“Since there are no modistes in this house, I am in no danger of being accused of extravagance.”
His expression cleared a little. “My apologies. Of course you would like to enjoy the fruits of your good fortune. I will arrange for Penelope to take you up to London in a few weeks.”
“Thank you. However, I would like some pin money now. I need to purchase a few items of a personal nature.”
As she expected, the word personal kept him from probing. He opened a drawer in his desk.
“I expect that twenty pounds should suffice,” she said.
“That is a lot of pins, Miss Kenwood.”
“I will use some of it to pay Mr. Peterson.”
“Mr. Peterson can send his bill to me.”
“I prefer he does not. I prefer that he remembers just who has engaged him. Nor do I think it right that I ask him to await my expectations.”
Vergil removed several notes from the drawer and placed them on top of the desk. He walked to her chair, no longer hiding his irritation. He towered above her and she barely managed not to cower.
“I am not accustomed to such blunt discussions of money, especially with women. Nor am I accustomed to questions that imply suspicion regarding my honesty and judgment in managing your estate, especially in front of a man with whom I have no acquaintance.”
He bent and grasped the arms of her chair. She shrank against its back, away from the sparks flashing in the eyes just inches from her face. “The fact is, Miss Kenwood, right now Uncle Vergil is thinking that his disrespectful ward could use a good spanking.”
Her mouth fell open in indignation. He whipped away and strode to the door.
As soon as he departed, she scooped up the notes and joined Mr. Peterson. She handed him ten pounds. “This is to pay you for your fee and expenses so far. I want you to take what is left and establish an account for me at a bank. Use your own name if necessary.”
“Surely Lord Laclere has an account on which drafts can be written.”
“I want my own, and I don’t want him to know about it. Write to me with the information once it is done. I also want you to find out about these offers to purchase the business partnerships.”
“If you insist, I will see what I can learn. Should I write to you here?”
“Yes. I don’t think the viscount intends to allow me to go anywhere for a very long while.” Probably not until she married or turned twenty-one.
She had no intention of doing the former, and refused to wait for the latter. If Mr. Peterson obtained the names of the parties interested in her partnerships, she might find a way to procure the funds necessary to go to Italy, despite the obstacle of Vergil Duclairc.
Vergil had barely cooled his temper after the surprise meeting with Mr. Peterson when another unexpected visitor arrived late that afternoon. Adrian Burchard, one of Vergil’s friends, entered Vergil’s study, mercifully distracting him from insistent, erotic images of taming Bianca Kenwood.
“It has been too long, Burchard,” Vergil said, welcoming him.
“If you spent more than a few days in London at a time, it would not have been so long. Where have you been keeping yourself?” Adrian’s dark, foreign-looking eyes revealed no expectation of an interesting answer.
Nor did he get one. Vergil gestured to the desk. “The family’s affairs occupy most of my time, I’m afraid.” The statement was true, but not the gesture and its implications. He spent no more time at Laclere Park than he did in London.
Of all his friends, Burchard was the most likely to become aware of the gaps. “I escape north frequently, to my own property there. I do not have to be a viscount then,” he added, to cover that eventuality. “It is good of you to ride down and save me from being one this afternoon.”
“I regret that this is not a social call. Let us walk outside, and I will explain.”
Curious, Vergil accompanied him out the drive. Adrian led him to the spot where another lane broke off to circle the property. There, in the shade of a tree, a carriage waited.
A graying man with a prominent hooked nose sat inside it.
Vergil pulled Adrian aside. “You could have warned me that you brought Wellington with you.”
The duke overheard. “I told him to bring you here without announcing my presence, and Burchard fulfills his missions to the letter,” he said as he climbed out of the carriage.
“Your Grace honors us with this visit.”
“This isn’t a visit, which is why I had Burchard bring you to me here. It is no insult to your sister, Laclere. I merely don’t have the time today for drawing room chats.” He gestured with his walking stick. “This appears a pleasant, shaded path. Let us take some exercise.”
Vergil fell into step, with Adrian alongside. Adrian had become a protégé of Wellington’s. The great man’s patronage had secured a seat in the House of Commons for the Earl of Dincaster’s third son.
The rhythmic fall of their boots beat out a few minutes of time. The duke did not even try to fill it with pleasantries.
“I have come to speak of a delicate matter,” he finally said. “There is no good way to broach it, so I will be blunt. I have come to ask you about your brother’s death. I am always curious when men accidentally inflict mortal pistol wounds on themselves. I am in a position to know that it is not an easy thing to do. I want to know if, in your brother’s case, it was not an accident, but suicide.”
Vergil gave Adrian a resentful look, only to have his friend subtly shake his head. The evidence that Adrian had not been disloyal or indiscreet checked the anger.
“Yes. Only the family and a few friends know.”
“I appreciate your confidence in my discretion as well, but receiving confirmation of my suspicions is hardly good news. Tell me, did you never think it odd that we had two prominent suicides in the same week? Your brother’s and Castlereagh’s.”
“My brother was prone to fits of deep melancholy. The Foreign Minister was deranged. It was a coincidence.”
