Barbara Metzger (11 page)

Lisanne snapped back, “Then never look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“She’s insane,” Sir Alfred raged on. “She talks to fairies. She lives in a dreamworld in that forest of yours. Addled Annie, everyone calls her. The only reason I never saw fit to lock her away is that she seemed harmless enough. Now look what my kindheartedness has done.”

“You didn’t lock me up, Uncle, because then you’d have no excuse to stay at Neville Hall at my expense. If asylum fees were paid from my estate, there’d be no need for a well-fed, well-kept guardian and his family. And I might have died in such a place. Most bedlamites do, don’t they? Then you’d never see a groat of my income.”

“You see, Duke? See what madness she speaks? No child in her right mind would so accuse her loving guardian. With such suspicions, she’ll see a plot to assassinate her next.” Sir Alfred was practically frothing. Beads of spittle had joined the ink on the desktop.

St. Sevrin turned to Lisanne. “Are you insane?”

“Can you afford to be so particular?” she replied, pointed chin raised, blue eyes flashing.

“Dash it, girl, I’m on your side!”

Findley pounded the desk, sending droplets of ink and saliva flying. “You may as well ask a liar if he’s telling the truth. That’s what makes a crazy person crazy, isn’t it? A lunatic doesn’t know reality from cloud-cuckoo land.”

“They say the king knows when he is having one of his spells. It upsets him, but he realizes when he is all about in his head. I think the baroness knows very well the state of her mind. What say you, my lady?”

“I am not daft. Sir Alfred chooses to make me out to be for his own purposes.”

Sloane stared into her eyes. There was no guile in their blue depths, no blank look he’d seen on soldiers with head injuries, only intelligence, bravery, and a plea for help. He nodded. “The marriage will take place tomorrow morning. I’ll make arrangements with the vicar. See that my bride has a clean gown to wear at least, Findley, or you’ll be wearing your teeth on your tonsils.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Of course not. I never waste my time threatening pigs like you. That was a promise.”

“I’m not afraid of you, Duke,” Sir Alfred sputtered.

St. Sevrin shrugged. “Then you’re a fool besides a blackguard.” He stepped closer to Lisanne and clasped her hand, where she was shredding the already frayed ribbon on her gown. He made sure Sir Alfred saw the ring before he brought her fingers up to his lips. “Mine.”

No one in the room made the mistake of thinking he meant the ring.

“
A demain, cherie.”

Oh,
the shame of it! Oh, the disgrace of being connected to that family!” moaned Aunt Cherise.

“Oh, shut up,” snarled Uncle Alfred back.

The rest of the family had rushed into the estate room as soon as the duke left, leaving their tea in the parlor. Aunt Cherise wanted to know what all the yelling was about. What could a bounder like St. Sevrin want with Sir Alfred?

“He what?” she shrieked, clutching her vinaigrette. “My nerves cannot take such a calamity, Sir Alfred, I tell you. I’m sure to be laid in my bed for a week.”

“Stubble it, woman. He means to have the plaguey chit, your nerves or not, blast him to perdition! Wants me to buy her a trousseau, no less!”

The plaguey chit was standing near the fireplace, as far from the Findleys as she could get. If Nigel and Esmé hadn’t been crowded in the doorway, she would have fled lest Sir Alfred decide to ignore the duke’s warning and take his ire out on her, as usual.

This time it was Aunt Cherise who turned on Lisanne before she could make her escape. “You ungrateful child! How could you do this to us? Why, that man is not acknowledged among the best houses. With that connection we’ll never be received by the highest sticklers. Dear Esméralda won’t receive invitations to the best parties, where she can meet the most eligible
partis!
”

“What about Almack’s, Ma? I’ll still get my vouchers there, won’t I?” Esmé demanded.

“Oh, my precious, I fear not.”

“What?” screamed that devastated miss, who’d secretly harbored the notion that the dashing rake had come to ask Papa permission to pay his addresses to her, Esmé. “Why, you jade, Annie! You’ve ruined everything! I hate you! I hate you! If I can’t go to Almack’s, my come-out will be a failure. I may as well stay in Devon!”

“Where?” Sir Alfred snidely asked. “You cannot have thought, miss, nor you, madame,” he said with a nod toward his wife. “Neville Hall will become the duke’s property. And it’s not merely a matter of receiving the proper invitations to those dreary subscription balls when we go to London; we cannot go to London! In case you forgot, the site of that grand debutante ball you’ve been planning for months, Neville House in Cavendish Square, will belong to the dastard also!”

