The Rogue's Last Scandal

by Alina K. Field

  Mr. Everly’s gaze rested upon her, and for that moment, they were the only two people in the room. The concern in his eyes settled over her, as comforting as the strong arm that held Reina in place on his lap.

  “Have you had a reply from Lord Shaldon?” Penderbrook asked, bringing her up from her mood.

  “Not as yet. That isn’t surprising,” Lady Perry said.

  Mr. Gibson grunted. “Be assured, Shaldon will know exactly what’s happening.”

  Graciela studied the oldest Everly son. He might not carry their name, he might have the exotically fiery hair of the northmen, yet one could not miss his resemblance to the strong-jawed, straight-nosed, firm-lipped siblings. This must be the look of the father. She wondered if there was a portrait of the man somewhere in this great house.

  “But Bakeley sent an express,” Lady Perry said. “He and Sirena are on their way.”

  Bakeley was the second son and heir. The Viscount Bakeley whose bed she had napped in early that morning, the rescuer of Lady Sirena.

  How wonderful to have brothers and sisters to come to one’s aid. She had none of those. She had only her two servants and Reina. She was not part of this house or this great family. When they were finished rescuing her, they would try to begin their own arranging of her life.

  She did not belong here. She must not forget that.

  Lady Perry reached across Graciela to catch the biscuit sliding from Reina’s hand. “You have put her to sleep again, Charley.” She laughed.

  “I’ll take her.” Graciela leaned in close. The hand that slid under the child’s bottom collided with the solid muscle of Mr. Everly’s chest. The other met his wide shoulder. Both collisions induced a riot and leaping of nerves within her. Her cheeks warmed again, but she kept her lashes lowered, her gaze on the sleeping child as she sat back down.

  Around her, the others went very still. She blinked hard. I will not cry.

  “How beautiful she is,” Mr. Everly breathed out. When she looked, his gaze was on her, not Reina.

  Her heart stuttered and she found herself short of breath.

  Yet, she had things she must say. “We have spoken—” She cleared her throat and sipped some more air. “Of the scandal sheet piece and the solicitor’s office. What is next in your devious plan for my future?”

  Penderbrook chuckled, and Charley made himself grin.

  She didn’t trust him. Of course she didn’t. And he needed her to.

  “What do you want to do next, Graciela?” Perry asked.

  The lovely lips clamped together, her face crumpling over the child in her lap, like a Madonna thinking ahead to her savior child’s fate.

  As soon as she’d tamed her emotions, she’d ask for transport to Falmouth. And he wasn’t having that.

  Charley cleared his throat. “There’s the matter of your trust.”

  Her head shot up.

  “The bank,” he said. “The bank where the funds are being held. You’ll not want to leave all your money here.”

  With her next breath, her emotions cleared. “Yes.”

  She had been pondering running. It was good she had him to think this through logically.

  “Do you know which bank your father was using, Miss Everly?” Bink asked.

  “He did tell me. It was a Scottish name.” She pursed her lips. “Mack…Mack…” She shook her head. “Mack-something.”

  “McLintoch,” Penderbrook said. “Or, MacIntosh is Bank of Scotland, is he not? Oh, but I believe he’s in Edinburgh. As well as…might you be mistaken? Kinnear and Sons—”

  “You’ve done a study of Scottish banks, have you, Pender?” Charley asked.

  Pender was looking for a position, any position. And the lady was frowning prodigiously at his friend’s doubting.

  “I am not mistaken.” She waved a hand, juggling the sleeping child. “I will visit them all. McLintock, MacIntosh, Mac—”

  “McCollum’s,” Bink said.

  Gracie blinked and nodded. “It might be.”

  Bink drummed his fingers on the table. “It might well be.” Plates and utensils rattled as he lumbered to his feet. “There’ll be no need to visit them all. We’ll go there first thing tomorrow morning.” He excused himself and left.

  Charley stood also and signaled to Penderbrook. “I must go change my coat and cravat.” He flicked a spot of dried gruel from his shoulder and bowed to Graciela. “Ladies.”

