Lady Windermere's Lover (22 page)

Chapter 23

T
hat Damian would never have been as cruel in his response as Cynthia had believed was cold comfort. Suppose he had received the report of her pregnancy. What would he have done?

The truth was, he wouldn’t have much cared. Consumed by work so that he could forget the wife he had so rashly married, the thought of a child would have been another unwelcome burden. And an infant Chorley-Lewis, son or daughter, would be a victory for Joseph Chorley, who had blackmailed him into marriage so that he could have connections to the aristocracy. Eventually Damian would want an heir, but in an undisclosed, theoretical future that had little to do with his present concerns.

The intensity of her grief surprised him at first. He tried to see it from a woman’s point of view. From Cynthia’s. He’d left her alone, married but not really wed. A child would have given her the affection she certainly couldn’t expect from her husband, and an object for her own devotion. He remembered her saying vis-à-vis her charitable endeavors that women loved their children even if they hated the father.

Now that he knew the truth he could think of a dozen hints she’d dropped that had gone over his head. While he wished he had understood sooner, perhaps it was for the best. Loving her as he did, he could now share her disappointment and grief. That he had caused her pain wrenched his guts, and the loss of a child who had barely existed hurt him too, in retrospect. Family duty and the future of the Lewises mattered a little. Having children, a real family, with Cynthia mattered a lot.

On the journey to London significant conversation hadn’t been possible in the presence of the maid. At Windermere House he’d told her about the Falleron collection and she had laughed at his dilemma, ordered to negotiate with Julian when he believed him to be her lover. He’d seen precious few of her smiles since her revelation. Tense and subdued, he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

He conceived a plan: Take her to Beaulieu where their marriage had begun so badly and make a fresh start; shower her with gifts to celebrate the season; get her naked as much as possible. And, above all, tell her how much he loved her and convince her it was true.

He set off the next day to the Foreign Office to break the bad news to the foreign secretary. He had failed to persuade Denford to let go of the Falleron collection and would no longer make the attempt.

On the way to see if Grenville could give him an audience, he hesitated at the door to Radcliffe’s rooms and grimaced. Damian wasn’t merely reluctant to deliver unwelcome news. He didn’t want to see Radcliffe, or hear what he had to say, or share his thoughts with him. Gritting his teeth and remembering all he owed Sir Richard, he entered and prayed his mentor wasn’t in.

Of course he was.

He heard Damian’s resignation with his usual calm, then regarded his protégé over steepled fingers with a pale, unblinking stare.

“You’ve disappointed me, Damian.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but in this case I must decide what is best.”

Sir Richard continued to look inscrutable, but for some reason Damian didn’t think he was particularly upset. Or perhaps the news didn’t surprise him. “Lady Windermere failed to come through for us.”

“My wife? What has she to do with it?”

“I rather thought everything, since it is her liaison with Denford that caused your regrettable decision.”

“Lady Windermere,” Damian said, “is not the Duke of Denford’s lover.”

“I’m sure you know best, dear boy, but it seems a waste of a promising relationship. I had a feeling she wasn’t going to be helpful.”

“What do you mean?”

“Merely that I spoke to her about her duty to your future career and the ways she could help. One way, in particular. She became quite provincial at my very reasonable suggestion. Apparently you can take a young woman out of Birmingham, but you can’t polish base metal. Did she complain to you?”

“She didn’t mention the matter.” His head spun. Bad enough that Radcliffe suggested Damian pimp his wife. Treating Cynthia to the same insult made him absolutely furious. He clenched his hands together and summoned every ounce of control he possessed. He had never in his life felt less diplomatic.

“I am glad she had that much tact, at least. I confess I thought I’d done rather well by you. She’s a pretty little thing with a good deal of charm. With time, experience, and a little less Birmingham she can still be quite an asset.”

Damian fastened on one part of this maddening speech. “What had you to do with my marriage?”

“Didn’t you know? You could say I arranged the whole thing. I knew you wanted to gain back your mother’s estate and I knew Chorley was looking for a title in the family. So I suggested that he acquire it as his niece’s dowry. No need to thank me. I’m always pleased to help.”

