Never a Duke, page 8
“You look at the cart horse,” Ned said. “Is he a solid, well-groomed specimen in good weight, or a skinny hack one delivery away from the knacker’s yard? Are the womenfolk cheerful and energetic or listless and sullen? Do the apprentices serve out their terms or decamp for parts unknown after two years? Are the windows spotless, suggesting somebody has too much free time, or are they filthy, suggesting nobody has any care for appearances? You pay attention.”
Stephen twiddled a quill pen. “I could study the shops for ten years and never realize the successful enterprise has slightly dirty windows. Quinn would not come to that realization.”
Ned smiled, because Stephen was right. “That bothers you.”
“It puzzles me, but Quinn did manual labor in his youth, then he was in service, then he was a clerk and eventually, a banker. He never managed a shop.”
“Neither have I.” Though Ned had been born above his father’s shop, and been given needle and thread before he’d been breeched.
“Abigail will adore your scheme,” Stephen said. “Her Quaker leanings will approve of that bit about a circle of prosperity.” And much of life, for Stephen, balanced on what Abigail liked or disliked. A man could have far worse lodestars.
“She gave me the idea,” Ned said, “or the Quaker approach to banking did. They regard their obligations from a congregational perspective and are considered more trustworthy as a result, hence more people do business with them. The Friends back one another and rise or fall together.”
“Their banks still sometimes fail.”
“Not as often as most.”
What did Rosalind think about mercantile ventures? How would she approach managing a bank? Did she have an opinion on the Corn Laws? Ned suspected she did, a well-thought-out, rational, and slightly unorthodox opinion.
“Neddy, something is troubling you,” Stephen said, after a pause in the discussion had turned into a silence. “I realize you should figuratively draw my cork for prying, but Abigail would want me to ask if there’s anything I can do to help.”
“Abigail would want you to ask?”
Stephen tossed the feather aside and folded his arms. “Very well, I want to know. When the rest of the world was tiptoeing past my door for fear I’d go off into one of my tantrums, you taunted me to attempt a game of pall-mall. I’m returning the favor now. What’s amiss?”
Ned had forgotten that exchange, had forgotten how upsetting he’d found the thought of a human being voluntarily shutting himself away from light and fresh air.
“You excel at pall-mall. You have the eye for it.”
“I excel at nearly everything,” Stephen replied, with what sounded like genuine exasperation. “My point is that we’ve never been delicate with each other, so what the hell is wrong?”
That kiss with Rosalind had been wrong—also wonderfully right. “I must pay a few calls I’m not looking forward to.”
Stephen shot his cuffs. “You dread these calls.”
“The brothels,” Ned said, hating even the word. “I must canvass my connections in the brothels to learn if pretty female domestics are going missing from London’s streets in greater numbers than usual.”
“I’d relieve you of those errands, except Abigail would disapprove of me setting foot in such establishments. Most bachelors would leap at the chance to pay such calls.”
“Most bachelors are idiots.” Ned rose and locked the blue ledger in the glass-fronted bookcase beneath the window. “I kissed Lady Rosalind.”
Stephen looked bored. “Proving that at least sometimes, you do not number among the idiots.”
“She’s an earl’s daughter, and she came to me for help.”
“She’s an adult with a brain in her head, Neddy. I hazard she did not swoon with disgust at your overture—unless you made a complete hash of the business?”
“I did not.” Nor had she. “Most people think I’m Walden’s by-blow.”
“What matters, Neddy dearest, is what Lady Rosalind thinks of you. Your personal wealth recommends you to any woman short of royalty, as do your social connections. The problem is not Lady Rosalind’s social standing.”
Ned had suspected as much, though he’d not admitted that to himself. “I’m sure you will enlighten me as to the true difficulty?”
“Being generous of heart and brilliant of brain, of course I will. The ladies all eye you covetously. You are the dark-eyed Wentworth, the mysterious Wentworth, the quiet Wentworth. Byron’s charms would pale beside your manly allure, and yet, you never dally, never favor one lady over another. You treat all with distant, impeccable courtesy, and that drives them wild.”
