Queen of Diamonds (2 page)

“Our mother also said you'd come to a bad end.”

“Then I'll die a rich man. And they can't hang me if they can't find me. Soon as the gents start making deposits to the bank, I can ship out to the colonies. You can keep collecting and sending me my share, or come join me. One of the gulls don't know it, but he's going to support us for the rest of his life.”

“And me too,” Ize put in, coming back and passing the bottle over after taking a drink.

Molly purposely wiped the bottle before having a sip. She handed it to her brother and asked, “But what about the girl?”

Dennis shrugged. “She knows too much. After I'm gone and you're on your way, then maybe they can have her back. Until then, you always wanted a family of your own, didn't you?”

Molly choked on her next swallow. “I'm to keep her?”

Ize took the bottle back. “It's that or the Thames.”

The little girl was huddled under the coat again, rocking.

“You wouldn't!”

Dennis made a gesture of slicing his own throat. “If it's her or us…”

So Molly took the child she called Queenie and left London that very day. She had what money her brother could spare, a trunk of second-hand clothes, boots and hairbrushes from Ize's shop, and the name of the London bank where deposits were going to be made twice a year. Forever.

No slaving all hours under dreadful conditions for ungrateful actresses who were no better than they ought to be. No wondering where her next meal was coming from if the manager found a seamstress who was faster or cheaper. No eating and sleeping and sewing all alone, without even a cat for company. Now Molly would have someone to care for, someone she wanted to sew pretty dresses for, someone who needed her.

Molly had an old friend who had left London years ago to set up as a milliner in Manchester. That's where she decided to go, to start her new life. She'd be a soldier's widow. With so many women in that same situation, no one would think twice about a mother and her fatherless child. Ize supplied a gold wedding ring.

The dead soldier would have been from a decent family, they decided, leaving her with a handsome jointure, enough to purchase a little house, with a garden for Queenie to play in.

The world had never looked rosier for Molly. Even knowing that her brother had committed a heinous offense—and that by taking the child away she was most likely just as guilty in the eyes of the courts—could not dampen her enthusiasm. Molly was finally getting her chance for a better life. If worse came to worst, she could always flee the country too, or marry Ize.

As for Lottie, no one asked her, and she did not say anything. She was so disappointed in Molly, she barely spoke for the entire journey. She did eat, though, and let Molly bathe her and dress her and comb the knots out of her curls…and kiss her good night.

They went, and Dennis Godfrey stayed hidden away, drunk and in pain, except to check the bank for his first extortion deposit and Carde House in Grosvenor Square for the earl's return.

The blackmail money came from the madman who had hired Dennis Godfrey, but the earl did not come back. They carried Lord Carde home to his country place, instead, where he died of the fevers brought on by his search for his baby daughter, and grief from burying his beloved young second wife.

The earl's heirs or his executors would have paid a ransom to get the girl back, but it was too late. Dennis Godfrey died of his own wound turning putrid before he could book passage out of England.

Ize came to Manchester to find Molly and tell her the news. He felt his third share was not enough—he was actually getting a quarter, by his lying, cheating, dead friend's arrangement—and wanted half. Molly refused. Her brother's third would go to Queenie, for her future.

Ize did not argue, not when he thought he still had a chance of getting it all by marrying Molly.

Give up her new wealth and freedom? Make some denizen of the underworld who looked like he crawled out from under a rock, and who lived in a cave, Queenie's father? Never!

Ize thought about taking the brat—or her body, which could tell no tales to the courts—back to London for the reward. But Ize couldn't figure a way to collect the brass without naming Molly, who'd pin the whole thing on him in return. So he'd have to kill her, too, which did not appeal to him. Besides, they still had silence money from the man who'd hired Dennis Godfrey. That was as good as a pension from a rich uncle, except only Molly could withdraw it, now that her brother had stuck his spoon in the wall.

In case Molly heard about the reward and thought of giving the chit back to her family, cutting him out and handing him to the magistrate, Ize reminded Molly of her own culpability. She would not survive the prison hulks, he warned, being handed from the guards to the ship's crew to the convicts until she died.

Give up Queenie? The child was everything Molly was not: beautiful and bright, innocent and untouched. She was well-behaved, too, as if she feared losing yet another home, another loving mother. Molly went to church every day to thank the Almighty for the angel He'd blessed her with. Give up that precious gift? Never!

Besides, she did not know anything about any dead earl or how high was the reward for some missing child's return. How could she, so far from London, when she could not read the newspapers or the broadsheets?

