An Elegant Façade (Hawthorne House Book #2)

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  Georgina sighed. “The man whose home you’re going to keep and all that.”

  “Oh!” She smiled and laid her head in the nest of feathers decorating Georgina’s sleeve. “I don’t know. He had a mask on.”

  “You don’t . . .” Georgina snapped her teeth shut and bopped Jane on the forehead, careful to avoid the artfully arranged coiffure. “You can’t marry him if you don’t know who he is.”

  “I know. That’s why I invited him to my house.” Jane looked so proud of herself that Georgina hated to bring her down.

  “Jane, after tonight, several men will be calling at your house.” Hopefully not the same ones that would be calling on Georgina, but some men were bound to prefer Lady Jane. And she would flourish nicely wherever she landed on the aristocratic scale. Even if she had to settle for a second son bound for the army, she would do well.

  The prospect of not being able to identify her mystery suitor didn’t dim Jane’s smile. If anything, it broadened with personal pride. “I know. That’s why I invited him to our Friday salon next week.”

  Jane had never been overly bright. Sadly, it was one of the things Georgina liked about her. Even if Georgina were to mess up in front of the other girl, it was likely Jane wouldn’t even notice that Georgina had revealed a life-changing secret. But this plan was too cork-brained for even Jane to think up. “You can’t invite a man to our Friday afternoon salon. It’s nothing but young ladies playing cards and pretending to gamble.”

  The Friday salons had begun last year as a group of girls not quite out but wishing they were decided to practice their social skills on each other. They’d gambled for real once, but their mothers had a collective tizzy and threatened to refuse to let them gather anymore. The plan was for the gatherings to continue even though all the young ladies were now out in society. Jane couldn’t bring a man into their midst.

  “Oh, but that’s the brilliance of it. I’ve decided we don’t need to play cards anymore since we’ll be invited to real card parties now.” Jane stood up tall and smoothed her green and blue skirt. “We’re going to be a book club.”

  A book club. Georgina nearly dropped her glass of lemonade again. That was even worse. She could talk Jane out of it. She had to be able to talk Jane out of it. “You can’t do a book club.”

  “Whyever not? They’re very popular. I heard even Lady Brattleby’s doing one.”

  “But one man and a bunch of ladies discussing romantic novels?” Even Jane could see how that wouldn’t work. Couldn’t she?

  Jane frowned.

  Relief sagged Georgina’s shoulders, and she tipped the remainder of her lemonade into her mouth.

  Jane shrugged. “I’ll think of something else and send word around.”

  Georgina grunted a response. It was Jane’s worst habit, sending letters to people she was going to see in a matter of hours. Who had time to do that?

  Jane’s attention snapped from Georgina to the ballroom beyond the alcove. “Oh, who’s that? Do you think it’s your brother Trent?”

  Georgina glanced at the man who’d caught Jane’s eye. As the man had brown hair it was most certainly not Trent, but it was very likely to be Lord Eversly, a man Jane would do well to dance with. Especially since Georgina had some misgivings about Jane’s fascination with an unknown man. Anything that would redirect her attention would be a good thing. “It might be. Stand near the pillar there and he’s sure to see you. Then you can find out if it’s him while you dance.”

  Jane scurried out of the alcove to stand next to the pillar, her bright peacock-inspired dress making her difficult to miss. Sure enough, Lord Eversly asked her to dance.

  Georgina stayed in the alcove until she spotted her own gentleman to target. Mr. Moreland, a younger son, popular with the ton. He was suitable to dance with and easily recognizable.

  She stepped forward to stand near the pillar and catch his eye. As they stepped onto the dance floor, she saw more than one person look their way. Satisfaction made her smile as they stepped into the quadrille. This would be the dance people talked about when they discussed her mix of partners. No one would remember Mr. McCrae.

  Especially not Georgina.

