Pryor Cousins

Chapter 3-1

As a fifteen-year-old, Ella had stepped out of the schoolroom and into marriage with a man forty years her senior. A man who’d ruled every aspect of her life.

Her husband had chosen the clothes she had worn, her gowns and her bonnets, her shoes, even her underclothes: stockings, petticoats, chemises. He’d decided how her hair was styled and what perfumes she wore, what jewels she adorned herself with—diamonds and pearls only—just as he’d decided when she left the house and when she didn’t, which shops she patronized, which invitations she accepted, which books she read, even what food she ate.

It had almost been a continuance of her childhood—obedience to a stern parent’s authority—except that Francis had been assiduous in asserting his conjugal rights. Not that his assiduousness had been fruitful; Ella had proven barren, her monthly flow so intermittent that it barely qualified as a yearly flow.

Francis had favored cool shades of gray and white, with the occasional foray into pale, icy blues and delicate celadons. After his death, when she’d begun to think for herself, Ella decided that he’d chosen her as his bride because of her coloring: the white-blonde hair and wintry blue eyes.

In the six years of her marriage, Ella hadn’t been allowed to make a single decision. At first, it hadn’t occurred to her that she could. Later, she hadn’t dared. Widowhood had been a liberation, an escape from a cramped and cloistered prison. With Minette and Arthur’s help she’d avoided a return to her father’s house and his power over her, just as she’d avoided being subsumed into the new viscount’s household and the rôle he’d intended for her, that of grateful, mouselike widow.

Ella had been the most meek and obedient of wives, but as a widow she had learned to be colorful, bold, free. No one told her what she could and couldn’t do, what she couldn’t eat or wear or think or say. No one said, “You can’t have marigold and amber and gold all in one room,” or “You can’t wear crimson.” Instead, Minette and Arthur encouraged her to live as loudly and brightly as possible. Her wardrobe brimmed with color and so did her house. There were no diamonds and pearls in her jewelry box, not a scrap of pastel in her wardrobe, just as there were no rooms decorated in cool, pale colors, no whites, no smoke grays or dove grays, no frosty blues, no celadon. Everything was a feast for the eye: clothes that made her feel happy, rooms that were vibrant and welcoming, furniture that was exuberantly comfortable.

andandFrancis would have hated the house and her clothes; Ella loved them. “My life, my choice,” she sometimes whispered to herself when there was no one to overhear, touching fingertips to a sumptuous brocade curtain, a saffron-colored cushion, a flamboyant ormolu clock.

MymyOne such clock, with frolicking nymphs and satyrs, was currently gazing down upon Ella, Arthur, Minette, and Decimus Pryor from the mantelpiece in Ella’s second-best parlor. The nymphs and satyrs were all beaming sunnily; Ella was not, because a man she’d sworn never to encourage was sipping her tea and attempting to flirt with her.

It wasn’t that Pryor was repugnant. He was as good-looking as he was personable, which was to say, very—the midnight black hair, the dark eyes, the strong jaw—but he had no substance. He was a bandbox creature, a man with nothing better to do than to look handsome, c***k jokes, and talk his way into ladies’ beds.

Ella had held few opinions about men before her marriage. She’d dreamed of being swept off her feet by a dashing hero or a handsome prince, as most schoolgirls did. She had spared little thought as to what the character of that hero or prince might be, other than that he’d be noble and virtuous and, in some nebulous way, perfect for her. By the end of her marriage, she’d wanted nothing to do with men—not to be controlled by them, not to be told what to do by them, not even to be touched by them.

But then Minette and Arthur had swept into her life, bringing with them color, warmth, laughter, joie de vivre. To her astonishment, she’d discovered that life could be enjoyable. Eventually, she’d wondered whether s****l congress could be enjoyable, too. She hadn’t wanted a husband—she never wanted one of those again—but lovers? Why not?

joie de vivre. Rakes had never tempted her—who wanted to be a notch among many on a bedpost?—but dandies, with their dazzling appearance, briefly had. She’d quickly learned that color didn’t equate to character. Her preference was for men with more depth than shallow, frivolous popinjays like the specimen currently sitting in her second-best parlor. Men who didn’t look for the mirror whenever they walked into a room and who didn’t surreptitiously preen when they thought no one was looking. Not that Pryor had done either of those two things yet. He was too busy responding to Arthur’s effusive compliments and Minette’s rather less effusive words of praise, while simultaneously drinking his tea and attempting to flirt with Ella.

Ella eyed him over the rim of her cup. Decimus Pryor. Possessor of a handsome face, a glib tongue, and no substance whatsoever. A rake and a dandy, a libertine, a man whose sole purpose in life was to inveigle his way into young widows’ beds.

A man who had put three highwaymen to rout.

Or possibly, one whose invisible companion had put three highwaymen to rout.

