Her ladyship sat back in her chair. “What did you talk about? Did he ask after our family? It would be a great stroke for you, Cecilia, if you captured Lord Rudyard! And in your first Season, too.”
“Perhaps Lord Rudyard is interested in Lucasta for herself,” Cici ventured. “I’m afraid I took the last of the sugar, dear.”
Cici looked a bit peaked, with violet shadows under her eyes. And the Season was only beginning. There would be weeks more of unending entertainment.
Unless Lucasta did something so deplorable as sink her cousin’s chances by alienating the most fashionable man of theton, one with the power to launch or scuttle maidenly prospects with a word.
She curled her toes into her slippers. She’d forgotten, last night, that Rudyard was a threat and a danger. She’d been caught up in the magnificence of the music. In the clean, sharp scent of his eau de cologne as he stood beside her in the opera box.
In the exultant thrill that raced through her body when that low, liquid baritone poured into her ear. The man had a voice that sounded like brandy tasted—rich, smoky, delicious, and quite, quite heady for one not accustomed to spirits. Did he sing? She would forget all his faults at once—saving, of course, his insult to Selina—if he did.
“Interested in Lucasta? Oh, I see.” Her ladyship tapped a finger on the scandal sheet, her lips pinched as if her cordial had turned sour. “Lady Clara hinted she had also heard that your great-aunt intends to leave everything to you.” Her smile showed her teeth. “Though she is my aunt also, and I might be helped just as much by her fortune. In addition, my birth cannot be quarreled with.I, unlike my sister, have done nothing to disgrace the family.”
Lucasta stared into her weak tea. She would rather be rated for attending the opera than endure this discussion. “My aunt may change her mind, mum.”
But in the meantime, gossip about her supposed inheritance would indeed account for Rudyard’s interest in her. There was no other reason a man of his rank and wealth would take the slightest notice of a poor vicar’s daughter.
Unless he were looking for revenge, in some fashion, for rude observations the vicar’s daughter liked to sling about him and his friends. But then why not condescend to her face, as he had to Selina?
Cici frowned. “But Papa wants Lucasta for Trevor. You’ll adore him, my dear. He’s quite dashing.”
“Far too dashing for her,” her ladyship said sharply. “Cecilia, do not be a goosecap. Lucasta would not dare aspire so high, and I cannot conceive why your father should jest about such a match. Your brother and your cousin are unsuitable in every possible respect.”
Lucasta winced and set her tea aside. Always the poor relation, the dowdy cousin, plain, disappointing Lucasta. Her aunt didn’t approve of the Baron’s plans, then. That was useful, since Lucasta didn’t approve of them, either.
“Aunt Pevensey has the right of it, Cici,” Lucasta said, careful to keep the bitterness from her tone. Her aunt would pounce on the opportunity to read her another juniper lecture about perceiving the generosity of her family, et cetera, though barbs about her father’s foreignness and her mother’s birth were slipped into every sentence. “Your brother will be a peer of the realm in good time, and I, if luck and fate are kind, will have a music studio of my own.”
If she were going to be brazen, might not go for the prize. “I am much better off devoting myself to the poor sad talents that might support me at Miss Gregoire’s, do you not think? And since Signor Marchesi was performing last evening, and he?—”
“No,” her aunt snapped. “To all of it, no, as I have told you, Lucasta! It is one thing to nurture a private talent that can prove agreeable to your friends. But no member of this family, while I live and breathe, will do something so vulgar as perform in public for pay. On that, at least, Aunt Cornelia and I agree.”
Her ladyship took a deep draught of her cordial, her nostrils flaring. “Only that awful school could have given you such ideas. She ought never have let you attend it.”
Lucasta forced herself to breathe evenly, all the way from her belly. It was a technique a past singing master taught her, and it was a useful trick for handling temper as well as deepening sound. How she longed for the day she could return to MissGregoire’s. At least there she had employment, and she could play and sing as much as she liked.
“If private entertainments are acceptable, mum, then perhaps you might reconsider Lady Cranbury’s invitation for me to participate in her musicale.” Lucasta tried to sound diffident. Her aunt would deny her out of sheer spite if she knew how much Lucasta longed to get her hands on a pianoforte built by Cristofori.
Aunt returned to her cordial. “We have no reason to appear agreeable to Lady Cranbury, not when she is trying to match one of her grandnieces with Mr. Plimpton, and he is showing interest in Cecilia. Besides, it would appear I am pushing you forward, and I will not appear so vulgar.”
She slid aside her egg in its cup. “The hairdresser is coming this afternoon, and the Baron and I are hosting a dinner this evening. I need you to make up the numbers, so pray appear on time, Lucasta, and wear the gray silk robe.”
Lucasta nodded and rose, swallowing the remark that the gray robe made her look like a turned pudding, and both she and her aunt knew it. “My errands this afternoon will not take long.”
“Check if Mrs. MacGowan requires anything. And Lucasta.” There was ice in her ladyship’s tone, though she stared straight before her, raising her cordial to her lips and not meeting her niece’s eye. “There will be no more mention of your name in the gossip papers. In association with anyone, least of all Rudyard. You will avoid becoming notorious at all costs.”
“There isn’t the least chance of that,” Lucasta said, pushing in her chair. “One has to be visible before one can be notorious.”
Cici shot her a look of surprise at her bitter tone, and Lucasta left the room before she did something so foolish as to burst into frustrated tears. Only it felt a crueler loss now, to have her music denied her, after she had spent a night at the opera. She had stood in the music on its way to heaven and a man with thevoice of a fallen angel had enjoyed the performance with her, conversed with her, escorted her through one of London’s most beautiful theaters on his arm.
Poor, plain Lucasta Lithwick could not hope for a repeat of that experience. She had seen her last of Signor Marchesi and likely Smart Jeremy as well. He would have forgotten her already.
Until the moment he nearly ran her down in Bloomsbury Square.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jem made his obligatory visit to the drawing room of Arendale House to find Bertie making an impossible tangle of her netting and his aunt devouring the morning papers.
“It’s everywhere, Jeremiah,” Aunt Payne said with a frown. “You were seen again fawning over this mysterious Miss Lithwick. A schoolteacher, lately of Bath? Why would you let her in Arendale’s box?”
