With a grimace he shrugged out of it again. “He didn’t have much meat on his bones, did he?”
Diane frowned. “No.”
“Well, I suppose I’ll have to be attired more casually. I can only hope your prospective employees don’t all throw themselves at me and leave you without assistance.” Looking down, he began unbuttoning his waistcoat.
“What are you doing?”
“Putting on a fresh shirt,” he said, hanging his tan-colored waistcoat over one of the wardrobe’s doors and then pulling his one-sleeved shirt off over his head. “With the sleeves rolled up, I would presume.”
Memory touched her again, this one much more pleasant. Those same arms and shoulders, that fit, muscled abdomen, golden with firelight and settling over her in what had only a fortnight previously been her husband’s bed. Belatedly she turned half around to find a small pile of clean cravats.
“You aren’t being bashful, are you?” he drawled. “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”
“Precisely.” Pulling a cravat free, she intentionally walked over and draped it with the waistcoat. “And I’m afraid the detriments of your character far outweigh the benefits of your body.”
“You didn’t think that then.”
“I was stupid and lonely. Now I am neither. Get dressed. I want you out of my private rooms.”
“I’ll leave your rooms,” he agreed. “For now. But I’ll wager everything I own that I won’t be leaving your thoughts.”
Arrogant man. “No, both you and the rats in the cellar have my attention. Jenny will bring the ladies up in a moment. Be there waiting.”
With that she slipped out of the room and down the hallway to her own bedchamber. It was the largest one in Adam House and had been Frederick’s. Now it and its sturdy lock were hers.
For a minute she fought the urge to collapse on the bed. Instead she concentrated on easing the shake of her fingers as she paced to the window and back. Generally these days she was far beyond panic and hysterics. They had no place in her life any longer.
What Oliver had said made a surprising amount of sense. Not that silliness about them being even, but the bit about which of them presently deserved the blame for today’s fiasco. She’d demanded that he be involved in all this, had thoroughly sought about for weaknesses, and then had shot him when she’d found one that had also turned out to be hers. Her mind might still mistrust him keenly, but her body was rather more forgiving.
* * *
“You’re leaving?” Manderlin opened the lid of the nearest trunk and peered inside. Then he moved a step over to the next one and repeated the action. “And you’re taking that Prussian beer stein with you? I rather like that one myself.”
Oliver walked back into the morning room where most of the full crates and trunks had ended up to wait for transport. “I’ve decided not to renew my lease here,” he commented, closing the lids Jonathan had opened. “When I expire you may have the stein. For now, it’s going with me.” And so was the nude woman painted on the outside of the mug, along with her head—which lifted off when the thing was opened.
“Are you finally purchasing a place, then? I heard that Simwell House was going on the market.”
“I’m moving into one of the rooms above The Tantalus Club.”
“You’re bamming me.”
Oliver glanced at his friend as Jonathan seated himself on a crate of books destined for storage. “I nearly moved into the Society last year. And who can resist a club stocked with pretty chits?”
“I can’t decide if I should point out that the book at White’s has The Tantalus at eight-to-one odds to close within ten weeks of opening, or if I should fall on my knees and worship you.”
“I prefer the worship.”
“That’s an awfully close association with a near-certain failure, Oliver. Not the way you generally do business.”
“It’s not going to fail.”
“Hm.” The viscount slapped his hands on his thighs and stood again. “Purchase me luncheon at White’s and we’ll chat about your connection with Lady Cameron then, why don’t we? And don’t tell me you don’t gossip when you’ve been supplying the wags with half their fodder for years.”
“I’ll keep my own counsel, thank you very much.”
“That’s damned selfish of you, Oliver.” Jonathan strolled to the door, then stopped. After a brief hesitation, he closed it and turned around again. “I’ve known you for a long time, if you’ll recall. I know, for instance, that your uncle cut you off five years ago because you called him a horse’s ass. I know that—”
“No, I called him a poor excuse for a horse’s ass.” Oliver looked at his friend. Jonathan was sober, interested, and genuinely concerned. Over him. And however reticent he generally was to speak of his own situation, the viscount could be trusted—if the secrets had been Oliver’s to share. “What do you want to know, Jonathan?”
