“Where else were you? Besides Macao?”
“India. Tibet. China itself for two weeks, although I nearly got caught. Russia—”
“Tibet?”
“All kinds of places, Hayden, but you have diverted this conversation from my intentions.”
“Damn your intentions.”
Hayden's anger crackled out of him. Christian suffered it as he rarely tolerated such intrusions from anyone except his two brothers. A person cannot live in the dark center all the time, and in the end knowing his brothers’ joys more than balanced knowing their pains.
He waited until Hayden's little storm quieted. His brother was the most reasonable of men. The winds would disperse soon.
“I trust Miss Montgomery will be in town for at least a fortnight or so.” Hayden spoke with a bland ease that matched a renewed but tenuous calm. “My mind is not on finance and trade right now.”
“This introduction can wait until after the birth of your child, if that is what you mean.”
“Then send another of your imperial summons at that time, Christian, and we will arrange it.” He strode to the door. “Russia and Tibet. Hell.”
With Hayden's departure, the memory of Leona's visit returned. Again Christian saw her face before she entered the carriage to go about her afternoon plans.
He wondered what those plans were. He did not question that she was in London to further her brother's business. He just doubted that she had truly forgotten or forgiven the way that business had almost been destroyed seven years ago.
He wandered to the fencing chamber, and into its dressing room. This space served as storage now, a place where he deposited personal items no longer in use. While he moved wooden boxes and trunks, his gaze lit on a wall covered with frames displaying insects, ferns, and seeds.
You waste too much time on that collection, Christian. Better if you read books or practiced with your pistols. I'll not have a son who turns into one of those peculiar fellows who chases butterflies.
He had read plenty of books and practiced many hours with his pistol. Books and guns, like collecting, could be done privately. Alone.
Nor had he truly been interested in insects and seeds. They had been an excuse to go out in the woods and fields, where he would be spared the awkward and often painful awareness of another person's unhappi-ness. There had been a lot of misery in the home of his youth.
He pulled a trunk forward and threw it open. Full of the flotsam of two years of travel, it offered few memories that mattered. The real goal of that journey had been escape, not discovery. It had been an accident that it resulted in discovery after all.
He shoved aside statuettes and odd weavings. Down at the bottom lay a half-folio-sized journal, thick with pages. He reached for it, then stopped with his hand poised above its brown leather cover.
He had never read the notes inside it. He had reasons not to want to know what they would reveal. He had cause to think these notes might shed light on the darker corners of his father's life. They might expose secrets that still remained buried by place and time.
The last marquess had committed his share of sins, and Christian had long ago decided that he did not want to learn about them. Ignorance had been a path to liberation. He did not want to reenter that morass of inherited guilt and obligations again.
Now, however, it might be wise to open this notebook. Leona had lied during their reunion. He needed no special sensibility to her emotions to know it.
He was almost certain that she had not come to London merely to help her brother. She had also come to finish her father's crusade. If her father had even been half right in his theories, she could be headed for trouble.
She surely suspected Edmund had taken these notes that her father had made while he worked through his suspicions and conducted his investigations. When a man and an item disappear at the same time, only an idiot would not see the possible connection.
She might have asked Edmund to give the notebook back. She probably would not trust a marquess about anything regarding this second mission, however.
He contemplated the journal for a good while. Then he closed the trunk. He would read it if he had to, but he doubted it would come to that. He intended to keep Leona very close to him. He would divert her from this particular path, if she had ventured down it.
He returned to his dressing room. There was one more chore to complete. He sent for Miller.
“Bring this to Mrs. Napier. Give her my regrets that I will not be calling on her tonight.”
Miller weighed the little box in his hand. Its contents had been purchased from one of the visiting tradesmen this morning. “No note?”
“That necklace is all the explanation that is required.”
Miller eyed the box distastefully. “I hope there will not be a scene. Women can get dramatic when they are thrown over.”
“There will be no drama. Mrs. Napier has only two strong emotions, lust and greed. She is smart enough to know that satisfaction of the first is fleeting, while that of the latter lasts forever.”
“Not to speak out of turn, sir, but she sounds a little ruthless.”
“No more than most people, unfortunately. No more than you and I, that is certain.”
Miller smiled, rather pleased to be included in the same circle as a marquess, even if it was a ruthless one.
Miller wandered off to deliver the parting gift. Christian assumed that a good deal of his recent physical comfort walked out the door too.
Dealing with women was the hardest part of his life. Romance was impossible if one sensed not only the desire and the joys of one's beloved but also her disappointments, her flashing moments of hatred and her grudging accommodations.
The erotic and ruthlessly practical Mrs. Napier had been, he had to admit, the perfect mistress for the cursed Marquess of Easterbrook.
CHAPTER
FOUR
Griffin Winterside, the manager of the East India Company, charged with coddling and cajoling Parliament, watched Mr. Hubson eye the ten-pound note lying on the mahogany table. It was a lot of money for a coachman hired out like the team of horses he drove.
