Ianthe and the Fighting Foxes: The Fentons Book 4

by Alicia Cameron

  Wilbert Fenton raised an eyebrow at this. Audley grasped Fox's arm and the gaze they exchanged was tinged with desperation on the marquis' part. 'I'll go with Steadman,' said Fox. 'Take Audley up with you.'

  'But—' Ianthe looked down on him, Fox reached up and patted the arm that leant on the edge of the landau, giving her a warning look.

  'Later.'

  She nodded and glanced at Audley, who was standing stiffly beside him, as unlike himself as could be. The Richards were being handed into the other landau, but Sally turned back and crossed the two paces towards Audley. She handed him a scrap of linen.

  'I think you dropped this, marquis.'

  He took it and glanced at it indifferently, 'I don't think-' he said as he looked up.

  She was smiling at him, a little intimate smile. 'It is definitely yours,' she said, and turned back to take Mr Steadman's hand, and he aided her to the coach.

  On the drive to the village, Audley hardly heard Mr Fenton's talk with Ianthe. It was uttered in a low voice, lest the groom hear it. Audley and Lady Aurora sat opposite them, with their back to the groom, and Her Ladyship said eventually, as he gazed down dazedly at the handkerchief in his hand, 'What is that? Those are not your initials.'

  He fingered the three simply but elegantly achieved letters. M-N-M. He had not even asked himself yet what this could signify, was still seeing her smile and wondering how he could last for the next hour watching someone else court her. 'No,' he answered Her Ladyship dully.

  'What do they signify, marquis?'

  His thumb was touching the third letter as she asked, and suddenly his brain awoke and he gave a crack of laughter. Marquis. He thought. My Noble Marquis. It was a gift and an insult at the same time. He had had no thought that its purpose was to entice or snare him. He had seen the look in her eyes, that glance a little wicked. It was a parting gift, one that she thought would make him smile. A little jibe at his arrogance. It was, he thought, the perfect souvenir of a woman who had chided him and pricked at his rank and arrogance from the first.

  'Is it a jest, then?' asked Lady Aurora, gazing at him with rapt attention.

  He turned to face her, the beautiful wife of his friend who had become his friend too, and looked her full in the face. 'It is,' he said simply. 'A lovely, cruel jest.'

  She put a gloved hand on his arm. He put the handkerchief away, as though he was freeing himself of it, and looked off to one side, gazing at the hedgerows on the road, bursting with autumn fruits.

  The landaus pulled up at the inn, and ostlers came forward to attend, bowing low to the marquis before dealing with the horses. Audley had hardly noticed, but Miss Richards was behind one of these men, revealed by his lowered back. The marquis met her ironic eye.

  He frowned and walked over to her casually.

  'Am I supposed to thank you for the gift?' he said.

  'You understood!' she said delightedly, but with an eye to where her mother was looking. She turned a little away from him, so that they might not seem to be conversing, and began to shake out her pelisse. 'I wanted you to puzzle over it and then have to ask me.'

  'Where you would deliver my slap-down personally?' he said. 'And to think I let you ride my Sapphire!'

  'You did not mean to do so at all! You meant to terrify me!'

  'I did. But why the gift now?'

  'Oh, when I heard you were to go to London, I thought you might need something to add to the sweet flattery of society.'

  'My noble marquis,' he said. 'Yes, very complimentary and just what my rank demands.'

  She turned to him then and gave the smallest curtsy she could so as not to draw attention in the inn yard. 'Precisely,' she said and looked up at him to share the joke. He was arrested by her eyes again and then suddenly felt a slap on his shoulder which brought him to his senses.

  'Shall we go?' Fox said in a tone loud enough to include the whole party.

  'Lady Richards has business at the bootmakers,' announced Steadman. 'I shall take them, never fear.'

  Then Sally was gone, walking off from Audley with her mother and Steadman.

  'Ianthe has promised to show us the sights,' said Lady Aurora, and Fox laughed.

  'That will not take you long, I fear.'

  'You underestimate my wife's love of shopping,' said Wilbert Fenton dryly.

