by Juliana Gray
“On the contrary. Her Grace assured me that the family would soon be in possession of a handsome fortune, as a result of an advantageous alliance on the point of being announced.”
“Her Grace was mistaken, as I’m sure you well knew.”
Mr. Wright settled himself more deeply into his chair and rested his chin in one hand. Tap tap tap went his finger against the corner of his full mouth. His dark eyes studied Hatherfield, the brows above them slanted in thought.
A sensation passed through Hatherfield, a vague and fleeting sense of familiarity.
“I do have an investment of my own,” said Hatherfield.
“Ah yes. Your houses in Hammersmith. Quality homes for the middle classes, instead of the usual job-work rubbish being raised all over the suburbs. A clever idea, and serves the purpose of keeping your own capital away from your father’s grasping paws. I admire your thinking, your lordship.” Mr. Wright smiled, not a particularly pleasant smile.
“If you can hold my stepmother’s marker until summer, when the houses are finished and sold, I’ll pay you myself.”
Mr. Wright shook his head. “Too late, I’m afraid.”
“Then I’ll grant you a quarter-interest in the project now. This very instant.”
Another shake. “Too risky. Estate prices are so variable.”
“A half-interest. You might have twice your forty-two thousand quid by September.”
“I have no need for another investment, Lord Hatherfield. With respect.”
Hatherfield spread his hands. “I have nothing for you, then.”
“What an unfortunate predicament for the duke and duchess,” said Mr. Wright. “A knotty sort of conundrum.”
“You could solve it in an instant, Mr. Wright.”
“What, tear up the marker? A debt of honor? Come, Lord Hatherfield.” Mr. Wright shook his head in sorrow. “We both know that’s impossible. Perhaps a small matter, a trifling amount, between friends. But forty-two thousand pounds? A man’s word is his word. It is the bedrock on which all else stands.”
“The duchess is not a man.”
“The principle remains.”
What an implacable face the man had. Hatherfield, who had learned to detect every minute clue of expression, who could tell if a man was lying by the flicker of his eyelids and the movement of his pulse in his neck, found himself frustrated. Nathaniel Wright was as smooth as a mask.
But that in itself was a clue, wasn’t it? Only a man with something to hide kept his face from revealing anything at all.
Hatherfield’s nerves leapt to life. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Tell me, Mr. Wright. What is it you’re really after, here? You’ve refused a perfectly good alternative to the debt in question. You’re already as rich as Croesus.” He gestured to the understated interior around him, the office of a man who owned so much wealth, he knew no urge to display it.
Wright spread his hands innocently. “I want my rightful forty-two thousand pounds, or at least some certain guarantee of it, by the next quarter day. That is all, Lord Hatherfield. Nothing could be easier, really.” He smiled, a singularly wolfish smile, crammed with even white teeth.
“And if Her Grace proves unable to pay?”
“I am afraid I would, with the very greatest regret, be obliged to take measures.” Wright’s elbow was propped thoughtfully on the arm of his chair. He leaned his temple into his forefinger.
Measures. A man like Wright might have all sorts of measures at his thoughtful forefingertips, not all of them executed through official channels.
Hatherfield remained silent, a slight puzzled smile on his face, as if not fully understanding the weight of Wright’s meaning.
“Of course,” said Wright, “you could always marry the lady.”
“That, my dear fellow, is none of your affair.”
Wright shrugged. “No, it’s not. Only a little friendly advice, man to man. An easy and straightforward remedy for the problem at hand. Eliminates the need for further trouble on all sides.”
Hatherfield rose to his feet. “Man to man, eh? That’s good of you, Wright, to assume such a tender interest in my personal affairs, but I’ve taken enough of your time this morning as it is. Much obliged, your allowing me the interview and all that. I believe I understand your position with absolute clarity.”
“Unless your affections are engaged elsewhere, Lord Hatherfield?”
Hatherfield went still. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your affections, Hatherfield. Are they engaged elsewhere? I ask as a businessman, of course, with an investment to protect.”
