Chapter One

 

 

“Are we there yet, Mama?” Sophy asked, for the third time since they had crossed the river.

“Not yet, dearest,” Victoria murmured.

“Are we nearly there?”

“We are nearer than we were, which is the most anyone can honestly promise in this street.” She drew the carriage rug back over the child’s knees where it had slipped.

“That is not a real answer,” Sophy said, unconvinced.

“It is the only honest one,” Victoria answered. “Shall I lie to you instead, and say two minutes?”

“Please do.”

“Two minutes, then, and not a second longer.” She watched her daughter narrow both eyes at the promise, plainly unconvinced.

“Ruth wishes to know whether there will be cake,” Sophy reported, pressing the doll’s wax face to the glass.

“Ruth is very forward for a young lady who has never once paid for a carriage,” Victoria said drily.

“She says it is your carriage, so it does not signify,” the child returned.

“Then Ruth and I are to have words about the household accounts.”

Sophy laughed, and the sound reached the cold place under Victoria’s ribs and warmed it half an inch, which was more than the whole of London had managed in a year.

“Why must we go at all?” the child asked.

“Because Cousin Amelia has written me three letters,” Victoria replied, “each sadder than the last, and I have not the heart to make her write a fourth.”

“What did they say?” Sophy asked.

“That I have been hiding in the country. That if I hide long enough, people will forget me.”

Sophy wore the frown she kept for remarks she suspected of being partly serious. “Would that be so very bad?”

It would not, Victoria thought, though she could not say so to a child of five. What she mourned, on the rare nights she let herself mourn anything, was her younger self; the woman she had been before Gerald, before she had learnt to count the exits from every room.

“It would not be bad at all,” she said. “But Amelia does not agree, and one is polite to one’s hostess even when one would rather be anywhere on earth besides.”

“Even at a ball?” Sophy asked.

“Especially at a ball. A ball is where politeness is most required and least deserved.”

“Papa liked balls,” Sophy said promptly.

Victoria went still for the space of a breath, then made herself easy again before the child could mark it. “Your papa liked being admired,” she said. “A ball is a very good place for that.”

“Do you like being admired, Mama?” Sophy asked.

“No. I like being left alone, which no one admires at all.”

“I admire it,” Sophy offered.

“Then you are the only critic whose good opinion I value.”

“Shall we go home after?” Sophy asked. “To the real home, with the pond?”

“The moment Amelia will let us,” Victoria said. “A week, perhaps two.”

“I like the country better.”

“So do I,” Victoria returned. “In the country, no one writes me letters telling me who I ought to be.”

The coach lurched forward six feet and stopped, and the jolt threw the doll clean out of Sophy’s grip, sideways through the half-open window and down into the dark of the road.

“Ruth!” The cry was instant. “Mama, she fell, she is in the road, she will be crushed.”

“She will not be crushed,” Victoria said quietly, catching the child back from the window. “Sit still, love.”

“She is under the wheels,” Sophy wailed.

Victoria had her hand on the latch when a figure stepped between the two stalled carriages ahead and bent, without hurry, to the gutter. He came up with the doll and brought it to the window, inclining his head not to Victoria but to the child.

“I believe this belongs to you,” he said.

Sophy went shy at once and pressed back into the corner of the seat.

“She is quite safe,” the gentleman went on, in the unhurried voice of a man with long practice at not frightening small persons. “A little muddied about the hem. But mud improves most things by giving them a history. She has had an adventure, and you may hear the whole of it later, when she is calmer.”

A hand crept out of the shadow of the seat, and he surrendered the doll into it with a bow as grave as if he were handing a duchess down from her carriage.

“Thank you,” Sophy whispered.

“You are entirely welcome,” he said gravely. Then, “What is her name?”

“Ruth. Her name is Ruth,” the child said solemnly.

“Then Ruth and I are properly acquainted at last, which is more than I can claim of half this street.”

Only then did Victoria mark the state of his gloves, one of them ruined to the wrist where he had gone into the gutter, and no word of it from him.

“You have sacrificed a pair of gloves for a stranger’s doll, my lord,” she said.

He paused, and a flicker crossed the corner of his mouth that was not quite a smile. “A poor bargain,” he said. “The doll appears to have more gratitude than most of my acquaintance.”

“That is a low estimation of your acquaintance,” Victoria replied.

“It is an accurate one, which is worse.” His glance went once more to the child, who had tucked the doll beneath her chin. “Good evening to you both.”

He was gone into the crowd before Victoria could find the reply she wanted, which annoyed her more than it should have.

“Mama, that man bowed to Ruth,” Sophy said, twisting round in the seat to look after him.

“So he did.”

“Nobody bows to Ruth.”

“No,” Victoria agreed, watching the place where the crowd had closed behind him. “Nobody does.”

 

***

 

Amelia Ashcombe’s house blazed at every window, and the line of carriages emptying onto the steps told Victoria that her cousin had underestimated the crush in exactly the way she underestimated most things.

“You came.” Amelia met her in the crowded hall with both hands out. “I was certain you would turn back at Hounslow and send me some elegant excuse about Sophy’s cough.”

“Sophy has no cough,” Victoria said.

“Then you would have found her one on the road.” Amelia drew back and looked her over, and her face tried for approval and failed. “You have worn grey to a ball.”

“I have,” Victoria said evenly.

“You are permitted colour, you know,” Amelia pressed. “You are very nearly required it.”

“I am permitted a great many things I do not want.” Victoria smoothed a crease from her glove that was not there.

“People will look at you in that and think you have come from a funeral,” Amelia said, dropping her voice. “Then they will remember whose, and then we shall spend the entire evening carefully not speaking of Gerald, which is the one subject I most wished to spare you.”