“You met Lady Cameron in Vienna, didn’t you?”
“Well, clearly I met her somewhere. Vienna does seem like the most likely place.”
“And now you’re moving into her house. Not a very subtle way to begin a scandal.”
Oliver forced a grin. “I’m not moving into her house. That place practically has steel walls separating it from the club. On the other hand, The Tantalus Club boasts two private apartments above its main dining and gaming rooms. I’m taking one of them. Perhaps both of them. I haven’t decided yet.” In fact, he just that moment had, but he wasn’t idiotic enough to announce it publicly before he did so to Diane. He had no wish to be shot again this month.
“When do I get a look at your new residence, then?”
Manderlin still had his doubts about what Oliver was up to with Diane Benchley. Considering how long they’d been friends and the sort of behavior Jonathan was used to from him, that wasn’t much of a surprise. “How about today?” he decided. Diane’s obsession with mystery was one thing, but mistrust from a good friend was quite another. And Oliver had few enough friends that he wasn’t willing to set this one aside because of that damned woman. “After I purchase you luncheon at White’s.”
“Well, that’s a generous offer. Thank you, Haybury.”
“Half-wit.”
Over the next two hours he learned that most of London seemed to know he’d been calling on Adam House almost daily and staying for hours at a time. Apparently everyone believed that he and Diane had a … connection, as Manderlin put it, and that Oliver was one of the reasons she’d chosen to open her club in London.
The speculation over the precise nature of The Tantalus Club was even more varied, but he refused to either add to or quell the flames. That was Diane’s grand experiment. Not his. He was there only to share his expertise and to add to the spectacle.
As he listened and continued to turn away or misdirect questions from Jonathan and everyone else in earshot of his table, it occurred to him that so far Diane was accomplishing exactly what she intended. The Tantalus Club would open in one week, and no one—none of the men, at least—wanted to speak of anything else.
“Good afternoon, my lord,” the senior Adam House groom greeted Oliver as he and Manderlin reached the front drive.
“Clark. How many men in residence today?”
The grizzled groom snorted. “More’n her ladyship likes, and that’s for damn certain. I’ve two new lads myself.” As he took Brash’s reins and stepped over to collect Manderlin’s Phoenix, he lowered his voice. “Just so you know, she hired on two large fellows this morning. From the docks, I think.”
Oliver nodded. Though he ordinarily didn’t make a habit of conversing with the help, Clark seemed to consider him an ally in a household where he was very much outnumbered. The information with which the groom supplied him had on occasion been quite useful.
The front door opened as he and Manderlin topped the steps. “Langtree,” Oliver said, moving forward.
The chit stepped up at the same time, blocking the doorway. “Lady Came
ron isn’t entertaining callers today,” she stated, with a pointed glance at the viscount.
“We’re not calling on her,” Oliver returned, reflecting that where he might have been willing to set an uncooperative butler on his arse, he wasn’t so certain he wished to do that to a butleress. “We’re viewing my new apartment.”
With a nod she shifted sideways. “The secondary staircase was finished just this morning. Be careful of the bannister; I’m not certain the varnish has set.”
He meant to ask Diane whether the new staircase at the very front of the house was for anyone wishing to reach the club’s upper rooms or if it had been installed solely to keep him out of the main part of the house. The question would have to wait until he didn’t have Manderlin tagging along, however; Oliver preferred to hear his landlord reply candidly—even when firearms were involved.
“I was in Adam House once eight or nine years ago,” Jonathan commented as they ascended the new staircase, set at ninety degrees from the main one. “I don’t recognize anything but the outside walls.”
