Secrets of a Proper Countess

by Lecia Cornwall

  Bridges was old enough to be Miranda’s father, and therefore his own father too. He paused, tempted to turn and point that out, but caught Adam’s impatient stare and kept walking. Damn Bridges. His reputation for gambling and whoring was worse than his own. Miranda deserved better. Much better.

  The way the day was going, and in his present black mood, it was hard to keep playing the rake. He knew the wicked predilections of every gentleman in the room. They drank, gambled, and held the whores they bedded in higher esteem than the ladies they courted and married. He couldn’t imagine sweet, innocent, bright-eyed Miranda consigned to a husband of that ilk. He scanned the room and realized there wasn’t a man present to whom he’d willingly entrust his sister.

  Except Adam, of course, he thought as he approached his brother-in-law’s table. The Earl of Westlake was happily married to Phineas’s eldest sister Marianne. He gladly took a seat across the table from Adam’s sober, intelligent company.

  “God, Phin, how the hell do you do it? I couldn’t put up with these fools for five minutes,” Adam muttered, casting a sour look at the club’s denizens.

  Phineas signaled the waiter and grinned at Adam, still in character for the sake of anyone watching. He was a rogue and a rake, never serious, always seen with a drink in one hand, another man’s wife in the other. Or so he made it seem. Adam was one of the very few who knew differently.

  “I have made every man here think I am even more reprehensible than he is. They believe I am singularly focused on the pursuit of pleasure and that I care nothing for anything—or anyone—else. A gentleman in his cups will willingly babble his closest secrets if he thinks the man he’s talking to is a bigger fool than himself. I make them believe they’re talking to the greatest idiot in Christendom, and the information I want comes tumbling out.”

  The waiter proffered his whisky on a silver tray, and Phineas raised it to Adam before sipping. “The job is not without its pleasures, I assure you. Ladies adore rakes.”

  “Nor is the job without its torments, I imagine,” Adam said. “I have no doubt a lot of useless drivel comes streaming out along with those brilliant gems of information you collect.” He raised his glass in turn. “I applaud your gift for knowing the difference.”

  Phineas let his eyes roam the room, resting his gaze briefly on various faces as he spoke. “I know which gentleman is sleeping with his brother’s wife. I know who has been forced to sign away his family estates to pay his gambling debts. I know who is hiding a fortune in smuggled brandy under his great house by the sea. I know which lord wears a corset to hide his belly, pads his stockings and wears high heels to impress a mistress years too young for him.”

  He met Adam’s eyes. “And those are just the little secrets. I also know truly nasty things. I am the keeper of dozens of dangerous secrets that could ruin marriages, topple the government, or send seemingly upstanding lords into lifelong exile. I keep them all to myself, in case England ever has need of them.” He rubbed a hand across his brow, trying to smooth away the frown as he looked frankly at his brother-in-law.

  “Adam, I think it’s time I got out of this line of work, before I become what they all believe I am.”

  Adam raised his eyebrows. “You? You’re the most honorable dishonorable rogue I’ve ever met. The only one in fact.” He grinned, but Phineas didn’t return his smile. “Edmond wasn’t wrong about you, Phineas. My brother knew how clever you were when he recruited you for this work.”

  “He picked me up out of the gutter after I told Carrington to go to hell and came to London to kill myself with drink and whores. I damned near succeeded,” Phineas said bitterly.

  Adam folded his arms and leaned back with a smile. “You managed to make your own way in this unholy city for three years after Carrington cut off your allowance, solely by gaming and watching what other men did. Edmond saw it had become a very useful skill, and simply helped you make use of it for more noble purposes. You could have stopped once you came into your inheritance at twenty-five.”

  Phineas scowled at him. “We both know why I didn’t, Adam. If Edmond hadn’t been killed—”

  Adam held up his hand. “If Edmond had not been killed, then he would have married Marianne, I would have joined the navy, and we would not be having this conversation.”

