St. Raven (24 page)

Bon voyage, my love.

Sally closed the door and popped the umbrella back in the elephant-foot container. “Nasty weather, miss. What a shame you had to travel in it.”

“Dismal. Is my mother with my father?”

“Yes, miss.”

Since they had only the one maid now, Cressida carried her own valise and hatbox up to her room, trying not to imagine the handle still warm from St. Raven’s hand. In her room, she paused to take off her gloves, bonnet, and curl-trimmed cap, then went to visit her parents.

She found her father asleep and her mother knitting. Louisa Mandeville had always claimed that knitting was soothing. Since her husband’s attack, she must have knitted enough shawls and mufflers for half the poor in London.

She looked up, gray eyes weary, but they brightened. “Cressida, dear! I didn’t expect you back for days. Did I?” she trailed off uncertainly.

Her poor mother had always been so quick, so certain, but this whole debacle had shaken her.

“I was supposed to be away for the week. Chicken pox,” she explained, kissing her mother’s cheek. “Fortunately a neighbor was returning to London and offered to convey me home. How is Father?”

“Much the same. The doctors say there’s nothing wrong with him, but if there’s nothing wrong with him yet, there soon will be from lying in bed so long.”

She looked at the still figure in the bed, and Cressida looked, too, seeking any sign of change.

Mouth slack, her father snorted with each breath. In sleep he looked fairly normal. It was between sleep he was so strange, staring at nothing and acting as if deaf and dumb. Her mother was right about the effect of this state. His thick head of grizzled hair remained the same, but his sun-browned skin wasn’t wearing well, and she knew it was a struggle to get any kind of food into him.

Her mother sighed. “I have told him and told him that I forgive him for losing all the money. I don’t know what else I can do.”

Cressida was sure it was the loss of the jewels that had shocked him into this state. Would their return be the key to recovery? When would she hear? Tris would hardly be at his London house yet, never mind tidied up and at Miranda Coop’s.

Her mother’s shoulders straightened, and she rose to lead the way out of the room and close the door. “There are times when I could slap your father,” she said, sounding more like her old self. “To throw away a fortune on the folly of gaming!…” Hand over mouth, she stopped and inhaled.

She lowered her hand. “I have been thinking while you were away, Cressida. It is time to make plans. Our lease on this house will soon expire, and there’s no money to renew it. I have sold most of my jewelry to pay the doctor’s bills and to buy food and pay Sally. We can live cheaper in Matlock, but we need money to get there. I’m not even sure if your father can travel… Oh, Cressy, what are we to
do
?”

Cursing her father, Cressida squeezed her mother’s hand. She didn’t want to raise hopes. “An inventory,” she suggested. “We need little of this fashionable stuff, so we can sell it.”

And, she thought, that would explain her discovery of a cache of jewels.

“I doubt we can raise much. Most things here came with the house. When I think of all those Indian things your father scattered around Stokeley Manor. And the house!” She put her hand to her head. “I can’t bear to think of it.”

Cressida took her into her arms. “Then don’t, Mama. Leave this to me.”

To her embarrassment, tears leaked from her mother’s eyes. “What would I do without you, darling? But this is so unfair. You should be enjoying parties, finding a husband.”

“Not in London in August, Mama. And truly, though this has been an adventure, I will be happy to be back in Matlock.”

“If we can even afford to run the house there.”

Oh, dear. Her mother must have been going round and round all this for days. “We’ll manage,” Cressida said with as much confidence as she could find.

Her mother pulled free, smiling sadly. “You have such a practical, enterprising nature, darling. You have it from your father, of course. Or did. I mean, he used to be so very practical…” She shook her head. “I must return to him. By all means, inventory the house—once you are recovered from your journey.”

Cressida watched her mother return to her vigil, then wandered back to her own room, fending off assorted thoughts about the nature of love and loving responsibility. She’d always assumed that a happy marriage required complete approval.

Did her mother love her father, even in the face of his appalling behavior, or was the bond simply duty? Louisa Mandeville had shown no sign of missing her husband over twenty-two years, but she had accepted him back with apparent pleasure. In the past year, they had seemed a happy couple.

