A Useful Woman (29 page)

The music drew to its close. The couples, flushed and breathless, applauded politely. Under cover of that noise, Devon murmured his answer.

“I did not write the bet in. Lord Blanchard came to me and told me it had been done.”

Lord Blanchard. Yes. Of course. He had plenty of time to write it, and he'd know you well enough to know you'd go along with the deed,
for honor and for me, and Jasper and Honoria as well.
Rosalind nodded. “Thank you.”

The gentlemen led the ladies back to their friends and companions. Devon led Rosalind back to Honoria, so that all the world might see that she and his supposed intended were all friends. As they passed the threshold, Rosalind saw Sanderson Faulks leaning casually against a wall, his small, cynical smile set firmly on his face. He nodded toward her.

“Well, that's over with,” announced Honoria as Rosalind and Devon reached her. “You've danced, we've been seen. Now what do we do?” She sent her sharp glance around the room. “And where's Mother got herself to?”

They all looked around. “Oh.” Honoria waved her fan.

Lady Edmund was standing side by side with Lady Blanchard in the green salon. Together they surveyed the gathering. Rosalind, heart in her throat, saw the Countess Lieven, very grand in scarlet and black with a chain of diamonds at her throat, glide up to her godmother. Lady Blanchard gestured, one to the other, clearly making introductions. Lady Edmund curtsied, but not before giving the countess a long, measuring look.

“Well, won't Mother be full of herself now,” muttered Honoria.

“I should probably get over to Lady Blanchard. She'll need me tonight. Thank you for the dance, Lord Casselmain. I'll speak with you soon, Honoria.”

Devon bowed. His gray eyes were filled with questions, and with promises he wanted to make, but could not. Rosalind felt her heart crumble for the sorrow of it, and yes, the foolishness. She wanted to drag him out of here. She wanted to stand in the street like a fishwife, or Honoria, and scream at him until he told her all he was still hiding, and she could lose herself far enough in the violence of her emotion to confess all that she still hid from him.

Of course, what she did was turn away and make her slow, winding way through the crowd. But it wasn't the need to assist Lady Blanchard that guided her steps. It was the need to hear the conversation Lady Blanchard and Lady Edmund were carrying on with the Countess Lieven. But the rooms had filled up since the dance began, and Rosalind had to edge her way politely between the gathered persons. She must smile, and acknowledge their greetings, and make her curtsies to those who bowed to her. As fast as she might excuse herself, it was not fast enough.

For by the time Rosalind reached the countess, Lady Edmund was gone, and had taken Lady Blanchard with her.

The Inner Workings of an Exclusive Society

For the female government of Almack's was a pure despotism, and subject to all the caprices of despotic rule.

—Captain Rees Howell Gronow,
Recollections and Anecdotes of the Camp,the Court, and the Clubs

“Ah, Miss Thorne!” Countess Lieven bestowed her highly polished smile upon Rosalind. “How very fine to see you again. Do you enjoy yourself?”

“Very much, Your Grace,” answered Rosalind, grateful for the politeness that was reflexive and covered over her distress. “Mrs. Nottingham's parties are always lovely.” She let her gaze wander about the room, as if taking in the scene. She saw Lord Blanchard in a corner, next to a Grecian urn on its pedestal, listening to a small man in a cavalry officer's uniform. But she did not see Lady Blanchard at all.

“. . . after their kind, and thanks in no small part to you, or so I am told,” the countess was saying. Rosalind lowered her eyes modestly, which made the countess laugh.

“You are a charming girl, Miss Thorne. I wonder if you would
consider coming to stay with us this summer? We have become quite English, you know, with a house in the country and all the . . . what is the phrase . . . all the trimmings!”

Startled, Rosalind almost fell out of her polite mannerisms. “That is most kind of you, Your Grace.” She remembered her curtsy, which only made the Russian countess laugh again.

“Ah! You English. So many manners for a people who do not understand what you do.”

“I don't understand you, I'm afraid.”

“In Russia, it is simpler. Not better perhaps, but simpler.” Countess Lieven waved her fan, which had been dyed the exact same shade of red as her dress. “In Russia, none of us has any ambition, except to be seen as the finest servant of the tsar. Everything we do is to magnify the tsar, and to make sure he knows it was us”—she tapped her chest with her fan—“who added so much to his glory.”

“I don't see how that would be simpler.”

“It means there is only one road, and one way to travel it, and one master over all. Here you may have your pick of masters, but if you pick the wrong one . . .” She clicked her tongue softly. “What a pity it is.”

