*
Annalise could not look Rob in the eye when she reached the carriage and had to tell
him
what the watchman had said, that Aunt Ros was traveling abroad with a gentleman friend. “Of course there must be some innocent explanation,” she added, wishing she had the imagination to conjure one up. More important, what were they to do now? Her friends had already given up their home for her. How much more could she ask? “Do you think we should try to find her in Vienna?”
“Thompson’s sure to be having the ports watched. ’Sides, I ain’t never been on no boat, and I ain’t goin’ on no boat now. Good Lord wanted men to swim, He’d of given us gills.”
“Pshaw, Robbie, and here I’ve been telling everyone back home we were off to the coast so you could go fishing!”
“Cut your nattering, woman, and let me think.”
“Well, do your thinking in a hurry, Robbie Tuthill, for this coach is passing damp, and Miss—Annie needs to be in a warm bed. All that jouncing around in the cold and wet, and eating what I wouldn’t toss to the pigs, why, I can see my lamb fading right away.”
Annalise bit her lip. Henny’s shorn lamb would fare even less well locked away in some insane asylum for the rest of her bound-to-be-short life. She’d heard of such things, unscrupulous physicians taking money to declare an unwanted family member mad. Right now Annalise was so mad, she could just—
The door of Number Eleven, Laurel Street opened and a young girl in a gray uniform with white apron and cap peered out. “Was it you knocked on the door a minute ago?” she called over to the carriage. “I was on the ladder, doing the chandelier.”
The maid’s name was Lorna, and she allowed as how the travelers could rest in the kitchen for a bit, the younger female looking so pulled and all. Of course they had to be gone by four o’clock, when a young lord was coming to look the place over to rent, she told them, happy to have someone to talk to. And she wouldn’t mind a hand with moving the heavy furniture at all, because she was hoping his lordship would keep her on as daytime help if the house met with his approval. “Of course he’ll still need to hire a housekeeper and a cook and a man of all work. Was you folks interested in the positions?”
Chapter Five
Ross Montclaire, the sixth Earl of Gardiner, loved women. All women. Tall or small, lithe or rounded, haughty or shy, exquisite or plain. He loved the way they moved, the way they smelled, the way their emotions were written on their faces, the way they played off their charms for a man. Old ladies delighted him; tiny moppets enchanted him. The only females he did not enjoy were the predatory debutantes on the Marriage Mart and their ambitious mamas. Luckily, he never encountered these greedy, grasping representatives of the fair sex in his rambles through London. In fact, he avoided the polite world’s piranhas like the plague. Worse, for if there were a plague, he would offer to help bury the dead; Lord Gardiner could not even bear to witness his friends’ weddings.
The earl’s friends, those still speaking to him after his refusal to attend their nuptials, called him Gard. The broadsides and scandal sheets called him Earl en Garde, because he was always ready. The duels they referred to were not affairs of honor, either, simply affairs: the
duello d’amore,
whose field of honor was a bed, a couch, a closed carriage, or a blanket in the woods, the eternal skirmish from which both combatants rose satisfied, if the
passage d’arms
was conducted properly. Ross Montclaire was everything proper, and he never received a challenge he didn’t meet.
Like the bee that goes from flower to flower, the earl visited woman after woman, never bruising the most fragile blossom, never staying longer than the sharing of a sunbeam. He might return, but a single bloom never held him long, much to the rosebuds’ regrets.
When Lord Gardiner was not paying homage to his ladyloves with his body, he was worshipping them with his pencil. He sometimes got so lost in the beauties of a woman’s form that he forgot her function there in his bed for hours on end. Well, minutes on end. Heirs to earldoms seldom being encouraged to pursue artistic careers, Ross was not as fine a draftsman as more advanced technical training could have made him. Practice, however, made
him
outstanding in this field, too. The faces of his portraits may have been mere rough likenesses of their models, but, oh, the bodies were perfect in their infinite variations. An unexpected dimple here, a softer fold there; the earl took endless delight in his two favorite pastimes.
Ross Montclaire, my lord Gardiner, was a rake of the first order. Then his mother came to Town.
