La Petite Four (11 page)

Priscilla must have been of the same mind, for she winked at Emily. “Oh, how delightful,” she told Acantha. “I’m certain the two of you get on famously.”

Acantha blinked as if she had not expected so enthusiastic a response. Then she stroked her lovely shawl, and Priscilla’s gaze followed each movement.

“Indeed we do,” Acantha said. “Such a fine gentleman. He has the very best taste, in clothing, in furnishings. He was most admiring of my pearls.”

Of course he had been! He’d very likely stolen them from under that smug little smile.

As the two mothers turned to discussing the latest news of the war, Priscilla smiled at Acantha. “Such a shame you lost your pearls,” Priscilla said, just loud enough that the mother’s couldn’t hear.

Acantha’s expression was nearly as poisoned. “But I didn’t lose them. I found them later, in the drawer of my dressing table.”

Now Emily blinked. “What?”

As Priscilla frowned, Acantha nodded. “It’s true. It seems I’d only misplaced them.”

But if the pearls weren’t missing, then Lord Robert could not be a jewel thief. Oh, why had she thought they’d uncovered his secret?! He was obviously far more cunning than they’d guessed. So, if not the pearls, then what?

“It seems you’ve been quite fortunate,” Priscilla said to Acantha, but each word was bitten off as if she didn’t appreciate being in a position to praise the creature for anything.

Acantha fluffed at the limp brown curls on one side of her narrow face. “Too true. Fortune seems to follow me, just as it does my dear Papa. Of course, I am entirely too gracious to lord it over anyone, particularly someone of your dire straits, Miss Tate.” Her dark gaze roamed over the mismatched furniture and common paintings of the sitting room, and she scrunched up her long nose in obvious distaste.

Priscilla’s fingers were pressed so deeply into the lion’s mouth of the armrest that Emily wouldn’t have been surprised to hear the wooden beast gag. Why couldn’t Acantha leave well enough alone? If Emily had been home, she’d have called for Warburton to throw the creature out, but as this was Priscilla’s home, all Emily could do was sit and try not to do or say anything that would bring shame on Priscilla, the Tates, or His Grace. Miss Martingale said that the daughter of a duke would sit serenely while her fate was pronounced by the executioner.

Sometimes Emily hated being the daughter of a duke.

“Yes, I am, by nature, entirely too sensitive,” Acantha said now with a sigh, as if she bore a burden too great for her scrawny frame. “I care too deeply what others think and feel. In fact, I’m likely the only one who understands how devastated Lord Robert feels after the tragic accident.”

Emily started. Accident? She opened her mouth to ask and felt Priscilla’s slipper come down hard on her own.

“Well,” Priscilla said, “that was most kind of you. I suppose the fellow needed someone to comfort him. Don’t you agree, Emily?”

Emily met her green gaze, feeling a bit as if she were walking out onto an empty field with no knowledge of how she’d come to be there in the first place. “Oh, indeed,” she tried.

It must have been a good enough answer, for Priscilla nodded. “And then compounded with the death of his poor father. Well . . .”

“Actually, his father died first,” Acantha corrected her with a sniff of disdain at Priscilla’s apparent ignorance. “Though I’m sure Lavinia Haversham’s death hit much harder. Robert thought himself in love, after all.” She squealed out one of her laughs, and both mothers glanced at the girls. Mrs. Tate’s ruby lips were parted, as if she wasn’t sure whether to speak. Mrs. Dalrymple’s dark brows were drawn down over her heavy nose as if she suspected Acantha’s laugh was misplaced.

Acantha favored her mother with a sickly smile that was no doubt meant to be reassuring and leaned closer to Emily and Pricilla. “Yes, Lord Robert thought himself foolishly in love. That was before he met me, of course.”

He‘d said very nearly the same thing to Emily! That could only mean one thing: this Lavinia Haversham Acantha was talking about was the merchant’s daughter with whom Lord Robert had dallied.

“It didn’t matter if Lord Robert was in love,” Emily told Acantha as the mothers returned to their own conversation. “His family would never have allowed him to marry a merchant’s daughter. Particularly one ill enough to die so young.”

