Cupid's Dart (6 page)

He set the miniature and the playbill on a table. "You will find her, Mr. Brown. And when you do, you will send me word." With that command, Carlisle clapped a tall beaver hat onto his head, and strode out into the hall.

Mr. Brown paused to wipe his damp brow. Then he collected the playbill and the picture and retired to the taproom, there to inspect the landlord's stock of sack and canary, ale and stout, and initiate his inquiries over a well-earned pint.

Mr. Sutton stepped into the courtyard of the inn, which styled itself The King's Hand, and was one of several establishments in which Charles II was said to have tarried whilst in flight to France. Carlisle had not wanted to return to England, and put on these curst uncomfortable clothes that made him feel trussed up like a chicken for the pot, and be subjected to the various humbugs that being rich as Croesus entailed. Here in Brighton he was, nonetheless, and in Brighton he would remain, even though he hadn’t the slightest interest in the town's fashionable pursuits. Even the extravagancies of the Prince Regent could only seem tame to someone who had rubbed shoulders with a Rajah, a Scandial, a Holkar, and a Peshwah.

What Carlisle found most interesting about Brighton was its mention in the Domesday Book, with 4,000 herrings paid as rent. Since he must be here, he would probably inspect the shipping and the harbor, and ride out to view the remains of the old Saxon camps. He called an ostler to bring round his horse.

Marry at haste, repent at leisure.
The Norwood Emerald must be returned where it belonged. Carlisle contemplated a horse trough filled with clear, fresh water, the ground below it sprinkled with fresh hay. Had Mr. Brown spied his employer at that moment, he might have glimpsed in those normally cold eyes a certain bloodlust. Mr. Sutton's complicated nature thrived on adversity.

It would not be difficult to drive the thieving wench out into the open. Even after so long an absence, Carlisle had access to resources not available to the earnest Mr. Brown. Not as stimulating as a tiger hunt, perhaps, he thought as he swung into the saddle, and certainly not so dangerous, but "Miss Mary Macclesfield" would provide him a diversion all the same. And when the chase was over, the little trollop would come to rue the day she first heard the name Norwood.

Chapter Seven

The following morning, because it was her habit—unthinkable that it should be for any other reason—Miss Halliday took her energetic pet for a stroll on the beach, and even went so far as to engage him in a game of fetch with a piece of driftwood. Georgie greatly enjoyed the seaside, though not so much that she might venture out in one of the storms that periodically encroached upon the shore and tore away great pieces of land. She held in great respect a force of nature that swept away embankments as soon as they were built. She liked to watch the packet boats sail to and from Dieppe, and the fishing fleet, to hear the murmur of the water against the shore, and inhale the bracing air.

That air, just now, was very chill and damp. Georgie pulled her shawl closer round her shoulders and trudged through the sand. Fortunate that Marigold was not an early riser, else even this little bit of solitude would be disturbed with laments about an unkind fate. Georgie did not recall her oldest friend being so prone to melodrama. That would be the influence of the theatrical Mr. Frobisher, no doubt. Georgie wondered which of Marigold's husbands might be held responsible for her current foolhardiness. "Blast and damn!" muttered Georgie, and kicked at an inoffensive seashell.

A large shape loomed up out of the fog. Georgie jumped. "I see that you are again unchaperoned," Lord Warwick remarked.

Georgie gestured, as Lump emerged from the fog with the driftwood in his jaws. "Not precisely. I wondered if I might find you here."

"I have grown accustomed to taking solitary walks." Garth smiled to see the riotous blond curls that escaped her bonnet. "You look like some water nymph sprung up out of the mist."

He looked like a devil, conjured up out of the fog to steal away her heart. Georgie blinked. Appalling, the effect Marigold had on one's imagination. "I am thinking of taking a course of sea-bathing. Perhaps I shall even hire a bathing machine."

Then perhaps Lord Warwick would hire a telescope, like those other gentlemen who sat on the Marine Parade and gazed out to sea, watching not for incoming enemy ships but inspecting the ladies in their flannel smocks as they floundered about in the muddy water. "Ah," he said ironically. "The lovely Mrs. Smith."

Marigold had made no conquest of Lord Warwick. "She is lovely, isn't she?" Georgie responded. "One might also wish she had good sense. I must ask you not to mention her presence to anyone, Garth. Pray ask me no questions, because I cannot explain."

