How To School Your Scoundrel (10 page)

Luisa hadn’t ever glimpsed the interior. During the very few times she’d passed through the nursery, Lady Somerton’s door had remained closed, giving off the unmistakable whiff of the sacrosanct. A kind of altar, on which her ladyship’s youth and beauty were made sacrifice. The nunnery upstairs.

The door was not, however, locked.

When Luisa turned the knob, expecting resistance, she found it opened so easily she staggered inward, off-kilter. The gentle scent of roses drifted into her head, making her pulse jump, as if Lady Somerton herself had sprung out of the wardrobe and stabbed an accusing finger.

Except that Lady Somerton would never do that, would she? She would simply stand there in all her quiet perfection, casting out her look of grieved accusation.

Luisa straightened herself and looked around. The curtains were drawn, shading the watery February sunlight, but she could easily make out the shapes of a well-furnished room, done in blues and creams, surprisingly large for a room on the nursery floor. Perhaps they had taken out a wall. A white-painted iron bed stood in the center, neatly made. A pair of fine old walnut wardrobes filled the shorter wall, opposite the window, clearly brought up from downstairs; in another corner, a washstand and dresser formed a nook of convenience. Bookshelves had been built into the walls flanking the window, and a seat below it; this was piled with blue and cream cushions, an invitation to read. A closed bureau sat opposite the foot of the bed, topped by a glass vase filled with dried hydrangeas.

Where on earth could she begin? Any one of those books might conceal a cache of love letters. The bureau—undoubtedly locked—might be stuffed with illicit correspondence and
objets d’amour
, or it might be stuffed with bills and household lists. Should she open that first? Miss Dingleby had taught her how to pick a simple lock with a hairpin, during one of her Battersea afternoons, but she would rather not if she could avoid it.

On the other hand, a locked bureau was the obvious place to start searching for evidence of a love affair.

Luisa dragged herself across the floorboards—hygienic, if rather ascetic—and placed her hand on the smooth-polished lid of the bureau. Sure enough, the key had been removed from the lock. She reached into her pocket for the hairpin. Oh, the grubbiness of it all, the low sneaking vulgarity. Looking inside a countess’s private papers, and for what? To feed the mad jealousy of a scorned husband.

She should stand firm. She shouldn’t do this. She wasn’t a spy, like her uncle. Like Somerton himself. Even if she were, there was a world of difference between gathering intelligence for the greater good of one’s country—ransacking the papers of traitors and state enemies, or worse!—and fingering through the personal effects of a private and exceedingly virtuous citizen.

But what if she returned empty-handed?

She would be sacked, turned out, left without protection. Her uncle’s schemes interrupted, her own identity perhaps exposed, her beloved people left under the rule of revolutionary despots. The effects of failure went far beyond the injured privacy of Lady Somerton.

A head of state must sometimes do the unthinkable on behalf of his country.
She could hear her father’s voice as if he were in the room, speaking in her ear.
It is the greatest burden of leadership.

She fingered the hairpin, took a deep breath, and stuck it in the lock.

The burled wood brushed her knuckles, sleek with polish. An elegant, well-made desk: It reminded her of her own bureau, back in Holstein Castle, left locked just like this one. Had some member of the Revolutionary Brigade of the Free Blood picked her lock? Read her private papers? Opened her drawers and found the acorns Stefanie had given her as a present, fifteen autumns ago? The little infant’s cap she had begun knitting for her stepmother’s expected baby, which had never required finishing? That first halting and endearingly awkward note from Peter, after their engagement?

Who the devil
was
she, anymore? What had she become?

Luisa slid the hairpin back out of the lock and straightened her spine.

“What are you doing?”

Luisa jumped and turned, all in the same motion. “Wh-what?”

Young Philip stood by the window, watching her with his dark and solemn eyes. How long had he been there? For God’s sake, a moment ago he’d been walking in the square gardens. She’d seen him dash through the gate with her own eyes. “I said, what are you doing in my mother’s room?”

“I . . . No . . . I . . .” Luisa ran a frantic hand over her hair and eyed the distance to the doorway. “Shouldn’t you be with your mother?”

“Mama’s downstairs. I forgot my marbles. Have you lost something, too?” His innocent young voice lifted inquisitively.

Luisa’s thoughts dashed in circles. She forced them to slow down, forced herself to breathe. He was just a five-year-old boy, after all. A stranger to logic. “No! That is . . .”—an idea flashed—“that is, yes. Yes, I have. I’m looking for something. Your father asked me to fetch something of your mother’s, but he forgot to tell me where it was. Isn’t that silly?”

