Lady Hawk's Folly (17 page)

“Gavin!” protested Lady Bridget, scandalized. She glanced pointedly at the flunky, now opening the door and letting down the steps. But once safely on the flagway with the boy giving directions to the coachman, she said in an undertone, “You should not say such things, my dear. Frances Villiers is one of the foremost leaders of the
ton.
Moreover, though I am sure you never knew him, George Villiers was a foppish macaroni, scarcely the sort of man to beat his wife. And he is dead,” she added, as though that ought to clinch the matter.

Taking her elbow and following Mollie up the wide, steep steps to the front door, Hawk said, “Lady Jersey fancies herself a leader only because she thinks her erstwhile relationship with the Regent entitles her to certain privileges.”

“Oh, Gavin,” said Lady Bridget, diverted, “do you remember what a furor there was—No, of course you don’t, for it was years ago. Only think, she insisted upon sitting next to the Princess of Wales instead of opposite her in the royal coach!”

“She lost that round, as I hear the tale. Even Prinny could scarcely insist that his mistress he accorded the same treatment as his wife.”

“I think,” Mollie put in over her shoulder, “that it was outside of enough for him to make his mistress Lady of the Bedchamber.”

The front door opened just then. Various minions stood ready to take their wraps and usher them into her ladyship’s presence, so their conversation came to an end, but as a result of it, Mollie was able to greet her hostess less apprehensively.

In her sixtieth year Lady Jersey was very well preserved, if a trifle plump. She always dressed according to the height of fashion and received her guests now with her figure stiffly corseted beneath a gown of richly embroidered rose mousseline. Her greeting was cordial, though she did indeed look down her nose at Mollie. The effect was not what she might have hoped for, however. With Hawk’s words still echoing in her ears, Mollie smiled and was forced to repress a chuckle. She contrived to retain her poise, however, and politely inquired after the guests of honor.

“Oh, Germaine is conversing with his highness yonder,” replied Lady Jersey with a casual gesture. “I declare they have been monopolizing each other for quite three-quarters of an hour.” She did not seem in the least distressed by the fact. “And dearest Albertine is there with that Russian prince of Dasha’s.”

Mollie glanced in the direction indicated and immediately perceived Prince Nicolai Stefanovich in conversation with a plain but elegantly garbed young woman with about sixteen summers in her dish. The prince looked up just then and, catching her glance, smiled as warmly as though her appearance had made his day complete.

“Who is that rude young man?” Lady Bridget asked in an undertone. “He should not look at you so, my dear. Not here, in any case.” She glanced back at Lady Jersey, still in conversation with Hawk. “She is not known as Silence because of any ability to keep a still tongue in her head, you know.”

“Why, you sound as if you think I am having an affair with that gentleman,” Mollie said teasingly, though she, too, cast a glance over her shoulder to see if by some mischance her husband had caught the prince’s look. Hawk showed no interest in anything beyond Lady Jersey’s conversation, however, so Mollie was able to reply lightly when Lady Bridget protested a sound belief in her virtue. Nevertheless, the older lady seemed taken aback to learn the prince’s identity and even, once she had noted Lady Andrew Colporter among the guests, decidedly uncomfortable.

Hawk touched Mollie’s elbow. “His highness is preparing to take his departure. Shall we make ourselves known to Madame de Staël?”

“I declare, Gavin, I shan’t know what to say to her,” Lady Bridget said, not for the first time that day. “I have been given to understand that she is quite a bluestocking, you know, and although I do read books and quite enjoyed the new one by that young gentlewoman who wrote
Sense and Sensibility
two years ago—such charming stories, both of them—well, I simply do not read such stuff as Madame de Staël writes.”

“From what I know of her, Aunt Biddy, you needn’t bother your head searching for conversation. She will talk enough for the three of us.”

Mollie scarcely heeded his words, for she had been having all she could do not to stare at the woman seated upon a settee that looked too fragile to bear the massive weight of the Prince Regent beside her. Madame was no lightweight herself and was, moreover, quite the ugliest woman Mollie had ever seen. Her face was square and Germanic. Her hair and eyes were black, her mouth wide and disfigured by two very projecting upper teeth, and her complexion was swarthy. But although her figure was broad and heavy-bosomed, Mollie noted as they drew nearer that Madame’s arms were very fine beneath the tiny puffed sleeves of her green sarcenet gown. She noted, too, that the black eyes were alight with wit and intelligence. The Regent was lumbering to his feet. He nodded.

