The Birth of Blue Satan Page 5

  “You prefer a milder climate, then? If so, you must come into Kent. You can always count on the warmest winds at Rotherham Abbey. What think you, Mrs. Kean? Will I be successful if I try to prevail upon Mrs. Isabella and her mother to bring you into Kent?”

  As he spoke Isabella’s name, Gideon let his gaze seek her on the ballroom floor. She was dancing still with Kirkland, her infectious laughter lighting up the room. Gideon felt an instinctive pang when he noted how much her current smile resembled the one with which she always greeted him, as if it had no particular significance.

  Of course, he reminded himself, that was one of the things he loved about her, her constant glow. From where else could such a smile come, if not from some deep fountain of goodness?

  “I should be delighted to accompany Isabella to your house, my lord,” Mrs. Kean said so quietly he almost did not hear her.

  Gideon turned to find that she was observing him closely. The pity he saw in her eyes gave him a jolt.

  “Mrs. Kean,” he said, “you will not be offended, I hope, if I confess to you my aspirations.”

  “My lord.” Her smile gently teased him. “You will not be offended, I hope, if I tell you I have guessed them long ago.”

  Gideon found himself relaxing again at the evidence of her humour. “Have I been so awkward as that?”

  “Not awkward—no.” Her haste to reassure him on this point made him worry all the more.

  Gideon studied her face and noted her unease with a sinking heart. “Have I a serious rival, then, or would you rather not say?”

  “I should rather not say, but since you desire it, I will do my best to put the case in the fairest way I can. My lord—” she regarded him solemnly before taking a deep breath— “I can only say that both my aunt and cousin look upon your suit with great favour. But you must realize that Isabella has more attention than any dozen girls could ever hope to have. And, because of that attention, I do not think she is always in a position to know her own heart.”

  Gideon felt a frown crease his brow. He did his best to erase it, but he was feeling sick. The wound on his arm was aching more and more with every minute. Fever had begun to blur his eyes, and Mrs. Kean’s words had struck at his worst fears.

  He would have thanked her all the same. He took her remarks for a careful warning that he must do his best to secure Isabella’s hand with all haste. But, just then, a shrill cry interrupted them.

  “Hester!”

  Mrs. Mayfield’s vicious note shocked him.

  “I have been looking for you this past quarter hour and more! And where you had gone to, nobody could tell me. I need you this instant to fetch my pink shawl from the carriage. The air has grown quite chilly in here, and I swear I shall catch my death of cold before supper.”

  Gideon stood abruptly. A wave of dizziness seized him, but he tried to ignore the stabbing pains in his arm that had caused it. Catching his balance, he gave Mrs. Mayfield a stiff bow. If he needed any proof that Mrs. Mayfield regarded him as her daughter’s property, her offence at his attention to Mrs. Kean had given it. He supposed he should feel delighted, but he could never wish to see a girl as decent as Mrs. Kean treated so unfairly.

  “Pray allow me, madam, to find a page to fetch your shawl. Mrs. Kean has been kind enough to sit with me.” He might have added that she had done so while he waited to dance with her cousin, but such a comment would only serve to diminish Mrs. Kean and his pleasure in her company.

  Gideon saw that his politeness had done nothing to take the edge off Mrs. Mayfield’s offence. The smile she gave him did not reach her eyes—nor did it include her niece.

  “La, my lord! How can you think I would ever ask your lordship to bother yourself over a trifle like this?” Turning to her niece, she said with a false cheer that failed to conceal her displeasure, “Be a good girl, Hester, and run along to the carriage.”

  Gideon watched Hester’s face as she curtsied to him, accepting her aunt’s command with no sign of resentment. None of the annoyance he had felt seemed to have bothered her, which was good, he told himself, since she undoubtedly would have to put up with Mrs. Mayfield’s whimsical humours until she married. For her sake, Gideon hoped it would not be long.

  Here stood Ill Nature like an ancient maid,

  Her wrinkled form in black and white arrayed;

  With store of prayers, for mornings, nights, and noons,

  Her hand is filled; her bosom with lampoons.