Aunt Cherise fainted into Nigel’s arms, never yet swooning when no one was nearby to catch her. Nigel quickly lowered his mama’s bulk to a leather-covered chair. Esmé was drumming her feet into the carpet, screaming that her life was over, that she hated all of them.

“Neville House is to be mine. Mr. Mackensie is drawing up the papers.” Lisanne ignored her uncle’s narrowed eyes, his fury at how much she had done behind his back, and addressed Esmé. “You may still have your ball there. His Grace has a home of his own in London. He cannot live in two houses at once.”

Aunt Cherise sat up, and Esmé sniffed, “Well, that’s the least you could do.”

“And the most, I’m afraid. His Grace will naturally control the bulk of the estate. You’ll have to bear the expenses yourself, Uncle. Unless, of course, you wish to ask my lord St. Sevrin to sponsor your daughter’s come-out.”

Aunt Cherise fainted again. Sir Alfred pushed past his children and out the door, slamming it behind him. No one mentioned Lisanne’s trousseau.

*

Lisanne took dinner on a tray in her room, what little she could eat atop the knot of uncertainty in her stomach. She thought of asking the serving girl to help her find a gown, but the maid was already rushed off her feet since Aunt Cherise and Esmé had also requested trays, tisanes, and soothing teas. Findley and Nigel were left alone in the dining room to bedevil the other servants with their ill temper.

Searching through her closet brought Lisanne no closer to an acceptable gown in which to be married. For her own sake, she couldn’t see what the to-do was about a dress. The wedding was a formality only, a ritual binding of the arranged contract. Any of the serviceable gowns in her closet should have done, spots, stains, gathered seams and all. But His Grace had requested a clean, decent gown. Appearances obviously meant more to him. The veneer of a proper bride must suit his self-consequence, although Lisanne knew she was no such thing. St. Sevrin must be worrying over his decision as mightily as she was hers, Lisanne thought, so she owed him the attempt to satisfy his wishes.

She would not think about what other desires of his might need satisfying. She would not think about tomorrow at all. He had stood up for her—for his own reasons, she must never forget—and he wanted a conventional bride. So a dress was her mission for the evening, not fretting herself to flinders over decisions already made.

Scratching on Esmé’s door produced nothing but more vitriol. “Go away, you loony. I hate you! You’ve ruined my life.”

Her aunt’s French dresser opened the door to Lisanne’s knock, took one look at who called, and shut the door in her face. “Madame is prostrate with
une crise de nerfs.
Good night, mademoiselle.

So Lisanne took herself upstairs past the servants’ quarters, to the attics. It took some time for her to find what she wanted in the dim light of two small wall lamps and the candle she carried. Even after she found the right trunks, she had to struggle to uncover them, to move heavier items off their lids. For once she wasn’t concerned with collecting cobwebs, although her hair and hands did a good job of it. At last she gave up trying to drag the weighty trunks toward better light and just started opening them. First she wiped her hands on her already filthy skirts.

Gowns were fuller in her mother’s time, she quickly realized, pulling out one opulent gown after another, trying to ignore the smell of camphor. They were meant to be worn over the voluminous crinolines that filled a nearby trunk. Contrary to Aunt Cherise’s estimate, Lisanne could ply a pretty needle indeed—she had to, to mend broken wings and injured paws. But remodeling one of these gowns was entirely beyond her. Why, it would take all night just to hem the wide skirts.

She kept opening more trunks, almost in despair, when she came upon her mother’s undergarments and night rail. Silk and lawn, they were, the finest muslin with lace and embroidery. One white silk nightgown had a rounded neckline, a high waist, and small puffed sleeves, similar to the muslins Esmé wore year-round. It was a narrow slip of a gown, meant to be worn under a satin robe with matching embroidery. It was the embroidery that caught Lisanne’s eye. Flowers of all hues and tints twined around the entire bodice and trailed down the skirt, with here and there a butterfly sewn into the design. Perfect.

Of course the gown was almost transparent, so Lisanne unpacked the trunk onto a blanket she placed on the floor until she found a silk slip, a batiste shift, and an entire layer of neatly folded stockings. She left the whalebone corsets in the bottom of the trunk. Not even for His Grace would she lace herself into one of those contraptions.

