Little Coquette (6 page)

Half a dozen fashion magazines were fanned out on the sofa table beside an empty wine decanter and a crystal bonbon dish with a domed lid. There was nothing to indicate a more serious turn of mind. No books, no journals. What on earth had attracted her papa to such a woman? He was intelligent, worldly, worked with the most important gentlemen in England—and came to this tawdry place for his amusement.

She just shook her head and continued her exploration. One door led her to a spartan chamber that was obviously a maid’s room. Across the hall she saw Beaumont standing at a clothespress, examining the gowns. She went to the bedroom and stood, gazing around. It was done in white and pink and reminded her of a birthday present. A large bed occupied one corner. Flounces of white lace formed the canopy and seemed to drape the entire bed. A tumble of small pink satin cushions were at the head of the bed. As Lydia walked toward it, she noticed a strong scent of that same musky perfume she had smelled in Prissie’s room at the inn.

A mental picture of her father and Prissie on that bed caused her to wince and turn quickly away. On the other side of the chamber, a pink damask chaise longue sat by the grate with a white-and-gold table in the French style beside it. The dresser and desk matched the table. A telltale shaving set and a gentleman’s brushes rested beside the feminine cosmetics and brushes on the toilet table.

At the clothespress, Beaumont continued rooting through the gowns. Lydia went up behind him, looking for jackets. She didn’t see any. He took out some black, filmy thing and held up the skirt.

“What on earth is that?” she asked.

“It is a black lace peignoir. Rather dashing.”

“I didn’t realize there was such a thing as a mourning peignoir.”

“It is an evening peignoir, I should think.”

“I meant mourning, with a
u,
as in bereavement.”

“Black has more interesting associations as well.”

She lilted an eyebrow in derision. “I was joking, actually.”

“Ah, that is a change. You don’t usually show much sense of humor.”

She glared and said in a tight voice, “Unlike you, I fail to see the humor in this appalling situation.”

“Point taken,” he said at once, mentally berating himself for insensitivity. All this was a rude awakening for Lydia. She had always adored her papa.

He moved to the dresser and began nipping through the silken dainties there: satin nightgowns, embroidered lingerie, silk stockings in various shades.

“Such extravagance!” Lydia complained.

Her harping on the money Sir John spent on his woman annoyed him. The Trevelyns were far from poor. Lydia lacked for nothing. He looked over his shoulder with a quizzing smile. “Am I to assume Miss Trevelyn does not wear such alluring underpinnings?” His eyes traveled in a leisurely manner from her bonnet to her toes.

“This is hardly fit conversation for mixed company. I doubt anyone but a lightskirt would wear such things. And please do not look at me like that, as if you were imagining—all sorts of things.”

“Even the imagination fails at what you are suggesting.” She tossed her head. “You must admit, though, Miss Shepherd has good taste.”

“Good taste! She has squandered a good deal of Papa’s money to very poor effect. The parlor looks as if it were put together by a color-blind twelve-year-old. As to that black peignoir!”

Beaumont refused to admit he found the flat in poor taste. “A certain country charm,” he said. “The engravings are good.” He waved his hand toward a folder that rested on the desk in the corner.

Lydia went to it and began to examine the folder’s contents. They were at startling variance with the rest of the flat. She stared at three austere sketches, exquisitely executed on old, yellowed parchment. One was of an old man with a beard, one of an owl, and one of a crouching rabbit.

“Albrecht Dürer,” Beaumont said, with a question in his voice. “A sixteenth-century artist.”

“Yes, German, I believe,” she added, to let him know she also recognized the pieces. “These must be Papa’s. I wager he gave them to her. She wouldn’t appreciate them. You notice she didn’t hang them up.”

“They wouldn’t really suit this bower of bliss,” he said, waving his hand around the ultra-feminine room.

“No, they wouldn’t. They are too refined. I have a good mind to take them with me.”

Beaumont went to her side and began examining the pieces more closely. He held one up to the window and frowned. “And how would you explain to your father that you have them in your possession?” he asked, replacing the sketch.

She scowled and put them back in the folder. She drew open the desk drawer and saw art paper. The other drawers held boxes of pens and nibs, charcoal, India ink, and paints.

