Without a Summer (8 page)

The Prince Regent, ever the gallant, took Melody’s hand and bent over it. “A pleasure, madam.”

“The pleasure is entirely mine, I assure you, sir.” Melody lowered her eyes so she looked through her eyelashes at the Prince.

“But of course you are required to say that.”

“Not required, no.” Melody tilted her head toward him as though she were sharing a joke. “I am required to say that I am grateful to be invited—which I am—and that you are most kind to invite me—which would be true, had you known that I was coming—but I am not required to tell you that it is a pleasure to meet you. By that, you may know that I am sincere.”

Throwing his head back, the Prince Regent laughed. Jane envied her sister the ease with which she made even the most excessive statements charming. She had the Prince Regent firmly in her grasp, along with the rest of his set.

“Now then, my dear, you had begun to say something when overwhelmed by my Most August Presence. Would you be so kind as to repeat it?”

“Only … it is about riots again, sir.” Melody dipped her head becomingly. “We saw a riot of Luddites upon our arrival in London, so it is not only in the north.”

“Well, do not fret. We shall have no riots
here
.” He looked around at the other gentlemen and said more firmly, as though his word could cause it to be so. “No riots.”

“My sister has come with us to experience the Season.” Jane pitched her voice so that the other men in their circle could hear, though not so loudly as to be indecorous. She wanted them to know that Melody was Out. “This is her first event in London.”

“Then we shall direct our attention to pleasure, and leave these topics of unrest for another day. Sir David, Lady Vincent … would you be so kind as to offer us a diversion?”

Vincent inclined his head coolly, as if a request from a member of the royal family were part of everyday life. His colour mounted, though. From the sudden warmth that Jane felt in her cheeks, she suspected that she had flushed at the attention rather more than her husband had. Offering his arm, Vincent led her a little away from the group.

Jane lowered her voice to ask, “Would you really decline the royal wedding?”

Vincent shuddered. “Any wedding. I do not do weddings, which His Royal Highness knows. He is merely teasing me.”

“Ah.” Her mind drifted back to their own wedding, which had been a small affair, to her mother’s eternal regret. If Melody—when Melody was married, Mrs. Ellsworth would want more pomp than Jane and Vincent had obliged her with. Thinking of pomp … “Would a
tableau vivant
serve, do you think?” Jane pulled her gloves off and the wind found her newly bare skin, chilling it.

“Admirably.” Vincent tucked in his chin and considered the lake. “Would you feel up to a Jack Frost?”

“Of course, though it feels rather obvious.” More than that, she wanted some colour to relieve the ice and snow. “What about Persephone?”

His eyes narrowed with thought. “Her return, or when Hades seizes her? Ah … her return, of course. The spring.”

“My thoughts as well.”

With a grunt of assent, Vincent cast a
Sphère Obscurcie
around them, making them vanish from view within the ball of glamour. Outside the
Sphère,
several of the Prince Regent’s guests gaped in astonishment. The technique that Vincent had developed was faster and more thorough a method for masking than any other Jane had seen. He took a single fold of glamour and twisted it to create a path for the sunlight to follow, guiding it around whatever lay in the
Sphère
’s midst. Other glamourists masked objects by creating a
trompe-l’œil
and deceiving the eye with a fully rendered illusion of the space without the object. That technique took scrupulous care and sometimes weeks to complete.

The speed of Vincent’s technique had allowed the Duke of Wellington to defeat Napoleon the previous year at the Battle of Quatre Bras. Her husband employed it more regularly, as he did now, to create a private space in which to prepare a
tableau vivant.

With haste, Jane sketched a Persephone around herself, looking back at Vincent’s Hades. Working so quickly meant that their glamours were less completely rendered than the ones that they were creating for Lord Stratton. Jane likened it to creating a watercolour instead of an oil painting. Still, it took effort. By the time they had drawn the rugged cave from which Persephone was emerging, Jane’s heart beat rapidly. A crowd had gathered around the Prince Regent in anticipation of their display.

“Ready?” Vincent’s breath puffed in white plumes from Hades’s mouth, as though the lord of the underworld were breathing fire.

