A Duke For All Seasons (16 page)

    
Then he straightened to his full height. “Come, poppet,” he said to Lisette. “We have a long carriage ride before us and your mother and father are waiting.”

    
Lisette gave Arabella a quick hug around her knees and ran to his arms. He wrapped her in the blanket again and was gone before Bella could beg for one more kiss from her daughter.

    
Or him.

    
“God help me.” She leaned her forehead against the closed door, listening to his footsteps, the measured smack of leather on wood like a fading dirge as he disappeared down the back stairs. “I love you, Your Grace.”

Mr. Cobb,

    
Kindly locate the book titled
A Gentleman’s Guide to Keeping a Mistress
by Lord Funderburk. It should be shelved in my library’s reference section. Once you have found it, toss it in the nearest fireplace and set the damned thing ablaze.

           
Winterhaven

    
Arabella ran through a few dozen scales to warm up as she applied her stage makeup. Usually the backstage of the Olympic was a cacophony of singers and instruments tuning up their respective pipes, but on this night, only echoes of her own tones bounced back from the high ceilings.

    
Blast.
Her vibrato was usually tight as a lark’s. Now her tone had a wobble wide enough to drive a coach and pair through. She forced herself to focus on her technique, to control her breathing. Somehow, she had to pretend this was just another performance.

    
“Five minutes to curtain,” the stage manager said through her closed dressing room door.

    
“William, come in, please,” she called.

    
He poked his homely, good-natured face around the door. “Yes, Bella?”

    
“Do you remember the fellow who came here with me about a week ago?”

    
“The one who wanted to see the Scottish play box?”

    
“Yes, that’s him. Have you seen him since?”

    
“No. Should I have?”

    
“You’ve taken a stroll through the house this evening, haven’t you?” Bella tried to keep her tone casual. While performers weren’t allowed to mingle with patrons before the footlights went up, the stage manager often made the rounds on the other side of the curtain to make sure the theatre-goers were happy. “I was thinking that gentleman might come tonight.”

    
“No, can’t say as I’ve seen him. He was a pretty remarkable fellow what with that pale hair and all. Handsome bloke. Think I’d have remembered him if I’d seen him again. Sorry, Bella. But cheer up. The house is packed.”
 

    
As if to support William’s words, the indistinct murmur of myriad conversations rose to a vibrant hum.

    
“Time to dim the house lights,” Will said as he checked his pocket watch. “Your accompanist is already in the wings.
In bocca al lupo,
Bella.”

    
In the mouth of the wolf
.
Theatre people told each other to ‘break a leg.’ Opera types wished each other well by reminding themselves they were about to face ‘the mouth of the wolf’—the audience, the critics, the thousands of things that could go horribly wrong in a complicated performance.

    
But Bella wasn’t the one facing the wolf this night. Once the gas footlights were glaring in her eyes, she wouldn’t be able to see Sebastian alone amid the sumptuous appointments of his private box, but she knew he’d be there. It was the Duke of Winterhaven, resplendent in the full glory of his station, who would meet a French wolf once the houselights dimmed.

*
   
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Fernand tugged the turned-back cuffs at his wrists as he strode with purpose along the rear corridor of the theatre. The fit of the powder-blue livery that marked him as one of Lord Granger’s footmen was adequate, he supposed. Disguising himself as a servant was brilliance itself, for no one ever looked closely at fellows in the frockcoats and breeches of the last century. He’d walked, bold as brass, past the stage manager without drawing so much as a second glance.

    
He was less pleased by the horsehair wig. It itched abominably. Fernand only hoped the fellow from whom he’d liberated the costume didn’t have head lice.
 

    
If he did, the little beasties will trouble him no more
, Fernand thought darkly. The real footman had been ridiculously easy to dispatch. The entire garroting had taken less than a minute and had been good practice for Fernand’s real target this evening. He’d never used a garotte before and was pleased with the result. The footman hadn’t managed a sound and there was no blood to speak of.

    
It was unlikely anyone would find the corpse until long after the recital was over. Especially since the hue and cry over discovering the cooling body of a duke in his private box would naturally overshadow the death of an insignificant footman.

    
He drew near the curtained doorway where a servant in the scarlet of Winterhaven’s livery stood sentinel.

    
“My lord craves a word in your ear,” Fernand said. He’d practiced for days till he could ape the English accent, shoving his voice back in his throat instead of letting the tone ring in his nasal cavities. Arabella had taught him that years ago, patiently showing him how to disguise his nationality. At the time, he’d let her believe he wanted to be accepted when he came with her to England.

