Page 30 of The Gentlewoman Companion (The Gentlewoman #4)

How strange to hear her lady expressing anxieties similar to her own. “You are one of them and can enter anywhere you choose.”

“I suppose, but…it has been so long.” Lady Halverton became contemplative and watched out the window.

Louisa followed her example and soaked in the bustling metropolis, throngs of people intently making their way across the city. Her eyes caught on the familiar gait of a young man walking in their direction. She watched him as the carriage approached. He looked up. Charles.

She gasped and pulled back from the window.

“What is it, dear?” Lady Halverton’s brows were drawn, and she made use of her fan to cool Louisa, who knew herself be turning red from the heat that crept into her cheeks.

“Nothing at all.” She could not explain why seeing her brother was so upsetting without divulging the man’s awful nature or her own Great Misjudgment.

“It seems like something. Is there anything you wish to discuss?”

Louisa ran her hand down the front of her gown until a finger snagged on a bow, which she began to twist. It was one thing to receive Charles’s letters.

It was quite another to see his loathsome face traipsing along a London road, visible evidence of her precarious situation.

What could she do to rid herself of him?

Suggest he enlist in the navy? He was too lazy.

Find him a rich wife? No one would have him.

“If ever you wish to tell me something,” Lady Halverton said, “I am an understanding listener.”

“Thank you, my lady.”

Lady Halverton’s warm hand slid into Louisa’s. “I am fortunate to have found you, my dear. When you first came to me, I never could have guessed the delight you would bring. I feel almost as if—well, if it isn’t saying too much—almost as if you are my own daughter.”

Louisa stopped breathing. A daughter. Could she have become so important to Lady Halverton? Louisa squeezed her employer’s hand, accepting and expressing love and gratitude, while the swelling in her throat alluded to a future wherein their bond may break.

“Are you content with our arrangement?” Lady Halverton asked.

“Oh, yes! Only it is I who am fortunate. You have given me refuge, guidance, and wisdom that I scarcely deserve. I am very flawed, and you meet me with grace and patience.”

Lady Halverton laughed. “True. You are far too impulsive. If it were up to you, we never would have found the best perfume, as you immediately loved the first bottle you smelled.”

If her ladyship was trapped in a burning castle, Louisa would stay with her.

Her loyalty to her mistress was boundless.

But she could not expect the same treatment from so superior a woman as Lady Halverton.

Somehow, through Charles or another way, Louisa’s past would make itself known.

Her days with the Halvertons were limited.

She needed something to do. A diversion, a distraction—something to numb the worry that Lady Halverton and her son would discover she was not as wonderful as they supposed.

She required activity to replace the dreaded fact that the container of her secret wandered about London gambling and carousing, waiting for the moment it became convenient or entertaining to spiral Louisa’s life into ruin.

C andlelight danced off Lord Halverton’s eyes, an easy smile decorated his mouth, and his shoulders lay a smidge lower than Louisa had ever seen them.

Mr. Morden was regaling an attentive Lady Halverton with stories of their Grand Tour, sharing in particular a tale about a day when her son had become so absorbed in the extensive book collection exhibited in the Amberbach Cabinet that the doors had locked on him. He had been obliged to spend the night.

“I still don’t know how they failed to notice you when locking up,” Mr. Morden said.

“I was in a second story alcove only accessible by ladder.” Lord Halverton leaned back in his chair and set down his fork. “Until the sun began to set—which was late because it was summer—I didn’t notice I was alone.”

“Was it worth it?” Mr. Morden asked.

“The juridical collection contains over two thousand volumes of?—”

“Thank you, James, that is quite enough.” Mr. Morden raised his glass at his friend.

Halverton’s laugh stirred something inside Louisa. “Why do you never speak of your travels?” she asked.

“I’ve had other things on my mind.”

“James can only focus on one thing at a time,” Mr. Morden said, “as evidenced the night he spent with a dusty pile of books.”

“That is unfair,” Lord Halverton protested. “You say that only because you give your attention to a thousand things but never get anything done.”

Clearly, they both exaggerated, but it gave Louisa a fair image of their dynamic.

“Shall we move into the drawing room for cards?” Lord Halverton placed his napkin on the table. “No need to stand on ceremony when it is only the four of us.”

“We drink our port with the ladies?” Mr. Morden asked.

“And why not?” Lady Halverton stood, and the company followed her into the drawing room, where they settled around a table with glasses of sherry.

“Who teams with whom? Halvertons against the commoners?” Mr. Morden asked.

“Nay! No family members can pair, else cheating ensues,” Louisa said.

“Louisa, we would never.” Lady Halverton feigned offense.

“Let’s draw for it,” Hugh said. “The two highest cards will play together; the two lowest cards make the other set.”

Louisa and Lord Halverton drew the highest cards.

“Mind your bets,” Louisa said, “I feel feusik tonight.”

“Feusik?” Mr. Morden asked. “That word reminds me—I met a young man called Charles Thorpe. That is why your name is familiar. He uses the same word. Cornish, isn’t it?”

“Charles?” Lady Halverton asked. “Your brother?”

Louisa’s heart pounded into her throat. She wanted nothing to do with Charles but could not conjure an excuse to deny the connection. “Charles Thorpe is my brother’s name,” was all she could squeak out. She rarely spoke of him and was surprised Lady Halverton had remembered his name.

Louisa’s gaze flitted between Lady Halverton and her son, who watched her with similarly concerned and confused expressions.

“Perhaps Louisa doesn’t wish to see him,” Lord Halverton said.

Mr. Morden, clearly not perceiving the mood, said, “He is a fine fellow. Ready for a game, eager to send drinks round if he’s winning.”

Playing well. Louisa’s heart sank in the certainty that Mr. Morden’s knowledge of her brother was rooted in gaming halls where Charles bet too high and drank too much.

The subject dropped, but Louisa set to thinking on how to avoid Charles, whom she’d seen in passing and heard mentioned in the same day.

Could explaining that she simply did not get on with her brother be enough to keep him out of Grosvenor Square?

But if Mr. Morden knew him, had he been introduced into polite society?

That had never been Charles’s ambition. Dismissed from university for bad behavior and uninterested in learning to manage the estate, he was content to cavort with passing sailors who spent the short time they had on land roistering and making mischief.

She would tell Lady Halverton that Charles was not civilized company, that he was not a kind man. Already the lady was aware that something was amiss between Louisa and her brother. And she must send Charles some of her savings to keep him away from her.

The tightness at her core writhed and coiled, threatening to snap.

Louisa recognized the wave of reckless agitation washing over her, an urge to do something rash, to distract herself from the stiff tangle that twisted her stomach.

For the moment, she would allow herself to channel her anxiety into playing a reckless game of cards.