Mina was equally as certain that Roderick would definitely not be pleased to turn his town house into an orphanage. And she did not mean to put any man’s wishes above her own, again. “No, I do not wish to batten on the new earl. I understand Roderick is searching for a bride. Whichever young lady he chooses will not want another woman ensconced as mistress in the household.”
“Very well, but where am I to find you a house for lease in London while the Season is still going on? The Quality will not leave for their country estates until the close of Parliament, when the heat of summer is upon us, if then. You cannot mean to spend August in the City.”
“No, I mean to move this month, if possible. If you cannot find me a house to rent, then buy one. I want a big place, with a large garden for playing.”
“Pardon, madam. Did you say for playing?”
“That is correct. I am thinking of establishing an adoption home. The children need room to run and shout, where they will not bother the neighbors.”
“I see.” The solicitor obviously did not see, not at all. He cleared his throat. “Ahem. That is very noble of you, my lady. However, while many gentlewomen espouse such good causes, they do not do so in their own homes. I am sure we can locate a private orphanage that will be gratified by your patronage, without your needing to bring the unfortunate children into your home and hearth. You can do as much good for the urchins, ah, orphans from the comfort and protection of Sparrows Nest.”
“I misspoke, sir. I said adoption home when I should have said adopting home. I intend to take in my husband’s children, as soon as I locate them.”
Mr. Sizemore wiped at the beads of sweat dripping from under his brown wig. “I fear that your recent bereavement has disordered your thinking, my lady. That and the sad loss of your own infant. I realize you were deeply affected by that sorrow, but it was many years in the past. We must all rise above our grief and—”
“My husband’s illegitimate children.”
Cousin Dorcas was already laid on her bed, with a cloth soaked in lavender water over her eyes. She’d staggered to her chamber when Mina announced her intentions of taking in Sparrowdale’s bastards, and had not come out since. Mr. Sizemore looked about ready to join her. Not in Miss Albright’s bed, of course, but in the same state of appalled dismay.
“But—”
“My husband was taking responsibility for his ignoble actions,” Mina said, having decided that the fewer people to know the whole truth, the better. Let Sparrowdale look like a hero. He was already rotting in hell. “I can do no less than fulfill his wishes.”
“He never mentioned any such wishes to me. I am sure he would have—”
“I have concluded that he must have confided in your partner, then forgot to pass on the details to you when he transferred his business into your capable hands. You have done admirably, sir, with the mare’s nest he made of his accounts and obligations, and now you must continue to serve his memory.”
Since Sizemore’s memory of the earl was one of utter repugnance, he shuddered. “But you were the one who convinced me the earl was so uncharitable.”
“So I believed at the time. There is that money he kept withdrawing, however, and there are the children.”
“Surely the new earl”—who had not retained the services of Mr. Sizemore’s office—“will make arrangements.”
“I have written to Roderick. No matter what he decides to do, however, I have decided that I will no longer be a spectator, watching as others govern my future. Caring for those children is what I want to do with my life, with my money.”
The solicitor shook his head, almost dislodging his wig and setting his jowls to flapping. “This is what comes of giving women their independence.”
Mina ignored the older man’s outdated notions. “I will fill the London house with cast-off children no one wants because it is the right thing to do, and because I want them. I will fill the Portsmouth house too, if I wish. My father’s money bought him the title he wanted. Now it can buy me the family I always wanted.”
“But when you are out of mourning and wishing to marry again, any prospective husband will be frightened off by such a . . . an unconventional burden.”
“I understand that and do not care. No, and not for the scandal either. I do not wish to marry again, so my reputation matters not.” She held up her hand. “I know you are going to tell me that I will change my mind in time, that tomorrow I will regret destroying my chances today. You and Cousin Dorcas have more in common than a love of sweets. She has already enumerated the ramifications of my chosen course endlessly. I have not changed my mind in the slightest, so you may as well save your breath.”
