Chapter 5 #2
“Hosted by Lady Frances Elston and attended by a great many of my friends. It will be an easy, informal place to make introductions. It is you who have been invited, Mrs Ardingly.” He gave Lady Pemberthy an apologetic look. “Lady Frances’s set…”
“Oh, all spritely young things, I know! Never fear! I’ll not squash your fun with my ancient old bones.”
Her niece gave her a sorrowful look. “I’d much rather you be there, Aunt.” She glanced at him. “I won’t know anyone. And won’t it seem strange, me turning up, when I have no mutual acquaintance?”
“Ah.” He smiled. “This is why it’s so very helpful that Lady Frances has acquired a sudden interest in charity work. She is eager to make your acquaintance and quite willing to sponsor you into society.”
Mrs Ardingly narrowed her eyes. “She’s in on your wager.”
“She is indeed.”
“And has backed you to win?”
“The lady has great sense.”
Did she know, he wondered, of his intentions towards Lady Frances? She gave no hint of it, only looked mildly amused—and sceptical.
It hardly mattered anyway. Mrs Ardingly was getting from him what she required and was sensible enough to know it. Lady Frances, amused by his wager, was beginning to see another, lighter side to him.
He suspected that was what she really wanted to prove, not this heart nonsense. She would hang back until she could be sure he would be an amusing husband, not too strict. One she could have a degree of control over.
Well. He could have fun, couldn’t he? He was having fun right now.
The door opened and that ancient old footman entered with a message for Lady Pemberthy. Someone or other had called about something or other. Both women knew what it was about, exchanging a glance.
“I’d best go down and see which bags she’s collecting,” said Lady Pemberthy. “Don’t you remember last time? She took the rags to the orphanage and the clothes to the ragman! Excuse me, my lord. Business is always calling.”
Politely, he smiled as she left the room. He looked back from the door and met Mrs Ardingly’s eyes. She quickly looked down, pouring tea into her cup from what must, by now, be a very cold and overstewed brew.
Sebastian stood. He walked around the table and sat down beside her. She stiffened, her cup rattling in her saucer as she put it down again, though he’d left a good foot of space between them.
The modiste’s book was still in his hand, and he pushed the tea tray over, placing the book down in its place.
“Allow me to help you choose, if you trust me eye?”
“For fashion? Yes. I trust you know a great deal.”
“Oh,” he said carelessly, starting to flip through the pages, “it’s far from my only area of expertise, Mrs Ardingly.”
She knew what he meant. That was the charm of widows. He’d kept one as a mistress a few years ago. Everyone did it, at one time or another, and so he’d done it too.
It was part of the life he lived, part of the conversation in clubs and on long rides with friends.
It was an experience Sebastian Thorne was supposed to have, and so he made sure he had it.
There were no gaps in his knowledge. No soft little innocent flaws for his friends to discover and poke at in mischief and glee.
Steadily turning the pages, he said, “What was he like? Your husband?”
She went so still he could feel it.
“I would prefer not to talk about him.”
With you was the clear subtext.
He turned another page, studying the plate.
“I was five when my mother died. I hardly remember her at all, but I wish I could remember more. The memories I do have are very dear. And I find…” He slowly turned another page, confronted by a celestial image or dark beauty, adorned with ostrich feathers.
“I find that the ones I remember best are the ones I shared most often, as though speaking of them helped imprint them into my mind. Or perhaps they’ve just become stories that I’ve told myself.
Perhaps I don’t remember the truth at all.
When I look at paintings of my mother, she doesn’t look how I remember her in those stories. ”
A pause. Another adjustment to the conversation’s mood shifting. Why is he telling me this? He could almost hear her thinking.
A technique, a tactic, a social lure.
“Does…does your father think the paintings a good likeness?”
Sebastian’s hand stilled. He forced himself to turn another page. “My father does not like to speak of her.”
And his stepmother had all the paintings removed, except the miniature in his bedroom and the locket he’d stolen long ago from the cabinet his father kept locked.
She’d said she was removing the paintings out of sympathy for his father’s grief.
Sebastian hadn’t believed it even then, aged eight.
She replaced them all with portraits of herself and never commissioned a single one of her with her husband or her adopted son.
