“I should warn you not to send a squeamish young woman. My master’s right arm was amputated some years ago. He doesn’t like people to feel sorry for him, of course, but an expression of shock and horror would scarcely bolster his confidence. Other than that, he is a perfectly healthy specimen, I assure you. A little shy, perhaps.”
“Shy!”
Pickering sighed. “I’ll be frank with you, Mrs. Price. Sir Benedict’s loins are in a dreadful state. If my master doesn’t bed a woman soon, I fear he might explode. Of course, it’s my fault completely. For years, I have drawn his baths, darned his stockings, boiled his shirts, pressed his suits, and starched his collars, but I never once thought to get him a woman.”
“You were busy,” she said charitably. “Stockings don’t darn themselves, you know.”
“How soon can you get the girl?” he asked eagerly.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said the imposter. “In the meantime, I understand that ice baths can be most efficacious in cooling an overheated body. Or you could try putting saltpeter in his food. They use it in the Army when the men get a little too randy for their own good.”
Cosy left the interview with a feeling of accomplishment. As she went down the front steps, she saw a veiled woman coming up the street. Her suspicion that this was the real Mrs. Price was borne out almost at once as the other woman walked up to the gate.
The two veiled ladies looked at each other angrily.
“Mrs. Price?” Cosy said coldly and imperiously.
“Who wants to know?”
Cosy threw back her veil. Her green eyes glittered dangerously. “I am Lady Wayborn,” she said with cool dignity. “If you ever come near my husband again, I will tear out your liver and feed it to my dogs. I will laugh while you die, and I will dance on your grave. Are we clear, Mrs. Price?”
The other woman gasped, sucking in her veil. “Yes, Lady Wayborn,” she said meekly.
Lady Matlock no longer lived with her husband. Having provided her lord and master with two healthy sons as well as one superfluous daughter, the countess was now free to enjoy the ill health she had always complained about. Deeply engrossed in the pursuit of Parisian actresses, Lord Matlock had offered no resistance when his lady removed to Bath.
Lady Rose, their only daughter, had been brought up in the country by a governess, then brought out in Town by an obliging aunt. The return of Rose to her mother’s bosom had forced the invalid to make a remarkable recovery, but it was very tiring to be well again. Society expected so much of one when one was well.
“Are you or are you not pregnant?” Lady Matlock snarled as she neared the end of a long, uncomfortable interview with Rose. She was no closer to understanding Lord Westlands’s odd behavior toward her daughter than she had been the day before, and her delicate nerves were completely frayed. I am too young, she raged inside, to have a grown-up daughter. “If you are increasing, he will have to marry you. We will make him marry you.”
Rose was curled up in the window seat, scornful and sullen. Her eyes were red from crying, but she was all cried out now. “I am not increasing,” she howled.
“Then you will have to marry someone else,” said her parent, exasperated. “You can’t stay here. I’m too ill.” Opening her daughter’s wardrobe, Lady Matlock began pulling out the gowns Rose’s maid had so carefully put away the day before. “And no wonder!” she exclaimed in disgust. “You will never catch a husband dressed so modest. I was practically naked when I met your father. Fardle! Fardle!”
Rose’s maid, who had been banished to the privy closet for the mother-daughter interview, reentered the room. “Yes, my lady?”
“Here is a shocking piece of intelligence for you, Fardle,” said her ladyship. “Men like looking at bosoms! Lower the bodices of the ballgowns by three inches, and the day dresses by two inches. That ought to do the trick.” She looked angrily at her daughter. “I expect you to try, Rose. For my sake. You will find little competition here. There is a Miss Vaughn that all the men are in love with, but she’s poor, and half-Irish, so I do not take their love for her seriously. Better to be rich than pretty, I always say, and you, my dear, are both!”
“I should like to meet her,” Rose said eagerly.
“Who? Miss Vaughn? What on earth for?”
“She is Lord Wayborn’s niece, Mama. That makes her Westlands’s cousin.”
“Then, for all we know, she is the reason Westlands jilted you,” snapped Lady Matlock. “Though, I daresay, if she is poor, Lord Wayborn would never approve the match.”
“Westlands did not jilt me,” Rose protested for the hundredth time. “There was never any understanding between us, Mama. We are friends, that is all.”
“Men and women cannot be friends. For one thing, their parts don’t match. Aye, me!” Exhausted by her exertions, Lady Matlock sank down into a chair.
“Couldn’t I stay here with you, Mama?” Rose begged. “I could help look after you. I could bring you your hartshorn as well as any nurse. I need not go to balls. I need not marry.”
Lady Matlock rallied. “My daughter? A nurse? No, indeed! You are the daughter of an earl. Your duty is to make us all proud, and marry well. Honestly, Rose, with this ungrateful attitude, I am tempted to marry you off to the first gentleman who asks for you!”
Rose suddenly shrieked in alarm. Kneeling up in the window seat, she pressed her nose against the glass. “Oh, no! It is Sir Benedict Wayborn! He is coming here!”
Instantly, Lady Matlock was on her feet, marshaling her forces like a general. “The nice gentleman who found you in the road and brought you home? Yes, I think he will do very nicely. Don’t just sit there, child! Go and wash your face. Put on your blue gown. Hurry!”
“No, Mama, please!” begged Rose. “He’s so old. And I am sure he does not like me.” She looked out the window again. The baronet had stopped at another door. “He has stopped two—no, three—doors down. Who lives there?”
Lady Matlock was furious. “Serena! He ought to have called on me first. She may be the daughter of an earl, but I am a countess. More to the point, he spent four hours in a closed carriage with my daughter—and I am not even acquainted with him! He has a duty to call on me first! But that is how it is.” She sniffed. “No one has any manners anymore.”
“Perhaps he will marry Serena,” Rose suggested happily. “She is quite as old as he is!”
“If not older,” said Lady Matlock, but that was only spite. Anyone who possessed a copy of the Peerage could easily discover that Lady Serena Calverstock was only thirty.
Lady Serena received Benedict graciously in her elegant drawing room. She was just emerging from mourning for her sister, Lady Redfylde, and she looked charming in a lavender gown with a jabot of black lace at her throat. Her black hair was worn in a topknot with a frisette of glossy ringlets on her brow. As a debutante, her ivory pallor, raven tresses, and cool violet eyes had made her portrait one of the most admired in the National Gallery, and she was still considered one of the handsomest women in England.
They exchanged the usual pleasantries over strong black China tea.
“What brings you to Bath, Sir Benedict?” she smiled.
“Duty, I’m afraid,” he admitted ruefully. “My brother has managed to get himself elevated to the peerage, leaving my little baronetcy quite without an heir. Suddenly, I find myself in want of a wife, Lady Serena.”
Serena inclined her head. “I saw your brother’s name in the List of Honors. Tell me, does his lordship mean to build a fort somewhere with archers on the battlements, or will he be content to live in London as a man of fashion?”
Benedict suppressed