Lavinia knew immediately that she was going to like Roselie Stratton excessively. The viscount’s sister had hurried them into the house, dispatching their coats and hats with the footman and ushering them into an airy sitting room. The furniture had all been moved against the walls and the carpet rolled up.
At the pianoforte sat a tiny woman, and beside her stood a tall, solidly built man with impeccable posture. He stood at attention like a wooden soldier.
“I am so glad you asked me to help, Tuck,” Roselie was saying. “This Season has to be the dullest in years. I needed a project that would require some subterfuge just to keep me from dying of boredom.”
If ever there was a living and breathing example of Miss Darby, Lavinia had the sense she was meeting her. That, and Roselie also reminded her of Lady Essex—the most indomitable of all the Kempton spinsters.
Lavinia glanced around and spied an elderly lady dozing in the corner.
Roselie noticed and winked at her. “That is Mrs. Pratt, the companion my mother hired to keep an eye on me. Actually, she came very highly recommended from a dear friend. Mostly because she is always and ever on the alert.”
There was an indelicate snore from the far side of the room, and the lady’s head bobbed as she slept.
Roselie grinned happily. “And, of course, this is Herr Fuchs.”
The dancing master clicked his heels together and nodded slightly at the new arrivals, but even so, Lavinia could feel his gaze taking a full measure of the work ahead of him though he barely moved, that is until Roselie began directing the proceedings.
“Now Tuck,” she announced, “you partner Miss Tempest, and I’ll dance with Brody.”
Herr Fuchs struck his walking stick to the floor. “Nein! Nein! Nein!” he protested after taking one scathing glance at the couples before him. “This will not do,” he declared, marching up to them, all the while shaking his head. “You and the young lady do not suit. Not in the least,” he told Mr. Rowland, who had come to stand beside Lavinia.
“Actually, we rather get along quite well,” Mr. Rowland replied.
“That has nothing to do with dancing,” Herr Fuchs shot back, nudging Tuck aside with his walking stick and prodding Brody to stand beside Lavinia.
Lavinia knew she should be thrilled to be partnered with Lord Rimswell. He was everything an eligible parti should be. Handsome. Titled. Wealthy.
Yet as the music began, and Lord Rimswell politely took her in his arms, all Lavinia could do was steal a glance over at Roselie and Tuck. Her lips pursed together as she realized that the pang running through her with a jolt was jealousy.
Ridiculous, she told herself, and turned her full attention on the baron.
And promptly stepped on his boot.
“I am so sorry, my lord,” she hurried to apologize.
“It is to be expected,” Lord Rimswell replied politely. “Why this German martinet of Roselie’s has even me on edge.”
Lavinia laughed a bit—at least until Herr Fuchs shot her a scathing glance. She straightened hurriedly and tried to concentrate on her feet.
Yet all she could think about was how dancing with Lord Rimswell was nothing like the magic she felt when she danced with Tuck.
Again, she stole another glance in that direction.
“They dance quite well together,” Lord Rimswell commented.
“Yes, they do.” Then again, everyone danced quite well together if they weren’t partnered with her.
“Not that it’s a surprise, we all learned to dance together.”
“We?” she asked.
“Me, my older brother, Poldie, Tuck, and Piers—Viscount Wakefield, his older sister, Margaret, and, of course, Roselie.” The baron said her name with a bit of resigned annoyance.
“Whatever is the matter with Miss Stratton?” Lavinia asked. “She seems quite lovely.”
In fact, she looked quite fetching in Tuck’s arms. The pair of them striking together.
Another jolt of jealousy shafted through her as Tuck whirled Roselie in a perfect circle.
“I suppose it sounds foolish, but Roselie and I are the same age, and all the others were a few years older. My brother, Piers and Tuck were inseparable, while I was deemed too young to be included in their adventures and was left behind with Roselie. Utterly humiliating.”
“Yet Miss Stratton has turned out quite pretty,” Lavinia noted.
Lord Rimswell barely spared the other lady a glance. “Yes, I suppose so. But I fear, she’ll always be a dreadful handful to me.”
“Mr. Rowland seems to find her diverting,” she said aloud before she could stop herself.
Lord Rimswell smiled and leaned down to whisper, “I would wager they are arguing.”
Lavinia hardly thought that was fair, but as she took another glance at the other couple, she also came down hard on top of the baron’s foot. “I am so sorry,” she managed.
“No, that was my fault,” he said, even if it wasn’t.
“Nein! Nein! Nein!” Herr Fuchs said, pounding his walking stick and marching over to Lavinia and Lord Rimswell.
From across the room, Tuck sent her an encouraging glance. Courage, Livy. You can do this.
