House of Cads (Ladies of Scandal Book 2) Read online

  Lady Shipley was Richard’s mother, and had never been more appalled than when her son announced he would make Marie-Anne his wife. True, they had made it a bit more appalling by putting off marriage until Marie-Anne was pregnant, but her Richard had been so busy in his comings and goings with the military that it really could not be helped. Nevertheless, upon hearing of their engagement Lady Shipley had begun a series of screeches and swoons that had lasted until, just a week before the wedding, poor Richard had fallen ill. At which point, Lady Shipley had subsided into woeful moans and hissed recriminations. Sir Gordon Shipley, Richard’s father, had been no less disgusted by the connection though he was considerably less voluble.

  When her Richard had died so suddenly, they had barred Marie-Anne from the funeral. Ten days later, she had miscarried the child and eventually sent a note to let Sir Gordon know that Richard had not left an heir. She vividly remembered debating over whether to write heir or bastard, and had decided that Richard’s intentions mattered more than the cruel reality. It hardly made a difference, though. Her note was answered with the briefest of messages, which read only: Thank God. She had heard nothing from the Shipley family since.

  The letter she held from Lady Shipley now referred to none of this. There was no apology, not even an attempt to wave it away by referring to a “misunderstanding.” It was written as though none of it had ever happened. Marie-Anne tried to think if Richard had ever said there was madness in his family. It was the only explanation she could think of, until she noticed another, smaller note wedged down at the bottom of the envelope.

  It was from Amarantha, the eldest Shipley daughter. Marie-Anne, it is unforgivable of me to write to you now when I have so sadly neglected you for all these years, it began. Oh sweet Amy, who had been barely fourteen when it had all happened. Marie-Anne wouldn’t dream of faulting the girl for following her parents’ example – indeed, the whole of Society’s example – in shunning her. She ran her fingers over the writing with affection, and wondered if Amy always wrote in such a cramped style or if she’d merely been trying to make the smallest note possible, to ensure it could be slipped into the envelope without her mother’s noticing.

  Please come, Amy wrote. I am newly engaged and D and P will ruin all my hopes through their actions. They will listen to you, if you will be so kind as to come, though I am sure none of us deserve it.

  Oh well this was very interesting. D and P could only be Amy’s younger sisters, Dahlia and Phyllida, who had from birth been quite a trial to anyone’s patience. They would be seventeen and eighteen now, and were apparently having an eventful season. At their darling older sister’s expense.

  What a family. Not for the first time, Marie-Anne wondered how such a gathering of awful people could have produced her dear Richard. The arrogant father, the grasping mother, the silly and spoiled sisters. Well not Amy, though, she was the best of the lot now that Richard was gone. Oh and the brother, Percy, who was so priggish that she used to joke he was destined to be the oldest virgin in Europe one day, even if one included every priest on the continent in the final score.

  Marie-Anne began to giggle. It was not at all a refined sound, rather more of a tittering that grew into snorting laughter. Oh heavens, what must they be up to, to make their mother desperate enough to invite scandalous Marie-Anne de Vauteuil to stay at their precious townhouse, at the height of the season? Of course she felt sorry for poor Amy, but there was no denying that there must be a delightful spectacle waiting to be viewed in London.

  It really was a perfect answer to the desperate boredom she’d begun to feel in Bartle. And she could visit Helen! Oh what a lovely prospect, to help Amy while watching the antics of her sisters and the acute distress of the more horrid members of the Shipley family. And to be able to laugh with her dearest friend about it all as it happened! Except that Helen had mentioned a trip – a holiday somewhere Nordic – or would that be later in the summer? No matter, so long as she had a little time with her.

  Yes, she would accept this most unlikely invitation. How could she possibly resist? She must write back without delay, and send a note to dear Helen too.

  Marie-Anne went back to the kitchen and popped the little lemon cake into her mouth. It was delicious. The cake, the letters, the entertainment that was promised in London: it was all most delicious.

