By a Lady

by Amanda Elyot

  “Oh yes, many times, your ladyship,” C.J. replied, remembering to keep all her answers as honest as possible.

  “Well, I shan’t discuss my brother’s abilities—or absence of them, according to the critics—but perhaps someday we shall compare our views on Mr. Macklin and Mr. Garrick. You are far too young, of course, to have seen Garrick on the stage, but his fame lives on, to be sure.”

  C.J. was rescued from the necessity of fabricating a response by the interruption of Collins announcing Lady Oliver and her nephew, Owen Percival, Earl of Darlington.

  Surely the stately matron sailing into the room was Jane Austen’s Catherine De Bourgh in every imposing ounce of flesh. Her impeccably tailored iron-gray redingote, satin gown, and plumed bonnet matched the color of her hair, lending her the appearance of a battleship.

  Lady Oliver’s nephew, on the other hand, presented rather a different impression altogether. With a start, C.J. recognized him as the handsome aristocrat she had marked in the courtroom on the day of her trial. Her stomach plummeted. Did the earl remember her? How she wished for a fan with which to hide her face! He looked to be about thirty-five years old, perhaps a bit older, with merry, deep blue eyes; and even before he uttered a syllable, she could plainly see that it was the gentleman, rather than his forbidding-looking aunt, on whom Lady Dalrymple truly doted.

  Was it C.J.’s imagination, or did the man’s eyes sparkle even more when he focused them on her? “Aunt Euphoria” was not insensible to the earl’s reaction, and motioned for him to sit opposite C.J. so he could better admire the view. C.J. was relieved that he did not appear to recognize her from the assizes.

  “I see you have a guest, Euphoria.” Lady Oliver retrieved a gilded lorgnette from her reticule and scrutinized C.J. as though she were a microbe. “Qui est la jeune fille habillée comme une domestique?”

  “My niece, Cassandra Jane. Goes by the name of Welles.” Lady Dalrymple lowered her voice. “Albert’s child.”

  Her guests nodded in complete comprehension. “Of course,” Darlington agreed softly. “Ah yes . . . and her choosing to be known by another name. It is better that way.”

  “Better, Percy? Of course it is better,” Lady Oliver erupted, laying aside her lorgnette and opening an ivory-handled fan fashioned from Chinese silk. “Il fait très chaud, ma chère. Are you not stifling as well, Euphoria?” Lady Oliver wrinkled her nose as though she smelled decaying fish. “The eighth Marquess of Manwaring is a notorious wastrel who gambled away his fortune and was forced to earn a living as an actor,” the battleship sneered in a rather theatrical tone herself. “Albert has always been a most unattractive combination of the bombastic, the cantankerous, and the unwise.”

  “You are nevertheless speaking to Lady Dalrymple and her niece of their own flesh and blood, Aunt Augusta,” interposed the earl in a tone that signified an end to the matter, and left his aunt pursing her lips in evident distaste.

  “I’ll allow that my father is not without his faults, but I would wager he is not the only person in England who is ‘bombastic, cantankerous, and unwise,’ your ladyship,” C.J. found herself saying.

  Lady Oliver snapped her fan shut in a most indiscreet gesture.

  “Lady Cassandra appears to have inherited your spiritedness, ‘Aunt Euphoria’,” Darlington remarked, evidently pleased by the lovely newcomer’s intrepid reproval of his formidable aunt.

  “You must remember to call her Miss Welles, Percy,” Lady Dalrymple replied, her twinkling eyes conveying the endorsement of her headstrong “niece’s” behavior. “Elle est arrivée cet après-midi. Mais oui—just this afternoon. All the way from London,” she continued, aware that Eloisa Wickham would be too embarrassed by her mistreatment of the girl to ever contradict Lady Dalrymple’s version of the truth. Her warm smile illuminated the room. “How remiss of me not to make a proper introduction! Cassandra, may I present my dearest friend, Lady Augusta Oliver, and the Earl of Darlington—her nephew, Owen Percival.”

