Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03] Read online

  Kate made no answer, beyond a small inward sigh. Really, it must be very pleasant to live in Viola’s world, with everything drawn in such broad strokes. People and actions easily classified as righteous or knavish; no margin granted for human fallibility or the claims of society. No energies squandered in pondering extenuating circumstances. No time wasted on doubt.

  One of the Pride and Prejudice volumes was pressing a sharp edge into her forearm, so she switched to a one-handed grip, like Viola with her Vindication. Conjugal felicity, indeed. That came in several guises, surely, or at least you might get there by more than one path. If Mr. Darcy, for example, had come to her with that first grudging proposal, openly acknowledging his abhorrence at so lowering himself, she would have swallowed her pride long enough to choke out a yes. Affection and understanding could come afterward—or if they never came at all, she would have a good name and the grounds at Pemberley on which to build all the felicity she required.

  As they made their way into the residential streets of Mayfair, she tipped back her head for a view of remote upper windows. Surely somewhere in London was a gentleman who would suit her needs. Surely some aristocrat—some marquess ripe for stupefaction—must appreciate a beautiful bride with such pragmatic expectations of the wedded state. Surely someone, someday, could be brought to lower himself as Mr. Darcy had, and spirit her out of that middling class in which she had never truly belonged.

  Surely that man did walk and breathe. The trick was only to find him.

  ROUND THE landing, down the stairs, and through the heavy oak front door, Nicholas Blackshear spilled out into the cold sunlight of Brick Court, black robes billowing in his wake. TIME AND TIDE TARRY FOR NO MAN, warned the inscription on the sundial where he paused to confirm the hour. It told the truth, that inscription, but far from heeding its exhortation to haste, he always seemed to stop here an extra moment, reflecting on the hallowed figures who must have consulted this same timepiece as they’d gone about their business in the Middle Temple.

  William Blackstone and Oliver Goldsmith had each surely stood here—he had only to glance up at Number Two Brick Court to see where the jurist and the writer had slept and studied a few generations ago.

  But so it was throughout the Inns of Court. Just as he always had to stop at the sundial, so must he quietly marvel, every time he took a meal in the Middle Temple Hall, at the serving table whose wood came from the hull of Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind. So must he always attempt, mid-meal, to picture all the details of the evening, some two hundred years ago, when the benchers and students had been privileged to witness the very first performance of Twelfth Night in that same room.

  To be a London barrister was to live surrounded by the best of everything England had to offer, all from men who’d charted their own courses to greatness. A fellow might end up anywhere, who began here. If he was literarily inclined, he could look not only to the example of Goldsmith but also to the poet Donne, the satirist Fielding, the playwrights Webster and Congreve—onetime barristers all. If he aspired to etch his name in big bold letters upon the pages of English history, there were Francis Bacon’s footsteps to follow in, or, more recently, William Pitt’s.

  And if his ambitions ran to the idealistic, he might pattern himself after William Garrow, reforming the practice of courtroom law before gaining a seat in Parliament, and a role in all the glorious wrangling through which the nation’s daily business was managed. One day, if he, Nick Blackshear, was scrupulous in both personal and professional conduct, he might restore the family name to such respectability as would make any ambition possible. In the meantime, the law itself must be his purpose, a fit exercise for his faculties, a consolation for disappointments old and new.

  Nick swung out from Brick Court into Middle Temple Lane and headed north. Bewigged, black-robed gentlemen made a steady traffic both ways in the lane. His tribe. His species, with all their quirks and crotchets. Some argued as they went along in twos and threes, sawing at the air or jabbing with peremptory fingers. Some presented a hazard to their fellows as they barreled blindly ahead, never looking up from the pages of a brief. He wove through their ranks, long legs and five years of practice steering him clear of collisions while his robes whipped with each sharp turn. At the end of the lane stood the gatehouse, with the Old Bailey looming on the far side of Fleet Street, and—

  “Blackshear!”

  He’d know that voice in his sleep. Partly because he’d spent a good year studying with the man; partly on the merits of the voice itself. Most barristers made an effort to speak well, and almost all had the genteel accents of the well-born, but few could spit a word like Westbrook. His consonants snapped like a flag in high winds; his vowels poured out in measures as precise as medicine into a spoon.

  Nick pivoted, finding the man and stepping clear of traffic in one economical move. He liked to be early to court, and he’d tarried a bit too long already at the sundial.

  Never mind. Westbrook had hailed him, and there was not much he wouldn’t do for Westbrook.

  “Walk on, walk on, I wouldn’t dream of making you late.” The man was grinning as he pulled even with him, wheeling one hand in a move-along motion, because in the course of that year he’d so graciously taken him on, he’d learned Nick’s habits well enough to understand the importance of punctuality. “In the criminal courts today, are you?”

  “Stubbs means to keep me busy with desperate cases all this session. Beginning today with an incident of pickpocketry in Whitechapel.” He gave one smart rap to the bag in which he carried his brief. “I’m to spare a wretched young man from transportation, if all goes well.”

