Chapter Seventeen

A lice stepped back at the same time as Gerald released her.

“What’s going on here?” Adam demanded.

“Just a little family reunion,” Gerald said. “I must admit, she has gall showing up here as if nothing ever happened. Did you even know she is considered a pariah for her youthful behavior?”

Alice flinched and glanced at her husband. His expression was inscrutable.

“Your opinion of Lady Diamond is inconsequential to me. I suggest you stay away from her in the future. Your family connection has entirely vanished, and I would like you to do the same.”

Gerald’s face reddened, but he turned and walked away.

Alice wanted to collapse against Adam’s chest and have him soothe her, but she didn’t want him to think Gerald — or memories of Richard — could make any difference to her. Instead, she took a deep breath.

“He always was a toady, worshipping his degenerate brother as if everything the man did was either well thought out or plain good sport.”

Adam nodded, then offered her his arm. “Let’s return to the ballroom and enjoy the rest of the evening.”

She hesitated. “What if he is correct and people are talking about me ... about us?”

Her dear husband shrugged. “If they are talking about you, it is only to wonder what makes you so special you can capture two titled gentlemen within four years. And if they speak about us, it is only to say how lucky we are to have made a love match. For I do love you, my lady.”

“And I, you.”

Adam hated to do it . But Fairclough had been so nasty and Alice was so reticent, he decided he had best dig a little into her background. He didn’t want to ask anyone too close to his family, for if they knew something awful, then it would be awkward in the future. Thus, he didn’t go to the Fenwicks who knew everyone, nor ask either of his brothers-in-law.

Instead, he did something that he loathed. He consulted back issues of The Times society pages. In the McClary reading room on St. James's Street, right around the corner from his own home, Adam read the gossip from four years earlier up until Alice’s first marriage announcement.

His wife had been a bit of a wild young woman, as it turned out. The newspaper’s journalists who covered London’s upper-class members noticed her dancing at least three times in a single evening with the same man! They made note of her comings and goings from backyard gardens and in Vauxhall, on more than one occasion looking breathless at the side of some swell. The papers also chronicled as with whom she sat at dinner parties and concerts, and how closely she was chaperoned.

Moreover, to Adam’s dismay, Richard Fairclough had been engaged to another lady at the time he and Alice were discovered. The Times was almost gleeful to disclose the sordid details of one young woman’s heartbreak and the other’s near ruin but for Fairclough offering for her hand in marriage. Still, the papers labeled him a dishonorable rogue and Alice, a sorry jezebel. She had disappeared from London’s social scene at once, going back to Caversham until her wedding day.

At that time, Adam learned, they moved into the less desirable neighborhood of Gloucester Street. It was a place of respectable citizens, some with noblemen in their family tree, but who lived by more meager means than what he would have expected of Lord Fairclough.

Adam decided the best way to deal with anything he learned was simply to ask her. He refused to live a life of doubt.

Therefore, at dinner, over the first course of pottage, he broached the subject. He hadn’t rehearsed, so perhaps the question came out badly.

“Did you know your previous husband was already engaged when you let him spend time with you?”

He hadn’t meant to blindside her, but Alice dropped her spoon, letting it clatter upon the bowl’s rim and splash the tablecloth. He waved away the footman who left his station next to the sideboard to assist.

“You may leave until the next course is ready. Thank you.” He sent the man on his way. He ought to have done that before he began a private conversation.

Alice dabbed at her lips. “I was aware. But how did you know?”

Adam didn’t want to tell her the extent of his investigation or how many newspapers he’d read, knowing it would not go over well. After all, she was the one who had told him he shouldn’t marry her. It wasn’t fair now to look for reasons she might be deemed unsuitable.

“It doesn’t matter how I know. And now that I think of it, I don’t care about your answer. I apologize. It’s petty to rehash the past.”

“This is because of Gerald Fairclough’s rudeness the other night, isn’t it?”

“I suppose he made me curious.”

“He will say worse about me before he stops. Thus, if you have any misgivings, you may as well tell me now or pass over them and let them go.”

That was the forthright, practical governess he’d fallen in love with.

“I agree. I have no misgivings about us. But you seem so entirely different from the person who would get involved with an engaged man and...” He trailed off.

“And hurt someone like Miss Dumfrey. That was the lady’s name. I am not the same person I was. At the time, it was all a lark, and I had no intention of sticking with Richard more than I did with any of the men I knew at the time. I was waiting for my heart to beat fast, the way it did the first time you talked to me on the street and gave me back my rosin.”

Adam loved the memory of first seeing her on Great Pulteney Street. “I thought the package contained fancy lace gloves for an assembly.”

She nearly smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I needed wax for my bow. I had no need for lace gloves in Bath until I met you, but I must have gone through hundreds of pairs when I was younger.”

