Vice (23 page)

“Ensure he doesn’t molest me?” Juliana raised an eyebrow.

Quentin flushed darkly. “If I believed that Tarquin
would not protect you, ma’am, I would not be a party to this business.”

“Would you have a choice?” she inquired softly. “Your brother is very … very persuasive.”

Quentin’s flush deepened. “Yes, he is. But I like to believe that he could not
persuade
me to do something against my conscience.”

“And this manipulative scheme is
not?’
Juliana sounded frankly incredulous as she took a piece of bread and butter from the plate. She regretted the question when she saw how distressed Quentin was. She bore him no grudge—indeed, sensed that he would stand her friend and champion without hesitation if she asked it of him.

“How can I say it isn’t?” he said wretchedly. “It’s an abominable design … and yet it will solve so many embarrassments and difficulties for the family.”

“And the family interest, of course, is supreme?”.

“For the most part,” he said simply. “I’m a Courtney before I’m anything else. It’s the same for Tarquin. But I
do
believe he will ensure that you don’t suffer from this … and …” He paused uncomfortably. “Forgive me, but it does seem to me that you could benefit from this scheme if you don’t find Tarquin himself distasteful.”

Juliana was too honest to He. She set down her cup, aware that her cheeks were warm. “No,” she said. “It’s all very confusing. I hate him sometimes and yet at others …” She shrugged helplessly.

Quentin nodded gravely and put down his own cup. Taking her hands in a tight clasp, he said earnestly, “You must understand that you may count on me, Juliana, in any instance. I have some influence over my brother, although it may seem as if no one could have.”

His gray eyes were steady and sincere resting on her face, and she smiled gratefully, feeling immeasurably comforted. It was the first real statement of friendship she’d ever been given.

Another knock at the door interrupted the moment of tense silence, and the butler appeared. “Lady Melton and
Lady Lydia, madam,” he announced. “I took the liberty of showing them into the drawing room.”

“Thank you, Catlett,” Quentin replied swiftly. “Lady Edgecombe will be down directly…. Don’t worry,” he said to Juliana with a quick smile as the butler departed. “I’ll lend you my company for the ordeal.”

“Will it be one?” Juliana examined her reflection in the mirror and patted her hair with a nervous hand.

“Not at all. Lydia has the sweetest nature in the world, and Lady Melton is not too much of a gorgon.”

“The duke seems not inclined to marry Lady Lydia,” Juliana said, licking her fingertip and smoothing her eyebrow. “He said it was a marriage of convenience.” She caught sight of Quentin’s expression in the mirror behind her, and her heart jumped at the bleak frustration, stark in his eyes. Then he’d turned aside and opened the door, holding it for her. Vividly now, she remembered his studied indifference at the theater, an indifference that she’d been convinced had masked a deep tension.

But this was not the moment for examining the puzzle. Juliana tucked it away for future reflection and prepared for her first social encounter as Lady Edgecombe. It was only as she was crossing the hall to the drawing room that she realized she had no story to explain her marriage to the viscount. Who was she? Where had she come from? Had the duke said anything to the Meltons at the play? If so, what?

Panicked, she stopped dead in the middle of the hall, seizing Quentin’s black silk sleeve. “Who am I?” she whispered.

He frowned, puzzled; then his brow cleared. “A distant cousin of the Courtneys from York. Didn’t Tarquin tell you … but, no, of course he didn’t.” He shook his head.

“I could cut his tongue out!” Juliana whispered furiously. “He is the most inconsiderate, insufferable, dastardly—”

“My dear Juliana.” The duke’s soft voice came from the
stairs behind her. “Could you be referring to me?” His eyes twinkled.

She winded on him and caught her heel in the hem of her gown. There was a nasty ripping sound. “Oh, hell and the devil!” she exclaimed. “Look what you’ve made me do!”

“Go and ask Henny to pin it up for you,” Tarquin said calmly. “Quentin and I will entertain your guests until you’re ready.”

Juliana gathered up her skirts and cast him what she hoped was a look of utter disdain. But he pinched her nose lightly as she swept past him to the stairs, and she stuck out her tongue with lamentable lack of dignity. Their chuckles followed her upstairs.

When she entered the drawing room twenty minutes later, Tarquin came forward immediately. “Lady Edgecombe, pray allow me to make you known to Lady Melton and Lady Lydia Melton.” He took her hand, drawing her into the room.

