Deadly Affair: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance) (21 page)

Sir Charles took snuff. He didn’t think Lord George amusing and it showed.

“And if Cleveley discovers to what lengths you’ve already gone to
lay claim
to
your
Hatty?”

“Now Charlie, don’t go threatening me!” Lord George growled and sunk his head into his hands again. “Oh God, I feel ill,” he moaned. “I wish you’d blow away...”

“You and I must decide what’s to be our next move.”

Lord George sighed impatiently. “You’re such a bore. But I’ll listen. I’ve no ideas of my own.”

“Just so,” murmured Sir Charles.

Lord George had a sudden thought.

“Mayhap I don’t need to worry. After all, it’s not as if it was Mamma’s fault the marriage was barren. We all know what’s whispered about the clubs: Father can’t even get a whore with child. And God knows he’s had his fair share of them over the years.” He snorted a lop-sided grin and gave Sir Charles a nudge. “Whose to say he’ll fair any better with Hatty? Ha! No need to panic at all!”

“Think on it a moment, George. If Lady Henrietta marries your father then she’ll be in
his
bed, not yours.”

Lord George frowned and chewed on a fingernail gloomily

“Although… There has been no
official
announcement of the engagement...”

Lord George bit off a piece of quick and flicked it away.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, that until a notice appears in the newssheets announcing the engagement between His Grace and Lady Henrietta Russell, you have as much hope as I do of becoming Lady Henrietta’s husband.”

Lord George’s mouth dropped open and then he burst out laughing as he shuffled to a walnut sideboard that concealed a chamber pot in its lower drawer. He proceeded to urinate into the opened drawer. “
You
?
Hatty’s
husband?” he said over his shoulder. “That’s priceless, Charlie!” Turning back to adjust himself he discovered the chamber pot missing. A servant had removed it to empty and not bothered to put it back. Undaunted, Lord George buttoned his breeches and kicked closed the now dripping drawer.

Sir Charles regarded him with barely concealed loathing. It nauseated him to think this turbaned buffoon had even placed a paw on the Lady Henrietta Russell. As for succeeding to a dukedom... Yet, while he could overcome his bitter disappointment should the Duke marry Earl Russell’s daughter, the thought of that marriage producing an heir and Lord George not being the next Duke, did not bear thinking about. Such an outcome left no room for Sir Charles to exercise any political influence. He had spent the better part of his formative political career cultivating the Duke’s family, the Duchess and her son in particular, and he wasn’t about to let his efforts come to nothing. Up until the Duchess’s demise he had been supremely confident of enjoying many more years bathing in the golden glow of the Cleveley patronage. With her death had come uncertainty of its continuance; the impending engagement of the Duke, a severe jolt that his political career was at an end, unless, that is, he could rally Lord George into action.

“Be a good fellow, Charlie, and have a lackey fetch a physician.”

Sir Charles ignored the request.

“His Grace has gone post haste into Somerset. I presume he means to pay a visit to the Bath studio of a particular painter, to ascertain by what divine right he took it upon himself to immortalize a bastard brat and her whore of a mother. It was the devil’s own luck that his most prized painting was mutilated beyond recognition. That may yet save you.”

This had a profound effect on his ailing lordship. He looked at Sir Charles with a sense of overwhelming panic. His eyes went very round. “Vesey knows where she lives and if he knows where she lives then it is only a matter of time before Father knows where she lives also.” He slumped onto a chair again. The ale did not look so bad after all. He drank it down in one breath and belched. “You told me she and the brat had been taken care of!” He pouted at Sir Charles and shook his arm. “You
promised
Mamma. You said she was gone from our lives
forever
. Ha! And now you tell me she’s living as some painter’s whore? You
lied
to me, Charlie!”

Sir Charles freed himself. “I did no such thing,” he answered haughtily. “Against my better judgment, but in deference to the Duchess, I implicated myself irrevocably in your sordid business. I did what was asked of me. Nothing more and nothing less. That the whore and her bastard are being championed by an emaciated boy-painter and have come back to haunt you after all these years is hardly my affair.”

Lord George chewed on a non-existent thumbnail. “But you will do something about it, won’t you?”

Sir Charles baulked. “I? Why should I further incriminate myself? Unlike you, I can explain away my involvement as a loyal secretary merely looking after his noble employer’s best interests.”

“Damn it, Charles!” Lord George whined. “You’re just as much a part of this!”

Sir Charles sniffed contemptuously but was secretly pleased Lord George had the honesty to be frightened. He sensed the tide had once more turned in his favor. “Oh, don’t look so forlorn, George,” he said with a bright smile. “I am willing to offer you my assistance.” He propelled Lord George into the bedchamber. “Get dressed. We’re off to Somerset as soon as you’re packed.”

Lord George visibly froze in the doorway. “You won’t get me to confess a syllable to father! Not after all these years.
Never
.”

“No one is asking you to do that,” Sir Charles said with forced patience; his accompanying smile tight. “Those pictures were a mightily unpleasant reminder for you, George, but I am of the opinion that the dead should stay dead. The only person who can ensure this matter is dealt with once and for all time is your aunt Lady Rutherglen and before the Duke becomes involved. She is the person we are to visit. I have it on good authority she’s at Bath taking the waters.”

Lord George tossed his turban onto the tumble of bedclothes and scratched the back of his matted head. “Aunt Rutherglen?” he grumbled. “What can that old serpent do for me?”

