Surrender to Sin (4 page)

“Oh, yes. I thought you hated him. Didn’t he run off with your maid?”

Juliet frowned impatiently. “That is all forgiven. He’s returned Fifi to me, and my hair has never looked better, not that you men take any notice.”

“He’s costing me a fortune,” the Duke put in. “Rooms at the Albany. Private hairdresser. Open-ended accounts with Mr. Weston
and
Mr. Hoby. Pretty well for an Irishman!”

“I see,” said Cary, whose own accounts with the famed tailor and bootmaker were firmly closed, at least until he got his estate back in the black. “But I’m afraid that not even Mr. Rourke can entice me to Surrey this Christmas. I shall be at Tanglewood.”

“But you always come home for Christmas,” said his sister, “except that one year when you ran mad and enlisted in the Army. We were so very annoyed with you.”

“My tenants and neighbors are expecting me to give them a Christmas Ball,” said Cary, “and a New Year’s Day Ball, too, I shouldn’t wonder. Not to mention a St. Stephen’s Day treat.”

“You never bothered with all that before,” she said suspiciously. “What’s really keeping you in Herts? Don’t tell me the
artless
Rhoda Mickleby has captured your heart!”

Cary glared at her. “Juliet, as you have pointed out to me over and again, I’ve neglected Tanglewood for years. I’m trying to correct that now. As for Miss Rhoda, I’m quite safe from her. Some old aunt of hers has promised her a Season in London, and, as you know, catching husbands in the country cannot possibly compare to chasing them around Town.”

“You can start afresh at Tanglewood in January,” said his sister, refusing to give up her scheme. “There’s no point in turning over a new leaf this late in the year.”

“The trouble with January,” Cary told her, “is that it has two faces. One looking into the past and the other to the future. No, I’m sorry, monkey, but it will be a great scandal if I don’t keep my word. I won’t see you at Christmas. I shall miss you nearly as much as you miss me, but it can’t be helped.”

Juliet reacted to this disappointment with a petulance unbecoming to a duchess in training. “You needn’t play Sebastian, you know, if you don’t wish to,” she said waspishly. “You can be Olivia’s uncle, Sir Toby Belch. Or Sir Andrew Aguecheek—no, no, he courts Olivia as well. I know! You could play the part of Feste, Olivia’s Fool.”

Juliet was a fine-looking girl with a cloud of dark hair, wide gray eyes, and a slim athletic figure. Pique only served to enhance her natural beauty, but, as her brother, Cary was immune to both her tantrums and her charms. He still remembered her as the disgusting object that, at the age of three, had broken his favorite toy horse.

“I shall take my leave of you now, you little beast,” he said. “Kiss me goodbye.”

“I want you to come to Surrey!” said Juliet, in case he had not understood her. “I hate to think of you all alone in that drafty old pile at Christmas when you ought to be with your family. But I suppose you have a mistress there,” she went on spitefully, “and a half-dozen brats, too!”

Cary laughed bitterly. “As a matter of fact, I’m up to my ears in involuntary celibacy.”

It was no more than the miserable truth. There was not even one obliging widow in his neighborhood. His cousin the Vicar kept a very tight rein on the private lives of his parishioners. Wherever Dr. Wilfred Cary saw even a hint of impropriety, he took ruthless action to eliminate the threat. As for the artless young ladies Cary had boasted of knowing, he could not say two words to any of
them
without raising expectations he had no intention of fulfilling. Worst of all, he lacked the disposable income one needed to secure temporary love in London.

“You have in me a kindred soul,” the Duke said sympathetically.

Juliet flashed him a warning look. “What keeps you in the country, if not a woman?” she demanded of her brother.

“Duty, monkey,” he told her resolutely. “Duty. I owe it to my tenants. I owe it to my neighbors. I owe it to dear old Grandmother Cary, who left me the drafty old pile. I owe it to her memory not to let the place fall to ruin.”

“If you could just forgive Serena,” said Juliet, overriding his protests. “She has money, Cary. She could help you with the place.”

“No, Juliet,” he told her curtly. “I will make that estate turn a profit by main strength if I have to, and I don’t want to hear another word about it from you.”

Juliet remembered that commanding voice from childhood. It was her father’s voice, and both her brothers seemed able to summon it at will. It always made her tremble and want to cry. “All right,” she sulked. “You needn’t shout at me.”

