Midnight Bride (19 page)

Elizabeth glanced from Louisa to Charles, suspecting something, but then she looked at Louisa closely. She hurried to her side. "Why did you try to come down, dearest, if you were not feeling well?" she asked.

Louisa opened her eyes, lifting her lids as if even that small amount of effort took more energy than she could possibly bear. "I am so bored with staying in bed," she explained, allowing her voice to drift off plaintively. Charles had to bite the inside of his jaw to keep from laughing. Louisa held out her hand, and Elizabeth took it.

"Perhaps tomorrow we should send for the doctor again," Elizabeth suggested, her face worried.
If anything happened to Louisa, she would be lost. Louisa opened her eyes; then she frowned. Charles hastily wiped the grin off his face.

"I will be all right. Having the ones I love around me is all that I can ask for," Louisa said weakly. "I am certain I will be well soon." Elizabeth looked at Charles, her face worried. "Now tell me what has been happening to you." Louisa held out her hand dramatically until Charles rushed to her side. "Help me to the settee, dear boy." He helped her to her feet and across the foot or so that separated her chair from the settee. When she was comfortably settled, he stepped back. "Now, Elizabeth, sit beside me and tell me what has been happening."

For the rest of the evening Louisa kept Elizabeth at her side, asking her questions about the estate and about their neighbors. When she had at last retired, pleasantly tired and ready for bed, Louisa let her maid undress her and see her comfortably established in bed,
then
she waited.

As soon as Charles saw Elizabeth to her room and assured her that he too was worried about their cousin, he furtively walked along the corridor to his cousin's room. A short time later, he asked, "Well, what do you think?"

"She is definitely not ill. And nothing seems wrong on the estate. Has she been anywhere lately?" Louisa asked. Elizabeth had the look of someone lost in a dream.

"No. Oh, she visits the tenants. That is all since Hartley left." His face clouded. "She can't be still upset about my friendship with him, can she?"

"Hartley?
No. She has put him out of her mind for now," Louisa said quietly, still thinking about what he had said. After a few minutes of silence she asked, "Has she mentioned anyone else?"

"Only Dunstan.
She asked about him this morning." Charles stopped abruptly, his blue eyes growing wide. "You don't think? But she only met him once."

Louisa simply smiled. "Tell me more about the viscount," she
said,
her voice pensive.

Charles sat down across from her, stretched his feet out in front of him. "He is a member of my club. And he wins when he plays," he began.

While Louisa was plotting with Charles, the man who was in the center of both of their minds was in London. When Dunstan was not running errands for the government, he was carefully amassing a remarkable body of information about the people who had been present at the house party. As he sifted through the reports his informants sent him, his face darkened with suspicion. Hartley, known for leading innocents astray, was an acknowledged master of the underhanded trick. But he only used trickery when it would gain him some advantage. And to Dunstan's dismay he could not find any reason why Elizabeth's and his predicament would help the man.

To make his dismay even more complete, Dunstan received his first letter from Elizabeth that evening. Gentle as her tone was, the message was clear: no. A black depression fell over Dunstan, blacker even than the one he had felt when he realized that his father had totally abandoned him, left him alone at the school at the mercy of unknown people. But then, he reminded himself, the headmaster had known what to do.

His depression blotting out his reason, Dunstan spent that evening deep in his cups. By the time the butler and a footman helped him to his room, he was babbling. "Don't send me away.
Must be
married.
No
scandal
,"
He repeated in a slurred voice. The two men raised their eyebrows and then shrugged. They had heard the stories about his father.

Over the next week or ten days, Dunstan's behavior deteriorated even further.
Once a member of only the best clubs, Dunstan left the safer haunts of St. James for the hellholes, staking huge sums on the turn of a card.
Gambling and drinking until dawn, he would stumble in, falling into bed without removing his clothes. Waking later, he would swallow the gruesome compound his valet held out, dress and head back to the latest hellhole. He gambled and he won.

"Don't play with him," he heard one man say loudly to another as he walked into yet another dub.
"Too lucky."
The two men stared at him suspiciously.

In the background a man so tall he stood half a head taller than anyone else in the room followed the two men's gaze. Although impeccably dressed, the man had obviously seen rougher days. He looked at Dunstan carefully, his eyes narrowed dangerously. For the rest of the evening he was Dunstan's shadow. But Dunstan did not notice.

Hours later, when he was several thousand pounds richer, Dunstan weaved his way to the door.
Before he crossed the threshold to the street outside, a hand as large as a kettle grabbed his arm, pulling him around.
Staring into a shirtfront was not usual for Dunstan. Slowly he raised his head, a slightly bewildered look on his face. "Tall, very tall," he said, slurring his words.

