“Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?”
—JANE AUSTEN, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
Max had had a good day. The second of the two houses Bartlett had found in Mayfair was most suitable, and Max had instructed Bartlett to buy it. The trip to Richmond had been delightful, the road good, the weather chilly but dry and the inn where they’d stopped for lunch excellent. It was everything he’d missed about England.
To top off the day, Freddy’s friend was indeed selling up, and Max had purchased a phaeton and a beautiful pair of high steppers that would give Freddy’s sixteen-mile-an-hour pair a run for their money, as well as a pair of matched bays that he thought would suit his aunt’s barouche very well. They would all arrive tomorrow.
He’d planned to round off the day with dinner at the club with Freddy and some old acquaintances, and had just dropped past to change his clothes and inform his aunt. Her door was open. He glanced in.
“What on earth . . . ?”
The bedchamber was an explosion of color and fabric and garments, a feminine Aladdin’s cave. Even more so than usual. “What are you doing?” he asked, eyeing the pile of fabrics cautiously. Presumably there were kittens buried under it somewhere.
“Max, my dear.” His aunt’s eyes were a little red rimmed, as though she’d been weeping.
In two strides Max reached her. He took her hands in his. “Aunt Bea, what is it? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, nothing. We’re going through all my old gowns, and oh, the memories.” She waved a crumpled wisp of lace. “A few sentimental tears, that’s all, but mostly tears of laughter.”
“I see.” His gaze roamed over the tumbled mass of clothing.
“No, you don’t, dear boy, but never mind. I’ve had the most delightful time reliving my youth. The gels have had me in stitches.” She chuckled. “Stitches, gels, did you hear? I made a pun.”
All the girls except Daisy were dressed in old-fashioned clothing, the dresses sagging a little, as if they were children dressing up. But Abby was no child. She was dressed—half dressed, he saw with a leap of his pulse—in an eighteenth-century brocade gown with panniers. She moved slightly, defensively.
Her back was to the freestanding cheval looking glass and he saw at once that the dress was not properly laced. . . .
She was naked from the nape of her neck to just below the small of her back. His breath caught in his chest as his gaze traced the graceful line of her spine.
Unaware of what the looking glass revealed, she faced him calmly, secure in the belief that the gown she held to her chest protected her modesty. Her shoulders and arms, as well as her back, were completely bare. She was wearing no chemise.
If she dropped the gown . . .
A delicate wild-rose color flushed her just-concealed breasts, and slowly spread to her cheeks. She’d noticed him staring.
With an effort he dragged his gaze off her. Off her image in the looking glass.
“These clever gels are going to make new dresses from my old clothes—we’re checking to see what is suitable.”
“Everything.” Daisy sighed. “It’s all beautiful.”
His aunt’s words finally penetrated Max’s fogged brain. “From old clothes? Good God, why?”
His aunt shrugged. “Exactly what I said myself, but they insist. So I’m giving them all of these.” She gestured to the welter of clothing that covered the room.
The girls gasped. Miss Chance gasped too and then had to hitch her gown higher. As he watched, she stole an arm around behind her. Had she felt a draft? She gasped again and stepped behind a screen, blocking his view of her slender, creamy back and shoulders.
From behind the screen he could hear rustling noises, and in his mind’s eye he saw the green silk dress ripple down her body and settle in a puddle at her feet. He imagined her, like a Botticelli Venus, rising naked from a green pool. He swallowed to get rid of the hard lump in his throat, and forced his mind off the image, telling himself the sounds he heard were nothing but that gray woolen dress being dragged over her body.
“Old clothes? For God’s sake, I have a silk warehouse, Aunt Bea,” Max said irritably. “Anything you need, you can take from there.”
That got another series of gasps and a whole lot of excited exclamations, in the midst of which Miss Chance stepped out from behind the screen with heightened color, as he’d expected, thoroughly swaddled in the gray dress. She glanced at him, bent down and picked up the ginger kitten. Max couldn’t see her expression.
He decided to drop his bombshell now, while his aunt was in a good mood. “It’s no bad thing you’re sorting through your old possessions, Aunt Bea. We’re moving house.”
