Barbara Metzger (25 page)

According to that venerable lady, a female wasn’t entirely
comme il faut
until she’d been approved by the patronesses at that bastion of propriety. A lady might be popular, acclaimed in the newspapers and journals, but she wasn’t past ridicule if she didn’t pass through those hallowed doors. If Lisanne didn’t do it now, they’d have the whole thing to go through again next Season, or whenever the duchess came back to Town.

Lisanne would go through one more senseless ordeal then, one more humiliating rite of passage into her husband’s world. She’d do it, but only for him. If St. Sevrin were ever to take his proper place in the governing of the country, he’d need a wife above reproach. For that matter, Aunt Hattie felt that Sloane needed to be seen at Almack’s, satin knee breeches and all, to bolster his own reputation.

As for the duchess, she’d seen enough sights and met enough people to be convinced that she wouldn’t miss this frantic bustle once she was back in Devon. Only Lisanne knew how hard it was for her to face such crowds in her own drawing room when she was used to hours—no, days—of solitude.

It might have been easier if she had her husband’s support, especially since she was making herself miserable on his behalf. Sloane had been attentive at Esmé’s ball, hovering nearby to make introductions and accept congratulations. He’d left her side only for the one dance with Esmé, crowning that miss’s triumphal come-out. And Lisanne knew he was attracted to her: she could feel the tingling heat pass between their gloved hands during that waltz. He might have been counting the freckles on her cheeks, so intently did he stare at her. She’d hoped that night that he would…but he hadn’t. Now he was gone, leaving her to deal with this gathering of peageese in her parlor.

*

Sometimes a single grain of sand can make a pearl, a thing of great beauty. In other situations, that same grain of sand can make a blister on somebody’s foot. Which is to say that, over time, the smallest irritations can grow larger with constant rubbing.

Lisanne’s nerves were being rubbed raw. She was dressed to the teeth again, in a gown whose cost would have fed a hundred beggars. She was wearing a tiara besides, adding the weight of guilt, at how many children could be educated with one of its diamonds, to the weight of the foolish bauble. She already had a headache.

The Almack’s hostesses were adding to the pain with their subtle interrogations and sly innuendos. Sloane had said they were like sleek house cats. To Lisanne they seemed more like hunting jaguars, sniffing out new prey.

She’d been separated from her party almost instantly by Sally Jersey, who wanted her to meet Lord Alvanley, who may have been a cousin to her mother. Did Her Grace know? Her Grace knew that Lord Alvanley’s eye looked grotesque through the quizzing glass he so rudely used to inspect her.

Lady Drummond-Burrell was interested in orchids, and in finding out how well-studied Lady Lisanne was on the exotic plants. Lisanne was well-studied enough to know that she could have been talking Hindustani, for all the other lady understood.

Speaking the formal French of the Russian court, Princess Lieven obviously hoped to trip the newcomer up on her schoolgirl grammar. The princess was wearing a taffeta gown with ermine borders, at least fifteen dead ermines, Lisanne calculated. She responded in Russian and moved on.

Maria Sefton might have measured the depth of Lisanne’s curtsy to an inch, gauging if this interloper knew the proper degree of deference. Lisanne held her head high. She was a duchess by marriage, a baroness by birth. She would not kowtow to anyone so impolite as to make guests—paying guests at that—run this gauntlet of sharpened claws.

Lisanne caught her husband’s eye across the room. St. Sevrin shrugged as if to say she was on her own now, before he returned to his conversation with the dashing redhead at his side.

Aunt Hattie had warned Lisanne how it would be, that they couldn’t shield her from the tabbies tonight, not unless they wished to give rise to more questions about her competence. Aunt Hattie hadn’t warned her that St. Sevrin would take the opportunity to get up a flirtation with one of the most notoriously willing widows still invited to Almack’s.

Sloane was even sharing the contents of the flask in his pocket with the dazzling female, while Lisanne sipped tepid orgeat brought by some lordling produced by Sally Jersey as a suitable partner. Suitable, hah! With greasy hair and eyes that never rose above her bosom, the man wasn’t suitable to walk her dog.

