A Worthy Wife (12 page)

Aurora was smoothing the paper across her lap. “I may be green as cabbage, my lord, but I am not as stupid as one. Nor is it any of my business what you did before I met you, much less married you. What are you going to do about Miss, ah, Lola?”

Kenyon thought for a minute, thinking that he wouldn’t be needing any cold baths, not with the icicles dripping off her words, but he did not have a great many options. If one of his own footmen were in attendance, he could send the chap in his stead, but Needles was only a boy. And he could not simply ignore Lola’s plea for help. “I’ll have to go see what the difficulty is.”

“Of course you do. She’s counting on you.”

“Likely she’s between protectors and needs a loan to tide her over. Or needs a place to stay for a few days. I’ll drive you home, return here in time for the last act, hand Lola a few pounds, and still be back at the hotel for our late dinner before the cat can lick its ear.”

“If you drop me at the hotel, I shall ask the first gentleman I see to escort me to the dining room. I hope it’s that tobacco merchant.”

“What, the dirty dish who tried to look down your décolletage as we were leaving? I almost called him out then and there! Besides, supper with that shabster would destroy whatever reputation you might ever hope to have.”

“So would my husband’s visiting his former mistress in public view not three days after our wedding. We are
still married in the eyes of the church, the law, and these thousand people. Unless and until you prove that I am not Aurora Halle, I am Lady Windham, your wife. You did swear to honor me at that ceremony, didn’t you? Well, there is no honor in shaming me before all of London.”

She had a point, Kenyon conceded. She also had a green streak a mile wide, which secretly delighted him. “Very well, we will go together, but you will stand in the corner and not speak to anyone. Is that clear?”

*

It was clear that the man accosting Lola was not going to abide by any rules of gentlemanly conduct. He had a firm grasp on the front of her gown and was pulling her from the room when Kenyon and Aurora and Ned got there. No one seemed inclined to stop him, since the man was as tall as the door frame and nearly as wide. He made the earl look puny.

Kenyon groaned.

“I paid for you tonight, and I’m gettin’ you tonight, you cheatin’ doxy. No one diddles Nick Chubb.”

“But I thought you were giving me a gift, is all. I sold the bracelet to buy coal, like I told you. You never said I had to pay you back in any way.”

“Every gift has its price, duckie, and you’re about to pay the piper.”

Kenyon stepped forward and cleared his throat. “I’ll be happy to pay the lady’s debts, Mr. Chubb, is it? Lola seems reluctant to share your company.”

Chubb swung around. “Who the devil are you to be sticking your long nose into Nick Chubb’s business? I want what I paid for, and no dandified toff is going to do me out of it. ’Sides,” he said, looking back at the corner, “you got your own dollymop. Go plow your own field, like a gentleman farmer, iffen you know how. Unless of course you want to trade?”

So Kenyon hit him. It was a flush hit to the jaw, one Gentleman Jackson would have approved, and nearly broke the earl’s knuckles. Chubb did not even let go of Lola’s dress. He simply picked Kenyon up with his other hand and tossed him against the door, headfirst. Lola
screamed. Aurora screamed. Three other actresses screamed, and one fainted. Two actors fled, one stage-door beau hid under the table, a reviewer from the newspaper started writing furiously, and the manager called for the constable. Kenyon dragged himself up, shook his head to clear it, and landed Chubb another facer, this one to the nose. Chubb shoved him into a tea cart, which toppled.

“I am beginning to get annoyed, boy-o,” the behemoth bellowed when Kenyon came at him again, this time with a blow to the breadbasket. Chubb grabbed him again and held him off the ground, at which Aurora decided it was time to act. She could feel her stomach lurching and refused to let her husband be vanquished while she vomited. So she picked up the nearest thing to hand, the stage pistol that had been used in the last act, and began beating Chubb about the knees, since she could not reach his brain box, which was too small a target anyway. The pistol went off in a harmless cloud of smoke and dust, but creating more panic in the onlookers. Aurora almost swooned herself, thinking she’d shot her husband. But Kenyon roared, landing a solid clout on Chubb’s ear, which caused the giant to drop both the earl, who banged his head against the table, and Lola, who fainted dead away. Aurora kept clubbing at Chubb with the gun. He raised his fist to brush her aside, but Ned leaped onto his back, placing his hands over the bully’s eyes. “Kick ’im in the privates, m’lady!” the boy shouted, so she did. While Chubb was doubled over, Windham coshed him over the head with a wooden chair, just in time for the Charleys to come haul him off.

