Rules for Being a Mistress Page 8

  Benedict looked at him incredulously. Serena was right to worry about her cousin, he reflected. The young man seemed to have learned nothing from the fiasco with his opera dancer.

  “She has the face of an angel,” Ludham sighed blissfully.

  “Yes, indeed,” Lady Dalrymple agreed warmly. “Millicent is admired wherever she goes, and, of course, she has twenty thousand pounds…or so my Lord Dalrymple tells me,” she hastily added. “I never concern myself with money, you understand. Nor does Millie, not like some young ladies who must scrape as they can, and calculate as they go. I am but a bird-witted female, my lord, and I don’t pretend to be otherwise.”

  “Excuse me,” said Benedict, abruptly, unable to bear any more machinations that were, at least to him, transparent. “I must pay my respects to Lady Serena.”

  “What a rude man he is!” cried Lady Dalrymple as he strode off. “He did not even ask Millicent to dance.”

  Lord Ludham mumbled some excuse about paying his respects to Lady Serena as well, and scampered off. Lady Dalrymple sighed. Sometimes, even though one did all one can do, things did not turn out as one had hoped. “It will have to be Fitzwilliam, after all,” she said, raising her lorgnette.

  “I do not like the Church,” said Millicent. “And he smells bad. I want to be a countess.”

  “If Lord Matlock and his two sons should die, you will be,” said her mama. “One never knows. Ah, Mr. Fitzwilliam! Poor Millicent has been longing to see you this age!”

  “I daresay Lady Dalrymple thought I was talking about her daughter,” Ludham said when he had caught up with Benedict. “But, really, I was talking of Miss Vaughn.”

  “I had guessed as much,” Benedict said politely. “From what I can tell, your lordship speaks of nothing and no one else.”

  Ludham took this for an invitation to expand on his favorite subject. “The first time I ever saw Miss Vaughn was in the rain. Naturally, I offered her my umbrella. I told her she was like Venus washed ashore, but I daresay she did not understand me. She told me to go away.”

  As Lady Serena regally inclined her head to him, Benedict could not help but notice how black her hair was, the same improbable black as his own. Her beautiful face was painted, too. Her maid was such an artist that it was only detectable in the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth, but, now that he was looking for it, he noticed it. As ever, she was elegantly and simply dressed, neither addicted to the latest fashions nor aloof to them. While the other unmarried women seemed to be coming out of their clothes, Serena’s neckline showed only a modest hint of bosom.

  “I see you have met my foolish cousin, Sir Benedict,” Serena said. “Now, Felix, you must not rattle on about the beautiful Miss Vaughn. You will give the unfortunate young lady a reputation before she ever enters society. Ah, Lady Matlock!”

  “Serena!” Lady Matlock sailed through the crowd, which parted around her and her daughter like the Red Sea in deference to her exalted rank. The ladies kissed the air around each other’s faces. “You remember Rose, of course.”

  Rose was trying to hide behind her mother, but the countess pushed her forward. Obviously uncomfortable in her low-cut gown of dampened muslin, she tried to cover herself with her lace fan, but her mama snatched it away, and all she could do was toy nervously with the pearls at her throat.

  Benedict suppressed his burning desire to take off his coat and wrap the half-naked child up in it. He had once been the guardian of a much younger sister. Not in a hundred years would he have permitted Miss Juliet Wayborn to make such a spectacle of herself. Lady Matlock would be fortunate if her daughter did not contract pneumonia, rather than a husband.

  Lady Matlock herself was dressed warmly in a garnet-colored velvet gown and a massive brown wig. Numerous chains of gold hung from the precipice of her bosom, twisted together in a hopeless tangle. “Do you dance, Ludham?” she demanded, attacking that gentleman first, by order of precedence.

  “I do dance, Lady Matlock,” he answered. “And if I could ever be introduced to Miss Vaughn, what’s more, I would dance!”

  “Miss Vaughn?” cried Rose eagerly. “Is she here, my lord? I would so like to meet her! Indeed, I have heard so much about her from Lord Westlands that I feel I know her already.”

  “Does this Lord Westlands know Miss Vaughn?” Lord Ludham demanded jealously.

  “He is her cousin,” replied Rose. “They have known each other all their lives.”

