Dair Devil (4 page)

“She has
eloped
with Fitzstuart’s
brother
?” Lady Grasby was so astounded she shooed quiet the butler who was giving her the good news Mr. Romney was free to receive her. “Say it is not so! A girl who has the odor of the Covent Garden market about her person has the barefaced cheek to reject the heir to an earldom, in preference for a younger son who has no prospects and even less fortune? The girl must indeed be mad!”

“Or in love…?”

“Rot, Aurora!” Lady Grasby stated dismissively. “The children of merchants are raised to believe first and foremost in the value of a
thing
. Love is an ideal, an emotion of the highest order. As such it cannot be measured, so can hold little or no value for such practical people.”

Rory wondered if her sister-in-law was speaking from the experience of having a grandfather whose vast wealth had been accumulated over a lifetime as a Billingsgate fishmonger. But as she had used the third person, Rory could only hope, for her brother’s sake, that her sister-in-law had quite forgotten her own family’s fishy beginnings.

“Now let us say no more about this Miss Strang and her mental deficiencies. Nor do I want to hear another word about Lord Fitzstuart,” Lady Grasby continued. She covered her sister-in-law’s gloved hand with her own and said quietly, “Truth be told, it is your brother’s slavish friendship with Fitzstuart that keeps me awake at night. Sometimes I think… Sometimes I think Grasby cares more for that man than he does me! I wish—”

“Grasby is devoted to you,” Rory interrupted.

“—Fitzstuart had never returned from the Colonies!”

Rory gasped. “You do not mean it, Silla!”

“Unfortunately, he is possessed of the devil’s own luck,” Mr. Watkins said on a sigh, offering his tearful sister his perfectly pressed and folded white linen handkerchief. “The more dangerous the mission, the more daring the cause, the more willing Fitzstuart is to play the hero. And he came out of the army with all four limbs and his head intact!”

Rory looked from sister to brother, stunned.

“I cannot believe my ears. Mr. Watkins, you may decry the man for being a reprobate and a womanizer, and you, Silla, may dislike him heartily and be jealous of the time Grasby spends in his company… Indeed, there is not much Lord Fitzstuart can say in his own defense for his want of conduct, but neither of you have the-the
right
to wish him
dead
. How-how uncharitable, and his lordship a war hero!”

“No. No, Miss Talbot. You misconstrue me,” William Watkins apologized. He smiled thinly and looked secretive. “As secretary to the Committee for Colonial Correspondence of Interest, I am privy to certain—
communications
and-and
particulars
about the war in America… There have been occasions—dangerous occasions, Miss Talbot—when his lordship was required to involve himself, and did so willingly, at considerable risk, not only to the men under his command but to his person. He is considered
reckless
in the extreme, so much so that I am not the only one who has wondered aloud if he has made a pact with—” He paused, looked over his shoulder at the butler, who quickly looked away, and pointed a gloved finger to the floor, and whispered, “
You-know-who
.”

Rory blinked at the man’s outrageous suggestion that Lord Fitzstuart had managed to undertake and survive perilous and often life-threatening missions only because he had sold his soul to the Devil. But before she could make comment, Lady Grasby confronted Rory, saying with a pout,

“No one mentioned wanting Fitzstuart
dead
. If you are not careful such a spirited defense of a gentleman you do not know in the least, and who would not know you from Eve, but whom you readily admit to observing, will be misconstrued as the unhealthy interest of a delusional and plain spinster for a handsome rake.”

Rory’s face ripened. Spinster she may be. Delusional she was not. Nor was she plain. Her hair might best be described as damp straw-blonde. Her eyes were blue, but so pale as to be thought cold. But her face was heart-shaped, and her skin unblemished, so on balance, she was considered sweet and pretty, if not beautiful. If she was plain, it was only when in the orbit of the dark-haired beauties with cheeks flushed from flitting about the dance floor. But at two-and-twenty she had no expectations of marrying for love or anything else. With no fortune and not enough beauty to overcome a meager dowry, Rory was resigned to living her days as she had begun them, as her grandfather’s dependant.

