The Lie and the Lady (3 page)

“Don't exactly look like the type, do I?” Sir Barty had said. “Decades past the prime touring age, I know. But I never got to the tour before I married—that tiny frog Napoleon made sure of that—and then after the wedding, didn't really feel much like leaving home.”

He winked and laughed, a huge guffaw that shook the statues in the gallery.

Leticia had smiled, warming to this somewhat coarse but obviously kind man's attentions. After all, the porter and his charges seemed to be taking their time. There was no harm in mild conversation while she waited.

“And how does your wife feel about you coming abroad now?”

He fiddled with his cane a moment, idly tapping it against his thigh. “She passed. Two years ago.”

Suddenly, this Sir Bartholomew—Babcock, was it?—became much more interesting.

“I'm so sorry for your loss,” Leticia said, leaning in closer.

“Thank you, m'dear,” Sir Barty said. “It was hard, I grant you. But before she went, she made me promise I'd shake some of my dust off, and now I'm doing it.” He winced and nodded to his outstretched leg. “Although it would be much more pleasant a walking tour if I could walk it.”

“Oh, you must be in the worst kind of pain!” Leticia exclaimed, placing her hand over his. “You simply cannot be on your feet . . .”

“But neither can I be holed up in the hotel. It's the oddest place. For breakfast . . . they have oranges,” he whispered to her, in the same tone one might say “they have clockwork abominations.”

“I would never suggest such a thing,” Leticia replied. “Not when you are on a heroic quest.”

“Heroic quest? Well, I suppose I am, in a way.”

“Luckily this museum has chairs for public use. We'll hire one for you.”

Leticia called over to a guard or servant—they seemed to fulfill both roles—and was about to ask him to fetch one of the wicker wheeled chairs, but Sir Barty stayed her hand.

“Oh no—I can't ask for that.”

“Why ever not?

“It's not . . . I don't want to seem . . . I'm used to my foot and walking on it, is all.”

A feline smile spread across Leticia's face. Of course. A big gruff man from Lincolnshire would not want to seem feeble. The male ego was a terribly silly thing, and it looked as if this Sir Barty had a typical one. But it also meant that Leticia knew his weakness—his pride.

“You're likely right,” she replied. “It would be foolhardy for a man as strong as yourself to use a chair. It would be taking the chair away from someone who truly needed it.”

“Precisely.” Sir Barty relaxed. “Besides, with such lovely company, I'm happy to wait here for the guide—some Frenchie named Gaston—who promised to show me the sights of this fancy place. Paid the man five francs, said he knew the Louvre like the back of his hand.” He frowned. “At least, that's what I think he said.”

Leticia's eyebrow went up. She knew Gaston—he was one of the less reputable porters. She was absolutely certain that he had indeed promised a comprehensive tour, but doubted he'd show up at the museum—he was far more likely to be drinking Sir Barty's francs away.

“If your Gaston is so late, I would be happy to show you around the museum,” Leticia offered. “I come here so often I feel like I know each piece of art personally.” At the quizzical look on his face, she pointed to a bronze bas-relief, a half circle hanging on the wall, with a nymph lounging beneath a stag's head. The
Nymph of Fontainebleau
—one of Leticia's favorites. “For instance—that is Nancy.”

“Nancy?” Sir Barty asked, squinting at the sculpture.

“Indeed. Nancy the Nymph. She has spent all morning hunting, and finally caught a stag—which, as you must know, is exhausting work. Therefore she decided to take off all her clothes and have a bit of a sleep.”

“That can't be right.” Sir Barty looked from the nymph to her and then back again, utterly confused. “Oh, I see!” he then cried. “You've made up a story to go along with the statue. Jolly good!”

“I'm afraid that as much as I enjoy the museum, I'm not much of a scholar,” Leticia demurred.

“Neither am I, m'dear,” Sir Barty said in confidence. “Never did have much use for knowing the names of all these things. Now, what about that one over there?”

He'd pointed to a very large statue of a man with wings embracing a woman. Psyche.

“Well, he's very obviously a man who also happens to be a bird.”

“Not an angel then?” Sir Barty asked.

“No, he's forever being mistaken for one, though, and it's a great burden on him. She's the only one who ever correctly guessed he was a bird man, and for that, he loved her immediately.”

Sir Barty laughed his deep guffaw, this time adding a few snorts for good measure.

“If you think that's funny, there's a woman with no arms in the next room who has the most interesting history,” Leticia smiled. “She cut off both her own arms,” she whispered.

“How does someone cut off their own arms?” Sir Barty asked as he stood and offered Leticia his arm. “One would think you'd need your arms to do the cutting.”

“That is the interesting part.”

“I think the interesting part will be her storyteller,” Sir Barty said with a modicum of gallantry. They'd spent the rest of the afternoon together, Leticia Scheherazade-ing her way through the galleries, making up stories for each of the statues and paintings, Sir Bartholomew Babcock falling more and more under her thrall with each new ridiculousness. She made certain to move slowly, and take some of his weight on her arm, all without him ever thinking that his gouty leg was an issue.

They parted that day without any kind of exchange of information. There were no flowers at Leticia's door at the ladies' boarding house the next morning, nor were there chocolates or a Lincolnshire gentleman of later years making formal addresses. But when she came to the Louvre that next day, Sir Barty was there, exactly where she'd expected him to be.

She learned a great deal about him as they ambled through those rooms at a glacial pace. She learned that the Babcocks had been one of the largest landholders in Lincolnshire since King Charles. She learned that the last time he'd been in London he'd been a young man, and hadn't thought much of it. If he was to go into town, he much preferred the closer York for his scene and society. She even learned why he was so aghast at a hotel that would serve oranges for breakfast.

