Murder While I Smile

by Joan Smith

  “I asked if there were any new developments,” Luten said dampingly. It was hardly news to him that Prinney was courting Lady Hertford.

  “After our stunning triumphs, we feel confident of total victory. We’ve sent Wellington the reinforcements he needs to take care of it. He’ll soon have the Frenchies rooted out.”

  “Thank God for Wellington. A fine tactician.”

  “The opinion at the Horse Guards is that he depends too much on his thin red line, actually.”

  “Have the Horse Guards yet discovered that it works?”

  “He overlooks more modern methods, was my meaning.” Marchant so enjoyed being seen in public chatting to such an out and outer as Lord Luten that he soon slipped into indiscretion. “The rocket devised by Congreve, for instance.” He lowered his voice and drew Luten a little aside. “This is not for the common ear, but we have sent rockets to Canada to fight the Yankees.”

  “They were not very accurate when Haidalr Ali used them against us in India in the last century,” Luten said doubtfully.

  “True, we suffered heavy losses at Mysore, but the development of the rocket has come along nicely since then. They’re lighter now, cheaper. They’ve increased the range to over a mile and a half, nearly two miles. They’ll revolutionize war, only Wellington is too blind to see it. He’ll use the rockets if the Duke of York tells him to use them, however. York is the commander of the army. War is too important to leave to—”

  “To soldiers?” Luten asked with a derisive smile.

  “To an Irish upstart. If it weren’t for Wellington’s friendship with Castlereagh—but enough of that.”

  “Quite. Am I to understand we are sending rockets to the Peninsula?”

  Marchant looked about for listening spies. “That is the idea,” he allowed.

  “I see. We shan’t detain you. Lord Bathurst will not want to be kept waiting.”

  “Oh, as to that, the meeting ain’t for an hour yet.”

  After being away for the summer, Luten was eager to discover what new tricks Mouldy and Company, as the Whigs termed the Tories, were up to.

  “About these rockets,” he said. “Congreve will be the supplier?”

  “He is one of the suppliers who sent in a bid.”

  “Who are the others?”

  Marchant hesitated a moment before replying. “Only one other. Gresham, from the Gresham Armaments Works in Colchester.”

  “Which one—”

  Marchant stiffened up. “I’m not at liberty to say, milord. Actually it hasn’t been decided yet. That’s why we’re meeting this afternoon, to discuss it. Come along, Inwood. We must get busy on those notes for Lord Bathurst.” He glanced around to see if passersby were harkening to this important name.

  “Thank you very much, Prance,” Inwood said. “I look forward to this.” He lifted the book, then bowed to them all and left with Marchant.

  Luten was preoccupied as they continued their walk. Not, as Corinne suspected, with thoughts of the comtesse, but with the question of who would get the rocket contract. Logic decreed that it should go to Congreve, who had developed the device and was more familiar with it. But as the Tories were hastening the business along before the House resumed after the summer recess, there was a possibility of chicanery. The shares of Gresham could be bought for an old song today. If they got the lucrative contract, they would soar. He would pay a call on Grey or Grenville, the leading lights of the Whig party.

  When he drew out his watch, Corinne knew he was eager to leave. And as she was eager to be alone with him, she made no objection when he suggested they go home.

  Chapter Six

  When Coffen received his gilt-edged card to Carlton House, he was thrown into a pelter. He had never been there before. What did a fellow wear to say good day to the Prince Regent? How, precisely, did he word his greeting? What did he say if His Majesty wished to discuss art? Of course, the whole world and his brother knew Prinney was a lecher and a clown, so he would not be allowed to show the glee he was feeling when he casually mentioned the evening to his friends, but still there was some éclat in being invited to the prince’s own house to meet him.

  When in doubt, Coffen appealed to the omniscience of Corinne, who had been to Carlton House any number of times with deCoventry when he was alive. Coffen was jabbering incoherently when he called on her a moment later. She was in no good humor herself, after being summarily dumped on the doorstep by Luten with the excuse that he was going to Westminster. Black, her inestimable butler, had reported that Luten left his premises again within ten minutes. The suspicion in her mind was that he was even now ensconced in the Comtesse Chamaude’s cozy saloon, renewing past intimacies.