  The dark front of Colin’s town house greeted him as he paid the hackney driver and stepped to the pavement. As the hired conveyance drove away, it passed another carriage, one that had been decorated with pomp and station in mind. The contrast of the two vehicles was difficult to miss, and normally Colin chose to ignore it. He didn’t see the point in owning his own carriage and horses. Though he could well afford it, the expense wasn’t worth it for a single man who spent most of his time in London. This time, though, he found himself wishing no one had witnessed him arriving home from the ball in a hired hack.

  The private carriage, gilded to the point of near gaudiness, rolled past Colin, the occupants’ loud laughter scraping over him, making him shudder. He rolled his shoulders and shifted his weight, hoping the movement would ease the restlessness creeping under his skin.

  It didn’t.

  He was accustomed to balls leaving him exhausted and tense, but tonight there was uneasiness in the fatigue. Instead of affording him a sense of accomplishment and a mental list of things to do the next day, his mind swirled with questions he hadn’t allowed himself to consider in a very long time, if ever. It was going to take more than his usual cup of evening tea to distract him from his internal musings so he could rest tonight.

  The door opened behind him, drawing him out of his reverie.

  “Good evening, sir.” Taggert, who acted as both Colin’s butler and valet, held out his hands for Colin’s hat and greatcoat. “Cook is preparing your tea tray. I shall bring it up directly.”

  Colin ran a hand through his hair. It was late and the financial world didn’t keep ton hours. He would have to be awake and alert early tomorrow. He should go directly to bed.

  But he simply couldn’t.

  “Bring the tea to the study. If there are any biscuits left, add those.”

  Taggert nodded. “Of course, sir.”

  Colin jogged up the stairs toward his study. The town home was narrow and modest, but still a ridiculous amount of space for a single man of his station. His first year in London, he’d taken rooms at the Albany, like many other gentlemen in his situation, but confining his life to two small rooms when he’d grown up with the sea as his backyard had slowly driven him to the brink of Bedlam. The terrace house gave him room to spread out, to walk, to not spend every moment at home staring at the same four walls. The fact that he never used two entire floors of the place meant little. He liked knowing they were there and he could use them if he wished.

  If he were to marry, the extra space would be useful indeed.

  He stumbled on the last stair. Marriage had entered his mind more this evening than the previous five years put together. Was that notion causing him such distress? It shouldn’t. Plenty of men weren’t going to get married this year, and there was no reason Colin should be ashamed to be one of them.

  Two quick jerks loosened his cravat. The dishevelment was usually enough to indicate to his subconscious that his day was complete and it was time to relax. There would be no more guests this evening, no business associates claiming a sudden need for his attention. He could stop weighing his every word and deed to make sure they presented him in the way he wanted to be seen.

  His body normally recognized this release and sleep would tug at him soon after. But tonight the freedom made him even more restless.

  What was different this evening? Why was he in his study, eyeing the stack of correspondence he’d yet to go through instead of resting his head on his pillow?

  Ryland had returned to society, and that had certainly changed Colin’s evening. Perhaps his friend’s intent to make a change in his life had affected Colin more than he thought. Even though the duke had left after dancing with Lady Miranda, Colin hadn’t reverted to his normal evening routine. Instead he’d made every attempt to simply enjoy the
evening, another significant difference.

  He even danced a few more times, though with ladies considerably closer to his social class than the conniving Lady Georgina. His invitations had been better received than he had hoped. The idea of taking a wife, settling down, had niggled at the corners of his brain.

  Taking a wife meant starting a family, though, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to do that. He knew business, but families? He wasn’t any good at those. His dealings with his own family certainly hadn’t shown any marked skills in that area.

  He wrote to them faithfully every three months, or at least he wrote to his mother and sister. They always wrote back, alternating between telling him the latest news and begging him to come home. More than once he’d considered it, but things had been tense between him and his father for years, even before he’d left Glasgow. That final argument had nearly destroyed the family’s reputation around town. He couldn’t risk the damage his return might do to his mother and sister. Bronwyn had come out this year and was hoping to find a husband soon. The last thing she needed was the gossip Colin’s return would bring.

