A Lady of Persuasion (35 page)

He loved her, and she loved him. And shouldn’t life be wonderful now?

Perhaps it was the first whisper of madness speaking, but as Bel bathed and dressed, she began to believe it could be. Surely her heart was strong enough, surely her love was sufficiently deep. She could devote herself to both Toby and charity. Passion by night, good works by day.

Why couldn’t she have it all?

She found herself humming a theme from
Don Giovanni
as the carriage conveyed her to the printer’s shop, where she retrieved two stacks of Society leaflets bound with twine. Bel scanned one with satisfaction. Augusta’s clear prose described the plight of the climbing boys and articulated the argument in favor of replacing horrific child labor with grown men and modern machinery. And while Augusta’s text appealed to the reader’s reason, Sophia’s deft illustrations pulled at the heart. Now it fell to her, as a lady of increasing social influence, to convert sympathy into action. That was the purpose of the demonstration Friday.

And Bel’s mission today, as befitted a lady of influence, was to issue personal invitations. It was time to pay a call on Aunt Camille. Otherwise known as Her Grace, the Duchess of Aldonbury.

The Duchess of Aldonbury was, as duchesses went, a rather minor one. She was not a royal duchess. Nevertheless, Aunt Camille held her own version of court. She hosted a ladies’ card party on the third Wednesday of every month, and she guarded the invitations with every ounce of supercilious zeal her aristocratic rank allowed. Add to this the talent of a renowned French-trained pastry chef, and each third Wednesday afternoon saw London’s most elite and influential ladies converging on Her Grace’s residence. To merit an invitation, one must bring a purse bursting with coin to wager and a quiver of witty rejoinders to amuse. Bel didn’t meet either qualification, but she was family and therefore exempt.

When she entered the Roman-styled parlor, there were already nearly two dozen ladies in attendance, arranged in neat clusters of four. Sophia was seated at a table of whist players near the hearth. Bel exchanged a warm smile with her sister-in-law as she moved to greet her aunt.

“Your Grace.” Bel dipped in a graceful curtsy, and followed it with a warm kiss to the matron’s rouged cheek. “How are you, Aunt Camille?”

“I am well, child.” Aunt Camille waved Bel to a seat and then promptly forgot her. Which suited Bel’s purpose, because she was here to speak with everyone except Aunt Camille.

Armed with a small clutch of leaflets, she approached a knot of ladies chatting by the tea service.

“Lady Violet, Mrs. Breckinridge,” she greeted them brightly. The ladies turned to her with expressions of benign amusement. “I’m so delighted to see you. Did you receive my invitation to breakfast at Aldridge House, this Friday?”

“Yes, and I thought surely it was a joke,” Lady Violet replied. “Breakfast, at half-eight in the morning? Why, I’m scarcely abed by five.”

“It’s not only a breakfast,” Bel said. “The meal will be followed by a demonstration, of an exciting innovation in house hold management. This is the reason for the early hour, you see.”

“Oh.” Lady Violet gave her friend a speaking look. “An innovation.”

“And an exciting one,” Mrs. Breckinridge said with a smile. “It must be thrilling indeed, my dear. You’re positively aglow. I should like to learn your secret.”

The ladies tittered, and Bel’s confidence wavered. Then she thought of Toby and lifted her chin. “I do find it exciting,” she said. “There is a grave transgression being perpetrated on the helpless children of London, and we have the power to stop it.”

“Through innovations in house hold management?” Lady Violet looked dubious.

“Yes.” Bel passed each of them one of her leaflets. “As a member of the Society for Obviating the Necessity of Climbing Boys, I—”

“What an absurdly long name,” opined Mrs. Breckinridge. “Why, it hardly fits on the leaflet.”

Bel resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “As a member of the Society, I invite you to attend our demonstration this Friday. The practice of forcing small children to remove soot from flues is not only barbaric, but inefficient. As our demonstration will show, the proper cleaning of chimneys is a task that can only be performed satisfactorily by a grown man.”

“A grown man.” Lady Violet’s eyes went wide. “Did I hear you correctly? Only the services of a grown man are satisfactory?”

