Lady of Fortune Read online

  The admiral waved his hand deprecatingly. “Part of an officer’s job is to recognize talent, and you’ve amply repaid my faith. Anyone who can capture a hundred-gun French blockade runner with a frigate the size of the Antagonist is a credit to the Navy. How are you feeling?”

  “Very well, sir.”

  The admiral tapped the pile of papers on the table next to him. “According to your medical report, that’s not quite true.”

  Alex shifted in his chair, uneasy at having attention focused on his injury. Admiral Hutchinson noticed his movement and said, “I have a legitimate interest. The Navy is going to need all of her experienced captains in the years ahead. I think you’re ready for a ship of the line.”

  Alex straightened up, his attention engaged, but he refrained from comment. One of the first things one learned in the Navy was not to volunteer conversation.

  Pulling a pipe and tobacco pouch from a drawer in the side table, the admiral said, “What are your plans? You’ll be off active duty until next year, but what then?”

  Alex paused, uncomfortable with having to make even a tentative commitment. “Sir, I really don’t know. My father has died, and I have a good deal of personal business to take care of here in England.”

  He halted as a vision of the Harringtons’ household flashed before his inner eye; he had found himself envying the warmth and companionship his friend had found. The viscount considered holding silence but decided to make a clean breast of it. “I may not want to return to the Navy. There is a part of me that finds the idea of a settled life on land appealing. The Navy is a world of its own; compelling, but also very strange.”

  The admiral gave a short bark of laughter. “I always found I missed the land when I was at sea, and now that I’m permanently docked, I miss the sea. I realize it’s early days for you to be making a decision, but I wanted to talk before you disappeared into civilian life. If you do return to active command, we should be able to find you a ship very quickly.”

  The admiral paused and drew on his pipe, attempting to improve its feeble glow. “My personal belief is that we may be at war with the French for a long time to come. This citizens’ army of theirs is like nothing else in Europe. They’re fighting for something they believe in, not as mercenaries, and there is great power in that. Look at what the American colonies did.”

  Hutchinson inhaled a deep lungful of smoke, then let it out with satisfaction. “That’s two things the Americans do well—fight in the woods and grow tobacco. But to return to the subject at hand. If I’m right, we will need all our resources.”

  He looked at Alex’s carefully neutral expression and said, “I think it unlikely that you will wish to return to sea. After all, you are a peer and have numerous responsibilities, and you need the prize money less than most. But if you stay ashore, there are times the Admiralty might want to call on you for some advice—you are one of the best tacticians I’ve ever seen. Can we do that?”

  Alex stammered, “Yes, sir. Of course, sir!” Really, this was one of the most surprising interviews of his life—it was distinctly unnerving to hear that the august Lords of the Admiralty might value his opinion.

  Admiral Hutchinson stood and extended his hand in farewell. “You will want some time to get your land legs, but please keep in touch with me. I can always be reached through this office.”

  Alex was in a daze as he walked out of the Admiralty into the mild May evening. The great ships of the line were Britain’s finest fighting vessels, carrying twice the guns of a frigate like the Antagonist, and to command one was the dream of every young naval officer. Hutchinson’s offer was a tremendous compliment, and the prospect appealed in spite of Alex’s nascent yen for the settled life. He mentally kicked himself back to reality; there was no point in thinking much about it since he would get a ship of the line only if he didn’t expire as Peter had so gloomily suggested. At the moment, dinner and a place to sleep were of much greater relevance.

  Unable to face his family quite yet, Alex bespoke a bed at a snug inn called the Anchor that was a nearby favorite of naval officers. Over a leisurely meal he considered his tasks for the next day. First, visit the family lawyers and announce that he was finally taking the helm of the Kingsley interests. Then, a visit to Kingsley House to see about opening it again. Several of the servants had been kept on after his mother died; one was the longtime family butler, Morrison, who should be able to get the place staffed properly without much delay.