  That was, of course, assuming his father would even let him into the house. Not once in the past five years had the man taken time to write him. Even when Colin sent inquiries about the family shipping business, Celestial Shipping, his father’s office manager handled the reply.

  If Colin were being honest, he’d have to admit that he hadn’t written to Jaime McCrae during those five years either. At least not anything that had actually made it to the post.

  The wild scent of Colin’s favorite tea preceded Taggert into the room. He left the tea tray on the edge of the desk before gathering Colin’s discarded jacket and cravat and leaving the room. Silent, efficient, and exactly what Colin normally wanted.

  Tonight he wished he’d hired one of those chatty fellows as a butler. One of the nosy ones who pretended to be all stoic but was actually invested in his employer’s life. Those butlers tended to gossip a lot though, which was the last thing a businessman such as Colin needed.

  Since he certainly wasn’t replacing his butler in the middle of the night, Colin would have to find a distraction elsewhere.

  The pile of papers on his desk was the most likely location to find one.

  He fixed his tea and dropped into the chair before selecting the London Gazette from the top of the pile. Perfect. His unusual mood was no doubt due to the increase in personal involvement this evening. He needed to get his mind back on business, and then everything would go back to normal.

  With a steaming cup of tea at the ready and a large bite of cinnamon biscuit filling his mouth, he flipped to the paper’s agricultural report. The Corn Returns, as the grain report was called, had brought him good news for the past two years. Last year he’d been able to live off the profits from his grain investments alone. Of course, if the war ever ended and France and Britain began trading again, grain would cease to be such a lucrative investment. He was more than willing to give up the influx of money if it meant an end to the fighting.

  He finished perusing the papers while he ate the biscuits and drank a second cup of tea. He could probably force himself to retire now, but the stack of letters remaining was small. Fifteen minutes now would give him the luxury of starting with a clean desk tomorrow morning.

  At the top of the stack of letters was one that made him grin. William Colgate was the perfect blend of business and pleasure. Colin had been a mere boy of eleven when William’s family had left England on one of Celestial Shipping’s ships. At the time, Colin had been sailing with his father more often than not—it was never too early to learn the business, after all—and a solid friendship had formed on that crossing and continued through regular letters. William’s fledgling soap business in New York had been one of Colin’s first investments. It was paying off nicely, though he had to keep his involvement quiet. Even Ryland didn’t know Colin had such close ties to an American company. France wasn’t the only country England was at war with, after all.

  William wouldn’t be expecting a reply for a few months. It wasn’t easy to get mail to America. Still, responding to the letter gave Colin something to do, so he pulled a clean sheet of paper from his desk drawer and selected a new steel-tipped writing pen from another. He dipped the tip in the inkwell, marveling as he always did at how much nicer the pen felt in his hand than a quill did. There was a future in such pens, and he was on the lookout for the man who was going to take initiative and spread them to the masses. The elite would probably frown at them, but shopkeepers everywhere would rejoice.

  Fancy new pen notwithstanding, Colin struggled to respond to William’s letter. As the pen flowed over the page he found himself waxing poetic about the events of the evening and where he saw his life going. And it wasn’t even the good kind of poetic. It was more the dreary, depressing, confusing sort of poetic that had grown men scrambling for the door at poetry readings and salons. Like an ode to the mold on the underside of a boat.

  He threw his response in the fireplace and set William’s letter aside. Answering it could wait for a day or two. Perhaps even a week.

  The next letter in the stack was upside down, and the familiar three-star seal on the back didn’t induce a smile.

  Obviously he should have left the correspondence for tomorrow.

  He supposed he still could. He could leave the stack and retire, but curiosity was a difficult thing to turn off. What if something was wrong with Celestial Shipping? Colin had gotten an update from the manager just last week. Why would he be writing again? Colin flipped the letter over and nearly knocked his teacup to the floor.