Alice picked up her spoon. “Believe me, I wish Richard had remained faithful to Miss Dumfrey and left me alone.”

“He would have been someone else’s problem,” Adam agreed.

“But I probably would have got myself into trouble, in any case,” she confessed. “Of similar ilk, too, knowing my thoughts and actions at the time.”

Adam pondered that. She was all but stating she would have been caught kissing another man.

“On the one hand, I wish you hadn’t been involved with a rake. On the other, I am glad you married a man who died young because regardless of what or who came before me, I think we are right for one another. I would have hated missing out on you.”

Her smile lit up the room.

“I didn’t know a man could be like you.”

Adam had an inkling what she meant. While he’d had his own wild moments, his father had instilled in him a deep respect for the fairer sex. He could hardly escape their intelligence, virtue, and kindness when living with his mother and four sisters.

And if it had taken him a little extra time to realize he could just as easily love a woman from the middle class as the upper one, then he, like Alice, was no longer the same person he had once been. In his case, he’d traded in a distinctly prejudiced view, which he hadn’t realized he had, for a broader way of thinking.

“I won’t ask you any more questions,” he vowed.

“Thank you, but to satisfy your curiosity, Richard’s heartbroken fiancée was anything but. She was angry, as I recall, more than she was devastated. I believe Miss Dumfrey already knew he was a blackguard, and she had made a mistake in agreeing to a marriage. Shortly afterward, she married a Scottish baron and moved away.”

Adam coughed. “It seems she got the best bit of beef, leaving you the gristle.”

“Indeed, she did.”

They fell into silence until the next course arrived.

“One last thing on this subject,” Adam said. “Tell me if Fairclough bothers you any time you are without me. You are my wife now and thus, fully under my protection.”

“I will.”

He hoped Alice understood the value of having married into a close and powerful family.

Alice had been surprised by her husband’s question. And the more she thought about it, the more she realized he must have asked someone about her. Hopefully, her new family didn’t know anything of her shameful past behavior. She was sure her new sisters-in-law had never acted with an ounce of impropriety.

All she could do was comport herself from then on in a way that would make Adam proud to be her husband. Before going out, she always told him where she was going, or at least made sure their affable butler knew.

And when she did venture onto the streets of London, she took her new lady’s maid, the sometimes sweet, sometimes salty Jillian. It had been years since she’d had a maid dedicated to her service. Having a person at her beck and call seemed odd, especially after being a governess when her household status had been nearly on the same level as the Beasleys’ house maids.

Regardless, Alice found herself chatting with Jillian from Ireland as if there was no difference between them, enjoying her company. If her old self, the debutante who had no female friends due to her own devilish behavior, could see her now, she would be shocked.

“I would like to purchase some cologne for Lord Diamond,” she told Jillian, and they headed along Jermyn Street to Floris. Despite the perfumier making her sniff every other fragrance in the shop until her head was light, Alice made her purchase of Adam’s familiar citrusy, woody, and amber scent.

As a clerk held the door open, Alice nearly walked directly into Gerald Fairclough, who was entering at the same time. Swallowing her alarm, she waited for him to step aside. When he didn’t, she tried to go around him. He blocked her to the left and then again, to the right, all the while scowling at her with such loathing, it made her skin crawl.

“Move aside,” she demanded, using her best supercilious tone despite a trickle of fear.

Cocking his head, he looked at the pretty bag she held in her hands, then at Jillian, and back again.

“It doesn’t matter what sweet scent you put on your body, Lady Fairclough, you will still smell like a whore.”

Jillian gasped. “Here now, you aren’t to speak to my mistress like that.”

Alice appreciated her maid’s quick defense, but she needed to stand up for herself.

Gerald sneered. “Is that too harsh a description for a woman who traded her virtue more than once until finding a man who fell for her pretty face? My besotted brother gave up a fine woman with an even finer fortune for you. And what did he get for it?”

Alice wasn’t going to trade barbs with Gerald, not when the clerks in the store behind her were undoubtedly listening, and Jillian was hanging on every word.

Her former brother-in-law was trying to strip her of her dignity as Lady Diamond, but she wouldn’t let him drag her into a battle of insults in the street.

Instead, she looked him in the eyes and again calmly said, “Move aside, or I shall call for a constable.”

His response was a bark of laughter. “I doubt you want to be anywhere near the Metropolitan police.”

His threat of persecution over how Richard died still unnerved her.

“Is that my new sister-in-law?” came a familiar voice.

Alice cringed, not wanting any of the Diamond females anywhere near Gerald Fairclough.

Adam’s flame-haired, green-eyed sister, the very image of her mother, managed to squeeze in past Gerald and stand directly beside him. He looked down at her with obvious curiosity.