But then, that was an accurate portrait of their life: all three of them, under one roof but living entirely separate lives.
“I remember everything,” Mrs Ardingly said, her voice quiet and careful, as though she moved carefully with an overfull cup.
He looked up from the book, finding her staring unseeing at the tabletop, her hands clasped on her lap, her skin pale, despite its light tan—unfortunate, the tan, but he could hardly fix it before the picnic.
There were very, very faint freckles over the fine, delicate bone of her nose and more on the sliver of shoulder that deplorable dress left bare.
Her brown hair was twisted carelessly at the back of her head, no attempt at ringlets, just left to curl vaguely this way and that, a light, even brown, except where the sun caught the odd strand and turned it to coppery gold.
There was gold on her finger too. He noticed it for the first time—the wedding band she still wore.
“Perhaps that’s harder,” he said, “than remembering nothing.”
She let out a breath, a little shaky, the tight smile she gave him embarrassed.
He tapped the book. “This dress. But paler still. And less fuss around the hem and shoulders. Perhaps you’re right to wear so little ornament, but not rags.”
Her mouth tightened as she studied the picture, irritation in the stiff set of her shoulder. But the distant, echoing sadness had gone for now.
“I’ve offended you,” he said, smiling.
“No! Every woman longs to be told she looks a fright. Especially by a veritable stranger.”
He chuckled softly. “Not a fright. But you’re certainly doing neither yourself nor your cause any favours.”
“And here I was concentrating on communicating my message! On research and facts and expert testimony! Really, I should have been studying fashion plates. I must suggest this to Mr Wilberforce. Perhaps a new way of tying his cravat would give him greater success than ever.”
Her sarcasm made him smile. “You think you’re joking, but you’re quite correct. The problem with your methods so far—
“Oh, do enlighten me, please!”
His smile widened as she turned to him in mock rapture, hands pressed together as in prayer.
“Your problem, Mrs Ardingly, is that you think people truly care about anything other than themselves.” He gestured towards his chest. “I am here for purely selfish reasons. And all your future subscribers and supporters will have reasons equally selfish.”
“Like what?”
“Any number of things. Like hoping their charity in this world will secure them better treatment in the next. Or they have a guilt they wish to ease themselves of. Or they wish to believe themselves better than their friends. Or demonstrate through the largesse of their donations how wealthy they are.”
“And the thought of a small child with his back flayed to ribbons moves them not at all?”
“No more than they care about abolition, or poor relief, or crippled soldiers, penniless widows, starving orphans, fallen women, climbing boys, or carriage horses falling dead of exhaustion. A great many of them might think your beaten children of less concern than any of those—a child being beaten normally has a parent or teacher who cares enough about it to correct it.”
“Cares? Cares? Is that what you call it?”
“All children need an authority figure to look up to and direct them.”
She let out an exasperated breath. “Which is a very different thing to beating them! My parents raised seven children and never raised a hand against any of us!”
“A rare exception doesn’t make a rule.”
She stared at him, chest rising with the force of her anger, a flush on her pretty cheekbones.
“Were you beaten, Lord Cotereigh?”
“Soundly.”
“Then I think that entirely proves my point.”
She stood up, as though unable to bear his proximity, and walked briskly towards the window.
She folded her arms mannishly across her chest and stared up at the sky. It was probably blue and fluffy and all those sorts of things, and she looked at it like a caged bird looks for home.
His gaze tracked down her stiff neck and tense shoulders, a crescent of skin revealed at the base of her neck, between her shoulder blades. Her dress was the sullen grey of a spoiling morning, when rain relentlessly drizzles on your plans for cricket.
He had to admit it. He found her extremely attractive.
If he’d thought she’d ever permit it, he’d take this widow as mistress. Remove that dress. Lay her down flushed and bare and pink. They’d both remember they were alive.
“Mrs Ardingly,” he said, very patient, very calm. She stayed looking at the sky. “You can distrust my motives—despise them, even, as I’m sure you already do. But right now, our goals are aligned.”
She glanced back at him.
“Trust my methods,” he said. “We may have different reasons, but we want the same things. And I always get what I want.”