“Moving house?” Aunt Bea repeated. She groped around in the tumble of clothing on her bed and found her lorgnette. She raised it and peered at him with a beady expression. “Not Davenham Hall? Not the country? Because I’ll tell you now, Max, you won’t get me—”
“To Mayfair.”
“Mayfair?”
“I purchased a house on Berkeley Square this morning. We move into it next week. So you can start the servants packing, Aunt Bea.”
There was a stunned silence. Finally Aunt Bea said, “You bought a house?”
“I did.”
“And we’re moving? And just when did you think to tell me?”
Max smiled. “Just now, and there’s no point arguing, Aunt Bea. We move in at the beginning of next week.”
His aunt stared at him through her lorgnette. “And what if I say I don’t want to move?”
He just looked at her. “As I said, you have to the end of the week. And now, if you’ll excuse me, ladies, I have a dinner engagement at the club. I bid you all good evening.”
And before anyone could say a word, he left.
There was a short silence. The girls looked at Lady Beatrice, concerned for her feelings.
Lady Beatrice looked back. “Well,” she said after a moment. “I do like a masterful man.”
“You what?” Jane gasped.
“As long as he does exactly what I want, that is.”
“And if not?” Abby asked.
“Oh, then he’s impossibly arrogant and interfering.”
Abby smiled. “And in this case?”
“In this case I’m delighted, though I won’t tell my nephew that, of course. Not for a week, at least,” Lady Beatrice confided. “It really doesn’t do to let men think they can have their way just like that.”
“You really won’t mind leaving this house?”
“Not at all. I’m fed up with it, if you want to know the truth. I’ve lived here since I was a young bride, more years than I care to count. It’s been my London home—my only home since my husband died—and I never did like it in the first place. Nor did I like Davenham Hall—that’s the country seat of the Davenhams, my dears. I haven’t had to go there in years, thank goodness. Max arranged something before he went away, so I wasn’t bothered with it. I never could abide the country. So noisy with all those ducks and dogs and whatnot. No, not ducks—peacocks. My late mother-in-law adored the creatures and kept a dozen of them. Have you ever heard the cry of a peacock?” She shuddered. “Disembodied shrieks from the grave—enough to curdle your blood.”
Abby laughed. “So you don’t mind moving to Mayfair?”
“Not at all, my dear. High time I had a change, and Mayfair is where everyone lives these days. Of course, it’s bound to be a little poky—”
“Poky? On Berkeley Square?”
“Exactly, all those modern houses are. I daresay it will have only half a dozen bedrooms. Still, that’s to be expected. Nobody in the city builds houses on a decent scale anymore. We’ll squeeze in, I suppose.”
Abby smiled, but didn’t respond. She was too busy wondering whether Lord Davenham’s plans included the Chance sisters or not.
“He said he was moving his aunt to Mayfair. And himself. He didn’t say anything about us going with them,” Damaris said later that evening.
So Abby wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the omission. Lady Beatrice had retired for the night, and the girls had gathered in the small, cozy downstairs parlor.
“You think he’s going to leave us behind?” Jane said.
“Lady Bea won’t let him,” Daisy said.
They all looked at Abby. “Daisy’s right—Lady Beatrice won’t let us go without a fight, but it does change everything.”
“I don’t see why,” Jane said.
“It will be his house, and what he says goes. If he wants us gone. . .”
There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the fire crackling in the grate.
“Do we have enough saved to go to Bath yet?” Damaris asked.
Abby shook her head.
“With the dresses Lady Bea gave us we’ll have enough material for the clothes we need,” Daisy said. “But it’ll take a lot more than a week to make them.”
“Did you hear what he said about the silk warehouse?” Jane said. “Don’t get your hopes up. That was for his aunt, not us,” Abby said.
“New silk. I wonder what that’d be like?” Daisy murmured. “I’ve never made nothing from new. Never cut into anything that hasn’t been worn before.”
“You’ll just have to talk him ’round, Abby,” Jane said.
“Me? What makes you think he’d listen to me?”
“He likes you.”
“Nonsense.”
Jane shrugged. “You don’t see the way he looks at you when he thinks you’re not looking.”
“It’s true, Abby,” Damaris said. “I believe he desires you.”
“Desire is even better. When a man desires you, you have him on a string.”
“Jane! Where did you pick up such notions?” As if she didn’t know.
