“Oh, but I could not ask you to leave your guests!”
“Yes, you could. They can get on without me for a quarter of an hour. Elliot!”
Mr. Elliot glided over, a difficult trick when one is wearing cavalier boots, but he was what is popularly known as “a smooth customer.”
“Highness?”
“Escort this lady and myself to the treasure cave. Elliot has the keys, you see,” he explained. “An’ a good thing, too. B’cause I don’t think I could manage th’ intricacies of a lock by m’self, jus’ now.”
Arabella was incensed! So, Elliot had had the key all along, and might easily have let her into the room! He was a scoundrel, and no mistake. But then she reflected that the place was guarded, after all, and if anyone had caught her in there, snooping around with Elliot’s key, it could have been awkward for both of them.
Collectors are an odd breed. Sometimes they get carried away; they become a little too focused, and Arabella would have been the first to admit it. Take the regent, for example. Here he was, in the company of a beautiful . . . well, of a woman who embodied his ideal type, and all he could do was fawn over his antiquities, which, now that she saw them, weren’t even that impressive. There were a few amphorae, a couple of busts on pedestals; nothing in comparison to the collection at the Naples Museum, and no sign of her statue, either. She took off the mask, in order to be certain she had not missed it through want of a clear visual field. But then Prinny pulled a cord, and the draperies covering what she had taken for the back wall drew apart, revealing another room. This appeared to have been hacked from living stone, though it could not have been, of course, existing as it did inside Carlton House in the center of London. It looked convincing nevertheless, and was roughly paved to resemble an actual cave.
“Welcome to the masturbatory,” leered Prinny.
Here was beauty, indeed: the most magnificent statues, sculptures, and artifacts ever conceived by gifted artists with sex on their minds. For a few moments, Arabella forgot why she was there, and wandered through the ranks and rows of artworks, thinking each piece she saw more dazzling than the one before it, until finally, she came face-to-face with “her” bronze: the double-phallused Pan statue.
He was striding forward on cloven hooves, arms extended behind him with the backs of his hands forward and the fingers spread, as if he were pushing through tall grasses or low shrubs. Every visible muscle and sinew on the slim torso was bursting with virility, and from between his hairy haunches the two great, curving phalli, one thick, one thin, seemed to be leading him on to glory. Thankfully, the garish paint with which he had once been coated had worn off, but the glass paste eyes remained in their sockets, supplied with those unsettling square pupils characteristic of the genus Capra. The rest of the eye, which was all iris, was the color of marmalade. Another pair of horns sprouted from the head, curving gracefully back over the shoulders, and the face . . . nay, the entire figure, wore an expression of concupiscent joy.
Thy rod and thy staff shall comfort me, thought Arabella.
“George . . . you in here?”
It was the Duke of Clarence, one of the regent’s many brothers. He appeared to be even more inebriated than Prinny was, for Arabella saw him pause unsteadily before a statue of the drunken Bacchus, preparing to address it as a kinsman. His mistake was, perhaps, understandable.
“I’m over here, Willy,” said the regent. “What d’you want?”
“’S’not for me, you know. I’s my boy. Osvaldo.”
His boy? It was true, then! Osvaldo really was Clarence’s bastard! Not only that; the duke actually acknowledged the connection! Good God, what a family! If one hadn’t known them for royals, it would have been natural to mistake the duke and his reigning brother for a couple of muck shifters on a bender.
“What’s he want, then?” Prinny asked.
“Says you’ve got a friend of his in here (hic). An’ he’d like to know if he might come in, too.”
Horrors! If Osvaldo were to address her by name in front of her enemy, the regent would recall the incident—perhaps regrettable, perhaps not—when she had called him a fat git from the depths of an unfriendly crowd, nearly inciting a riot. If he were to discover her true identity now, she would be executed, probably, for impersonating the sort of woman he found attractive. But Elliot had caught Arabella’s panicked glance.
