Lady Killer (4 page)

“You did say death would be preferable to going through with your betrothal,” Tristan reminded him.

“I believe the exact words were ‘even a long painful death would be preferable,’ ” Sebastian corrected. “Be glad we did not take you at your word.”

“Besides, Bianca assured us that the cold water probably wouldn’t kill you,” Ian pointed out. He paused before adding, “It did seem the fastest way to make sure you were sober.”

Ian’s words hung in the air. He had said what none of them wanted to, and now they all braced for the inevitable maelstrom that followed any mention of Miles’s drinking.

Miles stood in the middle of the room, his clothes dripping wet, clenching and unclenching his hands. He was looking down at the water puddling on the bare floor, but the tension in his body was palpable, and every one of his cousins was holding his breath anxiously.

It was a scene that very few people could have imagined, or even believed. Because Crispin, Ian, Tristan, and Sebastian were four of the six richest, most powerful, and most dauntless men in Europe—four of the six men who, as the Arboretti, were hailed, worshiped, envied and courted by princes, merchants, and beautiful women everywhere. The word ‘Arboretti,’ describing as it did not only the six cousins but also their enormous shipping enterprise, could conjure blushes behind both the gilded doors of the most exclusive boudoirs and the solid oaken ones of the most respected counting houses, although generally not for the same reasons. Between their wealth, connections, charm, and courage, the Arboretti could have anything they wanted. Which made Crispin, Ian, Tristan and Sebastian, four of the six men least likely to worry about antagonizing anyone, particularly anyone dripping wet and much the worse for drink.

But Miles was not just anyone. He was the second youngest of the Arboretti, and in many respects more like a younger brother than a cousin to all of them. In a way they had raised him themselves, since he had spent most of his youth avoiding his father’s insults by hiding out at their houses, and each of them felt a concern for him that went beyond mere affection. Especially right then.

During the previous three and a half years, Miles had willfully become something of a stranger to them, to everyone really, first because of Beatrice and then, after her death, by purposely holing up at his country estate and refusing all visits. The other Arboretti knew that he had overseen the training of the queen’s forces in hand-to-hand and sword combat before the battle against the Spanish Armada, but after that he had slipped out of sight. From the scant information available to them—that he descended into his wine cellar every morning sometimes for days on end, and that when he arrived in London six months earlier it had been found to be completely empty, with not even a single cask left filled—his cousins surmised that he had been spending his days and nights brooding in the lonely company of a decanter. But it was just a surmise. He would not volunteer any information about that period, and they had all experienced his wrath enough times when they dared ask to have stopped inquiring.

Despite his listlessness and the fact that he never opened his eyes more than halfway, he still looked like Miles, the man who could fall in love with five different women in the time it took most fellows to unknot their boots; the man whose poems had once spawned a national craze and whose three year silence the publishers of London continued to bemoan on a daily basis; the man who still had the best collection of timepieces in England, but no longer cared to keep them working; the man whose habit of pushing his unruly locks from his forehead had become a hallmark for gentlemen of fashion, even now that he never bothered with it anymore and just let his hair hang limply in his eyes; the man who had been without question England’s best swordsman, but now used his skill only in drunken brawls; the man that women nicknamed the Viscount of Dreams and took to their bosoms with a willingness despite his long-standing betrothal that made the other Arboretti—let alone the rest of the men of Europe—mope with envy; he still looked more or less like that man, but he was not the same.

The smile for which he had once been famous had been replaced by a sneer, his love poetry had turned into such sharp parody that no London printer who valued his neck would dare to touch it, his brilliant wit had become biting sarcasm, and he now considered friends only those who would drink with him without challenging his behavior. His apartments, once among the most comfortable and sumptuous in London, were now empty of all but broken clocks, the brand-new furniture stacked in towers against the walls, still swathed in the wrappers it had been delivered in three years earlier. Not that it mattered, since he was rarely to be found there, preferring to pass his days and nights in unsavory taverns. On his worst days he provoked fights, during which more than one man had been injured mortally. But even on his best days there was a brittleness about him, an uneasiness, and a deep unhappiness.

