Leslie Lafoy (39 page)

Simone came to a sudden halt at the base of the stairs and whipped back. “Lady Aubrey says I have to ride sidesaddle or I can’t ride at all! That I’ll be ruined forever if I ride astride.”

“There are physical . . . ” the woman hotly countered, somehow managing to pant and glare as she bore down
on the girl. “Consequences . . . that . . . ” She stopped between the two of them, her back to Caroline and breathlessly declared, “Well, we needn’t go into the specifics.”

Simone threw a tangle of black curls over her shoulder. “The cherry might pop and deprive some man of the greatest thrill of his life?”

Lady Aubrey started, gasped, then moaned and crumpled where she stood.

“Simone!” Caroline cried, dashing forward, thinking to break the woman’s fall to the hard marble floor. The intent didn’t take into account Lady Aubrey’s greater weight and the time it would take Caroline to reach her. She got a handful of riding habit, for just a moment, and then it was pulled from her grasp. “Oh, no,” she moaned as Lady Aubrey became a fashionably attired unconscious mass at her feet.

“Have I killed her?”

“No, she’s still breathing.”

“Well, there’s a disappointment.”

“Simone, please,” she chastised. “Would it really be too much to ask that—” She froze, appalled. “What are you doing?”

“Sneakin’ one of her cheroots,” Simone announced, removing a small tin from the woman’s skirt pocket. “Amazin’ what good stuff money can buy,” she added, taking a twist and a match from the container. She struck the match on the bottom of the tin and, seemingly oblivious to Caroline’s shock, drew the fire into the end of the little cigar. She puffed twice, shook out the match, and then held out the cheroot, asking, “Wanna pull?”

“No!”

She shrugged, clamped the bit of tobacco between her teeth, and stared down at Lady Aubrey as she said, “Look,
Carrie, before the tugboat comes around, there’s something you need to understand. All this . . . ” She gestured to the house around them and met Caroline’s gaze. “All the dancin’ lessons and talkin’ lessons and all the fancy dresses and sidesaddles in the world ain’t gonna make one bit of difference in the end. My da may or may not have been the old duke. Hell, given how I don’t look anything like you and Fiona, odds are he wasn’t.”

Her heart pounding, Caroline pressed her hand to the cold pit of her stomach. “But you’ve been legally recognized, Simone. It doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, it does,” Simone countered, ambling over to sit on the stairs. Calmly, ever so matter-of-factly, she explained, “The duke wasn’t my da and my ma was a whore, Carrie. I was ruined the day I was born and no amount of paper is ever gonna change that. You can call me ‘Lady’ and give me a last name, but ain’t no one ever gonna look at me and not see where I come from.”

“They will overlook it, Simone.”

“Not for real,” she quietly shot back. “They’ll just pretend to ’cause that’s the only way they’re gonna get Drayton’s money. And if you think otherwise, you’re just lyin’ to yourself, Carrie. We ain’t nothin’ more than some man’s way up the ladder.” She nodded toward Lady Aubrey. “Do you think she’d even talk to either one of us if we wasn’t attached to Drayton?”

No. She wouldn’t have so much as acknowledged that they existed.

“Admit it, Carrie. She wouldn’t, would she?”

“No, probably not,” she allowed.

“No ‘probably’ to it.” She pulled on the cheroot and sent a cloud of blue smoke toward the ceiling. “Ridin’ astride ain’t gonna matter one whit, Carrie. Hell, I could
ride astride buck naked through Trafalgar Square and it wouldn’t outweigh Drayton’s money.”

She was right, of course. But still . . . “You’d just be making your own life terribly difficult,” Caroline pointed out. “Unnecessarily so.”

Simone smiled wryly as she stared at Lady Aubrey. “But not nearly as difficult as I’d make it for the tugboats of the world. Every time they have to talk to me, look me in the eyes, smile at me and be nice, they’ll know that
I
know just how low they’ll go for money.” She slowly lifted her gaze to meet Caroline’s. “How we
all
know that underneath all the fancy clothes and fine airs they ain’t one bit different from a Cheapside whore.”

Leave it to Simone to so smoothly, coolly cut to the core of brutal truth—and not only accept it, but use it to her advantage.

“But that’s just my way of lookin’ at all this,” Simone went on, puffing on the cheroot again. “Your ma wasn’t no whore so you got better odds of it going easier for you.”