Jane gave her a knowing look. “You don’t need to look at me like that—I knew that much even back at the Pillbury.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have the first idea how to influence Lord Davenham, even if he did desire me, which I very much doubt. He is betrothed, recall.” And if he did desire her, well, Abby knew where that path led. It was playing with fire, she knew to her cost.
For all Jane’s worldly talk of desire and leading men about on strings, she was still basically innocent and heart-whole. Jane hadn’t a clue of the dangers involved, of the pain that could result.
Abby might be attracted to Lord Davenham, but she’d never act on it. A man’s desire was not anything Abby wanted to evoke again. She’d been badly burned once, and never wanted to feel such pain again.
But talk, reason, argument—that she could do. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” she promised.
Later, as they were preparing for bed, Abby sought her sister out. She was still a little disturbed about what Jane had revealed when they’d been discussing marriage earlier. “I thought you remembered Mama and Papa being happy together.”
“Well, I think I do, but mainly I remember you telling me how happy they were.”
“Because they were happy. And they loved us both very much.”
Jane nodded. “I know.”
“Then why wouldn’t you want that for yourself?”
Jane gave her a rueful look. “Because they’re just stories, Abby. All I really remember about Papa is being lifted up by him, and feeling so safe and tall in his arms. And his smile. But I remember Mama’s stories about her come-out and the balls and everything, because you used to tell them to me when we were in the Pill. What I mainly remember of Mama is her being sick and coughing all the time.”
Abby looked at her in dismay. “Don’t you remember anything else about them? Anything good?”
Jane shrugged. “Mainly I remember being cold, Abby, and being hungry and frightened, and a couple of times having to sneak out of our lodgings in the middle of the night because Papa couldn’t pay the rent. And I remember Mama worrying endlessly and trying not to let Papa see, and Papa doing the same, and you worrying most of all.”
“Me?”
“Oh, Abby, you spent your entire childhood worrying about all of us, and you do it still. And I thought, if that’s what marrying for love means, I’m never going to do it. I don’t want my children to go through what we did.”
“I never thought . . . I didn’t realize you were so aware of all the bad things. You were so small.” Only six when Mama had died.
“At the time I didn’t understand, but I remembered a lot. And I think when you’re small you remember bad things more easily than good ones. After you left the Pill, I had plenty of time to think about it and realize in retrospect what it all meant. I decided then that I was never going to go hungry, or be cold or frightened again.”
“Oh, Jane.” Abby hugged her sister. “And then you were kidnapped.”
Jane gave her a determined look. “Yes, and it has to mean something that I escaped from the brothel—unscathed—against all the odds. And in that attic room, I could have died of that fever but I didn’t. That’s when I made up my mind once and for all—we’ve got one chance in life, Abby, and I mean to seize what I can to make mine better.”
She grasped Abby’s hands in hers. “Mama was given a pretty face and she wasted it. I’m not going to waste the only gift I’ve been given. Somehow I’m going to marry well and get myself a better life. And, big sister, I’m going to take you with me.”
Abby hugged Jane tightly. She didn’t agree with her—loving Papa was the right thing for Mama, no matter what the cost. To believe otherwise was a betrayal of them and their love; it was the one certain thing in her childhood—and if she didn’t believe in that, well, she couldn’t believe in anything.
Abby hadn’t forgotten the bad things either, but she remembered more than Jane, and the most important thing she remembered was that the love between her parents and their love for their children made the bad times better.
But in another way her little sister was right: They had a chance, here with Lady Beatrice, to make a better life, and she should seize it with both hands.
Seduction was out of the question. Even if she were the kind of woman who could seduce men to her will—which she wasn’t—it was too risky, too painful. The woman always paid the price.
Still, Abby could try to talk to Lord Davenham. You never knew; he might listen, though she doubted it.
She might not be the seductive type, but she did have brains. If only she could think of a plan.
Lady Beatrice spent the morning after Lord Davenham’s surprise announcement writing notes to all her old friends, informing them that she’d been ill but was now well on the way to full recovery, and from the following week onward would be in residence at her new home in Berkeley Square, where she would welcome callers. The last two words were heavily underlined, and thus would carry, Abby suspected, almost as much weight as a royal decree.
