Barbara Metzger (14 page)

He approached cautiously at first, a dance here, a not-so-chanced meeting in the park there. Lee knew what a storm of gossip his least interest would produce, and wished to spare Miss Tarlowe that discomfort. But there were so many other, younger, men trailing at her skirts, men with no greater needs than to sit at her feet and write poems to her golden locks. Lee sat on two Parliamentary councils and wrote briefs for the Foreign Office. Nor could he dally on in London, worshiping her eyebrows like those sprigs, not when the Corn Laws were wreaking havoc in the countryside.

But what if she accepted one of them? Suddenly all those other fishes in the matrimonial seas were blowfish or barracudas or big-mouthed bass. It had to be Miss Tarlowe.

And she seemed to favor his suit. The viscount wasn’t naive enough to be surprised, yet he was delighted and relieved nevertheless. He moved slowly, quietly, not about to frighten her off with protestations of devotion and endless passion. And he gave her every opportunity to retreat without dishonor. He was even willing to wait six months to give her another Season to look around, to decide if he was the best she could do. It might have killed him, but he gave her the chance.

She hadn’t taken it. She’d taken him instead.

Lee poured out another glassful and this time sipped it slowly. No, he thought now, she’d taken his title and fortune and social standing, not the man. Not the man she’d just thrown out of her bed.

That man’s feet were getting cold, so he tugged on the bellpull. He knew the household was up, for he could hear scurrying and whispers beyond the library door. Hell, he’d be glad if Senta’s shrieks hadn’t awakened the sleeping Morvilles in the family crypt.

When he heard a scratch on the door, Lee’s heart leaped up, but it was only a footman with an armload of firewood. Then his valet came in, handing over a pair of slippers without meeting his master’s eyes. Even the butler, Wheatley, who was as much a fixture at the Meadows as the suits of armor in the hall, entered silently. He made room on the desk for a pot of coffee and a cup, not too subtly moving the cognac decanter aside.

Lud, what the staff must think of him now! Lee shook his head. Years of being a fair and generous employer, earning their respect, were wiped out in one night. What kind of beast brutalizes his sweet young wife into hysterics on their wedding night? Lee couldn’t imagine. But he was sure his servants could. By tomorrow the tale would be all over the countryside, too. Trying to stop the gossip would be like holding the ocean from the shore. He shoved the coffee aside and reached for the cognac. “Hell and damnation, is it possible to make more of a mess of this night’s work?” he asked himself.

Lee didn’t see the gold-clad figure glide through the wall, nor did he hear Sir Parcival’s answer: “Un-uh, reckon it’s impossible.” The spirit had drifted through the vast mansion looking for the viscount, catching giggling maids and leering footmen. “Man, this place is bigger than…bigger than…” He shook his head. “By the grace of God, I wish I could remember.”

Lord Maitland, meanwhile, decided on the coffee after all, to warm him. He shoved the cognac back and filled a cup of the strong, hot brew. He’d had too much to drink already today, perhaps enough that he could blame some of the night’s fiasco on the devil in the bottle. He wasn’t one to overindulge in the usual course, so perhaps all the toasts at the wedding breakfast had him a trifle disguised. If his head had been clearer, maybe he wouldn’t have frightened poor Senta so much.

Sir Parcival gazed longingly at the decanter, but shrugged and strolled about, admiring the rows upon rows of leather-bound volumes. He was even more impressed with the tiger-skin rug in front of the fireplace. Lee didn’t notice.

Thunderation, the viscount cursed to himself, he’d known Senta was frightened. Hell, he’d been quaking in his boots himself, or out of them, as it were, nervous about making the first time pleasant for her. He wasn’t inexperienced, not by a long shot, but the women he was used to were usually even more experienced. Most assuredly Viscount Maitland was not in the practice of deflowering virgins. He’d even had a cold bath before knocking on the door of her bedchamber, to dampen some of his ardor. It hadn’t worked a bit.

