The Bride Hunt

by Jane Feather

  However, if the horses went to pasture at the country house at Romsey, they would be much cheaper to keep. Then she could rent out the mews at Manchester Square. Mews courts were being turned into garages for the new motor vehicles all over fashionable London; it would be an income, of sorts, that would contribute to Cobham’s pension. And if he took one of the cottages rent-free on the estate at Romsey, then he could live comfortably on half his London wage, which would probably be the equivalent of the rent on the mews. He could have a very comfortable retirement and the family finances would benefit.

  “Had you thought where you would go, Cobham?” she asked.

  “The wife’s a hankering for the old village,” he said, slowing the horses across a slippery patch of cobbles. “Spent enough time in London. Misses her sister.”

  Prudence nodded. Cobham’s wife came from Romsey. It was how Cobham, a Londoner to his bootstraps, had come to work for the Duncan family at the Manor.

  “There’s a vacant tenant cottage on the road to Lyndhurst, if you’d be interested. Of course there’d be no rent to pay. It would be part of your pension, if that was agreeable.”

  There was silence while the coachman ruminated into his whiskers. After a minute he said, “Reckon so, Miss Prue. I’ll talk to the wife.”

  “Good. Let me know what you decide and we’ll settle the details.” Prudence sat back with the sense of a job well done.

  The barouche turned off the wide thoroughfare of Pall Mall and onto a quiet cul-de-sac of tall, narrow houses.

  “Number Seven, Miss Prue.” Cobham reined in his horses and looked back at his passenger.

  “So it would seem,” Prudence said, examining the Georgian house with its telltale fanlight above a shiny black front door, its black railings and white steps, the double frontage with the two bow windows. This was no private supper club. This, unless she was much mistaken, was the residence of Sir Gideon Malvern, KC. And once again he’d sprung a surprise that threw her off balance.

  Cobham let down the step and opened the door for her. “Thank you, Cobham. Would you come back for me at eight, please?”

  “Of course, Miss Prue.” He closed the carriage door and put up the step again. “Since it’s only an hour, I’ll have a tankard in the Black Dog, just over on Jermyn Street, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Of course,” she said, heading to the front door. “In an hour.” She took up the shiny door knocker in the shape of a lion’s head and rapped it smartly.

  It was opened immediately by the barrister, still in morning dress, as if he’d just this minute returned from his chambers. Prudence was glad that she too was wearing what she had worn for their meeting that morning.

  “A carriage,” he said with a smile, watching Cobham drive away. “Expensive to keep horses in London.” He stepped back, holding the door for her.

  “Yes,” she agreed, moving past him. “But nothing compared to a motorcar. Believe me, I looked into it. My father was very keen of having one, until he realized how unreliable they were.” She drew off her gloves as she took a quick survey of her surroundings. Subdued elegance, she decided.

  “They can be unpredictable,” he agreed with an affable smile. “May I take your coat?”

  “Thank you.” She thrust her gloves into her pockets and shrugged out of her coat. “Do you ordinarily conduct business in your own house, Sir Gideon?”

  “Only when my business has to be conducted after-hours,” he said, gesturing towards a door that stood open at the rear of the hall. “When I’m short of time, Miss Duncan, I have to sacrifice some of my leisure, and it’s more comfortable to do it here.”

  Prudence followed the gesture and found herself in a pleasant library with a very masculine air. There was a lingering smell of cigar smoke, leather and oak furniture, an Aubusson rug on the highly polished oak floor, dark velvet curtains at the long windows, not yet drawn against the encroaching shadows of night. There was not an inch of space visible in the bookcases that lined three out of the four walls.

  “Drink?” Gideon asked, closing the door behind them.

  “No, thank you,” she said. “I’m here to talk about the case.”

  “I often discuss cases over a drink,” he said casually, pouring himself a whisky. “Please . . . sit down.” He indicated a comfortable armchair in front of a cherry wood table on which reposed a small pile of neatly arranged papers and nothing else.

