The Wild Marquis (4 page)

I
t should have been the footman’s job, but Chase wasn’t surprised when his housekeeper limped in with a pot of coffee. He wondered what had kept her so long.

“You’re up early. And you’ve been home early three nights in a row. Did your cock fall off?”

She filled his cup, curving her arm with a trace of elegance that had rendered her successful early in her career. Unfortunately Mrs. Melisande Duchamp’s gentility was as spurious as her French name and had never extended to her speech, which was as earthy as her former profession.

“I don’t believe the state of my private parts lies within the purview of your responsibilities as my housekeeper,” he said.

She emitted a crack of laughter. “Purview! That’s a good one. Especially since it was me what taught you how to keep ’em in good order. Lusty little bastard you were. And is it
within my purview
to know why you’re upsetting the household by calling for your breakfast at nine in the morning?”

“I’m told the agencies that furnish the gentry with
their staff open early. I’ve decided to replace the lot of you with respectable servants.”

“Like any of them would come and work for
you
,” she replied, unconcerned.

“Oh sit down, Mel, and have some coffee. Tell me the news.”

“Certainly not. It wouldn’t be proper.” It was absurd, but Mel insisted on clinging to the notion that she knew her place. Yet Cain had been as close to her as any person since the day she and her friend Bet had found him bleeding in the gutter and given him shelter at Mrs. Rafferty’s bordello.

She might refuse to sit in his presence but she had no scruples about speaking her mind. “I’ve got your paper and mail here. You can read the news yourself. Why don’t
you
tell
me
what’s going on.”

“Nancy and I have parted company by mutual agreement. She has decided to devote more time to her vocal efforts.”

“From what I hear she’s sparing a minute or two for the efforts of Sir ’erbert Litchfield.”

Chase wondered how long it had taken for the news that his mistress had found a new protector to reach the ears of every servant in the West End of London. About an hour, he guessed.

“Gave you the boot, did she?”

“As it happens she did initiate the severance of our arrangement.”

“Smart lass, that one. Coming up to six months with you. She knew it wouldn’t last. But what I don’t get is why you ain’t out there finding another one. It ain’t like you, Cain.”

“Haven’t you heard? I’ve decided to devote my attentions to literature. I’m going to buy a book. Or, if Mrs. Merton has anything to say in the matter, many expensive books.”

“Hah! I knew there had to be a woman. Why d’you want to buy books? Don’t you have enough of them?”

“Mrs. Merton tried to interest me in a famous Italian work on the lives of prostitutes and pimps.”

“Not much point in that. You know all about them already.”

“As it happens, I had read the book.”

“Is it good?”

Cain shrugged. “Signor Aretino’s work is, at least, blessedly free of the moralizing that some commentators seem to feel a necessary accompaniment to titillation.”

“Why’d this mort want you to buy it then?”

“I believe she thought it the kind of book that would appeal to me.” He smiled. “I punished her a little for her presumption. I made her examine the book with me.”

He felt guilty about causing his little bookseller embarrassment but hadn’t been able to resist. She’d blushed quite charmingly, speaking with earnest enthusiasm about the quality of the engravings. All the while trying to ignore the fact said engravings depicted acts that were, he was quite sure, foreign to her experience. His own mind, predictably enough, had toyed with the notion of giving her a practical demonstration.

In the end he’d got what he deserved for his teas
ing. She’d fled Sotheby’s with flustered haste, refusing his offer of a ride home. He never had the chance to interrogate her about Sir Thomas Tarleton’s unorthodox methods of acquisition.

Mel’s gray eyes glinted, revealing a flash of the beauty she’d once possessed before hardship and injury had dulled it. She’d been past her peak already when Cain had met her, eight years earlier. No longer a prime article with her own rooms, she’d descended to the level of brothel fodder.

“Are you going to make her an offer?” she asked.

“Mrs. Merton is a respectable shopkeeper and much too good to be associating with someone like me.”

“Is she a looker? Young?”

“I don’t know. Not very old. And I’ll thank you not to gossip about her. I’m not in the habit of ruining tradeswomen.”

