The Spider's Touch by Patricia Wynn Page A

Henry had cause to squirm for his relatives, and not only she.
    But Isabella seemed to think her husband’s joke very jolly indeed, and Mrs. Mayfield wagged her finger at him coyly. “Fie, my lord! You know you was head-over-heels in love with my Isabella. And if it wouldn’t make me blush like a cherry, I could tell a thing or two about your lordship’s courtship of her. But you gentlemen all pretend that you never wish to be wed!”
    Harrowby winked grotesquely at his brother-in-law, and said, “Your sister is a saucy baggage, who never ceases to plague me o’ nights. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since I fell into parson’s mousetrap.”
    Isabella and her mother laughed uproariously. None of this banter served to soothe Dudley’s horror, though it did divert him long enough to plant the hope that this talk of his own upcoming nuptials was nothing but a bad joke. His expression wavered between terrified doubt and headstrong resentment.
    Hester smothered the sigh that a more intimate knowledge of her family inevitably provoked. Her impression of Dudley was no more favourable now than it had been on first acquaintance, formed during her brief stay at Mayfield Park before she had traveled with her aunt and Isabella to London. He had been raised with no sense or taste, and she doubted he had the personal qualities to benefit from good instruction if he had received it. At home he thought only of his pleasure in riding and shooting with his cronies, who were no more intelligent or sensible than he. Like Isabella, he had a cheerful temperament if everything went his way. He only seemed to differ from her in his propensity to sulk whenever things did not. Although she could sympathize with his resentment over his mother’s manoeuvrings, she also knew that his main objection to marriage was likely to be the threat it posed to his pleasure.
    She could only imagine the resentment James Henry must feel on knowing that a part of his father’s estate was to be wasted on an undeserving oaf like Dudley Mayfield.
    * * * *
    Harrowby was not immediately able to take Dudley under his wing, for the next day, he had to attend the interment of the Earl of Halifax in Westminster Abbey. Without a day to lose, Mrs. Mayfield decided to take it upon herself to improve her son’s appearance by taking him to visit some of the shops in the City. Dudley would rather have amused himself by going to see a public execution, but since the hangings for this term—six men and a woman—had already been carried out, he consented to accompany his mother after dinner.
    Isabella was promised to Madame Schulenberg at four o’clock. Hester was to accompany her, for Isabella had refused to set foot in the Palace again without her cousin’s support. Her last experience at a drawing-room given by the Princess of Wales had been a disaster. That evening the King had made one of his rare appearances and had addressed Isabella in French. Weak in any language but her own, she had become so tongue-tied as to embarrass both herself and the King. She had no more understood his German accent than she had been able to reply, so she still did not know if her panicked, “oui,” had been an appropriate response. The King had quickly recognized her dilemma, which was common to most of his courtiers, and with an inclination of his head had dismissed her. But Isabella had vowed never to be caught in the Palace without her own interpreter again.
    Mrs. Mayfield was piqued at having to forego a visit with the King’s mistress, but her ambitions for Dudley gave her no choice. After sharing her resentment that Lord Halifax had chosen that day to be buried, when Harrowby might have taken his brother into London, she set off, but not before drawing Hester out into the hall to speak to her alone.
    With a talon-like grip on her niece’s arm, she said, “Hester, see if you can discover how much it will take to win Madame Schulenberg’s influence for