There wasn’t any point reminding Radcliffe that he’d been ready to buy Beaulieu when Chorley bought it from under his nose and blackmailed him into an alliance. Rather he ought to thank him for bringing him Cynthia. He refused to do that either.

Perhaps Radcliffe had once been his friend. Or he might have used Damian entirely for his own ends. Though Damian would wager on the latter, it all came to the same. His affection for Sir Richard was at an end, as was any obligation to the man.

“Thank you for clearing that up, sir. I always like to know where I stand. I’m sorry about the Denford business but I’m sure you understand.”

Sir Richard nodded. “Can’t be helped. We’ll have to think of something else.”

“Please convey my thanks to Lady Belinda for a most delightful entertainment on Christmas Day. Lady Windermere and I look forward to seeing you soon.”

Sir Richard Radcliffe had taught him well. He could lie like a diplomat and never let his opponent see him sweat. He left the room with a straight back, an insouciant air, and a sour stomach that the man he’d respected for so long had turned out to be a cold-blooded manipulator.

He’d admired Radcliffe’s ruthlessness, he realized, but perhaps Julian had been right when he equated patriotism with scoundrelry. At least in some cases.

Glancing at the
Morning Post
while he waited in an anteroom to the foreign secretary’s office, he was joined by a familiar figure.

“Good morning, my lord,” John Ryland said.

“How are you, Ryland?” It was hard to believe that only two weeks had passed since they’d met. It seemed like another era.

“You must be satisfied with the outcome of the affair.”

He had no idea what he meant and settled for replying “Indeed” with a hint of a question that Ryland picked up.

“But of course, you haven’t heard.”

“If the news is recent, I know nothing. I returned this morning from a brief trip out of London.”

“The foreign secretary heard on Christmas Day that Prince Heinrich of Alt-Brandenburg has seen the wisdom of an alliance with Britain and signed the treaty.”

“Without the pictures?”

“I’m sure he would still be pleased to buy them from the Duke of Denford directly, though perhaps not at the price His Majesty’s government would have offered.”

“When did this happen?” Damian asked with a mixture of irritation and curiosity. “It takes a week or two for dispatches to come from Germany. Whatever argument convinced him must have been applied some time ago.”

“You likely feel you were withdrawn from Persia unnecessarily. The matter was so vital we needed several contingency plans. We are sorry you were inconvenienced.”

Ryland wasn’t remotely sorry, and neither was Damian, though not for the same reason. The whole business with Julian and the bloody pictures that he hoped never to hear of again had been a nuisance. But he couldn’t regret coming back to England. A few weeks longer and Cynthia might have succumbed to Denford’s seduction.

“Thank you for telling me. I had come to report my lack of progress, but there is no reason now for me to take up Lord Grenville’s time.”

Ryland frowned. “I don’t need to tell you to keep this to yourself, my lord. Since you were involved I thought you should know the outcome, but it’s not common knowledge yet, by any means.”

Damian felt a spurt of irritation at the knotted intricacies of his business. Once he would have been idealistic enough to believe discretion was required by a further move in the diplomatic chess game. Sadly, it was more likely because some official in some department was guarding his ground against a rival. He was mildly intrigued that Radcliffe hadn’t been told, or perhaps he had and elected not to tell Damian so he could scold him anyway. It wasn’t important enough to waste time worrying about it.

Then he smiled. He’d forgotten to confess to Radcliffe that he had changed his mind about the Spitalfields Act. As Radcliffe, and Chorley too, would discover when the matter came up in Parliament, they hadn’t got themselves the bargain they hoped for when they purchased the Earl of Windermere.

Lady Windermere, on the other hand, would be pleased. The gentlemen could go hang. It would be another gift for her on their second honeymoon.

The sight of the Duke of Denford coming down the steps of Windermere House dowsed his sparkling mood. Denford waited for him to alight from the carriage and seized him by the arm.

“What do you want?” Damian asked.

“I was looking for Cynthia?” Julian asked without a trace of urbanity.

She must have refused to see him, thank God. “If she isn’t at home to you, the polite thing to do is leave.”

“She is not at home to anyone. I am very afraid that she’s been abducted.”

Damian stared at him. “You’re mad!”

