Sheri Cobb South

IN MILADY’S CHAMBER

Sheri Cobb South

Chapter 1

In Which a Body Is Discovered in the Boudoir

Julia Runyon Bertram, known to the fashionable world as Lady Fieldhurst, sat at her dressing table, resplendent in a high-waisted, low-necked gown of snowy white lace over satin. Diamonds at her ears and bosom winked in the candlelight, trembling slightly as her lady’s maid, a handsome Frenchwoman in her early thirties, pinned a jeweled aigrette into her golden curls. Beyond the dressing table, Viscount Fieldhurst stood framed in the doorway that connected his suite to that of his lady. A severe-looking man some fifteen years his wife’s senior, he leaned negligently against the doorjamb and studied her with the detached interest of a connoisseur examining the latest oil paintings on exhibit at the Royal Academy. Lady Fieldhurst avoided his gaze, toying with the various articles of toilette littering the dressing table—a silver-backed hairbrush, a pair of nail scissors, a gold-topped bottle of scent.

Abandoning the doorjamb, the viscount advanced into the room. Joining mistress and maid before the mirror, he stroked the side of his wife’s slender neck with the back of his index finger. “You shall break hearts tonight, darling. A veritable goddess—Aphrodite, perhaps. Or do I mean Artemis?”

Julia’s lip curled. “I am quite certain you meant Aphrodite.”

Lord Fieldhurst shrugged. “No doubt you are right. But surely you said something about jonquil crape? Or was the temptation to air the Fieldhurst diamonds too great to resist?” His caressing finger dropped to trace the fall of gems over the bare expanse of flesh.

Striving without success to repress a shudder, Lady Fieldhurst sought to cover her faux pas by plunging headlong into conversation. “Indeed, I meant to wear the jonquil, but it is the most tiresome thing! I spilled sherry on the skirt at the Blandford rout, and my good Camille has been unable to eradicate it.”

The lady’s maid acknowledged this tribute with a tight little smile, but alas, Lord Fieldhurst would not be distracted. “But you shiver, my dear,” he said with a piercing look at his wife, sparing not so much as a glance at the discarded gown lying in a heap on the bed. “Shall I ring for the chambermaid to light the fire?”

“That will not be at all necessary,” Lady Fieldhurst assured him hastily. “I shall be leaving very soon. Are—are you quite certain you will not accompany me?” The words sounded forced, as if she were hoping for a reply in the negative. If Lord Fieldhurst noticed this, however, he gave no outward sign.

“Would that I might, my dear, but I’ve an appointment at nine o’clock, after which I shall probably spend the rest of the evening at my club.”

“An appointment? Someone from the Foreign Office, I daresay.”

The viscount neither confirmed this assumption nor denied it. “You disapprove, my dear? No doubt you would prefer that the Little Emperor be allowed to invade England, so long as he did not interfere with your pleasures. And yet,” he tweaked the short, puffed sleeve of her gown, causing it to slip from one white shoulder, “you have no objection to purchasing new frocks with the tribute of a grateful nation.”

“Camille, you need not wait up for me. And you may have the jonquil crape as a reward for your efforts, fruitless though they were.”

“Merci, madame,” murmured the serving woman. She bobbed a curtsy, then bundled up the rejected gown and bore it out of the room, exiting through the small jib door papered to blend into the wall.

“I wish you will not say such things in front of Camille,” chided Lady Fieldhurst, tugging her sleeve back over her bare shoulder. “It cannot be comfortable for her, knowing that her wages are paid, at least in part, by our own war efforts against her native country.”

One slanting black brow arched toward the viscount’s hairline. “Do you truly expect me to consider the sensibilities of a servant?” He chuckled at the very thought. “I have displeased you even more than I knew. I am flattered, my dear. I had no idea my escort was so important to you.”

“Much as it pains me to disabuse you of so pleasing a notion, I fear I must inform you that Lord Rupert Latham is to call for me at half-past eight.”

“Ah, then you have no need of my escort, after all. I shall trust to Lord Rupert to fill my place admirably.”

