The Mercenary Major (5 page)

“We don’t know that . . . Cousin Jack died, Papa,” said Katie. “Aunt Letty says his body was never—”

“That only means,” interrupted the earl, “that something else happened to the boy’s body as it certainly might have in such a lawless nation.”

“But if someone has replied to Letty’s letters, Walter,” said Lady Dorward, looking up from the paper in her hands, “then he must be Jack Amberly, mustn’t he?”

“Hardly,” snapped the earl. “Letty has been writing to Spain these fourteen years. The wonder is that no one has seen fit to take advantage of her sooner.”

Two pairs of blue eyes looked imploringly at Victoria. Those light expressive eyes were quite the best feature of her Faverton friends, and though she knew she should not, Victoria could not help answering the plea in them. “Sir,” she said to the earl, “surely it would be difficult to impersonate Jack Amberly. He must be a man of certain years and at least a passing family resemblance.”

“Hah,” said the earl. “What woman can’t be deceived by a handsome rogue, Miss Carr? I’ll wager Faverton Hall this man is some cozening Captain Sharp who has picked up one of Letty’s letters and seen a way to line his pockets at her expense.”

“How dreadful, Walter. How are we to save her?” asked Lady Dorward.

“Save Letty? Pah! Who can save a woman from folly? What are we going to do about you, Charlotte?”

“Me? Am I in some danger from this man, dear?”

Victoria pressed her lips together, withholding a most intemperate remark. It was so like the earl to alarm his wife and family.

“I’ve taken that house on Grace Church Street for a fortnight, no more,” he said, ignoring his wife’s question. “Whatever can my sister be thinking to bring this man to London and settle him in her own house when she has promised to take the girls and give them a ball? How the girls can go to her now, I don’t know.”

Victoria thought she might cheerfully topple the earl down his own monstrous flight of stairs.

“Oh, Papa,” said Katie, “do you mean we shall not have our ball?”

“Not if this impostor remains with Letty. I refuse to give the man any countenance.”

“But Walter,” pleaded Lady Dorward, “could you not accompany us, delay the project at the hall?”

“Delay the project . . .”

Even Victoria had to acknowledge the magnificence of the purple hue which the earl’s face now assumed. Coupled with his fiery hair and blazing brows, his wrathful violet shade produced a startling effect, and it occupied her attention through most of the ensuing catalogue of delays that his beloved project had suffered.

“Of course, dear,” murmured Lady Dorward some time later. “I am sorry I suggested it. It is just that the girls will be so little established in a fortnight, and I had hoped—”

“Confound the man, confound Letty,” interrupted the earl. “Reg, you,” he said to his heir, causing the young man to start as if he’d been wakened from a nap. “Call upon Letty at once. Warn this fellow off. Tell him I mean to bring in Bow Street. The man must be out of Letty’s house by the end of a fortnight. Charlotte, you and the girls will remain in the house on Grace Church Street and have no connection with Letty until the impostor is gone.” Having made this pronouncement, the earl looked balefully around at his family and servants, excused himself, and charged up the stair with the master builder in pursuit.

Within minutes Victoria and the Favertons were underway, but, Victoria reflected, it was hardly surprising that her friends’ pleasure in the journey had diminished. She herself was so impatient to begin a new life, so sure that London offered just the gaiety and joy that had been missing in the dreary days of her father’s epic mourning, she could not bear to sit glumly while they rolled along to their destination.

“This is quite the most
delicious
moment of the journey, don’t you think?” she said, letting her voice suggest possibilities of pleasure, so that Katie turned to her at once and Reg stopped toying with the carriage strap and Lady Dorward caught herself with a jerk as her chin descended toward her ample breast.

Reg leaned against the squabs, propping his carroty head on one hand. “
Delicious
, Tory?” he asked.

“Whatever do you mean?” asked Katie, her eyes bright with curiosity.

“I mean,” said Victoria, “that since we have done all that’s practical and necessary to prepare ourselves for town, we may now imagine ourselves the hero . . .” She nodded at Reg. “And heroines of such scenes as we are likely to be a part of there. Indeed, we must do so now, for tonight we shall be in London and be obliged to be quite practical again.”

