A Grand Design Part 2

Cate nodded and prepared to descend. Both men politely turned their backs as she did, charming but unnecessary as she was well used to going up and down ladders while keeping her skirts quite decently close to her legs. In the country, she had often worn old breeches that had belonged to her father. Here in the city, much as she would have liked to disregard protocol, she knew better.

She'd worn breeches during the Maybole job. That had been rural Scotland, after all, and she had a.s.sumed in her man's garb, hair tucked away and skin forever dusted with something or other, she would attract no attention whatsoever. She'd been wrong. And she had paid for her wide-eyed naivete.

Shaking her head now to prevent the memories from going too far down that path, Cate set her jaw and climbed down to the floor. There, she shook out her very proper skirts to be certain they were not clinging anywhere they ought not. There was no way of knowing who might come through this front door.

For some reason, privacy appeared to be a vague concept to the residents of London. She'd heard of Londoners trooping through the houses of people they did not know to view the aftereffects of fire, important birth- or deathbeds, even the victims of murder. None of that, of course, in Mayfair. But in Mayfair, she was learning, curiosity was just as avid and ill-contained, if slightly less lurid.

A good half-dozen times in the past sennight, well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, residents of the Square and its environs, had knocked at the door-and in several instances simply walked through it- and demanded to see the house. Politeness had nothing to do with the Buchanans' acquiescence. A smart businessman or woman knew when to court potential clients. So while her uncles, on whom she could always count to charm these potential fleece-bearers should they be present, entertained the nosy visitors, Cate faded grumpily into the shadows. Appropriately skirted, of course, lest she be noticed.

Now she followed Gordie, MacGoun's second-in-command, into the foyer. There, squatting among the shattered and pulled-up remnants of the original floor, was the aforementioned Jamie. The little Highlander, as seemingly unlikely a hefter of Portland stone and marble as Angus Buchanan, was rubbing at the crown of his bald head and squinting at the designs spread before him.

He glanced up, then jumped to his feet as she approached, top drawing in hand. "Sorry, miss, but I canna tell ..." He broke off, shrugged helplessly, and pointed to the paper. " 'Tis stone here and marble there? Or there?"

Cate looked over his shoulder-and sighed heartily. Not only was the design upside down, but it was liberally spattered with both tea and paint. Oh, Uncle Ambrose! she scolded silently, then removed the drawing from Jamie's work-roughened fist. She rummaged through her pockets for the stub of pencil she knew was there, then strode over to the wall. Propping the paper there, with the two men to hold it, she repaired the damage as best she could, making the lines darker with her pencil so they could be seen again through her uncle's spillage.

"Here," she said, pointing, "the large squares, is the Portland stone. Bright white. Here, the smaller squares in the center, is the black marble. And here, at the edge, all around"-the piece de resistance of the design, of the whole floor-"are the colored tiles."

It was difficult to see on the smudged drawing, but the colors were there, the alternating rust and gold and deep forest green. It was a daring concept, using color there and in ceramic. It was even more innovative. To the best of the Buchanans' knowledge, there were but the merest handful of London homes with colored floor tiles. As far as Cate was concerned, there would be more, many more, and not so far in the future.

"They'll break, I tell you," came MacGoun's dour p.r.o.nouncement from the doorway. He wasn't deliberately being the voice of doom, Cate knew, a knowledge that often kept her from throwing pencils, sketchpads, and even hammers at his glowering head, but rather stating a simple fact.

"They will not," she insisted, more stubbornly determined as to the tiles' future than confident of it. "They are being hand-made in Kent now and will be in this floor, intact, when the Marquess of Tregaron has been six feet under for a century."

She jumped when Gordie suddenly slapped his open palm against the wall. "That's it!" he declared, smacking the wall again. "I've remembered!"

"Remembered what, lad?" MacGoun demanded.

"Why, what he did, o' course, the marquess. To get London all riled-like."

Cate had no idea that Tregaron had ever riled Society, but considering their brief encounter, she was hardly surprised. She was, however, curious. Gordie, Grampian born but a longtime resident of London, had been working in Mayfair houses for a good decade and had proven to be a marvelous storyteller. "So what did he do? Tell us," she urged.

To her amazement, the man flushed to the roots of his wiry black hair and actually scuffed his feet.

"Sorry, miss," he mumbled, "but I can't."

"Can't?"

