Private Arrangements, page 11
“I don't know,” she said. “And I don't care. All I know is that Freddie is my last chance for happiness in this life. I will marry him if I have to turn into Lady Macbeth and destroy all who stand in my path.”
His eyes narrowed. They were the dark green of a nightmare forest. “Warming up to your old tricks?”
“How can I fail to be unscrupulous when you keep reminding me that I am?” Her heart was a swamp of bitterness, at him, at herself. “We will begin our one year tonight. Not later. Not whenever you finally feel like it. Tonight. And I don't give a ha'penny if you have to spend the rest of the night puking.”
He merely smiled.
Chapter Twelve
January 1883
Beckett, Twelve Pillars' majordomo, was a man in his early fifties, tall, thin, and balding. Camden found him highly efficient, despite his occasional unctuousness—presumably Carrington had liked his servants obsequious.
“You wish to see me, Lord Tremaine?” asked Beckett.
Without speaking, Camden motioned the majordomo to sit. He himself remained standing. The older man settled uneasily into the indicated chair.
Camden stared at him, because he wasn't yet sure where to begin and because he wished to intimidate. After twenty seconds Beckett had trouble meeting his eyes. After three minutes, he was fidgeting and surreptitiously wiping away at his forehead and upper lip.
“You do know, Beckett, that abusing your employer's trust is a crime punishable by law, don't you?”
Beckett's head snapped up. For a moment, his expression was one of sheer panic. But he hadn't risen to be the head of staff in a ducal household without having learned a thing or two about self-control. In the next second, he replied in a normal voice, “Of course, my lord. I am more than aware. Loyalty is my creed.”
But his fear-stricken look had already given too much away. He was guilty. But of what?
“I admire your composure, Beckett. It must not be easy to appear calm when you are quaking in your shoes.”
“I . . . I'm afraid I don't know what you are talking about, sir.”
“I think you do, Beckett. And I think you are filled with dismay, horror, and, I hope, some shame at being found out. If I were you, I wouldn't carry this protestation of innocence any further. If you would not admit your errors to me in private, I shall be forced to go to His Grace and expose your lies, then he would have no choice but to call in the constables.”
Beckett was not about to give up easily. “Sir, if I've done something that has displeased you, please let me know what it is.”
Therein lay the difficulty of the matter. Camden had nothing concrete against Beckett, only the knowledge that Beckett had disrupted the usual pattern of mail delivery within the house and that Camden had a letter from Theodora that he was beginning to believe wasn't from Theodora at all, God help him.
He walked to the mantel and pretended to study the framed seascape above it. If there was any link between Beckett and Theodora's letter, it was only an indirect one. He was acting at someone else's behest, a paid agent.
Camden turned around and bluffed. “I know why you have all the mail delivered to you first. You see, Beckett, I have bad news for you. Your puppeteer has no more use for you and doesn't care to pay the remainder of your fee. So he has decided to throw you to the wolves.”
“No!” Beckett bolted out of the chair. “The bastard!”
His ragged breathing suffused the stillness of the room. Then, realizing he had completely given himself away, he sank down into the chair and lowered his face into his palms.
“Forgive me, my lord. But I've not done anything. Nothing, I swear. I was told only to watch out for any letters that came for you from abroad. Those I was to hand to the man. But he never took one of them either. He just looked at them and gave them back to me.”
Any letter that came for him from abroad. Camden felt something implode in his chest, as if his lungs had collapsed. “Are you sure you've done nothing?”
“There . . .” Beckett wiped his face with his handkerchief. “There was this one time, in the beginning, when the man gave me back the letters and I was sure one of them hadn't been there earlier.”
One letter. That was all it took. One letter.
“Where and when do you meet this man?”
“Outside the gate, on Tuesday and Friday afternoons.”
“And what if you can't meet him in person, for some reason?”
“Then I'm to wrap the letters carefully and place the package under a rock by the gooseberry bush to the left of the gate. He comes at three.”
Today was Friday. The time was twenty-five minutes before three.