He smiled. “That’s silly. What is it?”

“It’s a . . . it’s a . . . it’s a grown-up . . . a grown-up thing, Philip.”

“Oh.” Disappointment.

“So I’m trying to think where it might be. Where she might keep it. It’s something very special, something she loves very much and likes to keep safe. So of course it’s tucked away somewhere. I was just wondering where.”

“Oh.” He jiggled something in his hand. The marbles, no doubt. “Just wait here and I can ask her.” He turned to the door.

“No! No, let’s not trouble her. It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

Philip nodded sympathetically. “I like surprises.”

“Yes. So I’ll just run down to ask your father, and . . .”

“Father won’t know. He never comes up here.”

“I’m sure that’s not true, Philip.”

“Yes, it is. He never comes up here.”

Luisa turned the hairpin over and over in her palm. “I expect he comes up at night, after you’re asleep.”

Philip tilted his head, considering.

“Off with you, now. You . . . well, you’ll keep our secret, won’t you?”

“I can keep a secret.” He paused in doubt. “Unless Mama asks me.”

“Yes, of course. If she asks you outright, you must tell her the truth, Philip.” Luisa slipped the hairpin back into her pocket. For some reason, her eyes stung with tears.

“I’ve got to be a man of my word, after all. That’s what Mama says.”

“Yes, you do. She’s right, that’s the most important thing in the world. Now go enjoy your games in the park.”

“All right. You’ll let me know when you’re going to surprise her, won’t you?” He smashed his cap back on his head and wiggled it into a position of comfort.

“Oh, of course.”

He grinned and turned to the door. “I’ll bet she puts it in her treasure box.”

“Her what?”

He was already trotting out the door, marbles rattling. “Her treasure box in the wardrobe! She lets me play pirates with it as long as I put all the jewelry back when . . .” The rest of his words were lost in the hallway.

Luisa stood without moving, right in the center of the countess’s austere blue and cream bedroom.

Oh, damn. Now why on earth did the little chap have to go and say that?

L
ord Somerton and his companion prowled between the tables of the Sportsmen’s Club dining room, spreading silence like a virulent miasma in their wake.

His lordship was not unaware of the effect. He knew his fellow members cordially disliked him, that he had only been accepted inside the hallowed walls because the relevant committee members had feared for their lives otherwise. He knew they would in fact draw such a collective sigh of relief as to rattle the trophies in their cases, should he be so good as to tender his resignation. He had long since ceased giving a damn.

Damned scoundrel
, someone muttered behind him, a trifle too loudly.

“You’ll find the wine is excellent, the food mediocre, and the company mewling,” he said, as the waiter led forth to the snug table in the back corner, “but a London club, however ossified its membership, is nonetheless vastly preferable to a mere public dining room.”

Though Somerton was normally quite capable of lowering his voice to a discreet hum, indecipherable from more than a foot away, he didn’t bother lowering it now.

“I quite agree,” said his companion, lowering himself into the proffered chair. “Though I have never been so fortunate as to have been offered membership.”

“I am hardly surprised. The sons of privilege are never more close ranked than when confronted with a man with the balls to make his own fortune.” He took pleasure in putting a slight emphasis on the
balls
, so that the word projected halfway across the room and bounced about like a rubber quoit off the horrified faces of the assembled diners.

Mr. Nathaniel Wright, founder and chairman of that colossus of British finance, Wright Holdings, Ltd., was unperturbed. “Or to have been born to parents so careless as to have neglected to marry each other.”

“Ah, but the old earl who sired you had no choice, had he? Divorce is such a distasteful affair, and he could hardly commit bigamy.” Somerton smiled, to make sure Wright caught the humor in his words. So many people unaccountably missed it.

“Certainly not in order to perform the entirely unnecessary duty of marrying the daughter of a tea shop owner, who merely happened to be carrying his child.” Wright’s face contained all the warmth and expression of a plaster of Paris mask.

Somerton rather liked that in a man.

When the plates had been cleared and the wine finished off, and the waiters had brought out the cigars and brandy and retired to a respectful distance, Somerton reduced his voice to a confidential drawl.

“I am so glad, Mr. Wright, that I was able to supply my little mite of assistance in that affair of yours,” he said.

Wright took a slow draw of his cigar. “Indeed. I’m grateful.”

“Have you reached a satisfactory conclusion?”

