Chapter 2
Two
Despite being silk, Lucy’s gloves were itchy.
Or not her gloves, she corrected herself with her natural honesty, but her fingers, which had been irritated by the turpentine she’d hastily used to clean them when her frantic hostess hauled her away from her work.
“Good Lord, Lucy! Look at the state of you! Covered in stinking oil paints and we leave for Almack’s in an hour! ”
Now her hostess, Nell, or Helen—or Lady Ashburton, which Lucy couldn’t quite get used to—sat across from her in the lantern-lit carriage, looking the picture of decorous serenity.
They were safely on their way, and Nell was even smiling benevolently at the two younger ladies sat opposite her, Lucy and Nora.
“The easiest thing in the world to procure you both vouchers. Even you, Lucy, unknown to anyone as you are. But you’re under my aegis, and the Ashburtons, you know, have long been highly esteemed.”
There was a very strong smell of perfume in the carriage. And pressed silk. And starch. And the crowded evening streets, all of London heading out to a thousand different diversions, meant they kept stopping and starting again with a lurch.
Privately, her eyes on the small gap in the curtains and wishing she could pull them back or even open the window itself, Lucy suspected the admission of Lady Ashburton’s protégés to Almack’s hallowed halls had more to do with another name entirely. Nell’s brother, Lord Orton.
Lord Orton… Her hands were damp with heat, which didn’t help the itching.
Lord Orton, she knew, was unmarried and very rich.
And if he was still in any way Jack…if he was still the laughing, energetic Jack she’d once known…
and if the aggravating beauty he’d possessed so carelessly at nineteen hadn’t worn away, then he was exactly the sort of young man to be in high demand by the hostesses of London’s marriage mart.
“I suppose you must have managed to make a good impression on Lady Sefton when she came to visit,” Nell said, giving Lucy a grudging frown of examination. “Whatever did you find to talk about?”
“Art.”
He’d have to come, wouldn’t he? He’d have to escort his unmarried sister and her unmarried friend on their Almack’s debut. No wonder his sister had been able to procure vouchers.
There was no chance at all that he wouldn’t be there.
She continued fidgeting with her gloves. The silk was sure to be ruined. But it was unbearably hot, a muggy March evening, and in five days in London, she hadn’t once felt a shred of truly fresh air.
“Well!” Nell wrinkled her small nose, unimpressed at art as a conversational lure. “But you must stop fidgeting, Lucy. You’ll ruin those gloves before we get there. They’re made of a far finer material than any you’re used to, I’m sure, and you have no idea how easily they can be torn.”
“Or made grubby,” added Nora, sitting at Lucy’s side.
“Mine are the most exquisite silk,” she informed them, holding her gloved hands out in happy self-inspection.
As Lucy and Nell had already been made to admire the gloves several times, and had also been there at their ecstatic purchase, neither made any reply.
“But there’s no need to be too careful, Lucy,” Nora said brightly, “because even if you do ruin your gloves—which you’re bound to, knowing you—we’ll go and buy some more tomorrow!
Do you remember those lavender kid ones?
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them since we saw them.
I don’t know why I didn’t buy them at the time; it was very stupid of me, and I’m entirely resolved that the next time I see anything I think I might like, I won’t hesitate to buy it.
And if, when I get back to the house, I find I don’t like it, then I’ll simply give it away. ”
That was an entirely Orton attitude. Lucy laughed, secretly, deep inside herself, the way she’d once often done.
It had been very strange coming back to these people, like revisiting a house you suspected might have been only a dream.
But his sisters hadn’t changed at all. He probably hadn’t either.
They were all trivial as caged birds with a mirror, amused by whatever was in front of them, forgetting it the moment it was gone.
Out of sight, out of mind. Seven years was a lifetime.
Nell gave Nora a scathing look. “Please don’t prattle on in that vulgar way when we’re there, Eleanor! No man of sense is going to be impressed by such…such vapid greed.”
“But, my dear,” came Lord Ashburton’s ponderous voice from Nell’s side—he’d been a silent mass of dark coat and chapeau bras until now.
“Didn’t you say just the other day that you bought those three hats because you couldn’t choose between them, and”—his voice was slow with the effort of careful remembrance—“if you’d been forced to leave one behind, you would’ve regretted it? Is that not very similar?”
Nell’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “Well…yes, dear…but…but they were hats. It is quite different.”
A look of understanding dawned upon his broad, good-natured face. “Why, yes, of course.” He gave a contented nod, entirely satisfied by the good sense of his wife’s answer, and subsided again into silence.
Lucy hid her smile and dipped her head to look again through the small gap in the curtain over the carriage window.
It was dark outside, and she couldn’t see much, but the flickers of yellow and orange as they passed lit windows and streetlamps and the lights of other carriages were still exciting.
Almost a week in London, and she still couldn’t help but gawk.
It was horribly noisy, of course, and often smelly, and just the briefest venture through it left her senses reeling, but it still made her blood surge with excitement to know she was here, where the Royal Academy met.
She was within reaching distance of Somerset House and the British Institution and the British Museum.
.. London held art schools, art societies—everyone who was anyone in the art world had a house here.
Nell’s unexpected summons had seemed like providence, though all her flowery words and protestations of undying friendship hadn’t been able to disguise the invitation for what it was.