The dancing master stopped right in front of her, his face a stern mask of disgust. “Can you not count, fraülein?” The walking stick came down hard against the floor, and the man struck an imperious pose before her.
Lavinia felt every bit of her resolve crumble in the face of this martinet. “Yes,” she sniffed, and glanced away. Oh, dear, she was going to turn into a watering pot. This was more humiliating than the time she had nearly burned down Foxgrove. And yet despite her best efforts, her eyes welled up.
Herr Fuchs remained unmoved. “What? Are you crying? There is no crying in dancing!”
“You weren’t the one dancing with her,” Brody muttered as he limped back a step from her. Abandoning her to Herr Fuchs’s tirade.
And yet it was Tuck—the knave, the rake—who stepped in to rescue her. “However is this helpful, Herr Fuchs? Making a young lady cry? Villainous!” he declared, taking Lavinia by the hand and turning her so her back was to everyone.
“Steady on, Livy. I’ll dance with you.” He glared over her shoulder at Herr Fuchs, and the dancing master made an exasperated noise and stomped back over to let loose a flurry of complaints at Roselie. In German, thankfully.
“He said we do not suit,” Lavinia reminded him, dashing at the tears now falling to her cheeks.
Tuck pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “I disagree. We rub along most excellently. Don’t you think?”
Lavinia looked up at him and found herself nodding in agreement. They did rub along well. It made no sense, for here was a man who didn’t fit anywhere on her list, but oh, how he fit to her.
Like when they’d danced at Monsieur Ponthieux’s. Or when he’d sat next to her at St. George’s, her shield against the scrutiny of the ton.
Or today. For there in the carriage, she’d thought he was going to say something, ask her something, tell her something very important, or when she’d put her hand on his sleeve, it was because somewhere, deep inside her, she just knew that was what she should do.
Never mind his teasing ways (which, if she was being entirely honest, she rather liked), he’d nearly had her confess that yes, she loved Miss Darby because the girl lived exactly the life Lavinia desired with all her heart.
Adventurous. Passionate. And oh, so improper.
And she suspected he would never disapprove of such a dream. Such a desire.
Any desire, for that matter.
Yet to take that step into such a world, would be her ruin. And Louisa’s as well. Worst of all, it would break her father’s heart to see her follow in her mother’s footsteps.
Still, the lure of Tuck Rowland was nearly irresistible. She knew now why Lady Essex and every book she’d ever read on ladylike comportment warned of such men.
But there was more to all this than just the way he made her feel—beyond forward and passionate—there was a wounded and desperate man beneath all this Corinthian veneer.
And that part of him tugged at her heart. Felt they shared something deep and unspoken—a sense of being outside the rest of the world.
She couldn’t imagine what it was like to be him—what with the whispers and pointing she’d seen at St. George’s.
In church, no less.
For while she’d put her hand on his sleeve to press her point—that he did need to know that love was real—but once her fingers curled into the wool of his jacket, the heat of his arm rising into her fingertips, she had the sense that as much as she needed his help, he needed hers as well.
She just didn’t know how.
“Perhaps you could teach us something new?” Roselie was saying. “I hear there is a new French—”
Oh, just the mention of that land across the Channel was enough to send Herr Fuchs into a fury.
“Did the French compose the great music? Nein! Did they create the waltz? Nein! What do the French know of these things? Music is the very heart and soul of a German!” He pounded his fist to his chest, his face red with emotion.
“Oh, do teach us to waltz,” Roselie begged. “My father learned how when he was in Vienna and would dance it with my mother.”
After sending a skeptical glance at Lavinia—most likely because the man was certain he was about to see the dance of his beloved homeland tromped all over—Herr Fuchs nodded in agreement and waved his hand at his poor beleaguered accompanist, who began to play a wonderfully sweet arrangement—the sort of notes that were meant to awaken the very soul.
Tuck already knew the dance—of course he would for it was a scandalous thing. He caught hold of her hand, and his other came to rest on her hip—ever so intimately. And they began to move together, just as they had at Ponthieux’s.
“Thank you for rescuing me,” he told her. “My cousin was ringing a peal over my head.”
“For what?” Lavinia asked, growing dizzier by the minute. And it wasn’t just the circles they were dancing.
It was Tuck.
“Everything,” he teased back.
“That narrows it down.”
“Minx,” he whispered in her ear, sending tendrils of delight through her.
“Knave,” she replied with just as much passion.
He grinned at her, then something over his shoulder caught his attention. He glanced back at her. “And what were you and Lord Rimswell discussing? And in such earnest, I might note.”
