Suzanne Robinson (19 page)

Mattie didn’t answer at once. She bit her bottom lip and rocked on her heels. Finally she tossed her head. “The man I marry won’t ignore me.”

“If you say so.”

“You tried, and look what’s happened to you.”

She turned her back and marched into the house before he could reply. Standing beside the fountain, he watched the door shut behind her. He looked around the dark and deserted garden.

“Dang.”

 
13
 

Mattie was so furious with Cheyne that she almost forgot to act the part of a distraught young lady. She was too busy doing something that was certain to annoy Tennant; she decided to question Lance. She convinced Narcissa that the Honorable Lancelot Gordon needed to be taken in hand.

“Someone has to, Narcissa, before he decides to fall in love with a professional thief or one of those depraved Pinchbeck sisters.”

Thus the day after the letters vanished she had Mama invite Gordon to tea. Mama was having her own set of friends over, but Mattie and Narcissa cornered their victim on a settee in the Palm Room.

Gordon turned his head from Mattie to Narcissa and beamed at them. “I say, Miss Bright. Awfully kind of your dear mother to invite me to tea.”

“We’ve never gotten to talk, what with all the parties and balls and such,” Mattie replied.

“It’s wonderful timing,” he said, “because there’s a secret I’ve been dying to share.”

Narcissa batted her lashes and said in a breathless voice, “Oh, tell us.”

With an air of imparting state secrets, Gordon complied. “I’ve fallen in love.”

Mattie and Narcissa exchanged meaningful glances.

“With a perfect angel. Lady Jane Rothburg.”

Mattie nearly choked on her tea. “Jane Rothburg. The Jane Rothburg who has twelve children and is such a great friend of your mother’s?”

“That’s her. She’s amazing, delightful, so calm and unflappable.”

“She’s calm because she doesn’t have enough energy to be excited,” Narcissa said.

“I shall change all that,” Lancelot said with a wave of his teacup.

Narcissa rolled her eyes, but Mattie gave her a warning look and said, “We’re happy for you, Mr. Gordon.”

“Thank you. It’s nice to be congratulated instead of tolerated the way Tennant does. He said perhaps I could live in her nursery along with the children.”

“That wasn’t kind,” Mattie said.

“I know, and Tennant’s usually an amiable chap. He’s been distracted lately. This morning he was in an evil temper. I think he’s got trouble with a lady. Oops. Shouldn’t have said that.”

“Nonsense,” Narcissa cooed.

Mattie asked, “Does he have lots of problems with ladies?”

“Rather the other way around. They have trouble with him. Usually there’s one who’s trying to catch his attention or entice an offer from him. Several years ago there was this enchanting French princess. I thought she’d go the distance, but Cheyne danced out of her reach at the last moment. Then there was that business with Lady Drake.”

“Oh?” Narcissa smiled and handed him a cake plate.

Lancelot glanced around at the others in the room, then lowered his voice. “It was the talk of London two years ago. My dears, she suddenly announced she was leaving her husband for him. Said it aloud in front of a dining room full of people. Cheyne wasn’t there. In fact, he’d gone to the Continent on business, but the woman was mad for him and wouldn’t listen to reason. He came home to find her waiting for him. He won’t say what happened, but after an hour with him she packed herself off to Italy to some villa in the country. She’s still there.”

“How sad,” Mattie said. “He must have said something terrible to her to make her abandon her family and country.”

“I don’t think so.” Gordon stabbed a piece of cake and ate it. “Tennant’s not like that. He has the devil of a temper sometimes, and a vicious tongue when annoyed, but he wouldn’t hurt someone who’s so obviously distressed. He’s as kind as my dear Lady Jane.”

Narcissa excused herself, and Mattie suspected she’d lost patience with the irrepressible Lance. Mattie poured Gordon more tea. She’d proceeded to pry some information from him without being too obvious. His income was substantial, but not in league with most of his wealthy friends, and Gordon had been upstairs “wandering in the dark” at the time the letters were stolen. He’d bumped into Elland Capgrave and the countess at different times in his attempts to find his way around. Still, Mattie had trouble believing that anyone so open and guileless could be a blackmailer. However, her having talked to him should annoy Cheyne Tennant.

