Chapter Thirteen
Landry sat on the chamber pot, his nether region beginning to get sore at this point, mulling over how exactly he was to manage asking Lady Edith the momentous question.
He dared not have a repeat of his current circumstances.
She was an understanding lady, but no lady should be forced to imagine what had happened in this room.
Perhaps he would pick a day where he ate and drank nothing. Then his nerves could do what they liked but could not cause a disaster of the chamber pot variety.
Yes, certainly, that was what he ought to do. He would starve himself and then just get out the words. If she said yes, he could starve himself on the wedding day. And then maybe other days. He would grow thin, that was only to be expected, but he would manage his condition.
As it usually did, feeling as if he’d found a solution calmed him.
There had been no reason to rush into it tonight, after having eaten greasy potatoes.
That had been a silly notion. An easily made mistake, as it were.
On his next try, he would spend a day surviving on a few sips of ale and nothing else.
He would be an empty shell of a man, impervious to any dangers of a revolt in his digestion.
As well, he might write down the question and just hand it to her. Had that been done before? Surely it must have been. Perhaps it might even be preferred, as it supplied the lady with a keepsake. Indeed, what lady would not like to have a memento?
As it had been near a half hour since anything of note had come out of him, Landry felt he might safely return to the garden.
In any case, he’d just heard another sound at the door. Another click. Then, silence. Had he now driven two gentlemen away from the room from the scent of the mess he’d left in the pots?
It would be too humiliating if he were caught at it. There would be jokes going round in the clubs. Sir Howard was still trying to live down something similar that had occurred at Lady Gerard’s card party. They were still calling him “Have at It Howard.”
He must not let that happen!
Landry hurriedly did up his pants and jogged to the door. Out in the corridor, he noted St. John look out of the ballroom and then pull his head back in, and then Lady Winsome hurrying toward him. She appeared upset or affronted or alarmed.
Good God, had it been Lady Winsome he’d heard at the door? Had she got a whiff of such an abomination? Could he blame it on somebody else?
She even looked a little disheveled. Had her encounter with his unfortunate eruptions caused a discombobulation?
“Lady Winsome,” he said hurriedly, “I was going to the billiards room but Lord…Lord, well I forget his name, he was already in there. The point is, somebody else was in there!”
Before Lady Winsome could indicate whether she believed that or not, they came face to face with the dowager. “Lady Winsome,” she said, “I was sent to look for you.”
“Yes, I was delayed,” Lady Winsome said in a tremulous voice.
Landry could not work out why she seemed on the verge of tears. It was true that what was in that billiard room was deeply upsetting, but he’d not thought it could make a person cry. But then, she was a lady and would be more sensitive to such things.
“I was delayed too,” Landry nearly shouted. “Somebody else was in the billiard room. I don’t know who it was. Just somebody else!” Then he fled lest he be interrogated on the matter.
*
Winsome had no idea what had just happened to her. She’d gone into the retiring room to check the string of letters in a looking glass. Then she’d been locked in. She’d banged on the door and called for help but nobody had come.
The oak door was substantial and so well-fitted that she could not even see a strip of light coming from underneath. Nobody could hear her.
As the minutes passed, she began to feel as if she were living inside a gothic novel. Why had she been locked in? Who had done it? Was there some means of escape?
She had searched the room, looking in vain for a secret passage.
There usually was one in her books. There was always a way out when the heroine found herself in seemingly impossible circumstances.
She combed the room top to bottom and got on hands and knees to peer underneath tables. There was no way out but the door.
Then, just as she was about to give up and just wait for her father to send up the alarm and start a search for her, she’d heard the distinct slide of the bolt. She’d run to the door. It was heavy and it took her several tries to push it open. There was nobody in the corridor.
Somebody had locked her in and then let her out again? Why? What had been the purpose? Had it been a prank of some sort? Was there a mischievous child in the house? Sir Jonathan was unmarried, but that did not mean he did not have relations staying in the house.
The more she considered it, the more it began to make sense.
She had allowed her imagination, which was far too influenced by the books she’d read, to think there was something nefarious afoot.