Hatherfield pulled his watch from his pocket and consulted the face. “Affections? Gad, no. What a chap you are. Affections, indeed. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must confess to a pressing appointment at the other end of town. Houses to inspect, you see, builders to consult. Can’t waste another moment on this charming conversation. Good day, Mr. Wright.”
Nathaniel Wright rose from his chair and extended his hand. “Your servant, Lord Hatherfield.”
Hatherfield shook the offered hand and returned his smile, wolf to wolf. “Indeed, Mr. Wright.”
Hatherfield returned to the reception room and found his coat and hat. Outside, in the street, his driver had finally made his way through the traffic and stood waiting next to the hansom.
“Hammersmith, if you will,” said Hatherfield, and then he fell back against the seat and studied the small square window on the cab roof with grim eyes.
For he had, at the very end of the interview, at the words You could always marry the lady, suddenly placed where he’d seen that particular gesture before, that patient and rather predatory tapping of the corner of the old mouth.
Lady Charlotte Harlowe affected it, from time to time, when she was pondering a particularly complicated move at whist.
SEVEN
Old Bailey
July 1890
By the third day of the trial, the section of the courtroom closest to the dock was filled with young women—heaven only knew from which shop room they had obtained leave—who regularly swooned at the entrance of the Marquess of Hatherfield into the courtroom and swooned again when he left it.
Such abuse of maidenly privilege did not improve Stefanie’s mood.
Not that Hatherfield appeared to notice his bevy of dizzy damsels. He appeared as he always did, negligent, a bit distracted, exuding golden animal spirits like a lion left on display at the London Zoo. Not even the entrance of Mr. Nathaniel Wright into the witness box caused his radiance to dim an iota.
“Mr. Wright.” The prosecutor drummed his fingers on the table in a kind of anticipatory prelude. His eyebrows were high, his lips pursed and smiling both at once, as if a bowl of syllabub had just been placed before him.
“Mr. Duckworth,” said Wright, in exactly the same tone, causing the entire courtroom to come down with a case of the titters.
The judge banged his gavel. “Order!”
Mr. Duckworth continued hastily. “Mr. Wright, I understand you have a sister.”
Mr. Wright cast a lazy dark eye across the courtroom, lingering with particular interest on the ladies assembled near the dock. “I understand I have several,” he said, “though in the natural course of things, I am only acquainted with one.” A telling emphasis on the word natural.
Mr. Duckworth’s cheeks had the grace to turn pink. “And will you have the goodness to identify this sister, for the information of the court?”
“I would rather not.”
Another bang of the gavel. “Answer the question, Mr. Wright.”
Wright shrugged. “Her name is Lady Charlotte Harlowe.”
A gasp swept across the courtroom.
“Your father, then, was the Earl of Montclair, God rest his soul?”
Mr. Wright brushed a speck of invisible dust from his cuff. He turned to raise a devilish black eyebrow at the damsels. “So I have reliably been informed.”
This time, a mixture of gasp
s and titters. One of the damsels hesitated, and then swooned.
Mr. Duckworth crossed his hands behind his back and began a studious journey across the courtroom. A few hairs had escaped from the snug white curls on his wig and waved faintheartedly in the passing air. “You are close with Lady Charlotte Harlowe?”
“A rather vague word, that.”
Mr. Duckworth stopped and turned. “Do you see each other often? Do you bear a fraternal affection for her?”
“I do.” Wright’s voice turned to steel.
Mr. Fairchurch leapt to his feet, causing the nearby papers to flutter in alarm. “Objection, my lord! I don’t see how this line of questioning has anything to do with the case at hand.”
The prosecutor raised his hand. “My line of questioning has everything to do with the case at hand, as I will shortly demonstrate.”
The judge said, in a dry and fatigued voice, “Proceed, Mr. Duckworth, but bring us to the point.”
“Oh, I shall, my lord. Mr. Wright, you are a wealthy man, is that true?”
“Another vague word, Mr. Duckworth. I’m disappointed. I understood lawyers to be precise and exacting. I pay my own solicitors a great deal of money for this precision, so my valuable time is not wasted.”
