But she also couldn’t help but wonder why Aidan was really there. He said he liked the theater and wanted to write plays, which was reason enough, but could there be more?
“A
nything interesting in the
Gazette
today, Lily my dear?” Katherine St. Claire asked as she poured more tea into Lily���s breakfast cup.
Lily shook her head as she scanned the tiny newsprint columns and automatically ducked as Brendan tossed a bread roll at their younger brother James’s head. Breakfast in the St. Claire house was always like an immature gentlemen’s club. Brendan and Dominic didn’t live at the St. Claire house any longer, but they always seemed to appear at meal times. “Just that the royal family are leaving for their new residence at Osborne House for the summer, after a trip to Coburg to see the prince consort’s family. Wordsworth attended the Queen’s Ball at Buckingham Palace. The prime minister will—”
“Oh, politics,” Isabel moaned. “Is there anything duller? Especially first thing in the morning.”
“Could you not talk so loudly, please, Issy?” Dominic groaned.
Lily studied him across the table. “You do look rather green this morning, Dominic. Long evening last night?”
Dominic winced. “You could say that.”
Lily tried not to laugh, even when Katherine waved a plate of kippers under his nose and he went completely white.
“You should eat something, dear,” their mother admonished. “It will do you good.”
“Just coffee, thank you, Mama,” he said tightly.
“Serves you right, you wanker, for going out and leaving me here,” James groused.
“Language, James,” Katherine said. “And you are probably too young to go wherever Dominic and Brendan went.”
“Mama, I am almost eighteen!” James protested, but Lily knew how frighteningly adept he had become at sneaking out of the house. He was often gone somewhere where no one else knew.
“Oh, do read the society pages, Lily,” Isabel interrupted her twin, buttering her toast as she cut him off. “I can’t bear to listen to our brothers’ nonsense another second.”
Lily obligingly turned to the middle of the paper. She, too, could use the distraction of gossip, anything to keep her mind from spinning on one subject—Aidan Huntington.
It had been over a week since that night at the Devil’s Fancy, and she hadn’t yet seen him again. He had sent flowers twice, bouquets of violets, along with short notes in his dark, slashing handwriting, but that was all. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved not to face him after what happened or disappointed. But thoughts of him caught her at the oddest moments. She would be working on accounts and see his teasing smile in her mind, that dimple set so incongruously in his chiseled cheeks. She would be riding in the park and smell his cologne.
And at night, in her dreams, she felt his kiss, his touch. Imagined him between her legs on her bed, drawing her feet over his shoulders as he plunged his talented tongue into her aching womanhood, again and again…
“Lily, whatever are you reading about there?” Isabel suddenly said, yanking Lily out of her heated daydreams. “Your cheeks are all pink. It must be something terribly scandalous.”
Lily jerked her head up to find everyone at the table staring at her. Dominic looked pained, but Brendan’s green eyes were narrowed in suspicion.
“Not at all. It’s merely warm in here this morning,” Lily said carefully. “I was reading an account of Lady Waldegrave’s ball. I doubt she would let anything the least bit scandalous happen in her house.”
“The old battle-ax,” Dominic muttered. “Wonder what she would say if she knew what her nephew was up to at the Devil’s Fancy last night?”
“Dominic, dear, I hope you are not getting into trouble at that club of yours already,” Katherine cried. “Remember what happened last time, with the racetrack.”
Lily sincerely hoped there was
not
trouble at the Devil’s Fancy, not when they were all working so hard to make it a success. She glared at Dominic across the table, until he groaned and buried his face in his hands.
“Tell me about the ball, Lily, please!” Isabel begged. “Who wore what? Who danced with who? Were any engagements announced? Oh, I do wish we had been invited. I thought we surely would since we saw the Waldegraves at the assembly rooms last month.”
“Issy, you’re much too concerned with the doings of toffee-nosed snobs like the Waldegraves and the
Huntingtons,” Brendan said. He snatched Dominic’s kipper from his plate since it would obviously not get eaten there. “Who needs them?”
“I am not concerned about them,” Isabel protested. “I just like gowns and parties. So ignore those philistines, Lily, and read to me about the fashions.”
