Mrs. Hood smiled across the room at Bobby. He grinned at her, but her expression when she turned back to Harry was as fierce as a broody hen’s.
“Either myself or Mr. Hood will stay with him every minute, Master Harry. Don’t you worry! No harm will come to that little golden head in this house, not as long as I’ve breath in my body!”
* * *
Harry rejoined his brother and Lord Belham in Richard’s study. He announced himself with an excellent joke and a charming apology for taking so long to see to poor Miss Drake and the young Lord Dunraven. He looked relaxed, carefree, and nonchalant.
“Helena has Miss Drake safely tucked up in the second-best guest chamber. No doubt I set far too madcap a pace from Oxford, but Lord Jervin has such a deuced bang-up carriage, and whenever the ostlers saw his crest they gave us the fastest prads.”
Harry poured himself a brandy and crossed the room to take a chair by the fire.
“But how on earth did you know, sir,” he said to Belham, “that I was escorting your runaway ward and his governess? You must have an excellent spy network.”
The marquess leaned back and stretched his long legs to the fire. He examined Harry between narrowed lashes.
“I do, as a matter of fact. But it was not good enough.”
Harry grinned with deliberate camaraderie, as if to be stalked across Britain by spies were an everyday occurrence.
“You mean we gave your man the slip?”
“Several times, I regret to say. The last report I had of you was that you were taking part in a prize fight in Gretna Green.”
Richard laughed aloud. “A prize fight? For pity’s sake! You are truly incorrigible, Harry.”
Harry kept his attention on Belham. He didn’t attempt to hide his surprise.
“Good God! Your man was there?”
Lord Belham smiled. “He didn’t witness the battle royal itself, I’m sad to say, but it was the subject of a penny sheet the next morning. You’re a famous man on the borders, Mr. Acton. The only Englishman ever to have defeated Braw Jamie, I understand—a rare ox of a man and irresistible in battle.”
Richard was now almost choking with laughter, but Harry let himself look a little petulant.
“It was drink defeated Braw Jamie. Pistols are my strength. I’m no more than average with my fives, so it was not a fame fairly won.”
Lord Belham idly turned the signet ring on his finger. “Yet it was a fame that gave me a very complete portrait of you, especially when added to prior descriptions gathered from your days at the Manse with Mr. and Mrs. MacEwen. It was not hard then to discover your identity from your acquaintance in London. You look very like your mother, Lady Acton.”
“My mother is well renowned in society, of course,” Harry said.
“As for the pistols, I would like to match you some day, sir. I’m not a bad shot myself.” The marquess glanced back up at Harry, his black eyes glittering with well-hidden emotion. “When I lost track of you in Liverpool, I feared you had taken Lord Dunraven to the Americas. How the devil did you disappear so completely after that?”
Harry grinned. “I believe I have heard some splendid doggerel to the point, my lord: ‘By you rich presents every hour are sent / To Father Thames, to Severn or to Trent.’ We came down the Grand Trunk to the Oxford Canal, Lord Belham, with a load of teapots. And had the best damned weather anyone could wish for. Far better than we’re having now, in fact. It looks remarkably as if it’s going to snow.”
Lord Belham betrayed one flash of anger, but he covered it instantly with an urbane lift of his brows.
“You came down the canals with a load of freight and took a small child with you?”
Harry kept his expression benign. “Didn’t you guess as much? When your man picked us up so quickly in Oxford, I was sure you’d been sniffing at our heels every step of the way. You seem to know everything else about me.”
“Lord Belham sought me out in London,” Richard said. “I told him you’d gone missing in France, though you were bound to report to me as soon as you came back.”
“Which is why I came here to Acton Mead,” the marquess said. “I did not know you had gone to Oxford.”
“Oh, really?” Harry offered the same bland smile. “When your man accosted us there? He had an eye missing, poor fellow, and wore a patch.”