“Ill?” Acantha rolled her eyes. “You two are sadly misinformed. Lavinia Haversham was never ill. Indeed, she went everywhere with Lord Robert. Several balls, Astley’s Riding Amphitheatre, the Egyptian Hall, Lord Elgin’s Marbles . . .”

The Marbles! But Emily had had to beg him to take her there! And he hadn’t offered to take her anywhere else. Besides, he wouldn’t let her attend a single ball.

“He might even have offered for her,” Acantha insisted, “if she hadn’t died. Can you imagine anything worse than dying by accident in your first Season? She passed on only four days before we graduated, you know.”

“No,” Priscilla said, “we didn’t know. And I do believe you’re making this all up.”

Emily couldn’t tell whether the tragic story of Lord Robert’s relationship with Miss Haversham was true or not. For all his claims of grief over his father and the girl he said he loved, Lord Robert had a poor way of showing it. Dallying with a married woman? Agreeing to marry Emily less than a day after Miss Haversham had had her accident? For he could not have taken longer and still reached Barnsley in time for graduation.

And what of the marriage settlements? His Grace had said they’d been working on the things for months. So had Lord Robert dallied with Lavinia Haversham
knowing
he was going to marry Emily instead? Any way she looked at it, Lord Robert was an unconscionable scoundrel.

Acantha apparently thought otherwise, as her gaze darkened. “I did not make it up! I have exquisite details from the gentleman himself.” She glanced at her mother, then rose, lowering her voice. “Take a turn about the room with me, and I shall tell you all.”

14

Emily was quite glad Priscilla, Daphne, and Ariadne had scheduled fittings for their ball gowns the next day, for it gave the four of them an excuse to meet and discuss Acantha’s strange tale. Not to mention, it allowed Emily to escape the house again. She merely told Warburton that Priscilla had requested her company. She didn’t tell him Priscilla had requested her advice on the ball gown. Sadly, he would never have believed her.

Of course, Emily was not being fitted. Everyone thought she was still to be married. Even her father. She’d tried broaching the matter to His Grace the previous evening. He’d been home and in his study for all of a quarter of an hour before changing for dinner with the Home Secretary.

“I am hearing distressing rumors about Lord Robert,” she had tried when her father noticed her standing in the doorway and asked her what was wrong.

His smile was kind. “I imagine any young man of Lord Robert’s expectations engenders some amount of envious gossip.”

Emily moved closer to where he stood behind the massive, claw-foot desk. Parchment was neatly stacked here and there across the polished top, and he seemed to be taking a moment to study each piece before laying it back down again.

“I explained to him my desire to join the Royal Society this Season,” she told His Grace, “to exhibit my paintings. He did not seem encouraging.”

He frowned, but she could not tell whether it was from concern over what she’d said or concern over what was on the paper in his hand. He did not look up. “Lord Robert is under a great deal of pressure from his family. I imagine that’s what’s driving his desire to marry so quickly.”

Emily bent her head to try to peer up under his gaze. “Could you not persuade them to wait?”

He sighed and let the paper fall. “I would prefer not to, Emily Rose. These are trying times. We thought the threat to England vanquished, yet he manages to raise an army and rally France into a furor once more.”

He, Napoleon. She should have known it was not her marriage that had brought her father back so soon from Vienna. He had important duties, for the Crown, for England.

His Grace looked up and met her gaze, brown eyes solemn. “I want you safely settled, Emily. Your mother and I both wanted this match. I know she’d be very proud of you.”

Emily had nodded and left. Truly, what else could she do? It wasn’t as if she could appeal to her mother for help. The very idea just made her feel hot, angry, ready to throw something.

But that wouldn’t have helped matters either.

Now she stood at the back of Madam Levasard’s, watching as Priscilla and Daphne took turns on the raised platform so that the seamstresses could tuck and pin and stitch them into their gowns. The shop was light and airy, with bolts of fine fabric clustered along the walls, lace dripping from wooden wheels, and fine feathers waving from drying racks. Half-finished gowns hung here and there, tantalizing the imagination. The air smelled of crisp cotton and the chamomile tea that Madam was so fond of serving. Indeed, Priscilla’s mother and Daphne and Ariadne’s mother, Lady Rollings, were already seated by the front window with steaming cups in front of them, waiting to critique the final gowns.