  Penderbrook hurried out behind him.

  “Where are we going?” Penderbrook asked.

  “We are not going anywhere. I am going to change coats, as I said. You may proceed to the next bank on your list of prospective employers.”

  His friend’s cheeks reddened, and Charley laughed, slapping him on the shoulder. “I’m roasting you. Of course, you must have a position like a regular gentleman, somewhere in the government. We’ll both talk to my father when he returns. Meet me at White’s later tonight.”

  Penderbrook hesitated and nodded. “You’re a friend indeed, Everly. I’ll keep my ear to the ground. Until later.”

  Charley hurried to his room, changed, and left the house, before either of the ladies could track him down and demand to come with him.

  The approaching hackney squeezed down the mews and stopped at the door where Charley waited. He pulled his cap low and put down the steps, dipping his head like a faithful retainer. Swathed in a gauzy mantilla, the lady stepping down gripped his fingers and tugged him inside the dark stable.

  She glanced around the empty stable and pulled his head down and kissed him, a long press of her mobile lips on his, totally without passion on her part, stirring none on his. When she squeezed his arm and stepped away, she glanced over her shoulder at her coach and shut the stable door.

  “That was convincing, Duquesa,” he said.

  The mantilla slipped back to reveal a tiny bonnet perching atop her golden coiffure. Blue eyes dancing, she smiled. “Perhaps someday, Charles Everly, it may be a real kiss.”

  His thoughts flew to Gracie’s petulant mouth, and he reeled them back, forcing a grin. “You must take care. You’re playing a dangerous game. And what would your father say if he knew how you were carrying out his mission?”

  “He will not care. He knows I will not allow that pig into my bed. As long as I am discreet…” She shrugged.

  “Your men are outside?”

  “At either end of this street. We may take our time. He will think, when he learns of it, that you have tupped me here. I shall attach a few pieces of straw.”

  “I fear we don’t have that much time. You are blocking the mews at a busy of time of the day.”

  She slid a hand up his arm and smiled. “It would not take long.” With a quick squeeze, her demeanor changed. “But now, we must get to our business.” She withdrew a paper from under her redingote.

  Charley turned the letter over and studied the plain seal.

  “From my father to yours.”

  “If it came by pouch, The Duque will have read it,” he said.

  “No. A friend has brought it.”

  “Is it urgent? Father is in Bath.”

  She cocked her head and studied him. “You have called him back, no?”

  “One of our servants is talking.” Bakeley would want to know about that.

  A wide smile displayed gleaming white teeth. “It is only a leap of logic from the reports in the scandal sheets.” She tapped his arm. “You have dallied with some other young woman. I, perhaps, must have a fit of jealousy.”

  Voices outside drew their attention, and they waited until they had passed.

  “I will save that for our next public meeting. For now, give that letter to him, and for your other request, I’ve learned that he was held in a farmhouse north of Pamplona, where the exchange was to be. He walked into a trap. The hostage was already dead of a fever. The money went to the French but…he was taken. It was a chance to obtain another ransom. A painting.”

  His mind flew back to Perry’s accusation of
theft after their mother’s passing.

  “What painting?” he asked.

  She tapped him again. “You know.”

  He held her gaze.

  Around the same time, Saints Felicity and Perpetua had disappeared from the wall in his mother’s bedchamber, replaced by a painting of her three children. Mother never said where the painting had gone.

  “That’s madness,” he said.

  “It was Lopez de Arteaga’s work, painted in Mexico City and lost with a Spanish ship full of treasure, that is, until your father obtained it.”

  “A ship belonging to your husband?”

  She shrugged again.

  “And he has the painting now?”

  A knock rattled the door. Charley stepped over to it. A dark-clad man who he recognized as one of the Duquesa’s guards whispered that they must leave, that a cart wanted to pass through the mews.

  Charley shut the door and turned on her. “Well?”

