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Sophy and Leonie ran into the nursery. Sarah raced in, and stopped short, her expression horrified. This was her first experience of Lucie in a tantrum.
She started toward the raging child.
Marcelline put up a hand, and the maid backed away. “Lucie Cordelia, that is quite enough,” she said, keeping her voice calm and firm. “You know ladies do not throw themselves on the floor and scream.”
“I’m not a lady! I hate you!”
Sarah gasped.
“Come, Erroll,” Sophy said. “You’ll only make yourself sick.”
“He’s coming back!” Lucie shrieked. “He loves me!”
Marcelline squared her shoulders. She moved to Lucie and scooped the child into her arms, in spite of flailing arms and feet and deafening shrieks. She held Lucie tight against her and rocked her, as though she were still the tiny infant she’d been once.
“Stop it,” Marcelline said. “Stop it, love. You need to be a big girl.”
The kicking and punching stopped, and the screaming softened into weeping. “Why c-can’t we st-stay th-there? Why d-doesn’t he k-keep me?”
Marcelline carried her to the window seat and held her, rocking her and stroking her back. “If everyone who loved you kept you, where would you live?” she said. “Then where should Mama be? Don’t you want to live with Mama and Aunt Sophy and Aunt Leonie? Have you grown too fine for us? Do you want to go away and live in a castle? Is that it? What do you think, Aunt Sophy? Shall we dress Erroll in a princess gown and send her away to live in a castle?”
It was nonsense, most of it, but it quieted Lucie. She tightened her hold of her mother’s neck. “I can live here,” she said. “Why can’t he come?”
“He’s a great man, sweetheart,” Marcelline said. “He has his own family. Very soon he’ll be married and have his own children. You can’t have every handsome gentleman who takes your fancy, you know.”
Erroll quieted. The motion of her eyes told Marcelline the child was thinking. She was only six, and children had difficulties with logic, but the prospect of being a princess might suffice to distract her.
The tempest over, Sarah said, “I’ll tell you what, Miss Erroll. Let’s have our tea with the dolls, then we’ll take a walk in the Green Park. Perhaps we’ll see the Princess Victoria. Do you know who she is, miss? She’s the king’s niece, and one day she’ll be the Queen of England.”
“If you do see her,” Marceline said, “you must take special note of what she’s wearing, and tell us all about it.”
While a little girl threw a tantrum on St. James’s Street, the Earl of Longmore was throwing his own in the library of Clevedon House.
Clevedon caught hold of his friend’s arm. There was some pushing, and a brief scuffle. Then the shouting started.
Halliday had tactfully taken himself out of the room and closed the door. Having failed to break Clevedon’s jaw or provoke him into a duel, Longmore was drinking the duke’s brandy to sustain him while he paced the room and raged in his usual hotheaded fashion.
Clevedon knew he deserved a dressing down. All the same, it was very hard to bear. It was not as though he was enjoying himself. His life, at the moment, seemed to be utter excrement.
“You don’t deserve my sister,” Longmore said. “I should never have come to Paris. She raked me over the coals for doing it. She was right. I should have left you there to rot. I should have encouraged her to look elsewhere. I should have told her the leopard doesn’t change his spots. But no, I was completely taken in. I wondered why you came back so soon—but I told myself it was because you’d realized how much you missed Clara. Gad, I was a naïve as she is!”
“I don’t recall appointing a particular time to return,” Clevedon said.
“I told you the end of the month was soon enough,” Longmore said. “I knew you weren’t done. I only wanted to be able to tell my mother you were coming back. I wish now I’d told her to mark you down in the column under dead losses. I’ve half a mind to tell her so now.”
“If this is about the dressmakers—”
“Who else would it be about?” Longmore snapped. “Who else has been so thoroughly lost to propriety—”
“ ‘Lost to propriety,’ ” Clevedon echoed. “I can’t believe those words are issuing from your mouth. When did you ever care for propriety? As I recall, your father was happy enough to pack you off to the Continent.”
“I’ve never pretended to be a saint—”
“Good thing, too. No one would believe you.”
“But I don’t invite milliners to sleep in the ancestral home!”
“They were burnt out of their lodgings,” Clevedon said. “It was in all the papers. Do you think that was a fabrication? But why the devil do I ask? If you were rational, you wouldn’t be here, guzzling my brandy as though it was Almack’s lemonade—”
