The Chaperone's Secret Read online

  Life was hard, as she had discovered at fifteen when her parents had died within days of each other from a wretched bout of typhus. She had been dejected and lonely, and if it hadn’t been for her Aunt Marabelle and that woman’s extreme self-sacrifice in taking in a desolate, pitiable and poor niece, she could have been one of those girls, with nowhere to go but the streets of London.

  “There but for the grace of God go I,” she muttered, and it was almost an invocation. Sleep approached, creeping toward her in silence. Exhausted, she murmured a prayer for the girls and more especially for the gentleman in the gutter’s well-being, and drifted off.

  • • •

  Just a few city squares away Lord Dante Delacorte Pierson, eighth viscount of that title, awoke a couple of hours later from a dream in which his fair vision was stroking his brow and murmuring soft words of comfort. The fog of inebriation had completely worn off. He slipped out of bed and padded, naked, over to the window, pulling the heavy brocade drapes open and staring out over the rooftop of the neighboring townhome. A faint shimmer showed in the east that dawn was coming.

  His vision haunted him with longings he had never experienced before. Was it an illusion, his fleeting impression of exquisite goodness and purity, the fair Belladonna of his desires? All his life he had followed in his father’s footsteps, not seeing any chance that he would ever be able to reclaim any respect for the Pierson name. Delacorte, his country estate, was heavily mortgaged to finance his life in London. He had hated the country for that very reason, that the old home of his remembrance only held reproach for him now that he was Pierson, of a long line of Piersons who had sacked and looted the land. He felt helpless in the face of such a long history of neglect. What could one man, one generation, do to right that ancient wrong?

  But a woman such as his vision, with wisdom in her bright eyes and patience in her soothing touch, if he had her he could feel some hope of rebirth. And he wanted that renascence, that second chance. There would be something to work for in the hope of a child, a son, to carry on the old name. There would be a reason to make the name something not to be ashamed of, but to be proud of. A wife and a son would give him the incentive he needed to stay away from gambling and the bottle.

  So his first step must be finding and wooing—if she were not already married, dread thought—the fair beauty of his adoration. And yet for some reason he felt sure that the lady he had seen was not married. He knew that she would change his life forever.

  He padded back to bed and slipped under the covers. He would start immediately. It would give him some object, some way to occupy his time that would keep him from the gambling hells and drinking dens. He buried his head under the pillow against the insistent light of dawn and drifted back to sleep, contentment stealing through his exhausted body for the first time in many months.

  Three

  Pierson, with the restless energy of the newly sober, paced in the magnificent Bainbridge drawing room waiting for his friend to join him. Lady Bainbridge, clad in her usual attire of pearl gray half-mourning, sailed into the room but drew back to the doorway when she saw him.

  “My lady, please don’t leave,” Pierson said, offering her a courteous bow.

  Reluctantly the lady, gray hair stiffly waved and topped by a lacy white cap, stepped inside the door again.

  Pierson took a deep breath. The widowed marchioness had despised him for some years, believing him to be a bad influence on her son, the marquess. It was, in her opinion, that bad influence that kept her darling boy from following his mother’s, grandmother’s, and aunts’ inclination, which was that he find a wife and bear a slew of children to carry on the illustrious title of his forefathers. Never mind that that was hardly fair to Pierson, since Bainbridge had no desire to marry until he decided on his own. The ladies had decided Pierson was in the wrong and that was that. His despicable reputation gave them all the reason they needed, and many an afternoon tea was spent commiserating with the unfortunate widow over her son’s terrible judgment where friends were concerned.

  Pierson had been apprised of all of this by Bainbridge himself, who had found it all too deliciously diverting. In essence, he did exactly as he pleased about his marital plans—that being nothing—and his friend received all of the blame for his inaction. The viscount had not minded so much before, but now he had a desire to mend his ways and that prolific gossip and entrenched society matron, Lady Bainbridge, was the best place to start. If he could win her approval he was on his way back to respectability. He had no illusions that it would be an effortless climb from rascality to respectability. “My lady, how are you on this lively . . . er, lovely spring day?” He tapped his fingers against his thigh nervously.

