The Duke
Page 17
She had heard through the gossip mill that he had laughed aloud for no apparent reason the other day in the House of Lords, right in the middle of a session. Then he had voted at the wrong teller’s booth, to the amusement of his peers, and had to stand up before the Woolsack and recast his nay for an aye.
Last week Mick Braden had come to visit her, but Robert had refused to let him in—an incident which had made her feel protected rather than put upon, to her own surprise.
There had been no repeat of their intimacy in the library, but everything between them had changed. Slowly but surely she knew that they both were lowering their masks, dissolving each other’s pretenses and becoming quite solid friends.
In addition to all this, she now had about seven hundred fifty pounds in the bank toward the three thousand she needed to spring Papa from the Fleet.
She snapped out of her musings, realizing her Parisian mantua maker had asked her a question. “How eez Madame Julia? So beautiful! I have not seen her of late.”
“Expecting again,” Bel murmured in a confidential tone.
The woman stopped and looked up, jaw dropping. “Mon Dieu! Is five children now?”
“Six—this one by Colonel Napier.”
The mantua maker muttered under her breath and bent her head, speaking around a pin. “You be careful, mademoiselle.”
“Oh, I will, believe me,” Bel vowed. Harriette had instructed her thoroughly on the proper use and insertion of the small sponge tied with a bobbin of thread, her sole defense against pregnancy, along with the intelligent use of a calendar.
The method had been developed on the Continent and was assured not to impede the full pleasure of both parties. In England this mode of contraception was even recommended by wise accoucheurs to wives in delicate health for whom pregnancy would have been dangerous. Condoms made from the innards of goats were also available, but Harriette said no self-respecting peer deigned to use one, which was just as well, because Bel found the whole notion disgusting. If all else failed, there were home remedies that she had been taught to concoct which could end a pregnancy—ergot, aloes, lead preparations.
“Les six enfants!” the Frenchwoman was mumbling. “How she keeps her figure, je ne sais pas.”
When the mantua maker had finished pinning the gown in a few places, Bel went back into the dressing room, gingerly took it off and changed back into her dashing military-inspired afternoon dress. Over a white muslin sheath, it had a dark blue broadcloth spencer with tight-fitting sleeves, brass buttons, and gold epaulettes.
She carefully made out her bank draft for the exorbitant ballgown, pleased with the knowledge that Robert had deposited another two hundred fifty pounds in her account-not, thank God, to pay her for what she had done to him, but simply because her clothing allowance was part of their agreement.
As she left the shop and walked out to her elegant black vis-à-vis, she thought with pride of the one hundred pounds she had already invested in the funds. It would grow slowly at the five percent interest rate, but at least it was begun. She did not forget to show her thanks to her protector, either, by buying him the occasional present, some small but thoughtful trinket. Before coming into the dress shop today, she had picked up an elegant silver hunt flask on which she had had the silversmith engrave a wry and risqué dedication:
To Robert with a kiss: That His Grace may wet his lips for future games of vingt-et-un.
From your Belinda, happily conquered.
June, 1814.
This little token would go along nicely with the case of fine French black-market brandy that his privateer brother, Lord Jack, had just sent him, she thought, as William, the young groom, opened the carriage door for her. She handed him her small package of sundry things she had bought in the shops and asked him to stow it in the boot.
As she happened to glance across the busy street, she saw Dolph Breckinridge sitting in his phaeton, smoking a cheroot and staring at her. He did not acknowledge her gaze with a tip of his hat or one of his unnerving smiles; he merely continued to stare, making no move to come closer. With the primal sensation of prey being stalked, she felt a chill run down her spine as she realized he had been sitting outside, watching her and her mantua maker through the shop window.
“We’d best get you home, miss,” William said, bristling as he, too, noticed Dolph, but Bel shook her head, steeling herself. She hadn’t run from the warden of the Fleet and she certainly wasn’t going to run from Dolph Breckinridge. She refused to go scurrying back to Knight House. Her errands weren’t finished yet.