Cary had always been fond of Juliet, even when, at the age of eight, she had found his battered copy of
Fanny Hill
and showed it gleefully to their eldest brother, Sir Benedict Wayborn, who had proceeded without delay to burn it. “Cheer up, monkey,” he said gently. “I’ll be with you in spirit. And I got you a nice present.” He handed her the gaily wrapped package from Hatchard’s. “Everyone else is getting a dead pheasant, I’m afraid.”

“What a pretty package,” said Juliet, her suspicions renewed. “A woman must have done it for you. Who is she, Cary? Some opera dancer, I suppose.”

“Cheeky madam! The clerk at Hatchard’s did it for me, if you must know. It’s a new service they’re offering. I actually met the young lady who thought it up.”

Juliet grinned. “I knew there had to be a girl. What exactly did she think up?”

“Christmas wrap.”

“Nobody invented Christmas wrap,” Juliet scoffed. “Christmas wrap has always been.”

The Duke suddenly laughed. “You mean like the stars and the mountains?”

“If you don’t mind, sir, I’m interrogating my brother,” said Juliet, refusing to be thrown off the scent of a promising new trail. “Was she
very
pretty, Cary?”

“Actually, she’s one of our Derbyshire cousins,” said Cary, avoiding the question. He knew from experience that telling his sister he had met a pretty girl was the surest way to turn her into a Cupid’s helper. “Lord Wayborn’s her uncle. You must know her. You know everyone.”

“I do know everyone,” Juliet said smugly, “but his lordship must have two dozen nieces, if not more. He had a dozen brothers and sisters. What’s her name?”

“Don’t know,” said Cary. “I didn’t think to ask.”

Juliet stared. “Didn’t think to—! And, of course, a lady couldn’t volunteer the information,” she said, exasperated. “Who was with her?”

“No one.”

“No one?” said Juliet, in disbelief. “She must have been with someone. Her mother? A chaperone? A maid?”

“No one,” said Cary. “Unless one counts Lord Dulwich.”

The Duke sat up in his chair, demonstrating that he had actually been following the conversation between brother and sister. “One don’t, as a matter of fact.”

“No, indeed,” said Cary. “An absolute negative quantity. One subtracts him, rather.”

“I don’t understand,” said Juliet. “Was this girl of yours
with
Lord Dulwich?”

“No, she was quite alone when the filthy beast knocked her down,” said Cary, remembering the incident with renewed anger. “He shoved her out of the way in Piccadilly, and she fell, poor mite.”

“Somebody ought to shove
him
into the bloody river,” snarled the Duke, “except there’d be no grave for me to dance on. Look here, Cary, if you want to call him out, I’ll second you. He can’t go about the place shoving girls in the back. Not in
my
England.”

“I hadn’t thought of taking it quite so far,” said Cary, modestly. “I just helped the girl to her feet and showed her the shortcut to Hatchard’s. You know, through the bakery?”

“Oh, yes,” said the Duke, who knew London almost as well as the other gentleman. “There’s nothing quite like a bun straight from the oven.”

“What did she look like, this cousin of ours?” Juliet inquired, not in the least interested in shortcuts or buns or even Lord Dulwich’s grave. As the sister of two eligible bachelors, she prided herself on knowing all the marriageable young ladies on the market, and for Cary to have met one whom she could not immediately identify irritated her. “Was she pretty?”

“She was noticeably human in appearance,” Cary equivocated.

“What does that mean?” Juliet demanded.

“I didn’t want to kiss her,” he explained, “but neither did I feel compelled to run away.”

Juliet sighed. “That doesn’t much narrow things down, I’m afraid. I’ve met three or four of our Derbyshire cousins, and they’re all presentable but rather plain. The word for that is ‘tolerable,’ by the way. You might use it instead of ‘noticeably human.’ What color is her hair?”

Cary knew better than to reveal that the girl had hair the color of hot buttered scotch.

“Brown, of course,” Juliet answered her own question. “The Wayborns are all brunettes.”

“She’s not a Wayborn herself,” said Cary. “Her mother was one of the earl’s sisters.”

“The man had seven sisters,” Juliet complained. “Your mystery girl could be anyone.”

