Almost a Gentleman

Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue

ALMOST A

GENTLEMAN

PAM ROSENTHAL

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

BRAVA BOOKS are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp.

Third Avenue

New York
,
NY

Copyright © 2003 by Pam Rosenthal

ISBN 0-7582-0443-4

First Kensington Trade Paperback Printing: May

Printed in the
United States of America

For my mother, Anne Ritterman

No one is born a romance writer, but I got a good start: just before I was born, my mother, a lifelong book lover, was wheeled into the delivery room reading
Forever Amber
. Thanks, Mom, for sharing your love of reading with me from the very beginning, and for introducing me along the way to Jo March, the first scribbling woman of my acquaintance.

It's been a long time since then, and almost five years since I first thought I might write a romance novel. During those five years, I've received lots of generous and enthusiastic help. Ellie Ely encouraged me when I wasn't sure whether to continue, read numerous drafts of two novels, and caught countless errors, obscurities, and infelicities both large and small. Thanks to Robin Levine-Ritterman, Barb Levine-Ritterman, Ellen Jacobson, Barbara Schaffer, Jeff Weinstein, Ron Silliman, Krishna Evans, Anne Bard and Amy Bard for ongoing sympathy and encouragement. And to Dr. Jeff Ritterman for information about wounds and dislocations.

My son, Jesse Rosenthal, asked difficult, provocative questions about the romance genre and what I'm doing here; someday I hope to have some definitive answers for him. My husband, Michael Rosenthal, simply did what he always does. As a brilliant bookseller, he finds historical and literary resources I need and have overlooked; with his customary critical energy, he helps me understand and strengthen the structures underlying what I've written. He'll always be my most astute reader—and not just of the words I put to paper.

Romance Writers of America is a treasured resource for anyone who takes it into her head to write a romance novel and needs to learn how. I'm particularly grateful to my local San Francisco Area Chapter for hosting a presentation by Helen Breitwieser, who later became my agent. My debt to Helen is inestimable: not only for her unfailing confidence in me, but for the combination of intelligence, enthusiasm, and hardheadedness with which she expresses it. Thanks also to Kate Duffy and Lisa Filippatos of Kensington for their input to the manuscript.

The first thing a fledgling romance writer learns is that her book must derive its energy from the "conflicts" between its protagonists. In
Almost a Gentleman
, I found my lovers' conflicts in studies by three extraordinary cultural critics. For how a nineteenth century outsider could also be an insider, Ellen Moers's
The Dandy: Brummell to Beerbohm
. For far-from-trivial matters of dress and style, Anne Hollander's
Sex and Suits
. And for the discontinuities between a culture's shining self-image and its darker realities, Raymond Williams's magisterial
The Country and the City
.

London
, 1819

"Kate?"

The eyes fluttered open in a very white face, surrounded by wild, shining tangles of hair.

Her cheeks are so pale
, thought the woman sitting beside the bedstead.
They're whiter than the lace pillow she's resting on. And her eyes are huge against the dark shadows around them
.

She squeezed the hand she'd held for hours while her friend had writhed in tormented sleep. She tightened her grasp, willing a lifetime of love, gratitude, and sympathy to pass through her warm flesh into the slender, icy fingers that clung to hers.

"I'm here, Phoebe. Don't try to talk, darling."

But the white face was composed, the gray eyes focused, the lips wrought so finely they seemed to have been etched with acid.

"I remember all of it, Kate."

"Hush, not now."

The cold fingers squeezed back tightly.

She's strong
, Lady Kate Beverredge thought.
Even after the horrors of this week. And even after those four dreadful years of marriage
.

Phoebe's voice was a bit louder now. Louder and strangely matter-of-fact, as if she were choosing a new fall wardrobe or instructing the gardener to plant zinnias instead of dahlias.

"It doesn't matter, Kate, whether I say it or not. It's true, it all happened, it's not some terrible dream."

"Your brother will be here soon."

"He knows?"

"Not all of it. I wrote to him as soon as I arrived, to tell him there'd been an… accident."

The phaeton overturned, the two handsome grays panicked and tangled in their traces.
Bryan
was thrown from his mothers arms onto the gravel path. One of the horses had reared back…

"What date is it today, Kate?"

"September twenty second, dear."

"I must have slept through
Bryan
's birthday, the day he would have been three years old."

Kate nodded.
You slept, thank God, with the aid of a powerful dose of laudanum
.

"I sent the cakes to a foundling home." Tears began to trace wavering paths down Kate's pocked-marked cheeks. But Phoebe's eyes were disconcertingly dry. She raised dark eyebrows, plucked into a fashionable arch.

"And the baby I lost. It was a girl, wasn't it?"

Kate tried to say
yes
, but no sound came through her lips.

