Suzanne Robinson (11 page)

Of course he couldn’t find her. She’d gone off by herself on foot, and no one knew where. Alexis had to content himself with writing to his own solicitor.

His secretary was handing him the letter to sign when Fulke paid him a visit. Alexis finished his signature and dismissed the secretary. Fulke promptly set a stack of papers in front of him.

“Sign,” his cousin said.

As Alexis read and signed, Fulke took a seat in the armchair in front of the desk.

“I see my revenues have gone up,” Alexis said without looking up.

“You needn’t thank me,” Fulke said.

“I wasn’t going to. Why am I paying Badger Snead an allowance?”

“Broke both legs thatching one of the tenant houses.”

“Drinking again?”

“Yes. Alexis …”

“Mmmm.”

Fulke waited until Alexis looked up from the papers. “I’ve invited someone for a visit.”

“You know you’re free to ask whomever you wish.”

“I know, and I have consulted Juliana. She agrees that no matter how we feel, it is our duty as Christians and as subjects to help.”

Alexis put his pen down, then walked around the desk and leaned on it with one arm.

“When you start talking about Christian duty I almost get a recurrence of dysentery. Out with the wormwood and gall.”

“The Earl of Cardigan.”

Alexis didn’t move. To hear the name hurt physically. “Not if the Queen herself asked.”

“She does,” Fulke said. “That is, His Royal Highness does on her behalf.”

Alexis turned to the cabinet where he kept liquor. He poured two whiskeys and held one out to Fulke. As he bent to hand the glass to his cousin he whispered as if in church.

“If you bring him into my house, I may throw him in the oubliette.”

“Charity, Alexis.” Fulke stood up and walked over to the fireplace. “There have been threats upon Lord Cardigan’s life.”

“Good,” Alexis said. Fulke scowled at him, and he grinned and lifted his glass in a toast. “To James Thomas Brudenell, the Earl of Cardigan. May he take up residence in hell.”

“Don’t blaspheme.”

Alexis drained his glass. “Cardigan is a permanent scandal. He’s been involved in more duels and lawsuits than anyone else I know. He is simultaneously arrogant, unintelligent, and fearless. Did you know he spies on the officers under his command? Has adjutants hide in closets and take down their conversation? If he weren’t so brave I’d call him a weasel. As he is brave and a damned good horseman, I’ll call him a selfish idiot. He’s not coming here.”

Fulke took a folded letter out of his coat and handed it to Alexis. Alexis glanced at the Royal Seal, then tossed the letter on the desk and shook his head.

“He’s arriving tomorrow,” Fulke said.

“Is that so? Then I’ll put a canon on the battlement and he can charge it. I won’t miss like the Russians did. God! Fulke, the man tossed away the lives of hundreds of men in a useless charge.” Alexis felt his control beginning to shatter. His voice rose with each word until it almost echoed throughout the room. “Useless, dammit. And Val lives a bloody waking nightmare. You weren’t there. You didn’t see the headless bodies still riding horses. Damn you, Fulke. Damn you for bringing that monstrous fool where I can reach him.”

“Alexis!”

Fulke was beside him holding his wrist. Alexis looked down. He’d broken his glass with his grip. Whiskey and
blood dripped from his hand. Fulke pried his fingers loose and removed the pieces of glass. Shoving Alexis into the armchair, he wrapped the hand in his handkerchief before summoning the butler.

Alexis studied his hand while Fulke dabbed at it with the handkerchief. “It’s too late to stop him, isn’t it.”

“I’m afraid so. You must practice forgiveness. The Lord has a grand design, and you cannot know what he intends by bringing him to you.”

“God told you to inflict Cardigan on Val and me? It’s all right for you. You’ll be going home in a few weeks, but I’ll still be here with him, may God shrivel his—”

“I told you not to blaspheme. I’ll try to keep him from you as much as possible. The idea is to remove Lord Cardigan from his usual haunts until these threats are proved false or a malefactor is caught.” Fulke pulled another shard of glass from Alexis’s palm. “I am sorry, Alexis. When the Prince mentioned the problem, I volunteered without thinking.”

“You can make up for it by getting the bastard to help my invalids. Some of their families have no income. And keep him away from Val. Keep him far away from Val.”