The first batch of notes had barely been delivered when, late that afternoon, the front doorbell rang. A few moments later Featherby carried in a calling card on a silver salver. Lady Beatrice inspected it through her lorgnette.
“Clara Beddington!” she exclaimed with delight. “One of my oldest friends. Show her in, Featherby.” To the girls she said, “Good thing I decided to dress and come down this afternoon. Wouldn’t do to have Clara see me lolling about in bed—terrible gossip, Clara.” She tidied her hair, straightened her beautiful cashmere shawl and sat up straight.
Featherby announced the visitor. “Lady Beddington, m’lady.”
A small, plump woman trailing several shawls and a sumptuous fur entered excitedly. She hurried across the room and the two women embraced. “My dear Bea, when I received your note I simply couldn’t wait. Do you know, I cannot recall how many times I called on you in the last year, only to be told by that horrid butler that you weren’t at home—not even to moi! I’m so glad you got rid of him, the disagreeable creature—this new fellow is so much better!” She bestowed a gracious smile, two shawls and a frilled purple oiled-silk parasol on Featherby, who received them all with unruffled composure. “Do you know, I was so worried about you that I wrote to your nephew. And I can see you’ve been ill—not surprising, given the truly appalling weather we’ve been having—can you believe this is supposed to be summer? Summer? It’s absolutely freezing!” She retrieved one of the shawls from Featherby and flung it around her neck in a dramatic movement that caused Max the kitten to pounce on the tempting fringe.
“Good God, is that a kitten? How amusing. I dislike cats. This illness of yours, it’s nothing infectious, is it? I should have asked that first, shouldn’t I? Never mind, I’m sure you wouldn’t pass it on. And how are you, my dear?”
“I’m well, Clara, thank you, and you’re looking the same as ever. It’s nothing anyone can catch, and thanks to these dear gels—my nieces, you know—I’m getting stronger every day.” She introduced the four girls to Lady Beddington and then said, “Now, I know it’s atrociously ill-mannered of me, but would you mind terribly, Clara, if we let Abby finish the chapter she was reading me when you arrived? She’s only just started chapter two and it’s at a very interesting point. It won’t take more than about ten minutes.” She glanced at Featherby and added, “And in the meantime my butler can bring us tea and cakes.”
“You’re reading books now, Bea? Good heavens! Well, of course I don’t mind, if that’s what you want.” But though she allowed herself to be seated in a comfortable chair by the fire, it was clear she thought the request a peculiar one.
However, as Abby read on, Lady Beddington edged forward in her chair, twisting her shawl into a rope, listening eagerly, until by the end of the chapter she was perched right on the edge of her chair, hanging on every word.
When Abby finished the chapter Lady Beddington fell back in her chair, exclaiming, “Bless my soul, I never knew a book could be so entertaining.”
“I know,” Lady Beatrice said. “Before these gels came to live with me, I can’t remember when I last read a book. All the books I’d ever been made to read were dreary, improving things, full of morals and lessons and homilies or facts—and that’s when I could understand the dratted things. But Abby and the gels always find the most thrilling tales, and the only thing that’s improved when we’re finished is my mood.”
“I wish I’d read the start of that one,” Lady Beddington said.
Abby held out the book to show her the title. “You could always buy a copy, or borrow it from the circulating library.”
Lady Beddington squinted at the cover, then shook her head, dislodging her shawl. “No point, my dear. I can’t read much of anything these days. Eyesight ain’t what it was.”
“I know,” Lady Beatrice agreed. “Which is why these gels are a godsend.”
“And you read so well, Miss Chance. As entertaining as a night at the theater, I do assure you.”
Featherby arrived with the tea and cakes, and Abby and the girls retreated to leave the two old friends to catch up.
A couple of hours later Abby was summoned to return.
“Lady Beddington is going to stay for dinner, Abby, dear.”
Abby smiled at their visitor. It was clear her visit had done Lady Beatrice a lot of good. “How delightful. Do you wish me to speak to Cook and—”
“No, no, Featherby can see to that. Lady Beddington has a special request for you—go on, Clara.”
Lady Beddington hesitated, fiddled with the fringe of her shawl and then said, “My dear Miss Chance, would you mind very much reading me the first chapter of that delicious book?”
