Amanda Scott (27 page)

“Oh, surely not yet!” she protested.

Clearly tired now, he glanced at Borland, who said, “It is necessary for Mr. Murray to be getting on with his part of the business, Miss Nell. Indeed, a letter from him arrived at the receiving office only this morning, containing a draft of the title page and wording for the dedication, and wondering when he might be privileged to see the manuscript.”

She still could not imagine that what she had contributed was of such a standard as to impress Mr. Murray, but neither could she reconcile it with her conscience to debate the point with Sir Mortimer, who was by now having difficulty keeping his eyes open. Accepting Borland’s suggestion that she take with her the proposed title page to put with the rest of the manuscript, she took leave of both men and made her way downstairs to the drawing room, looking for Manningford.

Mr. Lasenby was alone, however, reading a newspaper. He put it down and got up at once. “Bran’s gone out, ma’am. Your humble servant would be delighted to walk beside your chair if you would not despise the company.”

“Not at all, sir, though I warn you, I mean to walk. It does not suit me to be cooped up in a chair on so fine an afternoon, but you may certainly accompany me, if you like. Dare I ask if you have had word from Miss Wembly?”

“Devil a bit,” he replied. Though he did not seem cast down by that fact, he grimaced as he added, “Had a scrawl, however, from m’ grandfather. Says he’s had a visit from a pair of dashed impertinent tipstaffs, looking for me. Now the betrothal’s been called off, they ain’t so patient as they was, and m’ grandfather said if I don’t wish to find m’self in the sponging house, I’d best post up to London at once to placate Miss Wembly.”

“Then she has returned to town,” Nell said. “But you sent your letter to Brighton, did you not, sir?”

“Did I, by God?” he replied, much struck. “Forgot, you know, but that would account for her not replying, would it not? Daresay the thing’s been lost.”

“But surely they would send it on after her,” Nell said.

“Do you think so?”

“Oh, yes. In fact, if she did not receive it in Brighton, it must be because she left some time ago, in which case the letter ought to have reached her, even in town, by now.”

“I daresay you are right,” he agreed with a sigh. “Nothing for it, then. M’ grandfather says I won’t like the sponging house, so—though I daresay one life sentence is much the same as another—I suppose I shall have to post up to town next week to see what is to be done.” He held out his arm. “Shall we go?”

Nell swallowed the laughter that threatened her in response to his notion of “at once,” and accepted his arm, but they got only so far as the hall, where they encountered Manningford. Lasenby seemed very glad to see him.

“I say, Bran, your pockets are flush again, ain’t they?”

Manningford regarded him wryly. “They are. How much?”

“A monkey. I’ve had a devilish good notion.”

“You terrify me, but I’ll give it to you later if you play least in sight now.”

When Lasenby had gone, Nell lost no time in telling Manningford that Sir Mortimer now knew of the Regent’s forthcoming visit. The information did not please him, but he agreed when she had explained the whole that it was probably just as well. As to her making one of the party, he had not the least objection, since Lady Flavia had already said she would require support. He was to escort her to Bathwick Hill House himself, and he could not think it would pose any difficulty for Nell and Lasenby to be included in the party. “Sydney knows the whole,” he said, “so he can simply tell Prinny that the author, being notoriously bashful, requires the support of her niece and her friends to see her through the ordeal of being presented.”

And so it was the following day when the four of them arrived at Bathwick Hill House. Mr. Saint-Denis, having taken the trouble to greet them in the spacious hall, said to Lady Flavia, “Prinny knows many people are frightened by the ceremony that surrounds the royal family, and while he don’t insist upon all that when he travels, he is aware that he is a figure of awe and rather pleased by the fact, so he don’t think it at all odd that his author wants her family at her side. In point of fact, he never objects in the least to meeting a pretty young woman,” he added, smiling at Nell. “You should continue to wear lavender after you put off your half-mourning, Miss Bradbourne. The color becomes you mighty well.”

She blushed, for though she had known the simple muslin dress became her, Mr. Saint-Denis was an authority. His attention to sartorial detail was respected throughout the
beau monde
, and he was always precise to a pin himself. Beside Mr. Manningford, whose careless elegance did not include precision of any kind, and Mr. Lasenby, whose taste was exquisite but lacked something that Mr. Saint-Denis had in abundance, Sydney, dressed in a black coat and cream pantaloons, without a touch of color except for the enormous emerald nestled in his snowy cravat and the gold trim on his quizzing glass, was magnificent.

