The Painted Lady (18 page)

Kasey debated his choices while Dimm hovered near the door. He could take the man to Lonsdale Street and confess he was a thwarted painter, or he could give him Sir Osgood’s address and admit he was a lunatic. Either way, his privacy was breached and his name was a byword. The duke would almost rather be known as an abductor of whores. Almost, but not quite.

Then he had an idea, an idea so wonderful, it almost staggered him with its brilliance. “I was courting a young lady,” he told the downy old Dimm. “You can imagine why I would not want anyone to know.”

Dimm stepped back and sat down, taking out his pad again, nodding. “It’d make the morning papers afore you said good night.”

“Quite. I would not want our names linked until there was an announcement, you see, to keep the options open, so to speak.”

“Aye, the tabbies’d have you riveted without a by-your-leave, prime bachelor like yourself. And if you left without a proposal, the lady’d be labeled an antidote, or you a philanderer.”

Kasey smiled for the first time during the interview. “You understand exactly. I did not want to make a hasty choice, nor force the young lady into one.”

“That’s right. Marriage is forever not like going to the auctions at Tattersall’s. Fellow wants to take his time, see the lady outside of parties and balls, meet her family. You can tell a lot about a filly by looking at the stable, I always say.”

“This lady is an orphan, I am afraid. There is an uncle, and a younger sister.”

“Good enough that she’s not alone in the world. So, did you come to a decision?”

“Not yet but I am still thinking about it. I’d like to get to know her a bit better before dropping my handkerchief.”

“So I could go talk to her, and she’ll say you were visiting in her neighborhood?”

“You needn’t bother. I am hopeful she will arrive in London within the month.”

Oh, how Kasey was hoping Lilyanne would come. He needed her. He needed her calm good sense, her levelheadedness, the peace he found in her company. She was his friend, by Jupiter, and he needed her nearby! Not to satisfy this canny old thief-taker, but to tell Kasey that he was not insane. Lilyanne believed in him, in his paintings, the way no one else ever had.

He’d been worrying about how to change her dreary life with Sir Osgood, besides, so now they could both benefit from Kasey’s reshaping of the truth. Reshaping? Hell, he’d rewritten it! “Perhaps she’ll come within the week.” If he begged.

‘Then you’ll be giving me her address in Town?”

“Why, she’ll be staying here, of course.”

Kasey did not know how he was going to manage such a thing without giving rise to the very rumors he’d described for Dimm, or destroying Lilyanne’s reputation, but he was going to try, by George.

* * * *

“A companion, dear? I did not think we needed a companion, did you, Mirabel?”

“What for? We do have each other, for what that’s worth,” Aunt Mirabel said with a sneer at Aunt Maeve in her bright yellow gown and bleached yellow hair. Mirabel, as usual, was wearing a dark, high-necked gown and a single strand of pearls. “We also have our maids, and Ticket of course.” On hearing his name, the pug trundled his sausage-shaped body to the other side of the sofa, where Lady Mirabel fed him half a macaroon.

Aunt Maeve frowned, disturbing the face powder she wore. “Not to mention Charles and Jason and yourself, Caswell dear. But thank you for the nice thought.”

“What, did you think we were growing too old to find our way about the house, nephew? Too decrepit to hear the dinner bell?”

“What did you say, Mirabel?” Aunt Maeve poured a few drops of her sherry into a dish and held it out to Ticket.

“I said we did well on our own.”

Kasey tried to ignore the slurping sounds, or the drops of wine that sprayed the sofa fabric. “Actually, I thought it was Ticket who could use a companion. To walk him and such.” These days, trotting the length of the sofa between the two elderly ladies and their treats was the most activity the dog got, since the footmen were terrified of the little ankle-biter.

“Does the young lady you have in mind like dogs?”

Kasey recalled Lilyanne bringing Wolfie scraps, but considering the fare at Sir Osgood’s dinner table, he could not say she was doing the gardener’s dog any favors. “She adores them. And birds. Why, she can name scores of kinds of birds, just from their songs.”

“I’m sure that’s a useful skill in a companion, dear, here in London.” Not even Aunt Maeve sounded convinced.

“And she can spin her own yam, and knit.”

Aunt Mirabel wrinkled her nose in disdain. “Well, at least the girl does not sound like Haymarket ware. I’d wager none of your other high flyers could tell a spinning wheel from a cider press.”

