Private Arrangements (11 page)

He would be called that very same if he didn't stand in direct line of succession to a ducal title, Camden thought wryly. Instead, Gigi would bear the brunt of the snickering their hasty marriage was certain to engender, for her feats of social mountaineering.

“Your noble cousin's wedding would have been the grander affair,” said Camden.

“Very likely.” The elderly countess nodded, her hair a rare shade of pure silver and elaborately coiffed. “
Zut!
I can't recall the bride's name. Elenora von Schellersheim? Von Scheffer-Boyadel? Or is her name not even Elenora?”

Camden smiled. Aunt Ploni was known for her prodigious memory. It must gall her to no end not remembering something right at the tip of her tongue.

He sat down next to her and poured more curaçao into her digestif glass. “Where is the bride from?”

“Somewhere on the border with Poland, I think.”

“We know some people from there,” he said. Theodora, for one.

The countess frowned and tried to concentrate amid the lively conversation flowing in the great drawing room at Twelve Pillars. Thirty of Camden's relatives had arrived from the Continent to attend the wedding, despite the short notice. And his mother was ever so pleased to finally be able to receive people in a mansion, however neglected, of her own.

“Von Schweinfurt?” Aunt Ploni refused to give up. “I do hate growing old. I never forgot a name when I was younger. Let's see. Von Schwanwisch?”

“Von Schnurbein? Von Schottenstein?” Camden teased her. He was in a buoyant mood. Tomorrow this time he would be getting married to the most remarkable girl he'd ever met. And tomorrow night—

“Von Schweppenburg!” the countess exclaimed. “There, that's it! Haven't quite lost all my marbles after all.”

“Von Schweppenburg?” He'd accidentally electrocuted himself once during an experiment at the Polytechnique. He felt exactly the same shock in his fingertips now. “You mean Count Georg von Schweppenburg's widow?”

“Dear me, not quite that bad. His daughter. Theodora, that's her name, not Elenora, after all. Poor Alesha is quite smitten.”

Something droned in the back of his head, an incipient alarm that he tried to dismiss. Titles that had their origins during the Holy Roman Empire went on in perpetuity to all male issue. There could very well be another late Count Georg, from a lateral branch of the von Schweppenburg family, who had a marriageable daughter named Theodora.

But what were the chances? No, they were speaking of
his
Theodora here, the one whose happiness he had once hoped to secure. But how? How could she marry two men in one month? The simple answer was that she couldn't. Either the countess was wrong or Theodora herself was wrong. A laughable choice, really. Of course Theodora would know the name of the man she was going to marry. The countess had to be mistaken.

“I met her years ago, when we were in Peters,” he said carefully. “I thought she married some Polish prince.”

The countess snorted. “Now, wouldn't that be interesting, a real live bigamist? Unfortunately, I've no hope for it. According to Alesha, his intended is as pure as the arctic ice field, with a mother who watches her every move. You must be mistaken, my boy.”

The clamor in his head escalated. He poured a goblet full of the digestif and downed it in one long gulp. The cognac at the base of the liqueur burned in his throat, but the sensation barely registered.

“It's only two o'clock in the afternoon. A bit early to be doing your last bout of bachelor drinking, eh?” cackled Aunt Ploni. “Not getting cold feet, are you?”

He wouldn't know if his feet were cold. He couldn't feel any of his limbs. The only thing he felt was confusion and a rising sense of peril, as if the solid ground beneath him had suddenly splintered, cracking dark webs of fissure and fracture as far as he could see.

He rose and bowed to the countess. “Hardly. But I do beg your pardon, noble cousin. There is a small matter that requires my attention. I hope to see you again at dinner.”

Camden couldn't think any better away from the drawing room. He wandered the silent, drafty corridors as bits and pieces of what Aunt Ploni had said streaked about in his head like panicky hens facing a weasel invasion.

He didn't exactly understand why, but he was scared witless. What frightened him most was that he knew, deep in his guts, that Aunt Ploni had not been mistaken.

At a turn in the hallway, near the front of the house, he bumped right into a young footman carrying a tray of letters. “Beg your pardon, milord!” the footman apologized immediately, and got down on all fours to retrieve the scattered missives.

As the footman gathered up the letters, Camden saw two addressed to him. He recognized the handwriting of his friends. The new university term had already started; they must be wondering why he hadn't returned yet. He had not informed his classmates of his upcoming marriage—he and Gigi had decided to throw a surprise reception in Paris, in the spacious apartment her agent had located for them on Montagne Sainte Geneviève in the Quartier Latin, a stone's throw from his classes. A few essential items of furnishing had already been set up at the apartment, where a cook and a maid had also taken up residence in preparation for their arrival.

