The Last Earl Standing

by Blackwood, Gemma

  Julian was waiting for him in a quiet corner. “Where have you been?” he asked, turning his back to the crowd so that no one could see what he was saying. “I lost you completely!”

  George raised a single eyebrow and nodded surreptitiously towards the side door. Lord Shrewsbury came out first, cheeks red, eyes low. Wetherton followed, holding his silver-tipped cane like a sergeant major’s baton. He gave the room an imperious sweep of his eyes, passing over George and Julian entirely, and then tossed his head scornfully and marched towards the exit.

  George and Julian exchanged a look.

  “I’ll follow,” Julian murmured. “We mustn’t make him suspicious.”

  George hung back, searching the room for the reason Wetherton had left in disgust. He soon found it.

  Lady Anthea Balfour was in the centre of a group of laughing girls. She was recounting a story to them with some animation, her hands making a series of flamboyant gestures that were incomprehensible without hearing the words she was saying. George moved closer.

  Just as he came within earshot, Anthea stopped talking abruptly and lowered her hands.

  “Why, it’s the dreadfully busy Lord Streatham,” she said. George prepared himself to be the butt of her friends’ amusement. Giggling would ensue, no doubt. Whispers behind silk-gloved hands. He deserved nothing less.

  But it seemed Anthea had not seen fit to blacken his name with every woman in the vicinity. Far from giggles, George was met with a series of polite curtseys.

  He recognised the shortest girl as the one who had been tearing about with Lord Rotherham. If he had to guess, he would say she was Anthea’s youngest sister, Lady Edith. A third girl, standing close at Anthea’s side with her eyes demurely lowered, bore the Balfour features strongly enough to be identified as Lady Isobel, the Balfour sister who reportedly made the least trouble.

  The extremely elegant woman at Anthea’s other side, though she lacked the golden Balfour hair, was watching the girls with a protective air that immediately told George she was the eldest sister, Lady Selina. His surmise was proven accurate by the appearance of the Duke of Loxwell, their brother, whom he knew well enough from a series of amusing encounters in the House of Lords.

  The duke was not pleased to see him.

  “Good evening, Streatham,” he said, extending his hand with a frown. George shook it enthusiastically.

  “Duke! What a charming evening this is. I admit that I came across in the hopes of being introduced to your delightful sisters.”

  The duke’s jaw tightened, but he was too proper a gentleman to refuse. George might be his political opponent, but his character was spotless. At least, as far as society knew.

  What happened in the dead of night in the service of the Crown was nobody’s business but his own.

  The Balfour sisters were duly introduced. Selina, cool and aloof, acknowledged him with an incline of her graceful neck. Edith curtseyed and immediately excused herself to some pressing business with a lively group of young friends on the other side of the room. Isobel barely murmured a greeting.

  Anthea, to his surprise, stuck out her hand and shook his warmly.

  “We are already acquainted,” she declared. “And we are good enough friends already that we need not stand on ceremony. Is that not right, Lord Streatham?”

  “Call me George,” he invited her. “Since we are such good friends.”

  The duke cleared his throat loudly. “Anthea. It is your turn to attend to Aunt Ursula. Please see that she has ample refreshment. This is a very late hour for her, and she is only here for the sake of you girls.”

  “Of course, Alex.” Anthea gave her brother a gentle nudge and raised an eyebrow at George. “Please accompany me to the card room, George.”

  Fully aware that this was the last thing her brother wanted, George bowed and offered his arm with great delight.

  “You are wicked,” he murmured, as they made their way around the edge of the dance floor. “It’s plain to see that your brother does not think me a suitable companion for you.”

  “And he is quite right.” Anthea spoke teasingly, lightly, and did not look at him. “A suitable gentleman would never request my company for supper and then abandon me. I am not a wallflower, George. Appearances notwithstanding.”

  “I have never seen anyone less like a wallflower. I had to fight off Wetherton and Shrewsbury for that supper invitation.”

  “And I am glad you did.” She came to a halt, letting out a sigh. “I wish I knew what they wanted with me!”

