Page 4 of Lady Liar (A Series of Senseless Complications #5)

H enry had no plans to go out that evening and so he’d dined with his aunt in Berkeley Square.

Now they had retired to the drawing room, he with his glass of port and she with her glass of sherry.

Lady Pegatha Rysdale was nothing if not practical.

The notion that he would sit alone in the dining room with a glass of port, and she would sit alone in the drawing room with a tea tray, was deemed absurd.

“So this is it?” Lady Pegatha said. “You’ve finally tired of living alone with your nose in a book?”

“Yes, I have finally tired of it. Naturally, I plan on continuing my current inquiries into the circulatory systems of slow-moving animals far into the future but—”

“It sounds fascinating,” Lady Pegatha said drily.

“I know it is not of particular interest to you,” Henry said, “nor would I expect a wife to take an interest in it.”

“Yes, well, all I will say about it is you are a strapping specimen of a gentleman. I’ve seen you turn heads everywhere. You’ve just been too busy rushing to your little meetings to notice.”

“They are not little meetings. They are Royal Society meetings.”

“So I understand. Now, this wife to be, who is out there somewhere, what do you suppose she is like?”

Henry had certainly given that some thought.

While he did not imagine that his future lady would be interested in his research, he did imagine that she would have a certain intellectual bent.

He’d been through the seasons in London enough times to be certain that must be the case.

He had no use for shallow personalities that acted as if fan waving, clever repartee, and knocking down their fellow members of the fairer sex were hallmarks of intelligence.

He had his fill of it last season, feeling very much like a stag on the run from leveled guns.

Lady Lilith, for one, had for some reason decided to set her cap on him.

Their encounters were torturous, as her mode of flirting seemed to be noting another lady’s dress and wondering if it were not déclassé, but then perhaps she ought not judge, she said.

If she were not occupied with that unpleasant hobby, she was outlining what one could do if they wished to be a leader in society and dropping French phrases when English would do perfectly well. Comme c’est amusant, indeed.

Of course, he had encountered some deeply intelligent women too. A few he suspected of besting him in pure intellect. They had been, for one reason or the other, not right. They were already married, or his aunt’s age, or there had been no other attraction there beyond the intellectual.

“I suppose I hope for my intellectual equal, even if our interests vary.”

Lady Pegatha laughed. “Well then, I suppose you ought to secure the Dowager Lady Marie forthwith!”

“Very amusing,” Henry said. Lady Marie was indeed remarkably intelligent. She was also seventy if she was a day. “I suppose it will not hurt if she is pretty, too.”

“What about Lady Lilith? She will be in her second season this year and likely ready to settle. She seems to be reasonably intelligent.”

Henry had no doubt she’d be interested in settling for him as she’d made clear. He did not think she really liked him but that she had other reasons for her interest, and he thought he understood those reasons.

He might only be a baron, but he was a very rich one.

Through generations of good management of an extensive amount of land, coupled with conservative and judicious investments, he probably had a deal more at his disposal than lords with far loftier titles.

Henry had the added benefit of not squandering what he had on stupid gambling.

None of the men in his line had—it was almost a family tradition to avoid betting like a disease.

Considering how some lords ruined themselves, perhaps it was a disease.

Henry had listened to Lady Lilith speculate ad nauseum about opportunities to “make one’s mark,” as she termed it.

All of those opportunities, like the grandest house available for purchase, the newest fashions, and elaborate entertaining, all came with a price.

As far as he could understand it, Lady Lilith wished to be a leading lady of the ton and would be happy to use his funds to get there.

He, himself, was rather beside the point.

“I see you are not bowled over by the idea.”

“Not particularly, no. I hold nothing against her, but I believe she is looking for a different type of gentleman.”

“Very well. In any case, I will rouse myself and accompany you to Almack’s on the morrow,” Lady Pegatha said. “I would like to see what the field looks like this year and weigh in with my opinions.”

Henry attempted to suppress a groan with middling success.

Lady Pegatha laughed hysterically. “You are pleased. No, do not thank me—I am delighted to do it!”

*

Mrs. Right had hauled Mr. Morus Klonsume down the stairs and into the servants’ hall. They had passed by the cook, who’d narrowed his eyes at the man.

As well he should. What was she to do with this fellow?

