The Bargain (3 page)

Was this chit of a girl laughing at him, Alan wondered incredulously?

There was a sharp sound at his back, as some sort of tool was inserted between the door and jamb. A splintering noise from near the keyhole heralded a crack of light that wavered, and then quickly expanded as the lock was broken and the door pried open, finally flying back to crash against the corridor wall.

Alan felt an odd moment of regret as he took a step back and turned toward their rescuers. Ariel Harding had roused his always active curiosity, he realized. He would be rather sorry to see the last of her.

As he'd feared, the hall was full of people. Around his father and the prince stood a crowd of servants and guests all peering avidly in his direction and trying to discover what was going on.

“All right?” murmured the duke.

Alan nodded, taking another step and thus revealing Ariel to the onlookers.

“Hallo?” said the prince. “What's this, then?” He moved closer, holding up a beribboned quizzing glass for a better look and casting an experienced eye over Ariel's rounded figure. He appeared to find much to admire, taking his time to savor the glowing skin of her neck and shoulders and the voluptuous shape of her lips. “Thought you were chasin' the ghost,” he admonished Alan without shifting his gaze. “Not that anyone wouldn't rather be shut in a cupboard with this—”

“We were both chasing it,” broke in Ariel. “And
I
, at least, intend to find out the truth about Bess Harding's death.”

“Eh?” sputtered the prince, looking uneasily aware of the crowd around him. “Truth? Everyone knows the truth. Fit of despair. Took her own life. Always a moody creature, was Bess. Terrible thing. But nothing to do with—”

“She had to have some reason,” interrupted Ariel again. “Why is she coming here? I want to know—”

“Perhaps we should adjourn to some other room,” said Alan in a loud voice. “I'm sure the others would like to get back to the entertainment.” He ignored the many interested expressions that contradicted this assertion and gave the prince a significant look.

“Yes, indeed,” replied Alan's father. He fixed one of the senior servants with a commanding gaze. “Escort everyone downstairs.”

There were some protests, but in a few minutes the hall was clear of everyone but the prince, the duke, and Alan and Ariel. “What's going on here?” blustered the prince. “Who is this girl? What's she doin' in my house? Never seen her before in my life. Don't believe I invited her, by Jove.” He gave a very creditable impression of outraged virtue.

“I am—” began Ariel.

“Assisting me in the investigation,” interjected Alan smoothly.

The other two men looked at him.

“I am not—” attempted Ariel.

“She possesses certain key facts that will help discredit this hoax,” Alan said.

His father frowned, looking deeply puzzled.

“Facts, is it?” said the prince. His sharp look faded as he examined Ariel yet again. A gleam came into his eyes and he chuckled. “I've known a few ladies who possessed some fascinatin' ‘facts.' Taught me a good deal, they did.” He started to turn away. “Do as you like, my boy, but don't be diverted from your task, eh? Come along, Langford, I want a drink.”

The duke followed him down the corridor, in which the sconces had been relit. But he cast several curious looks over his shoulder as he went.

“Why did you say that?” exploded Ariel when they had gone.

“What?” answered Alan.

“That I am assisting you.”

“You might have knowledge that could be useful,” he replied. “If you do not blurt it out before a crowd, that is.”

She drew in an angry breath. “I am not in the habit of—”

“As you nearly did just now,” he continued. “You were about to tell them all that you are Bess Harding's daughter, weren't you?”

Ariel stood very straight. “I am not ashamed of being her daughter,” she declared. “She was a great actress.”

“No doubt. But that is no reason to broadcast information when you do not know who is listening.”

“Who…?”

“Our so-called ghost may have been standing right here, enjoying her triumph. She had ample time to change her dress and return.”

“She…” Ariel put a hand to her lovely lips. “If it's not Bess…” She faltered. “It has to be a woman, doesn't it?”

“It certainly was a woman who appeared here tonight.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “But who would…?”

“Precisely.”

He straightened his coat and pushed the now-ruined cupboard door closed. “Let us go somewhere private, and you can tell me everything you know about this matter.”

She stiffened. “Why should I?”

Alan looked surprised. “So that I can resolve the situation and be done with it.”

“The ghost, you mean?”

“Exactly.”

“What about my mother?” she demanded.

Trying to temper his impatience with sympathy, Alan looked down at her. “I am very sorry about your mother. The prince was right, it was a terrible thing.”

“He wasn't right, because he knows nothing about it and hasn't bothered to find out.”

