The Rules of Seduction (11 page)

The gentleman was losing the debate on what to do about Alexia Welbourne.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

H
ayden passed over the documents for signing. Suttonly scribbled his name.

“You should read them,” Hayden said.

“Does your brother read them?” Suttonly spoke in his typical bored tone. He handed the pages back to Hayden and lounged back in his chair.

“Easterbrook reads every one.”

“My solicitor will see to it when the final papers are prepared. You have never steered me wrong thus far. My worth has doubled since I began riding your coattails.”

“A less honorable man could have relieved you of more than you have gained these last years.”

“If we faced each other in a gaming hell, I would have long ago left the table, Rothwell. In these chambers, however, you have proven less bloodthirsty.”

Suttonly alluded to a past that, as Hayden’s old friend, he knew too well. When he first stepped into manhood, Hayden’s success at the gaming tables had been notorious. The thrill of victory drove him like a madness. It had all been part of his attempts to be a different man than breeding dictated.

He kept risking ruin at the tables, and instead became rich. It took a long time to realize that he played with an unfair advantage. Where other men saw random cards, he saw patterns. Even games of chance were governed by systems of likelihoods dependent upon recent cards played.

Then he discovered the work of Bayes and Lagrange and others. He read LaPlace’s book on probabilities. The study of those likelihoods was becoming a science, one that fascinated him.

However, realizing the truth had taken the fun out of the games. He restricted himself to a fairer sort of gambling now. He still saw patterns, he still calculated the odds with instincts most did not possess, but the unknown variables leveled the field somewhat. Even better, there could be victories sometimes in which no one lost.

Suttonly rose and strolled around the City chambers where Hayden conducted his business affairs. It was part of a suite that contained both an office and a bedroom. He rarely used the latter but on occasion stayed late enough that it proved convenient.

“Still at it, I see.” Suttonly poked at some die on a little table and scrutinized the ledger beside them. “Any luck?”

“I am making progress.” The table contained the makings of an ongoing experiment. Laws governed the likelihoods behind what others considered chance and luck. Scientists thought the world worked like a well-designed clock, but he thought it might actually be ruled by fairly simple mathematical equations.

Suttonly kept moving, poking his nose into private things the way old friends tend to do. He focused his attention on a thick stack of pages lying atop a standing desk. “What is this?”

“A new mathematical proof recently presented at the Royal Society. I am seeing if it holds.”

“You must be careful, Rothwell. Such interests have not made you boring yet, but ten years hence, if you are not vigilant, no one will want to know you except the dullards who frequent Somerset House.”

“I restrict my play with abstract numbers to several hours a day,” Hayden said. “As it happens, they are the hours passing now.”

“I will leave you to it, then. By the way, that business with Longworth—I trust it was not a latent taste for blood on your part that caused his ruin. The rumors that you were behind it are still flying.”

“I have not been at the tables in years.”

“What an interesting response. It is ambiguous enough to raise my eyebrows, if I were the sort to care. Longworth is best gone, I say. Ben could be fun if one overlooked his exhausting enthusiasm, but Timothy proved too tediously grasping.”

When Suttonly had gone, Hayden tucked the documents into a drawer. He then approached the standing desk.

Within minutes his mind traveled paths of formulas, winding through the awesome, wordless poetry symbolized by his notations. As a student he had considered mathematics a vaguely interesting chore at which he unaccountably excelled. Finally one master had introduced him to the profound beauty hidden in the more sophisticated calculations.

It was an abstract beauty, one present in nature but not physically visible. It had nothing to do with the world in which most people lived. There were no emotions or hungers or weaknesses in these numbers. No pain or guilt, no passions or impulses. This beauty was pure rationality, the most fundamental kind, and his visits to its power could be escapes, he knew. On those occasions when his soul was in turmoil for the most human of reasons, he always found peace here.

“Sir.”

The voice jolted him back into the world. His clerk stood by his side. The man had instructions to interrupt at a specific hour so that the entire day did not get lost in these abstractions. Hayden could not say how long he had been at it, but he knew this day’s intrusion had arrived too soon.

“A messenger came,” his clerk explained. “He brought this and the instruction that you had said to see you received it at once. If I should have waited—”

“No, you acted correctly.” He slid the seal while the clerk returned to the anteroom. He read the one sentence, written by an accommodating footman in Henrietta’s household.

Miss Welbourne had a free day today and had gone to the shops on Albemarle Street.

If Phaedra Blair did not possess both style and beauty, the world would consider her merely strange. Since nature had blessed her with both qualities, society thought her almost interesting.

Phaedra was one of the few good friends Alexia could claim besides her cousin Roselyn. Theirs was not an especially public friendship, although they sometimes spent time together in town, as they did today. Phaedra was the friend Alexia normally called on for private conversation about books and ideas.

The illegitimate daughter of a reforming M.P. and a bluestocking, Phaedra lived alone in a small house on a poor street near Aldgate. She had inherited from her parents the ability to discard rules and beliefs if they seemed stupid to her. Since a good many did, Alexia and she engaged in some strong arguments on occasion. It was such an argument two years ago, one exchanged the day they met while both examining the same painting at a Royal Academy exhibition, that began their friendship.

“I think your plan to make hats is admirable. As you have finally learned, a dependent woman is a woman enslaved,” Phaedra said. Since an uncle had left her an income of one hundred pounds a year, Phaedra was not enslaved by anyone or anything.

