Page 9

At Bute House, Cressida was shown to her old bedchamber, following Annis’s disapproving housekeeper up wide stairs redolent of beeswax and the scent of boiled trout emanating from a servants’ door left open.

A tall, austere woman with a weather-beaten face, Roberts hadn’t altered in years, still favouring a hostile attitude and gowns of heavy serge made up high to her neck.

When she’d gone, leaving both Ines and Cressida with a wide-eyed chambermaid, Ines sent for hot water and Cressida stepped out of her travel-stained clothes in a room papered with jarringly familiar hand-painted twisting vines and palm fronds.

Now, she sat before the old rosewood Queen Anne dressing table, staring at her own reflection in the mirror as Ines pinned and arranged her chestnut-brown curls into a fashionable artless tumble.

London. It was really as if her life in this world had happened to someone else; readying herself for balls and opera breakfasts in this very room; a gracious smile from Queen Charlotte in an overheated palace chamber; a pair of green silk dancing slippers with gold satin roses cast aside on the bedchamber floor.

‘You’re tired, milady,’ Ines said, sharply, pinning the last ringlet into position in a coronet of curls atop Cressida’s head. ‘And this sort of place is exactly where you’ll give in to the exhaustion, if anywhere. It’s not like being on the march, is it, to say the least?’

‘I can’t afford to make any mistakes, so don’t worry your head about that,’ Cressida said.

Here at Bute House, both versions of herself converged into one, sharing the same characteristic of fatal overreach.

She pictured Annis’s cold smile, which no longer had the power to frighten her: One day, young lady, you’ll go too far and then we’ll see what comes to the likes of you.

Less than half an hour later, Cressida paused at the bottom of the staircase, steeling herself as she stepped out onto the floor of black-and-white tiled marble.

She’d bargained for the evening gown of peacock-blue silk in a Madrid back alley and Ines had adjusted it to devastating effect, creating a clinging sheath of a silhouette.

She was going to need all the help she could get.

After the scene in the drawing room earlier, there’d been no guarantee that the Butes wouldn’t throw her out into the street via the servants’ door.

Aware that she was being watched, Cressida stopped where she stood, turning to look over her shoulder to face Roberts in one of her interminable dark gowns like some sort of rent-a-penny angel of death.

Moments passed before Roberts finally curtseyed.

Cressida ignored the frisson of alarm that swept in a burning sensation down her arms, right down to her fingertips.

In Spain or Portugal, a jolt of animal instinct like this would have been her signal to pick up her skirts and run, or at least to draw a knife.

Here, she could do neither. Instead, she just winked over her bare shoulder, knowing such vulgarity would annoy the woman.

They’d always had the measure of one another anyway.

No amount of false contrition or assumed shame would change Roberts’s opinion of a saucy, forward miss.

Annis’s two footmen were too well trained to allow a roving eye to wander, but at least she could be sure of the effect of the peacock-blue gown, sensing their awareness of her breasts rising from ruched silk.

The footmen had thrown open the doors, the drawing room now sparkling before her, all shadow and soft candlelight.

‘ Milady! I’ve announced you. Please to go in?’ The footman addressed her in a desperate undertone, risking a summons from Twisden by speaking to her.

Cressida murmured her thanks, tossing him a smile as she walked into the room.

One never knew who one might need and when, after all.

And good heavens, she must get a hold on herself: Ines was right.

She found Annis and Bute also in evening dress and sharing the club fender.

An elaborate arrangement of dried flowers garlanded the fireplace, and the warm air was heavy with the scent of orange oil and fine candlewax.

Bute’s grey head was bent close to Annis’s coiffure as they conversed in low voices, only looking up as she was announced.

Annis’s mouth was set in a bloodless line, and Bute’s appreciative smile was not predatory but that of the aesthete, and therefore useless.

Cressida was one of the few who understood the true nature of her cousin’s marriage: a long friendship, and a largely unspoken understanding of Annis’s discreet relations with her head gardener and Bute’s relationship with Hemmings, his unmarried steward at their Oxfordshire estate, Seekings Court.

For years, Seekings had been mismanaged and bled dry, first by Bute’s libertine father, and then by Bute himself, who always had a scheme for either agricultural or architectural improvement guaranteed to be ahead of its time, adding to a litany of expensive failures.

Bute got up and kissed Cressida’s outstretched hand, tall, cadaverous and deceptively gentle as ever.

‘My dear girl,’ Bute said and shook his head. ‘One hardly knows where to begin.’ He glanced down at Annis. ‘Come, my love: you might as well unbend a little. The situation being as it is, we must act. Your cousin is here: everyone knows she’s here.’

‘Yes, I know I’m putting you both to a great deal of trouble, and I’m sorry for it,’ Cressida said, accepting a glass of champagne. A swift glance at the table confirmed it was laid only for two. Whatever Annis’s plans for her, they didn’t include dining.

Annis took a brief sip from her own glass, and Cressida wondered if she knew that Rosmoney was back in England. ‘When were you ever sorry for anything, Cressida?’ Annis let out a swift exhalation, looking up at her from her seat by the fire.