“I believe Prissie is an artist!” she exclaimed. “I wager she painted those horrid things in the parlor herself.”

She darted back into the parlor and examined the pictures hanging on the wall. They were watercolors of women and one of a young boy, all well done as to craftsmanship. They obviously depicted real, recognizable people, but they were only illustrations. They lacked that special something, that depth and integrity that would make them art. In the corner of each picture she had signed “P. Shepherd.”

The discovery that Prissie was an artist was oddly disconcerting. It no longer seemed possible to consider her as just a lightskirt. She was taking on a definite personality. The white-and-pink bedroom and the expensive lingerie revealed a sensual side to her nature, but this saloon was completely different. It was the work of a homebody.

Lydia pictured her sitting in this cozy little parlor—it was cozy, if not elegant—with one of those smiling ladies in the frames, chatting as she made her sketch. What would they talk about? Their patrons? Their new gowns, their black lace peignoirs? Would they, like her mama and Lady Beaumont, gossip about their friends and servants? Who had been jilted, who had contracted a good match, and what Cook was making for dinner tonight? Were all women sisters under the skin? Even Nessie, her model, had spoken only of matches and food and fashion that morning.

She looked up when Beaumont entered the room. “Prissie painted all these,” she said, indicating the watercolors.

He went forward and examined them. “I recognize this one!” he said, pointing at a sketch of a blonde with green eyes.

“Maybe we could talk to her.”

“She’s no longer in town. I met—saw her a few years ago. She married a fellow and moved to Ireland.”

“Oh, too bad. Did you find anything else in the desk?” she asked. “I am thinking of this Dooley that Prissie was worried about.”

“I found this,” he said, holding out a little appointment book bound in red Morocco leather. “Dooley’s name occurs frequently, but with no address. Perhaps he met her here.”

“A lover, you mean?”

“Possibly your papa’s predecessor—and unhappy with being jilted. That seems unlikely, though. She had been under Sir John’s protection for the better part of a decade.”

“How do you know that?” she asked at once.

Beaumont regretted that he had let that slip out. “It is what I heard from friends.”

“Ever since I was eight years old,” Lydia said in a sad, faraway voice. She was thinking of her sixteenth birthday, when he had promised to be home for her party and hadn’t come. He had sent her a string of pearls and a note of apology, claiming urgent business at the House. She had felt sorry for him, working so hard.

He hadn’t been home for any of her birthdays since then or Mama’s either. “Too busy in the House” was always his excuse, but he wasn’t too busy to visit Prissie Shepherd. This house on Maddox Street was “the House” that kept him occupied.

“There’s no more to discover here,” Beaumont said. “Let us have that drive in the park. It will cheer you up.”

She gave him a questioning look. “If you think you are going to palm me off with a drive in the park, Beau, you have another think coming. I have already told Nessie we are going out this evening.”

“That was not why I said it! Why are you so suspicious? I just wanted to cheer you up, you look so ... morbid. I have nothing better to do this evening, with the Season over.”

“I suppose you know a few women you would be happy to visit.”

That disparaging “women” told him what sort of women she meant. If she had meant ladies, she would have said so. In other words, she was charging him with having a lightskirt. He didn’t, at the moment, but he would certainly have to meet Prissie’s friends if he hoped to discover who this Dooley person was.

“I am a bachelor, you know,” he reminded her. “The muslin company’s doors are open till dawn, which is why they’re called ladies of the night. I shall do the pretty with Nessie and you first. Do you want to attend that lecture?”

“Let us try to think of something more useful we could do. Since Dooley or someone searched her room at the inn in Kesterly, he might search her room here in London as well. If we watch, we might catch him in the act.”

“Unless he got what he was after at the inn,” he said.

“Yes, that’s possible. What could it be? Money?”

“Incriminating letters, perhaps. Love letters, I mean. I may be wronging Prissie. I don’t know that she is the kind who would hold a gent to ransom over his indiscretions, but it must be something of that sort.” He looked again at the sketches on the wall.

“Do you think you have met—er, seen that one as well?” she asked as his gaze settled on a redhead.

“No, I wouldn’t forget a redhead with brown eyes. I was thinking of something else. Those Dqrer sketches ... The parchment didn’t seem quite right. Do you think it’s possible Prissie did them?”