Well, Lisanne fumed, she was quite competent to handle this on her own if her husband chose to abandon her. She didn’t like being passed around as if she were a new shipment of yard goods to be inspected or a new mix of snuff to be sampled. She didn’t like not being permitted to sit with Trevor and Esmé, not being permitted to choose her own dance partners. She absolutely despised the fact that while she was suffering through Lord Higgenbotham’s lumbago and Sir Sheldon’s sweaty palms and fetid breath, St. Sevrin was having a high old time peering down the widow’s low neckline. Any lower and the collar would be a belt around her waist.

My, how that grain of resentment rankled.

Lisanne was walking through this genteel fire for St. Sevrin, damn his roving eyes, to establish him as a gentleman of stature and honor. He, meanwhile, was taking the first opportunity to confirm his reputation as a rake. He even looked the part in his elegant black and white formal wear with a single ruby in his cravat highlighting the reddish glints to his hair. No other gentleman present had such broad shoulders or well-muscled legs. No other gentleman present interested Lisanne in the least. In fact, she was sick and tired of the whole business of being presented, being approved, being accepted. St. Sevrin hadn’t even accepted her as his wife, by Jupiter. Her chin rose. She’d been accepted down paths where these fools couldn’t hope to tread. How dare they sit in judgment of her. How dare he dally with that deep-chested demirep.

Lisanne wanted to go home, not to Berkeley Square, but to Devon. Now. Lisanne had proved she was a lady, now she’d prove she was what they had all believed anyway, St. Sevrin most of all. He kept waiting for her to do something outlandish, didn’t he? She wasn’t going to disappoint him again, the way she’d done in their marriage.

She watched as Sloane escorted his new friend out of the ballroom proper. They’d already had two dances. One more and the widow may as well be standing on the corner of Covent Garden, so they must be headed for the card room. At least Almack’s did not tend toward secluded corners and private chambers. St. Sevrin never played for the chicken stakes permitted here, though, so likely there was a higher ante, such as the woman’s favors. The redhead would win when pigs flew.

Lisanne sent her latest partner, a clumsy dancer and a clumsier conversationalist, off to the refreshment room for another tasteless drink while she took up a position next to a potted plant at the edge of the dance floor. The palm tree looked as parched and brittle as Lisanne felt.

“How do you do, sir?” she asked. Getting no response except a startled look from the two chaperones nearby, Lisanne went on: “It’s a terrible crush here, isn’t it? I’m finding it hard to breathe myself, with all these perfumed bodies, so it’s no wonder your fronds are drooping.” One of the chaperones had scurried away to whisper in a different ear. The other stayed, fascinated, her mouth open, as Lisanne continued her one-sided chat. “I suppose we should be happy they use perfume, my dear, for I understand some of the guests see water as rarely as you appear to.”

Out of the corner of her eye she could see a wave of motion travel across the room like a breeze blowing through a field of wheat. Not quite every eye in the room was turned in her direction, but almost. Sticking her gloved fingers into the pot, Lisanne scrabbled around until she had a sample of the dirt in her previously immaculate hand. Then she sniffed at the dirt and went so far as to stick her tongue out near it, pretending to taste the soil. That may have been too far, for the thud she heard could only be Aunt Cherise’s limp body hitting the floor.

Aunt Hattie was across the room, trying desperately to extricate herself from an old court card in a bagwig who kept shouting, “What’s that they’re saying? They’re awarding a palm?”

Esmé and Trevor were arguing over what to do. Trevor won and limped off to get the duke.

Lisanne had a moment before all of them, plus a few of Almack’s outraged hostesses, converged on her. So she recommended that her friend ask for some ground fish bones, or tea made from well-rotted manure. “Perhaps that’s what they are serving here. The stuff tastes like―”

Esmé got to her first. “My, what a sense of humor my cousin has,” she commented to the room at large. “So witty, so amusing. Why, she kept us all in stitches back in Devon.”

Aunt Hattie was out of breath, but she managed to wheeze, “My dear duchess, I am the one in the family who is supposed to be eccentric. You’re much too young to affect quirks to be interesting, isn’t that so, Lionel? I mean Sloane, of course.”

St. Sevrin’s mouth was smiling. His eyes were shooting daggers. “I believe my bride was trying to get my attention, ladies, that’s all. I admit to being derelict in my attentions this evening. I’m still not used to leg-shackles, don’t you know.”

