Lady Windermere's Lover (14 page)

His breath shortened. Why wouldn’t she agree to give up Denford? All she had to do was admit her sin, accept his forgiveness, and they could be perfectly happy together.

Bingham, a partner in a respected firm that had handled the Lewis family affairs for half a century, was announced “Tell me,” Damian asked, once the formalities had been observed and a new series of reports delivered, “how did it come about that Lady Windermere occupies this house? I expected it would be let once I left the country.”

“In the hurry of your departure, you forgot to leave instructions. When Lord Morton inquired as to its availability this spring, I wrote to Markham at Beaulieu to see if you had mentioned the matter to him and he asked Her Ladyship. I understand she decided to come to London to visit the warehouses for the redecoration of the manor, and to consult a physician.” He looked anxiously at his employer. “I saw no reason why she shouldn’t use the house under the circumstances.”

“No reason at all, Bingham.” He wished she’d remained in the country, however. Julian Fortescue would never have encountered her had she been safe in Oxfordshire. “Is there anything else?”

“I hesitate to bring this up, but there is an oddity that bears investigation with regard to Lady Windermere’s expenditures. She has bought a good many pieces from a warehouse in Long Acre.”

“Hamble & Stoke. Never heard of it.” Damian leafed through a sheaf of bills, recognizing some of the more egregious examples of Cynthia’s bad taste. “Fifty guineas seems high for a miserably uncomfortable sofa, and I wouldn’t take the still life in the hall at any price. Still, I won’t complain. Her extravagance doesn’t threaten to outrun the constable, does it?”

“No indeed. Mr. Chorley’s settlement was generous and will be more so when a happy event should occur.” Bingham cleared his throat. “Now that Your Lordship has returned,” he added delicately.

Not as things stood at present. If he couldn’t get back into Cynthia’s bed there was no chance of reaping the greater benefit of the dynastic alliance. Also he would explode from frustration. It wasn’t just the lovemaking he’d regret either. A smile played on his lips as he thought about her kindness to Oliver and Pudge, the way her brow creased when she was thinking seriously, even her surprising sarcastic edge when he displeased her. Somehow he had to make up their quarrel.

“Just pay the bills and don’t worry about it, Bingham.”

“I have done so, my lord. Also the account from a carrier for transporting Lady Windermere’s purchases from Long Acre to Hanover Square. Nothing seemed out of order until the last submission from the latter. For some reason the carrier’s bill was attached to copies of invoices from Hamble & Stoke. A clerk in my office noticed that the sums are different from those submitted to us for payment.”

He laid two sheets of paper side by side on the table. The bill from Hamble & Stoke, signed by William Hamble, listed half a dozen items, including “A pair of bronze and gilt incense burners, French. 35 guineas.” The entire figure came to just under two hundred guineas. The list attached to the carrier’s invoice was the same, though written by a different hand, a neat copperplate typical of a professional clerk. The same except for the prices. The incense burners were fifteen guineas and the total one hundred and ten.

“Are the invoices usually attached to the carrier’s bill?”

“No. It must have been an aberration.”

“Or a mistake.” Damian lifted his eyebrows at his employee and the two men shook their head in unison. “Or a fraud.”

“I am afraid so, my lord. I fear Her Ladyship has fallen among thieves, as the saying goes.”

“She isn’t used to London ways.”

“Shall I pursue the matter further and prepare a suit?” Bingham asked.

“No. Leave these with me for the moment.”

Half an hour later, he was in a hackney heading for Covent Garden, pondering what happened to the difference between the true price of the furnishings and that paid out by Bingham. The money went to Hamble but what did he do with it? Damian didn’t know if Bingham had been tactful, or whether he had really failed to notice that there was no reason for Hamble to establish a complicated system of false invoices if he was merely overcharging a wealthy customer. He had to wonder if the wealthy customer was a party to the scheme.