They strolled through Pope’s warehouse on Albemarle Street while Alexia bought millinery materials. She had decided to make one hat and one bonnet. She chose some iron wire she would use to create the latter’s brim.

“Do not let that milliner rob you. Your hats are worth a great deal,” Phaedra said. “Design is everything in art.”

“She will want to profit too. Even a few pounds a month and I can support myself.” Barely, but it could be done. If she was frugal, she might save some money too. In a few years she might open a school for girls. That was a common and respectable way for ladies to employ themselves.

“I am the last woman to preach against this course of action. Still, you care more about the world’s opinion than I do, Alexia. Do not discount that as you make your choices. If it is learned that you engage in such piecework for a shop, your attempts to maintain your station will be in vain.”

Alexia sorely wished she did not care so much about that opinion or her station. Phaedra didn’t, and her life was probably a lot more interesting than her own would ever be. Phaedra did not worry about propriety at all. She traveled alone if she wished. She entertained writers and artists in that small house. Alexia had reason to suspect that Phaedra had lovers too. Alexia did not approve of that, but she could not deny that her friend’s indifference to social rules could be alluring.

Phaedra did not even wear caps or bonnets. Her long, rippling red hair just flowed too. She did not dress it.

As a result, they received a lot of looks from patrons in the warehouse. Once people looked at that hair, they noticed the garments and looked some more. Phaedra wore mostly black. She could be in mourning if not for the hair and the unusual, flowing cut of her dresses. The apollo-gold silk lining of her black cape further announced that black was her preference.

“I will confess that I am surprised by your decision to leave that house,” Phaedra said as Alexia chose some Dunstable straw for the hat. “You have this day to yourself and use of the carriage. You are not a prisoner. You are far more comfortable there than you will be on your own.”

“I do not want the dependency, no matter what comfort it brings. Nor is it secure. I could be put out at any time, for any reason. Then where would I be?”

“How is that different from what you knew before?”

“Before it was family. Family do not put you out.”

“That one did.”

“Please do not criticize them, Phaedra. I received a letter from Rose today, and things are not going well. Tim is ill most of the time, and they ration fuel like peasants.”

“Perhaps your cousin should improve his health quickly and find employment.”

Alexia avoided the argument. Today was not really about the Longworths. They were not the reason she was buying materials to secretly do piecework.

She wished she could tell Phaedra about Lord Hayden and those kisses. If she did, however, her friend would bluntly name it as the base lust it had been. Phaedra would probably remind Alexia that she had not long ago written three long letters to Phaedra that heaped hatred on the man in question.

Her face burned at the thought of the carriage ensemble and dresses being made by Madame Tissot. She was sure Rothwell, not Easterbrook, was paying for them. Phaedra would scold her soundly about that. Phaedra might have lovers, but she opposed the practice of men paying for favors with gifts.

Alexia checked the supplies laid out on the counter to make sure she had everything. She added up the long bill of sale and paid. The clerk wrapped her purchases in several bulky packages. Balancing them in a clumsy pile that reached her nose, she aimed for the street and the carriage.

“You will be wanting to start on the hats today,” Phaedra said. “Otherwise you will have to wait until next week to make progress. Do not tell me that you will craft those hats by the light of a lamp after you are finished with your duties either. It will affect your health, and I will not countenance that.”

“I suppose it would be best to get started if I am going to do this at all.”

“I will go home in a hansom cab, so you do not waste an hour crossing town. It was kind of you to come for me, but I will not mind making my own way back.”

Alexia turned her head to thank Phaedra for her consideration. From the corner of her eye she saw someone step in her path. She noticed just in time to avoid bumping into him.

Suddenly the top two packages on her stack disappeared.

She swung her attention to the thief and began to raise a cry before he ran away. Only it was not a thief.

“They were about to fall,” Lord Hayden said. “I see that you are using your free day more actively this week, Miss Welbourne.”

“Lord Hayden. What an unexpected surprise.” He was the last person she wanted to see.

She had no choice but to introduce him to Phaedra. He did not even blink at her friend’s appearance. He exuded an affable grace.

He looked at the packages. “The carriage is nearby? I will carry these and escort you ladies to it.”

“I will be using a cab, thank you,” Phaedra said.

“I will not have that.” Alexia tried with a firm tone to communicate that Phaedra must now remain with her. “I will bring you back in the carriage.”

“You have better use of the afternoon.”

“Allow me to obtain the cab for you,” Lord Hayden offered. He gestured to the man who stood sentry at the warehouse door. He fished some coin from his waistcoat pocket and gave instructions that a hansom cab should be hired for Miss Blair.

He then guided Alexia away from the door and toward the line of carriages waiting down the street.

“Your friend Miss Blair is distinctive.”

“She is honest and true and incapable of dissembling.”

“I meant no disrespect. She is an original. I should introduce her to Easterbrook. They can braid each other’s hair.”

“I suspect Phaedra would find Easterbrook rather boring. That is how distinctive and original she is, you see.”

The slightly surly attitude with which her coachman had begun this outing disappeared when he saw Rothwell approach by her side. He rushed over to take her packages, then carefully tucked them inside the carriage.

“In the future, when Miss Welbourne uses the carriage to shop, a footman is to accompany her,” he told the coachman. “My apologies, Miss Welbourne, for not making that clear to the household from the start.”

He opened the door for her. She stepped inside. He did too.

“I do not need an escort. The coachman can protect me the short way back to Hill Street.”

He ignored her pointed lack of welcome and settled across from her. “Was Miss Blair correct? Do you have another use for this afternoon?”