The Water Nymph (13 page)

“Please, please call me Dolores,” Lady Artly begged, once she was sufficiently recovered. “I have long been
such
an admirer of yours, Lord Sandal.” If there had been any question of the direction of Lady Artly’s interest in the Earl of Sandal, it was resolved as she leaned close to Sophie, led her hand toward the ample bosom, and whispered in her ear, “I have often thought we could find
such
enjoyment in one another’s company. Two people of the world such as you and I.”

Sophie, who wondered if this sort of thing happened to the Earl of Sandal every day, was spared having to respond by Crispin’s return to the room, eliciting another chorus of “The pleasure is mine” from Grip. Lady Artly withdrew quickly, dropping Sophie’s hand and pulling the green silk back over some small part of her bosom. “Who is that man?” she asked sharply.

Sophie smiled reassuringly, as she imagined Crispin would. “There is nothing to worry about, Dolores,” she said in her low voice. “That is only my secretary, Don Alfonso.” Crispin had opened his mouth, but Sophie shot him a look that silenced him. “He is here merely to record our conversation and will not speak.”

Lady Artly looked Crispin up and down, with an expression that made it clear he did not meet her idea of a fashionable secretary. “I would rather we were alone, Lord Sandal,” she said finally, the sharpness gone from her voice and the purr back in place. “I have
such
a lot to confide in you, and Spaniards make me nervous. Could you not dismiss him? For me?”

Crispin blinked twice to make sure he was seeing what he was seeing, since he could not possibly be hearing what he was hearing, but lost all capacity for blinking as Sophie turned to him and said sternly, “Go, Don Alfonso. I will ring for you when I need you.”

“Go, Don Alfonso,” Grip piped in, hopping on one foot. “Get the girl.”

“Listen,” Crispin began, moving toward the two women. “I—”

Thurston’s entrance cut him off midsentence, to Sophie’s great relief. “I beg your pardon, my lord,” the steward said, addressing the room generally, “but there is a personage below who desires to see you.”

Sophie seized the opportunity. Turning her head completely from Lady Artly, she gave Crispin a huge grin. “Don Alfonso, I would be much obliged if you would attend to that matter and leave me to see to our charming guest.”

Sophie, who did not know that there was a peephole into the library through which everything that passed in there could be seen and heard, was surprised and pleased by Crispin’s acquiescence. Indeed, taking his cue from Thurston, he did not even bat an eyelid as he bowed and said, “Very good, my lord,” then followed his steward from the room.

When they were alone together again, Lady Artly resumed her leaning position. “You handled that man with
such
mastery, my lord,” she praised Sophie. “You are frightfully powerful.”

“Frightfully powerful,” Grip chirped. “Frightfully, frightfully, frightfully.”

Sophie rose from her seat abruptly in order to avoid the pair of lips that had somehow wended their way toward her. “Yes, well,” she said in an offhanded baritone as she moved toward the raven’s cage to give the bird a stern look, “someone has to be.” She began to pace the library twirling her mustache, trying to remember now how Crispin had begun the earlier interviews, and relieved that the raven seemed to have gotten her hint and was now dozing with its head under its wing. “Tell me, Dolores, did you enjoy your subscription to Richard Tottle’s
News at Court?”

“No, I most certainly did not.”

Sophie stopped her pacing and mustache twirling. This was the first less than positive reaction they had gotten to their questions about Richard Tottle’s broadside, and possibly the first clue as to its strange machinations. Sophie tried not to seem too excited, lest she scare the clue away. “I am sorry to hear that. Was it the content you objected to?”

Lady Artly’s face assumed a pained expression. “It is
such
a painful subject for me to talk about. Won’t you come sit down next to me again?”

Sophie returned to the seat she had left and submitted to having her hand raised to Lady Artly’s cheek.

“I only tell you this because I know you will understand,” Lady Artly began, fluttering her false eyelashes. “It is
such
a terrible thing to have to admit. You can imagine how I feel.”

Sophie, whose hand was now being pressed to Lady Artly’s breast, did not have to leave much to her imagination to know exactly how Lady Artly, or at least her skin, felt. She nodded sympathetically.

