A Roguish Gentleman

Chapter One

‘Elizabeth!’

Lady Elizabeth Rowe turned in the spacious hallway of her grandmother’s elegant townhouse to see the elderly lady bearing down on her, nose pinched between thumb and forefinger and what was visible of her face, behind her podgy hand, set in a grimace of utter distaste.

Elizabeth understood. Sheepishly she glanced down at her hem. It was suspiciously clogged. She sighed and shrugged an apology. It was possible the stains were mud from the hedgerow she had skipped over moments ago on alighting from Reverend Clemence’s gig. Unfortunately, she suspected, as did her grandmother, that it was rather more offensive detritus. Probably ordure from the gutters in Wapping where she’d been assisting the vicar in teaching at Barrow Road Sunday School.

‘Look at you!’ Edwina Sampson shrieked at her granddaughter, jewels flashing on her fat fingers as they flicked floorward in disgust. ‘There’s no mistaking when you are home. I simply follow m’nose!’

‘Don’t nag so, Grandmama,’ Elizabeth said mildly. ‘There are worse things in life than a little muck. I have just been amongst poor wretches who live with the stench daily in their nostrils as well as beneath their feet.’

Edwina Sampson bristled. ‘Decency and hard work is what’s lacking! Shut that door!’ she suddenly bawled at a tall, stately man who was standing by the draughty aperture, steely eyebrows slightly elevated as he phlegmatically assessed a trail of dung on formerly pristine marble. ‘Quickly, man! Do I warm this house simply to let it out and encourage vagrants to congregate on m’step? Do you know the cost of a sack of coal? A cartload of logs?’

‘Indeed, I do, madam,’ Harry Pettifer calmly responded. ‘I have just this week settled the fuel bill.’

‘Is that insolence, Pettifer?’

‘I am never insolent, madam,’ her butler informed his mistress, inscrutable of face as he regally paced the hallway poker-backed. One bright blue eye disappeared as he passed Elizabeth and she stifled a smile at the unobtrusive wink.

Harry Pettifer had been in service to the Sampsons for almost thirty years. In the few years Elizabeth had lived with her grandmother in this quiet part of Marylebone, she’d witnessed far more entertaining exchanges between the short sexagenarian and her statuesque butler.

As Elizabeth carefully eased off her suspiciously slimy shoes, she noticed the commotion had drawn other servants to gawp at the spectacle. With supreme aplomb, Pettifer clicked his elegant fingers at mobcaps. ‘Brush…mop…hallway…now,’ was his brusque instruction to them to dispose of the mess.

Edwina Sampson frowned at his back. ‘For what I pay him, I could take on two footmen, or pay m’butcher for a twelvemonth.’

‘I think not, Grandmama. I doubt poor Pettifer’s salary would even cover your confectioner’s bill.’ She teased her grandmother’s fondness for marchpane with a meaningful nod at her sizeable girth.

Pettifer allowed an appreciative smile to touch his lips, prompting his employer to snap, ‘Less of your sauce, miss! I might have a sweet tooth,’ she admitted while twitching Elizabeth’s skirts this way and that, her smooth, plump face a study in revulsion. ‘And why should I not? A woman who’s worked her fingers to the bone is entitled to a little treat in her twilight years.’

Elizabeth padded to the stairs in her stockinged feet. ‘You know very well that we need Pettifer…far more than he does us, I suspect. I hear that Mrs Penney is stalking him again. She’s keen to lure him away to her Brighton townhouse,’ Elizabeth warned.

‘Is she? Who told you?’ Her grandmother’s lips compressed into a tight, indignant line, her pale blue eyes narrowing.

Elizabeth removed her bonnet, dropped back her ash-blonde head and laughed while the hat swayed on its strings. ‘I shall just freshen myself, then join you in the parlour and share some gossip regarding Pettifer’s popularity. Meanwhile, perhaps you ought go and curry a little favour with him, lest he really is tempted to go this time,’ she taunted over her shoulder as, grimy skirts held high and shapely ankles displayed, she ran easily up the curve of stairs.