  George could not imagine anything more obvious than what his two fellow earls wanted from the vivacious Lady Anthea. He was about to tell her so when he remembered what he had overheard Wetherton saying to Shrewsbury. Her brother would never permit her to marry a fortune hunter.

  George’s heart recoiled at the thought of Shrewsbury getting his sticky hands on Anthea for the sake of her dowry. He pitied any woman who married in such circumstances, but in Anthea’s case the thought was particularly repellent. She was so lively, so self-assured, so particularly appealing, that she deserved a truly worthy partner. Neither the grasping Shrewsbury nor the suspicious Wetherton would do.

  “What is it that you suspect they want?” he asked. “Shrewsbury does not strike me as a difficult puzzle to solve, but Wetherton…”

  “Wetherton is the one who truly confuses me,” she admitted. “We have nothing in common. I cannot confess to liking the man at all. And yet he has recently become extremely persistent.” She hesitated for a moment, frowning, then shrugged her shoulders and resumed walking towards the card room. “I hope I can trust you to be discreet, George.”

  “No man in England can keep a secret better than I.”

  She looked at him curiously. “Do you know, I thought that was the case. I have an instinct about people sometimes. I knew from the moment I saw you that –”

  “Anthea!” An elderly woman was waving an empty glass at her from the whist table. “Anthea, dear girl! Fetch your old auntie some more sherry!”

  Anthea smiled fondly. “At once, Aunt Ursula!” She turned to George and curtseyed. “I won’t introduce you. Aunt Ursula has a habit of asking every young man I present to her when she may wish us joy. Even you don’t deserve that.”

  “Have you decided my punishment for abandoning you at dinner?”

  She gave him an appraising look. “Not yet. Though I assure you, it will be something very distressing.”

  “Perhaps you will tell me what it is when I call on you tomorrow.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Supposing you find me at home, you mean.”

  “Isn’t that what every young lady does the day after a ball? Sit at home awaiting her suitors?”

  She looked horrified – just for a moment. “You are teasing me.”

  “I am,” he agreed. “Though I hope you will find time in your doubtless frantic schedule to sit just a moment and wait for me.”

  “You may try your luck,” she said, shrugging carelessly. “I will not hold my breath waiting for you, however. You do not deserve it. Not yet.”

  She gave him an unladylike wink, curtseyed, and went to attend to her elderly chaperone.

  George felt an old, familiar smile settle on his lips. He recognised this feeling. He had felt it while clambering over the ramparts of a moonlit castle beside a Swiss lake. He had felt it while entering the war camp of a French general in heavy disguise.

  He had never yet felt it in a ballroom, and certainly not for a woman. But the thrill was unmistakable all the same.

  The game was on.

  “What’s got into you?” asked Julian, appearing at his side. “You’re grinning like the cat that got the cream.”

  “If I were a cat, I’d only smile for caviar,” said George. “I know my worth.” He noticed the pallor in Julian’s cheeks and flung an arm around his shoulder. “Is the evening taking its toll?”

  “I cannot abide the crush,” said Julian, passing a hand across his brow. “Wetherton l
eft without speaking to anyone else. Shall we order our carriage? I suspect you had more luck this evening than I did.”

  George’s eyes lingered on Anthea’s glimmering blue dress as she bent to whisper in her aunt’s ear, making the old lady rock with laughter.

  “You’re right there, old chap,” he said. “I have been lucky indeed.”

  5

  The morning after a ball found the Balfour household mostly abed until gone noon. Only Aunt Ursula, who woke at eight every morning to perform her daily stretches, and Anthea, who forced herself out of bed to complete her day’s work on the column in peace and quiet, were stirring upstairs.

  The weather had turned just crisp enough that Anthea was glad of the fire her maid had set in the grate. She shuffled her feet towards it as she sat at her desk, her pen busily scratching across the page.

  My readers must surely agree that nothing could be less gentlemanly than abandoning a lady in the middle of a crowded ballroom…

  Yes, that might do. She wanted to chastise George without going so far as to paint him as a villain. But there was a fine line to tread; the last thing she wanted was for him to suspect that she was behind Lady X’s column. She had kept the secret too long to slip up now.

