“No, you did not.” But then, she’d attempted to couch her excoriating speech in veiled terms, eschewing the more unsavory ones a lady would necessarily be loath to utter. “Has Redding turned her away?” he asked as he pushed himself up from his chair.
“No,” Mother said, her voice clipped. “I asked him to do so, but as she called for you, he would not refuse her without your leave. I came only to request that you tell him as much yourself.”
Only months ago, Mother had been the mistress of this house, and the butler would have taken his orders from her. But now it belonged to Anthony, and Mother had found herself with somewhat less authority than that to which she had long become accustomed. Anthony had not intended to usurp it, exactly, but Mother was now the mistress of the house in name only.
Clearly, she had taken it ill. As she had taken so many other things.
“He’s put her in the drawing room?” Anthony inquired as he rounded the desk and headed for the door.
“With tea,” Mother said resentfully. “Though God knows why she should want any at this hour of the night. Youmusttell him to remove her at once.” She trailed along behind him as he strode for the stairs.
“I’ll see her.” His hand clenched upon the banister to steady himself as he began to descend. Slowly. The one eye left to him had also left him with a rather poor perception of depth, making the navigation of stairs a trickier business than it once had been. Even something this simple could be fraught with complications; the sudden onset of dizziness, a queersensation of vertigo.
“What?” Mother gasped, and he would have sworn he could hear the crackle of her ire rising in the wake of his declaration. “Warrington—”
“Mother, I am going to see her,” Anthony ground out as he reached the bottom of the stairs, where Redding waited in the foyer. He gave a gesture toward the drawing room as Anthony stalked past him.
Mother made a muted sound of aggravation and her footsteps picked up pace as she followed, the sharp click of her shoes upon the floor rattling through his brain like gunshots. “Warrington, I really must insist—”
Too late. The commotion—or as much of one as Mother had allowed herself to make—had clearly been audible to his guest. Perhaps she had once been sitting, given that the tea cup that rested upon the small table to the side of the sofa suggested it, but by the time Anthony had made it through the door, she was standing, her hands clasped before her, her shoulders drawn back proudly.
Probably, he thought, this was hardly the first scene that had been made over her presence.
“I am given to understand he prefers Captain Sharp,” she said, with a tiny tilt of her head that sent a loose dark curl tumbling over her shoulder. “Is that not so?”
Anthony heard Mother draw to a stop just behind him, heard the indignant rustle of her skirts, the hard, offended breath she drew in through her nose. But then, Miss Nightingale had been bound to give offense anyway with her very presence, and now again with the nearly-indecent cut of her gown, the glaring, brilliant red of it. Probably she had not expected an audience.
But she knew what to do with one. Shecommandedit, with her vibrancy, with her rich, dark beauty. She had to be well into her thirties, but if so much as a single wrinkle had dared lay itself into her smooth, unblemished face, then he could spot no sign of it at this distance.
Her friend, Mr. Moore, had said that she had retired from her career as a courtesan. Retired—which Anthony took to mean she had accumulated a tidy fortune for herself, one which would easily see her through the remainder of her life in comfort. And he could well see how she had done it. A face to launch a thousand ships, and breasts to launch a thousand more. He’d have staked the whole of his fortune on the certainty that whatever lay beneath her gown of shimmering satin was worth at least another thousand. Helen of Troy herself could not have held a candle to her.
All those years ago, he’d never seen her face. But he recalled now that voice, smooth and soft as silk. He knew the feel of her hand cradling his own.He remembered the comfort he had felt in her presence, in the soft stroke of her fingers through his hair.
“Mother,” he said, his voice oddly hoarse. “May I introduce—”
“No,” Mother gasped out, in tones of increasing horror. “No, you certainly may not!”
“That’s quite all right,” Charity said, unoffended. “As it happens, Captain Sharp, I have only come to—to discuss our mutual problem. If I might have a word in private?”
A tactful phrasing, no doubt due to the hostility of their audience.
“No, you may not,” Mother said, and though Anthony had not bothered to glance over his shoulder at her, he couldhearthe haughty lift of her chin in the icy cadence of her voice. “In future, madam, any business you might have with Warrington should not be brought to our door. If it’s money you require—”
“I don’t, Your Grace.” Charity smoothed at her vibrant red skirts, a thoroughly bored gesture. “But I would prefer my private matters to remain exactly that.”
“Then perhaps you ought to have chosen a different vocation.”
“Enough.” Anthony’s voice sliced straight through his mother’s catty jibe. Enough of all of it; the condescension, the spite, the judgment. “Mother, you were given ample opportunity to leave and to let me handle my own affairs. You have elected not to do so.” He took a breath, prepared for the worst—which Mother, with her acerbic attitude, had well earned—and said, “Charity, may I present my mother, the dowager Duchess of Warrington?”
Mother gave a gasp of offense. “Dowager,” she hissed. “Dowager!”
“And Mother,” Anthony continued, irrespective of the insult he had given, to have presented her to someone she considered to be so far beneath her. “This is Charity Nightingale. ThecurrentDuchess of Warrington.”
Chapter Four
The poor woman had fainted dead away. Not into a graceful swoon—a performance piece which might be enacted by some lady seeking attention or else to display her delicacy—but in a dramatic puff of black skirts as she collapsed to the floor, her head saved from a harsh strike against the floor only because she had landed upon a plush rug draped across the floor.
“Was that strictly necessary?” Charity groused, entirely disenchanted with having been used as a weapon against the unsuspecting woman, no matter how unpleasant she had been.
