Incognita (Fairchild Book 2) (9 page)

“Let me take you away,” he said without thinking. “We’ll go to Brighton.”
 

Her hand fell. “You can’t be serious,” she said, failing to hold back a bitter laugh.
 

“Of course I’m serious. Forget Sophy. Forget everything. Let’s go away.” Maybe it would be miserable. He hadn’t travelled with her for twenty years. She refused to admit that she got sick in carriages. In fact, she refused to get sick, mastering her stomach by sheer will. It made her about as friendly as a basilisk. But perhaps this trip would be different. He would be patient and they could travel slowly. Away from town, she could think of other things—the sun on the sea, the breezes that would play with her curls and pull at her skirts. She was still as slim as a girl. If she smiled . . .
 

“I don’t want to go to Brighton,” she said.
 

“What do you want?”
 

She looked at him with desolate eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t want to sew. I don’t want to eat. Or sleep. Or walk, or drive, or—or see people. I don’t want to go to Mrs. Fanshawe’s ball and I don’t want to buy a bonnet to match my new pelisse.”
 

“What about furs?” he asked, but she only shuddered. Most unlike her.
 

“I can’t have what I want. The rest is nothing,” she said, her wrist turning restlessly in her lap.
 

“Would you like companionship?” he asked, looking down at his hands.
 

She laughed, short and sharp. “And what would we say to each other, pray? Five minutes and we would use up every civil comment we had.”
 

He swallowed. “You wouldn’t necessarily have to choose me. Though I would be honored if you did,” he added.
 

She looked at him, a crease forming between her brows. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No.” She rose from her chair.
 

“Where are you going?” he asked, before she could escape through the door.
 

“To count the household linen,” she said.
 

William sighed. She had done that just last week.
 

It was early in the evening, and Lady Fairchild found herself in Sophy’s empty bed chamber. Again.

Sophy’s brushes were missing, and her pearls—trinkets, only—but everything else was set out in a line on the dressing table: the perfume they had bought together, a painted fan, a new pair of gloves. The day she left, there had been a letter too.

I cannot marry him. I am sorry.

She had said nothing more.

Regrets were mawkish and beneath contempt. Lady Fairchild despised herself for sitting here, for comparing this dreary week to the way it should have been. Planning flowers for the wedding, and a menu for the breakfast afterward. Purchasing bride clothes. Perhaps a drive out to Barham to look over the house. Letters arriving, a sheaf of them, bearing the congratulations of family and friends. She and Sophy, their heads bent together, side by side.

Behind the glazed exterior, Lady Fairchild’s face threatened to crumple, so she sniffed and straightened the fan so it was at right angles to the edge of the dressing table.

Bagshot hated her, she was certain of that. Sophy was young and trusting; whether he deserved it or not, Bagshot was first in her affections. And now there was a knot of worry in her brow that was too tight to unpick. Better to avoid looking in the mirror.

She swept across the room to the window, but the rustle of silk as she moved was no longer comforting. Lady Fairchild had always taken pride in her bearing, in the arrangement of her tapered fingers, in the gleam of her hair and her clothes. She had arranged Sophy’s debut and Alistair’s proposal as carefully as an artist’s tableaux. She’d put herself into the scene—a confidante, a friend, a companion. Not the protagonist, but someone important to the happiness of all. It wasn’t a lofty part, but she wouldn’t have minded. Sophy would need her, and they would be close.

It was a sad thing to discover, even when you’d cast yourself in a supporting role, that you weren’t needed at all.

Lady Fairchild moved the curtain aside with a finger to peer into the street. She had no interest in the goings-on below, but she was tired of looking at the things Sophy had left behind. She may as well tuck herself away too, with the slippers and riding habits and gowns. She did not wish to go out, but she ought to go somewhere this evening. One had to support appearances. Talk would die down eventually, and she would continue on as before, entertaining, going to the theatre, viewing the newest spectacle, defining the mode. It was a bleak prospect. If she were not doing those things, someone else would. No one would notice the difference.