That had not been very sensible though. Certainly it had been a childish game.
It was the sort of thing Valor would have done but a few short years ago.
Or even yesterday. Whoever it was, they’d probably run upstairs in laughing hysterics over it.
She could not say she was laughing quite so hard.
Winsome hurried down the corridor toward the door to the garden. She was nearly bowled over by Lord Landry coming out of another room and babbling about another lord he could not remember the name of who had been in that room.
Then they had both encountered the dowager.
Lord Landry, for reasons known only to himself, once again mentioned the mysterious somebody else in the billiards room before fleeing the corridor.
She could not imagine who that unknown lord was or what he’d done to Lord Landry, but the fellow was in near hysterics over it.
She hardly knew what to say to the dowager regarding the situation so she’d merely said she had been delayed.
Winsome did not know what the dowager thought about it, but the lady suddenly said, “Lady Winsome, do give me your arm. I find I feel poorly.”
“Oh certainly,” Winsome said, assisting the lady down the hall. She supposed the effects of trying to keep up with the duke had begun to take their toll.
“Take me to my grandson,” the dowager said, “then he can escort me home.”
Winsome nodded and suppressed a sigh. Lord Manderbey would leave.
This had not been the evening she’d been hoping for.
She was supposed to be figuring out how to pull him away from his gambling habit before he went too far.
Instead, she’d been trapped in a retiring room, looking for a hidden way out.
They entered the garden and Lord Manderbey strode over to them.
“Manderbey, I an unwell,” the dowager said. “Take me home and call for the doctor.”
“I see. Yes, of course,” he said, taking his grandmother’s arm. “Lady Winsome,” he said, by way of goodbye.
She made her way over to her father, who still sat on the bench, now holding two glasses of wine. Winsome took one from his hand and drained it. “I’ve just spent the past half hour locked in a retiring room. What a night.”
*
Leland had the carriage called and found a chair for his grandmother as they waited.
The whole evening was unaccountable. Lady Winsome had disappeared for an extended period.
His grandmother had gone off to find her and come back doing poorly.
She’d been right as rain before she’d gone back into the house.
He supposed the elderly were prone to sudden attacks and hoped it was not of a serious nature. He suspected the physician would advise her to cut back on the amount of spirits she’d been imbibing over the past days.
The carriage came round, he helped his drooping grandmother into it, and banged on the roof for the coachman to get going.
The horses pulled forward and settled into a trot. His grandmother suddenly sat up straight and said, “I’ve saved you from humiliation, Manderbey. This will come as a shock, I know, but Lady Winsome has been compromised.”
Leland dropped his hat, which had been in his hands. “What?”
“Trust me, things could have gone very badly if I had not discovered it.”
“Trust you? I certainly will not blindly trust you. What are you claiming? Specifically?” He did not know what sort of trouble the dowager was trying to drum up, but she no longer looked as if she did poorly. “You do not require a doctor, do you?”
“Of course I don’t,” the dowager said. “I had to get you away from there in all haste, before you committed yourself to anything. Lady Winsome is not the innocent that she seems.”
“Do not be ridiculous,” he said.
“Manderbey, I may be old, but I am not blind. I know what I saw.”
Leland crossed his arms. “What exactly do you think you saw?”
“As you know, Lady Winsome was missing for an inordinate amount of time. In the ladies’ retiring room, you said. Well, let me tell you, that was not where she was found. I discovered her in the corridor, looking very flustered and disheveled, with Lord Landry.”
Leland burst out laughing. “Landry?” he asked. “You think Lady Winsome was compromised by Landry? He could not seduce a Cyprian he’d already paid.”
“That comment was in very bad taste, do not speak to me of Cyprians again, if you please. Now, I know what I saw, Manderbey. The look of guilt on that man’s face was unmistakable. He positively fled the scene.”
“It’s all nonsense.”
“It is not nonsense. How does she account for her absence? She simply says she was delayed. By what? Or rather, by who?”
“Even if I believed Lady Winsome capable of what you accuse her of, which I do not, Landry would not be up to such connivances.”