“Yes, he informed me also. I advised him to get a cat, but since cats make him sneeze . . .” He shrugged.
Miss Thringstone stamped her foot. “And will you shrug when Eudora, having seen these thefts go unpunished, takes to stealing other, more valuable items?”
He shook his head. “It won’t happen.”
Miss Thringstone flung up her hands. “That is the essence of the problem, Mr. Reyne!
You
are the reason those girls will never be fit to enter society! You simply don’t care about their atrocious behavior and criminal tendencies!”
His voice was steely soft. “Oh, I care, Miss Thringstone. If I didn’t, I might let you whip them into submission.” He gave her a level look from cold gray eyes and said, “The task may seem impossible to you, but I am in the habit of achieving what I set out to do.” He clenched his fist. “When the time comes, the girls
will
be presented at court, they
will
make their entry into society, and they will stand
equal
to every other young lady there.”
Miss Thringstone snorted again, much less ladylike this time. “Face facts, Mr. Reyne. All the money in the world is not going to make acceptable to the haute ton a foul-mouthed wildcat who carries a knife strapped to her thigh and a girl, however sweet-faced, who is mentally deficient and cannot speak.”
She recoiled involuntarily at the look he gave her, stepping back as if she thought he might strike her, but his voice remained cold and unemotional as he said, “Your employment in this house is at an end, Miss Thringstone. You will leave within the hour.”
As the governess stalked from the room, Sebastian sat back in his chair and sighed. The seventh governess in four months. Hiring another one would bring about the same results; he had no doubt of it.
He needed a different solution, dammit. He stretched and pulled the bell cord.
“Send for Morton Black,” Sebastian ordered as soon as a servant arrived. He pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and began to write.
Forty minutes later, Sebastian’s agent, Morton Black, walked in, his gait uneven from the wooden leg that replaced the one he’d lost at Waterloo.
Sebastian nodded a greeting. “Another confidential assignment, Black. It will involve a journey to London.”
Black looked faintly surprised. “Very good, sir. What’s the assignment this time?”
“I need a wife, a special kind of wife. She will not be easy to find. I have noted down the main particulars.” He handed Black the list he’d just written.
With all expression wiped from his face, Black took the sheet of paper and eyed it cautiously. “I see. And what do you want me to do with this, sir?”
Sebastian frowned, impatient of his agent’s uncharacteristic slowness. “Find me a female—a society lady—who fits those particulars, of course. It will not be easy, but I have confidence in you. Let me know her name, and I’ll do the rest.”
Black swallowed and said woodenly. “Very good, sir.” He glanced at the list. “There is nothing here about looks, sir.”
Sebastian shrugged. “They don’t matter. Character is what counts. Looks fade, character strengthens.”
Black looked doubtful. “But you’re a young man, sir,” he began.
Sebastian looked up. “Are the instructions not clear, Black?”
Morton Black stiffened and almost saluted. “Yes, sir, quite clear. I’ll start on it at once, sir.”
After Black had left, Sebastian penned another letter to his oldest friend, Giles Bemerton. This would involve courtship, something in which he had no experience. He would need Giles’s knowledge of the world, his savoir faire, to get him through it.
He wasn’t looking forward to the task at all. He’d not intended ever to marry again. But Sebastian Reyne was not a man who shirked his duty.
Chapter One
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
FRANCIS BACON
LONDON, ENGLAND. APRIL 1818
“BUT SHE’S GOT NO BOSOMS! YOU CAN’T MARRY A WOMAN WITH no bosoms!”
Sebastian Reyne shrugged. “She is by far the most appropriate for my requirements, according to Morton Black’s report. Besides, of course Lady Elinore Whitelaw has bosoms. She’s a woman, isn’t she?”
“She might not be,” his friend, Giles Bemerton, declared darkly. “Swathed as she invariably is, in seventeen acres of gray cloth, who could possibly be sure?”
“You are talking nonsense,” Sebastian said firmly. The two men were seated in a small, snug room that was part of Giles’s bachelor lodgings in London. It was late at night, and a fire was burning merrily in the grate.
“And she is older than you by ten years at least.”
“Only six.” Sebastian sipped his brandy. “In any case, a man looks for maturity in a bride.”
