Dangerous to Love (29 page)

I
n the companionable silence, Blackie allowed his gaze to wander over the office which he had occupied during Julian’s absence for the last two years. In his mind, it had always been Julian’s office, stamped with Julian’s personality, and now that Julian was sitting behind his desk again, it seemed as if the last two years had never been. The whole house was Julian’s conception, and Blackie still could not believe that his friend meant to relinquish even a small part of it.

As Julian had pointed out, a man moved on, changed direction as events shaped his destiny. In a month, two at the most, he would be returning to the New World to the life that awaited him there. It went without saying that Julian would make a success of whatever he attempted. Blackie never doubted that for a moment.

“Why the glum look?” asked Julian.

Blackie shrugged, hesitated, then said sheepishly, “I never expected nor ever wanted to be the part proprietor of this place. Truth to tell, in the last little while, I’ve felt more like the caretaker waiting for his master’s return. I shall miss your bark, Julian, if not your bite. And .  .  .”

“And?”

Blackie laughed. “I hope my luck is not about to turn.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it,” rejoined Julian, regarding his friend steadily. “You have proven your abilities to handle things in my absence, as the ledgers clearly demonstrate. You’ll do fine, Blackie. You may take my word for it. And it’s not as though I am making you a gift
of the enterprise. I expect to be well paid from future profits.”

Blackie glanced at the open ledgers on Julian’s desk. “Well, there have certainly been plenty of those.”

“Yes,” said Julian, running one finger down a column of figures, stopping at a particular entry. “What surprises me is that in my absence our patrons could be persuaded to redeem their vowels. How did you manage it?”

Blackie bloomed with pleasure at this high praise. Laughing in a deprecating way, he said, “I took a leaf out of your own book, Julian, you know. I let it be known that if they did not pay off their gaming debts, I would make it public knowledge, and as you know, there is nothing to make an English gentleman lose face so much as the scandal of not redeeming his vowels. It’s a matter of honor.”

Julian smiled. “That was well done of you,” he said, then went on casually, “What surprises me is that Jeremy Ward was in a position to clear his debts. As I understand, he practically beggared himself to obtain that pardon for his father.”

Blackie glanced at the notation in the ledger that Julian was indicating. “Lord, yes!” he said, and looked reproachfully at Julian. “When I went through the promissory notes in the safe and came upon the bills and mortgages belonging to Jeremy Ward, I almost had an apoplexy. I could not believe that you would extend credit, and such an astronomical sum, to a man who was known to be tottering on the verge of ruin. I was sure the house would never see a penny of it.”

“But I see from the ledgers that Sir Jeremy redeemed every last bill and mortgage.”

“Not Sir Jeremy, no. Lord Charles Tremayne approached me and made me an offer for them. I sold them for half what they were worth.” He looked doubtfully at
Julian. “Did I do wrong? I don’t mind telling you, I jumped at Lord Charles’s offer.”

“You did the right thing,” said Julian, and smiled. “What puzzles me is how Lord Charles knew that the bills were in my possession, and what he meant to do with them.”

Blackie shrugged. “I never thought to ask. I was only too happy to be shot of them.” He looked curiously at Julian.

Aware of that speculative look, Julian flicked open a silver snuffbox and offered it to Blackie. “What do you think of my mix?”

Taking a pinch, Blackie raised it to one nostril, then the other. “Very nice,” he said. He did not know the first thing about snuff, nor ever wished to know. He left such things to connoisseurs such as Julian. Seeing that something more was required of him, he said emphatically, “Very nice indeed. Is it your own recipe?”

“No,” said Julian, “it was a present from a lady.”

“Ah,” said Blackie, trying to sound noncommittal. In the week since Julian had taken up residence, Lady Amelia Lawrence had made an infernal nuisance of herself, sending round perfumed notes and gifts in an attempt to lure Julian into her net. For the most part, Julian had been preoccupied with business. If there was a woman in his life, Blackie wasn’t aware of her. He hoped, for Julian’s sake, that he wasn’t going to take up with Amelia Lawrence. In Julian’s absence, Lady Amelia had become a widow and Blackie feared that she had set her sights on Julian.

