A Worthy Wife (9 page)

“We’ll take them all,” he announced. “And parasols to match.”

Aurora thought parasols were as silly an affectation as his looking glass, but naturally she did not say that. “Oh, I don’t burn, so I have no need for a sunshade.”

The parasols were not for the sun, it seemed, but to protect her from the stares and scrutiny of the gabble-mongers when they drove through the park.

“Surely no one would be so rude.”

“Ruder,” Kenyon swore, and Marie agreed. “They’ll all be on tenterhooks to get a glimpse of the new countess, especially after word of the unconventional wedding arrives, which it will, every dowager and debutante having a bosom bow in Bath. You’ll be happy to shield your face from their inspections. On the other hand, don’t use the parasols too much. I want everyone to see what a beautiful bride I have.”

He thought she was beautiful? Aurora floated to the carriage, not even noticing which new bonnet she wore.

Chapter Nine

“And remember, don’t admire any of Hortense’s
treasures overmuch,” Kenyon warned Aurora as they passed through the doorway of Lady Anstruther-Jones’s house. “She’ll simply give you a fan or a hair comb if you don’t express interest in anything grander, and that will be fine.”

In the marbled entry a footman took Kenyon aside to remove his boots, while a maidservant showed Aurora into a bamboo-papered chamber where she was offered a selection of soft-soled silk slippers. She chose a pair with turned-up toes, feeling that the more exotic, the better. She was a
Troglodytes troglodytes,
a common wren in the midst of peacocks. She might borrow a plume or two.

The butler who then bowed them into Lady Anstruther-Jones’s presence wore a jeweled turban, the maids who sat on pillows near their mistress, ready to pour tea or serve the honey cakes, wore flowing robes of rainbow hues, and the viscountess herself wore an abbey’s worth of gems at her throat and wrists and ears. She was a tiny woman for all that power, all that wealth, Aurora thought, and dwarfed by the ballroom-size room she inhabited. She was not rendered insignificant by the high ceilings or the thick white carpets, however, not with her loose saffron yellow pantaloons, which were eminently sensible for sitting on the floor.

“Don’t even think of ordering a pair,” Kenyon whispered, as Aurora gaped at the sight of a female in trousers, bobbling her curtsy and missing the introductions altogether.

She must have made the correct response, though, for
they were invited to sit on adjoining pillows at some distance from their hostess. Aurora saw no way of doing so gracefully. She tried kneeling, then sinking sideways, only just managing to land on the pillow. Kenyon and her ladyship were sitting cross-legged, she saw, but her dress’s skirt was just too narrow. With her feet sticking out in front of her like a jointed doll on a shelf, she fretted about her ankles showing. And the gaudy slippers made her feel like a court jester, not a courtly lady.

Sensing her anxiety, Kenyon spoke softly, for her ears only. “Relax. You outrank the old besom now.”

So she did! Aurora wriggled her toes, just for the fun of it. She need not have fussed anyway. Lady Anstruther-Jones held a cane and wore spectacles with black lenses. The viscountess was blind, and they had brought her a painting!

Aurora scowled at Kenyon, who shrugged. “I haven’t visited in ages, and I never heard why she stopped doing the social rounds. I’m not the one
au courant
with all the talk; she is. And her loss of sight hasn’t kept her from knowing everything there is to know.”

“But the gift!”

He looked at the smiling virgin in his lap, and could swear she was laughing at him—the Madonna, not his maiden bride, who was horrified that her very first call as Lady Windham was going to be a disaster.

Thinking frantically, Aurora gestured for a maid and sent the girl off with a message for Ned, who’d been sent to the kitchens while the horses were stabled. The maid returned with a bow, and with Aunt Thisbe’s butterfly music box.

Lady Anstruther-Jones adored the little bibelot. Her long-nailed fingers could trace the filigree wings she’d never see again, and could play the music she’d never more perform. She wound and rewound the trinket while Kenyon paid his respects and their hostess asked after his sister, and if there was any news of his brother.