Moments later, in her lavender-fragrant chamber, Elizabeth grimaced down at her hem, then up at her maid. Josie distastefully wrinkled her small pert nose, shook her head and gingerly helped her mistress step out of the serviceable garment before bundling it away for the laundry.

Her grandmother was right, Elizabeth mused while bathing her face with petal-scented water. It was the stench that disturbed the most. Even when home and decked in fresh clothes, the reek of the slums would haunt her nostrils.

She’d been assisting at Barrow Road Sunday School every week for some thirteen months. In all that time, it seemed that the air never got sweeter or more foul. The fortitude of unwashed humanity, seething middens and the proximity of the docks contributing salt and tar spillage, remained stoically unchanged. Even the recent heat of summer seemed to make little difference to rank poverty. Only the flies came and went. As did the school’s pupils.

At times a gap would appear on the rough pew on which the boys and girls sat, slates balanced on tattered laps. ‘A’workin’ t’day, m’m. Ailin’ t’day, m’m,’ would gruffly answer any enquiry as to where was the absentee. ‘Dead, m’m,’ on one occasion was the toneless reply to the condition of a sickly child.

The philanthropic owner of a spice warehouse had allowed a spare, bare corner to serve as a classroom to a score or more local urchins, aiding their escape from a little petty larceny along the wharves or watching young ’uns on the Sabbath to scratch out scripture instead. On arrival at the premises on Sundays, a mass of skeletal arms and legs would jostle and elbow for a place on a splintery bench as determinedly as they doubtless fought for a portion of what was available to eat or earn. The weakest would sink cross-legged to the cold, stone floor.

Seating herself on her velvet dressing-table chair, Elizabeth studied her well-nourished appearance. As Josie worked pins from her hair, pearl-blonde tresses sinuously spiralled to bounce either side of her oval face and slender column of neck. A healthy flush was still rimming her high cheekbones from the brisk walk earlier.

Each Sunday, she and Hugh Clemence hurried through a maze of narrow alleys to reach Barrow Road. Even a clergyman who was afforded a respectful nod or word from ragged parishioners never chose to tarry in such an area. Their route never differed. Winter and summer, lines of greyish washing crisscrossed overhead between grimy tenements. When the air froze in front of their mouths as they talked and walked, the rags hung stiff and unmoving; at other times a tepid oily breeze might flutter the tattered flags of a community surrendered to its fate. Dead-eyed women and rickety children crowded the dank doorways or squatted on the cobbles sifting through the rubbish for something useful.

Elizabeth closed her violet-blue eyes and relaxed into the chair as Josie gently but firmly drew a brush through her blonde tangles. She sighed as she thought of the children. Was it enough to simply suspend reality for them for a while on the Sabbath? What were they really thinking as they gazed, glassy-eyed, at her and rubbed at streaming noses or chapped skin? Their empty bellies? The chores they had just come from or were soon returning to? The nonsense of hearing tales of a Benevolent Father when in their short lives most had experienced nothing but hunger and harshness?

‘If but one child escapes the ravages of the gin house or the bawdy house through our work today, I shall die a happy man,’ Hugh Clemence had once expounded his philosophy on it all. Enduring the stench of poverty in her nostrils once a week was a paltry price to pay to help just one poor soul.

‘We must make it two,’ she had answered him, and he had taken her hand to hold. And she had allowed him to…for a few seconds, before extricating her fingers.

‘Ah, that’s better,’ Edwina Sampson praised the sight of her granddaughter’s pretty, petite figure. Elizabeth entered the cosy, flame-flickering parlour, dressed in rose-pink crepe with her shiny blonde hair piled elegantly atop her head, making her look taller than her five feet three inches. ‘Now you look and smell more like my sweet Lizzie.’

‘On the subject of odours, Grandmama…have you been smoking in here again?’ Elizabeth quizzed, wrinkling her small nose. ‘It reeks of a gentleman’s gaming room,’ she chided, fanning a space in front of her with a small hand.

‘And how would you know of such places? Have you lately been in a gentleman’s gaming room?’ her grandmother shot back distractingly while the heel of a slippered foot sent a dark stub skidding under her chair.