Oliver nodded. “She’s been busy.” A walkway along the right ran to the upstairs gaming and sitting rooms, while two doors stood on the left-hand side of the landing. He pulled out the key Diane had very reluctantly given him yesterday and unlocked the right-hand door.
Everything still smelled of fresh construction, but he’d become more than accustomed to that particular scent over the past five weeks. The door opened into a large, comfortable sitting room, with two bedchambers, a library, and an office all branching off from a short hallway just beyond it.
“This is rather ingenious,” Jonathan commented as they walked the rooms. “Larger than the apartments at the Society by a good deal. What about servants?”
“The Adam House maids will clean, I’ve use of the club kitchen staff, and Langtree answers the door. I’m only bringing along Myles and Hubert, and they’ll reside in the attic.”
“If you weren’t Beelzebub himself, I would say you’d found a room in heaven, Haybury.”
Oliver grinned. “I doubt heaven has gaming tables and a billiards room or is populated solely by pretty chits.”
“What are you doing up here?”
At Diane’s sharp tone he turned around. She stood just inside his door, at her shoulder a pretty girl with ash-blond hair. “I’m showing Lord Manderlin my new residence,” he stated, squelching the abrupt feeling that he was back in university and the headmaster had just caught him with a chit in his rooms. “What are you doing here?”
A muscle in her jaw jumped. “You know how I dislike having surprises spoiled, Oliver,” she continued in a much more sensual voice, gliding forward.
Good God, he remembered that tone. His cock jumped, and he shifted. “Then you have nothing to fear. Manderlin is very nearly the soul of discretion.”
“Thank you for very nearly complimenting me,” Jonathan put in, his gaze shifting from the advancing Lady Cameron to the tall chit behind her. “I beg your pardon, but you’re Lady Camille Pryce, aren’t you? Does Fenton— Are you … working here?”
The chit paled. Before Oliver could get a closer look at her, Diane stepped between them. “You’ll have to join The Tantalus Club if you wish to find that out, Lord Manderlin.”
The viscount sketched a bow. “Yes, my lady. If I may say, what little I’ve seen of The Tantalus Club is very impressive.”
“Thank you, Lord Manderlin. When you have a moment, Oliver, the main room is finished. As long as you’re here, you and Lord Manderlin may have a closer look, if you wish.”
As soon as she and her companion left the room, closing the apartment door behind them, Oliver turned on Manderlin. “What were you stammering about? Who’s Camille Pryce?”
“You haven’t heard?” Jonathan returned, raising both eyebrows. “I know something you don’t? Hold a moment. I need to jot this down for my memoirs.”
Clearly he’d been spending too much time at Adam House, if he’d missed out on gossip about the aristocracy. “It’ll be your obituary if you don’t tell me.”
Manderlin eyed him. “You may be terrifying, but I’m going to take a stand here. You tell me what the devil is between you and Lady Cameron, and I’ll tell you who Camille Pryce is.”
Oliver snapped a curse. “I don’t like bargaining.”
“Yes, but you like not knowing things even less.”
For a long moment Oliver glared at the viscount. “Remind me why we’re friends?” he suggested finally.
“Because no one else tells you the truth about yourself,” Jonathan said easily. “And because I don’t pay attention to what other people say about you.”
Oliver took a breath. “Yes, well, likewise. We were acquainted in Vienna. It didn’t end well.”
Manderlin nodded. “So I surmised. Camille, Lady Camille Pryce, that is, was engaged to marry the Marquis of Fenton. She fled the church on their wedding day. No one’s seen her for weeks.”
“Apparently this is becoming a home for wayward chits.” It was all interesting, but something that he needed more time to contemplate. “Now let’s go see Lady Cameron’s gaming room, shall we?”
“I may trample you on the stairs to get there first.”
Oliver refrained from confessing that he’d already seen The Tantalus’s rooms, and on numerous occasions. Diane had managed to purchase his silence by threatening blackmail, but even more troubling was the way she’d managed to get him both to comply and even to willingly cooperate with her subterfuge.
