Francesca Read online

  Mrs. Denver enjoyed a relatively carefree evening knowing her charge was with Mr. Caine with whom she would suffer nothing worse than boredom. No harm could come to her at the theater, and they would be there for most of the evening. Major Stanby was gone; it would take Fran a few days to find a new flirt for them all to worry about. If only she could care for Mr. Caine—but then, he was so dull, poor lad, and given to those tedious sermons. He ought to have been a bishop.

  Francesca was scarcely aware of Selby as she adjusted her opera glasses to scan the boxes at the theater. She had forgotten to move the patch from her bosom. She observed several ladies checking out her new brooch-necklace and smiled to see Miss Frobisher remove a brooch from her glove and attach it to her diamonds, where it looked quite ghastly. Miss Frobisher was a regular sheep. She was still wearing a brooch on her glove when that had been out of fashion for two weeks. Several of Lady Camden’s followers were still wearing rings outside their gloves.

  She did not observe Lord Devane lurking in the shadows at the back of a box across the hall, his glasses trained on her. He recognized that tousle of black curls, and those impertinent shoulders at a glance. Discreet inquiries in various quarters had turned up no knowledge of Mrs. Wilson, though several had queried whether he meant Harriet Wilson.

  A coincidence that Biddie had used that name, or was it an announcement that she meant to be the Season’s reigning courtesan? He thought it an excellent jest, if jest it was. He liked her insouciance, too, in wearing a patch on her bosom. He recognized it for a patch. He had seen enough of her bosoms the other evening to know they were unmarred, snowy white. Did the patch on the left side indicate that she was a Whig?

  If the girl was clever and venturesome and ambitious enough to be inventing her own trademarks, it seemed unlikely she hadn’t recognized him the other evening. She had tipped him the double to increase his interest, and ardor. Damme if she hadn’t succeeded.

  His glasses moved to examine her friends. That nondescript, sad-eyed gent—hadn’t he been with those girls Mrs. Wilson waved to the other evening at the Pantheon? What was the relationship between them? No matter, she would drop him soon enough if the dibs were in tune. She’d want a good allowance, a house, a carriage.... These were reasonable demands and caused the wealthy earl no undue concern.

  His lips curled in amusement; then his glasses rose to examine Mrs. Wilson’s face. He was delighted to discover she was even more beautiful than he had imagined. The shade of her eyes was not discernible from the distance, but he could see they were large, wide-spaced, and dark. Her nose was straight, with just a suggestion of a tilt at the end. She had called herself “an older woman.” She was no girl, but hardly old. Twenty-four or -five. He preferred the experience of an older woman in his affairs.

  Devane had attended the play with his sister, her husband, and his family, the Morgans. Marie would not take it amiss if he left them after the play, and Lord Morgan would be delighted to be allowed to return home directly to bed. In fact, he was nodding off already. Devane decided he would follow Mrs. Wilson’s carriage when she left, and discover where she lived.

  There was no point asking Marie if she knew anything about Mrs. Wilson. Lady Morgan would scarcely recognize the name of Harriet Wilson, the most infamous courtesan since Nell Gwynne. Marie knew all the respectable on-dits, but she drew the line at lightskirts. The worst calumny of that sort to pass her lips was that so and so was “keeping a woman.”

  The play seemed very long and dull. It was the Morgans’ habit to have wine brought in at intermission, and as several friends stopped at their box, Devane was obliged to remain as well.

  Francesca went into the hallway to take a glass of wine and have a stroll. She noticed a few gentlemen gazing at her bosom, and remembered the patch. Lydia Forsythe complimented her on it, and said jealously, “You have outdone yourself this time, Frankie! Honestly, I don’t know how you come up with these clever ideas. And where does one buy patches in this day and age?” This question indicated an intention to follow the style, so Francesca left the patch where it was. She didn’t even think to look around for Devane. She had forgotten all about him.

