Thea's Marquis (16 page)

“And that gentleman’s waistcoat far outshines yours, Mr. DeVine,” she teased. “Peacock blue, with spangles and...Thea, I believe it is that man who was so rude to us at the Haycock. Do you remember? Ilminster, his name was. He took us for...for women of easy virtue.”

“Ilminster insulted you?” Will half rose, his face matching his crimson coat, his knife clenched in his fist. “I’ll horsewhip him!”

“You can’t do that.” Roderick laid a restraining hand on his cousin’s arm.

“Then I shall call him out!”

“Pray do not,” Thea begged.

“You might be hurt,” said Meg, round-eyed.

“Sit down,” the marquis commanded, and his cousin subsided. “You will draw everyone’s attention, which is precisely why you will not challenge the earl. Do you want the entire
beau monde
whispering that Miss Kilmore and Miss Megan were mistaken for...er...ladies of easy virtue? You know such things cannot be kept quiet.”

“Of course not, but how can you be so deucedly calm and collected about it? Forcing his attentions on innocent females!”

“Believe me, if it were not for the certainty of gossip, I should call out the scoundrel myself.” The iron in his quiet, controlled voice and the fire in his eyes confirmed his words.

Thea blenched. Suppose he changed his mind, decided scandal could somehow be avoided? “Lord Ilminster was in his cups at the time,” she said, attempting to excuse his behaviour. “I doubt he was able to...to force his attentions on anyone. Meg told him, ‘Unhand me, sirrah,’ and we left without harm.”

Will gave a shout of laughter. Roderick grinned. “Did you really say that, Miss Megan?” he asked. “I once heard the line in a melodrama at The Haymarket, though I never supposed it might be pronounced anywhere but on the stage.”

Meg twinkled at him. “Heroines in novels say it all the time. The villain generally leaves, uttering dire threats.”

“I trust you will not rely on its efficacy, however. Real villains are rarely foiled by words not backed by the certainty of punishment.”

“But you mean to let the infamous earl escape without punishment,” Will complained.

“I shall give him the cut direct,” said the marquis dispassionately, “and you will drop a quiet word in your friend Sir Gideon’s ear to the effect that I do not care to frequent a house where Ilminster may be encountered. He will tell his mother, and if I am not mistaken, the earl will soon find himself
persona non grata
in respectable Society.”

Will shook his head admiringly. “Since Lady Turner—along with half of Society’s hostesses—harbours hopes that you will cast the handkerchief in her daughter’s direction, I have no doubt but you are right. Ilminster ran through his fortune years ago and cannot compare as a possible match.”

“As though Maria would marry Lord Hazlewood for his fortune,” said Meg, filled with indignation. “Even if Lord Ilminster were twice as rich, she’d refuse him, because he is odious, and ugly, and wears dirty linen.”

“And a flashy waistcoat,” pointed out the marquis, his gaze on Will’s pale pink-and-white stripes.

“Oh, go to the...ahem...deuce, coz. Ah, people are returning to the ballroom. I’ll go and have a word with Giddy. You know what he will say? ‘The Divine Will has spoken.’ And I’ll tell him I’m backed by the Divine Rod....”

“Blasphemy,” said his cousin severely, then he smiled at Thea. “With luck, after tonight you will no longer run the risk of coming face to face with the infamous earl. I hope you are satisfied with my solution?”

“Most certainly, sir. How dreadful it would be if he recognized us.” Yet Thea wondered whether Lord Ilminster might not have preferred pistols at dawn to banishment from Polite Society. Will DeVine’s wrath was violent, but Lord Hazlewood’s was more to be feared, though he never allowed anger to ruffle his outward calm.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Wearing black crape in mourning for Princess Charlotte, Meg looked tinier than ever as she stood at the drawing-room window. She held aside one sage-green curtain with its border of bright autumn leaves and peered out into the dark. For once, no one chided her. “What shall we do?” she demanded yet again.

“I don’t know,” Penny wailed. “Tonight of all nights! I don’t know if it will be worse to go without Jason or not to go at all.”

“If I stay at home,” the dowager volunteered, “the balance of ladies and gentlemen will not be upset. Mrs. Trevelyan will just have to remove two covers.”

“If it were anyone but the Trevelyans, Mama,” Thea reiterated patiently. Though her mother had not been told the full story, she knew enough to be aware that Alison Trevelyan had been singularly gracious to invite the Kilmores. How could Jason do this to his wife? “We shall be abominably late if we do not leave soon.” She began to fasten the buttons of her slate-grey pelisse.