The two ladies, seated side by side on a sofa, bowed from the waist as Juliana curtsied. They were both dressed in black, Lady Melton also wearing a black dormeuse cap that completely covered her coiffure. Her daughter wore a more modest head covering of dark gray. But the overall impression was distinctly melancholy.

“I am honored, ma’am,” Juliana murmured. “Pray accept my condolences on your loss.”

Lady Melton smiled fleetingly. “Lady Edgecombe, I understand you only recently arrived from York.”

Juliana nodded and took the fragile gilt chair Tarquin pushed forward. Lady Lydia smiled but said little throughout the interview, leaving the talking to her mother. Juliana was far more interested in the daughter than the mother, noting a sweet but not particularly expressive face, a pair of soft blue eyes, a somewhat retiring disposition. The duke was formally polite with both ladies—distant, it seemed to Juliana, unlike his brother, who was warm and
attentive. She noticed that most of Lady Lydia’s shy smiles were directed at Lord Quentin.

The visit lasted fifteen minutes, and Juliana was gratefully aware that she was being steered through it by the Duke of Redmayne. He answered most questions for her, but in such a way that it appeared she was answering for herself. He delicately introduced neutral, superficial topics of conversation that took them down obstacle-free avenues of purely social discourse and touched on subjects that he knew would be familiar to Juliana. When the ladies took their leave, Juliana was confident enough to think she might be able to manage the next one on her own.

Quentin and the duke escorted the ladies to their carriage. Juliana watched from the drawing-room window. It was Quentin who handed Lady Lydia into the carriage, while Tarquin did the honors for her mother—which was odd, Juliana thought. Lydia smiled at Quentin as she settled back on the seat, and he solicitously adjusted the folds of her train at her feet.

And then, with blinding impact, it struck Juliana that if she was asked who was affianced to whom, she would guess Quentin and Lady Lydia were to make a match of it. It would explain Quentin’s strangeness at the theater, and it would certainly account for that fierce, bleak look she’d surprised on his face when she’d carelessly repeated what Tarquin had said about his impending marriage. It seemed she had put her foot in it with her usual clumsiness.

As she watched, Quentin walked off down the street after the carriage, and the duke turned back to the house. She heard his voice in the hall and waited for him to come back to her, but he didn’t. She’d expected a word of approval … a moment’s conversation about the visit … something, at least. Crossly, she went into the hall.

“Where’s His Grace, Catlett?”

“In the library, I believe, my lady.”

She turned down the corridor to the library at the back of the house. She knocked and marched in.

Tarquin looked up from his newspaper with an air of surprise.

“Did I conduct myself appropriately, my lord duke?” she said with an ironic curtsy.

Tarquin laid down his newspaper and leaned back in his chair. “I have offended you again, I fear. Tell me what I’ve done wrong so that I can correct my faults.”

This assumption of chastened humility was so absurd, Juliana burst into a peal of laughter. “I fear you’re a lost cause, my lord duke.”

Before the conversation could go further, the butler appeared in the open door behind her.

“Visitors for Lady Edgecombe. I’ve shown them to your private parlor, madam.”

Juliana turned, startled. “Visitors. Who?”

“Three young ladies, madam. Miss Emma, Miss Lilly, and Miss Rosamund. I thought they would be more comfortable in your parlor.” Not a flicker of an expression crossed his face.

Had Catlett guessed the ladies from Russell Street were of a different order from Lady Melton and her daughter? Or had he assumed she would entertain her own friends in her own parlor?

“Excuse me, Your Grace.” With a smile and curtsy she left him and hurried upstairs to her own private room.

Tarquin raised an eyebrow to the empty room and shrugged. The only woman he’d ever lived with until now had been his mother. Apparently he had something to learn in his dealings with the gender sex—and it seemed that Juliana Courtney, Viscountess Edgecombe, was going to provide the education. Absently, he wondered why the prospect wasn’t more irritating.

Juliana hurried up to her parlor, vaguely surprised at how eager she was to see her friends from Russell Street. She hadn’t had much time to get to know them, but living under one roof with them even briefly had fostered the kind of easy camaraderie that came out of shared laughter as well as shared anxieties.

“Juliana, this is the most elegant parlor,” Rosamund declared as Juliana came in.

