Celeste Bradley - [The Liar's Club 02] (3 page)

Then the ladies descended once more. “Oh, Sir Thorogood!” they caroled and fluttered about him like butterflies without the sense to get out of the rain. The gentlemen scattered under such a feminine barrage and Dalton cursed to himself. He’d not accounted for Sir Thorogood’s magnetism with the ladies.

How could he have, when women had treated him like a rather frightening menagerie lion for most of his life? He’d sometimes wondered how to bridge that distance, but now he was beginning to miss that intimidated awe with all his heart.

Put a pair of high heels on a fellow and just look what he was reduced to.

With one hand, Clara dragged Beatrice into the ladies’ retiring room. The rose-and-cream-furnished room was supplied with several wall mirrors that only served to multiply the many ladies within to dizzying numbers.

Bea put a hand to her hair to protect her array of ostrich plumes as she ducked through the doorway. “What are you on about, Clara?”

Clara didn’t bother to answer. Instead she towed Bea through the crowded room to a free corner.

“I need to look different,” she whispered urgently to Bea. “I need to look like them.” She gestured toward the other ladies. “Only better.”

A smug gleam lit Beatrice’s eyes. “I knew it. I knew you’d regret not coming out of mourning sooner. It’s that Thorogood fellow, isn’t it? He’s a handsome one, I’ll grant you that.”

Clara waved off the question. “Help me, Bea.” Bea looked her up and down. “Well, we can visit Madame Hortensia tomorrow morning and order some things, though I’m sure it will take weeks at this time of year—”

“No, Bea.
Now.”

Beatrice blinked. “Now? You want to impress a man in that dress, with that hair, and your face unpowdered—”

It was time to bring out the big cannon. Clara half turned away, letting her shoulders sag. “If you don’t think you can, I suppose I could ask Cora Teagarden—”

“That goose? Are you mad? She doesn’t have the fashion sense of a flea! You’d look a sight worse—” Sputtering in indignation, Beatrice grabbed Clara’s arm and dragged her to a mirror.

Standing behind her, Bea examined Clara in the glass with alarming intensity. “The gown’s well enough, if we lose the lace. Heavens, girl, why bother with a corset at all if you’re not going to lace it nice and tight? Pull the shoulders down—no, lower … hmm …”

She turned to gesture at a waiting chambermaid, assigned to help ladies who wished to unlace and freshen up a bit. “You there! Fetch some rice powder and kohl. And some pins!” she called after the retreating maid.

Turning back to Clara, Beatrice smiled with fierce glee. “I’ve been dying to get my hands on you for years.”

Clara swallowed. Oh, dear holy
drat
. What had she gotten herself into now?

Dalton’s feet hurt and his jaw ached from smiling, and he wanted nothing more than to burn his shoes and relax with a snifter of brandy and a fire, yet he forced himself to smile insincerely at yet another fawning female. “I’m entirely shocked, my lady. How could one so lovely as yourself ever doubt …” Blah, blah, blah. He could hardly keep track of all the moronic things he’d said this evening.

He felt an abrupt desire to go shooting. Or perhaps go a round in the boxing ring—
anything
reassuringly masculine. Preferably something exhausting and dirty that involved not an inch of lace.

Time to leave this conversation and move on to another, anyway. Preferably in a card room or smoking room. Sir Thorogood must be somewhere among the elite, for no one on the outside could ever know so much about the scandals and goings-on among the members of the
ton
.

Enough. He made a pretty excuse to the lady currently monopolizing his attention and moved away before she could capture it once again.

He turned, only to nearly trip on another. Catching himself quickly from trodding upon the gown of yet one more overdressed female, he quickly reached for a gloved elbow to support her.

The faint scent of flowers came to him, reminding him more of soap than of perfume and sending tiny jolts of alertness to his male instincts. Startled, he removed his supporting hand and stepped back, making an apologetic bow as he did so. “Please pardon my clumsiness, dear creature. Might I beg an introduction?”

“On your knees would be perfectly acceptable.”

Dalton looked up quickly. He couldn’t have heard those crisp acid words in truth, could he?

