Sheri Cobb South (14 page)

“I didn’t tell him anything that wasn’t true,” insisted Lady Helen, instantly on the defensive. “I told him that you were on intimate terms with members of Parliament, and that you visit the gentlemen’s clubs with peers of the realm, and that you—”

Here she faltered in her recital of his triumphs, and he was obliged to prompt her. “And that I what?”

“And that you took Almack’s by storm,” she confessed guiltily.

Mr. Brundy’s lips twitched, and then he laughed aloud. “Aye, I did at that, didn’t I?” He caught her hand and pressed it to his lips. “You’re a brick, ‘elen Brundy.”

Lady Helen could not have said why this simple tribute warmed her heart so, but it did.

“Anyway, that’s the mill,” he said. “What did you think of it?”

Although his tone was nonchalant, there was something in his expression which betrayed his eagerness for her approbation. She found his imperfectly concealed anxiety rather sweet.

“I thought it was fascinating,” she replied, and had the satisfaction of seeing the anxiety in his eyes replaced by pride.

And it
was
fascinating, she reflected, though not necessarily for the reasons he thought. Any one of Manchester’s dozens of cotton mills could produce calico and gingham, but this one had produced a man. He had been tempered in the fires of poverty and hard labor, forged into a man unlike any Town beau she had ever known. He was the gentlest of men, yet he had held his ground against the Duke of Reddington’s towering rage. He was an astute businessman, yet he treated his workers with consideration and fairness. He debated labor reform with members of Parliament, yet he took the trouble to buy peppermints for a child in his employ. In their three weeks of marriage, he had never responded in kind to her verbal barbs, but had shown her more kindness, perhaps, than she deserved.

The great irony was that there was no place in Society for such a man. However vast his fortune might be, it had been acquired through Trade, and that fact negated all other considerations. It might not be fair, but since when had life ever dealt fairly with workhouse orphans?

He should not have tried to fight it, she thought as the square brick house appeared over the hill. He should have stayed here, where he belonged, and married a girl of his own class who would have filled his house to the rafters with strapping boys and apple-cheeked girls.

The image, merry as it was, left her feeling strangely hollow inside.

Chapter 10

Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT,
Madame Bovary

During Lady Helen’s absence from London, Lord Waverly consoled himself by furthering his acquaintance with her young brother, Viscount Tisdale. Since the earl was not in the habit of lending consequence to green youths, the viscount could not but feel flattered when a chance meeting at Tattersall’s resulted in an invitation to accompany the earl to a new and already notorious gaming hell where, it was reputed, Lord Parley had won the astonishing sum of £30,000 in a single night. That some other, less fortunate soul must have lost an equal sum on the same night did not in the least deter the viscount’s eagerness to try his own luck. And so, armed with a rouleau of guineas and an optimistic frame of mind, he set out for Jermyn Street with his host.

Upon their arrival, young Tisdale was hard pressed to hide his disappointment. The gaming hell, viewed from the street, looked not at all like a den of iniquity, but a rather staid residence.

“This is it?” he asked his mentor in disbelief.

“Indeed, it is,” confessed the earl.   “I trust you will not be disappointed.”

Waverly lifted the door knocker and let it fall. A pair of steely eyes inspected the newcomers through a slit in the door, and a moment later they were admitted by a burly porter whose crooked nose suggested a prior career as a pugilist. Once inside, the viscount found the atmosphere far more in keeping with his expectations. A cloud of cigar smoke hung in the air, and the scent of strong spirits stung his nostrils.

Tisdale followed the earl up the stairs and into the gaming rooms, where players in various stages of inebriation fondled painted women with shocking
décolletage.

“What will it be, Tisdale?” asked Waverly. “Faro? Macao?”

“If it is all the same to you, sir, I have always wanted to try my luck at hazard,” confessed his eager pupil.

“As you wish.” The pair found a vacant table, the earl called for a pair of dice and a bottle of brandy, and the viscount’s lessons commenced. The earl patiently explained the rules, then generously allowed his young protégé a few trial casts before play began in earnest.

The viscount won the first cast, a circumstance which he modestly ascribed to beginner’s luck, but when the second and third also fell in his favor, he began to fancy himself a dab hand at the game.