“Greetings, Lady Radiance,” Alice said, wishing she had stayed home and sent her maid by herself to buy the wretched cologne. This outing was taking on all the traits of a music-hall farce.

“Radiance,” echoed Jillian, taking in the only red-haired Diamond sister. “And she is, too.”

Radiance sent her a friendly look, then focused on Alice. “I am so glad to have run into you. I know your problem. The streets here are filling with dung, and I find you trapped in a doorway by this pile of manure.”

Gerald’s expression turned thunderous. Naturally, Radiance took no notice.

“There is so much manure on our city streets, some say we’ll be buried in it five feet deep one day. I just read a letter to the editor of The Daily News from one Charles Cochrane, President of the National Philanthropic Association. He suggests a city-wide plan of using men and boys as street-orderlies like they use in Cheapside and Bishopsgate. Honest work for honest pay and entirely clean roads.”

She looked up at Gerald as if he might be interested in the project. “They use shovels, brooms, and wheelbarrows to remove the dung all day and all night.” She even leaned closer to him. “Thus, no horse-shit on the street!”

He couldn’t pretend not to understand the fiery lady. Thus, turning his back, he walked away.

Alice was astounded, a gloved hand to her mouth. When she looked at Jillian, she wore a similarly impressed and horrified expression.

Too late, the shop clerk who had assisted her approached the three women. “I hope you weren’t inconvenienced, my lady. Please tell Lord Diamond that Floris Perfumers sends its utmost gratitude for his continued gracious patronage.”

“Yes, of course. Thank you.” Alice and Jillian stepped outside with Radiance. Alice couldn’t help glancing around to make sure Gerald wasn’t lying in wait, but she saw him striding down toward Pall Mall. He had ruined her day and perhaps soured her maid’s view of her.

“He’s a right arse, isn’t he?” Jillian asked, breaking the tension.

Radiance laughed immediately, and Alice took a deep breath, then released it. “He certainly is.”

Just like his dead brother! And with her own mother’s help, Alice had stepped willingly into their world. If only she could figure out how to leave it behind now that she was back in London.

“I hope you don’t mind that I stepped in and insulted him,” Radiance said. “It seemed like good sport. But I must finish my shopping and get home before anyone notices I dashed out unaccompanied. Don’t tell my brother.”

Then the young lady leaned forward and embraced Alice briefly, dropping a kiss on her cheek before disappearing back inside Floris.

“She’s a force of nature, that one,” Jillian said. “If you don’t mind my saying, m’lady.”

“She is, to be sure,” Alice agreed.

Insulting Gerald was the least of her problems. But short of hiding in her new house, she had no idea how to avoid him in the future. In any case, Adam wasn’t about to let her do that. He was the opposite to Richard, and when her husband wasn’t in his study, at the exchange, the bank, his club, or with his father discussing Parliament, he was with her.

One morning over coddled eggs, he said, “Recall when we discussed the Great Exhibition with Lady Susanne?”

“Indeed, I do.” Alice caught his intent at once and dropped her napkin so she could clap her hands with the excitement of a child going to the fair. “Are we going today?” she asked.

“I have the entire day free to spend with my wife walking through the wonders of the world.”

With the throng of people — twenty-five thousand on opening day — Alice hoped no one would notice her and doubted she would run into anyone she knew. The Crystal Palace, which housed exhibits not only from Britain but from around the world, was a place so large and novel the newspapers repeatedly stated the structure’s enormous measurements.

Built in only nine months from glass and cast iron fabricated in Birmingham, it contained 293,000 panes, including the largest sheets of glass ever made, and 3,330 columns of iron.

However, when they arrived, it was not as crowded as she’d expected. At her query as to its waning popularity, Adam chuckled.

“It’s Friday,” he pointed out as they passed through the turnstile at the main entrance.

She shook her head, not comprehending.

“The entry price most days is only a shilling,” he explained, “but they charge a pound today and on Saturdays.”

“To keep out the masses,” Alice surmised, embarrassed by the two-tier system as a few months prior, she was part of that class that would only pay twelve pence.

Once inside, she could think of nothing but the awesome ingenuity of people. Half of the nineteen-acre building contained inventions and goods from the British Isles, and the other half from fifty countries in the rest of the world, as well as another thirty-nine colonies.

Everywhere, colorful red, white, and blue banners hung with the names of the countries and the type of item they were exhibiting — be it Manufactures, Machinery, Raw Materials, or Fine Arts . The noise and the aromas were overwhelming, both the rattling of machinery in the distance and the nearby fragrance of produce from colonial Trinidad and spices from the India exhibit.

