The Rambunctious Lady Royston (16 page)

"Oh, dear," said her awestruck hostess.

"Indeed, oh dear. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, the cursed Ardsley from each generation has to keep his head shaded day and night during the time of the full moon, else the curse overtake him. Or her," she finished with a deep sigh.

"But why, and what, and who?" breathed Samantha's audience.

"As to that," she shrugged, "the why of it hardly seems important two centuries later—though I have heard it whispered that it had something to do with my ancestor and the chieftain's young daughter. But who am I to lend credence to a mere rumor. The who for this generation is, of course, me—or so I believe. And the what—or the effect of the curse, you might say—has only been witnessed once, as we Ardsleys are a cautious lot. But Uncle Simon, my father's cousin you understand," she whispered in awestruck tones, "was said to have once flouted the curse, and it was impossible to restrain him as he went dashing out into the night to bay at the moon."

Amidst the
oohs
and
aahs
Zachary growled, "What a bag of moonshine, Samantha—pardon my little pun."

"You mean, then," his hostess asked, crestfallen, "it is all a hum?"

Zachary nodded. "Could it be else? Samantha, you are incorrigible!"

His wife grinned impishly up at him and twirled her parasol. "I but try, my lord. I but try."

Within minutes the story had circulated among the assembled guests, who in the capricious way of the
ton
decided it was a great piece of fun, and soon Samantha was surrounded by a swarm of young bucks all eager to bask in the reflected glow of the newest sensation.

St. John was content to stand back and watch his wife as she gave every sign of becoming the life and soul of the ball, while mentally recording all the provocative glances she threw his way in preparation for making her pay for them later that night, once they were alone.

When at last she spied out her sister and aunt, she demanded they be brought to her, then summarily dismissed her court of admirers and shooed them all away. Within moments of settling themselves beside her on the satin sofa, Aunt Loretta had unburdened herself of a halfhearted sermon on the folly of making an exhibition of oneself.

"Oh, Aunt, you'd throw a damper on anything," Samantha pouted prettily, before launching into a spirited discourse on her plans for Isabella's future. As a Countess, she promised blithely, she would herself launch Isabella into the upper strata of Society and have her bracketed to a title within a twelvemonth. Aunt Loretta, Samantha assured the woman, would not long have to lug Izzy around with her once the Countess of Royston took her under her wing.

"After all," she went on happily, "it is not as if Izzy were not top of the trees, being an extremely delicately-nurtured female. I was, too, in matter of fact, but with me it just didn't all quite take. Isn't that so, Aunt Loretta?" Before her aunt could answer, Samantha was off again, this time musing about the ball she would give in her sister's honor and the turban she, now a stately matron, would deign to wear.

In her fervor, Samantha saw—but refused to acknowledge—her sister's visible lack of enthusiasm over the project, and put down Isabella's reaction to a maidenly restraint that would have been most becoming had it not been accompanied by several irritatingly deep heartfelt sighs that quite disrupted Samantha's monologue.

"There is Lady Foxx," Isabella broke in, longing for a change of subject, and Samantha—diverted from her debate as to the proper decoration of the Royston ballroom in either greenery or bunting or both—pushed a small button on the stem of her parasol, activating a mechanism that extended a gilt quizzing glass from the base of the handle. This glass was raised to one emerald-green eye as Samantha openly inspected the woman in question.

"A ravishing creature," Aunt Loretta commented, "if a bit
outré
in her dress."

"Quite pretty," Isabella agreed quietly, watching her sister for any reaction.

Samantha's extended assessment was most unnerving. At the end of it she lowered her glass, snapped it back into its hidey-hole, and said contemptuously, "Nonsense, Izzy. The woman has a squint. In time to come she will resemble nothing more than a wizened old crow. About the middle of next week, I would imagine—as she is already at least five-and-thirty, the poor doddering old thing."

Isabella giggled at this nonsense. "Oh, Samantha, you are too naughty to be borne. You're just out of countenance because of the way she is always toadying up to St. John."

"I am not!" Samantha pouted. "Besides, somebody has to toady up to him and his overweening arrogance, as there can be no hope of my ever drooling all over his consequence."

"Oh, dear," Isabella said quietly, wondering if the Earl knew he was in trouble and if she should warn him. After another quick peek at her sister's firm chin, she decided that he didn't, and she wouldn't.

