The Painted Lady (4 page)

“There, you see?” Aunt Maeve was cooing. “Ticky loves me better.” She was letting him lick her fingers after dabbling them in her glass. Ticket was wagging his sorry excuse for a tail.

“Ha!” Aunt Mirabel dangled a sugared almond from the side table, and Ticket tore across the sofa—the recently reupholstered-at-great-expense sofa—to her side.

As far as Kasey could ever tell, Ticket seemed to snarl at both aunts with equal surliness whenever they tried to nudge him away from the furniture when company was present. His Grace might own the house, but not in Ticket’s eyes, and Kasey had the scars to prove it. He’d have given the mutt a ticket to the great furniture showroom in the sky long ago, except that the aunts would have been heartbroken. And they would have turned to coddling their nephews instead.

Kasey pulled the velvet curtains aside, staring at the darkness rather than the unsavory picture of his aunts cosseting the cur. After a few moments of listening to the munching and slurping, he tried once more to get his aunts’ attention away from the overfed fleabag. “I’ve been hearing ... rumors.”

Both pairs of eyes were firmly on him now.

“Oh dear, oh dear.” Aunt Maeve fretted. “We were so hoping you wouldn’t catch wind of that.”

He opened the window. “Not Ticket, touched in the upper works. Is there anything like that?”

Both of his aunts looked worried. Aunt Mirabel spoke up first. “If this is about your brother, the lad is a bit ungoverned, I’ll admit, but he is not unhinged.”

“Goodness yes, the boy is merely sowing his wild oats.”

Kasey’s brother Jason was twenty, going on seventeen forever, it seemed. He scowled, and Aunt Maeve hurried on. “Nothing a few years won’t cure. You never caused half the talk, Kennard dear, of course, but you were already duke by that age.”

“And I am sure no one blames you for the incident. His father passing on when the boy was at such a tender age, perhaps, but that cannot be laid at your door either.”

Whatever mare’s nest Junior had stirred up now, Kasey did not want to hear it. “This has nothing to do with the nodcock.”

“You cannot mean Charles, can you?” Aunt Maeve asked in horrified tones. After all, Charles Warberry was her nephew, her second sister’s son, no relation to Mirabel at all. “I swear Charles is a most sober gentleman, with never a whisper of any untoward behavior.”

“No, no. I trust Charles implicitly. A regular rock of respectability. I couldn’t manage the estate and the investments without him.” Kasey shut the window before his aunts could accuse him of letting poor Ticket catch his death. The bloated beast couldn’t catch a rat if it crawled up his pushed-in nose. “Something else.”

“Well, there was that woman your great-uncle Murray Cartland married, the one who used to forget things, like where she lived and poor Uncle Murray’s name, but I don’t think you could say that is in the family bloodlines. And it was ages ago. I am quite sure there is no other lunacy on my side of the family.”

Aunt Maeve adjusted her turban. “Well, your mother and I had one second cousin who was decidedly dicked in the nob, but that was after he fell out of the tree. He spoke gibberish, he did, until the day he died, many years later. The family kept it under wraps, naturally, and even managed to find some Magyar countess for him to marry. She never knew he wasn’t speaking English, and they got on famously.”

“No, I was thinking of something closer.”

Aunt Mirabel clutched Ticket to her boney breast. “Great Scot, nephew, you cannot be thinking we are touched in the upper storeys, can you?

His other aunt was already dabbing at her eyes. “After all, lots of people dress up their doggies.”

* * * *

The duke found his cousin in the estate office, as usual, going over some figures before dinner. “Charles,” he said, taking a seal across the desk, “do you think I am missing something?”

Warberry’s face went white and the quill pen snapped in his fingers.

“Good God, man, I am not accusing you of pilfering from the accounts! I wouldn’t be asking this now if I did not trust you completely.”

Some of the color came back into Charles’s complexion. “Just what is it you are asking, then, old man?”

Kasey fiddled with the silver inkwell. “I want to know if you think I am missing something in my life.”

Charles laughed. “You? Devil take it, cuz, you have a fortune and a title. You have the looks of a blond Adonis—”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh, you didn’t mean you have every female between the ages of sixteen and sixty tossing her cap at you? Six different estates, the finest horses money can buy or breed, entrée to all the clubs. Lud, you have everything a man could ever want.”

“But is it enough?”