“Too bad,” Camden said. “I imagine he will not come anymore. Or I could have him thrown in jail also.”
Beckett paled. “But, my lord, you said . . . you said—”
“I know what I said. I expect your resignation to be handed in to His Grace tomorrow after dinner.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Beckett all but kissed Camden's feet.
“Go.”
As Beckett made his unsteady way to the door, Camden remembered one last thing. “How much were you paid up front?”
Beckett hesitated. “Two thousand pounds. I have a natural son, my lord. He is in trouble. I used the money to pay off his debts. I will restitute it to you as soon as I may.”
Camden pressed his fingers hard against his temple. “I don't want it. And I don't wish to see you ever again. Leave.”
Two thousand up front, two thousand later. Who had this kind of money to throw away? And why would anyone want to do it? All the evidence pointed to only one direction. But he couldn't bear to acknowledge it. Perhaps, he prayed, perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps the fear that knotted his guts wasn't a sign of inevitability but only a result of his overactive imagination.
Perhaps there was still hope.
* * *
Two and a half hours later, there was no longer any possibility of denial.
Camden wrapped the two letters from his friends, hid them as Beckett had done, and waited. A man did come, a raffish-looking man in his sixties, in a dogcart pulled by an ancient nag. He looked around carefully, then went for the gooseberry bush. As Beckett had described, he quickly glanced over the letters, then put them back where he'd found them.
The man maneuvered the dogcart around and started back the way he'd come. Camden followed at a distance, on foot, the pain in his chest growing more vicious with each passing mile, all the way to the bitter end as the man and his cart disappeared between the gates of Briarmeadow, the chimneys of his fiancée's house just visible in the fading light above the tops of the naked poplars.
Something shriveled and died in him. He began to walk, then run, away from Briarmeadow, away from her. Gigi, lovely, treacherous Gigi. Was it only this morning that he had come this way, as eager to please and impress her as any stupid puppy that ever lived?
He didn't know how far or how long he sprinted, or at what point he finally crumpled to the ground, his eyes dry, his mind numb except for a splitting headache, the anvils of Lucifer beating every last shred of illusion out of him.
She had done it. For some reason she had decided that she must have him, so she'd had the letter forged. Of course it was her; she was by far the most devious person he had ever come across. And he, horny fool that he was, had played along ever so willingly. How immeasurable her satisfaction must have been to see him this morning, knowing that her victory was complete and that he'd melt in her hand as readily as a piece of suet.
Anger—burning, icy, dark as the pits of hell—rose slowly in him, until degree by degree it had taken over every cell of his body. He clung to that anger, for it dispelled pain and kept it at bay.
Vengeance, he would have vengeance. She was willing to shell out four thousand pounds for him, was she? Then the lady mustn't be disappointed. She would see that he was every bit her equal in duplicity and heartlessness.
He pried himself off the ground and went on running, not stopping again until he was in view of Twelve Pillars. A stray thought wrestled free from his tight control as he marched toward the house. It pined over how close to paradise he'd come, how joyful and carefree he had been only hours ago. It wanted time to turn back and Aunt Ploni to never have come. It wanted to beat the walls and wail. Gigi, you stupid, stupid girl! Why couldn't you have waited? Theodora got married today. Today! I would have been—
Shut up! Shut up! I will shoot you myself if you ever whine for that girl again.
Vengeance, remember, only vengeance.
Chapter Thirteen
22 May 1893
Langford was restless.
For the past fifteen years, his evenings had consisted of dinner, a cigar, the day's copy of the Times, and one last hour of scholarly reading. And for about thirteen of those fifteen years, twice a week, his current London mistress would arrive just as he laid aside Plato's Symposium or Aeschylus's Myrmidons. The first year after his return to Devonshire he had tried, without consistent success, to set up a more local arrangement. For the past twelve months or so, he had been celibate.