Arthur was still in his Russian manifestation, jovial and big-bellied and bewhiskered, taking up most of the three-seater sofa. Minette, petite and elegant, was perched on a sumptuous Louis XV bergère. Pryor had chosen what was Ella’s favorite armchair, a Chippendale with a winged back, red upholstery, and lion’s paw feet. It irritated her, somewhat irrationally, that out of all the chairs and sofas in the room, he’d chosen her favorite.

bergèreArthur was currently extolling Pryor’s bravery in thickly accented English speckled with the occasional Russian word, a pastiche that rolled off his tongue as easily as if he had been born in Saint Petersburg, not Bristol.

Pryor appeared rather disconcerted by the deluge of praise but, disconcerted or not, he was also throwing out lures to Ella: laughing glances and playful little smiles, compliments turned deftly away from himself and presented to her instead—forays into flirtation that Ella was ruthlessly ignoring. She had no intention of inviting Pryor into a dalliance, however good-looking he might be and regardless of whether they had the same taste in armchairs. He met none of her criteria in a paramour. He had no substance, no seriousness. Ella had so far had four lovers—an earl’s son who wrote poignant sonnets, an aristocratic sculptor who was fascinated by the female form, a quiet baronet who painted watercolors, and a gentleman scholar who wrote essays on emancipation and civil society—all earnest, erudite men, men who held women in high regard and didn’t reduce them to playthings and conquests.

Unlike Decimus Pryor.

“But you were not alone, no?” Minette said. “Who was your companion?”

Pryor stopped looking at Ella and returned his attention to Minette. “My companions? You mean the coachman and footman? They were behind—”

“No, no. I mean the person who helped you to fight les brigands.”

les brigandsMr. Pryor’s smile began to look wary rather than playful. “I assure you, ma’am, I was alone.”

“But you were not. There was someone to help you.”

“It was a frightening experience, ma’am,” Pryor said, his manner becoming slightly condescending. “You were overwrought—”

“Bah! I was not overwrought. Moi, I see everything, and I see a man fly across a road as if he has been seized by an invisible giant.”

Moi,An expression that could almost be alarm flitted across Pryor’s face, and was immediately replaced by a charming smile. “Ma’am,” he said, his tone light and amused and still with that hint of condescension. “I can assure you that there were no invisible—”

“I saw it, too,” Arthur put in. “Thought perhaps it was a ghost. Was it?”

Pryor chuckled, a sound that was probably meant to be merry rather than uneasy. “I assure you, sir, there were no invisible men or ghosts with me.”

“Then who threw that stone?” Ella asked.

His gaze flicked to her.

Ella gave him a steely smile. “The stone that hit that last horse on the rump . . . who threw it, Mr. Pryor?”

Pryor put down his teacup and uttered another uneasy laugh. “I did, of course.”

Ella shook her head. “No, you didn’t.”

“Someone else threw it.” Arthur leaned forward on the sofa, ponderous and dignified, pinning Pryor with an imperious stare. He was channeling one of the many kings he’d played on stage. “Just as someone flung that highwayman across the road.”

“An invisible person!” Minette declared.

“Or a ghost,” Ella put in, although she wasn’t certain she believed in ghosts.

“There was no ghost,” Pryor said emphatically. “And no invisible person.”

“Then it was . . . how do you call it? . . . la magie?”

la magie“No, of course it wasn’t magic.”

Pryor’s voice was just as emphatic, but his pitch was a little higher, a little sharper, his cadence slightly staccato.

Arthur had spent years treading the boards, pretending to be people he wasn’t, surrounded by other actors who were also pretending. He was good at hearing when something didn’t quite ring true. Ella didn’t have that skill, so she glanced at him to see what he thought of the change in Pryor’s voice.

Arthur looked dumbstruck. Which meant . . .

That Pryor had just lied?

That what they’d witnessed last night had been magic?

hadElla glanced at Minette, so that they could share a moment of shocked incredulity, but Minette was looking at Pryor, her eyes narrow with speculation.

Arthur recovered his voice. “Aha!” he cried. “It was magic!” He forgot his Russian accent in his excitement, but Pryor didn’t notice.

was“Nonsense! Magic doesn’t exist.” He slipped his watch from its pocket in his waistcoat and glanced at it. “Oh, is that the time? I really must—”

“All three of us saw it, monsieur,” Minette said.

monsieur,Mr. Pryor shoved his watch back into his pocket and stood. “It was dark and you were overwrought and—”

“I was playing la dame hystérique and Arthur was playing l’homme frénétique, but we were not overwrought and we were not blind,” Minette told him rather tartly.

la dame hystériquel’homme frénétique,“It’s not magic!” Pryor said. He’d lost his duke’s-grandson cockiness and the rakishness. Gone was the suaveness, the playfulness, the swagger.

“Does your grandfather know?” Ella asked.

Minette seized upon that idea. “But of course! We must visit le duc and ask him.”

le duc“Excellent notion,” Arthur said, his Russian accent firmly back in place. “Where does the duke live? Here in London?”

“Gloucestershire,” Ella informed him. “Linwood Castle. If we leave at first light tomorrow, we’ll be there by—”

“Don’t!” Mr. Pryor said, putting up both hands in a gesture that shouted Stop! “Please, don’t.”

Stop!“Does he not know about la magie?” Minette enquired.