“Lucy? Married?It’s not very likely, is it?”
“Well,” conceded Jack, brow furrowed, finding he somehow couldn’t imagine it at all, “it hardly seems fair inviting her and pretending it’s for friendship’s sake when you’re planning to use her as little more than a servant.”
“Use her like aservant?” protested Nell. “I’m going to shower her with riches! I’m doing her a great favour. Who in their right mind would prefer an antique aunt and the freezing Northumbrian wind to a London season as the pampered guest of Lady Ashburton?”
Jack didn’t bother answering, but he suspected if there was anyone, it was his little old Min, Lucy Fanshaw.
Two
Despite being silk, Lucy’sgloves were itchy. Or not hergloves, she corrected herself with her natural honesty, but her fingers, which had been irritated by the turpentine she’d hastily used to clean them when her frantic hostess hauled her away from her work.“Good Lord, Lucy! Look at the state of you! Covered in stinking oil paints and we leave for Almack’s in an hour!”
Now her hostess, Nell, or Helen—orLady Ashburton, which Lucy couldn’t quite get used to—sat across from her in the lantern-lit carriage, looking the picture of decorous serenity. They were safely on their way, and Nell was even smiling benevolently at the two younger ladies sat opposite her, Lucy and Nora.
“The easiest thing in the world to procure you both vouchers. Even you, Lucy, unknown to anyone as you are. But you’re under my aegis, and the Ashburtons, you know, have long been highly esteemed.”
There was a very strong smell of perfume in the carriage. And pressed silk. And starch. And the crowded evening streets, all of London heading out to a thousand different diversions, meant they kept stopping and starting again with a lurch.
Privately, her eyes on the small gap in the curtains and wishing she could pull them back or even open the window itself, Lucy suspected the admission of Lady Ashburton’s protégés to Almack’s hallowed halls had more to do with another name entirely. Nell’s brother, Lord Orton.
Lord Orton… Her hands were damp with heat, which didn’t help the itching. Lord Orton, she knew, was unmarried and very rich. And if he was still in any wayJack…if he was still the laughing, energetic Jack she’d once known…and if the aggravating beauty he’d possessed so carelessly at nineteen hadn’t worn away, then he was exactly the sort of young man to be in high demand by the hostesses of London’s marriage mart.
“I suppose you must have managed to make a good impression on Lady Sefton when she came to visit,” Nell said, giving Lucy a grudging frown of examination. “Whatever did you find to talk about?”
“Art.”
He’d have to come, wouldn’t he? He’d have to escort his unmarried sister and her unmarried friend on their Almack’s debut. No wonder his sister had been able to procure vouchers.
There was no chance at all that he wouldn’t be there.
She continued fidgeting with her gloves. The silk was sure to be ruined. But it was unbearably hot, a muggy March evening, and in five days in London, she hadn’t once felt a shred of truly fresh air.
“Well!” Nell wrinkled her small nose, unimpressed at art as a conversational lure. “But you must stop fidgeting, Lucy. You’ll ruin those gloves before we get there. They’re made of a far finermaterial than any you’re used to, I’m sure, and you have no idea how easily they can be torn.”
“Or made grubby,” added Nora, sitting at Lucy’s side. “Mine are the most exquisite silk,” she informed them, holding her gloved hands out in happy self-inspection. As Lucy and Nell had already been made to admire the gloves several times, and had also been there at their ecstatic purchase, neither made any reply.
“But there’s no need to be too careful, Lucy,” Nora said brightly, “because even if you do ruin your gloves—which you’re bound to, knowing you—we’ll go and buy some more tomorrow! Do you remember those lavender kid ones? I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them since we saw them. I don’t know why I didn’t buy them at the time; it was very stupid of me, and I’m entirely resolved that the next time I see anything I think I might like, I won’t hesitate to buy it. And if, when I get back to the house, I find I don’t like it, then I’ll simply give it away.”
That was an entirely Orton attitude. Lucy laughed, secretly, deep inside herself, the way she’d once often done. It had been very strange coming back to these people, like revisiting a house you suspected might have been only a dream. But his sisters hadn’t changed at all. He probably hadn’t either. They were all trivial as caged birds with a mirror, amused by whatever was in front of them, forgetting it the moment it was gone.
Out of sight, out of mind. Seven years was a lifetime.
Nell gave Nora a scathing look. “Please don’t prattle on in that vulgar way when we’re there, Eleanor! No man of sense is going to be impressed by such…such vapid greed.”
“But, my dear,” came Lord Ashburton’s ponderous voice from Nell’s side—he’d been a silent mass of dark coat and chapeau bras until now. “Didn’t you say just the other day that you bought those three hats because you couldn’t choose between them, and”—his voice was slow with the effort of carefulremembrance—“if you’d been forced to leave one behind, you would’ve regretted it? Is that not very similar?”
Nell’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “Well…yes, dear…but…but they were hats. It is quite different.”
A look of understanding dawned upon his broad, good-natured face. “Why, yes, of course.” He gave a contented nod, entirely satisfied by the good sense of his wife’s answer, and subsided again into silence.
Lucy hid her smile and dipped her head to look again through the small gap in the curtain over the carriage window. It was dark outside, and she couldn’t see much, but the flickers of yellow and orange as they passed lit windows and streetlamps and the lights of other carriages were still exciting. Almost a week in London, and she still couldn’t help but gawk.
It was horribly noisy, of course, and often smelly, and just the briefest venture through it left her senses reeling, but it still made her blood surge with excitement to know she washere,where the Royal Academy met. She was within reaching distance of Somerset House and the British Institution and the British Museum... London held art schools, art societies—everyone who was anyone in the art world had a house here.
Nell’s unexpected summons had seemed like providence, though all her flowery words and protestations of undying friendship hadn’t been able to disguise the invitation for what it was. But beggars could not be choosers. This was her only chance to escape her aunt’s house, to see the world, to make the artistic connections she so desperately needed. To be…inspired.
There had been a brief struggle—her aunt didn’t want to lose her slave. But the woman was also a snob, and a letter from the daughter of a viscount, now the wife of an earl, might as well have been a summons from the queen herself. It couldn’t be refused.
“Of course, all this will be for nought if Jack doesn’t turn up,” said Nell.
