She had bought herself some time, but now she needed to stay one step ahead of him in the game. He would come to her tomorrow and she knew she must be ready. She had to have a plan. She had to escape him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Penelope Standish was dressed in her nightshirt, a practical, masculine, striped cotton affair with no frills. She was sitting on her bed rather than in it, and around her on the embroidered counterpane were spread sheet upon sheet of writing. Some had been discarded because they were not scandalous enough, others because they were too lurid. It was difficult to hit the correct note of suggestiveness, but Mr. Morrow, the editor of the Gentlemen's Athenian Mercury, thought that she was doing very well for a beginner.
Pen shuddered as she thought of what Isabella would say if she knew it was her sister who was feeding stories to the press. Isabella did not deserve such disloyalty. She had come home from her travels and taken her younger sister to her heart as though they had never been separated. Pen had been surprised and warmed by the friendship that had grown so rapidly between them. Yet now she betrayed Isabella at every turn.
The difficulty was that she was desperate. In fact, she was not simply desperate but utterly, completely and irrevocably without hope.
The house was very quiet. Freddie had escorted her home from the Duchess of Fordyce's ball and left immediately thereafter. He had not told her where he was going. These days he seldom did, and anyway, Pen required no explanation. When Freddie rolled home in the dawn smelling of drink and cheap perfume it was fairly evident where he had spent the night.
It happened more and more frequently these days. There had been a time when she and Freddie had been able to coexist in comfortable affection, sharing if not confidences, at least conversation. Nowadays they seldom saw each other and when they did, Freddie was disinclined to talk. Pen knew she hectored him and that this merely made him run from her, but she could not help herself. She worried about him. There was a hunted look in his eyes these days, as though he were trying to blot out some unpleasant truth with the drink and the women and whatever else he did in the dark reaches of the night.
The money had disappeared, too. Freddie's income had never been large, and now all of it seemed to go to support the wine-sellers and brothel-keepers of the capital. Pen's small allowance, left to her by her father, was insufficient to sustain both of them. The debts were piling up and soon, very soon, would come the creditors and then the bailiffs and the summonses and the courts. Pen remembered how her father had ended, an embittered man who had suffered half a dozen ignominious court appearances for debt and had died of bad temper at being reduced to living off the pittance of his wife's jointure. Debt stalked their family like a curse.
Which was where the information about Isabella's activities came in. Pen had tried to write fiction at first, but her work had been rejected by various publishers with the comment that it was rather too sensational for the popular taste. She had toyed with the idea of writing conduct manuals or moral fables, but her inherent irreverence always seemed to shine through at the most inappropriate moments. Then she had been tidying the study one day and her eye had fallen on an old copy of the Mercury that Freddie had left lying around. There had been a salacious story about the extramarital affairs of a well-known lady. And Pen had thought that she could write something at least as good if only she knew someone famous to write about. . . .
The devil of temptation had whispered in her ear that her sister would not mind, her sister would understand, Pen needed the money and Isabella knew what it was to be poor and desperate and in debt. . . .
Pen selected a few sheets, read the contents, then put them down with a sigh. The guilt grabbed her by the throat again. Even though she had been only fifteen when Isabella had married Ernest and gone abroad, she had been extremely attached to her elder sister. She could still remember with perfect clarity the dreadful moment when their father had told Bella, in front of the entire family, that she must marry Ernest or they would all be ruined. Pen had been too young to understand properly what was happening. She had taken Isabella's hand and said that she had been told that if her sister refused the prince they would all starve in the Fleet Prison, and surely that could not be true, and surely Isabella would not let that happen. She had seen the change in Bella's face then, a sort of crumpling beneath the surface, and had understood too late that Bella was young, too—too young to have to make such choices. And yet she had made the choice and saved them all. Ernest had been rich then, and carelessly generous to his new family. They had started over, their father investing just as poorly as before and inevitably losing it all again some years later.
Pen fidgeted with the pages. They had written to each other through the years, she and Bella. It had kept them close even when they had only met three or four times in twelve years. They had discussed, gossiped, confided. Then they had met each other again and found that they liked each other a great deal in real life as well as on paper, and Pen had felt almost as if she'd rediscovered a part of herself that had been lost.
Under the circumstances, detailing her sister's misfortunes for the press felt like the greatest deceit imaginable.
Pen tried to tell herself that her sister had not seemed unduly disturbed by the column in the Mercury. It had been a relief in a way to know that Isabella did not intend to track down the author. In another sense she had felt disappointed, for now she knew that her deception could continue. Isabella would never know.
Pen bit her lip hard. She supposed that she could take the time-honored route out of trouble and find a rich husband, but she was an old maid of seven and twenty now and, although men still admired her golden prettiness, it was unlikely anyone would come to the point when she was both old and poor. Nor did she feel she had the temperament to spend her life cajoling a rich man. She would probably lose her temper with him, tell him a few pungent truths and then he would consign her to Bedlam. Besides, the only man who had interested her recently had been Alistair Cantrell and she had already discovered that he was not rich. Not in the slightest.
