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She knew this. She knew women were the ones who had to deal with the consequences.
It made no difference.
She didn’t want him to go.
She made shooing motions. “Make haste, make haste!” she said. “I hear carriages, and in a few minutes the light will be—”
“I know,” he said.
He rose, and not ten minutes later, he’d made himself something like presentable, and then he was gone.
Later, at Lisburne House
Lisburne was starting up the stairs to his bedroom when he heard Swanton come in.
Only then did Lisburne remember he’d left his cousin to find his own way home from Vauxhall.
Lisburne paused while he tried to decide what to say.
“There you are,” Swanton said. “No one seemed to know where you’d got to, but they didn’t know where Madame was, either, so I assume you looked after her?”
“Yes.”
“How ghastly for her!” Swanton started up the stairs after him.
Lisburne continued upward. “It was,” he said. “Though I might have reduced the damage somewhat. But you? Did you find Gladys?”
Swanton said nothing.
Lisburne looked at him. The poet’s face was scarlet.
“She was not as friendly and forgiving as you’d hoped?” Lisburne said.
“I couldn’t find her,” Swanton said. “Now and again I heard her voice—but so faint and faraway, I might have missed it altogether were it not so distinctive. I’m certain I heard it among some of our acquaintance who were dancing. But I couldn’t find her. All the world was dancing, it seemed, and—” He broke off, brows knitting. “I believe she isn’t as tall as Clara?”
“Not many women are as tall as Clara,” Lisburne said. He thought Gladys broad enough not to be missed in a crowd. On the other hand, she seemed to have lost weight. Either that or her new garb made her seem a degree slimmer. Still, it was only a degree. One could never call her slender.
“In any event, it was impossible to be quite sure which one she was, and after what had happened this night, I hesitated to accost any woman without knowing for certain it was the right woman.” Swanton rubbed his forehead. “And perhaps I had second thoughts about accosting her. And so . . .” He paused, his color deepening. “I occupied myself with listening for her voice, and by and by Crawford stopped to talk. Said the whole scene with the woman was ludicrous. No one would believe it of me. Then Hempton turned up, and he said people will believe anything scandalous. They argued about it, naturally. I vow, they’re never happy but when they’re contradicting each other, because that’s an excuse to bet on who’s right and who’s wrong. Then I lost track of the beautiful voice, and couldn’t find it again. I reckon your cousins left Vauxhall while Crawford and Hempton were bickering, because the next time I saw Bates and Flinton, the ladies weren’t with them. That is to say, they were with other women, and . . . well, it would have been embarrassing to ask about your cousins.”
“They would have roasted you fearfully, I daresay,” Lisburne said.
They’d reached the top of the stairs, and he felt a hundred years old. It was so unfair that Swanton, so sensitive, should be placed in this humiliating position. Had an unknown woman accused any other man of fathering and abandoning a child, the Great World would have shrugged. But the world loved to topple an idol. In Swanton’s case, the ton would break him into pieces, and drag the fragments through the mud.
But worst of all—because Swanton would survive this, and recover eventually—was the damage to Leonie. And her girls. And her shop.
Still, it was no good brooding about that, any more than it made sense for Lisburne to brood over his own breach of honor. Or the fact that he wasn’t as upset about it as he ought to be. He’d wronged her, and yet . . .
He was happy. Her image floated in his mind—nearly naked, wearing his hat—and though he could suppress the smile, he couldn’t squelch the gladness.
In any event, he and Leonie had done what they could to moderate the scandal. Gladys had done her part, too, whether intentionally or not.
There was nothing more he could do at present—nothing intelligent, certainly, until he’d had a good night’s sleep.
“Get some sleep,” he told Swanton. “We’ll all do better for it.”
Chapter Twelve
Ros. There is none of my uncle’s marks upon you: he taught me how to know a man in love; in which cage of rushes, I am sure, you are not prisoner.
Orl. What were his marks?
Ros. A lean cheek; which you have not: a blue eye, and sunken; which you have not . . . Then your hose should be ungarter’d, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation.
As You Like It, Act III, Scene II
Tuesday 21 July
Lisburne tried to sleep, but that didn’t go as well as it ought, considering how weary he’d been when he fell into bed. He tossed and turned and now and again came full awake in a sort of frenzy, certain that alarm bells had gone off or the roof was falling in, and he had to run and warn people and Do Something.
Though he gave up hoping for sleep by the time the sun had climbed a short distance from the horizon, he remained in bed. Arms folded under his head while he stared at the canopy, he relived his time with Leonie, especially the last few hours of that time.
Eventually he heard Polcaire creep in as he always did, to make all ready before his master thought of stirring. This morning the master stirred, to the valet’s annoyance. He wasn’t any happier when the master bathed, shaved, and dressed with indecent haste, and went down to breakfast.
Swanton was eating. Foxe’s Morning Spectacle lay folded for easy reading at the edge of his plate.
“The news can’t be completely ghastly, if you still have an appetite,” Lisburne said.
“I’m hoping to find a clue to the truth,” Swanton said. “A name, a word I might have missed—something, anything, that might rouse dormant memories. I’m pretending the Spectacle talks about somebody else. It might as well, since Foxe has included three conflicting reports. The most intelligible one deals in exhausting detail with what everybody wore.” A pause. “Especially what your cousin Lady Gladys wore. And what she said. In this article, she gets more column inches than Lady Clara.” He looked up at Lisburne. “I did wonder whe
ther you’d written the piece, but then I couldn’t picture you rhapsodizing about your lady cousins, even Lady Clara, whom everybody seems to agree is the most beautiful woman in London. Falling into raptures about a woman isn’t your style. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you fall into raptures about anything. And what do you know about women’s clothes, beyond the quickest way to get them off?”
It was true that Lisburne wasn’t inclined to be poetical about women. He hadn’t done so since he was a schoolboy in the throes of his first infatuation.
Yet he’d quoted Shakespeare to Leonie—from a lovers’ scene in Romeo and Juliet, no less.
Not that Swanton needed to know that.
“You aren’t even attentive to your own clothes,” Swanton said.
Lisburne looked down at himself and frowned.
A scene from As You Like It rose in his mind’s eye: Rosalind describing how to recognize a man in love.
Then your hose should be ungarter’d . . . your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation.
But that was drama and poetry—Swanton’s line—and Lisburne was not in love. He’d simply been too tired and irritated to want to spend the usual eternity dressing.
Swanton was saying, newspaper in hand, “You always leave your appearance to Polcaire. Maybe he can translate this for us. ‘Sleeves with double bouffans and lace sabot’? ‘Corsage half high mounting’? Have you the least notion what any of this means?”
Lisburne shook his head and moved to the sideboard. He stared at the covered dishes for a time before he realized his mind wasn’t on food. It held only Leonie. Wearing his hat and some bits of gossamer. Wearing nothing but the half smile . . . caressing him . . . sure of him . . .
Very well. He liked her excessively. He lusted for her, perhaps more than was entirely comfortable. But he wasn’t in love. He was aware such a thing existed. His parents had been deeply in love. But they were exceptions, from all he’d seen.
