“No, I guess not,” Susannah said, wanting to cry. “Do you think she has interviewed all the mistresses that Rohan has collected since that time?”
“Now that is an interesting question,” Charlotte said thoughtfully as she poured herself a cup of tea with incredible grace. “I shouldn’t be surprised. Lily is a very intelligent woman. If a girl weren’t proper for Rohan, then Lily could steer him away from her. Yes, I shall have to ask him.” Suddenly, Charlotte paused her teacup’s ascent to her mouth. She said, her voice incredulous, her blond eyebrows raised a good inch, “Susannah, you aren’t jealous, are you?”
“Jealous about what, Mama?”
Charlotte looked up to see her beautiful boy standing in the doorway, looking very interested, his eyes on his wife. “Oh, dearest, Susannah and I were just speaking of Lily. Do you have Lily look over a girl before you take her under your protection?”
His eyes nearly crossed. He couldn’t believe what his mother had just said. Well, actually, yes, he could. He shot a quick look at Susannah. She looked cold and withdrawn, yet at the same time there was something else. He did believe it was anger radiating from her. Now this was interesting. It pleased him inordinately. He managed not to smile. “No,” he said, in all seriousness. “Lily has never done that.”
“Perhaps it is an idea you should consider,” Susannah said, her chin up, those beautiful eyes of hers so cold they could have frozen the tea in her cup. “Surely a man doesn’t want a mistress who is rapacious and uncaring.”
“No, that’s true,” Rohan said, stroking his chin with thoughtful fingers. “I believe that you, Mama, have used those exact words. Interesting. Perhaps I should give it some thought.” He turned to his mother. “What’s this about jealousy?”
“Oh, nothing, dearest,” she said with great disinterest, obviously protecting Susannah, which pleased him excessively. “Now, Rohan, attend me. Susannah must have some new gowns before you go to Dinwitty Manor. Actually, are you committed to leaving on the morrow?”
“I would like to,” he said, walking to the fireplace and leaning against the mantel, his arms crossed over his chest. “So would Susannah. It’s time we learned the truth about everything.”
“Very well,” Charlotte said, rising to shake out her skirts. “There is only one thing to do. I shall visit my closet. I will have Sabine alter at least four gowns for you. Goodness, you don’t have a maid, Susannah.”
“She can have one in the future, Mama. I’ll play her maid at Dinwitty Manor as well as on our trip there.”
A wistful look came into his mama’s eyes. She sighed softly, saying, “I’ll never forget how your dear father enjoyed unfastening the buttons down the back of my gowns. The smaller the buttons, the more he enjoyed himself. Your father was a darling wicked man, dearest.”
Rohan flushed red.
She shook herself. “Enough of that. I must get Sabine busy. Where is Marianne? I wish to see her before I begin my labors.” Charlotte wafted out of the drawing room, leaving the light scent of jasmine in the air and the echo of rustling silk.
Susannah said very low, “This is difficult to bear.”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. “I imagine that it would be. Actually, it’s difficult for me as well. But my mother, as well meaning as you know she is, is not one to remain in any one place and grow roots. No, she’ll be off before very long, probably to Venice.” He looked down at his shining Hessians. “There is no one else like her, you know.”
She felt helpless, beaten down—all by a woman who was really quite nice and seemed to care about her. “She treats all of this so matter-of-factly.”
“Yes. It is the way she is, the way she will always be. I assume she accused you of being jealous?”
“She mistook my reaction to all her mistress talk as jealousy, which it wasn’t. I told you, Rohan, I am not a milksop female, nor am I like your mother.”
“I have told her that you would be an interfering wife.”
“Goodness, and she still wanted you to marry me?”
“Oh, yes, she thinks you’ll change, under her tutelage, and under the sheer glut of other women trekking in and out of my bedroom.”
“I would prefer it if you wouldn’t do that.”
“I have no intention of parading women under your nose, Susannah. I have told you that.”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts. Contrive to trust me, Susannah. Now, I don’t think we should take Toby with us to Oxford. Indeed, I have arranged for Mr. Byam to take him to the seashore for some botany studies. I think he’ll find that of much more interest than wandering about Oxford with us.”