Why would Cynthia steal from her own husband? Her pin money was fair and he’d given her virtual carte blanche for household improvements. Uneasy doubts swelled into full-blown suspicion when he recognized his own coach being walked up and down the street by his own coachman. She certainly wasn’t at her dressmaker’s. He had to hope that Cynthia was indeed the victim of Hamble’s fraud, for the alternative was far worse. She must need the money for someone else.

Among Cynthia’s friends, Caro had wed a duke and Anne Brotherton was rich as Midas. She might be slipping a little aid to Oliver Bream. Patronizing the arts was an acceptable activity for a lady, but nothing gave Damian the impression that Oliver had access to the kind of sums involved in this particular scheme.

That left the Duke of Denford. Ryland had told him Julian’s title brought him little money, yet he seemed to be living comfortably. He would no doubt find it a huge joke and delicious revenge to steal hundreds of guineas, thousands even, from his enemy, along with his wife.

Paying off his driver, Damian pushed open the door of a shabby building with Hamble & Stoke painted in red on a scratched fascia board, and entered an ill-lit hall containing a staircase, a couple of doors on either side, and a tall desk at which a scrawny clerk was intently writing. He looked up indifferently, jerked his head in the direction of a door on his right, then continued to ply his quill. Damian wondered what manner of accounts the man was concocting. But he lost interest in the subject when a low chuckle he’d recognize anywhere wafted in from an adjacent room. Damian slipped into the shadow of the stairs to listen.

“Hamble, you old villain. I’ll take twice that sum and you should be grateful.”

“Now, now, Your Grace. If you don’t want these pictures, why would anyone else?”

“Because most people don’t have my discriminating taste. You can sell the lot wholesale to an Oxford Street gallery catering to the vulgar rich.”

“Why don’t you do it yourself?”

“Because I’m a damn duke, now, curses. I’m fighting a pack of snarling Fortescues over every penny of the family fortune, and my supposed dignity is an arrow in my quiver. I can no longer be seen to conduct trade except in the discreetest fashion.”

“I’d say you ’ave a problem, then, Your Grace.” The elderly Cockney voice was replete with the pleasure of a good bargaining session. The conduct of trade had much in common with diplomacy, save for being socially unacceptable at the higher levels of society. Damian spared a moment’s sympathy, quickly squashed, for his former friend’s dilemma.

“I suppose,” Julian said, “I could offer them to Isaac Bridges. He’d take them off my hands as a favor.”

How Hamble would respond to this move was to remain a mystery. Light footsteps sounded at the top of the stairs and a whiff of rosewater cut through the musty atmosphere. A beam of winter sunlight filtered through a panel of glass over the front door, catching motes of dust in the air. Damian craned his neck, and through the spindled banister he saw his wife, exquisite in blue velvet, walk down the stars bearing some kind of urn, like the Queen of Sheba bringing gifts to Solomon.

“Mr. Hamble!” she called. “How much do you think we can bill my husband’s man of business for this vase?”

“I do not think, madam,” Damian said, stepping out to block her final descent, “that it is possible to put a price on such an egregious act of cuckoldry.”

Her jaw dropped. He felt worse than on any day since the morning after his twenty-first birthday.

Chapter 15

C
ynthia stared out of the window of her bedchamber at the muted browns and grays of the winter garden. It was Christmas Day and she was alone again, as forlorn as the few sad snowflakes that had managed to penetrate the coal-fueled heat of London and lay disconsolately on the gravel paths. No merry Christmas for her, this year. But there was one silver lining to the relentless weight of clouds. She didn’t have to attend Lady Belinda Radcliffe’s Christmas party.

The door from the passage opened behind her.

“I don’t need anything,” she said. “Go downstairs and enjoy your Christmas dinner.”

“I am not your maid. All the servants are below stairs.”

