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Dain took up the tale where he’d left off, but hadn’t much to say about Grenville’s life from the time after her father had gone to America, when she went to live with her great-uncle and -aunt. The father had died in ’16, of injuries sustained in a beating. He’d tried to run off with a rich American girl. This time, though, they were pursued, and the girl’s brothers rescued her and meted out their own justice to John Grenville.
“It appears that my cousin traveled abroad with Stephen and Euphemia Grenville,” Dain said. “They died last autumn. I had learned the name of one of their servants, who lives in Marazion, Cornwall. We were planning to go down to talk to him when we received your wedding invitation.” Dain took up his tankard and emptied it.
When he set the mug down, his dark gaze shifted to Vere’s plate. “I shall send Mr. Herriard to meet with your solicitor in London. You will not deny me a small act of belated revenge upon my sire, I hope. To spite the dear departed, I should like to dower Lydia, and Herriard can be counted upon to entangle you in settlements sufficiently exorbitant and complicated to stifle any shrieks of your manly pride. Lydia, of course, is perfectly capable of taking care of herself, as she’s proven. Yet I’m certain she would not object to having her offspring’s future secured.”
“If she does, I’ll tell her to quarrel with you about it,” said Vere. There would be offspring, of course, he told himself, and Dain asked nothing more than what was customary. Dowry and settlements tied up certain issues neatly and legally, and provided a degree of material security for the future. If other aspects of the future troubled Vere, and if he was having rather more difficulty than usual in obliterating fresh anxieties, only his gut—currently in an annoying state of mal de mer—offered a hint, and that was on the inside, where Dain couldn’t see.
“You won’t leave me to it without ammunition,” Dain said. “I’ve told you what you didn’t know. It’s your turn to satisfy my curiosity. I’ve had Sellowby’s version of recent events, but even he, it seems, does not know all. I’m on tenterhooks to hear about this business of climbing to the first floor of Helena Martin’s house. He was there at the time?”
“It’s a long story,” said Vere.
“I’ll order more ale,” said Dain.
The waiter was summoned, the tankards replenished, and Vere took his own turn, telling his tale from the start, in Vinegar Yard. He did not tell everything, naturally, and he made a joke of what he did tell—which it was, and what did it matter that the joke was on him?
He wasn’t the first man who’d run blindly into matrimony without realizing where he was headed. It was rather, as Dain so succinctly put it, like walking into a door in the dark. Dain certainly should know. He, too, had walked into the door.
And because he had, Dain had no qualms about laughing at his friend’s errors, discomfitures, and defeats, or about calling him a “precious cretin” and other like endearments. Dain was merciless, but then, they had always been merciless to each other. They had always traded insults and blows. That was how they communicated. That was how they expressed affection and understanding.
And because this was the way it had always been between them, Vere soon relaxed. If the uneasiness did not altogether vanish, he forgot it for the time he remained in the dining parlor, talking with his friend.
It was all so much like old times that Vere could be excused for failing to understand that times had changed. He didn’t know that in six months of marriage, Dain had come to know himself better, and had no trouble applying this sharpened awareness elsewhere.
Consequently, Lord Beelzebub was strongly tempted to take his bosom bow by the neckcloth and bang his head against the wall. He resisted the temptation, though, as he later told his wife. “He has Lydia,” Dain said. “Let her do it.”
“Oh, Lizzy, I’m so sorry,” Emily moaned.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Elizabeth said briskly, as she wiped her sister’s forehead with a cool cloth. “If it had been something worse than dyspepsia, then you must be sorry, because it would frighten me out of my wits. But I’m not afraid of mere puking, however prodigious.”
“I ate too much.”
“You’d gone too long between meals, and the food was ill prepared. I was queasy myself, but then my stomach’s tougher than yours.”
“We’ve missed it,” Emily said. “We’ve missed the wedding.”
That was true. It was Thursday evening. They occupied a chamber of an inn near Aylesbury, many miles from their destination. They might have reached Liphook in time for the wedding, if Emily had not become violently ill half an hour after a hurried midday meal on Wednesday. At the next stage, they had to disembark. Emily had been so sick and weak that an inn servant had to carry her up to the chamber.
They were traveling as governess and charge. Elizabeth had donned one of her old mourning dresses, because black made her look older. She’d also “borrowed” a pair of reading spectacles from the Blakesleigh library. She had to look over them, since she couldn’t see through them, but that, Emily assured her, made her appear all the more stern.
“You must stop fretting about the wedding,” Elizabeth said. “You didn’t get sick on purpose.”
“You should have gone on without me.”
“You must be delirious to say such a thing. We’re in this together, Lady Em. Mallorys stick together.” Elizabeth plumped the pillows behind her sister. “They’ll be sending the broth up soon, and tea. You have to concentrate on getting strong again. Because as soon as you are, we’ll set out.”
“Not for Blakesleigh,” Emily said, shaking her head. “Not until we’ve made our position clear. He has to know. That we tried.”
“We can write a letter.”
“He never reads them.”
The Longlands servants communicated regularly with those at Ainswood House, and Longlands’ housekeeper wrote every quarter to the Ladies Elizabeth and Emily. Consequently, the girls were aware the present Duke had not opened his personal correspondence in a year and a half. At Longlands, the house steward dealt with His Grace’s business correspondence. At Ainswood House in London, the butler Houle performed the same service.
“We could write to her,” said Elizabeth. “And she could tell him.”
“Are you sure they’re married? News travels fast, but it isn’t always accurate. Maybe she won the race and he’ll have to try something else.”
“It’ll be in tomorrow’s paper,” Elizabeth said. “Then we’ll decide what to do.”
“I’m not going back to Blakesleigh,” Emily said. “I shall never forgive them. Never.”
There was a tap at the door. “There’s your dinner,” Elizabeth said as she rose from the chair. “And in the nick of time, too. Perhaps your temp
er will improve when you’ve something in your belly.”
Though Lydia and Ainswood arrived at Ainswood House very late on Thursday, all the household awaited them.
By the time the housekeeper had relieved Lydia of her outer garments, the rest of the staff had filed in to the ground-floor hall and stood at attention—or their version of it.
Lydia understood what Wellington had felt before Waterloo when he surveyed his “infamous army”—the ramshackle lot with which he must overcome Napoleon.
She noted wrinkled aprons and tarnished livery, wigs and caps askew, haphazardly shaven chins, and most of the range of human expression from terror to insolence, embarrassment to despair.
She withheld comment, however, and concentrated on memorizing names and positions. Unlike Wellington, she had a lifetime to make a satisfactory domestic fighting unit of this demoralized mob.
As to the state of the house itself: Even without seeing much of it, she perceived that it was in even sorrier condition than its staff.
She was not surprised. Ainswood rarely spent much time in residence and, like so many of his sex, lacked the faculty for perceiving dust, dirt, or disorder.
Only the master bedchamber turned out to be in neat order. This, doubtless, was due to Jaynes. She had discovered earlier in the day that, contrary to appearances—which was to say Ainswood’s appearance—Jaynes was a prodigious fussbudget. He simply had the misfortune to be working with an uncooperative subject.
Since Ainswood had dismissed the others with an impatient wave as soon as the butler and housekeeper, Mr. Houle and Mrs. Clay, had introduced everyone, it was Jaynes who showed Lydia her apartments. They adjoined Ainswood’s. No one, evidently, had entered them in years.
Ainswood certainly didn’t want to enter them. As Jaynes opened the door to Her Grace’s quarters, the duke went in the opposite direction, into his dressing room.