Other than her one friend, the milliner, Molly kept to herself in a tidy cottage outside Manchester. The air was cleaner there, and the neighbors minded their own business. She did occasional piecework sewing for her friend to keep her hand in, but mostly devoted herself to bringing up Queenie as a proper lady. She even hired an Irish woman to come in by day to cook and clean—like regular gentry. She found a retired Oxford dean to educate Queenie, a portrait painter to give her drawing lessons, and the church organist to teach her music. With the learning of a lady and the dowry of a rich man's daughter, Queenie would not have to toil for a living, or sell her body just to eat. She could marry a decent, respectable gentleman with a profitable business or a bit of land. Perhaps she might even land a bloke with a title. Molly had dreams for the little girl she took to Manchester, and took to her heart.

They traveled to London occasionally, to meet up with Ize and collect the money their new patron kept putting in the bank. Mrs. Molly Dennis was the name on the account, and Mrs. Molly Dennis grew into a respectable widow with a pretty, well-mannered daughter who was too delicate to attend the village school and too reserved to play with the local children.

And Lottie? With the resilience of a child, and no other choice, she grew into Queenie, a quiet sort of girl with a loving mother and a dead hero father. She had a tutor and a kitten and all the fancy frocks a little girl could want. She loved to sew and draw and dress her dolls and listen to her mother's stories of all the plays Molly had seen. In time Queenie forgot about having brothers or a grand house in London or a title before her name. The crashing coach and the bad man were too awful to remember, so she did not. But sometimes, even years later, she would wake up in the middle of the night, trembling, holding onto her pillow to keep from falling, and crying out: “Mama!”

Chapter Two

1813

When a female reaches a certain age—that is, when a girl approaches womanhood—she begins to wonder about her future. Sixteen was a time for daydreams and knights on white chargers, air castles and coy glances at the boy next door. At that age, some of the village girls were already wed or promised. Others who were not needed at home to tend farms or younger siblings had left to take positions in the mills or gone into service. Daughters of the wealthy landowners and manufacturers were planning their come-out balls. Young ladies of the aristocracy were preparing for their court presentations. And Queenie was…asking questions.

Where was she to find the perfect match? How did her parents meet? How did they know they were in love?

The older Queenie grew, the harder the questions were to answer. What had seemed so simple to Molly thirteen years earlier, now seemed impossible. She'd dreamed of raising her precious girl as a lady, then seeing her wed to a fine gentleman. But how? Queenie Dennis was neither fish nor fowl, having the airs and the education of a well-born female but with no connections, no known lineage, no history. Molly could not hide her own coarse accent that labeled her lower class, but the boys who worked the mines or the mills or the farms were not good enough for Her Highness, as the would-be wooers called Queenie when they were denied an introduction to the young beauty.

Sons of the gentry saw the diamond in their midst, shining with a handsome dowry. But their sires would ask more questions than a courting shopkeeper or a solicitor would. Their mothers would want to know the family tree, not just the bloom on one branch. Who were Queenie's people? Where did the dowry come from if Molly's husband was a common soldier?

Oh, how fast they would run if Molly told them her girl was rich with extortion money from a madman who had committed a crime. But what could she tell a prospective suitor? And what could she tell Queenie about her past…or her future?

The filthy little waif of thirteen years ago had surpassed even Molly's prejudiced estimation of her coming beauty. She was growing into a stunning female, with long, wavy hair like white gold and eyes of vivid blue. Her complexion was flawless and her figure was willowy, with enough curves to be womanly instead of girlish. Queenie took after her handsome father, plump, plain, brown-eyed Molly claimed when the girl asked, not her own side of the family.

Now, though, Molly's greatest fear—after Queenie discovering the truth about her parentage and hating Molly for it—was that her baby would attract the wrong kind of attention from the wrong kind of man, one with no intentions of offering an honorable proposal. So they never attended the local assemblies, the potluck suppers, or the country fairs. They never congregated after Sunday services in the church yard, never breakfasted at the coffee house, or dined at the nearby inn.

Molly kept Queenie close to home, where she seemed content with her lessons and her books and her sewing. Queenie had an eye for fashion and a knack for design that Molly encouraged since it kept the girl busy. Let the townsfolk think Molly was above herself. Let them think quiet Queenie was a snob. Let the future take care of itself. Molly was not ready to part with her greatest joy yet anyway. Queenie was too young, too sheltered, too naive. Husband-hunting could wait.

