How To School Your Scoundrel (8 page)

She turned to leave. Behind her, Quincy’s claws scrabbled on the polished surface of the wood.

“Wait a moment.”

The silkiness of the earl’s voice made her foot arrest in midair. She took a deep breath, placed it back down, and forced a smile to her lips.

“Yes, sir?” she asked, turning back.

“Perhaps, Mr. Markham, you would like a moment to reconsider.”

The ring weighed heavily in her pajama pocket. She was afraid to look down and see what a lump it made, sticking out from her hip like a piece of coal.

“Reconsider what, sir?” She lifted her hand to smother a yawn. “I’m awfully tired. Quite done in.”

“Reconsider taking the ring from my washstand.”

At her feet, Quincy let out a whine and thumped his tail against the floor. A roaring sound rose up in Luisa’s ears, an ocean of fear.

“Sir, I don’t . . . I . . .”

“Mr. Markham. Do me the favor, if you will, of not playing the fool.” Somerton’s voice was sharp enough to cut steel. His face had gone blank, blank and hard-edged, a plaster mask of unknown intent. “I have faced down far more clever deceit than yours, believe me.”

She anchored her gaze on his nose, which was large and slightly Roman, an ancient gold coin of a nose. So must a butterfly feel, with the pin stuck firmly in her thorax.

“The ring is not yours,” she said.

“You think so? But neither is it yours.”

How it burned through the flannel of her pajamas. She stuck out her chin. “You are quite wrong. It is mine.”

“Yours?” He laughed brutally. “My dear fellow. Yours?”

“Mine.”

“A ring of such value, belonging to a common young clerk? Of such singular appearance? I can picture it now, a most unusual arrangement of stones.”

“It is a family heirloom. My only legacy from my father.” She kept her voice steady, her gaze trained on his, communicating truth.

“Ah. A family heirloom.”

“Yes. For generations.”

The brass clock ticked its slow military tick. Quincy huddled against her ankles, hangdog. Somerton stood rock-still before her, half clothed and magnificent, a cunning beast whose every sense seemed to reach out and penetrate her skin. A single muscle flexed at his chest, and then relaxed.

“This family heirloom. This legacy from your father. It simply dropped from your person during the attack?” he asked.

“The thief took it from my waistcoat pocket, right before you arrived.”

“Hmm.”

She waited for him to speak. To tell her she was a liar, to ask for the ring back. To ask her to show it to him.

“Why didn’t you claim the ring back immediately, in that case?” he asked, in that same inscrutable low tone.

“I didn’t think you’d believe me. As you say, a lowly clerk, with a ring so valuable. I thought you might think it suspicious.”

“It
is
suspicious, Markham. Damned suspicious.” He walked up to her with deliberate strides and stopped just shy of her body, a foot too close. She had to tilt her head upward to meet his black gaze, exposing her vulnerable gauze-wrapped neck.

“Then I suppose you don’t believe me.” She slipped her hand into her pocket and clutched the ring into her palm.

Somerton’s breath was thick with brandy and tobacco, tingling her skin. He raised his hand and touched her face. One finger dragged lazily along her bruised cheekbone, around the tense corner of her mouth, down to her chin. He captured the tip lightly between index finger and thumb.

“On the contrary, Mr. Markham,” he said softly. “I believe anything you choose to tell me.”

For an instant, she didn’t quite understand him. The words revolved in her head like some sort of drunken parlor game, attempting to find their correct order.

I believe anything you choose to tell me.
Had he really said that?

Her chest seemed to glow and expand, as if a crushing weight had been lifted away.

Luisa drew in a massive breath and stepped back. “Thank you for your trust, your lordship. Good night.”

She was about to close the door behind her, when Somerton’s stern voice cut the air a final time.

“Until proven otherwise, Mr. Markham.”

London

February 1890

T
he front room of Mrs. Duke’s house in Battersea smelled like a barnyard.