“Perhaps so, but—”

“I must speak to the ghost,” she went on, “and ask her what she knows. I
will
discover why my mother is dead!” She glared up at him, defiance and something more poignant in her hazel eyes.

“Don't get hysterical,” he said uneasily.

“I am not hysterical. I'm never hysterical. I am simply utterly determined.”

“You are being unreasonable,” accused Alan. “I know that as a woman, you are prone to illogic, but you must see that—”

“I won't tell you anything, or help you in any way with the ghost, unless you agree to do the same for me as I search for the truth,” she said.

“Don't be ridiculous. You are a woman. You have no notion how to conduct an investigation, even if you were capable of sustained—”

“I know who my mother's friends were,” she offered. “I have her things. And her servants will talk to me and no one else. They are very loyal.” Her voice broke a little on the last word.

“Some of that information might be useful,” he conceded.

“Well, then…”

“And it might not,” he added. “This haunting may have nothing to do with your mother, if it is simply someone trying to discredit the prince.”

“But you should eliminate the possibility that it is related to her death,” Ariel said.

He was surprised. “That would be a logical course of action,” he admitted.

“No one else is better placed to help you do that,” she pointed out.

“That may be so, but—”

“So, we are agreed?” She held out her hand as if to shake his and seal the bargain.

Alan gazed at her small white hand. His eyes ran up the slim arm attached to it and met the deep hazel eyes fixed on his. This was most likely a complete waste of time, he thought. She was a woman, and thus a creature of instinct and whim rather than rational thought. She could not have anything valuable to offer that he would not discover himself. However, there was something about her… He suppressed this irrelevancy. A scientist considered all alternatives, he told himself, no matter how remote they might be. “Very well,” he said. He took her hand firmly and shook it.

“There, that looks all right, doesn't it?” said Ariel, pushing the silver tray an inch to the left on the small side table. The crystal decanter and glasses had been polished to a high sheen, and the lemon wafers on the enamel plate had been purchased from the confectioner that very morning. “It's the sort of thing Miss Ames used to serve important visitors at school,” Ariel added. “I imagine it will do for a lord, don't you?”

She turned to look at the only other creature in the room, a huge cat with blue-gray fur the color of smoke and preternaturally glowing golden eyes.

“I got fish heads for you, so you needn't worry,” she told the animal.

As if he understood, the cat rose and stretched, first digging his claws into the carpet and extending his whole spine in a concave arc, then pushing out his hind legs one at a time. He started toward the door. Ariel followed.

“It's Lord Alan Gresham coming to call,” she informed the cat. “He's going to help me find out about Bess's death.”

Downstairs in the kitchen, she unwrapped the fish heads and set them on the floor for the cat, who began to eat at once. His sonorous purr echoed through the room, and Ariel bent to run a hand over his extraordinarily thick, smooth coat. “What would I do without you?” she murmured.

She had returned from school to find an empty house. Her mother's servants had scattered after the suicide, she discovered; no one knew where they had gone. The magistrate in charge of looking into the death had seemed interested only in dismissing it from his mind. After he had had the contents of her mother's wine cellar conveyed to his own house, Ariel thought bitterly. When she had gone to ask for his help, he had been thoroughly foxed at eleven in the morning. Her mother's solicitor had been no more encouraging. He had suggested that she think of the future rather than the past, and had given her the one piece of good news she had received in London. Her mother had left her enough money to live on, if she was careful.

“How did she manage it?” Ariel asked the cat. “She always spent every penny she had. I remember the bill collectors pounding on the door, and Bess sending a footman running out the back way to borrow the money to pay them.”

She rose and went back up to the parlor to await Lord Alan. But as soon as she sat down, the silence of the place dropped over her like a heavy blanket. It was a little unnerving, staying here by herself. She had never lived alone. And these were certainly not the best circumstances for trying it out. Memories of her mother became uncomfortably vivid in the dense quiet. When she had heard of the haunting at Carlton House, she had almost…

Ariel shook her head sharply. She would hire new servants, she thought. She was not entirely sure how one went about this, but it could not be too difficult. And more important, she would find the truth. That would put everything to rest. She had an ally now; she was no longer totally alone. She was managing perfectly well.

Hoofbeats sounded in the street. Ariel listened, but they clattered on by. A board creaked upstairs. Of course, Bess would not at all approve of her agreement with Lord Alan, Ariel thought, or of his visit here today. Though men were a great part of Bess Harding's life, she had not trusted any of them, particularly not where Ariel was concerned.

