That arrested Edwin. “You did not.”
“The agreement was that if you chided me—”
“Which I didn’t do.”
Her gaze narrowed on him. “Were you not just saying something about ‘looking beyond my own nose’ and being a ‘jealous wife’? Sounds an awful lot like chiding to me.”
“That’s absurd,” he said irritably, impatient to be away, “as you know perfectly well.”
“Now you’re chiding me for being absurd.”
“I’m not saying you’re absurd. I’m saying your remark is absurd.”
“Same thing.” She tapped his hand coyly with her fan. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to renege on our wager.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, I’m not—” he began, then halted as he noted the tension in her face.
In a flash, he realized that this was how Clarissa always handled a difficult situation. She made arch comments. She poked and prodded. She even flirted. And if that was what she had to do to take her mind off Durand, then he could at least give her that.
He gentled his voice. “All right. I concede defeat. I’ll bring you an automaton tomorrow night.”
She eyed him suspiciously, as if she couldn’t quite believe he’d given in. “It had better be a nice automaton, if you please. Something I can put on the mantel. And one you created, not one of those old—”
“Yes, yes, I remember,” he said, biting back a smile. “You want only the best. As usual.”
“You say that as if it’s a flaw in my character,” she said with a sniff.
“No, indeed.” Taking her hand and turning it over, he lifted it to his lips so he could slowly, carefully, kiss the inside of her wrist. When he felt her pulse quicken and heard her sigh softly, he murmured, “I’ve always preferred the highest of quality myself. In objects . . . and in people.”
The sudden shadow in her eyes was sobering. “I know that only too well.” She slipped her hand from his. “But I suspect that you and I differ in what we consider the highest of quality in people.”
The strange statement gave him pause. “I doubt that. But we can discuss it further tomorrow night.” Seeing her already withdrawing from him made him add, “Along with making plans for our future.”
“Our future,” she repeated dully. “That should prove an interesting discussion.”
She’d said she would think about marrying him, but clearly she was starting to balk again.
Why? Damn it, she was attracted to him—he was sure of it. No woman made such sweet little sounds when being kissed and caressed if she didn’t desire the person doing the kissing and caressing.
But no woman had ever brandished a hairbrush at him for it, either. The memory of that rubbed him as raw as a burr under a saddle. The fact that he could have been so carried away as to make her fear him . . .
It didn’t matter. He would remedy that, somehow. He might not be good at understanding women, but if he put his mind to it, surely he could woo one. And wooing Clarissa began to make more sense in light of the problems with Durand. He would simply have to convince her of it.
He bowed to the ladies. “Good night to you both, and thank you for joining me at the theater. I’ll see you tomorrow night for dinner.”
Then he strode out the front door. Time to deal with that blasted count.
The moment he was outside, he noticed a carriage stopped directly behind his. As he descended the steps, the carriage door opened and Durand stepped out.
“You and I need to talk,” the Frenchman said.
Edwin halted a few steps above the man. “Indeed we do. But not here.” He glanced up at the windows and prayed that Clarissa wasn’t looking out. “Somewhere more private.”
“Yes. If you’ll follow me to the French embassy, we can discuss this like civilized gentlemen.”
“That would require your being a gentleman, which seems unlikely.”
Durand flicked some nonexistent dirt off his sleeve. “It’s either here or there. Or perhaps we should go inside to talk about it with Lady Clarissa.”
Devil take the bastard. “Fine. I’ll meet you at the embassy.”
Despite the hour, it should be relatively safe there, with the usual guards present.
Still, when they pulled up in front of 50 Portland Place, he retrieved the small pistol he kept in his carriage for protection on late nights such as this. After checking to make sure it was loaded, he tucked it into the pocket of his dress cloak. He wasn’t taking any chances with Durand.
It was nearly 1:00 A.M. when he and the Frenchman entered the embassy. Though the guards seemed surprised to see the charge d’affaires so late, they merely exchanged a few words with him before leaving Durand and his guest to their own devices.