“Not anyone, surely,” said Cary, amused by Juliet’s frustration. He was himself only slightly interested in the identity of a girl he probably would never see again in his life, but Juliet was like a dog with a marrowbone she couldn’t crack.

“It could be the Vaughn girl,” she said hopefully. “There’s a scandal in there somewhere, but no one’s talking…
yet
. I’ll find it out though. See if I don’t.”

Cary chuckled. “Sorry, Julie. This girl’s about as scandalous as a pot of tea.”

Juliet wrinkled her nose. “Too bad. How was she dressed?”

“I expect her maid was responsible.”

The Duke appreciated the joke, at least until Juliet indicated with a look that she did not.

“What? No, you fathead. I mean, what sort of clothes had she on?”

“Oh, you mean what sort of clothes had she on,” said Cary. “I thought you were asking me how her clothes got on her body, which, of course, is a question no gentleman ought to answer, even if he is in full possession of the facts. Warm cloakish thing, gray, with fox fur at the ends, entirely unremarkable. Hood, no bonnet.”

“Marry her,” said the Duke. “I can’t bear these foolish new bonnets. I turned to the left in church the other day, during a hymn, and some woman’s feathers got on my tongue.”

“I daresay I
will
marry her,” said Cary, stifling a yawn, “if my sister can ever suss out who she is. Really, Juliet, I thought you knew everyone. I thought I could depend on you.”

Juliet bristled. “Well, is there anything
useful
you can tell me about her?”

“She likes the poetry of Wordsworth, but isn’t quite sure about Blake, even though she quoted what must be his most immortal words: ‘Bugger the King.’”

Juliet was shocked. “She
said
that?”

“Mr. Blake said it first, and I daresay
he
enjoyed the advantage of knowing what it means,” Cary said, laughing. “Our poor cousin merely repeated it. What else? She prefers
Tom Jones
to
Moll Flanders
, both of which she has read, even though she is
not
married. And, like everyone else in London, she’s waiting with baited breath for the publication of
Kubla Khan
.”

“She seems bookish,” was the Duke’s deduction.

Cary admitted that appearances were against the lady, but offered an alternative explanation. “We were talking in a bookshop. Had we fallen down an abandoned well together, our conversation might not have been the same.”

“What had she to say about Lord Byron?” Juliet demanded.

“Not a word. She spoke only of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, and Fielding.”

“Why, she sounds perfectly vile,” said Juliet, a little relieved. After all, she was under no obligation to know young ladies who admitted to liking Wordsworth. “Could her father be a military man? Did she say anything at all?”

Cary laughed. “Like what? ‘Forward march’? ‘Present arms’? She
did
say that her mother is generally thought to have married to disoblige her family.”

“It
is
Miss Vaughn,” said Juliet in triumph. “Cosima Vaughn. Her mother was Lady Agatha Wayborn, who married Major Vaughn, the rudest man in Dublin—something of an accomplishment, there being prodigious competition for the title! But I can’t think why they’ve come to London if the girl’s merely tolerable. She has nothing but a thousand pounds in the three per cents, and that’s certainly not enough. She would have married better at home.”

She bit her lip almost savagely. “More to the point, how could she afford
fox
?
I
never had any decent fur until after my engagement. Cary, are you quite sure her cloak was trimmed in fox? It must have been squirrel. Trust
you
not to know the difference.”

The Duke laughed suddenly. “Major Vaughn—good God, I know him. Once the Lady-Lieutenant—my aunt’s cousin by marriage, you know—asked him why he’d named his daughter Cosima, and the Irish rogue answered, ‘Cosima bastard, that’s why!’”

He roared with laughter, which not even a look from Miss Wayborn could quell. In a moment, Juliet was laughing, too. It had been quite some time since they had laughed together, and perhaps they laughed a bit harder than they otherwise would have done.

“And to think,” said Cary, brushing tears of hilarity from his eyes, “I might have met the man himself if I hadn’t been late for my appointment in Park Lane.”

When Abigail returned her engagement ring to Lord Dulwich, she expected a certain amount of private recrimination from the jilted man. To her surprise, he merely disappeared from her life. Abigail, who dreaded all unpleasant scenes, was immensely relieved.

