Pendragon (2 page)

Tysen said, “They'll be here in May. They're in Paris, Rohan wrote me, looking at all the new crop of beautiful gardens. You know Rohan and his gardens—he will return with a dozen new designs.”

“It was a good day,” Max said, still carrying Mr. Cork, no longer panting so heavily now.

“Yes,” his father agreed, “it was.”

“Papa, can I carry Mr. Cork?”

Tysen looked up at his four-year-old Rory, mentally added Mr. Cork's additional weight, and sighed. “Hand him up, Max.”

2

Sherbrooke town house

Putnam Place, London

One week later

T
HE SHERBROOKE TOWN
house, on the corner of Putnam Place, was a three-story Georgian mansion built in the middle of the last century by an earl of Northcliffe with far more money than good taste, or
bon gout
, as he was wont to shout out when he took his pleasure at Madame Orly's brothel. He was also the same earl who had filled the Northcliffe gardens with all the coupling Greek statuary. Sherbrooke children, adults, guests, servants, and the occasional tradesman had, for the past sixty-five years, spent hours staring at the naked marble men and women, all in the throes of physical endeavors. Meggie wished she could have met that earl. Neither Leo nor Max had ever let fall to their vicar father that their cousins, Uncle Douglas's boys, had quickly shown them the statues in the hidden part of the Northcliffe gardens, and how all four boys had gawked and made lewd remarks and studied the statues in great giggling detail for hours on end. None of them was stupid.

Meggie was just down the hall from her aunt Alex's bedchamber that adjoined to Uncle Douglas's in a lovely airy room that was all shades of peach and cream. She'd
stayed in this same room since she'd been eight years old.

There came a light tap on the door.

“Enter,” Meggie called out.

It was her aunt Alex, looking tussled and windblown and as happy as the spring sunshine because she'd been out riding early with Uncle Douglas in Hyde Park. They'd doubtless galloped to their heart's content because no one was about that early to see and remark upon such eccentric behavior. She was wearing a dark green riding habit that Uncle Douglas had presented her on her birthday. Her rich red hair had tumbled out of her stylish riding hat and was in curls and tangles down her back.

She looked flushed and happy and in high spirits. “I love to be back in London,” she said as she stripped off her York tan riding gloves, the leather incredibly soft. “It's ever so when we first arrive. Everything is fresh and new again. Now, it's your first Season, Meggie, and I am so pleased that Tysen gave you over into our care. What fun we shall have. I've come to tell you that Douglas will be taking you to Madame Jordan's this morning.”

“Who is Madame Jordan?”

“Why, she's my dressmaker, has been since Douglas and I married.” Alex broke off a moment, a wicked memory breaking into a big smile. “Hmmm, oh yes, between the two of them, you will look like a princess. Trust whatever your uncle says. He has excellent style.”

Both her uncles had had excellent style when it came to ladies' clothes, Meggie had been told all her life. Her own father did too, one assumed, since all Sherbrooke males had unconscionable portions of luck and style, but as a vicar, he normally didn't let his style out in full company.

Mary Rose, Meggie's stepmother, and Meggie, in a house full of males, had long ago pulled together and seen to their own shopping, enjoying it immensely. Because they weren't dolts, the four males in the Vicarage household, including Alec and Rory, knew that they were to instantly compliment any new garment, the greater the length of the compliment, the better treatment accorded
them. Their father, hardly ever a dolt, roundly endorsed this.

“Now, Douglas wishes to leave as soon as he changes from his riding clothes. He has a meeting with the foreign office this afternoon. I do hope it's not yet another offer of a diplomatic post. The last one was to Rome. It was very hot when we were there. We spent a lot of time with cardinals and bishops, and that meant I was very well covered up.”

“I would perhaps consider Paris,” Meggie said.

“He turned that down two years ago,” Alex said. Indeed, Lord Northcliffe had turned down several diplomatic offerings, and was frequently called in by the King, George IV, particularly on matters pertaining to the French, a people Douglas understood very well, and then he would snort.

An hour later Meggie and her uncle were discussing fashion with Madame Jordan in her elegant shop in the heart of Regent Street, at #14, on the east side.

