Amanda Scott (2 page)

Surely, you have heard the tales of the Earl and Countess of Andover and their merry match. Why, Lady Jersey informed me only yesterday that we provide all the best tit-bits for the gossip-mongers.”

“Well, you need not need such stuff from her ladyship, of course,” Lydia said quietly, “and if she was able to say all that with a straight face after cuckolding poor Jersey all these years with the prince, I can say only that I have a smaller opinion of her than ever. She is a grandmother, after all, several times over. Such behavior is too absurd.”

Diana shrugged, pulling off her bedraggled hat and flinging it onto a nearby chair. “Her ladyship’s morals make little difference to the matter at hand. What she said was true enough.”

“Well, I have heard things, naturally,” Lydia admitted, “but I learned long ago to discount three-quarters of what I hear and to take the rest with salt.”

“Oh, you may believe everything you hear about me,” Diana said grimly. She reached to unfasten her spencer, muttering, “Surely, you of all people must know how spoilt I have been by my doting parents and what a hey-go-mad hoyden I was when Andover chose to cast the handkerchief to me. And now I am held to be a loose screw with no principles, besides.”

“Merciful heavens,” Lydia said in damping tones, “whatever can you be talking about? Open the budget, my dear, and quickly, for Patcham will have told them to begin laying the covers for our supper, and I mean to get to the bottom of this tangle before we leave this room. As I recall the matter, you chose Andover quite as quickly as ever he tossed any handkerchief. Why, everyone knew yours was the love match of the Season. And I have never heard anyone but Ethelmoor complain of your having been spoilt. As for your principles, well, that’s naught but a bag of moonshine, as our John would say.”

“How is John?” Diana asked absently, slipping from her damp habit and handing it to Lydia, who hung it on a wall-hook where her maid would be certain to spy it at once. “Does he like Eton, or do they beat him?” Diana stood now in her thin chemise and York tan halfboots, a slim, athletic young woman, her sun-streaked blond hair darkened now by the dampness, her nearly turquoise eyes lightless under the long, thick lashes.

Lydia regarded her with concern. “Never mind John. He is well enough. What happened, Diana?”

Silently, Diana picked up the blue woolen gown from the high primrose-draped bed where Lydia had put it, and slipped it over her head, wriggling her hips to make the soft skirt fall properly into place. But when she would have turned her back to let Lydia do up the numerous tiny pearl buttons, the dark-haired woman stopped her with a gentle touch and a direct look.

“Tell me, dear.”

“Simon thinks I have been engaging in an illicit affair with Rory,” Diana said listlessly. Her gaze met Lydia’s, and she was grateful for the disbelief she saw in the other woman’s soft brown eyes.

“With his own brother? His
twin
brother? How could Simon be such a knock-in-the-cradle?” Lydia demanded. “How could he possibly believe such a thing of you, Diana? Or of Lord Roderick, for all that. Even that rascally scalawag would never do anything so reprehensible. Why…why, that would be incest! Simon deserves to be thoroughly shaken if he truly believes such stuff.”

Involuntarily, Diana chuckled as the vision danced through her mind of Lydia, no bigger than herself, after all, attempting to shake sense into the tall, broad-shouldered Earl of Andover, a gentleman as well-noted for his abilities in the amateur ring as for his diplomatic prowess in political circles. A distinct twinkle lingered in her eyes as Diana shook her head fondly at her sister-in-law.

“He found us together, you see, and jumped—as, indeed, he always jumps—to all the wrong conclusions. But I’m fed to the back teeth with his temper and with his scolds,” she added, turning now so that Lydia could attend to the pearl buttons, “so I simply ordered up my horse and Ned Tredegar and rode here to you, Lyddy dear.”

Lydia had accepted Diana’s rapid change of mood with a placidity born of long experience and had actually buttoned the bottom two buttons of the wool dress, but at these last, casual words, her hands went still, and a discerning eye would certainly have noted a paling of her cheeks. Her voice was carefully expressionless, however.

“Andover doesn’t know where you are?”

Diana shrugged, saying in an airy tone, “I daresay he will find me if it suits him to do so.”

“Merciful heavens,” Lydia breathed, “he’ll murder the lot of us.”

Just then there was a scratching at the door, and a maidservant entered, bobbing a curtsy and saying politely, “M’lady, Mr. Patcham be wishful to know if y’ want he should ’ave supper put back. It be ready t’ serve, ’e says.”

