Why could you not have left well enough alone?
Blindly, Mark turned his steps away from Embleton House and toward Covent Garden. He would never be able to sleep tonight, and this fury needed to be exorcised. An obvious solution awaited, deep in the bowels of one of the worst parts of the city. Gentility, nobility needed to give away tonight to therawness of physicality. The boxing ring called, as did the wagers circling it.
It would be a rough night.
*
Monday, 18 July 1814
Sculthorpe Manor
Half-past eight in the morning
Epworth looked atthe lone stocking a long time, glancing between it and Judith. “Youlostit? At the theater?” The disbelief in her voice spoke volumes and tweaked Judith’s lingering touch of guilt. Epworth knew she had not misplaced a stocking.
“I think I must have had too much ratafia.”
Epworth’s eyes narrowed, the sharp cockney coming out in her words. “You don’ like ratafia. Never touch the stuff.”
“Well, any port in a—oh, let us forget about the stocking.” She snatched the remaining one from Epworth and rolled it around one hand. “It is gone and that is that. Let’s get me dressed. I want to see my boys, then breakfast, and I need to be at the modiste’s by eleven. I want to go to the park after luncheon. Is the countess awake?”
Epworth grinned, then motioned for Judith to sit at her dressing table. Judith tucked the stocking into one of the drawers as Epworth began to brush out her hair. “At half-past eight? Possibly but unlikely. Although his lordship did ask for breakfast to be on the sideboard by nine.”
Judith examined her nails for splits or cracks, then picked up a wooden tool from the table and began pushing back her cuticles. “He probably has some sort of business to attend to. I heard our steward is coming in from the country house. Apparently, the crops are not faring well in this cooler weather.”
Epworth changed the brush for a comb and began to style Judith’s hair. “And all this rain. Like God’s calling on Noah again.” She paused to open a box of ribbons. “What will you be walking out in today?”
Peering into the box, Judith pointed at a yellow silken loop. “Let’s chase a bit of the gloom away, shall we? And hope the rain gives a pause.”
Epworth pulled the ribbon out, shook it free and draped it over her own shoulder as she continued to plait, pin, and twist Judith’s long chestnut strands. “By the by, the servants were all a-chitter this morning about something that happened at the theater last night.” She leaned closer, her tone sly. “About the Embleton gentleman.”
Judith froze, staring at her maid in the dressing table mirror. She licked her lips, which had suddenly gone dry. “Um, what about him?”
Epworth’s voice dropped to just above a whisper. “Apparently, that actress he’s been, um, visiting got herself into a spot with another man. Before and after her show, right there in the theater. Word is, you could hear ’em rutting—oh, pardon me, my lady—talking, through the door of her dressing room. And the Embleton chap right outside, hearing it all, pacing and fussing like a mare in heat. He didn’t break in or nothing, but they said he looked like a thunderstorm. Apparently followed ’em back to the place she lives. When her maid came out to buy milk this morning, she told some folks her mistress had to move. That the gentleman who owned the house had tossed her out on her heels.”
Judith could not believe it. “He evicted her because she—she—”
Epworth had embraced the heart of it now. “Her maid—Clara, sweet girl if a bit dim—said it had to do with the man she—well, it were the Duke of Shropshire.”
Judith’s stomach clenched as she stared at Epworth in the mirror. “No! Why would she—”
Gesturing with a rat-tailed comb, Epworth nodded. “Clara said her mistress claimed to not know about his—well, what everyone else knows.”
A veil of dread settled on Judith. “That he has the pox. But everyone does know that. Do you think she is lying?” Mark’s face returned to her mind... and the look he had given her when she had said something about current mistress. Cold and dark.
“She must be. How could she not?”
“Perhaps she thought he had money.”
“Well, my lady, heisa duke, pox or not.”
“But an impoverished one. The man is a scoundrel who gambled away everything he owned... or gave it to one of his many doxies.”
“I don’t think everyone knows that part of it.” Epworth began weaving the yellow ribbon into Judith’s hair. “My lady, I don’t understand that. I thought every title came with an income. And land? Stuff they cannot sell.”
Judith shook her head. “You are speaking of what is called an entail—property, usually, although sometimes money—that is tied to a title and cannot be divested from it. The property and its management provide an income, although some titles have a yearly stipend from the crown. Shropshire’s does not, and the only entail was his country house and a small acreage around it. The larger estate—family-owned land—earned an income through tenancies and farming. When he became duke, the estate had been stable and rather wealthy, even by Beau Monde standards.”
Judith paused, thinking suddenly about other men who had followed the duke’s same path. “But like a lot of profligate men in the aristocracy, Shropshire could not manage his way across the auction lot at Tattersall’s. He virtually lived at gamblinghells and brothels instead of learning to manage his heritage. Finally, he had to sell what he could and abandoned the rest. His beautiful house now sits empty and rotting. Unless one of the new merchants with all their growing wealth buys it, it will probably collapse in a few years.”
