The Wild Marquis

by Miranda Neville

  “I’ll come with you. I told the guv I wouldn’t leave you alone.”

  A footman trailing behind her, even an undersized and underaged one, would be a hindrance on this morning’s errand.

  “I’ll take Quarto. He’ll be enough protection in broad daylight. You stay here and help Peter guard the shop.”

  In the end it took the best part of three days for Juliana to get what she needed. She visited every bookseller in London with whom she had anything approaching cordial relations. She called in favors dating back to Joseph’s time. She offered prize items of stock at tempting prices. She questioned, she cajoled, she gossiped.

  And she learned. She learned a great deal about what was going on in London book-collecting circles. She heard numerous predictions for the last day of the Tarleton sale and made her own deductions.

  And she enjoyed herself. She found these bookmen—and they were all men—quite human. Most of them, once they discovered she simply wished to engage in the kind of talk and transaction they’d have with any other of their kind, seemed to forget she was a mere woman. The suspicion and reserve that had been her normal lot since Joseph’s death didn’t disappear. Yet she began to see that she might, despite her sex, find a place in this world. Which was a good thing, since she had no other prospects and had better be prepared to spend many years as a bookseller.

  She refused to entertain the slightest hope of a future with Cain.

  By the morning of the fourth day she was ready. She suppressed her scruples about what she was about to do and hoped it wouldn’t end up damaging her reputation and the career that was so important to her future.

  Sir Henry Tarleton lived in a small house north of Oxford Street, a genteel but not fashionable neighborhood. The prices at the Tarleton auction continued to exceed expectations and common sense, so the heir to the estate would receive a very large sum from the proceeds. In the meantime the mean nature of his abode confirmed that Sir Henry was short of ready money.

  Calling on an unmarried man was not proper for a lady. But it wasn’t a social call and she didn’t see why she had to be governed by restraints her male colleagues didn’t suffer. She could have written and requested he call at the shop, but she didn’t wish Cain’s servants to hear her conversation with Tarleton. She gave Quarto a fond scratch behind the ears as she waited at the door. The bulldog would double as protector and chaperone. His discretion she could certainly count on.

  Sir Henry received her with obvious curiosity. “I haven’t seen you at Sotheby’s lately.”

  “I was in Salisbury for a few days.”

  “Was this a book-buying trip or were you visiting family?”

  “A little of both,” she said, not knowing why he was interested.

  She discreetly examined her surroundings, and the room confirmed what she’d heard about Henry Tarleton. Whatever his aspirations, he wasn’t much of a collector yet. Perhaps his library was stored in a different part of the house, but Juliana had yet to meet a book collector whose enthusiasm wasn’t obvious in every room. Tarleton had received her in a sitting room that contained not one single volume.

  “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?” he asked.

  “I wonder if you are still seeking advice and representation at your uncle’s auction.”

  “Have you changed your mind about Lord Chase then?”

  “Lord Chase is no longer in the market for books.”

  “As I suspected, his interest was whimsical.” Sir Henry spoke with satisfaction, but without rushing to request her services again. “You would have been wise, Mrs. Merton, not to give too much credence to such a notoriously unreliable man. And so you find yourself without a customer.”

  Very well, she thought, he wants to be asked. “You were good enough, a few weeks ago, to ask for my assistance.”

  “Let me be blunt, Mrs. Merton. I explained to you before that my resources are limited. Why should I pay you a commission instead of bidding myself?”

  “Let me be blunt, Sir Henry. How much gossip do you hear? Do you know what other collectors are planning?”

  Sir Henry’s eyes gleamed. “Do you know, Mrs. Merton?”

  One of the things Juliana had ascertained in her researches was that Sir Henry was something of an outsider. Sir Thomas Tarleton had been disliked but respected. His heir, perhaps unfairly, had inherited the aversion but not the admiration. He wasn’t likely to have been the recipient of many confidences.

  “I know a great deal. I can make a very fair guess as to who will be bidding on the best books in the collection. And how much they are prepared to pay.”

