The Mercenary Major (14 page)

“And Lord Dorward wants that money for his project?” Victoria hardly needed to ask the question.

“It’s a sizable amount, and Dorward’s renovations are costly. Nothing short of witnesses or documents will stop him from contesting the major’s claim. And he’s not going to allow his wife and children to flout him much longer.”

Victoria stared at the November landscape, bleak under heavy gray clouds. She could well imagine Lord Dorward’s growing rage and the effect it would have when it broke on her friends. Just when Katie was overcoming her shyness and Reg was learning to be responsible and Lady Faverton was enjoying her independence, the earl would appear and make them all feel that they had been wrong, foolish, stupid to trust an impostor. If he was an impostor.

The
condesa’s
revelations suggested an even worse character than the major had admitted to at the Montfords’ ball, and Victoria could not forget that he was hiding something in his room. Furthermore, he was wearing a lady’s wedding band around his neck. She had to acknowledge to herself that she had been oversanguine about investigating the man. She, who knew better than most how unfathomable another’s character could be.

She turned to her father and found him watching her with one eyebrow raised. He, too, was like a stranger, this man with his familiar face and hair, and unexpected sense of humor.

Victoria adjusted the hood of her cape. “Is that why you came to town, Father? To warn us?”

He nodded. “And to find my daughter,” he said. “To let her know I . . . noticed that she was gone. To talk to her.”

Victoria’s throat tightened. It was more than she had expected. She clasped her hands together inside the snug warmth of her muff and blinked back the stinging moisture in her eyes.

“Would you like me to tell you about your mother?”

“Yes,” she said, the word no more than a hoarse whisper.

“I think . . . now . . . that she loved me,” he began. He spoke haltingly, as if he were letting guilt and bitterness slip away by degrees. Anne had not been happy in their marriage. She had felt confined by it and quarreled with him to excite him, shock him. Pushed into some wild, wicked act by her taunting, he would recover himself and return to her to declare his love, and she would tell him she had married him for his money. She exhausted his passion. For a long time he had been like a field lying fallow.

The story was too much for one telling, and her father stopped, lost in some remembrance Victoria could not share. Presently, he shook it off, and turned to her, his eyes clear again. “You are not very like her,” he said. “And I realize I hardly know you.”

A distant flash of lightning lit the underside of the clouds. They turned their steps toward Letty’s.

“Will you stay a while?” she asked him. She was not willing to go back, but perhaps he would go forward.

“I think so,” he said. Then he smiled, and Victoria thought he looked years younger. “It depends on what my tailor can do for me.”

Victoria found no opportunity to speak to the major privately before a further warning of the Earl of Dorward’s simmering wrath arrived by post. It was the eve of the Lord Mayor’s Show, a London ritual that Letty had declared her guests must see.

The earl’s letter so alarmed his wife that she took to her bed. Letty wrote to Lord Dorward at once and did what she could to soothe her sister-in-law’s distress. Reg shrugged and left Letty’s in pursuit of a good mill. Katie and Victoria took their tea alone in Letty’s drawing room, sitting side by side on the brown silk sofa.

Katie stared blindly at the fire in the grate. “Papa said Mother and I will never leave the hall again if we continue to stay here with Cousin Jack.”

Victoria heard the confusion in her friend’s voice. Katie liked her “cousin” and had come to depend on him. Her head was down, her hands twisting in the folds of her skirts in the nervous gesture she had so recently abandoned. For the first time Victoria considered how nice it would be if Jack Amberly truly were Katie’s cousin.
He
would stand up to the earl in a confrontation.

Victoria shifted closer to Katie and put an arm around her friend’s shoulders. “I am sorry your father said such a thing, Katie, but you know how he threatens and how his threats escalate before he acts. Really, he’s at a paltry level of threat still. I do not think he will
do
anything for weeks, and by then we will have had our ball.” It was all the comfort Victoria had to offer, but it seemed to lift her friend’s spirits.

Later, on the way up to their rooms, they met the major apparently on his way out. Katie smiled happily at him and asked if he would be joining them for the mayor’s parade.

“I’ll be there,” he told her, but his gaze was on Victoria. She nodded coolly.

