Fifteen

James made certain that his party arrived well ahead of the start of the play the following evening. His goal was to be obvious to the entire audience. Cecelia looked lovely in a pale-rose gown with a spray of flowers twined in her blond hair. She appeared poised and serene. He didn’t think anyone would spot her anxiety. Lady Wilton was her usual imperturbably fashionable self. James dared anyone to challenge her. He was prepared to do social battle and to triumph this time. They settled in their box, ignoring the stares and whispers that rose around them.

“So now we must look carefree and chat,” said Cecelia. James heard strain in her tone.

“Indeed,” said Lady Wilton. “And I have a good deal to say.” She was clearly pleased to have James cornered for an entire evening. “Ferrington,” she added with a steely glint in her eye.

James held up a hand. “I have found an inquiry agent to set on his track. He wants a place to begin. What can you tell me about your lost earl? Where should I send this fellow first?”

“If I knew that, I would already have looked there,” replied his grandmother acerbically.

“Sent your enterprising footman perhaps?” asked James, unable to resist.

The old lady scowled.

“Smiles, Grandmamma,” said James. “Don’t forget.” Not that the entire ton wasn’t accustomed to Lady Wilton’s glowers.

“Insufferable boy,” she muttered. But she smiled for their observers.

“Could Ferrington have gone back to America?” asked Cecelia.

“America?” James had not thought to send anyone so far.

Lady Wilton snorted. “Of course he hasn’t. No one walks away from an earldom.”

“And yet he seems to have done so,” James pointed out.

“Unless something happened to him?” said Cecelia. “What if he was attacked by footpads?”

“All of his things and a horse I had purchased for his use disappeared with him,” said Lady Wilton. “Hardly the work of footpads.”

“So why and where has he gone?” James asked. “Let us begin at the beginning, Grandmamma. He was here in London.”

“The beginning is my daughter’s marriage to the earlier Earl of Ferrington,” Lady Wilton interrupted. “Sixty years ago.”

“Yes I know, but…”

“She had two sons,” Lady Wilton continued, in the tone of one reciting an oft-told tale. “An heir and a scapegrace instead of a spare. Ralph. We had to send him off to America before he was eighteen.”

“Had to?” echoed James. He felt a surge of pity for the lad. He saw the same emotion in the Cecelia’s eyes.

“He was intractable,” Lady Wilton went on. “Plunged into every vice from a scandalously early age. It was the best solution.”

“Until you needed him again,” murmured Cecelia.

James glanced at her.

Lady Wilton merely nodded. “Because my elder grandson got himself killed on the hunting field without producing an heir. So we had to go looking for Ralph.”

“You didn’t know what had become of him?” Cecelia sounded shocked.

“We heard he made a dreadful marriage. Years ago. After that…” The old woman made a brushing motion. “But we finally tracked down his son.”

“Ralph’s?” James had rather lost track of this proliferation of people.

“Yes, Tereford. Have you not been paying attention?” Lady Wilton bared her yellowed teeth in what might have appeared to be a smile, from a distance. “I had this American fetched. A shabby, rag-mannered fellow. Prone to lounging. Wished to be called Jack, if you please! But I informed him that I was willing to lick him into reasonable shape to fit his new position. Despite his dreadful mother. The next day, he was gone.”

“How very odd of him,” said James. He saw Cecelia catch his tone. They exchanged a look of mingled humor and sympathy for his grandmother’s victim. “Might he have gone to his mother’s family?”

“She had none.”

“Everyone has a family, Grandmamma.” James was rather wishing that he did not.

Lady Wilton waved this aside. “The worst sort of riffraff.”

“What was her name?”

“I have no idea.”

“Then how do you know…?”

The old woman leaned forward and spoke softly, as if fearful of being overheard, and murmured, “Her people were Travelers.”

James frowned. He had heard of this rambling tribe. “They are rather like gypsies?”

“Quiet!” hissed his grandmother. “We do not want that known!”

James’s pity for the new earl increased. If he did return to London, he was not going to have an easy time of it.

“I wonder if he might have gone to see Ferrington Hall?” Cecelia asked.

“To take a look at his inheritance?” said Lady Wilton. “But if he saw the place, why has he not come back to claim it? It’s a substantial estate.”

“I’ll send the agent up there to look around,” said James.

“And what else?” demanded the old woman. Impatience was an inadequate description of her tone.

