Almost a Gentleman (45 page)

But in truth he'd been rather timid about going to Linseley Manor. Not that he'd expected to find Marston there; everyone had said he'd gone on to Scotland, and anyway, he wasn't the sort of person one invited to a Plough Monday festival. It was just that there was something unsettling about one's solid, responsible father having such a surprising connection.

The whole thing was probably just a rumor, Alec told himself. After all, Papa was hardly the type to… well, Alec wasn't exactly sure what he was defending his father against. Of course, his father wouldn't have minded if he'd asked directly. Alec couldn't remember ever having asked the earl a question that his father hadn't replied to honestly—even those difficult queries about one's body and its unruly desires. Perhaps, he thought now, this was why he
hadn't
wanted to ask about Marston. Perhaps he'd feared what he might find out if he had.

A house footman brought over a fresh deck of cards. Alec nodded to the dealer: yes, he supposed he would play another hand. What was another hundred pounds, after all? And thank you, another drink would be topping.

The cards from the used deck fluttered about his ankles. His head felt light. He saw immediately that his new cards were just as bad as his old ones. But this seemed to matter less with each hand he was dealt. Gratefully, he erased his troublesome thoughts from his mind and returned to his comforting private world of speed and motion.

If she weren't careful, Phoebe thought, the sight of David's son was going to ruin her concentration entirely. She'd been watching the young man since she'd come in an hour ago. Well, any woman would, she thought upon first seeing him. Impossible to refrain from looking at him, he was so young and ripe, his new adulthood sitting so lightly on him, like the blush upon an apricot. He seemed shy, a bit introverted and out of his depth; one wanted to protect him. It would be another year until one could feel entirely comfortable simply desiring him. She'd hoped he'd be ready for
that
when it happened: next year at this time he wouldn't be able to enter a room without raising a storm of lust.

Passing by his table, she hadn't known who he was. She'd been able to gull herself so thoroughly, she thought now, because his obvious resemblance to his father was altogether
too
obvious. She saw David's image wherever she went anyway; his face and body superimposed themselves over every passably attractive man who came her way. So she hadn't been surprised to see him in this radiant young man with the large, light eyes. She'd quickly discounted the evidence of her senses:
eyes light green instead of dark blue
—
there, you see, Phoebe, not the same thing at all
. She'd joined a table and turned her attention to her cards, taking ten tricks out of the next twelve.

"Are you in for the next game, Granthorpe?" she'd heard someone ask—perhaps after her sixth or seventh winning trick.

Granthorpe
. Of course, she'd thought; how absurd not to have seen it immediately. Astonishing how one could will oneself not to know what one didn't wish to.

Raising her eyes now and calling for a new bottle of champagne, she could see that he looked drunk, bewildered. He's too young to be here, she thought. Someone should take him home.

She peered steadily at him until he flinched under her gaze and she had to lower her eyes. I mustn't discomfit him like this, she thought—after all, he's heard the gossip about Marston and his father. He'd be mortified to speak to me.

But
someone
ought to see to him. He was close to passing out.

It was her turn to deal.

A dreadful hand. No way to play it. She lost it gracefully.

There seemed to be some sort of altercation at his table. Someone had accused someone else of some misconduct. She could tell from the set of his shoulders that he intended to join the fight. Fight? He'd barely be able to stand up, she thought.

And if no one else in this room full of absurd, affected, posturing
men
was prepared to do anything about it—well, then the most absurd and affected of them would have to do so.

She made her apologies to the players at her table and strode quickly across the room.

"Get up. You need to go home."

He could barely focus his eyes upon her face.

Still, he wasn't too drunk to insist upon the proprieties. "Have we met, sir?"

"Allow me to introduce myself, Lord Granthorpe. Philip Marston. Luck all run out for the evening, don't you know. I wonder if you might like to share a cab. I'll drop you wherever you say."

A low laugh rumbled in a distant corner of the room. "Like father, like son." Hell, she thought, someone
would
have to say that right now, wouldn't they?

But perhaps it was an opportunity.

"And you may ask me anything you like—about recent events, you know."

She'd dared him to confront the truth, whatever it might be. Even as befuddled as he was, he couldn't refuse the challenge.

"All right, Marston. You may drop me at… Upper Brook Street. At my father's."

She slipped a hand under his elbow to help him to his unsteady feet.

Quickly collecting her winnings and their coats, she led him from the room. The amused murmur that had accompanied their encounter gave way to the usual busy, ambient hum at Vivien's. There were cards to be cut, fortunes to be lost. Weary gentlemen turned their attention back to the hands they'd been dealt.

Alec had surrendered himself to her firm grasp upon his arm. Of course, she thought, she wouldn't have to tell him anything about herself and his father; he'd pass out as soon as they got into a cab.

A footman opened the door. She led him out, into a swirl of gaslit yellow fog.

"That's Alec," Admiral Wolfe said, peering into the fog from the window of his carriage. "Rather the worse for wear, too. Got a cab quickly, though. Well, not too many people are leaving so early, the cabman's eager for the custom on such a filthy night. Who's the chap helping him, I wonder? Well, I'll just go lend a hand. He can come with us if he likes, of course. Good job, Kate, your suggesting we come here after the opera."

"The chap helping him is Phoebe," Lady Kate murmured to herself as she looked out the carriage door after John had stepped down. How strange to see Mr. Marston arm-in-arm with Lord Granthorpe. Or not so strange, she supposed on second thought.

She watched John make his way toward the two young men. Phoebe was intent upon holding Granthorpe steady; she hadn't yet noticed John approaching her. Kate glimpsed Mr. Stokes's reassuring bulk, lurking in the shadows. Good. She nodded approvingly: things were as they should be. When suddenly—she couldn't see very well in the fog, but suddenly things weren't at all as they should have been.

