Improper Ladies (29 page)

Plus, this would give him a chance to get—and keep—his thoughts off of Mrs. Chase.

“Very well, gentlemen,” he said. “I will take that wager.”

“Correspondence is a private matter, and one must never read another person’s letters without being invited.”

—
A Lady’s Rules for Proper Behavior
, Chapter Six

 

“
T
here is a caller, ma’am.”

Rosalind glanced up from her embroidery to see Molly in the doorway of the sitting room. “A caller?” she said, puzzled. It was early on a quiet morning, and Rosalind had been enjoying the time to make some progress on her needlework while she pondered Allen and some new expenses at the school. She had not heard from her brother for several days, and it was beginning to worry her. Also, the roof had begun to leak in the east wing, and the funds would have to be found to repair it.

She always thought more clearly with a piece of embroidery in her hands. But today, no solutions were occurring to her. She was almost grateful to be interrupted, even if it was not the usual time for callers.

“Who is it, Molly?” she asked, and tucked her embroidery away into her workbasket.

Molly came to her and held out the silver tray, where one stark white card reposed. “He says his name is Mr. Richards. From the bank.”

Rosalind’s hand froze as she reached for the card.
Mr. Richards.
The one who had been writing her letters about Allen’s stupid loan. Now he was here, in person. He must be quite serious if he took all the trouble to come out here to the school.

She grasped the card, and folded it into her hand until it bit into her palm. “Tell him I will be down momentarily, Molly.”

Molly bobbed a curtsy, and left the room with her empty tray.

Safely alone now, Rosalind took a deep breath of air. She hated dealing with finances, except for paying bills with the local tradesmen at the end of the month. Those were simple, straightforward, necessary transactions. Her experiences with Allen’s creditors in the past had proved to be anything
but
simple.

And this was the first time she had had to face a banker from London.

Rosalind straightened her muslin cap and smoothed the skirt of her gray morning gown. He would not go away if she just kept hiding in here. She had to meet him, work out some sort of payment plan for Allen’s loans.

Oh, she was just going to
strangle
her brother when next she saw him!

She squared her shoulders and marched down the stairs to the drawing room.

Rosalind had never given much thought to what bankers should look like, but if she
had
, it would be much like this man. He was very tall, very thin, and very pale—pale skin, pale blond hair. He wore a plain dark blue coat, and a stiff white cravat tucked into the front of a black waistcoat. He stood across the room, examining a collection of small porcelain figurines and boxes arrayed on a tabletop.

“Mr. Richards?” she said, drawing herself up to her full, tall height and walking toward him, her hand outstretched. “I am Mrs. Rosalind Chase.”

Mr. Richards straightened from his examination of the bibelots, a monocle falling from his eye. “Mrs. Chase,” he said, and bowed briefly over her hand. “I was really hoping to speak with both you and Mr. Silas Lucas.”

“My uncle is quite elderly now, and not in the best of health. He seldom leaves his home in the country. But I assure you that, as co-guardian of my brother, I have the authority to speak to you myself. Please, won’t you be seated?” She gestured toward a pair of chairs.

“Of course, Mrs. Chase,” Mr. Richards said, clearly still reluctant. He sat down, and placed a large black leather portfolio across his lap. From it he withdrew a stack of papers. At the bottom of the top sheet Rosalind saw, with a sinking of her heart, the bold slash of Allen’s signature.

“These are the documents pertaining to Mr. Lucas’s loan,” Mr. Richards began. “As you see here, Mrs. Chase . . .”

He went on in this vein for some time, spouting different legal terms and quoting figures.

A suspicious throbbing began above her left eye, until she had to say, “Please, Mr. Richards. Could you please just tell me what I must do to repay this loan?”

 

Two hours later, when she collapsed onto the settee in her office, Rosalind was very sorry she had asked that question. She had indeed worked out a repayment plan with Mr. Richards and his bank, but it was not going to be quick or simple. The school was prosperous, yes, but it could not long support such debts. The building and grounds of the Seminary also required upkeep, not to mention the wages of the teachers and servants.