The man ignored him. "You are no longer welcome here, my lord," the man said in a voice as deep as a kettledrum and as quiet as a whisper.

Dunstan jumped as though the words had been
a shout. "What do you mean?" he said blusteringly, his voice much louder than the other's.

"We do not allow Captain Sharps here." This time the tall man's voice was louder also.

Dunstan stepped back, his eyes flashing in anger. "I do not need to cheat," he said, his voice rising dangerously and his words more distinct than they had been in hours.

Glancing across the room at his employer, the tall man gently but firmly swept the protesting viscount from the room. "Do not return here, my lord, if you care for your life," he said. Then he waved at a hack waiting nearby.

Behind them in the club the gossip had begun. Once again Viscount Dunstan was the center of gossip, living up to his father's memory. One afternoon about ten days after he had received Elizabeth's letter, Dunstan wandered into his office. He had been there less than five minutes when a messenger appeared.

As he stood in front of his superior a few minutes later, Dunstan hid his discomfort. Lord Seward finished the letter he was writing, reread it, sanded it, and handed it to his secretary before he even acknowledged Dunstan's presence. Then he looked up, his cold gray eyes staring into Dunstan's. The younger man resisted the impulse to loosen his cravat and tried not to show how nervous he felt. He had heard of this type of conference, but he had never expected himself to be part of one.

The silence continued for several minutes, hours to Dunstan. Finally the older man waved him to a chair. Dunstan collapsed into the nearest one. "Am I to expect your resignation?" Seward asked coldly.

"My resignation?"
Dunstan's face paled. Then he stood up, his back ramrod straight and his face
carefully blank. "If that is what you wish, my lord. You will have it on your desk within the hour.

Seward straightened. "Sit down!" he said, his voice as forceful as it had ever been on the battlefield. "What is the matter with you, Dunstan?" asked his grandfather's friend, the man who had given him his place in the government. "Are the rumors I have heard about you true?"

"What rumors?" Dunstan asked, ashamed to admit that he had to ask. He straightened in his chair, wishing he could think more clearly.

"That you have grown more profligate than the Prince of Wales, visiting the hellholes and wagering thousands on the turn of a card. And you protested when I asked you to pretend a tenth of this when you visited
Beckworth
." The older man tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair while he waited for an answer. His cold gray eyes seemed to bore into the younger man.

"The gossip mongers give me more credit than I deserve," Dunstan said. His attempt at humor brought a darker frown to Seward's face. Dunstan lowered his eyes and tried to think of an explanation.

"Is this behavior going to continue?" The man's tone was as cold as a stream fed by melting winter snow. "If it does . . ." his voice drifted off suggestively.

"
Ño
,
my lord," Dunstan sat up straighter. "I promise you
Ì
will regain my control." Except for the oblivion he gained from the alcohol, his actions the last few days had not brought him any closer to happiness. Ashamed of his weakness, he squared his shoulders and raised his eyes to stare into the older man's.

What he saw seemed to satisfy Seward, for he nodded and waved his hand, signaling Dunstan to leave. On the other side of the door, the younger man slumped against a wall and ran a hand over his face. Then he straightened and headed back to his office and the desk covered with papers.

As he began clearing his desk, he found once more the report on Hartley and frowned. But those thoughts led to Elizabeth. At that thought his eyes darkened. He pushed her to the back of his mind and began once more to sort through the material that had been awaiting his attention.

Finally, his desk was clear and no new problems waited for him. He pulled a letter from his pocket. Creased, wrinkled, and wine-stained, it was his one link to his dreams, to Elizabeth. He read it again, smoothing its wrinkles carefully, his eyes darkening as they always did when he looked at it. But then his mouth took on a determined line. He put the letter in the center of the desk and leaned back, tapping his fingers together thoughtfully.

Dunstan glanced at the letter on his desk, shoved it aside, and picked up a pen. "And if Elizabeth does not accept me this time, I will simply write her again," he whispered, his dark blue eyes shadowed. He pulled a sheet of paper closer, dipped his pen in his ink, and began: "My dear Elizabeth . . ." He closed his eyes, seeing her wrapped in her covers, her eyes wide, Then he remembered the sun shining through the lawn nightgown, and the way she had looked when she had told him goodbye. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to fix her image in his mind. Then he opened his eyes and continued the letter.

When Dunstan arrived at Clarendon House on Berkley Square that evening, he discovered that the gossips had been busier than he had imagined. Planning to dress and join his friends for an evening of cockfighting, he had gone home to change later than usual. As soon as the door to
the house opened, he knew. The earl had come to town.

"Where is my grandfather?" he asked the earl's personal footman, who stood beside the door.