A Spinster by the Sea Read online

  “I pity Lord Corbett. He has made a laughingstock of himself, and Miss Baxter had a narrow escape. If you declare it to be so, all of Society will agree with you, particularly when Miss Baxter turns around and catches the notice of an eligible duke.”

  Lady Deschamps rose on a soft rustle of blue silk. “I never cared for the Hobbs boy. Too frivolous. His parents alternately ignored him and indulged him. He’s the caricature of the useless spare. I’ve always said that.”

  “While Miss Baxter remains an heiress, related to two earldoms, and quite comely.”

  The line reappeared between Godmama’s brows. “‘Quite comely’ is doing it a bit brown, Tindale. Passably pretty, I grant you, though only passably.”

  When Anne Baxter closed her eyes as the surf lapped at her ankles and the sun kissed her cheeks, she was goddamned gorgeous. When she grew animated on the topic of women’s contributions to the theater, she was riveting. When she fell into a pensive silence, she was breathtaking.

  And in all of those moments, she was honestly herself, not some creation concocted by modistes, cosmetics, and deportment instructors. She wasn’t an aging schoolgirl driven by a craving to revenge petty social slights, and she never would be.

  “I shall be gracious,” Lady Deschamps said. “I shall invite Miss Baxter and her cousin to tonight’s card party. I have it on good authority that Helen Saunders is an excellent whist player, and she’s sensible. Maybelline is overdue for a set-down, and allowing Anne Baxter to mince about on your arm a time or two will achieve that result.”

  Before the buffet was laid out, Godmama would have convinced herself and half of her guests that inviting Anne Baxter to make up the numbers had been her plan all along and that Miss Baxter was, after all, quite pretty.

  Augustus bowed over her ladyship’s hand and withdrew. He had achieved his objective and had to find his way back to his rooms without being accosted by any chaperones, matchmakers, diamonds, originals, or merry widows.

  He had spoken honestly to Anne. He needed her. Needed her desperately, and the sooner she joined the house party, the safer Augustus’s bachelorhood would be.

  “They will say Tindale feels guilty,” Helen murmured, running her hand over the soft, black leather of the coach seat. “They will say it was his responsibility as best man to get Lord Corbett to the church, and thus Tindale owes you the loan of his consequence.”

  The luxurious Tindale traveling coach had been sent to fetch Anne and Helen from the Siren’s Retreat. With the windows open, the coachman, groom, and footmen—two on the boot—could overhear what was said inside.

  About which, Anne did not care. “Tindale owes me nothing. Lord Corbett is not a toddler, to be kept on leading strings all the way to the church. Corbett changed his mind, and Lady Deschamps needs another female guest to make up her numbers.”

  “Lord Corbett lost his mind,” Helen retorted. “But he’s a man. He’ll be considered dashing and romantic, bold, or amusingly eccentric. We cannot concern ourselves with him tonight. You will be meek, Anne. Do you hear me? Meek and sweet and a little dazed at such good fortune following swiftly on the heels of heartbreak. If you can muster a sniff or two into your handkerchief, a teary blink in the odd moment, that will invite pity. Pity is your best bet.”

  Helen went on lecturing as the coach rolled along a coastal highway with a magnificent view of the sea.

  “You have my good offices to thank for this invitation,” Helen said as the coach turned through towering white gateposts topped by stone lions sejant with pineapples crowning their heads. “Please promise me you won’t bungle an opportunity I spent hours at the card table wrangling for you.”

  His Grace of Tindale had asked Anne to attend this function, had nearly begged her to come. What stopped Anne from disclosing that to Helen was primarily the need to avoid arguments. Helen meant well, she had Anne’s best interests at heart, and as a widow with small children, she had better things to do than clean up Anne’s wreckage.

  Anne also kept her peace because the time spent with Tindale was personal and precious, a memory to revisit in the quiet nights of spinsterdom that Anne honestly longed for. She and Tindale had argued about the significance of women in breeches roles—did that device ridicule men or simply show off a lady’s legs for the benefit of the males in the audience? Both?

  She had held hands with him.

  She had sat by his side and resisted the urge to lean into him for the sheer pleasure of bodily closeness with a fit, attentive male.