The pinkness returned to Mr. Duckworth’s cheeks. “Are you the owner of Wright Holdings, Limited?”
“I am.”
“You are engaged in financial dealings?”
“I am.”
“Do you have in your possession a promissory note in the amount of forty-two thousand pounds from the late Duchess of Southam, which she was, in fact, unable to pay?”
A veritable wave of gasps engulfed the courtroom.
“I do.”
Another damsel swooned.
“And is it true, Mr. Wright”—Mr. Duckworth was on his toes now, building to a mighty crescendo—“that you and the Duchess of Southam agreed that the promissory note should be considered executed in full if her stepson, the Marquess of Hatherfield, agreed to marry your sister, Lady Charlotte Harlowe, who was in love with him at the time?”
A wail of agony rose up from among the damsels, nearly drowned by the expressions of shock and horror rattling among the benches behind.
Stefanie’s heart had frozen in her chest. She looked in horror at Hatherfield, for some sign of surprise, but his expression remained in place. The mouth a little compressed, perhaps.
“I don’t deny it,” said Wright, looking a trifle smug.
“And did the accused, the Marquess of Hatherfield, agree to this plan?” demanded Mr. Duckworth.
Wright shrugged. “I can’t say, can I?”
“Let me rephrase the question. Was it your impression that the Marquess of Hatherfield looked favorably on the hand of Lady Charlotte Harlowe? This—you’ll pardon the expression—this bargain between you and the Duchess of Southam?”
A silence settled upon the courtroom, so thick and heavy it lay on them all like a blanket of hot midsummer air. Stefanie’s mind floated above it all. She twirled her pen around her forefinger and stared at the square tip of Wright’s clean-shaven chin. Someone coughed, and the noise echoed and echoed.
Without moving his head, Mr. Wright turned his gaze to Stefanie. His eyes, to her surprise, were soft with compassion.
“No,” he said. “I believe he did not. Not at all.”
EIGHT
November 1889
The brothel was not Stefanie’s idea, not at all.
In fact, she hadn’t quite realized they were going to a brothel at all. They’d been slugging back ale at the Slaughtered Lamb, and someone had slurred, I’ve got it, let’s head over to Cousin Hannah’s, I hear they’ve got exceptionally fresh pickings at the moment, and Stefanie, who was not precisely an innocent, still assumed he meant that this Cousin Hannah’s establishment, wherever it was, had just received a brand-new shipment of ale. And anything was preferable to this swill she’d been pretending to drink at the Slaughtered Lamb.
“Oh, splendid thought,” she exclaimed, hopping from the booth, because Stefanie had been born and raised in Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof, had cut her teeth sneaking out of the castle for adventures in the village with the son of the Holstein mayor, and she knew her hefeweizen from her doppelbock. “The fresher the better!”
She did feel a twinge of guilt, as she made her way along the damp and darkened alleys of London with her fellow clerks. She’d always felt a twinge of guilt, even back home, when slipping out the kitchen door of Holstein Castle and into Gunther’s jovial company (and, later, his waiting arms). There was work waiting for her back at the chambers, duties to be performed, and this time those duties actually interested her. There was her father’s death to avenge, when she had a spare bloody moment.
But her spirits had stirred, her damned restless spirits, as the clerks rose up in five o’clock unison and made for their black coats on the coat stand, all jumpy and smiling with anticipation of the amusements to come. Before she could stop herself, she’d thrown down her pen and called out, “Wait! Perhaps I’ll come along for a bit, after all.”
And after all, it was important to win the trust and confidence of one’s colleagues, wasn’t it?
But. This business of skulking down the alleyways, this Cousin Hannah’s establishment with its fresh shipment of ale. Stefanie should have felt the familiar rising tide of excitement, the anticipation of new mischief, but instead she felt rather . . . glum. As if she were going through the motions, not really interested. Her mind kept returning to the case she’d been summarizing a few hours ago. And, more deliciously still, to the Marquess of Hatherfield, who never quite disappeared from her mind, all vibrant in his mesmerizing figure and his rich laugh, his bright eyes and wit. With the tantalizing sense that she’d barely shaved the golden skin of him, that there was so much more inside waiting for discovery.
