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The man made a sound, quite incomprehensible, and let them in as far as the foyer. “I shall ascertain whether her ladyship is at home,” he whispered. Immediately he turned his back and marched away, his shiny shoes clicking upon the marble floor.
“Where else would an old woman be on such a day?” Esme muttered. “How rude he is, to leave guests at the door. He did not greet us, or welcome us, or ask after our health.”
“Servants are usually discouraged from making inquiries of so personal a nature, love. Especially when they’re unsure of a visitor’s welcome. At least he didn’t turn us out directly. That’s something.” Varian drew her arm through his. “I hope you’re not too chilled. Still, I expect the temperature will go up very shortly.”
A full ten minutes later, the servant returned, relieved them of their wraps, and led them down a maze of hallways to an immense set of doors, thickly carved and painted gold. He quietly opened them and nodded Esme and Varian inside. Not sure if it was correct to thank him, Esme made do with a tight smile. To her surprise, the servant flashed one in return, but so quickly was it gone, she wondered if she’d imagined it.
An instant later, she was inside the lion’s den. Lioness, rather, and this was hardly a den.
The room, in keeping with the house’s exterior, was immense. Every stick of furniture from a dozen large Albanian towns would have fit inside easily, with room to spare for fifty people besides. All the same, some determined individual had managed to fill it nearly to bursting. The draperies, rugs, and most of the furniture were green and gold. Every solid material ornately carved, every fabric thickly trimmed or embroidered with gold, the great, heavy room seemed determined to press Esme down and squash her flat.
As the great mass of things resolved into individual objects, Esme discovered the other living being in the place.
An old woman stood straight as a pike by the windows, glaring down at her visitors, though she wasn’t much taller man Esme. Her hair was thick, gray with streaks of faded brown, and elegantly arranged. She was sumptuously dressed in dark green velvet with gold lace at her neck and wrists.
“Well, what are you gaping at?” she barked, making Esme start. “Come here where I can get a look at you. It’s black as Hades in here, and those lazy fools ain’t lit the candles. Come here, gel.”
“My lady,” Varian said. “Lady Edenmont, my wife.”
“Did I ask you, coxcomb?” the old woman cried. “I know who you are. Let me see the chit who calls herself my granddaughter.”
Esme yanked her hand from Varian’s, marched to the windows, dropped a deep curtsy, then rose to glare at her father’s mother, who glared back.
“There,” Esme snapped. “You see me. Call me what you like. It is nothing to me. You did not wish to see me. I did not wish to come. But my husband said it was my duty. And so I have done it. Goodbye.”
“I ain’t excused you, Miss High and Mighty. You just hold your tongue and show some respect for your elders. Damnation, Edenmont,” the insufferable creature went on, still scowling at Esme, “she’s but a child! What the devil was you thinking of?”
“I am not a child! I shall be nineteen in—”
“And cold and wet and half-starved to boot,” her grandmother went on, heeding her not a whit. “I’ve seen more promising specimens in a workhouse.”
She backed away a few steps and, her eyes still fixed on Esme, yanked violently on the bell pull. “What a man thinks of, I don’t know I’m sure, except I much doubt he’s got the equipment for it. And you less than most, Edenmont. But you’ve brazenness enough to make up for brains, I collect. Drays! Blast the scurvy rogue! What’s keeping him?”
The doors opened once more, and the beaky-nosed little man entered. “My lady?”
“Take the gel to Mrs. Munden and tell her to order a hot bath, and then—”
“Take?” Esme echoed incredulously. “Bath? I am not—”
“And tell Cook to send her up a good hot curry and a pot of strong tea with plenty of sugar and a heap of them biscuits and a bowl of—”
“I do not—”
“No one asked you. Go along with Drays, now, and get out of them rags. Disgraceful’s what I call it.”
Esme’s glance darted from her obviously insane grandmother to her husband. Varian smiled, very faintly. She couldn’t tell what it meant. “Varian?”
“Your grandmother is most gracious,” he said.
“You want me to do as she says?” Esme asked, bewildered.
“It would be best. I believe she wishes to speak with me in private.”