“You have a vivid imagination, my lord.”
“I was pathetically jealous of you. Who can compete with that cool self-possession, particularly from the confines of a damned Bath chair?”
“So you became the idiot variety of bachelor.”
“You are an idiot.” Stephen rose and smoothed the crease of his trouser, which was fitted loosely enough to conceal the brace stabilizing his knee. “You aren’t cool and haughty and all that other whatnot. You are simply indifferent. The belles and merry widows do not appeal to you. You see them as slightly tiresome, while they regard you as fascinating and forbidden.”
The tiresome part was accurate enough. “To many of them, I am forbidden. In trade, baseborn, and so forth.”
“Balderdash.” Stephen collected his walking stick. “Money and ducal associations can elevate the prospects of the lowliest knight. In any case, your quandary arises not because you kissed Lady Rosalind, but because she kissed you back.”
Oh, she had. Wonderfully, enthusiastically, generously. “You find that surprising?”
“Not at all, but you do, and therein lies the difficulty. She refused to adhere to your treasured prejudices and predictions, and now you are wrestling with hope and uncertainty. Being a mortal and tenderhearted male, you find those demons terrifying.”
“Are you quite finished?” Ned asked, producing a yawn and a stretch.
“I am, and you are just getting started. You might consider offering a reward for information about the missing ladies. Make it quiet and confidential, and you might learn something.”
“That is not a bad idea.”
“Such high praise from you, dearest Neddy, will surely put me to the blush. When will you call on Jane?”
“Soon. Give Abigail my love.”
“I will give her your fond regards, you blackguard. Abigail is mine. Go find your own duchess.” Stephen saluted with his walking stick and departed, closing the door silently in his wake.
Ned remained in his office, wrestling with hope and uncertainty, and with joyous memories of Rosalind’s kisses too.
* * *
“My lady, with all due respect, you don’t know who Mr. Wentworth’s antecedents are.” Mrs. Barnstable offered that vexing observation in tones of earnest patience.
“He is a member of the Wentworth family,” Rosalind retorted. “How much more illustrious can antecedents be? Their Graces are not only titled, but also well situated, and Walden is said to have the ear of the Crown.”
Rosalind was sketching, while Mrs. Barnstable worked at her embroidery. Both activities struck Rosalind as utterly pointless when each passing day could mean that Arbuckle and Campbell were in greater peril.
“I grant you,” Mrs. Barnstable said, “he is attached to the Wentworth household and traveling under the Wentworth name, but the rumors about him are most troubling.”
“What rumors?”
Mrs. Barnstable held her hoop up to the light of the morning room’s east-facing window. “Unsavory rumors.”
“I am not fourteen and ignorant of the world, Mrs. B.”
Mrs. Barnstable resumed stitching, the sun making a golden halo of her blond hair. She was not yet thirty-five and surely qualified as an attractive widow. Rosalind liked her companion’s penchant for books and her strong practical streak.
Also her firm grasp of the difference between a companion and a nanny.
“My lady, you are motivated to champion unfortunate causes, and Mr. Wentworth might fall into that category. Where does his wealth come from, for example?”
“He is a banker. Bankers, by definition, possess money.”
“He works at a bank,” Mrs. Barnstable corrected gently. “He is not a Wentworth by birth, or not by legitimate birth. Half the time when his name is mentioned he’s referred to as Walden’s by-blow, the other half the speculations run in even worse directions.”
Rosalind took a moment to shade in her subject’s eyebrows. They were dark, finely arched, and gave him a knowing air.
“How many FitzClarences are there?” Rosalind mused. “The heir to the throne can have ten by-blows, and they are lionized everywhere, but His Grace of Walden cannot have one?” Though Ned had said his father was a tailor. Had he meant his foster father? A stepfather?
“The FitzClarences are not said to have enjoyed the king’s hospitality at Newgate. One does not hear jests about the FitzClarences graduating from picking pockets in Piccadilly to picking pockets in the City. I say these things not because I mean the young man any harm, but because somebody must keep your best interests in mind.”
