The Mandarin of Mayfair (19 page)

"Oh, I've no doubt of it. 'Tis best not to pay too much attention to his rantings. He's a proper doomsday doctor, you know!"

"I suppose if I say he did not get knighted by ranting to no purpose, you will say that is precisely how one gets knighted."

He laughed. "You begin to know me too well, miss!"

"Even so, I wish you would rest. At least keep at home for a few days."

He had every intention of going to the Winter Fete at Overlake Park the following day, and no intention of mentioning that fact. Walking over to open the door, he assured her he was feeling "perfectly fit," but that it was kind of her to worry for his sake.

She shook her head and left him. When she reached her bedchamber, she sat by the window and gazed out at the rainy gardens and at the little summer-house where she and August had engaged in some lively discussions. Thinking over the tragic story he had told her, she felt tears start to her eyes again. That poor little lady—and that poor tormented boy!

How terribly hurt he must have been when his schoolmate so cruelly told him the truth of the matter. Whoever it was should have been soundly thrashed. She smiled musingly. Perhaps he was. August had hinted that there had been something more. He fought back, did August N. K. Falcon. The poor creature had been fighting back all his life, one way or another. 'Twas remarkable he'd not been crushed by the world. 'Faith, but there was little wonder he felt as he did.

She went to the dressing table and unlocked her jewel case. The collection revealed would have been judged pitiful by most ladies of the ton, but she had never thought of herself as being the type to wear expensive jewels, and although she treasured some of the lovely pieces given her by her family, she seldom wore them. She took up a gold chain and a locket surrounded by intricate filigree set with semi-precious stones. Opening the locket, she gazed wistfully at the object it contained: a carefully polished but very much used golden guinea. Sighing, she closed the locket and returned it to the case, then wandered back to the window.

It was raining steadily now. She had never disliked the rain, nor did she share her brother Newby's feelings of depression on gray days. But on this decidedly gray morning she closed her eyes and directed a small prayer to whichever angel was in charge of the weather. "Please, holy sir or madam, if 'tis at all possible, might it
not
pour tomorrow?"

Falcon leaned back in the sedan chair and closed his eyes. Jove, but he was tired. He'd intended to walk to Rossiter Court, But the rain had changed his mind. He'd been lucky to find an unoccupied chair. Deuce take the fellows, they didn't have to gallop! He leaned forward and shouted a request for less speed, then eased himself back again.

Confounded arm. The Smallest Rossiter was likely in the right of it and he should have kept to his bed today. If truth were told, he'd have rather enjoyed to stay at home. But, stupid as it may be, he could not dismiss Tummet's remarks about Bonnie Prince Charlie, and he was eager to hear what Ross had to say in the matter.

Despite his arm and the fact that he felt rather uncomfortably warm, he knew a deep sense of relief that he'd not been obliged to send the Smallest Rossiter packing. To drag out the sad tale of Grandmama Natasha had been an ordeal, but it had been worth it to win Gwendolyn's understanding. They'd have liked each other, he thought. Although Grandmama might have been a trifle taken aback by some of Gwendolyn's starts. Indeed, many people, even today, would be shocked that a young lady should hold views on such things as politics, or the history and philosophies of other nations (such as China!). And that she would voice those views in mixed company would be judged presumptuous and unfeminine. He chuckled. An independent spirit, the Smallest Rossiter, which was the very quality he found so delightful. It was remarkable in fact that she had not argued when he'd rejected her suggestion that Katrina tell Jamie Morris about Grandmama Natasha. Nor had she protested his remark that Jamie was sure to say it would make no difference. Instead, she'd said in that funny grave little way of hers, "Well, that's true, of course," which was—

He frowned. She
had
been agreeing with him, had she not? She couldn't have meant that
Morris
would be right if he made such a silly observation?

He reviewed that part of their discussion carefully. In fact, he worried at it all the way to Rossiter Court.

"My Capitaine he is not in the home!" Travattori viewed Falcon from his superior height, flung up his head and lowered his eyelids dramatically. "The use it is not for you to beseech me, signor. Where he is going?" He gave a greatly exaggerated shrug and spread his long bony hands.

