Ruined By The Reckless Viscount

With care she raised herself up on to her heels and walked across the clearing with a swagger, her head held high, her shoulders stiff. Then she ambled back, this time with a stick in hand shaped from a branch that she had stripped from a tree.

The accoutrements of a gentleman. Better. It felt more...right. So many parts made up a man, though. Stride. Voice. Arrogance. Certainty. Disdain.

She walked faster as though she was important, as though in the wasting of even the tiniest of seconds there lay a travesty. Men about town knew where they were going. They did not falter. They acted as though everybody might wish to know of them and their opinions. There was a certain freedom in being such a one as that.

Lengthening her stride, she tried again and again, all the while adjusting things slightly so that it felt more real, this person whom she was becoming.

She could do it. With spectacles to hide her eyes and a moustache to disguise her lips. A neckcloth tied in the high manner would see to the rest. The cane her grandfather had owned sat unused in the attic, just another prop to draw the eye away from her with its silver dimpled ball and dark walnut wood.

Everything was beginning to fall into bands of colour. Her wig. The clothes she would sport. The heightened leather Hessians that would easily come to her knees.

Like a painting established layer by layer, of substance and structure. Drawing the eyes. Finding the essence. Creating the illusion.

Chapter Three (#u45dc3348-40f5-5f51-93b9-1e30f835329e)

‘I think you are a veritable tease, Lord Winterton, and if half the things that are said of you are true I should imagine you find us very dull.’

James glanced down at Miss Julia Heron, soft blonde ringlets falling around her face and smiling brown eyes. One of the beauties of the Season, it was said, though there was a wide ring of other young ladies around her who looked every bit as charming. He wished they would not look at him as if he was the answer to all their heartfelt dreams. He wished he could have simply crossed the floor and left, to feel the rain on his face and puddles beneath his feet, and smell the green of London in the spring.

How he had missed it.

His neck ached as it always did at about this time of the night and he breathed through the pain with a measured practice.

Lady Florentia Hale-Burton was not here, he was sure of it, and from what he had managed to find out about the family in the last few weeks he could well imagine why. His actions on the road across from Hyde Park had ruined the youngest daughter of the Earl of Albany. For marriage. For the hope of a family. For life. For ever.

Her sister was present, though. He had met Lady Maria Warrenden, once Hale-Burton, on the arm of one of his oldest friends as he had alighted from his coach. Roy Warrenden had introduced his wife with pride, giving him her unmarried name to place her in a context and James prayed his surprise and shock had not been noticeable.

She’d showed no recognition of him or his name at all which was a comforting thing leaving him with a decided uncertainty as to what he wanted to do about the whole sordid affair. An apology to the Hale-Burtons would be a good start, but by all accounts the father had taken to bed with a broken spirit and he could well see that his very presence would be a nightmare for the entire family; a memory of a time they would have no want to recall or relive.

Lady Florentia Hale-Burton would be twenty-three now or twenty-four, he thought, and gossip had it she resided in Kent and only occasionally visited town.

James looked around, wishing he could simply leave and figure out his choices in peace, but as it had been only an hour since his arrival he thought any withdrawal would incite comment. Better to have not come at all, he thought, as he swallowed his drink.

Miss Heron before him was weaving her fan this way and that, a dance of wonder he found himself mesmerised with and repelled by, the female tool of flirtation and provocation holding no interest for him.

He had come home to England half the man who had left it, but with twenty times the fortune. There was a certain irony to be found in all he had lost when weighed against that which he had gained, here in a place where money mattered most.

‘You promised me this dance, my lord.’ There was a note of supplication in Julia Heron’s eyes. He could not remember making such a promise and frowned slightly.

It was the way of the London set, he supposed, a world of chimera and delusion underpinned by a steely determination to marry well.

‘I’ve written it in, Lord Winterton,’ Miss Heron insisted, showing him the name placed in small and precise letters upon her dance card.

