“What a delightful analogy,” Matilda said.
And what a towering relief. A stupid, nosy journalist—what an enormous, huge, wonderful relief.
“Alas for me,” Mr. Fenwick said, “I must return to the Albany. I’ll need some proper clothes to meet a friend for dinner tomorrow night, so Helen, if you’re intent on begging a tart from Mrs. Bryce, do it now.”
“She’ll spoil her supper,” Matilda said.
“You and Mr. Fenwick just spoiled yours,” Helen retorted, “and Sol spoiled his too.”
Mr. Fenwick plucked the cat from Helen’s arms. “If that’s your best attempt at importuning, you’ve some work to do, Helen. With what letter does the name Bryce begin?”
“B.”
“Name me three other words beginning with b.”
“Bugger, bloody, bedamned.”
“Three words that begin with d.”
“Damned, deuced, dratted.”
“Dear me,” Matilda interjected. “I suppose I’d better stuff some apple tart in your mouth before you turn the air blue with your vocabulary. Tart begins with t, by the way.”
She rose to cut Helen a quarter of a tart.
“Try a vowel,” Mr. Fenwick said. “Three words that begin with e.”
Helen looked thoughtful. “Enormous, equipped, earl.”
Oh dear, indeed. Equipped was slang for rich.
“What?” Helen said, her gaze uncertain. “That’s three.”
“So it is,” Matilda replied. “Three very unusual words to call to mind at once. When you’ve washed your hands, you may eat your tart.”
Helen was off the chair and down the corridor to the washroom as Mr. Fenwick set the cat on the floor.
“I’ll work with her,” he said. “Provided she doesn’t reduce me to tears in the middle of the street. Thank you for the tart and the company.”
The thanks ought to go the other way, though Matilda couldn’t admit that, not yet. Maybe in two weeks, when she knew Mr. Fenwick had one boot out the door. He’d probably take Helen with him, and that thought gave Matilda a pang.
“I’m off to retrieve my jacket,” he said. “Make her say grace before she eats next time.”
“Ambitious, but a good plan. Good day, Mr. Fenwick.”
He leaned closer. “Ashton. The child’s off pretending to get her hands wet, Matilda.”
Matilda put a hand on his shoulder and kissed his cheek. “Ashton. Good day.”
His expression went from puzzled to pleased, and then he was sauntering up the steps, off to retrieve finery from one of the finest lodgings in the whole of London.
Surely Helen would be safe in his care, even if she accompanied him when he left London? Safer than she’d be popping in and out of Matilda’s laundry room window.
On that thought, Matilda sat with Helen while the child devoured her apple tart and cast about for words that began with f.
Fenwick, faraway, flirtation.
“Tell Mr. Fenwick you’re ready to leave,” Matilda said, stuffing Helen’s braids more neatly under the girl’s cap.
And don’t tell him that I wish, when he leaves London, he’d take me along too.
* * *
“If you wait much longer, it will be too late, Uncle.”
Stephen’s knee bounced, for all his warning came out in a languid drawl. The boy couldn’t sit still, couldn’t be patient, couldn’t allow his uncle’s common sense to prevail over high-handed impetuosity.
“My good fellow,” Charles, Earl of Drexel, replied, “we still have nearly a year to locate your step-mama. During that year, the funds you’re so anxious to inherit are in good hands and the warrant for her arrest remains valid.”
Drexel had had this discussion with Stephen in this same library at least six times a year for the past six years. Drexel’s hands were the ones holding Stephen’s fortune, and Drexel had no intention of letting go until the last possible instant.
“Hang the damned warrant,” Stephen said, popping to his feet. “Locating Step-mama has proved a fruitless endeavor.”
Unlike his late father, Stephen was damnably good-looking. Tall, blond, pleasant-featured with an athletic build. Drexel suspected his nephew had been a cuckoo, for poor Althorpe had been distinguished by a foul temper rather than a fair appearance.
“Besides,” Stephen went on, “I’d rather locate proof of Step-mama’s demise. That would save us the trouble of a trial. Damned Bow Street probably took Papa’s coin to help her hide.”
