Page 56

June 1, 1802

Vauxhall Gardens

Two days before the Kelbourne wedding

Miss Clara Vetry considered herself a sunny person by nature. She hated to think poorly of acquaintances, and always did her best to consider their point of view. When someone made fun of her darling reticules—the one shaped like a mouse’s head seemed to draw particular scorn—she dimpled at them forgivingly and straightened its wire whiskers.

So often criticism was the result of being accidentally poked in the leg, and one couldn’t blame them for being irritated. Whiskers were a signal characteristic of her reticules, and she couldn’t give them up.

Viscount Kelbourne, for example, had smoldered at her in a most unforgiving manner when the whiskers on her darling black-and-white skunk reticule snagged his silk stockings. He went so far as to suggest that skunks didn’t have whiskers, which she could have vigorously contested—except he made her far too nervous, so she had done nothing except whisper apologies.

The skunk-hating viscount was marrying her dearest friend in the world. She wanted to think well of him, even given his dislike (and ignorance) of whiskers.

Yet Clara could think of nothing that would excuse his behavior at this very moment. Nothing. She could only thank her lucky stars that Torie hadn’t accepted her invitation to join them at Vauxhall.

“Do I believe my eyes?” her Aunt Marigold said in an escalating whisper, staring across the dance floor into one of the open boxes under the Pavilion.

“I can scarcely believe the exquisite decoration on the Pavilion,” Clara cried, suddenly realizing that Kelbourne’s appalling behavior would be of interest to others. “Aunt, do let us go around the other side and examine that eggshell blue more closely.”

“What lechery, virtually on the eve of his wedding,” Aunt Marigold breathed. “Vile lechery, performed before the eyes of the world!”

Aunt Marigold was devoted to the teachings of a minister who regularly portended the end of the world due to human misbehavior, which had a dampening effect on her mental state.

For a moment, Clara entertained the wild notion of begging her aunt to pretend she’d seen nothing, but since Vauxhall did not offer dancing on Wednesdays, the floor was thronged with people who would be just as interested in Kelbourne’s activities as Aunt Marigold—who was now tugging on Clara’s mother’s sleeve.

The Right Honorable Lady Vetry turned, her mouth tight as a drawstring purse. Clara’s mama had been chatting with a countess, and though the Vetrys traced their ancestry—albeit with a few creative embellishments—to one of Henry VII’s trusted courtiers, she was clearly not be pleased to be interrupted while speaking to those of higher rank.

“May I be of assistance, Marigold?” she asked with acid emphasis.

“Look who is seating himself in the box to the left,” her sister hissed.

Lady Vetry pointedly rearranged the stiff brocade of her sleeve. Her gown harked back to the days of Queen Elizabeth, a fashion she preferred to the present. Queen Charlotte’s towering wigs? Heaven forbid.

Her eyes widened as she followed Marigold’s gaze. “Two days before his marriage!”

Clara’s heart was hammering, but she could already see that there was no way to head off a scandal. All the world that hadn’t attended Vauxhall this evening would learn everything by the next morning, when the gossip columns rolled off the press, bundled for delivery while their ink was still wet.

Her darling Torie’s fiancé—that beast—was seated in an open box with his flamboyant mistress, the infamous opera singer Gianna, to his right. The lady had piled lightly powdered dark hair atop her head. She wore one of the new chemise gowns; tawny silk clung to her curves.

It hardly needed to be said that Lady Vetry would never allow Clara to order a garment so scandalously revealing. Even now, in Clara’s third Season, her mother scarcely allowed her to wear white silk instead of white dimity cotton, let alone any of the more exciting fabrics and shades.

Gianna—as the world knew her—wore the gown so well, Clara thought with a pang. Even if her mother did allow a dress like that, Clara was too short and squat to be flattered by it.

“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times,” Aunt Marigold rabbited. “Vauxhall is no place for ladies. I shall not join you again. A lady of quality should never rub shoulders with the demimonde.”

“Don’t be silly, Marigold,” Lady Vetry said. “The pleasure gardens are the pinnacle of the fashionable world. One cannot afford not to be seen here, no matter whom one rubs elbows with.”

“But she’s just sitting there, as if she has every right to be in our presence!” Marigold cried.

Gianna was indeed looking over the crowd, her gaze cool and impertinent. Clara had the feeling that Kelbourne’s mistress never suffered from the sort of anxieties that plagued her own mind every day.

“As Mama just said, she has every right to be here,” Clara pointed out. “Could we please not make a fuss about it? Torie will be so horribly embarrassed.”

“That poor girl,” her mother said. “That poor, poor girl.”

People often talked of Torie that way, as if she had been staked to a rock and fed to a dragon. That was dramatic, but Clara adored fairy stories, and her mother always acted as if Torie was on the point of death. Which she wasn’t.

“Gentlemen of quality do have mistresses,” Clara said. “We all know that. When Kelbourne was betrothed to Leonora, he told her as much himself. I fail to see why we should decry her, rather than condemn him!”