My Lady's Pleasure (37 page)

Of Paulette’s family, there was of course nothing. When Lady Loughlin had first shown the gallery to Lady Georgiana, she had made a joke about it. “What would we put here, the formula for the complexion cream?” she had asked. “A coat of arms with a microscope and a factory?”

Georgiana thought of that as she made her way through the gallery, looking at the pictures, but she was not in the mood to see the humor. She found that she was profoundly uncomfortable, almost frightened. This part of the house was completely empty and absolutely silent, but she did not feel alone. The hairs were up on the back of her neck, and she slowed her steps as she strained to hear any sound.

She was almost through the gallery when the lights went out.

Georgiana’s first thought was that it was an unfortunate coincidence, that a servant had been sent to turn out lights simply because it was so late. A split second told her she was wrong.

She heard footsteps running toward her, but she couldn’t see a thing. There was some light filtering into the hall from a skylight, but her eyes had been accustomed to the brightness of the electric lights, and the semidarkness seemed total to her.

That is why she didn’t see the suit of armor topple over. She heard a metallic creaking, and automatically turned her head in the direction of the noise. She still didn’t see it as it barely missed her head, grazed her shoulder, and almost knocked her down. She jumped back instinctively as the armor clattered to the floor in front of her.

She was desperate to see what was happening, and her eyes finally started to make out some of the shapes in the darkness.

The shape she saw bearing down on her horrified her. It was a person, arms overhead, carrying some kind of weapon, presumably intent on bringing it down on her head. She turned to flee, but tripped on the helmet from the armor, which had come loose from its body and rolled behind her. She fell, sprawling on the floor, and steeled herself for the blow that was to come.

She heard the whoosh of whatever weapon it was, and then the clang of metal on metal and then a grunt of pain. Her assailant had hit the helmet instead of her. Georgiana turned over as quickly as she could. Her eyes were now accustomed to the dimness, and she could see that her attacker wore some kind of robe, and was holding his wrist in his hand.

The blow had made him drop the weapon, which she could now see was a battle-ax of some kind.

She reached for the ax, thinking first to take it to defend herself. Feeling its weight, though, which was too substantial for her to handle deftly, she decided against that and instead slid it along the floor, far enough down the gallery to be out of reach, in order to give herself time to escape.

Before she could recover her footing, her assailant was upon her, trying to get a grip on her throat. Although she knew she ought to be terrified—and, on some level, she was—she found herself thinking remarkably clearly. She didn’t know who this was, and she didn’t know why she was being attacked, but she did know that she would not let this be her fate if she could help it.

She fought. She fought with all her strength and all her guile. She kicked and she bit as she tried to shield herself from the blows of her attacker and protect her throat. But her attacker was bigger and stronger, and Georgiana was just beginning to feel that she must lose when the lights went on again.

Her attacker immediately stood up and pulled the hood of his robe over his face so he could not be identified. He knew someone was there, someone who would help, and that his only chance was to run.

He did run, straight into the arms of the Roman senator Georgiana had danced with earlier in the evening.

The senator was no longer wearing his mask, and Georgiana was astonished to find herself face-to-face with Jeremy Staunton.

“Are you badly hurt?” Jeremy asked her as he wrestled to hold what Georgiana could now see was a man dressed as a monk.

She took inventory of her limbs even as her mind reeled to make sense of Jeremy’s presence there. “I believe I am barely hurt at all, just quite shaken,” she answered as she stood up.

Both Jeremy’s hands had been occupied in restraining the monk, whose hood still covered his face. Georgiana lifted the hood, and saw that it wasn’t a man at all. It was a young red-haired girl whom Georgiana thought she recognized as a servant of the house.

It was Maureen.

T
here was much that Georgiana wanted to know, but she was so addled by her experience, and by Jeremy’s sudden appearance, that she could think only of the one question that was to her most relevant.

“Why did you do this?” She asked it plaintively. She really had no idea, and it was important for her to know.

Maureen said nothing, and looked at the floor.

“Will you not tell me?” Georgiana said.

Maureen again said nothing.

“We need to find Lord Loughlin, and call the local constables,” Jeremy said, as he started walking Maureen down the hall. “There is no point in trying to get information from her.”

“Wait,” said Georgiana, and ran down the hall in the other direction to take a look into the grand lab. As she suspected, Barnes was not there. The note had been a ruse to get her to the gallery.

She returned to Jeremy, and they went off to search for Lord Loughlin. They found him in the library with his Armagnac and a few friends. He was startled to see a man he didn’t know holding one of his servants, dressed as a monk, firmly by the wrist. He looked at Georgiana inquisitively.

“I think we have a great deal to tell you,” she said to him. “But I don’t know that you know Jeremy Staunton.” She nodded toward Jeremy, and some of the confusion on Lord Loughlin’s brow cleared.

He extended his hand. “Mr. Staunton, I am glad to see you. We were, of course, expecting you, but I did not have the chance to make your acquaintance earlier.” He looked at Maureen. “But you must tell me what is going on here. Perhaps we can find a more private spot.” He made his excuses to his friends and bade them enjoy his Armagnac, and the four went to one of the parlors, which was completely deserted at this hour.

The story of the assault, which horrified Lord Loughlin, was soon told.

“And are you hurt?” he asked Georgiana with real concern.

“I am not,” she said. “Shaken, but not hurt.”

“I am glad of that.” He turned to Maureen. “This is a very serious matter.”

