#leverage: regency

As he tipped his glass in her direction—a toast to the awful playacting their marriage had become in the last four months—she flushed an angry red and turned away.

He entered the music room.

Mrs. Clive did not seem to notice as she busily shuffled a folio of sheet music on top of the pianoforte, the reddish wood glossy with lacquer and gleaming. Iysex bought it just a week after Sam—

Mrs. Clive put the papers back down and turned. She seemed surprised to see him. Her hand was on her throat and slid, well…well below her throat, where the hem of her silk evening gown met a very sheer fichu. 

Mrs. Clive was a very attractive woman, and she appeared to commit the societal sin of knowing it. But that wasn’t why he came into the music room, nor was it why he searched her face so intently.

It was just that she had chosen to come into the music room at the precise moment that the rest of the party was being scandalized by Lady Blackpoole’s sister, when all of the attention was on the other side of the room. And there was something about her expression of surprise, how it held, and how it was already formed, complete with her hand on her chest, before she should have even seen him.

“Mr. Ford! I simply cannot believe his lordship has three such lovely and accomplished daughters, but there is no music here from before the last century!” She waved her hand at the folio and then waited for him to respond. 

“Indeed,” was all he said. 

“I know the girls must hear the new songs in London. Do you get up to town at all? As a vicar?” Mrs. Clive’s warm brown eyes never left his. Not even to glance down at the overfull glass.

She was hiding something. 

But what?

She had all the trappings of the upper ten-thousand, but she had to be introduced to everyone at the party that evening. Only Iysex and his wife seemed to know her. 

“Is that where you met Lady Blackpoole?”

She barely even blinked, but her charming smile spread. “Of course! And she was very kind to invite me here while my husband is on the continent… for business.” There was a stutter there at the end. Nate thought it might be rehearsed, a little hesitation that told its own story if a man was listening. 

In any case, all one would require to gain familiarity with that set would be the right fashion and the right manners, which she had. Then, to manufacture a chance introduction where all the gentry gathered in “town”: Almack’s, Vauxhall, or the like.

Rev. Nate Ford had served Iysex’s parish for almost twenty years, he could imagine how easy it would be for an unknown to ingratiate themselves with a class of people so assured of their own superiority—hadn’t he done something of the kind?

“Lady Blackpoole is very kind,” he agreed. 

Her gaze finally released him, flicking over his shoulder to the door a second before the countess entered. “They just said dinner is ready—Oh Mrs. Clive, you’ve found the pianoforte I was telling you about!”

“I hope you don’t mind that I took a peek.”

“No, no, my dear! Not at all!” She turned to Nate and explained. “Mrs. Clive has agreed to take this gorgeous instrument off our hands. I love it dearly, but the girls have no interest in playing at all, even though I brought out my old songbook,” she sighed. “But Mrs. Clive has three daughters of her own—can you imagine that?” Nate could. “And they’re all very musical, so it will be put to good use somewhere.”

“They’ll adore it, your ladyship,” Mrs. Clive said with a deferential bow.

Nate thought she might be laying on a little thick, but the countess replied with a self-satisfied “There!”

“Though, your ladyship…” Mrs. Clive still had her head bowed. “I did notice…but of course this can wait until tomorrow.”

“Of course not. What is it, dear?” Lady Blackpoole’s voice mimicked the anxiety in Mrs. Clive’s.

“It’s only, you see, I believe a chord is snapped. She pushed down a key, it landed with a click, bit nothing else. Then she cleared the sheet music and opened the top to reveal rows of taught metal thread, broken by one cable, snapped and lying limp on the wooden floor of the instrument. 

It wasn’t a clean break, Nate noted with some pride in Mrs. Clive’s craftsmanship; he had decided she was a thief now, or at least an exceedingly presumptuous acquaintance. No, instead it was unraveled and frayed as if it was pulled too tightly and exercised too rarely. She probably took a knife to it, hacking at an angle. 

“It’s already such an expense to transport it,” Mrs. Clive was saying. “I have no idea what shape it will be in if it reaches London.”

Lady Blackpoole was nodding along as Mrs. Clive continued, “My Sarah knows her way around instruments better than I. She will know what must be done and what must be paid for…”

“Oh you mustn't think I would have offered it in such a state!” Lady Blackpoole fretted. “Truly, Mrs. Clive, I believed it was in excellent condition. We bought it new and it’s barely been played!”

“It needs to be played,” Nate said. He didn’t know why, other than that he hated the instrument. He hated it for what the cost could have gone to, and he wanted Lord and Lady Blackpoole to part with it and all the money Mrs. Clive could take from them.

The countess and Mrs. Clive were looking at him now, so he kept talking. “As part of an instrument’s care it must be played regularly. Disuse can lead to disrepair. I can’t speak to London prices, your ladyship, but I imagine that the cost of treating such an expensive instrument would be considerable.”

While Lady Blackpoole fretted, Mrs. Clive continued to look. Her lips were quirked up and there was a quizzical furrow between her eyebrows. It was her turn to try and figure him out. 

He shrugged and took a long sip from his glass, half draining it, even under a lady’s scrutiny.

The countess looked truly embarrassed by now. “When you return to town and have completed the repairs, do write to his lordship’s bank and I will see to it you shall be reimbursed in full, Mrs. Clive. I cannot let this gift become a burden!”