“I trust you will give your professor an opportunity to win back his losses,” remarked the earl, refilling the younger man’s glass.

“Oh, of course!” the viscount consented generously, and play recommenced.

Alas, Lady Luck was in a flirtatious mood, and after losing four straight throws, he was obliged to break open his rouleau of guineas. The lead seesawed back and forth for some time thereafter, while the level of brandy remaining in the bottle dropped lower and lower, and the pile of guineas at the earl’s elbow grew slowly but inexorably larger. It was not until a second bottle had been broached that the viscount looked down to discover that his rouleau of guineas had completely disappeared.

“I say, Waverly, thish ish—this is deuced awkward,” he mumbled, pushing back his chair so that he might search underneath the table for his missing coins. “Can’t think what might’ve happened to them.”

“I believe they are all here, quite safe,” Waverly said reassuringly, indicating the golden mound at his elbow. “Do not fret yourself over it, Tisdale. I must own myself a poor teacher indeed if your game does not begin to improve very soon. In the meantime, I shall be more than happy to accept your vowels.”

The viscount blinked owlishly at the earl’s winnings, and decided it would be insulting in the extreme to balk in the face of such generosity. He allowed the earl to refill his glass while he scrawled his initials onto an I.O.U. with an unsteady hand.

By the time they at last rose from the table, the second brandy bottle had been drained and the pile of vowels at the earl’s elbow had reached an alarming height. When their sum was tallied and Tisdale found himself some five hundred pounds in debt, he was shocked into a state approaching sobriety.

“I—I don’t have the blunt on hand at this moment,” stammered the viscount. “Still, debt of honor and all that—”

“Nothing to worry about,” Lord Waverly assured him, correctly interpreting his pigeon’s blanched countenance. “You may have all the time you need to square things with your father.”

Privately, the viscount suspected there was not that much time in a month of Sundays. Despite his own fondness for table and turf, the duke had no patience with his son and heir’s indulging in similar vices. No, he could not go to the duke with a request for money, but there was another he could turn to—one to whom five hundred pounds would seem mere pocket change.

“I shall ashk—ask Nell,” he said, more to himself than to the earl. “She musht—must be back soon. Can’t see Nell staying in Manchester a minute longer than necessary. Depend upon it, that’s the ticket.”

* * * *

The viscount had to wait four days for his sister’s return. Being young and resilient, his body had by that time recovered from his excesses, but his mind was not so easily assuaged. What if his wealthy brother-in-law—no great lover of gaming, as he recalled—refused to cough up the ready? What if he were forced to turn to the cent-percenters or, worse yet, his father?
When,
for God’s sake, was Nell coming home? He only hoped that a prolonged sojourn with that Cit husband of hers hadn’t put her in such a bad temper that she would refuse his request out of hand.

In this last, at least, the viscount’s fears were unfounded. Far from returning to London out of temper, it was with an uncharacteristic sense of reluctance that Lady Helen returned at all. As the postchaise bowled steadily southeastward, she found herself missing the easy camaraderie they had achieved in Lancashire. She darted a quick glance at her husband, who stared silently out his window at the landscape whizzing by, and wondered if he were thinking similar thoughts.

As if feeling her eyes upon him, he turned and gave his bride a tentative smile. “I’m afraid it wasn’t much, as wedding trips go,” he offered apologetically.

“I enjoyed it very much.”

“You know, ‘elen, I’ve been thinking,” he continued hesitantly. “If you like, we could go somewhere after the Season ends—a belated wedding trip, per’aps. Not changing the terms of our agreement, or anything like that,” he added quickly.

“That sounds lovely, Mr. Brundy.” She started to suggest Italy or even Paris, now that the war was over, then remembered that, in either case, he could not speak the language. Not for the world would she embarrass him or make him feel ill at ease. “Brighton is always a popular choice for summer,” she said at last.

“Then Brighton it is,” he declared. “I’ll ‘ave me man of business locate a suitable ‘ouse.”