“Yes, he already mentioned it to me. He’s very excited. In fact, he—”
They heard a howl from the entrance hall.
Rohan burst through the door so fast he nearly tripped on the suit of armor that stood too close to the room. He cursed, then saw Toby flat on his stomach, his arms and legs sprawled. Ozzy Harker stood behind him, nodding placidly.
“My God, what’s happened?”
Susannah skittered to a stop beside her brother and fell to her knees. She shook his shoulder very gently. “Toby, are you all right? Are you hurt?”
Toby gave his sister a disgusted look, pulled himself to a sitting position, and said, “I’m fine. It’s Gilly. He leapt out of my arms and Ozzy told me I was to chase him, even yell at him if I wanted to. I did and went sprawling over one of Marianne’s toys.” He raised himself and pulled a small wooden block with painted faces on each side of it from beneath his bottom.
Toby looked back and grinned at Ozzy. “Gilly’s fast, really fast. Did you see him fly across the tiles? I don’t think I had a chance of catching him.”
“ ’E’s got th’ champeen’s blood,” Ozzy said and nodded again, so pleased that Rohan thought he would yell with his fervor. But he didn’t, just nodded again and took himself off. “Tom’ll be pleased, ’e will. Lordie, ’e’s a fast littil sprat, our Gilly cat.”
“Where is the bloody cat?” Rohan said, looking around. Then they heard a scream of laughter at the top of the staircase. There was Marianne, racing around in circles, with the kitten trying to climb up her dress. Charlotte stood over her, smiling down at her, doing nothing.
Susannah collapsed against the wall in laughter.
22
THEY ARRIVED AT DINWITTY MANOR TO FIND PHILLIP MERCERAULT, Viscount Derencourt, in residence. No, he hadn’t received Rohan’s first letter, since, obviously, he wasn’t in London. He had, however, received the second letter, which Rohan had sent to Dinwitty Manor. He greeted Susannah with pleasure, hiding well his astonishment. A lady described in a letter was one thing; a lady greeting him in person was quite another.
“You’re here to visit me, you say, Rohan?” he said after all the greetings were passed about.
“Yes.”
“Don’t tell me that this is your bridal visit? Surely you would have more imagination than this.”
“No, it’s not our honeymoon, but sort of. Susannah and I have only been wed for five days, as I wrote to you.”
“Ah.”
Susannah sent him a stricken look, to which her husband said smoothly, “As I told you, Susannah, Phillip and I have been friends for so many years we can’t even remember when it started. Probably with me pounding him into the dirt. In any case, I wrote him the truth. He won’t tell anyone, will you, Phillip?”
“Not even a racing cat, if I owned one, which I don’t, since the Harker brothers never believed my commitment profound enough.”
She looked from one to the other. Men such as these left her wits scrambled. Phillip Mercerault was a fine-looking man—not as handsome as Rohan—perhaps a year or two older, nearly as tall, his features strong and blunt. He had the look of a man who was rarely disconcerted. He looked as if he would accept a racing cat with a boy chasing it across the entrance hall of his home with great equanimity. He also looked as if he enjoyed laughter.
“Forgive me,
” Phillip Mercerault was saying now. “Ma’am, you must be weary. If I know the baron here, he rushed you from London to my refuge in a day.”
“We came from Mountvale House,” Rohan said. “We took three days.”
“And three nights, I assume. But here I am making comments that make me deserve to have my teeth slammed down my throat. Please come into the drawing room, and doubtless tea will come sailing into port in a very short time.” He turned to Susannah. “My housekeeper and cook are both sweethearts who spoil me endlessly. The only problem is that they are on a quest to make me fat, just as they tried to do to my father. They failed with him too. Cook’s cakes are beyond delicious.”
“This is a strange house, sir,” Susannah said, then blinked, for surely that was on the rude side.