  “I am fit, as always.” She edged one step farther into the room.

  “And how is Lady Harriet?” Pierson asked, of the woman’s daughter.

  The marchioness drew herself up. “My daughter is well, I thank you. She is considering offers from a number of suitors at the present, among them Lord Newton-Shrewsbury.”

  Pierson’s first instinct was to laugh, for he had heard Bainbridge despairing many a time over his sister’s lack of suitors. Lady Harriet was not unattractive—though she was accounted plain by most—but she had a piercing intelligence and a horror of pretension. She was just as likely to rip a man to shreds over his lack of learning as she was to consider him a suitor. She openly derided the dandy, the Corinthian, the beau and every other sort of London gentleman, including the ones she had named the faux intellectual. Pierson rather liked her, but not enough to consider her anything more than an amusing sparring partner in debate. “Shrewsbury’s a grand fellow. Make a good match for Lady Harriet.”

  “I think so,” Lady Bainbridge said, thawing slightly at Pierson’s acceptance of her conversational sally. She paced across the Turkey rug and adjusted a blue-painted bowl on a table near the tall window overlooking the street below, so the porcelain ornament was more exactly in the center. “If Harriet will only think so.”

  Bainbridge, cool, amused and perfectly turned out, sauntered into the room just then. “Pierson, how are you this morning?” There was a secret glint of humor in the fellow’s handsome countenance.

  “I’m well.”

  Bainbridge chuckled.

  “Truly,” Pierson said, raising his eyebrows. He felt the need to express his new energy, his new life. “I’m better than well; I am . . . reborn.”

  Lady Bainbridge furrowed her brows and stared at Pierson while her son appeared skeptical.

  “Really. Well, I received your note and I’m ready to undertake any mission you have in mind. Where am I and the new Lord Pierson going this morning?” Bainbridge said, a sardonic curl to his lip.

  “To the studio of a sketch artist of my acquaintance. You do not believe me about being reborn, but I have much to tell you,” Pierson said, with a warning glance and a faint movement of his head toward the older woman in the room. It was a sordid tale, especially the part about the Cyprians, the overindulgence in alcohol, and the long stagger home, and it was not a story he wished Lady Bainbridge to know of. It was a part of his old life.

  “Then let us be off for parts unknown,” Bainbridge said.

  “Do not forget to come back for my literary tea this afternoon,” Lady Bainbridge said to her son, waggling her knobby finger at him.

  “Mother,” he said in answer, his tone polite but steely, “you know I do not attend such monstrosities. Let you and my sister revel in the bookish bellowings and erudite eruptions of amateur poets and bluestocking ladies.”

  Frostily she said, “And what is so important that you will miss this?”

  Pierson bowed. “I promise you he will be at no gambling den this afternoon, my lady.”

  She sniffed and glared at him with a hostile glint in her eyes. “I do not need your impertinence, Pierson, nor your worthless promises. Get you gone, both of you. The servants need to arrange this room for the tea.”

  “Phew,” Pierson
said as they descended the steps to a brilliant spring day. He took a deep breath and coughed. “Your mother is the most frightening woman I know. It’s the one thing I fear about marriage, wedding a kitten only to wake up with a hellcat.”

  “And it’s what you will never be sure of, my friend,” Bainbridge said as they made way for a lady with a parasol, and then started their journey. “Why do you think I resist all the most determined efforts to matchmake me? I’m cynical about women as it is, but that sham they are forced to perpetrate, that they are sweet, virtuous, innocent, mild pictures of docility . . . that keeps me from any serious marital thoughts.”

  “Don’t you think that you can tell a woman’s character from her countenance?” Pierson glanced curiously at his friend. “Many of the most learned philosophers of our day have determined that the physiognomy of a person does not lie.”

