How To School Your Scoundrel (12 page)

He had broken the seal, read the note, and looked back at her in that examining way.

“Will there be any reply?” she said, eager to be done with the whole sordid task.

“Does his lordship expect one?”

“I am not privileged to know that, sir.”

“My compliments to his lordship, then,” Mr. Wright had said, or something like that, and he had turned without another glance and walked back to his meeting, without even the courtesy of offering her refreshment.

They were all alike, weren’t they? Somerton and his friends. Not a worthy bone in their bodies.

She’d been a fool, really. Allowing herself, over the past few months, to develop a sort of sympathy for him, mired in his loveless marriage, his proud loneliness. Yes, she could admit it now. It was perfectly natural, after all. She’d lost her sisters, her husband, the extraordinary privilege of her life in Holstein Castle. Her commanding father, to whom she had always looked in hushed admiration, desperate for a crumb of approval or affection. She’d been cast into constant intimacy with the Earl of Somerton, who despite the errors of his character was a man who radiated power and a kind of dark charisma, whose shoulders were broad and thick and whose austere face she’d caught herself studying far too often. Whose soul seemed to contain an aching hole of which she had been allowed only the briefest and most tantalizing of glimpses.

Compelling. He was compelling.

Only natural, then, that she—a healthy young woman of childbearing age, deprived of her own near male relatives—should find herself . . .

Attracted to him.

There. She admitted it.

She curled her hands around her teacup. Her stomach rumbled, though not quite insistently enough to make the watercress sandwich the least bit tempting. She hadn’t finished her breakfast, she remembered. She really should eat something.

She picked up the sandwich and nibbled at the edge. The taste of butter and tired watercress rested on the tip of her tongue, not quite so unpleasant as she’d feared. She took another bite and swallowed.

She had to find another situation. That much was clear. She would come back this evening, collect Quincy and her things, and be gone by morning. She could go to the house in Battersea and wait there for Olympia or Miss Dingleby. She would demand, in any case, that they allow her inside their plans.

She would be an active participant in her own rescue, from now on.

Another bite of sandwich, and another. The bread was really quite good. Almost enough to counterbalance the watercress, which had not been sprinkled plentifully anyway.

A small black fly landed on the edge of her saucer and crawled a cautious quarter inch down the slope, before dashing away.

The rest of the afternoon off.

Well, Luisa?
She drummed her fingers on her teacup.
What are you going to do with the hours allotted to you? Sit and stew in an Aerated Bread Company tea shop?

Or do something?

In a brisk motion, she stuffed the rest of her sandwich in her mouth, bolted the rest of the tea, and wiped her mouth.

“Thank you,” she said to the approaching waitress, and she tossed a shilling on the table and walked out of the shop.

T
he Duke of Olympia’s London house occupied a prime slice of Park Lane, a hundred or so yards to the north of Wellington’s noble posture. Luisa leaned against the rough bark of a tree in the park opposite, London
Baedeker’s
in hand, and studied the stately ducal windows over the crisp edges of her guidebook.

Her heart beat smartly in her chest. She could almost taste its energy at the back of her throat. Somewhere behind one of those heavy-draped windows sat her sister Emilie, perhaps reading a book, perhaps pacing the elegant floorboards of her allotted room. Perhaps sitting with her duke, the one with the strange mask and the white hair. Perhaps peering out the window and wondering who stood outside.

Despite the cold February air, the unfashionable time of year, the house was bustling. A stream of people eddied around the entrance steps, laden with flowers and parcels and musical instruments. Several vehicles lay alongside the curb, horses’ necks all lowered at the same resigned angle. Just outside the massive front entrance, a man in livery directed the flow of traffic, stopping each man, delivering instructions. All this activity must be preparation for the ball tonight, for Emilie’s engagement ball. No doubt the mews entrance at the rear was even busier.

If Luisa knew where Emilie was—if all London’s tradesmen apparently knew what was taking place at the Duke of Olympia’s town house tonight—then so did the conspirators. Those agents of the Revolutionary Brigade, who were supposed to be in England this instant, hunting the princesses down—where were they now? Were they among the alarming swarm of men entering and leaving that grand marble portal? Were they among the drivers hunched atop the delivery vans just outside, any one of which might contain enough ordnance to blow up the Houses of Parliament?

Or that portly fellow walking up the path, looking occasionally to the right, for example. Was he glancing with a tourist’s curiosity at the magnificent houses bordering Hyde Park? At the extraordinary activity along Park Lane? Or did his gaze have a more sinister purpose?

Olympia claimed that Emilie was safe and well guarded in his house, but if that was the case, why hadn’t he kept the three of them here from the beginning? How could Emilie possibly remain safe in the middle of all that anonymous and businesslike humanity?