So infinitely more interesting than sitting around another battered wooden table for a few more tedious hours with this drunken lot.
She should really be getting back to Cadogan Square and a good night’s sleep. This enterprise had been a stupid mistake, a leftover instinct from her old unsatisfied life. She imagined Hatherfield watching her now, understanding and a little sorrowful, giving his head a little shake. Disappointed in her choice of company. She should find a hansom and head back, she should . . .
“Here we are, then!” one of the clerks called out cheerfully, and bustled her inside an unexpected and nondescript doorway, halfway along the street.
“You know, I really . . .”
But her comrades were already filling the hall, already laughing and flinging off their coats, already moving as a group into a warm and well-cushioned parlor, in which an electric chandelier hung with decadent brilliance from the ceiling and the surrounding upholstery had evidently been acquired from a factory positioned directly atop the world’s largest deposit of red ocher.
“Oh dear,” said Stefanie.
Evidently this Hannah was a kissing cousin.
The clerk who sat next to her, Bumby was his name, delivered her back a hearty thwack. “Look there! Cousin Hannah herself!” he called out.
The mistress of the house appeared in the doorway, not at all the florid female butterball of bawdy house legend. Cousin Hannah was tall and willowy, except for a pair of unnecessarily plump breasts perched atop an unnecessarily snug corset, and at the sight of the company in her crimson parlor, her face of fragile if rather mature loveliness opened up in a welcoming smile. She held out her hands. “Why, Mr. Bumby! Do come and give me a kiss. It’s been ages. A fortnight at least!”
Mr. Bumby obliged with enthusiasm, and then he turned to a pink-faced Stefanie. “This is my young friend Mr. Thomas, Hannah. He likes them fresh, he says. The fresher the better, isn’t that right, Thomas?”
“In fact,” said Stefanie, “I believe that last beer at the Slaughtered Lamb has rather done for me tonight . . .”
“Oh, rubbish, Thomas!” said one of the other clerks
. “Why, Hannah’s girls will have your prick standing in no time, never fear. Once I staggered in here at two in the morning, drunk as a dockhand, couldn’t put two words together, couldn’t bloody walk for England, and in two minutes little Camille had me so stiff I could have ground pepper with my . . .”
“Yes, yes, Mr. Humboldt.” Cousin Hannah tilted her head and assessed Stefanie from under her thick black lashes. “But Camille is not for everyone, you know. Are you certain you want someone so young, Mr. Thomas? I think an older girl might suit you better. A girl of experience.”
“Or no girl at all,” said Stefanie, “for I’m really quite . . . shattered. Been an exhausting day, an exhausting few days really, and . . .”
“Oh, that’s balls, Thomas,” said Bumby. “Do go up for a quick one, at least. You can’t just sit about the parlor waiting for us with your doodle hanging down mournfully around your ankles, can you?”
“That’s . . . that’s unlikely, really,” said Stefanie. “In any case, I can find my own way home.”
Cousin Hannah took a step closer. She laid her hand on Stefanie’s arm, light as a silken feather, ladylike and lascivious all at once. “I think I understand your difficulty, Mr. Thomas.”
“I really think you don’t.”
She bent her pretty head to Stefanie’s ear and spoke so softly, Stefanie almost couldn’t hear. “It is your first time, isn’t it? A little nervous, perhaps?” Her breath smelled of chocolate.
“No! No. I mean yes. I mean . . .”
Her hand slipped down Stefanie’s arm to grasp her fingers. “Come with me, Mr. Thomas. I have just the thing for you.” She spoke more loudly now, and the other clerks whooped with gentlemanly approval.
“Go on, Thomas!”
“Up you go, old man!”
“Poke her a good one, Thomas!”
Cousin Hannah tugged her out of the room. Stefanie followed, thinking perhaps this was her chance, she could make a break for it, find a back entrance. But the stairs loomed up immediately, tall and steep and carpeted in plush crimson. Cousin Hannah gripped her wrist like a manacle and yanked her upward, in a gesture quite unlike her ladylike deportment in the parlor.