Mel snorted. “Only those what are already ruined.” She raised an arm at his mutter of protest. “I’ll keep my mouth shut. I’ve got better things to do than stand around and palaver with you. That new maid needs watching every minute, silly little drab.”

Alone once more, Cain shuffled through the post: bills; a missive from the steward of his estate; the usual selection of requests for his charity or patronage. He left all this to his man of business. Robinson, a canny and tough old fellow, had even stood up to his father, convincing the Saintly Marquis that his heir should be granted a meager allowance rather than continue the scandal of living in a brothel.

Which left one letter in a feminine hand.

He held it for a full minute, both reluctant and
eager to open his mother’s monthly genuflection to duty, then tore off the seal.

It was the usual rant, full of exhortations to renounce his wicked path and surrender to the will of the Lord, embellished with plentiful quotations from the Reverend Josiah Ditchfield, the pompous blowhard of a clergyman who had once been his tutor. After their last face-to-face conversation, following his father’s funeral, he never knew why she bothered to write at all. Yet he thanked her sense of duty, because of the brief letter enclosed within her own.

In the eight years that had passed since he had been cast out, frightened and almost penniless, to face London alone, the only times Cain felt like weeping were when he received his sister’s notes, the slight, unsatisfactory contact that was all his surviving parent permitted.

“Dear Brother,” she wrote.

“I trust I find you in good health and obedient to the will of Our Lord and Savior. My studies progress. I have learned to play three new hymns on the pianoforte and have made a copy in watercolors of the Italian painting of the
Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian
acquired by our late Respected Grandfather. Mr. Ditchfield says it is very like. Mr. Ditchfield is also good enough to supervise my studies of the Bible. This month I am reading the Book of Ruth.

“Your affectionate sister, Esther Godfrey.”

Did she mean these pious platitudes? Did she enjoy her education, devoid, as far as he could tell, of any kind of frivolity? She never wrote of anything personal: a new gown, a pet, a thought that couldn’t have
been placed in her head by their mother. Perhaps she was like their mother. He had no idea. He hadn’t seen her since she was his adored, adorable eight-year-old Esty, all eyes and curls and sweet laughter.

A postscript at the foot of the page caught his eye.

“Ruth 1:20.”

He hurried to his library, the letter clutched in his hand. There had to be a Bible somewhere. Thanks to his father and the Reverend Josiah, he’d once been an assiduous if unenthusiastic student of the Good Book. Now, when he tracked it down among a group of reference works, he half expected it to go up in smoke at the touch of his hand. He riffled the pages in search of the Book of Ruth.

Was the verse a message? His first instinct was to take horse for Markley Chase and discover what had made his sister unhappy. But likely it was nothing serious. A broken trinket, a scolding for a poor lesson. Better to imagine nothing more grave, or to see it merely as a recommendation for biblical study of the kind his mother occasionally made and he always ignored. Because if Esther was in trouble, there was nothing in the world he could do that wouldn’t make things worse.

As usual his sister’s letter depressed his spirits. For a couple of days now he’d lived with the hope that
solving the mystery of the Burgundy Hours would provide him with something, some piece of information he could use to understand his late father’s behavior and make his obdurate mother relent and let him see Esther. In the cold morning light the idea seemed absurd. Why waste time pursuing a chimera?

For eight years he’d been without family, thanks to his father’s accusations and banishment, virtually estranged from his social peers. He’d managed without them and survived to inherit his title and fortune. He hoped his hedonistic existence caused the late marquis considerable anguish in whatever section of the afterlife he inhabited.

He thrust aside the momentary gloom engendered by word from home. What was the point? He had a reputation to live up to, and nothing better to do with his time and wealth than enjoy himself.

Yet the present day stretched ahead of him, empty of engagements, one of the problems with going to bed early and alone and rising at this hour. Had he been a real gentleman of the
ton
he would have sought the company of his peers at Tattersall’s, or one of the other haunts of the sporting-minded. But horses interested him solely as means of transportation. He was adept at both boxing and fencing but maintained his skills only as a means of exercise. So much did he avoid interaction with his fellow men, he didn’t even belong to a club.

