Apthorp leapt to his feet and made a deep bow. “My lady.”
Lady Spence’s narrow eyes did not move from Constance’s tear-lined ones.
Constance made a rapid calculation. Lady Spence had never been fond of her, and it was a risk to show vulnerability before a foe. But if there was one thing she knew about her godmother, it was that the woman enjoyed being right.
And so Constance craned her neck and blinked, allowing a single tear to roll out of her eye and trail tragically down her cheek.
She tilted her head away poetically, mopping up the tear like she’d been caught.
“Lady Spence!” she said, rising to curtsy. “What a relief to see a friendly face.”
Friendly was the last word she would use to describe her godmother’s penetrating gaze. But at the evidence of Constance’s discomposure, the old woman looked at her with greater interest.
“I saw what happened,” she said without preamble. “As did half the room. The cheek of that colonial. I told you not to consort with her type.”
“You were all too right. I regret I didn’t listen.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised, given your circumstances.” The old woman looked meaningfully at Apthorp, eyeing him like she might meat rotting on her parlor floor.
Constance ignored the insult and wrung her hands. “Oh, Lady Spence, I’m at a loss for what to do! You can’t imagine my distress. All around us I hear the vilest whispers, all because of slander printed in some dreadful paper. None of it is true, of course, but the timing is so unfortunate.” She paused, as though to stifle a sob. “I’m desperately afraid for our future.”
Lady Spence sniffed. “As you are right to be. I made clear to Westmead I don’t approve of this match at all. I can’t fathom why he hasn’t blocked it.”
Apthorp did a remarkable job of not reacting to this discussion of his own unsuitability.
Her brother only chuckled. “Lady Spence and I agree I am far too lax a guardian and you need taking in hand,” he said cheerfully. “I suggested she might find it in her heart to reform you.”
Constance sighed. “Normally I would contend I am not in need of reformation, but this week has been so difficult that I am chastened. I would be grateful for your advice, Lady Spence. It is a fretful thing to prepare oneself for marriage without a loving mother here to guide me. I so wish I weren’t an orphan.”
Lady Spence gave her a long, appraising look. “I shall do what I can for you. However, I might lament your choice of suitors.”
Constance pressed both hands over her heart. “Oh, I am so grateful.”
“If you’ll agree to surround yourself with respectable people,” Lady Spence added. “I’m hosting a small luncheon with several members of my congregation tomorrow. Join me and I will see what can be done for you. Perhaps it’s not too late to make a proper lady of you yet.”
“How kind. I would be delighted to attend.”
Lady Spence glared pointedly at Apthorp. “And bring him with you. I expect he would benefit greatly from the example of my minister.”
Apthorp produced that bland, gracious smile she’d watched him use on everyone from the vicar to the king for years. The one she’d dismissed as hopelessly boring. “I’d be honored, Lady Spence,” he said with touching humility. “Thank you.”
Lady Spence nodded at Westmead, who escorted her out of the box.
When they were alone, Apthorp turned to Constance.
He was silent. And then his face crinkled up into an absolutely charming smile. “Lady Constance. My word. Is it possible your wicked plan is working?”
She put her hands over her face and put her head on his shoulder and laughed in pure relief. He put an arm around her, laughing too, his chest rumbling beneath her shoulder.
The curtain opened, and the crowd went quiet, and they stopped laughing.
The soprano sang, and for the next three hours there was no one to perform for.
But she could not help but notice that for the duration of the opera, neither of them even tried to move away.
Chapter 7
The servant who greeted Apthorp at the door to Lady Spence’s town house the following afternoon was so hoary and gray that he looked like a ghost from the fire of 1666.
“The Earl of Apthorp,” the servant said, announcing him to an overwarm room furnished with tapestries that appeared to predate the Stuart line. Apthorp bowed to his hostess, who sat sternly in a chair next to the fire, and to Constance, who sat beside her with her hands folded demurely in her lap.
She smiled at him sweetly, in the exact way she had the night before when he’d awoken her at the end of the opera, after she’d fallen asleep nestled into the crook of his shoulder.
When no one had been watching.
“Allow me to present you to my friends,” Lady Spence said. “This is Mrs. Henry Mountebank, whom I’m sure you recall from her many noted essays on theology.”
“Of course,” he said, hoping he would not be struck down instantly for lying.
“And Reverend Keeper, the minister of our congregation. And of course Mr. Henry Evesham, whose name you will know from his most affecting reports on vice.”
Apthorp froze.
That name he did know. For Henry Evesham was the editor of Saints & Satyrs.
A curate-turned-journalist with evangelical leanings, Evesham was enjoying increasing renown for his crusading gazette calling out the city’s vices. His stories exposing procurers and serial bigamists had endeared him to the more pious members of the House of Lords, who’d recently invited him to testify on what could be done to protect the city’s innocents.
Lady Spence’s message in inviting Evesham was clear: it was a none-too-subtle threat to fall in line.
“A pleasure, Lord Apthorp,” Mr. Evesham said. He looked nothing like the spectral figure one imagined of a crusading man of letters. He was tall and wide-framed, with hands and feet like shovels and intelligent green eyes that held the kind of restful clarity that must come with the certainty one is ordained for heaven.
How nice for Mr. Evesham.
“It’s an honor to make your acquaintance,” Apthorp said, making it his personal mission to seem utterly unperturbed by having been invited to break bread with the man who’d slandered him.
“Lady Spence, thank you for inviting us here today,” Constance said. “Lord Apthorp and I have been so eager to become better acquainted with your congregation.”
“I’m glad to hear it. As Mr. Evesham’s writings can attest, there is a creeping wantonness in our society that those of us with the privilege of nobility possess a duty to expunge.”
She looked at Apthorp meaningfully, the way a long, black eel might regard you as it coiled itself around your ankle in a swamp. Christ, but he despised people of her ilk, with their penetrating judgments. He rewarded her with a smile that he knew from years on Charlotte Street set off his jawline to its best advantage and turned his eyes on Constance.
“I agree,” Constance said with a beatific smile that belied any awareness of the undercurrent of hostility in the room. “Mrs. Mountebank, Lady Spence recently sent me your essay on the sacrament of matrimony. There is much I’d like to learn from you. It is my dearest wish to be a loving wife in the spirit of Christian rectitude.”