Barbara Metzger (18 page)

“What, should I have? Good grief, is your pride hurt, too, besides your spinster sensibilities? I do believe you’re upset that I didn’t offer you a slip on the shoulder!”

“A normal man would have, especially thinking me so far beneath him socially. I suppose your admiration was as false as your war wound.”

“The wound is no act, I take leave to tell you. That pistol ball was quite real. And I was attracted to you, damn it, more than I wanted to be. What did you expect me to do about it, toss you on the rug and make mad, passionate love in Nanny’s parlor, just because you were dressed so provocatively in those low-cut gowns?”

“ ‘Twas you who dressed me like a courtesan, sirrah. Those gowns would never have been my choice.”

“No, you’d have gone around in grain sacks buttoned to your throat.”

“My fashion sense is not the issue; your behavior is, and I think you owe me an explanation. My reputation is ruined, I cannot show my face abroad without being recognized as a light-skirt, and I have been kidnapped by your friends.” She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot. “If it’s not because of your injury, I want to know why.”

“I have certain principles, a set of beliefs I’ve held my entire life.”

“So do I, like ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but I am seriously beginning to rethink that one. Go on.”

Courtney took a deep breath. “I am a virgin.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me, and you can shut your mouth now. Surely there are a few others around, unless we’re like the unicorns that got left off the ark. I am, as trite as it may sound and as unvalued in this day and age, saving myself for marriage.”

Kathlyn poured herself another cup of tea. She forgot to put in the sugar. She drank it anyway.

“We are always taught the necessity of a virgin bride,” Courtney went on, “for how else is a man of worth to be assured that his heir is indeed his flesh and blood? And why should a poorer man labor to feed another man’s get? Yet why isn’t a husband’s virtue just as important?”

Kathlyn found her voice. “Perhaps because sometimes a woman’s virtue is all she has. Men have all the property and power.”

“Is privilege a substitute for principle? No woman should have as her life’s mate a man who has mated with half the females in England, who brings home diseases and litters the countryside with his butter stamps. It’s wrong.”

“That’s truly what you believe, and how you live your life?” Lord Chase was such a virile man, broad-shouldered and strong-willed, Kathlyn was having trouble assimilating his words. If he’d said an evil wizard had cast a spell over him, to be broken only by the love—and marriage vows—of a good woman, she’d find it easier to accept. “You’re not joking?”

“By my word, it’s no laughing matter! Have you ever wanted anything so badly, your body shakes with the need? When you can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t think of anything but the wanting? I was not meant to be a saint, Miss Partland, for I have the same desires as every other sinner. I simply have not succumbed.”

There was absolutely nothing Kathlyn could say to that. She knew Latin and Greek, French, and a bit of German. This was so far beyond her ken as to leave her reeling. The last pure male in London was sitting in Nanny’s parlor, blowing his nose.

  And speaking. “Unfortunately for my code of ethics, the era of chivalry has long passed. Our society, the so-called polite world, has raised licentiousness to an art form. It is considered de rigueur for a man to sport a mistress. If he’s not raffish, rakish, and rumpled at four in the morning, he is not considered manly. Hence our bargain, Miss Partland, which I can only pray you will not discuss with anyone else.”

“Of course not.” No one would believe it. She took another sip of the bitter tea. “Ah, not to make light of your .. . your sense of morality, but I always thought a husband should be more experienced in these things, for girls are told nothing.” Kathlyn could feel herself blushing, but heavens, if he could bare his soul, she certainly could satisfy her curiosity. “You know, how it’s done and all.”

Courtney finally smiled. “Believe me, my dear, every boy past puberty knows how it’s done.”

“Oh.” Kathlyn swirled the leaves around in her teacup until the warmth left her cheeks, thinking that no Gypsy fortune-teller could possibly have foreseen this happenstance. Then she set the cup aside, indicating an end to the discussion. “This is a highly improper conversation, my lord.”

“Our whole relationship is highly improper, my girl, which is why we’re having this talk, to try to bring some respectability to our association. I hope that, with my explanations and reflection, you’ve come to your senses and seen the logic of my offer.”

She saw the logic—she’d always seen the logic of marrying a wealthy, well-favored viscount; she wasn’t a total imbecile—but she didn’t hear one word of love. And a marriage without love, well, Kathlyn had her principles, too.

