Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Ideclare, I never heard such utter villainy in my life.” Lady Diana sat in her favorite chair in the grand salon of Suffolk House, restored from a theater to a formal parlor once more.
Candles burned from every sconce and bracket, and a fire in the grate threw heat, even though, at the other end of the room, the gentlemen had opened one of the tall doors to the terrace so the smoke from their cigars could issue out of it.
“She took you to the abandoned Royal Spa, pretended she’d been set upon by thieves, and left you there?” Diana repeated.
“Then told Mr. Manelli that I had run away with a lover,” Cerys confirmed.
Diana snorted. “That takes a nerve. I never thought much of that woman. I’ll see that she’s cut everywhere for the rest of the Season, never you fear.”
“I hear she and Lord Baeccon are withdrawing to their castle in the north, so we will be free of her.” Cerys sat opposite Lady Diana on the chaise longue with its scrolled back. Her mother sat on one side and had been beside Cerys for most of the day since Dante had rescued her.
“And she did all this,” Dovey said, “because she thought, if she could make Dante doubt you, it would break his affections for you.”
Cerys nodded, her heart pinching with a worry that wouldn’t leave off needling her. “She supposed someone would hear me eventually and let me out, or that is what she told Dante. She never meant to do real harm to me, or so she claims.”
Dante had insisted he be the one to approach Bathsheba earlier that day and hold her to account.
Cerys was happy to turn her defense over, in this case, to her heroic protector.
It would do no good for an actress to make public claims that a peer’s wife had attacked her.
Bathsheba would deny it, Cerys would look deranged, and the gossip might hurt her in the end.
While the public interest would draw audiences for quite some time, as Dorsey pointed out, Cerys did not want any scandal to attach to Dante’s name in relation with her. Best for Bathsheba Baeccon to leave the area and vent her spleen somewhere else.
“But Lord Baeccon has agreed to furnish funds for our theater. With our own savings that we recovered, along with the subscriptions he’s raised, Dorsey has enough funds to secure a builder and start breaking ground,” Cerys added, forcing a bright smile.
Dorsey had gone with Dante to the reckoning and returned with a written pledge in hand. That was all the apology Cerys was likely to get for her ladyship’s mischief, but it was enough.
As she always did now, she scanned the room for Dante.
He stood at the far end of the room with the gentlemen, who clustered near the open French doors in an intense discussion about whatever it was that occupied gentlemen.
His sleek dark head rose above all of them, a commanding presence, and his attire, which she knew he was self-conscious about, was as good as theirs, his dark frock coat shaping the lines of his broad chest and the long tails brushing against his solid thighs.
As she watched, Penrydd gestured toward him, and Dante produced a paper and pencil from his pocket. He leaned over an end table and began sketching, while the viscount, the knight, the earl’s son, and the baron’s heir all bent close, pointing at the paper and talking over one another.
She smiled. She’d dealt with her own reckoning as her family and friends quizzed her about Dante and what had transpired between them so far. She’d satisfied Penrydd and Sir Hewitt that Dante’s intentions were honorable, and it seemed they were prepared to accept him.
As long as he was still prepared to take her on.
Evans had made his peace with Dante already, although she didn’t know when or how.
Her stepfather had waited his turn to embrace her after she spilled out of the spa and had been clutched and exclaimed over by her mother, Gwen, and Lady Anne.
Ridiculously, Cerys had wanted to cry again when she leaned against him and that one arm closed around her.
Evans had been the model all her life for what a true man should be: quiet, strong, protective of others, and as dependable as the circuit of the sun about the earth. Dante had those same qualities.
Little wonder she was over the moon for this man.
“I once had a rival put ipecac in my punch at a party, so I’m never surprised what women will stoop to when they think it will gain them a better man,” Diana remarked.
“Lady Penrydd, I hear you are becoming quite the hostess.” Diana nodded a greeting as Gwen plopped herself down on the chaise beside Cerys.
“Miss Wade could speak of little else at dinner but how much she admired you and this abbey you run, Mrs. Evans.”
Dinner had been a grand affair, and Lady Diana had presided in style over all of it, delighting in the eclectic mix of lords and ladies, gentlefolk, and then the actors, mingling among the great.
