“Do you know if she has any suitors at home in Cheshire?”
“She’s never mentioned any. Why?”
“I wanted to rule out the possibility that some unworthy fellow followed her to London.”
“If he has, I’ve seen no evidence of it.”
“And does she speak fondly of her home?”
“Not at all. In truth, she seems eager to remain in London as long as possible.”
So she could meet with her secret suitor. That made sense.
Clarissa let out a breath. “I just don’t want her to . . . to . . .”
“I understand. I’ll do some asking around at the club and see what I can find out, if that will make you feel better.”
“It will, thank you.”
He chucked her under the chin. “Now stop worrying and come dance with me. If you’re up for it.” It would take her mind off Miss Trevor.
She brightened. “I’m always up for a bit of dancing.”
They headed for the lawn, and by the time they had taken their places, Miss Trevor seemed to have vanished. That was all right. Let her enjoy her last hours believing that she was the mistress of her own fate.
Because tonight he meant to discover who was after the pretty Miss Trevor’s fortune. And he would make sure the man never preyed on an innocent again.
Shortly after 11:00 p.m., once the maid had left, Delia opened the window-box seat in her bedchamber. She removed several books before lifting the lid of the false bottom. She’d been lucky to stumble upon the hidey-hole her first week here, and she’d made good use of it since then.
Just as she was about to take out the hidden contents, a knock came at the door, and a muffled voice asked, “Delia? Are you still awake?”
Brilliana. Blast.
Swiftly, Delia closed the false bottom and began piling books atop it. “Come in,” she called out.
Her sister-in-law slipped inside, looking like a wraith in her nightdress and filmy wrapper. “I hope I’m not disturbing you. Aunt Agatha said you’d gone to bed with a headache, but I thought I heard you about.”
Thank heaven Delia was still dressed for bed. “Yes, my head is feeling much better. So I got up to look for something to read.” She grabbed a book and closed the window-seat top. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Me either.” Brilliana seemed lost, like a princess who’d stumbled out of a fairy tale. She’d always been gorgeous—a full-figured beauty whose hair was not a mess of corkscrew curls like Delia’s—yet Delia couldn’t envy her.
Hard to envy anyone who’d been dealt the hand that life had dealt Brilliana.
Brilliana sat down on the bed, and Delia’s Persian cat, who’d been dozing on the pillow, woke up to hiss a warning.
“That cat hates me,” Brilliana said ruefully.
Delia chuckled. “Flossie hates everyone.”
“Except you.”
“And Reynold.”
A sigh escaped Delia’s sister-in-law. “Is that why you hold on to the cantankerous little devil? Because she was Reynold’s?”
Delia tamped down her grief-ridden anger. “I suppose. I don’t have many things to remember him by.”
Brilliana stared at her hands. “You have a nephew.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean—”
“I know. This has been hard for all of us.”
Delia ventured a smile. “At least little Silas is unaware of his lack of a father. You take good care of him.”
Brilliana’s face lit up. “He’s the most beautiful baby. I wish Reynold could see how he has grown.” Pride crept into her voice. “He walks very well now.”
“I noticed,” Delia said. “Give that child a couple of years and he’ll be leading us all a merry dance.”
Her sister-in-law’s brown eyes darkened to black. “If there’s anywhere left for him to dance.”
With a clutch in her heart, Delia sat down beside Brilliana. “Don’t worry. I have matters well in hand. If I have anything to say about it, Silas will have a fully working, debt-free estate by the time he’s old enough to manage it.”
Brilliana stared off into space. “That’s why I’m here, actually. I fear I know how you mean to ‘manage it.’ ”
Fighting to keep the alarm from her voice, Delia said, “What are you talking about?”
“Aunt Agatha mentioned that your friend Clarissa’s cousin, Lord Knightford, was very interested in you at the breakfast.”
Delia stifled her sigh of relief. She should have known Brilliana wouldn’t have guessed the truth. There wasn’t a suspicious bone in her sister-in-law’s body. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly.”