“Deuce take it, you must have been talking to Lord Granleigh again, he’s that eager to see Lady Phillida off his hands. Convinced you that a man needs a wife and children, eh?”

“You cannot think that makes a man complete, or else you’d have a wife of your own by now. You’re eight years my senior and you’ve never taken a bride.”

Charles pretended to shiver at the thought. “I’ve never seen the need to tie myself to one woman for the rest of my life. No title to pass down, don’t you know, no property to be lost if I didn’t produce little butter stamps to inherit. Besides, in my experience a wife is more trouble than she’s worth.”

After thinking about his conversation with the painted lady, Kasey had to agree. The kind of marriage he was envisioning, with both parties going their separate ways, could only complicate a man’s existence no end, if it did not end it in a duel. “No, I was speaking of spiritual fulfillment, I think.”

Charles sat back in his chair, frowning at his cousin. “You went to church with the aunts last week, didn’t you? That ought to put paid to any religious fervor. Jupiter, you aren’t thinking of becoming one of those Reformers, are you? Or joining a monastery?” He laughed out loud at the notion. “No, that’s out of the question. You wouldn’t last a week without women.” He noticed that his cousin was not laughing along with him. “Come on, old chap, you are beginning to scare me.”

“I am beginning to scare myself, too,” Kasey confessed, staring at his hands. “Do you think I am insane?”

“What in the world... ? I’ve known you since birth, and I’d swear you are as sound as I am.”

“It’s ... the painting.”

Charles waited, but when His Grace did not add anything, he sighed. “Ah, the painting. Well, old man, I never did comprehend why you burned yourself to a stump with that business. I don’t suppose anyone but another artist could understand the need to be slopping about in paint smocks.”

He straightened his own immaculate cuffs. “Eccentric bunch, artists, but that’s not to say they are insane. As for your hiding the work away where no one can see it, well, you said yourself you never wanted to give the gossipmongers any more to chew on. It’s enough they broadcast every dasher you dance with and every opera singer you escort to dinner. You’d have no privacy at all, if you showed your paintings. You know how people are always laughing at that lordling who’s forever putting on his own plays. And it’s not as if you need the money they’d bring if you tried to sell them. If they are worth anything, that is, other than as curios of a dilettante duke.”

Kasey had never considered the worth of his artwork, and did not now. He was on his feet, examining the portrait of his grandmother that hung between the windows of the office. It was not a particularly good painting, most likely done by some journeyman artist the duchess felt sorry for, hence its place in the estate room. Kasey was not wondering about the artist, his motives, how much he was paid. He was wondering if the old lady would start chatting to him if Charles turned his head.

He turned to face his cousin and attempted a smile. “I think I’ve been trotting too hard, that’s all.”

“Quite. I thought you were looking a tad peaked,” Charles said, relieved. “Why don’t you take a rest? You haven’t had a holiday in ages, and there is that race meet at Epsom, of course. Or you might visit the hunting box in Scotland before the weather turns. You could even take one of your lady friends along for company.”

Kasey was very much afraid the lady was no friend, and she’d be coming along, invited or not.

Caswell found his brother in the billiards room. He took up a cue and waited his turn. “Evening, Junior—Jason,” he corrected, purposely trying to imbue a modicum of maturity so sadly lacking in the sprig. The chawbacon did not seem to have any sense of style or color either, rigged out as he was in yellow Cossack trousers, a puce waistcoat, with a spotted kerchief at his neck. “Aren’t you dressing for dinner?”

“I am dressed, brother. I just don’t fancy being togged out as if I were going to a funeral, and the guest of honor there at that.”

Lord Jason straightened up and untangled a quizzing glass from the chains and ribbons crisscrossing his narrow chest. Through it he surveyed his older brother, soberly dressed in blue-black superfine, with pristine white knee-smalls and neckpiece. The only dash of color came from a ruby glittering in the snowy folds of his cravat. Jason would have given a monkey to be able to tie such a perfect Waterfall. Hell, he’d have given his eyeteeth for Kasey’s broad shoulders and well-muscled legs.

“Dreary,” he pronounced, without specifying whether he meant Kasey’s stark ensemble or his own spindle-shanked shortcomings. He picked up his cue stick again and returned to the game. “Speaking of dreary, I need to talk to you about m’finances. Chap can’t live on that pittance of an allowance, don’t you know.”

“Jason, do you ever hear voices?”