“That would be me, sir,” he said quickly. “Have I your permission to go out to him? And shall I escort the duke out as well? His Grace seems to be having some difficulty in locating the door.”
Clarence was indeed reeling about, and bumping his head repeatedly against the wall. There was a very real danger of his knocking over one or more of the pedestals and thereby smashing a number of irreplaceable objects.
“By all means,” muttered the regent. “Get him out of here.”
Elliot tucked a hand beneath the duke’s elbow and steered him toward the exit. As they passed Arabella, Elliot murmured, “You’re on your own, now,” for he had seen the regent looking at her in a particular way.
Here, the reader might think, Well, Arabella is a courtesan, after all! This is what she does. Yes, but courtesans also have feelings. And the feelings she entertained toward the regent were not cordial. Besides, she held to the tenet that no matter how low her fortunes might sink, she would never lower herself. Degradation of that sort would destroy all the pleasure Arabella had ever taken in her profession, and she would have to give it up to become a laundress or something. Should my gentleman readers fail to grasp this perspective, I must ask that they simply take it on faith. The ladies, I know, will readily comprehend it.
Given the choice between having it off with the regent and obtaining her bronze—if she thought she could get him to give it her, in other words—Arabella would have found herself in an agonizing quandary. But the problem facing her now was simply how to get out of the treasure cave without yielding up her person, and without insulting the temptingly insultable ruler of the realm.
“Thank you, Your Majesty, for allowing me to see this,” she said, turning from the statue. “I shall never forget it as long as I live.”
She put her mask back on and made for the door. He followed her, smiling.
“’Tis a lewd, crude cave of wonders, madam, is it not?”
“Yes, indeed! But what a shame that it all has to be kept locked away like this! The whole world should see it!”
“I beg to differ, madam. The subject material is far too shocking to be put on display to . . . just anybody.”
They were nearly out of the room now.
“That is what I meant,” said Arabella sadly. “It’s a shame that it is so, is it not?” And she stepped lightly over the threshold, into the corridor and out of danger, whilst the regent was still forming his response.
“I can’t agree with you there,” he said. “If salacious imagery were socially acceptable, it wouldn’t be any fun.”
He followed her past the gaming tables, where, as luck would have it, Charles was just sitting down to another game.
“Arabella!” he called to her. “I say, I’m a bit short of ready. Lots of coves in here owe me money, though. Would you lend me a fiver? Just till tomorrow?”
She scowled, shaking her head, and wouldn’t the odious Osvaldo just have to pick that moment to intercede?
“Here, Beaumont; I’ll stand you to a twenty, if you like. Miss Beaumont, I still have not discovered the whereabouts of your sister!”
The two names she had just been called buzzed around the regent’s bleary brain like a pair of randy wasps: Beaumont . . . Arabella . . . Arabella . . . Beaumont.
One of the chief perils of this prince was that with his legendary pride and selfishness, his childish outbursts of weeping when things failed to go his way, his ruinously expensive bad taste and his drunken default state, there was a tendency to think him stupid. Because intelligent persons do not generally behave in this fashion. But what people often failed to realiz
e was that all this self-absorbed, self-indulgent behavior was mere padding for an icy core, consisting of an essentially suspicious nature, a steely refusal to be taken advantage of, and the determination to be revenged upon his enemies. Even at his most soused, the regent was able to retain a watchful cunning that, as Mrs. Janks liked to put it, “would do a viper proud.”
Now the two names by which his charming companion had been addressed continued to buzz: Miss Beaumont . . . Arabella . . . Miss Arabella Beaumont. He had it, at last. And then he turned toward her a look of sneering contempt.
“ ’Tis a pity,” he said in a voice that belied this sentiment. “I daresay I would not have slept with you, madam; no self-respecting man wants to go where dogs have been.” He looked meaningfully at Charles, who had the decency to blush. “But we might at least have been friends, had you not insulted me so coarsely in the street last year.”