“I'd rather be able to choose my service, if I must serve.” The cavalry officer moved away from Lord Blanchard, who folded his hands behind his back and scanned the room. Was he looking for his wife, too?

“We all must serve someone,” the countess agreed. “But have you given any thought to what things will be like for you once Lady Blanchard leaves? Especially the way she is leaving.” She nodded toward Lord Blanchard alone in his corner.

Rosalind took a moment to be sure of her voice before she answered. Her Grace's tone was entirely too arch and searching
for anyone's comfort. “Lady Blanchard is leaving to accompany her husband to a diplomatic post,” she said firmly. “There is nothing at all extraordinary in that.”

“There would not appear to be, no.”

Rosalind hesitated. This woman was clever. She was cultivated and ambitious. She was also very much playing her own game and could not be trusted. On the other hand, she very clearly had something she wanted to say to Rosalind, if she could be sure Rosalind was ready to hear it. A twisted hope seized hold of Rosalind. Perhaps the countess had heard this story of Lord Blanchard's debts and was about to tell it to Rosalind. If it was true . . . that could be the beginning and the end of Lady Blanchard's involvement in this terrible affair. Perhaps she really was just trying to find out who was trying to blackmail her husband.

“Your Grace, I have a question,” said Rosalind.

“I am all attention, Miss Thorne.”

“Lord Blanchard is a member of the foreign office, as is your husband.” The countess nodded in acknowledgment. “Does Count Lieven perhaps have any business with him?”

“Minor matters from time to time, I believe. What is your interest?”

“There have been a few rumors. Nothing direct, of course, but some persons have been hinting that Lord Blanchard might have been experiencing some financial difficulties of late.”

The countess kept her eyes fixed upon her party, but she did turn her head just slightly so that she could regard Rosalind out of the corner of one eye. “Hmm. I had not heard any such rumors, not from my husband, at least. But it is so seldom Lord Blanchard enters into what conversation I have with Lieven.”

She's lying
, Rosalind thought, irritatedly.
In a moment, she will say she recalls something.

She was right. “But now that I stop to think on it, I believe I heard something . . . yes. From my dear Lord Palmerston, perhaps it was.” She laughed. “Oh, you needn't look so distressed, Miss Thorne. There is no scandal. Simply ambitions which fell short, let us say.” Rosalind's last hope shattered, but if the countess saw any hint in her expression, she took no notice. “Lord Blanchard has name, he has bearing and fortune and all that belongs to the great and good of the world. He has ambition, too. He wishes to soar.” She waved her fan toward the ceiling.

Jane's not ambitious
, she remembered Lord Blanchard saying.
Not in that way.

“But somehow, he has not managed it, at least not to his own satisfaction. He is in good standing with his party and his friends, but they do not see him as a leader of men.” The countess paused. “Some Englishmen trust too much in the family name. They assume all will flow smoothly from their friends to them, because they see it is so for others. They talk freely and lend freely—money and votes and favors. But they are not selective, or they make their selections badly and they find those favors are not repaid. Then they, for all their rank and fortune, are somehow left behind.”

“I had not thought of it in that way.” Across the room, Lord Blanchard was still on his own, glaring at them all, looking for someone. His wife? His political allies? This was a political party; he should be in the thick of it. But there he stood alone, and there he remained.

Rosalind struggled to collect her jumbled, frightened thoughts and return them to some semblance of order. There was one last thing this woman could tell her. One last chance
that the worst of all possibilities would not prove true. “Your Grace, if it is not impertinent, may I ask another question?”

“Certainly, Miss Thorne. Whatever you like.”

“The day Jasper Aimesworth died, Lady Blanchard was late in leaving the patronesses' meeting. Do you know why she was delayed?”

“Ah, now I have all this time been wondering when someone would ask that question. You see, that was a most unusual meeting.”

“In what way?”

“Because Lady Blanchard was not there at all.”

Rosalind's heart stopped. Her throat closed around her breath and all the warmth of the crowded room seemed to rush over her in a wave.

“But she was,” Rosalind heard herself croak. “I was in the carriage when she was taken to Almack's.”
She made such a point of having to be there, and of not wishing to be late . . .

“Taken to Almack's she may have been, but she was not at the meeting. Lady Jersey told us she had been excused on a matter of urgent business.”

“Did Lady Jersey say what the business was?” Because her godmother had talked about something being arranged, about having to wait. Was it possible that Lady Blanchard had missed the meeting, and Jasper's murder, because she'd been on some errand for Lady Jersey? That would make it all so innocent.

“Sarah did not favor us with further explanation.” The countess arched her neatly plucked brows. “I find myself surprised you do not ask Lady Blanchard about the business yourself, Miss Thorne. She is, I believe, your godmother?”

