Lord Perfect (16 page)

He glanced at her. "You cannot be as cold and
cynical as that," he said. "I will not believe it."

"One cannot be softhearted about Olivia," she
said. "She will only exploit it. She is a dreadful child. One
can either face the fact or one can live in a delusion and watch her
go straight to the devil. I refuse to let her go to the devil.
Therefore I cannot be sentimental about her, or pretend she is a
normal girl."

There was a silence. Bathsheba let it stretch. Her
hardheartedness had shocked him, naturally. Being an aristocratic
male, he had no inkling what it was like to raise a difficult child.
Few of the women of his class had any idea. Someone else looked after
their children.

She did not point this out. She did not want him to feel
sorry for her. She did not even want him to like her—the
sensible part of her didn't, at any rate. The sensible Bathsheba was
glad this crisis had started them quarreling. Hostility would keep
them at a safe distance from each other.

After a time, he spoke. Growled, rather. "They left
in a farmer's cart, you said. Did you happen to find out their
direction?"

"The farmer offered to take them to Brentford,"
she said. "She must be headed to Bristol."

"Bristol is an odd place for a pirate to bury
treasure," he said.

"There is no treasure," Bathsheba said. "It's
legend, nothing more. Edmund DeLucey wasn't really a pirate, either.
I have explained it all to Olivia time and again. A precious waste of
breath."

"And the truth is?"

"My great-grandfather had the Idea of becoming a
pirate, yes," she said. "But it quickly palled. Edmund was
a dandy or a macaroni—or whatever they called them in those
days. Pirates, he soon discovered, were crude, ill-dressed, and dirty
brutes. Not at all in Edmund's style. Furthermore, because they were
far from intelligent, they were constantly getting themselves maimed,
hacked to pieces, drowned, and hanged. Smuggling suited Edmund far
better. Playing cat and mouse with the English authorities was vastly
entertaining. He especially delighted in daring forays into the mouth
of the Severn, not many miles from his family's ancestral home."

"Ah, indeed," Rathbourne said. "I'd
forgotten. The— er—other DeLuceys—"

"The good ones," she supplied.

"The less exciting ones," he said. "The
ancestral pile is near Bristol, if I recall aright."

"Every member of my family knows
where Throgmorton is and all about it, though they know better than
to come within fifty miles of it," she said. "Meanwhile,
they never tire of boasting about Edmund DeLucey. Perhaps because
Jack, too, had a rebellious streak, he never tired of hearing about
him. He started repeating the tales to Olivia when she was a baby.
Those were among the bedtime stories he told her. I had assumed that
as she grew up, she must realize the buried treasure was
make-believe, like the tales from
The
Thousand and One Nights
."

"A treasure is not completely unreasonable, in the
circumstances," Rathbourne said. "A smuggler might easily
amass a fortune."

"He might," she said. "But would he bury
it?"

"That seems doubtful," he said.

"It makes no sense," she said. "Edmund
was a wastrel. Why bury it instead of spend it? I have made this
point repeatedly. I cannot tell you how many times the three of us
had the same exchange. It became a game at bedtime. 'Where do you
think Edmund DeLucey buried the treasure, Mama?' Olivia would say as
we tucked her in. 'Men like that don't bury treasure,' I would say.
'They spend it as fast as they get it, on drink, gaming, and women.'
Then she would ask Jack: 'Where do you think he buried the treasure,
Papa?' And Jack would say, 'Right under his family's noses. That's
where I'd hide it, if I were him. I'd go in the dead of night and
bury it at the base of the mausoleum where all the revered ancestors
lie a-moldering: all my ill-got gains, on hallowed ground. And I'd
laugh and laugh every time I thought about it.'"

She heard Rathbourne suck in his breath.

"Do I shock you, my lord?" she said.

They'd reached the Hogmire Lane tollgate. He halted the
vehicle.

"Well, yes, I am shocked, actually," he said
slowly. "Your husband put his child to bed. He told her bedtime
stories. Astonishing."

* * *

THE TOLLGATE KEEPER had seen too many farm carts to
recall one in particular, with or without young passengers.

Still, this was the usual route to Brentford, so
Benedict drove on. To his vexation, he had to do so far more slowly.
This stretch of road, while set with paving stones and therefore less
dusty than the section they'd just traversed, was also a good deal
narrower and more congested.

Benedict tried, as he'd tried before, to concentrate on
driving, always a chancy thing after dark. The carriage lanterns
illuminated the vehicle somewhat but not the way ahead. The street
lamps made a halfhearted twilight. He tried to keep his eyes and mind
on the road while Bathsheba Wingate's voice rippled and flowed about
him.

He was used to letting women's voices go on and on about
him while his mind wrestled with important matters: the war widows
and veterans, the inadequacies of present policing methods, and the
vagaries of English law.

He could not get his mind to turn away from Bathsheba
Wingate. He listened to her, to every word. He couldn't ignore her.
He was too intensely aware of her next to him on the seat: the
not-nearly-wide-enough seat. While the carriage was in motion, the
only way to keep from touching was to hug the side of the vehicle,
which he could hardly do while driving, even if it wasn't ridiculous,
which it was.

And so they touched, frequently, hip briefly pressing
against hip, thigh brushing against thigh.

And every touch reminded him of the last time they'd
touched: the kiss, weeks ago… the taste of her mouth and* the
scent of her skin and the mad hunger she awoke in him.

To distract himself from physical awareness, he focused
on what she said. The result was, he now wanted to know more about
Jack Wingate.