“No, William. Take me to Harriette Wilson’s, please.” Robert’s latest deposit meant she owed Harriette another cheque for twenty percent. She hoped her mentor was not entertaining a client at the moment, for it had been a while since they’d had time to chat.
Dolph sat where he was and just watched her ride away, making no move to follow. She heaved an uneasy sigh of relief and looked forward again, rather weary from so many late nights out. She needed a respite from the social whirl, but tonight they were scheduled to attend a party after the outdoor concert in honor of the visiting Prussian war hero, General Blucher. She shrugged off her weariness. The thought of going anywhere with Robert filled her with happy excitement.
She gazed out the window as the prancing black geldings drew her vis-à-vis through the busy city streets. She held an expressionless look as people watched her pass, their stares following her carriage as though they knew what she was.
They probably did.
She stole a wary glance behind and saw Dolph following in his phaeton, though a delivery wagon and a barouche had slipped between them. Unnerved, she looked forward again. At length William brought the vis-à-vis to a smooth halt in front of Harriette’s house. Dolph stopped his vehicle a short distance down the street and continued watching her. William jumped down from the driver’s seat and went to the door to make her arrival known and to see if Harriette was free. Seeing one of the big, mean footmen answer the door, Bel felt safe enough to leave her carriage, though Dolph was not far off. She climbed out of the vis-à-vis and strode quickly to the door just as Harriette came out to greet her.
She didn’t point Dolph out because it was embarrassing to be the object of an unstable man’s obsession. Instead she forced a blithe smile as Harriette appeared in the doorway of her house. The petite queen of the demireps gasped, throwing aside her usual droll manner to exclaim in wild envy over Bel’s carriage and horses.
“You haven’t seen them?” Bel asked with a smile, crossing the pavement to her. “I thought I showed you already. Oh, I’m very fine, aren’t I?”
“La grande cortesane!” Harriette cried with a tinkling laugh, giving her a fond embrace. “Oh, you and your carriage are so gorgeous I can barely stand it. Now, come right in and have tea.”
Gladly Bel obeyed as Harriette tugged her inside.
“Ah, my little protégée, you have taken the Town by storm,” Harriette exclaimed a short while later as they settled cozily across from each other on the couch, teacups balanced on saucers in their laps. It was the same room where Robert had made his bold proposition weeks ago. “Hawkscliffe, no less! If I were closer to your age I’d have to hate you. As it is, I feel an almost motherly pride in your achievements—Hawkscliffe and La Belle Hamilton! The world talks of nothing else. So, tell me,” Harrietts said, slanting her a shrewd glance, “how is your duke?”
“He’s fine. I think he’s in better spirits generally than when I first went to him—”
“No, you little simpleton, I mean, how is he in bed?”
“Harrie!” Bel laughed, blushing crimson, for not even Harriette knew the truth about the nature of their liaison.
“High stickler like him, I figure he’s either a perfect bore in the sack or riddled with perversities. So, which is it?”
Flabbergasted, Bel opened her mouth to speak but no sound came out.
“Oh, come on, spill it, Bel! You know I won’t tell a soul.”
Harriette laughed gaily and leaned back against the couch. “Well, perhaps he really is a paragon.” She sighed and dropped her gaze musingly. “Ah, Bel. How cozy for you—he’s rich, powerful, handsome as the devil, very generous, and a good lover. I must confess, I am worried about you.”
“Why? You can see I’m in the perfect situation.”
“Too perfect.” Harriette shook her head. “I see how you gaze at him. It is all well and good to feel an attraction, even an attachment to one’s protector, but I beseech you for your own sake, do not forget the primary rule.”
They stared at each other.
Bel knew it by heart, of course: Never fall in love.
She looked into her tea. “Of course I won’t, Harrie.”
“Bel? Look at me, Bel. Are you sulking?”
