignore images and put yourself in my hands and you will be the beginning of an honorable line.”

  “You terrify me,” he said in complete honesty.

  “A familiar sensation,” Van murmured.

  Maria turned to Pup, smiling and softening her voice. “Mr. Uppington. Arthur, I believe?”

  He nodded, frozen with a mouthful of something.

  “An excellent name, drawing on an ancient king and a modern hero. You should use it more. You will like to be married?” It was a question, but she somehow managed to make it an instruction.

  Pup swallowed. “Think so, ma’am. Better than Violet Vane’s,” he added helpfully.

  Van choked. Maria’s smile struggled with outright laughter.

  “An older lady, I think,” she said. “Not old, of course, but a little older than you. Young ladies can be so very demanding, and you will like a wife who can run your house for your comfort and advise you how to go on.”

  Canem thought Pup might object to this, but whether by force of Maria’s will or his own inclination, he nodded. “Yes, I would.”

  She smiled like a madonna. “I’m giving a small dinner party next week, and I will invite a lady of my acquaintance. If you do not care for her, of course we will say no more about it, but I think you will. She’s a widow with two young children, but you won’t mind that.”

  “No,” Pup said obediently, but added, “Is she pretty?”

  “She’s pleasingly plump.”

  Canem had no idea whether Pup liked plump women, but he could see the seed grow shoots and leaves in Pup’s mind. Plump equaled pleasing, pleasing equaled pretty. Maria Vandeimen was a truly terrifying woman.

  “Her name is Alice Wells,” Maria went on. “She is twenty-seven years old and was married to a naval officer who died two years ago. She comes from an excellent family, but unfortunately there’s little money and she is obliged to live on her brother’s charity, which is not abundant.”

  She continued a flow of Mrs. Wells’s excellence to such effect that when Canem and Pup left the house, Pup was saying “Alice…” under his breath. “Pretty name, don’t you think, Canem?”

  “Lovely.”

  “And twenty-seven’s not too old.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Won’t mind a couple of children. Like children. Have children of my own, I suppose.”

  “It does tend to happen.”

  That led to silence, whether of trepidation or anticipation, Canem didn’t know.

  “Marriage,” Pup said as they neared Hanover Square. “Best thing in the world, marriage, don’t you
think, Canem?”

  From seed to shoot to mighty oak.

  “Absolutely splendid,” Canem said as he ushered Pup into his house, but he promptly took refuge in the office, Sunday or not. Here he was, surrounded by apparent friends—Rogues. Gad—and now Pup could be safely settled in days. All it needed was a letter from Frank to say he was betrothed…. But it was too early for that.

  All the same, the change in his situation in less than a week would be gratifying if it weren’t so alarming. He felt as if he were in a runaway carriage, lacking all control over his destiny.

  Damn women.

  But at this rate he soon might have to return hospitality. Entertain in Cave House? Hard to imagine, but he’d better look over the house with that in mind. He visited the drawing room again. It would do, but it’d need a thorough cleaning, which meant more servants. That raised the problem of the Prussocks. They were doing their best and it went against the grain to dismiss them, but the sort of servants he should have wouldn’t work under their rule.

  Was it possible to hire some maids for the day? He made a note to consult Maria on this and other matters. His pen wandered into curlicues before running out of ink.

  Thea Debenham had claimed to know how to run a house.

  No. Far too dangerous to involve her in his domestic affairs.

  He summoned Prussock and asked for a tour of the wine cellars. Prussock scowled, perhaps over doing extra work on Sunday, though Darien had seen no sign of piety.

  “Not much left,” Darien said a few minutes later, surveying empty racks.

  “I gather the old viscount drank a lot, milord.”

  “I’m sure he did. I’ll order more. I might be doing some entertaining. Show me how we stand for china, silver, and such.”

  Now every line of the man’s heavy body showed annoyance, but he gave Darien the tour of cupboards of china and glassware. The stock couldn’t be called elegant, and no set was complete, but there seemed enough. Darien had no difficulty in imagining a great deal of china and glass being smashed by his family. But silver did not break. When unlocked, the silver cupboard was almost bare.

  “Sold, I assume, milord,” Prussock said.

  “More than likely, but you should have alerted me. What if I had a sudden need of it?”

  “You didn’t seem to be in the way of entertaining, milord.”

  Darien nodded and returned to his office. He had long experience of men, many of them scoundrels, and his instincts were ringing alarms.

  Sold, or stolen? By the Prussocks? He couldn’t accuse them on such scanty evidence, but the viscountcy of Darien and all its possessions were his to take care of now. He wrote a note to his solicitors requesting the inventories made upon his father’s death. He sealed it, and then sat there, realizing that Maria’s words about him starting an honorable line had settled in his mind like seeds. No shoots and leaves as yet, but there they lay, full of strange promise.

  Line meant wife, and wife fired his mind straight to Thea. But he laughed without humor. Thea Debenham, mistress of Cave House? Mistress of Stours Court? One of the Caves?

  His revulsion was so strong he rose. He should probably release her from her promise to attend the Harroving masquerade, but he wouldn’t, not least because she needed to do it.

  He was going to free her from the cobwebs of formality, set her free, so she could fly as she was meant to fly, high and strong. And he’d told her the truth when he’d said he could keep her safe. She’d be no worse for her adventure, but perhaps she wouldn’t trap herself for life with that stiff-rumped clotheshorse, Avonfort.

  He could do no more than that for her, however, or for himself.

