A Season to Be Sinful Page 2

  “C’est vrai. Fresh air. Daily walks. Hard work and prayer. None of us are prone to illness.”

  “If it is all as you say, then where is my daughter’s governess? Are my standards so exacting?”

  The Reverend Mother’s dark eyes slid to Sister Mary Joseph, the merest question in the tilt of the glance. “No, they are not,” she said slowly. “Your tour was thorough?”

  The sister pressed her lips together and nodded.

  Returning her inquiry back to the baron, the abbess said, “Then I can only suppose that there is some particular you require that is yet unknown to us, perhaps even to yourself. Given what you have said, we have many suitable candidates for the position of governess.”

  “Really? Like the redheaded cripple? Pure at first blush but clearly touched by the devil’s hand.” He paused, drawing on his recollection of something Sister Mary Joseph had said to him. “You cannot deny it, for I understand it is also your opinion that she is an abomination.”

  This time the Reverend Mother could not mask her surprise. Her nostrils flared with her sharp intake of air, and her regard for Mary Joseph was stern. Still, it was with a mixture of tenderness and resignation that she asked, “What has Lilith done now?”

  Lilith stared at the traveling and identification papers that Sister Mary Joseph thrust into her hands. It was after midnight, and a stub of a candle was all that illuminated Lilith’s cell. She had made room for Mary Joseph by sitting cross-legged at the head of her cot. Her thin cotton shift was pulled taut across her knees, and it served to catch the papers when they fell through her nerveless fingers.

  “Je ne comprends pas,” she said, pushing the papers off her lap and onto the cot. Her spine was no longer the curved deformity she had shown to the baron, but ramrod straight.

  “Quietly,” Mary Joseph whispered. “And in English, please. We do not want to be overheard, but if we are, it would be better if we were not well understood.”

  Lilith nodded. Everyone spoke some measure of English, but even Reverend Mother did not have the facility with the language that she and Mary Joseph enjoyed. They could speak rapidly and employ phrasing and cant that was often incomprehensible to those for whom l’anglais was a second language.

  “But why am I being sent away?” Lilith asked with all the plaintiveness of a child questioning the fairness of her punishment. “I do not want to go. This is my home.”

  Mary Joseph shook her head, her eyes sad but resolute. “No, it is not your home. You have always chafed at the restrictions of the abbey, and you would not want to live out your life here. Some of us have spirits that are set free in the service of our Lord. The abbey does not confine us as much as it defines our work.”

  “But I want to serve our Savior.” Unfortunately, even to Lilith’s ears this statement was marked by a certain defensive desperation that undermined its truthfulness. “You are my family,” she said, taking a different tack. “You. Sister Carmel. Sister Angeline. And Sister Mary Claire. Sister Agnes.”

  Mary Joseph held up one finger before Lilith named everyone who lived at the abbey as well as those who served it, from the groundskeepers to the groomsmen. “Shh. I know what we mean to you because I know what you mean to us.”

  In spite of the raised finger, Lilith was compelled to name one more. “Even the Reverend Mother,” she added quickly.

  This last elicited a gentle smile from Mary Joseph. “Of course, the Reverend Mother. She loves you, dearest. We all do.” She gathered the papers, squared them off so they fit neatly inside a slim leather packet, then placed the packet on Lilith’s lap. “There is not much time, and there are many details to attend. I must have your full attention and your promise to commit what I am telling you to memory.”

  Lilith was not yet prepared to listen. “I do not want to go with him. He frightens me. I saw how you looked at him. It was the same.”

  Mary Joseph did not deny Lilith’s observation, only her assumption. “I am not here to arrange your departure with the baron. Is that what you have thought all this time? No, don’t answer. I can see that it is. When he returns in the morning, it is my hope that you will be gone. That is important, for I am unsure that once you are in his company you will be able to get away. We are fortunate, indeed, that Reverend Mother insisted that you remain here this evening to make your farewells. More fortunate still that his lordship acquiesced.”

