The Courtship (33 page)

He rose and walked to her. He took her hands and pulled her against him. He said against her hair, “Forget the damned lamp. Who cares when it comes right down to the core of the matter? It is old, ancient, long gone from here. Listen to me now, Helen. I want you very badly. I am holding myself by the only single honorable thread in my body. Kiss me, Helen, then run.”

“All right,” she said, “if you are sure this is what you want,” and kissed his mouth, his ear, his chin. “I will see you at dinner,” she said over her shoulder as she raced to the door of her study. Her last glimpse was of him standing there in the middle of the room, breathing hard, looking like a starving man.

She wanted to come back to him, but she didn't. She knew this was important to him. She knew him that well.

For the first time she realized she was thinking more about him than about the lamp. It was true even though now they'd added its history and its warnings to their knowledge. Truth be told, the lamp was long gone, just as Spenser said. What was important was that they had discovered that it had existed, verified by an ancient text. She was pleased. She was ready to let it go back into myth.

She thought about the man she loved with all her heart, the man she wanted with every fiber of her being to wed. She thought of Gerard Yorke and knew to her very soul that he was still alive and that he would never let her go. She just didn't know why.

And she cried in the privacy of her bedchamber and cursed the eighteen-year-old girl who had been so stupid as to believe herself in love with such a paltry man.

Spenser was so certain that everything would work out, but she just didn't see how it could.

 

In the early evening Lord Prith strode into the drawing room where Helen and Lord Beecham were talking, and announced, “I have a surprise for all of you. Flock, bring it in.”

In walked Flock carrying a silver tray. “It is my newest experiment with champagne.”

“Father, it's purple.”

“Yes, Nell. I poured some grape juice into the champagne, just to give it that nice healthy color. All of you can try it.”

“Father, Spenser and I are the only ones here, and he doesn't drink champagne.”

Lord Prith heaved a deep sigh and held up his hand. “We will wait, Flock, until we have a more ample supply of palates.” He sat down and leaned back, smiling at both of them. “Now, have you decided what you will do about Gerard Yorke?”

“We are just beginning our thinking,” Spenser said. “And food will help.”

Flock said from the doorway, “Cook has excellent timing. Dinner is served.”

Over a splendid dinner of pork tenderloin with mushrooms, fish and capers in black butter, innumerable side dishes, including cook's specialty—eggs
au miroir
—and redcurrant fool for dessert, they decided that everyone would go to London the next morning. Helen and her father, Flock and Teeny, would stay at the Beecham town house. It was the first time the town house would welcome guests since three years before, when Lord Beecham's great-aunt Maudette had arrived with her ten best friends, all very old ladies, all of whom tatted and left their work in progress all over the house. Actually, looking back on it, Spenser had enjoyed himself immensely during those chaotic two weeks.

“Flock and I will be ready to leave tomorrow by ten o'clock,” Lord Prith said to Spenser. He added, “Goodness, what with the Sherbrookes hanging about all the time, my little Nellie will be very well chaperoned indeed. Now I won't have to worry about you taking advantage of her, my boy.”

There was another small bit of dead silence.

“And then,” Lord Beecham said, clearing his throat, “Douglas Sherbrooke and I will go to meet with Sir John Yorke at the Admiralty.”

“Yes,” Helen said, “but you must be alert, Spenser. Sir John is ruthless and shrewd. I know that Gerard was afraid of his father. His father ruled not only him but his entire family with an iron fist. I do want to see what truths you manage to get out of that old curmudgeon.”

Late that night Lord Beecham lay wide awake in his bed thinking about his life. It was at once extraordinarily complicated and very simple and as clear as a spring rain, and he smiled into the darkness. He remembered his words with Lord Prith just before they had all retired. “I have decided that you deserve to stay in the Dancing Bear's Room, in my town house,” Spenser had said.

“An odd name, my boy. Wherever did that name come from?”

“Well, some fifty years ago, my grandfather had a trained bear and he kept him in the house. In that bedchamber.”

“What was the bear's name?”

“Guthry, I believe. He did enjoy dancing with my grandfather. I was told that he died shortly after my grandfather did.”

“I hope,” Lord Prith said, “that they were not buried together.”

“I understand that it was discussed, but I don't believe it happened. But you know, I have learned over the years that nothing in my family is ever what you expect.” Except for his father, he thought, who was a thorough rotter, no doubt about that; but now, Spenser didn't flinch from it. He just dismissed it. It felt very good. He felt like a house that the ghosts no longer haunted.

As he was nodding off to sleep, Lord Beecham realized that life was fascinating, a thousand years ago and today. Who else had dancing bears hanging about in the past? He wondered now as he had when he'd been a boy, what it would be like to have a bear living in the house.

 

 

 

 

It was Claude, Lord Beecham's acting butler, who assigned the name “the War Room” to the large, shadowed study at the back of the house.

On Friday morning everyone was gathered around talking. Everyone had an opinion. When Ryder and Sophie Sherbrooke unexpectedly joined the company some thirty minutes later, Ryder simply stood in the doorway and said in the special voice he used for his fifteen children, which was actually a bellow, “Close your mouths or no dessert!”

That got everyone's attention. One by one, each occupant ceased speaking and stared at Ryder.

Douglas Sherbrooke said, “Ryder, Sophie, welcome to London. Come join us. This is a conundrum both of you will enjoy. Ryder, did you know a naval man, Gerard Yorke? He supposedly drowned back in '03 off the coast of France?”

