Three Weeks With Lady X (3 page)

Thorn pulled off his shirt and used it to mop his chest and face.

“Do you think that Laetitia will like you?” Vander asked.

“ ‘Like me?’ What do you mean?”

“The way you look. Does she seem attracted to you?”

Thorn glanced down at himself. Long bands of muscle covered his body, forming ridges over his taut abdomen. He kept his body in fighting shape, and no woman had yet expressed a complaint. “Are you talking about the scars?” Like every mudlark who survived into adulthood, he was covered with them.

“You never go into society, so you wouldn’t know, but Laetitia’s just spent the season dancing with a crowd of wand-thin mollies with no need to shave. We’re too big, and we’d both have a beard within the day if we allowed it.”

“Those men were all at school with us,” Thorn said, shrugging. “You’re taking marriage too seriously. It’s a transaction like any other. I’m giving her a country house; that will make up for my brute proportions.”

“Damn,” Vander said, pausing in the middle of rubbing sweat from his hair. “You really mean it, don’t you? I can’t see you as a rural squire.”

Neither could Thorn, but as he understood it, children required fresh air and open spaces. His new estate was close to London, and he could easily visit.

“What will you do with yourself there?” Vander gave a bark of laughter. “Go fishing? I can see you fashioning a new rod and selling the design for a hundred pounds, but reeling in a trout? No.”

Thorn had just acquired a rubber factory that was losing money fast. For a moment, he imagined a rubber fishing rod—he had to design something profitable that the factory could make—but then dismissed it. “I won’t be there often,” he said, tossing his shirt to the side. “I’ll leave the trout for idiots who fancy shriveling their balls in rushing water.”

He was an East Londoner to the core, and he’d only catch a trout if he were starving. Plus, his time as a mudlark had left one indelible mark: he didn’t like rivers. Given a choice, he’d never go in one again, and certainly never dive to the bottom.

“I like fishing,” Vander objected, pulling on one of the linen shirts that Thorn’s valet had left stacked on a filigree chair.

“Good, because I’m inviting Laetitia and her parents to the country in a fortnight or so, and you can come along and fish for your supper. I have to persuade Laetitia’s mother to accept my baseborn blood, and you can be proof that I know the right sort. I only hope you’ve never met each other.”

Vander threw his drenched shirt at Thorn’s head, but it fell to the floor. Thorn was already heading out the door.

He had a factory to save.

Chapter Three

I
ndia made an excuse and did not join the Dibbleshires for tea; there was no point in risking yet another passionate declaration from his lordship. Instead, she and her godmother retired to their sitting room, where India began opening the mail Adelaide’s butler had sent over by a groom. Letter after letter implored her to cure various ills: a disorganized house, an unfashionable dining room, even (implicitly) a marriage.

But she resolutely wrote back refusals, mindful of her decision to marry. She even refused an offer from the Regent’s secretary asking if she would renovate his private chambers in Brighton. The only truly tempting letter came from the Duchess of Villiers. Eleanor was older than India, and mother of an eight-year-old boy, but despite these differences, they had struck up a close friendship. Eleanor was brilliant, well read, and witty without being cruel, and India admired and adored her.

In fact, Eleanor was everything India planned to be, once she had time to read the books she had missed as a child. Someday she would like to invite Eleanor and her other friends to a country house of her own. They would spend lazy days in the shade of a willow, talking about literature. She would understand grammar by then, and never worry about
who
and
whom
again, let alone
lie
and
lay
.

But now Eleanor was writing to ask a special favor. “Adelaide, did we meet Tobias Dautry when we stayed with the Duke of Villiers?”

Her godmother put down her teacup. “No, he was in Scotland at the time. You must have heard of Dautry. He’s the oldest of Villiers’s bastards, and by all accounts, he owns five factories and is richer than Midas.”

“Didn’t he invent a blast furnace, or something like that?”

“Yes, and sold it to a coal magnate for ten thousand pounds. I must say, I do feel sympathetic toward Villiers’s by-blows. It must be awkward to be brought up as a lord or lady, with expectations of an excellent marriage. Who would choose to marry a by-blow? Still, I hear that His Grace has given the girls outrageously large dowries.”