“What do you suggest?” James asked her.

“I don’t know. You’re the head of the family now. Think of something!”

All the responses that occurred to him were ones his grandmother would not appreciate. Thankfully, the play was beginning, and he was able to drop the conversation to listen. But James wondered if this new earl had returned to America. Faced with Lady Wilton’s scorn, he would have been tempted to do so. Presumably the fellow had a life of some sort across the sea.

Laughter at an actor’s antics filled the theater, including a ripple from Cecelia at his side. James turned to gaze at her delicate profile. He could trace signs of strain in her face, though they would not be visible from other boxes. He hated to see it. Throughout their long association she had been the calm solver of problems, the one who found a way to untangle the worst snarls. She’d never turned away from a dispute. To see her shaken by this wretched excuse for a prince was dreadful.

She turned, noticed his gaze, and smiled. The trust in her blue eyes, the lovely curve of her lips, led James to a moment of stark clarity. She mattered more to him than anyone else in his life. There was no one he knew better, none he valued so much. He realized that he couldn’t imagine his life without Cecelia. He…required her. He had for years, all unaware. But what did she feel? She’d refused his proposal. When she was in trouble, she hadn’t turned to him. Had he ever been more than a burden to her? A void seemed to open in James’s chest at the question.

But she’d kissed him. She’d wanted to. She’d melted in his arms. She was not the sort of person to do that lightly. She must feel the bond that linked them.

Unsettled by the demanding intensity in James’s face, Cecelia turned away. She watched the actors go through their speeches and tried to ignore the audience all around, many of whom continued to stare at her rather than the drama. Lady Wilton’s lost earl had temporarily diverted her from her own predicament. But now she was again conscious of innumerable sharp eyes focused on her. Much of society attended the theater to socialize and gossip rather than follow any action on the stage, and Cecelia felt that tonight she was the play. She was pretending nonchalance, presenting a picture of ease while emotion roiled unpleasantly inside her. She felt that she was succeeding, but the strain was considerable.

Some people loved being the center of attention, craved it even. But she had found over the course of this unusual season that she did not. Her early excitement had given way to unease. And now she had learned that a reigning belle was the target of envy and malice as well as admiration. She hadn’t quite understood that before, from the outside. There were many in society avid to see her fall. And one, of course, who was trying to ensure it.

She’d misjudged Prince Karl so completely. Any shame she felt was for her own blindness. Had her head been turned by the flurry of social success? Had the thrill of James’s offer addled her wits? She’d had no experience of a man like the prince, but this was no excuse in her eyes. She’d made an idiotic mistake.

Did Prince Karl really expect that she would now make another? Yield to him under the threat of disgrace? Could he be so blind? No, he was punishing her for refusing his advances. He was a smug, vindictive blackguard.

Cecelia diverted herself by imagining that she could challenge Prince Karl to a duel. It would be so very satisfying to slap his smug face with a glove. Did anyone do that these days? It was a sad loss if not. Think of his surprise and chagrin.

She would accuse him of tarnishing her name with lies. Bid him name his seconds and give her an opportunity to redeem her honor. And then to pace off the steps in some misty dawn, to turn, and take a shot at him. She had never fired a pistol, but it didn’t look difficult. She couldn’t kill him, but surely she could wound him a bit, drain off some of his infuriating complacency?

But the prince would choose swords, Cecelia realized as she embroidered on this fantasy. Of course he would. He’d delighted in besting James, who knew how to handle a blade. Prince Karl would make her look like a clumsy fool on the dueling ground. He would thoroughly humiliate her. She could not…

Cecelia shook her head. She was pretending she could actually fight him. In fact, she could only sit here, as decoratively as possible, looking as if she didn’t care. It was no wonder that beleaguered ladies of the past had resorted to underhanded weapons, like poison.

“Now we are for it,” said Lady Wilton.

Looking up, Cecelia saw that the first interval had arrived. This was an opportunity for visitors to come and interrogate them. No doubt they would do so. She braced to offer bright confidence and carefree delight.

But the very first to appear at the door of their box was an unwelcome surprise. Prince Karl stood there, tall, blond, and arrogant in one of his vaguely military coats. How dared he? James rose to face him. Cecelia remained where she was. She would not speak to him.

The intruder bowed. “Lady Wilton, one sees you everywhere,” he said. “And the so charming Miss Vainsmede.” His smile became a leer. She tried not to see it. “Milord duke has reappeared also. To hit me again perhaps? Since his first effort was so…feeble?”

