Julie Anne Long (17 page)

Chapter Twelve

S
he is quite the success, is she not? A diamond of the first water.”

Lady Tremaine addressed her remarks to the Duchess of Dunbrooke as they watched Lorelei sail by in the arms of Viscount Grayson, one of a clutch of titled gentlemen in need of a wife this season. He looked besotted, but then again, one of his eyes had a tendency to wander, which could lend a besotted effect to anyone’s aspect. Cordelia curved her lips in what she hoped was a fond smile of agreement, one of thousands of smiles of agreement she had been forced to issue over the last several days.

Lady Tremaine, Cordelia thought, was a new form of torture. As the Duchess of Dunbrooke, Cordelia had never been obliged to suffer boredom for any significant length of time; if the vise of tedium began to tighten, she merely moved on to another conversation group, or joined a card game, or visited the buffet table, or took the air. She deployed her movements much the way she deployed her fan—to keep from suffocating.

But she was obliged to suffer Lady Tremaine, and Lady Tremaine registered on Cordelia’s senses like a mediocre soprano hitting and sustaining one high quavery note again and again and again. Lorelei—her beauty, her charm, her success, her suitors, her prospects—was what her song was about. Cordelia’s head had begun to throb with it; she half feared it would shatter like a wine goblet in the not too distant future. She wondered if she should plead a headache and go home, retire to her room, mercifully alone, draw the drapes and take to her bed until . . .

Until what? Until the locket was safely in her hands again? Hutchins’s assistants had questioned a pawnbroker in Sheep’s Haven, the Godforsaken town nearer to Scotland and the cold Dunbrooke estate Keighley Park than Cordelia ever wanted to be again. The shop’s fat proprietor had confirmed that yes, a lad with the look of Dunbrooke had tried to sell a locket there, but had changed his mind the moment the proprietor had exclaimed over the splendid miniature of the Duchess of Dunbrooke. The locket scarcely mattered now, or at least paled in significance to the fact that they now knew that the man traveling with the girl did indeed have gold flecks in his eyes.

And oh, what a fool she was, but when Cordelia heard that Roarke had attempted to trade the miniature of her for pots and a musket and an
herbal
, of all things, her heart had twisted savagely. She had thought she was beyond feeling that kind of pain now. Or feeling anything at all so powerfully.

Convincingly portraying a groom for five years would have required cunning and calculation and a great deal of control to keep his refined breeding from poking out of the seams of his duplicity. She should know. She had done precisely the same thing—in reverse—for almost as long. And then there was the matter of the annuity that Melbers had paid him. Imagine, Melbers, the dear old family retainer, a traitor. Somehow Roarke had contacted Melbers when he arrived in England again from Waterloo. But not her. Not Marianne Bell.

Rebecca Tremaine. Who was she to Roarke Blackburn? Could they be headed for Gretna Green? Did Rebecca know who Roarke really was? Cordelia was stunned by something she rarely felt: jealousy. It tasted like rust in her mouth, turned her palms to ice. Roarke was risking everything for a daughter of a knight, but he had left Marianne Bell without a thought, it seemed. A rage Cordelia had not allowed herself to feel when he had left her, and had forbidden herself to entertain when she thought he had died, caught her now utterly by surprise and nearly made her gasp for breath. She struggled for control, masterfully and inconspicuously, and regained it.

Cordelia glanced up and inadvertently intercepted the sultry gaze of Lord Lanford. The gazes of men tended to do that as they passed her; they heated and melted, as though held to a candle flame. She nodded absently in acknowledgment, and turned her head toward Lady Tremaine once more. Cordelia had begun to take this for granted, the fact that her position meant that her beauty could be used as a shield, a means of intimidation and not just as a means to an end. She had been an orphan and destitute, and at one time her beauty had been her only source of power. She had learned to wield it nimbly, but men were always stronger. A persistent man weary of her sweetly worded dodges could pin her down and take her by force. Before Hutchins entered her life, her beauty had brought her an inordinate amount of grief.

One could not pin down a duchess and take her by force. Or rather, one could not pin down an
unmarried
duchess and take her by force. If she were married, her husband, of course, would have the right. Cordelia intended to remain unmarried, and she intended to remain a duchess.