Thus, for her beautiful sister-in-law, who was a remarkably pretty brunette with damp brown eyes, to underscore the reality of her situation, in such a blunt manner,
and
in public, was a piece of spite that bruised Rory to the core. She knew her sister-in-law was not cruel by nature, but having been indulged from an early age, Drusilla did not often think of others before herself, and thus could be unconsciously unfeeling. Rory was surprised yet grateful that Drusilla had not stated the glaringly obvious; that was left to William Watkins, who shared his sister’s unwitting lack of tact.

He made Rory mentally wince and wish she were a mouse to scurry through a hole in the kicking boards when he said with a sickly-sweet smile of understanding,

“I am certain Miss Talbot’s interest in Lord Fitzstuart goes no deeper than an appreciation of his exceptional athleticism. As is often the way, what is lacking in ourselves we greatly admire in others. You, my dear Miss Talbot, cannot help being lame, just as I cannot be blamed for my poor eyesight. It is God’s will, and thus we abide it with good grace and forbearance.”

“If you will follow me to the upstairs drawing room, Mr. Romney will be with you presently,” the butler intoned in the silence which followed Mr. Watkins’ homily, a toe on the first step.

“You do have your eyeglasses, William?” Lady Grasby asked, bunching up her apricot silk petticoats to ascend the staircase as rapidly as possible in high-heeled mules. “I so want you to examine the portrait, to tell me what it is about it that is vexing me.” She paused on a sudden thought and looked over her shoulder, a gloved hand to the polished balustrade. “Don’t trouble yourself to come up, Aurora. We will not be above half an hour.”

“That would be for the best,” Rory responded cheerfully, standing at the base of a staircase that would take her twice the time to ascend than anyone else but a child taking its first steps. “I know so little about art that I would be of no help to you whatsoever.” Her gaze swept the hall for a settee or a wingchair. “Mr. Romney must have a suitable vestibule for visitors on this level…”

She was talking to herself. The butler and Lady Grasby, with her brother a step behind, had disappeared up the staircase.

One of the painter’s assistants rescued her. He stepped into the hall from the studio at the back of the house, dressed in a smock covered in all manner of colored daubs, and in time to be privy to the conversation. He offered Rory to follow him to a small viewing room off Mr. Romney’s painting studio. There was a fire in the grate and a comfortable chair to sit upon and wait.

The fire was welcoming, but her interest was not in the many painted canvases stacked against two walls, or in those propped on easels ready for inspection, but in the sounds of commotion coming from the other side of a door left ajar by the assistant. Interest piqued, Rory entered the large well-lit room uninvited, and found it brimming with activity and laughter.

She was halfway across the room and beside a canvas propped on an easel before her trespass was finally noticed by those on the stage in front of her. She took only a cursory glance at the canvas of a half-finished painting, more interested in the group of scantily-dressed females whose modesty was saved by strategically draped diaphanous silks. While these draperies covered their torsos and flowed to their stockinged feet, the sheerness of the fabric did little to hide their limbs and female attributes. All possessed the long shapely legs of the opera dancer. This was confirmed when three of their number broke from the group and danced out across the stage, holding hands and twirling this way and that on the balls of their stockinged feet, slim graceful arms offering an elegant counterpoint to their footwork.

Their movements caused the silks pinned at their shoulders to slip and bunch at the blue sash tied about their trim waists. Long hair, carefully pinned and decorated with flowered wreaths, unraveled in heavy coils down narrow backs and across small rounded breasts that bounced free; petals dropped from the flowers and were strewn across the stage in the wake of their steps.

They appeared as Greek statues of glistening white marble come to life with their sculptured white limbs and powdered faces; their graceful movements, as they danced about the stage, mesmerizing. Rory delighted in their exuberance and agility, so much so that it was several moments before she realized she was being addressed, and by the principal ballerina fanning herself by the chaise longue.

“I beg your pardon. I was so taken with your companions I did not hear your question.”

C
ONSULATA
B
ACCELLI
did not immediately respond, taking her time to appraise Rory’s gown of striped mint green taffeta with underskirts of embroidered lilac silk, the outer petticoat ruched and bunched behind to affect the fashionable polonaise. Here was a lady of style, if not of the first society, and she wondered where the young woman’s male chaperone could be—a personal maid at the very least—particularly at this late hour. A lady of quality did not venture from her home on her own, and never into the homes of men, painters in particular; all sorts of riffraff could be present. She wondered if Rory had somehow slipped away from her minders, and if she intended to turn and flee in horror at having walked into a room of disreputable dancers.