Abby stared at her in silence for a long moment. An idea had popped into her mind, a crazy, possibly ludicrous idea. . . . If she could bring it about . . . it might just be the solution to all their problems.
“Abby?” Lady Beatrice prompted.
Abby gave a start and picked up the book. “I’m so sorry; I was woolgathering. Of course, I’d be delighted to read it to you, Lady Beddington.” She looked at Lady Beatrice and said, “It’s just that I had . . . an idea.”
Lady Beatrice was sharp as a razor. “About what we discussed the other day? Your sister and society?” Abby nodded.
“Then tell us, my dear. Clara won’t mind.”
Abby explained her idea.
“A literary society?” Lady Beatrice exclaimed, screwing her nose up. “Where they discuss books nobody wants to read, and everyone pretends they’re all very learned and compete to say the most intelligent things?” She grimaced. Her old friend nodded in agreement.
Abby leaned forward eagerly. “Ah, but this won’t be that sort of literary society. It will be fun.”
“Fun?” Lady Beatrice asked doubtfully.
“It’ll be much the same as we already do—one of us will read a chapter at a time, aloud, and then we’ll have conversation, tea and cakes, just as we usually do.”
Lady Beatrice’s eyes narrowed. “No clever remarks? No looking for metaphors and themes and hidden dratted meanings?”
“Not if you don’t want them,” Abby said. “It will be your literary society, after all, and you will make the rules.” Lady Beatrice clearly liked the sound of that.
“Just for the story, then, and the company?” Lady Beddington asked.
Abby nodded. “What do you think?” It wouldn’t exactly introduce Jane to eligible men, but at least they’d have made some connections with their mothers and aunts.
“A literary society for people who don’t want to be improved,” Lady Beatrice said thoughtfully. “Just a good story, with wine and cakes . . . I like it.” She looked at Abby and added, “The kind of thing an eligible young man could be prevailed on to escort his mother to.”
Abby grinned at her optimism. “I’m not so sure of that. It’s not really a young man’s cup of tea—”
“Nonsense, we only need to get them here the first time. Once they meet those pretty gels, they’ll be fighting to come back.”
Abby laughed. “I like your optimism.”
“So when do we start? Officially, I mean,” Lady Beatrice said. “I’ll send out invitations, to start with—”
“And I’ll spread the word,” Lady Beddington said. “Oh, this will be fun, Bea.”
Lady Beatrice rubbed her hands. “It will, indeed. I think it’s a splendid idea, Abby. And, Clara, I don’t think we should mention this to my nephew. He has a tendency to fret, and is sure to say it will be too much for me, which, of course, it isn’t.” She winked at Abby. “Now, my dear, Clara’s waiting for you to read her that first chapter and then it’ll be time for dinner.”
“Well, well, well, it’s been a delightful evening altogether,” Lady Beddington declared as the dinner was drawing to a close. “I can see what you mean about these gels enlivening the house. I wish I had nieces who came up with delicious schemes, but I don’t have any—” She stopped, thought for a moment, then turned a perplexed face to Lady Beatrice. “Thought you were an only child, Bea. Or are the girls your late husband’s nieces?”
Abby waited for Lady Beatrice to reply. A courtesy aunt was how she and the others had decided to deal with Lady Beatrice’s continuing assertion that they were her nieces—the kind of aunt who was a dear friend of the family, and called “aunt” for affection, not blood.
Abby glanced at Lord Davenham. He leaned back in his chair and regarded his aunt with a sardonic, let’s-see-you-explain-this expression.
“No, of course not,” Lady Beatrice said. “They’re no relation at all to Davenham—or to dear Max.”
Lady Beddington looked confused. “Then—”
“They’re my half sisters’ gels, of course—Griselda’s.”
“Griselda?” Lady Beddington blinked.
Griselda? Abby and Jane exchanged glances.
Griselda? Max frowned.
“My mother’s child by her second marriage,” Lady Beatrice said smoothly.
“Aunt Beatrice, will you have some of this delicious asparagus?” Max interrupted. What the devil was she playing at?
“Thank you, no, I detest asparagus.”
Lady Beddington persisted. “I never knew your mother married again.”
“She didn’t.” Max fixed his aunt with a stern look.
