The tawdry tidbits would make us laugh. He’d offer a rare smile, one that showed the small gap in his teeth that made him look young and human and less jaded.
But we have no such secret. Miserable.
He turned away, and my thoughts scattered. I sipped from my glass of punch. Lady Bodonel’s horrid dinner was crowded, but the regulars—politicians and peers and pretty women—had become more familiar to me.
“You don’t have to eat any more, Jemina,” Patience said. She was at my right in a wonderful gown of peach satin with a ripe orange banding of dyed silk beneath her bosom. “Pretend. Move things about. That’s what His Grace does.”
The duke escaped again, some military thing or Wellington thing or cannon thing. He always had athingto stay as far from his mother as possible.
My dearest Patience suffered in his stead—the bad food, the bad guests who made sly jokes about her being foreign, and the bad music from showy fortune hunters like Lady Lavinia. The woman clad in gold, I’d heard she searched for husband number four.
Nothing wrong with a woman looking to secure her position, but I hated that she exhibited herself, wiggling on the pianoforte bench in a bodice that barely covered her off-key lungs. That shouldn’t be necessary to gain a man’s attention.
With a hand to her stomach, Patience slid her plate backward an inch. A server in silver dashed to the table and took it.
Her warm-brown heart-shaped face looked so relieved. She leaned toward me. “Lady Shrewsbury says at month’s end she’ll have the informant’s whereabouts. We have time for your arm to mend.”
“Good.” I nodded. “The widow Cultony needs proof. Her trial for theft is weeks away.”
A footman in a cranberry-red mantle came to Thackery with a note. The barrister dropped a glove as he took the paper. His large coal-black eyes loomed behind his spectacles. They blinked fast. He sprang up. “Lady Bodonel, thank you for having me. A pressing matter—”
“No. Sit, you should.”
“No, ma’am, the Lord Mayor requests—”
The lithe blond woman blew a heavy, breathy noise that shifted the peacock feather dangling from her headpiece. “You’ve been elevated. You’re an earl now. The new Lord Ashbrook. When will you give up this work business and assume your place in society?”
The man bit his lip, bowed, and broke for the nearest exit.
Dinner guests fluttered their fans, but the talk was on Mr. Thackery, well the new Earl of Ashbrook.
Patience grasped my hand. “And here I thought His Grace’s mother, the old girl, had become more liberal inviting him. Mr. Thackery is a peer. He’ll be on everyone’s guest list now. Poor man, Lady Shrewsbury says he’s been a hermit since his wife died.”
The pianoforte clanked. Lady Lavinia stretched her fingers and began another song, but her eyes were not on the keys. They were on the barrister’s exit.
CHAPTER 4
DANIEL—OUTED BY THEGOSSIP
Trudging down the hall of Lady Bodonel’s Mayfair home offered the feeling of walls closing in. Daniel reached for his cravat, as if he were being strangled.
What could the Lord Mayor want now? Had Daniel missed something in his aunt’s dealings. Had one of her widows exposed the Widow’s Grace organization? Did the clues lead back to him?
“Daniel, wait.”
The light, imperious tone made him stop midway. Flicking his finger, he motioned to a servant. “Have my carriage brought.”
The fellow nodded and trotted down the gold carpet.
Then Daniel turned to face his aunt. “Yes, Lady Shrewsbury.”
She wrapped her arm about his, surely part affection, part coercion. The woman was a force of nature, like the powerful sea. “Nephew, you haven’t replied to my missives.”
“I’m busy in court. There are clients depending on me.”
“Daniel, you know I need your assistance. My women—”
With a gentle tug, he freed his arm. “I can’t do it anymore. The stakes are too high.”
