Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
‘Very fine, if I say so myself.’ Pierce stood back from the mirror and looked admiringly at his handiwork. ‘Don’t you agree, Mr. Bennet?’
‘He looks like a right toff,’ Mr. Bennet agreed.
This was Sebastian’s first foray into full evening wear, and he ran a finger around a stock so high and stiff that it almost grazed his ear lobe.
‘It’s very tight,’ he complained.
‘Meant to be, my lord. Meant to be! And, might I say, my lord, a very fine figure you cut. While his late lordship cut a dash, er… He didn’t have the attributes you possess, my lord.’
Sebastian cast a nervous glance at his reflection in the mirror, in particular the tight white satin breeches, and hoped that the man referred to his shoulders and not other attributes.
‘A more slender gentleman, his late lordship,’ Pierce continued, happily expanding on his theme, ‘suited to an altogether different style to yourself, my lord. Now if I may venture so bold, my lord, your stance...’
Standing in the properly affected manner, all the better to show off his attributes, Sebastian allowed himself the luxury of a last long look in the mirror. His own mother would have difficulty recognising her scruffy and disorganised son in the elegant figure that he now presented.
The Reverend Alder would merely have shaken his head. ‘Vestis virum reddit,’ he would have said, quoting his favourite Roman writer, Quintilian.
Clothes maketh the man. We all wear uniforms, Sebastian thought.
In his army days, his uniform had been scarlet with buff facings. Now it was a well-cut jacket and satin breeches.
‘When your lordship returns to London, we will be able to have some proper tailoring,’ Pierce said, still primping the cravat.
‘What’s wrong with these clothes?’
‘A quick job, my lord, hardly worthy of you.’
‘It looks fine to me,’ Sebastian said in a clipped tone that Bennet would have instantly recognised as a warning not to push Sebastian Alder into doing something he did not wish to do.
Pierce retired to the chest of drawers and returned with a diamond pin that he affixed to the fine linen folds of the cravat before allowing his master to escape.
The driveway to Fairchild Hall, home of Lady Kendall, had been lit by flares, and the front of the old house was brightly illuminated with red silk lanterns.
Connie, leaning from the window, exclaimed at the show.
Even Sebastian, alighting from the coach, had to admit that the effect had been carefully stage managed to give the visitors a sense of expectation.
They were met in the flagged front hall by a flunkey who took their cloaks and indicated the wide doors to the right from where the sound of music and laughter issued.
Sebastian glanced down at his sister, dressed in a pretty pink gown, borrowed from Fanny.
Her new pearl necklace graced her neckline, and her dark blonde hair had been swept up into a sophisticated knot, set off with pink ribbons and a white feather.
If this was Fanny’s work then he owed the girl his thanks. Connie looked beautiful.
He offered her his arm and she accepted it, her face flushed and her eyes sparkling with excitement. Her fingers tightened on his arm for a moment and he patted the gloved hand.
‘Lord Somerton,’ the footman intoned. ‘Mr. Alder and Miss Alder.’
A sudden hush fell on the gathering as all eyes turned to the door. Lady Kendall, dressed in a green satin gown with a matching turban topped by a green feather set in place with an emerald the size of a quail’s egg, disengaged herself from a group of guests and came forward.
Sebastian heard Connie whisper. ‘Oh, my!’
Lady Kendall extended her hand. ‘Lord Somerton. Welcome to my home.’
He bowed over the proffered hand and presented Connie and Matt.
Connie curtseyed and Matt, resplendent in clothes borrowed from Freddy, seemed completely confident as he bowed to Lady Kendall.
Isabel and, he grudgingly admitted, the Lynchs had done a fine job in preparing two youngsters straight from rural Cheshire for their new life.
He felt inordinately proud of his siblings.
Across the room, Harry Dempster raised a hand in greeting before being drawn back into conversation with a woman in a scarlet dress. Matt looked around at the gathered crowd. Fans fluttered like a rabble of butterflies as his brother’s gaze scanned the room.
Sebastian smiled and leaned in to whisper, ‘You seem to be attracting attention, little brother.’
Matt cast him a cheeky grin and, taking Connie’s arm, sallied forth. Lady Kendall tucked a small, gloved hand into Sebastian’s arm and led him into the room.
‘Your brother and sister are quite charming, Lord Somerton.’
‘Thank you,’ he replied. ‘It was kind of you to invite us.’