  Phineas wished it was as easy for him to be glib about the lonely years he’d spent in the service of the crown. His work had been dangerous at times. For their own safety, he’d severed his ties to everyone he cared about, and he did not dare forge new ones. He glared at his brother-in-law and wondered yet again if serving his country in lonely secrecy was worth the cost.

  “My grandfather is in Town, but I suppose you know that. He’s brought Miranda for her debut Season. I haven’t seen Miranda in more than five years. Carrington believes everything he hears about me. Except for you, I am a stranger to my family. They don’t know this…life of mine is for show, for England. No one does. Even Marianne despairs of me, and we were once close friends as well as brother and sister.”

  “She still loves you,” Adam said. “My wife is unfailingly loyal. She will stand by you no matter how great the scandal.”

  Phineas tightened his hand around his glass, letting the cut crystal points bite into his palm. “Did you know she sends me letters, admonishing me for my behavior? They come with clippings from the scandal sheets, or segments from letters she’s received from friends here in Town that mention me. Never in a good way. She believes I am utterly without honor or control.”

  Adam’s expression hardened. “This isn’t the time, Blackwood.”

  Phineas frowned, knowing by Adam’s expression there was another mission afoot. He felt trapped, and he leaned forward, meeting his brother-in-law’s flat gaze, feeling desperation swell in his throat. “My grandfather is staying at Blackwood House, keeping an eye on me.”

  Adam nodded. “Yes, I know. Marianne and I are staying with your great-aunt Augusta until the renovations to our town house are completed. Jamie’s with us, and His Grace couldn’t countenance a small boy underfoot. Too noisy. Look, it may make things more challenging, but—”

  “Damned right it will,” Phineas interrupted. “Carrington is going to be watching everything I do. He’s already lecturing me like a child of five. He’s insisted I be on my best behavior while Miranda’s in Town, and that’s to be some months, I understand. My family’s presence is a perfect chance to affect my reform. No one would question it.” He shrugged. “I might even marry, retire to the country like you and Marianne.” He fleetingly thought of the eyes behind the mask in Evelyn Renshaw’s ballroom, gazing at him with such admiration. If only it had been real. Longing made his throat ache.

  “You can’t,” Adam sighed. “Your grandfather’s presence may make your job more difficult, but you’ll have to find a way around it.” He paused, glanced around the room, then back at Phineas. “Did Evelyn tell you anything last night?”

  Phineas’s gut tightened. “Evelyn Renshaw is the most upstanding lady in London. She isn’t going to let me seduce her, and she isn’t going to betray her husband after a few cupfuls of strong punch.”

  Adam leaned in, his voice low. “We’re not asking her to betray him. We just want to know where he is. We can find out what he’s up to ourselves. We know he’s not at his estate in Wiltshire, or at her manor in Dorset, but he must be somewhere.”

  “What does it matter?” Phineas asked bitterly. “What’s one more smuggler? There’s not a lord in England who doesn’t drink contraband French brandy, or a lady lacking a gown of French silk and lace. Every footman, coach driver, and whore in London sips gin smuggled from France. There’s no way to stop it.” To prove his point he beckoned the waiter. “French brandy, please.” The man nodded without a word and went to fetch it.

  Adam ignored the demonstration. “Philip Renshaw is involved in something much more dangerous, much more important, than smuggling a few casks of spirits. Did you find anything when you searched his stud
y?”

  Phineas sipped the brandy when it arrived, swirling the acrid liquid in his mouth before swallowing it, feeling it burn his throat and warm his belly. He’d take mediocre whisky over the finest brandy any day. He fixed Adam with a cold stare. “Unfortunately not. There was a party going on, if you’ll recall, and there was a woman standing right in front of the door that led to his office.”

  Adam’s eyes sharpened. “What woman?”

  Phineas looked into the dregs of his brandy, seeing her masked face, her painted mouth. “Damnedest thing. I have no idea who she was.”

  Adam laughed out loud, causing several heads to turn. Phineas grinned at them out of habit, but Adam ignored them and folded his arms over his chest. “A woman in London you don’t know, Phin? I didn’t think it was possible.”

  Phineas let the sultry memory of the mysterious woman nudge the corners of his lips back into a grin. “I got to know her better before the evening was out.”