“Oh, Lord Sandal, it is awful. It was not I, but my husband, Harry, who subscribed to those wretched papers. I knew when it started, when the meringues began to come, that something was amiss. You see, Harry hates sweets, yet he was paying that baker, Sweetson, a hundred pounds a month for those dreadful French confections. And whenever I asked him about it, he told me to mind my own business.”

Sophie, who had little experience with how a married couple negotiated the ordering of pastries, was having trouble comprehending the problem, but she tried to look as though she understood. “I can imagine how hard that was for you.”

“Can you?” Lady Artly brought her face very close to Sophie’s. “Yes, I suppose, Lord Sandal, you can. You are
such
an understander of women. You can see how difficult it would be for a woman like me.”

Lady Artly made a move to caress Sophie’s cheek, but Sophie pulled away slightly, pretending to cough. She did not know how stalwart the mustache paste was and was not about to put it to the test of being caressed.

“Oh, dear, are you ill, my lord?” Lady Artly asked with great solicitude. “Let me cradle your head—”

Sophie stopped coughing abruptly. “No, no, it is just a cold I got from being out in the rain. Nothing to worry about. Tell me, what did you do when the meringues began to arrive?”

Lady Artly looked despondent. “Nothing. What could I do? Besides, the meringues stopped coming for a few months, and I thought perhaps Harry had seen his error. But then, then those dreadful papers started.”

Sophie had not been able to read much of the broadside printed by Richard Tottle that had arrived through the window that morning, but nothing about it appeared to warrant the description “dreadful.” “You mean Richard Tottle’s papers?”

“No, no, those came later. No, I mean”—Lady Artly took a deep breath—
“The Lady’s Guide to Italian Fashion
. Harry, reading a fashion broadside. It was all so clear then.”

Lady Artly’s voice had begun to quiver, and Sophie understood that while nothing was clear to her, something was clearly wrong. “Lady Artly—Dolores,” Sophie said in a low voice, but the woman stopped her with a hand.

“Please. Save your condolences, your excuses. I know when my husband is having an affair. There is no other explanation. First the French sweets, then the Italian fashions. He has a mistress stashed somewhere, I am sure of it. And I think she must be one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. Why else would he take Richard Tottle’s paper, but to look for the name of his mistress in its pages?”

Sophie opened her mouth to speak and was again stopped. “No, I know what you would say. You would say that no man who was married to a woman with
such
looks,
such
style as I myself possess, would have a mistress. That I am all the woman he, or any man, would ever want. And you would not be the first to say so. But Harry is ungrateful and unrefined. He does not know what a prize he has in me. He is not like you. He does not appreciate me as you do. That is why I came to you today.”

Sophie was growing more confused with every word, and in particular, Lady Artly’s final words. Could Lady Artly be proposing that they have an affair to get back at her husband? Sophie hesitated for a moment before asking, as neutrally as possible, “Is there a service I can render you?”

Lady Artly pulled a kerchief from her waist and dabbed at her eyes. “I want you to find Harry’s mistress and lure her away from him. You can do it, Lord Sandal. No woman can resist you.” She put the kerchief away and turned her eyes back to Sophie. “Even I, a married woman, am not immune to charms such as yours. I must admit, your portrait in the broadside never moved me, but now that I see you in person, and see your mustache…” She lowered and then raised her eyes slowly.

“You do me too much honor.” Sophie spoke as formally as she could, sitting up rigidly in her seat.

“Lord Sandal, you need not be modest.” Lady Artly leaned close to Sophie. “You are worthy of far more than mere praise from me. I am a woman who could really cherish your finer points.” A finger crept across the arm of the chair and drew a long, suggestive line up Sophie’s thigh.

Sophie suffered a second coughing fit then, which caused her face to turn red and again nearly resulted in her having her head cradled on Lady Artly’s bosom. But she could not keep coughing forever, and she was at a loss as to how to end the bizarre interview, when the great clock in the downstairs hall began to chime.

“Oh, dear,” Lady Artly said with alarm, “I must be going. I hate to leave you in the throes of such a bad cold, all alone, with no one to look after you, no one to comfort you.”

“I shall be fine,” Sophie assured her, with a few precautionary coughs just to keep Lady Artly’s hands at bay. “It is better if you go. We would not want anyone to suspect us.”