  “Such as?”

  Juliana reeled off the names of a dozen books she knew Tarleton wanted.

  “I am interested.”

  “And, of course, the Burgundy Hours.”

  “Mrs. Merton. I do believe we shall be able to come to terms.”

  Henry Tarleton, it was rumored, had been engaged in trade of a questionable nature in his native West Indies. An hour later Juliana could well believe it. The man drove a hard bargain. The “usual commission” had been beaten down and he wanted every last Shakespeare, folios and quartos. He ignored or forgot his promise not to compete for the Romeo and Juliet.

  Juliana had a customer for the finale of the Tarleton sale. She hoped she hadn’t made a contract with the devil.

  Chapter 26

  Cain had forgotten what a beautiful house it was.

  Abbey was a misnomer. When the first Godfrey had been granted his barony for services rendered to the crown by his future wife, the title of Lord Cainfield had been accompanied by a substantial portion of monastic land. His relatively modest manor, converted from the original priory, had been transformed into a mansion to celebrate the receipt of an earldom from Queen Elizabeth. Markley Chase Abbey was a masterpiece of Cotswold stone and glass set in rolling green hills.

  Cain entered the great hall, which retained the original Elizabethan oak paneling and tapestries. His memory of the room, of the whole house, was of darkness and gloom. Now it struck him how light it was, the vast chamber illuminated by sunlight pouring in from the tall windows.

  The butler hurried to greet him, doubtless alerted to the unlooked-for arrival of the master of the house. “My lord!” he said, with barely concealed astonishment.

  “How are you, Stratton?” The man had presided over the household for at least twenty years, yet Cain couldn’t remember much about him. The late marquis had never permitted hobnobbing with the servants, even the male ones.

  “Is Her Ladyship expecting you, my lord?” he asked.

  Cain handed the man his outer garments. “I believe I can enter my own house without prior notice,” he said. “Where is Her Ladyship?”

  Was that a ghost of a smile on Stratton’s face, or did Cain imagine it? “In the saloon, my lord. I believe Mr. Ditchfield is with her.”

  “Don’t bother to announce me. I know the way.”

  He climbed the grand staircase to the main floor, remodeled some eighty years earlier. The first marquis spent a fortune celebrating his promotion, his taste influenced by a visit to Rome. The saloon was a lofty cavern of marble and gilt, embellished with huge canvases by Italian masters. Rather popish, Cain thought. Amazing really that his sire hadn’t burned the lot of them.

  Or got rid of them along with the Burgundy Hours, that other masterpiece of Roman Catholic art. Except that now Cain knew why his father had disposed of that particular piece of his family history.

  Lady Chase sat in a straight-backed chair next to the massive Carrara marble fireplace. She held up an open leather-bound volume and appeared to be consulting her companion about a passage in the book. The Reverend Josiah Ditchfield stood next to her, his head cocked attentively.

  The sight of the clergyman caused Cain a spurt of rage. Setting aside the miseries he’d inflicted on Cain when acting as his tutor, the middle-aged bully aspired to wed a sixteen-year-old girl. Cain repressed the urge to seize Ditchfield by his
overly long, slicked-back, greasy locks and rub his long, thin nose in the ashy hearth.

  The reaction of the pair to Cain’s entrance was almost comical.

  “Cainfield!” boomed the old hypocrite, dark beady eyes bulging unattractively in his sallow face.

  His mother closed her eyes, as though to avoid viewing an abomination. She slammed her book closed and clutched it to her breast for protection. Some work of piety, no doubt. “Cainfield,” she said faintly.

  Cain’s bow was all that was correct. “I believe I may be properly addressed as Chase.” He looked at Ditchfield. “You, sir, may address me as ‘my lord.’”

  Lady Chase opened her eyes. “I cannot bring myself to call you Chase. That was your father’s name and one you don’t deserve to bear.” His mother’s soft, die-away tones belied the severity of her words.

