The Lodestone (11 page)

**

If Drake had heard her words, he would have instantly agreed. Signing the Magna Carta could not have required as much time and formality, he’d thought glumly when the business of purchasing the new ship had dragged on endlessly. The only boon was that in his hotel in Newcastle, among the letters awaiting him, was one from his secretary, Mr. Collins, announcing his own imminent arrival. He urged Drake to wait for him there, as he had news of his sister that he hesitated to put in writing.

The day Collins was expected, Drake was more restless than usual. He left word where his clerk could find him and went to visit the place where his mother had died. Something perverse in his nature made him want to see it, and he’d been strangely comforted that, as brothels went, it was one of the better ones. At least, its landlord went to great lengths to keep it disguised as a boarding house. When the matron asked him suggestively if he wanted something, he’d asked for a tankard of ale to be brought to him in the drawing room. Collins came in just as the ale did, and the matron hurried to get another glass.

“Following the information I purchased from the scullery maid in this very establishment where we sit, I learned that there was a young girl in residence with your mother on the day she died.” Mr. Collins spoke slowly, as if dreading the information he must impart.

“Go on, Collins. I have no patience for delay.”

“Yes, sir. Well, the girl had no way to pay the rent, so the proprietor—that is, the previous proprietor who has since died—called her into . . . well . . . into service.” Mr. Collins pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his brow, even though the day was not warm. “She was but sixteen. She remained here for the next three years.”

“Where did she go from here?”

“The maid couldn’t be sure. She only heard a name, and she thought the gentleman who took her stayed for a while in a nearby hotel.”

Drake took a long pull on his ale. “Go on,” he said.

“I found the hotel. The clerk, for a few coins, allowed me to peruse the old registry books. I doubt the gentleman in question used his real name, of course; but the clerk overheard where they were heading next. The lass had been sold to a foreign lord or duke or something, who was quite put out that she wasn’t as represented.”

“A virgin, you mean? It’s an old game these ghouls play with the young ones, selling them repeatedly, sometimes at auction, until they are too broken and debased for anyone to believe them innocent.”

“Indeed, sir.” Blushing a vivid pink, Collins went on, “That was exactly the case. But instead of returning her to the . . . ah . . .
here
, he took her with him on his travels. Some would have thought her fortunate, a girl in her position, to have found a wealthy benefactor. But he was most abusive. He installed her in his apartment in Rome and kept her his prisoner, in almost total isolation from other human contact.”

“How do you know all this?” Drake asked, the lines of his face set grim and hard, as if in stone.

“The scullery maid in this establishment also gave me the name of a servant, Joseph Marthers, who was eager to talk to me. This foreign gentleman had also hired him away from here. Joseph no longer works for the man, who left Rome quite suddenly.”

Collins cleared his throat and drained his tankard, most ill at ease with the subject. His eyes filled with tears as Drake motioned for the matron to bring more ale.

“Sir, according to Joseph, his former employer brought your sister out of her solitary confinement only on occasion, for the lascivious amusement of his guests . . . um, other gentlemen, most of them.”

“What sort of entertainment?” Drake’s voice was deadly quiet.

“What he called games of passion. I’m sure you can surmise what that means.”

The matron put another pair of overflowing mugs on the table and then stood by, waiting. Drake frowned at her. “What do you want?” he asked tersely. “I’ll settle the bill when we’re done here.”

“Oh, it isn’t that, sir,” she replied, smiling and arching her heavy brows.

“Then what?”

“Just wonderin’, sir, if ’e’ll be stayin’ the night. Are ’e in need of a room or some other comfort?” Encouraged when Drake didn’t reply, she continued in a smug, soft voice, “Will ’e be wantin’ to see the young ladies now, or would ’e like me to select one for ’e?”

“Be off!” Drake roared. “Leave us alone or I’ll bring in the constable and have you shut down! Away with you!” When the matron scurried away, Drake turned back to Collins. “Go on,” he said soberly. “Finish.”

The sensitive Mr. Collins forced himself to take up the story again. “He drugged her repeatedly to force her compliance. On that last night, he thought the physician—his friend and traveling companion—had given her too much. She wouldn’t awaken. He instructed the servant, Joseph, to get rid of her, and when Joseph found her alive, he got help for her. He looked at it as a miracle and told me it changed him completely. He took her to a convent just outside Rome and has dedicated himself to the church.”

“That’s very touching. Where is my sister now?”

“With the nuns at St. Augustine’s. She was ill and in such a state that she could not even remember her own name. The nuns have christened her Mignon.”

“I’ll go to her immediately.”

“I spoke at length with the Mother Superior. Your sister has been at the convent for seven years now, Mr. Stoneham. And she has not uttered one word in all that time. Mother Superior says they can’t be sure how much she remembers. All they know of her is what Joseph related to them, which was most cruel indeed. The poor girl is given to nightmares and daytime terrors. There’s a chance she’ll never recover.”

So Drake had gone to Rome, to St. Augustine’s, to meet his sister. She was hauntingly beautiful, tall and slender with dark hair and eyes and a look of their mother about her. Mignon refused to speak and while she seemed glad to know she had a brother, she had no interest in leaving the convent. Drake gave the Mother Superior a sizeable donation and instructed her to waste no expense in obtaining anything his sister needed. He would, he informed the Mother, take Mignon to London to live with him when his residence was completed. He instructed Mr. Collins to return to London and take up his duties there, but to also continue his investigation into the identity of the nobleman who had so cruelly used Mignon.

