Rules for Being a Mistress (10 page)

Lady Dalrymple had not expected to find Miss Vaughn so well defended. “How innocent you are, my dear,” she murmured. “You will understand when you are older.”

“But not everyone can afford to marry for love,” Benedict pointed out, annoyed by the woman’s self-righteousness. “In our society, a poor woman can only better herself through marriage. What would you have poor women do, Lady Dalrymple? Starve?”

Lady Dalrymple glared at him. “In our society, Sir Benedict? You make us sound like savages! Is there anything you
like
about England? Is there anything you would
not
change?”

Benedict saw that he had spoken too seriously for his company. He smiled ruefully. “The weather, my lady. I would not change good English weather for the world.”

Puzzled silence. No one seemed to realize the gentleman was making a joke.

Nothing could prevail on Benedict to stand up with anyone else for the second cotillion, and he spent the last half hour of the ball pleasantly engaged in conversation with Lady Serena while Ludham danced with Lady Rose.

“Now
that
would be an equal match,” said Benedict.

“She is absurdly young,” said Serena. “But, I daresay, so is Miss Vaughn!”

“You should encourage him to return to London,” Benedict suggested. “He would soon forget Miss Vaughn in London, I am persuaded.”

Serena sighed. “He cannot go to London, Sir Benedict. They have published the letters! The entire body of criminal correspondence between that wretched Pamela and her Frenchman! I have not seen it, of course, but I understand it is perfectly unexpurgated.”

“Ah,” said Benedict.

“So embarrassing for poor Felix. Besides which, London is full of opera dancers! At least I can keep my eye on him here in Bath. In London…!”

“Quite,” said Benedict.

“It would be just like Felix to rush headlong into another disastrous marriage. He is so susceptible to a pretty face, and so blind to everything else. I don’t wish Miss Vaughn ill, of course, but…” She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “It would be as much a mistake for
her
as for him.”

“Someone should explain to Miss Vaughn the evils of an unequal marriage.”

“I say! That’s a good idea. As her cousin, Sir Benedict, you must be able to exert some influence over her. You can see I have no influence over
my
cousin,” she added ruefully, “but
he
is a man. Any assistance you can offer me in this matter would be most gratefully received,” she added persuasively.

“I will call on Lady Agatha tomorrow,” he promised. “And then, I would like to call on
you,
if I may, Serena. Would one o’clock be convenient for a private interview?”

“A private interview to discuss Felix and Miss Vaughn?”

“You must know I am going to make you an offer of marriage,” he said impatiently.

She smiled. “I believe you just did, Sir Benedict!”

The ball ended punctually at eleven o’clock, and the doors of the ballroom were thrown open to admit the chairmen, who strode right into the ballroom with their sedan chairs. Owing to the steepness of Bath’s streets, carriages were rarely used.

Benedict commandeered a chair for Lady Serena, bade her good night, then walked alone up to Beechen Cliff. He sat down on the damp ground, took out his cheroot case, and lit up.

The big brass numeral on Lady Agatha’s front door looked like a six. The nail at the top had come loose, allowing the number to swing into the upside down position. As he waited for the servant to answer the bell, Benedict flicked it with his finger. The number spun around, still attached by a single brass nail at the bottom. This sort of thing could lead to postal errors, he thought with annoyance. These people might be getting his mail, and vice versa.

“I have been ringing the bell for some time,” Benedict said coldly when, at last, the door was opened by a massive, gray-haired manservant dressed in rusty black. He looked seedy and he smelled of whiskey. He looked at Benedict in surprise. Then a twinkle appeared in his eye.

“Ah, sure, didn’t we disconnect that bell?” he said in a careless Irish drawl. “And very noisy it was, too. I was just going out to post a letter for Herself, or I’d never have known you were here at all, at all.”

An odd feeling came over Benedict as he stepped into the hall. The place seemed familiar to him, even though he was certain he had never been here before.

“You really should do something about the number on your door,” he said, taking out his card. “It has come loose at the top. It looks like a six.”

“So it does,” the Irishman said agreeably. He winked at Benedict.

Benedict glared at him. “Will you kindly take my card up to Lady Agatha.”

Benedict waited in the hall while the man went up, chuckling to himself. Doors opened and closed on the floor above in a flurry of activity, then the house fell silent, and the manservant returned, still laughing. “She’ll be down in a minute,” he said. “She’s after putting on her best dress for you, but you didn’t hear that from me.”

He went out by the front door, not the usual way for servants to come and go, but this, evidently, was an unusual household.

Presently, a slim young woman came down the stairs. Her best dress was a cream-colored cambric striped with blue. It looked unfortunately like mattress ticking. As she stopped on the landing, the morning sun shot through the fanlight over the door and fell directly on her.

“You!” he said, thunderstruck.