‘You know Papa and his cronies could set up quite a fug in the blue salon at Thorneycroft when playing at Faro. I am well used to identifying tobacco smoke.’

‘Hmmph,’ Edwina rumbled. ‘I thought perhaps you’d been spending time with a real man instead of that whey-faced clergyman who limps after you.’

Lady Elizabeth Rowe sent her grandmother a prim look. ‘Hugh is a very conscientious and kindly gentleman, and I cherish him as a good friend.’

The demure description was dismissed with one plump hand while the other dived into a silver dish and extracted a piece of marchpane. Chewing and eyeing her granddaughter speculatively, Edwina demanded, ‘Has he yet proposed?’

Elizabeth sank daintily into a fireside chair opposite her grandmother’s seat. Holding her hands to the glow in the grate, she allowed a small smile. ‘No, he has not. Neither will he. Hugh is well aware I have no fondness for him in…that way.’

‘Thank God for that!’ her grandmother muttered. ‘I live in dread of you arriving home with some paltry bauble on your betrothal finger to announce you’re to move into some roof-leaking rectory in a godforsaken part of town.’ With a finger-wag, she added, ‘That’s not to say I’ve given up on your nuptials, miss. It is far and away time you were wed. You are soon to be twenty-nine and can’t live with your old grandmama forever. I might soon get notice to quit and first I must know you’re settled.’

‘You’re as robust as ever and as like to see a score more years. And you’re well aware that I shall never marry. Now then,’ she speedily changed subject, ‘are you interested in learning how I know that Mrs Penney is again batting her lashes and her banknotes at Pettifer?’

‘You shan’t sidetrack me that easily, m’girl. I meant what I said. I’m sixty-five years old and often afflicted with a pain right here.’ She thumped a spot beneath her ribs. ‘It could be a serious malaise; it might see me off!’

‘It’s indigestion,’ Elizabeth mildly reassured her. ‘And as like to disappear if you cease eating for…let’s see…one hour a day?’ A cheeky smile made her look no more than nineteen, and immediately melted her grandmother’s indignation.

‘Elizabeth,’ Edwina wheedled. ‘You are a beautiful woman and need a husband. You can’t let a tragedy that occurred a decade ago blight your entire life. It is forgotten. People have forgotten.’

‘I haven’t forgotten! Neither have I any wish for a husband…especially not a gentleman from the ton. Were I to marry, I would choose a kind, caring man such as Hugh, which would rile you greatly and have you ranting of a mésalliance. After all, I am the daughter of a Marquess and poor Hugh comes from a long line of impoverished men of the cloth. So please, no more of it.’

A theatrically languid hand displayed despair as Edwina flopped back in her chair. Her fingers began straying comfortingly towards the silver dish. ‘Tell me then why that cat Alice Penney is after Pettifer.’ She resorted to sighing in a martyred tone.

Elizabeth smiled winsomely. ‘I imagine it is because he is so handsome.’

‘Pish! He is an old codger: a year older than me!’ emerged through a mouthful of marchpane.

‘He is still a very sprightly and handsome man, despite his age. According to Sophie, many a matron in Mrs Penney’s set would like him to greet their guests and grace their hallway. They are to have a wager, so I hear, on who can steal him from under your nose. I believe a great deal of money is in the pot.’

‘A wager?’ Edwina spluttered. ‘On who can steal my butler? He’s been my man for nigh on three decades and my man he will stay. I’ll…I’ll never give him a character if he leaves me.’

‘I rather think he might not need one,’ Elizabeth chuckled. ‘I’m sure Mrs Penney will snap him up without.’

Edwina shook her salt and pepper ringlets back from her plump cheeks, her eyes narrowing, her mouth twitching angrily. A gleam appeared in her light blue eyes. Wager? If there was one thing Edwina liked as much as a good gobble, it was a good gamble. She’d give those wanton alley cats a run for their money!

Harry Pettifer was a fine figure of a man and he had noble blood in him. Had it not been for his idiot father, Sir Roger Pettifer, taking the family into penury through his love of hazard, his youngest son might have had an inheritance to smooth his path through life. Instead, fate decreed he take up a position as butler to a friend.