“I suppose that remains to be seen. The immediate object, however, has been achieved. The young man in question is about to find himself in a very tight spot indeed. He’s an ingenious fellow, however, and I’m not at all certain he won’t find a way to wiggle out of it.” Wright tapped a thoughtful crumb of ash into the tray and waved aside a lingering curl of smoke. “Do you know, I rather hope he does. Wiggle out of it, I mean. Either way, I shall be fascinated to observe the performance.”

“Good, good.” Somerton tried to summon up a measure of sympathy for the beleaguered young Lord Hatherfield—God knew, he himself had some experience with tight spots and overbearing fathers—and failed. In professional matters, he had long since acquired a hardened detachment to the fates of his subjects. Work was work, after all. Someone had to do the dirty tasks in a civilized society. Someone had to blacken his fingers.

“And you, Somerton?” Wright rolled the brandy lazily in its snifter and observed Somerton’s face with his patient gray eyes. “Is there anything I can do to return the favor?”

“How good of you to ask, Mr. Wright. In fact, as it happens, I do have a matter of my own that might better be handled outside the influence of official channels.”

“Indeed.”

“You impress me, Mr. Wright, as a man of both discretion and initiative. A man on whom—and I never render this judgment lightly—a man on whom I can rely.”

Wright lifted his left eyebrow an inquisitive quarter inch, and nodded cordially.

Somerton took this as an indication of acquiescence. “You have some influence in shipping matters, I believe.”

“I run a mere humble countinghouse, Lord Somerton, not a shipping empire.”

Somerton regarded Wright’s sleek dark hair, his rigid and blinding shirtfront, his fine wool dinner jacket stretched over his broad shoulders, blackest black, identical to Somerton’s own. The scent of hushed expense that wafted from his substantial figure. “But shipping empires, to use your words, come to you for capital, do they not? Capital to buy more ships, capital to finance cargoes.”

“From time to time, they do.”

“So if, for example, and speaking hypothetically . . .”

“Hypothetically, of course.” Wright took a drink of his brandy and picked up his cigar.

“Hypothetically, if one wished to arrange a berth for a certain passenger and his luggage, quite at the last minute and without any questions asked as to the content of said luggage, you might find yourself in a position to effect this removal?”

“Discreetly, I presume.”

“Discreetly, of course.”

Another drink of brandy. “To which continent, sir?”

“Let us say, for the sake of argument, to South America.” Somerton made an expansive gesture with his hand, drawing a thin blue curl of cigar smoke in the air.

“And when would this voyage take place?”

“
If
it were to take place, it would be soon. Perhaps before the end of the week.”

Wright let out a low gentlemanly whistle.

“Too soon?” Somerton asked.

“Not necessarily. Hypothetically, I suppose I might be able to pull a string or two. Call in the odd favor.”

“My dear fellow, I am vastly pleased to hear it.”

“I would have one condition, however, were such a proposal to be made. A concern to be laid at rest, as a point of honor.”

“Name it.”

“I will not, under any circumstances, commit an action that would in any way, or to any degree, prove to the detriment of Great Britain, Lord Somerton.” Wright set down his empty brandy snifter precisely in the center of the table and fixed Somerton with the kind of gaze that might melt the walls of an iron safe. The rich scent of cigar smoke teemed between them.

Somerton smiled. “I assure you, Mr. Wright, I am most fervently of the same mind.”

“Very good.” Wright stubbed out his cigar, rose to his feet, and tilted his body in the most perfunctory of bows. “Thank you for the excellent dinner, your lordship. I look forward to hearing from you when your plans are more definite.”

When he had gone, Somerton reached inside his waistcoat pocket for the note that had arrived yesterday with the morning post.

One hears that Lord R. P. may be planning a voyage of indefinite length in the coming weeks, and he will not be traveling alone.

He placed the note in the ashtray next to Wright’s cigar stub and held his own over the paper until a tiny trail of smoke wisped upward from the top right corner. A flash of orange flared and spread quickly across the message, leaving only a small pile of dust to merge with the remains of the cigars.

•   •   •

T
hree or four months ago, Somerton might have finished off such a satisfactory meeting with an hour or two in a whore’s bed, or perhaps a prearranged engagement with someone’s restless wife, followed by a few more hours of drinking and gambling at some den of suitable iniquity.