Jane marked her hold on the slipknot she had ready. If Vincent’s forte was his strength and speed, Jane’s was her cleverness with knots. “Yes.”

With a simple twist, Vincent dropped the
Sphère Obscurcie
that masked them. An audible gasp went up from a number of those assembled as the tableau appeared. Using his formidable stamina, Vincent managed all of the threads and folds surrounding him to make Hades’s arm reach for Jane’s Persephone. Jane answered by having Persephone step away from him. She would not have been able to do this before she had begun to work with Vincent. Her constitution had improved since then, though her heart raced as she held the threads, and her breath came rapidly. She had been cold before, but the exertion vanquished that.

Jane released the threads she had bound into a slipknot and the ground around her seemed to bloom into a patch of green dotted with purple crocuses. For this brief moment, spring had come. Led by the Prince Regent, the crowd burst into applause.

Jane and Vincent held the tableau for a moment longer, then released the folds masking themselves. They could, if the situation had warranted it, tie off the threads and step out of the illusion, but part of the charm of a
tableau vivant
was its transient nature. If their audiences were allowed close scrutiny, they would see the broad strokes and coarse stitches that went into creating so fast a glamour.

As they reappeared, the audience granted them another polite burst of applause, then went back to mingling, talking about what they had seen and what the weather was likely to be on the morrow.

Vincent wiped the sweat from his brow. “I fear that the time spent resting at your parents’ house, for all that it was comfortable, has left me without the endurance I once had.”

“I know.” Jane was all too aware of her breath as each exhalation hung steaming in the air. “A week back at work is not enough, it seems.”

“We should have practised more at your…” Vincent raised his head, looking out at the lake. “Is that Mr. O’Brien with your sister?”

So involved had she been in creating the
tableau vivant
that Jane had not seen Melody depart from the Prince Regent’s set, but now Melody hung on the arm of a young gentleman, not far from the edge of the lake. Both wore skates, and, though Mr. O’Brien seemed uncertain on the ice, he supported Melody as they skated. His red hair flamed like a torch in the light. “It is.”

Jane could not feel sanguine about seeing Mr. O’Brien in such intimacy with her sister. It was impossible to disregard the way that his interest had faded upon understanding that Melody was the sister of artisans. Entirely separate from his heritage, she wondered if his interest were sincere. Had the Prince Regent not so recently condescended to notice Melody, Jane would feel fewer doubts about the attention Mr. O’Brien paid her now.

“Muse … what is wrong?”

“Nothing. Why?”

Vincent tilted his head and regarded her with incredulity. “Perhaps I am misled, then. I thought I heard you snort.”

“That would not be ladylike.”

“Hm.” Vincent offered his arm. “And yet…”

Sighing, Jane walked with him along the edge of the pond. “If you will press me, then yes. I am disturbed that Mr. O’Brien is attending Melody.”

“And?”

“He did not consider her so worth his while before the Prince Regent noticed her. I worry that he thinks to use her for her perceived consequence.”

Vincent peered past her to where the pair glided laughing across the ice. “This seems unlikely.”

“No? Did you not see the way he cut short his visit when he realized who her relations were?”

“I thought he was simply being polite. We had finished work and were ready to depart. He, very properly, did not detain us.”

Jane opened her mouth to object, breath steaming out, and closed it again to think. When had Mr. O’Brien made his excuses? “Perhaps…”

A gust of wind caught laughter from the pond and carried it to them. Melody held Mr. O’Brien’s hands as he guided her across the ice. Even at a distance, the delight on her countenance was plain.

“She is happy. Is that not why we brought her to London? Where is the—” Vincent went rigid beside Jane, coming to a halt in the path. He turned and almost let go of her hand. Catching himself, Vincent made a studied effort to regain his composure.

Alarmed, Jane put a hand on his chest. “Vincent?”

He caught her hand and bent down to whisper in her ear. “My father. With his back to us.”

His father. Here? On the path ahead of them stood a tall well-built older gentleman with an elegantly cut coat. His hair had once been a dark brown, but was now brushed with silver where it fell over his collar. He rested one hand on a walking stick in a posture of casual disregard.

