A Matter of Circumstance and Celludrones (2 page)

No, he’d wanted to meet her, even if he hadn’t wanted to dance with or
smile at her.

“Oh! Not now…” She reached out blindly, found her aunt’s arm and held
on as the scene unfolded inside her head…

It was night time, a fat moon shrouded by a thin layer of clouds; gas
lamps cast intermittent pools of yellow light around their posts. The driver,
perched on the box of a large Landau carriage, flicked the reins to pull away
and a Barouche with the hood turned down filed into the vacated spot before the
entrance; the shadows were too thick to make out the writing carved into the
stone above the portico, but the building was unmistakeable and Lily knew it
read
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
.

Two couples alighted from the Barouche, the men in top hats and
swallowtails, the ladies in short-sleeved gowns with stitched panels and drapes
trailing from delicate bustles; the taller of the ladies had a plume of ostrich
feathers attached to her hairstyle in place of a bonnet—she was also the one
smudged around the edges, as if her body could not be tethered one hundred
percent to the visages painted in Lily’s mind.

The dark street shredded bit by bit as reality clawed its way through
and a moment later Lily was standing once again in the Cheshire’s ballroom,
blinking into Aunt Beatrice’s anxious face.

“I’m fine,” she assured her aunt.

Neither of them could muster a comforting smile. It had been so many
months now since the last time; they’d both hoped she’d finally outgrown these
spells.

Chapter Two

H
is
thumb on the fine dial on the left side of the pair of Foggles, Greyston peered
through the lenses. The red-breasted robin appeared so close, he could see the
soft down of its chest, but he hadn’t spent a fortune on a blasted magnifier.

“Professor Clarke warned the calibration would be
fussy,” he muttered. “Impossible would have been a more apt way to put it.”

“But then you wouldn’t have paid him three thousand pounds for the
contraption,” Neco said in his monotonic tone of endless patience. The
manservant held a steel nib pen and notebook ready, his gaze fixed on the
bright blue door in a row of townhouses across the green of Grosvenor Square.
The carriage pulled up in front had been loaded with trunks almost a half hour
ago and there’d been no movement since.

“An excellent deduction.” Greyston rolled his thumb over the dial
again. The muted click-clickety-click of minuscule gears rotating micro lenses
and spheres could be heard through the brass barrels. The lenses and spheres
diffracted the light until it splintered into millions of different
configurations, seeking an optical path through the organic substances that
made up the bird’s feathers and flesh. He was rewarded with a dark smudge in
the vague outline of a bird.

“There’s action, Grey, the door’s opening at number twenty-six.”

Greyston’s head swung up to see Beatrice Ardington step out on the
front porch. The Foggles were still glued to his eyes and, by some unfortunate
coincidence, perfectly calibrated to the composition of the lady’s garments.
The matrix of light beams passed straight through the opaque material to focus
on what lay beneath.

“Good God.” Greyston flinched and lowered the Foggles. He’d just seen
more of the buxom woman than any man in his right mind would want to. “Seems
I’ve stumbled across the transmission matrix for woven cloth.” He read off the
eight digit number combination from the brass dial while Neco scribbled.

By this time, Beatrice Ardington had navigated the cobbled path and
wrought-iron gate in her wide skirts and was bustling her way inside the
carriage. The men made a more sedate pace toward their own carriage.

“If every outcome is preceded by an action,” Greyston mused, “then
must one presume every uncertain outcome is preceded by a mistake?”

“Are we to engage in a philosophical debate?”

“You are all logic and no passion, Neco, no fun in a debate.” He
yanked open the carriage door. “I was merely speculating on my reception, or
possible non-reception, at number twenty-six.”

 
Neco jumped up onto the driver’s
box, gathering the reins in his large hands. “Lack of an invitation has never
stopped you before.”

Greyston chuckled as he climbed inside and pulled the door closed. He
had some misgivings about his behaviour at the Cheshire ball, but he’d lived by
his gut far too long for regrets. He’d taken one look at the blush creeping
across Lily d’Bulier’s cheeks and his gut had told him to show his true colours
in a hurry. The situation was complicated enough without the lady developing an
infatuation. Why the hell couldn’t she have gotten herself married in all these
years?

