Amberley Chronicles Boxset I: The Impostor Debutante My Last Marchioness the Sister Quest (Amberley Chronicles Boxsets Book 1) (11 page)

Chapter 21

Lady Amberley had been right, Charlotte thought; if the noise level had been lower, she could have enjoyed the music better. As it was, the intermission arrived as a welcome relief. Throughout the performance she had felt a great many curious gazes on her face, and she expected more visitors to their box. Lady Amberley decided, however, that they should all walk around outside, which raised the problem of only one escort for three ladies.

Before a solution could be found, her younger son and his friend Alphonse providentially entered the family box. Apprised of his mother’s plans, under her disapproving eyes James whisked Charlotte away, and secured her a glass of Rhenish wine, which she sipped gratefully. They greeted a number of acquaintances, but did not stop to talk to anyone.

“Your mother wanted me to walk with Lord Monksley, I fear,” Charlotte told him. “She was not at all pleased when I left with you instead.”

“Well, the fellow was there before me, so it’s hardly my fault if he was too slow off the mark. He does seem very interested in courting you, though in his place I’d prefer to do it without dragging my mother along.”

“Yes, isn’t it terrible? I wish I could tell him he was wasting his time.”

“You could hint that your affections are already engaged.”

“I suppose I could – but as long as he doesn’t declare himself, that would be difficult to bring up in casual conversation.”

“I can just picture it. “ James grinned. “Oh, by the way, I am in love with a fellow up in Yorkshire.”

“Someone else could tell them more easily, than I myself. Would you-“

“Good god, no, if it came from me they would merely think I was trying to bamboozle the competition. By now everybody must be aware that we are getting rather close.”

“At least you are not nursing any false hopes, and you are the only person in London to whom I can speak frankly.”

“So glad to be of service. But we don’t have much time.” They stopped talking for a minute to exchange compliments with Lady Sefton and her escort for the evening.

“As I was saying,” James resumed, “the papers are liberated from your solicitor’s office, and I have found another, younger solicitor to handle them for your sister. He has to go to Yorkshire, though, to be retained by her husband.”

“Could he take me with him?” she impulsively asked. “My situation here is getting quite untenable.”

“He is leaving early tomorrow, within hours, so I don’t think it’s possible. And you could not go with him anyway, without a respectable female along.”

“I don’t have much luggage, maybe there’s still time – “

“If you have to go, I will take you myself. You said yourself that my greys need more exercise than they are getting here in a town stables.”

“That would be scandalous indeed – for you as well as me. I couldn’t put you in that position.”

Seeing that the intermission was to end soon, they turned back in the direction of the box by common accord.

“Well, don’t despair. We can talk more after I escort you and Mother home. Everything will work out fine – you’ll see.”

“I really don’t see how that is possible,” Charlotte replied, irked by his unreasonable optimism.

During the final act James and his friend were sitting behind Charlotte, and she was acutely conscious of James’ proximity, of every breath he was taking. Strange how his friend, who was just as good-looking with his dark locks and soulful brown eyes, left her completely indifferent. She could appreciate his looks and undeniable charm with objectivity, while as for James - was he looking at her bare shoulders and neck right now? What were his intentions? Since the kiss in the chilly garden of Sefton house, he had not pressed any attentions on her and in fact, behaved more like a friend than a would-be-lover. Was he expecting a reward for his help? Surely she had made her opinion on that clear enough.

After the performance the young French gentleman – whose nationality Charlotte would never have guessed from his speech – took courteous leave of the ladies, telling James they’d meet later on. How nocturnal were these young men, if the night was still young for them at eleven? Charlotte was feeling tired but not sleepy, propelled by a nervous energy that would soon leave her a wreck if she could not quiet her incessant worrying, and rest for at least several hours. Maybe she should have brought some of the remedies of the Manor’s stillroom with her.

Arrived at Mount Street, James casually announced he’d have some brandy in the library before going on, while the ladies retired upstairs. He had only sipped half of his glassful when Charlotte, still dressed but without the pearl set, slipped into the room.

For a moment they looked at each other in the dim light of the four candles James had lit on the mantelpiece.

“Did I mention how beautiful you look tonight?” James said.

“Thanks - I think. Almost anyone would look good in fine feathers like these.” She glanced down at her skirts. The silver threads woven into the fabric glimmered faintly.

“But let’s not waste time on compliments.” Charlotte sounded practical and resolved. “I need to leave and go back to Yorkshire sooner rather than later. Peter is capable of any villainy. I don’t want your family drawn into my troubles.”