Mattie scowled at the thought of him. He’d kissed her and then regretted it. The skunk. His lips had been so hot, just like the heat of his body, and he’d stirred her senses in the most amazing way. She didn’t understand the man. One minute he was kissing her, the next he was treating her like some brainless doll who couldn’t be trusted to make inquiries about suspects.

“I say, Miss Bright, is something wrong?”

“Hmmm? No.”

“You were frowning.”

Mattie smiled at him. “You were saying you thought Cheyne Tennant was a good chap.”

“Yes, especially considering.”

Nodding encouragement, Mattie waited for Gordon to continue. He chewed his lip for a moment.

“It’s really no secret, I suppose.” Lance set his cake plate on the table in front of them, turned to Mattie and said, “The duke is a simple man. Not what one
might call a thinking man. Ever since I can remember he’s sneered at Cheyne because he was so different from his other sons, Harry and Eustace. Cheyne is the youngest, and he’s gifted. He’d have been invited to attend either Oxford or Cambridge even if he hadn’t been the son of a duke. But his intelligence only annoyed Bracewell.”

“Why?”

“I think because he doesn’t understand Cheyne, and what he doesn’t understand, he dislikes. Cheyne once told me his father could remember—how did he put it—infinite equine trivialities such as the names of the Derby winners since the seventies and recite in excruciating detail the events of every hunt he ever attended, but he can’t abide the arts. Hates music in particular. Well, you know Cheyne.”

“Not that well.”

“He can hunt, shoot, ride with the best, but music, paintings, sculpture and such are as necessary to him as food. And he’s the only one in his family like that.”

Lance waved his hand. “The duchess appreciates art, but only as a setting for herself. The others would rather watch a boxing match than go to a museum. Once when Cheyne was home from university he brought a small painting, the first he’d purchased with his own money. I think it was a Constable. The duke tossed it in the fireplace while Cheyne was dressing for dinner.”

Mattie scowled at him. “You mean that man destroyed a painting?”

“Not the first, I understand. I was there when he did it. When Cheyne came downstairs, he saw the charred frame and turned the color of the ashes in the fireplace. He never said a word.”

“I think I would have come after the old coot with a poker. I wish he was here so I could do it right now.”

Lance smiled at her. “Cheyne could have used your defense when we were growing up. The duke is a harsh man.”

“How harsh?”

“Cheyne doesn’t talk about that, but I’ve seen him come out of his father’s study bleeding.”

“I take it back,” Mattie said quietly. “Bracewell should be shot.”

“Oh, don’t worry about old Cheyne. No one hits him now. Wouldn’t dare.”

“I’m sure.”

Mattie subsided, her feelings about Cheyne Tennant in an uproar. The man who seemed so dignified, so assured and unflappable, had earned his selfpossession in a hard school. Her heart ached for him. Dang. Every time she thought she was too angry with him to feel anything softer, something happened to change her mind. She hated having all these conflicting emotions about him.

Narcissa appeared, smiling brilliantly. “My dear Lancelot. May I persuade you to view Mrs. Bright’s lovely garden?”

They rose to accompany her, but as they crossed
the threshold Narcissa said, “Oh, Mattie, your Ma
ma
asks that you join her. Mrs. Arbuthnot has a new French gown that’s simply deevie.”

Mattie went back inside, stood behind a drape, and watched the two stroll around the garden. She frowned when Narcissa placed her hand on Lancelot’s arm and gazed up at him in admiration. Narcissa was engaged. True, she showed little anxiety at the absence of her fiancé, but she liked the earl’s son.

Narcissa had never said she loved him, but Mattie had assumed her content with her most suitable match. Perhaps Narcissa was trying to rescue Lance from his latest debacle by attaching his interest to herself. If this was so, Mattie was going to have to warn her. Once attached, Lance could be most trying. For a few weeks anyway.

