Page 199 of The Ladies Least Likely
He’d confessed that he stammered less around her. That admission lifted her heart and pierced her belly at one and the same time.
“Oh, they have no more than the customary complaints.” The countess folded the sheet of newsprint and passed it along to Princess. “We are unattached women who live as we please, so we must be engaged in riotous or nefarious activities, or both. Dear me, these British are easily scandalized. They ought to see what takes place in courts abroad.” She focused on Harriette. “How did you find Renwick?”
“Gorgeous,” Harriette blurted. “Top of the trees.” She turned her jasperware cup in nervous circles as the attention of the others settled on her. “And the night was a disaster. His mother chased me out of the house with the butler on my heels. I’ll never have the chance to paint him and have a portrait that will gain me commissions from those ofton.”
“We’ll never be goodtonanyway,” said the countess. She had been much admired as a dashing and rich young widow when she first arrived in London, celebrated for her foreign beauty. But she proved too beautiful and dashing for the arbiters of taste and Polite Society, and as her list of lovers and scandals grew, the invitations to certain events and noble houses ceased. She was still celebrated in the circles known to be riotous, dissolute, and quite uncaring of social niceties, but those people tended to be frequently in debt, and the Catherine Club, or whatever they were to call themselves, lived on the same food that regular mortals did.
“Who says we needton?” Their cook-housekeeper, Sorcha, trucked into the room with a fresh pot of coffee and thunked it on the table. “Never understood what that meant anyway.”
She sank into the open chair beside Darci and poured herself a cup. Sorcha, their wild redhead, was the only one among them who could say she’d been born in the British Isles but not, asshe reminded anyone who would listen, on British soil. She was Manx, and the Isle of Man was a self-governing territory, even if the British crown had purchased the right to call themselves Lords of Mann.
“Tonsimply means style,” Harriette said, reading the gossip paragraphs over the shoulder of the Princess. “Taste. Something like tone, but in French. It signifies quality. And those who have it possess the wealth, and the respectability, to keep us all in fine style for a good long while.”
“Our style is fine enough, ain’t it?” Sorcha crumbled sugar into her coffee and slurped the hot liquid. She’d been brought into the house as one of the countess’s strays and had quickly appointed herself as housekeeper and caretaker of the others, a natural expression of her skills.
“And we are already quality,dah?” Natalya stretched her arms, pale and plump in the sheer fabric of her morning gown.
“I will agree wit dat.” The butler, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a patch over one eye, strode into the room with a large silver tray laden with more breakfast items. He placed each woman’s favorite before them, starting with the countess and working around the table, before unloading the rest of the tray among the other dishes on the sideboard.
“Good morning, Abassi,” the countess greeted him. She tapped a fold of the paper beside her plate. “Can you countenance, there is another advertisement in theIntelligencertoday looking for a runaway male slave. ‘Black skin, missing one eye, of low, mean countenance, escaped from theZongeleven months ago.’ But that cannot be you, Abassi, as your countenance is in no way low or mean.” She smirked at her butler as he refilled her chocolate, and he grinned back, showing a gold-capped tooth.
“My word, after eleven months you’d think Mr. Gregson would accept defeat,” Melike observed. “A Barbary pirate would have moved on long ago.”
“This man, he must be very valuable,” Abassi said in his soft Caribbean accent. “P’raps he was a pirate once too, eh? Or very strong.” He flexed unnecessarily as he picked up the empty tray.
“You might join us, Abassi.” The countess waved for him to pull up one of the extra chairs stationed against the wall. Quite against all usual protocol, and one of the many reasons her household was considered so outrageous, the Countess of Calenberg dined and conversed with her employees.
“Non, dis morning I teach Jock and Beater how to shoot.” Abassi pretended to sight a gun with his good eye, pointing his finger toward a portrait of the long-dead Count of Calenberg that graced the wall above the fireplace mantel. “They need much practice.”
“Well, go somewhere quite safe, and don’t blow the wigs off any passersby.” The countess handed Abassi the offending paper. “What’s next for you now, Hari?” she asked, returning to what was apparently the morning’s theme. “Netting Renwick was an unsafe bet from the beginning. Consider what you might do with your salacious sketches, however.”
“The ones of the Graf von Hardenburg were very like,” Darci agreed with a wide grin. “And very—instructive?”
“And vulgar, as our dear gossip called them.” Harriette put her letter aside to read later. It had done wonders for the Graf von Hardenburg’s popularity when sketches of him indishabilleproved the latest fad among London’s print-hungry populace, but she hadn’t thought her hand would be quite so easily exposed, or she would meet such censure for them.
Before last night, she would have agreed with Sorcha and Natalya that they rubbed along just fine without need of Polite Society. But she had seen the disdain of the ladies of fashion—allexcept Lady Bessington, bless her heart—and the indignation of being herded out of the Countess of Renwick’s house cut deep. Harriette had never cared about her reputation until she realized that, in the eyes of many, it made her unfit to associate with the Earl of Renwick.
And then there were the practical concerns. “I can’t make a fortune on pennies from sketches.” Harriette pointed to the dark, yellowing image of the Count of Calenberg, her great-aunt’s long dead and not-much-lamented husband. “A commission for an oil that size could fetch me hundreds of guineas. A little less for a pastel or gouache, but still a fine price.”
“I’ll p-p-ay it.”
From the doorway came a deep voice that was not the butler’s, though Abassi stood behind, examining the small white calling card the visitor had produced.
Every woman in the room straightened, even Sorcha, who, after losing a child and several years of her life, had sworn off both gin and men. Darci smoothed a hand over her plush curls. Melike touched her throat. Natalya thrust out her breasts, the most prominent of her many admirable features. Princess slipped her feet back into her slippers and adjusted the enormous amethyst collar that hung about her throat. Even the countess took a long moment to inspect the newcomer and appreciate the splendid figure he cut.
Harriette stared at him greedily. He was more striking in the light of day, his features sharply defined and animated by the warm intelligence in his eyes. He filled out a butter-yellow morning coat and breeches with a sleekness that hinted at the muscle of exertion, not the fat of indolence. Instead of a wig he wore his own hair, lightly powdered, and his neckcloth had fallen out of its elaborate twist.
She rose and moved toward him without conscious thought, her head filled with the memory of his arms about her, hismouth on hers, the evidence of his desire for her pressing against her hip. His dark blue eyes, riveted on her, held the same memory, and a languorous curl of desire woke and stretched in her belly. She might very well have walked straight into his arms and kissed him again, losing her head completely, if Abassi hadn’t spoken.
“The Earl of Renwick, your ladyship.”
Harriette pulled herself up short before she did something that even in her aunt’s permissive household might be considered unorthodox. But the urge to touch him was too much to deny. She was not a creature to deny herself anyway, a trait her aunt had cultivated. She tidied his cravat, reshaping its stylish twist, and let her fingertips brush the warm skin above his collar. His eyelids flickered, and a small, wicked triumph joined the other emotions swirling in her lower regions. He was affected by her, as she was by him.
And he was here, when she thought she might never see him again. “You found us.”
“The Countess of Calenberg is well known, it seems.” He bowed to her aunt, who responded with a gracious incline of her head.
“Aunt, this is my Ren. Renwick, my great-aunt, the Countess of Calenberg.” That slipped out; he wasn’t ‘her’ anything. Having ceded to the impulse to touch him, now she could not seem to take her hand away, and let it linger on the embroidered lapel of his waistcoat. Heat. Strength.Maleness.