He was watching her, the bastard. He was watching to see if she knew which fork to use. The pig. No, he was too slender to be a pig. He was a snake. An arrogant, pretty snake—black and poisonous.

Kate let her hand drift toward the dessert fork just to tantalize the Marquess of Richfield, then picked up her soup spoon. She nearly snickered. His face fell the way Zachary’s did when one of his practical jokes failed. A familiar sadness welled up at the thought of her brothers. She missed them. Zachary was in San Francisco with his governor, and Robbie was at Harvard. Even long letters didn’t ease the pain of being apart from them.

Letting the conversation go on without her, Kate alternated between her sorrow at the several deaths in her family that year and fuming at the marquess. She would hurry the repairs to Maitland
House so she could get out of the reach of de Granville’s condescending patronage.

He didn’t remember her. She could still feel the scarifying humiliation of that night when he had publicly rejected her, and when she returned to England, he thought they’d never met. And how dare he treat her as though she were addled simply because she was a woman?

A servant offered bread. Kate shook her head and tried to shake her foul mood as well. All she had to do was see Mama established in Maitland House amid the Society of her dreams; then she could go back home. San Francisco might be full of gamblers, sailors, and Australian convicts, but it didn’t have any English aristocrats.

“Miss Grey, how is Lady Emeline?”

Kate smiled at Fulke Sinclair. He was a kind man. It wasn’t his fault he was so unbearably upright. Perhaps having served in the government made him so tired he couldn’t help ignoring his wife and preaching at people.

“Aunt Emeline finds it hard to take in what has happened,” Kate said. “I have to keep reminding her where she is and why. I hope to get her back to Maitland House as soon as possible.” She would have said more, but Lady Juliana’s annoyed voice overrode all others.

“My dear Mrs. Grey, I don’t concern myself with the doings of King William’s unfortunate offspring.”

Kate made a fist with the hand that rested in her lap. Fulke had taken her aside before dinner and explained that Lady Juliana had “bad spells,” but that this evening she’d improved enough to come down to dinner. Unfortunately, Juliana and Mama hadn’t taken to each other. Mama loved gossip about royalty, and the illegitimate sons and daughters of Queen Victoria’s uncle were among her favorite topics. Lady Juliana, however, didn’t gossip. At least, not with ladies she considered her social inferiors.

Why did Mama provoke the woman? Juliana was one of the few people who intimidated Kate. It wasn’t her
“bad spells.” Kate had recovered from her encounter with one of them. From what she could understand, they weren’t very frequent. Perhaps it was Lady Juliana’s height. She was almost as tall as her son. Perpetually dressed in mourning for her dead husband and daughter, she nevertheless dominated county society by virtue of her birth and force of will.

Juliana put down her spoon. Kate knew it was the signal of an impending set-down. Fulke came to Sophia’s rescue before Kate could.

“Miss Grey, didn’t you say your father was from Virginia?” Fulke asked the question in a voice raised to attract everyone’s attention.

Grateful, Kate nodded and smiled at him again. “Yes, but we traveled west to California when I was a girl.”

“Virginia,” the marquess said. He slouched in his chair and raised a brow. “Ah, no doubt the Grey family were gentlemen planters—gentlemen who owned slaves. Tell me, Miss Grey, did you take your slaves west too?”

The attack was so unexpected, it took Kate a moment to respond. She felt like throwing her soup at his face, but Mama would have died.

“No, my lord, we didn’t take slaves. Let me enlighten you. My father conceived an abhorrence of slavery that got him kicked out of his family. We went west with him because he was forced to leave Virginia. Not that he could have stayed much longer, feeling the way he did.” Kate clasped her hands in front of her and batted her eyes at the marquess. “Slavery in my country is as bad as the plight of the English poor in cities like London, where children work in rat-infested workhouses for fourteen hours straight.”

De Granville gave her a stare she was sure intimidated many a young miss.

“It’s hardly the same,” he said.

“Oh,” Kate said. “Forgive me. I didn’t know you approved
of working children to death.” Kate turned to Hannah. “Lady Sinclair, I dearly love history, and the castle is fascinating to me. Could I persuade you to show me about?”

Hannah cast a fearful glance at the marquess. “I-I—”

“Excellent!” Juliana’s voice almost made Kate drop her wineglass. It was deep and filled the long room with its near roar. “Excellent, Miss Grey. I shall call you Kate.”

