How To Distract a Duchess (15 page)

Trev’s life did have purpose. He was dedicated to gathering the intelligence that would avert unnecessary warfare and save the lives of countless British soldiers. But to do that, he needed a reliable means of validating the information and that meant finding Beddington’s damned key.
 

But Trevelyn couldn’t tell his father what truly occupied his days and nights. He couldn’t tell anyone. With a lodestone of regret lodged in his chest, he turned and strode out of the house that had been his London home since before he could walk.

He’d garnered half a dozen commendations for valor from his commanding officers, but his father was the only man whose approval he craved.

The man whose approval he would never earn.

* * *

“Oh, Your Lordship, this is terrible, simply terrible,” Mr. Weatherby said. “You surely can’t let him go like this.”

“I can’t believe he’d be so stubborn.” The earl leaned his forehead on his palm for a moment, eyes closed. “My hands are tied. I can’t retract my ultimatum. Surely he’ll think better of his present course.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

The earl skewered his solicitor with a steely gaze. “Then I must do as I have promised and disown him.”

“But, milord, he doesn’t know. You never told him. Trevelyn has no idea what he just renounced.”

“No, he doesn’t,” the earl said. “And I fear he never will.”

* * *

Felix Pelham-Smythe stepped from the smoke-filled darkness of the gaming hell into the stark brightness of early morning. Clammy sweat dotted his brow. He should have remained at his blasted stepmother’s masquerade for all the good it did him to sneak off to play last night. He’d hoped a change of game from whist to hazard would result in a change of his luck, but such was not the case.

He was now indebted to the cursed Russians for triple his yearly stipend and the duchess repeatedly ignored his pleas for an advance. He’d tried to explain to Lubov and Oranskiy that he’d have the money. They need only wait a few months till he came into his own. Hellfire, he’d even pay them whatever usurious interest they cared to demand.

But the Russians weren’t prepared to wait. He needed to come up with a scheme to get the money. Quickly. That, or he had to produce Beddington for them. In truth, they seemed more keen on Beddington than the guineas they were owed and that was fine with Felix.
 

The dickens of it was, he could never catch the man, let alone introduce the Russians to him. Every time Felix made the effort to travel down to the wharf to beard the elusive lion in his own den, Beddington had conveniently “just stepped out.” He was met by the great man’s assistant, Mr. Shipwash, with vague promises of Beddington’s return at a later time.

As if a duke had nothing better to do than cool his heels in a grimy little office waiting for an underling to deign to appear. Really, it was too insulting.

Still, insult was better than injury. The Russians were capable of almost anything.

“I show you little souvenir from last man who owed me so much money,” Oranskiy had said.

Then Lubov pulled a jar of formaldehyde from his pocket. It contained a severed finger. Felix feared he’d void his bladder on the spot.

“Sometime, when he have long wait, Lubov cut off more than finger,” Oranskiy said with an evil smile. “But we reasonable, Lubov and me. Just give us Mr. Beddington . . . before Lubov have long wait.”

The unhealthy combination of too much cigar smoke, enough alcohol to drop a horse, and totally justifiable terror made Felix double over and empty his stomach into the gutter. If anyone was going to have something sliced off, better Beddington than him.

It was time, he decided as he climbed unsteadily into the waiting barouche, for drastic measures.

Once Trevelyn left, Artemisia allowed herself five full minutes to regain her composure before she rang for Cuthbert. With nothing more than a kiss, the infuriating man had reduced her to a light-heeled wanton. Her family, her position, her art—everything faded into insignificance in the white-hot flare of passion ignited by Trevelyn Deveridge’s mere presence.

Naresh told her once that all the souls on earth chose their own king. Whether it be a mate or drink or a taste for opium, whatever one yielded to became one’s master.

Artemisia refused to be a slave to lust. After all the nudes she’d painted, hadn’t she proved she could look upon a man’s body in a detached, professional manner? None of her other models had driven her to such outrageous extremes.