  “Is he here? Can he not introduce me?”

  “He is back in London now, I believe,” replied Rose. “But we need not apply to him. Here is another of the lady’s cousins. Surely, Sir Benedict can introduce us.”

  “I, Lady Rose?” Benedict protested. “I never heard of the Vaughns.”

  Rose looked scandalized. “You deny them because they are Irish? That is very bad of you, Sir Benedict! In any case, Lady Agatha Vaughn is not Irish. She is Lord Wayborn’s elder sister, and your cousin.”

  “I’ve never been introduced to Lady Agatha,” said Benedict. “The Derbyshire Wayborns have little to do with humble Surrey Wayborns like myself. I assure you, I had no idea of these ladies being related to me in any way.”

  Serena laughed behind her fan. “I should have thought that all the Wayborns, both Derbyshire and Surrey, were in St. George’s Church when Miss Juliet Wayborn married the Duke of Auckland.”

  Benedict smiled. “Lord Wayborn even disputed my right to walk my sister down the aisle. He wished to do it himself. There were no Vaughns in evidence, however.”

  “There was a rift between brother and sister some years ago,” said Rose. “Westlands did not know all the particulars, but he said that Lady Agatha and her daughters must suffer for it all their lives. His father’s resentment, once aroused, is implacable. It’s up to you to help them, Sir Benedict.”

  Benedict lifted his brows. “I?”

  “Yes! You are her nearest male relative, so you must help her. And, as Lady Agatha is too sick to come to you, you must go to her. It is not fair that Miss Vaughn can never go anywhere simply because her mother is ill.”

  “Lady Rose is perfectly right,” said Ludham. “You must bring her to balls, Sir Benedict, so that I can dance with her.”

  “They live at Number Nine, Upper Camden Place,” Rose said eagerly. “I wanted to visit them myself, but Mama said I may not.”

  “That is right across the park from me,” Benedict remarked in surprise.

  “Then you have no excuse not to visit!” said Rose.

  Lady Matlock changed the subject abruptly. “It was so very kind of you, Sir Benedict, to rescue my daughter when she was stranded. Sir Benedict happened to be passing by when Rose’s carriage got stuck in the mud,” she explained to Serena, who showed an expression of polite inquiry. “It was fate, I am persuaded. I have been urging Rose to dance. Everyone has asked her, but she says she will only dance with you, Sir Benedict. You are her hero.”

  The gentleman did not seize the hint, but Lady Matlock persevered. “It would be very strange indeed if my daughter did not fancy herself in love with you, Sir Benedict. You are her knight in shining armor. Pray, for the sake of my nerves, take her away and dance with her. She will sulk all night if you do not ask her.”

  “Thank you, my lady,” he said, “but I have hopes of soliciting Lady Serena for the first cotillion, and I am engaged to Miss Carteret for the second.”

  Serena declined to rescue him, however.

  “Thank you, Sir Benedict, but I do not mean to dance,” she said firmly. “As you can see, my skirts are too long.”

  “I can pin up your demi-train for you, Lady Serena,” Rose said quickly.

  Lady Serena demurred. “Pins in my lavender crepe? I think not. No; dancing is an amusement for young ladies, I think.”

  “You are still young, my lady,” cried Rose. “Indeed, you look much younger than you are! No one would ever guess you were thirty!”

  “Thank you, child,” Serena said coldly. “What a pretty compl
iment.”

  “The set is forming, Sir Benedict,” Lady Matlock said threateningly.

  “Lady Serena is not dancing,” said Benedict. “I am pledged to keep her company.”

  “I will sit with Serena for the first dance,” Ludham said generously. “What’s more, I will dance the second with Lady Rose, if I may.”

  “Certainly, my lord!” cried Lady Matlock in triumph. “Hurry! The set is forming.”

  “Mother, please!” cried Rose, clearly horrified by the prospect of standing up with the baronet. “He’s old enough to be my father, for heaven’s sake.”

  Lady Matlock stabbed her daughter in the back with the sticks of her fan. “Thank the gentleman for asking you,” she insisted, quite forgetting that Benedict had done no such thing.

  “I thank you, sir,” said Lady Rose, regarding Benedict with revulsion.

  “Indeed, I am in your debt, Lady Rose,” he replied.