  Chapter Two

  “Watch out for that one,” said Freddy with a nod toward the newly arrived guests who had been announced with some pomp.

  “Summerdale, was that it?” asked Mason, looking toward the aristocrat. Not just an aristocrat, he immediately noticed, but very aristocratic. God, they really knew how to breed them here. Centuries in the making, and this Summerdale was a perfect specimen: impeccably dressed, ramrod straight posture, oozing circumspection, and with just the slightest superiority as he scanned the room. Of course, all those things really just made him the perfect specimen of what the aristocracy supposed themselves to be. Mason had seen enough in his brief time in England to know that most of them fell far short of this ideal – and that most did so gleefully.

  “Earl of, old boy,” emphasized Freddy. “A bit elevated for this company, I’d think, but perhaps he owes Huntingdon a favor and is paying up by making an appearance.”

  They were at the Right Honorable Lord Huntingdon’s ball, given in honor of his niece’s recent engagement to the third son of the Marquess of…he’d have to check his notes. Mason never felt more American than when he struggled to remember the many names, titles, ranks, and honorifics that all Englishmen seemed to have printed on the insides of their eyelids. But Huntingdon was a baron, which was definitely below an earl, which he thought was below a marquess. Possibly not below the third son of a marquess, though. He’d have asked Freddy to clarify if his head wasn’t already close to busting with spare bits of the high society minutia.

  Besides, he’d just spied the woman who’d come in with Summerdale and he really didn’t relish looking at Freddy when she was there to be looked at instead.

  “No surprise he’s brought the wife, I hear they’re inseparable. She was a scandal in her day,” Freddy was saying. “But best to pretend she was never anything but spotless, around Summerdale. He’ll take us both down without batting an eye if we give him half a reason, remember that. But she’s old news, who’s that with them? Damn, I wasn’t listening.”

  Mason made himself absorb all this information but didn’t ask any of the questions he normally would have. He just didn’t feel like working now that the pretty, lively Lady Summerdale was there to be looked at. He could believe she had scandal in her past. It took next to nothing for these people to consider a woman scandalous, and she looked like a merry ball of mischief all packaged up in a blue-eyed, blonde-haired, fashion plate of a woman.

  Crying shame, that she was married. She looked like the type that might be up for it anyway, but he had his own scruples. Not many, but he had them. Besides, if Freddy said her husband could cut them off at the knees, then best to listen.

  As Mason watched her, she tilted her head up to better hear her friend, a very elegant, dark-haired woman who exuded as much reserve as the blonde woman exuded exuberance. The dark-haired woman was so graceful in her movement that Mason found himself momentarily distracted by her form. She possessed an outrageously perfect figure, one that made him want to study her at length until his pencil captured her exact proportions. It even made him think for a moment that he should try his hand at sculpture. She seemed far more suited to the Earl of Summerdale than the lively, petite blonde.

  “Hey, Fred,” he hissed, grasping the other man’s cuff as the thought occurred to him. Freddy had started to slink away. “Which one is Mrs. Summerdale?”

  “Lady Summerdale, Mason, do try to keep it in your head when it’s one of the higher ranks.”

  “Right. Lady, I knew that. Just forgot it for a second. Which one?”

  “Dark hair, tall and lovely. Don’t know who short-and-lovely is, try to find out,
won’t you? I just saw Bilson head for the card room.”

  Bilson was the main reason they’d come to this thing. Well really, they’d come because Mason had been invited. Freddy had managed to slip in because the Huntingdon staff was notoriously easy to bribe. Bilson was a lawyer, the most indiscreet one of those who worked for a certain marquess. That marquess was considering divorce, and a divorce trial would sell a lot of papers, and so here they were in the hopes Bilson couldn’t resist the opportunity to share the latest gossip. Freddy would skulk around and maybe ply Bilson with drink, hoping to get something they could use. But first he warned Mason once more to be careful of the Earl of Summerdale.

  “Don’t make him curious about you or it’s the end of us,” said Freddy, and headed to the card room.