The time for private conversation was soon past, once it became evident that the buzzing swarm of admirers was no longer to be denied. Soon both sisters were claimed for the set then forming, leaving Aunt Loretta to gaze sleepily into the middle distance with an inane smile upon her cherubic face.

While Samantha was busily engaged in becoming the first rage of the Season, Lady Lorinda Foxx—finding herself in the unaccustomed position of looker-on—was rapidly recalculating the forces of her enemy. It was never a pleasant experience for an older woman to be cast, as it were, in the shade by a wet-behind-the-ears young chit. For Lady Foxx it was tantamount to a living death and—as she was unhappily a poisonous sort of female at heart (not to mention hedonistic and ambitious)—she was hard-pressed to expose Samantha for the upstart that she was and reestablish herself as the reigning "toast" of this and any other Season.

"Ignorant chippy," she muttered under her breath, and smiled blazingly at Samantha as she whirled by in the arms of a brilliantly uniformed young Hussar. "Totally lacking in polish, too. I see it as my duty to depress her pretensions."

And so it was, with the martial light of battle in her eyes, Lady Foxx went off to seek out Miss Isabella Ardsley.

She ran her to ground in the supper room some time later, sitting with her Aunt Loretta after firmly refusing numerous offers from young gentlemen who wished to fix her a plate (thereby gaining her company for an hour).

Aunt Loretta eyed Lady Foxx owlishly, dredging in her mind for her brother's conclusions as to the character of the woman and coming up with the words "rapacious female." Nevertheless, the woman was still accepted in Society, so Aunt Loretta welcomed her—if stiffly—and the three fell into a conversation that was conducted at a fever-pitch of civility.

After a few minutes, Lady Foxx concluded Isabella to be a harmless young miss, and her aunt to be the sort who could not locate her brains with the help of a lantern.

So thinking, her conversation was heavy-laden with concerned cluckings over the misfortunes of making a spectacle of oneself in company, the pitfalls that so often accompanied sudden wealth and popularity, and the inadvisability of setting oneself at odds with one's husband by means of indiscriminate flirting and hoydenish carryings-on that could be of disgust to anyone with any feelings for decorum and family standing.

Out of the corner of her eye Aunt Loretta espied Samantha, who had come up behind Lady Foxx some moments before to hear most of what was being said. The old woman, feeling one of her headaches coming on, cravenly longed to slip quietly off into a restoring snooze.

Once more the parasol's retractable quizzing glass was put into use as Samantha ran one grossly enlarged, cool green eye up and down Lady Foxx and then up again before turning to speak to her mortally embarrassed sister. "What say you, Izzy? Corralled in the supper room and forced to listen to all the tongue-bangers expound on the lessons learned by their own folly?" she questioned loudly.

Zachary, who had been standing nearby and who had hastened to Samantha's side—in an attempt to prevent just such a confrontation as the one which now seemed destined to not only prove unsettling but capable of mushrooming into a sordid scene—arrived too late to do more than pinch the tender skin above Samantha's kid glove and scold under his breath: "You imp of the devil, Samantha, can you not win gracefully?"

Lady Foxx, drawing herself up to her full height, pronounced in injured tones, "She all but cut me dead, Zachary, this child bride of yours. And you assured me just today that she would show me proper respect upon meeting me, after that sad display of ill-breeding when first we met," she finished triumphantly, seeing St. John's involuntary flinch at the mention of their rendezvous at the Bartholomew Fair.

"Um, er, harrumph," interposed Aunt Loretta hastily. "Samantha, love, do behave, please. It would not do to, er, display your feelings in public so. It could only serve to be a vulgar titillation to those assembled."

Samantha folded away her quizzing glass reluctantly, muttering, "If it livens their dull little existences, then I am but happy to be of service to my fellow man."

Whilst Zachary was struggling to find a suitable riposte, Lady Foxx interrupted to repeat, "She all but cut me dead, Zachary, using that stupid quizzing glass on me and then simply turning away as if I was beneath her notice. How dare she! Are you going to allow that? Never—I repeat, never— have I been so insulted by such as she. That you could wed such a hurly-burly girl of no background is incomprehensible to your friends."

"And you are an expert on the subject of backgrounds—or at least backs, Lady Foxx, being as you are on yours so much," Samantha found herself saying quietly before she could stop to think. She had not planned what form her vengeance would take, but as the opportunity had presented itself she was powerless to do more than swim with the tide of events.

