Born to Be Wilde

  Perhaps she overdid the enthusiasm on that last sentence.

  “I don’t see any particular benefit in that,” Lady Knowe observed. “Most of the people I know can scarcely manage one language, let alone two.” She pushed her plate away. “What happened to Lord Jeremy?”

  “I think he is not joining us, since he was supposed to be here well over an hour ago,” Parth said.

  “I’m too old to be awake this late,” Lady Knowe said. “Lord Jeremy will have to fall in love with you another evening, Lavinia. I’m voting for Prince Oskar. I like picturing you with a diadem on your head. Help me up, my dear. It’s time to go home.”

  Parth rose, and Lavinia followed, a feeling of deep gratitude washing down her. She and Lady Knowe had become close in the last weeks and she had the idea that the lady knew just how much Lavinia didn’t want to discuss Parth’s future children.

  This tugging at the heart would go away in time.

  Parth escorted them into the townhouse and Lavinia held out her gloved hand for a kiss, pretending that she didn’t see that Parth’s eyebrows were pulling together. They weren’t bushy eyebrows, but thick, like his hair.

  “This has been such a pleasure.” She turned to Lady Knowe. “Mr. Sterling was kind enough to offer to escort me to Cheshire when I deliver the garments we ordered, but I declined. I’m sure you’ll agree with me that two or three seamstresses will be more than adequate companionship for the journey.”

  “I do agree,” Lady Knowe said. “Parth, you’ll want to remain in London with Elisa, since you are bringing her to us for the wedding.”

  “I fail to see what one thing has to do with the other,” Parth said. “Miss Gray should not make a five-day journey with no more escort than a pair of young seamstresses.”

  Lady Knowe fixed him with a peremptory stare. “If you feel the need to escape your work, just come to Lindow. Don’t make up excuses; you’ll cause Lavinia to feel like a burden, and then she won’t wish to visit us any longer.”

  “Yes,” Lavinia chimed in, feeling another surge of affection for Lady Knowe. “I will feel like a burden.”

  Parth bowed. He had a remarkable ability to show just how much he disagreed, even though his bow was perfect in every respect.

  “That boy has a talent for being exasperating,” Lady Knowe said, as the door closed behind him.

  “He’s hardly a boy,” Lavinia protested.

  Lady Knowe sighed. “To me, he is.”

  Lavinia held her tongue. To her, Parth was all man: strong, confident, warm, intelligent.

  Ugh.

  Chapter Sixteen

  August 14, 1780

  After the trip to Vauxhall, Diana, North, and Lady Knowe stepped into a carriage bound for Cheshire. Lavinia breathed a sigh of relief. She adored them all, but just at the moment, she felt like a general managing a large-scale military campaign. She didn’t have time for pleasantries.

  She spent the ensuing weeks crisscrossing London, collecting garments from modistes, tailors, and mantua-makers. Back in the duke’s townhouse, she and Annie catalogued everything, along with any notes Lavinia had taken about the finishing touches needed. The following morning she would set out again to visit two cobblers, a milliner, an umbrella maker . . .

  She worked day and night, making certain that she knew exactly what was needed in terms of alterations, and compiling long lists detailing the steps required to finish each garment. Each ornament required for the finished item of clothing—lace, spangles, ruffles, plumes—was carefully organized and packed in separate parcels.

  Finally, finally, all the items on her list were checked off. The clothing was packed. She had hired two excellent seamstresses. She was ready.

  Lavinia set off for Lindow in the first of three carriages. Her carriage held herself, Annie, and two young seamstresses recommended by Madame Prague for their skill, and hired by Lavinia, with the blessings and purse strings of the Duke of Lindow.

  The second carriage—one of the duke’s sturdiest vehicles—was filled to bursting with gowns in various stages of completion, hanging from numerous hooks specially attached to the ceiling. Diana’s wedding gown, swathed in layers of silk, hung from the center hook and was thus entirely cushioned on all sides. Opening the door of that carriage was a bit like opening the door of a dangerously overstuffed cupboard: voluminous, brightly colored silks and satins swelled out as if alive, and made closing the door again an open question.

