Miss Spence was some sort of distant relation of Lord Beverly’s, and though she was not bright, and rarely entertaining, Lady Beverly had always staunchly claimed she couldn’t do without her.
Ivo couldn’t help but wish she’d at least make the attempt.
He sprang to his feet with particular warmth to greet his godmother’s belated entrance. One more bit of mindless gossip and he was going to say something utterly ungentlemanly to Miss Spence. What did he care who the Prince of Wales was currently cuckolding, or whether Lady Jersey’s sapphires were real?
‘Get off, you young rascal,’ Lady Beverly said, slapping at him with one heavily bejewelled hand. ‘If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, it’s not polite to maul a lady that way.’ She put a hand out and smoothed her petticoats over her hoops like a hen settling her feathers.
He smiled and swooped in to kiss her again. ‘I know what you tell me, and I know what the ladies like, and the two don’t seem to match up very often.’
‘Devil,’ she scolded, clearly pleased. She slipped her arm though his and marched him off to dinner. ‘Tell me all about what you’ve been up to, my boy. You don’t come see your poor old Aunt Prue often enough anymore.’
‘I know,’ he assured her. ‘I’m an ungrateful child. I’ve been swamped with taking over for Courtenay: the drainage, crop rotation, different breeds of sheep. Not to mention the effort it takes to resist Grandfather’s urging me to begin preparing to run for a seat in the Commons. It’s been exhausting, really.’ He smiled down at his godmother as he helped her into her seat. ‘But I’ve recently decided that the perfection of English ladies just might make it all worthwhile.’
Lady Beverly gave a sharp snort, and Ivo moved quickly to help Miss Spence with her chair. His godmother’s companion sat down heavily, hair powder drifting about her like a flurry of snow. She began to sneeze and Lady Beverly said over her, ‘Last I heard you weren’t making the acquaintance of any ladies. By all reports, you’ve done nothing but cavort with Italian hussies for the past few years.’
Ivo pursed his lips and suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. Where did his godmother get her information? Hussies? He’d had one mistress the entire time he’d been there. And they had been entirely circumspect.
Well, they’d been circumspect for Italians. He blew his breath out in a little huff. ‘Mrs Exley, whom I had the good fortune to meet at her father-in-law’s recent shooting party, is most assuredly a lady.’
‘Oh, her,’ Miss Spence chimed in, pausing to sneeze again. ‘I always think of her as one of the men. There’s really not much that’s very ladylike about her.’
Lady Beverly eyed him like a hawk and Ivo gritted his teeth. He shouldn’t have mentioned George. ‘I found her very ladylike, though certainly not missish.’
‘Nothing to be missish about,’ his godmother said, fiddling with the placement of her fork. ‘Mrs Exley’s been making a spectacle of herself since she was plain Miss Glenelg. She was a hoyden during her season, threw herself away on Glendower’s youngest son not a month into it—a delightful boy, but an heiress of her magnitude could have done better. Much better. She could have had Lord Montagu if she’d deigned to notice him—and then she went quite wild when the young man died.’
Ivo tossed back his wine and waited impatiently for the footman to refill it. An alcoholic stupor might be his only hope.
‘Her godfather was just complaining about her antics,’ Miss Spence said, not a hint of malice in her tone for him to complain of. ‘The duke says she’s quite lost to decorum—’
‘Amelia,’ Lady Bev interrupted her, ‘Alençon said no such thing.’
Miss Spence blinked, looking owlishly back and forth from his godmother to him. ‘But he did, Prudence. He said—’
‘He said,’ Lady Bev said, her commanding voice overriding her companion, ‘that her rackety ways left her open to gossip.’
‘Yes, gossip that she’s—’
‘Gossip, nothing more, Amelia.’
‘Well, it’s no wonder,’ Miss Spence insisted. Ivo reached for his once again full wineglass. ‘Running all over the country with that foreigner.’ She made a face, her lips wrinkling up like a prune. ‘Attending gentlemen’s shooting parties. Riding ventre à terre in the park. Filling her house with—’
‘I think we’ve wasted enough of our evening on the exploits of Mrs Exley,’ Lady Beverly said as the first course was laid on the table. ‘I want to hear about Italy.’ She turned to Ivo as he was filling his plate with buttered peas. ‘What’s the latest tittle-tattle? Has Hamilton really allowed Mrs Hart to move into his house?’
Ivo smiled at his godmother and took a bite of the rare roast beef that had been set before him. At last they’d moved on to gossip that didn’t potentially concern him.
Ivo arrived to pay a morning call at George’s town house in Upper Brook Street just as a party of young blades was leaving. One of them tipped his hat, while they all looked him over as if he were a hunter for sale at Tattersalls.
He stared them down and they moved aside, the shortest of them brashly rattling his sword.
Like a dog growling to let you know he had teeth. Ivo did his best not to sneer openly. They were little more than boys, cocksure and eager to prove themselves. The one with the ready sword didn’t even look old enough to shave.
It hadn’t been hard to find out where George lived. He’d casually mentioned to Lady Beverly that he wanted to see her about a horse she might be selling and his godmother had jotted down the address for him. She’d smiled, sphinx-like, as she’d done so. He didn’t trust Lady Bev when she smiled like that. It usually meant she was plotting.
He entered the front hall and handed his card to