This aim, however, was now threatened by the fact that the Duke of Dunbrooke had arisen from the dead and was now ricocheting across the English countryside with a redheaded girl in tow. What did Roarke intend to do? Appear, a veritable English Lazarus, at Keighley Park, rally the servants, and undertake a coup to depose her? Was Roarke even aware that she had married his brother? Perhaps he considered the fat old pawnbroker’s comments mere blithering. Perhaps he had thought to himself, “The Duchess of Dunbrooke, my left foot. That’s just my mistress, you old sod.”

Cordelia knew better.

Viscount Grayson returned Lorelei to them with a bow, and almost by magic Colonel Pierce appeared and led Lorelei out onto the floor again. Cordelia wondered if Lady Tremaine noticed how animated Lorelei looked in Pierce’s arms, how comfortable and happy. Two balls in two evenings, and Lorelei had danced several dances at each with Pierce.

Ah, it seemed Lady Tremaine
had
noticed; she watched them take the floor together, her mouth opening as if to say something, then closing again immediately in a tight little frown.

Feeling slightly mischievous, Cordelia could not resist a tiny goad disguised as reassurance.

“He has forty thousand pounds a year, you know,” she said to Lady Tremaine, who, mercifully, momentarily, had gone quiet with dark thoughts. Cordelia gracefully and subtly gestured with her fan to the “he” in question, Colonel Pierce.

“Yes, but no title,” Lady Tremaine replied. “Lorelei’s
father
very nearly has forty thousand pounds a year. Quite fortunate in his investments, you see.”

They both donned bright smiles when, as if on cue, Sir Henry Tremaine rejoined them. He quietly deposited a minor piece of gossip in his wife’s ear, something about the daughter of a friend of theirs, and left them once more.

Forty thousand pounds
. Good heavens, Cordelia thought. Edelston had known what he was about, then, when he had ensnared the Tremaine girl. She was fairly certain Viscount Grayson’s fortune didn’t even approach thirty thousand pounds.

The Dunbrooke fortune, on the other hand, exceeded forty thousand pounds by far. In the capable hands of Melbers, who had been the only person who seemed to care a fig for the Dunbrooke finances and investments and who had been given a free rein to do what he liked with it by Richard, it had grown like a weed, extraordinary expenses notwithstanding.

Cordelia absently fingered a fold of her gown, one of those extraordinary expenses. A midnight blue silk overlaid with gossamer-fine gold tissue, edged in tiny embroidered gold flowers, cut deeply at the neckline. A necklace featuring an enormous sapphire in the shape of a tear stopped just short of vanishing into her bodice between her breasts. It drew male eyes like a magnet, as she had known it would. Suddenly the very fact of this bored her; she had a bizarre impulse to tear the thing from her neck and fling it into the chandelier. It was a far cry from a gold locket. That stupid, stupid gold locket.

After giving his report this afternoon, Hutchins had asked her very simply, very quietly, what she wanted to do. Cordelia usually found the very absence of emotion in Hutchins’s delivery reassuring. But this afternoon, this particular “What do you want to do?” had fallen on her ears like a death knell. She could sell the Dunbrooke jewels and steal a good portion of the Dunbrooke fortune and disappear, perhaps to Italy, leaving scandal in her wake. But the continent was a small one; she would be located, she would be known.

In the midst of her reverie, her fingers fluttered up to touch her sapphire, and she was jolted back to the present, a ballroom full of spinning couples and chattering matrons and ogling men. Something about the solidity of the gem, of all it represented, focused Cordelia’s careening thoughts.

The Duchess of Dunbrooke was the invention of a lifetime, and Cordelia feared she had no energy left for another invention, and no will to begin again in any other fashion.

“Forgive me, but I need some time to think,” she had told Hutchins this afternoon, faintly. “I shall have an answer for you this evening.”

And now she did have an answer for him. Passion and sentimentality were foolish indulgences at this point in her life. She must be practical. Which meant she must remove Roarke Blackburn from her life. Permanently.