Durand led Edwin into an office, probably the one he’d been using while the ambassador was in France. Opening a box, Durand offered him a cigar, which Edwin refused. He didn’t want to smoke, eat, or drink with the man. He just wanted him out of Clarissa’s life.
After lighting the cigar, Durand puffed on it a moment. “Have a seat.”
“I’d rather stand. I won’t be long.”
“As you wish.” The count leaned against the desk. “We need to discuss Lady Clarissa.”
“We do, indeed. And I’ll make this simple. She’s my fiancée. I want you to stop plaguing her.”
“I’m not plaguing her. I’m merely reminding her of our suitability for one another.”
Edwin stared him down. “She isn’t taking the hint very well. Nor am I. So I don’t want to see you anywhere near her again.”
“Or you’ll do what?” Durand cocked up one eyebrow. “In my position, I’m immune to any attempt to curb my actions. As I’m sure you know.”
“Nobody is entirely immune, even you.”
The count smirked at him. “You’d be surprised. France is in tumult now. No one there will concern themselves with the frivolous accusations of a young woman who’s being very respectably courted by a nobleman of my stature.”
“Respectably? That’s what you call dogging her steps, accosting her continually, spying on her home?”
“I should like to see you try to repeat those claims to anyone else. They would say that you are overreacting. That I am a well-respected diplomat, who would have no cause to trouble a lady. That yours are merely the rants of a jealous British earl having trouble securing his place as her suitor.”
Edwin gritted his teeth. “Let them say whatever they want. I have sufficient consequence to make my voice heeded.”
“Not sufficient enough that I can’t take it away at a moment’s notice.” Durand blew out some smoke. “All I need do is expose your father’s secrets.”
That sent unease curling through Edwin’s insides. “My father had no secrets.” None of any importance, anyway.
Yes, Father had been a member of a private opium den, which Edwin had discovered when he’d been forced to track down his father after Mother’s death. But that had been fifteen years and several French ambassadors ago. Durand couldn’t possibly know anything about it. And even if he did, Father had been dead quite some time. It would hardly matter to anyone that the man had occasionally indulged in opium-pipe smoking.
The count pushed away from the desk to walk over to a cabinet. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know about your father’s actions during the war.”
The war? “What actions?” Edwin said snidely. “His sitting in Parliament? His occasional gambling? His attendance at the theater?”
“I’m speaking of your father’s spying for France.”
The accusation hit Edwin like a sledgehammer. What the devil? Durand was daft. Granted, Edwin’s great-grandmother had been French and his family had distant relations in Paris, but Father had been thoroughly English. He would never have betrayed his country.
“That’s a bald-faced lie,” Edwin said coolly. “But a clever one, since you know there’s no way to prove or disprove your claims.”
The feral glitter in Durand�
��s eyes sent a shaft of ice down Edwin’s spine. “Ah, but there is.” Durand unlocked and opened the topmost drawer, searched through it until he found a file, then handed it to Edwin and closed the drawer.
Edwin stood staring at the file for a moment, his heart pounding in his chest. God, how could it be? His father had never been much engaged with his family, but Edwin had always assumed it was because he was a cold fish, incapable of caring. Or because of the slow, awful disintegration of his marriage.
Not this. Edwin couldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t.
“Look inside,” Durand said, lounging against the cabinet. “And in case you consider tossing the papers in the fire over there, you should know that they represent only part of your father’s reports.”
Reports. Oh, God. With a sinking feeling of dread, Edwin opened the file to find, in his father’s own handwriting, pages and pages of notes. He choked down alarm and began to scan them systematically.
The further he read, the more his stomach roiled. Every report began with a letter to a Frenchman named Aubert and contained a series of notes detailing information his father had gleaned at the opium den.