Chapter Nineteen

A foghorn was echoing
wooo, wooo,
that melancholy, muted call into empty gray ocean. Except there was no ocean in the middle of England, no lighthouse, and no horn, only the dense winter fog and Lady Bellamy’s mournful keening: “Woe, woe.”

Kathlyn’s aunt, traveling from Manchester to London with one lapdog, two daughters, three maids, four outriders, and five carriages, had put up at the finest inn in Leicester. There she was offered her choice of five bedrooms, four varieties of wine, three dinner menus, two private parlors, and the London newspapers, only one day old.

That could have been her sister staring out at her from the scandalous cartoon. Why, she preened, it could have been herself at an earlier age. The Bronze Age, perhaps, but there was a family resemblance. No one who saw this illustration could think the wanton so portrayed was anyone other than Gwyneth Fowler’s daughter, Lady Bellamy’s niece, cousin to her own precious lambs. They were ruined, ruined.

Thank heavens Lord Bellamy had decided to follow them to Town in a month, in time to pay the tradesmen and escort his wife and daughters to the opening rounds of the Season. Having made his money in the India trade and subsequently buying his title and entry into the ton, Lord Bellamy was even more conscious than his wife of the social niceties. It was not nice to have a fallen woman in one’s family, not nice at all. Bellamy would have them sequestered back in Manchester before you could say jackrabbit, and then where would her girls be? Not at Almack’s, that was for sure, meeting the most eligible
partis,
making the most brilliant matches.

Well, Lady Bellamy was not about to cut the offending drawing out of the paper and send it on to her spouse. She was more likely to find the offending wench and cut out her heart. No, Madorra did have some family feeling, she supposed. She’d pay the chit off and send her to the Antipodes.

But first she had to find her. She didn’t doubt that Bellamy, were he in Town, could locate London’s most expensive high flyer in a matter of minutes, bribe her away from her current protector, and establish her in any one of those “real estate investment properties” of his. That was decidedly not what Lady Bellamy had in mind. Nor did she wish to involve her employees in the search for her errant niece. They talked more than the gossip-mongers at afternoon teas. No, she needed someone disinterested to locate Gwyneth’s girl, someone discreet. But who? Who?

* * * *

Inspector Dimm wasn’t happy, even though his feet were soaking in a tub of hot water and no relatives were battening on his hospitality this week. No, he wasn’t happy with the way this case was going, not at all. Miss Partland wasn’t any jewel thief, b’gad, and she didn’t have any more knowledge of where Harry Miner stashed his booty than did Dimm’s pet tabby. So the Runner wouldn’t earn the reward, or his nibs’s commendation. Worse, he wouldn’t have any excuse to call around at Mrs. Dawson’s cozy little house, not ten blocks away.

Dimm’s own house was looking not as comfortable as he’d thought, by comparison. A good cleaning, maybe new drapes, would help the shabbiness, but they wouldn’t improve Dimm’s cooking. He’d taken to eating his meals at coffeehouses, sitting at solitary tables with his newspaper. He always brought back some scraps so at least the cat was happy to welcome him home. Otherwise his house was very, very empty.

Well, Jeremiah Dimm hadn’t given up on an investigation yet, and he wasn’t going to start leaving his path strewn with unsolved cases now, like the dirty plates he seemed to forget around his house. The cat wasn’t a half-bad dishwasher.

He tapped out his clay pipe and refilled it, then relit it, blowing smoke rings overhead. When a bloke reached the end of his rope, Dimm always believed, he should tie a knot and keep going. So he needed a plan, was what. If he couldn’t bring in the jewels, at least he ought to be able to nab Harry’s partners and Harry’s murderer, especially since they were likely one and the same, the big cutpurse with the cut ear, or the smaller footpad, Sean. There was also a price on those two, nowhere near the reward Lady Bellamy was spouting for her necklace, but enough to hire a

housekeeper to come in days to clean and maybe cook.