He’d been watching her? She shouldn’t be, but the idea thrilled her. “Mostly I was apologizing for stepping on his feet. ”
“Then Brody can’t be that much of a partner, for I think you are a perfect handful.” And as if to emphasize the point, his hand, the one on her hip, curled slightly, caressing her.
Somehow, the world slowed around her. “Truly?”
“Decidedly,” he whispered into her ear.
And there it was, all those shivers, and she couldn’t help herself, she leaned closer to him. And as she fit against him, she could feel him flinch, ever so slightly.
But he didn’t move away, only pulled her closer, as if he was testing the same theory.
That something magical, something impossible was happening.
“Does it always feel like this?” she whispered up to him.
“No, Livy, it doesn’t.”
There was an emotion behind his confession, his words, that she’d never heard him use. As if the truth surprised him as well. Yet before she could ask him another question, from beyond the music room, there was the sound of the front door opening and closing.
“Roselie! Oh, Roselie, where are you?”
The music stopped, and all four of them came to a halt, even as a woman came rushing into the room.
What followed was a very uncomfortable moment. The matron—whom Lavinia had to assume was the dowager Viscountess Wakefield—came to a fluttering stop, and her eyes blinked a few times, the scene before her coming into focus.
If she had questions or objections, the only sign was the slight uptick of her brow and the quelling glance she shot her daughter.
Her unmarried daughter.
“Roselie, I didn’t know you were entertaining,”
“Just a dancing lesson, Maman,” Roselie replied, leaving Brody’s side and smiling as if there was nothing wrong with having two unmarried gentlemen in attendance without anyone proper to chaperone—well, other than her hired companion, who was dozing in the corner.
Her mother glanced around, until her gaze lit on Herr Fuchs, who executed a precise and measured bow of respect.
“You said the other night that I could stand to improve my steps a bit,” Roselie rushed to add, “and it was ever so kind of Miss Tempest—and Mr. Rowland and Lord Rimswell—to aid me and agree to keep my secret. Terribly embarrassing to be twenty and four and still unable to remember such a simple measure. And besides, dear Bernie has been here the entire time.”
When they all looked at once over at the corner, there to Lavinia’s surprise, was a completely awake and for all accounts, alert Mrs. Pratt, who was not only awake, but on her feet. She bowed her head to her ladyship as if to say that nothing untoward was going to happen on her watch.
Roselie, for her part, beamed at her co-conspirators. Follow my lead, or we are all done for.
But there was no need for that, for Lady Wakefield was now fixed on another subject.
Or rather person.
“Miss Tempest? Truly?” The lady gazed at Lavinia and shook her head. “That cannot be. I have it on good authority that not thirty minutes ago Miss Tempest was seen getting into Piers’s carriage. Lady Gourley was quite convinced.”
“Then it must be the other Miss Tempest, Maman,” Roselie explained. “This is Lavinia Tempest. The one I met the other night is her sister, Louisa.”
“Truly?” She gave Lavinia another once-over as if she wasn’t quite convinced that she had it muddled. But then she brightened. “Oh, yes! I do recall now. Twins, isn’t it? In the excitement of the moment, that quite slipped my mind.”
At this, Lavinia stepped forward. Though her thoughts were reeling at this unexpected news.
Louisa was out riding with Lord Wakefield?
“My lady, my sister and I are identical,” she told the dowager viscountess. “We are often confused for each other.”
The lady looked her up and down. “Identical, you say? How perfectly delightful! But more to the point, it would seem I do indeed have the correct Miss Tempest, for you can tell me all about your sister. I must know everything.” The lady stalked forward, smiling widely, but her piercing gaze had Lavinia pinned in place.
“Maman!” Roselie protested. “You are terrifying poor Miss Tempest.”
“Nonsense. She strikes me as a miss who knows her own mettle,” the dowager declared. Then, like a cat, came pouncing forward and folded her arm into Lavinia’s, catching her tight.
Lavinia had a horrible moment of knowing exactly how Hannibal’s prey felt when that wretched beast went hunting.
Meanwhile, Lady Wakefield began to tow Lavinia from the room, saying, “I know we are going to get along famously! You are going to be at Lady Grayson’s tonight, are you not?”
“No, my lady.”
This halted Lady Wakefield in her tracks. “Whyever not?”
Lavinia drew a steadying breath. “The invitation was withdrawn.”
“Withdrawn?” The dowager paused and looked Lavinia over, then her eyes widened as if she were collecting, cataloguing and plotting all at once. And more to the point, her gaze lifted to Mr. Rowland, a sharp, narrow accusation that Lavinia suspected could pin the man to the wall.