  The curtains of this carriage were firmly tacked closed, and the head groom would be bedding down on the coachman’s seat every night—with Lavinia’s apologies, and an offer of a superb bonus. No one would be able to gape at the wedding dress under her watch.

  The third carriage was loaded with everything else: more gowns, umbrellas, stays, shoes . . . anything and everything that Diana, Lady Knowe, and the duke and duchess had requested, down to a trunk devoted to wedding clothing for the youngest Wilde offspring.

  Lavinia relaxed only when her carriage was trundling out of London. For the next five days, work was impossible; she could do nothing but chat with Annie, Tabitha, and Mary.

  Some small part of her was surprised that Parth hadn’t made an appearance before her departure, or even offered a protest. That he hadn’t simply appeared and folded himself into the crowded carriage implied that he had more respect for her opinion than she had believed.

  Or perhaps that he didn’t really care one way or the other.

  On that dispiriting thought, Lavinia banished him from her thoughts.

  “I wish we could sew in a moving carriage,” Annie said, from the seat across from her.

  “Rest,” Lavinia advised her.

  Tabitha and Mary looked at her uncertainly. They were used to working exhausting days, well into the night if a gown was needed the next day.

  “Rest,” Lavinia told them as well. She kicked off her slippers, tucking her legs under her and settling into the corner. The duke’s traveling carriage, with its padded walls and dark-blue velvet seats, was outrageously comfortable.

  The days passed in a soothing haze. Every innkeeper rushed out on seeing the duke’s insignia on the carriage door. Baskets of food were offered, foot warmers, blankets, hot toddies.

  It was very luxurious.

  Before she lost her inheritance, Lavinia probably wouldn’t have noticed. She was living more vividly now.

  Without the impetus of her mother’s thefts, she would never have put herself in charge of Diana’s trousseau. She wouldn’t have gone back and forth with modistes, ensuring that every detail of each gown suited the woman who was to wear it. She wouldn’t have categorically refused feathered collars—an abominable and sure-to-be-short-lived fashion.

  She wouldn’t have spent hours choosing just the right plumes to complement each gown, sometimes purchasing them in both short and long lengths, so that ladies’ maids would be able to vary the ladies’ headdresses.

  Yet she loved doing it. While the seamstresses napped, she would pull out the pages of foolscap detailing her sewing schedule and review them again and again, coming up with alternatives in case of disaster.

  If Diana were to gain more weight than expected . . . If Lady Knowe’s trusted seamstress, Berthe, fell ill, and her gowns had to be fitted as well as completed . . .

  Madame Prague had spent two days going over every garment she had created and showing Lavinia, from examples in her showroom, what could go wrong. In the end, Madame gave twenty percent from the cost of each garment—including the wedding gown—to Lavinia. “You will earn it,” she had said.

  The lady was not merely being kind. Madame was saving herself the tremendous amount of work needed to oversee the final perfection of these garments.

  As the girls chattered among themselves, and the countryside rolled past outside the windows, Lavinia steeled herself for the month to come. It was the beginning of September, and Diana would marry on All Hallows’ Eve, at the end of October.

  She had less than two months, and sh
e would need every day, every stitch, every seamstress.

  Parth plunged into work the morning after the trip to Vauxhall and thought nothing of Jeremy Roden other than a fleeting acknowledgment that he would never introduce Lavinia to Jeremy, or, for that matter, any other eligible gentlemen.

  He was biding his time, but she was his, and he meant to convince her as soon as he had a chance—after the trousseau was finished. Every time he went to Mayfair, the ladies were out.

  A week later, he visited his private gentlemen’s club and discovered that Jeremy, most uncharacteristically, hadn’t been seen there since the night he missed their appointment. That was odd—and concerning.

  To have failed to appear at Vauxhall was one thing; to be absent from the club was quite another. He turned about and set out for Jeremy’s lodgings, but he found only Jeremy’s elderly, distraught valet.

  “No, Lord Jeremy wouldn’t have gone home,” the man said, wringing his hands. “He won’t exchange a word with his father, the marquess. My master hasn’t slept in his own bed since Tuesday. I fear he’s been taken down by ruffians and thrown into the Thames. I went to the constables, but they haven’t found a body.”

