Page 3 of Lord Gabriel’s Undoing

He was rewarded by one of his wife’s widest smiles. “Oh, thank you, Thomas. You won’t regret this one bit.”

“Now, let me fetch paper and a pen, and you can give me a description of the mother. I’ll employ a private inquiry agent, and we’ll have the little chap back with his mama in no time.” Missing the look of rebellion in his wife’s eyes as he turned to his desk, he picked up a pencil and paper. “Tell me. What did she look like?”

Camilla looked back down at the baby and made her second fateful decision of the day. “Quite old, with hair already going gray. Short, bad-tempered looking. Ugly. I really think she didn’t want to keep the baby.”

She watched Thomas write this down, her conscience eased by the comforting thought that she would be giving this child a far better home than the frightened Frenchwoman could have, even if she was his real mother. Those awful men, she reasoned, might even have killed the child if they’d caught the mother. She had no way of knowing how right she was, though.

Woodhouse, the butler, arrived in response to Thomas’s tugging on the bell. “You rang, Your Grace?”

Camilla shook her head. “No need to call Martha. I shall carry this little darling upstairs to the nursery myself and introduce him to Ambrose. He’ll be delighted to have a new little brother to play with. I think we’ll call him Gabriel, because of his angel’s kiss.”

“He’s not—” began Thomas, but his wife had already gone. He sighed. “Staying.”

Chapter One

1816

Lady Phoebe Nicholson surveyed the brightly lit and densely crowded ballroom in awe, more than glad that Aunt Fanny had decreed that she and her older cousin Matilda should make their debuts into society at the same time. Reaching out a hand, she took hold of dear Mattie’s and clung on tight, as though it were a lifeline.

Was her cousin feeling just as nervous? But then, at just-turned twenty, she was five months older and far wiser, as she kept telling Phoebe. And being such a statuesque beauty with her blonde curls and wide blue eyes might account for her brimming self-confidence. All the young men would be queueing to put their names on her dance card. If her cousin weren’t so nice, Phoebe would have been sure not to have liked her. However, they were the best of friends, having been brought up together on and off for most of their lives, and properly together since Phoebe’s dear papa had died three years ago.

Phoebe cast a critical glance down at herself. She should surely be feeling better about this as she had a gown as lovely as Mattie’s, and an array of the most gorgeous set of pearls, a necklace and matching earrings, left to her by her mother. Pearls that were more even and lustrous than anything Mattie possessed. But as she stood a full six inches shorter than her cousin, that in itself rendered her far less noticeable. Added to that, observing herself in her cheval mirror before their departure had convinced her that although her rather boring brown hair had been teased into the latest fashion by Atkins, her maid, nothing about her was ever going to make men catch their breath and stare in the way they did at Mattie.

Phoebe would have loved to have possessed the self-assurance of her cousin, and perhaps just a little of her height. Yet whereas at home she could hold her own, in the few times she’d been out in public she’d been overcome with an insurmountable shyness. It wasn’t so much that she was properly shy, it was more the dread of doing things wrong, of stumbling or dropping things, and making a public fool of herself.

The problem was, she was clumsy when under stress and always had been, although this had grown much worse since she’d come to live with Aunt Fanny. Possibly she could blame Aunt Fanny’s overly high expectations, or it might just be that she was indeed growing worse as she grew older. This boded ill for the future as she was still only nineteen years old, which left a lot of years for further decline.

Before they’d set out for Lady Caithness’s house, they’d gathered in the parlor and Aunt Fanny, always fussy, had tweaked the appearance of both her young charges. But not even she had been able to find anything positive to say about Phoebe’s proposed debut, other than rather baldly stating that, as an earl’s only orphaned daughter, as well as being an heiress in her own right, she was a far more impressive catch than the prettier Mattie. For that alone, and totally disregarding her looks, she should attract a good few offers this Season.

This was because Phoebe’s mother, who’d died when she was only twelve, had been one of the only two heirs to the late Barnaby Downham. The problem, Phoebe knew all too well, was that he had been a self-made man, a cit who’d made the majority of his money in the East Indies, and, despite his well-born wife, had not been a recognized member of the ton. Unlike Aunt Fanny. Richer than most of them, yes, but without the ancient bloodlines they all boasted, and this was something for which, according to her aunt, it was virtually impossible to be forgiven.

