Cynthia Bailey Pratt (13 page)

“All she meets.”

“You do not encourage me, then?”

“I didn’t say that. Lord Framstead. But Berenice is only just eighteen.”

“I would not wish her to be older.” He watched the other couple. Though Berenice nodded frequently to what her companion said, her attention was given more to the artifacts in the shop windows than to those discovered thousands of miles away.

“Does she like Newland? I’ve not known him long but he seems a terrible prosy sort of fellow.”

“My cousin has not taken me into her confidence. And, had she, I could not tell you.”

“Of course not. I am glad she has someone like you about her. You did say you are her cousin?’’

Danita thought she heard incredulity in his tone and it was her turn to flush. She knew she had not the slightest resemblance to the petite and fair beauty, but it was hardly kind to make comparisons. “A distant cousin. Here we are. Thank you for your escort, my lord.”

From the steps, Berenice hailed her. “Danita, why go to the Post Office now? It’s so near the Pump Room that you might as well come with Grandmamma and me, and then excuse yourself.”

“I’d rather go now.”

“Perhaps you are right. It will give me a chance to sweeten her, because of you-know-what.” A ludicrous expression of secrecy distorted the girl’s beauty for an instant.

Mr. Newland appeared startled. But Lord Framstead covered his smile by a bow as he said, “Allow me to escort you so far, Miss Wingrove.”

“Oh, no,” Berenice said. “You and Mr. Newland are coming in for tea. We decided it on the way.” She laid her head prettily to one side and said, “Please?”

Love triumphed over gallantry, aided by jealousy. Also, he told himself with some justice, that Miss Wingrove did not seem to want his company.

“I shan’t be long,” she said, hurrying away.

Instead of talking to Lord Framstead about Berenice, she wished she’d taken the time to discuss Sir Carleton. Despite the difference in their ages. Sir Carleton seemed to like Lord Framstead, and had even taken him into his confidence when good fortune had abandoned him.

Danita’s conscience did not offer even one pang at breaking her word to Mrs. Clively. The oath had been made under protest and she would not be bound by it.

The main entrance to the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul stood less than thirty yards from the pedimented door of the Pump Room. She could never pass the abbey without stopping to look at the west front, with its carvings of angels on ladders, some rightside up, and others head-downward. It always made her smile. But today, she did not look at it when she stopped in the churchyard, busy as always with fashionable folk, invalids and idlers. Danita’s gaze went not to the seventeenth-century stonework, but to a man.

Had the sun been shining all the while, and she only just noticed it? Sir Carleton leaned against one rounded support as he had in the Assembly Rooms. She tried to proceed slowly toward him, but had no better luck restraining her steps than in hiding the smile that leapt to her lips at the sight of him. He would, she feared, find little difficulty in persuading her to do whatever he asked of her. As she came closer to him and he smiled back, her fear turned to hope that he would ask a great deal.

Chapter Seven

“I was afraid you might not be able to get away,” Sir Carleton said as he drew her inside the vast church.

“I daren’t stay long,” Danita answered, following him to a quiet pew at the rear, far from the gilded altar. Surrounded by thick stone, the air was cool and damp. Great shafts of colored light rendered the rest of the interior that much darker. Two or three small groups studied the quaint monuments that covered the walls and floor, laughing at what had seemed suitable praise for the dead in their great-grandparents’ day. In the distance, a woman flicked a languid duster at the highly carved choir stalls.

“I wonder if you know how rare you are to come at all. Most women are so concerned about their reputations that even a life-or-death prayer means nothing to them,” he said, seeming to think for a moment, perhaps reliving a memory.

“My reputation means nothing in any case, Sir Carleton, and as for life-or-death...what do you want?”

He smiled as though her bluntness somehow pleased him enormously. Danita shivered, but it was not from the coldness of the abbey or from the hard seat. She shivered because he sat so near and kept his voice low so that it rumbled not only through his deep chest but through her body as well. “I need you,” he said. “I need my luck by me.”

She saw he was serious, though the light of laughter still glinted in his eyes. “I don’t understand. Your luck?”

“Perhaps I’m mad,” he said, moving closer still so that no one but she could hear what he said, even if someone should come to sit at his elbow. “But I can’t afford to take a risk. My skill at the table has turned again. Miss Wingrove, and just when I need all the good fortune I can find. There is to be a card party, tomorrow evening, at the home of a certain duke. He doesn’t like me, but he’s asked me to play.”

