Dukes Prefer Blondes (4 page)

Radford's own father had married for the first time at fifty because he couldn't afford to marry earlier. This was why Radford and Bernard had been schoolmates.

Westcott took up the letter and read it through again. “Something isn't right,” he said. “I can't put my finger on it, but I'm sure there's a meaning here we've overlooked. I can't seem to read between the lines, and you refuse to.”

“I'll tell you what isn't right,” Radford said. “It only purports to be a legal document. Amid the lawyerly convolutions do you distinguish anything more pressing than a summons from Bernard? Can you ascertain anything to be gained by my heeding it?”

“You might at least take the trouble to find out what he wants.”

“Now? Have you forgotten the Grumley case?”

“I could go in your place,” Westcott said. “As your solicitor.”

“Neither you nor anybody else will represent me in this. You don't know Bernard.”

Father could deal with the lack-­brained bully if he had to, but there was no reason he ought to. The last thing he needed now was strain and aggravation. Radford had better write to his mother straightaway, warning her.

“He'll only waste your time for the fun of it,” Radford said. “You and I have more useful things to do. For the present, I aim to send that villain Grumley to—­” He glared at the door. “Who's there? Where the devil is Tilsley?”

“If you refer to your clerk, he's punching a boy in the churchyard.”

The voice, though muffled by the closed door, was clearly feminine. And aristocratic.

Westcott, while not as observant as his friend—­who was?—­had no trouble recognizing the diction of the upper reaches of the upper classes. Some of his clients lived in these exalted realms. He hurried to the door and opened it.

The tall blonde walked in.

 

Chapter Two

Juvenile delinquents . . . are found in every part of the metropolis . . . Many of them . . . are in the regular employ and training of older thieves; others obtain a precarious subsistence by begging, running errands, selling play-­bills, picking pockets, and pilfering from shops and stalls.

—­John Wade,
A Treatise on the Police and Crimes of the Metropolis
, 1829

F
ollowing a long climb up dark, narrow stairs, Clara and Davis had found, along a passage lined with black doors, the one bearing the name they wanted.

Davis had knocked thrice before the men inside took any notice. They seemed to be arguing, but Clara couldn't be sure.

One of the voices—­the deeper one—­sounded familiar.

But Clara hadn't placed it by the time she walked in. When the pale grey gaze fixed on her, she started in surprise. Heat sprang from several inner places at once and raced up to her neck and face as well as to areas ladies did not acknowledge to anybody, including themselves.

This was a disturbing development, but a lady always appeared to be in control, even when she felt as though she'd walked into a lamppost.

“Lady Clara,” he said. His keen grey gaze traveled over her, swiftly assessing. “Is that supposed to be a cunning disguise?”

The other gentleman said, “Radford, what the—­”

Clara held up her hand, silencing him. If she didn't immediately seize control, they would. They'd treat her like a child, the way men usually treated women, especially young women. They'd murmur soothing things and send her on her way. They might even tattle to Papa's solicitor. She doubted any lawyerly rules of confidentiality applied to women.

Do not show uncertainty or anxiety
, she commanded herself
. For once in your life you can do something more productive than decline marriage offers
.

She adopted her paternal grandmother's autocratic manner.

“Thanks to you, I now know who he is,” she said to the other man, who was a degree shorter and fairer, and not dressed entirely in black. “It is immaterial to me how he knows who I am. You must be the eminent solicitor Mr. Thomas Westcott. I haven't much time, and I should prefer not to waste it on formalities. As your colleague has so cleverly ascertained, I am Lady Clara Fairfax. This is my maid, Davis. The boy Fenwick, who is trying to kill your clerk, advised me to consult you.”

As she let her glance rest briefly on the tall, dark man, the sense of familiarity she'd experienced at Charing Cross returned. “He seems to believe Mr. Radford is peculiarly equipped to assist us with a problem.”

“He's peculiar, I'll give you that,” said Mr. Westcott.

“This isn't about the mangy dog, is it?” Mr. Radford said. “Because the police have more important matters—­”

“It's about a pauper boy,” Clara said.

Mr. Radford stalked to the window and looked down. “And you wanted us? Can't mean the fellow down there. He's holding his own. No, wait. Better. He's giving Tilsley a Chancery suit on the nob. That boy of yours looks familiar.”

Having spent a part of her childhood with three older brothers, she knew what he was looking at. A Chancery suit on the nob involved getting one's opponent's head under one's arm and punching said head with the free hand.

