“What that approach lacks in charm, it makes up for in brevity,” Marie Montpelier replied. “This is wonderful tea.”
“Lord Stephen gave it to me.”
To Stephen, dozing in the bedroom adjacent to this conversation, Babette—given name Betty Smithers—sounded a little perplexed by his latest gift.
“What’s he like?” Marie asked. “His lordship, that is.”
An interesting pause followed, during which Stephen told himself to get the hell out of bed and take himself home. Abigail Abbott expected him to be awake and sentient at breakfast, and only a fool would cross swords with that woman on less than three hours’ sleep.
“Lord Stephen is different,” Babette said. “Take this tea, for example. What lordling brings his light-skirts a tin of excellent tea? How did he know I’d appreciate that more than all the earbobs in Ludgate? The tea merchants don’t trot out the fine blends for the likes of us.”
“The earbobs are mostly paste,” Marie replied. “Did he bring you these biscuits too?”
“Aye. Had his footman deliver me a basket. I never had such glorious pears, Mare. I’m saving the last one to have with the chocolates he sent me. If you’d told me a pear could make right everything ever wrong in an opera dancer’s life, I’d have said you were daft.”
Another slurp.
“A man with glorious pears must be making up for a lack of glory in other regards, Bets.”
Marie had been with the opera five seasons. Stephen had steered away from her practiced smiles and knowing glances. Babette was new to the stage and had retained some generosity of spirit on her recent trek down from the Yorkshire dales.
Stephen had endured the usual round of cards at the Aurora Club, then caught the last act of the evening’s opera. Escorting Babette home had led to an interlude, and now—at three in the morning—Babette was having tea with her neighbor. Very likely, Marie had just bid good night to some wool nabob or beer baron.
“If you mean in bed,” Babette replied, “Lord Stephen is a handful.”
“A mere handful?” Laughter followed, the sort of laughter women shared only with one another. Stephen liked that variety of mirth and was happy to be its inspiration, though he really should be getting dressed.
“Not that sort of handful,” Babette replied. “He’s demanding, inventive, and relentless, is the only way I can describe it. You know how we sometimes flatter the menfolk?”
“Feign pleasure, you mean?”
Stephen felt a twinge of pity for Marie, who mentioned her subterfuge with no rancor whatsoever.
“He doesn’t put up with that, Mare. He has a way of insisting that there be no faking, no pretending, and that’s unnerving, it is. Goes along with the scrumptious pears and the rich chocolates. Lord Stephen deals in a kind of blunt honesty that wears me out as much as his swiving does.”
Women spoke a dialect Stephen didn’t entirely understand, though he sensed Babette was not offering a compliment to his sexual prowess. She wasn’t insulting him either, but she was blundering perilously close to an insight.
Should have left fifteen minutes ago.
“I hate it when a man lacks consideration,” Marie said. Porcelain clinked, suggesting she was serving herself more tea. “Some of them have more care for their horses and lapdogs than they do their women.”
A sad truth.
“Lord Stephen is frightfully considerate. He holds doors for me, holds my chair, as best he can with his canes and all. He never hurries me into the bedroom, and he never rushes away as if a hand of cards matters more than a fond farewell.”
“Betty, you know better.” Marie’s tone was pitying rather than chiding. “You let a man have your heart, you’re doomed. Look at poor Clare. A babe in her belly, naught but another few weeks of dancing left to her, and where’s her lordling? Off shooting grouse in Scotland. She’ll be lucky to survive the winter, and he promised he would marry her.”
Clare Trouveniers had been under the dubious protection of Lord Alvin Dunstable, known as Dunderhead to his friends. Stephen made a note to send Dunstable a pointed epistle and to slip Clare some coin.
“Lord Stephen doesn’t have my heart, not yet,” Babette replied. “It’s a near thing, though. You know what he does that just unravels me, Mare?”
“Pays well?”
“Of course he pays well, and he puts the money in my hand, and tells me how to invest it. His brother owns a bank, you know.”
“His brother owns half the City. Does Lord Stephen bring you flowers?”
“Flowers are predictable. Lord Stephen isn’t predictable.”
That observation was inordinately gratifying.
“He’ll be predictably married before too long,” Marie observed. “His brother’s wife was just delivered of yet another girl child. That’s four girls, Bets. I do love it when Providence refuses to bend to the will of the Quality.”
That observation—about Stephen having to marry—was inordinately disquieting.
“He doesn’t do what you think he’ll do,” Babette replied. “Take the last biscuit. We have rehearsal in the morning. You’ll need to keep up your strength.”
That Babette continued to dance when Stephen paid her well enough that she could put away her ballet slippers bothered him even as it earned his admiration. Men were fickle, fate was a mercurial old beldame, and bad luck was inevitable. To wit, Jane’s fourth child was indeed yet another girl.
Though Stephen was helpless to do anything but adore his nieces.
“You are perilously fond of your lordling,” Marie said, sounding as though her mouth were full of biscuit. “He doesn’t strike me as a man to inspire fondness. Cold eyes, never a wrinkle on his Bond Street finery. His canes are worth more than my poor papa’s life savings, God rest his soul. Have you ever heard Lord Stephen laugh? Does he snore? Does he forget where he put his sleeve buttons?”
“He smiles.”
What had laughing or snoring to do with anything, and who in his right mind would misplace gold sleeve buttons?
“He smiles like I smile at this butter biscuit, Bets, like