  “Perhaps he’s decided to visit a friend,” Parth suggested.

  “Without clothing? Without me to trim his beard? Never!” There was genuine conviction in his voice.

  “Have you checked the hospitals?” Parth asked.

  “I went to St. Thomas’s and Guy’s. I meant to try St. Bartholomew’s today.”

  Parth nodded. “I’ll go to the London Hospital.” He hesitated. “And Bedlam.”

  “Bedlam! Lord Jeremy isn’t insane!” the valet protested, his voice rising. “He might be a trifle twitchy after his experience at war, but that doesn’t mean he belongs amongst the madmen. That’s not for those of his stature, people of worth and consequence.”

  “Hopefully not,” Parth reassured him. But he had a bad feeling, and over the years he’d learned to trust his instincts.

  Those instincts sent him directly to Bedlam, a label that referred to Bethlem, London’s lunatic hospital. Parth knew it by reputation to be hellish, squalid, and crowded with benighted souls who heard voices, and others who tried to beat the voices out of those patients.

  Jeremy had had a rough go of it since the war, and if by some appalling twist of fate, he’d ended up in Bedlam, he must be found without delay.

  Once he arrived, Parth quickly established that no Jeremy Roden had been entered in the ward-book. All the same, he methodically made his way through the men’s wards, searching every face, trailed by a keeper who insisted there were no gentlemen anywhere on the premises.

  Parth had no idea of the stature of any of the men he was shown; few wore more than tattered garments, and they stared at him with the vacant gaze of men who had lost all hope.

  On the second floor, he looked into a chamber that held a narrow cot. A man lay with his back to them, seemingly napping, as he hadn’t twitched when the door creaked open.

  “This one’s a strange case,” the keeper reported. “We can scarce get him to wake up, but when he’s awake, he’s frightful violent.”

  He began to pull the door shut, but Parth stopped him and entered the chamber. This patient wore silk breeches, filthy though they were.

  His instincts proved correct: it was Jeremy. “This is he,” he said over his shoulder. He gently shook Jeremy, and his friend’s entire body moved. They’d trussed him up like a chicken set for roasting.

  “He’s wearing a strait waistcoat,” the keeper explained. “Keeps him from hurting hisself, or anyone else.”

  Jeremy showed no sign of rousing at Parth’s touch.

  “Take this off him,” Parth ordered, keeping his voice even. “Why isn’t he waking? Has he been drugged?”

  “He thought how he was on the battlefield,” the man said defensively. “Dangerous, he was. He tried to fight us at first. Finally, they bled him, and he’s been like this since.”

  Parth swallowed a curse. He wouldn’t leave a dog, let alone a friend, in this godforsaken hospital. He paid for Jeremy’s room and board, hired a stout fellow to help, and between them, they loaded the unconscious man into his carriage.

  It was like loading a corpse, for Jeremy was deadweight, his limbs slack, utterly inert. His illness—if that was the correct label—had left dark circles under his eyes, and his forehead was furrowed, as if he were caught in a nightmare from which he couldn’t escape.

  Parth couldn’t send Jeremy back into the care of an elderly valet. Instead he directed the carriage to his own townhouse. A couple of stout footmen helped Parth get Jeremy up the stairs, and then the carriage went off to fetch his valet.

  Later that evening, his butler reported that Jeremy had been given a bath and put to bed, without any signs of wakefulness. “We tried to feed him but he turned his face away without opening his eyes.”

  “We used to call him ‘Sausage’ at Eton,” Parth said, suddenly remembering. “Tomorrow morning, try sausages.”

  Sure enough, when an excellent sausage was waved under his nose, Jeremy opened his mouth. The following day, when two footmen put him in the tub and his valet poured water over his head, he suddenly spluttered, opened his eyes, and demanded a brandy.

  Parth breathed a silent sigh of relief when his butler told him the news, and headed upstairs.

  “What in the bloody hell am I doing here?” Jeremy asked. He was wearing a wrapper, seated by the fire. He looked exhausted.

  “You had a turn,” Parth said. “What do you remember last?”

