Miss Dauntless, page 29
“Lord Tremont has implied as much, but, Harry, that’s all behind you.”
Matilda’s heart hurt to hear the hope and determination in Esther’s voice. “Tell your sister she’s right, Harry. You are turning over a new leaf on a new branch on a whole new tree, aren’t you?”
Harry met her gaze for the first time since he’d entered the room. “This is my penance? To go back to Bristol?”
Matilda’s hands bunched into fists. “This is your salvation, you dolt.” As Harry’s wife, she would never have addressed her husband so disrespectfully. As his not-quite-widow, she barely refrained from profanity. “Esther never gave up on you, Harry. She would not allow your uncles to declare you dead and divide up your share of your father’s estate. You are a wealthy man by most people’s standards, and you have at least a sibling willing to claim you.”
Harry, glib under all circumstances, was quiet for a moment. “Papa mentioned me in the will?”
Esther Merchant shifted to stand before her brother. The resemblance was strong, though Esther radiated hope, while Harry seemed genuinely bewildered.
“Papa eventually regretted the rift between you. He put notices in the paper, Harry, and I have a letter he wrote to you on his deathbed. He blamed himself, and rightly so, in my estimation. You were little more than a boy, and he was all stubbornness and pride dressed up as moral conviction. I’ve managed your share of the estate, and you are indeed quite prosperous.”
Tremont took the place at Matilda’s side. “Prosperous enough to buy yourself a theater, Merchant, if that’s what you please to do, and to produce all the bawdy farces and comedies you please.”
“The tragedies have the better speeches,” Harry murmured.
“Harry,” Matilda said, wanting to shake him until his teeth rattled, “you can write whatever blasted speeches you please. You can hire London’s finest thespians to give benefit performances. You can do as Mr. Sheridan did at Drury Lane and pay urchins and pickpockets to be your extras. You have a prodigious imagination, and now you have an equally impressive opportunity to use that imagination for worthy purposes.”
“Come home,” Esther said, taking her brother’s hand. “Please, Harry, come home. I’ve missed you and prayed for you and cursed you, but I need you to c-come home.”
“Don’t you dare cry, Esther,” Harry said, eyeing the door. “Don’t you dare, don’t you even think… Blasted hell.” He wrapped Esther in his arms and buried his face against her hair. “I’ll come, just don’t cry. You’ll hate me for it, but I’ll come back to Bristol.”
MacKay picked up a decanter from the sideboard. “We’ll be in the formal parlor, celebrating—or fortifying ourselves for the next act, or some damned thing or other.” He offered his arm to Dorcas, and Matilda and Tremont followed him out the door.
Epilogue
Tommie was riding atop the box with John Coachman, and Copenhagen lay forgotten on the opposite bench.
“Our son is growing up,” Tremont said, and even those simple words filled him with a quiet wonder. “Poor Cope can’t hold a candle to the prospect of taking the actual ribbons.”
“Tommie won’t last two miles out in the elements,” Matilda said. “The cold will drive him to rejoin us, despite the lack of excitement to be had in our company.”
“I like that,” Tremont said, wrapping an arm around his wife. “I like the lack of excitement. The placid joy of seeing you and Tommie at breakfast, the pleasure of hearing you at the pianoforte, the way Tommie squirms sitting between us in church, as small children have squirmed at divine services from time immemorial. I love all the mundane sweetness and even the tedium of travel.”
“Going to bed with you is anything but mundane, Marcus.”
He liked even more when his countess, wife, lover, and best friend addressed him by name in that particular tone.
“But that’s the thing,” he said, taking her hand. “The mundane is marvelous with you. We’ve been married less than a month, and our first Christmas was special. Our first Boxing Day. Our first New Year.”
Matilda nudged the curtain aside. “Our first journey to Shropshire. I hope your mother approves of me.”
“She will adore you, and she will be smitten with Tommie, and the staff will spoil him rotten, and we will have our hands full.”