  She poured Coffen and herself a large glass of sherry and tried to calm him down.

  “It is not a coronation after all, Coffen, but an informal evening to look at some pictures. As to what you say, you admire them.”

  “What if I don’t like ‘em?”

  “You admire them, whether you like them or not. To do otherwise would cast aspersions on the prince’s taste. You accept one glass of wine—or maraschino, if that is the abomination he is serving—and sip it slowly. Carlton House is not the place to get foxed, or you’ll end up at the card table, where you will be fleeced by experts.”

  “I expect the monkey suit must come out of the cedar press? Mean to say, Almack’s insists on it.”

  “Very likely, though Yarrow called it an informal do. Brummell has allowed Prinney to switch to pantaloons, so perhaps—”

  Coffen’s eyes grew big as saucers. “You never mean Beau Brummell will be there?” This was nearly as frightening as meeting the prince.

  “He may not. There are rumors of a coolness developing between them.”

  “If Brummell is there, I’m done for,” Coffen said, gulping down the sherry. “Mean to say—I can praise a dashed picture as well as the next commoner, but if I have to look stylish, the jig is up.”

  “I’ll handle Beau, if he is there.”

  Brummell was susceptible to flattery. A mention that Coffen was eager for his opinion of the Poussin would go down well. Praise whatever cravat the Beau was sporting that evening, and the thing was done.

  “What is Prance wearing?” she asked. This arbiter elegantiarum would surely know the correct dress.

  “I’ll ask him. Let us go in your rig with a lozenge on the door tonight. Mean to say, Carlton House.” He took one last, loving look at the gilt-edge card that was already dog-eared from handling and trundled out the door.

  Corinne sat on alone, looking through the window across the street for the return of Luten’s carriage. She had not invited him for dinner, not thinking it necessary. After his absence, she assumed they would share an intimate dinner on his first evening home. This meant dining at his house, as Mrs. Ballard would sit with them at hers. At six-thirty she went abovestairs, where Mrs. Ballard, her companion-cum-dresser, assisted her into an elegant Italian crepe gown of Olympian blue and dressed her hair en corbeille.

  When she returned below, Black, her dark-visaged butler, said in his insinuating way, “His lordship’s carriage arrived home ten minutes ago, milady. I take the privilege of mentioning it since you’ve been keeping an eye out.”

  “Thank you, Black,” she said, and bit back the eager question. “Did he send a message?”

  Corinne always felt she ought to depress Black’s pretentions, but as he had been with her for as long as she had been in London and had helped her out of more than one scrape, she hardly knew how to go about it.

  “His lordship wasn’t in the carriage,” he added, peering to see the effect of this marvelous news.

  “Indeed?”

  “What it was about, I believe, is that picture Mr. Pattle bought. The coachman darted it across to Mr. Pattle’s place. I’ll keep an eye out and let you know as soon as his lordship returns—and in what rig,” he added with a piercing eye.

  As this was precisely what Corinne wanted to know, she said
only, “Thank you, Black,” in a falling voice, and went to join Mrs. Ballard for a glass of wine before dinner.

  Black, of course, knew all about Pattle’s purchase of the Poussin. It was not a case of a servant being invisible, and thus privy to all the family’s secrets. Black’s avocation was eavesdropping. He had the ears of a dog. Hearing conversation through an open doorway was obviously no challenge to a man who could hear a carriage a block away and could usually tell whose rig it was by the sound of the wheels and the trot of the team.

  How could he respond to his beloved’s unspoken needs if he didn’t know all her doings and the doings of her friends? He had seen her strained face when Lord Luten dropped her at the door that afternoon. It was not the way Lord Blackwell would have treated her after a longish absence! Lord Blackwell, the butler’s fantasy alter ego, would have swept her into his arms and not let go for a week.

  * * * *

  In Prance’s dressing room, knee breeches and silk stockings, commonly known as a monkey suit, had been agreed upon, but an argument ensued over the all-important arrangement of the cravat. Coffen felt such an evening called for the extravagance of the Oriental and was summarily overruled. When he was as fashionable as Prance’s valet could make him, they sat down to one of André’s gourmet dinners and a selection of vintage wines. Prance ate even less than usual. While he tenderly dissected a carrot, he ranted on about the comtesse and inevitably about dux bellorum.

