The Counterfeit Gentleman (26 page)

As much as Bethia hated her cousin—whichever one had
conspired to have her killed—it was nothing compared to
the hatred she now felt for the fifth Earl of Blackstone.

He had casually and wantonly destroyed innocent peo
ple. It staggered the imagination to think how different Dig
ory’s life would have been if he had been the heir instead of being the bastard. And how his mother must have suffered
from shame! If the earl were not dead already, Bethia
would not have hesitated to kill him herself.

She was still considering how satisfying that would have
been, when her musings were interrupted by a tapping at the door. Quickly, she put the letters out of sight in the
drawer of her writing table, then wiped the tears from her
cheeks and called out, “Come in.”

It was one of the maids, and she carried a note. “Beg par
don, Miss
...
I mean, Mrs. Rendel,” the maid said with a
blush for her slip of the tongue. “But this just come for
you.”

Thanking the girl, Bethia took the note and broke the
seal. It was from Lady Edington, who had been at the wedding along with her husband, and it was an invitation to go out for a drive.

* * * *

The sun was high in the sky when Wilbur Harcourt ventured forth to begin his campaign to force Lady Clovyle to
admit that her niece was missing. At the speed with which
gossip spread, by tomorrow a hue and cry would be raised,
and as a loving cousin, he would insist that a Bow Street
runner be hired to find the poor child.

Since he would give the runner a few hints as to the most
profitable area to commence his search, by the time the
week was out, Wilbur would be rich.

He was sauntering down Bond Street looking for pre
cisely the right ear to whisper into, when opportunity found
him in the person of Lord Keppel.

“I say, Harcourt, is it not ghastly? Like to have turned
my stomach when I read it in the Morning Post.”

“Read what?” Wilbur said absently, his mind occupied
with choosing the precise way to arouse the viscount’s cu
riosity and suspicions.

“Why your cousin, of course—Miss Pepperell. Or I suppose now I must call her Mrs. Rendel, though I never heard
of the gentleman before. Can’t believe I was cut out by a
total stranger. Don’t mind telling you, I’d not have been
surprised if she’d taken you or one of your brothers, but
this fair leaves me speechless.”

His tongue continued to flap, but Wilbur was too stunned
to breathe. Just as Keppel was turning to continue on his
way, Wilbur managed to grab his arm and croak out, “What
do you mean, Mrs. Rendel?”

The viscount shook off Wilbur’s hand. “Confound it all,
now you’ve wrinkled my sleeve,” he said with a scowl that
quickly changed to a grin “You don’t mean to tell me you
didn’t know?”

“Please
...”
Wilbur said, reaching out blindly.

Deftly fending off another attack upon his clothing, Lord
Keppel said, “The chit was married yesterday at Lady Leti
tia’s house. Which means I’ve got to screw up my courage
and offer for Witchell’s eldest. Got a squint, but eight thousand pounds a year does remarkable things for her looks.”

“She can’t be married,” Wilbur said, too dazed to believe
what he had just heard. “She’s—” He almost blurted out
that she was dead, but he caught himself in the nick of time.
“She’s not mentioned a word of it to me,” was what he said
instead.

“If I were you, I’d be off to the Continent before your
creditors get the word,” Lord Keppel said, clapping him on
the back and then strolling off.

Wilbur remembered nothing of the retreat to his rooms, but when he unlocked the door and let himself in, he found
a letter on the floor. Picking it up, he broke the seal and unfolded it.

It was from Mr. Kidby, his uncle’s solicitor, and as he
read it, Wilbur felt a white-hot rage burning inside him.

His mind now clear, he began to plan how he would
make his recovery.

* * * *

Digory was ostensibly looking through the papers the so
licitor had sent over relating to the management of various
estates formerly owned by his wife’s grandfather.

At a casual glance, the accounting seemed to be in good
order, which was fortunate since he could not focus for
long on the columns of numbers. Despite his most valiant
effort, he repeatedly found himself thinking about his wife
and the reproach in her eyes, rather than about rents and ex
penditures.

He had just thrown down his quill in disgust when the
door to the study opened and his wife entered. She had her
bonnet in her hand, and although her color was high, her
voice was calm when she spoke to him.

“I am going out for a drive with Lady Edington,” she
said.

“Are you sure that is wise?” he asked, rising to his feet
and approaching her near enough to see that her eyes were
red from crying. He reached out his hand, but she shied
away from his touch.

“I understood that my will and Kidby’s letters to my
cousins have taken care of any danger, so I should have
nothing left to fear.”

“I was not worried that you might be in physical dan
ger,” he said. “I merely thought to save you from needless embarrassment.”

“Embarrassment?”

“Lady Edington knows I am a bastard, which might
make you feel uncomfortable around her. I suggest you de
cline the invitation.”

To his complete amazement, instead of seeing the rea
sonableness of his request, his wife turned into a veritable
virago. She seemed to swell up to twice her normal size,
and so fierce was the expression on her face that he found
himself taking an involuntary step backward.

“How dare you!” she said, making no effort to moderate
her voice. “How dare you imply that I should be ashamed
of you! I am not such a shallow creature that I let other
people’s prejudices and bigotry determine my own opin
ions, so do not try to make me cower like a craven in my room, for I shall not do it.”