  The earl approached C.J. and bowed gallantly. The glossy dark hair that framed his handsome face smelled of a spring morning. Yet among Darlington’s immediately agreeable qualities, it was the intelligence in his eyes, which danced with an incomparable sparkle, that rendered him most compelling.

  It occurred to C.J. that it might be better to volunteer nothing more to the conversation, and to avoid speaking unless expressly spoken to. It would be an exercise in restraint—ordinarily not one of her strongest suits. Thus, it was both a blessing and a curse when the older women retired to a corner of the room, at the prompting of Lady Oliver’s disdainful sneer in the direction of C.J.’s bodice.

  Her voice pierced the air like a cold poniard through warm flesh. “My dear Euphoria, the girl looks like a street urchin, perhaps worse, in that unfortunate gown. You cannot possibly be considering her introduction into polite society unless she is taken well in hand. Well in hand, I say! Perhaps her appearance was acceptable to Albert, but it simply will not do here. I cannot imagine what you were thinking in allowing her to be seen looking like a tradesman’s wife.”

  Polite society, indeed! With half an ear to the women’s conference, C.J. deemed Lady Oliver’s denunciation of her appearance as anything but polite. In fact, in what C.J. had always imagined was a world of excessively good manners, her ladyship’s shocking rudeness came as a great surprise. C.J. knew a couple of fine old Anglo-Saxon words to describe a woman of Lady Oliver’s stamp, but with some effort she restrained herself from voicing them. She also wondered why the women peppered their conversation with French when they were both English bluebloods. And their nation is at war with France! There must have been a reason for such pretensions, but to inquire seemed inadvisable.

  “I have every intention of sending her to Mrs. Mussell at the first opportunity, Gustie. However, the girl arrived today, so shortly in advance of your call that I had not the chance to properly groom her.”

  Groom her? C.J. felt like a horse.

  “Mrs. Mussell,” Lady Oliver sniffed. “A second-class seamstress. Send her to my modiste, Madame Delacroix. Clearly, the girl has a figure worthy of admiration, if my nev-you (for that is how she pronounced the word nephew) is any indication.”

  The older women discreetly turned to see the earl and Miss Welles engaged in animated conversation.

  “Percy has always had an eye for the ladies,” Lady Dalrymple remarked, silently noting that they had not always been ladies of quality and gentle breeding. When Darlington had finally chosen a wife, he was nearly disinherited for selecting so poorly. Marguerite de Feuillide was not only a Frenchwoman, she was also an actress—herself shunned by her noble family for pursuing a life upon the stage of the Comédie-Française. In Lady Oliver’s estimation, the only crime worse than appearing on a public stage was being French.

  It would be an uphill climb for Lady Dalrymple to bring her dear friend around to accepting Cassandra in any guise as a suitable wife. By styling her as the child of the black sheep of the family, Euphoria ensured that little would be expected of the girl. No one in polite circles spoke aloud of her brother Albert. Lady Oliver’s characterization of the dissolute nobleman-turned-actor was unfortunately a rather accurate one. But these proclivities rendered the Marquess of Manwaring no better or worse than a dozen of his contemporaries. Among the Georgian nobility it was a badge of honor to be deeply in debt, and many a man who had been ruined at the gaming tables was still received in the best circles and was always welcome at his clubs. It was his ill-fated decision to pursue a stage career that had made Lord Manwaring a pariah among his peers. Euphoria was fully aware that some of her ilk would be reluctant to accept the girl in society. The tack to adopt was that Miss Welles could not help her lineage. After all, the marquess’s reversal of fortune and subsequent adoption of the thespian’s mantle had occurred while the unfortunate girl was still in swaddling clothes.

  Chapter Eight

  In which an otherwise enchanting nobleman discloses his prejudices, somewhat
marring a blissful afternoon; our heroine’s idol, Miss Jane Austen, pays a visit; and a most unusual time-travel conveyance is discovered.