A soft lurch started them on their way around the green. Greyston
packed the Focal Opaque Transparency Goggles into the silk-padded leather case,
had just stashed it in a compartment beneath the seat when they drew to a halt
again. He alighted to witness the tail end of Beatrice Ardington’s carriage
disappear around a corner.

“Wait here,” he called up to Neco, reasonably sure gentlemen did not
pay house calls with their manservant in tow.

The door to number twenty-six was opened by a reed-thin man of middle
to late years. Greyston handed over one of the fancy calling cards he’d
recently acquired and was immediately admitted into a narrow foyer.

“Please excuse me, Lord Adair,” the butler said, “I will see if anyone
is available to receive you.”

Greyston didn’t wait for permission to remove his hat and shrug out of
his light wool coat. He hadn’t come this far to be thwarted by a little matter
of unavailability. In any event, the butler returned shortly to see him into
the drawing room. The room was a clutter of delicate Rococo wing back chairs,
frail settees upholstered in flowery pastels and walnut side tables with fluted
legs. The mantelpiece top was lined with a collection of silver, glasswork art
and porcelain frames. Curious, Greyston walked over and stooped to look closer
at the miniature portraits set inside the frames.

Beatrice Ardington was easily recognisable, although the woman had
traded an almost pretty smile for an extra chin since the watercolour had been
painted. Next was the usual cherub face of a baby girl who could have been
anyone, then a portrait of Lady Lily that must have been done quite recently.
The artist had been generous, giving her hazel eyes a spark of fire and adding
a stubborn tilt to her chin, capturing a presence of spirit the real article
clearly lacked. Lady Lily was pleasant enough to look upon with her neat
features and slender figure, but the face in the portrait projected beyond
physical beauty. The slanted eyes promised wicked pleasures and the curve of
full lips tempted thoughts of slow kisses. The determination set in her jaw
challenged the whole damn world.

He moved onto a second portrait of Lady Lily and immediately saw his
mistake. This Lady Lily’s cheeks were slightly broader, the eyes wider and less
slanted, the lashes thicker and darker, lips thinned over a placid smile, her
throat longer, the shape of her shoulders slimmer. His gaze shifted to the
other portrait. He’d only snatched a glimpse of her mother all those years ago,
but the essence of the lady throwing open the carriage door and alighting
before the footman had even hopped down from his platform at the rear, the tilt
of her head as she’d marched across the stone courtyard, was there in every
stroke of the artist’s brush.

A blur in the gilded mirror above the mantelpiece caught his
attention.

“We’ll take a tray of tea, thank you, Halver.”

Greyston straightened and turned to see the butler, Halver, closing
the door behind Lady Lily.

“Lord Adair,” she greeted, picking at an errant drape on her dress, a
darker shade of green to the one she’d worn last night, as she walked deeper
into the room. Her hair, a rich, chocolate brown, was pulled back into a
complicated knot involving pearl hairpins and curls escaping at her nape. “What
an unexpected…delight.”

“Not inconvenient, I hope?”

Her smile was polite and no more. “Please, do be seated.”

He glanced at the closed door. “We are alone?”

“You’ve just missed my aunt.”

He deliberated between a look of surprise and disappointment. Since he
was neither, he went with a simple shrug. “Perhaps you should call for your
celludrone to act as chaperone. You do have one? I’m sure I’ve heard mention of
it, a female companion or lady’s maid of some sort?”

Her eyes widened. “Why, my lord, are you afraid I’ll compromise you?”

Now that she mentioned it…but no, her cheeks were devoid of blushes
and she wasn’t bumbling about with out of turn curtseying. There was also no
hint of humour in her smile. His roguish behaviour last night had done its job.

“For the sake of propriety,” he insisted.

“Celludrones are not considered adequate chaperones.”

“Given our limited options, the celludrone will do.”

“There is a third option, my lord.” Her brow notched high.

“I could simply leave,” he interpreted. So, there was more to the lady
than the timid town mouse who hid behind the pot plants at balls. “Aren’t you
interested in the reason behind my visit?”

