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Authors: The Last Bachelor
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tone.
“As if you would know the difference. Go away, Fitch,” Shelburne said, glancing away irritably.
“Who was the ladybird?” Rupert Fitch, correspondent for the sensational and widely read
Gaflinger’s Gazette
, asked in breathy, urgent tones. “The one in purple, who near chewed yer ears off?” he prompted. When there was no response, he added, “A fiery little thing, eh? Seems to hate the Ladies’ Man, right enough.”
The “Ladies’ Man” was a title bestowed upon Remington Carr by none other than Rupert Fitch himself. The news writer had long ago decided that a wealthy blue blood who went against both prevailing political winds and royal favor to demand women’s political and economic rights might make for interesting reading. In the florid and highly competitive world of Fleet Street journalism, a news writer had to make the most of every opportunity for a juicy byline. Of late he had taken a more intense interest in the radical earl’s activities, hoping that he would do something more scandalous than write suffragist magazine articlesand work to seat the radical atheist Bradlaugh in the Commons.
When Shelburne glared at him, Fitch apparently took it as a sign of encouragement. He leaned closer and his voice dropped to a wicked ooze. “What’s Landon done to ’er? Give ’er the jilt? Give ’er the slip? What?”
Shelburne gave him the shoulder and strode on until he reached the door to the Smoking Room. There he slowed, then paused with a canny look and waved his colleagues through the door ahead of him. Turning to the relentless little muckraker, he looked down his nose at the fellow’s ill-fit collar and gin-flushed complexion.
“All right, here’s a tidbit for you, Fitch. The ladybird was indeed a lady. Lady Antonia Paxton … wealthy widow, do-gooder, and defender of marriage and the sanctity of the home.” His expression warmed at the sight of wheels turning in the newsman’s mind. On impulse he greased the gears that turned them. “But being a gentleman, I must stop there and leave it to you to discover what they truly are to one another.”
Fitch’s ferret-quick eyes narrowed and his mouth quirked up at one corner.
“I owe ye one, Mr. Shelburne.”
Chapter
4
Night rolled softly over the city. The air had been cleared by a gentle afternoon shower, making it a perfect evening to open the terrace doors and let the perfume of the gardens drift in on the breeze. Men in swallowtail coats and ladies in delicate silk gowns arrived at the Ellingsons’ great house on Park Lane in open calashes and stylish barouche coaches. Inside, they moved through the gilt and mahogany splendor of the drawing rooms and into a long glass conservatory, which opened onto ranks of flower-covered terraces.
Into that gathering of wealth and privilege stepped Remington Carr, devastatingly turned out in his best evening dress, and ready for battle. As he made his way through the rooms, heads turned and tongues wagged behind feathered fans and potted palms. He did not appear often at social gatherings, and his presence, even at liberal Lord Ellingson’s house, was cause for speculation. He took a hand here and there in greeting, and met an occasional eye, but his attention was trained on the search for what he remembered of the infamous Lady Antonia Paxton.
It had been an unpleasant surprise that afternoon to have Carter Woolworth point out to him a trim, well-dressed figure across the Central Lobby at Westminster. And as he approached her, his surprise had turned to confusion. From the various descriptions her victims had suppliedhim—a vulture, a charging rhino, a jackal, a fire-breathing dragon—he had expected something more on the order of a zoological specimen than a woman. Something with a few more tusks or talons. At the very least, someone a decade or two older and twenty or thirty stones heavier.
He was unsettled to find her in mere womanly form and dressed in fashionable silk rather
“As if you would know the difference. Go away, Fitch,” Shelburne said, glancing away irritably.
“Who was the ladybird?” Rupert Fitch, correspondent for the sensational and widely read
Gaflinger’s Gazette
, asked in breathy, urgent tones. “The one in purple, who near chewed yer ears off?” he prompted. When there was no response, he added, “A fiery little thing, eh? Seems to hate the Ladies’ Man, right enough.”
The “Ladies’ Man” was a title bestowed upon Remington Carr by none other than Rupert Fitch himself. The news writer had long ago decided that a wealthy blue blood who went against both prevailing political winds and royal favor to demand women’s political and economic rights might make for interesting reading. In the florid and highly competitive world of Fleet Street journalism, a news writer had to make the most of every opportunity for a juicy byline. Of late he had taken a more intense interest in the radical earl’s activities, hoping that he would do something more scandalous than write suffragist magazine articlesand work to seat the radical atheist Bradlaugh in the Commons.
When Shelburne glared at him, Fitch apparently took it as a sign of encouragement. He leaned closer and his voice dropped to a wicked ooze. “What’s Landon done to ’er? Give ’er the jilt? Give ’er the slip? What?”
Shelburne gave him the shoulder and strode on until he reached the door to the Smoking Room. There he slowed, then paused with a canny look and waved his colleagues through the door ahead of him. Turning to the relentless little muckraker, he looked down his nose at the fellow’s ill-fit collar and gin-flushed complexion.
“All right, here’s a tidbit for you, Fitch. The ladybird was indeed a lady. Lady Antonia Paxton … wealthy widow, do-gooder, and defender of marriage and the sanctity of the home.” His expression warmed at the sight of wheels turning in the newsman’s mind. On impulse he greased the gears that turned them. “But being a gentleman, I must stop there and leave it to you to discover what they truly are to one another.”
Fitch’s ferret-quick eyes narrowed and his mouth quirked up at one corner.
“I owe ye one, Mr. Shelburne.”
Chapter
4
Night rolled softly over the city. The air had been cleared by a gentle afternoon shower, making it a perfect evening to open the terrace doors and let the perfume of the gardens drift in on the breeze. Men in swallowtail coats and ladies in delicate silk gowns arrived at the Ellingsons’ great house on Park Lane in open calashes and stylish barouche coaches. Inside, they moved through the gilt and mahogany splendor of the drawing rooms and into a long glass conservatory, which opened onto ranks of flower-covered terraces.
Into that gathering of wealth and privilege stepped Remington Carr, devastatingly turned out in his best evening dress, and ready for battle. As he made his way through the rooms, heads turned and tongues wagged behind feathered fans and potted palms. He did not appear often at social gatherings, and his presence, even at liberal Lord Ellingson’s house, was cause for speculation. He took a hand here and there in greeting, and met an occasional eye, but his attention was trained on the search for what he remembered of the infamous Lady Antonia Paxton.
It had been an unpleasant surprise that afternoon to have Carter Woolworth point out to him a trim, well-dressed figure across the Central Lobby at Westminster. And as he approached her, his surprise had turned to confusion. From the various descriptions her victims had suppliedhim—a vulture, a charging rhino, a jackal, a fire-breathing dragon—he had expected something more on the order of a zoological specimen than a woman. Something with a few more tusks or talons. At the very least, someone a decade or two older and twenty or thirty stones heavier.
He was unsettled to find her in mere womanly form and dressed in fashionable silk rather
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