“Hawkstone and the beautiful Lady Hawk. Haven’t spoken to you, my lady, since the dinner I gave in honor of her majesty. Permit me to introduce Madame de Staël. A fine woman. Most entertaining. A pleasure, ma’am,” he added, his Cumberland corsets creaking as he turned back to the dark woman. “Damme if this hasn’t been the most pleasant hour of my day.”

Madame de Staël had also risen and her smile was ingratiating. “You converse like a sensible man, your Highness. A credit to your education. I have learned many things from you in the course of a fascinating conversation.”

The Regent nearly preened himself as he took his departure, and Mollie was hard-pressed again not to smile. She turned her attention firmly back to Madame, who was saying she had found his highness most kind. Since she went right on talking in a nonstop stream, even Lady Bridget was soon able to relax. It was a relief when Lady Sefton and Mrs. Drummond Burrell stepped up to claim Madame de Staël’s attention and the Colporters were able to excuse themselves and move away.

Sir James Smithers approached them immediately, grinning. “See you’ve met the guest of honor. Did she toady to you, my lord?”

Hawk’s eyes twinkled. “Since she said I must know more than anyone else in England about Wellington’s plans and strategies and was no doubt a hero besides, I’ll thank you to cast no aspersions my way when next you speak with her. Don’t you like her, Jamie?”

“Not in my style,” Smithers replied. “Dashed woman lays herself out for admiration any way she is able, purchasing any quantity of anybody at any price. She traffics in mutual flattery, Hawk. I trust you paid your toll.”

“I did. She is recently come from France, Jamie. We cannot afford to snub her.”

Sir James’ round eyes took on a more intelligent expression than was their wont, and he nodded slowly. “Just so. The lady,” he added cryptically, “might well know where a body or two be buried. Well, in that case, you’d best keep an eye on Brummell, Alvanley, and that lot. They’re plotting mischief over yonder.”

Hawk glanced toward an alcove where the Bow Window set from White’s seemed to have taken up residence for the afternoon. Mollie, mystified by most of his conversation with Smithers, paid little heed when Lady Bridget’s attention was claimed by their hostess, and followed her husband when he began to move toward the dandies. Brummell, Lord Alvanley, Lord Breckin, Sir Henry Mildmay, Henry Pierrepont, and Tom Raikes were all seated together at their ease. It was Tom Raikes who greeted them.

“Welcome, Hawk! And welcome to your lady. I see your husband’s been making sheep’s eyes at Madame Bluestocking, Lady Hawk. Don’t fret, though. Alvanley means to cut him out.”

“Not so,” interjected Mr. Brummell with a lazy smile. “His lordship will be pursued by young Libertine. ’Tis a certainty.”

“No such thing,” said Breckin in his customary affected tones. “Alvanley prefers a woman with well-developed lungs, and while the younger de Staël is not ripened sufficiently, the old dame has a thoracic development worthy of a wet nurse.”

“Sirs,” protested Alvanley, lisping as always, “I’ve little wish to develop an acquaintanth with either one. They are more in his highneth’s style than mine.”

“You’ve little choice in the matter, my lord,” Brummell said softly. “I told that woman you enjoy an income of one hundred thousand pounds a year. And since her response to that bit of fiction was to tell me you’ve a pretty face, I’ll lay any odds you like that she puts young Libertine on to make a dead set at you.”

Raikes chuckled, turning to Mollie. “The Beau is getting even, you understand, my lady. Alvanley put him out by pretending to know some fat, perspiring cit at the Opera and introducing Brummell to his notice. Fellow was delighted. ‘Brummell? Brummell?’ he said. ‘Ain’t you the fellow as sung such a good song at our club?’ Alvanley whispered in the fat man’s ear that he must be right, ’cause George certainly
does
sing a good song, though he’s too shy to admit it. So the fat man up and invites Brummell to his hunting lodge for Christmas. Promised him as good a bottle of port as any in England. It’s a fact. Heard him myself.”

The Beau’s expression did not change, but Mollie was certain he could not like hearing a tale that made the others laugh at him, so she was glad when Hawk returned to the original subject. “If you’re laying odds, George, I might as well take the bet,” he said, twinkling. “Seems to me you’ve lost well nigh every bet you’ve laid since I came back to England.”