With a nod, he acquiesced. He’d never particularly liked dancing, but as the orchestra began into a quadrille he was at least grateful that it was not a waltz.

Moving on to the dance floor, James saw that many patrons watched them, smiling in that particular way of those who imagined an oncoming union. The jaded anger inside him rose with the thought and he pressed it down. A crowded ballroom was not the place for excessive introspection or regret.

As he fished about for a subject that might interest the young woman beside him came up with a topic of her own.

‘Papa is having us all drawn by Mr Frederick Rutherford, the artist, my lord. He hopes the portraits will be begun as soon as possible.’

The words were filled with a delight tinged in trepidation.

‘Have you seen anything at all of his work, Lord Winterton?’

James shook his head, the heady world of art a long way from anything he’d ever been interested in. ‘But I am sure he will capture your likeness with alacrity.’

The girl’s face fell. ‘Well, in truth he tends to embellish things with his own interpretation, though Papa says he cannot imagine the man wanting to do so with us.’

‘Because perfection cannot be improved upon?’ He heard the tone of irony quite plainly in his voice, but Julia Heron simply trilled and blushed, her hand tightening around his as her glance came fully upon him.

His heart sank further. He would need to be careful if he were to escape the gossip so often associated with these soirées and emanating from even the simplest of familiarities.

His fortune had singled him out now as highly sought after husband material and if beneath his clothes there lay deeper shades of tragedy no one else here knew of it.

The older Herons were watching them closely, another younger daughter of the same ilk beside them glowering at her sister. When the dance brought them together again Julia had a further question waiting.

‘Are you here in London long, my lord?’

‘Just for the next few weeks, I think, Miss Heron. I am hoping to move west.’

‘To Atherton Abbey?’

‘I see you have heard the rumour.’

‘Who has not, Lord Winterton, for the Abbey is said to be one of the loveliest homes in all of Herefordshire as well as one of the most expensive.’

James gritted his teeth and smiled, glad as the complexity of the quadrille pushed them apart again, though the other woman on one point of the square was unexpected and he tensed as he saw her visage.

Lady Maria Hale-Burton, now the new Lady Warrenden, smiled at him politely. She was taller than her sister and much more rounded. Her hair was darker, too. He waited to see if in private she might mention the plight of her sibling in connection with him, but she did not, chancing instead on a mundane and social propriety.

‘I hope you are enjoying your return to London after so long away, my lord.’ Her voice was soft and carried a slight lisp.

‘I am, thank you. It was good to see your husband again. We were at school together.’

She was about to answer, but the change in the figure took him back to Julia Heron who claimed his arm in the final flurry of the dance, her colour high and her smile wide with enjoyment.

Accompanying the girl back to her parents he gave her his thanks and went to find Roy Warrenden, grateful to see the Baron sitting at a table with a bottle of wine before him and a number of empty glasses, though he was in full conversation with another James had no knowledge of. Maria Warrenden now joined them, brought back to her husband on the arm of an older man whom she promptly thanked. As her dancing partner left she sat down and made her own observations.

‘Roy said you led him astray more than once, Lord Winterton, but your presence here has made his night. He is usually desperate to get home early.’ She laughed heartily, a joyous natural sound that was nothing at all like Julia Heron’s practised society giggle.

‘Are your parents here tonight, Lady Warrenden?’ He’d looked around the room before just in case the visage of Florentia Hale-Burton’s father should be peering back at him, his face full of violent memory, and had been relieved to see no sign of the man.

‘No, I am afraid they seldom venture far from Albany Manor in Kent any more. Papa suffers from bad health, you see, and Mama feels it her duty to be there to wipe his brow.’

‘A woman of responsibility, then?’

‘Or one who enjoys playing the martyr?’ Close up the resemblance between Maria Warrenden and her sister was more noticeable and he found himself observing her with interest even as Roy Warrenden stood and clapped him on the back.