“Of course I do. Hearing you now, ain’t I? But if you mean to give me a bear-garden jaw about that Charlie and his box, I ain’t listening.”

Kasey did not want to know about the unfortunate watchman, much less the state of his brother’s purse. “No, I mean voices when no one is around.”

Jason missed his shot, then backed away from the table. “All the time. I usually hear them in an alley, saying that if I didn’t pay up someone named Three-Finger Fred would be introducing my ballocks to my eyeballs. That’s why I need an advance. I called at your place out by the gardens, but your man shut the door on me. Insolent blighter. You ought to dismiss him.”

“I ought to give him a raise.” Kasey sighted down the green baize and neatly sent the ball into its pocket. As he walked to the other side of the table, he made one last try. “Forget about the voices. Do things ever come alive for you? You know, inanimate objects taking on a life of their own?”

“Of course. Just last night the floor jumped up to hit me on the head, and I swear that footstool waltzed right into my path. For that matter, the aces always do the pips’ pavane straight into my opponents’ hands, which is why I need—”

“Some other time,” Kasey said, handing Jason the cue stick before he left, shaking his head. The lady in the painting made more sense.

* * * *

“Do you think I am different, my dear?” The duke and Lady Phillida Granleigh were strolling between sets at Miss Georgina Leydon’s come-out ball.

“Different how, Caswell? Are you parting your hair to the other side or some such? I hadn’t noticed.”

She noticed what every other female in the room was wearing, Kasey couldn’t help observing, since Phillida kept up a running commentary on Miss Dalrymple’s dampened skirts, Lady Henderson’s crooked hairpiece, and Countess Cavanaugh’s
daring décolletage. She herself was stunning in a sky blue gown that matched her eyes, with a lace overskirt and embroidered flowers at the flounced hem. Even now, though, those sky blue eyes were darting around the room, making sure everyone saw her on the arm of a duke.

Kasey did not want to ask outright if the earl’s daughter thought he was attics to let, so he hedged. “No, I mean different from other men.”

“La, Caswell, you are not supposed to be like other men. You are a duke.”

Fluff and feathers, indeed, Kasey thought, recalling the painted lady’s words. Lady Phillida was a Diamond of the First Water, and they made a handsome couple with nearly matching blond hair, but could he face a lifetime of this inconsequential chatter? Perhaps he truly was insane to be considering making the chit his bride, for the sake of his succession.

Her mother was smiling at them from the sidelines, planning the wedding, no doubt, and her father was bouncing between the card room and the dance floor, making himself available in case Kasey wished to ask him a particular question. The only question His Grace wished to ask anyone this evening was if he was losing his mind, if he had the wild-eyed gaze of a bedlamite, or the pallor of someone who had seen a ghost. The Earl of Granleigh would not care if he sprouted horns, Kasey knew, as long as he did not lose his fortune.

“Whatever possessed Miss Rostover to put on such a pale yellow gown?” Lady Phillida was saying, before a sharp glance from her mother recalled her to the matter at hand, namely an offer for her hand. “Should you care for a stroll on the balcony, Your Grace?”

Kasey knew he’d be more than crazy to accept such an offer; he’d be betrothed before midnight. “No, my dear. I fear the chill night air might prove detrimental to my health.”

Phillida frowned. “I think you are different from my usual beaus, Caswell, now that you mention it.”

“Yes?”

“You’re older.” Fine. Now he was demented and decrepit.

Chapter Five

Almost anything a man might wish to know could be found in Lord Leydon’s library. Some of it was even between the pages of the leather-bound volumes. The rest reposed in the gentlemen strewn about the room in comfortable armchairs, reading today’s newspapers, napping behind yesterday’s newspapers, or conducting affairs of state and commerce that would fill tomorrow’s newspapers. They were, one and all, avoiding the crowds, the dancing, and their wives.

Kasey nodded to several silver-haired gentlemen, contemporaries of his late father, if not his grandfather, seeking the likeliest source for the information he sought. His eyes finally alighted on Baron Stallworth, who was not only awake, but awake on all suits. Better yet, the baron used to be a bosom bow of the poor King, and Jason’s godfather, to boot. No one would question a conversation between them, and Stallworth would not repeat it. Kasey stopped to take a glass of fine cognac from the waiting servant, knowing that the Leydons did not stint when it came to entertaining. Of course, the duke decided, after an appreciative swallow, if they had a great galloping girl like Georgina to fire off, they had to do it first-rate.