“It isn’t as if you are missing much, Miss Tempest,” Roselie rushed in to add—and obviously familiar with her mother’s moods. “Lady Grayson rarely sets a proper supper.”
“No, not in the least,” Lady Wakefield echoed. “Roselie, I’ve changed my mind. You and Mrs. Pratt walk Miss Tempest home. You are staying with Lord Charleton are you not? With Lady Aveley as well?”
Lavinia nodded.
“Yes, inform Lady Aveley I shall be calling in the next day or so.” Lady Wakefield once again raised her glance to Lord Rimswell. “You may leave now, my lord. My best to your mother.”
Her tones held a warning note, which turned out to be enough to send Lord Rimswell bowing and beating a hasty retreat.
Not that Mr. Rowland was as easily cowed. “But my lady, I thought to see Miss Tempest home myself.”
At this, the matron snorted. “You thought wrong, Tuck. Roselie and Mrs. Pratt will see her home. Properly. Besides, I would have a few words with you before you scurry off.”
Roselie tugged at Lavinia’s hand, and whispered, “Come along before she changes her mind yet again.”
And Lavinia went, following the remarkably spry Mrs. Pratt and the much-chastened Roselie out the door.
But at the doorway, Lavinia took one last glance back and found Tuck watching her.
And she had the sense that suddenly their roles were reversed.
For his last glance seemed to cry out, Save me, minx. Why, the poor man looked terrified.
Lavinia pressed her hand to her mouth and stifled a laugh. And she almost wished she could stay.
Well, almost.
After his own mother, Tuck counted Lady Wakefield as the second most conniving and cunning woman in London, which hardly boded well for him considering she had her sharp gaze currently fixed on him.
Leaving him with the unsettling notion that he should check his wallet and his watch. But that was more his mother’s strong suit. And he was pretty certain Lady Wakefield hadn’t taken to crime.
At least not yet.
“Come out in the garden with me, Tuck,” she said, smiling kindly.
Rather, he suspected, like Henry VIII had invited Anne Boleyn to a garden party.
At the Tower.
And while the small bower behind the house was a lovely spot, the roses and vines did nothing to soothe Tuck.
Nor should they have, for the rosebush beside him was in full thorn.
“Whatever do you think you are doing?” Lady Wakefield demanded.
“I-I-I,” he stammered.
“Yes, well, I know of your wager,” she told him, sitting down on a bench and waving her hand at him to sit on the other half.
He rather sank down beside her. What had happened to the sacred sanctity of silence as to the doings inside White’s? Now it seemed every miss and matron knew exactly what was happening within its walls. The club needed to take another look at its membership and issue muzzles to the more chatty subscribers.
“Yes, well, you are going about it all wrong,” her ladyship continued, smoothing out her skirt and her countenance.
Then to his surprise, Lady Wakefield sighed and shook her head. “Oh, Tuck, this is a terrible muddle.”
“I can’t argue that,” he admitted.
“And I hardly see why you think you can save these girls. They are quite ruined. Kitty saw to that years ago, and what Charleton and Amy thought by introducing them—well, I will never understand.”
Tuck couldn’t argue the later part, but one name stopped him. “Kitty?”
The lady looked up and nodded. “Their mother. Lady Tempest.”
Then it struck him. “You knew her?”
“Yes, of course. Isobel, Amy and I were all friends with her. We went to school together. Came out together.” Lady Wakefield glanced across the garden and, he suspected, across the veil of years. “Don’t believe everything you hear about Kitty. She was not the light skirt all claim her to be, though unfortunately Society has handed down that judgment, and there is nothing to be done about it.”
“Hardly seems right,” Tuck said, prodding at a loose stone with his boot. He knew quite well what it was like to be unfairly labeled.
“Never is. It is always difficult when men are cruel, but when women turn on one another, point fingers and whisper such foul names, it is a grave thing. A terrible curse. As it was for Kitty.” She glanced over at him and probably divined what he was thinking. “Oh, she was as selfish as they say—but she was so very pretty and spoiled—and a terrible flibbertigibbet, but she loved only one man. And for that she should hardly be condemned.”
Only one? Tuck looked over at Lady Wakefield. “Her history rather contradicts that statement, my lady. She married, then ran away with her lover.”
“Oh, I’m not talking about Sir Ambrose or that horrid dancing master, but her true love.” Lady Wakefield reached toward the rose bush and her fingers brushed over a newly opened blossom. “She loved Lord Eddows first and always.”
“Lord Eddows?” Tuck shook his head. “Isn’t he a bit—” He stopped there, for he could hardly find the right words. The Lord Eddows he knew of lived in the country, rarely came to town, and also had an affinity for Italian dancing masters.