Harry and her late husband had been chums, even though, at one time, Harry had been frowned upon for keeping company with a lowly ‘cit’. For Daniel Sampson had made his tidy fortune through commerce, progressing through hard work from humble mercer to retail baron, dealing in all manner of luxury commodities. At that time, Harry had been an eligible bachelor who lived off a generous allowance. Then bankruptcy came; no more funds were forthcoming for the Pettifer sons and Harry would not hear of a loan from Daniel Sampson being written off. So his services were taken up, half in jest, half in earnest, for Harry had always been a proud man. What ensued was an employment lasting half a lifetime. On her husband’s death some thirteen years ago, Harry had stayed on. She hadn’t expected him to: her relationship with her husband’s friend, confidant and man of all trades, had at times been quite prickly.

Edwina had never been generous or mean in her dealings with him. Since his financial obligation had been cleared, Harry had drawn a reasonable salary. Edwina had always paid him an acceptable rate: what was fair. And now, if he wanted to go, she had no right to detain him. In the past, when she had casually interrogated him for his opinion on their status quo, a slightly quizzical look would sharpen his blue eyes. Politely he would assure her he was content. Perhaps he no longer was content. Perhaps he missed not having a wife, children of his own. Perhaps he regretted only ever observing family life rather than engaging in it himself. Perhaps, Edwina mused with a leaden feeling in her stomach that she knew was nothing devoured, she regretted that she had never rewarded her loyal gentleman butler with gratitude and generosity instead of a remote fairness. Annoyed at the melancholy that the possibility of losing him evoked, Edwina suddenly barked irritably, ‘What time are we to go to the Heathcotes’?

‘At eight,’ Elizabeth confirmed the hour of the quiet soirée planned at Sophie’s parents that evening. At twenty-two, Sophie Heathcote was six years her junior. Her closest friend was an attractive brunette who possessed a sharp wit she refused to disguise. That rendered Sophie far less attractive in the eyes of the beau monde. Sophie was a bluestocking, an odd creature who was happier pursuing knowledge than an eligible man. Which was as well, for no man would want a wife whose intelligence was superior to his own. The two young women were outcasts in a society which despised and isolated women who didn’t conform to an accepted ideal. Since Elizabeth moved to town from the countryside when her father, the Marquess of Thorneycroft, died, some few years ago, she and Sophie, both lonely yet lively, had gravitated towards each other and become firm friends.

‘Would you mind terribly if I cried off tonight, Lizzie? You know it is all a bit dull for my taste and I have an invitation to Maria Farrow’s salon. Josie can accompany you there.’

‘No, I don’t mind. I shall not stay too late, in any case. There is a visit to Bridewell planned tomorrow—’ Her grandmother’s snort of disgust cut her short, making it clear she had no interest in learning any details of her visit to the correctional institution, with Hugh Clemence and some other charitable ladies. Elizabeth, undeterred, ploughed on, ‘Actually, Grandmama, we are hoping for some kindly people to donate—’ She got no further.

Sixty-five years old and portly, maybe, but Edwina was out of her chair in a flash and soon at the door. ‘I have told you, young lady, I have no spare fortune to be squandered housing foundlings and fallen women!’

‘I am not asking you for a fortune, Grandmama,’ Elizabeth sighed. ‘A few pounds would be very welcome. It would buy cloth for the women so they can make things to sell: pinafores, handkerchiefs…’

‘Had they not stolen such articles in the first place, they wouldn’t now be stitching scrappy rags to while away the time till their release!’

Elizabeth sprang to her feet and glared at her grandmother. ‘One mistake in their miserable lives—perhaps to put bread in their children’s mouths—and they should pay forever? I made a mistake once; have you forgotten that? I made a bad mistake. But I refuse to feel ashamed. I, too, was wrong for the right reasons. Some of those gentlemen you would like to see come a’courting are the worst immoral riffraff. If one or two of them still loiter about me, it is for far less honourable reasons than proposing marriage!’ Her small oval face flushed with anger, her fingers clenched. After staring stonily at each other for a moment, Elizabeth sighed and gestured apology.