  “No. That is, I do not know where the painting is. But I know that, weeks later, when the painting was delivered, both the messenger and your father ended up in the hands of a French commander, and your father was never released. He escaped.”

  “You know this how?”

  “A peasant boy who worked at the estate.”

  The door rattled; the Duquesa’s guard again. Charley quickly bundled her into the hackney along with her man, closed and locked the mews door, and climbed out through a window. He made his way to the street, whistling and pondering the story the lady had told him.

  Later that evening, he caught up with Penderbrook at White’s and ordered both of them drinks.

  “No family dinner for you tonight?” Penderbrook asked.

  “I’ll join them in a bit. For now, what have you found?”

  “No other McBankers than the one your brother lit upon. Shall I accompany you?”

  While the waiter poured their wine, he sat back, thinking. McCollum’s was tied in with merchant shipping, that much he’d learned in his afternoon travels. He might as well make quick work of this conversation and go talk to Bink, who he suspected knew something more of this bank than he was mentioning. Perhaps from the Parliamentary work that Charley had been shirking.

  “I think not,” he said.

  A member he didn’t know seated himself at the next table, twitching his chair so that one ear was turned their way. Dark hair and a well-tailored dark coat.

  He was obviously preparing to eavesdrop.

  “I say, Pender,” Charley said, too loudly, “will you still insist that Cribb was a better pugilist than Spring?”

  The fellow turned full around. “Penderbrook, is it you?” He stood.

  A tall athletic body stretched under a lean face with a hawk nose planted between two small dark eyes. A flamboyant gold waistcoat caught the light from the nearest sconce, a contrast to the rest of his darkness.

  Penderbrook nodded cordially, his jaw tightening. “Payne-Elsdon,” he said.

  “Fancy seeing you so soon after that card game at—”

  “Yes, yes,” Charley interrupted, tossing back some wine and signaling the waiter. “Let’s make short work of the introductions and I’ll get on to my third drink. I’m Charles Everly.”

  “Pleased to meet you. I have heard you are blessed with the attentions of a golden-haired angel.”

  Indeed.

  The fellow put his hand on a back of a chair preparing to draw it out and join them.

  “This is Major Payne-Elsdon,” Penderbrook said. Then he put his attention to gulping the rest of his wine. Though as pale as his face was, it might come back up.

  “Major.” Charley beamed a smile. “We’d invite you to join us but I’m delving into Penderbrook’s expertise for an upcoming wager. Height of secrecy, and all that.”

  Penderbrook failed to smile. Instead his face paled even more.

  Payne-Elsdon’s lip curled up. “Maybe you’ll have better luck with your boxing bet than cards.”

  “I say, Payne-Elsdon,” Charley said affably, “on active duty, are you?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve sold out my commission.”

  “Weren’t in the Peninsula, were you? Might have run into my brother.”

  He blinked. “I don’t believe I had the pleasure.” He flashed a toothy smile. “Though I was there during the war, and more recently.”

  Charley grinned back while the waiter poured a fresh glass and he mentally connected the dots. He’d heard of a sold-out major, recently returned from some scandal in Spain, a card shark and swordsman who’d maimed a man, all of it hushed up by the victim’s family. Pender was swimming in dark waters. “Not likely you’d have met my brother. He was a lowly sergeant then, but Shaldon has lured him into the Everly fold and he’s a Member of Parliament now.” He raised his glass. “Cheers.”

  Penderbrook pushed back his chair and stood. His face had recovered some of its color. “I see Gilbert over there and I promised to meet him. Many thanks for the drink, Everly. Do send a note if I’m needed. I am at your service.”

  The abrupt departure brought a smirk and a raised eyebrow. Charley stood also and leveled a gaze at the man. His appearance at their table tonight—and for that matter at Penderbrook’s card table sometime in the recent past—was one more sudden appearance to delve into.

  “I suppose I’ll have to manage this wager with my own wits,” Charley said.

  Payne-Elsdon dipped his head, but there was no apology in his expression. “I’d be happy to offer counsel.”