“If he doesn’t care for your company, I am surprised he...” Looking at him, she saw that he seemed to be waiting. “Oh,” she said, enlightened. “He wants you to lose?”

“He has made certain comments that lead me to think he’d be happiest to see me go back home without a penny to bless myself with. The stakes tomorrow will be damned high—I beg your pardon—extremely high. If I win, well, I might go back to Ireland, all right, and if I do, they’ll probably make me king. If I lose, however ...” The great shoulders lifted.

“Russia?” Danita asked, knowing the light that fell through a stained glass saint must shine on her anxious face.

“Not quite Russia, you minx, but certainly Damingford.”

Danita recalled his patched linen the first time they’d met and unaccountably her eyes pricked with tears. She turned her head from the light. “What do you want me to do?”

“Come with me tomorrow night. The party is at the town house of the Duke of Lichoakes. In the Royal Crescent.”

“I can’t,” she said, standing up. “It’s impossible.”

He caught her hand and held it, preventing her walking away. “Sit down, again, and tell me why.”

“Anyone can see why.”

“Sit down. Miss Wingrove. Before someone notices you and thinks I’ve offered you an insult.”

He was wise. The woman now waving her duster over some of the marble bas-reliefs already craned her neck to see. Remembering the woman from the Gardens who’d informed on her to Mrs. Clively, Danita dropped into the pew. “You know it is impossible,” she whispered. “I can’t...what if Mrs. Clively should want me, and I wasn’t there? I can’t just walk out of the house in the middle of the evening.”

“There’s to be a huge fireworks display tomorrow night. I happen to know Mrs. Clively and her granddaughter are making up a party with that Rivington female. They won’t be home until long after the card party ends. You can be in and out with no one the wiser. You did it before, didn’t you?”

“That was only for a few minutes. And I had only to cross the street.”

“Just long enough to show me where you lived. You knew I followed you?”

“Followed me? I thought I ... then you didn’t bring the handkerchief just to meet Berenice?”

He chuckled and touched her hand lightly for a single instant. “My interest in empty-headed chits is nonexistent, Miss Wingrove. All my love is given to the Queen of Hearts. True, she’s only pasteboard, but she’s all the world to me.”

Danita felt her heart race when he admitted to no interest in Berenice, despite her wealth and beauty. She struggled to keep to the subject at hand. “Will there be other people there, besides the duke? What if someone recognizes me?”

“Who looks at a companion?” Sir Carleton asked rhetorically.

Danita’s heart slowed again. She knew she was drab and unattractive in her almost nun-like clothing, but somehow she’d hoped he hadn’t noticed. “No one,” she answered.

“Exactly. I promise you, no one will recognize you. I’ll buy you a gown. I’ll go out immediately and find you a gown. Do you think you’ll want a wig? With all that rich black hair covered up, you won’t look like the same girl in the least.” He caught at the reins of his enthusiasm.

He lifted the hand he had thoughtlessly retained, and said more slowly, “Will you help me, Miss Wingrove? If you sit beside me, perhaps all will not be lost.” He rubbed his thumb gently over the crest of her knuckles. Looking only at her fingers, he said, “I ... I can’t imagine another woman I’d ask this of. It’s superstitious of me, but the situation is important enough to me to risk a little foolishness. Will you be with me as a sort of good fairy, and work a charm on my cards? Will you, Miss Wingrove?”

The next afternoon, Mrs. Clively felt ill. She called Danita to her room. Muffled in varicolored shawls, she sat propped up in bed by thick pillows. Coughing slightly, she pointed for a sip of water. “That’s better,” she said, returning the glass to Danita. “I’m very dull today, child. As you read so well, I wondered if you would take an hour to entertain me with a book.”

“Of course,” Danita instantly replied. Looking about her, she saw a thick leather-bound tome on the slipper chair near to the bed. “Shall I read this?”

“If you please. The page is marked.”

The book was dreary, full of sermons dotted with obscure biblical references. Though Danita had learned to read aloud with emphasis and ease when a teacher, the learned preaching all but defeated her attempts to make the work interesting. Glancing up after stumbling through one particularly long paragraph, she found Mrs. Clively’s eyes fixed on her. “Excuse me, ma’am. I don’t mean to be so clumsy.”