“God, I really hope so. I’d like to think this note I received ten minutes ago, demanding the Falleron collection in exchange for her safety, was nothing but a remarkably bad joke.”

“It has to be.” He tore up the steps, with Denford at his heels. “Harrison!” he called over his shoulder. “Walk the horses. I may need the carriage again right away.”

The butler, hovering in the hall, confirmed that shortly after Damian left the house, a message had been delivered to Her Ladyship and she had left the house.

“On foot? I had the carriage.”

“She took John with her and he summoned a hackney.”

At least she had a footman with her, but he didn’t like the sound of the message.

“There seem to have been a lot of messages turning up on this side of the square,” Julian said, reflecting his own thought.

“Do you know where she went, Ellis?”

“Her Ladyship didn’t inform me, but her maid may know.”

“Send her to me in the library and hurry. Come, Denford.” The last time he’d been in the room, he and Denford had nearly destroyed the furniture and each other. His excellent servants had removed all signs of the fracas. “What the hell is going on?”

The duke appeared ready to explode. “It’s your bloody rotten government that’s responsible, of course. Those bully boys in the Foreign Office will stop at nothing. Apparently
diplomat
is another word for
criminal
. Read this.”

“We need the whereabouts and sleutel of the Falleron collection. If not, Lady Windermere will suffer. Someone will be in touch.”

“If Grenville’s ruffians so much as scratch her . . .” Damian couldn’t ever remember seeing Julian so agitated.

He stared at the note, written on a nondescript scrap of paper in no hand he recognized. “It doesn’t make any sense. We don’t even want the pictures. The prince came to terms without them. It has to be someone else.”

“Someone forgot to call off the hounds.”

Damian made himself stop and think. Tearing out of the house with no idea where to go would be futile. “I’ll grant that occasions sometimes call for unofficial action,” he said, thinking aloud, “though such operations are certainly not the common method of diplomacy.” This drew a derisive snort from Julian, and Damian wasn’t overly confident of the truth either. He’d heard rumors about some of the skulduggery undertaken by men like Ryland. “But the man who would certainly know about something like this is the one who informed me the prince had given in. Not an hour ago he told me I need no longer try to persuade you to sell the collection. If Cynthia is in danger it’s not from that quarter.”

“Then who? Why? Have you a better suggestion?”

He tried to apply logical processes to the cryptic ransom note. “What do they mean by the
sleutel
? Is that Dutch? Not one of my languages.”

“It’s Flemish and it means ‘key.’ Whoever wrote that note knows that the pictures are in the southern Netherlands and that their guardian will hand them over on hearing a key phrase, a password, that only I know.”

“Good God! No wonder you haven’t been able to get the collection out.” This was no time to discuss the political situation in Belgium. “Who knows about the sleutel?”

“Aside from my man there? No one, or so I thought. The only other is dead.”

“You wanted to see me, my lord?” Cynthia’s maid spoke from the doorway.

“Come in, Matthews. Did Her Ladyship tell you where she was going this morning?”

“She had a message from that nasty Spitalfields place,” she replied with deep disapproval. “Very upset, she was. Said she had to go at once. She never takes me there, not after the first time, that is.”

Damian could imagine that the Flowers Street household would not sit well with the ladies’ maid, very conscious of her status as a senior servant. “Thank you, Matthews. You may go. I assume,” he said to Julian, “that you know about Flowers Street.”

“Of course. In a sense I helped finance it.”

“If Cynthia heard she was needed there, because one of the children was hurt or something like that, she wouldn’t wait. At least she has a footman with her. I’ll take the carriage and my other man and follow her there. I just pray I’ll find her there, safe and sound, and it’ll turn out someone is playing a game with you.” He hesitated for a moment. “Will you come too? If there is trouble, an extra man would be useful and you are a fair fighter.”

“You mean an unfair one. The best kind.” The set of Denford’s face, combined with his black topcoat, reaching almost to his booted ankles, made Damian very glad that in this battle Julian and he were on the same side. The duke fingered the knob of his cane but turned aside. “Much as I would prefer to take action, I had better stay at home and await instructions from the abductor. He’s either mad or ruthless, or both, and I’m not going to risk annoying him. The only thing that matters is to get Cynthia back safely. Will you be able to do what’s needed?”