The resolution was strengthened by a chance comment from a surprising quarter: Lady Imogen Vansittart, who passed so near to me in her progress towards the gaming tables that she must speak, or appear insufferable.
“I find, Miss Austen, that we have an acquaintance in common,” she said with her bewitching smile. “The Countess of Swithin is my intimate friend. I believe you were acquainted with her uncle, the late lamented Lord Harold Trowbridge?”
“I have had that honour — yes,” I replied.
“Poor Desdemona is very low. She practically lived in Lord Harold’s pocket, from what I understand. And who can blame her, with such a father? Bertie is the meanest stick in the world — I should not be saddled with him for a parent for all the Wilborough fortune! Marriage was the wisest choice Mona ever made. It freed her from one form of imprisonment — tho’ we must hope it did not throw her into another.”
I was at a loss for a proper response to this observation, and so managed only to say, “I cannot wonder that the Countess should mourn her uncle. They were very good friends as well as relations.”
“I understand Mona nearly rode out from London in search of you herself,” Lady Imogen observed. “She was quite wild with fury that his lordship had left you all his papers. Care- less, she called it.”
A thrill of apprehension coursed through my body, setting it to tingling as tho’ Lord Harold’s hand had caressed my skin.
“Papers? What papers?”
“Those in the Bengal chest, of course. The diaries and correspondence his lordship guarded with such vigour in life.”
Lady Imogen tossed me an arch look. “Do not play the village idiot with me, Miss Austen. The Great World has long been agog to know what was recorded of its vicious propensities in Lord Harold’s inscrutable hand. My own father — who has been intimate with his lordship these thirty years — would part with half my inheritance to know in what manner he himself figures in those pages, and which secrets have been let slip like the veriest cat out of the bag.”
“Lady Imogen,” said a gentle voice at my shoulder, “I believe you are wanted at the faro table. Mr. Thrace is attending you.”
“Good God, Charles, do you wish to see me ruined?” Lady Imogen reached her hand to Major Spence’s cheek, where he stood correctly awaiting her with no quarter offered his weak leg. “You know my luck is damnably out. There will be a line of duns a mile long awaiting us at Stonings, and you do not prevent me from wagering everything I have!”
Major Spence’s sombre gaze shifted a fraction to meet my own, and I thought I read in its depths a kind of apology, and a plea for discretion. But then the steward’s grey eyes returned to the bright image before him, and he lifted her hand from his cheek. “Julian will not be happy unless you play. Therefore I charge you only to play well, my lady.”
“Such a steward!” Lady Imogen observed mistily; “so caring and thoughtful in every respect, that I might run roughshod over your heart and mind both, and you will not presume to manage me. Take care, Charles,” she threw over her shoulder as she left him, “or I shall accept that proposal of marriage you offered me. It would ruin us both, I assure you.”
Major Spence did not allow his expression to change as his eyes followed Lady Imogen to the faro table; and in that perfect reserve and preservation of countenance I read the strength of the man. Perhaps I alone would name such a look as passion — but I, too, had loved a wild thing once to my loss. A simpleton could perceive that the steward was languishing for the Earl’s daughter.
Spence bowed correctly in my direction, enquired if there was anything I wanted — if I was amply supplied with muffin and tea — and then took up his place beside my mother at the whist table.
I am no card player. The elder Prowtings and the Papillons made up one party of whist; Mr. Middleton, Miss Beckford, my mother, and Major Spence another; while Lady Imogen was claimed by Julian Thrace.
“She is said to be a gamester of the most hardened kind,”
Henry murmured in my ear, “tho’ she is but two-and-twenty. It is not to be wondered at, with the Earl for a father. The gaming trait is fatal in the Vansittart blood. It is said to rival even that of the Spencers.”
“Did you know, Henry, that the Earl was a friend of Lord Harold’s?”
“I did not. But they were both of a Whiggish persuasion; and I confess I cannot be surprised. The Earl’s society is rackety enough, Jane — his lordship being cheek by jowl with the Carlton House Set; and Lady Imogen’s mother, you know, ran away with a colonel of the Horse Guards when her daughter was only three.”
“How diverting is your knowledge of the Great, Henry!” I sighed. “The appearance of Mr. Thrace — the prospect of losing so considerable an inheritance as Stonings — must make her ladyship quite blue-devilled.”
“I should think the earldom would be entailed on the male line,” Henry said doubtfully. “Absent the upstart Beau, the title will pass to a cousin of some kind. But it is certainly true that Stonings at present forms a significant part of Lady Imogen’s jointure. At her marriage or her father’s death, the estate should come to her; but his lordship now appears inclined to allow Thrace to live in it. Spence told me as much himself.”
“So it is for Thrace that Major Spence is undertaking repairs?” I enquired in astonishment. “That cannot be an easy circumstance — when the Major has so clearly lost his heart to Lady Imogen.”
“Do you believe it? Perhaps he means to rescue her ladyship from an unendurable future. Julian Thrace will be three-andtwenty in three weeks’ time, and on that date the Earl will throw a ball and invite the entire county. His lordship intends, so Spence assures me, to appoint Thrace his heir — to Lady Imogen’s loss. She must either marry, or in some other wise put an end to the Bond Street Beau’s pretensions.”
“—By discovering, perhaps, that Thrace is not at all what he claims,” I said slowly. Three weeks was little enough time to secure a fortune. Who would know the truth about Thrace? An acute observer — a man of the world — a self-trained spy with his finger in every tonnish plot. Lord Harold might know, and guard the facts in his subtle papers. Did Lady Imogen comprehend as much? Was direst need the spur to her playful conversation?
My own father. would part with half my inheritance to know in what manner he himself figures in those pages, and which secrets have been let slip like the veriest cat out of the bag.
“Is Lady Imogen expensive?” I asked Henry.
“Ruinously so. It is said that young Ambrose, the Viscount Gravetye’s heir, cried off from an engagement when acquainted with her true circumstances, and that only old Coutts stands between her and disaster.[17] Observe: Lady Imogen will end the evening by wagering that emerald circlet with young Thrace — for she cannot abide to lose.”
“Particularly to him. ”
They were a compelling pair: the Beau with his guinea-gold hair in fashionable disorder and his coat of the most elegant cut gracing a sportsman’s form; the easy humour of his smile; the warmth in the lazy blue eyes. And Lady Imogen: dark, hectic, her lips parted with excitement at the turning of every card, her alabaster throat a lily rising from the vessel of her gown. They reminded me of two others who had once played at faro—
17
Thomas Coutts (1735–1822), a cautious Scot who became the chief banker and financial support of the most fashionable people in London during the late Georgian period, was known for having privately floated the Prince of Wales, Charles James Fox, and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, whose fatal habit was gambling away a fortune.