The public uproar that followed, however, was worse than anything she could have imagined. The fact that her mother had been Lady Anne Wayborn was entirely forgotten, while it was discovered anew that her father, Mr. William “Red” Ritchie, was not a gentleman, but rather the reverse: a Glaswegian and a purveyor of Scotch whisky. For a woman of such imperfect descent to break her engagement to an English lord was tantamount to a peasant’s revolt, and, in the view of the Patronesses of Almack’s, deserving of punishment. This created some difficulty, for, as Lady Jersey dryly pointed out to Mrs. Burrell, Miss Ritchie could scarcely be cast out of all good society when she had never been permitted into it.

Lord Dulwich, meanwhile, was not immune to the scorn and ridicule of his peers, who openly despised him for having offered his ancient name to the Scotch heiress in the first place. His lordship retaliated by accusing Miss Ritchie of replacing the Rose de Mai, the carnation-pink diamond in her engagement ring, with a piece of worthless glass. In response to the accusation, Red Ritchie took the unusual step of purchasing twenty thousand pounds’ worth of loose diamonds from Mr. Grey in Bond Street, merely to demonstrate that Miss Ritchie could buy and sell a hundred Rose de Mai diamonds in an afternoon spree.

No one was surprised when legal briefs were filed in Doctor’s Commons. His lordship alleged that Miss Ritchie had stolen his diamond, and Red Ritchie filed suit for slander.

Abigail could scarcely venture out of doors without being pointed at and whispered over. People who would never have condescended to know her now went out of their way to give her the Cut Direct. Her uncle, Earl Wayborn himself, who had never communicated with Abigail in her life, not even upon the death of her mother, his elder sister, now petitioned to have the spelling of his family name legally changed from Wayborn to Weybourne in an effort to distance himself from the scandal.

Abigail went out less and less, and when Mr. Eldridge of Hatchard’s kindly began sending her the latest books, allowing her to choose what she wanted and send back the rest, she stopped going out completely. And yet, despite being a virtual exile in Kensington, she was dismayed when her father announced his intention of sending her into the country until the Dulwich affair was settled to his satisfaction.

The announcement came at dinner. Abigail set down her knife and fork with a clatter. “No, Papa,” she said, her quiet, genteel voice at odds with his Glaswegian brogue. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I refuse to be driven out of my home. I won’t leave you.”

Red’s mind was made up, however. “I’ve spoken already to Mr. Leighton. He agrees with me. It’s settled.”

Mr. Leighton was her father’s personal solicitor and would never have considered disagreeing with his most affluent client. Abigail was no more argumentative than Mr. Leighton; she knew argument would be futile. As long as she never asked for anything that did not coincide with his own wishes, Red Ritchie was an indulgent parent, but on the occasions when father and daughter disagreed, he gainsaid her ruthlessly.

“Please don’t send me to Aunt Elspeth in Glasgow,” she begged.

Fortunately, the tyrant had no idea of sending his only child farther afield than St. Albans or Tunbridge Wells. “You’re not going into exile,” he assured her. “I’ve asked Mr. Leighton to look for a suitable situation within easy distance to Town. Hertfordshire or Kent, I’m thinking.”

“Hertfordshire!” Abigail instantly thought of the handsome “cousin” who had come to her aid on the fateful day Lord Dulwich had so rudely bumped into her. She could now think of him without the crippling terror she had experienced at the actual time of their meeting. She had even begun to believe she could see him again without losing the power to think or speak intelligently.
He
had a house for rent in Hertfordshire. She would much rather stay in a cousin’s house than a stranger’s, and, of course, she would be absolutely delighted to meet his wife.

“We know no one in Hertfordshire,” Red Ritchie explained. “You’ll be called Miss Smith, and absolutely no one is to suspect that you’re my daughter, not even your chaperone.”

Abigail had some objections to the scheme. In particular, she doubted the efficacy of calling herself Miss Smith, but, having secured Hertfordshire as her haven, she was loathe to awaken the tyrant in her father by questioning his judgment. “And who is to be my chaperone?” she inquired pleasantly.

“Some auld woman of Leighton’s,” was the only answer forthcoming until Mr. Leighton himself arrived the next day with a portfolio of houses he deemed suitable for Abigail’s needs.

