“Have you any specific requests as regards decoration of the house?”
He shrugged. “I like every color other than red. My father appreciates luxury, and one guest room should look like a king’s palace, if possible. Get rid of those naked statues, unless you want to keep the satyr for yourself. It’s sad to think of you having grown this old without ever glimpsing a man’s arse.”
“If you ever say anything like that to me again, I will walk out that door and never return,” India stated.
There was a moment of silence, and then he smiled again. It was galling to recognize a drop of admiration in his eyes. “Balls,” he said, “you’ve got them.”
“I am not a general!” she said, and then kept going, made reckless by fury. “How do you know I haven’t seen a man’s arse?”
“If you have, you have untold depths, Lady Xenobia,” he said, his amusement clear.
“Lady Adelaide and I will welcome you back in precisely a week,” she said, ignoring his provocation. “By then, I will know the full extent of what needs to be done.”
“Right. One more thing,” he said. “I don’t want a bed in Laetitia’s room; she’ll sleep with me.”
“No bed?” India said, incredulous. “Of course I’ll put a bed in your wife’s chamber. What if she doesn’t wish to sleep with you?”
“We’ll sleep together.” He folded his arms again.
“Your wife—”
“I know. She deserves much better than I.”
“Me,” India snapped.
“What?”
“ ‘I’ is ungrammatical; it should be, ‘She deserves much better than me.’ ”
He burst out laughing, so India talked over him. “Privacy is a lady’s prerogative, no matter whether her husband considers her—and treats her like—a possession.”
“You seem to think that Laetitia won’t want to sleep with me,” he said silkily. “Dear me, India. You take such a dismal view of marriage; you must at least feign optimism once you accept a man’s hand.”
She turned on her heel and stamped out of the room, followed by a deep masculine chuckle. “I saw your lips moving,” he called. “Didn’t you tell Lady Adelaide that you never curse? Or were you talking about her butler?”
Choice words rocketed through India’s head.
“Three weeks with Lady Xenobia as my wife,” Dautry said, still laughing as he caught up with her. “I can’t think of a better prologue to a life with Laetitia.”
Chapter Nine
June 20, 1799
The Horn & Stage Inn
Just after sunrise the next morning, India rousted Adelaide from her bed and dragged her back to Starberry Court.
“Why must we be here early?” Adelaide asked, her sentence cut off by a yawn. “I’m in no hurry to see Jupp’s statuary again.”
“I have so much to do; I can’t waste time.” India crossed the entry hall, feeling a rising sense of excitement.
Adelaide trailed after her. “The statues look absolutely revolting in the morning light, don’t they?”
A bird—or a flock of them—had plainly roosted on the marbles’ heads and other bits of their anatomy; all the sculptures were lavishly streaked with white. India didn’t care. Her first order of business was to inventory the rooms. After that she would tackle cleaning, with the help of every chambermaid she could find in the village and vicinity.
Adelaide drifted through the entry, morosely holding her skirts above the dust. She loved to accompany India from house to house, primarily because it gave her an opportunity for a long visit with acquaintances. India loved the challenge, but Adelaide loved the company.
“I’m in no danger of finding myself compromised here,” India said. “By noon today, I’ll be surrounded by laborers, from gardeners to maids.”
“That’s true enough,” Adelaide said, poking at one of the statues with a gloved finger. “I think this one is a copy. It’s plaster, not marble.”
“Why not return to the inn? You could send my lady’s maid back in the carriage and spend the day relaxing in that lovely parlor, reading a book.”
“I couldn’t leave you alone!”
“Marie would be here in no time, Adelaide. And since Dautry rented the entire inn, your presence will give the innkeeper and his wife something to do.”
“Well . . .”
“I insist,” India said firmly, taking Adelaide straight back out the door and leading her to the carriage. “I’ll see you for dinner tonight, dearest. I’d be most grateful if the innkeeper could send a light luncheon.”
Once Adelaide was gone, India returned inside, enjoying the great echoing sense of the house. A surge of excitement bubbled inside her. Furnishing and staffing a great house from the ground up would be the perfect swan song to her career.
She would give Starberry Court a sense of dignity and tradition, with a balance of beauty and comfort. Interestingly, the furnishings that were left in the house did not live up to Jupp’s lurid reputation. There was some unfortunate damask wallpaper in one bedchamber, but that was a question of taste rather than depravity. And if Jupp had hung his bedstead in garish red velvet, the cloth had long since been stolen.
She pulled out a piece of foolscap. One sheet would account for every object in the house, and another would list ideas for walls and furnishings. In the next hour, she opened every drawer in the kitchens, wrinkled her nose at the privies, and investigated the butler’s pantry, only to find empty shelves lined with felt where silver should have been.
When three women arrived from the village, she promised to pay them half again as much as their regular wage. Her maid, Marie, appeared and professed herself happy to help as well. They all began dragging furniture downstairs, and even throwing some out the windows with the help of Adelaide’s grooms.
Dear Mr. Dautry,
I am attaching a list of all the usable furniture discovered in the house. Most important is an extraordinarily beautiful cabinet with pearl-inlaid swans on panels of exotic wood. It bears the mark of the artist Jean-Henri Reisener, who is one of the most notable French cabinetmakers.