While Isabella looked ready to sink and Aunt Loretta furrowed her brow in an attempt to appear a trifle puzzled by such plain speech (while in reality she was totally at sea), Zachary bit out a pungent oath that had little to do with polite Society conversation.

Surprisingly (and much to Samantha's chagrin), it was Lady Foxx who recovered first. "Oh, my, Zachary, you have landed yourself with a real termagent, haven't you? No wonder you're looking so woefully harassed these days. Poor thing, the trials you men must endure to secure your nurseries. Ah, well," she conceded, as she waved her fan beneath her patrician nose, "at least you can school wife and child at the cost of only one governess."

Things were not going well, as the nearby eavesdroppers were quick to hear. Their snickers and giggles at Lady Foxx's quick rebuttal showed their pleasure at Devil Royston's discomfiture. "You overreach yourself, madam," was his only near-whispered reply to his widely acknowledged light-o-love's cutting remarks—that, and a searing look directed upon nearby spectators that would have prompted anyone not so entirely caught up in the deliciousness of the scene to take to her (or his) heels in fright.

Samantha was still standing mutely, her bosom heaving in her agitation, unable as yet to form a set-down sufficient to shut Lady Foxx's face once and for all.

The older woman, relishing her victory, smiled condescendingly and leaned just a bit closer to Samantha to simper sweetly, "You agree then, child, that you are out of your depth, trying me on like some cock-a-hoop adolescent vying for the attention of her betters?"

St. John cut in hurriedly, knowing at once that Lady Foxx had gone too far. "I'd not be so cock-a-hoop myself if I were you Lorinda, m'dear. When dealing with Samantha, such confidence ain't —"

His words died as—more quickly than he could move to avoid what was to happen—Samantha's vision of the leering face of her rival crowding in on her set up a hum in her ears and caused her to reach out and clutch at the first thing to come to hand. That "thing" was an enormous strawberry tart, oozing juice and topped with a large dollop of finely whipped cream, that had lately reposed on a plate in front of her Aunt Loretta. Once the pastry was, at it were, in hand, it was almost a foregone conclusion as to where to dispose of the thing. Before (as the lower classes might say) the cat could lick her ear, Samantha had shoved the tart smack into the grinning mouth of one Lady Lorinda Foxx.

Zachary stood for a moment, looking as if he had been stuffed, before he could find his voice. "Samantha!" he bellowed. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

His young wife, busy licking cream from the tips of her gloved fingers and seemingly unperturbed by the positively deafening silence that had descended all about her, looked, shrugged, and at last offered hopefully,
"Bon appetit?"

The entire room erupted in grins, giggles, and loud guffaws. Isabella was forced to retain consciousness in order to minister to her swooning aunt. The host and hostess of the ball, while outwardly showing all the signs of affronted dignity, secretly rejoiced at the stroke of luck that had made their humble establishment the site of the Season's latest coup. Lady Lorinda Foxx, tears and black mascara streaming down her cheeks, raced from the scene of her embarrassment, with berry juice dribbling from her chin and a thick mustache of cream giving her the appearance of—as one daring young buck alluded in a loud voice—a rabid dog.

Last, but by no stretch of the imagination least, Zachary St. John, Earl of Royston, grabbed his wife's wrist and trod determinedly toward the door of the supper room, his icy stare daring anyone to stand in his way. He dragged her straight across the ballroom, heedless of the mess he was making of the orderly dance in progress. Down the wide marble staircase he went, Samantha skipping behind, her parasol still unfurled and bumping along in the breeze, past the stony-faced footman holding open his wife's cape, and out into the flambeaux-lit street.

To the delight of the throng of ordinary citizens who normally line the flagway to observe the
ton
at one of its august gatherings, St. John paused, looked distractedly up and down the street, and then—putting the tips of two fingers to his lips—whistled shrilly for his carriage. Amid the rude calls and crude suggestions of their audience of sweeps, crossing-links boys, and cits, Zachary and Samantha (the former in the lead, the latter being hauled along like a sack of goods) made to enter the carriage. In a final burst of bravado Samantha paused on the carriage step to acknowledge the crowd. "Toodle-loo," she called out, and waggled her fingers at her admiring audience just before Zachary's well-placed boost in the region of her derriere catapulted her inside.