Cordelia glanced up suddenly, sensing an intent gaze upon her, and saw Edelston across the ballroom. He was leaning against a pillar, and not surprisingly, his fine eyes were fixed on her sapphire and on the snowy swell of bosom that cradled it. A rare involuntary smile leaped to her face, accompanied by a peculiar and unexpected sense of relief. The greatest luxury in Cordelia’s life, greater by far than gowns and jewels and London townhouses, was being understood. Edelston understood her and, to her continued bemusement, failed to judge her. He was, she supposed, the closest thing she had to a real friend in the
ton
. No matter that the now-habitual haunted look on his face seemed to drain the very light from the room. She was delighted to see him.

Deftly she tapped the arm of Charlotte, Lady Caville, a beanpole topped in plumes who was drifting by, with her fan.

“Lady Caville, may I introduce you to my dear friend Lady Tremaine?” Thus having procured a substitute for her presence, Cordelia made her way over to Edelston.

“You will make all the young girls swoon from the romance of it all, Tony, if you go about with that look of torment on your face.”

“Hello, Cordelia.” Edelston bowed low, which Cordelia knew afforded him a better view of her bosom on the way down. “I fear the mamas of those young ladies have all been forewarned about Lord Edelston and his desperate need of a fortune.”

“And of Lord Edelston’s engagement.”

“And of Lord Edelston’s engagement,” Edelston repeated, with a touch of bitterness. “It matters not. They are all boring. They are none of them Rebecca.”

“Even that one?” Cordelia gestured to a brunette minx with enormous dark eyes who was casting a saucy look at Edelston over the shoulder of her dancing partner. “She has the look of a budding adventuress.”

Feature for feature, Edelson was still the most handsome man in the room, Cordelia assessed objectively. He would likely be the recipient of a number of saucy looks before the evening was over.

Edelston’s eyes followed the young lovely about the floor for a spell, and he couldn’t disguise the speculative interest in his eyes. Still, he repeated, “They are all of them boring.” Cordelia had the faintest suspicion that he was attempting to convince himself of this.

“Tell me, Tony,” Cordelia said. “Is it Rebecca that you yearn for, or is it the
idea
of Rebecca?”

Edelston stared at her openmouthed for a moment, indignant. “What on earth do you mean?”

“Is it that
Rebecca
is particularly enthralling, or would you be just as enthralled by any young girl who managed to slip your grasp?”

Edelston frowned. “It is Rebecca,” he said firmly.

“Say the word, Tony, and I can find you another heiress, despite what all the mamas know about you.”

“It is Rebecca,” he repeated stubbornly, but the conviction in his voice was, in truth, wavering. Cordelia knew his thoughts: what a relief it would be to not deal with all of his creditors, to spend freely and recklessly again as a young man was meant to do.

Cordelia nodded, her face unreadable, a slight smile playing on her lips.

“How are you faring, Cordelia?” Edelston asked suddenly. “You look . . . very well, indeed. But a trifle pale.”

Cordelia gave a start. Imagine Edelston noticing such a detail. A gentleman would never dare suggest a lady might not be in the pink of health, but a friend would. Cordelia was so absurdly touched that, for a moment, she could not find words to answer. She felt her cool, ironic smile, that faithful tool of her disguise, falter.

“I remain somewhat distraught, Tony, but I am well enough, thank you,” she managed to say glibly, regaining control of her face. How could she possibly explain Roarke Blackburn to him, even if she wanted to, in the middle of a crowded ballroom? “How do you fare?”

Edelson glanced over his shoulder before responding to determine whether any interested ears were pitched in their direction.

“My creditors are haunting me at every turn. They await me on the doorstep of my house, at the entrance to my club. No doubt one of them is standing outside in the street at this moment, awaiting my emergence. And my fiance´e apparently despises me, and is missing.” He concluded this recitation with a fatalistic shrug.

Cordelia knew not where the impulse came from, but suddenly she wanted to give to Edelston the thing he wanted most, if only to take the shadow from his face. “Tony, may I ask you a delicate question?”

A wicked half smile touched Edelston’s lips. He and Cordelia had struck numerous indelicate poses together in the past;
delicate
was not typically a word they associated with each other.

“Ask away, Cordelia.”

“You must promise not to impugn my honor when you answer.”

“I promise.”

“If Rebecca has, shall we say . . . surrendered her honor to this Irish groom, this Connor Riordan, would you still want her back?”

Edelston recoiled as though struck.

“She would not do such a thing.”

“Still, if perhaps she was expertly seduced . . . we are all of us human, you see . . .”