“No, no, not Lucius,” Lady Wakefield said, laughing a bit. “I am speaking of his older brother, Ewen—he’s been gone so long most people have forgotten him. But Kitty, oh, she loved him desperately, and Ewen loved her in return. They planned on marrying—there was a bit of a tangle about it all—I don’t remember what exactly—but before anything could be arranged or agreed upon, he died of a sudden fever.”
“And yet she married Sir Ambrose in all due haste.” It didn’t sound like this Kitty’s affections were as deeply rooted as Lady Wakefield seemed to think.
A pensive expression crossed over the older woman’s features. “And whyever, do you think, a lady would do that?”
It didn’t take Tuck long to come up with one reason. “Are you suggesting—” He paused there for a moment. “Poor Sir Ambrose.”
“I don’t think Sir Ambrose minded—at least not at first. He had loved Kitty from afar from the first moment she made her curtsy. He would have taken her broken and destitute. Which in a sense, he did.” Lady Wakefield shrugged and smoothed her skirt yet again.
The magnitude of it all weighed down on Tuck. “And now her daughters—”
“Yes, her daughters are here.” She looked over at Tuck, and he realized now it was his turn to share. For having been the wife of a diplomat, Lady Wakefield knew that information was something that came with a price.
“If Piers is—” She said the words both hopeful and with a bit of trepidation.
If Piers is in love with one of them . . .
“As I said earlier, he was seen out riding with—” she prodded.
“Louisa Tempest,” Tuck offered.
“Louisa,” the lady murmured as if trying out the name. “I do like the sound of that. What is she like?”
“I can’t say that I know Miss Louisa, but her sister, the one you met today, Lavinia, I do know.”
Lady Wakefield’s gaze turned sharp yet again, but all she could say was “And is she like—”
Like her mother . . .
Tuck laughed. “Oh, hardly. Lavinia Tempest is a walking encyclopedia of all things proper. She even keeps a list. Can cite lines from any number of volumes on manners and propriety.”
“A list?” Now it was Lady Wakefield’s turn to laugh. “Oh, how diverting. I ought to encourage Roselie to spend time with her. I fear my daughter is as headstrong as her father and her brother.”
And her mother, but Tuck wasn’t going to add that to the lady’s list. Still, Roselie and Livy plotting together? Dear God, he feared for London.
No, make that the entirety of England.
“Yet, explain this to me, here is Miss Tempest—whom you claim is an expert in propriety—and yet she is gallivanting about Town in your company.” Lady Wakefield made a tsk, tsk.
Whether that was over him or Lavinia, Tuck wasn’t too sure. Probably both of them. “Yes, well, Miss Tempest is a bundle of contradictions. While she goes on and on about the need for proper rules and order, she is utterly fascinated with some series of novels about a Miss Darby.”
Lady Wakefield groaned. “Oh, those books! They are the bane of every mother in London. Miss Darby this, Miss Darby that! Why Lady Shelby’s daughter insisted on wearing the most ridiculous feathered headdress last Season because Miss Darby favored the fashion. Half the young ladies in London were donning those dreadful creations by summer.”
Tuck recalled the gaggle of debutants parading about the previous year and laughed a bit—for at the time he’d thought them a mad collection of muslin.
But Lady Wakefield’s expression changed, as if something began to dawn on her. “Though you might also recall Lady Shelby’s daughter married the Marquess of Scorton.”
“Oh, yes. I remember her now. Forward chit, wasn’t she? Always laughing, and I think she even joined a card game at Almack’s.” Tuck shrugged. “Her antics nearly got her ruined.”
“Nearly,” Lady Wakefield agreed. “However, she did catch the marquess’s eye with all her parading about. And her, the daughter of a baronet. Imagine that.” She paused and looked at Tuck “Helped that she was so pretty . . . rather like your Miss Tempest.”
“She isn’t ‘my Miss Tempest,’” he said, shifting on the bench.
“Perhaps Miss Tempest’s fascination with the Darby novels isn’t such a bad thing—” Lady Wakefield began. “Perhaps it might be the perfect way to help her.”
“Perfect?” Tuck blurted out. “Oh, yes, that would fix everything if she were to start parading about Town—”
Lady Wakefield said nothing, just cocked a brow and smiled slightly, as if encouraging him to see past the point that was stopping him.
He shook his head, as he imagined Livy—his Livy parading about in some feathered headdress. Catching the eye of some marquess. “No-o-o . . . And here I’ve always thought you a sensible woman, my lady.”
“I am,” Lady Wakefield told him.
“And so you think I should—” Honestly, he wasn’t too sure what the dowager was suggesting.
“I think you should introduce Miss Tempest to your mother.”