“So who exactly is Lavinia Haversham?” Daphne asked as if she had not been able to follow Emily’s and Priscilla’s explanations. She was taking her turn on the platform, a seamstress kneeling at her feet to let out the hem of the dazzling white gown.

“That wealthy merchant’s daughter who dallied with Lord Robert,” Ariadne offered, thumbing through some of Madam’s sketches and pausing on one of a daring green gown with a sigh. “Though I would have made her a princess, mind you, with a name like Scheherazade or Alamahari.”

“She was not a member of Good Society,” Priscilla explained, eyeing the delphinium blue fabric that had draped her only moments before, “but Lavinia’s father hoped to buy her way into the Beau Monde with a titled husband. That should not have been difficult. Acantha related that Miss Haversham was beautiful, gracious, and kind. If she hadn’t slipped in her bedchamber, struck her head on the corner of her dressing table, and expired, Lord Robert might well have defied his family and married her.”

“Perhaps not,” Daphne put in hopefully. “Perhaps he realized that Lady Emily had always been his one true love.” She gave Emily a look out of the corners of her eyes.

Certainly Lord Robert wanted Emily to think that. She still couldn’t make herself believe it. “And perhaps pigs might fly,” she replied.

Priscilla nodded. “His behavior is shameful. It’s as if he simply forgot all about Miss Haversham and went happily on with his life. Doesn’t the poor girl deserve better?”

Ariadne and Daphne were nodding as well. Emily could not look at them. She gazed down at her gloved fingers, so tightly entwined in front of her that she could feel all her bones.

“Sometimes,” she said, “it’s easier to forget, to pretend you never knew the person you loved.”

Someone, likely Daphne, sucked in a breath. Emily managed to look up. They were all regarding her as if she were made of fine crystal, and if they touched her, she might break. Even the seamstress paused to stare at her.

“I simply meant,” she said, wanting to hide under the little wire-backed chair, “that there might be a reason for him rushing off to Somerset to meet me, why he doesn’t speak much of her.”

“I suppose his heart may be broken,” Daphne conceded. Then she turned so the seamstress could work on her graceful train.

Priscilla shook her head. “I’m not willing to agree that he has a heart. Acantha said Miss Haversham’s family has retired to the country for the remainder of the Season to mourn. Should he not mourn as well?”

It did seem rather heartless. Was this all some game to him? Would he treat Emily the same way? Was he pretending to court her, only to dash her hopes at the last second? If so, he was toying with the wrong person. One did not abandon the daughter of a duke!

“I can’t understand him,” Emily said. “As much as it pains me to admit, however, this sad tale doesn’t help us in the slightest.”

“Surely His Grace would be moved by it,” Daphne protested, scooping up her train. The seamstress rose, held out her hand, and helped Daphne off the platform to go show Lady Rollings.

“Very likely he would find it tragic,” Emily replied as they passed. “However, while it does not reflect well on Lord Robert, we have nothing to lay at his door except extremely shallow feelings, especially as we now know that he did not steal Acantha’s pearls.”

“Then what do we do?” Priscilla exclaimed. “You cannot give up! We could never be happy knowing you were consigned to that shallow fellow! Besides, think about the ball, Emily—roses, fairies, goldfish!”

“Perhaps you could just tell Lord Robert you wish it above all things,” Ariadne suggested, rummaging through the rose-colored folds of her reticule.

“I told him so yesterday,” Emily replied. “He said he would simply have to make me a better offer.”

“I knew it,” Ariadne said, head rising and eyes lighting. “He
is
smuggling virgins. I read a pamphlet on it. They were handed out at Hatchards Lending Library.”

“Next time,” Priscilla advised, with a smile and a shake of her head, “go into the library instead of loitering out front to see the gentlemen passing. Lord Robert is definitely
not
smuggling virgins.”

“I don’t see why not,” Ariadne said with a sniff. “He has the connections, and what virgin would deny him anything?” She blushed furiously.

“I don’t think Lord Robert smuggles young ladies of quality, or anything else,” Emily said quickly as Ariadne opened her mouth to protest. “And, as Acantha’s pearls were found, it appears he isn’t a jewel thief either.”

“Perhaps Acantha is lying,” Ariadne said, as if she couldn’t bear to see another theory proved wrong. She pulled a smaller sack from her reticule and set it down on the sketch of the green gown.