The proposed chaperone was revealed to be the mother of his first wife. A middle-aged widow, Mrs. Spurgeon was entirely dependent on Mr. Leighton, who was only ten years her junior. She had lived with the solicitor throughout his first marriage, and, after the death of her daughter, the arrangement had continued for reasons of simple economy. However, the introduction of a second Mrs. Leighton into the household had made necessary certain changes that had little to do with money. Mrs. Spurgeon and the second Mrs. Leighton cordially despised each other.

Abigail liked her father’s private solicitor enough to take his former mother-in-law from him without question, but, to her dismay, the portfolio he presented did not include a dower house attached to Tanglewood Manor. She brought the oversight to his attention.

“Tanglewood Manor,” he repeated thoughtfully. “An old college chum of mine is the Vicar at Tanglewood Green in Hertfordshire, Miss Abigail. There is nothing advertised, but I’ll make a private inquiry. Many of the best families prefer not to advertise, you know.”

Red Ritchie had left the choice of house entirely to his daughter, and so the matter was settled within a week. Red had but one demand, and, as long as Abigail promised to safeguard her health by drinking a
quaich
of Ritchie’s Gold Label every day she was away, she was free to do as she pleased in Hertfordshire, and Mr. Leighton was authorized to keep her in funds.

She could now look forward to making Mrs. Spurgeon’s acquaintance. On the way from Red’s Kensington mansion to his own modest town house in Baker Street, Mr. Leighton explained that his mother-in-law would be traveling with her latest nurse-companion. “Mrs. Nashe comes to us very highly recommended,” he assured Abigail. “The Countess of Inchmery was her most recent employer.”

“Is Mrs. Spurgeon ill?” Abigail inquired. “If so, Mr. Leighton, I wonder if it is advisable for us to remove her from London at this time of year.”

“She is not ill,” replied Mr. Leighton, his mouth tightening. “She has been examined by every doctor in London. She
was
ill, Miss Abigail…but it was quite four years ago. At that time, she so enjoyed the attentions of the young person I hired to wait on her that I believe she is determined never to be well again!

“She is a difficult woman,” he went on, “but, rest assured,
you
will not be expected to wait on her, Miss Abigail. I’ve made it clear that Miss Smith is the daughter of one of my clients, and most definitely not her servant. Her nurse and her maid will see to all her needs. Do not feel you must spend one instant in her company if you do not wish to.”

“I’m sure she’s not as bad as that, Mr. Leighton,” said Abigail mildly. “I would not mind in the least being useful to Mrs. Spurgeon.”

Mr. Leighton did not attempt to dissuade her from this view. Rather, he trusted that his mother-in-law would soon convince Abigail that he was speaking the gospel truth.

As they drove into Baker Street they found a scene of disarray. Mrs. Spurgeon herself was standing in the street directing the placement of what appeared to be the trousseau of a royal princess onto the baggage coach. Abigail’s chaperone was a massively built lady swathed in a billowing garment of the deepest black, but the overall impression she gave was of brute strength, not bereavement. Her face was a hard slab supported by more than one chin, and she had the cruel, dark eyes of a rapacious Mongol chieftain. If she had ever been pretty or young there was no sign of it now, except for a mass of bright yellow hair dressed in a style far too girlish for a stout woman of her years.

A woman of strict propriety, Mrs. Spurgeon refused to get into the private chaise as long as Abigail’s maid was in possession of it.

“If you are accustomed to traveling in the company of a servant, Miss Smith,” she bellowed in a voice a master of hounds might have coveted, “I am not. I suggest you put her in the second coach with the rest of the baggage.
My
standards will not be compromised simply because
you
do not know what is right.”

Abigail explained that Paggles had been her nurse when she was an infant, after having performed the same service to her mother before her. “Besides which, she is elderly and infirm,” she added, hoping to gain Mrs. Spurgeon’s sympathy.

While claiming to suffer from a variety of illnesses herself, Mrs. Spurgeon had no sympathy for fellow subscribers. “If she is too weak to travel with the baggage, then you had better turn her off. When my last maid wore herself out after only ten years, we sent her to the poorhouse. There she makes baskets out of reeds. A basket is a very useful thing, Miss Smith.”

Abigail was horrified. “Paggles will
never
be sent to the poorhouse, Mrs. Spurgeon!”