The longer Matilda hid, the longer Drexel could manage his late brother’s estate. Once she was declared dead, Stephen would become the sole heir, and his squandering of the family wealth would begin in earnest, while the earldom’s resources were already dwindling by the year.
“Why don’t you stop around Bow Street and have a word with the runners?” Drexel suggested. “The Season hasn’t truly started, and you surely have an hour or two to spare?”
Stephen paused before the window, sunlight turning his hair into a golden halo—an effect he had been exploiting since childhood.
“Uncle, you jest. Between my boot-maker, my haberdasher, my glove-maker, my tailor… my time is hardly my own. Besides, Bow Street is full of criminals.”
How could one young man be so greedy and so lazy? At twenty-four, Stephen knew everything and everybody and had a frivolous use for every groat. The wrong sort of woman fell all over herself to attract his notice, and he enthusiastically yielded it, along with half his quarterly allowance. Stephen already had two bastard daughters, of which he took scandalously little notice.
“I’ll send a note to the runners,” Drexel replied, “but with polite society thronging to London, now is hardly the time to revive old scandals. Chasing Matilda to ground—if she’s still alive—can wait until summer.”
Stephen took out a gold snuffbox with an odalisque painted on the lid, flipped it open with his fourth finger, and helped himself to a pinch. Filthy habit, no matter how elegantly the boy sniffed and postured.
“Justice delayed is justice denied, Uncle. Step-mama ought to have been hanged by the neck until dead six years ago. A murderess is a murderess.”
“And a scandal is a scandal. If you’ve any thought to taking a bride this year, you’ll let Matilda kick up her heels for another few months.”
Stephen snapped the snuffbox closed. “If Step-mama reached France, there’s no telling where she may be now. I want her found, and you will cease pressuring me to marry. I’m far too young to consider taking a wife.”
No, he wasn’t, though God pity the woman who had Stephen for a husband.
“I’ve had the ports watched closely for years,” Drexel said. “A woman traveling alone, much less a gently bred young woman with a very attractive figure, does not take ship without a number of men remarking it.”
“Step-mama wasn’t that pretty.” Stephen snorted a second pinch of snuff.
Matilda had been exquisite, poised between girlhood and womanhood, her youth and vivaciousness enough to warm any man’s blood—almost any man’s blood.
“You mustn’t let me keep you from your appointments,” Drexel said, rising from his desk. “I was young once and recall well the pleasures a bachelor enjoys in spring. Try not to overspend your allowance.”
Stephen’s signature charming smile appeared, as Drexel had known it would. “As to that, Uncle, I’ve had a few extraordinary expenses, played a bit too deep last week. Would a small advance be possible?”
“Stop around at Basingstoke’s tomorrow afternoon,” Drexel said. “He’s been warned.” Again. Drexel’s solicitors were nothing if not responsive.
“You are the best of uncles,” Stephen said, bowing with a flourish. “My thanks. Let me know if you hear anything from Bow Street.”
Drexel was not the best of uncles, but he was a competent accountant. Every penny of Stephen’s “small advances” came out of funds the boy stood to inherit. That would come as something of a shock, but Stephen was overdue for any shoc
k that might result in a sense of financial responsibility.
“If there’s any news to report regarding Matilda, I’ll alert you on the instant.”
Stephen was on his handsome way not two minutes later, ready to do his part for the trades and the game girls. To Drexel, the most puzzling aspect of Stephen’s behavior was why the same pleasures—if drunkenness, stupid wagers, and whores qualified as pleasures—year after year hadn’t bored the boy silly.
His father had certainly had no taste for diversion, though poor Althorpe had chosen a lovely second wife. Lovely, and more clever than anybody had realized, damn the luck.
Though Drexel had spoken the truth: Matilda was too pretty to take ship without some randy sailor noticing. She was also too lovely to hide in the shabbier neighborhoods of London without occasionally being spotted.
* * *
“I’m to give you this.” Hazelton passed a folded piece of foolscap across the dinner table. “My countess has been busy.”