The earl was as close to his mother as most noblemen with one and thirty years in their dish. Like most of his fellows, he’d been sent off with wet nurses, nannies, and tutors, then to boarding schools and university, grand tours and a stint in the army. His later years were spent between house parties, hunting boxes, and bachelor digs, with occasional appearances at his far-flung properties and his seat in Parliament. Which is to say, Gard might be able to sketch his mother’s face from memory. Or he mightn’t. He did love and respect Countess Stephania, naturally. She was his lady mother; he was a proper son.
“You are the most unnatural child a woman could bear!” the diminutive dowager screeched, beating her much larger son about the head and shoulders with her cane. “Where are my grandchildren? Where is the successor to your title? Do you think I suffered with your great hulk for nine months just so you could become a byword in the gossip columns? That’s not why a woman has children, you dolt! She has them so her husband leaves her alone—from the grave, you jackaninny. Your father is disturbing my rest again!”
Ross tried not to laugh as he easily fended off his mother’s thrusts. The late earl, Sebastian Montclaire, often cut up his lady’s peace, it seemed, especially when Lady Gardiner was dissatisfied with her allowance, her life as doyenne of Bath society, or, most commonly, her son.
“Sebastian cannot be happy knowing his heir is a profligate here-and-thereian,” the countess pronounced, finally accepting an Adams chair in the Gold Parlor. “And I deserve to have little ones playing about my skirts.”
The last thing the countess would have permitted, her son considered as he rang for tea, was sticky fingers on her elegant gros de Naples ensemble. Nevertheless, she seemed determined to make Ross’s life a misery. She was in London, the dowager announced, to make sure he reformed. This time she would see he attended correct gatherings, met suitable females, settled down to begin his nursery.
“Your past behavior outrages and offends my every proper feeling as a mother,” she continued after Foggarty, the butler, wheeled in the tea tray. Eyeing the almond tarts, macaroons, and poppyseed cake, Lady Stephania slammed her delicate cup down in its saucer. “How can I eat, looking at my only son, knowing he has just recently left some doxie’s arms?”
So Gard made sure the dowager’s digestion did not suffer. He left. Since his presence seemed to displease the countess, and he was nothing if not a considerate son, the earl stayed as far away from her as possible, which was far indeed in the clubs and stews of London, and the vast reaches of Gardiner House, Grosvenor Square.
The dowager bribed the servants to discover her son’s location; he threatened them with dismissal if they divulged his hideouts. Ross came in after she was abed and left before she was awake. Peace reigned. If the fifth earl walked the halls at night, the sixth one never met him in the darkened corridors.
The system worked fairly well until the night of Diccon Inwood’s birthday celebration. Lord Gardiner found himself having a late supper at Hazlett’s with his closest comrades and half the Royal Theatre’s
corps de ballet,
the most comely half.
Esprit
was running high after the sweets course and after numerous bottles of champagne, when the guest of honor turned to his dinner partner and declared, “You’re as pretty as a picture,
chérie
.”
Which wasn’t terribly original for a gentleman hoping to entice a female to his rooms for another bit of dessert. Considering how castaway Lord Inwood was at the time, however, his friends were impressed with his finesse as he continued: “Not even Bottle…Botti…Michelangelo could capture your incredible beauty.”
To which Lord Gardiner’s best friend Cholly, otherwise known as the Honorable Charlton Fansoll, replied, “Gard could do her justice.”
Some of the other revelers remembered Lord Gardiner’s clever renderings from their Oxford days and quickly followed Inwood’s plea that Gard do a portrait of his
belle amie
with clamors of their own. No one wanted to be behind times with the girls, who seemed entranced with the idea. Zeus, it was cheaper to buy old Gard another round than to spring for a pair of diamond earbobs. But old Gard couldn’t do all the fair charmers’ pictures, especially when they seemed to multiply in front of his eyes, so he offered an alternative. He’d give the fellows a few pointers, lend a more practiced if no steadier hand so they could each draw their own lady. The suggestion was received with applause and laughter, and quickly evolved into a bet, as was wont to occur among these bucks and sporting bloods of the Corinthian set. The best portrait would win ten pounds from each of the wagerers, half to the artist, half to the model. Gard could judge, since he was too good to compete. The only problem was that they needed more room than Hazlett’s private
dining
parlor could provide, and a few props and drawing materials, all of which were in ample supply at Gardiner House in Grosvenor Square.
