Dangerous to Love (13 page)

His brows drew together in a frown. “Catherine, you’re not serious?”

“Oh, my dear, but I am. Well, you must have noticed in the last little while how Major Raynor is present at all the assemblies and parties Serena attends?”

“But so is half of London,” he protested. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

Catherine slanted him a superior smile. “Furthermore,” she said, “Serena and I cannot go out in the carriage, or do a little shopping, but we ’accidently’ run across Major Raynor.”

He thought about this for a moment. “And Serena encourages him?”

“Hardly. That is not Serena’s way. But anyone with eyes in his head can see that they are taken with each other.”

His look was skeptical.

Catherine nodded. “If I were you, Jeremy, I would start getting used to the idea of Serena and Julian Raynor.”

   Serena went immediately in search of Clive. She did not have far to look. He was in the front hall, on the point of taking his leave.

“Clive, I should like a word with you,” she said.

“Can’t it wait? I have an appointment—”

“It can’t wait,” said Serena, and held the door to the morning room for him.

As soon as he had crossed the threshold, she shut the door, and said, “What is it, Clive? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing! That is, everything! Well, you heard what Jeremy said. I had no idea things were so bad with us.”

She studied him closely. “Yes, but that’s not it. Something was bothering you before Jeremy told us about our financial troubles. What is it, Clive?”

He stammered, and looked away, then finally blurted out, “The last thing I wanted was to involve you! Truth to tell, I was glad you were out of it. This is a dangerous business, a man’s business, and women should have no part in it.”

She laid her hand on his sleeve and looked up at him in appeal. “Let me be the judge of that. Now tell me what scrape you have got yourself into.”

For a moment, he hesitated, then plunged into speech. “The thing is, I agreed to take delivery of another ‘passenger.’ There’s no way of putting it off, and I don’t know
who to trust or turn to. I must go to France with Jeremy. Oh God, Serena, what am I going to do?”

   When the constable came to call at Ward House, with the exception of the servants, Serena was all alone. Summoned from the small sitting room which was reserved for the ladies of the house, she took a few moments to tidy herself before entering the downstairs blue saloon where the constable awaited her.

Constables calling at the house was not so unusual an event. Their most common complaint was that the Wards’ chairmen had become embroiled in a bout of fisticuffs with other chairmen whose sedans had got in their way. London chairmen were colorful characters and notoriously ill-tempered. Serena prayed that this call was no more than that.

She greeted Mr. Loukas with all her usual composure. After inviting him to be seated, she explained why it was she who had answered his call.

“As you may know,” she said, “my brothers have gone to France to make arrangements for my father’s return.”

“Yes, I had heard that Sir Robert had received his pardon. When did they go?”

“Two days since.”

“And when do you expect them to return?”

Serena studied the constable covertly. He seemed a genial sort of a fellow—merry blue eyes in a florid face. His powdered wig was slightly askew, and that made him seem all the more likable.

Relaxing a little, she replied, “Now that I cannot tell you with any certainty. Before they left, my brother received word that my father was not in the best of health. Oh, nothing serious, you understand. Sir Robert suffers from gout. As soon as he is fit to travel, they will escort him home.”

“And Mrs. Ward? Did she go with them?”

“Oh no. Catherine, that is, Mrs. Ward and my younger sister have gone to Riverview to be with the children. I, myself, would have gone with them if my little mare had not come down with a fever. Goldie is so indulged,” confided Serena, “that she would rather go into a decline than allow anyone to doctor her but I.”

It was all so distasteful, this subterfuge and misleading people, but there was no way around it. She had promised Clive that she and Flynn would see that his “passenger” got safely away, and that meant, of course, that she must remain in London until the thing was done. What made everything worse was that people accepted her explanations so easily. They trusted her, and that hurt. If only Catherine had made some protest, she did not think she would feel so guilty. But Catherine had merely said that though the children would be disappointed, they would know that Serena’s little mare must come first.

“I trust your ministrations were successful?” observed the constable politely.

The last Serena had seen of Goldie, she was in her stall, eating her head off. “It’s too soon to say,” she said, managing to look anxious. “Her constitution is very delicate, you know. These thoroughbreds are all the same.”

