Talk of the Town (4 page)

“What else could it be, my dear?”

Daphne mentioned her own opinion and was talked down as being suspicious and mean-natured, “which you get from James, dear, and nothing can be done about it; but I do wish you would not take that notion into your head or you will spoil all our fun.”

“I could be wrong. They’re your friends, and you must know them better than I.”

“I should say I do, and they are not at all like that, Daphne, so pray banish the thought.”

“It is banished,” Daphne told her, not quite truthfully. “And what do those intriguing feelings of yours inform you we have in store for this afternoon?”

Effie shivered. “How strange,” she said. “A chill just ran over me. I got the feeling someone..."

“An evil person?” Daphne asked quizzingly.

“No, not evil precisely. More troublesome,” Effie said.

“It will be interesting to see who else has read the Observer,” Daphne answered, and ate her omelette without paying the least heed to Effie’s warning, which was rather a pity. But then the six feet-and-two-inches of trouble that was on its way would not have been turned aside in any case, for when the Duke of St. Felix undertook to do a thing, he did it thoroughly.

Chapter 4

The day after receiving his sister’s summons to Charles Street, St. Felix stopped by to see what old Bess was in a pucker about now. The late Duke of St. Felix had fathered four children, each spaced five years apart. He had not hurried his breeding. The eldest, Elizabeth, was forty-five; the other two daughters forty and thirty-five; with Richard, the precious son and heir, a mere stripling of thirty in this family of aging women.

Despite his youth, he ruled the family as firmly as ever his father had done. From his sire he had come to appreciate the value of the perquisites that were his to bestow, and none were bestowed on those who failed to live up to his high standards. He was generous to the brink of fault with relatives whose sons did well at Oxford and distinguished themselves in those jobs he found for them; but let a daughter make a poor match or behave in any unseemly manner and she was called severely to account. He did not despise liveliness or spirit in the extended family over which he held sway, but the semblance of propriety was always to be maintained. He spoke a good deal of the family’s name and reputation, as though they were living things, subject to physical deterioration.

Elizabeth was awaiting her brother in her Gold Saloon, hoping to soften him with a glass of Larry’s very best burgundy.

“Good afternoon, Bess,” he said with a smile. It cheered him to see his sisters living in good, respectable homes surrounded by luxury and tokens of success. He was particularly close to Lady Thyrwite, as she was the only one of his sisters to reside in London, like himself. The others were well married into influential county families and received semi-annual visits from their brother to see that they were not slipping into obscurity or any other bad habits.

“Dickie!” Bess began, and at the one word his genial smile faded.

“I have been asking you for twenty years to call me Richard,” he said. It seemed a reasonable request from a very tall gentleman in his thirty-first year.

“Sorry, Richard, but it slipped out. I still think of you as my dear little brother.”

“What can I do for you?”

She indicated a chair and poured him a glass of wine. She was tempted to invite him to have a cheroot, for she wished him to be in a good mood, but then the stench lingered so, like burning garbage. “I want to ask you to do a little favour for me, Richard.”

“So I assumed. What is it?”

She cleared her throat. “I wonder if you would be kind enough to drop by Mrs. Pealing’s place for me, and...”

“Who the devil is Mrs. Pealing?”

“You can’t mean you don’t know of Mrs. Pealing, the ex-Countess Standington!”

“Oh—also ex-Mrs. something else, isn’t she? I heard some mention of her yesterday. Writing a book of reminiscences, I believe. Is that the one?” Bess nodded. “She seems to have the whole town in a twitter with this book of hers.”

“Yes,” she said grimly.

“Now why in the world should I call on her? She is exactly the sort of person I abhor. To live a life of debauchery and then, in her old age, to make public her conquests. What do you have to do with the woman?”

“Nothing. I don’t know her at all.”

“I shouldn’t think you’d want to.”

“I don’t, but the thing is... It’s this book she’s writing."

Richard stared in fascination, a slow smile spreading across his handsome face. “You don’t mean to say you ever performed an act worthy of publication in the book, Bess?” he asked.

“Certainly not! It is no such a thing.”

“Ah—you blast my hopes. I had thought there for a moment that in your salad days you had cut up a lark. It’s Larry, then, is it?”

“Yes, and she must be bought off, Dickie— Richard!”