Katie continued up the stair, but Victoria remained, and, with a touch on his sleeve, she stayed the major. He went still at her touch, holding himself rigidly. She told him, “Lord Dorward plans to involve Bow Street in an investigation of you.”

“A kindness, Miss Carr? Warning the enemy?” he asked. “Thank you.” With a nod he descended.

When Jack Amberly did not accompany them to the procession, Victoria endured a stab of disappointment that made her quite angry with herself. Surely she was disappointed only for her friends’ sake and not because the major’s absence reflected poorly on him. She set herself to enjoy the entertainment and company Letty had planned for them.

Though a thin, chill fog obscured the sun, dozens of fashionable equipages were drawn up around the expanse of Charing Cross to see the procession. Several gentlemen joined them, gathering around Letty’s carriage, among them Edward Carr, now looking every inch a polished town gentleman in a coat of blue superfine cut to Weston’s exacting standards.

Letty explained that the mayor, installed the day before at the Guildhall, would come by barge to Westminster Bridge with his retinue of guards, bands, and attendants, disembark, declare his fealty to the crown at Westminster Palace, and make his stately way back through the streets to the city in a splendid red-and-gold coach drawn by six black horses. There could be no doubt from her account that Letty dearly loved her city’s pageantry. Nor any doubt that her account fascinated Edward Carr. There was something in his manner toward Letty that Victoria had not noticed before.

She put the thought aside as she entered into the exchange of compliments and witticisms that were part of any fashionable gathering. She was parrying an outrageous compliment from Kit Grafton when something in his face reminded her of that earlier moment between her father and Letty. Looking at the men around her with new insight, she realized they had become her suitors. She felt rather dazed by the idea, and yet it was the very thing she’d come to London expecting.

Kit Grafton’s suit she could dismiss. Like Reg, Kit seemed to regard town life as a contest and apparently felt it necessary to vie with older men in everything. But Henry Wright, who talked of his acres in Dorset, and Richard Kindel, who planned to enter the Commons, were men who had been to war and who had returned tempered, ready to take up the patient tasks of peace. It sobered her that they had confided such plans in her. She had a feeling that each meant to marry soon, and she felt both complimented and, inexplicably, vexed by their attentions. Ruthlessly she suppressed the thought. This was neither the time nor the place to sort out maidenly hesitation.

She smiled gratefully when Sir Henry pointed out a crowd of small boys fleeing up the street, the unofficial heralds of the coming procession. A blare of trumpets, pipes, and drums sounded, stirring the crowd to further movement. Victoria exchanged a quick glance with Katie, who twisted and stretched, arranging herself to see better. The first men in the procession appeared, and Victoria thought she could understand Letty’s excitement. In spite of a damp, gray day and widespread hunger and distress, the city was proud.

The gay procession had filled the cross with prancing horses, banner-carrying marchers, and even two knights in full armor when from the opposite direction came another sound, a low angry rumble of voices and feet, pounding nearer. Victoria turned toward the new sounds and saw a mob of men spilling from the Strand, like a dirty tide. For a chilling moment it looked as if the tide would sweep away the colorful procession. Then just as the two groups of men must collide, those coming from the Strand opened their ranks and passed along the outside of the mayor’s procession. They were chanting in a cadence Victoria remembered with a sudden cold fear.

“Bread or blood. Bread or blood.” At her side Katie gasped and hid her head against Victoria’s shoulder.

Victoria put an arm around her friend. Her father and several of their escort stepped in front of Letty’s carriage.

Over their heads Victoria watched the two groups of marchers flow past the carriages of the
ton
. The men of the mob waved pamphlets and signs in the faces of the marshals and standard-bearers. The band faltered as shouts drowned out its music. Some of the onlookers began to pull their carriages away from the parade path, and the mob taunted them. Unexpectedly a knot of men broke from the main crowd and rushed toward the carriages, waving signs and effigies aloft and yelling an absurd scrap of nursery rhyme, “Eat no fat. Eat no fat,” as if their wits were wanting. Letty’s carriage was directly in their path, and Victoria’s fists clenched in helpless anger. Her father and friends stood ready to protect her, but she felt silly with nothing more substantial than a silk reticule with which to defend herself. Several yards from them the leader of the rioters raised a filthy bundle of rags as if to hurl it, when, with an odd whirling kick, a second man knocked the leader and several of the ruffians to the paving stones. The second man shouted a few words at the fallen men and sent them scrambling back toward the parade. The scuffle dissolved in the surging movement of the crowd.

