Chapter Twelve
Once again, Mel spent the night at the Golden Adonis, moving from room to room and group to group. This time, she was not there to listen, but to speak.
The members of the club were wealthy women whose independence came from their control over their own finances. Or over the men who controlled their finances. Many of them were wives, sisters, daughters, mothers, cousins and other relatives of England’s most powerful families.
They were the ideal audience for the rumor she wanted to spread—that those in the Burlington Arcade at the fashionable hour tomorrow afternoon would be the first to know a particularly juicy item of gossip.
“No, no. I was told in the strictest confidence. I could not possibly disclose details.” At this point, she always lowered her voice.
“But it involves several high-profile marriages, a deep rift in one of England’s most prominent families, and a brewing scandal of the most appalling nature.
I would not miss the occasion for any reason in the world. ”
Meanwhile, the brothers were all hinting at the same thing.
Before the night was half over, she began to hear new versions of the story, developed and expanded by people’s imagination.
The Deerhavens were planning to divorce.
Or the Dellboroughs. Or the Stancrofts. The Versey family was feuding, two brothers siding against the other two. Or the Forsythes. Or the Redepennings.
One person even speculated that the little Haverford infant had been purchased in an orphanage and smuggled into the birthing room.
Another was certain the prominent family in question was the royal family itself, although those rifts were so well known that her listeners assured the gossiper that could not possibly be the solution.
She was constantly aware of Lord Kemble. Lord Apollo, as he was known here at the club. A room changed when he entered it. Even if she was not looking in his direction, something in her recognized his presence, as if her body was tuned to his and vibrated at a tone outside of human hearing.
They had argued this afternoon. He had wanted her to move back home, and she had argued that it was too dangerous. She could not bring the wrath of the marquess down on her daughter or her sister and nephew.
“You cannot stay with me in the tower,” he had insisted. “A woman living alone with an unrelated man? It is not proper. If anyone knew, it would destroy your reputation.”
He wasn’t wrong, but who was to know? Only his brothers, and they would not gossip. “I could, perhaps, rent a room,” she had conceded.
She had expected him to object on grounds of safety, and she was not disappointed.
“You might as well paint a bullseye on your back and stand in front of the marquess,” he had scoffed.
His solution was that she went to live with one of his brothers, preferably Cornelius, since Cornelius’s wife was her cousin.
“They are newly reunited,” she had objected.
“Besides, their place in Spitalfields is tiny. And the others are newly-wed, and do not need a third party disturbing the early days of their marriage. The tower is convenient, it is safe, and it is free. And I am confident that I can trust you, Lord Kemble.”
At that, he had turned away muttering. Even with her sharp hearing, she’d had to strain to pick up the words. “Not if you give me the least bit of encouragement, you cannot.”
Excellent. Exactly what she was counting on.
She had been married for three years and widowed for seven. Marital intimacies had been a disagreeable chore, and she did not miss them. Since her husband’s death, she’d discovered that other women found them pleasant—some said incredible, but she dismissed that as hyperbole.
Pleasant, though, she could believe. Otherwise, why would the Golden Adonis have private rooms?
Not that she wanted to purchase the opportunity to share what was possible between a man and a woman.
After all, looked at in one way, her marriage had been just such a cold-blooded transaction, her husband having the use of her body in return for the cost of her food and lodging.
She would not use another human being in such a way.
If Lord Kemble was willing though… Indeed, she could not imagine wanting anyone else.
She trusted him—that, she thought, was at the core of her decision.
Her desire for him, which she had at first found inconvenient, now struck her as a happy chance.
But without trust, she would not have contemplated moving forward.
That afternoon—yesterday afternoon now, for it was well after midnight—they had set up bedrooms for themselves downstairs, and relocated their personal effects. When the Golden Adonis closed in the morning, the brothers were going to return to the upper tower and finish moving out.
After Gerard’s wedding, the departure of the travelers, and the spectacle at the Burlington Arcade, she and Lord Kemble would return to the lower tower.
The pair of them would be alone, for even the cat—after a brief struggle and much hissing and protest—had gone to join his owner in his new accommodations.