Ryder Sherbrooke frowned, looked thoughtful, stroked his chin, then announced, “I hope this doesn't distress anyone here, but he cheated at cards. He nearly got his throat slit over one incident where I was present. I remember him whining that his father never gave him enough money and that he was desperate. When he was asked why he was desperate, he said he was three months behind in paying his mistress. I remember he was a seedy fellow, complained a lot. Yes, I remember now that he reportedly drowned. What's this all about? What's the matter?”

And so the mix increased and the noise level escalated until Mrs. Glass, the Heatherington housekeeper, poked her head in the door and whistled, just like a man. “Claude has a slight cold and his voice isn't all that strong at present,” she said once she had everyone's attention. “Who would like tea and cakes? No, don't speak. Raise your hands. Ladies first.”

One countess, one sister-in-law of a countess, and Miss Mayberry all dutifully raised their hands.

“Good. Now gentlemen.”

And so an earl, two viscounts, and the brother of an earl all raised their hands. Lord Prith requested a touch of champagne in a subdued voice.

Sophie Sherbrooke said to Helen, “We haven't met, but I've heard a lot about you, from Alex, who wanted to garrote you before, but then she decided that you were just fine as long as you kept your distance from Douglas. Is it true that you are going to marry Lord Beecham?”

“Yes,” Helen said. “But first as you have already heard, we must determine if my husband is still alive, and if he is, what sort of evil he is brewing. It is a horrid thing to have a husband pop up when he was supposed to have croaked it eight years before. It is particularly difficult since I want to marry Spenser.”

“I see,” said Sophie Sherbrooke, without blinking an eye. She could, after all, deal quite well with fifteen children forced indoors on a rainy day. “Tell me all about it.”

Thirty minutes later, when everyone was eating cook's delicious chocolate puffs, peach fritters, and caraway seed cakes, Ryder announced, “Behold the new member of the House of Commons. That is why Sophie and I are here in London at this particular moment. I handily beat a very obnoxious paunchy man by the name of Redfield. I will now be representing Upper and Lower Slaughter and environs.” He beamed at everyone.

“Hear, hear,” Lord Prith said, and raised his crystal flute of champagne. “Er, are you certain you wish to do this, young man?”

“He wants to reform the wretched laws that allow for the terrible exploitation of children, sir,” Sophie said. “He will succeed, you know.”

They briefly discussed Ryder's Beloved Ones, the children he saved from dreadful situations and brought to live at Brandon House.

Plans were made, shifted, reevaluated. Ryder and Sophie decided to stay with Douglas and Alexandra. They were on the point of leaving when Lord Prith strode into the drawing room, Flock on his heels carrying a large silver tray.

“What is this, Father?”

“Ah, my dear, I believe we now have a suitable number of gullets to experiment on. No, don't look alarmed, Sophie, this is champagne.”

“Sir,” she said, “it's purple.”

“Well, yes. It is something I have invented. You see I added some grape juice to the champagne to give it that healthy purple color. Splendid, don't you think? All of you will try it, if you please. Except you, Spenser, since you would turn quite green and ruin the evening.”

Nobody wanted to, but everyone was polite, and so everyone drank the strange grape mixture with Spenser watching, a look of total revulsion on his face.

Alexandra cocked her head to one side as she lowered the lovely crystal flute after two small sips. “It is very different, sir. Actually, to be blunt about this, it is close to revolting. I think perhaps you should try something else to mix with the champagne.”

Lord Prith looked hopefully toward Douglas, who mournfully shook his head and kept his mouth shut. When his eyes met Sophie's, he looked near to tears. Sophie cleared her throat, gave her husband an agonized look, and said, “I am so very sorry, sir. Perhaps it is the sort of grapes you used. Perhaps grapes from the Mediterranean region would work better.”

Helen said, “Father, it is a good try, but Alexandra is right. If I were dying I would have difficulty drinking it even if I was promised that it would bring me back.”

Lord Prith said, “Not even you, my little Nell? My daughter adores me, you see, and if she doesn't approve, then it must be very bad indeed. But wait—Ryder, you did not give me your opinion.”

“Sir, I have found in the years I have been married that if I disagree with my wife, she refuses to give me her sweet smiles, as well as sweet other things. I am sorry, sir, but I cannot.”

“I can understand your hesitation,” Lord Prith said.“Ah, well. Flock, what was it that we called this lovely purple drink?”

“Grapagne, my lord.”

“I do like the name. It has a certain cachet. Hmmm. What do you think of apricot with champagne?”

Evidently no one thought anything of it, since there was dead silence.

Both sets of Sherbrookes left shortly, everyone ready with his assigned task.

IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT when there was a tap on Lord Beecham's bedchamber door.

He was naked, lying on his back in his mammoth bed, a sheet pulled to his waist, thinking about kissing the soft flesh behind Helen's knees, something he hadn't managed to do yet.

“Enter,” he called out.

Helen floated in—no other way to put it, he thought, stunned, watching her glide toward him. She was wearing a crimson-silk nightgown with an even darker red dressing gown over it, and strangely enough, that incredible ensemble was not the least bit tawdry. In fact, it gave a man absolutely no hint as to what treasures lay beneath.

“Go away, Helen. I mean it.”

“I will,” she said, walked right up to the bed and stopped. “Do you like it?” She did a graceful twirl and the soft slithering sounds of all that fabric would have sent him to his knees if he hadn't been lying on his back.

“If you don't go away I will rip it off and examine it in the morning.”

“I wore it to punish you. This is discipline, Spenser, a divine sort of discipline. What do you think—perhaps a Level Four?”