“What did he do?”

St. Felix was treated to an expurgated, whitewashed, and harmless version of the straying of Lawrence, and lifted a brow in question. “It’ll hardly set the town on its ear that he once paid a few calls to Mrs. Pealing,” he pointed out.

“It was more than that.” The story came out in bits and pieces, until after fifteen minutes St. Felix was more or less possessed of the facts and reminded that a folio in the Cabinet hung in the balance—a fine ornament for the family’s reputation.

“Very well, I’ll go with Larry,” he decided. “I confess I am curious to see the latest scandal. And I’d better make sure he don’t overpay. Not a penny more than five hundred pounds in my opinion. If I have the whole story, that is,” he finished up.

This jibe went unanswered. “No, Richard, Larry must not go with you. I want you to go for him. You deal with her, you are better able to handle her sort.”

“On what do you base that opinion?” he asked.

"Oh mercy, Dickie, don’t get satirical on me. I am desperate! You know Larry’s a fool—that is... I don’t mean—only he is not shrewd like you and not able to give a set-down half so well.”

“Thank you,” Richard said in a thin voice. “Tell me, is Larry to foot the bill at least, or am I to have that honour, as well?”

“I took a thousand pounds from the bank. I hope she’ll settle for five hundred.”

“She will,” Richard said, arising.

“Lady Pamela Thurston stopped by for lunch. She went to pay up yesterday, and she says they are demanding interest.”

“I don’t know why you associate with that creature. Hair the colour of a flamingo.” He stopped in mid-tirade. “Did you say they? Is Pealing in on it, as well? I thought I heard she was a widow.”

“She is, but she has a girl staying with her. A niece, I believe; and Lady Pamela says she’s the image of Mrs. Pealing at the same age. She was very pretty, you know.”

“I didn’t suppose an antidote had half of London at her feet,” he said, continuing towards the door.

“Come right back and let me know!” Bess called after him and then took up her vigil.

St. Felix drove his curricle to Upper Grosvenor Square and eyed a somewhat ramshackle apartment building with scorn. What a fool old Mrs. Pealing must be to have run through the fortune Eglinton left her and be living in such squalor as this. He gave his card to the butler and said he had come on a matter of business.

The card was handed to Mrs. Pealing, who sat in the study with Miss Ingleside, continuing on the work of editing. Her pink face paled, and she said, “Impossible! He’s dead.”

“Who is dead?” Daphne asked.

“St. Felix.”

“Oh yes, for a certainty. They never canonize a living person. But who on earth—or in heaven—is St. Felix?”

Effie handed her the card. “Oh, the Duke of St. Felix,” Daphne smiled, impressed. A baronet’s wife and a colonel were their lordliest callers thus far. “I wonder how much gold is jingling in his pockets. We’d better go in and see him.”

“Not I!” Effie stated firmly. “I am too busy.”

“Auntie, you can’t leave a duke cooling his heels. Now do use your head. It isn’t the dead St. Felix flitted down from heaven to see you. It is his heir, probably his son. Come along. I’ll go with you.’’

“No, no. I do not wish at all to see St. Felix. Perhaps you could handle it, dear.”

Sensing a heavy windfall from a long overdue debt to be waiting in the next room, Daphne was not inclined to lose it only because her aunt was suddenly shy of this man she had never met. “Very well, I’ll see him. But before I go, what was the nature of the other St. Felix’s dealings with you?”

“We were—just friends,” she answered vaguely.

“Did you lend him money?”

“Lend St. Felix money? Lord, no, he had more of it than I.”

“I see,” Daphne replied, surprised. Was it possible one person was actually calling out of mere friendship?

When she was face to face with St. Felix, she relinquished the thought. There was no token of friendship on the formidable gentleman’s arrogant face, nor indication of it in his stiff bearing.

“Miss Pealing?” he asked, looking her over from head to toe with cold grey eyes.

She returned the inspection, taking in a well-cut coat of blue Bath cloth, an elegant but unexaggerated cravat, a generally subdued outfit. He was too tall for the foppish mode. “Miss Ingleside. I am Mrs. Pealing’s niece. She is indisposed and asked me to see you in her stead. Pray be seated, Your Grace.”

He sat, still regarding her coldly. “I daresay you are privy to her dealings, and we can handle the matter between us.”