“You're familiar to him, which is why we're here,” Clara said.

“What's the brat calling himself now?” Mr. Radford said.

“He doesn't call himself anything,” Clara said. “He could teach clams a thing or two. His employers call him Fenwick. And he seemed to think you could help us find a boy named Toby Coppy.”

Mr. Radford turned away from the window. “Friend of—­er—­Fenwick?”

She'd spent the last two days studying the notorious Raven Radford, no easy task, even had she not had to keep her mission secret from her family.

His name didn't feature in the usual accounts of parliamentary or social doings. Mainly his name appeared in reports of criminal proceedings, some dauntingly lengthy. From what she'd read, he seemed to be sharp-­witted, learned, and tactless to a spectacular degree. Though she hadn't had time to read everything, she'd thought it amazing he'd won so many cases, when judges, witnesses, juries, and even his own clients must have wanted to throttle him.

She, for instance, was already growing irritated.

“If I might begin at the beginning,” she said. “Rather than proceed along the haphazard route of your questions.”

One black eyebrow went up. “Haphazard,” he said.

“That was a setdown, in case you didn't recognize it,” Mr. Westcott told him.

“I thought so,” Mr. Radford said.

“Not that snubs have the least effect on him, my lady,” Mr. Westcott said, “even when he recognizes them as such. Brilliant otherwise, of course.”

“So I've been informed,” Clara said, “else I wouldn't be here.”

“Certainly, my lady,” Mr. Westcott said. “And since your ladyship has taken the trouble to be here, we ought to proceed in an orderly fashion. Frankly, I'm puzzled why a man renowned for his fanatical attachment to logic has been perambulating into detours in this strange manner. If your ladyship will be so good as to take a chair—­here, by the fire—­or what is, in colder weather, a fire. It's cleaner—­”

He broke off as Davis advanced and wiped the chair with a handkerchief and him with a censorious eye.

“Yes, quite so, thank you,” Mr. Westcott said. “And if her ladyship would make herself comfortable, I should be happy to take notes. Radford, we don't need you at present.” He gave Clara an apologetic smile. “Only if it comes to trial, naturally, which—­”

“It will save time if I listen,” Mr. Radford said.

“No, it won't,” Mr. Westcott said. “Because you'll interrupt.”

“I shall remain as silent as the churchyard denizens under our window,” Mr. Radford said. “The ones belowground, that is.”

He folded his arms and leaned back against the window frame.

“Kindly proceed, my lady. I'm all ears.”

I
t was the chipped tooth.

When she walked in and caught sight of him, her composure disintegrated, her mouth fell open, and for a moment she looked like an astonished little girl.

Radford knew that little girl.

She recovered with remarkable speed, but Radford had seen all he needed to.

The distinctive Fairfax features he'd identified the other day . . . assorted bits he'd read in newspapers and magazines . . . the nagging sense of familiarity.

With the chipped tooth, the last piece of the puzzle fell into place.

This wasn't merely one of the numerous Fairfax family members he'd seen from time to time in his perambulations through London.

This was the little girl to whom he'd shown Vauxhall's Heptaplasiesoptron. This was the little girl who'd tried to rescue him from Cousin Bernard.

She was all grown up and dressed in what she fondly imagined was a disguise.

Unlike the comical hat she'd worn in Charing Cross, her bonnet was dull and dark, boasting nothing in the way of adornment but a darker ribbon. Its large brim did not tilt up in the way the hat had done, to show her perfect face framed in lace and bows. It tilted downward, its shadow concealing her countenance. That was clever, actually. A veil—­the usual ruse for ladies—­would have called attention to her attempt to appear incognito.

All the same, he would have known her for the Charing Cross female anywhere, even had she been wearing a veil. The drab dress failed to disguise her posture and figure.

Remarkably fine figure
, he was aware of his irrational self thinking. It proceeded to imagine said figure in its natural state. Such meditations were not conducive to clear thinking.

He wrestled the other self into a dark corner in the back of his mind and focused on watching the lady ignore the chair Westcott had offered and her maid had scoured.

Lady Clara remained where she was, posture upright—­

Horizontal would be better
, said the inner voice of unreason.

He ignored it and listened to a tale told with a conciseness he would have believed incompatible with the female brain, such as it was. In a shockingly few words, she contrived to explain what the Milliners' Society was and who Bridget Coppy was.