She stared back at him. Her least favorite person looked none the worse for his adventure in the park. In fact, the man was infuriatingly perfect. His hair was so perfect it looked like carved ebony. His patrician face might have been carved of marble. His light gray eyes were hard and brilliant. And his clothes were gorgeously tailored. He looked lean and fit. His shoes were polished to a high sheen. He didn’t look seedy at all. He looked dead aristocratic.

Fleecing him was going to be a delight and a pleasure.

“You yourself!” she snapped. “You’ve a bloody cheek showing your face here after what you did to me. If my brothers were here to defend me, you’d be a dead man.”

“My God, it
is
you,” Benedict said, as if she had not said a word. “You look different. Your hair—You’ve changed your hair.”

Her hands went to her hair. She had braided it tightly and pinned it up as she always did. She thought it looked nice. “What about my hair?” she demanded.

“It looked orange in the candlelight,” he said. “I thought—”

“Oh, you thought I was a redhead,” she murmured. “That explains it.”

She had been wondering why he didn’t ask Mrs. Price for a blond girl.

Benedict, meanwhile, had pieced it all together. Obviously, he had come to the wrong house on the night he arrived in Bath. Obviously he had behaved very badly. Of course, she had overreacted to his bad behavior, but there was no denying that he had behaved very badly indeed. He was mortified. It was one thing to try to seduce one’s own housekeeper, and quite another to try to seduce someone else’s. He could only hope that Miss Cosy had not reported his faux pas to her employer. A scandal like that could ruin his reputation.

“I suppose,” she said, “you’ve come to collect your things. They’re in the kitchen where you left them. I’ll fetch them for you.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I was just going to pay my respects to Lady Agatha.”

She frowned. She didn’t want him anywhere near her mother and sister, but Lady Agatha knew he was here, and she was beside herself with joy at the thought of having a visitor. “All right,” she said reluctantly. “But be quick about it. She’s a delicacy, so don’t say anything stupid to upset her.”

Benedict started up the steps to her. She waited on the landing, her hand on the railing.

“You haven’t told her anything, have you?” he asked anxiously.

“Of course not,” she said scornfully.

“There’s no reason, after all,” he said, looking into her green eyes, “for Lady Agatha to know. She would be very angry with you, I’m sure.”

“With me!” she said. He moved closer to her, but she did not move away.

“Yes, with you,” he said softly. “It is most unfair, I know, but, in such cases as these, the woman is always blamed. She might even turn you out of the house. Have you thought of that? A beautiful girl like you? On your own in this cold, cruel world?”

He traced his finger along her jaw. Her eyes widened but she did not flinch.

“Of course,
I
am to blame,” he said. “My behavior was atrocious. I was not a gentleman. Forgive me?” He moved his lips to hers, and, when she still not flinch, he kissed her. It was a chaste, quiet kiss. “Am I forgiven, Miss Cosy?”

He kissed her again. Her mouth tasted clean and tart, like a green apple. He wanted more of it. He wished she might kiss him back, but he supposed that was out of the question. A housekeeper could lose her place if she was caught in such a compromising position.

“Come away with me,” he whispered. “Let me be your protector. Let me take you away from a life of drudgery and care. You’ll never have to work again in your life. You’ve no idea how boring my life was before I met you. Say something, my angel.”

She stepped back from him and touched her mouth. She looked quite surprised.

“Are you trying to seduce me?” she demanded.

“Oh, yes.”

“You devil! Meet me in the kitchen in five minutes,” she said. “You can shag the fanny off me then, if you like.”

He smiled. He was a young man when he smiled. “Make it twenty, you little beauty. I have to go up to the drawing-room now and make nice with bloody Lady Agatha. But then…” His eyes glowed. “Oh, then, my angel, my dove, my sweet, sweet honey, I shall ravish you to your heart’s content.”

She pushed him away and smoothed down her dress. “Keep your breeches on, lover,” she said. “You still have to make nice with Lady Agatha. I’ll take you up now.”

“A pox,” he said, “on Lady Agatha. Lead on, bright star. Take me anywhere you like.”

She turned smartly and started up the next flight of stairs. It was all he could do not to run a hand over those slim, young haunches. She looked back over her shoulder at him and plucked his heart out with a smile.

“After you,” she said softly at the drawing-room door, and, very deliberately, he brushed the front of his body against hers as he went in. He was looking forward to the next twenty minutes of pleasurable agony, to be followed by twenty minutes of agonizing pleasure in the kitchen.

But first…the social niceties must be observed with the mistress of the house. In the drawing-room, a frail woman of uncertain age and a robust child were sitting in front of a small fire. The older woman, presumably Lady Agatha, was disposed on the sofa, bundled in a shawl, with a rug over her knees and a cap over her frizzy red hair, while the child, a girl of perhaps nine years of age, was draped across a chair, rapidly and noisily shifting the tiles of a fifteen puzzle. She was wearing an ugly pinafore dress of brown bombazine. She had flaxen hair and green eyes, just like the delectable Miss Cosy.

