It was late in the day when Lady Norwood’s traveling carriage drew up in front of the Loversall town house in Brook Street, which if not among the most fashionable of London neighborhoods, was still respectable. From the carriage emerged Lady Norwood, her maidservant, Barrow, and Daisy, who at the last moment had refused to be left behind. Unfortunately, it had soon been discovered that the setter didn’t travel well. Beau was grateful that he had ridden alongside the carriage, and not inside.
He dismounted, handed his reins to a groom, and strode toward the front door where the butler stood. Widdle had only recently come into the Loversall employ, following an unfortunate incident involving some missing silver plate. Servants did not last long in this household, but at his age—Widdle’s hair was sparse, his posture bent—opportunities were scarce. He squinted at the women approaching in his new master’s wake. One, a middle-aged female who looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, was evidently a servant. The other was unmistakably a member of the family. Widdle hoped she might be more conversant with the proprieties than the other residents of this household seemed to be. Except for Miss Ianthe, but of course no one listened to her. And was that orange-and-white-speckled creature a canine?
It was, and it knocked him over. From a prone position between lapping tongue and wagging tail, Widdle suggested that the lady might like some tea.
The lady first preferred to freshen up. Once safely inside her chamber—which had not changed a bit since she last saw it, from the canopy bed with blue silk hangings to the flowered china ewer on the corner basin stand, although she hoped dust and spiders had not been gathering all that time—Cara pulled off her bonnet and sank down in a chair. “I don’t like this, mum,” said Barrow, for what seemed the hundredth time since they’d set out from Norwood House. “What will Squire Anderley think, you running off like that?”
Paul would think, quite rightly, that Cara was playing least-in-sight, and he could make of it what he wished. Difficult, however, to reprimand a servant who’d been with her since she was a girl. Barrow only wished the best for her, in this case that Cara should marry Paul.
“Mortimer will tell him where we’ve gone.” Cara wondered as she spoke if Mortimer would do any such thing. Her abigail wondered also: Cara winced as Barrow’s brush tangled in her hair. Order at length restored to her person as well as to her coiffure, Cara left Barrow unpacking and muttering darkly beneath her breath, with a subdued Daisy to keep her company, and descended the stair.
The house was as she remembered it, furnished in a gay rococo fashion grown somewhat shabby with use. The drawing room displayed an elaborate variety of carved shells and scrolls and fish scales, ribboned flowers and butterflies, ormolu and asymmetrical scrollwork. On either side of the chimney stood a sofa, and on the opposite end a confidante. An elegant narrow-waisted grandfather clock ticked away the hours in a somewhat eccentric fashion, its brass dial richly ornamented with cherubs in relief. The polished wooden floors were adorned by several small rugs, the walls covered with chinoiserie paper, the plaster ceiling enriched by simple ribs in low relief.
On a gilt bow-fronted table decorated with strings of bell flowers sat an oval japanned tea tray. Wrapped in a Chinese robe of puce silk, a lace cap, and a Norwich shawl, Ianthe stood by the fireplace.
She looked worn-down with fuss and worry. Cara felt a stab of guilt. Ianthe had lived with the family for as long as she could remember; had been like a second mama when Cara’s own mother had decided she had exhausted all her maternal impulses (not to mention her patience with her husband’s stable of mistresses) and embarked with the widow of a Russia Company merchant on an extensive round of sightseeing, during the course of which she published several volumes about her “Tours” in Scandinavia, Russia, and Poland, before succumbing to malaria in Madagascar.
Ianthe would no doubt have enjoyed a nice stay in the country. Cara had thought several times of suggesting that her cousin come to Norwood House, but withheld the invitation because she hadn’t wished her peace also invaded by her volatile niece. After all she owed Ianthe, to behave so shabbily!
Cara cleared her throat. “Oh! You came!” Ianthe hurried across the room to envelop Cara in a great hug. “I have so wished to see you. Everything is in such a muddle! I’ve been standing here teasing myself with thoughts of what to say to Beau.” She burst into tears.
Cara drew her cousin to a sofa. “He should say ‘thank you,’ though it would never occur to him. You might have had a home of your own instead of staying here with Zoe.” As she herself had a home, Cara thought.
“Fiddle!” Ianthe pulled out a handkerchief, wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and picked up the teapot from a tray decorated with a huge chrysanthemum. “Someone had to look after the babe, and you were far too young. Beau, as we know, is useless in such matters. Zoe has him wrapped around her thumb.” Her blue eyes brimmed with tears. “Still, I can’t help but think I’ve done a dreadful job of it, for Zoe is—I won’t mince words with you, Cara: she’s a horrid brat! Oh, she’s sunny-tempered enough until her will is crossed. But since she’s also highly capricious, it’s next to impossible to guess what she wants from one moment to the next.” Ianthe dabbed the handkerchief to her eye.