"Well, you see, it's this way. I never speak ill of him who's paying m'wages while he's still paying them. Tis bad luck. Last time I did, when I mentioned to my mates that Lord Pickering wanted me to build him a game room with cheaters' mirrors and pockets, I dropped a load of bricks on my foot. And before that, when I mentioned George Reynolds's fondness for the drink, I fell off a ladder into the neighbor's rose garden. And before that-"

"Never mind, Gordie," Cate insisted far more patiently than she felt. "We understand."

Oh, but her curiosity was piqued. What a terrible shame, she lamented, that she did not have anyone else to ask.

"I will say one thing for the marquess, though." Gordie's neck was still a bit pink, but he had stopped shuffling. "He must be a clever bloke to have hired Buchanans, Miss Cate, rather than Nash or one of those other lads."

Cate managed a tight smile. "I don't think his lordship even approached those other lads," was her reply. "Buchanan and Buchanan was available, eager, and came cheaply. But we'll show him, won't we, gentlemen, what a wise fellow he is?"

MacGoun grunted. Jamie grinned. And Gordie declared, "Aye, we will at that, Miss Cate."

Cate needed to get back to her ladder. "One more thing. Make certain I am warned should our wise marquess choose to drop in. His presence is quite enough to cause anyone to have an anxious fit of the heart."

Though not Catholic, she was tempted to join Jamie when he crossed himself before trotting back to his place at the center of the floor. As far as Cate was concerned, a little heavenly intervention could always do the Buchanans a world of good.

Tregaron silently wished Sheraton, Chippendale, and all men of their ilk into the devil's hands as he shifted in his grandmother's tiny and dismally uncomfortable parlor chair. He was always concerned he would break something on these visits, including his grandmother. No matter that he knew she was tough as a cut diamond and just as sharp; she barely topped five feet even in the built-up heels of her generation's fashionable shoes, and could not weigh much above six stone despite the profusion of precious family stones she tended to sport.

At the moment, she was peering at the floor through an elaborate quizzing gla.s.s that hung about her neck on a jeweled chain. "Have I not asked you before to refrain from bringing this slavering beast into my home, Colwin?"

"You have," he replied mildly.

"Yet you've chosen to ignore the request."

"I have." He glanced down at Gryffydd, who, rather than slavering, was grinning up at the dowager marchioness from his place beside her chair. It was, Tregaron knew, the prime location for the dog to receive the biscuits the dowager would pa.s.s down when she thought her grandson was not looking.

"Shall I have Wills remove him?"

She promptly waved a hand that seemed far too fragile to support the collection of rings it bore in his direction. "No, no. The creature is already here, and my butler has better things to do than chase it about the house."

"As you wish." Tregaron glanced casually at the clock on the mantel. From the corner of his eye he saw the first sugar biscuit disappearing into Gryffydd's jaws. When he glanced back, the dog had crumbs on his nose and the lady was patting her immaculate white hair. "You are looking well, madam."

"You said that already," was her retort, "when you arrived. And I do not look well. I look old."

"I don't see that."

"You need spectacles. All the St. Clair-Wright men need spectacles and refuse to acknowledge it."

"Grandfather once shot a feather off your hat from a hundred yards away," Tregaron reminded her, half horrified as always by the tale and half intrigued by the pa.s.sionate, devil-may-care connection the pair were reputed to have shared. "I would say that required better than adequate eyesight."

"He was aiming between my eyes," his grandmother snapped, the sudden mistiness of her own eyes belying the words. "And the very fact that that day was more than forty years ago tells you just how aged and decrepit I am."

Sarah, Lady Tregaron, nee Lady Sarah Granville, sister to the late Earl of Heathfield and aunt to the current, was of something of an advanced age, her grandson supposed.

She certainly would not see five-and-seventy again. She was, however, spry and sharp, and still possessed of much of the beauty for which she had been so famed in her youth. The years had left a gentle pattern of weblike lines on her face and turned the once ebony hair to white. The pain of surviving not only her husband but also her son had dulled the sparkle in the amber eyes. But she had never stopped living, and never stopped making her existence very much known, and often of central importance, to those around her.

She was vain. She was demanding, vinegar-tongued, and unabashedly haughty. She was also the only person on earth who cared a fig for the ninth Marquess of Tregaron.

