The Last Hellion (44 page)

"You're telling me the members of your sex are imbeciles who can't distinguish fact from fiction," he said. "Anyone fool enough to try one of Miranda's tricks is either reckless by nature or doesn't own a grain of sense. Such people will do something stupid with or without your suggestions. My wards offer a perfect example."

"Your wards prove my point."

" 'Dreadful girls,' you called them, before you'd ever clapped eyes on them."

Vere's voice rose. "They're Mallorys, Lydia, and the Mallorys have been spawning hellions since the dawn of time. You will not use Lizzy and Em as an excuse to stop writing those wonderful stories you please to call 'romantic claptrap' and 'rubbish.' You are a talented writer, with the knack of communicating with readers of both genders, of every age and background. I will not permit you to throw that gift away. As soon as you're well, you'll start another story, dammit, if I have to lock you in a room to make you do it!"

She blinked once, twice. Then, "Lud, what a fuss you make," she said. "I had no idea you felt so strongly about it."

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

"I do." He left his chair, walked to the fireplace and back. "I should be illiterate were it not for romantic claptrap and sentimental swill and improbable tales. I cut my teeth on
The Arabian Nights
and
Tales of the Genü
. My father read them to me, and they made me hungry to read more books, even without pictures."

"My mother gave me storybooks," Dain said, his voice very low. "They provided me some of the happiest times of my childhood."

"We read them to Dominick," his wife said.

"You saw the lad," Vere said. "For the time you read, nothing else in the world existed but your story. Not a peep out of him, for half hours at a stretch. It was the same with Robin when I read to him. He would have loved your story, Grenville."

The room became very still, heavily silent.

His wife's cool voice broke the tension. "Then the next one will be for him," she said. "And it will be ten times better than anything in
The Arabian Nights
."

"Naturally it will be ten times better," Dain said mildly. "A
Ballister
will have written it."

Vere didn't know why it nagged at his mind, only that it did.

…
grandfather and his brothers exceedingly fond of the theater
—
and actresses
.

… virtue… never been our strong suit… devil in each generation…

… a Ballister
will have written it
.

That night, the Duke of Ainswood dreamt about Charles II. Grenville was entertaining His Majesty with an impersonation of the third Marquess of Dain, who stood among the courtiers, wearing only a plumed hat, with the actress Nell Gwyn draped on his arm.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

Vere awoke as the sky was beginning to lighten. His wife was sleeping soundly.

He left the bed, moved noise-lessly to the other side, took up her mother's diary, and went to the window to read it.

It didn't take long, and when he was done, he was as dissatisfied as he'd been the first time. The gaps between the entries… the sense of too much unsaid… the pride that wouldn't let her complain. The nearest she'd come was in the first entry, in her scornful description of her husband… the bitter undercurrent when she spoke of her father.

…
memory submits to no will, not even a Ballister's, and the name and image
persist, long after death
.

Whose name and image persisted in
her
memory? Vere wondered.

No biddable young lady should have a clue how to escape a vigilant household
, Grenville had said.

Anne Ballister had been closely guarded and sheltered.

How had she and John Grenville—a third-rate actor—ever crossed paths? How had he managed to get to her, seduce her into eloping with him to Scotland? Her father was a "pious hypocrite," according to Dain. Acting troupes were not invited to Athcourt in Dain's father's time. Anne's father wouldn't have invited them to his home, either.

Vere had recognized, in hindsight, all the clues Grenville had carefully dropped into
The Rose of Thebes
. Carried away by the adventures, the readers had overlooked them. Only when Orlando's perfidy was finally revealed did one discern the seeds, so cleverly sown throughout the preceding chapters.

He looked for clues in the little diary, but if they were there—as he was sure they must be—they were too cleverly concealed.

He returned the book to its place on the night table and went into his dressing Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

room.

According to Beelzebub, the legal firm of Carton, Brays, and Carton were "a lot of driveling incompetents." This was why Dain had dispensed with their services as soon as he inherited.