But the lady before him was as overdone and silly as any in the room. Sillier, in fact, for her hair was piled high upon her head in a tumbled style and sported three ostrich plumes that topped even his own height.

She was probably attractive enough, if one could see past the heavily applied powder and rouge. At least there didn’t seem to be any obvious deformities. But her gown, dear God, the silly things ladies got up to!

She’d pulled the small cap sleeves down to her elbows, trapping her own arms to her sides, and her breasts were thrust up nearly beneath her chin by a corset surely too tight to allow natural breathing. Since he was obviously meant to notice those breasts, he took a moment from his busy evening to appreciate them.

After all, he was only working. He was not dead.

Very pretty, considering the rest of her. Smooth and creamy, with just the right amount of plumpness. Not so much as to ruin the cut of an elegant gown, not so little as to disappoint a fellow. Dalton suppressed another round of glimpses. He was only looking, not buying.

Finished with his appraisal, he looked up into the
woman’s eyes. She stood with her head tilted, batting her overly kohled eyes at him slowly. No, not a sharp tack, this one. More like a dull pin.

“I am Mrs. Bentley Simpson, sir. I don’t think we really need an introduction now, do you? After all, you’re the famous Sir Thorogood, so there, you see?”

He didn’t see at all, but rallying to his cause, he bent deeply over the silly twit’s hand. “It is my pleasure, Mrs. Simpson. Might I add that Mr. Simpson is undoubtedly the luckiest man in this room tonight?”

He was answered by a decidedly unladylike snort. Was that sarcasm? Still bent, he looked up in doubt, only to see the brainless creature tilting her head so far to the right to meet his eyes that she appeared about to fall right over.

Dalton straightened quickly, and Mrs. Simpson bobbed right up with him. One of her plumes had come unfixed, and now bent gracefully forward to dangle before his nose.

Backing away while retaining his smile, Dalton gave the thing a surreptitious bat. The lady only smiled and stepped closer, bringing the damned feather to tickle his cheek and ear.

“I know how you can make it up to me,” Mrs. Simpson said with a gleeful clapping of hands. “You can draw me a picture!”

Good lord, was she twelve? Glancing down at those admittedly mature breasts again, Dalton had to say no to that. But her girlish squeal had brought the attention of several other ladies nearby, and soon he was once again surrounded by trilling ninnies galore.

All clamoring for him to demonstrate a talent which he did not possess.

And at the center of it all, eyes alight, stood the silliest female of them all, Mrs. Bentley Simpson.

Oh, he was a smooth one. Even as Clara urged the other ladies to plead for drawings, she had to admit that the impostor was a very good liar.

With charming smiles and pretty words, he begged off from displaying his talents here at the ball, when they had all come to hear the music and dance with fine young men. Not for him was it to steal their attention, he said.

That was rich. Clara almost kicked him in the shin on the spot. Stealing attention was precisely what he was up to.

For the first time, she was forced to admit to herself that she had enjoyed the public’s response to her work. Although her original purpose had truly been to stop injustice, over the last months she had begun to cherish Sir Thorogood’s popularity like a secret jewel.

She didn’t like knowing that she was less than entirely altruistic in her purpose. She didn’t like it one little bit. One more reason to hate the outrageous poseur for pointing it out. Scarcely able to hide her sneer, Clara stood among the teeming ladies and added her pleas to the clamor.

One drawing was all it would take to expose him. Her talent might not be much more than a parlor trick, but it was a parlor trick that she was very good at.

And it was something that not everyone could do. Caricature was not a straightforward representation of a person. It was an exaggeration of a few key features, and a minimization of all others. To know
what
to draw was the difficult skill.

The press of ladies behind her thrust Clara even closer to the fiend in question, and a whiff of his scent came to her. She wanted to hate it, to claim to herself that he smelled of pungent cologne and lies, but he smelled rather nicely of sandalwood soap and clean, healthy male. She liked it very much. Very annoying.

Was there no end to his perfidy? Even his scent was a lie!

Her anger seemed to be choking her. Clara tried to shake off a sudden spell of dizziness, but it only worsened. Perhaps it was her corset that wasn’t allowing her to breathe. Bea had pulled the dratted laces much too tight.