“Too late for that, sweetheart.”

At the endearment, Charlotte jerked slightly. “Please, don’t. You know why I can’t be intimate with you-“

“Yes, I have given some thought to what you said on the issue. Don’t worry, I am not going to do anything more than to kiss you for the time being, and not even that if it makes you feel uncomfortable.”

“For the time being?” Charlotte was not sure what to make of this reservation.

“I must beg your pardon for my earlier suggestions. My thinking was confused because I have been moving mostly among ladies who are protected by their families and marriage, at liberty to indulge in the occasional discreet affair. Since your position is more vulnerable, it would be unfair to make you choose between passion and respectability.”

Charlotte was amazed and a little suspicious. “That is not a point of view many young men would take. Thank you, if you really mean it.”

“Don’t mistake me: I still mean to have you, Charlotte, but only when you yourself are in full agreement.”

“That may be a very long wait.”

“I’ll take my chances. If we were both free, and I could offer you marriage, would you accept?”

“In a heartbeat,” Charlotte said frankly. “But what’s the point of dwelling on impossibilities?”

“That’s enough for right now.” He smiled at her. How had she ended up so close to him, that it now seemed the most natural thing in the world for James to put his arm around her waist and draw her in – carefully, slowly – for a deep, sweet kiss? It was wonderful to be held like this, in his strong arms, pressed full body into him.

This time it was James who broke it off. “If we don’t stop now I may yet forget all my good intentions.”

Charlotte, who had clearly felt the physical evidence of his desire through her skirts, had to smile. “Yes, we’d better. Tell me what you have discovered about Peter and his so-called wife.”

“Not much so far. The wife is not receiving, and I still don’t know why he maintains a second residence in Bloomsbury. The fellow has had the audacity to try and blackmail me, threatening to engulf my family in scandal.”

Charlotte blanched. “Then I really must leave right away – there is no time to be lost.”

“Don’t panic. We just need to spike his guns. You told me you thought he might come from a Southern shire; did he ever mention Kent or a place called Deedescombe?”

“No, why?”

“There is a Sir Mortimer Conway resident in Kent, I was wondering if he was a relative.”

“Peter never mentioned him or the connection to me. In fact, it should have seemed suspicious that he was so totally lacking in family ties.”

“Well, it’s something else to follow up on. Kent is not too far, after all.”

“You are planning to leave town?” Charlotte sounded apprehensive to her own ears. “If things here should come to a head, and I have to leave – “

“I’m not going anywhere while that scoundrel is making trouble for you. But in case you do have to leave here and I’m not around, it might not be a bad idea to agree on a meeting place.”

“It’s very improper, of course –“

“Charlotte, surely we are beyond thoughts of propriety by now.”

“Yes, I suppose you are right.” She thought for a few moments. ”I don’t know London at all well yet. But when I sent my maid back home after coming to London, she was to sleep the night at the Green Boar inn before boarding the northwards Mail coach. It is large and has many rooms; I could always take one there as Mrs. Mercer, like other northwards travellers waiting for a place.”

“I don’t like the idea of you all alone at a coaching inn, but for a few hours, until I can come to fetch you, it might do.”

They kissed again. Charlotte rubbed her right hand against the nape of his neck – what little skin was accessible above the stiff neck-cloth – and sighed.

“I really need my sleep, so I’d better say good-bye. Thanks for your help, James, I really don’t know what I would have done without it.”

“Good-night, love.” He smiled at her and she had to almost force herself to leave and shut the door behind her. Had the man bewitched her? At least he took her mind off the fear of ignominious exposure. With one firm ally, already the future looked a little brighter than it would otherwise.

Chapter 22

James had asked Alphonse to bring the deed box to his lodgings after the opera performance. When he came home, Alphonse had not yet arrived.

“Do we know anything more about Conway?” he asked Jouvin, who had waited up for him, against their usual practice.

“Indeed, Sir, I have had both of his households under constant observation since early this morning.”

“Go on.”

“The Bloomsbury address is not used by a mistress, as I had surmised. It is very modest and cheap, half the second floor of a dingy building. Any self-respecting mistress would scorn it. Instead it houses a young lady of some ten to twelve years and her governess. Conway is her father, it seems, and he visits the place infrequently. The place is leased under the name of Peter Massey, as Conway is apparently known there. The governess is a plain woman of almost fifty, surely too old to have any allure for a comparatively young man like him.”

“Stranger things have happened, but you’re likely right. So he has a daughter! And his new wife probably doesn’t know about the girl’s existence – very strange that he gave me the address.”