And I have just tipped my hand. Now you know for certain that something is wrong, and you will make use of it. Because we are both still alive and this is society.

And now the secret is out.

“She has so much on her mind at the moment, I don't like to disturb her with a trivial matter,” murmured Rosalind, even though she knew this thin veil of an excuse to be utterly useless.

“Ah, of course. Leaving the country is always such a monumental undertaking, and there is the matter of making her successor acceptable to Lady Jersey, and the rest of us, of course. So very much to do.”

Rosalind followed her gaze across the busy room. Lord Blanchard was no longer alone. Lady Blanchard and Lady Edmund stood with him. While she watched, Honoria marched up to her mother and said something, accompanied by a great many broad gestures.

She could not see Devon anywhere.

“Is something wrong, Miss Thorne?”

“A sudden headache. I think I should get a bit of air.”

“It is very close in here,” agreed the countess. “But the night is hardly conducive to taking the air, and I say this as a Russian who understands the cold. Perhaps a walk in the gallery? For myself, I believe I shall indulge in a dance. How delightful it is to talk with you, Miss Thorne. I hope to make your better acquaintance very soon.”

“Your Grace,” murmured Rosalind as she curtsied. Then more softly she asked, “Why did you tell me these things?”

Countess Lieven winked. “We all must serve someone, Miss Thorne. I shall not serve my own master half so well if I have not Almack's, where I may see and be seen, let us say. Good luck in your hunting, or whatever it is you must do next.”

With that, the countess sailed away, moving effortlessly as a swan through the crowd.

Across the room, Lady Edmund stood beside Honoria, who glared openly as Lord Blanchard and Lady Blanchard walked
away. No. Lord Blanchard led Lady Blanchard away, his arm wrapped firmly around hers.

Getting her away from Lady Edmund. Why?

“Well, Miss Thorne, how is your evening thus far?” murmured a familiar voice at her shoulder. Rosalind closed her eyes briefly, struggling for patience before she turned to face him.

“Tiring, Mr. Faulks. And yours?”

“Dull, but I still find my little amusements. At the moment, I am composing a painting, Miss Thorne. A study of a supper party in all its elegance and complexity.”

Rosalind resisted the urge to scream. “What have you seen?”

Mr. Faulks considered this, and her. “I have seen Mrs. Nottingham openly courting your favor and the Countess Lieven bringing you into her orbit. I have seen Lord and Lady Blanchard closer together, at least physically, than they have been in many years. I have seen Lord Casselmain becoming increasingly ill at ease with his situation and his decisions.” He paused. “I have seen you, Miss Thorne, on the cusp of making either a great leap or a great fall.” He turned his brilliant smile on her. “There! Now I make my self-portrait and it is as a grand and mysterious figure.”

“So you do, and you can make up for it by answering a question.”

He bowed. “I am at your service.”

“When you went to White's with Mr. Harkness, did he ask you about my father?”

Sanderson paused, thinking carefully before he made his answer. “He did not. He did, however, ask about you, and Lord Casselmain.”

“I see.”

“I don't, and I don't mind confessing it. He looks on the world from a very different sort of perspective, does our Mr. Harkness, and at the moment I don't think he likes what he sees.”

Rosalind remembered Devon's harsh assessment of the way in which Mr. Harkness might see things. She strained her eyes to see across the room. There. There was Devon, standing in front of Honoria and Lady Edmund. He was saying something, but for all she could hear, they might as well have been on the moon.

Now it was the Blanchards who were nowhere to be seen.

Mr. Faulks followed her gaze with his own, and sighed. “Perhaps I should have married you when your father suggested it,” he murmured. “It might have saved us both a certain amount of trouble.”

The words were filled with such a genuine and uncharacteristic melancholy that Rosalind turned toward him in surprise. “Oh, no, Sanderson, it would not have worked. You're many things, but a martyr to a marriage of convenience is not one of them.”

Now he pulled a wounded face and laid his hand on his breast. “I'll have you know I will make a splendid husband one day.”

Despite all, Rosalind smiled. “I have no doubt. If you're really looking for a wife, you could marry Alice. The money would certainly be welcome.”

“Alas, I fear our Miss Littlefield has sailed far beyond my humble self into an entirely new existence, like a butterfly leaving behind her former fellow caterpillars. I will subscribe to her first novel, though, which I suspect will cause a sensation. Especially after she hears about the next act in our little play.”

“What? Why? What are you . . .”

But Mr. Faulks put his finger to his lips and smiled. Then, he, too, made his way into the crowd, strolling nonchalantly toward the card room.