Dimm puffed on his pipe, thinking. Even the canniest rats crawled into the trap for the right bait, and Miss Kathlyn Partland was bait enough to tempt Lucifer himself out of his hidey-hole. Iffen he, Dimm, let it be known in those coffee shops and around Bow Street that he was still pursuing the chit as a lead to the jewels, the vermin would come after her, he knew it. And his plan wouldn’t be jeopardizing Miss Partland at all, he reasoned, because he’d have Nipperkin stationed across the street watching. Of course Bow Street’s finest would be right there to guard her every minute, too, right where he wanted to be, at Mrs. Dawson’s. Those two sneak thieves might as well be fitted for hempen neckties.

* * * *

“I say we go north and search again, Quig. Harry must of stashed the rocks afore he ever got on that coach.”

“What, the fifteen miles between where you stabbed him and where he caught the Mail? We been there, Sean. The Runners’ve been there. Harry stole a horse, too, remember? He could of put the bundle in the fork of a tree, for all we know. Know how many trees there are between two postin’ inns? ‘Sides, half of ‘em are under snow.”

“Shut up, both of you. I say we go after the girl. You should have seen the way her man lit into his friends at Epsom. I wish I’d had blunt on the match. He’ll come down heavy to get her back, I know it.”

“But kidnappin’, Ursula? We ain’t never been in that line.” Quigley scratched his armpit.

“We ain’t never been in Newgate either, but that’s where we’re headed if you bunglers keep trying to snatch reticules off old ladies.” She frowned over at Quigley, who was too busy itching to notice, nor the way she kept her distance. “Else you two incompetents’ll be laid in the ground somewheres.”

“How’d I know she had a pistol in her purse?” Sean whined. Now part was missing from his ear, too.

Ursula pinched her cheeks. It was cheaper than rouge. “No, the girl’s our only chance to make a killing.”

“You said no killin’.”

“What, you’re getting religion on us, Quigley? It never stopped you from shooting that guard or Petey.”

“He weren’t a female. I don’t cotton to hurtin’ females.”

Ursula filed that away for future reference, but for now she told her cohorts, “We won’t hurt a hair on her head. Well, maybe cut off a snip or two to send the viscount so he knows we’ve got his little dove. He’ll come running with the gold, the same as he came running to Epsom after her. You’d think he was married to the chit or something.”

* * * *

“Oh, my word, what if he marries her?” Rosemary, Viscountess Chase, shredded her handkerchief as she sat in the pretty morning room of her rented house in Trowbridge. In front of her were three letters from faithful correspondents and three, count them, three copies of that wretched cartoon. The drawing was bad enough, showing a female of unmistakable appeal—at least her son had good taste—but the letters were worse. He was taking the female to museums, by heaven! A gentleman took his mistress to the park, the theater, anywhere he could show her off, not to museums and monuments! ‘Twas almost as if Courtney thought the baggage had something beside feathers between her ears. Worst of all, dear Lord, he was defending her.

Her son was defending a Covent Garden convenient! Lady Chase knew the boy, knew Courtney didn’t take these things lightly. Not for him any mindless tumble with a bit of nameless fluff, oh, no. He had to go find himself a woman of wit and wounded sensibilities, then put her on a pedestal for others to admire, and him to protect. The quixotic clunch must have gone and fallen in love with his mistress.

Drat him for not being infatuated with the gardener’s daughter when he was sixteen, his tutor’s wife when he was seventeen, Harriet Wilson and her sisters when he came on the Town. He’d be long over such calf-love catastrophes. But no, he was too serious as a young man, too responsible, too aware of what he owed his name and dignity, which traits he definitely had not inherited from his father, the libertine. Not that Lady Chase would prefer her son to be a profligate womanizer, she only wished he’d gone wading more, before jumping in over his head.

What if he married the jade? It would be the misalliance of the century, that’s what. They’d never be received and her grandchildren would be taunted by bullies. She’d never be able to show her face in Town, perhaps not even in Bath where Reverend Hollingsworth was a particular friend of hers, not with such a daughter-in-law.

Lady Chase tried to reread the letters, but they were too streaked and sodden with her tears. There was nothing for it but to order her things packed, to go put an end to this affair herself. Courtney was a good boy; he’d always listened to his mama. If not, she’d just have to buy off the mercenary miss.

Lady Chase didn’t blame the gel, not in the least. She blamed that snippety Adelina Marlowe for jilting her dearest boy and giving him a disgust of decent womenfolk. Why, if he’d married that flighty baggage, he could maintain five mistresses with the ton’s blessings—and his mother’s.