  'Well, I am only in need of silk pins,' Lady Aurora said lightly, 'but I always find village drapers amusing. There are sometimes bolts of fabric years old that are very original if used correctly. One never knows what treasures hide in back rooms.'

  'Which you will no doubt search every inch of,' sighed Mr Fenton.

  'Audley and I must pay a visit, briefly. We shall see you back at the inn at one o'clock or thereabouts.'

  'Yes, make your escape, gentlemen.' Fenton looked at a handsome clock tower and said, 'But you really underestimate my wife. I will do my poor best to return her on time.' He bowed and left them as Audley walked off, in the opposite direction to the bootmakers.

  After some minutes in which he hardly noticed the road, the marquis attempted a normal tone. ‘I’ve never asked you, Fox. What will you do about marriage? I have never seen you display much interest in the ladies, though you do your duty at balls.’

  Fox kicked a stone on his path. ‘I don’t know. What should I do? I’ve always had a vague idea I would be married, and I dance with ladies as you said. I suppose I want a peaceable wife but whenever I’ve met some gentle soul that attracts me somewhat, I freeze. I imagine bringing her home to Studham and I understand how cruel that would be. Could you do that to a wife?’

  ‘Sounds like we are both rather more considerate than I took us for.’ Audley looked askance at Fox for a moment. ‘But other kinds of female dalliance — you do not indulge? You do not have that reputation.’

  ‘I find it unsavoury,’ said Fox, with typical bluntness.

  The marquis shrugged at the implied insult. ‘You are not wrong, my friend. But old habits die hard.’

  ***

  When Audley and Fox made their way back to the inn an hour later it was to regard the interesting sight of Lady Aurora and Ianthe Eames being accosted by a tall, very broad shouldered individual in a long green coat that swept the ground. He seemed to be holding out his hands to Ianthe. She, to Fox's horror, took them.

  'That,' Audley informed Fox, 'Is the Comte d'Emillion-Orsay.' There was something sober in Audley's voice. 'The other important thing for you to know is, he is in love with Ianthe Eames.'

  Chapter Fifteen

  Antoine

  ‘Antoine!' Ianthe said, clasping his hands as if in a dream. The memories that she had been ruthlessly suppressing before this, memories of Paris, her papa, and another life entirely, now flooded back and her hands shook in his. Her eyes filled as she gazed up at him, the comte's own eyes nearly black and full of intensity. 'Antoine … how … why?'

  'To see you,' he answered simply.

  The marquis and Fox had arrived, and in a reprise of Fox's move earlier, Audley slapped a hand on the Frenchman's shoulder. 'My dear Comte!'

  The spell was broken, and Ianthe's hands were dropped.

  ***

  Re-entering the Hall at Studham, Lord Fox ignored the servants’ desire to take the ladies' bonnets and pelisses and jerked his head at Ianthe.

  'In here!' he said, heading for the study.

  'In a moment,' she answered flatly, untying her bonnet strings.

  'Now!' he thundered.

  Both of the Richards jerked their heads, not having heard that tone from him in a while. They exchanged worried glances while Ianthe (wearily, thought Lady Richards) followed him. Lady Richards made to go after them, feeling suddenly very protective of the weary Ianthe, but Sally held her back, whispering, 'Edward will not hurt her.'

  Ianthe entered the study slowly and looked for a second at Fox's furious back. She sighed. 'I think it will be better, my lord, if—'

  He spun on his heel to face her and covered the four paces towards her in a
second. He snatched at her bonnet. 'Why are you still wearing this thing?' He plucked it from her head, and she watched, detached, as 600 francs of French millinery flew over the back of a chair. 'Take off that…' his fingers made a gesture of disgust at the military frogging on her bronze pelisse, '…and sit down.'

  She did so, but with no answering spark of either amusement or anger, just the same weariness she had had since the encounter with the comte in the village.

  None of the things that had come to his lips on the journey home, none of the impudent and intrusive enquiries or demands that he had wished to use to wrest the truth from her could be uttered — they had been raised in his brain on the journey, only to be dismissed. He had no rights here, and he knew it, but he could not abide her pain. So, he said instead, in a low, harsh tone, 'Tell me!'