The image Benedict received from her did not match the
one Society had painted: the victim of a heartless siren, a man
destroyed by a fatal passion. Benedict had pictured a broken man
living in lonely exile from the world to which he properly belonged.

The Jack Wingate she spoke of sounded like a man who'd
ended up where he truly belonged. His remarks about burying the
treasure made him sound more like a Dreadful DeLucey than his widow
did, in fact. Intrigued, Benedict wanted to probe.

He was very good at probing subtly and manipulating
others into imprudent speech. But that was strictly for political
purposes. It was justified if used to promote worthy causes or to
crush opponents. Employing such methods in a personal conversation
was disgraceful.

Prying into others' private affairs is the preferred
occupation of small minds.

He certainly never meant to offer glimpses of his own
private life. The trouble was, her nearness was a constant
distraction and irritation, and the words spilled out before his
irritated and distracted brain had properly examined them.

This must be why, shortly after they'd passed Kensington
House and a press of vehicles brought them to a standstill, he said,
"I am deeply shocked. I had always believed that nursemaids put
one to bed and told one bedtime stories. Fathers, on the other hand,
want to know why you tied your little brother to a bedpost and cut
off most of his hair with a penknife."

He'd hardly said the words before he wished he hadn't.
But he hadn't time to fret. A space appeared in the solid mass of
vehicles, and he quickly guided the curricle into and through it.

Though focused on the maneuver, he felt her shift in the
seat, turning toward him. He was as aware of her gaze on his face as
if it had been her hand there… and he knew she hadn't missed a
word.

"Why did you?" she said.

"We were pretending we were in
the American Colonies," he said, striving for a tone of cool
amusement. "I was a Red Indian chief." He was
always
the Red Indian because he was the dark one. "Geoffrey was my
English captive, and I scalped him."

She laughed, and the wicked, haunting sound almost made
him smile.

"You were not a perfect child," she said.

"By no means," he said.
He'd
hated
Geoffrey's golden curls and golden eyes and angelically sweet
countenance. "I should have scalped Alistair, too, if I could
have got my hands on him. But he was safe with a nursemaid
elsewhere."

She said nothing. He need say nothing, either, but, "The
nurses called my brothers 'little golden angels,'" he went on.
"They were not angels by any stretch of the imagination, but
they looked the part."

"You should have scalped the nurses, too," she
said. "For stupidity."

"I was a child, no more than eight or nine years
old," he said. "Geoffrey and Alistair were fair and I was
dark. If they were golden angels, what was I?"

"What else could you think?" she said
feelingly. "In your place, I should have done exactly the same."

He glanced at her. "No, you would not."

"Because I am a female?" she said, eyebrows
aloft.

"Girls do not behave that way."

"How little you know my sex," she said. "All
children are little savages, even—or perhaps especially—girls."

"Not
all
children," he said. "Not for long, at any rate. Certainly
not when one is the eldest. As soon as the next child arrives, we
have responsibilities. We are not quite children anymore. 'You must
take care of your brother, Benedict,' they say. 'He is smaller than
you.' Or, 'You ought to know better, Benedict,' they say. 'You are
the eldest.'"

"Is that what your father said?"

"More or less. I remember little of the lecture,
except the end. He sighed and said he wished he had daughters."

"That was nothing more than parental exasperation,"
she said. "Few men—and no noblemen—would wish to
have daughters instead of sons."

"He meant it," Benedict said. "He's said
it countless times since then."

"Still?"

"Yes."

"Why? You have all got past the trying stage. You
are all grown up."

"Not to his satisfaction," Benedict said.

She turned fully in the seat to stare at him. "Even
you? Lord Perfect?"

"I am perfect by average standards," Benedict
said. "My father's standards are not average. Nothing about my
father is average. I am not sure anything about him is even human."
He added quickly, "At any rate, he did not tell bedtime stories.
I was unaware parents did such a thing."

"Then it's unlikely Jack's parents did," she
said. "The Dreadful DeLuceys must have corrupted him."

"Not necessarily," Benedict said. "You
said he was rebellious. Maybe, like Peregrine, your husband wanted a
different sort of life. Maybe it was in his nature to be
unconventional."

And among the DeLuceys, Jack Wingate must have
experienced the kind of freedom he could never have in respectable
Society. He'd found a world without rules.

"He had no trouble adapting, admittedly," she
said. "Still, Jack could distinguish between truth and fiction.
I am not sure my relatives can. They spin brilliant tales, and
perhaps their lies are so convincing because they believe them. I
think it is the same for Olivia. That is the only way I can explain
this mad quest of hers."

"She needs a governess," he said—and
cursed himself immediately the words were out. It was an idiotish
thing to say. Why not suggest a pack of servants, while he was at
it—and a house in the country, away from London and its
pernicious influences?

Face hot, he waited for a sarcastic comment from her
regarding the obliviousness of the upper orders.

"I could not agree more," she said, startling
him again as she too easily did. "That is next on the list. Miss
Smith-son runs a fine school but it is not the same. I had a
governess. A dragon. Even Papa was afraid of her. But that was the
idea. If she could not intimidate my father, she hadn't a prayer of
making an impression on me."

"Are you saying that you were not a properly
behaved child, either?" he said.

"From whom would I have learnt to behave properly?"
she said.

"You must have learnt from somebody," he said.
"You are a lady."

She turned away, facing forward once more, and folded
her hands in her lap.

"You are," he said. "There is no
question—and I am an expert on the subject."

"I had to be a lady," she said tightly. "My
mother had ambitions for me."

"Thus the dragon governess," he said.

"I admit I have ambitions for Olivia," she
said.