when their pa sets a big dowry on them, it’s on account of being squinty or spotty or bowlegged.”
“What he means is, mostly, they’re dogs,” Meffat said.
“I’m fortunate,” Adderley said. “I know that. I might have done so much worse.”
She was a beauty, and that would make the bedding and getting of heirs more agreeable. Still, she wasn’t to his taste, a great cow of a girl. He liked daintier women, and he would have preferred a brunette.
But her dowry was enormous, she’d been vulnerable, and beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“Bless her innocence,” said Theaker. “She went just like a lamb.”
“There’s one won’t give you any trouble,” said Meffat.
* * *
Warford House
Wednesday 3 June
Clara kept her composure until she’d closed her bedroom door behind her.
She swallowed, walked quickly across the room, and sat at her dressing table.
“My lady?” said her maid, Davis.
A sob escaped Clara. And another.
“Oh, my lady,” said Davis.
“I don’t know what to do!” Clara buried her face in her hands.
“Now, now, my lady. I’ll make you a good, hot cup of tea and whatever it is, you’ll feel better.”
“I need more than tea,” Clara said. She looked up to meet Davis’s gaze in the mirror.
“I’ll put a drop of brandy in it,” said Davis.
“More than a drop,” Clara said.
“Yes, my lady.”
Davis hurried out.
Clara took out the note Lord Adderley had sent her.
A love note, filled with beautiful words, the kinds of words sure to melt the heart of a romantic girl.
Of course the words were beautiful. They’d been written by poets: Keats and Lovelace and Marvell and scores of others. Even Shakespeare! He thought she wouldn’t recognize lines from a Shakespeare sonnet! Either he was a complete idiot or he thought she was.
“The latter, most likely,” she muttered. She crumpled the note and threw it across the room. “Liar,” she said. “It was all lies. I knew it. How could I be such a fool?”
Because Mr. Bates had not asked her to dance, and she’d watched him whirl Lady Susan Morris, Lady Bartham’s daughter, about the floor. Lady Susan was petite and dark and pretty, and next to her Clara always felt ungainly and awkward.
Then what?
A moment’s hurt. Then Lord Adderley was at her elbow, with a glass of champagne, and a perfect remark, sure to make her smile.
Irish blarney, Mama would have said.
Maybe that’s what it was. Or maybe it was like the beautiful words he wrote, stolen from gifted writers. False, either way.
Champagne and waltzing and flattery, and Clara had taken the bait.
And now …
What to do?
She rose and walked to the window and looked out. In the garden below, the rain was beating the shrubs and flowers into submission. If she’d been a man—if she’d been Harry—she’d have climbed out and run away, as far as she could go.
But she wasn’t a man, and she had no idea how to run away.
Time, she thought. Her only hope was time. If they could drag out the engagement for months and months, a new scandal would come along, and everybody would forget this one.
Davis entered with the tea. “I put in a few extra drops, but you’ll need to drink it quickly,” she said. “Lady Bartham’s called, and Lady Warford said you’re to come straightaway.”
“Lady Bartham,” Clara said. “That wants more than a few drops. That wants a bottle.”
She swallowed her brandy-laced tea, put on her company face, and went down to the drawing room.
The visit was even worse than anticipated. Lady Bartham was so sympathetically venomous that she left Clara half blind with rage and Mama with a sick headache.
The next morning, Mama announced that she was sick to death of this ghastly engagement and everybody’s insinuations. They would consult the calendar and fix a date for the wedding.
“Yes, of course, Mama,” Clara said. “In the autumn, perhaps. Town won’t be so busy then.”
“Autumn?” Mama cried. “Are you mad? We’ve not a moment to lose. You must be married before the end of the Season—before the Queen’s last Drawing Room at the latest.”
“Mama, that’s only three weeks!”
“It’s sufficient time to arrange a wedding, even a large one—and a small one is out of the question. You know what people will say. And if those wicked French dressmakers Harry took you to can’t finish your bride clothes on time, it is too bad. It is not my fault if my children disobey me at every turn.”
Now, thanks to steam-presses, steam-vessels, and steam-coaches, the prolific brain of a French dress-maker or milliner has hardly given a new cap of trimming to the Parisian élégantes, before it is also in possession of the London belles.
—La Belle Assemblée, March 1830
Friday 5 June
Longmore transferred the reins to one hand and with his other took out his pocket watch. He flicked it open.
Eleven o’clock, she’d said. In the morning—because the fashionable aristocrats shopped in the afternoon, and she had to get there before they did.
“It’s important to arrive before Dowdy’s favorite customers do,” Sophy had told him. “Shopkeepers like that will fawn over the great ladies with the heavy purses and pass off dull rustic misses to lowly assistants. It would be truly useful to see the pattern for your mother’s dress, since she’s one of their most important customers. That means I can’t be passed off to an assistant. It has to be Horrible Hortense herself or her forewoman.”
It was exactly eleven o’clock. Longmore looked up at the sky. Cloudy, but not threatening rain as his tiger, Reade, had insisted. Reade had not been happy about having to remain behind. If it rained—as he assured his lordship it would surely do—his lordship would need help raising the curricle’s hood.
Well, then, they’d simply have to get wet, Longmore decided. While convenient for minding horses and helping one wrestle temperamental hoods, on the present occasion a groom would be very much in the way.
Longmore put the watch away and reverted to staring at the shop door. She’d told him to collect her, not at Maison Noirot, but at the ribbon shop farther down St. James’s Street, near St. James’s Palace. To Allay Suspicion.
She was hilarious.
“Cousin?” said a familiar female voice.
He blinked. It was Sophy’s voice and it wasn’t. He knew this had to be her but his eyes denied it. The woman standing on the pavement next to his carriage was so nondescript that he’d probably been looking straight at her without actually seeing her.
The murky brown cloak concealed