Giles gave him a look of disbelief. “She has eschewed marriage all this time, and yet she must have had offers—despite her lack of looks—for her father would have left her well provided for, even though he was estranged from the mother. Why would she change her mind now?”
“She has no choice. Her mother died last year, leaving her little to live on. Her father’s fortune comes to her only after she has been married for three years.”
Giles pursed his lips. “I see. But you don’t need a fortune, so why shackle yourself to a cold little fish like Lady Elinore? D’you know, I danced with her once. She made it abundantly clear she found me repugnant!
Me!
” Giles glanced indignantly down at his well-formed person.
Sebastian suppressed a grin. With Giles’s golden good looks, few women would find him repugnant. He said with dry amusement, “Another point in her favor. She shows great discrimination.”
“Bah! She is a complete eccentric! Her only passion is for good works—museums and destitute brats and charitable causes.” Giles shuddered eloquently. “It is madness, I tell you. Why would anyone choose to take a repressed little stick like Lady Elinore Whitelaw to wife, when there are plenty of prettier and more cheerful girls available on the marriage mart?”
Sebastian had engineered a meeting with Lady Elinore the previous week and found her small, quiet, and unremarkable. They’d discussed her charitable works, and Lady Elinore’s responses had confirmed his choice. She had devoted much of her life to working with orphan girls. She would do nicely. “Stubble it, Giles. My mind is made up. Prettier, more cheerful girls do not have the . . . the fortitude and experience a woman will need to deal with my sisters.”
Giles made one last effort. “But you’ll have nothing in common with her, Bastian. She’s plain as a pikestaff! One of those earnest, bespectacled bluestockings.”
“I don’t care. I’m not looking for beauty in a wife. My sisters need stability and a sense of family. I cannot give it to them because they cannot trust me; therefore I must take a wife, and Lady Elinore is the kind of—”
“What do you mean, they cannot trust you? You’re the most trustworthy fellow I’ve ever—”
Sebastian cut him off quietly. “Thank you, but trust is not a reasoned emotion. Their . . . experiences have made them unable to trust me.”
“I’m sorry, Bastian. I know how much you care about those girls.”
Sebastian shrugged awkwardly. Nobody would ever know how much his little sisters’ lack of trust hurt him. It did no good to repine. “The damage was done before I recovered them. But I won’t give up on them. Lady Elinore is a woman of sense who places a high value on duty, and her experience with destitute children means that she will be less easily shocked than most.” He sighed. “I have it on the authority of no fewer than seven governesses that Cassie is particularly shocking.”
“Sense and duty!” Giles snorted. “What about love?”
“Love is a lie told to children.”
“No, it’s a game, a delightful game.”
Sebastian snorted cynically.
“And you used to be such a romantic.” Giles clenched his fist. “I wish to God you’d never met the damned Ire-tons. That witch and her father—”
Sebastian cut him off, saying mildly but with a thread of steel, “When speaking of my late father-in-law and my late wife, do so with respect, if you please. If not for them, I would still be living in poverty, my sisters would be lost forever, and none of this would be possible. One must take the rough with the smooth.”
“I know, but still, what they did to you—”
“Yes, and I am such a delicate flower. Now drop it, Giles.”
Giles gave him a frustrated look. “Lord, but you’re stubborn.”
Sebastian smiled. “I know. And you are very good to put up with me. Now, may I rely on you to assist me through the shoals of the ton?”
Giles laughed. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world!”
“Thank you. I wonder why that doesn’t fill me with confidence.” Sebastian set down the empty glass and stretched. “I must go. I have an early engagement in the morning.” He pulled a wry face. “Dancing lessons. Some finicky old French fellow. Wears rouge!”
Giles gave a shout of laughter. “I’ve a good mind to come around and watch!”
Sebastian gave him a dry look. “Do so at your peril, Bemerton.”
“All the world is here,” Giles assured him as they entered the Frampton House ballroom some ten days later. He immediately began to point out well-known people. Sebastian had no interest in them. He was here for one reason only.
“And Lady Elinore?” He’d calculated that it would take six, possibly eight significant meetings before it would be acceptable for him to propose marriage.
