Barbara Metzger (18 page)

“It is not nonsense. How did you think I was going to make my way in the world? Women have few enough options if no one will take them to wife. You heard Wiggy. I am firmly on the shelf.”

“Blast Wiggy, too. You have a brother and an uncle. The men in your life will take care of you. That is their duty.”

“What if I do not wish to be a duty, an obligation, a burden?”

“A woman has no choice. She is to be protected, and that is final.” He examined the other glove, although one of a matched pair was useless.

“Your sister is independent. She travels and keeps her own household. You said so yourself.”

“My sister has twelve years more in her dish than you do. She also has a fortune of her own, and other considerations. Besides, we are not speaking of my sister.”

“I might have no choice but to be independent. My sister-in-law will not welcome my presence, now that I have been rejected by her favorite. She will likely wash her hands of me, and wash Rensdale’s hands for him, too. And my uncle might not wish a permanent female tenant. He has been a bachelor all his life, after all, and obviously prefers things that way.”

Ian was now shredding the ripped glove as well as its innocent partner. “Your future will be secured. You have nothing to fear.”

Athena looked at him through narrowed eyes. “You are not thinking that I will replace Lady Paige, are you?”

“As my mistress?” The pieces of leather fell from his lifeless fingers. “Good grief, that is the furthest thing from my mind!”

So he was not the least bit attracted to her, Athena understood by his appalled expression. He could not even bother to lie and say he had considered it, but knew she was too virtuous to offer carte blanche, after he had lied about everything else. Not that Athena would have accepted a slip on the shoulder, from the earl or any other gentleman, for that matter. But it might have been nice to be asked, to be wanted. She raised her chin and said, “In that case, my future is very much uncertain, now that my reputation must be shredded worse than your gloves.”

He stooped to pick up the pieces, and looked up at her. “I will make it right. Can’t you trust me?”

Trust a man whose mistress invites herself to stay at his house? Whose every other word was a lie? She would sooner trust her own battered and bruised and bleeding heart—which had lied to her, too.

Chapter Thirteen

To purchase a filly, check her stable, her pedigree, her conformation, her gait, and her temperament. Have her health looked at by your head stableman, and try her out so you know if she will suit. To find a wife, the first one to catch your fancy will do.

—Anonymous

To purchase a bonnet, try on a hundred that catch your fancy, but buy the one that suits you best. The same goes for finding a husband.

—Mrs. Anonymous

Lady Paige left in the morning, as she had promised. The earl’s carriage was waiting to convey her and her baggage and a borrowed maid, as he had promised. The coach had been waiting since nine, however, and Mona was not ready until nearly noon. She had kept her word by ten minutes. Ian had kept his word by sending her off with the most hopeless scullery maid, the one who broke things, burned things, and became lost between the kitchen and the pantry.

He was not waiting to see Lady Paige’s departure, trusting in his repentant butler to see the deed done. Ian had ensured that Athena would not be present at the leave-taking, either, having his gardener ask her opinions of a new flower bed he was planning. The gardener’s opinion was that Miss Renslow ought to walk the boot-biting dog elsewhere, but he tipped his hat and led her off, happy enough to find the young lady knowledgeable about plants and shrubbery.

Only the butler was in the hall, then, when Lady Paige glided down the marble stairs in her wide-brimmed bonnet and primrose gown, hoping to make a last, lasting impression on the earl. Disappointed, she sailed past Hull, who was also disappointed but not surprised that the baroness did not press a coin into his hand, for all the effort and aggravation her brief visit had entailed. The highborn high flyer did not so much as nod at the earl’s senior servant, a far cry from the way Miss Renslow usually greeted Hull, with a smile and a friendly word. Now there was a true lady, Hull reflected, and so he’d tell the other butlers at the local pub.

He held the door for Lady Paige, but he did not offer to carry either her hatbox or her wooden jewelry case or the frilly parasol she had dangling from a string off her wrist, along with her reticule. Perhaps because her bonnet’s brim was so weighed down with cherries and silk flowers that it obscured her view, or perhaps because she was carrying so much, or perhaps because her vanity would not permit her to wear her spectacles out in public—or in private where the earl might see them—Lady Paige did not watch where she was going. She collided with a gentleman just approaching from the other side of the earl’s waiting carriage.