  “What was her name?”

  Yasmina. A sound like a sigh, as sweet as the exotic drift of her perfume. Except it wasn’t her real name. He shifted in his seat.

  “We didn’t get to that.”

  “What was she doing there?” Adam asked, his voice betraying his anxiety, his brows drawing together. It made Phineas nervous. Prickles of warning crept up his back.

  What was she doing there?

  “Relax, Adam. It was a party. She was a guest like anyone else.”

  “Except you didn’t know her,” Adam snapped, as if that had been the worst sin Phineas had committed in the dark.

  “Not by name. It was a masked ball, after all, but I’d know that mouth if I saw her again.” He grinned, but Adam ignored the joke.

  “The biblical sense notwithstanding, we still have need of information. Now more than ever.”

  “Why? It didn’t seem all that important last time we spoke.”

  “Things have changed.” The room was quieter now. Several tables had cleared out, their occupants off to an afternoon at the track or for luncheon at yet another fashionable club. Private conversations were easier to overhear.

  “Look, we can’t discuss this here,” Adam muttered. “I’m late to meet Marianne and Jamie at Hyde Park. Ride with me.” He made it an order, not an invitation, and didn’t speak again until the Westlake rig swung out into the chaos of London’s midday traffic.

  “How was your voyage?” Phineas asked. Adam owned a fleet of merchant ships, an unusual thing for an earl, but his brother-in-law was not a typical peer. Several of his ships were used to gather information about Napoleon for the English crown.

  “I saw Thomas Moore at Smuggler’s City.” That instantly bought Phineas’s full attention. Napoleon had set up a safe and welcoming haven for English smugglers at Gravelines. In exchange for gold, English fishermen and sailors could buy all the contraband they could carry. Napoleon used the gold to pay his vast armies, and the smugglers provided the enemy with a great deal of useful information while drunk on cheap French wine.

  “Moore, at Gravelines?” Phineas asked. “I thought he was running a booming business smuggling French prisoners of war out of England.”

  “Yes, he’s making a fortune ‘rescuing’ officers who give their parole and promise to remain in England for the duration of the war. Probably even has a French priest to absolve them of their vow on the trip across the Channel. We have reports that most of the former prisoners run straight to Napoleon the moment their boots touch French soil, to report on what they’ve seen. It could do a lot of damage. All thanks to Moore.”

  “Is that what’s so important?” Phineas asked. “Some French officer with a tale to tell? What’s Philip Renshaw got to do with that?”

  “It’s much bigger than that. Moore was only too happy to sell the information to me. He’d sell his own mother for a shiny ha’penny. Do you remember when King Louis of France arrived here, looking for asylum until Napoleon could be defeated?”

  Phineas nodded.

  “When he landed, two English lords offered His Highness their hospitality until the government decided what to do with him. One was the Marquess of Buckingham, and the other was Lord Philip Renshaw. Philip went to great expense to lure the king to his home. His mother was a French noblewoman, a cousin of the royal family, and he expected Louis to honor the connection. He did not. Instead, Louis walked right past Philip’s magnificent coach and got into Buckingham’s plainer one and went to his estates at Stowe. Philip hasn’t forgiven the slight, and according to Moore, he’s made a deal with Napoleon. He has promised to deliver King Louis to him, Phin.”

  Phineas’s brows rose. “If Renshaw plans to kidnap him, surely a few additional guards could handle the threat.

  Adam shook his head. “It’s not just Renshaw. He could never manage this alone. Tom Moore says there’s other English lords involved, some of England’s most important men.”

  “Have we got names?” Phineas asked.

  “Moore didn’t say who they were. I don’t think he knows. This goes higher than he can reach. He’s worried, though. Such a plot would give the authorities a greater reason to clamp down on smuggling. Moore’s afraid his business may suffer because of this.” Adam smiled grimly. “That, and he says he’s a patriot.”