Rosalind’s pencil stilled. “What are my best interests, Mrs. B?” Lately that question, or a version of it, had been plaguing her. Lately since asking Ned Wentworth for help. “Am I to age into desperation, such that I finally accept a proposal from the likes of Lord DeGrange just to escape my father’s household? Do I wait until I’m so close to my last prayers that when I write letters to the newspapers about the cruelty of badger baiting I become the object of jests?”
“No more letters,” Mrs. Barnstable murmured. “Please, no more letters. The editors publish them for the sensation they create, not because anybody intends to pass laws for the defense of hapless badgers. Besides, Lord DeGrange is in every way an estimable parti.”
“If he’s so estimable, then you elope with him.”
Mrs. Barnstable smiled, making herself look younger and altogether less staid. “If Lord DeGrange proposed, I would consider his suit. He has aged well.”
But he had aged somewhat longer than Rosalind preferred in a prospective spouse. Then too, his conversation was limited to last year’s adventures in the hunt field or this year’s crop of foals. When he was in a truly lively frame of mind, he’d recount various cricket matches from his boyhood years at public school.
Worst of all, Lord DeGrange wasn’t Ned Wentworth. He could not put Amanda Tait in her place with a bland word. He would never take on the challenge of finding a missing lady’s maid, and he would never wonder why a woman had kissed him—and why would she?—much less ask her to explain her reasons.
“Until Papa calms down enough to stop heaving aging barons and unctuous cits at me, I won’t be writing any more letters.”
“Your father is concerned for you, my lady, as I am concerned for you. You drove out with Mr. Wentworth on Monday and permitted him to escort you again just yesterday. That will start talk.”
“He has agreed to escort me again on Monday evening,” Rosalind said. “George and Lindy should be overjoyed to be spared that duty. Moreover, Lindy appeared at yesterday’s Venetian breakfast too, but never offered to escort me. Not well done of him.”
Mrs. Barnstable’s needle stilled. “My lady, please exercise caution. Gossip is unkind to women who violate convention.”
And there sat Amelia Barnstable, a woman who personified conventionality, and society hardly esteemed her for her choices.
“Mr. Wentworth is neither silly nor vain nor self-absorbed,” Rosalind said. “His manners are faultless, and he is received everywhere.” Then too, his kisses were amazing.
“He is received, but not accepted. Please consider crying off on Monday night, my lady. Better still, tell Mr. Wentworth you will attend with one of your brothers and will not need his escort. If Mr. Wentworth is half the paragon you paint him to be, he’ll understand he’s been given his congé.”
Logic, Rosalind’s besetting sin, prodded her to leave off pondering Ned Wentworth’s kisses long enough to consider Mrs. Barnstable’s words.
“You are not making sense,” Rosalind said, folding down a blank page over the unfinished sketch of Mr. Wentworth. “He is in demand as a dancing partner and escort. I’ve heard any number of matchmakers speculating about his wealth, and both Amanda Tait and Clotilda Cadwallader have admitted they would entertain his addresses. He is beyond eligible, and yet you disparage him.”
“My lady, I applaud your independent spirit. You know I do, and I understand better than you think the allure of forbidden fruit, but Ned Wentworth isn’t merely common, he’s questionable. I urge you to greatest caution. Married to him, you too would be received but not accepted, and when a conversation paused at somebody’s soiree, you would always wonder: Were they gossiping about your husband?”
As opposed to knowing, at least some of the time, that they gossiped about me?
But then, Rosalind was reminded of Ned’s words to her: Not me. Was this what he’d meant? That association with him would come at the cost of society’s dubious blessing?
If so, did she care? Rosalind drew a single line on the blank page, a line that happened to follow the contour of Ned Wentworth’s upper lip. “He says it doesn’t signify that I stammered.”
“Of course it doesn’t signify, particularly when you no longer suffer that affliction and haven’t for years. What are you drawing?”
“Ideas for bonnets.” Though Rosalind did occasionally still stumble over her words when she was tired, nervous, or upset. “I don’t believe we’ve gone bonnet shopping yet this Season. Are you up for an outing?”