“They will speak of Gerald whatever I wear,” Victoria said. “In grey, they may pity me. In blue, they would only wonder what I was after. I prefer the pity. It asks less of me.”

“You cannot mean that,” Amelia protested.

“I have never meant anything more sincerely in my life.”

“You used to love a ball,” Amelia said anxiously. “You danced every set. I remember it.”

“That was a different woman. She married well and learnt better.”

“You might love them again,” Amelia insisted. “You are but eight and twenty. It is not a sentence.”

“It is not the balls I mind. It is the people who remember Gerald fondly, and expect me to hold still while they do it.”

Amelia’s mouth softened, and she seemed on the point of a remark they would both regret. She reached for the child instead. “And where is this one to be put? You cannot have brought her down among the dancers.”

“She is to sit upstairs with your Mrs Foss,” Victoria said, “and I am to look in on her, and if a single soul tells me she is a nuisance I shall take her home and count the evening a triumph.”

“Nobody will tell you she is a nuisance.”

“There is always one who does,” Victoria murmured. “It is the one thing at a ball a person may rely upon.”

“Then I shall stand between you and that one all evening,” Amelia declared.

“You will be dancing all evening. You always are.”

“I can dance and defend at the same time. It is very nearly my only accomplishment.”

The thing Victoria had dreaded without troubling to name it came out of the cloakroom doorway in dove-grey silk and pearls, straight as a fire iron.

“Victoria.” Lady Agatha stopped a pace off, and her gaze went past Victoria entirely, down to the child at her side. “And here is Sophronia. How thin you have both grown. And how grey you are, my dear, are you unwell, or is it grief still? A year and more, and you cannot let the poor man rest.”

“I am perfectly well, Lady Agatha,” Victoria said evenly. “You are kind to ask.”

Lady Agatha did not answer her. She studied Sophy the way a buyer studies a horse whose papers she suspects, and Sophy pressed closer to her mother’s skirts.

“How like her father about the mouth,” the old woman said coolly, her eyes never leaving the child. “Though I confess I see little of him elsewhere. Say good evening, child.”

“Good evening,” Sophy whispered.

“She might curtsy.”

“She might,” Victoria said, “when she is introduced to a person she knows.”

“She has spirit,” Roland, now Sir Roland Hemsworth, observed from behind his mother. “Gerald’s girl would. A pity spirit is so much harder to place well than obedience.”

“She is not a housemaid to be placed, Roland,” Victoria said evenly.

Beside her, Amelia had gone pale.

“I did not invite them,” she whispered. “I swear it to you, I did not.”

“They do not require inviting,” Victoria said drily. “They require only an occasion, and you were kind enough to provide one.”

Roland smiled at that as though it were a point scored in a game only he was enjoying. Victoria set her hand flat against Sophy’s back and steered her towards the stairs before the inspection could go any further.

Victoria carried her up herself. The housekeeper produced iced cakes, and Sophy arranged the doll against the sofa arm where it might best watch the room.

“You will not go far, Mama?” she asked.

“Only down the stairs. Send Mrs Foss if you want me, and I shall come straight up, and we shall go home.”

“Even if the ball is not finished?” Sophy asked.

“Especially then. I am rather hoping for the excuse.”

“And you will come the very moment I send?”

“The very moment,” Victoria said. “I have never once failed to come when you sent for me, and I do not mean to begin tonight.”

“Ruth is frightened of new houses,” Sophy offered in a small voice.

“Then you must be brave for her, as you always are. And I shall be brave for the both of you.”

“She says you should dance at least once, so the journey was not wasted,” Sophy said gravely.

“Ruth is very free with her advice for someone who was so recently in the gutter,” Victoria said.

“She has forgiven the gutter. She says it was educational.”

“Did she indeed?” Victoria kissed the top of her daughter’s head and went back down into the noise with the particular armour a woman puts on when she has decided, in advance, to feel nothing at all.

It held as far as the ballroom door.

The first to reach her was Mrs Radley, who collected other people’s misfortunes the way some women collected fans.

“Lady Hemsworth. We had quite given you up.” Mrs Radley’s gaze travelled down the grey silk and back up. “And in grey, how brave. Most widows have the decency to choose between mourning and not, but you have found a third way, and I confess I admire the economy of it.”

“You are too kind,” Victoria said. “Grey hides both grief and the dressmaker’s bill, which are the two subjects a widow is least eager to be asked about.”

“They are saying you have come to town to look for another husband.”

“Then they will be sorry,” Victoria returned. “I have come to town to disappoint my cousin, and I mean to do it thoroughly before I go home.”

Mrs Radley laughed, uncertain whether Victoria had insulted her, and drifted off to spread the report that the widow Hemsworth was sharper than grief had any right to leave a woman.

Then Lady Agatha found her again, the way water finds the low place in a floor.

“You slipped away before we had finished,” the old woman said, and took Victoria’s hand in a grip that read as affection to anyone watching and as inspection to Victoria herself. “I had wished to speak of the child’s future, which weighs upon me far more heavily than her manners.”

“Sophy’s future is settled. She has a mother, and that mother is not going anywhere.”

“You always did have an answer ready.” Lady Agatha’s gaze travelled over her, cool and thorough. “It is only that a girl of her age, kept always at her mother’s skirts and so far from her father’s family… One cannot help wondering whether she quite knows who she is.”

“She knows exactly who she is,” Victoria said.

“She is mine.”

“She is also a Hemsworth,” the old woman said.

“She is a Hemsworth by an accident I have spent five years repairing.”

That landed harder than she had aimed it, and for half a breath, the pearls at the old woman’s throat rose and fell too fast before the smile came down over them.

“An accident,” Lady Agatha repeated, as though tasting the word. “You did not call it an accident when it made you a lady.”

“I called it a bargain,” Victoria replied. “I have since found the price was printed on the far side of the page.”

