Chapter 3
Three
If you ever need to disguise your emotions, follow our mother’s advice: Don’t move your eyebrows and don’t fidget.
What?
She lives here? In the abbey? As the words slowly filtered into my mind, I began feeling sick.
No advice manual for ladies addressed this possibility.
A mistress is a siren of vice, an irredeemable harlot, whereas a lady’s purity is integral to her status.
Consequently, that lady publicly ignores the existence of “fallen” women—and privately talks of little else.
The notion that a lady could be expected to share her home with her husband’s paramour was not just untenable but downright unthinkable.
Yet if there’s one thing a gentlewoman learns at her mother’s knee, it’s how to hide her emotions.
Godric’s gaze was fixed on my face.
I nodded. “I see.”
His brow was puzzled rather than contemptuous. “The woman is an opera singer. A courtesan,” he added, his voice softening.
Time to be blunt (my forte).
I met his eyes with a flat stare of my own.
“I infer you consider my vocabulary deficient. A gentleman tucks his mistress in a house in Covent Garden, at best showering her in jewels, at worst bestowing a paltry allowance in exchange for private favors. A courtesan, on the other hand, may entertain as many gentlemen as she pleases in exchange for ready coin.”
Seemingly stunned, he nodded silently.
“It seems that my husband’s mistress has been tucked away in the Highlands. Since you mentioned weeping predecessors, Aunt Mima, might I conclude she has held her position for some years?”
“That portrait dates back to ’76—”
The woman had been Burnsby’s mistress for thirty years?
“—and she predates Hecuba. She’s lived here through the tenure of two wives,” Mima confirmed. “Three wives, now.”
That was a facer, as they say in boxing. I choked back a curse, along with a strong impulse to box one of my husband’s ears with a cobblestone. What a bastard he was. I’d heard plenty of gossip about Burnsby’s supposedly murdered wives, but not a whisper about his longtime mistress.
I swallowed hard. “Have you always been tasked with explanations?”
“Oh, you know Clifford,” Mima sighed. “He refuses to discuss unpleasant facts. I have taken it upon myself, ever since Sophonisba threw herself into Clifford’s arms in front of his second wife. Hecuba was quite dismayed, as they were newlyweds.”
“Sophonisba” must be the fallen woman.
“Why are you party to these unpleasant revelations?” I asked, turning to Godric.
“I was concerned that Mima might forget, leaving you as blindsided by meeting Sophonisba as was Hecuba,” he replied. “Lance and I were boys, here on Christmas break from Eton. I would describe Hecuba as devastated, not dismayed.”
“Your parents allowed you, a young gentleman, to visit the abbey while this woman was in residence?” (Yes, my voice was incredulous.)
His mouth twisted. “My parents had passed away, leaving Burnsby my guardian. I have never publicized his ungentlemanly behavior, because it would affect Ophelia’s marital prospects.”
True.
“I see,” I managed.
“I thought a cup of tea might be calming before you meet her,” Mima said.
Meet her?
In other words, she not only lived here, but we’d be in daily contact, as in sharing cups of tea? I was stunned into silence. I’d never heard of a lady living in proximity to her husband’s mistress.
Mima clapped her hands. “How relieving that we needn’t make further explanations! When I was young, mistresses were as alien to me as piglets.”
My stomach curdled with a mixture of humiliation and rage. What could I do? Banish the mistress to the cowshed along with the portrait?
Presumably Burnsby wouldn’t cooperate with that last option.
Banish him to the cowshed?
“Inasmuch as the lady shares both my husband’s bedchamber and his musical talent, is she responsible for introducing him to ‘A Virgin Unspotted’?” I babbled. “If so, I shall have words with her.”
I was trying to sound sophisticated, but to be honest, I felt as if a boulder had settled on my chest. When Burnsby was courting me, he expressed a wish for a companion, which I translated (cynically) into the desire to show off a beautiful, young wife.
I had assumed Burnsby was too old for marital intimacies. Apparently not.
Luckily, I had clarified before our wedding that I would never entertain him in private.
To wit: I was the only unspotted virgin in sight.
“Burnsby has adored Christmas hymns since boyhood,” Mima said, seeming taken aback. “They do enjoy crooning together in the music room.”
Godric winced, but she didn’t appear to be using “crooning” euphemistically. Still, the music room was obviously a location to be avoided.
“You take such an open-minded view of the matter,” she added with an approving nod. “You are far more liberal than Clifford’s previous wives.”
“Liberality is easy when one’s emotions are not involved,” Godric remarked.