Her mother was angry with her father now, she saw how foolish he had been, and yet she still seemed devoted. Cressida sighed. It was too complex a situation for her troubled mind.

She unpacked her valise, finding at the bottom Roxelana’s blue head veil. She didn’t regret bringing it, but as she wrapped it idly around her hand, she recognized a disturbing link. It was like a ribbon stretched from here to there when a clean break would be much better.

It was over. Or would be once Tris… Once the Duke of St. Raven retrieved the jewels from Miranda Coop. Would he be able to open the statue quickly if he had the chance?

Oh! If she’d thought, she could have brought him into the house to practice on the one here…

No. The Duke of St. Raven could never come here. The servants would speculate. Nor could a rain-drenched groom be taken to her father’s study. But she could have given the statuette to him. Why couldn’t she have thought of that in time?

Her recent life seemed to be a dreary parade of if-onlys and what-ifs, and not a one of them was a pennyworth of good. The past could not be changed.

The future, however, could.

She could send the statue to him. She hissed with frustration. The same problems applied. How could she explain sending something to the Duke of St. Raven, and through pouring rain? Nothing, nothing, could connect them.

She suddenly realized how true that was.

No one from Stokeley Manor was going to wonder if St. Raven’s houri had been that dull Miss Mandeville, the nabob’s daughter. Even the fact that Stokeley had been her father’s house, and those statues her father’s possessions would not stir the notion.

If the idea were forced to anyone’s attention, however, it was a different matter. Her protection from ruin was the complete impossibility of it, the total lack of contact between them.

She acknowledged the fierce pain of that prospect, but it made no real difference. Their worlds did not connect.

She turned her mind to the practical. By now he might be dressed and on his way to Miranda Coop. She looked out and saw that the rain had lightened. It had been a summer storm. He need not get wet. Perhaps an hour?

She’d go mad waiting, so she started the task she’d set for herself—the inventory of their salable possessions. She began in the dining room. The silver epergne with tigers gave her hope. That was theirs, as was the china. Perhaps there was enough here for survival, at least, even without the jewels…

Tris drove up to Miranda Coop’s house with reluctance, even resentment. Damn Cressida Mandeville for making this necessary. Damn the woman for the whole affair, for forcing him into Crofton’s company, for putting herself in danger, for laughing gray eyes and luscious curves and insane curiosity, and courage, and spirit, and will…

Ah, hell.

The rain had forced him to travel here in the coach, so a real groom came to open the door. He stepped down and glared at the green lacquered door. Then he smoothed his expression and went to knock. He’d sent a note to ask if Miranda would receive him, never doubting the answer. Her reply had come back swiftly and predictably, but at least on elegant cream paper, not perfumed.

This house was better than he’d expected, as well. On the fringes of fashion, but in a new terrace, quiet and well maintained. Miranda was one of the top courtesans in London, but it would appear she knew how to be discreet.

She was a lover in great demand who refused to be set up by any one man as a mistress yet charged exorbitant rates for her favors. He wondered what Crofton had paid to get her to attend his affair. He also wondered why she had served Crofton for a statuette that would probably not bring fifty guineas at auction.

Too many unknowns and improbabilities for comfort.

The door was opened by a stone-faced middle-aged maid, and in moments he was with La Coop. He gave her the courtesy of a bow.

“A delight to encounter you again last night, Miranda.”

She inclined her head. “Please, Your Grace, be seated.”

She settled gracefully onto a sofa, leaving the choice of seating to him.

He chose a chair facing her while doing rapid assessments. Miranda Coop had a number of guises. At riotous events she could be wild, but at the opera or other such public functions, she could appear a lady, if a painted lady. At home it would seem she chose to be an epitome of propriety.

Her olive green dress was the height of fashion and showed off her lush charms, but it could have been worn by Princess Charlotte. She was painted, but with discretion. Her only flaw was a hint of a Cockney accent.

“A surprise to see you at Crofton’s, St. Raven. I thought you and he were at odds. I was well paid…”

He smiled at the subtle question. “My little houri insisted.”

“Ah. Then I hope she paid you well? Forgive me, but she seemed a little… unskilled.”

“
Innocent
, I believe, is the word.”