“I
cannot
face them without him.” Penny paced, green eyes huge in her pale face, charcoal silk swishing about her ankles. Her hair flamed above the sombre colour. “Yet if neither of us goes—”

“Here he is!” Meg cried. She dashed for the hall door. Penny and Thea at her heels.

Dunmow, as anxious as his ladies, was loitering in the hall. He opened the front door and Jason came in, shaking raindrops from his beaver. Far from being apologetic, his expression was jubilant.

“Penny, it’s all settled at last,” he announced triumphantly. “Wait till I tell you—”

“Jason, we shall be late,” Meg interrupted. “You are not even changed for dinner.”

“Are we dining out?”

“Jason, the Trevelyans!” Penny moaned.

“To perdition with the Trevelyans! I cannot explain to you in company...” He realized his wife’s lips were trembling, her eyes filling. “The Trevelyans? Yes, I suppose we must go. You take the carriage, my dear, and leave at once.”

“I cannot go in without you.”

“Of course not. Dunmow, have my horse brought round by a mounted groom. Five minutes! Penny, wait on the comer of Green Street until I come. I shall catch you up, I promise.” He touched her cheek as he strode past to take the stairs two at a time.

He did not keep them waiting. Joining them in the carriage, he struggled out of his riding boots and put on evening pumps while Scargill drove the last few yards to the Trevelyans’ house.

“I am not quite my usual immaculate self,” he said, a laugh in his voice, “but I don’t believe I smell of the stables after so short a ride. Come, Mama, let me help you down.”

They were the last to arrive, but not so late as to cause comment. In fact, the only topic of conversation in the Trevelyans’ drawing-room was the sad death of Princess Charlotte in the early hours of that morning, after bearing a stillborn boy.

The gentlemen spoke gravely of the political situation. The loss of the Prince Regent’s only child left his brothers as his sole heirs. The youngest was in his forties, and not one of them had legitimate offspring. What was to become of the throne?

The ladies, all dressed in grey or black, talked in hushed voices of long and painful labour, of the Regent’s disgraceful absence from his dying daughter’s bedside. Many blamed her death on Dr. Croft’s harsh regimen of bleeding and restricted diet. Penny looked more and more unhappy, and Thea began to wonder just how little her brother’s wife had been eating of late.

She blamed herself for not observing Penny more closely. Occupied in chaperoning Meg, whose crowd of admirers constantly increased, and absorbed in her own emotions, she had neglected her sister-in-law. She moved towards her just as the butler announced dinner.

Since ladies and gentlemen had such different interests in Princess Charlotte, conversation at table of necessity turned to other subjects. Thea found herself flanked on one side by a Member of Parliament, who harangued her at length on the topic of Rotten Boroughs, and on the other by a young man more tongue-tied than herself. Neither required much of her attention. She watched Penny, some way down on the opposite side of the long table.

Mrs. Trevelyan had given Penny Lord Hazlewood for her dinner partner, but had seated her next to Jason. Looking worried, Jason abandoned his own partner to press titbits upon his wife. Penny made a valiant effort to eat, but she seemed to have completely lost her appetite.

The events of the evening had been more than enough to overset her, Thea thought. The prospect of visiting the Trevelyans, Jason’s absence when she most needed his support, and then the talk of the princess’s death in childbirth—no wonder Penny appeared far from well. If Jason did not have the sense to take her home immediately after dinner, Thea decided she would send a footman to drag him from his port.

Then she recalled that Jason had urgently wanted to talk to Penny. “It’s all settled at last,” he had said. What was settled? Was he going to explain what mysterious business had kept him from home all these long weeks? Curiosity gnawed at her.

At last Mrs. Trevelyan gave the ladies the signal to retire. Gentlemen stood as footmen moved to pull back chairs. With varying degrees of confusion as they gathered gloves and fans, the ladies rose. And then Penny dropped fan and gloves, raised her hand to her mouth, and swayed. Lord Hazlewood caught her as, eyes closed, she sank towards the floor.

Jason, who had at last politely turned to his partner, swung round. “Penny!” he cried and, fiercely possessive, seized her from the marquis’s arms.

Alison Trevelyan was beside them in a flash, while Thea was still hurrying around the table. “Carry her to the library,” she directed, and caught her butler’s eye. “Lady Emma, if you would not mind...”