“I thought I told you to stay in the corner,” was all the earl could say as he watched the reporter tear out of the Green Room with his pad and pencil still flying.

“That was the bravest thing I have ever seen,” Aurora marveled as she wrapped her handkerchief around Kenyon’s battered hand, once they were finally in the carriage.

His heart swelled, almost as large as the lump on his head. And it did not matter that he couldn’t see her in the coach lamp’s dim light, or that he couldn’t see out
of one eye at all; he could hear the warmth in her voice, the pride, the admiration.

“Why, we all might have been killed if Ned hadn’t jumped on Chubb that way.” She patted his bruised cheek. “And you did well too, my lord.”

Chapter Twelve

For twenty-odd years, almost no one but his lordship’s valet knew that the Earl of Windham wore spectacles. It was not vanity, Kenyan always told himself. It was a matter of strength, power, authority. And he looked foolish in glasses.

Now everyone would know unless, of course, they assumed he’d donned the peepers to hide the magnificent black eye he sported, which was only half true. He’d mostly chosen to wear his spectacles on his daily call at the War Office in hopes that no one would recognize him. He’d rather be known as the four-eyed earl than the bridegroom of a ballock-basher. Every scandal sheet, every broadside, held a cartoon of last night’s events: Aurora as Boadicia, rosebuds in her hair, defending the family jewels. Aurora as David, aiming her slingshot at Goliath, and himself, not Ned, on the giant’s back, yelling, “Aim lower, my dear.” The reason Kenyon was so sure it was his caricature was that the dashed swell was looking through a quizzing glass. Bloody hell.

For a man who despised having his name simmering in scandal broth, Windham was not doing a good job of keeping his affairs out of the public eye. His marriage to Genevieve and her French leave, then Brianne’s elopement and nonmarriage, were nothing to the continual catastrophe that was Aurora. He could only imagine how many trees would be cut down for pulp when news of her false identity was aired, and another Warriner marriage was dissolved.

The earl intercepted a few winks at the War Office, a few fingers held alongside noses. Damn, a fellow saw too much when he wore his glasses. And glaring at the insolent curs through thick lenses was not nearly so effective in depressing pretensions as peering through his looking glass. He shouldn’t have listened to Aurora about wearing the spectacles. Zeus, he shouldn’t have listened to her about going to the Green Room. He shouldn’t have married the confounded chit.

The War Office had no news for him. The McPhee solicitor had no information for him, either, only copies of Aurora Halle’s adoption papers—and titters. Gads, who would employ such a twittering toad? But the man appeared honest, and unaware of any possible legal legerdemain.

Could his wife really be the child of Elizabeth and Avisson Halle? Lud, that would leave Kenyon with a flea-wit who fell into one disaster after another, but not a fraud. That would mean, however, that Lady Anstruther-Jones was wrong, and England’s Empress of the East was never wrong.

“You did just as you should, child,” Hortense was telling Aurora as they entered her presence that afternoon.

So the old crone was not infallible after all, Kenyon thought, seating himself on his pillow as if paying homage to a fairy queen instead of a dab of a dowager.

“I am more and more impressed with you, missy. Might even leave you something in my will.”

Lord, not the weapons collection, Kenyon prayed. Heaven alone knew what mayhem Aurora could create with an arsenal.

Fearfully eyeing the stuffed black leopard who was not at Lady Anstruther-Jones’s side but was lapping at the ornamental fountain, Aurora hastily disclaimed any need for such a bequest. “Sweety is more than enough, my lady. We are quite enjoying his antics, aren’t we, Kenyon?”

“Oh, quite, my dear. I can’t recall when I’ve been half so amused.” Waking up to find Sweety on his chest, with his shaving razor in one hairy paw, had been absolutely hilarious. Much more such jollity and he’d laugh himself to death.