  This confused Lilith. She could not be certain what Sister Mary Joseph was telling her. Was she suggesting that the Reverend Mother had given her tacit approval to some alternate plan, or that they were about to take advantage of her kindness? The farewells, for all that they had been appreciated, had also been difficult. Lilith knew that with the exception of a few of the sillier girls, no one was truly happy for her.

  The sisters said the right things, of course—that this was a great opportunity, that she would have her eyes opened to the world, that she was blessed to be offered a position that would no doubt prove her mettle. They pointed out that the time she spent in Paris with the baron and his children would provide a lifetime of memories. They were much less effusive about the certainty that she would eventually go to London to live. The one moment of respite came when Sister Angeline announced that it was her fervent wish that the baron’s daughter would bless Lilith with the same challenges and rewards that Lilith had bestowed upon all of them.

  Lilith had laughed then, knowing it was true that she had been up to every sort of mischief. Now, however, the memory of Sister Angeline’s words were bittersweet, and she bent her head to shield tears from Mary Joseph. One dripped onto her unsteady hands but neither of them acknowledged it. “What would you have me do?” she asked with a calm that surprised her. “If I am not to be here when the baron returns, where will I be?”

  “On your way to Le Havre, I hope.”

  “Le Havre?” It was so far. Impossible.

  “Then across the channel and eventually to London.”

  “London?” In her terror she was becoming as silly as Justine Derain, the one they all called l’écho. Perhaps it was only that Justine was afraid, too, Lilith thought, and she kept her head down, this time with a sense of shame. “But I know no one there, and the baron—”

  “The baron will remain in Paris for months yet, mayhap see out the year there. Do you understand his purpose in France?”

  Lilith shook her head.

  “He is trying to effect a peace here. Détente. The emperor merely suffers the Englishman and the others like him, of course. They amuse him, I think, and there are always advantages to keeping one’s enemies at hand.”

  Glancing up, Lilith asked very softly, “Is that what we are, Sister? The emperor’s enemies?”

  “Non. Jamais. Do not think it.”

  “Mais, je suis l’anglaise. Vous aussi.”

  “English, remember? Yes, we are English, but we are also French. Chameleons, both of us, and survivors as well. It is not politics that interest me, or governments. They are institutions of man, not God.”

  The church, Lilith thought, might be sanctioned by God, but it was most assuredly an institution of man. She sighed suddenly, knowing that her ability to entertain that thought was further proof that she could not live the abbey life. Survivors, Sister Mary Joseph had named them both. For the nun it meant embracing the protection of the abbey walls, but Lilith understood finally that for herself, it meant escaping them.

  “What would you have me do, Sister?” she asked at length.

  Mary Joseph nodded faintly as she leaned forward and grasped Lilith’s hands in hers. “I have a brother, dearest Lily,” she said. “You must go to him.”

  One

  London, April 1815

  His nibs was a watchful one. She’d give him that. Most of the young bucks strolling through Covent Garden after the theatre discharged its patrons gave their full attention to the muslin set and never took notice of the footpads brushing their elbows. Some nights it was so easy to lift the contents of a gentleman�
��s pocket that there was no sport in it.

  She had never cared for the sport of it overmuch. Snick. Snack. A flick of the wrist and two swipes of a finely honed blade were usually all that was required. The threads, even the finest silk ones, could be sliced as easily as butter. Sometimes the money purse jangled, especially if it was nicely weighted, but by then it was already too late. Fleet of foot and as unpredictable in their movements as quicksilver, the thieves were already plunging through the crowd, hiding behind skirts as well as under them.

  The gentleman—and she could tell by his negligent confidence that he was at the very least a gentleman—inclined his head toward the woman on his arm as she spoke. The nature of the comment was not clear to her, as the gentleman’s features merely remained politely fixed. The woman evidently thought her observation was worthy of some sort of response because she raised her brows expectantly. His nibs remained unmoved. This seemed to cause his companion some distress as the curve of her dark red mouth faltered, then fell. Lest he miss the point, the woman underscored it by pursing her lips, not with disapproval, but petulance.