Sir Charles deliberately bit his tongue. Lady Rutherglen had done more to save her ungrateful nephew’s fat neck than any other person living. In many ways she had paid the ultimate price for her devotion to her sister’s offspring, and she was going to be called upon one last time to make certain that Lord George Stanton succeeded to the Cleveley dukedom. Too many people’s livelihoods depended on that outcome, her ladyship included. But Sir Charles knew that Lord George did not care in the least what sacrifices had been made on his behalf, or by whom, because all his life what George wanted George received, regardless of the consequences to others. Hence their present predicament. But Sir Charles didn’t have the energy or inclination to lecture on the obvious so said simply,

“Trust me, my lord. All will become clear once we reach Bath.”

His lordship did trust him. He had every confidence in Sir Charles being able to right matters. After all, he had managed it five years ago, and with the blessings of his mother and his aunt. He expected nothing less than absolute loyalty from his stepfather’s henchman. Suddenly he did not feel so ill.

“So what’s your plan, Charlie?”

“That, my lord, has already been set in motion. We must now put our trust in my raven-locked school friend’s pathetic desire for truth and justice.” He took out his pocket watch to view the time and grinned. “I should think by now he is on the road into Somerset to confront the Duke.”

“
What
?” thundered Lord George. “You’ve roped
Halsey
into this? Why, in Bedlam’s name? If anyone’s capable of raising the dead, it’s that cursed principled trouble-maker.”

Sir Charles smiled unpleasantly. “Precisely. And what better way to get a self-righteous Duke to keep the dead in their graves than have a crusader of righting wrongs on his back?”

Lord George was not as dull-witted as Sir Charles supposed, for in response he broke into such unrestrained laughter that the former secretary was quite prepared to ignore the stench of stale vomit and urine about his lordship’s large person.

Selina sat in a corner of her travelling coach being bumped about on uneven roads as she tried to read the morning edition of
The Gazette
. She loathed travel, being constantly jostled, bounced and swayed this way and that on narrow, rutted and muddied roads; the tedium of miles and miles of countryside; and the smell of horse sweat and manure in the crowded stableyards of the inns along the way. It was not that she disliked the country or country life. It was the getting there she found irksome.

And her two travelling companions weren’t providing her with any diversion to help the passing of the hours.

Evans sat beside her, back rigid as ever but fast asleep, with her head forever falling forward so that her pointy chin bounced on her emaciated chest. Talgarth was huddled in a corner diagonally opposite, wide awake and ignoring the open fields. He stared vacantly at the padded velvet upholstery between the two women. Despite being rugged up under three blankets, and with a hot brick under his feet, his forehead was beaded with perspiration and he continued to shiver, arms folded tightly across his chest in brooding silence.

He had not spoken since their overnight stay at Marlborough, where he had been violently ill in the stable yard; the third such vomiting episode since leaving London. Selina was well aware his suffering was self-inflicted. Nausea, chills and sweating always accompanied her brother’s periodic episodes of opium withdrawal. He was punishing himself for what he saw as his failure as an artist. It was an act of self-loathing, and although Selina hated to see him in such distress she knew no amount of cajolery on her part would make him feel any better, and it certainly wouldn’t get him to speak. He must be allowed to initiate conversation in his own good time.

So she returned to the pages of
The Gazette
and finished reading an article on the successful passage of the Bristol Bill, her interest only momentarily piqued by a quote from Sir Charles Weir, praising the Commons vote and giving his long-winded explanation
verbatim
of what it would mean for the mercantile greatness of the kingdom.

“Whatever did Cleveley see in that man?” she asked herself aloud and tossed the folded newssheet to one side to pick up the
Public Advertiser
.

“I’m a damned failure!” Talgarth announced, momentarily forcing his thin body to stop its involuntary shudders.

Selina pretended a moment of distraction. She did not look up from the newsprint. “I beg your pardon, dear... What did you say?”

“I’m a failure.”

“Failure...?”

“The exhibition was a failure. No one will care to commission a portrait from a failure. God damn it! I allowed myself to fall all to pieces in full view of the
world
.”

Selina folded the
Public Advertiser
, a sidelong glance at the dozing Evans.

“Tal, you are being too harsh on yourself. Anyone with proper feelings couldn’t but be affected by such hideous vandalism. Who could think less of you for showing your emotion? In fact, I would be surprised if you didn’t receive a flood of commissions because of it.” She held up the newssheet in her hand. “Why, in here there is an article on the exhibition that gives you three paragraphs to Hamilton’s one.”

What she did not add was that there was just as much ink devoted to speculation, as to the identity of the vandal or vandals of Talgarth’s portrait and to the identity of the figures in the portrait. One reviewer proudly stated that he had inspected the damaged canvas and was of the opinion the mystery lady was none other than French Louis’ latest mistress, Jeanne du Barry. Selina had no idea how this startling conclusion had been reached given that the portrait had been so badly defaced with red paint that it was impossible to discern even the hair color of the sitter.

“Lina,” Talgarth said in an agonized whisper, “it was my
best
work. My
very best
.”

Selina had not viewed the portrait before its ruin but she was sure he was right. She wanted to gather him up in her arms and hug away his hurt. She wasn’t given the opportunity to agree with him. Talgarth suddenly slammed the side of his fist against the door paneling, rage welling up within him.

“Cobham will think
I
did it, just to get attention. He thinks I’m mad.” He met his sister’s open look. “Am I? Am I
mad
, Lina?”

“Not at all,” she answered calmly, which she truly believed.

What Cobham thought was entirely different. But then their elder brother lacked all imagination. So had their parents, who, unable to deal with Talgarth’s scholastic ineptitude, had had him strapped to a chair for hours on end, with a tutor standing over him reciting Latin and Greek verse. As if their recalcitrant son could breathe in his education by simply being in the presence of an Oxford don!

“The fact you ask the question shows you are as sane as me,” Selina added with an understanding smile. “Besides, what do you care for Cobham’s good opinion? I certainly don’t.”