It was just this one man who gave her fits.

Well, that was easily remedied. She’d take steps to exorcise Trevelyn Deveridge (or Thomas Doverspike or Terrence Dinwiddie or whatever he bloody well wanted to call himself), not only from her life, but her family’s as well. She couldn’t bear to contemplate a lifetime of looking at Trev over a Christmas pudding with Florinda by his side. With or without her mother’s blessing, the first order of business was to locate a suitable replacement as Florinda’s intended. She gave the bell-pull a vicious yank.

“You rang, madam?” The unflappable Cuthbert appeared in the doorway.

“Send for the barouche to be readied. I must visit Mr. Beddington on an urgent matter.”

A frown of disapproval wrinkled Cuthbert’s brow. “I regret to inform you that Master Felix departed the ball late last night and has not yet returned with the barouche.”

“Very well,” she said, her lips tightening into a thin line of censure. Felix was another problem she’d have to deal with, but later. Her duty to her sister came first. A new marriage agreement needed to be negotiated quickly so Florinda’s broken engagement to Trevelyn could be announced in the same breath. Artemisia wasn’t prepared to examine the downward spiral in her gut whenever she thought about Trevelyn marrying anyone, least of all her sister.

“Go out to the street and hail a hansom for me, if you please,” she told Cuthbert. “I have business that will brook no delay.”

In short order, Artemisia was jostling over the cobbled streets in a hired cab toward the offices near the wharf. As the hansom clattered through the narrow streets, Artemisia watched London waking. Fishwives nattered in strident clumps as they set up their stalls. The aroma of fresh bread competed with the less wholesome stench of the night soil wagon that still made the rounds in the undeveloped area of the wharf.

When the carriage stopped before Mr. Beddington’s office, she asked the driver to wait.

“How long you expect to be, Your Grace?”

A new fiancé for Florinda. A new backbone for Felix. A different continent for Trevelyn Deveridge—no, not even that much distance was guaranteed to give her peace.

How long would it take to set things to rights? Artemisia wondered.

“Consider yourself engaged for the entire day,” she told the cabby before hustling into the office. That should at least give her a good start at rectifying things.

“Good morning, Mr. Shipwash,” she called out as she hung her cloak on the coat rack inside the thick oak door.

No greeting came in answer.

She turned around and quickly surveyed the anteroom where James Shipwash did his work. Usually tidy to the point of obsession, the room was now a shambles. Sheaves of paper were scattered across the floor like maple leaves in autumn. Mr. Shipwash’s inkwell lay on its side, a pool of black spreading unchecked across the surface of his desk.

A clatter came from the inner office as if a chair were shoved violently to the floor. A dull thud followed, sounding for all the world as if someone had fallen face first on the smooth hardwood.

“Mr. Shipwash?” she said uncertainly. Artemisia had never used her assistant’s Christian name before, but she felt so uneasy, this seemed no time to stand upon ceremony. “James? Are you there?”

A groan came from the next room.

Artemisia hurried into Mr. Beddington’s office and found an even worse state of disarray. Drawers had been yanked from file cabinets and documents strewn about in drunken disorder. Above the desk, an oil painting depicting the Hindu god Shiva had been sliced and hacked repeatedly and now hung in tatters. A tingle of apprehension fingered Artemisia’s spine.

She noticed an unusual pair of boots sticking out from behind her massive burled walnut desk. A prone figure sprawled next to her overturned chair. Her breath hissed over her teeth.

“Felix!” she exclaimed, recognizing his curled-toe boots as part of his Harlequin costume from the previous night. She knelt beside him and placed a hand on his ribs to check for a breath. His chest expanded shakily. “Good heavens! Are you injured?”

Her stepson rolled over and dragged himself into a sitting position. One of his lapels had been ripped from his jacket and his right eye sported a swelling purple bruise. When Artemisia tried to help him to his feet, he waved her angrily away.