Having dealt with the amenities, Serena was not quite sure how to proceed and Mr. Loukas seemed to be in no hurry to state his business. Reflecting on the last time a constable had called at the house, she said in a conciliatory way, “I presume Flynn has been involved in another brawl? You may believe I shall deal very severely with him. Now, if you would be so good as to tell me what the damages amount to, I shall pay them at once.”

As it turned out, the constable’s visit had nothing to do with Flynn. It was Clive whom Loukas had been in hopes of finding. This is what Serena feared most.

“Clive? Why should you wish to see Clive?”

“My dear lady, let me set your mind at rest. My business with your brother has to do with another gentleman, an acquaintance of his. Perhaps you have heard of him? Lord Alistair Cumming?”

Not only had Serena heard of Lord Alistair, she knew exactly where he was. This was the “passenger” she had promised Clive she and Flynn would look out for. He had been delivered into their care in the wee hours of that very morning. At this moment, he was lodged in a room in a house in Whitefriars Street. Before the night was out, they were due to return and convey him to his ship.

“An acquaintance of my brother, you say? The name has a familiar ring to it. But .  .  .” She shook her head. “I regret, I cannot help you, Mr. Loukas.”

Little more was said after this, and before long, the constable had taken a very civil leave of her.

Serena was mulling over this conversation, when Flynn entered the room. “What did ’e want?” asked Flynn without preamble.

In very few words, Serena told him of the reason for the constable’s visit.

“I don’t like the sound of this,” said Flynn.

Neither did Serena. “Pooh!” she said. “What can go wrong? The constable isn’t likely to suspect a mere female. And we can’t just leave poor Lord Alistair in the lurch.”

“Why can’t we? ’E’s a man, ain’t ’e? Let ’im take ’is chances, that’s what I say.”

“Flynn, you know you don’t mean that. Besides, he’s only a boy.”

“ ’E’s a soldier, and the same age as me, for God’s sake. What do you think they wants ’im for—peeking under ladies’ skirts?”

She wasn’t listening to him. “Give me five minutes to dispense with these hoops, then we shall be on our way.”

“Oh no! Not this time, Serena. I ain’t putting my ’ead on no block for no traitor, not even if he is your brother’s friend.”

She showed him a perfect set of pearly white teeth. “Don’t worry, Flynn. Your head is safe from the block. They hang commoners.”

He watched her go with a smile on his face, a smile that Serena would have deeply distrusted if she had been there to see it.

In the carriage that conveyed them to Fleet Street, Flynn carried on from where he had left off. Serena let him run on without interruption. Her attention was given to adjusting the white feathered demimask she had borrowed from Catherine’s plethora of accessories. Ladies of fashion were often to be seen around town at night wearing masks to hide their identity.

From his corner in the coach, he said glumly, “I tell you, I’m at my wits’ end. I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”

Serena gave him a dry look. “I might say the same to you. Honestly, Flynn, if you go on the way you’ve been doing, you are going to come to a bad end.”

He grinned hugely, aware that she was referring to his amorous adventures with several ladies who moved in her own circles. “What ’ave I been doing?” he needled.

“You’ve been dropping your aspirates,” she retorted nastily.

“Them’s not all I’ve been dropping,” he riposted. “And you’re a fine one to speak!” When her lips set in a prim line, his grin intensified. Laughing, he sprang up and rapped his knuckles sharply on the roof, signaling the coachman to stop.

“This isn’t Whitefriars Street,” said Serena. “Why are we stopping?”

“Use your ’ead.” He reached in his coat pocket and pulled out a fat purse. “I don’t like the looks of that constable. ’E’s a fly one.”

“You think he may be following us?”

“Let’s just say I didn’t reach the ripe old age of twenty by forgetting to look over m’ shoulder.”

Once on the pavement, a change came over Flynn. When paying off the coachman and addressing Serena, he was the picture of deference, a well-bred lackey who knew his place. It was all show, of course, but it preserved the proprieties in public.