Which left the ladies. After breaking with his mistress he should be in eager pursuit of new companionship, haunting the theaters and the promenade in
Hyde Park to assess the fashionable impure. Or venturing into the few drawing rooms where he was received in search of more refined bedfellows.

But today he found his mind dwelling on Mrs. Merton.

He might harbor fantasies about stripping her naked and unleashing the passion he was convinced lingered under her forbidding exterior, but she wasn’t a woman who deserved to be trifled with by a worthless rake. Still, she was amusing to tease. And she knew more about Tarleton than she’d admitted.

Perhaps, after all, he ought to find out what.

Juliana blushed whenever she thought of the Aretino affair.

Back in the shop she convinced herself that this was a perfectly natural consequence of examining erotic images in the presence of an attractive male. Yet again she found herself in need of a self-administered reprimand on the folly of thinking of Lord Chase as anything but a customer with deep pockets. With his reputation for debauchery it would be something of a miracle if she could manage to retain his attention.

His attention to books and nothing else. Of course.

Luckily she had just the task to help achieve the laudable goal of forgetting the sexual urges and images he’d aroused: finding those dreary volumes Mr. Gilbert had mentioned.

Joseph was never shy about soliciting book owners to sell their collections. In this case a Miss Combe, resident of a substantial house in the Salisbury Close,
had responded to his letter of inquiry with an invitation to look at her library. Although any purchases were financed by Juliana’s modest fortune, he refused to take her with him on the trip to Salisbury. As usual, he traveled alone, leaving her to mind the store while he made the important decisions.

In this case his business acumen had been inexplicably poor. She’d have suspected he’d bought Miss Combe’s collection out of pity for an elderly lady, except that it was so unlike Joseph.

A few volumes had been found in the room when his body, stripped of his purse and watch, had been discovered. The local magistrate had concluded that robbery was the motive for Joseph’s killing. The thief had left the books, which were now shelved in the shop. The rest of the collection, a couple of hundred volumes, had been delivered by carrier a few weeks later. Still reeling from the shock of her husband’s murder and the challenge of running the business alone, Juliana had given them a cursory glance, enough to see they weren’t going to make her fortune. From that day to this they sat disregarded in the back room.

Now her eye ran over the spines with practiced ease. Mr. Gregory’s
History of the Christian Church
. Very dull.
The Church History of England
by Hugh Tootell. Excellent bedtime reading, for an insomniac. And many more in the same vein. Perhaps Mr. Gilbert would be interested, but she wasn’t optimistic. She pulled a shabby folio volume from the bottom of a pile. The calf binding had once been fine, with traces of a distinctive gilt tooling on the spine and along the
inner dentelles and a coat of arms on the front cover. But the hinges were cracked and the leather badly scratched. Gingerly removing the loose front cover she discovered a collection of manuscripts.

Hoping for a buried treasure, she carried the folio upstairs to look at after dinner. It turned out the contents of the volume were more soporific than precious, and it wasn’t long before she gave up and went to bed.

She awoke from a heated dream in which she knelt naked before an almost fully clothed man. A particular man. Her half-sleeping mind shied away from what she’d been doing to him, but she knew. It wasn’t something she’d ever have imagined before looking at that shocking book. The act should have disgusted her but instead she found it exciting.

On the occasions when her husband felt amorous he’d give a little cough before they retired for the night and suggest she “prepare herself.” Then he merely rolled over in bed on top of her and did his business. She hadn’t exactly disliked it, but it bored her. Her role was passive and his exertions never varied. In her dream she was an active partner in lovemaking and she enjoyed the sense of power. She awoke with a frustrated ache between her thighs, not wanting the dream to end.

The inky darkness and silence told her that the city outside had called it a day and predawn deliveries to the busy commercial street hadn’t commenced. Yet something had woken her. She listened nervously. Was that scratching she heard on the floor below? Rats? She shuddered with distaste. The alternative
was even more unwelcome. She’d told herself over and over again that Joseph’s death was the result of an unfortunate mischance, the attack of a random thief turned murderous. For weeks she’d suffered night terrors, but they’d subsided when nothing threatening occurred. Nevertheless, the idea of an intruder in the shop was horrifying. She huddled under the covers, pulling a blanket up over her head.