  “Hurry, my dears. The set is formed! The musicians are tuning up!”

  Exhausted, Lady Matlock sat down to fan herself. “Thank heavens there are only two cotillions performed in an evening,” she confided to Serena. “If this new waltzing catches on, there will be so many partners to get.”

  “I don’t like this Sir Benedict sniffing around you, Serena,” Ludham said darkly.

  Serena lit up. “Felix! Are you jealous?”

  His face turned red. “Don’t be daft! He’s probably a fortune hunter, that’s all. We’re cousins, and we have to look out for one another.”

  “Are you implying that a man can’t find me attractive?” she snapped.

  “No, of course not,” he said. “Just be careful, that’s all.”

  “I’m not the one who needs to be careful,” she said, still angry.

  Rose Fitzwilliam did not believe in mincing her words. “I am not in love with you, sir,” she told Benedict, on the very first occasion when the dance brought them close enough for such an intimate disclosure.

  “How very kind of you to put me on my guard,” he answered as they parted.

  “If you ask me to marry you, I shall kill myself,” was her next tragic communication.

  “You mean to flatter me, I see.”

  “You are old enough to be my father!” she snapped, nettled by his cool reply.

  “Fortunately, however, I am no such thing,” he said pleasantly.

  “I wish you were my father! Then you could not ask me to marry you!”

  “No,” he agreed, “but I could take away your pin money, and you wouldn’t like that.”

  Tears pricked her eyes. “I think you are hateful and odious,” she declared. “I wish you had left me in the mud! I was happier then!”

  At the end of this delightful exercise, Benedict conducted his partner back to her mama, and the tea interval was announced. Lady Matlock claimed the right to leave the ballroom first, before the crush of the crowd, but Lady Dalrymple and her daughter were not far behind her to the first table.

  Lord Ludham had gone to the card room. Lady Dalrymple took advantage of the earl’s absence to warn Serena that Miss Vaughn had designs on him.

  “I do not believe she is a fortune hunter!” Rose hotly declared. “She may be poor, and she may wish to marry, but that does not make her a fortune hunter.”

  Lady Dalrymple had not expected to find Miss Vaughn so well defended. “How innocent you are, my dear,” she murmured. “You will understand when you are older.”

  “But not everyone can afford to marry for love,” Benedict pointed out, annoyed by the woman’s self-righteousness. “In our society, a poor woman can only better herself through marriage. What would you have poor women do, Lady Dalrymple? Starve?”

  Lady Dalrymple glared at him. “In our society, Sir Benedict? You make us sound like savages! Is there anything you like about England? Is there anything you would not change?”

  Benedict saw that he had spoken too seriously for his company. He smiled ruefully. “The weather, my lady. I would not change good English weather for the world.”

  Puzzled silence. No one seemed to realize the gentleman was making a joke.

  Nothing could prevail on Benedict to stand up with anyone else for the second cotillion, and he spent the last half hour of the ball pleasantly engaged in conversation with Lady Serena while Ludham danced with Lady Rose.

  “Now that would be an equal match,” said Benedict.

  “She is absurdly young,” said Serena. “But, I daresay, so is Miss Vaughn!”

  “You should encourage him to return to London,” Benedict suggested. “He would soon forget Miss Vaughn in London, I am persuaded.”

  Serena sighed. “He cannot go to London, Sir Benedict. They have published the letters! The entire body of criminal correspondence between that wretched Pamela and her Frenchman! I have not seen it, of course, but I understand it is perfectly unexpurgated.”

  “Ah,” said Benedict.

  “So embarrassing for poor Felix. Besides which, London is full of opera dancers! At least I can keep my eye on him here in Bath. In London…!”

  “Quite,” said Benedict.

  “It would be just like Felix to rush headlong into another disastrous marriage. He is so susceptible to a pretty face, and so blind to everything else. I don’t wish Miss Vaughn ill, of course, but…” She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “It would be as much a mistake for her as for him.”

  “Someone should explain to Miss Vaughn the evils of an unequal marriage.”

  “I say! That’s a good idea. As her cousin, Sir Benedict, you must be able to exert some influence over her. You can see I have no influence over my cousin,” she added ruefully, “but he is a man. Any assistance you can offer me in this matter would be most gratefully received,” she added persuasively.