Facing him was an older gentleman with hair that matched the snow. His cheeks were reddened, though it was difficult to say if it was from the cold or anger. “Sir. I may promise you that the extreme cold of the season is in no way caused by coldmongers. You may have my assurance on that.”

“Of a certainty, Lord Eldon. Your assurance is worthy of much consideration. I can think of no reason why you should have any partiality to the coldmongers.”

That Lord Verbury was here should cause no great wonder. He was, after all, an Earl, and as a peer he was likely to be in town for the Season. And yet it was beyond anything she had looked for to come upon him unawares in this manner. At Almack’s Assembly, or in a salon, perhaps that might have been expected; but outside in the snow seemed an ill-fitted place for such an encounter.

In spite of her deep astonishment, Jane could not help but study Lord Verbury, seeing Vincent in his height and the lines of his back. Jane had met none of Vincent’s family in the time since their marriage, and, until Lady Penelope called, had assumed that she would not. Frederick Hamilton, the Earl of Verbury, had cast Vincent off when he decided to pursue a career in glamour. Jane’s one attempt to contact the man, when Vincent’s life had been in danger, had met with silence. She had had no desire to meet him since.

Lord Eldon’s nostrils widened. “Do you insinuate something, sir?”

“Should I?” Lord Verbury’s inquiry chilled in the air.

“You seem to. I would rather you said it than hide behind a façade of seeming politeness.”

With a shrug, Lord Verbury drew his walking stick across the snow, marking a line between them. “I have no need to insinuate anything. If you tell me that the coldmongers are not creating this unnatural cold, why would any right-thinking man dispute you? Your heritage is a matter of common knowledge. ‘Common’ is perhaps the best word for a man who was born a coldmonger’s son.”

With that, Lord Verbury gave Lord Eldon his shoulder and turned on his heel. He was now facing Jane and Vincent, though his countenance betrayed nothing.

Vincent’s arm tightened under her hand. He murmured, “In all likelihood, he will not even condescend to notice us.”

“There you are.” Lord Verbury crossed the snow and stopped in front of them, planting his walking stick. “I was told you would be here.”

“I did not have the same intelligence, alas.” Vincent’s voice was steady and easy, but his hand pressed Jane’s so firmly against his arm that her bones ached.

“You might have, if you had spoken with Penelope.” Inclining his head, Lord Verbury seemed to see Jane for the first time. “This is your wife?”

“Lady Vincent.” Jane could almost hear his teeth grate. “Allow me to present the Earl of Verbury.”

“How do you do?” Jane dropped a curtsy, as was owed to mere filial duty.

“Very well, thank you.” He bowed with a surprising degree of charm. “My son spoke so highly of you that I was disappointed when he did not bring you to our home.”

“I—we have been quite busy.” Jane had not looked for anything like interest from all she had heard of Vincent’s father. She had rather expected a dismissal.

“Perhaps we might remedy that, since we are all in London.” That courtesy was all the attention the Earl paid her, fixing again on Vincent. “I had heard the Prince Regent honoured you with a knighthood. The Royal Guelphic Order, I understand. I congratulate you.” He tucked his chin in, the same way that Vincent did when thinking. Jane shivered. “It seems that your chosen profession is turning out to be a benefit rather than the stigma I expected.”

“Do I hear an admission of a mistake?” Vincent’s voice was admirably level.

Lord Verbury pursed his lips. After a moment, he looked at the ground. “You hear a wish to repair the relations with my son.”

“I must admit this comes as something of a surprise.” Through his coat, Jane could feel Vincent trembling, but he gave no visible sign of how deeply affected his sensibility was. Had she not known him, she might have thought he was indifferent.

“A surprise that I should have an interest in my son?”

“You have not shown one thus far.”

“What do you expect? You came to me a year and a half ago, asking to return so you could marry, and then threw me over again.” He glanced at Jane. Here was the sneer she had expected. “To be a
glamourist
.”

She lifted her chin and matched his gaze. “You have a peculiar way of mending bridges, sir. Have you really so little understanding of your son as that? His art is his life.”

“Glamour.” He snorted. “I should advise you to give up glamour as a profession. Have you considered having children?”