Vice (4 page)

“Because it is,” Quentin said shortly. “How will you protect the girl from Lucien? Supposing he decides to exercise his marital rights?”

“Oh, you may safely leave that to me,” Tarquin said.

“I don’t like it.” Quentin scowled into his glass.

“You’ve made that very clear.” Smiling, Tarquin patted his brother’s sober-suited shoulder. “But you don’t care for most of my schemes.”

“No, and I wish the devil I knew why I care for
you,”
the other man said almost bitterly. “You’re an ungodly man, Tarquin. Positively Mephistophelian.”

Tarquin sat down, crossing one elegantly shod foot over the other. He frowned down at the sparkle of diamonds in the shoe buckles, musing, “I wonder if jeweled buckles aren’t becoming a trifle outré. I noticed Stanhope wearing some very handsome plain silver ones at the levee the other morning…. But, then, I doubt that’s a topic that interests you, either, Quentin.”

“No, I can’t say that it does.” Quentin cast a cursory glance down at his own sturdy black leather shoes with their plain metal buckles. “And don’t change the subject, Tarquin.”

“I beg your pardon, I thought we’d reached an amiable conclusion.” Tarquin sipped his sherry.

“Will you give up this scheme?”

“No, brother dear.”

“Then there’s nothing more to be said.”

“Precisely. As I said, we have drawn the topic to an amiable conclusion.” The duke stood up in one graceful movement, placing his glass on the table. “Don’t fret, Quentin. It will only give you frown lines.”

“And don’t play the fop with me,” Quentin declared with more passion than he usually showed. “I’m not fooled by your games, Tarquin.”

His brother paused at the door, a slight smile on his lips. “No, thank God, you’re not. Don’t ever be so, if you love me, brother.”

The door closed behind him and Quentin drained his glass. He’d known his half brother for thirty years. He remembered Tarquin’s rage and disillusion as a boy of fifteen, betrayed because he wouldn’t buy the friendship of his peers. He remembered the desperation when a year or two later the young man had discovered that the woman he loved with such fervor was interested only in what she could gain from being the mistress of the Duke of Redmayne.

Quentin knew how vitally important the family’s heritage
was to the third Duke of Redmayne. Tarquin had been brought up as the eldest son and heir to an old tide and vast estates. He would uphold the family pride and honor to his dying day.

And Lucien was threatening that pride. For as long as he’d been Tarquin’s ward, the duke had managed to keep control of the reins, but now he had no say in the way their cousin conducted his own life or managed his fortune and estates. Quentin understood all this, yet he still couldn’t accept Tarquin’s demonic scheme to save Edgecombe. Tarquin would come out the winner, of course, at whatever cost.

But surely there had to be another way. Quentin picked up his book again, seeking solace in Plutarch’s
Parallel Lives.
He hoped the archbishop would take his time over the business that had brought Quentin to London. Someone needed to keep a steadying eye on events at Albermarle Street. Sometimes Tarquin would listen to Quentin and could be persuaded to modify his more far-reaching schemes. Quentin loved his half brother dearly. He had hero-worshiped him through their childhood. But he couldn’t close his eyes to the darker side of Tarquin’s nature.

“Ah, Your Grace, you are come.” Elizabeth rose and curtsied as the duke was shown into her private salon.

“But of course, ma’am. With such incentive, how could I possibly stay away?” He withdrew an enameled snuffbox from his pocket and took a pinch. Mistress Dennison couldn’t help but notice that the delicate gold and ivory of the snuffbox exactly matched His Grace’s silk coat, waistcoat, and britches.

“Do you wish to see her now, Your Grace?”

“I am all eagerness, madam.”

“Come this way, sir.” Elizabeth led her guest out of the parlor. It was evening and the house was awake. Two young women in lace negligees sauntered casually down the corridor.
They curtsied to the mistress of the house, who greeted them with a smile, before passing on.

