Fortune's Lady (20 page)

“And all her gowns are made of the very best materials,” Emily added.

All in all, the opinions expressed by those fortunate enough to meet Kennington’s new owner were favorable, and it was felt by one and all that while Master Reginald had been a most charming young gentleman, his visits had been so infrequent that the estate was in better hands now than it had been for some time.

Though involved in the more masculine business of running the estate, Lady Althea did not neglect the more traditional female charitable activities expected of its mistress. Advised by Mrs. Crowder and Mrs. Tubbs, she visited the cottages of the village’s most unfortunate residents, bringing nourishing soups, comforting words, and the more material offer of fuel for their fires. It was at one of these cottages that Tom Baldock, emboldened by her kindness to his wife who had been laid low for some weeks with a putrid fever, and by the desperation engendered by a string of bad luck, had the temerity to ask if she would look at his horse as well. “For it is said you were wonderful clever about Farmer Tubbs’s Dobbin. My Charlie here has been acting most strange lately. You never saw a gentler animal in all your life, but now he is as full of temper as any high-blooded thoroughbred, tossing his head and nipping anyone who gets near him. I am sure I don’t know what has come over him.”

“If you will take me to him, I shall take a look, but I am not a farrier or a veterinary surgeon, you know,” Althea explained.

“I know, my lady. But Farmer Tubbs says you are as clever as could stare, and he is not a man as is easily impressed. Please look at Charlie. I am at my wits’ end over the animal.”

“Very well.” Althea followed the man to a rude shed leaning against the cottage. There was loud thrashing followed by a muttered oath, and the cottager dragged out a gangly brown horse whose laid-back ears, rolling eyes, and bared teeth were indications enough of its ill temper.

Taking a deep breath as she locked eyes with the agitated animal, Althea approached calmly and deliberately, murmuring soothingly, “Poor Charlie. Poor old horse. Now let us see what is upsetting you so.” Finally she drew close enough to lay a gentle hand on the animal’s sweat-soaked neck. The horse snorted nervously, but let her remain there stroking him and talking quietly as she bent over to observe him more closely.

“Ahh,” she muttered thoughtfully. “Yes, that is it.” Althea straightened up and then turned to the animal’s owner. “Now, Tom, if you can keep his head still, I think I can do the trick.”

The cottager gaped at her, but did as he was told, holding tight on the leading rein so as to keep the horse’s head down and as close to immobile as possible.

Althea dug in her pocket, pulled out a clean, neatly folded linen handkerchief, and twisted one corner of it into a point. Then, reaching up, she pulled gently but firmly on the horse’s upper eyelid while swiping gently under it with the handkerchief. She was so quick and so deft that before the horse could toss its head she was holding out the handkerchief so that Tom could see the wood chip resting on the tip. “There. Let us see if getting rid of that improves Charlie’s temper any. You may let him have his head now.”

Tom let go of the reins, and the horse snorted and shook his head but remained standing calmly enough. Tentatively Tom stroked his animal’s neck. Charlie did not shy away, but lowered his head to nibble the edge of his master’s rough coat. The cottager scratched his head in puzzled admiration. “Well, I’ll be ... You surely have a believer in Tom Baldock, my lady. I never did see such a quick change in an animal in all my life. How did you know it was something in his eye that caused him to fret so?”

Althea smiled at the man’s astonishment. “You spoke of his shaking his head, which made me wonder if he had something in his ear or his eye, but the nipping and the bad temper you described made me decide that it must be the eye, which would be more upsetting to the horse. So I looked at the eyes closely and could see that one was a good deal more red and watery than the other.”

“Now that you explain it that way, I see it, but it is a miracle you figured it out in the first place, and I bless you for it, lady.”

“But the real miracle,” he later told the crowd in the taproom, “Is that I have known that horse nigh on all its life and it would not let me get within kicking distance. She just looked at it straight in the eye and talked to it slow and comforting, and bless you if he didn’t let her do her work meek as a lamb.”