But beggars could not be choosers. This was her only chance to escape her aunt’s house, to see the world, to make the artistic connections she so desperately needed. To be…inspired.
There had been a brief struggle—her aunt didn’t want to lose her slave. But the woman was also a snob, and a letter from the daughter of a viscount, now the wife of an earl, might as well have been a summons from the queen herself. It couldn’t be refused.
“Of course, all this will be for nought if Jack doesn’t turn up,” said Nell.
Lucy looked up from the window. He hadn’t been to call. She hadn’t yet seen him. Nell said he was busy, giving a roll of her eyes, and that he was forever away from home on some escapade or other.
“Jack?” repeated Nora disdainfully. “What on earth does he have to do with anything?”
“Because Jack is… Jack has… No offence, dear”—she patted the silent block at her side—“Jack has presence. He is, heaven knows how, one of the most fashionable and popular men in London, and if we want to see you brought out right, Nora, then he needs to be there. To walk into Almack’s on Jack’s arm… ”
Nora pulled a face at her sister’s reverent air. “I don’t need Jack’s help.” She preened again, adjusting the tips of her gloves. “I’m pretty. I’m rich. And I’m an Orton.”
Lucy bit her lip, again hiding her smile, though it was all true, however vainly spoken. Nora was pretty, was rich, and the Ortons were one of the oldest families in the country; they could trace their lineage back to the Normans.
The hall of Orton House held an ancient, dulled painting of the first viscount: he who’d previously been Baron Henry Orton.
He’d been made Viscount Orton some hundreds of years ago in return for services rendered to, “Some boring old king or something,” Jack had told her once, yawning.
“Lord, who cares about history, Min! I wish to God this old house would burn down. It’s damp and draughty and damned well haunted, I’m sure of it.
I’m going to build a new one all in modern brick when I’m in charge. ”
Fortunately, the fourteen-year-old Jack’s wish had not come to pass, and Orton House still stood, Lucy assumed, as it had always stood, an enormous and chaotically pretty expanse of old stone deep in the soft Herefordshire countryside.
Fourteen-year-old Jack’s other statement, that the house was haunted, he’d later attempted to bring to life by jumping out at her from various dark corners with a blood-curdling yell.
The first attempt he’d found hilarious. The second one had brought him an ineffectual slap.
The third, she was sorry to say, had punished him with her tears.
In her defence, she was only just turned eleven.
Suppressing the memory—suddenly more vivid and lifelike than she cared for—she turned her thoughts instead to the old painting of Henry Orton, the first viscount.
She’d looked at it often, had looked at all the paintings often; the great cathedral-like hall with its tall, mullioned windows being one of her favourite places at Orton House.
Even when the sky was flat and grey, the light washed eagerly through the stained-glass panels decorating the very top of the windows, adding colour to the smooth, ancient stone of the floor and bringing new life to the colours of the faded tapestries and dulled oil paintings.
Henry Orton, First Viscount Orton, had been a slim man, with very dark hair and—she guessed because Jack’s eyes were that colour—stormy-grey eyes, though she hadn’t really been able to see them properly with all the murk that darkened the painting.
He’d been savagely handsome, wildly so, something savage in his expression too.
A man who’d started a family and a title that had lasted generations.
Orton after Orton, all of them dark and beautiful.
Helen was. Nora was. Jack was. But what the savage Henry Orton would have made of his descendant sitting smugly in a cascade of pink tulle and satin, preening over silk gloves, Lucy could only imagine with a smile.
“I don’t see why Lucy is smirking,” Nora exclaimed hotly. “I am pretty, and rich, and an Orton. And some of us here are none of those things.”
Lucy flinched, but it could hardly be denied. She fixed her attention on the gap between the curtains. Inspiration. She was here for inspiration. Look how the massed lantern lights made almost the whole sky glow… This city was alive.
“And,” added Nora, “I’m going to take London by storm!”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” retorted Nell.
“You’ll be lucky to stir a mild breeze, and it’ll be nothing but a damp squib if Jack doesn’t help set the thing off right.
And if I don’t make you a success, both he and Mother will blame me!
As if I have anything to do with it. And I bet you ten to a dozen he won’t even be there.
I told him to be in London five days ago when you both arrived, and where is he?
No one knows. But I bet there’s brandy, and horses, and cards. Or worse.”
Lucy’s attention flicked again to Nell’s face, but the very real anxiety which underlay the angry words appeared to have more to do with Nell’s fears for her own success than her brother’s whereabouts.
Jack Orton. It was a strange name from an old story; one she’d long since stopped telling herself. And, more properly, his name was John. But no one ever called him that. “John is a dreary name,” he’d told her. “No one interesting is ever called John.”
“And what about Min?”
“Ah, that is a name only you are called.”
“But—”
“It’s short for Minnow, obviously.”
“But why do you call me that? Because I’m small?”
He’d only laughed. Most of her memories of Jack involving him laughing.
At her. Would he be any more serious as a grown man?
She doubted it. She might have lived a very sheltered life since leaving her first home on the edge of the Orton estate, but in her lonely years of growing from girl to woman, she’d still come to realise that she was the type of woman who would always be laughed at.
And Jack was the type of man to do the laughing.
When she arrived at Almack’s, she discovered she was right.