The earl was very considerate of his staff, most of whom had been at Gardiner House longer than he had. He always sent his valet, Ingraham, to bed when he left for the evening, scandalizing the old man with tales of how many times he’d be in and out of his clothes that night without his valet’s assistance. Lord Gardiner also refused to permit Foggarty to stay on duty all night just to open the door, when Gard had a very fine key in his pocket, so no one met his lordship’s party in the marbled hall.
They tiptoed past a gape-jawed night footman on their way to the grand ballroom, miles away from the family wing of the huge pile. The footman’s only prior function, as far as Lord Gardiner could tell, was to report back to the countess what time her erring son returned and whether his neckcloth was tied correctly. Tonight the clunch could earn his keep lighting candles, laying fires, and fetching the earl’s pads and charcoals. Gard and Cholly made forays to the wine cellar and the conservatory while the other gentlemen shifted a plant stand or two and helped the dancers remove Holland covers from the gilt chairs and satin-covered love seats.
“Gentlemen,” Gard finally announced, “in the interest of fairness, I have established some criteria for the judging. Artistic composition and depth of expression shall be counted as well as execution.”
“What the deuce are you talking about, Gard?” Cholly asked for the rest, who were shaking their heads and looking more confused than foxed.
“That it doesn’t have to look like your ladybird, you gudgeon, it just has to be a good picture. That way you can use your imaginations, if you have any, even if you haven’t much skill. You have one hour. On your mark…”
Soon there were naked ladies with roses in their teeth, naked ladies draped creatively across gilt chairs. Ballerinas had remarkable flexibility, surprising even the connoisseur earl. One dancer was wearing the gauntlets from a suit of armor and nothing else; one was en pointe on a plaster pedestal. There were more chuckles than concentration on the other side of the makeshift easels.
“Drawing class was never like this,” Lord Inwood laughed as the earl made his way around the room, straightening a line, adjusting a pose. He offered a suggestion here, a bit of gauze there, a kiss or a pat of encouragement to all the models. Ah, the joy of Art.
“Cholly, you’ve given her three arms! Nice pose, Lockhart, but you’re not supposed to be in the picture with Chou-Chou; get back to your drawing. Hello, Mother. No, Nigel, you’re supposed to draw on the paper, not on the model.” Hello, Mother?
More lightskirts went home in Holland covers that night than in the entire history of British shipping. Someone had the presence of mind to extinguish most of the candles. They were just a tad too late, however, to prevent some of London’s choicest spirits from witnessing the Dowager Countess Gardiner, five feet from the tips of her embroidered slippers to the curl papers in her silvered hair, attack her six-foot-plus son with a fireplace poker.
*
By way of remorse, Gard sat through three lectures about not fouling one’s own nest and two secondhand visitations from his father’s uneasy spirit. In the end, just to win a modicum of peace for his aching head, he even agreed to accompany Lady Stephania to a few
tonnish
parties and to consider—consider, mind!—looking around for a suitable countess.
The balls were as awful as he recalled, too hot, too crowded, too many rules. The refreshments were more fashionable than filling, the table stakes were low, the dance floor stakes were high. He no sooner asked a young lady for a dance than her name was linked to his in the morning’s papers. Her mother was calling him “dear” and her father was telling him when he could call. And the debutantes were as insipid as the lemonade they drank, while their older sisters, the established Beauties, were as cold as the ices from Gunther’s every hostess served. Raspberry, lemon, the only difference was in the color of their dresses. As for the dresses themselves, those low necklines and dampened skirts did nothing to reconcile Lord Gardiner to leg shackles. A fellow didn’t choose his wife from a row of Covent Garden whores, and the whores at least provided what they promised. The price for these highborn high flyers was too costly.