“Actually, my daughter was the first to tell me.” She smiled wryly. “She disapproves of you. But I think a judgment of you based only on your prodigal years is perhaps as biased and incomplete as that made solely on what one knows of you before and after those years.”
She raked in the chocolates, set them in a neat pile before her, and cleared the cards. “Your turn to wager, Your Grace. Though I'd understand perfectly should you no longer wish to stay, now that I've revealed myself as both a fraud and a schemer.”
No, she hadn't merely revealed herself to be a schemer. She was still a schemer. She was still weaving fact and fiction together in order that her daughter could rise from the ashes of her divorce more socially prominent than ever.
Yet something bound him to her now. Thirty years ago, when the young Mrs. Rowland had been respectfully attending the late duchess, he had been silent and sullen at dinner, ignoring his mother to the best of his capability. He had hardly known the woman who gave him life. Even the death of his father hadn't imparted to him any urgency to better acquaint himself with her. She had been the healthy one. He'd assumed that she'd be around to wring her handkerchief and frown upon his infractions for decades to come.
He put up five pieces of chocolate. “Please deal.”
Chapter Nineteen
31 May 1893
As you can see, sir, we have outstanding vehicles that would meet your every need,” said the wiry Scotsman, proprietor of Adams's Fine Carriages, For Sale and For Let.
“Indeed,” said Camden. “Most excellent wares. I will be out of town for a day or two. When I return, I will decide on one in particular.”
“Very good, sir,” said Adams. “Allow us the honor to conduct you home in one of our fine conveyances.”
Camden smiled. He regularly hosted sorties on his yacht, and guests who had not seriously considered owning a yacht before had been known to commission one from him before they disembarked. So he appreciated the Scotsman's acumen. “It would be my pleasure.”
“This way, please.”
A sumptuous black-and-gold landau was already fitted to a team of four and ready to go as they approached the courtyard.
“Ah, Mrs. Croesus is here today, I see,” said Adams, with evident pleasure.
“Pardon?” said Camden, certain he'd misheard the man. Mrs. Croesus? He couldn't help imagining a small female pup with a gold leash and a diamond-encrusted collar.
“Won't you excuse me for a moment, Mr. Saybrook?” said Adams.
He rushed forward to greet the woman about to mount the carriage. Rope upon rope of perfectly matched pearls rambled across her shapely front. The rest of her was swathed in brocade shot through and through with gold threads. Beneath her oversize and wildly beplumed hat, the chin-length veil that concealed her face sparkled in the sun—tiny diamonds sewn into the netting.
The woman appeared exactly as a human Mrs. Croesus should. He ought to ask Gigi, Camden thought dryly, why she, one of the richest women in England, rarely dressed the part. Next time he saw her, that was. After their last coupling the night of the Carlisles' ball, she had sent him a tersely worded note the next morning, informing him that she'd be unavailable for procreation-related purposes for the following seven days. And he'd hardly seen her since.
Today was the eighth day.
Adams fussed over Mrs. Croesus. She received his attention with a grand condescension that he quite obviously relished. At last he handed her into the open carriage, bowed, and returned to Camden.
“Don't much care for fancy ladies usually,” he said. “But there is something about that one. Magnificent, eh?”
The magnificent one raised the lapdog she'd held on the side away from Camden and lifted it to her face. “Magnificent indeed,” said Camden, recognizing the corgi.
Gigi. What was she doing hiring a carriage from Adams's? Didn't she have barouches and broughams enough of her own? And why was she suddenly dressed like some American millionaire's mistress?
“On second thought,” he said to Adams, “I've decided that a cab will be all I require this morning.”
Gigi's hired landau went east, across Westminster Bridge, past Lambeth, into Southwark. Shops lined the thoroughfares. Vendors milled about the curb, hawking ginger beer and West Country strawberries. Sandwich-board men, wearily watching out for yobos who tipped them over for fun, advertised everything from tobacco to female pills.
The houses looked decent, some even well-to-do. But the prosperity did not extend beyond the main boulevard. The landau turned off onto a side street, and within a few blocks the neighborhood hung on to respectability by its fingernails.
The carriage stopped before a small establishment set between a grimy cookshop reeking of sausage and onion and the office of a doctor promising to not only cure common diseases and female ailments but also to regenerate hair and banish corpulence.