It would be just the two of them. In the coming days, surely she would have the opportunity to make memories to take out and enjoy in her dwindling years.
*
The Burlington Arcade was an exclusive shopping arcade.
It had been built on the corner of his land by the Earl of Burlington, at least in part to mask his mansion and grounds from being overlooked by neighbors, who—or so it was said—were guilty of disposing of their rubbish by throwing it over his wall.
Be that as it may, the arcade was very new, very fashionable, and quite exclusive.
It had its own force of beadles to keep out pickpockets and prostitutes, and maintain the atmosphere that drew those with money to spend to more than fifty single or double-width shops selling products such as hats, gloves, shoes, jewelry, lace, umbrellas, shawls, books, and music.
On entering through one of the three arched entrances at each end, a shopper found themselves in a long promenade lit from above by glazed roof lights, with ground-floor shops along both sides. The upper floor held residences and more shops, accessed by spiral stairs.
On the afternoon of the thirtieth day of December, though the weather was dreadful, the arcade was packed, with business booming in every shop, and conversation humming as those who came to see and be seen waited for the promised juicy story to unfold.
Mel had come early, on Lord Kemble’s arm. He intended to have his own moment at center stage. Today, if they chanced to encounter the family of his father’s bride for him. But the first act was to be the appearance of Cornelius and Thomasina.
Here they came, arm in arm, Cornelius holding the hand of a boy who looked much like he must have done when he was a child.
The three aunts were there, too, an essential part of the scene, all dressed with that indefinable flair that marked French fashion.
No one would know they had spent the last three decades working the vines and processing the grapes alongside their workers.
From the door of the bookshop, Mel saw Cornelius stop an acquaintance and introduce his wife, her aunts, and his son. The gentleman, in his turn, introduced the ladies with him. A mother, perhaps, and either a wife or a sister.
It could not have been the first such encounter, for the gossip had outrun the strolling family group, and all around her, Mel could hear people explaining to others that Lord Cornelius Sheppard, third son of the Marquess of Teign, had reunited with Lady Cornelius, and that the boy was their son.
“So, she isn’t dead, after all,” said one lady.
“I daresay she ran away from Teign,” said another. “Horrid man. Everyone knows he chases every attractive female that comes within his orbit. Perhaps he tried it with Lady Cornelius.”
From the Burlington Gardens’ end of the arcade came the principals of the second scene of their little play—Lord and Lady Francis, Lord and Lady Gerard, and Lord and Lady Hudson, all still dressed in the garments they had worn for Gerard’s and Amber’s wedding.
Allan had suggested that today’s newly-weds need not be part of the display, but the couple had insisted on joining what they called “the fun.”
The brothers had been locked up since Thomasina’s escape, so few realized who they were, until Cornelius saw them, and called out, “Well met, brothers and sisters.”
Cornelius introduced the newly arrived group to the people he had been talking with, and once again, the buzz of conversation spread along the arcade as everyone expressed an opinion about where these three Sheppard brothers had been, when they had married, and what their appearance today presaged.
“It cannot have been long,” said a lady who was standing near Mel and Kemble. “I know Winifred and Parthena. Their families were still trying to puff them off only last week.
“What is happening now?” asked another of their group, as there was a stir further up the arcade, in the direction of Piccadilly Street. She poked her escort, who responded by craning his neck as if that would give him the extra height needed to peer over the sea of tall hats and bonnets.
Once again, the murmurs arrived before the center of the disturbance. “It is three more Sheppard brothers, with ladies on their arms. One is Lord Baldwin, and the lady he is escorting is certainly not his betrothed.”
“Lord Baldwin is with Mrs. Wickham, and Lady Verity Querrendale is with Lord Donald. I don’t know who the lady is with Lord Ernest, but it is not the lady he is meant to be marrying next week.”
“Did I not see the brides shopping here today, with their mothers?”
Mel grinned. She had spoken to Ernest’s would-be mother-in-law herself, last night in the club. It was a bonus to hook all three mothers and their daughters with the same worm.