“My deepest apologies,” said the duke, scratching delicately under his wig. “My neighbor to the left appears to have introduced a large and incontinent sow into the premises during the late cold spell. We are considering legal remedy.”

“Not at all.” Luisa removed her hat and set it on the hall stand. Quincy leapt from the crook of her left arm and pattered across the worn Oriental rug to the tips of Mrs. Duke’s leather half boots. One ear cocked hopefully.

“Oh, very well,” said Olympia. He reached for the tea tray and broke off a piece of ham sandwich. “With compliments.”

Quincy caught the sandwich in midair and swallowed it whole.

“You really shouldn’t. The servants in Chester Square spoil him shamelessly, to say nothing of Somerton’s boy.” Luisa eased herself carefully onto the faded velvet sofa next to the fireplace. Experience had made her cautious.

“Consider it my revenge against the sow,” said Olympia. “Warm yourself, warm yourself. The cold is intolerable today.”

“I don’t mind. Winters in Holstein were far worse. We used to be snowed in for days.” She reached for the teapot. “May I?”

“Go on, go on. I’ve swallowed three cups of coffee this morning in an effort to thaw myself. Where is that damned slatternly maid?
Dingleby!
” He lifted his voice to a friendly roar.

“Bugger yourself,” came the friendly reply, floating through the parlor door.

“Good servants are so difficult to find these days,” said Olympia.

Luisa bent her head over the cup and warmed her face in the fragrant steam. “Indeed. Have you made any progress this week? Is there any news from my sisters?”

“I find,” Olympia said, selecting a ham sandwich with less-than-feminine grace, “that one usually asks questions about others when one wishes to distract from oneself.”

“Bugger yourself.”

“Tut-tut. Such language from a princess of Germany.”

“I have absorbed myself into my role, as you suggested. And now I should like to know how my sisters are doing. You haven’t mentioned them in weeks.”

Olympia chewed, swallowed, dabbed a napkin to his mouth. “As it happens, there is news. I daresay you’ll see it in the papers shortly. Our dear Emilie’s employer has discovered her true identity.”

Luisa’s cup clattered into the saucer. She jumped to her feet. “
What?
Is she safe? Is she . . . is she . . . ?”

“Whole and unmolested? I very much doubt it. But the man in question is an honorable chap. He’ll make her happy enough, I daresay, if she allows him to.”

Luisa worked her mouth, which had gone rather dry. “She’s . . . she’s getting married?”

“She may not realize it yet. But yes. If all goes well, she’ll be the Duchess of Ashland by Lady Day.” He coughed slightly into his napkin. “If not sooner.”

She placed her hands on her hips. “
If all goes well.
What the devil do you mean by that?”

“Dear me. All this talk of buggery and devils. Perhaps I ought not to have packed you off to Somerton’s lair after all.”

“Uncle.” She deepened her voice to a warning growl. “Is my sister safe?”

“She is under the strictest protection, at my own house in Park Lane, guarded assiduously by the duke himself.”

“That’s not the same thing as safe.”

“My dear Luisa,” he said kindly, “none of you are safe. Not one person on this good earth is safe. You might be struck by an omnibus leaving this house. A scrape on your elbow might go septic. Typhoid, consumption, war, lawsuit . . .”

“Now you’re trying to distract
me
.”

“What I mean to say is this: Nothing in life is accomplished without risk. Fortune favors the bold. There is a tide in the affairs of men, which if taken at the flood . . .”

Luisa dropped to her knees before the chair on which Olympia sat, in a pool of striped cornflower blue silk. “What have you done, Uncle?” she whispered.

He took her hands on his lap. “Listen to me, my dear. We have not been idle, these past few months, Miss Dingleby and I. We have discovered that there is indeed a group of agents in England this minute, tracking down the three of you. We have discovered, moreover, that they are getting their information from a person with some knowledge of your situation. We believe we can turn this . . . this disruption of Emilie’s disguise to our advantage.” He patted her hands, as if to console her.

Quincy, who was sniffing the tea tray for further traces of ham, turned his head in Olympia’s direction and let out an inquisitive growl.