"Come, walk with me before you take a chill." Garth offered her his arm. "Is there nothing I can do? I do not like to see you worrying yourself to death."

He could kiss her, Georgie thought. Not that a kiss would solve any of her problems, but it would feel very nice. "We are at sixes and sevens," she admitted. "Marigold is the least of my worries, to say the truth."

About those other worries, Lord Warwick had some notion. "You must know that Wellington has been elevated from viscount to earl. Your brother was with Mackinnon at Cuidad Rodrigo, was he not?"

Georgie glanced up at him, startled. "I did not think you were acquainted with my brother." Lord Warwick shook his head. "I sometimes wonder if Andrew will ever wholly recover. He has recurrent fevers. And nightmares. And gets to raving sometimes about the things he saw there."

Lord Warwick had a clearer notion of the sights of the Peninsula than did Andrew's sister. Scant wonder the boy raved. "I knew Mackinnon. He once impersonated the Duke of York at a banquet and dived headfirst into a punch bowl. Another time, when Wellington was visiting a convent, Mackinnon pretended to be a nun. Wellington was quite taken with the lady, or so the story goes."

Georgie smiled. "I think Andrew would like to talk of him. If you would not mind."

Garth would not mind anything that made Georgie less unhappy. Unless, perhaps, that something involved kissing someone other than himself. "I am at your service. And I will plague you with no questions so long as you promise to come to me if you find yourself in over your head with this business. I have taken a house on the Royal Crescent for the season." He paused. "You will be interested to know that Prinny has now lost not only some fingers, and the whole of his right arm, but also a portion of his nose."

The Royal Crescent, built facing the sea by a West Indian speculator, was a most fashionable address. The houses there were faced with black mathematical tiles, and in the center of the garden enclosure stood a buff-colored statue of the Prince of Wales. Perhaps Georgie should go inspect the defaced statue, for which either the weather or vandals were to blame. Or perhaps she should inspect the lodgings hired by Garth.

Georgie was rendered strangely breathless by this shocking notion. She pinched Lord Warwick's arm. "It is not kind of you to try and distract me! Or perhaps it is."

Lord Warwick wished that he might distract Georgie all the more. "There is one question I
must
ask. However came you by that nitwit of a butler?"

Georgie gurgled with laughter. "Poor Tibble. He tries so very hard. I inherited him from my grandmother along with the house, and could not bear to turn him out. Although I admit to being tempted the day I found him trying to break the claws of a lobster between the hinges of a dining room drawer." She then went on to divert Lord Warwick with additional tales about her household, including Janie's efforts to attract the attention of the new footman down the street, which took the little maidservant out of doors at every opportunity on the slightest of pretexts, with the result that they now had the whitest front steps in the entire neighborhood; and Agatha's efforts to tempt Andrew's sluggish appetite with mutton cutlets, eel broth, and rice milk. "She is now experimenting with home remedies for which I have even less hope," Georgie concluded. "They include dried toad, powdered mole, and fresh horse dung."

Georgie seemed comfortable with her bizarre household, Lord Warwick realized. Indeed she seemed comfortable with herself in a way now that she had not as a girl.

How dull as ditchwater were his companions. Lump dropped the driftwood that he had been clutching all this time in his jaws. His mistress had ignored him sadly since the gentleman had interrupted them at play. She had not even included in her tales of the household Lump's own discovery in the larder of a sleek and well-fed mouse. A seagull flying overhead caught his attention. He leapt up and barked.

Lord Warwick grasped Lump's collar. "No!" he said. "Sit, you wretched hound."

What was the world coming to, when he was spoken to so rudely twice in so many days? Lump sank down on the sand.

Georgie clapped her hands in admiration. "How did you do that?" she asked. "None of us can." The wind blew her errant curls into her eyes and she untied her bonnet with the intention of pushing her aggravating hair back beneath its confining bounds. "Although I have
noticed that gentlemen can sometimes persuade people to obey them just by employing a certain tone of voice."

Lord Warwick could not help himself. "Oh?" he inquired.

"Not that sort of thing!" Georgie made a strong effort to discipline her mind. "You are out early," she added. "Or have you not been to bed?" Quizzically, he looked at her. She sighed. "That didn't come out right."