“Lud, but the whole mansion is in the first style of elegance.” Lilly floated across the room to embrace Juliana. “You are the luckiest creature. And just look at your gown! So pretty. And real silver buckles on your shoes, I’ll be bound.” The eye of the expert took in every detail of Juliana’s costume.

“I swear I’ll die of envy,” Emma lamented, fanning herself. “Unless, of course, there is some unpleasantness here.” Her eyes sharpened as she looked at Juliana over her fan. “You must have to pay for all this in some way.”

“Yes, tell us all about it.” Rosamund linked arms with Juliana and pulled her down onto the sofa beside her. “You can say anything you wish to us.”

Juliana was tempted to confide the whole as they sat around her radiating both complicit sympathy and alert curiosity. But an instant’s reflection canceled the dangerous impulse. She must learn to keep her own secrets better than she had done so far. If she hadn’t yielded to weakness in the first instance and told Mistress Dennison her story, she wouldn’t be in this tangle now.

“There’s nothing to tell,” she said. “It is exactly as you see it. I was wed to Viscount Edgecombe yesterday, and he and I both reside under the Duke of Redmayne’s roof.”

“So the duke didn’t buy you for himself?” Emma pressed, leaning forward to get a closer view of Juliana’s face.

“In a manner of speaking he did,” Juliana said cautiously.

“So both he and the viscount are your lovers.” Lilly smoothed her silk gloves over her fingers, her hazel eyes sharply assessing.

“Not exactly.”

“La, Juliana, don’t be so mysterious!” Emma cried. “Everyone wants to know how you managed such a piece of amazing good fortune. There’s nothing strange about being
shared … particularly when you’re provided for with settlements. You are, of course?”

“Yes.” Juliana decided that it would be simpler to let them believe that she was shared by the duke and his young cousin. It wasn’t a total fabrication, anyway. “I’m well provided for, and I suppose you could say that I belong to both the duke and the viscount.” She rose and pulled the bell rope. “Will you take ratafia, or sherry … or champagne?” she added with wicked inspiration. “Do you care for champagne?”

“La, how wonderful,” Lilly declared. “You can order such things for yourself in this house?”

“Anything I please,” Juliana said with a hint of bravado as the butler arrived in answer to the summons. “Catlett, bring us champagne, if you please.”

“My lady.” Catlett bowed and left without so much as a flicker of an eyelid.

“See,” Juliana said with a grin. “I have the right to command anything I wish.”

“How enviable,” Rosamund sighed. “When I think of poor Lucy Tibbet …”A cloud of gloom settled over Juliana’s three visitors, imparting a cynical, world-weary air to the previously bright and youthful countenances.

“Lucy Tibbet?” she prompted.

“She worked in one of Haddock’s millinery shops,” Emma said, her usually sweet voice sharp as vinegar. “Keep away from Mother Haddock if you value your life, Juliana.”

“She’s every bit as bad as Richard Haddock,” Rosamund said. “We all thought when he died, his wife would be easier to work for. But Elizabeth is as mean and cruel as Richard ever was.”

Catlett’s arrival with the champagne produced a melancholy silence broken only by the pop of the cork and the fizz of the straw-colored liquid in the glasses. Catlett passed them around and bowed himself out.

“What’s wrong with a millinery shop?” Juliana sipped champagne, wrinkling her nose as the bubbles tickled her palate.

“It’s a whorehouse, dear,” Lilly said with a somewhat pitying air. “They all are in Covent Garden … so are the chocolate houses and coffeehouses. It’s just a different name to satisfy the local constables. We can’t call them whorehouses, although everyone knows that’s what they are.”

The others chuckled at Juliana’s quaint ignorance. “The Haddocks rent out shops and shacks in the Piazza … usually for three guineas a week. They pay the rates and expect a share of the profits.”

“Not that there ever are any profits,” Lilly said. “Lucy spent ten pounds last week on rent and linen and glasses that she had to buy from Mother Haddock, and she had only sixpence for herself at the end of the week.”

“She’d given Richard a promissory note before he died for forty pounds,” Rosamund continued with the explanation. “He’d bailed her out of debtors’ prison once, and she was supposed to pay him back every week. But she can’t do that out of sixpence, so Mother Haddock called in the debt and had her thrown into the Marshalsea.”

“We’re having a collection for her,” Lilly said. “We all try to help out if we can.”