“Describe the carriage that took her away, Mr. Hubson.”
“Big one. Town coach. Two footmen and another one, young, who wasn't in livery. Secretary perhaps. A lord's coach, I'd say, but I didn't see the door.”
Winterside doubted this opinion. Leona Montgomery was a mere Country Trader's sister. What would a lord want with her?
“Has she often had congress with such elevated society?”
“I took her to two such addresses. Stayed a respectable time at both. She was received that is certain.” Hubson gazed at the note again.
Winterside set the note aside. “All in good time, Mr. Hubson. All in good time. Which two?”
Hubson leaned forward, as if he worried someone might overhear his indiscretion. The pose made his rotund chest threaten the security of the buttons of his waistcoat.
“There was a party at the house of Lady Barraclough a fortnight ago. Quite smug she was at having that invitation. Dressed herself very fine, she did. Then, let me see.…” He cocked his head and thought hard. “Six days ago it was, she had me take her to Grosvenor Square. To Lord Easterbrook's house. She called on his aunt, Lady Wallingford.”
Hubson described a thin social schedule for Miss Montgomery, and not one of much interest. Lady Barraclough was a harmless woman with a stupid husband. Easterbrook was an eccentric recluse and his aunt a vapid harpy.
It sounded as if Miss Montgomery was pounding on the weakest links of the chains that barred society's doors. None of her movements presented any cause for worry.
“Did you see this coach return her to her house?”
Hubson shook his head. “I'd dealt with the carriage and horses, and was settling in for a good nap by then.”
Too bad. This story of the coach nudged at Winterside. It might belong to some man who had developed a tendre for Miss Montgomery. He hop
ed so. A love affair would ensure that Miss Montgomery occupied her time in London on the most ordinary matters.
Winterside was quite sure that ordinary matters were all she intended here. Others did not agree. It was not so much who Miss Montgomery was that provoked their interest, but who her father had been.
He sighed inwardly. What nonsense over ancient history. As if a woman would know or give a damn about Reginald Montgomery's bizarre accusations. Nonethe less, important men wanted reassurance that she had not picked up her father's standard.
Hubson must have thought the silence reflected displeasure at his answer, because he tried again. “I didn't see her return, but I did see her later that day. She went out again.”
“Did she now?”
“There I was, settling in, and she sent the Chinaman to tell me to bring the carriage around. It did not please me, mind you. I'd made everything ready once, and to start all over again—”
“Where did you take her?”
“To the Royal Exchange.”
“The Royal Exchange? You are quite sure? No doubt she sought a shop nearby.”
“It was the Exchange itself that she wanted. I saw her go in. She did not stay long. No more than a quarter hour. I thought it odd. A woman going to the Exchange.”
Not so odd. She was a trader's daughter and sister. The Royal Exchange was the center of trading in London. She may have just been curious.
“Tell me, Mr. Hubson. Have you taken her anywhere else that you considered odd?”
Hubson thought so hard that his fleshy face creased at brow and mouth. “Not really.”
Of course not. Winterside checked the tip of his pen. He would write to his contact among those important men and explain that Miss Montgomery had engaged in no activities to cause the slightest interest—
“Except that day she went to Mincing Lane.”
“Mincing Lane, you say?”
“Actually to the crossroad. She bade me walk the horses and return in a half hour. But as I moved on I looked back and she was walking down Mincing Lane.”
“You are very sure it was Mincing Lane?”
“I've been a coachman in London for twenty-two years, sir. I think I know the City streets well enough, thank you.”
Winterside sat back in his chair and contemplated this last tidbit. The coachman looked longingly at the ten-pound note.
“Take it, Mr. Hubson. We are done and you have been most forthcoming.”
Hubson swiped up the note and took his leave. Winterside moved his ink within reach. He had been too optimistic in hoping he could end this matter today.
There was only one reason for Miss Montgomery to go to Mincing Lane.
“It is good to see you preparing to go out,” Isabella said. “You have been so quiet the last few days that I feared you were ill.”
Leona bent her head while Isabella stroked the brush down her scalp and back. “I have not been ill. I have been thinking.”
“Good things, I hope.”
Not entirely.
The reunion with Edmun—Easterbrook—demanded a reassessment of many matters. She had been reexamining her past with him. She had been mourning for her innocent memories, preserved carefully over the years even while maturity taught her more skepticism.
Her heart cringed as she saw it all with newly opened eyes. She had thought they had shared a special intimacy of souls and minds, and an unfulfilled passion of bodies and hearts. In the years since, she had even convinced herself that she had been a fool not to grab the excitement he offered instead of being so good. She had come to curse her girlish fears, and cherish her nostalgia for the young man who had thrilled her blood.
Now her mind saw every slow smile and every dark gaze, every stolen kiss and every private confidence, from a different perspective. She had merely been a convenient plaything to amuse the marquess when he was not busy addressing other, more important matters.