He held out his hand for the tray. “I'll take them, Elwood.”

Elwood looked baffled. “But, sir, Mr. Beckett said all letters must go to him first, so he could sort them out.”

“Since when?”

“Since right about Christmas last, sir. Mr. Beckett said His Grace didn't like too many letters begging him for charity.”

What?
Camden almost said the word aloud. His father had never met a beggar for whom he didn't have a coin to spare. It was his very softheartedness that had in part made them paupers.

An appalling suspicion was beginning to coalesce in Camden's mind. He wanted to bat it away with something heavy and powerful—a club, a mace—to disperse the filaments of deductions and inferences that threatened to choke his perfect contentment. He wanted to forget what he had heard about the majordomo just now, ignore the clamor in his head that had risen to a screaming siren, and pretend that everything was exactly as it should be.

Tomorrow he was getting married. He couldn't wait to sleep with that girl. He couldn't wait to wake up next to her every day, bask in her adoration, and delight in her verve.

“Very well, take these to Beckett,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

Camden watched the footman march down the hallway.
Let him go. Let him go. Don't ask questions. Don't think. Don't probe.

“Wait,” he commanded.

Elwood turned around obediently. “Yes, sir?”

“Tell Beckett I would like to see him in my apartment in fifteen minutes.”

Chapter Eleven

22 May 1893

A
gentleman's club had seemed the perfect remedy after a tiring, weeklong business trip to the Continent, during which he'd thought very little of his business and too much of his wife. But Camden was beginning to regret his freshly minted membership. He had never set foot inside an English gentleman's club before, but he had harbored the distinct impression that it would be a quiet, calm place, filled with men escaping the strictures of wives and hearths, drinking scotch, holding desultory political debates, and snoring softly into their copies of the
Times.

Certainly the interior of the club, which looked as if it had not been touched in half a century—fading burgundy drapes, wallpaper splotchily darkened by gaslights, and furnishing that in another decade or so would be called genteelly shabby—had seemed conducive to somnolence, giving him the false hope that he'd be able to while away the afternoon, brooding in peace. And he had done so for a few minutes, until a crowd begging for introductions surrounded him.

The conversation had quickly turned to Camden's various holdings. He hadn't quite believed Mrs. Rowland when she declared in one of her letters that Society had changed and that people could not shut up about money these days. Now he did.

“How much would such a yacht cost?” asked one eager young man.

“Is there a sizable profit to be realized?” asked another.

Perhaps the agricultural depression that had cut many a large estate's income by half had something to do with it. The aristocracy was in a pinch. The manor, the carriages, and the servants all bled money, which was getting scarcer by the day. Unemployment, for centuries the gentlemanly standard—so that one could devote one's time to serving as parliamentarian and magistrate—was becoming more and more of an untenable position. But as of yet, few gentlemen had the audacity to work. So they talked, to scratch the itch of collective anxiety.

“Such a yacht costs enough that only a handful of America's richest men can afford one,” Camden said. “But, alas, not so much that those who supply them can claim instant riches.”

If he were to solely rely on the firm he owned that designed and built yachts, he'd be a well-off man but nowhere near wealthy enough to hobnob with Manhattan's elite. It was his other maritime ventures, the freight-shipping line and the shipyard that built commercial vessels, that comprised what Americans called the “meat-and-potato” portion of his portfolio.

“How does one come into possession of such a firm?” asked yet another man from the group of interlocutors, this one not as young as the others—and, judging by his silhouette, sporting a corset beneath his waistcoat.

Camden glanced toward the grandfather clock that stood between two bookshelves against the far wall. Whatever the time was, he was going to say that he was expected elsewhere in half an hour. The time was quarter past three, and beside the clock stood Lord Wrenworth, observing the mob about Camden with amusement.

“How?” Camden looked back at the corseted man. “Good luck, good timing, and a wife who is worth her weight in gold, my dear fellow.”

His answer was received with a silence halfway between shock and awe. He took the opportunity to stand up. “Excuse me, gentlemen. I'd like to have a word with Lord Wrenworth.”

My daughter sends me postcards from the Lake District. I hear Lord Wrenworth is also there.

My daughter is going to Scotland with a large party of friends, Lord Wrenworth included, for a sennight.

My daughter, when I last saw her at a dinner, sported a fetching pair of diamond bracelets that I'd never seen before. She was unusually coy about their provenance.