Thinking of Mr. Cantrell made her think of Marcus Stockhaven. Not as a potential husband—Pen did not mind admitting that the thought of marrying a man like Marcus would terrify her, for there was a physical quality about him that was quite overwhelming—but because he was the only one of her relatives who was rich enough to help her. It was a possibility, of course, but she did not know him well and she sensed that he disapproved of Freddie for some reason, and Pen loved Freddie and did not want to expose his weakness to Marcus.
Thinking of Marcus brought her thoughts firmly back to Isabella. Pen had thought—no indeed, she had known—there had once been something very strong and passionate between Marcus and Bella. She had been only a child that last summer in Salterton, but she had seen Isabella creeping from the house at night, and seen her return from the gardens later, a spring in her step and light in her eyes. Isabella's betrothal to Marcus had seemed the next natural step, a formal recognition of the unbreakable bond between the two of them. And yet the bond had been broken, irrevocably.
And now, curiously, both of them had returned and, judging by their behavior at the ball that evening, some pattern was reasserting itself . Only this time they were older and the passion between them seemed darker, somehow, and more painful. Pen thought of the way that Marcus had looked at Isabella and she shivered with reaction. If a man ever looked at her in so particular a way, she thought she would probably run a mile.
There was the sound of the street door crashing open and Freddie's voice raised in drunken discord as he shouted for his valet, utterly thoughtless for the rest of the household. Pen sighed. She gathered the scattered sheets together and bundled them into the cupboard at the bottom of her nightstand. She could hear Mather, Freddie's valet, speaking softly to his master as he steered him across the landing and into his room with a minimum of damage to the furniture.
Pen got to her feet, crossed to the
dresser and splashed some cold water from the ewer onto her face. She looked at her reflection in the mirror. She looked pale and tired, and behind her like a mocking ghost, the rose-colored ball gown lay discarded across the back of a chair. No husband, no prospects, no money. Miss Penelope Standish dismissed her reflection and vowed to send her next piece to the newspaper immediately, so that it would make the morning editions.
Marcus had gone straight from the ball to the rather less salubrious surroundings of the Ratcliffe Highway in East London. Alistair, who had been cultivating the company of a Bow Street runner called Townsend, had had a tip that one of Warwick's henchmen was implicated in the recent spate of murders in that area. Marcus spent several hours and not a few guineas in a fruitless attempt to buy information. No one was talking. Everyone was too fearful.
"It is the strangest thing," Marcus said, as they took a battered hackney carriage home in the early hours, "but Warwick is nothing more than a whisper, is he? He is everywhere and nowhere. I begin to wonder if he exists at all."
"Oh, he exists," Alistair said grimly. He was sitting in a corner of the carriage, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, his chin buried in the folds of his cravat. "In one form or another, he exists. Whether it is as a legend or as a man, the effect is the same. He spreads terror with the mere mention of his name. That is what we are fighting against."
"But how to find him?" Marcus asked. "We do not even know where to look. He slips through our fingers like smoke."
Alistair turned his head and looked out of the carriage window at the strengthening daylight. Marcus thought for a moment that he would not reply. He felt cold, stiff and frustrated. There was only one benefit in such activity, and that was that it took his mind from Isabella. In a couple of hours he would have to wash and make himself presentable and go to Brunswick Gardens and confront her.
"You forget," Alistair said suddenly, "that you have something Warwick wants. Sooner or later, he will come looking for you."
A certain vivacious princess, whose return to London has been greeted with excitement by all those rakes and beaux who courted her the first time around, was last night much in evidence at the Duchess of F's Scottish Ball. The princess, never one to shirk her responsibility in providing scandal, was heard to remark that she had no intention of encouraging the amorous attentions of any gentlemen because, in her view, Englishmen are the very worst lovers in the world. Whilst we bow to the princess's superior experience in the field—she has lived much of her life abroad and therefore must have the means of contrast—we hope a gentleman may step forward to defend the reputation of his countrymen and change the princess's mind. Perhaps the Earl of S may be just the man for the job? Those with long memories will recall that the lovely princess and the gallant earl were once more than mere acquaintances. . . .
—The Gentlemen's Athenian Mercury, July 3, 1816
Isabella sighed and placed the newspaper carefully by the side of her plate of breakfast toast. It was scarcely unexpected to see herself mentioned in the scandal sheets again. Someone who had attended the Duchess of Fordyce's ball must have been delighted to make a swift guinea from passing on so prime a piece of gossip. In Ernest's time it had happened time and again. This piece of scandal, however, she had brought entirely on herself. Whatever had possessed her to make such an outrageous and ridiculously untrue statement about the amorous capabilities of the English male? It was not even as though she had the experience to judge. If only she had not risen to the Duchess of Plockton's barbed provocation. But the comment about her daughter, Emma, had overset her, being the one subject on which she would always be vulnerable, and as a result she had not given a damn for the proprieties.
"The ladies and gentlemen of the press," Belton said sepulchrally, from the doorway, "are encamped outside, Your Serene Highness. I have taken the liberty of removing the door knocker so that they cannot disturb you, but I fear they may attempt an entry through a window. And Miss Standish has arrived."
