It was past two o’clock that night when Lewis found his way back to the Wedburys’ house in Brook Street. Even drunk, he wasn’t so stupid as to try walking alone in the blighted neighborhood where he’d left Jack and the others. Once he reached the better part of town, though, he’d paid off the hackney and walked the last few blocks. He thought the exercise would clear his mind. Yet now he was not even sure he had the right house. He peered stupidly up at the façade in the gleam of the streetlights—the whole blasted row looked identical.
He sat on the steps to think about it. His head felt heavy, but disjointed, like it might roll off his neck and bounce down to the pavement. Then he’d have to retrieve it. And he wasn’t sure he could.
The front door groaned as it yawned wide behind him—or was it he who groaned? Turning his head with meticulous care, he saw the door standing open and the familiar furnishings of the Wedburys’ entrance hall inside. In lieu of rent to Lord Ryndale back home, who owned the place, they had paid to redecorate it. Lewis had helped choose the statue of Aphrodite. The closest he’d ever been to a naked woman, he wasn’t likely to forget it, even if she was now tastefully draped in white linen.
“Mr. Lewis?” A footman in familiar forest-green livery bent over him. “Let me help you inside, sir.”
Robert—he thought it was Robert—half-carried him up two endless flights of stairs while Lewis fumbled with the cravat cinched around his neck. As they rounded the corner toward his bedchamber, a latch clicked behind them in the dim corridor.
“Lewis?”
He winced as Cassie’s voice reverberated in his head. Robert swiveled at the sound. Held in his grip, Lewis did too. The walls undulated.
“Lewis. Are you all right? What’s the matter with him, Robert? Is he sick?”
“In a manner of speaking, miss. I’m putting him to bed.”
“You mean he’s drunk?” Cassie giggled.
“No,” Lewis muttered. “Just a bit fuddled.” Trying to focus on her face, he settled instead for the pale pink dressing gown she wore. It was a larger target and had no noses or eyebrows roaming about in unpredictable ways.
He hoped he heard wrong when she said, “Bring him to my room, Robert. I need to talk to him. Mama won’t mind. Letty’s there.”
Robert regarded at him doubtfully. “Sir?”
Lewis made a clumsy gesture with his arm that was meant to accompany a formal bow. He’d already decided he wouldn’t survive the bow itself. “Do as th’lady commands.”
So Robert guided him along the hall to Cassie’s room and deposited him in a chair. “Not that one,” Cassie said. “It’s too comfortable. Put him here.”
Here was a hard wooden chair with no arms, not a scrap of upholstery, and a straight back too low to support his head. Lewis complained about the change in plans, but no one was listening.
Robert removed Lewis’s ravaged cravat and recommended to Letty, Cassie’s diminutive maid, some cold water for his face. “I’ll bring him an ale.”
“Did Jack not come home with you, Lewis?” Cassie asked.
Lewis shook his head and regretted it. His feet ached and his coat felt tight, but he was not so far gone as to undress in a lady’s room, even if it was only Cassie. He’d tried to imagine himself locked in a passionate embrace with her, but it was impossible. She was too much his sister.
“Where did you leave him?”
“Some grimy tavern in… Well, you’d not know it. Wish I didn’t know it either. Tried to persuade him to come home.”
“I can’t believe you just left him.”
“It’s not like I left him alone, Cassie. He’s with friends—friends with hard heads, like his. What good would I be to him in this state? Any more to drink, I wouldn’t have made it home myself.”
“Well, don’t tell Mama. I’m surprised she didn’t hear us in the hallway.”
“I forget, where’d you go tonight?” His voice was muffled as he scrubbed his face with the cool cloth Letty handed him. He requested another.
“We went to that concert at the Seftons’. Ugh, how tedious.”
“Bet you foun’ someone to flirt with.”
“Well, Captain Fuller came.” There was an odd note in Cassie’s voice. Lewis had known her since she was born and had never heard it before. The thought wafted away into the gin fumes in his brain.
“Ahhh.” He sighed as he ran the wet cloth around his neck.
Cassie opened her eyes wide. “Lewis! Is that chest hair I see?” She erupted in gales of laughter.
Lewis jumped up, except it felt more like swimming. “I don’t know what’s so funny. I’m not ten anymore, you know.”
“I’m sorry, Lewis. It took me by surprise, that’s all.”
“I’m going to bed. Didn’t want to come in here in the first place.”
“Oh, Lewis, I am sorry. No, don’t leave yet—here, you may have the big chair.” She urged him into it, solicitous but still giggling.
Lewis grunted and took a gulp of ale. “I need my bed, Cassie. What is it you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Miss Spain. She wasn’t there tonight. We can’t let her hide, Lewis. No better way to prove how unhappy Gideon’s made her.”
No surprise if she wanted to stay out of sight. “Just what do you propose to do about it?”
“We need to take her out. We can start with places Gideon won’t be. I’ll have Mama invite them to tea, and we can take her for a drive to Richmond Park, and—”
“We? It has nothing to do with me.” If Cassie thought she was doing him a favor, she was off the mark. Far less painful if he never saw her again.
“Of course it does. You—”
The door opened with a whoosh and Lady Wedbury swept in like an oversized plum in a puce silk dressing gown. She gazed accusingly at Lewis, who struggled yet again to his feet like a jack-in-the-box. “I thought I heard voices. Masculine voices.”
Cassie giggled. “One masculine voice, Mama. It’s only Lewis. And Letty’s here.”