She still said nothing, but looked down at the carpet.

Lord Loughlin looked at his guests. Lady Georgiana, now that the incident was over, had been overtaken by a tiredness that penetrated to her bones, and her weariness showed on her face. Jeremy, who had risen at dawn to make the trip to Penfield, was manfully trying to stifle a yawn.

“Nothing can happen at this hour,” Robert Loughlin told them. “I will make sure Maureen is confined, and I will send a messenger to the police first thing in the morning.” He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and added, “Which is only an hour or two from now. In the meantime, though, we must all get some sleep.”

This was the first thing to make sense to Georgiana since she had received that note, and she was perfectly ready to excuse herself.

She turned to Jeremy as she was leaving. “In the morning, you will have to tell me what on earth you’re doing here.”

“In the morning, I will do just that,” he said, smiling.

 

The morning came and, with it, the constable. Cowed, perhaps, by his presence, Maureen told all.

Lord and Lady Loughlin, Lady Georgiana, and Jeremy Staunton had assembled to hear it.

She did it because she was desperately in love with Bruce Barnes. When she learned of his affair with Lady Georgiana, she was afraid she would lose him. She thought it would be easy to scare off her rival, and her first attempts at threats were harmless enough.

But her rival would not be scared off. And that was why she tried the tainted milk.

“But why did you give that to Miss Niven?” Lady Loughlin asked, bewildered.

“I didn’t,” said Maureen. “Rose did. It was supposed to go to Lady Georgiana, but the stupid girl mixed up the trays.” That explained a great deal, and Georgiana was sure Miss Niven would be relieved to hear that she hadn’t been the target, after all.

At the moment, though, Georgiana was busy assimilating the fact that she had been someone’s rival. She had no idea whether Maureen’s obsession with Barnes had been born of an affair the two of them had been having, or whether she had formed it without any assistance from him, but her bet was on the former. She knew, firsthand, how he could exert his pull with women, and Maureen was an attractive girl.

She sighed and stood.

“I think I know everything I need to know,” she said to the company generally. “Do you need me for anything else?” she asked the constable.

He answered in the negative, and she turned to go. Seeing that she was leaving, Jeremy stood also. “May I join you?”

“Of course.”

They left together, and at first said nothing to each other. After a while, Jeremy said, “Perhaps we can find a quiet place to sit so I can tell you how I came to be here.”

She nodded, and they found a window seat in the room that, the night before, had housed the buffet. Georgiana marveled at how quickly, and how thoroughly, it had been restored to its regular condition.

As soon as they had taken their seats, Jeremy said, “Lord Grantsbury wrote to me.”

Lady Georgiana took this in. “He did, did he? And what did he say?”

“He said your high spirits might have gotten you into a bit of a fix.”

Georgiana raised her eyebrows at this. “A bit of a fix?”

“That’s what he told me.”

“And is that all he told you?”

“That is all he told me. But he pressed that I should come to the masquerade—he had gotten Lord Loughlin’s leave, of course—and the pressure lent his concern some urgency. So of course I came.”

“When did you get here?”

“Just an hour or two before the party began. Grantsbury let me use his rooms, and had arranged the costume.”

“And what did Grantsbury tell you when you arrived?” Georgiana needed to know how much Jeremy knew.

“He told me only that I should perhaps look out for you. He had learned what your costume was, but I would have recognized you regardless.”

“Yet you did not identify yourself to me when we danced.”

“I did not. I wasn’t sure what my reception would be.” He stopped, evidently thinking he was treading on dangerous ground. “Had nothing happened, I might not have revealed myself to you at all, and gone home this morning. I thought you might be offended had you known I was watching you.”

Georgiana considered this. “I might have been,” she said. “I’m not at all sure.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and then Georgiana decided she ought to tell him everything. It wouldn’t be fair, she thought, when everyone at Penfield knew what had gone on and he, her particular friend, did not. She also thought he was bound to learn the truth sooner or later, and better he should hear it from her.

And she did, giving the story no gloss and making no excuses for her own conduct, of which by now she had come to be somewhat ashamed.

Jeremy listened silently, and when she was finished he sat back in his chair and let out a long, slow breath. When Lord Grantsbury had written to him about Georgiana’s “high spirits,” he had expected something along this line, but nothing so bad as this.

Grantsbury had written to Jeremy because he was concerned about Georgiana, both because he thought she was behaving badly and because she was under some sort of vague threat. Jeremy had come because Lady Georgiana was his most particular friend, and if he thought that she could do herself harm, or that someone else would do her harm, he wanted to do everything in his power to prevent it.

But it was more than that. The knowledge that he loved her had come on him gradually, and the absolute conviction that it was so, which was quite recent, surprised and discomposed him. He had been happy, he thought, with the casual nature of their intimacy and the pleasure of their stolen moments. When he understood that he wanted more from her, that he wanted to be with her always, he found he could not tell her. He was afraid she would bolt, of course, but he also had a sense that, if she could be happy with their relationship as it was, so should he be able to.

He was not able to.

He had inadvertently disclosed his love to Lord Grantsbury when the earl, a family friend of the Stauntons as well as of Georgiana’s family, had visited the Stauntons that spring. Grantsbury, who made a habit of using old friendships as an excuse to say anything he liked, had asked penetrating questions about Jeremy’s prospects and intentions. Jeremy had tried to avoid answering the substance of the questions, but also tried not to tell blatant untruths, and had thus given himself away to the canny old nobleman.