It was past time he begin taking steps to see that if this little battle of wits ever became a full-out war, he would win. What he needed to do now was see how far he could raise the stakes before she felt compelled to risk her one hold card. Anything short of that, well—that left a very large field in which he could play. And he knew just the game.
What better way to prove to himself that Vienna had been nonsense, a moment of weakness, than to repeat the experiment? And to be sure that this time she would be the one fleeing like a so-called scalded dog. Because he didn’t leave a table until the game was finished. Not any longer. And not until he’d won.
Chapter Eight
“He recognized me,” Camille Pryce said, her hands gripped together over her chest. “I told you that would happen, my lady.”
Diane stopped halfway through the main gaming room. “It takes too long to say ‘main gaming room,’ doesn’t it? I should name it. Something that flows off the tongue. Every room, in fact. What do you think?”
The Earl of Montshire’s daughter wiped at her face. “I … Are you certain you know what ruin could fall upon you by employing me, Lady Cameron?”
“What I know, Camille, is that men will wish to see you here. They’ll likely make comments, and one or two of them may sneer or scowl. If they wish to pay twenty pounds a year to scowl, however, they are welcome to do so.”
“It’s not you they’ll be scowling at.”
“Oh? You think not?”
Camille’s too-pale cheeks darkened. “Well, perhaps they’ll frown at you as well, but only behind your back.”
“Where I shan’t see it, and where I shall care even less. The worst they can do is not come here. Once they’ve paid to walk through my doors, well, let them do what they will, as long as they spend their money. Which I shall use to pay you and the other ladies in my employ. What do you think of ‘the Persephone Room’? We’ll have to paint the names in all the doorways, but … oh, yes. I think that would be splendid.”
When Camille began to calm a little and join in with suggestions to call the other rooms after goddesses and mythological females as well, Diane shifted position. She wanted to know when Haybury and Manderlin entered the room.
She’d never expected to be reassuring young ladies or providing shelter for others of dubious background, but now that she’d begun it with Emily Portsman and Camille Pryce, it seemed … fitting. And even a little satisfying.
At three-and-twenty Diane was hardly of an a
ge to feel motherly toward them, but a sister—yes, she could do that. They weren’t her confidantes, because that was Jenny’s role. But some of them had been placed in the position of needing to work for her, and they’d been put there not through any true stupidity of their own devising. No, men were much better at being stupid and arrogant. In that she had no difficulty agreeing that they were superior.
“Good glory!”
Diane stifled a smile at Lord Manderlin’s exclamation. “Welcome to the Persephone Room,” she said, trying out the name and liking it. She would have to meet with Mr. Dunlevy again, to have him do a bit of scrollwork for the lettering, but he’d managed an additional staircase with fewer than a dozen curses. Painting a few words above doors should be simple in comparison.
“It doesn’t have enough tables,” Oliver stated.
He’d said that before, and she’d ignored him. This time, however, he’d brought along a witness. Oh, and then she’d invited the two of them into her parlor, damn it all. She cleared her throat. “We have additional tables. They can easily be brought in and set within minutes, if necessary.”
“I like it,” Manderlin commented before Oliver could say something disparaging. “I always hate squeezing past empty tables at the Navy. Far too cluttered.”
“Thank you for saying so, my lord.” This time she did smile. “I think I’ve found the balance between intimacy and practicality.”
“I’d love to see the rest of the rooms, if you’d indulge me, Lady Cameron.”
She dipped her head a little, to look at Manderlin from beneath her eyelashes. “Your friend is quite charming, Oliver.” Ah, men were so … transparent.
“Leave my f—”
“A lady must keep some mystery, however,” she interrupted. “I will send you an invitation for opening night. Will that suffice, Lord Manderlin?”
“I suppose it will have to. You’ve definitely whetted my curiosity.”
A Beginner's Guide to Rakes Page 9