A footman bearing a tray with champagne and two glasses and a platter of oysters knocked on a door at the end of the passage.

“The evening is starting early,” the duke remarked.

“It often does, my lord,” Elizabeth said complacently. “I understand His Royal Highness will be visiting us later.”

“Alas, poor Fred,” murmured the duke. The bumbling Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, whose addiction to women was a society joke, was a regular visitor to the Dennisons’ harem.

Elizabeth led him up a narrow flight of stairs at the rear of the corridor. It was a route unknown to the duke, and he raised an eyebrow as he followed the swaying, rich crimson hoop ahead of him.

“This is a private passage, Your Grace,” Elizabeth explained as they turned down a narrow corridor. “You will understand its purpose in a minute.”

She stopped outside a door at the end of the passage and softly opened it, standing aside to permit the duke entrance. He stepped past her into a narrow wardrobe, lit only by the candle in the sconce in the passage behind him.

“In the wall, Your Grace,” Elizabeth whispered.

He looked and saw it immediately. Two round peepholes, at eye level and spaced for a pair of eyes.

Wondering if all Mistress Dennison’s rooms provided opportunity for the voyeur, the duke stepped up to the peepholes. He looked into a candlelit chamber. He could see a dimity-hung poster bed, matching curtains billowing at an open window, a washstand with a flowered porcelain jug and ewer. It was a bedroom like many in this house.

But it contained a girl. She stood at the open window, idly brushing her hair. The candlelight caught the flames in the glowing tresses as she pulled the brush through with strong, rhythmic strokes. She wore a loose chamber robe that fell open as she turned back to the room.

He glimpsed firm, full breasts, a white belly, a hint of
tangled red hair below. Then she moved out of sight. He waited, his eyes focusing hard on the part of the room he could see. She came back into view. With a leisurely movement she threw off the chamber robe, tossing it over an ottoman at the foot of the bed.

The duke neither stirred nor made a sound. Behind him Elizabeth waited anxiously, hoping that he was seeing something worth seeing.

Tarquin looked steadily at the tall figure, noting the generous curve of hip, the fullness of her breasts that accentuated the slenderness of her torso, the tiny waist. He noted the whiteness of her skin against the startling flames of her hair. She moved toward the bed, and he noted the flare of her hips, the smooth roundness of her buttocks, the long sweep of thigh.

She raised one knee, resting it on the bed, then suddenly glanced over her shoulder. For a minute she appeared to be looking directly at him, her eyes meeting his. Those eyes were the color of jade, deep and glowing, wide-spaced beneath the uncompromisingly straight line of her dark brows. Her eyelashes, dark and as straight as her brows, swept down and up as she blinked tiredly. Then she yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her hand, and climbed into bed.

Leaning over, she blew out the candle.

The Duke of Redmayne moved out of the wardrobe, back into the light of the passage. He turned to face the expectant Mistress Dennison.

“Is she a maid?”

“I am certain of it, Your Grace.”

“Can she be bought?”

“I believe so.”

“Then let us talk terms, Elizabeth.”

J
uliana awoke to a bright dawn. Always an early riser, she came awake without intervening drowsiness and sat up immediately, gazing about the chamber. It was small but comfortable, well furnished, although not luxuriously so. The bed hangings and curtains were of starched dimity; simple hooked rugs were scattered on the waxed oak floor, cheerful cretonne cushions piled on the chaise longue.

It felt comfortingly familiar, similar to her bedchamber at Forsett Towers. But the sounds coming from the street outside bore no relation to the high cry of the peacocks strutting on the mansion’s lawns or the clarion call of the roosters on the home farm.

She flung aside the bedcovers and stood up, stretching with a sigh of pleasure, then padded to the window. Drawing aside the curtains, she looked down into a narrow street crowded with wagons and drays, piled high with country produce. Raucous barrow boys pushed their way through the throng, heading for Covent Garden at the end of the street. Two disheveled young men in evening dress stumbled out of a tavern across the street and stood blinking in the daylight. A woman in a grubby red petticoat hitched up to show her calves, with torn, tawdry lace at her low neckline,
sidled up to them, an insinuating smile on her face, and drew down the neck of her dress to bare her breasts.