‘Rarely, I will admit.’ Cressida’s gaze was drawn to the emeralds and diamonds at her cousin’s throat: was it just the angle of the candlelight, or had those emeralds lost their lustre? Cressida would have comfortably bet they were paste. ‘How are the children?’

‘Already staying with Louisa,’ Annis said. ‘You can be very sure that I’m not bringing them to Scotland with you there into the bargain. If Hetty were any closer to her first Season, you wouldn’t still be in this house, mark my words.’

Cressida didn’t volunteer an answer to that.

‘Yes,’ Bute said, perspiring a little. ‘My sister’s happy enough to entertain Hetty and Charlotte, so let’s not concern ourselves with problems that don’t exist. We must deal with the situation as it is, not the worst case.’

‘Which it very nearly is,’ Annis went on, casting her gaze over Cressida. ‘At least you haven’t lost your eye for a gown. Shall we get to the point? Davies will sulk about the soufflés if they sink, and I can’t have my cook in a brown study with twenty-five to dine here tomorrow.’

‘As you wish.’ Cressida raised her glass.

With soufflés soon to be brought up from the kitchen, Annis obviously planned to despatch her within minutes.

If the Butes were so badly on the rocks that Sylvia risked mentioning it in public, Annis would be doing everything she could to maintain appearances: to do otherwise was fatal.

Annis smiled. ‘Now that half of London knows you’re joining our party at Drochcala, people will talk. They’ll want to know why you’re here. Why you came back. I need a story, and a convincing one.’

‘Come now, my dear,’ Bute said. ‘Cressida is only human. To be exiled is to be cut off from all one knows. It must be miserably uncomfortable. Is that not reason enough to return home?’

Annis let out an unladylike snort. ‘Don’t put words into her mouth.

Has she ever cared for what other people think?

Loneliness is just the price one pays for that sort of selfishness, unfortunately – much as I’m sorry for it.

I’m afraid that if you want money, you won’t get a penny from me.

Thanks to Rosmoney, I must have spent hundreds of pounds on silks and satins for you. ’

‘My love—’ Bute began.

Annis ignored him. ‘Not to mention the cost of your come-out, only to have it all thrown back in my face when you were caught half naked with the Duke of Cleveland in this very house, like some sort of common trull.’ She spoke with that easy musicality that would once have sent Cressida running for the attics, but her eyes blazed with angry dislike.

‘How dared you humiliate me in such a way, Cressida? And how dare you come here now, insinuating yourself into an invitation to Drochcala? You can at least do me the courtesy of telling me why.’

‘I’ve travelled alone for years in circumstances I won’t bore you with,’ Cressida said.

‘I want what’s due to me. I left in disgrace, yes, while neither my husband nor the other creature who are equal in fault share any of the blame.

’ The most successful lie is a bedfellow to the truth.

She allowed long-suppressed fury to bloom.

‘Tell me, Annis, if Lord Greville Nightingale or the Duke of Cleveland walked into your front parlour one morning, would anyone even remark upon it?’

Annis’s expression changed to one of alarm as Cressida looked up from her glass of champagne.

‘I’m tired of living like a recluse when all the while my equally guilty husband and lover are still welcomed everywhere they go.

I don’t care about Cleveland, but I do want revenge on Nightingale.

By the end of the summer, every drawing room will be hot with gossip about me and Lord Byron, and there will be nothing Nightingale can do about it but wear the cuckold’s horns again. ’

Annis glanced at Bute who was staring open-mouthed.

She made an obvious decision that he was going to be of no use to her whatsoever, turning back to Cressida.

‘Women don’t get revenge for their husbands’ indiscretions.

We’re not allowed it. Not publicly in the way you chose, not unless we wish to court ruin. ’

‘But I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life,’ Cressida said, sweetly, even as a thick sweat soaked into the fine linen fabric of the chemise she’d stolen from a washing line in Porto. ‘And the fact is, Annis, now that I’m here, you need me under control.’

Bute set down his glass. ‘Annis, Hetty debuts in three years. Either we get this wrong and it follows her everywhere, or you can make Cressida’s return a success.

She’s well born and still well dressed, and she was always fashionable.

She hasn’t lost her figure or any teeth, thank God.

Look at her: it’s not as if you don’t have a fighting chance.

George Byron has the power to have her fêted across London: he’s the only man on earth with a chance of bringing her back into style. ’

Annis took a sip of her own champagne, never taking her eyes off Cressida as she drank it.

‘Very well. Come to Drochcala and I’ll sponsor your return into society, with George Byron’s help whether he likes it or not.

But take my word for it, Cressida. We’ll do this my way, or not at all.

’ Her expression altered then: there was an element of uncertainty, even of well-disguised alarm.

‘I take it you’ve heard nothing from your father?

If we’re extremely strategic I can make you fashionable again, even if you’d never receive an invitation from some of the more conservative hostesses.

But Rosmoney would be a bridge too far.’

Lord Bute grimaced, as though he’d just stepped into an open sewer. ‘Heaven forbid.’

Cressida smiled, already waiting for the day when she never again had to lay eyes on the Butes. ‘Don’t worry, Annis. If I see Lord Rosmoney before I go to hell, where I’m perfectly sure I won’t be able to avoid him, it will be too soon.’