  Prudence sat down. “Why did the earl’s counsel respond so quickly to your letter. Is it a good sign?”

  Gideon considered. “Neither good nor bad,” he said, sipping his drink. “They may think their case is foolproof and just want to get on with it, or they may have doubts and want us to show our hand.”

  “As soon as we can look at my father’s papers we’ll have all the evidence we need,” Prudence stated.

  He leaned his forearms on the table and his eyes were now sharp, his voice clipped. “Well, as I said this morning, I’ll wait until I see it before I’m convinced. Let’s deal now with what we have.”

  He was all business, Prudence reflected. Not a hint of personal connection in his demeanor. She should find it reassuring, except that it put her back up. She shook her head in an unconscious gesture designed to banish her own inconvenient personal reactions. “Very well,” she said briskly, and folded her hands in her lap. “You have questions for me.”

  He drew a sheet of paper towards him and took up a pen. “I need some hard and fast facts. When did the publication first come out?”

  Prudence considered. “I’m not positive. My mother started it. We began to help her when Con was fifteen, I think. So I would have been fourteen.”

  “I don’t think we want to bring your mother into this,” he said, frowning. “It’ll complicate matters too much. When did you and your sisters take over the sole running of the publication?”

  “Four years ago, on our mother’s death.”

  “All right. And have you been sued before?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “There’s no of course about it. How many adverse reactions have you had? Complaints from readers, for instance?”

  “Not many.”

  “How many? More than ten, less than five?”

  “Probably more than ten.”

  “So, you would agree that this is a controversial publication?” He was writing as he spoke, not looking at her as he fired the questions.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you set out to be offensive?”

  “No. What kind of questions are these?”

  “The kind you’re going to be asked in court. And if you give way to a show of petulance or indignation, you’re going to lose the jury and give the prosecution ammunition. If you lose your composure, you’re lost.” He picked up his glass and went back to the pier table where the decanters stood. “Are you sure you won’t have a sherry?”

  “No, thank you. I need to keep my wits about me if I’m going to survive this ordeal.”

  “I don’t mean to make it one.” He refilled his glass.

  “Yes, you do,” she contradicted.

  “Only for your own good.” He sat down again.

  “This hurts me more than it hurts you?” she scoffed.

  He shook his head with a gesture of exasperation. “No.” He reached for a cigarette in the silver box on the table.

  “‘A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied,’ ” Prudence quoted.

  “That sounds like Oscar Wilde,” he said.

  “Yes, The Picture of Dorian Gray.”

  He smiled a little. “I only smoke when I’m working. Now, can we get on with it?”

  Prudence nodded with a sigh. “By all means, carry on. I have to leave at eight o’clock.”

  He looked momentarily taken aback and then as quickly his expression resumed its calm neutrality. “Do you and your sisters ordinarily consort with—” He was interrupted by a knock at the door. “Yes?�
� His voice was not inviting.

  The door opened and a girl’s head appeared. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, Daddy, but Mary is out for the evening and I have all these literature quotes to identify and I just can’t get them all.” Gray eyes, her father’s eyes, darted around the room, fixing on Prudence, who now leaned back in her armchair and prepared to discover what she could about the barrister and his daughter.

  “Why don’t you bring the rest of you in here,” Gideon said. “I don’t care to converse with disembodied heads.”

  “Like the Cheshire cat’s smile,” the girl said with a sunny smile of her own as she inserted herself fully into the room, although she stayed by the door. “It’s just two references that I can’t identify, Daddy. Please, can you help?” Her tone was pleading and made Prudence smile. This was one child who knew how to manipulate a compliant parent.

  “I’m with a client, Sarah,” her father said. “And judging by the monthly accounts from Hatchards and Blackwell, you have a substantial library of reference books. I must ask Mary why a Dictionary of Quotations is somehow missing from the schoolroom shelves.”

