I did not need the facilities in the retiring room itself, so I stepped across the corridor to what had become its annex. The gentlemen’s swearing and tippling room, perhaps.
“The violins are bloody flat, I tell you,” a sprig seated by the window said, corking his flask with a decisive blow of his gloved fist. “I cannot abide country musicians.”
“Miss Ellison’s bosom isn’t flat.” That came from Brimstock, who sat in a wing chair in a corner of the room.
The place looked to be a library without books or a gaming room without a billiards table. The requisite shelves were built into the far wall, heavy furniture was arranged about the room, and a potted lemon tree added a touch of greenery by the French doors. A fresh breeze wafted in from the balcony, though the air bore the slight odor—and sting—of tobacco smoke.
As I came farther into the room, I saw that Brimstock’s bare foot was propped up on a hassock, a towel with what I presumed to be ice wrapped over his arch. His jacket was off, as was the jacket of the musical genius by the window.
“Did somebody step on your foot, Brimstock?” I pretended to examine the decanters marching in height order along the sideboard.
“Longacre’s rubbishing colt,” Brimstock replied. “Ruddy thing is a demon, and I told mine host as much. Should be sentenced to hard labor with the draft mares. They’ll sort the little shite out.”
I took a ham and cheese sandwich from the tray before the decanters. “How did Longacre respond?”
“Claimed I’d offered him an inspired idea, and he wished he’d thought of it.”
“Broomstick likes some meat on a woman’s bones,” another coatless scion said from a window seat. His cravat had been tied in the most elaborate, lacy confection I’d ever seen on a gentleman’s person. The pin securing it boasted a sizable amethyst. “Brimmie probably dreams of draft mares.”
Mozart snickered.
Brimstock lifted a drink from the table by his chair, saluted, and sipped. “You know what they say about soft cushions,” he replied.
The order of the evening seemed to be to shrug out of one’s coat, get off one’s feet, and insult women. I could manage two out of the three. I draped my coat over the back of the chair pressed into service for that purpose and took a bite out of my sandwich.
“Will you offer for Miss Longacre, Brimstock?”
He shifted the towel to peer at his injured foot—or show off the purpling bruise—then reapplied the cloth and sat back. “We still have more than a week of this ordeal to endure, Caldicott. One doesn’t surrender one’s freedom lightly.”
“You won’t surrender your freedom at all,” Amethyst said. “You’ll simply add the fair Maybelle to your stable. She isn’t bad-looking, and she has settlements.”
“Has a sharp tongue too,” Mozart muttered. “I cannot abide a woman with a sharp tongue.”
Men did this, and for the sake of justice between the genders, I hoped women did it too: assessed marital prospects as if acquiring new furniture. That armchair looks comfortable, but puce upholstery is too high a price to pay for comfort. Another chair perfectly matches the aubergine sofa, though anything stuffed with horsehair will itch and rustle abominably.
“Miss Longacre,” I said, “is understandably reluctant to follow the example of not one but two young cousins who died as a result of giving birth. They survived a year of matrimony apiece, from what I’ve been told.” I took another bite of my sandwich rather than lapse into outright sermonizing.
The tulip shot his lacy cuffs and fluffed his cravat.
Mozart cleared his throat. “If Eve hadn’t gone about flirting with snakes, then the ladies might have an easier time of it.”
“If Adam had been a proper escort and on hand to fling the snake out of the garden,” Brimstock said, “we might all have an easier time of it. None of this sweat-of-our-brow and perpetual-toil nonsense. Somebody find me some fresh ice. This lot has melted.”
Raking apparently made a fellow more broad-minded than I’d realized. I tugged the bell-pull—the bruise was nasty—and wandered out to the balcony. If Brimstock was flaunting his injury, he might well have come by it honestly.
Mendel Cleary lounged with a hip propped on the railing, his shirt white against the evening darkness.
He caught sight of me, straightened, sniffed, and brushed past me through the French doors. He muttered the word thief so quietly only I would hear him.
“Pay him no mind.” The tip of Ormstead’s cheroot glowed momentarily red. “Longacre suggested to him that he’d won enough at cards for the nonce. He’s pouting.”
“I believe the manly term is ‘seething.’” Brooding was too calm a term for Mendel’s turbulent mood.
From the balcony, we could see down into the glittering, semi-sunken ballroom. The strains of violins in close harmony—sounding perfectly in tune to me—drifted up on the night air.
“Mendel Cleary doesn’t have an easy time of it,” Ormstead said, blowing smoke rings. “He’s inherited spent acres, one brother toils away as a glorified clerk at Horse Guards, the other came home from the war and became a wastrel. There’s old Mendel, trying to marry wealth before he has to sell off his hunters and his art, though he has all the charm of a temperance crusader on the topic of gin.”