Burnsby hadn’t twigged to my apathy in seven months of marriage, but this stranger was more perceptive. Apathetic or not, I had considered Burnsby my friend. I had been delusional. It didn’t help that it seemed I was the third woman to fall for the illusion.
“When I summon him, Burnsby will escort Sophonisba here to meet you,” Mima said, in yet another deeply unwelcome announcement.
Retreating to my bedchamber would be spineless. “I’ve never met a fallen woman. I’m . . . agog,” I said.
I caught Godric’s eyes; condescension had been replaced by pity. Who would have imagined pity was harder to stomach?
I had understood my life. Yes, I had married an old man for his fortune. Yes, I was scorned by bystanders. But I knew, inside, that my reasons for marriage were good ones. And again, I had believed—firmly believed—that my husband respected me.
Sharing a dining room table with my husband’s courtesan, something that would make any lady faint? A woman whom my husband had unaccountably failed to warn me about during seven months of marriage? This was the opposite of respect.
I drew a searing breath into my lungs, raised my chin, and straightened my back. “Aunt Mima, please fetch Lord Burnsby.”
After she left, I offered Godric more tea, trying to pretend I was unmoved. “Have you searched for that lost passage as an adult?” I kept my eyes on the teapot because my hands were shaking. “Perhaps I shall investigate.” I’m proud to say that my voice sounded almost normal.
“You could search the chapel, though not through the front doors. It took four grooms to push them open this morning. Burnsby always wants a fuss for his latest wife.” Godric’s tone was matter-of-fact.
I returned his cup. “Were you in residence for his third wife’s arrival as well?”
He nodded. “Since Burnsby was my guardian, I spent my Christmas holidays here. I was twelve when Hecuba visited the abbey, and sixteen when Alice, his third wife, arrived.”
“I cannot believe that Lord Burnsby’s daughter has been raised in this household, in light of its occupancy, not to mention the widespread belief that her mother was murdered.”
Godric’s lips quirked. “I’ve heard that gossip, but you needn’t fear for your safety. The only person who would care enough to murder one of Burnsby’s wives would be Sophonisba, and no one has battled her for supremacy.”
I couldn’t imagine fighting for my despicable husband.
But for my dignity? Perhaps.
“I knew Hecuba well,” Godric said. “She hadn’t the constitution for a battle.”
“Did she faint?”
(I might faint. I was certain etiquette required a faint.)
“No.” He put down his cup. “She was heartbroken. She wept.”
My so-called husband had a lot to answer for.
Godric abruptly reached out and wrapped a large hand around mine. I stared blankly down at blunt fingers that bore no resemblance to my husband’s slender digits.
“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding as if he meant it. “If Lancelot didn’t live in Paris, he would have warned you before the wedding. Hell, I would have told you, but the announcement in the Times caught both of us off guard.”
“Our decision to marry was sudden.” My fingers trembled inside his grasp, and my eyes stung with tears—not because of the shock or humiliation, but because he was being kind. Decent.
The sympathy of a stranger didn’t solve anything.
I rose to my feet when the door opened. The subject of the portrait walked in, albeit thirty years older.
Irrelevant thoughts ran through my head: Did she always wear plumes?
Was that smile triumphant? How could my husband regard me with placid arrogance, at the very moment he broke every rule of polite society?
“May I introduce Miss Sophonisba Ainsworth?” Burnsby asked, without even a shard of embarrassment. “She is a longtime friend and an opera singer famous throughout the Continent.”
I clasped my hands before me. “Good afternoon,” I said, nodding (not coldly: that would be too revealing, but not curtsying either).
Nor fainting.
“Charmed, I’m sure,” Sophonisba said in a throaty rumble, her curtsy making the feathers attached to her bonnet wave back and forth.
I gestured toward the tea tray and asked, “May I offer you refreshment?”
She blinked. I held her gaze. I was the lady of the household, despite the garish portrait behind me.
In one of the world’s most awkward gatherings, Sophonisba and Burnsby seated themselves on one sofa, facing me and Godric on the other. Mima had disappeared now that her role in this farce was concluded. Or perhaps she’d forgotten to return.
As I poured stewed tea for my husband and his paramour, I had the unnerving sense that the world was trembling beneath my feet. Still, I am an Englishwoman. In the event of an earthquake, I would offer tea.
I put sugar in Burnsby’s tea—which he loathed—and handed it to him.
Revenge tea.
Unfortunately, it was hard to overlook the fact that my husband’s gaze was fastened to the mountain range of bosom bared by his lover’s scanty bodice.