“Laclere, I am not convinced it was a coincidence. Is there any chance that your brother was being blackmailed? Did you find any evidence of that? I ask because there is some indication that Castlereagh was.”
“I thought that suspicion had been laid to rest. By you.”
“Considering his position, I could hardly let it stand. The man was clearly delusional, so I gave it little credence. However, the last time I saw him he did say something to me about receiving a letter. He alluded to fears of exposure.”
Exposure. Vergil suspected where this was going and he did not want to tread that path. “As you said, he was delusional.”
Wellington paced five steps before he spoke again. “The letter writer claimed to have proof of certain criminal activity.”
Vergil stopped, forcing Adrian and Wellington to as well. “And so, after months of mulling it over, that detail led you to see some connection to my brother?”
“Laclere, hear him out,” Adrian said.
“I’ll be damned if I will.”
“I understand your anger, Laclere. I assure you that the only connection I saw was two suicides, one of which may have been the result of blackmail.” Wellington’s voice got stern. “I ask you again, do you have reason to think that your brother was being blackmailed too? Lest you be tempted to lie to protect his name, let me say that I think that others are being victimized now, that Lord Fairhall’s hunting accident in May was not what it seemed, and that we will see more ruin and death if we do not get to the bottom of this.”
The fury spun out of Vergil. It was not the Iron Duke’s severe tone that caused that. He had been carrying this secret for almost a year, wondering if the pattern and connections that he suspected were his own delusions.
“Yes, I think that Milton was being blackmailed. I think that is why he killed himself.”
“He left a letter. I found it in his papers, where he knew I would look after I took up the reins of the estate. It alluded to a betrayal, whether
his or another’s, I do not know. Mostly it spoke of the family, and how it would be better if he left the stage before we were ruined. I wanted to believe he meant the finances, which were in dire condition by then. However, I have wondered if his hand was forced.”
They had sat down on a fallen tree while he told his story. Wellington drew pictures in the dirt with his walking stick as he listened.
“Let us assume that it was blackmail in both cases. Was the goal their deaths?” Adrian asked.
“That is the question, isn’t it?” Wellington said.
“For my brother, it may have only been money. There would be no way for someone to know that he could not pay. Our financial condition was not obvious. He spent as if there were no problem.”
“Normally, one would assume that a blackmailer only wants to bleed his victim. However, the timing—we have had evidence that there are radicals trying to assassinate members of the government and House of Lords. How much easier, and safer, to affect things this way.”
“My brother was not prominent in the government.”
“He had an interest in politics.”
“A theoretical interest.”
“A radical theoretical interest. It may have brought him into contact with men who espouse violence, and who would entangle him, and, through him, others,” Wellington said. “He may have innocently communicated or associated with such men, only to have them use the connection against him later.”
The comment hung in the air, begging a response. The duke had neatly articulated Vergil’s own fears about the reasons for Milton’s death.
“Did you find letters to indicate a friendship between your brother and the Foreign Minister?” Wellington asked.
“I did not look for any.” It was a lie. A damn lie. He would not allow supposition to become fact so easily, however.
“Perhaps you should.”
“I have been pursuing other directions. I do not think there is any direct connection between these deaths, except perhaps the same blackmailer. I am more interested in finding that man than in learning the sins he discovered.”
“So that is why you have not been in London much, nor here,” Adrian said. “Have you made any progress?”
“A little.” Damn little, considering how much of his time and his life he had invested in the search.
“There is nothing that I can do in this, except observe men’s demeanors and wonder if they are worried,” Wellington said. “I have reason to think that several are. It is a diabolical notion, that someone is ferreting out secrets and using them to intimidate or extort your friends. Or worse, that men are being pressed so much that they take their own lives to escape.”
“And you, Burchard? What is your interest in this, or did you only come today to arrange a private meeting for His Grace?” Vergil asked.
Wellington answered as they all stood to make their way back to the hiding coach. “He is making some discreet enquiries for me regarding Lord Fairhall. Since you know him to be trustworthy, it is my hope that you will share anything that you learn with him so that we can resolve this quickly.”
“Of course.”
It was another bold lie. Adrian was a friend, and experienced in both enquiries and discretion, but Vergil had no intention of telling anyone what he learned if it would reflect badly on either Milton or the Duclairc family.
He suspected that the truth would, for all of the reasons he had carefully avoided discussing today.
chapter 5
Do you see what I mean?” Charlotte whispered.
She sat with Bianca in the drawing room while the house-party guests arrived.
Vergil stood by the mantel, chatting amiably with Fleur and her mother, Mrs. Monley. They had arrived just after midday, pulling up in a magnificent carriage.
“Nothing,” Charlotte muttered, shaking her head. “No . . . well, I do not know what. Vergil may as well be talking to me, and Fleur to her father.”
Sitting on Charlotte’s other side, Diane St. John, one of the countess’s dearest friends, patted Charlotte’s hand. Her soulful eyes showed amusement as she glanced to the mantel. “I would not worry for your brother or Miss Monley. Things are not always what they appear to be in such matters. They look perfect together, don’t they? A matched pair.”