Lord Belham set down his empty glass. The simple movement vibrated with power. He turned his piercing gaze again to Harry, and this time his annoyance was visible.
“I have no such man in my employ, sir, I assure you. I trust that my agents are discreet enough that you would not have seen any of them.”
Harry yawned, a little too obviously, perhaps.
“Then I must have been mistaken. It’s of no matter now, is it? Since little Lord Dunraven has safely arrived, you may get him into your clutches as soon as you like. But I wish you would tell me, sir, why his governess saw fit to flee with him to England to start with. She seems to think that you intend Bobby some harm.”
Lord Belham rose to his feet, his movements marked with an anger he could no longer hide.
“A notion she was given by the Dowager Countess of Dunraven, the child’s grandmother. I regret to say that the lady is of unstable mind. My only concern is to see the child safe.”
“As is mine, Lord Belham. How fortunate that we are in such close accord! Good night.”
Harry walked to the door.
“It’s early for you to retire, Harry,” Richard said.
“Indeed, sir!” Lord Belham said. “I had hoped to have a private word with you, Mr. Acton, about something quite different.”
Harry turned to face him. “Forgive me, Marquess! It’s been a long day. In fact, it’s been a long month. In the morning, perhaps?”
Not caring that he showed no sign of fatigue, Harry bowed and left the room.
Chapter 10
Helena dropped onto the chair next to the bed.
“To France? Oh, heavens, it’s a long story,” she said.
“It’s something distressing, isn’t it?” Prudence asked.
“Indeed, but I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. Last year my husband, Richard, uncovered an unpleasant racket in Paris.” An expression of real distress passed over Helena’s usually calm features. “It involved young English girls being sold to France for immoral purposes. Do you wish me to go on?”
“My father was a doctor,” Prudence said. “I know that such things happen.”
“Very well. A certain Madame Relet ran the house where the girls were taken. Richard found out about it when the British occupied Paris at the end of the Peninsular Campaign. We managed to uncover the perpetrator on this end and finally put a stop to his trade. In fact, the man was killed.”
“How was Harry involved?”
“He saved Richard’s life. Richard would have died, too, if Harry hadn’t been there—Harry’s a dead shot, you know—but there was nothing much more that my husband could do about Madame Relet. He had just come back to England after many years away, and he had a lot of responsibilities here. Not the least of which was me, I suppose. After our enemy was killed, Harry offered to go to Paris to do what he could to rescue the girls who were still there.”
“When was that?” Prudence asked.
This new information seemed absurdly out of place. What on earth could a Paris brothel have to do with coded messages being taken to Scotland?
“Harry left us at King’s Acton, my father-in-law’s place, in January. So he has been gone without word to his family for far too long, don’t you think?”
“Then all this was long before Bonaparte escaped from Elba?”
“Yes. Napoleon has now been welcomed into Paris, of course, where he’s taken control without opposition. Richard is most dreadfully afraid it’s going to mean war again very soon—and after all those years of death and anguish to bring about Bonaparte’s defeat the first time!”
Helena closed her eyes for a moment. Her face revealed bo
th dread and a deep, compassionate understanding of the suffering of war. Harry had said that Richard had been a soldier, hadn’t he? Was that what brought such pain to his wife’s lovely features?
Prudence gazed at her hands. Had she done the right thing with that coded message that Harry had brought from France? Had Admiral Rafter deciphered it?
Whatever it turned out to be, she could never tell Helena what her husband’s brother might have been involved in, because Helena so very plainly wouldn’t be able to face it.
* * *
Harry checked with Mrs. Hood that Prudence and Bobby were secure in their bedroom, before striding off to his own chamber. He paced for some time, thinking over the encounter in Richard’s study.
Acton Mead had proved to be as safe as the lion’s den. There was a certain grim irony in it. If Prudence had gone off to Wiltshire as she had planned, he could have arrived here alone and perhaps thrown the marquess off the scent. Now what the devil was he going to do?