This thought had him grinning. If anyone could take care of himself, it was Julian, as his sojourn in the colonies had proved. In point of fact, it seemed to Blackie that Julian’s arrest and subsequent flight to South Carolina had all worked out for the best. Julian was the same man
he remembered, and yet he was different, less cynical, more at ease with himself. Except, Blackie mentally amended, when the subject of women crept into the conversation. That was when Julian was at his most satirical. Blackie divined that his friend had taken a mauling from one of those Charles Town beauties with whom his name had been linked in the last little while. No. Julian was in no danger of succumbing to Lady Amelia’s lures.

“What put that grin on your face?” asked Julian.

Blackie shook his head. “You,” he said. “Since your return, you have become a person of celebrity. Society matrons who once hid their unfledged chicks from your eyes are now outdoing themselves in trying to lure you to their parties. This is a far cry from those early days in the stews of Whitechapel!”

“Yes, we’ve both come a long way.”

Blackie smiled to himself as the recollection of his first encounter with Julian came back to him. It had happened all of six years ago. He’d met Julian in a gaming den, and had propelled himself into the fracas which developed when Julian discovered that he was being cheated. There was no reason for Blackie to take Julian’s part, except that a moment or two before, they’d exchanged a few words on their respective experiences serving in His Majesty’s service. Julian was a military man. That was enough for Blackie.

Though they’d come out the worst in the melee, they’d managed to bloody a few noses before they were thrown unceremoniously out on the street. Afterward, they’d drowned their sorrows in the time-honored way and had become friends in the process. From that day to this, Blackie never ceased to be amazed that for once in his life, he had been in the right place at the right time. Julian Raynor never forgot a good turn.

“You know what they are saying about you, don’t you?” said Blackie.

“What do they say?”

“Oh, some say that you were a Jacobite, and others that you were a government agent, and the reason you left England in such haste was to escape the wrath of whatever side you were working against.”

“And what do you say, Blackie?”

“Why, I tell them what you told me, that it was always in your mind to go to America, and that your arrest merely hastened that day forward.”

“And that’s it in a nutshell.”

Long after Blackie had returned to his duties, Julian sat at his desk, contemplating the ledgers. He cared little that Sir Jeremy Ward’s bills and mortgages were no longer in his possession. He had acquired them for only one purpose and that was to ruin Sir Robert Ward. With the baronet’s death, there was no point in going on with it. What puzzled him was Lord Charles’s intervention. What good were they to him? If he was staving off ruin for the Wards, why not simply lend Sir Jeremy the money so that he could clear his debts in person? And how had Lord Charles known where to find them?

It hardly mattered to him. The Wards were no concern of his. He had more important things to occupy his mind. With a glance at the clock, he stowed the ledgers in the safe, an ingenious contraption in the shaft of the dumbwaiter that connected his private office to the pantry in the floor below. Only he and Blackie knew of the existence of this safe. A gambler could never be too careful with either his ledgers or the notes he had acquired.

His hand moved aside a stack of promissory notes, and touched upon a document that he had examined many times in the last week. Retrieving it, Julian examined it again. The seal was broken now, but that had been his
doing. He had wanted to make quite sure that no one had tampered with the contents of the packet. His marriage certificate was not much to look at. It was torn and disfigured by several unsightly stains.

He stared at it for a long, long time before tossing it into the safe and depressing the lever that worked the secret panel. Having shut the doors to the dumbwaiter, he again glanced at the clock. It was time to keep his appointment with Lord Kirkland at the War Office.

   “I c-came into the affair very late in the day, as I wrote you once I knew your direction.”

Lord Kirkland topped up Julian’s glass of sherry. “As I told you then, I called out the militia to look for you, but by then, of course, it was too late. You were already on your way to America.”

“What I want to know,” said Julian, “is who authorized my arrest?”

“That’s just it. Your arrest was n-not authorized, at least, I can find no r-record of the magistrate who called the militia out to arrest you. I don’t know what to m-make of it. It’s an odd business, a v-very odd business indeed.”