  There Affectation, with a sickly mien,

  Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen,

  Practised to lisp, and hang the head aside,

  Faints into airs, and languishes with pride

  This day, black Omens threat the brightest Fair

  That e’er deserved a watchful spirit’s care;

  Some dire disaster, or by force, or slight;

  But what, or where, the fates have wrapped in night.

  Methinks already I your tears survey,

  Already hear the horrid things they say,

  Already see you a degraded toast,

  And all your honour in a whisper lost!

  How shall I, then, your helpless fame defend?

  ‘Twill then be infamy to seem your friend!

  CHAPTER 3

  Hester did her best to keep her composure until she passed from the crowded room. She would not wish St. Mars to see how embarrassed she had been by her aunt’s churlish mood. As if Isabella suffered any competition from a parson’s drab daughter! she thought, hiding her flaming cheeks from the people she passed, and hoping the cool of the night would tame the flush that heated them.

  At the door downstairs, she was checked by a footman who inquired whether he might perform her a service. Hester had enough sense not to insist upon searching for Mrs. Mayfield’s carriage herself. With the crush of vehicles awaiting their owners outside, she might spend an hour dragging her skirts through the mud and the cold air while she tried to discover the right one. Not that she supposed Mrs. Mayfield had any need for the garment, but neither could her aunt now pretend she did not, having expressed herself so strongly in front of St. Mars. There was humor in that thought, at least, which made Hester feel a bit better while she waited for the footman’s return.

  She stood to one side of the hall, her back against the wall, where she could observe the arrivals and departures of Lord Eppington’s guests. The number of goings and comings had greatly fallen off this close to the supper hour, so that the noisy arrival of a gentleman, dressed in a riding costume rather than the finery required for a ball, his tall boots splattered with mud, could hardly escape her notice. The man’s Puritan-style clothing and grim expression gave her the unhappy feeling that he had come to deliver bad news.

  Just then, the footman returned with Mrs. Mayfield’s shawl. Hester was obliged to take her eyes off the newcomer in order to thank the servant for his help. By the time she turned again, the gentleman had moved up the stairs in the direction of the ballroom, leaving a stream of murmurs in his wake. His sober clothes alone would have caused remark, to which his solemn expression could only add.

  With a sense of impending calamity, Hester followed him back upstairs, through the hallway and into the ballroom.

  She trailed him to within feet of her aunt. He stopped and bowed before my Lord St. Mars.

  St. Mars, his colour heightened since Hester had left—perhaps by the fact that he was enjoying Isabella’s company at last—noticed the gentleman and his eyebrows shot up in surprise. He seemed to recognize him at once, although Hester could not hear what passed between them until she stepped closer. When she did, she felt her breath die in her throat.

  “My lord,” the gentleman said, “I regret to inform you that your father, Lord Hawkhurst, has been murdered.”

  “Murdered?” Gideon raised a hand to his forehead, gone suddenly chill as the blood drained from his face. A sense of unreality had been slowly spreading through him as the dancers pranced and Isabella toyed with her fan, refus
ing to hear his entreaties. But now the room transformed itself into a whirligig of faces. Lord Eppington’s guests disappeared in a revolving cloud of noses, wigs, and eyes.

  Someone grasped him by the arm, and an intense pain shot through him. He tried to muffle his cry, but the unexpectedness of the pang made him jerk to protect his stabbing wound.

  “My lord!” Sir Joshua Tate, the justice of the peace who had brought him the news, stared down at a smear of blood on his hand.

  A gasp tore through the room. Isabella shrieked. His arm—his wound had bled. It must have been oozing through his bandages and had alarmed her.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. But his tongue would not obey his commands, and his speech sounded slurred even to his own ears. He tried to speak more clearly. “Mustn’t be frightened, Isabella.”

  “My lord, you should sit down.” Mrs. Kean’s calm voice came as if from far away. “You have suffered a grave shock.”

  A shock? Oh, yes, Tate had come to tell him—something that had upset him. His father—his father couldn’t be dead.

  Gideon wished the humming that filled his head would cease, so he could make sense of it all, but the noise only increased.