“Magnificent,” Alice exclaimed, her head on a swivel, trying to take it all in at once. Directly ahead was a tall elm tree growing indoors under a barrel-vaulted roof, and near it, a massive fountain made of four tons of pink glass if the sign could be believed. They lingered a long time in the section from India with the vibrant textiles and the life-size stuffed elephant carrying a—

“Is that elephant wearing a four-poster bed?” Alice asked, going closer.

Adam read the sign. “It’s a howdah . Their version of a horse and carriage.”

And then, they stood before the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond, given to Queen Victoria upon being made Empress of India.

Adam whistled loudly at the large stone and read the translation of its Persian name, “Mountain of Light.”

She squeezed his arm. “You are a larger Diamond by far, my love, and I much prefer your warmth and wit to that cold stone. Plus, it’s rather dull, don’t you think? Not a hint of sparkle compared to you.”

“But I recently bought it for you.” He sighed as, momentarily, she believed him. “I guess I shall have to return it to the Queen.”

They both laughed, passing it to walk through the representation of a medieval court. But Adam’s eyes widened when they approached a tall nude statue. He stared up at the alabaster sculpture on a rotating pedestal with an orange-red canopy and matching curtain as a backdrop.

“Does it say, ‘Here stands the likeness of Lady Diamond’?” he asked, leaning over to look at the description.

“Adam!” she exclaimed, her cheeks feeling warm as she examined the unclothed female form. “ Ssh! What will people think?”

“That I have seen you entirely bare, which I have, and I’ve admired the artistic beauty of every square inch, too.”

There was no stopping his innuendo, even though she’d heard his sister Purity say that double entendres were crude and a lady ought to ignore them. Alice did exactly that.

“The fact that Mr. Hiram Powers’ statue is turning so smoothly,” she insisted, “is as spectacular as the figure itself.”

“To be sure,” Adam agreed. “I’m only looking at it for its clever mechanical aspect.”

“Come along,” she said. “If you enjoy mechanics, we shall tour the industrial exhibits.”

Machines hummed and clanged, powered by a steam generator. And Alice and Adam were genuinely impressed by the hydraulic presses, the large Jacquard loom, and the self-acting spinning mule, which could do the work of many laborer’s hands.

Looking at the finer inventions and the best of what had been manufactured, they peered through microscopes, shuddered at surgical instruments, and on the second floor of the main hall—

“Look at the pianos and violins!” After Alice examined them and was given permission to play a violin that caught her eye, Adam immediately ordered one for her.

“Let’s go look at the American exhibits,” he suggested after giving the man their address.

“I cannot believe you just bought me such a precious gift.”

“Why not?” he asked, clearly pleased at her reaction. “You are a fine musician who deserves a fine instrument.”

“I cannot take in anything more,” she vowed. “Not after the violin.”

“Yes, you can. I won’t leave until they throw us out,” he said.

The American section was a little thin compared to some of the other countries. Alice couldn’t keep from laughing at the cornhusk mattress, the jars of Cincinnati pickles, and the double grand piano for four pianists, which she found ugly and unwieldy.

But the hand-cranked contraption that washed dishes, the machine for making ice, and the straight-stitch sewing machine seemed wondrous indeed.

“The Americans have become a pragmatic people, don’t you think?” she asked as her husband examined Mr. Goodyear’s extensive display.

“Pragmatic, perhaps,” Adam agreed, “but there’s no accounting for taste.” He pointed to the rubber-covered walls and the chairs coated in rubber veneer. There were even paintings done on rubber and rubber clothing.

“Rubber plates and cups, and — Good God! — rubber jewelry.” He made a face. Then he laughed. “No need to worry about losing your teeth. Here are some rubber ones!”

They were an unnatural looking, dark reddish brown of vulcanized rubber with some type of white bone or ivory stuck into it.

“Please don’t let me ever need those,” Alice prayed aloud.

They left through the open rubber curtains between the potted rubber plants on either side of the Goodyear display.

“I don’t think any of that rubber stuff will ever catch on,” Adam mused.

And then they went to a refreshment stand to enjoy some of the Messrs. Schweppes’ fizzy drinks and iced syrups before purchasing one of the exhibits most popular food items, the London Bath Bun.

At the same time, Alice and Adam took a bite from the bun, each held wrapped in a piece of wax paper.

“Too sweet,” Adam declared.

Alice wrinkled her nose. “Doughy and too small to be a true Sally Lunn.” But she finished it, anyway.

“London Bath Bun,” Adam muttered, cramming the rest into his mouth before he wadded up the paper and shoved it into his pocket. “Ridiculous name.”

They were approaching an exhibit of life-sized Native Americans standing in their colorful costumes before a teepee, when someone touched Alice’s arm.

“Lady Fairclough, where on earth have you been?”