The Gilded Web (6 page)

She had found his appearance quite disconcerting. Her memories of that morning would be humiliating enough even if the Earl of Amberley had turned out to be a plain, aging man. She had felt quite mortified to know that this young and elegant gentleman had seen her lying on a bed, her hair loose about her, her skirt twisted up under her and exposing almost all of her legs. She would dearly have liked to turn and run to her bedchamber so that she could hide her face in the covers of her bed. She had stood still instead and forced herself to both look at him and listen to him. She had even spoken. She had had to call on all the training of years for the discipline necessary to contain her discomfort.

She had found the whole interview quite thoroughly embarrassing. She had had little to do with gentlemen since her arrival in London the month before, and nothing whatsoever to do with them before that. She had lived an appallingly sheltered life at home. For years she had longed for her marriage and a home of her own and London, longed for freedom, though she had always known that in marrying the Duke of Peterleigh she would merely be changing hands from one severe taskmaster to another. But oh, being a wife would surely offer her more by way of independence and responsibility and self-respect than being a daughter. And a wife in London!

Yet she had found London bewildering and disappointing. She found that she was not at all equipped to mix socially with her social equals. While one part of her longed and longed to be gay, to abandon herself to the pleasures of the Season, the other part of her shied away from letting go of the discipline and the dignity of a lifetime. And this same part of herself led her frequently to long for escape, as it had the night before at the Easton ball.

And so she knew little about how to talk to and how to deal with a gentleman. She really had not taken at all well with the
ton.
She had not even known—ridiculous innocence—if it was proper to give her hand to the Earl of Amberley. She had not known if he was taking an unpardonable liberty by kissing that hand. Nothing like it had ever happened to her before. Yet she was one-and-twenty!

Certainly she had felt unusually flustered when his lips had touched her hand. The gesture had seemed alarmingly intimate. She had felt sensation sizzle along the full length of her arm. And she had despised herself for allowing such a little thing so to discompose her. If it
were
a little thing! She did not know.

The front door opened to the right of her window, and the subject of her thoughts emerged. Alexandra stepped back as a groom led forward a magnificent black stallion. She would not wish to be caught looking out if he should happen to glance up. But he did not do so. He mounted the horse, handed a coin to the groom, and turned the horse's head in the direction of the gates.

Alexandra could not remember seeing the Earl of Amberley before that morning, though she had been in London for a whole month. She hoped that she would never see him again. And she hoped that Lord Eden would not be sent to make his apologies. She really wanted the whole nightmare of the night before to be forgotten. She wanted life to be back to normal. His grace was to accompany them to the theater that evening and to attend Lady Sharp's soiree the following evening.

The door behind her opened and closed, and Alexandra straightened her shoulders and turned reluctantly to face her father. He was looking grim and tight-lipped, she saw with a sinking heart. His eyes were cold.

“So, Alexandra,” he said, “you have seen fit to refuse the offer of respectability the Earl of Amberley was willing to make?”

“I refused his offer, yes, Papa,” she said in some surprise. “It was quite unnecessary for him to make it. And besides, I am to be betrothed to his grace during the autumn.”

“Perhaps his grace will not be eager to ally himself to a slut,” Lord Beckworth said. “And am I to have you on my hands for the rest of my life?”

“A slut?” Alexandra's eyes were wide with disbelief.

“What do you call yourself?” her father asked, striding toward her. “You were brought to London at considerable expense and trouble to me in order to make your appearance in society. You were to be made a more accomplished bride for the duke. Last night you were sent to a ball with both your mother and your brother to ensure your respectability. Yet you hoodwinked your mother by sending your aunt and your cousin to tell her you were leaving with them just so that you would be free to slip outdoors unchaperoned. Who was he, Alexandra? I mean to have the truth.”

“I did not send Aunt Deirdre, Papa,” she said, bewildered. “And who is who? I do not understand.”

“You have had all the benefits of a good and virtuous home,” the baron said harshly, “but it has had little effect on your wicked heart, Alexandra. I want the name of the lover you were to have a secret tryst with.”

Alexandra gaped at him. “I went outside to be alone for a few minutes,” she said. “I find the crowds at social gatherings overwhelming, Papa, and sometimes long for the quietness of home. I did not intend to be gone for longer than a few minutes. And I did not plan to meet anyone. I did not know about the misapprehension Mama was under. I did wrong. I know that, and I beg your pardon, Papa, as I have already begged Mama's. You have taught me better than to wander about alone and unchaperoned. I have been justly punished.”

“I left off thrashing you when you were sixteen,” Lord Beckworth said. “God is my witness that I did my Christian duty in trying to instill the principles of virtue in you. Perhaps I should have continued with the thrashings even after you left the schoolroom. Perhaps I have failed in my duty after all. But you had beatings often enough, Alexandra, and they seem to have done little good. You are clearly of a stubborn and wayward disposition.”

Alexandra had lowered her eyes to the floor from force of long habit. There was no point whatsoever in arguing with her father. She stood straight before him, her face impassive. “I am sorry, Papa,” she said.

“We will be fortunate indeed if you have not brought permanent disgrace on your family,” he said. “We will have to rely on the courtesy of the Earl of Amberley and Lord Eden to keep quiet about your scandalous indiscretion.”

Alexandra raised her eyes to his for a moment, a look of incredulity on her face. But she resumed her former stance when she saw his reddened face and coldly angry eyes.

“You will spend the remainder of the day in your own room,” he said. “You will occupy your time in reading your Bible. You will speak to no one until tomorrow. I shall have water and bread sent to your room at dinnertime. You will not communicate with the servant who brings it to you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Papa,” she said. Her voice was quite steady.