  It took some doing to keep track of Mrs. Wilson’s carriage in the melée after the play, but Devane’s groom, from long practice, was quite a wizard in that respect. When the lady’s carriage turned into Grosvenor Square, Devane’s was only three carriages behind it. He frowned to see her carriage draw up in front of the perfectly respectable residence of Sir Giles and Lady Lister. Surely the chit was not bold enough to crash a polite party! No, the brown-haired gent escorting her must have some entree to society. The Listers were not a couple whose party he would normally include in his rounds, but they were by no means on the fringes of society.

  He watched as Mrs. Wilson was handed out by the brown-haired nonentity. He didn’t recognize the other couple with her, but they looked respectable. By the time he entered the ballroom, Mrs. Wilson had not only been announced but had joined a set for a country dance. She heard the announcer call, “Lord Devane,” and her head spun around. He stood behind an iron railing at the top of a shallow set of stairs, surveying the room as if he owned it. How arrogant he looked, how proud. She quickly turned her back to him, and was aware of a nervous dryness in her throat.

  He couldn’t possibly recognize her! She hadn’t removed her mask at the Pantheon. He might see some resemblance, but when he heard her friends call her Frankie or Lady Camden, he would think he was mistaken. If he approached her, she would look right through him. What had she to worry about? He was the one who had behaved outrageously! Yet she felt guilty, and angry with herself for it. Why did he have to come here? She couldn’t remember ever having attended the same party as him before, so they obviously traveled in different sets. He had come alone, without Lady Devane, if there was a Lady Devane. She was assailed by the awful idea that he had followed her.

  When the music began, the motions of the dance distracted her to some extent. She looked around the room, wondering what set he had joined, but couldn’t find him. Perhaps he was in the card parlor. She glanced toward the door, and there she saw him, hovering, looking directly at her through his raised quizzing glass. He looked like a vulture, all in black. She hastily averted her eyes and tried not to look at the doorway again.

  But her eyes were impossible to control. Again she looked, and again he was staring at her, wearing a sardonic smile now. She would not look again. He might mistake it for encouragement. Yet she was aware, without quite seeing him, that the black vulture never moved a muscle. At the end of the dance her nerves were stretched taut. She risked one last peek, and for a moment she breathed easy. He was gone.

  Then she saw him working his way through the crowd straight toward her, and her blood chilled to ice. She turned to grab Selby’s arm, but he had moved away. Her whole set were moving toward the refreshment parlor, but Francesca’s legs seemed incapable of motion, and still he kept advancing. Within seconds he was at her side, bowing suavely.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Wilson. We meet again.” The words sounded like a challenge, and the sparkle in his eyes confirmed his mood.

  There hardly seemed any point pretending, but she lifted her chin and said in a breathless voice that wouldn’t fool a child, “I beg your pardon? Are you speaking to me, sir?”

  He gave her a quizzing smile and glanced around the immediate area, which was bereft of other guests. “It looks like it, doesn’t it? I am not flattered that you have forgotten me so soon, Mrs. Wilson. But then, I have been forewarned your memory is faulty. You forgot to return from the ladies’ room the other evening.”

  “I can’t imagine what you are talking about. I have never been inside the Pantheon in my life.”

  His smile stretched to a grin. “Why should you imagine I was speaking of the Pantheon?” he asked. A gasp of annoyance escaped her lips. “Come now, prevarication is pointless after that blunder, ma’am. The cat is out of the bag. You are you, and I am me. No hard f
eelings, but I do think you owe me an explanation.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she insisted, and turned bright pink.

  “I take leave to inform you, Mrs. Wilson, that you are a wretched liar. Your explanation was highly unsatisfactory, but if you will bolster it up with a waltz, I shall accept it.”

  The carved emerald on his finger glowed from the overhead chandeliers as his hand came out and fell on her arm. His grip felt like a manacle. Francesca looked up into his dark eyes, with that slash of brows lending him the air of a satyr.