“Sit,” she said, pointing at a chair.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Mr. Klonsume said, throwing himself into it in the most ungraceful way possible. She was rather surprised the arms of the chair did not break under the force of it.

“Do not move,” Mrs. Right said, turning to have a word with Cook.

As she passed through the doorway, he called after her. “I wouldn’t argue against tea, assuming you’ve got any left after Boston. Hah! Tell him that joke again, maybe he’s got it by now!”

Mrs. Right found Cook staring at her in horrified fascination. “I know, I know,” she said. “I do not know how we are to rid the house of him, but god willing, something will come to me before the sun rises tomorrow.”

“I’ll do anything to help, Mrs. Right. Anything at all. Do you know how many times he’s told me about the tea in Boston Harbor? Get that man out of the house.”

She looked round the shelves in the kitchen. “I don’t suppose you have any poison?”

“Mrs. Right?”

“Sorry, just throwing around ideas, early days,” she said. “We’ll think of something less risky. Hopefully. For now, do send in a tea tray while I attempt to discover more information about that person.”

Cook had nodded and Mrs. Right made her way back to the butler.

Mr. Klonsume was casually leaning back in his chair as if he were king of the hall.

He looked exceedingly relaxed for a fellow arrived for his first day on the job.

She was determined to find out more about this individual.

That was the only way she could discover how to rid the house of him.

“The tea tray will be in shortly,” she said.

“Hah! So there was some left after Boston Harbor! We called it a tea party, you know. Very funny.”

“A gentle hint, Mr. Klonsume,” Mrs. Right said, “it generally does no good to keep repeating the same joke, especially when it was not amusing the first time.”

“Ah, Lady Marchfield said you’d be wound tight over my arrival. Mrs. Right, you must not fear! Naturally, it can be startling to have a whirlwind of ingenuity whip into your house.”

Mrs. Right stared at him. A whirlwind of ingenuity?

“But welcome the new ideas coming in! The Americans have arrived!”

Her eyes drifted round the room. Had he brought other Americans? “Where do you come from, precisely?” she asked.

“The great city of New York—what a town! By the by, I cannot help noticing that everywhere I look in this town, all I see is old. Does nobody build anything new here? Even the contents of this house are as old as the hills, it really is dreary. Lacking panache, if you will. Have you considered wallcoverings in the dining room? At my last house, we had a chartreuse and pink stripe—very striking.”

Mrs. Right imagined a chartreuse and pink striped wallcovering would strike people. Rather hard, too. That was beside the point, though. There was something else she wished to know far more than Mr. Klonsume’s taste or lack of it. “What caused you to leave that service in New York, then?”

Cook brought the tea tray in and Mr. Klonsume once more joked about Boston Harbor under his glare. Mrs. Right poured.

“A very sad case for my last employer,” Mr. Klonsume said, adding half the sugar bowl into his cup. “But that’s America for you! The land of opportunity. One minute you’re up and the next you’re down. Embezzlement, bad business.”

“Do you mean to say, then, that your employer was an embezzler?” Mrs. Right thought this would go some way to accounting for the man’s rather rough manners.

“It was a shock, I can tell you,” Mr. Klonsume said.

“The gentleman embezzled from his partner, and then one of the servants embezzled from the gentleman, and then another servant embezzled from the first servant. That’s America—everybody’s always climbing the ladder, no surprise that a fellow falls off it here and there. ”

Mrs. Right did not have the first idea if any of that could be true. Charlie and Thomas, having got the trunks into the hall, came in for their tea before the onerous job of getting it all upstairs. They both looked warily at Mr. Klonsume.

“There’s my boys,” Mr. Klonsume said. “Not quite as sturdy looking as what I’m used to. Jack and Richie could’ve lifted you both with their little fingers. Well, that’s English food, is it not? It doesn’t seem to grow very big people.”

Now that Mr. Klonsume had thoroughly insulted Thomas and Charlie, Mrs. Right poured the footmen their tea. Thomas looked with incredulity into the near-empty sugar bowl. She said, “Mr. Klonsume was just telling me of his history in New York. Apparently, his house was chock full of criminals.”

Thomas and Charlie did not look very surprised to hear it.

“Criminals? Now that’s going far, Mrs. Right. I won’t go into detail but rest assured, all three of those men had very pressing reasons to embezzle.”