Consulata did not have to wonder why the young woman used a walking stick. When Rory had silently crossed the room, it was evident in her awkward gait that she needed it to move about. The short hem of her polonaise, which was some three inches off the ground, exposed her trim ankles in their white clocked stockings and matching heeled silk shoes; an inwardly twisted right foot answered to the uneven gait.

Rory was all wide-eyed interest, and Consulata thought it a great shame the young woman would never dance or be graceful in her movements, which surely meant she could never show herself to advantage. But her spontaneous delight at watching the ballerinas playfully spin out across the stage decided Consulata here was a young woman without malice, and she immediately decided to befriend her.

“Signora—”

“Signorina. Signorina Talbot,” Rory corrected with a smile, gaze turning to Consulata Baccelli, because the dancers were being ushered back into formation by a weary assistant; another hurriedly coming to his colleague’s aid to help adjust drapery and flowered headpieces. “They dance delightfully. I’m sure you all do.”

“
Sí.
We do. But me, Consulata Baccelli, I am the most delightful dancer of them all.” The principal ballerina laughed behind her fluttering fan at her conceit. “I would show you but for these outrageous robes Signore Romney he has made us wear.” She indicated the blue damask chaise. “Come, sit here with me.”

When Rory looked about her, as if a chair closer at hand would be more suitable than sitting upon the stage with the dancers, Consulata smiled and patted the damask cushion.

“Come. Amuse me until the excitement, it begins.”

Rory reluctantly climbed the three wooden steps and sat where requested, careful not to disturb the bunched petticoats at her back. Her walking stick she kept close to her side, a gloved hand about its mahogany stick.

“You must be thrilled to have a painter of Mr. Romney’s skill and reputation to immortalize you and your beautiful dancers.”

“Signore Romney he paints us not as dancers but as part of a Greek allegory. Me? I prefer to be painted as I am, a ballerina most famous. But this—” She waved a plump wrist covered in pearls at the large canvas propped on the easel. “—this painting that has us all dressed in these ridiculous sheets of annoyance, it is painted for the Duke of Dorset. He will hang it in the gallery at Knole.” Consulata leaned in with a sly smile. “And then, because Dorset he is my lover, he will have me painted, dancing. And
that
painting he will hang in his private apartments, for his eyes only.” Her large brown eyes danced merrily, adding so only Rory could hear, “Dorset, he wants Signore Romney to paint me nude. Perhaps I will allow it, eh?”

Without wishing it, Rory blushed. Consulata Baccelli’s suggestion was an outrageous one, and most inappropriate to a spinster who lived a sheltered existence in the household of her aging grandfather. He would have been horrified to learn his only granddaughter was in the company of a troupe of dancers whose morals were questionable at best. That Rory was conversing with the notorious mistress of the Duke of Dorset was an encounter she decided to keep to herself.

She knew she ought to take offence at the dancer’s lewd conversation, excuse herself and return to the small waiting room, but she was not the least offended. And lest she be considered prudish, she summoned her courage, looked into Consulata’s large lovely eyes, and said with a smile she hoped oozed a worldliness she did not in the least possess,

“The Duke is sure to treasure such a painting. A graceful figure as you possess is to be admired, and deserves to be immortalized.”

Consulata was pleased with this response and beamed.

“I think we will be good friends. Very good friends indeed, Signorina Talbot. I will have Dorset invite you to dinner. Then you and me, we can laugh and reminisce together about the little escapade Major Fitzstuart he arranges for his pleasant friend.”

Rory tried to keep the interest from her voice and the surprise from her features. “Major? Major Fitzstuart?”

She succeeded in appearing none the wiser as to knowing this officer, because the dancer’s dark eyes crinkled with amused mischief. Before enlightening Rory, she turned on the group of females giggling and jostling each other behind the chaise and slapped her fan down hard across the back of chaise’s gilt frame. The dancers instantly swallowed their mirth and were silent and still long enough to be chastised.