  “You said my father has been murdered?”

  “Yes, my lord.” There was an odd note in Sir Joshua’s voice. “He was killed by a man who was himself injured in the attack.”

  It made no sense to Gideon that Sir Joshua should be the one to inform him of his father’s death. Lord Hawkhurst had detested this man and his Puritanical ways.

  “What brings you here? What attack?”

  “My lord—” that quieter, gentler voice urged him to calm— “my Lord St. Mars, you must be seated. You are weak.”

  From another direction Mrs. Mayfield’s harsher tones sliced through. “Come away from there, Hester. Isabella can tend to my Lord St. Mars—Lord Hawkhurst, I should say.”

  Gideon ignored the murmuring voices about him, the worried glances and the shuffling feet. This was all too confusing, though he thought he heard a whispered protest from Isabella among her mother’s forceful remarks. Of Mrs. Kean’s calm tones, he heard nothing more.

  The room was spinning. Hands reached out to grasp him. He was pushed into a chair.

  “I am sorry.” He tried to form words, but his tongue was heavy as if he had bitten it. The sounds that came out of his mouth, he hardly recognized as his. “Tate, please tell me again what you said.”

  Sir Joshua repeated the horrible news. Still unchanged; still unbelievable. Gideon pictured his father so full of life, purple with rage the last time they had met.

  When had that been?

  He tried to think, but he could hardly form a cohesive thought. “I was with him—this morning I think. We had a quarrel.”

  “So I was given to understand, my lord.”

  Some of the hum that confused him came to a sudden halt. Even over the ringing in his ears, Gideon heard the silence that had come over the room.

  Why had everyone stopped whispering? His brain was refusing to think, or to tell him what to do. Was it shock? He had thought himself almost recovered from his injury until Tate had come, though Mrs. Kean, observant girl, had noticed his growing fever.

  “Lord St. Mars—” Sir Joshua spoke again— “I suggest that you come with me. I will take your statement at Hawkhurst House.”

  His statement? Gideon’s eyes flew open and he sought the justice’s face. What the devil did he mean?

  He peered out at the hazy room and saw the crowd of guests, frozen in place, their horrified stares surrounding him. Lady Eppington was leaning on a gentleman’s arm, being fanned by her black page.

  “Yes, we must go.” Gideon tried to pull himself together for the sake of his hostess. He should try not to spoil her ball. He only wished he could hold on to Isabella but she was nowhere near.

  From a distance, feeling as powerless as a mother whose son was going off to war, Hester watched St. Mars depart with Sir Joshua Tate and Sir Harrowby Fitzsimmons. A few gentlemen moved together to speak, closing the gap behind them before they, too, left the ballroom. Those who remained seemed strangely tight-lipped, their faces worried and drawn. And no wonder. St. Mars had stated that he had quarreled with his father before Lord Hawkhurst had been found murdered. They had seen his blood and heard the justice of the peace state that the earl’s attacker had been wounded.

  The shock on their faces told Hester exactly what they thought, though knowing St. Mars only this short while, she could not credit their suspicions. No means on earth would convince her that St. Mars had done his father harm.

  He had no sooner left the room than it became a buzz of speculation. No one dared to voice the most startling thought—not when Gideon Fitzsimmons was now an earl. But Hester could read condemnation in their arching brows. In this Whig assembly, with many of the gentlemen either peers or members of Parliament, St. Mars had no more friends than his father would have had.

  “Now, here’s a coil.” Mrs. Mayfield snatched the forgotten shawl from Hester’s hands. “ ‘Tis time we left.”

  “But, Mama—”

  Hester was relieved to hear her cousin’s protest, until Isabella finished— “I have promised five other dances, and Lord Kirkland to take supper with him.”

  For once, Hester was in complete sympathy with her aunt when she rounded on her daughter, hissing, “Foolish girl! Have you no notion of what has just occurred? We must hurry home to think this business through.” Grasping Isabella by the wrist, she bustled her party out, hardly stopping to thank their prostrate hostess.