She swung to face Windermere, whom she hadn’t set eyes on since he’d hustled her out of the shop and into her carriage in Long Acre, ordering her to go home and stay there. She’d heard him in his room, late at night, but he hadn’t made use of the communicating door: no mattress complaints, no offer of bhang. Also no scolding or threats of retaliation.

“You haven’t eaten,” he said from the doorway, with an air of concern she found spurious. The diplomatic Earl of Windermere was back in force, not a hair out of place. Even his complexion seemed paler.

“I thought perhaps I was to be starved to death in my prison cell.”

“Don’t be absurd. You could have gone downstairs at any time, or ordered a meal in your room.”

She knew that. Her door wasn’t locked and her maid had tried to ply her with food. She had accepted only bread and butter and tea for supper. “I didn’t feel like eating until I knew my fate.”

“Now you’re being melodramatic. I asked only that you remain in the house until I had attended to matters.”

She had waited on tenterhooks, dwelling on her supreme ignorance of the law. She worried about poor Mr. Hamble, who, although he’d made a fair profit from her purchases, risked the ruin of his livelihood should Lord Windermere decide to prosecute. She worried about the inhabitants of the house in Flowers Street when she no longer had anything except her pin money.

Julian she didn’t worry about, much. She doubted there was much the law could do to a duke, however newly minted. Besides, although he had come up with the scheme by which Hamble submitted inflated invoices and paid her the difference, he wasn’t otherwise a party to the fraud.

“Did you summon a magistrate or a Bow Street Runner?” she asked. “Will you send me away?”

“I don’t wish for a scandal so your conspirators are safe. For now.”

“It wasn’t their fault. I wish you would let me explain.”

“There is nothing I want to hear from you about the Duke of Denford.”

“Did you call him out?” One of her greatest fears had been that they would duel. If things were to be resolved in a fight, she was afraid for her husband’s safety. More so than Denford’s. Julian had never struck her as a man likely to be caught at a disadvantage.

“Concerned for the fate of your lover, I see. Or do you hope he will make you a widow? I’m afraid I have no wish to accommodate you.” His temper was showing beneath the smooth marble façade.

“My greatest desire is that no one will come to any harm, including certain innocents involved in this business.” She took a deep breath and ventured to cross the space that separated them. “Please Damian! You must let me explain.”

He ignored both her plea and her proffered hand. “Not now.”

“Why not? What else is there to do?”

“You must get ready for Lady Belinda Radcliffe’s Christmas dinner. We are summoned for one o’clock and you need time to dress in your best.”

“I won’t go.” She was appalled. It was intimidating enough to face a fashionable gathering for the first time. To do it when her nerves were rubbed raw and she couldn’t expect any support from her husband was terrifying.

“I am afraid, my lady, that I must insist. I believe under the circumstances you owe me your graceful acquiescence.”

He had a point and she should acquiesce, though she wasn’t sure if she was capable of grace. “Will we be out late?”

“How long we stay depends on how enjoyable we find the party.”

“I expect I will wish to leave before the end of the first course.”

“Please restrain yourself,” he said. “We have spoken before of the importance of my relationship with Sir Richard. He is anxious to meet my wife and I expect you to behave yourself with all the decorum of which you are capable.”

His manners were slipping, his ire now undisguised. Cynthia found it preferable to the iceberg who had entered the room five minutes earlier.

U
ntil she set eyes on Lady Belinda Radcliffe, Cynthia hadn’t been certain how she would behave. Windermere had spent the short carriage journey giving her such basic advice about how to go on in society that he must have intended to be insulting.

“Don’t tell me any more,” she said finally. “I know how to correctly address a baronet and his wife, even if she is the daughter of a duke. And if I didn’t, I know now because I am not deaf. Let me also inform you that the Birmingham Academy for Young Ladies is, indeed, for
ladies
. We were not permitted to eat beef with our fingers or spit at our dinner partners. I can get through a meal without embarrassing you.”