“No, I don’t,” Caroline admitted, her knees starting to shake. She crossed the foyer and dropped down beside her sister. “Not really.”

“So what you gonna do?” Simone asked as they both stared at Lady Aubrey. “Keep dancin’ to her tune? Or call your own?”

A quavering voice in the very farthest corner of her brain said she’d be better off following Simone’s advice. Clasping her hands together, hoping that Simone wouldn’t notice how they were trembling, she managed a weak smile and an even weaker chuckle. “I don’t think I have the courage to ride astride and naked through Trafalgar Square.”

Simone snorted, flicked the ash on her knee, rubbed it into her pant leg, and then held out the smoking bit of tobacco. “Wanna pull while you think about it?”

She didn’t really, but took it, telling herself that every journey of defiance began with a single small act of nonconformity. “This tastes horrible,” she said, sputtering out a tiny puff of smoke and holding it out for her more daring sister to take.

Simone pushed her hand back toward her. “It helps to think of it as wastin’ someone else’s money.”

Caroline took another small puff and was amazed that it didn’t make her choke this time. “You’re right,” she said, handing it back again. “But just the same, I don’t much care for it.”

Simone blew another cloud toward the chandelier and drawled, “What’s the most outrageous thing you’ve done since . . . ?” She shrugged. “Well, since whenever.”

Making love with Drayton in the parlor.
She blinked as the memory played through her mind. Heat flooding her cheeks, she expelled a long breath and said, “I don’t think I can tell you about it.”

“You musta enjoyed it.”

“I did,” she had to admit.

“Did Drayton?”

She whipped around to squarely meet her sister’s gaze. “Simone!”

“Oh, hell, Carrie,” she countered with a chuckle. “I’ve known from the very beginning.”

“Oh, really?”

Simone nodded and took another pull on the cheroot. “The night at the inn on the way here.”

All right, her sister knew. Just
how
she knew . . .

“Have another pull,” Simone said, passing the tobacco twist as she leaned forward to study Lady Aubrey. “Are you sure I didn’t kill her?”

“We don’t have that kind of luck,” Caroline pointed out. She managed to blow a fairly decent stream of smoke this time and then passed the cheroot back, pleased with herself.

“Aw, luck’s what you make out of the bits and pieces you come across.”

True. But what was lucky one day had a way of becoming a burden the next. The trick was to know from the beginning what was going to turn bad and what wasn’t. A month ago she would have said that being recognized as the daughter of a duke was the most wonderful thing that could ever happen to a woman. In the span of a single day she’d gone from a meager existence, a narrow bed in the corner of a workroom, and hoarding a little bar of scented soap to . . . to having everything she’d ever dreamed of and never thought possible. A huge home to make beautiful, two wonderful sisters, sharing a bed with Drayton.

And then Drayton had left. She still had everything else that made a world golden. She could still appreciate how far she’d come. But now the luck felt largely empty and these days she smiled and laughed only because she was expected to.

“So what you gonna do, Carrie?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I wish I did.”

“Well, just ’tween us, sleepin’ alone in his bed and dreamin’ about him seems like a real pathetic way to spend the rest of your life.”

Caroline sighed and blinked back tears. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

“Yeah,” her sister drawled. “Why the two of you think
doing what everyone expects you to is more important than doing what you want. Seems to me you make each other happy, and why you’d be willing to be miserable . . . I don’t know why you’d do that.”

“Because,” she began. The tears spilled. Angrily wiping her fingers over her cheeks, she said, “It’s about money, about marrying as much of it as you can and then using it to . . . ” It was about surrendering your life and your soul and your happiness for money. “Oh, God.”

“And the light dawns,” Simone whispered. “ ’Bout damn time. So you goin’ to London after him?”

She didn’t have any choice. She had to know for sure, had to hear Drayton say of his own accord that she didn’t make him happy, that he was willing to sell his life to the highest bidder. If he could do that, then she would let go of hope. If he couldn’t . . . God knew she could create a scandal without even trying. If she actually put her mind to it . . . Her heart pounding, her knees quivering, she stood, saying, “Go have a carriage readied. I’ll pack our things.”

“Who’s all goin’?” Simone asked as she came to her feet.

“You, Fiona, me, Mrs. Miller, and Dora.”

“Gonna be cozy.”

Yes, it was. Especially with Fiona’s menagerie. “Where’s Haywood?”

