Snobbery With Violence - M. C. Beaton [6]
He waited patiently in the hall while the butler took his card. While he was waiting, Lady Rose came down the stairs. She was wearing an elaborate tea-gown but her long hair was brushed down her back. Her face glowed with happiness like a lantern in the gloom of the hall. She did not acknowledge Harry because he was a stranger and she hadn’t been introduced to him. Rose passed by him and disappeared through a door at the side of the hall.
Oh, dear, thought Harry. She is most definitely in love.
The butler came down the stairs and instructed Harry to follow him.
Rose picked up a book from a table in the library and made her way upstairs behind them. She wondered who the caller was. Her father was slightly deaf and his voice was loud. She was just passing the drawing-room when she heard him say, “That will be all, Brum. Leave us.” As the butler reappeared and turned to close the double doors, Rose distinctly heard her father say, “Well, found out anything about Blandon?”
She stayed where she was, frozen to the spot. The butler looked at her curiously but went on down the stairs.
Rose heard the low voice of the caller and then her father’s outraged shout of, “The man should be horse-whipped. My daughter’s ruined.” A frantic ringing of the bell was answered by a footman who leapt up the stairs, not even seeming to see Rose who stood there.
“Get her ladyship. Fetch Lady Polly,” roared the earl.
Rose went into the drawing-room. “What is wrong, Pa?”
The earl held out a sheet of paper with trembling fingers. “Wait until your mother gets here.”
Lady Polly, small and round like her husband, came into the room. “What is it, dear?”
“Sit down, you and Rose,” said the earl, all his bluster and rage evaporating. “Bad business. Bad, bad business. Ladies, may I present Captain Cathcart?”
The captain, who had risen to his feet at Rose’s entrance, bowed. “Captain, my wife, Lady Polly, and my daughter, Lady Rose. Now all sit down. Got your smelling-salts, Rose, hey?”
“I never use smelling-salts.”
“You might need them now. Go ahead, Cathcart, tell them what you found out.”
Feeling rather grubby, wishing he could escape and leave the earl to break the news, Harry described what he had discovered. He started by saying, “Blandon keeps a mistress in Pimlico, a girl called Maisie Lewis.”
He saw the shock and dismay in Rose’s eyes, followed by a defiant anger. In that moment, he knew that Rose had immediately decided that the affair with Maisie was old history.
“The affair continues,” he said. “As Blandon had the appearance of a gambler, I decided to check the betting books. I thought I might find out something about financial difficulties, but instead found out that Blandon had bet that he could seduce Lady Rose before the end of the season.”
The countess let out a little scream and raised a handkerchief to her lips.
The earl held out the sheet from the betting book to Rose. She read it carefully and then said, “You must excuse me. I have things to attend to.”
“We can’t go to the ball now!” wailed Lady Polly.
“Sir Geoffrey does not know what we now know,” said Rose. “We should not give him that satisfaction.”
She rose and sailed from the room, back erect, and all the love light gone from her face.
Her mother hurried after her, leaving Harry and the earl alone.
“Thank you,” said the earl gruffly. “Do you mind leaving now?”
Harry rose and left the room and walked quickly down the staircase. The happiness he had felt in the success of his detective work had evaporated. He was haunted by the set, cold, bereft look in Lady Rose’s eyes.
Rose entered the ballroom at the Duke of Freemount’s town house the following evening, hearing the chatter of clipped voices threading through the jaunty strains of a waltz. She had artificial flowers in her hair and a white satin gown embellished with white lace and worn over silk petticoats that rustled as she walked.
She felt cold and dead. She allowed Sir Geoffrey to write his name in her dance card. He