My Pleasure (14 page)

“Pardon me, Lady Tilpot,” Helena said, surreptitiously tucking the newspaper between the cushion and the arm of the chair in which she sat. “I was engrossed in reading and, soft-footed as you are, you caught me unawares.”

The appeal to Lady Tilpot’s vanity worked. Her teeth appeared in what passed as a smile. “I suppose that is understandable. Still, you must try not to be so skittish.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The charge was not unwarranted. There had been a time—not but a few weeks ago—when she would not have had to try. But now restlessness hounded her waking moments, and passionate encounters with a Celtic prince, a dark overlord, and a warrior angel filled her nights. Knowing she was not likely to see Ram again, she hastened into sleep to find in dreams what she could not seek in her waking hours.

Yet it was not solely Ramsey Munro that accounted for her nerves. Her recent feelings of being followed had grown. Even something as innocuous as a trip to the circulating library had her jumping at shadows and looking over her shoulder.

And then there were the roses. Seven, one for each day since she’d been to Vauxhall. She found them in chance locations and odd places: waiting at the milliner to pick up Lady Tilpot’s new hat, or coming back from the greengrocer’s, or on the shelf at the circulating library.

At first she had found the roses rather charming, but not anymore. They were not like the perfect specimen she’d been given at Vauxhall two weeks ago. Now they were overripe or desiccated, some had the outer petals ripped off, and today’s had been so thick with thorns hidden beneath the rampant leaves that it had drawn blood when she’d picked it up.

“Did you hear me, Miss Nash?” Lady Tilpot demanded.

Startled, Helena looked up. “Ma’am?”

Lady Tilpot scowled. She disliked having Helena’s attention focused on anything or anyone other than herself. “Do try to remember in whose employ you are. It is important that my household run perfectly today because today the duke of Glastonberry’s nephew is coming to call, and he is only fifth in line for the title. That is why I have arrived early, to greet the young man.”

“Should not Flora be greeting him?” Helena asked.

Lady Tilpot rolled her eyes. “Flora? Flora? No. Oh, she will make an appearance eventually, but you are naïve if you think it is Flora that the young man has come to see. It is not. ’Tis Flora’s family. ’Tis…” She paused, and her double chin hiked an inch higher in the air.“I.

“Family, Miss Nash, is far more important than the personal attributes of a prospective spouse. What is the prospective bride’s breeding? The character of her relatives? These things are far more significant than a chance arrangement of features or”—her eyes fell on Helena’s blonde tresses—“an unusual shade of hair color.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Helena murmured.

“I know what you are thinking.” Lady Tilpot leaned forward. “You are thinking of your own family and how they reflect so poorly upon you, and comparing them to Flora’s obvious advantages.”

A month ago, even a few weeks ago, Helena would have kept her gaze lowered in the face of this wretched piece of nonsense and remained mute. But while she could bite back the retort welling in her throat—she must for Flora’s sake—she could not avert her eyes. Not today. Maybe not ever again. She met Lady Tilpot’s challenging stare coolly and without wavering. Her regard, so unlike her usual demeanor, clearly confounded her employer. Lady Tilpot frowned, fidgeted, and smoothed the thick cascades of lace across her lap.

“True, you will likely remain a spinster,” she finally intoned. “But not to worry, my dear. You have a place with me, and I foresee no reason you should be dismissed from your current situation, all matters remaining the same.”

“I am not worried,” Helena said flatly. She had spent little time planning her future. For years she had never allowed herself the luxury of looking forward to it with anticipation.

She had thought that she aided Flora out of a sense of duty and obligation, but now she wondered if she had not been looking for an excuse to begin living again, to become the woman she had wanted to be. Someone who would be loved as Mrs. Winebarger was loved, as an equal. Someone capable and vital and…unafraid.

“Well, have you nothing to say in the face of such charity?” Lady Tilpot demanded irritably.

“Your words inspire me, ma’am,” Helena said.

“Humph.” Lady Tilpot sniffed. “Flora is lucky that I know my duty. I will not wed her to anyone but a gentleman of the first degree. But one who also has the fortune and character to match her own!”

Lady Tilpot studied Helena. “But you, Miss Nash, haven’t Flora’s wealth, her name, or me to look out for either of them. Far better for you to stay with me, whom you are so similar to in temperament and character.”

