‘Has it?’ Joan’s eyes widened. ‘What cruel fate. Who told you of it?’
‘Luke had heard the news on the grapevine, then Fiona told me about another fellow who has been greatly reduced in circumstances. I understand that was entirely his own fault, though.’
Joan put down her cup, then waited till the maid had deposited some cakes and disappeared before asking hesitantly, ‘Was Fiona referring to Drew Rockleigh?’
Maude airily waved a tartlet she’d immediately selected and bitten into. ‘Rockleigh is out of favour and never mentioned. The culprit is another fellow who lost his house on a turn of a card to a professional gambler.’
‘How careless...’ Joan gulped her tea. She wished she’d not mentioned Rockleigh now because she feared her stepmother would pick up the thread of the conversation and she was confused as to how to continue. She was still smarting from his maddening attitude to her earlier. She was also still feeling embarrassed about her unpleasantly haughty response to his provocation. Yet, despite it all, there was within her a restlessness to see him again that was so powerful she felt tempted to fly to the stables, find Pip, then return to the slum and demand answers to the questions bedevilling her.
‘Fiona is aware that her husband’s friend has had a dreadful time of it.’ Maude popped some stray currants into her mouth. ‘Luke refuses to discuss Rockleigh because he is very angry with the ingrate.’ Maude sighed. ‘These men! They will get themselves into scrapes with their bad habits.’
‘He didn’t gamble away his money!’ Joan had immediately leapt to the ingrate’s defence.
‘Did he not?’ Maude sounded surprised. ‘What did he do?’
‘Um...I’m not sure,’ Joan admitted. ‘Papa heard that some business went bad for him.’
Maude helped herself to another cake. ‘I see...but Drew always seemed a devil-may-care charmer to me.’ She arched an eyebrow at Joan. ‘I recall he paid you rather a lot of attention at their wedding reception.’
‘For the short time he attended,’ Joan countered. Fiona and Luke’s wedding breakfast had been a wonderful celebration held in the ballroom that occupied a sizeable amount of the first floor of the Duke of Thornley’s town house. Wistfully Joan recalled Drew looking heartbreakingly handsome that evening. He had asked her to dance, causing fans to stir amongst the ladies present.
But by ten o’clock he had gone. Joan had been piqued enough by his abrupt disappearance to discreetly try to find him. Her search had taken her from the card room to the supper room and then to wander down the stairs. In the vestibule she had heard two dandies, lounging against a marble pillar, laughing that Rockleigh’s mistress had waited over two hours outside for him in a carriage. Joan had melted away into the shadows in a whisper of lemon silk, not wanting those chortling young bucks to spot her. She’d felt a fool, pining for a man who clearly wanted to be elsewhere and had danced with his host’s daughter out of politeness.
And that had been the last time Joan had been in Drew Rockleigh’s company...until very recently.
‘Why is Luke angry with him?’ Joan enquired. According to her sister, Drew had been a true friend to Luke when they were growing up and Luke had been unhappy at home. ‘Is Rockleigh no longer deemed fitting company since my brother-in-law settled down to a staid family life?’ Joan hoped Luke’s loyalty ran deeper than that.
‘Not at all!’ Maude wiped crumbs from her lips with a napkin. ‘Luke wants to be friends. Apparently he offered his chum a loan to get him back on his feet, but Rockleigh flatly refused to have it. Drew is now living like a degenerate, consorting with quite the wrong sort of people. Luke is out of patience with him.’ She frowned. ‘It is inconceivable that somebody would willingly remain in the gutter. It might be all exaggeration.’ Maude’s expression turned optimistic.
‘I fear this time the gossip might not live up to the reality, ma’am,’ Joan said quietly.
‘You know the ins and outs?’ Maude was intrigued enough to push away the tempting plate of tartlets and give her stepdaughter her full attention.
‘I might as well own up, for no doubt Papa will regale you with details of my latest scrape.’
‘Indeed, you must, if you wish to have my assistance in the matter,’ Maude answered with a wink.
Five minutes later when the saga about the beggars and Drew Rockleigh’s heroics had been related, Maude was looking much less amiable.
‘Oh, Joan!’ the woman wailed. ‘I wouldn’t have gone off to Essex for so long if I’d known you’d get embroiled in the vicar’s ragged school. There’s always a price to pay for doing a good deed, as my late husband would say.’ Maude sorrowfully shook her head. ‘I’ve always sanctioned your friendship with the vicar as he is kin of the Finches and I know your late mama liked him. Alfred is sure to remind me of my interference when he gets home.’
‘You know you have my father wrapped about your little finger.’ Joan managed a fraudulent smile, inwardly wincing at having caused yet another person’s upset. She’d not wanted to bring tears to her stepmother’s eyes, but equally she would never regret teaching some slum urchins their letters.
Thus far her stepmother had been her ally. Maude would gently chide her husband over keeping a too-strict rein on his eldest child. Her own daughter, she would remind him, had braved the hazards of travelling hundreds of miles in the seeking of employment and in the end the adventure had enriched Fiona’s life rather than ruining it.
The Duke would listen and nod. He would heed Maude in most things. In this particular case he had no need to humour her though, as there was great truth in her boast that Fiona’s courage had been well rewarded: Joan’s stepsister had travelled to Devon to take up a position as a governess when her life was at a low ebb and instead had fallen straight into the loving arms of her future husband.
‘Oh! That is your father back now.’ Maude had agitatedly gained her feet at the sound of voices in the corridor.
Joan had also heard the Duke’s baritone mingling with her Aunt Dorothea’s shrill treble. She was itching to speak to her father in private to discover why he’d found it necessary to reward Rockleigh with as much as fifty pounds. But now Maude was home husband and wife would want time alone, so Joan would have to wait her turn for an audience with him.
She was wrong on that score. Her father strode into the rose salon with his sister trotting in his wake. ‘Ah, capital to have you home, m’dear,’ he addressed his wife with a fond beam. A moment later Alfred’s beady gaze was turned on his daughter. ‘It seems you and I must have another serious talk, miss,’ he announced.
Over his shoulder Joan could see Dorothea’s fingers nervously plucking at the skirts of her widow’s weeds. So her aunt had blabbed about the encounter with Rockleigh in Hyde Park and had doubtless put her own fantastic interpretation on it.
‘I should like to speak to you, too, Papa,’ Joan replied stoutly.
‘You will have an immediate opportunity to do so, miss, never fear,’ the Duke retorted. He turned a softer gaze on his wife. ‘Why do you not retire for a while, Maude, and I’ll join you shortly?’ He raised her fingers to his lips in tender salute. ‘Off you go, now. There is no point in bringing you in on this half the way through. I’ll explain it in private, for deuce knows there are bits that stretch the