  The maid knocked on the door and came in with a tray of tea and toast. “Are you ready for breakfast, my lady? It being nearly noon, I thought you might be up.”

  Anthea pushed her papers away with a sigh. “I may as well eat. I am getting nothing else done.”

  The maid busied herself laying out Anthea’s day dress and organising the jewellery she had left on the dressing table the night before. “Oh! My lady, is this new?” She was holding up Aunt Ursula’s diamond brooch. “It’s lovely.”

  “Not new.” Anthea stretched her hand out to take it. “Very old, in fact. It belongs to Aunt Ursula.”

  The maid craned over to get a better look at it as Anthea rubbed her thumb over the spiky gemstones. “Real diamonds, my lady?”

  “I didn’t ask. I imagine they must be.” Aunt Ursula, so rumour had it, had been an astonishing beauty in her youth. She had accepted gifts of impossible value from every lord, prince, and foreign ambassador who had passed through London. At least, that was what she always said.

  “Shall I take it back to her room for you, my lady?”

  “No, leave it with me. I ought to thank her for it again.” Anthea bit off a corner of buttered toast and returned to her work with a sigh. “Just as soon as I have finished this.”

  The maid bobbed a curtsey and left her to sigh over her sentences. Lady X was renowned for her scathing wit and her take-no-prisoners attitude. It would not do to have her growing sentimental over a mere gentleman.

  Not that Anthea felt anything sentimental about George and his teasing manners. Not at all.

  By the time she had decided on the right tone for her column, the house was stirring around her. She heard a loud crash and a cry of dismay from the room next door as Edith knocked something over. Isobel’s musical humming passed from one end of the corridor to the other. Alex’s deep laugh sounded from somewhere downstairs, telling Anthea that his wife must be awake, too.

  No one had ever made Alex laugh as Daisy did.

  Anthea pushed back her chair, lifted her arms over her head, and stretched until the bones in her back complained. She hid the column under a pile of letters and took up the diamond brooch. She rarely felt sentimental about jewellery, but she would be sorry to give this one back to Aunt Ursula. It was a truly beautiful piece, shaped like a sprig of jasmine, the golden leaves so delicate, and the diamond petals so bright.

  She padded along the corridor in her night gown, ignoring the inbreath of censure from Selina who sailed past fully dressed and ready for the day. Selina always went visiting the day after a ball. Any gentlemen hoping to see her were inevitably disappointed.

  “Are you going to receive morning calls in your nightgown?” she asked. Anthea could not resist.

  “It would save a great deal of time. If a suitor cannot bear the sight of me in a nightgown, his ardour cannot be very robust.”

  “Anthea!” Selina shook her head, pinching her lips together to stop herself from laughing. “You are impossible! You don’t deserve any gentleman callers after that remark. Though, unless I am wrong, you may expect several.”

  “One,” Anthea corrected her. “I did my best to discourage the others.” When Selina opened her mouth to chastise her, Anthea quieted her with an upraised finger. “Don’t tell me I was wrong to do it! You have spent every Season since you came of age snubbing every man who dares to look at you.”

  “That is…” Selina abandoned her tone of protest. “True. That is quite true. But I do not want to see you following my bad example.”

  “I am not. I made a friend last night. An eligible gentleman friend.” And, with any luck, a pair of eligible gentlemen enemies. She had no desire to see Lord Wetherton or Lord Shrewsbury in the drawing room that day – or any other.

  “The Earl of Streatham?” Selina laughed. “You have finally found someone as keen to shock our poor brother as you are! Well, I commend you for your ingenuity. Now, off with you and get dressed. Poor Lord Streatham deserves better than your dressing gown.”

  Anthea wished she had not mentioned him. Now, if George proved as unreliable as he had been at the ball, she would be doubly embarrassed. Selina would doubtless be extremely sympathetic, and that was something Anthea could never bear.

  Aunt Ursula was, as expected, in the vibrant silk dressing gown which she wore each day until luncheon. She waved Anthea towards the chaise longue opposite her armchair with a hand stuffed with rings.

