Fanny was surprised both by the intensity of his words, but also by the lack of enthusiasm in Venetia’s response when the girl was generally so deferential.
“Good day, Mr Wells.” Venetia hesitated, then added, “Please tell Sebastian I wish him all the best for the future.”
“I’ll do that. He’s seeing to the travel arrangements. Libby and her young man are traveling together, which means Sebastian will bear me company home.”
After murmuring their thanks and compliments, the young couple departed in Mr Wells’s wake, just as the parlormaid entered the drawing room with a silver salver bearing the afternoon’s correspondence.
“This one is for you, Antoinette, from your even more scandal-prone friend, Mrs Brice,” Fanny said, handing her sister a scented letter covered in an elegant scrawl. “I hope you can decipher it, for she seems to have written it in a particularly exuberant mood.”
“And this one is for you, Fanny, from our brother, who no doubt is in need of being bailed out again.” Antoinette traded envelopes, opening her letter as she adopted a pose of great relaxation, turning the pages with a great deal of oohing and aahing.
Until she cried out, “My goodness, Fanny! Mrs Compton has been delivered of her baby! Oh my! A full three months early, Mrs Brice tells me! No one was expecting it, least of all Mrs Compton’s husband. He’s livid, apparently!”
“Really Antoinette, this is not the place…” Fanny tried to remonstrate with her sister, who now had her hands to her cheeks and was laughing, while Lady Indigo stamped her cane on the floorboards and demanded to know what was so amusing.
Not surprisingly, Venetia continued to sew with stolid determination, looking like she barely cared what the excitement was about. Restrained at the best of times, the girl looked like she was inhabiting a different plane today. Poor thing. There was no fire in her, Fanny decided. No wonder the gentlemen didn’t take to her if she showed such habitual lack of enthusiasm.
“It’s too shocking, Lady Indigo,” Fanny said, reluctantly returning her attention to Lady Indigo who continued to demand that she be apprised of the facts. She was embarrassed to be asked to divulge the details to a no-doubt disapproving old woman, much less an innocent young lady like Venetia. Not that Venetia looked like she was paying attention.
“Shocking it no doubt would be if you’re talking about that...designing creature, Mrs Compton.” Lady Indigo appeared to be shaking with rage, and Fanny watched, fascinated by the way her hands shook, and her nostrils flared. “Is it the same woman? I don’t wonder her husband wanted to divorce her! Oh, but she likes the gentlemen!”
Fanny saw that Antoinette, like herself, was taken aback by the extent of Lady Indigo’s spleen.
Her sister dropped the letter in her lap. “Yes, it’s the same Mrs Compton your nephew was visiting when he fell from her windowsill! And Mrs Brice has even more details if you’d like to hear them.” She stopped when she caught Fanny’s warning look for Lady Indigo was in the midst of such severe palpitations that Fanny feared her heart might give out on her.
“Antoinette, where are your smelling salts?” she entreated her sister, but Lady Indigo waved away the suggestion, saying, “Thanks to that scheming jezebel my nephew is dead. What has the evil woman got up to this time? Whose husband has she cuckolded now? Her husband was going to divorce her but then didn’t! Tell me all the details!”
Another rapping of the cane upon the floorboards precipitated Antoinette to answer with more detail than she might otherwise.
Though perhaps she’d have answered with such detail, in any case.
“Mrs Compton’s husband was going to divorce her when he learned she was going to have a child, and he believed the...er...timing indicated the father was, in fact, his arch enemy,” said Antoinette, referring to the letter once more.
“Who was his arch enemy?” Fanny asked.
“Sir Redding to whom he’d lost a great fortune some years earlier, then fought a duel, causing him to suffer a terrible disfigurement.”
“And why would Mr Compton think Sir Redding was the father of Mrs Compton’s child?” asked Lady Indigo.
“Because Mr Compton found Sir Redding in his wife’s bedchamber.”
Lady Indigo drew in a labored breath as she shifted her feet and sucked on her gums. “Sir Redding made a lucky escape! He got out of Mrs Compton’s bedchamber, alive. Unlike Theophilus!”
Fanny tried to puzzle it out while offering Lady Indigo the required sympathy. “The gossip sheets were full of the scandal regarding her affair with Sir Redding, but then it died down until, of course, the gossip sheets were full of the scandal involving Sebastian Wells.”
“Indeed, they were!” Antoinette agreed. “Possibly unfairly, Mrs Brice writes,” she added, tapping the letter on her lap. “For she says here that Mrs Compton was heard confessing to having lured Mr Wells into her bedchamber for the single purpose of trying to allay her husband’s ire by claiming Sebastian was the father.”
“Poor Sebastian,” Fanny said on a sigh. “Not that she could have got away with it when the timing would have revealed the truth, regardless.”
“Yes, poor Sebastian,” said Antoinette. “I think she may have hoped Sebastian would have championed her and provided support if Mr Compton had thrown her out.” She sighed. “It would appear that Sebastian never found the dark-haired beauty he went in search of the day after Dorothea’s funeral.”
“No,” agreed Fanny. “He just found trouble at the hands of Mrs Compton, who used him as a scapegoat.”
“Indeed, she did!” Antoinette’s excitement grew as she scanned the few lines once more. “Why, Mrs Compton must have been more than three months gone when she and her friend, Lady Banks, set their trap. And there was the poor fellow, so recently returned from the Continent, knowing nothing of the reputation of these two wicked ladies.” She clicked her tongue. “He’s such a kind man, isn’t he, Fanny? But to his detriment, it would appear. Lady Banks petitioned him to sell some of her jewelry so she could pay a debt without her husband knowing. Three men, who knew she was not to be trusted, had already refused. But Sebastian fell victim to her tears and, unfortunately, was discovered in Lady Banks’s bedchamber.”
“He sounds more like a fool, if you ask me!” said Lady Indigo.
“Well, Lady Banks was holding a soiree with Mrs Compton and some other friends when her husband was supposedly away, and she told Sebastian she couldn’t prize the safe from beneath the floorboard and asked him if he would go up and help her,” said Antoinette. “I’ve asked gentlemen to do such favors for me, and I don’t consider them fools.”
“No, I’m sure you’re right, Antoinette,” said Fanny.
“Besides, Sebastian had just returned from the Continent, and Mrs Compton led him to believe she was a widow,” Antoinette went on. “What was that? Did you say something, Venetia?”
Fanny glanced at Venetia whose needlework, she noticed, was on the floor at her feet. “You look a little heated, Venetia. Are you well?” she asked, her attention diverted by the sound of a departing carriage. “Well, there he goes now, poor fellow,” she said, glancing toward the window. “He’ll be enormously relieved that there can be no doubt Mrs Compton’s child is not his.”