Fran Baker (22 page)

The bright blue eyes of Helen Lawrence shimmered with surprise, joy and doubt as they intently searched her sister’s face. Helen noted, too, the taut line of Stratford’s lips and the heat of his dark eyes before he turned to stand staring into the cold cavern of the unlit fireplace, one booted foot upon the grate, one hand gripping the mantel. She began to wonder why he should be so extremely vexed, but had no chance to examine this notion as the earl raised a toast to the couple.

Hallbrook was as delighted as his daughter was not. He clapped Daniel on the back and embraced Rose as he presented her with a dry kiss on her cheek. As a servant bestowed a glass of his lordship’s finest sherry to each of those present, the earl called out in a voice crackling with cheer, “To the health, to the happiness of the betrothed couple!”

Stratford’s head snapped up at this. Though his hand held the wineglass, he did not raise it to his lips. His eyes seemed to bore through Rose until she felt she could not bear it any longer. She turned away to accept the felicitations with a wan smile, her face ghostly pale against the dark brown of her gown.

“You sly thing!” Helen chided, gently hugging her. “You never said a word this morning! But when is the happy day to be?”

“W-we rather thought—that is, if you do not mind—” Rose stumbled, for once visibly disconcerted.

“We thought a double wedding with you and Stratford would be charming,” Baldwin finished.

The viscount’s glass came down onto the mantel with a thump, freely baptizing the ledge with sherry as he said curtly, “If you will excuse me.”

His abrupt departure spurred the dispersion of the company. They did not all meet again until gathering around the dining table that night.

If talk the evening before had been desultory, tonight it was dismal. Little was said beyond the commonplace and more than one member of the small party showed an alarming tendency toward silence altogether. Miss Thacker was among the latter, having been induced to come down for dinner only by her mother’s tart observation that if she wished to remain in her room and appear the jilt then by all means she must do so. Beyond casting one venomous glare at Rose, Amy had not removed her eyes from her plate, though little of the offerings she saw there appealed and course after course was taken away untouched.

Her lack of appetite was shared by the object of her animosity, and when the earl demanded to know why Miss Lawrence was not eating, she lamely offered the excitement of the day as an excuse. This earned her a fulminating stare from her future mother-in-law. Having her eldest son refuse to answer her demands for an explanation to his incredible behavior had only served to exacerbate Lady Minerva’s already foul temper. Helen and Elizabeth strove vainly to stimulate conversation, but when they found themselves remarking for the fifth time how lovely the weather had been today, they, too, fell silent.

At last the seemingly endless meal wound mutely to a close.

When the ladies stood to leave, Lord Stratford moved quickly to the door. “I find I am obliged to return to London in the morning. I therefore bid you all goodnight.” With a brusque bow and without waiting for his grandfather’s response, he retired.

Stratford let the Keep long before breakfast was served on the following day, and though he had not said goodbye, he left a note for Helen telling her crisply that he would see her on her return to town. His early departure saw him in London long before noon. After a brief visit to his lodgings in Half Moon Street, where he changed into fresh morning wear and flipped through the number of invitations, notes and other correspondence awaiting him, he paid a call at Maret’s. There, however, he was informed by Dobbs that Mr. Maret had not returned from his journey, though he was expected later that day or the next.

*****

In Hampshire, Maret had just entered his mother’s boudoir to bid her farewell.

They stood in a room as delicate and airy as the woman who occupied it. Silk-covered chairs were daintily arranged over a fringed, willow-green carpet and matched the straw-colored draperies ornamenting the fanlight windows. A quartet of gilt angels carried the flaxen silk hangings as they guarded the enormous poster bed lining one wall, while a fifth angel hovered coyly over the carved mirror of the vanity opposite the bed.

It was beneath this angel that Simone Maret had positioned herself, occasionally running a tortoise comb through the hair that had once been likened to a sunbeam reflected on still water. As she conversed with her son, she thought he looked superbly handsome in his tight, dark riding coat, though she wished he were not so very pale. Her full lower lip pushed forward, a sign of her determination to discover the cause of Jacques’s somber spirits before he left her this day. Her delicate heart-shaped face was filled with unaccustomed gravity as Simone dropped the comb onto the table and turned to interrupt her son’s amusing description of Lord Antioch’s refusal to use a light snuffbox in an east wind for fear of catching a cold.