  Sarah looked a little self-conscious. “I’m sure we have one, I just couldn’t find it, and I have so much other preparation to do for tomorrow, Latin and French, that I thought maybe . . .” She cast him a quick mood-assessing glance, and then before he could respond, said, “‘Beauty is truth . . .’ ”

  “‘Truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know,’ ” Prudence said. “Keats, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn,’ 1820.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Sarah Malvern said. “And there’s one other: ‘Love built on . . .’ ”

  “‘Love built on beauty, soon as beauty dies,’ ” Prudence said. “John Donne. The elegies, I think.” She frowned in thought. “Fifteen ninety-five, I think.”

  Sarah beamed. “Thank you so much, Miss . . .”

  “Duncan,” Prudence said, rising and holding out her hand. “I’m a client of your father’s.”

  The girl shook it with considerable warmth. “I didn’t mean to disturb your meeting.”

  “No, of course you didn’t,” her father murmured from the far side of the table. “If your curiosity has been satisfied, Sarah . . . ?”

  “It wasn’t curiosity,” the girl denied. “It was genuine research.”

  Gideon nodded. “Oh, yes, of course. Research.” A smile quirked the corners of his mouth.

  “Thank you for your help, Miss Duncan,” Sarah said politely. She backed out of the door, asking just before she closed it, “Are you dining out, Daddy?”

  His eyes glanced off Prudence, who had returned to her seat and was gazing studiously out into the now complete darkness beyond the window. “Apparently not,” he said. “I’ll come up and say good night in an hour.”

  Sarah bobbed a curtsy. “Good night, Miss Duncan. Thank you again for your help.”

  Prudence smiled. “I enjoyed the exercise. Good night, Sarah.”

  After the door had closed on the girl, Gideon observed, “So, you’re something of an expert on English literature.”

  “We all are,” Prudence said. “It was one of our mother’s passions. We imbibed it at the breast.”

  He nodded, rising to draw the heavy velvet curtains, shutting out the night. “Sarah has a particular affinity for mathematics. She also plays the flute.”

  “Music and mathematics tend to be complementary talents,” Prudence observed. “She seems to be an avid student. Which reminds me of some questions I need to ask you.” She opened her handbag and took out her own notebook. “We were beginning to put together a list of possible brides this afternoon and there are one or two issues we’d like to clarify.”

  Gideon returned to his seat. He leaned back and folded his arms, then raised his eyebrows, his mouth set in an expression that was not encouraging. “I should warn you that I have very little time to spend on this brief, Miss Duncan. If you want to take some of that valuable time away from your own affairs, that is of course your business.”

  “It seems to me we have to work in tandem,” Prudence said. “You have your job to do and I have mine, but they are intimately connected. Now, we’re assuming you would only consider prospective brides who would be sympathetic to Sarah. Someone whom she would be able to confide in, to feel comfortable with.”

  “If you’re asking me whether I would consider marrying again just to provide Sarah with a mother, the answer is no.” He shook his head vigorously. “That seems to me to be the worst possible reason for tying oneself to someone, and I can’t imagine any woman worth her salt settling for such a bargain. No, if I ever married again it would be because I met a woman who suited me. I would like to think that Sarah would find such a woman both likable and sympathetic.”

  He unfolded his arms and leaned his elbows on the table. “Now, if that answers your question, perhaps I could return to mine.”

  “Well, you obviously couldn’t consider someone who disliked children,” Prudence pressed on. “There’s one possibility who might suit you. A widow called Agnes Hargate. A charming woman, very attractive. She has a five-year-old son. Would that be a disadvantage?” She looked up from her notebook and raised one hand to adjust the set of her glasses as she examined his expression.

  “The prospect leaves me less than joyful,” he stated. “Now, are you and your sisters in the habit of consorting with fallen women?”

  “No,” she said. “At least, I don’t know what you mean by fallen women. I’m sure there are plenty of women of our acquaintance, not to mention of Lord Barclay’s, who’ve indulged in a little extracurricular activity. And that’s another question for you. Are you only interested in prospective brides who have an unblemished reputation?”