When Lydia hesitated, Diana smiled at her. “Do up my dress, Lyddy, and we shall repair to the dining room. Simon can’t eat either of us, after all, and he may not even bother to come after me.”

“Very well,” Lydia said, her tone long-suffering. “Dory, tell Patcham we shall be down directly. But you, my girl,” she added fiercely the moment the door had shut behind the maidservant, “are going to tell me the whole immediately after supper. How I wish Ethelmoor were here!”

“Why, Lyddy? So he might read me a scold? He scarcely ever does, you know.”

“Well, he will if you’ve brought Andover’s wrath down upon us all,” Lydia pointed out. “Your brother is the kindest, most gentle man alive, Diana, but he does have a temper, and I for one would as lief you didn’t stir it. Still, I cannot help but think he would have had the whole tale from you by now,” she added wistfully.

Diana laughed. “Never mind, Lyddy. I’ll tell you everything right after supper. But hurry now. I’ve scarcely eaten a thing all day, and I’m famished.”

Obligingly, Lydia dealt with the rest of the pearl buttons, then waited patiently while Diana smoothed her damp hair into a neat coil at the nape of her neck. These details taking a mere moment or two, the two ladies were soon seated in the large ground-floor dining room, attending to the first course of a tasty supper. With the servants in constant attendance, there was no opportunity for private conversation, but Diana had no qualms about entertaining her sister-in-law with some of the juicier bits of gossip she had collected during her recent round of house parties.

“For you must know, dearest, that although we have managed to visit Simon’s father and Lady Ophelia at Alderwood Abbey several times since our wedding, Simon and I have scarcely set foot in Andover Court since the prince left Brighton at the end of September. First there was the hunting in Leicestershire, followed by a myriad of country house parties as we made our way south again, and then of course, I went into Hampshire to visit with Mama and Papa whilst Simon went to France with Mr. Fox and Lord Holland and the others last month.”

“Do they truly expect this peace to last?” Lydia asked curiously. “Ethelmoor says that some of the news has been disquieting of late.”

Diana shrugged. “The Peace of Amiens was meant to be the beginning of great things, but by all I’ve heard these past months, there has been a good deal of trouble over the bits and pieces of the treaty itself. Mr. Fox and the others are prodigiously disappointed by Mr. Bonaparte’s continued aggressions, and I believe one purpose of their visit to France was to attempt to persuade him to behave himself, but all Simon would say was that they went there to pay their respects to the First Consul, as Mr. Bonaparte likes to call himself—seeing himself a prime minister, I daresay—and that they went there on behalf of Mr. Pitt. A state visit, in fact. But of course, Mr. Pitt is no longer the Prime Minister, and Mr. Addington is a loose fish, Simon says. So what Simon told me didn’t make a great deal of sense, but then he rarely does when he talks to me of politics. And it isn’t that I cannot understand, for of course I can, but he believes such things are not suitable for women’s ears, or some such thing. In any case, that’s all he told me of the matter. Of course, Lady Ophelia is furious with him—Simon, that is—for having any part of such a nasty piece of goods as that upstart Bonaparte fellow.”

“I can hear her telling him so,” Lydia responded with a gurgle and a wary glance at the hovering servants.

Diana’s eyes twinkled, but she waved away the plate of creamed tripe being proffered by a footman and waited until the room was nearly clear again before continuing the conversation. “Her ladyship is
not
the diplomat in the family, to be sure,” she said then, still twinkling. “She simply cannot conceive of any good reason why her nephew, who ought to be quite puffed up with his own vast consequence, after all, should have anything to do with an upstart commoner. And a French one, at that.”

“He is Corsican, I believe.”

Diana dismissed Corsica with a slight gesture. “He is a foreigner, which is quite enough for Lady Ophelia. She has no patience with foreigners. They are so very un-English, you know.” Diana grinned. “The old marquess isn’t nearly so outspoken, of course. I daresay he’s waiting to see which way the wind will blow before plumping for one course or another.”

“Well, at least he doesn’t disapprove of Simon’s activities,” Lydia said comfortably.

“No, Simon can do no wrong in his eyes,” Diana said, her thoughts turning inward again as she added musingly, “and poor Rory can do nothing right.”