At one end of Bouverie Street, there was an alley, an airless, unsavory place with rows of washing stretched limply from window to window above their heads. One step into it, and Serena put her perfumed handkerchief to her nose to smother the smell of rotting refuse. They weren’t alone. Huddled in corners were the shapeless forms of men and women in various stages of inebriation. From lighted windows one floor up, naked girls brazenly postured, while their pimps accosted passersby in the street below. Business seemed to be brisk.

Serena was not so sheltered that she had not observed similar scenes around Covent Garden and in Drury Lane when she attended the theater. Closer to home, in the Strand, where a century before the private palaces of great noblemen had proliferated, prostitutes and their well-breeched patrons could be observed taking the air as soon as dusk settled over the city. There was an elegance to the Strand, however, that was not present here. This was squalor and on a scale she had never witnessed before.

They delayed until Flynn was satisfied that the coast was clear, then, using a labyrinth of connecting alleys,
they finally came out on Whitefriars Street. Only then did Serena dispense with the perfumed handkerchief.

“You are certainly no stranger to these parts,” she commented, her brows lifting meaningfully.

He answered her with a grin.

The house where they had lodged Lord Alistair appeared to be quite respectable, relatively speaking. Hackneys and sedans came and went in the street, and the patrons in the coffeehouse on the corner were more in the style Serena was used to. At the head of the stairs, Flynn halted and knocked on a door, not in a desultory way, but rhythmically, as if he were rapping out a signal.

“Who’s there?”

“Your little white rose,” whispered Serena,
giving
the password she, herself, had invented.

Flynn rolled his eyes. “This is better than the theater,” he said. “Look, while you entertains young Romeo ’ere, I’ll check on things downstairs.”

The door opened to reveal a remarkably handsome young blade dressed in the height of fashion. His garments had been supplied by Serena, courtesy of Clive.

“Mistress Ward,” he said, a smile lighting his eyes, and he ushered Serena inside.

Lord Alistair’s manners, his unwavering loyalty to a lost cause, everything about this young man found favor with Serena. Even the cultured Scottish brogue caught her fancy.

He pulled out a chair and dusted it off with his handkerchief. “You’ll share a glass of wine with me, milady?”

The wine, too, had been supplied by Serena, courtesy of Sir Robert’s fine wine cellar. “Thank you kindly, sir,” she said.

There was only one glass. Serena took a sip, and offered it to Lord Alistair. He fairly blushed at the implied intimacy.

This, very naturally, put her in mind of the last time she had shared a glass of wine with a gentleman.

Gentleman? She remembered the thrust of his tongue and the way he had lapped at her, practically devouring her, and she, too, blushed rosily. If Julian Raynor had ever blushed in his life, she would eat the fifty-pound note she kept in the top drawer of her dresser.

“I shall remember you to my dying day,” said Lord Alistair. “I never thought to find such kindness among the English. You are the bravest lady I have ever been privileged to meet.”

You have the manners of a lady and the morals of a whore.
That was the kind of compliment Julian Raynor passed out, and in the weeks following the night of The Thatched Tavern, his manners had scarcely improved. She’d thought they had an understanding, that in future they would give each other a wide berth. He was doing it on purpose, flaunting her wishes, turning up where she least expected him. Catherine’s levee had been the start of it. Now, she could not drive out in the park, or go shopping, or attend a musical evening or whatever, but he was there, trying to fluster her with those knowing looks of his, whispering “Victoria” in her ear when no one was listening. It was impossible to avoid him, impossible to deflate him without rousing everyone’s suspicions. She was forced to nod and smile and make conversation when what she really wanted to do was spit on him. Victoria, indeed! Victoria Noble was only a figment of her imagination and the sooner he understood that, the sooner his interest would wane.

Determined to banish Julian Raynor from her mind, she embarked on a flow of small talk, introducing the subject of St. Andrew’s University. This was where Lord Alistair had met her brother, when Clive went there for a year as an undergraduate. When they heard feet taking
the stairs, they both fell silent, and their eyes went to the door. A moment later, Flynn burst into the room.

“Militia,” he hissed, “with that there constable! We’d best get the ’ell out of ’ere.”

After dousing the lone candle, Flynn led the way, having previously ensured that they had another exit.