Ormiston was silenced. How the deuce did she know about Giugliana?
“No, you may be sure that Henri has not told me any confidence that you may have made him privileged to. But the Marchesa di Podenza's family is not unknown. Rumors have spread that she has spent much time in galleries and artistic churches with a romantic, aristocratic Englishman, and that her mother has insisted on her wintering in Naples, under her especial vigilance. The identity of the English aristocrat is a closely guarded secret, but your appearance is undeniably
romantique
, and suddenly you are here in Paris on your way to conclude family business at home?”
Ormiston summoned up all his courage to look the tiny, bird-like creature in the eye. She laughed, and put out her hand to reassure him.
“
Non
,
mon fils
. I was just guessing. My late husband's brother is at Naples, and he knows how I love gossip. The story of the marchesa's attachment is rife in Naples, but has not yet reached Paris. You are safe here. But, since you are the friend of my son, I should warn you that the so-romantic Englishman is unlikely ever to see Giugliana di Podenza again. Her mother is determined that her next husband will be a Bourbon, no matter how impotent and discredited.”
Ormiston was mortified. That his delicate affair with Giugliana should be known to half the wagging tongues of the so-called diplomats, the spies of Europe! And now, no doubt, would follow the humiliating information that he had been passed over for a man with sixteen quarterings on his shield. But there had been something else that the dowager had said which had touched on another raw nerveâher casual assumption that all at home was well.
If only that were the case
, he thought. He was suddenly thrown back into the gloom that had obsessed him in Vienna. For the first time in years he thought seriously about the frightful truth that awaited him in England. He had become sufficiently a man of the world to recognize that his dreams of happiness with Giugliana might be beyond him. But the sure knowledge that he had no people at home who cared even a jot for his well-being was a harsh reminder of the realities of his life.
The Comtesse de Ferrières was aghast at the effect her words had produced. Ormiston had sunk into the deepest reverie. She continued with her recital of who was who, but Henri's friend was lost, sunk into a bleak and threatening world of his own. Perhaps she had been wrong to mention the Italian? Surely not. It was her duty as a friend to warn him that the affair was becoming publicly known, that sooner or later he would be identified as the romantic Englishman, and that he would be a fool to nourish hopes in that quarter. It was with some relief that she sighted the daughter of her best friend, and instructed the coachman to drive toward her.
But Louise was riding accompanied by the most extraordinary creature and, involuntarily, she cried out.
“This girl is mad. Who can she be!”
Ormiston roused to her unexpectedly sharp tone and his eye followed her startled gaze. There were three girls riding together, properly accompanied by what seemed to be elder brothers and grooms. But one of them stood out by the quality of her mount, an exquisite, spirited gray, and by the color of her habit, a brilliant, jewel-like blue.
Almost pure cobalt
, reflected Ormiston.
The horse was obviously affected by the combination of sharp air and bright sunshine which had made so many of its stablemates so frisky that morning. Her horsemanship was superb as she controlled her mount, and he noticed that this was indeed a horse that the girl was riding, not a docile mare or gelding. Her companions were all riding lesser animals, but he watched this girl's hands as she soothed the beast, as if promising a gallop in future, if he would just be good for a moment longer. As he watched her restless stallion, held to hand while she exchanged the time of day with her friends, he found himself drawing the furs up closer around his neck. Decidedly, the wind was getting fresher.
As they passed the group, he heard Henri's mother expressing her indignation that she had no idea of the identity of who that girl “riding that powerful horse and dressed in such an exquisitely pure blue” might be.
“The girl in pale gray is the Duchess of Dino's niece, the one in green is Louise de la Trémouillère, but this mad girl riding that savage horse that is much too strong for her,
aucune idée
.”
He felt a tinge of regret. Giugliana did not ride. The nobility of horses never ceased to amaze him. Despite the trappings of saddles and girths and bits, the instinctive desire to race forward was always there. He looked back, admiring the girl's skill as she kept the horse calm, despite its obvious desire for more freedom.
There was a sudden gust of wind. Ormiston felt the cold and was about to draw the furs even more closely around him when, still looking back, he saw that one of the duller girls of the three, dressed in a turgid green and riding a pale chestnut gelding, had lost her hat. He could hardly believe what happened next.
