Scandal Wears Satin (13 page)

“She doesn’t know anything,” she said. “Even for a girl of one and twenty, she’s lamentably naïve.” She took in a deep breath and let it out.

He watched the rise and fall of her bosom. It was crass in the circumstances, he supposed, but he was a man, and it was nighttime and she was dressed like a fashionable impure.

They passed the Westbourne conduit and approached the Rural Castle Inn. The mail coaches’ horns sounded. They were sending the Portsmouth coach on its separate way, down the Brompton Road. Where he’d soon follow.

“She has three brothers,” he said. “She’s not that innocent. She knows what men are like. She should have known better than to encourage any of that lot of loose screws.”

“A woman might think she knows about men, but until it happens—until a man touches her, she doesn’t
know
.”

He remembered this woman’s reaction when he’d breathed down her neck.

Was it possible she didn’t know what he’d assumed she knew?

But that was ridiculous. She was no schoolroom miss. She’d grown up in Paris. She was a milliner. And she walked the way she walked.

He passed Sloane Street and turned into Brompton Road. No parade of mail coaches now. Only the lone one, not very far ahead.

“Maybe that’s it,” she said.

“What is?”

“Maybe she’s had even less experience than other girls her age. It’s—what?” She counted on her gloved fingers. “A month since she told my brother-in-law to go to the devil. Only think what it’s been like for her. Imagine spending most of your life assuming you’ll marry one person, and then realizing he or she isn’t what you want. I’m sure she felt liberated and exhilarated after rejecting the Duke of Clevedon—but afterward . . . She had to find herself. She had to do what other girls do at seventeen or eighteen, in their first Seasons.”

“Yer worship!” Fenwick’s high-pitched voice broke into a very difficult piece of cogitation. “I say, your highness!”

“Your
lordship
,” Sophy corrected. “I explained that to you. How hard is it to remember?”

“Yer lordship!” Fenwick said more forcefully. “You better close up the front the best you can. East wind coming about.”

“What is he, a weathercock?” Longmore said.

That was when the rain started pelting down.

“Better hurry, yer majesty,” the boy said. “Weather’s going to turn ugly in a minute.”

Chapter Seven

On Putney heath, to the south of the village, is an obelisk, erected by the corporation of London, with an inscription commemorating an experiment made, in 1776, by David Hartley, Esq., to prove the efficacy of a method of building houses fire-proof, which he had invented, and for which he obtained a grant from parliament of £2500.

—Samuel Lewis,
A Topographical Dictionary of England
, 1831

T
he weather did turn extremely ugly, very quickly. The wind picked up speed, driving the rain sideways at times, so that even the apron couldn’t fully shield them.

Still, any driver could manage a team in rain. This weather wouldn’t slow the Royal Mail, let alone stop it. Mail coach drivers continued through thunderstorms, floods, hailstorms, sleet, and blizzards. At present Longmore had only a bad rainstorm to contend with. No thunder and lightning to agitate the horses.

He drove on.

The storm drove on, too, with increasing intensity, the rain pouring straight down sometimes and at other times pelting sideways at them, depending on the gusting wind.

Though the waxing moon wouldn’t set until the small hours of morning, the storm swallowed its light. Rain poured off the hood, obscuring Longmore’s view of the horses as well as the road ahead. It dimmed what little light the carriage lamps threw on the road. The farther he drove, the darker grew the way ahead. He slowed and slowed again, and finally settled to a walk.

By the time they passed Queen’s Elm he was driving half blind and trusting mainly to the horses to keep to the road. Luckily this was a major coaching route, wide and smooth, which lowered the odds of his driving into a ditch.

Still, he needed to keep his mind on driving. Talking was out of the question. In any case, with the rain thumping on the roof and the wind whistling about their ears, they’d have to shout to make themselves heard.

They drove on through villages distinguishable mainly thanks to the lights in a few windows. Not many lights. It was bedtime in the countryside. The inns and taverns were awake, but not much else.

He glanced to his left. Only Sophy’s gloved hand, clenched on the curved arm of her seat, hinted at fear.

Though he quickly brought his gaze back to the road ahead, a part of his mind marveled at her. He couldn’t think of another woman who wouldn’t be shrieking or weeping right now, and begging him to stop.

He was starting to argue with himself about whether he ought to stop.

Though their creeping pace made it seem they’d been on the road for hours, he knew they hadn’t gone far. They hadn’t yet crossed the Putney Bridge, and that was only four miles from Hyde Park Corner.