Apparently, certain British naval and army officers had enjoyed indulging from time to time in the odd Chinese practice of smoking opium. On those occasions, they’d inadvertently let slip bits about strategies of the war in France and the Peninsula. Father had then pieced them together into these reports.
There were crudely drawn maps, troop movement sketches, gossip about where Wellington intended to strike next. It was a damning set of documents, indeed.
No, how could this be? “Where did you get these?” Edwin demanded.
Durand shrugged. “They’ve been in our files for years. Our spy Aubert passed them on to the embassy after the war, and we kept them, in case we needed something else from your father.”
“In other words, needed something with which to blackmail him,” Edwin said tersely.
The acrid scent of cigar smoke swirled between them as Durand took another puff. “Or his son.”
Edwin’s blood chilled. “What the devil does that mean?”
Durand flicked some ash. “All I need do is send this to the press, and you’d be ruined in society.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” Edwin fought to hide the tumult inside him. “With all the talk of another revolution to depose Charles X, your superiors have their hands full. They won’t appreciate your stirring up a hornet’s nest in England.”
“What hornet’s nest? I’d merely be guaranteeing that your position in society drops to somewhere below that of a charwoman. Especially after the scandal that your brother’s criminal conviction engendered. Your sister’s recent marriage might have restored the family name to a small degree, but this would destroy it for good.”
Somehow Edwin managed a shrug. “That would merely mean I’d no longer have to deal with the likes of you.”
“Ah, but you wouldn’t be alone in your loss of consequence, would you?” With a grim smile, Durand pushed away from the cabinet. “How do you think Lady Clarissa would react if her association with you turned her into an outcast in society, too?”
God rot the bastard. Edwin knew how Clarissa would react. She might not care that his father had been a spy, but she would most assuredly hate leaving good society. Not being able to go to parties and routs and be the belle of the ball.
Durand pressed his point with ruthless efficiency. “Do you think she’d even consider marrying you if there was a chance it might mean suffering in solitude with you for the rest of your life? Does she care about you that much?”
Edwin feared he knew the answer to that, and it made an unmanageable anger roar up inside him. “My relationship with my betrothed is none of your concern. And yes, she’d stand by me. Because unlike you, Clarissa has a sound character.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Durand said.
The crafty remark only further fired Edwin’s temper. With a growl, Edwin thrust his face into the other man’s. “If you’re insinuating anything insulting about my fiancée—”
“No.” Durand’s face clouded over. “Though she isn’t the woman you think she is.”
“Because she won’t marry you, you mean? That only proves her intelligence and good sense.”
Durand stiffened. After stubbing out his cigar in a salver, he slid the file from Edwin’s clenched fingers. “Careful, Blakeborough. If you keep provoking me, I might just send this to the press for the fun of it.”
“Go ahead. Then you and I can be churned under the gossip mill together. You’re not the only one who can spread slander effectively.”
Durand’s cold stare would have frozen fire. “Have you considered that I could implicate you in your father’s activities? You were, what? Eighteen or nineteen at the time this was going on? Not too young to be helping your father spy.”
“There’s not a shred of evidence I had anything to do with it,” Edwin scoffed. “I was away at university.”
“Not all the time. And you were certainly old enough to accompany him to that private opium den.”
Edwin suddenly found it hard to breathe. In the last year of the war, he hadn’t been at university. He’d been at Mother’s side during her final hours. And he had visited the opium den once, too. If someone were to remember, were to misconstrue that . . . “Why are you doing this?”
“I want Lady Clarissa. I had a claim on her long before you started courting her. I know you don’t love her, and I doubt she loves you, either. The two of you behave more like friends than like prospective spouses.”
A pity that Durand hadn’t discovered them in the midst of their unwise caresses earlier, although the wretch would probably have found a way to use that against them. “Tell yourself that our engagement doesn’t mean anything if you wish, but it won’t change the truth.”
