His Lordship's True Lady (True Gentlemen #4)(23)
“I’m taking Bronwyn to visit Amy Marguerite on Monday,” Lily said. “I cannot promise to earn anybody’s favor for you, Uncle, but I will do my best.”
“You always do, dearest niece. I so admire that about you.”
He went back to the mistress who’d held him in thrall since Lily had first met him—the financial pages—while Lily sipped tea and waited for her stomach to settle.
It never did, not entirely. Fear circled her life like a raptor. When she couldn’t spot its shadow on the path before her, she knew it would reappear at the worst moment and threaten every kind of safety a woman held dear.
“I’m off to pay a call on Tippy,” Lily said. “She might remember some details of Grampion’s boyhood visits to London.”
“The very recollections I pay her for. I’m told Grampion likes to hack out on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The usual predawn lunacy in Hyde Park. Never saw much sense in it, myself.”
“The fresh air is invigorating, and the horses are happier for stretching their legs.”
Lily had given the right answer, the answer that assured Uncle she’d drag herself out of bed at the ungodly hour preferred by London gentlemen for their morning rides. She’d drag herself to whatever balls, routs, Venetian breakfasts, soirees, musicales, and at-homes Uncle put on her schedule. She’d drag herself to the card parties and charity auctions too.
He’d never asked her to compromise her virtue, never asked her to do more than relay gossip word for word, and yet Uncle was her gaoler as surely as if he chained her to the cart’s tail and whipped her through London daily.
Next month, on her twenty-eighth birthday, Lily would gain nominal control of an inherited fortune. Uncle would doubtless continue to manage all of the money and most of Lily’s time.
If she remained under his roof.
With no money in hand, few friends, and a history of felony wrongdoing, Lily’s escape would present many challenges.
She’d faced many challenges and survived. Spending time with Grampion was simply one more torment added to a list that was as long as Lily’s memory, and as near as her own name.
Chapter Six
* * *
Hessian left the library door ajar, not to let the spring breezes waft through his house, but because with the door open, he could hear activity in the foyer and thus avoid an ambush if callers disrupted his day. In Cumberland, one visited back and forth with the neighbors, and that was all very pleasant, but in London, socializing was a more portentous undertaking.
Politicians’ wives held dinner parties that decided every bit as much legislation as did parliamentary committee meetings.
A conversation over cards might put a complicated investment scheme in motion.
Ladies sharing a cabriolet for the Fashionable Hour could plan a match between their grown children.
If Worth came sauntering by, or one of Jacaranda’s host of brothers dropped around, Hessian wanted even the few minutes’ notice that he gained by leaving the library door open.
Monday arrived, and well before the appointed hour for Lily Ferguson’s visit, somebody gave the front door knocker a stout rap. Hessian rose from his desk and donned his jacket. Perhaps the lady was as eager as the children—and Hessian—for this call to begin.
“When last Miss Ferguson called, I did not quite make a cake of myself,” he informed his reflection in the mirror over the library’s sideboard. “Neither did I inspire the lady into rapturous enthusiasms.”
Butterflies were shy creatures and so were certain northern earls. Hessian was rehearsing a gracious smile—charming was beyond him—when a feminine voice came from the direction of the foyer.
Not Miss Ferguson. Whoever had presumed on Hessian’s morning was unknown to him and lacked Lily’s gracious, ladylike tone. Hessian was back at his desk—for he’d got halfway across the room at the tap of the knocker—no smile in evidence, when the butler brought in a card on a silver tray.
“Mrs. Braithwaite has come to call, with her companion Miss Smythe.” Hochman’s tone—utterly correct—suggested the caller hadn’t impressed him.
Hessian took the card, plain black script on vellum. Daisy’s aunt… Drat the luck. “Show the ladies to the guest parlor and let the kitchen know we’ll need a tea tray, please.”
“Very good, my lord. Should I notify the nursery as well?”
God, no. “No, thank you. If anybody asks, the child is resting from a trying weekend.” Daisy had tried the patience of every member of the household, waking three times each night in some peculiar state of somnolent terror.
“Let’s use the good silver, Hochman, and if Miss Ferguson arrives while I’m entertaining Mrs. Braithwaite, please put the library to use. Miss Ferguson might entertain herself and the children by reading them a story on the mezzanine.”
“I understand, my lord.” Hochman bowed and withdrew, the silver tray winking in his gloved hand.
Mrs. Braithwaite was much as Hessian recalled her. Her figure was fuller and her use of henna more in evidence. She was handsome rather than pretty, and her gray walking dress sported a dizzying abundance of lace.
Mourning garb, this was not.
At her side was a lovely, willowy blonde in sprigged muslin, one of those pale, quiet creatures who belonged in some enchanted forest with a book of spells rather than swilling tea in Mayfair.