He was trying with little success to calm her when the
knocker banged twice, and with one last fulminating glare,
Bethia marched out of the study, slamming the door behind
her.

A moment later he heard the front door slam, and cross
ing to the window, he watched Bethia climb into a high-
perch phaeton pulled by a pair of high-spirited chestnuts.

Then with a curse for his own lack of foresight, he
dashed after his wife.

W

ith a smile for Bethia, Lady Edington signaled her
groom to release the horses’ heads, but as soon as the man stepped aside, Digory took his place, preventing her
from setting off.

“It is perfectly all right with me if you drive over him,”
Bethia muttered under her breath, not even trying to keep
the bitterness out of her voice.

Lady Edington glanced at her with one eyebrow raised. “So the honeymoon is over already?”

“I would prefer it if you took Little Davey along when
you go out,” Digory said.

“We have no need of a groom,” Lady Edington said. “I
am quite a noted whip, and even dearest Matthew trusts me
to drive him.”

“Please,” Digory said, looking right at Bethia.

“No,” she said flatly, and after a brief hesitation, he
stepped aside.

Lady Edington set her horses going at a pace that was a bit faster than Bethia preferred, but she neither asked her
companion to slow down, nor did she turn around to see
what her husband was doing. She stared resolutely ahead,
and did not even comment when they entered Green Park.

“Since Hyde Park is the only proper place to be seen at this hour of the day,” Lady Edington said, “with luck we
will not be interrupted here.”

Bethia did not immediately reply, but the viscountess
was not the least bit discommoded. “Please call me Ade
line, and if you have no objections, I shall call you Bethia.”

Bethia nodded briefly, but she was still too angry to
speak.

Patting her on the hand, Adeline said, “If you will think of me as an older sister, I am sure you will find it is not at
all difficult to tell me what has gone wrong with your marriage. I am not a gossip, and whatever you tell me I promise
I will never reveal to another soul, not even to my hus
band.”

Her voice shaking with outrage, Bethia said, “Digory has
decided that if I stay married to him beyond my birthday, my life will be ruined. He plans to obtain an annulment.
Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous?”

“Astonishing! Does he give any reason for this peculiar
idea?”

“Merely the fact that he is baseborn, and that people
will shun me if they discover his low origins.”

“When they find out, for they will find out, you know,”
Adeline said gently. “It is not the kind of secret that can
stay hidden for long. And he is correct. Everyone who is
anyone will avoid you as determinedly as if you had the
black plague.”

“But I do not care what other people say or do,” Bethia said, feeling quite put upon. “Why can no one understand
that?”

“Well, then, if that is the case, there is nothing more to
be said, and so you should tell your husband.”

“I did tell him. And yet he still refuses to consummate
the marriage.” Bethia felt herself blushing, but when she
turned her head, her companion was smiling. “And I do not
find it at all amusing,” she added.

“But my dear Bethia, it is positively hilarious,” Adeline
said. “There is no way on earth that he will be able to resist
your charms for long, for it is quite obvious that the poor
man is totally besotted with you.”

“He may be head over heels in love with me, but he is
also impossibly stubborn. You would not believe how pig
headed he can be. Why he slept in a chair for two nights
during our journey back from Cornwall, and the beds were
quite wide enough for the both of us,” Bethia said, feeling her spirits lift a tiny bit at the thought that her companion
might possibly be right.

“You must trust me, for I am very knowledgeable about
men, having lived with one for over nine years,” Adeline
said, pulling the horses to a halt and then executing a very
skillful turn around so that they were heading back out of the park. “The only way your husband would be able to
suppress his own desires for the next several months is if he
were locked up in a monastery, and fortunately King Henry
the Eighth dissolved them. Furthermore, so that you will
not have to languish about for too many weeks, waiting for
your husband to come to his senses, I am going to introduce you to my modiste, who is able to concoct the most wicked
nightgowns imaginable.”

An hour later Bethia was put to a blush by the sheer silks and delicate laces being displayed for her approval. “I shall
look like some rake’s mistress,” she murmured for her
friend’s ear alone.

“Precisely,” Adeline replied. “These will leave nothing
to your husband’s imagination. Once he sees what he has
forsworn, he will soon contrive to overcome his scruples
about taking advantage of your innocence.”

“I am not sure I will have the courage to wear them.”

Adeline shrugged. “Even if you pay Madame extra to
have them put before her other orders, she will not be able
to finish them for several days. When they are delivered, if
you still feel they are too daring, you may pass them on to
me, and I will be happy to pay for them. Matthew has
grown a bit too complacent lately, and it is time he was reminded that I am not yet in my dotage.”

* * * *

Under normal conditions, Gervase Harcourt would not
even have bothered to open the note from his brother, but
having read the letter from Mr. Kidby, he assumed that Wilbur was interested in securing a place for himself in
Gervase’s curricle, to spare himself the expense of a ticket
to Dover.

The note was brief and demanded that Gervase present
himself without delay in Wilbur’s rooms in Castle Street.
So rudely was it phrased, that it was only the desire to rub
his elder brother’s face in their mutual misfortune that kept Gervase from ignoring it all together.