  “I will call on Lady Agatha tomorrow,” he promised. “And then, I would like to call on you, if I may, Serena. Would one o’clock be convenient for a private interview?”

  “A private interview to discuss Felix and Miss Vaughn?”

  “You must know I am going to make you an offer of marriage,” he said impatiently.

  She smiled. “I believe you just did, Sir Benedict!”

  The ball ended punctually at eleven o’clock, and the doors of the ballroom were thrown open to admit the chairmen, who strode right into the ballroom with their sedan chairs. Owing to the steepness of Bath’s streets, carriages were rarely used.

  Benedict commandeered a chair for Lady Serena, bade her good night, then walked alone up to Beechen Cliff. He sat down on the damp ground, took out his cheroot case, and lit up.

  Chapter 6

  The big brass numeral on Lady Agatha’s front door looked like a six. The nail at the top had come loose, allowing the number to swing into the upside down position. As he waited for the servant to answer the bell, Benedict flicked it with his finger. The number spun around, still attached by a single brass nail at the bottom. This sort of thing could lead to postal errors, he thought with annoyance. These people might be getting his mail, and vice versa.

  “I have been ringing the bell for some time,” Benedict said coldly when, at last, the door was opened by a massive, gray-haired manservant dressed in rusty black. He looked seedy and he smelled of whiskey. He looked at Benedict in surprise. Then a twinkle appeared in his eye.

  “Ah, sure, didn’t we disconnect that bell?” he said in a careless Irish drawl. “And very noisy it was, too. I was just going out to post a letter for Herself, or I’d never have known you were here at all, at all.”

  An odd feeling came over Benedict as he stepped into the hall. The place seemed familiar to him, even though he was certain he had never been here before.

  “You really should do something about the number on your door,” he said, taking out his card. “It has come loose at the top. It looks like a six.”

  “So it does,” the Irishman said agreeably. He winked at Benedict.

  Benedict glared at him. “Will you kindly take my card up to Lady Agath
a.”

  Benedict waited in the hall while the man went up, chuckling to himself. Doors opened and closed on the floor above in a flurry of activity, then the house fell silent, and the manservant returned, still laughing. “She’ll be down in a minute,” he said. “She’s after putting on her best dress for you, but you didn’t hear that from me.”

  He went out by the front door, not the usual way for servants to come and go, but this, evidently, was an unusual household.

  Presently, a slim young woman came down the stairs. Her best dress was a cream-colored cambric striped with blue. It looked unfortunately like mattress ticking. As she stopped on the landing, the morning sun shot through the fanlight over the door and fell directly on her.

  “You!” he said, thunderstruck.

  She stared back at him. Her least favorite person looked none the worse for his adventure in the park. In fact, the man was infuriatingly perfect. His hair was so perfect it looked like carved ebony. His patrician face might have been carved of marble. His light gray eyes were hard and brilliant. And his clothes were gorgeously tailored. He looked lean and fit. His shoes were polished to a high sheen. He didn’t look seedy at all. He looked dead aristocratic.

  Fleecing him was going to be a delight and a pleasure.

  “You yourself!” she snapped. “You’ve a bloody cheek showing your face here after what you did to me. If my brothers were here to defend me, you’d be a dead man.”

  “My God, it is you,” Benedict said, as if she had not said a word. “You look different. Your hair—You’ve changed your hair.”

  Her hands went to her hair. She had braided it tightly and pinned it up as she always did. She thought it looked nice. “What about my hair?” she demanded.

  “It looked orange in the candlelight,” he said. “I thought—”

  “Oh, you thought I was a redhead,” she murmured. “That explains it.”

  She had been wondering why he didn’t ask Mrs. Price for a blond girl.

  Benedict, meanwhile, had pieced it all together. Obviously, he had come to the wrong house on the night he arrived in Bath. Obviously he had behaved very badly. Of course, she had overreacted to his bad behavior, but there was no denying that he had behaved very badly indeed. He was mortified. It was one thing to try to seduce one’s own housekeeper, and quite another to try to seduce someone else’s. He could only hope that Miss Cosy had not reported his faux pas to her employer. A scandal like that could ruin his reputation.