  Then would come the hard part: he would have to go to Aunt Agatha’s to find Annabelle. Jonathan was at Eton, so he would have to make a trip out there later. Alex flinched at the thought of the scorn he would see in their faces, their justified anger at the way he had run away from his responsibilities. But there was no help for it; without being able to express the thought in words, Alex knew there was a flaw in his maturing that could only be healed in service to his family.

  When he retired, the viscount had trouble falling asleep in a bed that wasn’t moving.

  Like many greatly feared confrontations, Alex’s homecoming turned out to be far easier than expected. He had steeled himself before raising the heavy brass knocker at his Aunt Agatha’s Portman Square house; when the footman admitted him, there was scarcely time to hand over his hat and request the presence of Miss Annabelle before he heard an excited voice from the top of the stairs leading into the wide vestibule.

  Alex looked up to see his sister calling to a maid behind her, “Quickly! Find Jonathan and tell him Alex is home!”

  Then she was flying down the stairs, her light slippers moving so quickly he feared for her safety, and into his arms, hugging him fiercely. Alex looked into the huge blue eyes swimming with tears and realized with awed humility that she didn’t hate him at all—by some miracle, and for reasons he couldn’t fathom, she loved him.

  Annabelle blinked back her tears and said shyly, “I’m sorry to be such a watering pot, Alex. But … but will you be staying this time? For at least a while?”

  He felt a rush of tenderness as he gazed into her lovely face, as beautiful as their mother’s but with a sweetness that angry woman had never known. “Yes, Belle,” Alex said huskily. “This time I’ll stay as long as you want me.”

  Larger feet thundered down the marble steps and he looked up to see his younger brother skid uncertainly to a halt an arm’s length away. Alex would hardly have recognized Jonathan; at their last meeting, three years before, he had still been a boy. Now he was a gangling fifteen, as blond as both his siblings and bidding fair to be as tall as his older brother. Alex impulsively reached out his hand, and suddenly the three were embracing in one confused tangle of arms and legs and blond hair, laughing and crying together. For the first time, and against all the odds, the three children of Lady Serena Kingsley were a family.

  Half an hour later they were sharing tea and cakes in the small drawing room, Aunt Agatha having shown the rare good sense to leave them alone. Annabelle automatically fell into the hostess role, pouring tea and offering cakes to her brothers. Alex studied her; she had grown into a lovely young woman with the height of the Kingsleys and a grace all her own, but there was a shyness and uncertainty in her demeanor that must be the result of too many scoldings and criticisms. His sister still wore mourning for her mother, and he could not decide if her slightly haggard look came from the black dress or from some other source.

  “Are you ready to be presented this fall, Belle, during the Little Season? The mourning period for Lady Serena will be over within the next couple of weeks,” Alex said.

  His sister wrinkled her nose a bit and handed him his tea. “I suppose I shall have to be. After all, I’m twenty and almost on the shelf. Do you have a naval friend who will marry me sight unseen so I can avoid going to the market?” she ended hopefully.

  He chuckled. “Really, Annabelle, you can do much better than a salty old sea dog. I expect there will be dozens of swains begging my permission to pay their addresses. There can’t be many pretti
er girls in London.”

  Annabelle shot him a startled look. “It is kind of you to say so, Alex. Though of course it isn’t true.” The last sentence fell away under her breath, almost inaudible. Alex frowned a bit; could the chit not believe the evidence of her mirror? He looked at her measuringly; while the delicate face, slim body, and long golden hair were beautiful, the overall effect was lacking.

  “We shall need to get you a whole new wardrobe. The styles have changed considerably since you first went into mourning after Father’s death.”

  His sister nodded. “Aunt Agatha didn’t think it right to waste money on mourning clothes when no one would see them.” She sighed. “And Wilkens said fashionable gowns would be wasted on me. She says I have no sense of style, not like Mother at all.”

  Alex raised a brow questioningly. “Have you kept Wilkens on? I know she was Lady Serena’s dresser for over thirty years and you must be fond of her, but wouldn’t you prefer a younger abigail, someone more your age?”