The lady stared at her. “I hope you don’t mean to pension her off, Miss Smith,” she said severely. “It is very bad for servants to be pensioned off. Is there anything worse than calling upon a new neighbor only to discover that it is, in fact, the pensioned-off dogsbody of a Cabinet Minister? I vow, it is getting to the point where they expect—nay, demand—to be granted a pension. The
look
Smithers gave me when I turned her off without a character, when it was the doddering old fool who dropped the tray—! Why should
I
, a poor widow, pay an annuity to someone who is of no further use to me?”

Paggles had grown frail in her old age; Mrs. Spurgeon’s clarion voice was enough to reduce her to tears. Though it was not in Abigail’s nature to court strife, she dearly wanted to rebuke Mrs. Spurgeon when Paggles clutched her arm in terror, wailing, “Please don’t let her send me to the poorhouse, Miss Abby! I’ll sit in the other carriage, if that’s what she wants.”

Abigail decided it would be cruel to force Paggles to remain in the chaise merely to satisfy her own urge to triumph over Mrs. Spurgeon. “No one is sending you to the poorhouse, darling,” she assured Paggles, as she helped her into the baggage coach. She gave Evans, Mrs. Spurgeon’s maid, a handful of shillings to look after the old woman.

Mrs. Spurgeon now assumed the chaise, and called for her birdcage. Abigail would not have objected to a collection of lovebirds, finches, or canaries, but when a servant brought forth a large brass cage containing a scarlet macaw with evil-looking claws and a monstrous beak, she became alarmed. Most parrots, in her experience, were well-behaved, but some sixth sense told her this one was trouble. “Oh, no,” involuntarily escaped from her lips, a reaction that seemed to please Mrs. Spurgeon.

“You must treat Cato exactly as you would an intelligent child, and say nothing before him you would not wish to have repeated, Miss Smith,” said she. “Some people find it disconcerting. But I believe that one should always guard one’s tongue.”

After no further delay, other than Mrs. Spurgeon’s being sure that Evans had forgotten the medicine chest, and Evans having to convince her that she had
not
forgotten the medicine chest, the chaise proceeded up Baker Street at a sedate pace, followed by the baggage coach.

With her considerable bulk and her parrot cage, Mrs. Spurgeon took up one side of the carriage, leaving Abigail to share the other seat with her nurse-companion. Mrs. Nashe proved to be an attractive young widow with the soft manners and speech of a true gentlewoman. Mrs. Spurgeon remained indifferent to any conversation between Miss Smith and Mrs. Nashe until the former complimented the latter’s clothes. Mrs. Spurgeon then felt obliged to inform Miss Smith that Mrs. Nashe’s smart clothes were all cast-offs from Lady Inchmery, a former employer. Needless to say, Mrs. Spurgeon did not approve of the practice of giving one’s clothing to one’s servants. In her opinion, it was nearly as bad as granting them pensions.

As they turned onto the Great North Road, Abigail proposed opening the curtains. There had been snow, and the countryside was bound to look like a winter wonderland in the morning sun. Mrs. Spurgeon, who certainly knew how to dampen youthful enthusiasm, curtly informed Miss Smith that views of rollicking countryside invariably caused her to vomit. Ditto the flickering of lamps. Therefore, the three ladies were obliged to sit in the carriage with the curtains closed and the lamps doused; Mrs. Spurgeon’s threat, though not quite believable to Abigail, was too horrible to be ignored.

Contented with the arrangements, Mrs. Spurgeon went to sleep, and her snoring was quite as stentorian as her speaking voice. “How do you bear it, Mrs. Nashe?” Abigail whispered.

“My husband was only a poor lieutenant,” the nurse-companion replied, pausing to squint in the darkness at her employer. A loud snore reassured her. “When he died of wounds he sustained at Ciudad Rodrigo, I was left destitute, to make my way as best I could. Mr. Leighton pays me very well, you see, and I have an elderly mother who depends on me for an income.” As she spoke, she caressed the simple gold band she wore on her left hand, and the expression of longing in her dark eyes would have melted the hardest of hearts.

“All the same, I could not do it,” said Abigail.

“She’s lonely and unhappy, Miss Smith,” Mrs. Nashe said gently. “I know what that’s like, you see. And, compared to my last situation, this is ideal.”