Those other matters occupied her mind now. This morning she had put the past behind her and turned her attention to the present and the immediate future. She had begun considering how this shocking discovery might affect her plans in England.
Easterbrook had been suspicious about her reasons for coming to London. Despite her insistence that she intended only to aid her brother, he had not believed her. Even at the end he referred to her missions. Plural.
That implied that he knew what other reasons might draw her here. Which in turn probably meant that her suspicions about him were correct.
Had he done it? Stolen her father's papers? Fled Macao with all that evidence that her father had accumulated while he investigated the attacks on his business?
The timing of the notebook's disappearance had always made her wonder, even if her heart had argued against her mind most forcefully. After all, what use would their guest have for those notes and letters? They had no value to a naturalist and adventurer.
Her father had not been distressed by the notebook's loss, but then his sharp mind could recall its contents with little effort. She, however, had almost no information at all after he died. She wanted that notebook and the evidence it contained.
Easterbrook knew that. She was almost sure that he did. He guessed that she had hoped to find him so she could ask for the papers. Now she dared not even let him know that she suspected he had them.
His identity changed so much. Everything. For the Marquess of Easterbrook, that theft could have been the reason he was in Macao to begin with. He might have learned that her father had traced the source of his oppression back to England, and believed that some members of the House of Lords were behind it.
Easterbrook probably arrived in Macao seeking a way to protect his wealthy friends, his family, or even himself. He had lied about his identity so he could learn what her father knew and interfere with her father's attempts to expose them all.
Isabella finished dressing her hair. Leona felt the topknot and dangling curls. “Where is Tong Wei?”
“He is in the library studying his English reading.”
“Let us go to him. I want to tell you both something.”
They found him there, bent over a child's book. As a boy, Tong Wei had traded language lessons with an English clerk in Macao. It was illegal to teach foreigners Chinese, but Tong Wei had risked it. In turn he had learned English far purer than the fractured dialect spoken by the official interpreters, and he had perfected it in her father's service. However, he had never learned to read English.
“I saw Edmund,” Leona announced once she had Tong Wei's attention. “The day I went to the Royal Exchange.”
“So that is why you have been so quiet and thoughtful,” Isabella said. “Is he much the same?”
“He is not at all the same. He is not even Edmund. That is not his name. That traveler who accepted my father's hospitality was actually one of the highest-ranking noblemen here, the Marquess of Easterbrook. He lied to all of us.”
“It is good news, is it not? That he is this marquess?” Isabella asked. “He had much affection for you. If he still does—” She raised her eyebrows at the possibilities.
Isabella's allusion revived the memory of Easterbrook's recent kiss. And his touch. And his confidence in his advantage. Leona's heart trembled softly, an echo of her reactions in the green bedchamber.
“Affection is not the correct word for his interest back then,” she said.
“He is a powerful man merely by his birth,” Tong Wei said. “I hope that you did nothing to anger or insult him when you learned of his old deception.”
“I do not think that I did, but I was unable to hide my shock. He agreed to aid me.”
“That will be very useful.”
It would be. If she could trust herself, she might even try to obtain more of Easterbrook's aid. Not to her private plans, but to the ones that touched on her brother.
His parting words, however, indicated that she dare not have too much congress with the marquess. I will have you.
Leona was
not above using a man's interest to her own purposes, but she knew better than to play with fire—especially when the flames were in herself as well as him. He had already proven that they were. Even her suspicions about his betrayal did not change that, to her dismay.
“You will require a better wardrobe if you will consort with such a man,” Isabella said. “We will have to sell some of the jade.”
“I will not be consorting. He will provide one introduction, nothing more. I thought that you should both know his true identity, however.” Leona sat at the writing table and thumbed through the letters of introduction stored there. “Do not sell the jade yet. We may need it later, and for more important things than my wardrobe. We may be here longer than I anticipated.”
She hoped not. Coming to England had meant leaving her brother for over a year. She had taken pains to prepare him and the business for her absence, but she could not stay away indefinitely. Gaspar might be the titular head of their company now, but he was still very inexperienced.
She found the letter written by another Country Trader to provide an introduction to his sister in London. She would call on this woman today. Although she did not expect the visit to yield any direct benefit, one never knew who knew whom. She would be grateful for the most tenuous connection to the people she needed to see.
With the recent setback to her plans, even a small step forward would be helpful.
Leona entered her house, contemplating her meeting with Mrs. Fines. It had been more useful than she had anticipated.
Mrs. Fines might be a trader's sister, but she had married above her family. Her husband was a barrister, and related through his mother to a baron. By the time the visit ended, Mrs. Fines was insisting on obtaining good invitations and introductions for her new dear friend.
While Leona untied her bonnet, Isabella hurried into the reception hall.
The Sins of Lord Easterbrook Page 4