Among them, her mother and Evans had borne the attention with their usual calm amusement.
At St. Sefin’s they were accustomed to hosting a duchess’s party with a set of vicar’s daughters at one table, the curious commonfolk passing through town at another, and always, in the spirit with which her mother and Gwen had founded the place, any seeker in need of aid.
“It is more of a guesthouse now, with the medieval elements as an attraction,” Dovey said comfortably. “We’ve a hoard of treasures from the priory days. Cerys found them when she was younger.”
“I shall have to visit,” Lady Diana said.
“Perhaps if you are married from there, Cerys, I will come. And Lady Penrydd, I am glad you wrote to tell me to watch out for your young friend, when you knew Dorsey’s Players were coming to Cheltenham.
I told Andover we must look for a way to be of service, and he did.
Miss Evans has brought a note of elegance to our house, even if Andover did go overboard in bringing all of the company here, so we would not seem to be favoring Miss Evans in particular. ”
“It was very kind in you, milady.” Gwen settled comfortably against the chaise, and Cerys leaned against them both.
Two women who had held her up all her life.
“I didn’t know if you’d recall our meeting in Malmesbury years ago, when you were staying with Andover’s sister, Lady Catherine.
It was bold to ask a favor, I know, and I never expected him to offer lodgings.
But he says the place is too quiet with Lady Andover and the children staying with her parents for the summer. ”
“We had decent enough lodgings in Coffee House Yard,” Cerys said.
“It was only that our theater burnt down. Someone didn’t keep the candles trimmed, we suppose.
And it seems you all came because Bathsheba wrote you that I was publicly misbehaving with Dante?
Rather forward of her, considering she didn’t know you.
And you might have trusted me not to lose my good sense.
You are the ones who drilled it into me. ”
“Cerys, pwt, no woman shows sense when she falls in love. But we were coming anyway,” Gwen said.
“I read that Dr. Edward Jenner has established a clinic for inoculations against smallpox, and so I brought the babanod. Anne came to investigate for her own twins, and Dovey will bring your brothers and sisters if my children take it well.”
“Oh.” Cerys knew that Gwen’s mother, long ago, had died of fever, along with her infant son.
Gwen and Dovey had nursed plenty of sufferers at St. Sefin’s, those who survived disease, and those who did not.
Gwen would be among the first to inoculate her children if she thought there were any way to protect them.
“That explains why there is a child at the piano with Lady Vaughn.” Diana sniffed, clearly doubtful about having a young girl mingle with adults.
“That is Arwen, sitting beside Anne. Edwin and Dafydd are upstairs in Andover’s nursery, which he has kindly provided for us.
We won’t impose on you long,” Gwen promised.
“Parliament is still in session, and Penrydd has found arguing bills a great hobby of his. Sir Hew has several building projects underway in Newport.” She nudged Cerys with her shoulder.
“How clever of you to bring an architect into the family, chick. No doubt they will have Mr. Manelli in Newport soon, building for them.”
“He’ll enjoy it. He is looking for opportunities, and he will relish the challenge.”
Her heart still clenched, like a small hedgehog curled in fear.
She’d confessed to the man that she loved him.
He’d kicked down a door for her, then held her in his arms as if he meant to never release her.
But all day, with her friends and family about, they’d barely spoken.
What if Bathsheba had made him see something he hadn’t before—good reason that an ambitious man oughtn’t give his heart to an actress?
“He must love a challenge, if he means to take on you.” Her mother ran a hand over Cerys’s hair, tightly confined in a style that Gwen’s lady’s maid had wanted to try. “Lady Diana makes an excellent suggestion. You can bring him to St. Sefin’s and be married from there.”
Cerys clutched the skirts of her muslin evening gown, a delicate white embroidered with tiny lilacs. A new apprehension, or rather the old one, pricked at her heart again. “Will they scold me for leaving?”
Her whole body was tense. She had seen her mother only once or twice in the last two years, and she had not returned to St. Sefin’s in that time. She had abandoned them to take to the stage and try to make something of herself, and what had she accomplished, after all?
Besides find Dante. Her love and her future. She would never have crossed his path had she stayed in Newport.
“It was selfish of me,” she said, determined to have the whole of it out. “I don’t know if I would forgive me, in their place.”