He couldn’t wait to make her his, to tie her to him with bonds of passion, to express his love in a way his fumbling words never could, to make her forget every other man who ever existed. Maybe she’d even get to like him, just a little. But no, he’d rushed his fences. His head hadn’t been clear enough to exert control over his wayward body. Lee blamed himself for the whole
debacle, for having too much on his mind to pay attention to Senta’s anxieties. Then he told himself it wouldn’t have mattered at all, if she had another man on her mind.

Lee sighed and pulled open the top drawer of his desk. Reaching toward the back, he pulled a hidden lever and another, secret drawer opened. The viscount withdrew two folded notes. “I didn’t make her happy,” he lamented aloud. “Didn’t make her like me. Now I can’t even protect her from scandal.”

Sir Parcival stood behind Maitland’s chair to see what was bothering this jackass so much he didn’t get back upstairs and make love to his wife. “Hell,” Sir Parcival muttered, “you wouldn’t find me down here catching my death, if I got a woman waiting upstairs.” He cocked his head. “Nah.”

Lee was studying the two notes. Fine, he thought, his wife had two lovers; he had two blackmailers.

Sir Parcival leaned over his lordship’s shoulder to peer at the notes. He read one and whistled through his teeth, causing the viscount to tug at the collar of his satin dressing gown to avoid the draft. He couldn’t, for Sir Parcival whistled again, after he read the second message. “Those ain’t no love letters,” he drawled. “No wonder your hand’s shaking like a leaf on a tree.”

The first letter, written in bold but elegant script on fine-quality paper, advised:
If you do not wish your bride and the public to hear the true facts concerning the death of Lieutenant Michael Morville, send five hundred pounds to the Seven Swans posting inn, in London, attention, Mr. Browne.

The missive had arrived at the Meadows right after Christmas, via the troubled hands of Lee’s London secretary, John Calley. Lee hadn’t paid the demand, of course. Once you paid an extortionist, he became your pensioner for life. Besides, you could pay and pay, and still have no guarantee that your family skeletons would stay in the closet. Lee wouldn’t put his trust in finding
any honor among such thieves as would steal a dead man’s integrity.

Instead he’d sent back with his trusted secretary a thick letter to Mr. Browne, three pages folded and sealed with the distinctive Maitland crest. Let the dastard think his blood money was inside.

The pages were blank, while Calley had enough blunt to bribe everyone at the inn from the porter to the potboy. Someone ought to be able to identify Mr. Browne when he retrieved the letter, quickly enough for the men Calley was hiring to follow him. If Lee had to spend more than the five hundred pounds in rewards and bribes, it would be money well spent, to defang the viper. Let Calley just find the snake’s name and direction, then let Mr. Browne see how he liked the payment Lee was planning to give him.

So far, there had been no report back from London. Nor any gossip.

The other note was on common stock, and had arrived today before the wedding. No, ’twas past midnight. Lee’s wedding day had come and gone. It was already yesterday now. He could only shake his head at the waste, and look back at the second message. This one was written in ill-formed letters, which could have disguised a gentleman’s handwriting, even a woman’s, but Lee didn’t think so, from the caliber of the threat:
I know what really happened to your little brother. I’m at the inn. We need to talk.

This villain was a fool, thinking to get away with extortion in Maitland’s own home village of Mariwaite, where every stranger was immediately suspect. The townspeople had been loyal to the Maitland family for centuries. If the fellow dared breathe a word against Michael, he’d be lynched before Lee could get to him, which would be a deuced shame.

Not that the viscount meant to pay off this gallows-bait, any more than he would the muckworm in London. And he didn’t need to talk to anyone about his
brother, for he already knew more details than he wished. Details that he thought—prayed—he could carry alone to his own grave. It was not to be.

Maitland stood and carried his coffee to the mantel, over which hung a picture of the late viscountess, his mother. She was wearing a rose-colored gown in the style of twenty years ago, and she was smiling down at the child at her feet. Another boy, himself, stood rigidly at her side, already serious and solemn at ten. The baby frolicked with a ball at his mother’s skirts. Lee remembered the nursemaids endlessly chasing after toddling Michael to return him to the sitting, while the artist scowled. Lee had stayed put, hating every minute of it, because the heir to Maitland knew his duties. Mama just smiled.