Her feelings as she ascended the massive staircase from the towering hall were torn between the certainty that she would make a fool of herself and a desire to do so, and make a fool of her husband.

“Good Lord,” she said, gripping his arm and forgetting that she had sent him to Coventry about halfway along Brook Street and refused to utter another word in response to his pompous instructions. “I’ve never seen such a huge house in London.” She gawked like an ignorant rustic.

“Radcliffe bought it a few years ago,” he replied. “It’s one of the biggest houses in the square.”

“He must be very rich.” All around her she saw signs of wealth that made Windermere House seem quite a modest residence. “I suppose that was a vulgar remark,” she added.

“Given the lavishness of our surroundings I believe the observation is justified. Our host has succeeded in turning a handsome fortune into a splendid one.”

To her ear there was a faint note of disapproval in his comment. He’d found Mr. Chorley’s conspicuous wealth cause for scorn too, but it hadn’t stopped him from wedding her for it.

At the top of the stairs they were directed into a vast saloon, but Cynthia had only an impression of serried pilasters, profuse gilt, and royal blue silk hangings. Her attention was riveted on a woman she had no trouble recognizing from Drury Lane. Close up, Lady Belinda was stunning.

She appeared to favor red, this time a deep crimson crepe that clung to her slender but luscious figure. The trimmings were gold lace, and matched the setting of a splendid ruby and pearl tiara that set off dark hair, flawlessly arranged in the most fashionable Grecian style. Her skin was white, her eyes large and almost as dark as her hair, her lips painted carmine to match her gown.

“My dearest Damian,” she cried in an odiously affected lisp at odds with her empresslike beauty. “It makes me so very, very happy that you are sharing our little Christmas feast.” She smiled warmly, revealing straight white teeth.

Satisfied with her appearance when she left her room, standing next to her magnificent hostess Cynthia felt like an undersized and overdressed snowball, or maybe a kitten. White satin with a gauze tunic threaded with silver seemed the sort of thing a provincial would choose, and perhaps it was. A dumpy little blonde from Birmingham could never compete with a woman who was born to the cream of society and bestrode it like a Colossus. And she was just about as tall as one too. Cynthia hated her on sight.

Her husband was no better. An inch or two shorter and a good twenty years older than his wife, he was as beautifully dressed, if less gorgeously. Cynthia couldn’t define why she found him immediately repulsive, or why she had to hold back a shudder when he kissed her hand. “My very dear Lady Windermere,” he said. “I have keenly looked forward to meeting Damian’s bride and I am not disappointed. Exquisite, quite exquisite. But I should expect nothing but the best from my dear boy.”

Cynthia wondered waspishly if her husband was embarrassed by this fulsome praise, since he’d made little secret that he’d found his bride less than lovely and certainly hadn’t wed her for her fashionable appearance. A sideways glance showed him predictably unabashed.

“My lady does indeed look very beautiful tonight,” he said, with a tender glance. “As does Lady Belinda.” He kissed that lady’s hand with what the successful graduate of the Birmingham Academy judged to be excessive, even unmannerly enthusiasm.

“Dear, dear Lady Windermere,” Lady Belinda said. “I am so happy to have met you at last. Damian is such a
dear
friend. You should have told us you were in town and we’d have invited you to dine during his long absence.”

Cynthia refrained from remarking that since she had no idea of the Radcliffes’ existence, she was unable to call on them. She doubted they’d been in a state of equal ignorance. She might not rub shoulders with the
ton
, but she’d learned enough of the narrow society of the London great to know that little happened in Mayfair that wasn’t spread by the servants. The Radcliffes would have known within a week that she occupied Windermere House. She hadn’t been
dear
enough to merit their attention before her husband’s return.

The studied nonchalance with which Lady Belinda kept a hand on Windermere’s arm as she delivered her condescending speech roused Cynthia’s courage. Whatever the future of her relationship with Damian—and at this moment she wouldn’t wager more than sixpence on the chance of reconciliation—she wasn’t going to let this gaudy siren intimidate her.

