The Tutor (House of Lords) by Meg Brooke Page A

wondered what Lady Gillian would say if she knew what it had really been like, being assigned a treatise or an essay each day, being quizzed on them at night, being berated if she hadn’t understood well enough to please her father. “It was pleasant,” she said.
    They spoke of useless pleasantries for a while. Then Lady Imogen, signaling that the afternoon was at an end, stood. “Miss Endersby,” she said, “I wonder whether you might like to accompany us to the Strand tomorrow afternoon. We are making our first trip to Wright’s of the Season.”
    “Thank you, Lady Imogen,” Cynthia said. “That would be lovely.”
    “Excellent. Shall we call for you at one?”
    Cynthia agreed readily, gave them her direction, and allowed them to show her out.
    As the footman handed her into the ducal carriage, which had been called for her, she reflected that her greatest worry was not whether her father would believe that she had formed a friendship with Lady Imogen and Lady Gillian, but whether he would be suspicious of the partiality they were showing her.
     

FIVE
     
    January 8, 1834
     
    “I don’t know what you did to Viscount Sidney,” Beresford said the following morning when he and Charles were preparing for their fencing sessions at Spitzer’s. Charles had belonged to the club since he had first come to London, and regularly attended on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. Beresford was, as in most areas of his life, a less devoted attendee, and Charles had been rather surprised to see him this morning, since he had also seen Beresford long after midnight at Lady Jack’s, settling in for a few more hours’ carousing. “But the man was either angry with you or with me yesterday, and I haven’t seen any of the Chesneys in weeks , so it must have been you.”
    Charles kept his attention grimly focused on fastening his jacket.
    “Very well,” Beresford said. “I can take a hint.”
    Herr Spitzer himself came forward to greet Charles, his foil tucked under his arm. “Your Grace,” he said in his heavily accented English. “How good to see you again. Will you come through, please?”
    For the next hour, at least, Charles was able to concentrate only on the singing of the foil and the placement of his feet. But as soon as the session was over, his mind was dragged back to more complicated issues. Even as he bid goodbye to Herr Spitzer and Beresford, his thoughts were already turning to the outing his sisters had planned for the afternoon.
    Imogen had mentioned at dinner that she had invited Miss Endersby to accompany the girls to Wright’s the following afternoon. Ordinarily, Charles did not involve himself in his sisters’ social schedules—they were old enough to know whom they should and shouldn’t befriend, and he trusted Imogen to help Gilly make the right choices. It didn’t mean that he always liked their friends, but at least there was peace in the Bainbridge household. Still, he wasn’t sure he was comfortable with them spending time with Miss Endersby, who struck him as a very odd young lady.
    It wasn’t just her beauty that made her stand out, though she had that in spades, and Charles was finding himself quite perplexed by how unaware she seemed of it. She dressed well, of course, as befit a gentleman’s daughter, and her hair was dressed perfectly. She seemed to favor shades that highlighted her coloring, bringing out her green eyes and making her pale skin look even creamier. At some point, Charles thought, she had had a very wise governess who had taught her how to play up her looks to perfection. If one had glimpsed her in a drawing room or at a ball, it would have seemed as though she was a lovely young woman of quality, and he did not doubt that she was capable of conversing without giving the impression that she was anything more.
    He knew better now. It was her unabashed expressions of her opinions and demonstrations of her intellect that really left him bemused. He had never met a woman