  She faltered. “I’m not at all fond of her, actually, but Aunt Agatha said I had a duty to keep her on.”

  Alex frowned. Wilkens probably bullied Annabelle unmercifully. She was a bad-tempered old biddy, completely devoted to Lady Serena but loathing the rest of the human race, particularly her mistress’s children, since they might be expected to hold some share of their mother’s affection. The dresser’s jealousy was unwarranted; Alex could remember no instance of motherly regard from Lady Serena.

  Their father’s sister, Aunt Agatha, had a certain fair-mindedness but was elderly and self-absorbed. She must resent the burden of her two young relations, and would have made no attempt to enter into the feelings of a shy young girl. The sooner Alex got Belle away from both of them, the better.

  “In that case, we shall pension her off,” he said cheerfully. “She can go to her well-earned reward in whatever that place was that she used to mutter about.”

  Annabelle giggled. “You mean Scunthorpe?”

  “Exactly. It is a good name for muttering; I hope the village can survive Wilkens’s return. If she misses her old life, she can harass whatever relatives she has left. Meanwhile, you shall have a new maid.”

  “Shall I have to choose her myself?” Annabelle looked alarmed; Alex was beginning to suspect that almost everything alarmed his sister. He gave an inward sigh but smiled reassuringly.

  “I’ll help you. We will advertise for suitable candidates and you choose the one you like best—that is all there is to it.”

  Annabelle still looked intimidated at the thought of exercising such control over her own destiny, so Alex turned his attention to Jonathan, who was putting away cakes with the dispatch and vigor that only a growing boy could provide.

  Jonathan colored slightly under his brother’s regard and hastily swallowed the rest of his cream cake. “You’re probably wondering why I’m not at Eton.”

  “The question had occurred to me,” Alex admitted.

  “I was expelled for the rest of the term.” At Alex’s questioning look, Jonathan said with a mixture of pride and embarrassment, “I put a cow in the chapel bell tower. Some of my friends said it couldn’t be done, so of course I said it could.”

  With sudden foreboding, Alex knew what was coming next. “Don’t tell me,” he groaned. “You said it was possible because your brother had done it.”

  “Of course!” Jonathan said proudly. “I couldn’t have them making a liar of you, could I?”

  Jonathan seemed so proud of his older brother that Alex felt a shade uneasy, fearing that he was not cut out to be a proper hero. Pushing aside the thought, he grinned at his brother. “I presume you found the problem with putting a cow in a tower?”

  Jonathan tried to look ashamed of himself, but without success. “The cow will walk up steps, but it won’t walk down. When they sent me home, the cow was still up there.”

  Alex started chuckling. “I hope for the cow’s sake that someone remembers the solution Peter Harrington came up with.”

  “What was that?” Jon asked with serious technical curiosity.

  “A cow won’t go headfirst down a stair, and who could blame her? But she can be persuaded to back down, if you have someone stationed at each hoof to move it backward.” Alex suddenly laughed outright. “It is a slow business, and it’s hard to get volunteers for the back feet.”

  In a moment they were all whooping with laughter at the thought. In his innocence, Alex decided that being head of a family might not be so difficult after all.

  It was time to work on the wigs again. In the eight weeks since Christa had started her career as an abigail she had cleaned, trimmed, and recurled every one of the heads in her charge. Her ladyship apparently did not object to lice and other fauna infesting her hairpieces, but Christa did.

  Lady Pomfret was out much of the time, leaving her maid in peace to mend and alter and refurbish. It was a rather lonely life but not unpleasant; there was satisfaction in a job well done, and Christa would sit in milady’s boudoir and read books from the library when her other tasks were done. On a day like today, with the May sunshine flooding in the window, she would succumb to her natural exuberance and sing happily away in French.

  Carefully removing the clay rollers from the formal headdress in front of her, Christa patted the plump ringlets into place around the top of the head, then looped a long swatch of hair at the nape into a cadogan. She sighed; Lady Pomfret wanted her to attach a coquelicot band, three ostrich plumes, and a bunch of pink roses with green foliage. The thought of them bobbing above her ladyship’s beefy countenance did not please; Christa was beginning to understand why a lady’s maid would leave a position because her mistress did not reflect creditably on her.