  Jeremy frowned. “Fireworks. The damned fireworks sounding like cannon fire.”

  “You might want to avoid fireworks in the future,” Parth suggested. “I recommend you stay here for a week or two, and then come with me to Lindow.”

  “Lindow? The duke’s castle? Why in bloody hell would I go there with you?”

  Parth shrugged. “Why not? I’m not prying you out of Bedlam again. We’re both lucky not to have got fleas.”

  “Thank you,” Jeremy said. “But I don’t see where Lindow comes into it.”

  Parth gave him a faint smile. “North is at Lindow, you know. If anyone understands what you’re going through, he’s the one.”

  Jeremy flinched, but Parth could see he accepted the reasoning. “I’ll go if you don’t tell a soul—including North—where you found me.”

  “That’s your business,” Parth said readily.

  “When are we going?” Jeremy asked, slumping back into the chair.

  “As soon as Miss Lavinia Gray leaves London,” Parth said. “She’s bound for Lindow, and we will follow her.”

  “Follow her?” Jeremy scowled at him. “Does ‘follow’ mean that we’re sneaking about?”

  “She won’t allow me to accompany her,” Parth explained, “but it’s not safe for her to travel so far on her own. I mean to shadow her carriage in order to make certain she’s safe.”

  “Bloody hell,” Jeremy said, shaking his head. “Isn’t that the woman you were introducing to me? You’ve stolen my bride-to-be.”

  “Yes, I have,” Parth said.

  “She’s not quite stolen, if she won’t allow you to accompany her,” Jeremy said with a bark of laughter.

  “It’s important to her to feel independent,” Parth said. “I don’t want to take away her confidence. But I have to make certain she’s safe.”

  Jeremy snorted. “And people think that the title of ‘gentleman’ means something. You’re as much a wolf as any other man—just a patient wolf.”

  It took five days to reach Lindow, longer than Parth would have taken on his own—but they stopped whenever Lavinia stopped.

  On the last morning, Parth woke a cantankerous Jeremy at five in the morning and took off for Lindow. When he walked into the castle four hours later, Aunt Knowe dashed down the stairs to greet Parth, eyes shining. The duke appeared too, his welcome quieter than his twin’s, but just as affectionate. Ophelia greeted him with
her warm, sweet smile.

  Coming home was like sinking into a warm bath after a cold day on the moors.

  “Lord Jeremy is sleeping in the carriage?” the duchess said, her brow pleating. “What on earth is the matter with that poor man?”

  “He’s twitchy and he drinks too much,” Parth said bluntly. “North might be able to help. I told my man to let him sleep for another hour or so.”

  “I shall wake him,” the duke said. “I’ve always liked that young man.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said his duchess, and they left, arm in arm.

  “I can’t believe that you followed Lavinia’s carriage all the way from London! Appalling Parth, indeed!” Aunt Knowe said.

  “She had only the coachmen and a few grooms, and her three vehicles were obviously carrying valuables. I put one of my grooms outside her room, and another on each of the carriages. Anything could have happened to her.”

  “But nothing did,” Aunt Knowe declared.

  “Lavinia doesn’t take care of herself,” he said, hearing the gruffness in his own voice. “Just look at the way she travels around London with no chaperone.”

  “Lavinia is not in her first Season.”

  “What if a ruffian had seen her entering an inn?”

  Lavinia was an exceptionally beautiful woman, and he damned well wasn’t going to let his future wife be attacked. Or worse.

  Parth wrapped his arm around his aunt. “I know I’m a stubborn fellow, but it’s paid off, hasn’t it?”

  “In money,” she said, waving her hand dismissively, as if the world’s riches meant nothing to her.

  They probably didn’t. Aunt Knowe was the sort of person who’d be happy anywhere from a castle to a farmhouse.

  “Yes, in filthy lucre. And hopefully, in a wife,” he said.

  “I like her.” Aunt Knowe strode over to a window.

  Her? She had to mean Elisa. He hadn’t said a word about Lavinia.

  “You’re all falling in love at once,” she said in a stifled voice. “My three boys, all leaving the nest, and there’s Horatius gone without a chance to fall in love. I don’t want to forget him.”