Her ladyship had known considerable sorrow, burying two husbands, a son, and a daughter, the latter two in their early childhoods. She banished life’s woes with a determination I envied, except when she aimed her schemes at me. Since I’d returned from the battlefields, she’d left me mostly in peace, though the look in her gimlet blue eyes said my reprieve was at an end.
“How can it be a good morning,” she began, “when you look like a death’s head on a mop stick and your hair needs a trim? Young men today might as well be die-away schoolgirls for all they primp, lisp, and sigh. Back in my day, men could wear the most elegant fashions and still comport themselves like men. You lot, with your scientific pugilism and Hungary water, make me bilious.”
“The only pugilism I engage in of late is verbal, dear lady, and never a drop of Hungary water has touched my manly person. Shall I ring for a tray, or will you swan out the door before my poor, stodging Harris can heed my summons?”
“You wish.” She settled onto the sofa, her presence a contrast to the masculine appointments and closed curtains of my study. Godmama had been a beauty, to hear her tell it, and my mother—who would argue with the Almighty over the ideal order of the Commandments—did not contradict her. The former beauty still indulged in every fashionable whim her heart desired or her modistes suggested.
She donned pale silk when sprigged muslin would have done nicely, and she wore jewels during daylight hours. Her slippers, gloves, and reticules were exquisitely embroidered and usually all of a piece—today’s theme was roses and gold. No grand diva ever assembled her stage appearance as carefully as Godmama put herself together simply to disturb my peace on a Tuesday morning.
My mother muttered about Lady Ophelia’s flamboyant style, but I was nobody to begrudge Godmama her crotchets. One coped with grief as best one could, as I, half of England, and much of the Continent had occasion to know.
“Cease pacing about, dear boy.” Her ladyship patted the place beside her. “I come to you in my hour of need, and you must not disappoint me.”
I settled a good two feet away from her ladyship. I wasn’t keen on anybody making free with my person, and Godmama was extravagantly affectionate. I had a valet. Sterling tended to my clothing, and I tended to… me. I was working up to allowing him to trim my hair, but until that day, an old-fashioned queue served well enough.
Though I have yet to obtain the thirtieth year of my age, my hair is snow white, a gift from my French captors. I owe the French army for my weak eyes, as well. My vision is adequate, but strong sunlight, London’s relentless coal smoke, or simple fatigue can cause my eyes to sting and water. Tinted spectacles help, though they add to the eccentricity of my appearance.
To my dismay, my looks render me far too appealing to frisky dowagers. Lady Ophelia likely finds my situation hilarious.
“I have disappointed you any number of times, my lady. I’m sure you’ll weather another blow if need be, stalwart that you are.”
Before I’d gone for a soldier, she would have countered with a witty retort about her fortitude being the result of the thankless job of godparenting me, but now she frowned, glanced at the clock, and held her silence.
“What brings you to my door, my lady?”
For all her imperiousness, Godmama could be bashful. On behalf of others, she blew at gale force on the least provocation. When it came to her own needs, she was the veriest zephyr, though I suspected the contrast was calculated.
“The Season is ending.”
I refrained from appending a heartfelt thank God to her observation. “Will you join Mama for a respite by the sea?”
“Her Grace might find a respite by the sea. I find a lot of aging gossips. I’m off to Betty Longacre’s house party. Her oldest girl failed to snag a husband, so Betty is compelled to take extraordinary measures. The chit goes on well enough, but she’s overshadowed by all those diamonds and heiresses and originals.”
Betty Longacre—Viscountess Longacre, in point of fact—was about ten years my senior. That she had a daughter old enough to be presented came as an unpleasant shock.
“What has any of this to do with me?” I asked. “I am firmly indifferent to the concept of matrimony, and even my mother has accepted that I will not be moved from that opinion.”
“You are an idiot. Your mother has other children to manage, and thus it falls to me to chide you for the error of your ways.”
I rose, a spike of disproportionate annoyance threatening to rob me of my manners. “Chide away, but your efforts will be in vain. We both know that I am not fit for matrimony, much less fatherhood, and there’s an end to it.”
I expected Lady Ophelia to fly at me, wielding eternal verities, settled law, and scriptural quotation at my preference for bachelorhood. Godmama remained brooding on my favorite napping sofa, confirming that even she conceded my unfitness for family life.
Her relative meekness came as a disappointment and a relief.
“I ask nothing so tedious as matrimony of you,” she said.
“Perhaps you ask me to make up the numbers at this house party, to lend whatever cachet a ducal heir has to the gathering. Thank you, no.”
I managed to make the refusal diffident rather than rude, and now Lady Ophelia did rise, though she paced before the hearth in a manner calculated to make my heart sink. This, too, was evidence of the damage done to me during the war, and of Lady Ophelia’s shrewdness. She’d noted my reluctance to sit near her, and I wished she hadn’t.
I was improving in many regards, though the pace of my recuperation was glacial.
“One does not wish to be insulting,” she said, “but I assisted Betty with the house-party guest list. The numbers match quite well, thank you, and if we allowed a ducal spare to lurk among the bachelors, the other fellows would all hang back, assuming you had the post position in hand. All I ask is that you escort me down to Makepeace. Maria Cleary will be among the guests, and we were bosom bows once upon a naughty time. I have not seen Maria for eons.”
As best I recalled, the Longacre family seat was a reasonable day’s travel from Town in the direction of the Kentish coast.
“Since when do you need an escort, Godmama? Any highwayman who accosts your coach would get the worst of the encounter. You’d scold him into submission and demand his horse for your troubles.” Or she’d brandish her peashooter at his baubles.
“You don’t get out much,” Lady Ophelia said, “so I forgive you for ignoring the fact that former soldiers are swarming the countryside. They can’t find honest work, many of them have come home to families incapable of supporting them in the shires, and the dratted Corn Laws have driven the cost of bread to the heavens. We all thought we wanted peace, but we didn’t plan for the reality. Thanks to the great and greedy men charged with ordering the nation’s fate, English highways are unsafe these days.”
During the Season, I did not get out socially at all if I could manage it, but I read the papers. I corresponded with some of my fellow former officers and a few who still held their commissions. I paid courtesy calls on the widows of my late comrades and the families of fallen subordinates—those who would admit me.
I had a platoon of sisters, cousins, and in-laws who were very active in Society and who made their duty visits to me.