A few nearby gentlemen laughed in commiseration. A new bride was a deuced nuisance, and that flame-haired widow could make any man forget his own wife, even if the wife was a tiny golden-haired beauty. More than one of the men wished he’d been quick enough to console St. Sevrin’s bride.

“You see me a chastened man, Duchess,” the duke was claiming for the spectators’ benefit. “I swear not to leave your side again tonight.”

With that he bowed to their audience and led Lisanne onto the dancing area. Actually the grip on her forearm was more like a vice clamp, cutting off circulation. “Smile, damn you,” he whispered.

Lisanne pasted a smile on her face that matched his for insincerity, and they got through the set. Without stopping to speak to anyone, St. Sevrin led her off the dance floor and out the door to the entry hall, where Aunt Hattie and Trevor were already waiting with their wraps. The carriage was at the curb.

Trevor looked from the duke to the duchess and suggested that he and Lady Comstock take a hackney home.

St. Sevrin was already helping his aunt into the coach. “No, for if you’re not along, I might strangle her.”

Ordinarily the carriage was spacious enough for the four of them. Not tonight. Ordinarily they’d have been chatting about the evening’s entertainment. Not tonight.

“Hell and damnation,” the duke finally ground out. “Why the deuce did you have to pull this stunt tonight?”

“Those women were being hateful, and I am tired of being scrutinized like an insect under a microscope. I decided that since you never cared what anyone said about you, I wouldn’t care, either.”

His voice was as sharp as a knife. “I may have been careless with my own reputation, Duchess, but I do believe that you knew how very much I cared about yours. That’s what this whole time in London has been about. All of Aunt Hattie’s efforts, all those boring teas and dinner parties, were to make your peers respect you. Now it’s all wasted, damn it.”

“I just gave them what they expected.”

“You gave me a kick in the—The devil take it, you don’t even talk to your own potted plants.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You do not.”

“I do.”

“You don’t.”

“Children!” Aunt Hattie had her hands over her ears. “Stop this instant, or I’ll faint like that ninnyhammer Findley woman, I swear.”

Lisanne folded her hands in her lap and with utmost reserve stated, “I always sing while I am working in the garden. Or I hum. The plants like it.”

The duke snorted. “Then I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky this one didn’t request an operatic aria.”

Trevor chuckled, which rewarded him with a kick from Aunt Hattie. Since it was his wooden leg she kicked, Trev didn’t notice, but Aunt Hattie gasped.

“You see, now you’ve given my aunt a spasm with your idiotic behavior.”

“My behavior? My behavior? I wasn’t the one ogling some female’s bosom all night!”

“Aha! I was right all along. You were jealous, that’s what. You were bitten by the green-eyed monster and tried to bite me back.” The idea didn’t seem to bother Sloane as much as he thought it should.

“Why should I be jealous? We had an agreement and…and I don’t care what you do.”

“You were jealous, admit it.”

“I was not!”

He folded his arms over his chest and winked at Trevor, who was grinning by now. “She likes me, you know.”

“I do not.”

Sloane smiled. “Then give me another explanation for this night’s debacle.”

First there was silence. Then a low murmur. “I want to go home.”

Spun sugar and steel were an unlikely mixture, but that was St. Sevrin’s duchess. They couldn’t stay in London—who knew what she’d do next to get her way?—and Sloane wouldn’t cave in and take her home. A man had to have some pride left, some sense of mastery. Besides, in Devon Lisanne would disappear into the estate books or the library or those blasted woods. St. Sevrin had a better idea. He gave her one day to pack, one day to make whatever arrangements she needed. They were going on their honeymoon.

The yacht was waiting in Bristol, back from another trip to pick up injured officers from the Peninsula. They’d sail to Ireland, to Liam McCardle’s horse farm. If there was one thing St. Sevrin knew, it was gambling. He had some of his own money put by, winnings and earnings on his investments, and now he was going to start that racing stud. He had to do it soon, before winter set in and they couldn’t travel to Ireland, where Liam, another retired army officer, was breeding the finest Thoroughbred mares. Somewhere in Portugal they had discovered that Liam was a distant relative of Sloane’s own Irish mother Fiona, although Lady Comstock repudiated the connection. McCardle had written back to Sloane’s request with an invitation to come at any time. The house was not up to ducal standards, but it was always open to Sherry, especially if his pocketbook was open for horse-trading.