From across the room, Cecil Elliot divined that something unpleasant was afoot, and unobtrusively rejoined them.
“Remove your mask!” snarled the regent. For truth to tell, though he’d connected Arabella with the shouted insult, he felt there was something more. If he could just . . . get his mind to focus.
She took it off.
“Oh, yes.” It was all coming back to him now. “The murderess. Had a clever lawyer get you off. In more ways than one, I’ll be bound!”
Arabella curtseyed. “Actually, they found the real murderer, Your Majesty.”
“Ha! Some poor blighter unable to prove where he was on the night in question.”
“Well, he actually confessed.”
“People will say anything under torture. Guards, throw her out.”
“Sir!” called Charles, who for a wonder was not in his cups. “Might I ask you to join me in a game of whist? I thought perhaps we could play for your entire Roman antiquities collection.”
Quite on the spur of the moment, Charles had seen his chance to do something helpful for somebody else, and so relive the agreeable feeling of being adored and appreciated.
The regent turned to Elliot. “Who is this dog?” For although he’d been able to identify Charles with the incest scandal a moment ago, Prinny had already forgotten who he was, or wished it to appear that way for reasons of his own.
“Charles Beaumont, Majesty,” Elliot replied, and then whispered in the royal ear: “Addicted to gaming. Always loses.”
His information was woefully out of date for once.
“Does the fellow have anything worth staking, then?”
“No, sire, but his sister does.”
The palace guard arrived, to usher Arabella out and away.
“Wait,” said Prinny. “On second thought, leave her here a moment.... Madam, your brother wishes to play for high stakes, indeed. But he has no collateral, it seems, and I believe that you do.”
It took Arabella a few moments to find her voice, astonished as she was by her brother’s sudden and highly uncharacteristic act of selflessness. Nor did she stop to consider that Charles, now, had plenty of his own money to put up if he chose. But it is quite possible, reader, that the regent would still have insisted on shifting the risk to Arabella. In fact, I am almost certain that he would have.
“Ask what you will of me, sir,” she said.
“Very well; you have a handsome barouche, with six magnificent horses. I’ll have those, before witnesses. Also . . . your pretty little manor house, which I shall have gutted and re-fitted. And . . . if Beaumont loses, he is banished for life.”
At last, Arabella found that she had reached the limit of what she was willing to sacrifice for the statue. She did not want to risk losing her home, even though it meant not having to see Charles again for a very long time. But to back out would be poor showmanship. Besides, she had not been given the opportunity to do so.
“Get her out of here, Elliot. And, madam, if you dare to gate crash one of my parties again, or to so much as set foot in this house, I shall have you disposed of. Quietly, efficiently, and permanently.”
This was the closest Arabella had yet come to getting her bronze. She might actually achieve it at last. But it went deeply against the grain to meekly allow someone to insult her and to offer no reply.
“You need have no worries on that account!”
“Oh, I’m not worried. I’m the king, or as good as. You’re a whore.”
“ . . . Or as good as,” she replied as she was being led away, “and what I was going to say before you interrupted me, was that your house is the ugliest, most ostentatious monument to bad taste as ever was seen, and the sooner it is torn down the better!”
As they proceeded to Lustings in the hired carriage, Arabella thanked Elliot a thousand times for his intercession and assistance.
“Am I forgiven, then?”
“Oh, no! I am still angry about your shipboard behavior. But as I promised to give you a full hearing, you shall have a chance to exonerate yourself.”
“Well, you see—”
“Not here. Wait until we reach Lustings, and are comfortable before a fire, with liquid encouragement close at hand.”
The hour was late, or rather, early, and the servants were all fast asleep. It would have been most cruel to rouse anyone to build a fire at that hour. But such a dank chill permeated the downstairs apartments that there could be no question of holding a tête-à-tête there. So Arabella took Elliot up to her room, where Doyle, she knew, had lit a fire before retiring. The embers still glowed faintly in the grate, and the room was still warm.