Mr. Wiggs bounced off the buxom lady, but got his knee banged by the bandbox and his breath knocked out of him by the jewel case and his legs tangled in the parasol. He fell down, dazed, at the woman’s feet.

“Oh, you poor, poor man,” Lady Paige exclaimed, dropping the hatbox, but placing the jewelry case carefully on the ground before lowering herself to Wiggs’s level. “And it was all my fault!”

Wiggy found himself well cushioned by a pillow of pulchritude, and he found the experience pleasant, indeed. He thought about sitting up, and then thought better of it. “Think nothing of it, madam. I was not watching my way.”

The maid Lord Marden had assigned to Mona came and started to pick up the jewelry box, to load it in the coach. Mona grabbed up her parasol and swatted at the girl with it. “Not that, you goose. No one touches that but me.”

The girl, Susie, leaped back, away from the point of the parasol, and dropped the case. It fell open, spilling Lady Paige’s old-age pension onto the carriageway. Wiggy’s eyes opened wide at the sight, and he scrambled to his feet, to assist the woman who was growing more attractive by the diamond—that is, by the moment.

“Please permit me to introduce myself, madam,” he said. “I am Renfrew Wiggs, the Reverend Mr. Renfrew Wiggs, I should say, temporary guardian to Master Troy Renslow. I am calling to see how my charge fares this morning.”

Wiggs was calling to see if he could mend his fences with Athena. A night’s reflection had told him that he had scant other opportunities waiting. With few prospects and dwindling connections, he had no better chance at bettering his living. Besides, the wench ought to be grateful that he was willing to overlook her lapse in judgment, grateful enough to welcome him back. The silly chit had spoken in a moment of pique only. Not even the foggy-brained female could overlook her own best interests.

Now those mendable fences could stay so far fallen that a herd of cows could march through. “Please allow me to assist you,” he told this new acquaintance, this bountiful benefactress-to-be. He handed her a diamond bracelet that could have fed a family of four for a year, at least.

“Why, how kind of you. And I suppose I must introduce myself, as well. No harm can come of such an informal introduction, I daresay, with you a reverend. I am delighted to make the acquaintance of such a courteous, kindly gentleman.” She was, too. The man was a bit dour, and his mouth did turn down unbecomingly, but Mona saw a way to restore her own blemished reputation. What could be better than a Bible-bearer? He was smiling at her words, and staring at her sapphires, when his eyes raised past her bosom. “I am Mona, Lady Paige.” She made a half curtsy, fluttering her eyelashes.

Lady Paige? The woman everyone knew to be Lord Marden’s mistress? Wiggs almost fell back onto the driveway again. He staggered, but maintained enough balance to keep his grip on the ruby brooch he had picked out of the paving.

Mona took it from him, with more force than finesse. She clutched the wood jewel box tighter to her chest. “That is, Baroness Paige, Mr. Wiggs.”

“Of course.” Wiggy remembered his manners and made a half bow. “My, ah, pleasure. I must be going now, to see to young Renslow, don’t you know.”

Just then, the butler came down the steps to see why Lady Paige had not departed although her trunks had been loaded earlier. “Tut, tut,” he said, noticing the dirt stains on the reverend’s unmentionables. He did not offer to dust them off. “I regret that your visit has been in vain, Mr. Wiggs,” Hull said, nodding to the waiting groom to assist the maid with getting Lady Paige’s belongings onto the carriage. Susie had already restored the fallen contents of the hatbox, only dropping Lady Paige’s best bonnet into the carriageway twice. She only stepped on one of the feathers. And let one of the ribbons trail against the coach’s greased wheel axle.

“Master Renslow is sleeping,” Hull continued. “He shall be for some hours, I understand.”

“
Humph.
How can you know that?” Wiggs demanded.

“It is my job to know everything in the household, sir. Will that be all?” Hull turned to go back inside before receiving an answer, as if Wiggs had received all the attention he was going to get.

“What about Miss Renslow?” Wiggy called to the man’s stiff back. “She cannot be sleeping at this hour.”

