“I don’t understand,” said Juliet. “Was this girl of yours with Lord Dulwich?”
“No, she was quite alone when the filthy beast knocked her down,” said Cary, remembering the incident with renewed anger. “He shoved her out of the way in Piccadilly, and she fell, poor mite.”
“Somebody ought to shove him into the bloody river,” snarled the Duke, “except there’d be no grave for me to dance on. Look here, Cary, if you want to call him out, I’ll second you. He can’t go about the place shoving girls in the back. Not in my England.”
“I hadn’t thought of taking it quite so far,” said Cary, modestly. “I just helped the girl to her feet and showed her the shortcut to Hatchard’s. You know, through the bakery?”
“Oh, yes,” said the Duke, who knew London almost as well as the other gentleman. “There’s nothing quite like a bun straight from the oven.”
“What did she look like, this cousin of ours?” Juliet inquired, not in the least interested in shortcuts or buns or even Lord Dulwich’s grave. As the sister of two eligible bachelors, she prided herself on knowing all the marriageable young ladies on the market, and for Cary to have met one whom she could not immediately identify irritated her. “Was she pretty?”
“She was noticeably human in appearance,” Cary equivocated.
“What does that mean?” Juliet demanded.
“I didn’t want to kiss her,” he explained, “but neither did I feel compelled to run away.”
Juliet sighed. “That doesn’t much narrow things down, I’m afraid. I’ve met three or four of our Derbyshire cousins, and they’re all presentable but rather plain. The word for that is ‘tolerable,’ by the way. You might use it instead of ‘noticeably human.’ What color is her hair?”
Cary knew better than to reveal that the girl had hair the color of hot buttered scotch.
“Brown, of course,” Juliet answered her own question. “The Wayborns are all brunettes.”
“She’s not a Wayborn herself,” said Cary. “Her mother was one of the earl’s sisters.”
“The man had seven sisters,” Juliet complained. “Your mystery girl could be anyone.”
“Not anyone, surely,” said Cary, amused by Juliet’s frustration. He was himself only slightly interested in the identity of a girl he probably would never see again in his life, but Juliet was like a dog with a marrowbone she couldn’t crack.
“It could be the Vaughn girl,” she said hopefully. “There’s a scandal in there somewhere, but no one’s talking…yet. I’ll find it out though. See if I don’t.”
Cary chuckled. “Sorry, Julie. This girl’s about as scandalous as a pot of tea.”
Juliet wrinkled her nose. “Too bad. How was she dressed?”
“I expect her maid was responsible.”
The Duke appreciated the joke, at least until Juliet indicated with a look that she did not.
“What? No, you fathead. I mean, what sort of clothes had she on?”
“Oh, you mean what sort of clothes had she on,” said Cary. “I thought you were asking me how her clothes got on her body, which, of course, is a question no gentleman ought to answer, even if he is in full possession of the facts. Warm cloakish thing, gray, with fox fur at the ends, entirely unremarkable. Hood, no bonnet.”
“Marry her,” said the Duke. “I can’t bear these foolish new bonnets. I turned to the left in church the other day, during a hymn, and some woman’s feathers got on my tongue.”
“I daresay I will marry her,” said Cary, stifling a yawn, “if my sister can ever suss out who she is. Really, Juliet, I thought you knew everyone. I thought I could depend on you.”
Juliet bristled. “Well, is there anything useful you can tell me about her?”
“She likes the poetry of Wordsworth, but isn’t quite sure about Blake, even though she quoted what must be his most immortal words: ‘Bugger the King.’”
Juliet was shocked. “She said that?”
“Mr. Blake said it first, and I daresay he enjoyed the advantage of knowing what it means,” Cary said, laughing. “Our poor cousin merely repeated it. What else? She prefers Tom Jones to Moll Flanders, both of which she has read, even though she is not married. And, like everyone else in London, she’s waiting with baited breath for the publication of Kubla Khan.”
“She seems bookish,” was the Duke’s deduction.
Cary admitted that appearances were against the lady, but offered an alternative explanation. “We were talking in a bookshop. Had we fallen down an abandoned well together, our conversation might not have been the same.”
“What had she to say about Lord Byron?” Juliet demanded.
“Not a word. She spoke only of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, and Fielding.”
“Why, she sounds perfectly vile,” said Juliet, a little relieved. After all, she was under no obligation to know young ladies who admitted to liking Wordsworth. “Could her father be a military man? Did she say anything at all?”
Cary laughed. “Like what? ‘Forward march’? ‘Present arms’? She did say that her mother is generally thought to have married to disoblige her family.”
“It is Miss Vaughn,” said Juliet in triumph. “Cosima Vaughn. Her mother was Lady Agatha Wayborn, who married Major Vaughn, the rudest man in Dublin—something of an accomplishment, there being prodigious competition for the title! But I can’t think why they’ve come to London if the girl’s merely tolerable. She has nothing but a thousand pounds in the three per cents, and that’s certainly not enough. She would have married better at home.”
She bit her lip almost savagely. “More to the point, how could she afford fox? I never had any decent fur until after my engagement. Cary, are you quite sure her cloak was trimmed in fox? It must have been squirrel. Trust you not to know the difference.”
The Duke laughed suddenly. “Major Vaughn—good God, I know him. Once the Lady-Lieutenant—my aunt’s cousin by marriage, you know—asked him why he’d named his daughter Cosima, and the Irish rogue answered, ‘Cosima bastard, that’s why!’”
He roared with laughter, which not even a look from Miss Wayborn could quell. In a moment, Juliet was laughing, too. It had been quite some time since they had laughed together, and perhaps they laughed a bit harder than they otherwise would have done.
“And to think,” said Cary, brushing tears of hilarity from his eyes, “I might have met the man himself if I hadn’t been late for my appointment in Park Lane.”
Chapter 3
When Abigail returned her engagement ring to Lord Dulwich, she expected a certain amount of private recrimination from the jilted man. To her surprise, he merely disappeared from her life. Abigail, who dreaded all unpleasant scenes, was immensely relieved.
The public uproar that followed, however, was worse than anything she could have imagined. The fact that her mother had been Lady Anne Wayborn was entirely forgotten, while it was discovered anew that her father, Mr. William “Red” Ritchie, was not a gentleman, but rather the reverse: a Glaswegian and a purveyor of Scotch whisky. For a woman of such imperfect descent to break her engagement to an English lord was tantamount to a peasant’s revolt, and, in the view of the Patronesses of Almack’s, deserving of punishment. This created some difficulty, for, as Lady Jersey dryly pointed out to Mrs. Burrell, Miss Ritchie could scarcely be cast out of all good society when she had never been permitted into it.
Lord Dulwich, meanwhile, was not immune to the scorn and ridicule of his peers, who openly despised