As you’ll see, the list is short, as unfortunately most furnishings have been damaged or stolen. I will be buying a great many items in the next week and shall have the invoices sent directly to you. I will also be contracting for wall painting and coverings.
Yours sincerely,
Lady Xenobia India St. Clair
Dear Lady Xenobia,
It’s nice to know that you haven’t crashed through an unstable floorboard and broken your neck. Swans and more swans . . . what have you done with Leda? I can’t say that I’m very fond of swans. Did you know that the males bite hard enough to snap a child’s arm bone?
Thorn
Dear Mr. Dautry,
I am sending this note back by the groom who delivered yours. In a piece of luck, we discovered that the cellars are intact. You have a quite fine collection of wine, which includes port laid down twenty years ago. When we find a butler, he will have to fill in gaps in the collection, but of course the sediment in any new bottles would not have settled by the time of your house party.
You will also be glad to know that there are no swans in the river that borders your gardens. I put Leda in the attics; a bosom that size might terrify an unwary chambermaid.
Yours sincerely,
Lady Xenobia India St. Clair
Dear Lady Xenobia,
I speak for all the males in the house when I say that Leda’s bosom was the best thing about her.
Thorn
“There is no response,” India told the groom who had spent the day riding back and forth to London. By all rights, she should throw such a disgraceful missive in the fire.
Instead she folded it and slipped it in her pocket.
Chapter Ten
June 22, 1799
76 Portman Square, London
Home of Lord and Lady Rainsford
and their daughter Laetitia
Miss Laeti
tia Rainsford, known to her family and friends as Lala, was in the grip of a wave of pure, unadulterated panic. Mr. Dautry would soon arrive for tea. Her mother had already succumbed to three spasms that morning, and Lala felt as if she was on the verge of her very first.
He was coming. Mr. Dautry. The son of the Duke of Villiers. Her suitor. He had made his intentions very clear, although this was the first time he had paid them a call. She had met him a month ago in Kensington Gardens, at which time Dautry had told her plainly that he meant to court her, following that up with an appointment with her father.
She truly appreciated his clarity and decisiveness, because she always found herself confused when people engaged in clever conversation. Society conversation.
She hated society.
“Lala!” She turned to find her mother standing in the drawing room doorway, clutching a handkerchief, looking the very personification of self-sacrifice. “Is that what you mean to wear?”
“Yes, I am wearing this gown,” Lala replied, clasping her hands behind her back tightly so that her mother couldn’t see that they were shaking. “I’m afraid there isn’t time to change it now, Mama. Mr. Dautry will be here any moment.”
“I suppose that is the best you can do,” Lady Rainsford said, eyeing Lala’s hips. “He must not mind overly about your shape, as he has accepted our invitation to tea.”
“I am of the impression that he does not dislike my form,” Lala said, finding her voice. Her aunt had told her that she had been dubbed the most beautiful debutante of the season, but her mother never said a word about that; she was obsessed with the overly generous shape of Lala’s hips. “My figure is not terrible, Mama.” Where did that come from? She never stood up to her mother.
Surprisingly, Lady Rainsford didn’t burst into an angry retort. Instead, she strolled into the room, sat down, and said, “The man’s a bastard. Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Lala swallowed and said, “Mama, Mr. Dautry is no beggar; he is extremely wealthy.”
“Daughter! A lady never speaks of money in such a direct and vulgar manner.” Her mother raised a melodramatic hand to her brow, like a bad actor in a penny drama.
As Lala saw it, given that ladies such as her mother took great pleasure in spending money, the subject could not be outlawed. “Julia heard from a friend that he recently bought a country estate because he is planning to marry.”
Her mother straightened. “Which estate?”
“Starberry Court.”
Lady Rainsford sank back onto the sofa again, brow creased in a way that would give her palpitations if she caught sight of it in the mirror. “That’s the Earl of Jupp’s estate—before the line died out, of course. Dautry probably bought it for a song.”
“Twenty thousand pounds,” Lala said, telling the first huge lie of her life. She had made up the biggest sum she could imagine.
“Well, I suppose his money balances his blood,” her mother said, showing no reaction to the sum, though Lala knew she had to be impressed. “Sit down, if you please. You drive me to distraction the way you’re looming about. You must remember, dear, that your bottom is better hidden than revealed in the open air.”
“I understand you dislike talk of money, Mama, but I also know that Father is feeling very strained by lack of funds and would prefer not to pay for another season.”
“Oh, your father,” Lady Rainsford said, allowing her head to droop like an unwatered tulip. “When has the man not fussed about this or that? My ill health is due to his constant laments.”
“Mr. Dautry won’t care that I have no dowry,” Lala said bluntly. “And he’s likely to give Father a very large settlement if we marry.”
“Believe me, Lord Rainsford could talk the hind leg off a donkey on that subject,” her mother cried. “Neither of you seems to understand what a disgrace it would be to marry my daughter to a by-blow.”