Hull turned and looked past Wiggs, his long nose in the air. “I regret, sir, that the young lady is out.”

Wiggs understood that Athena would be permanently out, to him, no matter where she was. Without an excuse to go in, he could only leave. He gave up.

Lady Paige did not. “La, sir, if you are free, perhaps you might do me a favor. I hate to travel through the streets of London with all my jewels, so unprotected.”

So what if a groom sat up beside the driver, and another would ride at the back of the carriage once she was inside? “A woman cannot be too careful, you know.”

Neither could a minister without a manse. “I am sorry, I have—
humph
—another appointment.” Wiggs pulled out his pocket watch, as if he were in a hurry to return to that dreary hotel of his and another sparse tea.

“Then the carriage can take you there after. You would not wish to ride in a hired hackney, would you, rather than his lordship’s finest vehicle? I am taking up residence in Kensington,” she continued, “but there is no hurry for my arrival.” She fluttered her handkerchief. “No one is waiting,” she said with a sniffle, and with the intimation that his lordship would not be joining her there. “And I do hate to enter a strange house alone. Besides, you must let me offer you refreshments, after knocking you over that way, and for helping me gather my trinkets.”

Since she had him by the sleeve and was tugging him toward the coach, Wiggy could not refuse. What harm could there be, anyway, in having a free ride at Marden’s expense, and a free meal with a bounteous, bejeweled brunette?

The butler watched them go.
“Tut, tut,”
he repeated with a smile.

*

Athena told herself that it did not matter that Lord Marden was not at home for dinner that evening. She asked for a tray in her room rather than sitting in the dining parlor in silent solitude. Troy was asleep again, and the loneliness of her own chamber almost swallowed her up.

The earl did not owe her an explanation, Athena told herself. He did not owe her his company, either. He had done so much for her and her brother, she could not be greedy. He had done what he could to protect her from gossip, and she had to be satisfied with that.

His mistress was gone, thank goodness. So was he.

It did not take a mathematician to complete the equation. One plus one equaled a full house in Kensington.

Athena sent the dinner tray back, nearly untouched.

*

Lord Marden was coming up empty, too. He had eaten. That was not the problem. He was not successful. That was.

He was in Bath, at his mother’s bedside, begging.

“No, dear, I am too sick to return with you to London,” his mother said, holding a cloth soaked in lavender water to her forehead. She had dismissed her maid so they might have a private conversation, but she would not leave her bed, or the stifling, overcrowded room. Vases of flowers covered every surface that was not filled with knickknacks or medications. There were roses on the chintz upholstery, and more roses on the wallpaper. Ian felt that he had walked into a conservatory.

“And I look too awful, besides.” His mother did look dreadful, but her loving son lied and told her she was still one of the handsomest women he knew. On most days, she was, having the ageless, confident beauty a younger woman could not attain, with only a single, distinctive streak of gray in her dark hair. She was tall and stately, with a still-graceful figure, and her eyes had kept their brightness.

Today the countess looked more like a soggy biscuit than a former Toast. Her nose was red and raw, and her eyes were swollen nearly shut.

“Nonsense, Mother. You are as lovely as ever.”

Lady Marden sneezed and blew her nose, then told him to go away. “I do have a mirror, you know, Ian.” She sneezed again and lay back against her mound of pillows with a groan.

Ian touched her forehead with newly learned expertise. “Well, you do not seem to have a fever. What does the doctor say?”

“He says I should stay in bed and not exert myself. So do take yourself back to London or whatever briar patch you have fallen into this time. Really, Ian, you are too old to run to your mother when you find yourself in a minor difficulty.”

The earl ground his teeth. This was not a minor difficulty; it was a thundering disaster. Did the woman have no maternal feelings? “Dorothy is away from home, or I would have asked her. That is, I did ask her first, knowing how you hate to travel. But she has not returned to Richmond, and I am desperate.”

The countess barely waved one languid hand, as if the effort to hold up the four ornate rings and two heavy bracelets she wore was too much for her poor, frail constitution. “I am sorry, dear. I simply cannot be of any assistance.” She draped the dampened cloth over her eyes and asked, “Will you pour me a bit of that restorative the physician prescribed?”