The Secret Pearl (13 page)

“Sit down,” she said, “and play for me.”

“Please,” Fleur said quietly.

But even as she prayed silently for cooperation, she knew that she would not get it.

“Play for me,” the child ordered petulantly.

“Please,” Fleur said.

“That is silly,” Lady Pamela said. “What difference does ‘please’ make?”

“It makes me feel that I am being asked, not ordered,” Fleur said. “It makes me feel good about myself.”

“That is silly,” the child said.

“Please will you play the harpsichord, Miss Hamilton, while Pamela goes to lie down on her bed?”

Fleur’s back stiffened. She had not heard him get up and cross the room.

His daughter threw him an exasperated look. “Please, Miss Hamilton,” she said.

Fleur closed her eyes briefly. She would have done anything rather than play. Her hands were clammy. But she sat on the stool without looking around and played Bach, compensating as well as she could for the key that stuck.

“It is your turn now, Lady Pamela,” she said when she was finished.

“You are good,” his grace said. “Have you seen the instruments in the drawing room and music room?”

Fleur had seen them during the tour with Mrs. Laycock, though she had not had the temerity to touch either one. The pianoforte in the drawing room was better than the one at Heron House, she suspected, lovely as that one had been—Mama’s precious treasure. The massive grand pianoforte in the music room she had been able to look at only in awe.

“Yes, your grace,” she said. “I saw them on my first day here.”

“Come along, Pamela,” he said, reaching for his daughter’s hand. “We will hear Miss Hamilton in the music room. And we will remember to say ‘please.’ Won’t we?”

“Yes, Papa,” she said.

Fleur followed them numbly from the room and along the upper corridor to the far staircase. And yet there was a feeling of excitement too. She was to be allowed to play that pianoforte!

If only she could be alone, she thought as they entered the room next to the library and she approached the instrument and touched its keys reverently. If only he were not there.

“If you please, Miss Hamilton,” he said quietly, and he disappeared somewhere behind her back with his daughter.

She played Beethoven. It had been so long. Beethoven was not suited to a harpsichord. She played hesitantly at first, until her fingers accustomed themselves to the smooth ivory of the keys and the flow of the music and until her soul was carried beyond itself and she forgot where she was.

Music had always been her great love, her great escape. Cousin Caroline’s barbed tongue, Amelia’s caustic comments, the knowledge that she would never see her parents again, the strict discipline and drab routine of her school years—all had ceased to exist when she touched a keyboard.

She bowed her head over her still hands when she was finished.

“May I go and see Tiny now, Papa?” a voice said from behind her, bringing her soul back inside her body again.

“Yes,” he said. “Ask a footman to go with you. You might remember to say ‘please.’ ”

“That’s silly, Papa,” the child said.

Fleur heard the door open and close again.

“You have great talent,” the Duke of Ridgeway said. “But you are out of practice.”

“Yes, your grace.”

“If you are to teach my daughter,” he said, “you must play faultlessly yourself. Half an hour a day for her lesson, an hour a day for your practice.”

“Where, your grace?” She still had not turned.

“Here, of course,” he said.

She rubbed at a key with one finger. “I am not allowed on this floor, your grace,” she said.

“Are you not?” he said. “By Nanny’s orders?”

“By her grace’s,” she said.

“Given in person?”

“Yes, your grace.”

“You will spend an hour and a half each day in here,” he said, “by my express order. I shall explain to her grace.”

She could not continue to sit there all day with him standing behind her. She drew a steadying breath, got to her feet, and turned to face him. He was standing quite close, so that for a moment she felt again that terror at his largeness.

“You have had access to a pianoforte for most of your life,” he said. It was not a question.

She said nothing.

“You told Houghton that your father died recently in debt,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Did he?”

She looked up into his eyes.

“Did he die in debt?”

“Yes.” She was not sure that any volume had come out with the word.

“And your mother?” he asked.

“She died,” she said, “a long time ago.”

“And you have no other family?”

She had never been good at lying, though she had done enough of it in the past few months, heaven knew. She thought of Cousin Caroline and Amelia and Matthew and shook her head quickly.

“What are you frightened of?” he asked. “Just of me?”

“I should be with Lady Pamela,” she said, raising her chin, firming her voice.

“No, you should not,” he said. “My orders take precedence over yours, Miss Hamilton. Pamela is a difficult pupil?”

“She is not used to doing what she does not wish to do, your grace,” she said.

“You have my permission to insist,” he said. “Provided you do not make of her life a dreary business.”

“She is a child,” she said. “My greatest delight is in seeing her smile and hearing her laugh.”

“Are those skills you can teach, Miss Hamilton?” he asked. “I have never seen or heard you do either.”

“I can give her my full attention,” she said, “and praise where it is due and encouragement when praise would be inappropriate. And I can give her enough freedom so that she will feel like a child.”

He searched her eyes with his so that she felt breathless, and resisted the temptation to panic. She wished she had taken a step back from him when she had first risen from the stool and it would have seemed more natural to do so than to do it now. She felt strangely that she could be scorched by the heat from his body, even though he stood several feet away. His face was too close, as close as it was in all her nightmares, bent over her naked body.

“Your working day is at an end, ma’am,” he said. His voice
had changed in tone. It was cold, cynical. “You are dismissed. I shall go and join my daughter in the stables.”

“Yes, your grace.” She turned to leave.

“Miss Hamilton?”

She half-turned her head.

“I am pleased with what I have seen of your work this afternoon,” he said.

She stood still for a moment before leaving the room and closing the door behind her. She drew in deep lungfuls of air before proceeding on her way up to her room.