The man walked by, continuing toward Marble Arch without a pause. Luisa watched his wide woolen backside diminish innocently between the trees. At the last instant, just before her head and her attention turned back to the house across the street, she caught a glimpse of movement from the edge of her vision.

Slowly, idly, so as not to draw any particular attention, she adjusted her posture against the tree and returned her gaze to the section of path to her left.

Trees, a few hurried walkers. A woman in a smart black coat and cap, pushing an infant’s high-wheeled perambulator.

Perhaps she’d imagined it. Or perhaps it was just another walker, someone lingering for a second or two to light a cigarette or . . .

A man stepped out from behind a tree, gazed across the street, and tugged his ear.

Luisa reached up and settled her hat farther down on her forehead. A little gust of wind made the bare winter branches creak and scrape above her. She turned her head back to her
Baedeker’s
, feigning study, and discovered that she was holding the book upside down.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the man tug his ear again and lean back against a tree, one foot propped against the trunk.

Luisa pulled her watch out of her pocket, glanced at the face without seeing, and strolled to a nearby bench. A man sat at the other end, head turned back, snoring softly. She eased herself downward and crossed one trousered leg over the other. Over the top of the guidebook—now right side up—she observed the house on Park Lane.

The bustle went on. One fellow dropped a flat of orchids—a bit excessive, orchids in February, but a princess didn’t get engaged every day—and the resulting fuss occupied the entire considerable breadth of the entrance steps. A bottleneck formed in the efficient flow of men and goods from pavement to house. Someone swore, so fluently and loudly that the words carried right through the cold winter wind, between the delivery vans and a half-empty omnibus, to land squarely in Luisa’s ears.

Next to her, the sleeping man startled upward, clutching his dislodged cap with woolen fingers, and glanced across the street.

Luisa turned a page in her guidebook. A pair of bicycles rattled by, obstructing her view for a second or two, and when Olympia’s house reappeared, a tall, broad figure had emerged from the doorway and was skirting around the orchid-scented pandemonium on the steps to dodge casually around the traffic on Park Lane.

His hat, like hers, was pulled low on his forehead, and she couldn’t quite glimpse his face. But the ears, large and protrudent as the wings of a giant butterfly, she knew well. Likewise the chin, which she had stroked a hundred times, fiddling curiously with the stubble, trying to nudge that wide mouth into a smile.

Usually, she had succeeded. Hans was like another father to her, a warmer and more forgiving one, who kept sweets in his pockets and who, after dressing Prince Rudolf in his magnificent dress uniform, frogged in gold and shouldered by epaulettes the size of dinner plates, would invariably bring Luisa and her sisters around the minstrels’ gallery to watch the colorful splendor of a state ball. Hans had acted as her father’s valet since the day Prince Rudolf turned eighteen. He had trimmed his every whisker, had straightened his every necktie. He had dressed him for the last time, before laying the prince in his satin-lined coffin with his own strong hands.

He had guarded the princesses along that cold midnight journey to England. She and her sisters had walked through the shelter of the Duke of Olympia’s door at three o’clock in the morning with Miss Dingleby leading the way and Hans standing watchfully at their backs.

Now he swung over the low park railing with one swipe of his long legs and joined the man at the tree, side by side, hands shoved in pockets, comrades in arms.

The man on the bench sat up, stretched his arms, and rose to his feet.

Luisa couldn’t breathe. The muscles of her chest had frozen in fear and shock. She tilted her head away, so that she could scarcely see them in the outermost corner of her vision, and concentrated on her heartbeat, on drawing a single shallow breath into her lungs. She dropped her gaze to the pages before her and tried to read the words.

Hans. Surely not. Surely he was meeting with Olympia’s men, surely they were all preparing for tonight’s ball, readying themselves to trap the conspirators.

That was it.

Except that Hans couldn’t speak more than a few words of English.

Well, no doubt he had picked up more since arriving here. He would have had to, wouldn’t he? And Hans was clever enough. He could carry on a conversation by now, if he had applied himself diligently to the study of English.

The words blurred before her, the ink ran together. The snoring man was now ambling toward Hans and the other man, among the trees.

A bicycle went by, and another. The two riders shouted to each other.

Luisa rose to her feet and made as if she were trying to find her way to Marble Arch, looking up at the street and down again to her guidebook. The pages shook a little between her hands. She rolled her weight about on her feet, steadying herself.

Calm down
, she thought sternly. This is Hans.

With an air of decision, she turned and walked north, staying on the graveled path, so she would pass behind the backs of the three men. She drifted close to the edge, as close as she could, and the low murmured voices rumbled in her ears.