“You are bitter, Victoria,” the old woman said, almost fondly.

“I am accurate. You have simply never had occasion to tell the difference.”

“Roland was saying only this week,” the old woman continued, “that Sophy ought to spend a season among us. Among people who remember her father as he truly was.”

“How generous of Sir Roland to remember him at all,” Victoria said.

Roland, who had been lingering a few paces behind his mother, came forward with a smile.

“She would want for nothing,” he said. “Nor would you, cousin. Surely that must tempt you, after such lean years.”

“You mistake lean for free,” Victoria said quietly. “It is the commonest error your family makes.”

“The girl should know her father’s house,” Roland pressed. “That is all my mother means. A season, no more. You could hardly object to a season.”

“I could object to a great many seasons,” Victoria said, “and I find I object to yours first.”

“You will not always have the choosing of it,” Roland said, still smiling.

“While I live, cousin, I will have the choosing of everything that touches my daughter. You may write it down, if your memory runs as short as your delicacy.”

“You were gentler as a wife,” Lady Agatha said.

“I was quieter. You mistook the one for the other, as your son does now.”

“You mistake me for an enemy, my dear,” said Lady Agatha.

“No, Lady Agatha,” Victoria answered. “I have never once mistaken you for anything.”

The smile did not falter, but a cold attention behind it took note and filed the remark away.

“You will find,” the old woman said softly, “that the world is not half so fond of a sharp widow as it was of a sharp wife. A husband can afford you. A reputation cannot.”

“Then it is fortunate I have stopped trying to be afforded.”

“And how do you keep yourself, my dear, now that you are so independent?” Lady Agatha asked, gentle as a blade. “Gerald’s people were always generous. It would grieve me to hear you had fallen into difficulty.”

“It would grieve you far more to hear I had not,” Victoria said. “But you may be easy on both counts. I want nothing from Gerald’s people that Gerald’s people have not already tried very hard to keep from me.”

“You were always quick,” Lady Agatha said. “Gerald admired it. In moderation.”

She moved off before Victoria could answer, the last word carried away like a stolen glove.

Amelia was at her elbow within the minute. “What did she want?” she asked.

“Sophy,” Victoria said evenly. “She dressed it as concern, but that is what she came to say.”

“She cannot have her.” Amelia’s whisper shook. “Gerald is dead, and a mother has the keeping of her own child.”

“A mother has the keeping of her own child until a family with money and lawyers decides otherwise,” Victoria murmured. “Do not comfort me with certainties you do not possess.” She heard the sharpness and gentled it. “Forgive me. It is not you I am angry with.”

“I know it is not.” Amelia followed her gaze, which had drifted, without permission, towards the pillar at the far side of the room. “What are you looking at?”

“That man by the pillar,” Victoria said. “Do you know him?”

Amelia looked, and frowned, and looked longer. “I have never seen him before in my life,” she said. “And I know everyone here, which is one of the few things at which I may claim some competence. Why?”

“He pulled Sophy’s doll from the gutter earlier and made her laugh. Now he stands very quietly in a corner, watching the Hemsworths as though he were pricing them.”

The man from the street stood near a pillar, wearing a fresh pair of gloves and holding a glass from which he did not drink. He watched the Hemsworths as a man watches weather he has decided not to trust.

“He is not watching them,” Amelia protested. “He is watching them watch you.”

The truth of it went through Victoria, cold and sudden. When Lady Agatha turned for one last measuring glance across the room, the stranger’s eyes followed hers and tracked the look to its object. For a moment, the three of them were joined by a single line of attention: the old woman, the widow, and the man who had bowed to a doll.

Then he found Victoria watching him. He made no attempt to look away or pretend otherwise, but inclined his head once before returning his attention to Lady Agatha, as though the widow’s enemies had already become, by some private reckoning, his own affair.

“Well,” Amelia said faintly. “He might have introduced himself first.”

“Men of that sort never do,” Victoria said drily.

“Perhaps he means to. He looks as though he means to.”

“Then he had better be quick, for I intend to be in my carriage within the hour, and no gentleman who bows to dolls is going to alter that calculation.”

“You might at least learn his name,” Amelia said. “For curiosity, if nothing else.”

“Curiosity is how I acquired my first husband. I have sworn off it.”

“He is still watching,” Amelia said quickly.

“Let him watch. Watching is free, and it is the only thing in this room that has cost me nothing tonight.”

“You are impossible,” Amelia said. “A handsome stranger notices you across a crowded room, and you wish to flee.”

“He has noticed a disagreeable old woman staring at me,” Victoria said. “Let us not turn observation into gallantry.”

Victoria closed her fan against the heat rising in her throat. She lingered a moment longer than she needed to, watching the stranger keep one eye upon Lady Agatha. The cold in her chest eased a little before she turned away and refused to examine why.

 

 

Chapter Two

 

 

“You cannot leave yet,” Amelia said softly, catching her by the arm. “You have been here scarcely an hour. An hour is not a visit; it is a rumour with its cloak on.”

“An hour is precisely what I promised,” Victoria said, “and I have a daughter upstairs who was assured she might summon me at any moment.”

“Stay another half-hour. If you go now, they will say you fled, and a woman who flees is presumed to have something to flee from.”

“And a woman who stays is presumed to have something to prove,” Victoria returned. “I gave up proving myself the day I buried the man who made a habit of requiring it.”

“You are impossible when you are frightened,” Amelia said under her breath.

“I am not frightened, Amelia.” Victoria smiled, though the expression did not reach her eyes. “I am tired. It lasts longer and answers to nothing.”

“You could remain beside me,” Amelia pressed. “I would not let them near you.”

“You could not keep a terrier from me in this crush, dearest, much less Lady Agatha. But I love you for offering.”

Amelia might have argued, but the crowd shifted, and the clear space Victoria had kept at her back closed like water.

