Page 2 of The Devil of Drury Lane
Miss Clark stilled, her gaze making a detailed examination of her charge and recording things Mercy tried valiantly—every day, without success—to hide. It was quite unnerving. Gesturing to the sketchpad, her companion’s brow rose in speculation. “What’s that you have there?”
Mercy clutched her drawings close to her nonexistent bosom. In the end, however, pride was stronger than punitive threat. Exhaling sharply, heart beating double-time, she extended the folio.
Miss Clark flipped pages before returning to the most recent sketch, her gloved fingertip gliding like sunlight over Damien DeWitt’s features. “You’re quite talented, Lady Mercy. This is no idle effort.”
“It won’t be allowed,” Mercy whispered, clenching her fingers in her skirt and doing further damage to the already-crumpled silk, “in any way beyond what it has been. I’ve repeatedly asked for an art tutor and been denied. I’m told the daughter of an earl hasn’t a reason to perfect a talent aside from how to host a proper tea. And if he knew what I was drawing, who I was drawing, I’d be locked in my bedchamber for days. My father isn’t forgiving of any foibles but his own.”
Miss Clark tapped the vellum page, right atop the outline of Damien’s broad shoulder. Sighing, she closed the sketchpad and extended it to Mercy. “I wish I could dispute your assertion, but I cannot. I’ve been hindered my entire life, ground down to adhering to society’s belief of me. You’re right to fear reprisal, as your father is known as the sternest delegate in the House of Lords, not a man to trifle with.” Miss Clark dusted a stalk of grass from her sleeve. “However, there are ways to pursue your dream. Clandestine ways, if you’re willing to play the game as females have had to for centuries.”
“Game?” Mercy whispered over a rumble of thunder sounding in the distance, the wind whipping a contrary strand of hair against her cheek. “What game?”
“The game of life. Follow the rules required of a gently-bred miss of impeccable breeding. Stay inside the lines they’ve drawn for you. Feign a limited capacity for rebellion, for passion, for life. Everyone knows the quiet feline is left in peace to explore.”
Mercy tilted her head as a mental thunderbolt reached her. With a storm brewing at her back and a larger one brewing in her mind, the ground beneath her feet shifted in a way that seemed significant. Deceive them, deceive all of society.
“If I may provide a salient morsal of advice, Lady Mercy, once your father ceases anticipating trouble, he’ll quit looking for it. Leaving you to discover your world, in a stunted manner, yes, but better than no discovery at all.”
Mercy glanced over her shoulder as Damien’s arrow struck the target dead-center, the feather tip quivering with the impact. He lowered the bow and flexed his shoulders, sending a vibration through her that didn’t calm until it hit her toes. Her fingertips tingled, begging to draw the expression of rapture on his face.
Somehow, she knew the flutter of her heart spelled disaster.
Miss Clark tucked her arm through Mercy’s and turned her away from temptation. “You understand that your father would never accept a third son. Not when the Duke of Herschel has a sordid reputation, his title being sullied by two generations of disgrace. To make matters worse, Herschel’s offspring, the twins in any case, are proving to be incorrigible without hope of bringing the DeWitt family where they should be in standing. His heir, Knoxville, is written about far too often in the scandal rags, and Cortland, why, he isn’t any better. While the youngest, Damien, the one you appear taken with, merely has a reputation for being odd, his nose always stuck in a book.” She clicked her tongue against her teeth. “I fear incorrigible charm is preferable to studious disregard.”
Temper sparking, she jerked her arm free. “He’s not odd, he’s…”
Her companion smiled softly, patiently waiting for her retort.
Mercy halted, pushing a tight breath past her lips. Honestly, since he’d never spoken to her, she didn’t know what Damien was, aside from beautiful. Her estimation about his brilliance was simply a guess. At a musicale last summer, he held the veranda door as she sailed through it in an effort to escape Lady Merchant’s horrid pianoforte stylings. Then there was the time she entered the village mercantile as he exited. He’d had a cut slicing across his upper lip, as if he’d been scuffling with his ‘incorrigible’ brothers, and the scent of woodsmoke clung to his clothing. This bit she distinctly recalled, the aroma a firm piece of the memory.
For all that she found Damien DeWitt fascinating, she had absolutely no reason to do so.