“It’s just—how did that rule come into being, anyway?” she burst out. “Why can’t we?”
“You know why—because it forfeits the game! Whoever declares first loses. You know that, Bel. Look what happened to me.”
“What happened? You are the most sought-after woman in England—”
“I gave my whole heart to my beautiful, treacherous Ponsonby and he smashed it into a hundred pieces by returning to his wife. And now every other lover fills me with distaste—but I must continue to entertain clients because this is the only life I know. I am quite wretched, when one thinks of it.” Harriette looked at the fireplace and gave a melodramatic sigh. “I don’t want the same thing to happen to you. Be beautiful and gay and cruel, Bel. Never fall in love.”
“But Harriette,” she ventured, “Lord Blessington married Marguerite—”
“No, I will not hear of this,” Harriette snapped crossly. “For every Marguerite, there are a thousand of us who end up penniless hags in the gutter.”
“The gutter!”
“I am headed there, God knows, with all my duns.”
“Bosh, Harrie, you know full well you could marry Worcester in a trice.”
“Sweet foolish boy,” she sighed in regret. “I am too fond of him to accept, for I know such a mesalliance would not be in my little marquess’s best interest, or in mine.”
“He may be younger than you, but everyone knows that he loves you.”
“Love?” Harriette laid her hand on Bel’s cheek with an expression of sorrow. “No more of this love nonsense. My heart is already uneasy with having brought you into this accursed life. I don’t want to see it destroy you. I don’t want to see you make the same mistakes I made when I was fifteen and just starting out. Magnificent as he is, your Hawk must fly away one day. Blessington was not a rising power in Parliament when he married Marguerite.”
Bel said nothing, but studied the floor and stewed in rebellion.
“Bel?” Harriette prodded. “Do you think Marguerite’s lot is so marvelous now that she’s Lady Blessington? You’re wrong, if you do. None of the other Society women will ever accept her—they won’t even speak to her, though her behavior is faultless. If you lured Hawkscliffe into offering marriage, the scandal would wreck his career as a statesman. If you took that away from him, if you allowed him—especially him—to choose desire over duty, he would regret it and eventually come to despise you, and then where would you be?”
“I know what you say is true, but Hawkscliffe isn’t like everyone else. He’s so good and kind, so genuinely noble—”
“No more!” Harriette cried in exasperation, jumping up from the couch and clapping her hands over her ears. “You are going to destroy yourself. Do not get so attached to him. Take what you can get from the man, but be ready to leave him as soon as you detect any sign that he is growing bored.”
“But that is so cold—”
“That is reality, dear heart. I’m teaching you how to survive.”
Bel sighed in distress and reached to grasp her hand. “Don’t be angry with me, Harrie. I’m doing my best. You know I will always listen to your advice,” she lied merely to end the argument.
Harriette didn’t know everything, she thought in rebellion. Maybe the prime rule was wise under normal circumstances, but her situation with Hawkscliffe was different.
Harriette remained miffed until Bel opened her reticule and wrote out her draft for fifty pounds, twenty percent of Robert’s latest deposit. The cheque helped soothe her ruffled feathers. They talked of other things until Bel finally rose and bid her good-bye. By the time she returned to her vis-à-vis, she saw that Dolph had left. William reported no trouble from the baronet.
They headed back to Knight House. Several times she checked out the back window and searched the streets to make sure Dolph was not lurking somewhere nearby. Satisfied at last that she was rid of him for now, she propped her chin on her fist and stared out the carriage window, willing herself to believe that Harriette didn’t understand. Robert was not like the idle, self-centered cavaliers who swarmed around the Wilson sisters.
Suddenly she saw a pair of small familiar faces in the hustle and bustle about the corner of Regent and Beak Streets. Her orange-selling days rushed back to her as she recognized her eight-year-old little rapscallion friend, Tommy, plying his charm on the corner, sweeping the crossing for a gentleman in a top hat, while, to her horror, she saw his nine-year-old brother, Andrew, a step behind, picking the man’s pocket!