Oh yes, Lee knew how Michael had died in Portugal. Thank goodness their mother had passed on before she had to know.

The official version, because of Maitland’s money and influence, and because the army couldn’t afford another scandal right now, was that Lieutenant Morville was accidentally killed when his rifle discharged while he was cleaning it. It was just one of those quirks of war, they said, that a young man could serve with distinction through all those bloody battles and retreats, even survive the fevers and fatigues of the occupying army, then succumb to a misfired bullet. Frightful loss and all that. There were even rumblings among the condolence-callers of shoddy weapons, misspent appropriations. Lee had nodded, accepting the sympathy, because the heir to Maitland still knew his duties.

The story was a lie. The generals knew it; Lee knew it. They thought they were the only ones, that they could get away with the fabrication, so Lee could bring the body back and bury Michael next to their parents in the family plot with some degree of honor. It wasn’t a hero’s burial, but neither was it a traitor’s hanging, or a suicide’s ostracism.

For in truth Michael, that little cherub playing so sweetly at their mother’s feet, had done them all the courtesy of blowing his own brains out before the army got a chance to court-martial him. He’d led his own men into an ambush after selling information about their movements to the French.

Lee still couldn’t believe it. He had a hard enough time believing dashing, daring Michael was never coming back, much less that he was a turncoat. But the evidence was there, laid out by Michael’s commanding officer: the French script found in his bunk, the gambling chits he’d signed, the casualty reports of a supposedly secret mission. Most damning of all was the general’s own report of the bullet to the temple. Innocent men don’t kill themselves.

Why hadn’t he sent home for money if he found himself up River Tick? Lee had asked himself a hundred times. He’d never refused Michael anything, not even the commission the young hellion begged him to purchase. All the young officers gambled; that was no great failing. No, Michael knew his sins were so great that suicide was the only solution.

But it hadn’t been a solution at all, not one the army or Lord Maitland could live with, so they’d devised a death by misadventure. Lee could hold his head up, with his family name still untarnished, while he searched for a woman to give him heirs to replace his fallen brother. That was his duty now.

He went courting and found a pure, innocent girl, he thought, with the light of heaven in her blue eyes. Well, they’d both cheated on their wedding vows.

Senta’s soul wasn’t quite so unsullied, although he still believed her body was. So far. On the other hand, he’d offered his fine old name, which was in reality as tarnished as a pinchbeck teapot. If she’d married him for the exalted social position, she was in for a disappointment as bad as this wedding night was to him.

The truth was bound to get out now, even if he paid. If two men knew the truth, there would be others. It would be a scandal of epic proportions, and a blot on Lee’s own honor, that he lied and laid out donations to the war effort to get Michael a decent burial.

No matter, Lee had no intention of paying. But he did intend to do what he could to repay the blackmailers for his anguish.

“I’m not going to let this night be a total waste,” he vowed out loud as he left the library, calling for his clothes, his pistol, and his carriage, in that order.

Wheatley protested from his position of aged family retainer. “But, milord, there’s flurries starting. Who knows, but we could have a blizzard by morning. You can’t go out in this, and on your wed—”

“I’m going,” Lee snapped back before Wheatley could finish that thought. “I’m only going as far as the inn in the village, old man.” Let the whole staff think he was going to drown his sorrows in local ale or in the arms of a willing tavern wench. Lee didn’t care. He was going to get some satisfaction out of this evening.

Sir Parcival, his brow furrowed, long fingers tapping out a silent tune on the desktop, stood staring at the two notes. He didn’t know what he was doing here, or how to get back to something familiar. He figured that since Senta could see him and no one else could, he must be here to help her. He hunched his shoulders. How? He didn’t even know what her husband intended to do out there in the night.

He stared at the letters as if the answer lay in their words. If he could just figure out the meanings and motives behind these two notes, he’d know better how to help. Then maybe he’d get his memory back and go home.