“Surely you are not deserting us so soon.” Lady Agatha’s voice reached her a moment before a hand settled upon Victoria’s sleeve. “We have hardly begun to be a family again.”

“We were never a family, Lady Agatha. We were an arrangement, and it ended at the graveside.”

“How hard you have grown.” The old woman said it fondly, as another woman might admire a gown. “It is the child I think of, you understand. A girl kept from her father’s people can learn nothing of them. She will grow up half a stranger to her own blood.”

“The door was never shut,” Victoria said. “It was watched. There is a difference, and you have stood on the wrong side of it for five years.”

“And whose fault will it be,” the old woman continued, as though Victoria had not spoken, “when she asks one day what her father was and learns that her mother kept the answer from her out of spite?”

“Out of memory, Lady Agatha. I keep it from her out of memory. She is too young for the truth of him, and you are far too fond of the lie.”

Roland appeared at his mother’s side, a glass still in his hand. “You must forgive my mother her plain speaking. She only says aloud what the rest of us are too polite to mention. A girl raised by a widow alone, with no man’s hand upon the household and no father’s name spoken kindly at her own table, may grow confused as to her proper place. It is not a criticism, cousin. It is a mercy to observe it early, while some remedy may yet be found.”

“And you are the remedy, I suppose?”

“I am her nearest kinsman on her father’s side,” Roland said pleasantly. “The law has its views on such matters. It is not blind to how a child is kept, nor to who keeps her, nor to what may be said of that person in a crowded room. I merely mention it. A man likes to know the ground upon which he stands.”

“You mention it as a footpad mentions the hour,” Victoria said wearily, “so that I shall look at my watch instead of guarding my purse. I have been robbed by cleverer men than you, Sir Roland; and by one of your family with considerably more charm.”

“You do yourself no favours, cousin,” Roland said, unruffled. “A softer answer tonight might have spared you a difficult morning.”

“I ceased trading soft answers for difficult mornings some years ago. The exchange never once came out in my favour.”

“There is the girl’s portion to consider besides,” Lady Agatha added. “A child with expectations requires managing, and you were never taught to manage money; only to want it very quietly.”

“I was taught to want nothing aloud, which your son mistakes for having nothing. It is a convenient error. I have allowed him to keep it for years, and it has cost me dearly.”

Roland smiled and drank, offering no denial. It was the nearest thing to honesty his family had produced all evening.

Neither of them noticed the gentleman standing three feet away, his back half-turned to them as he contemplated a poor painting of a horse. He had not moved for several minutes. Yet something in the set of his shoulders had altered, as a room alters when a distant door opens upon cold air.

“You must both excuse me,” Victoria said quietly. “I find I have quite exhausted my capacity for family this evening.”

She turned before either could answer and made for the edge of the crowd. She had almost reached open space when a broad figure stepped directly into her path.

“There you are.” The voice came thickly and from much too near. Sir Peregrine Crayle followed it, his waistcoat straining at its lowest button and his breath announcing him a full second before his words. “The handsomest widow in the room, hiding herself in corners. It will not do. You must dance with me.”

“I am not dancing this evening, Sir Peregrine.” She made no move to accept the hand he offered.

“Nonsense. A widow who will not dance is only advertising herself, and you have advertised quite long enough. One turn. I insist.”

“You may insist upon a great many things. I remain, in the face of all of them, not dancing.”

“You wound me.” He reached towards her waist as though the matter had already been settled between them. “A little grief becomes a woman. Too much of it is greedy. Let a man cheer you out of it.”

Victoria stepped back before his hand could touch her. “Cheer another lady, sir. There must be one in this house who has not yet enjoyed the pleasure of refusing you.”

“Sharp,” he murmured, delighted, as though she had flirted with him. “I do like a sharp one.”

When she answered only with a look, his smile hardened.

“You will regret refusing me. Women in your position always do, once the invitations cease.”

“I have refused better men than you, Sir Peregrine, and regretted only that they troubled to ask. You told me you liked sharpness. I trust you will be satisfied with a sharp answer. Good evening.”

She left him there. She would regret it before half an hour had passed, for a man like Sir Peregrine did not hear no as a refusal. He heard it as an opening bid.

The heat and noise had begun to press upon her like hands, and she wanted three minutes in which no one possessed a face. A servant’s door at the end of the gallery opened into the conservatory, and she slipped through it into the dark.

 

***

 

The room was cool after the ballroom, illuminated only by moonlight through the long panes of glass. The damp, earthy scent of orange trees hung in the air. Victoria released a breath she seemed to have been holding since the carriage.

For a little while, there was only glass and moonlight and green silence, and her own reflection staring back at her, thinner than she remembered.

Then the door opened behind her.

“I knew you would want a private corner,” Sir Peregrine said as he entered and drew the door shut at his back.

“I wanted a room in which to be alone, which is the precise opposite of your company.” Victoria did not turn. “Open the door.”

“In a moment. We have not finished our conversation.” He settled his shoulders against it, comfortable in the doorway, a man who had done this before and been thanked for it afterwards. “You are what… eight and twenty? Far too young to spend your best years playing the grieving saint. It does not suit you. And I assure you, it does not pay.”

“And you have appointed yourself physician to my condition?”

“I have appointed myself a husband, which is the only cure a woman in your position requires.” He spread his hands as though displaying a gift. “Think of it. No more counting every shilling before it is spent. No more Hemsworths at your door disguised as concern. I take the widow, the widow takes my name, and every inconvenience in the county is settled at a stroke.”

“You find yourself unaccountably in debt,” Victoria said evenly. “That is not the same as finding yourself unaccountably generous, though I see how a man might confuse the two at this hour.”

He laughed, wholly untroubled by the accusation. “Sharp again. Marry me and be as sharp as you please every morning of my life. I shall grow to depend upon it.”