Her eyes twinkled. “How novel for you. No longer, I assume.”

The truth of that hit him, and he kept his smile in place with an effort. “No longer,” he agreed, revolted to be speaking of Cressida with this woman. But he must. For Cressida.

“Therein lies this visit, Miranda. My Turkish delight took a great fancy to one of those statuettes at Crofton’s. When I went to buy it from him, it appeared you had already… won it.”

“Paid for it,” she corrected. “And paid quite dearly.”

That said something about Crofton, coming from a whore. It made Tris worry even more about why she’d wanted it. She couldn’t possibly know.

“I see. I, of course, am willing to pay you what you think the item is worth—within reason. You know, none better, how men are in their first flush of ardor. My houri wishes this little gift. I must do my best to obtain it.”

She cocked her head. “I have no great need of money, Your Grace.”

“Then you’re a damn unusual whore.”

He was deliberately rude but saw no flinch.

“Yes, I am. I am no man’s property because my appetite is too great for any one man. And,” she added, her eyes traveling over him, “I like variety.”

Even as parts of Tris’s body reacted to a message in her knowing eyes, he knew that he didn’t want to bed this woman. No, that wasn’t strong enough. He was revolted at the thought of bedding this woman. Which surprised him.

He drew on every scrap of control he possessed not to show it. “Which does make you a whore,” he pointed out.

“Then what does it make you, Your Grace?”

He was on his feet by reflex. “You are impertinent.”

She looked up at him, eyes laughing but hot. She wanted him. He felt it, and his skin crawled.

“You do not charge,” she said. “That is true. But you are, at the least, promiscuous.”

Damnation. The woman’s impudence had pushed this to an edge. If he didn’t react the right way, she’d know there was something important about that statue.

“You cannot possibly be suggesting that I turn whore with a whore. Sell my body to you for a piece of carved ivory?”

Her expression became watchful. “You requested this meeting, Your Grace.”

“To humor a bint’s whim.” He turned and walked away. “No more. Good day.”

“Your Grace!”

He paused at the door and turned back, blanking out any sign of hope. She was standing, not looking at all nervous, but watchful.

“I appear to have made a mistake, Your Grace. I assumed I knew what you wanted. Men do,” she added wryly. “Want. Almost invariably. Any question of barter was mere amusement.”

His heart was beating as if before a crucial roll of the dice. “Then may we discuss monetary payment?”

She considered him. “I really do not need money, Your Grace. You find me here in London in August, when the
haute volee
have flown elsewhere, simply to rest. The Crofton affair”—she shrugged—“it was a diversion. I do enjoy raw crudity now and then, and I wondered just how far he would go.”

“Unless you will take money, madam, and a reasonable sum of money, you are wasting my time.”

“Even if the price is merely that you escort me to Sir James Finksburg’s house party next weekend at Richmond?”

“You lack an escort?” he asked, assessing this new move. He had to confess that though he wanted nothing to do with Miranda Coop in bed, she was an interesting opponent.

Finsbury was a friend, and he had an invitation to the party. On the surface, it would be mildly respectable, but the company would be a combination of racy couples and men with their whores.

“Of course not, Your Grace.” She cocked her head. “I think perhaps you do not understand the essentials of my trade. All,
all
, is reputation. In matters physical”— she dismissed that with an idle hand—“my reputation is well established. In other ways, it requires constant attention.

“You, my lord duke, are the prize of the world. Every virtuous maiden desires to wed you. Every wicked woman lusts to be the object of your admiration. If I arrive at Sir James’s house on your arm, my cachet rises many rungs up the ladder.”

“I thought you were already at the top.”

“How kind. But in these things there is no top, is there? And there are always so many climbing hard below.”

“I’m sure you know how to stamp on fingers.”

She laughed, seeming genuinely amused. “Most unwise, wouldn’t you say? Even Miranda Coop will one day outlive her charms. I intend to have plenty of money for my retirement, Your Grace, but friends will be useful, too. So, does my proposition offend you? I assume you plan to attend, and I’m sure I need not say that my body is not included in this bargain. For that, Your Grace, you must pay, and pay high. It would never do for it to get out that I had to pay for a man.”