“Give me a moment,” he said in a surly tone. The reek of several types of spirits wafted about him and Artemisia spotted a stain or two on his checkered waistcoat that proclaimed he was wearing bits of last night’s supper.

“Felix, what went on here? Where’s Mr. Shipwash?”

“Where’s Beddington is more to the point,” Felix said. “It’s him they want, not Shipwash.”

“What do you mean? Who wants Beddington?” Her belly roiled in panic. “What are you doing here so early? Tell me exactly what happened.”

“I came by because I can’t get Mr. Uppity Beddington to deign to answer my requests. Really, madam, it’s too horrible to bear the way the man ignores my plight.” Felix gave an injured sniff and Artemisia noticed blood crusted around one nostril. Someone had connected at least one ringing blow to her stepson’s face, but she had no time to offer him tea and sympathy.

“Felix, please go on. Who did this to you?”

“How should I know who they were?” he demanded. “Beddington doesn’t exactly include me in all his dealings, does he now? Won’t even speak to me about my financial requirements.”

Artemisia pursed her lips, refusing to be drawn into yet another argument with Felix about the state of his allowance.

“Well, Shipwash starts to give me the usual cockamamie tale of Beddington not being available, when in comes these big chaps. They wanted Mr. Beddington too, but of course, the old piker’s nowhere to be found. It upset them plenty, let me tell you.” Felix swiped his nose on his sleeve. “I don’t know what business Beddington’s gotten himself into, but these fellows were not the sort you’d invite for clotted cream and crumpets.”

Artemisia cast back in her mind, trying to imagine why someone would be after her alter-ego. Assuredly, ‘Mr. Beddington’ drove a hard bargain in the marketplace. His reputation for shrewd dealing might garner some resentment (especially if it were discovered that Mr. Beddington was actually a woman!), but Artemisia had cheated no one. This unprovoked attack made no sense.

“What did Mr. Shipwash do?” she asked.

“He tells them to leave their cards and Beddington would get back to them. Set them off something fierce. Not that I blamed them at first. This man Beddington is positively infuriating. He controls every farthing of my income and do you know I’ve never even seen him face to face?”

“Please, Felix, you’re wandering off the subject.” When his nose started to bleed again, she handed him her embroidered handkerchief. “Where is Mr. Shipwash?”

“I’m getting to it. One of the mugs starts swinging and knocks Shipwash flat and the other one begins tearing through everything like a whirlwind. I tried to stop them, but this is the thanks I got.” He pointed to his swelling eye.

“What were they looking for?”

“They kept saying something about a key,” Felix said, holding his head with his hand.

Artemisia shook her head in bewilderment. There was a goodly sum in the strongbox for day to day use in the business, but the lion’s share of Southwycke’s wealth was held by the Bank of London. Hadn’t she told her assistant to pay the threatening men who’d come trying to collect Felix’s debts? Were these even the same men? If they were, her stepson wasn’t admitting it.

“A key, you say. Did they think there was a safe with valuables on the premises?”

“No, they just want some blasted key. Beddington will know what they mean.” Felix mopped his nose with her scented kerchief and then shoved the soiled cloth into his pocket. “It’s all they want.”

A key.
Something about that odd request niggled her brain. Someone else had asked about a key. Trevelyn as Thomas Doverspike and her father had spoken about one in that cryptic conversation she’d overheard in the garden. Yes! When Thomas (or Trevelyn or whatever the bloody man’s name was!) asked about a key, her own father told him he wanted Beddington. She’d taken the statement for the ramblings of a deranged mind. Now she wasn’t so sure. But what key could they possibly mean?

“You haven’t answered my question.” She turned her attention back to her stepson, who still sat splay-legged on the floor. “Where is Mr. Shipwash?”

Felix cleared his throat and raised himself unsteadily to his feet. He was unable to meet her gaze. “They took him.”