“You mistake me for a woman with a choice still before her. I made all the choices I intend to make concerning husbands, and I made them at a graveside. The position is closed.”

“Positions reopen,” he said quietly, moving nearer, “when a lady’s reputation resigns them on her behalf. And yours, I am told, is halfway out of the door already.”

“Then it requires no assistance from you to complete the journey.”

“One kiss,” he said softly, “and I shall call it a betrothal. You will thank me by spring.”

“I would sooner kiss the orange trees. They, at least, keep their hands to themselves. Move aside, Sir Peregrine.”

She stepped towards the door, and he caught her by the wrist.

His grip was not hard, which made it worse. It held the easy confidence of a man certain she would make no scene, because women in her position never did.

“Do not be missish about it,” he said. “I am trying to do you a kindness.”

“You are offering to become the very thing a woman requires saving from,” Victoria said. “Take your hand off me. I will not ask a third time.”

“Remove your hand from Lady Hemsworth before I remove it for you.”

The voice came from the doorway beyond the orange trees, quiet and almost pleasant. They both turned towards it.

The gentleman from the street stood there, the man who had bowed to a doll. No anger showed in him, which was the most frightening part. He looked merely patient, as a man looks when he has already decided how a matter will end.

“Harwood.” Sir Peregrine’s laugh came thinner this time, and his fingers loosened without quite releasing her. “This is nothing to you. A private conversation, nothing more.”

“It ceased to be private when the lady asked you to open the door and you declined.” Harwood stepped into the conservatory without haste, and the ease of his approach drained the confidence from the other man by degrees. “You have until the end of this sentence to remove your hand from her wrist. After that, we shall continue before everyone in the ballroom, and I give you my word that you will care far less for their account of the evening than for mine.”

Sir Peregrine released her.

“There,” he said, too loudly. “No harm done. You see? The lady is quite unharmed.”

“The lady may say for herself whether she is unharmed. She has no need of you to report it on her behalf.”

Harwood turned his attention to Victoria, the question already in his face before he spoke.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.” She drew her wrist against her body and hated the small movement for giving her away. “Only handled. It is a distinction Sir Peregrine was never taught.”

“He will learn it,” Harwood said mildly. “People learn quickly, in my experience, when the lesson is arranged with sufficient care.”

Sir Peregrine might yet have salvaged some scrap of the evening: a bow, a jest, an exit that left a little of his dignity standing. He was assembling one when the servant’s door opened again, and two guests entered in search of the very quiet Victoria had wanted.

They stopped dead.

Their gazes took in the room at once: the widow holding her wrist against her body, the drunken baronet standing half a pace too near, and the Earl of Harwood between them with the stillness of a man interrupted in the midst of some deliberate act. There was no arrangement of those three facts that a ballroom would interpret kindly.

“Lady Hemsworth,” one of them said faintly.

By then, it was much too late.

Sir Peregrine, who possessed a rare genius for choosing the worst available course, seized upon the witnesses like a drowning man upon a rope.

“A misunderstanding,” he announced towards the doorway. “The lady was overcome. I came to her aid, and Harwood chose to interfere. All entirely proper, I assure you.”

“Say one further word,” Harwood told him, still without raising his voice, “and I shall give these good people the true account instead. It does you no credit and me a very great deal, and I should enjoy delivering it more than you can imagine.”

But the harm no longer required Sir Peregrine’s assistance. It had everything it needed already: two witnesses, a closed door, a moonlit room, and a widow foolish enough to have wanted three minutes alone.

Harwood turned to the pair at the door. “Lady Hemsworth came here for air and was followed. I removed the man who followed her. You are welcome to repeat precisely that, and nothing beyond it, with my compliments.”

They murmured something indistinct and withdrew. From their faces, Victoria understood that a great deal beyond it would be repeated before the clocks struck one. His standing between her and the story had only made a better story of it.

“You should not have come in,” she said when the door had closed behind them.

“I know the arithmetic,” Harwood replied. “I considered it on my way across the room. A bruised name set against a bruised wrist, and I chose. You are welcome to disagree. You are the one wearing the wrist.”

“I am wearing both now,” Victoria said drily. “That is the flaw in such bargains, my lord. They always prove cheaper for the man who strikes them.”

He accepted the blow without flinching and inclined his head as though she had scored a fair hit he meant to remember.

“Then I am in your debt for the difference,” he said. “I shall find some way to settle it.”

“Men who speak of settling debts to women they met at a carriage window make me nervous, Lord Harwood.”

“You may remain nervous. It is better company than trust, and it keeps sharper hours.”

“You have not even told me your name.”

“Harwood. Elias Fernwood. You will hear it spoken in a great many ways before the week is out, most of them unkind. I would rather you heard it once, plainly, from me.”

“And why should it matter to you how I have it?”

“It should not,” he said evenly. “And yet here I stand, telling you.”

She had no notion what he meant by any of it, and no opportunity to press him. Amelia appeared at the gallery door, white about the mouth, and the evening tipped from disaster into aftermath.

By midnight, the story had travelled the length of the ballroom three separate times, and each circuit had improved upon the last. In the first telling, Victoria had entered the conservatory for air. By the third, she had arranged to meet a baronet in the dark and been discovered there. In none of the versions did the Earl of Harwood appear as anything but a man who had arrived too late upon a scene no respectable woman would have entered at all.

“They are saying such things,” Amelia whispered, gripping Victoria’s hand behind the shelter of a pillar. “Vile things, and half of them from people who saw nothing.”

“The half who saw nothing always tell it best,” Victoria said. “Where is my cloak?”

“You mean to leave in the midst of it? They will say you fled.”

“They will say whatever they have already decided to say. I would rather not stand here and watch their mouths form the words. Find my cloak, dearest, and find my daughter. They may keep the rest of the evening. It was never mine to begin with.”