“You are far too old to be entertaining young men in your bedchamber, Cassandra, even if they are only Lewis. Come along, young man. It’s high time we were all in our beds.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Lewis. “I’ve been trying to get there for the past hour.”
Over breakfast the next morning, they learned from the servants that Jack had not arrived home until nearly dawn. Lady Wedbury frowned, but Sir John seemed unconcerned. “We wanted him to get a taste of town life, my dear. It seems late to us, accustomed to our sedate life in the country, but by the standards of fashionable society, it’s quite a normal hour.”
“Humph,” said his lady. “Who was he with, Lewis?”
Lewis listed a couple of names she would know, well-born fellows from respected families.
“You see, my dear?” said Sir John. “Perfectly acceptable.”
Lewis was not so sure. Others had been there, too, whom he did not name. They moved in different circles, but that did not necessarily make them corrupt. He could not yet make that assessment. But he had his doubts and hoped they would not become his intimates. Or Jack’s either.
Cassie breezed in, wearing primrose-yellow. She brought smiles for everyone and kisses for her parents, and a new topic of conversation.
Lewis squinted. It was far too early for so much brightness, even if it was near eleven.
“Mama, I want to start taking Miss Spain about. I wonder if we might invite her to our soirée on Tuesday. Her mother too, of course.”
Lady Wedbury sipped her coffee. “What brought this on, Cassandra? Not that I have anything against the girl, but she’s not like most of your friends.”
“That’s just the point, Mama. She’s reserved, and it’s been hard for her to make her way.”
“Spain?” Sir John’s brow furrowed. “Isn’t that the pretty blonde who’s caught Gideon’s eye?”
“Yes,” said Lady Wedbury. “I’d say she’s doing fine without your help. Gideon’s one of the most popular men in town. As long as she has him on her hook—”
“She doesn’t, ma’am,” Lewis interrupted, avoiding Cassie’s eye. God forbid she should think he’d signed on to her plan.
“He cast her aside, Mama, in the middle of my ball. In the most hurtful way you can imagine.”
Lady Wedbury shook her head. “You two are determined to think the worst of Gideon on every occasion.”
“He’s earned it, Mama,” Cassie insisted. “What would you think, if he came up to you and acted like he couldn’t remember your name, and refused the dance he’d promised? He was the one with the hook, and he used it to rip her heart out. When we first came to London it was Miss Medley, then Miss Spain. Now it’s Miss Landrum.”
“Such melodrama, dearest. She’s eighteen, she’ll come about.”
“Your mother’s right, Cass,” Sir John said. “Hearts mend. It’s not like he’s ruining these girls.”
Lewis leaned forward. “Of course not. But I swear he enjoys watching them gasp on his line. Mighty callous, wouldn’t you say?”
“Perhaps,” Sir John said. “But there are plenty of young men flirting their way through the girls in town. One of them might be you, one of these days. Some are more heartless than we might wish, and that’s lamentable, but we’re not going to change human nature.”
“Nevertheless…” Lady Wedbury eyed her daughter, a pucker of worry between her brows. “Did you say Alice Landrum?”
“Yes, Mama. She was hanging on his arm at my ball and danced with him twice. I’m surprised you did not notice them together at the concert last night.”
“Hmm. Perhaps I’d better drop a word in her mother’s ear.” Her tone changed from concern to abhorrence. “I did notice Mrs. Spain fawning over Gideon. Trying to get him back for her daughter, no doubt, after leaving her to fend for herself the other evening. Apparently, she was a childhood friend of Lady Sefton. Otherwise, Miss Spain would surely not be dancing at Almack’s with the most eligible bachelors in England.” Her nose wrinkled in distaste. “I understand Mr. Spain is of genteel birth, but he was wise not to accompany his ladies to London. His fortune comes from trade.”
“So does my father’s, ma’am,” said Lewis. Without the Wedburys’ sponsorship, he too would be denied entrance to the hallowed premises of Almack’s, Society’s so-called Marriage Mart.
“Yes,” she replied, “but at least your father has resigned from all involvement in business. Gideon’s sons might legitimately be called gentlemen, and yours too if you choose a respectable profession.”
Ugh. A respectable profession. Law or the Church would require years of schooling he had little hope of acquiring, and no one was likely to buy him a commission in the Army even if he wanted one, which he did not. Nor was he cut out for a life in government. He’d do better selling sketches of passers-by on the street. But it would hardly qualify as respectable.
It had never much mattered. Before meeting Miss Spain, he’d had no thought of marriage, much less children.
“The daughter seems a nice, modest girl,” Lady Wedbury continued, “but I tell you, Cassandra, I don’t want that woman at our intimate little party.”
Cassie sighed and dug into her egg.
Lewis set down his cup and stepped from the frying pan into the fire. “What if we devise a way to get Miss Spain here without her mother? Would that be acceptable to you, ma’am?”
Cassie’s spoon clattered against her plate as she clapped her hands together. She cast Lewis a glowing smile.
“Oh, that’s a prime notion! I’ll take her shopping, and then she can stay for dinner and the party. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“A prime notion?” Lady Wedbury’s voice was grim. “I do not expect to hear such expressions from you, Cassandra, even if you manage to hold on to your spoon. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Mama,” said Cassie, as demure as could be.
“Except for visiting you in your room last night, which I have no doubt was your idea, Lewis has been a perfect gentleman. That is why I’m saying yes. Assuming Mrs. Spain permits it.”