  She broke off her song when the front door of the suite opened to reveal Lady Pomfret’s husband, Sir Horace. Christa had never seen Sir Horace at close quarters before. The baronet was as beefy as his wife, and as he walked toward her she heard creaking sounds reminiscent of a ship at sea. It must be a corset; suppressing a smile, she stood and bobbed a curtsy. “Good morning, sir. Lady Pomfret is abroad early today. Do you wish to leave a message?”

  Sir Horace stared at the abigail, unconscious of the fact that the tip of his tongue had slid out and licked his lower lip. By George, but she was a tasty morsel! The baronet kept a woman near Covent Garden but liked to have at least one or two of the maids primed and ready as well. He’d been mowing the third housemaid for several months, but she wasn’t half so toothsome as this one.

  “No need. You must be the new mam’zelle, Bonnet.”

  Christa nodded. “Oui, milord. I am Christine Bohnet.” She pronounced her surname in the French fashion but without hope; none of the English appeared willing to tackle foreign sounds.

  “You’re a pretty little puss,” Sir Horace said, moving around the narrow table where Christa worked on the wigs. “Sometimes I hear you singing when I’m in the hall.”

  “I am sorry, sir, I do not always notice that I am singing. I shall try to be quieter.”

  “No need to apologize,” he said with oppressive bonhomie. “It does my heart good to hear you sing.”

  Christa looked at him with distaste. The baronet was within an arm’s length of her, and proximity did not improve his appearance. A number of teeth were missing and he had smallpox scars. That was not his fault, of course, but the scars did not improve a countenance that was low-browed and bulbous-nosed to begin with.

  She did not start to become irritated until the man reached out and pulled off her mobcap. Christa was proud of that cap; she thought it gave her the look of a proper servant. Without it, her simple dresses made her look too elegant for a servant.

  The baronet tweaked a dark curl. “Pretty hair you have, too.”

  Christa stood and deftly put the width of the table between them. Really, men were so tiresome! She had found a book downstairs in the library called Directions to Servants, an amusing satire derived from life belowstairs. The author, Jonatha
n Swift, said that the lord of the household often fancied his wife’s maid, even if she were not half so handsome as his own lady. All of Lady Pomfret’s men appeared anxious to prove the writer correct; having discouraged the two lovers, apparently Christa would now have to do the same to the husband. “Milord is very kind. If milord does not require anything, I must go out now to purchase some ribbons for Lady Pomfret.”

  Christa hoped that mention of his wife might deter him, but the baronet pasted on what was intended as a charming smile and moved after her, trapping her between a wing chair and a small table. He was surprisingly quick for such a bulky man; he must have pursued a good few maids in his time.

  “No need to run away,” he said coaxingly. “It is early yet. Plenty of time for us to have some fun, eh?” The Chinese-blue dress Christa wore had an open neckline and Sir Horace reached out and grasped the bare skin of her neck and shoulder. His damp hand started squeezing and petting, then slid down to her left breast. “Nice,” he said with approval. “Is the rest of you just as nice?” The baronet put his other hand on Christa’s shoulder to pull her to him, then tried to force her chin up. She turned her head sharply and the wet kiss landed on her cheek.

  Using her most aristocratic voice, Christa said sharply, “Sir Horace, let go of me at once!”

  Her air of authority startled the baronet so much that he released her, but increasing excitement led him to believe that she was just holding off until the business arrangements were settled. “Don’t worry, my pretty. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  As Christa tried to slip away, Sir Horace followed until she was backed into a corner of the room. “Swift said the final favor was worth a hundred pounds. I’ve never paid a servant half so much, but you look to be worth it.”

  Christa was hard pressed not to burst into laughter at the farcical scene; she knew now whose book she had found in the library. Didn’t the foolish man recognize satire when he read it? Apparently the baronet studied the book to learn his courting techniques!