  And those encounters were private, as was the gentlemanly kiss to her cheek that Anne treasured most of all.

  This house party, by contrast, was not private. It was theater in the round, and Anne must not forget that she’d been recruited to play a role.

  “If Tindale does show you any favor,” Helen went on, “you will simper, Anne. Simper, do you hear me? Blush if you can manage it and try to look overwhelmed to have gained the notice of a duke. He might be a solicitor in duke’s clothing, but his title is old and wealthy. Disdain his notice at your peril.”

  “I doubt he will do more than bow over my hand.” He could start speculation with little more than that. Watching Anne from across a portrait gallery, bringing her a single glass of punch, or partnering her for a hand of cards would be sufficient to get the tabbies talking.

  “Chin up,” Helen whispered as the coach drew to a halt at the foot of an imposing cascade of marble steps. “Not up too high. Demure and dazed, but on your dignity—what’s left of your dignity.”

  Anne’s dignity was in very good repair, in part thanks to His Grace of Tindale. “You are kind to accompany me to an outing such as this, Helen. Expecting you to drop everything so I can make up the numbers was presuming of Lady Deschamps. I do appreciate your generosity.”

  Helen preened at Anne’s thanks, and Anne had meant them. Widowhood was not for the faint of heart, and Helen never complained or caused talk, when doing both would have been easy.

  The evening was informal, meaning the butler escorted Anne and Helen to a portrait gallery, where guests were mingling and chatting. Lady Deschamps greeted them with every appearance of good cheer, then introduced them to Lord Bertram and his adult son. Bertram was a widower, while the son, Lieutenant Charles Thurlow, had the bearing of a fellow intent on announcing his naval rank—all chest forward, shoulders back, his nose and chin forming the prow of a masculine ship of the line.

  “Simper,” Helen muttered just before Lord Bertram led her off on a tour of the paintings.

  “Shall we admire the art?” Lieutenant Thurlow asked, “or admire the view from the back terrace? I must own that a view of the sea will always appeal to me more strongly than even the best works of the old masters.”

  “Then the back terrace it is.” Anne could not muster a simper, but she could take Thurlow’s arm. He was a fine specimen of an officer, with blond curls falling fashionably over his forehead, pale blue eyes, and a ruddy complexion indicative of years ruling the waves.

  “I’ve heard of your recent disgrace,” Thurlow said quietly. “I am not the judgmental sort, though, and when Lady Deschamps explained that you’d been treated ill by Lord Corbett Hobbs, I knew my sympathies would lie with the jilted bride.”

  He patted Anne’s hand, and she sent up a silent prayer that Tindale would pop out from behind some old statue and pitch Thurlow into the ocean blue.

  “Your sympathy is much appreciated,” Anne replied, though Thurlow’s blasted sympathy was also entirely unnecessary.

  Nor did she crave sympathy when they stepped onto the back terrace and conversations paused as speculative looks were sent her way. When the talk resumed, the timbre had changed—softer and more intense.

  From idle talk to gossip, in other words.

  “The ducal lordlings,” Thurlow went on, “are overindulged and underdisciplined, if you ask me.” In the out of doors, his voice carried all too well. “Send them to sea at age eight, I say, then they’d know better than to leave a lady standing alone at the very altar.”

  Anne had actually been sitting in the front-row pew, Aunt Daphne on one side, Helen on the other, when Tindale had asked for a quiet word with Uncle Potter.

  “Do you one day hope to make captain, Lieutenant?”

  “One day? One day? My dear Miss Baxter, a captaincy is nearly a foregone conclusion, but the peace has bollixed up the works terribly. The senior officers are hanging on to their posts, and the admiralty is facing budgetary constraints. Pursuit of a captaincy, as with any worthy undertaking, will require ambition coupled with patience and persistence.”

  He sent Anne a look that involved one eyebrow lifted at an imperious angle, his head turned in three-quarter profile, and a knowing smile aimed at her… forecastle.

  The Thurlow family must be nearly destitute if a disgraced heiress inspired the lieutenant to comport himself as a one-man press-gang. Next would come a little speech about how overwhelming it must be for a woman to endure the burden of an independent fortune.