“The truth is that I could show the file to Lady Clarissa. I don’t have to make it public. I daresay that would be enough to make her balk at being your wife.”
Considering that Edwin hadn’t even succeeded in getting her to agree to marry him, it probably would. “Is that what you meant by blackmail? You intend to expose my father’s secrets to her unless I do what you wish.”
“Exactly. I want you to set Lady Clarissa free.”
Edwin gaped at him. “Half of society has already heard that we’re engaged. If I were to end the betrothal, it would ruin her.”
“Precisely.” Durand’s eyes shone the color of dark, treacherous waters. “She’d have nowhere to turn, no possibility of marrying anyone else but me. Admit it—you’re merely involved with her because Knightford is your friend. But your heart isn’t engaged. Mine is. Leave her to me, and I’ll shower her with jewels and consequence and all the attention that a woman like her requires. Then I’ll destroy your father’s reports, burn them in front of you. You’ll never have to worry about anyone learning the truth. But if you do not do as I ask . . .”
Durand left the words hanging with the dramatic flourish of some operatic villain. Edwin couldn’t breathe. This made no sense. Why was the bastard so determined to have Clarissa as his wife? No doubt he was seeking some advantage by wedding her, but Edwin couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was. As a highly placed diplomat, Durand could have any woman he desired. This fascination with a lady who had no interest in him was unnatural.
No more than yours.
Not true. Edwin would never want to gain Clarissa by shaming her. And the fact that Durand would stoop so low chilled Edwin through and through. He had half a mind to shoot the arse right here and now.
But since the guards all knew of Edwin’s presence, he wouldn’t get away with it. He’d be tried and hanged, almost certainly. That, too, would affect Clarissa.
And not just her. It would expose his sister to yet another scandal, a worse one than anything their cursed younger brother had fomented. Yvette was finally happy; he refused to ruin that for her and her new husband.
B
esides, there was another solution to this dilemma, one that would nip all of Durand’s machinations in the bud. But it would take a bit of time to put his plan into place. So, as much as he wished to throw the count’s threats back in his face, he must be cautious.
“I need a few days to think about it.” Edwin practically choked on the lie. Though it was a necessary one, he loathed implying that he’d ever consider capitulating.
Durand narrowed his gaze on Edwin. “Why?”
Edwin shrugged. “That should be obvious. If I withdraw my offer to Clarissa, she could—and probably would—have me charged with breach of contract. So I must consult my lawyer about the likely outcome of such a charge and what it might cost me financially. I must also consider which scandal would damage my family more—the revelation of my father’s secrets or the sudden refusal to marry a woman I’ve publicly proclaimed as my fiancée. Then there is also the matter—”
“Enough. I take your meaning.” Durand scrutinized him closely. “You really are a cold man sometimes, Blakeborough. I threaten to take away Lady Clarissa, and all you can think about is how it will affect your purse.”
If Durand thought so, then at least Edwin was managing to shield his true feelings. “I like to think I’m practical. As you say, Clarissa and I aren’t in love—but that doesn’t mean I’m unaware of what effect giving in to your demands could have on my life.”
The count seemed to consider that. “Fine. You can have two days. But I expect your decision at the end of the day after tomorrow.”
“Thank you.” Edwin affected the bored tone typical of a lord of his rank. “Now, since this conversation has grown tiresome, I’ll leave you to your cigars.”
“You can show yourself out, I suppose,” Durand said.
With the merest of nods, Edwin calmly left the room.
But inside he was seething. It was all he could do to contain his fury until he was safely in his carriage and away. Father, a spy for the French. His gut twisted into a knot at the very thought.
Though it did explain so much. Why Father had always been so inattentive to his family. Why, when Mother was dying, he’d continued his jaunts to London. And why Edwin had never noticed any signs of opium intoxication on the few occasions Father was home. Had he ever even used opium? Or had he just gone to the opium den for his French masters?
The Study of Seduction: Sinful Suitors 2 Page 13