  It wasn’t the manager’s handwriting on the front.

  It was his father’s.

  Colin’s emotions bounced around like a skiff in a storm as he ran his finger over the script he hadn’t seen in so long he thought he’d forgotten it. He knew he was imagining things, but he swore he could smell the mix of salt water and cheroot smoke that always clung to his father at the end of the day.

  The letter opener nearly sliced through his finger as he broke the seal with a bit too much aggression. Meticulous, even writing marched across the page in lines straight enough to make a Cambridge professor proud.

  Colin’s confusion grew as he read the letter. There was nothing profound or earth shattering on the page. No news of immense proportions, no impending doom. Not even a significant setback with the shipping company. There were a few sentences about the business, a couple of lines on his sister’s ball, and then a paragraph on the new ship he was designing. That was it.

  The news of the new ship design was exciting. Several of the men he managed investments for used Celestial Shipping to transport goods. There was no reason for Colin’s father to know who had arranged the clients, but it let Colin have a hand in the company that had given him a love for business. A newer, faster ship would certainly increase their market share.

  Part of his brain raced ahead, drafting a series of questions about the boat design, suggestions for materials, and ideas for the layout of the cargo hold. Before he could set nib to paper though, suspicion raised its head.

  Carefully, Colin refolded the letter and set it to the side of his desk. Why had his father written now? Was he dying and didn’t want to tell Colin? Despite the hard feelings between them, the idea that his father was ill made Colin’s chest ache.

  His mind seethed as he groped for the Bible on the edge of his desk. Opening it eased the ache in his chest a bit, but his thoughts couldn’t settle enough to see where he’d opened it to. He stared blindly at the page in front of him, asking God what the letter meant, until his candle guttered out.

  Then he sat in the dark.

  His eyelids grew heavy, and it seemed easier to just lean his head against the back of the chair than stumble off to his room. He was sure to regret it in the morning, but he was suddenly too tired to care. In that hazy moment right before he fell asleep, he dreamed he was back at the ball, dancing thro
ugh the night with an elegant creature in white. At least the dream version of Lady Georgina smiled at him.

  Chapter 5

  Georgina’s eyes drifted shut, blocking out the morning sun as she inhaled the sweet steam rising from the large mug of tea. After a fortifying gulp, she squared her shoulders and nodded to Harriette. “I’m ready.”

  The rattle of paper filled the room as Harriette spread the morning’s news sheets across the writing desk. “Everything appears to be following your plan.” The maid looked up with a wide grin. “I still can’t believe he was there.”

  “I know.” Georgina returned the smile as she set the mug on her dressing table and began loosening the long braid she’d slept in. She loved mornings. Everyone else in the house thought her fast asleep, lazing the day away until noon, which meant in these early hours with Harriette she was completely free.

  With hair swinging wildly about her shoulders, Georgina hauled Harriette to her feet and twirled the laughing maid around the room. “He was there, Harriette! All of my efforts to get proper mentions in the society columns last year have been worth it.”

  Harriette stumbled out of Georgina’s impromptu waltz. She caught herself on the bedpost, barely stopping before she fell headfirst into the lacy coverlet.

  Georgina twirled on her own once more before dropping into a pink-and-white-striped chair, sending a flutter through the ruffles cascading from the seat to the floor. “Speaking of the papers. Is there anything else of importance in them today?”

  Harriette flipped through the stack of news sheets. “Several lists of who has returned to Town and accounts of last night’s ball. All mentions of you are quite favorable.” She frowned and glanced up from the paper. “Who is Lord Canwell?”

  Georgina paused, a comb halfway through her hair. “I don’t know. We should look him up.”

  Their well-used copy of Debrett’s Peerage was already in Harriette’s hand. She flipped the pages while Georgina began pinning her hair to the top of her head. “Ah, he’s a baron.”