The girl dressed in blue did not hesitate. Suddenly she and her horse were in motion; she leant down the immense distance from the beast's back, retrieved the hat, and presented it to her friend.
The Comtesse de Ferrières had not missed the performance, nor failed to note Ormiston's interest.
“
Sans doute
, you would like to know who she is. I shall find out. She rides like a child of the circus, but she is beautifully dressed. I shall call on dear Louise's mother this afternoon. She is sure to know, and then we must make sure that such an exquisitely beautiful creature is invited to the
bal masque
.”
But how, he wondered, was he to divine the beauty's identity if she attended the ball? For of course, there she would be disguised. Still, his interest was piqued, and his anxieties regarding his return to England at least temporarily allayed.
Four
Bursting into her room, Cecilia flung her gloves and crop onto the bed before teasing out the hatpins securing her top hat. Almost immediately, Marston came bustling in, gathering up the discarded items from Cecilia's morning ride, muttering and snorting to equal the disapproval expressed by Lady Ormiston's bay mare when roused too early for her morning gallop. Having straightened the bed and arranged Cecilia's accessories on a bureau, the maid came to her aid to unfasten the glorious blue habit. Two weary undermaids were filling the bath before the fire with buckets of steaming water scented with lavender essence.
“How was milady's ride this morning?”
“Exhilarating, Marston.” Cecilia twirled her way out of her petticoats, grinning broadly. “Simply splendid.”
“Is that what you call it? Behaving like a hoyden is what I call it, from what the groom says. You should know better, and you a viscountess and such.”
“Well, we don't discuss that, do we, Marston? And if you have heard about the ride from the groom, what need to fatigue me with your tiresome questions?”
“None of your airs, madam. If Lady Ketley hears about your circus tricks, there'll be a piper to pay and it won't be me as is shelling out.”
“How should Lady Ketley hear, unless you choose to tell, my dear Marston?” Cecilia slipped out of her chemise and tested the waters of her bath with her toes. The temperature was perfect. In French, she thanked the maids and sank into the water. The girls left Marston alone with Cecilia.
“There is a great deal I might choose to tell Lady Ketley if you continue with your cheek, Madam High and Mighty.”
Cecilia turned to face Marston and, leaning her chin on her arms along the back of the bath, she widened her eyes.
“But you wouldn't distress Aunt Letty. And you wouldn't give me away, dear Marston. I beg your pardon. I never intended to cheek you, I promise.”
“Think you can weasel round me with your big eyes and your soft ways? How long is it since we arrived in Paris? A week? Ten days. And you've smoked out all manner of low dives in a trice. A fencing salon for ladies. Coffeehouses for ladies. Clubs for ladies. Gambling dens for ladies. It's iniquitous what ladies get up to here.” Marston helped Cecilia to soap and rinse her hair.
“It's wonderful.” The girl lay back and relaxed as Marston massaged her scalp. “After all the restrictions and hedging about one in London, all the worries about how one will take and whether one will get vouchers for an insipid evening at Almack's, which I swear is the dreariest place imaginable. Especially if one isn't hanging out for a husband.”
“Aye, but the less you hang out for a husband, the more you have the men swarming round you. Wasps at a jam pot.” The older woman poured clean water over her charge's head, and Cecilia came up for air, spluttering and giggling.
“Isn't it a joke, dear Marston? And all due to you and Aunt Letty. I'd be the frumpiest woman in England even now if you hadn't taken me in hand.” She stood and pulled a towel about her, stepping gracefully from the bath and sitting so that Marston could dry out the wet mass of curls dripping down her back. Combing out the tangles took time, but Marston was patient and gentle.
“Good bones and fine skin will out. Given time, your mademoiselle would have ensured that you were dressed as befits a young lady.”