“Yes. Well, not any grown man … he must have the proper equipment, of course.”

Mrs. Breckinridge looked on the verge of losing her mouthful of tea. She swallowed with apparent difficulty. “But of course. Tell me, Lady Aldridge, will your husband be a party to this demonstration? I think all the ladies of the
ton
have been curious regarding the state of Sir Toby’s equipment. One has only to look at you to see his services are quite satisfactory.”

Now Lady Violet choked on her biscuit.

Bel frowned, trying to imagine why these women would think Toby would be cleaning his own flues. “Why, my husband is currently occupied with the polling in Surrey. But if the election concludes early, perhaps he will attend. The demonstration itself will be performed by a chimney sweep.”

“Ah,” Lady Violet murmured to her friend. “She has turned to the help already. And a chimney sweep, no less. Worse than a footman.”

“This is not a demonstration for gentlemen,” Bel went on, ignoring the cryptic comment. “The power to change this deplorable situation rests within the female sex.” She continued speaking over their giggles. Why did this strike them as so amusing? “It is a true mark of our modern age, when we, the ladies of English society, find ourselves in a position to exert influence over our husbands and effect social change.”

Lady Violet struggled to compose her expression. “And what position would that be, Lady Aldridge? For exerting influence over one’s husband? Not supine, one supposes?”

“No, indeed not. This is precisely my point. We must not take this injustice lying down.”

The ladies collapsed into laughter. Bel wanted to growl with frustration. Why could she not make these women see? Were they purposefully misunderstanding her, or merely that obtuse?

And was it her passion-addled imagination, or did all of their barbs have a distinctly carnal implication?

“Yes, well,” she muttered, rising to her feet. Perhaps she would find a more sympathetic audience with the Countess of Vinterre across the parlor. “I do hope you will be able to attend.”

“Oh, we shall,” Lady Violet said. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world, Lady Aldridge. Friday promises the best amusement of the season.”

It is not meant for your amusement
, Bel longed to retort.
It is for your edification, you silly,
thoughtless wench
.

Oh, heavens. Had that thought truly originated in her brain? She felt so queer, so out of sorts.

She would have liked to blame her odd behavior on fatigue from the night before, but she suspected the lingering passion had more to do with it. Even staring at the illustration of poor, maltreated climbing boys, she could not muster her usual zeal. Instead, as she surveyed the assortment of wan ladies decorating the richly hued salon, all she could think was that she wanted to return home, return to bed. Return to Toby.

And worse, it was as though everyone in the room could sense it. Lady Violet’s comments were only the beginning. From every corner of the room, the ladies stared at her, whispering to one another across the card table and laughing into their tea.

“Bel.” Sophia touched her elbow. “The air in here is so close, and with the baby”—she laid a hand over her abdomen in a universal gesture of incipient motherhood—“Will you take a turn with me, outside?”

Bel nodded and followed her sister-in-law out the door and into the garden. The moment they rounded the corner of a hedge, Sophia turned to her. “You haven’t seen it?”

“Seen what?”

“This morning’s
Prattler.”

Bel shook her head. She avoided the rancid tabloid on principle, only bothering to glance at it when Toby needed soothing over another assault on his character. Why that paper had such a vendetta against her husband, she could not comprehend.

Sophia withdrew a scrap of rolled newsprint from her reticule and extended it to Bel with one hand, taking the stack of leaflets in her other. “I am so sorry to be the one to show you this. But after Lady Violet’s comments inside … I really thought you must be made aware. People will be talking.”

Bel’s stomach plummeted as she took the bit of paper and unrolled it cautiously. Had they linked Toby with another woman? She knew now that
The Prattler
grossly overstated his rakish exploits, and she believed that no rumor of infidelity would have a mite of truth. But still

—it wounded her, to hear the gossip suggest he had already strayed.

And as she took her first glance at the caricature, she thought indeed that was what the illustration implied. It depicted Toby with a loose woman on his arm, her clothing agape and one sleeve sliding from her shoulder. Her exaggerated breasts squeezed to the top of her bodice, overflowing her gown as she leaned against Toby’s frame. The two figures were depicted in the dark of night, tripping down the stairs of a grand stone edifice. Bel peered closer. Why, it was the opera house!