Kasey wrinkled his nose, too, then stepped further away from the couch, and Ticket. “I told you, Miss Bannister is a gently bred young lady, not a ladybird. Her father was a respectable landowner near Maidstone.”

“Bannister
...
Bannister. Wasn’t there a Dr. Bannister?” Aunt Maeve asked as she scratched between the wrinkles on the pug’s head. Ticket’s tongue lolled out in ecstasy, drooling on the sofa. Kasey made a note to have the thing reupholstered in oilcloth next time.

“There may have been; Bannister is a common-enough name,” he said, then quickly added, “I believe her mother’s family, the Hardaways, had connections to a title in Devonshire.”

While Aunt Maeve flipped through the Debrett’s Peerage of her mind, Aunt Mirabel enticed Ticket back to her side with a sugared walnut. “You swear that this Miss Bannister is not one of your flirts, Caswell? For I tell you now, it won’t wash, foisting a soiled dove off on Society, even as a ladies’ companion.”

“Do you really think I would bring a Cyprian into my own home, to meet my maiden aunts? If Miss Bannister were no better than she ought to be, I could simply install her at... at
...
”

“That little house you keep near the Botanical Gardens, dear?”

Inspector Dimm could take lessons in intelligence-gathering from Kasey’s aunts, he thought.

“Yes, there. I repeat, Miss Bannister is a lady of unimpeachable virtue and reputation, both of which I swear will be preserved here, in this household. I am not asking you to keep her on as a permanent member of the family either, merely long enough for you to give her a good reference when she leaves. If we could show her about London, meanwhile, take her to the opera or a few parties, well, it is less than she deserves. Had her parents lived, Miss Bannister would have had a come-out of her own. Perhaps not in the highest circles, but high enough that she could have attracted any number of offers from eligible gentlemen, even without a generous dowry.”

Aunt Maeve was so worried she forgot to lure Ticket away from the competition. “Miss Bannister is that pretty?”

Kasey might guess about Lilyanne’s affinity for flea-hounds, and he might omit Sir Osgood from her family tree. He might forget to mention Mr. Dimm’s interest, and misrepresent his own, but he could not lie about Lilyanne’s looks. “No,” he told his aunts, “Miss Bannister is not pretty. She is beautiful.”

“Oh, dear, oh, dear. That will never do. No one will believe us, dear, not even if we claim her as Cousin Irmentrude’s sister-in-law’s godchild, which we could have done, since Cousin Irmentrude passed on three years ago, or was it four? It’s your own reputation, you see.”

Aunt Mirabel agreed, for once. “Maeve is right. No matter who we say Miss Bannister is, everyone will believe you’ve seduced the girl—or are planning to. Perhaps you ought to take rooms at the Albany while Miss Bannister is here. Or, I know, you could move to that other little house where you keep your, ah, late hours.”

Kasey should leave Lilyanne here with Charles and Jason? Let his aunts introduce her to London, and its legions of lust-driven libertines? Not on his life. Lilyanne was his friend, and he wanted, desperately, to see her at his breakfast table, on his sofa—not the one with dog drool, but the one in the Crimson Parlor where her black hair would be magnificent against the red silk. He wanted her under his roof.

And in his bed. That was something else His Grace could not lie about, at least not to himself.

“No,” he said, “that house out by Kew is haunted. That is, it’s inhabited. Mice, don’t you know.”

Chapter Nineteen

My dear Miss Bannister, the duke wrote. Then he crossed out the My. Then he sat back, put his pen down, and cursed. Devil take it, he hadn’t ought to be writing to Lilyanne in the first place. That was one of Society’s innumerable edicts: A single gentleman may not correspond with an unmarried young lady, not without compromising her. The low-minded meddlers would be all-too ready to suspect him of pouring illicit and impassioned murmurings into his letter, unseen by higher authorities. Kasey had indeed been meaning to write that he was going out of his mind without Lilyanne. No, that he was going out of his mind, period.

He picked up the pen and started idly drawing on the ruined sheet, before catching himself and quickly crumpling the page into a ball. No, he was not going to chance another encounter with the impossible, at least not until Lilyanne was here.