  “I would be honored, madam, if you address me as John. And I would prefer to call you Mother.”

  He’d always addressed her formally, as he had his father. But he’d come to make peace. He intended to treat his mother kindly, if she would allow it.

  She appeared not to know how to respond and looked down at her lap. Ditchfield suffered no such doubts.

  “Have you come to restore Lady Esther to her rightful guardians?” he asked.

  Bad mistake, Ditchy.

  “Guardians?” Cain asked, walking over to the clergyman and deliberately crowding him. They were much of a height but Cain no longer found him remotely intimidating. “Guardians? Plural?”

  Ditchfield stared back. “I have enjoyed Her Ladyship’s confidence in the upbringing of Lady Esther. In the future I expect, with her mother’s blessing, to establish a more formal dominion.”

  Cain leaned in and spoke softly, inches from Ditchfield’s face. “If by those words you refer to your presumptuous, not to mention disgusting, notion that you should marry my sister, I recommend you put it out of your mind. I also suggest you leave this room. Now.”

  His mother made an exclamation of protest and half stood, dropping her book in her agitation. Cain retrieved it from the floor and looked at the title. Selected Sermons of the Northern Bishops.

  “Is it good?” he asked derisively, before placing it on a nearby table. “Better than the sermons delivered by a certain clergyman who appears to be still here, although I asked him to leave?” He swung around to glare at the sputtering Ditchfield.

  “I won’t leave this room while Lady Chase demands my presence.”

  “Wrong, Ditchfield. You are forgetting something. This is my house and I am the master here. You can walk out now, I can throw you out, or I can summon servants to throw you out. The choice is yours.”

  Ditchfield turned to his patroness, who looked distressed but made no further argument. Not that it would do any good. His departure wasn’t open to negotiation.

  “You’ll regret this, Cainfield,” he said.

  Cain raised an eyebrow. Part of him hoped Ditchfield would refuse to leave, giving Cain the very great pleasure of picking him up and tossing him through the door. Unfortunately Ditchfield read the message correctly and walked out of the saloon, trying to look dignified.

  His mother didn’t invite him to sit and Cain decided not to make an issue of it. He remained on his feet.

  “Why are you here? Have you brought Esther back?” She couldn’t possibly be as unemotional as she sounded.

  “I am hoping we can come to an accommodation about my sister without an unpleasant battle in the law courts.”

  “I object to Esther’s request to have you named guardian.”

  “So I am informed by my lawyer.”

  She looked around, as though waiting for someone else to reply. But Cain had dismissed her ally. She would have to speak, and think, for herself. “As though a girl her age would know how to select a guardian,” she said.

  “Yet the law allows it.”

  “I fear for her immortal soul, living in the cesspit you have made of your father’s house.”

  “As you know, Mother, Esther is now under the roof of your sister, Lady Moberley. My aunt is ready to prepare Esther for her presentation next year. She’ll find her a much more suitable husband than that middle-aged hypocrite you tried to foist on her.”

  “My sister, Augusta, is given over to worldly vanity. And Mr. Ditchfield is a good man, a gentleman of true virtue. He reminds me of your father.”

  “I’ll never let Esther wed Ditchfield. It’s a ludicrous match. What can you be thinking to approve a union so unequal in every conceivable way?”

  “Oh no! Marriage to such a man is the only way to save Esther from the taint of bad blood. The bad blood she gets from me.”

  “I cannot believe this! If there’s any bad blood in this family it comes from my father. By the time he died he was quite, quite mad.”

  Throughout the exchange, his mother had spoken in soft, matter-of-fact tones, suitable for incontrovertible truths about the current weather. She spoke of bad blood as though commenting on a shower of rain. Cain’s words about her late husband roused her to something resembling animation.

  “Don’t speak of your father like that. He was a saint. He forgave me for my blood, he helped me overcome it. Esther must be chastised in order to be saved. Mr. Ditchfield will correct her, as my lord corrected me. As he tried to correct you until he discovered you were incorrigible.”