Falcon swore under his breath. The journey from Great Ormond Street had been considerably round-about and eventful. A shouting, brawling crowd had blocked the junction of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street. His alarmed bearers had retreated to Drury Lane, and thence to Charing Cross Road, where they were delayed once again by a troop of dragoons thundering to quell the disturbance. Having reached his destination at last it was irksome to find that Gideon was frippering about somewhere.

He left a note with Travattori telling Gideon that he must see him urgently, and went back to his bearers, whom he had fortunately asked to wait. He directed them to convey him to the Turk's Head Coffee House. They made the journey without further incident until they reached the Strand, which was blocked by a great coach broadside across the road, its team in a great state of agitation, the coachman no less agitated, and a small crowd shouting advice to the lady who was alighting from the coach and who shouted back at them when she was not reviling her unfortunate coachman.

Falcon left his chair and walked along toward the popular coffee house. Head down against the rain, and his thoughts elsewhere, he failed to see the angry lady abandon coach and coachman and march toward him under an umbrella held over her by an anxious footman.

"Stand aside, there!" commanded a loud, harsh, and all too familiar voice.

Falcon's head jerked up, and he halted.

The Lady Clara Buttershaw was tall, angular, harsh-featured, inordinately proud, and opinionated. She was widely feared and disliked, but her wealth and her ancient lineage made her a power among the
haut ton
. She had formed a deep passion for Falcon, and while rejecting him publicly, had privately thrown herself at him and made every effort to seduce him. Far from returning her affection, he thought her an impossible woman and did all in his power to avoid her. His coldness, however, she interpreted as a justifiable sense of unworthiness; his often sardonic remarks she was convinced were uttered to conceal his love, for that he should not adore her was inconceivable. In her arrogance it had never occurred to her that he would have sufficient intelligence to be aware that she and her spinster sister, Lady Julia Yerville, were deeply involved with the League of Jewelled Men. Lady Clara's bubble had burst when Falcon and his friends had confronted her and dared to interfere in one of her schemes, contriving to rescue Zoe Grainger, who had been a virtual prisoner in Yerville Hall.

Now, meeting a pair of hard dark eyes that glared fury, and a mouth bitterly downturned, Falcon found those expressions easier to face than the cloying sweetness that had so appalled him. He swept off his tricorne and made her a magnificent bow. "
Dear
Clara," he murmured wickedly.

She uttered a screech of wrath.
"Serpent!"
Wresting the umbrella from her startled footman's grasp, she snapped it shut and swung it aloft.
"Villain! Libertine!"

Her intentions were all too clear. With a whoop, Falcon took to his heels and ran, the lady's most unladylike profanities and the hilarity of the onlookers following him.

Grinning, the porter at the Turk's Head Coffee House swung the door wide. "Sanctuary, sir," he murmured, with a wink. Falcon laughed breathlessly and went into the warm interior, where he was at once shown to his favourite table near the fire. The encounter with Lady Clara had lightened his spirits, which were even more improved when a fragrant mutton pie and fried potatoes were set before him. He had just picked up his knife when a familiar voice faltered, "Might I join you—for a minute, Falcon?"

He thought, "Deuce take the fellow!" and looking up was startled to see Sir Owen Furlong swaying beside his table and white as death. "You'd best be quick about it," he said, "else you'll fall in my pie."

Sir Owen sat down and leaned back against the settle, breathing hard.

With an imperious gesture Falcon secured the attention of a waiter who hurried off and returned with brandy. Sir Owen's hand shook as he raised the glass, and not until a trace of colour had returned to the drawn face did Falcon enquire offhandedly, "Get caught in the riot, perchance?" Sir Owen looked at him as though he were invisible, and he added, "None of my affair, but if you can't deal with hooligans, you should keep a servant with you when you venture out."

Sir Owen blinked at him.

Beginning to fear that the man had suffered some kind of brainstorm, Falcon waved a hand in front of his face.

"Don't hit him!" James Morris hurried up, rain dripping from his cloak.

Irked, Falcon said, "I wasn't hitting him, you silly clod. The fellow's gone into some kind of trance."

Squeezing onto the settle beside him, Morris said, "He's had a nasty shock. Oh, do move over, August! You ain't that corpulent!"

"
Corpulent!
Of all the—"

Gideon Rossiter came in looking concerned, and Perry Cranford limped after him, waving to some acquaintances, his peg-leg thumping on the floor.