"I had to enter by the back door," Pen grumbled, plumping herself down on one of the rosewood chairs and slapping a pile of newspapers next to her sister's plate, making the china jump and the tea spill. "Oh, you have already seen the papers!"
"Whatever has happened to put you in such a temper?" Isabella inquired. "It is unlike you to arrive with the first post on the morning after a ball."
"I wanted to acquaint you with this." Pen gestured toward the news sheets. "But I see that I am too late. May I have some tea? I assure you that I require it."
"Please do." Isabella put down her toast and honey and wiped her sticky fingers. She drew the papers toward her. "I suppose I should have foreseen this."
"It is as I said yesterday." Pen waved the teapot around with emphasis. "You cannot even move for drawing scandal, Bella." She frowned at her sister. "Upon my word, you are very calm about this. There is a crowd outside your front door!"
"I know," Isabella said.
"The Mercury and the Preceptor are running rival columns," Pen grumbled. "It is most vexing."
"It is certainly vexing that they are two most scurrilous rags in London," Isabella agreed. She viewed her sister's flushed face with concern. "You seem to be taking this very personally, Penelope."
"I?" Pen jumped. "No. . . Well. . . Yes, I think it is a disgrace."
Isabella shrugged. "The fuss will die down. It always does."
"You are evidently accustomed to this."
"Of course." Isabella fixed her sister with her amused blue gaze. "Ernest was forever attracting the attentions of the papers."
Pen leaned her elbows on the table and drank deep from her cup, her curious gaze fixed on her sister over the rim. "Yes, I see," she said. She hesitated. "Bella, that thing that you said. . . Is it true?"
Isabella frowned. "What thing? What did I say?"
"That Englishmen are the worst lovers in the world? I do hope not. I did not get the opportunity to quiz you about it last night since cousin Marcus seemed intent on refuting your words in the quickest possible time!"
Isabella frowned. "I am shocked that you should ask such a thing, Penelope."
Pen laughed. "My interest is purely intellectual." She made a slight gesture. "I am seven and twenty years old, Bella. Am I to pretend that I do not know such a side of life exists?"
"I suppose not," Isabella admitted. "It seems rather foolish to pretend."
Pen opened her eyes wide. "So?"
"I have no notion whether it is true or not," Isabella said. "I was merely being deliberately shocking."
Pen stared. "You do not know?"
"No." Isabella raised an amused eyebrow. "I do not have sufficient experience to judge." She stopped, thinking of Marcus. He had been her lover, but in those sweet early days of youthful indiscretion he had seemed much more. He had been her whole world.
Pen was watching her thoughtfully.
"You know full well that three quarters of my bad reputation is the result of Ernest's profligacy," Isabella added.
"And the remaining quarter?" Pen persisted.
"Ah well. . ." Isabella considered. "For the most part that is the fiction made up by those so-called gentlemen whose advances I rejected. Alas, they were not able to admit that I found them resistible." She sighed. "I cannot deny that there was a gentleman I turned to when I thought that there might be some affection there to sweeten my life with Ernest—" She broke off, shaking her head. It had taken years before her misery had led her to be unfaithful to her husband in the aftermath of Emma's death. She had been very lonely and had fallen disastrously in love with an Austrian soldier of fortune who had seen her unhappiness and courted her gently—and abandoned her ruthlessly only ten days later. Disillusioned, heartbroken, she soon realized everyone was discussing the affair and came to her senses. After that she had locked her heart and her unhappiness away.
"It is the greatest piece of nonsense in London that I stand accused of being a lady rakehell when in fact I am utterly unintereste
d in the pleasures of the bed," she said now.
Pen frowned. "How can such matters possibly be uninteresting?"
"Trust me," Isabella said, heartily munching a piece of toast. "They are."
Pen was looking dissatisfied. "Then it seems to me that it is Ernest who must bear the responsibility for being the worst lover in the world or you would not feel like that."
"Very true," Isabella concurred. She paused, elbows on the table, while she thought not of Ernest but once again of Marcus. Her first experiences of love at Marcus's hands had been undeniably dazzling. She had burned for him. Yet now it seemed a pale dream, something that had happened long ago in another life, if it had happened at all. And although he could still awaken something deep within her, she vowed he would not have the chance. When she had been seventeen, matters had seemed simple. She had loved Marcus and had given herself to him with love. Since then she had lost a great deal and she knew, with absolute certainly, that the best way to avoid future loss was not to engage with risk in the first place. Besides, Marcus held her in the lowest possible esteem now. She recalled his hostile words from the previous night. If anything proved to her that the marriage had to be ended, and quickly, it was Marcus's bitterness. She must contact Mr. Churchward immediately to arrange an annulment and the terms under which she would repay her financial debt to her husband. She could not bear to be beholden to him any longer than she must.
Pen pursed her lips. "I am disappointed that you are unable to advise me on my love affairs. I was hoping that that would be one of the benefits of having a sister with such an exciting reputation."
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