The Effingham town house was built to the design of Sir Edwin Effingham, Miss Isabella’s great-grandfather, who had made a fortune in the Indies. Situated in Adelphi Terrace, the mansion’s imposing colonnaded front and curving carriage drive looked toward the Strand, while a second porticoed entrance at the rear of the building faced the Thames.
Graveled paths wound past flower beds and through immaculate lawns extending from the house to the riverbank, where, the baronet had insisted, he must have his own private water stairs. Even in this year of 1816, when more bridges spanned the Thames than in Sir Edwin’s day, a number of wherries and sculls bobbed in the water near the stairs.
It was in this lovely garden on the Thames, in the shade of some fine old elm trees, that Miss Isabella’s luncheon was set out. All morning, the Effingham chef had slaved and driven his minions to despair in an effort to overcome the handicap imposed by mistress and daughter of the house: shortage of time. All morning, footmen and maids had delivered invitations for the impromptu party Miss Isabella insisted she must have.
Only Lady Maryann had been personally invited and fetched. Isabella knew of Maryann’s obsession with gardening, and she had suspected that an invitation delivered to Mr. Salisbury’s Botanic Garden might end up unread—though, perhaps, watered and lovingly tended—in a garden urn or a flower bed.
About a dozen young ladies and as many young gentlemen sat on cushions and rugs spread on the close-cropped turf and within minutes demolished the delicacies created by the chef in hours of agony.
Ladies of more mature years, like Lady Effingham and mothers of Isabella’s friends, a governess or two, a poor relation serving as companion, were more formally seated in chairs around a cloth-covered table. Four gentlemen also formed part of that group, and after a look at the youthful males surrounding Lady Maryann and Miss Isabella beneath the elms, Lord Tammadge murmured something to his betrothed, bowed, and took himself off to the table and chairs.
Maryann showed no sign of surprise or distress at her fiancé’s desertion, but chatted happily with Bella and responded to comments and questions addressed to her by the young people.
Most of the remarks had to do with her engagement to Tammadge and were of a congratulatory nature. A few young ladies sounded cattish, commenting on Tammadge’s advanced age, his blandness, and making sly references to the fact that he was as rich as Golden Ball. Maryann shrewdly put these barbs down to envy.
She did, however, send surreptitious glances in Tammadge’s direction, observing as she did so that the silver in his hair was no more and no less pronounced than the gray in Mr. Folsett’s beside him, and whom she knew to be of her father’s generation.
Tammadge was five-and-forty, her mother had said. Maryann had not given the matter much thought, but wondered now if the difference in age would have a bearing on their marriage. His sitting down at the table, for instance. Would he expect her to join him with the matrons and elderly gentlemen when they were married?
And suddenly, for no reason that she could fathom, Mr. Stephen Farrell came to mind. She tried to dismiss the detestable man from her thoughts, but his image kept popping up—among the young people who, replete now, were more aptly described as lounging rather than sitting on the rugs. She also pictured Farrell with the group at the table, between Tammadge and Mr. Folsett. And the strangeness of it was, Farrell seemed to fit into both parties with equal ease.
He might not be a true gentleman; he might be a false friend, a back stabber, but he was a man who would draw notice. There was nothing bland about him. His tone as well as his words were forceful. Physique and the keen, dark eyes betrayed a latent power, a sense of purpose and determination.
Maryann could not possibly imagine Farrell leaving his betrothed for a comfortable chair.
When Tammadge arrived at her side after the repast and invited her for a gentle walk along the riverbank, she assented readily enough. She might as well make use of the time and ask questions about her fiancé’s friend. If she satisfied curiosity as well as made up her mind whether or not there was still any purpose in warning Tammadge, it wouldn’t be a bad thing at all. Once she knew more about Farrell, she would have no need to be preoccupied with him.
Since most of the party appeared too lazy or too stuffed with food to leave cushion, rug, or chair, Maryann and Tammadge soon found themselves out of earshot but well within sight of Lady Effingham and the eagle-eyed matrons who had come to assist in the task of chaperoning.
It was a golden opportunity for questions, but Maryann, after several false starts, was about to give up. How did one interrogate a husband-to-be about another man without giving the impression of being unduly interested in said man?
Stopping to admire some especially fine specimen of fern growing where the graveled path met with the stone and rock of the embankment, Maryann finally spoke of the betrothal ball and what a great success it had been. The subject might give her an opening to bring up Farrell’s name.
“Then you don’t find that sort of social do a bore?” asked Tammadge, standing dutifully at her side and even casting a cursory glance or two at the gently waving fronds. “Your father gave me to understand you’re more interested in gardening than in dancing.”
“Oh, I admit I am passionately interested in gardening.”
And I shall get to work on my own botanical gardens as soon as I am in possession of my dowry and the consols you settled on me, my lord.