A smart woman of about thirty nodded. Jason, holding Penny close, followed the butler from the room. Mrs. Trevelyan swept Thea, Meg, and their mother along behind.

“I am so sorry, Mrs. Trevelyan,” the dowager apologized in flustered distress. “Your dinner party...”

“Pray do not give it another thought, ma’am. Lady Emma will take the rest of the ladies to the drawing-room and I shall join them as soon as I know everything possible is being done to make Lady Kilmore comfortable. Oh dear, I hope nothing serious is the matter!”

“My sister-in-law is in the family way,” Thea told her. “I suspect she was distressed by the talk of Princess Charlotte.”

“No wonder! It was perfectly horrid.”

They entered a room lined with bookshelves, where Jason was laying Penny on a sofa. Gently he raised her head to put a cushion under it and the dowager bustled forward.

“No, dear, keep her head down and raise her feet. Less elegant but far more efficacious.” Taking charge, she lost her vagueness. From her reticule she produced a little bottle. “Thea, here is hartshorn. Mrs. Trevelyan, if I might trouble you for lavender water, and a little wine, and if possible a hot brick.”

“Of course. I shall send for Mrs. Pugh, my housekeeper, and you shall have whatever you need.” She gave orders to the butler. “And see that a chamber is prepared, with the bed warmed, lest Lady Kilmore needs to stay the night.”

“No!” cried Jason. White with anguish, he was kneeling by the sofa, chafing Penny’s hands. “Mama, she is not so ill as that, is she?”

“I hope not, dear. Thea, you can stop waving the vinaigrette. Her eyelids are fluttering. As long as she is not bleeding...” She cast an anxious glance at her silent younger daughter.

Mrs. Trevelyan promptly said to Meg, “Will you come with me to the drawing-room, Miss Megan? Between us we shall tell everyone in confidence that Lady Kilmore is
enceinte,
then no one will think anything of her faintness. Do you know, I once thought it would be prodigious romantic to swoon, but I see it is not at all as described in novels....” She and Meg went off arm in arm.

Thea silently blessed her. If Jason had once been in love with her, how could he ever have considered marrying Henrietta?

“Jason, go and stand by the door,” his mother ordered. “Make sure no one enters for a moment.”

“I don’t want to leave her.”

“Just for a moment, dear. You may be her husband, but this is women’s business.”

Unwillingly he obeyed. The dowager sighed with relief when she discovered no sign of blood on Penny’s undergarments. Jason rushed back to her side just as she opened her eyes. She burst into tears and he took her in his arms.

Tears pricked Thea’s own eyes. Blinking them away, she fetched the glass of wine the butler had poured from a decanter he’d placed on a small table. “Will she be all right, Mama?”

“I believe so, but rather than risk a miscarriage, she ought to spend the night here, since Mrs. Trevelyan has so kindly offered.”

Penny overheard. “Jason, I want to go home,” she wept.

“Then you shall, my darling. Mama, if I carry her, and she puts her feet up on the seat in the carriage...?”

The dowager acquiesced, took the wine from Thea, and urged Penny to drink. A little colour returned to her cheeks.

Thea went to answer a knock at the door and admitted the housekeeper, followed by a maid with a hot brick wrapped in a towel. Behind them stood Lord Hazlewood.

“How does Lady Kilmore go on?” he asked.

“Better, sir. Jason will take her home shortly. Have you seen my sister?”

“Miss Megan is conducting herself with admirable composure. She and Mrs. Trevelyan appear to be on the best of terms. Nonetheless, she looks a trifle woebegone.”

Thea glanced over her shoulder at the group fussing about Penny. “I ought to go to Meg. Penny must keep her feet up in the carriage, so Jason will have to send it back for the two of us.”

“I shall be happy to convey you both to Russell Square whenever you wish, but if I may make a suggestion, it will be best if you stay for a while.”

“To keep people from talking? Yes, you are right. Just let me tell Mama, and I shall come to the drawing-room.”

He waited for her, and she was glad to have him at her side when they entered, for most of the guests turned to stare.

Deserting two disconsolate young men, Meg sped to ask anxiously after Penny, and the Trevelyans came to join her enquiries. Mr. Trevelyan’s genuine solicitude surprised Thea. Doubtless his wife had convinced him of the wisdom of putting aside his understandable animosity towards the Kilmores.