Through the lashing rain he made out flickering lights ahead. Gradually, he began to discern the rough outlines of houses—or what seemed to be houses. Finally they reached the quaint old double tollhouse, with its roof spanning the road. The roof diverted some of the downpour while they waited for the gatekeeper to collect his eighteen pence and open the gate. Though he wasn’t inclined to prolong the encounter, he did answer Longmore’s question.

Yes, he remembered the cabriolet. An exceptionally fine vehicle and a prodigy of a horse. Two women tucked under the hood. Couldn’t properly make out their faces. One had asked for directions to Richmond Park.

When pressed for more detail, the gatekeeper said, “I told them to keep on this road up to the crossroads, then watch for the obelisk at the corner of Putney Heath, and go that way, rightish. I told them what to look for. It’s not hard to keep to the main road, but for some reason, there’s them that go astray there, and end up in Wimbledon.” He hurried back into the shelter of his tollhouse.

“Richmond Park,” Longmore said. He had to raise his voice to make himself heard over the wind and drumming rain. “What the devil’s there?”

“I read that Richmond Park was beautiful,” Sophy said.

“You think she’s gone
sightseeing
?”

“I hope so. It might calm her.”

He had to stop talking to negotiate the bridge. An old, narrow, uneven structure, it bulged up unexpectedly here and there. At this time of night, in this weather, the only way to proceed was cautiously.

Caution wasn’t Longmore’s favorite style.

He was grinding his teeth by the time he got them safely to the other side of the Thames. Thence it was uphill to Putney Heath and the obelisk, about two miles away.

The horses trudged up the road while the rain went on thrashing them, torrents cascading from the hood’s rim. The wind, howling occasionally to add atmosphere to the experience, blew the wet under the hood. It dripped down Longmore’s face and into his neckcloth.

Though he knew her glorious monstrosity of a traveling costume involved layers and layers, the wet would eventually penetrate to skin, if it hadn’t already.

He threw her a quick glance. She’d turned her head aside so that the back of her hat took the brunt of the wind-driven rain. That was the only sign of discomfort. Not a word of complaint.

He went on wondering at it, even while he watched the road and argued with himself what to do.

When at last they reached Putney Heath, the wind abruptly died down. In the distance a bell tolled. An ominous rumbling followed. He turned his head that way in time to see the crack of lightning.

The wind picked up again, coming from the same direction.

It was driving the thunderstorm straight at them.

S
ophy was petrified.

Her heart had been pounding for so long that she was dizzy. She was terrified she’d faint and fall out of the carriage and under a wheel. If she fell, Longmore might not even notice at first, between the darkness and the rain’s incessant hammering.

Safe at home, the sound of rain drumming on a roof, even as fiercely as this, could be soothing.

This was not soothing.

She was city bred. If she’d ever spent time in the country, it must have been in her early childhood. She vaguely recalled traveling across the French countryside when she and her sisters had fled cholera-ravaged Paris three years ago. But they’d traveled in a closed vehicle, and not at night in such hellish weather.

Intellectually, she knew she wasn’t in any great danger. While a famously reckless man, Longmore was a highly regarded whip, too. In a carriage, one couldn’t be in safer hands. He drove with the magnificent calm the English deemed
de rigueur
in whipsters. The horses seemed tranquil and absolutely under his control. Traveling on the king’s highway, she knew, one could count on smooth, well-maintained roads. Hostelries lined them at short intervals. Help was rarely far away.

All the same, she didn’t feel very brave.

She’d started out concerned mainly about Lady Clara. The difficulties of travel, even at night, hadn’t crossed Sophy’s mind. For one thing, at this time of year, a sort of twilight prevailed rather than full darkness. For another, this evening had promised to be a pleasant one: When she set out from home for the Gloucester Coffee House, she’d assumed the moon would brighten their journey.

Instead, within minutes they were pitched into a streaming Stygian darkness, which feeble lights here and there only seemed to emphasize. The world about her felt too empty.

Breaking in on an unexpected silence, the crack of thunder, distant as it was, made her jump. Longmore’s head turned sharply that way, and in the faint glow of the carriage lights, she saw his jaw muscles tighten.

He turned to her. “Are you all right?” he said.

“Yes,” she lied.

“The horses won’t be, in a thunderstorm,” he said. “I’ve decided not to chance it. With a broken neck you won’t be much help to my sister. We’ll have to stop.”

She was only half relieved. As alarming as she found it to travel at present, she was impatient at delay. Back in London, after Fenwick had reported what his friends had told him about the cabriolet, she’d looked up Richmond Park in a road guide. It wasn’t very far from London. Still, near as it was, if even Longmore didn’t want to risk traveling on, no sane person would try it.