“Better married to Mr. Dautry than never married at all.” Lala had been beset by suitors all season, but her father had rejected every one. She knew why: he had decided that her beauty was worth a huge settlement. In short, no one had bid high enough to pay off his debts.
“If only you’d eat less, your season might have had an entirely different outcome!” her mother said, her voice becoming a little shrill. “Why, you were seated beside Lord Brody, the Duke of Pindar’s heir, throughout six courses. You could be a duchess!”
To Lala’s mind, her failure with Lord Brody had nothing to do with her figure. It was because she was stupid. She couldn’t follow conversations that pinged like tennis balls, clever expressions flying back and forth. His Grace had looked bored by the end of the first course.
“Father cannot afford another season,” she said, going back to the only point that might influence her mother. “Thus, if I don’t marry Mr. Dautry, I might never marry at all.”
“There’s no need to play the martyr,” her mother said, clutching her handkerchief in a manner that threatened to shred it. “It’s as if you actually want me to have another nervous spasm. I’m sure we all wish you would marry, even if it is to—”
The butler opened the door and announced, “Mr. Dautry.”
Lala knew perfectly well that her mother’s voice was audible in the entry, even through the door. Whenever she heard that strident tone in the drawing room, she tiptoed up the stairs.
But Mr. Dautry strolled into the room as casually as a lion into its den, Lala thought, with a sudden—and uncharacteristic—turn to metaphor. Except that lions’ eyes were tawny and hungry, and Mr. Dautry’s eyes were the color of the sky on a windy, rainy day: cold, without an ounce of sentiment. His rumpled black hair was a bit longer than the fashion, but then, as far as she knew, he had nothing to do with the ton, so why should he follow fashion? And yet she noted with relief that his coat and breeches had been crafted by a master. Her mother would never forgive a second-rate tailor.
“It is such a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Dautry,” Lala said, risking the revelation of her bottom by rising from her chair. “Mother, may I present Mr. Dautry to you?”
As Dautry bowed, Lala realized that her mother was responding to the masculinity that clung to him like a second skin. Her handkerchief was no longer clenched, but began gently waving about, conveying a sense of fragility.
Mr. Dautry wasn’t the man Lala would have chosen for a husband; he was altogether too rough and masculine, with his hard eyes and the way the air seemed to vibrate slightly around him. But that was irrelevant.
As her mother had said, beggars can’t be choosers.
Throughout the fuss over the tea tray, Lala told herself that she was not going to sit like a stone, without opening her mouth. She was going to be witty. She had rehearsed some clever things to say, and she had asked her maid to read aloud the Morning Post. If the conversation lagged, she planned to say—brightly—“Isn’t it marvelous that those terrible mutinies in the Royal Navy were put down quickly?”
Mercifully, she didn’t have to blurt it out immediately, because her mother was inquiring about the “dear duchess,” Dautry’s stepmother, even though Lala knew perfectly well that her mother had, at best, a nodding acquaintance with the Duchess of Villiers.
Dautry was obviously aware that her mother did not move in such exalted circles. At the same time, he didn’t seem to care that she was claiming acquaintanceship. Despite Lala’s nerves, a smile turned up the corners of her mouth. And Dautry smiled back at her—with his eyes only, but she saw it.
“The duchess is great friends with Mrs. Worsley, is she not?” her mother was saying. “Mrs. Worsley is so lively at the dinner table. She always leads the conversation.”
Dautry did not reply, and neither did Lala. She had learned long ago that replies were not obligatory when conversing with her mother.
“I wouldn’t know how to speak as she does, going on and on about affairs of state and matters of high culture. There’s something unrefined about it, don’t you agree, Mr. Dautry?”
“I f
ind Mrs. Worsley an interesting conversationalist.”
“Men do, do they not?” Lady Rainsford exclaimed. “That is, she has the trick of talking to every man as if she adored him.”
“And every woman as if she loathed her,” Mr. Dautry said. “I suppose that I fall on the lucky side of that divide. But I come with an ulterior purpose, Lady Rainsford. Your daughter has told me of your exquisite taste.”
Lala had never said anything like that, but she recognized the work of a master and smiled as if she had, indeed, said as much.
“I have recently acquired a country estate, Starberry Court.”
“So we have heard,” Lala’s mother said, adding, with inexcusable vulgarity, “for some twenty thousand pounds.” That was typical of her mother: she chastised Lala for mentioning money, but considered her own social position so secure that she could say whatever she wished.
Mr. Dautry clearly did not like to discuss his finances. But when Lala looked at him with a plea in her eyes, he did not utter the rebuke her mother deserved. Instead, he said, “That rumor was inaccurate. The sum was close to double that; the lands are quite extensive.”
His expression apparently reminded Lady Rainsford just how presumptuous she had been; the handkerchief began fluttering about her face as she peeped over it.
“At any rate,” Mr. Dautry continued, “I should be very grateful to have your advice on restorations you might suggest for the estate, Lady Rainsford. I am thinking of assembling a small house party for just that purpose.”
“We are frightfully idle in this family,” Lala’s mother replied, still playing peekaboo with her handkerchief. “Even so, our social engagements keep us running hither and thither all the time. When will you hold your party, Mr. Dautry?”