Lydia quickly cleared her throat and suggested that Diana might like to try some of the goose liver sauce. Diana refused with a little smile, but she accepted the hint willingly enough and began to relate a harmless anecdote from one of the house parties she had attended. Lydia encouraged this line of conversation, and by the time they had finished their repast, she had caught up on most of the pertinent
on dits
of the glittering
beau monde
, including the fact that the notorious Lady Jersey, who had been the Prince of Wales’s
inamorata
for something more than seven years, since shortly before his unfortunate marriage to the Princess Caroline of Brunswick, seemed to be on the lookout for an heiress for her eldest son.

“Not that Lord Villiers needs to marry money,” Diana said, “but he’s easily the handsomest bachelor on the Marriage Mart these days, so it doesn’t hurt him to look about for the brightest star, and that certainly seems to be Lady Sarah Fane. She is, after all, the greatest heiress the
beau monde
has seen for many a day.”

“They say her income will be forty thousand pounds per year when she comes of age,” Lydia said in tones approaching awe. “I have never met her. Have you?”

“Briefly, the first day we were at Wilton House. She is pretty enough, and certainly her family is as well-connected as the Villiers, but I thought her rather wearisome. She is just seventeen, you know, and her manners are brash rather than pleasing—a schoolgirl drawing attention to herself, I think. You may judge for yourself if she and her stepmama condescend to visit Alderwood Abbey for Christmas. Lady Ophelia invited them, I believe. She likes Lady Westmorland but has no good to say of the earl, and I doubt she’s even met young Sally. The Earl and Countess of Westmorland got married only two years ago, after all, and Lady Sarah’s mama has been dead these nine years and more, so I cannot think how Lady Ophelia might have met her before.” She paused, the infectious grin lighting her face again. “Her Christmas party is going to be something like, I can tell you. Besides Mr. Brummell, Lord Alvanley, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, and a good many others, including the prince and maybe the Duke of York, Lord and Lady Jersey are coming, and Viscount Villiers, as well. And I can tell you, you might have knocked me over with a feather when I heard that, for I would never have expected Lady Ophelia to allow Lady Jersey within shouting distance. They are of an age, of course, and have known each other for many years, but they are
not
bosom bows. However, Marimorse insisted because Jersey is an old friend of his. I believe they pranced about Almack’s together in their macaroni days. And of course, Lady Ophelia can never stand out against her brother when he makes up his mind to something.”

“Didn’t they call Lord Jersey the Prince of Macaronis?” Lydia asked, smiling.

“Indeed, and the signs are all still there, I promise you. He lisps, and when he walks you’d swear he had high heels to his shoes. And I know for a fact that he still carries a lace handkerchief, though he makes do with a quizzing glass in place of a clouded cane these days to punctuate his conversation.”

Lydia laughingly pointed out that his lordship, having served until recently as the Prince of Wales’s master of horse, was still very influential in royal circles, then asked if Diana required anything more by way of sustenance. When that young lady insisted that she had eaten all she could reasonably hold, Lydia signaled to the footman behind her chair, and he immediately moved to assist Diana. Once she had risen, he stepped back to perform the same office for his mistress. Within minutes the servants had moved in to clear the table, and Lydia was inexorably leading Diana into the drawing room.

This room, quite the largest one in the house, was decorated in green and gold with modern, Egyptian-style furniture. The outer wall was glazed and in the light of day would present a picturesque view of rolling Wiltshire hills, the nearby woods, and a small lake. At present, the heavy green velvet curtains were drawn, a cheerful fire blazed in the marble fireplace, and Lydia led the way to two deep armchairs placed strategically near enough to the blaze to benefit from its warmth, yet not so near that the chairs’ occupants might become overly warm. Firmly, Lydia pushed her guest into the nearer of the two chairs, taking the other for herself.

“Now, my dear, I wish you to begin at the beginning. We have seen too little of you since the wedding, since neither Ethelmoor nor I enjoy jauntering about the countryside as you and Andover do, but I had thought matters between the two of you to be marching along nicely. He loves you, Diana, and you love him, so the tales we hear from the rumormongers, despite what I said earlier, have distressed us. And now you say that Andover has actually accused you of being involved with Lord Roderick, a thing I cannot and will not believe of you, and for that matter, a thing I would not have imagined Andover, in his worst temper, believing of you. So, clearly, things have come to a worse pass between you than I had thought.” Lydia rested her elbows on the arm of her chair and propped her chin in her hands, gazing directly at Diana. After a brief silence, she said gently, “Please, dearest, won’t you tell me what on earth can have happened these past months to set the two of you at odds with one another?”