“No, not immediately,” she agreed placidly. “Though you shouldn’t be airing our dirty linen, dear boy. Still, we are among friends, are we not? And in the end, they did marry just in time for Griselda to be born. It was very romantic—and perfectly respectable.” She beamed at Miss Chance.
Lady Beddington shook her head. “Well, well, well. I had no idea. I always thought she died shortly after you married Davenham.”
“She did.” Max leaned forward. “Have you attended the opera recently, Lady Beddington? I believe the current Mozart is held to be very good.” He had no idea what was playing at Covent Garden. He didn’t care, as long as the subject was changed.
“No, Max, dear, it’s no use trying to conceal the facts any longer. Mama ran off with an Austrian count,” his irrepressible aunt responded, carefully spearing a single green pea. “My father divorced her, of course, and had it all hushed up. Papa gave it out that she’d died.”
She had died. Max had seen the grave. He frowned at Aunt Bea. This was getting out of hand.
She smiled at him sweetly and ate the pea with an air of triumph. “It was soooo romantic. The count was terribly handsome, of course—one of those tall, golden-haired Austrians with eyes of ice blue. He was utterly mad about my mother. Griselda took after him. Jane has her hair and eyes.”
Jane choked.
“Is that so, Miss Chance?” Lady Beddington said.
Miss Chance hesitated, glanced at Max, her expression a mixture of amusement and helplessness, and said to Lady Beddington, “Jane is the very image of our mother.”
Aunt Bea’s glance drifted to Damaris’s dark hair, and Max leaned forward and tried to catch her eye, hoping to head off the next outrageous lie. But she had the bit between her teeth and was running with it.
“Griselda married a Venetian, a marchese—that’s Italian for marquess, my dear,” she explained to Daisy. “Tall, dark and divinely good-looking too—the women in my family have always been lucky that way, marrying the handsomest of men. Dear Damaris has her father’s features and coloring.”
“What was this Italian marchese’s name?” Max asked sardonically. He glanced at “dear Damaris,” who had developed a sudden fascination with the weave of the damask tablecloth. Her face was hidden; her shoulders were shaking.
“Venetian, dear boy, not Italian. They don’t like it when you get them mixed up. Venice is the place with the canals,” his aunt explained kindly.
“And his name, this divine Venetian?”
There was a short silence. His aunt’s gaze went momentarily blank as she tried to think of a suitable name. Then, “Angelo,” she said airily.
“I meant his surname,” Max said with silky satisfaction.
She arched her brows. “Why, Chance, of course.”
“Very Italian-sounding name, Chance,” Max said dryly.
His shameless relative didn’t bat an eyelid. “Well, naturally in Venice it’s pronounced ‘Chancealotto’ ”—at this point Miss Abby choked—“but here, we Anglicize it to Chance, those Italian names being quite hard to pronounce.”
“Venetian.”
“Quite so, dear boy, I’m glad you’re paying attention.”
“Oh, believe me, I’m fascinated. It’s like something out of a novel.” Max noted that Miss Abigail too was now enthralled with the tablecloth. As was her sister, Miss Jane. Miss Daisy was watching the whole thing with jaw agape. As well she might, he thought grimly.
“Isn’t it just? Wonderful things, novels—as Clara has just discovered. Have some more asparagus, dear boy. You look a little liverish.”
“Well, I’m amazed,” Lady Beddington said. “And to think I’ve known you all these years, Bea, and I’d never even heard of your half sister, Griselda.”
“Not surprising, since—”
“Since Papa didn’t like us to speak of her. Of course, poor Max was raised believing Papa’s lies.” His aunt added in a forgiving tone, “He still finds it hard to accept the truth, poor boy.”
Max’s lips twitched despite himself. She was outrageous. “That’s enough, Aunt Bea,” he warned her.
“How wonderful that you have her daughters with you now.” Lady Beddington smiled at the girls. “You always wanted daughters, I know, Bea. Will you be bringing them out this season? How exciting.”
“No,” Max said firmly. This was one piece of nonsense he was going to quash once and for all. “There are no plans of that sort. Whatsoever.”
“We’ll see,” Aunt Bea said sweetly.