He had never been an advocate for celibacy, nor was he one now. He had, perhaps, simply become too much of a village bumpkin to make the rounds of the London flesh market. Or perhaps he had no more need for the old carnal calisthenics, having grown prematurely asexual via the combination of solitude and scholarly pursuits.
And he hadn't missed it terribly, until tonight. He would not mind knowing that a woman was stepping off the 9:23 train at the town of Totnes at that moment, about to be conveyed four miles southeast to Ludlow Court.
The tranquillity of his library had become somnolent and tedious. His evening routine, with its careful variety of cigars, Punch, and an occasional novel, was as sterile as the capons his cook served on Thursdays. Even having his dessert first tonight had done nothing to alleviate the oppressive sameness, except making him feel acutely ridiculous.
The problem was not lethargy, which afflicted him from time to time. Rather, he suffered from a surfeit of energy. He was pacing like a windup Christmas toy soldier under the generalship of a three-year-old boy.
A knock came at the library door. His butler, Reeves, entered, bearing the evening post. Langford scanned the three envelopes. Two were correspondence from other scholars, one German, one Greek. The last was a letter from his cousin Caroline, otherwise known as Lady Avery, a woman with a religious passion for the sins of others and a philanthropist's delight in sharing her encyclopedic knowledge of Society's every last tempest in a teapot.
He dismissed Reeves and opened Caro's letter, glad for some nonsensical distraction. Caro and her sister Grace, Lady Somersby, used to call on him first thing in the morning, to find out from the servants which lady's abode he had visited the night before or if any cyprians—the precise number, please—had been brought into his own house. He had personally supervised the “accidental” dumping of buckets of cold water as they stood before his door one morning, ringing. But their fearsome dedication to their craft was such that they'd returned the next day with umbrellas.
Perhaps as a tribute to all the delicious, scandalous tidbits he'd provided, which had elevated them to the top of the rumormongering pyramid, Caro wrote him every month about the latest on-dits. At the beginning of his self-imposed exile, he had tossed the letters unopened into the fire. But as the years went by, her clockwork persistence wore down his resistance. He was ashamed to admit to it, but he had become addicted to the monthly dose of adultery, vanity, and lunacy.
This month's installment had Lady Southwell giving birth to yet another child who looked nothing like Lord Southwell but bore every resemblance to the Honorable Mr. Rumford; Sir Roland George setting up two mistresses in the same house; and Lord Whitney Wyld reputedly being caught with his brother's fiancée in a cupboard.
But Caro saved the best for last—an honest-to-goodness divorce, involving not just anyone but one of the country's richest heiresses and a duke's heir, said to be worth a mint himself. Caro wrote giddily and at length of the marchioness's determination to marry her young admirer, the marquess's cryptic intentions, and the wild conjectures circulating about town concerning the outcome of the case. They had put on a most amicable front before others, but behind closed doors what was taking place? Were they poisoning each other's coffee? Each spreading false rumors about the other? Or, unlikely but not impossible, sharing a giggle together at the expense of that dunce Lord Frederick Stuart?
The Railroad Heiress, Caro had called the Marchioness of Tremaine. The Railroad Heiress who almost married a duke, then managed to marry her dead fiancé's cousin within an indecently short period, but never got to wear a coronet of strawberry leaves.
He frowned and suddenly realized where he had seen Mrs. Rowland before. Right there, on that same country lane, before that same cottage.
It must have been a good thirty years ago. He had been home on holiday from Eton, bored out of his mind, itching to do something wild and stupid but not quite wanting the news of it to get back to his parents.
His father had been bedridden for several years and would die in a few weeks. But Langford hadn't known that at the time. He resented his sire's interminable, and seemingly pointless, illness. At school he could slur against the pall that hung permanently over Ludlow Court by making savage jokes involving his useless father's bodily output and the middle-aged, round-faced nursemaid who handled the effluvia with what he considered obscene good cheer. At home he had no such recourse. He could only try to distance himself from the house as much and as often as possible.
So he undertook long daily walks. And it was on one of those walks that he saw her, emerging from the cottage to a waiting barouche in the lane.