Three or four months ago, in fact, he had. It was October, and the night had smelled of frost when he emerged up the area stairs of the Duke of Southam’s town house in Cadogan Square, dogged with a dissatisfaction that had little to do with Her Grace’s disappointing performance in bed. Like most famous beauties, the duchess proved the old saw that the hunt was more interesting than the kill, and since the duchess was a long-practiced adulteress, even the hunt had been brief and lackluster at best. As a rule, Somerton preferred to seduce wives who had never strayed before: so much more challenging, such a frisson of danger and betrayal, such an explosion of untapped passion. The more virtuous the lady, the more headlong her capitulation. In that first slick entry between a pair of forbidden legs, he felt, at least for a fleeting moment, that his world had righted itself.

But the dissatisfaction had always returned, and this time more than ever. The duke was an old self-important fool who deserved to be cuckolded, his wife was even worse, and yet Somerton couldn’t shake the sensation that he had done something wrong. That his soul had gone so far off its kilter, it might never recover. And as he had walked down Cadogan Gardens in the chill October air, and the brown leaves had swirled around him in the London midnight, and a pair of drunken gentlemen staggered past, Somerton had felt colder and colder in his fine wool coat, and sicker and sicker, and he had found a sewer drain and retched up brandy and bile until his stomach seemed to have turned inside out.

Afterward, instead of proceeding in the direction he had intended, where a table and a bottle awaited him, along with a pack of cards and a pack of identically dark-souled men, he turned around and staggered down Sloane Street in the direction of his own house.

He couldn’t approach his wife like this, only minutes out of another woman’s bed, green-faced and defeated. But perhaps in the morning, fortified by coffee, he might head upstairs to the nursery and begin a conversation of some sort. A few words, to bridge this years-wide chasm between them. To rest one knee at the altar of her virtue, and ask for God’s blessing from her.

When he turned the corner of Chester Square, his steps had quickened. He felt warmer already, and a kind of peace had invaded that region of his belly that had heaved itself almost into oblivion a short while ago.

Then Somerton saw him.

A tall figure, wearing a dark hat, lingering outside the area gate of Somerton’s own mansion, the way Somerton had lingered briefly at the area gate of the Duke of Southam. Just like Somerton, the man had pulled his hat farther down his forehead, turned, cast a last glance upward at the magisterial windows above, and walked briskly away.

Somerton’s feet had screwed themselves into the ground. Had he wanted passionately to move them, he could not. He could only stand there helpless as the figure approached, as the head ducked away at the last instant, and the Adonis features of Lord Roland Penhallow burned once more into the tissue of his brain.

The next morning, instead of climbing the stairs to the nursery, he had sent a message around the usual channels to Mr. Norton.

He had not, however, returned to his old nocturnal habits. Whenever he contemplated another seduction, or another businesslike transaction with a well-trained whore, the taste of vomit had risen most inconveniently in the back of his throat. The sensation of sickness and decay was so great, he sometimes had to sit and put his head between his knees, to draw in several slow breaths of air, until the wave of nausea passed at last.

Now, on this frigid February night, he emerged from the Sportsmen’s Club to find the piles of gray slush freezing in place on the pavement, and the streets unaccountably devoid of hackneys. It was hardly yet eleven o’clock, yet he knew better than to consider a visit to Cousin Hannah, or to the faithful old Black Seal in St. Katharine Docks.

Instead, he turned his steps to Piccadilly and a cold trudge homeward, huddled in his overcoat, knife and pistol tucked securely in the inner pockets, and when at last he arrived in his study, his mind was calm enough to take in the sight of the jewel box in the center of the leather blotter without any inconvenient physical symptoms.

He stood a moment, without moving, as if to memorize the details. In reality, the carvings, the gilt design, the letters stamped on the lid—EHM, her maiden initials—drifted through his eyeballs without making any permanent impression inside.

He sent a glance around the room, to see if Mr. Markham were sitting in one of the chairs by the fireplace, or the window seat at the opposite wall, but no slim, brown-suited secretary rose up to greet him. Above him, the members of his household slept quietly on their various floors. He was quite alone.

So he walked carefully around the side of the desk and sat down in his comfortable leather chair, and without any weak-willed hesitation he opened the lid of the box.

He recognized a few of the pieces. He had given them to her himself. Throughout the course of their marriage, he had never shirked that essential duty of an aristocratic husband; at every birthday, every Christmas, he had presented her with a bauble appropriate to her station, always more expensive than the one he gave to his current mistress, if he had one. Now he picked through the glittering mess of familiar diamond bracelets and pendant sapphires, the rings and brooches, until he found the false bottom and lifted the tray upward to reveal the object that lay beneath.