  “Good morning! Good morning!” She leaned forwards and caught up Anthea’s hand, squeezing it with more strength than seemed likely from such ancient fingers. “Do help yourself to sherry.”

  Aunt Ursula drank nothing but sherry, despite entreaties from every doctor who attended her. To the doctors’ eternal confoundment, she was the picture of perfect health.

  “Thank you, Auntie, I am not thirsty.” Anthea passed her the brooch she had worn to the ball. “I wanted to return this and thank you for it.”

  “Ah! That old thing!” Aunt Ursula tapped her nose with a wrinkled finger. “I am glad to see you took care of it. This was a gift from a maharaja! I met him in my travelling days. Oh, I must have been no more than twenty – bouncing along atop an elephant! Have you ridden an elephant, Anthea?”

  Anthea had seen an elephant only once, in the menagerie at the Tower of London. She had pitied the poor creature, enclosed in a space far too small for its bulk and suffering from the cold weather of England. Rides had not been on offer.

  “I have not.”

  “Very good.” Aunt Ursula nodded approvingly. “I cannot recommend it.”

  Anthea could see that her aunt was in the mood for reminiscing. “How did you meet the maharaja, Auntie?”

  Aunt Ursula leaned back in her chair, her eyes growing distant, and recounted a lurid tale of fire-eaters, kidnappings, and glittering Indian palaces which, if not entirely true, was certainly entertaining.

  “And that was when I opened the sandalwood box and discovered the diamond brooch,” she concluded, as Anthea listened fondly. “There was a note inside, but it was not in English and I could not read it. After all, it would never have come to anything. I am an English rose at heart. Besides –”

  “The man to match you has not yet been made,” said Anthea. It was one of Aunt Ursula’s favourite phrases.

  The old lady winked. “And a good thing too! I was not cut out to be anyone’s wife.” She shook the brooch to attract Anthea’s attention. “Now, see how your wise old auntie takes care of her precious things.”

  Aunt Ursula pushed herself slowly upright – Anthea resisted the urge to embarrass her by offering an arm – and made her way to the bookshelf standing in the corner of the room. She took out a dusty volume of history and opened it to reveal that the pages had been cut away to form
an inner compartment. The brooch fitted neatly inside.

  “Ha!” Aunt Ursula slammed the book shut, sending up a cloud of dust, and replaced it on the shelf. “Let the thieves find that one, if they can!”

  “Thieves, Auntie?” Anthea could not help but smile. “Are we in danger of being robbed?”

  “I am not a fool, girl, though the servants think I must be. Snooping creatures! Only yesterday I found my jewellery box had been moved to the other side of my dressing table. Someone was rifling through it, no doubt about it!”

  “Perhaps the maid was simply dusting?” Anthea knew that her brother and Selina vetted their staff with extreme care. Every one of the servants had come with the highest possible recommendation.

  “Dusting! Dusting, my foot!” Aunt Ursula shook a wizened fist at an imaginary adversary. “Does dusting explain the apple that went missing from my beside table last week?”

  “An apple, Auntie?”

  “An apple, girl! I eat an apple every morning the moment I wake up. Why else do you think I keep this close to hand?” Aunt Ursula slid a rather impressive hunting knife from beneath her pillow. “My teeth can’t manage the whole fruit anymore.” The blade flashed in the sunlight. Anthea leapt to her feet, holding her hands out without knowing whether she ought to take the knife from her aunt or back swiftly away.

  Aunt Ursula made a few exploratory passes through the air. “The beauty of it is that it’ll manage burglars just as well as apples. I won’t hold with being burgled. Not at my age.”

  Anthea fancied she could hear a metallic swish each time the blade moved. “Auntie, does Alex know you have that?”

  “Oh, it’s none of his business.” Aunt Ursula sheathed the knife beneath her pillow once more, to Anthea’s relief. “I’ve given the maid who makes the bed a little something extra to keep it between us.”

  Anthea hoped the something extra was enough to compensate for the potential loss of a finger. “I don’t think you need to worry about being robbed when you have that to hand.”