Harry turned at the knock on his door. Richard stepped into the room. A faint crease of anxiety lay between his winged eyebrows.
“All right, Harry,” he said, leaning back against the door and folding his arms across his chest. “What the devil is going on?”
Harry faced him perfectly seriously. “What is going on, dear brother, is that your eminent guest stands to inherit a sizable estate upon the unhappy demise of the small Lord Dunraven. His grandmother, whom one would think had no motives at all except love for the child, was concerned enough to attempt to send Bobby into hiding.”
“Yes, I gathered all that. So the child was rushed away from Dunraven Castle with his governess, who then tried to flee with him into England. Belham told me all about it. But you must have been more than your usual lunatic self to take part in such a hare-brained scheme. The child is just five, I understand. How the devil do you justify keeping him from his legal guardian?”
“I thought I had just explained.”
Richard ran one hand back through his blond hair.
“You expect me to believe that the Marquess of Belham is prepared to commit infanticide in order to secure title to a damp keep in the Highlands and its paltry income? For God’s sake, Belham is one of the wealthiest men in the realm.”
Harry flung himself back onto his bed and gestured Richard into a chair opposite.
“Is he? Does that preclude him from wickedness or greed?”
Richard walked to the chair and dropped into it. He met Harry’s gaze without flinching.
“No, of course not. But that he is respected and trusted in both society and government would seem to weigh heavily in his favor. And I believe that he has no interest at all in Scotland, apart from his mother’s relatives. All of his concerns are based in London. Lord Belham does secret work that is vital in the struggle against Napoleon. Among other things, he has a talent for codes.”
“Well, good for him!”
“He also wants to talk privately to you about something. I suspect it’s not only concern for little Bobby that brings him to Acton Mead. Belham has been tracking you for weeks. Are you in possession of vital information of some kind?”
“Not that I know of!” Harry’s surprise turned to laughter.
“So what the devil were you doing in Scotland?”
“I have no idea. ‘Breathes there the man with soul so dead, / Who never to himself hath said, / This is my own, my native land!’ Of course, Scotland is Walter Scott’s native land, not mine. I have about as much interest in Argyle as you claim Lord Belham does.”
“You mean you won’t tell me?”
Harry sat up and stared at his brother. “I’m keeping nothing from you, Richard, I give you my solemn word. I truly have no idea. It would seem that I was shipwrecked in a storm—even though no ship was reported missing—and that I received a blow on the head in the disaster. I suffered a complete and grotesque amnesia. I didn’t even know my own name, damn it all, until I arrived in Oxford. I have no memories of France. I don’t even know why I went there in the first place.”
“Oh, dear God!” Richard seemed to lose himself in thought for a moment. “All right. One thing at a time. Lord Belham tells me you were found on a beach, half-drowned. Is that right?”
“The puissant marquess does have excellent information, doesn’t he? Yes, I was discovered as limp as sun-bleached seaweed by Miss Prudence Drake on a beach in Argyleshire. I was wearing a sailor’s jacket and trousers with my own boots and underwear, and was as vacant and sunny as a babe.”
“Do you think someone could have knocked you over the head somewhere else and dumped you there deliberately?”
“I thought of that, but Prudence heard me muttering in French, something about all being lost and abandoning ship. How would this hypothesis explain that?”
“It doesn’t, of course. Very well, forget that part for a moment. Let’s tackle what happened in France. You truly remember nothing?”
“All is as blank as a good footman’s face, dear Richard. It’s been damned unpleasant.”
“Then listen! You left England for Paris in January. I had reports that Madame Relet’s brothel burned to the ground about a month later. Do you think you had a hand in that?”
“A brothel?” Harry closed his eyes for a moment, searching for answers.
Richard grimaced. “Oh, for God’s sake! It’s why you went to France in the first place.” Quickly he gave Harry an account of the scheme involving the young English girls, which they had interrupted the previous autumn. “After Helena and I were reconciled, and our enemy met his death, you went to Paris to rescue some of the English girls still imprisoned in the maison. You must have had success, since one of them wrote to me in February and gave me a lurid and complete account of her adventures.”