Though they seemed to be crossing an endless uninhabited wilderness, it wasn’t long before he turned into the yard of an inn. White flashes lit the sky, and the thunder rumbled oftener and more loudly, nearer at hand.

While the ostlers rushed out to take charge of the horses, Longmore practically dragged her from her seat and swept her along under his arm to the entrance, calling over his shoulder, “Look after the boy. If he isn’t drowned, dry him off and see that he’s fed.”

A short time later, she was shaking off the wet from her carriage dress, and Longmore was treating the landlord with the same imperious impatience he’d shown Dowdy and her accomplice: “Yes, two rooms. My aunt requires her own. And you’d better send a maid to her.”

“Your aunt?” Sophy said after the landlord had hurried away to see about rooms.

Amusement lit Longmore’s dark eyes and a tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I always travel with my aunt, don’t you know? Such a dutiful nephew. Luckily, I’ve scads of them.”

That was all it took: one rakish glint in his dark eyes and a ghost of a smile. Her heart gave a skip and pumped heat upward and outward and especially downward. She had to fight with herself not to rush to the nearest window and pull it open, storm or no storm. She needed a sharp dose of cold water.

She told herself to settle down. He’d used that look on hundreds of women, probably, with the same effect. And she was a Noirot. She was the one who was supposed to slay men with a glance.

In any event, she supposed she ought to be glad he owned at least a modicum of discretion.

As
fille de joie
euphemisms went, “aunt” was probably more useful than “wife.” Half the world would probably recognize him, and that half would know he wasn’t wed or likely to be anytime soon, if ever.

He took out his pocket watch. “This is ridiculous. We haven’t covered eight miles and it’s nearly half past ten o’clock.”

“She wouldn’t travel in this weather, surely?” Sophy said in a low voice, though they were alone in the small office. “If she did visit the park, wouldn’t she stop at an inn nearby when it grew dark?”

“I hope so,” he said. “But who knows what’s in her mind?”

“She has Davis,” Sophy said. “She wouldn’t let her mistress endanger herself.”

“Clara can be obstinate,” he said. “My hope is the horse. Wherever she tries to go, she’ll have the devil of a time changing horses. The cabriolet only wants one, but it needs a powerful one. Inns reserve those for the mail and stage coaches. She’ll probably find it easier to keep the one she set out with. Which means she’ll need to stop at intervals—and stay for a good while—to give the creature food and drink and rest.”

Sophy knew little about the care of horses. She and her sisters had had enough to do in learning not only their trade but a lady of leisure’s accomplishments as well. This was no small feat for girls who had precious little leisure. But it was unthinkable merely to learn a trade. While the DeLuceys and Noirots might all be greater or lesser rogues and criminals, they never forgot they were blue bloods. Too, they knew that refined accents and manners vastly improved the odds of luring unsuspecting ladies and gentlemen into their nets.

Learning dressmaking and learning to be a lady—not to mention acquiring other less virtuous Noirot and DeLucey skills—left no time for the finer points of horsemanship. Sophy could distinguish general types of vehicle, and she could appreciate a handsome horse, but for the rest she had to trust Longmore’s judgment.

“I think I’ll send Fenwick to insinuate himself among the stablemen,” he said with a glance at the door through which their host had departed. “They’ll have noticed the cabriolet if it passed, or they’ll have heard about it from post boys. We’ll get more detailed gossip from them than from any tollgate keepers.”

The innkeeper reappeared then, a plump maidservant following. While she led Sophy up to her room, Longmore stayed behind, talking to the landlord.

M
eanwhile, less than ten miles away, in Esher’s Bear Inn, Lady Clara sat by the fire, studying her copy of
Paterson’s Roads
.

“Portsmouth,” she told Davis. “We’re already on the road, and it’s only a day’s journey.” She calculated. “Not sixty miles.”

“It’s not twenty miles back to London, my lady,” Davis said.

“I’m not going back,” Clara said. “I won’t go back to
him
.”

“My lady, this isn’t wise.”

“I’m not wise!” Clara jumped up from her chair, the guidebook clattering to the floor. “I declined a duke because he didn’t love me enough. Poor Clevedon! He at least
liked
me.”

“My lady, everybody who knows you loves you.”

“Not Adderley,” Clara said bitterly. “How could I be so blind? But I was. I believed all those romantic words he’d taken out of books.”

“Some gentlemen can’t express themselves,” Davis said.