Kate regarded Lady Juliana with distrust.

“It isn’t often that I meet a young lady who can see past my son’s attractions to the flaws in his character. And it’s more rare for such a young lady to be honest enough to express her distaste for him.”

No one moved. Juliana smiled and lifted her glass to Kate as though she were discussing the quality of their meal rather than humiliating her own son. In the silence that followed, Kate couldn’t help looking at the marquess.

His cheeks were flushed. The hand beside his plate was clenched so tightly, the knuckles were white. He stared at his mother without saying anything. Slowly, with care, he uncurled his fist until his hand lay flat on the linen tablecloth. Oblivious to everyone else, he continued to stare at his mother, who was feeding scraps to a cat and a monkey at her feet. Kate felt the intensity of that stare. Nothing and no one existed for the marquess except his mother. Finally thick lashes swept down over his eyes, hiding whatever emotion might have escaped his control.

Around him the carousel of conversation began to spin once more. Fulke treated Sophia and Hannah to a lecture on the Great Exhibition of scientific wonders of a few years before. The marquess kept his eyes lowered.

Kate wanted to say something to take away the hurt. She could barely imagine the pain he must be feeling. Such a proud spirit to be so cruelly shamed before others.

He moved abruptly. Resting his elbow on the table, the marquess downed his wine and shifted his gaze to
Fulke. Gone was the flush, the withdrawal. His lips curled in amusement at his cousin’s stilted conversation.

“But Fulke,” he interrupted, “you haven’t told the ladies about my friend Mr. Darwin’s views on the evolution of life. Or about geology. Do tell Mrs. Grey about how the earth has been proved to be much older than the Scriptures make it out to be.”

It was Fulke’s turn to blush. “You’re improper, sir, to bring up such subjects in the presence of ladies.”

Alexis laughed and teased more. Kate stabbed at her roast beef in disgust. She was a fool to have felt sorry for the man. Lady Juliana knew her son better than anyone. Alexis de Granville was flawed all right. As far as Kate could see he was a master of verbal torture, and she wasn’t about to become one of his victims.

After dinner Kate sat as long as she could in the drawing room with the women, listening to her mother chatting with Hannah. Without warning, Sophia looked up at Kate and flashed a smile so filled with contentment, it brought tears to Kate’s eyes. After Papa died, Kate had been afraid she would never see that smile again. She smiled back and resigned herself to an evening of tedium. Her participation would please Mama.

She tried hard. She tried awfully hard. But when the conversation turned to Ophelia’s tragic death, Kate had to leave. Her sorrow was too raw for her to share it with others. She slipped out into the hall and gathered her skirts in both hands, preparing to race up the stairs before someone saw her. In the back of her mind was the disturbing thought that she was avoiding the marquess. She didn’t trust the man. After the way he’d humiliated her when they first met, she found herself on guard in his presence, dreading another insult. Besides, he’d been Ophelia’s lover.

“Miss Grey.”

She gasped and whirled around. It was de Granville.

“Hellfire. Do you have to sneak up on me?” She pressed a hand to her chest in an effort to still the thudding of her heart.

The marquess strolled over to her from the threshold of the dining salon. The door was closed, and he’d been leaning there watching her progress. Kate mounted the first step to put more distance between them.

“Hellfire?” he said. “What an expression for a gently reared young woman to use.”

“I’ve used worse,” Kate said. “What do you want?”

“I would like to discuss something with you. Don’t start shaking your head, Miss Grey. It’s a matter of business. I would have approached your Mr. Poggs, but you sent him away.”

She folded her arms in front of her. “What?”

De Granville held out his hand. It was obvious he wasn’t going to converse on the stairs. Kate unfolded her arms. She had no intention of giving him her hand, but he took it anyway, and it disappeared in his. Seeing the hand she took for granted being swallowed up by his warm flesh gave her a start. He wouldn’t let go, and the feel of his hand was so good, she was distracted into letting him take her into a sitting room.

He must have planned this meeting, for a fire was already lit. He escorted her to a chair. She was sure he chose such a large one to make her feel small. Her feet didn’t touch the floor, and to make things worse, he knew it and brought an ottoman for her. The snake.

A servant came in with a tray. Coffee. What was he up to?

“I don’t like coffee,” she said.