His cousins felt for him enormously, both for his loss of Beatrice—they had never before seen him devote himself so entirely to a woman—and for the approach of his arranged marriage. As they had grown from boys into young men, they had all aided him in avoiding any meeting with his prospective bride, agreeing wholeheartedly that half a lifetime was long enough to spend with someone you hated and he need not start any earlier than necessary. Together they had all toiled over the “love letters” Miles’s parents forced him to write, packing them with such extraordinary poetic confections based on the portraits of her he received yearly, that Mariana had been moved to publish them, an event which Miles claimed set back the reputation of English composition by sixty years. If the thought of marrying someone not of his own selection had not been bad enough, the decision to publish those missives and the poor taste it showed would have caused Miles to break the contract, even though it meant the loss of his immense fortune, were it not for his strong sense of duty and honor. His cousins respected him for that, even as they suffered at his hands.

All of which—his unhappiness, their suffering—had only intensified in the weeks leading directly up to his nuptials, that is, up to this night, the night he would at last meet his betrothed (whom he had for years called the Monster). Tonight was the first in a series of ten days of celebration that would end in the most sumptuous and anticipated wedding of the year. Anticipated by everyone except the Arboretti, who dreaded it more than they would have dreaded the gallows. It was their responsibility to see to it that Miles was presentable, if not entirely present, at all the festivities. And given the way he looked at that moment, unshaved, in the same clothes he had been wearing for three days, now dripping wet, that was going to be quite a chore.

Especially if he went into one of the rages generally occasioned by any mention of his drinking. As the seconds spread into a minute, the tension with which the Arboretti awaited Miles’s retaliation became so thick it was almost edible.

“Actually,” Miles said finally, and with a surprisingly small amount of surliness, “It was not the water I was talking about. It was that pack of ruffians you sent to bring me home.”

The collective exhaling of breath in the room could have launched the heated air flotation device Ian had been working on for years.

Crispin recovered his wits first. “They were not ruffians,” he pointed out. “They were more like well paid thugs. One of them said he had worked for the queen.”

“I believe he said the Queen of Bawds,” Sophie corrected her husband in a semiwhisper.

Miles grunted. “It is not as though I won’t have enough bullying after my marriage. Given what awaits me, you might have considered sending a slightly kinder escort. Say a young woman. With long brown hair. And brown eyes. And a smudge of dirt on her cheek.” Miles nodded to himself then and gazed out into the distance. “Oh,” he added suddenly. “And no monkey.”

All four of Miles’s cousins raised an eyebrow, a family trait, but only Tristan spoke. “Right,” he said, working to keep the surprise out of his voice. “We’ll note that the absence of monkeys would be welcome next time.”

“Good.” Miles pushed the lock of hair off his forehead, and glanced at the large clock that stood opposite him. None of them knew why he kept it there, it had never shown the correct time even when it was well looked after—just now it said it was three o’clock when it was easily half past four—but today it seemed to have a strange effect on Miles. When he spoke again the hint of Old Miles was entirely gone, replaced by surly irritation. “Don’t you have anything better to do than wait around my apartments gaping at me? I have to go make myself presentable for this evening, and if it pleases you, I would rather not have an audience.”

Ian stepped forward to stop him. “Before you go, you should read this note from L. N.” L. N., Lucien North Howard, earl of Danforth, was the youngest of the Arboretti, and the most mysterious. None of the cousins had ever met him, though not for lack of trying. It was not simple curiosity that drove them, but also the fact that, according to the terms of their grandfather’s will, L. N. was the official head of the Arboretti. Still, the words “His Lordship is abroad,” spoken by his solemn steward, were the only real evidence they had for his existence. That and the train of beautiful women who spoke of him in terms reserved by the ancients for their deities, and pined for him openly throughout the courts of Europe. They had hoped that their mysterious cousin would at least put in an appearance at Miles’s ball, but his expression on reading the note suggested their curiosity would not yet be satisfied.