As she let the curtain fall, her eyes dropped to the window sill, where a blue book sat propped against the window frame. She picked it up, noting the title with surprise. Sophy was an adequate student, but it was unlike her to read a book of sermons. Frowning, she flipped open the cover and thumbed through the pages.

This was no sermon, she realized, her eyes falling on familiar words. This was a description of the Marchese de Montferrat! Lady Fairchild stopped reading. She examined the cover again and the frontispiece. Sure enough, this sedate cover concealed the first volume of
The Orphan of the Rhine
. The cuts were scarcely noticeable, the new endpapers pasted in with niceness and precision. Only a careful eye could see these were not the original pages. And someone expecting a treatise on the sacraments.

Lady Fairchild snapped the book shut—she’d read this one already, and knew the fate of Julie and her children. She also knew how good Henrietta was with scissors and a glue pot. The only question was how many more proscribed books Henrietta had sent Sophy’s way. With a swiftness her servants learned to fear, Lady Fairchild’s eyes darted to the bureau. The next moment she was lifting out two more books from beneath a pile of gloves.

Hmmmn. Volume two of
The Orphan of the Rhine
looked unread, but there was a letter marking a place in
Lady of the Lake
.

No wonder Sophy had run away, with her mind full of this sort of romantic fudge. Lady Fairchild intended to have a few words with Henrietta. Without hesitating, she pulled out the letter. On the outside at least, it was addressed to Betty, Sophy’s former maid. The inside was another matter entirely.

Dear Sophy,
she read.

I saw you and your mother driving in the park—alas your yellow sunshade told me you did not need to be rescued. I’m not sure exactly how I would have accomplished it, with myself on foot and you in your carriage. Also, your mother seems a formidable lady. I expect if she looked at me, she’d know at a glance if I’d said my prayers and cleaned my teeth. One wonders how you honed your propensity for mischief. Don’t take that as a criticism. I like that about you.

I will remind you that formidable or no, I am no coward, and ask again to have the honor of making your mother’s acquaintance—no, don’t get that pained look. I’ve asked once, and will hold my piece now on that head. Until tomorrow. After all, it is persistence that lets wind and water shape the hardest stone.

Thank you for your compliments—I despise my quizzing glass a little less, now that I know you favor it. I only like that it allows me to send messages to you. Here’s a new one: if I hurl the thing into your box at the opera tonight, it means I like the production. Since I have no expectation of enjoyment, you should be safe.

Unless I spend the evening looking at you. Is that allowed? Never mind. I shall do it anyway, with or without your permission.

Your devoted,

Tom

Censoriousness, outrage, chagrin—these emotions vanished by the time Georgiana reached the last paragraph. When she set down the letter, she almost felt envious. She searched her memory, trying to find a letter like this addressed to her. She couldn’t. She remembered Sophy chuckling over letters from Henrietta and Jasper, sometimes reading aloud the funniest bits. The letters she received from her son and daughter were recitals of facts in Henrietta’s case, and polite taunts in Jasper’s. More than once, she’d fought the desire to crumple his letters. One could—and did—occasionally answer in kind, but it was hard to best him. Impossible, really, shielded as he was by indifference.

And the letters she exchanged with her husband . . . well, when they did write, it was usually through the medium of his secretary.

Please inform my husband that I will stay a week longer with Lady March . . . .
 

Lord Fairchild bids me write that he will return from Scotland the second week of November . . . .
 

She could no longer say with certainty why things had gone so wrong. Other husbands took mistresses, other couples lost children. It didn’t always make them hate each other. She and William had been at war so long, neither of them knew how to sue for peace.
 

Wearily, she replaced the letter and the book, closing the drawer. She had to go out this evening, or people would laugh even more. Sophy wasn’t her daughter. No doubt people expected her to shrug off both the girl and her mésalliance. Never mind that she could not. She cared horribly for Sophy, her only willing companion, and felt her absence like an ache in her joints.
 