“I’m very interested.
If
you’re offering explanations, my
lord.” She moved to a settee and sat down. “Why not start with what you were
doing watching my home yesterday morning? From there, we can go on to why you
followed me to Lady Cheshire’s ballroom.”

Greyston lost his mental footing for a moment. He was spared by the
door opening. It was Halver with the tea, delicate china tinkling as the man
pushed the trolley over the lip of the rug. A silver stack held plates of
marzipan cakes, finger sandwiches and scones. Not a measure of whiskey, brandy
or anything tolerable in sight.

Greyston’s fingers went to his throat, tugging on his neck cloth for
an inch of extra air. Lady Lily wasn’t nearly as vapid as he’d assumed. Damn it
all, his razor sharp intuition was as off-kilter in society ballrooms and
drawing rooms as the rest of him was.

After dismissing Halver with instructions to send for Ana, whom he
presumed to be the celludrone, Lady Lily busied herself pouring the tea. “One
lump or two?”

Greyston had no idea. “Two?” he guessed.

She smiled that polite smile again.

For the first time, he wondered what hid beneath. He took the cup and
saucer she offered and placed it on a side table. “Is this your mother?” he
asked, crossing to the mantelpiece.

“Yes.” Her frown lingered on the miniature he pointed at. “What do you
want from me, Lord Adair?”

He delivered the blatant lie without a blink of conscience. “I knew
Lady d’Bulier.”

“I see.” Her cup rattled in its saucer for a few seconds before she
set both on the trolley and folded her hands in her lap. The frown cleared from
her brow. “I imagine my mother had many acquaintances. She was well received in
society.”

“What do you know of her death?”

“I was fourteen, Lord Adair,” she said, her voice hardening. “Old
enough to remember every detail.”

“Shortly after your fifteenth birthday, you mean.”

“It was approximately six months
before
my fifteenth birthday,”
she corrected.

“Impossible.” Was she deliberately misleading him? Reading people had
kept him alive these last six years, but he’d already misjudged her at least
once today.

“Are you implying I’m too muddled in the head to recall my age?”

“I’m saying you may have suffered some distress at the time.”

“May have? As opposed to what? Giggling with delight when my aunt
arrived at my doorstep with the tragic news?”

“You are being purposely obtuse.” He rubbed at his jaw irritably. “I’m
merely suggesting grief can bring about periods of confusion, that it is not
unusual for one to lose days, weeks, even months.”

“You know nothing about me, and certainly not enough to pass judgement
on my state of mind, then or now.” She shot to her feet. “I’ve allowed you into
my home. I’ve tolerated your impertinent and personal questioning.” Her hands
went to her hips, then dropped limply to her sides. Her gaze, however, was as
haughty as her tone. “Please leave, or I’ll have you thrown out.”

A half grin snuck out despite his effort to keep a neutral expression.
He’d finally fractured her composure and that beanstalk of a butler was no
match for him. “Don’t you want to know how your mother died?”

“A gas explosion.”

“Why she died?”

“An accident. Apparently Castle Cragloden had gas piped through all
the chambers for heat and lighting. My mother was a victim of circumstance;
wrong time, wrong place.”

“What she was doing at Castle Cragloden that night?” he persisted.

“A weekend hunting party.” She blew out an exasperated sigh. “
Now
will you leave?”

“Cragloden sits on the Firth of Tay. Did you know that?”

She glowered at him.

“That’s a far way to travel,” he said dryly, “considering The Baston
& Graille Dirigible Company didn’t provide a public service to Edinburgh
until 1850. You never wondered what might have enticed your mother all the way
up there for a weekend?”

“I already told you.”

“You are not one of those analytical machines, Lady Lily, you can do
better than spewing out whatever rubbish has been fed into you.”

“Another insult, my lord? So terribly innovative of you.”

He looked at her a long moment, seriously contemplating rattling an
honest answer loose from her slender shoulders. As if seeing straight through
his guarded gaze to his intentions, she took small steps away from him, edging
toward the door.

A few loose-limbed strides placed Greyston between her and escape.
“I’m trying to understand how you can be so placid and accepting.”