Had Helena not had the habit of equanimity so firmly ingrained, her mouth would have dropped open.

“Do you think I had not noticed that, despite the great differences in our relative positions in Society, there are certain similarities between you and me? I hope I am not so bigoted I cannot appreciate a likeness when I see it, and I see that you, like me, are sweet-faced, angelically natured, but undemonstrative, avoiding the emotional muddiness that soils the common life.

“Clearly you are as repulsed by the notion of intimacy as I. I applaud you on your youthful wisdom.” She paused and looked Helena up and down. “Relatively youthful wisdom.”

Helena ducked her head to hide her mounting horror. Is
this
how Society thought of her? Remote? Undesirous of human touch or concourse, and happily so?

She stared at her lap, barely heeding Lady Tilpot’s continued chatter. Would she be well on her way to becoming the person Lady Tilpot described if Flora’s elopement hadn’t roused her to action? Or had it been Ramsey Munro who had awakened her?

The thought of Ram brought with it an urgent wave of longing mixed with panic. Would she ever know such sweet excitement with another man? Could anyone else ignite her senses to such a degree?

“Aunt Alfreda?” The door opened, and Flora, dressed in a confection of pale pink muslin and satin bows, and looking like a bonbon at a sweet shop, hesitated in the doorway. An intellectual Flora might not be, but she possessed a sort of feline intuition. Whatever telepathic whiskers the little puss owned were shivering now. Her eyes widened anxiously. “Is everything quite all right? Should I go away and come back later at a more fitting time?”

Lady Tilpot sputtered with exasperation. “Our guests are due to arrive in a few minutes. Just when do you suggest that better time might be, Flora? After they’d left ?

“Now stop behaving like an idiot, come in and seat yourself. There. Just so. Fluff your hair, child. Flat hair is the bane of your family, I am afraid. Now, tuck your shoes beneath your hem. Pinch her cheeks, Miss Nash. She is entirely too white—”

Both Flora and Helena were spared this last as the footman—a darker John than the one that had earlier attended them—appeared in the doorway and announced the first guests.

“Clearly he is smitten with you,” Reverend Tawster said, glancing at DeMarc while assiduously licking the sugar from his fingertips. The vicar had declared himself inordinately fond of sugarplums, and now, filled with the warm feelings induced by excess, had apparently decided to try his hand at matchmaking.

Helena considered DeMarc, standing with spine-breaking exactitude near the door, his chin high, the light gleaming in his thick blond hair as he regarded the rest of the company with ill-concealed condescension. Though she considered him the most likely candidate to have sent her the roses, she couldn’t imagine any possible way he could be responsible for their appearance in such odd places in this house. She must have an admirer amongst the staff. As for the rose in the carriage—? An earlier fare must have left it. And Oswald had clearly sent the first. She was becoming imaginative. That is what happened when you went about pretending to be someone you were not.

She quit her study of DeMarc. Twice in the last week they had met, and he had done no more than incline his head. Lord DeMarc, she decided, had finally recalled the great social gulf separating them.

“I think you are mistaken. He is here for Flora.”

“I suppose you are correct,” the vicar agreed, popping another sugarplum in his mouth. “But aren’t all the men here for that same reason? Excluding myself, of course. But then,” he sighed, “I am hardly the stuff of a young girl’s dreams.”

“You are here as Lady Tilpot’s spiritual advisor,” Helena assured him. “A far more heroic role.”

“You are, as ever, diplomatic, Miss Nash.” He frowned a little, studying her with great intensity. “But…”

“What is it, Mr. Tawster?”

He shook his head. “I fear I was about to be quite forward.”

“Pray do not feel that way,” she said. “I consider you a friend.”

“Do you?” His smooth face reflected his unconcealed delight. “How charming of you!” The delight faded, replaced by concern. “It is just that…are those bruises beneath your eyes? Oh, do not misunderstand me. You are, as always, surpassingly lovely. But is something troubling you?”

“Troubling me?” Helena repeated, surprised by the vicar’s insight. “No. That is, nothing that you need concern yourself over.”

“Oh? Oh!” His expression collapsed into misery. “I have been too forward! Pray forgive me!”

“No, no! You haven’t. Really.”

“Then let me ask you something. You see, I have grown fond of you. In a most brotherly sort of way,” he hastened to add. “But I am not your brother.