“Hah! You’ve got no time for watching a monkey’s
antics, from what I hear. Up to your own, everyone says. Well, Windham, the gel is a goer, but I am not impressed with you, sirrah, not at all.”

Aurora leaped to his defense. She stayed on the pillow, of course, but she hotly protested Lady Anstruther-Jones’s criticism of the earl. “But Chubb was enormous. The biggest man I’ve ever seen. That’s why no one else would help poor Lola. Windham was magnificent, like a knight on a charger, not hesitating an instant to assist the lady. And he would have won the day, I am sure. Eventually.”

“I’m not talking about any brawl, missy. Win or lose, Windham had no business taking his bride to meet his
cheri amour
.”
She thumped her cane on the floor for emphasis, which sent a flock of tiny, colorful birds winging from the trees. Aurora wished she had Aunt Thisbe’s books with her to identify the species.

“She was not my
cheri amour
,”
Kenyon protested, when it seemed that his wife’s defense had taken a detour.

“Oh, she was perhaps a patroness of Almack’s whom I hadn’t heard about previously? Or a lady-in-waiting at court? The woman was someone you should have been introducing your bride to, I’m sure, to see her established in the
beau monde
, yes?”

There was, of course, no answer. Kenyon sighed, almost wishing Sweety had gone ahead and slit his throat.

“Furthermore, young man, you were not forthcoming with me on your previous visit. Didn’t mention your bride’s full name, as a matter of fact. I had to read it myself, or have one of my secretaries do it, which is one and the same. Aurora
Halle
McPhee, the
on dits
columns say, which you forgot to mention.”

“I did say we were looking for information about her relations, Elizabeth and Avisson Halle. I saw no reason to be more specific.”

“Like saying they were her parents. But were they?”

“That is the question, ma’am. You are the one who said the Halle daughter was dead. Is she, or did you discover other information?”

Lady Anstruther-Jones fussed with her pipe, then
wound the butterfly music box while Kenyon waited on tenterhooks, or on a sore posterior from landing so hard last night. “Ma’am?”

“I think I am not in the mood to answer any more questions.”

It was a dismissal, after she’d dragged him here, and out of his boots, and kept him from Bath where he might have found some answers, by George. Kenyon was ready to tell the wizened old viscountess what he thought of her and her homicidal ape. His wife had other ideas.

“Rather than answer questions, my lady, perhaps you’d rather open the gift we brought. We are enjoying the monkey so much we wished to repay you for the pleasure.”

Kenyon had forgotten the wicker basket she’d carried in the curricle. Too concerned with his own doubts, he’d neglected to ask about the gift Needles had procured. Jupiter, let it be something exotic and expensive. Otherwise, they’d be out on the street, and so would the uncertainties concerning Aurora’s birth.

Aurora brought the basket over to Lady Anstruther-Jones and raised its hinged lid. “Hold your hands out, my lady,” she said.

“Eh? Feels like a pricker bush or something. You haven’t brought me a cactus, have you, missy?”

“No, my lady. It’s
Erinaceus europaeus,
a hedgehog Ned found at the market. Some boys were selling it, for stew if you can imagine such a thing! If you give it some seeds or an apple slice, it will uncurl and walk around your lap.”

“Why yes, I believe it’s licking me! You mean to say that someone was going to eat this charming little creature?”

“I’m afraid so. But now I am more afraid the leopard might. I hadn’t thought of that at the time, only how happy the little fellow might be in your indoor garden.”

“Oh, Baku is so ancient he has hardly any teeth left. That’s why I never sent the old boy back to his jungle after the emir brought him to me. He wouldn’t have survived a week. Baku, that is, not the emir. I don’t suppose you two would want—”

Two voices answered as one. “No!”

The old woman shrugged her thin shoulders and kept running her fingers over the hedgehog’s spines. “And you say that boy Ned rescued this darling from a cook pot? What an intrepid lad he is, to be sure. I don’t suppose I could hire him away from you, could I? With a sharp boy like that, there’s no telling what I could do.”