Her head ached in earnest now, as it had so often of late. She pressed the heels of her hands against her temples.

“Oh, Allen, Allen!” she groaned. “What were you thinking of? Where did I go wrong?”

But she knew in her heart that it was not her fault. She had tried hard to teach him the values of education and thrift. He had fallen in with a bad example of behavior in London.

He had fallen in with Lord Morley and his crowd.

At the thought of that name, her head pounded harder. She could
not
think of him now! She had to conserve her energy for what truly mattered-finding a solution to her financial dilemma.

She pushed herself up off the settee and went over to the desk to pull out her ledger books. One detailed the school’s finances, the other the profits from
A
Lady’s Rules
.

“I will just have to write more books,” she murmured, and reached for her pen and ink. “A Lady’s Rules for Fashion? A Lady’s Rules for Garden Design?”

As she sharpened the tip of the pen, her gaze fell on the new pile of letters on the edge of the desk. The morning post. Molly must have left it there when Rosalind was in the drawing room with Mr. Richards.

She did not really want to face correspondence on top of everything else, but the missive on top appeared to be a letter from her school friend, Georgina Beaumont, now the Duchess of Wayland and cutting a dash in London. Georgie would surely have gossip to cheer her! Reading of her adventures always lifted Rosalind’s spirits.

Rosalind pulled the post toward her, anticipating a respite from her woes. But the letter just beneath Georgina’s was a missive from her publisher.

“Oh, thank heaven!” she whispered, breaking the wax with her letter opener. “There is sure to be a bank draught.”

There
was
a draught—yet it was not nearly large enough. It was only half what her previous payments had been. Appalled, she put aside the bank draught and read her publisher’s letter.

“We apologize for the unexpectedly small sum,” it read. “Unfortunately, sales of
A Lady’s Rules
have inexplicably dropped. We would be very happy to look at any other manuscripts you may have to offer. Yours, etc....”

“What!” Rosalind screamed out, and dropped the paper as if it burned. “Sales have dropped? What can this mean?
Everyone
wants to read
A Lady’s Rules
.”

Did they not? They had become so very popular.

This was the worst possible time for something of this nature to happen. She was counting on that money—she
needed
it. She had known that the popularity of
A Lady’s Rules
would one day wane, but not so very soon. Not
now.

Lights exploded in her brain, pounding at the inside of her skull. Rosalind pushed the letter away, not caring when it fell to the floor. She felt so—trapped. Unable to break out of this dilemma. It was even worse than it had been when her husband died, and she discovered that his estate was far smaller than she had thought.

She needed some air.

Tucking Georgina’s letter into the pocket of her morning gown, Rosalind stumbled out of the office, across the empty foyer. She pulled open the front door and walked blindly out into the garden.

At first the pale sunlight hurt her eyes, made her headache worse. But the breeze was cool and clear, the garden an early spring pale green. Slowly, as she filled her lungs with its country freshness, she felt calmer. More in charge of herself.

She sat down on a marble bench beneath a spreading oak tree, and pulled Georgina’s letter from her pocket.

Her hope for distraction was not in vain. Georgina’s usual effervescence, which had carried them through some difficult school days, came across in her words. Rosalind soon found herself smiling at Georgina’s stories of her young daughter and baby son, her sister-in-law’s come-out, gossip about her friends, including their fellow school friend Elizabeth Hollingsworth, who was traveling in Italy with her husband and twin daughters. Rosalind even laughed aloud at a particularly spicy tale of a certain Lord Bunberry and Mrs. Brown-Perkins, even though she knew she shouldn’t.

Her laughter faded at Georgina’s final paragraph, though.

“And, in closing, my dear Rosie, something most odd is happening. You know of
A Lady’s Rules for Proper Behavior
, that amusing little book everyone has been so wild to follow of late? Even
I
have improved my etiquette! Well, Lord Morley and some of his cronies have been behaving just so badly of late. It is as if they are trying to break every rule. Everyone is absolutely agog to see what they will do next. I will write more of this later, for I think it will grow even more interesting.”