They did look well matched. Fleur was all grace and elegance, tall and slender, alabaster-skinned and dark of hair. Ringlets falling from a little beribboned topknot framed her oval face, which possessed a rose of a mouth. She had struck Bianca as an intelligent, soft-spoken person whose deep brown eyes did not miss much.
Bianca experienced a vague disappointment that she could not instantly dislike Fleur, as well as an inexplicable pang of melancholy whenever she looked to the group by the hearth.
“I fear that Vergil is sacrificing himself for her fortune,” Charlotte said. “He looks happy to see her, but considering that her family left London eight weeks ago and they have been apart all that time . . .”
“You do not know that,” Mrs. St. John said. “Perhaps when he is not here or in London, he is visiting her sometimes.”
“I think not. He goes to his manor in Lancashire, mostly. He has to tell his agents and Pen and the governess who comes to stay with me where he can be found. If it were anyone but Vergil, one might suspect that he visits a woman up there. Someone he loves but cannot marry.”
Bianca snapped her head around and stared at Charlotte’s wistful expression. “That is a scandalous thing to suggest.”
“Such arrangements are very common, I have gathered. Pen has even suggested to me that I should expect my husband to form other friendships on occasion.”
Mrs. St. John lowered her lids. “I think that too many people have been very indiscreet when speaking around you, Charlotte.”
Bianca noted that Mrs. St. John did not say that Charlotte was wrong, or that her ignorance had led her to misinterpret Penelope’s instruction.
“It would explain a lot. That, for one thing.” Charlotte nodded her head toward the mantel. “The delay in announcing a formal engagement for another. With her beauty and portion, she does not have to wait for him. The odd thing is that Fleur does not seem to mind how things stand. It is her mother who grows impatient.”
Yes, the mother was growing impatient. The eyes of Mrs. Monley were the brightest pair by the fireplace. She followed her daughter’s conversation with a lovely smile and a cocked head that set the feather in her silk, corded turban at an inquisitive angle.
“The evening promises to be full. You should retire and rest,” a male voice said.
Bianca tore her attention from the mantel to see that Daniel St. John had joined them, and was addressing his wife. A handsome man who could quickly slip from passive coolness to intense attention, he now focused the latter on the subject of his interest.
“Daniel is very protective when I am in the family way,” Diane confided to them with a smile. “After two children, you know I am not very frail, my dear.”
“All the same, some quiet is in order.” He held out his hand to escort her.
Bianca did not miss the look that passed between them. Warmth, humor, and total absorption flowed in that fleeting connection. It was as if years of memories colored how they saw each other, and enriched even this commonplace exchange.
She glanced back to the mantel, and noticed how the demeanor that Vergil and Fleur displayed contrasted with this other couple’s. She comprehended Charlotte’s comment in new ways. There need be no overt demonstration to show passion and affection. In silent ways that involved no physical contact, a man and a woman could be intimately connected.
Diane St. John accepted her husband’s command and rose. “I suppose a short rest would be a good idea.” Side by side, saying nothing, but speaking volumes, they strolled from the drawing room.
Activity in the hall heralded another carriage.
“Finally the last.” Charlotte rose to her feet. “This must be Mrs. Gaston. She is one of Pen’s fri
ends and a great patroness of the arts. She stood by Pen when others forsook her after the separation. I think Pen invited her just for you, because of your singing.”
Bianca and Charlotte followed Penelope and Vergil out to meet the new guest.
Mrs. Gaston had come in a large coach. Pen advanced with outstretched hands of welcome. “So good of you to make time for our little party.”
Mrs. Gaston was a beautiful woman with a winning smile, high cheekbones, and coppery brown hair. She carried herself with prideful elegance, and wore a dress with an exotic pattern and a bonnet with extravagant feathers. “It is you who are good to give me a chance to escape the city for a few days. I fear, however, that I have committed a faux pas and must beg your indulgence for it.”
“A faux pas? You? Never.”
“Alas, yes. You see, I have brought a friend with me.”
“I wrote that your friends were welcome.”
“So you did. Normally I would have written to alert you all the same. This friend, however, arrived in town unexpectedly.”
A footman reached through the open door of the coach. A gloved hand and a sleeve en gigot emerged. An elaborately coifed and hatted dark head ducked as the friend in question bent to step down.
“Maria,” Pen cried, embracing the statuesque figure swathed in pale blue muslin. “No one said you were coming to visit this year. This is a wonderful surprise for me.”
The woman’s face was not beautiful, with its prominent features, but her manner possessed solid dignity and confidence. “It was an impetuous decision on my part, cara mia. Milan is horrible with heat, my musicians are acting like spoiled children, and the tenor for the next production is an arrogant young idiot who will not take direction. I simply left them all. Let them see how they fare without Catalani.”
“Oh, my, what fun,” Charlotte whispered to Bianca. “Do you know who that is?”
Bianca knew. For years the preeminent opera singer in England, Maria Catalani had returned to Italy six years ago and now managed an opera company in Milan.
What a wonderful twist of luck. With Mrs. Gaston and Catalani here, this house party promised to be vastly more interesting than she had expected.
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