The smile Lady Fieldhurst bent upon him was somewhat brittle. “Lord Rupert has given every indication that he would be more than pleased to fill your place in whatever capacity I have need of him.”

The viscount did not pretend to misunderstand, but took her cold hand and raised it to his lips. “I’ve no doubt many men would. But I have every confidence in your fidelity, my dear.”

And every confidence in my inability to conceive a bastard child with which to embarrass you, Lady Fieldhurst supplied mentally. Aloud, she merely said, “I must not keep Lord Rupert waiting. Goodnight, Frederick.”

With head held high, she rose from the dressing table and exited the room in a cloud of white lace.

* * * *

“Is something troubling you, Julia?” Lord Rupert Latham asked a short time later, as he escorted her from the dance floor.

Lady Fieldhurst unfurled her small ivory fan and plied it vigorously, but the slight breeze it created offered little relief from the heat generated by two hundred wax candles and as many warm bodies. It was ever thus with London society; the mundane reality fell far short of the glittering illusion. Six years of a supposedly brilliant marriage had taught her that.

“Troubling me, Rupert?” she echoed with a trace of defiance, snagging yet another glass of champagne from a tray borne by a passing footman. Was it her third, or her fourth? She decided she did not care. “What could possibly be troubling me?”

“I don’t know,” said Lord Rupert, frowning as she downed the pale liquid far too quickly. “I only know that you look—”

“Be warned, Rupert, if you intend to make unhandsome remarks about my appearance, I shall be forced to seek more diverting company.” She smiled, but her eyes held a reckless gleam.

“I can find no fault with your appearance, Julia. I meant only to say that you look like a woman determined to enjoy herself, even if it kills her.”

“I have never heard of anyone being done to death by enjoyment, although if one must go, it sounds as pleasant a way as any other.”

Lord Rupert leaned closer and lowered his voice to a husky near-whisper. “Ah, but one may indeed be pleasured to death, Julia, and the best part is that one does not die at all, but lives to, er, die another day.”

“Others may do so, perhaps, but not I,” said Lady Fieldhurst, not even pretending to mistake his meaning. “My husband assures me that he has every confidence in my fidelity.”

“Is that it? Have you quarreled with Fieldhurst?”

“My dear Rupert, Fieldhurst never quarrels! He is all that is urbane and charming—provided there are witnesses.”

“The bastard! I don’t see why you—oh, damn!” muttered Lord Rupert as a portly gentleman emerging from the adjacent card room jostled his elbow, causing him to spill champagne down the front of his form-fitting pantaloons. “If you will excuse me, I shall go home and change.”

“Must you, Rupert?” Lady Fieldhurst found herself reluctant to be left alone, even in the middle of a ballroom filled to overflowing. “It does not look so very bad. I daresay no one will even notice, once it has dried.”

“In fact, all I have to fear is being rumored incontinent in the meantime,” he observed in accents of profound revulsion. “Never fear, Julia, I shall be back in time to escort you to supper.”

The viscountess, painfully aware of having betrayed too much, waved him away with an air of nonchalance. “By all means, go! You need not hurry back on my account.”

Lord Rupert regarded her with a sardonic look, then moved away and was soon swallowed up into the crowd milling around the edges of the ballroom. Lady Fieldhurst had not long to mourn his departure, for a dashing Hussar in scarlet and gold lace immediately solicited her hand for the cotillion, and a dandy in high shirt-points and an elaborately tied cravat claimed her for the contredanse which followed.

She next took pity on a spotty-faced youth who, stammering, requested her hand for the boulanger, and who repaid her kindness by treading upon her train. Lady Fieldhurst, hearing the delicate lace and satin rip free from the high waist seam, was obliged to finish out the set as well as she might, before seeking refuge in the ladies’ withdrawing room set aside for just such emergencies. Holding up her ravaged train to prevent further damage, she pushed open the door to the withdrawing room—and surprised the maid on duty in the lusty embrace of a strapping young footman.