The solicitor rose and pulled his plain gray waistcoat down to try to cover the evidence of his love for sweets. “Then I might as well be on my way, Lady Sparrowdale, to find you a London residence suitable for your new venture.”
“Thank you, sir. I knew I could count on you.”
And she could count on Satan going ice-skating before Mr. Sizemore wrote back about a house.
Perry did not return, and the solicitor did not locate an appropriate dwelling. Mina did, however, receive a prompt and courteous answer to her note to Mr. Merrison, regarding his advertisement.
The fellow appeared to be a lord, by the signature, which was odd considering the vocation, but not off-putting. Indeed, Mina was pleased to see a member of the peerage actually earning his bread and butter, not simply inheriting it.
Lord Lowell’s reply was as circumspect as Lady Sparrowdale’s inquiry. What, should she have written to an absolute stranger about what a cad her husband had been? No. And no, the detective wrote, he could not supply references, for that would betray his clients’ confidences. No, he could not estimate expenses until he knew the nature of the countess’s investigation. Usually he accepted a percentage, if an item of monetary value was involved. And no, he did not accept every case presented to him, especially those where he might be expected to commit illegal activity—which Mina had not mentioned. On the other hand, Lord Lowell’s services were not currently engaged, his reputation for integrity could be easily ascertained at almost any gentlemen’s club, and he would be pleased to meet with her, in strictest privacy, of course, at her convenience. He remained her servant, et cetera, at the end of his letter.
Mina had originally conceived of asking Mr. Merrison to assist her in discovering the reason behind her husband’s bank withdrawals. The amount was never staggering, simply troubling in its secrecy. She had vaguely thought to hire someone to interview the earl’s old gambling cronies to see if any of them had an inclination toward extortion or whatever. There was nothing illicit about that—and nothing she could ask a gentleman to undertake on her behalf, for a fee or not. Sparrowdale and his son had frequented the lowest of dives. Lord Lowell’s letter was much too polite, the handwriting too precise, the grammar too refined to assume that he would be comfortable in such a milieu, much less be successful at gaining the confidence of its denizens.
Now she knew where the money had gone, and her investigation went far past curiosity. She needed to find the children. Perhaps it was the loss of her own infant that made her so determined to locate Sparrowdale’s, but her heart and her head both ached with the need to see them safe, even if they all had black hair and beaked noses like the man she despised more every day.
Mina was determined to find Lord Sparrowdale’s leavings, with or without young Peregrine Radway’s assistance. A gentleman such as the author of the note she held just might know where another lord could have gone to find gullible women, or corrupt clergymen willing to put their names on faulty marriage lines. Perhaps there had been rumors of Sparrowdale’s doings in those gentlemen’s clubs where Lord Lowell was so well known. He might even be a contemporary of the earl’s, familiar with the ancient gossip. Mina had no way of knowing his age, of course, but she hoped he was old—old enough to remember jokes Sparrowdale might have made about foolish females. Then Lord Lo
well would be ideal for that line of inquiry.
She did not have to tell him about all the bastards. She could claim that her husband had been supporting some distant relations, but the names had been lost with his demise. He did not need to know that all the children were born on the wrong side of the blanket, or how Sparrowdale had wronged their mothers. Thinking of what the earl had done made Mina ashamed to bear his name. Lord Lowell, of impeccable breeding and unsullied reputation, did not need to know any of that.
No one did, not the solicitor or her cousin, not even Harkness, who seemed to know everything. The butler, predictably, believed that Perry had been spinning Lady Sparrowdale a tarradiddle altogether about the other brats, and that she had exchanged a handsome purse for an ugly dog. The halfling may or may not be the earl’s get—Harkness was willing to concede the family resemblance—but he would never be back. The downy butler was willing to wager a month’s salary on it.
In that case, if Mina had been taken in, she wanted to find Perry, to give him a piece of her mind—if not his dog back. Surely this gentleman detective could find one lad in London’s outskirts.