So it was that Althea’s reputation as something of a healer of horses was established among the humbler folk of the community. It was soon discovered that she had a goodly amount of information about other animals as well, talking knowledgeably with Mrs. Tubbs about chicken yards and the amount of space needed to ensure that its inhabitants were healthy and active, or discussing with Farmer Tubbs the points in favor of Tamworth pigs over Gloucester Old Spots. But it was not her knowledge so much as the calming effect she seemed to exert on ailing, injured, or frightened animals that won her the grudging admiration of the country folk. Knowledge was one thing—it could be gotten through years of experience—but the other was a gift from the Almighty and revered as such when they saw proof of it demonstrated on their livestock.

Chapter 23

While Althea was slowly making her presence known in and around Kennington, her parents were doing their utmost to keep members of the fashionable world from remarking upon their daughter’s absence from London.

The Duke and Duchess of Clarendon were far too well-bred to express anything as undignified as anger, distress, or even frustration at their daughter’s disappearance. Privately, the duchess unbent so much as to confide to the duke the morning after Althea’s disappearance that despite her best efforts their daughter had never acquired the proper appreciation for her exalted status as an incomparable among incomparables. “She would always attribute her success to her expectations—so unbecomingly cynical.” The duchess had agreed to join her husband in the breakfast room that morning instead of taking her usual chocolate in her bedchamber at an hour considerably closer to noon than this.

“It is not the lack of appreciation for the reputation she has established in society that is so upsetting; for after all, one is well aware of the vagaries of fashion—a young lady who is all the rage one Season may be quite soon forgotten the next. But it is her utter disregard for what is due the family name that is so incomprehensible. One’s standing in the
ton
may rise or fall, but ...” Seeing his wife’s expression of horror, the duke paused in midsentence before continuing. “Well, you know, my dear, that before you took me in hand, the Beauchamps were not considered leaders of the fashionable world by any means. But, as I was saying, one’s status in the
ton
may change, but the glory of the Beauchamp name has always remained unblemished, and Beauchamps have understood and carried their duty to the family since the time of the Conqueror. We must proceed most delicately in this matter. After all, the letter she left indicated very little except that she had gone into the country with her grandmother. One does not wish to call attention to the clandestine nature of their departure by appearing to look for them. And, Mother, though perhaps a trifle too strong-minded”—he coughed delicately—“is not so strong-minded as to be thought eccentric. She will see to it that the family name is not dishonored.”

“The family name!” The duchess’s voice rose ominously. “Our daughter has the entire fashionable world at her feet and you worry about the family name!” With an effort, she calmed herself. “As you say, my lord, the family name has remained unblemished for centuries; it will no doubt remain that way for centuries to come, but to sustain the reputation as an incomparable, one must be constantly before the public eye. This absence will not do, I tell you. You must bring her back before Lord Spottiswode, Fotheringay, the others ... Oh, it is too much to bear. After all the hours I lavished on her with dressmakers, milliners ... There is nothing for it but to bring her back.”

“But my dear,” the duke pointed out mildly, “we have no idea where she is.”

“Do be serious, my lord. Young women and their grandmothers do not just disappear off the face of the earth. Surely your mother has had some hand in this. Where would she go?” The duchess’s expression left very little doubt in her husband’s mind that in her opinion, the annoyingly independent-minded dowager had more than a little to do with this disaster.

“She could have gone to visit any number of friends, all of them well enough respected in the fashionable world to make us a laughingstock if I should appear on their doorsteps demanding my daughter like some overwrought parent in a novel from a circulating library. I tell you, there is nothing to be done but to remain here as we are in dignified silence.” Having made his pronouncement, the duke picked up the
Times
and buried himself in its description of the previous day’s debate on the Seditious Meetings Bill.

The duchess contained her irritation as best she could. Her husband confronted problems with the same ponderous gravity he brought to the rest of life. His thought processes were often slow and arduous, but once he had arrived at an opinion or a course of action, there was no changing his mind. Deliberately, she took one last swallow of tea, rose majestically, and swept out of the breakfast room to prepare for an orgy of shopping. Whatever happened, one made a much better face of it if one were exquisitely turned out. She had discovered over the years that people were far less likely to gossip about those who dressed with exacting taste in the latest fashions than those less a la mode.