Clara tried to take deep even breaths to stem the dizziness and it seemed to help for a moment. She turned her attention back to the crowd around the impostor but found that something else had captured the man’s attention.

Over the shoulders of the ladies, Dalton saw a man enter the ballroom. He was a lean older fellow, not very tall, but the guests seem to part before him like a well-trained sea.

The Prime Minister of England.

Dalton knew his godfather rarely made appearances at anything but royal events. Apparently, he was about to find himself in some trouble.

After greeting a few of the more important men in the room. Lord Liverpool raised his gaze directly to Dalton’s. Liverpool seemed anything but surprised to see him there.

Oh, yes, trouble indeed. When Liverpool’s gaze flicked to a nearby set of terrace doors and back, Dalton gave a tiny nod.

With sugary platitudes he excused himself from the
company of his fawning admirers. He’d thought the clinging Mrs. Simpson would put up more of a struggle, but she seemed a bit distracted and pale. Dalton made his escape and strolled leisurely to the terrace doors.

As this was a town house, the scale of the terraces was small. Each had its own entry into the ballroom, and a set of stone stairs leading to the gardens below.

Dalton found Lord Liverpool leaning against the balustrade, gazing down to where a box-hedge maze cleverly gave the small area of gardens more scale for the wandering admirer.

Although Dalton hadn’t made a sound, Liverpool began speaking immediately, though he remained turned away.

“What in the seven reaches of hell do you think you’re doing?”

If Liverpool was resorting to bad language, Dalton was in for even more trouble than he’d thought. “I’m investigating the latest case given to the Liar’s Club,” he replied stiffly.

Liverpool snorted.
“Personally
. You left out
personally
. Which you are not supposed to be doing. Have you given any thought to the repercussions if your true identity is revealed? You’ve lived quietly these last few years, but not that quietly!”

Despite the fact that he’d worried over that very point, Dalton felt obligated to defend his decision. It wouldn’t do for Liverpool to know precisely how tenuous his hold over the Liars truly was. “It isn’t likely that anyone will associate the somber, reclusive Lord Etheridge with the flamboyant Sir Thorogood. In the event that they do, I shall admit my identity and claim Thorogood was merely my nom de plume.”

“And how do you intend to explain away the humiliation
and degradation of several dozen peers of the realm at the hands of that reformist agitator? What about the connection that will inevitably be made to
me?”
Liverpool turned swiftly, his black eyes glittering in the half-light. “It is no secret among those who matter that I raised you when your father died!”

Dalton looked down at his godfather.
Raised
was perhaps too strong a word for the man’s participation in Dalton’s childhood.
Supervised
, perhaps.
Arranged
, even.

Liverpool had personally selected a highly distinguished school, where he ordered that his charge remain through every lonely holiday while the other boys had joyfully returned to their homes. Every six months Lord Liverpool had made an appearance there to check on the young Lord Etheridge’s progress. Dalton knew this because the faculty had never failed to inform him of his esteemed guardian’s visits.

He himself had never had much conversation with the man until he’d finally left Oxford to take his place in the House of Lords.

Once there, he’d been expected to back Liverpool at every turn, to vote with the man’s vote, and generally add to the power and influence that Liverpool had already accumulated.

Liverpool would have had his support anyway. The man was the glue holding the government together, what with a mad king and a profligate prince who was more interested in art and women than in government.

In the past several years, Dalton had run many a mission under Liverpool’s direction. His esteem for Liverpool’s political acuity had only grown.

But England’s most powerful man was not Dalton’s
intimidating guardian anymore. Nor was Dalton a lonely boy, desperate to please.

“I fail to see how any of this could come to reflect on you, my lord. My identity will not be revealed. I had the best of costumers, and honestly, would anyone dream that the sober Lord Etheridge would use a quizzing glass?”

The attempt at levity fell flat in the silence. Though the gathering was plainly audible in the background, the high terrace seemed very much like a chill mountaintop at that moment.

“However you and that ragtag lot care to go about it, I want Thorogood run to ground. Do you hear me, lad?”

Before Dalton could protest that he was no longer a lad and had not been for fifteen years, Liverpool had slipped back through the doors, leaving him in the darkness.