That struck Benedict as rather odd. After all, green eyes and flaxen hair were not all that common outside of the Scandinavian countries.

The room was cold.

“Mother?” Cosy said softly.

The lady on the sofa gave a start and looked around, confused.

Benedict knew just how the poor woman felt.

“Mother, this is Sir Benedict. Sir Benedict, this is my mother, Lady Agatha Vaughn.”

“Ah,” said Benedict.

“Sir Benedict has come for a nice long visit. Isn’t that nice of him?”

She sat down on the sofa and arranged her striped skirts. Benedict looked at her without expression for a moment, then turned to her mother.

Lady Agatha was not, Benedict realized instantly, a fashionable hypochondriac like Lady Matlock. Cosmetics could not hide her ravaged complexion. She was tiny and frail. She breathed wheezily. Benedict seized on the excuse to beat a hasty retreat. “Perhaps I should call when her ladyship is feeling better,” he offered.

To his horror, Lady Agatha burst into tears. “It’s the light,” she sobbed. “The morning sun is not kind to a woman of my years.”

Cosy looked daggers at Benedict. “Nice!” she snarled at him before turning to her mother. “You look beautiful, Mother,” she said soothingly. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it like that!” She took out her handkerchief and carefully dried her mother’s face. “Allie, go and draw the curtains!” she snapped.

“I’m working my puzzle,” the younger girl snarled.

Muttering unladylike imprecations under her breath, the elder girl went to the windows and closed the curtains herself.

“Of course,” said Benedict, “I did not mean to insult your ladyship. I was told that you were very ill, Lady Agatha. I simply do not wish to intrude if you would rather be resting. That is all.”

“Mother’s having one of her good days,” Cosy said as Benedict’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. “Aren’t you, Mother?”

“I feel quite like my old self,” wheezed Lady Agatha.

Good God,
Benedict thought.

Cosy lit a branch of tallow candles standing on a pedestal in one corner of the room. The candlelight cast an orange stain over parts of the room, casting black and umber shadows over the rest of it. “We’re glad of the company,” Cosy said. “We don’t know very many people here.” She looked at him angrily. “Well? Aren’t you going to sit down and make nice?”

“I wasn’t asked to sit down,” he retorted. “Miss Cosy,” he added irritably. “Or should I say
Miss Vaughn
?”

“Will you sit down,” she said. It was not a request. Almost in the same breath she barked, “Allie! Take that clackering over to the window; you’ll ruin your eyes.”

Benedict sat down and the child took her fifteen puzzle to the window seat.

Cosy sat down next to her mother again. Lady Agatha had withdrawn as far as she could into the shadows. The gentleman had made her feel self-conscious about her looks.

Benedict said, “Please forgive me for presenting myself to you unannounced, Lady Agatha, but I understand that your ladyship rarely ventures out into society. I am a little acquainted with your brother, Lord Wayborn,” he added.

“That’s society for you,” Cosy murmured. “Everybody knows everybody.”

Lady Agatha’s voice quivered. “Did my brother send you, Sir Benjamin?”

“It’s Benedict, Mother. Like the saint,” Cosy said maliciously.

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Lady Agatha. “Did my brother send you, Sir Benedict?”

“No, my lady. But I felt it was only right that I pay my respects when I discovered that his sister was in Bath. In point of fact, I am a distant relation. Mine is the Surrey branch of the Wayborn family. My sister, Juliet, married a duke last summer. You may have read about it in the papers. The wedding party lasted a month. I had many conversations with your brother.”

“We were still in Ireland last summer,” said Lady Agatha. “It’s so difficult to get proper news in Ireland,” she complained. “We are much better off here. Cosima, ring the bell for tea.”

“Sir Benedict doesn’t like tea,” said Cosy. “And besides, Nora’s gone to the market. There’s no one in the kitchen at all, at all.”

Benedict glared at her.

“I do wish you wouldn’t speak in that dreadful brogue,” said Lady Agatha, wincing. “What will the gentleman think?”

“The gentleman,” said Miss Vaughn, “can think whatever he likes.”

“It is so nice to have a visitor,” said Lady Agatha hastily. “Lady Dalrymple used to visit us when we first came to Bath. And her son, Mr. Carteret, was very much in love with my daughter, but then we got that awful letter from the bank—”

“And so the love dried up,” Cosy said with a short laugh.

“Cosima,” Benedict said, looking at her.

She looked at him, startled.

“You have an unusual and lovely name, Miss Vaughn. It is Italian, I believe?”

“All my children have Italian names,” Lady Agatha said. “Colonel Vaughn and I honeymooned in Italy, you know. Of course, he was only a captain then. All the children are like him, as tall and blond as Vikings. No one would ever guess they were half-Irish.”

Benedict looked at Cosima. “Larry? Sandy? And Dan, I think it was?”

“Lorenzo, Alessandro, and Dante,” she replied.