The Viscount's Revenge (The Royal Ambition Series Book 4) (20 page)

“How is my aunt?” asked Amanda in a low voice.

“She is still in great distress. Charles says cynically he thinks she is beginning to enjoy the drama and that may be the case. What I am come for, Miss Colby, is to proffer my apologies. But, I beg of you, avoid my son. It will not make his lot easier to bear. As a man of honour and a gentleman, he is honour-bound to marry Lady Mary.”

“And if he were not?” asked Amanda in a voice barely above a whisper. “Would he marry me?”

“That I do not know, and it is useless to speculate thereon. Perhaps your attraction for him lies simply in the fact you are forbidden fruit. Gentlemen always lust after what they should not have.”

Amanda hung her head and Mrs. Fitzgerald looked at her with a certain sympathy.

“Has Charles shown any actual love for you?”

Passion, Amanda thought, a certain teasing mockery, a certain warmth. But love?

Slowly she shook her head.

“Then it should make your task easier,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald. “Goodness knows, I have my hands full with Susan. I do not think telling her lies about how attractive she looks has done the slightest good at all.”

“It is better than constantly telling her she is plain,” flashed Amanda. “Forgive me, ma’am,” she added in a contrite voice, “but I fear Susan’s clumsiness and gaucheries came about because she was accustomed to thinking herself plain.”

“I will decide how to bring up my daughter,
if
you please, and I am not in need of advice from a chit like you,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald tartly, reverting to her former manner. “I was a great beauty in my youth. Susan takes after her father.”

Lady Mary removed her ear from the other side of the door and slid off quietly along the passageway. She was consumed with rage and jealousy. She did not give a rap if Lord Hawksborough married her reluctantly, just so long as he
did
marry her.

Lady Mary had put considerable work into securing him. She had adopted a free-and-easy and open manner which she instinctively knew would sit well with him. She could not risk being jilted again. She was extravagant and coveted Lord Hawksborough’s money to buy beautiful gowns and jewels. Her first fiancé had been killed in a duel after he was accused of cheating at cards. Her second had complained she was out to send him into the River Tick since she had already started to make inroads in his fortune before the wedding.

And then he had run away. Her face still burned as she remembered the shame of that day. The engagement to Hawksborough had proved to the Polite World that she was an attractive woman. She had seized the prize from under the pretty noses of so many. She did not love Lord Hawksborough. But she was determined to keep a close guard on him until the day of the wedding.

Amanda Colby must be removed. There must be some way to discredit her. Lady Mary sat down to plot and scheme.

The Season seemed to be hurtling towards Amanda at a tremendous rate. Mrs. Fitzgerald had secured vouchers for both Susan and Amanda to Almack’s—those famous assembly rooms which were the high temple of London fashion.

Relieved that the repercussions over her marriage proposal were not nearly so great as she had feared, Amanda began conscientiously to look for a beau. Having said she loved young Mr. Carruthers, she decided he would do as well as anyone. He was a cheerful, unaffected young man of twenty-three. He was not possessed of any great degree of intelligence, but he made up for it by being unflaggingly good-natured. He seemed happy to accept the role of Amanda’s beau, although he had no serious intentions of marriage. He supposed he would become married sometime in the vague future, but for the moment he was content to squire the vivacious and undemanding Miss Colby anywhere she wished.

Lady Mary had been unexpectedly friendly. Amanda did not trust her, but was prepared to accept her surface character, since she still felt guiltily that there had been some truth in Mrs. Fitzgerald’s original lecture: she
had
been casting languishing eyes at Lord Hawksborough.

Richard came down from Oxford for a weekend and paid court to Susan, which quite restored that young lady’s
amour propre
, and she graciously agreed to resume her rides with Amanda in the Park.

Aunt Matilda had not quite forgiven Amanda and had returned for a while to her old habit of sleeping too much. She was convinced her lover had been stolen from her. The whirl of London fashion had rather gone to her head, and in a mildly crazy way, she regarded her niece as a rival.

But a few bullying and bracing words from Mrs. Fitzgerald at least got Aunt Matilda back on her feet and out into the world again.

Amanda was out riding early one morning with Susan and Mr. Carruthers. They were hailed by Colonel John Withers, the Hussar officer who had been of the party the evening they had gone to see Kean in
Othello.
He engaged Susan in conversation, leaving Mr. Carruthers to ride side by side with Amanda a little way ahead.

Amanda was wearing a smart blue velvet riding habit which she felt became her. It gave her confidence to sound out Mr. Carruthers on the subject of marriage. She felt it was time the young man showed signs of popping the question. So far he had been about as loverlike towards her as her brother, Richard.

“I confess I am dreading the Season,” said Amanda, watching the spring sun burn through the mist which snaked around the boles of the old trees in Hyde Park. Daffodils grew in the tussocky grass, and the young leaves were fairy green. Shafts of sunlight, diffused and broadened by the mist, turned the Park into a pantomime transformation scene.

Any moment, the gauze would rise, the trees would melt away, and there they would be in Prince Charming’s palace, and Prince Charming would be wearing her—it was always a woman—glittering uniform of tinsel and silver epaulettes, the sort of thing poor Prinny used to wear before his mentor, Mr. Brummell, persuaded him it was vulgar.

“Nothing to fear about the Season,” said Peter Carruthers.

“It is different for a man,” replied Amanda, slowing her horse to an ambling pace.

“How so?”

“Gentlemen do not
need
to get married,” pointed out Amanda.

He frowned deeply, as if faced by a mathematical problem of great complexity. Then his face cleared. “Ladies don’t have to either,” he said triumphantly. “Do you care to gallop, Miss Colby?”