James longed to plant a facer on that sneering countenance. He could almost feel the gratifying crunch of the blow, the welcome pain in his fist. It would be splendid to see this knave reel back and fall. But that would simply cause further scandal. Some might see it as the prince’s vindication.

He struggled with his temper. The prince had put them all on display. Those in nearby boxes had certainly heard what he said. He was here to embarrass them as publicly as possible. James needed to defeat him with his own weapons. He groped for the right phrase.

And then indecision subsided as the idea came to him. James said nothing at all. He looked Prince Karl straight in the eye and then slowly and ostentatiously turned his back. James sat down, catching the eyes of his companions. He nodded at them. His grandmother looked startled, Cecelia shocked. But they both took his cue and turned away from the visitor as well. And then the three of them acted as if Prince Karl did not exist. He had, metaphorically, vanished from their lives. He would never be recognized in their ambit again. The cut direct.

Murmurs washed through the theater, a susurrus of delicious horror. It seemed as if every eye was now upon them. James listened for movement from behind. The prince might decide to retaliate with words or even a blow, which he would have to answer. But there was nothing for what seemed like an age but was in reality only a few moments. Then the swish of cloth suggested that Prince Karl had left their box.

James did not lean back or sigh. He made sure to show no reaction whatsoever. But he was relieved. He had put his social position and credit up against the prince’s. It was a different kind of duel, and it remained to be seen whether his adversary was as skilled at this type. But he had won the first throw.

“What have you done?” murmured Cecelia.

James turned, smiled as if she’d made some commonplace remark, and quietly said, “We will not discuss it here.”

“No indeed,” replied his grandmother, smiling like a sated vulture. “We will…rampantly enjoy the play. But I must say, James, I didn’t think you had that in you.”

“Reckless audacity?” muttered Cecelia.

“Resolute daring,” said Lady Wilton. “We will see what comes next.”

“What will the prince do?”

“We will not speak of it here,” James repeated.

“No, we will leave that to everyone else,” replied his grandmother, running her eyes over the chattering crowd.

Few audience members paid attention to the play after that. They talked through the action at a level that made some of the actors sulk visibly onstage. James knew that people would take sides. His action had set off a kind of war in society, but it was one he thought he could win. He’d been an admired member of the haut ton for years and had a host of friends and acquaintances. He’d recently been elevated to one of the highest titles in the land. Prince Karl, on the other hand, was a foreign stranger. He would be leaving England at some point, so there was less future advantage in backing him. Some might be spiteful just because they could be, but James thought they would be few.

James’s party endured the stares and watched the rest of the evening’s program in their roles as carefree playgoers. They laughed as much as was reasonable. No one else visited them. “Afraid to,” Cecelia murmured to James. “Who knows what you might do?”

He smiled at her. Not sardonically. He was feeling something very like joy after acting strongly in her defense.

They lingered after the end of the performance, letting the room empty out, which allowed them to reach their carriage without pushing through a crowd. Once inside the vehicle, Lady Wilton said, “I haven’t seen that tried since the Regent cut Brummell.”

“Which did not go well for the Regent,” said Cecelia.

The old lady shrugged. “He had less reason for the snub. And Tereford is rather more popular than the Regent.”

James grimaced. “Please do not say that where anyone else can hear you, Grandmamma.” The Prince Regent was notoriously jealous of his consequence. And petty when he felt it threatened.

She snorted. “I cut my eyeteeth before you were born, my boy. You do not need to tell me.” The vehicle slowed. “Here we are, Miss Vainsmede. You may tell your aunt I delivered you home safe and sound.” Her eyes gleamed with sarcasm in the dimness.

James handed her down and escorted her to the door. There was time for nothing but a squeeze of her fingers. And then she was gone, and his grandmother was summoning him back.

***

Sitting alone in her drawing room early the next morning, Cecelia was still prey to jumbled thoughts. She’d enjoyed snubbing the prince. There was no doubt about that. After the way he’d treated her, he deserved it. And she’d been touched by James’s decisive defense. “He might have consulted me,” she murmured. “Although I don’t believe he planned it in advance.” The cut had been an impulsive rejection, an automatic response to Prince Karl’s intrusion and sneering remarks.