  Good God, she’s frightened of me! Devane stared a moment, wondering if it was an act. But there was no air of coyness or teasing in her strained, pale face. His harsh features softened to a smile, and when he spoke, his voice was gentle, not the gentle silken menace she had heard before, but a warm gentleness. “I don’t bite, you know. And I am considered a fair dancer. One dance, and if you aren’t charmed by my nimble-footed Terpsichorean prowess, I’ll let you go—most reluctantly.”

  He watched as she drew her bottom lip between her teeth, then slowly released it. “Well, one dance, then,” she said, and smiled shyly.

  “Unless you are charmed by my footwork, in which case I shall certainly be back to pester you for another waltz. You must not judge my performance by that free-for-all at the Pantheon.”

  “What makes you think it will be a waltz?”

  “I have arranged it.”

  “You never left that wall. I saw you, staring at me, through your quizzing glass. I don’t know why gentlemen employ them.”

  “The better to see you, my dear. I sent a footboy to the orchestra with a half crown. I begrudge no expense or trouble when I am—interested in a lady, you see.”

  She glanced at him from the corner of her eye and noticed Devane was peering at her patch. She was sorry she had not removed it. It seemed, suddenly, shoddy. Devane was not so stiff as she had feared, however, and she decided the easiest way out of this situation was to give him one dance and make a joke of the other evening. “A whole half crown. My, you are reckless, Lord Devane.”

  “Oh, you’ve cost me a good deal more than that already, and we haven’t even—waltzed. I have had my spies out, trying to discover where I might find you.”

  “Very flattering, I’m sure. You make me feel like some sort of traitor.”

  “You are too harsh on yourself. Deserter would be my choice of word.”

  “Is Lady Devane aware of your lavish spending on another lady?” A tinge of ice coated her words, as it always did when she was reminded of David.

  “No doubt she is frowning down on me from above.”

  Francesca glanced up to the platform, where new arrivals gathered. “Higher than that,” he said. “I was saying, in my rather clumsy way, that my mother is dead. But what you were really asking was whether I am married. I’m not.”

  His being a bachelor lessened her ire somewhat. The music began, and he gathered her up in his arms. In this polite room he held her politely, their bodies an inch apart. His dancing lived up to his boast. He moved lightly and with grace and still managed to keep up a patter of conversation.

  “Have you been in town long, Mrs. Wilson?”

  “Going on three years, but this is only my second Season. Last year I was in mourning for my husband. He was killed in the Peninsula.”

  Devane examined this for credibility. Odd that she didn’t wear a wedding ring, but she might have been married to an officer. Young gentlemen about to leave the country had made bad marriages before this, and their wives, wearing a thin coat of respectability, were permitted to loiter at the edge of society. If they were very pretty, as Mrs. Wilson was, they might advance a little deeper into the ton. Their aim was generally to make a second marriage that bettered their social standing. Mrs. Wilson’s having inquired whether he was a bachelor suggested this was her aim. Her being at the Pantheon, on the other hand, suggested that she was not above a less formal liaison if there was something in it for her.

  “It is odd I haven’t seen you about before this,” he said.

  “It seems we attend different parties. I have heard of you, however.”

  “Nothing bad, I hope?”

  “Mostly political things—you are a Whig, I think?”

  “Guilty as charged. Your patch tells me we have that in common?”

  She felt uncomfortable at the mention of that patch, and slid over it. “Oh, no, that is mere fashion. David—my husband’s family are Tories. My papa has no interest in politics. He is a farmer.” As Lord Devane was behaving like a gentleman, Francesca thought she ought to explain about calling herself Biddie Wilson.

  He inclined his head and looked at her again with his disarming smile. “What a boor I am, discussing politics with a lady when we are waltzing.”

  “I expect that’s a left-handed apology. I am the one who mentioned it first.”

  “I have heard of a left-handed compliment, but never a left-handed apology. You meant, of course, that I was chiding you under the guise of an apology. Guilty, as tacitly charged.”

  “That is twice you have told me what I meant. Do you read minds, Lord Devane?”