She had been jaw-droppingly beautiful. Having lost his virginity a few months before, he considered himself sophisticated. But he gawked. Not only were her features lovely, her figure was divine. She moved with the grace of a nymph and the fluidity of a Nereid.
A man he thought to be her father climbed into the open carriage after her. But then a second man, gray-haired and stooped, approached the carriage. She leaned out and kissed him on the cheek. “Good-bye, Father.”
She was on his mind quite a bit in the following days. He found out that she was indeed married to someone twice her age, a man who manufactured rails and industrial machinery. A shame, he thought, though why it was a shame he never explored. He certainly had no intention of marrying her, though he would have loved to seduce her.
Then his father died, and guilt consumed him. She faded from memory. He embarked on the life of a rogue until he returned to Devon. How long had she been back? They had lived as neighbors for years without the least neighborly interaction.
Until now. Until she'd barged into his path with all the subtlety of an avalanche. He had wondered that he let himself be drawn into her schemes with so little resistance. Perhaps some part of him had recognized her before his conscious mind did. Perhaps the Fates were up to their old tricks. Or perhaps he was simply a man deprived of feminine contacts and she was still the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.
* * *
Victoria was learning far more than she wanted about the Duke of Perrin.
She had a cordial but frustrating dinner with Camden at her London hotel. The boy was slippery as an eel and gave her elegant answers that upon further reflection contained exactly nothing of substance.
After Camden left, she took herself to the theater, where she was most enthusiastically accosted by Lady Avery and her sister, Lady Somersby, two women with whom she had the most incidental acquaintance. They were, of course, after news of Gigi.
Victoria obliged. She told them that Gigi was having second thoughts. Who wouldn't? Just look at Lord Tremaine. Lady Avery and Lady Somersby concurred, the latter waving her handkerchief emphatically. Lord Tremaine was divine, simply divine. She also told them that Camden was working subtly to regain Gigi. No, not that he'd confess any such thing to her, but he did dine with her this evening—so genial of him—and she saw no hurry on his part to proceed with the divorce. In fact, the two of them were coming to visit her very soon at her cottage.
Well, she wasn't obliged to tell them any truth, was she?
So delighted were Ladies Avery and Somersby with the “intelligence” she provided that they invited her to sit in their box. Still peeved with Gigi, Victoria agreed.
“We see far too little of you in town,” Lady Somersby lamented halfway through the second act of Rigoletto.
“I suppose it's because Devon is infinitely more beautiful.”
“Our cousin lives in Devon!” exclaimed Lady Avery.
“That's right,” agreed Lady Somersby. “Where is he exactly?”
“Between Totnes and a little village called Stoke Gabriel,” Lady Avery said. “You must have heard of him, Mrs. Rowland. Our cousin is the Duke of Perrin.”
For once, Victoria wasn't certain what to say. “Ah, yes, I might have heard of him.”
“How could you not?” Lady Somersby giggled. “Gracious me, I do miss that dear boy. Kept us busy, didn't he, in his day.”
“Do you remember the time he won ten thousand pounds in one night, and lost twelve thousand the next, and then won another nine thousand the third night?”
“Oh, yes. But he still came out seven thousand pounds ahead. So he bought himself a new set of matched bays and leased all of Madame Mignonne's girls for a sennight.”
“What about that brawl over him, between that American woman and Lady Harriet Blakeley? They slapped each other like two fishwives. And then the two of them found out he was also having a liaison with Lady Fancot!”
“Surely . . .” Victoria mumbled. “Surely these rumors are much exaggerated.”
Lady Somersby and Lady Avery exchanged a look, as if Victoria had suggested that the Prince of Wales was a lily-white virgin. “My dear Mrs. Rowland,” Lady Somersby said, every syllable drawn out for emphasis. “These are not rumors. These events happened as we pronounced, their truths as indubitable as those of the Scripture. If we wished to traffic in rumors, we'd have told you about what we have heard concerning his affair with Lady Fancot.”
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