Lady Flavia, in wide silver skirts and a staggering amount of frothing lace, had chosen to enhance her eccentricity with three pink ostrich plumes waving in her headdress. She carried a lorgnette in one hand, a lace reticule and her cane in the other, and had said in the carriage—for Mr. Manningford had insisted upon taking them to Bathwick Hill House in style—that had she bethought herself of it earlier, she would have borrowed a lapdog to carry with her.

“Of course, one might have brought dearest Max along,” she had told her companions, “but I daresay, the effect would not have been quite what one desired.”

Chuckling with the others at the vision thus brought to mind, Nell had said, “For myself, I only hope that poor Sudbury can constrain him to remain in the kitchen while we are away.”

“Oh, indeed, he promised Max a marrow bone, and we must hope it serves the purpose, but it would not have done, you know, to have had him baying at the Prince Regent from the carriage, and one cannot help but think that Mr. Saint-Denis might object to our bringing him into his house at such a time.”

Nell, remembering that moment as she followed the others upstairs to Carolyn Saint-Denis’s drawing room, found it necessary to suppress an all-too-familiar urge to laugh. Thus, she was not nervous at all when she discovered their hostess and her chief guest awaiting them.

The Prince Regent, fatter even than Nell had expected him to be, was gracious enough to rise, corsets creaking, to greet them. Mr. Saint-Denis performed the honors, and Lady Flavia, soon put at her ease by the Regent’s famous charm of manner, was able to carry off her role with all her usual flair.

Indeed, so adept was his highness at putting his companions at their ease that as they were taking their leave of him twenty minutes later, Mr. Lasenby was moved to speak to him as he might have done to any chance-met acquaintance.

“Daresay you might not have thought of it, sir,” he said casually, “but while you’re fixed in Bath, you might like to take a look-in at the Bees-Waxers’, don’t you know. Made a bit of history for the club thirty-five years ago, putting your name down in their book like you did. Daresay it’d gratify some o’ those sleeping old gents—even wake ’em up a bit—if you was to take another look-in on your way home from the theater tonight.”

“Damme, sir, if I can make head or tail of what you’re asking,” the Regent said, shaking his head, “but what with that nag of mine running this afternoon—and at thirty-to-one against, damn their impertinence—then the theater tonight, I’ve no time for more appearances. What club did you say that was?”

“Bees-Waxers’, though now I come to think about it, probably had another name when you was there, but your signature is set down in their betting book, for anyone to see who cares to look. Thirty-to-one, sir?”

“Aye.” The Regent frowned. “Damme, but that can’t be so. Don’t say I’ve never signed a betting book, for I have, and more than once at that, but not in Bath. Damme, sleepiest town I know. Never set foot in the place before I began visiting Saint-Denis now and again. M’ mother was used to come, but not I, and not thirty-five years ago. Prefer the south coast.”

“Don’t like to contradict you, sir,” Mr. Lasenby said sticking to his guns, “but the fact is, seen it m’self. There’s a date, too, though I’m dashed if I can remember what it is.”

“I can,” Manningford said, regarding the Regent somewhat fixedly. “The fifteenth of December, eighty-five.”

“I wasn’t there,” the Regent said flatly.

“But dash it, sir,” Lasenby protested, “how can you be so certain? I mean to say—Well, thirty-five years ago!”

The Regent said to Manningford, “You certain of that date?”

“I am, sir. Five years to the day before my own birth.”

“My memory is equally acute,” the Regent said, his naturally florid face turning an even deeper color. “I know for a fact I was nowhere near Bath that evening, damme if I don’t.”

His expression was so forbidding that even Mr. Lasenby did not dare to question him further on the subject. Manningford remained thoughtful, however, and back in the coach, he said, “The time has come to find the truth, Sep. We’ll visit that club again tonight, while everyone who is anyone is at the theater.”