Phillip Mercerault just grinned at her. “It has, hopefully, become even stranger under my reign. I have plans, ma’am, to fashion myself a crenellated tower onto the end of the west wing. Just one tower. I strive for imbalance and eccentricity. Dinwitty Manor has a reputation, you know. Perfect strangers come to visit and to stare. If I am ever at low ebb, my pockets to let, I shall simply charge admission. Yes, with a suitable admission, and Dinwitty’s inclusion in a tour book, we shall spread our eccentricity throughout the whole of England. Did you not, Lady Mountvale, drop your jaw when you saw the Moorish arches just to the side of the Tudor manor wing?”
“As I recall, she laughed her head off,” Rohan said. “Then she punched me because I hadn’t told her about the treat in store for her. You’ve a grand pile here, Phillip. Fashion away. The Medieval touch—I like it.”
“I was also considering a Medieval herbal garden. Perhaps you will be able to help me with that?”
Susannah was eating a lemon tart, having lifted it within a second of the time the butler had placed the shining silver tray on the table in front of her.
“Certainly. We will speak of it later.” He looked briefly at Susannah, but her eyes were closed as she chewed that lemon tart.
“That was delicious,” she said, wiping her fingers on the whitest, softest napkin she’d ever felt or seen. “As to your house, sir, I believe you will succeed admirably.” She was eyeing that tray of goodies again, and Rohan laughed. “When you marry, Phillip, you must be sure not to let your wife live here more than a week at a time or you will find yourself married to a very fat lady.”
Rohan then turned to his bride, who had just pushed the remainder of a scone into her mouth. “As for you, you’re too thin. Eat, but we won’t be here more than four days. You should be in quite perfect form by Friday.”
“I pray you will tell me the purpose of your visit, Rohan. You told me nothing at all in your letter. I trust I will be of use to you.”
Rohan and Susannah had discussed this on their trip to Dinwitty Manor, located only five miles east of Oxford. Phillip was aware of just about everything that went on in that town and in each of the various colleges. He knew everyone. They’d been friends forever. Yes, he’d immediately made up his mind to confide everything to Phillip. Actually, truth be told, Rohan hadn’t really thought all that much about anything, since all he could think about was getting Susannah out of her clothes and onto her back.
He had caressed her for an hour before their arrival at the inn in Mosely. She’d been so beside herself that he had barely gotten the bedchamber door locked before she hurled herself at him. Ah, that was glorious. He gave her a perfectly fatuous grin now.
She swallowed her scone, staring at him. She knew exactly what he was thinking. About that low-ceilinged inn in Mosely that smelled of delicious ale and sweat and the two of them. She had been perfectly frantic, utterly beyond herself; she’d become an animal again. It wasn’t to be borne. She leaned close to him and bit his earlobe hard.
He yelped, drawing away from her.
“Don’t you dare look at me like that again, Rohan Carrington!”
“The marvels of married life,” Phillip Mercerault said, leaning forward, and snagging an apple tart. He grinned at his guests. “I allow myself two a day, no more. I refuse to let her make me fat.”
Susannah wanted to make a jest about that, but she was too busy chewing a tiny apricot pie with fluted pastry edges.
Rohan and Phillip Mercerault visited the Reverend Bligh McNally the next afternoon in his small apartment on the second floor of an eighteenth-century townhouse just off High Street.
Phillip said, “How subtle do you want to be with this fellow?”
“I was thinking about breaking both his arms.”
“A beginning. It will gain his attention. Then subtle?”
“Something like that. It’s the entire truth I want, Phillip.” Rohan banged his fist against the door. No answer. He banged again, longer and louder this time.
Still no answer.
Rohan pressed his ear to the door. He heard nothing at all.
“He could be out marrying another innocent girl off to some worthless little sot. Sorry, Rohan.”
“No, don’t apologize. George was what he was. What he did to Susannah, well, I’m sorry he’s dead, but if he were alive and I found out about this, I’d probably kill him myself. Actually, so would my mother.”
“Ah, glorious Charlotte. Knock again, Rohan.”
He did. Then he turned the knob. Both expected it to be locked. It wasn’t. Rohan looked over his shoulder at his friend, a blond brow raised.
The men entered a long, narrow hallway. On the right was a small drawing room. No one was in it. At the back of the apartment was the bedchamber. The door was shut.