  “ ‘Incipit Vita Nova,’ Pattle,” he said, gazing at the floral centerpiece as he lifted his wineglass. The small conservatory behind his house had been an inspiration. Fresh flowers without the tedium of buying them or having them sent from his estate. That little bouquet of Provence roses, still blooming in September, reminded him of Yvonne. French, and the petals with that same delicate texture and hue as her cheeks.

  “Eh? You know I don’t parlay the bongjaw.”

  “Latin, actually. An old Italian rubric. I feel a new life beginning. Ah, how clearly I see the folly of the old. I refer, of course, to the Rondeaux. How could I have been so supremely blind? You are all too kind to say the obvious: the Rondeaux are not poetry at all. They reek of lamp oil, dull evenings poring over dusty tomes.”

  “They ain’t that bad.”

  “Out of the mouths of babes! Are you sure you have read them?”

  “Of course I am. I read part of them all the way through. Page thirty-nine, if you want the exact page.”

  “Pas nécessaire. Dante should have been my inspiration—as I had not yet met her.”

  Coffen lifted a piece of mutton from the ragout and peered at it warily. “I always thought Dante was a him.”

  “The comtesse, I mean.” He lifted a carrot to his lips and set it down again, untasted. “Dante and Goethe. The latter to teach me that woman is the energy of poetry; Dante to guide my quill in the choice of phrases. I hear an echo of eternity in every line of Dante’s Vision.”

  “Is there any mustard?”

  “One does not put mustard on André’s ragout! It is seasoned with wine and herbs.”

  “Is that what ails it?” The footman handed him the mustard pot. “Thankee kindly.”

  Prance stared at the flowers and murmured, “ ‘Love with delight discourses in my mind.’ There is a phrase for you. ‘A light between truth and intellect.’ “

  “More like darkness between lies and flirting, if you’re talking about the comtesse. The woman’s a flirt, Prance. Shocking the way she was trying to steal Luten from Corinne. And she’s older than thirty, too. That’s why she keeps her saloon so dim.”

  “She’s thirty-three or four, perhaps.”

  “Eh? Nudging forty is what I meant.”

  “What has age to do with anything?”

  “It has for women. An old woman like that wouldn’t do your reputation any good, I can tell you. I spotted crow’s-feet at the corner of her eyes this afternoon when the light from the window struck her.”

  “I spotted black diamonds in her eyes. But we were speaking of my poetic failure. ‘Worldly renown is naught but a breath of wind.’ How did I have the effrontery to write a poem when I had not yet lived? I have lived a sham life, Pattle, harkening to every wind of fashion, thinking of the impression I was making, forsaking the true meaning of life.”

  “Money, you mean, or food?”

  Prance winced. “Love, dear boy. “The love that moves the sun and other stars.’ The sort of eternal love inspired by those marvelous Sturm und Drang eyes!”

  “You’re making a dashed fool of yourself, Reg. Tarsome fellow. We’ve all heard enough of them stern danged eyes. Too much.”

  Prance sniffed and finally got a small piece of carrot into his mouth. With no ladies to keep waiting, the gentlemen soon left off gourmandizing and decided against the taking of port. They went to call on Corinne immediately after dinner.

  “I thought Luten would be here, urging you not to attend the vernissage” Prance said, looking all around the saloon.

  She tidied her skirt with an air of unconcern. “No, he just returned,” she said.

  “Did he bring my picture?” Coffen asked. “I left it in his rig when you two went dashing off this afternoon.”

  “Black says he sent the picture home in his carriage earlier. It was taken to your place. Did the servants not bring it to you?”

  “They might have tried. I’ve been at Prance’s, getting cleaned up and fed.”

  Prance studied Corinne’s strained face and suspected there was trouble between the lovebirds. “Where has Luten been all this time?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, Reg. He just dropped me off and left. He said he had some things to do at Westminster after his long absence from town. I haven’t heard from him—but he returned in his hunting carriage,” she said, with dilating nostrils.