“Heroes and heroines, how could we be?” asked Katie.

“Yes, what adventures are
we
likely to have?” demanded Reg. “Do you think we will meet highwaymen or gypsies between Faverton and London? The smugglers and spies are done for with Bonaparte locked up, Tory.”

“But we are already a hero and three heroines,” insisted Victoria. “Merely because we have taken it into our heads to go to London. We are a modern Dick and three Diane Whittingtons.”

“But my dear Victoria,” objected Lady Dorward gently, “you have no fortune to seek away from home, for you are an heiress. You are all quite as well provided for as any three young people in the realm, I daresay.”

“Mama is right,” said Katie, “and what’s worse, Tory, not only do we all possess fortunes, none of us is an orphan. Though I know your mother has been dead for a very long time, you haven’t a wicked stepmother or an evil suitor or anything to endanger or alarm you as a true heroine would.”

At that Reg laughed. “That’s a leveler, Tory,” he said, “especially from a novel-reader like Katie. You may be a beauty, but with such paltry adversities you will hardly do for a heroine.”

Victoria gave Reg a stern look. She could have informed him that it was her beauty, so reminiscent of her mother’s, that had imprisoned her for years and that small defeats repeated daily were as wearing to the spirit as grand catastrophes, but she did not. “If you all are determined to be dull on the very threshold of our adventures, I can’t help you,” she said. “But it is not beauty or adversity that makes a heroine—it is ambition.”

“Oh ho,” said Reg, sitting up, “it’s Lady Macbeth.” He struck a pose. “Do you mean to murder Prinny, then? ‘I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition . . .’ “

“Do stop being silly for a minute, Reg,” said Victoria, though he made her want to laugh, for his dramatic pose was quite at odds with his youthful, still roundish face and bushy head of flaming hair. “You must acknowledge that everyone who goes to London harbors some secret ambition, some desire for glory that elevates the journey to a quest.”

“Oh, Tory, do you? You must tell us,” exclaimed Katie.

“We will all tell,” said Victoria. “Now think for a moment. What is your highest ambition for the Season?” She closed her eyes, feeling the new energy in the silence around her. When they had had time to contemplate, she opened her eyes again and said, “Lady Dorward, we must hear from you first.”

“Well, my dear,” said the countess with some agitation, “I hadn’t really thought so before, but I shall make great matches for both of you—a handsome duke for Katie and no less than an earl for Victoria.”

“My turn,” Reg exclaimed. “I shall become a notorious whip and win a dozen races a day in my curricle.”

“Katie?” asked Victoria.

“I . . . I shall dance every dance at our ball, and I shall find something to say to each of my partners.”

“Now you, Tory,” prompted Reg.

What could she say? The game had succeeded, but it had brought her back to her own unhappy circumstances, and how could she tell her friends that she was going to London to escape her father’s house?

She looked at the three faces turned expectantly toward her and hoped for some inspiration. “I . . .”

“Oh, dear,” said Lady Dorward, pulling a lace-edged bit of linen from her reticule and applying it to her eyes. “I know you meant to divert us, Victoria, but it is no use. This impostor will ruin everything.”

“Mama’s right,” said Katie, the bright glow fading from her eyes. “What are we to do?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Lady Dorward. “This is not like your Aunt Letty at all. She has always doted on you children, always planned that you should come to her for your first ball. There’s no ballroom in Grace Church Street, and Letty has such a lovely ballroom. Reg, you must go to this Amberly person.”

“
I
must?” said Reg, sinking back into the squabs. “A fine figure I shall cut in town, telling my cousin to get out, if he is my cousin, and trying to scare off some sharp, if he is a sharp.”

“Maybe we should do a little investigating,” suggested Victoria.

“Like Bow Street?” asked Reg, clearly contemptuous of the idea.

“Exactly,” said Victoria, as if her suggestion had not been sneered at. “Reg, you could call on Letty and tell her we have been delayed. We may arrive quietly with no one the wiser, and Reg can go about to make inquiries.”

“Me again. Why must I go?”

“Because,” explained Victoria, “you can go places we cannot—all the clubs. There is bound to be talk about this man. If he is who he says he is, there must be men who knew him in the army.”