Aurora meanwhile, was able to look around. She didn’t even worry that she was staring, for Lady Anstruther-Jones couldn’t tell. And remembering Kenyon’s instructions, she bit her lip to keep from exclaiming at
the marvels in the room. To one side, ceiling-high palm trees were covered with lush blooms and trailing vines, just like a jungle. They couldn’t be real. But why would there be so many windows in the roof, if not to let in the sun? Surely Lady Anstruther-Jones did not require light. Newfangled oil lamps stood in every corner of the room, and small braziers glowed from the trees’ branches, hung with pots of steaming, scented water. She could feel her hair curling from the humidity, so the indoor forest must be real.

The black leopard near Lady Anstruther-Jones must be stuffed. No one would keep a panther in their parlor, would they? She prayed that, if it was not stuffed, at least it was satiated. A huge egg, which Aurora could only surmise was
Struthio camelus,
an ostrich, from her aunt’s ornithology volumes, stood on a lotus pedestal closer to hand. Aurora had never seen an egg half so large, nor so intricately painted and carved. The gilded sides were hinged open, and an entire little village of ivory and jade figurines cavorted inside. Aurora had to cough to cover her gasp of admiration. Lud, Kenyon would kill her if she went into raptures over such a priceless piece. He’d have to sell Windrush to pay for a correspondingly valuable gift. She let her eyes move on, though she was aching to examine the egg more closely. How Aunt Thisbe would love to see such a thing.

One wall was hung with a collection of weaponry: curved blades, heavy swords that could have been at the Crusades, rapier-thin ones with blued steel, daggers with jewel-encrusted hilts, spears with feathers twined to their shafts. Aurora wouldn’t have been surprised to find Excalibur among the masterpieces of the armorer’s art. She
was
surprised Kenyon didn’t pay them any attention, since most gentlemen seemed entranced by instruments of war. Perhaps he’d seen them enough times before that they had lost their fascination.

Aurora let her eyes move on, to cabinets filled with porcelains so delicate she could see light coming through behind them, to shelves loaded with figurines carved from precious stones, to piles of fabrics embroidered with stitches so fine fairies must have sewn them, and
on and on and on. The room was almost as crowded as No More Morris’s, without the dust. Aurora only wished she could get up and examine everything at her leisure. For once she wished she had Kenyon’s quizzing glass. Instead she had to sit and listen while he told some faradiddle about her being a young friend of his sister’s, whom he’d known for an age. Lying through his teeth, Kenyon said he’d been waiting to offer for her hand, but she’d grown weary, the impulsive puss, so he had to ride to Bath and snatch her out of another man’s arms.

“You know how females get romantical notions. My darling wanted to be carried off over my saddle bow, but I convinced her to settle for a carriage.”

Lady Anstruther-Jones nodded. “That’s the Banbury tale you want me to tell, eh? It’s a pretty one, though not very believable. Thought you’d do better than that. No matter, now you can tell me why you have come. On second thought, you have been doing all the talking, Windham. Let me hear from your bride. Miss McPhee, was it? Any relation to the Somerset McPhees?”

“Through the cadet branch only, ma’am, via Scotland. There is no communication between the families. My relations are from Bath. They are amateur naturalists.”

“Dabble in pond scum, do they?”

Kenyon grimaced. This was going worse than he’d hoped. But Aurora clapped her hands together. “Oh, you’ve heard of them! Aunt and uncle will be so proud! They feared no one read those scientific papers they work so hard over.”

“I do keep up with the journals, don’t you know. A female can’t know too much. Remember that.”

“Oh, yes, I have always believed it so, but not just for females. Education is never wasted, not even on men, and never finished.”

Lady Anstruther-Jones nodded, setting her jewelry to clamoring like Mr. Morris’s clocks. “That’s right, I heard you were a bookish sort. Caused a near riot at Hatchard’s yesterday, did you?”

Kenyon groaned. Of course Hortense would have heard about the melee in the midst of the
beau monde
.

“It was nothing like a riot,” Aurora was explaining. “The man was abusing the poor old horse, right outside the bookseller’s door as I was leaving the establishment. I went back in to seek help. The proprietor would not come to the unfortunate animal’s aid

“So you did, eh?”