  C.J. WAS FINDING the earl to be a witty and well-read conversationalist. Educated at Eton and then at Oxford, he was of course well versed in Greek and Latin but had read history at Magdalen College—a secular shift from an earlier inclination toward theology. Of course, as a first son he would never have entered the clergy, but he was interested in the subject of all religions, most particularly the pantheistic ones practiced in ancient Greece and Rome. When he was branded a pagan and a Philistine by his don, Darlington decided to focus his interests instead on the classical world, relishing the poetry of Homer and Virgil in their respective original tongues. He had even enjoyed some modest success as a translator but was rather retiring about what he allowed were only modest accomplishments. “I daresay, the only reason any of the translations sold was that people were dead curious to see what a nobleman dabbling in such scholarly pursuits might publish.”

  They shared a laugh. “I am quite sure, your lordship, that you are undervaluing your achievements.”

  “If I were to tell you then, Miss Welles, that there was no call for a second printing, you might revise your good opinion of my efforts.” He smiled, then leaned toward her and in a very confidential manner spoke a few words of a foreign language.

  “What is that?” she questioned admiringly. “It sounds lovely, whatever it is.”

  “The first line of The Aeneid. Impressed?”

  “Indubitably, your lordship!” More laughter.

  “My classical leanings I admit to have come by honestly, owing to my father’s keen interest in archaeology, but I have not divulged my true passion, Miss Welles.”

  It was a comfort to realize that the nature of flirting had changed so little over time. “May I express the hope that you will reveal it to me?”

  “I confess it is not so mysterious nor as prurient as I have made it sound. Nowadays it is fashionable for the better educated of my class to profess an appreciation for Shakespeare . . . but for me it is so much more than that.”

  C.J. favored him with a look of pure radiance. “I, too, have a passion for Shakespeare, your lordship, although, in the numerous productions of his plays that I have had the opportunity to . . . view, I would have wished for ‘more matter with less art.’ ”

  “However do you mean, Miss Welles?”

  She realized that she had nearly divulged the secret of her true profession and was about to say that she was something of a purist, preferring interpretations that placed the Bard’s glorious language over production concepts like putting The Tempest on Mars or setting Romeo and Juliet in Miami’s South Beach. “It does not signify. Merely an attempt to be clever, which fell far short of the intention. Do go on, your lordship. You said there was so much more . . .”

  Darlington’s expression was one of pure rhapsody. “Ahh . . . the golden age of England, Miss Welles . . . the Renaissance . . . the flowering of literature . . . art for art’s sake. I have so often wondered what it would be like to travel back in time to have such an experience, sharing a bumper with Kit Marlowe in a Deptford tavern . . .”

  “In that case, your lordship, you would be hobnobbing with the marginally rich and posthumously famous. Would you still wish to be a nobleman if you were to travel back two hundred years?” C.J. quizzed.

  “Given the choice, I firmly believe that no one would elect to live in squalor, even if he is a poet. And for the briefest window of time, Miss Welles, if I may disagree with your assessment of Marlowe’s literary achievements, he was the most celebrated dramatist of the day. ‘Aunt Euphoria,’ ” he called to the dimpled dowager entertaining his blood relation, “will you make a loan to me of your crystal ball so that I may travel back to the Renaissance?”

  “Absolutely not, Percy!” his hostess retorted. “The Renaissance the golden age? Pish-tush! Now my salad days were the golden age of England: the Enlightenment—the Age of Reason. Discoveries. Inventions. Art for man’s sake.”

  “And the world has gone to the devil ever since,” Augusta concurred. “Look at France.”

  “You are sufficiently enlightened then, Lady Oliver?” C.J. asked charmingly.

  “It is unwise to bait her,” Darlington warned in a whisper, but his merry expression indicated that he quite enjoyed the young lady’s boldness. “However, on the subject of the French Republic, Aunt Augusta is well aware that we tread common ground.”

  “How so, sir?”

  “Miss Welles, we have spoken of my predilection for antiquities and touched upon the subject of my pastimes. It is not appropriate for me to venture into a discussion of politics in the presence of a young lady.”

  “And why, pray, should I not be entitled to learn more about you, especially on the issue of something which so clearly strikes to the core of your beliefs as a man?”