It wasn't raining, a miracle, Meggie said to her uncle, since it had poured all the way to London, poured the entire previous evening, but beginning at dawn, April was strutting beautiful spring plumage. Flowers were bursting out and trees were turning green. Meggie couldn't breathe deeply enough.

There were only three ladies and their maids in the shop that morning because it was quite early. Madame Jordan took one look at Meggie's uncle, and flew to him, presenting her cheek to be kissed, which he did. After tea and gossip, Madame Jordan said to Uncle Douglas, considering Meggie irrelevant to the process, which she was, “Just fancy, a young lady for you to apply your excellent taste to, my lord. She will be a beauty, with my assistance. Hmmm, a nice waist, which is good since ladies are now allowed to have waistlines again, and her bosom is ample. Yes, nice skin, and that hair, the same rich color as Mr. Ryder Sherbrooke's and Lady Sinjun's, all blonds and browns and sunlight. And those blue eyes, I will make them sparkle with magnificence. Now, let me take her
measurements, and we will see what is what.” Meggie was stripped to her petticoat and chemise and stockings, stood upon a small dais, measured, large swatches of material draped over her, from the filmiest silks to the most brilliant and shimmery satins, all with Uncle Douglas looking on, making comments, stroking his jaw, looking like a man in charge of an army, and every soldier in that army was ready to do his bidding.

When she saw the ball gown Douglas picked out for her to wear the next evening, Madame Jordan nodding enthusiastically, her heart thrummed with excitement and pleasure. It was glorious, tulle over white satin with two lines of exquisite embroidery from the waist down the skirt to the hem, suggesting an open robe.

“Thank God you look very fine in white, Meggie,” he said, looking her up and down and nodding. The sleeves were short and tight, the neckline square. There were very narrow flounces, one at the hem, the second nearly to the knees.

“It's not overdone,” said Douglas, “and at last the waist is where it should be. You have a nice small waist, Meggie, and your bosom is particularly pleasant—ah, perhaps I shouldn't point that out in your hearing, but it's true, just as Madame said. Yes, this style will become you. No more schoolgirl gowns, my dear. You are now a young lady in her first Season.”

Madame Jordan sighed. “Remember, my lord, when you first brought your young bride to me? What atrocious taste she had, and still has, for that matter, but she did understand the power of her magnificent bosom, and dug in her heels.”

“Women always understand the power of the bosom,” Douglas said, snorting. “As for my wife, she still wears her gowns cut nearly to her knees, and I don't like it any more now than I did then. Men ogle her, Nicolette. Three men could ogle her at the same time, she is so well endowed.”

Madame Jordan laughed and poked his arm. “Ah, a jealous husband, isn't it delightful, my dear?”

Meggie looked from Nicolette to her uncle, getting her first glimpse of uncharted territory. “Yes, ma'am, now that I am thinking about it, why yes, it is quite delightful.”

Then came a riding habit in royal blue that made Meggie want to weep it was so beautiful. “Oh goodness, Uncle Douglas, it is too fine,” she whispered as she ran her fingers over the fabric that one of Madame's minions had delivered directly to Meggie's fingertips.

“We will come back tomorrow, Meggie, to order up more gowns for you and to have your ball gown fitted. This is just the beginning. Tomorrow evening you will look like a princess for the Ranleigh ball.” He said to Madame, “Her coming-out ball will be in two weeks. I want something very special for her that night.”

“I will find it,” Madame said comfortably, and if Meggie wasn't mistaken—and she wasn't since she'd seen the same look many times in Mary Rose's eyes—there was a gleam of pure lust in Madame's fine dark eyes as she watched Uncle Douglas leave her shop.

“She, er, really appreciates you, Uncle Douglas.”

A dark eyebrow went up. “You are eighteen, Meggie, a vicar's daughter. What do you know of men and women sorts of things?”

She laughed. “I live with my father and Mary Rose. Those two—they laugh and hug and sneak kisses when they think they're alone, which they never are in the vicarage. What's more, Rory came into my bedroom two weeks ago, afraid because he'd heard his mother yelling. I am not an idiot, Uncle Douglas.”