Brilliana seized her hands, which provoked another hiss from Flossie, who was jealous of everyone who came near Delia. The cat had already lost Reynold, after all. “I don’t want you to sell yourself for our sake.”
“Sell myself?” She pasted on a smile. “Isn’t offering a nice dowry more like buying myself a husband?”
“You know what I mean. You shouldn’t have to . . . cozy up to some ugly old marquess in hopes that he will marry you and solve all our problems.”
A laugh bubbled out of her. “Trust me, Lord Knightford is neither old nor ugly.” More’s the pity. “And he isn’t in the least interested in marrying me.” Also a pity.
No, she didn’t mean that.
“Are you sure? You’re prettier than you give yourself credit for.”
“Quite sure,” Delia said dryly. “Though I’ll admit Lord Knightford might be interested in pretending to court me to get his cousin out of his hair.”
“Oh. That makes sense. I’m told that Lady Clarissa can be very forceful.”
“You have no idea.” Delia cast her a hard stare. “But you would, if you didn’t hide every time she came to visit.”
Brilliana released Delia’s hands, and Flossie crept into Delia’s lap as if to better protect her. “I don’t hide. I’m in mourning, remember?”
“You don’t hide from anyone else.”
Rising to pace the room, Brilliana wouldn’t look at Delia. “She’s a fine countess, that’s all. I get nervous around such ladies.” Brilliana shook her head, sending lush waves of chestnut hair spilling over her shoulders. “Besides, we weren’t talking about your friend. We were talking about her cousin. Aunt Agatha says Lord Knightford has a reputation with women.”
“I’m well aware.” Delia scratched her cat behind one ear. And the marquess’s reputation was richly deserved, judging from how easily he could unsettle a woman and make her pulse leap. A fact which Delia dared not let on to Brilliana.
So she went on the offensive. “Anyway, why would it be wrong for me to marry in an attempt to save Camden Hall when you’re proposing to do the same thing?”
Brilliana shrugged. “First of all, your marrying isn’t likely to help us, while my marrying will. I’ve already been married, so I know how it works, and it wouldn’t be that difficult.”
“It wouldn’t be that easy, either. How will you find a husband in enough time to prevent the foreclosure? You’re certainly beautiful enough to attract a man, but burdened with a debt-ridden estate and having a small child will complicate matters. Besides, you’re still in mourning; you can’t even go into society.”
“It ends soon. As long as we can convince your aunt to remain in London a bit longer, while Parliament is in session, we might have some nice social engagements where I can meet gentlemen. She has said she would give me a small dowry, too. And besides, Silas needs a father, particularly someone wealthy enough to bail out the estate and oversee his education as heir.”
“In exchange for having you under his control.” The very idea of her sister-in-law being forced to marry yet again under such circumstances made her stomach roil. “It’s not fair. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice yourself because of my brother, who went off to London to gamble and then abandoned you and Silas. It wasn’t right of him to do what he did to you.”
Dear Delia, I’ve lost everything. There’s n
o more reason to live. Take care of Brilliana and Silas for me. I can’t bear it anymore. Forgive me.
“He was drunk. It was an accident,” Brilliana said.
Blast. Delia had forgotten that her sister-in-law didn’t know the truth about how Reynold had died. No one but Delia did. “An accident. Yes.” She hated lying, but there was no point in heaping another burden on Brilliana, who already staggered beneath a host of them.
Much as Delia had loved her brother, the way he’d gone about gaining Brilliana as a wife had left much to be desired, and the woman had deserved better than to be abandoned in the end.
The raw anger swelling in Delia’s throat threatened to choke her. “I should have seen how upset Reynold was and kept him from going out that night.”
“If I couldn’t, how could you? Your brother always did as he pleased.”
How well she knew. He was as selfish as every other man in that respect. “And no more so than when he came to London to gamble. Did he never say why he felt compelled to do that, when he claimed to dislike it as much as I?”
