Rules for Being a Mistress Read online

  “But what’s Eton?” she insisted, snatching up a cushion to cover herself. “What the hell kind of a place is it?”

  “Eton,” he said gravely, “is where great men send their sons to be educated.”

  “You learned that at school?” she cried, appalled.

  “We of Eton carry on a tradition of excellence going back for centuries,” he explained.

  He laughed. He was a young man when he laughed.

  Nora took one look at her young lady’s flushed face and sparkling eyes. “He’s done for you then,” she said grimly.

  “You have a dirty mind, Nora Murphy,” she said primly, walking up the stairs with her head held high.

  “Where’s the money, then?” Nora demanded. “If it’s only reading you are?”

  Cosima paused on the stairs. She had forgotten to get her three shillings.

  “Go boil your head, Nora,” she said.

  The next morning Pickering pretended he had seen and heard nothing the night before. The new day was a tabula rasa as far as he was concerned. He counted his blessings that the mysterious and rather noisy Mr. Cherry had not been invited to stay on as a guest.

  Benedict ate his breakfast with a hearty appetite. He read his newspapers and correspondence as usual. He bathed and dressed, and was on the verge of leaving the house when a Dr. Grantham called.

  White-haired and handsome, Dr. Grantham was a society physician. Most of his patients were females, and his suave and sympathetic air inspired the fair sex to confide their most delicate issues to him. To Benedict he looked like the typical sort of leech that makes most of his money catering to rich females who fancy themselves nervous.

  Dr. Grantham came straight to the point. He wanted Sir Benedict to commit Lady Agatha Vaughn to the Royal Mineral Water Hospital for treatment. As Lady Agatha refused to go, and “the daughter”—presumably Miss Vaughn—refused to make her ladyship go, Dr. Grantham had no choice but to apply to a higher power. He hoped that Sir Benedict Wayborn might use his natural authority over the ladies to bring them into compliance.

  Benedict looked at him in amazement. “I have no such authority, I assure you.”

  The doctor’s amazement was equal. “Are you not a relative, Sir Benedict?”

  “I am very distant cousin, Dr. Grantham,” Benedict replied.

  The doctor smiled again. “Excellent! If you will just sign these papers, I will be able to remove Lady Agatha to the hospital at once.”

  “I’m not signing anything,” said Benedict. “If Lady Agatha doesn’t want to go to the hospital, I certainly will not make her.”

  “But you must understand, Sir Benedict. Her ladyship is in no condition to make these decisions. Her wits are fragile. She is actually afraid of the hospital—a quite irrational fear, I assure you! As for Miss Vaughn…”

  “What about Miss Vaughn?” Benedict said sharply.

  “I’m afraid the young lady becomes dangerously excited on the subject. I sometimes think Miss Vaughn would benefit from a few months of quiet serenity in my private asylum in Wiltshire.” He shrugged. “But, then, she is half-Irish, and breeding will tell.”

  Benedict decided he did not like Dr. Grantham. “Lady Agatha is frail, to be sure,” he conceded. “But that doesn’t mean she is incompetent.”

  “All women are incompetent,” said the doctor. “We men must think for them. If there were a man in the picture, Lady Agatha would be hospitalized. And, then, there is the matter of my fee,” he went on with a delicate cough. “I can not be expected to treat Lady Agatha indefinitely without being paid.”

  Benedict sighed. What was the girl doing with the money he had given her?

  “Send me the bill,” he said. “It will be your final bill.”

  Dr. Grantham gaped at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I believe my relative should be in the care of a specialist,” Benedict said tactfully. “In any case, I would like a second opinion.”

  The doctor seemed thunderstruck. “Second opinion! I never heard of such a thing.”

  He went off in a huff.

  Later in the day, when Benedict returned home, Pickering informed him that a Miss Vaughn had called while he was out. Pickering did not approve of young ladies who called on single gentlemen. It was not respectable, in his opinion. Benedict was not interested in his opinion. He walked through the park to Lady Agatha’s house.

  Cosima was furious with him. She had hired Dr. Grantham back, and she made it plain that Sir Benedict’s interference was unwelcome.