  He sighed. “I’m trying to get across to you, Prudence, that I am not at present in the least interested in any prospective brides.” He glanced impatiently at the clock, and his voice was irritable as he said, “We haven’t covered as much ground as I wanted to this evening. I was hoping we could have a working dinner, something simple, but since you have to leave . . .”

  “Your message—or summons, rather—made no mention of dinner,” she said. “But I would have had to decline, anyway,” she fibbed blithely. “I have another engagement.”

  “It wasn’t a summons,” he said. “It was a request.”

  “It read like a summons.”

  “Then you must forgive me.” But he didn’t sound in the least apologetic. He got briskly to his feet and suddenly pointed a finger at her. “Are you and your sisters in the habit of consorting with women of the street, Madam Mayfair Lady?”

  Prudence opened her mouth to answer a resounding and indignant negative and then realized what he’d said. “They won’t know there’s more than one of us,” she protested. “We’ve agreed. It’s just one representative. The Mayfair Lady. They couldn’t ask that question because they won’t know anything about us.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t be so certain. They’re going to move heaven and earth to track you down. It wouldn’t surprise me if they employed a detective agency. I assure you, they’re going to be no happier than I am at putting a sheet of newspaper on the stand.” He moved out from behind his desk as the grandfather clock in the corner of the library struck a sonorous eight bells.

  “Detectives?” Prudence said, sounding shocked. “Surely not.” She thrust her arms into the sleeves of her coat that he was holding for her.

  “Just be on your guard,” he said, going to open the door for her.

  Prudence went past him. “How long do we have, do you think, before the trial date?”

  He shrugged. “Three, maybe four weeks. Sam Richardson has some influence on the bench and his clerks are extraordinarily efficient. They’ll discover who’s presiding, and Sam, I’m sure, will have a pleasant chat over a more-than-satisfactory dinner in his club, and the case will come up when he wants it to.”

  Prudence frowned. “But don’t you have influence like
that?”

  “Certainly I do, but I don’t intend to use it.”

  “But we still don’t have our case put together.”

  “Bring me the evidence, Miss Duncan, and I believe you said that we’ll have all the case we need.” He opened the front door. The street lamps were now lit and Cobham sat smoking his pipe on the driver’s seat of the barouche, the horses shifting their hooves impatiently as the autumnal night air grew chilly.

  Gideon walked her down the steps and saw her into the carriage. “But do you believe that?” she asked, stung by the tinge of sarcasm in his tone.

  At that he laughed, but it wasn’t a particularly pleasant laugh in Prudence’s estimation. “I have no choice but to do so, my dear. Confidence is half the battle. I can’t go into court expecting to lose.”

  “But do you expect to?” She took off her glasses and fixed him with an anxious gaze, the light of the streetlamp giving her eyes a golden hue, tingeing the russet hair with touches of gold.

  For an instant an arrested gleam appeared in his gray gaze; he half opened his mouth, as if about to say something, then shook his head with another slight laugh, stepped back, and waved her away.

  Chapter 10

  Another letter for you, Miss Prue. From Sir Gideon.” Jenkins put the long envelope beside her plate at breakfast the next morning. “If I may say so, the barrister seems an assiduous correspondent.”

  “I trust it means he’s equally assiduous in his efforts on our behalf,” Prudence said tartly. She slit the envelope with her butter knife and perused the contents.

  “You have no reason to believe otherwise, Prue,” Chastity protested mildly, looking over the top of the Times.

  “No, I don’t suppose I do,” Prudence agreed with a little sigh. “It’s just that he made me feel last night that it was a wasted effort and we had no chance of winning and basically he resented the time he was spending.” She crumpled the letter and tossed it into the fireplace.

  “Maybe he just wasn’t in the mood to talk about brides,” Chastity suggested. “You’d just met his daughter, after all. That must have been awkward for him.”