“I worry that you are alone in the world, and that if something was troubling you, you would have no one to whom you might turn. I hate to speak ill of my benefactress”—his voice lowered miserably—“but I do not see her in the role of your champion.

“And while I would be pleased and flattered to be your spiritual advisor, as far as achieving any secular results, I am not well equipped.” His smile was self-deprecating. “I can hardly fight a duel for you.

“Pray ease my mind on this account if you can. Is there someone you could rely on for practical assistance, should it be necessary?” He regarded her worriedly, his light brows knit.

Was there? She hadn’t ever asked herself such a question. “I have my sister Kate,” she replied slowly. “And my brother-in-law is a most capable man.”

“But they are on the Continent, are they not?”

“Yes.”

“Is there no one else? An uncle? Cousin? A family friend?”

Ramsey Munro. If she was ever in true distress, she thought, she could go to him. Because he would do everything in his power to aid her—he’d sworn an oath to do just that—and “everything” in Ramsey Munro’s power would be a great deal, indeed. The realization washed through her, calming and easing.

She smiled at the vicar. “Pray, do not concern yourself, Vicar, I am not without resources,” she said.

The little vicar regarded her dubiously. “I hope so, Miss Nash. It is a terrible thing to be alone in the world. A terrible thing. And if ever you feel in need of a confidante, or advisor, regardless of what appearances suggest, I am very good in that role. I beg you remember that, Miss Nash.”

“Thank you, sir. I will,” Helena promised.

FLICK:

a cut-like action that lands with the point

“HERE YOU BE, MISS.” The carriage stopped, and Helena clasped the cloak tighter at her throat and adjusted the gold-lacquered papier-mâché mask that concealed her face. Tentatively she emerged from the carriage and paid the driver before looking around a neighborhood unlike any into which she had ever ventured.

On either side of a narrow street filled with people, buildings were jammed seamlessly together, disappearing twenty feet overhead into a brackish Thames fog. Gaslights floated like spirit lamps in the drifting morass above cobbled streets shimmering with oily condensation. Lights flared up from doors standing open at the bottom of short flights of stairs, portals to subterranean worlds below street level.

Taverns, she concluded, from the groups of people going up and down from those brightly lit holes, men in rough jackets and women in multicolored gowns and shawls. She looked about for a street number but could find no indication of the address Oswald had given. To her eye, nothing resembled an assembly hall or even a more modest private club. All the houses looked the same, disreputable and secretive.

Finally she spied a trio of women in fancy dress climbing a short flight of stairs to a nondescript door. Two wore masks like Helena, and the last was bare-faced and nearly bare-bosomed, trailing feathers and raucous laughter. Hurriedly Helena followed them.

“You are certain he is here?” the one in back asked her companions.

“Indeed, yes. I have it from Jonathan that he is obligated to appear. He is being paid to perform a demonstration. Deliciously vulgar, isn’t it?”

“I would pay for a demonstration,” the woman with the low décolletage announced.

At the top of the stairs the door suddenly opened on a barrel-chested man with blistered cheeks and a bulbous nose. He eyed them without interest and held out his hand. With an air of long practice, the women gave him some coins and filed in. Helena followed suit.

Inside, a throng of costumed merrymakers waited while the liveried servants scurried back and forth to take their wraps and coats and cloaks. Excitement filled their voices as they chattered and primped before a giant mirror.

Turning, Helena felt her cloak being swept from her shoulders and at once felt her fellow masqueraders’ interest. She regarded her reflection with unease. Though thirty years out of style, the French robe à l’anglaise, a ball gown she had found in the wardrobes in Lady Tilpot’s attic, still looked wicked and sumptuous. Yards of deep rose-colored velvet covered the wide skirts, creating a small train in the back. The tightly fitted sleeves tied above the elbows were embellished with deep lengths of Brussels lace. In front, the velvet overrobe cinched in at the tiny waist before flaring open to expose a gold-embroidered stomacher and two tiers of gilt-trimmed flounces.

Slowly Helena’s gaze rose to the extremely daring square décolletage. She could not imagine Lady Tilpot ever having worn such a gown. She could scarce believe she was appearing in public in it herself. If it weren’t for the anonymity promised by her gold-painted mask, she wouldn’t have.