“No, we won’t.” Max had had enough. He hadn’t wanted to embarrass Aunt Bea in front of her old friend, but she’d pushed things to the limit. “Lady Beddington, I must apologize for my aunt. She’s been playing a joke on us all, funning, with her made-up nonsense, but I think we’ve all had enough. Her mother never did remarry—she died, as you thought, and was buried in England. And there never was any half sister Griselda, nor any Venetian marchese or Austrian count.”
“Oh.” Lady Beddington looked uncertainly at Aunt Bea.
Aunt Bea rolled her eyes and shrugged as if to say, Don’t believe a word.
“I assure you it’s the truth,” Max said. “These young ladies are my aunt’s guests, but they are no relation to her. Or to me.”
He looked at Miss Chance, a silent order for her to confirm his version of events, but to his annoyance she and the others all still seemed inordinately interested in the blasted tablecloth.
“And she will not be bringing them out next season. Or any other season,” Max added as his aunt opened her mouth.
He rose. “Now, Lady Beddington, it’s been a delightful evening, but my aunt is still under the care of her physician, and needs her sleep. May I escort you to your carriage?”
Lady Beddington took her leave of them all, vowing to return the following day for the next reading of the book. She added with a mischievous glance at Abby, “And I might bring a friend.”
While Lord Davenham was putting Lady Beddington into her carriage, Lady Beatrice called for William to be fetched quickly so he could carry her upstairs, Abby assumed to escape her nephew’s wrath. The old lady could walk short distances now without assistance, but she still couldn’t manage stairs.
But before William could lift her, Lord Davenham marched in and scooped her up without warning, saying grimly, “I’ll take her, William. I need a word with this aunt of mine.”
She laughed and patted his smooth-shaven cheek. “So delightfully masterful you are, dear boy, but all this masculinity is wasted on an aunt. You should be carrying a pretty young thing up to bed, not an old woman.”
“I should strangle you,” he told her.
She laughed again. “Wasn’t it fun? You should have seen your face when I told Clara my mother wasn’t in her grave after all. And Griselda and her Italian marchese.”
“Venetian,” he growled. “Venice is the place with the canals, remember?”
Abby and the girls could hear her merry laughter as nephew and aunt disappeared up the stairs.
“He’s not going to hurt her, is he?” Daisy asked worriedly. Daisy’s experience of men wasn’t exactly conducive of trust.
“No,” Abby said softly. “He loves her.”
“You can see she’s not worried one little bit,” Damaris pointed out.
Daisy shook her head. “I never woulda thought that a proper lady like that would tell such barefaced whoppers in company!”
“Yes, I must say he took it very well,” Jane said. “Don’t you think?”
“Very well,” Abby agreed, her voice trembling a little. She met Jane’s gaze. “But really—Chancealotto?” She started laughing.
Jane giggled. “You can talk! You said I was the living image of Griselda.”
“I did not; I said you take after our mother, and that’s perfectly true.”
“Yes, our mother, Griselda Chancealotto.”
“Our mother, Griselda, the Marchesa Chancealotto,” Damaris corrected her, and then the three of them were laughing.
“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Daisy said. “It’s just more lies; that’s what it is. Diggin’ us into a deeper hole.”
“Don’t worry, Daisy,” Abby told her. “Only Lady Beddington believed it at the time, and she knows now it’s not true.”
“And if everyone knows it’s not true, it’s not really a lie, is it?—Signorina Chancealotto,” said Jane, and that set them off again.
Daisy scowled and shook her head gloomily. “I still don’t like it.”
As she undressed that night for bed, Abby smiled to herself about the old lady’s fantastical fabrications. She climbed into bed, thinking about the literary society and hoping some eligible young men might be prevailed on to attend.
Even if they didn’t, at least if Jane had met the mothers, aunts and sisters of eligible young men, they might introduce her to them at the park or somewhere.
But as she blew out her candle and snuggled down in her bed, she thought of Lord Davenham carrying his aunt upstairs, still able to maintain his humor and his patience despite her outrageous behavior.
She thought of the story Lady Beatrice had told her, of that little boy waiting loyally, grieving silently and alone—she could not rid herself of that image either.
Her heart had gone out to that child, and now she saw echoes of the boy in the man—his obvious love of his aunt, his care for her, his protectiveness.
Even the hostility he’d directed at Abby and her sisters was born of the need to protect his aunt. It was a powerfully attractive quality in a man.
Miss Parsley was a lucky woman.