  “Mother, he beat you. That has nothing to do with saving you. He was a brute.”

  “I deserved it.”

  Cain got down on his knees next to her chair and took her hands. She tried to pull them away but he wouldn’t let her.

  “No woman deserves to be beaten. Don’t you understand? My father was a bully, preying on you because he could. Because he was stronger than you. And because he enjoyed it.”

  “No! I deserved it. He was a saint.” She pulled away from him and rose to her feet. A slight figure in subdued gray silk with a lace cap, she presented an odd contrast to the exuberant caryatids that held up the marble mantelpiece.

  “How dare you,” she said with as much ferocity as she could project. “How dare you impugn your father. When you are guilty of sins against God and nature.”

  So, after all, it had come down to this.

  “Mother,” he said, rising from his knees. “Unlike my father I have never pretended to be a saint. But I swear I never set an improper finger on Esther. How can you believe me, your own son, guilty of such a terrible crime?”

  “Your father saw you.”

  “My father saw nothing because there was nothing to see.”

  “My lord never lied to me.”

  “Think for yourself, Mother. Did you ever see anything yourself, anything in my behavior toward Esther to arouse such a suspicion?” He was pleading with her now, desperate for some softening, an indication that she didn’t believe him loathsome.

  “He wouldn’t lie. He was a saint.” She kept repeating those words, which seemed ingrained in the fabric of her brain.

  “If you truly believed me guilty of incest, why haven’t you informed the world?”

  She stared at him, as though the answer was obvious. “It would damage my lord’s reputation to know he had such a son. Your depravity caused him endless pain. For his sake I wouldn’t publish your sin.”

  “Even if I fight you for care of Esther?” he asked, holding his breath. Could it possibly be this easy?

  “To save his daughter, I must betray him. I shall inform the judge why you should never be Esther’s guardian.”

  No, it wasn’t going to be easy.

  “What if I can prove to you that my father was as much a sinner as any man?” He really hadn’t wanted to do this. He knew what he had to relate would devastate her. He had never wished to hurt her. And yet it wasn’t as though news of his father’s proclivities should surprise her.

  “What calumny is this?” she asked.

  “My father…” Somehow it seemed less cruel to say “my father” rather than “your husband.” �
�My father for some years patronized a certain house of ill repute in London.” He hoped she understood the phrase. He’d prefer not to use a cruder term.

  “It’s not true,” she whispered. “Adultery is a sin and my husband never sinned. For all my failures he would never have played me false.”

  “As to that, he may not have committed adultery in the strictest sense. I apologize, madam, for speaking to you of such matters. The house in question is patronized by those who like to wield the whip. The unfortunate women there are paid to accept beatings.”

  “Then they deserved it. They were vipers and serpents attempting to seduce my lord. He was helpless in the face of their wiles and temptations.”

  Cain wouldn’t let her convince herself her husband had been a victim.

  “Let me tell you what happened,” he said, striving for a voice of reason. She allowed herself to be guided back to her seat. He moved a chair next to hers and would have taken her hand again, but both hers were clasped together in her lap.

  “Do you remember when my father had the fever? Just after I started Eton.”

  “By the grace of God he was spared.”

  There’d been many times over the years when Cain had wondered whether the intervention that saved his father’s life on that occasion had been divine, or the work of a more malevolent power. Before his illness the marquis had been domineering, bad-tempered, and overly pious. Afterward he had maintained all those qualities in greater force, mixed with an increasingly irrational rage.

  “I believe it was then he started to have these violent urges. He went to London each year for Parliament but he no longer took you with him.”

  “In punishment for my transgressions, he put me from him.”

  “What transgressions?”

  “After your sister I never increased again. God punished me for my sins by rendering me barren.” His mother seemed unsure as to whom her imaginary sin had offended.

  Cain ventured to touch her clenched knuckles and she snatched her hands back and pressed them against her midriff.

  “You had two children,” he said.