The disease growing inside Molly's chest could not. Then Queenie was too busy caring for her mother to worry about beaux and betrothals. Now it was Queenie's turn to nurse Molly, to comfort her and tell her tales and ease her fears…and listen to her confessions of old sins.

She had done it all for love, Molly whispered through dry, cracked lips. She had done everything for love of her brother, and love for Queenie.

Through her tears, Queenie forgave her mother without question. Of course she had questions aplenty, but she could not press a woman struggling for every breath. And Molly would have revealed all of her sins, for hopes of Heaven, but it was too late. Between the pain, the laudanum and the struggle to focus her fading eyesight on Queenie, the prettiest sight this side of Paradise, Molly could only gasp: “I was never married.”

Then Queenie was alone. Her tutor had retired to his niece's a year ago, and her drawing master had found a wealthy patron in Bath for his portraits and his more personal services. Molly's milliner friend had emigrated to Canada years ago. The taciturn Irish housekeeper went home at night.

Queenie tore the house apart looking for marriage lines, an inscribed bible, a love letter, anything. Surely Molly had been delirious when she'd uttered those fatal words. But Queenie found nothing. Molly never had learned to read, despite Queenie's encouragement, so why should she have written proof of what might never have existed?

So Queenie was alone with her grief. And she was a bastard.

She did not even know who her father might have been. An army hero who had left England not knowing his beloved was with child? Or was Lieutenant Dennis a figment of Molly's imagination and her desire for respectability? Molly's brother might have known, but he was long dead. A sad end to a bad seed, Molly had always said, and a name never to be spoken. Which left Ize.

Lord, please do not let the toad be her father, Queenie prayed, as she penned a letter to Molly's old—What? Friend? Associate? Lover? Heaven forfend. He'd want to know about Molly's passing, either way, and perhaps come in time for the funeral.

He did not, and few others attended the brief graveside service.

Afterward, while Queenie dyed some more of her gowns black, diluted with tears, she tried not to despair about her future. How could she hope to wed now? She understood and appreciated Molly's lies, to keep the stigma of illegitimacy from her daughter, but a prospective husband would have to know. He would have the
right
to know, and the right to reject a bride whose mother was no better than she ought to be and whose father was sewn from whole cloth. Of course a man who loved her enough would not care, not in the Minerva Press novels, anyway. Even that paragon of love and loyalty would want to know where her dowry came from. If not the dead soldier, then where?

Besides, what Queenie knew about men would fit in her thimble. According to Molly, they were a lying lot, their skulls filled with base lust instead of brains. They sought a maiden's virtue, or her money. And husbands could control every facet of a wife's life, from where she lived to what she wore to how he spent her dowry.

So Queenie decided not to marry. She was almost nineteen now and had run Molly's little household for the past two years of her mother's illness. She owned the cottage, she had her dowry, and she could support herself as a seamstress.

Then she had to face the truth. Molly had not gone to London to the bank for those two years and the money on hand was running out. And no one in Manchester would give Queenie any work. She was too stand-offish, the established dressmakers felt. What she was, was still too uncertain around strangers. She did not know how to speak up forcefully to sell her skills or show her potential. To the modistes, she was too untried, too unknown, too young, too peculiar. Even her name, Queenie, set her apart. The area was full of Janes and Marys and Elizabeths. Whoever heard of a Queenie, setting herself above the common folk? They'd heard how she felt herself too good for the local lads. She would be too uppity for their merchant-class customers.

And that left Ize.

Ezra Iscoll had improved his life over the years, running a better class of fencing operation in a better neighborhood. He even shaved, most days, before opening the shop doors. He'd believed Molly when she said she'd feel better next month, next January, next spring. Then again, he'd believed she'd marry him one day. The bitch had lied, and Ize was losing his store. He did not want to return to the slums, so now Ize needed Queenie to get to the London bank, and he needed to know what she knew.

“All she said was that she was never married,” Queenie told him over ale and sandwiches. She knew better than to offer the ugly little man tea and cakes. He might have shaved, but he had not plucked the hairs from his nose or his ears.

He twisted the black ribbon he'd tied on his sleeve as a token of mourning. “That's all right, then.”

“No, it is not all right, not by half. I have to know who my father was, and why my parents never wed.”

“What for? It won't change nothing. The past is past. Old Molly took her secrets to the grave, just as she ought. It's the money she couldn't carry with her, thanks be. Now it's our blunt, yours and mine.”