  “The man is a quack,” he said angrily. “Your mother needs a real physician, not some spa practitioner. Dr. Grantham is a charlatan.”

  “Dr. Grantham,” Cosima replied angrily, “is the best doctor in Bath. All the high-born ladies use him. I want my mother to have the best. And, anyway, it’s none of your business. She’s my mother, and I will decide what is best for her. You stay out of it!” She hissed and spluttered at him like an angry house cat. “I’m perfectly capable of looking after my mother!”

  “Of course,” he said stiffly. “But have you considered hiring a private nurse?”

  Cosima would have loved to hire a nurse to help her mother, but Lady Agatha did not like strangers looking at her raddled face. They made Lady Agatha feel freakish and ugly. But Cosima could not betray her mother by revealing these weaknesses to him. Instead, she shouted at Benedict, “I’m perfectly capable of looking after my own mother!”

  “You are quite right,” he said coldly. “I was high-handed. Please excuse my interference. I was only trying to help.”

  “I don’t need your help,” she said fiercely and showed him the door.

  “I don’t suppose you are going to the cotillion tonight?” he said, lingering in the doorway.

  “No, and I don’t want to,” she retorted.

  “I shall be attending,” he said. “But I shall be home at eleven-thirty.”

  “Good for you,” she replied coldly, slamming the door in his face.

  She was late. It was well after midnight when he looked up from his book and said, “Good evening, Miss Cherry.”

  She looked angry and flustered. “I almost didn’t come,” she said, flopping down on the sofa and pulling his boots off to expose her pretty white feet.

  “I’m sorry,” he began. “The doctor came to me—”

  She interrupted. “But then I thought: that’s between you and Miss Vaughn. It’s nothing to do with ourselves.”

  “Quite,” he said, closing his book.

  She looked at him expectantly. He must not have thought she was coming, for he was again in his nightshirt and dressing gown. He looked like some pagan prince drawn starkly in black and white. A heat warmer than brandy coursed through her veins as she thought of what he had done to her the night before. As angry as she had been with him for interfering with the doctor, she had come here because she wanted him to do it again.

  “Would you like me to read to you?” she asked when he did not attack her immediately.

  “No,” he said. He just sat in his chair and looked at her, kingly and remote. “I have been thinking about you all day, Miss Cherry,” he said finally.

  Her breasts began to tingle. “You have?”

  “This isn’t exactly how I pictured you, however,” he said dryly.

  She frowned.

  “When I am with a woman, I like her to look like a woman. I lent you those clothes so that you could slip past the constable, but, I think, while you are here, we must institute a sort of dress code. You left your clothes on the floor of my closet the other night. Go into the bedroom and put them on. If you are wearing drawers, remove them.”

  “Who died and made you king?” she grumbled, but it was no good. She was tingling all over and they both knew it.

  “Do as you’re told,” he said imperiously, “and I might be nice to you.”

  “Brute,” she said. “That’s blackmail.”

  “Fair play, madam,” he corrected her. “Off you go.”
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  She scooted to the door, her cheeks pink.

  Chapter 12

  “I do hope my pianoforte is fast enough for you, Miss Vaughn,” Lady Serena said archly. Much struck by her ladyship’s wit, Lady Dalrymple and her daughter tittered appreciatively. Benedict, who had the honor of aiding Serena in fleecing her good friends, studied his cards and pretended not to hear.

  At the next card table, Mr. Freddie Carteret whispered to Lady Matlock, “It would have to be very fast indeed to be fast enough for Miss Vaughn, from what I hear.”

  Lady Rose glowered at him silently.

  “What are trumps?” asked Roger Fitzwilliam, wondering why his hostess had placed him at a table with the only two women in the room whom he could not possibly marry.

  Serena had not invited Mr. Fitzwilliam. He had arrived unexpectedly with his sister-in-law, spoiling Serena’s plan of having two card tables, with Miss Vaughn odd man out. To Serena’s annoyance, Lord Ludham had given up his seat to the clergyman. Lord Ludham was drooling over Miss Vaughn in the alcove where the pianoforte had been set up. And, despite all the speaking glances she had cast to Sir Benedict, the baronet had done nothing about it. Since their little tiff at the lecture on Wednesday, he seemed determined to be unhelpful.

