A Little Deception by Beverley Eikli

Rose discovered was the old woman’s characteristic hiss,
and not the vestiges of a bad throat. ‘Gaming! Were I prime minister it would
be outlawed and punishable by transportation.’ She drew in a laboured breath,
exhaling on an even more venomous hiss. ‘He was raking it in when his heart
gave out and he landed with his nose in the middle of his pile of coin. Obediah
never knew how to deport himself!’
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ Rose said in tones that she hoped sounded
passably sympathetic. Not that the wizened old face which peeped from the
starched frills of Great-Aunt Gwendolyn’s white lace bonnet appeared in need of
cosseting or sympathy.
    ‘So.’ She gave Rose a beady look, her eyes travelling from
the top of the curling feather that adorned Rose’s bonnet to the tips of her
slippers. ‘I see you favour your father. Now there was a notable rake, to be
sure!’ There was admiration in her tone. ‘Broke a dozen hearts and kicked up a
lot of dust before he married your mother—for love!’ She made a noise
indicating disgust. ‘Worst mistake either of them ever made. He needed someone
strong to keep his dangerous impulses in check. Not some whining, puling beauty
who’d be the death of him. Make no mistake about that! Were you to have
favoured her I’d have given you short shrift for sitting at my bedside with
only one thing on your mind: my fortune.’
    ‘With respect, ma’am, Aunt Alice insisted that I came. I
have as little desire to be sitting at your bedside as you do to be
entertaining me.’
    ‘Miss Alice Wentworth! Addle-headed muttonhead who runs
around in terror of that stepson of hers. Oswald! Now there’s a nasty piece of
goods. If the whisperings I’ve heard are true he should be sent packing to the
Peninsula or transported.’
    ‘Aunt Alice has been very good to me.’
    The old woman shrugged and her small black eyes seemed to
sink into the folds of her wrinkled flesh. ‘Perhaps more so than you might
suppose.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘The irony is I’ll never see the reaction of those
grasping relatives upon finding they’d been passed over in favour of the
daughter of my disgraced half-nephew, eh? A girl who only turned up at my
deathbed to inveigle her way into a fortune.’ She pursed her lips and watched
for Rose’s reaction.
    ‘Why would you do anything so addle-headed?’ Rose knew she
was being tested. ‘When I am nothing to you?’
    ‘Except the vehicle of my malicious pleasure.’ The old woman
gave a gusty sigh and turned her head. ‘But you’re not the first to whom I’ve
intimated such intentions.’ When Rose did not respond she swivelled a sidelong
glance at her. ‘I’m tired,’ she said, petulantly. ‘It’s time for you to go,
young lady. Rose? That was your name, wasn’t it?’
    ***
    At last. Rampton felt satisfaction course through him as he
raked his eyes over lovely Lady Chesterfield whom he’d just ushered into
Felix’s studio. His brother was to do the preliminary sketch of his subject in
his artist’s studio, a quaint circular room on the second floor of the tower.
    It had not been easy. The lady really was determined to make
him sweat over this protracted courtship, for she’d declined his offer to be
painted twice until he’d approached her husband and stated, baldly, that his
brother, a noted portraitist, had a week only in which to render her likeness;
that her good fortune would inspire envy amongst the ton, inferring that this
could only be a good thing.
    Rampton increasingly got the impression that there was
little of substance in the relationship between Sir Charles and the
intoxicating little minx that was making Rampton’s life hell.
    Fortunately Sir Charles had waved one of his long-fingered,
ineffectual hands in the air and muttered something about being honoured,
whereupon Rampton had fixed a time, there and then.
    Now she was here and he was aware of his urgency to have her
almost as if it were a living thing co-existing within