Brilliana shook her head. “All he told me was that he wanted to call on a friend.” A shadow crossed her face. “Imagine my shock when I learned he’d gone to some gaming hell, where he’d lost so much money he had to mortgage Camden Hall to pay his debt.”
That was the crux of it. Reynold had gambled with strangers for no reason that they could discover, and the only way Delia could save the estate from foreclosure—and either her or Brilliana from having to marry for money or become governesses or something like that—was to catch the card cheat in the act.
No lord of any reputation dared to be exposed as a cheater, so the wretch would pay back what he’d taken from her brother—even if she had to blackmail him into it. Because there was no way on God’s green earth that Reynold had lost all that money simply by playing badly.
Not the son of Captain Mace Trevor, card sharp extraordinaire, who’d taught her and Reynold everything they knew.
Which reminded her . . . Delia glanced at the clock. Nearly midnight. She only had an hour to make her preparations; she needed to get rid of Brilliana.
With a big yawn, Delia rose from the bed. “My, my, I must be more tired than I realized. All that dancing.”
As she’d expected, Brilliana leapt up. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Here I am going on and on, and it’s far too late for that.” She headed for the door. “I’ll see you in the morning. Try to get some sleep.”
“You, too,” Delia said as she walked her to the door. “And put your mind at ease about Lord Knightford. Even if I wanted to marry him—and I assure you, I do not—he would never choose as a wife the daughter of a gambler who once won a sizable estate from a hapless squire.”
An estate on the verge of foreclosure.
But that was about to change. She would make sure that it did.
Four
Warren glanced at the clock at St. George’s. He still had some time before 1:00 a.m., when he meant to be at Lady Pensworth’s town house in Bedford Square. Fortunately it wasn’t far from the club, since he’d have to walk there. The bright streetlamps, seclusion, and exclusivity of the neighborhood would make any carriage stand out like a beacon at midnight, especially a marquess’s.
Besides, he could move about easier on foot. And conveniently, Bedford Square had a large private garden in the center where he could wait. He already had a key for it. He had keys for most of the private gardens in Mayfair. Aside from the fact that he lived in the vicinity, he found it convenient to have keys for when he wished to meet with certain bored wives for a bit of . . . enjoyment.
But first he wanted to finish his conversation with one of the club’s members about Miss Trevor’s situation. He’d already discovered that she was highly regarded by gentlemen in search of a wife. Some had even courted her. But the woman had dismissed their attentions as firmly as she’d dismissed his less serious ones.
It made no sense. A woman of her situation should be grabbing at any decent suitor who came along. So why wasn’t she? Because she’d fallen for some fortune hunter? She didn’t seem the type to be easily swayed by a smooth talker. And she seemed too practical not to acknowledge the advantages of having a suitor with more connections and more wealth.
Yet her suitors had all been rebuffed, even the important ones.
Including the fellow he was presently speaking with. “She’s very polite about it,” the man said, “but she’s also very clear that she’s taking her time to evaluate her choices.”
On the surface of it, that sounded sensible. But if she were so sensible, why was she meeting some arse in the middle of the night? “Didn’t you find that odd, given her late entry into society?” Warren asked.
“I would have, except I know what happened to her brother. I suspect she’s still grieving him.”
“The brother who died in an accident.”
“If you can call it that.”
That sparked Warren’s interest. “What do you mean?”
The man shrugged. “Supposedly he stumbled off a bridge and drowned while he was drunk. But there have been rumors that it was not an accident. That he jumped.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I imagine it would be for the usual reasons—gambling, financial difficulty of some other kind . . . a thwarted love affair.”
“Ah.” None of those would enhance a family’s reputation, which would certainly suffer if it was bandied about that their beloved patriarch had killed himself. The scandal would be enormous.
Then again, gossip was often wrong. People were always trying to make more out of something than it might be.
After it became apparent he would learn little else of interest, he walked over to Bedford Square and let himself into the garden with his key.