"I'm most terribly sorry," said Rossiter, nodding to Falcon and sitting beside Sir Owen. "We couldn't find a trace of her."

"Her? Who?" asked Falcon.

"You sound like an owl," said Morris. "Are you sure 'twas
her
, dear boy?"

Sir Owen said with a wan smile, "D'you think I could mistake the lady?"

"Jupiter!" exclaimed Falcon, the light dawning. "If you're jabbering about the Frenchwoman who shot you down so as to steal that accursed Agreement, I'd rather think you
should
remember what she looks like!"

Sir Owen sighed. "I'll never forget for as long as I live."

Falcon gave a disgusted snort. "Which would have been a short span had the lady had her way! You cannot think Mademoiselle Maria Barthelemy, or whatever she called herself at the time, would dare show her nose in London again? Why, we'd have her clapped up in a trice!"

"For what?" asked Cranford, dragging a chair to the end of the table. "No charges were brought 'gainst her. There were no witnesses when she shot Owen and purloined the Agreement. We had no evidence. And what judge, looking at such a beautiful creature, would believe her capable of so violent an act?"

"
He
was a witness!" Falcon jabbed his fork at Sir Owen. "And had he the wit of a wart-hog
would
have brought charges 'gainst her. Instead of which, he excuses her murderous conduct and moons over her! I wonder he don't go about wearing one of those sign-board things, reading 'Human target—penny a shot!' "

Sir Owen flushed scarlet but stared at the table in tight-lipped silence.

Rossiter frowned. "Easy said, August. But you forget, I think, that Owen is in love with the lady."

"He don't forget," said Morris. "Just don't know what it is."

"Of course I know." Falcon added with his bored smile. 'Tis a delusion. An intense but fortunately brief disorder of the brain." He gave his attention to his lunch, ignoring the mocking chorus.

Cranford said laughingly, "Expound, oh mighty expert! We yearn to hear more of your brilliant diagnoses."

"I'd not waste my valuable time. You all are infected with the disease, poor fellows, and would benefit not one whit, even if I could restore you to a vestige of common sense. Which is doubtful."

Morris swooped to snatch his plate and pass it to Cranford.

"Hey!" cried Falcon, springing up.

Holding the plate out of Falcon's reach, Cranford said gaily, "Not another bite till you educate the ignorant!"

Falcon crouched, his eyes narrowing.

" 'Ware that panther glare, Perry," warned Morris. "He's getting ready to run you through. Whom shall we notify, dear boy?"

Falcon gave him a withering look and sat down. With a great show of resignation he said, "Very well, but make an effort to attend my discourse with proper respect."

Rossiter clapped a hand over Morris' mouth. "Say on, Macduff!"

"Then let us consider the case of a comparatively sensible young female," Falcon began, adopting a scholarly air. "For reasons known only to herself, she suddenly becomes convinced she has fallen in love. Does she accept this as one of life's more interesting little quirks and go on her way with a grateful heart? No! She instead begins to drift about sighing so often that she is surrounded by a perpetual breeze, which she augments by weeping buckets of tears while declaring in accents of utter misery how happy she is!"

With a broad grin, Cranford said, "Marplot! You'll not dampen my vision of the tender passion."

Falcon shrugged. "Which merely proves my point, for males behave no less stupidly. They lose their appetites, go about smiling vacuously, and with the least encouragement bore their acquaintances to death while endowing a usually very ordinary girl with the qualities of an ethereal goddess. You may see a perfect example of such deluded idiocy"—he stared pointedly at Morris—"stumbling about Town with glazed eyes and the expression of an expiring sheep! He is—"

He was interrupted by shouts of laughter, during which he sprang up and recovered his plate.

Morris protested that he never behaved in so foolish a way. "And for your information, Lord Haughty-Snort, there's a deal more to falling in love than that silly stuff!"

"I agree," said Falcon with a bland smile. "There is the ultimate disaster. The poor fool who with humble and genuine devotion lays his heart and soul at the feet of his beloved only to be trampled upon and rejected. Probably"—again he looked squarely at Morris—"for some cogent reason which he should have anticipated in the first place." Sobering, he said, "Seriously, I once knew a fellow who blew his brains out when the parents of his chosen lady quite sensibly married her to another man. To permit oneself to become that vulnerable must surely be the most pathetic folly!"