Step, step, step. The voices grew louder, but their tone remained unintelligible, kept just below the range of ordinary conversation. As if deliberately hushed. English, or German? She couldn’t be certain. The sounds were thick, a bit glottal, but wasn’t English sometimes less than crisp, when spoken by bulky men in hushed voices? Wouldn’t Hans’s English—if he now spoke English—carry a heavy German accent?

Step, step. She was almost directly behind them now, as close as she would get. She strained her ears above the sound of her own shoes, crunch, crunch, crunching on the fine gravel.

Please, God. Let it be English.

The single word
Musiker
rose above the rumble, and passed into memory.

•   •   •

I
t took Luisa some time to locate the mews entrance to Olympia’s town house. In the first place, the alley was naturally dark and narrow, made more so by the fading winter afternoon, clogged with London soot and smoke.

In the second place, she’d never seen it. She didn’t even know the number. What use had she ever had for house numbers and mews entrances, when visiting her uncle before? A driver had navigated her to the house, a footman had ushered her in the front door with all the ceremony due her royal status. Except when she had arrived in October, of course, and even then she’d had Hans and Miss Dingleby to lead the way.

She paced down the rough-cobbled alleyway, counting the wide carriage doors, until she thought she had the right one. It was painted a sleeker shade of black than the others, and the familiar ducal crest decorated the area where the brass knocker would be, if carriage doors sported brass knockers. A large delivery wagon stood by, and as she approached, the entrance sprang open to admit a pair of men, laughing, carrying an empty crate between them.

“Excuse me,” she said, “do you work for the Duke of Olympia?”

One of them swiveled his head in her direction. “Sorry, mate. Fruitmonger. But you can go on in, if you likes, and tell the big cove guarding the way that Sam Apples sent you.” He winked.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You can thank me later, if you like, lad,” he muttered in her astonished ear, as she sidled past.

“Not bloody likely,” she muttered back.

Inside, the stable area was dark and smelled of horseflesh and leather. A few white-flecked equine faces stared curiously at her from the stalls, as if trying to place her. As Sam Apples had suggested, a large man blocked the door at the back that led through the garden to the main house; she prayed he wasn’t someone who might recognize her.

She strode up and spoke in her lowest voice. “Good afternoon. I have a message for Miss Dingleby.”

“What’s that?” He looked startled.

“A message for Miss Dingleby. She’s a . . . an attendant of Her Highness.” Luisa watched the man carefully: Did he recognize the name? Had she guessed correctly that Dingleby would be staying here in the same house as Emilie?

He paused and knitted his brows together. “What’s your name, lad?”

“My name is Markham. I’m a friend. Could you tell her that I’m here to see her, with an important message?”

He bent down slightly—he really was an enormous beast, three or four inches above six feet—and peered at her face. “Markham, you said?”

“Yes. Mr. Markham. I’m the Earl of Somerton’s private secretary.”

He straightened and turned to the door. “Jack, the lad here says he needs to speak to that Dingleby woman, urgent-like.”

The reply was unintelligible to Luisa, but the guard nodded and turned back to her.

“Wait here,” he said, nodding at a stool between two stalls.

Luisa ignored the stool and reached for a horse instead. He was one of the duke’s famous matched blacks, a big, sleek fellow designed to pull a crested landau in the company of three more identical animals. He nudged eagerly at her chest. “I haven’t got anything for you,” she said softly. “I suppose you’ve been cooped up all day, poor fellow.”

She bent her face to his and absorbed the comfort of his breath, the raw power of him, now still and contained beneath her touch. For some reason, Somerton’s image rose in her head. Black and sleek and magnificent, just like the horse, and filled with strength to be used for good or ill. Cooped up in his civilized cage for far too long.

“Mr. Markham.”

Miss Dingleby’s sharp voice shattered the dusty idyll.

Luisa released the horse and spun to meet her. “Miss Dingleby,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”

The governess’s arms were like two iron bands across her chest. Her face, even in the semidarkness of the stable, was stern enough to scatter gravel. “What the devil are you doing here, Mr. Markham? This is no place for you. Today of all days, when I specifically instructed . . .”

“I’ve a message. An important one. I’ve . . .” Luisa cast a quick glance at the doorway, and lowered her voice. “I’ve discovered something rather important.”

“What is it?”

Luisa reached out and took Miss Dingleby’s sleeve. Evidently her old governess had yet to dress for the ball; the material was a serviceable blue wool, the sleeves long and businesslike. Luisa pulled her into the shelter of the horse’s long black neck.

“The traitor,” she whispered. “I’ve discovered the traitor.”

The muscles of Miss Dingleby’s face made a strange movement, a contortion. In the wavering light from the safety lantern hanging from the low mews ceiling, her expression looked almost demonic, all heightened eyebrows and narrowed eyes. “What’s that? You’ve what?”