The last thing Queenie wanted was to go into partnership with the greedy, goggle-eyed gremlin. Nor could she like the way he licked his thick lips when he looked at her, as if he was getting ideas about getting his hands on her dowry, now that she was fully grown and without Molly's militant protection.

“Where did the money come from if not my father's family?” she asked, hoping for information that could end their relation once and for all. She could go to Molly's benefactor herself, if she knew a name.

Ize licked his lips again. He had not come so far in the fencing business without learning to drive a hard bargain. “I'll tell you if come to London. I know Molly left a will, so that ought to convince the bank to hand over her accounts. I get my half”—no more thirds or less, not from a slip of a girl he could strangle with one hand, were he a violent man—“and you get some facts no one told you.” Of course they would be the facts Ize wanted the girl to know. There was no way he was going to tell her about Carde or the reward. That would be signing his own arrest warrant. Miss Prunes and Prisms would rat on him quicker than she could say Lady Charlotte Endicott. And the blackmail money would disappear too.

Queenie was tempted. She wanted the information Ize was dangling in front of her like a carrot to a donkey. And there was nothing to keep her in Manchester. In London she could start her own business, not dependent on Ize or that troublesome bank account.

“I'll think about it.”

“What's to think on? We could share a coach back to Town tomorrow.”

Hours alone with Ize? Nights on the road? That was enough to convince Queenie to wait. “I have too much to do here, papers to sign and such. I have to pick a headstone for the grave, talk to the solicitor, make arrangements for the house. I will let you know if I am coming. Or I will send to you from Mrs. Pettigrew's.” She named Molly's London friend.

“See that you do. And bring a copy of that will. Else I'll come back here to fetch you myself.”

They both knew that was both a threat and a promise. Queenie knew she would never be rid of the man until she settled the bank thing once and for all, and she would never find out her heritage any way else, either.

The solicitor was not quite as easy to convince that selling the house and moving to London was in Queenie's best interests, or in keeping with Molly's last wishes. The solicitor disapproved of women handling money in the first place. The younger the woman, the less capable was she of managing her funds, in the second place. Thirdly, Miss Dennis needed a man to guide her before she fell into the wrong company, was swindled of her inheritance, or met a fate worse than death in the evil streets of the metropolis. The solicitor's nephew, now, was a likely lad with a mind to enter politics. With the proper wife and a bit of financial backing…

Queenie had a copy of Molly's will. The house and her dowry were Queenie's outright, for being such a loving, dutiful daughter. No court had yet declared her in need of a trustee, so the solicitor really had no choice but to accede to her wishes. She collected her gratifyingly generous dowry, sold the cottage and its furnishings, and left half the income, after the housekeeper's pension, with the solicitor to invest, until she needed the money for her new business.

A female in business? Mrs. Dennis had not seen her daughter educated like a lady just to go into trade. The lawyer threw his hands in the air. Impossible!

Possible, and not his decision to make. For such a soft-spoken female, Queenie was learning to have a will of steel. She left for London within the month.

Not that it was any of the solicitor's affair, but Queenie did have a plan, and a place from which to carry it out. She actually knew someone in London, or near enough in Kensington to make no never mind. Valerie Pettigrew had been a minor actress many, many years earlier, where she and Molly, as wardrobe mistress, had become friends. Valerie left the theater to become a rich man's mistress, a lord willing to support her and the daughter they created. Unfortunately, although he loved Valerie and the child, he was married to the mother of his heir. Hellen, with two
l's
, after the baron, Elliot, and because Valerie never could spell, was a few years younger than Queenie. Queenie and Molly stayed in the tiny spare bedroom in the Pettigrew's row house when they came to London. Mrs. Pettigrew invited Queenie to visit after Molly's sad passing.

Queenie accepted. She rode the mail coach, white-faced, frozen in terror. She told herself she was not frightened of the speed or the mostly male passengers or at being alone. She told herself she was merely scared of the future. She was lying to herself.

Mrs. Pettigrew was delighted to see her, especially when Queenie made arrangements to rent the small bedchamber. The aging baron seldom came to town anymore, since he was gout-ridden and afraid of suffering an apoplexy in his inamorata's arms. His wife and son would kill him. His infrequent visits meant less frequent visits to Ize, to trade the diamond bracelets and ruby pendants he brought, in exchange for money for coal and clothes and food.

Hellen was thrilled to have such an elegant, fashionable friend staying with them. Her mother was too fat and indolent to stroll in the park or attend the plays or visit the shops—places where Hellen might meet men. Surely Queenie would want to view all the single gentlemen—and the sights, of course.