After tea Mattie had the luxury of an entire evening without engagements. Mama’s appetite for Society had at last begun to wane. She was exhausted from the frantic pace, the late nights, and the plotting to catch a titled husband for her daughter. Mattie dressed for dinner and considered herself lucky that they only expected Narcissa and an elderly friend of Mama’s. She was exhausted too and desperately wanted a little peace. In the hall, Wynkin appeared with the evening post. At the bottom of a stack of letters for Mattie lay a plain envelope with no return address.

Mattie’s heart jumped in her chest. She hadn’t expected it so soon. Clutching her mail, she rushed
back upstairs and locked her bedroom door. She opened the envelope, and one of Cheyne’s letters to her dropped out. She cried out and snatched it up.

It was one of her favorites, and having it in her hands again brightened her spirits. In it he’d called her “my fearless midnight sun.” He said she had warm summer in her eyes and described a walk in the country they’d taken—in his imagination, of course. “I remember the brightness of the day, almost as bright as your dear face. Several white and curious clouds followed us, longing to decipher the secret to our happiness. You stopped to chide them for their intrusion.”

Her finger traced the bold strokes of Cheyne’s pen. Why couldn’t he behave like the lover he created in his letters? Closing her eyes, she imagined walking beneath a bright sky with Cheyne Tennant, imagined him speaking the words in his letters. She looked at the letter again. He’d called her his midnight sun. Her fingers brushed the ink again. Then her hand stilled, and she stared at the paper without seeing the words.

“Mattie Bright, it’s true. You’ve fallen in love with his letters.” She jumped up from the bed, and another sheet caught her eye. The blackmailer’s note. She’d forgotten it. How could she do that?

The note had been folded over the letter and read, “The others are safe. If you want them back unpublished, it will cost you ten thousand pounds.”

Her hand began to shake. “Thursday night at two o’clock in the morning. Use large bills to make a
small bundle. Wrap the money in a plain brown paper and leave it by the south end of the footbridge in St. James’s Park.”

Mattie snatched the envelope to look at the postmark, but it was from a central London station through which tens of thousands of letters flowed each evening.

“Thursday,” she muttered. “That’s the night of the Countess of Trillford’s costume ball.”

It was a grand affair, one of the highlights of the Season, at which the Prince and Princess of Wales would make an appearance. The prince loved dressing up, and he planned to go as Louis XIV, while the princess would dress as Marie Antoinette. Rose Marie was going as Napoleon’s empress, Josephine. Mattie couldn’t remember what Lance had decided to wear, but Narcissa planned to go as Eleanor of Aquitaine. Mattie would have to attend and wear her Mary, Queen of Scots, costume before sneaking out to leave the money in St. James’s Park.

A shiver of excitement rushed through her. They were close. She would deliver the money, and Cheyne would pounce on the blackmailer. She wouldn’t want to be him when Cheyne got hold of him.

The hunt would be over soon. Over. Then there would be no more magical letters. No more secret plotting with Cheyne Tennant, no meetings in the dark garden. No more arguments, and she had come to almost delight in pitting herself against him.

No more chances that he might kiss her again. Suddenly the world grew dim and featureless, and
her body filled with a strange craving that increased with each breath drawn. Soon there would be no encounters in which he might touch her and feed this craving. Mattie shook her head, drew in a deep breath, and blew it out slowly.

It was true. All the excitement in her life would be gone when her reason for seeing Cheyne vanished. She would be left to pursue her original aim of marrying well. She would still have her interests in politics and inventions, but somehow they weren’t enough anymore.

Until now she hadn’t realized how vibrant her days had become with Cheyne Tennant in them. She liked working with him; she even liked fighting with him, which was fortunate, since he was such a skunk. Did he feel the same? He seemed to like kissing her, but that didn’t mean he felt the same way she did. He wanted her; she knew this. But was that all?