‘I’m sorry Grandmama. I had not meant to shout. But…’ She dredged up a weak smile, reseating herself. ‘I have been meaning to ask you for some weeks now…’ She paused, striving for coaxing words to unlock her parsimonious grandmother’s purse. ‘The portion you have put by for my marriage is money likely to stay untouched. I shall not marry. But if you really intended it to benefit me, I beg you allow me just a small sum from it so that I can—’

‘You are right in one respect, miss,’ her grandmother interrupted tightly. ‘The money is for your benefit. If you think I will pass over some of my hard-earned cash—from the days when I worked dawn till dusk in your grandfather’s mercery—so you can then transfer it to such drabs as used to rob us blind the moment our backs were turned, you are much mistaken! Never a week went by but a pair of gloves, silk stockings, handkerchiefs and ribbon went missing from our first shop. And now you want me to support those miscreants’ descendants in their thievery?’

‘No, Grandmama,’ Elizabeth reasoned wearily. ‘So it can assist such poor wretches to perhaps gain employment, a little self-respect; to help them start a new life. Just one hundred pounds…please? It is my money and it would make such a difference to so many; children as well as their mothers.’

‘I’d as lief hand it straight to your husband to squander at dice.’

‘And the men you would see me wed would do exactly that!’ Elizabeth snapped bitterly. ‘Perhaps I shall wed the vicar after all, I’m sure I might persuade him to give it me straight back!’

‘Hah…you think I’ve not thought of that? No clergy. It states in the terms. Marry a clergyman and the dowry is forfeit.’

Elizabeth threw up her hands in despair. ‘I love you dearly, Grandmama, but your misanthropy disgusts me.’

‘And I love you dearly, granddaughter, but your misplaced charity disgusts me,’ was flung over a plump satin shoulder as Edwina quit the room.

Lady Rebecca Ramsden raised her glorious turquoise gaze from the paper and stared into space. It couldn’t be true! Luke surely would have said! She shook the page to straighten it, dipped her golden head and read the paragraph again. It was true! It was there in black and white! Springing from the chair, the paper clutched tightly in a hand, she sped for the door. Out in the hallway she gasped at their aged butler, ‘Have you seen my husband, Miles?’

‘Er, no, Miss Becky,’ Miles returned with a frown at his mistress’s agitation. Neither of them were in any way put out by him addressing her so informally. Miss Becky she had been prior to her marriage to Baron Ramsden and Miss Becky she was now to all old and trusted servants at Ramsden Manor, who had known her since childhood. Now approaching his seventy-seventh year, Miles would never think of her as anything else but little Miss Becky. In all other respects, Lady Ramsden was accorded every respect due to her station as the much-loved chatelaine of this grand house.

‘I expect he’s about the stables, putting young Master Troy through his paces on his pony,’ Miles added helpfully.

Rebecca had already reasoned that and, with a laughing wave of the crumpled Gazette, was off again. She ran in mellow late-afternoon sunlight towards the stables. ‘Luke!’ she called breathlessly as she hurtled into the cool, musty building.

Only a few young stable-hands, toiling at one end of the brick-and-timber building, were within. They looked curiously at her. ‘I think his lordship be in the barn wi’ young master. Right tired he were after his ride, m’lady. Practic’ly a’snoozin’ on his feet,’ the more gregarious of the grooms told her.

Rebecca nodded in appreciation of the information and was gone. She pushed open the barn door and located her husband at once. Against the yellow straw his dark breeches, white cambric shirt and jet hair were a striking contrast. He looked up as a shaft of warm, mote-ridden sunlight bathed him. Earth-dark eyes locked on to his wife’s curvaceous figure, silhouetted by hazy golden light. He smiled slowly in that special intimate way that quickened her heart. A finger beckoned her in, moved to touch his lips, then indicated their small son, curled up on his side on soft straw close to his father.

Rebecca sank gracefully down onto her knees close to her husband. Even casually reclining on his side, dark head propped on a hand, one black knee raised, the powerful masculine lines of his body were immediately apparent. She shook the paper at him and hissed in an undertone, so as not to wake their sleeping son, ‘Why did you not tell me? Isn’t it wonderful news?’