  Chapter 25

  As the next week progressed, Thea’s mother remarked at regular intervals how satisfactorily things were going. Thea had to agree, even though she missed Darien. She hardly saw him, and if she did encounter him at some social event, he was engaged with a Rogue and friends of Rogues.

  Military men with Major Beaumont, though that sector was mostly on Darien’s side anyway.

  Reforming politicians with Sir Stephen Ball.

  Diplomats with the Earl of Charrington.

  Even when she didn’t meet him, she could follow his adventures in the press.

  While Thea was enduring an afternoon literary salon featuring Mrs. Edgeworth, Darien was racing horses at Somers Town under the aegis of that famous horse breeder and heir to an earldom, Miles Cavanagh.

  While she was at a very dull dinner, he attended a gathering of scientists called the Curious Creatures. She’d never heard of them, but wasn’t surprised to discover that Nicholas Delaney was a founding member and that many eminent men of science belonged.

  He attended a one-night party thrown by the Duke of St. Raven at his country house called Nun’s Chase. The journey there and back was a horse race. Lord Arden won in one direction and Van in the other.

  Maddy was the one to tell her that Nun’s Chase had been the scene of scandalous goings-on before St. Raven’s marriage, and that this one had been tame by comparison.

  “Strictly gentlemen only,” Maddy said to Thea and two other fascinated young ladies at Lady Epworth’s Venetian breakfast.

  “How do you know?” Thea asked, feeling dull again.

  “Cully was there. Disappointed that there were no Cyprians at all. All riding, fencing, shooting and such, which he enjoyed as much or more, but he wouldn’t admit it. Darien’s a dead shot, but so is Lord Middlethorpe, apparently. They dueled over it forever.”

  “Dueled!” Thea said in alarm.

  “Only in the sense of contested. Shooting at targets at greater and greater distance.”

  “No wonder Almack’s was thin of company that night,” Alesia said. “It really is too bad, and he is, after all, a Cave. I still don’t trust him.”

  Thea managed not to argue, but only because it would do no good. Alesia was a twit.

  But then good news swept everything else from Thea’s mind.

  Dare was through the worst and recovering. He planned to soon travel to Long Chart to complete his recovery there before the wedding, which was fixed for June 24.

  He made all sound very well, but Mara wrote separately to say he’d lost an alarming amount of weight and was weak as a kitten, so he would need to rest for a while before any journey. Even so, Thea and her mother hugged each other and even cried a little for joy.

  When Thea met Darien at a rout that night, the good news spilled out before she remembered the enmity between him and Dare.

  “You must all be delighted,” he said.

  “Are you?” she asked, surprised to realize she could ask such a question now. “Or is Dare still your enemy?”

  “No, I’ve outgrown that. I truly wish him well.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad.” She wished they could talk longer, in some place other than this hot room, with people all around.

  She missed him. That was startling.

  “I gather you’ve been attending scientific gatherings,” she said.

  “Submarine warfare, no less.”

  “Does such a thing exist?”

  “Yes, actually. The Americans almost got it to work in the late war, and there are records of attempts going back a century or more. Even a theoretical plan for a man to go underwater and apply a bomb to the hull of a ship.”

  “You needn’t sound so enthusiastic,” she complained, but smiling. “What if you were on the ship at the time?”

  “That’s the trouble with advances in warfare. The other side always catches up.”

  They chuckled together. Thea saw her mother waiting to leave, but she lingered.

  Darien was so much more relaxed now than when she’d seen him at the Netherholt rout. She couldn’t say he was surrounded by universal approval, but even the members of the ton who were still cool had wearied of shock and horror.

  “So, how does the campaign progress?” she asked.

  “Well. Your mother’s beckoning. Let’s work our
way toward her.”

  “So keen to be rid of me?” she dared to tease.

  His look was quick but intense. “Never.” But then he smiled at a young man who came over. “Thea, do you know Lord Wyvern?”

  Thea had to smile at the young earl when she’d much rather have had a few more minutes of Darien alone. “Yes, of course. He’s from my part of the world.”

  She dipped a curtsy and Wyvern bowed, but rolled his eyes at the same time. “Don’t know why I allowed myself to be persuaded up to London. Give me the country and the coast any day. I’m off in search of fresh air, if such a thing exists in London at all.”

  “His arrival in Town provided an excellent distraction,” Darien said, watching him depart, “given the furor over his inheriting the title. As he’s brother-in-law to Amleigh, I assume the Rogues arranged it.”

  “Wheels within wheels,” Thea said. “How clever.”

  The new Earl of Wyvern had been the previous earl’s estate steward, unaware that he was the man’s legal son. Of course the old earl had been completely crazy, so no one was completely surprised that he’d created a mess even of marriage and offspring.

  They’d arrived at her mother. There, Darien took Thea’s hand and bent over it, his eyes holding hers. “Remember,” he said softly, “I’m dutifully paying my price, and you must do your part.”

  “I will,” Thea said, and he turned to disappear into the crowd.

  I can’t wait, she thought after him. At the Harroving masquerade, she would have him to herself for a whole evening. But for now she had to go in a different direction, to a poetry reading that held no appeal whatsoever. Tomorrow, however, was Friday.

  Only one day to wait until her reward.

  Friday itself seemed to plod along, but at last Thea could dress in her goddess costume. She found herself both excited and nervous. Soon he’d be here, but what if he thought this costume absurd?

  What if his attentions to her had always been manipulative and he felt no attraction toward her at all? What if he was as strongly attracted to her as he seemed, and took this outré costume as encouragement to be wicked?

  At least she was armed, though the point and blade of her halberd were sadly blunt.