  He drummed up a grin. “No thanks. I’ll ponder out the odds myself.”

  He waved to Pender as he passed. The bloody fool was playing cards again trying to raise some capital. In spite of his joking, he was too proud to take a loan, preferring to issue vowels to the likes of a shady major, who’d work for the likes of the Duque and who probably marked his cards.

  He’d send Pender some work on the morrow, and scrape his own allowance to pay for it.

  Chapter 11

  Charley tipped back the chair and rested a booted foot on the edge of the library table where one dim candle burned.

  The four of them—Bink, Perry, Gracie, and Charley―had dined informally and rather quickly, retiring to the drawing room to plan the trip to the bank.

  After, he’d lured Bink to the library to discuss the major. Bink thought he’d heard the name, and promised to make inquiries, without any nosy questions about why Charley wanted to know. Which was much the way Shaldon would have reacted, and wasn’t it amazing that the bastard who’d joined the family only two years before should be so much like the father the man had never met. Their brother Bakeley would have spent a full hour trying to winkle out the reason Charley was asking.

  He rather liked his new brother.

  Bink refilled Charley’s brandy glass. “I’m for bed then. Best get some rest yourself. Kingsley and Carvelle will catch up with us soon enough, and even if they don’t we’ll have Shaldon’s tricks to deal with. He’ll pop on the scene just as everything is falling apart.”

  Charley laughed and wished him a good night.

  As Bink left, Perry entered.

  “She’s safely tucked into the blue guest room. Francisca and Juan have the chamber next to her, but they’re sleeping in the nursery, I fear.”

  “Good.”

  Perry came close and wagged a finger at him, smiling. “Should I lock Graciela’s door, Charley?”

  No. Never. It’s what her captors at Kingsley House had done.

  He made himself grin back, as she expected him to.

  Perry boosted herself and perched on the edge of the table near where his feet rested. “Look at us. Mother would scold us, wouldn’t she?” She tapped the toe of his boot. “Mother would have liked her, I think. Miss Kingsley is a lovely young woman. Quite beautiful. Brave and intelligent. Likes children. And she’s wealthy.”

  His heart had picked up an annoying race along Perry’s matrimonial track. He must divert her. “We shall see abo
ut her wealth tomorrow.”

  She sighed. “I do wish I was going along. I’m always left out of the excitement.”

  “Miss Kingsley will feel better if you are here with the child, marshaling the guards.”

  He heard the swish of skirts as she swung her legs. “Yes, I suppose. I have bought Juan’s goodwill with a pair of the Mantons from Father’s cache. Francisca, however, was excoriating him about the danger you pose to her lady.” She went very silent for a moment. “But I assured her you will act honorably.”

  The candle sputtered and outside a distant carriage rattled―one of their neighbors heading out for an evening’s amusement. Not Carvelle—his attack would be a silent one.

  “Charley?”

  He plopped his feet on the floor and stood. “The girl has survived one attempted assault. Do you think I would do such a thing to her, Perry?”

  Perry dropped down from the table and faced him. “You would not need to. She is half in love with you already. And you are attracted to her, as any man would be. That is what Francisca sees.”

  His hand remembered the tightness of Graciela’s back, and the chill of her slender fingers, and the slimness of her waist as he’d lifted her into the coach the night before. His shoulder remembered the touch of her next to him in the narrow hackney. He thought about the fit of the coats over her bosom and the fine turn of her thighs in Roddy’s clothing.

  He shook his head. “I’m not looking for a wife, Perry.” He walked out of the circle of candlelight to the window that looked out over the garden.

  “What do you intend to do with her?”

  What indeed? Miss Kingsley wanted to find Captain Llewellyn, to investigate her father’s disappearance, to take the child to her relatives in Spain, to return to Alta California. All of those seemed impulsive, improvident, one might say, impossible.

  I will take what is left and go home, and buy some land and perhaps, someday, find a strong man who I can respect.

  No, no, that was, in the long term, sensible, and reasonable, and he could not fathom letting her go into another man’s arms.