  “Stubbs, to be sure. A well-meaning man, but his head’s nearly as soft as his heart. See that he’s prompt with your gratuity this time.” Westbrook gave a nod and half-salute to a passing gentleman in the silk robes of King’s Counsel. Burnham. Nick knew the name of every KC.

  “Indeed I took a lesson from the last time, and collected in advance. Mind you, I suspect it’s out of his own pocket. From what I’ve read of the boy I doubt he has either means or connections sufficient to engage a barrister. But you know how Stubbs is.”

  They both did. To rail at the eccentricities of this or that solicitor was a barrister’s pleasure and privilege, though he would never go too far in mocking Stubbs. Other solicitors, after all, had ceased to bring him clients since the events that had blemished his family name. Stubbs continued undeterred.

  “Well, I know you’ll give the client a fine, spirited defense.” The older man clapped him on the shoulder. Father had done that a very few times—he’d been a cerebral man, not much given to such displays—and to this day the action loosed a melancholy that went trickling through his veins. “Indeed that brings me to my purpose in seeking you. An opportunity has arisen that I think may suit your talents and inclinations. I won’t delay your arrival in court by telling you all about it now, but I wonder if you might come to the house for dinner. Mrs. Westbrook and the family would be glad to see you, and we could speak on my subject over a glass of port.”

  “I’d like that very much. It’s been too long since I’ve seen them. Let me bring the port. I just bought a new bottle of something fine.” He got the words out rapidly as they approached the gatehouse into Fleet Street. Westbrook, like any barrister, knew the value of efficient speech and wouldn’t think it brusque.

  They parted at the street and Nick made a mental note to buy port. And to ask one of his neighbors which sort was fine. He had better uses for his money than to be frittering it away on transitory luxuries, but hanged if he’d turn up empty-handed to dinner. Not when his host had four daughters to dower, and a son still living with him as well.

  Ah, the daughters. His pulse swung into a foolish little jig at the prospect of seeing Miss Westbrook. His pulse would never learn.

  The rest of him had learned all too well. It hadn’t wanted any scandal on his side to put Kate Westbrook beyond his reach—she’d put herself there from
the beginning, and kindly left him in no doubt of the fact. His pride still smarted sometimes at the memory, when he allowed himself to dwell.

  So he would not dwell. Certainly not when there was an opportunity to be thought of. He’d turn his pondering there instead.

  What sort of opportunity? He wound through the usual crowd loitering outside the bail dock’s brick wall, curiosity kindling steadily as he went. Westbrook knew every detail of his circumstances; knew how heavily his practice depended, these days, on the sorts of clients who couldn’t afford to be fastidious in choosing their representation; knew how the work dwindled during those periods when the criminal court was not in session. Maybe the opportunity had to do with a good long case in Chancery, or the Court of Common Pleas?

  The gate, the bail dock, the great courthouse door, and the corridors all went by in a pleasant blur, mere background to the question of what news he’d learn tonight over a glass of fine port. When he crossed the threshold into the courtroom, though, he put that question away. A client and his soft-hearted solicitor were depending on him, and until he left this room again he was entirely at their service.

  TRUE TO her word, Viola stationed herself under one of the great maples in Berkeley Square’s center, the very picture of righteous disapproval with her back turned to Harringdon House and her arms folded tight about all the borrowed books.

  Not that she had much to disapprove. Kate stood ready with her letter, and when the butler answered her knock she bid him carry the note, with Miss Westbrook’s regards, to the countess. That was that.

  “Shall I announce you to her ladyship?” The butler opened the door three or four inches wider.

  Something swift and predatory uncoiled in her middle, awakened by that motion of the door easing open; by the glimpse of patterned carpet and gleaming oiled woodwork within. Eleven such notes she’d delivered here, one for each marriage or birth or younger son turned ashore triumphant, and she’d never in five years met with the opportunity to be announced.

  But a girl of grand ambition prepared herself for every possible windfall, and she had in fact rehearsed this moment before her mirror once or twice.

  She took a half-step back, clutching her cloak together and lowering her lashes in a pretty show of confusion. “Oh, no. I have no thought of troubling her ladyship. She can read the note at her leisure.”

  In her private rehearsals she’d always imagined a look of august yet deferential approval on the butler’s face; an unspoken assurance that he would tell Lady Harringdon of her caller’s impeccable manners and modesty, with perhaps a mention of the beauty that rendered such diffidence all the more becoming.

  But he wasn’t even looking at her. His gaze had gone beyond her to the street, and he was once again pulling the door open, all the way this time.

  She turned. At the end of the walk, clearly waiting for her to pass, stood a tall gentleman of late-middle years, ebony walking stick in one hand, the other hand reaching for his hat. And all of a sudden she felt every ounce of the confusion she’d been feigning but an instant before.

  He looked so much like Papa. Not about the face, entirely—or rather, the chin and cheeks and jawline might all be the same, but a thick brush of blond whiskers prevented her discerning this—rather it was his stature, and a certain quality in his posture, and other things beyond her ability to name. Without intervention from her brain, her blood knew him. Or knew his blood, to be more exact, as like must recognize like.

  He doffed his hat and nodded, his smile showing the same impersonal politeness with which he would doubtless greet any woman, young or old, high or low, fair or plain, who stood impeding his way on his own doorstep.

