Francesca (3 page)

“What happened with the major?”

“He took the stupid idea he wanted to marry me, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Devane sent him packing, and then I had to try to get rid of
him.
But he can’t possibly know who I am.”

“Didn’t he ask your name?”

“Yes, I told him I was Biddie Wilson. Oh, I wish I
were
Biddie Wilson again,”
she said petulantly.

“But you’re not, my dear. You are a lady, and it’s time you began acting like one instead of inviting such disasters as this by behaving like a hurly-burly girl. That was Lord Devane you were with.”

“He told me his name. What has that to do with anything?”

“He flies too high for you, Fran. A man like that—
you couldn’t manage him as you do your younger flirts. Devane means business. It is exactly what I have been warning you about these past weeks.”

Francesca felt a blush suffuse her cheeks. She didn’t tell Selby what Devane had suggested; it would only increase his wrath, and the length of his lecture. A frisson of fear scampered up her spine as she recalled Devane’s cold, dark eyes examining her. “He has no idea who I am. He is not part of my set. I’ll stay well away from him if I see him about anywhere.”

“You would be well advised to do that. Your being a widow would be no protection against a man like Devane. I don’t say he’d go after a maiden, but a widow is as good as a harlot to the likes of him. He flies with the highest, fastest set in town.”

“I wonder why I was never presented to him when David was here,”
she answered tartly. “They sound like birds of a feather. The very sort of gentleman I despise.”

“And the very sort you will attract, carrying on as you do. Haven’t you had enough of playing around, leading a life of dissolution, Fran? Nothing but grief will come of it. If you won’t go home, for God’s sake, find a decent husband and marry him.”

“Then
I
will be bound leg and wing, and
he
will continue playing around! No, thank you.”

“Well, at least keep out of Devane’s way.”

A lecture was always enough to set Francesca back in fighting mode. “Do you know, Selby, I don’t think I shall go home just yet after all. It is only ten o’clock. Let us go to some rout or other instead.”

“I am taking you home,”
he said sternly.

At the corner of Bond Street and Piccadilly, Francesca recognized a friend’s carriage. She pulled the check string and hopped out. “Thank you, my guardian angel. Don’t worry. I shall be with the McCormicks.”
She blew him a kiss and ran to the other waiting carriage.

Selby drew a deep, defeated sigh. Well, at least it was the McCormicks. They weren’t as bad as most. He had introduced Fran to them himself. Selby’s own circle of intimate friends knew his concern for Lady Camden, and assisted him in watching over her. Alfred McCormick wouldn’t let her run off with anyone undesirable. He called to the driver to take him back to the Pantheon, where he recovered his carriage and drove to Brooke’s Club to finish the evening with a game of cards, if he could find anyone willing to play for chicken stakes. Mr. Caine was not the man to plunge into unrestrained gambling.

Francesca threw off her domino and mask and attended a small rout party, where she met a circle of her own flirts, and had a noisy evening of dancing and laughing and drinking a little too much wine.

It was not the sort of do to attract Lord Devane. He waited five minutes in front of the Pantheon, and when Mrs. Wilson did not come out, he went in to look for her. He toured the hall once, then returned to his table. He was more curious than offended, yet more angry than curious.

Why had she run off on him? He was the answer to a lightskirt’s prayer. Wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, fairly generous, amusing. He was no Adonis, but no one had ever called him ugly. In return for his manifold assets, he demanded a semblance of breeding from his mistresses, and Mrs. Wilson certainly had that. He demanded constancy, of course. One did not buy a chicken to provide other men omelettes. And in return he provided a residence, a clothing allowance, cash, and a reasonable amount of jewelry.

Perhaps she was ill? A gentleman like Lord Devane was not left alone at such a den as the Pantheon. Within two minutes he was joined by a female acquaintance who had her eye on him. Peg Clancy was very pretty, but she was a common, garden variety harlot who held no interest for Devane. He asked her to see if there was a Mrs. Wilson in the ladies’
room. She skipped off and returned in a minute.

“No, she isn’t there.”

“Have you met Mrs. Wilson? A new woman in town.”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Black hair, a good accent.”

“The lady you was waltzing with?”

“That’s the one.”

“Coo, you never mean she done a flit on you!”
Peg laughed uproariously. “She’s a new one to me. She couldn’t’ve known who you are.”