  It was not a look that sat well on the woman’s narrow features, she thought as she advanced on them, but that expression had arrested the gentleman’s attention and neither he nor his lightskirt made any attempt to evade her approach.

  She saw the buzz-gloaks coming at him from three directions, moving purposely through the crowd but without hurry or menace, cautious in the way they were proceeding to deliver the rum-hustle. Indeed, if she had not been looking for them, they might have easily escaped notice. It was all part and parcel of their plan, a plan they had executed successfully more times than she cared to contemplate. One would rub elbows with their quarry, one would beg his pardon, and one would step smartly on his ladybird’s ruffled skirt. They would move on quickly, but not at a run. They were boman prigs and knew their craft too well to draw more attention to themselves than was strictly necessary. If their victim realized his purse had been lifted and gave chase, then they would run. It would require more luck than determination to catch them, for they had a lightness of foot that equaled the lightness of their fingers and putting hands on them was like trying to snatch quicksilver.

  Her attention was all for them, gauging the moment they would strike, her deliberation matching their own. It surprised her, then, that she should notice anything at all outside the trap that was about to be sprung. Perhaps it was because she knew the players so well that one more or less in the drama gave her pause. It was as if Iago had made his entrance with Queen Titania’s fairie court; one knew immediately that Othello’s villain had no place in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  She did not mistake the man’s nature by naming him a villain. Although he was a brutish sort, with broad, uneven features and a heavy gait, he was in every way the equal of the dangerously sly and manipulative character that Shakespeare had perfectly penned.

  These thoughts flitted through her mind so quickly that she barely grasped their import; acting on them was impulsive, accomplished more by instinct than plan. She had arrived in this place with only one purpose: to stop the three young ruffians from picking the gentleman’s pockets. Once she saw the glint of the attacker’s blade, she was helpless to respond in any way save to stop him from slitting the gentleman’s throat.

  Launching herself forward at a run, her lithe body defied gravity as it took flight. For a few moments she was actually suspended above the crushed gravel path, then momentum brought her crashing into the gentleman, bearing him hard to the ground.

  Lady Georgia Pendelton, Countess of Rivendale, pressed her hands to her heart in what an idle observer might have determined was a dramatic, perhaps overwrought, gesture. Those fortunate people who numbered themselves among the lady’s dearest friends knew the sincerity of such gestures and would always recognize them as a sign that her sympathies were deeply engaged.

  “Never say you were hurt, Sherry. I do not think I can bear it if you say you were injured.” Her pale gray eyes narrowed as she made a complete survey of her godson. He had suffered a measure of this scrutiny when he crossed the threshold into her sitting room, but then she had not known he had had an adventure. Now she must assure herself that he was none the worse for it, dear boy.

  That dear boy, Alexander Henry Grantham, Viscount Sheridan, was in his twenty-eighth year, and he was as kindly cooperative of his godmother’s second study of his person as he had been her first.

  This inspection was nothing new. He had been all of five the first time he was aware of it. On that occasion Lady Rivendale had swept into the nursery, his own mother a few steps in her wake, and made an extraordinary fuss over him. There had been comments about the unfortunate darkening of his hair, from toffee brown to bittersweet chocolate. And was there nothing anyone could do about the cowlick that surely pointed due north like a compass needle? His eyes, she also noted as she raised his chin, had lost every hint that they might be green or hazel and now were as deeply brown as his hair. Why was he so pale? she wondered, and because she was Lady Rivendale, his mother’s great friend from childhood and his own dear godmother, she felt free to wonder this aloud.

  There was also a critique of the shape of his nose, which was pronounced as substantial as an eagle’s beak by his godmother and aquiline by his mother. “Just like his father’s,” Lady Sheridan had said. “Yes,” his godmother had replied, “but one hopes that can be changed.”