Aurora caught herself nodding, which her hostess could not see, so said, “It was quite simple, really. The man only needed to be able to purchase another beast so he could work for a living to feed his family. Lord Windham had been generous, so I was able to pay the man the price of a younger, stronger horse.”

“In view of all the other patrons, eh?”

“I was not aware anyone was watching. Certainly no one came to help move poor Magpie from the street. That’s what caused the congestion, which caused various drivers to become irate, which, ah, caused the Watch to be sent for.”

“Irate didn’t half describe it, from what I heard. But they are always watching, the creatures with nothing better to do than find fault. They’ll see anything you don’t want them to. Remember that, too, missy.”

“Yes, ma’am, I will.”

“You like animals, do you?”

Worried over saying the wrong thing, and ending up with the stuffed leopard, which she was positive had been lying on its right side before, not its left, Aurora was noncommital. “My aunt and uncle taught me to respect all of God’s creatures, Lady Anstruther-Jones, from the tiniest to the largest. I believe it is our duty to look after them, for, like poor Magpie, they cannot speak up.”

“Good. I never could abide anyone who thought animals mere dumb brutes, made to serve mankind and nothing else. Shows a hard heart and a closed mind. Don’t fall into that trap, missy.”

“Oh, no, I won’t.”

“Good. I always say you can judge a person by how they treat beasties.” The viscountess turned unseeing eyes toward Kenyon. “Is she pretty?”

Without pause, he answered, “No.”

Aurora would have sunk to the floor, except she was already there.

“She’s not pretty,” the earl was going on. “She’s beautiful, like springtime, full of golden sunshine and blue skies.”

Ah.
Aurora wiggled her toes in joy.

“And her mind? Gel’s got to have a head on her shoulders if she’s to keep a man’s interest.”

“Her mind?” Kenyon stroked his chin, pretending to think. “Quite frankly, her mind is totally incomprehensible to me.” That may have been the only honest words to leave his mouth, except for calling Aurora beautiful.

Lady Anstruther-Jones slapped her leg and laughed out loud. “Good, good. You’ll never grow bored, then. Seems like you did something right for a change, Windham, after that mess you made the first time around. And you, missy, count your blessings. You’ve landed one of the finest catches in all of England.”

“Yes, I know.”

Kenyon shot her a look full of curiosity, but Lady Anstruther-Jones went, “Hmph! I can smell April and May from here. You take care not to lose that tender regard, Windham.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll try my damnedest.”

“See that you do. Smoke?” She gestured for one of the serving girls to fill her own pipe when Kenyon and Aurora both refused. When it was lit, she nodded again. “Very well, you have my blessings on this odd alliance. I’m the last one to insist on an equal match, great wealth to high titles. Bah, better for everyone to spread the blunt around. Besides, desert nomads wouldn’t breed a camel to its cousin the way Englishmen do, trying to keep the blue blood in the family. Now, what do you really want?”

Kenyon didn’t bother trying to hide his motives. The old witch would see right through any fustian anyway, blind or not. “Information, of course. My wife had relatives in India about twenty years ago. They are both dead now, but we were hoping you might tell us something about them.”

“Elizabeth and Avisson Halle,” Aurora elaborated. “She was Elizabeth Balcombe before her marriage.”

Lady Anstruther-Jones flipped through the pages of memory. “Yes, I remember Elizabeth Balcombe. A lovely gal, somewhat in the manner you describe your wife, Windham. She came out to India with Halle when his parents tossed him out, though no one ever knew why. It seems everyone in London thought she’d marry George Ramsey, Lord Ratchford, or his brother Phelan, but that never came to pass. Ratchford was the better
parti
,
by far. I knew Halle better, of course, for he worked for my husband, if you could call the pittance he did work.”

“Could he have amassed a fortune there?” Kenyon wanted to know.

“What, looking to claim an inheritance for your new wife? I thought you were too well to pass for that nonsense. You’ll grow cold at it anyway, for the man couldn’t hold on to a shilling if it was glued to his thumb.”