“
Vraiment
! I do not wish to hear of this Antioch. I wish to hear of
you
, Jacques. Will you not tell me what brings the sadness to your eyes,
mon petit
?”

There was a perceptible pause. “I rather fear, my dear
maman
, that you would laugh to hear it,” he drawled as he leaned his shoulders against the white marble mantelpiece.

“But,
non
!” she denied with a vivid flutter of her hand. Simone gazed shrewdly at her son. “It is
une femme, non
?”

His rare, blinding smile rewarded her percipience. “How very like you,
Maman
, to be so perceptive.”

“But, tell me! Is she pretty, this one?”

“Like an exquisite porcelain figurine come to life.”

“Ah . . . you love this woman,
n’est-ce pas
?”

“Love?” he echoed. “How can I say? I am not . . . well acquainted with love. Indeed, I had begun to accept that such emotions were not for me.” He left his stance by the unlit fireplace and wandered to stand looking out one window. “I only know that when Helen is in the room, I am . . . satisfied. And when she is gone, I miss her.”

Madame Maret drew in her breath. Keenly watching him, she demanded, “But what then is wrong? Dos she not return your regard?
Tiens
! That is
stupide
!”

“I believe—indeed, I am nearly certain—that she does . . . care . . . for me. But as she is betrothed to the Viscount Stratford, it does not much matter what she or I feel.” The indifferent tone, the bare shrug as he turned to face her, did not deceive Simone.

Adroitly, she drew the tale from her reluctant son. He made light of the water and of his own loss of heart and at the end of it, returned to stand before the fireplace while his mother stared thoughtfully into her mirror.

“Ah,
mon fils
, it is not right that you should be unhappy.
Non
!” she said on a sigh when at last she twirled to face him with a swirl of her lacy peignoir.

“I dare say,
Maman
, that I shall live through it,” he answered with a rueful smile.

“But you love this girl,
non
?
Eh bien
! You should have her. You tell me she is not yet married,
et bien plus
, that you do not think she loves her fiancé. It is very plain to me,
mon cheri
, that you must marry this Hélène—
mais oui
!—even if she is not at all what I should like,” she finished in a burst of sacrificial generosity. She rose and floated to her son’s side.

“I cannot marry another man’s fiancée,
Maman
! Most especially not Stratford’s.”

“
Vraiment
!” she exclaimed, nearly stamping one petite foot. “That is the
anglais
way! But me, I am not
anglaise
, and you, too Jacques, should remember that you are not also. Listen to me,
mon fils
, if you wait until she is married, it will be too late and everyone will be unhappy, especially your Hélène and that boy
remarquable
, Colin, who is sometimes more
le francais
than you.” She gently ran her hand along his cheek as she spoke.

Maret took her hand in his own and kissed it. “You are, as always,
ma chere maman
, the wisest and loveliest of women,” he whispered softly before releasing her hand. In the doorway he turned to add, “It is perhaps a pity, my dear, that Helen is indeed everything you should like.”

Simone watched her son disappear, then heaved a sigh. She earnestly hoped she would like this Hélène Lawrence for,
bien entendu
, Jacques must marry her. Her son was another such as her husband—there would be no other love for him. Jacques gave his affection sparingly, she knew. To herself, to that wild,
charmant
Colin and now, it seemed, to this Hélène, whom she hoped would be tolerable. But whether she was or not did not matter to Simone, for she knew she must somehow erase the unhappiness from Jacques’s eyes.

She began to pace the room with feathery steps, forming her plans.

*****

Blissfully ignorant of his mother’s schemings, Maret journeyed back to London, arriving late in the day to learn that the Viscount Stratford had called earlier. By the time Maret ran his friend down in the wee hours of the morning, mingling with all manner of people and drinking vast quantities of Blue Ruin in the back room of a dingy shop in the slums of Tothill Fields, Stratford was well on his way to scandalizing the
ton
with a week of unmitigated dissipation.