Beelz must have bestowed a stare more petrifying than usual in the process, because nothing seemed to have moved in the intervening nine years, including, most especially, the dust.

Mr. Carton the elder wasn't in, "on account he's barmy," the law clerk informed Vere. Mr. Carton the younger was in Chancery, embarked on the process of going "barmy" himself. Mr. Brays was not engaged at the moment, but he was most certainly drunk, "as is his usual habit," the clerk explained. "It's a sorry state of affairs, is what it is, Your Grace, but it's a place, and the only one I got at the moment, and I make the best of it."

The clerk, by the name of Miggs, was little more than a boy—a tall, lanky one to be sure—with a very little fuzz aspiring to a mustache and a great many spots.

"If you do what I ask without your superiors' approval, you'll probably lose your place," said Vere.

"Not likely," Miggs said. "They can't do anything without me. Can't find anything, and when I find it for 'em, they don't know what it means and I have to explain it. If I was to go, they'd lose every client they got, and that isn't many, and most of them I got for them."

Vere told him what he was looking for.

"I'll see," the boy said.

He went into a room and did not come out again for half an hour. "I can't find a record," he said when he came out. "But that doesn't mean much. The old fellow kept everything in his head. Which explains why he went barmy. I'll have to go Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

into the catacombs, sir. It might take a few days."

Vere decided to go with him. Which turned out to be very wise, for the

"catacombs" was Carton, Brays, and Carton's equivalent of a lumber room: heaps of boxes, filled with documents. They were simply stacked, one atop the next, according to no logical system whatsoever.

They worked through the entire day, only stopping at midday and late afternoon for ale and pies. Vere heaved the boxes, and the clerk quickly sifted through the contents, again and again, hour after hour, in a dank basement, while various insects and rodents scurried about, darting in and out of the crevices between boxes.

Shortly before seven o'clock that night, Vere trudged wearily up the cellar steps, out the door, and into the street. His neckcloth, now grey, hung limply from his neck. Cobwebs clung to his coat, along with miscellaneous dirt and debris.

Sweat trailed through the grime caked on his face. His hands were black.

But in those grimy hands he carried a box, which was all that mattered, and as he set out for home, he was whistling.

To pacify the overly anxious group Ainswood had sternly ordered to look after her, Lydia had said she would take a nap before dinner.

This didn't mean she intended to nap. She'd taken a book with her to the master bedchamber—and fallen asleep reading it.

A noise from the window woke her, and she caught her husband in the act of climbing through it.

She did not ask him why he couldn't come in the door like a normal person. One glance told her why he'd eschewed the more public route.

This morning he'd told her he was going to meet with Mr. Herriard regarding the Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

marriage settlements, and would probably be at it for hours. These negotiations had been delayed while His Grace searched for his wards. Dain had reminded his friend of the matter yesterday, before he left.

"I collect one of the settlement terms was your sweeping Mr. Herriard's chimney," she said as her glance swept over six and a quarter feet of human wreckage.

Ainswood looked down at the small box in his hands.

"Um, not exactly," he said.

"You fell into a sewer excavation," she said.

"No. Um…" He frowned. "I ought to get cleaned up first."

"I'll ring for Jaynes."

He shook his head.

Lydia left the bed.

"Vere?" Her voice was gentle. "Did someone knock you on the head?"

"No. Let me just wash my face and hands. I can have a bath later." He hurried into his dressing room, still holding the box.

She supposed the box contained the marriage settlements and there was something in them he didn't think she'd like. She beat down her curiosity and waited, pacing.

He emerged from the dressing room a few minutes later, wearing a dressing gown and nothing else, and carrying the box. He drew up a chair near the fire and invited her to occupy it. She sat.

He settled onto the hearthrug at her feet and opened the box. He withdrew an oval object and laid it in her lap.

It was a miniature, of a young man, fair-haired and blue-eyed. He wore a faint Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

smile.