“Well, it's like showing off, isn't it?” he'd said. “I'm a man of certain wealth, I have an orchard—but I've had an orange maybe three times in my life. To have a whole bowl of them, sitting out for breakfast . . .” He'd shuddered, and Leticia had laughed.

Sir Barty had no children other than his daughter, Margaret, who was as Sir Barty put it, “likely back home digging in the dirt, and scraping up her knees something fierce.”

“I have a niece very like that,” Leticia had replied. “She's nine, and mad about horses.”

Sir Barty hummed in agreement. “She needs a female's guidance,” he said, shaking his head. “I try as best I can, but ever since her mother died . . .”

Leticia placed a hand over Sir Barty's. “I understand completely.”

And she did understand. She understood that Sir Barty needed a mother for his daughter as much as he needed a wife for himself. And luckily, she was ready and willing to be both—which placed him squarely within her power.

Of course, Sir Barty learned things about her too. But only what she allowed.

She told him of her beloved Konrad perishing in a riding accident in Brighton three years ago. She told him about her sister, Fanny, Lady Widcoate, and how dear she found Fanny's children, Rose and Henry. (She did not mention that she only found children delightful once they reached the age of being able to amuse themselves.)

And then she told him about the Lie.

Not the salient details, of course. Just what was pertinent.

“Last year . . . last year I was very nearly engaged,” she'd said, her eyes falling to the stone floor between them. “But it turned out the man in question was playing me false.”

“How so?”

“He lied. About who he was. Where he was from. His very name.”

It was a name she had been hoping to call her own—Ashby. But it wasn't attached to the man who had kissed her on a dance floor or driven her mad with want in the dark of her bedroom. Instead, his name was rough and common, just like him: Turner. More specifically, Mr. John Turner, secretary to the real Earl of Ashby. While visiting her sister, Mr. Turner and the earl had switched places on a lark.

And on a lark, nearly ruined Leticia's life.

“Luckily, his lie was revealed in time,” Leticia had said, shaking off her growing anger. “But it was very embarrassing.”

“Broke your heart, did he?” Sir Barty had replied, gruff.

“I do not—” But she faltered. Because as much as she hated to admit it, to admit anyone had that kind of effect on her, it was the one thing she had never been very good at hiding. “Yes. He did. But he's thankfully in the past.”

“Thankfully,” Sir Barty replied. Then, with a boldness she hadn't imagine he had, let his hand fall over hers where it rested. “M'dear, I hope you know I would never lie to you like that. I would much rather take care of you.”

And she glowed with triumph.

Walks through the Louvre led to chocolates drunk at small cafés along the
rue
. Then meals taken together at Sir Barty's hotel before attending the theater. All under the eyes of servants and with the utmost propriety. Sir Barty was traveling without friends and Leticia had none, so they could have very easily acted without caution. But the fact that Sir Barty was so careful with his attentions and Leticia so controlled in hers led to that moment in the Louvre where Sir Barty had taken his hand in hers and blurted out his proposal.

It was a triumph of strategy. And she could not have played it more perfectly, Leticia decided.

“Of course I'll call you Barty,” Leticia replied. “If you wish it. And you must call me Leticia.”

“But I already do call you Leticia.” He frowned.

“Well, we'll think of some other endearment.” She patted his hand sweetly.

“You've never gone by Letty, I suppose?” he asked.

A pang of regret shot through her. However, she must have looked stricken, because Sir Barty immediately squeezed her hand. “No, of course not. No one as fine as you has ever been called Letty.”

Leticia forced herself to calm, to smile. “I do rather like how you say m'dear, Sir Barty,” she offered softly.

Sir Barty's eyes lit up. “Then m'dear it is.” He squeezed her hand, more gently this time. “Well, m'dear. I think I've had about all of the Continental travel I can stand for one lifetime. Would you like to go home?”

He did not mean back to the hotel, or to her lodgings. No, he meant home.

England.

Finally.

Yes, Leticia Herzog, Countess of Churzy, née Price, and soon to be Lady Babcock, was going back to where she belonged.

In triumph.

“Yes, Barty,” she cooed. “Let's go home.”

3

L
incolnshire wasn't at all what Leticia expected.

Not that it was in any way different from any other time she had been to Lincolnshire. She was certain that she and Konrad had driven through here, and possibly spent a day or two at an inn across the Wolds by the sea when they'd had to let rumors die down. She remembered it being picturesque, if a little sparse. Expansive, but far too much windswept grain on hillsides and grazing livestock.

Then, of course, she'd passed through on her way to or from Edinburgh, trying to outrun the Lie.

She hadn't seen much of the place that time.

No, what was unexpected about Lincolnshire, Leticia supposed, was that it was going to be her home.

Strange, but home usually did not feel so . . . foreign.

“I'll warm to it,” Leticia told herself as the carriage rolled across the hills.

“What's that, m'dear?” Sir Barty said, snorting himself awake.

“Nothing—simply that I am comfortably warm.”

“Oh . . .” He settled back down against the cushions. “Let me know if you need another blanket, or . . .” And he was snoring again.

She would warm to Lincolnshire, she decided. Indeed, she would find something to love about it. Such as . . . that sky. Rare was it to see a sky so blue in town!

And those fens, she thought as they crossed from the lower counties into Lincolnshire proper. There aren't fens like that anywhere else in the world! Other fens, not nearly as flat and expansive a stretch of farmland, were hardly as worthy of praise as Lincolnshire fens.

Forty minutes later, they stopped to change horses and have a bite to eat, and Leticia was introduced to the local cuisine.