  “The view is spectacular,” Anne said, disengaging her hand from Thurlow’s arm and standing at the balustrade. “I quite agree with you that all the paintings in the world, as inspiring as they are, cannot compare with nature’s splendor. The sea is proof to me of a Deity beyond our comprehension, if the seasons, forests, sky, and fields did not already make that case.”

  Thurlow took the place beside her—immediately beside her. He did this in full view of the other guests, who were sending Anne looks that oscillated between sneering, amused, and—from a few of the older women—sympathetic.

  Anne drew her shawl closer about her shoulders and took half a step to the left. “How long will you be on leave, Lieutenant?”

  “Until June. That much shore leave is akin to punishment for a naval man, Miss Baxter, or it would be, but for the pleasure of present company.” He turned to perch a hip on the railing so the magnificent seascape served as a backdrop for his posturing. “I don’t suppose it’s easy for a young lady to be saddled with the burden of a fortune and have only solicitors and aging relatives to assist her with its management.”

  Nothing could be easier. Support the well-run charities. Don’t support the other kind. Invest in the prudent ventures. Don’t invest in the other kind. Live within your means on the interest and leave the principal to grow modestly over time. Anne’s papa had explained it to her when she’d still been in the nursery.

  “I manage.” Anne was beginning to doubt that she’d be able to manage an entire evening of sly and sympathetic looks, much less Thurlow’s seventy-four gun wooing. “Might you introduce me to some of the other guests? I know a few of them, but others—that lady in the Bath chair, for instance—are strangers to me.”

  The woman sat alone near the balustrade in a corner of the terrace. She looked out to sea, and Anne realized the woman was not elderly. She was older than Helen, though far from doddering. No husband or adult child attended her, and she looked lonely.

  “That’s Mrs. Northrup. Carriage accident killed her husband, put her in that Bath chair. All quite sad, but years ago. Do you know the Misses Daley? Their papa is Viscount Easterly.”

  Anne knew them. They were not twins, but they’d been born within a year of each other and operated as a single, malevolent social entity.

  “I’d rather make Mrs. Northrup’s acquaintance.”

  “Nonsense,” Thurlow retorted, placing Anne’s hand on his arm and patting her knuckles. “The Daley daughters are all that is delightful. Come along.”

  Come along? The Daley daughters had handsome settlements, about which their mama reminded any bachelor within seven leagues.

  “If you don’t mind, Lieutenant, I will enjoy the view awhile longer.”

  Thurlow looked torn between issuing an order and delivering a lecture. In the back of her mind, Anne heard Helen’s repeated admonitions to simper. Anne was constitutionally incapable of simpering, and her own cousin ought to know her at least that well.

  “Miss Baxter.” Tindale had sauntered up the steps from the formal garden. He bowed to Anne and smiled. “And Thurlow. A lovely evening to enjoy the view, and may I say, Miss Baxter, that the sea air agrees with you?”

  “Thank you, Your Grace. A pleasure to see you.”

  “You two are acquainted?” Thurlow seemed none too pleased at the duke’s arrival, while Anne wanted to throw her arms around His Grace’s neck.

  Tindale merely stared at Thurlow.

  “Oh, right.” Thurlow studied Anne’s left shoulder. “At the church and all. I beg Your Grace’s pardon. I was about to ask the Daley sisters if I might fetch them some punch. Miss Baxter, good evening. Enjoy the view.” He came about and sailed off, apparently having realized that Tindale outgunned him.

  “Thank you,” Anne said. “He was growing presumptuous.”

  “I escaped the Daley Dragons not a quarter hour past. ‘Tindale, fetch us some punch.’ ‘Tindale, my shawl is in the library.’ I was to be their personal footman. Let’s greet Mrs. Northrup, shall we?”

  As Tindale escorted Anne to where Mrs. Northrup sat alone, the looks Anne received shifted, the sneering gazes became puzzled, the amused smiles faded to speculation.

  “Tindale.” Mrs. Northrup offered her hand. “You must be about ready to jump into the sea by now. I’d heard you were part of this gathering and concluded Mayfair was treating you very ill if you were willing to leap from frying pan to fire, as it were. Who is your young lady?”