  “Not only does the face indeed prevaricate,” Bainbridge said, curling his lip, “but the countenance lies only as much as a lady’s behavior, and the same in reverse. And it is so much more reprehensible that behavior is a liar, for while a face is immutable, behavior is ours to determine. I do not believe you can tell a woman’s character at all before marriage.”

  “And that,” Pierson said, stopping and turning to face his friend, “is where you and I part company.” He had never considered it before, but his friend was the most determined cynical non-romantic in all of his acquaintance. Bainbridge had had his encounters with ladies of a certain stamp, but they had always been conducted with a cold-blooded nod to his physical needs. In his own experience, Pierson found that though he had had as many liaisons with ladies of the evening as Bainbridge, he had always needed to be attracted by something other than a fair face or figure. Even girls of that receptive class, who traded money and jewels for their favors, differed widely in their cynicism in the exchange, and their soft-heartedness. He had always looked for something in their eyes, some tenderness of expression lingering even after all their jaded encounters. That was a rare find indeed among ladies of the evening.

  But still, he had never been in love, nor had he imagined himself to be before now. Almost to himself he said, “I believe that I have only been looking for that lady whose countenance promises the sweetness I desire.”

  Bainbridge gazed at him steadily. “I heard what happened to you last night,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “How? What did you hear?” Pierson asked. A carriage rolled close and he moved back from the road, not wanting to get sprayed by mud. The streets were still not dry after the rain of the night before, but with the sun out and at full strength, it shouldn’t take long. It was unusually warm for early March, actually, a brilliant early spring day. That had to be a good harbinger for his future, that he should awaken to such a start.

  “Oh, much! My valet, Staynes, heard from the long-suffering Rupert.” Bainbridge chuckled and cast a humorous glance at the nearby mud puddle. “They are friends, after a fashion. Rupert appealed to him for a receipt for muck removal—according to your valet your clothes from last evening smell of the gutter—and Staynes heard everything, about the harlots and the carriage and the spray of filth, and the odd way you behaved after. I suppose you must have muttered about the whole evening even as you slept, but were too in your cups to remember. Rupert felt there was something behind it all, your behavior and manner, but he was puzzled as to what it was. What’s going on, Pierson?”

  Pierson turned and began their walk again, moving as if in a dream along the sunny street. “I saw a vision, my friend.” Again, Pierson felt the surge of hope and the determination to seize hold and march forward to bliss. “I saw a vision, and I will never be the same again. I have found my fair infinity.”

  “Oh, Lord, a woman! Likely to be your fair extinction, you mean,” Bainbridge muttered, following. “All right, first to a coffee house, and then, if we must, let’s go on to this artist acquaintance of yours and you can tell me all about it.”

  • • •

  The sun had passed its zenith, and in the parlor of the Marquess of Bainbridge’s town house a crowd milled waiting for enlightenment from the several writers and poets, most of whom had come for the free luncheon after their performance, Amy suspected, eyeing their hollowed cheeks and ravenous looks with alarm. Being a literary figure must not pay very well, even less than a chaperone or governess, she would guess. It was fortunate she had no aspirations in that direction.

  The hostess, an imposing woman with a bust like a ship’s figurehead, sailed toward them.

  “Ancient harridan,” Lady Rowena muttered under her breath, so only Amy could hear. Then she curtseyed demurely to the approaching lady.

  “Lady Rowena,” the older woman said as she came closer. Her beady eyes held a speculative gleam. “I would know you anywhere. You look the very image of your beautiful mother! I regret that I did not see you last Season, but my husband’s death . . . we were in mourning, of course. How delightful that you could grace my literary tea with your presence this afternoon.”

  “My lady,” Rowena said, casting her gaze shyly down to the carpet, “I would not have missed this enchanting engagement for anything. It is a delight to meet you at last, my mother’s one, true friend.”