Mollie again expected Mr. Brummell to take umbrage, but he did not. The lazy smile reappeared instead. “This is a sure thing, my lord. She won’t be able to resist the bait.” He patted Alvanley’s plump shoulder. “Then, too, my luck is about to change. I’ll not deny I’ve had a run of bad fortune at Macao, but when Breck here and I were walking home from Berkeley Street the other night—”

“At five o’clock Friday morning,” Lord Breckin corrected, lifting an eyebrow.

Brummell gave a slight shrug. “In any event, when I saw something glittering in the gutter, I stooped and picked up a crooked sixpence, which anyone knows to be a harbinger of good luck.”

“Previous owner must have thought so,” drawled Breckin. “Dashed thing already had a hole in it.”

“Can’t have brought him much luck if he tossed it in a gutter,” Hawk pointed out. The others laughed, and the discussion turned to matters of superstition. After a few moments, seeing that her husband meant to stay a while, Mollie excused herself and wandered off to find Lady Bridget. Before she could do so, however, she was accosted by Lady Andrew Colporter.

“How do you do, Margaret? You are looking well.”

Mollie answered politely, but the look in Lady Andrew’s eyes caused her some misgiving, and when her ladyship demanded a private word with her, she followed her reluctantly into a small anteroom.

“I cannot think what you want with me, Beatrix, but Hawk must be nearly ready to depart.”

“Don’t take that high-handed tone with me, young lady. I want to know if the news I’ve heard about you and that Muscovite is true or not!”

“Good gracious, Beatrix, what maggot have you got in your brain now?” Mollie demanded. “I collect that you are referring to Prince Nicolai Stefanovich, who is a perfectly respectable member of Monsieur de Lieven’s staff, so I cannot conceive—”

“Oh, can you not!” Her ladyship’s high-pitched voice dripped with sarcasm. “I suppose that next you will deny traipsing all over Dorothea de Lieven’s back garden with the man. Shifty, that’s what he is. And I’ll tell you to your head, Margaret, that he is more than you can handle. I have already told Hawkstone what I think about such a liaison, and he says there is nothing in it, more fool he. But I know you for what you are, better than he does.”

She went on in the same vein, but Mollie had ceased to listen, her heart thudding into her shoes at the thought that Hawk would now think every gossip in town was linking her name to Nicolai’s. Still, he had said nothing further to her, so perhaps he had assumed Lady Andrew was exaggerating. As, indeed, she was. The thought brought anger upon its heels, and when Lady Andrew took that moment to insist in her haughtiest tone that Mollie never so much as speak to “that fellow” again, the sparks leapt to her eyes. Drawing herself to her full height, Mollie told Lady Andrew to be silent.

“What?”

“You heard me, Beatrix. I have listened to more than I wish to hear from you on that or any subject. Whether or not I speak to his highness or walk with him in a garden—hardly a private walk, at that—it is my business and solely my business. Neither you nor Hawkstone, for that matter, has the right to tell me not to speak to the man. I have done nothing for which I need to feel ashamed. Not now and not during the four years of my husband’s absence, though you choose to think otherwise. Oh, I know you think you know all about me, and I freely admit I did some foolish things. But they were foolish, Beatrix, not scandalous. I should not have gone to the Bartholomew Fair, but only because it meant hobnobbing with rustics and cits, and because of the unfortunate fact that that particular fair very nearly turned into a riot!”

“I suppose you will next pretend to have been all decorum at Margate last year as well,” Lady Andrew retorted scathingly.

“Lady Bridget was with me.” Mollie’s tone was snubbing, but Lady Andrew was made of stern stuff.

“More shame to you that you dragged her there. And Biddy was
not
with you when you attended that dreadful masquerade at Dandelion Gardens dressed as a Vestal, of all things, and accompanied by a knight whose only claim to the title, as I understand it, was that he was errant!”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mollie, hoping she sounded more astonished than she felt. “Where on earth did you come by such a tale?”

“Do you dare to deny it?”

“I shouldn’t think of dignifying it with a denial,” Mollie retorted. “I have come to know that you derive your greatest pleasure from believing the worst of me.” When Lady Andrew looked as if she would speak further, Mollie held up an imperious hand. “I won’t hear another word. You have tried to make mischief and you have failed. There is nothing further to be said.” With that she turned on her heel and left the room.