The problem was, the way things had unfolded made this seem a fight over her between the two men. Again. Still! Like their mock fencing battle and the rivalry they’d exhibited before the ton. So many people insisted on seeing her as a prize to be won. It made her think of the conversation she and her friends had had about their role in society. “Young men roam, young ladies stay home,” she muttered. Yet for much of her life she’d managed her father’s affairs. She dealt with tenants and tradesmen and servants. She’d played the diplomat when James and her father wrangled. She’d planned projects and seen them completed. There had to be some way to take control of her situation herself.

Aunt Valeria came in. “Cecelia, you are up early today.” She didn’t look pleased.

Her aunt was accustomed to having the drawing room to herself for the first hours of the day, before it was invaded, as she put it, by Cecelia and the threat of callers. She went to her customary chair by the table and set out her notebook. Next she would open it and become immersed in something she’d written there. She would pretend that Cecelia did not exist. After a bit, her presence would actually fade from her aunt’s mind, Cecelia believed. The pattern was engrained. Aunt Valeria’s sporadic new attempts to be a chaperone would not affect it.

Aunt Valeria did as she pleased. So had her mother, Cecelia remembered, on at least one important occasion. She had not sat waiting with folded hands for her fate to find her. The seed of a radical idea took root in Cecelia’s mind. “Aunt Valeria, do you think my mother was happy?” she asked.

“What?” Annoyance at being interrupted filled the word.

“You told me that Mama chose her own future like the queen bee.”

“That is not what I said. I told you that the queen flies high and fast to test her suitors and find the strongest.”

“Is that not a choice?”

“Not as I understand the word,” replied her aunt.

Cecelia waved the distinction aside. “You said that Mama decided she wanted Papa and went and got him.”

Aunt Valeria nodded, her eyes straying to her notebook.

“Do you think she was happy with her choice?”

“I really do not…”

“You knew her for more than fifteen years,” Cecelia said. “You stayed with us often during that time. You must have formed some conclusions.”

“I am not particularly adept at deciphering people, as I’m certain you have noticed.”

That was true.

“She loved you very much,” Aunt Valeria added. “She was delighted to have a daughter. She told me so.”

“I know.” Cecelia examined her memories. “I think she was happy, mostly,” she said. “I don’t think she regretted her choice.”

Her aunt examined her, frowning as if Cecelia was a knotty conundrum. “From what I have heard, I do not think this prince would be open to the sort of arguments that…”

“Him!” Cecelia could imbue a single word with emotion also. In this case, contempt.

“We are not talking of…?”

“He is an irrelevant annoyance,” said Cecelia. “Like a wasp buzzing about one of your hives.”

“Wasps are not irrelevant. They can be quite dangerous.”

“Not a wasp then. Some inconsequential thing.” Cecelia’s brain was full of another topic entirely.

“Then I am not sure what we’re talking about right now.”

“There is no need for you to be.”

“I would so like to agree, Cecelia.” Her aunt’s gaze moved to her notebook again. She set a yearning hand upon it. “But I fear I cannot. I may be a poor excuse for a chaperone, as Lady Wilton said. Yet I can see that something has agitated you.”

She ought to know. Cecelia told her what had transpired at the play.

Aunt Valeria sighed when she finished. “No more than the fellow deserved, but it will raise the talk to an intolerable pitch. Humans are such exhausting creatures.”

“At least they don’t have stingers,” Cecelia joked.

Her aunt’s round face creased with rare concern. “But they do, Cecelia, and I do not wish you to be hurt.”

“I know.” Aunt Valeria did care, in her peculiar way, even if she was not very good at it. “Why don’t you go out to your hives? You will feel better there.”

“I wish to. Very much. I cannot help it. But I won’t abandon you. You know we will have a flood of morning callers after the events you have described to me.”

It was true.

“I won’t leave you to be…swarmed by them.” She smiled at her feeble jest.

Must she be? Cecelia had faced down the gossips before the play. She’d shown them she wasn’t cowed. She’d cut the prince in public. She had nothing more to say to the ton and much to ponder. “I believe I will tell the servants that we are not in to visitors today.”

“Really?” Her aunt looked absurdly hopeful.

“Really.”

Cecelia went down the stairs to give the order and encountered Sarah, Charlotte, and Harriet, arriving at the earliest possible moment for a morning call. Cecelia beckoned to them before telling the footman to admit no one else.