Mina thought she could find the boy and his grandmother herself, unless Perry had used a false name, given a wrong direction, invented a fictitious relative, and taken her money with him to Ireland or the Antipodes. Then she would need help, if only to find out the truth about her unlamented husband and his licentious ways. She could not rest easily, wondering if there were children waiting for coins that never came.
She would give Perry another few days before hiring the aristocratic investigator.
The next day, though, brought Roderick.
Chapter Six
Roderick was not appalled at Mina’s plans. He was angry, aghast, and at her doorstep—his doorstep, actually—in a towering rage. Not only had he received her letter, but he’d also had a visit from Mr. Sizemore, who was hoping the head of the Sparrowdale household could talk the countess out of her latest start.
Roderick did not talk. He shouted. He did not even wait for the drawing room door to close behind Harkness, saving the butler from having to put his ear to the wooden panel. Cousin Dorcas had fled at the first curse, which happened to be Mina’s, when she heard who was calling.
“How could you, Minerva?” the new earl yelled, using the given name she had never given him permission to use. She might be ten years his junior, but Mina was still Roderick’s aunt by marriage, and a countess.
“Good day to you also, Roderick,” Mina replied, purposely not giving the new earl his recently acquired honors either.
“It is not a good day. It is raining, if you bothered to look out the window, and my clothes are ruined, thanks to that obnoxious creature.” Roderick took great pride in his appearance. His nose was not quite as prominent as his uncle’s and cousin’s had been, and his dark eyes were not quite as closely set. In fact, many a woman might find him handsome. Mina did not, those familiar features too reminiscent of his reprobate relatives. Roderick did pay a great deal more attention to his apparel than the stained and spotted earl had, or the dissolute, disheveled viscount. Today he wore buff pantaloons with a hunter-green coat and a figured waistcoat, all liberally splashed with mud and short dog hairs, from Merlin the mutt’s greeting. The dog quickly decided—after narrowly avoiding a kick—that such a surly, stomping stranger was up to no good, and he took to snarling as loudly as the earl.
“Call that beast off or I will shoot it, I swear. This is a gentleman’s residence, not a kennel, by George.”
It was also her residence, Mina thought, but did not say so. There were larger issues here than one little dog, a dog, moreover, that did not even belong to her. She shooed Merlin out of the drawing room, and asked Harkness, where he hovered at the door, to bring tea and a decanter of the late earl’s cognac. She, at least, could act the lady, despite her company’s boorishness.
Neither the hot tea nor the spirits had a soothing effect. Roderick was still irate. “How could you think to haul the family skeletons out of the closet, madam? I am doing everything in my power to restore my family name to respectability, and you would see it dragged through the mud of yet another scandal. I will not have it, do you hear?”
Harkness heard from outside the door, for sure, and so did the dog there too, whose growls increased in volume with the threat he perceived to Mina.
Mina refused to feel intimidated. She had lived with overpowering, obdurate men her entire life. This one had no authority over her. She would move to the dower house on the morrow.
“What precisely is it that you will not have, Roderick? Cream in your tea? Wine that bears no excise stamp?”
“You know exactly what I mean, so do not come the innocent with me. You have never been innocent a day in your life. I mean this notion of yours to gather Uncle Harold’s bastards together. How lovely,” he said with a sneer. “Uncle’s legitimate whore and his illegitimate children playing in the park—for all London to see. I can imagine the party the scandal sheets will have with that.”
Mina ignored the slurs. Sparrowdale’s son, Viscount Sparling, had been witness to her interrupted elopement. He had been so often in his cups, he could have told the world, much less his cousin. Roderick had also been present at the house party on the night Mina had given birth, and lost her own son. “I take it, then, you were aware of your uncle’s backdoor dependents?”
“Of course I was. The old bounder boasted of his prowess often enough, in earlier years. That jackanapes Sparling was set to follow in his footsteps when the old man gave up the sport.”
