Little Coquette Read Free Page B

had struck her. “Papa’s bit of muslin!” she gasped. “You’re mad. Papa doesn’t have a mistress. How dare you say such a thing! That is slander, Beaumont. If you repeat that filthy lie, he’ll take you to court.”
    He blinked in astonishment. “Didn’t you know? Why the devil do you think he spends so much time in town?”
    “For his work, of course. He is very busy in the House. He is on half a dozen committees.”
    Beaumont realized his error and wished with all his heart he could unsay the fateful words already spoken. He cleared his throat, blushed, and said, “My mistake, Miss Trevelyn. Sorry. Forget I spoke.”
    “But where did you hear such a thing?”
    He waved his hands as if batting away a gnat. “London is a hotbed of gossip. No doubt it was some other Sir John. Or perhaps it was Lord John. It is a common enough name after all.”
    Strangely, it was his immediate retraction that half convinced her he was telling the truth. Such an idea had never entered Lydia’s head. She knew that plenty of other gentlemen entertained themselves with a mistress, but that her papa, whom she looked up to as a demigod, should sink so low knocked the wind out of her. Then an even worse notion seized her.
    “Are you suggesting that Papa killed the woman?” she asked. Her eyes were like wild things, staring at him. “That she came pestering him at home and he drowned her?”
    “Of course not. She wasn’t drowned anyway. She was shot.”
    “You think Papa shot her!”
    “I don’t think anything of the sort!” he replied angrily. “I am not even sure she was his mistress. I heard the woman was putting up at the Rose and Crown. I mean to discover her name and ask Sir John if she was his woman. That’s all. It would be a great scandal for the Tory party if it were true.”
    Scowling like a gargoyle, he took a rough grip on her elbow and led her into the Rose and Crown. Lydia was too shaken to argue. She stood a few feet away while Beaumont spoke to the clerk. As the first shock of his accusation was digested, she began to accept what now seemed almost inevitable.
    Her papa had a mistress. That was why he had not encouraged her to make her debut last April. He didn’t want Mama and her to find out. He had complained of the expense, and Mama had agreed that money was a little tight lately. He was squandering his money on a lightskirt. That was why he spent so much time in London, even in summer when the House was not sitting.
    Lydia remembered going into his room only last evening to ask him to explain exactly what function the Chancellor of the Exchequer filled. Her papa had been writing something. She assumed it had to do with government business, and had been a little offended that he pushed the paper under the covers so hastily, as if he could not trust his own daughter. She had seen a corner of violet-colored stationery protruding from under the blanket and wondered at it. It had been a billet-doux from her, his mistress.
    But surely his mistress was not that creature in the vulgar red bonnet with all the feathers? Her papa was a gentleman of refined taste. His own toilette was a matter of pride with him. No one for jackets but Weston. His boots must be by Hoby, of St. James’s Street, who shod the royal family and the Duke of Wellington, and his curled beavers by Baxter. No, if he had a mistress, it was not that woman found in the river. And even if, in the worst case, Papa had gone mad and taken up with such a creature, he could not have killed her, for he had been in bed with gout. He did have gout, didn’t he? It was odd, though, that he would not let Mama ask for Dr. Fraser to attend him as he usually did.
    “I know the treatment well enough by now,” he had said. “Bed rest will cure me.”
    But he didn’t spend all his time in bed. Late one night when everyone had retired she had heard him coming upstairs and had gone to investigate. He was walking without much limping and without his walking