Luke frowned at the paper, removed a stalk of sweet straw from between his even white teeth and said softly, ‘Whichever marriage you’ve seen announced…I’ve no knowledge of it, Rebecca. I’ve not yet read the paper today. And don’t be cross if I’m not about to be as enraptured as you at the prospect of some acquaintance’s impending nuptials.’

‘No…no, not a wedding!’ Rebecca chided in an excited squeak. Then her turquoise eyes were sparking mischief. ‘You’ve not seen it? Guess, then, what I have just read,’ she teased, standing up and whipping the paper behind her back, out of reach. ‘I promise it will interest you. It should delight you…’

‘Enough…I’m curious,’ her husband growled, snaking a powerful hair-roughened forearm about her slender blue silk figure to catch at the paper.

‘No! Guess!’

A peaty-brown gaze swerved to his son, then raised to his wife’s beautiful flushed complexion. His hands jerked her forward and his mouth approached a rounded hip close to his face. Slender fingers wound into long dark hair, holding his hot trailing mouth against her midriff as she insincerely discouraged, ‘Oh, Luke, not here…not now; Troy might wake and…’

‘Give me the paper, then,’ her husband whispered in a throaty growl against warm silk. ‘Or I’ll have no option but to wrestle it from you…’

Heat flooded Rebecca; her fingers tightened in his hair, but, with her eyes on her sleeping son’s profile, she again sank, with an expression of very ironic submission, to her knees.

Demurely she handed over the paper, pointing at a paragraph before resting back onto her heels and watching his face.

Luke Trelawney, Baron Ramsden, slowly pushed himself upright, a slow grin moving the lean dark planes of his handsome face. ‘I didn’t tell you, my love, because I didn’t know,’ he emphasised for Rebecca. ‘Only Ross would keep quiet the fact that he’s being gazetted as a peer of the realm.’

‘Viscount Stratton! How noble it sounds,’ Rebecca said on a musical laugh. ‘You had no idea?’ she quizzed her husband. ‘He had said nothing?’

‘Not a word. But then I’ve not seen him in six months. Neither, I imagine, has Mother or Katherine or Tristan.’

‘Oh, but it’s too bad of him, Luke! He really should have written to let his kin know of such an honour.’

‘Ross? Write a letter? My little brother is more likely to turn up unexpectedly after half a year’s absence than he is to pen a couple of lines.’

Rebecca flung her arms about her husband’s neck. ‘It’s such wonderful news. Viscount Stratton of Stratton Hall in the County of Kent. Ross must be so proud.’

‘Is Uncle Ross coming soon?’ a small voice quavered from beside them.

Rebecca relinquished her husband to stroke her son’s silky black hair. ‘No, my love. But your uncle Ross is now a nobleman. The honour has been bestowed by the King. Uncle Ross is now a Viscount and will be Lord Stratton.’

Troy Trelawney looked singularly unimpressed by this news. He fully opened his sea-green eyes and looked at his mother from beneath black curly lashes. ‘Will Uncle Ross still play pirates with me?’ he asked with all the gravity of his six years. ‘Now he is so important?’

Rebecca stifled a laugh and looked helplessly at her husband. Luke gave his son a lop-sided smile. ‘I think that’s still very likely,’ he gently reassured Troy while a stray thought acknowledged that, at thirty-three, his recklessly intrepid brother still looked and acted like a dashing young buck. ‘Besides, if he doesn’t, then I shall.’

Again Troy Trelawney looked unimpressed. ‘But you’re not such a good Blackbeard, Papa, as Uncle Ross. He teaches me to fight with his sword. The one with the silver hilt, not a pretend wooden one…’

‘Now I think it’s time a certain sleepy man was snuggled up,’ Rebecca hastily interjected, on noticing her husband’s murderous look. Her brother-in-law might never live to enjoy his new rank.

‘Excellent suggestion, darling,’ Luke murmured. ‘Tend to Troy first, though.’ In a lithe movement he was on his feet and tousling his