While her father and the other gentlemen spoke reassurances to the ladies in their party, Victoria stared at the back of the man who had rescued them. As if he felt her gaze, he paused in his flight and turned, lifting the grimy cap that covered his dark hair. She found herself looking into Jack Amberly’s blue eyes. He smiled, blew her a kiss, and was off again after the crowd of tattered men.

The mob passed beyond Charing Cross, and the parade went on. And Victoria had a second realization. She had been tempted, sorely tempted, to leap from the carriage and follow Jack Amberly through the crowd. She lost sight of the major only when the Lord Mayor’s splendid red-and-gold coach came into view.

Jack thought it just as well that Miss Carr had caught a glimpse of him in the mob. His being a part of the unruly protest would keep her distrust of him strong. But the look on her face hadn’t done him any good. Those soldier’s eyes of hers had faced a charge as bravely as any man he’d known. And she had been wearing red again, some sort of cloak that set her apart from the other ladies present and made him think of wine and fiery sunsets and passionate kisses.

How was he going to keep his eyes, and hands, off her for another month? He shook his head, clearing his thoughts.

He would have been beside Miss Carr in Letty’s landau except that last night, he and Gilling had figured out that the conversation Jack overheard in the Swan had to do with the mayor’s Show. Furthermore, Gilling had discovered that the house to which Jack traced the spy belonged to Sir Arthur Lonville. Felicidad’s betrothed was a man with connections to the Home Office. Today they had spotted the spy early, and Gilling was following him. Jack had spotted Hengrave, then been distracted by Victoria Carr. Now he had to find his friend again.

**** 12 ****

T
he storm that broke two days later was not after all the earl’s wrath but a literal gale. Victoria woke to the rattle of a violent gust against her windows and the odor of wet ashes from the cold hearth in her room. At breakfast, Reg, who had ventured as far as the mews to check his cattle, reported chimneys blown down and roofs lifted from houses. Letty declared the day’s engagements unthinkable and ordered them all to the drawing room.

At that moment Victoria felt Jack Amberly’s gaze across the table. She looked up. There would be no avoiding each other this day. As they left the breakfast room, he leaned toward her and whispered, “Truce?” She turned and nodded.

Briggs appeared in a startling flannel waistcoat, a testament to the cold that made them stare, and Letty came up behind her butler, accompanied by a footman carrying a stack of neat boxes. The next few moments were a bustle of activity. Letty directed everyone to the drawing room, and two tables and several chairs were brought nearer the hearth while Briggs, the footman, and two housemaids lit more candles, tended the fire, and set out an abundant supply of cakes and fixings for tea and chocolate.

When they were seated at the two tables— Charlotte, Letty, and Katie at one, Jack, Reg, and Victoria at the other—Reg said, “Dashed dull if we’re going to play cards all day,” a remark which earned him a reproachful look from his mother.

“Games later, Reg,” said Letty, apparently unoffended. “First we’re going to make out the cards of invitation for our ball.” She held up several sheets covered in columns of her own delicate hand. Reg groaned.

“Do we get to choose the guests, Aunt Letty?” asked Katie.

Letty turned to her niece. “Well . . .”

“I’ll wager I know who Tory would invite,” said Reg.

“You have no idea,” Victoria protested.

“How much of a wager, Reg?” asked Jack Amberly. He sat to Victoria’s left, indolently elegant in a blue coat, cream waistcoat, and buff inexpressibles.

Victoria shot him a quelling glance.
Truce?
she mouthed.

“I know,” said Reg. “Tory, you write down the name of one gentleman you would like to see at the ball, but don’t tell us. We’ll each write a guess and see who’s right.”

It was a silly idea, but Victoria agreed on the condition that Reg and Katie play, too.