“Dear Mendy doesn’t seem to mind putting out coin for decent boots, gold sleeve buttons, and Bond Street tailoring.” I finished my sandwich and dusted my hands over the railing.
Ormstead tapped the ashes from his cheroot into the abyss of darkness beneath the balcony. “I do not want to talk about Mendel Cleary or his perishing watch.”
I glanced behind us. Cleary was shrugging into his coat and doing up the buttons. Off to pout somewhere else, and good riddance.
“You want to discuss Hyperia West,” I said, “but I am not the person you should be talking to.”
“You and she were all but engaged, my lord. She would have wed you.”
“She would have wed the man who went off to Spain, full of his own consequence and ready to teach those upstart Frogs a lesson.”
Ormstead watched his smoke rings drift into the night. “We were such fools.”
“We were exactly what we had been raised to be.” Arrogant little pawns who’d excelled at taking orders without question. “Talk to Hyperia. She’s so smart, she even knows how to hide how intelligent she is. She loves a good verbal donnybrook, and she’s a demon in a steeplechase.”
“If you are that fond of her, why not marry her?”
“It’s complicated, but suffice it to say that I wish her only the best.”
Mendel had quit the room behind us, and a footman was arranging more ice on Brimstock’s wet towel.
“Marriage is the least complicated undertaking in the world,” Ormstead countered. “You care for each other, there’s desire too, and marriage provides the means to further both sorts of interest while creating a home for the inevitable offspring. The institution makes perfect sense to me.”
“While making sense of the woman herself takes a little more work. Best of luck.”
His cheroot smoke was bothering my eyes, and the topic… The topic bothered my heart. “I must make my obeisance before Lady Ophelia,” I said. “Lord Longacre will be along directly to send the stragglers back to the ballroom, and I don’t fancy another scold from him.”
I retrieved my coat from the heap draped over the chairback and wondered what exactly I did fancy. Oddly enough, I no longer wanted to be the popinjay who’d pranced off to war, convinced that because he could read, ride, and shoot, he was God’s gift to the British military.
But I wanted that popinjay’s innocence, I wanted his damned brown hair, I wanted…
I’d apparently picked up the wrong coat. I could have forced my arms into the sleeves, but the cut was too narrow in the chest. I was sorting through the heap of other possibilities when Mendel Cleary returned. Only then did I notice that he was wearing a garment cut too loosely for his frame.
“I’ll need a bath after this,” he said, unbuttoning the jacket, “but at least you didn’t put mine on.” He balled up the coat and tossed it at me. I passed him the one that didn’t fit.
I put on the correct coat and patted down the pockets to make sure no stray watches had been secreted therein.
“An easy mistake to make,” I said, prepared to once again attempt civility. “No harm done.” A few wrinkles needlessly added, but no harm.
Cleary smiled at me, a genuinely pleased, good-humored smile. He buttoned up his coat and nodded. “No harm at all. Good evening, my lord.”
He jaunted from the room, leaving a puzzled silence in his wake.
Brimstock wiggled his toes. “So Cleary can smile. One had doubts. Who will refresh my drink?”
Mozart obliged, and I made my excuses. But for Cleary’s rudeness on the balcony, my reception had been cordial enough. More to the point, I had been seen by numerous witnesses who could explain why I’d absented myself from the festivities.
I grabbed another sandwich, bowed to the company, and made my way back to the ballroom, the long day catching up to me yet again. Bone-weariness was a part of life on campaign, and I’d hoped to put that sort of mind-flattening fatigue behind me. I was nearly that physically tired now and also worn in spirit.
Marriage was simple to Ormstead. Caring, desire, vows, et voilà. Domestic bliss. Would that it were still so for me.
I left Ophelia to her admirers after about a quarter hour of fetching punch for her and the other chaperones, then tendered my excuses.
“No stamina,” Ophelia said. “That’s the problem with young men today. They simply lack bottom. Off to your beauty sleep, then, and leave me to enjoy this cheerful company.”
Some old gallant blew her a kiss, she simpered, and I made my exit. I promised myself that whatever else was true, thirty years on, I would not waste my evenings on whist and flirtation when I could instead be reading a good book by the fire with an old friend and a good vintage.
Though who would that old friend be?
I took a sconce down from the corridor a few yards from my room and was surprised to see a faint light already leaking from beneath my bedroom door. Atticus would not have waited up for me. Canning was refilling coal buckets and trimming sconces.