Mrs. Barnstable flashed that charming, mischievous smile again. “On a pretty spring day, what could possibly appeal more strongly than a shopping expedition?”
“Another visit to Hatchards?”
“Or both? Be still my fluttering heart.” She gathered up her embroidery and closed the lid of her workbasket. “I’ll meet you by the front door in ten minutes.”
“And Gunter’s,” Rosalind said, closing her sketchbook. “Good things come in threes.” That was a variation on the adage—bad things came in threes—but also suited to Rosalind’s mood. To spend another afternoon sitting at home perusing the newspapers was beyond her.
“We should drop by Mrs. Abercrombie’s and invite her to join us,” Mrs. Barnstable said, pausing at the door, workbasket in hand. “Her new companion has decamped on short notice, and Mrs. Abercrombie has yet to hire another. She might appreciate some company and fresh air.”
Mrs. Abercrombie was a widow of an age with Mrs. Barnstable, and not at all high in the instep. “The more the merrier,” Rosalind said, getting to her feet. “How many companions does that make in the past year?”
“Three, but she does hire the younger, less-experienced women, and they are often less reliable too. You will consider what I said about Mr. Wentworth? You would not want to attract undue notice, my lady, especially not before your brother has attached a suitable bride.”
And abruptly, the entire conversation fell into a rational pattern. “Lindhurst’s pride is smarting because Mr. Wentworth wasn’t cowed by his lordship’s almighty consequence. Lindhurst put you up to warning me off Mr. Wentworth, didn’t he?”
Lindy might even dimly suspect that the accident that had befallen his favorite watch—he had several—had not been an accident.
Mrs. Barnstable paused, hand on the door latch. “Actually, both your brothers mentioned their concerns to me, and just because they are your brothers doesn’t mean you can dismiss everything they say. Your behaviors have caused them no little embarrassment in the past, my lady, to say nothing of the talk your father has endured on your behalf.”
“And Lindy’s inane bets? George’s attempts at poetry that he wastes his allowance publishing in bound volumes? Higgins having to send the footmen out to bring Lindy home at all hours, dead drunk, pockets to let again? That’s all simply amusing while my decision to allow the same man to escort me twice in a week has my brothers flying into the bows?”
Mrs. Barnstable sighed, the sound having a familiar, disappointed quality. Rosalind’s tutors and governesses had frequently sighed like that, as did Papa.
“Your brothers are male, my lady. It’s not fair, it’s not right, but it’s the way of the world that the male of the species in polite circles need not grow up unless or until he chooses to.”
That surely qualified as an eternal verity, supported by observation and logic both. In the normal course, Rosalind would have apologized for being so vexatious and acknowledged the truth of Mrs. Barnstable’s observations. George and Lindy were male, though compared to Ned Wentworth, they were hardly men.
But today, Rosalind’s penchant for truth-telling beset her with particular intensity. “You live your entire life above reproach, Amelia Barnstable. You observe every rule and respect every protocol. Despite your exemplary existence, your husband’s gambling left you without even your widow’s mite. And yet, you defend the same conventions that rendered you impoverished and homeless. That is not right either.”
Mrs. Barnstable shot Rosalind a look, one that hinted at fear and more subtly suggested the merest glint of rage. “I’ll fetch my bonnet, and you will be careful where Ned Wentworth is concerned.”
Rosalind let her have the last word. When it came to Ned Wentworth, Rosalind had every intention of being careful. He was the first man she’d noticed in a positive sense since becoming infatuated with the curate at the family seat in her eleventh year.
Ned Wentworth was honorable and kind, and so what if he’d had a rough start in life? His Grace of Walden himself had been to the gutter born, to hear the gossips tell it. Ned had made something of himself, an accomplishment far more worthy of respect than George’s awkward poetry or the intricate knots in Lindy’s cravats.
* * *
The most successful exponents of London’s underworld rubbed along tolerably well with the most genteel. At the theater, a man of means might escort his mistress one night and be joined at the interval by his good friends.
