Lord Perfect (7 page)

Yours sincerely,

Olivia Wingate

P.S. Please do not attempt to
communicate with me.
One day
the Family Curse's
h
all
be lifted, and then
In
India, there is a class of people known as Untouchables.
Until
Henceforth you must consider me one of Them.

The letter was ghastly, even for a girl. She'd
overembellished the script with curls and corkscrews. The wretched
excess of capital letters and thick underlines indicated
sentimentality, an overly romantic turn of mind, and an emotional
temperament.

Peregrine's parents were all these things; his paternal
grandparents were more so. The Dalmays were always breaking out into
dramatic scenes, and he was always being made to feel guilty without
ever having the least idea what he was guilty of. But then, logic
seemed to have no place in his relatives' thinking processes—if
they had processes, which Peregrine sometimes doubted.

This was one of the many reasons he preferred his
uncle's house and his uncle's company. Lord Rathbourne was calm. His
household was calm. When he was vexed, he did not fly into a passion.
He did not storm about and spout long, vehement speeches that made no
sense. He never lost his temper, although once in a while he might
become annoyed. Then his drawl might grow a trifle more pronounced
and his countenance so calm that it might have been made of marble.
But he never made a to-do. Ever. About anything.

With his uncle, Peregrine did not spend his time tensed,
waiting for the next storm to break. With his uncle, Peregrine always
knew exactly where he stood and precisely what was expected of him.

Until Wednesday evening, that is.

Before going to his room to dress to go out, Lord
Rath-bourne stopped by the study where Peregrine was writing out a
Greek exercise. After making two corrections, his lordship told
Peregrine that Mrs. Wingate "would not suit" as a drawing
master.

Surprised and puzzled, Peregrine could not help trying
to ascertain the logic of this decision.

"I do not understand, sir," he said. "What
was unsuitable about her? Didn't you say that her watercolor was
brilliant? You seemed to admire it very much. You seemed to find her
agreeable. Of course, it is difficult to tell when you are polite
because you want to be and polite because it is a gentleman's duty.
When I do it, the difference is so obvious. But she was not boring or
silly at all. Quite the opposite. Did she not strike you as unusually
intelligent for a female?"

Lord Rathbourne did not answer any of these questions.
Instead, his face acquired a marble calm. When he spoke, his drawl
was quite pronounced. "I said she was not suitable, Lisle. That
is the end of it."

"But, sir—"

"I can think of few exercises more tiresome than
being catechized by a thirteen-year-old boy," Lord Rathbourne
said.

Peregrine recognized the exceedingly bored tone. It
meant the subject was closed.

This was a shock. Usually his lordship was the most
logical and reasonable of adults.

If Peregrine had not been so completely flummoxed, he
wouldn't have stared so hard. Then he would not have seen it. But he
did stare and he did see it: a muscle twitch. Only the once, and very
quick and slight, at the far corner of his uncle's right cheekbone.

Then Peregrine knew there was a Serious Problem (as
Olivia would have written) regarding Mrs. Wingate.

If Lord Rathbourne would not tell him what it was, it
must be very serious indeed.

If he would not speak of it to Peregrine, no other adult
would. If Peregrine was so foolish as to ask someone else, he or she
would say, "If it was proper for you to know, Lord Rathbourne
would have told you."

Peregrine tried through all of Friday and Saturday to
put the letter out of his head. The girl was silly—ye gods, she
wanted to be a knight!—and since he'd never see her again, her
family secrets didn't matter.

The trouble was, his chosen vocation was the finding out
of secrets. He'd recently returned to his Greek and Latin studies
with a zeal he'd previously been unable to muster. This was because
he'd found out they were crucial to unlocking the secrets of the
ancient Egyptians. Aunt Daphne—she wasn't really his aunt, but
all of Lord Rath-bourne's family had adopted him—had promised
to teach Peregrine Coptic, one of the keys to deciphering
hieroglyphs, if he could get through Homer creditably.

Thus, by Sunday, Peregrine knew that
he would go mad if he didn't find out why Olivia Wingate was a
Leper
and an Outcast,
and what the
Family
Curse
was.

This is why, on Sunday night, long after his uncle had
bade him good night and gone out, and most of the household had gone
to bed, Peregrine began writing to Olivia Wingate.

THE LETTER FROM Lord Rathbourne arrived in care of Mr.
Popham the print seller late on Friday. Bathsheba waited until she
was at home to read it. With trembling fingers she opened it.

His lordship's secretary had written it. The message
declining her services was short and scrupulously polite.

She stared blindly at it for a long time after she'd
absorbed the meaning. A too familiar icy feeling trickled through her
veins. Then the heat came, setting her face aflame.

She told herself it wasn't the same, but the memory
burned in her mind as though freshly branded there, though three
years had passed.

It was a few months after she'd buried Jack. A note
arrived from her father-in-law, written by his secretary. It
accompanied the long letter he'd received, he believed, from her.
This letter, which Bathsheba had never written, maundered on about
Jack's death and his "beloved daughter Olivia." The writer
sought forgiveness. And money, of course. It was horrible. "Let
us be reconciled in Jack's memory and for his child's sake"…
and more in that vein. For pages and pages the letter wheedled and
begged, a shameless attempt to take advantage of Jack's death and his
father's grief.

It was written in her mother's hand.

Mama hadn't even had the decency to exploit the
situation in her own name. If she had, Bathsheba might never have
known about it, never suffered a moment's distress on that account.

But no, Mama must pretend to be Bathsheba.