Morley!
Rosalind wanted to scream that name to the wind. It was always Morley, popping up whenever she was most vulnerable. Ruining all her plans, her good work. He was becoming the bane of her life, setting himself up against every civilized tenet that Rosalind stood for.

She tightened her grip on the letter, crumpling it into her fist. There was just one thing to be done. She had to go to London.

“A crowded ball is not the proper sphere for private conversation.”

-A Lady’s Rules for Proper Behavior
, Chapter Three

 

T
he Portman ball was quite the crush. People thronged along the silk-papered walls, lined the staircase to the ballroom, jostled across the corridors in order to greet Lord and Lady Portman and proceed into the soiree. The crème de la crème of Society was arrayed in all its glittering, silken splendor.

And they all turned to stare when the butler announced, “Viscount Morley.”

There was a tiny pause, a sort of collective murmur before talk resumed in one great rush. Lady Portman and several of her friends rushed forward to greet him.

It was slightly disconcerting. Michael was used to a certain amount of attention, as any unmarried heir to an earldom would be, but not
this
much attention. It was gratifying, too. At least he knew his wager was going well. People still associated with him, indeed fawned on him, even though he tried to break all of
A Lady’s Rules
whenever possible.

Well, not
all
of them. There were still two or three he had not gotten around to. But it was early days yet. Surely, given time, everyone would see how absurd such rules were. Even Violet, who had been watching him with narrowed, disapproving eyes of late. Ever since his rule-breaking had begun in earnest.

His sister, his sweet, pliant sister, was clinging tenaciously to every strict tenet that she had learned at that blasted school. Every conversation, it was Mrs. Chase this, and Mrs. Chase that, Mrs. Chase says this, Mrs. Chase does that.

Always Mrs. Chase. The rule-following Mrs. Chase.

He frowned as he thought of her again. The memory of Mrs. Chase came into his mind at the most inopportune moments, ever since that strangely intimate scene in her office. He would be at the theater, and an actress’s red hair would remind him of the ringlet that had escaped from Mrs. Chase’s cap. He would be riding in the park, and a whiff of some springtime scent would make him think of her perfume, so green and fresh when he leaned close to her. He was even at a prizefight, and—well, he was not sure
what
had reminded him of her at that violent scene, but he had thought of her nonetheless.

It was absurd. Ridiculous. Mrs. Chase was a stern, cap-wearing schoolmistress, who looked at him with the highest disapproval. She had even given him a copy of
A Lady’s Rules
! She was not at all the usual sort of woman he was drawn to—blond, giggling, vivacious, petite. Mrs. Chase was a tall, redheaded Valkyrie.

Yet there it was. He could not cease thinking about her—even now, at a grand ball, surrounded by females. Her ice blue eyes lingered in his mind. It was almost as if she watched him across the miles, disapproving of him.

He shook off the thought of Mrs. Chase, and turned to Lady Portman. “Good evening, Lady Portman,” he said, bowing low over her gloved hand. He lingered over it just an instant more than was proper, mindful that the rules required the merest airy salute. “You have quite outdone yourself this evening. Your ball is the event of the Season.”

Lady Portman gave a gay little trill of laughter, and tapped him on the arm with her folded lace fan. “You flatterer! I am sure it cannot be
the
event of the Season, but it has surely moved closer because you are here, Lord Morley. Perhaps you could read us one of your new poems after supper?”

“Oh, yes!” Lady Portman’s friend Mrs. Eastman cried. She laid a beseeching hand on his other arm. “I so admired ‘The Onyx Vase.’ It was so—evocative.”

Lady Clarke, whom Michael last recalled seeing in the drawing room of Mrs. Chase’s Seminary, slid up to them in a flurry of orange silk and fragrant plumes. “I am still partial to ‘Alas, fair cruelty,’ myself,” she said, with a secretive little smile.

Lady Portman moved closer to him, tightening her clasp on his arm. She gave a glare to the other women surrounding them. “Right now, though, Lord Morley, let me introduce you to some of the other guests. So many of them are literary-minded, and are so eager to greet you.”