  She had been sitting with her discarded pelisse beside her and her eyes lowered to her lap, but at this she looked up at him for a second, holding his eye, but then in a quick movement, she had stood and run from the room. Fox, startled, took a step to follow, but instead sunk to the sofa and distractedly began to stroke her pelisse. Broodingly, he remained there for two minutes or more when the quick figure in the fawn striped day dress re-entered the room. She moved past him to the desk and let something spill from her hands. He joined her there, looking down at a dazzling array. A very long pearl necklace, the glint of diamond studs, some collar of large, flawless rubies. She threw down a torn scrap of paper on top. Tout ce que j'ai pu trouver encore, he read.

  He met her eyes, distant and troubled, but before he could speak, she said. 'My mother's jewels. I knew it must have been him. And now he's here.'

  'The comte? I don't understand.'

  'Neither do I. There are many things I do not understand about this.'

  'This comte held your mother's jewels for you?'

  'No, I had to sell them to pay debts before I left Paris.'

  'But this is a king's ransom!'

  'There were a great many debts. Recent gaming debts. I found a bureau drawer full of them. Debts of honour. Papa did nothing by half.' A rueful laugh shot through her, but he saw her tremble. She had always been so full of spirit, so strong, and it came to him then how much she had concealed. Her papa, whom she still could not mention without deep affection, had died only perhaps ten months ago. She had come to this god-forsaken house only to be met with patronising disdain from the other Foxes and with indifferent avoidance from him, while still in the midst of her grief. His one act of duty, to offer her a home, had included no compassion or care. He knew from her clothes what a fall in position she had taken when she moved here as poor relation, but the riches on his desk now underlined that fall. To her though, he could see them conjure up another, happier life with her papa. Fox frowned. 'But you recognised that the comte had sent these to you even though the note was not signed? How?'

  'He … I cannot say how. I knew.' She turned away, as though shaking something off, and then turned back to him once more. 'I wanted to tell you; I wanted your advice as to what to do about them. They are not mine anymore.'

  He picked up the silver locket. 'Could you not even let yourself keep this?'

  'I took out the lock of Mama's hair that it used to hold. But the diamond at the centre bought me one less vowel, one less creditor.'

  'It must,' he said, deeply ashamed that he had not asked her about any of this before, 'have been very difficult.'

  'As to the loss of fortune, I did not mind it. I have never really understood our finances, but in the pretence of being any number of things in many countries, we have not only lived in luxury. I have been a pastor's daughter, or a lawyer's, or a duke's. Latterly we settled into the Paris elite, it was true, but like a soldier I was always ready to move to a worse billet if necessary.'

  'It sounds an anxious, difficult life. No security for a young girl.'

  'But you are quite wrong. Security does not come from a house like this, or from a settled existence. Papa was my security.' She smiled reminiscently. 'Wherever he was, I was safe, even when guerrillos chased us in Portugal, or we escaped with only these jewels in Bordeaux, Papa was with me and I was safe and very happy.'

  Her breath caught in a sob and he grasped her hands and drew her to a seat.

  'Why did you talk to Mr Fenton about this?'

  'Because it is so strange. So many things about this.'

  'You mean why did he buy them back for you?'

  'Oh, I know why he did that. And I feel oppressed by it.'

  'Has he offered for you?'

  'The situation is much more complicated than that. I cannot speak of it; you would have to understand much of the background…'

  'Take as long as you need.'

  She looked up and met his eyes piteously. 'Edward, I am very confused and weary about all this. Above all else, Antoine has brought back another…' A tear fell and Fox grasped her hands more firmly. 'That hurts,' she complained, laughing and withdrawing her hands. 'Can we talk later? I do want you to know all, but right now I wish to lie down…'

  'Go,' he agreed. 'Forget everything and sleep. You need not think of it today.'

  'But there is a puzzle that—' Her voice was tense, weak, and it moved him to see her so.

  Fox was brisk. 'Whatever it is, you need not solve it today. You've told Fenton. I do not know him well, but I can see that he is not a man to be bested easily.'

  'Yes, Mr Fenton will know what is best,' Ianthe said, like a child.

  'My dear girl,' Fox said, his voice still harsh and low. He touched a tear on her cheek. 'Go now and rest.' Her eyes gave him a watery thank you, and she moved from him.