“I most certainly do,” the old lady said darkly.
Reading his expression was always difficult. Varian assumed masks so easily, and they all appeared so genuine. Still, as she moved reluctantly to the doors, Esme thought there was an easing of some kind, in his stance if not in his cool gray eyes. She lightly touched his hand. He caught hers and squeezed it briefly. “It’s all right, dear,” he murmured.
Nothing seemed all right to her, but Esme gave him a weak smile and her grandmother a great flounce of a curtsy and, lifting her chin, left the room with Drays.
“Jason’s gel,” Lady Brentmor said, when Esme was well out of hearing range. “If I was blind and deaf, I could deny it, but I ain’t, so I won’t. I’ve heard all about this business—from that incompetent son of mine and his lunatic boy.”
She waved at a large gilt-legged marble table. “There’s brandy in that decanter on the what-you-call-it. Get me a fistful, will you? Yes, and yourself as well. You ain’t no Methodist, I know.”
As Varian moved to obey her orders, she dropped into a chair. “Devil take the chit. Of all the imbecilic, worthless rogues in all of God’s creation, she had to shackle herself to you. No more sense than her father. Got himself killed, didn’t he?—and by a pack of heathens, of all things. Which he wouldn’t have done if he’d been where he belonged. But he wasn’t. No sense at all. A pack of fools, men are. Every last dratted one of them.”
Varian wordlessly gave her the glass he’d generously filled. His great aunt Sophy had been of this species: a woman of the last century, a hard living, blunt spoken breed. Great Aunt Sophy could drink most of the men in the family under the table, and her oaths could redden the countenance of a marine.
“Sit, sit.” Lady Brentmor gestured impatiently at a large chair opposite. “I’ll get a rheumatic in my neck looking up at your sneaking, lying face.”
“I assure you, my lady, I’ve not come to deceive.” Varian sat, and immediately suspected his hostess had ordered the chair upholstered in macadam and painted over. “You’d given your son Jason permission to call on you, I was told. I hoped the permission would apply to his offspring.”
“We won’t speak of that numskull, if you please,” she said sharply. “As to de
ceiving me, you couldn’t. I ain’t a green gel, and I ain’t cozened easy by pretty, words or pretty faces. Handsome is as handsome does, I say—and what you’ve done don’t bear repeating. I know all about you, Edenmont.” Her shrewd hazel eyes bored into him. “You and Davies and Byron and the rest. Birds of a feather, and you the blackest magpie of them all.”
“Wild oats, madam. The follies of youth.”
“Not six months ago you cuckolded two Italian counts, one banker, and a pastry baker. A pastry baker!” she repeated. “Haven’t you any discrimination at all?”
“My misspent youth, as I said. But I am a wedded man now, my lady, and cognizant of my responsibilities.”
She leaned toward him. “Are you cognizant as well that you’re miles up the River Tick and got no prospect of an oar to paddle you out of it? Because I won’t paddle you out, my lord. If you thought I would, you’d best think again, with whatever it is you’ve got passes for brains.”
“I assure you, I had no illusions on that score.” Varian turned the brandy glass in his hands. This was not going to be easy. And later would be worse. “I’ve a good idea what you suspect—what anyone aware of my reputation would suspect. I can only assure you I did not bring Esme in hopes of coaxing a dowry from you. I didn’t wed her because she had a wealthy grandmother.”
“But you knew she had one, didn’t you?”
“Esme has never claimed to be an heiress. Quite the contrary. Furthermore, nothing I knew of your family inclined me to imagine otherwise. I’ve gambled often enough to recognize exceedingly poor odds.”
“Yet you wed her.”
“Yes.”
“With no thought to your interests, I’m to believe.”
“I wed her because...” Varian stared into his glass, as though he might find the words written there, clearer than in his own heart. “Because I am much attached to her,” he finished tightly.
The dowager gave a loud snort. “This is not my notion of attachment, sir, any more than it’s my notion of practical sense. You wed her, though you knew you couldn’t feed or dress or house her. A mere child—and you put a ring on her finger so you could take her direct to the sponging house?”