Old men shook their heads and women whispered behind their fans wherever Stratford appeared, as the
haunt monde
fairly hissed with the daily doings of the hell-bent viscount. It was generally agreed that poor Miss Helen Lawrence did not know what a rakehell she was getting for a husband, though some more charitable souls felt it was a pity she had returned to Willowley with her sister, for it was plain to see that her presence was needed to keep his lordship in line.

For once, not even Maret could tame his friend and when at last Stratford was seen in the Lovedays’ private box at the Covent Garden theater taking snuff from the wrist of the passionate Thalia, Jacques gave up hope of discovering what had gone awry at Hallbrook. With the slightest lift of one thin brow, he gave the viscount to understand he disapproved. It was not to be wondered at that within a short period of time Stratford was seen leaving the box with Mrs. Loveday on his arm. The hum of gossip arose like a wave crashing on rocks to die away and swell again as Maret was noted turning his back when the viscount and his companion passed by.

When Stratford returned to his town house late the following morning, it was obvious he was in an ugly mood. From his having found violent fault with three of his servants’ habits, dress and abilities in as many minutes, the downstairs staff was given to understand that his lordship’s temper was as rumpled as his clothes. Thus it was somewhat reluctantly that Felton approached him in the study bearing a small silver salver.

“What is this?” Stratford asked acidly as the door opened. He was seated at his desk, a glass and half-empty bottle standing at his elbow.

“A message, my lord,” the butler replied tonelessly. He proffered the tray. “I was asked to give it to your lordship immediately upon your return.”

With a scowl, Stratford took up the folded note from the tray and waved his man brusquely away. He did not read the missive immediately, but set it aside to stare instead at the sheet which lay on the desk before him.
My dearest Rose
was written in an unsteady hand across the top, with nothing thereafter. In sudden rage, his lordship’s hand crumpled the sheet and he sat with the paper trapped in his clenched fist before dropping it to cradle his head in his hands.

Stratford was roused sometime later by the sound of a tradesman calling out his wares in the street outside. He poured himself the remains of the bottle with a hand that shook, sloshing wine upon his desk. He apparently did not care, being more concerned with emptying his glass. But his eye was caught by the note Felton had delivered—how long ago? He stood weaving beside his desk and held the paper to the light of the window.

I beg your earliest attendance to discuss a Matter of Importance
, read Stratford. He did not recognize the elaborately embellished script and was startled to see the name of Simone Maret with her London address at the bottom of the page. Jacques had not mentioned the arrival of his mother in town, but then Stratford remembered that he was not confiding in his friend of late. He stood a moment longer, gazing unseeing at the note, before tossing it into the crimson puddle of spilled wine. As he left the room, he was calling for Busick in a voice that left little doubt that his lordship’s frame of mind had not improved with his brief rest.

Some hours later, refreshed by a bath, a change of clothes and breakfast of cold ham and ale, Stratford presented himself before Madame Maret. There was little to be seen of his all-night debauch beyond the dark circle beneath his heavy-lidded eyes when Simone received him in her morning room. To her polite inquiry as to how he did, the viscount replied that he was well and she did not question this. During the pause which followed, his lordship thought again how much Jacques favored his mother, for both were extremely fair with silvery blond hair and stunning green eyes.

But the resemblance ended there as Madame Maret could never be so motionless as her son. Every inch of her petite frame vibrated with expression as she spoke. Her hands darted over the decorated front panel of her muslin day dress even now as she considered how to begin.

“
Eh bien
! You are wondering for what I have asked you here,
n’est-ce-pas
?” she asked, coyly wagging one slim finger. With the air of one confiding a great secret, she continued. “I wish to ask of you, Colin, a very
grande faveur
.”

“I should be honored to oblige, Madame,” Stratford responded with a slight inclination of his head. He was wondering what favor she could possibly want of him and was totally unprepared for the words which followed her quick smile.