Mrs. Rowland had been overly lavish in her praise of Lord Wrenworth—
a man all men want to be and all women want to bewitch—
but not by much. The man seemed effortlessly graceful, effortlessly fashionable, and effortlessly calm and collected.

“Quite a crowd you were drawing, my lord Tremaine,” Lord Wrenworth said with a smile, as he and Camden shook hands. “You are an object of great curiosity around these parts.”

“Ah, yes, the latest addition to the circus, et cetera,” said Camden. “You, sir, are fortunate to be so well situated that you need not soil your mind with thoughts of commerce.”

Lord Wrenworth laughed. “As to that, my lord, you are very much mistaken. Rich peers need money every bit as much as poor peers—we have far greater expenditures. But I daresay your material success fuels only part of the collective curiosity.”

“Let me guess, there's that little matter of the divorce.”

“Short of a good, old-fashioned murder, a divorce with charges of adultery leveled is the best anyone can hope for when the mood calls for some entertaining gossip.”

“Indeed. What have you heard?”

Lord Wrenworth raised an eyebrow but proceeded to answer Camden's question. “I'm blessed with a battalion of sisters-in-law. One, with impeccable sources, declares that you are willing to submit to an annulment should Lady Tremaine hand over half of her worth and promise to travel to her honeymoon destination on your flagship luxury liner.”

“Interesting. I do not deal in passenger transit.”

“You must be mistaken,” said Lord Wrenworth. “Though, to be sure, another one of Lady Wrenworth's sisters, with sources equally infallible, insists that you are a hairbreadth away from a grand reconciliation.”

Camden nodded. “And you are in favor of the old status quo. Lady Tremaine is quite peeved with you, I might as well let you know. She thought you'd be a better friend to Lord Frederick.”

“Then that would make me less of a friend to her,” said Lord Wrenworth, no longer glib. “Lord Frederick, though he is a man of unimpeachable goodness—Speak of the devil. The rumormongers will have new tales to tell tonight.”

He pointed his chin toward the door. Camden turned to see a young man coming toward them. Though he stooped slightly, he was still tall, a hair under six foot. He had a round face, a firm jaw, and clear, uncomplicated eyes. Elsewhere in the room, men stopped what they were doing and stared openly at his progress, glancing from Camden to him and back, but he remained oblivious to the attraction he had become.

The young man offered his hand to Lord Wrenworth. “Lord Wren, pleased to see you.” He had a melodious, surprisingly
basso profundo
voice. “Was just thinking of sending a note around. Lady Wren asked me a couple of months ago if I would paint a portrait of her. Well, I told her that I wasn't much good at portraits. But these days—well, you know what's going on—I seem to have lots of time on my hands. If she is still interested—”

“I'm sure she would be delighted, Freddie,” Lord Wrenworth said smoothly. He turned to Camden. “Lord Tremaine, may I present Lord Frederick Stuart? Freddie, Lord Tremaine.”

Camden extended his hand. “A pleasure, sir.”

Lord Frederick blinked. He stared at Camden for a second, as if expecting something dire. Then he swallowed and grasped Camden's hand with his own, which was large and slightly plump. “Right ho. Pleased, I'm sure, milord.”

For some reason, despite everything Mrs. Rowland had written, Camden had expected to see a prime specimen of a man. Lord Frederick was not that man. Next to Lord Wrenworth, he seemed all too ordinary, his looks pleasant but unremarkable, his attire a year or two behind the forefront of fashion, his demeanor unsophisticated.

“You are an artist, Lord Frederick?”

“No, no, I only dabble.”

“Nonsense,” said Lord Wrenworth. “Lord Frederick is tremendously accomplished for his age.”

His age—yet something else Camden hadn't expected. Lord Frederick could not have lived through more than twenty-four winters, a mere babe, barely old enough to grow hairs on his chin.

“Lord Wrenworth is much too kind,” Lord Frederick mumbled. Camden could see he was beginning to sweat, despite the cool interior of the club.

“I beg to differ,” said Wrenworth. “I have one of Freddie's pieces at home. Lady Wrenworth quite admires it. In fact, I believe Lady—”

Suddenly Lord Frederick looked quite panic-stricken. “Wren!”

Lord Wrenworth was taken aback. “Yes, Freddie?”

Lord Frederick could not come up with a slick answer. “I . . . uh . . . I forgot.”

“What were you about to say, my lord Wrenworth?” Camden asked.