She read the caption aloud. “The Rake Unrepentant. Is Sir Toby London’s own Don Giovanni?”

“Oh, Bel,” Sophia said. “I’m so sorry.”

Dread stirred in Bel’s chest as she looked again at the loose woman draped over Toby’s dashing form. For the first time she examined the face, instead of the voluptuous figure indecently spilling across the page. Black hair. Wide, dark eyes.

“Oh, dear Lord.”

It was her.
She
was the woman on Toby’s arm, slavering over her own husband like a glassy-eyed prostitute. Now Bel noticed the ribbons of speech attributed to these disgusting renditions of her and Toby. From his mouth: “Did you really think to reform me?” From her: “La! I never knew ruin was so sweet.”

Behind them, in the shadows of the opera house, Mr. Hollyhurst had drawn a pair of underfed children, their hands out in an attitude of begging. Their pleas went unheeded.

“Thank you,” Bel said numbly, rolling the paper again. “Thank you for showing me. It explains a great deal.” No wonder the ladies inside had greeted her overtures with amusement, doubted her charitable intentions, taken all of her words as innuendo. This was their opinion of her: a lust-mad female, incited to depravity by her husband’s rakish charm and dissolute example.

And the worst of it was—Bel worried that they were right. Mr. Hollyhurst, Lady Violet, Mrs.

Breckinridge. Why would anyone draw such an image, or give credit to its implications, if it did not contain truth at its core? She thought of leaving the opera house last night, flushed and frenzied with desire—too desperate even to wait until they returned home. Good heavens, she’d thrown herself on him in the carriage! A respectable lady of influence didn’t behave in such a manner. And had there truly been hungry children, huddling in the shadows in need of help, whom she had ignored in her passion-blinded state?

There could have been.

Who would look to such a woman for their moral direction? How could such a woman be the wife of an influential MP?

“Don’t make overmuch of it,” Sophia said. “As scandals go, desire for one’s own husband is not much of one. Never mind Lady Violet—she’s just an old, embittered dragon. She can’t help but breathe fire. She’ll tire of teasing you quickly enough, if you refuse to give her the satisfaction of showing distress.”

“It’s not just Lady Violet. All London reads
The Prattler.”

“Yes, and there is a new issue printed each morning. Within a few days, people will find a new topic of gossip, and this will all have been forgotten.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” But in a few days, the election would be over—the demonstration, as well. And all of it could be ruined, because of her. Because she had allowed passion to overrule her principles. “I…” She choked back a wave of bile. “I feel suddenly ill. I think I’ll slip out by the garden path and make my way home. Please make my excuses to our aunt.”

“Yes, of course.” Sophia stroked Bel’s arm soothingly. “If there’s anything I can do—”

“No, no.” Bel forced a little smile. “Really, this is nothing. I’m just fatigued. I need to rest, that’s all.”

After bidding Sophia good-bye, Bel made her way to the front of the residence. To make her failure complete, she ordered the carriage to simply return her home. She knew Toby would still be out, campaigning in Surrey. Perhaps she ought to complete her visits to distribute leaflets, or take supplies to the children’s dispensary. But she didn’t want to be near ladies or orphans right now. She wanted to be near Toby, in what ever way she could. She would cast off this fine, French-striped day dress and beribboned bonnet, put on one of her old, plain muslin shifts, and creep into the bed that might still be warm from their night of passion—that might still retain some comforting hint of his scent. And then she might weep, or fitfully dream the day away, until he came home to hold her and love her.

Oh, she was weak indeed.

When she entered Aldridge House, she heard low, masculine voices down the hall. Her heart leapt. Was Toby home? Perhaps he’d been laughed off the hustings in Surrey, if today’s
Prattler
had reached the borough already. To her surprise, Bel didn’t even care—so long as he was here, with her.

On light feet, she hurried down the corridor. The voices seemed to be coming from Toby’s library. Nearing the door, she recognized the warm timbre of her husband’s voice. It
was
him.