Ashton did not want to take the piece of paper, but they were at Hazelton’s club at an hour when the dining room was full. Viscounts, earls, sons of dukes, and the like were consuming steak, port, and gossip on all sides.
“A busy woman should always hold a man’s notice,” Ashton said, unfolding the paper. A list of names marched down the page in an elegant, legible script, not a blot to be seen. “These are all females.”
“Maggie started with the ones to avoid,” Hazelton said. “The young ladies who claimed to have spent a year in Paris directly after their come outs, though nobody saw them there. The ones whose mamas play too deep, the ones whose sisters are on a perpetual visit to an aunt in Wales.”
The list had at least two dozen names on it. “My thanks. I’ll make it a point to seek these ladies out.”
Hazelton looked up sharply, then glanced about the room. “I did not give you that list so you might set one of them up as a mistress. That lot is to be left alone, Fenwick.”
Ashton’s companion was a shrewd man, and he’d doubtless omitted use of the Kilkenney title in these privileged preserves on purpose.
“You regard them as too decent to become mistresses,” Ashton said, “but not decent enough to be wives?”
“Exactly.”
Hazelton placed their order with the waiter, who was more punctiliously attired than if Cherbourne had dressed him.
“You make no sense, Hazelton,” Ashton said. “I’m not a paragon, that I should be inflicting myself on some maidenly innocent, and yet, I’m not exactly wicked, despite my dubious antecedents. Your list is the perfect place to start.”
“Don’t you dare, or my countess will disown me.”
The waiter reappeared, presenting a bottle of wine as if he were about to perform some sleight of hand involving the contents. Hazelton nodded, then sampled the contents and nodded again, after which the waiter poured precisely the same amount into each of two glasses, bowed, and withdrew.
“Tell your countess that you are not my nanny,” Ashton said. “And remind her that I am not some empty-headed debutante who needs my mama and papa choosing my spouse for me.”
Matilda, who was by no means empty-headed, had endured a rotten marriage thanks to the one person who ought to have been safeguarding her happiness. How many of the debutantes on offer were doomed to the same fate?
“Your situation is complicated,” Hazelton said. “Though you are wealthy. That doesn’t hurt.”
“Don’t delude yourself. Wealth matters inordinately.”
“A tasteful display of wealth matters,” Hazelton countered. “If you’re interested in setting up a mistress, I can make some recommendations.”
Good God, was nothing private in this bastion of masculine gentility? “Now you’re procuring for me? I assure you, in this regard, I’m capable of fending for myself.”
Though Ashton hadn’t done any fending in far too long. When a steward offered a lady a turn about the dance floor, so to speak, she knew exactly who and what she was getting, without any confusion on either side. When an earl made the same offer, all manner of aspirations developed on the lady’s part, none of them having to do with a mutually agreeable, temporary sharing of pleasure.
Once again the waiter intruded, this time bearing plates of thick steak and two bowls, each holding a baked potato from which the skin had been removed.
“I’d prefer my meat cooked,” Ashton said.
The waiter’s brows shot up, and he looked to Hazelton, as if Ashton might have accidently used a word that didn’t mean at all what Ashton thought it meant.
“You heard the man.” Hazelton twirled a languid hand. “Tell the chef to give that steak another turn.”
“A chef is involved,” Ashton said as the waiter strutted away, nose in the air. “That explains it. They can criticize plain English fare, intimidate, and pontificate, but I’ve yet to find one who can cook a satisfying meal. Where’s the butter?”
“One uses the gravy and a dash of salt.”
“One uses butter.” Helen knew that, for God’s sake, and teaching her the letter p—pointless, perishing, polite society—would have been a more engaging discussion than the topic Hazelton had raised.
“Butter is for bread, Fenwick.”
“None of which graces this table. I’ll not be taking a mistress.”
The Lord of Culinary Disapproval came back to the table, and Hazelton asked for both bread and butter, which request was met with yet another bow.
“A mistress might be a good idea,” Hazelton said. “The right woman could be a strategic ally, keeping you apprised of developments you’d otherwise learn of too late. Then too, if you chose somebody of, say, Mrs. Bellingham’s caliber, you might elevate your status in the eyes of your rivals.”