She would go to the theatre tonight and force herself to sit through one act. Alistair had offered to escort her, knowing she couldn’t depend on William or Jasper. She was about as eager for the excursion as she would be for a purge—a horrid business, but necessary sometimes to maintain one’s figure. Hairdressers, slimming diets, nail brushes, silk and lace and subtle cosmetics: with their help, she looked like a different species than the sharp-boned gutter trash that littered London’s streets. But she knew hunger too—it was a terrible thing, a hopeless, desperate craving. It consumed thought, destroyed every other comfort, leaving one with nothing but want—and not all kinds could be answered with food.
 

*****

It was a sad thing, Lord Fairchild thought, when a man had to bribe his servants to obtain news of his wife.

“Nothing ails her, my lord, though it’s plain to see she’s lonely without the young miss,” Dawson, his wife’s maid, reported reluctantly. It had taken persuasion and a considerable sum to convince her to keep him informed about her mistress, and even then, she scowled at him like he was an unscrupulous ruffian. She found the arrangement as distasteful as he.
 

“You could discover this yourself, sir. All you would have to do is ask her. Lady Fairchild has never made a habit of confiding to me.”

“But she complains about me, yes?”

Dawson glanced down, her frown deepening. “Not lately. And why not, is what I’d like to know!”

He couldn’t help a laugh, but he sobered quickly. “I’d like to know why too.” He ignored Dawson’s disgusted snort. “She goes to the theatre tonight?”

Dawson nodded.

“Who escorts her?” he asked with studied unconcern.

“Captain Beaumaris.”

Some of his tension left. He took out the promised pound note and placed it on the dressing table.

“She’s dining at home tonight,” Dawson admitted, compelled to full disclosure by the money resting between them. She didn’t pick it up.
 

“Unfortunately, I am not,” William said. Pity, but he was expected at a dinner with Sir Samuel Romilly to discuss his latest bill. William didn’t support the Whigs in all their endeavors, but he agreed with Romilly that something had to be done for the hordes of injured soldiers and sailors. Currently, unless they had a written pass, if they were caught begging it was a capital offense. No, Romilly and his bill could not be put off, but with any luck, he could meet Georgiana at the theatre.

“Thank you, Dawson.” He left before the words held back by her bitten lips escaped her. Dawson’s loyalty was well only to a point; if she spoke out of turn, he would have to dismiss her and he really didn’t need any more reasons to anger his wife.

William escaped the after-dinner political debate early, knowing he wouldn’t be missed. After voicing his support for Romilly’s bill, he’d said little and his attention had wandered. No one questioned his excuses as he departed.
 

He’d left no instructions for his coachman, being unsure what hour he would be free to leave for the theatre. It would only take him a quarter of an hour to walk from Russell Square to Covent Garden, so he engaged a link boy to light his way. The streets were insalubrious, but so were hackneys, and at least he wouldn’t have to sit, waiting for his hired coach to advance through the press of carriages choking the street in front of the theatre.

The skinny, tow-headed boy holding the light was ragged and grimy, but he owned a pair of shoes. He chattered incessantly as they crossed the square and turned down Drury Lane, undeterred by William’s rare, one word responses. He was a resourceful scamp, offering to fetch a whore if William liked, or show him the best flash houses.

“Just take me to the theatre,” William said, glancing over his shoulder, lest the boy be drawing him into an ambush. No one seemed to be trailing them, but best to keep a sharp eye out.

Under the first floor overhang of a building clad in grimy timbers and plaster, a woman minding a tea wagon thrust a cup in his way. He darted by, careful not to touch her. No good if he arrived at the theatre with smudges of goodness knows what on his clothes. The garbled cries that followed him were indecipherable. He knew without looking that the tea seller had a mangle mouth of black, peg-like teeth. Though not an especially fastidious man, he shuddered at the thought of swallowing tea sold by such a creature. Probably wasn’t tea at all—just old leaves bought from kitchens like his own and dyed black again.

“Almost there, me lord,” panted his little street sprite. The boy had to take two steps for every one of William’s, but he never flagged, hopping over ruts and puddles of slops like a small bird.