“He regrets to say he will be unable to attend this evening,” Miles announced. He crumpled the note into a ball and let it fall to the ground, adding audibly, “Lucky bastard.”

He did not see the expressions on his cousins’ faces as he stalked out of the room, but Miles hoped they showed resignation and disappointment. It was ironic, he thought, that the one day he really had been doing exactly what he seemed to be, the one day when he actually had spent the last twenty-four hours in the company of a decanter, was the day when he had almost let his carefully wrought disguise slip.

It was not that Miles did not spend a good deal of time in taverns. He visited them almost daily, seeking sanctuary. They were the only places he felt at ease, the only places he could easily sleep. Nor was it that he did not drink. He did, every day. But only at home. Only at night. And only alone. “Insurance for pleasant dreams,” he used to say glibly as his manservant Corin brought in the carafe of wine he would go through between midnight and dawn before he could fall asleep. But that was before. Now it was more like five carafes. And now he did not bother to make excuses.

Miles closed the door of his inner chamber with a desultory shove and silently locked it. Then, moving with an animation and purpose his cousins would not have believed, he crossed to the large clock that stood against the wall, opened its false-front panel, inserted a strange looking key, rotated it three times and ducked inside.

The troubled looking sailor who slid out of Dearbourn Hall half an hour later went unnoticed by the crowds that had massed to gawk at the illustrious guests arriving in their hackney carriages and litters for the party. Garlands of lemons with their glossy leaves decked the facade of the house, and four-dozen footmen in the immaculate yellow and gold livery of the Dearbourns stood before the door to lead away horses and escort guests in. This was a party unlike any other in English memory, bringing together not only the elite of the London social whirl, but also celebrities from the worlds of art and theater. The arrival of Sir Francis Drake and entourage garnered a loud cheer from the crowd, as did the appearance of Sir William and Lady Elizabeth Porteous, the famous travel writers, and that of Christopher Marlowe, an up-and-coming playwright. But by far the biggest sensation of the evening came when Lawrence Pickering, the best-loved hero of the battle of the Spanish Armada, descended from an elaborate coach with the wry smile that was setting every heart in London aflutter that season on his face, and a stunningly beautiful but unknown woman on his arm.

The stir caused by Lawrence’s arrival outside Dearbourn Hall was audible even over the din of conversation in the Great Hall within. Lady Mariana Nonesuch, Miles’s betrothed, stood at one of the windows overlooking the main door, observing the commotion below with a dreamy smile on her lips.

“Don’t the coachmen with their lamps look like a sea of diamond angels, Doctor?” Mariana asked the bearded and brooding man at her right. Without waiting for him to answer, she rushed on, addressing the rest of the small group that surrounded her. “Oh! It is all so darling. That is ten war heroes including the admiral,” she enumerated. “Eight poets, six members of the Star Chamber, two of Her Majesty’s former lovers, three playwrights, and five artists, in addition to all the regular guests. Poor dear Cecilie, she will be so jealous. She had only three war heroes—none of them admirals—and no poets at her ball. I shall have to do my best to let her know that her place in my heart is unchanged.”

Lady Alecia Nonesuch, the betrothed’s grandmother, inclined her head, setting aquiver the two “copied from life” purple doves that sat atop her enormous silver hairpiece. “It is like you to think of others’ distress even as you prosper, my dear.”

“Oh! I feel acutely the pain of others. When one is blessed as I am, one must always be magnifamous.”

“Magnanimous,” the bearded doctor corrected.

“Doctor, you are too literal,” Saunders Cotton, the young man standing on Mariana’s left, interjected then. “My lady’s soul cannot be defined within the language spoken by such as you and I.”