Now all he had to do was wait.
He pulled out a flask and swigged some brandy. It was quiet here. And dark. Too dark. He didn’t like quiet or dark places, hadn’t liked them since he was—
Don’t be a sniveling coward, boy. Lords aren’t afraid of the dark. Buck up and be a man.
Fiercely, he thrust the hard words to the back of his mind. He mustn’t think about those nights right now, or his mind would spiral down into the depths and he’d have to escape before he’d accomplished what he’d come here to do.
Instead, he concentrated on the sounds of the outdoors—the carriages in distant streets, the summer crickets chittering in the garden, a frog croaking in the tiny pond. If he had to endure the night alone, he much preferred it be outdoors. At least there he didn’t feel hemmed in. That was crucial.
A new sound came to him—of a door opening—and he looked over the fence. He’d timed matters perfectly. There was that Owen fellow, emerging from the front servant entrance with a young gentleman.
Although gentleman might be stretching it a bit. Even from here, Warren could tell that the man’s clothes were ill-fitting and not the least fashionable, that he walked hunched over, and that his beaver hat was too large for him. Indeed, the fellow looked more the height and build of a boy than a man.
But where was Miss Trevor? Had he somehow missed the assignation, and her secret suitor was the lad now being ushered out of the house?
No, that made no sense. Why would Miss Trevor meet with a lad beneath her aunt’s very nose? It wasn’t wise or clever.
Besides, why was Owen accompanying the fellow, and without wearing any livery, either? Had Miss Trevor lied about Owen’s position? Was Owen her suitor’s servant, rather than hers?
That made no sense, either. From what Warren had overheard, Owen had been concerned about Lady Pensworth dismissing him. So the man had to be the baroness’s servant. What the bloody hell was going on here?
The two fellows headed down the road, and Warren watched until he felt it safe to go into the street to follow them. This wasn’t his usual sort of pastime. Unlike Lord Rathmoor at the club, he wasn’t adept at trailing suspects and uncovering
skullduggery.
As they turned toward a seedier part of town, he continued shadowing them, his curiosity roused. Was the younger gentleman another servant? Why was the footman accompanying him, and where? What were they up to?
All entertaining questions. Yes, perhaps he should look at this as his night’s amusement. Because God knew he hadn’t had much else to entertain him lately, what with his best friend settling into comfortable married life and his youngest brother doing the same, and the world passing him by—
The world was not passing him by. That was ridiculous.
Annoyed by the very notion, Warren stalked the two chaps for some time. He’d begun to wonder if it was worth his trouble when he realized they were going into Covent Garden, where the theaters lay, along with some choice brothels.
It was the area of London where he spent most of his nights, so he was heading in the direction he would have come anyway, just a little later than usual.
Owen and his companion were likely here for the same reason he would have been. They certainly weren’t attending the theater—those were all closed at this hour.
For their sake, he hoped the two fools had condoms or they could find themselves in deep trouble long after their entertaining jaunt. He always carried preventives, having learned long ago the risks of his way of keeping the night at bay. Not for him a bout of the clap, or supporting a slew of dubious by-blows.
In any case, this was proving to be a fool’s errand. Perhaps Owen had convinced Miss Trevor not to meet her suitor; it looked as if the fellows were merely servants out on the town.
But their departure at precisely 1:00 a.m. was enough to keep him following them until they entered a gaming hell.
Damn. He hated these places. He preferred to play cards at a club where he trusted his fellow players. He’d learned the dangers of gaming hells in his youth, while trying to keep busy and awake until dawn. This particular hell, a hazy den called Dickson’s, was frequented by both respectable and not-so-respectable gentlemen.
Which category did Miss Trevor’s suitor fall into, if indeed the youth was her suitor? And if he was, why on earth was Owen accompanying the man? Perhaps the two had become friendly during their setting up of assignations with Miss Trevor.
The Danger of Desire Page 4