  Finding out who the pretty blonde fashion plate was while avoiding Summerdale would require some creativity. He noticed a few people looking her way and surreptitiously whispering to each other, but they were careful not to be too obvious about it. He certainly couldn’t overhear them. The hostess was the answer, he supposed, and fortunately for Mason, this particular hostess was Lady Huntingdon. She loved nothing more than to educate him as to who was who on the London scene, and to include all sorts of inside information.

  Lady Huntingdon was moving toward Summerdale’s party and her demeanor made him pause. On second thought maybe she wouldn’t tell Mason anything more than the woman’s name. The trio of women met with genuine joy and affection, the warm greeting of true friends and not the usual fake delight. Which meant the blonde mystery was an actual friend to both a baroness and an earl’s wife.

  What was an earl’s wife called? It was the odd one, not like duchess or viscountess. There was no earlesse, a fact that he’d fortunately learned by misspeaking to Freddy and not through any more embarrassing experience. But in any case, if she was dear friends with these people, she was probably pretty elevated herself.

  He heard the music change, the dance winding down to a close. As the next dance started up, he watched Lord Summerdale escort the petite blonde to the dancefloor, leaving Lady Summerdale behind to talk with the hostess. Mason moved toward the women, finding a spot between a well-placed fern and a majestically proportioned matron with a plumed headdress that would hide a frigate – a perfect place where Mason might hear their conversation without being seen.

  “Norway!” Lady Huntingdon exclaimed, loudly enough so that Mason could hear it. “But my dear, you could go anywhere at all, why do you let him drag you to Norway of all places!”

  “I assure you I am the one doing the dragging, Joyce.” Lady Summerdale was laughing. It was a wonderful sound, all gurgling and burbling like a brook, and didn’t seem to match her elegant exterior. She seemed aware of it and quickly swallowed the sound. “There is so much I want to see there, but we will have only a few months. I’ll tell you all about it when we return. Now in the meantime you must…”

  Here her voice wound down to a more discreet volume and she brought her fan up to shield her lips as she spoke to her friend. He watched them, unable to hear anything they said but enjoying this rare display of real friendship at a high society event. He also enjoyed the line of Lady Summerdale’s back and how perfectly the ice blue dress suited her. Not that she’d relish hearing it, or that he’d ever dare to say it, but she would make the most enviable artist’s model.

  He looked to the dancefloor, where the women were watching Lord Summerdale and the pretty blonde dancing. Her movements were out of step with the other dancers and she didn’t seem so very graceful. In fact, he thought she must have stepped on the earl’s toes once or twice. This was evident not by any grimace on the earl’s face, but on her own – a little apologetic cringing amid all the laughter she was valiantly holding in. The earl never missed a step, of course, and he wore the same expression of suppressed mirth. It was a shared joke, obvious in the way the earl slid a look toward his wife from time to time while he guided the other woman through the steps and they both tried not to laugh.

  When the music stopped, the earl whisked her off the dancefloor and back to where Ladies Summerdale and Huntingdon stood. As soon as they were within steps of the other ladies, the mystery woman let her smile open up to her friends, though she seemed determined not to laugh aloud.

  “Oh what a disgrace I am!” she cried.

  “On the contrary, madame, you are the most delightful dance partner any man could hope for. It has been not only an honor but a very great pleasure.”

  Lord Summerdale said it all quite smoothly while making an elegant bow over her hand. Mason wondered how long it took to perfect that move. He’d tried it himself a few times but nothing could convince him he didn’t look like a complete ass.

  “It has been nothing but cruelty to your well-trained toes, my lord, and your wife will not forgive me if I have ruined you for more dancing tonight.”

  She had an accent – French, he thought, though he’d like to hear more before judging, and he wasn’t sure he could count on the matron with the elaborate headdress to continue to create his perfect hiding spot much longer. Fortunately, Lord Summerdale’s toes weren’t so damaged that he couldn’t dance immediately. He murmured something that made the ladies laugh prettily and then offered his hand to his wife. She gave the Frenchwoman a questioning look.