While the cabman was opening the door for Phoebe and Granthorpe, a man had suddenly run up behind John Wolfe. The man's silhouette obscured Kate's view of John; all she could see was his back and raised arm. Was he holding some sort of club? Kate heard a sharp, frightening, cracking sound. The man disappeared into an alley, and for a moment Kate thought that John had disappeared as well.

But of course he hadn't, for now she could see him lying sprawled upon on the cobbles. She heard a shout.

It must have been me who shouted, she thought; I must have called out when I jumped from the carriage. She had no memory of any of this, but there she was, kneeling beside John in a puddle of dirty slush.

But it hadn't been Lady Kate who'd shouted.

Let me out
! She heard this second shout; with a start, Kate realized that the voice came from Phoebe's cab. Phoebe must have seen the attack, she thought vaguely; she'll help me, perhaps she'll call the police.

Right you are, guv'nor
, the cabman replied cordially. Good, Kate thought, she'll be with me in a moment. Turning her attention back to John, she whispered a prayer of thanks. For although there was a cut on his head, he was breathing and his eyes were open. Ah, and here was Mr. Stokes, kneeling beside her.

"He'll be all right, my lady," he said. "A nasty cut is all he's got."

"Kate?" John's voice was weak, but he seemed to be trying to sit up.

"It's all right, dear. You weren't badly hurt, but lie back for a moment."

But where was Phoebe? "Mr. Stokes," Kate began, "would you please make sure…"

"
I
said
to let me out
!"

"
Gee-up
," the cabman called, cracking his whip.

"
Stop, you idiot
!" Phoebe yelled. Kate turned, just in time to see Phoebe's pale face at the cab window. And to hear Phoebe's fist, banging at a door that must have been locked from the outside. The cab jolted into motion and turned the corner sharply.

Mr. Stokes gasped.

"Go!" Kate whispered harshly, "Right now, Mr. Stokes. Take the admiral's carriage, we'll be all right."

He rose, hesitated at the carriage door, and instead, heaved his big body up beside the coachman. Bouncing on its springs, the carriage moved off in pursuit of the cab.

"If you scream once more,
Mister
Marston, I'll put a bullet through the boy's head right now."

She hadn't even realized that there was anyone sitting across from them. But it seemed that there was: a tall man holding a pistol pointed squarely at young Alec. He wore a dark, heavy cloak, his face muffled in a high collar. She couldn't see much of him, but she could easily make out the dull shine of metal in his hand.

His voice was distantly familiar. There was a nasty, cringing quality to it that chilled her.

"Who the hell are you?" she asked quietly.

He laughed, showing large, grayish teeth. "You don't recognize me without my livery, do you?"

He leaned a bit forward. Holding the pistol steady with one hand, he unbuttoned his cloak to reveal a footman's humiliating comic-opera costume: white ruffled jabot, velvet coat and breeches, in powder blue, the color worn by those in the service of the Dowager Lady Claringworth. The footmen had worn a brighter blue in the younger Claringworths' household, but the effect was very similar.

"Trimble?"

"At your service, my lady," he sneered, laying his hat on the seat next to him. His powdered wig caught the light from a lamp as the coach hurtled forward.

"But I don't have to call you "my lady" anymore," Trimble added. "I can call you what you deserve to be called. Harpy, harridan, Circe, shrew. Well, I've already called you all those things, haven't I? Of course the word
I
wanted to use was the one the Dowager Lady Claringworth was too refined for. Bitch. Oh yes, I like the sound of that one. Bitch."

"
You
sent those letters?"

"I cut out the letters for my lady, at her request. Her hand can't manage the scissors these days, you see. And as to the content—well, that was her choice, though I made a few suggestions."

"Was it you who beat Billy so savagely?"

"A pack of amateurs did that. Misunderstood my instructions entirely.
We
had much more interesting plans for you and your dolly boy."

He laughed.

"Good for you, bringing a fresh new one with you tonight."

She glanced at Alec, seated beside her. Too bad, she thought, that he hadn't fallen asleep as she'd expected—at least he'd be saved the insulting filth issuing from the madman opposite them. Instead, he'd recovered from his drunkenness and seemed intent on under-standing what had happened. Well, David
had
said he was quite formidably intelligent. Good luck to him, she thought, if he expected to make sense of
this
mess.

In any case, he wasn't about to make any misplaced heroic gestures or remarks. He was intelligent enough—and sober enough—to see that there was a pistol pointed at him.

"Just be kind enough to let Lord Granthorpe off at his father's house in Upper Brook Street. You can do anything you like with me after that."

"Granthorpe, is it? Convenient, that. Missed the father with the chandelier, but we'll get the son instead.
She'll
enjoy that, I think."

You can't
, Phoebe was about to scream.
He's innocent
. And then, for the first time, she began to wonder.
Innocent of what, exactly
?

"And just
what
was my crime, Trimble?"

"
Mr
. Trimble."

"Mr. Trimble, then. Just what have I done to make you and the Duchess hate me so?"

"You had no respect."

"No respect?"

"None at all. Well, who
were
you, anyway? While
our
household was among the highest of the
ton
—still are, of course, well, my Lady Claringworth's a patroness of Almack's, can't get much higher in the world than that, you know.

"And my young gentleman… the very image of a gentleman he was, made me feel important to be in his service.

"You could have been the image of a lady, too. Well, you had the looks for it. And he spent more to dress you than he did to stable his horses. And yet, day in and day out,
you
managed to make him feel stupid. 'But Henry,' you'd say, in that high-minded way of yours. 'But Henry, don't you think… ?' 'But Henry, consider the plight of the Red Indians…"