"I would have liked a daughter. But I would have been afraid—ashamed, you know—to let her see how weak I've been, how easily dominated by her silly father. Still, how lovely to have a little girl… what a pleasure for me, and what an irritation for Henry. He'd have felt obliged to get me with child again as soon as possible…"

"Shhh, darling."

The noise that came from the bluish lips might have been a laugh. But it sounded dreadful, mechanical.

"Oh, he wouldn't have minded. It wasn't his
preferred
.. . mode of gratification, but he could schedule an evening now and again for it. Anything, after all, for the requisite heir and a spare."

Kate shook her head helplessly. "Don't, Phoebe."

"Just this once, Kate."

"All right, dear."

"No, what would really anger Henry would be seeing me all swollen and bloated. Wasted months when he couldn't parade me about during the Season, tricked out like a show pony in satin and kid gloves with twenty vicious little pearl buttons up my arms, diamond bracelets like manacles on my wrists, and that stupid family tiara threatening to topple off my head without so much as a by-your-leave."

Kate nodded slowly, forcing herself to suppress a smile at Phoebe's jaundiced view of life at the center of
London
's most exclusive circles. Rarely going out into society herself, Kate followed the notices in the newspapers, especially about the
ton's
most celebrated couple. Tall and elegant, young and effervescent, Lord and Lady Claringworth had been the crown jewels of many a glittering dinner party. Kate could well understand how entering a room with a stunningly gowned Phoebe on his arm would have stoked the fires of her husband's vanity.

"He was terribly drunk, Kate. He'd been drunk for days, since he'd lost all that money on a racehorse. They'd laughed at him at his club, his mistress had made eyes at Lord Blassingham—all excellent reasons to torment his wife and child, don't you think? So he went round and got the phaeton, ordered us into it, and drove to
Hyde Park
.

"I should have refused to go. Or insisted, at any rate, that we leave
Bryan
at home. But, but…" her lower lip trembled, "
Bryan
was so happy to go anywhere with the papa he so rarely got to see."

She hesitated before continuing. "He drove like a madman. He wanted to make us scream, you see. But Bryan and I were too frightened to scream. So he drove even faster, until he lost control."

Kate thought the tears would come now. But Phoebe's contralto voice—always a surprise how low it was—seemed almost tranquil, as though she'd found some bleak comfort in the word
control
.

"He'll never control us again, Kate. He was a weak, spoiled, arrogant cad. A
little
man really, for all his long legs and fine looks. He was a cur and a coward and he's dead and I'm glad of it. And I'm going to sit up now and you're going to brush the tangles out of my hair."

This time Kate allowed herself to smile, even to rejoice at Phoebe's commanding tone of voice. And to respond, as readily as she'd done for the past twenty years, since she'd been eight years old, shyly returning to school after nearly dying of smallpox.

The other girls had quietly shunned her, frightened, probably, by the ugly pitted skin on her cheeks. But a nasty little clique had taken to taunting her, until Phoebe had boxed the ringleader's ears and proclaimed that henceforth she'd be playing and sharing treats with nobody but Kate—Kate and anybody else, she'd added as a casual afterthought, whom Kate might like to play with.

And because games were no fun without Phoebe, who was taller, faster, and more daring than any of the village boys, Kate had regained her place within the circle of schoolgirls and Phoebe would reign in Kate's heart forever.

"You have such beautiful hair," she murmured, drawing the soft brush through its thick waves. A little long to be quite
a la mode
, it rippled down Phoebe's back, pale chestnut with shivery highlights of champagne.

Phoebe looked thoughtful. "Lately it's seemed to have a mind of its own; sometimes it wants to stand straight up, like a person demanding the respect she's due. If you fetch a pair of scissors from the drawer in that table, we can trim it back a little."

"Right now?" Kate felt a chill as she pulled the drawer open.

"Right now, Kate."

They were heavy shears. "The draper used them," Phoebe explained, "when he recovered the damask chairs."

And while Kate hesitated, Phoebe took the shears from her hand. "Don't worry, dear. I'm not going to plunge them into my breast."

"Of course not. But do let me help you."

"That won't be necessary."

It only took four swift cuts. The thick, shining hair fell to the coverlet like the curtain dropping after a tragedy.

"So simple," Phoebe murmured, "to effect the death of that sham creature, an elegant lady of the
ton
!"

With her hair chopped to an inch below her ears, one could see a resolute jawline. And the shadow of Phoebe's old, mischievous smile. A few golden sparks danced in her gray eyes.

She ran a hand through her cropped hair. A mass of willful curls sprang up in its wake.

"So simple," Phoebe repeated, "and yet so satisfying. Rest in peace, Lady Claringworth."

London
, three years later

"Phizz." Marston wasn't the richest or most notorious of
London
's dandies. His house, though exquisite, was small and compact as a jewel box, and his
bon mots
didn't take to public recital. His sharp wit was perhaps a bit too pointed to be cherished and repeated throughout the city's salons and clubs.