She had always loved the outdoors, the home woods and gardens at Rivington Hall in Kent. But gardens had taken on a special meaning since her father started to lock her into a windowless cellar room when he wished to punish her. Only he held the keys to that remote part of the cellars. It was where he stored his wines, and it was impossible for Irene and the servants to smuggle food, books, or a candle to her as they had done when she was confined to her bedchamber.
Maryann hated darkness and confinement. She needed the kiss of sun, wind, and rain on her skin; needed to smell and touch flowers, grass, earth; needed to sit under trees and hear the song of birds.
When she went to live in London the first time, she had discovered Mr. Salisbury’s Botanic Garden and the pleasure it gave thousands of Londoners, trapped as they were in dark, overcrowded lodgings, in narrow streets shadowed by the towering facades of gray brick houses.
It was then that her dream had crystallized. She wanted gardens not just for herself, but to be enjoyed by others. She wanted to give color and brightness to families whose lives were as drab and gray as the London streets.
She wanted her own botanical gardens.
Maryann became aware of her fiancé’s prolonged silence. Perhaps she had been too fervent in her assurance that she liked gardening. Perhaps he assumed her passion would distract her from her wifely duties.
She studied his face, but as usual, it told her nothing.
“As long as I don’t have to attend a ball or rout every night,” she assured him, “I do enjoy the diversion of going into society. You need not be afraid I shall shirk my duty as your hostess.”
Gently fanning himself with the scented, monogrammed square of lawn that was never long out of his hand, Tammadge said, “As long as we remain in London, there will be one or two occasions when I require a hostess, but once we remove to Sevenoaks, your duties will not be too arduous. You may devote as much time as you please to the gardens.”
“Sevenoaks?” she asked faintly. “That is your estate in Northumberland, is it not?”
“Indeed. You will find it a challenge for a gardener.”
Maryann stared at the ferns. She could only agree with him. Northumberland with its raw climate, its hills and moors, was indeed a challenge—one she could do without.
“I wonder,” he said, “what is so intriguing about a fernery?”
Murmuring an apology, Maryann started walking. “I presume, my lord, we shall not spend all year in the north? You would wish to live in town—during the season at least—to enjoy the company of friends?”
He did not reply right away, but took her elbow as they turned onto the embankment with its uneven surface of rock and stone.
“What I wish,” he said, “is that you will stop calling me “my lord.” If you feel it is premature to address me by my given name, you might at least call me Tammadge.”
“Thank you. I think it will be best if I call you Tarnmadge. For now,” she added diplomatically. “But we were speaking of your friends and that you would miss them at Sevenoaks.”
“You were speaking of them, my dear.”
There was no mistaking the sarcasm in the low voice, but Maryann plunged on with barely a check. “Tell me about your friend Mr. Farrell. He does not seem to have been in town before. How did you meet him?”
Tammadge released her arm. Carefully folding the handkerchief, he slipped it into the pocket of his coat.
“I made his acquaintance through Woverley. You must remember the marquess who arrived at the ball with Farrell?”
She remembered pig’s eyes darting from her to Tammadge and the grin splitting Woverley’s round face. She remembered that she had found him repulsive.
“Does Mr. Farrell attend many of the social functions?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, he did not seem to enjoy our ball. I did not see him dancing once.”
They were approaching the property of Effingham’s neighbor to the west and turned to retrace their steps.
“Mr. Farrell,” Maryann persisted, “strikes me as a man who’d be more at home in a country setting.”
She could see him leading the local hunt, organizing a steeplechase, but she could not, as she had told him to his face, see him in the role of a Bond Street beau, a society fribble.
“I believe Farrell once mentioned a farm in Cornwall.” Tammadge gave her a look Maryann could not possibly call bland.
A farming gentleman? She knitted her brow in an effort to visualize Stephen Farrell striding across fields or listening to a tenant’s needs. It was not impossible …
“And before you ask,” Tammadge said with a definite edge to his voice, “no, I don’t think he is married. And I believe his fortune to be nil.”
“I had no intention of asking any such questions,” Maryann said indignantly. She hoped her face did not look as hot as it felt. What awkward business this prying was.
“But I admit to some curiosity about him. He—well, he is quite unlike any man I’ve met.”
They both stopped, as though the arrival at the water stairs signaled the end of their stroll. Tammadge kept his gaze on the murky waters of the Thames and looked like a man lost in deep thought. Maryann had her eyes on her betrothed and wondered if, possibly, her curiosity in Farrell had been misunderstood.
“Tammadge,” she said hesitantly. “I did not mean to make it sound as if Mr. Farrell were someone special or extraordinary when I said he’s unlike any man I’ve met. But he explained, you see, that he’d been a spy during the war—”
She faltered when Tammadge turned and looked at her through narrowed eyes.
“I only meant,” she said, growing rather desperate in her effort to stress a natural and quite disinterested curiosity, “that he is not an ordinary man. He’s—well, different.”
Tammadge returned his gaze to the river, and Maryann reflected wryly that explanations were not her forte. She seemed to have made matters worse.
Considering the experience a lesson well learned, she wisely kept quiet.