"Come, let us continue our walk. You must be very cold." Lord Warwick regained possession of her arm. "No, I have not been to bed. We fashionable gentlemen would be appalled at the notion of cutting short our revels before cockcrow."

Georgie was not deceived by the lightness of his tone. "I am glad to see you return where you belong," she said. "You were gone from us for a long time."

Only with great difficulty had Garth rousted himself from the sprawling estate near Penrith where he had been rusticating—or, as some would have it, sulking—for some months. "So I was," he said. "It is almost as good as a play to see the fashionable world watch each other to determine how they must react—for the gossips hint that if I did indeed dispose of my wife, who knows what other dark secrets might lie buried in my past?"

Thus was Georgie confirmed in her opinion of the fashionable world. "Fiddle-faddle!" she said crossly, and slapped the bonnet against her skirts. "You had no previous wife to dispose of, and even the largest chucklehead would find it difficult to credit that you would sooner do away with a tiresome
petite amie
than simply pay her off."

Lord Warwick smiled. "I thank you, my dear, for that vote of confidence. Between you and Prinny, I may yet contrive to hold up my head. Although all the world knows Prinny is hardly a judge of character. Speaking of which, I have been privileged to see Mr. Wyatt's plans for remodeling the Pavilion in the most extraordinary Gothic style. It is expected to cost a minimum two hundred thousand pounds."

Georgie had forgotten that Lord Warwick was an intimate of the future king. It did not place him in exclusive company—the indolent, affable Regent was not notorious for the discriminatory quality of his relationships, among which had been included not only Beau Brummell and Lord Alvanley and the Duke of Argyle, "Poodle" Byng and "Golden Ball" Hughes, but also the Duke of Queensbury, who for a time retired to the King's Bench Prison for Debtors; Sir John Lade and his wife Letty, once the mistress of a highwayman known as "Sixteen String Jack"; the Barrymore brothers, Hellgate and Cripplegate and Newgate, and their sister, Billingsgate who, it was said, could be outsworn only by Letty Lade—but it reminded her anew of how great the disparity between them had grown. "The Pavilion is already a house run mad," Georgie remarked. "Domes and pagodas and turrets. Banqueting rooms with twining golden dragons. A China gallery of painted glass. One hears the strangest tales."

"All of them true, I make no doubt. I have seen the new stables myself. They include coach houses, harness rooms, servants' rooms, stables, and an open gallery. The whole structure is lighted through the glazed compartments of the cupola by which it is surrounded. It is some sixty-five feet high." Why the devil was he talking about stables? Garth didn't give a damn for Prinny's stables. He paused.

Georgie was thinking of their first meeting, and what Lord Warwick had said. When
had he wished to kiss her? He had used the word "still." Had he done so then, would things be very different now? Not that intimates of the Prince Regent were prone to dally with spinsters like herself. Bonnet forgotten in her hand, Georgie looked up at Lord Warwick. Her ribbons dangled in the sand.

They were very tempting ribbons. Piece of driftwood or straw hat, it was all the same to Lump. He grabbed the bonnet in his strong teeth, and ran.

The moment was shattered. Georgie sighed, and gazed after her lost bonnet. "I meant what I said, Garth. I am glad to see you resume your place in the world."

She was so determined to think well of him. Lord Warwick was touched. "As a gentleman of sinister reputation?" he inquired.

Georgie pushed her windblown hair out of her eyes, and frowned. "You are determined to jest."

Garth grasped her shoulders, swung her to face him. "It is hardly a jesting matter. I remind you that the gossips have me accused of murder, ma'am."

Steadily, Georgie met his gaze, or as steadily as she could with her hair blowing in her eyes. "To tell truth, there were several occasions on which I wished to murder Catherine myself."

Garth was aware of some of those occasions. Reluctantly, he smiled. "As did I. All the same, I did not murder my wife. Nor incarcerate her in some dank dungeon. Nor wall her up in a nunnery. I truly do not know where Catherine may be."

Georgie was very conscious of the warmth of his lordship's hands through the thin material of her shawl. "Lud!" she said briskly. "I never doubted that."

Garth was conscious also of Georgie's nearness. He could smell her sweet perfume, see the rapid pulse beat at the base of her throat. He thought that he would very much like to press his lips against that tender spot. He thought also that he was a married man, and one who stood accused of murder, and had much better not.