Julian could scarcely concentrate on the conversation for staring at the portrait on the wall behind the earl’s desk. He felt as though he had been flung back in time, and he was a boy again, and his mother was laughing at something he had just said. His throat was so tight, he was drinking his sherry as if it were water.

Observing that Julian’s interest was straying yet again, Lord Kirkland half turned in his chair to look at the portrait.

“She is very beautiful,” said Julian. “Who is she?”

“That,” said the earl, “is a p-portrait of my sister, Harriet, shortly before she eloped.”

“I understood you to say that your picture gallery had been destroyed in the fire?”

“And so it was. This p-portrait was in a relative’s possession. It came to me on his death.”

This was the first time that the subject of Julian’s mother had ever come up between the two men, and Julian seized on the opportunity to probe a little deeper, knowing that it might never come again. “It was a tragic story, as I have heard?”

“What have you heard?” The earl was fiddling with the stopper on the sherry decanter.

Julian hesitated, then plunged in. “I heard that Sir Robert Ward hounded the man your sister married, and that he died in debtors’ prison.”

“I’m surprised people remember the s-story. But yes, what you have related is the sum of what h-happened.”

“And your sister? Whatever became of her?”

“I never found out. Well, I w-wouldn’t, would I? She eloped when I was a m-mere boy. By the time I was in a position to look for her, ten years had passed, and the trail was cold. I knew she was d-dead, of course.”

“How could you have known that?”

“Because, before his d-death, Renney took up a position with Lord Hornsby. He must have been a w-widower by that time. There was no s-sign of Harriet, no m-mention of her. And, if Harriet had been alive, she would have c-come for me. We were always very c-close.”

Julian remembered well the straits that had led his father to take up a position with Lord Hornsby. Their little family had been scattered, never to be reunited. He couldn’t stop now. “I believe,” he said, “Sir Robert’s hatred was motivated by a letter your tutor wrote to the authorities betraying him and Lord Hugo?”

“Was there a l-letter? Well, we have only Sir Robert’s
w-word for that. He was to be m-married to my s-sister, did you know? He never forgave Renney, never f-forgot.”

“Are you saying that Sir Robert hounded poor Renney because he was jilted?” asked Julian, frowning.

“It would not surprise m-me. Sir Robert was always a p-proud man. Anyway, it h-happened such a long time ago. We shall n-never know now.”

There was a knock at the door, and the earl’s secretary entered. After a short discussion of which Julian heard not one word, the secretary quit the room, and the earl returned to the subject of Julian’s arrest.

“I c-called you to my office because this is in the nature of an apology for what you were m-made to suffer through our .  .  . well .  .  . you know what I mean.”

“Incompetence?”

The earl shifted restlessly. “Who is to say what happened that night? At the time in question, riots were taking place in the city, and m-my hands were full putting them down. Didn’t you know? Some naval men went on the rampage, setting fire to b-bawdy houses for whatever reason. When soldiers came out to subdue them, they went for them too. There were so many m-militia on the streets that night k-keeping the peace, that it was hard to k-keep track of them all.

“However, if you would give me some clue to the s-soldiers who arrested you, n-names, or even a description of the officer in charge, I would be p-prepared to pursue the matter until we discover who they are. One thing I can s-say for certain. They were acting on their own. No magistrate, no justice of the p-peace authorized your arrest that night.”

Julian thought of “Pretty” and the scar he undoubtedly carried from their confrontation. It was the thought of Serena that made him hesitate. If it could be proved that she was behind his abduction, he didn’t want the law to
deal with her. He was quite capable of dealing with her himself.

“I regret to say that none of them stands out in my memory.”

“Where did they t-take you? How did you escape them? You m-must remember something?”

With the exception of the perpetrators of the crime against him, no one knew that he had been transported to Maryland as an indentured convict. Everyone was under the impression that he had escaped from custody and had fled the country with the help of his friends. He debated taking the earl into his confidence, and decided against it. He was enough of a celebrity as it was. If it became known that he had served time as a convict, he would become an object of raging curiosity.