    
Foolish girl.

    
“I don’t serve Lord Granger,” the Winterhaven footman said. “Why would I bear a message for him?”

    
“You won’t serve His Grace much longer either if you ignore this summons,” Fernand said loftily. “My lord has a message for the duke that will only bear so much repeating. He knows you have your master’s ear. The fewer tongues that relay the information, milord says, the less likely it will be misunderstood.”

    
“But I can’t leave my post.”

    
“I will stay in your place, if you like,” Fernand offered. “But if his lordship gives you a guinea, I expect half.”

    
“You think he will?”

    
“My Lord Granger has been known to be quite generous to those who please him,” Fernand said.

    
A round of applause and shouted “Brava’s” echoed from inside the hall.

    
The diva has made her entrance.

    
The first percussive chords of the piano introduction signaled that Arabella’s recital had begun. Fernand recognized the beginning a song cycle of several German
lieder
. Since each individual song was considered part of a larger composition, there would be no more applause again until she reached the final note in the set.

    
Plenty of time.

    
“I trust you know where Lord Granger’s box is located,” Fernand said. The other footman rolled his eyes. Of course he did. “Oh! Do not intrude while the music is ongoing. Lord Granger would be most displeased. Wait for the applause.”

    
The Winterhaven footman gave Fernand a withering glance. “And see to it that no one disturbs His Grace, even during the applause.”

    
“I assure you,” Fernand said smoothly as the other footman headed down the long curved corridor. He drew the piano wire garotte from its place of concealment in his capacious cuff.
 
“No one shall get past me.”

    
Sebastian leaned forward to watch Arabella. Statuesque and regal, she was every inch a duchess.

    
At least in a perfect world, she would be.

    
Her voice rang through the hall, expressive and voluptuous. He warranted most of the attendees would never know she had anything on her mind but her art. However, each time she swept her gaze in the direction of his box, the footlights caught a glint of terror in her eyes.

    
He was determined never to see that glitter of fear again. After this night, he hoped she’d have no cause for it.

    
Sebastian leaned back in the tufted velvet and crossed his long legs. He might project an image of repose, but every muscle in his body was tense. His ears pricked to any stealthy noise, waiting for de Lisle to show himself.

    
Sebastian had always been athletic. He rode like a demon and trained regularly with a fencing master. His skill with a pistol gave his enemies second thoughts about issuing a challenge for a ‘polite exchange of bullets.’

    
But he’d never killed anyone.

    
He thought he heard the faint rustle of velvet behind him that might be a curtain parting. He drew his boot knife surreptitiously, careful to keep the blade close to his thigh and uncrossed his legs, but didn’t turn around. Surprise was his friend. He would lure de Lisle close before he made his move.

    
Then the piano stopped. Arabella had missed an entrance and blanched pale as foolscap. She shrieked, a blood-curdling cry of such force and magnitude as only an operatic soprano could produce.

    
Sebastian leaped to his feet, but not quickly enough to escape the thin wire slipping over his head and choking off his wind.

*
   
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*

    
Beyond the footlights, the dark hall was a void. She knew the audience was there. She could feel them breathing with her during the long phrases.

    
Then Arabella had missed her entrance when she saw one of the few things she could make out from the stage—a flicker of light from the ducal box that meant the curtain over the door had parted. Someone had joined Sebastian there in the dark.

    
She reached for the highest pitch in her range and screamed, long and primal, with the full force of her lungs behind it to warn Sebastian. When she went silent, grunts and curses and the noise of a scuffle turned every eye in the theatre to His Grace’s box.

    
Arabella ran to the edge of the stage, but the gas footlights were too bright for her see past. A masculine cry of pain rang through the hall and the audience gasped as a body tumbled out of the box and landed in the aisle a few rows back from the orchestra pit.

    
“William, bring up the house lights,” Arabella shouted as she ran to the wings and sprinted down the stairs leading from either end of the proscenium. Her heart nearly choking her, she shoved her way through the throng to reach the broken man on the floor.

    
He was wearing Lord Granger’s livery, but she recognized Fernand’s pale eyes staring sightlessly under the white wig. The hilt of a dagger protruded from his chest. A debutante in a salmon pink gown swooned, but relief washed over Bella in waves.
 

    
She jerked her gaze up to the duke’s box. There were several men jammed into the space, all with their backs to the main hall, but she couldn’t see Sebastian. The crowd around her began to surge toward the exits and Arabella was lifted off her feet, swept along like flotsam on a river in full spate.