  “Suffice it to say,” Darlington said stiffly, his skin coloring a deep red against the stark white of his starched cravat, “that the French learned everything they know about revolution from the Americans!”

  The earl’s jingoistic ignorance both shocked and surprised her. “I don’t believe they ever used guillotines in America, your lordship!” C.J. countered. He had been right. One passionate political remark and a barricade had been erected between them that threatened to unduly mar an otherwise charming acquaintance.

  “It was not enough for them to take up arms against their sovereign,” Darlington continued hotly. “But the infant nation of heathens and savages had to pour their democratic pestilence into the ear of England’s other enemy . . . dispatching traitors like Jefferson and Franklin to Paris with the hope of winning converts to their perverted brand of government. And they found them—in Marat, Danton, Robespierre!”

  C.J. drew in a slow, measured breath and counted to five before speaking, the better to control her temper. “I think . . . perhaps . . . it is an exaggeration on your lordship’s part to intimate that Thomas Jefferson played Claudius to the French monarchy’s Old Hamlet. In fact it was Jefferson himself who said that when you consider the character which is given America ‘by the lying newspapers of London and their credulous copiers in other countries, when you reflect that all Europe is made to believe we are a lawless banditti, in a state of absolute anarchy, cutting one another’s throats and plundering without distinction,’ how can a reasonable person expect a European to know that in truth, ‘there is not a country on Earth where there is greater tranquility, where the laws are milder or better obeyed, where everyone is attentive to his own business, or meddles less with that of others, and where strangers are better received, more hospitably treated, and with a more sacred respect’?”

  The earl allowed the young woman to deliver her defense of America by proxy before issuing his challenge. “Have you been in France, Miss Welles?” Darlington asked, his voice rising.

  “Well . . .”

  “I was! And I saw innocent people—dozens if not hundreds of innocent men, women, and young children . . . babies ripped from their mothers’ arms—taken to the Place de la Concorde and bloodily dispatched with one stroke of a falling blade!”

  “Have you ever met an American, your lordship?” C.J. demanded.

  “I hope if ever I do, I am wearing a sword or carrying a pistol.”

  What colossal bigotry! “You would kill an innocent, and perhaps unarmed, stranger simply because you do not like his kind or his countrymen? And yet you have the audacity to accuse others of barbarism?” C.J. thought the Englishman would spit in disgust right on Lady Dalrymple’s pastoral Aubusson. “Ah yes, ‘Rule Britannia! Britannia rules the waves!’ ” she added in a lilting tone intended to lighten the tenor of the conversation. It occurred to C.J. that her particularly impassioned defense of her own nation was predicated upon wounds inflicted to her homeland that were as fresh as France’s atrocities were to Lord Darlington and that they approached the subject from a chasm more than two hundre
d years wide. In this world, the Reign of Terror was a recent event, not something consigned, as it was for C.J., to the dusty pages of a distant history.

  “Heavens!” Lady Dalrymple exclaimed. “The pair of you! I knew there was a reason gentlemen did not discourse on politics at tea. Percy, you’ll frighten my poor niece out of her wits with talk of heathens and pistols and Frenchmen.”

  Offering a polite bow, the nobleman apologized for his outburst. “Forgive me, Miss Welles. It was entirely imprudent of me to allow you to draw me into a discussion of international proportions. I should not be surprised to discover that you have a bit of the Yankee rebel in you, yourself.”

  Oh yes, you should, C.J. thought. If you only knew how much. But she replied simply, “Pooh! If ladies and gentlemen discussed nothing but the weather and the state of everyone’s collective and individual health, we should never begin to learn one another’s true natures. However distasteful.”

  “That is what marriage is for, my dear,” the countess beamed, ignoring C.J.’s last remark.

  “But by then, it is often too late, Aunt Euphoria.” She looked to his lordship for a reaction.

  Darlington studied a biscuit. “I have a witty cousin who believes that a young lady should never know too much about her husband before marriage, as she has the rest of her life to devote to acquainting herself with his habits.”

  Lady Oliver peered at her teacup as though she were inspecting it for germs. “Speaking of our cousin, where is she, Percy?”