  “The devil you say!”

  “Don’t mean a thing,” Coffen said, and was ignored.

  It was well known that what Luten hunted in that particular unmarked carriage was women in whose company he did not wish to be recognized. As far as Corinne was concerned, it was confirmation that he had been with the comtesse.

  “We all know what it means. I’m sorry, Reg,” she added. “I know you fancy yourself in love with the comtesse.”

  “A double villainy!” Prance cried. He felt a strong jolt of some emotion composed of anger, pain, jealousy, sympathy for Corinne, and even joy. The drama of it appealed to the rogue in him. Betrayal, heartbreak, jealousy—and infinite possibilities for future scenes of high melodrama.

  “Daresay there’s some simple explanation,” Coffen said. “Shall we be off?”

  Chapter Seven

  The carriage drove at a good clip to Pall Mall and soon entered the Corinthian Portico of Carlton House, the prince’s London residence contrived by Henry Holland, James Wyatt, and John Nash. Inside, they dismounted and the groom removed their carriage. They were met at the door by the butler, flanked by a bevy of footmen in dark blue livery trimmed with gold lace, and led into the finest marble entrance hall in all of London. A plethora of porphyry columns soared ceilingward like trees in a forest. Etruscan griffins glowered from cornices.

  As they advanced, they caught a glimpse of marvelous rooms with magnificent cascades of crystal chandeliers, silver walls, and pier glasses throwing back another forest of columns. They were led down a circular double staircase, past bronze statues and assorted artworks to an apartment below.

  For this informal gathering they were directed to a room vaguely Corinthian in architecture, but overlaid with so much finery and such a surfeit of magnificence that its original character was lost in a blur of crimson and gilt. There were Gothic windows, spandreled ceilings with gold moldings. The room was overly hot and brighter than the outdoors at noonday.

  “One would think a gentleman of his fading looks would want a darker room,” Prance murmured.

  Corinne smiled demurely. “Like the comtesse, you mean?”

  “Cat! Save your ill temper for Lu
ten.”

  Of the three dozen people present, mostly gentlemen, half stood sipping wine and chatting while the other half strolled about, examining the new acquisitions on the walls. Coffen was relieved to see Beau Brummell was not present. Conning the throng, Corinne recognized Countess de Lieven, the wife of the Russian ambassador. The prince’s current favorite, the comely Lady Hertford, was magnificent in a magenta gown. The gentlemen were his card-playing friends and a clutch of Tory ministers, there to curry favor. It promised to be a very dull do. There was not a single handsome gentleman present of whom she could speak to Luten later.

  Lord Yarrow was with the prince, helping him praise the paintings. When Yarrow spotted Lady deCoventry’s party, he drew the prince’s attention to them and beckoned them forward to be presented.

  Coffen, who had never been close enough to touch the prince before, though he had occasionally glimpsed him in passing, gazed in awe at the corpulent figure stuffed into the blue satin jacket weighed down with ribbons and medals. His brown hair was elegantly barbered, but the luxuriance of his brown whiskers owed more to art than nature. The sagging royal neck might nestle in a fold of cravat, the gray eyes might water, but when the prince opened his mouth, all imperfections were forgiven.

  He was called the First Gentleman of Europe, and his reputation rode more on his graceful manners than his pudgy shoulders. “Lady deCoventry,” he said with a bow, and inquired politely for her brother-in-law, Lord deCoventry, and a few other relatives. Then he turned his charm on Coffen. “We are always pleased to meet a fellow admirer of the arts, Mr. Coffen,” he allowed with a gracious inclination of the head.

  Coffen bowed and murmured, “Your Majesty.”

  Prance stood, waiting to be recognized as the author of the Rondeaux. He had sent Prinney a copy.

  The prince just nodded to Prance and continued speaking to Coffen. “Yarrow tells me you have bought a Poussin. I am a secret admirer myself, but for me to be buying paintings by French artists at this time would be maladroit. I most reluctantly limited myself to the Dutch masters, for the nonce. You must come and tell me what you think of my latest acquisitions.”