“It is of no importance. Continue.”

Danita found it no easier. If anything, her tongue stumbled more and more often. She could not help but be conscious of the steadiness of Mrs. Clively’s gaze. Danita felt almost afraid to look up again. Her great-aunt’s expression had been a most unsettling one. Her eyes were narrowed, as though she suspected Danita of some nefariousness. She wondered if another promise would be forced from her. Had Mrs. Clively learned that Sir Carleton and she had met again?

“That’s enough, child. Close the book. Perhaps we might talk a little instead.”

“Certainly, ma’am. On what topic?”

“Whatever pleases you. I am too tired to think much about it.” Faced with so unhelpful a suggestion, Danita was dumb. Finally, Mrs. Clively said, “What thought you of the Pump Room?”

“It is the most elegant room I have ever seen.”

“Yes. But I am sure you will visit many more beautiful rooms before you are through. Have you seen that gamester again?” Mrs. Clively suddenly snapped.

Taken unawares, Danita blushed and stammered, “Why, no ... that is, I promised I would not.”

“And you are a good girl who always keeps her promises?”

“I try.”

The older woman nodded. “Berenice convinced me that she was right to give you that money. What did you do with it?”

Danita did not like to lie, but when people pushed one into a position where the only choice was between a deliberate untruth and severe unpleasantness, what choice really existed? She could imagine Mrs. Clively’s reaction were she to say what she had actually done with the sovereign. Danita thought of an answer not even her great-aunt could argue with. “I gave it to a poor woman I met on my way to the Post Office, yesterday.”

“Very generous,” Mrs. Clively snorted. “The entire amount?”

“I had no change,” Danita said and then, caressing the large book, went on the offensive. “Was that not the subject of this sermon? Compassion to those in need?”

“For all the good it does one. Look at me. I take in Berenice, just when I had hopes of finally living in my own way, and after years of my sacrifice, nothing will content her but to have her own husband. I’m very fond of her, but she shows me no gratitude. Just like her father. Off to the Islands as soon as he was sixteen, and my husband encouraging him in his ‘adventure’, as they referred to it.” The small mouth puckered as though tasting something sour.

“But your son has done well there.”

“What does that signify? I never see him. He married out there, some underbred female. That is why Berenice was so sickly as a baby, her mother’s bad blood. I have kept a careful watch over the girl, to exterminate the seeds of wildness.”

Danita could not imagine Berenice being described as either sickly or wild. Perhaps sometimes the girl was too much of a free spirit, but she seemed neither malicious nor sinister to Danita, who had, despite her relative youth, more experience with young girls than Mrs. Clively.

“I hope that you will prove to be more grateful than Berenice, Danita. Well, don’t sit there gawking at me,” she said with a return of her former fire. “Ring for my maid. I’m getting up.”

“Are you certain you ought? I can easily send for Doctor Swanson.”

“What use are doctors? I feel much more the thing, thanks to your company I’m sure.” Though the words were not unkind, Danita felt Mrs. Clively’s tone held a sting. “Ring for the maid,” she said again. “Though she is of no use to me. The only thing I miss about Roselands is Simmins. She knows how to care for me so that I am not bothered so.”

It seemed odd that Mrs. Clively would miss her maid more than her husband, until Danita reflected that Lemuel Clively had seemed a mere cipher in his own home. Mrs. Clively had organized their journey to Bath, arranging for their housing, ordering the coach, and overriding her husband’s mild suggestions for their comfort. Danita recalled how Mrs. Clively had scarcely troubled to thrust forward her cheek for her husband’s dutiful salute before leaving. Of the three women in the coach, only Danita had fluttered her handkerchief to the lonely figure in the worn black suit, watching from the steps as the coach turned the corner of the drive.

The thought that Mrs. Clively’s malady, whatever the cause or cure, might reappear before the end of the day, might prevent her venturing out with Berenice in the evening, haunted Danita. She began to phrase a note to Sir Carleton, begging off. Only the hope that Berenice could whine enough to persuade her grandmother to go kept Danita from planning a ruse to deliver the note into Sir Carleton’s hands.