  He peered down at her and smiled ingratiatingly. “I call it interpreting ladies’ language. It is quite a foreign tongue to some of us gents. I, having spent some time in the territory, am conversant with the language. ‘I look a quiz’ means ‘I have taken considerable trouble with my toilette and wish to be complimented.’ ‘You’re early!’ when said in a plaintive way means ‘I am late.’”

  “And when it is not said in a plaintive tone?”

  “Why, then it means the lady is happy to see you.”

  “They say something is always lost in translation,” she replied with a light laugh,

  “You should do that more often, Mrs. Wilson--smile, I mean. You have a lovely smile.” You look less like a lady of pleasure, he thought to himself. Yes, rather a sweet smile.

  “Here is another speech for you to translate. I am not who you think I am.”

  “Not a Mrs., or not a Wilson?”

  “Well,” she said pensively, “not both. Really not either.” The waltz ended. “I leave you with that little job of interpretation to think about.”

  He bowed while still holding her hand. “Don’t worry. I didn’t intend to forget you, Biddie.”

  She smiled and curtsied. “Thank you for an enjoyable dance, Lord Devane.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  “You may feel free to interpret that, too,” she teased, and disengaging her hand, she turned to leave.

  Devane followed her from the floor. “I interpret it to mean my dancing charmed you. Our bargain was that if it did, I had another dance.”

  “That is not how I interpreted it. Better take another ladies’-language lesson. Sorry.” With a wave of her fingers, she hastened away.

  Lady Lister was certainly charmed that the illustrious Devane honored her ball, and darted forth to nab him, and tour him about the room. “I see you have met Lady Camden,” she said. “A charming girl.”

  Devane, for once, was shocked. “Lady Camden!”

  “Yes, widow of Lord Camden, old Maundley’s son, who was killed in the Peninsula. Not in the army precisely. He was sent over on some government commission and got in the way of a bullet. Francesca took it very hard, but she is recovering amazingly this year.”

  Was it possible Lady Lister was mistaken? “I thought she mentioned the name Wilson ...”

  “A Wilson before marriage. One of the Surrey Wilsons, Sir Gregory’s daughter. Her mama is connected to the Beauforts. David was a wonderful catch for her, but then, she is so pretty. Come, you must meet the Landrys.”

  She led him on, and while he bowed and smiled and made inconsequential chitchat, Devane assimilated the news that Biddie was a lady, and a widow. What he could not fathom was what a respectable, noble young widow had been doing at the Pantheon. There was a wild streak in the girl, obviously, or she would never hav
e attracted that hell-raking young baron Camden. Wearing a patch where she wore it was a trifle fast, too. Such a lady might very well be interested in a discreet affair.

  The nature of the affair would be somewhat higher in tone than previously anticipated, and much more discreet. She would have to join his set, or he would have to join hers. Liaisons of the sort he had in mind were customarily carried out under the protective disguise of large house parties thrown by understanding hostesses. He was invited to two or three such parties in the near future.

  When Francesca left Devane, she escaped to the refreshment parlor, where she joined Selby. “What had Devane to say?” he asked, worried. “Did he recognize you?”

  “Yes, but I put him off. I don’t think we need fear any bother from him. He seems quite nice, when you get to know him.”

  Mr. Caine assumed Devane had learned her true identity, and apologized for his error at the Pantheon. He joined her for the next set, and saw her safely escorted for the one after that. Devane kept an eye on her but did not approach her. It was of prime importance now that the world not suspect anything between them. A lady’s reputation must remain unsullied, especially when she was involved in an affair.

  When he saw her stroll away from the ballroom a little later, however, he went after her and caught her up in the hallway. “Not leaving, I hope, Lady Camden?”

  “Oh, you found out!” she said, and laughed.

  “I cannot imagine why you chose to conceal such a respectable name.”

  “Because I was caught in such a scandalous situation, of course.”

  “Quite. The real question, however, is what you were doing there. Just out for an evening’s hell-raising, I expect?”

  She gave a weary sigh. “Well, one does get bored with all these formal dos.”

  He nodded. “I am attending an informal house party at the Duke of Tavistock’s estate in Kent this weekend. Perhaps you would care to join me?”