During those years of his seclusion in Wales, she had been the only person from his family or Society to visit. Tregaron had not asked her to come, had not wanted her to come. But she'd arrived nonetheless, bouncing over the deplorable country roads in her antiquated traveling coach every three months, braving the gamut of Welsh weather and by-ways, tolerating a country she had always loathed- loathed to the extent that, when her husband had departed this life some quarter century earlier, she had emphatically vowed never to set foot in the dismal land again.

She'd changed her mind, perhaps the only broken vow in her life, when her grandson cloistered himself within his Welsh estate. Finally, after the third visit, when it became clear she was going to continue blessing him with her irascible, determined presence whether he wished it or no, Tregaron had offered to come to her in Suss.e.x, to the tidy little estate she occupied when not in London-an estate

that bordered on the one where she had grown up and that always seemed to be filled with saintly, cheerful Granvilles paying visits. Distant cousins who would have been polite enough to the marquess's face, no doubt, but winced at his approach and smiled at his departure.

Lady Tregaron had refused, insisting her grandson's ever-muddy boots and filthy beast of a dog, merely a pup at the time, would only ruin her fine possessions. She had, however, accepted the sleek and modern coach he had purchased for her, and the visits had continued through the long years.

Upon his return to London, Tregaron had come immediately to see her, and came now every second day for overly strong tea, lashes from her sharp tongue, and an hour or so of the simple, unspoken acceptance they gave each other. By tacit agreement, they never spoke of the events of eight years earlier. However, despite Tregaron's constant requests that she desist, the dowager marchioness constantly reminded him of his duty to the t.i.tle and lands.

"You," she was saying now, "are not getting any younger, either. Forty at your next birthday, isn't it?"

"Seven-and-thirty," he corrected, aware that she d.a.m.n well knew how old he was, right down to the hour of the day of the month and year in which he had been born.

"Seven-and-thirty. High time to be getting yourself an heir. Now don't you be scowling at me, Colwin. You don't want to be kicking off at a tragically young age like your dear papa, leaving the responsibility to a mere snip of a boy. It was not good for you to succeed to the t.i.tle so early, and would do no good for your son."

Tregaron held his tongue. It wouldn't serve much purpose to mention that he did not have a son and, intent notwithstanding, was not likely to beget one in the immediate future. It would certainly do no good to mention that his dear papa's death, though tragic, perhaps, and unquestionably at a young age, had been preventable. No man of five-and-thirty should have been so arrogantly f.e.c.kless as to chase after the wife of a notoriously suspicious, bitterly jealous, and famously violent army colonel. Especially when there had been no love involved, merely boredom and l.u.s.t.

But the St. Clair-Wright men had never been either saintly or righteous. They'd been a misguided, ill-reputed lot for centuries. Tregaron was hardly unique in his infamy. He was merely another apple from a gnarled tree.

"Honestly, Colwin, one would think you had not the slightest care for me. At this rate, I shall die never having held my great-grandson, never knowing the fate of the name and estates so dear to my heart."

Tregaron suppressed an amused snort. The old virago was hardly on her last legs. Nor did she give a spit about the name and estates. She had lost interest in both the moment her beloved husband died, reverting almost wholly to being an eminently respectable, well-admired Suss.e.x Granville.

To be fair, he had to admit she showed her care for him, if sometimes in odd ways. She never used his Christian name, for which he was extremely grateful. Instead, she continued to call him Colwin, the courtesy t.i.tle he had borne until his twelfth year, when his father had died, and he had become the Marquess of Tregaron. For that alone, he felt she deserved better than a sarcastic response. He gave her the stock one.

"If you will endeavor to stay in this earthly realm for the time being, madam, I shall endeavor to find some unsuspecting creature to bear the next generation." When his grandmother gave a very unladylike snort and dropped a biscuit into Gryffydd's waiting maw without bothering to hide the act, Tregaron couldn't help but give a faint smile. "For now, I will set my house to rights and see to trading these rags for something Brummell would not scorn."

"Addled, impertinent fellow," the dowager marchioness muttered, not making it clear whether she spoke of the famous dandy or her grandson.

"That's as it may be. But as it happens, I have an appointment with my tailors. Apparently the half-dozen waistcoats I've already collected are not sufficient. I have another batch waiting."

His grandmother's disinterested expression faltered for an instant. "You are leaving so soon? I was hoping you might stay for supper." Recalling herself, she stiffened her ramrod-straight spine that scant bit further. "I believe Cook is preparing an entire haunch of something or other," she announced vaguely, fluttering her fingers in a very good semblance of disinterest, "and you know how it vexes me to have so much food thrust at me."