“Her father is dead,” she said. “The mother is a hopeless drunkard who takes in mending on the rare occasions she's sober. The Milliners' Society has taught Bridget to read and write a little. She persuaded her brother to attend a ragged school. I know I needn't explain to you what that is.”

Ragged schools were pitiful attempts to teach pauper children the basics they needed to improve their lot in life. The teachers were unpaid, many of them nearly as ignorant as the children. All the same, it was better than the nothing otherwise available to London's impoverished masses.

Most members of the upper classes had never heard of ragged schools. Being a duke's great-­grandson, Radford was, technically, a member of the upper classes. His life had been different from most, though, and he knew all about these schools.

The note of distress in her voice told him the schools were a very recent and disturbing discovery for her.

She had no idea how some ­people lived in London, practically under her nose.

But why should she? And how odd it was, her having discovered even so much.

She was saying, “With Bridget's help, Toby was learning to read and write and do sums. But as you know, less reputable types hang about the ragged schools. Bridget says a gang of thieves has lured him out of school, and she hasn't seen him for more than a week.”

The day, which had brightened remarkably when Her Majesty sailed into his chambers, reverted to its customary grey.

A missing child of the lower orders. Radford knew where this story led. Not to a happy ending.

First the accursed ducal letter.

Now another boy lost among London's teeming thousands of unwanted children.

Why couldn't she have come to him because she'd murdered somebody?

That would have been so much more promising, not to mention stimulating.

“Bridget wishes to remove him from the gang before they get him hanged,” she went on. “She's sure the police will take him up in short order. She does not believe her brother has the intelligence or dexterity to be a successful thief—­not for long, at any rate.”

Oh, better and better.

Very likely there was more to this than met the eye. It didn't matter. The boy was doomed.

She was wasting her time as well as Radford's. She was completely deluded if she thought the brat could or ought to be rescued. But of course she wouldn't believe him. She hadn't the least idea what she was about.

He said, “Do you know which gang, precisely?”

“Fenwick has been unable to find out,” she said.

“Does that tell you anything?”

“That London holds a great many gangs.”

“And therefore . . . ?” he led the witness.

She regarded him with a polite expression, her gracefully arched eyebrows slightly raised.

By now Westcott ought to have leapt in to state the obvious or at least give the
don't
signal, warning Radford he went too far. He glanced at his friend.

Westcott was gaping at her as though he'd never seen a girl before.

No, in point of fact, he was doing the opposite: what men always did when they looked at women. He was admiring her breasts in what he must suppose was a surreptitious manner, and had become fully absorbed in that endeavor.

Hers, Radford would readily admit, were uncommonly good. Either that or her undergarments were constructed to make them look good. He'd debated this point with himself when he met her the other day. Whatever the truth of the matter, Westcott had no business drooling over them.

The part of him Radford kept tightly confined was developing a fantasy of pitching his friend and colleague out of the window.

Thrusting the mental image aside, he said, “Does the phrase ‘needle in a haystack' signify anything to your ladyship?”

“Let me think,” she said. She screwed up her mouth and eyes in an exaggerated effort of thinking. He remembered the little girl learning to say
Heptaplasiesoptron
.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it does, shockingly enough.”

“Good,” he said. “Because—­”

“Fenwick assured me you'd know how to find Toby if anybody would. And you've made a name for yourself as an advocate for pauper children.”

“I suspect that's because advocating for paupers, being unusual to the point of bizarre, makes sensational headlines,” he said. “In fact, mainly I appear in court for very boring cases: poisonings and burglaries and assault and libel and such.” Few of these cases attracted the more respectable newspapers' attention. The rare cases that did tended to focus on plaintiff, accused, and lurid witness statements, not boring lawyers. Until recently.

“But the Grumley case—­”

“Ah, yes, the sensational one,” he said. “Which demands my full attention at present. I promise you, the judge will not give me a leave of absence to hunt down this boy, even had I any hope of finding him, with a year to do it in.”

An emotion flickered in her eyes, but even he, usually so perceptive of the subtlest facial cues, couldn't decide whether she was disappointed or . . . relieved?

Not that it mattered in the least.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “I've read about the Grumley horror. I should have realized . . . How silly of me. You have your work cut out for you there. In that case, perhaps you can advise me how to proceed.”

“I strongly recommend you leave it alone,” he said. “These sorts of things never turn out—­” He broke off because her chin went up another notch and her posture stiffened, and he was forcibly reminded of the girl who'd kicked her brother in the ankle.