Rohan bounced her on his knee until she tired and leaned back against his chest, still certain that she had his full attention. Her fingers were in her mouth.
Toby said, “I have tried to train her not to put her fingers in her mouth, Susannah. But whenever I pull them out, she howls, and I finally gave up. Charlotte said her ears couldn’t take the punishment. I’ll try again, Susannah, but we have to be alone. She doesn’t howl when we’re alone, isn’t that odd?”
“Not at all,” Susannah said. “Why would she howl if she didn’t have an audience?”
“Ro-han!”
“Yes, my perfect little princess?”
“Lunnon. I want to go to Lunnon.”
“We will,” Rohan said slowly. “We will go there very soon now.”
“I don’t suppose that fine tale you just spun for your daughter has any resemblance to the truth,” Charlotte said.
“No, Mother,” Rohan said. “Actually, I am sorry, but Tibolt is dead. It was an accident. He tried to save me, but fell over a cliff himself. There was no treasure. It was all a legend, a myth, if you will. There was nothing, just betrayal. But never forget, Mother, that Tibolt died as he lived. I would that you and Toby not speak of it more.”
Susannah merely nodded.
“I don’t like this,” Charlotte said, then broke off when they saw that neither her dear son nor her daughter-in-law was going to say another word. Tears welled up, but she managed, for the moment at least, to sniff them back. She knew there was more, but the res
ult was Tibolt’s death. He’d died trying to save his brother. As Rohan had said, Tibolt had died as he had lived. She swallowed again and said, “I am relieved that Tibolt didn’t turn out to be like George. That would have broken my heart, I think.”
A month later, Lord and Lady Mountvale left for London, taking their daughter with them. It had taken nearly that long for Marianne to learn to call Rohan Papa.
Colonel Nemesis Jones proposed to Charlotte on a bright, warm day that even held a rainbow after a light rain shower. All thought she would accept him, but she didn’t. She left for Venice instead, taking Augustus, the Welsh footman, with her, to act as her bodyguard, among other things.
Mountvale Townhouse in London had been stunned to hear of the baron’s nearly five-year-old marriage, even more stunned to learn of his little daughter.
But that response was nothing to the reaction of Society. There had been endless foment, endless speculation, endless dire predictions on what would come of this obviously doomed marriage, made when the baron was naught but a wild young man. Well, truth be told, he was still a wild young man, but now he was more a discreet wild young man. Wasn’t he? Then—five years before—he’d just been wild, headstrong and impulsive.
However, Lady Sally Jersey, an unchallenged leader of Society, just chanced to speculate that perhaps the baron was done sowing his wild oats. Perhaps that was why he had brought his wife and little daughter out of exile. He was a reformed philanderer.
No one agreed with that—there was no joy in it, no promise of wickedness. No one, however, disagreed with that assessment either—at least not to Lady Sally Jersey’s face. No one had the nerve.
All waited avidly to see the new baroness. All waited to see how long it would be before the baron would tuck his wife away again and resume his dissipations. Surely all his mistresses—numbered in the legions—were pining for him.
Pulver, the baron’s gaunt-faced secretary, said to his friend David Plummy, “They’ve been here for four days now. I don’t understand any of it. The baron hasn’t left the house at all in the evenings unless it is to accompany his wife somewhere. He’s given no hint when he plans to resume his former life. When we were at Mountvale House, he was a model of husbandly rectitude. It depressed my spirits.”
To which David Plummy said, “Buck up, Pulver. He’ll be going to that other little house of his any night now. He’s a man who loves women, isn’t he? Isn’t he the firstborn of his parents? Isn’t he a satyr and thus must have infinite variety? With a man of his reputation, it shouldn’t be much longer now. There simply wasn’t a woman in the country that he wanted.”
That was hard to believe, surely.
But Pulver wasn’t so very certain about that assessment. He had seen the baron and baroness together. She wasn’t as beautiful as many of the women the baron had been seen with. She was pretty enough, but not dazzling, like, for instance, the baron’s mother. But there was a kindness in her, a quickness about her, a way of speaking, that had the baron laughing more than anyone had ever heard him laugh. The two of them also appeared to spend quite a bit of time in the baron’s bedchamber during the middle of the day.
It was a mystery to everyone.
As for the little girl, Marianne had decided that she fancied Pulver. It quite convulsed the poor man, sending him into the kitchen to hide.
“She’s a child,” he said to Tinker, his lordship’s valet, “a child, and yet he lets her sit on his lap, he lets her touch his face with those little fingers of hers that are always in her mouth. She shrieks—shrieks—with laughter and he appears to enjoy it. Sometimes she shrieks with a tantrum. The baron just kisses her and tells her to be quiet, and she does. It is amazing, Tinker. And now she fancies me. I cannot bear it, Tinker. It is not in my nature to abide a little child.”
But within a week, Pulver was quite delighted whenever Marianne touched her wet little fingers to his cheek. The first time she kissed him, he nearly swooned with delight. But whenever she stomped her foot and yowled, he was out of the room, calling for the baron. It was Toby, however, whom Pulver came to admire greatly, even though he was only a little boy. They read together and went to the British Museum together. Rohan remarked to Susannah that he had never before seen his cadaverous secretary so animated.
As for Susannah, she was scared to her toes every time they stepped into the house of another member of London Society for some sort of ball or soiree or card party. She knew that everyone believed the poor baron had made a grave error. She knew that everyone believed the poor baron had gravely compounded his error by suddenly producing this wife and little girl. She knew that everyone believed he would soon have her and Marianne gone again so he could resume his dissolute ways. It depressed her profoundly.
“Chin up,” Rohan always told her before he helped her out of the carriage. On this Wednesday night, at Almack’s on King Street, her chin was already so high he feared she would hit the top of her head on the carriage door frame. Rohan grinned at her as he clasped his hands around her waist and very slowly lifted her down, watching her eyes darken at the feel of him. He wanted to tell her that it made him feel like a bloody king when she looked at him like that, but he said instead aware that his voice sounded low and raw, “Did I tell you that you looked rather lovely this evening? I like your hair in that coronet with all the blue ribbons threaded through the braids.”
“Yes, but you didn’t really mean it. The ribbons match the blue in the gown. Ah, Rohan, you’re trying to build me up so I don’t run and hide in the ladies withdrawing room.”