Page 22 of To Tame the Wild Rake
That had been several years ago. Tony had been surviving somehow, doing odd jobs whenever someone would employ him. Honest or not, Charlotte assumed, and certainly wouldn’t blame him.
Aldridge asked more questions. Tony’s birthdate brought the comment that Aldridge had been in Scotland for a year around the time Tony was conceived. But the marquis reacted to the address where Tony had sought his father. “But surely… Tony, what did your mother tell you about your father?”
“He was right young, she said. But kind and he made her laugh. She was working for a milliner in a village called Windsor, and the old lady was a besom. They kept company till he had to go home for the summer holidays, and Mam didn’t know she’d caught a baby till after he left. Then the besom fired her, so she took the coach up to London and found him, and he bought her the shop.”
Windsor? Charlotte knew the Haverfords well enough to leap to an unlikely conclusion. “He was only fifteen!” she objected.
Tony looked from her to Aldridge. “My brother Jonathan was at Eton in Windsor,” Aldridge explained. “And yes, he did have a London apartment.” His voice dried. “The duke our father thought that young men should have a place to spend time away from their mother.”
“My second name is Jonathan,” Tony offered. “Anthony Jonathan Tweedy.”
Aldridge smiled. “The name is a further clue. Even Tweedy. Tweede means ‘second’ in Flemish. Gren is Haverford’s second son. We’ll write to Gren to confirm, but I believe you are my long-lost nephew, young Tony.”
Charlotte served them both with tea and cake as Aldridge explained that Jonathan had been overseas for the past seven years, and two years ago had married into one of the principalities between Russia and the German states. “I expect your mother’s letter went astray,” he said. “He would have written to ask me or our brother David to help you if he’d known you needed us.”
It was a long visit; longer than Tony was really well enough for. But he was intrigued as Aldridge shared some stories from Lord Jonathan’s childhood and youth, and she kept putting off turning Aldridge out.
In the end, he made the move. “You need to rest, and her ladyship and I have to prepare for a ball. If Lady Charlotte permits, I will return to visit you tomorrow.”
10
For once, Aldridge was looking forward to a ball. Lady Charlotte had promised to dance a set with him—the set before supper, at that. She had come to him when she needed help, and this afternoon when he visited Tony Tweedy, the icy defences that had won her the name North Wind were nowhere in evidence. They had talked more easily than in all the years since he first showed an interest in courting her.
Even better, he would be escorting her for the first part of the evening. He’d gone from visiting Tony to consulting Bentham about his father—Bentham had concurred with the dissenting voice among the three doctors. Nothing could be done at this stage apart from making the duke as comfortable as possible.
Lord Andrew had arrived as Aldridge was leaving, on an errand for his father to question those who’d been at the fire and take the information to David Wakefield. When Aldridge had mentioned his need to leave in time for the ball, Lord Andrew had asked him to pass on the message that he would be there in plenty of time to conduct his cousins home.
Since Aldridge would be escorting his mother the duchess, he offered to ask her to chaperone the Winderfield sisters as well as her ward, Jessica. Jessica had returned early from a house party yesterday but would say nothing about her reasons beyond a wish to do some shopping in London before the family retired to the country for Christmas.
Aldridge expected she had been snubbed and gossiped about. When they were babies, Her Grace of Haverford had taken three of her husband’s base-born daughters into her own nursery as her wards. His Grace never countermanded her decision, but he retaliated by pretending they did not exist. Jessica and her half-sister Matilda had made their debut three Seasons ago, though rumours about their origins made would-be suitors wary. It would have helped if the Duke of Haverford, their father, acknowledged them.
In the carriage, Jessica diverted his questions by teasing him about his new haircut, and Aldridge let her. Both Mama and Aldridge had warned her not to go to the house party without them present to demand that the other guests treat her with the respect due to a young lady, but she had insisted on going with only an elderly cousin as her chaperone, and Cousin Maude was far too ineffectual to defend Jess from the cuts and insults Society offered those of questionable birth.
He’d not insist on answers; let Jess keep her pride. But he would find out. No one hurt his sister and got away with it.
Perhaps by the time the youngest, Frances, was old enough for a Season, Aldridge would be duke and able to lend her his consequence. Meanwhile, Matilda had made a spectacular and unexpected match at the beginning of this year, and Aldridge had hopes this would encourage those interested in Jessica.
The carriage eventually made its way up to the head of the queue and stopped at the steps up into the house. Aldridge descended and helped his ladies down and saw them into the entrance hall before returning outside to wait for the Ladies Charlotte and Sarah.
The stars were aligned in his favour this evening, he concluded as he conducted the Winderfield sisters to his mother’s side. Once they were in the ballroom, Her Grace gravitated towards the older ladies while the younger ladies crossed the room to talk to their own friends, Aldridge trailing in the same direction.
Charlotte noticed and smiled. She was relaxed and friendly tonight, which was a gift Aldridge intended to enjoy. Sarah, though, was on edge about something. Then Bentham entered the room. His eyes sought and found Sarah, whose tension shifted up another notch.
Charlotte took her sister’s hand. On the whole, Aldridge was inclined to like Bentham, but if he upset Sarah, that would upset Charlotte, which Aldridge wasn’t about to allow. But the man approached and both sisters greeted him politely.
Other gentlemen came to claim the sisters for the first dance. Aldridge took Jessica out on the floor, making it clear to the assembly that she was the precious sister of the almost Duke of Haverford. He handed her over to the Earl of Colyton. Hadn’t he been courting Lady Sarah last time Aldridge noticed him?
To keep himself from standing to one side glaring at the earl, a sin for which Jessica would not easily forgive him, Aldridge set off for the wallflower corner to seek partners for the two sets that stretched like a desert between now and the supper dance.
It was one of his stratagems for enjoying an evening. The less favoured maidens did not develop expectations from a single dance, and Aldridge enjoyed making the unseen ladies visible to other gentlemen. If a girl was graceful, and if she managed to converse and look as if she was enjoying herself, she was sure to get other invitations onto the floor.
And if she continued to be clumsy and tongue-tied, no matter how Aldridge exerted his dancing skills and his charm, then it was a mere thirty minutes of his time, soon over.
Tonight, the first wallflower partner was plain and a little plump. However, she danced like a dream and her smile at Aldridge’s humorous comments on the other dancers transformed her into passably pretty, though she didn’t manage much in the way of conversation.
The second was a bluestocking, his favourite kind of wallflower, since all he had to do was find a topic that fascinated her, and she carried the burden of conversation from that point. Some of them were even eloquent, and Aldridge had whiled away many a set learning about topics as varied as Sapphic poetry, the construction of automatons, and the wildflowers of rural Shropshire.
Sadly, this partner’s genuine interest in archaeological digs was not enough to overcome her flat delivery of a crushing volume of measurements and dates that obscured the very real human stories that made such investigations come alive.