“Be thankful that your punishment is to last a day and not a week,” Lord Beckworth said. “I would suggest that you spend at least a part of the day in prayer, Alexandra. God may not be as lenient in his judgment as I have been.”

“Yes, Papa,” she said.

She lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders as she walked past him and out of the salon. A slut? A lover? Wayward? Oh, no, this was becoming insufferable. She met James on the first landing. He was clearly waiting for her. She looked meaningfully into his eyes and shook her head slightly as she turned to the staircase leading to the upper floor.

“I understand, Alex,” he said quietly. “Is it to be for just the one day?”

She nodded briefly without turning back to him or slackening her pace.

“Did you refuse Amberley?” he asked.

She nodded again.

“Good girl,” he said. “Good girl, Alex. It will not be too long until tomorrow. I have heard that the play is a bore anyway.”

Alexandra, halfway up the staircase, looked back at him over her shoulder. She did not disobey her father's command—she had never dared disobey him—but a smile that would have been imperceptible to someone who did not know them passed between brother and sister.

“N
O, REALLY, YOU FELLOWS,”
Lord Eden said indignantly, “it is no laughing matter, you know. We could all swing for kidnapping or something else if her family should decide to cut up rough. I could still end up peering down the wrong end of a dueling pistol. I didn't much like the look of that brother. A decidedly nasty fellow when aroused, I wouldn't be surprised. And all this is not to mention the fact that either Amberley or I will probably end up in parson's mousetrap over your atrocious bungling.”

“She should make an active armful anyway,” Mr. Clement Jones said with a grin. “She fought like the very devil. You had better tie her in the sheets before boarding her on your wedding night, Eden. She might do you some irreparable damage.”

“I say, you fellows,” Lord Eden protested as his two unsympathetic friends roared with laughter. The three of them were taking an early-afternoon ride in Hyde Park. Lord Eden had other pressing matters to attend to, but this meeting was of great importance too. “Between us we have done the girl enough harm as it is. There is no need to be vulgar or disrespectful. The point is, I need your word that not a breath about last night's doings will escape you. Not even when you are drunk. Faber? Jones? Your word of honor?”

“I call it a mortal shame,” Mr. Faber said, having controlled his laughter finally. “It would make a priceless story, Eden. May we use it if we change the names?”

“Just try it, my friend,” Lord Eden said, his customary good humor deserting him for the moment, “and you will be the one eating the barrel of a pistol. With my finger on the trigger! Your word, now.”

“You have mine, Eden,” Mr. Jones said. “Not that I think it necessary, mind. You should know us well enough to know that neither one of us would say anything to dishonor a lady. What is she like, anyway? Pretty?”

“Amberley says so,” Lord Eden said gloomily. “Lord, what a coil! Forced to offer for a girl I haven't even met.”

“Poor Miss Carstairs,” Jones said, and winked at Faber.

Lord Eden groaned. “Don't even mention her,” he said. “I have to blank my mind. But I say, fellows, we might show a bit more sensibility. What about Miss Purnell? The poor girl must have suffered agonies. You know what females are like. And perhaps it doesn't suit her inclination to be thinking of taking on Amberley or me, any more than it suits ours to be taking on her. She is supposed to be half-betrothed to Peterleigh.”

“Oh, Lord,” Faber said, “she would be a fool not to fly into your arms, Eden. Or Amberley's. Peterleigh! He would probably whip the poor girl twice a week whether she deserved it or not.”

“I have to go and call on my mother,” Lord Eden said, “and half-throttle Madeline. All this is her fault. I just wanted to hear you give your word first. The lady's reputation has to be our main concern here.”

Miss Carstairs, Lord Eden thought from the depths of his gloom as he turned away from his companions and headed his horse toward the Grosvenor Gate and his mother's house beyond. Trust one of those loose screws to mention her. He had been in love with her for all of three weeks, and it was real love this time. All those other times in the past several years when he had fancied himself in love, he had been merely infatuated.

But Miss Carstairs! She personified all that he found most desirable in a woman. She was small and fragile, with blond ringlets and blue, trusting eyes. She had a pouting rosebud of a mouth that his own lips ached to taste, and a tiny waist that he longed to span with his two hands. She spoke with the most adorable lisp.

And she was beginning to notice him. Three evenings before, he had had the unspeakable joy of seeing her carry the nosegay that he had sent her that morning, and she had smiled shyly at him over it as she lifted it to her nose. Her mother had even nodded graciously to him during the same evening.

And now he must renounce all thoughts of her. He must pay his addresses to a lady he had caught only the merest glimpse of that morning, a lady who had looked tall and thin and dark—not at all his type. That was if Edmund had not engaged himself to her already, of course. But surely, he would have had second thoughts on that matter. No, he would not. No one was more the soul of honor than Edmund or more eager to shoulder the burdens of his family. But surely the girl and her father would realize that his brother had no responsibility whatsoever for what had happened. Surely Edmund had been turned away.

He was going to have to make his own call on Lord Beckworth after his visit to Mama and Madeline. He certainly did not relish the prospect. He would not be wild with enthusiasm about confronting any father under the particular circumstances. But Beckworth! The man had not been in town long, but already he had gained a reputation as a harsh, moralistic killjoy.

Lord Eden had overheard him in White's one afternoon expounding his social theories. Every unemployed man and boy should be transported to a land where plenty of work could be found for them, and every prostitute should be stripped and whipped in the open streets before suffering a like fate. England should be preserved for God-fearing men and women who were ready to do their Christian duty at honest employment. Except for the rich, presumably. Lord Eden had felt taut with anger. Lord Beckworth, he had suspected, perhaps quite unfairly, was just the type who would relish watching corporal punishments, especially the stripping of the prostitutes.