Lily laughed and bent her head over the paper. “Well, it seems Miss Perkins-Smythe wore white with yellow rosebuds, and Lady Angelina Anderson wore yellow with white rosebuds. The Countess of Salisbury wore a gown of eau de nil velvet and net from Paris, and Miss Chase was clad in pale pink silk with cherry satin trim and a corsage of white velvet roses. And she did become engaged to Lord Hernley, so there you are, Issy—all you could ask for.”
“And what were the arrangements like?” their mother, the consummate hostess and decorator, asked.
Lily read aloud about the potted palms and swags of ferns and white hot-house roses, buffet tables laded with lobster patties and stuffed mushrooms, French wines and pink claret punch. Katherine and Isabel started criticizing the decor, and Lily read farther down the column about some of the other guests as she finished her tea. Many of the names she knew from the Devil’s Fancy or the theater, families who held boxes at the Majestic. And no doubt many of their sons indulged in less respectable pursuits with her brothers, in brothels and music halls and such things.
It always seemed funny to her how the lives of the St. Claires ran parallel to, and sometimes bisected, those of these aristocrats. How they were so intertwined that one could not exist without the other, and yet they were still so vastly far apart. They saw titled aristocrats at the
assembly rooms and theater parties and were sometimes even invited to their homes to be shown off as curiosities, but they were never truly friends.
Such as her and Aidan Huntington.
Lord
Aidan. The gulf between them was wide and dark, lined with jagged rocks and high walls. She could stand on the edge and look across at him, call to him, but she could not cross.
Maybe he knew the chasm as well, and that was why he had not talked to her when he came to the theater.
Then she glimpsed his name toward the bottom of the page, in smudged black print. She closed her eyes and opened them again, sure she was imagining things since her thoughts were so intently on him. But it was still there:
Lord Aidan Huntington, younger son of the Duke of Carston—
Lily opened the page and read further—
was seen dancing with the beauteous Lady HL, daughter of the Earl of D and the diamond of the season. Is a betrothal in the air? Will two of England’s oldest families be momentously united? And will Lord A’s elder brother be next? He has not been seen in London for many a month…
Lady HL. Lily flipped the paper closed and reached for her tea. It had to be Lady Henrietta Lindley. Of course he would be linked with the “diamond” daughter of an earl. She would expect no less. But still the thought stung, the vision of him dancing with a white-clad deb. Kissing her, touching her, telling her all the things he wanted to do with her, as he had with Lily in her office. The chasm didn’t seem so wide between them then.
Her cup clattered in its saucer.
“Lily?” Isabel said. “Was there something disturbing in the paper after all?”
“Not at all,” Lily answered in a strangled voice as she dabbed at the spot of tea on the tablecloth.
“Let me see,” Dominic said, and snatched the paper away from her before she could protest. He flipped through the pages until he came to the one she had been reading.
He scanned the gossip columns until suddenly he scowled, and his eyes became darker than the hungover shadows on his face.
“Lord Aidan Huntington,” Dominic said, and threw the paper back at her. “Does it upset you that he’s practically betrothed, then, Lily? Were his attentions at the club last week not enough? Or when he appeared at the theater?”
“Don’t be stupid, Dominic,” she cried, and threw the paper right back at his head. It bounced off and scattered on the rug. “He was hardly paying me attentions last week, and he did not even talk to me at the theater. I was showing him the club, as he said his cousin was an investor.
You
would have tossed him out and caused a scene on our first night in business. At least I know how to control myself.”
“Control yourself?” Dominic thundered. “You disappeared with him for an hour!”
“An hour?” Brendan said, his scowl matching Dominic’s. “What were you doing with him, Lily?”
Lily felt her face turn uncomfortably warm, and she turned away to fuss with her napkin as Isabel looked on, wide-eyed, and James smirked. “That’s hardly any of your business, is it? I am a grown woman, a widow. And where did you and that red-haired hussy Louisa Carstairs go off to, Dominic?”
“Damn it all, Lily!” Dominic burst out.
“Language, Dominic,” Katherine said, quelling their argument with the sound of her quiet voice. “I won’t have such talk at my table.”
“Sorry, Mama,” Dominic muttered.
Katherine tapped her fingers on the table and examined Lily thoughtfully. “Aidan Huntington? The son of the Duke of Carston? He was at your club?”