“Use her as bait, you mean.” Luisa could hardly move her lips.

Miss Dingleby’s voice interrupted the barnyard air of the parlor. “We have made our plans with the utmost care. We will hold an engagement ball, with great fanfare and public ballyhoo, in Olympia’s house. Dozens of our agents will be placed there, in every room. The Duke of Ashland will guard her personally . . .”

Luisa turned to Miss Dingleby, who stood at the parlor door, lean and angular in her gray maid’s uniform and incongruous white cap. “Oh, indeed! What on earth could possibly go wrong?”

“My dear, we’ve done these sorts of things endless times. Our agents are highly trained.”

“And Emilie will be right there in the middle of it all, with a target painted on her forehead . . .”

“She will not be touched, Luisa. I promise it.”

Luisa leaned forward and grabbed her uncle by his blue silk shoulders. “I will not lose her, do you understand me? I’ve lost my mother, my stepmothers, my father, my own husband! I will
not
lose my sisters as well!”

“There, now.” Olympia took her arms gently in his broad hands. “I quite understand.”

“They are all I have left.”

“Nonsense,” said Dingleby. “You have . . .”

“I quite understand,” said Olympia. “And I would sooner send a bullet through my own head than cause the slightest harm to you or your sisters.”

Luisa laid her head on his cheap silk knees and closed her eyes, so she wouldn’t see Miss Dingleby’s incredulous and somewhat disapproving face staring down at them. A long, warm tongue licked at her ankles, wetting right through her black wool stockings to her tender skin.

“Dear me,” said Olympia.

She didn’t cry. She wouldn’t cry; crying had long since been banished from her repertory of emotional display, such as it was. But she felt a certain brimming heaviness around her eyes and her heart. It had, after all, been a trying week. A trying winter, to be perfectly honest. She had never known anything like the atmosphere of the Earl of Somerton’s household, with its lines of battle etched out invisibly on the floorboards and its inhabitants tiptoeing about the heavy silence as if the life had been frozen out of them. As if they had all fallen into a trance of some kind, a nether-existence that was not living at all. Though Holstein Castle had been run along strictly formal protocols, and her father had treated her with brusque professionalism, and her stepmothers had died in childbed, her home nonetheless managed—perhaps even because of these struggles—to seethe with life and laughter and sisterly love.

She thought of Emilie now, golden-haired and quiet behind her spectacles, and tried to imagine her falling in love with a duke. Experiencing that great transformative joy—so the novels claimed, not that Luisa had read many novels—in which her family now played no part. No Luisa or Stefanie to share her happiness and sorrow, the unexpected moments of ecstatic connection and the all-too-frequent crushing disappointment of loss and uncertainty and . . .

Not that Luisa knew what that was like. Not at all.

“My dear Luisa.” Olympia patted her hair awkwardly. “Is there something you wish to tell me?”

She lifted her head and pulled away. “No, nothing. Good heavens. Nothing at all. Only a trifle worn today. A long evening of rather tedious work, followed by a disturbed sleep, remembering all the things I’d forgotten to sort out . . .”

“Any news to report? Unusual activities? Notes, letters, visitors?”

“No.”

“His wife, perhaps?”

“Lady Somerton is much as she’s always been. Very lovely, very kind, and unfailingly distant to everyone except her son.”

“
Their
son.”

“Yes, their son. He’s a dear little fellow, actually. She’s an excellent mother. But she keeps him away from the earl as much as she can. I think he’d like to be a better father, but he doesn’t know how. If she’d give him the chance to get to know the boy . . .”

“Yes, all very fascinating, this . . . this familial . . . whatever.” Olympia made a little movement of his hand and looked out the window at the smudged gray February beyond. “Is it too early for sherry?”

“Decidedly too early.”

Miss Dingleby jumped from the doorway. “Never too early for that, in a London winter. The sun’s halfway down already.”

“Such as it is,” said Luisa. “I much prefer England in summer.”