“I hope you do not mind the informality,” said Arabella, pouring out two generous glasses of brandy. “But this really is the most comfortable place in the house at the moment, and we shan’t be disturbed here.”
They sat before the embers, in Arabella’s blue and gold armchairs, and Mr. Elliot told her the circumstances under which he had been obliged to leave her so suddenly. Originally, he had been bound for Naples as the Herculaneum collection’s London escort. One attempt to steal it having been made already, it was Elliot’s job to ensure that the valuable gift arrived safely at its intended destination.
“But I made rather a late start. The regent had a thousand little things that wanted doing, and I, apparently, was the only one who could do them to his satisfaction.”
Elliot’s face, turned toward Arabella, looked sculpted and beautifully noble in the pale light of early morning. His nose, particularly. “If you recall, Miss Beaumont, I was forever on deck, searching the sea with my spyglass.”
“Yes; I had supposed you to be indulging an idle curiosity.”
“That is what I wanted you to think. But I was looking for the Sea Lion, which carried the treasure, and I spotted her leaving at last, just as we were on the point of arriving. Apparently, she had made a late start, as well. So I had the captain signal the other ship, got my things together, and made my good-byes to you . . . I had to lie about who had signaled whom, for you’d have demanded an explanation had I told the truth, and the explanation at that time was not mine to give. Besides,” he added with a wicked smile, “I knew that you were chasing the statue, and naturally I would not want to assist a competitor!”
“But how did you know I wanted the statue? I never told you so!”
“No; Charles did. But do not be vexed with me, Miss Beaumont; I found you so charming that I took precautions to secure your safety, in order to ensure your safe return, and have the chance of meeting up with you again.”
“What do you mean?”
“I let it be known in certain circles that you were the regent’s mistress.”
The outer door creaked, faintly, and they both jumped as it began slowly to open. After a moment, a cat appeared, purring its approval at finding a bit of a fire and two warm and waiting laps.
“What a handsome animal,” said Elliot, scratching Rooney behind the ears. “I must confess myself very partial to cats.”
Arabella had known about the feline’s continued tenancy from Mrs. Janks’s
letters, and was somewhat favorably disposed toward him, due to his reported interactions with Lady Ribbonhat. But she had informed the staff in no uncertain terms that the animal was to remain belowstairs at all times. Hence, she was on the point of throwing Rooney back out into the passage when she was checked by Elliot’s words. Nor did she display any negative reaction when the cat sprang onto her lap and made itself at home there.
“I wish you could see what I am seeing,” said Elliot with a smile. “‘Cat and Courtesan, by Firelight.’ The color of his fur complements your own hair most wonderfully! Is that why you got him?”
“No,” said Arabella truthfully. “No. It was a complete coincidence.”
The cock crowed from the top of the henhouse, and Elliot stood up, setting his glass on the mantel.
“Thank you for hearing me out, Miss Beaumont. I hope I am forgiven now?”
“Of course,” she replied, rising, too, and placing her hands in his. “And as for the gallant services you performed on my behalf tonight, or, I should say, last night, I shall be forever in your debt.”
“Is that so?” he asked, pulling her hands to his breast, so that the rest of her body was obliged to come, too. “An agreeable arrangement, indeed! This is one debt which I shall be most peremptory about collecting!”
She tilted her head slightly, so that Elliot could more easily reach her mouth and throat, and he inclined forward; was on the point of kissing her, in fact, when he evidently thought better of it and drew back.
“No,” he said. “Not now. Not until I have more time to spend with you. The regent is expecting my return, and as we know, he is a most exacting prince.”
“Do not you mean ‘exasperating’?” grumbled Arabella.
“Yes. That, too.”
Chapter 30
LETTING GO
There seemed little point now in going to bed, so Arabella changed her clothes and went downstairs, where she found Charles in the breakfast room, drinking brandy.
“You’re up early,” she observed.
Death Among the Ruins (Arabella Beaumont Mystery) Page 25