  Kate curtsied as she passed him, and came up in time to see a quizzical look in his eyes; then a startled awareness.

  Her heart thudded and her face flushed warm. He knew her. Without, to her knowledge, his ever having seen her before, he must have detected the traces of Papa in her person, just as she’d done with him.

  Neither she nor the gentleman spoke. Just as well, because she could think only of the most injudicious things to say. Good afternoon, my lord. I’m a daughter of the man you ceased to call brother three and twenty years ago.

  Yes, Mother used to be an actress. But if you’d met her even once, you’d see that she’s a woman of the highest moral character.

  He kept your letters. He has a stack of them, years and years old, that he never threw away. She’d found them once, by accident. In Father’s study, in the older writing desk he never used. She’d meant to take it for her own use, but she’d opened the lid to find letter upon letter, most of them from when he’d been at Rugby. Affectionate notes from his mother. Carefully lettered missives from younger sisters who were still mastering the proper use of a pen. And from this brother—Viscount Melford at the time—dense, cross-written pages recounting his adventures at university and encouraging young Charles in his studies. She oughtn’t to have read them but she had.

  I know what he meant to you once, and you to him. Do you never think of him? She couldn’t say that. She couldn’t say any of these things. And she’d been standing too long staring in silence at this man to whom she was both a blood relation, and nothing at all.

  She scuttled away—in her rehearsals she’d always glided, swanlike, employing every air she’d acquired from the dancing master at Miss Lowell’s—and across the street to where Viola waited. A glance, when she dared risk it, confirmed that the man had gone inside. Whatever disturbance he’d felt at the sight of her, it had apparently been but a hiccup in his lordly routine.

  “Well, that was quick, at least.” Vi greeted her with a grudging approval, and with the Pride and Prejudice volumes held out at arm’s length for her to reclaim. “I feared you might persuade the butler to admit you to her ladyship’s presence.”

  “No, I merely left my note, as I told you I would do.” She took back her books. She had news to confide, and no one to confide it in. Viola would care nothing for the opportunity to be announced to their aunt, and to the report of encountering their uncle she would probably respond with withering contempt.

  “You might have posted the letter, then, and saved us this march across town. Lord knows anyone living in Berkeley Square can afford the two pennies.”

  Kate made no reply. She loved her sister. Indeed she loved her whole family. But was it so unreasonable of her to crave a life in which people valued courtesy, consideration, and etiquette, and recognized that there was more to be thought of, when delivering a letter, than whether the person on the other end could afford to pay the postage? Was it so wrong for her to want to not be nothing to people who shared her name and her blood?

  The mile and a half from Berkeley Square to their Bloomsbury destination provided ample time for reliving that brief drama on the doorstep—it could scarcely have been a minute, altogether, from her lifting of the knocker to her flush-faced retreat—and wondering at the import of each twist and turn. The butler would not have decided on his own to announce her. Lady Harringdon must have instructed him to do so the next time Miss Westbrook called, but why?

  She’s bored, came the suggestion from the most audacious corner of her brain. Her daughters are all gone and she doesn’t know what to do beyond making matches for young ladies. She’d like someone new to bring out.

  Even if that were true—and Kate would not let herself presume that it was—Lord Harringdon, from his obvious surprise at encountering her, would appear to have not been in on the plan. He’d probably marched straight upstairs to find his wife and demanded to know why one of the Misses Westbrook had been on his doorstep, and then dissuaded the countess from any charitable impulses she might have entertained.

  Or, no, he wouldn’t have had to. Because when he’d asked his wife to account for the presence of Miss Westbrook, Lady Harringdon would have said, Oh, that poor girl. She insists on coming by with her little notes on every occasion, and I meant to finally bring her in and tell her plainly that she
must give up hoping for our notice.

  Kate squirmed, deep under her skin where neither her sister nor any passerby would see. Usually that audacious corner of her brain would put up a fight against the part that wanted to deal in measly expectations and self-doubt. Today it slunk back into silence, content to leave her with the construction of events most unflattering to her hopes.

  And matters only got grimmer when she and Viola reached Queen Square, and Miss Lowell’s Seminary for Young Ladies. In the parlor where the day pupils waited to be fetched home, a clutch of girls gathered at the fireplace, chatting like convivial magpies. Bea and Rose stood by the window at the opposite end of the room.

  Kate’s fists clenched; she had to will the fingers loose again. With every bit of her body she remembered that feeling of standing apart, shut out from the jokes and the gossip and the giggling over this or that girl’s handsome elder brother.

  “It’s not right that they should be so excluded.” The words forced themselves out in an urgent undertone, even as she felt all the futility of this conversation. “On balance they’re of better birth than any girls here.”

  “Of better brains, more to the point, and better character.” Viola didn’t trouble to keep her voice low. “So why on earth would they desire the approval of this lot? I had much rather be excluded.”

  Yes, that had been perfectly plain during their own years at Miss Lowell’s. While Kate had waged a meticulous and dogged campaign to work her way into, and eventually to the head of, the ruling group of girls, her sister had gone her own way, clad as always in the convenient armor of indifference to the judgment of others.