India knew she was cynical, but common sense told her that those girls would indeed make excellent matches.

“Dautry is different from the others,” Adelaide continued. “Rougher. I think he was living on the streets when Villiers found him, and he was already twelve years old. Eleanor never managed to civilize him.”

“Why haven’t I met him?” India asked. What with one thing and another, she had been to hundreds of social events in London in the last few years, although she had never debuted. It was her considered opinion that the queen had no more interest in meeting her than she had in meeting the queen.

“He’s a man of business. Knows his place, I expect.”

“Well, he can’t have avoided society entirely,” India said, “because Eleanor writes in this letter that he’s courting Laetitia Rainsford.”

“Really!” Adelaide’s mouth formed a perfect circle. “I wonder how he came to meet Lala? She’s so pretty that I would have thought her parents could do better. And Lady Rainsford was one of the royal ladies-in-waiting before her marriage.”

“Money,” India suggested.

“Money is not everything.”

Adelaide could say that because she had never lacked it. India, on the other hand, had grown up on an estate that had been falling to wrack and ruin. In her view, money
was
everything. Or nearly everything.

“Do read to me what she says?”

India looked back at the letter. “She begins by telling me that Theodore beat his father at a game of chess for the first time, which apparently made them both very happy—”

“Goodness me, the child is only eight, isn’t he?”

India nodded. “Then she writes, ‘
I know how much you are in demand, but I write with the faint hope that you are free. His Grace’s eldest son, Tobias Dautry, has recently acquired a country estate just outside London called Starberry Court. It likely needs some refurbishing, although Tobias bought it with its contents intact. He is courting Miss Laetitia Rainsford and he wishes to ensure that the house is in suitable condition before he invites her parents to the country. Naturally, I told him that you were the only person I would trust in such an endeavor.
’ ”

“Eleanor is not happy about the match,” Adelaide stated. “How interesting! I suspect that means that the duke is equally displeased.”

“What on earth gave you that impression?”

“If Eleanor were happy about Dautry’s courtship, she would say so. And you know how informal Eleanor is; she uses Laetitia’s full name. She doesn’t like Lala.”

“I only met her once, but I thought she was a very sweet girl.”

“She’s beautiful, but not very bright,” Adelaide said with a touch of asperity. “I suppose that explains why the duke and duchess are not in favor. Her parents must have weighed her lack of wits against his unfortunate birth. What did you say that estate he bought was called?”

“Starberry Court.”

“The Earl of Jupp’s country house!” Adelaide exclaimed. “Supposedly he draped the walls in red damask and invited fourteen Italian women to live with him. The naughty sort of Italians. He held very popular parties, by all accounts. No one ever admitted to going to one, but everyone seemed to know the details.”

One quickly lost all naïveté when investigating the antics that could disrupt a badly managed household, so India nodded, unsurprised. “Starberry Court became a bawdy house?”

“Not precisely a brothel, since the services offered were gratis,” Adelaide said. “Jupp died last November, I think it was, and everyone said that he was brought low by the French disease. I expect the furnishings are deplorable.”

“We could strip the damask in a day or two.” A little prickle of excitement went down India’s spine at the idea of tackling such a large task. Of course, there was the issue of finding a husband, but surely that could wait for a few more weeks. These days a small army of craftsmen awaited her command. She could have a house painter, a master wood carver, and a stonemason on the doorstep in a matter of days.

“You could likely make it acceptable,” Adelaide conceded. “Still, I don’t know what Dautry was thinking, buying that particular estate. Given the circumstances of his birth, why buy an estate with such a sordid reputation?”

“It was probably an excellent bargain.”

“I wonder if Lord Rainsford is feeling a pinch. His wife is both spiteful and recklessly extravagant. Perhaps Lala is being sacrificed on the altar of parental excess.”

“Eleanor goes on to say that she and the duke will be in attendance when Mr. Dautry entertains the Rainsfords in his new house,” India said. “She invites us to stay as well. I hardly think that accepting an offer of marriage from a duke’s Midas-like son, even if he was born on the wrong side of the blanket, can be termed a sacrifice.”

