Page 11 of Twelfth Night Sorcery (The Cambion Club #2)

Valance already deeply regretted attending Belmont’s masquerade.

Why had he gone to the house of such a monster of a man?

He should have stayed home and read a book by the fire, sipping a glass of hot mulled wine.

Or he could have played chess with Peregrine.

He might even have prevented the fire in the dining room.

Everyone would have been happy. Everyone except for Miss Grantly, that is, but as he would never have met her, this would not have disturbed him.

If he had stayed home on Twelfth Night, Valance could have spent a very pleasant afternoon at the Cambion Club today, with nothing more to worry about than what was for dinner.

Instead, he’d had one of the worst afternoons he could remember, beginning with a long visit to Doctor’s Commons.

As a nobleman, Valance was entitled to request a special license, but the Archbishop’s staff needed some convincing (and a donation to one of the Archbishop’s favorite charities) to get it ready today.

After he got the marriage license, he paid a visit to Cherie to inform her that their arrangement had come to an end.

He knew better than to arrive empty-handed.

He bought his mistress the diamond pendant she had been hinting about, intending it as a farewell gift.

He also offered her what he considered to be a generous financial settlement to tide her over until she found her next protector.

Nevertheless, Cherie took the news very badly indeed. To be precise, she threw a Sevres vase at the wall. She was not malicious enough to actually aim it at Valance, so he did not need to dodge, but the vase was ruined. And, since it had contained both water and flowers, so was the wallpaper.

Cherie also swore at him in French. Her lapdog woke up from his nap long enough to curse Valance out in canine, too.

“Oh, do stop that,” he told Cherie. “I know perfectly well you are English. And you know that I know. There is no need to pretend.” He ignored the dog entirely, hoping that would prevent his barking from escalating into biting.

She had been baptized as Charity Barber, but she changed her name to Cherie Barbauld when she went on the stage. She did have a French grandmother, from whom she had picked up some choice phrases, but she did not know enough of the language to fool anybody.

“Bastard,” she hissed. “How dare you treat me so cruelly? Leaving me destitute and alone?”

“I just gave you a thousand pounds, and I paid the lease for this house for an entire year. You will not be destitute.” And he had given her jewelry worth nearly as much over the course of their affaire, in addition to her allowance.

“But I will be alone. You have broken my heart!” She threw herself into an armchair and began to cry. She was only a moderately successful actress, but she had long since mastered the art of dramatic tears. If he had not known her so well, he would have thought she wept in earnest.

“Perhaps you can play house with that handsome actor who keeps calling,” Valance suggested.

Thomas Sowerby was everything Valance was not: svelte, blond-haired, blue-eyed, and charismatic.

He even had dimples, for Christ’s sake! Valance suspected Sowerby did more than drink tea when he dropped in to visit Cherie, but he had no solid proof of infidelity.

Cherie made a moue of distaste. “Perhaps I am better off alone. All men are selfish, inconstant, and worthless. I pity your wife. A pox on both your houses!”

“God, I hope not,” Valance said fervently.

Admittedly, he had frequented brothels before setting up a mistress, but he had always scrupulously used magically-reinforced condoms precisely to avoid the Great Pox.

Though he had never had any symptoms of such a disease, he still shuddered at the idea.

It would be dreadful to infect one’s wife because one had amused oneself too freely as a bachelor.

“It was a figure of speech,” Cherie grumbled. “You could not get the pox from me. You know you are the only man to have ever bedded me.” She pouted her plump lips at him.

There had been a time when Valance would have melted at the sight of that adorable pout, but now it merely irritated him. He wanted to ask some pointed questions about her relations with Sowerby, but he restrained himself. Such inquiries would only drag out this already-painful confrontation.

He cleared his throat. “In any case, I am certain that a woman with your talents will land on her feet. I am very grateful for the time you have spent with me, and I wish you well. But I am afraid I have much to do today, so I cannot linger. Good bye.” He hurried out the door before she could hurl more fractured French—or fragile housewares—in his direction.

On the whole, parting from Cherie felt more like a gain than a loss. Valance would no longer have to put up with Cherie’s histrionics, her fits of bad temper, or her wandering eye. Let Sowerby have her if he wanted her; Valance felt himself well rid of her.

In truth, he would have broken things off soon enough even if he were not getting married. Cherie ought to have seen the end approaching. Heaven knew Valance had been neglecting her of late: it must have been weeks since his last visit.

After that, he called on his friend Stephens, the only clergyman Valance knew well enough to ask for such an unorthodox favor.

If Augustus Stephens was startled to learn that Lord Valance wanted to get married in a private ceremony that very evening, he hid it well.

He offered Valance a glass of wine to celebrate, and then they both took another glass.

In fact, they spent rather too much time celebrating over a plate of cheese and biscuits before Stephens dressed for dinner and they walked to Carrington House.

Now that Valance was home, his bride-to-be seemed to be having cold feet.

He could hardly blame her. It wasn’t as if he wanted to go through with this farce.

But what else could he do? He had made the mistake of sneaking out of a ballroom with a total stranger.

He ought to have known such a choice would lead to trouble, headache, and scandal.

He was doing his best to minimize the scandal. He could deal with the headache by stopping at George’s Apothecary tomorrow to pick up more of their pain lozenges. But he suspected the trouble was only beginning.

As soon as Miss Grantly left the room, he rang for Preston.

Then he cast a skeptical glance around his bedchamber.

Where were he and his wife going to live after the wedding?

They could not live here—the house was full enough with four people.

Or, more accurately, it was filled with the possessions of four people, all of whom accumulated books at a rate beyond good reason.

Shelf space was in short demand when one lived in a house full of scholars.

Abigail and Peregrine both required materia magica for their spells, too, so the nursery had been converted into a storage room for magical supplies.

Though, now that Valance thought about it, wasn’t there still a bed in the corner of the nursery?

If Valance remembered to ask a housemaid to make that bed, he could sleep there tonight rather than in the drawing room.

The former nursery smelled strongly of magical herbs, but it would still be an improvement over that awful sofa.

He asked Preston to pass the message on to one of the housemaids.

That put him in much better spirits. He had not been looking forward to another night on that damn sofa.

To Valance’s surprise, dinner was served in the dining room that night.

He had feared they would have to eat in the breakfast room, which was already full of Valance’s things.

But Peregrine had worked some powerful wizardry to get the smoky odor out of the dining room, and though his spell had not been entirely successful, the room smelled tolerable now.

A tablecloth hid the scarring on the dining room table, and everyone simply pretended not to notice that some of the panels were scorched and the ceiling of the room had been blackened with soot.

Though dinner tasted delicious, the conversation languished.

It did not help that the table was so woefully unbalanced.

Usually, Abigail prevented her brother from monopolizing the conversation by talking only about his current magical experiment.

And if the Carrington siblings quarreled—which happened rather frequently—Susan and Valance would politely discuss music or light literature, ignoring the spirited row going on around them.

Abigail being gone meant she could not quarrel with her brother, which was a blessing, but it also meant she was not there to redirect conversation.

Peregrine spent the entire meal explaining his meteorite spell to Miss Grantly.

Her eyes grew rounder as his explanation grew increasingly more technical, but she continued to ask intelligent questions.

Valance could not help being a little impressed.

Even university-trained magicians had trouble keeping up with his friend.

Peregrine’s mind worked very well indeed, but it sometimes seemed to operate differently from other people’s minds.

Valance had always compared it to the way his own magic worked effectively, despite being different from other sorcerers’ spellcasting.