Cara accepted a cup of tea, and reminded herself that Ianthe had not been spared the family tendency for melodrama. “Perhaps Zoe is merely reacting to the strain of her come-out. You remember how it was. Everyone waiting and watching for the latest family scandal. We disappointed them, you and I.”
“I sometimes wonder if we would have caused more gossip by behaving badly than we did by being circumspect.” Ianthe gestured with her teacup. “As for Zoe, you are too generous. Easy enough for her to behave reasonably when you’re around, because you haven’t been around that much. No, I wasn’t scolding! You have a life of your own, and I’m grateful that you do. But now that you’re here, you’ll soon enough see how things really are. When denied anything on which she’s set her heart, Zoe screams and bites and kicks. You doubt me, I can tell. Look at this, if you please!” Ianthe drew aside her shawl to display bright scratches on one arm. “In her tantrums, she’ll smash china, throw herself on the floor in paroxysms of rage, and worse. Do you recall that lovely vase that once sat on the mantelpiece?”
Cara surveyed the empty niche. “Oh, dear.”
“Would that she had flung herself out the window instead! And all that Beau can say to me is that he wishes I would not enact the watering-pot. I am almost out of patience with them both.” Ianthe was one of those females whose looks were not diminished by tears, which was fortunate, considering the number of them she shed, as she was doing again at the moment, while she clasped her cousin’s hand. “Cara, I’m so very glad you’re here.”
“As are we all!” Beau stepped into the drawing room, looking refreshed; his valet, Flitwick, had bathed and combed and powdered his master before bearing off his riding coat to treat it lovingly with spirits of hartshorn and a good stiff brush. Beau glanced unappreciatively at the tea tray, headed for the brandy decanter, and poured himself a glass. Then he glanced around the chamber. “Where’s Zoe?”
Ianthe squeezed Cara’s fingers. “She called me an addle-plot. Then she said it made her feel quite waspish to never have a moment to herself. I suggested that she take her dinner alone in her room. Yes, I know that you will say it was very unfeeling of me, and so she told me, but I could bear no more."
“There, there!” Beau said hastily, for his cousin’s lips had begun to tremble. Ianthe must surely be the best weeper in all of England, at last count holding a record of twenty bouts of sobbing in one day. “No need to make a piece of work of it!”
Ianthe looked no less somber. “You may say that now, but it’s you who’ll fly into a pelter when you hear what she did while you were gone. At least I think she did it. We met Mannering at Gunter’s. Don’t glower, it was all perfectly correct. Except I think Zoe was responsible for him being there.”
Beau could not help but scowl, despite his cousin’s pleading. “That damned fellow! Things have come to a pretty pass when I can’t even turn my back.”
“Baron Fitzrichard was there also,” Ianthe added. “He has designed a new way of tying a neckcloth. I suggested that he call it the Dégringolade. I think he means to bring square-toed shoes back into style.”
Beau couldn’t have cared less about square-toed shoes and the foppish baron. “And while you talked to that man-milliner about shoes and cravats, Mannering no doubt took advantage of the opportunity to further his acquaintance with Zoe.”
Ianthe stiffened. “Don’t dare accuse me of being neglectful of my duties, Beau. I’m not the one who misbehaves.”
“Don’t get on your high ropes!” Beau strode restlessly around the room. He didn’t blame Ianthe for Zoe’s behavior—how could he? The child was a Loversall. But so was Ianthe a Loversall, and therefore should have had considerably more backbone than she had thus far displayed. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I just think you might discourage Mannering’s attentions if you tried. You should have sent him about his business. I rely on you to check Zoe’s starts.”
Cara thought this judgment seemed severe. “Beau—”
Her protest went unheeded. Beau continued scowling, while Ianthe bit her lower lip. “I don’t see why I should give Mannering a set-down when I quite like the man. He doesn’t rip up at me for things I didn’t do. And if you think you may stop Zoe acting like a little zany, then pray go ahead and try!”
Beau disliked hearing his daughter maligned, unless it was by himself. He said, “Zoe is but a girl.”
“Zoe is a thorn in my flesh,” Ianthe retorted. “I disremember when I last had a day’s peace.”
This bickering also was familiar. Ianthe and Beau could not be in a room for five minutes together without being at daggers drawn. Cara walked over to the French windows, drew aside the curtains, and looked outside. Although she could not see into the darkness, she knew the gardens were divided from the area at the back of the house by a simple stone colonnade. Two fine trees grew there, one a mulberry of noble growth, as well as roses of ancient lineage. Long neglected now, the flower borders had once been a blaze of tulips and jonquils, lilies and peonies and violets. Cara thought of her own gardens, and Paul Anderley. Were Lord Mannering to find himself alone in a garden with Zoe, would he steal a kiss?