“Of course. You are right, Harry should not know I have been here. He is
such
a jealous tyrant, and I should hate for you to have to fight a duel on my behalf.”

Sophie’s recovery was almost complete now. “I certainly would not shrink from it,” she answered, not hesitating to risk Crispin’s neck, then stood quickly and strode toward the bell rope in the corner of the room. “But, just to be cautious, I shall have Thurston show you out.”

Lady Artly rose majestically, gathering her green silk swathing about her. “I know we shall meet again soon,” she told Sophie. “You will do what I asked, won’t you? You will do that for me, for your sweet Dolores?” Sophie, who had been rendered rather short of breath by the coughing fit, did not have time to respond before Lady Artly rushed on. “Thank you, Lord Sandal. I knew I could count on you.”

Lady Artly edged toward Sophie, apparently expecting something in the way of an embrace, but Sophie bent down to avoid the red-tinted lips and instead, taking the lady’s hand, gave it a chaste kiss.

“So
gallant,” Lady Artly sighed.
“So
divine.” And with that, and the appearance of Thurston, she disappeared in a swirl of green silk.

Lady Ardy passed Crispin at the bottom of the stairs as she went out. “Good day, Don Alfonso,” she told him. “Be sure to assist your master well in his undertaking for me. He is
such
a wonderful man.”

Crispin, nodded, rendered mute as much by the sheer quantity of green silk as by the fact that Sophie had apparently agreed to do something for the creature wearing it, then returned his attention to the task at hand. He did not want to lose any time giving Sophie hell. He set his jaw slightly more with each step he climbed toward his apartment, concentrating on the lecture he was going to inflict on her for her behavior. She had violated their agreement entirely, had done nothing like sit meekly in the corner, and she was going to be sorry for it. First, he was going to lock her in his bedchamber. And then, he resolved, she would answer his questions. All of them. Truthfully. He had only five days to save his neck, and he was going to start by making her talk. Today he would find out what she had been doing at the Unicorn, what had passed between her and Tottle, and what exactly was her interest in the Phoenix. And, he added, what exactly was the nature of her relationship with her godfather. His spine began to tingle ever so moderately with this thought, but he ignored it. As he reentered the library and saw her sitting at his desk, kicking it with her foot and twirling one end of her mustache around her finger, his resolve jiggled but the words
“five days
” soon restored it.

Something about her interview with Lady Artly was nagging at Sophie, something about what the fashionable woman had said, and she was momentarily too distracted trying to figure out what it was to note Crispin’s return. “Oh, there you are,” she said, coming out of her reverie. “I am starving. What are we having for supper? And who was waiting for you downstairs?”

“That’s none of your business,” Crispin replied coldly, then demanded, “What the devil were you thinking, impersonating me to that woman like that?”

“Did you say we were having roasted loin of pork sautéed with apples?” Sophie went on, heedless of his displeasure. “And spinach soufflé? Oh, there is no spinach? Yes, then Lisbon sprouts will do fine.”

“Answer my question. Why did you impersonate me, against my direct orders?”

Seeing she was not going to get anywhere on their menu until this was dealt with, Sophie sighed. “You never told me I could not impersonate you. Besides, I did nothing of the kind.
She
mistook
me
for you. I merely failed to correct her. You will be interested to know that she thinks I, or rather, the Earl of Sandal, is handsomer in person than in your engraved portraits. And she liked my mustache.”

“I can’t begin to tell you how you arouse my jealousy. What service did you promise to do for her, Your Lordship?”

Sophie began to look a bit grim. “She wants me, or actually you, to find out if her husband is having an affair and, if he is, to seduce his mistress. Easy stuff for you apparently. She made it sound like the Earl of Sandal did such things every day, before breakfast.” Sophie wanted to kick herself for the petulant note she heard in her voice, so she kicked the desk instead.

“Before breakfast?” Crispin replied with mock alarm, forgetting for a moment that he was very angry at her in his pleasure at her obvious jealousy. “Never. Before supper perhaps.”

“Supper?” Sophie brightened considerably. “Squabs stuffed with spinach, onions, raisins, and breadcrumbs, and basted every twenty minutes with a mixture of white wine and butter?”

Crispin ignored her. “What else did you learn from her?”