“Probably still standin’ in the stable, holdin’ the reins and waitin’ to see if Lady Aubrey wins.”

“A change in strategy,” Caroline declared, eyeing the front door, mentally mapping her course. “You go tell Mrs. Miller and Fiona that we’re leaving. I need to speak with Haywood. And then find Mrs. Gladder and let her know.”

“All right.” Simone turned to go up the stairs, then paused and looked back over her shoulder at Lady Aubrey. “We just gonna leave her there?”

She was tempted, but her conscience squirmed and she relented just not to have to fight with it. “We should probably at least loosen her laces,” she said, stepping over and squatting down beside the woman. “Help me roll her onto her side.”

Simone huffed, but did as asked, grunting with the effort and grumbling, “If we ever run out of whale oil . . . ”

“That’s not kind,” Caroline pointed out, undoing the lower buttons of Lady Aubrey’s riding habit and then plucking loose the strings holding the scant petticoat around her waist. The laces of her corset exposed, Caroline picked first at the knot of the upper half, then abandoned the effort for an attempt to undo the lower one. “There is no way to get these untied,” she finally admitted, sitting back on her heels in frustration. “There’s absolutely no give in them at all.”

“Here.”

Caroline blinked as the light danced along the edge of the slim knife Simone held out for her. She took it, asking, “Where did you get this?”

“I’ve always had it,” her sister supplied with a grin. “It was a christening gift.”

God help the world, Caroline offered up, trying to get the point of the knife under one of the laces. Failing that, she drew a deep breath and simply sawed her way through. The last thread gave way with an audible pop.

The laces sang as they whipped through the grommets. Simone snatched the knife from her hand and jumped away, crying, “Stand back, she’s gonna blow!”

Rolling her eyes, Caroline said, “Perhaps we should put her in Mrs. Gladder’s care,” and watched as Lady Aubrey moaned and feebly lifted a hand from the floor to her brow.

“Be right back.”

As Simone ran for the rear of the house, Caroline eased the woman onto her back, asking quietly, “Are you feeling better, Lady Aubrey?”

For a second the woman simply looked up at her, her gaze clouded with confusion. Then she blinked and the haze disappeared as she laid a hand on her midriff. Her voice was hot steel as she demanded, “What have you done?”

“We couldn’t get your laces loosened, so we cut them.”

“You have ruined my corset?”

“Just the lower laces.”

“How dare you!”

“Well,” Caroline drawled, gaining her feet, “now that we know your expectations, next time we’ll just leave you lying where you fall. Would you like assistance rising, or would you prefer to spend the rest of the day there?”

“I do not like your tone.”

I don’t care.
Caroline bit her tongue. Mrs. Gladder and Simone saved her from having to bite it in two.

“Lady Simone tells me you’re leaving for London within the hour,” the housekeeper said to Caroline as she came across the foyer.

“Sooner if possible.”

“Have we arrived at the crossroads?”

“We have, indeed. And you were right. The course of action required is very clear.”

“What?” Lady Aubrey gasped from the floor.

Simone leaned over and informed her, “Carrie’s had enough. We’re goin’ to London so she can be with Drayton.”

“If you leave this house, I will refuse to sponsor your coming Season,” Lady Aubrey threatened, apparently unaware that lying flat on her back at their feet didn’t do much for making it terribly intimidating.

“I don’t want a Season,” Caroline told her. “I have never wanted a Season.”

“What you want is to create a scandal that would be the complete ruination of the Turnbridge name!”

As though that were even remotely possible. “I’m simply carrying on as my father before me,” she replied, smiling thinly. Walking toward the rear of the house, she called back, “I leave her in your hands, Mrs. Gladder. I’m going to speak with Haywood and order a carriage readied.”

The wind was quick and stinging and by the time Caroline reached the bottom step and headed toward the stable, it had cut through both her dress and her anger. Folding her arms across her midriff, she walked along the rear of the house, her teeth clenched and her mind chattering. There was no need to think of something scandalous to do or say once she reached London. She’d seen to that in the foyer of Ryland Castle. Between the determined efforts of Lady Aubrey and the other guests, the story of her outrage would probably get to London before she did.

As Simone had predicted, Haywood was standing just inside the stable door, holding the reins of an unsaddled horse in his hands. He dropped them at first sight of her and shrugged off his coat. Draping it over her shoulders, he asked, “Was it bloody ugly?”