Until now, he stopped himself from adding. Until he’d become a landlubbing viscount stuck in a soggy country that proceeded along much in the same manner as its weather: invariably and predictably.
The Dowager pivoted toward Mina. “And you must be Miss Radclyffe? Nearly match your father’s height, I daresay. Must be the Dutch blood.”
Jake took this as his cue. “Your Grace, may I present my daughter, Miss Radclyffe, to you?”
“Now, now, St. Alban, no need to stand on ceremony with family. After all, your paternal great-grandfather, the First Viscount St. Alban, was my paternal grandfather. My father was the second viscount. My brother, the third. And my nephew, the fourth. Such a tragedy about your distant cousin Georgie, but the man had no business stepping foot onto a boat. He couldn’t keep his footing on dry land.” She paused out of respect for the dead before continuing, “As far as the St. Alban title goes, nothing was ever expected to come of your particular branch. I suppose that is why you know so little of your English family. But, now, here you are. We shall make the best of it. You do, at least, look the part.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she began doing what appeared to be a complex computation, which required the use of her fingers. Jake smiled and winked down at Mina, who gave him a serious smile in return.
“Yes . . . yes, here we have it, St. Alban,” said the Dowager. “You and I are first cousins once-removed. That’s twice-removed for you, Miss Radclyffe, but I would like you both to call me Aunt Lucretia. Now, about Miss Radclyffe.” She paused for a gulp of air. “St. Alban, I understand that you’ve not yet learned the rules of Society, but you’ve made a gravefaux pasin bringing her here tonight. She is not yet Out. I shall escort her to my private suite of rooms, where she will remain until you are ready to leave.”
She held up a forestalling hand as Jake opened his mouth to insert his opinion on the matter. “I’ve been around men all my life, and I know that look. You can save it. Miss Radclyffe’s reputation is at stake.” She turned to Mina. “Do you happen to have a sampler in your reticule?”
“I have a copy of Newton’sOpticksin my reticule,” Mina replied.
The Dowager’s eyebrows shot up. “Indeed?”
“Miss Radclyffe,” Jake inserted, “has a keen interest in astronomy and is intent on constructing her own telescope.”
“Oh?” chirped the Dowager. She pursed, then unpursed, her lips and, at last, rallied. “How original of you, my dear. Now, if you will come with me.”
Jake made eye contact with Mina to ensure she was agreeable to the Dowager’s plan. Mina nodded once, imperceptible to all but them, and that settled the matter.
The Dowager was leading Mina away when she threw one last parting command over her shoulder. “St. Alban, you must make yourself at home.”
A snort escaped Jake as the Dowager and Mina disappeared into the crowd. Home? Several fingers of a Scottish single malt might convince him that this room felt like home.
He slipped through the crowd, making his way to its periphery and ignoring the three-foot radius of silence that surrounded him. He would stumble across a cart stocked with whiskey, sooner or later.
One year ago, the first royal summons had reached him in Singapore, informing him that a distant English cousin, who happened to be a viscount, had died without having produced an heir. He’d ignored the letter. The English aristocracy had naught to do with his life.
His father had been the younger son of a minor branch of a noble family. Few career options open to him, he’d purchased a commission in the Royal Navy and rose to the rank of Admiral before his untimely death at sea when Jake was still in leading strings. As a result, Jake had been raised by his widowed mother and the Dutch family she’d left when she’d fallen in love with the older English admiral, only to return after his death. The Van Rijn’s were successful traders in the Far East, and Jake had spent the first thirty-five years of his life assured of his place in that unpredictable, always fascinating, world.
The English, however, had a different opinion on his place in the world. A month after the first summons arrived a second summons. He’d ignored that letter, too.
When the letters from the Dowager began trickling in, relentlessly one after another, he began paying attention. Her message was clear and increasingly frantic: if he didn’t accept the title, it would revert to the Crown. There were no other male heirs.
No longer could he ignore his English relations. He’d never shirked his familial obligations a day in his life. He’d accepted his fate. A fate that had led him to London, the possessor of an English viscountcy and a mountain of debt left by the previous viscounts, George and Georgie.
While this crowd didn’t reflect the sort of company he was accustomed to keeping, it did offer a distraction, albeit a temporary one, from the dreary balancing of Georgie’s books. The man’s idea of “business ventures” had involved blindly handing over large sums of money to “gentlemen” capitalists. It was clear to Jake that those “gentlemen” had speculated the money away on their own doomed and uninformed interests.
At last, his feet found the oasis he sought: a shiny brass cart stocked with crystal decanters of various shapes and sizes. He deferred to a silver-haired gentleman seeking the same before pouring himself two fingers of a deep amber whiskey and taking a long draught. That was the stuff. This cavernous ballroom wasn’t like home, but the light felt warmer nonetheless.
The old gentleman gave him a knowing smile and a silent toast as they turned in unison to take in the crowd. Jake was about to practice his rusty social skills by introducing himself—life aboard an East Indiaman didn’t prepare one for a London “small” Salon—when a pair of lords sidled up to the whiskey cart behind him.
“A widow for a decade?” asked a sloppy voice. “And now a divorcée? That would make her a follower of Mrs. Wollstonecraft or a slut and—”
“. . . And,” an equally sloppy voice chimed in, “she’s too handsome to be a bluestocking.”
A round of laughter, grating and repulsive, rang out. The old gentleman stiffened and stabbed the obnoxious duo with his piercing blue gaze. Jake turned in time to watch the blood drain from their faces, eyes as round as sovereigns.
“Might there be,” the old gentleman began, “a wide spectrum of possibility for the fairer sex between bluestocking and slut? Perhaps I’m acquainted with this paragon?”
“Oh, no, Your Grace,” one of the louts stammered out, “you’re not familiar with this particular . . . paragon.”
The pair mumbled a few indecipherable inanities and halved in size as they slunk away, entirely sobered, Jake suspected.
Your Grace. A Duke. The company one kept in London.