  “If Louis were captured, paraded through the streets of Paris to the guillotine, it would put England in a deadly position,” Phineas predicted. “We’d look like fools. The French royalists and our allies would lose faith in us, some might decide to join Napoleon against us. England could lose the war, end up as part of Bonaparte’s empire. Even if Moore isn’t willing to become a French citizen, it appears Philip Renshaw might be.”

  “You see why we need you to play the rogue awhile longer. Are you sure there’s no chance of charming Evelyn into revealing her husband’s whereabouts? It would be the fastest, easiest way to—”

  “Evelyn Renshaw is a model of virtue.”

  Adam grinned. “Come now, I have complete faith in your abilities. You’ve never failed before.”

  “Evelyn Renshaw has no interest in forbidden trysts. Not even the faintest whiff of impropriety touches her. When asked directly, she simply says Philip is away, and changes the topic of conversation. She is clever, and no amount of hinting or trickery can get anything out of her. She is immune to my charms, Adam.”

  “And the other lady? The one who stopped you from searching the study?”

  “She didn’t stop me exactly. She was simply standing in my way.” Phineas couldn’t resist a grin. “She wanted to play, so we played. And as they say, all work and no—”

  “A dangerous game, wouldn’t you say?”

  “There was nothing sinister about her,” Phineas said, but uncertainty blew a cold breath down the back of his neck. Why had she been standing in front of that door, staring at him? “Probably just bored with her husband, wanting a little adventure,” he muttered.

  “Need I remind you there’s nothing sinister about you either, to most people? You appear to be a pleasant, harmless chap. But you are most definitely sinister, aren’t you?”

  The coach pulled to a stop in the green confines of Hyde Park, and Adam opened the door. “Marianne and Jamie will likely be at the pond,” he said, climbing down.

  Phineas followed him across the grass.

  Sinister, was she?

  He scanned the park, looking at every lady in sight, dismissing each one. None of them were Yasmina. He’d know that mouth, those eyes, anywhere.

  Phineas prided himself on knowing people, especially women. He knew what pleased them. He imagined Yasmina’s head thrown back in the dark, the glint of starlight catching the white column of her throat as he pleasured her. His mouth watered, remembering the taste of her skin.

  He also knew how to lie to a woman’s face when he had to, but in bed, when he made love to them, his bedmates got the real Phineas Archer. It was the only time he was truly honest, truly himself. He had given Yasmina his best.

  His gut t
ightened. Had it all been a deception on her part? If so, she was very skilled at the game. His game.

  He scanned a carriage filled with ladies as it passed, and quickly looked away. She wasn’t among them. Not that it mattered. She couldn’t hide for long. It would take him mere hours, a few days at most, to find her.

  And when he did, he was going to make love to her with the lights on.

  Chapter 6

  “May I suggest something in pink today, perhaps with a lovely bit of décolletage?” the modiste asked, but as usual the young widow shook her head.

  “No, make the gowns in pale gray or dark blue, please, with a modest cut,” she ordered firmly.

  The modiste’s smile faded. In her opinion, the young Countess of Ashdown was too pretty to spend the rest of her life dressed in half-mourning. Behind her widow’s weeds and a hideously unbecoming coiffure, she had a lovely figure and a natural grace. Her pale skin, her auburn hair, those large, luminous eyes—they were all glorious, and such features deserved to be shown off. In Madame’s opinion, her client needed pretty clothes to attract a new husband, or at least a lover, someone rich enough to dress a mistress in the latest, most expensive styles.

  Madame was not purely mercenary. She was also a Frenchwoman, with a romantic French soul. The widow had a delightful secret that Madame treasured. While the countess might insist upon wearing the most grim and unflattering gowns on top, she wore delightfully shocking undergarments beneath. The lady liked silk, lace, and pretty satin ribbons next to her skin where no one could see.

  The modiste regarded the gray serge her client was rubbing between her fingers and pursed her lips, knowing a dreadful mistake when she saw one.

  “Consider this blue moiré silk instead, Countess. It will turn the color of your hair to flame, and enhance your eyes.” She draped a rustling length of iridescent fabric over the lady’s shoulder. “Voilà! C’est magnifique!”