Belgravia (30 page)

Charles Pope was in a quandary as he stood near the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. In his hand was a letter that had been delivered to his office. He turned it over and over, staring down
at the light, precise writing. Was there any point in his being here? What could he achieve beyond more trouble? Maria Grey had written, asking him to call on her at her mother’s house in Chesham Street, but he had refused. A man in his position could not call on a young woman of her standing, especially as she was already betrothed. Instead, he’d sent a note suggesting they should meet at the Round Pond at three in the afternoon. It was a public enough place, and there would be no sense of impropriety should they happen to bump into each other while out for a walk. Would there?

Except that, now it was nearly the appointed time, his nerve was failing. How could he claim to love her if he was prepared to risk her good name like this? But even as he asked himself the question, he knew that he had to see her again.

A stiff wind was blowing when he arrived at the pond. The water was choppy, with small waves lapping against the sides and splashing at his feet. Despite the breeze, there were plenty of ladies taking a stroll, some in groups of two or three, and small children were running around, zigzagging between them. Some older boys were struggling to get a scarlet kite off the ground, and behind them was a gathering of their anxious nurses, a few pushing the new basket-weave baby carriages, while others carried their charges.

He sat down on a park bench and stared at the ducks bobbing about on the surface of the water, all the time glancing anxiously around him, scanning the faces of passersby. Where was she? Perhaps she had decided not to come. It was already twenty minutes after the hour. Of course she had decided against the whole thing. She had discussed it with someone, her mother or her maid, and they had seen it for the mad plan that it was. He stood up. He was clearly making a fool of himself. This fine and beautiful girl was a thousand miles out of his league. What was he doing but wasting his time?

“I am so sorry!” He spun around and there she was, wearing a simple light tweed suit and clutching onto her bonnet. “I had to run.” She smiled. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks flushed as
she stood catching her breath. “It was much harder to escape Ryan than I thought.” Then she laughed, because he was there waiting, and she hadn’t missed him as she feared, and everything was wonderful again. She sat down on a bench and he sat with her.

“You’ve come alone?” Charles did not intend to sound as shocked as he felt, but she was playing with her reputation.

“Of course I’ve come alone. You don’t think my mother would have let me out if she’d had the slightest idea where I was going, and I can’t trust Ryan. She reports every move I make back to Mama. You are so lucky, Mr. Pope, to have been born a man.”

“I’m rather glad you were not born a man.” It was the most daring thing he had said to her, and he fell silent at his own courage.

She laughed again. “Perhaps. But I’m rather proud of myself today. I lost my maid and hailed a cab, for the first time in my life. How’s that?”

He could not rid himself of the sense that he was luring her into danger. “But I don’t see what good can come of our meeting. Certainly not for you. You have taken a great risk in coming here.”

“Surely you admire people who take risks, Mr. Pope?” she asked, watching the ducks.

“I would not admire a man who allowed his beloved to sacrifice her reputation.” He’d failed to notice that he referred to her, by implication, as his beloved.

But she had. “Because I’m engaged?” said Maria softly.

“Yes, you are engaged. But even if you weren’t.” He sighed. It was time for some reality to break into fairyland. “I am not the sort of man Lady Templemore would ever entertain as a possible suitor for your hand.”

He had meant by this to bring things to a halt, but instead his words released a thousand possibilities. “Are you a suitor for my hand?” she said, looking him directly in the eye.

He returned her gaze. What was the point of lying now? “Lady Maria, I would fight dragons, I would walk over flaming coals, I would enter the Valley of the Dead, if I thought I might have a chance of your heart.”

For a moment she was silenced by this declaration. She had grown up in a different world from his, and she was used to flowery speeches but not great passion. She understood now that she had inflamed a love in this straightforward man that was completely out of his control. He loved her with his whole being. “Heavens,” she said. “We seem to have covered quite a distance in a few short sentences. Please call me Maria.”

“I can’t. And I have told you the truth because I believe you deserve the truth, but I do not think we have the power to make it happen, even supposing you should want to.”

“I do want to make it happen, Mr. Pope. Charles. Be easy in that.” She remembered the stiff and stilted conversation with John Bellasis she’d had in her mother’s morning room and compared the two scenes with wonder. This is what love is like, she thought, not that absurd mixture of polite anecdotes and feeble, unfelt compliments.

Charles did not reply. He simply did not dare to look into her beautiful, hopeful, proud face for fear of losing himself completely. And whatever she said, she would surely break his heart. Even if she had no desire to, even if she was determined to stick to him through thick and thin, it must come to that in the end. She might bemoan her fate at being born a woman, but he was ruing the day he had been born the orphan cousin of a country parson.

A figure striding up the Broad Walk caught his attention. “Isn’t that your mother?” he said suddenly, jumping to his feet. There was something about the shape of the woman’s silhouette, the brisk air of impatience, that he recognized from that moment on the balcony at the Brockenhursts’ party. He remembered how she had stood in the doorway, reeking of disapproval. Even then he had known that Lady Maria Grey was beyond his grasp.

She paled. “Ryan must have gone straight home and told her I’d given her the slip. I suppose she heard where I directed the cab. You must go, now.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t leave you to take the blame.”

She shook her head briskly. “Why not? The blame is mine. And
don’t worry. She won’t eat me. But this is not the right moment for you to be introduced as my lover. You know I’m right. So, go.”

She took his hand and squeezed it, then Charles drifted back across the graveled paths and lost himself in the shrubbery beyond.

Lady Templemore had arrived. “Who was that man?”

“He was lost. He needed to find the Queen’s Gate.”

She was very convincing. Lady Templemore sat on the bench. “My dear, I think it’s time you and I had a little talk.”