“If you can learn anything about her, write me a note to this address,”
he said, and handed her a card, accompanied by a gold coin. “There’ll be another one to match it when I hear from you.”

“Lud, I can’t write. Drop around tomorrow night and I’ll tell you what I’ve found out.”

“Fair enough.”

He left, and Peg beckoned her friend, Mollie, to come and help her finish a nearly full bottle of port. “Know anything about a girl calling herself Mrs. Wilson?”
she asked.

“Harriet Wilson, you mean?”

“Nodcock! As if Devane wouldn’t know
her!
No, this one is younger, and pretty. Ask around. There’s a bob in it for us if we find her.”

At the end of the evening, however, nothing had been learned of the mysterious Mrs. Wilson.

The weekend arrived, causing a brief cessation of festivities in the Season. Francesca thought often of Major Stanby, He would be leaving the next day for Spain, perhaps never to return alive, poor boy. She wondered how long he would remember her.

The harsh outlines of Lord Devane’s face obtruded often into her consciousness, too, but she made an effort to forget him. He was precisely the sort of gentleman she despised. The only difference between him and David was that Devane made no effort to conceal his character, but then David had probably not bothered either among his low female friends. She wondered if Devane had a wife; if he had, she pitied the lady.

On Monday afternoon she drove in the park with Mrs. Denver, where she met friends and arranged her evening’s schedule. They would attend the new comedy at Drury Lane and stop off at the Listers’
ball afterward. Francesca had her own theater box, and as there was a seat left over, and as Selby had been so kind to her, she invited him to join them. He would be the ghost at the feast, she feared.

As she prepared for the evening, her thoughts were all on making a grand appearance and attracting a new beau. She wore an emerald-green gown that emphasized her large, wide-spaced eyes. Its rich color contrasted dramatically with her creamy throat and arms. The bodice clung to her high bosoms and fell in graceful folds, causing a feminine rustle of silk when she moved.

“I wish David had left my jewelry with me when he went to Spain,”
she said to Mrs. Denver as she finished her toilette. “I have only this shabby string of pearls to wear everywhere.”

Mrs. Denver knew she referred to the entailed jewelry and did not bother mentioning David’s wedding gift of diamond earrings, bracelet, and brooch. Fran never wore them. She kept them in her bottom drawer, so she wouldn’t have to see them and remember.

The pearls gleamed luminously against her skin but were hardly visible at a distance. Francesca took up a colored paste brooch and attached it as a pendant to the necklace.

Mrs. Denver shook her head in condemnation of this freakish idea. It looked decidedly odd, yet it would probably start a new fashion. Francesca had a knack of creating fads. She had single-handedly revived the
victime
coiffure that had come into fashion along with the French Revolution.

That same brooch that now hung from her necklace had appeared on her gloves two weeks before, and the idea had been taken up by a dozen foolish ladies. Another time she had taken to wearing her rings outside her gloves. Mrs. Denver looked askance at a patch box on the dresser, hoping her charge did not intend to start wearing patches.

“The jewelry is entailed,”
Mrs. Denver reminded her. “It will be for David’s brother, when he marries.”

“As Horton is only seventeen, I cannot think he will want it for a decade. I would ask his papa for it, if Maundley weren’t such a stick.”
As she spoke, Francesca opened the box and extracted a small black patch. She tried it at the outer corner of her left eye.

“Don’t, Fran, you’ll only make a cake of yourself,”
Mrs. Denver said. “It is ill-bred to try for attention by these tricks.”

“Have you seen my fan, Auntie?”

Mrs. Denver went to the bed for it, and while her back was turned, Francesca stuck the patch on the inner curve of her bosom, planning to transplant it later. She hastily put on her pelisse, to hide the stunt from her aunt.

Mrs. Denver enjoyed a relatively carefree evening knowing her charge was with Mr. Caine with whom she would suffer nothing worse than boredom. No harm could come to her at the theater, and they would be there for most of the evening. Major Stanby was gone; it would take Fran a few days to find a new flirt for them all to worry about. If only she could care for Mr. Caine—but then, he was so dull, poor lad, and given to those tedious sermons. He ought to have been a bishop.