It was then that they heard a woman’s giggle.
“I was getting worried,” Rohan said quietly. “At least now we know the bastard isn’t dead.”
“You were thinking that as well?”
“As I told you, that villain Lambert had no scruples. Where there’s one villain, there are usually more waiting in the wings.” Slowly, Rohan turned the doorknob. The door was well oiled and eased open soundlessly. The two men stood just inside the room, their eyes on the big bed opposite them. A red-haired woman was astride a man, both of them naked, the man obviously inside the woman.
“Hello, Reverend McNally,” Rohan said, jovially.
The woman twisted about, stared at the two strange men, and shrieked. She jerked off the man and scrambled to grab a blanket to cover herself. As for the man, he was obviously dazed, but he was quickly getting his wits back together. He shook his head as he sat up.
He looked at them, heedless of the fact that he was naked. He said to the woman, not looking at her, “Do go make us all some tea, Lynnie. Ah, and dress yourself, for I fear there is nothing much else for us today.”
His voice was deep and mellifluous, its timber soothing and confident. He then said, “Baron Mountvale, I believe. And you as well, Lord Derencourt?”
“You are not a particularly pleasant specimen,” Rohan said as he strode to the bed. He threw the man his dressing gown. “Cover yourself. Come to your drawing room. We will await you there.”
“I suppose there’s no choice,” McNally said, looking thoughtfully from the baron to the viscount. “No, I didn’t think so. It’s a pity that the only way out of here is through the front door. You would spot me for sure, wouldn’t you?”
“Spot you and then shoot you,” Rohan said. “With a good deal of pleasure, I might add.”
Not ten minutes later the Reverend Bligh McNally sauntered into the drawing room, Lynnie at his heels carrying a tea tray that badly needed polishing.
“Please be seated, gentlemen.”
“Set the tea down and leave,” Rohan said to the woman.
“Yes, Lynnie, you may leave now. Ah, you will also keep a still tongue in your head, won’t you? No need to raise any eyebrows.”
“Aye, milor’.”
Phillip Mercerault raised a brow at that. “Milord? She thinks you’re a milord? Good God, don’t tell me that actually works?”
McNally shrugged. “Sometimes. Money
isn’t always necessary. Lynnie isn’t very shrewd, poor little love. It’s a pity, but she will require money from me as soon as she becomes wiser in her business. Now, what may I do for you gentlemen? I don’t suppose either of you wishes to wed in that very special sort of way I have? I have had new licenses designed. They would fool even you for a good minute or two.”
Rohan just smiled at the man, who was about the age Rohan’s father had been when he’d died in that wretched carriage accident. He was thin as a stick, and wore a thick beard. He looked like a Methodist. That was probably why young girls trusted that he was indeed a man of the cloth. Rohan walked to him, took his wrist in a fast, smooth move and wrenched it up high behind his back.
McNally moaned, tried to free himself but couldn’t manage it. “Wha—what is this, my lord?”
“This is to gain your attention, McNally. Now what I want is for you to cast back your marvelous memory to five years ago. You performed one of your sham marriages for my brother George Carrington to a young lady named Susannah Hawlworth.”
“That is a very long time, my lord. I am not a young man. You must understand that it is difficult—”
Rohan twisted the arm higher and McNally groaned in pain. He whispered in his ear, “I will break it if your memory doesn’t make a brilliant recovery. Immediately.”
“All right. Please, release me. I’ll tell you all I know.”
McNally rubbed his arm as he spoke, “What happened, my lord? After your brother died, the young woman came to you? You, naturally, knew that there had been no marriage? She wanted money? Did she still believe herself wedded to your brother, or had he left her long before?”
“It is none of your concern, McNally. Tell me what you know, now.” Rohan made a move to take McNally’s arm again.
McNally backed up quickly, his hands spread in front of him. “All right, all right. I remember now. It was in the spring. May, I think. A lovely time, really. Young Carrington came to me and asked me to perform one of my special marriage ceremonies. I agreed, since that is my business, and he paid me sixty pounds, my going rate when the young man in question has very rich and celebrated relatives.
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