“Only that I believe my mother-in-law begged to have it,” said Lord Wrenworth. “But Lady Wrenworth refused to part with it.”

“Oh,” said Lord Frederick, turning a shade of carmine to rival the drapes.

The two older men exchanged a look. Lord Wrenworth shrugged subtly, as if he had no idea as to the reason behind Lord Frederick's outburst. But Camden had already guessed. “Is Lady Tremaine, like Lady Wrenworth, an admirer of your work, Lord Frederick?”

Lord Frederick looked to Lord Wrenworth for recourse, but the latter chose not to involve himself, leaving Lord Frederick to meet Camden's direct question by himself. “Uh, Lady Tremaine has always been most kind to . . . my efforts. She is a great collector of art.”

Not something Camden would have said about his wife. But he supposed it was possible that, in a society enamored of the classical styles and subjects of Sir Frederick Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema, she could very well host one of the largest collections of Impressionist paintings. “You approve of the latest trends in art, I take it?”

“I do, sir, indeed.” Lord Frederick relaxed slightly.

“Then you must come see me the next time you happen to be in New York City. My collection is far superior to Lady Tremaine's, at least in quantity.”

The poor boy clearly struggled, wondering whether he was being played for a fool, but he chose to answer Camden's invitation as if it had been issued in good faith. “I shall be honored, sir.”

In that moment Camden saw what Gigi must have seen in the boy: his goodness, his sincerity, his willingness to think the best of everyone he met, a willingness that arose less from naïveté than from an inborn sweetness.

Lord Frederick hesitated. “Would you be returning to America very soon or would you be with us for a while?”

And courage too, to ask that question outright of him. “I expect I should remain in London until the matter of my divorce is settled.”

Lord Frederick's blush now exceeded Hungarian paprika in depth of color and vividness. Lord Wrenworth took his watch out and glanced at it. “Dear me, I should have met Lady Wrenworth at the bookshop five minutes ago. You must excuse me, gentlemen. Hell hath no fury like a woman made to wait.”

To Lord Frederick's credit, he didn't run, though the desire to do so was writ plain on his face. Camden gazed around the large common room. Newspapers suddenly rustled, conversations recommenced, cigars that had been dropping ashes on the scarlet-and-blue carpet rose once again to mustached lips.

Satisfied that the rampant, untoward curiosity in the room had been temporarily curbed, Camden returned his attention to Lord Frederick. “I understand that you wish to marry my wife.”

The color drained from Lord Frederick's face, but he stood his ground. “I do.”

“Why?”

“I love her.”

Camden had no choice but to believe him. Lord Frederick's answer brimmed with the kind of clarity born of the deepest conviction. He ignored the stab of pain in his chest. “Other than that?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Love is an unreliable emotion. What is it about Lady Tremaine that makes you think you won't regret marrying her?”

Lord Frederick swallowed. “She is kind, wise, and courageous. She understands the world but doesn't let it corrupt her. She is magnificent. She is like . . . like . . .” He was lost for words.

“Like the sun in the sky?” Camden prompted, sighing inwardly.

“Yes, exactly,” said Lord Frederick. “How. . . how did you guess, sir?”

Because I once thought the same. And sometimes still think it.

“Luck,” answered Camden. “Tell me, young man, have you ever considered that it might not be easy being married to a woman like that?”

Lord Frederick looked perplexed, like a child being told that there
was
such a thing as too much ice cream, when he had only ever been allowed a few spoonfuls at a time. “How so?”

Camden shook his head. What could he say? “Do not mind the rambling of an old man.” He offered his hand again. “I wish you the best of luck.”

“Thank you, sir.” Lord Frederick sounded both relieved and grateful. “Thank you. I wish you the same.”

May the better man prevail.

The reply rose nearly to the tip of Camden's tongue before he realized what he was about to say and swallowed it whole. He couldn't possibly have meant anything close to that. He couldn't possibly even have thought it. He had no use for her. He did not want her back. It was but the flotsam of his psyche, washed ashore in a sudden surge of masculine possessiveness.

He nodded at Lord Frederick and a few other men, retrieved his hat and walking stick, and exited the club into the midst of a fine afternoon. It was all wrong. The sky should be ominous, the wind cold, the rain fierce. He would have welcomed that, welcomed the drenching discomfort and isolation of an icy downpour.

Instead, he must endure the mercilessly beautiful sunshine of an early summer day and listen to birds chirp and children laugh as all his carefully constructed rationales threatened to crumble about him.

She was wrong. It wasn't about Theodora. It had never been about Theodora. It was always about
her.