“Someone wrote to you about me?”
“Little Penny from Cornwall was happily restored to her parents, thanks to the efforts of a dark-haired gentleman, who had managed to gain the trust of Madame Relet. He had very fine blue eyes and a way with him—or that’s how Penny was pleased to put it. The girls escaped during a planned diversion when said gentleman set fire to the place. He had carriages waiting, and passage was already arranged to England for those who wanted it. By some miracle no one was killed in the fire, but Madame Relet was ruined and has retired to Lyons. The story had your outrageous stamp on it from beginning to end. You truly don’t remember?”
Harry dropped his head onto his folded hands. He had dreamed of it. That confused jumble of scenes, echoing with broken snatches of rhyme and a far-off sound of screaming. There was a young fellow who kissed / Madame in her shift, but he missed . . . A blur of gaming tables, and empty wine bottles, and men shouting; a building burning fiercely, its timbers crashing down in sheets of flame; the shadowy faces of women.
He remembered the flames! The flames engulfing Madame Relet’s brothel in Paris as he hustled the young girls, some barely more than children, into the waiting carriages.
And with a dreadful, unwelcome lucidity, everything that had happened up to that moment came back—memories crisp, unwavering, and horrific to face, as each of the disjointed images fell into place. Heavy-handed dalliance in a room hung with red velvet. The grasping hands of a woman. Flirtation which sank rapidly into carnality. Black silk sheets on a huge bed reflected in a multitude of gilt-framed mirrors.
But it had been worth it for their sake—little Penny and the other girls, victims of a system as depraved and abhorrent as slavery. But, dear God, at what a price to himself!
“I am beginning to remember,” Harry said dryly to Richard at last. “There was tremendous confusion. I hadn’t intended the fire to get out of hand so quickly—all that cheap scent and drapery was splendidly flammable. I had been living there for a couple of weeks, laying out the escape plot for the girls.”
“For God’s sake, you lived there? How the devil did you manage to get the trust of Madame Relet? She had a deep suspicion of interfering Englishmen. She certainl
y saw right through me, even when I went there disguised with my hair dyed to pitch. I wasn’t allowed near her maison after that. It’s why I was so bloody ineffective in shutting the place down.”
Harry kept his head down, resting his forehead on both balled fists, amazed that his voice was quite clear and steady.
“I managed to get inside to start with by gambling and drinking deeply enough with some other men that I met—they knew me as a Mr. Grey. I expressed a suitably prurient interest in their nasty personal habits. So they took me with them to Madame Relet’s, where the innocent goods were displayed for our delectation.”
“Dear God, Harry!” Richard said.
Harry pressed his palms over his eyes. “Indeed! It was bad enough to know about in theory. But to see those children paraded before us like cattle! I wanted to be sick. Some of those poor little whores were younger than our own sisters. Yet unless I fornicated with one of the girls that night, Madame Relet would have become instantly suspicious and driven me from the place without a backward glance.”
Richard’s voice was very gentle. “I do understand, my dear fellow. That’s why I was never able to gain admittance again myself. So I came home to England, and did what I could with money and influence from this side of the Channel.”
“And for the girls that you saved you bought freedom from a fate worse than any of us can ever know, Richard.”
“But you lived there for long enough to put your entire scheme into action.” Dread was apparent in every word Richard spoke, but the gentleness did not leave his voice. “So how did you manage to allay Madame Relet’s suspicions? Can you tell me?”
Harry lifted his head. His very soul felt bleak, as drained of color as a winter sky. Richard, apparently unaware that he was holding his breath, looked haggard.
“Oh, that part was easy,” Harry replied. “I slept with her.”
Richard’s tension exploded as he leapt to his feet. “Oh, my God! You damned arrogant boy!”
Harry looked away from the open horror on his brother’s face.
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