Which left…
I pushed open the door and strolled into my quarters. “Really, Cleary, if you must plant contraband in a man’s rooms, you ought to get it right the first time.”
He ceased rifling beneath my mattress, straightened, and jerked down the hem of his evening jacket. “If you’ve destroyed my grandfather’s watch, I will have satisfaction from you.”
“For the last time, I did not take your rubbishing watch. I had little opportunity and no motive. The same with the horse. Whatever crusade you are on to vilify me must end.”
“Your own actions have vilified you from now to kingdom come,” he sneered. “All I want you to do is leave. You forced your presence on people who should not have to deal with you. You refused to slink back to Town as you ought. You had to appoint yourself investigator-at-large over some stolen kiss, then meddle at battledore. I can’t help that I excel at cards, but you could certainly have left this gathering the day you arrived.”
He stalked across the room until he stood nearly toe-to-toe with me. No odor of drink came from his person, but a vein was throbbing at his temple.
“You had to go poking your nose into matters that don’t concern you,” he went on, apparently blessed with one kind of stamina. “You fraternize with the staff and imposed yourself on my aunt. That you’d commit larceny for entertainment is all too plausible… Now I hear you’ve gone to tattle to Moreland, and next thing, he’ll be over here oozing ducal consequence and asking awkward questions.”
No, he would not. Moreland was too busy meddling with his heir’s bachelorhood, and as far as I knew, His Grace was still in Town.
“Why,” Mendel said, marching for the door, “why in the name of all that’s honorable can’t you just leave?”
He was truly incensed about his precious watch—or the schemes he’d had involving the watch—but something else caught my ear. He longed to challenge me. Yearned to face me over pistols or swords or bullwhips…
“You think I won’t meet you, Cleary?”
“I know you won’t. The great warrior has come home broken in mind and body, crying off from his engagement, idling behind closed curtains in London. He hasn’t the courage or mental fitness to take up arms again.”
I gestured toward the door. “I haven’t the foolishness to risk my life for the sake of a watch I did not steal, much less destroy. I bid you good night.”
He parade-marched out, the picture of masculine indignation, bootheels thumping on the floorboards. I closed the door behind him and flipped the lock. Atticus knew to knock, and I wanted no more reprisals of Cleary’s intrusion.
He should find the watch in his jewelry box before morning, and if that did not put an end to his malice toward me, perhaps I would quit the gathering early. He could insult me the livelong day, and that was no matter.
If he’d insulted Hyperia, though, or even Ophelia… I could not ignore slights to the ladies, and that might well be his next tactic.
I wasn’t too weary to care, but I was too weary to ponder Mendel Cleary’s rudeness any further. I hung my jacket over the back of the room’s sole chair, scuffed out of my dancing pumps, and began the ritual of my nightly ablutions. Not until I was hanging up my evening kit in the wardrobe did I realize the true magnitude of my difficulties.
For a few moments, Mendel Cleary had worn my jacket, and in those few minutes, he’d apparently found the card in my pocket. That was the reason for his uncharacteristic smile and the comment about my mind being broken. He knew the full extent of my mental infirmity and would likely use it against me at the first opportunity.
Why? Sir Thomas had grounds to hate me. Lord and Lady Longacre were certainly entitled to resent me. I deserved the enmity and suspicions of many, but from Mendel Cleary, to whom I should have been no more than a distasteful curiosity, I had earned undying loathing.
And I did not know why.
“I thought today we’d pay a call on Sally Hortonson,” Ophelia said, stirring her chocolate. “Such a lovely family, if a bit loud. We could bring Maria with us and get the poor dear a bit of fresh air.”
Encouraged by my reception among the gentlemen last night, I had braved the breakfast parlor at an early hour. Cleary had yet to blight the morning with his presence, and Sir Thomas was probably riding about the countryside, vanquishing brigands to build up his appetite.
“As it happens, Godmama, I thought I’d return to London today.” Mendel Cleary’s bald enmity was making up my mind on that score. He would continue with his machinations until I was thoroughly disgraced if not banished from the gathering and Society itself.
Hyperia had already asked me to leave, probably anticipating exactly the course Cleary was bent on pursuing. I had anticipated trouble from Sir Thomas, but Hyperia knew society better than I did. If Cleary desisted, Sir Thomas might take up the hue and cry against me.
Part of me desperately wanted to stay, to be simply another semi-bored, semi-diverted guest at a country house party. Hyperia felt safe, or so she claimed, but I was still uneasy on her behalf. We never had discovered who’d accosted her.
Another part of me was tired of fighting a rear-guard action against enemies whose ire I did not deserve.