Mr. Lasenby, saying that he had some business to attend to during what remained of the afternoon, left them at Laura Place, but Manningford accompanied the ladies inside to describe to Nigel the meeting with his highness, and when the matter of the prince’s signature and the betting book had been explained to him, he was instantly alive to certain possibilities.

“We know now that that book is anything but sacred,” he said. “Perhaps Reginald found out and somehow got Bygrave to alter the wager, or—Wait! Bygrave wrote it down, did he not? Suppose Reginald forced him to alter it by threatening to reveal the fact that the Regent’s signature was false? Oh, but Reginald would not have done such a thing, and though I begin to think Jarvis might, he was not there when the wager was made.”

Nell frowned. “Reginald was a jokesmith, Nigel. Suppose he never meant the wager to be taken for real. If he told Jarvis—”

“Jarvis,” Nigel said grimly, “is entirely capable of having taken advantage of an intended joke to get his hands on Highgate. I’ll not be left out of this business any longer, Manningford. If you go tonight, I go too, and afterward, I mean to find Jarvis and shake the truth out of him!”

When the gentlemen had gone, Lady Flavia announced that she had things to do if she was going to be ready to depart for the Theatre Royal once they had dined.

“Are you certain you wish to go, ma’am?” Nell asked. “Perhaps we ought to remain at home tonight.”

“Nonsense, my dear. It has been a long time since I have felt wealthy enough to treat myself to a play, and by tomorrow the whole world will be talking about the Regent’s visit. You may depend upon it that if we do not go to the theater tonight, one of us will be bound to let slip something that will prove we have seen him. Only think how it would be if we could not say we had done so at the theater.”

Agreeing that such reasoning was sound, Nell made no further objection; however, when she sat down at the escritoire to read over the scenes she had last discussed with Sir Mortimer, she found it difficult to concentrate, for she kept wondering what Manningford and the others were doing and what, if anything, they would discover. Managing at last to stifle these thoughts, she had no sooner set her mind to her work when Sudbury entered.

“Mr. Jarvis is here, Miss Nell. I have told him that you are not receiving, but he insists upon speaking to you.”

Fighting to keep her voice calm, she said, “Very well, Sudbury, show him in.”

She was surprised to see that Jarvis looked just as he always did, for although her imaginings had endowed him with all manner of villainous characteristics, he was dressed in his usual sleek fashion, and made his bow with customary flair.

“I trust I see you well, my love,” he said smoothly.

“Very well, thank you,” she said, ignoring the endearment. “No doubt you will forgive me if I express my hope that your business in London did not prosper. Do sit down,” she added hastily when he moved nearer, his expression sharpening to curiosity when he saw the manuscript. It was all she could do not to put her hand over it, but he moved obediently to a chair.

As he took his seat, he said, “My business is going so well just now that I felt confident in leaving it to see how Bath has been treating you. It occurred to me that by now you must have discovered how unfortunately you are placed and might be more willing to discuss a future with me.”

“I am not, however.”

He leaned forward. “Surely you will not tell me that either Manningford or that ass Lasenby has offered for you? I am certain you have met no other eligible gentlemen here in Bath.”

“Neither has offered for me,” Nell said, smiling as the thought of Manningford brought a vision of that gentleman to her mind’s eye and a glow to her heart.

Jarvis stiffened. “Do I take it that you are in expectation of receiving a declaration? By my oath, I cannot credit it.”

“You need not do so, for it cannot signify. I wish you will believe me when I tell you, sir, that I shall never marry you. If I have no better offer, I shall continue to reside here.”

“I should dislike to compel you, Nell.”

“You cannot.”

“Nonsense, I have only to threaten exposure of Lady Flavia’s true pecuniary circumstances to the quizzes to force you—”

“You know?”

“But of course. Good gracious, her jointure is set out in her husband’s will, a document of public record. I read it years ago, and prices being what they are, it took no great feat of mathematics to deduce that by now she must be feeling the pinch. She conceals it well, but I confess to having feared the truth might be discovered if your coming to her were to exact too heavy a toll on her purse. Hence, your allowance.”

“I see,” Nell said, getting to her feet in her agitation. “Well, I know nothing about wills, Jarvis, but I do know you would never betray her. Concerned as you are with the Bradbourne name, you could never want people to know her real circumstances, for they would only want to know why you did not assist her.”