Ashton hadn’t taken so much as a bite of potato, and already his belly was sour. “You are telling me that if I pay the right woman for her favors, her cachet will improve my own, though she’s disgraced and I’m titled? And what sort of loyalty goes only to the highest bidder, Hazelton? What of friendship, or giving a fellow a chance on his own merits?”
“That’s all well and good on the cricket pitch,” Hazelton said, “but matchmaking in Mayfair is the biggest high-stakes gamble in the realm. Finding the right spouse is deadly serious business, and if you sentimentalize it, you’re sure to end up with the wrong wife.”
Before Ashton could retort, the waiter reappeared, a sizzling piece of charred meat on a platter before him. He deposited the meat on Ashton’s plate, bowed, and withdrew without comment.
Hazelton was trying not to smirk, while Ashton’s irritation was genuine.
“Somebody raised this animal from a calf, investing at least two years of pasture, fodder, and shelter, and then sent it off to market hoping for a fair price. The meat is wasted, along with the fodder and the two years, because I’ve offended the tyrant in the kitchen who calls himself a chef. Tell me why I should search for a wife in a place such as this, Hazelton. Why shouldn’t I choose a name at random from this list?”
Hazelton was saved from replying by the reappearance of the waiter, who put a dish of butter pats on the table, each imprinted with the shape of St. Edward’s crown.
“You forgot the bread,” Ashton said.
The waiter bowed. “My apologies.”
The damned cipher was making excuses to disrupt the meal, the better to collect gossip. Ashton knew this, the way he knew when his horse was about to pitch a fit out of sheer boredom.
“Shall you eat that?” Hazelton asked, gesturing with his fork at the ruined steak.
“I’ll take it home for my landlady’s cat,” Ashton said. “He’s fierce and none too particular about his sustenance.”
“While you survive on what?”
“Apple tarts,” Ashton said, “fresh from the oven and slathered in cream.” Matilda Bryce also set her table with honesty. If she didn’t approve of a man, she brandished a knife at him. She wouldn’t gossip about him behind his back or play gam
es with steak and bread.
“You look dyspeptic,” Hazelton said around a bite of rare steak. “Not like a man contemplating apple tarts.”
Ashton waited until the bread had been brought to the table before replying.
“I’m contemplating lists, Hazelton. Your countess, without much thought, came up with two dozen names of young ladies I’m to avoid. My name is doubtless appearing on lists all over Mayfair, or my title is, and without having met me, I’ll be deemed worth a look. I’m not a man with whom some young lady will have to rub along, or make children, I’m a title and a bank account. That is no way to find lasting happiness.”
Hazelton paused, knife in one hand, fork in the other. “You are a romantic. My sister suspected as much.”
“I’m human,” Ashton retorted, “and you are a hypocrite. You didn’t find your countess by making lists and eliminating the dubious contestants. You fell in love and snatched her up, and now you counsel me against letting my heart guide me similarly. Not well done of you.”
Hazelton moved his potato to his plate and swam a bite about in the meat juices. “Maggie has cousins as yet unmarried. I’ll introduce you to them, and Windhams generally marry for love. It’s not unheard of.”
As the rest of Hazelton’s steak disappeared, Ashton figured out what the master of discretion wasn’t saying.
A wealthy duke’s offspring married for love. An earl from the Borders whose pedigree was checkered probably wouldn’t have that luxury. Ashton needed an heir if his brother’s progeny weren’t to be deprived of much of the family wealth upon Ashton’s demise.
And to produce a legitimate heir, Ashton needed not merely a wife, but a countess.
He parted from Hazelton without further mention of difficult topics, and yet, on the walk back to Pastry Lane, when Ashton should have been thinking about prospective countesses, lists, and settlements, he was preoccupied with a soft kiss to his cheek, offered by a woman who trusted nobody, had no fortune, and kept many secrets.
He wanted more of her kisses, and not just to his cheek.
A problem, that, or a challenge, and Ashton Fenwick relished a challenge.
Ashton: Lord of Truth (Lonely Lords Book 13) Page 7