Elsewhere in town, Lady Althea Beauchamp’s absence was being noticed in less dignified terms. “My dear Gareth, I have not seen you with Lady Althea this age. It is a great deal too bad of you to let such a lovely young lady slip through your fingers when it is clear that she has a decided partiality for you.” The Marchioness of Harwood rapped her son’s knuckles playfully with a dainty ivory fan as they stood watching the waltzing couples gliding around Lady Hatherill’s elegant ballroom.

“Such a naughty boy, my son.” She turned to flutter charcoal-darkened lashes at Lord Battisford, who did his best to look appropriately sympathetic. “Not more than a week ago he was thick as inkle weavers with the belle of the Season, and now you would not know that he had even made her acquaintance.”

“That is because Lady Althea Beauchamp is nowhere to be seen, if you have noticed. Mama,” Gareth responded dryly.

“Children are such a trial, are they not, my lord?” The marchioness chose to ignore her son’s unhelpful remark.

“Worrying over them is enough to turn a mother’s hair quite gray.”

“You cannot convince me, my lady, that you have a gray hair on your head. In fact, you are altogether far too young to be the mother of anyone, much less a man of Harwood’s years.”

Lord Battisford’s ponderous flattery was instantly rewarded with a brilliant smile. “La, you are so
galant,
my lord. ‘Tis true, however, that I was married at a
most
tender age. But tell me, who is that odd-looking woman with Sir Digby? What a quiz of a headdress, and do regard how she positively throws herself at the poor man.”

Seeing that his mother was totally occupied with whetting her elderly suitor’s competitive instincts by alluding to his hated rival, Gareth seized the opportunity to slip away to the card room.

But once there, he scanned the tables in vain. Neither Althea nor her grandmother was anywhere to be seen. He had half expected it, for he had not laid eyes on Lady Althea Beauchamp since she had left his lodgings in Curzon Street a good deal angrier and a good deal richer than she had entered them. It was not for lack of looking that he did not find her. Loathing himself for doing so, Gareth had shamelessly haunted all the possible gathering places of the
ton
—Almack’s, the theater, the opera, ballrooms and drawing room’s of society’s fashionable hostesses—hoping for a glimpse of the woman who had unnervingly dominated all his thoughts, but it was no use, she was not to be found.

As he had so sarcastically pointed out to his mother, Lady Althea Beauchamp was nowhere to be seen, at least not in London at any rate. But Gareth, once he had established to his satisfaction that she was not in the metropolis, was reasonably certain as to where she could be located. It did gave him some small feeling of triumph, in the midst of the lowering feeling that he was becoming obsessed with Lady Althea, to know that he was probably more aware of her whereabouts than her parents were. He knew his lady and her talent for strategy; she would undoubtedly have done her utmost to keep the Duke and Duchess of Clarendon from discovering her until it was too late to bring her back.

The Duke and the Duchess of Clarendon were also less visible than previously at the various haunts of fashion, but they did not abstain altogether from their social engagements. Such absence would have immediately caused comment. As it was, they tried to appear just frequently enough so that the
ton
was aware of their presence, but not so much that it would be obvious that their daughter was not with them. They often arrived separately and stayed for a very short time, hoping that anyone seeing one parent in a crush of people would assume that the daughter was with the other, never staying long in one place, and hurrying out as though forced to attend another pressing engagement. Those ill bred enough to remark on Lady Althea’s absence were informed in icy tones that she was kept at home by a headache but would grace the social scene when she felt more the thing. If, after that, anyone had the temerity to wonder how long Lady Althea Beauchamp’s headaches lasted, they had the good sense to keep their speculations to themselves.

Gareth, on the other hand, once he had heard of Reggie’s departure for India, concluded that Althea’s cousin had refused to take back the estate, as Gareth had predicted, and left it in Althea’s care. Having settled that firmly in his mind, the marquess discovered that London had begun to bore him in the extreme. There was no one to be found who could offer him sufficient challenge at the gaming table, and even the charms of the voluptuous Maria began to pall. The dancer’s lush beauty suddenly seemed overripe, her seductiveness overdone, and the pleasures of the flesh sadly flat without any accompanying intellectual stimulation.