It was almost like looking into a mirror. "He looks… like my brother," she said.

Her voice sounded thready to her ears. Her heart was thudding.

"His name was Edward Grey," Ainswood said quietly. "He was a promising actor and playwright. His mother was a highly regarded actress, Serafina Grey.

His father was Richard Ballister, your mother's great-uncle. Edward Grey was the devil Richard Ballister produced, in his wild youth, on the wrong side of the blanket. Richard's father was past sixty when Richard was born, of a second marriage."

He took from the box a yellowed piece of paper. It bore a fragment of the Ballister family tree—Anne Ballister's branch—and the names and dates were written in her tiny, precise hand. The second marriage, late in life, explained why Anne Ballister's Great-Uncle Richard was only three years older than her father.

But Lydia's gaze had already shifted lower, to where her name was written, below and between her mother's—and Edward Grey's.

She looked at the miniature. Then at the family tree her mother had so neatly drawn. Then at the miniature.

"This is my father," she said softly, wonderingly.

"Yes."

"Not John Grenville."

"There's no doubt of it," he said. "Your mother made sure. Like a true Ballister, she had it all documented. My guess is that she intended the lot to be given to you when you reached adulthood. Something went wrong. John Grenville ended up with it and sold it to the third Marquess of Dain—via his solicitors. The receipt for the transaction is dated August 1813."

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

"That explains where he got the money to go to America," Lydia said. She met her husband's gaze. "This explains a great deal." It was Edward her mother had eloped with to Scotland, not the man Lydia had called Papa.

"The box contains love letters he wrote to her," Vere said. "Two dozen at least. I hadn't time to truly study and sort everything out." His green gaze was soft and he wore his boy's smile, half abashed. "Even the little I read told me he adored your mother. He was born on the wrong side of the blanket, but they were deeply in love, and conceived a child in love."

"I love you," she said, past the lump in her throat. "I don't know how you did this, how it occurred to you, what drove you to look for and find something no one else guessed existed. But I know you did it in love for me—and really, Ainswood, I am so vexed with you. I have never done so much blubbering as I have since I met you." Her eyes were filling. She didn't try to say more, only slipped down from the chair and into his arms.

Though he was illegitimate, Edward Grey had been fairly close to his father, who provided for his keep and his education. He was one of the numerous dependents who attended family gatherings. That was how he and Anne had met.

She had been told he was "a distant cousin." They fell in love.

She had been visiting when he quarreled with his father, who vehemently disapproved of the acting career Edward was set upon. Edward was ejected.

Permanently. When Anne found out what had happened, she insisted on going with him. He wanted her to wait until he was sure he could support her. She refused to wait. She understood now that her father would never consent to their marriage. She'd be forced to wed the man her father chose. That was out of the question.

Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion

And so she fled with Edward to Scotland.

They were wed over the anvil. No minister, no church, no banns, no parental permission required. Their marriage was legal, but not by their relatives'

standards. The Ballisters had no more regard for the savage Scottish race's quaint laws and traditions than they did for the bizarre rituals of Hindus or Hottentots.

In their eyes, Anne was a whore, the mistress of a bastard. The box contained letters from the lawyers notifying her she'd been disowned, had no legal claims upon the family, and was forbidden, on pain of prosecution, to attempt any claims, financial or otherwise, or any other form of communication.

But Anne and Edward had known this when they set out. They understood their kin. They knew those doors were permanently closed.

They couldn't know that, in three short months, a piece of scenery would fall on Edward during a rehearsal and kill him. He hadn't had time to make provision for his wife, or the child she was carrying.

A month later, John Grenville married Anne. As the diary had indicated, he convinced her he truly loved her. She was seventeen, pregnant, with no one else to turn to. She thought he was generous to accept another man's child as his own.

Only when he tried and failed to use her baby as a way into the Ballisters' hearts and pocket-books did Anne see her error.