Bel hauled on the check string for all she was worth. William brought the vis-à-vis to an almost immediate halt. She didn’t wait for him to open the door for her, but leaped out of the carriage and marched over to the corner and seized an ear of each boy.
She began pulling them none too gently toward her carriage.
“Hey, lady! Let go of us!”
“It’s me, you little fools! Don’t you recognize me?”
“Miss Bel?” Tommy cried, gaping.
“What are you trying to do, get yourselves hanged? Get in the carriage! This instant!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Yes, Miss Bel.”
Paling and suddenly humbled, they scrambled into the vis-à-vis.
Glaring with anger while her heart pounded in dread, Bel wondered if anyone had seen Andrew’s theft. She entered the carriage and sat down across from the children. The awful smell of the filthy creatures filled the carriage and they were so underfed that both could fit easily in the one-person seat across from her.
She folded her arms over her chest and glowered at them. “I am shocked and appalled at you boys. Hand it over.” She put out her hand.
Andrew slunk down in his seat but produced a gold fob watch.
“You are a very naughty, wicked little boy,” she told him. “Do you have any idea what could happen if anyone saw you steal this?”
The pair exchanged a dismal look.
“That’s right,” she said sternly, “you would go to jail.”
“Do they feed you in jail, Miss Bel?” asked Andrew.
“Impertinence,” she exclaimed, barely masking the twist of sheer pity in her heart at his question. Her impulse was to give him a hug, but she had to scold, for it would be fatal to give them any reason to pursue their guilty course. Good Lord, she couldn’t just put them back out onto the street again.
Andrew hung his head. “We’re sorry, Miss Bel.”
“I know you are,” she said sternly. “Now, you are not going to steal anymore, but you’re not going to go hungry, either. Tommy, Andrew, I am taking you to a place where you will be cared for properly.”
“What place?” asked Andrew, instantly wary.
“A school.”
Tommy’s eyebrows lifted. “School?”
Bel nodded firmly at them, resolved. She could cancel her order for her next evening gown. These two children would have a roof over their heads, clean clothes on their backs, and food in their bellies even if she had to take her money out of the funds.
“I don’t care,” Bel replied.
“How come you don’t sell oranges no more?” Tommy piped up.
“Look at her fancy drags, Tom. She’s on the game,” said Andrew like any long-suffering elder brother.
Taken aback Bel gaped at the boy, then wanted to die of mortification. She snapped her mouth shut and looked away, reminding herself that after life in the flash house, these children had seen it all. Still, she was heartily glad they didn’t ask why it was all right for her to whore, but wrong for them to steal, for she had no idea how to answer. Guilt razed her conscience for having allowed herself to forget about the poor little wretches for more than a month, absorbed as she had been in her own problems.
She leaned out and directed William to take the Edgware Road out to Paddington. While teaching at Mrs. Hall’s she had heard about a charity school there privately funded by the Philanthropic Society. Surely she could persuade the headmaster to accept her homeless waifs.
When they arrived Bel grasped each boy’s hand to stop them from running off and marched them up to the squat brick school in determination.
She and her young charges were received with trepidation by the secretary. She asked to see the headmaster. The secretary agreed to keep an eye on the boys, who sat down obediently in the reception room, while she was shown into the headmaster’s office. She waited in fidgety impatience for a couple of minutes then looked up in cool, aloof composure when in walked a pinch-faced, hook-nosed little busybody of a man.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting, miss. I am Mr. Webb. How may I help you?” he intoned in nasal pomp.
“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Webb. I have come about two boys whom I would like to enroll as students in your school.”
The corners of his mouth turned down. “We are full near to capacity, I’m afraid. Were they born in this parish?”
Bel hesitated.
“You did bring their birth certificates, Miss—ah?”