“Dear Lady Belinda,” she said. “It’s a great privilege to be invited to celebrate the feast at your magnificent house. I notice that you haven’t any Christmas greenery, but with such splendid furnishings I suppose simple decorations would be overwhelmed.”

“Oh, country customs,” the other replied with a dismissive wave of her satin-covered hand. “One reason we prefer to spend Christmas in town is to avoid such crude rusticity.”

“I don’t believe anyone would accuse you of rusticity, my lady.” Cynthia smiled sweetly.

Lady Belinda looked Cynthia up and down with an assessing eye. “I see that the impression you like to give is that of unvarnished innocence.”

“I am a simple woman. I have no pretensions to be what I am not.” She sensed Damian stiffen at her side.

“I hope that isn’t true, Lady Windermere.”

“What can you mean, Lady Belinda?”

“Only that simplicity is quite overrated. It’s the kind of thing gentlemen say they like in a woman and become tired of in five minutes.”

Recognizing that she was out of her depth, Cynthia bared her teeth and beat a temporary retreat. “I defer to your greater experience.” She curtseyed again and Damian, perhaps anxious to escape from an exchange that was aimed at him as much as at her, led her away from the reception line.

A fair and slightly stout young man had been hovering nearby and spoke to Damian in a language she didn’t understand.

“Allow me to present Count Becker from the Bavarian embassy,” Damian said.

“My lady,” Becker said with a stiff bow and a click of the heels. Cynthia gathered her wits for her first conversation with a foreign diplomat. She didn’t know a word of German, but the blatant admiration in his wide blue eyes boosted her courage. Still, she’d like to make an impression for more than her looks. If Lady Belinda was watching, and she’d wager on it, she wanted to appear a success. And emphatically not simple.

“
Gnaedige Frau
,” he began, and thankfully continued in accented English. “I heard you speak of Christmas greens. I miss the customs of my native land.” He looked at the unadorned magnificence of the Radcliffe’s saloon with undiplomatic disapproval.

“How would you decorate your rooms in Bavaria?” Cynthia asked, and Damian gave her a quick nod of encouragement. “I have never traveled out of England but I am most interested in foreign customs.”

The count was easy to talk to, and she enjoyed hearing about fir trees festooned with cakes and sweetmeats. If she could only avoid Lady Belinda and other more alarming company, she would be able to get through the evening. It pleased her that Damian remained at her side, contributing an occasional reminiscence of a Christmas spent in Berlin. She had rather expected him to leave her to sink or swim. Of course, he wouldn’t want her to embarrass him. He was probably terrified she’d make a faux pas and damage his standing in the Foreign Office.

The undemanding charms of Count Becker afforded only a short respite. Her host came over to lead her into dinner. As he seated her on his right, at the head of a long, lavish board gleaming with silver, crystal, and hothouse flowers, she tried to suppress her instinctive dislike. While the fact of him being her husband’s mentor wasn’t a recommendation, it was her duty to be on good terms with him. Wondering if she had anything in common with this worldly man, the only thing she could think of did not make her feel better: Their spouses had once been intimately involved and might very well still be.

Lady Belinda sat at the other end of the table, apparently greatly amusing all within earshot, including Windermere seated a couple of seats to her right, diagonally across the table from Cynthia. It reminded her of spotting him at the theater, completely oblivious to the presence and even the existence of his wife. Did Sir Richard know? Of course he did. Surely there was little those shrewd eyes missed.

“Do I gather that you prefer country life, Lady Windermere?”

“I spent my early childhood in a country village but most of my life I lived in Birmingham. Though some call it provincial, it is scarcely rustic.”

“Not when so much of the wealth of the nation is generated there. I believe Joseph Chorley is your uncle.”

“Indeed. Are you acquainted with him? I would think you inhabited different circles.”

“A wise man has many interests.”