  Amy cast one glance at her charge, impressed despite herself by the young lady’s artful quaver and modest deception.

  “Oh, we have met before, my child, but you were so young, just a babe.”

  The older woman reached out one gloved hand and caressed Rowena’s cheek. Amy hoped that only she could notice the duke’s daughter flinch. Indeed it was such a slight movement no one else would likely ever discern it.

  Lady Bainbridge went on with a sigh, “I regret that I did not see your mother in the last years of her life, but my own dear husband was so very ill, we did not spend much time in London.”

  Amy watched Lady Bainbridge with curiosity. She had heard legends of the woman’s iron will and harrying manner, but she saw nothing but gentility and mildness on her lined face. She and Rowena said everything that was polite to one another, and then the woman bustled off to her other guests as befit the hostess of the afternoon.

  “She seems very pleasant,” Amy said, watching her skillful passage around the room.

  “Don’t be cozened by her parlor face,” Rowena murmured darkly as they nodded to acquaintances and moved through the crowd toward the seating area. “I have heard she is a legendary scold. It is why no one will marry her son, the marquess. No one could stand having her as a mother-in-law.”

  “My lady, that is hardly fair! You would not judge a man on his family, would you?”

  “I do not judge men at all, since the subject has no interest to me.”

  Once again Amy wondered how to counter this inexplicable prejudice the young lady had against men. Glancing around the room, she saw many ladies with less to offer in the way of personal attractions engaging and holding young men’s interest. Not that Rowena could not do the same, but she chose whom to dazzle carefully, making conquests when she wished with frightening ease. It was all very calculated.

  Prince Verstadt was there after all, Amy noticed, in full military regalia, even though the war was long over. Still, he had served in an English regiment and continued to hold his rank in the peacetime army. He was a generally pleasing young man, handsome, good-natured, intelligent. He was watching Lady Rowena with a sickly expression of longing on his pale countenance. He had been her first conquest of the Season, and had as quickly been discarded after he proposed. But still, even rejected, he remained in love with the beautiful Lady Rowena. That was her skill, to keep them on her string even after telling them she could not marry them. And all without earning a reputation as a jilt, more was the marvel! She should have been scandalous by now for the hearts she broke, but a combination of position, wealth and beauty seemed to assure that she would remain sought after.

  He was moving toward them, on an angle that would halt them in their perambulation. Amy was
not sure whether to warn her charge or not, and dithered so long the young prince was upon them.

  “Ladies,” he said with a deep bow, forcing them to pause. “I am indeed fortunate to find you here, since I wished to personally invite you to a reception at my cousin, the royal duke’s, residence here in London.”

  As Lady Rowena’s chaperone, Amy spoke for them both. “If you send us an invitation, sir, I will peruse our calendar and see if we are engaged for that day.”

  The young lady beside her had colored very nicely, her alabaster cheeks blushing to pink as she gazed down at her slippers, and the prince stared at her, lost in admiration.

  Amy cleared her throat. “As I said, if you send us a written invitation, I will see if we are engaged for that evening!”

  “Uh, yes, Miss Corbett, I will most certainly do that.” He bowed deeply to them both and retreated, to sit across the room and stare, even when accosted by other guests.

  “Poisonous royal toadie,” Rowena muttered under her breath, then smiled and nodded to an acquaintance who strolled arm in arm around the room with another young lady.

  Amy sighed at her impossible task as they continued to make their way through the crowded room toward one set of chairs. This was ever Rowena’s answer to everything, a murmured censure masked by a pleasing smile. “Whatever lady marries him will travel in exalted circles indeed, though,” she reminded Rowena, “since he is connected to our own royal family.”

  “I am the daughter of a duke. I travel wherever I wish and meet whomever I wish,” Lady Rowena said, her voice chilled by an unbecoming hauteur.

  “But as a married lady you could—”

  “Enough! I will not be badgered in company.”