The Marchioness of Prahmn never argued. She never raised her tone, she merely offered a look that wounded you in the heart.
Setting my papers on my desk, I looked at the music I’d written today. Miss Wilcoxwasmy muse. There was no denying my reaction to her, her turns of phrase, the openness of those magical eyes—she healed the blockage in my mind. A few more lessons and the sonata would be done.
Walking out of my lodgings, I headed on Jermyn Street to the mews. Collecting my horse, I rode to 75 Grosvenor Street and arrived just before sunset. Mayfair addresses—white houses, redbrick manors, limestone and Portland cement, palatial residences like Anya House—filled this expensive part of London, reaching heights to bask in the pinkish rays that the inhabitants probably assumed they owned.
It would be very dark by the time I left. I doubted I’d stay the night. Tossing the reins to a groom, I said, “I’ll not be here long.”
The fellow nodded and I headed into the house.
Like the Duke of Torrance’s Anya House, there was plenty of marble and gilding. Yet, this hall was decorated with statues, copies from the Italian Renaissance.
Prahmn wouldn’t pay for an original, but he’d not let anyone know differently.
I marched past the footman and was intercepted by the butler, Mr. Reginald Chancey. “Lord Mark, I had not expected you until tomorrow.”
I held up my mother’s letter. “I decided to act early on the invitation.”
Chancey had been with the family since before I was born, a wise, cheery man with serious brown eyes that matched his deeply sable skin. “You’ll find her in her parlor. She had asked for no visitors until tomorrow.”
The fellow seemed insistent, but I couldn’t wait. Waiting made things worse. Waving the note again, I headed deeper into the house. I didn’t stop until I happened upon Mama’s parlor.
Sprinting ahead of me, Chancey announced my presence, shook his graying, balding head at me, then headed out, probably returning soon with a service of tea and an ear ready to listen.
When I entered, I found my mother, eyes covered, lying prostrate on her favorite chaise with an arm bent over her brow.
Blossoms of the floral silk covering the chair that wasn’t blocked by her slender body bloomed. It made her seem as if she lay in a garden. The heavy scent of lavender lit the room. I went to the dying fire and poked at coals, then I tossed on new ones from a shiny brass bucket by the spit.
I wondered if this fuel was from the weekly delivery and if it was from Wilcox Coal.
“Mama, are you well?”
“Miserable,” she said, before rising like a phoenix. “You came early.”
She waved at me to come kiss her hands, drawing me deeper into her special place, a parlor complete with a harp that no one played, in front of a bookcase brimming with rare editions that no one cared to read.
Lacy mobcap on her strawberry-blond head and wrapped in swaths of satin and silk robes, she looked like the very elegant woman I’d always known. “Sit, Mark. We need to talk.”
“That’s what your note said. Will Father join us too?”
“Prahmn is still . . . still on holiday.” She choked out the words but stopped short of saying what was readily known. Father had gone away with another new mistress to Scotland or somewhere abroad.
Deciding whether to take a seat in the Klismos chair by the fireplace or the hard Chippendale closer to the chaise, I decided instead to stand in this very yellow room and take the tongue-lashing like a man. “You requested to see me. I’m here, let the punishment begin.”
“Mark, you’re very dramatic.” She sort of giggled, probably trying to ease me into a false sense of hope. “I think you get that from me. So you’re forgiven for interrupting.”
Chancey returned with a tray of cups, a silver teapot, and a bottle of Father’s best brandy, Calvados, an apple brandy from Normandy. “This is for the both of you.”
The butler had seen millions of scandals in the Sebastian line, and nearly all of the Sebastian men had courted folly. My brothers were no paragons, my father no saint. I’m not sure where that put me on the scale of things.
“Sebastians are better at hiding things than you, Lord Mark.” Chancey’s tone sounded like I had disgraced my ancestors. “I will be near with the medicine, ma’am.” He bowed and left us.
Mother made herself tea and poured more than a jigger’s worth of brandy in her cup. “Mark, it seems that you had a little bit of an interesting week last week.”
I chose the Chippendale and took a cup of the chamomile sans the brandy. “It was interesting. I made a lot of progress on my sonata. I think I will be able to submit this year to the Harlbert’s Prize.”
“Um. Mmm. Oh, this is hot.” She looked at me and batted her sea-blue eyes. “I was talking about your newest friend. What do you have to say?”
There were a lot of things I wanted to say, or question, but my mother wouldn’t listen. Like my friend Livingston, she listened to gossip. Of the particulars of my life, unless it had to do with my or my brothers’ choices of a bride, she heard nothing.