  Cosima answered her hostess’s comment seriously.

  “I like the Broadwood, my lady,” she called back to Serena from the alcove. “But I like the Clementi better. It takes a lighter touch, and the tone is brighter, I’m thinking. The Broadwood is more of a man’s instrument. You have to pound it with all your might to get anywhere, and then it mumbles at you. The Clementi is nice and crisp.”

  Mr. Roger Fitzwilliam turned pale. “Did she say it was a man’s instrument?” he gasped.

  “She’s talking about the tone of the piano, Uncle,” Rose snapped.

  “Try the prestissimo, Miss Vaughn,” Serena invited. “I got it especially for you.”

  “I’ve been admiring it,” Cosima replied. It was difficult to concentrate on the music, however, with Lord Ludham breathing down her neck. She began to play the second movement of the concerto. The painful stops and starts as she wrestled with the unfamiliar composition were as difficult to listen to as Serena could have wished.

  “Holy fly!” said Miss Vaughn, breaking off. “Who does this Beethoven fellow think he is? I’ll need a month of bed rest after this.”

  “It is a poor musician, Miss Vaughn,” said Serena, “who blames the composer.”

  “I think it’s your pianoforte, Serena,” said Lord Ludham.

  “I’m very lazy, I’m afraid,” said Miss Vaughn. “I don’t like to work this hard. The Clementi, now, is light as a feather. Playing it is all but effortless.”

  Lord Ludham and Miss Vaughn began to speak intimately, and Serena could no longer follow the conversation. Felix, Serena noted with exasperation, did not seem to notice that Miss Vaughn was wearing last year’s model in a very unattractive shade of green.

  “Your cousin has made another conquest,” Lady Dalrymple trilled at Sir Benedict. “Have you heard the rumor about her and Kellynch? I, for one, don’t believe it.”

  Benedict’s lip curled. “Could your ladyship mean the rumor you started? I am glad you do not believe your own malicious falsehoods.”

  Lady Dalrymple blinked her kohl-blackened eyelids rapidly. “You are in love with her, I see. Naturally, you defend her.”

  “You are nonsensical,” said Benedict. “I am too old for such foolishness, I assure you.”

  “They say there’s no fool like an old fool,” Lady Dalrymple said maliciously. “You men all fall like ninepins for a pretty face! When I think of how she used poor Freddie’s finer feelings against him—! But he is much better off where he is now.”

  At the moment, her youngest son seemed to be lodged in the bosom of Lady Matlock.

  “Theirs will be a long and happy marriage,” the proud mama predicted. “For she is rich and he is handsome.”

  “Lord Matlock might object to the marriage,” Benedict said dryly, as Freddie Carteret fawned over Lady Matlock at the next table.

  “Object to the marriage!” Lady Dalrymple cried indignantly. “No, indeed. After her disgraceful behavior in London, Lady Rose is lucky to get anyone.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Benedict. “It is the daughter who is to be the bride.”

  Lady Dalrymple giggled. “Oh, Sir Benedict! What a rattle you are! Lady Rose is the bride. Whom did you think I meant? Of course,” she confided, leaning closer in a blatant attempt to look at the gentleman’s cards, “there is a great deal left to be done. Old Matlock will insist on a marriage settlement.” She sighed heavily. “Who knows how many fine romances have been destroyed by these greedy lawyers?”

  “My trick, I think,” said Lady Serena, sweeping up the cards.

  “Lord Ludham! Do come and advise poor Millicent, or we shall all be ruined!”

  “It is not my fault we are losing, Mama!” Millicent said indignantly.

  “Do you want him to spend all evening with Miss Vaughn?” Lady Dalrymple hissed back. “You must use your head, Millie!”

  Lord Ludham pleaded that he had no skill at whist. He had no skill at music either, as Serena dryly observed, but that did not keep him from advising Miss Vaughn.

  “If I were advising Miss Vaughn,” Miss Carteret said viciously, “I would tell her to cut her hair.” Her own mousy locks had been artfully clipped into a fringe that circled her entire head, leaving a towering topknot of looping braids in the middle.