“Very likely. What is your business with my aunt?”

“I have no business with her, I am happy to say. I am here on behalf of Sir Lawrence Thyrwite.”

The name conveyed nothing to Miss Ingleside. She had not read all the memoirs, by any means. “And what is Sir Lawrence’s business with my aunt? I am sorry, I know nothing of him.”

“His business at the moment is of only a financial nature. There is no need to go into details. Just tell me the sum.”

“Oh, he owes her money, you mean?” she asked, smiling with satisfaction. At this rate, the book would bring in more before its publication than it was likely to do after.

“That is a matter of opinion. He is willing to pay in any case."

“I’m sure we don’t want him to pay if he didn’t borrow anything,” she said, disliking the tone of her caller. The others had at least put a decent face on it—pretended friendship. “We are not extortionists, you know.”

“How much are you charging for your silence?” he asked in a sneering voice.

“I told you we are not extortionists! If Sir Lawrence owes nothing, certainly we want nothing from him.”

“I would prefer not to have to return to this place,” he stated with an emphasis that implied the “place” was a snakepit. “What is the price?”

“Well, ‘Silence is Golden’, you know,” she answered, piqued into ill humour herself.

“Will five hundred do it?”

“I had best speak to my aunt. Perhaps she recalls Sir Lawrence.” She left and walked at a sedate pace till she was beyond his view; then she broke into a run.

“Auntie, who on earth is Sir Lawrence Thyrwite?” she asked, breathless.

“Larry Thyrwite? Gracious, I haven’t thought of that ninny in a quarter of a century. Is he here?”

“No, St. Felix is here on his behalf. Does this Sir Lawrence owe you money?”

“No, I never gave him anything. He used to try to make love to me after Jerry died, but I didn’t care for his lips. They hung open in that loose way some dull-witted people have. He is married now to—oh, dear!—St. Felix’s daughter. That is why that man is here.”

“Daughter! He can’t be more than... Oh, married to the sister of this St. Felix, I suppose. And you are sure you didn’t lend him any money? Think hard, Auntie. He mentioned five hundred pounds, and I would dearly love to gouge this gentleman.”

“It doesn’t need thinking about. Larry was always well to grass. He only came around for romance and didn’t get much of it, either.”

“Too bad. I’ll send St. Felix off then.” She was extremely sorry to have to let him off so easily.

“There seems to be some misunderstanding,” Daphne said to St. Felix when she returned to the Blue Saloon. “My aunt finds Sir Lawrence owes her no money."

Richard regarded her closely, and considered this statement carefully. “Owes her no money—what did that imply?

“They were just friends, you see,” Daphne went on, feeling uncomfortable in a totally silent room with those probing eyes staring through her. “In common with the rest of my aunt’s ex-friends, he has not been to see her for many years.” He continued to listen and think and stare, and she became increasingly angry at his silence.

“It is really quite shocking the way everyone has deserted my aunt. When I came here, she hadn’t had a single caller in a month. People only used her, took advantage of her generosity when she lived on Half Moon Street; and now that she is getting on and is poor, no one comes near her.”

Richard thought he had her meaning now. Mrs. Pealing wished to re-enter Society. “Where do you come into it?” he asked.

“I? I don’t come into it at all. I am her niece. I happen to be visiting her, that’s all.”

“Are you to make your debut this Season?”

“No, my aunt is in no position to sponsor me. It is only a family visit, and a quite dull one it has been, too.”

“She would wish to show you a livelier time, I assume?”

“I’m sure she would, if it were possible. She used to be very sociable, some years ago.”

“I shouldn’t think it would be at all possible, the way you are going about it. You are more likely to alienate your aunt’s former friends than endear yourself to them by blackmail.”

“Blackmail?” she said, not entirely surprised at the charge but angry nevertheless. “We have not threatened nor intimidated anyone, nor done anything illegal. My aunt has merely announced that she is going to publish a few memoirs from her youth.”

“It is tantamount to blackmail to threaten to publish licentious stories and accept payment for not publishing them.”

“Yes, certainly it is, but we are not doing anything of the kind. If people who sponged off my aunt when she was rich have been goaded into repaying their lawful debts to her only because they are so mean-minded they think she intends to expose them in her book, well, it is no more than is her due!”