Ariel clenched her fists. Just when she'd been insisting upon coming home from school permanently, her mother had ended her life in that horrifyingly bloody way. Whenever she allowed herself to think of it, she was overwhelmed by grief and incomprehension and anger. How could Bess have done it? How could she have left her in this awful way? And even more critically—why? Ariel caught her lower lip between her teeth. That question lay behind her every thought now, and everything she did. Why had Bess done it? Ariel was obsessed with finding an answer. She had to find it, she thought, if she was ever to have peace again.

Something touched her ankle. Ariel started, then saw that the cat had rejoined her. He sat at her feet, staring up. When she met his steady golden gaze, he blinked once, then began to groom his thick fur.

Ariel watched his quick efficient movements. The cat had appeared on her second day alone in the house. She still didn't know whether he actually belonged here, but he looked nothing like the half-starved street cats one saw in the city. He had some secret entry of his own; he appeared and disappeared at will, vanishing like the smoke he resembled. She'd named him Prospero, because he was majestic and magical, and because it reminded her of her own eccentric naming.

“Were you here when she did it?” Ariel asked him. “Did she speak to you as I do?”

Prospero's tongue rasped between the toes of his front paw. Fastidiously, he bit at one curved claw.

“If only you could tell me,” said Ariel. Her breath caught on a sob, and she repressed it almost savagely. She had decided on the long, long journey back to London that she was not going to give in to grief. She meant to act, and to find comfort in discovering the truth. “With Lord Alan's help, I'll be able to do it,” she told herself. “Bess always said that to accomplish anything you must have powerful friends.”

She looked up to find the cat staring fixedly at her. “Lord Alan and I have a business arrangement,” she told the animal. “We are to exchange information and absolutely nothing more.”

It seemed that Prospero's golden eyes narrowed.

“It's true,” insisted Ariel. “He is a man of science.”

Delicately, dispassionately, Prospero yawned, showing a ribbed pink mouth and a flash of small white fangs.

***

When the knocker sounded against the wood of the front door a little later, Ariel had to answer it herself. As soon as she opened the door, her eyes were drawn upward. She had forgotten how large he was, she thought, standing back to let Lord Alan Gresham enter. His coat and breeches were of plain dark cloth and his shirtfront unadorned, and his height and broad shoulders seemed to fill the entryway. Or perhaps it was his air of assurance and command, she thought. Were the sons of dukes born with it? A shaft of sunlight from outside drew red-gold glints from his deep auburn hair, which curled a little despite being cropped close to his head. His blue eyes held an intensity and intelligence such as Ariel had never seen before, and there was steely determination in the set of his square jaw. Momentarily, something seemed to flutter deep inside Ariel. She had never been alone with a man in her life. First her mother, then her schoolmistresses, had seen to that. She was very glad it was a warm day and he had no cloak for her to take. She had a dreadful suspicion that her hands might be shaking. Stuff and nonsense, she told herself severely, and raised her chin.

“This is an old house,” he commented, looking at the paneling and the intricate carving of the stair banister. “Seventeenth century, isn't it?”

Ariel nodded. The house, which was the only home she had ever known, was tall and narrow, with a twisting staircase up through the four floors and rooms paneled with polished walnut and oak. The windows were small and mullioned; some of the floors slanted a bit alarmingly; and the ceiling was somewhat low, she noticed for the first time, as Lord Alan ducked his head under a huge beam.

“My mother loved it,” she said. “I used to think that she would have been more at home in the court of Charles the Second. She seemed like someone from another century.”

He looked slightly surprised. But he said only, “My family's home in Kent is from the same era.”

Ariel glanced at him suspiciously. Was he patronizing her? she wondered. The country seat of the Duke of Langford must be a huge mansion, hardly to be compared with her modest house. Perhaps he was mocking her instead. Ariel's jaw set. She was quite accustomed to snubs. She had endured years of them at her fashionable school once the other girls had discovered her parentage. Though the headmistress had been scrupulously fair, she could not prevent the girls from venting their spite in private. But they had not found her easy to despise, Ariel thought defiantly, and neither would this nobleman.

She examined him for the signs she knew so well—the subtle sneer, the haughtily raised brow, the malicious spark in the eye. But his expression was unreadable as he deftly avoided hitting his head on the low beam and started upstairs. In the upper parlor, she offered him Madeira from the tray she had set out earlier, and he accepted a small glass.

“This was Bess Harding's house?” Lord Alan commented then.

Ariel nodded. “She left it to me.”

“It occurred to me that it might be helpful to question her servants. They may have heard something that will offer a clue to this haunting.”