  “Go, go, you have done your duty.” She shooed at them fondly with her fan, and they glided away into the moving mass of dancers.

  This was Mason’s chance, and since he had no idea how long the music would keep playing, he wasted no time in presenting himself to his hostess. Being a graceful fellow, he nearly toppled the fern and somehow managed to get his mouth full of ostrich plume as he freed himself from his secluded little spot. He thought he felt the feather snap as he shoved it aside, but ignored that in favor of moving speedily away from the site of his destruction. He let the unsuspecting woman tend to her headdress while he surreptitiously spat out bits of it before he was spotted by the ladies. Naturally, that took no time at all – one of the inconveniences of having flaming red hair.

  “Oh Mr. Mason!” Lady Huntingdon called as he swallowed a bit of ostrich plume. She waved him over the last few steps. “What a shame, you’ve just missed Lady Summerdale and I particularly wanted her to meet you. But here, this is our dear friend newly arrived from the country, Miss – that is, Madame Marie-Anne de Vauteuil.”

  He remembered he was supposed to be a very important and wealthy American gentleman, which helped him to square his shoulders and look sufficiently confident as he gave a small, restrained bow. “Madame, a pleasure.”

  “Monsieur,” she said with a graceful dip of her knees, and then looked up at him. She might have said more but he was distracted by the perfect blue of her eyes. He knew that color, exactly. On a clear fall evening at twilight, just before the light was completely gone, that was the blue of the sky above the layers of orange and pink. When you faced northwest, anyway, and stood on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River.

  It took an awfully long time for him to realize that the blue was framed by an expression that was half dubious, half laughing.

  “It is possible Mr. Mason believes I will be insulted if he does not ask me to dance,” she said, never looking away from him. “Shall we give him assurance that I will only be very relieved?”

  “There’s no need for that at all, my dear. Mr. Mason knows very well that he is the only gentleman in attendance who is entirely excused from asking ladies to dance,” explained Lady Huntingdon.

  “Because he is American?” asked the perfect blue eyes.

  “Because I’m the worst dancer on this side of the Atlantic, ma’am. The man who held the title before I arrived is probably dancing for joy. Poorly.”

  Her lips held in laughter. Her eyes crinkled at the edges with it. “What coincidence, we must alert the papers to this momentous occasion! For I am your female counterpart, monsieur. Such luck for our dear hostess. If the evening becomes too boring, she can invite us to
partner a waltz. The spectacle will make her ball the talk of the season.”

  “No waltzing even in jest, Marie-Anne,” Lady Huntingdon corrected her. “Something less daring, for our purpose.”

  The Frenchwoman’s smile dimmed a bit, which Mason found he didn’t like at all.

  “I’d propose a quadrille, ma’am, so we could share the burden of celebrity with three other couples.”

  “I would protest this,” she said, her lips curving up again. “They will never forgive me, these three other couples, for marching all over their toes for the length of a quadrille.”

  “No, you’re right about that,” he agreed.

  It was an actual, physical relief to see her smile back in place. It was clear she had the sort of sense of humor that was discouraged in fine company such as this. Could he bring it out? Could he resist trying? Of course he couldn’t.

  “Here’s an idea – I went to see the menagerie in the Tower of London this week. If it’s a spectacle you want, we could select a couple of animals to take our place in the set. We’d get all the same entertainment but they’d get the blame for the destruction.”

  “What an excellent idea. Perhaps there is a pair of monkeys?” She said it with a perfectly straight face.

  “Too agile, to represent me. They had some red gazelles…?”

  “That is far too graceful for me. Are there any water oxen?”

  He shook his head. “None that I recall, but there were some kangaroos. They’d make a good show.”

  Her eyes lit up. “No, it is a real word? Kanga – kanga-ruse.” She looked to her friend to verify, mouthing the word again. “Well it must be these, of course.”