The Devil to Pay (10 page)

“Really, Lord Devellyn!”

But the marquess had paused only for breath. “Your favorite color is dark blue,” he rapidly recited. “You have a fondness for feathered hats. You adore sponge cake. You’ve not yet seen thirty, but you’re getting perilously close. You like your tea very sweet. You have but two servants. Your companion’s name is Mrs. Crosby. Julia Crosby. And you have a black-and-brown tabby cat named Thomas, renowned as Bloomsbury’s fiercest mouser. There, how did I do?”

Sidonie was stunned. Abruptly, he seized her hand and kissed it. “Ah, I have left you speechless!” he said. “That would be my cue to exit.”

And he promptly did so, walking briskly around the stone edifice of Lord Bedford and dashing across the street with a grace which seemed remarkable for so large a man—especially one she’d assumed was staggering drunk.

The afternoon sun cut through the tiny windows of Sidonie’s attic, casting a sudden brilliance to the dancing dust motes. The room, she mused, reminded her of the
Merry Maiden,
Pierre’s merchantman. It was probably the low, sharply pitched ceilings, and Thomas skulking round the rafters in search of mice.

Under normal circumstances, the cat thought it a great adventure to be permitted into the attic, with all its nooks and crannies. But today he was going about his work with something less than his usual zeal, probably because Sidonie had spent much of the night tossing and thrashing—and thereby forcing poor Thomas to periodically seize hold of the coverlet as if he were riding the seven seas again.

But Thomas would sleep away the afternoon and recover. Sidonie was less sure of herself. During the night, she’d begun to realize just how badly she’d misjudged the Marquess of Devellyn. Her haughty reserve had not put him off in the least, and for whatever reason—ennui, or sheer perversity—the marquess now seemed intrigued by her.

She must take care to change that. She must not pique his curiosity. Otherwise, Devellyn might start making inquiries elsewhere. Already he’d quizzed his footman. Men, silly, predictable creatures that they were, always found inaccessible women captivating, and intelligent women challenging. Sidonie must neither captivate nor challenge Lord Devellyn. Instead, she must bore him to tears.

It shouldn’t be hard. Given what she’d seen, she doubted he was gifted with an overlong attention span. This afternoon, Sidonie decided, she would return the borrowed umbrella wearing a dowdy dress and her dullest expression. She would be amicable, polite, but exceedingly tedious. The marquess would almost certainly lose whatever interest he had in her. Indeed, by the time she was done prattling, Devellyn would be glad to see her go.

She’d been still puzzling over the details of her plan when Julia had sailed into her room with coffee and the announcement that today was the day they were going to sort out the attic. Sidonie had sold Claire’s elegant Mayfair house months earlier and had her personal effects hauled to Bedford Place, an address more in keeping with Sidonie’s station. Claire’s trunks had been stored in the attic, where they now lay in wait, like haunting apparitions from the past.

Behind her, Julia was unpacking the last of an old trunk. Thomas had lost interest in the rafters and was twirling round Sidonie’s ankles. She picked him up, then drifted to the window to look blindly through the glass. Thomas began to rumble, and pressed his forehead against her cheek, but even his best efforts could not always help her find peace.

She had never known quite what to make of her mother. Oh, Claire had loved her children, but as one loves pretty porcelain things—mostly from afar. She and George had been raised by servants and trotted out only to entertain their father, or to pacify their mother on those occasions when no admirers called. Eventually, Claire had come to treat George as…well, almost as an equal. She had doted on him, leaned on him, and promised him a grand future.

But Sidonie was much younger. She had been Claire’s doll; her pretty plaything to dress up and show off. By the age of twelve, Sidonie had learned to play and sing with poise, to recite pages of clever poetry, and to speak three languages, all to the delight of her mother’s friends. Sometimes she and her mother had even dressed alike. Sidonie remembered one summer day when they’d gone strolling around the Serpentine, wearing matching yellow frocks and hats, while merrily spinning their yellow parasols. It had been impossible to miss the many admiring gazes which came their way. Claire had thought it all perfectly delightful. For a while.

When she no longer found it perfectly delightful—or more specifically, when her newer, younger lovers began to spare Sidonie more than a passing glance—Claire had sent Sidonie home to France. Sidonie, she had decided, was wayward and in need of discipline. Only a bad girl would attract such attention; that had been the implicit message. Claire’s parents, however, had declined the honor of raising their bastard granddaughter and taken her instead to the convent school. Sidonie had been but fifteen and not nearly as sophisticated as she’d seemed.