I kept these conclusions to myself, because Ophelia and I had company. Sir Pericles—cane resting against his chair—pretended to read yesterday’s London newspaper, and Miss Ellison was carefully spreading jam on her toast. Canny stood vigil by the groaning sideboard, and Amethyst, cheeks approximating the shade of new asparagus, had banished himself to the company of a swaddled teapot at the shady end of the table.
Lady Ophelia set down her cup. “Talk of leaving is nonsense, Julian. You are here to stay, else I shall have to racket about all on my own. Who knows what trouble might find me? Besides, the sky is less than promising, and if you get caught in a downpour on your way back to Town, you might well end up with an ague.”
If she only knew the conditions I and the entire army had endured in Spain and France.
“A bit of weather never hurt a true soldier,” Sir Pericles observed, turning the pages of his paper. He’d been knighted shortly after Moses had presided over the defeat of the Amalekites, but the old boy’s hearing was apparently still in good order.
“When you’ve drained the chocolate pot,” I said, taking a place across from Ophelia, “I will escort you to your room. We can discuss the matter further at our leisure.”
Miss Ellison passed me the jam. “I hope you stay, my lord. With a ducal heir underfoot, the other fellows are a bit more on their mettle, though only a bit.”
Ophelia preened at this support, and I was a little heartened too. Miss Ellison knew what it was to fall from grace in Society’s eyes and what it was to embark on the long trudge back toward acceptability.
“Thank you for that,” I said, taking up the jam pot, “but others do not share your kind opinion, and our host and hostess were never expecting to add me to the guest list.”
Lady Ophelia gently swirled the chocolate pot, a porcelain confection glazed all over with red carnations, and poured herself a second cup, or a third. Who knew how long she’d been waiting to ambush me?
“Lady Longacre will be short two bachelors if you decamp,” Ophelia said. “I have it on good authority that Healy West has decided not to make the trek here and has sent his regrets.”
I tucked into my eggs and mentally counted to twenty in German. “Healy West is not a fellow to leave his sister unaccompanied in the wilds of Kent.”
My comment earned the notice of the ailing Amethyst, who sent a bleary squint in my direction.
“I am qualified to serve as the lady’s chaperone,” Ophelia said, stirring her chocolate vigorously, “and Lady Longacre has a connection to Miss West as well. You are nonetheless needed here, Julian, and here you will stay.”
Well, damn. Ophelia had got wind of Ormstead’s interest in Hyperia, and this was to be my penance. Healy had doubtless received an offer from Ophelia to stand in as the guardian of Hyperia’s virtue, and Healy, being nobody’s fool, had wasted no time sending regrets.
Hyperia joined us before I could protest further. She looked tidy, pretty, and dear, and she smiled genially as I rose to greet her.
“I am famished,” she said. “The country dances always leave me with a lingering appetite.”
Sir Pericles peered out from behind his paper. “Trouncing your elders at whist seems to appeal to you too, young lady.”
“Oh, quite, but you did put up a notable fight, Sir Pericles. Do sit down, Jules. I can fix my own plate.”
She piled eggs and a few slices of ham on her plate—God bless a lady with an appetite—and took the place beside me.
“Julian is once again announcing his intention to desert the gathering,” Lady Ophelia said. “Tell him he’s needed here, Miss West. Men require constant supervision, else they take odd notions.”
Hyperia poured herself a cup of tea before I could perform that office. “Lord Julian must do as he sees fit, my lady. This house party was not on his schedule, and we have imposed on him significantly already.”
Point to Hyperia, though her remark had Sir Pericles harrumphing behind the Society pages.
I was contemplating a second serving of eggs—they were hot, and I had passed over the ham, though the aroma wafting from Hyperia’s plate was tempting—when Mendel Cleary strode into the room.
He exuded brisk good cheer until he realized I was among the guests at the table. Like a bad fairy whose pretty disguise disintegrates at the stroke of midnight, his gaze narrowed, his posture stiffened, and his mouth became a flat, disapproving line.
“The company will excuse me,” he said. “I have abruptly lost my appetite.”
I was halfway through the thought, Good riddance, again, when Lady Ophelia was on her feet.
“Young man, I will not excuse you.”
Miss Ellison became fascinated with her tea cup. Hyperia patted my thigh beneath the table.
“Then I beg your ladyship’s pardon,” Cleary retorted, “but you cannot expect me to break bread with a thief, a traitor, a liar, and a varlet. That person…” He jerked his chin in my direction. “That disgrace to the male gender should offend all who behold him.”
