in the puce-faced Herbert Symington, the visibly quavering Lord Undercliff, and the obviously unconscious Lady Undercliff.
“Tiens! Do I detect a want of steadiness in our small group, an unwillingness to act? Very well,” he then drawled affably, “as it would appear it is left to me to take charge, I will. Lord Buxley, I commend you on your timely capture of our dearest hostess in her time of need. Perhaps you will now retire and give her over to the servants—with Lady Ariana’s assistance, as she considers herself too angelically pure for such goings-on as we are witnessing—while we vile, despicable souls remain riveted here at gossip’s head table, ravenous for sensation and unabashedly avid to lap up any drop of scandal. After all,” he continued, allowing the quizzing glass to drop, “as some observant wit has written, ‘Society in shipwreck is a solace to us all.’”
Lady Ariana winced as the shaft of St. Clair’s verbal arrow unexpectedly sank home in her chest. He had not cut Gabrielle Laurence. He had turned the weapon of his tongue on her instead, damning her with faint praise, calling her angelic when what he’d really meant was that she was a stiff-backed prude who had not insulted just Miss Laurence but all these several dozen milling people who were eager to witness Lord Undercliff’s very public embarrassment.
“Christian,” she began, squeezing his arm as she looked up at him, “please—”
“Tut, tut, my dear,” he broke in as two footmen came to Lord Buxley’s aid, taking the slowly recovering but still unsteady-on-her-feet Lady Undercliff away, “don’t say another word. We are all human, and therefore we all understand. Of course you may remain—you and Lord Buxley both. I know I could not leave now, even if I shall most sincerely hate myself in the morning—as we shall all most sincerely berate ourselves for our eagerness to hear what Mr. Simons here has to say.”
“That’s Symington, my lord,” Herbert Symington broke in rather rudely even as Lord Buxley, known far and wide as a true stickler for the conventions, sharply turned on his heel and strode away.
Lady Ariana didn’t know which of the two gentlemen she disliked more at that moment: Christian St. Clair for forgiving her, or Lord Anthony Buxley for having the courage to defy the man. Lord Buxley, probably, for now the smiling Miss Laurence and her most annoying, vulgar beauty mark were standing directly beside the baron, basking in the glow of his approval.
“Symington, you say?” St. Clair inquired casually, again employing his quizzing glass to great effect as he inspected the mill owner from head to toe, but quickly, as if the sight of the man’s poorly cut brown jacket and too-tight breeches were offensive to his sensibilities.
“La, sir,” the baron continued, “I can’t imagine why you have taken it into your head to believe I care either way what name you give to yourself. But, please, we are most avidly interested in what you have to say, as it is obvious you are operating under some sort of strain. You look, to be frank, as if you have just recently been ridden hard, and then put away wet. Not that such things matter in light of other, more interesting gossip. Miss Laurence here, for one, appears to be eager for news of the Peacock. Whatever has that terrible, terribly exciting creature done this time?”
And now, at last, Lady Ariana understood. How could she have been so stupid? The baron was attempting to protect Lord Undercliff, his inquiry deliberately bypassing Undercliff’s association with Symington to concentrate on the much more provocative subject of the Peacock.
And the rest of the evening’s guests also understood and would not speak publicly of Lord Undercliff’s acute embarrassment, knowing St. Clair would not be best pleased if they did so. Oh, he was clever, Christian St. Clair was, earning himself the powerful Lord Undercliff’s undying gratitude while still indulging Society’s appetite for scandal. Everyone was happy. Everyone save Lady Ariana, and Herbert Symington.
“What did he do?” Symington bellowed, causing Lady Ariana to bring herself back to attention after indulging herself in a lesson on how St. Clair’s mind worked. “I’ll tell you what the Peacock did. Just tonight he robbed me of my new coach and then burned my new house straight down to the ground!”
“’Tare an’ hounds! Another house? That’s the second this month,” someone behind Lady Ariana exclaimed.
“And the sixth—no, the seventh—this year,” another gentleman added, before both subsided, probably realizing that such intimate knowledge of the Peacock’s activities might urge the others present to look at them and wonder if they, like Lord Undercliff, might owe some part of their fortunes to secretly dabbling in trade.
“Now that you mention it, there is the air of burnt wood about you, Simons,” St. Clair said, lifting his scented handkerchief to his nostrils. “How lamentable.”
“Why did he burn down your house, Mr. Symington? Are you like the mill owners the Peacock has written about in the newspapers?” Miss Laurence asked, proving to Lady Ariana once again that the girl didn’t have a smidgen of sense in her head. A wise young lady, a prudent debutante, would never speak directly to someone as obviously common as the mill owner.
Mr. Symington opened his mouth, ready to answer, when St. Clair cut him off by waving his hand, the one holding the lace handkerchief—an object the mill owner stared at almost greedily. “Please, please, don’t subject us to a recitation of your virtues and the disaster of your poor, burned house, Mr. Simons, as I am convinced you were about to do. Likewise, we all are already quite familiar with sundry uplifting tales of the Peacock’s mission to punish the wicked for the wretched despair of the poor. Why, I have been so very affected by the man’s anonymous treatises to the newspapers concerning underfed children and injured workers that I have had to raise my servants’ quarterly wages, out of pure guilt. Haven’t we all reacted similarly?”
A murmuring chorus of “Of course!” and “Raised ’em all just last week! Can you even ask?” and “Those letters! So affecting!” trilled through the throng, all of them sounding very self-satisfied at having done their part to boost the Peacock’s mission.
“Did you see him—see the Peacock?” one plumparmed matron dared ask, poking Symington with her fan. “We hear he is magnificent!”
“And so daring,” another, younger woman put in. “I heard that just last week he and his brave band rode directly into Spitalfields to rescue a poor wretch about to be taken to Newgate for nothing more than picking up an apple that fell from a grocer’s cart.”
“He’s very tall, isn’t he?” a dark-haired debutante asked, her kid-encased hands pressed to her breast. “Tall, so very, very handsome, and gallant and prodigiously well-spoken, or so I’ve heard. He’s no common highwayman, everyone says. He must be one of us—but who?”
“Ladies, please,” St. Clair interrupted at last, just as a few of the gentlemen began to grumble that this Peacock fellow was becoming much too much the sensation with the females to be anything but an out-and-out rotter. “We are all enthralled with the Peacock’s romantic exploits, but the man is just that—a man, and one who chooses to keep his identity a secret, which cannot be considered commendable. We shouldn’t be raising him onto a pedestal.”
“Heavens no,” Miss Laurence slid in quietly, so that Lady Ariana and the baron were most probably the only ones who heard her amid the general murmurings of the crowd. “That would mean we first would have to topple you off, wouldn’t it? Unless you are already tottering? How does it feel to know you have competition?”
“I don’t believe this!” Symington exclaimed, spreading his arms wide, which he could do with ease, for no one in the small crowd appeared willing to be within ten feet of him. “You blockheads care for nothing but