After two miserable years of exile, Sidonie decided she might as well
be
a bad girl, since she was already being punished for it. And so she did it in a big way, and ran away with Pierre Saint-Godard, a dashing adventurer ten years her senior. Pierre had thoroughly seduced her first, of course. He almost certainly had not meant to marry her. But marry her he did—claiming, strangely, that he’d fallen hopelessly in love. And he had loved her, Sidonie supposed, as much as a swashbuckling rogue could love anything besides high adventure and tavern wenches. Moreover, Sidonie could not particularly say that she had ever regretted what she’d done.

Behind her, something heavy scraped the floor. She turned around to see Julia pushing the trunk they’d just emptied into a corner.

“Oh!” Sidonie hastened to her side. “Let me help.”

The job done, Julia straightened up. “Now, where’s your mind gone off to, dearie?” she teased. “You’ve been far away all morning.”

Sidonie let her gaze drift through the room. “I was just thinking of Claire,” she admitted. “And strangely, of Pierre.”

Julia turned her attention to some small bandboxes, which she hastily moved aside. “Nothing strange about a young widow grieving for her husband,” she said.

Sidonie ran her hands down her skirts almost nervously. “But that’s the thing, Julia,” she said. “I don’t precisely grieve. But I do miss him at times. Or perhaps I just miss the bustle of our old life, when I had no time to think or brood.”

Julia looked at her a little oddly. “Did you love him, Sidonie?” she asked quietly.

Sidonie nodded. “I did, yes. But our marriage was really just…just one big adventure, I suppose. We married on impulse and lived life one day at a time. I don’t know why, but I never saw us growing old together. I never saw us settling down in a little house by the sea.”

“Or having children?” Julia interjected.

Sidonie shook her head. “It would have been unwise,” she said. “Pierre would not give up the sea, and I did not wish to live alone. A ship was no place to raise a child.”

“Ah, then you made the right choice, aye?” said Julia consolingly. “I’m sorry you lost him so young. Now, let’s empty out just one more, then we’ll call it a day.”

Together, they pushed another trunk from the eaves into the center of the room. “This one I’ve not seen before,” said Julia, studying it. “ ’Twas already in storage when Claire died, so likely it’s full of junk.”

Sidonie unbuckled the leather straps and threw them back. Julia lifted the lid on squealing hinges. “More old clothes,” murmured Sidonie. “I vow, I never knew one person could own so many.”

Julia shrugged. “Your mother was a beautiful woman,” she answered. “People liked to lavish beautiful things on her.”

Sidonie sat back down on one of the three-legged stools they’d carried upstairs and flipped through the first few garments. And then she saw it. She was sure. The yellow dress.
The Hyde Park dress.
The coincidence unnerved her. Suddenly, she couldn’t get her breath. She shoved the garments away.

“Take this, Julia,” she managed. “Take it away. I don’t want it.”

Julia sat down and patted her knee. “Well, we’ll just give this lot to charity, along with that pile we already sorted,” she said, then rummaged deeper. “But let’s go through it first, just to be sure.” She lifted out a stack of clothes, Claire’s yellow dress amongst them, and set it aside to reveal a small box of carved ivory nestled in one corner of the trunk.

“How unusual!” said Julia, taking out the box. She lifted the little lid to reveal a mirror, and beneath it, several small compartments.

The yellow dress gone, Sidonie felt herself again. “What is it, Julia?”

Julia laughed. “Why, it’s a patch box!” she said. “I saw such things in the theater many a time, but why would Claire have had one?”

Sidonie took the ivory box and stared into it until memory stirred. “Costume balls,” she finally answered. “Dig deeper, and I daresay you’ll find her old Marie Antoinette wig.”

But Julia had licked one of the patches—a small black diamond—and stuck it on her cheek. “Do I look like a Georgian lady?” she asked, fluttering her lashes.

Somehow, Sidonie managed to laugh. Just then, the patch fell off, and disappeared into the folds of Julia’s skirt. Sidonie took one, and affixed it at the corner of her mouth, where Ruby Black’s mole had been cleverly drawn not so many days earlier.

“It’s rather like a tattoo, isn’t it?” said Julia, studying her. “Not permanent, I mean. But it has a way of…I don’t know, enticing the eye to linger on a certain spot?”

Sidonie laughed again, and the patch fell off. “Are you suggesting I am trying to attract attention to my breasts?”

Julia immediately colored. “Oh, no, not you, dearie!” Then she hesitated. “But, well, I have often wondered…”

“Oh, go on, Julia! Ask.”

“Well, why ever did you get that tattoo?” she finally said. “And in such a strange place!”

Sidonie lifted her gaze from the box of patches and considered it for a moment. “I did it because Pierre forbade it,” she admitted. “I was a very wayward bride, you know.”