L
ORD
B
ROCKLEHURST SENT HIS
card up to one of the rooms at the Pulteney Hotel and paced the lobby impatiently.

It was a stroke of raw luck, he knew, despite the fact that the Bow Street Runner had reported the detail to him the day before with puffed chest and important air, as if he had manufactured the whole thing with his superior police skills.

The list of guests for Willoughby Hall had been disappointing. Only two of them he knew even vaguely. There would have been no realistic chance of striking up a close enough friendship with either of them that he could have invited himself along to the house. Besides, all except one couple, with whom he had no acquaintance at all, had left London already.

He would have had to do things the way he did not want to do them. He would have had to go down to Dorsetshire in his capacity as a justice of the peace to arrest Isabella and bring her home for trial. He did not want his hand to be so forced. He did not want all his options to be cut.

Dammit, he did not want to see that lovely neck ringed by a noose.

But only one day after delivering the list and declaring that Lord Thomas Kent was nowhere in Britain, and after having had his bill paid, Snedburg had come bustling back, puffed with importance, to announce that his lordship had that
morning set foot on English soil from the deck of an East India Company ship.

“Of course, sir,” he had said, “I know from experience that when the nobility disappear from our shores, it is often to take employment with one of the companies. It was a simple, though time-consuming matter, you will understand, to make inquiries. What could have been more fortunate than to discover not only that his lordship had indeed taken himself to India but also that he was bringing himself back again?” He had coughed with self-satisfaction.

Lord Brocklehurst had paid the man more generously than he ought, he felt. Living in town was deuced expensive.

An employee of the hotel bowed in front of him and informed him that Lord Thomas Kent would receive him in his suite. Lord Brocklehurst turned to the staircase.

Lord Thomas Kent was a few years younger than he. The two men had never been very close friends, merely friendly acquaintances who had frequented the same gaming hells and taverns many years before.

Lord Thomas was in his sitting room, dressed in a long brocade dressing gown, when Lord Brocklehurst was admitted by a servant. He had grown more handsome with the passing of early youth, the latter noticed: bronzed, dark-haired, slim, a man of a little above average height.

“Bradshaw,” he said, extending his right hand, his teeth very white against his sun-browned face. “I hardly recognized you from the title on your card. Your father passed on, did he?”

“Five years ago,” Lord Brocklehurst said. “You are looking well, Kent.”

“I’ve never felt better,” the other said. “I thought not a soul knew of my return. I thought I would have to do the rounds of all the clubs today and leave my card at every door in Mayfair. This is a pleasant surprise.”

“I heard in passing,” Lord Brocklehurst said. “Been gone long, have you, Kent?”

“For well over five years,” the other said. “Ever since that debacle over the dukedom. I went running with my tail between my legs. Doubtless you heard.”

“Yes.” Lord Brocklehurst coughed delicately. “A nasty business, Kent. You have my sympathy.”

Lord Thomas shrugged. “I am not sure the sedentary life would have suited me after all,” he said. “Or the married life. Too confining by half. Are the ladies as lovely as they used to be, Bradshaw? And as willing? I must say I am starved for an English beauty or two—or twenty.”

“And just as expensive as they ever were,” Lord Brocklehurst said, “if not more so. You are going home?”

“To Willoughby?” The other laughed aloud. “I think that would be the unwisest move of my life, considering some of the things that were said when I left. It can’t be a comfortable thing to have someone who once wore your title breathing down your neck, I suppose—and someone who was once betrothed to your wife. Though it might be worth everything just to see the look on Ridgeway’s face.”

“Old wounds heal fast,” Lord Brocklehurst said, “especially within families. He would probably be delighted to see you.”

“The prodigal’s return and the fatted calf?” Lord Thomas said. “I think not. I’m deuced hungry and hate eating at hotels. Is White’s still standing where it used to stand?”

“I’ll be delighted to buy you luncheon there,” Lord Brocklehurst said.

“Will you?” Lord Thomas laughed again. “The Heron property is good to you, Bradshaw? I can remember the time when neither one of us had a feather to fly with. Luncheon it is, then, and perhaps tonight we can go in search of wine, women, and cards together, though I might be persuaded to dispense with the cards. Let my man pour you a drink while I dress.”

Lord Brocklehurst sipped on his drink a few minutes later and stared thoughtfully at the door through which Lord Thomas had disappeared.

S
IXTEEN GUESTS ARRIVED TO STAY
at Willoughby Hall, all on the same day. The Duke of Ridgeway stood beside his wife in the great hall to receive them and circulated among them during tea in the saloon late in the afternoon.

They were not quite the crowd he would have chosen to consort with, given the choice, he reflected, but Sybil was happy and looking quite glowingly lovely, and he supposed she was entitled to some happiness. Indeed, he was glad to see her enjoying herself. It seemed to have been beyond his power to give her any enjoyment since their marriage.

And he was getting mortally tired of sharing a dining table with her, one at the head, the other at the foot, making labored conversation across its empty length.

“Good hunting do you have here, Ridgeway?” Sir Ambrose Marvell asked him as they sipped on their tea.

“My gamekeeper tells me that the deer are increasing at an interesting rate,” he replied.

“And the fishing?” Mr. Morley Treadwell asked.

It was easy to see already whom Sybil had invited as her
cher ami
—there would have to be someone, of course, as there always was on such occasions. Sir Philip Shaw, he had heard, scarcely needed to keep a home of his own, spending all his time moving about among the homes of his numerous flirts and mistresses. And the current joke had it that one need not assign a guest bedchamber to Shaw—he would cheerfully share with one of the ladies, usually his hostess.