When Drake returned to Newcastle, he’d found the balance of his wardrobe waiting for him at the hotel. Congratulating himself on having the foresight to arrange that it be shipped directly from his place in Monte Carlo, he’d removed two shirts from one of the huge trunks and sent everything else on by coach to the Eagle’s Head Inn.

When the infernal papers were signed at last, he had but to pack a few things in his saddlebags, and he was again on the road. Drake had been away from his new holdings too long, and he was so anxious to get back that he’d paused in his journey only long enough to water his horse and allow him a few minutes rest while he chewed on a piece of hard bread. It had been impossible during his stay in Newcastle, and his brief trip to Italy, to erase Cleome Parker from his mind; and that mental aberration, so uncommon as it was to him, annoyed him considerably. He had known and bedded countless women, but few had commanded his thoughts when he was not actually enjoying the sweet delights they provided. Not one of them had branded herself so ruthlessly in his memory, and he had yet to sample the caresses of this gentle, lovely creature who shuddered visibly when called upon to endure his presence.

He hardly recognized her. In only two weeks, she had grown considerably thinner and much too pale. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, which lacked the spark he’d seen in them the night she’d laughed with Garnett Easton before Drake stripped her of her home. On seeing him, Cleome paused on the stairs a moment; then she walked to him with a resolve he’d never witnessed in one so young. He had expected to find her still in bed recuperating from the blow of her grandfather’s death, and the Eagle’s Head shrouded in mourning; but the place hummed with activity under her direction, carrying on the business of any prosperous inn.

“Good morning, Mr. Stoneham.” She greeted him pleasantly. “I expect you are hungry after your travels.”

“A bear waking from his winter retreat could not be more so, mademoiselle.”

He washed up in the kitchen and then Cleome ushered him into the private breakfast room, leaving him to enjoy the feast that had been set out for him. Later, when he put down his fork and pushed his chair away from the table, she returned. It was as if she had been watching from some hidden corner, he thought.

“A bath has been prepared in your room, Mr. Stoneham,” she announced softly, her head bowed in the manner of a servant, her eyes appropriately downcast. She seemed completely devoid of the fire he had first seen in her.

The temperature of the water was perfect; and not once was it allowed to become less so, for the lad from the stables had been set to stand by with buckets of hot water. Drake was required only to bask in contentment as his travel-stiffened muscles relaxed in the sybaritic comfort provided by the brass and porcelain tub. The experience, he thought, would have been considerably more pleasant if the vessel were larger; but he was not one to complain about shortcomings in luxuries he had neither ordered nor expected, even if his feet did hang over the end of the elegant bathtub.

He was astonished at the changes in the master bedroom, which he had first seen when he and Young Sam had placed William Desmond’s body there. At that time, it had held only the most essential necessities, and Drake could hardly believe the transformation Cleome had wrought. He knew she was after something and that it had everything to do with securing her position at the inn. Drake was puzzled by her methods, though, for most members of her gentle sex would have employed tears, tantrums, or more simply, an exchange of favors. She had chosen instead to prove her value with work. Considering her father’s fortitude and temperament, Drake realized it should not have come as a surprise.

Jimmy Parker’s own child.
Drake shifted his long limbs and settled them again in the steaming water. When he’d had his first glimpse of Cleome galloping down the lane on the back of the colt, her hair flying about in all directions like some kind of virgin Medusa, he had most assuredly had designs on her, but the pattern was to be one of slow seduction and pure pleasure, without the responsibility that came with commitment. When she had revealed the name of the pathetic female kneeling on the stable floor, it had placed the matter in a different light.

His first inclination was to defy the Providence that had led him to his comrade’s widow and take Cleome anyway. But he could not. It was a cruel fate that had brought him to William Desmond’s door and allowed him to deprive an old man of his life, and the wife and child of the only true friend Drake had ever known of their only provision. Drake owed Jimmy Parker far better than that. He refused to assume any guilt for winning the inn, for it had been a fair game. But Drake could not deny the obligation he now felt towards Cleome and her mother.

The shell that struck Jimmy down would have caught Drake if the older man had not pushed him aside, heedless of his own safety. Jimmy’s friendship had been offered freely to a young runaway who was scarcely old enough to drink or smoke or whore or kill a man—or any of the other things he was doing. Jimmy had counseled him, laughed with him, cried with him, starved with him and protected him. And on one freezing night, he had given Drake his own cloak and woolen neck scarf. Drake had felt the burning pride of any youth bent on affirming his manhood, but he’d been too cold to argue.

As if chilled by the recollection, Drake now motioned for Mickey to pour more hot water into his bath. If he was to do his duty by Cleome, he certainly could not turn her out of her home but neither could he pursue his first inclination. The sudden recollection of her small, graceful figure assaulted him. He’d never seen anything like the innocent alarm in her wide blue eyes . . . how they had reflected the candlelight as she’d shown him around his new home, and the only one she’d ever known. But, he told himself, the problem was easily resolved.

With the marriage certificate Drake had tucked away inside the music box Jimmy had intended as a gift for his bride, Cleome’s birthright to a certain position in the community would be unquestioned. It would give her a name, make her fit company for the young men hereabout. It would make her acceptable chattel for some eager lad to enslave somewhere on a farm or above a village shop. She could get a husband and he could enjoy his winnings with a clear conscience.

He scooped up the rough sponge and scrubbed himself, lathering his chest with suds. Then pulling himself up out of the tub, he motioned for Mickey to pour more hot water over him. He should be greatly relieved if some young fool
would
come along and marry the beautiful Cleome, for then he’d be excused from this troublesome duty. There were plenty of available women hereabouts, and damned few of them were immune to his charm. The last thing he wanted was to find himself besotted with an innocent country lass scarcely old enough to leave home.