One of the men grabbed her with a loud laugh and pressed his mouth against hers, holding her roughly by the head. Then he pushed her from him, still laughing, and the two men staggered toward the Strand. The whore picked herself up from the gutter, swearing and shaking her fist. Then she twitched the tawdry lace into position, shook out her skirts, and set off toward the market.

Fascinated, Juliana stared down at the scene below her window. Even Winchester on market day wasn’t this lively.

Filled with the energy of curiosity and excitement, Juliana ran to the armoire. She took out the simple muslin gown and cotton shift that her benefactress had insisted on giving her when they’d arrived at the house the previous morning. Juliana had accepted the garments because of their very simplicity. The gown was the kind a well-looked-after serving maid might wear on Sundays.

She threw the shift over her head and stepped into the gown, hooking it up, fastening a muslin fichu discreetly at the neck. She thrust her bare feet into a pair of leather slippers, also provided by Mistress Dennison; splashed water from the ewer onto her face; brushed her hair, pinning it roughly in a knot on top of her head; and was out of the door and running down the wide staircase to the hall within ten minutes of waking.

The front door was open to the street, and a maid was on her hands and knees polishing the parquet. Juliana had seen little of the house the previous day. After changing her clothes she’d spent the rest of the time with Mistress Dennison in her private parlor. She’d dined there alone and retired early, too overwhelmed by the strangeness and excitements of the day following the fatigue of the journey to examine her position or her surroundings too closely.

Now, however, she was refreshed and clear-headed, and she looked around her with interest. Double doors stood open to the right of the hall, revealing a long, elegant salon. From what she could see, the furniture, apart from some
deep, inviting sofas and plump ottomans, was all dainty gilt and elaborately carved wood, the carpet richly embroidered, the draperies and upholstery emerald-green velvet. The scent of tobacco and wine lingered in the air, fighting with the fragrance of fresh roses and potpourri from the bowls scattered on every surface.

Juliana could see a footman and a maid polishing the furniture in the salon, but apart from this activity the house seemed to lie under a curious hush. It was like a stage set, she thought. All ready and waiting for the players. The atmosphere wasn’t like a private house at all, more like a hotel.

With a slightly puzzled frown she approached the maid polishing the floor. But before she could reach her, a voice said softly but with great authority, “And where d’ye think y’are off to, missie?”

She spun round, startled, not having heard footsteps behind her. A burly man in scarlet livery with a powdered wig, impressive gold braid and flogging on his coat, and a heavy gold watch chain slung across his broad chest surveyed her, hands on his hips.

“I was about to go for a walk,” Juliana said, unconsciously tipping her chin, her expression challenging. “If it’s any business of yours.”

A strange little sound came from the maid still busily polishing on her hands and knees a few feet away. Juliana glanced quickly at her, but the girl’s head was down, and she seemed to be putting even more effort into her work. Juliana looked back at the liveried butler, or so she assumed him to be.

He was surveying her with an air of incredulity. “It seems ye’ve a lot to learn about this ’ere establishment, missie,” he declared. “And lesson number one: My name is Garston. Mr. Garston, to you, or just plain
sir.
And everything you do is my business.”

Her eyes threw green fire at him. “My good man, the only person who’s entitled to question my movements in this house is Mistress Dennison. Now, if you’ll excuse me,
Tin going for a walk.” She tried to step past him toward the door, but he moved his considerable bulk to block her way.

“Doors is closed, missie.” He sounded amused rather than annoyed by her defiance.

“They are not!” she stated. “The door is wide-open to the street.”

“Doors is closed to the ladies of the ’ouse, missie, until I says so,” he said stolidly, folding his arms and regarding her with an amused smile.