Their wedding trip settled to the satisfaction of both, they each returned to their own private thoughts. To be sure, Lady Helen had much to think about. She had once told her father that she did not know what she sought in a man, but was certain Mr. Brundy was not it. She could not have been more wrong. He was the man she had despaired of ever finding, and yet she had failed to recognize his worth.

But all of that was in the past. She knew now what a treasure was hers, and although he had not said it in so many words—and to be sure, she had given him no reason to feel thus—it seemed at times as if Mr. Brundy were rather fond of her. Perhaps, given time and opportunity, that fondness might grow into something deeper, something she dared not name, even to herself.

Accordingly, upon returning to the Grosvenor Square townhouse, she penned a note to her father’s cook offering her husband’s belated compliments on the salmon and requesting the receipt. While one footman delivered this epistle, another was instructed to remove all the extra leaves from the dining room table.

She had been home less than an hour when the viscount called, begging the indulgence of a private word with his sister. Correctly interpreting this request as a wish to speak to her without her husband present, Lady Helen instructed Evers to show the viscount to the drawing room, secure in the knowledge that Mr. Brundy would not emerge from his study before dinner.

“Nell!” cried young Tisdale, greeting his sister with outstretched arms. “I say, you’re looking splendidly!”

He would have said that anyway, of course, to get into her good graces, but he discovered with surprise that it was true. She looked different, somehow, and although he could not have said precisely what the difference was, there seemed to be a certain glow about her that had been lacking before. Far from rendering her peevish, Manchester had obviously agreed with her.

“Teddy!” Lady Helen returned her sibling’s embrace. “How are you? And how is Papa?”

“Oh, fine, fine!” the viscount assured her. “Papa is fine, too.”
And I’m counting on you to see that he stays that way,
he might have added, but wisely refrained.

“You must tell me all the latest
on dits.
What has been happening while I was away?”

“Well, Miss Putney is to marry Lord Haversham, and rumor has it that Sir John Haskell was forced to flee to the Continent to escape his creditors. And,” he added, trying to sound nonchalant, “a new gaming house has opened in Jermyn Street. Went there myself one night to play hazard.”

Lady Helen regarded her sibling with a knowing look. “Did you indeed? I’ll wager it would be news to Papa!”

Thus discovered, the viscount abandoned all pretense of nonchalance. “Indeed, it would, and I am counting on you to keep the news from reaching his ears. I dipped a bit deep, and I’d drunk too much brandy, and—oh, say you’ll help me! Please, Nell, I’m desperate!”

Lady Helen could not but be moved by her brother’s despair. They had grown up concealing one another’s worst peccadillos, when possible, from their father’s wrath. “Who holds your vowels, Teddy? Can you not ask him to wait until quarter-day, or pay in installments?”

“I’d rather not, since Waverly was good enough to bring me along as his guest. I hate to impose further on his generosity—”

Lady Helen caught her breath. “Waverly? Are you saying
Lord Waverly
introduced you to this gaming house?”

“Yes, but—”

“He was not acting out of purely philanthropic motives, you may depend upon it. Any extra time he might allow you would come with strings attached. No, Lord Waverly must be paid at once. How much do you need?”

“Five hundred pounds.”

“Five hundred pounds?”
echoed his sister, aghast. “You call five hundred pounds a
bit deep?”

“Come on, Nell,” begged her brother. “I’ll wager your pin money alone would support a small principality for a year!”

“I’ll not deny that Mr. Brundy is more than generous, but five hundred pounds is hardly pin money!”

“No, but you could ask him for it, could you not?” coaxed her brother.

Lady Helen’s glow flickered and died. “Pray don’t ask such a thing of me, Teddy.”

He had been braced for a show of temper, or even a diatribe on the dangers of frequenting gaming hells, but none of their childhood follies had prepared him for his sister’s quiet misery.

“You don’t think he would give you such a sum?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I daresay he might, if I asked, but—but I don’t want to ask.”

By this time the viscount was growing seriously alarmed, for his sister’s sake as well as his own. “Why not, Nell? Is he cruel to you?”

Lady Helen shook her head. “He is the kindest and best of men,” she declared mournfully, in precisely the same tone she might have used had she professed him to be a monster of cruelty.