She turned away from the window. “This squabbling accomplishes nothing! Has it occurred to anyone that Mannering might be serious? What if instead of merely engaging in a flirtation, he were to offer for Zoe?”
Beau regarded her with astonishment. “Are you mad?”
Cara frowned at her brother. “What I am is fagged to death! We have had a journey of some distance, and I dislike family brangles, as you may recall. From what Ianthe is saying, it sounds like the marquess may simply enjoy Zoe’s company.”
What was it about Mannering? Now even Cara defended him. “A gentleman may well enjoy a lady’s company without wishing to marry her!” Beau snapped. “And if Mannering ain’t married in all this time, he ain’t going to marry Zoe. Besides, he’s too old for her.”
Ianthe looked thoughtful. “She’s throwing her bonnet at him, and he’s letting her. Perhaps that’s a hopeful sign. Too, he told her that only his rheumatics prevented him going down on his knees and reciting poetry.”
Beau choked on a swallow of brandy. “Rheumatics? Mannering? The man spars with Gentleman Jackson. You must have made a mistake.”
“Why is it I who am always supposedly mistaken? Zoe informed me of that herself. Unless you think she’s telling taradiddles, perhaps?” Ianthe paused. Beau didn’t answer. “Whoever would have thought that Mannering was inclined to poetry!”
Beau didn’t think so, certainly. Nor did Cara. They exchanged a startled glance. “Why are you both so surprised? It’s not as if the marquess is a rakehell. No matter how Zoe has misbehaved, he’s always acted the perfect gentleman toward her.”
No gentleman himself, Beau may perhaps have been forgiven a certain skepticism. “So far,” he said, and finished his brandy. “Perhaps. And so far as you know.”
Ianthe stared. “You can’t think he would offer her false coin.”
Beau thought his cousin surprisingly naïve. “No man can be blamed for playing fast and loose with a lass who hurls herself enough times at his head.”
Cara leaned back against the window. “I believe we may be hearing the voice of experience speaking,” she remarked.
Beau ignored this sisterly provocation. He was appalled by the notion of his daughter engaged in escapades, and didn’t see that the matter had anything to do with how many escapades he’d indulged in of his own, an excellent example of the adage that what’s good for the gander may not also be good for the goose. “I won’t have Zoe plunged into the scandal-broth!”
Now it was the women who exchanged glances. Their family was notorious for the amount of dirty laundry it had aired in public, the exceptions being themselves. Ianthe mused upon Great-Aunt Amelia, who had eloped with her own groom and had wound up somewhere in Bavaria, where she attracted the attention of a princeling, and inspired a duel between that gentleman and a Greek. Cara was reminded of Third-Cousin Ermyntrude, who had eased her shattered heart by dressing as a man and fighting Red Indians in the Colonies.
Cara leaned her forehead against the cool window glass. What would Paul Anderley think when he discovered she’d gone to London? Probably that she was a coward. She was also flighty, because now she wished she might return home. Cara wished so all the harder when her niece walked into the room, looking like an angel with her big blue eyes and innocent expression and golden curls clustering around her face. “Hello, Beau. You came back. I wish you wouldn’t go away like that. Ianthe is always picking at me and it makes me cross. Tell her she must stop."
Beau gazed upon his daughter. He had fallen in love when he first glimpsed the red-faced shrieking infant, and felt no differently today. Indeed, he sometimes thought that Zoe was the only female he had ever truly loved, which was a sure sign of his basic faithlessness, considering how many females he’d had in his bed.
Zoe sank down on a footstool upholstered in striped horsehair and leaned against his knee. Beau stroked her gleaming curls. Impossible that he should deny her anything, which was precisely how they had gotten in the pickle they were in today. Knowing how a thing got broken didn’t make it easier to mend, unfortunately. “I hear you met Mannering at Gunter’s. What have you to say for yourself, puss?”
“One can meet any of one’s acquaintance at Gunter’s. You know that.” Zoe peered up at her papa from beneath her long eyelashes. “Cousin Ianthe just wants to make trouble for me.”
Beau glanced at his cousin, who pressed her lips together and said not a word in her own defense, primarily because she knew that if she spoke she’d call him a cabbage-head. “You misunderstand, poppet, Ianthe wants only the best for you.”
Zoe drooped. Beau looked stricken. Cara realized with horror that Zoe reminded her of herself at that age. Zoe was smaller and more petite than she had ever been, however, and so vivid that she made Cara feel as if she had one foot already in the grave.
Hopefully, the resemblance was only superficial, and didn’t extend to their personalities. Cara stepped out from among the draperies. “Hello, Zoe,” she said.
Zoe spun round on her stool. Her fine eyes widened, then narrowed, and she turned a furious face on her father. “What the devil is she doing here?”