The getting her to come was proving awkward. The invitation to stay at Caswell House was itself putting Miss Bannister’s reputation in jeopardy. He could hear the tabbies now, whispering about what honorable offer a duke could be making to a doctor’s niece. He could not compound the risk by addressing the invitation to her personally, not even if he had his own groom deliver the letter to her. The servant might talk, someone might see him hand the message to her, Mr. Dimm might question the man. Clandestine correspondence would put paid to Kasey’s claims of a proper courting.

He took a clean sheet of pressed paper, and addressed this one to Sir Osgood, as was entirely proper
...
and entirely unlikely to have the desired results. The high-flown healer was more than likely to deny Lilyanne permission to come to London. What, let his poor but pure niece visit the pagans in their pleasure palaces? His theories of mentalism were founded on the opposite. More importantly, Bannister would not part with his unpaid assistant.

Lady Edgecombe? Kasey considered. Then he called for his secretary.

“What is it, Caswell?” Warberry said when he arrived in Kasey’s library a few moments later, looking annoyed. “I was busy.”

Perhaps having his cousin as secretary was not such a fine idea, after all, the duke thought. Not that he demanded subservient toad-eating, but a little respect might not come amiss from someone whose salary he was paying. Wasn’t it all Kasey’s business, for him to decide what was more important? Right now, getting Lilyanne to London and saving his sanity seemed far more crucial than calculating crop yields.

“I am sorry to have disturbed you, old man,” he said, trying to keep the sarcasm from his voice. He supposed Charles had enough in his dish without his cousin coming the lord of the manor over him. Kasey decided he’d think about finding the man another post, perhaps in the government, where he could feel important, but not until this mess with the missing mistresses, and the mingle-mangle in his mind, were resolved.

His Grace motioned toward a chair and the decanter on his desk. Charles sat, but on the edge of the seat, obviously ready to leave as soon as possible. He did not pour himself a glass of wine.

“I was wondering if you had any information about Lady Edgecombe.”

The secretary relaxed the slightest bit. “It’s not been a day yet, Caswell. Are you that eager, then, to see the lady unencumbered? I hadn’t thought the wind sat in that direction, but
...
”

Dash it, why did everyone suppose he was carrying on an affair every time he mentioned a female’s name? Just because he was an unwed nobleman who’d spent the last ten years floating from lover to lover? He muttered another curse. The aunts were right: Lilyanne would be the object of intense speculation. Kasey held up a hand. “No, nothing like that. I was writing my thank yous for kindness shown me at my visit, and wished to give her some news, is all.”

“Well, I did find out that her husband never actually had the viscountess declared legally insane. That’s all public information. He merely threatened to do so, which means she would not have to submit to another hearing to prove her competency. Devilish things, those sanity trials. Whoever has the most money, the best barristers, and the most doctors to testify usually wins the hearing.”

With Sir Osgood speaking on Catherine’s behalf, Kasey thought, Lady Edgecombe would be in a restraining jacket before she could say Jack Rabbit. “That is good news, I suppose.”

Charles nodded. “On the other hand, Edgecombe never petitioned for an annulment or anything, either, so they are still legally married. Which means the lady is most definitely under her husband’s jurisdiction, living where he says, receiving monies only at his discretion. No court would decide otherwise. A wife is her husband’s possession.”

“I thought we abolished the slave trade.” Kasey poured himself some wine. This time Charles accepted a glass. As the duke handed the crystal goblet across the desk, he asked, “So her situation is hopeless, then?”

“Not necessarily. I did manage to find out that, according to her marriage settlements, the viscountess will be a wealthy widow when Edgecombe pops off, which won’t be that distant, according to talk. The French pox, I understand.”

“Well, that’s something to write. Thank you, Charles.”

Warberry stood and placed the glass on the desk, relieved to get back to his own paperwork.

“Oh, before you go, about that matter we discussed, the Lonsdale Street house?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t do anything about it right now.”

“But I thought—
”

Deuce take it, Kasey was still duke. He did not have to explain himself to anyone. He raised an eyebrow only. “Yes?”

Warberry coughed. “Nothing. You’ll tell me when you wish to proceed with the sale and the emptying of the premises.”

“Of course, Charles. Of course. You’ll be the first to know.” Right after Mr. Dimm, all of Bow Street, and the London servants’ grapevine, most likely. Kasey went back to his writing, silently dismissing the secretary.