There was a pier glass in the attic, its silvered mirror turned cloudy. Still, it was better than going downstairs to try on her finds, then returning to the attics if she wasn’t satisfied. Lisanne quickly undressed—there was no heat here in the attics—and drew on the gown. Her mother had been thin, so the fit was better than Esmé’s rejects, although the hem would need to be taken up.

An old sewing box leaned against a dressmaker’s dummy near the mirror, so Lisanne held the skirt off the floor and went to search for pins to mark the hem before removing what was to be her wedding gown. There were a few pins, not even rusted.

It was when she bent down to fold the fabric under that Lisanne heard voices. At first she thought she must be hearing the servants in their nearby rooms, but the voices sounded like Uncle Alfred’s and Aunt Cherise’s. Looking around to get her bearings, Lisanne realized she must be directly over the master suite, which her aunt and uncle would
not
have after her marriage. They might stay until they removed to London in the fall, but that was the end of her charity, and her patience.

She was gathering up a handful of pins and the other items she had selected from her mother’s trunks, thinking to take them back to her room since she had no desire whatsoever to be privy to her relatives’ bedroom conversations traveling up the chimney flue. As she bent to retrieve the dress she’d been wearing, though, she heard Uncle Alfred’s voice clearly state: “I tell you, the wedding will not occur.”

Lisanne sat on top of one of the trunks.

“What do you mean?” Aunt Cherise asked. “St. Sevrin has a special license and permission from that awful man in London. He doesn’t need her guardian’s approval, so how are you going to stop it?”

Lisanne could hear her uncle chuckle. “Oh, Nigel has his orders. He’ll take care of things.”

“Nigel?” shrieked Aunt Cherise loudly enough to be heard down in the kitchens. “He’s not going to challenge that disgusting man to a duel, is he? They say St. Sevrin never misses his mark. And he’s a master swordsman. My baby will be killed!”

“Don’t be absurd. Nigel will merely make sure that the chit is, shall we say, less desirable.”

“Less desirable? I don’t understand. You said that reprobate wants her for her money, not her appearance. Annie’s already an unkempt, unmanageable sort of female. However could Nigel make her any less appealing?”

Lisanne wanted to know, too, but she had an idea. Her suspicions were confirmed when Uncle Alfred’s voice rose through the flooring: “If you cannot understand, madame, then I suggest you put your head to it. Not even Satyr St. Sevrin will take used goods for his duchess. He might spend his life whore-mongering, but he won’t marry one of them.”

There was a gasp. Lisanne didn’t know if it came from her own mouth or Aunt Cherise’s.

Sir Alfred was going on: “Nigel will make sure of it tonight.”

“I don’t want to hear anymore!” Lady Findley cried. Lisanne could picture Aunt Cherise pulling her sleeping cap down over her ears.

“It’s a masterful plan,” Sir Alfred boasted, ignoring his wife’s mewling sounds of distress. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it years ago, except there was no need. Who would have thought that any man, no matter how badly dipped, would marry that farouche female? No, she’ll just have to marry Nigel. That way all her lovely blunt stays in the family where it belongs. The curst solicitor will have to give his permission. He’ll understand Annie’ll be ruined, else.”

“But…but my baby is a good boy. He wouldn’t want to…to…”

“Oh, wouldn’t he just. Our niece is turning into a dashed attractive female, if one doesn’t mind a little muck and mire. Some men might even find that attractive in a primitive, earthy way. Besides, your baby Nigel is at the age when he’d lift the skirts of the fat lady at the fair, if he thought he could fit between her thighs.”

“Sir Arthur, my tender sensibilities!”

“Blister your sensibilities. This isn’t the time for the vapors. Nigel knows what he’s supposed to do. Annie is richer than he, more highly titled than he, and God knows is smarter than he. The only thing she’s not is stronger than he. Nigel understands it’s the only way.”

“Fetch my laudanum. No, the big bottle. I intend to sleep until tomorrow afternoon.”

*

The pins were all over the floor. Numbly, Lisanne gathered them into her hand and then tried to put them into her pocket, out of habit. The nightgown she wore didn’t have a pocket, so the pins landed on the floor again.

Dear heavens, what was she supposed to do now? Lisanne knew she couldn’t overpower Nigel, and it was too late to put a sleeping draught in
his
evening brew.