Charles heard none of this exchange, although he might have guessed its content. He didn’t care. As he quickened his pace and walked back toward Kensington Gore, his chest was close to bursting. Nothing else really mattered, not any more. She loved him. And he loved her back. She had acknowledged him as her lover. That was all he really needed to know. If she did break his heart, it would be worth it for this moment. What came next he couldn’t guess at, but he loved and was loved in return. For now, that was enough.

J
ohn Bellasis braced himself before he crossed the threshold of his parents’ house in Harley Street. He wasn’t sure why he disliked it so much. Maybe because the place was so shabby in comparison to his aunt’s splendid palace in Belgrave Square. Maybe because it reminded him that his origins were not quite as smart as they should have been. Or perhaps it was simpler. Maybe it was just that his parents bored him. They were dull people, weighed down with problems of their own making, and, to be honest, he sometimes felt a creeping impatience for his father to quit the scene, leaving John as his uncle’s direct heir. Whatever the truth of the matter, he experienced a certain weariness as the door was opened and he stepped inside.

Luncheon at home with his parents was not an invitation he would normally accept with much enthusiasm. He’d usually concoct some excuse: an urgent, pressing engagement that sadly could not be delayed. But today he was—once more—in need of funds, so he had little choice but to be courteous to his mother, who always indulged her son and rarely refused him anything. It was not a fortune, but he needed something to tide him over until Christmas, and there was the question of Ellis and Turton to attend to. But that was an investment, he told himself confidently. A small outlay for a large reward, or so he hoped.

He wasn’t sure what the butler and the maid would come up with, but his instincts told him that the Trenchards were hiding something. And at that point, any illuminating fact about Charles Pope and his connections would be helpful. John was banking on the butler. He recognized a venal soul when he saw one, and
a butler enjoyed greater freedom of access within a private house than a lady’s maid. Turton had carte blanche to wander where he chose and could lay his hands on keys that would be withheld from servants of a lower rank; the maid’s territory was more circumscribed. Of course Turton had feigned surprise and consternation at their meeting when it was suggested he might investigate Mr. Trenchard’s papers, but then again, it was amazing how persuasive the offer of six months’ wages could be.

Walking into the small sitting room at the front of the house, John found his father in a high-backed chair by the window, reading a copy of the
Times
. “Mother not here?” asked John, looking around the room. If she were about, perhaps he could dispense with luncheon altogether and go straight to the essential question of finances.

It was an oddly decorated room. Most of the furniture, and indeed the portraits, with their heavy gilt frames and elaborate subjects, looked far too grand for their surroundings. The scale was wrong; it was clear these tables and chairs had previously occupied a larger setting. Even the lamps seemed bulky. It all generated a sense of claustrophobia, a feeling that permeated the entire house.

“Your mother is at a committee meeting.” Stephen put down his newspaper. “Something to do with the slums in the Old Nichol.”

“The Old Nichol? Why is she wasting her time on that stinking bunch of cockfighters and thieves?” John wrinkled his nose.

“I don’t know. Saving them from themselves, no doubt. You know what she’s like.” Stephen sighed and then scratched his smooth head. “Before she gets back, I think I should tell you…” He hesitated. It was not like him to be embarrassed, but he was embarrassed now. “That Schmitt debt is still troubling me.”

“I thought you’d paid him.”

“I did. Count Sikorsky was generous and lent me some money at the beginning of the summer, and I borrowed the rest from the bank. But it’s been six weeks, and Sikorsky is asking questions. He wants his money back.”

“What did you think would happen?”

Stephen ignored his son’s question. “You spoke once of a Polish moneylender.”

“Who charges fifty percent. And to borrow from one moneylender to pay off another…” John sat down. Of course this moment had to come. His father had borrowed an enormous sum with no means of returning it. Somehow he had tried to put it out of his mind, but it must be faced. He shook his head. John thought himself irresponsible, but surely women were a safer addiction than gambling.

Stephen gazed rather hopelessly out the window. He was up to his neck in debt, and it would only be a matter of time before he would join those filthy beggars and vagrants on the street outside. Or would he simply be dragged off to the Marshalsea and imprisoned until he paid? It was laughable, really; there was his wife, busily helping the poor, when in reality her services were required a little closer to home.

For the first time in his life John actually felt quite sorry for his father as he watched him sink back forlornly into his chair. It wasn’t Stephen’s fault he was born second. John had always, consciously or unconsciously, decided that everything was the fault of one or other of his parents. Somehow it was their fault that they didn’t live at Lymington Park, that they didn’t have a large house in Belgrave Square, and even their fault that he, John, had been born the eldest son of the second son and not the first. He’d been a child when it happened but now, if he was honest, he felt it was only justice that Edmund Bellasis had died and made him heir. At least a solution was on its way. Otherwise there would be no hope for any of them.

“Aunt Caroline might be some help,” said John, flicking a little dust off his trousers.

“Do you think so? You surprise me.” His father turned and looked at him, hands clasped together, eyes imploring. “I thought we’d given up on that.”

“We’ll see.” John rubbed his hands together. “I have a man on the case, as they say.”

“You mean you’re still looking into that Mr. Pope?”

“I am.”

“There’s definitely something going on. His hold over her is very strange, even improper.” Stephen’s lightly sweating face gleamed in the sunlight, dark eyes darting around the room. “Mark my words, Caroline is hiding something.”

“I agree.” John nodded, getting out of his chair. There was something about his father’s desperation that was disconcerting. “And when I have some information, I shall challenge her with it, and at the same time I’ll bring up our shortage of funds and remind her that we are a family, and families ought to pull together.”