“Off you go, then, Dingleby. Fetch the sherry from whatever cupboard you’ve hidden it.” He waited until her footfalls faded down the hall, and the crash of cupboard doors echoed through the wood and plaster. “Now, Luisa. Listen to me carefully. This has nothing to do with you and your sisters, I’m afraid, but the time has ripened for another plan I’ve had in contemplation for some time . . .”

“Oh no. No, no, no.” Luisa backed away and found the sofa with her black-trousered calves. She sank downward. Quincy jumped into her lap the instant it appeared and settled in with a sigh of canine contentment.

“It’s too late for that, my dear. You’re already involved.” He cast a quick glance to the parlor door. “I’ll be quick. Lord Somerton, as you know, has long harbored suspicions about his wife . . .”

“Ridiculous. She may not love him, but she’s faithful, I’ll give her that.”

“They are true.”

“True!” Luisa’s eyes widened. “But that’s impossible! She positively lives for that boy of hers. She only goes out for church and a bit of shopping and visits to her sister.”

“She has been in love with my grandson Penhallow for the past seven years.”

“Lord Roland? My cousin?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know this?”

“It’s not important. They were nearly engaged once, and I . . . that is, Lord Somerton stepped in with a better offer when Roland was . . . well, elsewhere.” He cleared his throat.

“But that doesn’t mean she’s . . . she’s . . .” Luisa searched for the right word.

“Have you ever wondered, my dear, why Lady Somerton betrays not the slightest hint of love toward her husband?”

“I don’t see why she should. He’s brutal and overbearing and secretive, and he can’t be bothered to offer more than an occasional word of affection or even approbation, and while he’s rather superbly masculine, particularly when dressed in his formal suit, if you’re the sort of female whose head is turned by a mere set of broad shoulders and a face that might have been taken from a Roman coin . . .”

“My dear girl. Remember yourself.”

Luisa closed her mouth and reached for her tea. “In any case, there’s no reason she should love him. Not at all.”

“I don’t disagree. However . . .”

The rattle of glassware in the hallway caused Olympia to turn his brilliant red-wigged head. “Ah! There we are. Just the thing to banish the odor of pigsty from the old senses, what? Have these glasses been washed, Dingleby?”

Miss Dingleby set down the tray with a little more force than strictly necessary. “I often wonder whether we need to maintain these disguises behind closed doors, Mrs. Duke.”

“Nonsense. What if one of the neighbors were to twitch her lace curtains, catch a glimpse through the window, and find things out of order?” Olympia rose to his full magnificent height and made for the table in a voluminous rustle of skirt and petticoat. “There we are, my beauty. That will be all, Dingleby.”

“Bugger yourself,” she said, and turned for the hall.

“You may close that door behind you, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“Hmph. Your wig is askew, by the way. All that unwholesome scratching, no doubt.” The door slammed dangerously in its moldings.

“I believe she resents this particular disguise. I can’t imagine why. Sherry?” Olympia turned to her with glass outstretched.

Luisa hesitated, and then held out her hand.

“Good man. Er, so to speak. In any case . . . dear me, where was I? This damned female costume makes my wits go feeble. I daresay yours, on the other hand, have sharpened out of all recognition.” He winked.

She scowled. “You had a plan.”

“A plan. Yes. Now, I don’t mean to shock you, and I beg you to remember that this information is to be held in the strictest confidence, but . . .”

“Lord Somerton is a government spymaster?” Luisa sipped her sherry.

Olympia’s mouth, on the verge of its first eager sip, formed a round rouge-edged hole.

“I’m not a fool, Uncle. I guessed it from the beginning, more or less, and your interest in him only confirmed the fact. Do go on. That vacant expression rather alarms me.”

“Yes. Quite.” He downed his glass in a single hearty swallow and reached for the decanter. “In any case, you need not know any more about it, other than this: We like to play a few games with each other, his department and mine, and the time has come for me to . . . how shall I put this? Volley the ball in his corner.”