“I’m sure some gentlemen will find it in them to overlook the fact of your mother’s parentage,” Aunt Fanny had said, in her well-meaning way, which was not guaranteed to increase Phoebe’s already nonexistent confidence. “After all, her mother was one of the Amberleys of Worcestershire. Daughter of a baronet. That must carry some weight.”

Not that Phoebe was embarrassed about her less than aristocratic antecedents. No, she was proud her great grandfather had made his fortune from nothing, and her grandfather had only increased it to the point of having been referred to, not long before he died when she was nine, as being “rich as Croesus.” She had her great-grandfather to thank for the strings of perfectly matched pearls she was wearing. Standing at her grandfather’s knee as a little girl, he’d several times recounted to her how his father had witnessed them being dived for in hot foreign lands and then brought them back for her great-grandmother to wear.

But her grandfather had been dead for over ten years now, and Uncle Richard, Aunt Olivia’s husband, was in charge of Downham’s. One day his only son, Cousin Tobias, would inherit the business, but before that, Phoebe would inherit her mother’s share, either when she married, or when she turned twenty-one in a little over a year. Then she would at last be independent of living under the rule of Aunt Fanny and would be able to do just as she liked. Which, at the moment, included a longing to voyage to those eastern seas to see people diving for pearls. That would shock Aunt Fanny, and Mattie, to the core, as it was not a thing a young lady should ever consider doing.

All of these ponderings made her think about Tobias, whom she’d always been very fond of. Might he be here tonight? It would be good to see a familiar face amongst this sea of frightening strangers. They’d shared much of their childhood but, once he’d gone away to school at thirteen, she’d seen him far less frequently.

His mother, her Aunt Olivia, whose inclination was to ignore her humble roots as though they’d never existed, would certainly be present. Tobias had once told her, in tones of disgust, that she attended almost every event in the social calendar. It was her avowed intention, in direct contravention to Uncle Richard, that Tobias should be a part of the ton and marry well, preferably into an ancient and titled family. She’d stated on many occasions that a gentleman did not sully his hands with running a business, and Phoebe had once heard Uncle Richard demand of her if she thought him not a gentleman in that case. But that had been long ago, when Papa had been alive and Tobias had been home from Eton, where he’d been learning to be a gentleman, for his holidays.

Tobias, like Phoebe, was only nineteen and this year would be his first Season as well as hers. Phoebe couldn’t help but think it must be harder for a young man as more was expected of them. According to Aunt Fanny, all she and Mattie would be expected to do was to smile sweetly, bat their fans and their eyelashes, giggle at gentlemen’s jokes, and dance gracefully.

All of which terrified Phoebe. Mainly because she knew she wouldn’t be able to. Oh, chatting to people when not in a crowd was fine, but under pressure she knew she’d crumble, as she always did. And crowds meant pressure. As did Aunt Fanny breathing down her neck. She secretly longed to be back at Coakham where she’d spent her childhood, but Uncle Robert had inherited that and the earldom after Papa died. If she’d been a boy, she would have become earl herself and could have gone on living there. How mean it was that girls couldn’t inherit titles and grand estates.

“Oooh, do look,” Mattie squealed from behind her fan. “I believe that must be the Duke of Kent himself. I recognize him by how bald he is, although no doubt he’d like no one to notice. And that…” She fluttered her fan and leaned in closer to Phoebe. “That can be none other than Madame de St Laurent.”

Phoebe looked. There was indeed a rather rotund and bald gentleman beside a woman of immense beauty, despite her obviously advanced age. “She’s a French lady?” she whispered, also under cover of her fan.

Mattie nodded. “She is indeed and long reputed to be the duke’s mistress.”

Phoebe gave a little gasp. “However do you know that?”

Mattie gave her a smug smile. “By listening at doors, by heeding the gossip of the servants, and by keeping my ear to the ground.” She sighed. “You are such an innocent, sometimes, Phoebe dear, despite your long association with me. You need to pay more attention to what’s going on around you.”

Mattie always knew everything. It was as if she soaked up gossip like blotting paper, which was a miracle as this was their first ball of their first season. Phoebe sometimes wondered if her cousin possessed psychic abilities.

“And that,” Mattie said, indicating with a slight point of her fan, “is the Earl of Mandeville, talking to the duke.”