‘Not at all. I am sure you and your brother are everything the mothers of the county would wish.’
‘And what is that?’ Sebastian asked.
‘In your case, a title and no inconvenient wife,’ Lady Kendall replied, ‘and your brother has a handsome face and, it is hoped, a generous allowance from your lordship.’
Sebastian laughed. ‘The young rogue has to earn it first,’ he said. ‘I am packing him off to university.’
Lady Kendall raised a delicately arched eyebrow. ‘Really? Is that something he wishes to do?’
‘Yes. He has a talent for mathematics but I was never able to...’
He stopped, feeling the embarrassment rising to his face. He couldn’t bring himself to say, ‘never able to afford the cost’.
Lady Kendall took two glasses of champagne from a tray and handed one to Sebastian.
‘May I claim a few minutes of your time in private, my lord?’
Sebastian glanced around the room, wondering about the propriety of a private audience with Lady Kendall. He ran a finger around his stock, which had become even more uncomfortable.
He followed her through the doors onto a terrace and into the night. She shivered in the cool night air, and Sebastian offered his jacket, which she declined.
‘I will not detain you long.’ She took a sip of champagne. ‘I like you, Lord Somerton, and I wouldn’t have you think ill of me.’
He started to protest, but she interrupted him, ‘I do not wish you to be under a misapprehension about my relationship with your late cousin.’
Sebastian spluttered on his champagne. ‘My dear Lady Kendall, your relationship with my cousin is of no interest to me.’
‘Yes, but it matters to me. I know what people say and, more painfully, I know what Lady Somerton believes. You are an honourable man and I would like to share a confidence with you.’
‘A confidence?’
She moved closer to him. Her exotic perfume wafted towards him in an intoxicating cloud of roses and spice.
‘It suited both Anthony and me for our own reasons to be gossiped about in a certain fashion, but we were not lovers. Our relationship was purely platonic. People do not speak kindly of Anthony or his treatment of Isabel. The truth is that Anthony was a deeply conflicted man,’ she paused.
‘His own nature did not incline him to the female sex.’
Lady Kendall’s revelation only confirmed the growing suspicion that the careful picture of a womanising, gambling rake Anthony had painted of himself was just an artifice, but it suited Sebastian to pretend ignorance.
‘What do you mean?’
Georgiana Kendall put her head back and laughed, a soft, tinkling sound swallowed up by the dark night. ‘Surely, Lord Somerton, you are a man of the world?’
‘I am the son of a parson. I was brought up in a vicarage in a small village. I am not a man of yours or Anthony’s world.’
‘But you have been a soldier,’ Lady Kendall said. ‘Surely you must have seen such relationships in your time?’
Sebastian considered for a moment. He had been aware of certain particular friendships within the army, but as long as the parties had been discreet and it had not affected the morale of their company, it was something to which the senior officers, some of whom were similarly inclined, were prepared to turn a blind eye.
Lady Kendall drained her glass and stood for a moment looking into its empty depths as the sound of music, laughter, and bright chatter spilled from the open windows of the house.
‘And you were happy to be complicit in maintaining this fiction? Even at a cost to your own reputation?’ Sebastian asked at last.
She laughed. ‘Oh, I know my reputation, Lord Somerton. In truth, I was being pursued by a man in whom I had no interest and it suited me to be known as Anthony’s mistress.
The man concerned would not cross Lord Somerton, and Anthony .
..’ She shrugged. ‘At first, the pretence concealed his other life but, in more recent times, it can happen that some men can lean in either direction. I believe Anthony had come to love his wife.’
Sebastian gave a derisory snort. ‘He had a strange way of showing it,’ he said.
‘I am not privy to the Somertons’ private affairs,’ she responded in a sharp tone.
‘I know only what Anthony confided in me, Lord Somerton, and trust me when I say I believe myself to be his closest confidante. Anthony had fathered a child with his wife, a child on whom he doted and, in the months following the child’s birth, he had grown to love his wife deeply, but he was not a man who knew how to demonstrate such affection.
William’s death was a bitter blow and Isabel’s grief was so great that he felt himself inadequate to provide the solace she needed.
His answer was to resume his former ways, but it masked a very different man and brought him no comfort. ’
‘If what you are telling me is true, then it is a sad story,’ Sebastian said. ‘I am certain, from what little she has told me, Lady Somerton had no idea of the depth of his feeling.’