“And a wayward daughter, too,” Julia murmured. “Your poor mother had a fainting fit when the nuns wrote to say you’d run away with a sailor.”

Sidonie scowled. “He was a sea captain, not a sailor.”

“Yes, and you were what? Seventeen?”

Sidonie looked away. “Yes, just,” she answered. “Anyway, Julia, you asked about the tattoo, not my reasons for marrying.”

“Yes, go on,” she answered. “Tell me about the tattoo.”

Sidonie tried to picture life as it had been. “It was our first run to Martinique,” she murmured. “We were to take on a cargo of sugar and rum. When we disembarked at Fort-de-France, we saw a strange old woman along the dockside, drawing a tattoo—with a needle, you know. That’s how it is done.”

“Oh!” Julia shrank back. “I did not know.”

“It does not hurt,” said Sidonie swiftly. “Not very much. Of course, I’d never seen such a thing. The old woman was drawing a sea serpent on a sailor’s arm. She spoke little French, but the sailor said she was from…some island in the Pacific. I decided I wanted one of these strange, exotic things, so I sat down and made a few silly gestures. The woman touched my black hair, then all over my face. Finally, she took up her pencil and sketched this little angel on a scrap of paper. I don’t know why. It wasn’t what I’d asked for. Then Pierre turned round, saw what I was doing, and had a fit. He said no wife of his would have a tattoo for all the world to see.”

“And quite right he was, too.”

Sidonie looked at the floor. “I am afraid I did not take it well,” she admitted. “I got it in my head I would have it anyway. The next day, when Pierre went off to see about the ship’s reprovisioning, I went down to the docks and asked for the woman. She was not there, but I found her house in an alley not far away. She seemed to have been expecting me. She pulled me inside, and showed me the angel again. She had saved it. And so I had her draw it—but in a private place, you see? A place only Pierre would see, so he could not say I had disobeyed him.”

“Oh, Sidonie!”

Sidonie gave her a sly smile. “Oh, don’t feel sorry for Pierre,” she answered. “Once his temper cooled, he decided he rather liked it.”

Julia had turned to the next trunk. “Was he a good husband, Sidonie?” she asked, dusting off the cover of a book she’d extracted.

Sidonie turned on her stool to help her. “He tried,” she answered, lifting out several more books. “But he was a restless spirit. And far too charming. Still, he was never harsh.”

“Then you were fortunate in your marriage, my dear.” Julia blew a puff of dust off another book. “What on earth are these? This trunk seems quite full of them.”

Sidonie was still lifting out the books, her movements mechanical, her mind still turned to Pierre. “These are Claire’s diaries,” she said absently.

But Julia was distracted by a small box. “Ah, here they are!” she said triumphantly. “The green velvet slippers.”

Just then, someone dropped the knocker, and its sound carried all the way to the attic. Sidonie looked at the watch pinned to her bodice, then leapt from her stool. “Oh, gracious! That will be Miss Hannaday!” she said, shaking the dust from her skirts. “Am I presentable?”

“You’re fine, dear,” said Julia, reaching up to brush a little dust from her cheek. “But poor Miss Hannaday! I did not like that bruise she was sporting yesterday.”

“Nor did I,” admitted Sidonie. “But she needn’t worry about Lord Bodley much longer.”

Julia was closing up the trunk. “Why? What has happened?”

Sidonie caught Julia by the hands. “I met with Charles Greer in Russell Square last night,” she whispered. “Maurice has offered him a position at Giroux & Chenault, and he is going to accept!”

Julia’s mouth fell open. “Then he and Miss Hannaday will marry after all?”

Sidonie smiled. “Good news, is it not?”

Suddenly, Meg called up from the bottom of the attic stairs. Sidonie hastened away, and was halfway down when Julia spoke again. “Shall I put the slippers in your room, dear?”

“Yes, thank you, Julia.”

“And what of these diaries? Shall you keep them? Shall I send them to George? Or just throw them out?”

Sidonie considered it for a moment. George would hurl them straight into the fire. She certainly did not want them. But nor could she bear to throw them out—which, when one thought on it, more or less summed up the whole of how she felt about her memories of her mother.

“I shall keep them,” she finally said. “Oh, and Julia—?”

Julia peered over the balustrade. “Yes, dear?”

Sidonie went back up the stairs, out of Meg’s earshot. “How hard, Julia, would it be for you to lay hands on a midshipman’s uniform? Or perhaps a second lieutenant’s?”

Julia looked at her incredulously.
“Naval uniforms?”
she echoed. “For what, pray?”

Sidonie smiled. “Well, I am, after all, an experienced sailor,” she murmured. “And frankly, I think I’ll cut a dashing figure in officer’s togs.”