“I adore you,” Matilda said, letting the curtain drop and snuggling closer. “I’ve missed the countryside, the fresh air, the trees, and cows and sheep. I’d lost sight of how busy and noisy London is, and I’m glad to be away from it.”
“We’ll go back in the spring to see how the men are faring at Elysium House. MacKay will keep them in line until then. I do believe we’re slowing down.”
“Either Tommie has tired of having his nose frozen, or you have highwaymen in Shropshire.”
Tommie rejoined them, his teeth chattering as he regaled them with the unparalleled thrill of taking the ribbons all by himself. Tremont listened, though he also spared a thought for his late father, who’d missed so much of his son’s upbringing.
Papa, I’m happy. I’m bringing my bride and our son home with me, and I am so happy. This is what you had with Mama, and now I have it too. I wish I could tell you how happy I am.
When Tommie had gushed at length about his career as an under-coachman and done justice for the third time to the comestibles in the hamper, he raised the same curtain Matilda had.
“You have good clouds here in Shropshire, my lord. Better than the clouds in London. We have smoke in London, but these are truly white clouds.”
“They are your clouds now too, young man.”
“That one looks like a longship,” Tommie said, squinting at the sky. “Look, Mama. It’s a longship cloud.”
Matilda dutifully looked, and Tremont did as well, the sight making him even happier than usual, and also—comforted?
“By Jove, boy, that is a longship to the life, complete with square sail and dragon prow. By night, it sails the stars, and by day…”
“The longship is sailing home with us,” Matilda said, smiling at her husband as if she could divine his wistful thoughts and slipping her hand back into his.
They had removed their gloves to aid Tommie’s plundering of the hamper, and Tremont was glad to have the contact. The longship was still sailing off the coach’s starboard prow when Tommie again took to pointing and waving.
“That is a castle! Look, Mama! A real, true castle! They have a castle in Shropshire and Viking clouds and sheep and everything!”
Tremont shared some of Tommie’s excitement and all of his joy. He’d come back to Shropshire from time to time in recent years, but this trip was different.
This was a homecoming, not a flying pass to keep an eye on rural duties.
“That is a castle,” Tremont said, “and also a family seat, and a stately manor, and a historical building, but mostly, Tommie, that is our home. My mama is there on the steps, you see? She can’t wait to meet you, and you must point out the Viking cloud to her too. My sister, Lydia, and her husband, Sir Dylan, are coming for a visit next week, and they are looking forward to meeting you too.”
Tommie sent Matilda a questioning look. “You didn’t say we would live in a castle, Mama.”
“We shall live in our castle,” Matilda said, handing Tommie his stuffed horse, “happily ever after. Now put on your gloves and prepare to make a proper bow to her ladyship. You can tell her all about driving the coach and introduce her to Cope and ask her impertinent questions about when Tremont was a boy.”
Tommie bounded out of the coach the instant the steps were let down and pelted up the staircase to the front terrace, waving his horse and yelling about longships in the sky.
Tremont handed Matilda down with slightly more decorum. “We will, you know,” he said, offering his arm.
“We will what?”
“Dwell in our castle, happily ever after.”
“We shall,” Matilda said, kissing his cheek. “With you, I’m sure of it.”
Tremont handled the introductions, and the hugs, and the kisses, and Tommie trying to slide down the terrace’s stone banister, and more hugs and kisses.
Before he escorted his wife and mama into the castle, he spared a smile and a wave for the longship soaring peacefully aloft in the beautiful Shropshire sky.
To my dear readers
I am having a wonderful time writing these tales for soldiers weary of life’s various battlefields, and when I met Marcus a few books ago, I thought he was particularly deserving of happily ever after. Then I recalled the withdrawn, widowed Mrs. Merridew I’d met even before Marcus strutted onto the pages, and ideas began to percolate.
I just love it when that happens!
My next set of ideas for the Mischief in Mayfair series has to do with Michael Delancey, another fellow who hasn’t been exactly forthcoming with us or with his family. Michael crosses paths with Mrs. Psyche Fremont, a woman willing to go to great lengths to hone her artistic skills. To what lengths will Michael go to win her love? Look for Miss Devoted (working title) in February 2023. Excerpt below!