“You’re wrong there. Lady Rainsford is one of the most arrogant women on God’s earth, obsessed by her connection to the Court. Mark my words: she is mortified to think that one of her daughters is considering marriage to a bastard. What’s more, Eleanor wouldn’t want any child of her beloved Villiers being less than celebrated. She is ferociously loyal and protective of her husband’s motley brood.”

India folded up the letter. “But if Villiers champions the marriage—which he must be doing, given that Eleanor will host the house party—it will take place.” She was reasonably certain that the duke got everything he wanted, whether that meant marrying his bastard son to a lady or to a royal princess. He was that type of man.

“We should do it!” Adelaide exclaimed. “Lala’s so witless that she might spend her whole life dancing attendance on her mother. Eleanor needs our help. That house needs our help. But heaven help her, that girl needs our help too.

“What’s more,” she added gleefully, “the betrothal will take Lady Rainsford down a peg or two. I can’t tell you how many times she’s informed me that her family has attended royalty since the time of Henry VIII.”

“You make Lala sound addled,” India objected. “I think her reputation for witlessness must be overstated.”

“She can’t read,” Adelaide confided. “She told me herself.”

“She needn’t read once she’s married to Midas; three secretaries can read aloud to her. Though I do think her governess should have been more persistent.” India had fierce opinions about inadequate education.

“By all accounts, they tried. She still had a tutor as of last year, but she just couldn’t grasp it. That must be the real reason the Rainsfords are considering this marriage. If she cannot read, she cannot run a household.” Adelaide hesitated. “I wonder if Dautry knows that?”

There was something about this proposed marriage that India didn’t like. The mercantile nature of it was jarring.

On the other hand, her parents had married for love—disastrously. Even though her father’s estate desperately needed an influx of money in the form of a dowry, he had decided that happiness would solve everything. He had been wrong. Love was a terrible reason for marriage, in India’s estimation.

“Eleanor is requesting that we spend the next fortnight at Starberry refurbishing the house, after which they would join us,” India said.

Adelaide’s expression cleared. “An excellent idea! And it would give you time to do something with your hair before we return to London.”

India’s hair was thick and hard to handle, as well as being an unusual color, more like silver than gold. One minute Adelaide thought she should rinse it with rosemary extract, and the next with egg yolks. Or better yet, dye it yellow.

India simply instructed her maid to pin it up as best she could. In her experience, women were of the opinion that her hair could be “brightened up,” but men seemed to like it as it was. India just thought there was too much of it.

As best she could tell, she had her paternal grandmother’s bosom, and there was too much of that too. Fashionable clothing was designed for small breasts, which always caused problems with fitting gowns—but luckily, she hadn’t had reason to dress fashionably. In fact, it was the opposite.

She had to wear gowns that promoted respect, but also trust. In order to do her job, the people who hired her must feel she could be trusted with their homes, and dressing in the very latest styles often frightened them.

Consequently, she traveled with three trunks, because she never knew how she might need to present herself. Sometimes the master of a household responded best if she dressed like a duchess, with an emphasis on diamonds. (They invariably assumed that her jewels were family heirlooms, even though India had bought them herself.)

Other times she presented herself as a docile, modest young lady, who valued every word that dropped from the man’s lips. And then there were times when the seventeen-year-old scion of the house was clearly going to make a nuisance of himself. She would come to breakfast with braided hair, wearing a dress of brown homespun reminiscent of a German governess.

If she took on Starberry Court, she should probably wear something that minimized her rank. A man who wished to rise in the world and overcome his illegitimate birth would be looking for reassurance. She would have to protect Dautry’s sense of
amour propre,
while giving tactful instruction about the manners and style of a great house.

“All right,” she said, making up her mind. “We’ll say farewell to Lady Dibbleshire and inform Mr. Dautry that we will help him with the renovation. And with catching the woman of his dreams.”

“An excellent plan,” Adelaide said, nodding. “But India darling, I must remind you that time is passing. This house cannot be an excuse to put off a decision about marriage.”

India’s good cheer wavered. She summoned a smile. “The house won’t take long.”

“You must decide between your various suitors, my dear.” Adelaide patted her hand. “They won’t wait forever.”

“I will,” India said, the words hollow even to her own ears. “I mean to find a perfect husband, Adelaide. Just as soon as I have time.”