  She said nothing about his mouth, which he remembered thinking was a kindness, for surely his lower lip had been quivering by then. Still, he stood there and accepted it, watching her gravely from eyes that she had already pronounced too large for his thin face.

  She liked the way he stood, though, and complimented him on his soldier’s bearing. “Come, give us a hug,” she said, and enveloped him in her arms. For a long time afterward Sherry had thought the “us” he was hugging were the soft twin pillows of her breasts.

  “You must call me Aunt Georgia,” she told him. Of course he did. How could he refuse a woman with such important breasts?

  She would disappear for months, sometimes years, then announce herself without advance notice or invitation. She was always welcome. Presents arrived at odd times, never for the usual celebratory reasons like birthdays or Christmas, but simply because she thought of him. Later, when his younger sister reached the great age of six and exchanged the nursery for the schoolroom, Lady Rivendale proclaimed this also made her of interest and showered her with attentions that had been formerly reserved for him.

  He did not mind overmuch. His godmother was in every way generous with her affections. The more she gave of herself, the more she seemed to have to give. For proof of this, he had only to think of the visit she made to Eton in the month following the death of his parents.

  A great-uncle on his mother’s side was now guardian to him and his sister, but the charge lay heavily on his shoulders, more burden than privilege, and he gratefully surrendered all duties to Lady Rivendale when she applied for them. At the funeral service he had been overheard to say, “Deuced irresponsible of Sheridan and my niece to die with their children yet to be raised. What am I to do with the two brats? Oh, it is a simple enough thing with the lad. He is at Eton at least, and his future is set. But the girl? I can get nothing from her save tears.”

  When Lady Rivendale arrived at Eton, she had his sister in tow. It was one of the few times she did not inspect his person before enveloping him in her plump arms and plumper breasts; it was also the first time he was called Sherry.

  Viscount Sheridan. His father’s title, now his, but somehow uniquely his. No one had ever call his father Sherry, not even the dauntless Lady Rivendale.

  On the occasion of that visit she had announced they would be family now, and she said it with such practicality that Sherry and his sister never questioned the good sense of it.

  It was not a matter of becoming a family; they just were.

  “I am all of a piece,” he said, retur
ning to the present before she placed the back of her hand on his forehead. “The ill effects were confined to my frock coat, which split at the shoulder seam, and the backside of my trousers, which was pitted with gravel. Kearns says the frock coat will be repaired to its former fit; the trousers have already been surrendered to the ragpicker.”

  “I am certain your valet has your wardrobe well in hand—he has never failed to turn you out impressively—but what of your backside?”

  Sherry blinked. He should not have been surprised by the remark, for Lady Rivendale always spoke her mind. Most often it was a refreshing discourse. He found, however, when the subject was his backside the notion of such plain speaking was rather alarming.

  “You are really quite charmingly priggish,” she said, dropping both hands from her heart to lay them lightly on his forearm. “I have always thought so. No, you must not take offense, for none was meant.”

  “Saying that it is charming does not mitigate the priggishness.”

  Lady Rivendale smiled deeply. She loved his wry tone. Sherry might be a tad high in the instep, but at least he had the good sense to know it. “I will not be persuaded to allow my question to go unanswered.”

  Sherry regarded her gravely. “When I said I was all of a piece, dear heart, all the pieces included my backside.”

  Clapping her hands together smartly as she laughed, her ladyship sat back comfortably on the settee. “Splendid. That is perfectly splendid. Now, what of your companion? I suppose she emerged unscathed.”

  Had his sister made the remark he would have reproved her, but this was his godmother and he found himself chuckling instead. “You will be disappointed to learn it was just so.”

  She did not deny it. “Bother. I would not wish her any grievous injury, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “But the thought of Miss Dumont tumbling head over bucket, especially if it were done with little grace, well, it is a delicious image.”