“He may have been trying to keep his gambling debts apart from his new family.”

“Hmm. Most people would just send the child to a boarding school, instead of setting up a separate household for a young girl and her governess. Please keep up the surveillance, without in any way bothering the child, of course.”

“Very good, Sir.”

Jouvin pocketed the gold coin James had slipped him, and continued, “The Half Moon Street household is rather different. It is in Conway’s name, and nothing is too expensive for him and especially its mistress. They have been married for some five months and the house was part of Mrs. Conway’s dowry. Rumour has it that lately there has been trouble between the young couple.”

“Obviously, judging by recent events. What else?

“This afternoon just before five Mr. and Mrs. Conway returned to the house; she was in obvious agitation, and the tension between the pair was described to me as palpable.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Conway left the house almost immediately after that. About an hour later, Mrs. Conway left with several bags, to stay with a friend for a few days, she told the staff. When you, Sir, arrived at their doorstep, she had been gone for over an hour already.”

“I see. The more I hear about the man, the more I wonder if this Conway is more fool or villain,” James mused. “A bungler, whichever way you look at it.”

“People can be both very stupid and evil at the same time, Sir, I could cite you a number of cases.”

Their discussion was interrupted by the arrival of Alphonse with the deed box. James asked Jouvin to prepare them a bowl of punch.

“Before we start,” Alphonse said, “let me tell you that your attachment to Miss Yardley is quite obvious to me, though people who know you less well might not immediately see it. There is no chance at all of denying it, after watching the two of you together at Covent Garden.”

“Could you also tell how she feels about me?”

“She is not an old friend, so I could be wrong, but my impression was that your feelings are returned. All plain sailing ahead, I daresay, you lucky fellow.”

“Not quite – what I am about to tell you is in the strictest confidence, mind.”

“Of course.”

“You’re quite right about my feelings, and my intentions are honourable insofar as possible. But there is a rather substantial impediment to our union – the lady is already married, to none other than this fellow Conway.”

There was a moment of startled silence. Alphonse, usually imperturbable, stared at James.

“That is an impediment all right. Married! But he has another wife living with him, doesn’t he? Is the fellow a bigamist?”

“Undoubtedly, but I have hopes that the previous marriage might turn out to be invalid. He claims that the current one is not bigamous. There also is a daughter of about eleven or twelve years, which would place her birth well before the time of his earlier marriage. If he has married girls for their money twice, without waiting for the first wife to die, is it too much to hope that he may have done it before?”

“Poor Miss Yardley. No wonder she went back to her maiden name, though it is rather irregular, you know. What if it became known? I take it your mother has no idea?”

“Well, that’s the other thing – the girl you met tonight is not actually Miss Yardley, but her half-sister Charlotte Mercer. She is not my cousin at all. As you have guessed, my mother has no idea of the truth.”

“Good God!”

As their punch had not arrived yet, James rose to pour some cognac into a tumbler and handed it to his friend.

“Here, have a drink, it will help you wrap your mind around this tangle.”

“It’s not my mind that is in need of help, James, but yours – have you taken leave of your senses?”

“No, I don’t believe so.” James remained serene. “As I understand from Charlotte, there is no Miss Yardley any more, as her sister is also married, to a local physician. We need to help her to get hold of her inheritance, and I hope this box is going to be useful.”

“Just how long have you been embroiled in this affair, James? Last week you seemed to be pretty normal, and now – well, it’s too early in the year for heatstroke. Have you been bitten by any mad dogs?”

“It has all come on rather suddenly,” James admitted. “But if I am mad, I have no desire at present to be cured. Are you willing to help me untangle this affair?”

“Of course. But my advice is to forget about it all and go away on a trip to Russia or Egypt, until you come to your senses again.”

“Noted. Now let’s look at those papers.” James wished that Alphonse had been less disapproving, but as he himself was acting so out of character, his friend’s reaction was not unexpected. And from long experience since their mutual schooldays James knew that he could implicitly rely on Alphonse’s discretion.

The deed box proving full of documents, they divided the pile in two and systematically read everything, though they did not open the sealed will.

“This is important,” – James noted as he perused one of the older papers. “It would seem that Sir Rudolph and his father jointly broke the entail on Brinkley Manor in 1774. Since then it’s apparently not been entailed, good news for the daughter.”