“Yes,” said Ariel. She very much wanted to speak to her mother's servants herself. She had been chagrined, and a bit hurt, to find them all gone.

“Well?”

She looked up to find that Lord Alan had raised one auburn brow.

“Perhaps you could summon them?” he added.

“Oh. The thing is… they've disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Well, gone away, I mean. I suppose it did not occur to them that I would be coming home, and they thought they needed new positions.” She could hear the resentment in her own voice, and she fell silent. She had been away for years, she reminded herself.

“I don't understand.” He seemed to listen for the first time to the deep silence surrounding them. “Who is here with you?”

Warnings her mother had given her echoed in Ariel's mind. “I'll be hiring servants,” she said firmly. “But if you could find the old staff, I'm sure it would be very useful to—”

“You are alone in this house?” He said it as if the idea were incomprehensible.

When it finally sank in that there was no one else here, what would he do, Ariel wondered? She had to trust him. There was no one else to help her. It was impossible to meet at Carlton House or a public place. She could only hope it hadn't been a mistake to ask him to call.

A flash of memory from ten years past came vividly back to her, summoned by the intensity of Lord Alan's gaze. She and her mother had been sitting at their dining table in a pool of candlelight. Supper was long over, but Bess stayed at the table, and so Ariel stayed with her. Her mother was silent, distant and cold, drinking brandy. Something had happened. Ariel didn't know exactly what. At the theater, after the play, there had been some incident—something that had punctured the buoyancy of a good performance. Bess wouldn't tell her about it, but it had brought on one of the black moods that descended on her mother from time to time and plunged the entire household into gloom.

“Stop staring,” Bess said sharply. Her hands swooped down on the decanter and she poured a tiny bit of brandy in a small glass. “Here,” she said, sliding it across to Ariel. “Try it.”

Doubtful, Ariel took the glass, raised it to her lips, and cautiously touched the tip of her tongue to the amber liquid. It burned and tasted horrible. Wrinkling her nose, she put it down.

Her mother laughed, and as usual, Ariel gauged the quality of the sound as a connoisseur might have judged the vintage she'd just been offered. There was as yet no edge of hysteria, no threat of a night when Bess would have to be soothed till dawn.

“You're ten years old,” Bess said then, as if the fact had just occurred to her. “It's not long before you're a woman.”

Ariel simply looked at her, knowing better than to reply to this tone.

“You'd best face the truth of it now,” her mother added. “Men will want you, and if you let them, they'll take everything you are and expect gratitude for their theft. They'll talk of devotion, but what they mean is bondage.”

Ariel shivered. Her mother had made the word sound like the knell of doom.

“Men don't see us, really,” Bess went on, almost as if she were talking to herself. “They see a story that satisfies their secret desires, an image that rouses their lusts. So you tempt them, echo their dreams, and when they fall at your feet, you take what you want.”

She sounded like one of the plays she acted in, Ariel thought. Except that love so often conquered in those. “What about love?” she asked in a small voice.

Bess glared at her. “Love? Is that what you think you want?” She bared her teeth. “Believe me, its price is too high.” She reached across the corner of the polished table, grasped Ariel's wrist, and squeezed it hard. “There's only one sure course in this life, and that's to rely on yourself. Most people don't give a brass farthing for you. And the ones who do will want to ‘help' you as they see fit, not give you what you want. Only you can get that. You understand?”

Ariel gazed up at her. She'd seen this mood before. It was as if a cold fire had ignited in Bess, so that she blazed with ice and spoke like an oracle. It frightened Ariel, not because of anything her mother might do, but because of the otherworldly crackle of her personality.

“You don't understand,” Bess accused. Letting go of Ariel's wrist, she stood, resting her palms on the table and looming over her. She had always loomed, Ariel thought now. She still did.

“Miss Harding?” said a deep voice.

She startled and found that Lord Alan was looking at her with what seemed to be a mixture of uneasiness and concern.

“Are you all right?”

She had to appear calm and composed and logical, Ariel thought. She had to keep this situation under control. Love was the last thing to be thinking of; she couldn't imagine why it had entered her mind. “We should search for the servants,” she began.

“Some member of your family must be summoned,” he interrupted. “You cannot stay here alone.”

Ariel sat straighter in her chair, relieved at this response to her solitude.

“We must send word at once,” he added.

He said it so easily, as if it were so simple and obvious that an idiot would have thought of it. He was so very large, and secure, and confident in his position and wealth of family connections. “I will be perfectly all right,” she said. “I will hire servants.”