“Perhaps it would be advisable,” Tammadge said, “if we spent more time in each other’s company before the wedding. It is borne home to me that I do not know you as I thought I did. I understood from your father that you would have no objection to living at Sevenoaks. He also stressed that you have a somewhat, shall I say, passive? Yes, a passive nature. That you have no curiosity, no interest outside your gardens.”
Maryann blinked. This was the longest speech Tarnmadge had ever directed at her. And there was much food for thought.
“How could you possibly believe me passive when I interceded in the negotiation of the marriage contract and asked not only that the dowry be mine outright, but also that you settle money on me to be spent at my own discretion?”
Tammadge did not turn from the prospect of the Thames. He pulled out his handkerchief but, without once fanning himself, crushed it into a tight ball and crammed it back into the pocket.
“I had no notion the clause was inserted at your insistence,” he said so softly that she barely heard. “I was given the impression it was your father’s doing. That he was looking out for your interest.”
Maryann denied herself a sniff of disdain. Her father knew only one interest—his own.
“And what about curiosity?” she asked with some asperity. “Is it such an intolerable trait in a wife?”
His back went rigid.
“To me, yes.” There was anger in his voice and something else, a razor’s edge that threatened … menaced. “I absolutely do not tolerate curiosity in those around me.”
Maryann caught her breath, as much at the menace in his voice as at the reply itself.
She would readily admit that curiosity was not always a virtue, and she had quite expected Tammadge to say something along those lines—since he had all his ladybirds to hide—but to hear him, one would think he was a man obsessed.
Or a man who hid worse than a mistress or two. A man who feared his wife would pry into the dark secrets of his life.
A chill brushed her skin, and neither the long sleeves of her spencer nor the April sun could warm her.
The rumors! Lucy Weller’s tale must be true after all. Fear of discovery would explain the threat underlying Tammadge’s words. A man making his fortune off prostitution would find himself ostracized by the ton, blackballed by the members of his club.
But then her betrothed turned, smiling at her with such tenderness that she wondered whether she suffered from the madness afflicting the poor king, whether she had been hallucinating when she heard menace in his voice and believed him capable of dishonorable activities.
“My dear Maryann.” His voice was quite definitely gentle, wistful. “You are so very young, so sweet, so innocent. But I’m afraid there may come a time, after we’ve been married awhile, when you will be curious about other men. Can you blame me if I regard curiosity as a husband’s bane?”
She stared at him and saw a man whose narrow, handsome face showed fine lines of age around the mouth and nose, a man who worried about a young wife wanting to take a lover. How could she have believed he feared discovery of a dark secret? How could she have let Farrell’s and Hedwig’s tales poison her mind?
He took her hand, touching it to his lips, and she felt the tingling warmth of his mouth against her wrist—just the way a hand kiss felt when she allowed herself the luxury of daydreaming about an imaginary lover.
“No,” she said. “I mean, yes, I can blame you.”
Confused, embarrassed, and feeling about herself as she felt about a slug in a bed of strawberries, Maryann tried to pull her hand away. But his slender white fingers held with unsuspected strength and drew her closer.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said caressingly.
“First of all, you have no cause to believe any such thing. I assure you, Tammadge, I shan’t be interested in another man.”
“And secondly?”
His breath stirred tendrils of hair against her temple, and his arm wound with disturbing intimacy around her waist. She could not deny that the sensations evoked by his touch were quite thrilling. Never before had she been held by a man, not even while dancing, because her father had unequivocally forbidden her to participate in the waltz.
“Won’t you look at me, Maryann?” Tammadge said coaxingly.
She kept her eyes on the sleeve of his coat, where a ladybird, the small orange-red bug with black-dotted wings that shared its name with ladies of easy virtue, had alighted and was exploring the blue valley created by a crease in the cloth.
“And secondly,” Maryann said softly. “Should a gentleman who keeps as many ladybirds as another might keep hounds, be quite so vehemently opposed to a woman’s curiosity in the opposite sex?”
The arm around her waist tightened like a steel band.
“Yes!” His voice was harder than his arm. “If the woman is mine.”
She pulled away, and this time he let her go at once.
“My dear, forgive me,” he said, gentle once more. “No doubt you think me harsh, but believe me, I will not be a husband who’ll look the other way should my wife wish to take a lover.”
“Ah, well.” Flustered, Maryann turned to gaze at the small boats tied to hooks high on the embankment. “I believe I already assured you that I shan’t be contemplating such a step.”
“Sweet, innocent child. You blush now at the thought of a lover. But, you see, I do not subscribe to the theory that a lady of quality does not have the desires and passions society takes for granted in a woman of the lower orders. I believe it is the course of nature that you will develop an interest in other men.”
He placed a finger under her chin and tilted her face until he could look into her eyes.
“But I will never tolerate it if you take more than a casual interest. He would face me across the distance of twelve paces, your would-be lover. Do you understand, Maryann? He must die so that my wife may remain faithful and pure.”