“Perhaps.” Cecilia went into a reverie as Marston eased the comb through the knots and snarls in her dark hair. She thought back to the days following her return to Sawards after her marriage to Ormiston. Reggie and Amelia had come out to greet Marchmont's carriage, but once Cecilia had given them each a brief hug, she had retreated to her room. Despite the best efforts of Marchmont, Lavauden, and her brother and sister, Cecilia had come back from London subdued and remained withdrawn from her family. She would rush through her lessons and then disappear on long walks or rides, missing lunch and even dinner, scavenging odds and ends from the kitchen, nibbling at one of the carrots or apples she intended to feed to her horse. It was as though she could not bear company at all, and she refused entirely to mingle with her former friends in the neighborhood. When she did return to the house, she would lavish affection on her brother and sister, but she would no longer join in their games and mischief.
The weather that summer had been sultry. The air grew dense and sticky, clouds rolled across the horizon without breaking, and Cecilia continued to ride at breakneck speed through the forests and across the fields, determined to rid herself of the echo of Ormiston's harsh words. Finally, one afternoon as Cecilia rode along the ridge way above Sawards, the skies darkened to a surly charcoal, thunder rolled around the valley, sheets of lightning shook the hillsides, and the first great gouts of water fell on parched land. Ceci raised her face to the skies and let the water rinse away the hurt and shame she felt. She headed for home.
Although the head groom would not allow her out on a horse again that week, Ceci contrived to escape the confines of the house whenever a storm broke and to return soaked and shivering.
Physically run-down, heartsick, her lapse into a fever which deepened until she was no longer conscious was inevitable. She remembered little of that time: just a haze of aching limbs and cold compresses and then the robust voice of Aunt Letty, saying, “You've given us all a fright, my girl, but there's no need to milk it quite to death's door.”
Marriage to a naval captain had removed Letitia Marchmont from her family sphere for many years, but now that young Ketley had achieved fame, fortune, and the rank of admiral, their peregrinations were less frequent and she was able to reacquaint herself with her brother's family at Sawards. She had reencountered the haunts of her youth to find the place in uproar, Marchmont and his two children in high agitation, the French governess close to exhaustion from watching over Cecilia's bedside, and her eldest niece afflicted with pneumonia. Slim, languid, and prone to sarcasm in regular life, in an emergency Letitia Ketley displayed energy, dependability, and stalwart good sense.
The Ketleys' union had not been blessed with offspring. While this had allowed Lady Ketley to accompany her husband on his voyages, it was a source of some disappointment. Seeing the need for feminine guidance at Sawards, Letty installed herself with enthusiasm, which was further galvanized when her brother reluctantly recounted the events that had led to Cecilia's precipitate marriage. Roundly declaring her brother to be a nitwit, as soon as Cecilia was convalescing, Letty set about winkling out of her niece her reactions to the viscount and the notion of being a married lady. One evening, she did not withdraw as usual with Miss Lavauden when Marchmont's port was brought in.
“Pour a glass for me, brother,” demanded the admiral's lady. Marchmont complied, somewhat disapprovingly, as Letitia savored the wine. “It takes me back to Lisbon. I do not customarily drink port, but this is a particularly fine specimen.”
“Your husband sent it to me. But it is not simply the port you wish to discuss.”
“Of course not. How you could have been so totty-headed with Cecilia is my chief concern.”
“Totty-headed? What do you mean?”
“What I say. I know that in Dacre's company you have always been prone to folly, but this is not some boys' scrape that can be cleared up with a few judiciously spent guineas and fulsome apologies. Annulments do not fall off trees. Nor can they be secured quietly and privately. Whatever possessed you?”
Marchmont dropped his head and cradled it in his hands, clearly distraught. “Lord, Letty, if I only knew that, I'd never have taken the wager in the first place. At the time, I felt invincible, but it has brought nothing but misery on me and mine.”
“It's not simply that, Marchmont. It's Cecilia. You and Lavauden have done a fine job on her mind and her morals, but between you, you have neglected entirely the womanly arts.”
“She can sew and draw and dance and all that business.”
“My niece is singularly accomplished, but she has the skimpiest acquaintance with proper behavior. If she was to go out into Society now, she'd be pronounced a gauche hoyden. We know her to be charming, but dressed like a quiz and prone to say the first thing that comes into her head.”
Marchmont preferred to ignore this attack on his child-rearing abilities. Instead, he tackled Letty's confident knowledge of marital law. “But what's this you say about annulments, Letty? What do you mean about it being so difficult to get one?”