  “Mrs. Northrup, may I make known to you Miss Anne Baxter, whom I consider a dear friend. Miss Baxter, Mrs. Lily Northrup, another dear friend.”

  Anne curtseyed while Tindale pulled up a pair of wrought-iron chairs.

  “Do sit,” Mrs. Northrup said. “And don’t mind me, Miss Baxter. I wanted to see who Camelia had assembled for her little party, but after this evening, I will likely keep to my rooms.”

  “You live here?”

  A look passed between Tindale and Mrs. Northrup. “Thanks to Augustus, I own this property. He was my solicitor at the time of my husband’s death. Or rather, he was the solicitor my daughter talked into taking my part when it became apparent my husband’s family was intent on leaving us destitute. Lady Deschamps is my late husband’s aunt-by-marriage, and the less said about her situation, the better. She is to be pitied. You are well rid of the Hobbs boy. A complete ninnyhammer.”

  Anne looked from Tindale to Mrs. Northrup, seeing only kindness and understanding. “He absolutely was. I thought I could manage him, but I’m glad to have been spared such a thankless task.”

  “Tindale, some punch,” Mrs. Northrup said. “I am about to sing your praises to Miss Baxter, and that exercise will go more quickly in your absence.”

  She shooed him off with a wave of her gloved hand.

  “You aren’t interested in the punch,” Anne said, watching Tindale cross the terrace. “And you need not sing His Grace’s praises to me. I find him in every way to be an estimable man.”

  “And he considers you a dear friend,” Mrs. Northrup said, “an announcement that both pleased and surprised you. Augustus is not one to dissemble, Miss Baxter, nor does he have many friends. I expect you know how that feels.”

  Anne considered Mrs. Northrup, a pretty woman whose features bore the stamp of pain and fortitude.

  “I can always use another friend,” Anne said, “and I suspect you could use the loan of my shawl.”

  As the evening wore on, Augustus realized how great a sacrifice he’d asked Anne Baxter to make. Amid a barrage of whispers and innuendo, she trod the line between witty banter and polite ignorance of what was being said behind her back. She lost graciously to Lieutenant Thurlow, though never very much at one time. She’d lent Lily Northrup her shawl and insisted that she and Lily partner each other at cards.

  She endured Augustus’s besotted glances, which were more sincere than Augustus had intended them to be, and when the card party broke up, he offered Anne a final turn on the terrace.

  “Helen is deep in conversation with Lord Bertram,” she said, slipping her hand about his arm. “Now would be a good moment to pretend some interest.”

  Augustus was not pretending, not with Anne. He wanted to tarry with her as he had at the beach, the conversation wandering in all directions, no audience to draw conclusions or overhear.

  “Why did you lose to Thurlow?” he asked when they’d reached the relative quiet of the terrace.

  “He’s on leave mostly to escort his sister about the social Season,” Anne replied, “but she lacks a dowry. As Mrs. Northrup explained it, the admiralty courts are dragging their feet settling some war prizes, which will considerably improve Thurlow’s circumstances.”

  “Admiralty courts can take years to simply put pen to paper on a decision. For the duration of those years, the Navy invests the proceeds of its plundering. That still doesn’t explain why you rewarded Thurlow’s presumption with coin.” The lieutenant had been all but physically pressing himself to Anne’s side when Augustus had interrupted, and then Thurlow had raced away to impose himself on the Daley sisters instead.

  “I suspect Thurlow was using me to inspire the notice of other women. He’d make either Daley sister a good husband, but they were too busy ordering you about. My fortune garners respect even while I merit only gossip.”

  The footmen had extinguished the torches in the formal garden, leaving only a pair of lit flambeaux on the terrace. The sound of the surf carried in the darkness, as peaceful as a lullaby.

  “Let’s sit, shall we?” Augustus suggested, leading Anne to the foot of the steps. A bench in half shadow afforded both privacy and a view of the moonlit sea. “You took pity on Thurlow.”

  “He has served his country loyally, and now he’s supposed to use his leave to serve his sister loyally. Lady Deschamps clearly invited him simply to make up numbers, or that sister would be here along with Lord Bertram and Mr. Thurlow. The lieutenant wants for some temporary fortification, lest a pressing need to pay the trades see him matched to a harridan.”