“Yes, yes, she’s over there,” said Giles impatiently. “Though I don’t know why she bothers, the way she dresses.”
“Good, then let us waste no more time.” He made a bee-line across the room in the direction of Lady Elinore.
“Subtlety, my dear Bastian. A little subtlety, I beg of you,” Giles complained in an undervoice as Sebastian towed him through the crowd. “I have a reputation as a person of some finesse, I’ll have you know! Slow down!”
Sebastian grinned, but his pace didn’t slacken. He wanted to get this courtship over as quickly as possible and get back to what he knew best—work.
“Lady Elinore.” He bowed. From the corner of his eye, he saw Giles give him a look that recalled their earlier conversation and, without thought, Sebastian’s gaze dropped. Giles was right; she did not appear to have bosoms. He said hurriedly, “You look charming tonight, Lady Elinore.”
Both she and Giles gave him a doubtful look. She was a small woman, very pale and thin, with mouse-colored hair scraped back in a tight knot and a kind of cap thing pinned to it. Tonight she was dressed in a plain gown of dark gray bombazine. The gray fabric leached all the color from her skin, and the severe, high cut of the gown did nothing to soften her scrawny frame. She wore no jewelry.
Sebastian shrugged mentally. It didn’t matter whether the dress suited her or not. Women preferred compliments to truth. At least Thea had. Besides, he hated this sort of gathering, was absolutely out of his depth with the sort of light banter that Giles was so good at. A compliment or two could stretch a long way, he’d found.
“How do you do, Mr. Reyne,” Lady Elinore murmured. “I wondered if you’d be here tonight.” She glanced to his left with a faint look of inquiry.
“Ah, yes, my friend Mr. Giles Bemerton. Bemerton, I believe you have met Lady Elinore before.”
Lady Elinore inclined her head regally toward Giles and said in a cool voice, “I don’t believe so, although I suspect our families are connected in some fashion. You are one of the Staffordshire Bemertons, are you not?”
Clearly Lady Elinore had no recollection of the dance that rankled so in Giles’s memory. Sebastian watched his friend master his chagrin and bow gracefully. “Quite so. Delighted to meet you, Lady Elinore.”
Fearing further conversational fencing, Sebastian engaged Lady Elinore for the next available country dance and the supper dance also. Giles, prompted, he said later, because he didn’t want his friend to be seen to be courting a complete wallflower, engaged her for a cotillion and a waltz. Sebastian thanked him gravely.
Sebastian paced with repressed impatience around the edge of the dance floor. Courtship was a tiresome business. He’d danced the first of his dances with Lady Elinore and was now awaiting the supper dance. Unfortunately, that was some time away. He was fed up with the sight of the beau monde enjoying itself.
The beau monde—the beautiful people. People who had nothing better to do than spend their time enhancing their looks with cosmetics and jewels. For them, clothes were adornments, designed to flatter their shape, not garments to protect a body from the cold and rain.
He watched them dancing, circling, laughing, and drinking, and his mood darkened. Beautiful. Frivolous. Not a care in the world. Lives of froth and bubble. They had no idea of the struggle for existence that most of their fellow humans experienced. Their bodies were well-nourished and well-formed, not starved and crippled by long hours of debilitating, repetitive factory work. Or crippled fighting for king and country, like Morton Black.
Sebastian didn’t belong here. He wasn’t one of the beau monde. He hadn’t lived a charmed life, as most of them had. He glanced at his scarred hands, at the two misshapen fingers on his left hand. Giles had advised him to wear gloves at all times, but Sebastian hadn’t. He wouldn’t disguise what he was.
The sooner he got this courtship out of the way and returned to the life he understood, the better. His gaze wandered idly over the colorful throng. And halted, riveted.
He grabbed Giles’s arm. “Who is
that
?” He breathed the question, staring across the ballroom floor, transfixed.
Giles heaved a sigh of relief. “Finally! Er, I mean, excellent. I knew the Frampton ball would yield up some entertainment. There’s dozens of prett—er, dutiful girls of sense here. Not that you’re interested in anyone other than Lady Elinore, I understand that. But it doesn’t hurt to look. Which one has caught your eye?”