“Oh, Cecelia,” said Sarah when they’d settled in the drawing room. “Such a furor. We had to come. We said we were going walking in the park.”

“You shouldn’t visit here secretly,” Cecelia replied. “I don’t want to cause trouble in your families.” The idea was mortifying on a number of levels.

“We don’t care!” replied Charlotte Deeping.

Harriet Finch’s expression suggested to Cecelia that this wasn’t true for all.

“Ada was sorry not to join us,” Charlotte added. “She is arguing with her mother about bride clothes today.”

“Still! With the wedding only two days away,” said Sarah, shaking her head.

“Ada wants garments suitable for restoring a moldering castle,” said Charlotte. “Her mother is partial to delicate gauze and lace.”

“Peter made the mistake of getting between them,” said Harriet dryly. “Social skills not being part of his…charm.”

“Who is Peter?” asked Aunt Valeria, looking interested for the first time since their visitors arrived.

“Ada’s future husband.”

“A groom should never intervene in wedding plans,” said Aunt Valeria, as if it was an adage she’d heard and committed to memory with no expectation of ever needing herself.

“I believe he has learned that,” replied Harriet.

Sarah leaned forward. “But Cecelia, the play last night! How I wish I had been there.”

“It was too bad of you not to warn us so that we could observe,” said Charlotte.

“It wasn’t planned,” said Cecelia. “It was more of a spontaneous…”

“Combustion?” finished Harriet.

Cecelia had to smile. “Of a sort.”

“Prince Karl must be dreadfully angry,” said Sarah.

“Well, I am extremely angry at him,” said Cecelia. “Should my anger matter any less?”

She received three surprised looks and a frown from her aunt.

“Do you remember those jokes we made?” Cecelia continued. “Young men gamble, young ladies amble. Young men drink, young ladies shrink. Why should it be so?”

“It’s not a case of should,” said Harriet. “But rather of is.”

“Unless one wishes to be…” Sarah broke off self-consciously.

“Gossiped about?” replied Cecelia. “Criticized, even ostracized?”

“Well, yes,” said Sarah. “I find malice very hard to bear.”

“Who does not?” answered Cecelia. “That is what they count on. But if one…” Her voice trailed off.

“Cecelia,” said Aunt Valeria.

They were all looking at her with varying degrees of concern, Cecelia saw. “Don’t worry, I shall think before I act.”

“Act how?” asked Charlotte.

“I’m not completely certain. Yet.”

There were sounds below and a moment later, James strolled into the drawing room, every inch the handsomest man in London. He stopped and surveyed the company. “A footman keep me out? Really, Cecelia?”

The three young callers broke into a round of applause.

James looked startled, then acknowledged their reaction with a smile and a bow.

“The cut direct,” said Charlotte. “Delivered with great style, it seems.”

“Indeed,” he said. “And this morning I am here to take the consequences.”

“Consequences?” echoed Cecelia.

“The onslaught of hideous harpies,” James replied. “The morning callers ravenous for scandal. Present company excepted, of course.” He turned to Cecelia. “You didn’t think I would leave you to face them alone?”

The look in his eyes made Cecelia’s heart pound. The idea that had sprouted in her mind produced branches.

“We can plot strategy in the intervals of routing the enemy,” he added.

“I have decided not to receive visitors today,” she said. “Any more visitors, that is.”

“Ah.” James looked thoughtful. “Thus my…discussion with your footman. Do you think that wise?”

“I don’t care. Let them wonder.”

“Our adversary is unlikely to be silent,” James said.

“The prince? What can he do? Whine that we turned our backs on him?”

“He does seem rather more…resourceful than that.”

“He’s already done his worst,” said Cecelia. She felt somehow certain of that. He’d expected to frighten and cow her. He was a bully unused to opposition, and he’d gotten far more than he’d imagined.

“It seems I have no reason to stay then.” James waited, but Cecelia didn’t protest. She needed to speak to him. But it must be alone, and Aunt Valeria had begun making that difficult. He acknowledged all of them with another bow and took his leave. Had he looked regretful? She thought so. She’d discover the truth soon.

“You sound so confident,” said Charlotte.

“Do I?” Cecelia looked at her three younger friends. She so appreciated their steadfast support. “You should go,” she told them. “You shouldn’t call here when you’ve been forbidden.”

“We want to help!” said Sarah.

“If we can,” added Harriet.

“I shall help myself,” said Cecelia, her mind suddenly made up.