“I am coming with you to the carriage,” Amelia said fiercely. “I will not have you walk out alone while the whole room watches to see whether you break.”

“Then walk beside me and look as though nothing in the world has happened. It is the only revenge left to us tonight, and I mean to take it slowly.”

Lady Agatha found her by the cloakroom, where Victoria stood waiting with the remnants of her composure held together by will alone.

“Well,” the old woman said, unhurried. “You have gone and done it now, with no one to thank for it but yourself.”

“I stepped into an empty room, and a drunkard followed me. If that is ruin, then half the women in that ballroom are ruined, and the other half merely luckier.”

“It does not signify in the least what happened. It signifies what is said. And what is said is that Sir Peregrine compromised you, or you compromised him. The only question remaining is which of you will consent to make the matter respectable.”

“There is nothing to make respectable. Nothing happened.”

“Happened.” Lady Agatha repeated the word as though it belonged to a child. “You have lived among us long enough to know that what happened has nothing to do with the matter. A thing becomes true in a drawing room the moment two people agree that they have seen it, and two people have agreed. You made it very easy for them.”

“And what, precisely, do you expect me to do with this intriguing, if highly inaccurate, version of events?”

“He is willing.” The old woman drew on her gloves finger by finger, wholly unhurried. “He told Roland so less than a quarter of an hour ago. Marry Sir Peregrine quietly, and the talk will be dead within a fortnight. Refuse him, and it will follow you. Then it will follow the child. A mother trailing scandal is a mother the courts examine very closely when the question of who shall keep the child comes to be asked.”

There it was at last: the blade beneath the velvet, the thing towards which the whole long evening had been moving without once troubling to name it.

“You arranged this,” Victoria murmured, very low.

“I arranged nothing. I have merely declined to save you from it, which is a different sin and a far smaller one.” Lady Agatha smiled, satisfied as a cat before a saucer. “Marry Sir Peregrine, my dear. It is the only door still open to you. I should go through it tonight, before some helpful soul thinks to close that one as well.”

“I have already buried one husband your family chose for me,” Victoria said softly. “I will not be handed a second across the wreckage of my own name. You may tell Sir Peregrine to keep his betrothal, and you may keep your concern beside it.”

“We shall see how brave you are in a week, when the invitations cease and the child begins to ask why.”

She swept away towards her carriage, leaving Victoria alone at the ragged edge of the evening, the scent of orange trees still clinging to her hair, while the whole of London, in a hundred low and busy voices, set about deciding who she was.

 

 

Chapter Three

 

 

“The wedding could be arranged within the week,” Sir Peregrine’s man was saying. “Quietly, at Sir Peregrine’s expense, with only the two families present. Discretion would serve everyone in this room.”

Victoria sat in the corner of her cousin’s morning room and listened to five people arrange her life as though she were a chair damaged in transit, to be mended before anyone noticed the crack. The room was too warm for the hour, the fire built high against the grey morning, and the tea had gone cold in its pot while the company attended to the more pressing business of her future.

“You will forgive me, Mr Dabney,” she said quietly, “but you speak of a wedding as though I had already agreed to one. I am also at a loss to understand why my late husband’s family has been invited to negotiate it.”

Lady Agatha’s expression did not alter. “Because Gerald’s daughter will be affected by whatever folly her mother chooses next.”

“My daughter has a name, and I have not asked any of you to bargain on her behalf.”

“A formality, Lady Hemsworth,” Mr Dabney interposed. He was a neat, apologetic man who conducted his cruelty by the clock and went home to supper untroubled by it. “Consent follows arrangement in matters of this delicacy. The lady’s agreement may be assumed once the terms are shown to be generous.”

For a moment, Victoria merely looked at him.

“Sir Peregrine is prepared to be very generous,” he continued. “He would settle a sum upon you, undertake the child’s maintenance, and ask in return only that the past be allowed to rest.”

“He would settle a sum upon me with money he does not possess, maintain a child who is not his, and purchase a silence I have not offered for sale. Forgive me, Mr Dabney, but your master’s generosity has the particular smell of a debt gone looking for a woman to marry it.”

“Victoria.” Lady Agatha set down her cup. “You are in no position to refuse. That position closed on Tuesday, in a conservatory, before witnesses.”

“I was followed into that conservatory,” Victoria said. “I did not invite the man. I did not want the man. And I will not marry him merely to spare this company the inconvenience of telling the truth about him.”

“The truth will not dine with you when the invitations cease,” Lady Agatha said. “It will not sit beside the child when she is feverish. It will not pay the coal merchant. A good name will do all three, and you had one once. You may have it again for the price of a quiet wedding.”

“I had a good name once, with a bad husband beneath it,” Victoria said gently. “I have since discovered which of the two a woman must actually live with.”

“She has done nothing wrong,” Amelia said, her voice rising. “Nothing at all. I was there. I saw the whole of it.”

“You saw the end of it,” Lady Agatha replied. “Everyone else saw the shape of it, and the shape is what survives. Do sit down, Mrs Ashcombe. You are not helping her by fluttering about the furniture.”

Amelia sat, wretched, and Victoria loved her for the attempt and hated the room for making it useless.

“There is another consideration,” Roland said, in the tone of a man offering a handkerchief to a weeping woman, “which I had hoped not to raise. But you leave me little choice, cousin, and it is better spoken plainly among family than whispered later by strangers.”

“Say it, Roland.” Victoria did not look up. “You have been polishing it since you arrived.”

“Gerald’s will named me guardian of the child.”

The words entered the warm room and altered its temperature. Victoria’s hand closed hard upon the arm of her chair.

“That is not possible,” she said, too quickly. “She is my daughter. I am her mother, and I am alive.”