'' Grandmother-''

"I cannot think how you manage to get a decent meal in those dismal, poky rooms you have taken.

Disgraceful, if you ask me. Don't you come running when you begin to starve, asking for succor here."

His suite at the Albany provided quite as much room as he needed, and had sufficient facilities for perfectly adequate meals. The rest he took elsewhere-including this house. Had he not been convinced that both he and his grandmother would run mad within a fortnight, he might have stayed with her. But the situation suited him as it was.

He had much-needed freedom; she knew she only had to send a footman and he would be by her side in a quarter hour.

'' Grandmother-''

"Colwin, you know it does not matter to me in the least where you dine . .."

He could see the plea in her eyes. He had never intended to disappoint her. "It has not yet gone three. I shall return well before dinner."

She nodded once, crisply, almost hiding the brief, relieved slump of her rigid shoulders. "Suit yourself. Now, you'd best leave the beast here. My nerves are strong. I cannot say the same for the preening flocks in Bond Street."

"What a clever idea. I shall do just that."

He took his leave. By the time he reached the foyer, he knew his grandmother would have moved from her minuscule, slate-hard chair to recline on the well-stuffed sofa nearby. The plate of biscuits would be within reach. Gryffydd would be in her lap.

Tregaron descended quickly to Hill Street. The temptation was strong, but he resisted the urge to head north to Hanover Square. He had stayed away from the house for a fortnight, kept himself busy with the annoying tasks of refurbishing his wardrobe and sorting through the invitations that arrived daily. Oh, a few notable hostesses were shunning him, that much was clear, but nearly as many were requesting his attendance at their dinners, their b.a.l.l.s, their interminable evenings of Gluck and Purcell.

Amazing, the marquess thought, what crimes a man could commit and still have any place at all in Society.

With that in evidence, and his goals in mind, he would be attending the Hythe fete the following night.

He would truss himself up in fitted, fashionable clothes, sip tepid champagne, and survey the field. No doubt he would have a handful of perfectly attractive, indifferently educated, excruciatingly well-bred young ladies from which to choose- ladies and their families who considered his t.i.tle and fortune just worth the risk of accepting his suit. Fortunately, he only needed one, and the Beau Monde would provide her.

Why then, he wondered grouchily as he stalked toward Bond Street, did he keep thinking of Catherine Buchanan?

Cate, for her part, was thinking wistfully of hot water, lots of it. After a long day at the Hanover Square house, all she wanted was a bath. It was not to be. Lucy had accosted her the moment she'd set foot in the house, demanding, among other things, attention and a stroll in the Park. Apparently the uncles, who had made only the briefest of appearances in Hanover Square that day, were not present at home, either.

"You cannot keep me prisoner here all the time, Cate! I must have some air, some small reminder that I have not been tossed into the oubliette of some moldering dungeon!"

Ah, the drama of it all. Such was life with Lucy. Cate could have provided the small reminder that they had been out the better part of the day before, spending money from the marquess's first advance on any number of fripperies they could ill afford but which Cate thought her sister deserved.

She could also have mentioned that Lucy had spent much of the past fortnight out and about with one uncle or the other. True, the girl was always escorted home before said uncle disappeared into a pub, but along the way she had visited such places as St. Paul's, the British Museum, Westminster Abbey, and, most recently, even a bit of Devonshire House on an art tour Uncle Ambrose had somehow arranged.

Cate, with the exception of several nearby and deadly dull shopping excursions, had seen little more than the streets between their own humble abode and the Tregaron house.

Any guilt she might still have felt at Lucy's plight-the girl did, as it happened, spend much of her time at home with only books and the meager staff for company-was forestalled by her appearance. Lucy was garbed in her newest dress, a frothy confection in white muslin, her hair carefully coiffed in cla.s.sical twists and curls, and what Cate recognized as one of their mother's delicate gold chains and crosses glinting about her throat.

Beyond this unusual display of late-afternoon splendor, Cate knew her sister loathed strolling anywhere one was likely to encounter dirt, gra.s.s, or low-flying birds.

"Hyde Park?" she demanded suspiciously. "Now?"

"As soon as you have changed your dress," was Lucy's reply, accompanied by a sad glance at Cate's work-dirtied skirts. "I am positively suffocating here!"