“No,” said Amanda crossly. “And it is
not
the same for ladies. What else can a lady do, if she does not marry? She can become a governess, someone neither fish nor fowl, despised by the mistress and the upper servants. She can become a companion, and measure out her days holding some cross old lady’s knitting.”

Mr. Carruthers reined in his horse to give the matter full attention. A shaft of sunlight gilded his curly fair hair and sent prisms of light sparkling from the large diamond in his stock.

At last he turned an awestruck face to Amanda. “By George, Miss Colby,” he said in admiration. “I always thought you was a deep’un. Now,
I
would never have thought of a thing like that.”

Short of saying to this cackle-brained lump of amiability, “Will you marry me?” I don’t really see what else I can say, thought Amanda.

Nonetheless, she tried again. “I must marry, you see. I only hope I can find someone kind and good-natured.”

“Like me,” said Mr. Carruthers jovially, and Amanda sighed with relief. “Tell you what, I’ll look around m’ friends. Now, I don’t plan to get leg-shackled for a few years, but I’ve noticed that some of ’em are suddenly struck with the thought. Take Philip Otley. One minute, biggest rake in town. Gets moody one night. Looks down at the dregs of his fifth bottle and says, ‘I’m going to get married.’ Just like that! ‘Who?’ I asks. ‘Don’t know,’ says he, ‘but anyone will do.’ So there you are. Would you care to gallop, Miss Colby?”

“Oh,
yes
,” sighed Amanda. She let him fly off ahead and stayed where she was, wrapped in thought. She had wasted
weeks
on Mr. Carruthers. And she had all but proposed to him. Good heavens! What if he went about the clubs saying Amanda Colby was desperate for a husband!

She spurred her horse and galloped after him, only to find when she finally caught up that she need not have troubled. Mr. Carruthers had already forgotten the whole conversation.

Amanda began to feel downcast. Catching a husband was going to be very difficult. Oh, if there was only a way of making money that did not involve marriage!

Without really taking into consideration to whom she was speaking, she voiced this thought aloud to Lady Mary, simply because Lady Mary happened to be the only female around when she arrived home.

“There is a very easy way,” said Lady Mary casually. “But I suppose you know about it.”

Amanda shook her head.

“Well, it depends on your luck at the card table.…”

“I am
very
lucky.”

“Then there are gaming houses for ladies, all most genteel, I assure you.”

“But how does one gain an introduction to one of those houses?”

“In the case of the best ones, by invitation. You see, a certain noble lady will send out cards of invitation, just as if to an ordinary card party. That way she can escape the attention of the law. Not that there is anything precisely
illegal
, you understand.

“All the best people go. I have an invitation to Lady Mannering’s tonight, but I have refused it because we are bound for the opera. Of course, I could go anytime during the night because the play will not finish until dawn but—ah, me—I do not have your luck.”

Lady Mary rummaged around in her diamond-shaped reticule and brought out a plain card with black embossed lettering. “There, you see… I think I hear dear Charles in the hall. Excuse me, Miss Colby.”

Amanda slowly turned the invitation card over in her hands. It was oddly worded in that no one in particular was invited. “Admit bearer” was inscribed in small, curly script at the bottom.

Amanda wondered and wondered whether to go and try her luck. She decided to leave her fate up to the gods. If Lady Mary asked for her invitation back, then she would not go. But as the day wore on, calls were made in the company of Aunt Matilda, Mrs. Fitzgerald, and Lady Mary, but Lady Mary did not mention the gambling house again.

They were about to set out for the opera in the evening. Lord Hawksborough had said he would meet them there. He avoided Amanda and always seemed only to see her when they were both surrounded by a crowd of people. Aunt Matilda was scanning a letter which had come from Mr. Cartwright-Browne by the morning post. She had put off reading it, because, she said, it would no doubt be full of the boring details of yet another lawsuit against Mr. Brotherington.

But as her eyes moved over the crabbed handwriting, her long sheeplike face fell and the end of her nose began to turn pink, a sure sign of distress.

“What is it, Aunt?” asked Amanda.

“It is Mr. Cartwright-Browne. He wishes to terminate the lease of Fox End. I doubt if we shall find another tenant to take it for a mere three months. I suppose I must give in gracefully, or no doubt he will try to sue
me.
We could have done with the extra…”

Aunt Matilda bit her lip and glanced away from Mrs. Fitzgerald, but everyone knew what she had been about to say.

They most certainly could have done with the extra money.

“I have the headache,” said Amanda suddenly. “I feel I cannot attend the opera tonight. Present my excuses to Lord Hawksborough.”

“You are certainly very flushed,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald.

“Oh, I think she should most certainly lie down,” said Lady Mary sweetly, and Amanda looked at her with sudden suspicion.

Did Lady Mary guess what she, Amanda, planned to do?

But that was impossible.

In the privacy of her bedroom, she studied the invitation again. Montague Street. Not so very far away. She could take a hack.

Amanda sat and thought furiously. She felt she did not have the courage to visit a strange house on her own. There was no one she could ask to go with her.

Susan!

Susan was staying at home because she said she detested opera. All that caterwauling and screeching gave her the vapours.

After a search, Amanda found Susan in the Green Drawing Room, lying on a sofa in front of the fire, reading a letter and eating chocolates.

“You didn’t go either,” said Susan, thrusting the letter under a cushion. “What’s the matter? No other men to steal?”

“Oh, Susan, do not be at odds with me,” said Amanda. “I need your help.”

“Fire away,” said Susan, sitting up and looking more amiable. “Richard told me to take care of you, anyway.”

“Richard? When did you see him?”

“I didn’t,” said Susan, blushing. “He… er… wrote.”

“How is he? What does he say?”

“Oh, this and that and t’other,” said Susan airily. “Tell me your problem.”