I’m also wrapping up my Lady Violet Mysteries (for now) with Lady Violet Says I Do, which goes on sale in the web store in December, and hits the retail outlets in January.
And because the holidays are upon us, I’ve teamed up with writin’ buddy Christi Caldwell to publish Yuletide Gems, a Regency novella duet. For the 2022 Christmas season, we’re releasing this title primarily through library channels, though if you must have your own ebook copy, you can purchase it from my web store. International readers can buy the book from Kobo, Vivlio, or Tolino, though many international libraries will also have this title available to their catalogs.
Christi and I both feel strongly that libraries deserve our support, so we’ve taken a different approach with this year’s novella duet. If all goes well, next year we’ll do another duet for library release, and make Yuletide Gems available from the retailers. The print version is available now from Amazon, and I’ve included an excerpt below from my story, Worth More Than Rubies.
That little story has everything we need to make the holidays merry and bright—a shy, honorable duke; an equally shy but determined spinster; meddling urchins; tons of books; and smooching!
Happy reading!
Grace Burrowes
* * *
Read on for an excerpt from Miss Devoted, book six in the Mischief in Mayfair series!
Miss Devoted—Excerpt
Michael Delancey—vicar’s son, ordained priest, and rising star at Lambeth Palace—shrugged out of his dressing gown and let his mind go quiet. To be naked in a room full of intently staring strangers had become a sort of relief.
The instructor made a few more remarks about the difficulty of accurately rendering hands and feet, and the necessity of paying attention to the smallest shadows—beneath the chin, below the ankle bone—and then Michael was posed, semi-recumbent on a chaise, one foot on the floor, one arm flung back over his head.
The posture was restful, though after twenty minutes, Michael’s arm began to tingle. The only sounds in the room were the soft scratch of charcoal or pencil against paper, the occasional cough, or one page being set aside so another could be begun.
The instructor, a fussy old Frenchman with a meticulous eye for detail, made an occasional murmured comment, and time drifted along in a peaceful trickle of moments.
“And now, mes prodiges, we draw more than the fingers and the toes,” Monsieur Berthold said. “We have noted before the regularities of our model’s features, the nobility of the brow, the fine angle of the chin, the lovely musculature, and the perfect symmetry of the dark brows. This man is quite attractive.” Monsieur’s remarks, while flattering, might have been describing a marble effigy, so dispassionate was his praise. “Now I pose him thus…”
Berthold demonstrated for Michael a sitting posture, one elbow braced on a thigh, gaze on the floor.
“Now, the handsome face is hidden. Draw this man so that without seeing his eyes, without knowing the set of his mouth, or the angle of his nose, he conveys merriment. He is about to spring up and give a shout of joy, to laugh with great glee.”
Michael, staring at his feet—scrupulously clean, second toe longer than the great toe—could not see the consternation in the room, but he could feel it in the silence that greeted Monsieur’s challenge. Monsieur had a whole speech about the difference between an artist and a draftsman. The draftsman rendered accurate likenesses and could make a fine living doing so.
The artist put truth on the page, the whole truth. The visual truth, the emotional truth, the moral truth. All a bit high flown when the audience was a room full of young men many of whom were more adept at draining a bottle than drawing that same bottle in slanting sunshine.
One lone stick of charcoal began scratching away. High up, farthest from the center of the room. That would be young Mr. Henderson, who preferred the longer perspective. Slight, blond, barely emerging from adolescence. Henderson never said much, but when he did pose a question to Monsieur, the answer came without the usual garnish of sarcasm and criticism.
Henderson had talent and didn’t feel compelled to bruit that about. Lord Dermot Anthony, by contrast, had sizeable talent and an even bigger mouth. Always in the front row, close enough that Michael could smell the fetid aroma of debauchery blended with expensive shaving soap wafting from the lordly person.