  Inside the carriage, Isabella complained of the unfair treatment, but Mrs. Mayfield seemed deaf. Sitting in the dark, Hester could almost hear the mill-wheels churning inside her aunt’s head. Mrs. Mayfield waited, however, until they arrived at their rented house in Clarges Street before she referred to the evening’s episode.

  When she did, the direction of her speech took Hester completely by surprise.

  “How fine dear Sir Harrowby Fitzsimmons looked this evening,” she began, as Isabella and Hester followed her into the house. “We must be sure to invite him to dinner.”

  They crossed the vestibule quickly and mounted the stairs to the withdrawing room. In only a fraction of the time this took, Hester had understood the turn in her aunt’s thoughts. With anger poised on the edge of her tongue, she waited to see if Isabella would come to a similar conclusion.

  “But, Mama—” Isabella yawned as she pulled at the ribbon tied about her neck—”I thought you didn’t want me to encourage Sir Harrowby by showing him any particular regard.”

  “Nonsense, child,” Mrs. Mayfield clucked as she helped her daughter off with her cloak. “Sir Harrowby Fitzsimmons is as elegant a gentleman as the world has ever known. And if not for the fact that his prospects have not always been the best, why, he would be the very man I would pick for you myself. And so, I hope, he knows.

  “You mustn’t think,” she added, as she fussed about her daughter, tucking a curl behind her ear, “that Sir Harrowby’s hopes will be unduly raised by a simple request to dine. Why, all the world will be wanting him! For who else could explain this curious business between Lord Hawkhurst and his son?”

  Hester stared at her angrily, but Mrs. Mayfield’s gaze had fixed upon an invisible speck of mud on Isabella’s cloak. When Isabella, who seemed to have slipped into a state bordering on sleep, failed to react to her mother’s words, Hester decided she had no choice. She tried to speak as calmly as she could.

  “I should think you would wish to hear Lord St. Mars’s own account of any event that so regards him, ma’am.”

  “And so we shall, Miss Prig, if his lordship is free to make it.”

  Mrs. Mayfield’s affronted glance challenged her niece to put herself forward again, but the next question came from Isabella herself. “Why should St. Mars not be free to do anything he pleases, Mama? Isn’t he an earl now?”

  “Why not, indeed?” Of a sudden her mother bus
tled her towards the door. “We must all be tired if we’re thinking up such foolish questions. All the same, my dear, it might be wise if you was not to be seen with my Lord St. Mars for the time being.”

  Hester spoke wryly. “And what will his lordship think, if Isabella refuses him the attentions she has granted him so willingly in the past?”

  This question brought her aunt up short. Mrs. Mayfield paused with one hand still clutching her daughter’s arm to study the expression on Hester’s face, and a realization made her frown.

  “What will he think, you say?”

  She struggled with the answer as she stood rooted to the floor. Isabella glanced back over her shoulder, but she was much too sleepy, and too used to that calculating expression on her mother’s face, to protest, even though Mrs. Mayfield’s fingers dug deeply into her arm.

  “He will think, ma’am, that Isabella is not loyal,” Hester said.

  “Hmmm.” Mrs. Mayfield drew her daughter back into the withdrawing room and closed the door. “You are quite right, Hester. I knew you was a smart girl.”

  This was not the precise result Hester had wished for. Still, she knew Mrs. Mayfield would take everything her own way.

  “Let me think on this.”

  “Mama—”

  Isabella’s sleepy plea was abruptly cut off. “Hush, child! This is much too important.”

  Since Mrs. Mayfield, for all her harshness, rarely spoke to her beloved daughter in any way other than a croon, Isabella’s eyes grew round.

  “What it is, Mama? Why are you so upset?”

  Her mother ignored her. Hester took her cousin by the arm and led her to a damask-covered loveseat. “Why don’t you sit with me, dear, until your mother’s had time to give the problem a little thought. Perhaps you will tell me about your partners this evening.”

  As sleepy as she was, Isabella summoned a delighted laugh as she collapsed on the cushions. “They were all vastly pleasing. Did you ever see the likes of his Grace’s coat? I vow that silver stitching must have cost him a fortune!”