“Ketley was in charge of some young fool of a lieutenant who had entered a marriage of convenience and sought to dissolve it. You will parade the family name through the courts if you proceed with an annulment, and you must prove not only nonconsummation but inability to consummate. Would you foist that reputation on either of these children?”
“What's to be done, Letty?”
“We must make the match permanent. It's a good marriage on both sidesâhardly astonishing, given the friendship between you and Dacre. If only you'd the sense to stop at a betrothal. It would have been as legally binding, but rather less irrevocable. As it is, I see no other course open to us but to ensure that your lovebirds come to care for one another.”
“How, Letty? The boy's on the continent until further notice, and Cecilia is a child.”
“By the time he gets back from his travels, she will no longer be a child. We simply put them in each other's way. But first, I want you to give me your daughter. Let her live with Ketley and me. We're fixed in London for the time being. We may go to Paris or Versailles in the next year or so, which will interest her and broaden her experience of the world. Of course, she would return home to Sawards frequently, as would I, but let the child get some town bronze.”
“She is still very weak.”
“I am not suggesting that we leave on the morrow. Let her convalesce for a further month, and then she and I may go up to town, say for six weeks. She needs clothes in any case, and more importantly, she needs distractions from her thoughts. I can promise to fill her days to the point of exhaustion. She will meet people. I have friends with daughters just her age. She needs to giggle and make foolish schemes and learn how to fit into the world.”
“How should you introduce her?”
“As Miss Marchmont. We need not advertise your folly. However, I will drop a hint or two that there is a long-standing betrothal. That will ward off any fortune-hunters.”
“And when she encounters Ormiston again? What then?”
“Let us worry about it when it happens. The likelihood is that we have no need to concern ourselves for at least two years, and probably four, given the attractions of the Continent to any red-blooded male.”
“I am not sure that Cecilia will feel comfortable with such subterfuge.”
“I am quite sure she will feel a deal more comfortable entering Society, as all her contemporaries do, in the guise of an innocent debutante rather than as a child-bride abandoned by her groom. Really, Marchmont, I wish you would try for a little good sense.”
Cecilia, of course, knew nothing of this conversation, but she had reaped the rewards of Letitia Ketley's adamant insistence that no one should know of the marriage. She had gone apprehensively to London with Letty, but this trip was very different from the short, disastrous journey she had made to marry Ormiston.
First of all, during her illness, Cecilia had lost much of the bulk that had made clothes such a problem. Her wardrobe might not be up to snuff, but at least she fitted into it. In fact, her dresses hung off her, and besides, she had grown as well as thinned out. Letitia's immediate task was, assisted by a lavish allowance from Marchmont, to dress her niece in the latest fashions suitable for a young maiden.
Her first fortnight in London was spent in a whirl of magazines and fashion plates, laces, satins, sarcenets, crepe and tulle, poplin, cambric and muslin, kid gloves and boots, slippers, gloves, swansdown muffs and Indian stoles. There were decisions of great moment to be made regarding flounces and vandyking, azure blue, blush pink, lilac, sprigs and stripes, pockets, petticoats, and whether amber was too fast an ornament for someone who should still be in the schoolroom. Finally, once the first gowns arrived, Marston poked and prodded and tweaked, without allowing either madam or miss to see, until, at last, satisfied with the end result, she summoned Lady Ketley and at last permitted Cecilia to stand before a cheval glass.
The reflection revealed a slender vision in a sarcenet evening gown the color of bluebells and satin slippers in the same shade. Although the silhouette was simple, rich silver embroidery at the hem, the square neckline, the sleeves, and bodice enlivened the gown. Marston had twisted up Cecilia's abundant head of hair into an intricate arrangement of plaits and silver ribbon, with a diamante pin in the shape of a crescent moon clipped into the dark mass. Her arms were bare, apart from a tulle stole shot with silver thread. Her eyes glowed violet with astonishment and delight.
“Diana, chaste goddess of the moon!” exclaimed Lady Ketley. “The color of that gown, the exact shade of her eyes. Marston, you are a genius. We shall have every aspiring poet in the Ton writing odes to Fair Cecilia.”