  “And if I were advising her,” said Lady Dalrymple, “I would tell her to stay away from libertines like the Duke of Kellynch. Dear Serena, did I tell you that, while we were obliged to put up at Castle Argent, His Grace visited Miss Vaughn quite five times? He even sent her grapes and nectarines from his succession houses. Nectarines!”

  “If poor Miss Vaughn has caught the eyes of James Kellynch, then she is a lost woman indeed.” Serena clucked her tongue sadly. “But, perhaps, things are different amongst the Irish savages, and we must not judge them by our English standards of conduct.”

  “Is it any wonder she is so vain,” Millicent sniffed, “when great men make such fools of themselves for her. His Grace, and now poor Lord Ludham.”

  “And even our Sir Benedict is not immune to her charms,” said Lady Dalrymple. “Poor Sir Benedict. She will never look at you when she has an earl on her hook.”

  It was empty, offhand malice. Benedict was determined not to show that Lady Dalrymple had drawn blood.

  “I think we must acquit her of vanity, Miss Carteret,” said Serena. “If she were vain, she would take more care of her appearance. One would think she doesn’t even own a mirror!”

  Benedict flinched at this well-deserved criticism. Miss Vaughn’s dress was a green disaster. Her hair, as usual, was slipping its pins. It irritated him that she had not spent a farthing of the thousand pounds he had given her on herself.

  “Are we playing cards, ladies?” he growled.

  The ladies ignored him.

  “She has no taste,” Millicent said, preening. Her own gown was so embellished with embroidered ribbons, braid, swags, buttons, and rosettes that one could barely discern that there was a gown of puce satin underneath it all. She had taken to wearing the new busk as well and, forced apart by this odd device, her breasts jutted to the east and to the west, respectively.

  “It appears she is vain enough to aspire to become a countess,” said Lady Dalrymple, pausing to cram a cream puff into her greedy wet mouth. “Poor Ludham! After all he endured with that opera girl! But at least Pamela was English! My dear Serena, how will you bear the humiliation of presenting your Irish cousin to the Queen? And Lady Ludham will outrank you, too!” she added gleefully.

  “I am not worried about Felix in the least,” Serena said coldly.

  “Oh, Miss Vaughn, do play us one of your Irish songs,” Lady Dalrymple called to the musician. “Serena has not yet had the pleasure of hearing you sing.”


  “Yes, do sing, Miss Vaughn,” cried Lady Matlock. “Something authentic.”

  Cosima ran her fingers over the keys and, after a few moments, chose a completely inappropriate song to sing.

  “Wherever I’m going, and all the day long,

  At home and abroad or alone in a throng,

  I find that my passion’s so lively and strong,

  That your name when I’m silent still runs in my song.

  “Since the first time I saw you, I take no repose.

  I sleep all the day to forget half my woes;

  So strong is the flame in my bosom that glows,

  By St. Patrick, I fear it will burn through my clothes!

  “By my soul, I’m afraid I shall die in my grave

  Unless you comply and poor Phelim save;

  Then grant the petition your lover doth crave,

  Who never was free till you made him your slave.”

  She had been quite correct in saying that her voice was not big enough to fill a concert hall, but it was a fine, creamy contralto, and it filled the drawing-room. The lyrics, however, were a little too coarse for the drawing-room. To the refined English ears of her audience, it sounded quite bawdy. Benedict was furious. She must have known dozens of perfectly lovely Irish songs, but, perversely, she had chosen this one.

  “That’s not Thomas Moore,” said Lady Serena, shocked.

  Cosima laughed. “It is not. ’Tis a bold song, perhaps, but I like it. I first heard it sung in The Brave Irishman by Mr. Sheridan in the Smock Alley Theater in Dublin. Of course, it’s meant to be sung by a man.”

  Lady Matlock’s voice suddenly rose from the next table. “I wish you had a harp, Serena. I long to hear Miss Vaughn play the harp. There’s something so authentic about an Irish girl playing an Irish harp, don’t you agree, Mr. Carteret?”

  “Oh, Miss Vaughn doesn’t play the harp,” Millicent sniffed. “We were with her in Ireland three months. She played the piano every day—very badly, too! But she never played the harp. I don’t recall even seeing a harp in the music room.”