Francesca was scarcely aware of Selby as she adjusted her opera glasses to scan the boxes at the theater. She had forgotten to move the patch from her bosom. She observed several ladies checking out her new brooch-necklace and smiled to see Miss Frobisher remove a brooch from her glove and attach it to her diamonds, where it looked quite ghastly. Miss Frobisher was a regular sheep. She was still wearing a brooch on her glove when that had been out of fashion for two weeks. Several of Lady Camden’s followers were still wearing rings outside their gloves.

She did not observe Lord Devane lurking in the shadows at the back of a box across the hall, his glasses trained on her. He recognized that tousle of black curls, and those impertinent shoulders at a glance. Discreet inquiries in various quarters had turned up no knowledge of Mrs. Wilson, though several had queried whether he meant Harriet Wilson.

A coincidence that Biddie had used that name, or was it an announcement that she meant to be the Season’s reigning courtesan? He thought it an excellent jest, if jest it was. He liked her insouciance, too, in wearing a patch on her bosom. He recognized it for a patch. He had seen enough of her bosoms the other evening to know they were unmarred, snowy white. Did the patch on the left side indicate that she was a Whig?

If the girl was clever and venturesome and ambitious enough to be inventing her own trademarks, it seemed unlikely she hadn’t recognized him the other evening. She had tipped him the double to increase his interest, and ardor. Damme if she hadn’t succeeded.

His glasses moved to examine her friends. That nondescript, sad-eyed gent—hadn’t he been with those girls Mrs. Wilson waved to the other evening at the Pantheon? What was the relationship between them? No matter, she would drop him soon enough if the dibs were in tune. She’d want a good allowance, a house, a carriage
....
These were reasonable demands and caused the wealthy earl no undue concern.

His lips curled in amusement; then his glasses rose to examine Mrs. Wilson’s face. He was delighted to discover she was even more beautiful than he had imagined. The shade of her eyes was not discernible from the distance, but he could see they were large, wide-spaced, and dark. Her nose was straight, with just a suggestion of a tilt at the end. She had called herself “an older woman.”
She was no girl, but hardly old. Twenty-four or -five. He preferred the experience of an older woman in his affairs.

Devane had attended the play with his sister, her husband, and his family, the Morgans. Marie would not take it amiss if he left them after the play, and Lord Morgan would be delighted to be allowed to return home directly to bed. In fact, he was nodding off already. Devane decided he would follow Mrs. Wilson’s carriage when she left, and discover where she lived.

There was no point asking Marie if she knew anything about Mrs. Wilson. Lady Morgan would scarcely recognize the name of Harriet Wilson, the most infamous courtesan since Nell Gwynne. Marie knew all the respectable
on-dits,
but she drew the line at lightskirts. The worst calumny of that sort to pass her lips was that so and so was “keeping a woman.”

The play seemed very long and dull. It was the Morgans’
habit to have wine brought in at intermission, and as several friends stopped at their box, Devane was obliged to remain as well.

Francesca went into the hallway to take a glass of wine and have a stroll. She noticed a few gentlemen gazing at her bosom, and remembered the patch. Lydia Forsythe complimented her on it, and said jealously, “You have outdone yourself this time, Frankie! Honestly, I don’t know how you come up with these clever ideas. And where does one buy patches in this day and age?”
This question indicated an intention to follow the style, so Francesca left the patch where it was. She didn’t even think to look around for Devane. She had forgotten all about him.

It took some doing to keep track of Mrs. Wilson’s carriage in the melée after the play, but Devane’s groom, from long practice, was quite a wizard in that respect. When the lady’s carriage turned into Grosvenor Square, Devane’s was only three carriages behind it. He frowned to see her carriage draw up in front of the perfectly respectable residence of Sir Giles and Lady Lister. Surely the chit was not bold enough to crash a polite party! No, the brown-haired gent escorting her must have some entree to society. The Listers were not a couple whose party he would normally include in his rounds, but they were by no means on the fringes of society.

He watched as Mrs. Wilson was handed out by the brown-haired nonentity. He didn’t recognize the other couple with her, but they looked respectable. By the time he entered the ballroom, Mrs. Wilson had not only been announced but had joined a set for a country dance. She heard the announcer call, “Lord Devane,”
and her head spun around. He stood behind an iron railing at the top of a shallow set of stairs, surveying the room as if he owned it. How arrogant he looked, how proud. She quickly turned her back to him, and was aware of a nervous dryness in her throat.