“Forgeries, you mean? I doubt she could do such a good job.”

 “It might explain what Dooley was after.”

“No, they wouldn’t fit in her bandbox, and he—or someone—had torn the lining out of it. It’s something else. I vote for billets-doux.”

“You’re probably right.”

They took a last look around the parlor and went back out to the carriage for a drive through Hyde Park. The fair weather continued. Sunlight shone from the blue sky; greenery stretched all around them. The crush of the formal Season was over but there were still several handsome carriages at the barrier for the ritual meeting of the ton at four o’clock. Many of the occupants greeted Beaumont and looked with interest at Miss Trevelyn. One of the gentlemen dismounted from his curricle and came to their carriage. He was a tall fellow with blond curls and blue eyes. Beaumont introduced him as Lord Farnsworth.

“My sister is having a little party tonight, Beau,” he said. “Be very pleased if you and Miss Trevelyn would join us. Nothing formal. Just a few friends, a bit of dancing. Didn’t know you was in town or I would have called sooner.”

“I am just here for a few days on business,” Beaumont said. He noticed Lydia looked interested, however, and asked her opinion.

She was not so keen a follower of Mary Wollstonecraft that she had not occasionally regretted missing her Season. And since Beaumont had made that remark about books being only an adjunct to life, she had begun to think she would make her curtsey next Season.

“We were going to attend Mr. Coleridge’s lecture,” she said, but she said it with very little enthusiasm.

“Dash it, you can hear that prosy old bore anytime. He is never so happy as when he has a captive audience,” Farnsworth said.

“That is true. Very well, I should like to go, Lord Farnsworth. Thank you,” she said, with a more flirtatious smile than Beaumont had won, with all his efforts on her behalf.

“See you around nine, then. Delighted to have made your acquaintance, ma’am. Beau knows where we live.”

After he had left, she said to Beaumont, “I daresay you would prefer the party to a dull lecture.”

“To a
dull
lecture, yes. Whether Coleridge is dull, however, is a matter of opinion. And in any case, I thought we were going to watch Prissie’s flat.”

“It is not too late to change our minds about the party,” she said at once. “A note to Miss Farnsworth . . .”

“Cut line, Lydia. You are dying to go to that party. Why should your papa have all the fun? We can watch the flat later. I doubt Dooley would search it early in the evening. If either of us is struck by an idea as to how else we can find him, we can leave early.”

“Very true, though I haven’t a stitch to wear.”

This feminine comment brought a twinkle to his eyes. “In that case, your success is guaranteed. You will certainly be the belle of the ball.”

“Lecher!” she charged, but she could not quite hold her lips steady. It was too ludicrous to think of barging into a polite party in her birthday suit.

“You’re the one who’s planning to attend the party naked. Personally, I think you should wear a fig leaf.” Then he paused and let his eyes drift over her body. “Or two—no, make that three,” he said.

“Really, Beaumont!” she felt obliged to object. Her cheeks were flushed with embarrassment, but she was no longer wearing that prim, prudish expression.

“Yes, really,” he said, pretending to misunderstand her tone. “Fig leaves are worn in all the better pictures of Adam and Eve.”

She got her emotions under control and gave him a cool glance. “Shall we go now?”

“Shall I bring the leaves this evening, or will you—”

“We have worn this poor joke into the ground,” she said stiffly, then spoiled her prudish pose by adding, “I really
don’t
have anything decent to wear.”

Nessie was delighted to hear a party had been substituted for the Coleridge lecture. Much as she liked Lydia, she could not imagine the dashing Beaumont offering for a bluestocking, and Lydia’s conversation was taking on a noticeable tinge of blue. Nessie blamed it on that book she had given Lydia last Christmas. Pity it hadn’t been a subscription to
La Belle Assemblée.
Her toilette had fallen into a dangerously unfashionable state.

“Mary Wollstonecraft’s book opened up my eyes, I can tell you,” Lydia said, when Nessie came to her room for a chat before dinner. “I want nothing to do with gentlemen. They only want to keep our minds fettered. You chose wisely. I shall be an independent spinster like you, Nessie.”