“Oh! Beggin’ your pardon, mum,” the girl mumbled, red-faced. As her swain beat a hasty retreat, she tugged her starched apron back into place and snatched up the frilled mobcap that had fallen to the floor. “What can I do for you?”

Lady Fieldhurst wondered fleetingly if she had asked the footman the same thing. If so, the girl would be wise to be rather less accommodating. But these were not her servants and therefore not her problem; let the young people take their happiness where they could find it.

“I’ve a tear in my gown,” the viscountess said, turning so that the maid might inspect the damage. “I wonder if you would mend it.”

“Aye, mum, I’ll have it done in a trice,” the maid assured her, all eagerness to please after her earlier faux pas.

She helped the viscountess to disrobe behind a large screen, where Lady Fieldhurst was obliged to cool her heels clad in nothing but her shift while the necessary repairs were effected. Whatever her skill with a needle, the girl was not swift. It was fully a quarter-hour later before Lady Fieldhurst returned to the ballroom and noted to her consternation that Lord Rupert had not yet returned.

He did not, in fact, return in time for the supper dance, so she accepted the escort of a noted Corinthian who had recently shocked and delighted Society by shaving a full seven seconds off the London-to-Brighton record held by the Prince of Wales. But though she danced and flirted and laughed at his more outrageous gallantries, she could not quite escape the echo of her husband’s voice. Aphrodite or Artemis? Love and beauty, or fertility and childbirth? She had understood his meaning as clearly as if he had spoken the words aloud. In six years of marriage, she had failed to give him an heir, and he silently flung her failure in her teeth every time he took a new mistress.

Her mistake, she knew, was in caring too much. Other ladies, far more well-born than she, were similarly neglected by their husbands and it mattered to them not a whit. But although Lady Fieldhurst might be considered one of Society’s most glittering ornaments, in her heart of hearts she sometimes despaired of ever completely throwing off the countrified Miss Julia Runyon, sheltered daughter of a West Country squire.

In retrospect, Somersetshire in 1802 seemed like a different world and in some ways, she supposed, it was. England and France had signed a treaty at Amiens, and the optimism of a world finally at peace had been personified in the young lady who had made her first curtsy at a Bath assembly room. The suave and sophisticated Viscount Fieldhurst, accompanying his mother as she took the waters on her physician’s advice, had swept the bedazzled Miss Runyon off her feet and married her in spite of his mother’s objections and her own parents’ bewilderment. Alas, the Peace of Amiens had proven as short-lived as her own wedded bliss: in less than two years, cannons fired and bullets rained down on far-flung locations from St. Lucia to Copenhagen, and not long after, a colder, quieter war was waged in Berkeley Square—a silent, bloodless battle that left the body unharmed while slowly killing the soul.

She was pulled back to the present by a question from the gentleman seated on her left, a young soldier whose once-handsome countenance was marred by a long scar down his cheek and a black patch over one eye. When he offered to carve for her a slice of the succulent roast beef set before him, she accepted with gratitude and a certain feeling of kinship: they were wounded veterans, the pair of them, albeit of very different wars.

After a supper which seemed interminable despite the pleasures of congenial company (to say nothing of the delights of turbot in lobster sauce, partridge a la Pompadour, and truffles with wine), she returned to the ballroom with the other guests, and was soon rewarded by the sight of Lord Rupert scanning the crowded floor for a glimpse of her. She smiled thoughtfully, tapping her fan against her chin, as he crossed the room in her direction. So Fieldhurst had every confidence in her fidelity, did he? Perhaps it was time his confidence was shaken and the unsophisticated Miss Runyon permanently banished.

It was not as if such things were unheard of in London society, or even particularly frowned upon, provided they were conducted with discretion. Her own dearest friend, the Countess of Dunnington, had been estranged from her husband for years, yet never lacked for intimate male companionship. Indeed, in recent months the countess had urged Julia to follow her own example. Perhaps it was time she did. She snatched yet another glass of champagne off a silver tray, tossed it off in one gulp, and met Lord Rupert halfway across the floor.