Everybody liked Lord Dermot, and even Monsieur offered him the occasional encouraging remark. Lord Dermot’s mama, the marchioness of Stanbridge, was a noted patroness of the arts.
As the minutes crept by, Michael mentally steeled himself for his next obligation, dinner with his sister and her doting husband. Dorcas had chosen well, and she set a fine table. Alasdhair MacKay, Michael’s brother-by-marriage, was a fine fellow with a sly sense of humor and a fondness for smooth whisky.
The drudgery though, of being polite and mannerly toward some pretty widow or spinster in training for three or four hours… The hope in the lady’s eyes, the determination in Dorcas’s, and the sympathy in MacKay’s…
The session came to an end, and Bertold passed Michael his robe. “Our thanks, as usual. We will see you again on Tuesday, sir.”
Michael donned the dressing gown and belted it loosely, then took himself to the changing room. Clothes maketh not the man, but rather, the masquerade. A priest wore sober attire, though he need not be shabby.
Michael enjoyed fine clothes. Perhaps if he showed up at Dorcas’s with a stain on his cravat and a smear of charcoal on his cuff… But no. Dissembling for personal gain would not do.
He was making his way through the academy’s grand foyer, wondering if he had time for a quick stop on Circle Lane before he was due for dinner. Just fifteen minutes, not really a visit, more of a sighting. He was too intent on his plans to watch where he was going, and thus he and Henderson collided right in the doorway.
“Beg pardon,” Henderson muttered, tugging down his hat brim. “Entirely my fault. Do go on.”
“My apologies,” Michael said, bowing. “I was pre-occupied. After you.”
Henderson bustled through the door and jogged down the steps, soon disappearing among the pedestrians thronging the walkway. Michael stood on the terrace, reviewing what he’d just learned.
Henderson, who preferred to sit in the studio’s most shadowed corners, who rarely spoke at all, and who never joined in the general jockeying for status with the other students, was apparently distinguished by more than talent and eccentricity.
Henderson had the unmistakable bodily endowments of a well-formed woman.
* * *
Order your copy of Miss Devoted, and read on for an excerpt from Yuletide Gems!
Worth More Than Rubies—Excerpt (from Yuletide Gems)
“Must you be so gracious to every dowager, beldame, and debutante we pass?” Tertius Dundee, eleventh Duke of Dunfallon, kept his voice down. A peer did not shout on a public walkway, particularly when he was determined to elude the notice of the ladies.
“Yes, I must,” Nicholas Haddonfield, Earl of Bellefonte, replied. “My governess pounded gentlemanly deportment into my hard little head before I graced the schoolroom, and the ladies enjoy my overtures. Besides, Yuletide approaches, and the season enhances my already-abundant good cheer.”
“You can afford good cheer,” Dunfallon retorted. “You’re married.”
“And happily so, thank the Deity and my darling countess.” Bellefonte tipped his hat again and beamed his signature smile at a pair of widows swaddled in fur muffs and wool scarves. Because his lordship stood over six and a half feet tall and sported a head of shining blond curls, his gallantry was like a beacon across Mayfair, summoning the admiring glances of any female with eyes to behold him.
“Remind me,” Dunfallon said, “that the next time we meet for breakfast at the club, we arrive separately.”
“Nonsense. A brisk stroll works up the appetite.”
“Blast ye, Bellefonte, don’t ye dare even think—”
This time, the earl made a sweeping gesture out of removing his hat before a roving band of well-dressed young ladies.
“Enjoy your shopping!” he called. “Remember that I have been a very good boy this year!”
A chorus of tittering and simpering followed from the young women, their chaperones, and the maids trailing after them. Across the street, a petite female attired in a white velvet cloak gawked at the spectacle Bellefonte created. Her older companion, sensibly attired in blue, smiled indulgently.
“What sort of fool wears a white cloak in London?” Bellefonte asked, settling his hat onto his head, then taking it off again and tipping it to the pair across the street. “The fabric will be gray before she’s bought her first pair of dancing slippers.”