  As she left, Fox called for his horse to be saddled, and left the Hall a few minutes later briskly, putting on his curly brimmed beaver.

  ***

  Fox walked into the salon at Audley, where Lady Aurora sat with her husband, very much as though he owned it. He had not waited in the hall to be divested of his coat, and discarded it now, along with gloves, whip and hat on a chair and side table, saying, 'Hello again, sir. I find I have to have words with you and the marquis if I may.'

  'I can guess the cause. The mysterious comte. Has Ianthe agreed?'

  'She wishes to tell me all, but is too knocked about by this to be strong enough to explain it now. I thought it would be easier if you did, sir. I should tell you that I know of your former occupation.'

  Wilbert Fenton raised an ironic eyebrow and said lazily, 'I should not, myself, refer to it as an occupation, merely a few breaks in the monotony that was my existence — before the advent of my lady gave me life.' Here he smiled at his lovely wife who returned it warmly. Fenton looked up at Fox and sighed, but seemed to decide to tell all. 'My brother and I have a French grandmother, you know, and consequently a host of French relations and friends.'

  'Had you then, visited Paris before the Terror?'

  'I had spent some time in Paris and Versailles as a very young buck of seventeen and eighteen. It was very different from the Paris of today, it had seemed eternal then.' He sighed. 'Anyway, I suppose that is why I was approached to deliver a certain package after the Bastille was stormed.' He laughed. 'It turned out that even the nights I'd spent drinking with the riffraff of Europe in Parisian taverns proved helpful. The mode of speech of the great unwashed was something I could ape well if I needed to be part of the mob.' Back to his urbane self he added, 'I was never, I fear, of a heroic disposition.' He laughed at Fox's expression of admiration. 'I assure you, the biggest danger to my person was the day I had to don a lice-ridden shirt in order to escape a damn trap.' He laughed again. 'I still itch when I think of it.'

  'Such peril!' laughed his wife, but the look she cast him was not deceived.

  'Now,' said Fenton, eyeing Fox with interest, 'you wish to know about the comte?'

  'Ianthe says that there is a puzzle at the heart of d'Emillion-Orsay's sending back the jewels. What is his relation to her?'

  'As for that, it is for Ianthe to tell you. I ca
n say that the comte was in the royalist camp all the time I knew him. While outwardly working for Napoleon's Empire, he was able to pass information to us, sometimes through Eames, once to me directly. He had a flair for deception.'

  'He was never caught?'

  'Now that is something … I heard tell that he was missing for some months. I have sent an express to Paris to see if more is known of it and to investigate his affairs. The central puzzle that Ianthe faces is how the comte, who was rumoured to be in debt, could buy back her treasure.'

  'I see. Is not the most central puzzle why he should do so?' Lady Aurora laughed and Mr Fenton lifted an ironic eyebrow. Fox felt himself blush. 'Very well,' he said, 'and so how could he have done so? Can you think?'

  'He may be an agent for another. I do not know. But I do not believe this is to do with French foreign matters any longer, but with Ianthe's heart. He may even have mortgaged his soul to win her heart.'

  Surprisingly, Lady Aurora responded to this. 'There is no question that Ianthe was moved by the return of the jewels.' She looked at Fox directly, smiling gently. 'Men believe that women value jewels because they glitter and add to their beauty. But it is not that. Women value the memories that the precious stones contain, the sentiment that a man donates with even his simplest gift.' She looked down, and to Fox's amazement she lifted her silk-ruffled gown to show one delicate ankle. Fox stared. Entwined around was a slender gold chain from which a tiny gold locket hung. 'It was a gift from the young Mr Wilbert Fenton to me, many years ago. It is more precious to me than my diamond collar.' She lowered her skirt. 'Those jewels are Ianthe's past life. She told me the stories she heard about the grandmother who wore the pearls, her mother's rubies, the diamond studs her papa gave her for her hair. All precious memories.'

  'I knew Eames to be in the suds many times over the years,’ added Fenton, ‘but he never sold a stone to ease his problems.'

  Fox paced. 'Can you put a value on them, sir?'