“Here are Yardley’s written instructions for drawing up a will,” Alphonse announced. “Dated 1814, four years ago. Brinkley Manor and the bulk of Yardley’s fortune to be held in trust for Miss Belinda Yardley for her lifetime, then either to her own descendants or, failing those, Miss Mercer and her descendants. Here, he writes,
it looks unlikely that my daughter Belinda will ever marry or have issue, so please set up a trusteeship for her. I suggest my friend Sir Jasper Coleman as the trustee, jointly with Mrs. Conway, the former Miss Mercer
. Why would he think his daughter was unlikely to marry?”

“About four years ago, from what Charlotte has told me, Belinda started to go blind. Maybe Yardley thought that a blind woman, even an heiress, would not be likely to contract a suitable alliance. I gather he did not know his own daughters very well.”

“Sir Jasper Coleman – the name rings a bell.”

“One of Prinny’s set, like Sir Rudolph himself. But I think he is Governor of some island in the West Indies these days. One more obstacle for this cursed inheritance to be settled. Maybe Beecham can get around this, given that the heiress did marry after all.”

Alphonse turned the letter he was reading and whistled. “He leaves thirty thousand pounds invested in the Funds outright to Charlotte Mercer, personally, and not to be touched by her husband. That would be your inamorata, I gather.”

“Yes. Thirty thousand! I had no idea that Yardley was so rich. I wonder if all the money is still there.”

“No reason why not. If the will is executed as Yardley wanted, it would mean that even if she marries again, the new husband couldn’t touch her fortune.” Alphonse shook his head disapprovingly.

“And if she ever is widowed, she’ll be secure, too. I must say this is the first good thing I have ever heard of Yardley doing.”

“If you get to marry this Charlotte, it really wouldn’t bother you that she had an independent income?”

“Of course not.” James stared at Alphonse. “Don’t tell me you want your future wife to be totally dependent on you.”

“It is the natural order of things,” Alphonse maintained.

“Bollocks. What if you had a daughter, would you want her to be totally dependent, with predators like this Conway around?”

“I’ve never thought of myself with grown-up children,” Alphonse said. “This is a very strange conversation.”

Jouvin brought in the steaming punch, redolent of rum and lemon. James filled glasses for his friend and himself.

“Maybe the punch will inspire your imagination,” James said. “You’ll have to marry sometime, as your parents’ only son, I assume.”

“Yes, of course, but I was hoping to put if off a few more years, and enjoy my freedom in the meantime. At least until I hit thirty or so.”

“When you meet the right woman, it won’t seem a sacrifice to give up all that. I would rather have Charlotte than all the courtesans in London or Paris.”

“Well, I wish you luck then.” They drank punch and returned to the task of reading the documents.

“Here is a deed for an estate in Cornwall, that according to the cover note Yardley won in a whist game two years ago,” Alphonse said.

“Probably never even went to inspect it. I doubt Charlotte and her sister ever knew about this property.”

“The marriage contracts of your aunt Amelia and Yardley. She brought a dowry of fifteen thousand pounds, the same sum to be settled on her children at her death. That money clearly belongs to the other daughter.”

“Belinda – Mrs. Seymour now. I hope to meet her soon.”

Having finished their perusal, they carefully replaced all documents in the box.

“I may need a Bow Street Runner after all, as you suggested,” James said. “The only landed family by name of Conway lives in Kent, in a village called Deedescombe. If Peter Conway is a connection, searching there may be my best bet to find evidence of previous marriages of the scoundrel, or at least some victim unconnected to my family who could denounce him without embroiling us in scandal. I cannot go myself, because I have to keep watching what Conway does here in town.”

“Kent is not all that far,” Alphonse said. “I have a fancy to see a bit more of the countryside in spring. It sounds like a good occasion to try out my new bays.”

“That’s very obliging of you,” James said, surprised. “But are you sure you can ferret out information in a strange place where you don’t know anybody? We are both of us beginners at this kind of work, whereas the Bow Street Runners do it every day.”

“Surely -,” Alphonse returned with mock outrage, “surely you don’t doubt that I could do as well as some common thief-catcher?”

“The brains you certainly have, but experience also counts. And I’ve told you before, people you regard as common can be quite as sharp as any of us. They have to be, often enough, just to survive.”

Alphonse shrugged, unconvinced.

James let the matter go. “Well, thanks for volunteering then. I’ll look forward to hearing what you find out.” He found the paper with the names and direction he had noted down at the club, and handed it to his friend. “Do be careful, and return safely, Alph.”

“You already sound like a father, James. May I remind you that you are two months younger than I?”

“Oh, of course. Beg pardon,” James said in a humble voice. Both of them laughed and drowned one more glass of punch, before Alphonse took his leave and James retired to bed. It had been a very long day.