“Do you think Aunt Letty has truly found our cousin, Tory?” asked Katie.

“I don’t know. If the man is not your cousin, he is certainly a bold and impertinent scoundrel, for his would be a very risky impersonation.”

“Could be like that Lavalette fellow, though,” suggested Reg. “He got away with pretending to be an English general.”

“But Lavalette did not have to maintain his disguise very long, and he had several accomplices,” Victoria reminded them.

“Yes, but suppose this fellow really is a fraud,” said Reg. “If he’s got hold of Letty’s letters, then he must know a great deal about the Favertons. And don’t forget, Jack Amberly was born abroad so no one here has ever seen him.”

“Oh, Reg,” said Katie, “do you think anybody could be so wicked as to use Aunt Letty? What if this person is our cousin Jack? Should we investigate him and treat him shabbily, Mama?”

“Well, no, of course not, dear, though I cannot help but think that your father does not wish for the connection,” replied Lady Dorward.

“You mean, even if he is our cousin, Papa doesn’t wish us to know him?” Katie was plainly uncomprehending.

“You see, dear, your Aunt Helen embarrassed your father and your grandparents so much when she ran off with her captain that I don’t believe your father ever forgave her. She jilted his friend, and she always seemed to be laughing at Dorward.”

“Well,” said Reg, “I say we depend on Tory. She can lead us in the investigation. I daresay she’s the cleverest girl in the county, and I’d put my money on her wits against some paltry impostor any day.”

Victoria felt her cheeks warm to be named cleverest girl in the county. Reg was given to exaggeration, but she supposed she valued her Faverton friends so much because they saw her for herself and not as a reminder of Anne Carr’s tragic beauty. It was both heartening and daunting that they trusted her to rout the mysterious Major Amberly, who, no doubt, knew his way around the world of the
ton
. Well, she would certainly try. With any luck she would expose the Mercenary Major before she had worn out the soles of her first pair of dancing slippers.

**** 5 ****

“R
eg is here,” said Katie, turning from the window through which she had been regarding Grace Church Street below, “and he’s having Tom walk the horses.”

“Hurry then,” replied Victoria, “we mustn’t let that brother of yours get away again.” She put aside the letter she was writing to her father, snatched up a burgundy spencer that lay on the bed, and buttoned it over a matching day dress.

“What if he refuses to take us up?” asked Katie, drawing on her gloves and following Victoria to the door.

“We can’t give him a chance to refuse,” came the reply.

They couldn’t. Ever since their arrival in town Reg had eluded them. The first morning in London he had risen from the breakfast table, claiming he’d best start investigating the impostor, and they had not seen him since. They had been confined to the house on Grace Church Street, obliged to support Lady Dorward’s spirits. The countess, ill at ease with their deception of Letty and positively terrified of defying her husband, had refused to leave the house. All they knew of the fashionable world was what they gleaned from the morning paper. But that other world was within reach if Reg had discovered and routed the impostor.

As they descended the last steps of the main stair, Reg emerged from the side hall. He wore a many-caped driving coat, a beaver hat at the sort of rakish angle a young man was inclined to affect, and his driving gloves. The impression of town polish was only slightly diminished by two large biscuits balanced on the palm of his left hand.

“Reg,” the girls called in unison. He looked up at once, cast a quick glance at the door as if measuring his chances of escape, and stopped abruptly as the girls reached the bottom step.

“Good morning, Katie, Tory.” He looked with obvious dismay at their wraps and gloves. “Going out?”

Victoria took a deep breath, unwilling to lower her dignity by speaking in the little puffs that were all she could manage at the moment. Smiling her sweetest smile, she said, “We’d love to.”

“Now just a minute, you two,” said Reg. “I never said I would take you up.” He waved a biscuit-laden hand in annoyance, flinging a shower of crumbs.

“Of course you did,” said Victoria, “don’t you remember?” She smiled and looked beyond Reg at the butler and footman, who also occupied the marble foyer of the rented house at that particular moment. Lady Dorward’s most-loyal butler, Stook, could be depended upon to report in detail any conversation that took place under his long nose.

Reg opened his mouth and abruptly shut it again. He glanced over his shoulder at the two servants, then turned to glare at the young women smiling so innocently at him.