And so it was Bathsheba who received Lord Fosbury's curt
reply. It was Bathsheba who was mortified.

And when she wrote to Mama, the answer was as she might
have expected: "I did it for you, my love, because you are too
proud and overscrupulous."

That was the last letter Bathsheba had from her mother.
Her parents moved on to St. Petersburg, where Papa died of a liver
ailment. Mama remarried soon after and went away without a word to
anybody, including her daughter. Bathsheba wished she missed her
family, but she didn't. Her childhood was filled with incidents like
the letter to Lord Fosbury. Small wonder she'd been willing to endure
anything, in order to have a life with Jack instead.

"What is it, Mama?" Olivia said.

Bathsheba looked up. She had not heard the girl come in.
"Nothing," Bathsheba said. She tore Lord Rathbourne's
secretary's note into very small pieces and threw it on the fire.

"You've been weeping," Olivia said.

Bathsheba hastily wiped her eyes. "I must have got
a cinder in my eye," she said.

It
was
nothing, she told herself. She had known this would happen. She'd
merely lost a potential pupil. She'd find others. This was nothing
like the humiliation of Lord Fosbury's note. It was ridiculous to
feel angry… disappointed… hurt.

The visit to the Egyptian Hall had been her first
venture into a part of London that Society frequented. Her exchange
with Lord Rathbourne had been her first conversation with a gentleman
since Jack's funeral. The newness of the experience had unsettled
her, that was all.

This explanation wasn't completely persuasive, but it
got her through the rest of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

On Monday she conducted her drawing class as usual, in
the room she rented two floors above the print shop. When the class
was over, she went down to the shop as she usually did, to find out
if anyone had enquired about drawing lessons.

A tall, familiar figure stood at the counter.

She stood and stared like a gawking girl who'd never
learnt any manners at all, her gaze roaming over the broad shoulders
and down the straight back and down and down along a mile-long
stretch of muscled leg and up again, over the immaculate, elegantly
garbed masculine figure. She gazed entranced at the strip of white
neckcloth visible above the coat collar and the thick, dark hair
curling against the neckcloth and the small, curving shadow the brim
of his hat made at his ear.

"Ah, here she is," said Mr. Popham. She
blinked as his head came into view. The tall, aristocratic figure had
completely obscured the print seller's small person.

The gentleman turned. Rathbourne, yes, of course. Who
else could be so… perfect, even from the back? Who else would
regard her so composedly, displaying not a flicker of surprise—no
hint of unseemly interest?

He
did not gawk like an imbecile.

"Mrs. Wingate," he said. "You have
arrived in the very nick of time. Popham and I had almost come to
blows."

"Oh, no, indeed, I am sure not, my lord," said
Mr. Popham, much flustered. "Merely a hesitation on my part, as
I was not at all certain…" He trailed off, clearly at a
loss.

"I expressed a desire to observe your drawing
class," said his lordship. "Mr. Popham tells me it is
conducted upstairs."

"The class is over," Bathsheba said. "I
thought your interest was as well. I received a note to that effect.
Or did I dream it?"

"You are displeased with me," he said. "You
are thinking that when a man makes up his mind, he ought to make up
his mind."

She was thinking she discerned an infuriatingly faint
hint of a smile at the right corner of his mouth. "What is
required to help you make up your mind once and for all?" she
said. "The class is over. My next is on Wednesday. Do you wish
to make another tedious journey to the other side of the moon to
observe it?"

"Holborn is not the other side of the moon,"
he said.

"It is not a sphere in which you customarily
travel," she said.

"Perhaps you would wish me to wrap the painting
now, my lord, while you continue your conversation with Mrs.
Wingate?" Mr. Popham said. "Then it will be ready for you
when you leave. Or were you desiring to have it sent on?"

"No, I shall take it with me," Rathbourne
said, his dark gaze never leaving Bathsheba.

Popham disappeared into the back room.

"Your watercolor of Hampstead Heath,"
Rathbourne said. "That is the problem, you see. That is what
brings me to Holborn. That is what has made me so indecisive. It has
haunted me since last Wednesday. I strongly doubt I should easily
find another instructor as gifted. The true talents devote their time
to creating and exhibiting their works. The more pedestrian make
their living by teaching. I wondered whether I ought to take
advantage before you come to your senses and leave off wasting your
time and talent teaching brats like my nephew."

Had he complimented her beauty, Bathsheba could have
listened unmoved. Though she knew she was well past her bloom, she
was accustomed to that kind of flattery and thought little of it. Her
looks were not her doing.

Her art was, and she had worked at it. She was
particularly proud of the painting of Hampstead Heath. He could not
have directed his praise more aptly.

She was hot everywhere, blushing like the veriest
schoolgirl. "My usual pupils are nothing like your nephew,"
she said. "The classroom is nothing like what he is used to,
either. And talented or not, we both know I am not suitable. You
might be willing to overlook my background, but his family will go
into fits."

"His family always goes into fits," Rathbourne
said. "I try to ignore them as much as possible. Would you be so
good as to show me the classroom, please, and allow me to try to
imagine it populated with students? I am not an artist, and my
imagination is limited. I hope it is a smallish class."

"Eight students on Mondays," she said. 'This
way, then." She led him out of the shop and up the narrow
stairs.

"Imagining eight is within my capabilities,"
he said, and his deep voice seemed lower yet in the cramped, dim
surroundings. "Girls? Boys? Both?"

"Girls." It was two flights up, but she was
used to the climb and should not be breathing so hard. She was
grateful he asked no more questions until she opened the classroom
door.