“Your father is a very happy man,” was all that Douglas would say to that revelation. Then, later, he laughed and said, “Ah, I would like to hear some day how you dealt with little Rory's concern. Now, Meggie, I have something to say to you. You will enjoy yourself here in London. You aren't hunting for a husband, just having fun. There is no pressure on you to attach some idiot gentleman. That's all your grandmother's idea, not ours. Your father is in complete agreement. Also, you are something of an heiress, so there will be some men drooling on your
slippers in hopes of attaching you. You will be careful of any man who goes over the line. Do you understand?”

“Oh yes. Aunt Alex told me that she was thrown at you because her papa needed money desperately, but, she told me, since I'm not in that situation, I can just skip about and smile and flirt with whomever pleases me. Papa kept telling me that I was to waltz and learn how everything worked and remain reasonably modest. Mary Rose wants me to see all the plays. Now that I think about it, Uncle Douglas, I don't think Papa wants me to marry and leave the vicarage until I'm thirty.”

“That's possible,” Douglas said, and smiled, imagining that he wouldn't want a man near his daughter, if he and Alex had produced one, which they hadn't.

“Grandmother Lydia tells me I must be vigilant or I will end up on the shelf like Aunt Sinjun nearly did. She kept insisting that eighteen was the perfect age to marry.”

Douglas laughed. “Bless my mother, at least she will never change. You will have fun, Meggie, that's what it's all about.”

 

The evening of the Ranleigh ball, Alex said as she smoothed her hands over the soft silk of her deep rose ball gown, “I am so pleased that my waistline is finally down to where my waist actually is.”

“On the other hand,” Douglas said, looking over at his wife, “you always looked splendid in the empire style, with the focus on your endowments.”

Meggie wasn't particularly surprised; it had always been so with her aunts and uncles. She saw her uncle's fingers creep toward her aunt's shoulder, pause, then fall back to his side.

After Douglas had seated his two ladies in the Northcliffe carriage, tapped his gloved fist against the roof, he said to Meggie as the carriage rolled forward, “You will be treated very nicely because, to be very honest about it, no one would ever dare to insult one of my family. On the other hand, both Alex and I are rather well liked in society, as is your uncle Ryder and aunt Sophie. You will
be your charming self, and if you have a question about how to behave in any given situation, just ask either Alex or me.”

“It's still rather scary,” Meggie said. “I suspect the balls here are very different from ours in Glenclose-on-Rowan.”

“People are the same,” Alex said. “It's just the gowns and jewels that are more splendid.”

“Some people are idiots,” said Douglas.

“And some are not,” Alex said. “Just like at home.”

“However,” Douglas said, “as I told you, if any man does anything that makes you uncomfortable, you will immediately tell him to take himself off. Then you will show me the clod and I will feed him a few choice words.”

“Yes, Douglas is quite good at that, although he hasn't had much practice for a long time.”

Douglas sighed, crossed his arms over his chest. “Just think, Alex. In a couple of years all the boys will be let loose on London. Can you begin to imagine the sorts of messes they will embroil us in?”

Alex groaned.

Meggie laughed. She thought of their twin boys, James and Jason—the most beautiful males she'd ever seen in her life. She rolled her eyes, thinking of the two of them strolling into a ballroom and hoards of wide-eyed ladies swooning in ecstasy.

Lord and Lady Ranleigh greeted their guests at the bottom of the grand staircase that led up to their pride and joy—a ballroom occupying the entire second floor.

“The first Sherbrooke offspring to appear in Society,” Lady Ranleigh said, smiling at Meggie. “You are blessed with your family, my dear. There are many people eager to meet you. I trust you will enjoy yourself.”

Meggie said, “Oh yes, ma'am, Aunt Alex says I am to dance holes in my slippers.”

Meggie continued to smile, to laugh, to make jests with all sorts of people who were perfectly pleasant to her. Young gentlemen came by to meet her and stayed or
asked her to dance. It was just before the midnight dinner that she saw a tall man she knew looked familiar. She cocked her head to one side as she stared at him.