Some sport, Mina thought, despoiling young women and creating society’s unwanteds. “Did you also know about the wedding certificates?”
“This is ridiculous, Minerva. It is all history, and must remain so.”
That was no denial, Mina noted, no query about what wedding lines, or whose. The blackguard knew all along and had done nothing to stop the earl’s evil pastime. “Knowing, you were going to look after your young cousins without my prompting, were you not?”
“You must be dicked in the nob to think I would waste good blunt on a dead man’s baseborn brats. Or else your working-class sentimentality is coming to the fore. No true lady even mentions such creatures.” He tossed back another glass of brandy and sneered. “In case you have forgotten, Minerva, you are a countess now, and countesses do not have dealings with the bar sinister. Real ladies ignore the existence of birds of paradise and their droppings. They do not parade them in public.”
“You did not answer my question. Are you or are you not making provision for the children?”
“They’ve had more provision than they deserve. Most bastards end in workhouses or orphanages. Their mothers were light skirts, for heaven’s sake.”
“So that is your answer? You are not going to make your uncle’s by-blows wards of the earldom?”
“I would sooner name your mutt my heir. Those brats—if any of them still live—are nothing to me. I did not create them. I did not keep them in style above their station, and I sure as Hades will not spend a farthing on them.”
“Then I will.”
Roderick slammed his glass down, nearly shattering the fragile crystal. “By Jove, you will not! I am head of this household, and I insist you cease this mad notion at once. Damn if I don’t have enough evidence to have you declared incompetent over this absurd bee you have in your bonnet.”
Mina gasped. “You would not!”
“Do not tempt me, madam. All I would have to say is that you were deranged since the death of your own child. People will believe me; you have disappeared from society, after all. I can say I need to have you incarcerated for your own safety.” He rose and started pacing in front of the mantel.
“You dastard.” Mina was shaking so hard she could barely speak. She took a calming sip of tea, then another, watching him tread back and forth. “You would never get away with it,” she finally said. “Recall that I am the one with the funds to finance a cou
rt battle. I can hire every barrister in the land. In fact, I can use my funds to ruin you, Roderick, before you file a single paper. Most of your income derives from the shares in the Caldwell shipbuilding industry. My father was too canny to give a hardened gambler such funds outright, so he paid off Sparrowdale’s debts and settled the mortgages, but he paid the rest of my dowry in shares that the earl could not touch, only the income from them. Father always held the controlling stock. Now I do. I could give the company away tomorrow, deed it to charity, or see it dismantled from woodpile to wharf, if you do not cease your threats.”
“Oh, give over, Minerva.” Roderick retreated, coming closer to her seat on the couch and pasting a sickly smile on his thin lips. “I was merely quizzing you. A public trial would be exactly what I do not wish. I am trying to polish up the family name, I told you. With any luck, and your cooperation, Westcott might be convinced to give me his daughter’s hand. The duke promised Lady Millicent in the cradle to Viscount Sparling, but now she is grown up, unspoken for, and ready to be presented at court—and to be snatched up by some lucky devil. I mean that devil to be me.”
The devil part Mina could well imagine. She pitied the poor duke’s daughter, another female who was to be bartered for fortune and title.
“Think on it, Minerva. If I wed the Westcott chit, I would not be dependent on you and your cursed shipyards. The duke could help me move up in the party, too. Who knows how high I might rise in the government with his backing, if he does not get wind of the stench at the root of our family tree.”
“I wish you luck with your plans, Roderick,” Mina lied. She wished him to perdition. And she wished Lady Millicent to a man who might love her, instead of her father’s wealth. “However, those children will not go away.”
“Deuce take it, you do not even know how many there are, your letter said. And the only evidence you have of their existence is the say-so of a thieving waif, likely put up to the scheme by Gypsies.”
“You knew of the children. You said so yourself.”
Lady Sparrow Page 4