Miss Clark recaptured her arm and moved them at a swift pace down the gravel footpath. “Don’t make the mistake I did, voicing my thoughts to anyone willing to listen without a handsome dowry to erase my misdeeds. Or the error in judgment of your beloved aunt, her desires on blatant display for society to witness. This world is unforgiving of independent women, and you’ll be better off the moment you realize it and act accordingly. Construct a suitable façade and hide behind it, Lady Mercy. If it’s solidly built, in private, you may then do as you wish. Render a thousand sketches for your delight if it pleases you. Find your pleasures, find your soul.”
Mercy stumbled along, aware she was being given mature counsel for the first time in her life. Counsel that sounded sensible, should she be able to follow it. “When I marry, how will I hide my true self from him?”
Miss Clark laughed, a trace of bitterness bending the sound. “Find a man you can outwit, my dear. Dullards are the easiest to control, and heaven knows, society is full of them.”
“Whitmore’s strange little duckling is following you again. I just saw her being dragged home by the melancholy soul paid to chaperone her. There isn’t enough blunt in Christendom to make that position tolerable.”
Damien tugged the arrow from the target’s bright blue center, loathing himself for thinking the color wasn’t far from the shade of the duckling’s eyes. He’d noticed last year when she’d nearly run him down fleeing a packed salon. Although, when he’d arrived to find Lady Merchant slaughtering Beethoven’s fifth, he’d understood Lady Mercy’s behavior. Sighing, he gestured to his brother, Cort, with his bow. “She’s not strange, she’s…”
Damien paused, unsure what the earl’s willful daughter was, as he’d never spoken so much as a word to the chit. He’d only found her underfoot on numerous occasions, her dazzling cerulean gaze fixed on him.
His brother trailed him to the balding circle on the lawn that they used for archery practice. He glanced to the darkening clouds, noting a storm would soon chase him into a house he wanted no part of with his father inside it. “She’s tracked you like a hound for going on two years. I worried at first, but you’re old enough to handle the situation yourself.” Cort grabbed an arrow and began tapping it against his thigh. “Half the time, she looks like she climbed from a rag bin; the other half, like she’s plotting someone’s demise.”
“That’s absurd,” Damien whispered, although his young neighbor did look fearsome at times, her gaze penetrating, almost as if she could see right through him. “She’s little more than a child.”
“She’s older than you think. Sorry to say, but you’ll find, more experience, that this brand of female absorption can be problematic. I prefer chits who couldn’t give a fig about me, in the end.”
Damien fit the arrow’s nock to the bowstring and closed one eye to properly sight. Mercy Ainsworth’s fixation had been going on for three years, at least, but he wasn’t about to correct Cort and find himself at the barrel-end of an inquisition. His brothers, twins separated by a scant three minutes and only eighteen months his elder, had taken the protective role to the extreme. Although love was love, and since they’d not received a trace of the emotion from their parents, they’d decided early on to freely share it with each other.
“Although her hair…” Cort exhaled, dragging the arrow’s tip across his chin. “Her hair could someday be her glory. If she grows into it. Not every woman can equal having tresses that hue, but a feisty one could. A hellion who can hold her own. Only, back to my earlier assessment, chits with spunk are the ones to avoid.”
Damien disagreed. It wasn’t Mercy’s hair but her too-generous mouth that captivated, a truth he’d die before acknowledging. He rocked back on his heels, restlessness beginning to overtake him. Unlike his siblings, he wasn’t comfortable with people. Long conversations brought apprehension, tight twists to his stomach that lingered for hours. Too, the charming twins were gaining reputations for carousing that Damien could never match. So much so, that the ton had started calling them the Troublesome Trio, when the youngest DeWitt had done nothing to deserve the inclusion.
Sensing his brother’s distress, Cort thrust the arrow in his direction. “Do you want me to have a groom saddle your horse? A ride on Pegasus will calm you.”
Damien glanced to the book he was reading. The Life of Samuel Johnson lay sprawled where he’d left it atop his beaten leather rucksack. He surrounded himself with books because words soothed his mind. Sometimes, even exchanges with his family were a challenge. Therefore, he chose a topic that presented an effective strike to the jaw. If they spent long talking about this, Cort would stalk to the manor and the stocked sideboard in their father’s study. “If only Mercy were more like Alexandra Mountbatten. A veritable diamond among sandstone, that one.”