Cleary was not wearing his grandfather’s watch, though he did have on a signet ring, sleeve buttons, and a cravat pin. He’d doubtless found the watch, but was persisting in the fiction that it had been stolen. If I’d had any doubts previously that his ire toward me was manufactured, he’d put those doubts to rest.
“Mr. Cleary, you insult my friend,” Hyperia said quietly. “Your behavior is not that of a gentleman, and the only party for whom you stand as a conscience is yourself. You owe me and Lady Ophelia, if not Lord Julian, an apology for your lapse of manners.”
Oh, Perry. I wanted to clap my hand over her mouth, and to… hug her. Her words were well meant, so loyal and firm, but Mendel was turning the same rosy shade as the carnations on the chocolate pot.
Cleary appeared to get hold of himself, though at the sideboard, Canny’s posture had become that of the soldier at attention. The change was subtle and grand and reminded me of many a morning before battle.
“The only apology I will make,” Cleary said, nodding slightly to Ophelia and Hyperia, “is to offer my condolences to you two ladies on the loss of your common sense. Lady Ophelia has brought a scoundrel into our midst, and you, Miss West, are too hen-witted to see her error. Lord Julian Caldicott needs to return to London, and if you truly cared for him, you’d be shooing him out the door.”
Sir Pericles had lowered his paper and was staring fixedly at Cleary. Amethyst looked baffled, and Miss Ellison’s pale cheeks had acquired two becoming dabs of color.
I rose with a sense of inevitable doom. Doom that had been pursuing me since the night I’d trailed Harry from camp, doom that had followed me out of the mountains in France and right back to London.
“Please apologize to the ladies,” I said. “Your differences are with me, Cleary, though I know not why you’ve taken me into such personal dislike.”
Increasingly, I did not care about the why. Some people were simply entitled snobs, and many of those objectionable sorts hailed from the gentry ranks. And yet, Cleary was a devoted nephew, a conscientious landowner—in as much as he could be—and a possible suitor for Miss Longacre’s hand.
He was more than the strutting twit making my life so difficult, and I was more than the fellow who’d come to such sorry straits in France. The thought was a relief and wanted further pondering, but for the moment, Cleary had my full attention. He had insulted the ladies, but still, I would not call him out.
Neither, however, would I quit the battlefield.
“The ladies have become your pawns,” Cleary said, “and if you will not leave in the next hour, my lord, then you will give me satisfaction instead.”
Sir Pericles was the first to recover from that salvo. “Cleary, you exceed all bounds. I don’t care if Lord Julian personally rowed the Corsican to France from Elba. There are ladies present.”
Cleary had counted on the ladies being present, though I knew not exactly how or why they figured into his scheme. Perhaps he thought I’d defend their honor when my own wasn’t worth the bother?
“Apologize,” I said. “Not to me, but to the ladies.” I did not tell him that I’d been planning to leave, because quitting Makepeace now truly would forfeit my honor.
“You should apologize for breathing,” Mendel retorted. “Name your seconds.”
He was committing mortal sins against gentlemanly deportment by failing to give me an opportunity to apologize and by insulting the ladies in public.
“I’ll serve,” Sir Pericles said, rising and passing Lady Ophelia his newspaper. “Lord Julian’s father would have expected it of me, though I must say this is all a damned lot of nonsense. Nonsense that Lord Julian, whatever his myriad other failings, did not start.”
Canny was still staring resolutely at nothing. He could not second me, having no gentlemanly pretensions, but I suspected he wanted to.
“Please apologize to the ladies,” I said. “Your differences with me aside, they are owed your respect.”
Mendel smiled the same sort of smile he’d offered me last night when we’d exchanged coats. “Do they know, my lord? Do they know that you have become as daft as my dear old auntie? That your memory is as leaky as Napoleon’s naval blockade? I know, and I will see to it that all of London does, too, unless you tuck tail and run like the coward you are.”
Calling me a coward to my face, before witnesses, qualified as bad melodrama, and yet, the threat Cleary wielded was real. My memory problems could taint my family with rumors of madness, and even ducal standing would not eclipse such a failing.
“With whom should Sir Pericles consult?” I asked quietly. Perhaps the seconds could sort this business out, or perhaps, upon reflection, I’d find it expedient to visit Rome for a few decades.
“Brimstock and Banter. Ladies, I bid you good morning.”
He offered them a jaunty bow, helped himself to a croissant from the sideboard, and left as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Sir Pericles thumped his cane against the floor. “Damned lot of nonsense. Choose swords, my lord. Harder to cheat. That one has the look of a fellow who’d fire early and blame his mischief on a faulty weapon.”
On that cheering note, he, too, quit the breakfast parlor, as did I, lest my eggs and toast make an untimely reappearance.