“And being very attentive to Lily,” Dominic said.
“No more than he would have been to any other hostess,” said Lily.
“Was he the one who sent the flowers?” Katherine asked.
“He sent flowers?” Dominic exploded, only to sit back at a look from his mother.
“Violets,” said Isabel. “They were beautiful. Oh, Lily, was it him? Is he as handsome as they say? Did he dance with you at the club?” Isabel cared nothing at all for the past between the St. Claires and the Huntingtons—she was too young and romantic, and too softhearted.
Lily sighed. “Yes, he is good-looking. But handsome is as handsome does, and they also say he is quite the rake. I would be a fool to get involved with him.” She glared at Dominic and Brendan. “Not the least of which because my hotheaded brothers would cause a scandal by dueling with him.”
Isabel rolled her eyes. “I think it sounds romantic.”
“Romantic to let Lily be taken advantage of again? Just as she was with Nichols?” Dominic said.
“I can take care of myself,” Lily answered. “And you have better things to worry about. Don’t you have a rehearsal today?”
“Yes, boys, your father has been at the Majestic for an hour already,” Katherine said. “I think we have exhausted the topic.”
“Shall we go riding in the park today, Lily?” Isabel asked. “I’ve been stuck here at home too long. I need to see people who are not my bossy brothers.”
Lily nodded, still distracted by the quarrel and by Aidan and Lady HL and violet bouquets. “After I finish going over the accounts. I could use the exercise myself.”
“I will go with you,” said James, but Katherine shook her head.
“Your sisters will be fine on their own today,” Katherine said. “I need your help with something later. And, Dominic dear, who exactly is this Louisa Carstairs?”
Lily pressed her hand to her mouth to keep from laughing at the chagrined look on Dominic’s face and quickly made her escape from the breakfast room.
Rotten Row was crowded by the time Lily made her way there with Isabel, the graveled pathways crowded with riders and sleek carriages all jostling for prime space to see and be seen. It was an unseasonably warm day, the sky a pale, sunny blue, and everyone wanted to be outside enjoying the exercise. And the gossip.
Lily guided her horse smoothly into the slow parade, Isabel close behind her. The lane was a tangle of dark riding habits like her own forest-green one, of sleek horses and shining carriages, of lacy parasols and feathered bonnets. She glimpsed the famous courtesan Therese La Paiva from Paris, in her trademark skintight red habit and
surrounded by black-coated men, as well as countesses and marchionesses and baronesses.
Everyone mingled at the high hour on Rotten Row. Even Queen Victoria sometimes appeared there in her carriage, though there was no sign of her today.
Lily studied everyone through the net veil of her riding hat, automatically scanning to see who was there, who talked to who, who snubbed who, who wore what. When she was a child, this would have been a prime spot for a con, a shivering dodge or the fake wedding band scheme. Now, though, observing everything around her was just good business.
And she was not looking for Aidan. She was
not.
Isabel drew in next to her as they rode along slowly by the rail. “Dominic and Brendan aren’t here now, Lily,” she said. “You can tell me all about Lord Aidan Huntington.”
Lily shook her head. “There is nothing to tell, Issy. I’ve met him once or twice. He was interested in the club, that’s all, and was at the play last night.”
“Mmm-hmm. Then why do you blush when I say his name to you?”
“I do not. It’s merely a warm day,” Lily protested.
“Not that warm. My friend Annabelle, the one in the chorus at the Majestic, says he is amazingly handsome. All the girls pray to see him in the green room at the theater, but he never is.”
“I’m surprised to hear it. Gossip says he’s a rogue of the first order.”
“Maybe the gossip is wrong. They also have a lot to say about the St. Claires, don’t they? And most of it is untrue.”
Lily gave Isabel a startled glance. “What do you mean?”
Isabel laughed. “You all can’t protect me from everything, you know. Besides, who cares what the tittle-tattle says? I want to hear about Lord Aidan. Was he really the one who sent you the violets?”
“Yes,” Lily said reluctantly.
“I wouldn’t think he’d send bouquets to every lady he meets ‘once or twice.’ ”
“I am not sure why he sent them,” Lily said quietly. She wished she
did
know what Aidan wanted from her and what she wanted from him.