“You forget that I have read the will as often as you have. It names me guardian jointly with you. Jointly, cousin. Not in your place.”

“Then jointly is where it ends. I am her mother. No court in England would remove a child from a fit mother.”

“Jointly, while both guardians remain fit,” Roland corrected smoothly, with a gentleness that was almost tender. “The word does a great deal of work, and it does it quietly. If one guardian is found wanting, the other assumes the whole responsibility. I should be desolate to carry it alone, but I would carry it. Duty is duty.”

The word duty in his mouth turned her cold. Gerald had used it in precisely that tone, as a key that unlocked any cruelty while leaving the man who turned it blameless.

“You would carry my daughter away like a parcel and call yourself desolate for the length of the drive.”

“A mother may be living and yet be judged unfit to retain charge of her child,” Roland continued, as though she had not spoken. “The law makes provision for it. Gerald made provision for it. The ordinary case presumes a mother of unblemished conduct. A widow whose name has become a public question is no longer the ordinary case. You see how the marriage answers everything. A respectable husband, a respectable name, and the question of your fitness need never arise.”

Victoria understood then, fully and coldly, what the whole slow performance had been building towards. The scandal was not the danger. It was the key, turning a lock that had lain quietly within Gerald’s will for five years, waiting for a hand patient enough to use it.

“This is monstrous,” Amelia burst out. “Gerald has been in the ground more than a year, and you would use his will as a net.”

“Gerald wove the net,” Roland said. “I merely read it aloud. If it catches her, Mrs Ashcombe, that is his doing and her conduct, not mine. I simply decline to cut the strings for a woman who has given the world such excellent reason to keep them tied.”

“You would take her,” Victoria said, and her voice was not quite steady. “You would take my child and call it the law.”

“I would hope it never came to that,” Roland said. “But if you refuse Sir Peregrine and the matter becomes public, questions may be asked about Sophy’s care. You know as well as I do that the court would consider every circumstance.”

She had no answer that was not a plea, and she would not plead to Sir Roland Hemsworth if the ceiling came down upon them both. She said nothing.

The silence was the nearest thing to surrender the room had yet drawn from her, and Lady Agatha’s mouth curved to receive it.

Then the door opened without a knock, and the footman’s announcement followed the visitor by half a second.

“The Earl of Harwood.”

Elias entered dressed for a morning call and entirely at his ease, as though he had been expected, and as though rooms full of people conspiring against a widow were a thing he encountered most days before noon.

“Forgive the intrusion,” he said, addressing no one in particular and therefore all of them. “I would have sent up a card, but cards are slow, and the matter under discussion will not wait upon my manners.”

“Lord Harwood.” Lady Agatha recovered first, as she always did. “This is a family matter.”

“It became rather more than a family matter on Tuesday, when a man laid hands upon Lady Hemsworth, and the account of it began to shift against her. I have come to correct that account.”

Roland looked at him. “You take a considerable interest in Lady Hemsworth’s affairs.”

“I take an interest in accuracy,” Elias said. “I was present, and I have no intention of allowing convenience to improve upon what I saw. A drunkard followed a widow into an empty room, took her by the wrist, and prevented her from leaving. The remedy upon which this company has settled is to reward him with her hand. Have I stated the case fairly, or have I been too generous to one of you?”

“You state it like a partisan,” Roland returned.

“I state it as a witness, since I was the man in the doorway.” Elias allowed that to settle before continuing. “Here is what I propose instead. Lady Hemsworth does not marry the man who assaulted her. She marries me.”

For a moment, no one in the room could find a word. Then three of them found words at once, and the noise filled the morning room.

“You cannot be serious,” Lady Agatha said sharply. “You scarcely know her.”

“I know her slightly better than Sir Peregrine does,” Elias replied, “and with the considerable advantage of wishing her no harm. At present, that is enough to put me ahead of him.”

“And what does Harwood gain by it?” Roland demanded. “Another man’s widow, another man’s child, another man’s scandal. No man takes on all three for nothing.”

“A quiet life, once I have won it. And I mean to win it.”

Through the clamour, Victoria heard her own voice emerge, low and unsteady with a feeling that was not gratitude.

“No.”

Elias turned towards her. For the first time, the ease left his face, and careful attention took its place.

“You would prefer Sir Peregrine?”

“I would prefer to be asked.” Victoria rose. “I would prefer that one man in this room, only one, might put a question concerning my life to me before deciding the answer. You are all the same. You differ only in the manners you employ while arranging me.”

Elias inclined his head, accepting the charge without defence. The ready surrender took the force from her anger and left her unsteady in the midst of it.

“That will do,” Amelia said, rising with a firmness none of them had suspected her of possessing. “Lady Agatha, Sir Roland, Mr Dabney, I must ask you to withdraw to the blue parlour.”

“This discussion is not concluded,” Lady Agatha said.

“It is concluded in this room. My cousin has been spoken of, spoken around, and very nearly disposed of without once being consulted. If Lord Harwood now intends to address himself to her, he may do so properly.”

Amelia crossed to the writing desk near the window and seated herself with her back partly turned to them.

“I shall remain here, of course,” she added. “But I assure you that I can become remarkably deaf when the occasion requires it.”

They withdrew, because nothing was to be gained by remaining and a great deal might be lost by quarrelling with a hostess in her own house.

The door closed behind them. Amelia took up her pen without dipping it into the ink, leaving Victoria as nearly alone with the man who had offered to marry her before her enemies as propriety allowed.

“Sit, if you like,” she said. “Or stand. Everyone else seems to have arranged the morning to suit themselves.”

“I shall stand. I do my worst thinking seated.”

Elias remained beside the window, at a distance she noticed and understood, giving her the width of the room.

“You are right to be angry. I made a decision concerning your life and announced it to a crowd. It was badly done. I would apologise, except that I would do it again, and an apology for an act a man means to repeat is only a lie with good manners.”

“Then do not apologise. Explain.” Victoria held his gaze. “Why would a man I have known for the length of two conversations offer to marry me before the people trying to force my hand?”

“Because I stood in your cousin’s hall for four minutes before I entered, and I recognised the tune your kinsman was playing. He does not want you married to Crayle for the sake of your good name. He wants you married to a fool he can manage, or discredited past resistance. Either road ends in the same place: the child. He has a claim on paper and needs only your disgrace to carry it into a courtroom.”

Victoria went very still. “You heard all that from a hall?”

“I heard the shape of it. Men like Sir Roland know one song, and they sing it in every house in England. He likely means to have the girl, her portion, or both, and he means to use your disgrace as the means of reaching them.”

Elias paused.

“I am offering to stand where that door stands. A wall is not a husband, Lady Hemsworth. It merely remains where it is put and does not open when a Hemsworth knocks.”

“And what do you want in return for standing there?”

“A wife,” Elias said. “More precisely, an heir. The earldom requires one, and legitimacy, inconveniently, requires a marriage.”

Victoria looked at him.

“I have neither the patience nor the inclination to spend a season inspecting debutantes beneath their mothers’ eyes,” he continued. “You require protection without interference. I require a wife who understands that marriage may be an arrangement without pretending it is a courtship. Our necessities appear to suit one another.”

“And what would this arrangement require of me?”

“You would keep your own rooms and your own hours. Sophy would remain with you, and I would not interfere in her upbringing. Your household would be yours to order. I would ask only that, in time, we provide the earldom with an heir.”

“You said my own rooms.” Victoria held his gaze. “Say the rest plainly. I have guessed at a husband’s meaning before, and paid for guessing wrongly.”

“Plainly, then. I would not enter your rooms uninvited or touch you without your consent. An heir may be necessary; coercion is not. Whatever is agreed between us would be agreed before it was attempted.”

She searched his face for the gallantry that usually concealed a demand and found only calculation, stated without disguise.

“And Sophy?”

“I would settle her future beyond Sir Roland’s reach. Her portion would be secured so that no guardian could profit by controlling either it or her. I have the money, the lawyers, and sufficient dislike of being opposed to ensure it is done properly.”

“And when you tire of the arrangement?” Victoria asked. “Men tire. What becomes of Sophy and me on the morning you do?”

“The settlement would be beyond my power to undo. I might regret the marriage, dislike you, or wish myself a fool, and Sophy would remain protected. A safeguard is of little use if the man who builds it may tear it down in a temper.”

“You have considered a great deal for a man who decided this in a hall.”

“I had considered the need for a wife long before this morning. You are the unexpected part.”

“There is my own portion besides,” Victoria said drily. “My jointure, if anything remains of it.”

“Your man of business and mine will examine the accounts and see that every payment due to you is made promptly and without interference,” Elias said. “The money will remain entirely under your control. A wife with means of her own is harder to frighten, and I should like you very difficult to frighten. It will make my life considerably quieter.”

“You would defend my right to my own money and call it a convenience to yourself.”

“I would defend it because it is yours, and permit you to think me selfish for doing so, since you trust a selfish man further than a generous one. I have been listening, Lady Hemsworth. I did tell you that I do.”

The care in it unsettled her more than any promise might have done. She had entered the conversation braced for a cage and kept finding, where the bars ought to have been, open doors she had no notion how to pass through.

“You make it sound very reasonable,” Victoria said. “Reasonable men have cost me the most. My husband was reasonable in every drawing room in London.”

“Then do not trust my reason.”

Elias took one step towards her and stopped, careful not to narrow the distance too far. At the writing desk, Amelia kept her eyes conscientiously upon the blank page before her.

“I am not asking you to trust me. I should think less of you if you did, upon so brief an acquaintance.”

“Then what am I to marry, my lord, if not your goodness?”

“My self-interest. It is steadier than virtue and far less inclined to take a holiday.” He held her gaze. “I require a wife and a legitimate heir. You require a name strong enough to keep Sir Roland from your daughter. Once we marry, any attack upon you becomes an attack upon my household, and any claim upon Sophy becomes an intrusion into it. I am proud enough not to tolerate either.”

It was a strange comfort, but a credible one. What stood between Sophy and the Hemsworths was not love, which Victoria distrusted, nor duty, which she had worn like a collar for nine years. It was his interest, reinforced by pride. Virtue might be reasoned around; vanity was generally less accommodating.

“I do not love you,” she said, testing how the words might sound within a marriage.

“I should hope not. We met on Tuesday.” A flicker touched the corner of his mouth. “I am not offering love, Lady Hemsworth. I am offering a secure household, a name no court will question, and terms plainly understood between us. You may keep your love. You have had poor use of it thus far, and I have no wish to demand what I have not earned.”

The plainness ought to have offended her. Instead, it steadied her.

She glanced towards Amelia, who sat very still at the writing desk, then towards the closed door, beyond which the Hemsworths waited to learn whether they had frightened her into obedience. Sophy’s future had been weighed and bargained over all morning, and Victoria had heard enough.

“I will marry you,” she said. “Not because I want another husband. I have had one, and I would sooner have a fever. I will marry you because I will not lose my daughter, and because this arrangement serves us both.”

“That,” Elias said, “is an answer I can believe.”

Amelia’s pen, still dry, moved at last between her fingers.

“Shall we tell them?” Victoria asked.

“I suppose we must.” His expression remained composed, though satisfaction touched it. “But I see no reason to relieve them of their uncertainty before propriety requires it.”

“You are enjoying this.”

“Only the part in which your relations discover that their plan has failed. The rest I take seriously.”

For the first time since Ruth had gone through the carriage window, Victoria very nearly smiled.